#I feel like I just survived a haunting or something

[badasoneandonly]

𝘋𝘐𝘌 𝘞𝘐𝘛𝘏 𝘈 𝘚𝘔𝘐𝘓𝘌 || 𝘏𝘞𝘈𝘕𝘎 𝘐𝘕-𝘏𝘖 × 𝘙𝘌𝘈𝘋𝘌𝘙

𝘞𝘤:1,090𝘬

𝘚𝘶𝘮𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘺:

In a zombie apocalypse, Hwang In-Ho is bitten while protecting his pregnant wife, Y/N. He urges her to survive for their unborn child. Y/N escapes, giving birth to their son, and names him after In-Ho, honoring his memory.

𝘎𝘌𝘕𝘙𝘌: !𝘡𝘖𝘔𝘉𝘐𝘌 𝘈𝘗𝘖𝘊𝘈𝘓𝘠𝘗𝘚𝘌¡ 𝘗𝘙𝘌𝘎𝘕𝘈𝘕𝘛 𝘙𝘌𝘈𝘋𝘌𝘙! 𝘙𝘖𝘔𝘈𝘕𝘊𝘌, 𝘛𝘏𝘙𝘐𝘓𝘓𝘌𝘙, 𝘈𝘊𝘛𝘐𝘖𝘕, 𝘋𝘙𝘈𝘔𝘈, 𝘗𝘖𝘚𝘛- 𝘈𝘗𝘖𝘊𝘈𝘓𝘠𝘗𝘛𝘐𝘊, 𝘋𝘠𝘚𝘛𝘖𝘗𝘐𝘈𝘕, 𝘈𝘕𝘎𝘚𝘛, 𝘋𝘈𝘙𝘒 𝘍𝘐𝘊𝘛𝘐𝘖𝘕, 𝘏𝘖𝘗𝘌𝘍𝘜𝘓 𝘛𝘙𝘈𝘎𝘌𝘋𝘠, 𝘔𝘌𝘓𝘖𝘋𝘙𝘈𝘔𝘈

𝘈/𝘯: 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘶𝘴𝘶𝘢𝘭 𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘴𝘵 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘮𝘴... 𝘓𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘥 ｡^‿^｡

The world ended in the blink of an eye.

It was never supposed to happen this way—so sudden, so destructive. The virus spread like wildfire, faster than anyone could have anticipated. One moment, it was a distant threat; the next, it was on every street, in every home, devouring lives like a plague.

Y/N and In-Ho had always been prepared for chaos, but nothing could have prepared them for this. The infection spread quickly, turning the living into mindless, ravenous monsters. Society crumbled, and what was once a thriving world was now just a ruined, haunted landscape.

In-Ho, a man who had seen the worst of humanity, refused to fall apart. His love for Y/N kept him going. But even he couldn’t fight the unstoppable tide of the apocalypse.

It was early morning when the screams outside the safe house grew louder. In-Ho’s hand gripped his gun tightly as he moved toward the broken window. He hadn’t let Y/N out of his sight in weeks. They hadn’t been alone—there were others at first, people trying to hold on to their humanity—but they had all fallen.

Now, it was just the two of them. And Y/N was pregnant. Two months along. The news had been a surprise, a small ray of hope in a world that seemed to have none.

“We’re going to make it,” In-Ho whispered, his hand resting gently on her stomach. “We’ll survive this, Y/N.”

She smiled faintly, but she knew deep down that the world they once knew was long gone. The thought of bringing a child into this hellscape was both terrifying and comforting. If they could just survive long enough, maybe the child would be their chance at something better.

But survival, it seemed, was slipping further and further from their grasp.

The sound of glass breaking jolted Y/N from her thoughts. Her heart raced as In-Ho’s voice cut through the air, sharp and commanding. “Stay low. Stay behind me.”

He led her through the small apartment, past barricaded windows and bolted doors, but the sound of the infected—footsteps, growls, scratching—grew louder with each passing second.

In-Ho pushed her toward the back door. “We’re leaving now.”

Y/N clutched his arm, desperation flooding her. “No, In-Ho. We can’t leave. We have to stay hidden—”

“No,” he said firmly, his eyes dark and intense. “We move now, or we die here.”

Y/N opened her mouth to protest, but the words caught in her throat. A crash. The infected had breached the main door. The metal frame splintered, and the roar of the undead filled the air.

In-Ho pushed her into the hallway, shoving her behind him as he drew his gun. His eyes locked onto hers one last time. “I love you, Y/N. I won’t let them take you.”

The words barely left his mouth before he fired the first shot, silencing an infected man that had rushed toward them. The hallway erupted into chaos as more figures appeared from the shadows.

In-Ho fought with precision, keeping her behind him, but the numbers were overwhelming. Y/N could hear him grunting with the effort of keeping the horde back.

She could feel the tears welling up in her eyes as she watched him—her protector, her love—fend off the monsters, his every movement a display of the strength and skill that had once kept him alive in a game where no one was safe.

But this wasn’t a game. This was real. And suddenly, amidst the chaos, she saw him stumble.

He took a step back, his face tightening in pain. His hand gripped his side.

“In-Ho!” Y/N screamed, but her voice was drowned out by the snarls and growls of the infected.

He staggered, the look of shock and fear crossing his face as his fingers grazed his side. When he pulled his hand away, it was covered in blood. His blood.

She could see it now—the wound. A gaping tear in his shirt, blood slowly pooling at his side.

“No,” she whispered. “No, no, no—”

In-Ho’s expression faltered, his body going stiff as he turned to face her. His lips barely parted. “Y/N… I’m sorry…”

Her heart shattered. “No. You can’t be. You can’t be infected.”

“I am,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “I’m sorry.”

“No. Don’t you dare say that, In-Ho. We’re getting out of here together. We’re going to find a way.”

But In-Ho shook his head slowly, his gaze distant. The pain in his eyes was unmistakable. He had always been strong, but now… now he was fading.

She felt a sob rise in her chest, her knees threatening to give way. She reached for him, her hand trembling, but he pushed her away with what little strength he had left.

“Y/N,” he said softly, his voice barely audible. “Go. Go before it’s too late. Please… for him.”

Y/N froze. The mention of their child—a tiny life that was growing inside her—shattered her resolve. The love for this man, for their baby, was all she had left.

“I can’t… I can’t leave you,” she whispered, her voice breaking.

In-Ho smiled weakly. “You have to. You have to live for him.”

A wave of grief washed over her, choking her, drowning her in despair. She wanted to stay. She wanted to die with him. But she couldn’t—she couldn’t let their child die, too.

“I will. I’ll survive,” she promised, her voice raw. “But I will never forget you. I’ll never forget this.”

And with one last look at the love of her life, Y/N turned and ran.

The world outside was still as brutal as it had been before. The streets were littered with the remains of those who didn’t make it, their cries for help lost to the wind. But somehow, Y/N found her way to an army camp—a makeshift sanctuary for those who had survived.

Her body ached from exhaustion, her mind fractured from the trauma. Yet she pressed on, driven by the memory of In-Ho’s love, the promise she’d made to him, a promise whispered on the wind of a dying world. Days bled into weeks. The camp, a haven of sorts, offered little solace. The constant fear, the gnawing hunger, the ever-present shadow of the infected – it was a life lived on the edge of a knife. But Y/N persevered, driven by the memory of In-Ho’s love, the promise she’d made to him.

Then came the day. The pain was excruciating, a mirror of the agony she’d witnessed in In-Ho’s eyes. But through the haze of pain, she saw him, a ghost in her memory, his hand gently cupping her cheek, his eyes filled with a love that transcended death.

She gave birth to a son, a tiny, fragile being, his cries a fragile melody in the harsh symphony of the apocalypse. He was beautiful, a perfect miniature of In-Ho, his father's eyes gazing up at her, filled with an innocent wonder that pierced her heart with a bittersweet joy.

She held him close, burying her face in his soft skin, the scent of his milky breath a balm to her wounded soul. But the joy was laced with an unbearable sorrow. The weight of her loss crashed down on her, a tidal wave of grief that threatened to consume her.

She whispered his name, a prayer, a lament, a vow. “In-Ho,” she breathed, tears tracing paths down her cheeks, mingling with the newborn’s soft skin. “He’s here. Our son. He’s here.”

She named him In-Ho, a legacy of love, a testament to a life lost too soon, a promise whispered on the wind, a flicker of hope in the ashes of a broken world. She would tell him stories of his father, of a man who loved fiercely, who fought bravely, who died protecting her, protecting their child. She would teach him to be strong, to be kind, to be brave, to love with a heart as boundless as the sky.

And as she held her son, a tiny hand grasping her finger, she knew, with a certainty that transcended the despair, that In-Ho’s love lived on, beating in the tiny heart nestled against her own. The world was broken, but within that brokenness, a new life bloomed, a testament to the enduring power of love, a fragile hope in the face of oblivion.

𝘛𝘢𝘨𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵: @warlabels @m0rtifiedg0th @ehcausewhynot @hwang-inhosb1tch @xcinnamonmalfoyx @filthygalli @d4rno @nightdark-dreamdark @inhomymanz @mothmorales @flow33didontsmoke @xxdiaqiaoxx @gwynethx @aregeeg5t @crystalizia

𝘈/𝘯: 𝘚𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘺 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘨𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘧𝘢𝘯𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘴 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘥𝘢𝘺 𝘨𝘶𝘺𝘴, 𝘪 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘯 𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘬𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦 (𝘪𝘵 𝘩𝘶𝘳𝘵𝘴 𝘴𝘰 𝘣𝘢𝘥)...

[thoughtfultyrantlove]

I LOOK FOR YOU IN EVERYTHING ft. geto suguru

you navigate a world hollowed by loss, where memories haunt every corner, and healing emerges through the smallest, most fragile moments of possibility.

contents→ sashisu and reader (though hints at past suguru/reader), gn!reader, angst angst angst, slight comfort, canon au, slow healing, reader is numb and introspective, themes of isolation and yearning, reader is struggling but determined to survive!!! shoko and satoru are here for reader! yumi is back!!! (those who know, know), again very introspective!!! emotional depth and a hint at a hopeful ending (not really...)

word count→ 6.5k

ring. ring. ring.

the sound cuts through the fragile veil of unconsciousness, sharp and relentless. it claws at your skin, dragging you into the waking world—a place heavy with a melancholy so profound it feels tangible. a gray weight presses against your chest, sinking into your very bones.

the alarm screams beside you, shrill and insistent:

get up. get up. 

each piercing note feels like an accusation, a grating companion to the misery of morning. 

your hand moves on instinct, silencing it with a clumsy slap. the motion is mechanical, practiced—an unthinking ritual repeated countless times. the sting of impact lingers in your palm.

ouch.

poor little device—it’s only doing its job, though it always seems angry with you. 

but today, this rickety clock isn’t the only one disapproving of your existence. 

you feel it before you see it—grief, your ever-faithful companion. its presence burns against your back like a silent glare, scorching and unyielding. you don’t need to turn around to know it’s there. it waits patiently on the windowsill, a shadowy warden poised to deliver its daily sentence.

watching.

waiting.

your eyes flutter open slowly, reluctantly.

the fan spins overhead, its steady rhythm a monotonous backdrop to your morning—a soft hum that fills the silence but offers no comfort. shadows dance lazily across the ceiling, tracing patterns that feel both familiar and foreign.

the space beside you is hollow.

emptier than usual.

no warmth lingers there—no soft breathing or steady heartbeat to ground you in the present. it’s a void that aches like an old wound reopened—a constant reminder of what you’ve lost and what will never return.

even your cat is absent this morning. she isn’t here to paw at you impatiently, to demand breakfast or break through the oppressive quiet with her small but insistent presence. her scent lingers faintly in the sheets—an apparition of comfort teasing you with the illusion that she might still be around the corner.

but she isn’t.

a sigh escapes your lips—heavy and unspoken, carrying something too fragile to name aloud. your lashes flutter as you blink away the remnants of sleep clinging stubbornly to your consciousness. your back presses into the resisting embrace of your sheets, letting the silken touch hold you momentarily against the tide of reality.

your gaze drifts upward to the ceiling above—a landscape carved with grooves and imperfections that frown down at you in silent judgment. each line feels like a scar etched into plaster—a testament to moments suspended in time, memories that refuse to fade no matter how desperately you try to erase them.

a lump rises in your throat—thick and unyielding—but you swallow it down and turn toward the window instead.

at least out there, there’s some semblance of calm.

birds chirp faintly in the distance; wind whistles through unseen cracks in buildings long weathered by time. once upon a time, this symphony might have stirred something inside you—joy or wonder or even just a fleeting sense of peace.

but now?

now it stirs nothing but irritation—a low-burning resentment at how casually indifferent the world remains to your grief.

stuck in this haze of anticipation, reality creeps closer—gentle yet devastating—and dissolves what little comfort remains holding together your fragile sanity. cruel on its part, really.

you close your eyes again shutting out the light hoping everything else follows suit.

and then…

you hear it...

footsteps echo down the hallway—confident and deliberate, each step loud enough to shatter what little peace lingers in this not-so-peaceful sanctuary of yours.

the external world.

it barges in without invitation—the memory of yesterday’s voicemail from your mother reverberating through your mind like an unwelcome guest:

“you haven’t been taking care of yourself,” she’d said.

her voice carries disappointment like a blade—not sharp enough to cut but heavy enough to bruise.

the accusation lingers in the air now, mingling with the familiar tightness coiling around your chest—the weight of unmet expectations pressing down on you like an invisible hand.

this is all my fault, whispers a voice inside your head—a voice that sounds suspiciously like every criticism you’ve ever internalized.

you remember how the universe turned away from you a long time ago—how gloomy skies swallowed a black-haired figure lost among an indifferent sea of faces. there was no acknowledgment then; there is none now either. the world continues its endless pulls and pushes without sparing even a glance for those left behind in its wake.

at this point, you can’t tell if this is some ugly truth about life or just another cruel play staged by your subconscious—a punishment born from guilt too heavy to bear or perhaps a curse whispered by someone long forgotten.

either way… it doesn’t matter anymore.

(or so you tell yourself.)

you’ve grown accustomed to this particular brand of nonsense—the weight of despair settling over you like an old coat worn threadbare from overuse.

peeling off suffocating blankets feels like shedding armor too heavy for battle as you stagger toward the bathroom on legs weighed down by weariness that goes beyond mere exhaustion. duty calls—even on days drenched in despair.

the tiles beneath your feet are cold—biting into bare skin with sharp clarity as though trying to remind you that yes…you are still here.

the golden light from above flickers faintly—casting uneven shadows across walls painted with echoes of mornings just like this one. the faucet drips steadily into porcelain below—a rhythm so precise it feels mocking:

time doesn’t wait for you.

it never has.

you pause before the mirror—its surface dull and unkind—and stare at what greets you there: red-rimmed eyes blinking back hollowly; cheeks sunken with fatigue; lips that have long forgotten how to curve upward into anything resembling joy.

the reflection feels warped somehow—as though even glass itself has grown tired of reflecting this version of you day after day after day.

but it isn’t just your face staring back at you—it’s everything else too: every mistake etched into lines around tired eyes; every regret shadowed beneath hollow cheekbones; every moment survived when survival felt impossible.

your fingers tremble as they reach up toward cold glass—a fleeting thought crossing your mind: what if it shattered under your touch? would cracks spiderweb outward until they consumed this distorted version staring back at you?

but no matter how hard you press…the mirror holds firm.

unyielding.

unforgiving.

a cruel reminder that some things cannot be broken—no matter how desperately we wish they could be.

and deep down… you’ve always known this truth.

haven’t you?

the answer was always there—hidden beneath layers of denial—but acknowledging it feels impossible even now…

even here…

even when there’s no one left but yourself to face it alongside.

*

the walk to the kitchen feels endless today. each step drags like wading through a river of ghosts, their unseen hands clinging to your legs, pulling you deeper into the weight of yourself. the air in the house is thick—dense with something you can’t name. it presses against your skin like a second layer, suffocating yet inescapable.

when you finally reach the living room, she’s there—your cat. perched atop the dining table like a queen surveying her kingdom, she greets you with a soft meow. her tiny frame vibrates with purrs as she stretches lazily before pawing at your uniform, her claws catching on the fabric.

a faint smile tugs at your lips despite yourself. 

at least someone is happy to see you today.

in the kitchen, life stirs again—tentative and fragile—as breakfast begins to take shape under your deliberate hands. the sizzle of eggs meeting hot metal cuts through the silence, and the rhythmic clatter of utensils pulls you back into reality, piece by piece.

the scent of butter melting into salt fills the air, mingling with faint traces of houseplants and dust motes that drift lazily through beams of sunlight. for a fleeting moment, the weight on your chest lifts—just enough to let air fill your lungs again.

your cat leaps onto a chair beside you, her wide eyes tracking your every move with curiosity. her presence is grounding in a way that nothing else seems to be these days—a small anchor tethering you to this fractured world.

the aroma of breakfast lingers as you set a plate on the table: eggs cooked just right, toast slathered with jam. you move toward the cabinets, rummaging for tea packets hidden among forgotten treasures—a collection of expensive blends brought by a certain white-haired troublemaker and traditional teas gifted by a tired girl who doesn’t visit anymore.

your clumsy hands knock over several boxes, their contents spilling across the counter and floor in a chaotic tumble. but one catches your eye—a familiar brown package that stops time itself for just a moment too long.

it’s his tea.

your breath falters as you reach for it, fingers trembling against the worn edges of the packaging. the seal tears easily under your touch, and pu’erh leaves scatter like fragments of memory across cold tiles. you sink to the floor, knees meeting unyielding wood as you clutch these remnants of what once was.

grief doesn’t announce itself—it doesn’t knock or wait for permission. it lingers quietly in shadows, resurfacing uninvited to remind you of what’s missing in life’s smallest moments.

the earthy scent rises into the air—rich and familiar—and suddenly it feels like he’s here again. suguru. sitting across from you at this very table, his hands wrapped around a steaming mug as he laughs at something silly you just said.

the memory crashes over you like a tidal wave—relentless and all-consuming.

you can almost hear his voice—soft and teasing—as he recounts his day or asks if there’s any honey left for his tea (there never was). you can almost see him leaning back in his chair with that easy smile—the one that made everything feel okay even when it wasn’t.

you can almost feel his gaze on you—violet eyes drinking in every detail with an affection so quiet it felt sacred.

but when you blink…

he’s gone.

all that remains is silence and the dry texture of pu’erh leaves scattered across cold tiles like ashes from a fire long extinguished.

your cat pads over to where you sit on the floor, her tiny paws making no sound against the wood. she nudges her head against your arm—gentle but insistent—and lets out another soft meow. her warmth pulls you back just enough to remember where you are:

here, now, alive.

not whole.

not healed.

but alive.

you take a deep breath—shaky but steady enough—and begin gathering up the spilled tea leaves with trembling hands. the kettle whistles softly in the background—a sound so simple it feels almost soothing—and for just a moment…there is peace.

not healing. not forgiveness.

just… possibility.

possibility that tomorrow might be easier than today. 

possibility that one day this ache will dull into something softer, something manageable. 

possibility that maybe—just maybe—you’ll learn how to live again without feeling like half of yourself is missing.

for now… possibility is enough.

you pour hot water over fresh tea leaves and watch as they unfurl slowly in their new home—a quiet transformation unfolding before your eyes. pain softens into something transient and mellow, carried away on steam rising toward an indifferent sky.

it isn’t much. but it’s something.

and for today…

that will have to do.

the train rumbles beneath your feet, a low vibration that travels up through your legs and settles deep in your chest. it’s a familiar sensation—one you’ve felt countless times before—but now it feels heavier, as though the weight of memories has seeped into the tracks. the train carries not just passengers but ghosts, their presence woven into the very bones of this rattling machine.

your phone buzzes against your leg—a faint buzz buzz that pulls you from the haze of your thoughts. you glance down at the screen, its dim light cutting through the shadowed cab. shoko’s name glows softly. her message is short, simple: 

"i can pick you up."

your thumb hovers over the keyboard, but no words come to mind. what could you even say? 

for a moment, you let the message fade back into darkness. your reflection stares back at you from the black glass of your phone screen—that same face, worn down by time and emotion.

so foreign.

you turn toward the window instead. outside, the world blurs together—gray skies bleeding into green trees, flashes of neon signs smearing across rain-streaked glass like watercolors left out in a storm. the rain slides in uneven trails, catching faint glimmers of light from passing buildings. 

and then, unsolicited, comes the memory.

he always sat by the window on these rides. always. his fingers would trace patterns in the condensation—spirals and shapes that disappeared almost as soon as they were made. his eyes would follow the city as it slid past, his expression a mix of wonder and something else entirely—something quieter, harder to name.

“like a painting in motion,” he’d said once, his voice so soft you almost didn’t hear it over the hum of the train.

to him, these rides weren’t just journeys from one place to another—they were moments suspended between movement and stillness, between reality and something more ephemeral. they were spaces where time seemed to pause just long enough for conversations about everything and nothing to unfold without interruption.

