#I don’t post about her much or draw her much. I just spin her around in my head like a rotisserie chicken

[blueyedgrass]

cNiki <3

[minisugakoobies]

Paradise | JJK - Fifteen

Pairing: Jungkook x Reader

Genre: smut, neighbors to lovers (not quite friends but not quite strangers), slow burn, love triangle, Stripper!AU

Rating: M (18+)

Warnings: we finally get a JinKook showdown in the most ridiculous way possible, the tiniest bit of angst, CONFESSIONS!!, followed by post-confession sex, JK hits it raw, OC in lingerie, fingering, oral sex (f receiving), lots of talking about feelings, I'm sorry but this gets a little soft because I love these two

Word Count: 6.3k

Disclaimers: NSFW, obviously I don’t own BTS - they just inspire me

Summary: That sexy man on stage - the one currently giving your friend the lap dance of her LIFE - is your super shy neighbor, Jeon Jungkook?!

A/N: We're back and we're nearing the end! Thank you to everyone who has been waiting patiently for the next chapter - I didn't mean for it to take so long, but, well, life 🤷‍♀️ Anyway, I'm very excited to share this chapter with you finally - I hope you enjoy!

Unbeta’d as usual. Please don’t be a silent reader, I’d love to hear from you!  💕

Previous Chapter ♦️ Paradise Masterlist ♦️ Next Chapter

Despite his words earlier, Jungkook is in fact one of the first people on the dance floor when it opens. And of course, you’re right there with him. How could you say no when he holds his hand out and smiles at you like that - like nothing else would make him happier right now than you in his arms?

After all the time you’ve spent admiring Jungkook’s moves when he dances for you, it’s a whole new perspective to get to experience them when you’re dancing with him. Part of that difference is due to the deejay keeping it wholesome with the song selections, since Jennie and Yoongi’s family members are the majority of the revelers surrounding you. So there’s a lot less grinding and a lot more distance between the two of you.

You don’t really try to keep up with him - it’s not that you’re a terrible dancer, it’s just that he’s so fucking good. His every movement is so natural, like he’s not even trying. He does show off just a little bit, when Jisoo eggs him on, slipping into a freakishly accurate robot that has a small ring of guests gathering around to cheer him on. The giant grin on his face tells you he’s enjoying the attention just as much as the faint blush on the tips of his ears tells you he’s just a little bashful about it. 

After a few songs, the music finally slows a little, the crowd thinning as only couples are left. Jungkook draws you close, one arm sliding around your back as the other clasps your hand, holding it to his chest. The room around you falls away as he takes the lead, swaying with you around the floor.

“Are you having a good time, jagi?” he murmurs after a moment. 

“I am, Kookie.” Lifting your head from his shoulder, you gaze into his eyes, feeling that familiar warmth overtake you when he returns your smile. “Thanks for coming with me today.”

“Like I’d turn down the chance for free food and drinks,” he teases, laughing when you huff and try to pull away, tightening his grip to keep you locked in place. “What? I’m just being honest.” 

“Ass,” you mutter, but you can’t stop smiling, and neither can he. He lifts his arm, hand pressing lightly on your back to guide you in a spin, then brings you back into his embrace. You spot Rosé across the room, watching you and Jungkook dance, and she politely claps as you shake your head, grinning. 

The beat picks up again, and your friends surround you and Jungkook. Rosé, Jisoo, and Jin all dance together as Lisa introduces Yi-Jeong to the group. Even Jennie and Yoongi join in, and it’s true what Jennie told you yesterday - her man definitely has moves. Everyone’s happy and laughing, and you’re so full of joy you could just burst.

Jin suddenly twirls, facing Jungkook with an intense look on his face. The younger man takes a step back in surprise as Jin starts to rock his body back and forth, like he’s about to bust out a breakdance move. Is he seriously about to - 

“Ooh, dance battle!” Jisoo cups her hands around her mouth, yelling. Your other friends start whooping, forming a circle around Jungkook and Jin. Jisoo pulls you next to her from where you’ve been standing, so you’re not between them anymore. “Get it, Bambi!” 

While the others around you are shouting encouragement, you just gaze silently between the two men, unsure if you should be joining in. Unsure if this is a friendly competition or if the tense vibes you feel radiating between them is something more. From the expressions on their faces, it’s clear that they’re going to do this, so you just sigh, bobbing along to the beat, waiting for the show. 

Jungkook stops gawking at Jin and begins bedrocking, swinging his hands as he faces Jin with a fierce look. Jin glares back, sticking his arms out as he undulates in a rather impressive wave, rolling his long limbs from left to right. 

It’s not until you hear clapping behind you that you realize that more people have joined the circle, crowding in behind you, shouting Jin’s name. Jungkook hears it too, his brow furrowing slightly. It’s clear his competitive nature’s kicked in when he peels his suit jacket off. You hold your hand out for it automatically, feeling a swoop of heat in your stomach as he gives it to you with a wink. 

The tip of his tongue slips out as Jungkook suddenly throws himself towards the ground, landing on one hand like he’s doing a handstand, and then kicks his legs out in a cartwheel kick. He’s so smooth with it, inverting himself like it’s nothing, that you actually gasp.

It’s like he cranked the volume up on the crowd, and someone - Rosé, maybe? - starts chanting Jungkook’s name. You can’t help but add your voice to the mix. 

Jungkook lands back on his feet and motions for Jin to go. Jin also takes his jacket off, jaw clenching firmly. He rolls his body a few times before bouncing into the Roger Rabbit, feet stepping quickly, arms flapping at his side like wings. It’s surprisingly loose and funky, two words you don’t typically associate with Jin. 

Lisa yells, “Go chef!” and the crowd divides itself into two chants. Jin ends his turn with a little flourish, dusting imaginary dirt from his broad shoulders. But you know from Jungkook’s smirk that he’s undaunted, and without a second’s hesitation, he swiftly dives to the floor, launching himself into a windmill.

Your friends explode into cheers, watching Jungkook roll round and round the floor. As he picks up speed, he tucks his arms up onto his stomach, doing the trick with no hands. Then he comes to a stop with a freeze, legs hanging in the air. 

The crowd chants Jungkook’s name only as he rises to his feet. He straightens his tie, then gestures to Jin. Jin rocks for a few beats, a strange look in his eye. 

Then he throws his hands out in front of him, holding one steady while the other mimics winding a reel. 

“Is he - is he fishing for Jungkook?” 

You don’t answer Rosé as there’s no need to. Jin’s clearly doing the fishing pole move. One by one, the voices around you grow quieter. Jungkook blinks at Jin for a few seconds, obviously thrown by this decision.

Then he grins, flapping his hands by his face like fins.

“Oh, wow, they share a brain cell,” Lisa says. “Did not see that coming.” 

Jisoo groans. “Well, this is anticlimactic. I was promised bloodshed.” 

“Who promised you that?” you ask, laughing. Feeling a tiny bit relieved. 

The crowd departs, but the two men keep dancing. Jungkook pretends he’s been hooked, thrashing from side-to-side before dropping to the ground in his signature dolphin kick. Always a performer to the end, you think, as he hops back to his feet, and he and Jin take turns bowing to one another. 

The smile on his face gets wider when Jungkook sees you clapping for him. He reaches for his jacket, and you impulsively press a kiss to his cheek, biting back a laugh as his eyes widen slightly.

“If those are the moves you pull out for a dance-off, I can’t wait to see what you’ve got planned for later,” you whisper. Jungkook’s arm grips your side as he tilts his head to look at you. His touch is warm, but it can’t match the heat in his eyes. 

“Careful what you ask for, jagiya,” he replies, gaze dropping to your mouth so briefly that you almost miss it. “I need some water. Do you want anything?” 

You shake your head, and he disappears towards the tables. As soon as he’s gone, you feel someone brush your arm. 

“Okay, I’ll give it to the kid - he’s got moves,” Jin declares, holding his hand out in an offer to dance. You silently take it, letting him pull you close as the deejay cues up a ballad. 

Jin’s quiet for a few beats, leading you in small circles around the dance floor. It strikes you that this is the first time the two of you have really been face-to-face since yesterday, that weird standoff in the hallway earlier notwithstanding. You haven’t had a chance to talk to him alone since - 

“So what’s up with your boy?” 

You meet Jin’s gaze with a raised eyebrow. “Jungkook? What do you mean?”

Jin shrugs, the movement jostling your hand where it rests on his shoulder. “I mean, he looked like he was ready to throw hands when he introduced himself earlier. Like he was just itching for a fight.” 

“And you’re not?” You snort when he blinks in exaggerated confusion. “Oh, come on, all those snide little comments you were making at the table? Arguing with him about who has it worse? What was that all about?” 

Jin maintains his affronted expression for half a minute longer before he starts to laugh. “Okay, fine, I admit I was just pushing his buttons at dinner. In my defense, he made it too easy!” He laughs harder when you roll your eyes and start to pull away. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry. But I had to do something to cheer myself up. It wasn’t easy for me to sit there and watch the two of you together, to see the way you look at him.” 

Your curiosity tampers down your annoyance for a moment. “How do I look at him?” 

Jin smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Like there’s no one else in the world.” 

You glance away, unsure what to say to that. Your gaze flits around the room until it lands on Jungkook, finding him at one of the tables, chatting with Lisa and Yi-jeong. His nose crinkles as he laughs with your friend, tattooed hand coming up to swipe away the hair that falls into his face, and you hear Jin sigh. 

“Yeah, that’s the look,” he says, shaking his head. He shifts his arm from your back, leading you into a gentle spin. “I was honestly surprised at how easy it was to antagonize him. Figured nothing I could do or say would bother him, knowing he won your heart.”

When you don’t respond to that, staring at Jin’s bowtie instead of meeting his eye, he hums. 

“Oh, I see. You haven’t told him yet.” 

Without warning, Jin dips you. You gasp, clutching his bicep to steady yourself.

“Are you having second thoughts?” he murmurs. His hand grips yours tightly, arm cradles your back, keeping you in place while his face hovers a mere breath above yours. 

It’s an intimate pose, the way he holds you now, yet just like yesterday, you feel nothing.

“No. No second thoughts.” You’ve recovered from your momentary shock, voice steady as you reply. “I’m sorry, Jin, but like I told you yesterday, it’s Jungkook I want.” 

Immediately, you’re back on your feet. 

“Yeah, I didn’t think so.” Jin grins a crooked grin. “Had to ask, though.” 

You roll your eyes. “I’m starting to regret this whole ‘let’s be friends’ idea.” 

He ignores your jibe. “Can I ask you a serious question?” 

You take a moment to study his face before answering. All traces of humor have vanished as he waits for your response. Slowly, you nod. 

“What are you waiting for?” 

The rooftop garden glows softly in the night air, lit by tiny lights strung along the trees and flowering plants. Hidden speakers strewn around the open space bring the music from the reception outside, providing a gentle soundtrack for a beautiful summer evening. 

“Where are we going?” Jungkook asks, hand clasped firmly in yours as you lead him out of the reception and across the garden. 

In the corner of the roof, there’s a small nook carved out between two potted cherry blossoms, their branches obscuring the two of you from any of the other guests milling about. Right now, you need a little privacy.

You also need a moment to gather your thoughts. Your stomach’s jumped into your throat at the thought of what you’re about to do, and your anxiousness makes it hard to think straight. It doesn’t help that you’re slightly distracted by the sight in front of you. 

Although the sun’s long since set, the air is still warm. Jungkook’s shed his jacket, has his tie loosened, sleeves rolled to his elbows, hand still in yours as he looks at you expectantly, patiently waiting for you to speak. You can see the moon reflecting in his bright eyes, and for a moment, you’re back in the elevator at your apartment, staring at your handsome neighbor, that shy man with the sweet smile.

It wasn’t that long ago that he was a total stranger. Someone you saw occasionally at the mailboxes, someone who regularly ran away when you tried to talk to him. You didn’t know anything about him back then - what he did, what he liked, what made him laugh. What his kisses felt like. 

It wasn’t that long ago, yet it already feels like a distant memory. One that you never want to return to. Knowing everything you know about him now, feeling everything you feel - you can’t go back. There’s only one thing you need to do now - tell him. 

No reason to wait a second longer. 

Taking a deep breath, you squeeze his hand. “Jungkook, I brought you out here because I wanted to tell you something. I’m… ah, I’m not very good at this kind of thing, but I’m gonna try because I don’t want to drag this out when I don’t need to.” 

Jungkook’s eyebrows twitch slightly, but he doesn’t say anything, so you go on. 

“You know how I went to Jennie’s yesterday? Um, Jin was also there, with Yoongi. He pulled me aside and told me that the job Wendy asked me to interview for is actually his show for Nosh. And then he started talking about the two of us working together and traveling and -”

“Choose me, jagiya.” 

“Huh?” 

His interruption throws you off from the rambly mess you were attempting to say. Jungkook reaches for your other hand, holding both against his chest, and gives you a shaky smile. 

“Choose me, jagi. I know I don’t have a career like Seokjin does, or his money, or - or even a guarantee that I’ll ever have either of those things. I probably can’t promise you most of the things he can.” He pauses to draw a long breath, like he’s trying to slow himself down and not rush over his words, and oh, you want to kiss him so much right now. Even if this isn’t how it’s supposed to go. “But I can promise y-”

“No no!” It’s his turn to look surprised as you raise your hands to his mouth, muffling his speech. “Jungkook, stop! I was trying to tell you that I ended things with Jin yesterday. You don’t have to say another word because it’s over.” 

“Mmt’s omer?” he mumbles against your fingers, eyes widening. 

“Yes, it’s over,” you giggle, uncovering his mouth, and suddenly all of your nervousness floats away on the evening breeze. “Come on, Kookie. Don’t you know? I’ve already chosen. It’s you. It’s always been you.” 

Jungkook continues to stare at you with those big doe eyes as your words slowly sink in, and you can’t help but smile, fondly, so, so fondly, that familiar sensation of warmth surging up from your chest, and you know now that it has a name, that buzz, that elation, that euphoria, and it’s on the tip of your tongue, just waiting for you to breathe it to life. 

So you exhale. 

“I think I’m falling in love with you.” 

For just the slightest of moments - a fraction of a second, a single heartbeat - when he doesn’t do anything, doesn’t so much as blink or breathe, you’re scared you’ve said too much. It’s too soon, too fast, too everything. 

But then he wraps his arms around you, holding you close enough that you can feel his own heart thumping wildly within his chest, and puts your fears to rest with four simple words, whispered softly against your lips.  

“Jagi, I’ve already fallen.” 

He kisses you, soft and slow, every touch so full of tenderness that you could cry. You tangle your fingers in his hair, desperately seeking something to hold onto, to keep you from floating right off the roof. He’s fallen for you. Jungkook’s fallen for you. 

You never knew your heart could hold so much. 

All your nervousness from before has dissipated. Now the only reason your pulse races is the nearness of him.

“Are you in any hurry to get back in there?” he asks, tipping his head towards the party.

You shake your head. 

He smiles. “Good.” 

He takes your hand again, locking his other arm around your back. You lay your head on his shoulder and close your eyes, listening to him sing along lightly with the music drifting across the rooftop. Even when the song changes to something more uptempo, he doesn’t let go, just laces his fingers through yours and continues to sway with you beneath the stars. 

Many songs later, when the two of you finally return to the party, you find that it’s already winding down. Jennie and Yoongi are making their rounds to say goodbye, needing to go home  and pack for their trip to Jeju Island in the morning. 

Jennie grabs your arm and pulls you away from Jungkook, waving the other bridesmaids over. “I’m gonna do it tonight!” 

Jisoo pinches her cheek. “Babe, you’ve already done it. That’s why you’re late, remember?” 

“Ha, ha.” Jennie smacks her hand away. “I mean I’m gonna tell Yoongi I’m pregnant, smartass.” 

“Ah, I’m so excited for you!” Lisa gives her a hug, and then you’re all hugging. 

“Have you all had a good time tonight?” Jennie asks, not waiting for an answer. “This has been the most amazing day! Thank you for everything, I couldn’t have done this without you.” 

“Yes, you could have,” you grin. 

“Okay, true, I could have. But it wouldn’t have been as much fun without you all. I love you so much!” 

“We love you too. Now go celebrate with your husband!” Rosé giggles, emphasizing the last word with an energetic wiggle of her eyebrows. 

“Yeah, get out of here. Some of us have plans tonight but we can’t leave until you do.” Jisoo declares. 

“She makes a good point,” Lisa chimes in, glancing over her shoulder at where Yi-jeong sits alone, clearly waiting. 

“Wow, okay,” Jennie laughs, but she’s flying too high to really be mad. “I’ll see you all in a week!” 

It’s as you turn to walk back to Jungkook that you remember. 

“Oh! Lisa!” 

Your friend glances at you as you back away with a giant grin. 

“Pay Rosé her fifty bucks.” 

“Why are your friends screaming like that?” Jungkook asks when you rejoin him. 

You just smile and press a soft kiss to his cheek. “Ready to get out of here?” 

Riding Jungkook’s motorcycle is a much more pleasant experience tonight than it was on your way home from your first date. The sky is clear above you as Jungkook expertly weaves through traffic, and you’re warm and dry sitting behind him, wearing his suit jacket, arms tight around his waist. You spend most of the ride hugging more than holding on to him. 

Every few blocks, he releases the hand grip to let his palm rest on your thigh for a moment, squeezing gently. You think he means it as a reassuring touch, knowing how shaky you are with the entire concept of motorcycles to begin with, how just the thought of riding one still makes you nervous, but the actual effect he's having on you is far from comforting. It’s driving you insane.

By the time you reach your apartment door, you’re feral with need. You toss Jungkook’s jacket onto the floor and Jungkook lets out a surprised yelp when you tug on his arm as he’s closing the door. He barely has a chance to turn the lock before you’re pulling him down, passionately kissing away his confused noise. 

“B-baby,” he finally manages to stammer out after a few minutes of intense making out, “baby, do you wanna move to the couch?” 

You shake your head. “Need you now.” 

“Yeah?” His eyes are so dark that it makes you shudder when he catches your gaze. “Always so needy for me, huh? Just like the first time?” 

You remember that night, the way he’d fucked you against the hallway wall, both of you too desperate to even make it another ten feet to your bed. That same greedy desire burns through you now. 

Thank god for the slit in your dress. Hitching your leg up, you wrap it around his back, guiding him back down on top of you. 

“Just like that,” your voice trembles, back arching as Junghook’s hand snakes between you, rubbing at you through your dress. “Ahh, fuck, just like that!” 

You grasp at the side zipper on the dress, fingers fumbling too much to yank it down as quickly as you want. Jungkook has to do it for you, helping you sit up long enough to shed the entire gown. 

He sucks in a sharp breath. “Jagi.” 

If you weren’t already dying for him, the expression on his face when he sees you in the lingerie you’re wearing beneath your dress would do it. 

“Does it look better in person?” you ask, running your fingers over your chest, thumbs pressing in slow circles to wake your nipples, feeling them swell beneath the lace. 

With a pained groan, Jungkook starts hurriedly tearing at his suit, throwing the items nearly halfway across the open space of your living room in his urgency, not stopping until he’s completely naked, cock already hardening between his legs. 

“Yeah,” he grunts, biting his lip to let his hands do the talking. They travel over your torso, up across your breasts, squeezing your hands so you grip yourself harder. He laughs at your little gasp, and then he’s swallowing your sounds with his eager mouth, knocking your legs apart with his knee so he can press his body to yours. 

Your own impatience has you hooking your calves the backs of his thighs, bending your knees to urge him nearer. But no matter how close he is to you, it’s not enough, an itch you can’t scratch no matter how much you try. 

“I think this is going to have to come off now,” you frown, tugging at your bodice. You need to feel him, skin-to-skin. 

“Oh, not yet,” Jungkook says, voice near enough to be a growl. “Please, jagi, keep it on a little longer. For me.” He looks at you with such a lustful gaze that you find yourself nodding, immediately caving to his wish. If he wants to fuck you in your lingerie, fine. There will be more time to feel him later. 

There will be more time for everything you want with Jungkook. 

His mouth reconnects with yours. You sigh into him as his fingers find the snaps at the crotch of the teddy. He’s not gentle with them, practically ripping them open, but he’s more delicate as he slides his finger into you, finding you just as wet as always. He plunges two fingers in, and you know he’s trying to take his time and make sure you’re ready, but you’re too impatient for his consideration right now. 

“Come on, Kookie,” you plead, cupping his chin to draw his gaze away from his work, “I’m ready. I need you now.” 

“Shit,” he mutters, clearly reading your frustration. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I wanna feel you.” 

He reaches for his pants, which have been flung over the back of the couch, and you stop him.

“No, I mean, I want to feel you.”

Jungkook swallows hard, his Adam’s apple visibly bobbing. “Jesus Christ, jagiya, you’re going to kill me.” He kisses you again, before his expression turns serious. “Can we? I mean, are you on something -” 

Laughing, you grab his face again, pulling him back to you for another kiss. 

“I have an implant. And I haven’t been with anyone since you and I have been…” you trail off, unsure what to call it. Dating? “Not since the last time I was tested.” 

“No one?” He doesn’t say the name, but you know what he’s asking. 

“No one.” You and Seokjin never got that far.

“I haven’t been with anyone either.” Jungkook strokes his thumb along your cheek. “It’s just been you. You’re the only one I want.” 

“Then have me.” With another sigh, you lift your hips, rolling against him. 

Jungkook groans, and you barely have a second to breathe before his lips take yours again. There’s some shifting, you spreading your legs while he’s propping himself up on one elbow and lining himself up with his other hand, and then he’s sinking in, slowly, filling you up hot inch by hot inch, until he’s completely sheathed. 

You got your wish. You can feel all of him. It’s a new sensation, and it’s intense, but you can tell it’s even more so for him. 

“Oh, goddamn, jagi.” Jungkook presses his forehead to yours. His chest heaves as he holds himself completely still. “You’re so - fuck.” 

“Yeah? Is it that good?” 

He nods a little, eyes squeezing shut, and you run your fingers through his hair, trying to impart some comfort. As much as you want him to rail you through the floor right now, you don’t want to rush him anymore. 

“Does it really feel that different?”

Jungkook shakes his head. “It’s not that. That’s part of it - you feel so fucking good, baby - but it’s - it’s…” He huffs out a short breath, shaking his head again. “I don’t know how to say it. It’s everything.” 

And you understand exactly what he means, not by whatever he’s trying and failing to say, but by the look in his eyes. 

���Oh,” is all you can say, feeling your own words slipping away from you, as he starts to move. 

His cock drags slowly, so slowly at first, his head bowing as he concentrates on the feeling of you, the way your cunt seems to suck him back in eagerly, walls clenching when he snaps his hips experimentally. He observes every breath that escapes you, every mewl and whimper, and adjusts his pace, the strength of his thrusts, all the while drowning in his own perception, the tight heat and wetness of your core making his eyes roll back in his head with each pump. 

Neither of you speak after that, but you don’t need to. Your bodies communicate everything you’re feeling, punctuated by the unrestrained noises you both make. Your nails rake down Jungkook’s back as he fucks into you, drawing whine after whine from him, broken cries of desire, of wanting you to hold him, claim him, just as he’s claiming you. Mine, your fingernails declare, inscribing his skin with scratches. Yours, his hips answer in return, powerfully driving into yours, connecting you again and again, faster and faster. 

His hand clutches at the thigh you’ve wrapped around his waist, fingers twisting around the garter straps, and you can tell from his unsteady panting that he’s close. Your own pleasure is nearing the precipice, but you know he’s going to reach his first. Which he confirms with a strangled whimper.

“Jagi, I’m - I’m gonna come,” he grits through his teeth, brow furrowed, like he’s focusing all his energy on not coming right then and there. “‘M sorry, I can’t stop, I can’t - “

“Don’t stop, Kookie, don’t stop!” You don’t care if he finishes first. This isn’t about just sex anymore. All you want is for him to feel as good as he makes you feel, all the time. “Come on, cum inside me. Give me everything, fill me up!” 

“Fuck!” he grunts, moaning your name, and with only a few more thrusts, he follows your command. His hips jerk wildly as he gives in to the burning need beneath his skin and fills you with his hot release. It seems to go on and on, until he’s gasping, sagging against you weakly, too wrung out to hold himself up any longer. “Holy shit.”

You just hum, stroking his sweat-soaked hair, until he finally lifts his head. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I got caught up in the moment. Too much going on in my head and - and, fuck, you felt too good.” He gives you a sheepish smile.

You shush his apologies with a laugh, wrapping your arms around him again, urging him to lay down, so his head rests on your chest. “You don’t have to explain. It’s been… it’s been a long time since I’ve felt anything like this.” 

He sighs, moving slightly so he can leave light kisses over your covered chest. “Me too.” His hand trails lazily down your torso, following the swirls in the lace’s pattern. “I’m glad you said what you did. On the roof. I wanted to tell you before how I felt, but I was afraid you’d think I was rushing things.” His voice gets quieter. “It wouldn’t be the first time.” 

There’s a sadness in his tone, a naked vulnerability that makes your heart ache, so you squeeze him a little tighter. You know exactly what he means. 

He raises his head a little, starts kissing his way down your stomach. “Are you still…”

“Am I still what?” You bite your lip as he reaches the apex of your thighs, gently nudging them further apart so he can lie in between. 

Jungkook presses soft kisses to your inner thighs, one side, then the other, before he looks up at you. “Was that enough for you or are you still wanting more? You were so needy earlier, jagiya.” 

Of course you still want more. You don’t think you’ll ever get enough of him. 

“Yeah,” you say, your fingers combing his hair out of his face so there’s nothing hiding him from you, just as there’s nothing hiding you from him, “I want more. Please, Kookie.” 

The smirk that spreads across his lovestruck face sends your heart racing. Your back arches off the floor when he coaxes the first orgasm from you with his tongue, feels like it might snap in half by the time he pulls the second one with his fingers. 

You melt into his embrace afterward, so thoroughly satiated, so utterly content, that you nearly fall asleep. But Jungkook coaxes you off the floor and into the bathroom, to wash his back in the shower before he tenderly scrubs yours, and then into bed, where the last thing you see before closing your eyes is the smile on his face as he whispers good night. 

“What does this one mean?” 

It’s late. Very late, sometime between midnight and early morning, when you should be asleep. You’d awoken in need of some water, slipping out carefully, trying not to wake Jungkook, only to come back to find him up and waiting for you to return to bed. He wasn’t just awake but up up, and you couldn’t resist, climbing directly into his lap for a slow, lazy ride. 

Now, you’re lying together, back pressed to Jungkook’s chest, with his arm draped beneath your breasts, as he gives you a tour of his tattoos. He tells you that most are symbolic, but a few have stories behind them, and you listen raptly to each one. Even though he’s probably tired, he’s indulging you, answering all your questions without so much as a single yawn.

He tilts his head to look at where you’re tapping on a striped snake. “That one? That’s supposed to represent growth. You know, shedding my skin, like a snake.” He flexes his forearm and the snake moves as if undulating on its own. “Do you like snakes?” 

“I like them a lot more than spiders, I can tell you that,” you reply, giggling. 

He laughs, watching silently as your fingers roam over his skin. There’s so much ink covering him, and you’re dying to know about all of it, filled with a buzzing curiosity despite the late hour. 

“What about this one?” Gingerly, you trace over the orange tiger lily etched onto the inside of his forearm, as if afraid that pressing too harshly will cause the petals to crumple. It’s gorgeously vibrant, the glowing color popping vividly against his skin. 

“Ah, that’s my birth flower.” Jungkook laughs a quick laugh. “That one was actually Taehyung’s suggestion. Do you know what the flower is supposed to represent?” 

“Uh-uh.” 

“Self-confidence.” He laughs again, shaking you a little as his chest vibrates. “He said it’d be a good reminder when he’s not around, that I still need to be confident.”

“Taehyung’s a good friend,” you remark, and Jungkook hums in assent. He rubs mindlessly at the flower with his other hand, fingertips bumping against yours. 

“You know, there’s another reason I got this one. A hidden meaning that tiger lilies are meant to express.” 

“Ooh, a hidden meaning?” You tilt your head to peer at him. “And what’s that?” 

Even in the dim light from your bedside lamp, you can see the tips of Jungkook’s ears turning red as he smiles bashfully, his eyes crinkling when he answers. “Please love me.” 

It’s impossible to resist kissing him, kissing that shy bunny smile that you’ve adored all this time, so you don’t even try, cupping his cheeks gently while you brush his lips with yours. When you pull away, his face is flushed, and he laughs, dipping his head in embarrassment even as he whispers, “Keep going.” 

You giggle, and kiss him again, and then stop. “Oh! Wait a minute.” 

Jungkook lets out a small grunt of displeasure when you leave his embrace, but you return quickly, handing him a small frame from your desk. 

“Jagi, you framed this?” He stares through the glass at the tiger lily sketch he’d drawn for you, back when he asked you out on your first date.

“Well, yeah. It was too pretty not to.” 

You take your place between his legs again, his arm automatically sliding around your waist while he gazes at the picture. “But it was just a quick little drawing. It’s not my best work.” 

“So? I think it’s beautiful. And… it’s from you.” You can feel your neck warming as you speak. “I like to keep it on my desk when I’m working. Every time I get annoyed by something, I look at it, and it calms me down.” Your lips quirk in a little smile. “So you can imagine that I look at it a lot,” you say, half-joking, half-not. Because it’s true, you do stare at it a lot. The drawing always brings you peace. Because it reminds you of Jungkook. So fiery and bright, but also so lovely and delicate. 

“Jagi,” Jungkook says again, swallowing thickly. His arm squeezes you closer.

You take the frame from his hand, placing it on the nightstand, before shifting to face him, legs straddling his as you loop your arms around his neck. “Be honest - were you sending me a hidden message with this?” 

