#I am TRYING to fucking get commissions done

[jocelynships]

Me: I have motivation to draw!

My hand: Yeah we’re not going to cooperate with you

Me: :/

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

hour 14 of taking a break from art for the sake of my tendons: i am Wailing and Keening and Scratching Forlornly At My Tablet

[callmehere-iwillappear]

leo voice YES it's in poor taste. but have you considered. it's REALLY FUNNY

[arrowpunk]

Current mood: gosh I sure would enjoy my life more AND make a good bit more money if I was able to just do art full time- Like if I spent 8-10 hours a day on art for commissions and such I would probably make twice what I'm making at my current job- but also I don't have much visibility as an artist which is fine, and I don't have the time to churn out shit for free in order to grow my visibility and market myself (because yeah sure I know drawing fanart would get a lot more eyes on my shit but I just do not want to so I am not going to) but also IF I had the ability to use all the time I'm currently at work on art stuff I probably Would gain a big enough following to at least get a decent amount of commissions- I mean I'm skilled enough as an artist that it's definitely not unthinkable- but ALSO I cannot afford to quit my job or take the time off of work to Have enough energy to churn out art pieces consistently enough to build a following and get customers.

In conclusion: my life is a Sisyphean nightmare of no money and no time but have to go to job that steals all my time to get enough money to barely stay afloat because the only other option is completely sinking and that is not something I will accept.

[just-a-creep-babe]

What Makes You Tick - Prologue

(Ticci Toby x Reader)

Cheers to the new longer fic series starring Toby! Hope you enjoy this brief little intro to get a taste of what's to come~

Commissions are open!

Masterlist: x

Divider by @plum98

Work.

That’s what Toby’s life revolves around. Day in, day out. He doesn’t have hobbies, doesn’t have friends to hang out with—and he certainly doesn’t have a family to go back home to, either. He has work.

It consumes him.

He’s thankful for it, though. It’s pathetic to say, but at least he has something. At least he’s still good for one thing. At least he’s not completely fucking useless.

So it doesn’t bother him when Slender sends him out on a mission not even a full 24 hours after the last one. It's just another distraction, another way to kill some time and keep his darker thoughts at bay. It's another way to feel useful, to feel needed.

He notices, as he's preparing his things, that his partners in crime aren't the happiest about getting thrown into another job. But then again, when are they ever happy?

Toby sits on the couch in their dingy cabin when he finishes prepping. Hoodie joins him not too long after, leaning against the side of the couch with his arms folded over his chest, and both wait in silence for the following orders.

When Masky has most of his things ready, he stands in front of them and addresses them for a debrief. It's a fairly standard mission, as far as jobs go. Something about someone with the Sickness who's trying to find the cure and needs to be intercepted—same old, same old. There's a strange kind of comfort in the regularity of the work.

Ever since the incident, Toby's life stopped making sense. But at least there's still some semblance of routine within the insanity of it all. At least he could still cling to these fleeting threads of normalcy.

"Toby."

Snap.

Masky snaps his fingers in front of Toby's face.

"You're zoning out. I need you focused."

"I am focused," Toby retorts.

"No, you're not. You're not taking this seriously."

With a roll of his eyes, Toby looks up at the ceiling.

"That's because we've done this exact same job hundreds of-of times by now. I don't need to listen to the same fu-fucking debriefing every s-single time."

Masky pinches the bridge of his nose, furrows his brows, and exhales deeply through his tired frustration.

"It's not the same every time. I'm giving you important information that you need to know and you need to remember. I don't do this shit for fun, Toby; it's not a fucking game."

"I'm not saying it's a fucking game," Toby stands abruptly as a jolt of anger snaps through his body. It takes everything in his power to stop himself from grabbing Masky's collar and shaking him. "I'm saying I'm sick of hearing you spew out the same crap time and time again when you—when you could just s-summarize it or something!"

"I am summarizing it—you fucking dipshit. You'd know that if you fucking listened for once in your life."

Toby's about to lose whatever meager ounce of self-control he has, when Hoodie steps in between them and separates them.

"Alright, that's enough. No injuries before we're on site. I don't wanna have to work more to compensate for dead weight."

"Just—focus, alright?" Masky insists, and all Toby can think about is how satisfying it would be to throw his fist into his dumb fucking face.

"I am focused," the youngest of the three seethes the words out.

"Alright, can you repeat the plan to me, then?"

"We're finding our target, going in, seeing what edge we can find. They have some—some notebook or wh-whatever and Slender wants it back. We kill if we need to."

Masky groans, as if the recap isn't good enough, but Hoodie shakes his head, as if to dissuade his partner from arguing any further.

"It'll do," Hoodie states, "C'mon, it shouldn't be a long one. The sooner we're in, the sooner we're out."

And just like that, the three separate to start loading up the car and heading out.

Masky drives, as usual, and Hoodie takes shotgun, leaving Toby in the back, as usual. He doesn't mind it too much, though; anything is better than sitting next to Masky for an extended amount of time. Plus, not having to worry about the road gives him plenty of time to look out the window and daydream. It's one of the few times he can escape, and his mind won't take him anywhere unpleasant.

Well, most of the time it won't, anyway. Which is about as good as it can get.

They sleep at a hotel after driving non-stop for the rest of the day, and they're on the road for the following two days after that. It's only on the fourth day that they finally crash at a hotel that Masky announces will be their "home, sweet home" until the end of the job.

He recaps the mission, again, but Toby, admittedly, only really pays attention to their target's description. He hears Masky explain that they’ll start working at dusk, but Toby’s already too busy testing out the mattresses and pillows to bother listening.

Thankfully, Masky ignores him instead of bitching at him, and the two other proxies talk about more shit Toby doesn't care about.

At least this won't be a long one, Toby thinks, his eyes already growing heavy as the comfort of the cheap hotel bed encourages him to relax. The last coherent thought he has is the feeling of relief that at least this mission’s bound to be over before he knows it.

And then his thoughts are lost to his dreams.

[the-one-who-lambs]

hi hey holy fuck i'm done with this. I tried to render for the first time following a "15 minute" tutorial and my noob ass turned it into a 3 hour learning experience. But now I have Narinder's reference for The Risen Lamb and the Fallen God! Rambles under readmore

SO I BARELY DRAW because I started learning how to draw like... May of last year, and then went bonkers over the summer making lots of progress and once the school year started in august I dropped it to focus on writing... and have drawn basically 1 thing in between then and now. Anyway. Last week I remembered, oh yeah, I used to draw sometimes. And suddenly had an all consuming urge to practice again.

And you know what? I forgot how fucking FUN drawing is. I take it much less seriously than I do my writing so my technique for now is pretty much "go ham and try a bunch of shit because you're getting practice and having fun with it anyway". and it IS fun until I try to do a specific thing and can't figure out how so thanks to those who tuned in to my stream tonight to see me push through the frustrating part of finishing this LMAO. uh according to the krita file this took me 13 and a half hours

If you didn't catch it a while back, the one thing I drew during my kinda-art-hiatus was my Lambert reference! Normal outfit, casual outfit (that they sometimes wear while off-duty, usually when visiting Ratau or just hanging out alone), and wedding outfit ^^

...Which means now that I have my narilamb references I can commission my friends. i have a few people who i already plan to open my wallet for.

"Ive already drawn you fanart for ur fic and now the outfits are very slightly wrong :<" ITS FINE I AM CHERISHING IT FOREVER PLS DONT CHANGE IT ITS PERFECT

"is it okay if i draw your designs" Why do yall think i would be mad about this i will eat that shit UP i would fucking LOVE that and I'm already foaming at the mouth because i'd been asked that a couple times while i was drawing narinder's reference lol

I'm still a beginner and constructive criticism is welcome! Will probably make less intensive references for the OCs in Risen/Fallen or at least draw them, Thenana and Juno for sure

[zarnzarn]

About the Reverse Odyssey AU (love it btw), do you think any of the Ithacans start praying to Hephastus? Just in case they can't get Odysseus back to human form, at least they can ask the God of inventing how to build a new palace that's half underwater.

oh god I have to continue that.... i have 3000 wips that ive gotten inspo for all at once are descending on me guys plus I am actively getting a master's degree bear w me for a few days

also OMG fuck yes!!! Ithaka is much more involved in this than in canon since a. they r not down 600 people who are immensely loyal to odysseus b. their king made a direct sacrifice FOR THEM literally no one else would have done this no other king would ever let himself be cursed to save his kingdom c. it's been 10 years and they all find it unjust because they'd all seen him weep as he left and know he and Penelope missed each other like crazy.

(plus he was very young when he took the throne! imagine a 13 year old telling u what to do and then being right. the people of Ithaka must have been very fond of him and most would have seen him as son-adjacent)

so one person has this idea one day, and they take it to the architects, who take it to the blacksmiths, who take it to the ruler of Ithaka. She pursues her lips as she looks at it, teeth grinding at the assumption that they would succeed but not overcome the curse, but allows them to do it.

So they start.

It is harder than their initial ideas demanded. First there is the matter of structures that do not stay down long enough to stick together, then there is the matter of how to secure them. Their dreams of beautiful underwater sculptures fall through as they struggle to conjure up even a basic shelter, even in the summer calm of the waters.

So, desperate and frustrated, they pray to Hephastus.

Ithaka is famous for its dedication to the goddess Athena, most of its temples under the king's ten-year rule being lovingly dedicated to the wisdom goddess. A separate group of smaller temples honors the other gods in the main town; but the main palace and most houses are painted blue and owl feathers and trinkets and sculptures are sold in the main market- the most beautiful of artistry is reserved for Pallas Athene alone.

But the blacksmiths and architects work together to build a small shrine worthy of the inventor god; with hidden catches and rotating idols and the best of their tools and ideas burnt at the fire kept burning at the base of it.

And after a few weeks- Hephaestus blesses them.

(He cannot make up for what he tried to do to Athena in his drunkenness and on Posiedon's inescapable goading. He was young and stupid and hurt and proud and drugged- he thinks she knows this, and has long since let it pass enough to stand beside him without a second thought; but will never be able to get over his shame- so the least he can do is this.)

But Ithaka's artists wake up with the same idea in mind and rush to the shrine in the early hours of the morning to give their thanks. Then they start building- floating large stones down at the far end to mark the range, until they have raised the wall enough to drain out the waters for them to work inside. They work fast, laying down the walls within days, until it joins to where the courtyard of the main palace creeps down the side of the cliff. From the palace itself, a tunnel is dug in the main room, wrapping around the mountain through the softer rock deposits, then travelling down to the sea.

They have the blueprints Odysseus himself had commissioned for his palace, and try to add in the carvings and structures accordingly. They dare not risk more than the smallest of owls carved into the stone entrance, wary of Posiedon's wrath at his rival. They work hard, encouraged by the people, helped by the Trojan heroes themselves- and strangely, their hands never feel tired and the ideas never stop coming.

The first test comes at the start of the monsoons.

The storms roll in angry and strong, battering against the island of Ithaka as furiously as always. When it is done, the architects are dismayed to find their hard-made palace flooded and destroyed, stone displaced or missing, with one collapse of the outside barrier causing three more within.

Dejected, they burn their tools at the temple forge once more, and then go to bed.

That next morning, the youngest of them wakes up with the thought- what if we used metal to hold them together?

The royal family gives them funding once more, and they commission for marble pillars to be sent from the mainland in exchange for their raw materials; these they sink to the bottom and drain the water once more. These pillars are erected and melted into the shifting sand with hot liquid metal, until they fuse into the rock. The roofed ceiling is replaced with live kelp and seaweed, attached to the top of the pillars and bound together. The walls are rebuilt quicker- with more labour coming in when they look closer to success than before, men with guilty eyes and stubborn determination ready to do the back-breaking, risky work.

The whole island holds its breath this time, as the monsoon rolls in and the ships return. The storms roll in and-

The wall has fallen completely, leaving the surroundings unsuitable for them to put it back up, letting the water back in.

But the building stands.

The celebration lasts all day and night, with all the workers being given a place of honor at the palace table itself for dinner. Even the royal family themselves are happy, for all the disappointment of another year of failure, and are grateful in a way that satisfies them more than the money ever could.

Yet there is still the second test- the tunnel to connect to the palace.

The main digging is complete; but as they reach the end they realize they do not know how they will open it to the sea without losing men to the outburst of the sea pouring back in. The Queen twists her lips when they go to her with the problem, thinking.

"This is such a bad idea," One of the men whispers.

"Shh," Eurylochus says, striking another spear into the final barrier. Two men come forward with hammers and push it in further, and they wait until the call comes in from the surface far above from the diver outside that the spear has gone through. "Don't tempt fate."

"You are such a nice, sane man, Eurylochus," One of the men moans despairingly, and he smiles, small. "Why are our royals all mad?"

He laughs, remembering a similar conversation from many years ago. He slips the rope around the loop at the end of the spear, and feels the nostalgia twist into sorrow once more, missing his captain, his general, his brother, his king, his friend. If only he had never kept that cursed bag. If only he had the courage to step forward first, not frozen in fear and shouldered the cost instead like a soldier should for their king, for Odysseus. Had not made mistake after mistake further, ordering Odysseus out of their reach in his panic to get him to the water, not being prepared with a net to catch him both times they'd seen him after.

He kept one on his belt now, at all times.

But until the skies and seas cleared, there was nothing to do except make sure Ody had a home to return to; that he could reach.

"Let's go," Eurylochus exhales, and they all grab the ropes attached to the dozens of spears and make their way back up the winding tunnel as slowly as they can, careful not to step on even one rope or pull too hard, and risk spelling doom for them all. Hearts pounding as they walk in the eerily silent tunnel, the dark taunting them, urging them to run. But they hold their nerve and come out at the pool created inside the main court.

Eurylochus climbs out last from the pool, and smiles up at Ctimene. She looks beautiful in the Ithakan jewels once more, holding herself with more grace and confidence than much richer princesses ever had, anklets tinkling.

She nods and then turns to the rest. "PULL!"

As one, the ropes spring up tight, straining until the spears come loose and men go falling to the floor with shouts. For a second nothing happens.

Then they hear the roaring.

He knows it's water, Eurylochus knows it has to be water- but it still sounds like a hoard of monsters, the shouting of a battlefield, the cyclops when he stole the lives of their friends in his fury. He can't help grabbing his wife and pulling her back, shouting for a retreat as the water rushes through the tunnel and bursts out in a terrible din into the pool, filling it to the top and then overspilling off the sides immediately.

For a heart-stopping moment, Eurylochus watches the water catch onto the feet of the people around, rising and rising, and he remembers Poseidon's cruel smile as he crippled and cursed Eurylochus' brother and thinks it's going to drown us all-

And then the tide recedes, and the water crawls back with it.

The plan worked. The palace of Ithaka now creeps down into the sea, enticing their wayward king to find his way back home, swim back to them and be happy, even if they never solved his curse.

All they have to do now is wait.

[melodic-haze]

OMG FUCKING AYAKA ABSOLUTELY SENSELESS WITH A STRAP GOT ME LIKE UGHMSGGHRKLSH LIKE IMAGINE EDGING HER MULTIPLE TIMES, SHE WAS BEING SUCH A GOOD GIRL, YET YOU DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT IT AND JUST BE CRUEL TO HER LIKE AGHDSFKKHSJGRHG AGHHHHHH (I am sane)

☆ — DEMO TRACK: sub!Ayaka x dom!afab!Reader

☆ — TYPE: NSFW

☆ — CONTENT WARNINGS: Reader has a strap, rough sex stuff, BDSM mention ig?

☆ — NOTES: Dude what if I combusted on the spot HELLOOOOOOO GOD I NEED HER (I'm not sane)

I need her to go mental PLEASE

I love the thought that Ayaka's canonically really REALLY pretty but at the same time I KNOW I'd hate it cuz of how she DEFINITELY gets hit on like a lot

She wouldn't be all that clueless of her beauty's reputation but like.......at the same time she kinda is, with the way that she kinda dismisses the attention as basically awe and reverence bc yk. She's in the Yashiro Commission

The attention just. Irks you One Too Many Times 🫶 and it doesn't help her case that she looks soooo utterly delicious, crying bc of you, so you do something about that!!!!!!

Ayaka doesn't know what she's done wrong.

She had sworn she's been behaving like a good girl for you, obeying your every command and being at your beck and call (minus when she's at work for her family's commission, you're not unreasonable), yet she was still faced with such a predicament.

Inazuma's cute little princess was clueless—was it something she said? Or maybe something she had done unconsciously to prompt you to essentially raise torturous hell on her?

She could try to rack her brains, and by archons she did try at first, and yet the only thing that she could even think of at the moment was the severe desperation for release.

The woman could see your borderline sadistic grin grow further as tears streamed down her face, cheeks almost as wet as her gushing pussy that has been mercilessly edged for.. who knows how long, by this point.

"'m sorry," she hiccuped, resisting the urge to buck her hips into your strap because despite everything, she was still your good girl, "I'm so-- mnf, sorryyy-- AH!"

You slapped her ass, pale skin already so red from the previous impacts it's had, before squeezing it roughly as you spoke, "Saying sorry and you don't even know what you're apologising for..."

"B-But I've done everything you asked of me, I--"

"Are you talking back?"

Her mouth clamps shut.

"I said--" and you grab a fistful of her hair to pull her up to your level, your hips moving as if punctuating every pause you make, "--are you.. talking.. back?"

She lets out those pathetic little whimpers of hers as she feels the tip of your faux cock bottom out inside of her in quick, deep thrusts, "I'm sss-- sorry I talked back please--"

"Please what?"