(the very essence of him: transient and beautiful.)

your thumb hovers over shoko’s message again. a simple no sends itself before you can second-guess it. the screen blinks off, leaving only your reflection staring back at you once more.

the train jolts slightly as it slows for its next stop. a passenger brushes past you with a muttered apology—soft and hurried like a skittish bird taking flight. you nod absently but grip your phone tighter, as though her words might spill out if you’re not careful.

the seat beside you feels louder than any sound in this rattling space—a hollow echo of his presence that once filled it so completely it was impossible to imagine it ever being empty.

but now it is.

(and it feels impossible to get used to that.)

the train begins to slow as your station approaches. outside, familiar landmarks come into view: cracked pavement glistening with rainwater, a weathered sign bearing the station’s name in peeling paint.

it’s all so common yet suddenly so alien—like looking at an old photograph through someone else’s eyes.

you gather your bag as the train comes to a halt. your movements are mechanical—unthinking—and each step off the train feels like leaving another piece of him behind.

the platform is damp beneath your feet, puddles reflecting fragments of gray sky and muted scenery. your steps trace a path you’ve walked countless times before, automatic and unfeeling.

in the distance looms jujutsu high.

and with it comes a silence louder than any memory.

*

the halls are just as you remember them: wide and echoing, their polished floors reflecting faint glimmers of light from overhead fixtures. but today they feel different—colder somehow, emptier.

each step reverberates like a hollow drumbeat against walls that seem too vast for their own echoes. for a fleeting moment, you wonder if even these walls miss him too.

it isn’t just his absence—it’s what his absence has left behind: an ache that lingers in every corner he once occupied. every shadowed alcove where he leaned or stood or laughed now holds its breath in mourning.

you pass by the classroom where he used to sit.

his chair is still there—tucked neatly under his desk as though waiting for him to return. dust gathers on its surface—a quiet betrayal of time moving forward without him—and for a moment, you hesitate in the doorway. 

your fingers brush against the doorframe as if stepping inside might summon him back from wherever he’s gone.

and for just a second…

he is there.

you see him so clearly: dark hair falling into his eyes as he leans back in his chair with that lazy confidence only he could pull off. arms crossed over his chest; smile teasing yet disarming—a look that always made you shy away despite yourself.

the image blooms so vividly it makes your chest ache—makes something stir inside you that feels almost like hope—but then you blink… 

and he’s gone again.

the chair is empty.

the room is empty.

you force yourself to move on because standing here won’t bring him back.

(but as you turn down the hallway, you swear you hear his voice call out to you.)

*

the training grounds stretch out before you: wide open spaces where laughter once rang sharp and unrestrained—a sound so uniquely his it could slice cleanly through even the thickest tension.

even now, small remnants remain: vending machines humming softly with familiarity; shadows cast by trees swaying gently in the breeze; echoes of choices made at snack machines that once felt monumental simply because he made them.

right here—this is where everything changed.

this is where he changed.

but not everything has shifted beyond recognition.

familiar faces linger around corners like ghosts refusing to leave their hauntings behind.

there’s satoru—a moon disguised as the sun—his laugh rippling through air thick with memories before he even steps into view. when your eyes finally meet across the hallway…

something is different about him now.

his grin is still wide—still bright—but behind it lies something fractured: cracks running through armor no one else seems able to see but you.

he passes by whistling some half-forgotten melody and squeezes your shoulder gently as he goes. his hand lingers just a second too long—as though letting go might unravel everything holding either of you together.

no words are spoken.

none are needed.

in that moment, everything is understood:

i’m here.

but what good is being here when neither of you knows how to bridge this chasm between griefs too heavy to share? his pain feels too vast to touch; yours too fragile to expose.

*

you pause at the courtyard—the old tree swaying softly in the breeze catches your eye.

his tree.

the one he used to sit under when life became too heavy to bear alone. head tilted back against its trunk; eyes closed as if seeking solace in leaves whispering secrets only they could understand.

its branches sway gently now—a quiet rhythm carrying words meant only for him. their rustling fills spaces words cannot reach anymore no matter how hard you try to find them.

you clutch your sleeve tightly—a futile anchor against storms raging within—and close your eyes against tears threatening to spill over.

even now…

he lingers behind closed eyelids.

but when they open again…

there’s nothing.

just wind.

just leaves.

just silence breathing heavy on your chest with everything unsaid between breaths too shallow for comfort.

you take one last look at his tree before stepping away—letting its whispers carry what they can into skies too vast for understanding yet small enough for hope lingering somewhere unseen but felt all the same.

it’s the lunch break. 

bells ring out, loud and sharp, shattering the quiet that had settled over the building. chaos erupts in its wake—voices rising, footsteps echoing through hallways as everyone rushes for a much-needed reprieve. 

you rise slowly from your slouched position, every movement deliberate, as though shaking off the weight of the morning. hours spent arranging files with yaga or keeping an eye on the first years while satoru was whisked away to yet another clan meeting have left your body heavy with fatigue. 

your stomach growls—a low, insistent protest that pulls you forward. 

megumi rushes past with a curt nod, his expression as stoic as ever, while itadori and nobara yell a boisterous “good afternoon!” their voices carry a warmth that surprises you, and before you realize it, you’re returning their greeting with a small curve of your lips. 

a genuine smile. 

ah…

youth. 

(and what wouldn’t you give to experience it all over again? just for once.) 

*

the cafeteria greets you with its familiar stillness, empty save for the kind lady behind the counter. the glass doors swing shut behind you with a quiet click, sealing you into this space where time feels delayed.

you don’t need to look at the menu—it’s been etched into your memory for years. the same dishes, unchanged:

japanese delicacies mingled with fast food staples.

nothing new. every flavor tasted and cataloged long ago. 

you settle on takoyaki—simple, comforting. the steam rises from the tray in soft tendrils as you carry it away, its rich scent filling your lungs and stirring something deep within you. a memory flickers at the edges of your mind—shared laughter in these very rooms—but you force it aside before it can take root.

your feet carry you without thought, guided by muscle memory rather than intention, until you find yourself at a familiar block:

the medical wing.

*

the air here feels different today—sterile and suffocating. 

the faint hum of fluorescent lights buzzes overhead, persistent and invasive, like a sound that worms its way into your thoughts and refuses to leave. the antiseptic smell lingers—sharp and clean—but it does nothing to mask the heaviness pressing against your chest.

the pale green walls are meant to soothe, but instead they remind you of hospital waiting rooms from years ago: stiff chairs lined up in neat rows, ceilings with too many tiles to count, and time dragging on endlessly as you waited for something—anything—to happen.

you slip quietly into one of the rooms—the only room you know here.

shoko doesn’t look up when you enter. her hands move with practiced precision as she organizes medical supplies on a nearby tray.

each motion is deliberate, careful—as though she’s constructing something invisible between herself and whatever unspoken truth hangs heavy in the air between you.

her fingers hesitate briefly on the edge of a vial before continuing their work. the tension in her shoulders betrays her calm exterior; even her steadiness feels strained under the weight of shared grief.

you hover behind her, unsure of what to do with yourself. your presence feels intrusive here—as though you’ve interrupted something sacred.

your shoes squeak faintly against the polished floor as you shift your weight from one foot to the other. shoko doesn’t react to the sound—but you know she hears it.

she always does.

“how are you holding up?” she asks finally, her voice soft but steady—a question crafted with care only she could manage.

your throat tightens at her words. shoko doesn’t want an empty “i’m fine,” and both of you know it.

but no words come out.

the silence stretches between you—thin as glass—waiting for even the slightest touch to shatter it. shoko doesn’t press for an answer; instead, she slides a cup of water toward you—a quiet acknowledgment of everything neither of you can say aloud.

her fingers tap softly against the tray in a rhythmic pattern as she sets it down—a grounding motion against the stillness that fills the room.

“c’mon,” she says after a moment, gesturing toward a cluster of chairs haphazardly placed in one corner. “sit.”

you follow her without question—like always—and sink into one of the cold metal chairs that creaks faintly under your weight. its frame presses uncomfortably into your back, but you don’t adjust yourself.

“do you want to talk?” she asks again, her tone gentle—an invitation rather than a demand.

you shake your head—a simple gesture dripping with everything unsaid.

in the silence that follows, memories surface unbidden: pale green walls from years ago; his large hand squeezing yours during stitches; his voice steady as he reassured you: 

“it’s just another challenge.”

back then, those words felt like truth—like medicine could hold back inevitability if only for long enough.

shoko knows this history without needing to be told. some stories are written not in words but in how people carry their grief—in silences that linger too long or hesitations that speak louder than any confession ever could.

her presence has always carried a particular gentleness—not pity but understanding—and for that alone, you are grateful beyond words.

the untouched glass of water sits between you both like a silent witness. droplets bead along its surface before trailing down in uneven lines—a quiet metaphor for something neither of you can name but both understand instinctively.

outside, sunlight shifts across tiled floors in long shadows that stretch and breathe with their own rhythm. time feels suspended here: outside this room, life pulses forward; inside it…everything stands still.

shoko moves again—a subtle shift as she rises from her seat to busy herself once more with supplies on nearby shelves. her brown eyes meet yours briefly before darting away again—not out of discomfort but because she knows better than anyone that sometimes being seen is enough.

“take your time,” she murmurs before disappearing behind rows of cabinets again.

her words settle over you like a thin blanket—not warm enough to comfort entirely but enough to shield against some small part of the cold creeping into your bones.

eventually, the bells ring again—a sharp reminder that life moves forward whether or not you're ready for it to do so.

you sigh softly as your body protests against standing once more—the ache in your bones heavier now than when you'd first sat down. the untouched glass remains on the table behind you as if bearing witness to everything left unsaid between two souls bound by shared loss.

your steps echo faintly through empty halls as they carry you back toward your office—a journey so familiar yet so foreign all at once.

and somewhere deep within yourself…

you wonder if this ache will ever truly fade—or if it will simply become another part of who you've always been meant to be.

the day dissolves like watercolors bleeding into twilight—each passing hour a soft, indistinct blur. your office breathes its quiet resignation, a contained universe of stillness.

the clock ticks—a metronome measuring grief's endless rhythm—while your fingers dance across the keyboard, creating soft percussion against silence.

something hangs in the air.

a tension.

as though the walls themselves hold their breath, waiting for your departure.

outside, the sun has surrendered—its final breaths painting the sky in amber and crimson. streaks of molten light filter through window blinds, casting fragmented patterns across your desk. kaleidoscope shadows too beautiful for a moment so heavy.

you lean back. your chair creaks—a sound both familiar and strange.

the city beyond feels distant.

muted.

its distant hum barely penetrates this contained space where memories and paperwork blur into one indistinct landscape. contracts. reports. forms. they mesh together—an abstract painting of professional grief.

your mind drifts.

to him.

to suguru.

memories curl around you like smoke, soft and suffocating.

your thoughts drift like autumn leaves—weightless yet laden with memory. how different would everything have been if life had been gentler? if it had spared him the weight he carried alone, silent and unbroken?

you dream of alternate moments. suguru sitting across from you, his voice teasing, pulling you from the darkness of your own making:

"let's get you out," he might have said, "before you turn into these chairs."

the vision lingers—so clear you can almost taste it, yet so distant you cannot touch. a phantom possibility suspended between what was and what could have been.

the memory feels like a bruise—tender when touched, sharp with remembered pain. you can almost hear his breath, feel the warmth of his proximity. but proximity is a luxury long stolen from you.

the door swings open with sudden violence—a bang that shatters your delicate remembering.

satoru appears, leaning against the doorframe. one hand buried in his pocket, the other clutching a bag of snacks. his hair slightly disheveled, bandages over his eyes loose—suggesting he's come directly from the meeting, some world you're no longer part of.

"still here?" he asks.

his voice carries its usual casual amusement, but underneath—something careful. something fragile.

you do not comment.

a wordless nod is your response—your voice a fragile thing, liable to shatter if pressed too firmly.

satoru enters without permission—he never asks, never waits—dropping into the chair across from you with a heavy sigh that feels like a universe of unspoken understanding.

the snack bag rustles—a sound sharp against the room's muted stillness. he pulls out a packet of pocky, tossing it onto your desk with a practiced motion that speaks of countless similar moments.

"for you," he breathes simply. "thought you might need some sugar."

the pocky sits between you—a small offering, a bridge across the landscape of grief. you turn it in your hands, examining it as though it might contain some hidden message, some secret code that could unlock the weight pressing against your chest.

"thanks," you murmur. your voice barely rises above the room's quiet hum—a whisper so soft it might dissolve into the gathering shadows.

satoru only watches you.

his sharp blue eyes scan your face like he's trying to read something written between the lines of your expression—a text of pain, of memory, of something both fragile and unbreakable.

his gaze feels like a physical touch—searching, probing, yet somehow gentle. a familiar silence stretches between you filled with everything neither of you can bring yourself to say.

suddenly, he moves. standing with an exaggerated stretch that reminds you of a cat—all fluid motion and deliberate grace. his arms reach overhead, fingers brushing the ceiling, breaking the room's careful stillness.

"come on," he says lightly, circling back to you. "i'll drive you home."

you hesitate. the unfinished paperwork calls to you—a siren song of responsibility, of distraction. "i'll manage," you start, your voice thin and unconvincing.

but satoru cuts you off with a dismissive wave, something both stern and tender in his gesture.

"don't argue," he says, mock severity barely masking genuine concern. "i'm not taking no for an answer."

your resistance crumbles—not from weakness, but from a sudden exhaustion that feels bone-deep. the kind of tired that transcends physical space, that lives in the marrow of grief itself.

he helps you gather your things—movements practiced. the office lights click off behind you, casting long shadows that seem to reach out like desperate fingers trying to hold onto something already gone.

the hallway breathes its own quiet language. same fluorescent lights flicker—pale ghosts illuminating empty corridors that feel more like memory than physical space. your footsteps echo softly, each sound a delicate percussion against institutional silence.

satoru moves ahead with his characteristic grace—hands tucked into pockets, body moving like water between shadows. he whistles something again that hangs in the air like a fragile thread connecting you both to something lighter than grief.

behind him, you trail like a shadow.

your mind drifts—caught between the unfinished work left on your desk and the promise of something that might resemble home.

the building feels different at night.

intimate.

holding its breath.

walls that have witnessed countless moments of human fragility now stand as silent witnesses to your particular landscape of loss.

outside, rain begins—soft droplets painting the world in shimmering grays. each raindrop feels like a memory sliding down invisible glass, collecting stories too delicate to be spoken aloud.

satoru's car waits in the parking lot—a sleek silhouette against the night's dark canvas. he opens the passenger door with a flourish, bowing slightly—part chauffeur, part court jester attempting to break through your carefully constructed walls of grief.

"your chariot awaits," he says, that familiar grin playing at the edges of his mouth—not quite reaching his eyes.

you roll your eyes, but the faintest tug at your lips betrays you—a ghost of a smile, fleeting and fragile. you slide into the passenger seat, the door closing with a soft thud behind you.

the scent of the car wraps around you—a mix of leather and something distinctly satoru—like a hug.

the engine hums to life, a low purr that fills the quiet space between you. as the car pulls out of the parking lot, you cast one last glance at the building behind you. its windows glow faintly in the rain-soaked night, a beacon of light holding secrets and memories within its walls.

the drive begins in silence. the rain falls steadily now, streaking the windows with uneven trails that catch and refract the golden halos of streetlights. the rhythm of the tires against wet asphalt becomes a kind of music—soft, steady, unrelenting.

satoru fiddles with the radio, his fingers moving absently over the dials until he settles on a station playing soft jazz. it’s an unexpected choice for someone like him, but somehow it fits—the muted trumpet notes weaving through the quiet like threads of something almost forgotten.

he talks after a while—something about training earlier in the day, about itadori accidentally summoning an army of curses during an exercise gone wrong. his words are light, his tone playful, but there’s an undercurrent to it—a deliberate effort to fill the silence with something other than grief.

you don’t laugh—not fully—but there’s a faint pull at the corners of your mouth that doesn’t go unnoticed. satoru glances at you out of the corner of his eye, his grin widening just slightly.

“see?” he says softly. “you can still smile.”

the words hang in the air between you like a fragile thread—delicate but real. you don’t respond, afraid that speaking might break whatever tenuous connection has formed in this moment.

the rain picks up, its rhythm growing louder against the windows. droplets race each other down the glass, their paths illuminated by passing headlights. the city blurs around you—buildings and streets melting into streaks of light and shadow.

when he finally pulls up outside your apartment building, he leans back in his seat and looks at you with an expression you can’t quite decipher—part concern, part something deeper that he doesn’t let surface fully.

“if you need anything,” he says finally, his voice low but steady, “you know where to find me.”

you nod slowly—gratitude swelling in your chest but refusing to rise to your lips. instead, you open the door and step into the cool night air. the rain greets you immediately—soft and persistent—as satoru rolls down his window.

“don’t forget to eat that pocky!” he calls out teasingly before driving off into the night.

*

your phone buzzes as you climb the stairs to your apartment—a message from shoko:

“take care of yourself.”

simple words that carry more weight than they should coming from her. you pause at your door before typing back: “i will. you too.”

and for once…

you mean it.

the apartment greets you with its familiar stillness—a quiet that once felt suffocating but now feels like a reprieve. your cat waits by the door as if she’s been expecting you all along.

her tail flicks lazily as she lets out a soft meow—a sound equal parts greeting and reprimand for making her wait so long.

“hey,” you murmur softly as you crouch down to scratch behind her ears. she leans into your touch with a contented purr that vibrates through her small frame—a warmth that settles somewhere deep within your chest.

the weight on your shoulders eases—just slightly—as she follows you into the living room on silent paws. she leaps onto her usual spot on the couch while you set down your bag and shrug off your coat.

for a moment, you just stand there—still caught between memory and reality—as the low hum of electricity fills the quiet space around you. then she meows again, insistent this time, pulling you back into the present.

you sink onto the couch beside her without thinking too much about it. she curls up against your side almost immediately, her warmth grounding in a way nothing else seems capable of these days.

your gaze drifts toward the window where rain continues its quiet descent—each droplet catching faint glimmers from distant streetlights before sliding out of sight. the city stretches beyond—a vast expanse of twinkling lights and darkened silhouettes, each one holding stories you'll never know.

your fingers flutter against the cool glass as though tracing invisible paths across its surface. the gesture reminds you of suguru—the nights spent beneath canopies of rain and stars as he whispered dreams too afraid of daylight.

it still aches—the memory of him—but it’s no longer sharp enough to cut through flesh and bone. instead, it sits within you like an old scar: tender when pressed but no longer bleeding.

behind you, the apartment remains still—as if mourning his absence alongside you. your cat pads softly across the room before leaping onto the windowsill beside you.

you reach into your pocket and pull out the pocky satoru gave you earlier. its wrapper crinkles loudly in the hush as you unwrap it—a sound startling against this newfound calm. you break off a piece—the sweetness melting on your tongue feels almost sacrilegious against memories so bitter.

your fingertips press lightly against your lips, trying to hold onto something slipping away—the shine of suguru's smile, the way his breath would catch just before he kissed you, how vulnerability bloomed between shared silences.

the memory doesn’t shatter you now; a tamed beast locked behind the bars.

your cat’s soft purring draws your attention back to her green eyes—knowing and patient as if she understands what even words cannot convey:

it’s okay to remember.

and perhaps…

it’s okay to move forward too.

you whisper into the darkness—not for anyone who can hear but simply because it feels right:

“good night… suguru.” your voice trembles but doesn’t break.

“i miss you—i always will—but i’m learning how to carry this without letting it destroy me.”

an inhale.

“a—and i hope... that's okay.”

the city lights flicker faintly in response as though offering their silent acknowledgment. and for just a moment—you let yourself believe that somewhere beyond this world…

he hears you too.

you let the night wrap itself around your body— a heavy blanket—not stifling but comforting in its weight. grief sits beside hope now—not as enemies but companions sharing space within your chest.

tomorrow will come with its own burdens and blessings—a new mix of joy and sorrow waiting just beyond this moment's reach.

but tonight…

tonight is yours to simply be.

goodbye, suguru.

a/n→ i looked over some research papers for this... wanted to get this as accurate as possible lmao!!! i had to change some sections so many many times... things just won't work out... anyways im happy i manged to flesh this out on his birthday!!! happy birthday suguru <333 will be taking a break for midterms :(((

[idciminlove]

FIGHTER.

Part Five - Circle

Kang Dae Ho x f!reader

Cinnamonacid on AO3

Warnings- Panic attack, death, slight blood and gore, fights and bruises, pregnancy (222), misogyny, etc.

You couldn’t sleep. Everytime you shut your eyes, you saw it. The old man falling backwards, the bullet going through his head. You heard the gunshot, watched the blood splatter and seep out of his body. It made you sick. You tossed and turned restlessly, unable to calm yourself, unable to breathe.

Who knows what the next game could be? If only one person made it out of this, then it would only get more and more difficult. Out of 456 people, only one survived. A haunting reminder of what's ahead. You sat up in bed, your chest feeling tight.

Breathe. Breathe. No. You can’t. You’re going to die here. You’re going to die here and your mother won’t ever find out what happened. You’re going to die here and your mother is just going to get more sick and her treatment won’t be covered. You’re going to die. You’re going to die. You’re going to die.

You hadn’t even realized you were hyperventilating until someone said something, it was quiet, distant in the background. Tears were streaming down your face as you gasped for air, trying to catch your breath. You can’t breathe. You can’t breathe. You feel like you’re dying.