His ears are burning red again. “Maybe. Guess it worked.” 

You surge forward, kissing the cheeky smile right off his face. His hands settle on your hips, holding you tightly, as if right now there’s any danger of you leaving. There’s nowhere else you’d rather be, with no one else. 

But you’re also wondering something you’ve been wondering for a while now, and since he’s been so obliging so far, you decide to ask him one more question. “Can I ask you something?”

“Jagi, all you’ve been doing is asking me questions,” Jungkook grins. 

You roll your eyes at his teasing tone. “Yeah, okay, I just mean, can I ask about something that doesn’t have anything to do with your tattoos?” 

He nods. 

“If I hadn’t come to Paradise with my friends that night, would you ever have made a move?”

He clearly wasn’t expecting that question, judging by the look on his face. His eyes fall out of focus as they stare unseeing at you, and you know he’s lost in thought. You give him the time to find his way to an answer, running your fingers through his hair soothingly while you wait.

“I don’t know,” he finally admits. “I’d like to think that yes, I would’ve gotten up the nerve to talk to you. But it might’ve taken a while. Seeing you at Paradise kind of gave me an opening.”

“I think this still would’ve happened,” you tell him, suddenly filled with an unusual amount of confidence, bolstered by his hands on your waist, his eyes locked on yours, “all of this. I think we would’ve ended up just like this.” 

“How do you know that?”

“I would’ve worn you down at the mailboxes,” you grin. “At the rate we were going, it probably would’ve taken a decade, but we’d get there eventually.” 

He laughs, hands locking behind your back as he holds you close. “Or maybe I would’ve shown up at your door one night and danced for you. Maybe that’s what I did in another universe.” 

“I’m sure it worked,” you murmur, leaning closer to his lips. “I think in any universe, we end up like this. We’re just lucky that we got here so fast.” 

“The luckiest,” he agrees, closing the space between you. 

When you finally fall asleep again, you dream of falling through other universes, following the same dark eyes and wicked smirk through each.

If you liked this fic, please consider reblogging! Likes do not help it get seen by other readers. 💕

Masterlist 💜 Find me on AO3 💜 

© 2021-22-23-24 by sunshinerainbowsbts/minisugakoobies. Crossposted to AO3. Please do not copy or repost.

[shintin]

The Hickey on Your Neck

↳ Vash the Stampede x Female Reader

One-shot

Summary: Only seconds before closing your eyes do you realize that the dreams you had forgotten among the lust and thrust of your lover were the life you were destined to lead.

Or a story about how You and Vash fucked from dawn to dusk on his birthday.

Word count: +17.5 k.

Genre: explicit smut, romance, angst (Trigun au).

Warnings/Tags: +18, NSFW, established relationship, soft/dom Vash the Stampede, too much fluff and kissing, scar worship, plant patterns display, manhandling, cunnilingus + fellatio, creampie,  fingering (with prosthetic arm), unprotected sex (c’mon! We want his seeds), multiple orgasms, hair pulling, two smut scenes (one romantic, other hardcore), aftercare, emotional trauma, violence, blood and gore, post-Trigun Stampede but no manga spoilers.

Notes: I'd never written a Trigun fic before, but with this Vash brain rot, I'm sure it won't be the last. I originally intended to name this fic "Sleepless Nightmare" after TOMBI song, but somehow changed my mind. You'll see why. "Elay" in my mother tongue means the Moon of a Tribe. A nick name Vash will use for reader.

By the way, you can also read the Disclaimers and Writer's Note at the end.

Song Recommendation: The Hickey on Your Neck Playlist

You can read my fics on AO3 and Wattpad. If you have any questions, don’t be shy and ASK. This is my DISCORD account, in case you want to contact me.

Back to master list.

07:30 pm – July 21st

A hole had been left in your heart. Throwing yourself backward, you tripped over your feet. Your head slammed into the floor as your arms did little to break your fall. It was a pain you'd never known, a pain you never thought you could feel, never would have even imagined. From the inside out, you were lit on fire by a bullet that went off in your chest.

All of a sudden, everything slowed down.

So this, you thought, was what dying felt like.

You blinked, and it seemed to take forever. The images before you were unfocused, with colors, bodies, and lights swaying in unison and stilted movements blurring. Your ears couldn't hear clearly. All the sounds were garbled, warped, and too high or low.

Who … she?

I asked for a tall, blond man with … eyes, and the folks pointed at her.

How come … shot her …?

She said … had never met such a man.

… idiot! What if she's with the gunman?

Whatever. … doesn't draw a gun anymore; rumor has it.

What a moron! The man may not kill, but … wiped out … whole city!

What … … we should … then?

If … … his girl, … … screwed up!

… the bounty! … get lost before the news …!

It was like all the words were banging into each other, colliding again, spinning around you. Your name seemed to be being called, but you couldn't hear it. Everything was muffled, slippery, and off-balance, like it was there, just out of reach, but you couldn't find it.

Heavy footsteps stomped, stomped, and stomped the ground, and a familiar face appeared before you. The shape, the golden and green colors drew your attention, and you tried raising your hand to feel his warmth once more and assure him that everything was okay, but it was too hard, and suddenly you couldn't breathe. Your throat felt like it was being slashed, holes punching into your lungs, and the more you blinked, the less clearly you could see. The tightest breaths, tiny little gasps, were soon all you could manage. Pain, pain, and more pain followed the dizziness and lightheaded feeling. It was terrible, never seeming to end.

Your sight suddenly went dim. Blindness overtook you.

Blood dripped from you rather than being seen as you blinked, blinked, and blinked in a desperate attempt to regain your vision, but all you saw was a cloud of white. A short frantic gasp and the pounding of your eardrums were all heard. Some warm sensation spread throughout your body as the fresh blood pooled under you.

You knew your life was about to evaporate, and it only made you think about how short you lived with him and how he would blame himself for your loss. Leaving your tears to fall, you whispered, "I-I'm sorry, Vash."

05:45 am - July 21st

A sharp intake of breath caused your eyes to fly open. Your skin froze in a cold sweat as your brain waded in waves of distress. Inhaling as much as possible was the only thing you could do. Your chest heaved, and your heart raced. You looked around, feeling the stillness within the madness, blinking hard against the white ceiling.

Your hands reached your throat and chest. No blood. No holes. You could feel your pulse. That must be the sound of your heart, at least, you hoped.

There was a strange feeling in your gut, like your instincts were stumbling through mud, and your bones were filled with stones. Your eyes shifted to the other side of the bed, and you sighed in relief. The reality sleeping next to you brought a moment of clarity. You sat up on your elbows, head spinning as you glanced at the nightstand.

The glass was empty.

You slowly pushed the sheets aside and felt more awake with your bare feet touching the cold floor. Picking up the glass, you tiptoed toward the murky kitchen.

You reached for the pitcher on the table, but the water never made it to your lips; instead, your trembling hands grabbed the faded and scratched edges of the cabinet as if letting go of this old piece of plywood would plunge you into the blackhole of your nightmare.

A muffled whimper escaped from the bottom of your throat, and you whispered, it was just a dream. Yet, your white knuckles became wet as tears streamed down your face, blurring the cracked tiles before you.

You shouldn't have cried. You should have been stronger. Not just for yourself, but...

Incoherent thoughts still occurred to you as you pressed your palm to your lips—a fruitless attempt to stop any further crying from coming out.

It was just a dream. Everything was fine.

Your glistening eyes were fixed on the glass of water as you took a sip and pushed the venom-like lump down your throat. Nobody was going to lose anyone. This fear was deeply buried under the sands of your heart. Why did it have to appear today of all days?

A chill ran down your esophagus. Your hand shook involuntarily, and a few drops of water slid from the corner of your mouth to your chin and neck and then ran to your perked nipples.

Looking down at your body, you wiped the drops away before feeling cold. After all, this planet didn't earn its name, "Noman's Land" for nothing. The weather could get pretty chilly and cruel in this desert when those two suns weren't out. Moreover, let's not forget how many people were denied heat due to a lack of resources. Ugh! So, it's not like you didn't know you should've worn something, but God damn it! You woke up feeling a great deal of fear. Fuck! Still, you weren't eager to catch a cold. At least, not today. As you were about to return to bed, you suddenly stopped. Random images filled your mind.

Tears staining emerald green eyes, red flowers blooming on blood, and heart-wrenching screams fading in the night, all in an empty room filled with balloons and mud.

The next gulp of water tasted salty, leaving you feeling numb. Tears must have flowed down your cheeks. You lowered your glass and let your thoughts drift away.

There was a flash of your limp body in your mind, accompanied by a sharp twinge in your gut, a screaming sensation in your body, as if your lungs craved for air.

You wicked away the images, expunging thoughts of pain and death from your mind. The churning in your stomach began to slow, but your skin took on a damp, clammy sensation in its wake. You struggled to recount the things you had eaten last night. It must be it. No doubt, you had eaten poorly.

It was just a dream. What the hell was wrong with you? Crying over a dream? What were you, five? No, not today! Not today! Not today! Get your shits together!

After a moment of hesitation, you rubbed your eyes with the back of your hand, ran your palm across your forehead and nose, and stopped it on your mouth before glancing at the bed.

Your pale face bloomed with a faint smile as you saw the sight—a miracle in this barren wilderness.

The curtains of the half-open window fluttered lazily with the morning breeze, letting the suns' rays play upon his scarred shoulder blades now and then, and run their greedy fingers through the golden waves of his hair, an enraged sea of sunflowers bounded by rough rocky beaches on the side. Oh! His undercut was glorious from where you watched.

He was sleeping with his eyelids slowly moving. The corners of his lips were curved upwards. Today seemed to be one of those rare days when he was free of the burdens of his past. Was he dreaming? What was his dream about? Love? Peace? Foods? Probably sweets!

You tried to avoid the woods squeaking beneath your feet as you walked back. Putting the glass of water next to the orange-tinted shades, you slowly climbed back under the warm sheets without shifting the mattress too much.

Once your head touched the pillow, cinnamon, and caramel again filled your nostrils. The man ate so many donuts that you feared he would become one. When you pictured it, your smile reached your eyes, and you giggled silently.

Like on the days you woke up early, you rolled over to face him and let your eyes roam over his abs muscles and those beautiful V lines guiding you to his secret paradise. Other than the massive gash across his chest, he had several cuts on his arms, wounds on his shoulders, and scars all over his back and legs. This man was a walking history, marked with painful memories, and luckily, your lips had perfectly mastered the story behind every blemish, slit, and stitch on his body.

It wasn't that simple, though.

When you first met him, he was a broken man covered in an old cloak, his eyes filled with agony. He was consumed by remorse, but nonetheless, he was still full of life and willing to try and glue back all his broken parts. Indeed, it was a challenge for him, and somehow, it didn't come easy to you either. Your heart ached when you removed each piece of clothing from his body. You cursed those who hurt him. It took you time and love to learn how to cherish those wounds instead of looking at them with pity. And little by little, your eyes learned to see a delicate kind of beauty in them, as if, every once in a while, you could see the sunlight shining through the cracks of his heart, lighting up your world in a most wonderful way.

Perhaps that's why after years of running, running, and running, he stopped for once and decided to rest. Something about you must have felt like home. And how lucky you were to have this?

06:30 am - July 21st

You couldn't look away from him, your mind unable to comprehend the perfection of this happiness. He was so ethereal you could hardly fathom that he was yours, wanted and loved you. You couldn't even hear yourself think over the rush of blood in your ears. The sight of him sleeping beside you, relaxed and vulnerable, was causing wild, desperate thoughts to race through your head. God! The fantasies you'd had about him. The places your mind had gone.

You sighed and brushed your face to the pillow, hoping he would roll over to you in his sleep so you could get back into his arms and the legs draped around you. Your eyelids peered at the glistening prosthetic arm in the soft light of the down. Could he feel your warmth whenever you kissed those fingers? How come you had never asked? There were many things you hadn't asked him yet.

Maybe you should start tomorrow? Hm? It's not like the world was ending today.

"You're going to come back over here, or you want to leave me cold and lonely?" he murmured, the raggedness in his voice confirming that he had been sleeping. Your gaze shifted upwards to meet his eyes, only to realize they were still shut, but his lips were painted with a playful grin.

Something inside you melted. It moved by his words, his smile, and his voice.

"I thought you were asleep." You scooted closer, and he wrapped his arms around you, cautious not to accidentally hurt you when he slipped his left arm beneath your neck. "I didn't want to wake you up." Your forehead pressed against his chest, and you felt the coldness of the iron mesh against your skin. His chin rested on your head, and his toes caressed your legs. The prickles of scars and fine hairs of his limbs tickled yours, and you felt blessed.

Funny how your nightmare faded the moment you felt his warmth like he burned a hole right through your head and pulled all your thoughts out. Well, other than that, it seemed like this morning, everything about him was exactly what you needed. His voice was calm and caring, his arms protective, and his presence comforting. You didn't want him to let go of you.

"Even if you had woken me up," he said, his artificial fingers sinking into your hair, and he continued, "I wouldn't have minded." A light kiss on the crown of your head followed his honest words. Even though this man kissed you every day and night, you could feel a silent giggle seeping into your body, causing your face to blush bright red.

Vash yawned soundlessly as he pulled you closer, his eyes still closed. The two of you were so close, too close, but never close enough for him. You had come to realize that your body heat did more for him than any blanket could. It was always in his eyes, aching with a desperate yearning he could only meet with you and your touch.

A joyful happiness settled between you as his hands drew shapes and patterns alongside your spine like those bright ones sometimes you could see on his body. Your lips curved into a smile as you watched him. His hair thick and blonde. The lines of his body sharp and robust. Damn! He had everything about him beautifully crafted. His nose. His chin. His ears and eyebrows. The eyelashes any girl would kill for and those turquoise-green eyes you longed to see. He had a gorgeous mouth.

You lingered too long there, your eyes betraying your mind.

Vash smiled. "What are you doing?" He fiddled with your hair, wrapping a lock around his finger.

In response, you sighed. Clearly, you would never discover how to avoid getting caught red-handed every time. "Just enjoying the view," you said, still staring at his mouth. You reached and touched two fingers to his bottom lip only to feel a rush of memories.

Long nights. Early morning. His mouth on you. Everywhere. Over and over again.

07:15 am - July 21st

He laughed sheepishly at your response.

You brushed a strand of hair off his forehead. His hair had grown a little long. You stroked his cheeks and drew his head back toward you, pressing your lush mouth against his. It never took him long to part his lips. He kissed you back, holding your head steady with his prosthetic arm while his other embraced you tightly. You could feel him smiling against your lips.

He had your heart, and you loved him quite horribly, too. This fact always smacked you over the head so hard you felt dizzy. You should have been afraid and wanted to hide it, as he was the most wanted man on the planet, but love had made you bold and brave.

You pulled back and studied his kiss-inspiring lips. Your whole body was filled with a warmth you wanted to share with him because it was pure, and so was he. There was no way for you to find the right words to describe how you felt.

The morning light was shining through the windows at the perfect angle and time. His muscles were taut, bathed in gold.

"Can you lie back, Vash?" you asked, pushing his shoulder back toward the bed. Finally fluttering his eyes open, he lifted his head in your direction.

Oh.

God.

His eyes.

He blinked dark lashes, revealing a spectrum of sadness and beauty, unlike anything you'd seen before. The way a person could convey so much with a glance caught you off guard. He had an extraordinary amount of pain paired with even more extraordinary passion.

His face spread into a wide smile the moment he saw you. These smiles, they changed him, and moments like this killed you a little.

He had the kind of face that made you forget where you were, who you were, and what you might say or do. You held his face in your hands as you laid his head down on the pillow. A half-lidded gaze sat on his face as he leaned to your touch, and you kissed him. Slowly, this time. His eyes fell closed. His mouth responded to yours.

Your fingers moved to his neck, then to his hair, and your mouth followed them. Soft lips caressed his earlobes and nipped the tiny single hoop, hot breaths hitting his skin, surprising a giggle out of him.

His hands reached up to pull you closer, but you stopped him. "No," you whispered. "Don't move." Without a second thought, he dropped his hands.

"Lie back and keep your eyes closed," you muttered, and strangely, he didn't object. His obedience led to you kissing him everywhere. His cheeks. His eyelids. His chin. The tip of his nose and the space between his eyebrows. All across his forehead and along his jawline. Every inch of his face. Soft, small kisses that said more than you ever could. You wanted him to know how you felt. You wanted him to feel it in the way only he could, the way he could sense the depth of your emotions. You wanted him to know and never forget.

And you wanted to take your time.

As your mouth moved down his neck, he gasped. You peeked up at his features only to meet a crooked grin on his face. The moment was worth savoring. It seemed like Mr. Vash was enjoying himself, so your tongue continued to adore his arm's sculpted hills and valleys, the perfect shape of his torso.

You breathed in the scent of his skin and took in the taste of him as your hands ran down his abs, kissing your way across and down the line of his torso. You kissed around his navel, and the trails of fine hair underneath caressed your lips. He kept reaching for you, trying to touch you until you told him to stop.

"Please," he said, taking a deep breath. "I want to feel—"

Even though he couldn't see you, you raised your brows with a head tilt and gentled back his arms. "Not yet. Not now."

He let out a breath in protest and crossed his arms behind his neck until your hands went further down and his eyes flew open. Blinking at him, you found out you were still fascinated by his eyes—such a stunning shade of green. "Close your eyes, Vash," you had to tell him.

A big gulp of air filled up his Adam apple. "No." He hardly spoke.

"Close your eyes!"

With his sharp gaze following your every move, he shook his head and leaned on his elbows.

"Fine." You rolled your eyes, and your hand grabbed the base of his hardness.

As soon as your nails brushed the skin of his length, he sat up and stared at you. He was breathing so fast you could hear and see his chest moving.

With a smile, you looked him in the eyes and leaned your head down. Your mouth took in the tip, and your tongue traced circles as Vash gasped. The sight of your bent head made him bite his lip. No doubt every fiber of his being demanded you to take him fully in your mouth, but he wanted you to call the shots. Allowing you to control the pace pushed him to the edge. He enjoyed the thrill of knowing he was at your mercy.

Soft hairs of his thighs against your ears, your nose skimmed his sensitive areas, and your lips kissed all over those favorite parts. The smooth skin of your fingers rolled around was warm and delicate, so fragile you were afraid you might tear it with your teeth. You felt his hardness throb against your cheek, pleading with you not to neglect him. Your thumb rubbed the pre-cum off the pink tip as you raised your head.

You looked up at him, his hair gleaming like golden flames, his cheeks drenched with sweat, and his lower lip stuck between his teeth, and you realized that his eyes looked at you with a look of something like trepidation, as if he was nervous. His face was still flushed red, and he had an expression somewhere between unworthiness and pleasure. With every stroke, his breath grew heavier. Obviously, he wanted more but was trying to contain his desire. Did he feel he was getting something he didn't deserve again?

There was no way you could let him be alone with these thoughts. So, before his dazzled eyes, you licked your thumb and watched how blood drained from his head and rushed straight to his torso. In surrender, he fell back; his eyes squeezed shut. You closed your mouth to half his length, and he turned his face to the pillow, stifling a moan. A tremor ran through his body, and his hands gripped the sheets tightly. Your hands ran down his legs, grabbing them just above his knees and inching them apart so you could trail kisses down the insides of his thighs.

He looked like he was in so much pain. So much pain.

You licked the pain away.

Twirling your fingers around the length, you took the crown in your mouth. Only enough to tease. Too little to satisfy. Your lips gently pressed against it, and when Vash was ready to scream, you accepted his whole length in your mouth.

Your lips were sealed tight as you hummed and increased the speed of your ministration. He threaded his fingers through your hair and molded his hands into your head, not to push you further down but to tilt your face up.

His forehead and neck were dripping sweat. The lines of emotion on his face were so deep you wondered how you must look to him. His throat bobbed, and you felt yourself drown in his eyes, enigmatic yet expressive, like sea foam, tempestuous but very calm. His fingers trailed over your salivate-covered lips, and you noticed that the sadness in his eyes had receded.

The world was suddenly brighter, bigger, and more beautiful.

07:40 am - July 21st

Taking hold of you by the arm pits, Vash pulled you in until your chest touched his. Next, you were rolled over so that your back touched the mattress, and he crawled onto you. Now his arms were propped up on either side of your head so he would not crush you under his weight. Looking into his eyes, you were pinned in place. His urgency ignited your bones. The polished planes of his face glowed with rivulets of sweat. His hardness was poking desperately against your thigh.

"I want to … …, …," he whispered. Intoxicated, you couldn't digest anything except his body hovering over you.

"… ?" His body pressed closer, and you realized you were paying attention to nothing but the dandelions blowing wishes in your lungs.

His eyes were heavy now in a way that worried you, but his gaze was still so tender, focused, and full of emotions you could hardly bring yourself to say anything. As your words faded, they became an unspoken whisper. Your lips glued together.

Screams.

Death.

Screams.

Your heart suddenly raced. What if these moments were destined to expire?

The sound of a clock striking midnight. A pumpkin carriage. The possibility of losing him.

You didn't want your arms to be deprived of his warmth. His touch. His lips, God, his lips, his mouth on your neck, his body wrapped around yours. The nightmare had caused this all, you knew, but the realization was like a pendulum the size of the moon. It wouldn't stop slamming into you.

Blinking fast, you swallowed back the fear building in your throat. God! He was speaking with you, but you couldn't hear him.

You were worried, really worried something was going to happen to him. What if bounty hunters found him? Could his brother hurt him? No. No. No. Even though you were only a human, you would never allow such a thing to happen. You just couldn't. You...

"Hey," he said, his voice soft, so soft. His arms were stronger than all the bones in your body. He pulled your figure close. You heard the beats of his heart humming deeply within his chest, and the steel of his arm encircled your whole body, releasing tension from your limbs. The icicles in your body were melted by his heat. Something about this frame made you want to freeze it forever. "You okay, Firefly? Wanna stop?"

The words he said sent waves of emotion coursing through you. He could read you like an open palm. You weren't lost before you met him, but you were never found until he laid eyes on you. Your tears stung as they fell backward down your throat, burning as they went. "Kiss me, Vash," you said before closing your eyes.

He searched your face, unsure what to do, hesitating, until you felt his lips on your shoulder, tender and scorching, so gentle you could almost believe it was the kiss of breeze and not a man.

Again.

This time, it was on your collarbones and felt like an ache that needed to be soothed. You didn't want to do anything to stop his mouth from touching your body.

He pulled back.

Desire.

Crave.

Need.

Again.

Your eyes refused to open.

His finger grazed the corner of your mouth, tracing its shape, the curves, the seams, and the dips. You felt him so much closer, his body heat filling the air around you, along with his smell and something sweet, until nothing was left. Your senses were so engulfed in his scent you didn't even realize your back was arching toward him as you breathed him in until you found out his fingers were no longer on your lips because his hand had gotten around your body.

"So, where do you want me to kiss you?" Vash whispered, his chest heaving, his words almost gasping. A wave of blistering heat moved through you, sealed shut your mouth. You didn't specify precisely where you wanted him to kiss you, and he didn't seem to have any difficulty selecting the spot. 

He whispered your name as he kissed the corner of your eyebrow. "Here?" His lips brushed over the shell of your ear, and your body squirmed slightly. "Or here?" He pressed a kiss against your neck, right beneath your ear, and you tipped your head to let him in, biting down the urge to beg him to take more, to take faster, as he murmured, "tell me."

Clasping your warm fingers with his cold metallic ones, he hovered over you to kiss your throat. You were the oxygen he desperately needed to breathe. His body was almost on top of yours, one hand in your hair while the other held yours delicately yet firmly. His lips crushed yours in no time.

A kiss like this was like swimming in honey rivers, like being dipped in gold, like diving into an ocean of bliss and not realizing you were drowning because you were too caught up in the current to notice. Nothing mattered anymore—neither your nightmare, this room, or the whole fucking planet.

All that mattered was this.

This.

This moment. These lips. This strong body pressed against yours, and these firm hands that always found a way you bring you closer. Oh, My Gosh! You wanted so much more of him. You wanted all of him.

Your eyes opened up.

Not content to be passive, your hands ran down his back, dancing over his broad shoulders, pressing into his dimples, and squeezing his hips.

Your hand grabbed a fistful of his hair when he broke for air with a groan, but you pushed him back, kissing his neck, arm, collarbones, and chest. It was amazing. Being with him, touching him, holding him like this. The rush of adrenaline was so intense and euphoric that you felt invincible.

He muttered your name, his lips mouthing the letters, barely speaking. Your skin was scorched everywhere he hadn't touched you.

He kissed your top lip.

He licked your bottom lip.

He kissed just under your chin, the tip of your nose, the length of your forehead, both temples and cheeks across your jawline. Then your neck, behind your ears, the space between your breasts. He nibbled your nipples and left trails of kisses all the way down your belly button until his entire form moved down your figure, disappearing as he shifted downward, and suddenly his chest was hovering above your hips.

Grasping your calves, he spread your legs apart just enough for his head to fit between. Your thighs were lifted, and you couldn't see him anymore. His only visible features were the top of his head, the curve of his shoulders, and the unsteady rise and fall of his back as he breathed. Eventually, even that sight was lost, with your head falling backward and muffled moans leaving your mouth.

Vash ran his hands down and up around your bare upper thighs and ribs, and he held your hips to make you stand still. Your eyes lit up like small firecrackers every time his hair teased your groins until his lips kissed you there, and fireworks exploded in the back of your head.

As his right hand pressed against your stomach, his tongue played around to make you scream aloud. His mouth brushed against your skin in places you couldn't see but felt deeply. Oh my! You were out of your body, touching stars, when you realized he was working his way up your body, leaving two fingers of that prosthetic arm behind.

"It might feel a bit cold," he said as his nose glided the skin of your stomach, leaving random kisses around your breasts and collarbones just to ease your tension. "Tell me if it hurts, okay?" His hair was a mess, the wetness on his lips all familiar.

A nod came from you in response. He almost seemed to be smiling as his fingers slipped inside your slit, and your nails dug into the fabric. Moaning, you felt his warm hand brushing your hair backward as the other moved up and down inside your walls.

Your mouth was parted in a silent moan, and his small pecks covered you all around. There were tears in your eyes, baby hairs sticking to your sweaty forehead.

As his thumb and two fingers hit all the right spots, your throat wailed in frustration.

You grabbed his free arm, and he pulled himself up, onto you, on top of you. As if reading your thoughts, he kissed you hard. How strange, yet sweet, all you could taste was you, yourself, on his tongue. You moaned at the taste, and he opened his mouth more for you, allowing you to brush your tongue against his teeth.

The stinging coldness of his fingers was long gone. You had forgotten everything. There was something you shouldn't have forgotten, but you couldn't even remember why, what you were forgetting. Amid his length caressing your side and those digits thrusting backward and forward, paying attention to anything else was hard.

You could die from this, you decided. From wanting him, from the pleasure of being with him.

You must be smiling because he was looking at you and smiling too. His forehead was pressed against yours. His skin was flushed with heat. His hand had kept your head still. Your hands gripped his nick, sliding into the hollow behind it. You placed your palms just above his nape, and your fingertips gently began to squeeze and massage his undercut.

"Va-sh."

For a moment, you thought life poured out of you, or maybe your vision fractured as release barreled into you, and you grasped his name over and over again till your body calmed under his weight.

08:10 am- July 21st

Your eyes landed on his glistening wet metallic fingers, and you were dripping, burning, melting with anticipation. He was still on top of you when you thought you heard him speak, his mouth close to your ear.

"I love you," he whispered and kissed your brow. It never occurred to you that he could be like this, so human, so real, but it was there. It was right there. Raw, written across his face. You were about to mutter all the words and worries you held in your chest, but suddenly he stood up and stared blankly at the other side of the room.

You followed his gaze to the pane of glass separating you from the reality outside. You awaited his lips to part. You waited to listen to him speak. His eyes weren't revealing anything about what he was thinking, what was going on.

Something about the realization struck fear into your heart. In the span of a single instant, darkness surrounded your vision. Images appeared in the blur of your sight again.

The petals of red Geraniums floating in the sky, a boy running through blood-stained sands, the time speeding up and slowing down in fits and starts, streaks of green and red staining your dilated eyes, stars exploding, lights flashing, sparking, and then it's all darkness and Vash's screams.

You shook your head.

The images disappeared, but the heartaches and fears lingered, and you had to keep reminding yourself to breathe. Your lungs begged for air, but you looked around for Vash instead.

It seemed he wanted to scream, but you knew the words wouldn't leave his mouth. Those thoughts would expand in his head, explosive and angry, pressing against the ridges of his mind, and then he would hide them behind a smile. As he always did.

"Vash?" you called, just before witnessing how a car's radio sound from the street ripped open his past, pulled out what was left of his heart, and dropped it on the floor.

"… been two years since that fateful July 21st. A crowd has gathered at what used to be the third city of July to pay their respects. Even after two years, the pain of losing their loved ones has yet to heal. The suspect said to have murdered 90 percent of the city, also known as the Humanoid Typhoon, still remains at large. Vash the Stampede is on the run. If I were the demon who turned the whole city into a gaping crater overnight, I'd hide my face too. There is no forgetting the sorrow of loved ones taken from us. The Alliance of Cities has raised the dead or alive bounty on Vash the Stampede to $$60 billion, the highest in the history of…"

The loud words bounced around in the haze of your head, fogging your senses, misting your eyes, and clouding your concentration. In your bones, there was just ice. Your entire being wanted to vomit. Reality slapped you in the face, punched you in the jaw, and dumped you into sand oceans. You grasped the nightstand to keep yourself steady. The orange shades fell on the floor, leaving a big crack on display.

