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youraverageaemondsimp · 5 months ago

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Ensnared in lies. // Cult Leader!Bsf!Aemond Targaryen x Fem!Reader || MODERN AU.

Summary: Returning to your old town after many years to settle down posed many difficulties, luckily your childhood best friend was willing to help you out, surely he doesn't have any ulterior motives, right?

WARNINGS: dubcon, cult, narcissism, brainwashed neighborhood, coercion, somnophilia(?), unprotected p in v sex, breeding kink, body worshipping, cunnilingus, brainwashing(?), gaslighting, manipulation, extremely gullible reader, unknowingly being involved with a cult, yandere!aemond(?), + plus not proof read, lmk if there's anymore warnings I should add.

WC: 7.3k

A/N: I finally go to finish this, it's insane how long it took. // divider creds to @cafekitsune

You rolled down your window as you drove your car, allowing the breeze to hit you gently and flow through your hair, the smell of fresh air was something you weren't used to since you had lived in the city for a few years— having gotten to the pollution there, you had forgotten that air could even be this fresh.

Moving places was a hassle, especially from the city to a town, but it did not matter to you since you had told yourself that you'd come back here no matter what, after all it was your childhood town, where you grew up in.

As you drove, the town's sept came into view, and the moment you glanced at it, the sept made you feel an overwhelming amount of nostalgia, remembering how you and your childhood best friend would sneak off the Sunday preachings to play in the fields. They were fun memories.

But for an odd reason, you felt a sense of deep dread along with the feelings of nostalgia, you felt your gut wrench as you passed by it, the big seven pointed star loomed eerily, making shivers run down your spine.

You shrugged it off and stepped on the accelerator, speeding past it, the blanket of dread, which the sept engulfed you in, was lifted the moment the towns houses came into view, their architecture had developed but still remained their original structure, you felt nostalgic once again, memories springing up in your mind.

You quickly drove to the house you grew up in, parking the car in the front of it before getting out, the house had been abandoned for a few years after you and your parents had moved out of the town, it looked shabby, spider webs decorating the corners, you pulled the key out of your pocket before pushing the fence gate open and moving towards the door.

The door handle was rusted, and the key didn't fit into the hole at first, but you somehow managed to push it inside and twisted as much as you could, the noise of metal clunking against each other as you desperately tried to get it open, and by pure luck, it opened.

The door creaked open, revealing the insides of the house, it was empty, and you stepped inside — immediately coughing because of the dust particles in the air, the floor was covered in dust, abandoned spider webs clung onto the walls. You walked further inside, the sound of your boots echoing through the empty house, your feet took you to your childhood bedroom, which you opened to see if it was the same.

Of course it was, the walls were painted your favourite colour at that time, you giggled as you thought of a funny memory, when you had thrown a tantrum and asked your parents to get it painted because your best friend had his room painted too.

Ah yes, your best friend.

You wondered if he still lived here, though knowing him, he probably did. You both had kept in touch from time to time but never really went into details of your life, however he was still a main part of your life, after all, you spent most of your childhood with him, doing random stuff and messing around like kids and teenagers did.

The thought of him brought a smile to your face.

You continue to take in the sight of your bedroom, stepping inside to further examine the room, to check if it needs any cleaning, You go to the window before looking outside and then something catches your eye.

It was nothing out of the ordinary, just another spider web, weaved outside of it, unlike all the spider webs you came across in this house, it wasn't abandoned. A spider crawled on it, still seemed as if it was weaving it carefully, placing every microfiber in its place whilst moving to the centre, you watched as the silk came out of its spinnerets, awed by the process of how it made its web, with so much precision.

Just then, you spotted a butterfly making its way towards it, you furrowed your eyebrows, wondering if the butterfly knew that it was making its way towards its own trap, but you couldn't do anything except watch.

And alas, the butterfly got caught in the web, its wings sticking to the silks as it struggled to get out, ruining the web in process but the more it struggled, the more the web stuck to its wings, weighing it down further, the spider seemed to be watching ominously as the butterfly struggled, and then, it attacked.

It jumped on the butterfly, and you sighed heavily, knowing it was a lost battle for the butterfly, you had hoped it would escape but it didn't, the spider had already caught it, you watched as the butterfly eventually stopped struggling, indicating that it has met its own death.

You looked at it in horror before shaking your head and making your way out of your bedroom, mind still on the incident you had witnessed, trying to understand why it would ever willingly fly into the trap?

‘Perhaps it didn't see the trap’ is the reason you came up with, which made more sense, ‘What a naive creature’ you thought as you walked into the middle of the living room.

Just then your phone starts ringing, you smile when you read the name and immediately answer the call.

“Hello? Y/N? Is it actually true?” the voice on the other line questioned and you cheekily giggled before answering, “Yes Aemond!” You replied enthusiastically.

You had texted Aemond that you were moving back into town right before you reached.

It wasn't too long before Aemond reached your house, your guess was correct, he still lived here, you waited outside by your car patiently for him, scrolling through your phone when you heard the wheels of a vehicle squeaking as it stopped, you lifted your head up to take a look.

The car door opened and a familiar figure stepped out, you couldn't control the amount of happiness you felt when you finally saw him, your best friend. He had matured quite a lot, his hair grew in length, his features became more sharper as the baby fat was lost with age, and what you found surprising was that he now seemed to have stopped wearing that eyepatch.

You remembered how insecure he was about it, he lost it in a mishap that involved his nephews and was very insecure since then, yet now he doesn't seem so insecure anymore, in fact, you took note of the sapphire placed in the empty socket of his eye.

He shut the car door and made his way to you, and you immediately pounced on him, making him stumble back a little bit as you hugged him tightly, his hands rested gently on the back of your waist and he let you hug him, “Oh gods Aemond, I missed you so much! You've changed a lot.” You exclaim to which he gives you a small smile, “You too.” He replies, alluding to the fact that you have also changed.

You pulled back and gave him a big smile.

You expected him to let go of you, but he didn't, his grip on your waist tightened and he pulled you into for another hug again, this time, he bent down to bury his face in the crook of your neck, breathing in your scent, you didn't think much of it, and instead caressed his hair in a comforting way.

He lets go after a minute or two, before smiling at you, and then addressing the situation at hand, “You moved back here? So suddenly?” He asks you, and you nod, “It wasn't sudden, I had always said that I'd come back.” You shrugged and he nodded, then he looked behind you, spotting your house, and furrowed his brows, “You'll be staying there? That place has not been touched in years.” He questions and you turn back to look at it.

“There's nothing I can do about it, I'm gonna clean it up as much as I can and sleep on the floor until my furniture from the city arrives here, they said that it will take time, about a week or so, because my decision was last minute, I haven't booked them in advance.” You explain your situation and he raises an eyebrow, “No.” He simply asserts and you stare at him in confusion.

“I cannot allow it, how about you stay over at my place until your house is all cleaned up and ready to be moved in?” He suggests and you pout, “I don't want to be a burden to you.” You mutter.

You are taken aback when he grabs your sides and pulls you close, “You are never a burden to me, Y/N.” He tells you and you chuckle awkwardly at the weird situation but you agree nonetheless, “—Oh I forgot to tell you, my boyfriend will also be moving here.” You tell him.

“Boyfriend?” He questions, through gritted teeth, and you nod, oblivious to the emotions he's feeling, “Can he stay over too?” You ask, batting your eyelashes at him, and he swallows thickly, expression darkening before he agrees.

“Thank you Aem! But on the other hand, I guess I'll be busy for this entire week, trying to clean up the house.” You sigh, wincing at the thought of cleaning everything, and the renovations you'll have to make, which will also cost money.

“No need, I know a few people… who will be more than willing to help with it, I'd only have to ask them.” He tells you and you furrow your brows, “Wouldn't that be burderning them? Is that alright?” You question and he shakes his head, “Of course it's alright, they are obligated to.” He states and you are even more confused but Aemond quickly switches up the topic and asks you if you want to go to his house now, and you nod.

“Sure, let me lock the house up real quick.” You tell him and you go to the front door, shutting it and locking it. Of course, you struggled because the lock was bad as before but still managed to lock it.

“We can go now.” You say, getting into your car but Aemond tuts, which makes you halt, “Why bother taking two cars there? Just leave yours here, I'll drive you there.” He suggests and you were about to protest but immediately stopped the moment you realise how it wasn't a suggestion, but rather a statement.

So you agree, he's your best friend after all, someone you can blindly trust, he's extremely trustworthy.

And so, you get into the passenger seat and watch Aemond get into the driver's seat and start the engine, he steps on the accelerator, moving the car forward slowly. You stare out of the window as he turns around the corner.

Your eyes spot the same web from earlier, still the same as the spider feasts on the remains of the butterfly in its trap, a sense of dread forming in the pit of your stomach; but just then you feel Aemond place his hand on your thigh and you turn your head to him, “You're nervous.” He comments and you didn't notice but you looked down, to see your own leg bouncing up and down, so you try to stop it but you can't.

Aemond rubs up and down your thigh reassuringly, trying to provide you with comfort, you should tell him to take his hand away, cause it wasn't appropriate but you don't, because it actually made you calm down, something about his touch was strangely soothing.

So you remained quiet.

You both reach his home in twenty minutes, you open the car door and step outside, taking in the view of his house, “Still the same as ever huh?” You question, the house had remained the same even after all those years, Aemond hums in response.

“Where is your family?” You enquire when you step inside, finding the house empty, with no other human presence, “They moved out, they wanted me to come too, but I refused.” He answers your question curtly and you nod in understanding.

Your phone rings with a notification and you open it to see a text from your boyfriend; ‘i’ll be there by tomorrow’ it reads and you smile widely, immediately telling Aemond about it and he gives you a tight lipped smile before rolling his eye when you face away from him.

“You can use the room located down the hallway—” He points to the door “—all essentials should be there since it is Helaena's room.”

You thank him quickly before carrying your luggage towards the room, immediately plopping onto the bed and staring at the ceiling for a while, minding rewinding through the events of today, the sept, the spider and everything, you yawned, shaking those thoughts off and drifting slowly into slumber.

Aemond stood in the living room, tapping his foot anxiously against the floor as he dialled a number, each ring making him impatient, but the call was quickly answered and Aemond breathed heavily, “Hello? Floris?” He checks for the person on the other line, “Yes sir?” She replies, “I need you to do something.” He begins to explain his predicaments.

After his call with Floris, he makes his way over to Helaena's room and checks in on you, noticing your sleeping form, you were laying on your back, his eye softens at your peaceful expression as soft snores left you, he made his way inside the room, before standing right in front of you, hand steadily raising up to caress your cheek.

His thumb brushes over your cheek, before it outlines the bridge of your nose to your lips, slowly making its way down to your chin, he shifts in his place, mind racing with many thoughts of kissing you and wondering if he should fully commit to it.

And so he does, leaning over and kissing your lips as his hand cups your breast, he stops for a moment when he hears you whine, thinking you woke up, but you didn't, you instead turn to the side, exposing more of your neck, which Aemond, in his fucked up mind, takes it as invitation to leave kisses on it.

He slowly lifts your shirt up, revealing your flesh which makes the cock in his pants begin to stir as he feels a wave of sick arousal. He pulls your shirt up further, your tits beginning to get exposed, he pulls your bra down, fully freeing them.

He licks his lip before leaning, taking one breast into his mouth, twirling his tongue around it before suckling on your nipple, his hands begin to undo his pants, quickly pushing his underwear aside and grabbing a hold of it, before stroking it up and down.

He knew what he was doing was wrong, but he couldn't help himself, maybe you'd actually sleep with him if you're convinced enough, but he feels that your mentality isn't that easy to break, because he knew you from your childhood, you always stuck to your own beliefs and did not let anyone sway you.

He could have you under his fingertips if he tries, but you were smart.

Too smart.

You'd figure out what he was trying to do immediately.

So he needs to break you first.

Make you completely rely on him, make you feel like he is your one and only salvation, and only then can he finally achieve what he wants.

He's upset over the fact that you have a boyfriend, — a hindrance, he deems — didn't you promise to marry him after twenty five? He sighs, he was waiting for you all these years, yet when you come back, you're in a relationship? He saw you as a traitor.

However, that was far from the truth, You never really promised him anything, the pact that was made had a condition, you and Aemond would marry each other if you didn't find a right partner by twenty five, which Aemond twisted in his own favour to justify his actions, a delusion that he believes to be his truth.

His tongue flicks up and down your bud, sucking noises echoing through the room as he stroked his cock even fast, he lets go of your breast with a wet pop before he completely pulled his pants down and straddled your face, so his cock was directly above your chest and his tip ghosting over your lips.

He taps it against your lips, once, twice, and thrice, grunting at the feeling of your soft lips, he sighs heavily, speeding up the pace of his hand, imagining how your mouth would feel. Would you kiss the tip before taking him whole? Would you tease him? He knew you would, you were a cheeky little thing after all, and soon enough; before he can process it— he is spurting his cum all over your pretty face. He guides his cock and presses the tip to your lips, so his essence oozes onto it too.

He breathes heavily, taking in the sight of your face covered with his cum, still sleeping soundly, he searches for his phone, opening the camera and quickly taking a picture of you in this state, keeping it for later, and now, he's cleaning you up, pushing your bra back on your again, pulling down your shirt and wiping your face with the sleeve of his hand, you furrow your brows and he immediately gets off you, heart beating fast as you blink your eyes open, adjusting to the view in front of you.

“Aemond?” You question groggily, “Sorry, did I wake you?” He apologises and you hum, “Why are you here?” You ask, confused, “I just wanted to ask what you wanted for dinner, but then I realised you were sleeping, so I was about to leave just now.”

Those lies leave him naturally. You hum again, stretching in the bed before shifting positions, laying on your stomach this time. “So?” He asks, referring to his earlier question, “I'll eat anything, you're a good cook Aemond.” you give him a sweet smile and he smiles back, nodding before going out of the room. You fall back asleep, not suspecting Aemond of anything.

He walks out into the kitchen, sighing relief that he did not get caught, he isn't the type to be impulsive like this, he's much more calculative yet his desire was too strong to resist, but in the end; you did not suspect him of anything. Which he is thankful for. He opens his phone to take a look at the picture he took before smiling to himself.

Maybe you wouldn't be so easy to fool after all.

Aemond hates your boyfriend.

He hates the way he makes you laugh, the way you giggle at his unfunny jokes pisses him off, he didn't know why he even agreed to let your boyfriend stay here, he was extremely annoyed, yet he did not show it.

But he knew he shouldn't be worried, after all, his plan was now set in motion with the arrival of your boyfriend in town, he had asked one of his devout followers to seduce your boyfriend, which will be set in motion once he goes out alone.

It's like the gods were listening to him, after all, whatever he wished for came true, or maybe he was the god himself, somehow making miracles like this happening.

Your boyfriend had gone out to take a look at your old house, you didn't go with him because your periods decided to hit you right on that day, Aemond took great care of you, letting you lay down all day, and pampering you with kindness.

Over the course of the week, your boyfriend would go out on the excuse of looking at the house, you believed him that he was just doing only that, but his returns became late, and often so, he smelled like a woman's perfume. Aemond was disgusted by him, sure he had set up the plan but the fact that it took your boyfriend barely two meetings with Floris to begin to fall for her showed his wavering loyalty.

You didn't suspect him, which made Aemond scoff, realising that you're way too trusting and he had to take matters into his own hand.

He came back one day from ‘work’ which you still had no idea on what he did and told you that he spotted your boyfriend with a woman. You raised your eyebrow.

“Are you sure you aren't mistaken?” You ask him, “I knew you'd ask that, so I took a picture to prove it.” He shows you the picture and you are shocked, it was a picture of your boyfriend close to a woman, and it looked quite intimate.

Your eyes begin to tear up, “Surely it's nothing right? I mean, he probably got close to her to say something maybe? Right, Aemond? He wouldn't betray me like that right—?” Your voice begins to crack and your eyes frantically search for reassurance in Aemond's eye, but he just swallows thickly and looks down, and that's when you break down.

Legs giving out as you crumble to the floor, feeling your world shatter, Aemond is quick to react, trying to raise you back up but you wouldn't budge so kneels beside you as well, “I'm sorry, maybe I shouldn't have revealed that.” He mutters and you look at him before shaking your head, “No no no, it isn't your fault Aemond, I just— I just didn't think he'd be willing to throw away our relationship of 2 years.” You cover your face as tears begin to stream down your cheeks.

Aemond spreads his arms as if he's about to hug you, but he hesitates, not sure if you want to be hugged, but you lean into his chest for comfort and he immediately wraps his arms around you protectively. He rubs your shoulders as you cry your heart out to him, tears and snot staining his shirt, but he doesn't say anything.

A few moments later you calm down, and stare at Aemond, “What do I do now?” You ask him, eyes void of any light, and he wants to smirk but he can't, knowing that he has you where he wants, you to depend on him, it may just be a momentary dependence but he'll make it permanent soon.

“Leave him.” He says sternly and you nod, “He doesn't deserve you, you're such an amazing person, I cannot believe how he can leave you for another woman, who isn't isn't half as amazing as you.” He adds, and you nod once again, “You're right Aemond, I should leave him.” You tell him and get up off the floor, going to your room and thrashing around, separating your boyfriend's things from yours and throwing them in the living room.

Aemond smirks when you face away from him.

He's finally achieving what he wants.

The moment your boyfriend returns home, you begin screaming at him, telling him to get out and he argues back as well, before finally admitting that he cheated and apologising for it. Aemond was worried that you'd accept the apology, but you didn't and scoffed instead, slapping your now ex boyfriend across the face and throwing his things out and shutting the door in his face.

You rolled your eyes when he began yelling at you, calling you derogatory names but you ignored him, and Aemond sent a quick text to someone regarding your boyfriend.

You expected your boyfriend to still be there outside in the morning, but he isn't there anymore, he vanished. You didn't know why you hoped to see him there, but you were more relieved that he wasn't there.

Aemond was making breakfast and you decided to help him with it by preparing coffee for both of you and setting it down on the table, he places your plate in front of you and you thank him before he sits opposite to you, you stare off into the distance as you mindlessly chew.

“So what are you planning to do now?” He queries and you snap out of your daze to answer, “I don't know, I'll still probably live here, just not with a partner I guess.” You reply and he hums, “You can stay at my house as long as you want.” He interjects and you are about to protest but Aemond grabs your hand, thumb caressing your knuckles. You stare into his eye.

“Only for a few more days, to get your mind off, you know— I know you'll overthink when you're isolated, you always do.” He expresses his concern for you and you think for a moment, knowing that he is right. You sigh heavily before agreeing that you'd stay with him for a few more days.

Except it won't only be a few days.

Do you know how spiders devour their prey once it's trapped? Sinking their claws into their prey before injecting venom which destroys the prey from the inside and then; its ready to be devoured. Just like a spider; Aemond slowly injected his venom into you, manipulating you ever so slightly, till you are completely broken on the inside and dependent on him, he would play mind games with you, often talk to you about his beliefs— no, goad you into his beliefs.

You were left vulnerable after that incident, and Aemond had convinced you to join a ‘community’ where everyone gets together to help each other out and live in harmony, he talked about all the benefits of it, and at first you were reluctant, he knew you'd be, but at the end, you were convinced.

He was happy, telling you all the positive things about joining the said ‘community’, how the people were so welcoming and friendly, he said they all gather around the town’s sept every Sunday to pray, he tells you how most of the neighbours are in that community, they're selfless and kind.

He was making it seep into your brain.

Then he reveals that it's run by him.

Maybe he should've mentioned that earlier, because you looked at him shocked and you smiled, “It's run by you? Then I have no issue joining it! I was reluctant but for an odd reason, but knowing that it's run by you makes it more comforting.” You tell him and he smirks, knowing he had achieved his goal.

Well only half of it.

Aemond had a vision since he was young, to change the world for the better, he knew the world he lived in was beyond repair and so he decided to turn to the faith of the seven to find hope in religion, then, he had read about the ‘messengers’ of the gods, who are blessed by them.

Aemond believed himself to be one of them.

He did everything in the name of the seven, he just acted as a messenger, or so he thought himself.

Anyone one with common sense could that this community is clearly a cult, with its leader being Aemond, it wasn't a protestant group of the faith of the seven, no, it was entirely different, his community commits sin that the gods are against, incest, polygamy, etc yet Aemond doesn't think so. He believes that by committing these sins, they are repenting.

A flawed logic.

Aemond would often torture the community members who misbehaved, those who dared question his methods had their tongues cut off, and those that spread rumours that he was sleeping around with the cult women for pleasure was found and brutally tortured for hours on the end, he was more offended that they had claimed that he was doing it for ‘pleasure’ when in reality, he believes it to be a way of repenting. He never denied the accusations of sleeping with other women.

Amidst all of this he had almost forgotten about you.

Almost.

How can he ever forget you? His first love, the one that stayed together with him for a long time, helping him with everything. You were his star. A star that shone brightly, a star that he promised to seize.

And he had almost achieved that.

He just needed to push more, until you're finally his, he'll prove to you why you don't need anyone else, and neither does he, you'll be the goddess of the community, he will make sure everyone treats you with utmost respect.

It all started off slow, Aemond had introduced you to one of the members, who was very warm and cheerful which made you feel welcomed and you immediately began getting along with everyone slowly.

Aemond would introduce more and more people, and since then you started to wonder how many people are actually in the said community, the strength likely being in four digits.

You had tried to move out several times, but Aemond always had an excuse to make you stay, sometimes he'd fake being sick, and other times he'd guilt trip you — without you realising of course. So you stayed, a week turned into a month, and a month turned into two. Eventually you forgot all about moving out together and lived with Aemond.

You'd often cook dinner for him when he was out, coming back home late night, one time he had come back with a splash on blood on his clothes and you were worried for him, thinking he got hurt but he told you it was nothing and that he just helped a hurt animal on the road that was bleeding which got unto his shirt.

That was a far fetched lie.

He murdered your boyfriend that night.

After days, no, weeks of torturing him.

But you were none the wiser.

He'd make sure you'd never find out about his cruel side, he'd hope so that he doesn't have to act that way to get you to behave, after all he'd hate wanting to hurt someone he cherishes.

So he shows you all the love in the world, slowly indoctrinating you with his words that were sweet and having you falling for him, they weren't lies, but the tone was manipulative, he'd convince you sometimes that you need no one other than him, and you'd disagree at first but then you slowly began to agree, because you truly did feel that way.

The two of you got closer as time passed on, and Aemond had fully started to invade your personal space now, touching you for longer moments, hugging you from behind while you cooked, kissing your neck, while he fondled the flesh of your stomach and slowly tracing it up towards your breasts.

You didn't say anything about it, but you just leaned into his touch, it was comforting, warm and euphoric, so you didn't mind it. There was a blaring alarm at the back of your mind that tried warning you about everything that was occurring, but you didn't realise what it was warning you about.

And soon your twenty fifth birthday passed by, it was celebrated grandly, with the community members, everything seemed so fun.

A week had passed since then; life didn't change much except for the tension between you and Aemond increasing day by day, he especially seemed on edge ever since you turned twenty five. It seemed like a normal day, Aemond had gone out and returned, while you prepared a meal for the both of you.

He helped you set down the dishes on the table, and you thanked him for it. The food was burning hot, so you both decided to let it cool down a little before eating.

“There's something I've been wanting to talk to you about since your birthday…” Aemond is the first one to speak and you hum in question, “Do you remember the promise we made?” He asks and you furrow your eyebrows; trying to remember, and then it clicks.

“Ah yes! The promise about marrying each other if we don't have a partner after twenty five right?” You ask and he nods, “That was so silly, we were just kids!” You chuckle, “What?” His tone dropped an octave and the atmosphere suddenly turned ominous, “I mean—”

“So you're a liar.” He interrupts you, “You don't keep your promises.” He continues, “No Aemond- I did not mean-” “Shut up.” He grits his teeth and you immediately do.

“The conditions fit, do they not? What is so silly about it?” He gets up, chair screeching against the floor, he grabs your wrist and pulls you up too. “Aemond— marriage is a lot.” You try to be sensible, but he just furrowed his brows in anger, “Do you not feel anything between us? Do you not love me?” He asks, his eye frantically searching for an answer in yours, “Aemond, I do love you, but marriage is a lot.” You confess, looking directly at him.

You haven't fully broken down yet.

Your defiance tells him that.

The submissiveness that he once tried indoctrinating into you was gone in mere moments at the mention of marriage.

You were talking back to him.

“Marriage is a union of souls, if you love me, why do you not accept it?” He questions, his grip on your wrist tightening, You remain silent feeling a sense of doom in your gut, you did not want to disappoint Aemond.

Conflicted feelings arise in you, your rationality fighting against your own thoughts, Aemond can see it, “Y/N, I love you so much, I want you to marry me.” He says softly, voice laced with honey, you look him in the eye. ‘Maybe marriage to him isn't that bad, I love him too.’ you think, something about the eye contact was so intimate and hypnotising to the point that the voice screaming no in the back of your mind had begun to fade and soon disappeared.

His face softens when you look away, knowing he has you where he wanted, “Y/N?” He mutters and you do not respond, lost in your own thoughts. You felt as if your rational thoughts had been drained from you, and before you knew it, your brain had already made the decision.

“I will marry you, Aemond.” you reply.

Aemond wanted to jump in ecstasy, everything he ever wanted was right in his hands, the cult, the people, the power and now, you. He couldn't contain his joy and hugged you tightly, face buried in the crook of your neck, the scent of the fresh shampoo in your hair was subtle but it drove him insane, combined with the smell of soap on your skin.

You hugged him back, kissing his shoulder.

Something in this feels very wrong, yet you cannot put your finger on it, the rational voice has been drowned out from your thoughts, your skin feels prickly, your gut was warning you about something you cannot understand, because on the surface you don't notice anything wrong.