“Are you okay?” The whisper was louder now, snapping you out of your daze slightly. You looked over at the girl sitting beside you on your neighboring bunk. You felt like you couldn’t move, couldn’t think. After a moment or two, you shook your head no, unable to speak.

She stared at you, unmoving, unsure of what to do. Slowly, she got to her feet, getting out of her bed. “I can get the guards-”

The guards were the last thing that would help right now. Only hours ago they had been pointing a gun at your head. They wouldn’t care. They wouldn’t do anything but make everything worse. As she started to walk away, you finally moved. You grabbed her arm, your hand shaking as you held her, your grip slightly tight. “No, please don’t. Stay here.”

She sat back down onto the bed. You let her go and leaned back against the wall, trying to slow your breathing and get the tightness in your chest to stop. You blinked away the tears, gazing at her, focusing on anything else but the panic you were experiencing. She was pretty, her soft features glowing in the dim light of the dorm. Highlights, bangs, an eyebrow piercing. You gazed lower. The number on her chest, 222, the hand on her stomach.

You shut your eyes. Deep breaths. In and out. In and out.

You let out a shaky breath, feeling the tightness ease up, finally feeling like you could breathe. You slowly opened your eyes. The girl was still there, watching you. She stayed, just like you had asked her to.

You wiped the tears away, unable to look her in the eyes. It was embarrassing for you to show this much weakness, to be so vulnerable, but you couldn’t help it. “Sorry, I was just...scared.”

“It’s okay. I’m scared too. I think we all are.” She offered you a small, reassuring smile.

You gazed down at her stomach again, spotting a noticeable bump. A look of panic crossed her features as she realized, and she moved the blankets over her torso to cover it up.

“Are you-”

She shook her head, trying to deny it but you knew. You knew. A pregnant woman, stuck in these games which lead to almost certain death. How the hell did she wind up here? How could they recruit someone like her when they knew the risks? It was awful, truly awful.

“Please, don’t tell anyone.” She whispered to you. Her desperation and fear struck something inside you. Something that needs to defend and protect. A hunger. An urge. You had to help her. Fuck looking out for yourself. Your mother would want you to help her. She would be proud.

“I won’t. I’ll make sure you get out of here, no matter what.”

–

Time moved fast. Morning came quickly, and the next thing you knew, you were walking through the corridors again, preparing for the next game. The room you entered was bright and colorful, rainbows lining the floor and the walls, along with light blue clouds and flags from other countries hanging from the ceiling. It was eerie, being in a room with so much life, when you knew the only thing that would come out of it would be the exact opposite.

“The next game will be played in teams. Please break into groups of five. You have ten minutes.”

As the players began to separate into groups, you gazed around the room, before your eyes set on 222, who stood with another player, 333. He was trouble, clear proof of it from the bruises on his face. He was involved in some sort of bitcoin scam that conned tons of people out of their money, including 230 and 124. It caused a fight between the three yesterday, after the vote. 230 and 124 were beating him pretty hard, before 001 intervened and put them in their place. It was nice, seeing those two assholes get what they deserved. Satisfying. You practically cheered when you saw it.

You couldn’t hear their conversation, but it was easy to read their body language as you got closer. Her tense shoulders and furrowed eyebrows. His persistent attempts to reach out to her, which were constantly rejected. It was obvious she didn’t want him there.

“If you don’t get on a team, you won’t make it, and then you’ll never have this-”

“Is he bothering you?” You intervened, interrupting 333, and stepping beside 222, protecting her. He looked from her to you, desperate. She shook her head, glowering at him. “It’s fine. I was leaving anyway.”

She turned away. You looked him up and down, sizing him up, before following after her. If he caused her any problems, you’d deal with it.

You gazed at the clock. You only had two minutes left. The groups were starting to form, spots were being taken, and options running low.

You looked around the room, before locking with Dae-Ho momentarily. He looked at you, and then looked away. He was talking with another man, who followed him back to his group, which was 456, 001, and 390.

You nudged 222 and pointed to them. “You should go with them. 456 has experience, so it’ll be the safest with him. He can help you.”

“It looks like they just got their last group member.” She murmured.

You shook your head, insistent. “Your best chances are with them. Tell them you’re pregnant. They’ll have to help you.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll find a group of four to join. Go.”

You watched as she walked off, slightly anxious, but hopeful. That was the best you could do to help her. All that’s left now is to pray that she survives this round. You checked the clock.

30 seconds left.

“Miss? Do you need a group? We need one more.” A man approached you, soft spoken and kind. You glanced at his number. 246.

“Yes, I do, thank you.” He led you over to the group, all the other players being men. Upon seeing you, one of the men grabbed 246, dragging him to the side, where the rest of the group was.

“A woman? Are you kidding? She’ll only slow us down.” One of them whispered, loud enough for you to hear.

246 shook his head. “She’s strong. You saw what she did to those two guys. She can help.”

“Help us until she loses her temper and tries to beat us up.” Another added. “She’s crazy.”

10 seconds left.

“There’s only ten seconds left. Do you want me to join or not?” You interrupted their little group meeting.

The men sighed, almost all of them reluctant. “Fine.”

Time is up!

You took a deep breath. You have no other choice but to join a group that doesn’t want you, and work with them to play some unknown game that would probably lead you to your death.

You’re so fucked.

[aroacephotographer]

My experience at an In-N-Out

Long post!

The In-N-Out in Alameda, CA is like no other restaurant I have ever been to. Tonight (October 14, 2024) has me wondering what I saw.

I live with a coop and had just cleaned up a community event called Queer Bedtime Stories. It was nice and quiet and had me hungry after the fact. So I did what any neurodivergent going through burnout would do: go to a fast food restaurant. Even if it took the same amount of minutes to drive and order than to actually cook something. Fast food restaurants have something going for it that at-home meals don't: driving. You can drive and put some distance between you and the day you just had.

The parking lot was pretty quiet once I arrived. There was a group of people outside. Not a crazy thing to see on a Thursday, but still noticeable.

I walked into the building and then the Noise happened. There was a group of high schoolers in front of me wearing cheap suits. One of them had a green hat that said "Cena approved."

They take a while to order. This gives me time to look around and see that the entire place is filled with high schoolers. I could count the number of people over 20 on my hand. And most of them were working behind the counter.

The girl behind the counter has this thousand yard stare that fast food cashiers learn early on. I was once among those ranks, and can spot that look a mile away. Or is it a thousand. I'm too tired to make puns.

She starts the casual "Hey how're you" business, to which I respond. I'm careful with it because I once came in and said something stupid like "You look as tired as I feel." I don't know where that came from and I feel bad every time I see this lady so I try never to hold an actual conversation with her. My predictable burger orders are the safe confines of my guilt and I dare not stray.

I give my order: A number two. No onions. For here, yes. I confirm my order and thank her and leave for the drink machine.

There is no order here. There is only chaos with body oder. There is... some kid in a cheesy Daphne costume with a neon green tie (she doesn't wear one... why?) is hanging out with at least a dozen other people taking over the booths in the center of the restaurant like a bunch of "cool kids."

Next in the line from hell I see several people with I can only describe (and rather poorly) are bald caps. One of them has hand-drawn a blue arrow on the top of it and her arms.

"Oh no," I exclaim. "They're the Avatar..."

I've sat down. The only seat available to me is next to the drink machine. It had someone in a red skirt and black top sitting there, but she disappeared like a ghost.

Maybe the realm between the living and the dead have already thinned. After all, there's a super moon out tonight. I think it's called the Hunter Moon...

The people in bald caps slap each other one by one like it's a form of greeting. They continue to do this as they wait in line. The girl who took my order now has a two thousand yard stare. An impressive feat, truly.

My order is finally called out, alongside five other dine-in and to-go orders. We almost can't see the difference. It's a sea of fries in all the chaos.

As I bite into my burger I decide to put in my noise cancelling headphones and listen to a podcast. But that thought is stopped when the cool kids start clapping and applauding. Several phones are out. Daphne with a tie has a shit eating grin as a friend proclaims, "He's coming out! He's coming out! Everybody!"

I stare in horror and second-hand embarrassment as my stomach growls at me to keep eating.

The discount Avatar group has sat down behind me and decides now is the time to wish someone happy birthday. It is midnight, after all. Gotta get in the well-wishes early I suppose. After that, they keep themselves busy by shouting out the four elements and reminding themselves that they're all the Avatar.

I look over at the line. It's finally dying down. I see more suits. These look like there was a little more money put into them. I see pin stripe. I decide to leave when I see a young lady with voluminous frizzy black hair, a smiling round face sitting on top of a white shirt and blazer that looks pretty good with her pin stripe pants. It just feels like a full circle moment for some reason.

My burger was fine but the fries left a lot to be desired. That's fine, I just need to leave because the stomach is no longer yelling at me. The screaming, hooping, and hollering has yet to stop, though.

I look up at the counter one last time and see that the lady who took my order is no longer there.

It's 12:15am. I get up.

Someone in a dog costume walks past me. I get a refill next ot the hand-drawn Avatar lady. And I step through the double door of the Alameda In-N-Out.

And the noise is contained. It does not escape. I am alone, starting to get cold, looking up at the Hunters Moon. It's a little bit closer to Halloween, but the costumes and shenanigans are already here.

I just survived a fast food restaurant in the middle of the night during the full moon of October.

[transmechanicus]

Really fucked up that two ppl can care about each other and make their best efforts to communicate and still end up hurting each other so badly they cannot stand to be in the same room.

[yellllowstar]

slowly I'm recovering the beauty of discovery

(creature by half•alive)

(textless + timelapse below cut)

[botanicallyinclinednerd]

I really enjoy utilizing ghosts to make things interesting. I am very aware of what happens to Kutner and that coupled with the fact House hallucinates both Amber and Kutner AND Kutner is superstitious (and seems like he'd believe in ghosts) while House very much is NOT makes me want to do something VERY funny (imo)

[californiaquail]

dug through everything trying to find my little command hooks and poster putty and those seem to have vanished into the ether but what i did wind up doing was digging my impulse purchased pair of snaffle reins out and oiling those with my beautifully scented leather conditioner that they dont make anymore and made myself sad lol

[luna-azzurra]

12 Emotional Wounds in Fiction Storys

Betraying a Loved One. Your character made a choice, and it backfired, badly. They betrayed someone close to them, maybe on purpose, maybe by accident. Now, the guilt’s eating them alive. They might try to fix things, but can they even make up for what they did?

Guilt Over a Past Mistake. They made a mistake, one that cost someone else. Maybe it was reckless, maybe it was a dumb decision, but now it haunts them. They can’t stop thinking about it, and no matter how hard they try to make things right, the past keeps pulling them back.

Survivor’s Guilt. Imagine surviving something awful, an accident, a disaster, but someone else didn’t make it. Now your character is stuck asking, “Why me? Why am I still here?” They push people away, convinced they don’t deserve to be happy or even alive.

Feeling Powerless. Your character is trapped, maybe in an abusive home, a toxic relationship, or just in life itself. They feel stuck, with no control over their own future.

Being Wrongly Accused. They didn’t do it. But no one believes them. Your character has been falsely accused of something serious, maybe even a crime and now they’re fighting to clear their name. It’s not just about proving their innocence, though. They’re also battling the pain of being abandoned by people who were supposed to stand by them.

Public Humiliation. They’ve just been humiliated in front of everyone, maybe it’s a video gone viral, or they were betrayed by someone they trusted. Now, they can’t even look people in the eye.

Living in Someone’s Shadow. No matter what they do, it’s never enough. Someone else, a sibling, a friend, a partner, always shines brighter. They feel stuck in that person’s shadow, invisible and overlooked.

Abandoning a Dream. They had big dreams, but somewhere along the way, life got in the way, and now they’ve given up. Maybe it was because of fear or circumstances beyond their control, but the loss of that dream has left them feeling empty.

Childhood Trauma. Something happened to them when they were young, something painful that still affects them today. Whether it was abuse, neglect, or a significant loss, the trauma follows them into adulthood, shaping how they see themselves and the world.

Being an Outsider. They’ve never felt like they fit in, whether because of their background, their personality, or something else. They long for acceptance but fear they’ll never find it.

Struggling with Addiction. They’re caught in a destructive cycle, whether it’s with substances, behaviors, or even people. The shame and struggle to break free from addiction are real and raw.

Living with Chronic Illness. They’re living with a chronic illness or disability, and it’s not just the physical challenges that weigh them down, it’s the emotional toll, too. Maybe they feel isolated, or like they’re a burden to others.

[iniquitousyearning]

SLYTHERINSLUT0’S RIDDLEMAS

dec 23rd. tom riddle — wet dreams, house rivals.

RIDDLEMAS MASTERLIST. I 2024

summary: tom’s been infiltrating your dreams, and you decide it’s time to call him out on it.

warnings: 18+, SMUT MDNIIII, coercion!!!!, dark!tom, mind manipulation, religious undertones, gryffindor!reader, enemies if you squint, fingering, squirting, begging, dream sex, tom riddle is his own warning, so much praise, dirty talk, verbal sparring.

You've never been a heavy sleeper. Even as a child, the smallest sound—a creak in the floorboards, a shift in the walls—would jolt you awake. For years, you chalked it up to some ingrained survival instinct, some form of trauma response to whatever part of your childhood still haunts you. You got used to it.

But lately, it isn't sound that’s been waking you. It isn't movement or foundation shifts, either. It's the dreams.

Dreams—strange, lucid, intense dreams of him. Always him. Dreams that make you feel like you're drowning, like you're flying, like you've found a new level of intoxication that you'd never imagined possible—and each time the dreams wake you up, the sheets (and whatever bottoms you may have been wearing) are always soaked, and your thighs are always shaking.

It's maddening.

They feel too real to be anything but a violation, his presence bleeding into your subconscious regardless of how much you try to fight it. You know it means something is wrong. You'd tried to rationalize yourself into going back to sleep, telling yourself it's just hormones or some form of stress, but you're too smart to believe your own excuses.

You know it's more than that.

He's haunting you in your sleep—in the most unexpected way. The dreams are always lucid enough that you can feel it—you can feel him—his mouth on yours, his hands on your hips, his dick bullying your fucking cervix and his magic on your clit—leaving behind nothing but hunger. Hunger that's so intense it makes you want him in a way it almost scares you.

You tell yourself you hate him, you've always hated him—but denial only lasts for so many days, as you realize you can't look at him or talk to him without the dreams forcing their way to the forefront of your mind, making you remember the feelings and the sensations and how much, despite hating him, you want them to be real.

You wanted to believe it would pass. That this was nothing but a phase, a trick of your overactive mind. But deep down, you knew the truth. Tom Riddle has wormed his way into your head, into your dreams—out of spite—and he's not letting go.

So after a hell of a week of this—with damn near zero hours of sleep—you decide to seek him out. To put an end to this madness. Once and for all.

It takes every ounce of courage and Gryffindor-like reckless bravery you can scrape together just to go through with it, but somehow you do. Somehow, you make it across the castle, make it to his door. You're in your pyjamas, for Merlin's sake. It's 1 a.m., and the slick still coating your thighs from what had to have been your tenth lucid orgasm in a matter of a week is a humiliating reminder of why you're even here at all.

And when the door opens, you have the strange feeling that he's been expecting you, even as he makes a great show of acting surprised to see you, looking you up and down with a lazy, smug glance that makes your pulse quicken so viscerally you lose the last shred of sanity you were pathetically clinging to—

"What the fuck—" you prowl forward without hesitation, forcing him a step back into the room. "—are you doing to me?"

Even if you're not imagining some form of surprise in that smug little smirk, he does his best not to let it show.

"Me?" He says, all pretend innocence, flicking his hand out to shut the door behind you with some spell you don't care to name. "You'll have to be more specific."

You glare at him, refusing to acknowledge how unfairly attractive he looks in just sweatpants and an oversized shirt—because of course, even casual looks like this are a weapon in his arsenal.

"Cut the bullshit, Riddle," you snap, and you're not sure if it's your lack of sleep or some form of desperation-fuelled bravery, but you're suddenly invading his personal space, poking an accusing finger into his shoulder. "You're fucking haunting me—"

He blinks. "I’m haunting you. And how am I doing that?”

There's a part of you that knows it's a trap—that this is probably exactly what the smug bastard in front of you has been wanting, but your brain is so deprived of sleep and your body is so starved of respite that you decide 'fuck it'—you want answers, and you're going to get them.

"You're in my dreams," you say, bluntly, forcing an exhale alongside it. "You've been in them every night for a week straight. I haven't slept a bloody minute."

That's when it happens—the tiniest flash of amusement in his eyes, so brief you might've missed it if you weren't ready to tear his fucking throat out.

"You're accusing me of giving you dreams?" He asks, in a tone that makes you want to grab him by the front of his shirt and make him cut the bullshit, and you can't tell how much of your own expression is irritation and how much is lust. "You think I've somehow managed to invade your mind?"

"Don't be condescending," you spit, trying to focus on the spot between his eyebrows that makes the heat in your core roar the least, "and don't act like you're incapable. As much as I can't bloody stand you, we both know damn well your mind magic is strong enough to do this to me—"

"Mind magic," he echoes with an amused snort, "you think I'm doing some kind of mind magic to invade your dreams, is that it?"

He's so damn good at this, you think—infuriatingly good. The way he's playing it off like the idea is absurd, completely laughable—

"Fucking precisely.” You can't hide the heat from your voice. You don't care to try. "These aren't just dreams. They're—they're strong. I feel you. Your hands, your tongue, your—"

Dick. You can't even bring yourself to say it.

And the bastard just smirks, like he's reading your mind anyway. Like he knows. That glimmer in his eyes—arrogant, insufferable—only confirms it.

"Hm," he says with something bored, running a hand through his hair. "Your subconscious—"

"It's not a bloody subconscious thing," you cut him off, uninterested in whatever bullshit he was about to feed you. "It's you. You're invading my dreams—I feel you—my body fucking feels you—"

He laughs at that. Like some sick, sadistic freak. He actually laughs—

"Listen to yourself." He says, with a mocking tone that makes you want to shove him. "Are you that desperate to hate me that you're pinning your dreams on me?"

"Hate doesn't even begin to cover it," you spit, stepping closer, your frustration boiling over. He shifts slightly, his back brushing the wall. "You've got a hell of an ego, but even you have to know this isn't something I'd want. I wouldn't put you in my dreams willingly if you paid me to do it—"

He hums, smirk never faltering, if anything it fucking grows at the tirade.

"You've been dreaming of me for a week," he points out, coolly, as if this is the most casual conversation in the world. "And now, here you are—standing in my dorm in the middle of the night, dressed like this." He takes a step toward you, now. "Do you know what that's called, sweetheart?"

Your lungs hitch at the pet name. Your mind is at war with your cunt and it's losing—

"Delirium?" You choke out, noticing another flash of something in his eyes as the gap between you closes. "Insomnia? Sleep deprivation?"

He gives you a mocking arch of the eyebrow.

"No," he says, in a tone that makes you seethe. "It's called obsession."

"Oh. The irony," you can't help but hiss at him, heart pounding because he's in your space and you're in his and this shouldn't be getting to you the way it is. "It's rich, coming from you, that you'd put that on me when—when you've been mindfucking me every goddamn night—"

"Mindfucking you?" He repeats, almost lazily, as his gaze drops, sweeping over you—your pyjamas, the clear lack of bra, the flush creeping up your neck. "Is that what you think I've been doing? You think—"

The way he doesn't even deny it—doesn't argue the accusation—makes your blood boil in a way you can't control.

"It's the only explanation. You've been—you've been—" you cut him off but your sentence falters because his gaze is moving so deliberately, dragging over you like he's cataloging your weaknesses, and the anger curdles into something raw and desperate. "God, Tom, I just need it to stop. I'm so fucking tense and tired. I'm so wound I can't even focus—I'm wet all the time—"

His eyes snap up to meet yours at that, and he gives you a look you can't even begin to interpret. You bite your tongue, realizing the words that left your mouth just a moment too late to pull them back, and you know you've lost the upper hand in this, somehow. You feel the ground slipping from under you and you hate the way your body shivers as he takes another slow, deliberate, step forward.

"Is that what you are?” He wets his lips. "You've come all the way here, in the dead of night, in your pyjamas, half out of your mind with exhaustion because you're wet. Isn't that right?"

You know better than to answer, though you feel yourself walking straight into the trap he's set.

"Piss off," you snap, but the bravado in your voice is paper-thin as he takes another step forward. He's so close now that his scent overwhelms you—leather and spice, something sharp and smoky that makes your head spin. You recognize it, of course you do; it's the same as in your dreams, and the familiarity makes your knees feel unsteady. "You're—"

"Don't act so offended," he leans closer, his voice a low murmur, quiet, almost silky as it wraps around you, and suddenly you barely remember what you were so pissed off about. "You can't even deny it. I made you cum tonight, didn't I? In your dreams."

Your teeth grit. "You know you did—"

He takes one more step and now you're backed right up against his desk—and gods, Tom's tall, so much taller than you—and it feels like he's looming over you, caging you in.

"Mhm." There's a flash of triumph in his eyes as you lose your words. He leans down, breath grazing your ear just as he brings two fingers to your temple, pressing the pads against it. "Let's watch, shall we?"

Watc—oh no.

