#I tore every tendon in my right foot one time

[wolven91]

Bears In Space

The marauders had thought this would be an easy take. A tiny craft, slinking through the system, using the shadows of the planets to hide. Perfect to go undetected, if not that the raiding party was doing the very same.

The danger on this tiny craft was the ursidain guardian. A powerhouse in her own right, she'd fight tooth and claw for her human ward. But handle her and the human would be easy pickings. They'd caught the craft unawares, deliberately using a small craft of their own to sneak up submerged in the civilian craft's engine wake. Only a pilot who had used the same tactic would know what to look for. At most they'd think their engine was doing something strange, not that a raiding party was mere moments away from boarding them.

The fight for control was intense, but short.

Three of the marauders had been killed. One had their top half separated from their bottom in one, seemingly effortless, pull by the thirteen-foot-tall guardian. Ursidains could tear bulkheads from walls if angered enough, one draconian spine wasn't much of a problem.

The second's, an esquinine, head was limp against their shoulder at an odd angle, the wild swing that had connected had obviously broken their neck with ease. So much for their 'powers'. It didn't take a telepath to know that the ursidain would have killed each and every one of them at a moments notice.

The third and final casualty was an idiot taurian. He had lost their footing rushing the ursidain and had ended up on their back, firing upwards. The ursidain had merely stepped on them. An average ursidain weighed easily over a metric ton. She hadn't even needed to stomp; the fool's ribcage had snapped like thin dry twigs.

The remaining three team members had simply fired round after electrified round at the raging creature. Ursidains were hardly, but not invincible. A thin pelt and flesh prevented rounds from penetrating deeper. A fused ribcage protected their organs, muscles and tendons with naturally occurring carbon, strengthening their power and force. Realistically, the only thing ursidains naturally feared was deep water. Pressure was their enemy, so not even vacuum scared them thanks to their ridiculous biology.

But she eventually went down. The remaining three raiders were smart, staying away from her swipes and keeping their backs to a sealed door in the small cargo bay.

"Don't kill her." Ordered the lead. The human was nowhere to be found, the place reeked of them, but being so small, like a chintian or geckin, they could hide in places the other races couldn't go, there was no point in searching, so they kept their attention on the entrance to the cargo bay. No, the ursidain had to be kept alive so they could use her to pressure the human into giving up. Humans were soft. Weak. One cut and they bleed out, they didn't even have thick flesh or a protective pelt. They could be tricked.

"Human! This has already been a failure of a raid. Not even you are worth the loss of three of my finest." An obvious lie. Those three were wastes of space and with their departure from his crew, the reward for the human would be divided only three times instead of six. Realistically, the felinoid could have given the human a cut of their reward as thanks and still come out with more credits.

"I'll just kill your friend here and blow up the ship. You're not worth this effort."

"You realise you won't get away with this... right?" The ursidain rumbled from her knelt position, head rising. The three remaining pirates turned their attention to her.

"Oh no? An empty system, no signals going out, no relays even if there was and the witnesses about to be taken care of. Go on, how am I not going to get away with this?"

The ursidain grinned.

"You weren't paying attention to the-"

A deafening roar stole her words as a hurricane materialised in the cargo bay. A terrible force tore all four of the creatures from their place on the metal floor as the fury and might of the vacuum of space grabbed a hold of them. The ursidain knew what to look for as she tumbled head over heels towards the black. A human in a space suit, holding the emergency venting lever down. She caught eyes with her ward as she sailed past and out of the doors.

The raiding team screamed as they went, but nobody heard them, there's no sound in space and the moment they were clear of the air rushing out of the cargo bay, all sound cut off for them too. By the time their bodies collided with their own craft, two of the three were pretty much dead. They had attempted to hold their breaths and their lungs had exploded. The third only survived as they had no air in their lungs, but even then, a mere thirty seconds after entering the black, they too passed.

Their last vision was the ursidain, floating by with them. At least they got one of the pair.

The human on the other hand knew they had a few minutes. Using everything their guardian had taught them, they ensured that their own harness was attached to the miles long cord that kept them latched onto their craft. Then, they leapt from their ship.

The only thing they could hear was their own laboured breathing. 'Never get off the boat' was engrained on anyone who left the safety of a station or planet, the panic and fear of the void was real. Too many things could go wrong if one went floating out into the void. The human ignored the other lazily spinning corpses nearby, the heads-up display on their helmet highlighted the ursidain. They slowed their approach and immediately latched a hook onto the ursidain's belt. Checking it twice, the human began to reel in the tether.

Ursidains were hardy. The sheer strength of their chests and muscles, meant that for a time, vacuum would not kill them. Deep water was deadly, able to crush them as it worked against their strengths, but it meant in the event pirates boarded a ship without vacuum suits? It was better to just vent the whole ship into space while the ursidain distracted them. Just so long as they get picked up well within quarter of an hour... after that...

When the cargo bay sealed and repressurised, the human was watching their HUD for the green 'Pressurised' label before unlatching the helmet and throwing it aside.

When their hands shook the ursidain, nothing happened. They shook the giant again and they still remained unmoving.

It wasn't until the human slapped the ursidain with a desperate panicked shout that the guardian awoke with an 'ow!'.

"I thought you were dead!"

"So you slap dead people?!"

"You were MESSING with me!?"

"I thought you'd find it funny!"

"You're mental!"

"You're rubbing off on me then!"

Discord / KoFi

[little-bloodied-angel]

This morning I woke up and my right leg was screaming. The pain was so intense and brutal it was what woke me; I had to sink my teeth into my pillow and scream, too. Every cell from hip to knee is (yes, still) burning, liquid acid going through my veins; and the calf is strained and cramped and protesting the extra work as hard as it can.

I still had to use the bathroom; when I tried to stand up it buckled, like a lightning bolt went through it, and I went to the floor. Even just rotating in bed to get out was agonizing on my hip. My foot was numb, full of pins and needles for lack of proper circulation.

I limped there, dragging my leg behind, supporting my weight on the wall and gritting my teeth. The process of sitting down and standing up almost made me black out.

Over the sink, I looked at myself in the mirror and willed myself not to cry. When I came back into my room I caught sight of my medications on my bedside table, the myriad of pills I'll be taking for as long as I live. The Tramadol on top of them was mocking me, and I did cry then.

I remember everything my body could do. I remember flying. I remember the fall, too, the agonized animal screams that seemed to come from outside my body, the brutal audible SNAP of muscle and tendon, the bone against the hardwood, the hushed whisper-shouts of "get help -she can't move -she can't walk -god, her leg!"

The doctor's office and his placid smile as he told me I was "lucky" because my ACL didn't require surgery at the same time he delivered my death sentence, or what may as well been.

"A career in ballet is no longer an option for you".

I know he didn't understand how people who dance with the goals I did live and die for that dancing. He thought I was young and I'd find something else to do. I was young and a part of me died in that accident and I had to bury it.

I remember a different doctor, a different office, her worried face scanning my psychiatric history like she thought I'd kill myself right in front of her because of the diagnosis as she told me what I already knew.

"You have fibromyalgia. I'll prescribe medication to manage it, you have to be careful with it. But..."

But it'll never get better. You'll always hurt. It'll get worse. I already knew that. I just wanted someone to sign on it, because it turns out that when doctors perceive you as female, complaints of chronic pain tend to fall by the wayside, particularly if you have a history of mental illness. She took me seriously. She warned me about my leg, about what a flareup would do somewhere I'm already hurting all the time, and I kept myself from barking at her I fucking know, that's part of what it's been like for almost a decade because at least she believed me.

I mourned my body again, all the same.

I lay in bed gripping my thigh, trying to will the spasms down, trying to decide between yelling and sobbing, trying to figure out why: had I slept on it wrong? Was it the weather? It had hurt after walking too much on Monday, but not as much as I expected; a delayed reaction? It didn't matter, in the end; it wasn't going to take the pain away.

I thought of Izzy, as I tore my lips apart with my teeth to feel something that wasn't my damn leg. I thought of how real he felt, the tears and the screaming, the gritted teeth, the suicidal loss of identity. The loneliness. I thought of his stubbornness, his progress. How much both of those realities meant. How they thrashed it all, in one moment, and all but told us, the ones that feel like him, "when the desire to die comes back just do it. You've outlived what you were, so who you are has *had enough*", and my mouth tasted like blood for more than one reason.

He meant so much. He could have meant so much more. And we have to wipe the spit of this insult from our faces and carry on and accept it was part of a happy ending.

He might've forgiven it all; he was a character and you made him. I don't. I won't. I'm still here, with my pain and anger, and I refuse to die so the people who want me gone can live in peace. And I refuse to be quiet and accept that for a happy ending I should fade away.

If you can't understand this anger, at least don't insult me and others like me by telling us there's no reason for it.

I'm hazy with pain and aware that I'm rambling. But whatever I don't bleed in ink will poison me.

[unholyverse]

awsten knight in kerrang! issue #1654

(full text under the cut)

THE ULTIMATE ROCKSTAR TEST

AWSTEN KNIGHT WATERPARKS

HOW DO YOU BECOME HEIR-APPARENT TO POP-PUNK'S THRONE? EAT CIGARETTES AND BREAK YOUR FEET…

ON ROCK'N'ROLL…

YOUR ALBUM'S CALLED DOUBLE DARE. WHAT'S THE STUPIDEST THING YOU'VE EVER DONE FOR A DARE?

"One time I lit my pants on fire. I was sitting on the couch with my friend, playing with matches, and he said, 'I bet you won't set your pants on fire.' I said, 'Fuck you', and I did it. We freaked out because the flames were getting really big, so he went and got a wet towel and squeezed it out over my pants. Another time I ate a cigarette in a graveyard while we were out there playing with a Ouija board.""

WHAT'S THE MOST OUT-OF-CONTROL SHOW YOU'VE EVER PLAYED?

"Back when we used to play just locally in Houston, we used to play a lot of small places. They were the sort of places where there was no security and no barricades, and a lot of the time people would basically be on the stage. They'd be stepping on pedal boards and stuff, so there were times when we had to ask them to please step off our equipment. It was all good fun."

HAVE YOU BEEN INJURED BECAUSE OF THE BAND?

"We saw this setting we wanted to take some new pictures by. Basically, we had to do some trespassing to get to the spot, and there was a 15-foot fence. When I jumped off it I landed very wrong and busted up both my feet. I don't remember what it's called, but there's this thing that connects the front and back of your feet, and I tore both of them."

We presume you mean tendons, but it could have been your socks.

FAILS AND F UPS…

WHAT'S THE MOST EMBARRASSING THING TO HAPPEN TO YOU ONSTAGE?

"I don't really get embarrassed, and if I do fuck something up it's usually on purpose, whether that's singing a part in a weird, goofy way or anything else. I can't even recall falling over onstage. There was one time I nearly went off a 10-foot stage at a House Of Blues venue somewhere. I was spinning round and went right to the edge, but I didn't die, so that's good."

WHAT'S THE WORST SONG YOU'VE EVER WRITTEN?

"I've written plenty of bad songs, but with Waterparks I'd say Bones Of '92 or Easter Egg. I just don't like Bones Of '92—it's not a very good song. With Easter Egg, it doesn't flow well and it doesn't make sense."

Did you hear that, everyone? No Easter eggs for Awsten this year…

LIFESTYLES OF THE RICH AND FAMOUS…

WHAT'S BEEN YOUR WEIRDEST-EVER FAN ENCOUNTER?

"There have been so many weird ones, but the one that made me feel the weirdest was when a mom came up and asked me to take a picture with her daughter. The girl was crying but I thought, 'Okay - sometimes people cry when they meet the bands they like. Then the mother said, 'She's sad because one of her best friends just died. Now take a picture with her, smile.' I was like, 'What the fuck is happening?" I was trying to talk to the daughter, the mom was oblivious and it was just the most awkward situation I've ever been in."

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU WERE STARSTRUCK?

"The time I went to Pete Wentz's house. He was having us on his radio show for an interview and I couldn't believe I was there. He brought us out water in boxes, which was really weird. I was just sitting there going, "What the fuck, I'm at Pete Wentz's house!" It was nuts."

Water in boxes, eh? How the other half live…

ON THE HYPOTHETICAL…

GOOD CHARLOTTE ASK YOU TO GUEST ON A SONG, BUT WHAT THEY PLAY YOU IS SHIT. DO YOU TELL THEM?

"I would, but I'd definitely still do it. It might have been shitty on purpose, and if that was the case I could go and be shitty on purpose and get with that vibe. That could be really funny"

WOULD YOU RATHER BE ABLE TO SPEAK TO ANIMALS OR SPEAK EVERY HUMAN LANGUAGE FLUENTLY?

"Animals, easy. I talk to enough people as it is, and I love animals. I went to a pet adoption thing a couple of days ago and there was this dog looking at me. I felt like he loved me more than any human had ever loved me and he'd only just met me. If I could hear the love that he was expressing I would be completely fulfilled."

Get a dog-translator app-there probably is one now. Then feel the love…

SPIRITUAL HEADMELTER…

DO YOU BELIEVE IN GHOSTS?

"Yes, I do. I told you I ate that cigarette when I was in a graveyard with a Ouija board, and we used to do that a lot. We'd seek out haunted places a couple of times a week. I had to stop because I got too freaked out. It's really fun to do all that but then when you're alone afterwards, that fucking sucks."

Imagine how the ghosts feel when you leave…

"I USED TO GO LOOKING FOR GHOSTS A COUPLE OF TIMES A WEEK" - AWSTEN KNIGHT

WORDS: PAUL TRAVERS PHOTO: ANDREW STUART

[translations-by-aiimee]

The Husky and His White Cat Shizun - Chapter 18

Original Title:  二哈和他的白猫师尊

Genres: Drama, Romance, Tragedy, Xianxia, Yaoi

This translation is based on multiple MTLs and my own limited knowledge of Chinese characters. If I have made any egregious mistakes, please let me know.

Chapter Index

Chapter 18 - This Venerable One has Begged You Before

Tianwen has a deadly killing move. The name was very simple, just one word: "Wind". Once activated, no piece of armor in the surrounding area could withstand it.

Mo Ran was naturally acquainted with the power of "Wind". He also knew Chu Wanning's strength so there was no need to worry. He glanced at the pale man whose robe was dyed red with blood. He threw away the rest of his talismans to buy Chu Wanning some time, then flew away to the edge of the fight. He grabbed Shi Mei with one hand, Madam Chen with the other, and took two unconscious people, hiding a far distance away.

Chu Wanning endured the severe pain and reluctantly moved his other. Suddenly, Tianwen burst out with a dazzling golden light, and Chu Wanning violently jerked it back.

The Master of Ceremonies Ghost went berserk. It jumped up and rushed towards Chu Wanning with a distorted face.

Chu Wanning's robe waved like a flame in a violent wind, billowing and flying. His eyebrows were furious, half of his shoulders soaked in blood. He quickly raised his hand, Tianwen's golden light became more and more intense then it took off by Chu Wanning's flying spin.

The willow vine stretched for several tens of feet and whirled into a golden spiral. Like a whirlpool, it engulfed the surrounding ghosts, dead bodies, golden children, and the roaring and twisting Master of Ceremonies Ghost into the center of "Wind". The fierce image that was created by Tianwen was then shattered in an instant!!!

"Wind" smashed and destroyed. Not even the surrounding grass and trees, being ripped up from the ground, were spared.

The huge storm centered around Chu Wanning let out a dazzling golden light. The sky grew dark, covered by flying sand and rocks. Whether it was a coffin or the dead, they were like grass fluttering in the wind.

She was sucked in and was cut up by the rapidly spinning Tianwen.

Sliced into tens of thousands pieces of debris. . .

When everything calmed down, there was no grass around Chu Wanning, a desolate and empty wasteland.

Other than him standing alone in his bright, auspicious clothes that resembled a blooming red lotus and a begonia blossom, there was only a ground covered in crushed white bones, and the horrible hissing of Tianwen's golden light.

From this point of view, Chu Wanning did the world a favour pumping out so many disciples.

Based on his performance today, if he wanted to, even if every disciple on Life-Death Peak were defeated, it wasn't impossible for him to keep fighting. . .

The golden light faded away.

Tianwen turned into flickering dots like stars, blending into Chu Wanning's palm.

He breathed a deep breath and frowned. Enduring the sharp pain in his shoulder, he slowly walked towards his disciples in the distance.

"How's Shi Mei?"

Coming to their side, Chu Wanning pushed through and asked.

The ink burned down to look at the unconscious beauty in his arms. He still wasn't awake, his breathing was weak, and his cheeks felt cold to the touch. This scene was too familiar, it was a nightmare that Mo Ran couldn't get rid of.

As Shi Mei was lying in his arms like this, as time went on, he wasn't breathing anymore. . .

Chu Wanning placed his hands on Madam Chen's and Shi Mei's necks. He mumbled out: "Hmm? How could the poisoning be so deep?"

Mo Ran's head snapped up: "Poison? Didn't you say they were okay? Didn't you say that they were just being compelled?"

Chu Wanning frowned: "The Master of Ceremonies Ghost relied on the fragrance powder to compel them. That was a kind of poison. I thought it was only superficial, but I didn't expect the poison to be this severe."

". . ."

"Send them back to Chen's house first." Chu Wanning said, "It's not difficult to expel the poison. It's fine as long as they don't die."