"I need to feel you move please I've been such a good g-- GIRL-- oohhhthankyouthankyou thankyou--"

You had relented to her wishes with an eyeroll, your hips practically slamming into hers as you pulled on her hair as a way to keep her upright. That along with the pain from having her hair pulled in the first place and all that pent-up lust from not being allowed that sweet release had easily helped escalate that impending high.

Ayaka knew that such a state of undress, such an expression on her face, was unbecoming of the graceful White Heron Princess but at this point? The only thing she was concerned about was being your princess, along with what she had been chasing this entire--

She doesn't register it immediately, but when she notices that you've deliberately slipped out of her cunt--

"Funny, how the Kamisato clan's very princess whines like a pathetic bitch."

Another climax absolutely ruined by you, yet she still doesn't know what she did wrong.

But she won't fight back, she won't ever fight back. She was your good girl, and good girls don't only do what they're told.

They take what they're given too, no matter what.

I don't even have much to say after writing that I'm ngl

Just that she's definitely a bit of a masochist lol

God she would just be SO FUN to toy with no matter how hard or soft you go just saying 😜😜😜😜 who knew such a reserved girl was a whore all along

There's a saying for this somewhere you all know what it is guys

Anyway enjoy 🫶

[differentnerddiplomatopera]

ok work with me here, see my vision

*At Clytemnestra’s and Agamemnon’s house*

*Achilles and Patroclus open the door*

Patroclus: Hey, sorry we are late. We brought th-wait, where is everyone?

Achilles, chuckling: Don’t tell me we are actually early. Oh I am gonna-

Clytemnestra: KILL YOURSELF, YOU ASS!

Agamemnon: RIGHT BACK AT YOU SWEETIE!

(Incoherent Yelling)

Patroclus: What in the actual-

(Whispering) Menelaus: If you don’t get under here right now…

Achilles: Where are you, who was-

(Odysseus and Diomedes drag Achilles and Patroclus under the kitchen counter)

(Helen, Menelaus, Odysseus, Penelope, Diomedes, Hector, and Andromache are all hiding under the table)

Achilles: So why are we hiding under the table?

Diomedes: Do you not hear didgeridee and didgeridoo screaming and yelling like their chi-

Hector: Maybe we shouldn’t mention the “C” word right now.

Penelope: I swear if I never hear them argue again-

Helen: I need alcohol

Patroclus: Could someone-

Menelaus: Helen, no-

Patroclus: please tell us-

Helen: Alcohol, neow

Patroclus: Ok! Can someone explain what the fuck knuckles is going on with these two?

Odysseus: Of course darling. We found ourselves-

Diomedes: Ok, nope quick version. We came over for a house warning party, and in the middle of that-,

Odysseus: Cutting me off when I am trying speak. You know you can be a real bastard, right pet?

Diomedes: Bastard loves bastard, darling. Anyway, in the middle of that, Clytemnestra showed us a custom puzzle she made of their daughter. Very cute, very nice. Weirdly detailed. However Agamemnon has to be Agamemnon, and ruin good things in life. A tiktok account called ArtemisDares had a challenge to break something of your partners, something they loved to see their reaction. So Agamemnon made the asinine decision to break the puzzle she spent— how long did she say?

Penelope: She said “2 hours to find the perfect picture, 5 hours to put in her order because the commission site kept collapsing, and three days to put it together.” It was 2,000 pieces, and she was going to put it in a frame. I can’t even imagine..

Odysseus: Sweetheart, I-

Penelope: Yes I know you would never do that, you are leagues above him. We know this.

Diomedes: Do we?

Penelope: Not now darling. What can we do to-

*I SHOULD HAVE KILLED YOU WHEN I MET YOU, YOU WHORE*

*IF I WAS EASY TO KILL, YOU WOULD HAVE DONE IT ALREADY YOU FUCKING PUSSY*

*OH I AM GONNA-*

“COME AT ME BITCH*

*More incoherent screams, breaking of glass, grunts of pain*

Hector: We need to stop them before Iphigenia grows up without her parents.

Andromache: Right. You can go first baby. Tell us how that works out.

Helen: Sometimes I just want rip out Agamemnon’s vocal chords, and shove them down his ass.

Diomedes: A capital choice. Would you like help?

Odysseus/Penelope: No.

Hector: Ok, ok, but we have to do something before we have to talk to the police about-

Iphigenia: Aunty Pen, what is a va-vacuous moron?

Achilles: ……

Patroclus: …….

Diomedes: …….

Odysseus: ………

Penelope: …..

Hector: …….

Andromache: ……

Helen: ……

Menelaus:……

Achilles: Ah shit.

Menelaus: Oh come on, Achilles

Penelope: Honey, how about we talk…outside?

Iphigenia: Why? Mommy and Daddy loudly talking is normal. They turn on the tv for me and loudly talk. Sometimes they forget to turn it on and I hear everything.

Odysseus: Ice cream. That is the only way to fix this. And a good therapist. Let’s start with ice cream

Diomedes: Ok, everyone we have to time this perfectly. I think we aren’t in the mood for taking sides. Everyone good?

(The group nods)

Diomedes: Ok…wait…NOW!

Agamemnon: Oh look, Hector would you-

Clytemnestra: Shut up, Helen please tell him-

Odysseus:sorrywearekidnappingtyourchildbecauseyoubotharetoxictoeverybodybyeeeeeeeeeeeee

*They make it out the door*

Iphigenia: sooooo, what is a vacu-vaco-

Penelope: Let’s just get ice cream ok honey?

Diomedes: Can’t wait to do this shit next year.

Achilles: Another housewarming party? They just got this one.

Helen: They also get run out of every neighborhood they stay in due to the noise complaints. Two months, max.

Achilles:

Patroclus:

Helen: Welcome to the family.

[suzukiblu]

Ko-fi thank-you sentences for S; the one where Clark panic-adopts his teenage clones (yes, including the supervillain one). 

Maybe it’s a trap, Match thinks warily as he stares down the crystal-lined hall stretching ahead. A trap would make more sense than Superman bothering to be concerned with his injuries. Much more. 

But also it’s fucking cold and Thirteen is already headed inside, and hell if he’s going to get left out here alone with Superman right now. He’d actually rather never be alone with Superman again, at this point.

Match follows Thirteen in, and Superman closes the doors behind them. 

“Welcome home, Kal-El,” a voice says, and a luminous hologram of a man in long robes appears in the high-ceilinged, arching hallway in front of them. 

“Home”? Match thinks in absolute incredulity. That cannot possibly be accurate. Just–no. Not even slightly. 

“Hello, Jor-El,” Superman says, smiling at the hologram with a slightly stressed expression. “We have a couple of guests.” 

“I see, yes,” the hologram says, looking from Match to Thirteen, and then back again, his eyes lingering assessingly on Match. “Jor-El”, apparently. “Well-done, Kal-El. You are proceeding very well, for lacking a proper birthing matrix to work with.” 

“That’s, uh–that’s not–” Superman cuts himself off, looking flustered. “I didn’t commission them, Jor-El.” 

“Isn’t Jor-El your dad’s name?” Thirteen asks, peering curiously at Jor-El. “And you kinda look like . . .” 

“I am an artificial intelligence formed from Jor-El��s memories and cast in his image,” Jor-El explains. “I maintain the Fortress when Kal-El is away.” 

“Sick,” Thirteen says, then looks embarrassed for some reason, possibly because he sounds like an idiot. “I mean–cool.” 

“The current external temperature is 15° F,” Jor-El says agreeably. 

Match cannot for the life of him figure out what he should be doing here, but “escaping this conversation” is an increasingly tempting option. 

“I need to make a call,” Superman says, clearing his throat. “But first–ah, Jor-El, can you scan our guests for injuries and pharmaceuticals? Just–general health scans, actually, but focus on injuries and pharmaceuticals, please.” 

“Kon-El has high levels of hypnotics and sedatives in his system,” Jor-El says. “And your youngest has moderate levels of sedatives and tranquilizers, along with low levels of opioids. He has one second-degree burn on his stomach, another on his right thigh, and a minor head injury. All other injuries are negligible."

“What?” Superman startles, his eyes snapping to Match. “They drugged you?”

Match frowns, not understanding why the man looks so surprised by that idea. 

“Yes,” he says anyway, since apparently there’s actually a question there. 

“Why?” Superman asks. Match continues not to understand why he’s surprised, or why he’s asking questions with such stupidly obvious answers. 

“To keep me manageable,” he says, because why else? Superboy is prone to anger and rage and drastic emotional spikes, and Match was made from the same template. And everyone knows what an angry Kryptonian can do. 

Even just half of an angry Kryptonian. 

Superman stares at him, looking . . . unsettled, almost. Thirteen grimaces. Match really doesn’t understand what the problem is. 

“You mean they always drug you,” Superman says slowly. 

“Obviously,” Match says dubiously. “I wouldn’t be manageable otherwise.” 

“Jesus Christ,” Thirteen mutters under his breath, putting a hand over his mouth and looking nauseous. Match doesn’t bother wasting time on trying to figure out why. Thirteen never has rational reactions anyway.

[meguwumibear]

A Night Out Dancing

Tomorrow your party will reach JuLai. Tonight Wolfwood wants to dance.

thank you @/firein-thesky for commissioning this piece for the @ficsforgaza collaboration

The sky above No Man’s Land is inky and starless. The air stale and still. Despite the hour, the world around you is oppressively warm and dry. Nights in the desert are usually bitterly cold. You’re not sure what’s gotten into the weather today.

Vash at least doesn’t seem plagued by strange temperature, but then Vash can sleep through anything, including Meryl’s jerky driving, so the comparison isn’t fair. Meryl’s fast asleep too, tucked neatly into the driver’s seat. You watch her toss and turn for a while, wondering what she dreams of. Someplace nice, hopefully. Somewhere lush and flourishing and green.

Even Roberto seems to have found sleep, albeit at the bottom of a bottle. He’s snoring gently in the passenger seat, mouth wide open, empty liquor bottle still clutched tightly in his hands.

Seems everyone’s immune to the hot desert night but you.

There’s a chance it isn’t the heat keeping you up. It’s possible you’re making excuses, blaming the external world around you for your insomnia so you don’t have to turn inward, so you don’t have to confront your building anxieties about what the future holds for your little traveling party. It’s going to crack and splinter apart, isn’t it? Like that land mass you once read about in a book that spoke of some far away planet called Earth. Pangaea. A supercontinent forced apart by shifting tectonic plates.

Tomorrow, you’ll reach JuLai, and everyone will drift away from you. You’ll spend the rest of your life trying to remember what it felt like to be whole.

Fuck it. If you’re not gonna get some shut eye, you may as well make yourself useful.

Wolfwood is perched on a sand dune, resting against his cross shaped gun, lit cigarette in hand, nearly burnt down to the filter. He takes one final drag of it as he sees you approach, then snubs the thing out in the sand.

“I’ll take over the watch,” you tell him, eyes drawn to the little ‘o’ shape his mouth makes as he lazily releases the final dregs of smoke.

“Not your turn yet, sweetheart,” he replies. “Go back to sleep.”

If only you could.

“Haven’t been able to. Too much shit on my mind. No sense in my staring at the back of my eyelids when I could be doing this instead.”

Wolfwood stares at you through tinted shades he hasn’t bothered to remove despite the darkness of the night. The glasses are a part of his costume, of his carefully crafted mask that even after months of travelling together he’s still hiding behind. He told you he’s an undertaker, but he dresses like a priest. On a runaway Sandsteamer, you learn he is an orphan. You’ve learned nothing since.

“You should take better care of yourself,” he says, as if caring for yourself is easy.

“You’re one to talk,” you reply, eyes giving him a quick once over. It’s been a few days since you’ve spent the night somewhere with a working bathroom. Without a mirror or razor, the stubble on his chin has grown more and more pronounced. The hairs suit him, you think. Your fingers itch to run along his jaw.

“You’re staring,” he observes, mouth crooking into a smug grin because the undertaker or priest or whatever the fuck he is knows how handsome he is.

“Am I?”

Wolfwood stands slowly, brushing beads of sand off him as he does so. You try to keep your eyes on his face, on the slope of his nose, the dimples on his cheeks, but they wander anyway, along his broad shoulders, down his tiny waist. You’ll miss him when this is over, you decide.

“Wanna dance?” he asks suddenly. The question throws you off kilter. How long has it been since you’ve done something so mundane? Will you even remember how? Is it appropriate to dance given what tomorrow may bring?

“What about-”

“Needle-noggin and the lot are out like a light. No one will notice if we steal a few minutes for ourselves.”

He closes the gap between the two of you and links his right hand with yours, fingers interlocking. His hands are large and calloused from lugging around that heavy gun of his. Briefly, you wonder just how strong the guy really is.

 “But there isn’t any music,” you protest weakly. Wolfwood is frustratingly good at sapping away your resolve.

“Don’t need any. We’ll make our own,” he insists, slipping an arm around the small of your back and pressing you close, closer, and closer still.

This close to him, you can see deep into his eyes. There’s fear in them. Sadness too. He’s trying and failing to mask the emotions with a smile, with this dance. It must be so exhausting, you think, always having to pretend.

“One dance,” you surrender, relaxing into his embrace. He smells sharply of tobacco and nicotine, though you note hints of something a bit earthier underneath. Sweat, probably. It’s been a while since any of you have showered. “Then bed. Unlike you and Vash, some of us need our beauty sleep.”

A lopsided grin swims across his handsome face.

 “Aw, think I’m beautiful, sweetheart? That’s nice.”

There’s a biting remark on the tip of your tongue that never fully forms. Yeah, actually, you do think he’s beautiful. You’ve thought so ever since Meryl slammed the news van into him all those months ago. The impact should have killed him—it would’ve killed you—but Wolfwood simply rose up from the sand as if rising from an interrupted slumber. Beautiful, even with rivulets of blood trickling down his face.

“Shut up,” you hiss, cheeks heating as you think a bit too intensely about his sturdy body which is now pressed flush against your own. Has Wolfwood always been this tall? This large? His giant frame engulfs you as the two of you sway together, in tandem with Wolfwood’s quiet humming.

You rest your head against his sternum, listening to the sound of his heart beating quick and urgent like the wings of a bird. His chest vibrates as he hums his tune. You can’t seem to place the song. Likely, he’s making it up as he goes, the tempo slow and somber like a dirge.

“Where’d you learn to dance?” you ask him, conscious of the way your two left feet have nearly tripped him up twice. Lucky for you both he’s not just a hulking lump of muscle. He’s got a great center of balance too.

You chalk your awkwardness up to the loose, shifting sands and not to the odd sensation forming in the pit of your stomach. More unfamiliar than unpleasant. You swallow a few times in an attempt to settle it.

Wolfwood shrugs, spinning the two of you round and round in circles. “It’s not all that different than fighting.”

There’s truth to that, you suppose, remembering the fight on the Sandsteamer. Wolfwood refused to talk about the stranger you all watched disappear into the open maw of the sand ocean, but it was obvious the man once meant something to him.

“You’re thinking too much,” he says. “Just follow my lead.”

So you do. You let him whirl you around the desert dunes for what feels like hours, grinning up at him through thick lashes when you manage to step on his toes. Again. He laughs, a little too loudly, and you have to remind him that if he’s not careful he’ll wake your sleeping companions.

“What are you going to do if everything goes well tomorrow?”

For the first time all night, it’s Wolfwood who stumbles. The misstep is small, slight, if you weren’t so entangled, you may have missed it, but you are entangled so you feel everything. You feel his feet stall as the question leaves your lips. You feel the rise and fall of his belly as he takes a deep steadying breath.   

His hand travels up the length of your spine, coming to rest at the nape of your neck. He thumbs across your vertebrae and you recognize the ministration for what it is: a silent plea for you to let the topic drop and just enjoy this moment the two of you managed to carve out for yourselves amidst all the chaos of the world.

You let your head drop once more, tucking it beneath his collarbone, right above his heart, still rabbiting in his chest. He isn’t humming anymore. There’s nothing to help the two of you keep time as you continue to sway together, now gliding across the sand like worms.

Around you, the clouds begin to clear and bright, twinkling stars start to peek out from behind them. A soft breeze kicks up around you, and the sand particles scatter with it. Wolfwood—Nicholas—keeps you pressed against him as the temperature mercifully begins to drop.

Your mind still wanders from time to time, curious what tomorrow may bring.

Who cares, you decide. It doesn’t matter.

Tonight, you’re content to dance.

[steddieasitgoes]

@steddiemas Day 2 Prompt: Winter Sentence Starters

3. Did you know icicles make the perfect murder weapon?

Pairing: Pre-Steddie | wc: 1664 | Rating: T

Read on ao3 | ao3 collection

“Steve?” Eddie asks, squinting into the blinding lights of the familiar burgundy Beamer that’s parked in front of the mound of snow where the driveway usually is. It’s hard to see with the blinding lights and the sunrise bouncing off the bright snow, but Eddie’s pretty sure it’s Steve. He’s the only one who drives a Beamer around these parts of town, that’s for sure.

Sitting up on the outdoor couch, he adjusts the bundle of blankets around his shoulder. His hand fumbles in between the couch cushions until he finds the half-empty box of cigarettes and the lighter he and Wayne keep stashed there “in case of emergencies.” It’s a bit of a chore given the gloves covering his hands, but he gets the job done and brings the lit smoke to his winter-chapped lips. After a slow exhale, he tries again.

“Steve? What the hell are you doing here?”

There’s a clattering on the other side of the Beamer, followed by a string of curses before a figure emerges in the shadows of the lights. “Jesus dude,” Steve gasps. One hand stays pressed against his chest, the other clings to a snow shovel. “What the hell are you doing here? You should be inside it’s freezing out.”