A cold sense of dread washes over you as you catch on to what he's insinuating, merely a second too late—

"Tom—"

He whispers something, something that pulls you under, and the next thing you know—in a flash of consciousness you didn't even consider possible—you're staring at yourself inside a dream you remember all too well. A dream sequence where you're moaning and trembling beneath him, your head thrown back, eyes rolling in unabashed pleasure as he drives into you, hips snapping with thrust after thrust after thrust—

And it's one thing to have felt it in the safety of your dreams, in the dead of night when you woke slick and desperate, clenching around nothing. But this—this is visceral. You can't look away because it's projecting inside your mind: the flush blooming across your chest, the arch of your back, the way your lips part with every desperate breath. You hear the obscene sounds spilling from your mouth, mingling with his low, guttural grunts—and worst of all, you can feel it.

You can feel every ounce of pleasure he's giving you, as if he's giving it to you now.

"Mm," you hear him hum from infront of you—it's too much—you're lost in the memory, the dream, and it's a strange, voyeuristic, intimate experience to watch yourself and him like that. "You're worse off than I thought."

You’re gripping the wood of his desk so hard your fingertips are numb, heart flying out of the room as his hand slowly slides from your temple down to your jaw, holding you in place—

"Stop it." You manage to hiss at him, trying to force some semblance of control back into yourself—the last thing you need is to start melting against this bastard. "Tom—"

"You feel that?" He murmurs, breath brushing your neck, and you can't even focus on anything but the sensations he's forcing through your memory—seeing him above you, feeling him inside you. "You do, don't you? This is exactly what you've been feeling all week, isn't it?"

You want to snap at him, cuss him out, but oh god—

"Damn you," you hiss, even as his hands slide down to your hips—and it almost feels as if he's touching you twice, as if there are two sets of hands on your body. "Fuck, Tom—"

"Mm, you look good from this angle," he murmurs, and you fucking keen as you watch, in your mind, his hands slide over your stomach, pushing up your shirt and exposing your tits, groping as he fucks you. You keen as you feel it. "You love this, don't you? You want this."

"I—" you gasp, trying to convince him, or yourself, or goddamn anyone. Still fighting some invisible battle between resistance and submission because you hate that he's right. "I—god, what are you doing to me—"

"What am I doing to you?" He whispers, and you're not sure if the question is rhetorical, or if he's giving you permission to ask it. "I'm not doing anything that you aren't letting me do."

Your knees feel like they're about to buckle, and it's taking all your strength just to stay standing because the pleasure playing out in your mind is pouring into your veins and you can't even fathom how it's possible but you can't do anything to fight it—

"Oh, god—" you moan, unbridled, your physical body slumping back onto the desk as you feel the slick between your thighs, growing with every goddamn thrust. "Oh my god—"

He takes the opportunity of you slumped back against the desk and instantly leans down, bringing his lips to your ear—

"Not even god could keep your legs underneath you." His hand creeps up your thigh. "You're helpless."

"Helpless," you repeat, with a shaky gasp, and you hate how much the word turns you on. This is the first time you've ever been called helpless, and you're not even sure that you care. He's got you in his clutches, he's winning, and it's so infuriating and so goddamn perfect. “Tom—please, please touch me. I need to—fuck—"

You feel his lips brush the skin of your neck in a way that has you trembling with want, but—fucking hell, that's not what you need—you need his hands on you, you need him to just—

"What do you need?" He cooes, and there's a sly tone to his voice that makes you want to throw yourself at him all over again. "You need to cum?"

You moan, low and needy, writhing against the desk because this fucker—he knows exactly what he's doing. He’s got the upper hand here and you want it back. You want—

"Yes," you manage to gasp out. "I need you to—I fucking need you—inside me—"

As soon as that leaves your mouth, the dream fades from your vision and he's urging you to lay back. There's a soft thud as he places a hand on the desk next to your head, and he leans down, bringing his lips back to your ear, and you can't remember a time when you've ever wanted anyone else this bad.

"I'm touched," he murmurs, fingers slipping to the waist band of your pyjama pants, "that you want me that bad."

"I hate you," you manage to gasp out, but that's a lie, and you think he knows it. His fingers on your skin as he pulls your pants down make you ache for him, and you're struggling to not make another sound that will give him ammunition. "Why do you have to—"

"Why do I have to what?" He asks, and you know he's just trying to get a reaction out of you. "Tease you? Make you helpless?"

Your pants get hardly half way down your thighs before he decides it's enough and slides a finger through your soaked slit, and you can't hold back the moan that tears itself from your throat.

"Fuck, you're soaked.” He hisses through his teeth. “You've been sitting in your dorm for days, hm? Dreaming of me touching you, wishing you could touch yourself without thinking of me—do you want to cum, sweetheart?"

"Yes," you gasp out, and you're not above begging at this point. "Yes, god, please—I want to fucking cum—"

"There we go," he cooes, and he's enjoying this more than you'd like to acknowledge. "You know how long I've been waiting to hear you say that?"

"I'd say at least a week," you throw back, in a vain attempt to keep a shred of your dignity, but that's hard when he's circling his fingers around your clit and your body is jerking against the desk beneath you. God you really are helpless. "Because that's how long you've been plaguing my head, giving me wet dreams like some goddamn incubus—"

He chuckles at that, and you hate him a little less when he slips two fingers inside you, "You think I'm a demon?"

"You certainly act like one," you choke out, because he's crooking his fingers and your mind is going fuzzy and he's not going to let you get the upper hand back, even for a second. "Fuck—oh, yes, yes, yes."

"You've got me all wrong," he says, with a smile that would be boyish if it wasn't so sinister. "Demons come to punish you. I'm here helping you get that relief you've been needing so badly."

"Just want t-to help me," you moan as his long fingers work you open, thumb brushing your clit, "out of the kindness of your heart—"

"Out of the kindness of my heart,” he repeats, with a mocking tone, and it's the way he murmurs those words that's making your thighs clench around him until he grabs the fabric of your pjs bunched around them and pushes your legs up to your chest, working his fingers impossibly deeper. "Out of the goodness of my soul—it's what I do, darling, I'm known for my benevolence—"

"You're a good man," you know he can tell you're being sarcastic, but his fingers are filling you so fucking full you're nowhere near ready to start a fight again when you're this close to losing your goddamn mind on his desk. "You're such a good man, Tom—“

"Mhm," his breath tickles your ear. "What else am I?"

"So good with your fingers," you're moaning, and he's going to get a bigger ego than he already has. You're too far gone to care. "God, you're so good, I'm going to—"

"Yes, you are," he answers, and it takes you a second to realize that he's not correcting your words anymore. He's simply telling you that you are, in fact, about to fall apart for him. "Give it to me. You've earned it."

You almost want to snap back at him, you almost try to, but you're so far gone the words don't form on your tongue and you're not sure you'd be able to fight the fire pooling in your stomach.

"Oh, fuck—“

He doesn't even let you finish that, he just dips his hips down, bringing his hand that's not buried in your slick up to cover your mouth, muffling those strangled screams before they spill out and echo down the hall—

"That's it," he murmurs, his voice a low hum against your skin. "Be a good girl. Let it all out for me."

And it's that; that stupid combination of cooing warmth and the phrase 'be a good girl' that sends you over the edge, and you're muffling your gasps and moans and screams against his palm because gods, what would happen if someone heard you? What would happen if people realized what Tom Riddle was doing to you—your house rival, your sworn enemy—

"There we go," you're falling apart and he's watching you as if he owns you, as if this is where you belong—writhing beneath him, release squirting out around his fingers. "Ride it out for me. Such a good girl, you needed this so bad, I can tell you were aching for this."

You're struggling to say anything back, the only thing that comes out is a strangled moan of his name, and you've always known how bad he was, heard from other girls how good he could be with his hands, but this—you've never had this, never been this before.

"Such a fucking mess," he's murmuring, his voice low and rough and so goddamn beautiful. “How'd that feel? Hm?"

"So—so good," it feels like the words are being forced out of your throat, and you're struggling to think with enough clarity to form anything that's not an embarrassing moan of how much you needed this. "Needed it, need more, I—"

"More?" He murmurs as he slips his fingers free, and he's bringing his other hand up to your jaw, forcing you to look at him as he brings his soaked fingers to your lips. "Greedy girl."

You're not thinking about the implication of him calling you that, you're not thinking about how you should fight back, you're not thinking about how much you hate him—you’re just thinking about the sinful taste of you on his fingers, when they press against your tongue. Without a second of hesitation you suck them clean, tasting yourself, and it's obscene. You're obscene. But you don't care, it just makes that ache in you grow worse—you need more, you need him.

Dear god, what happened to you.

“So good," he murmurs, the praise dripping like honey from his tongue. You hum and he exhales. "I'll find you tomorrow."

"You'll find me tomorrow?" You repeat, as he withdraws his fingers from your mouth, and you're struggling for air, your chest heaving beneath your rumpled shirt. "What are you going to do, come into my room?"

"I'll come into much more than your room," he says, with a laugh that dances with promises of sin. "Now go. Before someone finds you here."

You push yourself up on trembling arms, pulling your pants up your thighs, your heart hammering in your chest because—god, that was incredible, you want more of it, and you can hardly even believe it happened. With a breath, you force yourself to move.

You look back at him as you get to the door. Your legs are shaking and you're not going to hold it against yourself for needing the wall to support you as his eyes rake over you, the corners of those lips curled up his signature smirk, and you want to hit him so goddamn bad—but then he speaks, like he read your mind, and it snaps you out of it—

"No dreams tonight." He says. "Scouts honour."

"You're no boy scout," you throw back, and your voice is a little breathier than you'd like. "And this changes nothing."

He smiles, slow and languid and knowing. "Of course."

You want to roll your eyes at the condescension dripping off his tongue, but you're worried that if you stay here any longer the only words on your tongue will be 'do it again'.

"You just owe me." You say as you crack the door open.

"I owe you," he agrees, and you think that his smile is just a little too genuine—like he would give you anything you wanted, just for another taste of that. “I'm keeping score, darling. Sleep well."

You hate him for calling you that, you hate his stupid smile, you hate the way he knows he's got you.

What he doesn’t know, is that you’re going to make him pay.

"Good night," you mutter, and then you open the door and slip out into the hallway.

[adlibitur]

not to be old me on main again but

[sp0o0kylights]

Sometimes I think of a Steve Harrington that is absolutely exhausted by all the horror and bullshit and trying to keep the kids alive through said horror and bullshit, who watches Eddie rock up to him at the beginning of S4 with a dead eyed, flat stare.

"Steeeeve Harrington." Eddie taunts and peacocks and twirls around him, and all Steve wanted was for a couple months to process the trauma, maybe feel safe enough to start thinking about the future instead of stuck in a never ending anxiety loop of what might happen to Dumbass Near-Deatherson, should Steve go to college or move out of Hawkins (bc all the bad nicknames in the world won't erase the fact that Dustin's family, now. They're all family. And when they need help, they go to Steve.) and now he's suffering the unjust ordeal of being haunted by the high school drug dealer.

"His highness has come down from his castle!" Munson will crow, making a show out of Steve picking up the kids like this is a great battle of wits, a scoreboard between them and not like Steve is half dead on his feet, head aching, dreams full of too many teeth. "Quickly hide behind me, he'll try to cut off your heads!"

"Wouldn't he just cut yours off too?" Lucas asked, though the tone was slightly timid, Sinclair unsure if his joke would be well recieved.

(Steve doesn't care if the kid outright insults him. He still recalls the junkyard, the fight with Billy, the blood staining the kid's headband. Lucas lived, therefore, he can be a shit if wants.)

"Mine? Oh, the King wouldn't dare." Munson tosses his head, full of cartoon energy, too big for his body and grin both. "Many have tried you see, but no one had ever succeeded!"

Steve, equally, does not give a single shit that Eddie Munson has decided to play these games with him--until he realizes he's maybe been a little too exhausted and depressed and morose around the kids.

Watches them getting worried over him, whispering urgently and making dramatic gestures and talking to Robin and suddenly, playing a little tug of war over them the way Munson seems to want feels like a good idea. A way to hide all the rough edges, a way to be fine so they can be fine.

"How about you guys skip the dork brigade tonight," Steve taunts back the next time they're all together, standing like the man he used to be, wearing a dead personality. "And we go do something actually fun instead?"

Eddie laughs, lights up, is all too happy to match him tit for tat, and it's so easy to fake this kind of interaction, rolling his eyes and snapping his gum. Steve could match this energy in his sleep, and never once does Munson catch on that Steve's not doing this for him.

That he's not even looking at him half the time, eyes askew, locked on the kids. Seeing them relax as he banters, seeing Dustin glow as he returns to his favorite position, being the center of attention.

So long as they think he's okay, Steve will be okay. If that means putting up with Munson, then so be it.

Its not like he'll catch on.

Eddie doesnt.

(Or rather, he does--but Its months and several deaths later, when they're in the RV, chasing what feels like literal demons, does it dawn on Eddie what Steve is doing.

Has been doing, the whole time.

Steve, sassy, ridiculous, jock- brained Steve makes the mistake of doing it again, using the same trick he had on the kids to convince them he was fine on Eddie. To further convince Eddie that they were fine as a group.

That they'll survive, they'll figure it out, they'll make it.

Loudly bantering with dead eyes, smiling with a mouth robotically locked in. Jokes on jokes on jokes and all of them making the kids take their minds off VecnaHenryOne to screech ineffectively at their babysitter. Winks tossed to the girls, who both roll their eyed at him. A sly look given to Eddie, to include him.

Its then, that Eddie decides to cement his life with Steve's. Because this loyal bastard of a paladin is too good hearted to die, too protective to not try it anyway. The idiot is cutting himself to ribbons to tie them all together and Eddie can't undo the damage but he can grab all the pieces he can, loop them together.

He can make those dead eyes light up again.

And he does.

This time when things are over Steve finds himself unable to pull those little tricks of his. Every time he slides the mask over his face Eddie rips it right back off again.

They fight, a lot, until they start kissing instead and for a while that also, somehow, feels like fighting but Eddie's real good at this. The emotional part, not so much the kissing, but he knows how to draw Steve out. How to break down walls, and annoying his real personality out.

The kissing was just an odd little side benefit.

A thing they don't talk about.

There's a benefit to it, one he doesn't look very hard into, until strangely, one day, Eddie wakes with Steve's head pillowed on his shoulder and comes to the abrupt conclusion that he's screwed.

Or so he thinks--until bright, loving eyes blink awake, and turn on him, and Eddie realizes just how long it's been since they looked dead.

He wonders, vaguely, how long it'll take for Steve to catch on, that this just got serious.

Will laugh at himself when he learns that Steve already knew.

Guess that's what he gets for finally paying attention.)

[chatsukimi]

ᴄᴏᴜʀᴛɪɴɢ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ

featuring: protective!heian!sukuna, kindhearted!servant!reader. slight angst/hurt -> comfort. synopsis: you're sick. to your surprise, you're rescued by the man second closest to death himself. masterlist

you should've known he wouldn't come. sukuna has never set foot in the servant's headquarters in his life, let alone to chase after a sick servant. you lower your head, trying to ease the headache that has plagued you through the day.

sukuna loves his bloodshed and his gore. him and death would be good friends, you think to yourself. he wouldn't care if your body was burnt or buried, you think to yourself; wouldn't care if you died at all.

the room the others put you in is empty. ash spreads neatly over the cold floor. the scent of kibble haunts the atmosphere. it's where they put the dogs before sukuna killed them.

ever since you took care of the king of curses while he was sick, the other servants had been careful in keeping a distance from you. not in ill of heart; they're simply terrified at what you must've done to survive in your week long stay with the monster. honestly, you don't blame them.

but now when you're laying on the freezing ground, struggling to breathe, it's hard not to.

'this is where you live?'

your eyes look up. shock. then, with all the strength you can muster, you heave yourself one step away from the man at the doorway, which only serves to piss him off more.

sukuna ryomen, in all his glory, looks down at you. bending down to pick you up like a limp doll to be seated against the wall, he seems to revel in his regained strength. you can't help but feel happy for him, to have survived this fatal disease. not many men can attest to that...

then again, he is no ordinary man.

'i asked you a question.'

you nod, a small thing, barely a movement. he seems to clench his teeth.

he takes off his long white coat, flaunting a layer of dried blood, and drapes it over your shoulders.

yet it doesn't end there. he retrieves from his pocket a bottle of what looks to be a golden syrup.

you know exactly what it is.

he takes your hand and wraps it around the flask, making you hold it, sparing, not one, but two of his eyes, to stare at you, making sure you do as he commands.

'swallow.'

you shake your head. you know he's asking you to do. this is a medication is so rare for your disease that no sorcerer has found in over a hundred years. he's brought this thing of myth right to your very lips. now he's asking you to drink it, and thus take away any chance of it saving anyone else's life.

you scowl, but the tickling sensation in your throat grows stronger, eventually erupting out of your mouth in a harsh cough. you look away from sukuna.

'leave,' you whisper, weakly. 'don't wanna infect you.'

'i survived the illness already. i've developed an immunity.'

you shake your head again. you couldn't threaten your king's health with your own weakness. you just couldn't.

'i can't take this.'

he growls. without any notice, he swallows your lips in a kiss. in the momentary haze, you could hardly resist, fisting the front of his kimono to ground yourself. then, you feel something sweet, honey-ish, hit your tongue.

with his hand locked on your chin, it forces you to swallow.

you pull back, pushing him away. he groans.

he wipes his mouth, still with two eyes staring.

no... no, why did he do that?

'y-you- how? no... why did you waste it on me?' you whisper, desperately searching his face for an answer. 'i'm just a servant. you could've given it to a princess, or a scholar, or priest-'

he grabs you by the arm and forces you into his arms. its heat astounds you, and you find yourself crawling closer. a vague thumping sound seems to press against your ear-

oh. you calm your breathing.

it's his heartbeat.

alive.

'sleep in my room tonight,' he demands.

what did he say? you strain your mind, trying to replay what he said earlier. no... maybe you heard correctly.

'but i'm no concubine,' you respond, instantly.

his arm supports your waist, helping you up effortlessly to your feet. he then directs two of his eyes to the doorway, his cadence low and domineering.

'it doesn't matter.'

he leads you placidly through the servant's quarters. you notice all conversation cease at your entry, bodies dropping into a low bow. a small voice in you whispers that it's where you should be too. you tug at sukuna's arm.

'i'm only a servant, sukuna.'

you know what it looks like, a servant clutching onto a man, more god than human. a man who has slaughtered villages, blood staining the base of his kimono crimson, and turned half a province on its head, just to save you.

'whatever you are in my eyes is what you are to the world,' he states, his expression unchanging. 'if i deem you a queen, that is who you are.'

exiting the servant compound, you know you can't say no- not like you wanted to. the wide expanse of his chest is comforting.

yet however sweet this feeling remains, you can't help but gulp. perhaps this is the closest a human has ever come to courting death.

[sluttyten]

The Devil in Me

Kinktober Day 9 | Haechan Masterlist | Member Masterlist

tags: loss of virginity, first time, oral sex, marking, biting, possessive/protective Haechan, mentions of human sacrifice, demons, a lot softer/romantic than it sounds

length: 8293

Maybe you should have heeded the warnings of your friends and family, but you’d thought it was all just a bit of small-mindedness and prejudice. 

When you started seeing a guy who was a loud and proud satanist, your friends and family had all told you that he would be bad news. But you’d done some research into the belief system of satanists, and it wasn’t inherently evil, as they all seemed to believe. And you liked this guy, he was charming and handsome and he spoke to you like you were his everything, that you were someone special to him. 

And now, in your present position, you can see that you were in fact someone special to him. 

You were his virgin sacrifice. 

It had been a mistake to tell him that you were a virgin. You could’ve fed him some other excuse for why you didn’t want to have sex, but you’d gone with the truth. And now look where it got you. 

He’d brought you out into the woods on the premise of a night hike, stargazing, camping and keeping each other warm beside a campfire. But now you were strapped to a wooden table in the middle of a circle of fire in the woods, and he was pacing in circles around you, chanting words and drawing symbols on his bare chest in either red paint or some kind of blood. 

He’d already given you the evil villain speech. This was a ritual to summon a demon he’d read about — a chaos demon who could grant him wealth and talent by stealing it from others. He was going to sacrifice you and blah blah blah. You’d stopped listening after a while. The straps on your wrists were so tight that you were losing feeling in your fingertips. Your ankles were tied down too, and you could see no way out of this, resigned to your fate. 

All you know is that if he kills you, you’re going to haunt the shit out of him. 

When he stops his pacing, when the chanting slows, you close your eyes and send a prayer out to anyone listening to save you. 

The asshole teases you with your own death. He trails his hunting knife from your neck down between your breasts, slicing apart your shirt as he goes. 

Your shirt falls open, and he returns the blade to your throat. You refuse to make a sound, you refuse to give him the satisfaction of hearing you cry out. 

“Look at me!” He yells, his hand gripping your chin. “I want you to watch.”

Your eyes fly open, and you stare this asshole in the eye, putting as much hatred and vitriol in your gaze as you can. 

He grins, trailing the knife lower, and with a flick of his wrist, he gives you a shallow cut just above your left breast. You can see the first drops of your blood well up to the surface. His eyes light up, the chant falling from his lips again as he lifts his hand and the blade, drawing them up into the air over the center of your chest. 