Aemond's hands trail up your back with carefulness, his fingers drew patterns as he pulled you closer into the hug wanting you impossibly close to him, he tried so hard to maintain his calm demeanour but it was difficult.

Because his prey is finally caught now.

The venom he injected into you worked, you weren't resisting anymore.

He could finally feast on you now.

He pulls away from the hug to stare into your eye before he tilts his head to connect your lips with his, he licks the bottom of your lip before capturing them fully, you take a deep breath of air before you lean into the kiss, arms circling around his shoulders, connected at the back of his neck.

His left hand holds the back of your head, pushing you further into the kiss while his free hand moves towards your breast, giving it a slight squeeze.

He plays with the nipple through the fabric with his thumb, his touch was electrifying, shooting current up your spine everytime he grazes his thumb against your nipple.

His hand leaves your breast resting on your waist instead, pulling your body close to his and holding you tightly.

He pulled your bottom lip with his teeth as he stared at you with hunger before he let it go gently, you breathed heavily, staring at him intensely, waiting for his next action.

He immediately pushed you against the table, lifting you up and placing you on it, he wasted no time in kneeling in between your legs while spreading them wide. He pushed your skirt upwards and hooked his fingers under the band of your panty before pulling them.

You watched in anticipation as he completely took them off before he positioned himself properly once again, he teased you, peppering kisses on your thighs and giving kisses to your intimate flesh.

You caressed his hair gently and it drove him insane; so he wasted no time and immediately latched himself on your bud, which made you gasp at the sudden movement.

Your grip on his hair only tightened further when you felt him swipe his tongue through your folds, lapping at them like a thirsty man, you couldn't help but grind yourself against his mouth, his hands were wrapped around your thighs, holding you in place as he devoured you.

“O-oh Aemond.” You moaned, face distorted with pleasure when you felt him bite your clitoris before licking it as a way to soothe it, his tongue soon prodded at the entrance of your cunt, licking up all the juices your cunt wept.

He flicked his tongue against your clit, nibbling on it slowly, taking his own time savouring his sweet, he licked and licked and still couldn't get enough, he felt like he was in heaven.

He pulled away to get some air and in that moment you caught a glimpse of his wet lips, covered in your juices, which made you clench around nothing, making you even more hot. You pulled his face into your cunt which he didn't protest against, taking your bud into his mouth once again.

You felt tingly all over your body and you knew your orgasm was approaching soon, so you began to hump his face desperately, gripping his hair tighter and moving your hips up and down.

You moaned in pleasure when you felt your high hit, your body trembled from overwhelming surge of pleasure.

You breathed heavily, panting and gasping for air as Aemond slowly let go with his lips glossed with your essence, he licked his lip wanting to taste you more and you blushed at the sight.

Aemond stared at you from below as you gave him a gentle smile, and he realised one thing.

He had never knelt for anyone.

Yet he's kneeling for you now.

And it doesn't bother him, he wants to serve you, as his everything but he also wants to keep you in control, and he shall do exactly that.

He immediately got up, and picked you up, carrying you towards his bedroom, his dick was throbbing in his pants, he opened the door quickly, kicking it shut with his feet and throwing you on the bed.

He took his shirt off; wasting no time, and immediately worked on pulling off his pants, he pushed them down and stepped out of them, leaving him fully naked while you removed your own clothes.

He pounced on you like an animal in head, holding your legs together up in the air and lining his cock up against your entrance, you groaned when you felt him enter you.

Feeling every little inch of him occupy you from the inside, you placed both your legs on his shoulders as he thrusted forward slowly.

He was visibly shaking, trying to not to be rough with you, he wanted to let go of himself fully and fuck you senseless, yet he retained himself, trying to stay calm as to not scare you off.

You involuntarily clench around him— which makes him lose the control he had on himself, the way your gummy walls felt around his shaft made him feral, and so he tightened his grip on your legs and immediately began ramming himself into you.

He thrusted ferociously, growling like a beast in heat with every movement, his hair growing messier and sweatier as he stared down at you, your body moved up and down the bed at the speed he was plunging himself into you, making the bed shake and creak.

You arched your back in pleasure when felt his tip kiss the sweet spot inside you, hands gripping the sheets below tightly. Your moans couldn't help but get louder and louder.

Your mind became hazy as you slurred out words, “H-harder, Aemond please..” you let out, wanting him to get even more rough on you, you were enjoying his cruelty which made him even more ecstatic.

He obeyed you, giving you what you wanted, you threw your head back against the bed, feeling him go faster, mind spinning with pleasure as his cock is making you feel unbelievably full.

Aemond could feel that he was close to his release, his abdominal muscles clenched in preparation for his orgasm but he did not want to finish before you do, so his hand travelled to your clit and rubbed fast circled onto it.

You whined at the combined pleasure and choked on your own words when you felt your orgasm hit you suddenly— the band in your abdomen snapping harshly, you let out a scream-like moan as your juices gushed down your thighs.

Aemond smirked at the sight, and picked up his pace, “I'm gonna cum inside you okay?” He tells you and you look at him, vision hazy, “But-” You couldn't finish your sentence as he had already cum inside you, shooting his load inside your cunt, painting your gummy walls white.

“Fuck oh fuck—” he slowly rides his orgasm out, “Can't wait to see you carrying my children around.” He rambles, and you stay silent, “Look at me.” You look at him, “You're gonna be the best mother, the mother of my children, aren't you excited?” He asks and you don't have time to think when your head moves by itself, you give him an eager nod.

“Yes Aemond, I am.” You were speaking, yet it didn't feel like you.

“Good girl.” Yet that one compliment made you giddy with excitement, so you pulled him into a kiss, dropping your legs off his shoulders.

“I can't believe this.” He starts

“Believe what?” You question.

“That I have everything I've ever dreamed of, especially you.” He kisses your forehead, and you smile. “Of course.” you reply.

Days turn into weeks, weeks turn into months, Aemond has completely infiltrated your brain, and at the wedding altar, the entire community cheered as you exchanged your vows, Aemond smiled mischievously, knowing you are his forever now.

He announced you as his ‘Queen’ and ‘Goddess’ which had everyone worshipping you. You would've found this odd had it been your old self, but you got accustomed to it, believing it to be normal, yet ignorant to your mental state.

But you had no time to ponder as you felt the babe in your belly kick which filled you with happiness, you grabbed Aemond's hand immediately which caught him off guard and placed it on your belly.

His face held confusion up until he felt the baby inside you kick again which made his eye widen and lips spread into a smile, he pulled you into a hug.

Your life was good and domestic or so you continue to believe. Unaware of what you're truly involved with. Yet Aemond never cared to reveal the truth to you.

As he believes ‘ignorance is bliss’

— ! ݈݇- thank you so much for reading! i hope you enjoyed it <3 comments and reblogs are appreciated greatly ♡

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dancingbirdie · 11 months ago

Note

Hi hi! I absolutely adore your astarion smut and I saw you were looking for ideas sooooo, how about reader being distracted watching him work with his hands?? Like he could be sat fixing his shirt with a sewing needle, flicking book pages or lockpicking- whatever- but it has an effect, his nimble, veiny hands being just soo good at things that he can’t help but notice just how zoned out and squirmy they get.. some teasing and loving jokes about it ensue until maybe one thing leads to another and he’s sat behind his pretty tav fingering them, bringing them to the edge over and over, whispering and nipping, carefully mocking them about somthing as simple as his hands getting them going.. just making them melt.. idkkkk man it gets me just thinking about it pahahah

Hi, anon! This was a WONDERFUL prompt to get me out of my smut rut. Hope you enjoy! xoxoxo

Like my smut writing? Find more here.

A Lesson in Lockpicking

Rating: Mature

Pairing: Astarion x fem!Reader

Word Count: 2.5K

Warnings/Tags: Hand kink, praise kink, semi-public sex, mild exhibitionism, teasing, vaginal fingering, smut with a little plot

Summary: Astarion notices you watching him pick some locks. He offers to give you a lesson you won't soon forget.

*****

It was unfair, really. No one should have hands as lovely and dexterous as he did.

You were practically salivating, watching Astarion’s nimble fingers pick lock after lock in the underground bank vault that you and the party had happened to stumble upon. While the others were far too distracted by crates of silks and gold troves, you had eyes only for Astarion. Or, more specifically, Astarion’s hands.

The others were slowly pilfering their way around the cavernous room, pocketing what they could without encumbering themselves. But not you.

No, you were too entranced by the movements of the rogue before you, as he worked to release the heavily rusted lock on one of the many jewel-encrusted chests scattered about the vault. You bit your lip, studying the way the tendons in his hands flexed and relaxed with every twist and fidget of the wrench and pick he held. His long, slender fingers balanced the tools with a graceful sort of ease that you knew could only come from years of practice. And the way he curled his wrist while manipulating those tools, it was almost too much to bear.

You blushed as you realized you had subconsciously clamped your thighs together, your body desperate to relieve some of the growing tension within you.

Gods above, you hoped that if anyone – especially Astarion – noticed your intense gaze, it could be chalked up to your excitement over another chest opened. Surely that made sense given the circumstances. Right? It was embarrassing enough to catch yourself squirming over just his hands doing some mundane task, let alone having someone else realize it.

Within seconds, Astarion had the lock released. Tossing it carelessly to the side, he heaved open the lid of the old chest to reveal the contents within. Another heaping mound of gold and jewels, same as the rest. Clearly unimpressed, he rose from his crouch and slunk over to the next locked chest, beginning the process again.

Gods, you needed some air. Needed to be anywhere else but watching him pick another lock open. With a tight cough and shake of the head, you mumbled a “nice job” as you skirted by him, desperate to put some distance between yourself and those mesmerizing hands of his.

*****

He had known why you were watching him so intently earlier in the day. Of course he had known. Even without his heightened sense of smell alerting him to your arousal (thank you elven heritage and vampiric consolation prizes), your expression in his peripheral vision told him everything he needed to know.

You were coveting. But not for the gold in the old chest he had popped open in record time.

No, your eyes had been focused singularly on him. On his hands. And sure, knowing this, perhaps he had embellished his movements a bit more than necessary. Perhaps he’d slid his fingers across his tools with a more lascivious flourish than lockpicking ever required. And perhaps he’d curled his wrist suggestively as he released the tension from those over-wound lock pins. But, oh, the way you had squirmed and clenched your thighs together as he did so was worth every second of that exaggerated performance.

So enamored with his hands, you’d neglected to see the smirk ripple across his features as the lock opened with a muted snick.

All the better for him, though.

Your starving expression had produced so many entertaining ideas in his mind while he worked.

And what made those ideas all the more enticing? You had no idea of the plans he had in store for tonight.

*****

It was late. Everyone else had retired to their tents for the evening, but you had volunteered to take the first watch. Like most nights, it was fairly quiet, nothing but the sound of crickets chirping and owls hooting in the distance.

You were stoking the fire with fresh tinder as you caught sight of Astarion reentering the camp. He was whistling some bawdy tune you recalled from the pubs of Baldur’s Gate while he sauntered toward you, tossing and catching some metallic thing that flashed in the firelight.

“What’s that you’ve got?” you whispered as he drew closer, mindful of your sleeping compatriots.

“Practice lock,” Astarion replied, tossing you the object. You turned it over in your hands, noticing its striking resemblance to one of the locks he’d picked earlier in the day.

“Why are you giving me this?” you questioned, eying him warily.

“I caught you watching me today, darling. I assumed you were too shy to ask for… lessons,” he supplied.

He had an innocent-enough tone, but still, it had you gulping audibly. Did he intend a double meaning to his words, or were you just desperately lusting after him? You couldn’t be sure. It certainly meant he had noticed your staring earlier, but far be it from you to correct the narrative he had formed in his mind. You would rather be buried alive than admit the truth to him right now.

No Astarion, I couldn’t give a damn about lockpicking. I just can’t stop watching your hands and thinking about all the ways I’d wish you’d use them on me. Even the idea of that confession caused a blush to bloom across your neck and cheeks.

You cleared your throat and nodded. “Right. You’re right. Thank you for offering.”

His smile widened. “Of course. I was thinking,” he began, as he circled around you, graceful as always. Like a feline cornering their dinner.

“We could have our first lesson tonight. Right now,” he continued.

You shivered, unable to see him any longer, but feeling him close behind you.

“Isn’t it a little late for that?” you asked weakly.

You both felt and heard his chuckle by your ear, his breath blowing tendrils of your loose hair into your periphery. He’d gotten so close without you even realizing. His preternatural stillness was always catching you off guard.

“Oh no, darling. It’s the perfect time for it, I think,” Astarion murmured. You shivered again as his nose traced a path up the column of your neck. “Let me show you.”

“All right,” you whispered, desire choking your voice into some muted, demure thing.

You clenched your jaw, commanding yourself to remain calm, as you felt him settle around you. Felt his body press snugly against you. You watched as his long legs stretched to bar you in while he circled his arms around you, resting his forearms on bended knees. His chest was flush against your back, his chin resting on your shoulder. You knew if you turned your head, your lips would be close enough to touch.

You were effectively caged within his embrace. Even fully clothed, it felt electric, everywhere his body touched yours. It took everything within you just to maintain your breathing.

Your eyes tracked his every move, as one hand moved to pluck the lock still clutched in your fingers, while the other hand revealed a simple lockpick – a long metal stem with a tiny curved hook at the end.

“It’s simple, really,” he murmured. “Do it once, and you’ll never forget.”

“Is that so?” you replied.

“Mm, quite so,” he crooned. You could hear the grin in his voice.

“Watch me,” he continued, as he held the lock in one hand and inserted the pick with the other.

You obeyed, taking in every minute movement of his fingers as he twisted the pick this way and that. This close, you could truly appreciate his beautiful porcelain skin. The way the blue-gray veins underneath snaked around each knuckle of his hand, a delicate webbing that came alive with each fidget of his fingers. The dance they performed against the tendons in his hand, as they rose and fell while he continued to work.

A quiet snick, and the lock handle popped open in his palm.

You blinked, impressed by how quickly he’d managed to free the pins within.

“See? Simple. Now you try,” he whispered.

You felt your stomach drop.

Fuck. You were utterly, completely fucked.

You hadn’t been watching the actual pick at all. You hadn’t the slightest clue how he’d maneuvered the tool. Once again, you’d been far too distracted by his hands.

You remained still, hesitating to accept the lock and pick he now offered.

“Is there a problem, darling?” he crooned after a moment’s pause. You could hear it again, that grin in his voice.

You turned your head slightly to take in his expression. There was mischief in his eyes, that much was unmistakable. Whatever game he was playing with you, you could tell he was enjoying it immensely.

“I, um… I think I may need to see you do it again. I’m not sure I’m ready,” you confessed in a hoarse voice.

“Oh, but you were watching my hands so intently! I doubt you missed a thing,” he chuckled, his eyes alight with amusement.

Gods damn it all, you thought to yourself, eyes roving across his face. Taking in the telltale signs in his expression.

He knew. He’s probably known this whole time.

You sighed, surrendering to the heat of the blush that was now coloring your entire face and neck.

“You know I haven’t been watching the pick, Astarion,” you murmured.

“Whatever do you mean, darling?” he gasped in mock surprise. “What could you have been watching then?”

You rolled your eyes, turning away from him to face the campfire once more. “You know already, you ass,” you grumbled.

“Tsk, tsk. Evading my questions and now name calling? Honestly, darling, I thought we had something special,” he pouted.

You groaned, smacking one hand against your forehead. His teasing would be the death of you.

“I was watching your hands,” you groused.

“My hands? Whatever for?”

“Gods damn you, Astarion. You’re really going to make me say it?” you snapped, whipping your head around again to glare at him.

“Oh, I really am,” he chuckled. His shit-eating grin did little to lessen your embarrassment.

“Fine. Fine!,” you spouted, exasperated. “I like watching you work with your hands. It… gets me… excited. And then, I start thinking about all of the other things I’d like you to do with your hands…” you paused.

“And?” he prompted. His teasing expression was gone, replaced with something more akin to what you had been feeling for him all day.

“And… and I think about how I’d like you to use your hands on me,” you finished in a whisper, mouth watering at the look of anticipation on his face.

“All you had to do was ask, darling,” he whispered, leaning in to kiss you as his hands slipped down to the front of your breeches. With deft hands, he loosened the knot there and pulled the strings free from their bindings, jerking the leathers down past your hip bones.

You gasped and keened back against his chest as you felt his fingers slip beneath the fabric, skimming past the tuft of curls to brush against your swollen clit, slick with arousal.

Astarion groaned. “Fuck, you’re absolutely drenched. Is this all for me?” he asked, as his fingers drew slow, languid circles against you.

You mewled a pathetic “yes” as your hips subconsciously rutted up, pressing yourself harder against his fingers.

“Just from watching my hands, darling? Just from watching me pick a rusted lock?” he teased.

You huffed and nodded your assent.

“Naughty thing, you,” Astarion chuckled, trailing the fingers of his other hand against your entrance, barely entering you with one finger before removing it entirely.

You whined your disapproval, inching yourself forward in an effort to communicate how much you needed those fingers inside you.

“Shh, shh,” he admonished, kissing your temple. “We don’t want to wake the others, now do we?”

“No,” you breathed, burrowing your face into his neck to muffle your noises. “I’ll be quiet.”

“That’s my good girl,” he cooed, slipping two fingers inside you. The sudden fullness caused you to groan desperately against his skin, becoming a long, drawn-out noise as he began pumping them with sure, deft strokes.

“No, we can’t have them see you getting finger fucked by the rogue in the firelight,” he whispered, working you now with both hands. “Although, I think the wicked part of you likes the idea of getting caught like this, hmm? Part of you wants them to see how I’m taking you, so easily, right under their noses? In the middle of camp? You want them to see how well I fuck you into oblivion with only my hands. You want them to hear and see how I make you moan.”

With his fingers on your clit and three knuckles deep in your cunt, you were far too gone to form an articulate response. His voice, so alluring it was sinful, only stoked the growing inferno within your lower body.

“Yes, yes, yes,” you cried against the column of his neck, both an admission and a plea. “Yes, Astarion, yes.”

“I know, I know. You naughty, precious thing. My sweet girl. My wicked one,” he cooed, planting kisses along your cheek and temple. “You’re doing so well. Making this so easy for me, love.”

You whined at his words, relishing the sound of his voice as it uttered the sweetest and most deplorable things. You nearly saw stars as he slipped a third finger inside you, thrusting into you harder as his fingers drew tighter and tighter circles around your clit.

“You can’t last much longer now, can you, darling?” he whispered. “Not when I’m fucking you like this, hmm? Tell me. Tell me how much you want to come.”

“Please, gods, please, Astarion. Let me come,” you pleaded, covering your mouth with your hands now to try to quiet your noises. It was becoming almost impossible to keep quiet. You could feel your release barreling through your body, desperate to spring free.

“I want you to. I want you to, my sweet one,” he responded between kisses. “I want to feel you clamp around me, knowing it was my hands that turned you into this pliant, mewling little thing.”

“Yes,” you moaned in agreement. “Yes, please.”

“Take your hands off your mouth, darling,” he whispered hoarsely against your jaw as his fingers ratcheted up their pace. “If you’re going to scream for me, I want everyone to hear it.”

It was the last push you needed before freefalling into ecstasy. Your climax rocketed through your body as his name burst from your lips, your hands freed from your mouth to clutch his thighs in a vice-like grip.

You were so lost to the sensation, you couldn’t tell how loud you had cried Astarion’s name. You simply melted back into his embrace, absorbing the aftershocks of your release while he held you snugly against him.

“Good girl. So good for me. So very good,” he whispered praises while his hands trailed errant patterns across the goosefleshed skin of your arms.

“Did anyone hear us?” you whispered after a while, blinking open your eyes to take in his expression.

He laughed, causing you to bounce lightly against his chest. “Oh, I’m sure they did. You sang like a songbird for me, darling.”

You huffed in annoyance, too relaxed to drum up much more irritation.

“If anyone complains, I’m going to tell them it was your fault,” you grumbled.

“I suppose that’s fair. I’ll apologize to them on behalf of my hands, since that’s what started it all,” he smirked.

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hugshughes · 1 year ago

Text

this is me trying L. Fantilli

Luca Fantilli x fem!reader

synopsis - You just want Luca to know that you're trying.

wc - 2.5k

contains - cursing, academic burnout (self reflection...), crying, not feeling good enough, reader has an older brother, um suggestiveness??? (reader makes one joke), that's it! LMK!

an - im so sorry i kept you guys waiting... but happy thanksgiving, forgive me im so thankful for you guys. this was a bit more self indulgent than my other fics... THIS WAS SO LATE BECAUSE i wrote 2000+ words then they didn't save and so i literally cried over it and couldn't write for the rest literal week whenever i came back to it i was upset, like i was that sad guys. and i really don't love this because it just isn't as perfect as the first one i wrote was. anyways hope you love this!

i've been having a hard time adjusting. i had the shiniest wheels, now they're rusting.

You were sick. Not like physical illness, go to the doctor and get medicine sick. You were sick of waking up every day, going to the same classes, eating the same food, coming home, sitting alone in your dorm, then falling asleep and doing it over again. But you couldn't afford to do anything else at the same time. If you wanted to get the grades you needed to pass your current classes, you were going to have to work your ass off.

You were always considered gifted. You took advanced classes all of high school, attending college-level courses in your junior year. Even in your freshman year at Umich, you passed with flying colors, but now, now it was different. You don't know why classes were so much harder now, and it was especially hard because everything had always been so easy.

Even with all of this, you had Luca. Luca had been your boyfriend since October of freshman year. He'd always stood by your side no matter what, but now it felt different. He'd never seen you like this, struggling so much with things you were known for being good at. You remember him telling you how proud he was when you had gotten a 98% on one of your final exams last year, you were worried he wouldn't be proud anymore.

As a child, you were conditioned into thinking that better grades meant better treatment from your parents. Your brother had been a star student always until he'd slacked off senior year and ended up going to a college he was way too smart for. When that happened, your parents decided you wouldn't be like your brother. You would go to a good school, and get good grades, and in exchange they would love you, at least that's how it felt.

i didn't know if you'd care if i came back, i have a lot of regrets about that.

All the love you'd ever known was for a price, your parents', your boyfriend's, even your brother's it was like you had to be good enough before they would consider you lovable.

You never felt this from Luca, but you never gave him a reason to think otherwise. You'd always been this smart girl for him, a girl he bragged about to his friends. The girl he could go to for help in classes.

You didn't mean to be pushing Luca away, but you were so stressed and didn't want to bring him into it.

I know I already said you weren't sick like an illness, but right now you felt gross. You were stuffy and coughing and had a pounding headache, but you had assignments due at 11:59 pm and they couldn't wait. It was 9:03 pm and it didn't look like you were gonna get any relief from class work for a while longer.

pulled the car off the road to the lookout. could've followed my fears all the way down.

You didn't even know you were crying until you saw tears fall onto your iPad screen, where you were currently writing notes for a quiz you had tomorrow. You felt completely helpless. You couldn't stop and let yourself wallow, because you had to get moving on your study guide.

You dropped your Apple Pencil and just buried your face in your hands, rubbing your eyes till you saw stars. Your pity party was interrupted by your phone ringing. Your phone was on your studying do not disturb so if someone's call was coming through it had to be Luca's.

You quickly tried to steady your breathing before swiping to answer the call.

"Hi?"

"Hey. So, what's with you totally skipping my game? You know that meant a lot to me."

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. How did you forget? You were the worst girlfriend ever.

"Oh my God, Luca. I'm so fucking sorry, it completely slipped my mind, oh my God, I didn't even know. I had a really long day, baby, I'm so sorry."

You were trying not to cry even more, you didn't want Luca to think you were a crybaby. Crybaby. That's what your parents called you whenever you got like this, too much for them to love.

and maybe i don't quite know what to say,

Luca just sighed, upset. He was upset with you, and you couldn't fix it. You could hear rustling on Luca's end, and another voice. All of a sudden you were seventeen getting a call from your nineteen-year-old boyfriend while he cheated on you, while another girl laid with him.

but i'm here in your doorway.

You didn't think Luca would do that to you, you really knew he wouldn't. But that one part of you was just screaming that you'd proven yourself unworthy to him, that he was done.

i just wanted you to know,

"I just, I don't even know anymore. You haven't consistently talked to me in weeks, every time we do speak you're in your head, and you keep pushing things off and forgetting. I just don't know what I'm doing wrong here."

Fuck, you couldn't stop the floodgates now. You quickly sniffed, holding the phone away from you so he wouldn't hear, soaking the cuff of your sweatshirt sleeve with tears before trying to respond.

"No, no Luc, you're not doing anything wrong. The last month has just been tough, I just don't know how to tell you. I'm trying Luca, I am, and I'm sorry. I know it doesn't fix anything and you still have every right to be angry with me, I understand why-"

this is me trying.

"Hey, it's whatever, just don't worry about it."

No. No this couldn't happen like this. He couldn't be checking out of your relationship right now. You needed him, even if you didn't know how to tell him. You accidentally let out a whimper when you tried to speak, before shakily breathing a deep breath and trying again.

"No, it isn't. I'm not being good to you. I just- Fuck Luca I'm sorry I didn't mean to forget, and I'm not meaning to be such a bad girlfriend I just, there's just,"

"Just what?"

"I don't know how to tell you! I don't want you to think differently about me Luc. You've never seen me like this."

Your trauma was truly shining through, you were terrified of Luca thinking you weren't smart.

"Are you like uninterested now? You could just tell me, not lead me on! Not just ghost me!"

"No Luca! I love you so much, I'm in love with you. I just-"

You cut yourself off, letting out a stressed sigh, rubbing your eyes when you felt the tears prick in them.

i just wanted you to know,

You didn't know what to say, it was so complicated. Every time you ever tried to talk about this with your family they shut you down, told you you were wrong for feeling like you did, and you didn't want Luca to think those things too.

"I just can't do this stuff anymore,"

"What?"

this is me trying.