Vash was shaking his head over and over and over and over. He was looking at his hands like he would see some blood on them, as if waiting for the part where someone would tell him this wasn't real and he didn't actually kill those 200,000 innocent people.

Oh, my beloved.

The pain was so plain on his face; it was killing you. Your gaze was drawn to the balled fists at his sides, the furrows in his brow, and the tension in his jaw. Minutes ago, this man was free, but now he was a prisoner of his own crime. In your heart, you wished you could release him from the claws of self-reproach.

Having seen his terror too often, you knew it well.

Sometimes, even when he was asleep, his tormented mind would grip his heart, and such emptiness and sadness would fill him that you felt he was suffocating, as if his sleepless nightmares never had an end.

You didn't know him before,

but

you

thought

he

had

lost

a

bit

of

himself

on

the

day

of

July

incident.

As time passed, you assumed he had finally learned not to dwell on what had happened. You imagined he avoided it like a cripple learning not to put weight on his injured leg.

However, deep down, you knew he was living on eggshells, always wondering when something would break, when everything would crumble. You always dreaded this day. This silence. It was not just an ordinary silence caused by the lack of things that moved or made noise, but a deep and tired silence that sometimes covered him like an invisible cloak—like the one ruling between your shared walls right now.

Stacks of sorrow had grown inside him, settling on his bones and snapping him in half. A cable twisted around his neck, a worm crawling across his stomach. It was the night, midnight, and the twilight of indecision. Too many pains to bear.

How naive of him to think he could slip into the role of a regular being and live a normal life in love and peace.

Vash.

Vash the stampede with a dream.

The mere thought of it filled him with mortification. He began to think others were right when they said things like him were better off destroyed.

Shaking his head, he coughed against the torture in his lungs, heaving strange, horrible gasps until his whole body spasmed into submission, leaving him sitting on the bed's edge like a sack full of nothingness. The old gunman looked as if he might collapse, barely breathing, his life-force being torn asunder.

You felt like your throat was closing up. You knew the infamous humanoid typhoon was everything broken and glued back together, and now knives bore holes into his cracked bones, filled with grief that could take his breath away.

Your face was drained of color, your ears ringing with your heart pounding. His desperate screams from your nightmare echoed in your head as if on repeat. His agony was acute. His terror palpable. Tears sprung to your eyes. It was painful to look at him, being so close and far away from him.

"Local news. You know how dumb they are," you said, trying to hide your petrified and nerve-wracking thoughts from his reach. What if he never experienced peace? What if there was no sanctuary, and the pain was always a whisper away, no matter where he went?

Pressing your nails to your palm, you continued, "None of that incident was your fault. You know that too. You hear me?"

His eyes widened a little. No one had ever cared about him for this long. No one had kept him ever this closely to read his thoughts word by word. No one had ever treated him like a human being. Then again, he thought you didn't know about all of his sins. In a century and a half, he hadn't been able to forgive himself; how could you? It made him wonder how long you could endure him before running for your life.

His head was spinning, thoughts knocking into one another. He clenched his fists and pushed back down the misery that had stuck with him. Even though he didn't want this, you'd probably be better off without him.

"Vash?" You swallowed and dug your fingers into the sheets desperately, a tear trickling down your cheek. It kept hitting you in the face, in the skull, in the spine, this knowledge of just how much you loved him.

His lips looked like they were barely able to form words. He could only take these harsh gasps and wonder why his body hadn't given up.

On all fours, you approached him and sat on your knees on the edge of the bed with a slight distance between you and him. You knew he wouldn't object, but you didn't want to intrude on his privacy. Thus, you remained silent so that he wouldn't be left by himself, and he would know you wouldn't leave him alone.

09:15 am – July 21st

Time passed, and you checked on him occasionally to see if he wanted to talk until he raised his head slightly.

"I'm a demon," he said the sentence so quietly. So, so quietly. He ran a hand across his face, both hands through his hair, looking like he wanted to scream, to break something, like he was truly about to lose his mind. "The world sees me as a threat. An unfixable monster. An abomination. They want me dead." His voice sounded sorrowful, almost like he had already accepted these labels.

Thousand pieces of feeling stabbed you in the heart. "I don't think you're a demon. Also, I don't think you're some sick, twisted monster. I don't think you're a heartless killer, and I don't think you deserve to die. You're not a humanoid typhoon. No, you're not any of the things people have said about you," you told him, words tripping and stumbling out of you.

His mouth fell closed, struggling with some kind of emotion, struggling to find composure. Suddenly he gasped. "No." One broken word. Barely even a sound. He was shaking his head, looking away from you. He turned to face the window. "No. No, no—"

"Vash—"

"No," he said. His voice was so soft and so scared you could scarcely hear it. "No, you don't know what you're saying—"

"You're not a monster!" you said. "And I love you exactly as you are. I don't even want you to fix yourself; I don't think you need to be fixed. People here love you as you are. Your name is the only thing that scares them," you told him.

You knew people had the right to fear him. You knew. Humanoid Typhoon certainly wasn't made of sugar, spice, and everything nice, but rather from hurricanes, lightning, and all things that scared. Seeing dusty storms and raging winds, people thought he was scary. They feared he would harm them. In truth, he was only his own disaster, destroying himself for others. He was Vash. Your Vash. Vash the Stampede, and you loved him with all his fears and frights, dreams and nightmares, sins and scars.

You smiled and continued, "If they learn your name and start hunting you, we'll run away! We'll run, run, and keep running as far as we have to! And when things calm down, we'll settle by their side again. You won't kill. You'll never kill anyone again, and one day, people will begin seeing you as I do."

Maybe tears filled his eyes. Possibly his breath was trapped in his chest. Perhaps his heart warmed a little. No one knew, not even the author. He had his head down, his chest rising and falling.

You sat behind him. A map of pain had covered his entire back. Thick, thin, uneven, and terrible, scars like roads leading nowhere. There were bolts and ragged slices, marks of torture he was not protected from.

Kindness must be difficult when all you'd received was hatred. Being able to see goodness in the world must be so hard when your only experience had been terror. You wanted to say something to him. Something profound, complete, and memorable, but there was nothing suitable. This planet was a broken bone that didn't set right, and Vash wanted to glue it back together. Alone, all by himself.

You two differed in this respect. Fearless and unafraid were two different things. He was fearless. He dared to outshine the sun, stare down a bullet, kiss death and walk away with his back unguarded. He would hold the whole world in his palms despite its bone-crushing weight, despite its sharp edges crusted with blood, if only he could stop it from falling apart. But you? You were fearful. Sometimes you couldn't breathe around the clot of fear lodged in your throat. The only way to lessen its weight on your tongue was to scream until no words came out, while the only way to chase away its shadows was never to close your eyes at night. You were unafraid of one thing, though —he could tear down the world and bury you alive under the weight of his guilt, yet you would follow him without hesitation.

Your eyes rested upon woven strands of sunlight, alighting softly upon his scarred skin. These honeyed arcing rays gave him a light glimmer that revealed his plant patterns, pulsing slowly and dimly. Something about the scene was so divine, and you felt the dawn rise from your heart every morning and reach the sky.

You hugged him from behind by bridging the gap between your bodies and leaned your cheek against his sun-kissed back. Your hands gently caressed his stomach and chest as your lips left kisses on his love reminiscences—one by one.

You could hear him breathing in and out. Unevenly. Yet he was silent. Hands clenched, knuckles white. Of course, he wanted you with a desperate need he had never known. But his regret, sins, and crimes were so overwhelming they consumed him. He thought, how could you be so kind to a thing like him?

Unaware of the voices in his mind, you dropped a kiss on his spine. You kissed the curve of his shoulder. His shoulder blades. Five kisses down his spine, each softer than the other one. For every little moment of pain he had ever felt in his life, you wanted to make it all go away. You kissed his neck, trying to ignore the tension in his muscles, the ache spreading inside you, urging you to end his suffering.

Your words were heavy with sincerity when you said, "I don't care what everyone else thinks about you." You leaned your forehead to his shoulder, your breaths gently caressing his back. "Because you're the only good thing left in this world."

As his eyes widened, he breathed heavily, trying to gain control of himself. "What are you saying?" he asked, his hand caught in his hair. "How can you tell such a thing this after all this?" His hand pointed to the window, to the news on the radio.

Standing on your knees, you kissed the hand caught between his gold locks. The same hand he always tried to cover its scar with a glove. Because the idiot thought his scars would be repulsive. The idiot. Your favorite idiot.

You didn't sit back. Keeping your head there, your nose buried in his hair, and your chest pressed to his back—this smell. You had never seen a sea, but you had heard about them. And you believed if there was ever to be a sea in this hell hole, he would smell like a sunny beach. Sweet, enveloping, and warm.

"That is—" your voice broke when you spoke. "That's what the family is for, Vash."

A sudden searing heat flashed behind his eyes, and his heart leaped at your response. He dropped his hand on his knee and sat still in place by the weight of your words. His hand trembled, and his eyes were willing and wanting but filled with both sadness and happiness.

A family.

All this time, he thought you were with him all along because you didn't have a grasp on his sins, but now, he could see that you already knew everything. And despite all of this, you were still willing to forgive him and give him something he always wanted but never had without even requiring him to earn it or redeem himself.

You touched his arm and traced the tender skin with your fingertips. Scars everywhere. You kissed the back of his elbow. "I'm sorry for everything humans have done to you," you told him, and he took a shallow breath. "Forgive us." Another kiss. "Forgive me."

A delicate warmth filled Vash's heart and melted it into drops of warm honey that soothed the scars in his soul. He turned his head and stared at you with open, vulnerable eyes, a tight jaw, and tensed muscles. No one had ever apologized to him. According to his experience, he was usually the monster, the wicked one. The onus always was on him to make amends.

It stunned him how strange it felt. Up until now, he never thought he deserved forgiveness, let alone someone asking for it.

Running a tired hand across his face, he wasn't sure what to do with himself. A joy filled his heart, causing him to feel heavy with something he wasn't even sure he could describe.

Gratitude, perhaps.

The ache in his chest had grown more assertive, more painful. But for now, he didn't want to think about it. He simply just wanted to enjoy your proximity.

Your hand reached up to stroke the luminous curved shapes on his cheek, tracing them to the softness of the mole beneath his left eye. The look in those aquamarines breaking your heart. You couldn't bear to see his face covered in sorrow and guilt.

"You're a good man, my Vash," you said, your words soft, your hand gentle as you tilted his chin up toward your mouth. He was blinking fast, yet not denying. You whispered words on his lips that no one had ever spelled out for him. "Rem would've been proud of you," you told him, watching the movement in his throat and his effort to keep it together. It didn't take you long to kiss him once, tenderly.

He found himself at a loss for words, opting to convey his emotions through touch instead as he melded his lips with yours. He sighed into your mouth, and you kissed him even more deeply, almost desperately, as if trying to pass over your breaths to him. You could taste the salt on your tongue. The wet drops falling on your cheeks made your flesh burn. You were uncertain whose they were as you continued to try and cling to him.

10:00 am – July 21st

The sheets slowly slipped and fell to the floor as Vash pulled you into his arms, clutching you tight, hardly able to breathe. When he exhaled and looked at you again, there were stories in his eyes, thoughts, whispers, and feelings of things you had never seen before. His whole body seemed to be relaxed in relief. He looked like he was hanging on his sanity by a single, fraying thread. You.

And you promised yourself, at this moment, that you would hold him forever, just like this, until all the pain, the torture, and the suffering was gone, until he'd given a chance to live the kind of life where no one could ever hurt him this deeply ever again.

He touched your cheek. Soft, as if he wasn't sure if you were real. His four fingers caressed the side of your face gently before they slipped behind your neck, caught in that in-between spot below your ear, and his thumb brushed the apple of your cheek, then grazing your bottom lip.

You did so much with these lips, you thought. Touched, kissed, and pressed them against tender parts of his skin. You made promises, and the words they formed, the shapes and sounds they curved around, all for him.

Vash moved closer by just an inch. His free metallic hand cupped the other side of your face. He was holding you like you were made of crystals. Holding you and looking at his own hands, he couldn't believe you were real.

Gone was the man with guns and bullets. These hands treasuring you had never held a weapon. They were perfect and kind, never touched by death. He took your hands and pressed your palms to his face. Tears must have welled up in your eyes when you closed them.

You whispered his name, and he breathed harder than you.

Could this be a dream?

You shook, shuddered, splintered into teardrops, and he held you like no one had before. He wanted you. Seeing him cling to you as he might never let go did something to you, something heady, knowing that he might wish you, or need you, like this, made you want to protect him even though he didn't need your protection.

Gently, he stroked your hair and pressed his lips to your forehead. Gradually, his arms became the arms around your waist; his lips became the lips pressed against yours, his body the warmth you felt.

You weren't even breathing, but you were alive, and he was kissing you. Deeply, desperately. The palms of his hands were rubbing the small of your back as he lifted you into his lap. Your legs automatically wrapped around his hips, allowing him to kiss your neck, throat, and nipples.

You broke apart with his small licks here and there, breathing hard, and stared at him like a bonehead, your brain still too numb to figure out exactly how you two got here.

Tilting his head to a side, he pressed his lips against yours again, seeking you with a burning need, a new kind of desperation. His hands were threaded in your hair, his lips so soft, so urgent against yours, like fire and cinnamon exploding in your mouth.

Vash nibbled your bottom lip in a flash and pulled back just a little bit. Your body was flooded with heat and desire so intense you could hardly think when he parted his lips from you to sigh in your mouth, and that slight sound of pleasure drove you crazy.

Putting one hand under your neck, placing his mouth on your breast, and running his fingers down your back, he pressed your body closer, only to find something hard pressing against your groin.

Oh.

Well.

While he avoided your gaze, he smiled sheepishly and tentatively touched your thighs with his hands. Because of what had happened, you knew he would probably feel embarrassed to ask for it, but that didn't mean you wouldn't give it to him. He deserved the whole world if you had the chance to provide for him. His markings were glowing softly when you squeezed him closer to yourself, holding him tighter.

Biting his lip and stifling his groan, his smart-ass hands slid up your legs and into your thighs. Soon, his lips reached your chest. Your body ached everywhere, tasting colors and sounds you didn't even know existed. His forehead was pressed against your chin, and your hands gripped his shoulders. He was hot, gentle, and somehow in a hurry.

You were beyond the reach of rational thoughts. Beyond words, beyond comprehension. The world was beyond understanding because nothing could ever compare with this. Nothing could ever capture the way you were feeling right now. Nothing mattered anymore. You were left with only this moment: his mouth on your body, his hands on your skin, and his lust deep in his eyes, making you absolutely insane.

Your wetness was no longer a secret when he surrounded you everywhere. As he watched you, you reached down and adjusted his length against your slippery entrance over a few strokes. His pulse could be felt in your palm and soon inside of you.

Using both soft and hard hands, he gently grasped your hips and pulled you down toward him. As he entered, you gasped, every time surprised at his size, clinging desperately to his neck as he hitched your legs around his waist, his prosthetic arm settling beneath your thigh. You loved the feeling of him stretching you. You loved having him this close to you. You loved the way he manhandled you. You loved his hand around your neck and the little squeeze of his fingers around your nape.

His grip tightened when he sensed you were ready for him, and he started moving you up and down. You cried out and leaned your cheek to his nose, dying and somehow being brought back to life in the same moment, in the same breath.

Fuck! You were full of him.

He lifted your thighs, and you bit back the moan stuck in your throat. His mouth wouldn't let go of your skin, kissing you with an intensity that made you wonder why you hadn't died, caught on fire, or woken up from this dream yet. Then he returned his hands to your face and kissed you once, twice.

The room's silence was filled with your heavy breathing, your chest against Vash's. Your pulses hammered against each other. You felt his arms around you become unbearably tight as he yanked you up and down with even more force than before, hitting you in a place he seemed to know too well.

As his teeth caught your bottom lip momentarily, you pushed your nails to his shoulder, running your fingers through his hair to pull him into your mouth. He tasted so sweet. So hot and sweet. You kept trying to say his name, but you couldn't even breathe, much less say a single word.

The pace increased slightly; each thrust was hard, deliberate, wringing gasps, whimpers, and long, rolling moans from you.

Your eyes tingled with tears, falling fast down, traveling quietly down your cheeks, and he cupped your face in his hands, his thumbs two parentheses in your mouth, against your tongue and saliva. As if he had found Adam's ale between million mirages of the desert, he stared at you, his eyes like fire in the water.

"I love you," he whispered over and over, his voice fragile, uneven. His lips covered yours in a tender kiss. He kissed you and tasted your tears, the lingering flavor of pleasure laced in your mouth. He kissed you and kissed you until time toppled over, and your head spun into oblivion.

Vash loved you…

His temple was leaned against yours when you took his earlobe between your teeth, stripped him to his bones, and ruined him from the inside out. Your sweet little tongue was frantic when you whispered, "I'm yours to love."

Hearing your words, he held still for moments, sucking in the air because he felt almost dizzy with satisfaction, running his hands over your thighs.

You. You were his. You, the one who knew if you left him alone at that moment, would fall into the depths of his own hell; if he'd slipped through your fingers, he would be gone, and no one could bring him back. You did not erase all his pain or offer to solve all his problems. You didn't fix everything that was broken, but that wasn't what he needed anyway. What mattered the most was that you stayed.

He loved you.

He loved you so much.

Grasping your soft hips, he buried his face against your shoulder and sped up. You were his undoing, taking him apart and putting him back together differently, better, and more himself than he ever could have been. He gritted his teeth as his orgasm came barreling at him. His hands glided on your back when you shuddered, your inner walls squeezing him so hard he couldn't prevent his release. With a growl, he thrust wildly, once, twice—and then everything around you both disappeared until it was all just colors and light, the sun shines and oceans, apple trees, and blossoms.

Your eyes were still closed, and you felt his hands laced with yours, just to remind you that you had him here and that he was with you. Your partner in everything. His chest heaving, he buried his face in your neck, sweat covering his temples. Kissing him there, you inhaled the scent of his hair.

"You're my family too," you heard him whisper, his words etched into your soul as his lips moved against your skin. And you wished, more than ever, that you could capture moments like this and relive them forever.

12:50 pm – July 21st

You woke up with a smile, your skin still hot from the memory of your vile. You were cleaned with a wet towel, placed in bed with a kiss, and promptly fell asleep. Thankfully, no nightmares this time.

What time was it? You didn't know.

As you stretched your legs under the sheets, you realized your back was against Vash, his prosthetic arm resting on your pillow, the other tucked around your waist. Knowing he had held you this close warmed the pit of your stomach and made you feel so safe that you didn't ever want to move, but you had a thousand things to do today, but you never, ever wanted to move.

Truth be told, you loved these moments the most. The quiet contentment. Being enveloped by his naked body. You never felt closer to him than you did like this when there was nothing between you.

Today was a big day delayed by your nightmare and the sound of that stupid radio! There was no way you were going to let anything overshadow his birthday anymore. Even for a few hours, he deserved this celebration, this little distraction. He deserved to be happy, eat, and laugh.

You sighed, hating to wake him up since he seemed pretty tired. Slowly, you turned around in his arms. A smile tugged at your mouth as you watched him, amazed at how his presence could bring you such peace. He shifted again, burrowing deeper into the pillows, and you realized he must be exhausted.

Watching the movement of his throat, you breathed him in, running your hands along the deep, strong lines of muscle in his arm. His entire being felt raw. Powerful. Being a plant had something wild and terrifying about it; somehow, this knowledge only made you love him more. You traced the contours of his shoulder blades, then his spine. He stirred, but only briefly, and buried his face in your hair.

"Don't go," he whispered softly, pressing his nose to your scalp alongside his lips.

You tilted your head, gently kissing the column of his throat. "Vash," you whispered. "I'm not going anywhere."

Taking a deep breath, he said, "good."

You smiled. "Oh, but we should probably get out of bed. I promised Rosalina I'll help—"

A disapproving sound escaped his throat as he shook his head, deftly helping you turn around. He hugged you close again, your back pressed against his chest. Soft and husky, his voice was full of desire when he said, "C'mon, let me enjoy this. Feeling good."

"You don't want a cake?" you blurted out, but it certainly caught his attention.

You could feel he raised his head, stiffened and confused. "How come Rosalina's making me a cake?"

Did you hear correctly? Had he forgotten about his birthday? Did this day become neglected to the point where it was forgotten?

Turning around, you saw he was sitting, his body frozen and his heart probably pounding furiously. Getting him to attend his birthday would take more effort than you expected. Because he asked how you could possibly plan a party for him, why anyone would throw him a party, what if he didn't even like birthday parties, and so on. Still, you didn't fall short. Since the day he told you about Rem making them a cake for their birthday, you kept track of his birthday. The July incident wasn't going to overshadow his birthday. It was your vow to replace that memory with better ones. That forever and ever, you'd strive to drown out the darkness that had ruined his life.

In his eyes, tragedy and beauty could be seen, a stoicism that wouldn't be shaken, and childlike joy that couldn't help but flow. When he swallowed, you noticed the gentle movement in his throat and moved your hand to his ear, your pinkie touching his earring, then tracing down his jawline. You didn't receive a rejection, but you didn't receive a yes, either. Why wasn't he saying anything? He had you on your worried until he clasped his hands over his face.

Your hand brushed against his undercut as you gently kissed his temple and tried to pry his hands away from his face. "Vash?" you said, your words hardly a whisper. "Is everything alright?"

The reply took him a few seconds to come out, but when he finally did, he nodded. It was only once, but it was enough. "Yeah," he said softly. "I'm okay."

The feeling of relaxation washed over you as you exhaled. "If you don't want a—"

He held and squeezed your hand as he looked at you, his eyes round when he said, a little nervously, "what have I done," he whispered, his voice trembling, "to deserve you?"

Did you die of joy? Because he took your face in his hands and kissed you so passionately, it blew your mind. Your heart began to beat violently, and you didn't recognize yourself. You didn't recognize your hands, your bones, your heart. You felt new. "Thank you," he whispered. "For loving me and everything."

"It's very, very easy to love you, Vash," your lips might have said, but the words never left your lips. You didn't know what to do, so you reeled him in, kissed him, and lost yourself in his taste and feel, in the fantasy of what you might have. What you might be.

But wait! Didn't you know fate was a jealous, vicious mistress that never ever slept?

You blinked.

You blinked again, but this time for too long. You saw a flash of blood spewing inside your open mouth. Nausea returned with a swiftness that scared you. A breath was drawn, your fingers fluttering as you desperately tried pressing them against your stomach. Pain filled your eyes as you kept them open. Clenching your fists, you attempted to control spiraling thoughts.

However, nothing helped. Nothing helped. Nothing, you thought. Nothing, nothing, and nothing.

Where was Vash? Where were you?

Throughout your open eyes, terror oozed from your heart. You heard someone calling your name. A hand brushed lightly along your spine as you shivered suddenly at the unexpected sensation.

" …," the voice said, "do you … ?"

The warmth moved in only to meet the coldness of your skin. You felt it all. Again and again, a touch of his finger did pull you out of your nightmare.

A rustle of sheets caught your attention, and Vash pulled you onto his lap. Straddling him, your legs stretched across the rumpled fabric. Wrapping his arm around you, he spread his hand along your back.

It was just a dream. It was just a dream. It was just a dream.

Turning carefully in the cradle of his arms, you pressed your forehead to his bare chest, your eyelashes fluttering against his rough gash.

"You okay?" he asked, his metallic fingers combing through your hair in a soothing act.

"Yes," you replied, forcing air into your lungs. You were breathing hard, head spinning as you held on to him. "Yes."

"Is something wrong, Elay?" He probably had lowered his head because his breath was touching your shoulder.

"Nothing," you claimed. Your heart was beating fast, too fast. You didn't know why you were lying. You should have just told him, but you didn't know why you weren't.

Wait.

Actually, you knew.

You were waiting.

You were waiting to see if this shit would pass. It had to, because today was a special day. Because you were already exhausted, and the radio's sound was repeating in your ears. Because you didn't want to add another burden to his shoulders with your silly nightmare. Even more, it wasn't real. Just a figment of your imagination, and saying it out loud would make it sound more real than it really was.

Vash asked no further questions. He was more of an "if you love someone, let them keep their secrets to themselves " guy. He pulled you close, and you melted into him, grateful for his warmth and steady hold. You took a deep, shuddering breath and let it all go, exhaling against him. A faint aroma of caramel lingered in your nostrils as you breathed in his skin's rich, heady scent. The minutes passed silently as you both listened to each other breathe.

01:45 pm – July 21st

It took a while, but your heart rate steadied.

You could feel it.

Here.

This.

Your bones against his bones. This was your home.

"What're you thinking?" His lips touched your neck, a graze that sparked, hot and cold, right down to your toes.

"Been thinking about you." You raised your head and looked at him. He was smiling, the unfaltering sun glinting in his eyes. You could see his fear, hopes, and love for you like a mirror to his soul in those mountain lake-colored spheres. Then there was something else as well—something like bliss. It was a faint glow, but it was there and made you so happy. You had blessed the blessing. He deserved happiness after everything he had been through. After all the horrors he had suffered alone.

"Me?"

As you closed the gap between you two again, you nodded against his chest. Nothing was said, but you could hear his heart racing until he exhaled. It was a heavy, uneven sound, as if he might have been holding his breath for too long.

Gently, you ran your hand along his back. "How long has it been since you celebrated your birthday?" you whispered.

"Hm?" He buried his face in your hair, and his nose glided over your scalp in what appeared to be caressing movements.

It didn't take a genius to figure out when he was ducking a question. You wiggled a little to loosen his grip and looked up. Your fingers ran through the soft, silky strands. The sight of him mesmerized you. His eyes were wide and bright. His lips soft and pale. He was perfect, bare, and beautiful, holding you in his arms. Sighing, you closed your eyes. "Let me ask it this way then," you said, "How many birthdays have you missed so far?"

Nothing came out of his mouth for what seemed like an eternity. You felt him finally move. In a gentle caress, his prosthetic fingers touched your face. "150 birthdays," he whispered, his voice uneven.

Your spine tingled involuntarily. 150 years of solitude. Loneliness. Alone with himself. On this giant planet. Where was his home? Where were his friends? His lovers?

You knew he was so much better at being alone as if being alone came more naturally. He led a life of deliberate seclusion, and when occasional loneliness crept in, he knew how to sink in and absorb its particular comforts or work his way out. After all, there were always bars and saloons and strangers around.

You knew he wanted to carry the weight of life all alone, even the burden of those he once loved. It wasn't fair, though. You had to be allowed to help him carry it all. A frown formed on your face, and you inhaled, "Happy birthday #1! Happy birthday #2! Happy birthday #3!..."

His metallic forefinger stopped your lips. Slowly, you looked up to meet his eyes. His expression was sad, sweet, and filled with love. You felt something thawed inside of you as you stared at him.

"You don't have to do this," he said as he separated his finger from your lips to brush away stray strands of hair from your face. A part of you wished his finger could stay there longer.

"Shut up and let yourself celebrate! We've got at least 150 birthdays to catch up on!"

He kissed your eye, and you felt his smile on your eyelid. His lips started moving tardily when he said, "I don't—"

"Shhhh! Since you interrupted me, I'm starting over!" you snapped and continued, "Happy birthday #1! Happy birthday #2! …"

The smile on his face grew bigger and bigger, as if he was filled with so much joy that he hardly recognized himself. You couldn't recall the last time he smiled this much. It was the most pure, unburdened bliss you had ever experienced.

He held you the entire time you felicitated all his forgotten birthdays. You could see it in how he looked at you. You could feel his fears disappearing and his emotions becoming something else. Now, his touch was hot and electric against your skin. Your heart was beating faster and harder, and he didn't have to say anything. You could feel the temperature change between you.

"You," he said, staring at your mouth. He touched his nose to yours, and something inside you jolted to life. You heard your breath caught, your ears turning red, unbidden. "I love you," he whispered.

The words did something to you every time you heard them. They built something new inside of you. You swallowed hard. A fire consumed your mind. "You know," you mumbled shyly, "It never gets old hearing you say that."

Leaning you back a little, he moved, his nose brushed the line of your jaw, and his lips touched your throat. You were holding your breath, terrified to move, to leave this moment.

"I love you," he said again.

Heat filled your veins. You could feel him in your blood, his whispers overwhelming your senses.

"Vash," you said. You wanted to talk to him about what happened hours ago. You knew you should've moved and snapped out of this but couldn't. You couldn't think. And then his hand brushed against your breasts. You breathed quickly, fighting against a sudden rush of pleasure.

It was impossible to pretend anything when he was this close to you. You knew he could feel how badly you wanted him. You could feel him, too. His heat. His desire. He made no secret of what he wanted from you. What he wanted you to do to him.

He kissed you softly, wrapping his arms around you, one too cold, the other too hot. Your body shifted forward in his embrace as you took another painful, agonizing breath.

"I know you're worried," he said, his lips too close to yours and his hot breath in your mouth. "I know we have to talk, but—" He never finished that sentence. He kissed you as he reached down, trailing his fingers along the inner parts of your thighs, and the movement seared through you. Your vision went white. You heard nothing but the pounding of your heart, then you remembered.

"Vash? Um-I have to-ah," you panted, "she is waiting."

You could feel his smile as he whispered the word in your ear. His fingers were teasing your groins. "Please." And you were gone.

One hand kept your head steady, the other roamed around your loins, and he kissed and melted you. Your eyes met his, and the feeling threatened to drown you. He kissed you, and every thought and worry wicked away, replaced by the feel of his mouth against your skin, his hand claiming your body.

Holy Molly!

He eft his kisses everywhere like he knew, like he knew how desperately you needed this, needed him, needed this comfort and release.

Like he needed it, too.