He’s going to plunge it into your heart, that’s something he said during his monologue. 

You suck in a breath, watching his hand, watching the moonlight glint off the blade. 

He swings. 

And a tan hand curls around his wrist, halting the movement. 

“I don’t think so,” a smooth voice says. 

You watch the hand on your would-be murderer’s wrist. The hand guides his, redirecting the path of his blade, and you squeeze your eyes shut as the blade draws across his throat. You try to tune out the wet choking sound as your would-be murderer collapses, as he pulls himself away through the grass and the brush, as he dies the ugly death he would have given to you. 

You open your eyes when you can no longer hear him struggling to survive, and you see before you a beautiful, beautiful demon. 

His eyes glow a deep red. Two black horns stick out from his black hair. Ragged black wings jut out from his shoulders. And he’s beautiful. Devastatingly handsome. 

The summoning ritual worked. 

The fight for survival comes racing back through you, and you jerk against your bonds, crying out, screaming for help. You’ll not have your soul taken by a demon. That’s not happening tonight!

“Don’t be afraid,” he says calmly, “I’m not here to hurt you.”

With a wave of his hand, the bonds on your wrists snap, your ankles suddenly are freed as well. You sit up, clutching at the sides of your shirt to pull them together over your chest. The demon looks at you, and then turns his head to the side towards where you last heard that bastard's dying breaths fade away. 

“Some humans are real assholes, yknow?” The demon says, still not looking at you. “They think we all want sacrifices, which, don’t get me wrong, they can be nice from time to time, but we don’t demand the murder of virgins. We certainly don’t demand unwilling pretty women be murdered in the woods.”

He spits towards what you can only assume is the dead body of your would-be murderer. And then the demon looks back at you, eyes aglow. 

“I’m Haechan,” he introduces himself, holding his hand out to you. “But you can call me Donghyeok.” 

You hesitate for a moment, uncertain if you should give him your name or shake his hand. You feel like you’ve heard stories about how bad doing either of those things could be. But in the end, it’s the way that the corner of his mouth tilts up as he watches you that convinces you. 

You put your hand in his, and you give him your name. 

Donghyeok lifts your hand, brushing his lips across your knuckles. “Pleased to have saved you.” 

Your pulse throbs in your veins, pounding in your ears. 

An actual demon is holding your hand, standing before you smelling like sea air and citrus rather than the burning brimstone stories would have you believe. Donghyeok lowers your hand, and you pull it back into your lap. 

“That guy seemed like a dick.” Donghyeok turns away, shaking his wings as he walks over to the nearest flickering ground torch. He continues talking while he extinguishes that torch, saying, “Very bossy in his summoning chant. I probably would’ve ended up killing him even if he wasn’t trying to murder you. How did you end up here, anyway?”

“I was stupid.” You droop forward, hanging your head as you look down at your knees. “I let him trick me into thinking he was a good guy despite all the warnings from everyone around me. I thought they were just prejudiced since he was a Satanist, but they were right.” You risk a glance in Donghyeok’s direction. “I shouldn’t have ever told him I’m a virgin, I was basically just asking to get sacrificed in a demonic ritual.”

Donghyeok’s wings flare as he turns to look at you. “Don’t say that. Don’t ever blame yourself for the actions of a stupid man. He is the one that did this, not you.” 

He extinguishes two more torches before either of you speak again. 

“Virgin sacrifices don’t actually mean, like sexual virginity, yknow?” Donghyeok says, his back facing you while he puts out another torch. Now only four of them remain lit in the circle. “It’s virgin blood. Blood that’s never been used for a ritual before. As soon as he cut you, I felt the call, and I saw what he was going to do to you. I’m tired of men killing women with the excuse of summoning me. I just require a few drops of blood to be spilled, not a life taken.”

Donghyeok waves his wings, and three more torches flicker out, leaving just one glowing right in front of you, providing just enough light to see by as Donghyeok strides back to you. His bloody red eyes sweep over you from head to toe. 

“What are you going to do to me?” You can tell your voice is small, nearly lost in the whisper of wind through the trees. But Donghyeok hears, and he cocks his head slightly to the side to watch you. 

“Haven’t you been listening?” He reaches up, snapping his fingers together and drawing a handkerchief out of thin air. “I’m not here to do anything to you. I came to rescue you from that asshole, and now you’re free.” He holds the handkerchief out to you. 

“So you’re just going to leave me here?” You accept the silky white cloth, and you find one corner of it embroidered with flowy script — LDH, it says, and you run your thumb over the fine threads making up the letters. 

“I didn’t say I was leaving you.” He smiles, and again, your pulse thunders. “We can go, or we can stay here and have sex.”

A squawk of surprise and indignation leaves you, which makes Donghyeok laugh. And fuck, you thought he was beautiful before, the sight and sound of his genuine laughter makes him even more beautiful. 

“I’m joking!” He keeps laughing, his shoulders shaking as he tries to hold it in while he speaks, “But I can get you out of here in a snap so you don’t have to hike back through these woods in the dark.” 

“Please!” You reach out, grabbing both of his hands, holding them between yours. “Please, get me out of here.”

Donghyeok’s expression goes serious. “I will, I promise. And what about him?” 

You begin to turn your head to look, but you change your mind, keeping your gaze fixed on this beautiful demon. You shake your head. “Leave him. The police can deal with him, I’ll report the crime when I get back to town.”

Donghyeok watches you for a moment, contemplating something. Then he shrugs, holds tighter to your hands, and you feel a tug behind your navel. 

The scenery around you has changed.

You’re still in the woods, but just at the edge of it. You can see the lights of town just ahead through the trunks. 

“Here, let’s at least make it look like you’ve run back here.” Donghyeok crouches down, filling his hand with soft dirt. “May I?”

You’re not entirely sure what you’re agreeing to, but you nod. Immediately, Donghyeok is touching you, spreading dirt over your clothes, a smear of mud along the torn open edge of your shirt. He runs his fingers through your hair (which shouldn’t feel as good as it does). He plucks some twigs and leaves, sticking them haphazardly in your hair, dangling from a new rip at the bottom of your shirt. 

He takes a step back to appreciate his handiwork, then nods, satisfied. 

You both stand there looking at each other for a moment, and finally you say, “Thank you.”

Donghyeok nods. “You didn’t deserve what that asshole was going to do to you. None of them ever do deserve it. He, however, deserved everything he got, and everything he’s going to get when I get back to Hell.”

“Thank you,” you repeat because you mean it, and there are no words more genuine that you can think to say. “Really, Donghyeok, thank you.”

You turn towards the lights of town. You’re going to the police, filing a report, making sure they know that that bastard tried to kill you, and he's the reason he’s dead. 

“One thing before you go!” Donghyeok steps in front of you. You look up at him just as he reaches out and puts his hand on your right shoulder. His hand burns hot and then hotter through your shirt, and you hiss in pain, trying to draw away, but Donghyeok holds on, only releasing you once the pain begins to fade into a tingle. 

“That’s all. See you around.”

And then the demon disappears into a shadowy mist. 

You stand there for a moment before you pull yourself back together, and you walk into town, straight for the police station. 

They believe the story, which is good since most of it is true. Only part of it is fictionalized: when you say that you managed to slip the bonds he’d had on your wrists, the part where you wrestled the knife from him, where you’d cut him across the throat and then run miles back to town through the woods. But the story is believable because the facts and evidence are all there — the police trek through the woods and find the site of the ritual, find his body, find a blade that somehow has your fingerprints; they find plans in his apartment, records of messages between him and others, of his search history on how to summon a demon and how to perform a virgin sacrifice. 

When you finally leave the police station, returning home under the care of your family and friends, you finally get a moment to yourself in the shower. 

You peel off your pants and socks, drag your shirt over your head, slip off your panties and bra, and then you look at yourself in the mirror. 

Black inky lines that weren’t there before these events are there now. You twist, angling better towards the mirror to be able to see what appears to be a whole tattoo that you never got. 

A sunflower curves from front to back over your shoulder and down onto your arm. 

You brush your fingers over the petals, feeling your skin tingle in a not unpleasant way. It sends a curl of warmth into your belly, makes your heart pound. 

It’s Donghyeok, you know it is. 

This is his mark, left on you. 

The next time you see him, it’s too brief for your liking. 

There’s a street festival, sort of like a carnival in town, and you spend hours down there one day as afternoon turns to evening turns to night. It brings all the weirdos out, from your town and those surrounding. You stick close to your friends, you have fun, you spend too much money on greasy food and rigged carnival games, you flirt with a cute carnie to get the big stuffed teddy bear prize. 

Your friends decide to ride the Ferris wheel, but your mild fear of heights and the lure of a big pink cloud of cotton candy call to you instead. You’ll stay here feet firmly on the ground, enjoying your cotton candy, and watching them take a turn on the giant wheel. 

But first you have to find the cotton candy booth. 

You’re carrying your teddy prize like it’s a toddler, hoisted up to sit on your hip. You’re still rather pleased with yourself for having flirted it out of the carnie, even though you’re not quite sure what you’re going to do with it, and carrying it around for the rest of the night is possibly going to become a bit of a hindrance. 

You cut between two game booths, slipping into the shadowed path that runs along the backs of the games, like an alley between the ring toss games facing one way and the basketball and shooting games facing the other. The cotton candy booth is visible at the end. 

You have to step over wires, bags of vacuum-sealed prizes, a crate that’s surrounded by cigarette butts. The dings and chimes, alarm sounds and cries of joy all sound muffled, leaving you feeling a bit apart from the carnival despite being right in the heart of it. 

A figure melts out of the shadows, suddenly keeping perfect stride with you. 

You gasp, twisting around with the bear between you and this shadow-born devil. 

“Me again,” Donghyeok laughs. 

He’s got his hands tucked into his pockets. The devil horns are concealed by a hood. He’s wearing a leather jacket that has black wings stitched into the back panel. He could pass for normal, you think as your heart settles back into a more normal rhythm, if only his eyes weren’t still a deep red with his pupils reflecting light like an animal’s eyes at night. 

“Donghyeok.” You almost collapse against the back of one of the game tents. 

His lips curl around the sound of your name. You like the sound of that — his voice, your name. 

You just stand there staring at him for a moment, amazed that he’s actually here. In the days after your near-sacrifice, you’d almost convinced yourself that Donghyeok had been nothing more than a figment of your imagination used to soften the trauma of that night a little. But here he is again. Real. In the flesh. 

“Are you keeping out of trouble?” He asks, and when you nod, he scoffs. “But you’re back here walking by yourself? Do you know what kinds of people are drawn to work these carnivals? The transient lifestyle calls to some pretty awful people.” He turns to look back along the path you’ve been walking in this makeshift alleyway. 

Several feet back, there’s a slumped over figure where there hadn’t been before. And the longer you look, the more you realize it’s that cute carnie that had given you the bear.

“Don’t worry, baby, I’ve got your back.” Donghyeok pats your right shoulder, his skin hot against yours. “You should get back to your friends before they start worrying. Here, this is for you.” 

Out of thin air, he draws a large fluffy pink cotton candy, holding it out to you. 

Donghyeok escorts you back towards your friends, and he blends in with the crowd, looking perfectly human except for his eyes. His shoulder bumps against yours. He chatters and laughs with you. You find it so curious the way that your heart skips each time you look at him. 

Hours later, once you’re safely ensconced at home, you notice that the center of your sunflower marking on your shoulder is darker than it used to be, almost like you’d gotten it shaded in. 

Donghyeok again, you’re sure. 

You recall his hand on your shoulder, the gentle but pleasant burn of his skin on yours. 

You turn your head, resting your cheek against your shoulder. The center of the sunflower is warm against your cheek. 

A few weeks later, you’re certain your family thinks you’re crazy. You’ve not seen Donghyeok again since that night at the carnival, and honestly, you’re beginning to feel very Bella Swan in New Moon about the situation. You’re about to start throwing yourself into harm’s way just to see if Donghyeok will make an appearance to save you; although, you have a strong suspicion that if he knew you were doing dangerous things intentionally, he would make a point of not showing up. 

So, instead of trying to cross paths with dangerous men (again), you decide to go to the library and local bookstores and pull any books you can find on how to summon a demon. You do research online, printing out pages and pages of summoning rituals. You’ve got a whole wall of your bedroom dedicated to the stuff.

“There is something very wrong with you,” your dad says one afternoon when he sees it all. “You survived that satanist dick. Why would you put yourself through this?”

You’re pretty sure your family and friends think you’re doing this to torture yourself. You can tell they’re all worried for you, all of them concerned about what path you’re taking.

But you’re not diving headfirst into satanism or anything like that really. You just want to summon one demon in particular – a chaos demon named Haechan who has asked you personally to call him Donghyeok.

You seek out a different ritual than the one performed when you first met him. You don’t want to have to sacrifice a virgin even if it only means a few drops of voluntary blood; that veers too close to the sacrifice you’d almost found yourself to be in the woods. 

Eventually, you find a source online that suggests a few specific crystals, certain herbs, fire and chalk and a spell in a language that you’ll have to teach yourself. But it seems doable. You just have to find a shop for all of those things, and then you’ll summon Donghyeok. You just want to see him again. You’re drawn to him, and maybe it’s because he saved you so you’ve got some weird type of twist on Stockholm Syndrome, or maybe it’s this sunflower he marked on your shoulder, the roots it’s put down inside you making you want to see him more and more, thirsting for him like a desert plant in a drought. 

You find a shop perfectly suited to your needs. The woman running the place seems quirky enough that you don’t have any qualms about telling her everything — what you’re looking for, how you’re going to use it, why you’re using it — and you’re obsessed with the gleeful twinkle in her eye as she dances around the shop, gathering the items you’ve listed, plucking them from dark corners, from a bay of windows, from bunches of herbs hanging from the ceiling. 

“I do have to warn you,” she says as she carefully packs it all into a bag for you, her voice dipping towards a serious tone to say, “Some demons are always listening for a call, even if it’s not for them, especially when it’s a pretty girl like you calling with almost no taint in your blood. Just know, dear, that when you call for your demon, someone else might try reaching through. So be careful when you speak the spell. Clear pronunciation, clear focus and determination.”

She pats your hand tenderly before you leave, and she wishes you well. 

You set up the ritual in your bedroom. You push all the furniture out of the center of the room, roll back the rug that usually covers the floor beneath your bed. You sketch out the symbols in chalk on the hardwood floor, you set up the crystals exactly according to the diagram on the website, placing candles exactly right too. You scatter herbs across the pentagram, sprinkle a few in a bowl set in the center of the ritual space, and finally you kneel beside it. 

You clear your mind except for thoughts of Donghyeok, your wish to have him in front of you, and you begin speaking the words you’ve been practicing since you found them. 

Before, they’ve felt like hollow words, but now as they fall from your lips there’s a new weight to them. 

You continue, keeping your mind set, and you strike a match, watch the flame flicker and wave as you continue speaking the spell, the foreign words feeling strange on your lips and tongue, creating a tingle that makes you feel that this must be working, that you’ll be able to see Donghyeok again. 

You drop the match into the bowl of crushed herbs in the center of the pentagram. The bowl is instantly engulfed in flame, the heat kissing your cheeks, and the final words of the spell incinerate in the air, the flames crackling and flashing a solid purple for a moment. 

You feel the air from the room disappear as the fire swirls and sparks, as the candle flames around the circle shoot up elongated and casting shadows. The crystals crack and shimmer.

And when it all falls away, when the flame in the bowl extinguishes and the candles resume their normal flame size, you look up at the demon standing above you. 

It’s not him. 

You gasp, falling back on your hands. 

The demon is fearsome, brutish. He reaches for you, gnarled red fingers clawed with filthy talons. You scramble backwards as he grabs for your sleeve, tearing the fabric when you jerk backwards. 

Suddenly the demon releases you and stands straight within the pentagram. 

“Haechan’s mark?” He utters in a garbled, deep voice straight from the pits of Hell. “You are under Haechan’s protection?”

A sharp whistle from across your bedroom draws your attention and that of the hideous demon in front of you. 

Donghyeok sits on your bed, looking relaxed as ever. He cocks his head to the side, staring down this other demon. “That’s right. She’s under my protection, so get the fuck out.”

Donghyeok flicks his fingers, and the other demon vanishes in a wave of smoke and embers. 

You can’t look away from Donghyeok lounging on your bed like it’s his throne. He’s wearing that leather jacket again, though right now his devil horns are visible poking through his dark hair. You’ve missed looking at him. 

He looks at you now too. “You called?”

“I wanted to see you,” you tell truthfully. 

“Why?” Donghyeok asks, not moving from the bed, just sitting there and watching you. 

“Well why did you mark me?” You lift your fingers to the flower on your shoulder, brushing your fingers over the petals. 

Across the room, Donghyeok’s eyelids flutter, and he rolls his head on his neck a little as if to relieve tension. “I marked you because I want you to be safe. I knew if any other demons saw my mark on you, they would leave you alone, as just evidenced.” He gestures at the pentagram. “And because I wanted you to have something to remember me by. And I like the thought of you wearing a memory of me.”

You stroke the petals of the flower again, and Donghyeok sits up on the edge of your bed, sitting forward. 

“The flower changed the last time I saw you.” You draw your finger up to the center, darker now than it had been when Donghyeok first marked you the night you met. “The center has color now.”

“I know.” He leans forward, but doesn’t leave your bed, though he seems to just be hanging onto the very edge of it. He doesn’t explain more, just looks at you as if waiting for more. 

You climb to your feet, picking your way through the candles and crystals and herbs, and you come to stand just in front of Donghyeok. He raises his gaze to your face, his hands are planted on either side of his thighs, and he doesn’t say a word as you reach out a hand, as you first touch his cheek with just your fingertips, and then you move them along his jaw, up into his hair. 

Donghyeok’s eyes flutter shut, a sigh falls from his lips. 

Your fingers find his horns, and gently you run your fingers along them both. 

His hands fly to your hips, a breath catching audibly in his throat. “What are you doing?” He asks, voice tight but not in a way like he wants you to stop. 

“You’re beautiful, Donghyeok,” you can’t resist saying, “And you’ve marked me, so maybe I want to return the favor.”

Donghyeok’s lips draw into a smirk. “Mark me how? Who are you trying to show that I’m yours?”

Your heart thunders, heat racing through your body at the sound of that. I’m yours, he said. “Say it again,” you demand. 

“Say what?” Donghyeok’s eyes open at last, flicking open and lifting to meet your gaze. “That marking me would show others that I’m yours? That I belong to you in some way?” His hands tighten in your hips pleasantly, and you shuffle a little more forward into the V of his open thighs. Donghyeok smiles up at you, saying, “Baby, you’re mine. And you have been since the night we met, since I put my mark on your shoulder. It’s only fair that you put a claim on me too. Do your worst.”

Challenge burns in his red eyes, and heat flows through you, rivers of fire that all lead to one point, settling low in your belly — a pool of burning need that you’ve never felt with anyone else before. 

With your fingers still in Donghyeok’s hair, you tip his head back. His lips pull into a wider grin, a soft sound of amusement, and then, “I forgot, baby, you’re a virgin. Are you intimidated by the thought of marking me?”

“No,�� you groan. “Shut up.” 

You push Donghyeok’s shoulders, and he flops onto his back in your bed. 

God, he just looks like a guy, any normal guy that you might have found and invited back to your bed. And you’ve had a man in your bed before. You’ve had make out sessions, had heated heavy petting that never led anywhere. You’ve had hickeys, and given out your fair share of them too. 

But Donghyeok is Donghyeok. There’s definitely something intimidating about the confident way he’s looking at you, the sexy look in his eye as he watches you — not just a look that says that he knows he’s sexy, but even more arousing is that the look in his eyes tells you that he finds you incredibly sexy. 

You sink onto your bed on your knees, straddling the demon’s lap. Donghyeok lifts his hands up, interlacing his fingers behind his head as he watches you, and the expression on his face is just stoking that fire inside of you. 

“Can you sit up?” You ask. “Take your jacket off?”

“Mm,” Donghyeok hums. “I like when you tell me what to do.”

Your belly swoops, and his grin widens. 

He sits up, and you find his smile just inches in front of you. He shrugs out of his jacket, pushing it off the bed, and then he’s sitting here beneath you in a plain white tee, the denim of his jeans rubs against your thighs. And he’s right here. Right here. Lips just in front of you, and your hands drift back to touch him, to feel the warmth and breadth of his shoulders, and then your thumbs are sweeping in to trace over his Adam’s apple, which bobs when he swallows and breathes in sharply. Your fingers slide around to the nape of his neck, just pushing into his hair, and Donghyeok makes a noise so quiet yet so filled with desire. 

You’ve been sitting here watching the path of your hands, but now you look at his lips so full and moist in front of you. And then you look just a bit higher to his eyes. 

Perhaps the demonic bloody red of them should scare you, but they don’t. They stare into yours and you can’t bring yourself to give a damn about the fact that Donghyeok is a demon and not just a man. 

That doesn’t matter to you one bit when you finally press your lips to his. 

Donghyeok immediately kisses you back, opening up to your kiss, but he lets you take the lead, lets you do what you want with him. He moans when you push your hands higher into his hair at the back of his head, moans when you suck on his tongue, moans when you press your chest against his. 