His voice was cold and unwavering. Although Chu Wanning normally spoke like this, at this moment, it really made people feel like he was uncaring and downplaying things.

Mo Ran was brought back to that year of heavy snow. He was knelt in the snow and in his arms was Shi Mei whose life was slipping away. With tears on his face, he hoarsely begged Chu Wanning to turn his head, look at his disciple, and pleaded for him to raise his hand to save his disciple's life.

But what did Chu Wanning say back then?

It was also in such a light and calm tone of voice.

Just like that, rejecting Mo Ran the one time he knelt down and begged.

In the heavy snow, the person in his arms gradually became as cold as the snow falling on his shoulders and eyelashes.

That day, Chu Wanning killed two disciples with his own hands.

One was Shi Mingjing, who he could have saved but didn't.

One was Mo Weiyu, kneeling in the snow mourning the death of his heart.

There was a sudden panic in his heart, a brutality, a snake-like flow of resentment, rage and viciousness.

There was a moment when he suddenly wanted to rise up and strangle Chu Wanning. Wanted to shed his kind and pleasant disguise, revealing the hideousness of a malevolent ghost. Like a fierce ghost from a previous life, it viciously tore into him, questioning him and demanding his life.

He claimed the lives of the two helpless disciples in that snowfield.

But when his eyes flicked up, they suddenly fell on Chu Wanning's blood-covered shoulder.

The beast's anger was suddenly cut off.

He didn't say another word, just stared at Chu Wanning's face with poorly-masked hateful eyes. Chu Wanning didn't notice. After a while, he lowered his head again and stared at Shi Mei's haggard face.

His mind gradually went blank.

If something happened to Shi Mei this time, then. . .

"Cough cough cough!!"

The person in his arms abruptly coughed. Mo Ran was stunned and his heart trembled. . . Shi Mei slowly opened his eyes, and his voice was extremely hoarse and weak.

"A-. . . Ran. . .?"

"Yes! It's me!" In his ecstasy, the haze disappeared. Mo Ran's eyes widened. The palms of his hands were pressed against Shi Mei's cool cheeks, and his shining eyes trembled. "Shi Mei, how do you feel? Does anything hurt? "

Shi Mei smiled lightly, his eyebrows still. He turned his head, and looked around: ". . . How are we here. . . How did I faint. . . Ah! Shizun. . . cough cough, this disciple is incompetent. . . this disciple. . ."

"Don't talk," Chu Wanning said.

He gave Shi Mei a pill: "Since you're awake, take this poison dispersing pill. Don't swallow it right away."

Shi Mei took the medicine then was suddenly taken aback, his colourless face appearing even more transparent: "Shizun, how did you get hurt? You're covered in blood. . ."

Chu Wanning still had that faint, calm, irritating voice: "It's nothing."

He got up and glanced at Mo Ran.

"You, find a way to bring both of them back to the Chen's residence."

When Shi Mei woke up, the gloom that was deep in his heart suddenly vanished. He nodded quickly: "Okay!"

"I'll go first. I have something to ask the Chen family."

Chu Wanning said and turned to leave. Facing the vast darkness of the night, the fields covered in decay, he finally couldn't supress a twitch in his eyebrow, revealing a painful expression.

The entire shoulder was pierced by five fingers, the tendons and veins were torn apart, and the Master of Ceremonies Ghost's claws even pierced the bones deep in his flesh and blood. No matter how he pretended to endure it calmly, no matter how he tried to stave the bleeding, he was still be a human being.

It still hurt. . .

But so what if it hurts.

He walked forward one foot after another, the hem of the wedding dress flying around.

For so many years, people respected and feared him, but no one has dared stand by his side. No one cares about him. He has long been used to it.

Yuheng of the Night Sky, the Beidou Immortal.

No one liked him. No one cared whether he lived or died, whether he was sick or suffering.

He seemed to be born without the need for the support of others, no need to rely on anyone, no need for company.

So there was no need to shout out in pain, and crying was even more unnecessary. Just go and dress the wounds, cut off all the festering flesh around the tear and apply ointment on it.

It didn't matter if no one cared about him.

Anyway, that's how he came to be alone. He's survived all these years. He can take care of himself.

When he came to the door of the Chen residence, before he entered the courtyard, he heard an ear-piercing scream.

Chu Wanning didn't care about aggravating his wound and immediately rushed in - only to see the old lady Chen with a disheveled hair, her eyes closed, but chasing her son and husband all over the house, only ignoring the young daughter of the Chen family. She stood beside her in panic, huddled tightly, shaking.

Seeing Chu Wanning enter, Mr. Chen and his eldest son screamed and rushed towards him: "Dao Master! Dao Master, help!"

Chu Wanning held them back. He glanced at Madam Chen's closed eyes, and said angrily: "Didn't I tell you to watch her and keep her from falling asleep?!"

"I can't help it! My wife is unwell. She usually goes to bed early. After you left, she was still holding out at first, then she fell asleep, and then she started to go crazy! She started screaming. . . yelling. . ."

Mr. Chen shivered and ducked behind Chu Wanning. He didn't notice that he was actually wearing an auspicious outfit, nor did he notice the hideous wound on Chu Wanning's shoulder.

Chu Wanning frowned and said: "What was she yelling?"

Before Mr. Chen spoke, the mad woman rushed over with her teeth bared, screaming mournfully. It was actually the voice of a young woman—

"Spineless liar! Pathetically fickle! I want you to pay with your lives! I want you all to die!"

Chu Wanning: ". . . This evil spirit stoops low." He turned back and sternly shouted at Mr. Chen, "Does this voice sound familiar?"

Mr. Chen’s mouth was trembling. He rolled his eyes and swallowed nervously: “I don’t know, I don't recognize it, I don’t know! Please help! Please help!

Just then, Madam Chen rushed over. Chu Wanning raised his uninjured arm, pointing at the sky above Madam Chen, and a lightning bolt slammed down, trapping Madam Chen within a barrier.

Chu Wanning turned his head with an icy gaze: "You really don't know?"

Mr. Chen repeated: "I really don't know! I really don't know!"

Chu Wanning didn't say anything else. He whipped out Tianwen and bound old lady Chen in the barrier.

He should have tied up the rest of the family outside, it would be more convenient and easier to gauge the situation, but Chu Wanning had his own rules of conduct. It wasn't easy using Tianwen to interrogate abnormal individuals. So he abandoned the soft approach and instead questioned the ghost in Madam Chen's body.

Interrogating ghosts wasn't the same as interrogating people.

When Tianwen interrogated people, they couldn't fight it and would speak.

When Tianwen interrogated ghosts, it would form a boundary where only Chu Wanning and the ghost would exist. Ghosts would regain their original appearance in the boundary and pass on their message to Chu Wanning.

A flame ignited on Tianwen. It snaked along the vine, burning from his end straight to old lady Chen.

The old lady let out a scream, and suddenly began to twitch. The original scarlet flame on the willow vine instantly turned into a blue ghost fire and burned back to Chu Wanning's side.

Chu Wanning closed his eyes. The fire burned up the willow vine onto his palm, but the ghost fire couldn't hurt him. It just burned all the way along his arm, down his chest, and then went out.

". . ."

The Chen family looked at the scene in horror. They didn't know what Chu Wanning was doing.

Chu Wanning's eyelashes trembled lightly, his eyes still closed, but a white light gradually appeared in front of his eyes. Immediately afterwards, he saw a small, white, jade-like foot step out of the light, and a girl about seventeen or eighteen years old appeared in his field of vision.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

[wendimydarling]

Weakness

Title: Weakness

Summary: Syverson and his wife get into an argument, and he shows her bratty ass how to mind.

Pairing: Syverson x First Person Reader

Word Count: 2017

Warnings: nudity, manhandling, penetrative sex, tickling.

A/N: Last request of the year, folks... I’ve got a full plate!

Could you please do a tickle fic with syverson where u guys have a fight, but then when he comes to bed late at night you tickle him to get him to talk. But then he gets annoyed at you and ends up tying you up and tickling you as a punishment, though it ends in fluff and giggles at the end? Love ur fics!

Enjoy!

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“How many times we gonna have this argument?”

I had zero desire to do this tonight but I stood there anyway, arms crossed, nostrils flaring. Everyone in the bar was cowering away from Syverson’s intimidating hulk of a stance, but not me. I’d been with him for too long.

The guy that hit on me was far in retreat but once again, I’d been embarrassed in front of everyone by Sy taking it too seriously. He was so protective and for the most part, I didn’t mind. But I consider myself a woman that can defend herself without the aid of a man, and when said man comes in and threatens to maul any man within a ten foot radius of me, my intimidation factor gets undercut by about fifty percent.

Syverson also had his arms crossed, his legs regulation width apart and back ramrod straight. His size alone was enough to terrify most women, and even some men, but not me. I was far too pissed. Sy furrowed his brow.

“I’ll not have anyone hittin’ on my woman, especially not while I’m there to defend her,” he stated firmly. I rolled my eyes and threw my hands in the air.

“We’re goin’ in circles, and I ain’t doin’ this in public, especially not tonight,” I snapped. I grabbed my clutch and walked out the door, hailing a passing taxi and getting in before I could change my mind. As I gave the driver my address, I looked out the window and saw Syverson standing there, his mouth set in a stern line. A pang of excited fear shot into my belly; I had just left my husband at a bar. 

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

Syverson made it home about twenty long minutes after I did. They had to have been the most agonizing minutes of my life, and that included the time he suddenly lost phone reception once when he was on tour. I got ready for bed while I waited for him to come home, but I knew sleep would evade me. Back and forth I paced, straightening the décor on our shelves and brushing my hair before finally coming to rest on the bed, my knees pulled up to my chest. 

I heard a car door outside and adrenaline coursed through my veins; the front door slamming shut near made me jump out of my skin. My body was rooted to the mattress, fingers fidgeting with the lacey hem of my cotton nightgown nervously. Sy entered our room, glanced at me briefly, then tore off his shirt and tossed it in the hamper as he barricaded himself in our bathroom without a word. I was in so much trouble, and my heart sank down into my stomach. Why of all nights did we have to do this tonight?

It wasn’t long before Syverson came back into the room, scowl still stubbornly etched on his face as he removed the rest of his clothes. He caught my eye and held it in silent warning; I didn’t dare look away. His belt was drawn out of its fabric station slowly and my ass clenched in apprehensive dread, but Sy just dropped it to the floor. My annoyance catapulted over my fear.

“Ya just not gonna talk to me then?” I snapped, shooting him my own glare. Syverson still didn’t speak, simply shucked his legs out of his pants and boxers and climbed under the covers, rolling over so that his back was facing me. That was the last straw.

“Sy…” I drawled, dragging a fingernail down his spine. He rotated his shoulder and huffed, but didn’t turn over. Determined, I tried again, spidering my fingers over the back of his ribs. Syverson spun around with surprising agility for a man so large and in a flash my wrist was seized. 

“Best not start somethin’ ya can’t finish, little lady,” he warned, shoving my hand away. He closed his eyes and settled back into the bed. Anyone else would have heeded Sy’s warning, but not me. I needed to talk about it. 

“Come on Sy, talk to me,” I pleaded. He just grunted. I assessed the situation, surveying his body for my plan of attack. His big arms protected most of his torso but the blanket had ridden down when he flipped over, and I could see the sharp point of his hip bone cresting through the waves of hair that graced his skin. Bingo.

I crawled on the bed carefully, sneaking a hand beneath the blanket to where Syverson’s warm girth lay nestled between his thighs. He grunted again but shifted to grant me more access; he never could say no to a blow job, no matter how mad he was. I straddled his chest and palmed him softly, smirking as he fell straight into my trap. Instead of leaning over though, I drilled my fingers into the deep pockets of his hips, relishing the way he immediately started huffing and throwing curses my way.

“If ya ain’t gonna talk to me then I’m just gonna tickle ya,” I drawled, scribbling my nails over his sensitive flesh. Sy grunted and jerked but he couldn’t quite get his hands around my torso to reach, the tickles confusing his brain and causing him to lose focus.

“Hmmm… still don’t wanna talk?” I teased, “Fine then, perhaps I should move to yer feet.”

In a flash my ankles were yanked out from under me and I was rolled underneath Sy’s heavy frame, his nimble fingers finding purchase beneath him on my sensitive ribs. I squealed and scrambled for his hands, kicking at him as I tried to stop the tickles. He just climbed on top of me and flipped around to straddle my hips, instantly immobilizing me and removing any notion I had of making it out of this alive.

“Ya think ya can just leave?” Syverson growled, pinning my arms above my head with one hand and returned to digging his fingers into my rib cage. I squealed again and fought to escape, but his thighs were an iron vice around my hips and his rough hand effortlessly held my wrists, locking me in place so that he had all the room in the world to punish me for my behavior.

“Ya thought this was over just cause you were done with it?” His fingers drilled faster, their ferocity matching the scowl on his face as I laughed helplessly.

“Try again, little lady... we ain’t over ‘til I say so.”

With that, he reverted back to his silence. I screamed and pleaded with him but he ignored me, tickling any skin he could find. When he ran out of skin to tickle he simply created more, rucking up my nightgown to gain access to my belly and navel. I laughed and wailed but my cries met a stone wall; I was too ticklish for my own good, and Syverson was mad. 

He tore my nightgown completely off me and grabbed my wrists, and I took the brief moment to gasp for air. My respite was short lived however as I noticed his intentions; he was pinning my arms beneath his knees.

“No, Sy NO, PLEASE!!” I protested, pulling uselessly against his brute strength. I knew his game, I knew where he was headed and I didn’t want it. 

“I’m sorry,” I begged him. Sy stared at me, hands on his knees, glare still firmly lodged on his face.

“I told ya not to start something ya couldn’t finish,” he said coldly. His hands travelled slowly behind him, resting along the supple flesh on my thighs.

“I know, I--KNOW,” I gasped, kicking at him. Syverson shuffled my body as I spoke, spreading my legs and trapping them between his folded knees.

“Ya just... ya wouldn’t talk to me, Sy. I didn’t want to go to bed upset, not tonight,” I admitted, gazing up at him with round eyes. I struggled under his weight, trembling as his fingertips grazed along the inner tendons that connected my legs to the rest of my body. Sy gave me a look that said I better keep talking, so I continued to explain.

“I don’t need ya to defend me all the time,” I said softly, not wanting to look at him. I knew his face would show that he was hurt, and I was right.

“That’s what I’m here for, bug,” He whispered, staring at my heaving chest as he traced circles along my sensitive loins. I shivered. God, I wanted to reach out and hold him.

“But what about when ya aren’t here?” 

Syverson’s head snapped up to look at me, fire and pain flaring in his eyes. I could see that it hadn’t occurred to him that I still got hit on when he was overseas. Remorse and understanding fell over his features, and he nodded in submission.

“You’re right, I’m sorry. Still, ya need to pay fer leavin’ the bar without me.”

His fingers picked up their pace and my face scrunched up in agony. I wasn’t gonna get out of this by distracting him, and I was left with no choice but to accept my punishment. Still, I had to try.

“Sy, no don’t--” I managed to get out before he was squeezing those tendons between his thumbs and fingers, pinching every last ticklish nerve along my thighs. I thrashed and screamed, the highest-pitched squeals tumbling from my lips as he laid waste to my secret weakness, fluttering his fingers all over my mound. Time lost all meaning; had it been five minutes? Ten? I didn’t know, all I knew was that instead of tickles, my tortured pussy desired nothing more than for him to split me open and fuck me into the next century.

“NO MORE!” I begged, “SY PLEEEHEHEASE!! NO MOOOHOHORE!!”

His fingers froze and Syverson cocked an eyebrow at me.

“Ya gonna try and fight back?” he questioned, positioning his elbows on either side of my head.

“No sir,” I breathed.

“Who do you belong to?” he growled. My eyes softened and I gazed at his face, desperate to touch him, to comfort him.

“I belong to you.”

“Good girl.”

Sy released my arms and I wrapped them around his neck, burying my face in his shoulder as he did the same to me, thrusting into me to be as close as he could. He was hard as a rock, it took no more than five seconds before he was bottomed out and we two had become one flesh. It was an old song and dance and yet every time still felt like the first.

 Syverson held me close as I clung to him fiercely, my tears weaving a wet trail into my hair as his embrace coiled around me, suffocating me in the best of ways.

“I’ll be back before you know it, bug,” He crooned against my cheek, but I could hear how choked up he was and I lost it. I would never get used to him leaving.

“You better be,” I sobbed, never wanting this night to end. Tomorrow brought pain, and separation.

“Now now, no tears,” Sy shushed, cradling my face in his hands and wiping the salt that threatened to stain my face. He thrust into me, hard and wanting and I gasped, pitching my hips to meet his. My cervix was on fire, the slightest movement would send me barreling over the edge into bliss. I saw a glint in Sy’s eye, one that told me he was about to be devilishly mischievous and my arms were brought to rest above my head, fingers interlocked with mine, and kisses alighted on my nose and neck as his lips found their way to my ear. 

“Keep your arms up, bug,” he ordered, his fingertips spidering softly down my arms. No, I thought, squirming my hips and then gasping in shock as pleasure rocked through my center. Not this. Anything but this. His voice came searing into my mind, sealing my fate with one phrase.

“Yer gonna learn not to start somethin’ ya can’t finish.”

[nessaxc]

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Victory is Sweet || Miya Atsumu

After Atsumu’s raid on the Police Station, he comes back home to the penthouse to celebrate with his girl, and he brought a souvenir for you.