"I'm just not smart anymore, and everything is so hard. And I don't know how to talk to you about it 'cause I don't want you to think I'm not smart, but I don't think I am anymore."

"Oh, baby."

Luca was stunned, his girl was going through something and he was upset with her over a hockey game. He thought you were beginning to distance yourself from him because you started to be uninterested in him. He never would've assumed you were doing it because you were scared to talk to him. He never would've assumed you were scared he would think less of you.

"Hey, it's okay. Everything's gonna be alright, okay? How about I come over? We can talk more about everything and I know I'm not the brightest guy when it comes to all of your stuff but I could try to help. That okay, pretty?"

"Yes. Please, Angel. Need you right now."

"Okay, give me a couple minutes, I'll be right there. I love you, okay?"

"I love you, Luc."

Luca let you hang up, taking a deep breath and sitting for a moment just to take in what had just happened. He had a bad feeling in his stomach now, knowing how you were hurting. He quickly recovered and got up, putting his shoes and a hat on backward before leaving his dorm.

He walked fast through campus to get to your dorm building, the cold motivating him further. When he got to your dorm building, he quickly went up the stairs, taking two at a time, and to your room. You were in a single this year, so he wasn't worried about a roommate being bothered by his presence. He knocked on the decorated door gently, bouncing on his feet waiting for you.

they told me all of my cages were mental, so i got wasted like all my potential.

Luca could've sworn he felt his heart break when he saw your face, the exhaustion mixed with sadness wearing you down. He didn't say anything before jumping to wrap his arms around you, just holding you for a minute. You clung to him so tightly, you'd missed him so badly while digging yourself into a hole of isolation.

"Hi sweet girl."

You could've started crying again. He held you gently but firmly, and it was all you ever needed. You felt yourself relax for the first time in two and a half weeks.

and my words shoot to kill when i'm mad. i have a lot of regrets about that.

"Hi Luc"

You sniffled, and Luca just melted. He pulled away from you just a little, pulling his arms away so he could cradle your faces in his palms. You brought your hands up to rest on his wrists, rubbing your thumbs back and forth.

"I missed you, pretty."

You missed him like a little kid. But it was your fault you were ever apart.

i was so ahead of the curve, the curve became a sphere.

"I missed you. 'M so sorry I isolated myself from you, I'm so fucking stressed right now. Everything is hard and it's scary 'cause it's never been hard like this for me, and I-"

fell behind all my classmates and i ended up here,

"I know baby. It is scary. College is just scary. And you are like the smartest girl I think ever so I know it's like even scarier for you when things don't make sense quickly, but it's gonna be okay. Because you have your amazing, talented, stud of a boyfriend to help you."

pouring out my heart to a stranger. but i didn't pour the whiskey.

You gave him a look, laughing for the first time in many days.

"He is pretty amazing, and talented, and hot, isn't he?"

i just wanted you to know, that this is me trying. i just wanted you to know, that this is me trying.

He nodded reassuringly, before putting his hands on your hips and pushing you back into your room, closing your door behind him.

"Damn, you just got here."

"Shut the hell up."

You laughed as you climbed up onto your bed, pulling Luca up next to you after he took his shoes off.

at least i'm trying.

"So, about this class. What do we need to learn?"

You explained how tonight you only really needed to do two things, finish a paper that was 75% done, and do another assignment that if you could figure out how to understand the concept, would be done in no time. You both snuggled close together while looking at the paper, Luca helping you through sentences you got stuck on. You finished the paper quickly, then pulled up your notes for the concept of the other assignment.

and it's hard, to be at a party when i feel like an open wound. it's hard to be anywhere these days when all i want is you.

At one point Luca took your laptop to read through the notes so you just turned over and rested your head on his chest, before seeing his gorgeous hair covered by a stupid hat grabbing it off of him, and putting it on your bedside table.

"No hats in my room."

"What? Since when?"

"Since I want to see your pretty hair, not the maize and blue hat I see every other day."

Luca just laughed, shaking his head and running his non-scrolling hand down your back. Luca somehow understood the concept and reiterated it to you in a way that made everything click. He was your good luck charm, you knew it. Everything made sense with him.

you're a flashback, in a film reel, on the one screen in my town.

You made him lay on your chest with your laptop resting on his back while you completed the assignment. One hand was in his hair while the other was gliding across the keyboard. You finished it in 20 minutes. And your chest felt so much lighter after you hit the submit button.

You closed your laptop, sliding it onto the floor before putting both of your hands into Luca's hair.

"I knew you could do it, baby. You just needed someone to tell you that."

"I love you."

"I love you so much."

Luca's arms around your middle tightened, and he moved his head to look up at you.

"I know you feel like you have to be this perfect person, baby, but I need you to know you don't have to do that for anyone, especially me. Because you are everything, and I can't take care of you if you're scared to talk to me about how you're feeling. I know your parents and other people make you feel like if you don't do good at school they will love you less, but you need to know that you could flunk out of school, and you would still be the most important person to me, okay?"

i just wanted you to know, that this is me trying.

You were crying. You pulled him somehow closer and hugged him so tight, pulling away after over a minute to give him a good long kiss that expressed your gratitude. Because you were, so fucking grateful. This boy had seen all of it, and still chose you, and would continue to choose you until his last breath.

(and maybe i don't quite know what to say,)

"Thank you, Angel. You don't know how much hearing that means to me. I love you, so so much."

"You're everything. I see that you're trying, and that is always gonna be enough."

i just wanted you to know, that this is me trying. at least i'm trying.

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anheliotrope · 26 days ago

Text

Rambling About C# Being Alright

I think C# is an alright language. This is one of the highest distinctions I can give to a language.