You moan when his hands finally find your hips again. Donghyeok drags your hips across the front of his pants, and you break the kiss to let out a shuddery moan. 

“Okay?” He murmurs, lips falling down to your jaw, leaving butterfly kisses along the underside. 

“Yes,” you sigh, “Do it again.”

Donghyeok drags you over his crotch again, rolling his hips up too, and you can feel him then, his erection beginning to press against the front of his jeans. He does it again and again, and after a few moments, you pick up the rhythm, taking over as you simulate riding him, and you bring his mouth back onto yours. 

Again, Donghyeok is happy to let you lead, to control what’s happening. 

He just touches you without pushing you, kisses you at the pace you set, although that doesn’t mean he’s a passive participant in all of this. He’s reacting and vocal, occasionally nipping at your bottom lip, occasionally bucking his hips out of rhythm with your moves. It’s like he’s giving you little peeks into his desire for you, moments when his cool demon facade slips. 

Donghyeok moans when you leave his mouth behind to instead kiss his neck. His hands come to rest on your ass while you keep rolling and grinding down on his straining erection, and you’re feeling the tightening in your belly, you know if you don’t stop soon you’re going to cum like this. But it wouldn’t be the first time. You’ve had boyfriends and casual relationships before that respected your virginity, that had been content with things like this, found it hot to cum when fully clothed. 

Donghyeok seems to be in the same mindset. 

His golden skin beneath your lips is hot, and he moans your name again and again, rolling his hips up to meet each downward push of yours. You rock your hips more frantically, losing control as your orgasm rises. You bite at his throat as you cum, and Donghyeok’s hands on your ass keep you moving, keeping up with the push and pull of your pussy grinding over his erection. 

Your body is still tingling as you roll off of him, as you lie down in your bed and pull him over you. “More,” you demand, “I want more.”

“Are you sure?” The demon above you asks. 

You crave more from him. Donghyeok has you hotter than any man ever has before. 

He kisses you without warning, jolting forward and sweeping you into a dramatic, hungry kiss. You want him, and you pour that desire into the kiss, impatient and horny for him to give you more. 

You don’t wait for Donghyeok to start undressing you, you reach down and unfasten your shorts, maneuvering them off your hips and down your legs. The shirt’s a bit more difficult to rid yourself of, but Donghyeok obligingly breaks the kiss to let you pull it over your head, and while you’re in this position with space between you, you reach for the hem of his shirt. 

“Can I?” You ask, tucking your fingers beneath the hem. “I want to have all of you.”

Donghyeok’s eyes flash flaming red. His voice is rough with emotion when he says simply, “Yes.”

You drag his shirt over his head without another moment wasted. And then your hands are back in his hair, stroking the curve of his horns as Donghyeok crushes his mouth to yours again. 

Donghyeok grinds against your thigh while the two of you make out, and you have to pull one of your hands from his hair, seeking out one of his hands to pull down between your legs. 

You’ve been touched like this before too. Over the panties, an ex rubbing your clit and stroking along your slit with the thin fabric between you and him. You’d managed a weak, unsatisfactory orgasm from it after a drawn out attempt, and decided to end things with him a few days later citing that you just didn’t feel the chemistry. 

But presently, the moment Donghyeok’s fingers make contact with your clit over your panties, your brain is buzzing. Every nerve ending in your body is alert. 

Donghyeok kisses you through every gasp and sigh. He smiles when you whine and buck your hips, when you circle your hips and grab at his wrist to guide his fingers towards your wet entrance, to the spot where your panties are absolutely soaked through. He kisses the corner of your mouth, and teases, “Do you want me to continue?”

You push away your panties, almost tearing them in your rush to be rid of them. 

This much you’ve never done before. Never done penetration even with a man’s fingers. 

Whether Donghyeok can read that in you, or if he sees the slight anxious anticipation in your gaze, he tenderly kisses your lips, sufficiently distracting you as he slicks his fingers against your bare pussy. This is a first for you too. Bare fingers and bare pussy, slick wetness making the glide so much easier and more pleasant. 

Donghyeok kisses you and touches you until you’re whimpering, reaching for his wrist. “Inside me, put them inside me,” you beg, urging his hand lower. 

It doesn’t make sense for a demon to be so gentle, but he is. Donghyeok eases first a single finger inside you, then another. He leaves your lips to kiss down your throat and chest, kissing lower and lower, drawing down your body until his mouth is right there and he licks your clit. 

You’re not sure if it’s just the experience of oral sex or if it’s because it’s Donghyeok, but your entire body lights up as he licks your clit, as he thrusts his fingers into you again. He takes his time with you, filling you with his fingers, curling them inside you and brushing a spot that makes you gasp, body jerking at the incredible sensation. 

Donghyeok laughs, delighted by how you’re reacting. He kisses your hips and your belly, slowly works his way back up, and you swear it feels like he kisses every part of you. His fingers press inside your pussy, slow thrusts until you’re begging for more, raking your fingers through his hair while he’s kissing your belly. Your fingers find his horns, and you use them like handles to guide his head back down. 

He’s laughing still, thoroughly enjoying you taking control, guiding him to where you want him. 

You arch your back, rolling your hips down against his face as Donghyeok sucks your clit between his lips, his fingers suddenly fucking into you at a faster speed, skilled at touching you exactly right. 

A second orgasm sweeps through you, and you ride it out on his face and fingers. 

When you push at Donghyeok’s devil horns, he backs off, kneeling up between your legs, and he gazes down at you while he licks his lips, and brings his fingers up to his mouth. You can’t look away, completely enraptured as he licks between his fingers, as he sucks them into his mouth. His eyes are hot, raking over your body. 

You want him bad. 

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Donghyeok asks, pulling his fingers out of his mouth. His hand drifts down to the front of his pants, and you watch him give himself a squeeze. “Looking like you want to eat me, baby.”

You want to take a bite out of him. Well, you at least can’t fight the urge to bite him, to leave the imprint of your teeth in the curve of his shoulder, to bite his neck again since he’d seemed to like that earlier. You don’t want to eat him, but you sure want to take all of him, to have this devil inside you. 

Donghyeok slides the heel of his palm along his clothed erection, and you decide right then in that moment that you’ve had enough of waiting. 

“I’m ready,” you tell him. 

Donghyeok blinks, and again he looks more human than demon. “Ready? Like for… for sex?”

You nod. 

“You want to lose your virginity with me?” Donghyeok clarifies. You nod, but that’s still not enough for him. “I need to hear you say it.”

“Donghyeok, please will you have sex with me. I’m ready to let go of the idea of my virginity. I’m ready to have sex, and I want it to be with you.” Can you be more clear?

Yes, you’ve waited a long time for this. You’ve picked and chosen, selecting this actual demon over some normal men. But despite Donghyeok’s demonhood, he’s treated you better and been more considerate than any of the men you’ve come close to considering doing this with before. You’ve just been waiting for the right man to come along, and the right man in this case just happens to be a horny, red-eyed demon. 

Donghyeok kisses you once again, and then he waits, holding just above you until you reach up and pull him back in. He’s smiling when you kiss him, and again, he lets you take over, lets you touch him and do what you want. So when you run your hands along his ribs, when your fingertips reach the waistband of his jeans, Donghyeok just moans happily. 

His hands join yours in the effort to push his pants down, and the demon above you laughs delightfully, kissing you thoroughly making you forget the slight nerves you feel at the prospect of finally doing this, finally having sex, instead you’re just excited, just laughing and moaning along with him. 

As soon as Donghyeok’s pants are slid down and kicked off, you reach for his dick, touching him the way an ex-boyfriend of yours had liked. He’d always told you to make it all about him, taught you to do things the way that he liked. 

“Wait,” Donghyeok says, “You don’t have to do all that. I’m already worked up for you, baby. You may think being a demon comes with supernatural endurance or something, but in this I’m no better than a human man. You’re gorgeous, and that makes me want to just…” He cuts himself off by kissing you, but you think you get what he means. 

He finds you beautiful, and not only that, but beautiful enough that he feels at risk of cumming too fast if you keep touching him before he’s inside you. 

“Then fuck me.” You whisper the words to his lips. “Take me as a virgin sacrifice, Donghyeok. Like I was meant to be.”

Donghyeok scoffs, kissing you again and then he’s moving. His hand brushes yours away from his dick, and he rolls his hips forward, pressing the tip against your entrance without actually entering you. 

“Are you sure?”

“I find it beyond charming that you’re a polite, gentlemanly chaos demon, Donghyeok. Yes, I’m sure.” You shift your hips, circling them down, and Donghyeok’s dick sinks in. 

He keeps going, pressing in deeper. He’s watching your face, and you hold his gaze while you adjust to the full feeling, the different feeling of having something this thick and deep inside you. Not a bad feeling, just a different kind. 

“Don’t stop!” You gasp when Donghyeok just goes still inside you. 

He holds himself above you, just looking down at you with this expression and all of these emotions in his red eyes. 

“Why are you looking at me like that?” You ask, lifting a hand up to cover his eyes, but it does nothing to block his radiant smile. “Are you gonna move or just dock yourself in me?”

Donghyeok laughs again, and you’re quickly realizing that’s your favorite sound. “Maybe I’m taking in your virgin sacrifice,” he teases, “Doing my demon thing.”

“Right, sure. But can you hurry up with your demon thing?” You move your hand from his eyes, pushing your fingers into his hair to find his horns again. Donghyeok shudders with pleasure as you stroke your fingers over the ridges on one horn and then the other. “You’re not acting very demonic, you know. Treating me all gently and tenderly.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. You’d rather I bend you into strange shapes and fuck you hard and rough for your first time?” Donghyeok pulls his hips back and pushes back in roughly. It stings a bit, but you don’t mind all that much. And then he does it again. “Like this?”

“Sure,” you whimper, “Fuck me like you’ve done to all the other girls you’ve ever fucked.”

Donghyeok simply kisses you, getting you to melt beneath his lips, and then he moves again, thrusting into you. You gasp into the kiss, and Donghyeok takes advantage of that to deepen the kiss, making out with you as he fucks you, his dick reaching places that you didn’t even realize existed. He’s got your legs spread wide, his hips crashing against you repeatedly, drawing pretty moans from you with each thrust against your sweet spot. 

And once you get used to this new sensation of having a dick inside you, you really enjoy it. Donghyeok’s tongue being down your throat helps a bit too, his skill with kissing is definitely distracting you from the less pleasant sensations. 

Your whole body tingles each time that Donghyeok buries himself to the hilt in you. He grinds forward, stimulating your clit, externally and internally. He touches your boobs, but that doesn’t do a whole lot for you. You keep your hands in his hair, on his horns, and that seems to drive him mad with lust; each time you’ve got your fingers on his black devil horns, Donghyeok jerks, fucking into you a little harder, a little out of control. 

It’s one of those times that you’ve got a hand curled around one of his horns, your other hand cradling the back of his neck as Donghyeok kisses your collarbones, that he moans so beautifully for you. “Fuck,” he moans, “I want to give you everything, baby. Everything I’ve got, all for you.”

You want it, whatever that means. Whatever Donghyeok has, you’ll take it. 

A moment later, he cums, heat flooding your belly, sticky and slick as he pulls out, streaking it across your inner thighs and your pussy. 

“Everything, baby,” he murmurs, kissing along your collarbone to your right shoulder. He rolls his hips forward, filling you with his dick once more right as he kisses the sunflower mark he gave you that first night. 

Fire ignited throughout your body, pleasure and desire tangling together, ramping up higher and higher. Your climax tears through you like a wildfire, and Donghyeok fucks you through it, hips driving against yours; his teeth dig against your shoulder, his tongue following to soothe the bitemark. You can only hold onto him, hold tighter, keep moving your body with his to keep the waves of pleasure coming. 

Even once you’re coming down from your orgasm, your whole body is still tingling and warm. Donghyeok is all but stuck to you, both of you are all sweaty so your skin sticks together. His lips press to the sunflower mark he left on you, his hands slide against your ribs, leaving a hot tingle deep under your skin, and you have a feeling he’s leaving another mark, another claim or protection. 

You can’t get a good look at the marks he’s left on you, but you can feel them all – the warmth of the sunflower on your shoulder, which you’re pretty sure looks a bit more yellow in the petals now than it did earlier; there are the hickeys and bitemarks Donghyeok left on you; now these new marks on your ribs, which look like a swirl of small inky spots that are resolving into anything familiar, and on the other side you swear it’s a fine-line rendition of the sun. 

You wish you could do the same and leave a mark on him, more than the sparse hickeys you left on his throat earlier. 

For right now, you settle for just holding him. You wrap your arms around him, and Donghyeok tucks his face into your shoulder, moaning softly as he rolls onto his side, bringing you with him. Your legs are still tangled, bodies pressed together, his dick still inside you though he’s gone soft. 

“Call me crazy,” Donghyeok whispers to you, “I know we’ve only met twice before tonight, but I feel like we have a really good connection. I like you.”

Your heart races at the confession. “I like you too.”

You feel his lips curve into a smile against your skin. “Good. I’d hate for you to have just given up your virginity on a guy you don’t even like. A demon, at that.”

“It doesn’t bother me that you’re a demon yknow. You’re more decent than most of the guys I’ve known.” You trace your fingers down Donghyeok’s back, feeling two long angled scars by his shoulder blades, like that’s where his wings come and go from. “If anything, I don’t understand why a demon is interested in me.”

Donghyeok lifts his head, and he looks you in the eye as he says, “I told you earlier. You’re gorgeous, and the moment that asshole tried to sacrifice you to me, I caught a glimpse of your soul. You’re a pure soul, so utterly good that it pains me to look at you with all the layers peeled back, but not in a bad way. It hurts me the way it hurts to look at something you aspire toward; looking at you is like looking at the stars and knowing that you’ll never be able to hold one in your hand.”

But his hands are on you now. 

His fingers trace over your ribs, and you can tell by the tingle now that he’s definitely left a new mark on you. 

You take up his hand, pulling it up to your lips, and you place a kiss in the center of his palm. And when you look at his face, you see right there on his cheek that maybe. He’s closer to holding the stars than he thinks. You trace the constellation of moles on his cheek and down his throat, so similar to one that you see in the night sky. 

Donghyeok leans his cheek into your hand, and he holds you a little closer. He presses his forehead to yours. 

The candles behind you on the floor have burned down to nothing but puddles of cooling wax. The herbs and crystals and chalk symbols can be picked up and wiped away in the morning. But for tonight, you hold a demon in your arms, completely at ease in his warm embrace.

a/n: I'm sorry for the long wait on this one! Day 9 is finally being posted on Day 11, which has definitely put me behind, and is making me reconsider my decision to do this for this month. But I really liked writing this one! I've been very Haechan-biased since The Dream Show 3, so I needed to write this tbh.

If you notice any errors or if you feel I should include some more tags/content warnings, please let me know!

I hope you enjoyed! Reblogs are deserving of my eternal gratitude, likes are greatly appreciated, and your thoughts and comments are always welcome !

[eu-nicola]

Morocco part 2

summary: Rafe says goodbye to Sofia and leaves her in outer banks while he goes to Morocco, where you are also and the danger that happens there rekindles the spark both of you thought had lost

warnings: mention of death, weapons, cheating, pregnancy, kidnapping, etc. only things of s4

word counter: 8530

author's note: spoilers of s4, many things have been changed but there are still spoilers, english is not my first language, this is long so get ready to read

The heavy silence of the room enveloped you as you sat there, sitting on the bed, staring at your hands as if you could erase what had happened. He had killed someone. You still felt it on your skin, the tension of that moment, the fear, the adrenaline, and in the end, the inevitability of the action. You knew you had done it in self-defense, that there was no other option. The guy was going to kill you or someone else, and you didn’t let yourself let that happen. But still, the feeling of having taken a life crushed you. 

Rafe had stayed close, always by your side, as if he knew what you were feeling without you having to say it. He had been there, watching, but he hadn’t said anything about it. None of the Pogues had said anything. In a world where survival was the only thing that mattered, everyone knew that the lines between right and wrong could become blurred. It had been an extreme situation, and in the end, only the weight of what had been done remained. 

You laid back on the bed, staring at the ceiling feeling like you were trapped in your own thoughts, in a tangle of doubts you couldn’t untangle. Rafe was beside you, silent, but his presence was comforting. His words hadn’t come yet, but that didn’t matter. You knew you didn’t need him to tell you anything; not at that moment. What you needed was to be there, with someone who wouldn’t judge you, who understood that sometimes decisions weren’t so simple. 

“You did it because you had to,” Rafe said, finally breaking the silence, his voice low, but firm. As if he had read your thoughts, as if he had felt everything that was going through your head. He approached you, placing a hand on your right hand, giving you the feeling that, despite everything you had done, you weren’t alone. “I know you didn’t want to, but there was no other way out.”

You looked at him, searching for something else in his eyes. A word, a comfort, a way to make the weight lighten, even if just a little. But as you looked at him, instead of finding judgment or disapproval, you found something unexpected: understanding. Rafe understood what had happened, even without having to explain it.

“I know,” you whispered, feeling a lump in your throat. “I did it because I had to. But I didn’t want to. I don’t want it to haunt me.”

He nodded, his gaze locked with yours. “Sometimes you don’t have a choice. And I know that if you had stopped, if you hadn’t, you’d be worse off now. But that doesn’t make you any less… human.”

The words weren’t what you expected to hear, but they carried a different weight. In that moment, you felt like maybe, just maybe, the guilt wasn’t so absolute.

You felt him close to you, and before you could react, he sat next to you on the bed, his arm around you with a comfort you hadn’t expected. There was something about the way he held you that made you relax, if only for a moment. “We’re the survivors, you know?” he said softly. “What we’ve done, what we’ve seen, what we’ve had to do to get here… all of that makes us who we are. And if you ever ask yourself the question of whether you did the right thing, I want you to remember that it was always about surviving.”

Your eyes filled with tears, not from weakness, but from the intensity of everything you felt. The weight of the decisions, the inevitability of the circumstances, and the fact that sometimes, the only thing left to do was to keep going, even if the burden was heavy.

“Thank you,” you said quietly, barely a whisper. You didn’t know what else to say.

The Pogues hadn’t weighed in, nor had you asked them to. They had seen what you did, they knew. The truth was that at that moment, no one dared to judge, because everyone knew that in those kinds of situations, life or death wasn’t always in your hands. You had done what was necessary, what instinct told you to do to protect yourself, but still, you couldn’t escape what had happened.

Rafe lay down beside you, his presence giving you the space to breathe, to rest, to not think so much about how irreversible it had been. “It’s done,” he said, unhurriedly, without pressure. “Now, all that’s left is to move on.”

Little by little, you felt the weight lighten, although it didn’t disappear completely.

After that, you had recovered quickly. The guilt, confusion, and restlessness you felt after what had happened slowly faded away. It wasn’t easy, but you knew you couldn’t stay stuck in that moment. Time was still ticking, and you had to move on. 

What really helped you recover so quickly was the conversation with your father. Even though things between you hadn’t always been easy, hearing his voice on the other end of the line gave you the calm you needed. You told him what had happened, what you had had to do to defend yourself. You didn’t go into all the details, but you did tell him the gist. The silence on the other end of the line lasted a few seconds before you heard his voice, firm and calm.

“I’m proud of you,” he told you, and those words resonated with you more than you imagined. “You did what you had to do. There are no regrets that are going to change what happened. You’re my daughter, and I will always be your biggest support.”

Something in his voice, in those simple yet powerful words, made you feel like everything you had done was, in some way, justified. You had done the right thing, even if it wasn’t easy to accept. What you needed most at that moment was his support, and hearing those words from him gave you the strength to let go of the guilt. You reminded yourself that you had acted in self-defense, that you had done it to survive. It helped you regain control of your thoughts, to not get caught up in what had happened.

“Thank you, Dad,” you said, the words coming out with a calmness you didn’t know you had. “I really needed to hear that.”

When you hung up, you felt different. You knew the weight of what had happened wouldn’t go away completely, but something inside you had changed. Your father’s approval, his pride in what you had done, gave you a push to keep going without looking back. You didn’t want to stay stuck in guilt.

When Rafe saw you calmer, more focused, he asked if everything was okay. “It seems like something has changed,” he said, watching intently.

“Yeah,” you answered, a small smile creeping onto your face. “My father talked to me, I feel… good. More at peace, I guess.”

Rafe looked at you for a moment before nodding, as if he understood what that meant to you. He didn’t say anything else, knowing you didn’t need any more words at that moment. Your father’s had been enough. Now, you could move on.

In one of those calls with your father, which Rafe knew nothing about, you learned something that left you paralyzed. Sofia had betrayed Rafe. The news hit you like a blow, every word from your father reverberating in your mind.

Your father, as always, recounted the events with a calm that only he could maintain. He didn't go into unnecessary details, but he made the essentials clear: Sofia had betrayed Rafe. This was more than just disloyalty; it was an act that put not only Rafe at risk, but you and everyone else's as well.

The knowledge hit you hard, a mix of fury and pain that you tried to hold back. You couldn't help but feel protective of Rafe, despite how complicated their relationship had been in the past and still was. Watching him go through another betrayal, especially one this deep, made you question whether you should tell him or keep quiet for a while longer.