Taking hold of his neck, you raised yourself up to kiss his nose, cheeks, and lips. The line of your bodies was welded together. You felt yourself dissolving, becoming pure emotion as he parted his lips, teased you, and breathed into your mouth. "I love you," he said, gasping the words.

He kissed the top of your shoulder, and his artificial hand wandered over your body, down your back, cupping your back side, lingering on your upper thighs like he wanted to memorize the shape of you, always leaving you in awe of how gentle he was. Your muscles tightened with longing, and you were surprised at how much you wanted him.

Again.

So soon.

However, you had to stop this.

"I'd better get dressed," you said, pulling yourself back, grabbing sheets, and covering yourself with them. "I've got stuff to do."

A grin spread across his face as he watched you as if he could sense your frustration. You crawled from his lap, the bedsheets catching under your knees and making you lose your composure. Like a sneaky fox, he couldn't resist taking advantage of the moment. He yanked the rest of the sheet away from you and tucked you underneath him. His weight pinned you to the mattress, a knee intentionally jammed between your legs and slowly grinding you down.

"Here's what I want for my birthday," he said, kissing your parted lips. He knew what he was doing and knew you couldn't comprehend his words. "I have this idea. Just hear me out; I think that maybe you should consider being naked all the time. I mean, just always. Okay?"

"Okay. I have to—" What were you saying? He had his mouth all over you, sucking at your breasts, licking your throat, his fingers going straight to your sensitive spots.

The moment he got there, you knew you wouldn't let him go, even if he wanted to. So, you needed to gather your wits and act before it was too late.

Think. Think. Think.

"Vash!" you gasped, pushing him up with your hand as much as possible. "I know you're going nuts like a hunk in heat," you said, holding his cheeks between your hands and staring at his big downturned eyes. "I gotta shower and go to the saloon so you can meet me there at eight, okay, good boy?" You tapped on his shoulder.

With raised eyebrows, Vash got off you, but you remained trapped between his knees. Although he crossed his arms and pretended to be mad, you could see him fighting back a smile. It was amazing how that poor piece of sheet managed to cover his hips; otherwise, you wouldn't have been able to focus on his face.

"You were going to take a shower without me?" he said sternly.

You couldn't figure out what to say for a moment and then carefully asked, "would you like to join me?"

Considering your offer, he gazed at you, up and down, with a sweet, secret smile. The look in his eyes was enough to persuade you to agree to anything. You would do anything for this man if he asked. Even if he didn't bother to ask.

"Vash."

Your heart was heavy as you whispered his name, filled with emotion. You went still as he hovered over you, gently mouthing your nipples. His kisses grow more intent, leaving a trail of fire across your chest, down your torso, and rushing through your veins.

Suddenly, you forgot why you were even in such a hurry.

Your hands slipped around his neck, and you reeled him in. He felt incredible against you, his body fitting perfectly. You tilted his face up, your hand caught somewhere behind his neck and the base of his jaw, and you kissed him softly and slowly, heat filling your blood with dangerous speed.

As one hand held him steady, the other skimmed the smooth skin of your waist, gripping your hip hard. He parted your legs with his thigh, hearing you make a desperate sound deep in your throat, and it did something to him, to feel and hear you like that, to be assaulted by your pleasure and desire. It drove him crazy.

Vash buried his face in your neck, and his hand moved up to feel your breasts' tender skin, hot, soft, and sensitive to his touch. He wanted your body under his hands, the scent of your skin, and the light whisper of your hair against his. Licking your earlobes, he tried to ignore the strain in his muscles and the hard, desperate pressure driving him towards you, toward madness.

An ache was expanding inside you and demanding more, craving him to flip you over and lose yourself in you. You clung to him, your eyes half-lidded, your face flushed. Your breathes were heavy when you said, "take me, Vash."

His eyes widened, and he stared at you like he might be going deaf and blind at the same time, hunching over from the effort of inhaling and exhaling. He said nothing and only looked at you carefully from the top, drinking you in. His pulse was wild, his mind racing. There was no way he could refuse you.

02:50 pm - July 21st

Vash stepped aside, and you pushed the sheets away when he asked you to get up. Soon you were standing in the middle of the room as he had demanded.

He couldn't look away from you and probably couldn't even hear himself think over his heart beating fast like a thud against his skull. Pinning you against the closest wall, he kissed you wild enough for you never to forget why he was called the stampede. His fingers touched every everywhere. Every bend and arc. Every pit and hole. Leaving gentle slaps and smacks on the soft skin of yours.

It was lovely to feel your soft curves against his rough edges, and somehow, the paradox between the smoothness of your bodies pressed against each other made the scene even more surreal. In order not to miss any precious time, he picked you up, and you gasped, shocked, and scrambled to hold on for dear life. He pushed the bathroom door aside with his shoulder and carried you into the shower.

He needed you. Needed this. Now. You could see it in his eyes, in the upward arch of his erection.

He drew a deep, unsteady breath before switching the tap on.

A short scream tore through your throat.

You two got soaked in cold water as he pressed your front against the shower wall, losing himself in you like never before. His kisses were more profound, more desperate, and his hands less considerate than before. The heat more explosive, and everything between you wild, raw, and vulnerable. His mouth devoured you. He had his lips all over your body, his tongue tasting new places.

With the cold tiles touching your breasts, a sensation of pleasure spread throughout your entire body. You could feel it, the bottom half of your body urging you to press against him more deeply and fully. He had to hear the pleas of every cell in your body because his next thrust was so intense that you had to hold on to the wall with your palms to steady yourself while your cheeks pressed more and more against the cold ceramic as he had his way with you.

You lost track of time.

You had no idea how long you had been here. You didn't know how long he had gone haywire in you. Your knees were starting to shake when he turned you around, and your eyes fell on his soaked hair sticking to his forehead and clumping eyelashes blinking slowly. You considered yourself lucky for not only seeing such a marvel but also tasting him and feeling him.

With such hunger, he kissed your lips like he hadn't had them in years. You felt the hard tiles press against your back as he pushed himself inside, without hesitating to move up and down. Over and over again, you were lauded, his panting echoing within four walls.

So many times that you wanted to open your mouth to protest, but every time he took one turgid nipple into his mouth. Heat surged through your blood as his teeth scraped over the end of one, and you moaned instead of complaining. You couldn't stop thinking about how good it felt to feel him inside you, his tongue twirling around your other breast.

The pressure was built. You were consumed by the need to reach the climax in every action. Your stomach muscles were tightening and quivering.

He moved his hands from your hips to your head, tangles of wet hair wrapping around his fingers as he pulled you upwards for a kiss. His tongue immediately thrust past your lips, and he increased his speed.

God! Nothing had ever tasted as good as Vash, you thought. Sensual, decadent, the flavor of him slipped through you.

His hands clenched tighter in your hair, and his teeth bit the flesh of your neck, but you barely noticed, barely caring about the hickey it would leave as he threw back his head, groaning your name. The sight of him in the throes of his peak drove you to the edge, your inner muscles clamping around his hardness, pulling him in deeper.

You cried out, clutching his shoulders so tightly that your fingernails dug into his skin, and your screams were muffled against his chest. The plunk of shower water running between your feet could be heard as your body shook, and he leaned his forehead against your head.

His hot released load was dripping and sliding down on your thighs when you collapsed into his arms, feeling weak and unsteady. He held you close to himself, tight yet so gentle, stroking your wet hair with his fingers and leaving small pecks wherever he could reach. "We should eat something," he said, kissing the curve of your shoulder and the sides of your neck.

You were intoxicated by the pure, stunning power of his emotions, endless waves of love and desire, love and kindness, love and joy, love and tenderness.

So much tenderness.

You pressed your cheek against his chest and held him as he braced himself against the wall. Your bodies were wet and heavy with feeling, your hearts pounding with something more powerful than you had ever imagined possible.

Water was dripping from the mess of his hair. So gorgeous, you thought. Then you forgot where you were and what you were going to do. Your arms and limbs trembled slightly, and he was too terrified to let you go.

Too in love to let you go.

07:15 pm - July 21st

As night fell, the blue haze of the day lifted and revealed the stars brightening the sky, shining like beams of happiness, appearing still as an old photograph. The wind blew Vash's hair into a tousled bun.

He walked out of his favorite shop and leaned against the wall with a big bag of donuts and an even bigger smile. Yeah, he perfectly knew he would eat cake, but eating donuts had nothing to do with it: a warm-up, just appetizers.

His eyes followed the long shadows of townies milling around under the flickering lamppost lights, even though he couldn't make out any faces from such afar. He liked this town. It was so small that his typhoon hadn't yet found it. Or maybe because he was a stranger here. Nobody knew him, and everybody was safe from the curse his name carried around.

Everybody but you.

You already had been spelled by those fifteen letters.

V-A-S-H-T-H-E-S-T-A-M-P-E-D-E

Taking a look around, he tried to find a clock on a building or something. The birthday boy didn't want to be late. This and, of course, the words you uttered before you left the house:

"Eight o'clock, Vash. Don't forget! Don't be late! Don't be early and wear that white shirt. See you there!"

He sighed and took a donut from the bag, careful not to stain his white shirt with his clumsiness. It smelled great. What a heavenly aroma, smelling like honey. This and you and this town. It sure felt good to see happy people around.

Without further ado, he took a bite of his sugar-coated donut.

He expected it to taste incredible and super tasty, like being alive, but he couldn't feel it. There was a sense of numbness in him. The weight of an unknown worry was heavy against his heart.

A muffled whistle-like sound echoed in the distance, followed by several. Another shot rang out, this time sounding like it was meant. Suffocating silence, creaking doors, and screams that tore the sky open.

He felt strangely dull, as if his connection with his body had been cut off. The bag fell to the ground, and the donuts scattered around. People were crying, weeping, but all he could hear was the wind's wails in his ears, slapping sharply against his face.

He took uncertain steps forward. The area outside the saloon looked like more than a graveyard. It was worse than he had expected. There were injured people everywhere; some collapsed on the ground.

From where he stood, he counted two men, one woman, and a child dead. Open eyes, mouths agape, fresh blood still dripping down limp bodies. Where were you? Something about that realization struck fear into his veins.

The horrifying possibilities flashed through his mind. His mind was blank as to what had happened. Were you okay?

Vash looked over the crowd, still staring, waiting for you to show up. Waiting for you to find him. But you weren't anywhere to be found. In the chaos, he ran from one to another, people scattered around, and he didn't see you. The terror of this moment kicked him in the gut.

So many thoughts were tangled in his head that he couldn't untie the insanity. He glanced back at the doors you were supposed to come out, opening it with a smile.

He waited. He waited longer than was reasonable. Then he called you. Quietly at first, then louder. He shouted your name. His chest was being torn apart by fear, squeezing his heart. A part of him was afraid to speak the words aloud, fearful of making them true.

His legs felt like they had been formed from fresh clay, like he was moving through a fog. His voice reached everyone, pleading this time, running forward until the doors were in his line of sight.

"Is she in?" he asked, but no one answered. Everybody was frozen by the agony of the moment. All that could be heard were silent weeps and the wind howling.

Vash gulped, his throat all dry, and walked in; his lips parted, his eyes wide and horrified. The blood in his veins all ice.

Pain.

It began at his feet, bloomed up his legs, unfurled in his stomach, and worked its way up to his throat, only to explode behind his eyes. The sudden scream ripped itself from his lungs. It wrenched free from his chest without warning, without permission, and it was a scream so loud, so hard and violent, it broke his back. His hands were pressed against his knees, his head half bent.

Echoes of his misery would never be lost in the wind or carried away by the clouds but would always live between these walls. Forever.

His voice was unfamiliar to him. The horror, shock, and dread that flooded his body was something he had never felt — never known before, not like this.

The popped balloons on the walls. A half-ruined cake on the counter. Blood-stained confetti all around. A shoeless foot lying on the floor. Locks of tousled hair slipped from the makeshift shroud.

The numbness was now merciful, at least for a few moments. Then, everything crashed.

Vash fell next to the body. The knowledge rushed up in him, choking off his breath. Another scream tore its way out. Then another, and another. It felt as if his very essence had been ripped from him.

He pulled you into his arms, clutching you tightly, barely able to breathe. His fingers seized your hair and yanked it from your face. The golden strands of his hair fell onto your bloody face. You were called over and over, but it didn't seem like anything more than a sound. His pleas were like commands, begging you to open your eyes, but you ignored them as if playing a nasty prank.

Vash held both of your hands in his. There was no touch. All he felt was an empty coldness. The silence grew even louder, consuming him like a pitch-black shadow. Biting his lip, he tasted a faint metallic taste on his tongue. The desperation in his expression, the grief carved into his features, the way he looked at you as if he were about to pass the gates of hell and utter his last farewell.

Suddenly, he wanted to laugh one of those strange, high-pitched, delusional laughs that marked the end of sanity. Because this world, he thought, had a terrible sense of humor. It always seemed to mock him, making his life more miserable and ruining his dreams by destroying everything he ever loved.

You were dead. This pain was truly real.

Vash broke apart. Sobs cracked open his chest and cried until the pain spiraled and peaked; he bawled until his head throbbed and his eyes swelled. His fingers dug into your back as he called, desperate for a sign of hope. Your hollow body was clutched to his heart, and he felt the injustice roared through him. The feeling fractured him apart. His forehead pressed against your cheek, and his mouth trembled as he whispered, "C-Come ba-ck." The words fell apart. He could only mumble stuttering sounds.

He kissed your knuckles briefly. Would you have blushed if you were still breathing, whining about how cheesy he was being? He could only imagine your reactions now.

Hot tears streamed down his face, and he squeezed his eyelids shut in an effort to make them stop. He sat there unmoving for quite some time with choppy breathing and watery eyes.

09:00 pm - July 21st

Things were in a state of disarray in his vision. People were coming in with dropped shoulders and muffled weeps in the air. Someone approached and touched his shoulder for comfort, and a fierce unknown rage emerged in him. He could kill the man there but would have to let go of you, and he couldn't.

Vash turned his face back and held you so tightly like you would be able to feel the faint beat of his heart. He wept, cradling you, and he wouldn't move nor speak a word other than your name. It was like seeing the sun through the water. His tears fell, but you wouldn't be able to kiss them away this time.

"How dare you mourn her!" Someone bent over him. "You killed her!" Weak fists landed on his back but hurt him more than torture and shots. "She died because of you! You bring misfortune and destruction everywhere you go!" yelled Rosalina with a devastated voice.

Words, he thought, were such unpredictable creatures. No gun, knife, army, or enemy could ever be more powerful than a sentence. Blades may cut and kill, but words would stab and stay, burying into the future, digging and failing to rip his skeletons from his flesh. These weren't nice things to say. Not now. Not after what he was going through. Not when his white shirt was covered in your blood, and his hands burned with the bit of warmth left in your body.

Vash continued to hold you, silent and steady, even as the tears receded, even when he began to tremble. He had you tight as his body shook, held you close when the tears started anew, held you in his arms, and stroked your hair, whispering, "Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me." His voice was a terrible thing, cracked and broken.

He felt guilty. Anyone who got close to him was doomed to die. He thought his actions and inactions always took away his loved ones. Oh, stubborn, stubborn Vash! Of course, he would blame himself for something that had nothing to do with him.

The once happy eyes of Rosalina spilled hot tears on his shirt. "For two years, you lived among us, looked into our eyes every day, and lied about who you are, Vash the Stampede!"

Several gasps were heard from the crowd, followed by whispers filling the air.

Vash the stampede was here.

Chaos.

Questions flew, and weeps were muffled. Everyone was shocked, horrified, freaking out. You had long been forgotten, he thought.

"Is he the most wanted Vash the Stampede?"

"Were there raids in the saloon because of him?"

"The bounty hunters were after the money on his head?"

"They shot us and ran away because of this man?"

"This guy really had us fooled!"

"Is this true?"

Vash's reality was too broken, too distracted to process these kinds of talks. This horrible instant was one mess of insanity in his mind. He couldn't make any sense of it. He didn't answer a word to anyone and just stroked your cold cheek with as much gentleness as he could.

Someone shouted, "What's the hell's the matter with you? Say something. At least make some excuse!"

"Shame on you for bringing danger to our town!"

"We've heard enough of your crying!"

"At least have the decency and go die like a man!"

"No normal human being could cause all these horrible things! He had to be a monster! Who else could have been responsible?"

"Did you feel some of the pain of people who died because of your reckless behaviors?"

He was dying, he thought. He must be. He thought he knew what death was like, but he must have been wrong because this was a whole different kind of dying—a whole different kind of pain.

"That girl died protecting this demon?"

"She knew about the humanoid typhoon all this time." The man gulped and pointed at your dead body. "Our loved ones are dead and hurt because of her stupid devotion to this walking disaster!"

The scene was quite unbelievable, horrifying. His mind reeled, incapable of comprehending or processing what he was hearing. Everything in him came to a halt while his thoughts caught up. It was for him that you died. The shock brought a quietness, a moment to gird his soul for what would come. Truth poured gasoline on the spark of denial in his belly, burning him alive. It fashioned itself into a knife and stabbed him in the eye. And the funny thing was, he didn't want to do anything to stop it. Anguish was all that remained of you; he embraced it with all he was. He deserved it. So he bled with a smile on his face, wishing the pain to end him this time.

"If that self-righteous whore had revealed his whereabouts, not only would she be alive now, but the others wouldn't be dead either!"

Blackness seemed to press against his eyes, ears, and throat. He couldn't breathe, hear, or see clearly, and the suffocation of the moment was so terrifying that he was almost sure he had lost his mind.

How many insults can one person take before throwing in the fucking towel? For him, that number was infinite, but for you, he wouldn't allow even one.

He stood up and grabbed a fistful of the man's shirt. He pointed a gun at the infamous criminal, but Vash ripped the gun out of his hand. "What did you say about her?" he asked with a voice like a rusty saw that wanted to cut the bone. His jaw was clenched, and his eyes were burning in absolute rage. Nobody had seen him like this. Not once. People were so used to his calm and kind demeanor that this side of him scared them. If they wanted a typhoon, they'd get one. He was fortified with a new kind of anger, a desperate, animal intensity that overpowered him and forced him to stand still.

The man was trembling in his grip. "N-nothing," he finally said. Vash's pulse was racing, breathing heavily, almost like he would burst. The muscles in his hand tensed, causing him to crack his knuckles. Almost like a blazing inferno, his blood boiled in his veins, burning him from the inside out. He was mainly angry with himself, but that wouldn't stop his urge to hunt each and every single one of those bounty hunters, just to make sure they suffered and felt a lot of pain, just like he felt. No longer did he want to show sympathy to anyone. Maybe he was really a monster, wasn't he?

"If they learn your name and start haunting you, we'll run away! We'll run, run, run, and keep running as far as we have to! And when things calm down, we'll settle by their side again. You won't kill. You'll never kill anyone again, and one day, people will begin seeing you as I do."

Recalling your words, his eyes widened, and his fist loosened. The man's face was devoid of color. Vash tried to read his eyes for something but saw nothing but terror in the end. He was afraid.

No.

Your race was merciless. How could they say such a thing about one of their own? This man probably deserved the worst, but you didn't want Vash to be cruel, only to be kind. And he couldn't do this to you. Because if he did and an afterlife existed, you'd probably be the only sad person in heaven right now.

Dropping the man on the floor, Vash crushed his gun in his hand and tossed it away. The stranger was groaning and hunching over when he returned to you.

It was the first time Rosalina had seen him like this, her brain unable to digest or process this information. Unlike the man she knew, this one had cold, sharp eyes only focused on you. The look on his face was different. Scary, even. Somehow that worried her even more. She might be sad for you, even hate her people for having talked disparagingly about you; maybe she would give them a piece of her mind and grieve your loss. Maybe. Right now, though, her child's safety was her top priority, and this blood-stained man didn't look very stable.

"Listen, we don't want to die! Leave here and never come back!"

Vash sat by your side, helpless, as if something had broken inside him and all his emotions had poured out. When you left him alone, did you take some part of him with you?

"Get her out of this town. This disaster would've never happened if you hadn't stumbled into this town. She'd still be alive," Rosalina said firmly, staring at your peaceful face like you were in a deep sleep.

Vash didn't answer or even glance at the woman who wanted to help you celebrate his birthday. Like an orphan, he pulled you impossibly close, your bodies soldering together. He pondered Rosalina's words and the night he saw you and wondered whether your life would have been different if he hadn't met you. Who was even capable of answering this? As he whispered your name and begged you for forgiveness, his tears washed the blood from your cheeks, and Rosalina felt something inside her die. As she watched him willingly take all blame upon himself alone, as if he was already familiar with this feeling, she felt something break apart inside her.

Vash resembled his wanted posters now. A tall man with blond hair covered in red, but this time, it was your blood instead of his famous coat. His hands were trembling so hard he couldn't even recognize them anymore. Even so, he picked you up, cuddling you in his arms, only to notice the hickey on your neck from hours ago. Pain cramped his joints, breaking away every single bone in his body. He wanted to shriek through the sky; he wanted to fall to his knees again and sob into the ground. He didn't know why the agony wasn't finding an escape through his tears.

"Think way back. Remember that story I told you? About the man that found a blank ticket that could take him anywhere he wanted? That man is all of us. Where you go is yours to choose. You'll always have that ticket in your pocket, no matter what darkness life throws at you. When you're ready, write down the destination. I promise you. You'll be alright."

He wished Rem was right, but there was no such concept as happiness in this world. There was only endless strife, destruction, and death. There was only loneliness, pain, and regret. Whatever he did, no matter how much he pleaded, no matter how much he wished with all his heart to make things right, life always had a way of taking everything from him.

It seemed like Vash the Stampede's life had peaked, and nothing that came after you would ever matter to him. Because for him, there was before you, and there was during you, but he didn't want any after you. You were the light he never knew he needed. He was lost in the darkness, wandering life without direction. Then he found you, and you brought him warmth and light. You were the one who saved him. Twice and he couldn't do the same.

As he walked forward, he pleaded with his bones to remain steady, to carry him through the rest of the day and into the rest of his meaningless life. He passed through the crowd as if he had never been a part of them. The sand dragged under his feet, his knees weak, but he held you tight and walked away. His footprints grew smaller and smaller until there was only the empty silence of a long, lonely night.

Let's let him be for now. Everyone deserves to be left alone for a moment or two, right? Be that as it may, he always lost his most precious ones on his birthdays. Maybe it would have been better if he had never been born so that he would not have to endure so much grief alone. Or perhaps it was the way it was so we could be part of his life.

Author note: My real world had grown so dark that I didn't want to live in it. That's why I escaped and spent the day in a world darker than mine. Please accept my sincere apologies for dragging you down here with me ^_^

If you have anything to say, don't be shy to use ASK and the comment sections.

Disclaimers: This fan-written story contains quotes from "The Song of Achilles", "King Killer Chronicles", "Shatter Me" series and "Reminders of him" books, "Hamlet" play, and "I am unafraid with him" poem by pencap on Tumblr.

The arts are from "Trigun Stampede" anime.

[hiwelcometothemonstersancturary]

Kickin and the Worldwide Communication Errors

This takes place in the "Angel saves everyone" AU, around a year post-game! Kickin and Hoppy have an argument over who knows brazilian portuguese more, and things get funky when he has the chance to prove himself to the others. No warnings necessary except for some swear words here and there. This work has been requested/commissioned by @jmr0303 as a way of supporting me. Thank you so much!

“EU SOU O MELHOR FALADOR DE PORTUGUÊS DESSA CASA!”

Kickin’s yell echoed through the house. There, standing straight on the sofa and pointing directly at everyone else below him, he felt like he might as well have worn the argument just by dramatics alone. He was the king of the living room, an unstoppable force in the art of speaking their parent’s native language, the…

“É ‘falante’, não ‘falador’”.

Kickin blinked, staring down at Hoppy. She crossed her arms, lying against the armchair, while Boxy Boo sat next to her on the floor, drawing something with his crayons. To add insult to injury, Hoppy was smirking.

“Face it, Kicks”, she pointed at him. “I’m the best”.

“Não é, não!”, he groaned, trying to pronounce each and every word as best as he physically could. “If we don’t count dad, I’m the best. I started learning way before you!”

“You could have started learning three decades ago, and it still wouldn’t matter. You gotta use your brain to do this sort of thing. Not like you would know that!”

“Says the girl who doesn’t know how to write the right porquê!”

“Says the chicken who has to ask dad to speak slowly so he can understand how to say hi in Portuguese”.

“… Says the giant bunny who still has to clean the play room for me”.

“Dad!”

Kickin jumped out of the sofa in instinct, already fearing trouble. Angel popped up from the entrance that led to the kitchen, their talent for scaring everyone getting the best of him yet again. Kickin had a theory that the reason why Angel of all people always scared him was because they had some sort of “parental power” or something like that. It was embarrassing. He had dealt with worse things than them! But, hey, at least Hoppy also got scared, and now she was looking away from their dad, which meant one thing:

Kickin won the argument. Hah. HAH!

“Go on, girl, you can do it”, their parent continued, scratching the girl’s head. “Can you help ya sister for me, Boo-Boo? I’ll put your drawings away for ya”.

Boxy purred in affirmation, happily spinning in place.

“Great. Kicks, could you turn on the lights outside? It’s getting kinda foggy, and I don’t want Theo to get lost on his way back home again. You know how he is…”

Kickin nodded: “Yes, sir!”, he smirked. “On my way! Good luck with cleaning your mess, Hoppsy”.

Angel was too confused to ask him what that was about, but Hoppy blew a raspberry at him, marching out of the living room. Heh, that was the price she deserved to pay for interrupting him and Bubba’s weekly walk through the woods that one time…

Speaking of woods. Kickin didn’t know it at that moment, but his knowledge of Portuguese would be challenged very, very quickly, as the world’s most lost man had just appeared in the family farm’s vicinity.

The man’s name was Francisco, also nicknamed Fran by his friends. He was just a tourist on vacation for a few weeks, wanting to experience the beauty of nature while hiking, and maybe even bring a souvenir or two back to his family, all the way back in Portugal. He was in the USA with a few friends, hikers just like him.

He, however, wasn’t at the farm with a few friends, hikers just like him.

Fran had taken a pause, a very quick pause, mind you, just to take a break from hiking. It was a pretty safe trail, so the group decided to go ahead and meet him in another spot. Which was a thing that he could do, mind you, and a thing that he had done before, mind you (!), if it wasn’t for the fact the world’s thickest and densest fog to ever exist on planet Earth had just settled in all around him.

The man couldn’t even distinguish what was right in front of him. It was a miracle that he could barely see his own feet! How was he supposed to go back now? He sung to himself in an attempt to calm down his own mind, but after the first few minutes of trying to find out where was he, Francisco found out that maybe he was outside the trail. And then he retraced his steps, and the minutes that would have taken him to go back turned into a whole hour, and he still had no idea where he was. Him singing Nevoeiro certainly wasn’t helping his case. Francisco was thinking about just accepting defeat and wait for the fog to go away when a miracle happened.

There, in the distance, a series of lights popped up. Lights! In the middle of a forest! It didn’t take him much to decide to approach them, and, next thing he knew (after almost falling down quite a few times), he was on what seemed to be the backyard of a… Farmhouse? So close to the trail? Well, it looked like one, so it must be one, right? It’s not like he had many options, regardless.

Oh. Speaking of options…

He was running out of them. Sure, Francisco knew the basic basics of English, he knew how to say “hi” and “how are you” and “the books are on the table”, but asides from that, only God himself could help him. Or, well, his phrasebook could, if he hadn’t left it with one of his friends. What was he thinking?! Okay, he wasn’t planning to get lost, which is fair, but now he is lost, and he barely knows his English, how was he even supposed to explain his situation, and oh God, what was that sound?!

And now, we circle all the way back to Kickin, who believed, until five seconds ago, that he was completely alone in the backyard, until he heard someone singing in the distance.

He very quickly noticed a mysterious figure in the fog. Kickin’s vision was pretty good, but he had no idea who that was. Too tall to be Ollie or one of the minis, too small to be anyone else. That was a complete stranger right then, right there! His dad wasn’t expecting a visit, so who…

“Hi! Uh… Help…!”

Kickin squinted at the voice. Just what…

“Help!”

“Who are you?”, he asked, very suspiciously, and not daring to approach.

“Hi!”, oh, wait, he could see that guy better now. “No English. Português? Uh, Portuguese?”

Kickin blinked. That accent… WHAT. A Portuguese speaker popping up in the middle of nowhere just when he just had an argument over his own understanding of the language? Was God or someone blessing him with an opportunity to rub his knowledge on Hoppy’s face? Dang, he was feeling lucky.

Kickin cleared his throat. “Eu falo um pouco!”, he announced to the stranger, hoping that his own accent wasn’t too heavy.

“Meu Deus, que milagre!”

A miracle? Yeah, Kickin could believe that. He gave the stranger a smirk, now finally able to see him: Just a normal-looking guy with a beard, short curly hair and equipped with a big backpack. A hiker, he assumed.

“Meu Deus, nem acredito que também falas português!”, the man approached him, very, very happy. Kickin felt himself squirm, only understanding the “you also speak portuguese!” part. “Ando há horas por aqui! Não faço ideia onde está o meu grupo. Estávamos a caminhar, tive de fazer uma pausa e depois perdi-me. De onde és?”

Uh.

Kickin forced his smile to stay on his face.

What the heck did that guy just say. He spoke way too fast for what the critter was used to! The stranger was… Hiking? And then got lost? Urgh, sounds bad. And that question? Where was he from? Uh…

“… Brasil”, he managed to reply, about saying Brazil instead. “De onde… Você… É?”

NAILED IT.

“Lisboa! O que um brasileiro está aqui a fazer? Perdeu-se? Hah, hah!”