It is freezing out, but there’s not that big of a difference between out here and inside Eddie’s bedroom. Not since the space heater took a shit at 2 am. He tried to fix it, he did. But it’s actually really damn hard to fix a space heater at 2 am when you’ve only slept for an hour because of chronic pain and nightmares and you can’t find the damn toolbox that’s supposed to be tucked away in the closet.

Frustrated beyond belief, Eddie needed a smoke and one thing led to another, and the next thing he knew he was being woken up by the rumbling of Steve’s Beamer. At least he was smart enough to put on gloves and wrap himself in his duvet before coming out here.

“Seriously, man. You’re going to freeze to death.”

“You know the dramatics are my thing,” Eddie teases, wrapping the blanket tighter around himself. “I’ve got a blanket and gloves.” Eddie wiggles his fingers for extra emphasis. “And this head of hair isn’t just for looks. Actually keeps me pretty warm too.”

Steve snorts, absentmindedly tugging on the end of his scarf. “Yeah, okay, man. Whatever you say.”

“So, I ask again,” Eddie says, pausing to exhale another puff of smoke. “What are you doing here at whatever time it is.”

“It’s 5,” Steve supplies, then holds up the snow shovel. “Who do you think shovels the snow around here since you’re out of commission? The snow fairy?”

The smoke in Eddie’s lungs gets trapped as his body tries to laugh and instead, he sends himself into a coughing fit that has him clutching his already aching sides. “First of all fuck you. Don’t joke about fairies!” he says, all bark no bite. “Secondly, I usually shovel the snow, but as you are aware, I’m still not allowed to lift more than two pounds thanks to our wonderful Spring Break adventures.”

“And you’re milking that for all it’s worth.”

Eddie’s quick to flip him the bird, rolling his eyes in the process. “S’Wayne paying you? That old bastard better not be paying you. I never got a dime when he made me shovel.”

“Probably because you always forgot, right?”

“You know what, Steve,” Eddie starts, trying to get up from the couch when a rush of pain races up his torso. Jesus H. Christ, he should be used to this by now. Biting his lip to keep the groan in, he settles himself back on the couch.

“M’just messing with you, Eds,” Steve says, shooting him an apologetic look. If anyone knows the pain he’s going through, it’s Steve. And yet, Steve’s wounds healed in record time, and Eddie’s on month nine of barely being able to make it down the three steps of his trailer. Yet another unfairness the universe has drawn for him.

“I was over helping the Mayfields during the last big storm and saw your uncle struggling to park after his shift. Figured if I’m here helping Max, I could help you guys out too. No big deal.”

Eddie’s not sure what universe Steve lives in, but agreeing to do manual labor for free is a big deal. A massive, big deal, actually. At least, in his universe it is. He doesn’t sign up for any sort of manual labor unless he’s getting paid. Fuck capitalism and all that, but also, you know, it’s only fair to cash in when it benefits him.

“Right, well, m’sure my uncle appreciates it.”

“He does,” Steve nods, resting the shovel on his shoulder. “So, you gonna quit distracting me now so I can get to work?”

Eddie extends one glove-covered hand out in front of him, fanning it out over the mountain of white snow separating them. “The snow is yours, my liege.”

Steve snorts, shaking his head. He takes a few steps away from the Beamer before repositioning the shovel in his hands. In one fluid motion, he drives the shovel the mix of  fresh and packed snow. The metal clatter against the frozen chunks at the bottom but the sound doesn’t drown out the groan that leaves Steve's lips as he hoists a giant pile of snow up and over to the side.

Jesus H. Christ.

Eddie takes an extra long drag from his cigarette, eyes glued to Steve as he does the same thing again. He holds the smoke in his lungs, tries to concentrate on not choking as he watches Steve shovel another massive pile of snow away.

There’s at least twenty feet of distance between them, but Eddie’s eyes are glued to Steve. His pale blue puffy jacket does a lot to obscure his muscles, but Eddie’s always had an overactive imagination. He doesn’t need a clear visual to know that Steve’s biceps are straining every time he hoists the shovel out of the snow. Or the way his back muscles flex, showing off that swimmer's upper body of his.

Steve’s ditched snow pants like most do around here and instead has his trusty pair of blue jeans on. Eddie knows from experience that denim does little to shield the freezing temperatures, but he can’t complain. Not when Steve’s ass is on full display when he squats to investigate what the shovel has just slammed into. (A stray dog toy from two trailers over.)

If he doesn’t look away soon, he’s going to be in trouble. Even the cold as fuck temperature can’t keep the blood from rushing to his dick for long. A blessing and a curse, Eddie supposes.

Taking another drag, Eddie tilts his head so it rests against the headrest of the couch. Exhaling, the plume of smoke and cold air mix, getting whisked away in the early morning breeze. It might actually be colder now than it was at 2 am.

With his head still turned upward, he can hear the rhythmic sounds of Steve shoveling the snow. The clink of the metal shovel with the snow, the scrape as he digs it down to the pavement. The occasional huff of frustration when Steve’s bitten off more than he can chew. Stubborn as always.

If he keeps making noises like that though, Eddie’s going to need a lot more than a smoke and a new direction for his eyes to keep his mind out of the gutter—

Speaking of gutters, they really need to get someone to clear out all the damn icicles clinging to them like damn Christmas trees. One harsh slam of the door and he or Wayne is going to take an icicle straight to the head. A month in a coma, seven months of physical therapy, and one dropped murder charge is not going to go to waste over a goddamn icicle. Not if he can help it at least.

Honestly, out of all of that, he’s still most upset about the murder thing. He won’t even go fishing with Wayne after that one year with the fish who flopped around practically hasping for breath until Wayne stabbed it with his pocket knife. Never again. Eddie prefers his food already cooked and void of eyes thank you very much.

Besides killing someone in his house is way too obvious. An amateur move if he’s ever seen one. He’d at least been more smart about it. If he was going to kill someone, but he’s not. Obviously. But if he was, Eddie’s thoughts trail off as the sun catches on the translucent icicle, washing his body in the warm rays of sunlight.

“You know, icicles would make the perfect murder weapon.”

The sound of the snow shovel clattering to the floor startles him. His head whips in the direction of the noises. It takes a moment a moment for his eyes to adjust to the sudden change in light, but when they do Steve is staring at him, hands on his hips and a frown tugging at his pale lips.

“Maybe don’t joke about murder when we’ve just cleared your name,” Steve scolds, shaking his head. “Or do you want to go back into hiding?”

Eddie’s mouth is faster than his brain, words tumbling out before he has a chance to realize the implications of his words.

“Depends. Would you be hiding me again?”

A sickening silence falls between them as all the blood in Eddie’s body rushes to his cheeks. At least his nose isn’t cold anymore. He’s two seconds away from scampering into the trailer, head slung low in embarrassment when Steve’s unabashed chuckle breaks the silence.

“You can crash at my place anytime, you know.”

No, Eddie did not know that. But now? Now, he thinks that damn space heater isn’t worth bothering Wayne for after all.

[afreakingdork]

Yeah, I'm not taking this sitting down. Man, I really am not trying to have beef out here, but I refuse to have my good fucking name tarnished. To make a public post about me? Yeah, I'm going to share my side. The facts are as such:

I approached wolf on 12/20/23 about a NSFW commission inspired by one of their works. It would feature my sona and an aged up Donnie. As they mentioned, our initial conversation was good. We went back and forth during the sketch phase and I requested quite a lot of edits. I asked if I could pay them for these corrections.

it was right after this that wolf asked about Donnie's battle shell since it wasn't illustrated.

After this message, I did not hear back from wolf after 2/9/24 until I sent them a follow-up message 3/27/24

I did not hear back from wolf until today 5/6/24.

Now I cannot share the images of the art I received because it is NSFW, but I can tell you that the grey from my sona's body appeared to be missing. The ears of my sona were grey, but the body only looked yellow. Donnie was missing his purple arm marks, and his knee pads were still the same only now they were colored in black along with his mask. From here I will just send the conversation in its entirety.

For reference, this was the reference sheet they had.

I was then sent two pieces where the grey on my sona was very obvious and Donnie's markings were now present with the following text.

Now again, I wish I could show you the pieces, but I can't. I was offered a 50% refund for my troubles, but I was not interested in taking it because wolf had already done all the work.

I will say that I was extremely frustrated with the whole affair so the next part I will admit was a bit salty because while corrections had been made, I wasn't able to give any input so there were still mistakes in my sona's colors (specifically the underside of the tail was yellow instead of white and my grey arm had one side yellow) and Donnie's mask was still black. The following is our last correspondence on my blog.

This would have been the end of it for me. Except, I did not get the email. I waited in hopes it would come in, but none did. Since I was blocked I was forced to reach out from one of my side blogs @thisgoesouttoyoubaby which feel free to check. it's my reblog sideblog that I use to send my bestie memes. It dates back YEARS and is not used for spam.

As you can see I was blocked here.

Now I have been refreshing my email feed waiting. I know emails can take time, but I have no way to confirm if I'm getting my work because I was immediately blocked on thisgoesouttoyou with no response.

So I used another sideblog, this time @plowingon which you can again, freely search, its not a spam blog, but a blog I once made to record the live of my old german shepherd I had years ago when he was getting older.

And wouldn't you know it, I got my first email from wolf at

Coincidentally, only after I sent my last message to them.

Now I'm not interested in hurting wolf's reputation. I think you should still commission them if you'd like. I still am a fan of their art. I have no ill will, but fuck if I will stand by as someone tells me that I won't pay an artist. I never even said i wouldn't pay. I was just frustrated because they wouldn't follow their own three correction rule. They allowed me no recourse, and then they were petty before I could even confirm that I received the email.

Could I have been nicer?

Of course.

Could I have been more clear?

Absolutely.

But there is no world in which I tried to gaslight anyone. I pride myself on my honesty. I was not shy when paying them. I sent payment before we even began. I offered to pay them more and acknowledged I was a needy customer halfway through. So I apologize for this long post, but I wanted to make sure all of this was visible because how dare you call me a scammer, wolf.

You disappoint me.

[halodwolf]

soooo hi. i'm seren. you probably know me but if you don't, hello! i'm a 2spirit ndn transmasc who's been living in florida for the last uh [looks at watch] 8 fucking years! and after a series of unfortunate events i no longer have the physical, emotional, or frankly any capacity to stay in such a toxic, unhealthy environment for anymore of my life. it has been the culmination of all the worst things that have ever happened to me and to stay here any longer than i have to will quite frankly be the death of me. so. i'm moving back home to virginia in late 2025!

unfortunately, this is a very pricey endeavor and for reasons i'm not getting into, my savings have been drained and i am basically starting from square one to do this. so i am opening commissions for the foreseeable future to fund my move from florida to virginia. i make a pretty decent chunk of money at my job but my rent is almost $1400 dollars and i am fronting all bills alone so most of my money is currently going towards that. i already have a job laid out for me once i move so all funds are literally going straight into things like a down payment on a car, deposits at a new apartment, uhaul fees, etc.

payments for commissions will be done up front through whatever payment option you see fit - i have pp, cashapp, and venmo. turn around time should be no longer than a week depending on my queue but i will try my best to get all art out within a couple of days if i can!

if you like what i do, are a fan of closed loops and my art, or are just wanting to help a guy out, my ko-fi is here.

thank you all so much for any and all support <3 it means the world to me and any kindness offered is truly a blessing

[kaybreezy3000]

The Pet (A Five Hargreeves / Male Reader Insert)

16714 words, 10 chapters of awesome, rated Explicit for dark themes and sexual content

Realizing that his family were going to be zero help, Five went back to the Commission with one goal in mind. He needed to find out who caused the apocalypse, but as he should have known already, when traveling through time, what you are looking for isn't always what you get. This time, he's taking you down with him.