You decided not to tell him. Sofia's betrayal was a bomb that could make him explode and you didn't need that now. That night, Rafe was sitting on the edge of the bed, his profile silhouetted against the dim light of the room. His eyes settled on you with a softness you didn't see often.

“Are you okay?” His voice broke the silence, direct but with a hint of concern that he rarely showed. “You’ve been tense all night.”

Your heart raced a little, but you tried to stay calm. You had rehearsed in your mind over and over how to evade his questions without raising suspicion. You gave him a tired smile, one that you hoped was convincing enough.

“I’m just tired,” you replied, and though it sounded almost believable, you noticed his blue eyes narrowed slightly, as if he were trying to read past your words. Rafe was observant, and the thought that he could tell the lie made your throat go dry.

There was a moment of tense silence, where neither of you said anything. Finally, he relaxed a little and stood up to approach you. “Let’s rest then,” he murmured, placing a gentle hand on your back and guiding you towards the bed. You let yourself be led, relieved that he didn’t press any further.

You kicked off your shoes and slipped under the sheets, feeling the coolness of the fabric against your tired skin. Rafe did the same, moving beside you with familiar movements. The bed, though not the most comfortable, was a refuge at the moment.

When he turned off the lamp, the room was plunged into darkness, and the sounds of the night in the Moroccan city remained as a soft backdrop. You felt his body close to yours, the warmth emanating from it comforting.

You turned slightly, turning your back to him as you tried to calm your breathing and quiet the whirlwind of thoughts in your mind. However, Rafe, in his silent and protective way, noticed your uneasiness and moved closer. His arm went around your waist and pulled you towards him, pressing your back against his chest. The contact, so natural and comforting, made your worries fade away for a moment. You felt his warm breath against your hair, and a barely audible whisper escaped his lips.

“Whatever you’re worried about, we’ll take care of it,” he murmured sleepily, as if the words were an involuntary reflection of his thoughts.

You closed your eyes and swallowed the lump in your throat. You didn't know how long you could keep the secret, but that night, at least, you decided to hold on to the feeling of being safe in his arms. You responded to the hug, settling in a little more and allowing yourself a moment of peace.

Slowly, tiredness overcame anxiety, and you both fell asleep.

It wasn’t long before the truth came out. Rafe was cunning, too cunning, and even though you had done your best to keep it a secret, the built-up tension and the little clues you missed had him starting to put two and two together.

It was one afternoon, as the two of you were going over some notes at a makeshift table, when everything exploded. Rafe was focused on the papers in front of him, his brow furrowed and his jaw clenched. There was something about his posture that made you feel a twinge of unease. Without looking up, he murmured, “Is there something you want to tell me?”

The seemingly casual question made you stop dead in your tracks. You knew he could read the subtleties, the changes in your behavior, and you understood in that instant that he already suspected something. You tried to keep your composure, keeping your expression from giving you away.

“What do you mean?” You asked, your tone trying to sound carefree, but the slight hesitation in your voice made him raise his head. His blue eyes caught you, cold and calculating, searching for answers.

“You know, right?” His voice was low, controlled, but charged with an intensity that made the room seem smaller. “About Sofia.”

The silence that followed was deafening. You didn’t need to answer; he already knew. The tension in his body turned into suppressed fury, and he slammed a fist on the table, causing papers to fly and some objects to fall to the floor.

“Since when?” he exclaimed, taking a step towards you. There was no physical aggression in his gesture, but the energy he emanated was enough to make you back off. “Since when did you know and decide not to tell me?”

“Rafe, I… I did it for you.” The words came out in a rush, clumsy and full of guilt. “I didn’t want to ruin what little you had. I thought it wasn’t the time…”

“The time?” His laugh was dry, humorless. “All this time I’ve been struggling, trusting someone who betrayed me, and you knew it! What kind of support is that?”

The hurt in his words was evident. You knew his trust, something so fragile and complicated, had been shattered once again, and this time, you were part of the reason. You tried to get closer, reach out to touch his arm, but he pulled away, as if your touch burned.

“Rafe, it wasn’t easy for me. I wanted to protect you.”

“You don’t need to protect me. I need you to be honest with me. I need you to tell me if you know something that affects me. How am I supposed to trust you now?”

The question cut through you like a blade. The pain in his voice, mixed with rage and disappointment, left you speechless. There was no justification enough to calm him down. All you could do was watch as the distance between you grew larger, deeper.

Finally, Rafe stepped back, putting a hand to his head and sighing in frustration. “This isn’t going to work,” he muttered, his voice barely a whisper. He looked at you one last time, his eyes filled with a mix of emotions you couldn’t quite decipher, and before you could stop him, he turned and walked out the door. 

You knew Rafe better than anyone. You knew that when things got tough, he tended to walk away, to hide from everyone. You set off, visiting several places. But in all those places, the answer was the same: nothing. 

The heat of Morocco stifled you, sweat running down your forehead, and anxiety made the air feel thicker. Still, you didn’t stop. You asked around in shops and at street vendors, and though a few curious glances and vague answers tried to calm your search, nothing was enough. 

You decided to go check on the boys. If anyone might know something, they would have at least a lead. When you arrived, you found them gathered in a corner of a coffee shop with the windows fogged up from the heat. The atmosphere of the room, normally filled with humor, felt different when you entered. John B was the first to notice you, and his expression hardened at the sight of your countenance.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, his brows furrowed in concern.

“Have you seen Rafe?” The question came out in a tone you couldn’t soften. Your voice, cracked with urgency, had everyone exchanging quick glances.

Sarah, who was sitting next to Kiara, looked away, uncomfortable with the subject. “No, I haven’t seen him since… since yesterday,” she admitted, her voice barely a murmur.

Pope, who had been quiet, nodded. “No one’s seen him. I thought he was with you.”

There was no sign of him, not a trace, not a word. You left the café before anyone could say anything else, frustration and worry fighting for control of your thoughts.

You were so focused on finding Rafe that concern for your own safety took a backseat. The city, with its narrow streets and maze of passages, had become a space where every shadow seemed to lengthen, and every sound multiplied into echoes. But you were so absorbed in your thoughts, so consumed by guilt and the need to find him, that you didn't notice what was happening around you.

The murmur of voices, the soft creaking of footsteps behind you, began so subtly that you barely noticed. The night was thick, the heat and sweat clinging to your skin, making you feel more tired than you were. As you walked down a dimly lit street, the streetlights cast your shadow against the walls of the buildings, a long, lonely silhouette.

It was only when you turned a corner into a darker alley that a cold sensation ran down your spine. A sixth sense warned you that something wasn't right. You paused for a moment, listening to the silence that seemed to breathe around you. You weren't alone. Confirmation came the instant you took a step back and felt a hand grab you tightly by the arm. 

You tried to get away, your first instinct was to fight, but you didn't have time to react. Another hand landed on your mouth, stifling the scream that choked in your throat. Three men surrounded you, their faces barely visible under the shadows of their hoods. One of them spoke to you in a low, threatening tone, in a language you barely recognized, but the message was clear: you weren't to resist. 

They pushed you forward, forcing you to walk as your senses went to full blast. Adrenaline pumped through your veins, making you tremble with rage and fear at the same time. You tried to observe, to memorize details, anything that might help you escape later: the tattoo on the neck of the man holding you, the smell of tobacco and sweat, the way they clenched their fists. But they were experts; there was no room for error.

The ride was short, but it felt like an eternity. Finally, they bundled you into a car, dark and dusty, and tied your hands with rough rope that bit into your skin. You felt the engine roar and the car jerk as it started, taking you away from familiar streets, away from any chance of help. You tried to stay calm, to control your breathing and not let fear paralyze you.

In the dim light of the car, one of the men spoke to the driver in a low tone, while another watched you closely, his piercing gaze searching for any sign of defiance. The city lights faded, and the landscape grew more arid, more lonely, with each passing mile. The idea that you were being taken to an unknown place, with no one knowing where you were, hit you with the force of a wave. 

What followed after that car ride was even more disconcerting. You were taken to an abandoned building, with weathered stone walls and broken windows that let in the dry night air. You were pushed inside, your feet stumbling over the threshold, and you fell to your knees on the dusty floor. You tried to get up, but one of the men's rough hands pushed you back down.

The space was large and dark, lit only by a dim light filtering in from a hanging lamp in the center. The men began talking to each other, their deep, rapid voices filling the room, but you couldn’t understand what they were saying. The language barrier made you feel even more vulnerable, like you were in a tunnel you couldn’t get out of. You tried to catch some word you recognized, something that would give you a clue as to their intent, but it was in vain. Desperation began to set in, digging into your chest like a thorn. 

As they argued, you took a moment to assess your situation. The ropes binding your hands were strong, but if you could find a weak spot, maybe you could break free. You watched the men’s faces carefully, trying to remember details: the eye patch on one, the scar on another’s cheek, the golden ring glinting on the third’s finger. But they showed no sign of empathy or doubt. Their cold, calculating gazes were diverted from you as if you were just an object, a pawn in their unknown game.

Far away from there, Rafe had returned to the place where they both stayed. The air in the room still smelled of you, a persistent memory that he tried to ignore as he moved through the space with firm steps. The rage and pain from the previous fight still burned inside him, and he repeated over and over what he had said, what you had said. However, not seeing you when he arrived, a subtle echo of worry tried to make its way into his mind. He dismissed it at first, convinced that, like him, you had only gone for a walk.

Rafe let himself fall into bed, closing his eyes as the night progressed. Dawn arrived, and with it a restlessness that he could no longer ignore. When he got up, he noticed that your side of the bed was still empty. He searched the small house for you, checking the kitchen, the makeshift living room, even the terrace where you sometimes sat to think. Nothing.

The initial annoyance turned into a shadow of fear that led him to look for the others. He headed to the place where the Pogues usually met, and found them having breakfast with tired and sleepy faces. John B looked up and saw Rafe approaching, his eyes reflecting the surprise of seeing him there so early.

“Have you seen Y/n?” Rafe asked, without preamble. His tone was firm, but there was a crack of anxiety that he couldn’t hide.

The others’ gazes met for a second before Pope answered, frowning. “No, not since last night, when she came to ask us if we had seen you.”

Rafe’s heart beat faster. Worry became a tangible weight, and he felt guilt begin to sink into him. You had been looking for him, and he, blinded by his anger, had done nothing for you. He ran a hand through his hair, breathing deeply as he tried to remain calm.

“What happened, Rafe?” Sarah asked, her eyes searching his face for answers.

Rafe gritted his teeth, his jaw set with tension. “I don’t know… but I have to find her.”

Back at the place where they had you held, the men had begun to lose patience. One of them approached you, his gaze icy as he examined you from head to toe. You tried to remain calm, even as the man crouched down to your level and issued a threat in broken, rough English. His words were fragmented, but you understood enough to know he was trying to intimidate you.

“Don’t move. Don’t… scream,” he said, his accent thick. “If you do, it will be worse for you.”

You tried to keep a neutral expression, but you couldn’t stop your hands from shaking, still bound tightly behind you. You tried not to make eye contact, knowing that any show of fear could only make the situation worse. However, he seemed to be enjoying your discomfort, a crooked, cocky grin on his face.

Just when you thought the situation couldn’t get any worse, another man entered the room. There was something about his bearing, the way the others looked at him, that suggested he was in charge. His clothes were neater, his posture more relaxed, but his eyes held a coldness that made your skin crawl.

He approached slowly, and as he stopped in front of you, you noticed that he spoke much clearer and more fluent English.

“Forgive my men,” he said in a calm but firm voice. “They don’t usually deal with foreigners, especially not a woman who butts into matters that don’t concern her.”

You tried to compose your expression, looking at the man firmly, although inside you felt how each word of his intensified the weight of your situation.

“What… what do they want?” you asked, your voice barely a whisper, but clear enough to show that you still had some control left.

He smiled, a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “That’s up to you,” he replied, lacing their fingers together calmly. “We’re looking for something, and we think you might be able to help us find it… or at least lead us to the people who could.”

Your mind began to work quickly, trying to connect the pieces. You knew that your arrival in Morocco with Rafe and the search for the Blue Crown hadn’t gone unnoticed, but still, the speed with which you’d been found, threatened, and now interrogated caught you completely off guard.

“Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you tried to say, but your voice betrayed a slight hesitation, and he noticed it.

“Don’t play naive. We know what you’re looking for… we know what you want. So, I’m going to make it easy for you,” he said as he leaned a little closer, his eyes locked on yours with an intensity that made your skin crawl. “You give us what we want, or you’ll see how things can get worse.”

You felt a knot in your stomach, each second growing more terrifying. You knew your only option was to hold on and buy time.

You took a deep breath, trying to calm the frantic drumming of your heart as the man in front of you watched you with unsettling patience. You tried to keep your composure and buy time, knowing that each passing second increased the chances of someone, somehow, finding out where you were.

“What they’re looking for isn’t so easy to find,” you said, keeping your voice as steady as possible. “Even we’ve had trouble following the right leads.”

The man cocked his head, evaluating your words. His eyes narrowed slightly, as if he was trying to read between the lines. “We’ll see about that. I hope you have more to say when we speak again.”

As he retreated, leaving you alone for a moment, you tried to move subtly, searching for any hint that you could loosen the ropes holding you prisoner. Your wrists were sore, but you ignored the pain, focusing on the simple act of resisting.

Far away, Rafe was in a constant state of agitation. He had spent the morning searching for clues, moving quickly between contacts and temporary allies who might be able to offer him some information. Every second that passed without seeing you increased his worry, and though he tried not to let guilt take over, his mind kept replaying the moment he realized you had disappeared.

“Did you see her last night?” he asked for the umpteenth time to one of the contacts he had managed to track down. The man, a local merchant with connections in the underworld, shook his head, his eyes watching Rafe with measured interest.

“I heard there was some activity in the old part of town,” he finally answered after a pause. “Someone brought a girl, but I don’t know who they are or what they’re looking for.”

Rafe clenched his jaw, feeling a mix of frustration and renewed hope. It wasn’t enough information, but it was a start. With a quick “Thank you,” he walked away, his mind already calculating the next move, thinking about how to get to that part of town without raising suspicion.

Rafe didn’t stop until he found more answers. He had navigated through dark alleys, bustling markets, and bars where curious eyes followed his every move all day long. The night in Morocco brought with it a thick air, and Rafe knew how to play in that environment.

With a handful of bills and a steady gaze, he approached a group of men moving like shadows on a dimly lit corner. After a few words of exchange and the handing over of money, one of them, a young man with scars on his face, finally spoke.

“The girl was taken to a warehouse near the old part of town, where the houses are crowded together and the streets are like a maze,” he said, his accent thick. “I don’t know much else, but those who have her aren’t known for being kind.”

Rafe nodded, absorbing the information and processing it quickly. The gears in his mind were working tirelessly, calculating routes and strategies. He now knew who had taken you, and most importantly, where you were. Getting to you wouldn’t be easy, but for him, it would be a piece of cake compared to the idea of ​​losing you.

Rafe just nodded before turning away, already focused on what would come next. He knew he needed to act quickly and precisely. He imagined you in that moment, alone and scared, and the fire inside him grew more alive.

In your dark corner, the minutes passed with unbearable slowness. The distant sound of footsteps and murmurs kept you alert, your mind working on every possible way to resist and endure.

In the two days you were held, time became an endless torture. You were given nothing but a few drops of water, and hunger made you feel weak, almost ghostly. Your thoughts were intertwined between worry for your safety and the persistent question of whether Rafe and the others were looking for you. The blindfold kept you in constant darkness, increasing the fear and feeling of isolation. Every noise around you was a reminder that you were not alone, but neither were you in good hands.

The voices of your captors echoed through the space like menacing echoes, their words in a language you did not understand. You tried to stay conscious, clinging to hope and the idea that this would end soon, somehow. Your body was exhausted, every muscle shaking from the effort of staying alert, every breath weaker than the last.

As night fell on the third day, the air was filled with a distinct murmur, a whisper that slowly turned into screams and the rumble of combat. The sound of doors breaking, banging, and gunshots made you turn around in desperation, even with the blindfold tight over your eyes. Your breathing quickened, and a cold fear ran through your body.

Time seemed to stop as everything fell silent. You could hear the frantic beat of your heart as you waited, vulnerable and alone in the darkness. Suddenly, you felt firm, familiar hands on your shoulders, and the pressure of the blindfold loosened. The cloth fell from your eyes, and the light, though dim, made you squint. In front of you, Rafe looked at you with a mix of relief and desperation, his blue eyes shining brightly.

“Rafe...” you whispered, a weak smile forming on your lips. He wasted no time; He quickly untied your wrists, and before you could make any move, he lifted you into his arms, not asking if you had the strength to walk.

You looked around as he carried you out of the place, and your eyes landed on one of the men lying on the ground, motionless. Blood pooled around him, and the question left your mouth before you could stop it. “Did you kill him?”

Rafe didn’t stop looking at you as he answered, his voice low and full of a certainty that chilled your blood and made you feel safe at the same time. “I’ll do anything for you, do you understand?” His tone left no room for doubt, and although his words were harsh, something in them made you feel protected, as if, despite everything, you were safe in his arms.

The world began to spin around you, the strength finally leaving your body after days of suffering. The last image you saw was Rafe's face, a mix of determination and fear in his eyes, before darkness enveloped you and everything faded away.

Hours later, the first thing you felt was the soft rustle of the sheets. Your eyelids were heavy as if you had slept for days, but you finally managed to open your eyes and see the ceiling of an unfamiliar room, illuminated by the morning rays. Turning your head, you saw him: Rafe, sitting in a chair next to the bed, his face covered by a mixture of tiredness and relief. 

As soon as he noticed that you had woken up, his eyes lit up and he quickly stood up, approaching you. His fingers brushed your cheek, as if he wanted to make sure that you were really there, awake and alive. “I worried about you,” he murmured, his voice hoarse and sincere. There was something in his words that carried all the weight of the last few days, of anguish and guilt. 

The silence that followed was heavy, but you couldn’t help it. “Rafe, I’m sorry… about Sofia.” Your words were a whisper. His expression changed slightly, his eyes darkening momentarily before he shook his head.

“I don’t want to talk about it right now,” he replied, a slight smile trying to ease the tension. The seriousness faded a bit when, with a soft laugh, he added, “You need to take a bath. You seem… well, you’ve been through a lot.”

You let out a weak laugh, agreeing with him with a look. “Yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever been worse in my life.” Your body felt heavy, muscles still sore from the lack of food and water, but you knew you needed to get up. “Help me, please. I need to get to the water.”

Rafe nodded without hesitation and put an arm around your waist, helping you stand carefully. Your legs shook at first, but with his support, you managed to stay upright. He slowly carried you to the other side of the room, where a tub of hot, steaming water awaited.

“You can go if you want,” you whispered, not looking at him directly, feeling the heat rising to your cheeks. But he shook his head, a lopsided smile appearing on his face.

“No, I’m staying,” he replied, and without adding anything else, he began to help you undress. His hands moved carefully, as if he were afraid of hurting you. When you finally submerged yourself in the water, a sigh escaped your lips as you felt the relief of the heat enveloping your battered body.

Rafe knelt at the edge of the tub and, with a damp cloth, began to gently run the water over your arms and shoulders. You couldn’t help but look at him, the attention and delicacy in his movements contrasting with the intensity of his gaze. Suddenly, he made a comment that made you smile, a joke about how no one would believe it if they knew he was taking care of someone this way. You laughed, even if it was weakly, and responded with something equally sarcastic.

His eyes met yours, more serious this time. “You’re beautiful,” he murmured, not looking away. The air grew thick between you, and you felt the warmth of the water mix with the blush on your skin. “I told you once not to say it,” you said quietly, looking away.

“Why not?” he asked, and before you could answer, he took your hand, the same one he had been cleaning, and pulled you close to him, carefully encircling you. He leaned in and kissed you, a gesture that was gentle at first, almost a test, but soon became deeper, as if he wanted to make sure you felt what he felt.

You stood there, letting yourself be carried away by the warmth of his lips and the safety of his arms. For a moment, everything that had happened, all the hurts, faded away, leaving only the certainty that, in the midst of so much chaos, you had each other.

Once the bath was over and you felt clean for the first time in days, the tiredness seemed to fade a little, giving way to a sense of calm that you had almost forgotten existed. You put on a light white linen dress, which softly caressed your skin and made you feel freer and lighter. Rafe had left the room for a moment to give you space, but he returned shortly after, his eyes scanning your figure with a mix of concern and something deeper, something you recognized instantly. 

You settled on a chaise longue by the window, letting the soft evening breeze come in and caress your face. Rafe sat beside you, his presence comforting despite everything that had happened between you. For a moment, neither of you spoke; you simply stayed silent, sharing a breath of peace that you both needed.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, breaking the calm with a low voice that was almost lost in the sound of the wind. There was a note of anxiety in his words, as if he feared the answer.

“Better,” you said with a soft smile, tilting your head towards him. “Thanks to you.” You didn’t add anything else, because you knew he understood everything those words meant. What he had done for you, what he had risked, was something you would never forget.

Rafe nodded, a shadow of a smile appearing on his lips before he reached out and gently caressed your cheek. “You don’t have to thank me,” he murmured. His eyes were a sea of ​​conflicting emotions: relief, remorse, affection.

He laid down beside you, and without thinking too much, you rested your head on his shoulder, letting a sigh escape your lips.