Warning: This post is verbose and rambly and probably only good at telling you why someone might like C# and not much else.

~~~

There's something I hate about every other language. Worst, there's things I hate about other languages that I know will never get better. Even worse, some of those things ALSO feel like unforced errors.

With C# there's a few things I dislike or that are missing. C#'s feature set does not obviously excel at anything, but it avoids making any huge misstep in things I care about. Nothing in C# makes me feel like the language designer has personally harmed me.

C# is a very tolerable language.

C# is multi-paradigm.

C# is the Full Middle Malcomist language.

C# will try to not hurt you.

A good way to describe C# is "what if Java sucked less". This, of course, already sounds unappealing to many, but that's alright. I'm not trying to gas it up too much here.

C# has sins, but let's try to put them into some context here and perhaps the reason why I'm posting will become more obvious:

C# didn't try to avoid generics and then implement them in a way that is very limiting (cough Go).

C# doesn't hamstring your ability to have statement lambdas because the language designer dislikes them and also because the language designer decided to have semantic whitespace making statement lambdas harder to deal with (cough Python).

C# doesn't require you to explicitly wrap value types into reference types so you can put value types into collections (cough Java).

C# doesn't ruin your ability to interact with memory efficiently because it forbids you from creating custom value types, ergo everything goes to the heap (cough cough Java, Minecraft).

C# doesn't have insane implicit type coercions that have become the subject of language design comedy (cough JavaScript).

C# doesn't keep privacy accessors as a suggestion and has the developers pinkie swear about it instead of actually enforcing it (cough cough Python).

Plainly put, a lot of the time I find C# to be alright by process of elimination. I'm not trying to shit on your favorite language. Everyone has different things they find tolerable. I have the Buddha nature so I wish for all things to find their tolerable language.

I do also think that C# is notable for being a mainstream language (aka not Haskell) that has a smaller amount of egregious mistakes, quirks and Faustian bargains.

The Typerrrrr

C# is statically typed, but the typing is largely effortless to navigate unlike something like Rust, and the GC gives a greater degree of safety than something like C++.

Of course, the typing being easy to work it also makes it less safe than Rust. But this is an appropriate trade-off for certain kinds of applications, especially considering that C# is memory safe by virtue of running on a VM. Don't come at me, I'm a Rust respecter!!

You know how some people talk about Python being amazing for prototyping? That's how I feel about C#. No matter how much time I would dedicate to Python, C# would still be a more productive language for me. The type system would genuinely make me faster for the vast majority of cases. Of course Python has gradual typing now, so any comparison gets more difficult when you consider that. But what I'm trying to say is that I never understood the idea that doing away entirely with static typing is good for fast iteration.

Also yes, C# can be used as a repl. Leave me alone with your repls. Also, while the debugger is active you can also evaluate arbitrary code within the current scope.

I think that going full dynamic typing is a mistake in almost every situation. The fact that C# doesn't do that already puts it above other languages for me. This stance on typing is controversial, but it's my opinion that is really shouldn't be. And the wind has constantly been blowing towards adding gradual typing to dynamic languages.

The modest typing capabilities C# coupled with OOP and inheritance lets you create pretty awful OOP slop. But that's whatever. At work we use inheritance in very few places where it results in neat code reuse, and then it's just mostly interfaces getting implemented.

C#'s typing and generic system is powerful enough to offer you a plethora of super-ergonomic collection transformation methods via the LINQ library. There's a lot of functional-style programming you can do with that. You know, map, filter, reduce, that stuff?

Even if you make a completely new collection type, if it implements IEnumerable<T> it will benefit from LINQ automatically. Every language these days has something like this, but it's so ridiculously easy to use in C#. Coupled with how C# lets you (1) easily define immutable data types, (2) explicitly control access to struct or class members, (3) do pattern matching, you can end up with code that flows really well.

A Friendly Kitchen Sink

Some people have described C#'s feature set as bloated. It is getting some syntactic diversity which makes it a bit harder to read someone else's code. But it doesn't make C# harder to learn, since it takes roughly the same amount of effort to get to a point where you can be effective in it.

Most of the more specific features can be effortlessly ignored. The ones that can't be effortlessly ignored tend to bring something genuinely useful to the language -- such as tuples and destructuring. Tuples have their own syntax, the syntax is pretty intuitive, but the first time you run into it, you will have to do a bit of learning.

C# has an immense amount of small features meant to make the language more ergonomic. They're too numerous to mention and they just keep getting added.

I'd like to draw attention to some features not because they're the most important but rather because it feels like they communicate the "personality" of C#. Not sure what level of detail was appropriate, so feel free to skim.

Stricter Null Handling. If you think not having to explicitly deal with null is the billion dollar mistake, then C# tries to fix a bit of the problem by allowing you to enable a strict context where you have to explicitly tell it that something can be null, otherwise it will assume that the possibility of a reference type being null is an error. It's a bit more complicated than that, but it definitely helps with safety around nullability.

Default Interface Implementation. A problem in C# which drives usage of inheritance is that with just interfaces there is no way to reuse code outside of passing function pointers. A lot of people don't get this and think that inheritance is just used because other people are stupid or something. If you have a couple of methods that would be implemented exactly the same for classes 1 through 99, but somewhat differently for classes 100 through 110, then without inheritance you're fucked. A much better way would be Rust's trait system, but for that to work you need really powerful generics, so it's too different of a path for C# to trod it. Instead what C# did was make it so that you can write an implementation for methods declared in an interface, as long as that implementation only uses members defined in the interface (this makes sense, why would it have access to anything else?). So now you can have a default implementation for the 1 through 99 case and save some of your sanity. Of course, it's not a panacea, if the implementation of the method requires access to the internal state of the 1 through 99 case, default interface implementation won't save you. But it can still make it easier via some techniques I won't get into. The important part is that default interface implementation allows code reuse and reduces reasons to use inheritance.

Performance Optimization. C# has a plethora of features regarding that. Most of which will never be encountered by the average programmer. Examples: (1) stackalloc - forcibly allocate reference types to the stack if you know they won't outlive the current scope. (2) Specialized APIs for avoiding memory allocations in happy paths. (3) Lazy initialization APIs. (4) APIs for dealing with memory more directly that allow high performance when interoping with C/C++ while still keeping a degree of safety.

Fine Control Over Async Runtime. C# lets you write your own... async builder and scheduler? It's a bit esoteric and hard to describe. But basically all the functionality of async/await that does magic under the hood? You can override that magic to do some very specific things that you'll rarely need. Unity3D takes advantage of this in order to allow async/await to work on WASM even though it is a single-threaded environment. It implements a cooperative scheduler so the program doesn't immediately freeze the moment you do await in a single-threaded environment. Most people don't know this capability exists and it doesn't affect them.

Tremendous Amount Of Synchronization Primitives and API. This ones does actually make multithreaded code harder to deal with, but basically C# erred a lot in favor of having many different ways to do multithreading because they wanted to suit different usecases. Most people just deal with idiomatic async/await code, but a very small minority of C# coders deal with locks, atomics, semaphores, mutex, monitors, interlocked, spin waiting etc. They knew they couldn't make this shit safe, so they tried to at least let you have ready-made options for your specific use case, even if it causes some balkanization.

Shortly Begging For Tagged Unions

What I miss from C# is more powerful generic bounds/constraints and tagged unions (or sum types or discriminated unions or type unions or any of the other 5 names this concept has).

The generic constraints you can use in C# are anemic and combined with the lack of tagged unions this is rather painful at times.

I remember seeing Microsoft devs saying they don't see enough of a usecase for tagged unions. I've at times wanted to strangle certain people. These two facts are related to one another.

My stance is that if you think your language doesn't need or benefit from tagged unions, either your language is very weird, or, more likely you're out of your goddamn mind. You are making me do really stupid things every time I need to represent a structure that can EITHER have a value of type A or a value of type B.

But I think C# will eventually get tagged unions. There's a proposal for it here. I would be overjoyed if it got implemented. It seems like it's been getting traction.

Also there was an entire section on unchecked exceptions that I removed because it wasn't interesting enough. Yes, C# could probably have checked exceptions and it didn't and it's a mistake. But ultimately it doesn't seem to have caused any make-or-break in a comparison with Java, which has them. They'd all be better off with returning an Error<T>. Short story is that the consequences of unchecked exceptions have been highly tolerable in practice.

Ecosystem State & FOSSness

C# is better than ever and the tooling ecosystem is better than ever. This is true of almost every language, but I think C# receives a rather high amount of improvements per version. Additionally the FOSS story is at its peak.

Roslyn, the bedrock of the toolchain, the compiler and analysis provider, is under MIT license. The fact that it does analysis as well is important, because this means you can use the wealth of Roslyn analyzers to do linting.

If your FOSS tooling lets you compile but you don't get any checking as you type, then your development experience is wildly substandard.

A lot of stupid crap with cross-platform compilation that used to be confusing or difficult is now rather easy to deal with. It's basically as easy as (1) use NET Core, (2) tell dotnet to build for Linux. These steps take no extra effort and the first step is the default way to write C# these days.

Dotnet is part of the SDK and contains functionality to create NET Core projects and to use other tools to build said projects. Dotnet is published under MIT, because the whole SDK and runtime are published under MIT.

Yes, the debugger situation is still bad -- there's no FOSS option for it, but this is more because nobody cares enough to go and solve it. Jetbrains proved anyone can do it if they have enough development time, since they wrote a debugger from scratch for their proprietary C# IDE Rider.

Where C# falls flat on its face is the "userspace" ecosystem. Plainly put, because C# is a Microsoft product, people with FOSS inclinations have steered clear of it to such a degree that the packages you have available are not even 10% of what packages a Python user has available, for example. People with FOSS inclinations are generally the people who write packages for your language!!

I guess if you really really hate leftpad, you might think this is a small bonus though.

Where-in I talk about Cross-Platform

The biggest thing the ecosystem has been lacking for me is a package, preferably FOSS, for developing cross-platform applications. Even if it's just cross-platform desktop applications.

Like yes, you can build C# to many platforms, no sweat. The same way you can build Rust to many platforms, some sweat. But if you can't show a good GUI on Linux, then it's not practically-speaking cross-platform for that purpose.

Microsoft has repeatedly done GUI stuff that, predictably, only works on Windows. And yes, Linux desktop is like 4%, but that 4% contains >50% of the people who create packages for your language's ecosystem, almost the exact point I made earlier. If a developer runs Linux and they can't have their app run on Linux, they are not going to touch your language with a ten foot pole for that purpose. I think this largely explains why C#'s ecosystem feels stunted.

The thing is, I'm not actually sure how bad or good the situation is, since most people just don't even try using C# for this usecase. There's a general... ecosystem malaise where few care to use the language for this, chiefly because of the tone that Microsoft set a decade ago. It's sad.

HOWEVER.

Avalonia, A New Hope?

Today we have Avalonia. Avalonia is an open-source framework that lets you build cross-platform applications in C#. It's MIT licensed. It will work on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android and also somehow in the browser. It seems to this by actually drawing pixels via SkiaSharp (or optionally Direct2D on Windows).

They make money by offering migration services from WPF app to Avalonia. Plus general support.

I can't say how good Avalonia is yet. I've researched a bit and it's not obviously bad, which is distinct from being good. But if it's actually good, this would be a holy grail for the ecosystem:

You could use a statically typed language that is productive for this type of software development to create cross-platform applications that have higher performance than the Electron slop. That's valuable!

This possibility warrants a much higher level of enthusiasm than I've seen, especially within the ecosystem itself. This is an ecosystem that was, for a while, entirely landlocked, only able to make Windows desktop applications.

I cannot overstate how important it is for a language's ecosystem to have a package like this and have it be good. Rust is still missing a good option. Gnome is unpleasant to use and buggy. Falling back to using Electron while writing Rust just seems like a bad joke. A lot of the Rust crates that are neither Electron nor Gnome tend to be really really undercooked.

And now I've actually talked myself into checking out Avalonia... I mean after writing all of that I feel like a charlatan for not having investigated it already.

#software #programming #anpost #csharp

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sudoka · 16 days ago

Text

Outpacing the Dawn

Blackwood Mountain is unforgiving. At night the mountain glows with a strange blue shimmer. One that threatens to consume everyone on it. Is tonight the night you confess to Josh? Or has your fate already been sealed?

Ao3

Washington Lodge. 7 Hours Until Dawn.

Rust and blood. The pungent smell filled your nostrils. Pain exploded behind your eyes, and sparks swam in your vision as you opened your eyes. In front of you was an old welded lever and just beyond that, a chain link barrier holding… two figures in the distance. You sat up, picking your groggy head up, the bare concrete cold on your hands as the two figures came into focus. Matt and Josh.

Memories flooded your head. Coming to Blackwood Mountain, warmth, awkwardly diverging from the group to relax, and then… nothing. You had sprawled out on your bed to finish your current read when it happened. The Psycho.

“Good, you’ve finally joined us.” You looked up and around, seeing no one else. The voice was muffled. Calculated. Standing up, sparks came into your vision again, but you pushed the pounding in your head aside.

The name said your voice, but your eyes were trained on the two boys in front of you. They were shackled to a wooden board, feet dangling. And then Matt coughed. Josh tilted his head. They were alive.

“Matt!” You rushed forward, trying the door, but to no avail. “Josh!” You began rattling the door handle harder. Slammed your body against the door frame. It shuddered, but there was no give. “Are you guys okay?”

And then you saw it. Your stomach dropped. Right in front of them was a horizontal saw. An image of the grotesque skull mask flashed in your memories. This was his doing. And you didn’t like where this was going.

“We’re okay! What’s going on? What is that?” Matt turned his head towards you and shouted your name. Josh’s eyes fluttered, he seemed to be fuzzy.

Before you could respond, the Psycho’s voice filled the room again. “So kind of you to join us. When you go in there, be honest with your feelings. Say your goodbyes. Have fun.”

Click.

You pushed onto the door and fell onto the floor. Hard. Scrambling up, you ran over to… your mind stopped. How did this affect this guy’s sick game? It was clear whatever happened in here would affect the outcome. How in the everloving hell would it be determined?

Your stomach sank lower than you thought it could. Be honest with your feelings. There’s no way this crazy guy would know-

“I’ve been dreaming of having Matt all to myself lately. We’ve only ever kissed, but I think he’s going to ask me out after winning the big game. Obviously he’s going to win.” Hot isn’t even the word to describe the feeling etching across your face at the words filling the silence.

“W-What is this?” Matt looked at you.

You couldn’t form any words as the Psycho’s voice continued to echo around the room.

“He said he wants to play varsity, and I really think he’s going to make it big. Is there room for me there? I’ll just focus on tonight and hopefully it ends with me under him.”

Matt’s eyebrows furrowed and you took a step towards him. “That fucker must’ve stolen my journal. These were from a really long time ago. You know the night.” You cringed at your own words.

“Good to know it’s from a long time ago,” Matt replied and shifted his body uncomfortably, trying to wrestle himself out of the shackles. Your heart panged. He didn’t deserve to hear these words, especially since your relationship with him didn’t pan out.

And the person who really didn’t deserve to hear those words was the current person your heart belonged to. Josh glanced between you and Matt wordlessly. His eye caught yours and the contact sucked you into a vortex of the past.

Washington Residence. Two Years Ago.

“Thank you for doing this for me. You’ll have lots of fun, I promise.” Matt gave your hand a squeeze.

“Okay, okay. No need to pile it on. I’m happy to be here for you.” With a returning squeeze, you smiled at Matt. It was a humid August night, the remaining crickets of summer still flitting about. Matt and the rest of the football team won their first big game of the season. And as Matt’s not-quite girlfriend you were obliged to go.

The relationship started innocently enough. You both had a world history course together, one Matt was flunking. The teacher assigned you to be his tutor as one of the star pupils of class. And strangely enough, it turned out Matt wasn’t too dumb to keep up with the course, he just needed to focus less on sports and more on school. With nothing to really teach him, tutoring sessions became more of a rendezvous.

Now, here you were. Holding his hand publicly and entering a stranger’s huge house. It honestly felt more like a mansion with a spiraled staircase and multiple hallways you looked like you could get lost in. Matt had never quite asked you out, but at some point between the make-out sessions you both knew you were exclusive. He always mentioned his ragtag group of friends, with whom you were familiar with from various classes, but never really interacted with.

Within minutes you had already lost Matt. He gave you a quick peck on the forehead and began to chum it up with the rest of his team. You had smiled and motioned encouragingly, but now found yourself alone. Awkward and with no familiar faces, you decided to go to the bathroom to freshen up.

It took you a little longer than you would have liked, with seemingly endless doors, but eventually someone pointed you in the right direction. Finally opening the bathroom door, you were surprised to see a brunette with her head out of the small glass window.

“Hey, are you okay?”

The stranger coughed and you saw smoke permeating around the glass window. “All good! Mind closing the door on your way out?”

“Yeah, sure, I’ll find another bathroom, no problem.” You rolled your eyes and shut the door. It wasn’t a big deal, but what if you had to actually use the bathroom? There had to be another one in this place.

Matt being away was no big deal, but gosh you had no idea what you were doing here. You shook your head just as you heard your name being called. Turning towards the sound you saw one of your classmates, Sam, waving at you excitedly with a disgruntled looking blonde next to her.

“Heyyy, Sam,” You drifted over, excited to see a familiar face. She was ecstatic to see you, bringing you into an emphatic, but brief hug. “Didn’t strike you as the party kind.”

“I’m not, I’m here for moral support,” she elbowed the guy next to her. He had his arms crossed, his glasses acutely perched on his face.

He coughed and then muttered out, “I’m Chris.” His tone was off, his eyes scanning the crowd.

“Don’t mind him, he’s not usually like this. We just can’t find our friend Ashley.” Sam gave you a pointed look and catching her drift, you nodded. “What brings you here?” The question caught you off guard.

“Oh I uh… I’m here with Matt actually.” Both blondes snapped their attention towards you. You floundered under their inquisitive gazes. “We uh…”

Thankfully, a reprieve was here. “What is up, party people!” You turned to see a new face. His features were strikingly unique with sharp blue eyes, and a humble bravado. He donned a big smile, slinging his arm around Chris. Your eyes met his and startlingly, your heart rate was quickening despite your inhibitions.

“Oh, Josh! This is one of my classmates,” Sam introduced you by name.

“Pretty name,” he said casually, a teasing smile on his face. You couldn’t help but return his smile, a faint heat creeping onto your cheeks. Then he turned back to Chris. “Why are you pouting, man? Drinks? Drinks?” He turned to you and Sam. You wondered if he was sober himself. Chris shook his head, but a light smile danced on his lips.

“I’m good,” both you and Sam said simultaneously. Josh threw his hands up in defeat.

“Alright, well, I gotta go make sure Matt and Mike don’t break anything from the keg stands.” And just as quickly as he had appeared, he disappeared, swallowed into a sea of people.

“Did you want to go with Matt too?” Sam asked you. You thought for a moment and then shook your head. “I was actually looking for a bathroom. The last one I was in had some girl literally through the window.”

“Oh, god, not again,” Chris muttered. “Was it downstairs?” His question seemed odd as you were all still on the first floor.

“It was… why?”

“Crap, that must be Ashley again. Last time she got stuck,” Chris sighed in exasperation. “Sam, come help me?”

“Why me?” She laughed, seeming to already know the answer.

“Last time she got stuck I- listen, I can’t just grab her.”

“Alright, alright, I’ll come.” After taking a step, Sam turned towards you. “You can come with if you want.”

Her offer was kind, but you shook your head. “Thanks, but I don’t think having a stranger there for this is the best idea.”

Chris was practically pulling Sam the second your conversation wrapped up. She turned her head and yelled over the deafening music. “We’ll be back!”

Then you were alone again. It wasn’t too bad, but so many people milled about. You were mulling over whether or not to find Matt when Josh bumped into you.

“Whoa, sorry,” he said, grinning cheekily. Whatever was in his cup sloshed over between you both onto the floor.

“No problem,” You laughed, his smile utterly infectious.

“Can I get you something?” He asked, his voice tinged with concern. “I know you said you won’t drink, but we have like… lemonade. Can’t have people over to mí casa and leave em’ dry.”

“Oh, this is your place?” Your eyebrow shot up.

“Yup. I know, an impressive place for an impressive guy.” He brushed off his shoulder proudly.

You shook your head in amusement. “Sure, I’ll take a lemonade. I was looking for the bathroom earlier, but it was occupied. Are there any other ones?”

He relaxed at your request. “There’s one up the stairs and to the left. I’ll go get your drink.” He had a sort of restlessness about him, but he was proactive, you’d give him that.

Upstairs was daunting and vast, the muffled sounds of the party blaring below your feet. Despite this, the respite was quite nice. Eventually, you found your way to the bathroom and entered, looking into the mirror. This night was not going the way you wanted it to. From Josh’s words, Matt was doing… keg stands. Not exactly the most admirable act.

But you shrugged it off, patting your cheeks with your hands. This night was going to be over soon. Enjoying the solitude, you started to wander the halls. The carpet was plushy, the walls lined with family photos of Josh, who you assumed to be his parents, and two younger girls. Sisters, you figured from the striking resemblance they all bore to each other.

The lights were dim, sconces that were not in your tax bracket lining the walls. Something in you told you to turn back after making headway through the halls, remembering Josh was bringing you a drink. The last thing you wanted was to be seen as a creep, especially with Matt’s friends. You had just turned around when voices cut across the night.

“C’mon Hannah, you look fine!”

“Fine is not the word to describe this!”

You froze as two figures made their way down towards you. As they got closer, you realized they were the same girls from family photos.

The one with glasses and longer hair marched right past you, her face clearly red even with the soft lighting. She went into a nearby room and slammed the door shut.

The other girl looked at you sheepishly. “I’m so sorry about that. She’s just… a little sensitive. I’m Beth.” She touched your arm softly. “I hate to ask this of you, but I need to find my brother. Can you just… stay with her for a second? You don’t have to go in or anything, but I’d really appreciate it.”

“Sure,” you said, not sure what to think. In a flash, Beth was gone. You stood there for a second, rocking on your heels when you heard a soft sob from inside the room. Taking a deep breath, you decided to knock softly.

“Go away, Beth!” The other sister, whom you assumed was Hannah yelled out.

“It’s not Beth,” you cringed at your own words, not knowing what else to say.

After a few seconds that felt like an eternity, she responded. “Come in.”

Pushing the door open, you saw her sitting in front of a vanity, her nose and face still red from tears as she looked at you through the mirror.

“What’s wrong?” You asked, concern etched on your face.

She wiped at her face as you stepped closer. “I just wanted to look cute tonight… and no matter how much I look in the mirror, no matter what I do, none of it feels right.”

“I know the feeling,” you said, now standing behind her at the chair.

“This is going to sound so stupid, but I really wanted to impress my crush. Look good for him,” she said with a half sob.

“No… that’s not stupid at all…” You inhaled. “You look so beautiful…” You said softly, not wanting to overstep the boundaries of someone you just met.

She smiled sadly at that. “Thanks… I don’t even know you, but you’re really nice.” She leaned back in her chair. “I just feel like a huge fool. Look at me, dorky glasses, frayed hair.”

“Your hair’s not that frayed,” you said, crossing your arms. “But if it bothers you that much, I do have an idea,” you offered, looking her over. She really was pretty, her soft doe eyes enlarged by her glasses.

Hannah turned towards you now, picking her head up. “Really?”

With a nod, you took a strand of her dark hair in your fingers tentatively. She turned back to the mirror to watch as you started a crown braid on her hair.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t even introduce myself and here you are doing my hair. I’m Hannah,” she said. You offered your name in return, laughing softly.

“We do stupid things for boys. For instance, I’m here for one too.”

“Who?” She asked, leaning forward. You averted her gaze from the mirror, shaking your head.

“That’s fair,” she laughed. “But since we’re friends now, I’ll figure it out.” You laughed at the family’s overt comfort with people. First Josh, then Beth, and now Hannah, none of them backing away from engaging with people.

“You are just like your siblings. I step foot in here and you guys are everywhere.” You started to work on braiding the other side of her hair.

“It’s a Washington thing,” she giggled. “So you’re friends with them?”

“I actually just met all of you for the first time. I came here with Matt.” Your fingers faltered as the words fell from your lips.

“I knew it!” She exclaimed. “He was acting really coy these past couple of weeks.” She noticed the blush creeping on your face and settled back down. “Well, my crush is Mike so…”

You smiled at her confession, finishing her braid and joining the two strands together. “Well, I heard they were both doing keg stands, so who knows if they’ll even recognize us. But…” you said, grabbing a nearby butterfly clip she had strewn on the dresser. “Mike is bound to recognize someone as gorgeous as you.” The clip laid neatly in her hair now, pretty, ornate blue and gold now adorning her head.

A blush crept on her face and she bowed her head. “Thank you…Actually, I know just how to thank you.” Without warning, she grabbed your hand and pulled you through the halls. You followed closely, laughing breathlessly as she brought you into a bedroom.

As you oriented yourself, Hannah busied herself in a dresser drawer. You looked around, the walls of this room covered in horror movie posters, the bed in the middle covered in blue checkered bed sheets, little classic monster figurines lining any shelf space available. It should’ve been overwhelming, but you found it had a certain charm. Your eyes widened, this had to be Josh’s room.

“Aaand, here!” Hannah turned towards you, holding out a flowery silver ring. It looked as if the band was made of branches, intricately winding over themselves. The ring was breathtaking. She noticed the hesitation on your face and pushed it into your hands. “Don’t worry about Josh. He owes me this. Please, take it.”

Your fingers closed over the ring. “I really don’t-”

“Uh-uh!” Hannah held up a hand. “You help me with Mike, I help you with Matt. A ring that pretty belongs on a girl like you.” She broke out into a grin and took your hand again, leading out towards the stairs. Her sudden energy was contagious and you both spoke in hushed whispers about updating each other on how the night goes.

Right before the stairs were Beth and Josh, making their way towards you both hurriedly. Both Beth and Josh looked at you and Hannah and then back to each other.

“Hannah?” Beth asked bemusedly.

Hannah stood up straighter. “I am sorry for how I acted earlier, Beth. I am a new woman. And it helps that I had help from someone” Hannah smiled at you appreciatively. Josh stood there silently, a similar look on his face as Beth’s.

Beth nodded, too astounded to speak. “You are a wizard,” she said to you, pulling Hannah towards her. She mouthed a thank you over her shoulder as they left.

Now with just you and Josh, you turned towards him. “What happened?” He asked you incredulously, a light smile playing on his lips.

“I just went in and offered to braid her hair. She really needed it,” you said, shrugging. “And she also declared us friends.”

“I see that,” he said with a laugh.”Y’know she doesn’t get along with people that easily, so I’m surprised she even said that.” He extended his arm, offering a red solo cup. “As promised, one lemonade.”

“Thank you,” You reached to take the lemonade, your fingers brushing against his you took the cup. “I- um…” You looked at him, feeling flutters spread through your body, as if there were butterflies in your ribcage, bursting to escape. His gaze locked onto you, and the rest of the party became drowned out by the beating of your heart.

Josh cleared his throat, drawing his hand back first. “No problem. Like I said, can’t have anyone high and dry at my place.”

You nervously took a sip of the lemonade, trying to still the beating of your heart. You were here with Matt, you reminded yourself. And then you remembered the ring Hannah had handed to you.

“Oh!” you said, reaching into your pocket. Taking the adorned silver ring out, you held it out to Josh. “Hannah gave this to me, but it looked like it was yours.” You flushed at your words, hoping he wouldn’t be upset.

Instead, Josh looked surprised, his eyebrows shooting up. “It is hers actually, it’s a Washington heirloom.” He sighed. “Did she go digging in my room? All she had to do was ask.”

“I’m sorry,” you said, your fingers curling over the ring nervously.

“No, no,” he waved at you. “Keep it. It suits you,” His eyes drifted down to the ring in your hand, and he laid his hands on yours, pushing your fingers to hold it. The contact sent electricity into your body.

“Are you sure?” You asked, tilting your head.

He nodded, his gaze unwavering from the precious silver in your hand.

“I’ll take good care of it, I promise,” you said, unsure of whether to put it in your purse or not, weighing the least awkward way to do this with your drink in your hand.

“Ah, here,” he said, reaching out. Your hand instinctively moved the cup towards him. Instead, he had taken the ring and was now slipping it gently onto your index finger. For a moment, neither of you moved, both of you looking down at the ring on your finger. It felt comfortable, sliding onto your finger like butter. But it wasn’t too big, settling just right. The cold metal was in stark contrast to the heat of Josh’s hands, still warmly holding yours.

A loud crash from downstairs broke the moment. You both laughed nervously, and you drew your hand back.

“I-I should go check on that,” he said.

You nodded, letting him go a few paces ahead of you, gripping the railing as you went downstairs. The heat of the moment didn’t escape you, and your head swam. Going back downstairs broke your feelings of solitude, an arm immediately slinging itself over your shoulders.