~ Words: 3.8k

~ NSFW 18+

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It was just after 10pm when you heard a heavy knock on the front door from upstairs that sounded like the police were here. You looked into the peephole to make sure that it wasn't and heaved a sigh of relief once you spotted the blonde through the space with a policeman's cap on his head.

You opened the door with a big smile on your face when you greeted him. "Ooh, how did it go? Did you knock em dead?" you practically squealed in excitement.

He skipped his way in before he kicked the door shut with his foot, his cackling immediately assuring you that you were correct.

"Oh, it was amazing, wish you could have been there," he said with a grin on his face. "Cleaned the whole place up, nice and easy, they didn't even see it comin'," he laughed and walked towards you. You were half listening to what he said but your attention was more confused on his police uniform and how it hugged the contours of his body so perfectly, like it was made for him, which was very ironic.

You snapped your head up to look at him just in time before he realized. "I'm impressed," you giggled. "I wish I could have seen the look on their faces," you added with a loud laugh that sounded much like his earlier one.

"They were such babies, couldn't hold a candle to anything I could do," he chuckled with you as his eyes met your lustful gaze, "which is why we're going to celebrate," he told you in a whisper before he laughed again. Your lips curled into a sly smirk the second those words came out of his mouth.

"I like the sound of that," you replied around a silky purr.

"Oh and I got a little gift for you," he said with a big grin before he removed the hat from his head and placed it on your own, and it fit snugly. "You're going to wear that while we fuck, think of it like as a souvenir for my hard work today," he told you, and you nodded your head in agreement because who were you to deny him?

Then in an instant, he leaned forward to press his lips against yours, the kiss was hard and insistent and demanding, just how you loved it. His teeth nipped at your bottom lip, and you could already feel the lukewarm heat spread through your body. It flooded your toes and fingers and pooled between your legs, stirring even further when his tongue passed over the swollen skin, the quiet groans against your teeth turning the stirring to a storm.

You both licked and nipped and sucked on each other's mouths and lips while he blindly staggered forward with you until he reached the room you two shared, plopping you down on the bed. He was quick to crawl atop your body.

"It's so rewarding coming home back to my girl after a long day," he cooed, his hands found the button on your pants and he undid it quickly before he yanked the zipper down in one swift motion. He pushed at your pants, your thighs peeking out from beneath the cotton, and you lifted your hips to shove them down the rest of your legs. "You proud of my work today, baby?" he drawled.

"Yes of course I am, you did so good," you praised and giggled when you saw a wide smile cross his face.

"I hope you don't mind, but you're wearing way too many clothes," he said before he practically tore off your blouse in one rapid motion, then repeated the same treatment to your bra which you didn't mind in the slightest. There was nothing like celebration sex with Atsumu after a successful day.

You squirmed as one of his strong arms wrapped around you, the fingers of his other hand tracing gently against the oddly sensitive spot beneath your ribs. His lips pressed to the swells of your breasts and—somehow, through the sensations—you noted that his fingers weren’t swirling randomly beneath your ribs, but in precise motions.

A.

T.

S.

You gasped when the U was written on your flesh. The M had your toes curling, your back arching. If the U came, you didn't feel it, too lost in the heat. His groan echoed off the walls around you two when he lowered his head down and pressed his face to your bare breasts. Teeth brushed against your flesh, nibbling at the hardened buds, tongue soothing when they became irritated, and he listened to your sighs as your hand fell to rub against your panties, fingers tracing the warm outline of your center.

You moaned when he took a nipple into his mouth and your finger crooked a rather specific way, and that was it. You were lost in the haze, and willing to do whatever he wanted. His hands fell to find a strong grip on your thighs. A squeak escaped from between your swollen lips as he hefted you up against him, your breasts pressing against his collarbone. You wrapped one arm around his shoulders to keep yourself upright, but the other hand pressed beneath the collar of his shirt and into his skin, finding the spot behind his left collarbone that he enjoyed so much and massaging it urgently.

He answered by taking your shoulder between his teeth, and you couldn't stop your hips from jerking against his stomach, nor could you keep your moans in as he nipped away at your skin deliciously.

"Looks like you need new marks," he told you around a heavy breath as he glanced at the fading marks on your skin.

"Oh, fuck," you gasped, writhing against him as he sucked on your skin, dragging his teeth over the sensitive flesh. He blew against the marks gently, cooling the saliva there before dropping you down his body slightly and setting his mouth to your neck. "Atsumu," you uttered his name softly, your heels digging into the small of his back.

He sighed against you as his lips trailed up and down your neck several times, his teeth scraping every now and then. Slowly, he shuffled you both to the last stretch of the bed. When his shins bumped against the bed frame, his fingers left your thighs and hooked behind your knees before dropping you down onto the mattress, your back connecting with the soft sheets as you stared up at him. When your cop hat nearly fell off your head, he readjusted it to make sure it would stay still.

You sucked your lip between your teeth as your gaze wandered over him. There was a flush climbing up from his chest, tingeing the tips of his ears crimson. His chest rose and fell quickly, his hair was a mess, and the bulge in his pants was an enticing sight. You couldn't help but feel incredibly lucky.

He dropped to his knees in front of you and ripped your panties from your legs, his eyes finding yours and holding them as he dropped the undergarment to the floor and pressed his teeth to the inside of your knee, nibbling before moving further up your thigh. He took his time making his way towards the apex of your thighs, his fingers tracing up the inside of them as he pressed his mouth to the softer skin near your core. Nip, lick, suck, over and over, and you knew he was littering dark marks across your flesh.

Your back arched when his mouth came closer, sucking a mark rather close to your folds, and you wiggled your hips in an attempt to find relief—relief he wasn’t yet willing to offer.

"Please," you keened, your hips bucking upwards. His mouth paused when he heard your plea, and he pressed a gentle kiss to his final mark.

"You're so fucking cute when you get impatient like this," he chuckled against your skin before he pulled away. Finally—finally—he threw your legs over his shoulders and inched closer to you, his breath fanning over the wet heat between your legs. And then there were lips, and tongue, and his nose pressing in all the right places. A strangled sound fell from your lips as he pressed the flat of his tongue to you over and over in long, heavy strokes.

Your fingers traveled down over your breast and stomach to press against his shoulder, silently asking for his hand. Seconds later, his fingers curled around your own, and your nails dug into his palm as he pointed his tongue and pressed it between your labia, his teeth and chin a welcome pressure against your swollen sex. In and out, once, twice, countless times. He knew you—knew how much you enjoyed the sensation, and the warmth of his smooth tongue.

His hand—the one not being destroyed by your own—traveled up your body, taking a breast into his palm and flicking his long, talented fingers over your nipple. You could hardly breathe. You tucked your lips between your teeth and bucked against his face, your open hand falling to bury your fingers in his hair and press him against you. When he moaned, you felt it, and you wanted nothing more than to fall apart before him.

His tongue didn't stop his attentions. Soft, tentative licks were brought upwards until he found the hard button at the top, but he didn't touch it. He teased, because he loved messing with you. Close, but not close enough. You didn't notice his hand left your chest and drifted down your body as you focused on the feel of him around your clit. Not until you felt a finger press into the spot his tongue had abandoned.

"Fuck, Atsumu!" you cried.

A slow slide, the drag of his digit against your walls. Your chest heaved when he pressed with another finger, and then stroked and searched attentively for the spot he knew would cause you to become a babbling mess of sensation. When he finally found it, you felt you were choking on air, your lungs unable to find enough oxygen to satisfy.

You both knew what was next—what you needed in order to become putty beneath him—it was just a matter of figuring out how much he would prolong it. Thankfully, not long, because he breathed against you once more before covering you with his mouth and flicking his tongue against your clit. Then in an instant, every muscle, bone, tendon in your body went rigid, waves of pleasure running through your insides, and your hand rose so your teeth could bit into the skin of your palm.

Though, it muffled your scream, it was still louder than you wanted, but you found yourself unable to care as your thighs clenched around his ears, shaking with the force of your orgasm as your essence fell on his clever tongue. He lapped at you as you continued to convulse, and his hand tightened around yours, grounding you.

Slowly, you came down from your high, and your muscles went lax. His lips pressed kisses to the marks on the insides of your thighs. It took a moment, but your ability to speak returned, and the first thing you did was swing your heel weakly against his back.

"Tease," you mumbled against the back of your hand. You could feel him grin against your thigh, and it was both a great pleasure and a great irritation. Gently, he pushed your legs from his shoulders and stood. He used his heels to quickly remove his shoes, and then his knees were pressing yours upwards as he crawled over you.

"You look so flushed, baby," he pointed out cheekily, one of his arms propping him over while his other hand smoothed over your ribs, stroking your breasts.

"Asshole," you said in playful tone.

"Bitch," he retorted.

With a peal of laughter, you reached up and began to attempt to undo the snaps and buttons on his dress shirt with fingers still shaky from your orgasm. What you lacked in finesse—at least for the moment—you more than made up for with enthusiasm, and soon the shirt was open and being pushed past his shoulders. He knelt over for a moment, but once his chest was bare he was over you again, leaning down to tenderly press his lips to yours.

"I need you so much," you muttered against his smile, your fingers combing through the fine hairs over his pectorals.

He took your bottom lip between his teeth and swept his tongue across it before leaning back, his eyes glinting as they found yours.

"Oh we're getting there," he promised in a gravelly tone. With some of your strength and a grin returning, you leaned up and kissed him once more before giving his shoulder a gentle shove. He rolled off of you and landed heavily on his back. You followed, your arms on either side of his chest as his arms reached up to stretch, pulling muscles and skin taut. His back arched momentarily, ribs brushing against your nipples. When he settled back down on the mattress and caught your infatuated gaze, he flashed you a smug grin.

"Get over here," he rasped. You snorted as you moved to kneel between his thighs, his calves hanging over the edge of the bed, and then focused your attention on the button and zipper on his pants. When they were loosed enough, you tucked your fingers beneath the waistband and pulled them down as far as they could with your position, along with his underwear. His member—hard and heavy—freed itself and fell against his stomach, twitching and smearing clear liquid against his skin.

Your eyes dropped to his erection, heat curling your toes. Your gaze reluctantly left his shaft to move to his eyes, and you found him propped up on his elbows, watching you with wide eyes, large pupils, and his tongue poking out from between his lips. His natural flush had darkened, his chest and shoulders painted red. You rubbed the pad of your thumb against the underside of his cock and he released a sharp intake of breath upon the gesture, and a shallow thrust as he leaned his head back.

Taking your lip between your teeth, you shifted to allow your thighs to generate a small friction against your center and squeezed your fingers gently around his cock, stroking from base to tip with a practiced fluidity. He moaned beneath you, hips rising to meet your strokes as his breath came faster.

"I said, get the fuck over here," he hissed out. His hand came down a moment later, grabbing at your shoulder and pulling you up. Your knees came to rest on either side of his waist as your sex gently settled over his erection, your arousal coating him as you leaned your hands on his chest. Whimpers erupted from both of you when his hips pressed upwards.

His hands grabbed at your hips as you shuffled atop him only to move them to your chest when you began rolling your hips. His fingers kneaded, stroked, his thumbs pressing over pert nipples and making you shudder and dig your fingernails into his shoulders.

"Oh fuck, yes," he groaned. His hands left your chest to once more grip your waist, pulling you downwards as he pushed his feet to the floor and the backs of his shoulders into the mattress, rolling himself against your slit. When your hat nearly fell from your head, you pulled it on tighter and pressed it back down which made him emit a laugh in amusement.

You leaned further over him—angled yourself so his tip rolled over your clit with every thrust of his hips—and couldn’t stop the strangled moan that dripped from your tongue. Every slow drag built the tension growing in the bottom of your stomach. It rose and rose and rose, and you found yourself rising up on your knees shakily, your breaths ragged as you reached down with both hands, taking his erection in one and spreading your folds with the other.

A string of garbled words left his throat as you shifted your knees slightly and pressed the head of him to your slick opening. Slowly but surely, you sank down, feeling the press of him on every inch of you, the slide of heat that pulled at you until you were seated on him. You willed your hands to move steadily as you smoothed them over his chest, shoulders, ribs, needing to feel him everywhere.

"Oh fuck, keep going, that's it," he said between long, heavy breaths, a glint in his eyes as they pierced yours, and it spurred you on. You smiled, your thumbs rubbing soothing circles into his skin, your heart swelling.

You could hear him take in his breaths as he tried to control them, both inhaling and exhaling through his nose. A quiet moan left you when you leaned over him, your lips covering his own, tongue finding his in breathy gasps and warm, wet strokes. Hands reached for each other and fingers laced together when you settled back on your knees, palms pressing as you better arranged your legs.

And then, leaning your weight against his hands to give yourself some leverage, you lifted yourself. Your muscles clenched around him as his shaft dragged tantalizingly against your walls, his fingers squeezed, your thighs trembled. Breathy curses shot from his tongue as you wiggled your hips and began to sink down against him once more. It was slow—too much so. At this rate, you two would either be interrupted or drive each other mad.

Reluctantly, you pulled your fingers from between his and planted your palms firmly against his chest. His own fell against your hips, eyes catching yours, tongue sweeping over his bottom lip. He thrust his hips upwards, nudging himself that small bit deeper inside of you and pulling a moan from your throat.

With fingers pressing into muscles and supple skin, you both moved together. He lifted to aid your tensing thighs as you pressed down when his hips rose to meet yours. Breath left both of you quickly as he thrust up into you over and over. Your eyes fell from his to look down your body, to your breasts, to watch his cock delve into you. Though, you—at some point, somehow—had come to hold yourself stationary above him, he had set a pace, rising to meet you.

His grunts echoed in your ears, and your toes curled. He pushed up inside you once more and released your hips to pull your chest to his, wrapping his arms around you before rolling you two, pressing you back into the sheets. Though one of his hands remained curled behind your back—arching you against him—the other planted itself on the mattress, and he used it for leverage as he pulled back before pounding into your slick heat once more.

Your mouth fell open in moans and whimpers as he pressed into you. You cursed, a groan against the skin of his shoulder, followed by his name in two separate, stuttered parts as your legs spread further and your ankles hooked against the back of his thighs. Every thrust dragged his torso along yours. Chest hair brushed over your nipples, his abdomen riding along your stomach, and still he wasn't close enough. Your hands found his back and pressed him down onto you. With every movement, he would stutter briefly before curving his spine and digging into you even further, and every muscle in your body would clench.

When the rhythm he set began to falter, his teeth found your neck to leave more marks. He could write his name on your forehead so long as he didn't stop. You could feel yourself tightening around him, and you dug your fingers into his back, lifting your hips to meet his every thrust.

You were sitting on the edge, and he must have known it, because he settled the length of his body completely along yours and dropped the hand that had been propping him to slip between your bodies. His fingers ran across the slick skin at the spot you both joined before rising to press against your clit. You leaned in and bit into his shoulder as he rubbed small circles around the nub. His fingers twitched in a specific way, his cock rammed into you and—with a high-pitched noise you would be ashamed of later—you fell.

You felt wave after wave of overwhelming pleasure through your core, and every part of your body found some way to cling to him; your hands scrabbled against his back, ankles dug into the back of his legs. You wanted to scream—more than anything you wanted to scream—but your throat felt like it had collapsed as your jaw locked on his shoulder. The pads of his fingers continued to massage your clit, his cock still thrusting into you at a stuttered pace, and you continued to fall apart beneath him.

He tumbled over the edge with you, a strained grunt echoing in your ears as his hips rammed against yours one final time. His thighs jerked and he pulled you tighter against him, spilling himself into your tight heat.

Together, the two of you went limp, bodies twitching and sending aftershocks up your spines as you laid together. It took several moments for your breathing to return to a normal pace. Only then did Atsumu allow himself to slip from you, his breath a heave, and he settled lower on your body, his hand dropping to rest on your chest. Your hands were shaky as they rose to run through his hair. A contented moan vibrated against your collarbone and you smiled before repeating the motion with one hand and allowing the other to draw lazy circles between his shoulder blades.

"You were so good today," you praised, your voice still not completely there. "You definitely earned that."

His lips curved in a smile, and you could feel it against your skin. He purred in approval, "Of course, I always do."

He nuzzled his head into your breasts before he peppered wet, sloppy kisses on the soft mounds. You laughed airily and dropped your head back against the mattress. You sighed happily as your fingers continued to pull his hair from his forehead and felt his fingers—still somewhat shaky—trace patterns into the skin on the side of your rib cage.

Exhausted, the two of you curled on the bed, and he told you all about his raid on the Police Station, laughing as he recalled the events just before he came home to you, foreheads finding each other, fingers stroking. You could feel the rest of the world fall away, and losing yourself in the moments like these—like the laughter, the smiles, the tender looks—made your crazy, wild, unbelievably fun relationship with the blonde even more worth it.

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[subbing-for-clones]

The New Apprentice Part 11

Maul x Sith reader

Word Count: 2.1k

WARNINGS: Oof um so yeah, SMUT 18+ ONLY, blood play, decapitations, straight up murder, power grab, power kinks, light cum play, over all violent.

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       The Death Watch customized their armor. It was in the small details that you had come to be able to recognize most of them. Clan signets, certain dents and scratches here and there, slight differences in paint. You didn't know any of them personally but you knew whose throat you crushed when they stood in your way to the throne room. Maul strode with his chin held high, hands clasped behind his back as you and Savage walked behind him clearing the way. You didn't have to see his face to know that his eyes burned, flaming with anticipation.