The silence in the room stretched on for a while longer, only broken by the soft whisper of the wind. You stared at the shadows cast by the sunset on the walls, trying to process everything that had happened in the past few days. Finally, you broke the silence with a question that had been burning on your tongue since you woke up.

“What happened to the men?” His words were slow in coming, as if he was carefully choosing what he was going to tell you.

“I took care of them,” Rafe said, his voice deep and firm. There was no room for doubt in his tone, but no trace of remorse either. “Your father… helped make any problems they might represent disappear.” There was a glint in his eyes at the mention of it.

You nodded slowly, letting the information settle in your mind. You knew what it meant when your father got involved; there were no loose ends, no mistakes.

Rafe seemed to pick up on your silence and let the words trail off, not forcing the conversation.

Rafe took care of you in a way you hadn’t expected. He made sure that every meal arrived to you on time, insisting that you eat and drink enough to regain your strength. Although you sometimes gently argued that you could get up and help in the search, he always answered you with the same firmness: “Leave it to me. I promise you that everything will be fine.”

The determination in his eyes and the conviction in his voice were enough to make you believe him. So, for the first time in a long time, you decided to let yourself go and do what he asked of you. You ate every dish he brought you, even if the appetite was not always present, and little by little you began to notice how your body regained its lost strength. Now you needed to eat more than before.

Meanwhile, Rafe moved around the house and the town like a ghost, always searching, always planning. Although you knew that the situation was much more complicated than he told you, you believed him. His confident and protective gaze left no room for doubt.

Your mind, which had been stuck in a constant state of alert, finally allowed itself a respite.

That same night everything was quiet, with a starry sky stretching out over the outskirts where everyone had gathered. The lights of the lanterns hanging in the trees and the crackling of the campfire provided a comforting warmth amidst the cool of the night. It was rare to find a moment of peace, and everyone appreciated it in their own way, laughing and sharing stories around the fire.

You were sitting next to Rafe, your gaze lost in the dancing and crackling flames. The boys were talking amongst themselves; JJ was dramatically telling an anecdote about one of his recent escapades, causing Kie to laugh and throw him a twig in mockery. John B, who was a little further away, was watching Sarah with an expression of complicity and tenderness.

Sarah stood up and ran a hand through her hair, a mix of nervousness and determination. Her eyes met yours, and for a moment, you wondered what she was going to say. 

“Guys, there’s something I need to tell you,” she began, and immediately the attention was drawn to her. The conversation died down, leaving only the sound of sparks from the campfire and crickets in the distance. Kie and John B exchanged a look, knowing what was coming, while JJ and Pope seemed surprised by Sarah’s serious tone. 

“I’m pregnant,” she finally said, her voice barely shaking, but firm enough to be heard by everyone. There was a moment of complete silence, and then JJ let out a low whistle as a smile appeared on his face. Pope blinked a few times, processing the news, and then smiled widely. 

You stood up and walked over to Sarah. Although your relationship with her hadn’t always been easy, at that moment you only felt sincerity in your words. “Even though we never got along as well as we’d like, I’m happy for you,” you said, looking into her eyes. “You’re going to be a good mother, I know it.”

Sarah looked at you with a mix of surprise and suppressed excitement before nodding and giving you a small hug. “Thank you,” she whispered, her smile reflecting both gratitude and relief.

Rafe, who had been silently watching the scene from where he stood, merely smiled sideways and nodded slowly, in a sort of silent approval that Sarah immediately picked up on. Their eyes met, and in that gaze they shared an understanding that only siblings could have. Sarah seemed to understand him and smiled back, softer, more sincere.

The night continued with a different energy. JJ joked about how they were going to teach the baby to sail before he could walk, which caused general laughter. Kie offered to make her a small seashell pendant for when she was born, and Pope said he would teach her to solve puzzles and understand ancient maps.

Rafe came up to you and put his arm around your back. “This is going to be interesting,” he murmured, a barely perceptible smile on his lips. You smiled back, feeling the warmth of his touch.

Several hours had passed since Sarah’s announcement. The atmosphere was still light, with a calm that was rarely present among everyone. Laughter and stories continued as the flames of the fire slowly dwindled. You and Rafe, feeling the need to be alone, decided to retire before the others. Night enveloped the outskirts in a blanket of tranquility, and the walk back was silent, accompanied by the crunch of grass underfoot.

The next morning, the heat was overwhelming, and every movement seemed to require double the effort. You got up to find Rafe sitting near the window, lost in his thoughts. Her jaw was set, her eyes fixed on the horizon as if searching for answers in the distance. You knew she had been dealing with something since your kidnapping, something she hadn’t wanted to share, and you couldn’t help but feel the awkwardness hanging in the air.

That same day, when everyone gathered under the shade to escape the scorching sun, Sarah suddenly paled and swayed a little. John B quickly grabbed her, concern evident on his face.

“I’m fine, just a little dizzy,” she murmured, but everyone knew she needed more than fresh air.

JJ rummaged through the backpack and pulled out a half-beaten apple. “It’s the only thing there is, but it’s better than nothing,” he said, offering it to her. Sarah accepted it with a weak smile, biting slowly as John B looked at her with a mix of love and concern. 

Rafe watched the scene with the same distant expression, his thoughts clearly elsewhere. JJ, unable to contain his annoyance, uttered an acidic comment: “What’s the point of all your money if you can’t even help your sister with some decent food?” The tension cut like a knife, and Rafe, without a word, abruptly stood up and began to walk away. 

You looked at Sarah, who was avoiding her brother’s gaze. Driven by an instinct you didn’t even fully understand, you approached her and pulled a wad of bills from your bag. You placed it in her hands with a gentle gesture. “It’s for you to buy food, Sarah. You need to feed yourself well in your condition,” you said in a low but firm voice. John B looked at you, surprised and grateful in equal parts.

“Thanks,” he murmured, as Sarah gave you a genuine smile. “Seriously, thanks.”

Without saying anything else, you walked away in the direction where Rafe had gone. You found him at a makeshift market, where a few local vendors had gathered. He was standing in front of a stall, buying a basic-looking cell phone and other necessary items. You watched as he held the phone out, dialing a number and bringing it to his ear with a grim expression.

“Is it true?” he said, his voice filled with suppressed fury. “After everything I did for you… you betrayed me? Is it true?” There was a pause, with only the bustle of the market and your labored breathing to be heard. Then, in an icy tone of voice, he added, “Get your stuff out of my damn house. We’re done.”

He cut the call and stood still, tension drawn in every line of his body. You hesitated for a moment, but eventually approached. Just when it seemed like he was going to reject you, you noticed how his gaze softened at the sight of you. His lips moved, wanting to say something, but he only managed to murmur, “We have things to do.”

You had lost track of time since you had left that market following in Rafe’s footsteps. The hot afternoon breeze hit your face as you tried to keep up with him, not really knowing where he was taking you. One problem more or one less, you thought, it didn’t matter anymore. They walked through labyrinthine streets and narrow alleys, the echo of their footsteps resonating between the adobe walls. There was a latent tension in the air, something that made you lock your gaze on Rafe’s back, watching the stiffness of his shoulders and the way his hands clenched into fists.

Without warning, a group of men stepped out of the shadows. You recognized one of them, someone Rafe had had problems with before. It all happened so fast, the exchange of words was brief before the fists started flying. Rafe fiercely fought as if his life depended on it. You, without thinking, took a few steps back, your heart pounding, searching for something to defend yourself with in case it was necessary. 

The noise of the fight filled the narrow street, screams, the thud of fists, the sound of a body hitting a wall. Rafe won, as always. He never lost. When the last man fell to the ground, panting and cursing in his native tongue, Rafe turned to you, his face and knuckles marked by cuts and bruises.

Without saying a word, you took his arm and led him to a more secluded corner, your hands already shaking as you searched for a clean tissue in your bag. “Let me help you,” you said, your voice barely a whisper as you gently pressed a wound on his eyebrow. Blood dripped from it, tracing a trail down his cheek. 

He watched you in silence for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, he broke the silence, “You know, I should have known from the beginning. I should have chosen you… you never betrayed me.” His words, laden with a sincerity he rarely showed, made your hands freeze for a moment. 

You sighed, removing the tissue and looking at him with a mix of sadness and resignation. “It’s too late, Rafe. There are bigger things at stake now than choices of partner.”

He shook his head, a hint of desperation flashing in his eyes. “It’s not too late. I can choose you… if you let me.”

You felt your heart pounding against your ribs. You looked up at him, searching for any hint of doubt in his expression, but all you saw was determination. “Only if you get Sofia out of your life for good,” you warned, your tone more serious than you had planned. “Or I will kill her myself.”

A dark smile curved his lips, and he nodded, moving closer to you. “I know you would,” he whispered, before pulling your body into his. His lips sought yours, and the kiss was everything you had held back for so long. It was intense, passionate, a silent promise of all that could be and all that had been.

When he pulled back just a little, he tilted his head and whispered in your ear, “Future Mrs. Cameron.”

A shiver ran down your spine. Because, even though everything had been chaos, even though the decisions had been erratic and the wounds were still fresh, deep down in your heart, you hoped to be that: the future Mrs. Cameron. Because after all, you were expecting his child, and he, although he didn't know it yet, was already part of that future that you had begun to secretly imagine.

[clanwarrior-tumbly]

Ooo you’re doing Pressure!!

May I request an artist reader who, throughout the journey found some paper, pencil and made a little makeshift sketchbook and when later bought Sebastian’s document decided to try and draw him? Like maybe both when human and current (and maybe the monsters)? 

Perhaps he saw them sketching, got curious and decided to look through it when reader left it somewhere or just straight up snatched it and held it out of their reach and sees those sketches of him. Could be hurt/comfort or angst/fluff.

Of course you’re free to change any of the details but please keep it platonic TwT

Aw love this idea! And it works considering all the paper and notebooks in the drawers of the blacksite.

............

"Great, [y/n]. One moment, you're doing some harmless graffiti on a brick wall nobody cares about. And the next, you're risking your life for a stupid crystal in hopes you'll get a federal pardon.."

Sighing, you held onto the overhead handles within the sleek black submarine, feeling it shake and rumble as it breached the water's surface. And after hearing the chime, the door hissed and opened up, the platform extending out onto the dock of a place already familiar to you: Hadal Blacksite.

'No place like home..' As you stepped out of the submarine, you could hear HQ over the PDA system informing you of your objective in reaching the crystal and collecting any "loose assets" you find along the way...

As if you needed any reminders of what you were doing here.

Immediately, you unlocked the first door with the keycard and began your journey to room 100. Along the way, you found a good handful of research data. Nothing too special aside from folders, USB drives, and a couple blue DNA vials.

Then after narrowly dodging the Angler in one area and avoiding Eyefestation's gaze in the next, you reached a room requiring yet another keycard to exit. You checked the nearby office cubicle, finding it in the first drawer you opened.

But that isn't what made your eyes light up. Rather, it's what was right next to the card that did:

A brand new pencil to go with the sketchbook you've been carrying with you.

Because you weren't given the luxury of doodling while sitting in jail for over 90 days, you felt your creativity flames being snuffed out, leaving you itching to draw something again.

Before all of this, you had a decent following on social media with your art skills, and you could imagine that they're worried sick over your sudden absence. But you hoped that, if you survive and succeed in this mission, you'll be able to come back and reassure them that you're very much alive.

And perhaps show them what Urbanshade has been hiding from the public...that is to say the sea monsters that have taken up residence in the Blacksite since its lockdown, freely roaming and haunting nearly every room you step into.

With the makeshift sketchbook you had (and somehow kept even after death), you've filled its pages with simple and detailed sketches of each creature you encountered.

But you doubt that they would let you leave with physical evidence of entities nobody else in the world should know about...unless you somehow convinced the guards that they were "original characters" that so-happened to look like them, but you had a feeling that excuse wouldn't fly.

Regardless, they've given you tons of artistic inspiration, despite your many close-calls with them in pursuit of studying their features from afar.

Thanks to the files Sebastian Solace has shown you, you've learned how to safely observe the Angler from a distance and better remember their details. They were merely a grotesque face surrounded by smoke, so you didn't have to worry about drawing any limbs or tails (assuming they had those).

You encountered their variants so many times that you could recall the little things that made each them unique--like how Pinkie had four pupils, how Blitz was missing pupils in one socket completely, how Froger was..well..a big frog with lots of needle-shaped teeth, and Chainsmoker was a sluggish blobfish through all that smoke.

Making eye contact with Pandemonium was a death sentence..as you've already learned after trying (and failing) to safely observe him through a glass window. So you draw him as you see him in his file.

The Squiddles' "intimidating" faces were scary in the dark when you least expected them, but they served as amazing inspiration. You even had a page full of what faces you'd think they make up to frighten others. It's too bad you couldn't show them, however, as that required you getting in their personal space.

Eyefestation, Good People, and the Wall Dwellers were quite..risky to observe, as they had ways of quickly and painfully sending you back to square one if you weren't careful. Even so, you made some pretty damn good sketches..and you wish you could show them off to them, too, especially to the shark who'd probably appreciate a human's drawing of herself.

Even the DiVine, who were always frozen in poses for some reason, joined your ever-growing list of muses. The oxygen gardens were a nice place for you to rest and appreciate the flora for a few moments--before an Angler came along, of course.

Then there was Sebastian.

While he was fully aware of your artistic passions, in the beginning he seemed a bit annoyed whenever you came into his shop just to sketch.....or if you took an unusually long time to reach him. He just assumes you've stopped to "doodle" and wonders if you really care about getting out of this place alive.

He'd remind you that HQ could get suspicious if you're off their radar for too long, but you've stayed in his shop for 10-20 minutes at a time and not once did your diving gear beep. So you reassured him not to fret.

It was kinda sweet that he worried over you, an expendable, although maybe that's because you actually treat him with decency..and don't take his snarky comments to heart whenever you died.

Aside from the occasional eyeroll whenever you brought out your sketchbook, he did inquire about some of the things you've drawn, and you'd show him, bearing a little pride in your work.

All you'd get in response was a "neato" or "wowie, that's how you see them?" and nothing more.

It wasn't insulting, so...you'll take that.

Obviously he was more concerned about how much research data you were willing to fork over in exchange for supplies, and how far that equipment will carry you before your next demise. So you'd eventually close the book and barter with him for whatever wares were on his tail.

Unbeknownst to him, you've actually started sketching him as of late. Now that you've met him dozens of times, it was easy for you to recall his features without needing to stare at him for reference every five seconds.

That would not only be rude, but very creepy.

Then one day, you showed up to Sebastian's shop with enough data to be able to afford his document, which described him as Z-13, "The Saboteur" who the company wanted "dead on sight" if he was spotted or trying to escape.

When you had time to read the file on your own, you learned some..pretty shocking things about how he caused the lockdown, went through torturous experiments, and was falsely accused of nine murders and was proven innocent far too late.

The most upsetting part was that he was never informed of this.

He learned that after presumably stealing his own document.

It made you feel sick to your stomach, knowing he's the reason you're being terrorized by those beasts, but you couldn't find it in your heart to be angry at him.

If anything you were angry at Urbanshade for their "guilty until proven innocent" system--or in his case, being proven innocent didn't matter.

His human mugshot was also included in the file, and even with the black censor bar covering his eyes, he still looked like quite a handsome fellow. You could make out some details, and ended up drawing him on a separate page, too, although part of you wishes you never started.

You doubt he would kill you or rip apart your book for drawing him, but considering how volatile and rude he could be at a moment's notice..you did your best to conceal the sketches when you visited his shop.

You didn't want him to be offended or reminded of his past..and make him resent the one person who he almost considered a genuine friend.

Unfortunately, you'd soon come to realize that your actions were only heightening his suspicions.

And that it was going to come to a head next time you entered his shop.

...............

"Okay, I'm going to bite...what're you really hiding in that little book?"

"Pardon?" Pausing mid-sketch, you looked up at Sebastian, wondering why he appeared so disgruntled. "I'm..uh...just doodling like I always-"

"No, don't give me that "like always" crap." He huffed, flicking the end of his tail as he crossed his two arms over his chest, staring down at you. "Last time, you couldn't stop showing me a stupid face you'd think one of those S-Qs would make...and now you won't even let me have a sneak peak of your next "masterpiece"." He spat the last word, voice dripping with disdain. "Are you really drawing something...or are you secretly writing intel to give to Urbanshade?"

"...wha.." You blinked in disbelief, wondering where he'd get that assumption from. "Why would I ever do that?"

"Oh I dunno, maaaybe because you have access to my file and know my location? I bet you're gonna sell me out to those scumbags once you reach the crystal." He gnashed his teeth. "Did they say you'd get extra cash for leaving tips on my whereabouts, huh?"

"Sebastian, there's no reason for this hostility. I'm not giving any intel to anyone-"

"Then you wouldn't mind me taking a look at this, would you? Yyyyyyoink!" His third arm was quick to snatch your sketchbook away, holding it out of your reach as you jumped up in panic.

You were already dreading his reaction.

This could very well be the end for you.

"Please give that back! You'll tear it!"

"You look frightened. So maybe I should, considering you're writing secrets about.....about...." But as Sebastian finally looked at the page, all he saw were sketches of his current self, and you began to see a shift in his expression.

It went from pure anger, to surprise and confusion, and then to....something unreadable.

"These are...all of me?" His voice became quieter as he flipped the page, only for his breath to hitch upon finding the drawings of his human form.

And for once, he was completely speechless.

The details were immaculate, everything from his hair style to the scar he used to have across his face--given to him from an angry cellmate who thought he really did kill those people and tried giving him a "taste of his own medicine".

But the way you made him look was...incredible.

That's him.

That's really him.

The man--the human--he was before...

Before...

"Yes." Your face was burning with embarrassment, and your heart was pounding with fear of both death and ridicule, now knowing that your fate laid in his hands now. "I-I'm sorry. I should've asked for your permission and I know the details aren't perfect but you didn't let me........huh?"

Ceasing your ramblings, you noticed the tears welling in his eyes, and you were stunned. Then his shaking hands closed the sketchbook and returned it to you. "Um..are you okay? I'm really sorry if-"

"I...a-almost forgot what I looked like before all of this.." He raised a claw to wipe at his watery eyes, sniffling. "They're...good drawings, friend. I'm sorry..I...I-I didn't mean to..." His voice cracked, and he forced himself to stop, bringing his hands to his face. "Why am I crying over something like..t-this..?"

He hated looking so weak in front of you, yet he couldn't help the tears that kept slipping down his cheeks. A certain sadness was weighing heavily on his heart, yet at the same time he felt...honored that you wanted to draw him, putting your heart and soul into every sketch--with him getting the most effort.

You didn't overexaggerate him as the hideous beast he and everyone else was convinced he was, but just him as, well, himself. His smiles when he realizes it's you coming through the vent again, his cheeky grins when you buy up all his supplies, and even the one time he pouted when you died to Pandemonium because you risked it all trying to draw the moldy fish-creature.

The human ones, as you could tell from the way he broke down, especially hit home for him. Just from a mugshot alone, you were able to create a near-accurate depiction of him.

It made him wonder if you two have met before any of this happened.

Sebastian sniffled, struggling to stop the tears and expecting you to make fun of him as he finally uncovered his face. But instead he saw you standing there with your arms opened up. "I feel like you could use one of these. It's okay. I know you miss being human."

".........."

"C'mon, big guy. My arms are kinda hurting--oh!"

Without warning, he accepted your embrace and squeezed you tightly in his hold. Of course he was careful not to crush your diving tanks, and you smiled in appreciation and patted his back. "It's okay, it's alright..I got you. I didn't mean to make you cry."

He sniffled a few times, but otherwise said nothing and tried making sure you weren't supporting all of his upper body weight.

Curse his size. He wishes he could experience a normal hug again.

This one will do, though.

"I-It's...it's fine. Don't worry.." He finally spoke after a few moments, calming down. "As long as you don't tell anyone about this."

"I'll take it to my grave." You chuckled, letting go and stepping away so he could straighten his back out. While he did that, you gently tore a few pages from your book, to which he blinked in confusion.

"What are you doing with-?"

"Keep them." You insisted. "In case this sketchbook falls into a pit or gets waterlogged, I want you to hold onto these. Besides, I can tell you appreciate them a lot. So...consider it a gift."

"Why..thank you." A smile appeared on his face as he took the pages carefully. "Rest assured, they'll be safe and sound." He gazed at them both one more time, feeling a tug on his heart.

But it wasn't as heavy as before.

After neatly folding and stowing them away into his pockets, he saw you already sitting in one of the chairs, your sketchbook opened to a brand new blank page.

"Sooooooo what are you going to draw this time?" He tilted his head, ear fins twitching with curiosity.

"Hm...I did see a vision of a white glowing man a few rooms back. I think he was from...the Mindscape? There was a file talking about him and some floating gears and a white ball."

"Ohh yeah, he's an interesting guy. I'd love to see your interpretation of him." Now Sebastian was 100% invested, as he curled his tail around himself, resting his upper body on it so he could see your book better. "But y'know you won't be able to leave this place with sketches of-"

"I'm well aware of that...I could always change a few things and turn them into OCs."

"Hah. You should."

"Maybe I will." You snickered, grateful that you didn't have anything to fear.

At least somebody in the Blacksite appreciated your art.