“There you are, babe.” Your face flushed at Matt’s familiar voice calling you babe. You turned towards him, a delirious look on his face. He was clearly inebriated.

“Hey, stranger,” you joked, leaning into his touch. Matt brushed his lips against the side of your head, and you froze. “What’d I miss?” You asked, taking a cautious sip of your lemonade. This was the first time Matt displayed PDA with you, and of course, it was when he was drunk.

“Nothing at all, this party was so boring without you,” He clumsily nuzzled his face into your hair. Your body shifted, feeling the room sway. Despite being sober, the music felt like too much. It was pounding.

“Didn’t look like that when I heard you did keg stands.” You turned to look at him, taking in how his eyes had a distant glaze to them, his head bobbing with tipsy movement.

“‘Ts not like that,” He slurred. You frowned, your mind growing worried about his current state.

“Alright, stud, we should get you home,” You said, patting his shoulder. Matt blanched, shaking his head adamantly.

“No, I didn’t get to introduce you to my friends,” he shook his head.

“I met some of them, don’t worry about it,” I offered, pulling Matt’s hand in an attempt to lead him to the door. But he just shook his head again.

“But we didn’t even-,” He cut himself off, his lips having much too fluid movement for someone as drunk as he was. His mouth was on your neck, trailing up to your ear. His breath was hot and warm. “Please,” he begged. You didn’t know what to say to his words, so you just let the moment overtake you. All of the months of creeping around, of the small dates and stolen moments culminated into this. Your desire and need for Matt took over your head and body. Before you knew it, he was pulling on you, and you were being swept into his arms.

His lips met yours over and over clumsily. Your heart beat in your chest, knowing you had wanted this for so long. You let him take you upstairs, your mind swimming as you both entered a dark room. All that mattered in this moment was you and Matt, letting him push you down onto a soft bed. Yet, somewhere in the haze of making out, a sneaking suspicion grew in the back of your head. You hadn’t made it that far past the staircase… As you opened your eyes, you froze, seeing the dark shelves and shadows around you. Without thinking, you pushed on Matt’s shoulder with your hand. This was-

“Are you okay?” Matt paused, pulling back from you. You had completely froze. The light leaking in from a nearby window caught on the silver ring, glinting as it laid against Matt’s shoulder.

“Yeah,” you answered as you tried to catch your breath. “This is um, it’s just, this is someone’s room, I don’t feel comfortable going any further.”

Matt visibly relaxed at your words, a small grin forming on his lips. “Don’t worry about it.” And then he was leaning back in again, any worries exiting his body. You looked up at him in concern as he dove back in, calculating how to stop him just as the sound of the door being opened and the flood of light switching on caused both of you to go rigid.

“Oh c'mon man, I said the guest bedrooms!” Your body stiffened as the familiar voice sunk into your head. Your eyes squeezed shut, embarrassed of the position that you were in.

“Sorry, your room was just the closest!” Matt responded, unfazed. His heat suddenly left you as he moved to get up. Your heart thudded loudly in your chest as you realized you couldn’t just lay here. Moving to get up, you couldn’t help but catch Josh’s eye. Matt took your hand in his to bring you both out of the bedroom, out of Josh’s bedroom.

“I’m sorry-” you started, but stopped as you noticed that Josh’s gaze was averted as he stared off onto the floor, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. Despite just meeting him, your heart panged. Whatever connection, or spark, or whatever you had felt earlier had just been snuffed out, and it was clear from his expression he felt the same way.

Washington Lodge. Present.

Now, here you were. A full two years later, making the eye contact you had desperately craved with him, but for all of the wrong reasons. This time, his eyes didn’t tear away from yours. They were searching for something, and you felt your stomach flip with dread.

Without warning, the Psycho’s voice filled the dimly lit room again. “Why does Josh look at me like that? It’s like he knows that my heart’s about to beat out of my chest and I can’t take it anymore. He’s so headstrong and arrogant and yet all I want is to kiss him. To hold him. To be held. I can’t keep writing like I’m a teen anymore. This is so embarrassing. I feel something so deep for him that I just feel like imploding.”

“I-” You floundered under Josh and Matt’s gazes as your deepest thoughts were now floating around in the room. Nothing made any sense. Why was this psychotic guy attempting to reveal your innermost thoughts?

Say your goodbyes. The command sent a shiver down your spine. And then it was suddenly like it all clicked. He was going to make you choose. And this might be your last time talking to either one of them. Or both if this sick guy didn’t get the show he wanted.

You approached Matt first, as he was the first subject matter of the entries. “Look, I know things weren’t always perfect for us, you have Emily now, but I wanted you to know that I never held anything against you. And I’m sorry this guy is getting his sick kicks from watching all of this. I care about you, I really do. I was naive and stupid and so many things I can’t take back.” Your breath hitched as you confessed this to Matt.

Matt met your gaze, a certain softness growing in his deep eyes. “I made mistakes too.”

You wrung your hands nervously, your palms beginning to tingle from your next action. It was now or never to get closure with Matt. Closing your eyes, you leaned up and placed a gentle kiss on his cheek. His eyes fluttered closed as he savored the feeling.

When you pulled back, you filled your lungs with a deep, shaky breath and faced Josh. Kind, warm, thoughtful Josh. The Josh who never missed an important date in your life, who you spent many nights with just talking for hours or watching cheesy movies. The one you just heard how much gravity was between you and your ex boyfriend.

Wordlessly, you moved over to him, placing a hand on his cheek. He looked at you, his brows furrowed and spoke before you could say anything. “Did you write that?” He almost whispered, seemingly stunned.

“I did… recently actually. Josh-,” You ignored the feeling of Matt’s eyes on the scene in front of him. You had moved on a long time ago and so had he. “-I know you probably don’t feel the same way, but I need you to know how I feel about you.” In case this is our last time together, you said to yourself. Even if anyone got released, who’s to say there wouldn’t be more. You shoved the thought down and decided not to waste another single second.

“I’m so sorry it had to happen this way.” You pressed your lips against Josh’s. He was warm, and everything you had imagined. He kissed you back eagerly, and you felt all of your reservations go. The kiss was affectionate, and sweet, and you felt as though you could kiss him for eternity. You pulled back from the kiss to see his reaction, every part of you burned to know how he felt, you needed to hear it.

Words formed on his lips before the world was plunged into darkness again. Your blood ran cold. Someone was pulling you away roughly, your feet dragging on the hard concrete as cold leather gripped your skin. “No!” you exclaimed, struggling against who you knew was the psycho. His show was over. The next thing you knew was the increasingly familiar scrape of the cold concrete against your skin.

The lights flicked on again and so did the saw, whirring to life in a roar.

“Good job, that went about how I expected.” The psycho’s dismembered voice filled the chamber. You got up and gripped the chain fence separating you from Matt and Josh.

“No, please, I’ll do anything you want,” you begged, shaking the fence. The saw started to move and your heart plummeted. You moved to the door again, trying desperately to make it move. It didn’t even shake in its frame.

“You made your choice,” the Psycho drawled.

“Bullshit, I made no choice!” you yelled, throwing your weight against the door again. “Let them go!” You kept rattling the door, but you couldn’t help but look at Matt and Josh, both struggling against their restraints as the rusty saw reached what looked like a fork in its track. And then it turned left. Towards Josh.

“No, no, please!” Tears filled your eyes as you got more frantic against the door. Slick sweat on your palms caused your hand to slip from the handle.

The sound of Josh saying your name caused you to turn your attention towards him. His eyes were widened in fright. “I want you to know that I-” but his words were too little too late. Screams pierced the air as the blade plunged into his stomach. From you. From Matt. And from Josh himself. The sight and smell of heavy iron filled your nostrils. The smell was nauseating as Josh yelled, his entrails being spilled out onto the floor as the saw cut deeper. And deeper. His body went still, his head limp.

Click.

You tumbled onto the floor, your vision swimming as you began to feel light headed. A blurry vision of Josh’s body filled your sight. Of what was left of him. He was silent. And you couldn’t comprehend it.

“Josh!” You shouted, pulling yourself up. You were going to go to him. He had to be okay, this wasn’t real. Something fastened around your waist.

“We have to go,” Matt said, pulling you against him.

“No, we have to help him,” you said, tears blurring your vision as snot began to drip from your nose.

“He’s gone. He’s gone and we have to go. Now.” Matt’s voice was gentle, but he was firm. Everything in you struggled against him, your hand reaching out frailly towards Josh’s motionless body. Your knees were weak as you fought against Matt.

Nothing was real. You had just kissed Josh. Felt his warmth against you. He was just there, alive and breathing.

In your weakened state, Matt was able to drag you out of the chamber. The door swung closed and clicked behind you both, a sharp sign of no return.

“I can’t leave him here,” you cried out, shaking in Matt’s arms. He was warm, blood from his letterman jacket seeping against your skin. It was hot and sticky. And that’s when it hit you. This was Josh’s blood. Still warm.

“We have to go,” Matt said. He tightened his grip on you. “If that sicko comes back, what then? We need to find the others and get out of here.” His voice was empathetic, but unwavering. He wasn’t going to let you go.

You nodded, letting your body go slack despite everything in your body screaming at you to go to Josh, even if you couldn’t. You wanted to just rot here with him. Everything moved in a blur as Matt guided you both out of the basement. The lodge felt ice cold, devoid of all life. Just hours before you had been talking to Josh on the couch, your legs curled up as you hung onto his every word, the fire softly roaring. And now, there was nothing.

The weather had begun to pick up outside, the snow and wind swirling. At this rate, it would be an arduous task to make anything out. The trees cast long shadows on the night, engulfing everything in darkness. Both you and Matt walked quickly, your scraped knees burning from the cold under your jeans. Tears flowed from your eyes, still unable to process everything they had just seen. They felt like daggers of ice dragging across your face.

“It’s going to be impossible to find the others like this, " Matt said, raising his hand to his face to shield his eyes against the poor visibility.

The others. You had almost completely forgotten that the entire friend group had collected on the mountain. Sam, Chris, Ashley, Mike, Jess, and Emily…

“Shit,” you replied. A shiver passed through your body, both from the cold mountain air and the thought of the others with the psycho killer on the loose. Were they okay? Were they safe? You didn’t think you could take any more losses tonight.

Matt softened for a moment as you shivered, and took his jacket off, draping it onto your shoulders. It was little comfort, but you appreciated the sentiment nonetheless. The worn out letterman jacket was warm, the right sleeve completely drenched in blood. In Josh’s blood. Your stomach churned at the thought and you fought to keep the nausea down as you traversed the woods with Matt.

You looked over at Matt silently. Taking the jacket off left him in nothing but his jean jacket and gray sweater. Despite losing the bloody jacket, splatters of blood still trailed over his face and neck, his right sweater arm stained with red. He looked over, catching your gaze and offered his clean arm. You took it gratefully, happy to have something to ground you.

The moment was short lived as a sudden crunch in the distance caused you both to snap towards the origin of the noise. Was it a friend? Or worse, had the psycho followed you both? No, it couldn’t be the psycho, there were three frames now emerging from the darkness.

You released your breath as the figures came into view in the pale moonlight- Chris, Ashley, and Emily.

“Whoa, what the hell happened?” Chris rushed forward first, taking in the sight before him.

Ashley started to chip in, “Are you guys ok-”

“What the hell is going on here? Where were you, Matt?” Emily stepped forward, pushing past Ashley and Chris to look at you and Matt. Her eyes narrowed at the sight of you- Matt’s ex-girlfriend, clutching his arm in his jacket.

Matt’s words tumbled out in quick succession with yours.

“There’s a killer on the loose, and he’s after us all-”

“I can’t, I don’t know. Josh is- We need to leave,-”

Emily’s eyes widened, and she moved closer to you and Matt. “Holy shit, is that blood?” Her cold demeanor dropped as she shifted closer in concern. Her words caused you and Matt to fall silent. This is not what you had expected from her. Emily usually treated you brusquely. You couldn’t really blame her given how Matt was not known for concise story-telling. Now all three sets of eyes gazed at you both intensely.

“That’s what we’ve been saying. There’s a killer here and he’s after all of us. We barely escaped with our lives and he’s probably going to try to catch up to us.” Matt shook his head, and stared down at the ground. This was affecting him more than he was letting on.

Chris and Ashley exchanged silent glances.

“And… where is Josh?” Ashley asked quietly, placing her hand on Chris’ faintly. Your chest heaved. All eyes were on you. You could feel your heart constricting as the words refused to leave your throat.

“He’s… he’s…” You kept trying to shove the words out, but they wouldn't come.

“He’s gone,” Matt stepped in. “He’s… Josh is gone.” Your grasp released from Matt’s arm as his words hit your ears.

“Oh god,” Emily said, placing her hand over her mouth. Ashley leaned into Chris sorrowfully.

“We need to go. Right now, we need to find a way off of this mountain,” Matt said, the urgency in his voice picking up.

“What we need is to go get help,” Emily interjected.

“And what about Sam?” Ashley piped up. Her head turned toward the lodge frantically as she spoke. “She’s still in there.”

Silence fell on the group with these words. It was as if everyone froze, unsure of what to do.

Finally, Chris spoke up. “Okay, Ashley and I will go find Sam, Jess, and Mike; the rest of you contact the authorities.”

“Okay, but we need to go. Right now. There’s an old radio tower in the distance we can probably get to,” Emily pressed. She dusted the snow off of her leather coat.

You sheepishly nodded. You were in no condition to try to go back into the lodge, the images still fresh and pervasive in your mind.

The group split, Ashley and Chris towards the lodge; you, Matt and Emily towards the old radio tower. The three of you moved in hurried silence, the wind howling as it picked up through the trees. Your hand had dropped from Matt’s arm, instead Emily resuming her place and holding his hand.

Things weren’t particularly tense between the three of you, both you and Matt had made things clear to Emily, his new girlfriend, that things were over.

“I’m sorry about what happened to Josh,” Emily said, glancing over at you again. Her gaze was empathetic, but her eyes glossing over the bloody letterman jacket didn’t escape you.

“Em,” Matt said tautly.

“What? How she felt wasn’t exactly a secret,” Emily whispered much too loudly.

“It’s okay. I’m okay,” you lied, releasing a small breath. “I appreciate it, Emily, really.” That part was true. Even though you and Emily didn’t have the best relationship, she was surprisingly amicable about your past with Matt. Her concern here was a welcome one. But you couldn’t help but feel a stab of resentment at her part in the drama the last time you all were gathered here on the mountain.

The silence returned. Your thoughts became a mess. Every Washington you had grown to love was gone. Every single one cruelly ripped from your hands. And it was all this psychopath's fault. A growing anger bubbled up inside of you. If you ever faced this guy again, you knew you would tear him a new one, even if it was the last thing you did. The cold rippled through you and you pulled Matt’s jacket closer into you. The blood from the sleeve was now cooled, leaving an uncomfortable sticky feeling on your skin.

Thoughts of Josh floated around in your head. His smile. His laugh. The way he always put others first. Even when they didn’t deserve it. Your fingers moved to idly play with your silver ring, the one he had placed on you that first night you met. Hannah’s gift. You had no idea how much things would change, that your relationships with them would deepen so much. That this small token would be all you had left of your best friend and her brother that you were in love with. You had never taken it off, it was like a permanent fixture on your body, and now a permanent reminder of all of your losses.

As the silence stretched on, you all passed a gate. It was locked, offering no shortcuts and no easy passage on the cold, desolate trek. That is, until you stumbled upon a small outpost.

“Finally, something,” Emily exclaimed.

“Yeah, something,” you replied, a sudden glaze in your eyes as something shiny reflected in them. Matt and Emily followed your gaze as you pulled an axe out of the outpost door.

Matt frowned as the axe came off of the wood cleanly. You turned it over in your hands, feeling the hilt. It was a little heavy, but nothing you couldn’t handle with the sound of your own blood pumping loudly in your ears.

“Nice catch,” Matt said with your name. “I’ll hold onto it.” He reached for the hilt, and you bristled.

Matt paused as you drew back, caught off guard. You coughed and pulled the axe closer to you.

“Finders keepers,” you joked weakly. Your grip on the axe tightened. A whole new web of possibilities opened up with uncovering the weapon, the feeling fluttering in you. “Actually-” you started slowly, testing the waters. “- I think with this, it’d be best if I found the others. Ensure their safety.”

“What?” Emily turned towards you. “No way, we found it, it should be protection for us. Matt.” She looked at Matt, whose frown had only deepened. You bristled again, feeling as if he could read your every thought. It was as if he could sense the pure anger flowing through you, despite your calm exterior.

“She’s right, Emily.”

“What?” Both you and Emily looked at him incredulously. Anyone in their right mind would want to keep the axe. You knew that much.

“She’s lost enough tonight. We’ll be okay, I’ve got enough brawn for us both,” Matt flexed his muscles, laughing haphazardly. You cracked a soft smile at his attempt to diffuse the situation.

“Unbelievable.” Emily threw her hands up. “You two are the worst do-gooders I’ve ever met in my life. It’s us, or the psycho.”

“Don’t worry. If I come across him, I’ll take care of him.” The glint returned to your eyes as you gazed at the axe. “Better that than letting him find us.”

Emily shifted uncomfortably. “Fine, just make sure you swing hard.” You nodded, your lips pressed into a hard, thin line. With the axe, you had a new power. One that was going to take what you wanted. It would save you all.

Matt saying your name momentarily pulled you back to reality. “Please be careful,” he said, eyeing you nervously. “I wouldn’t let you go on your own, but we need to get help.”

“Good luck,” you said, a sense of finality in your tone. This might very well be the last time you saw either of them, and you knew it. With your new weapon in hand, you trudged off towards the lodge, a renewed sense of vigor in your step. This was your chance to set things right. It wouldn't bring them back, no, but it might sate the bubbling in the depths of your stomach. The feeling gnawed at you, hungry for more. Hungry for revenge.

#josh washington #until dawn #Josh Washington x reader #josh until dawn #until dawn josh

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wh0re43van · 9 months ago

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Heart Shaped Box- (Warren Lipka X Reader)

Description: Your childhood best friend surprises you at work with a gift on Valentine’s Day.

Word Count: 2.1k

Warnings: none, unfortunately. (Besides weed use)

A/n: I was going to make this a longer fic with smut but I just really wanted to get this posted tonight 😭

Oldies Country tunes and static buzz from the outdated stereo as I restock the candies at the check out. I glance at the wooden analog clock above the exit; 9:00pm

“One more hour,” I sigh to myself as I trudge back to my stool behind the register. Working for my parents at their corner store is nice. It’s slow, I’ve known all of the regulars my whole life, and if I completely flunk out of college; at least I know I have a job. But something about sitting here alone on Valentine’s Day with the smell of stale (possibly mildewed) air and my Ma’s collection of taxidermy squirrels dressed up to look like the seven dwarves doesn’t seem fitting for a 19 year old girl. Especially since my parents went to Dollyworld for valentines day, leaving me completely alone. (Dollyworld is like Disneyland for people in Kentucky)

The rusted bells hanging above the door chime as cool air floods into the small store. I don’t bother looking up until the footsteps stop in front of me. My mood immediately lifts when I see a familiar face

“Hey, man! No date tonight?” I ask my best friend while he slips his lighter into his flannel pocket. I can smell the lingering smoke of a cigarette on his fingers as he reaches for a pack of gum on the display near my head. He flashes his dimples as he leans down onto the counter.

“Eh, it’s a stupid capitalistic holiday,” he shrugs as I reach down to grab him a pack of Newport 100s.

“Mmm okay Casanova,” I laugh as I take his cash. “So did you pick up from that new guy?” I ask excitedly when I remember that he was supposed to have picked up bud from out west.

“Mhm,” Warren smiles as he pops a piece of gum into his mouth. “That’s why I’m here, nerd. Let’s go spark,” he says as he turns on his heels.

“Warren, I can’t. I still have almost an hour until I can close,” I frown at the boy who’s slowly stepping towards the door.

“Oh, come on. Your folks are out of town, they’ll never know,” he smirks as he rests a hand on the door handle. I bite my lip, looking around the store, then back at Warren.

‘He’s right. I mean it is a holiday, after all, Most places close early on holidays,’ I look at Warren and do my best to fight back a smile. He looks at me with a shit eating grin, knowing I can’t say no to him.

“Give me 5 minutes to lock up,” I giggle as I pull the cash drawer out.

•

I closed the store faster (and worse) than I ever have. Within 5 minutes I’m hopping into the passenger seat of Warrens car. The familiar scent of stale smoke hits me in the face as I settle into my seat.

I shake the few snow flakes that found their way into my hair out as I turn all the heat vents towards me.

“Someone oughta’ shoot that groundhog for lying to us,” I joke as I rub my hands together hoping to get some warmth from the friction.

“Here, this will warm you up,” Warren laughs, fighting back a cough as he hands me the joint. His voice comes out raspy as the smoke rolls out of his mouth. I take the paper from his hand that’s cast in a yellow haze from the dim light shining from the side of the store.

As I take a hit from the joint I lean back in the seat before exhaling. The smoke tastes piney and almost a bit floral as it fills my lungs. After coughing so hard that I drool a litttle, my muscles relax almost instantly as the buzz fills my body.

“Damn, this really is good shit,” I laugh with my scratchy voice as I accept the drink warren has offered to me.

“Oh good. I’m glad you like it,” he smiles before twisting around his seat, reaching into the back. As he scrummages around his car, I take another hit.

“Dude, what are you-“I begin to question the boy but he cuts me off.

“Here it is!” He exclaims, before sitting back properly in his seat with a red heart shaped box in one hand and a mixed CD in the other. I quirk an eyebrow, waiting for an explanation. “Uh, happy Valentine’s Day, er, whatever,” he says with a small laugh, handing me the box. “I know I said that it’s stupid but, uh, ya know you’re a good friend or some shit,” he mutters with lidded eyes as he sets the red box in my lap. I can’t help but giggle at his awkwardness.

“Oh! Uh, thanks dude! I didn’t know we were doing presents or I would have gotten you something,” I say as I focus my attention on the red box.

“Nah don’t worry about it. Open it,” my best friend nudges me, seemingly very excited about his gift for me. I side eye him before handing him the joint so I can pop the box open.

I Take off the lid to reveal the expected assortment of cheap chocolates, but some of the spots of have been replaced with nugs. I look at Warren with a shocked smile and droopy eyes.

“Wow,” I laugh, trying to think of something to say. The THC in my system makes it a bit difficult to find something genuine to say to this unexpected kind gesture. “You really know what a girl wants,” I nudge him as I pop a piece of chocolate into my mouth. Warren chuckles as he inserts the burnt CD into his stereo.

“Yeah well I got hungry on the ride over here… figured I had to fill the empty spaces with something,” he teases. I laugh as I lay back into my seat. My ears perk up when I hear the intro to ‘November Rain’ by Guns N’ Roses. I lazily turn my head to quirk an eyebrow at Warren who looks almost nervous.

“You hate Guns N’ Roses,” I say with a small, confused smile, awaiting him to offer an explanation as to why he’s playing a band that he constantly complains has ‘sold out’. Warren let’s out a breathy chuckle.

“Yeah, uh, I do…” he looks away as he scratches the back of his neck. “But this is the song that was playing when the principal chased me around the gym for spiking the punch at our 8th grade dance, remember?” He explains, finally mustering up the courage to meet my eyes at the end. A laugh bubbles up through my chest as the memory comes flooding back to me. Warren had seen some kids do it in a movie, so naturally the 13 year old boy thought it would be brilliant to dump fireball into the fruit punch.

“Oh my god I forgot about that!” I wheeze, laughing so hard at this point that tears are coming from my eyes. “You got suspended for a month because you were convinced that ‘the cinnamon would complement the tropical flavor,’” I shake my head, finally catching my breath after my fit of laughter. As I wipe the tears from my cheeks, I notice Warren just staring at me with a goofy grin. There’s a glint of something in his eyes that I just can’t quite put my finger on… admiration, maybe.

“Yeah I was pretty stupid,” he laughs as he relights the joint. “But don’t forget that while he the principal was chasing me, you laughed so hard you pissed yourself,” Warren challenges as he hands me the spliff. My jaw drops before I slap him on the arm in mock defense.

“Hey I almost pissed myself. A little bit running down your leg doesn’t count,” I laugh as I blow the smoke out, watching it ricochet off the foggy windshield.

“Sure whatever,” Warren playfully rolls his eyes.

The conversation goes silent for a moment and when I look back at Warren, he has a more serious expression on his face. “I, uh, I think about that night a lot. I remember seeing you for the first time with your hair and makeup done, wearing that JCPenny dress that you hated but your mom forced you to wear… I remember thinking how beautiful you looked,” Warren says while he’s laying back in his seat, gazing through bloodshot eyes up at the roof of his car.

“Yeah that dress was the worst,” I say with a light laugh as I take a sip of his water. “I remember watching our moms hold you down and plucking your little unibrow before the dance. You screamed like a little girl and your forehead was red in all the pictures,” I laugh fondly at the memory. Warren scoffs, looking over at me.

“Woah that’s low. I compliment you and you bring up the most scarring moment of my life,” he snickers. “Uhm seriously though,Y/n. I’m, uh, really happy that you’re in my life,” his tone drops to a more serious one again.

‘What the hell is his deal?’ I think to myself in a moment of silence as ‘November rain’ continues to play in the background.

“God this song is long,” I sigh, furrowing my brows. I’ve completely forgotten what we were talking about, my mind clouded over with this extremely strong weed.

Judging by Warren’s huff and shuffle in his seat, I don’t think that he was pleased with my response. Then it clicks. The chocolates, the mixed CD, the heart to heart talk that he’s trying desperately to make work even though I’m stoned out of my mind, the fact that it’s Valentine’s Day.

“Are… are you flirting with me?” I ask, almost positive that that’s what’s happening, but still doubting myself. A large part of me is hoping that I’m right- larger than I’d like to admit.

“I’m fucking trying!” Warren laughs, his cheeks going red. I look at my best friend, seeing the handsome man that he’s growing into. A single moon beam shines from the sunroof, reflecting a sparkle in his ink pool eyes and illuminating his unkempt curls that frame his face. The car is filled with nothing but a long guitar solo as I get lost in my admiration for the boy. I didn’t notice how uneasy my silence was making him. “But if this is weird for you-“ Warren looks away, awkwardly scratching the stubble on the side of his face.

“Then kiss me,” I say simply, interrupting him. Warren Looks at me as if his eyes are going to pop out of his skull.

“What?” He asks, shaking his head, obviously unsure if he heard me correctly.

“Kiss me,” I shrug, not elaborating anymore. Warren stares at me like a deer in headlights. I roll my eyes, then lean over the console. I place my hand behind his neck, pushing his lips against mine. It’s a small, sweet kiss but it still fills my stomach with butterflies. I pull away, leaving my face just inches from Warrens. He’s still just staring blankly but a small smile creeps onto his face.

“Spencer owes me so much money,” he laughs and then as If a switch flipped, he places his finger under my chin, then goes back in for another kiss. I’m shocked that he takes the lead this time, moving his mouth against mine in a heated exchange.

Warrens hands make their way down to my hips, holding me as if I could slip away at any second.

“Come here,” Warren demands against my lips, his voice laced with lust as he begins to lift me over the center console onto his lap. His tone makes my stomach flip, but I force myself to pull away.

“Warren, I’m extremely into this, but I don’t really want our first time to be in the parking lot of my family’s corner store,” I explain as I catch my breath, resting my hand on his thigh. The disappointment is evident on Warrens face, but he attempts to hide it.

“Yeah, no. I get it,” he laughs, running his hand through his hair. “I can die happy now honestly. I’ve been waiting to kiss you for seven years. I can wait another-” he begins to ramble- something he often does when he’s nervous.

“My parents aren’t home,” I interrupt with a mischievous grin. Warrens eyes widen.

“You mean-“ he asks as if he can’t believe what I just said.

“Yes, dumbass,” I nod my head, biting back a laugh. With that, Warren throws his car in reverse, whipping out of the parking lot as if the cops just pulled up. I attempt to scold him through my eruption of laughter as he jostles me around in the car.

#evan peters #evan peters smut #jimmy darling smut #ahs cult #kai anderson #kit walker smut #ahs fandom #ahs hotel #ahs asylum #ahs murder house #warren lipka smut #warren lipka #tate langdon smut

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ranchclan · 19 days ago

Text

Map of the local territory and a closeup of the Ranchclan camp

1 | the barn

Previously Honeystar and Robinclover’s home, the hayloft now serves as the leaders den. Overlooking the territory, It stays warm and dry, while the mice and rats gather in the cluttered rooms below. It’s a great place for apprentices on their first hunt.

2 | elders den and cleric den

What seems to be the skeleton of a smooth silver monster, long since dead and discarded by twolegs. In its core the clan has made use of the shelter it provides, filling one side with straw and moss for a spacious elder’s den- or rather, Robinclover’s den, since he refuses to retire. The other side has been claimed by the clerics, as they make perfect use of its abandoned counters, cleaning herbs and filling moss balls with the clean water that drips year round from one of the beasts leaky metal arteries.

3 | the nursery

Sometime in the past, twolegs kept rabbits in this black fortress. It requires a jump to enter and exit, ensuring no wandering kits until they’re old enough to reach. In emergencies, the metal door can be swung closed, safely enclosing kits and elders away from any threat.

4 | warriors den

A rectangular beast, with walls so thick not even a bear could penetrate them. Warriors enter and exit through a single rusted spot in the corner. Little light enters the space, and it is cluttered with debris of twolegs. Wood shelves inside have been carefully cleared over the years, saving only the things the clan could use.

5 | the doghouse

Inside unfortunately still reeks of dog, but the space stays insulated and warm all winter. It also provides access into the training yard, which consists of stinky black rubber mounds that apprentices use to practice mock battles, train their dexterity, or show their fighting prowess in the sand pit.

6 | herb spiral

A spiral of stones, filled with soil and herbs. Left behind by twolegs, this little garden has become a vital source of medicine for the clerics. Kits often chase the frogs that gather in the small pond at the spiral’s base.

7 | the gardens

Have grown wild with neglect over time, but the paths are outlined and cobbled, and provide layers of shelter in areas where raspberry brambles have taken over. Attracts abundant prey including mice, voles, robins, jays and quail. Occasionally a passing deer, but they rarely cause any problems.

7.5 | the cathedral