    Not many, but a few of the Watch stepped out of your way. It was them you let live. You needed numbers and mindlessly slaughtering all of them wasn't going to get you anywhere. Ghosts couldn't pledge loyalty after all. But the ones who shot or lunged for your master all met one of two fates. Suffocation followed by broken necks or simply being thrown off of ledges. Every step the three of you took could have shaken the ground with purpose. Savage had the last guard in his force grip while he clutched and scratched wildly at the invisible hand that held his throat, lifting him high into the air. You threw the towering doors open to the hall with a powerful unseen push and Savage threw the gasping Mandalorian hurtling towards the group that surrounded Vizsla in his false reign on the throne.

    Blasters were raised in your direction but Maul hadn’t faltered, stalking forward he growled loudly banging his fist against his chest and pointing at Vizsla directly.

"I challenge you, one warrior to another and only the strongest shall rule Mandalore!" The guard lowered their weapons and looked to their leader who took each step off of the throne slowly but filled with resolve.

"So be it. Give him his weapon."

    Bo Kataan unclipped Maul's saber from her utility belt and tossed to him. Gods, you could've fucking ended her right then and there for having the gall of being the one to hold your master's weapon. Maul force pulled it out if the air and into his hand holding it closely, igniting it with a savage roar as the red lit up half of his face agianst the sun's setting glow.

    Vizsla lit the dark saber and cried out, "For Mandalore!" before charging. The two met with a violent ferocity, electricity screamed as their sabers clashed red agianst a crackling black. You noted that Maul wasn't using the force. Whether it was out of personal pride or to strengthen the chances of the Death Watch following him you didn't know but marveled all the same as you stood watching with Savage and Almec. They danced dangerously around one another, weapons shrieking with every contact.

    As you had suspected, the battle didn’t last long. You were surprised when Vizsla had managed to disarm your master but he quicky regained the upper hand. Kicking the broken leader back to the foot of the throne he force pulled the dark saber into his grasp, lit it and beheaded Vizsla in front of all of his men.

    You watched unblinkingly as Maul took his rightful place on the throne. His golden eyes bored straight into yours, a slickness wetting your folds at his power display. You barley registered Bo Kataan sneering something with a disgusted tone to her voice. Your masters growl rang out clearly in the hall calling for her execution along with the deserters who joined her. You walked slowly away from the door; eyes still locked on his, predatory. Blaster shots flew past you. The traitors had lit their jet packs and took flight, returning fire. You were possessed by lust, more so than you ever had ever been in your life.

    You felt more than thought about your arms lifting above your head, clenching your fists and slamming them back to your side, power fueled by your emotions. The loyal Death Watch members stared in amazement as every deserter crashed to the ground with such a force that their beskar shattered on impact. Death rattles and groans of agony drifted from piles of crumpled limbs as blood pooled around them. An invisible, ethereal hand brought Bo Kataan to her knees in front of you, clutching at her neck to no avail like you had seen dozens of times by now. Your eyes still locked with Maul’s.

    He leaned back in the throne grinning wickedly as you took your sabers from her belt where his had hung beside them not minutes before. You took a moment to look at her face, swollen and purple while her eyes bulged. You lifted the shorter of the two sabers to the side of her throat and lit it, plunging the plasma blade through her neck. You ripped the last tendons that connected her head to her shoulders with a violent spray of blood, drops splattering across your cheek.

    The loyalists were frozen in place, even Savage was gaping but you didn’t see any of them; only your master. He must have commanded them to leave the hall because bodies in armor rushed past you as you sashayed up to the throne before dropping to your knees between his spread legs; his twitching bulge painfully obvious now. You reached up to the hem on his pants and dragged them down, freeing his aching cock.

    You didn’t hesitate to drag a long languid lick from his base to his dripping tip while he groaned loudly. You captured the tip in your mouth and lightly suckled it, swirling your tongue around his head as you sunk lower down his shaft. Eyes locked onto his you took him all the way down to his hilt; gag reflex be damned. You were blown out by lust and feral for the man before you. Any slight shred of doubt you held in his plan, gone. You swallowed around him and he hissed, his eyes rolling to the back of his head. He gathered his bearings and pulled you off of him by your elbows and dragged his tongue over your chin and cheek, collecting the blood where it had splattered.

    After cleaning every last drop off of your flesh he delved his tongue into your mouth, tasting himself on your breath. He was growling while he tore your bottoms off of you, exposing your skin to the chill of the air. His hand plunged between your folds roughly and he moaned at how wet you were; dripping down your thighs like you had already cum.

    He bit at your lips viciously before pulling away long enough to pull you onto him and directing his cock into your burning core. You gasped out as he brought you down flush with his hips on the throne. You lifted slightly to fall back down onto him as he thrusted up into you. The pace was brutal, ferociously fucking each other as teeth explored one another’s soft necks. His pace impossibly picked up and your legs were starting to shake, breathing became ragged and inconsistent while you clenched around him. You screamed your release and went limp from its power as he continued to fuck into you until he was roaring animalistically in your ear; filling you with his cum. He gripped you there, on his cock, bodies littered around you, Bo Kataan’s blood staining your top. You stared into each other’s eyes until your breathing slowed.

      A week passed since your master took Mandalore and instated Almec as its prime minister. The Death Watch who had remained loyal to your master had painted their armor black and red, the higher-ranking members adorned a crown of horns in semblance to Maul’s. All that had seen your display and no doubt heard your sexual activity immediately after the bloodshed obviously feared you. Going rigid if you turned a corner and walked into their line of sight. You had tried to assure them that as long as they did their jobs and served the new Mand’alor appropriately they had nothing to fear of you. This only seemed to make it worse.

    That night when you returned to yours and Maul’s shared room you paced around while he read a data-pad from a desk.

“I’m gonna make them like me,” you decided aloud, eliciting a chuckle from Maul.

“They don’t need to like you to do their jobs darling.” He was wearing a long silken black robe as he peered over the rim of his reading glasses at you. He had adapted incredibly quickly to the finer things part of this new situation. He adapted quickly to all of it actually; he seemed to seamlessly juggle the various crime syndicates and the new planet easily.  

“No, they don’t, however, people who serve out of fear will only serve you for so long. People who like you, who love you, will follow you to the end of the galaxy and back,” you ran your hands over his shoulders, down his chest and nibbled at his ear, “as I would for you.”

Maul took off his reading glasses chuckling louder as he turned to face you, “they watched you kill at least fifteen solders simply by lifting your arms. Then you proceeded to rip a woman’s head off who had held an air of importance within their ranks; the second I sent them away we fucked on the throne while you were covered with blood,” he gazed at you like you were the most wonderful woman who had ever existed in the galaxy and you playfully pouted.

“I guess I did scare them a little didn’t I?” you pouted coyly. Maul stood to kiss you.

“Yes, my love you’re utterly terrifying and I love it. I love you.” You rubbed your nose against his and nipped at his lips, “I love you too.”

You took his hand and pulled him into your shared plush bed, “I’ve been thinking.”

He turned on his side, propping up on his elbow and dragging his other fingers down your curves, “yes? What about?”

“The extra funds we seized from Satine’s personal accounts. I think we should use them to relight the forges that the pacifist had extinguished. I’ve been reading up on the people’s customs and it seems they value a few things above all else, the forge fire being high on that list.”

He hummed in thought, “and what of the rest of the funds? That surely wouldn’t take all of them to accomplish.”

You thought for a moment before answering, you didn’t want to come off as undermining his rule but he had asked for your opinion so you spoke, “well, Satine had been struggling to get food to some of her people. I looked into reports and found that several extensive farm land properties had been seized from various clans by the crown after failing to make payments on them. After statistical analysists, I calculated that if those lands were to bear crops and raise meat yet again; Mandalore could be self-sufficient in two seasons. I suggest we give the land back to the clans who lost them, abolish their debt and use the money to seed their fields. Mandalore would feed itself without the need for outside intervention and you’d have their gratitude along with their loyalty.”

    Maul had removed his hand from your side to stroke his chin in thought of your words looking off into the distance. You waited on bated breath for his response. He eventually looked back to you with a proud smile on his lips, “that would work. You know,” he took your hand and pressed a kiss to your fingers, “you’d make a wonderful Queen. The people would adore you as I do.”

Your face heated as you looked away, honored by his praise and humbled by it.

“I will bring your suggestion to Almec tomorrow and see that it happens. I know I’ve been busy but we will resume your training very soon my love; I’m sorry the break has taken longer than I had perceived but please know I haven’t forgotten about it. It can’t be a bad thing to have a planet full of warriors grateful and indebted to me. Someone wiser than her years recently explained to me why it’s best to have people who like you, serve you.” You giggled at his mirroring and locked your lips with his.

   The two of you lazily made love until sleep took hold of you both. As you drifted off into its warm embrace you sighed contentedly, the path felt clear again. This is what you were meant to do in this moment, heal these people and their planet and strengthen Maul’s rule here.

[its-ribs]

Statement 0142110

Statement of R. Cantor, regarding his experience with a deranged killer in an unnamed area of woods in California, in 2012. Statement given 21 October, 2014. Recording by Jonathan Simms, head Archivist of the Magnus Institute. Statement begins:

I was on a camping trip with some friends out in the woods near Idyllwild in California. It was me and my friends Sam W., Stanley Y. and Louis S. staying in a couple of tents, when Sam pulled out some magic mushrooms. Now I know they’re illegal, but I’m fine telling you because it was two years ago on a different continent, so i don’t really care. I was 29 at this point, I’d been out of college for years and i hadn’t used any drugs since then, and I figured why not? It’s a camping trip, what could go wrong? Little did I know, everything would change that night.

I don’t know exactly how long it took, but I know that not long after taking those shrooms I was out cold, and when I woke up, I was in the middle of the woods and the tent and fire pit were nowhere to be seen. It took me a while to realise that neither were my friends. The night was unbelievably dark, it almost seemed unnatural, I couldn’t even see any stars. The intense darkness reminded me of the torch on my phone, but just my luck, it was dead. I was just beginning to panic when out of the corner of my eye I saw him.

He was about 30 feet back and I just knew he was following me. He was maybe 5’9, I couldn’t get a great look at him because it was so dark. At that point he did about the most terrifying thing possible, he got down on all fours like some sort of animal, and started sprinting towards me like a tiger. I was frozen. Of course I was frozen, what can you do in a situation like that? I began looking for any sign of my friends, or my car or even a road, but I was all turned around. And then he was upon me. He had a knife, and he had blood on his face. There was blood everywhere.

I ran as fast as I could from that freak of a man. I ran for my life, because I’m my heart I already knew he had killed my friends. I ran for what felt like hours, until I eventually realised he wasn’t following me anymore. This did give me a bit of relief, but I was still lost in the dark woods, stranded with a murderer.

It was at that point that I found what I thought would be my saving grace: a small cottage, with a light coming from inside. I crept towards what I believed was my salvation, when I heard a dull *thunk*, and a burning hot pain shot through my leg. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a bear trap in action, but standing in one is without a doubt the most excruciatingly painful thing I have ever felt. It tore through the tendons and muscles in my lower calf, and completely snapped both the bones, right above my ankle. I ended up losing the foot, and I know you and your people must have been wondering about my limp when I walked in, and it’s because I’m wearing a prosthetic.

After managing to tear myself away from the bear trap, I limped closer to the place that I had thought would be my solace, but I was slowly beginning to realise what it must be. Peeking through the ajar door, I could see the maniac inside scraping a rock against the sharp end of an axe. In the light of the fire I saw his face clearly for the first time. I couldn’t quite place it, but I could have sworn I recognised him from somewhere.

I knew this would be my only chance. I remembered taking some martial arts classes a few months ago, a colleague of mine had been attacked and it had scared me so badly that I took some Brazilian Jiu Jitsu classes. I snuck up behind him and pulled him into a sleeper hold. I knew that I would have to kill him if I ever wanted to get out of here alive. He struggled as much as a man taken by surprise who couldn’t breath could, but in the end I managed to stun him enough to wrestle his knife away from him, and I stuck it straight into his side. I had beaten him.

At this point my leg was bleeding pretty badly, so I began limping back into the woods, half dragging myself in whatever direction felt right, leaving a blood trail as I went. I paused for a second to lean against a tree and regain some strength. As I leaned on the tree, I felt the intense cold of a metal barrel press into my temple; a gun. Instinctively I grabbed it and pulled the arm holding it with all the night I could manage and I slammed my stalker onto the cold forest ground. His gun flew into the darkness, and in his shock he dropped the axe he was holding at my feet.

I scrambled to grab the axe and started swinging wildly. I may have taken a few MMA classes but that doesn’t prepare you to swing a heavy axe at a man, so I was unprepared for the weight, and my swings were clumsy and slow. A smile spread across his face, as he cockily ducked and dodge every swing I made. I realised that he was playing with me, so I had to use his confidence against him. I made a weak swing that he could easily dodge, but that was the plan, while he began to move left after my swipe, I turned and swung right as hard as my fatigued, injured body allowed me to.

The smile on his face didn’t have time to fade as the blade connected with his neck, and as his head rolled onto the dank ground that terrifying grin refused to fade, and I realised I knew why he looked so familiar. As realisation struck, a set of headlights appeared with red and blue flickering at the top. I collapsed to the ground, the blood loss from my leg finally taking my strength. Victorious, I looked into the sky and saw that the stars had returned. I had defeated Shia Lebouf.

Statement ends.

Mr. Robert Cantor was admitted to the Idyllwild health centre with a severed foot and severe blood loss. He made a full recovery before moving to the United Kingdom in 2013. His story lines up with both his hospital admission and the deaths of Samuel Witwicki, Stanley Yelnats, Louis Stevens as well as Hollywood superstar Shia Lebouf. The death of Mr. Lebouf was very publicly reported, and rumours of a homicidal and cannabalistic rampage at the end of his life have spread ever since. It seems Mr. Cantor is the only victim to escape the rampage of Shia Lebouf, as the cabin described in his statement was later found by LAPD, where they discovered the remains of over 40 campers, all partially eaten.

Normally I would just chalk this up to a regular human psychosis enduced murder spree, were it not for the fact that he had put the brain of every single of his victims into jars. He had inscribed each of them with a phrase. With the exception of the 3 friends of Mr. Cantor, every single brain had “to remember the thrill of the hunt” carved into them.

End recording.

[just-horrible-things]

Here’s a really old piece from before I had heard of whump! The perspective character is not mine, I wish I could remember a username to credit the owner.

---

Waiting for the High Hunt

I can hear him long before I enter the dungeon. He's in another manic phase. His voice reaches me first, filtering up through the stones. He screams long and hoarsely, more animal than person. Not for the first time, I think he would make a good hunter. He is full of primal rage and energy. Perhaps if he survives being prey I will make him an offer. 

As I open the door to begin my descent, the sound is magnified a hundred fold, echoing off the damp stone walls. I hear the repeated clang of metal on stone now as well, irregular and harsh. 

It is cold in the dungeon, colder than the wooden cabin above, but not so cold as the outside air, where the wind blows harshly. I have allowed him his leathers, but I know it is barely enough to keep the cold at bay. 

The wolves are restless. Some come to me, whining as I enter their lair. The others stand a little apart from his cage, watching him, or pretending not to care.

I had hoped they would cow him, but he does not fear them, and they have come to learn not to approach too closely. He is astonishingly quick, and even with only his hands and a piece of broken stone he injured one that tried to bite him through the bars. 

I have removed all the rubble from his cage, but I cannot stop the ice from forming, and sometimes it forms in sheets thick enough to be used as fragile, makeshift blades. I considered removing his gloves, but I don't want him to lose his fingers to frostbite. He must be strong for the hunt. Besides, I doubt the pain and cold would keep him from handling the ice. 

I stand and watch for some time. He hasn't noticed me yet, or feigns not to have done. He throws himself at the bars over and over, slamming his shoulder into them. Sometimes he hurls himself so hard at the metal that he breaks bones, but not today. Today he is showing restraint. Perhaps not truly manic then, merely letting out frustration. It is good for him to exercise and maintain his strength. 

When he finally sees me, he stops yelling and clings to the bars, panting. Another sign that he is not in the grip of madness. His pale, yellow eyes lock mine with a desperate urgency. He is defiant today, then. When he fears me, he drops his gaze. 

I require his fear. I need him to run before me when I finally release him. When the Hunt comes, he must flee before the wolves. But I am not worried. I know how to make him fear. In the weeks we have been together, I have learned his terrors. When the time comes, he will run from me. 

But knowing that, I needn't have his fear every day. Too much too soon, and he will become numbed to it. He numbs so quickly this one, so quickly shuts himself away and becomes dead to the world. I can't have that.

"When is the Hunt?" he asks. He asks the same thing every time. It has become a routine, and I indulge him in it. "When the moon is full." "How long? How many days?" "It's been two days since I last saw you," I tease him. He has no way of counting the time here in the dark. "Five more days," he responds instantly. He remembers, then, what I told him last. I am not lying to him. I want him to be as prepared as possible in body and in mind. He must be the best prey that he can be. "Are you looking forward to the Hunt?" I ask, mocking. His answer is fervent, and a little surprising. "Yes, yes, eight times yes." He sounds so sincere, I could believe that it is the truth. 