(Important Note: This is set during Season One. I don't like giving away the whole story in my tags, but don't worry, I am NOT doing a Five as a minor with an adult thing. And the dubious consent thing will also be very interesting, so, you'll just have to read to find out how this one works out, but if you do, I promise it's worth it.)

~~~Originally created for two separate explicit Tumblr requests for a story with Five and a male reader insert, one specifically involving hypnotism in the plot, and Five getting the chance to feel what it means to let go of control for once.~~~

Warnings and Tags: meant to be an intense read, The Handler, Hurt-Angst, Comfort, Five, Sub Five, Dubious Consent, Hypnotism, rough sex, many tags being left off to keep you on your toes until the end, so be warned...it's a dark one, but a very good one. Stay away if not your thing. TY.

The Pet

Chapter one: Prologue

The Handler glanced over her shoulder, looking back at Five. “You would think with all the blood on your hands, doing something as simple as this would’ve been nothing for you, but here you are, stomping along in those cute little schoolboy shorts, looking like a ferocious little puppy that’s about to nip at my heels over something as trivial as details…” 

Five continued watching as the orderlies dragged away their latest victim, but as soon as the other boy was out of sight, his glare turned to the real target of his hatred. “Why didn’t you tell me he was one of us?” he snapped as he stopped next to her. “And even better, what are you going to do with him?” 

The Handler’s smile grew bigger as she looked down at Five like he was the most pathetic thing she’d ever laid eyes on.

Hands trembling, Five’s fingers curled, his fingernails cutting half-moons into his small palms. 

A heat wave of outrage and confusion hit him all over again. 

He could still sense him.

As soon his eyes met that stranger’s, even before they had touched and he had his hands around the other male’s throat, he’d felt a power that was not his own. It was warm, like a blanket wrapping around his entire body, trying to muffle all his senses.

Just before nailing Five in the face, the young man cried out, begging him to let go, and unable to stop himself, Five did let go, but the deed was already done. 

Licking the corner of his lip, Five felt a fresh sting of pain, accompanied by the coppery taste of his own blood, and that only made him more furious. 

Adding insult to injury, rather than reply to his questions, The Handler had dismissively reached into her purse, pulling out a pocket mirror. As she gazed at her reflection, fixing her already perfectly crimson lips, he shook his head in disbelief.

Eyes darting at nothing and everything as he rapidly went over his options, and tried to figure out what was going on, Five concluded that if that kid was like them, based on the year they had taken him, he was only nineteen. Cursing under his breath, his hand raking back through his neatly clipped hair, he also concluded that he never should have agreed to come back with The Handler in the first place. 

None of this should have happened. He had to get back to his family in 2019. They’d find another way to figure out who caused the apocalypse, and as for him… 

“Fuck,” Five quietly cursed again.

Slowly, he started backpedaling, turning away, his hands coming together, the energy needed to open a portal just starting to illuminate his hands. 

His power fizzled out.

“What the ffff-?” Five angrily gasped as he frantically dug at the numbing sensation that was suddenly radiating through the left side of his body. 

Unsteadily spinning back around, Five saw it wasn’t just a tube of lipstick The Handler had in her hand. She’d been hiding a syringe too, just like the one he’d used to sedate the young man they'd just abducted. 

The long hallway began to sway and tilt under his feet. In less than a second, Five’s legs began to give out.

Chapter 2: Screw You and Screw Me Too

The smell of bleachy sterilization filled Five’s nostrils as his eyes began to flutter open.

He knew that smell.

Blinded by the unforgiving lights shining down on him, he started to panic. 

He was in the Commission’s lower-level medical wing; the same place they took him when he’d first been recruited and required their so-called ‘improvements.’ Here they had stripped him naked and hosed him down as he cowered in an open shower stall, uselessly trying to cover his privates.

It didn’t matter what he wanted. It didn’t matter how he felt. They treated him worse than an animal. They had said he needed to be decontaminated, but they did so much more than that.

Desperately trying to wake up and think straight, a whimper crawled up from deep in his throat, but the higher pitched sound of the voice that came out of him didn’t match the one of the horrendously traumatized old man that they had been dehumanizing. Lost in his nightmare of memories, that only terrified Five even more. 

As soon as he could make his limbs move, he began to wildly thrash, but just as fast, hands of people dressed in white scrubs came at him, holding him down. Much smaller than them and way outnumbered, Five wasn’t strong enough to break free, and soon, the restraints they’d been securing to his wrists were tightened.

When his power to blink himself out of there evaporated just as fast as he’d summoned it, Five dug the heel of his shoe into the stainless-steel table under him, sending his knee up, nailing one of the orderlies in the nuts. As the man let go of him, one of the women forced Five’s leg back down as she breathlessly asked, “Should we administer another dose to calm him, Sir?”

Readying a tray of shiny instruments, the lead physician tonelessly said, “No. The subject needs to be fully awake for the process to work. What is already in him will keep him from getting away while we are administering the serum. Once we determine it’s working, and he’s gone through the first stages, then we will give him another very small dose that will keep him manageable until she has time to take care of him more permanently.”

Sure that The Handler was close by, Five looked to the interior windows that opened to the hall. She wasn’t there, but he did see someone else. 

In the next operating room, the young man that he'd helped capture was laying there on a gurney, blankly staring back at him. His jaw was slack, and he wasn’t even strapped down, which meant he was totally screwed and there was no way he was getting away either.

“I’m going to kill all of you!” Five yelled as the hefty nurse yanked his head back by his hair, so another demon in scrubs could jam a gag in his mouth.

By the time they had it secured to the back of his head, all he could do was growl at them, but from the corner of his eye, Five saw movement happening over in the operating room, so he looked that way again.

The young man was still looking at him. Like before, gone was that eerie glow of vibrantly changing colors that had been radiating from his otherwise kind looking eyes that had caught Five’s attention even before The Handler pointed him out. Five could no longer feel that strange pull inside his mind telling him not to look away, but still, he couldn’t take his eyes away from what he’d done.

The assistants rolled their other victim on his side, then the physician raised a scalpel to the back of his neck, slicing him open, but for what, Five didn’t know. He didn’t even flinch. A line of drool slipped from his mouth, but there was a glistening of tears in his otherwise empty eyes, meaning he was aware of what was happening, even if he couldn’t feel it.

Just then, The Handler appeared, her body blocking Five’s view of the horrors happening in the other room. Her red lips curled with amusement as the Commission’s medical staff began cutting open his argyle vest, slicing right through it to his dress shirt. Like they were filleting a fish, they peeled back his clothing in layers, exposing his rapidly heaving chest, and the length of his small, stretched out arms.

“I have to give it to you again, Five. You really are adorable like this,” she said, admiring his skin as it turned an offended pink from even the slightest nick from the blade.

Five squirmed uselessly as the nurses moved along, roughly cleaning him with alcohol, not just all along the trunk of his body, and arms, but other places too. 

They took his uniform shorts, then they removed his underwear.

Drinking him in with sick fascination, The Handler ran a finger along Five’s cheek. “Many here think that it would have been easier to keep you in line by making you stay like this, but unlike you, I am a creature of my word,” she explained, then her focus switched to the other room, taking in her other prize before looking back down, her eyes narrowing. “You got me him…so I am going to give you what you want.” Her predatory gaze moved between Five’s legs. “Don't worry. You’ll be a big boy again in no time.”

Repulsed, Five could do nothing but lay there. 

This made no sense. 

She had told him, ‘They are perfecting your body as we speak.’ 

He’d thought that meant they were building a totally different body for him.

This was not that! 

The Handler grinned. “Lucky you that I figured out a way to leash you, because if I hadn’t, you would be lying dead on the road next to your brother’s stolen ice cream truck right now.” 

As she turned away, the Commission’s head doctor ordered his staff to start inserting dozens of needles into his body.

Frothing on his gag, unintelligible noises screeched out of Five’s mouth as he bucked his hips, frantically fighting against the straps holding him down. Within less than a minute, they had him strung up, with IV’s coming out of him all over the place. Hyperventilating, his eyes wide in terror, he watched them attach bags of fluid to the lines leading into his body. 

The substance crawling through the plastic tubes looked like pure evil, like luminescent clouds of churning black ink.

As the pain started, all Five saw were the fractured images of the room around him, blurred by his tears. His teeth bearing down, all he could hear was the sound of what was left of his soul breaking as his muffled screams got louder, and louder.

Chapter 3: Cat and Mouse

Before all this happened, body rigid with tension, Five stared at the marble partition, listening to The Handler shuffling around in the bathroom stall next to him.

“You know, we value integrity above all else,” she said, her voice velvety sweet. “Trust is essential, and that trust is…built over time. But in the event of a breach, the Commission will act swiftly and without mercy.” She purposefully paused, letting that sink in. “I’m sure you, of all people, can appreciate that.”

Saying nothing back to that thinly veiled threat, The Handler’s toilet flushed. Five reached up, needlessly readjusting his already perfectly knotted, standard black academy necktie.

Mentally cursing himself over getting trapped while sitting on the toilet seat like he was taking a shit, Five crossed his arms over his chest, watching her red heels heading towards the sink.

“I’m feeling peckish. Have you eaten lunch?” she casually questioned.

Jaw muscles working overtime, Five shook his head. “Not yet,” he replied through gritted teeth.

The sink squeaked on, the water splashing as The Handler washed her hands. “Great. How would you like to eat with me in my office?”

The water turned off.

Knees bouncing, Five anxiously bit the inside of his cheek as her heels clicked closer.

“You can eat solid foods, and I can live vicariously…” The tips of her sharp fingernails hooked over the door in front of him, followed by the plume of her platinum white hair “-through you,” she finished, as she peeked at him.

Reactively folding in on himself, the stiffness from the file hidden under Five’s vest crinkled. It was just the smallest amount, but it was enough to make her eyes narrow with vicious glee over how fucked he was.

Giving the best smile he could summon, Five cocked his chin at her as confidently as he could, nodding. “Sounds great,” he answered, sounding every bit the liar he was.

Despite her claim of a burnt rugae, and not being able to eat more than liquids, Five knew The Handler was toying with him. This was all part of her sadistic game; one he’d been playing with her ever since she plucked him out of his apocalyptic nightmare.

He knew that his plan of getting in and out of the Commission headquarters and finding out who he needed to take out to stop the apocalypse was quickly going down the crapper if he didn’t find a way to get her off his back.

With no other choice, forty minutes later, cautiously eyeing her, his well-practiced mask of civility in place, Five pushed his cafeteria tray in from the edge of The Handler’s massive desk and folded his hands in his lap.

“Care for a dessert?” she questioned.

“No, thank you.” His lips quirked. “I had a bad twinkie in the apocalypse. Kind of put me off desserts.”

The Handler leaned in, pushing her crystal candy dish in Five’s direction. “Please indulge me,” she insisted. Waiting, she lit her cigarette, taking a long drag as she rocked back in her chair.

Forced to oblige her again, Five moved forward, picking up a tiny foil covered candy from the dish. While he was contemplatively savoring the sugary, Commission engineered flavor that had miraculously captured all the nostalgia of 1955 drug store with their soda fountains and malted milkshakes, the viper in front of him hit her intercom, calling in Carla. Not a minute later, she joined them, setting down a long, flat box on the desk in front of him.

Five quickly stood up as The Handler sauntered around her desk to join him. Blowing a plume of smoke towards the ceiling, she gave a wave of her hand, encouraging him to look inside the package.

He lifted the lid, revealing a black 3-piece suit, one that clearly wasn’t meant for him to wear while in his currently, less than desirable thirteen-year-old body.

“Don’t look so pouty, Five,” The Handler scolded, like he was a real child, not just someone that looked like one. Further patronizing him, she ran the tip of her finger under his chin, making him look at her. “This situation is temporary,” she assured, grinning even more as Five shifted on his feet, but remained under her pitying gaze, with nowhere to go but right where she wanted him. “Just like those delicious candies you just got a taste of. Here at the Commission, we have all sorts of tricks up our sleeves. We can make things the way they were, and better.”

Fighting the urge to blink away, the Handler thankfully dropped her hand before stroking it over his boyishly soft brown hair, petting him, but Five could tell she was about to do it and that was bad enough.

Skin crawling, he scowled.

“Clothes make the man, Five,” she clucked. “Won’t it be nice when you can actually wear it.” Five looked back down at the suit. “Very soon… They’re perfecting your body as we speak.”

Just the sight of the finely tailored men's clothing made Five want to believe what she was saying was true. But hating himself for even considering trusting her again, his stomach sank even further than it already was because it didn’t matter if she was telling the truth.

He wasn’t going to stay with them long enough to find out if they could fix him. What he wanted didn’t matter. All that mattered was saving his family. That was all that ever mattered.

Still, looking at his feet, there was no hiding the twinge of pain he felt twisting around inside of him. “Thank you. It’s a very kind gift,” he softly replied.

Shutting the box, wanting to block all of that out, with his hands burrowing in his pockets, Five turned around, strolling over to admire the Chinese flamethrower he’d noticed on the way in.

With only a small sign of interest in it, soon, he had The Handler proudly showing off her other trinkets she’d gathered while doing the work of the Commission. After that, Five had thought they’d moved past the bathroom incident, so it was the perfect time to carry on with his real agenda.

“Since I am part of the team upstairs now,” he started, “may I make a suggestion?”

“Of course, please do,” The Handler replied as she picked up her Walther pistol, the one Hitler supposedly used to kill himself.

Five smiled cordially as possible, his eyes naturally wandering towards the gun. “Wouldn’t it be simpler for case managers if we removed Gloria from tube operation and did that part ourselves? Isn’t she an unnecessary cog in the wheel?” he questioned, deliberately using his employer’s own words to further his point and hopefully make her think he was buying into all her lines of bullshit.

Moving right past Five’s attempt to shift things in a way he could manipulate them, The Handler laughed. “Gloria has been with us for ages. There is no way we could function without her.” Gun still in hand, holding it up to let Five get a closer look, she leaned in and conspiratorially whispered, “We aren’t supposed to take these things, but…he wasn’t going to use it anymore.”

She straightened after that, the heat of her larger body and the feel of her flared skirt moving away from Five’s backside, but unfortunately the minimal distance from her only made it slightly easier for him to breathe.

“Speaking of the perks of this job,” she said, winking at him. “I know about a place that serves a pie that rivals those candies you were just sucking on.” Metal clicked as she cocked the gun. “Like this death dealing piece of metal here,” she pointed the barrel at him, closing one eye as she aimed. “It's one of a kind.”

It took everything inside Five not to move.

Sniggering over how perplexed he looked, she finally lowered the weapon. “Let's go get you a treat worthy of celebrating your first day back with us,” she said. “Then…” She stepped over, putting her pistol back in its case next to her pile of M26 Vietnam era grenades. “After we get you a proper sugar fix to refuel that brilliant mind of yours, I’ll let you get back to work so you can prove to the rest of upper management why I wasn’t wrong about bringing you back.”

Walking to the door, The Handler picked up one of the Commission’s huge briefcases, extending her hand towards Five.

Slowly coming closer, all he wanted to do was run, but adding to his other mistakes of that day, he didn’t.

Chapter 4: Too Sweet

A few seconds later, Five was inundated by the sounds and smells of a small diner, one that looked like something you’d see back in the 50’s, only a flat screen TV behind the counter was playing a music video, so it was immediately clear that they weren't in that era.

As they stepped up to the podium, a middle-aged woman looked up, greeting them with a tired smile. “Out of school already?” she asked, looking down at Five.

The Handler proudly grinned at Five as she replied, “For him it is, and he’s been such a good boy today, I decided to bring him for a piece of your famous pie.”

“We rarely get to see young faces in here these days, but once you’ve tried our dessert, you’ll be hooked,” the woman said as she led them in, gesturing to a young man that was sitting alone, with his back facing them as he ate at one of the middle tables.

Already irritated, Five snagged a newspaper from one of the uncleared booths as he passed, shaking the crumbs to the floor before he slid into the vinyl covered seat across from The Handler.

“It’s 2008,” he murmured as his eyes moved over the page.

He glanced around again.

Based on what he could see outside, he knew that they weren’t far from the Umbrella Academy.

The Handler had brought him to his family's home turf, only at a time when he wouldn’t have been with them anymore, and most of them weren't living there anymore either, but the question was why?

She never did anything without reason, and this obviously wasn’t about the food.

About to question her, Five was interrupted when a younger server came by, setting down his dessert.

Fighting the urge to roll his eyes, Five set the paper down, addressing the blonde waitress. “And a cup of coffee. Black,” he said, smiling a little too sweetly.

Apparently not at all charmed, the girl in her later twenties looked to The Handler for approval, and Five could no longer hold in his ire. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he looked down at the table.

Sounding tickled as ever over all of this, The Handler approved of his caffeinated beverage, followed by a joke about caffeine stunting his growth, which made Five hate her no less.

Eyes roaming around the diner again, Five noticed it wasn’t very busy. Besides the young man with his headset on who was totally absorbed with something on his laptop, and a few other old couples that were dispersed throughout the restaurant, that was it.

“Here you go, enjoy,” the waitress said, coming around, setting down his steaming mug of coffee.

Picking up his fork, though not at all hungry for the cherries covered in fluff, with his other hand, Five reached for his coffee, bringing it to his lips.

“She was pretty,” The Handler conversationally noted while he quickly drained his cup.

“Who?” Five asked, his fork filled with berries waiting in front of his mouth.

“The waitress,” The Handler replied, sounding even more amused by his oblivious reply.

Five hadn’t even noticed, which again was probably why the evil woman across from him was smirking. It’s not that he didn’t admire a good-looking woman. Dolores was a woman. It was just that-

“It’s unimaginable how lonely it must be…” The Handler dangled, interrupting his depressing thoughts about why it was so hard for him to do much more than look when it came to anyone that he found attractive.

Not taking the bait, Five said nothing, his fork slowly setting down on his napkin with the bite of food still on it.

“You're restless… Discontent. I see that as plain as that cute little nose on your fresh new face,” she furthered.

The tip of her shoe brushed against his knee sock.

Pushing himself back in the booth, as far away from her as he could get, Five looked away, noticing the young man who had been studying at the table next to them was now looking at him, his eyes focused on the crest stitched to the breast of his dark blue Umbrella Academy blazer.

Five loudly cleared his throat and the young man’s startled eyes met his, the look of confusion in them only getting worse. By now, as far as history was concerned, Five would have been missing for six years, not to mention he wasn’t supposed to be a little kid anymore.

“How I feel doesn’t matter,” Five finally said, rebuffing The Handler’s comment, while looking back down at his napkin.

“Sure it does,” she countered just as fast. “A man like you…one whose needs are hardly being met, is a man, tick tick ticking…like a bomb, just waiting to go off.”

Under the edge of the table, Five’s fingers curled into claws that wanted to dig her eyes out. He leveled her up with his glare. “Just spit it out! What you want? We are drawing unwanted attention, and I personally don’t have time for this.”

“Oh, Five, “she tittered. “Why always so dour?”