Kickin laughed.

He had no idea what the guy is talking about, but it’s okay, he could CERTAINLY figure it out. Eventually

“Onde estamos? Não é um trilho…”

“... Uh...”

“Uh?”

Okay. What. Kickin rubbed his neck, already irritated at himself. He just understood a bunch of gibberish. Angel did tell him about different accents, but dang, this was hard.

“Que lugar é este?”

AH, YES, YES, YES, HE UNDERSTOOD IT NOW, HAHAHAHAHAHA. Now, all he had to do was answer. Ahem:

“Tamo na fazenda da minha mãe!”

“Fazenda?”, the man tilted his head. “Ah, a quina!”

… What. Kickin swore he had just said “we’re at my mother’s farm”, fazenda means farm, so why is this stranger saying quina? What does quina even mean? Oh, he must have said something wrong. More embarrassed than before, Kickin decided to repeat himself:

“Não, uma fazenda!”

Maybe this was one of those situations where people used a different word for the same thing? A regional stuff? Kickin didn’t know where the heck Lisboa was located at. Brazil was way too big and he didn’t know enough. Argh! Now this felt humiliating! Better redirect the guy to Angel, then:

“A fazenda da minha mãe. Ela pode ajudar você. Ela fala brasi– português melhor do que eu”.

“Ah, que bom, que ótimo, que maravilhoso!”, the stranger nodded, more than happy to know there was someone out there who knew Portuguese better than Kickin did. Hopefully, he could still gloat to Hoppy how good he was getting! “Estou tão feliz que haja uma rapariga que me possa ajudar!”

[something something] happy that there’s a rapariga that can help me?, Kickin thought to himself. What does rapariga mean…?!

He went through his mental dictionary. Rapariga… Reminds me of rapaz. Guy? No, it’s not “guy”.

Rapariga…

Rapariga…

Rapar…

His eyes went wide.

“UMA O QUÊ–”

WHO THE FUCK CALLS SOMEONE’S MOTHER A RAPARIGA?! W-WHAT WAS THIS GUY THINKING?! WHAT?! Kickin grunted, now more angry than ever before. What was he supposed to say? He knew his swear words, but which one should he say?! ARGH, if only he could just punch that guy without causing even more problems–

“Kickin! You okay, kid? What’s taking you so long to… Uh?”

“Mom!”

Kickin approached Angel. Ah, he was so, SO freaking lucky! The human tilted their head in confusion, obviously noticing the guy standing right in front of the critter, but unable to see who was it.

“A hiker got lost”, he explained. “I think, I don’t really care, he just called you a fucking rapariga–”

“A what?”

“A rapariga!”

“… Where is he from?”

“Lis… Lis-boa. Lisboa. What state is it at?”

Kickin’s parent expression changed, going from confusion, to amused. He crossed his arms, feeling even more offended, before Angel opened their mouth:

“Kickin, Lisbon is in Portugal, not Brazil. Let me talk to that g…”

“Oi? Você é a mãe deste rapaz?”

“Sou, sim!”, they nodded at the stranger, just as Kickin was crossing his arms in annoyance and anger. They exchanged a few words that the critter for sure did NOT get, and then. And! THEN!

Angel laughed.

Loudly laughed.

“What’s up?!”, Kickin demanded, annoyed. “Dad!”

“Oh my God–”, Angel wheezed, finally finding the stranger. The man seemed confused, of course he was, HE BETTER BE, but Angel gave him a pat in the back, wiping their tears off: “Desculpa, ainda não ensinei meu filho como que o teu português funciona. Ele achou que você fosse brasileiro”.

“Achou?”, the stranger chuckled. “Ah, me desculpa! Eu não achei que–”

“Ah, não esquenta a cabeça não, fica tranquilo. Só fala mais devagar pra ele entender melhor”.

“Mãe!”, Kickin called again. “O que foi?!”, he demanded right after.

“He was speaking Portugal’s version of Portuguese, Kicks. Rapariga is just ‘lady’ to them. He wasn’t calling me a slut”, Angel shrugged, still giggling.

Kickin could feel his face turning red, despite that not being exactly possible, giving all of his feathers. He felt like an ostrich wanting to burrow their head SOMEWHERE. Damnit, his only opportunity at proving himself, and it was with someone who didn’t even SPEAK Brazilian Portuguese?! Just like that?! Oh, Hoppy was going to be so annoying about this…

And then Kickin noticed that his dad was inviting the stranger to come inside, away from the cold, and now he wanted to die, just imagining Hoppy annoying him. Urgh!

Well! Whatever! He wasn’t a COWARD, he could still show off his skills, now that he knew what the heck was going on. Kickin marched his way inside, more determined than ever, almost not noticing how the hiker seemed surprise at seeing him. The critter guessed the guy didn’t notice he was talking to a giant chicken, somehow. Either the man had poor eyesight, or that fog was really that bad. Regardless, Angel explained that the kids around the house are the ones from the PlayCo. situation, then offered the visitor – Francisco – some coffee.

“Quer pão?”, Kickin offered. Bread always goes along coffee, Angel had taught him, and it would be rude to not offer food.

“Só um cacetinho, por favor”.

Kickin blinked “Um cacete?”

“Pão, Kicks”, Angel corrected him. “That’s how they say it”.

“Cacetinho?’”

“Don’t even try using that word to escape the swear ban around the little ones”.

“Yes, sir”, he nodded,.

Imagine calling something a cacete, Kickin thought to himself. Cacetinho… It’s like calling bread “little fuck”. The fuck..., and then he shook his head, noticing that the younger toys had noticed a stranger in the house. Angel asked the critter to keep an eye out for them, and he accepted the challenge, of course, despite being very annoyed by it. Kickin didn’t want to be just a babysitter! He wanted to learn! Which was extremely weird coming from him, but anyways, he wanted to learn and hear and show EVERYONE what he was REALLY capable of! And maybe make Angel proud in the process or something…?

But, soon enough, everyone noted that the fog had cleared. Not by a lot, but enough for them to see what was up ahead. Francisco left the house and rub the back of his neck, clearly embarrassed. Kickin stared at him, trying not to look too curious (he was too cool for that), while Angel talked something to the hike.

“Parece que o trilho esteve mesmo na minha frente o tempo todo…”, Francisco muttered, thankfully slow enough for Kickin to understand that...

Ah, now that’s embarrassing.

Kickin could see a small pathway close to the woods, a place he had ignored up until that moment. So that was the trail that guy was talking about! It was right there all along! Francisco apparently had wondered around in circles for a whole hour before finding out there was a house right in front of him.

“Consegue voltar desse jeito, Francisco?”, Angel asked the man.

“Consigo, sim. Obrigado pela ajuda, Raphael”.

Angel then gave Kickin a look, and he sighed.

“Desculpa pelo mal-entendido”, Kickin apologised. Francisco shrugged and told him it was no big deal, and, after that, the critter watched as the hiker slowly went back to the trail, safe and sound.

Coincidentally, a small group of three other people popped up in the distance. They gave Francisco headpats and hugs, and Kickin realized that they must be his hiking group, likely going back to rescue their friend. Well, too late for a rescue, but at least they were all reunited. Fran waved back one last time, and then he and the others disappeared back to the trail.

Well, that sure must have been a crazy adventure for Francisco… Kickin hoped he had made a good impression, and wasn’t just a weird overgrown son that couldn’t even say tudo bem without sounding incomprehensible.

“That sure was something!”, Poppy muttered on the window. Kickin hoped no one had seen him jump from her sudden apparition. Was she learning that from Angel?! Really?! Argh! “I had no idea there was a hiking trail right next to us!”

“Me neither, Pops”, Angel went back in, Kickin following behind. “I didn’t know there was even a trail to begin with…”

“I’m worried about it, dad”, the doll continued, still on the window seat. “I don’t think leaving that over there will be a good idea”.

“Yeah, speaking about that. We should make some signs pointing away from the farm. Don’t want people using the ‘sorry, got lost on the trail conveniently close to your house’ excuse to bother you kids. That guy over there got really unlucky…”

Kickin gave Angel a smug smile before pointing at his own chest: “Thankfully, yours truly was there to help!”

His dad playfully shook their head, punching one of his arms in what the critter knew was a very good sign of approval: “Sure did, Kicks. Sure did”.

“Excuse me”.

Kickin never felt unhappier to hear Hoppy’s smug, smug voice. He didn’t even react when she, too, gave him a (playful) punch, this time to the back, and wrapped her arm around his shoulders:

“You call THAT being better at Portuguese than ME? Pffft, a kid would be better than you!”

He rolled his eyes: “At least that guy found ME instead of, I don’t know, CATNAP! I was able to help! What about you, who had your ass stuck on the play room cleaning your own mess?”

“Well, I–”

A loud, loud series of screams echoed in the background. Kickin didn’t recognize it from anyone in the house, and it was far too distant to be coming from WITHIN said house. He felt a momentarily shiver until he and Hoppy exchanged a stare, and, at the same time, realized something very important:

“Oh my God, Catnap found the guy”.

Silence.

They heard even more screams, all very different from the first.

“… And his friends, too”.

Then Hoppy wheezed as a response, and Kickin laughed out loud. Angel sighed (of course), rubbing their temples and quietly praying for a miracle before giving the duo a look, to which they laughed even harder, and now Angel was giggling as well.

Another series of incoherent screaming echoed. It sounded pitiful, to say the least, and that roar? Yeah, Francisco and his friends were in for one hell of a time.

“Look on the bright side, dad!”, Kickin pointed out. “Now the rumors of a giant monster will keep the hikers away from us!”

“Or the rumors of a chicken who can’t even say fazenda will–”

The yellow critter gave Hoppy a well-placed punch in the back, enough for her to feel it, but not strong enough for her to be able to complain. She blew him a raspberry, he returned the gesture, and now, Angel was leaving the house.

“Poppy, you take care of these two, I’m going to take care of Catnap”.

“HEY!”

“Wish me luuuck~!”

And off they went!

[chipthekeeper]

After many months of sporadically yelling my thoughts in various posts.........it is time.

*turns out there's like, so much competition for being the worst dad in this galaxy **a biased account from someone with their own very mid dad

Read on for an unnecessarily lengthy argument and just make sure to picture me like this the whole time

The Evidence:

Similarities/parallels between them

Shapeshifting -- They both transform so fully and easily from rebel mode to fancy rich asshole and back again throughout the show. Others do as well, but not nearly as often as they do and not nearly as sharp contrast from one thing to another

Quick tempers -- Evident from the way they snap at each other and the people they work with

Familiar framing -- There’s nothing accidental in this show. I believe the below photos draw a very deliberate, if subtle, parallel between them. We don’t see any of the other rebels using a stick like that, and Luthen's doesn't seem to actually have a function besides making youtubers believe he's a Jedi (I have a whole spin-off conspiracy theory on that we can get into some other day if you ask me)

Blonde -- Obviously. Though it seems Vel's hair is changing for season two. Perhaps a hint that she is trying to distance herself from her father's influence? (okay this part is mostly a joke but then I talked myself into something)

Also, this brand new page from the Dawn of Rebellion visual guide book that made me go !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! because, you know, proximity is everything. It would have made much more sense for Kleya to be on this page and Vel to be beside Cinta on the next page, right? Nope, not if there's a deeper connection here!

Their first interaction

Even before we meet Vel, Luthen predicts to Cassian exactly how she will react to them being there

He first tries to greet her with a big fake grin. Big time dad behavior to act like none of the past shit between you has ever gone down. But Vel remembers, doesn’t buy the act

Basically their interaction is just very familiar and informal, then breaks down quickly because of their attitudes toward each other

Vel is being very childish for most of it, pacing around, not keeping eye contact, then fully acting like a kid who doesn’t want to pick up their toys (see above picture)

Which then brings the Big Dad Energy from Luthen - "LOOK AT ME!!" he yells. The dadest dad behavior to ever dad. I can so easily picture this from my dad. "Look at me when I'm talking to you! Do what I say!" You have no choice but to shut up and obey unless you want to lose your allowance heist mission

Maybe he does actually care?

The night before the heist, Luthen is acting very strange, so much so that Kleya calls him out for being nervous. This is understandable given the stakes. BUT!

“They’re either going to be okay out there or they’re not” from Kleya is interesting. Be okay, rather than do okay. Like she knows he’s particularly worried about their safety, about one person’s safety especially?

And Vel’s mentioned in the very next line, reminding us of their connection again: "Vel's the only one who traces back" -- could be because she’s the only one who’s seen him, but who would actually be able to “trace” that??

Vel's need for approval

Veeerrryyyyy familiar to every eldest daughter constantly ignored by dad, seen most prominently in her interactions with Kleya

First right after the heist -- "Where is he?" ... "He read your message." "I really thought he'd be here?" Oh? Why's that? Why would he be there unless it was personal? Unless there was some sort of expectation of praise for the job well done, or comfort after losing so much of the team?

Later, before Ferrix, Vel won't give Kleya the information about Maarva's death until she secures the "I'll make sure he knows where it came from" promise from her

Rebellion is a family affair

"But Chip, Vel can't be related to Mon and Luthen!" Why not? There's nothing really that says Luthen isn't/can't be Mon's uncle

In fact, it might even make it easier to understand how a prominent Senator who's outwardly so centrist and careful could get Luthen's attention -- they always knew each other!

Anyway, a visual aid made months ago by @jedi-valjean, outlining the possible family tree, along with what seems to be the typical Chandrilan matriarchal naming conventions:

Vel Sartha, nepo baby

Vel absolutely does not have the experience or the stomach to be leading a mission like Aldhani. Why did he let her? That's right, nepotism

Hints to this in both her interactions with Kleya -- first "this is what revolution looks like" and then "You're off the rails. You're lucky he's not here"

She's clearly not ready and messing things up, but she's not facing any consequences for it because of her proximity to Luthen

Their second interaction

The convo on Ferrix is less loaded but still interesting

Vel looking at him and greeting him with a hint of "oh so you do acknowledge that I exist....but only because I have the information you need"

Again, the way they talk to each other is oddly informal for a boss and subordinate. Plus at the end he gives her tasks like a dad handing out chores

(also seems to like saying Cinta's name to her. supportive of his daughter's girlfriend, that gets him some good dad points)

Luthen's talk with Lonni

pound for pound, this is the most important part outside of their first interaction

As Lonni comes down in the elevator, Luthen congratulates him on becoming a father to a "healthy, beautiful" daughter. Tells him he must be pleased

Lonni thinks he's being threatened, asks "Do you ever think how it might feel from my side?" And Luthen tells him "I think about you constantly."

This. Shit. Makes. Me. CRAZY.

Because Luthen *was* Lonni. Just a guy with a daughter, trying to fight for something better

Also he sacrifices Kreegyr and all his men just to keep Lonni’s cover from being blown. Obviously that’s selfish on one hand, he gets to keep his spy, but also….Lonni’s daughter gets to keep her dad. I don’t think Luthen's just saying that to appease him. “You love your daughter," he says. The whole thing hits home for him and he thinks about it constantly

Basically the whole scene is a conversation between Luthen as he is now and Luthen as he could have been -- “Your investment in the rebellion is epic. A double life. Every day a performance.” He’s TALKING TO HIMSELF

And what does Luthen sacrifice? "...Kinship....Love" -- the love of his family? His kin? He may have his daughter in his life but they're hardly more than coworkers because of what they have to do. They're both sacrificing a real relationship with each other

"I burn my decency for someone else's future" -- he's sacrificed being a good father to fight and make a better future for his daughter!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The shoutout to his ego not having a "mirror" calls us back to Vel and Cinta's conversation, another probably deliberate thread supposed to connect them in our minds

"You'll stay with me, Lonni" can mean both that he's not letting Lonni out of this and, again, that he's always thinking of him (always thinking of that other version of his life)

The Conclusions

Putting together all the evidence and the fact that no one in the show seems to know about the connection between them, I can basically come to two possible conclusions:

Vel didn't find out this man was her father until she was already an adult

She knew him as a child but then he began making his calculations and left her and her mother

Either way, they would have gone years without interacting and thus it would be easy to hide their true connection once they've been reunited. And either way, their relationship would be as strained as it appears. Vel would want to have his attention and approval in a way she never did before, and Luthen would feel guilty enough to give her a job she hasn't really earned.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[musingsanddrabbles]

Anonymous asked:

I don’t necessarily have an exact prompt but just maybe something sweet or fluffy with Carlesme?

How About a Dance

Word count: 707 | Characters: Carlisle & Esme | No Content Warning | Time-frame: Post Volturi Confrontation, Breaking Dawn

The majority of the covens who came to testify had left after their testimony or simply followed closely behind the Volturi’s own departure. Whoever remained were seen off by Carlisle and Esme, their contribution to the Olympic coven’s safety deeply appreciated; an appreciation made known to those as they said their goodbyes.

The silence that encroached after everyone had left was almost unsettling. The last few months of their lives had been nothing but a flurry of noise and panic, plans chopping and changing. Nothing could be set in stone, no-one dared to live beyond the next hour.

With their safety now assured, Carlisle and Esme find themselves alone. Bella, Edward and Renesmee have taken themselves to their cottage, Rosalie and Emmett have gone away to one of their various wood cabins, and Alice and Jasper have taken themselves away to indulge their nomadic ways for the time being.

With the house having previously been full to the brim with vampires, being the only two occupants left has the house feeling nothing more than too big— bordering on lonely.

Esme has taken herself to their bedroom. As much as she has the whole house, she feels safest here. Snow is freshly falling outside, the sight hypnotising with vampiric sight; every single flake is noticeably different and unique. She spends hours watching snow fall most winters, utterly mesmerised by its beauty.

Carlisle finds her fairly easy. She can see his reflection in the window, his golden gaze content with the image of her and nothing else.

Eventually, he makes his way to the record player and places the needle against the spinning record. The familiar notes of Paul Whiteman’s Wonderful One replaces the comfortable silence between them, and she sees Carlisle unbutton the first three buttons of his shirt; he rolls his sleeves to his elbows before offering out his hand to Esme.

“How about a dance?”

She accepts his hand with biggest of smiles, her arms draping lazily across shoulders to clasp loosely behind his head. His own arms snake around her waist and eventually his forehead finds her own as they sway, the song the same one Edward played for them on the piano after their wedding— their first dance.

Carlisle playfully twirls her around, caramel curls brushing against his face and tickling his nose which causes him to briefly scrunch it up. Esme laughs, inviting his own before he pulls her close again and Esme’s head rests against his chest as her arms hold him around his torso.

They stand wrapped in each other’s embrace as the song finishes. Carlisle pulls back slightly only to find Esme’s eyes, gently singing the closing lyrics directly to her:

“Just you, only you; in the shadowy twilight, in silvery moonlight. There’s none like you, I adore you. My life I’ll live for you, oh, my wonderful, wonderful one.”

Esme can’t help but beam, her hands coming to rest against his chest as fingers lightly curl around the material of his shirt.

He places a kiss against her forehead, soft fingers coaxing her chin up so he can place a kiss against her lips too. He leaves for the briefest of moments to remove needle from record, opting instead for the saved playlist of 1920s love songs on his iPod to avoid scratching vinyl.

Before they can continue their dancing, he’s on one knee as he was all those years ago, a ring held between them in the daintiest of boxes.

“Will you do me the honour of renewing our vows?”

Just like then Esme feels him steal away her breath, but not before she can whisper yes.

Carlisle whisks her off her feet, his smile as wide as her own before placing her back down and drawing her into the deepest of kisses, one that hadn’t been shared between them like this since Alice’s vision.

He slips the ring onto her finger, capturing her hand so he can hold it as his other arm comes to wrap around her waist. And they dance until the sun rises, their eyes never straying too far from each other’s own, the memorisation of their features no longer fuelled by fear that that memory is all they will have left of another.

[j-nipper-95]

WIP Wednesday (because it's still Wednesday somewhere!)

Thank you so much for the tags recently. Even if I've not been responding to them I've been reading what everyone has been working on and it continues to astound me just how wonderfully talented this fandom is. Keep being fabulous, each and every one of you!

Would it really be a WIPsday of mine if I ever posted on time in my timezone?

That's right folks, Trails is back! Edits are happening with the next chapter, which I'm hoping I'll be able to share soon. My team and I are working through edits for chapters about one a week at the moment. I may have to go to bi weekly posting though, as writing has slowed down on the newer chapters. But we shall see. The muses are fickle, and may return to me, one day.

A huge thank you has to go out to my beta team, my friend Zoë (who isn't on tumblr), @artsyunderstudy, @cutestkilla and @iamamythologicalcreature! I couldn't have got this fic back on track without you all!!

But for now, a snippet from the next chapter. Baz POV.

The knife is kicked from my grip and sent flying into the river by a heavy work boot and another crewman drops into the lifeboat. I lurch away, almost back to back with Simon, the crowbar digging into my shoulder. I grope behind me, drawing it from his braces. “Told you it’d come in handy,” Snow smirks. “We’ll have time for ‘told you so’s later.” “Promises,” he purrs. You have no idea, Snow. Crowbar raised over my head, I swing at the newest attacker over the central bench but he deftly steps back out of reach, ducking under my return swing. I cross the bench to keep him on the retreat. He whips his handgun up to shoot but I get a hand around the muzzle and shift his aim. The bullet clangs against the side of the ship and I copy Bunce’s earlier move with the crowbar. I slam it into the man’s wrist and he releases his grip on the gun. My own hand flies open at the impact but I don’t try to fumble for the gun. The splash it makes into the Thames is too faint to make out.  Both hands back on the crowbar I swing for the man’s jaw. The crewman ducks and lunges for my waist grabbing me and knocking me off my feet between the benches. I’m forced to drop the crowbar and shove his face back, thumbs searching for his eye sockets, anything to get him off of me. One of his meaty hands pins my wrist to the bottom of the boat, the other finding my throat.  “Baz!”  Shadows shift as Simon spins, now doubt raising the mattock to attack, but there’s a spray of something warm over me from the other direction. The crewman goes limp in my grip as warm blood trickles down my wrists and beneath my shirt sleeves. Something metal clatters to the floor of the boat as I throw the man’s limp body off of me, and see the wound to the side of his head. Penny’s face is ashen and flecked with the man’s blood. “Penelope Bunce,” I breathe. “Penny, the rope!” Simon’s hand is on my chest gripping my shirt a split second before Penny’s end of the boat drops as the rope snaps. Penny screams and grabs hold of the central bench as Simon helps me sit up. The crewman’s body flops forward and tumbles out of the boat.  “Simon,” Penny calls, pointing over our shoulders. I follow her stare and see the rope Simon had been cutting is almost sawn through as well. More crewmen are shouting above us, seemingly deciding not to bother climbing down the ropes anymore and instead just shoot us from the deck. Hammers cock. A call to take aim. Please, not like this. He doesn’t know how much I love him.

(No pressure) tags for Sunday: @artsyunderstudy @aristocratic-otter @bazzybelle @blackberrysummerblog @bookish-bogwitch @cattocavo @chen-chen-chen-again-chen @cosmicalart @cutestkilla @dragoneggos @erzbethluna @ebbpettier @fatalfangirl @frjsti @henreyettah @hushed-chorus @ic3-que3n @ileadacharmedlife @ivelovedhimthroughworse @krisrix @larkral @letraspal @martsonmars @nightimedreamersworld @orange-peony @prettylightsbigcity @palimpsessed @phoxphyre @raenestee @shrekgogurt @skeedelvee @stardustasincocaine @subparselkie @that-disabled-princess @theearlgreymage @wellbelesbian @you-remind-me-of-the-babe 

[softxsuki]

Hello! I have a request for Valentines day letter event! I would like one with Shin ah from Akatsuki no Yona x fem reader. I don't mind about pet names, so it's your choice. We’re in an established relationship for a few years (maybe we lived in the same village, friends since we were teenagers and now we are a couple, reader is in the Yona's team too). I want to see it fluff. You know, Shin ah is soo shy and doesn't know how to impress his feeling to reader with words and he writes her a letter about his true feelings, like everything he can't tell by words. Location: anywhere, somewhen while our adventure. I feel that he will silently give the letter to the reader before splitting into 2 teams. That's everything! I requesting for events for first time, I hope it's fits to the rules, thank you!!

Shin-ah's Love Letter to His Lover

This event is now CLOSED, but you can view the masterlist for the other letters here.

| Pairing: Shin-ah x Fem!Reader| Genre: Fluff| Post-Type: Letter | Word Count: 960 |

Warnings: kissing

Note: Happy Valentine's Day! Hope you enjoy your letter from Shin-ah! This was one of my favorites to write &lt;3

Yona had suggested to the group to split up in the upcoming village so they wouldn’t get too many suspicious glances. There were already enough bold individuals in your group, so low profile clothes and hats to cover their colorful hair was a start to concealing your identities.

You were set to go off with Zeno, Hak, and Yona while Jae-ha, Kija, Yun, and Shin-ah went the other way. You had wanted to be in the same group as your boyfriend, Shin-ah, but when you brought it up, you could see his ears go red behind his mask as he quickly shook his head.

Slightly disappointed, you let it go, but you couldn’t understand why he didn’t want to split up with you in his group, was he upset with you? 

Just as you’re about to head in the direction your  group was set to go in, you feel a tug on your sleeve, and spin around to see Shin-ah. There’s a piece of paper rolled up and tied nicely in his hands which he quickly hands to you. He holds your hand briefly, giving it a squeeze before he runs back to his group. Jae-ha watches him with a teasing smile, smacking him on the back once Shin-ah reaches him, causing the blue-haired man to rush away from him quickly.

You can’t help the fond smile that appears on your lips, turning your attention back to the paper in your hands. Yona tells the group to start walking, which you all do, and you begin to unroll the paper and read its contents as you walk, careful not to trip over anything;

My Star,

Jae-ha told me that today was a day where men and women in his old village would come together and tell each other how much they love one another. Showing extra love, exchanging letters, and buying gifts for the one they love. I wanted to do the same, so here is my letter to start with. I’m not very good with my words, so hopefully I can convey my heart's passion for you in this writing instead.

If I am the moon, then you are my star. My sun, igniting me and giving me the light that I now have. Without you, I’m nothing but a dark mass, void of anything. Invisible to others until your light reaches me once more. My star, you shine brightly always, drawing everyone in and leaving your warmth behind. 

You were my hope back in our old village when I was hidden away. Never allowing me to be on my own and treating me like a human being the entire time when others saw me as nothing but a monster. You encouraged me to finally be free from the shackles I placed on myself and helped me experience true happiness in our new group. I don’t know how or why you decided to be my other half, but it is something I will always be grateful for. 

I know I’m not good at saying these things to you. I still can’t find my voice or courage to use it as much as I’d like. One day, I’d like to say all these beautiful things to your face as you hear me say them. I promise I will, just give me more time to find my courage. 

My star, I love you and I thank you for loving me back. I’m sorry for declining your request to split up together…I guess I’m a little embarrassed about giving this to you, but I hope you like it. Thank you for existing and being my light.

Love,

Your Moon.

You can’t control the silent tears that flow from your eyes, landing on the paper in your hands as you read over his words, two then three and four more times. No one had ever done something so romantic before. You didn’t even know he had these beautiful words about you in his heart, but you were beyond happy to read them. Perhaps the quiet ones really are secretly the most passionate. 

You tuck the note safety into your bag that was slung around you, wiping the stray tears from your eyes as you smile to yourself. You couldn’t wait to meet back up with your group so you could show your lover some of your own love for him.

You all safely make it through the village, stopping at some stalls for food or other resources that we needed to continue our journey. Yun was probably stopping in the other group to get medical supplies and other necessities he’d need as well. It didn’t take too long before you met up at your designated location, waiting for the other group to arrive.

And that’s when you see him. A sliver of blue hair beyond the trees with the rest of his group, walking towards you. You can’t help the explosion of emotions inside you, as you run the rest of the way towards him, straight into his arms, making him lose his balance for a moment before he holds you, steadying himself.

You grin from ear to ear, leaning in to press a kiss to his exposed lips,

“Your letter was beautiful, Shin-ah,” you whisper against his lips, you feel his arms tighten around you as you speak. “Thank you. I love you so much”

You see a hint of pink reach his cheeks as he lets you go and digs around in the pocket inside the cloak he was wearing to disguise himself, pulling out some flowers.

“I found them on our walk here,” he says softly, handing them to you. “I love you, too”

Your shy lover was not only sweet, but incredibly thoughtful and 1000000% yours.

Posted: 2/24/2024

[dustedmagazine]

Dusted Mid-Year 2024, Part II (Lumpeks to Z-Ro)

Rosali

Part two of our mid-year round-up provides a second perspective on albums that at least one Dusted writer loved.  Here we cover the second half, alphabetically by artist, with entries from Lumpeks to Z-Ro. 

If you missed Part I, check it out here. 

Lumpeks — Polonez (Umlaut)

Who nominated it? Bill Meyer

Did we review it? No

Ian Mathers’ take:

I’m honestly not familiar enough with either jazz or traditional Polish dance music to be able to spot or articular exactly where this intriguing and very enjoyable fusion of the two has joined them. There’s a similar feel to other acts I’ve heard that both clearly deeply respect the traditional music they draw on and are unafraid to put their own spin on that source material (both Xylouris White and Black Ox Orkestar came to mind), and as with those other cases the results on Polonez could equally be ancient or brand new. That the quartet’s main instrumentation (which also includes Louis Laurain on cornet, Pierre Borel on alto sax, and Sébastien Belief on double bass) includes steady, deep frame drumming (using a local variation called a bębenek obręczowy) from Olga Koziel (who also sings) gives it plenty of distinct character. And the mostly French group cares enough about actually understanding and respecting that traditional Polish music they made a short documentary about the field research that went into making Polonez. There’s an energetic, joyous swing to both the jazz and folk sides of Lumpeks’ music that makes the result much more than just an academic curiosity.