A ring of willow trees weaved together over time have begun to swallow an old metal bench. When Ranchclan was really small, they’d hold meetings in the enclosed space. Many got their first introduction to Ranchclan here. Despite the clan’s efforts, the sparkling line of twoleg lights that appear every night here are still a mystery, though they have gathered that it requires a certain amount of good weather. The lights seem shy on stormy days. Clovers grow wild here in the spring and require maintenance by apprentices to keep the bees from swarming the area during their blooms. The flowers make great rabbit bait, so no part of the plant is wasted.

8 | the greenhouse

A clear den that amplifies the heat inside. Cats sunbathe in here all the time, especially elders and cats sick with fever. A bowl of water and herbs can be placed inside on a hot day to increase humidity in the den and help cats with clearing stuffy airways if they’ve caught a cough.

#Clangen #warriors #Ranchclan #Ranchclan maps

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heliads · 9 months ago

Note

Hey, can I request something platonic with divergent. Something where reader was a dancer (I'm thinking ballet but it's up to you) before coming to dauntless so everyone underestimates her because they don't know how much strength it takes to dance. Feel free to ignore, I love your work.

'finding the moment' - divergent

masterlist

You’d think a faction that prides itself on taking any person and making them stronger than all others would know better than to underestimate somebody, but you’d be wrong. You’d think that the several years you’ve spent in Dauntless would be enough to wipe the glaring target clean from your back, but you’d be wrong again. You thought you knew what it took to stop the endless rumors about just how you got into this faction, but– well, by now it’s a pattern.

Everyone talks badly about the transfers. Everyone. All it takes to clear your name is one good fight in front of everyone or one great display of strength, and then even the most fervent of naysayers will shut up for good. That being said, apparently you’ve just got bad luck when it comes to finding that one moment, because no matter how many fights you win, it seems like the right crowd just isn’t watching.

You passed initiation with a far higher score than even you expected. You weren’t the top two, but definitely among the top five. It was more than a respectable showing, especially for a transfer. You picked a job you liked and showed your success with it. Dauntless is clearly changed for the better because you’re here, yet you still hear the whispers of rumors whenever you enter a crowded room. Everyone does something big to prove themselves. What’s your grand show going to be?

It’s starting to gnaw away at you, rust at a grand metal showcase. You have never failed your chosen faction. You’ve gone above and beyond at your job, but it seems like behind the scenes work isn’t the way to cut it when it comes to Dauntless popular approval. When two years have come and gone since you entered initiation and yet the tide still hasn’t turned in your favor, you decide to throw in the towel and go to the best source of advice regarding former transfers who managed to rally this bravehearted faction behind them, and that would be Four.

Although he’ll never admit it to anyone but a chosen few, Four isn’t exactly Dauntless born and bred, although you’d never guess it by looking at him. Four emanates cold, calculating judgment, always in control but quick to a punch when he needs to be. Yet behind him in a dusty and well-hidden past lies an upbringing not in Dauntless, but Abnegation of all the factions. Talk about a reversal of roles. Four wears Dauntless well, but he, too, had to go through the pain of being a transfer once, and if anyone can tell you how to hack it, it’s your friend.

Four knows what you want from the moment you find him. “I was wondering when you were going to start asking that sort of question,” he admits. A slight twitch of his lips is the only sign of a smile, swallowed up by his usual stony demeanor. No one can do a poker face like Four, although you’re secretly not sure if it’s due to supreme control over his emotions or perhaps just apathy at life surrounding him. A childhood in Abnegation would certainly do that to a guy.

You arch a brow. “So you were just keeping that information from me all this time? Way to be a good friend, Four.”

He coughs. It might be a laugh, but it can be hard to tell sometimes. “A true Dauntless would seek out information on their own. They wouldn’t need someone else to hold their hand and give them what they need all the time.”

You frown. “That sounds more like Erudite, really. You might be getting your factions confused.”

“I see why no one takes you seriously as a Dauntless,” Four deadpans. “Attitude.”

You roll your eyes. “Yes, Four, because you certainly don’t have an attitude. And neither does Eric. Or anyone else here.”

This time, you’re sure he grins. “You might have a point. Although Eric might not be the best example of Dauntless pride. He’s a transfer too, you know.”

Your jaw drops. “What? No way, he seems like he’s been here all his life. If you told me Eric Coulter just appeared one day out of the pit, I’d believe you.”

“It would make sense,” Four muses.

You shake your head, clearing your thoughts. “Jokes aside, I’m serious. How is it that both you and Eric were able to get rid of the transfer gossip so quickly?”

“We weren’t,” Four reveals. “We both had a bunch of public, bad fights in the ring before anyone started taking us seriously. That, and the fact that we were both in the top two initiation results. We had to have a moment where we proved to everyone that we deserved to be here.”

You groan. “I keep hearing about this moment thing. That’s not real, right? I’ve won plenty of fights here, but that doesn’t impact my reputation in the slightest.”

“Probably because they think you’re pulling your punches,” Four says. “Look, I didn’t lead your initiation when you went through training, so I don’t know for sure, but rumor has it, people don’t think you’re willing to go all the way. That’s why they accepted me as one of their own, you know. I got into a fight with a rival initiate, hurt him so badly he never dared to look at me again. That’s how they know you’re a real Dauntless. You have to give up fear completely.”

You whistle under your breath. “Dark stuff, Four.”

“It’s Dauntless,” he says. “What else did you expect?”

Truth be told, not much else. You love your chosen faction, even when its acceptance can be slow going, but it’s always been gritty, violent. Real. It’s what drew you here in the first place. You’re used to people lying to your face. In Dauntless, everything is fact or fiction, no gray areas. At last, everything makes sense.

You’re still mulling over Four’s words the next day, trying to wrap your head around just how you can eliminate fear completely from your person. This proverbial moment of Dauntless infamy is far harder to come by than anyone seems to suggest, and it’s starting to drive you mad.

Tired of seeing you tired, your friends drag you out for a training session one night. In true Dauntless fashion, nothing lifts your spirits like a round or two in the ring. After another thrilling victory, one of your friends laughs disbelievingly as she pulls herself up.

“I don’t get it,” she says, brushing herself off. “You always move so easily. How do you keep your balance that well?”

You grin. “I used to dance before I came here. It was great for coordination.”

Your friend nods along, and starts to say something about how she could see that when she’s suddenly interrupted by a voice a few feet away. “You did dance? I can’t believe it.”

You frown, glancing towards the source of the trouble. It’s a young man about your age, he went through initiation a year or so after you did. “What did you say?”

The man scoffs again. “If I were you, I’d never admit to something like that. Dance. Might as well transfer to Amity. It’s probably a better fit for you anyway.”

He starts to turn around, but he stops dead in his tracks when you call after him. “You want to try that again? Don’t talk to me like that.”

He casts you a disbelieving glance. “I’ll say whatever I want.”

“Then you’d better transfer to Candor,” you tell him icily. “Or, better yet, how about you meet me in the ring?” When he hesitates, you laugh. “What, are you scared? I thought you were so much better than me just because I did dance.”

That does it, and the man crosses the floor to join you in the ring. Your raised voice has started to draw a crowd, but you couldn’t care less about the other people there. The only thing that matters is making sure you get this guy to the ground before he can draw another breath to put you down. He’s substantially taller than you, and his arms are well muscled, but he’s underestimated you, and nothing– nothing– makes you as furious as that.

See, there’s one thing nobody here realizes about dance, because none of them have done it, and that is the incredible strength it takes to pull off even the most basic of maneuvers. You have exquisite balance, fantastic timing, and your legs and core are stronger than many people here.

So, although it comes as no surprise to you when your opponent is toppled and swiftly pinned in a matter of minutes, the ripple of shock that surges through the training hall echoes all the way up to the high ceilings. You stand over the felled man, looking down on him coldly. “Don’t ever try to belittle me again,” you inform him. “Also, you might want to look into some dance lessons. Might help you stop being so weak.”

With that, you jump down from the ring. A crowd has formed, but they part to give you space wherever you walk. For once, though, the faces aren’t judgmental but awestruck. On every expression here, you see something new: grudging, genuine respect.

It occurs to you at last, when you look back at all the people who’ve seen you win, that this was it, this was your moment. You’ve proven yourself. At last, you’re one of the Dauntless, and everyone knows it, too. This is victory, and it is yours.

divergent tag list: @blondsauduun, @with-inked-solace, @gods-fools-heroes, @23victoria, @manyfandomsfanvergent, @imwaysthelastchoice, @drinking-tea-and-be-obsessed, @crazyhearttragedy, @alex-1967s-blog, @aoi-targaryen

all tags list: @wordsarelife

#divergent #divergent imagines #divergent oneshot #divergent fanfic #dauntless #dauntless imagines #dauntless oneshot #dauntless fanfic #four #four oneshot #tobias eaton #tobias eaton oneshot

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violetlunette · 2 months ago

Text

The Ramshackle Un-Birthday Interview: Prologue

Summary: This is a slight prologue for the Un-birthday interview for my Yuusona who is Twisted from the Mad Doctor.

Notes:

*Mild language

“So what do you think our resident mad scientist is up to doing today?”

Two first years students of Heartslabyul followed the autumn trail of NRC. The two were excited to visit their unique and interesting friends on that day, especially as they had a special surprise for the two.

His dormmate closed his teal-colored eyes in thought and worry.

“Knowing Yuu, it could be anything.” And he meant that literally. Ace hummed in agreement, bouncing the package in one hand.

“You’re right.” They faltered in step for a moment.

Yuu R. Hoo (a name Ace was pretty sure was fake) was quite famous around Night Raven.

To begin with he had come to Twisted Wonderland from another dimension all together, one very different than theirs if Yuu was to be believed. Coming from another world, or other worlds even existing, was unheard. Yet, looking at Yuu, it was impossible not to believe it. At first glance he looked like everyone else, however, the longer one looked, the easier it was to see he wasn’t like the people of Twisted Wonderland. The shape of him, the odd gleam of his eyes, the odd accent, way he moved—it was hard to explain but one look and everyone instantly knew the boy was alien to this world. And it was this peculiar other-worldliness that convinced Crowley to allow Yuu to enter the college as the first magicless student.

That was main point of interest for others.

Night Raven College was a prestige magic academy built to educate mages of the future. Therefore, when someone without magic enrolled, it caused a huge stir, for better or worse. However, with his cunning intellect Yuu managed to navigate most troubles that befell him.

That was another curiosity about Yuu—his intellect and his very unique demeanor.

Ah, how to describe the young man? The polite way was to say that Yuu was that he was—eccentric. The accurate way, however, was to call him “madder than a hare and hatter drinking coffee at tea time.”

Yuu was a person who tore away the line between genius and stupidity. He did things that not only defied logic and common sense but also raised a rebellion and took the two to the guillotine.

If there was something he wanted the mad man would get it. The path there would be jagged, twisted into a knot, and so cracked he would have to hop-scotch across with a dead body here or there, but he would get there. The question—usually asked by the frightened masses—was how.

As they pondered their weird pal, Aduce came to the gates of the Ramshackle Dorm.

Ramshackle could be described in the name; the place was falling apart, only held together by rust, moss, and the spiders who worked over time in their webs. In the yard there were grave stones, though none knew why. Perhaps to entertain the residents within.

The teens stepped onto the porch, which creaked and groaned under their weight.

“You think the doorbell’s fixed?”

“Let’s see.” Deuce reached out a hand when--

“Uwahh~”

“Whoa!”

“What the--?!” Ace and Deuce fell back as three ghosts flew past them, giggling in ghoulish delight. They were quickly followed by the door being tossed open by seven skeletons. They all seemed to be missing something as they ran past, clattering like angry chipmunks. Adeuce then noticed that the ghosts were playing keep away with various bone parts.

The brunet let out a breath, his palm over his beating heart.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to those guys,” he muttered. Ace shivered next to him.

“Right? Ghosts are one thing, but animated skeletons…” He couldn’t accept that. He wouldn’t accept that. If he did, he’d be as mad as a dodo—no, he’d be mad as Yuu. A line he prayed never to cross.

He coughed and forced himself to look away from the sight.

“Anyway, let’s get going! We gotta hurry if we’re going to get ready for the unbirthday party!”

They entered the old Ramshackle abode and casually strolled down the halls, leaving foot prints in the dust.

They stopped when they came to an old portrait of Yzma, the famed advisor of a spoiled Emperor and the mother of theme parks. (Honestly, the picture was the second scariest thing here.)

Ace moved it like a sliding door to the left, revealing two iron levers. Ace grinned playfully.

“Okay, Deuce! Pull the lever!” he ordered, excited for the ride they were about to have. Deuce mimicked the expression, just as excited.

“Yes!” Deuce pulled the left lever.

"Wait, not that one--” The floor opened, and Ace fell. “Wrong lever~!!” Deuce winced as the trap door closed.

Ace eventually returned, soaked with murky water. Gnawing on the coat of his uniform and the package he had been carrying was Brutus the alligator.

“Dammit! Why does he even have that lever?” He back-kicked Brutus in the jaw and snatched the item back. The gator “harrumphed” before turning and crawling away to chase two white mice that ran by.

The student then stomped forward, puddles forming with each step.

“Get outta the way!” He pulled the RIGHT lever, and the floor flipped them into a wall and into a rollercoaster.

They giggled with anticipation, even Ace, as the safety bar closed over them. They then screamed with joy as the coaster shot down the half-hazard mining-like rails.

They went up, down, left, right, southwest, north-west, sky-high, down under, looped one, two, three! Shot around an “o” through a “z” down to the double D and over the CC, till finally they reached the end.

There, the boys were flipped onto a safety mat, wearing safety gear. Yuu valued safety, after all—for others, that is. He himself “wasn’t a pansy.”

“Awesome!” Aduce shared a high-five with one another, grinning broadly. The dangers that awaited them in the lab were always worth the cool roller coaster ride that came before it.

The pair could hear the fizzle-dizzle and see glops popping as they searched for their friends in the basement lab. Experiments and weird inventions littered every nook and cranny, looking like something out of a horror movie. Potions that were stored in glass jars, plastic bottles, paper cups, soda cans, and whatever else he could get out of the trash. Technically, he was forbidden from making potions outside the potions class under Crewel’s strict orders. However, Yuu figured that it was fine as long as Crewel—or the law—never found out. Speaking of potion making;

“WHOA!” A burst of wind threw Ace and Deuce across the room and into the rubber walls, where they bounced to the floor in a heap.

“Burst of wind’s been added, Yuu!” A short teen ran a black rubber hand through his messy choral hair to move it back from his forehead, reveling a stitched scar as he did so. His grin was broad with excitement.

“Excellent! We’re almost there, Grim! Once we succeed in this, nothing will be able to keep me from my darling treasure. Not even Batman!” His skin, pale as and gray as death, was layered with sweat due to the heat of the large cauldron Deuce had procured for him a while back. The concoction glowed, reflecting in dark eyes that had as much life as a dead fish. The teen hummed and began to count on his fingers.

“Let’s see~! Scream of fright, sun stalk, magnesium, blast of wind, thunderbolt—thunderbolt! Grim, where’s the bottled storm we made last week?”

“Here it is!” A black Dire Cat floated over with a tall coffee pot and shook it. Green lightning poured out and zapped potion—and Grim, who made the mistake of holding it at the base rather than the rubber handle.

“Meyaah!!” Grim cried as his form lit up. Yuu laughed as Grim fell from the air.

“Glad you managed to get your jolt of energy this morning.” He caught the pot with the base of his hand, which sent electricity throughout his form, illuminating his bones. Unlike Grim though, he didn’t cry out and casually returned it to a random place on the shelf. As he twirled back around, he grabbed a green apple from the basket and bounced it in his hand.

“Okay, last one!” He announced. “Get ready to see an angel!”

“I’m already seeing them.” Grim Groaned. Yuu pecked the apple with a kiss and then shot it like a basket ball into the pot. It landed with a splash and sank with a plop. The liquid began to glow and sizzle.

“Meow… This better be worth it,” Grim complained, climbing onto Yuu’s shoulder. His fur was extra fluffy as it stood on its ends, static circuiting through it.

“Oh, it will! It will!” Yuu promised, face lit with desire. From the sidelines, Ace and Deuce had a premonition of disaster. Quickly, they made their way to the “anti-death” shields. Neither Grim nor Yuu had this foresight.

“Is it okay to fizzle like that?” Grim asked, slightly nervous.

“Only if it’s not blue—oh, shit.”

KA-BOOM!

There was a large blast of color, and everything in the lab jumped as the foundation shook like a tambourine. Ace and Deuce, who had been pushed back, peaked over the shields.

“Yuu?! Grim?!” They called. “You okay—who’s that?”

Standing in the middle of the room appeared to be a man dressed in traditional prince clothing. He looked around, confused.

“Hello? How did I get here...?”

“That’s the question,” Ace said. Everyone in the room turned to Yuu for the answer.

The mad scientist had been tossed into a pile of junk parts he used for his inventions and was now digging himself out like a parry dog. When he poked his head out, he seemed excited. It faded instantly.

“What the hell?! You’re not my sweet Moonshine!” Prince Charming raised a brow.

“Er, no. What’s going on? I was searching for my true love using this mysterious slipper when I ended up here.” Yuu’s brow furrowed into a pout, upset his experiment failed. He grumbled to himself as he flipped to his feet.

“Here’s some advice,” Yuu said, snatching the glass slipper away to look at it. “Don’t base your future wife on her footwear.” He paused as he took a closer look. “Hmm, even though it is fabulous—no, no, never mind! Be gone!” The scientist tossed the shoe back to the prince, who scrambled to catch it before it shattered on the floor.

He then went to one of the many potion cans along the wall, peeking in them for the one he wanted. (He didn’t bother with labels.)

He found a banishment potion and tossed it at the prince, who vanished in a puff of smoke. (Everyone was pretty sure he went back to where he belonged.

“So, what was that about?” Ace inquired as he and Deuce approached the cauldron. It was empty now, but they kept their distance just in case.

“Hm? Oh, I was working on a summoning potion.” Yuu dug in his coat for needles and thread. He had gotten a long gash from his hand to his forearm when he landed in the junk pile. Still, he didn’t miss a beat or slow as answered Aduce’s question, even as he started to repair himself. “That way, if something were to happen—like I was stranded on a beach somewhere—I could summon Silver to me and we could still be together.” Every other person in the room groaned.

“Of course it’s something like that,” Ace muttered.

“Honestly…” Deuce sighed, dropping his chin to his chest.

“You told me it was something cool!” Grim complained, shaking his paw like a fist. “If I knew it was something stupid, I wouldn’t have bothered.”

Grim was a magical beast who had a desire to enter the school as a student. He was determined to prove himself become the greatest sorcerer in the world. However, because he was a dire beast he had always been rejected. It wasn’t until Yuu came along that Grim was able to get his chance to prove what he could do.

“What’s stupid about being able to conjure your true love wherever you are?” Yuu argued. He knotted the stitch and bit the string off. “Especially in a world where curses are a thing and true love’s kiss is the cure-all remedy?”

Ace ran an exasperated hand through his hair as he stated, “That’s just in stories, you loon!” Yuu rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, well, this entire world is made up of fairy tales. Fuck, it has actual fairies!” he scoffed. “And even without that, why wouldn’t I want the ability to call my sweet moonshine to wherever I am? Be here here at school, or in a distant galaxy faraway? To lift a curse or simply be cuddled during a storm, don’t we all want to be able to instantly bring the one we love to our side? To hold under the sweet caress of twilight?” The others, who didn’t have a romantic bone in their body, all turned and felt their stomachs turn.

“Oh, brother!” they all said at once, slumping forward.

For reasons that no one in NRC could understand, Yuu was OBSESSED with Silver, who was a 2nd from Diasomnia and a retainer to Malleus, the Dorm head and Prince of Briar Valley. Yuu’s affection for the ever-drowsy teen teetered on creepy and pathetic.

To Yuu, Silver was the beauty and light of the world. A presence that could only be described in purple prose and a Shakespearean play. Quite simply, Yuu was moonstruck by the knight in training.

During one of their earlier meetings, Yuu was so captivated by Silver’s charm that he proposed in the lunchroom in front of everyone. The sad thing was that Yuu believed that Silver was thinking it over, not realizing the silver-haired beauty had been asleep at the time.

Yuu continued his rather odd methods of courting Silver to this day. And while his actions were shameless, the rest of the student body took solace in the fact he wasn’t a yandere (though Idia had doubts). Rather, they all agreed Yuu was “a pathetic, love-struck puppy” and that the wild actions he took seemed to be a mixture of ignorance and passion.

“Well, moving on from that nonsense--” Ace said loudly, waving his hand as if to brush the topic aside. “You free today?” Yuu raised an inquiring brow as he wound a gauze around his arm.

“I don’t plan on letting myself be arrested,” Yuu answered as Grim hopped on a shoulder. “Why?” Ace and Deuce held up the bundles in their arms with a large grin.

“Happy Un-birthday!” They cheered. Yuu and Grim blinked in surprise.

“Huh?”

~end~

A/n:

*The potion is a reference to Villain’s Revenge, an old Disney PC game.

17 notes · View notes

grecoisms · 3 months ago

Text

title: a heap of broken images (4/4)

pairing: kim wexler x lalo salamanca

rating: E

summary:

"Funny coincidence, no? I leave this apartment, and they come to kill me two days later." "One might say you could not get your house in order." Kim says coldly, pressing all her nails into her palm with full force. Small crescents of small moons.

"You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water." t.s.eliot - the waste land

They could have died.

Died so easily.

As easily as one draws a breath.

The realization hits her like a gong gone off.

The realization comes after -

locking eyes with Lalo and staring him down,

looking at the empty space he still occupied,

getting in the taxi and the ride itself,

leaving adrenaline behind, again,

But the realization comes before -

Getting into the hotel bed,

Shaking from exhaustion,

Hugging Jimmy tight,

Faking a cough,

Calling in sick,

Sleeping in,

Staying in,

Processing,

Surviving.

The day is spent in bed and recollection.

He thumbed his gun so naturally, Kim thinks, picturing Lalo with a repressed storm on his face and gun tucked in his belt. He spoke so politely, even though his very presence froze the place up, made Jimmy and her rooted to the ground. Speechless.

Jimmy went out some time ago to get some food, but they promised to text each other every five minutes, something he was more adamant on doing than Kim, who felt how she felt usually after going on a rollercoaster. Slightly sick, insides coiled, head fuzzy.

We almost died.

He made Jimmy retell the story how many times? At least three. But the words were less crucial than his presence - for he actually came to listen to Jimmy's story, find the cracks, and then?

Then he would have shot them both dead.

Except she convinced him. Or perhaps made him rethink his agenda. Matters not which. All that matters is he left, left to Mexico, or perhaps somewhere else, but is probably far-far away.

Her phone buzzes from under the pillows. Kim peers at the screen, seeing Jimmy's name.

Just stepped in Walmart. Milk, cheese, sth else?

If u see some tylenol, pls buy some, Kim writes back, head on the headboard, head in a fog, staring at the colorless painting hung on the colorless hotel wall. Staring, but not seeing.

Lalo left only for them to leave the house as well, with shaking limbs and a shock worth several strung-out nights. Jimmy has more of a problem with dreaming than sleeping though: started mumbling, shaking in his sleep yesterday - please, please, I didn't know.

As for Kim, she has more of a problem with falling asleep. She keeps seeing the look Lalo gave her when she stepped between Jimmy and him; when she struck him down with three well-versed sentences, aim to be heard, aim to hurt.

Later, in the dark, the hotel room feels foreign. A fever-dream. Kim scoots closer to Jimmy, touching his arm gently, to soothe him, calm him.

"I won't let anything happen" she whispers in the dead night, where the words might as well be a dream. Wish upon a star. "I'm here."

And he is gone. And he cannot hurt you. Even if his eyes seemed to pierce.

Eyes so dark.

Half-admiring, half-calculating.

She quits Schweikart and Cokely the next day, with the sole intent on focusing on two things:

Help pro-bono clients.

Turn Lalo Salamanca in.

Helping pro-bono clients, of course, is way easier than trying to come up with an affidavit that won't put Jimmy and her in jail for at least a couple of years.

Context matters, and since Kim's knowledge of criminal law has been superficial and whatever remained has rusted over the years anyway, she decides to consult some books at the Central Library. Asking Jimmy is out of question, especially because he is still jumpy at the mention of anything regarding the cartel, the desert or the name Jorge de Guzmán in general. His sunburn has started to fade, but the wound on his forehead is not in a hurry to heal.

"Back in the biz" he sighs two weeks later, just as he sets his briefcase in the hall. They moved back a week ago, mostly because Jimmy insisted on going to work and repeating different versions of "everything is settled now, I don't think there is going to be a problem" - and well, because they actually missed their real bed, and in Kim's case, needing stuff like pens and skirts and various folders from home.

It's almost as everything is back to normal.

Lalo nothing but a memory.

And yet.

Jimmy still mumbles in his sleep. He still awakes drenched in sweat.

As for Kim, she insists on working from their bedroom. It's not that the kitchen or the living room has become spooky or uninhabitable, but when alone, she has become used to working from their bedroom, where light seeps in so tenderly.

No memory that taints the space.

Whether it is fate or simply bad luck, Kim does not know.

May changes to juvenile June - time flies. It has been what? A month since Lalo has entered their home, uninvited.

The amount of pro bono cases double at the start of summer season, and Kim barely has time to eat, least to wander around Central Library to read through yet another book on cartel cases. One makes do with the time one has, and since the only time the library closes late is on Wednesdays, Kim makes it a routine to nap for twenty minutes in her car after work, then head to the Library and stay as long as eleven in the night in the silence of the books. Rubbing her tired eyes, praying to find at least one small parallel between older cases and the Salamanca case. What she found out so far is not from a book, but Jimmy. Lalo's cousin, Tuco, is in jail right now. Real name, real case. But the cousin sounds labile, prone to violence, no control whatsoever, so Kim quickly shuns the idea of visiting him. Also, because she is sure that the moment she speaks with another Salamanca, she is dead.

And Kim likes living, thank you very much.

But her time remains tight and because of that, her mood morose, and she, unmotivated. The hardest part is leaving Jimmy out entirely, but after reading a 1986 case where the lawyer of a larger gang in Chihuahua got away by a written warning only, he includes him - by name - in the document, watchful of the tone. Yet playing with the tone of the affidavit suddenly makes it personal, the exact opposite of what it should sound like, what it must be.

After coming up with a particularly complex sentence and realizing Jimmy does sound guilty in all of this (Saul Goodman, known as Jimmy McGill, volunteered, accepted, got chosen by Eduardo Salamanca to collect the bail money) accentuating how thin her case, how brief her document, Kim throws her pen away, resisting the urge to scream on her way home.

Home is more or less a sanctuary.

More so, because Jimmy is home.

Less so, because his mood is not the best either.

He still suffers from nightmares, regularly. Kim can hear it sometimes, the panting or lashing out against a ghost threat, a ghost danger. When she hears it, she shakes Jimmy up immediately, but there are other disturbing remnants in him: outages, as she calls it. Because sometimes, even during the most innocent of actions, like cooking soup, or watching TV together or starting the washing machine, Kim sees Jimmy transform - face dropping, eyes vacant, hands shaking - and she knows he sees not the flat, or her, or the screen, but the desert, vast and unforgiving. Something terrible has happened, or is happening, and he denies telling her. Kim cannot decide whether she is angrier at or sorrier for him. Right now, the two feelings are equal in her, arguing.

"You're early!'' Jimmy is on the couch, fresh out of the shower, laptop in his hand. "You want to order Chinese?"

He looks a bit pale, as if not have seen the light today.

"Sure" sighs Kim, throwing herself next to him. "Anything important happen today?"

"Well. I kinda fucked up, Kim." he turns his head. "Khalil found me today. With that detective you mentioned."

"Roberts" nods Kim, tense. "What did they want?"

"Called me out on the fake family. No phone, no address. By the way, how did you find them?"

"It was buried in the back of your other folder, the red one. Got lucky."

The folder, alongside all documents regarding de Guzman's case (and Ignacio Varga's, coincidentally) was destroyed when they moved back to the apartment. Jimmy shred them to smithereens, but when Kim got a whiff of his plan, she insisted they burn the remnants as well.

"Point is" continues Jimmy. "I...got carried away, and said Lalo's name."

"Shit" says Kim with a dry mouth. "Did they notice it?"

"Yeah, Khalil repeated his name back at me. Y'know... interrogation style."

"Shit" Kim repeats.

"I acted confused, but I'm sot sure they bought it. I bet they ran to Ericsen right away."

There was a silence. The uncomfortable kind this time - sand in the shoes, sand in the eyes.

Kim takes a big breath.

"Okay. No point in panicking." This would, of course, accelerate some things. ''What if... what if this was a way out?"

"What... what do you mean?" Jimmy stammers.

Though feels he won't take it well, Kim leans forward, reaching for her husband's hand, still dry from the days spent wandering. How deep he still carries the desert with him, within his body!

Indeed, where can he put it down?

"Jimmy" her voice is soft, hushed. "If we fold now, we might have a chance to get out. It is your choice, always has been. But from where I'm standing, you don't seem so happy to have been caught in this."

"But..." Jimmy smiles at first, as if she was joking. Falters. "It's all good now. I just need... no, listen. We just need some more time. This will blow over." There must be doubt on her face, because he continues.

"Worst case, they're gonna be angry with us for a few weeks? And then - what can they do: shake their fists at us?" he waves, but it's half-hearted. "Come on!"

"And when it blows over, will it be really over?" she asks, sharply. "From where I'm standing, it looks like you are wandering around comatose, and it has nothing to do with the courthouse. It has to do with the desert."

"I'm just tired, that's all. Look, maybe I haven't drunk enough water in the past few weeks, and maybe, I should see a doctor. You were right before, maybe I will see a shrink, but.... Kim?"

His voice trails off, because Kim stands up suddenly, both alarmed and ecstatic.

"Jimmy... the man. The man who wanted to kill Lalo!"

"You told me he killed him." her husband says, alarmed.

"One of them. The cellmate. But the other one... the one from outside..."

"He is in the hospital." Jimmy's breath hitches. "In a coma."