But he is an inveterate liar, and very good at what he does. Most likely he is only looking forward to what he imagines will be his chance to strike at me. 

He does not know how badly he will fear when the time comes. 

Or perhaps he's merely saying what he thinks I want to hear. I've punished him before when he steps too far out of line.

There is a brief quiet. We watch each other, I among my wolves, and he clinging to the cold metal as if his legs barely have the strength to hold him. 

The power differential is palpable in the air, but that has never seemed to disconcert him. As if reading my thoughts, he sinks slowly to his knees, a tacit acknowledgement of my power over him. He has never been ashamed to beg, not even when his hatred for me runs hottest.

"You want water?" He nods. I haven't fed him in two days. Water seeps down from above and freezes onto the walls. He can lick the ice, but it is never enough. He grows thirsty in my absence. The water I've brought this time is warm, heated over the fire then carried under my furs. Its heat will give him strength, if he drinks quickly. 

I approach the bars at a slow, but confident pace. He hesitates, then falls back. Sometimes he attacks me at this point, but he is always swiftly punished. I am cautious, but I do not fear him. He is too thirsty to act against me today. 

I set down the jug of water in front of the bars just within his reach, and lay a haunch of raw meat beside it. The wolves eye it with interest. Just like that his gaze leaves mine. It flicks to the meat, then from one wolf to the next. He snarls, and some of my pack snarl back. 

I can see from the tension in his body that he is ready to pounce forwards, but nobody moves. They are waiting on my tacit permission. Even he acknowledges my authority today. 

I step back, and three bodies snap into motion. A hungry wolf moves fast, but he is impossibly quick. Almost faster than the eye can follow he is at the bars, flat full length on the floor to extend his reach. The meat disappears back into the cage before either pair of wolf jaws can close on it. 

One retreats, conceding defeat, but the other, angered, lunges forwards for him. Sprawled flat as he is, he shouldn't be able to react, yet he does. As the fanged muzzle pushes through the bars to reach him, he is spinning, and a booted foot collides squarely with the side of the wolf's face. It cries out in pain and withdraws, but he has landed another blow before it can retreat out of his limited reach. Wounded more in pride than anything else, it skulks to the back of the pack, tail low. 

The jug of water has been knocked in the confusion, but the seal holds. He retrieves that before eating and drinks deeply, holding the meat protectively against his chest. At first he seems a little surprised by the warmth. He looks to me and mumbles gratitude before continuing to drink. 

It remains a puzzle to me how he can simultaneously hate me and thank me, apparently in sincerity, for the smallest of things. I have never demanded thanks from him, but his manners remain impeccable, at least on days when he isn't mad.

When he looks up from the water, he speaks again. "What meat is this?"  He asks these pointless questions, trying to prolong my visits. He is not afraid of the wolves, but he is afraid to be left alone, and he barely bothers to conceal it. "Deer again," I respond. 

In the first week I tried to taunt him by pretending I was feeding him the meat of his own kind. He wasn't bothered by the idea, and nor was he fooled. I suspect he's been driven to eat the flesh of the dead before. He was so thin when I caught him, and yet I believe he has been thinner before. I feed him as well as I can, but it is not enough to put more flesh on his bones. I have too many other mouths to feed.

"Where did you catch it?" "Near the cemetery." The question recalls to me the thrill of the hunt. "We ran it down, just me and my priestess. A long hunt, to honour the Beastlord. The first time we ran it down we only spilled a little blood and allowed it to run on. The second time I tore out a hamstring to cripple it. We let it limp a little longer, desperately fleeing us, until we finally pulled it down and feasted on its hot guts. It was still screaming." I grin at him, but his pale eyes are unperturbed. "That's how we'll hunt you. A long, painful hunt, with a lot of blood and glory. You'll scream in the end." He nods. "Most people scream in the end."

"Still looking forward to the Hunt?" I ask. He still shows no fear, as such, but there is a certain wariness in his eyes. He hesitates, as if sensing my intent. "You shouldn't be. You should be afraid. You think you can escape me, but you are wrong. I will run you until you can run no longer, but the fun doesn't stop when I catch you. I will tear your tendons so you cannot flee, but I'll leave you just enough strength to struggle against me as I pin you to the floor." I step closer to the cage, right up against the bars. He's afraid now, he won't strike against me. "Once you're helpless, perhaps we'll start eating. Eyes are delicious, we could have those out, one at a time. Maybe your guts. A gut wound is a terrible way to die, but a slow one. You'd live long enough for us to have plenty of fun. You like begging for mercy, don't you, but once I had your tongue out, you'd be hard pressed to beg for anything."

He shrinks away from me as I speak, eyes low. No more defiant stares now. This is what I need. He must fear me. He must run before me. I bare my teeth and snarl at him, and he flinches sullenly away. 

I laugh and stand to leave. 

As I reach the stairs, I hear the dull crash of him hitting the bars, but only once. I look back. He's clinging desperately to the bars, staring at me with pleading in his eyes. As my gaze meets his, he drops his stare, and sinks again to his knees. He doesn't bother to beg me to stay with words anymore. It makes no difference to whether I stay or go. But he still does this pathetic routine every time. 

He's normally quick to learn, so I wonder if I've been accidentally rewarding this behaviour. Perhaps it's not such a bad thing. His submission to my strength is good. 

I smile at him as he kneels, silently begging me to stay, then I turn and climb the stairs. 

As the door at the top grinds shut behind me, I hear him begin to scream again.

[shinsousbedroom]

Stars and their Distance

Daiya no Ace misawa FWB AU, 1/10 chapters

Miyuki Kazuya, a depressed, workaholic catcher in the NPB, and Sawamura Eijun, a frustrated influencer who just got dumped, are both looking for temporary distraction. The casual, no-strings-attached friends with benefits thing they stumble into is exactly that.

Well, it would be if either of them knew how to do casual.

[Read on AO3.]

Chapter 1: Spinning

Excerpt from “Ace of Hearts: a blog about when love comes outta left field!; Q&A: Bad Break-Up Blues”

“[…] Think of relationships like this. You’re a pitcher on the mound and there’s a line up of batters waiting to knock your ball outta the park. These are your dating prospects. When you’ve gotten hurt pitching before—tore a tendon, drilled the batter, balked, whatever it was—you might not wanna pitch again, right? But the only surefire way to lose the game is to not throw the ball at all. 

“You might be thinking, ‘But Eijun, if the batter hits a home run off your pitch, aren’t you losing the game?’ Well, if you think the point of the game is to win, sure. But to me, the point of baseball isn’t victory. It’s playing the best game you can with the best players you can. The same can be said for love. Some batters will foul out early, and some runners will never make it all the way home. But when you make that connection, when that bat slams the ball out of the park and the whole field feels the electric rush of a phenomenal play that you helped make—isn’t that a beautiful moment to chase after? Isn’t that feeling worth the risk that comes with love?

“So no matter how unlikely a batter steps up to your plate—and there will be batters you didn’t anticipate—throw the pitch! I promise, every strikeout and home run just makes you a better pitcher and brings you a step closer to a beautiful game. […]”

***

“Did you have to move right after the end of the season?” Kuramochi wiped off the sweat from his face with the bottom of his blue shirt. The whole thing was already drenched dark, consistently doused with water the whole day through as Kuramochi drained bottles over his head to beat back the unseasonably hot September day. “Take a fucking break first, Miyuki.”

Kazuya spat out a handful of screws. The bitter, metallic aftertaste clung to his mouth. “Why delay?” he said, tossing the instruction manual for his shelf to the side in frustration. It skittered across the hardwood floor and into Chris’ calf. 

Chris plucked the booklet up and thumbed through the pages of mildly helpful pictograms, eyeing them warily against Kazuya’s clear lack of progress. “Yeah, Miyuki. Why delay?”

Kazuya shot Chris a sour look and flopped back onto the ground with a groan, defeated. “Not like we���re busy during postseason this year.” 

They sighed in unison, united in the bitterness of loss. 

At least Chris’ team had been only one out from the Climax Series. The Swallows hadn’t come close, and even though it was expected from a rebuild year, the loss still rankled. Small mercies, though: Kazuya could rub in the fact that the Swallows hadn’t been last place in their league unlike the Mariners. 

Suck it, Kuramochi. He’d take his victories where he could.

Kazuya stuck his hand into the air, spreading his fingers wide as the overhead lights filtered between them. “Anyway. Moving is work, and you all banned me from working for the next four months. So really, I’m being responsible here.” His hand flopped down next to him with a hard thunk. 

Kuramochi trudged over, heavy steps echoing through the empty apartment, until his head popped into Kazuya’s vision, arms crossed and scowl fierce. “If you wanna try to fight this again, just give me a fucking reason to pin you into a headlock until you’re crying for mercy.”

Kazuya grabbed at his ankle, rolling onto his stomach for a second swipe as Kuramochi danced out of reach. 

“You can’t pull a fast one on the cheet—AH!” 

His ankles caught the edge of the shelf boards, knocking Kuramochi onto his ass. The wooden slats scraped across each other as they slid out of their neat stacks, thumping and scratching the floor until they were criss-crossed between Kazuya cackling into the floor on his stomach and Kuramochi, shocked and sprawled across the debris.

“Fucking build your furniture, Miyuki!” He cradled his foot in his hands, holding it up to inspect as he twisted it every which way. “We’re not doing the same thing as last time, when it took you a full year to finally put all your shit together.”

The weight of apathy slid back into Kazuya’s limbs, edging out the laughter that had given him a moment of relief. “What if I just didn’t?”

“Is that what you want?” Chris replied evenly.

He lolled his head towards Chris. Despite the heat, Chris had spent all day in a black turtleneck, never once hinting he was even mildly uncomfortable even at the peak of the day’s heat, lugging in heavy boxes from the sun-warmed streets. Now sitting on the floor among bubble wrap and crumpled paper, legs kicked out in front of him and waves of brown bangs framing his face, he still looked as wholly put together as ever. 

Even when Kazuya knew beyond a doubt Chris was the epitome of keeping a stone face even when he was going through the worst of it, he still couldn’t help but be jealous. 

Kazuya went back to staring at the unfamiliar gray tiles on his new ceiling. “It would be pretty funny to leave my apartment unfurnished to spite Kuramochi.”

“Finish the shelf.” Chris tossed the manual back. 

“Kominato’s the one who left the task half-done,” Kazuya said, closing his eyes, overwhelmed in a sudden wash of fury and helplessness. 

He opened his eyes to see Kuramochi and Chris hovering above him again. Both their brows were furrowed, Kuramochi’s fist clenched at his collar, Chris frowning mildly. 

“I’m fine,” Kazuya said brusquely.

They glanced at each other, then back at Kazuya. 

He sat up, forcing the other two to reel back to avoid knocking their heads together. “I’m 27, not 7,” he said, testily. “I don’t need to be put under a watch, I’m a grown ass adult.”

“We aren’t gonna—we can’t sit to the side and watch you nearly kill yourself from overwork again this off-season.” 

“Don’t exaggerate—“

“You said you had it together last year, but you didn’t. So you’re getting strict rules this year,” Kuramochi tugged at his hair, a frustrated sneer on his face. “The Swallows and your agent both know not to let you pile on more than your bare minimum until preseason. And the rest of us are going to check on you regularly because we care about your health, even when you don’t. Got it?”

“It’s not overwork,” he said, falling into the same argument that had been chipping away at him for a year now. 

“Then what is it?”

The only coping mechanism that works. The only way I can pretend to feel anything off the diamond. The only thing that makes me tired enough to sleep at night without baseball 24/7.

He settled on: “It’s just work. Making a living, some might say.”

“Hard to do that when you’re stuck in a hospital bed.”

“That won’t happen again. I was just stressed and tired and a bad day caught me off guard.”

“Yeah, it won’t again because we’re gonna help make sure the off-season doesn’t wreck you again after a long history of hiding your fucking problems until they explode.”

“At least you can’t take conditioning away from me.”

“Follow the plan your trainers set for you.” Chris’ voice cut into Kazuya’s stubbornness. “Please don’t joke about this with me.”

After a moment, Kazuya nodded his head, brusque.

Kuramochi rubbed the back of his neck, trying to break the awkward air that had sprung up between them. “Isn’t exercise supposed to help depressed people? Boost your serotonin up or some shit like that?”

“Just my luck it doesn’t,” Kazuya muttered. He cleared his throat. “Can we go back to harassing me about how bad I am at unpacking?”

“We wouldn’t harass you if you just did it.” Kuramochi stood back up and kicked at a box as he went back to sweeping the floors. “Unpack before the season starts up again. You have nearly five months. If you’re feeling feisty, try decorating your apartment, too.”

“My entire personality is baseball. I don’t care about interior design. Or anything else, for that matter.”

“You used to. Pick up your old hobbies. Bring out that telescope you had at back at Waseda. Read a memoir. All the shit you can’t do during the season, drag ‘em out into the open again.”

The wrong answer, he knew, was to reiterate that he didn’t care about any of that anymore. Seriously. “You two are busy-bodies.”

Chris handed him the power drill then returned to the pile of securely wrapped glass kitchenware. “It’s called friendship,” he said, bubble wrap crinkling.

“This is ridiculous.”

“Just try, Miyuki. Please.”

“Sure,” he said, flippantly, knowing the lie didn’t pass unnoticed from the sag in Kuramochi’s shoulders. He thumbed through the instructions, pushing aside the guilt welling into his throat. Kazuya needed this conversation to be over. “Chris-senpai, where’d you put the drill bits?”

***

“Hjnhbgfgvbhnjmknjbhgvfdbghnjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj” wasn’t the most eloquent start to Eijun’s next blog post. Of course, Eijun normally didn’t start his articles by rolling his face across the keyboard in frustration, but considering how little he’d written in the past week, this was as good a draft as any.

Eijun’s eyes flung open as the laptop shifted from under his face, tipping his head off to thunk into the table. He rubbed at his forehead, and blinked up to find Harucchi tapping delicately at the keyboard while the other hand balanced the device in the air. “Eijun-kun,” said Harucchi, peering from around the screen, “not your finest work.”

Eijun sat up and scowled, the lines of his face scrunching against the keyboard indents on his skin. “What would you know about it?” 

“I’ve been editing your posts for years,” Harucchi said. He settled the laptop in front of Eijun, then settled into the chair across from him. “If you’d like me to stop now, I can happily use that time in other ways.”

The dishes rattled when Eijun slammed his palm onto the table. “You’re not allowed to ditch me like that!” 

Harucchi raised his eyebrows. “Says the man who’s been avoiding me.”

A double blow of panic and then confusion struck him. He frowned and swiveled his head around. Snaking line at the counter, coffee scenting the air, a low hum of incomprehensible chatter: this was definitely the coffee shop he’d just discovered this morning and came to by himself and didn’t tell Harucchi about. “How’d you find me?”

“You should stop posting your location on Instagram if you don’t want to be found,” he offered with a gentle smile.

“You don’t live anywhere near here.”

“A teammate just moved to the neighborhood. It was pure luck I happened to be there while you happened to be here.” He ran his fingers against the edge of a plate by Eijun’s elbow, empty of all but crumbs. “It’s a cute shop. New haunt for you?” he asked, a touch too casual.

Eijun averted his eyes, lips pinching. He knew what Harucchi was really asking. “I’m fine.”

“I didn’t ask that.”

“I’m doing fine,” Eijun insisted. “Really.”

“I’m glad you stopped feeling obligated to go to the other cafe.” His voice was barely loud enough to reach Eijun, covered by the clatter and call of employees, and a particularly rowdy group of seven students packed at a four person table next to his little corner.

“The old place got too many baristas who sucked,” Eijun lied. As if Harucchi didn’t already know that he’d only just shoved his pride aside enough to accept he’d lost his favorite coffee shop to the break-up. “Had to find a new one.”

Harucchi pried open the plastic lid to his coffee, blowing at the steam rising from the cup. He drew in a long, slow slip of his drink. “Maybe a fresh start here means a fresh start with the blog. Talk about grinding new beans, or something…?” Eijun blanched, well aware that Harucchi’s innocent reputation was a front. 

“If you think I am going to subject my loyal followers to love advice using bean grinding as the topic—”

“You’ll have to excuse me if you had an idea in mind already. I’d thought from the keysmashing that you hadn’t.” Eijun aimed a kick at his shin under the table. Without looking, Harucchi crossed his legs, as if he’d planned on it for that exact moment all along instead of the attempt to dodge Eijun’s ire that it really was. “Is there a reason you can’t find an appropriate topic for your next post?”

Eijun cheeks puffed out, determined for two whole seconds not to tell Harucchi the truth, before blurting out, “I promised Wakana we’d wait a few months before officially announcing we broke up.” And yep—there it was, that classic Kominato passively skeptical look that circled past nonjudgmental so thoroughly that it ended up aggressively intimidating. The one that meant Harucchi was seconds away from bulldozing through all the nonsense he was seeing ahead of him. Eijun lived in terror of it. “She wanted to give us a chance to recuperate in private first,” he muttered, defensive. 

“Eijun-kun.”

“I know, I know! A smart idea for people like Wakana, but I don’t…like wallowing like this. I can’t keep sitting here thinking about how much she doesn’t want me, and it’s all I want to write about. But I can’t post any of it. It’s been nearly two months, and I haven’t moved on. I’ve just gotten madder.”

“You two didn’t consider posting a small announcement saying you were over but you needed time? Space?”