“Oh, I don’t know… Call it a habit born out of expecting the worst and always getting it.”

She leaned back, crossing her arms over her mounded bodice. “You ask what this is about? Well... It’s like that suit I knew you’d love. I just want to keep my agents happy.”

“Sure you do,” he sarcastically mimicked.

“With that case you had today…” She paused, raising one of her perfectly manicured brows. “Taking care of the Hindenburg with something as simple as seeing to it that a tainted roast was delivered to the right person… Now that was genius, and I expected no less from you. You didn’t pull the trigger, but the success of the job well done was no less satisfying, am I right?”

She was right, but lips pursed tight, Five refused to admit it.

“Be careful, Five. Pride is your Achille's heel, that and that tragic longing you have for acceptance and approval. You try to hide it, but I see right through you.”

About to jump the table and strangle her, Five picked up his fork instead, taking a bite of the flaky crust and berries, angrily swallowing it down as he pretended to be interested in the sticky looking ketchup bottle sitting next to the other condiments.

She’d hit a nerve. And worse, she was still on to him. The file on Dot’s desk covering his apocalypse was empty, and he should have known it would be, but he’d thought The Handler had let that go.

He had to be better than this.

He couldn’t let her get the upper hand this time.

This time, Five had called her, and come to them of his own free will.

This time, he was going to show them what happened when they tried to play God with him and the people he cared about. He just needed to get back to the main office again, so he could do some digging, and then no more Mr. Nice Guy in the cute little schoolboy shorts.

A small smile pulled at his sugar covered lips as he thought about the grenades he saw in her office.

Looking next to him, the kid who had been eyeing him up had started packing up his things.

“You need something to come home to, to fill that void, and scratch that itch,” The Handler pushed, clearly not done with whatever point she was trying to make. “You need something, or maybe better put, someone to exercise your demons.”

With an even worse sensation of unease hitting him, not at all comfortable with where any of this was going, Five looked back at her.

“Someone who knows just how to take care of you…” she said, “someone to turn that frown upside down.”

Five’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t follow.”

“You need a pet, and this place is exactly the kind of place to find the special kind of pet you need, because…” she plucked her sleeve, pulling it up a little so she could look at her watch, “because in just about four minutes, thanks to the gas line leaking under our feet, this place, and everyone in it will be no more. They are all free game.”

The Handler’s malevolent gaze moved to the table next to them, her crimson painted smile more devious looking than Five had ever seen it.

All at once, it dawned on him that she wasn’t talking about a furry sort of pet.

Hands sweating as he drew them up the navy-blue fabric covering his tensed thighs, he shook his head. “No,” he croaked, his voice catching in his suddenly dry throat.

“Don’t be so unimaginative,” she fired back.

“You must be confused, because I have no idea what you are talking about,” he lied.

“Really?” she mocked. “Our assassins come from some very dark places. You included. It’s perfectly understandable that a man like you has particular needs that are not exactly easy to fill, considering your past, and current condition… Relationships of any kind are not exactly where you excel, Five.”

Shifting his legs under the table, Five tried not to let her see how that had sung, but just like the young man next to him, who was waiting for his bill, his fingers anxiously tapping the tabletop, it was obvious that he couldn’t wait to get out of there.

“It’s no secret that others in our employment have taken advantage of their unique positions,” The Handler furthered.

She pointed to the boy as Five watched him nervously swallowing, the dips and curves of his throat slowly moving, the look of it so sinfully alluring that he felt even warmer.

“What do you think of him?” she asked, as if they were discussing an item on the menu, not another person who could probably hear them.

“I don’t think anything,” Five shot back, the shrillness of his voice making the other young male look over at them again, his eyes filled with what Five could for sure see this time was much more than frustration with how long it was taking to get his check.

The implications she was making were already making Five’s stomach roll, the acid of his lunch painfully adding to the forced bites of his pie.

He may have been extremely reclusive during his years working for the Commission, but Five had heard the rumors. Having a life in your hands of someone who was already written off, opened the door for the possibility of all sorts of bad things to go down, other than violent bloodshed.

“I never did that,” Five breathed, thinking about two agents in the locker rooms during training who were telling stories of having their way with their victims before they put a bullet in their heads.

“Oh- Oh, I know. You are much too sweet to do something like that,” The Handler assured, followed by a mocking laugh. “It is quite surprising though that you haven’t given in. You of any of our agents had every reason to,” she said, her tone dripping with saccharin sympathy.

She came forward, her hand reaching out to touch Five’s where it was hotly pressed to the table.

Fingers prying his hand up, flipping it over, she opened his palm, then purred, “You are missing something, Five. You know it. We all know it, and you're dying inside because of it.”

Five looked down at the syringe she’d just placed in his hand. Heat crawled up his neck; his blazer felt like it was a fur lined parka rather than a ridiculously tailored piece of summer wool.

He knew they were watching him all those years he suffered in the apocalypse, alone and on the edge of madness as he clung to the hope that he could get back and end this.

He knew they never stopped watching him, even after he’d signed away what was left of his soul to them.

All he’d ever had was himself, and the emptiness of that sometimes felt so crushing that he could hardly breathe.

Just the feel of The Handler’s fingernails seductively dipping under his cuff, gliding along his Umbrella Academy tattoo, had Five so overwhelmed he was nearly paralyzed, stuck on the verge of either blinking himself away, or falling further into the flood of emotions he was drowning in.

Instead of doing either of those things, he schooled his expression to one of indifference. Unblinking, his reply came out unwavering. “In exchange for the life of all my siblings, I agreed to work for you again, but I do not need or want this, so drop it.”

Looking unconcerned by Five’s refusal, The Handler stood up, her hands coming to her hips, straightening the tufts of sheer fabric that covered her couture A-line skirt. “We are the lucky few that exist out of time, Five. I never settle for subpar out of life, and neither should you. I take what I want, for example, like this Dior dress from the premier 1947 collection.”

“This is over,” he deadpanned, menacingly rising out of the booth as he looked her dead on, ready to kill her.

She burst out laughing. “Five, you are too easy. I was just joking with all that.”

“You were joking?”

“Yes, but tick-tock, we are on the clock. Time to collect what I really came here for, which was that handsome young man over there, only for me, not you. Hop to it. Go get him.”

As soon as the young man she’d been talking about was done signing his bill, the diner’s pen skittered across his table, hitting the floor as he bolted for the door.

“If he gets away, our deal is off. I’ll just get one of my other agents to retrieve him,” The Handler warned, her expression confidently calm as she held the briefcase up, a sign that she meant it. Like always, she held all the power.

Trapped like always, right before he blinked, Five’s hand tightened around the needle in his hand.

Chapter Five: Do Unto Others

Number Five Hargreeves, or the boy as they had called him, was a legend, but he wasn't supposed to be there sitting with that creepy bitch, his smug little face looking at you as he ate his pie. 

Laying there as they implanted their device inside your neck, you heard and saw enough to understand that you were somewhere you shouldn’t be, and he should be there either, but he obviously was, and he wasn’t there because he wanted to be. The restraints made that clear enough, but Five’s verbal threats of killing all of them confirmed it.

Somehow, they knew what you could do, or at least the people in charge there did. When Five had attacked you, you could tell that he was genuinely shocked by it. Seeing him there in that diner, you knew something was wrong. You should have taken off the second you saw him and that woman, but you didn’t, and now you were totally fucked, getting marched along like a mindless solider, there to do their bidding.

As they shoved you inside, looking around your new cage, otherwise known as Five’s shitty apartment, the Commission agents dropped a file on the kitchen table, ordering you to read it. Then they reminded you, that if you didn’t do as you had been told, or if you stepped over the threshold of the exterior door, you would be first electrocuted again, then if that didn’t stop you, and you kept trying to get away, the device in your neck would be manually triggered, and then you’d be dead.

In their hospital, after starting to regain the use of your limbs, the first thing you had done was try to escape, and that was how you knew they weren’t kidding about the electrocution thing. 

As that little Umbrella Academy asshole in the next room howled in agony, your feet hit the floor, your knees coming down on the cold tiles a second later thanks to your body’s refusal to cooperate. Looking down at you as you knelt at her feet, the one they were calling The Handler grinned at you, then she hit a button on a small switch she had concealed in her hand.

It felt like a bolt of lightning struck you in the head, reverberating through your entire body.

“Ssst- Stop-op-pllleeeaa-ssss-tttt-” you stammered as the aftershocks caused your body to spasm and your eyeballs to roll back in your head, getting stuck there, jittering. 

Your teeth clattered together so hard you tasted your own blood, and it hurt so much, you even pissed yourself, but she didn’t care. “Don’t do that again,” she chirped while smiling at you.

No way, you had thought. You weren’t going down like that. 

You almost never did this. You knew it wasn’t right. All you wanted was a normal life before this, but staring at her, your pupils instinctively dilated, the swirl of colors hidden in your irises flamed in outrage. “Let me-!”

You got zapped again before you could even get the words out to compel her to let you go, not that it would have mattered if you had said it, because the shorter, darker skinned, woman that had just came in was looking back at you with the same hypnotic glow of insistence you'd just had in your eyes.

“Relax,” she soothed. “You are going to listen to me now. Do you understand?” 

Your eyes drooped tiredly, and your mind slipped into a fuzzy state of forced contentment. “I understand,” you replied.

The Handler looked at the younger, much more casually dressed woman. “Lila, please tell him exactly what I said to you about how this is going to go from here on out.”

The deep pools of chocolatey brown gazing at you filled with even brighter light, and even through the control she was wielding over you, you still sensed a flicker of something in them, hitting you the way your power normally did when you were the one doing this invasively cruel act. 

She wasn’t the only one invading brains in that room, but she didn’t seem to be aware of that. They didn’t understand exactly how your power worked, or maybe it was just that since it wasn’t hers, she wasn’t able to fully command it the way you could. Either way, this Lila person didn't want to do this and that meant you still had a chance.

Where you were filled with fear, and rage, that thanks to her was now muted to a dull sense of lingering nothing, she was filled with a deep need for love. Thinking so much like Five had been as he came at you at the diner, appearing in front of you in a crackling burst of blue energy and violent momentum, Lila saw no other way. To get what she wanted, she needed to follow the orders she had been given, but with Five, you had seen that it was all a ruse. 

Five had thought he could outwit them. You were just collateral damage getting in the way of a much bigger purpose that was driving him. 

In those sad, pale green eyes, you had seen the end of the world, and him in it, alone. He’d already lived a lifetime of wanting things he’d never have. Being loved didn’t matter.

The glimpse you’d seen of the things Five endured were…

There were no words.

“Get him up,” The Handler demanded, and just like that, you were being lifted off the floor by the nurses that had dragged you in there.

Hardly able to hold yourself up, they supported you between them, your head sluggishly turning towards the room where Five was. He was laying there, totally naked, thrashing, and screaming for help that no one there was going to give him. 

“Look at me,” Lila said, and pulled by the invisible thread she’d already weaved into you, you did, your eyes nothing more than blank slates of light, burning blindly, seeking direction. “Do you know who that is in there?”

“Yes,” you whispered.

“Good. From here on out, you are allowed to do whatever is necessary to take care of him, to keep him…sated. He is yours, and you are his.”

Making a mistake, she looked at the real woman in charge, for just a fraction of a second, allowing you to come back to yourself enough to process what she’d said in a way that you were sure The Handler did not intend.

“When he arrives back at his apartment in a few hours,” Lila continued, locking eyes with you again, “bind him to you with your power. You will never leave his home, and he is never to leave this timeline unless we say so. Your entire purpose is to see to it that he thinks he wants to be here.”

The words, ‘unless we say so,’ lingered in your head, giving a window of opportunity that you couldn’t quite put together yet, but with that, it was still done. You had no choice. You had to do as she said, and even more awful, you wanted to.

Chapter 6: Hurt

Having cleaned up and changed into some of Five’s old man flannel pajama pants and one of his short-sleeved undershirts, you were sitting at one of his only two wobbly kitchen chairs when the door to his one room efficiency apartment burst open.

In nothing but a hospital gown that they hadn’t even tied closed, they lugged him inside, carelessly throwing him down on his bed with his back facing you. As soon as the two brutes shut his door, Five began to sob, his entire, noticeably larger body, shuddering uncontrollably. 

Gasping for breath like even breathing was hard for him, his left hand moved between his legs, the muscles in his bicep and forearm tensing from the repeated jerking movements of his wrist.

Staring at his bare ass as he writhed, you slowly lowered your spoon back to the bowl of canned soup you were eating. 

“Shit,” you breathed, hardly able to believe what you were seeing. 

Five was older, not looking really much different in age then you, when only an hour before, he was just a scrawny little neck stabbing douchebag. You knew he wasn’t really a kid. You had seen the picture of him, pre-maturely snowy white hair paired with a mustache of pepper and salt. You’d read about him as they'd directed, getting more acquainted with him to do your job, but this…

This wasn’t right. Five had not wanted them to do this. You had watched him desperately trying to get away.

They had hurt him with what they’d done, and he was still hurting, though you couldn’t tell if it was physical pain, mental, or both. Either way, you knew that he was jerking off, and the people at the Commission were monsters.

But then again, so were you, and so was Five.

Like a switch had been flicked on inside your brain, Lila’s voice circled around inside your head.

Bind him with your power.

He is yours.

And you are his.

Keep him sated. 

Closing the manila file that was filled with documented evidence that Five was not at all what he seemed, you shifted in your seat from the unexpected feeling of your own cock stiffening. The second the metal of your spoon hit the side of the porcelain bowl, he went completely still.

In a flash, he was on you, blinking across the room, his now much heavier body weight slamming into you, knocking you backwards while still not even up out of your chair.

Your head cracked against the ugly linoleum floor, your brain bouncing inside your skull as he pinned you under him, his strong arms and legs easily countering yours as you tried to throw him off.

“Get off of me, you fucker!” you shouted, rapidly blinking your eyes to clear the stars from your vision, but it didn’t work fast enough.

One of his hands came around your neck, ruthlessly choking you. “NO!” Five snarled, as you grabbed at his face, trying to make him look at you. 

Apparently, he was on to you and what you could do if given the chance because he forced your cheek to the floor, but just as fast, you jabbed him in the ribcage. Sucking in a pained hiss, he let go of your face, and you reached up, yanking him by his freshly grown mop of tangly dark hair, bringing your faces back together again.

Eyes ablaze, you gurgled, “S-top figh-ting-ME!”

Caught off-guard, Five couldn’t look away, but he fought back anyway, bucking his hips against yours as he tried to shake his head from your hold. The long, hot, hard length of his dick became even more wedged against yours, with nothing between you, other than his flimsy hospital gown and your borrowed pajama pants.

Feeling what you were feeling, because there was no way he wasn’t, looking even more ballistic, Five tried to throw his head back then forward to headbutt you, but that only made his cock rut into yours harder, and you didn’t let go of his head.

His face came forward anyway, his nose brushing against the tip of yours. His mouth gaped open as he gasped, his moist breath coating your lips.

Trying to speak again, he tightened his hand. Your words weren’t coming out, so you tried speaking to his mind instead. 

Focus on my eyes, Five, nothing else. I am not the one you should be fighting. Let me go!

The smallest flame started to reflect back at you as he watched the swirls of color building in your eyes. He was falling under your spell, but he still didn’t let go of your neck.

You almost had him, but you were growing dizzy from lack of oxygen. Your own eyes were fighting to stay open. You were sure that he was going to succeed in snuffing you out, and all the crap The Handler and Lila had done to get you there would have gone to waste, but then Five’s already ghostly pale face started to look more ashen. 

His sweaty brow furrowed, his face suddenly looking a sickly shade of green.

He started to gag.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! your mind screamed at him, right before he emptied the contents of his stomach, some of it splashing up on you even though you’d pushed his face to the side at the last second.  

With nothing left in him, Five finally let go, then he collapsed, his face burrowing against the start of bruises already forming along the length of your neck.

As your chest rose and fell, your body taking in the air it had been denied, the now much longer hair on the top of his head fluttered with your labored breaths. He had listened to you because he had no choice, but you also had a voice inside that wasn’t yours, and you couldn’t silence it.

‘… you are allowed to do whatever is necessary to take care of him.’

The heat between your bodies was about as impossible to ignore as the feel of his erection next to yours.

You laid your hand against the small of his back. Five flinched from even that lightest touch, but you kept your hand there.

“Everything hurts. It won’t stop,” he cried, the wetness of his words as his mouth opened against the side of your throat as heartbreaking as his tears washing over your skin.

Chapter Seven: Trust 

“You need to get up,” you told Five, letting the warmth of your hand slip away from the curve of his lower back, but only after he’d quieted. As you pushed your elbows into the floor, trying to sit up, you felt the slickness of his vomit coating your arm. “That is so gross,” you huffed in exhausted irritation.

Coming out of his delirium, Five started untangling himself from you. Now that he wasn’t ordered to look at you, he refused to meet your gaze. He looked down at his diamond patterned hospital gown instead, and the impressive tent he was making out of it with his dick.

He looked horrified.

Staggering to his bathroom, you watched him disappear, slamming the bathroom door so hard it rattled everything inside his small apartment.

Hearing the sound of Five taking what had to be a very sloppy, and very difficult to execute piss, you looked down at the floor. 

“What a fucking mess,” you muttered, right before a loud, man-sized thud hit the wall.

Coming inside the bathroom to see what he’d done now, you were greeted with the sight of Five slumped on the floor, wedged between the toilet and the bathtub, a space that didn’t look at all comfortable, or like he’d put himself there intentionally.

He was trembling. Now that you weren’t holding him together, he was falling apart all over again, and there you were, doing not much better, covered in his puke, trying to figure out which you wanted to do more, kill him or…

“Shit,” you said, sighing as you threw a frustrated hand back through your hair.

Pulling his knees towards him, burying his head in his hands, Five mumbled through his fingers. “I didn’t want to do this to you. I had no choice.”

“I know, but I still hate you,” you said.

He looked up, his eyes glistening. “Why are you here…with me?”

“Because they want me here. I also have no choice in this. If I walk over that threshold, my brain stem is going to end up deep fried like a churro. Speaking of which, you have no food here. Why have dishes when your refrigerator is empty.”

You reached back, your fingers gingerly grazing the stitches that they had only just closed a few hours before. You winched, triggered by the memory of debilitating pain The Handler had graced you with.

The line between Five brows deepened.

“What are you doing to me?” he questioned.

“Nothing at the moment.” 

It was true, you weren’t, but he didn’t look like he was buying it.