"Listen. We might be able to solve this, without incriminating us further. Hear me out..."

Allegedly, the man who attempted to kill Lalo Salamanca in his cell (the very same man who almost got killed by him) is called Stephen Olarfsson, 39, an accountant born in Oregon.

It takes her three days and - she avoids writing emails altogether - at least a dozen calls to track down the man. During this interval Kim is a chameleon: posing as a legal administrator, police clerk, member of the Neurocritical Care Society requesting a one-on-one with the patient, who she learns has woken up four days ago, disoriented and discomfited. He denies answering any questions and in turn, remaining chained to his hospital bed until the Rehabilitation Center of Rio Rancho discharges him, which, one of the nurses tells Kim's pseudonym, may take at least a month, but more realistically, three.

Apart from the sever head-trauma (causing hemorrhage in his brain, rendering him comatose for a few weeks), the shiv which killed Lalo's cellmate has founds its way into him as well, more specifically his thighs and stomach (so he was to be operated twice at the end of the month and fed intravenously in the time being).

He remains under close supervision, from both outside and inside of his hospital room.

He remains silent, despite threats and pleads and deals.

This suits Kim perfectly. She does not want to talk.

She just wants him to deliver a message.

Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong - is what Kim's mom used to say, usually after waking up hungover. Yet on those mornings, it was Kim tasting yellow acid in her mouth, as if she had been the one drinking. Bitterness, by any other name.

It's the same acidic bitterness in her mouth when Erickson finds her one morning, coffee in her right hand, and flattery in her mouth, and Kim knows they are in trouble. De Guzman's name could only hold up for so long - it's a damn miracle it lasted at all.

"Here" Ericsen says after leading Kim to her office, placing two photographs next to each other on the table. They are not shaking, her hands, but she puts them under the desk anyway, so that they wouldn´t betray her. "Same person."

On one of the photos is a black-and-white mugshot of Lalo, a close up of his all-angles face, mouth downturned. On the other, he is violently alive, all colorful, laughing, while embracing two older women in a garden. Maybe one of them is his mother, or perhaps both of them are his aunts - Kim cannot tell from the picture. She can only guess, and the smile on Lalo's face seems genuine in its warmth. But then again, Kim cannot quite tell.

"Who is Eduardo Salamanca?" she asks, easing the edges of the questions. For she knows him, seems like she has known him for ages, even though it's only been a month and a half.

"A major drug dealer south of the border" it's different, hearing it from Ericsen. There is a slight bite to her tone, meant to criticize. "It seems Salamanca jumped bail, fled to Mexico where he consequently died in a gunfight. Half dozen people were killed."

Dead.

Kim resists the urge to stare at the colored photo again.

When? she wants to ask, to get proof. It seems laughable, unbelievable to her, that a man like that would die, as if he was too much for death to bear. A month ago, he was towering above them, and staring at her with his knife-gaze, the gaze that seemed sharp enough to cut through her mask. And now -

The word is on the tip of her tongue.

When?

But instead, she says:

"And?"

Ericsen looks strict.

"I think there's a question here, Kim: How much did you know?"

The question is piercing.

Tell her, sensible Kim says. Here's the chance.

Not like this, survivor Kim whispers. She won't believe you. Or worse, she will believe you - but not Jimmy.

And without Jimmy McGill, Kim Wexler won't make a deal.

Kim returns to the hospital the next week.

Olarfsson, patient-assailant, is gone.

Kim's note, the one which he gave him to deliver, hid it under his mattress and told him to try, that note is gone, too.

Worse, as she leaves the hospital in a rush, confused if Olarfsson disappearing is a good or bad news, she spots a car that she has spotted before, when they returned home from the hotel.

A blue sedan with two men in it.

Otherwise forgettable.

Until they are not.

Jimmy's mood blackens in the upcoming days.

Hearsay starts and all the other lawyers ostracize him - the news reaches her not through Jimmy, but from here and there after hearings. This is how she knows his shunning is widespread, ugly in its depth.

He needs cheering up, Kim decides.

In fact, she needs cheering up as well.

Deserves it.

The plan presents itself in the form of Howard stopping her one day at the Forque Bar, voice polite but words biting, telling her to make her own decisions and insulting Jimmy. That is all it takes.

Rushing home, an idea forms in her mind, ugly in its depth, but rewarding too, she knows.

A well-deserved prank.

A lesson, if you would.

Nothing too serious.

"They're gone" says a gruff voice, grave and gravelly. "The two men who were following you. They're gone."

Kim turns, there is almost no one in the elegant, but shabby little café. It's a dead part of town, dead part of the day.

An old man looks back at her with shrewd eyed at the bar top.

"Would you mind sitting down for a moment? And I'll answer any questions you have. If I can."

Once seated, he fishes a paper out of his front pocket, unfolds it neatly, and sets it in front of her.

"This" he says. "wasn't very clever."

It's Kim's note, the offer, crumpled, but still eligible.

July heat scorches the back of her clothes, makes it stick to her back, however she resists it, whatever she wears.

"Doesn't fortune favor the bold?" she asks evenly.

"Sometimes" the man agrees with a small nod. "When you busted my men, that was brave. Not wise perhaps, but I'll give you credit."

"Were you..."

"The one who hired Olarffson? No." he shakes his head, for emphasis. "That is why you should not leave notes like that around. And I would advise against leaving a note like that at the District Attorney's office as well."

Kim picks up her note, and puts in her bag, slow.

"But the men who followed me" she asks, sharp. "They were yours, weren't they?"

"Yes. Both you and your husband. I'm not police. They are not investigating you either, in case you were wondering. I also know you have been doing things you should not be doing. But this is not what it is about."

"What is this about then?"

As if to brace himself, he man breathes in deeply. He has a tough look, but a calm kind of face. Grounding.

"Lalo Salamanca."

"Lalo Salamanca is dead."

The old man says nothing.

And by saying nothing, Kim knows.

Paranoia is just a fancy word for intuition - was another favorite saying of her mother.

The same intuition that made her find out about the attendant's men is now heightened three-fold. Now that she knows he isn't dead, it's as if the pavement, the canals, hell, even the high windows downtown grew eyes, watching her.

Made of sterner stuff, he said. It echoes in her mind, her child self, the survivor jeers at it. It is a praise but so what? She thumbs the note she has written, the offer of information in exchange for information, so that she can see better, understand Lalo, who is very much alive, and could be anywhere in the world.

So why is she so certain he is here somewhere, watching and smiling and knowing? Knowing what she does not? Sterner stuff, yet she is powerless. No move, no motivation given.

The note, she puts it next to the half-drafted affidavit. Both these papers, she puts in the cabinet under the fish tank, where they keep receipts, letter of guarantees and different sized rubber bands. Perhaps later she will have need of it, perhaps later, they can forget about it.

When cornered, an animal will attack. Kim, with a beer in one hand, and a cigarette in another, cannot attack a fanthom, a ghost. Takes a great inhale of smoke and watches the board where the Hamlin-scam's planning stages are almost all ticked.

A career-setback.

Or else, an attack.

You never listen, Kim.

It is true. She never listened to her mother, who she deeemed irresponsible and self-destructive in more ways than one. But then, how was she different? Where was the line, the line which she never should have crossed? Was it the Howard-scam? Or planning the affidavit? Or standing up against Lalo? Or going to the Detention Center to meet him? Or lying to Ericsen; laughing at Howard? Or marrying Jimmy? Where did it turn into a tragedy?

She doesn't reflect on these questions yet. Not on the sunniest day of July, the last day of the month, when the prank has succeeded, the deed done. Sex with Jimmy has never been this amazing. There must be something to be said about the euphoria found in the vulgar, and Kim is basking in it, her worries near-forgotten, so is her guilt. She has had no time to ponder about the affidavit too much in the last couple of days, so deep they were into executing the Howard-prank.

"Drinks?" Jimmy asks, half-clothed.

"I will get some snacks, we have nothing now." yawns Kim, who wants nothing more than sleep for a bit, but it has been a long time since they celebrated anything. "Not even toothpaste."

She drives to the nearest supermarket. On the way, Howard calls her, which she declines with a scoff. Gets the toothpaste and the snacks, but also washing powder, and a new set of towels for the kitchen, feeling festive, as if they have renovated their house, or else, moved into a new one. As if she should not hurry, because why would she need to?

One of her clients, an unemployed guy from Nevada who moved recently, calls her, she takes it, tells him the basics, asks him to write an email, tells him everything will be alright. Calms him.

Then she sees then Ericsen has called while she talked with Nevada. Calls her back with the patience of a saint. Ericsen just wants an update that she cannot give her, they talk of ongoing cases and how Jimmy fares, which Kim decided to color in a better light than it is.

"Oh, I forgot" Suzanne says before hanging up. Kim, who has been in the supermarket for two hours now, starts to get a bit impatient. "Police in Chihuahua tracked Ignacio Varga. He was first spotted at the border, then near Albuquerque around a fortnight ago."

Vertigo claims her, suddenly.

"That's great help, Suzanne. Gotta go now." she says, hangs up.

The first sign: when she checks her phone again, she sees that Howard has not tried to call her again, nor did Jimmy.

Not once.

Just paranoia, she repeats to herself, but goes over the speed limit anyway, rushing home despite her rational self soothing her. Nothing wrong, he probably fell asleep.

The second sign appears though: her key gets stuck into the lock - with a creaking, splitting sound, as if something has already been forced into it.

Kim will remember the sound for the rest of her life.

It is stuck, however forcefully she wants to pull it out.

"Kim!" Jimmy shouts from inside, and he sounds desperate, so Kim leaves her keys in the door.

Decides to step inside.

An act that cannot be undone.

Inside is a slaughterhouse.

She barely has time to register Jimmy's voice, which is shrill, begging her to run, when another person steps from behind the door, closing it, barring it.

"Mrs. Goodman" beams Lalo, dominating the dmall space around him. Smile so wide, so wild. "So nice to see you again - come, join us!"

He has specks of blood on his face, but he does not seem to mind as he leads her to the living room, where everything is either overturned, on the floor, or bloody. Or all three.

On the couch is Jimmy, crumpled and worn, so small. Around him are books opened and smaller storage boxes emptied on the floor, a mass of paper, most of them bloody, and god, where did the blood come from? She studies Jimmy who seems unharmed, though thoroughly shaken, like he was struck by lightning. Lalo does not seem to be hurt either - a bit tired and worn, but still very virile for lack of a better word.

All she has to do, however, is to step closer. There lies the answer. Lies, literally, because Howard is on the floor, sprawled on the ground, a stranger, because it is not him anymore, only his body: bloody and unbothered by the happenings around him. Some of his blood has been mixed with water, diluting it, increasing its spread on the floor. The water comes from the fish tank that has been shattered on the floor, the fish dead on the ground, the cabinets in the kitchen with the utensils and the pots scattered on the ground, as well as the papers from the filing compartment, soaking in the salty water and the fresh blood.

"God" Kim hears herself uttering the words, automatic and from far away.

She cannot see the note or the affidavit on the ground.

Once he sends Jimmy away, - because obviously he would send him to kill a man, as if the choice mattered - they are alone. Lalo simply makes Kim sit on the sofa, setting a glass of water before her.

"Can I get something stronger, please?" she hates how weak her voice sounds. It's like her energy was inside this room and by destroying its order, Lalo decimated her powers.

"Sure" says Lalo, amused. He has been walking up and down ceaselessly since Jimmy left, not one moment at ease. "Where you keep your liquor?"

"I thought you ransacked everything."

"You came home before I could get everything."

"It's above the fridge."

He whistles while stepping over Howard's body, on the way to the kitchen.

"You have a preference, Mrs. Goodman?"

"Gin."

"Blue or red?"

Kim looks into the unseeing eyes of Howard Hamlin, close yet far, and she has a sudden urge to cry.

"Blue."

He pours them both a glass and sits down on a chair, facing her.

"Drink up."

He gulps his in a second, sighing when finishing. Waits until Kim finishes hers, stares at her with a pensive look, thumbing his gun again.

"You were an only child, weren´t you?" he says after a second or so. "A lonely one, eh? You have that independence about you, real toughness, no fake macho shit. Could see it the first time you turned up, even if you were shaking down to your boots. Real courage. It's rare."

"Is this about Olarfsson?"

"Olarfsson?" smiles Lalo. "That the guy who I almost killed with my bare hands?"

Kim is very careful to keep her face blank as Lalo peers down at her.

"Seems like you´ve been bad" he murmurs to himself, licking his lips. "and there I thought you are all goody two shoes."

He scratches his chin with the gun, then pushes his chair closer to the sofa, to her.

"But then, you got me thinking."

The smell of him hits her nose this close: smoke, sweat and day old gasoline.

"Gotta hand it to you, your mask is real good. Almost fooled me too. But then again, you have some tells."

"Tells?" repeats Kim, voice far, mind on the floor, next to Howard´s body.

"Yeah" he drawls, holding up his fingers to count, comical. "The first being married to Mr. Big Mouth. The second chasing me down in jail. And the third, well... I saw the look you gave me across the table. You throw that look around often?"

"I dont´t often dislike people."

"Dislike" Lalo sneers, smile going cold. "Now that´s a funny word. You know what I dislike?"

He leans in, confidential.

"Disloyalty."

Her blood curls. Whatever happened to Varga must be something terrible, and there is not an ounce of her that wants to know. Not this, nor where her note or her affidavit went.

"Disloyalty is really ugly to me." continues Lalo breezily, as if they were having a coffee downtown, not playing russian roulette. "Hate and blood, that's part of the business, you know, but when you really trust someone - let's take your lovely husband, as an example, shall we? - it's all give and take. Al que a buen árbol se arrima, you know? And to betray a bond like this, well that's just a shame."

"Tell me what does this have to do with us?" Kim bites back. She can feel a swollen drop of sweat make its way down from the nape of her neck, and the blood of Howard Hamlin streaming its way to the carpet, near her feet. "You have asked for a service which Jimmy and I delivered. And now our business is done."

A deep cut appears in between Lalo's eyebrows: scorn.

"I told your husband the moment I left that cell: this business between you and me is not over. Great things were waiting for us. And then you two spit in my face."

"The job you gave us" argues Kim with a heaving chest. "wasn´t easy and it wasn´t quick, but we did it - and we did not rat."

"You are a liar, Mrs. Goodman" Lalo says a bit too calmly for her taste. "First time, I almost bought what you said, I even admired it. Thought to myself: this Goodman is one lucky pendejo, eh? But then your esposo comes back and suddenly, you don't know nothing about anything, despite being top of the class."

Some of the blood reaches her left sock - wet and warm.

What was that thing Howard told her some months ago, about forgiveness? Her mind feels a maze, but arguing gives some of her strength back so as she continues, so fear eludes her voice entirely.

"Threatening situations make people scared and desperate. And desperate people often look guilty."

"A nice defense, councellor. Maybe that´s why you went running to a hotel, afraid I´ll come back here, huh?"

"Which you did." Kim points out.

Lalo spreads his legs in sitting, and leans in closer. His knees are just touching hers like at the garden at the Center, when Kim wrote her number on the map of his hand. When she thought him human.

Lalo strokes his moustache before speaking.

"Funny coincidence, no? I leave this apartment, and they come to kill me two days later."

"One might say you could not get your house in order." she says coldly, pressing all her nails into her palm with full force. Small crescents of small moons.

Now, a snarl appears, yet Lalo manages some mirth into his voice - the contrast between his facade and his face quite disturbing.

"As you kindly warned me so. How can I ever repay you, Mrs. Goodman?"

"You can start by not killing me."

"Is this what you think I'll do?" his voice is low.

The thudding of her heart becomes almost unbearable. When she looks up straight onto Lalo´s eyes, only to find him already looking back at her, a mirroring. The sliver of his brown eyes seemingly warm in the living light of the room - but it's only veneer. She knows by now it melts off easy.

"What you think I want to do?"

Without looking at the table itself, Lalo puts his gun on the far end of it, and rests his hands on the sides of Kim's head, caging her in. Then he bends even closer, breath blowing some here-there slips of her hair.

"The worst thing that can happen?"

His pupils are so large, they seem to have devoured half of his gaze.

Fear, Kim realizes suddenly, is a very lax word. She thought she was afraid before, but it is nothing compared to what she is feeling now. It's as if her body was falling off a balcony, or her nerves were stacked on each other, aflame.

"Look -" she gives reason one last shot.

But he cuts her off immediately by pushing his hands from the sides of her head to the nape of her neck. Kim feels heavy and light at the same time.

"We talked about family, remember?" Lalo says in a strange tone. "Family...well it's everything. And the people back in my home, well, they were part of my family. And every one of them is now dead, thanks to Varga, and that hijo de puta, and maybe, just maybe... " he thumbs Kim's temples as an afterthought. "Because of you."

Terror is a stone that sits inside of her.

"That's insane" she whispers, looking down to Howard and then back at his murderer. Her face feels wet, and why is it wet? "You think we wanted this?"

Lalo angles his head to the side, examining.

"You might not have sent the men or pulled the trigger. But I'm sure you got a wind of what would happen. What has happened. And didn't tell me. Isn't that against law, too?"

Then with an almost uncanny gentleness, he caresses her face.

"You should have run further away, you know?" he whispers. "Just like your mama made you run before, huh?"

Time freezes.

It freezes with a special kind of carelessness, the one you don't expect coming, that makes the heart of you shudder.

Howard's voice, in her head:

Your debt is forgiven, but anything else? That's on you.

"You look shocked!" Lalo continues, toothful of mirth in his mouth. "But I check on everyone I employ. People I want to work with in the long run, y'know."

It's not so abstract anymore, the terror in her blood - indeed, it has turned entirely tangible, something to become entirely. Terror, personified, chewing on her brain, devouring it whole.

"Checked on your husband before Varga introduced us" then he points at her, just below her neck, near the jugular. "And I checked on you, too, just after we had that nice talk right in this room. Kimberly Wexler. Goodman's name doesn't suit you as much as your own does. Lots of, consonantes, hard on the tongue. Hard name for a hard woman."

He licks his lips.

"How many schools did you go to, exactly?" he asks. It would be a very polite question, were he a polite man. Were this a polite scenario.

Kim opens her mouth to say something.

But nothing comes out.

So Lalo reaches for one of her wrists resting on her lap.

"Hey, hey" he says, smile flattening. "Don't get panicky on me now, hm? We're just having a conversation. You, me, just like back in the garden."

His hand doesn't let go - his index finger measures her pulse.

"You can ask me anything in turn. Talking is nice, no? As long as we're honest with each other. Mira!"

He holds out his other hand, for Kim to shake it.

With a clammy palm, Kim shakes it, her body shaking itself into acceptance. This is not a dream. This is happening. Howard on the floor, a body, nothing more. Lalo sitting on the chair, in front of her, nearer than near, with frenzied eyes, oozing blood.

"So... Kimberly! How many schools did you go to, exactly?"

"I can't... can't remember." Kim confesses, teeth chattering. "Twelve, or maybe more. Didn't reach twenty, I think."

"Dios mio! Hell of an education!" he cocks his head. "But that's not what made you smart, isn't it?"

Kim says nothing. Thinks nothing.

Lalo continues.

"Must have been hard, growing up with a mama like that. You moved cause of her job?"

"Not really."

"Did she have a lot of men to run around with?"

"No, I wouldn't say that."

There is a sharp flash entering his gaze now.

Knowledge.

"But you moved because of her, no?"

"Yes" there is no danger in confessing this, at least.

"Was she a drunk? Or a gambler?"

"Bit of both."

Lalo hums, thoughtful.

"And your dad?"

"My dad left when I was very small." her answers come automatically - all she need is time. Maybe some curiosity where there is no sympathy. "Don't remember him."

"Must have been hard. I should know - I don't remember my papá either" says Lalo wistfully. "But he didn't leave."

"Did he die?" Kim asks, sure of the answer.

"Yes, he was killed when I was four. My brother too, y'know." he reaches for the hem of Kim's blouse, a soft kind of material, blue. He inspects it with a tender sort of care, like he wants to imprint it in his memory.

Jimmy loved the color of it, said so in the morning.

"Only brother I had. Mi madre estaba tan triste, she got locked in a madhouse. Did you know that grief can make you insane?"

"That's terrible" says Kim, fighting the urge to be sick. Her mind cannot comprehend it yet, but in her soul, she already feels what is about to bloom in between them.

"Yeah" Lalo says, still caressing the material, hands wandering near the skin of her abdomen. "You talked with Olarfsson?"

"No."

"And a gringo called Mike?"

"I do not know who that is."

Lalo hums again, the sound reverbarating on Kim's stomach, in her body.

"And does Goodman know?"

"Know what?" her mouth is so dry she has difficulty swallowing.

Finally, Lalo looks up from her blouse to her face, clenching both of her wrist this time, his hands hot and his eyes dark. But only when he starts talking, voice raspy and an octave deeper from arousal, does Kim realize his strategy as a whole.

"How much you want to be punished."

"That's not - " she tries, but Lalo raises one of his fingers against her face - his face severe in its fury.

"If you lie to me again, I´ll make Goodman eat that fish on the floor before I gut him before you."

Whether it's a revolt, an instict, it matters not.

What matter is it makes Kim spit on him.

For a moment, Lalo does nothing. Stunned completely as the wetness trickles down his face - Kim's spit landed just above his left eye, where there is a week old graze, perhaps from the day they tried to kill him.

"Bien" Lalo's face is blank as a baptism. "If you want to play it like this."

He thumbs the spit away, eyes bright, and there, just next to the craving, there is an animal coming out of his stare now, gentle reminiscing and the light mannerisms all gone, gone with the spittle. And Kim can see clearly now how the dark window of his eyes have splintered, and something wild and mad had spilled in between the cracks.

The hold on her hands is definitely painful now, she can feel his fingernails leaving red crescents on her in his wake.

"Turn" it's an order.

And he is reaching for the gun.

Kim has been waiting for this move since he put the gun down in the first place.

So when he moves to hold both her hands in one, she can feel his hold loosening a bit, and then, then she yanks her hands, preferably knocking him on the head. She also tries to kick him.

But that never happens.

Lalo is a seasoned one, it was clear from the first moment they talked.

It's past talking now, and even in actions, he feels experienced enough. The moment she moves to dislodge herself, he halts his movement and kicks the coffeetable away, so as to drag her by the waist, down, down to the floor that is all bloody and watery.

"Here she is!" he is panting, but his voice sounds triumphant. "¡Una mujer de fuego! I knew you were there somewhere, Kimberly."

He pushes himself on her so easily - and he is smiling again, the look on her face, the crack in her composure so intoxicating.

"Fuck" Kim hisses, strained. Lalo's body is a bulk. But the heaviness she feels now, in her abdomen, is both new and familiar.

"I'm trying, Mrs. Goodman." he chides her, cruel again, despite the plea now in her eyes, because he invoked him again.

Not him, he doesn't have a place here. Leave him out of this.

"What a temper you have, huh?" he moves deftly this time, moving her wrists into one hand, and pulling the hem of the blouse up, stroking the hardened skin there, seemingly a solid shell, yet soft nevertheless. Goosebumps appear on her abdomen as he caresses it. "The first time you got into trouble, you must have felt so bad. That made you do all the stupid things in the last few months?"

"At least I feel bad" Kim says dryly.

"Yes, I'm sure it made a lot difference." he looks around, cocking his head. "Wouldn't you agree?"

"I really hope you will die soon and painfully" Kim bites back, childish. "I hope they shoot your brains out or else hang you by your feet to rot."

As this was an invitation, Lalo leans in to kiss her with a devouring sort of hunger, pressing his forehead to hers and cupping her breast. Her breath hitches when he bites on her tongue, hard. As she taste of copper floods her mouth, and she sinks her teeth into his lips as a rebuttal.

Lalo grunts. His eyes are pitch-dark, and his lips vivid-red when he breaks the kiss.

"The moment you stood up to defend that clown of a husband, I knew. Almost took you on the spot. I got so fucking hard I got almost blind. Here, feel it."

Almost gently, he guides her hand to his trousers tenting.

You still have weapons, y’know, says the dark and dead voice again in the back of her brain. Think fast, Mrs. Goodman.

So Kim palms his erection through the fabric of his jeans - hears him inhale, hard.

"Qué inteligente" he drawls against her mouth, breathless. "Veamos que mojada estas."

So Kim helps him discard the rest of his clothes.

So Kim does not mind when he tears her blouse into two, and simply pulls her panties away, sticking two of his fingers deep inside of her, curling them. Does not mind when he groans against her neck when she pulls on his thick hair, dishevelled in their rutting because this is far from lovemaking, she wouldn't even call it fucking. It's something more violent, bordering on biological.

A whimper emerges from her mouth when he sticks a third finger in her, and he leans in close to swallow the sound with a kiss, searing. He licks her teeth before sticking his fingers into her mouth.

"Just get it over with" Kim chokes when he pulls his fingers out to lick them. Feels strung-out, feels seen. Does not like how Lalo keeps his eyes on fixed on hers, fixed on her - rooted, grounded. Does not like it at all.

She thought he'd cease talking once he is in her, but he is only silent as he unbuckles his belt with one hand, and takes out his cock. There is little to no fumblings, but Kim wishes there would be so she could be prepared. Still, the suddenness and harshness of it all is quite fitting. After all, judgement and punishment rarely comes expected.

It hurts, when he enters her - even wet, he is so big. She gasps into his mouth when he starts moving, resuming his speech.

"Can you imagine" he breathes into the hollow of her pale neck, as he presses her into the floor, the woodboard hard on her back, her hips. His golden necklace is cold on her bare breasts. "What Goodman would say if he found out? That would be something, no? Him walking in while I'm balls deep in you."

It is almost vulgar, the sound between the meeting of their flesh, because she is wet, shamefully so, and he, so eager that he is now slipping inside of her effortlessly.

"Enough..." she pleads, and when he smiles her down, she bites him on his shoulder, until she feels the skin break and the sinews shake and his shivering voice, low in her ears.

"Enough?" he pulls out of her only to turn her over, on her stomach, only to hoist her skirt to her waist, and enter her from behind. "We're just getting started - or is this..."

This time, his breath halts, as Kim feels her walls squeeze involuntarily, shuddering through her orgasm, throwing back her head, her ponytail slipping from its keep, the world with it too, falling apart. She feels as if she was being impaled, cut in half.

"Jesús" his left hand finds her hair, gripping, then pulling. Her back arches instinctively, and she mewls despite her discipline, despite this being a game. Because it is still a game, a chess game. Isn't it?

He is close to climaxing too - she can feel it as he grips her by the narrow slope of her neck and drags her closer, skin on skin, want on want.

"A woman like you, I could give her the world... ¿No lo quieres dulce, querida?" he bends to her right ear, his face next to her, their breath mingling. "You wouldn't have to act good, wouldn't have to act at all, you can be as cold...Don't you want it sweet though? Sweet from me alone? Cristó..."

His cock swells, and then he empties himself in her, his cum hot in her womb, his body almost lifeless as his orgasm take him by full force.

"It wasn't so bad, wasn't it?" he says, later, as he climbs down from her laid down body, resembling the corpse in the room, stiff and spiritless. "Miss Wexler?"

Kim turns her face away, and finally, finally, starts crying.

After, when Mike tells them that Lalo is dead, she also tells her he destroyed the note with the affidavit a long time ago.

"Knew you would keep it." he shakes his hands. The dawning light seeps in, and Kim feels a thousand year old. "And some things, you should let go of."

"Thanks." it sounds empty, because it is.

The apartment is a mess.

She wouldn't meet Jimmy's eyes, though he tries to catch her gaze.

They have to leave, so that they can clean the place, Mike and his men.

Most of the blood is Howard's, she wants to tell them in passing. Some of them is mine.

But there is a strange smell around the blood, heaviest in the living room.

Must be the same for them so it must means nothing for them.

So she tells them nothing.

Thinks of nothing.

#lalo salamanca #kim wexler #kim x lalo #bcs #bcs fic #better call saul fic #my writing

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helioshellion · 2 years ago

Text

Another yakuza hc dump from the bucky brain.

Majima

He is one of the few to actually graduate instead of dropping out. He was pushed by Shimano to finish because a man ain’t worth shit if he doesn’t have the smarts to back it up.

Isn’t an animal person one bit. He doesn’t get along with dogs or cats. He likes wild animals like birds and squirrels and stuff like that though. If he had the time he could be one of those grandpas that throws seeds at pigeons. His way of endearment is to insult and curse at them like “hey shiteater have some seed”

Prefers younger kids over older kids he doesn’t get along with teenagers or older kids because they remind him too much of himself therefore he sort of self-hate projects onto kids. However he loves babies and a deep down part of him gets baby fever each time he gets close to one. He wants to hold a baby and kiss its head and lay it down to sleep. He doesn’t want to argue about homework with a “brat” (once again he is projecting)

His car is a shitty mid to late 90s truck covered in rust and scratches. It roars like a son of a bitch and is the perfect spot to have depressed sack of shit benders. There are stains in the seats and burn holes from cigarettes. There’s probably a sexy woman keychain dangling from the rear view mirror.

Teeth are very yellowed and spotted and dirty and he should keep an eye on his dental health but with the rate he smokes there’s not much he can do unless he commits to a steady routine of caring for his teeth. His gums bleed and he gets freaked out so he stops.

Ends up always getting pneumonia or bronchitis in the winter. Every time. He’s immunocompromised so he gets easily laid out by sicknesses.

Actually is interested in metalworks but pretends to think metal sculptures are stupid as shit but he’s got the brain of a middle aged grilldad so he loves watching metal get real hot and make cool object.

Starts using nicotine patches when he’s older. He never quits, but he’s able to cut pack to less than a pack a day.

When not shirtless his attire consists of spotted gross tank tops and jeans of the dad variety, Also ripped and spotted. He’s kept the same bunch of clothes since 1995 essentially. He is a man trapped in time.

Growing up in poverty, Majima tries to keep ahold of the stuff he cares about. His father was much much older and essentially was a generation behind. There’s two sides of Majimas brain where one encourages him to hold onto stuff and the other encourages him to let go and not grow sentimental to things. It causes a lot of migraines.

Back on cars. He actually loves driving. Driving is something he holds a lot of value in and he’s good at it. He encourages seatbelt usage and will hit anyone driving him if they don’t belt up first.