“I couldn’t ask her.” Eijun subsided, spinning his teacup in its saucer with a single finger hooked through its tiny handle. “I owe her, Harucchi. The only reason I started lifestyle and romance blogging was because Wakana got me into it. I made my start on her profiles with her followers. Talking about her now? Why we broke up? Even if I want to, it sounds like betraying her. I don’t want anyone thinking I’m trying to talk shit about her, when we’re both in the same influencer circles.”

Harucchi tilted his head, and when Eijun didn't continue on after several seconds, he prompted, “There’s more.”

So much for the dumb jock stereotype.

“If I write it, then I feel like I’m giving up on her. On us ever being something together, again.” He crossed his arms onto the table, elbows shoving the dishes and laptop uncomfortably close to the edge of the small table, and laid his head on his forearms. He closed his eyes, and said quietly into his chest, “I still love her, Harucchi.”

“I know, Eijun-kun.” A warm hand squeezed his elbow. Between their silence, the monstrous table of college students packed up and left, and suddenly the shop settled into a calm Eijun needed. 

He poked his head up from the comfort of his arms to stare at Harucchi. He was steadily sipping his coffee, one hand resting on Eijun’s elbow. His pink hair had pulled out of the bun at his nape and fell into windswept wisps framing his face and neck. He’d long since stopped wearing Ryou-san’s hand-me-downs in favor of softer, luxe sweaters and slacks, the only true expense he indulged in despite his lucrative status as a rising star for the Swallows.

Altogether, he looked gentle, dangerously so. On the diamond or off, it was easy to be lulled into a sense of security right before he whacked an unpleasant truth out of the park. 

Harucchi pulled his hand back and apologized with a glance. Eijun wasn’t sure why…until he started speaking. “You make a living off of posting about your life—and romance, in particular. You’ve never hidden your past relationship troubles from your followers, however difficult it was to express. It’s part of your brand at this point.”

Eijun’s mouth twisted as he sat up. “Wakana isn’t a branding tool.”

“No one is saying that,” Harucchi said patiently. “What I am saying: you underestimate how much of your own work goes into your success. Aotsuki was certainly helpful—but your personality and your words are why people stay. People trust you.

“You’re good at what you do, Eijun-kun. You’re honest and kind in your observations, to yourself, to your partners, to strangers, despite how difficult and personal love is. When the time comes, whatever you post about Aotsuki will be the same.” Harucchi shrugged. “Also, I’ll edit out anything that makes you sound insensitive.”

Eijun let out a heavy sigh, stretching his arms into the air and shaking off the melancholy. “Thanks for not letting me fall on my own sword.”

“What are friends for?”

For all that he felt better, though, Eijun was still stuck staring at a blinking cursor at the end of a line of drivel. “That still doesn’t solve my problem. I don’t have a clue what to post next. The schedule I followed is trash now without personal updates of me and Wakana. I haven’t been able to binge any of the manga or shows I wanted to review, either. All I got left is the advice column, but if I keep that up with nothing else, I might as well change the blog name to Dear Eijun instead of Ace of Hearts.”

Harucchi stared at him, calculating out something as he took in Sawamura’s restlessness. “You don’t have to keep writing about romance.”

“That’s what I started the blog for.”

“But that’s not why you started writing and recording back at Seidou. You’ve had success with your baseball analysis and tutorials on YouTube and Instagram. You could even say you’ve been neglecting them to chase after romance.”

Eijun groaned, loud and theatrical enough to make the meek businessman behind him jump in shock. “Maybe if I got as much engagement talking about how stupid the idea of celebrity athletes are when it’s a team sport—”

“See?” he cut in, tilting his cup toward Eijun. “You already have a topic to post about.”

“Baseball is my hobby, not my job,” he said mulishly, jaw jutting out. “My dad wrecked his love of music that way! I’m not gonna risk hating baseball after he spent my whole life yelling at me not to ‘monetize my interests’ while holding me in a headlock. That’s asking for the biggest lecture of my life!”

“You can always stop if it’s not the direction you want to go. You’re not getting married to the idea.”

“Don’t bring up marriage, I just got dumped!”

Harucchi pressed his lips together in a thin line. “Fine, don’t think of it as a marriage,” he said. From Harucchi, the sliver of impatience he let free was the equivalent of hauling Eijun by the collar and shaking him down. “Flirt with baseball. Go on a few dates. Get a benefit or two out of it. Does the metaphor suffice now?”

Eijun gasped. “Harucchi! You’re too innocent for that sort of talk!”

“My brother is Kominato Ryousuke, and my best friend writes a blog about romance and sex that I edit,” he said, even as his quiet voice went squeaky and his face mottled bright red from embarrassment. 

“Maybe I should change my blog to save you the embarrassment.”

“I also admit I have a request of you,” Harucchi said sheepishly, pressing a hand to his cheek. “The Swallows want me to get more heavily involved in PR this offseason, and I could use your help figuring out what I’d actually like to do instead of going along with every idea they propose. I’ve seen what they make the other players do, and I’m not interested in doing the exact type of promo they’ve done the past few seasons.”

Eijun crossed his arms and leaned back, chin tilting up defensively. “If you’re trying to convince me by pretending you need help—”

Harucchi shook his head, bangs bouncing across his forehead. “I hope you’ll find value or inspiration in it, too, but I was going to ask, regardless.” He grimaced into his cup. “The players who carry most of the strain of Swallows marketing are…otherwise occupied this offseason. I was volunteered to step in; management’s been wanting me to raise my profile for a while. I can’t really say no, so I may as well make the most of it.”

“I don’t want a pity job.”

“Please, be reasonable.” Harucchi smiled the shy, dreamy, polished smile the Swallows had been trying to splash across their advertising since he joined the team. “It’s a pity favor.”

Eijun snorted, relaxing into his chair again. “Fine,” he said, pulling open a clean document on his laptop. “Let’s brainstorm.”

[vividlylost]

I don't make posts like this, but I figured all I can do is try.

My mother tore her Achilles tendon and messed up that whole area her foot this week. She's a hairstylist which means not only does this put her out of work, but it also means she can't afford surgery, physic therapy, or the tests on her own.

Our family is helping her best we can by getting the smaller bills, and I'm going to be getting her one of those knee scooters so she can hopefully keep going to work part time.

That being said none of us can help with the surgery beyond small amounts, especially during the pandemic.

I know it's hard for everyone right now, so even if you cant donate, I'm asking if you could share this for me so maybe someone sees it who can. Literally every dollar will help.

A Go Fund Me to help my mother try to pay for surgery can be found here.

[uglymanchronicles]

Ugly Man Chronicles: Reignition Book 2 Chapter 1: I Woke Up Like This

HEY GUESS WHO’S BACK

It’s time for Book 2: Friends Will Be Friends.  

“Cover art” by @steveman

Pain has a way of fading from the forefront of your mind when you’ve been feeling it long enough, becoming a sort of discordant background noise; still present enough to make every other experience difficult and miserable while not being the focus itself.

What Evan was feeling wasn’t that. His missing eye, his severed fingers, his masticated ankle and now his left tit were all parts of a very noisy argument, each agony clawing at and clambering over the others to try to be the loudest voice in the room.

His stomach felt nearly concave. The signals from the few uninjured parts of him were so fuzzy and indistinct that he might as well have had two tin cans and a piece of twine for a nervous system. He could barely breathe. His throat felt like it was the size of a swizzle stick. His face burned from where his own gore had dried on his skin, combined with the grit of… sand?

He opened his eye just in time for a shovelful of more sand to hit him directly in the face. He sat up, coughing and moaning.

“Shitting dicks!”

Evan turned his head towards the unusual exclamation. Eyepatch was standing a couple of feet from him, a shovel rattling to rest at his feet.

Evan tried to take in his surroundings. It was still dark. He was outside. There were stars in the sky but a very faint hint of pink on the horizon. He couldn’t see a road. His Volkswagen was parked about thirty feet away. There was very little vegetation. He was sitting in a hole a couple of feet deep, half-covered with sand and dry dirt.

“You call this a grave?”

That was what he meant to say, but what came out of his tight, sticky-dry throat was something like “Yyyccchhhggggghhh.”

Evan planted his hands on the sides of the grave and pushed himself up. He still couldn’t move his right foot and his fingers were still gone, but at least he was alive. He managed to drag himself out of the grave and onto his left foot, then held out his hand toward Eyepatch. “Ksss.”

His would-be killer gawked at him. “What?”

“KSSS!” Evan wheezed emphatically, gesturing at his car. “KRR KSS!”

“Oh. Oh!”

Eyepatch fumbled in his pockets, then tossed Evan a familiar, clinking mass. Evan would have caught it, but the bundle slipped through the gap where his fingers were supposed to be and clattered into the dusty dirt. Evan glared at Eyepatch, who hissed awkwardly through his teeth. Grumbling, Evan bent down and retrieved the keys, then hop/stumbled towards his car and opened the trunk. Under the fold-out workbench, he found a blessedly full gallon jug of water. Popping the lid off, he tilted it back and began to guzzle it down. Only a little more than half was actually going in his mouth, but the overflow washing off some of the blood and sand felt good. After the jug was nearly empty, Evan reached back into the trunk and came up with a handful of five-inch-long protein bars, which he tore open with his teeth and took bites out of as many as he could at once. Then he sat down on the bumper and chewed.

There was a period of several minutes where nothing was said or done, except for Eyepatch idly kicking the dirt as he looked on while Evan grunted and noisily devoured a few thousand calories in an almost primal fashion.

Evan burp-retched after the eighth bar, wincing as the pain in his wounds began to play itself in reverse. Food. It’s powered by calories, of course. How… pedestrian,he thought, grumpily.

“So,” he said, finally, causing Eyepatch to jump, “are we done?” “Huh?”

“You’re not gonna try to kill me again, right?”

Eyepatch sheepishly exhaled out of the side of his lips. “Nnno. I pretty much confirmed that you’re not who I thought you were.”

“What gave it away?”

“Well, the wallet full of fake IDs—very convincing ones, by the way, remind me to ask who made them—didn’t do much to dissuade my ‘hired goon’ theory, but then I saw what you wrote on the Finder’s Folly,” Eyepatch said, slowly walking around the grave. “Plus, the stuffed giraffe sorta hinted at someone who doesn’t kill people for fun.”

Evan’s chest tightened. “What did you do with Mr. Nex?” he asked, trying to keep the panic out of his voice.

To his credit, Eyepatch at least attempted to muffle the snort. He crouched down by the grave and reached into the dirt, coming up with a dirty but intact floppy yellow bundle of cloth. Somewhat tentatively, he walked towards Evan, holding the stuffed animal out in front of him like a man reaching out to pet a dog he’s not entirely convinced is friendly.

Evan looked him over for a moment. In the light, he… well, he didn’t look much different. He was wiry and weatherbeaten, like a well-seasoned scarecrow. He carried himself with a sense of potential energy, like he was constantly about to make a sudden move, but he didn’t seem particularly tense. His hair was a medium brown that mixed with some gray around his temples, with a mustache-less goatee and thin eyebrows to match. Stubble connected his facial hair to his sideburns, but Evan couldn’t tell if that was a styling decision or a lack thereof.

“I figured it only made sense to bury him with you. Seemed like the least I could do, considerin’.”

“That’s… almost sweet. Thank you, I guess.”

Evan slowly reached up and took Mr. Nex from him, tucking the giraffe under his arm. A moment later, he reached back into the trunk for another, smaller bottle of water. Eyepatch slowly sidestepped until he was at the other end of the bumper, then sat down, keeping his eye on Evan the whole time. Eventually, he spoke.

“…this is pretty awkward.”

Evan swallowed and chuckled darkly. “I’m pretty sure this is something on a whole other spectrum of socially uncomfortable,” he said. He flexed his right foot; the tendon seemed to be back to a functional level, and he was starting to be able to discern light out of his left eye. “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to have my fingers, would you?”

Eyepatch stood up and patted his pockets in turn, pausing when he reached his right side. Reaching into his jacket, he pulled out a bloody handkerchief wrapped around something. “Here.”

“Thanks.”

“Didn’t think it was good to leave obvious evidence behind.”

“Shit, we left that room a mess.”

“Don’t worry about it, I gave the manager a couple thousand to cover it when I checked you out.”

“Decent of you.”

“Well, it was on your card.”

“Bastard,” Evan muttered, though there wasn’t much actual vitriol behind it. He unwrapped the fingers, comparing them to the stumps. After rinsing off the raw, gooey spots with water, he held the fingers against the aching wounds. Neither man spoke for nearly a minute, then Evan pulled his right hand away and flexed his left hand into a fist.

Eyepatch whistled. “Damn, simple as that? Good as new?”

“They kinda feel like they’re asleep, but I think they’ll be good soon.”

“How come you can do that?”

“It’s not really a ‘can do’ thing, it just happens. No idea. I’m still learning.”

“Is your nipple gonna grow back?”

Evan looked down at his left pec. Where there had been a pert pierced nipple was now a sunburst of scar tissue. He poked at it, cautiously. There was no titillating tingle, only the blunt yes/no sensation of pressure on his skin. “God damn it!”

“What the hell’s up with your tits, anyway? You got some kind of hormone imbalance? I’ve seen chicks with implants smaller—”

“It’s all fucking muscle, okay? I’m just built thick! My whole family is!”

“Huh. You got a sister?”

“Oh, fuck you.”

Evan bit into another protein bar. All things considered, he’d come out of the whole encounter mostly intact—he could basically see out of his left eye by now—but the loss of his nipple really bothered him for reasons he was embarrassed to think about. So rather than think about it, he decided to talk.

“So who are you, anyway?”

Eyepatch seemed to consider the question for longer than necessary, but eventually he said, “Titus. My name’s Titus.”

“I’d say it’s nice to meet you, Titus, but nice meetings don’t usually involve a shallow grave.”

“Hey, that grave was plenty deep for the circumstances, thank you very much. It’s harder to bury a guy in sand than you’d think,” Titus said, a hint of wounded pride in his voice. “Plus, after I dragged your heavy ass out here—”

“In my car.”

“…in your car, because I drive a motorcycle, two feet is all I really had the energy to manage.” Titus winced and put his hand to his left side. “Plus, I think you bruised a couple of my ribs.”

“You fuckin’ bit pieces off me, ripped out my eye, and shot me with my own gun. You got off easy.”

“I don’t patch back together like some kinda… meat machine, though. And don’t forget how you squashed my fuckin’ nuts.”

“Oh, sorry, next time I’m yanked out of the time stream I’ll think of a more gentle way to deal with it,” Evan snapped.

That seemed to shut Titus up for a moment. He stared at the sand for a little while, then asked, “So what’s your name?”

“Well, you said you saw all my IDs. One of them’s real.”

“The card I paid with said ‘Evander G. Abrams’ but that’s a fake name if I’ve ever heard one. I’m guessing… ‘Babak Ervin’.”

Evan burst out laughing. “Oh man, I hardly ever use that one! You had it right the first time.”

“Seriously? But it’s such a…”

“White name?”

“That’s not what I was gonna say, but since you brought it up, yeah, kinda, unless you count Holyfield. What the hell ethnicity are you, anyway?”

“Wow, you don’t beat around the bush, do you?”

“I just watched a man I thought I wrongfully killed climb out of a grave and piece himself back together. You’ll have to excuse me being a bit indelicate.”

“You don’t strike me as that type who’s ever delicate.”

“Hey, fuck you, pal. This whole thing ain’t been a picnic for me, either. So your name really is Evander?”

“I just go by Evan.”

“Fine then, Evan it is.”

“Fine.”

“Good.”

“Okay.”

“Alright.”

“…do you hear that? Sounds like an engine.”

Titus cocked his head, then froze. “Oh shit.”

“What?”

Titus jumped off the bumper. “We gotta get outta here. Now! Close the trunk!”

Evan stood up, mainly to keep Titus from closing the trunk on him. “What’s going on?”

“Some very unpleasant people are on their way! Oh shit, you can see them, look!” Titus pointed towards the horizon. In the near-dawn almost-light, Evan thought he could see a plume of dust moving their way. “Get the keys and let’s go!”

“Okay, okay! You’re bossy for someone who just killed me,” Evan grumbled, walking around to the driver’s side.

“Well clearly it wasn’t that big of a fucking deal, so quit your bitching and drive or we’re both gonna be cactus food!”

“Jeeeesus,” Evan muttered, getting into the car. “Augh, you fucked with the seat and the mirrors? Seriously?”

“START THE FUCKING ENGINE.” Evan jammed the key in, cranked it, put the car in gear, and pressed the gas. “What way’s the quickest way to the… uh-oh.”

Skrrrrrr. Vzzzzzzz. Ssskrrrrt.

“Come on! Why aren’t we moving?!”

“Because you drove a VW Bug God-knows-how-far into the fucking Mojave! We sunk into the sand! I can’t get traction!”

“Aren’t Bugs off-roaders? I thought these things were supposed to be good rally cars!”

“The classic ones, yes, and if they’re kitted that way, yes! I don’t even drive this thing in the winter in central Ohio!”

“Well do something!” Titus sounded like he was on the edge of panic. Evan swung his door open. “Get behind the wheel. I’ll push. And if you leave me…”

“I’m not gonna, Christ! Just do it!” Titus shouted, clambering into the driver’s seat.  Evan crouched down behind the Bug and leaned his back against it, digging his heels into the sand. He threw his weight against it as Titus floored the gas, but all that got him was his calves sandblasted by the spinning wheels.