You glared at him. “I’m not the one responsible for your Alice in Wonderland, magical sizing up issue, or that hefty boner you’re dealing with,” you said, and you swore you saw the tiniest twitch in the corner of his mouth. 

“No. You are not,” he coolly replied. “I am being hit with six years' worth of developmental hormones all at once, so clearly that was not what I meant, and I think you knew that. What’s your excuse?”

Looking slightly less venomous, he glanced at the flannel covered outline of your semi hard cock, the shape of your mushroom tip still protruding enough that the thin fabric wasn't at all hiding it.

“Maybe I like getting pounced on by wiry old men with big dicks,” you replied, only half joking as you extended your hand. 

To your surprise, he took it without you making him, but he swayed on his feet the second you’d pulled him upright.

“Well, you know what they say about skinny guys with big shoes,” he said, looking loopy as hell.

“What? That they are huge assholes?”

“Something like that,” Five said as he put a hand to his stomach and grimaced, stumbling back into his sink, looking way too pale again.

“Let me help you,” you whispered as he looked up at you, his new height still not quite matching yours and only made worse by the way he was struggling to stand up straight.

Shaking like a leaf, you could tell Five was going to take off again, or barf, so you planned your next words very carefully, saying them in a calming cadence that only added to the trance-like state you were putting him in with your eyes.

“You are safe with me, Five. I need you to do as I say. Don’t try to get away from me, or them. You want to be here with me. We are both staying here, me never leaving this apartment and you working for them, doing everything they say. Confirm that you understand that.”

He nodded and very subtly, you motioned around you, warning him in case he hadn’t already known.

Sending a message to his mind only, you said, They are listening to us, maybe even watching.

He nodded again that he had heard you.

“Take in a breath,” you said, taking a long slow breath yourself, trying to calm your nerves.

He did too, holding it.

“As you let it out, you will feel the pain inside you melting away. All of it gone.”

The words filled his head, a warmth of something he didn’t understand dulled his sickness and fear as he obediently exhaled.

“Say, ‘I trust you,” you demanded.

“I trust you,” Five repeated, a fire from deep in his eyes burning back, letting you know that you had him.

Saying nothing more, you helped Five to the edge of the shower, urging him inside, keeping him upright with your slightly larger frame as you stepped inside with him.

Chapter Eight: Coming Together, Coming Apart

Positioning him with his back facing you, the warming spray of the shower head began covering you both, filthy clothes and all.

Now that he wasn’t attacking you, or on the verge of collapse, you really looked at Five, taking him in, your eyes trained on the muscular swell of his narrow, but strong looking hips.

He was so…

Fuck.

As if he was the one that held you in a trance of sexual subjugation, you gripped the length of your shaft, your fingers moving to the tip, stretching the material around your thick glans. The evidence of how turned on you were seeped out of you as you squeezed your girth, adding to the already rapidly darkening fabric.

“You are going to stand here and say and do nothing unless I tell you that you can. If I ask you something, you will not lie to me. Do you understand?” you said.

“Yes,” Five softly answered, still hypnotized by your power, even though he could no longer see into your burning eyes.

You had never done this to anyone before like this, and the thrill of taking control of him like this, in this way, only made it that much harder to stop.

Your breath cascaded down the back of Five’s neck and he shivered. You pushed the sleeves of his hospital gown down his arms, letting it drop at your feet. Hands coming to his hips, you pulled him back against you, the curve of his firm ass pressing against your reawakened, fully hard cock.

Five stiffened at first, but as your hands slowly moved around, your fingers relishing in the quiver of his toned stomach muscles, you heard him let out the quietest moan, and you felt him push back against you of his own free will.

“Do you want me to touch you like this?” you breathed, already knowing he did.

“Yes,” he gasped, sounding so pained, and so broken, that it made your balls quiver and your cock twitch.

He was so fucking beautiful. Everything in you wanted to destroy him, but you took no more than that, just relishing in the feel of your dick being enveloped by his hard ass cheeks. His body was nothing but lean muscle, and you knew just what he could do with it too, only now, Five wasn’t walking around as a thirteen-year-old. 

If given the order, now, like this, at the prime of life, he’d be so much more lethal than he was before. 

He is yours, your mind whispered, and fuck yes you wanted to believe that, even without Lila’s voice telling you that was already true.

Reaching for his shampoo, you glopped a squirt of it in your hand, then brought it to your head and face, washing away any remaining traces of the stomach splatter he had gotten on you. Then getting more soap, you brought your hands to Five’s head, massaging your fingers into his scalp. 

Already going weak in the knees with pleasure over the feel of it, Five’s head rolled back on his shoulders. Biting in a moan, he had to reach out, his palm pressing against the glass shower door to support himself. As you worked your hands down his neck, kneading his shoulders, then the long curve of his spine, he let out a series of puppy-like whimpers that only made you want to hear more intoxicating noises like that coming out of him. 

“Have you ever done this with anyone before?” you questioned.

“No. I only had Dolores,” he whispered.

You knew who Dolores was. The mannequin's picture was in his file. You let out a shaking breath, and kept going, your own sighs mixing with his, turning into a throbbing ball of pain and a full-bodied ache of frustration the more you touched him, but you couldn’t stop. You could practically feel Five’s tight rim clamped around the base of your cock as you took what was left of his innocence, ramming him balls deep as he screamed your name.

Playing with his wet stomach, you explored the shiny grooves of his abs as they twitched, making his cock stutter and bob between his legs because it was so painfully erect.

“You want me to help you take care of this?” you questioned, knowing he wanted to touch himself so badly, only he couldn’t unless you told him he could. 

“Please, yes! I- I need- It won’t-”

He couldn’t even say it. Five was so distraught, for all you knew, he’d been sporting a hard-on for hours, unable to do anything about it as he lay, strapped to that operating table in front of all of them.

Releasing him, you quickly peeled your shirt over your head, then took hold of him again, arms coming around, holding him to you as your hands worshiped his chest, fingers splaying over his small tight nipples before tracing patterns across his abs again. 

“Nnn-ahhh,” Five keened and wriggled, overstimulated and overwhelmed by being handled this way.

“Do you want me to fuck you, Five?” you questioned, your mouth greedily coming to his neck, sucking at the salty taste of his delicious skin.

Something inside hadn’t abandoned him, because even though you’d asked Five a question, he didn’t answer it that time.

The darkness in your mind felt like it was suddenly eating at you. You needed him to comply. Your eyes flared with anger as you reactively bit into him, your teeth drawing a cry of pain that made Five sound like the boy he had looked like only hours before, and that only pissed you off even more.

You hated this, but you hated even more than you didn’t.

Fighting the voices and the desire to do worse to him, your mouth moved along the crest of Five’s shoulder, breathing him in as he trembled. “Shhhh,” you hotly warned, kissing him so softly that he deliriously whimpered again. 

His hand slipped along the glass as he began to move, but just as fast, you took hold of him, taking his uncut cock up against his abdomen, pumping your hand along the veiny length of it.

“Fah-ah-aaahhckkkk,” he groaned, automatically reacting to the new sensation with his hips springing to life like a bouncing rabbit. 

You loved the sound of that, and the feeling of him rocking against you. He needed this so badly you could feel him throbbing in your hand. “Tell me what you want, Five,” you said while slowly fucking him with your hand, the pressure of your confined erection screaming at you to be released so you could slap the hot mounds of his ass with it.

“I want this! Please, fuck! I need to cum!” he cried, as you looked over his shoulder, longingly taking in the sight of the pearly string of fluid that was steadily leaking from his swollen red slit onto his taut torso. You smeared his bloated glans around his navel, letting his pre-cum slick your fingers, making it even easier to move them up and down his big cock.

Sliding the hand you had at his hip, back over his cute ass, you brought your fingers to the tight ring of puckered flesh hidden between his cheeks. Five flinched and lurched forward from the invasive sensation, but circling his rim while rolling his foreskin up and down, teasing his cockhead, you were determined to tangle the programing in his head that was used for interpreting right and wrong, making him associate you playing with his ass, with pleasure.

“I only want to make you feel good, Five,” you promised, then slowly inserted your finger up to the second knuckle, then pulled out again, repeating the pattern of in and out, dragging slowly.

Soon you had him panting and his thighs quivering. Not blinking away or even attempting to stop you but again proving that your power over him may have been slipping, Five cried out, “Please, Ffff-!” 

You weren’t sure if he wanted more or less, but pulling out of him, you ran your fingers over the bar of soap sitting on the small shelf next to you, bringing the sudsy fingers back to his hole. With no foreplay this time, you plunged your finger into his virgin hole that was so tight still you knew it would deny your cock entry.

Five growled as he closed his eyes, helplessly rocking against your hands and you loved it way too much that he wasn’t even capable of being ashamed or forming words anymore. 

Obliging his desire for more master playing with his puppet, you pumped him faster and harder, penetrating him with a second finger, crooking both digits as you twisted them and tapped them against his prostate. Five moaned so loud and raggedly, the needy tremor of it was almost enough to make you blow your load. Instead of doing that, or bending down to lick his ass hole, you shut your eyes too, focusing on nothing but him and the hypnotizing sounds of his hitched breaths.

“You like me fucking your hole like this, Five?”

“Yes. Fuck, yes. Fucking, ffff-” he breathed as he threw his head back against yours.

Straining, Five clenched his groin muscles, his entire body shaking with the first waves of his orgasm. His release hit him so hard, if you hadn’t been holding on to him, he would have slipped and fell down on the slippery shower floor.

His come was so hot as repeatedly spurt out of him to the rhythm of you fucking your fingers against his prostate, the milky strands of it covering your hand, flicking up, going everywhere. Working him a little longer as his body rested back against yours, you nuzzled the scruffy wet feel of his hair against your face, then you gently pulled your fingers from the seduction of his trembling hole.

You wanted nothing more than to feel Five in this way, surrendering all of himself to you because he'd done it completely willingly, but as soon as it was done, the painful disappointment of your reality cut through the words Lila had tried and failed to imprint on your brain. 

Forcingly spinning Five around, your eyes filled with a mirage of blissfully dancing colors. His own pupils, still blown dark with his lust, instantly went glassy, reflecting back eerily, the entire sclera glowing bright.

“Go find something to eat, and then get in your bed, and go to sleep. You have work in the morning,” you told him.

Waving a testing hand in front of his face, as if drugged, Five grinned back so stupidly that all you wanted to do was to kiss him silly, and that made the ache in your chest even worse. 

You slid the shower door open and repeated the order. “Go. Do what I said.”

Getting out, like the good little hypnotized time traveling assassin now made case worker for a bunch of demented dickheads, Five reached for a towel, tying it around his waist before he stepped out into the cold air of his apartment, hair still dripping beads of water down his back as he headed towards his kitchen.

Realizing you perhaps should have told him to dry off, and put some clothes on, rather than think on that mistake for even a second longer, you slammed the shower door closed, pulled down your pants, dropped your forehead against the tiles, quickly jerking yourself off with his name on your lips as you came.

Chapter Nine: I know Not What I Do, Only I do

As you had laid in Five’s bed, a few feet away from where he slept so peacefully under your spell, you knew this couldn’t go on, and seeing him walking in the door now only made you feel that way all over again.

Looking around Five’s small apartment, you smiled again at how he’d cleaned it that morning. While quietly getting ready for his day, he’d made sure you didn’t have to deal with the dried puke mess on the floor, or how he’d accidently pissed all over the toilet the night before. 

Coming home, Five looked so handsome and full of life, his new black suit clinging to him in all the right places. When he shut the door, your eyes met his for a second before he looked away. He was clearly uncomfortable, despite being forced to trust you being there in his private space. 

“I brought food,” he simply said, moving to the table to set down the brown bag he had carried in with him. “It’s just something I picked up, but I promise after work tomorrow I will go shopping for things to fill that empty refrigerator.”

He slipped off his suit jacket, placing it over the back of his chair, then sat down, taking out two containers filled with something that smelled so good it instantly made your mouth water. 

He smiled hopefully as he opened his dinner, gesturing for you to do the same.

Five was taking care of you. That was not something you had compelled him to do, but there he was, doing it anyway. 

As he started eating, you saw him looking over at the Commission’s file that was still laying on the table between you, every time you saw him do it, he would look away, nervously tapping his foot under the table. 

You didn’t care what it said. Five Hargreeves, the monster they’d made, the man that had killed so many innocent people, and had taken you away from your life, all because an evil woman told him too, was not what that file said he was. 

After several bites of food, the thickness in your throat was too much. “Five, look at me.”

He did, as if you’d made him, only you hadn’t.

“Is it true what The Handler said about that diner…about me dying there if this hadn’t happened?” you asked.

You watched him slowly swallow. “Yes,” he replied, again uncomfortable with this, but trying so hard not to show it.

Raising your fork again, you took a deep breath and nodded.

Silence resumed as you both ate.

When you were both done, you could tell that Five didn’t know what to do with himself. When he had looked like the older man in the picture underneath the cover of that file, you could only assume that even then, he didn’t have much to cling to in this place, other than scheming to get back to his family. He’d done it too, only the poor bastard got himself stuck right back where he was before, only two days later.

Leaning back as you pushed out your chair, you crossed your arms over your chest. You grinned. You couldn’t help it with him sitting over there, frowning as he ran his finger over the scratches etched into his tabletop. 

When he pulled his lips to the side, looking even more sulky, you let out a little chuckle.

“Something funny?” he coolly questioned, with such irritation souring his expression that your smile grew even bigger. Finally looking up, he glared at you through the messy pieces of hair dangling in his face

“No. I just like looking at you,” you honestly replied.

Flipping his head back, Five raised his eyebrows in disbelief, but you saw the smile pulling at his lips as his hair fell right back, annoying him all over again.

Drawing invisible pictures, he went back to jiggling his foot against the leg of the table.

“Are you bored, need help figuring out what to do with your night, other than studying your tabletop?” you teased.

To your surprise, Five suddenly disappeared, a rush of air hitting you when he reappeared less than a second later, standing right between your outstretched legs, one hand sitting on the table next to yours. He lowered himself even closer, his eyes boring into yours so hotly it felt like he was trying to light you on fire with them.

“What if I am bored? Are you going to play with me again?” he challenged.

You smirked as he rubbed your knee, the crotch of his pants already tented so big it was making it so hard for you to think of anything else other than playing with him again. Hormones still raging or not as the reason for it, Five’s dick was silently begging for attention as much as he had been.

You spread your legs a little more. “I could play with you and tire you out like I did last night, or since I am pretty comfortable right here after my long day of doing nothing, I could fill that spray bottle over there under your kitchen sink with water and squirt you in the face with it until you leave me alone.” 

“If you spray me, I will hump your leg and bite at you,” Five countered, his voice seductively sweet.

“It looks like we have a problem then,” you said as your eyes burned for him. “What are you going to do about it?” 

Five dropped to his knees between your legs. As he reached between your thighs, groping you, you instantly felt yourself getting harder. You bit back a moan and leaned forward, resting your forehead against his. “I can’t say no if this is what you want, but I shouldn't do-” 

“Quiet,” he whispered, pressing a finger to your lips, cutting you off as his breath purposefully ghosted against your ear. “I have wanted to do this all day.”

As Five stroked your cock through the frumpy gray dress pants you hand taken from the limited selection in his closet, he moved his lips along your cheek, coming to your mouth, where he kissed again, his slightly parted lips happily taking in your gasps.

It was his first real kiss like this, and he was perfect, so soft, so delicately insistent.

Lust hitting you hard, your eyes instinctually flamed brighter with need. Five kept going, unzipping your pants, pulling your cock out, only breaking away from your mouth to look down at it, the length thick enough, but at the head, where you were slightly thinner, you flared out with just the right girth to cause some major damage.

"Five," you breathed and closed your eyes as he began to kiss you again, this time thrusting his tongue in, twirling it around yours.

There was no question if this was wrong or right. No thoughts wasted on why you felt the way you did about him. 

When you reached down, cupping him through his pants, Five groaned and held the side of your face with his other hand, wrestling with your tongue, ramming his own as far into your mouth as it would go.

Forcing your lips away from his, even as he tried to nibble like a puppy on your lower lip, you gave a sharp laugh, rolling your eyes at him. “Are you trying to fuck me, Five?” Pushing your ass into your chair, stomach flexing, your hips fucked into his hand, taunting him.

When Five didn’t answer, you knew why. His brain couldn’t form the right response, and that was because he didn’t know what to say or do all of a sudden, like you just asking that had shaken him out of his own self-induced super horny trance. 

“I think it’s time for you to suck me off, sweetheart,” you mocked, and just like that, eyes glowing back, at the perfect height to bend over the length of dick in his face, Five did. 

Tentatively tasting you, you felt his tongue slide around your glans, causing you to anxiously twitch under his gentle touch. Growing bolder again, Five slid forward, grabbing your hips, aggressively pulling you to him, proving how strong he could be as he sucked the head of your cock between his silky lips. 

“Oh fuck,” you whispered, clutching the back of his head as he took as much of your erection into his mouth as he could. 

Even though he’d never done this before, Five was proving he wasn’t just very good at killing people and turning his own life into compete fucking chaos. Right now, the most important thing in his mind was your dick and he was owning that hot mess too.

Slowly letting him work into it, the building ache between your legs felt as good as your cock felt gently rocking into his throat. Like before, you were trying so hard to be careful with him. You had told him he was safe with you, that all he wanted was to be with you, but fuck…

The heady smell of your crotch and salty taste of your cock as he licked you and your fingers gripping his hair had him so excited, he was trembling with excitement. The tension building inside you just as strong, along with the ingrained need to take back control, you took his hair, pulling his head back. His mouth came off your cock with a pop as he looked up at you like he might snarl at you he was so mad. “Jerk off while I cum down your throat,” you said as you laughed at him.

As his mouth came back around you and he tore into his own pants, ripping his zipper down, you watched him start stroking himself, and that about sent your eyes rolling back in your head, but you forced them to stay open, dizzily admiring how fucking amazing he looked jacking off his big cock while he went doing down on you.

All you could do was enjoy every wet smacking sound you were making together. Your cock was swelling and leaking even more with his efforts and that only spurred him on even more.

You were inside his mouth and inside his mind. You could feel how much he wanted to taste your release, to swallow your gushing lust for him, letting it consume him, but before he could get you there, you pulled his head back again, frantically panting, and that only made Five look even more proud over what he’d done to you. 

He gave you a sloppy smile and you felt like your heart might burst out of your chest.

He wanted to drown in you, and you felt exactly the same about him. 

You took his hand. "What do you want, Five?” you asked, needing to hear it out loud.

“I want to give you everything,” he replied, his eyes still glowing as he meekly peered up at you.