Personal headcanon that his modern relationship with Saejima is. Tumultuous. They care about each other deeply but Majima has never had to live with someone for a long long time and has a lot of habits he’s accrued due to that meaning there’s a certain incompatibility they never had when they were young considering the fact that Majima never lived with Saejima in the 80s. Majima deals with a certain nervousness having someone in such close proximity and Saejima has to essentially relearn how to move and interact around Majima. There’s a part of both of them that somehow just knows what the other has been through, especially in regards to Kugihara’s torture on Saejima and Majima in the hole. They never talk about it, but they feel it.

His leg bounces as a nervous tick, and his teeth grind extremely loudly when he sleeps. It’s uncomfortable for everyone to hear. He snores softly, but needs to be pushed onto his side because he chokes easily on his back on his spit and the coughing wakes him up.

Kiryu

The kind of addict that’s never really able to quit fully. He’s tried, god he’s tried. He’s tried a lot of different routes but it never works. He gets extremely hostile when he doesn’t smoke and he has at times taken it out on the kids in morning glory leading him to the decision to just. Smoke and not try to quit. He cant handle the pain and the possibilty of him yelling at the children again for something that’s not their faults. He smokes more than a pack a day, even in his peaceful times, because his brain never really relaxes. He’s never at peace, not really.

In opposition to Majima, Kiryu prefers older kids. He likes guiding them and helping them and doesn’t like dealing with diapers or hand feeding them or anything like that. He likes talking to them like people.

He eats the kid’s leftovers. (Father overload)

Since my Kiryu is trans, he has genuinely considered at times to carry a child to term. They weren’t that serious but he did consider it. However he went through early menopause in his 40s so it isn’t happening. Before menopause, His testosterone levels fluxuate due to him not keeping a good schedule so theres usually a time where he’ll just menstrate and be like. How could this have happened. And it’s because he didn’t do his injections bitch.

During his transition in the 70s-80s, because of there being no real dictionary for him to really explain how he felt, he ended up falling in with a lot of different crowds in Kamurocho. The city life really helped him reflect. He found a lot of comfort within the small butch lesbian community in the bar scene, and identified with them a lot. It was through the shared support and love that he was able to recognize what masculinity meant to him and how he wanted to be viewed by others. He also engaged with the gay scene as well but felt a strong disconnect due to being transgender, and being fed fearmongering by Kazama. Kazama attempted, but it was his own fears that led him to feed Kiryu harmful anxieties about how he’d be treated and seen by everyone, and told him the only way to survive if he wanted to be yakuza was to stay in the closet about both his gender and sexuality. Kiryu didn’t.

While Kiryu is extremely. Sexually active to put it best (fucks like a beast and gets pussy like a frat star), he is still mostly closed off. It’s through interacting with Majima that Kiryu attempts a level of intimacy he didn’t allow himself before.

The kids are his alarm clock due to not having an internal clock. If they don’t wake him up he can sleep all during the day and completely miss the kids coming home from school. It upsets him knowing that sometimes Haruka will intentionally let him sleep to get everyone ready herself, but he can’t verbalize how it makes him feel.

While he does have a very deep intimate relationship with Majima, most of his conversations on a deep level come from interacting with Date. Date is his closest friend, and is one of the few with a more level head. Date is a regular civilian, and so has civilian advice. It helps Kiryu a lot in his darker times. Sometimes he just needs a pat on the back and a shared beer and be told to keep his chin up, bucko.

Would probably be really good at riding mechanical bull.

He talks to the kids like adults and sometimes that works well sometimes it doesn’t, because sometimes it results in him not giving the proper amount of care and attention in something, because sometimes you need to talk to a kid like a kid. He wants to protect their innocence but he can’t really help himself. Thjs is what happens when adults don’t have adult friends. Sorry kiryu.

As he gets older he has freeze-ups. He will go still and his brain will just. Freeze. It lasts for a couple seconds and it scares him. Nothing scares him more than losing control.

He has a neverending sadness and the only thing that satiates that is blood. He wishes he wasn’t like that. He wishes he was somebody else. He wants to feel comforted by his head on someone’s lap, their hand in his hair, but he can’t help that he just. Is himself. He wants to hurt people and he wants to be hurt because that’s all life is to him. He wants to be held.

Kazumajiiuurrtghhhh

Sex to them is staring at each other from across a bar. Sex to them is tasting each other’s blood after a fight. For all the sex they have they sure aren’t having sex. It works out, though.

Nothing will stop the beast in Majimas heart telling him to settle down and have a family and hold his kids hand and kiss their foreheads and kiss his spouse on the cheek and go to work and- none of this can really exist in the real world, not with Majimas turmoil. He imagines it, though. For how separate their lives are, Kiryu certainly exists in the life Majima deeply wants. Maybe there’s a small jealousy, or some type of envy. Or maybe it’s sadness that Majima and Kiryu can never meet in the middle. It’s an either-or, despite Kiryu being constantly in the middle. Kiryu will always be a bit of a hypocrite.

Kiryu pretends to be asleep when he wakes up, because Majima is always awake first and Kiryu likes to pretend to sleep and just exist in Majima’s space without expecting anything. He’s embarrassed to admit he once groaned in his “sleep” to pretend to be having a bad dream and Majima came over and sat down next to him and put a hand on his head and Kiryu very very enjoyed it. He’s not going to admit that, though.

Majima could literally be the most stable thing in Kiryus life if Kiryu and Majima were able to meet in the middle and see if they can live together, either earlier or in the orphanage. Majima keeps a schedule, Majima is stable, works hard, keeps track of things when he can. Majima would cook dinner, Majima would clean Kiryu’s space without being asked. Majima would stir and stir in his newfound life and never be able to truly settle down like his brain wants. Eventually it would come crashing down, but it wouldn’t be. Destroyed. Everything changes. Deep sigh.

Anyways, Majima can pick and throw Kiryu around and it makes Kiryus brain go hooray and yippee. They kiss like nasty ass gross men because they rarely ever actually kiss. So the times they do it’s very noticeable and nobody likes it. That’s why they only kiss when they’re alone.

#artbucky #yakuza #ryu ga gotoku #rgg #majima goro #kazumaji #kiryu kazuma

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californiaboytoybilly · 7 months ago

Note

🩷🧡💛💚🩵💙💜💐🌸 for Steve, Billy, Jason, Nancy, Chrissy and/or Eddie. I'm in need.

Okay okay, I’m gonna do a mix of them depending on who I have the best answers for. Some questions may get multiple answers :P

🩷 Why are they your favourite?

Billy, Eddie and Nancy are three of my all time favourite characters in a show ever, because I can relate to all of them in very different ways.

With Eddie, it’s about growing up an outcast and visibly out of place in a small town. I was tall, queer and autistic in a town where the last two weren’t welcome (and the first made me stick out, because I was the tallest in my class, especially among girls, at 5’11 by fifteen years old).

For Billy, it’s about the cycle of abuse and the anger that being mistreated brews inside. It’s about sitting outside of school and purposefully missing the bus because I didn’t want to go home. About how- even eight years after leaving the situation- I can’t handle being shouted at without breaking down or lashing out.

And finally, with Nancy, it’s about being constantly underestimated just because I’m a woman. About having a drive to prove people wrong, and sometimes realizing I’ve stepped on toes or treated people unfairly in my path to be seen.

🧡 Anything in common with them?

I kind of got into this above, so I’ll pick different characters for this question.

Chrissy - I was a cheerleader for several years in high school!

Jason - I can sometimes be so set in my beliefs that trying to convince me against my deeply held convictions can be… challenging. Not impossible, but might give you a slight headache.

💛 Do you have any polar opposite traits to them?

A few, yeah.

While Steve is constantly seeking validation through romantic connections, I rarely do so. My need for validation comes more in the form of approval of things I’ve done, or towards my intelligence or creativity. I can and do fall in love, I am in love currently, but in the past it hasn’t been a burden to me to be alone. Romance isn’t something I go out of my way to find, just something I appreciate when it comes along.

💚 Favourite representation headcanons?

Oh, this is a real long list but I will narrow it down for readability’s sake.

Chrissy - I tend to head-canon as suffering from chronic pain. As someone who spent 14 years of my life between competitive gymnastics and cheerleading, as an adult I struggle daily with constant levels of pain from injuries, being dropped, being kicked by flyers, the stress of competition season and more. Cheerleading is incredibly hard on the body if done for multiple years.

Steve - my favourites have to be dyslexic Steve and Italian Steve.

Eddie - Appalachian Eddie truther. Also, that boy is so autistic. Please, just look at him. I tend to double him up and make him AuDHD for projection reasons but also because it just… makes sense.

🩵 What’s a popular headcanon for them that you just can’t get behind?

As much fun as it can be to explore in fics, I can’t see Eddie secretly getting laid all the time. This boy is no sex god. He gets overwhelmed when someone attractive breathes on him. Tripping over his feet when people flirt. He’s too focused on music and D&D. I could see someone trying to hit on him, making some comment about his wand and him getting excited and showing off an actual magic wand replica from a book series he loved.

Also please look at his van for ten seconds and tell me he loves cars and knows how to fix them. That thing coughs up rust in the equivalent of a vehicular smokers cough.

💙 What’s a popular headcanon that you adore for them?

As mentioned above: Dyslexic Steve, touch-starved Billy, Eddie with an oral fixation (Hellfire had to give him the Heimlich one time because Jeff spooked him and he choked on a dice he’d been rolling around in his mouth).

💜 Put that guy into situations / take him out?

See, now, I would love to take them out of situations and give them a break with a vacation and unlimited icy drinks and a on-call therapist but… I do be putting them in horrible situations in my head. Whoops.

💐 Favourite polycules for them?

MMM.

Eddie/Steve/Billy/Jason

Steve/Nancy/Billy/Eddie

Jason/Patrick/Chrissy

Steve/Eddie/Chrissy

Jason/Billy/Patrick/Steve

🌸 Favourite mono ships for them?

Billy: My favourite Billy ships are Mungrove, Byergrove and Harringrove.

Steve: My favourite Steve ships are Steddie, Harringrove, Stargyle and Cheerscoops.

Jason: My favourite Jason ships are Tigerfreak, McCarver, Cargrove and Stason.

Chrissy: My favourite Chrissy ships are Buckingham, Sleuthcheer, Patrick/Chrissy (I refuse to call them Pissy and I can’t think of another ship name 😭) and Hellcheer

Eddie: My favourite Eddie ships are Mungrove, Steddie, Tigerfreak, Edgyle and Edancy.

Nancy: My favourite Nancy ships are Edancy, Bubblesleuth, Sleuthcheer, Bancy and Ronance.

#long post #billy hargrove #steve harrington #eddie munson #nancy wheeler #chrissy cunningham #jason carver

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the-consortium · 1 year ago

Note

Apothercary Sinj,

Do you even use the title, these days? I suppose I could have just called you Khorag, but I prefer to remain polite whenever possible; especially with a colleague, though we haven’t had the chance to work together.

Would you care to remedy that? I am returning to Urum for a consult with Chief Apothecary Fabius and would enjoy the opportunity. Assuming you accept this invitation, we can discuss the particulars when I arrive.

Grandfather’s blessings,

( @aldus-trazyrae )

The fact that the heavy, rust-covered airlocks and rivet-studded iris gates are closed may be the main reason. Or perhaps the physical seclusion.

Something else? Ah, it's not worth pretending. The other apothecaries simply don't feel comfortable in his lab.

And while he is always welcome in the more central areas of the sprawling ruined complex … but somehow it rarely really feels right.

Not that they hate him. True, the atmosphere of collegial competition is often punctuated by open (and offensive) hostility - but that's only natural. But he doesn't have the almost friendly bonds that Arrian and Tzimiskes share. Or Duco and Herik. He has his philosophical evenings with the Chief Apothecary, but these are far too infrequent. Fabius allows himself little free time.

And so mostly just the gifts from Nurgle remain.

Khorag sighs and a small cloud of tiny micro-rotflies swirls away from him, then rises towards the greenish skylight and settles on one of the rust stalagtites hanging down from the rivets of the frame. Their steady hum mingles with the whir of the cogitors, the sloshing of solutions in the centrifuges and Paz'uz` friendly snorts.

The apothecary pats the demon kindly on the head and is about to get back to work when a Nurgling appears out of nowhere with a belching sound, falls over itself and hisses angrily as it gets back to its feet. The little monster stares at him, the usual hostility in the red-rimmed eyes changing to neutral benevolence (if a Neverborn is capable of that). With a wet, coughing sound, the Nurgling produces a datapad from its belly-mouth and hands it gracefully upwards.

Khorag reaches for it while Paz'uz has already picked himself up to playfully pounce on the Nurgling.

As he takes a few steps to leave the erupting fight behind, he reads the short letter and growls in surprise. Shakes his head. A few flakes of rust sail to the ground like exotic petals.

He settles down on one of the lab stools and writes an equally terse - albeit flowery in his usual style - reply.

"Indeed, for understandable reasons, our work and life paths have not yet crossed. The Lord of Change and Father Nurgle have too little in common.

But I am not very religious when it comes to my work. Which is why I naturally like to take every opportunity to exchange ideas outside my sphere.

I will report your contact to the Chief Apothecary."

Khorag clicks "send" and then leans back. Murmurs "Well …"

Further back, the Nurgling and Paz'uz roll through the lab in a screeching, growling, slime-dropping heap.

#warhammer #ask post #roleplay #aldus trazyrae #Khorag Sinj #Nurgle

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ashcal99 · 2 years ago

Text

Certain Things : Leah Clearwater I

Chapter One

"Something about you, It's like an addiction, Hit me with your best shot honey, I've got no reason to doubt you, 'Cause certain things hurt, And you're my only virtue"

Summary: Conner Swan moves to Forks Washington in hopes to help his sister Bella through her breakup with Edward. In hopes to find happiness again. He finds much more.

Warnings: Eventual smut (18+ only), mentions of death, depression, loss, antidepressants, general angst, slow burn

Words: 3.5k

A/N: Comment if I missed any warning or anything plz thnx.

Soundtrack

Previous Chapter

Series Masterlist

!!!There is a prologue linked above if you're interested. You don't need to read it, but it does explain a lot of what's written later on.!!!

——————

December 18th, 2005

Traveling to Forks all the way from Phoenix was a long and boring trip. One that Conner had never driven before as he typically flew when traveling to visit his father. Unfortunately, seeing as he had about 20 moving boxes crammed in and strapped down under a tarp in the bed of his truck, he couldn’t exactly travel by those means this time. He supposed could’ve shipped his belongings and truck up the country, but he didn’t even want to think about how much money that would have cost. Being an accountant didn’t exactly support a lavish lifestyle by any means. Moving was never fun, especially when it was almost 1,600 miles away. But he knew that when he agreed to his father’s request to relocate north.

The twenty-one year old had been driving for about nineteen hours now, so doing a quick calculation in his head, he figured he had about four and a half hours left of the drive. He had refused to stop and pay for a hotel that he couldn’t afford and tiredness had long started to eat away at his mind. Looking at the small fluorescent numbers on his dashboard, he saw it had reached dinner time. In almost comical timing, his stomach growled out a borderline demonic sound, demanding to be fed. Giving into hunger, he pulled the old dull blue chevy truck to the nearest exit, deciding he would stop at the first restaurant he drove past. Much to his dismay, the only signs of life were an old gas station that looked like it was straight out of the 1950’s and a diner to match. Sure, 50’s diners had their appeal, but let’s just say, this one seemed a bit too authentic. He could get back on the interstate and drive further to see if there was anything else, but he knew for a fact that there wouldn’t be another exit for miles and he wasn’t about to backtrack south. He would just have to hope and pray that the food tasted better than the place looked.

Driving up to the almost empty parking lot, he pulled the transmission into park and un-clicked his seatbelt. Pausing for a moment he glanced again to the dirty windows and rusting railing of the building and grimaced. Did he really need food this bad? His stomach answered almost immediately with a low gurgling groan. Okay, that would be a yes then. Throwing his door open, he stepped out, stretching his long limbs for what felt like the first time in years. Reluctantly, he stepped back from the pick-up, manually locking the vehicle with the key, and began trudging stiffly to the dull chrome rimmed door. Once inside, his hopes for a decent meal demolished to ash as the odor of grease and burnt toast hit his sinuses. His nose wrinkled in disgust, as he choked out a cough in protest, earning the attention of a middle aged woman wearing a stained white apron who was sat directly in front of the doors, at the diner’s bar. Looking almost shocked to see a customer, she slid off the stool to her feet. Stepping over to greet Conner at the “wait to be seated” sign.

“Well hello, how can I help you?” She asked confused, the crease between her brows deepening. This couldn’t be a good sign, right? Surly it was bad that she was questioning why he would step into a diner around dinner time.

Taking a quick breath, trying not to breath through his nose too much, he answered. “Um yeah, table for one?” He needed food and a break from driving to wake up, he told himself. He could muster through this and get back to driving soon.

Quirking an eyebrow at the young man, the woman answered. “Are you sure about that? The only people we ever really serve are the farmers around here, and they clearly have incredibly low standards when it comes to the definition of food.”

He grimaced as another strong wiff of something burning hit his nostrils, seeming to singe the hairs. “Yeah, I can see that, well… smell it I guess.” He stated, wincing from the stench. “Unfortunately though, yes, I am afraid I do need to have something to eat as soon as possible or I think my stomach may start eating itself. Which I’m starting to wonder if that is the better of the two options here.” He half joked, earning a small slanted grin from the waitress.

“Right this way sweetie.” She said, ushering him to follow her to the furthest booth from the open kitchen. She slid into the booth quickly, reaching forward to unlatch the ancient window. She swiftly pulled the metal frame upwards, it groaning in protest. “Sorry about the smell sweet pea, our cook Earl gets a bit overzealous with the toaster.” She apologized, sliding against the old creaky booth to stand upright.

Conner smiled slightly, leaning down to sit on the cracked worn leather. “No worries, I just need something to eat to get me by for the rest of my drive.” He stated, pausing a moment to get a nice breath of fresh air from the now open window. “What would you recommend that’s least likely to give me food poisoning, a heart attack, or a stomach ulcer?” He half joked, a lop sided grin forming on his mouth.

The woman let out a bark of laughter, throwing her hand to her chest. “Honey, I wouldn’t touch any food here with a ten foot pole myself, but if you’re that desperate, I would recommend a grilled cheese sandwich with tomato soup considering the soup comes from a can-“ she paused, taking in a breath from her nose, and continued. “But, on second thought, maybe just some soup would be best.” She smiled apologetically.

Agreeing to the soup with a glass of water to drink, Conner leaned back into the creaking booth, stretching his legs as much as the space below the short table would allow. Running his fingers through his hair, he let out a deep sigh, as his thoughts began to wander.

He didn’t know what to expect when seeing his sister again after almost a year with little to no contact. The last time he had seen her had been after her accident and she had been too drugged up on pain meds to really hold much of a conversation. As far as he knew, she had no idea he was moving up, as him and Charlie decided it would be best kept a surprise.

Conner wasn’t too sure how she would react considering she had willingly stopped her daily conversations with him. He did know that after starting his antidepressants he had gotten a bit better with handling his trauma, and he could only hope that he was less of a burden to her because of it. Because, that’s what he was, right? Clearly there was a reason she had stopped talking to him after years of having a tight knit relationship with each other.

Really, he didn’t blame her, not too much anyway. He didn’t want her to feel trapped into comforting him through his depression, no matter how much it hurt him to be pushed away. She was the younger sibling and he had made the promise to protect her, not the other way around. He couldn’t expect to be coddled by her. None the less, the thought made his chest ache.

He slumped forwards, elbows resting on the table, dropping his head into his hands. The dull ache in his forehead grew. His thoughts continued grow more and more dismal, the ache turning into a pulsing behind his brow. He let his eyes shut as he kneaded his thumbs on his temples, trying to relieve some of the pain.

Before he knew it, he was jolting awake to a small shake of his shoulder. Looking around frantically, it took him a moment to remember where he was. The diner’s fluorescent lights burned his sleepy eyes as tried blinking them to attention. Turning to the waitress that still had her hand on his shoulder he asked, slightly panicked. “What time is it? How long was I asleep?”

She gave him a soft smile and replied. “Don’t worry sweetheart, you were only out a few minutes.” She paused, setting the bowl of steaming soup she had been holding down on the table, completely unbothered by the obvious heat of the ceramic bowl. “I am, however a bit concerned about your state of alertness and getting back on the road.” She continued.

He let out a small awkward laugh in reply, brushing his fingers through his hair once again, it being a bit of a nervous habit of his to do so. “Yeah-“ He said, letting out a deep yawn. “I guess I needed a bit of a power nap. I should probably get a cup of coffee to go and hope my stomach doesn’t put up too much of a fight at the food and drink combination.” He laughed.

She chuckled in reply, resting her hands inside the stained apron pockets. “Well, I’ll go ahead and start brewing that for you then.” She said smiling, turning, and walking behind the bar.

——————

Conner sipped on the coffee that had long lost its’ warmth, trying to keep himself alert. It had been a while since he had been in cold like Washington during December, and of course, he had forgotten that his truck’s heating had gone out. It was just his luck that this happened. He hadn’t exactly forgotten, but he had been so used to driving around phoenix, no matter the time of year, with his window rolled down to compensate for the fact that the heating and ac had stopped working. Arizona didn’t exactly come with the issue of trying to stay warm over half of the year. So, of course, when the sun had set just as he crossed over the Washington state line, he instantly regretted not fixing the truck previously. He knew he would have to find a mechanic to fix it asap, but for now, he was screwed.

So there her was, bundled in as many layers as he could fit on his body, sipping on cold coffee, shivering while his teeth chattered in his mouth. His cheeks had to have been bright red, he was sure. He was almost there though. In fact, hd was even starting to recognize familiar buildings on his way into town, and he knew he was only a few minutes away. Sure enough, he rounded the corner and instantly spotted the old police cruiser out front.

Not much had changed with the house since he had last seen it. The same old trees out front. Same chipped white paint. The only difference was a clunky ancient looking orange truck that now occupied half of the cracked driveway. This, he knew to be Bella’s. She had gotten it on her first day in town, back when she was still speaking to her brother.

Putting the truck in park for its’ final time of the night, he sighed, pulling the key from the ignition. Grabbing a few things, his keys, cell phone, and backpack full of overnight items, he slid out of the cab of the truck into the cold air. He closed the car door softly, trying not to make too much noise in hopes to not wake Bella, assuming she would be sleeping by now. He knew she had been having trouble sleeping and didn’t want to interfere with what little sleep she did get.

Walking up to the front door, he knocked softly. As he stood there, blowing on his hands, trying to warm them the best he could, the door swung open. And there stood Charlie. Not a thing had changed, minus maybe a new wrinkle here or there. Still the same warn out flannel shirt, bushy mustache, and warm brown eyes. "Conner!" His father whisper-shouted. Grabbing his son and wrapping him in his arms. God, he missed his dad’s hugs. Sure, the man was socially awkward as hell, but damn, did he hug with his whole heart. “I missed you so much, Son.” He said, the words muffled by Conner’s shoulder. His son had gotten taller since he had last seen him, that was for sure.

“I missed you too, Dad” He said, his voice cracking. “I’m sorry that I didn’t come to visit sooner.” He felt his eyes begin to water, trying to push back the building emotion behind his voice.

The older man pulled away, keeping his hands on his son’s shoulders, looking deep into the blues of his eyes. “Stop that. You don’t have to explain yourself or apologize. You’ve been through hell and back, Con. I understand, and I just hope that I can be there for you when you need me.” He said, tears filling his eyes as well. “You and Bells are the most important things in my life and that’s never going to change, okay?” He asked.

As Conner looked into the deep brown of his father’s eyes, the tightness in his chest that had been there for over year, slightly loosened its’ grip. He felt the comfort of home embrace the shards of his broken heart for the first time since Mia had left him. A small smile graced his lips as he nodded lightly, excepting his father’s love.

Charlie let out a deep sigh, letting his hands drop from his son’s shoulders, ushering him inside the warmth of the home. Closing the door and locking it, he turned to Conner. “I put sheets on your bed upstairs. I’m sorry, I only had your old sheets that fit, so you may want to get new ones once you get settled.” He said, giving his son a small smile.

“Thanks, Dad. I’m sure they’re fine. I’m just ready to knock out for ten hours straight.” He said, laughing lightly.

Charlie smiled. ”Okay, I'm going to go to sleep now, have to get up early in the morning. I assume you’ll still be asleep when I leave for work, but I’ll be home around seven, if you want to wait up and have dinner with me?” He asked hopefully.

"Will do, goodnight dad.” Conner replied, smiling softly.

"Night, Con. Glad you're here." Charlie took one more glance at his son before walking down the hall and into his bedroom.

He knew his aching limbs and head would have to wait until tomorrow to unpack the bed of his truck, so he didn’t bother waiting any longer before he trudged up the narrow stairs to his childhood bedroom. Trying to open the old creaky door quietly, he reached in, flipping the light on.

Warm light flooded the room revealing a small dresser, and an old mattress lying on the floor. It wasn’t the best set up, seeing as he was six foot two and would probably find some difficulty getting out of bed from so low, but this was how it was set up when he was a kid. Charlie hadn’t had time to change much of anything with such short notice and that was made clear by the power ranger posters that littered the wood paneling of the walls and the sheets that were stretched tightly across the mattress that were covered in looney tunes characters.

He sighed, knowing he would need to purchase a bed frame eventually, as he left his old one back in Phoenix, not exactly having the room for it in the bed of his truck. But that was okay, he had at least packed his sheets, and they were tucked away somewhere with the rest of his things. He would worry about that tomorrow though. For now, he just wanted a warm shower and a good night’s rest.

Setting his keys and phone down on the dresser, he turned, making his way to the small shared bathroom down the hall. Turning the water on, he dug through his bag, finding his soap and shampoo, and setting them on the edge of the tub. Peeling layer by layer off, he tossed them into the laundry hamper that occupied the far left corner. Finally, he discarded his last piece of clothing, the cool air hitting his bare skin.

Goosebumps rose on his arms as he stepped over the edge of the tub, letting the steady stream of water run over his rigid frame. He took in a deep breath, feeling the steam enter his lungs. Slowly letting the air back out, he felt his body relax under the warmth of the water. His body ached in protest of his day’s journey, the heat gradually easing the tense muscles. His mind blurred through the motions of his shower routine, wanting to finish quickly, so that he could enjoy the warmth for a bit longer. Finishing, he leaned his head back, letting the water droplets run freely down his face.

It was then that he allowed his thoughts to overcome him. It had been an overwhelming day to say the least, and after over twenty-four hours of distracting himself with music or books on tape, he was finally alone with his mind. He didn’t know what to expect from the move. It had been so long since he had set foot in the small town, and suddenly he was picking up and moving here? Sure, he had always missed his father and was happy to be around people he loved once again, but everything had progressed so quickly, he hadn’t been given time to process anything. He had gone over a year after the accident going by a strict schedule he had set in place in order to distract himself from the agonizing pain in his heart.

Now, he had been ripped away from his job, from his apartment, and from the life he was used to living day by day, and suddenly it was hard to breath. He felt his chest begin to raise quickly, up and down as he tried to catch is bearings. The sound of the water beating down on the porcelain tub began to drown out, the pounding in his ears numbing everything but the panic building in his chest.

Was he screaming? Maybe? Surely not. No, definitely not. Snapping out of his thoughts, he quickly shut off the water and stepped out of the shower. Grabbing a towel, he rushed to dry himself and wrap the cloth around his waist. Pushing the door open, cool air rushed down his spine, bringing the goosebumps back to his skin. Following the screams, he found himself lead to what he remembered to be his sister’s room.

Sure enough, there she was. The light of the hallway pouried in through the doorway, illuminating her thrashing body. He rushed to her side, shaking her urgently, trying to wake her from her nightmare. With a sudden gasp of air, she shot awake. Squinting through the light at the hazy silhouette before her, she blinked rapidly. Her voice cracked. “C-Conner?” She asked confused. Was she still dreaming? She couldn’t be. Her dreams hadn’t consisted of anything as pleasant as seeing her brother for a while now.

But her heart sunk as realization hit her. She had deliberately avoided him for over a year. Of course she had a good reason to do so in the beginning, but eventually it just turned into her not knowing how to come back and fix the mess that she had made of their relationship. And now he was here to taunt her in her dreams? This had to be a nightmare.

Panic began to fill her chest once again. Conner saw this in the brown of her eyes, and he quickly laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Bells, it’s okay. It’s me, I’m here.” He said reassuringly.

The space between her eyebrows creased as she finally got a good glimpse at him. Water dripped from his tousled hair onto the soft lavender of her sheets, darkening the shade slightly. She blinked. It was really him. She wasn’t too sure if that was much better than him being a part of her nightmare. “H-How?” She breathed out.

Conner sighed, “It’s late Bells, and I’ve been driving all day. I’ll explain in the morning, I promise. But, for now, you and I both need sleep. Okay?” He asked. After receiving a nod in repose, he stood, assuring his towel was secure around his waist, and walked forward to leave the room.

“Con?” Bella croaked. Turning his head back to the girl, he hummed in question. “I love you.” She answered softly, her voice trailing off slightly towards the end of her sentence.

The corner of his mouth twitched ever so slightly upward. “I love you too, Bells. Goodnight.” He said, not waiting for a response as he walking into the hallway, shutting her bedroom door behind himself.

After going back to the bathroom and grabbing his backpack, he sauntered back to his room. Dressing quickly in black sweatpants and a plain grey t-shirt, he climbed down into bed silently. Wrapping himself in the warmth and comfort of his childhood bed, he let himself succumb to sleep.

Next Chapter

#leah clearwater x reader #leah clearwater #Leah clearwater smut #twilight smut #twilight #Bella swan #Charlie swan #Edward cullen #eventual smut #slow burn #Leah clearwater x m!reader #fic: certain things

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