“Okay okay okay, stop stop stop!” Evan yelled after two knee-straining, back-breaking minutes of pushing and listening to his engine whine. “This isn’t working! We gotta try something else!”

“Well what do you suggest?” Titus screamed from the driver’s seat, nearly hysterical. “We have a rapidly shrinking window of time within which it is okay to be here!”

“Who are these guys, anyway?” Evan asked, squinting at the five—he could make them out clearly now—figures rapidly approaching them.  He could hear the roar of engines.  This didn’t make him feel a particularly strong sense of urgency—Maybe he was tired. Maybe he’d already subconsciously decided they weren’t going to get out of there in time.

Or maybe a small, sadistic part of him was enjoying watching the man who’d mutilated him grow more and more frantic.

“The Billiards MC! A bunch of drug-running shithead bikers! Real vicious bastards!” Titus yelled, flinging open the car door and nearly falling out. He crouched by the car’s forward fender, drawing his pistol and glancing nervously over the hood.

“And they’re coming for us why?” Evan asked, slowly stepping around the front of the car. The roar of the motorcycle engines was growing louder.

“It’s a long story, but the Cliff Notes version is I blew up their meth lab.”

“Huh. Lot of that going around lately,” Evan said absently. “So you don’t think you can take them?”

“Jesus Christ, no! Even with my power I won’t be able to get far enough away to keep them from fillin’ me fulla holes! You gotta do something!”

Evan had already intended to, but that little spiteful corner of his soul wanted to make Titus sweat a little more. “And why is that?”

“Because I can give you what you’re looking for!” Titus yelled, anger edging out the fear in his voice. “’Take me to a friend who can teach me about magic’! That’s what you wrote on that damn lamp! That’s me! I know some shit! I can teach you!”

‘A friend’? That’s what that translated to?  Evan grinned. “Well, hell, all right then! I guess we have an—”

The bullet smacked into his left shoulder and went clear through. He could see the bikers now, and it turned out one of them as actually two—and the rider was sighting down a rifle over the driver’s shoulder. Mostly for effect, Evan grabbed his already-healing shoulder and dove behind the car next to Titus. “Okay, so—these guys don’t have some kind of pool-themed power set, do they?”

“What? No! No, that’s stupid! No, they’ll all just normies with guns and knives!  Their founder’s name is William Yard!  Bill Yard! Billiards!”

Evan’s face went slack. “That’s… that’s actually kinda clever,” he said, grudgingly. “So are they going to try to shake you down, or are they ‘kill on sight’ mad at you?”

Titus peeked up through the driver’s side window. “Good question… I put a couple of their guys in traction and stole a couple hundred thousand bucks in addition to the whole ‘blowing up the lab’ thing…”

“A ‘couple hundred’ thousand?!”

“Yeah, and that’s not easy as it sounds, either. You know how much cash that is, especially when it’s in small bills? I had to balance three duffel bags on my bike and--”

“Sorry to interrupt, but that’s not really pertinent right now!” Evan hissed. “Should we—well, you start shooting now?”

“They’re probably gonna try to get me to give back the money, but that’s already long gone.” Titus exhaled heavily and sat back against the door. “Look, maybe if we go out there you can at least keep them from surrounding us completely. I’ll try to talk to them, but I’m guessing that’s gonna go to shit pretty quick. After that it’s up to you, okay?”

“Alright, fine. Just get clear and I’ll do my best. Put the gun away and let’s get out there.” --------------- The plan worked, insofar as there was an actual plan. When Titus and Evan stood up and walked around the car with their hands up (Evan still holding his ‘wound’), the bikers stopped in a semicircle around them instead of completely encircling them. His hands still raised, Titus stepped forward to, as he’d put it, ‘work my magic’.

“Heeeyyyy, guys! Great timing! I was just—” Blam-kssh!

Evan jerked forward, almost forgetting that he was supposed to be wounded. “…you did not just shoot my fucking window out, you son of a—"

“Hey-hey-hey whoa whoa whoa!” Titus cut in, holding a hand out in front of Evan. “There’s no need for any of that, 8-Ball, we can come to—”

“Where’s our fucking money, Finnegan?” 8-Ball said, his gravelly voice oddly quiet. He seemed to Evan to be the leader of this little band, and he looked for all the world like “Biker #1” right out of central casting. He was heavyset, bordering on fat, but was obviously packing some serious muscle under his leathers and huge bushy beard in addition to the .44 that was smoking in his hand. His namesake, set in the mouth of a fanged, fiery-eyed skull, was tattooed on the front of his bare belly, which Evan had to admit was a pretty striking commitment to a personal aesthetic.

“I’m getting to that, I’m getting to that!” Titus said, pleadingly. “My friend here, he can cover it—”

Evan whipped his head towards Titus, clenching his teeth and glaring. “—here, Evan, let me introduce you to the gang…”

Titus was doing something with his eye. He seemed to be gesturing towards each of the bikers with rapidly movements. Look at them.

Evan decided to play along and tried to size up the bikers without making it obvious that he was trying to calculate the best way to hurt each of them.

“There’s Stick…”

A skinny, pimply guy. Probably the new kid. His bike was too clean, his jacket too shiny, and he didn’t even have a gun; he was holding a Louisville Slugger that looked like it’d never even been used to hit a baseball.

“…Felt…”

A bit on the short side, but nearly as broad as Evan at the shoulder. His curly, short-cropped hair blended into his beard, his chest hair, and as far as Evan could tell, his back hair. He was gripping some kind of jerry-rigged pump-action sawn-off that looked almost as likely to hurt him as whoever it was pointed at.

“…I think that’s English under there…”

Definitely the odd man out. Full racing suit and a mirror-visored helmet. Even his—their? Evan couldn’t even tell—bike was unusual. While the rest of the Billiards rode some variation on the theme of a chopper, English’s bike was a sleek-profiled racer. They were holding some kind of machine pistol in one hand and were idly twirling a switchblade in the other.

“…you’ve already met 8-Ball, and that’s Scratch there with him…”

If 8-Ball was a cookie-cutter biker extra, then Scratch was a perfect “white trash girlfriend”. She was the one who’d shot Evan earlier, and was still holding her rifle as though she intended to swing it up and fire it at any second. She was a very unhealthy-looking skinny, with damaged, stringy hair, prematurely wrinkling skin, and less than an optimal number of teeth. She seemed to be trying to make up for that number in visible track marks and scabs, though. She was open-mouth chewing something that Evan couldn’t identify and was trying very hard not to think about.

“…and hey, who could forget Pockets?”The last member was wearing an open face helmet with goggles and a leather vest over what looked a military flight suit sewn with a truly Liefeldian number of pouches. Evan supposed they were full of spare magazines for the two Glocks he was holding, because he was making clinking noises whenever he shifted his weight.

“…now that we’re all introduced, why don’t I let you guys work out with Evan how you’re going to get your money back, with interest?”

“He ain’t even got clothes,” Stick sneered. This was true; Evan was still in his now blood-splattered heart-print boxers.  “He ain’t got the money.”

“Not on him right now, obviously!” Titus snapped. Evan could see him starting to sweat and his fingers were beginning to twitch. “Look, just let us get back to town and—”

“And nothin’,” 8-Ball rumbled. “If your boyfriend really has the money, well,” he raised his gun again, “we can just dig through his car after he’s dead.” There was a chorus of slides cocking and safeties releasing. Titus made a tch sound.“Well, if that’s how it’s gonna go,” he said, spreading his hands to the side, lowering his head, and freezing. Evan watched intently, eyes wide. Was he about to reveal some other magic?Titus raised his head and grinning at 8-Ball. “Scratch said mine’s bigger.”

Scratch gasped and started to stammer, 8-Ball turned to her with a look of hurt and anger on his face, and for a second, the whole gang was looking away from Titus. In that instant, he vanished. Less than a second later, Evan heard an ‘oof’ from the direction of the grave he’d occupied just half an hour before. Evan wasn’t sure whether to be amused or angry before 8-Ball yelled, “Kill these motherfuckers!”

“Not in front of my fucking caaaarrrrrr-----”

Protect the parts that will incapacitate you if they take too much damage, Evan thought, crossing his elbows in front of his chest and ducking his head behind his forearms. A distressing number of bullets were missing him and hitting his beloved Bug, but there was plenty of lead to go around. The noise was almost worse than the actual pain of getting shot, but Evan quickly noticed, to his disquiet and disgust, that he could tell who hit him by the shape of the bullets punching into his flesh.

Most of the hits were to his abdomen and thighs; his arms turned out to be sturdy enough to keep any lead from getting to his brain or heart, but a well-aimed shot from Scratch blew off a non-trivial chunk of his skull and made both his ears and eyes ring. And sometime during the hail of gunfire, Evan’s favorite boxers were torn from his body, fluttering limply to the ground as a pile of sad, defeated-looking rags.

Then, as the cacophony started to die down, one last blast from Felt’s shotgun knocked Evan’s left leg out from under him and he fell face-first into the dirt.

“Did we get him?”

“How the fuck’s he still movin’?”

“Christ, you see the size of his pecker?”

Evan pushed himself up on his forearms. He hurt, yes, but he was also angry. Angry that his first actual lead had been such a pain in the ass. Angry that he’d lost his boxers and his nipple. Angry that he’d woken up in a fucking hole in the ground and now had to deal with the problems of the guy who’d put him in it. Angry that his dick was getting scraped up from dragging on the sand.

“Go finish ‘im off, Stick.”

Evan raised his head to see that scrawny pimply prick walking towards him, smacking that pristine bat against his bony palm. Evan just knew he was going to say something fucking stupid.

“Eenie, meenie, miney—”

Stick’s obnoxious, outdated, barely-situationally-appropriate pop-culture reference was interrupted as Evan’s right hand swung up and clenched around his balls.

Let us step back for a moment and examine Evan’s fighting capabilities. He was not, at this point in his ‘career’, a martial artist. He was, however, a multi-faceted athlete. From boxing to cross-country running to gymnastics to baseball to wrestling to swimming to soccer to ballet to pole dancing, he had, since he was very young, explored what his body was capable of and refined his control over it until he was certain he could rise to any physical challenge. He was fast, precise, and flexible, and his recent bulking had only added to what he could do with his fine-tuned control over his body.

He was also the carrier of a deep, uncomfortably intense anger. And that, coupled with basic medical training from night classes studying to be an EMT, meant he had spent a lot of frustrated, sleepless nights thinking of very particular and very precise hypothetical methods of hurting people.

And now he had a little shithead’s nuts in his hand, and punchy, angry music playing in his head.

I can feel it on the back of my tongue, all of the words, getting trapped in my lungs

Stick screamed. Evan screamed. And then Evan yanked downward, tearing away a handful of denim and bloody flesh. As Stick folded up, Evan launched himself upwards, swinging his still-clenched fist up into the shrieking kid’s stomach. Then, now on his feet, he grabbed Stick’s sorry excuse for a ponytail, yanked his head back, and delivered a straight-armed downward punch across his jaw, sending him into the dirt in a gurgling, squirming heap.

Heavy like a stone, waiting for the river to run

Evan dug the balls of his feet into the sand and launched himself towards Pockets, who just happened to be the closest biker standing. The bepouched man was struggling to retrieve a fresh magazine for one of his pistols, but his hands were shaking violently. He screamed in terror as Evan bore down on him, head down and kicking up dust like a charging cartoon bull.

With all that metal he's wearing, it’ll be hard to land an incapacitating blow from a standing position. Get him on the ground.

Evan hit Pockets's waist with his shoulder and wrapped his arms around him, lifting the screaming man easily into the air. Still running, he whipped his passenger backwards, then swung their combined weights forwards, knocking the wind noisily from Pockets and winding up on top of him.

I wanna LASH OUT I wanna LET IT OUT

Pockets was screaming for help now, but Evan was hitting his stride and let the momentum of his own personal violence carry him seamlessly into his next move. With his left hand, he grabbed Pockets's helmet and yanked his head to the side, and brought his right elbow down hard where the neck joined the shoulder. Pockets made a wheezing sound, and Evan was back on his feet before he even went slack.

‘Cuz I can feel it on the back of my tongue, on the back of my tongue

Felt was closest, now, and had recovered from the shock of Stick's barehanded castration enough to start attempting to do something about the naked madman brutalizing his fellows with his bare hands. Unfortunately, he decided his best move was to try to load another shell into his shotgun as Evan rushed at him.

His core’s really thick and his center of gravity is low. I probably won’t be able to knock him down easily and body blows won’t cut it. Alley-oop.

Oh, hard to hold this fire inside me

Felt finally slid the shell home and cocked his shotgun, but by time he looked up, Evan was no longer on the ground. He’d swung his left leg forward and up and over across his body, launching himself into the air and twisting around his own vertical axis. By the time Felt realized what was happening, Evan’s right leg had swung around and his right heel hit Felt right in the temple. The hirsute man’s eyes glazed over and he slumped sideways to the ground while Evan landed on all fours and pushed off again, scrabbling at the dirt with his fingers as he lunged along the ground at surprising (to himself, at least) speed.

English stood between Evan and 8-Ball and Scratch. With that full-body suit and that helmet, they’ll be too hard to drop quickly. I’ll save you for later.

Oh, I know, sometimes it’s frightening

Evan hit English in the thighs with his shoulders and set them tumbling over him as he scrambled towards the uncouth couple. To his credit, 8-Ball stepped protectively in front of Scratch. Evan stopped his scuttling, planted his hands in the sand, and swung his legs around. He pointed his toes and kicked 8-Ball in the thigh, but the big man merely grunted angrily and grabbed Evan by the ankle. But as he hauled Evan’s leg upwards, Evan’s other leg came up with it and hooked around the back of 8-Ball’s head. Then Evan tensed his abs, swung himself upwards, and punched 8-Ball square in the face.

Hard to hold this fire inside me

8-Ball let out a yell and released Evan’s ankle, and the Ugly Man brought his other leg around the biker’s neck. He swung himself up further and started to rain blows down on 8-Ball’s scalp as the big man staggered backwards. The sand slipped under 8-Ball’s heels and he went down under the force of Evan’s next punch, but as he fell he managed to wedge an arm up between Evan’s leg and his own face. By the time they hit the dirt, 8-Ball had thrown his considerable weight to the side and swung Evan beneath him, pinning Evan’s thigh to the ground with one beefy forearm. Then he lunged up Evan’s chest and wrapped his hands around his throat.

“You ugly donkey-dicked motherfucker, you’re gonna pay for what you did to my boys—” 8-Ball’s walnut-knuckled fingers were ridiculously strong. Evan grabbed at the callused thumbs, trying to pry the hands off his throat, but 8-Ball’s considerable weight and strength were making it difficult to get any leverage. The two men struggled and grunted and swore at each other until a shadow fell over them.

Evan jerked his head to the side, but the bullet came close enough to his cheek to spray it painfully with flying dirt. 8-Ball looked up and yelled something at Scratch, who was trying to get her rifle lined up with Evan’s forehead. Evan could only guess at what they were screaming at each other, given that all he could hear in the wake of the gunshot was a high-pitched whine, but 8-Ball’s attention was momentarily diverted.

Oh, I know it’s not really like me to

Evan tucked his knees up, braced his feet under 8-Ball’s prodigious gut, and pushed. For a moment, the dawn sky was obscured by 8-Ball’s eponymous tattoo, then there was a brief scream, an oof, and a thud.

Evan got to his knees to see 8-Ball doing the same, panicking over Scratch’s limp form. She looked about as well as you’d expect a 120-pound woman to look after she’d just had a 300-pound man tossed onto her. Her head lolled around on her shoulders as 8-Ball shook her gently, pleading for her to come around. Then Evan, in a move he would later consider to be one of his most heartless, jumped on 8-Ball’s back and slung his arm around his neck.

LASH OUT

8-Ball tried to reach over his shoulders to claw at Evan’s face; Evan, meanwhile, was trying to remember how long you could keep someone in a rear naked choke without actually killing them. After a few seconds that seemed to take several hours, 8-Ball’s blunt fingers stopped scrabbling at Evan’s face and he went slack. Evan breathed a sigh of relief and let up on the pressure.

His shoulder exploded with a hot, wet pain that snaked down his right arm like molten lead. An urgent, insistent pain. It actually hurts! Does that mean I’m already running out of gas?

English’s switchblade was sticking out of his back.  It clearly hadn’t had the effect the mystery biker had in mind, because they jerked back as Evan surged to his feet, snarling. His left hand shot out and grabbed the lapel of English’s racing suit.

I can feel the cork come out of the bottle

And then he yanked hard and swung his head forward.

I can feel the cork come out of the bottle

Again. A spiderweb of cracks formed on English’s mirrored visor.

I can feel the cork come out of the bottle

Again. Now there were more cracks than solid plastic.

I CAN FEEL THE CORK COME OUT OF THE BOTTLE

The knife popped out of Evan’s shoulder as he drew his fist back.

LASH OUT

English’s visor shattered under the force of Evan’s punch, and, from the sound of it, so did their nose. They collapsed in a heap as Evan released his grip. And then it was over. Evan stood in the breaking dawn, naked, covered in blood, muscles bulging and chest heaving from exertion, surrounded by prone and groaning, and in one case, weakly screaming, figures. He’d won. “Yes! Yesyesyesyes!” he hissed to himself, pumping his arms and shaking his hips, dancing to the fading music inside his head. He froze when he glanced up and saw Titus watching him over the edge of what was formerly his grave. Evan cleared his throat, absently brushed some of the sand off himself, and walked over.