Mdou Moctar — Funeral for Justice (Matador)

Who nominated it? Jennifer Kelly

Did we review it? No, but we did a Listening Post. In the intro, Jennifer Kelly wrote, “The new record is as sharp and impassioned as any Moctar and his band have done so far, and it is inflamed with political energy.”

Andrew Forell’s take:

Mdou Moctar is an extraordinary guitarist and must be incredible in a live setting. The rhythms, the vocal back and forth and the moments Mochtar sprays power chords and shards of riffs that explode like bombs are all great. You feel his rage and frustration even when you don’t understand the lyrics. But the super intricate, high-speed soloing, whilst impressive, had the same effect on me as listening to electric blues-rock. I’m caught between the passion of the band, the eloquence of their anti-colonialist, pro-African politics, and the technically brilliant guitar noodling. The title track is a fantastic meld and it’s hard not be carried along but I really prefer the slower tracks, particularly “Takoba” and “Imajighen”, which lope along behind the drums while the bass darts around between entwined guitar lines and call and response vocals. Funeral for Justice is an album I admired and enjoyed hearing but, for me, the pyrotechnics get in the way.

Jessica Moss – For UNRWA (self-released)

Who picked it?  Ian Mathers

Did we review it?  Yes, Ian said, “sorrow and elegy and rage and strength all course throughout the piece.”

Bryon’s take:

This is a beautiful album born from an ugly situation.  Violinist Jessica Moss released this Bandcamp-only album to raise money for the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) after nation states halted funding when it was erroneously thought a few of its members were aligned with Hamas.  It’s a 42-minute suite of violin, electronics, and vocals that Moss captured at a live set in Berlin.  As someone who hasn’t had the pleasure of investigating her solo work but is enamored with her contributions to Silver Mt. Zion and other bands, I find this album to be an effective port of entry.  It swells with all the emotions that Ian describes in his review, unfurling with a beauty and grace that at times evokes stillness and at others exudes passionate fervor.  Based on this piece alone, I’ve decided that I need more of Moss’ music in my life.    

NYSSA — Shake Me Where I’m Foolish (Six Shooter)

Who nominated it? Alex Johnson

Did we review it? No.

Jennifer Kelly’s take:

NYSSA gets its kick from the charisma of the eponymous front woman, a wailing, belting, crooning dynamo, whose delivery is part punk, part roots rock, part blues and part adrenalized, corruscating confession. NYSSA’s first album, Girls Like Me, was long-listed for the 2021 Polaris Prize. This follow-up is less synthy and more rock, fleshed out by a ripping band. It’s larger in every way, from the stomping, vibrato-laced rager, “Werewolf,” to the torchy, piano-bar introspection of “Blessed Turn.” “I’m good for nothing but the hell I raise,” NYSSA intimates on the rollicking “Hell I Raise,” but she’s wrong. She’s good at lots of things.

Rosali – Bite Down (Merge)

Who picked it? Jennifer Kelly

Did we review it? Yes. Christian Carey wrote: “Rocking out is on the menu” and “the connections between pleasure and pain seem to coalesce in Rosali’s work.”

Alex Johnson’s take:

It’s a ferocious album, but intimate too. I hear a lot of Christine McVie in Rosali’s vocal. The way her delivery of “I want to feel right at the end of the day/I’m letting things come as they may” on “Rewind” contains warmth and sadness and joy and a sense of power in powerlessness that’s somewhere between cynicism and hope. It’s right out of Rumors. There’s some Fleetwood Mac in the groove of the title track too. But the spaciousness and spontaneity that Rosali and Mowed Sound capture remind me more often of the Oldham family — Will, Ned, et al. — from the raucous and inviting Viva Last Blues of “My Kind” to the clanging Anomoanon-ish country rock of “Hopeless.” 

This is music that not only lets you in but keeps you there. Like how the primordial bass drum in “May It Always Be on Offer” both grounds the rhythm and carves out a space you can practically sit in. The charismatic draw of Bite Down, though, is the guitar work. There’s so much texture and dimension in, say, the fraught duet that rips through “Change is in the Form” or the gravelly solo patched under the strings of “Slow Pain,” echoing the toughness of “maybe I’m just used to it/maybe I don’t give a shit.” With their various yelps and rumbles, the guitar tones that run through “Hills on Fire” don’t so much create the atmosphere as define it, adding a palpable, tectonic heat to the song’s otherwise easy daze.

Bite Down is a big, organic album, full of sensations — heard, articulated, and felt. Someone yells “act natural” as “My Kind” gets revved up — I’m surprised the band needed a reminder.

Thou — Umbilical (Sacred Bones)

Who nominated it? Jonathan Shaw

Did we review it? Yes, Jonathan wrote, “If we set aside Umbilical’s thorny thematics, we still have a superlative metal record, loud, as aggressive as it is palpably aggravated.”

Andrew Forell’s take:

At the end of his typically on point review of Umbilical, Dusted’s Jonathan Shaw pondered whether Thou singer Brian Funck might agree with his assertion that “pleasure isn’t what we need most from culture right now” and asked, “Should we listen to him?”. On the first point, there’s not much pleasure evident on Thou’s new album, which perversely or not appears to be this half year’s metal album de jour with even The Guardian unguarded in its praise. And yes, there are so many reasons right now when pleasure seems futile in the face of No Future. To the second point, a definite yes! Once you acclimatize to Funck’s voice, a dyspeptic shredder of a thing which renders his lyrics nigh indecipherable, the wall of sound coming at you is a caustic bath for the ears. The drums and bass a thumping foundry shaking and burning whilst the guitars surround you like a swarm of rusting chainsaws. Amidst this maelstrom, Funck screams as if his spleen is about to join his word splatter. Now, that’s a t-shirt I’d wear again without washing. Umbilical is a nasty, irate fury that I will be revisiting.

Uranium Club — Infants Under the Bulb (Static Shock)

Who picked it? Alex Johnson

Did we review it? Yes. Alex wrote, “these enigmatic Minneapolitans fling their conceptual heft in a new direction and expand their musical objectives without ceding much, if any, of their signature, careening tension.”

Patrick Masterson’s take:

When I first heard Infants Under the Bulb in the spring, it was with only a cursory commitment; I understood its tinny, furiously strummed contours, but the full thrust of its oddball conceptual heft passed me by. A second, much closer listen for this midyear exchange has proven far more rewarding, and while Alex pretty well nails what makes this record so interesting in his review, what I keep coming back to are the myriad voices across this record. I think core members Brendan Wells, Harry Wohl, Ian Stemper and Matt Stagner all take a turn behind the mic, though liner notes prove frustratingly (appropriately?) limited, and Molly Raben drives the four-part “Wall” sequence. A few points of order unite the Club and its associates — namely, all of them take pointed barbs at contemporary society in different ways, all of them play with noticeable tightness (even Raben in the New Age-y “Wall” songs), and none of them can sing. Musically, “Small Grey Man” might be an obvious single to that effect, but it’s the guitar licks in “Game Show,” “2-600-LULLABY” and “Abandoned by the Narrator” to which I keep returning. More than anything else in Alex’s review, what hits home hardest is very succinctly tucked away in its middle (my emphasis): Chorus of voices aside, Uranium Club has been and remains a great guitar band.

Waxahatchee — Tigers Blood (Anti-)

Who picked it? Christian Carey

Did we review it? Yes, Christian said, “Tigers Blood doesn’t have a weak cut on it. One imagines it will be in heavy rotation for many long after its release.”

Tim Clarke’s take:

Tigers Blood starts out promisingly enough. On opening track “3 Sisters” it’s immediately evident that Katie Crutchfield has an intensely expressive voice, plus the skill to wield it with nuance. There’s plenty of space for her to emote, then when the song takes off, it feels well earned. From there, things start to feel too rote to fully engage. The band is clearly playing in the country-rock pocket, but there are no surprises to be found in the songwriting to capitalize on the promise of that opening song. Ultimately, it mostly ends up sounding a little hokey. A genuine shame, as I had high hopes coming into this one.

Whitelands — Night-bound Eyes Are Blind to the Day (Sonic Cathedral)

Did we review it? Yes, Ian said, “Right from the start, there’s a clarity and focus in the songs here that belies their sometimes diaphanous settings.”

Tim Clarke’s take:

Right from the opening blare of guitars, British quartet Whitelands nail a particular shoegaze aesthetic: Ride’s Going Blank Again. The six-strings are loud, but with enough delay and reverb to create a blurry wall of sound, while the rhythm section keeps things punchy to give the songs plenty of momentum. Can’t say there’s anything here that quite rivals the first wave of shoegazers who combined hallucinatory sonics with catchy songwriting, but Whitelands are clearly tapping into some inspiring sounds, which will hopefully mean their next release will have its own distinct personality. 

Winged Wheel — Big Hotel (12XU)

Who nominated it? Bryon Hayes

Did we review it? Yes, Bryon wrote, “No Island hinted at Winged Wheel’s ability to craft such a sonic space, but that record was merely an appetizer for the hefty dose of momentum that Big Hotel provides.”

Christian Carey’s take:

A collection of artists who also belong to other bands, Winged Wheel coheres far more fluidly than most “supergroups.” On their second recording, Big Hotel, the band recorded in the studio together rather than remotely collaborating as they did on 2022’s Big Island. The difference is palpable, particularly in the power and execution of the rhythm section, which now includes Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley. At the beginning of the recording, the one-two combo of the spacy and clangorous “Demonstrably False” and “Sleep Training,” on which Whitney Johnson supplies beguiling singing amid a raft of guitar textures. The songs tend to move directly into one another, underscoring their interconnectivity. Most of them stretch out a bit, clocking in at around the six-minute mark, but “Aren’t They All” and the album-closer “From Here Out Nothing Changes” are both under three minutes. The former is a bustling instrumental featuring oscillating riffs and urgently rendered and foregrounded percussion. The latter begins with a brief, disjunct, nasal wind solo and a discordant guitar duo, that rhythm section punching away. Johnson shares a brief, delicately delivered vocal, which then disappears into a concluding maelstrom.

Z-Ro—The Ghetto Gospel (One Deep Entertainment)

Who nominated it? Ray Garraty

Did we review it? No

Jonathan Shaw’s take: Much contemporary hip hop is lost on me, and The Ghetto Gospel doesn’t do much to convince me that I should be paying more attention. That judgment has little to do with the record’s sonic qualities, which I am in no competent position to evaluate closely; but I like the mix of late-1970s hard funk, R&B swooniness and occasional flashes of (yep) gospel’s dramatics. And Z-Ro’s flow and vocals are pretty great to groove on. His seamless, artful shifts into more conventional singing, especially at some tracks’ refrains, are deft and pleasurable. But the constant focus on money—having it is unassailable proof of virility, craft, power, self-worth; when one’s antagonist doesn’t have it, or doesn’t have as much of it, that confirms he’s a fool and a loser—is by turns tedious and sort of depressing. The just as constant self-aggrandizement, endemic in the genre, is so ever-present that it’s completely unconvincing. When I can tune out the lyrics’ content, The Ghetto Gospel is just fine. Patient, cool, smooth. When, inevitably, I begin paying attention to Z-Ro’s rhymes and their themes and figures, the record irritates me. If I had the savvy to place his performances of black masculinity in hip hop’s regionally or generically specific modalities, I might find them more engaging. But that would require plowing through a lot more music, much of it singing the praises of cash as an end in itself and celebrating “pimpin” as a variety of socially compelling activity. It ain’t for me.

[zahri-melitor]

Recent Reads:

I haven’t done a round up of stuff I’ve picked up randomly for a while so let’s have one:-

Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles: I tried this, on the back of the fact I do enjoy Mark Russell’s satire. After one issue I rapidly realised I simply don’t know enough about the Hanna-Barbera characters in this to care about the adaption going on. The premise is interesting, it’s just Not For Me.

Madame Xanadu 2008 #1-10: this is Matt Wagner with Amy Reeder on art. Reeder's art is ADORABLE and she has such fun drawing elaborate clothing all the way through this. I really enjoy Matt Wagner's ability to take old stories or concepts and breathe a modern comics approach into them, making them a lot more accessible. This is Wagner telling the backstory of Nimue Inwudu, stopping in with her at 5 points in her history (Camelot, the court of Kublai Khan, the French Revolution, Jack the Ripper London, and America WWII) and her interactions with a bunch of characters from the Magic side of DC (Merlin, Etrigan, Death of the Endless, the Phantom Stranger, Giovanni Zatara, and Jim Corrigan as the Spectre). Nimue has a MASSIVE beef with the Phantom Stranger. She does not like him at all, because he keeps turning up at some of the worst points in her life and won't help her try to evade terribly fated things. Come for the Amy Reeder art, stay for the story.

The Demon: Hell is Earth 2018: I enjoyed this. Because I don’t clean read Etrigan stuff in order I cannot remember if Etrigan is officially a Rhymer again as of Rebirth (he appears to be rhyming for fun and because he enjoys it, but isn’t bound to do so, but he’s also getting mocked by his demon uncle for using rhymes). In any case, Jason Blood and Etrigan get separated for hell-related reasons, and they’re running around with Madame Xanadu and Merlin to prevent Belial taking over Earth by invading from Hell. Good times. Lots of people die. Etrigan potentially ends up King of Hell at the end of this story.

Swamp Thing: I was going to make this its own post but heck let’s put everything in together.

Len Wein (Swamp Thing #1-13 1972): Wein's work is absolutely solid magical horror. He sets up an intriguing premise to build from and he can spin a good story. It's exactly the sort of amusing writing that keeps me coming back to, say, Warlord. Worthwhile to see the starting premise.

David Michelinie (Swamp Thing #14-18, 21-22 1972): Not as good at Wein, but definitely can tell a story. You can tell he spent time on House of Mystery given the episodic horror nature of his storytelling.

Gerry Conway (Swamp #19-20, 23-24 1972 plus Challengers of the Unknown #81-87 1977): Conway I think is the first writer who actually gets some of the specific horror you can imbue in this concept, especially around identity. I can see how his ideas could contribute to the later concepts Moore will introduce. I don't think his execution is fantastic but the hand regeneration? Yeah. Yeah that is playing with the ideas available.

Martin Pasko (Brave and the Bold #176 1955, Saga of the Swamp Thing #1-19 1982): Pasko is definitely processing things. Like, the man has an entire story that's just him responding to the Atlanta Child Murders of 1979-1981. He is very much a cynic about the innocence of childhood (or innocence in general, actually) and wants to explore the dark side of humanity.

The Phantom Stranger: these have been backups to the Martin Pasko Swamp Thing issues. Mostly I’ve found them pretty trite and a bit overly religious in places. Yes I know his entire concept is rooted in religious myth (as the Wandering Jew) but I mean more in a 'this tale has an Overt Christian Moral' way. The concept of the character is fascinating. The execution seems to be very across the shop.

Outsiders #1-33 2003: oh boy. Uh. Tomasi's fill using the original Batman & The Outsiders characters was a WELCOME reprieve to this. Okay, in terms of the main run: I tend to find Judd Winick a writer that either I'm fully enjoying or decidedly not to my taste. Outsiders falls into the 'not to my taste' category. I can see what Winick is going for in terms of 'let's make this Gritty! And Mature!' except for it's really not that gritty and his idea of making it mature is just having everyone hooking up a lot on panel, whether or not said hookup makes characterisation sense. And then he'll turn around every 10 issues or so and have some quite interestingly interrogative storytelling about Dick and Roy. (literally: you want issues #1, 11 and 21). I see what a bunch of the DickRoy shippers enjoy in this, but there's a lot of cantilevered cloud structures required to extract the Shippy Goodness out of the rest of this run.

[awakening5]

Babe I will give you my left lung, a king sized candy bar and a little forehead kiss for a snippy of your ghostflower college AU AND your Beyond WIP 👀

Wait a KING size candy bar???

Another college snip:

“I’m…well, I’m like you,” he tells her, out of breath. He can’t believe he finally caught up to her before she got away. Adrenaline from the chase and from the encounter he’s been spending weeks trying to have thrum through his veins. “I’m Spider-Man.” “Sure,” she says, the eyes of her mask bending in…amusement? She looks him up and down. “Love the look, ‘Spider-Man’. Don’t get yourself hurt.” Miles is about to respond, offer to prove it to her. But she merely shoots a web high above her and launches herself into the air. His shout after her is lost in the cool night. He swallows, and gives chase again. He didn’t come all this way just to lose her again. Without webs, he was at a significant disadvantage. But he had all of the other Spider powers. And maybe even some she didn’t have.

And for the left lung and forehead kiss, a piece of Beyond, my post AtSV fic!

Miles’ first instinct is to go to Alchemax. But that’s a pretty far way to go from the city, and he’s not even sure there would be buses going out that way so late at night. So instead, he hopes Kingpin had been building a collider in this universe, too. Maybe he could hitch a ride on one of Fisk’s ill-fated test runs. He swings through the city to get there, and he quickly finds that he should have realized this wasn’t his earth long before he did. The streets are filthy, and empty. His Spidey sense is at a constant low hum, like he’d be able to find danger in any direction he turned. He ought to bring J Jonah Jameson to this universe to show him proof of the good Spider-Man did for the city. He tries not to think about how it was his Spider that should have given this city a hero.  Miles finds a building near where Fisk had built the collider in his universe and perches there, observing. He’s not exactly sure what he’s looking for. Henchman going in and out, maybe. Kingpin himself, in all his hulking glory. A shaking building from tests gone wrong. Miles sighs and tries to ignore the still- and ever-present Spider Sense. What are even the odds that this universe is looking to travel to another? Still, he has to try. What other option does he have? He has days or weeks to live in this world. His dad has fewer in his. “What do you know,” a familiar voice startles him from behind. “A Spider, just like Prowler said.” Miles spins around, and his heart catches in his throat. “Gwen,” he whispers. Her hair isn’t the same here. Her energy isn’t the same. Her outfit sure isn’t the same, either. Even though his Gwen wears the form-fitting Spider-suit, there’s something infinitely more alluring about this Gwen’s skin-tight attire and little half-mask that doesn't do much to obscure her identity from him. He suspects it’s intended to draw his eye, and Miles tries not to give in. It kills him that he’s still so affected by seeing a Gwen despite her betrayal. Even worse, it’s not even his Gwen! Even so, he has to calm his beating heart when she speaks to him. “What’s the point of a costume and a secret identity if people already know my name?” she asks playfully, and steps towards him. This Gwen doesn’t move like the same kind of dancer that he’s used to his Gwen moving like. More hips in her step, a sashay more than a walk. “And what’s the secret identity called?” Miles asks through a tight throat. “Black Cat,” Gwen responds with a wink. “But I don’t mind hearing my name out of your lips.” He clears his throat. “You work for Prowler?” Miles asks. She shakes her head. “For Prowler? No.” She steps right into his space. It’s nice. He’s able to be close to Gwen without actually being close to Gwen. He hates that he still wants to be close to her despite everything. “I work with him sometimes, though. When the mood suits me.”

[i-eat-worlds]

Wow Birthday Whump Day 5: Alt. Bridal Carry and “No!”

This is a fun one :) Teri whump!

Content: discussions and fear of death, brief hospital setting, severe illness, medic caretaker,

Teri smiled as Avia shuffled the cards, ignoring the pain pulsing in her head. The calm noise of the rec room buzzed around them, heroes playing thrilling games of air hockey and Mario Kart behind them. Avia had complained about a “post mission high,” and Teri wasn’t feeling super great, so they had opted for something calmer.

“Cut the cards.” They offered her the deck, narrowing their eyes. “Are you okay?”

She scrubbed her face. “Nothing. Probably caffeine.”

Avia took the deck back, dealt five cards to her, then five cards to herself, and placed it in the center of the table. Teri flipped the first card over, revealing a six of hearts. “You should probably lay off that stuff.”

“Yeah. But it tastes good.” She discarded a six of spades.

They snickered. “Fair enough.”

Teri sighed, drawing three more cards until they got one they could play. A moment of silence passed. “That was one hell of a job though.”

“Yeah. How many new baddies were there?” They grumbled something under their breath, realizing they couldn’t play.

“Seven or eight? To many.” She slapped down another card. Her stomach twisted, but she kept the discomfort off her face.

“Fuck,” they muttered, drawing another four cards. “I think they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel on the name front too.”

“Oh absolutely.” She smirked, ridding herself of a three of spades. “What was that one guy called- “The vaposquasher” or something?”

“I don’t know. There's too many of them to keep track of.” Her hand was starting to get stretched thin, keeping a hold of all of the cards.

“Yeah.” They lapsed into silence. The full day had lapped up their energy quite a bit, and they were both tired.

Her heart fluttered a little, discomfort flaring in her chest, and she made a face. Definitely too much caffeine then.

“You sure you’re alright?” Avia said, filling her hand with two more cards.

She nodded, using two fingers to flip over the last card in her hand, a queen of spades. “I know I’m alright.” She brought it down triumphantly. “I believe that makes me the winner.”

Avia gave her a look. “Pride comes before the fall, Teri.” They started to reshue their cards back into the deck, preparing for another round. “I’ll get you next time.”

The vibrating in her chest flared again, and she could feel her heart pounding double time. Her vision lurched, the room whirling around her for a moment. “Um, I think I’m going to go to bed.” She looked down at her watch. “Maybe the telekinesis did more than I thought today.”

“I’ll come with then. We all know I should be getting more sleep anyway.” They slid the cards back into their packaging. Teri stood up, trying not to wobble too much. Though they didn’t say anything, she could feel Avia behind her, ready to catch her just in case.

They made it to the elevator without issue, but halfway up, Teri found herself swaying again. The bright, reflective box was spinning, and the railing was unhelpful in that regard. She could feel it closing in on her, the walls narrowing, and she turned to Avia, frantically trying to get her to understand that something was wrong. Black dots filled her vision and she went limp, collapsing into Avia’s chest.

Eventually, she came too with her head pressed against Avia’s chest, arms positioned under her knees and upper back. The world felt like molasses, still gooey and unstable as she lifted her head up. “Hi ‘via.”

Avia looked relieved. “You’re awake.”

She nodded a little. “I need ‘oseph…” Her heart was still thundering in her chest. “Something’s wrong..”

“I’m getting you to him.” She turned the corner, trying not to jostle Teri too much.

“Oh..thank you….” Teri’s head bounced against Avia’s chest.

“I’ve got cha’.” They arrived outside of the door, and Avia pushed it open with her foot.

She charged straight through the foyer, laying Teri out on the couch. “Joseph?” Her voice carried through the apartment as he looked around for him.

“What do you need, Avia?” He walked down the hallway, steps quickening when he saw Teri laying on the couch. Judging from the basketball shorts and slippers, he had been about five minutes from going to bed. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. She passed out in the elevator.” Avai looked at him frantically.

“I’ll look her over, yeah.” He knelt down in front of the couch. “Can you get me my stuff from under the sink?” Her eyes lingered on Teri for a moment before she turned and shot down the hallway.

Joseph leaned forward. “Teri, are you with me?”

Her eyes flickered towards him. “Yeah.”

“Good,” he smiled at her, two fingers pressing into the thumb side of her wrist. “Do you know where you are?”

She nodded. “Apartment. With Avia. We were playing cards.”

Her skin was cool and sweaty underneath his touch. “How do you feel right now?”

“Tired. And dizzy. And my head hurts.” She was quiet for a moment. “It’s…It’s hard to breathe and my chest feels fluttery.”

Avia reappeared, setting the bag down next to him. “Can you call the response team?” He asked her.

Teri’s eyes went wide. “You think it’s that bad?”

He pulled on a pair of gloves as he spoke. “I think it's worth getting you some more help. They have equipment that I don’t, yeah.” She nodded, a little tearfully. “When did this start?”

“After we got back?” She shifted. The fact that breathing was difficult was obvious. “It wasn’t like this, just a headache, and some dizziness.”

“Have you taken anything at all? Even like an ibuprofen?” He unzipped the bag, pulling out the AED to get to what he needed.

“No.” She shook her head, then slowly pushed herself up with her elbow. “Not even caffeine.”

The movement caught his eye. “Is it better when you’re sitting up?”

“Yeah.” She pushed herself up more, and he let her.

“Alright.” Now that she was sitting, he no longer had to kneel. “When did you last eat or drink?”

The position change seemed to bring her some relief. “After we got back. A couple hours ago.”

“I’m going to get your vitals, and then we’ll go from there, yeah?” She nodded, and he started by clipping the pulse oximeter to her arm. After that came blood pressure, and that was where the real party started.

He kept his face neutral as he deflated the cuff. Hypertensive crisis. Wonderful. Her temperature and pupils were fine, but she was breathing too fast and he could feel the irregularity of her heartbeat in her wrist.

An even worse look spread across her face. “Joseph, somethings really wrong.” She pawed at her chest. “I don’t know…but it's not right.”

“The response team is on their way.” He squeezed her hand. “We’ll figure it out, yeah. You’re in good hands.”

“I just…” Her mouth made a million shapes but no words. “I don’t wanna die, Joseph.”

His eyes flew to her as soon as the words left her mouth. “Hey, hey, hey, no. I’m going to take care of you, yeah.” She was crying messily, and she might not have even heard him.

“It’s bad, Joseph, it’s really bad.” She reached out towards him, clinging onto the shiny material of his shorts.

His eyebrows furrowed. “How about you get on the ground?”

Teri listened, shakily lowering herself down onto the floor. The carpet was grating on her skin. “Joseph…Joseph I need…” She sobbed. “I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die.”

The world shimmered for a moment, before everything gathered into a pinpoint and disappeared. She was sure Joseph was saying something, but the only words that got to her before oblivion was Avia’s terrified, shrieked “Teri no!”

***

Joseph hunched over in the uncomfortable, too-hard chair at Teri’s bedside. Avia was snoring softly behind him, asleep in the much more comfortable seat, but he didn’t really care. Comfort would’ve been foreign to him anyway.

The normally background hum of the ward was extra jarring, and even though he knew what all of them did, seeing Teri surrounded by so many machines wasn’t exactly comforting. She’d arrested, right on the floor of Turquoise’s common room. It made sense then, but now that everything had calmed down, it felt worse. Random and targeted, at the same time.

He reached for her hand, careful of the cannula burrowed inside it. They’d said she was likely to recover, said that whatever crazy ass thing the supervillain had done was wearing off, said that she was responding to treatment and that her prognosis looked good, but it still didn’t erase the sinking feeling in his gut.

He’d promised her, he’d promised Pat, that he wouldn’t lose another. And this had cut far too close for comfort.

The words ghosted the back of his mind, amongst the chaos and the panic and the blood.

“Always kid, Always.”

Taglist: @pigeonwhumps@rainydaywhump@painful-pooch@rainbowsandwhumperflies@snaillamp @whumperofworlds

[messinwitheddie]

1:Whatever happened to Yeet after Tallest Purple died? Where was she?

2:Cini doesn’t it burn when you let smoke go through your eyes? Why not blow it out?

3:Does Tak have a scar on her abdomen? What happened there?

4:Who would look best in a two piece swimsuit? Tallest Dava? Kii or Miyuki?

5:Dib’s son had kids, right? The twin babies?

6:Hows the professor coming along?

All very good questions, which is why I feel obligated to warn everyone cringe, self-indulgent answers are ahead.

1. Yeet ends up deserting the Irken empire altogether for Mem's hive. She agrees to let Zim downgrade her PAK, severing herself from the CB's core collective. She stays in Mem's hive and continues to perform lookout/ guard duties as well as assist Purple with certain everyday tasks, as he is rendered disabled after being cut off from things like his hovor belts/ smart gauntlets (hence why he often walks with a cane after being de-measured. The measuring process is very damaging to the body.)

Yeet also volunteeres to lead an exploration expedition across Mem's mystery planet to help gather information about the surface beyond Mem's hive's known territories. She helped Zim, Dib and Reg draw accurate maps and extensively document the flora and fauna of the continent the hive occupies and eventually the whole planet.

In between expeditions, Yeet volunteers to bodyguard the Resisty-serving Cantina Gir (or frylord “Gorr-May" as he is eventually knighted after earning the title of Frylord in his own right) secretly opens on Mem’s mystery planet. Gir/Gorr-May is only able to sneak away and cook at the cantina occasionally, as the CB full system takeover puts him/ his employees at a huge risk. His apprentice, Mem's daughter, Vicious, does most of the cooking for the cantina.

Yeet provides Mem's hive with a much needed boost in silk, as her “condition" never improves, so she volunteers her time to silk spinning, laundry and mending clothes. She makes dolls for the smeets/ other infant species in her spare time. Yeet enjoys much more meaningful enrichment after joining Mem's hive. She stays active, happy and very much appreciated there, even if her and Gir/Gorr-May never have a swarm of their own (a mutual agreement between the two if them.).

Where Yeet is exactly when Purple dies, is not yet determined. She is very upset when she discovered he had passed. She mourned him deeply; Purple was one of her best friends, despite everything. He even officiated her and Gir's union.

2. Cini has a bad habit of holding in when he puffs on his amber pipe because he believes the old superstition that doing so will increase the effects of the amber (somehow smoke is able to pass through Irken tear ducts in my personal head canon. This is unhealthy and unnecessary. Do not hold in smoke. Don’t smoke in general, in case any minors are ignoring my blog boundaries lol).

3. Tenn (whispering) “That's just a prominent stretch mark from our pregnancies. She's a little bitter. Mine all faded before hers, so just don’t bring it up. She trained our swarms to attack on command.”

Tak “I can hear you over there!”

4. Why do you have to pit 3 bad bitches against each other? ^0

5.You know what? I cannot for the life of me find the drawing you are referring to. Slowly but surely , I'm organizing my drawing room, but have yet to come across it. It is lost in tumblr limbo for sure.