You didn't know what to say to that and with it, the hand you were holding went slack as Five blankly waited for direction. You untangled your fingers from him and his hand fell next to his body.

You reached out, brushing your fingers across his smoothly shaven cheek. “Five, you have to promise me that if I do something you don’t want, you will tell me. You have to tell me the truth, always.”

He said nothing.

“Do you understand!” you worriedly pushed.

“I understand. I will tell you if I don’t want something. Only the truth.

“Do you want your clothes off?”

“Yes.”

You started unbuttoning his waistcoat, your hands shaking as you pulled back the tailored black fabric from his toned waistline. 

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” you whispered as he pushed his pants down the rest of the way, clumsily kicking out of them, then his shoes.

“I can’t stop thinking about how good it feels with you,” he said, struggling out of his dress shirt even before you had it all the way unbuttoned.

Taking him by his tie, you pulled his face to yours while squeezing his cock. 

Falling into you, he submissively whimpered. 

Your teeth flashed at him, just like your eyes. “Tell me, Five…do you want me to fuck you again? Or do you have something else in mind?”

“I want you again. You make it so easy for me. I don’t even need to think with you. That's what I want,” he quickly shot back, so fast and high pitched that you had to laugh at how rushed and eager he sounded.

Hearing Five admit that only fueled the dark arousal burning in your gut.

You smirked and shook your head, cupping his balls.

Five furrowed his brow, looking genuinely confused until you shuffled him back and pushed him down and on his bed. He was so hard, his long cock slapped against his torso, and that was so fucking hot you could hardly take it.

If he did fuck you, you’d really be fucked.

Dropping your pants to the floor, throwing off another one of his borrowed undershirts, you wedged your body down over his. Instinctively, Five spread his legs making room for you. You hooked his legs around your hips, pulling him closer until he could feel the heat of your cock pressing against his.

Leaning forward, kissing him softly, your dicks slid together. Gripping them in your hand to make it better, Five moaned into your mouth with appreciation.

Rubbing off against each other’s cocks, you started nipping at his neck, leaving hot trails of your tongue anywhere you could reach.

“I need you inside of me…” Five begged, trying to rut into you even faster.

Hearing him say that, you rubbed the rigid tip of your cocks against each other, a groan rumbling in your chest because it felt so good. Bringing your other hand between his legs, the pads of your fingers started circling his hole. 

“I don’t want to hurt you,” you breathed against his neck as his legs gave out, flopping to the bed as if you’d just rendered him useless by tickling his asshole, but then, just as fast, he kicked into overdrive, moaning your name, the heels of his feet digging into the bed so he could frot against you faster. "I can take it. I need you, please...fuck, please-" he growled, evidently not at all incapacitated.

Five gasped when you tilted his hips, pulling your fingers away from his ass, but then the hot tip of your cock slid between his legs instead and he looked so cutely frozen with nervous anticipation over it, stuck between terror and just not giving a damn anymore. 

“Not yet,” you said, laughing, just before flipping in him around like he weighed nothing more than blow-up fuck doll.

Like a man possessed, coming in behind him, your eyes trained on his ass crack, you gave him a good slap, making him hiss and bite at his pillow in retaliation. If that wasn’t indication enough that he’d liked that, the way he curled in, his hand coming to his dick, fondling it just as angrily confirmed it.

“Hold still and be a good boy, and I’ll fuck you so hard you’ll never be able to forget it,” you promised, laying another handprint on him as you smiled.

After pinching his ass, making him growl a little more, you trailed your hand down his spine, leaving it in place on the small of his back. You spread his hole open, revealing his tender pink skin. “You’re amazing, so perfect, Five,” you breathed, meaning every word of it.

Reaching for his bedside table where you'd seen that he had a bottle of lube hidden under his dirty magazines, you dug around, then finding what you needed, popped the cap, squirting some of the watery fluid in your hand. Swirling it around his rim had him flailing, so being even more generous, you massaged his taint too.

“Oh fuck, this feels so good,” Five cried, grinding back on your hand.

“I told you to stay still,” you laughed as you yanked him to the side of the bed, reaching between his legs, pulling his cock back, stretching it down against the bedspread. Once you had him where you wanted, you pinned Five’s crotch flat against the mattress, admiring the view of him laid out for you like that.

You let your fingers linger along his ass crack again before drifting lower, groping his tightly hung balls. You gave a firm stroke along his shaft, finishing the torment by gently pinching and squeezing the flared strawberry shaped thickness of his tip, making him drizzle a hot trail of pre-cum against the bed.

Probing your slicked finger at his ass, when you finally entered him, Five, whimpered and tried to grip his cock again, but you slapped his hand away.

“You bastard!” Five screamed, rabidly humping the side of the bed as you worked his glistening pink asshole.

Twisting and turning your wrist, you smoothed your finger back and forth across his prostate, altering between that and jabbing it in and out of his hole. Panting curses, Five spurted even more onto his bedspread with his rim pulsing against the base of your fingers.

He squirmed and tried to lift his ass when you pulled out, but then you sunk a second finger, scissoring into him, holding him in place with your other hand, not letting him up even after you’d brought in a third digit into the fun and he was crying out like you were killing him.

You looked down at the swell of your cockhead hanging over his ass. You knew this was going to be hard for him no matter what, but just the thought of your dick jamming in Five’s asshole made your breath hitch and your heart beat even faster.

“Please,” he yelped as you pulled out of him, taking your time, lovingly tugging his long, heavy erection, covering it with the lube left on your hand.

After repositioning his shaft down against the side of the bed again where you could keep an eye on it, you spread a line of fresh lube on your own cock, coating it until it shined and throbbed, rock hard. Ready, you tossed the bottle on the bed and grabbed Five’s hips, flipping him around. 

Pulling him close, Five looked you right in the eye as you pressed your thick, swollen glans against his puckered flesh, giving it a few pushes to test the resistance. It was still too tight to accept you unless you forced it.

“Five, you don’t have to do this,” you said. “Tell me right now if there is anything inside you telling you this isn’t what you want. I’ll stop, I swear.”

Five was silent, totally still for a moment, then he whispered, “I want this, with you. Only you. Please. I want this more than anything.”

That wasn’t true. He wanted to save the world and his family more than anything, but dying a little more for him anyway, you leaned over, lining your throbbing tip against his hole as you tenderly kissed his parted lips, your tongue caressing his as you slid against his opening.

“I only want you too,” you whispered back as you felt the pressure on your cock increasing. Sinking in, you pulled out almost right away and you felt the sweet feeling of his asshole trailing the thick head of your cock, sucking at it like it was begging for it to come back, but Five was trembling so hard it scared you straight. Your brain doing the thinking for a fraction of a second, you asked, “You, okay?”

Frantic, he nodded. “Burns,” he breathed, swallowing hard. "So-so good though.”

Slow and careful, you pushed into him again, your head swimming from the sensation of his body clamping around you. 

An inch in and Five gasped and fisted at his bedspread.

“That's it, you’re doing so good. Just relax,” you whispered, increasing the force of your thrusts the more your cock entered him. “You’re so tight, so perfect, Five. Ffff-” you hissed between clenched teeth as you pulled back, watching his straining red rim follow your cock back as you pulled out, gripping and caressing every inch of you. 

“Thank you,” he moaned, saying it again and again, each time your cock reached a new part of him.

“God, Five, fuck,” you gasped against his ear, your stomach sliding along his sweat covered body as you came down next to him again, unable to stay away. 

At your mercy, you jarred his body into the bed with your strong thrusts, starting to fully fuck into him like a wild animal.

“No-matter wh-what, your mine,” you rhythmically grunted, as you rolled your hips into his ass, your cock sliding freer by the second as Five took the abuse, relaxing into it even faster because your power was making his body obey.

Your hands gripping his ass as you thrust into his asshole, bucking against his body, Five slurred back, “I’mm- Ya ya-yoursss.-” 

At this point, he was mumbling all sorts of sounds you couldn’t understand. He threw his head to the side, burying his face in the blankets as if it could ease the overwhelming sensations he was feeling. Saliva slipped from the corner of his mouth, and you wiped it away for him.

Seeing him that way was breaking you.

"Look what they did to you, Five!" You gripped his jaw, making him look at you. "I'm the only one who gets to ruin you,” you said, lowering your voice. “Not them. Say it.”

“You’re the only one. Not them,” Five quietly cried, his head swaying as you violently pounded into him and his hips humped mindlessly, his asshole clenching down on your dick. 

“Don’t let them away with this,” you said, your mouth at his throat, your voice so low with rage and your mind so gone that it only pulled Five deeper into your head and into this madness.

A sharp shock of pain shot through him as you cock bottomed out, but you held his wrists down to stop him from writhing. You kissed his brow, whispering your regret. “M sor-sorry, Five. So fucking sorry.”

His entire body shuddering, on the verge of climax, Five didn't know why you were saying that. Trapped between your bodies, Five’s cock leaked all over him, and you, but the friction he was getting wasn’t enough. He wanted to scream.

When you put your hand to his throat, the fire in your eyes as your fingers enclosed his windpipe would have been terrifying if not for how much he wanted to see it, and hear you ordering him to touch himself

Obediently taking his cock in hand, Five quickly started beating off.

Plunging into him hard and fast, his ass smacked your pelvis. Over and over, you took him, harder and faster, until you were both delirious with pleasure.

His oxygen cut off, his body under your command, Five started to come.

"Five," you gasped, tears clouding your eyes as he let go of himself completely, pawing at his sheets with numb hands.

One second you wanted to escape what you'd done, then the next you knew you couldn't fathom it, and all you wanted was to keep him here like this as your prisoner for the rest of his life, and the abject horror of that was too much.

You locked your arms around his shoulders, bearing down as you hurtled in and out of his increasingly slack ass, relishing the wet squelches and reverberating smacks that accompanied every rapid thrust. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…” Five’s voice was strangled and frenzied, his repeated gasps, wet and dripping with desperation. 

You slammed into him to the hilt and didn’t pull out, deeply grinding your cock into him so hard you could see the bulge of it pushing up in his stomach. 

You felt the spasm beneath you that rolled down Five’s spine and pulsed in his ass, making him wriggle and writhe against your crotch as spurts of cum burst from the tip of his cock. Then everything got hotter and tighter as your cock erupted inside him.

Your eyes rolled back in your head as you gripped Five harder. He thrashed as you spilled, ruthlessly filling him with your seed. 

He howled as your hips slammed into him one last time, a wall of pleasure coming undone that made him cum a little more too, his spent cock twitching as his balls emptied everything he had left.

For a couple of minutes, you were both still. Five’s apartment was silent except for the sounds of erratic breathing. You didn’t want to move, but if you didn’t, you might collapse.

Pulling out, his body jerked from the loss. Where he’d felt so unbelievably full, the shock of your retreat brought tears to Five’s entranced eyes.

You crawled up next to him, the warmth of your body pressing next to his as you pulled his chin towards yours, leaving your thumb resting against his kiss swollen lips.

He shut his eyes, looking so beautiful. 

You told him he was.

You told him to look at you.

As he did, you could feel it that Five was aware he was hypnotized. His mind was fuzzy, as if his head was filled with cotton, but you holding him felt cozy and warm and safe. It was like for the first time in his life, nothing bad could touch him. 

He wasn’t lying. This was what he wanted.

While listening to you speak as he watched the motion of your lips, Five felt like the world was operating in slow motion. He could see the glow if his eyes reflected back in the sadness of yours, but he still didn’t understand why you looked that way. All he wanted was to make you happy, and he hated that you seemed like you weren’t.

What more could he give you? he wondered.

Your eyes misted over.

This wasn’t about that. This was about what you could give him.

“Listen very carefully, Five,” you whispered, so quietly there was no way the Commission’s spying mics could pick up what you were saying. “Tomorrow, get what you need to get out of here. When you have it. Go. You need to jump back to the exact point you left. Even if you can get your hands on a briefcase, you still need to jump like you did the last time. Go back to the exact same body you had before, change the math to make it happen. Do you understand?”

“But you can’t leave,” he said, looking so confused. His hand came back around your neck, his fingertips careful not to touch your fresh incision, but the point he was making was clear as the pain you felt over this.

“I found a way out. I will be with you. This is the way it has to be. Tell me you understand, and that you will do this for me.”

He said nothing. 

“You are doing this,” you insisted, the pools of your eyes lighting up with swirls of power he couldn’t escape. “Tell me that you understand what you are supposed to do. You need to take your Umbrella Academy uniform with you. Change into it if you still get it on. No one else needs to know this happened to you. Say you’ll do this for me.”

“I’ll do this. I understand” 

With you, like he’d said, everything was easy. There were no doubts, no thinking, so his answer came out of him as free as he finally felt. 

You’d said you would be with him. That was exactly what Five wanted, in his mind and his heart.

He smiled, and you smiled back.

Unable to look at him looking back at you with that look of softness in his glowing eyes, you pulled him flush with your body, the curve of his warm backside pressed to you in all the right places. You brushed your face against the nape of his neck, tenderly applying kisses to his cooling skin as you whispered a continuous chant of how much he meant to you.

With words of love, you lulled him to sleep.

Listening to Five’s soft breaths as he slipped away in your arms, lost in his dreams, you shut your eyes, but like the fiery presence of your power that remained ignited for him, clinging to him as much as you were with your arms, your tears couldn't put the fire out.

Chapter 10: What Defines Us

The next day, just like the one before, Five dressed and got ready for work, but before he left, he bent over, placing a feather light kiss on your forehead, then he tucked you in, ensuring you didn’t get cold without him there cuddling you.

You felt him doing it, but you kept your eyes closed, pretending to be asleep. Biting in your smile, you thought of how sweet he was, how as soon as you were asleep, and you could no longer dominate him with your power, he’d reversed your positions, making you into his little spoon. 

What you wouldn’t give to know what it was like to be with Five, for even one more day, with him getting to just be him, and you just be you. 

What could have been?

Hours later, your mind still linked with his, you felt it when Five snuck past the tube operations room, following Dot. 

He was so focused, so dead set on doing what you said. 

Taking a deep breath, doing the only thing left you could do to help him, buying him some time, you stepped out the door of his apartment, your knees hitting the pavement as the sensor in your neck activated, alerting the Commission's agents you were trying to get away. 

“The Handler knows that Five is up to something,” Dot nervously said, handing the order he had seen her typing to Gloria. “Send this to Hazel and Cha-Cha immediately.”

As soon as Dot was gone, in a flash, Five was behind Goria, thumping her in the back of the head with his pistol.

As The Handler was hatefully looking down at you as you foamed at the mouth and her agents dragged you back over the threshold of Five’s apartment, blinking into an empty office he'd staked out earlier, Five sat down, opening the tube. “Reassignment: Protect Harold Jenkins,” he muttered, his eyes wide in recognition of what this meant. 

This was what he’d come for.

Heart racing, looking at the door, listening for any sign they were out there, he quickly got to typing new orders for The Commission’s moronic mask wearing assassins. 

The old typewriter clicked, and the paper whirled as he pulled the new orders out.

Quickly stripped and wriggled back into his way too small academy uniform, with the words, Terminate Hazel for Immediate Extraction, and Terminate Cha-Cha for Immediate Extraction on the office memorandums in his hand, Five blinked back to the tube room. 

“Didn’t you like the suit I bought you?” The Handler said, wandering in, narrowing her eyes at him after he’d sent the second tube. “And…you know that’s not how we do things here. Where’s Gloria?”

Five turned, hands in his shorts pockets as he shrugged. His fly wouldn't even go up because the wool covering his ass was so stretched so tight, but he didn't give a shit that he looked like Luther about to burst out of his clothes. “Oh, I couldn't find her anywhere,” he replied, just as the woman in question groaned on the floor behind her desk. 

The Handler shook her head at him. “You’re a great disappointment to me. You and that other promising face I so generously gave you to keep you company. You can’t change what’s to come, Five. I truly find it so odd that you can’t shed this fantasy. You’re a first rate-pragmatist. You belong here with us.”

“I don’t belong anywhere thanks to you. You made me a killer!” he snapped.

“You were always a killer. I just pointed you in a direction.”

Blinking, Five disappeared just before the bullet she fired at him flew through his chest. 

Reappearing behind the shelves, The Handler kept stalking him, her free hand reaching in her pocket. “With the click of this switch I have right here in my hand...” 

She paused. 

Laying on the floor, as you looked up at the sun shining in from the only window in Five’s apartment, the pain hit you again. Before everything went black, all you saw was the happiness in Five's sweet eyes as he looked up at you, his lips softly smiling.

The Handler let up on the switch, her hand coming back out of her pocket, joining the other on her gun trained at Five. “He’s gone,” she continued, and that is on you, not me. Just another death on your hands.”

The connection to you severing like a knife being stabbed through his heart, enraged, Five blinked, right in front of The Handler, his face covered in a sheen of sweat, his teeth bared. 

“We both know that you have a limit,” she sang, at him, her gun pointed at his face. “I saved you from a lifetime of being alone. You owe me.”

She pulled the trigger.

Click, click, click.

Five grinned as she tried over and over to kill him but had nothing left in her chamber to do it.

“You didn’t save me from a lifetime alone,” he said, “He did! And I do owe a debt.”

He blinked, landing behind her, pulling the pin on his grenade.

“But it’s not to you,” he finished, wiggling the piece of metal in her face before he bowled it along the floor under her feet.

Blinking again, his fingers shaking so badly he almost couldn't dial in the date he needed on the briefcase, the numbers Five had to use to get back home flew through his head, but all he wanted to do was go back to stop this from happening to you but your voice in his head lingered and he couldn't refuse it yet.

You had told him this was how it had to be. You told him you’d be there with him.

You’d lied. But you’d done it for him, to save him.

Clarity was a bitch.

His teeth on metal as he pulled the pin, Five took off running, turning as the explosion rocked the briefcase closet, blowing out the glass windows. 

In a fiery blaze, Five was gone. Landing on top of the bar in the living room, back at the Umbrella Academy, pain racked his small body. He’d been hit somewhere but he couldn't tell where. It didn’t matter. You weren’t there, the feeling of you inside him was gone, and that hurt more than anything could ever hurt.

He was so fucking mad!

And fuck did he need that coffee Allsion was holding. 

He had the briefcase. He had time in his hands, he quickly rationalized, doing what he always had to do, which was survive, and cling to hope.

Someday, he’d get back to you. Like he hissed at his siblings as they looked at him like he was somehow more nuts then than he was when he’d appeared out of pulsing blue vortex, falling on the ground in the courtyard during Ben’s funeral, Who cares if dad messed us up? Are we gonna let that define us? No.

Now Five was more hell bent than ever on seeing this thing through.

He was going to fix this, and not just for them. Even if you weren’t in his head anymore, he wanted to do it for you.

Someday he’d go back and save you the way you’d just saved him. He knew what it felt like to look into your eyes, floating in a bliss that was a gift only you could give.

The warmth of his blood seeping into his rumbled dress shirt, chucking the empty coffee cup behind him, Five looked at his family who were standing there looking dumbfounded as ever.

He grinned crazily. 

One day, he didn’t know when, but he would know what it was like to be loved by you again. 