I changed the story around since drawing/ posting that.

Reg temporarily cuts ties with both the Membrane and Van Verminstrasser families while in college during his early to mid 20’s. He goes through a whole para-spiritual/ environmental extremist fase. Part of the reason he joins Dib on his second trip to Mem's planet is to dodge arrest for “acts of environmental terrorism" in several countries. At some point in that time frame Reg sires a daughter, Prisha, shortly after his baby sister, Wyn, is born. (Dib and Mabel struggle to have a child for years before Mabel agrees to use ML’s cloning facilities. It's a whole thing. Yes, Dib is VERY upset he missed the birth of his grandchild.)

(Wyn and Prisha grow up to be close friends. Prisha regularly guest stars on Wyn's reboot of "Probing the Membrane of Science" show.

Reg and Prisha's life research/ field work is a major reason why Dib's great(s) grandson, Dro's generation of humans can still breathe clean air/ drink fresh water on Earth in the distant future.)

Dib is most likely holding both his daughter and granddaughter in that drawing. He and Reg slowly repair their bond, to the whole family ‘s/ Zim's relief.

6. Prof Membrane is very much enjoying his retirement by living his lifelong dream of exploring/ researching the uncharted depths of the earth's oceans. Dib is proud of his dad and extremely happy for him, but at the same time is constantly nervous something will go wrong and personally checks in on the Prof's research team/ inspects the equipment involved in the expedition.

[Slowly but surely I will start answering asks again soon. Been working on other things. Sorry...]

[novoaa1writes]

demonology

pairing(s): wanda maximoff x f!reader, natasha romanoff & f!reader, yelena belova & f!reader

summary:

A voice you know but shouldn’t says your name, all soft and reverent like it’s something holy, and your stomach curdles as you’re wrenched back into yourself with the force of a battering ram.

Your head spins. Your lungs burn. You can hardly breathe.

She—Wanda—is standing close. Too close. How did she get that close? How did you let her?

She’s got freckles, a faint smattering of them beneath her eyes and across her nose. Did she always have those?

You don’t know where you are. You don’t know what you’re doing.

cross-posted on ao3. 

word count: ~6,900

rating: teen audiences and up

warnings: a good amount of blood and violence. brainwashing, swearing, guns, knives, general head-fuckery, etc. pretty much all the warnings from previous installments apply

notes: LMAO. hello how is everyone doing. life can be brutal but i finally managed to get out the next installment! i realized that while i was writing it, i’ll definitely need another one (at least) to wrap up the final climactic action scenes, and hten probably another one after that to tie up loose ends and the like. i’ll do me best, and a huge thank you to everyone who’s stuck around this far. seriously, that is insane to me, and i know i am not a terribly consistent writer with a posting schedule, so it means a whole freakin’ bunch

anywho!

— —

PREVIOUS PART: THE BEST LAID PLANS...

— —

Plan B goes to hell in a handbasket in both spectacularly poor fashion and record time. 

It’s almost impressive, really. 

One second, things are (relatively) under control:

Two’s crumpled form lies listless at your feet, twitching and shuddering atop age-weathered wood. Not completely down for the count, but effectively neutralized for the time being. A handful of strides out stands a shrewd-looking Hawkeye, a single well-honed arrow nocked and leveled at your chest. 

Drama queen.

Beside him, his… tenderfooted charge. The Maximoff girl. Crimson luminescence flickers betwixt her hands, reflecting off spotless silver bands on willowy fingers; and despite your better instincts, you are loath to look anywhere else. 

A second later sees Iron Man plummeting down through the ceiling overhead with a hair-raising CRASH; and just like that, the spell is broken. Shouts ring out, explosions sound, and the entire ground floor devolves into a truly histrionic spectacle of unmitigated chaos.

While your concentration may be a hair short of compromised, years of training ensures you’re already in motion—stowing away the knife, then launching yourself back into a flawless backwards handspring through shrouds of darkness which fall in on you from every side. You’re aiming for the doorless entryway of the adjoining room, which you sail cleanly back through without error.  

Once inside, you’re quick to dart over to the left and out of sight. Scan your surroundings—no one here. Draw both Steyr TMPs, check them over once more—safeties off, mags attached, suppressors screwed on tight. 

A high-pitched whirr sounds off followed posthaste by an explosion two floors up that rocks the entire foundation of the building—again. If this keeps up, you estimate it’s only a matter of time before the entire infrastructure collapses in on itself in a hail of cement and splintered wood and a volatile mélange of deadly chemical fallout.

You haven’t caught so much as a whiff of rotten eggs (gaseous hydrogen sulfide’s distinguishing characteristic), fortunately, so you’ve got some time to figure out how to neutralize any ignition sources in the meantime. Stark’s laser beams, for one. The repulsors shouldn’t be a problem, from what you understand about his particular take on muon-catalyzed fusion. He’s taken great lengths to ensure they don’t release anywhere near the amount of energy (read: heat) required to fuel the earlier models. You’ve studied the logs yourself. Of course, those aren’t the only tools in his arsenal, but, you figure, they’re the ones you’re most likely to be dealing with here. Perhaps a younger Tony Stark would be brash enough to barge into an unfamiliar place slinging plasma from both palms, but he’s endured far too much to succumb to such senselessness now. 

At least, in theory.

You make a mental note to keep an eye out, and remain poised for intervention as needed.  

Beyond that, any Semtex or functional hand-grenade is out of the question, too. If the average grenade filler burns at somewhere over 2500 ℃ (~4500 ℉), even one could easily send the whole place up in flames. 

Thankfully, gunfire is a little less questionable. The scope of the operation combined with the fact that most every operative’s primary (and secondary) armaments are semi-automatics constitute a glaring pitfall that Black Room technicians would have to have been blind or brainless not to consider: If bullets go off at a temperature around or over 260 ℃ (500 ℉),  then even a single shot could send the whole place up in flames. 

Black Room technicians are not, nor have ever been, so irrationally short-sighted. They would have altered the substance accordingly. 

It makes sense, now, why the armory was suspiciously devoid of explosive weaponry. 

Guns loaded, you inch back over and peer around the door frame. 

Iron Man lies floor-bound amidst a mess of splintered wood and uprooted floorboard, silver-and-red armor (that which is characteristic of the Mark XLVII, if you’re not mistaken) reflecting beams of scattered moonlight from overhead. 

(The particular make and model of Stark’s illustrious armament sparks some measure of intrigue within you. 

Unlike the greater majority of his precious iron ensembles, Stark’s Mark XLVII—an earlier model of the Iron Man suit—includes a built-in feature which allows remote control access. Thus, it’s not at all unlikely to postulate that the suit you see is empty and under the remote control of F.R.I.D.A.Y., his quick-witted AI, while Stark himself is elsewhere.

You tuck that information away for later.)

Atop him, the woman you know as One bashes fist-shaped craters into the polished armor with her bare fists.

She wears a Kevlar vest over a wife-beater-style tank top, combat boots, and army-green pants. A thin sheen of perspiration coats her ridiculously built arms, muscles tensing and bulging obscenely beneath the scattered moonlight with every savage punch. 

Clang! Knuckles hammer against metal. Clang! Clang! Clang!

Yikes. 

A split second later, there comes a series of clicks and whirs, followed by the soles of Iron Man’s armored boots setting themselves alight—full-throttle. Twin flares set the entire entry hall alight in blaze of luminescent brilliance as the XLVII shoots directly out from under One, ejecting her off and down—through the floorboards, into the crawl space lying just below with startling haste and a deafening crash.

The Man of Iron torpedoes upward, then, gunning for the gaping hole in the ceiling that still rains debris and plaster down onto the ground floor—

Just before he can get there, a dark figure jumps straight through, crashing into the airborne suit with an audible clunk!—meeting him halfway. Stark—or the Mark XLVII—lurches violently beneath the sudden addition of weight on his plated shoulders, armored legs flailing, thrusters whining audibly beneath the strain. 

Meanwhile, on the ground floor, Barton’s hard at work—bow angled upward, loosing arrow after arrow through the gaping breach overhead in a flurry of movement, stubborn determination marring his lined features. 

Beside him stands the young clairvoyant, slender hands aloft and clouded in scarlet mist; her lurid red eyes fixed unwaveringly upon the freshly-formed crater in the ground floor foundation from which a truly murderous-looking One is re-emerging. She doesn’t appear to be terribly injured—One, that is—save for a nasty-looking gash just over her hairline that stains her left temple with rivulets of freshly-spilt blood. Then again, much like yourself, her tolerance for pain and bodily affliction is something obscene. Nothing less than a fatal blow will deter her from completing the mission objectives; you know that better than anyone. 

She leaps out from the crawl space and onto the ground floor, landing her full weight with a hollow thud! that makes the floorboards groan. Her determination hasn’t abated at all as she prowls forth, cutting a beeline straight for the Maximoff girl, close-cropped blonde hair soaked through with blood and sweat; if anything, it’s only intensified a thousand fold. You don’t have to see her face to know the expression she’s wearing—beady brown eyes alight with mutiny, jaw clenched tight, thin lips curled into a foul-mannered scowl.

You run the calculations in your head. Skill, agility, brute force… Maximoff—Wanda—can hold her off, at least for the moment. There’ll be no guarantees for an extended conflict, however, and the fact remains that even the mere sight of One drawing near her makes your stomach turn for reasons you’re loath to examine. 

Hell, you’ve half a mind to just shoot her dead and be done with it, consequences be damned. 

You almost do it, too. 

Your split hesitation costs you, though, and instead of pumping One full of lead before the ‘roided-up brute can lay a single hand on the likes of Wanda Maximoff, you’ve got your hands full with an entirely new problem:

It presents subtly, at first—nothing more than a whisper in the darkness at your six o’clock—but, what is that old saying? 

“This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper.” T.S. Eliot. American-born, but an Englishman at heart. 

You whirl around just in time to feel the air shift around your cheek and—

Fuck. 

A bone-jarring punch whips your head violently to one side, cool metal stamping an instant bruise (and possible hairline fracture) into your right cheekbone with borderline inhuman force that rocks you to your core.

It’s a damn miracle you manage to stumble off to one side, shaky on your feet as you grit your teeth and right your balance with a considerable amount of effort. 

Your cheek feels like it’s been through an industrial-strength press (though you suppose it’s some consolation to note that your attacker didn’t batter the same one Madame did), and the reopened bullet wound in your left shoulder—relatively old as it may be—feels like a step drill bit cleaving through your mutilated flesh anew. 

Jesus—fuck—

It’s pure instinct that has you reacting well in time to catch the second blow—a vicious downwards jab with a needle-point blade that would’ve otherwise skewered directly through your uninjured shoulder. 

“Brass knuckles? Really? ” you hiss in strained Russian, shoving your assailant off with no small measure of force and a sharp huff. Christ, but they’re heavy—far heavier than their compact, willowy form would imply. 

They relent without stumbling, which you suppose is something—quick and balanced on their feet as they retreat back an arm’s length… then two. 

You narrow your gaze, peering out through the darkness to see— 

Of course. S-shaped brows, raven-black hair piled up into a neat bun… cerulean-blue eyes that glint like polished gems through the cover of night. 

Madame’s taciturn second-in-command. The one who dutifully stood watch over her at the initial mission briefing, wordlessly cataloguing everything like a silent sentinel. 

She’s a graduate of the program, whether Red Room or Black Room, you do not know. (You think, judging by her age, it’s probably the former). If you hadn’t known it before, it’d be impossible to miss now.

As for what she’s doing here, well. Your guess is as good as anyone’s. Mission parameters constituted seven operatives—no more, no less. Then again, Black Room protocol has never shied away from layering one mission atop another, compartmentalizing the overlap and writing off the difference. 

The part that most unsettles you, though, is not the broad assortment of throwing knives stashed away in her belt, nor the black rucksack slung over both narrow shoulders (that which connotes a decidedly more sinister motive). No, it’s the utter lack of firearms (visible or otherwise) on her figure combined with the fact that you can’t catch the barest glimpse of brass knuckles which you’d thought responsible for clobbering you into next week. 

Erskine’s serum aside, that old adage rings forever true—you don’t bring a knife to a gun fight. 

So, why would she?

Not to mention—that hit was hard. You think it a wonder your cheekbone isn’t fractured. 

“You’re weak, Angel,” she growls—the first you’ve heard her speak. Interestingly enough, the quality of her voice is mild, sonorous… almost pleasant; even as the words themselves are nothing short of acerbic. 

“And you’re not supposed to be here,” you retort mildly, to—

Thwack! You duck just in time to miss the black-bladed kunai whizzing through the air in an impossibly high-speed blur, seeking to bury itself directly between your eyes. 

It lodges in the wooden wall a step behind you instead, its handle quivering with the residual force of impact. 

Feisty, you speculate, rising warily back up to your full height. You tuck away one of the Steyrs as you do, freeing up your aching hand to brandish the I.C.E.R. pistol instead. (Christ. You and your non-lethal options today.)

“What is your purpose here? ” you try again, brain working overtime to analyze and approximate her alignment (i.e., how deep her loyalty to the Madame truly runs, and consequently, exactly how big a pain in your ass she’s wont to be). 

“Insurance.”

“I don’t wish for us to fight,” you tell her. It is the truth, and though it burns, you do not shy away from it. “I have no reason to.”

A slow, chilling grin stretches its way across her angular features. When she speaks, sadistic mirth underlies her brisk intonation: “And I cannot let you leave here alive.”

Gamely suppressing a sigh, you shift back into a fighting stance—feet a shoulder’s width apart, knees bent, guns drawn. 

You have one last thought as she’s barreling toward you, and you’re bracing yourself for impact: I should really get started on that early retirement plan. 

— —

So, here’s the thing about serving as second-in-command to the Black Room Madame—you don’t arrive there without first selling your soul. 

You’re a little more preoccupied than usual—thoughts a little scrambled, brain a tad freezer-burned—so it takes you longer than it should to discern what you’re working with here.

Nonetheless, you do... though, not before enduring a blow. Or five.  

Cracked sternum—courtesy of a violent palm strike to the chest which sends you careening back through the drywall. Bone bruising in both ulnas—acquired when you blocked a bone-realigning roundhouse kick with your forearms. Three broken fingers (pinky and ring)—your penance for getting the grand idea to clip her diamond-cut jaw with a well-aimed punch. 

Yeah. It doesn’t take a genius to tell: you’re not going toe-to-toe with just another classmate of Natalia’s.

(Natalia…

The moment the thought surfaces, you do away with it. The sentiment—tempting as it is to re-examine—will only live on so long as you do, and at the current moment, that prospect is looking shaky at best.)  

She—whoever she is—is enhanced, sure. A recipient of some unidentified variant on Erskine’s serum? Unclear.  

The serum—though it bolsters muscle mass accordingly on any given subject—doesn’t make a combatant weigh in at 200 kilos (~440lbs). Hell, even Rogers was only weighing in at just over 135 (~300lbs) post-injection—and the batch that he received had been the most advanced variant known to man. More on that: it doesn’t give you a gleaming-silver exoskeleton of impenetrable steel beneath your skin, and it certainly doesn’t mean you can take a bullet between the brows and only be out of commission for two minutes flat.

Whatever she’s on, it goes far deeper than anything Erskine ever cooked up. 

Granted you can manage to make it out of this alive (a quixotic hypothetical that appears to grow increasingly more improbable by the second), you make a mental note to look into this later on, at length. If you know the mind of an overzealous scientist—and, considering your lab-rat background, you’re quite sure that you do—they didn’t stop (or start) with her. 

For the moment, though, you’ll just have to settle for taking things slow—one steel-gloved hit at a time.

You duck another punch and throw yourself shoulder-first down onto the ground, directly forth into a hurried roll across the groaning hardwood. It buys you about a half a second of time and less than a foot of space, but it’s better than nothing while your mind works overtime to come up with a new strategy for incapacitating your assailant—preferably one that doesn’t involve any more broken bones.

The syringes are out; that much is clear. Their flimsy steel needles won’t stand a chance at puncturing her wrought-iron skin. With knives, you’re met with the same issue. Guns? No, you tried that already. I.C.E.R.? Forget it. 

You’re gonna need a lot more firepower—firepower you don’t currently have on hand—to neutralize her. Though, you know what—or who, rather—just might? 

Stark. 

All this runs through your head in the blink of an eye as you rise to your full height and the lieutenant whirls around to clock you, bringing with her a vicious backwards elbow that makes you duck right back down to avoid getting clobbered.

You catch the knee-strike she throws next with both hands, though the sheer force of it sends your crouched figure sprawling backwards ass-first onto the wooden floors with little grace and an audible thunk! 

A boot races towards your face, then, though you’re quick to fall back and twist away. At the tail end of one full rotation, you level a kick at her ankle that sees her bounding back a full half-step to dodge, allowing you time to scramble up onto your feet and break away. 

Ice slithers its way up your spine as you break out into a full sprint, back turned… exposed. 

(Never let an opponent at your unprotected back, Angel. Never. )

Last you checked, she hadn’t any knives on hand (most of them littered across the floor or sunken into the drywall), but it’s a risk all the same. 

You huff out a noiseless sigh of relief when you manage to barge through into the next room and dive off to the side even as a throwing knife—this one silver rather than black—goes whizzing through the entryway where you once stood about half a second later. 

You come up on your feet and launch forth into an explosive run, gunning for the east central stairwell two rooms over. 

New mission objective: find Iron Man. 

— —

You burst onto the fourth-floor landing—TMP-I.C.E.R. combo drawn and looking for trouble. 

And damn it all, but you get it. 

The moment you hear it—faint crackling sounds from a procession of dated black speaker-horns mounted up in corners of every room, static and sputters to signal the intercom system coming to life—

You know you’re fucked. 

“Она провиденье искушала.”

[Ona providen’ye iskushala.]

A cool, brittle voice. Feminine; familiar. 

Madame E.

This can’t be a live feed… can it? No, she’d never risk it. A recording, then?

But whose finger is on the ‘Play’ button?

And those words… 

“Она звала прекрасное мечтою.”

[Ona zvala prekrasnoye mechtoyu.]

Your breath catches in your throat. Saliva turns to smoky ash on your tongue.  

Your tenebrous surroundings fall away, and you fall with them—down, down, down…  You barely feel the impact when your knees hit the floor, guns trembling in rigid fists. 

No… 

“Она вдохновенье презирала.”

[Ona vdokhnoven’ye priyezirala.]

The voice is cool, calm… unrelenting. Every word it utters, every letter feels as though it’s branding itself into your bare flesh. 

And the scariest part? Some indispensable, deep-down part of you—one that seems to swell and stretch by the second, growing like a sentient thing—is responding to it. Coaxed forth by its urging… compelled in a way you know there’s no coming back from.  

“Не верила она любви, свободе.”

[Ni verilla ona lyubvi, cvobodye.]

She had faith in neither love nor freedom… 

You know her. You know the girl of whom they speak. Don’t you?

A sharp ache builds in the back of your skull. You bite your lip hard as if to clear it. 

“На жизнь насмешливо глядела…”

[Na szhizn nasmeshliva glyadyela…]

Looked on life with ridicule… 

“И ничего во всей природе…” 

[I nichevo vo vsey prirodye…]

And in the whole of nature…

You clap your hands over both ears to block out the noise, gritting your teeth hard until your jaw creaks… but it’s too late for that, and you know it. The words are too loud, and they’re screaming in your brain, and you cannot help but soak them up like a blooming sunflower might the afternoon sun on a balmy springtime afternoon. 

The last line of the poem—because it’s a poem, you’re sure, and one you think some ever-nearing piece of you might know—is the final nail in a coffin of your handlers’ design.

“Благословить она не хотела.”

[Blagoslovit’ ona nye khotela.]

She did not wish to praise a single thing. 

White explodes across your spotty vision; a shrill, high-pitched noise shrieks deafeningly in your ears… there is pain, flashes of red, the distant sound of someone screaming—

… And then, there is nothing. 

Nothing but silence. Silence, bloodlust, and a single phrase to shatter what precious little remains holding you back—one you’ve still yet to hear.

“Встань, ангел смерти.”

[Vstan’, angol smyerti.]

Bingo. 

— —

You awaken in a strange, dark place—an older building that creaks and groans, its bowels teeming with shadows. Judging by the interior design—modeled to constitute a later motif of the Byzantine Revival—the structure had been built anywhere from the mid-19th century to the late 1900s. Reasonably meritorious upkeep. Doorless inlets formed by tall, rounded archways. Nicked hardwood floors, their once polished veneers a thing of the faraway past. The scent of lingering gunsmoke, how it tickles your nostrils. A brisk chill in the thin, damp air… 

Focus, you rebuke yourself. 

You’re hunched down, on your knees… staring at the floor. 

There’s a voice in your ear… but you have no comm. 

There’s someone there with you. 

“... hear me?” a deep, masculine-sounding voice cleaves through your clouded awareness like the first stroke of thunder in an oncoming storm. American. “Hey, are you alright?” You recognize it, you think… recognize him. Maybe from on television? “Don’t worry; you’re safe now. We’re here to help.”

It’s coming from closer, now… 

He’s right beside you. 

You can feel the heat of his body crowding yours… huge, well-muscled, quick on his feet. It’s not until you feel his hand on your shoulder, though—Big mistake—that the heavy fog which addles your mind seems to dissipate, and in its wake, a singular motive reigns absolute: 

Fight. 

You twist sharply, jerking back and away from the man’s touch. Simultaneously you’re raising your arm, snaking it over and around his own such that your limbs are twined steadfastly around each other like braided rope—his wrist beneath your armpit and palm pressed against your shoulder blade; your forearm around his bulging tricep and knuckles digging into the iron of his brachialis. The position is awkward (significantly more so for him than for you), forcing his arm to lock in a position that borders on overextension with every bit of added pressure you apply. Of course, he resists. 

Christ, but he’s strong. It’s exhausting to hold him still for even a second or two. 

There, with a split second’s worth of borrowed time, you get your first real glimpse of him—sharp jawline; gritted teeth… a chauvinistic kevlar-padded uniform with the most obnoxious, God-awful design you’ve seen in your entire life: a conspicuous blend of proud American red, white, and blues; a navy blue helmet that fits snugly around his cranium like a bald cap; a perfectly-circular shield the size of a large supper platter secured to his other forearm with a series of worn leather straps. 

Steve Rogers. Codename: Captain America.

Designation: Unfriendly. Threat Assessment: Deadly. 

(‘Stevie’... )

There’s a kind of calm, if distant, recognition in his blue-eyed gaze as you peer up at him, and he looks down at you. He knows you… somehow. You haven’t the time to ponder how that could possibly be. 

A beat passes. He sweeps your feet out from underneath you with a well-placed kick, and the moment is broken. 

You go down, down, down without a fight—your arm disentangling from his, your vision tilting upside-down. A calculated twist of your hips increases your momentum in a pinch, and, when your upper back hits the ground, it’s all too natural to further drive that propulsion feet-first into an improvised backwards roll off one shoulder, a move that’ll earn you about three steps’ length in additional space. In no time at all, you’re back on your feet—half-knelt in a crouched position and peering up at your opponent, twin knives drawn. 

“Stand down, Y/N,” he orders calmly, shield-clad arm resting innocuously at his side. He doesn’t even sound winded. 

“I do not answer to you,” you say flatly. 

It’s nothing but a testament to his arrogance that he would think otherwise—or, at the very least, feign it.

“This isn’t you,” he continues on, his words ripe with priggish well-meaning and maddening self-importance. You disfavor it on principle. 

Overhead, there’s the telltale crackle of static from the intercom, followed by an indisputable command:

“Eliminate the intruders.” 

You aren’t really supposed to have opinions (at all), particularly where it concerns orders coming from higher up the food chain. You’re not sure if it’s a flaw in your conditioning, or some indispensable defect of character, but that particular ordinance never quite seemed to take with you. Regardless, all orders are not created equal. (A matter of personal opinion, granted.) Some are ill-advised and inflammatory. Some are tedious, yet tolerable. Some are nothing short of condemnable.

You’d place this particular instance in the ‘tedious, yet tolerable’ category. If you were the type of person to have friends, Captain America would not be one of them. 

You twirl your knives in either hand and lunge explosively forth, seeking blood with both blades raised—poised to strike. 

You get a shield instead. Impenetrable vibranium strikes your upraised forearms with considerable force and a metallic thud to boot… but you’re expecting it. (Even if the impact makes your battered forearms smart like a bitch.)

Palming the handles of either knife, you manage to grip the shield’s top edge with your fingertips (sans the thumbs); and, using that hold as a grapnel, swing your momentum forward, boots first, to deliver a solid two-footed kick directly into the armor-padded gut of Captain America. 

Pained grunts from overhead constitute your reward—one when the soles of your boots strike his gut, and another when you employ that perch as something of a makeshift springboard; pushing off his firm stomach with both feet, setting an angled course for the ground below. 

You catch yourself there with both hands, the impact flattening both knife handles into either palm such that you’re sure they’ll sport impressive bruises come dawn. As your weight transfers to your hands, straining your bent elbows something ridiculous, you clock Steve Rogers at your 12 o’clock, stumbling backwards and righting himself just within arm’s reach. From there, your momentum takes you the rest of the way, and a forceful shove against groaning hardwood does the rest. In a matter of seconds—which see you neatly executing the tail-end of an improvised back-handspring—you’re up on your feet again in a fighting stance with a solid metre’s worth of space between you and your opponent. 

“This isn’t you,” he grits out, sounding rather winded. 

You shrug, like his claim does not irk you. (It does.) “You talk too much.”

And, without further ado, you launch yourself forth. 

— —

Steve Rogers—honorable and masochistic as he is—fights like a ‘roided-out street boxer. His footwork is just barely on the better side of decent; and, despite bouncing dutifully on the balls of his feet all throughout, he’s somehow the most flat-footed fighter you’ve ever seen. He never moves any more than a step or two in any direction, as though his lower half is encased in concrete and he doesn’t fancy moving any time soon. Any blocking comes few and far between, allowing opportunity for unobstructed attacks at every turn. You get four solid hits to his face—the third of which sees his nose broken and gushing blood—before he adjusts and starts dodging them. 

He’s good with the shield; you’ll give him that. 

There are also the faintest undertones of something more refined—and familiar—beneath his brawler fight pattern. Another influence; a guiding hand, of sorts. It’s got Natalia written all over it. 

He should listen to Natalia more, you think. Spar with her more often. 

The moment the thought registers—

A sharp pain behind your eye, making you falter mid-block.  

You take a bone-jarring right hook to the jaw for that one. The force of it whips your head to the side, makes your teeth clamp down hard on your tongue. Warm, coppery blood fills your mouth as you stagger back on the heels of your feet. 

You catch yourself on the second step, and recover your balance by the third. 

Steve Rogers is looking at you like he’s sorry, like he regrets it. 

You hold his gaze as you gather the blood in your mouth and swallow it down, jaw clenched.

“I don’t want to fight,” he tells you, his words jagged with exertion. His lower lip is split. The gusher of a bloody nose has slowed to a trickle. “You’re just a kid.” 

You note a flicker of movement over his left shoulder as he speaks; barely there, and yet, unmistakable to someone with your training. 

Simultaneously: a shift in the air just behind you, and to the right. 

“Down!” a woman yells in heavily-accented English.

Steve Rogers—ever the soldier—doesn’t question the order. He drops like a stone, hitting the deck just in time to dodge the throwing knife that comes whizzing through the air not half a second later. It comes for you, next, making you to twist slightly to avoid it—

A flash of blonde hair is all the warning you get before a shoulder rams you in the gut, tackling you, flinging you both down the nearby staircase with breathtaking momentum. 

You barely register the thunk! from overhead as the throwing knife buries itself in lath-covered plaster, too busy holding onto the golden-haired assailant with all your might as the pair of you tumble down a half-case of stairs, directly into a lath-and-plaster wall on the intermediary landing with an audible thud!

You settle in a tangle of limbs, heartbeat thundering in your ears, sandwiched between creaky hardwood flooring and your newest opponent. It’s a geometric staircase, the intermediary landing of which constitutes a pivot point for a full 180-degree turn. A classic design. You absorb all of this in the blink of an eye as your attacker—who hasn’t so much as a weapon in their hands—hastens to disentangle themselves and rise to their feet. 

You let them—her. A Widow, like you. 

Designation: Unclear. Threat Assessment: Deadly.

Straw-blonde hair, hazel eyes. Pouty lips. Button nose. 

Your shoulder aches. Your nose does, too. 

Yelena? 

The name comes to you like a knife to the gut, but you’re already in motion: Lunging forth, head down, shoulder first; nailing her with a tackle to the gut that makes all the air leave her lungs in a strangled gasp and sends the pair of you sprawling down the remaining steps in a tangle of limbs. 

You take the first impact to your shoulder—the uninjured one, thankfully—about halfway down the steps. You think it a miracle your combined weights and barreling momentum don’t snap your clavicle. 

The next—and last—one is a joint effort, cushioned by her left hip and your right knee; you on top, her underneath.

It’s something like a miracle when the pair of you spill out onto the second-story landing; tumbling over once, twice, before lurching to a decisive halt at the other end of the floor, pressed up against a rickety wooden balustrade. You’re on your sides, chest to chest; your leg slung around her waist, her face pressed into your armpit. 

You make to disentangle yourself, but she beats you to it: viciously shoving you off with both hands and a muttered curse. 

It’s a concerted effort to keep from retaliating, but you do it; skidding back across the hardwood without a fight, slowing to a stop with just short of an arm’s length of space between you. Your forehead is damp, beaded with cold sweat. Your chest heaves. The Widow—Yelena, you think—is not much better off.

After a moment, she wheezes out, “You’re an idiot.” Her gaze is absolutely murderous, her jaw clenched tightly enough to border on painful. She doesn’t sound at all like she means it. 

You eye her with shrewd interest. 

Kill the intruders. But Yelena is no intruder. 

“I don’t need to kill you, but I will,” you tell her plainly, having caught your breath.  

You want to say more. You can’t. You won’t. 

Why do you want to say more?

“Trigger words are flimsy,” Yelena ventures, forcing herself up into a sitting position. “An inexact science.” Huffing out a sigh, she hauls herself up onto her feet. You do the same. “You broke them before.”

“I have orders.” You don’t know why you’re humoring this. Humoring her. 

“Right now, there’s no time for the chair,” she continues on, like she doesn’t hear. You feel a twinge of… something at her mention of the chair. Discomfort? Dislike? Impossible. You are not permitted such frivolous sentiments. “So, they pull a poem out of their asses. They think—hope—that it will collar you. They’re wrong.”

You quirk a brow. Skeptical. “A poem? ”

Yelena huffs out another sigh. 

You get the feeling you’ve had this conversation before. You get the feeling she’s tired of repeating it. 

“Yours is Pushkin,” she recounts, sounding almost bored. Aleksandr Sergejevich. Born 1799… died 1837. “A verse they call ‘Demon.’” She rolls her eyes at that. “They think themselves quite clever for that one.”

You frown. “Because I’m…”

“An angel, I suppose. Heaven’s soldier.” She pauses, there. “Or assassin, as it were.”

You want to kill her. You want to punch in those prim, porcelain features until you reach bone. Even more than that, you want to listen. 

“Mine was Mandel’shtam,” she grits out slowly, almost unwittingly, her features contorted into a grimace. The gravity of such a confession is not lost on you. She is a fool for sharing it. “‘Sisters.’”

Thorns in your chest. Fluid fills your lungs. Sisters… “You had a sister, once,” you hear yourself say in a coarse, tinny voice—as if from under leagues of ocean water.

She flinches like you’ve struck her. (You haven’t.) “So they tell me.” Loosely-curled fists spasm at her sides like she wants to strike you. (She doesn’t.)

“A Widow.” It’s hardly a question. 

Yelena shrugs, smoothing her features out into something harder, colder… marble. “We have what we have when we have it.”

The words scald you like fire on a salted wound. Bile rises in your throat. Crimson colors your vision, so deep and dark and red, red, red— 

Stop. Breathe. 

Fear serves no purpose. Pain will be compartmentalized. 

“Whose words are those?” you demand in a voice that does not tremble, for you will it not to.

Yelena appraises you for a moment, a contemplative look in her eye. Then, without a word, she turns on her heel and sprints into the darkness. 

— —

Yelena is not running out of cowardice. You may not know terribly much right now (—honestly, you don’t much care to); but you know that. 

She is you, and you are her. The tick in her jaw, the fury in her eyes; the blood that dribbles down your chin. A mirror’s echo, even if wrung and wrought and warped beyond all comparison. You would not know your own face in a crowd, you think. But Yelena’s… you couldn’t miss hers if you tried. Natalia’s, either. 

Tearing after her is second nature. You see… narrow streets. Taxi cabs. A church, carved from volcanic stone. A glimpse of blonde hair amidst the sparse crowd of Independence Plaza. 

You sprint out onto the third-floor landing—a different one, this time—in a house of shadows. Floorboards creak beneath your boots. Voronezh. You halt yourself in place for a spell, listening for—

Bootsteps plodding down stairs. Too loud. 

She wants you to follow her. 

You vault the nearby balustrade, surrender yourself to the short drop that follows. 

You’re not alone when you land. There’s another, Yelena notwithstanding; though, theatric that she is, she’s quick to reassert her presence with a bone-jarring tackle that meets you like a speeding bullet train, shoulder to stomach, the second your boots touch solid ground. All the air shoves out from your lungs in a painful, burning rush as the pair of you go sprawling to the floor—again. 

Relentless. 

You’re no better. 

This time, though, is different. 

This time—

A flare of scarlet—red.

“Get off of her,” comes a heavily-accented voice that is cold and scared and just the wrong kind of familiar—

It happens before you can blink: Yelena is lifted bodily off of you in a nebulous mist of carmine-red, suspended midair for half a breath, then jerked sharply back—launched into the nearest wall. You barely register the thud! her body makes when it collides with the wall, the muffled curse that leaves her lips, the ensuing crash! when she tumbles down onto the floor in a haze of dissipating scarlet. 

All you see are pale hands and silver rings and eyes that burn red, red, red. 

You scramble to your feet in a daze, eyes locked on hers as they fade from florid red to a bluish-green. You wait for them to reignite. They don’t. 

Instead, she comes closer. 

“Don’t,” Yelena’s voice warns her, and for once, you agree. 

It’s as though she does not hear—drawn to you like a moth to an open flame. 

She’ll burn if she touches you. Doesn’t she know that?

When she speaks, it’s quiet. Almost reverent. Just a word—your name.  

She’s within an arm’s length, now. Your fingers twitch at your sides, itching for a gun, a knife, anything. Yelena is… too quiet. Peripherally, you recall a shuffle of clothing behind you, a shift in the air as she righted herself, but now—nothing. 

You should reorient yourself. Any moment now, Yelena will—

Red sparks itself alight in the witch’s eyes.

“Fuck !” Yelena curses bitterly behind you. 

You whip around to see her suspended midair in a mist of nebulous red, again. For a split second, the pair of you lock eyes, and in hers, you see… a curious mix of disappointment and righteous fury. It’s there one moment, and gone another as her body is launched unceremoniously across the landing and through the wooden balustrade—which splinters and gives way with a sickening crunch!—and she goes sprawling off the landing. 

It’s a one-story drop to the bottom. Maybe a little more, if you count the gaping hole in the ground floor. 

Yelena will be fine. Maybe a broken bone or two, but—fine. Alive. You don’t know why you care. 

A voice you know but shouldn’t says your name, all soft and reverent like it’s something holy, and your stomach curdles as you’re wrenched back into yourself with the force of a battering ram. 

Your head spins. Your lungs burn. You can hardly breathe. 

She—Wanda—is standing close. Too close. How did she get that close? How did you let her?

She’s got freckles, a faint smattering of them beneath her eyes and across her nose. Did she always have those?

You don’t know where you are. You don’t know what you’re doing.

But her hand grazes yours, and muscle memory does the rest. 

It’s a blur of motion—you’re a blur of motion—as you spin the pair of you around, draw a knife, bully her backwards. She winces when she hits the wall, when you slam her against it. Your forearm traps her shoulders, your blade is at her throat, and she… does nothing. 

Her breath is warm against the tip of your nose. Steady. 

“I will kill you,” you tell her in a voice that’s perhaps a little louder than strictly necessary. The blade trembles in your tightly-clenched fist. Your chest heaves; you can’t get your breathing under control. “Do you know that? I will kill you!” You’re almost shouting, now, or as close as you ever get to it, for the furor you feel is beyond imagining. It aches, it swells, it burns in your chest like something molten, something alive, something that’ll kill you trying to claw its way out.

A survivor. A cornered dog. You.

“Then do it,” Wanda’s strained voice cleaves swiftly through the noise, and it’s with a start that you realize she’s crying. Her cheeks are wet with it. “I will forgive you,” she whispers, wheezes; meeting your feverish gaze with a watery, desperate one of her own. “Do you understand? I will forgive you.”

Every word is a boulder in your throat, a brand upon your skin; a jagged blade splits your chest. You stumble back clutching your sternum, scrabbling for purchase, clawing to staunch the blood that pours out like water from a freshly-burst dam. You scarcely register the dull clatter of the knife when it falls from your grip, the solidness of the floor that breaks your fall. 

There’s just so much of it. It oozes between your fingers. So wet, and warm, and red, red, red.

Natalia was red. Wanda, too. 

Hair, eyes, jacket. 

Jacket? How strange. 

You hear—a name. You think it might belong to you. 

A foolish thought. 

There’s just so much blood.

It’s not yours. Is it? 

You blink. A face looms over you, cast in darkness. Young, pretty. 

So much blood. So much red. 

Another face joins hers—green eyes, fiery-red hair. 

Natalia.

She does not hesitate: grabs you by the throat. Yanks you up, slams you back down. 

The other one screams. Her eyes flash red, and Natalia is gone—torn away from you in a blur of motion. 

Fuck, that hurt. 

Your skull aches. Blackness clouds your vision. 

Is this what dying feels like?

— —

sources (do not tease me for this i stg. i go down rabbit holes with my little ‘puter sometimes. mind your business about it):

встань, ангел смерти | vstan’, angel smerti | stand, angel of death

mark xlvii | the forty-seventh iron man suit of armor constructed by tony stark. built after the mark xlvi sustained considerable damage in a conflict with captain america at a HYDRA base in siberia (captain america: civil war). appears in spider-man: homecoming. 

staircase construction | exactly what it sounds like. we are moving on now.

russian architecture | overview of russian architecture through the ages.

russian revival architecture | overview of russian revival architecture movement (mid-19th to early 20th century).

more russian architecture | russian architecture and its byzantine origins.

hydrogen sulfide (pdf) | hydrogen sulfide material safety data sheet, which includes information such as auto-ignition temperature and related facts and figures that i know you all care very much about. 

aleksandr sergeyevich pushkin | born 1799, died 1837. russian poet, novelist, dramatist, writer of short stories. largely considered to be the country's greatest poet, and the father of its modern literature.

демон/demon | poem written by pushkin. includes russian text as well as english translation.

osip emilyevich mandelshtam | born 1891, died 1938. major figure in russian poetry, prose, and literary essay composition. 

сёстры/sisters | poem by mandel’shtam. includes russian text as well as english translation.

— —

tagging:

[series]: @herecomesthewriterwitch @madamevirgo @tomy5girls​ @avengerstanforlife​ @steamhead15​

[marvel]: @yelenabelovasgf​

— —

end notes: okay. confession time. i did change pushkin’s wording slightly for the lines of ‘demon’ that i used here, but only inasmuch that pronouns were swapped, and the relevant past-tense verb endings were adjusted also to agree with the pronoun change (’he’ to ‘she’), becuase russian language says that they have to agree. 

also i’m pretty sure i forgot to make an actual taglist, ever, so i’m tagging the people that i tagged on the last post, and if i’ve forgotten anyone, i’m truly sorry!! 

thank you all for sticking with me thus far; it means more to me than i am able to put into words <3

link to masterlist

[flinttflakes]

The Quad

(Introducing all my main Ocs in one go)

In Order of Oldest to Youngest: Maria Dolores Ramirez (She/Her), Diego Marcos Ramirez (He/Him), Nikolai Emilio Ramirez (He/They), and Bianca Valeria Ramirez (Any/All - Mainly She/her due to the timeline)

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Maria D. Ramirez

The entirety of the Quad is twenty-two but Maria is the eldest.

She works as popular fashion designer and seamstress.

She adores making clothing and is usually the one who makes the clothes her siblings wear (because she is not letting her family look ugly.)

Maria is married with a wife and has like four kids.

She doesn’t spend a lot of time around the newsies but the Brooklynites play dress up in her stuff.

Diego M. Ramirez

Diego is the second eldest, one of the middle children.

He works as a boxer, and he learned a lot from the people he grew up around.

He’s dyslexic. Boy CANNOT read omfg. God help this man.

He’s so homosexual btw, he’s got like 3 boyfriends and eventually 3 daughters too.

He’s a big family man and loves their family so much.

Nikolai E. Ramirez

Smart doctor man!!!

Third child, and also technically the twins with the youngest because there was a time gap between him and Diego.

He was an apprentice under a military doctor and also went to college in Brooklyn for it.

BRO DOES NOT LIKE NEWSIES. He is friend with ONE newsie and is like done with the rest of them.

He’s also a gardener! He has a greenhouse on the roof he shares with his younger twin.

Bianca V. Ramirez

Entomologist!

She’s the youngest but acts the most motherly somehow.

She loves the newsies, loves them all, will/would adopt them all.

The Brooklyn newsies call her Mama B later on and she almost cried.

She shares the rooftop greenhouse with Niko and keeps all her bugs up there.

Bianca is THE ONLY ONE WHO’S IN A OC X CANON SHIP AND I DON’T KNOW WHY. I DON’T EVEN WANT IT ANYMORE, SHE’S MY WIFE NOT YORK’S. Anyways, she’s dating York, eventually marries him, and they have like four kids too. (Fuming about this. FUMING.

Anyways, notes: I plan on drawing more canon newsies stuff and posting old art because THIS IS OLD ART. I AM IMPROVING TOO FAST TO POST JESUS. So, more newsies art, I might start “designing” all the canon newsies just for funsies. I’ll probably start with the Brooklyn newsies because The Quad lives in Brooklyn.

When I mean “designing” I pretty much mean steal my friends designs and mashing it with canon designs and putting my style’s spin on it.

[androidcharles]

Surprise short story drop, since it's been a while! This time, it's a story based on the picture of Minerva and Jaques I posted yesterday. I'm still not good at writing fight scenes.

There's a lot that's going on here, but a lot of information cannot be revealed until the third arc, so just go in and hope like hell it'll all make sense later. TW for some blood mention of course.

Minerva yawned, trying her best to stay awake as she walked through the streets of Greenwich. She had a long shift cleaning up a level 5 anomaly at the Chaos Containment Center and she wanted nothing more than to send off Rupert’s nanny and see her boy before she headed to bed for the night.

She hated to make Mrs. Dasher stay much longer than she needed, but sometimes she couldn’t help these long shifts. She wouldn’t have taken the job if she wasn’t worried about just sitting around doing nothing but relying on Toppat funds.

Her husband had divorced her the minute Rupert was born and at the age of twenty, she could barely keep up with her studies, much less hold down a job while taking care of a newborn baby. But eventually, an opening for the CCC helped her out and on top of her brother, Jaques Kensington being the leader of the Toppat Clan, she was living pretty comfortably in an apartment in Greenwich, a town governed by the larger city of New Stick City.

Her thoughts were interrupted when she saw the man himself, rounding the corner quickly as she stopped in place, her eyes widening as he dashed towards her, his navy blue cape flowing behind him as he halted in place. He let out a few pants, trying to catch his breath as he doubled over from running so fast.

“Jaques? The bloody hell are you doing here?” Minerva said, tipping her head to the side.

“Ah, well…” Jaques panted out, trying to catch his breath, “It’s good to see you again Minnie.”

“I’ll say. It’s been almost two years since you’ve visited. I think Rupert’s forgotten your face. He’d be happy to see you again,” Minerva said, “Tell ya what, I’m heading home right now. Knowing the little nipper, he’s probably still up driving Mrs. Dasher crazy so-”

“Minnie, I don’t have time to visit! You’re in grave danger!” Jaques said. Minerva’s eyes widened as she looked around, trying to see where the government agents or police officers were.

“Look, I don’t have time to cover for one of your dumb heists right now! Where’s Randy? I’m pretty sure he’ll help ya if you just-”

“The police will be the least of your troubles, young lady…” she heard a voice whisper behind her as she was suddenly grabbed from behind. Jaques gritted his teeth as his hands glowed bright red, his hair flying up as Minerva turned around to see person wearing a beautiful green masquerade mask. Her blonde hair flowed behind her as she tightened her grip on Minerva, chuckling evilly.

“Well, Jaques, we didn’t think it was this easy to trick you. Than again, once a Toppat, always a Toppat,” she said.

“Isabelle, if you know what’s good for you, you would let go of Minerva right now!” Jaques shouted as he shot a blast of energy at her, causing her to jump up, still holding Minerva. She floated in the air above Jaques as he rocketed up with her, firing a few more blasts as Isabelle dodged them with ease. Minerva felt a bit queasy from all the spinning and dodging that was happening.

“Oh, Jaques, our clans have clashed heads for years now, and here you are acting like you’re the bigger man for fighting with me,” Isabelle said as they landed on a building, tossing Minerva aside as she gasped, trying to comprehend what was happening.

“Isabelle, you can threaten my clan members and me all you want! But I draw the line at family!” Jaques said, “And I can guarantee you that you’ve crossed that line more than enough times to warrant this fight!”

“How laughable! You really think you can beat me, don’t you!” Isabelle said, “Than let’s do this. But I can already tell you that this isn’t going to end well for you or your little sister either!” Isabelle hopped into the air, summoning dozens of paint tubes, blasting energy from each one as Jaques dodged the paint balls, placing a charm on Minerva to ensure her safety before flinging more energy blasts at Isabelle.

Isabelle got hit at least a couple of times, placing up a shield as she teleported in front of Jaques, hitting him with a magical paintbrush as he screamed, falling to the ground. He got up as he rocketed up again, firing more energy blasts into the air as they exploded into bigger blasts, making them hard to dodge as Isabelle summoned more paint supplies to try to throw at Jaques.

Eventually Isabelle stopped in place, a cluster of magic circles appearing behind her, vibrant colors flashing as Jaques charged up his own attack, blasts of energy flying out as Isabelle did the same. The explosion of color and sound caused Minerva to duck down, cowering in fear as she tried to understand what was happening.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a few pistols popped up around Jaques as he waved his hand, the pistols suddenly fire rapidly as Isabelle dodged expertly, her mask flashing as she cast another spell, a sheild of paint keeping her from being hit as she jumped up over Jaques, flinging another wave of paint at him. He was too slow to dodge as he fell to the ground again. Only this time, he didn’t get up so easily.

Isabelle hovered over Minerva as she cowered in fear.

“You Toppats are the same. You pretend to be all elegant when in reality you’re just a bunch of ugly cowards,” Isabelle said, “I have a feeling that-” Isabelle’s monologue was suddenly interrupted as a bullet went through her chest, causing her to gasp as she fell over, trying to breath as Jaques narrowed his eyes at her.

“Leave my sister out of this. I don’t know what caused you to instigate this sudden rivalry, but it ends here! I would highly suggest you slink back to the hole where you came or I will have no choice but call in reinforcements…” Jaques said.

“Oh, like you can get anyone here fast enough to help you with this mess!” Isabelle shouted, her magic healing her as Jaques smiled evilly.

“Try me,” Jaques said. Minerva held her breath as the two criminal leaders stood at a standstill, staring each other down before Jaques let out a sigh.

Suddenly Minerva was at his side, trying not to panic as Jaques took her hand and hopped down in the alley way below.

“If she knows what’s good for her, she won’t follow us,” Jaques said softly.

“But what if-” Minerva was suddenly interrupted as something grabbed his ankle, causing him to fall to the ground.

“What? What the-? WHAT’S HAPPENING!?” Jaques shouted as Minerva gasped. She looked up to see Isabelle, her hands glowing green as she smiled wickedly. At the end of the glowing green rope that was dragging Jaques was a portrait frame, an evil sickening green emanating from the middle. Minerva grabbed Jaques’ hand as he was dragged further into the glow, his eyes full of fear and determination as she tried to pull him out.

She gritted her teeth as she dug her heels into the dirt, Jaques going deeper and deeper into the painting as tears formed in his eyes.

“JAQUES! HANG ON!” Minerva shouted as she tried to pull her other hand up. His red eye glowed as he smiled sadly at her, his eyes still full of fear.

“Minnie… I’m sorry…” Jaques said softly. His hand slipped as Minerva was forced to let go, her stomach churning as Jaques flung back into the painting, his scream cut off as the painting fell to the ground. It spun for a few seconds on the corner, gently rotating to a stop as it fell to the ground with a thud. Minerva fell to the ground as well, her heart racing as she tried to process what had just happened.

To the CCC it would have been a category three or four incident. But to her…

To her, she had lost her brother. Her only brother.

“JAQUES!!!” Minerva cried, throwing her head back as tears started to fall down her face. She sobbed uncontrollably as Isabelle jumped down from the top of the building, chuckling to herself as she towered over Minerva.

“What a sad sight. I guess I’ll put you out of your-” Isabelle suddenly felt her arm being grabbed as Minerva twisted it behind her. Isabelle tried to cast another spell, but not before she was slammed into a wall, stars filling her vision as she looked in horror at Minerva, who’s face was twisted in rage as she kicked and punched Isabelle over and over again.

Isabelle tried to figure out what to do next as she felt a trash can lid hit her hard, causing her to go unconscious. Minerva had managed to take her down, but she wasn’t satisfied. She found a rusty pipe nearby, lifting it over her head and bashing in Isabelle’s skull. She let out shaky breath after breath, shaking and shivering as she watched the blood pool out of her wound before she snapped out of it, suddenly realizing what she had done.

She looked to the dead body, than to the painting and realized that if she didn’t get out of here, her brother being trapped in a portrait wasn’t going to be the only thing she would be worried about. She quickly grabbed the painting and ran off, hoping like hell that no one else was around as she dashed down the street.

- - - - -

Minerva sighed, placing her hand in her face as she monitored a couple of sectors not too far from the main city limit. It had been at least three days since the magical duel that caused her brother to become trapped in a painting. For three days she had tried to awaken her magic potential, so maybe, just maybe she could actually save him somehow. But for some reason, whenever she tried to awaken her magic potential it just… wouldn’t work.

It was almost as if she couldn’t do magic at all anymore. She let out a small sigh, wondering if it was possible that it was because of all the stress from what had happened when she suddenly felt someone tap on her shoulder. She jumped, turning around to see Patience Makenzie, one of her coworkers smiling gently at her.

“Are you feeling alright? You haven’t been yourself for a while,” Patience said softly. Minerva smiled weakly as she started adjust the scope.

“I’m fine, I just… had a rough last few days…” Minerva said, “Maybe I should take advantage of all that vacation time they give us.”

“Did something happen?” Patience asked, sitting down next to her. Minerva didn’t usually mind people sitting next to her while she was working. Hell, her boss has even taken position next to her while she was working. But in this instance, she didn’t really have the energy to pretend like someone being over her shoulder was OK in anyway.

But she still needed to vent to somebody and she wasn’t about to let it boil up inside of her. She gazed at Patience, her bright blue eyes searching.

“A… a category three point five event caused my brother to be turned into a painting,” Minerva said softly, “It’s at my house right now, but greater ones alive, I feel sick to my stomach just looking at it and my brother is magic, so that means I am too and every time I try to do magic, I can’t seem to do it and I don’t know what to do and-”

“OK, OK, calm down!” Patience said, “Now, now, relax, take some deep breaths…” Minerva tried to breathe as she buried her face in her hands, trying not to cry again. Crying on the job actually set off the alarms (it was a 2 on the scale) and she would have to be forced to take the rest of the day off to “restore balance” within the work place.

“There’s a couple of things we can do to test things out, but we’re going to need your brothers painting in order to do it,” Patience said, “Are you willing to do that?” Minerva nodded her head, sniffling a bit as Patience patted her back.

“Alright than, let’s get started,” Patience said, taking Minerva’s arm.

“Wait, now?” Minerva fidgeted a bit, a little uneasy, “I’m not sure if-”

“The only way we’ll know for sure what’s going on is if we investigate, right? So we might as well do it now while nothing big is going on. I’ll have Oswald cover for you while we do this OK?” Patience smiled at her as Minerva blushed before setting down her headphones and standing up, nodding her head.

“Alright, let’s get started than.”

It took some time to set everything up, but after a few hours of nothing special, Patience decided to go over Minerva with the Hyper Magic Detector 5000, an invention that was created to detect magical energy in any situation.

“That’s so funny… are you sure you’re saying the incantation correctly?” Patience said as Minerva slammed the beginner’s magic book shut, letting out a small sigh.

“I can’t believe it’s all gone…” Minerva said, “I can’t believe that I no longer have magic. I was never going to really pursue it, but now when I desperately need it, it’s gone…”

“It may turn up! Let’s see… I know the pulses of your magic energy, so I should be able to see what happened to it. Maybe someone took it? There are some magic users that are powerful enough to strip the magic from a person, no matter how powerful they are,” Patience said. Minerva felt a cold chill as she remembered what she had done to Isabelle and gulped. Could it be possible that Isabelle took it? The only person who could have given it back to her and she’s dead. At least that’s what the news confirmed.

“Minerva? You OK?” Patience said as Minerva snapped out of her trance. Minerva waved her hand as Patience pushed a few buttons on the magic detector before waving it in the air. Already, the detector was beeping rapidly, not enough that it locked on the location, but enough to show that something was going on.

“How strange…” Patience hummed as she waved the detector around before the beeping started to grow so rapid it was almost one continuous beep… over the painting that Jaques was trapped in.

“Ooooh… I think I found it,” Patience said softly as Minerva gasped, running towards the painting. She gazed at the painting, tears forming in her eyes as she gazed downwards.

“Jaques, you crazy bastard. I can’t believe it,” Minerva muttered, shaking her head, “This is just insane.”

“Well, that’s just how it is,” Patience said, clapping her hands together, “I have a theory though!” Minerva looked up as Patience nodded her head.

“I theorize that the reason Jaques took your magic was because being in that painting seals his magic away. It wouldn’t be a prison if you could do whatever you wanted. Maybe he hopes that your magic will be the thing that breaks him out. However, it may be a good while before he can break out of there. I think you’ll see him again very soon. But for now, the best thing you can do is wait.” Patience finished her theory as Minerva took the painting in her hands, feeling a cold chill down her spine.

On one hand, she couldn’t stand the idea of not having magic. She couldn’t help him in anyway now because Jaques was riding on this theory that he could free himself from his own prison with someone else’s magic. But maybe, in a way, it gave her a slight hope as well. After all, Jaques was a powerful magician, more powerful than she could ever imagine. He had been studying magic since he was so young, so if anyone could free himself from this painting, it had to be him.

“Hey, Patience? Could you tell Bill I’m taking the rest of the day off?” Minerva said. Patience nodded her head as Minerva tucked the painting under her arm, heading out of the test room and out into the hallway.

As soon as she clocked out and headed out of the building, she squinted in the low sunlight, looking around before catching a taxi and instructing the driver to drop her off somewhere near the Toppat Manor.

It was a long drive, but as soon as the sun started to set, giving the sky a soft pink color, she pulled herself out of the cab, almost tripping as the taxi driver practically sped off from their general location. She didn’t quite blame him for being as paranoid as he was. After all, the Toppats were a pretty fearsome bunch and there was no reason for him to stick around where he might get instigated.

However, she didn’t need to worry about that. She was confident in her stride as she approached the manors gates, ringing the buzzer as she looked to the manor garden. It was completely empty, almost eerily so, like something was completely wrong. She looked at the camera as she heard someone over the speaker.

“Who is this?” she heard someone say. She recognized the voice immediately as she pushed the button.

“Malcolm, it’s me, Minerva. I need to talk to Randy,” she said. There were a few moments of silence as she rocked back and forth where she was standing, trying to look as nonchalant as possible. Well, as nonchalant as she could holding a painting that her brother was trapped in AND while wearing a CCC uniform.

Finally, the gate opened as Randy Radman burst out of gate, closing it quickly behind him.

“MINNIE! Thank the greater ones you’re here!” Randy shouted, grabbing her by the shoulders. Minerva could practically see the stress behind his ladder shades as he shook her.

“The clan has been in a ruckus since Jaques vanished a couple days ago and no one has seen him! You’re his sister; do you know what happened to him!?” Randy said. Minerva sighed as she held a painting in front of him. Randy started to shake as he took off his shades, his pink eyes filled with dread.

“Randy, I need you to listen very carefully to me. Because what I’m about to tell you is VERY important,” Minerva said.

- Ten Years Later -

Dear Jaques,

It’s hard to believe that it’s been ten years since you’ve disappeared. Well, you’re not gone, you’re just… trapped I guess. But in the end, you’ve been gone for just that long. And everyday it still hurts to think about it. Rupert is now a very boisterous sixteen year old boy and boy is he a handful. He’s been pretty lacking in his grades, but he’s going on about how he wants to be a detective still. I know you were hoping he would become a Toppat, but I want him to explore his own paths for a change. Let him decide what he wants to do.

If you remember five years ago, I told you I moved out to West Mesa. It’s been a nice change of pace, for both me and Rupert of course. It’s a lot quieter out here, but that doesn’t mean my job isn’t anymore demanding than it usually is. Despite that, the clan still takes care of me. We had a few rough years where I had to go paycheck to paycheck to survive, but we managed even than. I should consider myself lucky that despite how bad you guys are… you’re still willing to take help care of me and my boy.

Minerva looked up from her laptop and saw Rupert absentmindedly chewing on his toast. His black hair had grown out full force, as it was practically a fluffy mess framing his face perfectly. His aquamarine eyes were a bit annoyed however as Minerva patted his hand.

“Oy, Rupert. It’s time ya got going to school,” Minerva said.

“Don’t wanna go,” Rupert muttered, looking out the window.

“I know you don’t want to, but if you wanna make a good impression, you gotta get some book smarts.” Rupert only slumped in his chair, groaning a bit as Minerva giggled.

“C’mon now, you’re all dressed up, you might as well go out, right?” Minerva said as Rupert rolled his eyes.

“Fine, fine,” Rupert muttered, pulling on his backpack and heading towards the door, “I’ll see ya after school.”

“Aren’t ya forgetting something?” Minerva asked. Rupert turned towards Minerva, a sort of soft look in his eyes as he walked towards her and planted a soft kiss on her cheek. She patted his cheek as she returned the favor, nuzzling his forehead.

“Have a good day. Learn something new, alright?” Minerva said as Rupert rushed back towards the door, waving at her as he headed out. Minerva smiled as she turned back to her laptop.

I miss you so much, you know. I wish you were here, watching Rupert grow up. I know you loved him dearly and it hurts to know that he’s growing up without an uncle. But if Patience was right about what she said… you’re definitely coming back.

And I look forward to the day you do.

Minnie ~ ❤