You were his.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That's it, my lovies. Please don't hate me for what I just did. You never know, maybe our new boy isn't really gone. And Five of anyone can get him back either way. He just needs figure out how and do a few more things first. 😉

Please let me know if you liked this one with a like, re-blog or a comment if you have some feedback you want to share. It means so much to us writers on here to see that stuff.

I hope you liked this. I know I did. I really liked this hypnotic young man with Five, and I am so happy I got the original request from my friend with the idea for the pairing. Developing him a little was so fun and I really struggled with not making this into so much more. I could see so much happening here but I fast tracked the shit out of it so it didn't end up like one of my other novel length Five stories. 😂

Link to all my other Tumblr Story and art posts

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[frannyzooey]

On The Green: 2

Ezra x f!reader

Rating: M (corpses, harvesting violence) will be E in later chapters ❤️

a/n: thank you endlessly to @the-scandalorian who lent me her big beautiful beta brain, to @bageldaddy who made me blush with pride and to @the-ginger-hedge-witch who soothed my Ezra nerves by checking this dialogue like the queen she is ❤️

Series Masterlist

—

You know he’s waiting for you to speak, but you…can’t.

He takes his helmet off, and you can see his features more clearly. His skin has a ruddy look to it, like it’s been days since he’s last bathed or eaten well, or gotten a decent sleep. He looks older, more weary without the reflective dome hiding the finer lines of his tired features – but still, no less intimidating. 

He looks rougher, his sharp eyes darker and more assessing. 

Your eyes make a slow circuit between his hand, which still loosely holds a weapon, and his dead partner. 

There is no deal to be made here. Not for you, and you know it. 

“Kevva waits, girl.” The sharp snap of his words brings your attention back to his face. He looks impatient. “You ready to talk about that deal?”

You swallow against the dryness in your throat, trying hard to fight against the sinking feeling in your chest. “What do you want.” 

It comes out more of a defeated statement than a question, and he studies you for a moment. 

“To be perfectly candid, I am in need of transit.”

You stare at him blankly, and he sighs with impatience. 

“I want your ship,” he states plainly. “However, I am not suggesting to leave you stranded if that’s what you’re thinking. As I find myself lacking….” He glances over at his dead partner for a moment. “I am generously proposing we join forces. Protection, for transport.”

“Protection?” you spit. “You gonna protect me as a partner like you did him?”

“He needed no protection, I can assure you that,” he huffs wryly. “But you?” He pauses in his speech, narrowing his gaze. “What is your plan here, anyway?”

Trying to appear like you have one, you steady your voice. “I’m here to dig.”

He laughs as if your statement is absurd. “I find myself disinclined to believe that, but let’s pretend for a moment that is the case. You dig. What then?”

“I’ll repair my ship and be on my way. Home, with something to sell when I get back.”

“And who is going to help you repair your ship?” he mocks. “You know how to do that too?” His eyes drift to your father’s lifeless form. “Seems your partner is out of commission. I think perhaps he was the mechanic?”

“He wasn’t my partner, I told you.” The corner he’s got you backed in displays plainly on your face. You shift your jaw, looking away. “I’ll find someone to help me. Someone –”

“A girl like you?” he interrupts, raising his eyebrows. “You wander into a camp of fringely mercs, raw, at the end of their tour, what happens? You appeal to their sympathies?” He shakes his head. “They have none. They are ruthless profiteers. You must have something to offer or they will find something to take from you.”

The emphasis he puts on the last few words makes his implication clear, and panic creeps into your limbs. 

“We’re in the same trough, you and I. Can’t say I was pleased to find your mare all black and cockways as she was supposed to be my redemption as well,” he muses, looking around at the poor state of the pod. “But I know how to fix her up. I can help you.”

He seems sincere enough in his offer, but everything he’s done thus far shows you his supposed sincerity means absolutely nothing. 

“I want someone else.” A childish statement, but the truth.

“Well I want a lot of things too, little bird.” He looks almost regretful for a moment, before leveling you with his gaze. ”Starting with your ship.”

Your mind still stuck on what he said about the other mercs on this planet, you wonder what’s stopping him from doing the same. 

“They will find something to take from you.”

Will he?

You could try to go it alone, but your first fucking hour alone on this planet has been nightmare enough to dissuade you from that course of action. If he doesn’t kill you to get this ship, the next person will. If he found you, others will, too. 

You think, buying yourself some time. 

“It’s clear you don’t belong here, little bird. I’m your safest route home,” he argues. “That is the goal, right?”

You bring your eyes back to him, wary and he seems to recognize something in your expression. When he slowly steps forward like he’s approaching a wild animal, you scoot back. 

“Hey,” his tone softens. “I’m not going to hurt you. You’re no threat to me, a fragile little thing like you. Anyone else would have killed you outright by now, I promise you that. You have a functioning ship – a rarity in these parts. I can help you protect it.”

“Only because you want to use it,” you sneer, and the edge of his lips lift. 

“Of course,” he replies. “I’m not foolish enough to offer my services for nothing. I promise you no harm if you promise me the same.”

“You killed your partner. Just now, right in front of me. What’s stopping you from doing the same to me?”

“I could have killed you a thousand different ways by now.” His voice slips into something lower, menacing yet truthful. “Like I said, you’re no threat to me. Besides, I think your ship would be better piloted by two, am I right?”

Seeing no way out, you deflate. 

And nod. 

“I need to hear you say it, little bird,” he tilts his head with a light scold. 

You glare up at him. “Yes. I accept.”

“Excellent!” he says, clapping his hands together, the sound making you jump. “First things first. Let’s move these bodies.”

The bodies.

Forgetting all about your new deal with a murderer, your stomach drops at the reminder of moving your dad’s body. 

“What’s your name, by the way?” The stranger grunts with exertion, lifting his partner’s feet to drag his body into a prone position. Crouching, he begins to pat the dead man’s pockets down. 

He’s callous about it, perfunctory. Not gentle in the slightest which makes sense since the man is dead, but still, there is something about the deft way he’s going through everything he had on him that makes it known that this is not the first time he’s done this. Not by a long shot. You wonder if it’s just from his experience on this planet, or an indicator of something larger.

“Mine’s Ezra, if you were wondering.” He gives a teasing glance, making note of your rudeness. 

When you don’t offer it, he merely shrugs. “S’okay if you don’t wanna tell me. I understand your apprehension. But I’ll have to call you something.” He seems to ponder for a moment, placing loose items he’s deemed useful in a pile by the man’s hip. “Since you came down from out of the sky, I would say “Birdie” is a suitable choice.”

You pull a face he doesn’t see, and then he’s moving the belongings to the side, making a clear path to the door of the pod. When his eyes shift to rest on your dad’s body, a sudden urge flares within you to stop him.

“He got anything useful on him?” Ezra’s chin jerks towards it. 

On instinct, you follow his gaze, immediately regretting it. You turn away in revulsion, the pooled blood a dark, congealed mass that sticks in your vision. Closing your eyes, you shake your head with a tight movement. “I don’t think he had anything on him besides his, uh…drops. Everything else is here in the pod.”

If he wonders what you mean by “drops,” he doesn’t ask. Instead, he approaches the body and glancing back, frowns at your hesitant expression.

“Look. You don’t—” he sighs, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. His voice lowers. “I’ll need your help with the big guy, but I can do this one by myself.”

“No,” you protest, forcing yourself to move forward. You can still taste bile, sharp on your tongue. “I should be the one—”

He puts his hand on your arm, shaking his head. “No,” he says kindly, but firm. “You shouldn’t be. A girl shouldn’t have to put her own father in the ground.” He steps around you gently. “Tell you what. Why don’t you head outside and keep watch, little bird. Let me know if you see anyone coming. Make no mistake, there will be scavengers looking for the same opportunity I was, and we’ve got to protect our only means of escaping this planet.”

He gathers your helmet to place in your hands, checking your filters are connected and charged. 

In your hurry to get out of the pod and away from the body, you’re already sealing your helmet into place when he snatches the thrower off the floor.

“Hey,” he calls out sharply, just as you’re about to step out of the hatch. He thrusts the weapon towards you. “Don’t forget your thrower. Armed. Always armed here. Understood?” His gaze holds yours in weighted significance. 

You nod, taking it from his outstretched hand. “Okay.”

Opening the hatch, you step outside for the first time. 

Everything is green. The brush, the trees, the sky–all varying shades of the color. Dust floats through the air; aimless, toxic, suffocating. You wonder how long you would last if you took your helmet off. Studying the lush, towering trees, your eyes follow the paths of thick vines that both climb up the trunks and spill over the dark soil, coming to rest on the soft dirt that your boots sink into. You lift your foot and the imprint you leave behind is as clear as the two sets that lead from the edge of the forest to your pod. 

The footprints circle the pod, and your stomach lurches at the thought that they were circling without you even knowing. 

Resolutely keeping your back towards the ramp, you tighten your grip on your thrower and use the moment to take stock of your situation. Your father told you a couple of things about this planet: the air is toxic, the population is non-existent, and the main reason anyone comes is for the aurelac. An amber colored gem found within the bowels of pit sites, the price it can fetch is significant. His drops clutched tightly in his hand, he told you of a neglected site filled with treasure—a rumor, the Queen’s Lair–his eyes wild and clouded with liquid that made them shine with foolish hope. 

That’s it, though. No map left behind, no coordinates. No solid confirmation it even exists. He only brought you along because it would be dangerous to leave you completely orphaned for however long it took him, and to take advantage of your (limited) skills as a co-pilot. 

When you hear a heavy slide and a grunt behind you, you keep your eyes on the forest, scanning the trees. 

Nothing to offer the man who has offered you partnership, you wonder how long it’s going to take him to figure out you’re of no value. Completely useless, better off dead and out of the way. Your mind scrambles for leverage, and you’re still thinking when you feel a tap on the shoulder. 

Swinging around, you point your thrower – directly at Ezra’s chest. 

His hands fly up in surrender. 

“Steady now. It’s just me.”

He must have connected your comlinks because you can hear his words, low and slightly modulated through your helmet. Lowering your weapon and assuming he’s going to take it from you, you offer it up, but he waves it away, resting his hand on a pistol strapped to his hip. 

“Good to see you’re quick on the draw,” he smirks. He jerks his head towards the pod. “I need your help with the other one now.”

You glance over his shoulder towards the woods, trying to find a sign of your father’s body and his voice snaps your attention back to him. 

“Hey. Don’t…” he pauses. “Don’t. Say your goodbyes to the Green, girl, but don’t go lookin’. You don’t need to see that anymore.”

Surprised by the consideration in his statement, you follow him up the ramp. Inside the pod, he lifts under his former partner's arms. 

“Grab the feet – go ahead and push, while I pull.”

It takes ages getting the massive, limp body down and out, but eventually it’s rolled down the ramp with a thud. Ezra’s breathing sounds loud, and he takes a moment to catch his breath. 

“What you want to do is cover the body with rocks. Try to hide it, so as to not attract any attention. The locals, they –” he grunts, dragging the man towards the brush, “—they leave bodies out in the open, as part of their ritual to honor the memory but I think it’s rather–” he shoves the man down a slope, letting gravity do the work for him, “uncouth.”

Slowly descending down the slant of dirt, you follow behind him. Not used to an explanation following orders, you listen closely to his words. He gives you more context for his decisions than your father ever did, and you pocket every piece of information, eager for it all. Anything to help your survival in this place. 

With both your heads bent in task, he breaks the silence after a few moments. “What was your father here to harvest?”

Lifting a rock from the ground, you toss it in the general direction of the body. “Gems.”

Ezra huffs a laugh. “Most gems are long gone. Discovered and harvested during the rush.” He looks over at you from the corner of his eye. “Got any information on where he was hoping to find unfound riches?”

“If most gems have been harvested, what are you doing here?”

He laughs in delight. “Rapport, how I’ve missed it.”

You take note of the way he side steps your question. “He didn’t tell me.”

“What did he tell you about this place?”

Easy to talk to, charming and affable, you can see how easily he would wheedle information out of others. Unsure how much you should really be confiding in him, you decide less is better for now. 

“He didn’t tell me anything. Just that we were going to come here to dig – or rather, he was.”

“Nothing?” he asks, surprised. “He led you here, unprepared?”

You say nothing, and his expression turns more solemn. He shakes his head. “Foolish, keeping you in the dark like that. My own partner was more of a utility. Seems like your father treated you the same way.”

His statement hurts, though you try not to let it show. You shrug instead, watching your steps as you pick through the rocks. 

He gives you time to reply, and when you offer nothing up, he continues. “Did you ever want to learn how to dig? Harvest gems?” 

You don’t think you’ve ever been asked that question, and when you look up at him to find him looking at the ground, you can hear the smile he has on his face through the commlink when you don’t answer. He continues, “I stumped you, didn’t I.”

“I don’t…” you flounder. You’ve always had a distaste for the profession, spending your life around the seedy people who do it. However, it seems rude to say that outright to his face. “I’ve never really thought about it. It would be useful to learn, I guess.”

“Maybe,” he says. “Depends on what you want from this life. It’s a big world out there, Birdie. If you could have your pick, what would you do?”

“Go home.”

The words slip out before you can stop them, and though it’s such a small thing to ask in such an endless universe, he just nods like he understands. 

 –

The bodies taken care of, he leads you back to the pod and tells you to wait there for him. He’s got a camp close by – a tent, filled with his belongings – and while he’s gone collecting it, you clean the disorganized mess inside the pod. 

Go home. You don’t even know why you said that, there isn’t much of a home to go home to. This pod has been more of a home than anything else has; the only constant in your transient life. What you meant was some place that felt like a home. A comforting place, where you felt safe and wanted and cared for. The place itself didn’t really matter, more the feeling it represented. You had yet to find it, but you knew it wasn’t here. 

The metal cabinets that line the walls had burst open upon impact, so you take your time methodically putting everything right. Medical supplies, vac packs of food, your father’s harvesting tools. His case, with his initials stamped on it. His supply of chemicals, his various scalpels unceremoniously dumped onto the floor. You snap them carefully back into their case, and put them away. 

Then your things: your bedding, your sparse collection of clothing, your journal. Wrapping the bound book in a shirt, you tuck it into your pillowcase, hiding it. Your headphones appear undamaged, and you test them with a couple of the cassettes that lay scattered across the floor. The music flows through them uninterrupted, and for the first time today, you feel a small sliver of relief. 

You find his drops underneath his chair. 

The tiny brown vial with the stopper you’ve seen him hover above his eye a million times, you aren’t ready for the resentment and rage you feel as you hold it in your palm. You can’t remember a time when your father didn’t have them on him. Slices of time flash through your mind: the sight of his back as he left you for days on end, the slow, syrupy drag of his words when he mumbled after putting the drops in, the feverish need in his eyes as he slipped the bottle from his pocket to calm the trembling in his hands – right before an emergency sensor went off in the pod and everything went to hell. 

The urge to crush it underneath your boot or take it outside and smash it against a tree flares bright, and a scream builds at the base of your throat. 

In your mind, you let it out. In real life, you tuck the bottle into a cabinet and shut the door. 

A signal agreed upon when he left, you know Ezra is back when he knocks rhythmically before entering. Busy scrubbing the dash clean, you’re going over the blood spots for the third time. You can’t see them anymore, but you still feel them there.  

“Got everything,” he states, removing his helmet. Tossing it on the ground, he rakes his fingers through his sweat damp curls with a sigh. “Quite the load to carry back. I’ll need space within your vessel to store my things.”

He steps towards a cabinet, and you stand, alarmed.

“Wait. You’re staying in here? With me? I thought you said you have a tent.”

He ignores the way your voice gets higher and tighter with every word, opening a door to peer inside. “I do, but it would be foolish to separate. If you’re opposed to discomfort, then you never had any business being on the Green, girl.”

It wasn’t my choice, you want to scream at him, but you hold your tongue. 

“Can’t you sleep outside in front of the hatch? To make sure no one gets in?”

He shakes his head, opening another cabinet. He rifles through your medical supplies, impressed. “This beauty really is fully stocked, isn’t she? No wonder I thought she’d be my redemption. Riches beyond belief hidden within her unassuming depths.”

He’s murmuring more to himself than anyone, and annoyance begins to simmer at the careless way he’s putting your freshly organized things back. You’re just about to repeat yourself when he closes the door and turns to you. 

“It won’t do to sleep outside. I need to protect this pod just as much as I need to watch over you.”

He opens another cabinet, and your cassettes spill out with a slide. 

“What are these?” he asks, already bending to pick one up. 

“Don’t worry about it.” Snatching it from his hand, you kneel down to gather them up. Huffing with frustration, you cram them back into their storage and shut the door quickly. 

He watches it all, his jaw shifting in thought. 

“Look,” he ventures. “I know this isn’t ideal, but it’s gonna be a long couple of months if you don’t trust me.”

You say nothing, and he sighs. 

“A good partnership is only made so by candid discourse.”

He’s right. You know he’s right, and yet you don’t have it in you to acknowledge it out loud. How he expects you trust him you truly don’t know, and yet in the hours since you’ve met him, he has shown you kindness. A partnership offer when you don’t deserve it, protection against his former partner, burying your father for you. Whether that kindness is real or a ruse to have you lower your defenses, you don’t know. 

Either way, you don’t really have a choice. 

“There are a couple of spare storage bins over there,” you gesture at the corner, defeated. “You can put your things in there.”

“My sincerest thanks,” he replies with a slip of sarcasm, and turning back to your cleaning, you roll your eyes. 

–

“I need to protect this pod just as much as I need to watch over you.”

The words repeat on a loop in your mind; your body shifting on the stiff cot. His presence in the small space feels foreign, your body hyper aware of it. You’ve never slept in this pod with anyone but your father. 

Your father. 

You wait for the grief to come, but when it doesn’t, you blame shock. The alternative would be to think about how you feel nothing, which, what kind of a daughter loses her father and feels nothing? Tendrils of shame seep through your thoughts, and you roll away from Ezra as if he can see into your mind. Your back facing him, you try to shut him out, focusing instead on the moon outside the window. 

It’s full, high and clear above the horizon, suspended in the inky sky. Your eyes study the craters carved into the surface, and you take slow and steady breaths out, mimicking sleep. You wish you could slip your headphones on and drown out the tension that fills the small space, but you don’t want to leave yourself vulnerable like that. 

You hear him shuffle behind you, and your shoulders brace themselves with tension – but when he doesn’t make any other sound, you go back to watching the floating dust. 

Isolated, alone. No different than any of the other thousands of nights you’ve spent staring out at the moon while waiting for your father to come home. The weight of your situation compresses the air in your lungs, and you feel the sharp, hot sting of tears behind your eyes. Squeezing them shut, you will them away. 

You won’t cry in here with him. You won’t. 

Both resentfully frustrated with his presence and deep down, grateful for it, you cross your arms tight across your chest and squeeze. Pouring all your emotions into the pocket of your chest, you squeeze and you squeeze, soothing yourself. 

He shuffles around quietly behind you, getting comfortable on his own cot and you’re thinking it’s going to be a long night just before the weight of the day presses upon your eyelids. 

They flutter shut, and you fall into a dreamless sleep.