“There. It’s done. Can we go?”

Titus sat up. “That was some ugly fuckin’ poetry in motion, my friend,” he said, taking Evan’s hand and pulling himself out of the grave. “So where do we go from here? Cap ‘em all, dig a few more of these babies? Ooh, think we can get ‘em to dig their own?”

“No,” Evan sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Get their guns and let’s get out of here. I think we—”

He was cut off by another long, weak scream from Stick, who was on his knees with his forehead pressed to the ground, hands clamped around his groin.

Evan sighed again. “Or I suppose I should do the good guy thing… still, get their guns and make sure none of them—Goddammit, dude, stop staring at my crotch,” he muttered, blushing.

Titus clucked his tongue disapprovingly. “Jesus, some guys have all the luck.” Evan fixed him with a withering gaze, scars wiggling around his face as he pursed his lips. “Most of the luck,” Titus corrected himself.

---------

“Stop crying, you big fucking baby,” Evan said. “I didn’t even damage your testicles; I just tore the skin on your scrotum. It’ll be fine. Maybe stay off your bike for a couple days. Now bite down on that cloth, this disinfectant spray is going to sting something fierce.”

Titus smiled contentedly at the sound of Stick’s muffled scream, then turned back to Scratch, gesturing with his gun. “Hand it over.”

Scratch, still acting slightly dazed (though Titus wasn’t sure if this was as a result of the fight or just whatever she’d chosen to inhale that morning), clutched the rifle to her chest. “No way! This belonged to my daddy!”

“No, it belonged to my daddy and you stole it from me, you tweaking skank,” Titus said, yanking the rifle away from the pouting Scratch. He gave the gun a cursory inspection, nodded to himself, and looked around.

The Billiards MC were sitting together in the dirt, holding cold packs to various injuries and looking sheepish. Evan had retrieved a spare pair of shorts, to everyone’s relief, and had seen to each of their injuries with an efficient, if not entirely sympathetic, manner. He assured them, with an air of faint menace, that nothing he did would be permanent beyond a few scars. Their weapons, on the other hand, were sitting in a pile several yards away. On the other side of Titus, who now had several guns about his person and a mean look in his eye.

“Alright, he’ll live, and, regrettably, probably be able to reproduce,” Evan said briskly, wiping some blood and other fluids off his hands as he strode away from Stick’s prone form. “Now… what are we going to do about the rest of you?”

The Billiards regarded him uneasily. Titus started whistling tunelessly, spinning a handgun backwards and forwards in his fingers. Evan stared off into the middle distance for a moment, lips pursed to the side, and then snapped his fingers and jogged back to the Bug.  He returned with a worn black duffel bag and tossed it in front of 8-Ball. It went whumpf. “I think that should cover the damages Mr… Finnegan? Caused you,” he said, mildly.

“What?” Titus shouted, staring at Evan with his mouth open, “you’re paying them?!”

“Call it an exchange. Or maybe it's just a ‘I don’t want this stuff in my car’.”

8-Ball was cautiously unzipping the bag, as if he thought it might explode. Once the zipper was open enough for him to peer in, he very reluctantly leaned over the hole and peered inside. Then he swore loudly.

“Holy shit! This—” He unzipped the bag the rest of the way, hauling out plastic-wrapped bricks of powdery white substance. “—this is—holy shit,” he finished, stupefied. “Pockets, check this shit.”

Pockets crawled forward and produced a small knife from one of his namesakes, deftly slitting one of the packages open. Then, with the precision and care of a watchmaker, he produced several inexplicably unbroken test tubes, petri dishes, and a handful of tiny vials of varying colors from his pockets and began arranging them in the dirt.  Titus and Evan shared a look that said: how is this the weirdest part of today?

After a few minutes of things foaming and fizzing and changing color, 8-Ball spoke up. “So what’s it cut with? It better not be fentanyl or we’re gonna have a problem. Selling it. Because that ain’t ethical,” he added hastily as Evan’s knuckles cracked like shifting gravel.

“…nothing.” Patches said, in the hushed tones of a lepidopterist finding an extinct butterfly in his backyard. “It’s… pure.”

“No fuckin’ way,” 8-Ball and Titus said at the same time.

Pockets dipped his finger in the powder and rubbed some on his gums. “Bluh… yeap. Whoa. But this can’t be coke. There’s too much here, it’s… you know what, fuck it.” And then he sprinkled some on the back of his hand and inhaled deeply.

Five minutes later, Evan and 8-Ball managed to get ahold of him and wrestle him to the ground. Pockets was vibrating slightly and cheering and laughing at nothing, though it was slightly muffled because Felt was sitting on his back.

“Well, uh, that’s good enough for me,” 8-Ball said, wiping his forehead. “And we can just have it? You sure?”

“Yeah,” Evan panted, bent double. “Get it out of here. Just don’t do anything stupid with it.”

“Where’d ya even get it?”

“Took it off a gang I beat up in Albuquerque.”

“Wait, that… that wudn’t the Five-Tens, was it?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit, we heard they basically broke up a couple days ago! All their guys are in jail or the hospital! Everyone said it had to be rival dealers, but nobody died! I heard some of ‘em were sayin’…”

8-Ball trailed off, staring at Evan with a fresh look of awe and horror. “Yer him. Yer the Ugly Man.”

Evan said nothing. He merely grinned. It was a good menacing grin; he’d spent a few hours practicing it in the mirror. The key was the slow parting of the lips, then the widening; the startlingly white and straight teeth behind the split burnt umber lips, the way his jaw didn’t quite fit together properly, the way the scars seemed to squirm around his face like a nest of worms, the way the edges of his mouth threatened to engulf his ears—it was a masterpiece. That, combined with a slight tilt of the head to drop his eyes into the shadow of his brows and a quiet, guttural chuckle, created a total effect that seemed to dip Evan’s face into the uncanny valley.

8-Ball shuddered. “Jesus. They… we thought they was just all high outta their minds! We didn’t think you was real!”

“Oh, I’m real, all right,” Evan growled, the grin snapping back to a scowl as he grabbed 8-Ball’s jacket. “Now you’re gonna take that coke, and you’re gonna do whatever you want with it, and you’re gonna leave us alone. I don’t give a shit if you sell drugs to people completely capable of making their own bad decisions. But here’s the thing—I’m gonna keep my ears open, and if I ever hear about you shlubs extorting a grieving family like the Five-Tens did I will come down upon you like the wrath of the worst god you can think of. Do-I-make-myself-clear?” 8-Ball managed to nod.

“Good. Now get the hell out of here and spread the word,” Evan said, pushing him away. “Oh, uh… and help me get my car out of the sand.” ---------------------- “Man, you are something fucking else,” Titus laughed dryly. “Trading them drugs you stole off of some other scumbags so they’d stop fucking with me. Of course, beating the shit out of them first probably helped.”

Evan made a slight exhalation of acknowledgement, keeping his eyes on the road.

“So I was thinking—I think we can work something out. You scratch my back, etcetera? I help you find out the things you want to know, you help me with some of the more… hands-on aspects of my work?”

“You mean catch more bullets for you?”

“That might come into play, yes,” Titus admitted, hesitantly, “but think about it—without me you’re just gonna be bumbling around until you trip over something weird, or worse, using dumb cursed crap to try to find out answers and maybe tearing a hole in the fabric of reality in the process.”

“Can that actually happen?”

“See, this is what I mean. You’ve got questions, I’ve got… well, we’ll see what I’ve got. More than you’ve got right now, that’s what matters. We can make this work, kid.”

Evan sighed inwardly. It was a lead. And Titus seemed like he could be at least interesting to be around; he’d just have to make sure to keep an eye on his wallet.

“Let’s get something to eat and talk it over. Healing makes me hungry.”

“There you go! That’s the spirit.”

They drove in silence for a little while longer, only minutes away from the edge of town. Evan started to relax. Maybe this could work.

“Oh yeah, I forgot to ask… what the hell’s wrong with your dick?”

Evan groaned. Or maybe not.

[sadoeuphemist]

Once upon a time, when magic still flourished on the outskirts of the world, all sorts of benevolent and capricious creatures lay in wait for any small kindness, ready to bestow boons upon some humble woodcutter, or maiden come to draw water from the well. Some would conjure up instruments of pure gold as gifts, some transformed pumpkins into carriages, others still handed out magical treasures so as to revolutionize a humble human’s life forever.

And among all the countless blessings a single kindness could bring, there lived an elf, whose sole magical talent was making shoes.

His name was Wurtchel, and to accommodate his talent he had moved into the basement of a poor but goodhearted shoemaker, and only emerged at night to replenish the shoemaker’s stores. He would wave his spindly fingers, curl up his toes, and with the innate magical talent other elves might have used to make gold, conjured a pair of leather shoes into being.

Looking at the lumpy dull leather shoes afterwards, like a pair of shrunken chopped-off feet, was always depressing. They weren’t even particularly good quality shoes, honestly; the old shoemaker outdid him on that account. And while the old man was always grateful to have an extra pair of shoes to sell - surplus inventory, marked down - it could hardly be said that Wurtchel was having any sort of transformative effect on his chosen beneficiary. He had been doing this for six weeks now, and the poor shoemaker was still unquestionably a poor shoemaker. 

One day, Wurtchel was walking back to the shoemaker’s shop through the woods, having gone to visit his parents. Their specialty was handing out axes made of gold. Wurtchel had done the math in his head as to how many poor-quality leather shoes a single gold axe could buy, and was now more depressed than ever about his life, and in general his effect upon the world. Through the overgrowth, he heard a rustling, and as he turned to look the branches parted and a beautiful young maiden burst through, wincing as she bounded along in a sort of painful hobbling run.

“Oh!” she said, nearly bumping into him, and froze in her tracks, staring.

Wurtchel hastily mumbled a greeting, trying to remember what it was you were supposed to say when you encountered someone obviously in need out in the wilderness like this. He had been domesticated, he supposed. He’d never even talked to the old shoemaker face to face. “Erm, are you in trouble?” is what he settled on. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Oh,” she said again, her face relaxing into relief. She doubled over for a moment, leaning heavily against a tree. “Yes. Just escaped my evil stepmother. She locked me up in that tower over there,” she said, pointing.

Wurtchel had noticed the tower in the distance before, an edifice of black stone with no obvious doors, highly formidable and clearly meant to hold a prisoner, and had very sensibly ignored it. “Ah,” he said.

“I’m going to find my true love,” she went on, somewhat breathlessly. “My evil stepmother went out to the market for the day, and I took my chance. We’ve been exchanging messages by birds, my true love and I, and she’s escaping her evil stepmother too, and we’re planning to meet up at Holtzheim by nightfall-”

“Uh-huh,” said Wurtchel, desperately wracking his brains for any way he could be of help. He did not know the way to Holtzheim, and would be scant protection when traveling, and in fact hated being out of the basement and was already anxious enough over his visit to his parents.

He briefly wondered if a golden axe would help in her predicament, and decided that in her vulnerable state it was more likely to get her robbed. “Well, I mean, erm .... good luck with that ...”

“Oh, thank you,” she said absently, and winced again, and reached down to rub at her feet, and Wurtchel looked down and almost forgot to breathe.

The young woman was barefoot.

The tender white soles of her feet were quite filthy, with bits of gravel and briar embedded in them, bleeding from scrapes here and there. Wurtchel felt such a rush of hope that it was almost indecent, and then felt ashamed of himself for getting so excited over the evidence of her suffering. “I - I could -” he started to say, his voice cracking, and then coughed and then steadied himself. “W-Would you like me to make you some shoes?” he said, as nonchalantly as possible. 

She looked blankly at him. “Shoes?”

“Shoes,” said Wurtchel, and pointed down at his own feet. He had on a pair of the shoemaker’s shoes, with nice brass buckles. He hated wearing his own creations. “You know, to - to protect your feet ... ?”

“Oh!” she said, and crouched down to study his feet, and shot up again, bright-eyed. “I’ve never worn anything like that before!” she said earnestly. “She never let me out, and the tower was always carpeted.”

“It - it’s my talent!” said Wurtchel, stumbling over his own words in his excitement. “I make shoes! I could - I could make you some right now! Would you like a pair?”

“That would be wonderful!” she said, with a gratitude Wurtchel had not known he could inspire. “Something to protect my feet from the briars and the stones - Why, thank you, thank you so much!”

“Right,” said Wurtchel, and cracked his fingers, and curled up his toes inside of his shoes. His face was flushed due to her worshipful gaze upon him, and he could feel his heart beating in his chest. Easy. Easy. Just do what he did every night. He could feel his blood burning in his ears. His eyes kept creeping back down to her feet unintentionally, and he had to shake himself off, trying to picture the shoes in his head instead. Good as gold, the shoes. Better than gold! A terrible tremble ran through his fingertips, and as he curled up his toes he could feel them drenched in sweat. Just do it! Do it! Good as gold! Gold! Now! Do it now!

He splayed out his fingers, and there was the smell of musty leather, and absolutely nothing else happened.

The maiden stood there, watching, one eye flicking up occasionally to glance at Wurtchel’s face. “Is ... um, is something supposed to be happening?” she said at last.

Wurtchel was mortified. All the blood from his face seemed to have sunk down into his chest, his stomach, and now sat there cold and heavy while he continued to hold his fingers outstretched like a moron. “It’s, erm - I don’t - It- it should be happening,” he mumbled. “If you’ll - if you’ll just give me a minute -”

“It - it’s all right if you can’t,” she said delicately, backing off with such a look of compassion in her eyes that Wurtchel felt his face flame up again. “I mean, I’m sure I’ll get used to it, walking on the ground.” She looked down at her dress. “I could make some shoes myself, maybe, if I tore off some cloth and ...”

“No! No no no!” Wurtchel swallowed down a rock in his throat. “Just - That won’t do any good, ripping up your dress like that! Cloth, you can’t make shoes out of that! Terrible, ha-ha!” A quaver ran up and down his voice as he tried to force a smile. “Just give me a - This is all I’m really good for, ha-ha! You just stay right there! I’ll have you your shoes, quick as a wink!”

Again he thrust out his hands, all the tendons in his wrists taut. Shoes. A pair of shoes. This was it. This was his purpose. They’d be the finest leather. The finest shoes he’d ever made, just this once, and why not? He imagined poulaine toes uncurling, full foot long, lovely satin insides to caress her tender feet, protect her from all the awful pointy edges of the world, salve her wounds. Just this once! He was all tensed up, vibrating, trembling with the effort, sweat dripping down his face. Shoes to walk her all the way to love, to safety! He was almost weeping now, so filled with an eager benevolence towards her. Just this once, to justify all else!

There was a loud gusting noise, and then a half-frayed shoelace materialized between his hands and fell limply to the dirt.

Wurtchel strangled a gasp, let his arms drop, limp. There was nothing else left in him. “I can -” he started to stammer. “I can try again -”

The maiden was already averting her eyes, looking up at the path of the sun across the sky instead. “Look, it’s all right,” she said, glancing back down. “You tried. I  - It’s fine, really, I didn’t have shoes before this, so no great loss, right?” She tried to smile. “But I really have to get going if I’m going to make it to Holtzheim before nightfall, so, uh ...” She was already beginning to limp away. “Thanks for trying to help -”

“Wait!” cried Wurtchel, and in a desperate impulse flung himself to the ground and wrestled off his own shoes, thrusting them into her arms. “Here! Take them!”

“Oh,” she said, and looked down at the shoes in her hands, and looked back at him. “You’re sure?”

Wurtchel nodded.

She found a fallen tree and sat down for a minute, brushing most of the debris off her feet and fiddling with the shoes until she got them on. She stood up again and walked, tramping around on the dirt, satisfied with the feel of them. She looked back at Wurtchel, who was still sitting on the ground.

“Thank you,” she said, and bent down to put her arms around him briefly, her hair brushing against his cheek. And then she was up and running again, more confidently now as she crashed heedlessly through the brush, making a terrible noise until she was out of range of hearing.

Wurtchel sat there on the dirt, barefoot, looking at his own pale feet, the veins standing out on them. He held out his arms - they felt wooden from the exertion - and almost experimentally flexed his fingers, clenched, waiting to see what would happen.

A pair of crude leather shoes popped into being.

“Now you work,” Wurtchel grumbled to himself.

The shoes were terrible. They didn’t fit right, and pinched in all the wrong places, and the leather was stiff, but he could walk well enough in them. He took a couple of hobbling steps at first and then relaxed into a normal gait, bearing the discomfort.

He sniffed, wiped off his nose, rolled his tensed shoulders. He should feel triumphant, he told himself, if only by the property of transmutation. She had a new pair of shoes, and he had made a new pair of shoes, and so even though the creation and the receiving hadn’t lined up perfectly, it was like he had magically bestowed upon her a boon anyway.

But he didn’t feel triumphant, or in any way vindicated. The end result of his magic powers was that he hadn’t had to walk the rest of the way home barefoot. Which would have been an inconvenience, to be sure, but hardly anything that he wouldn’t have put up with gladly.

He trod on, kicking pebbles along the path, and as he walked pass the trees the thought came into view: If that was the case, then his magical powers had been completely irrelevant. All he’d needed to do was to be in that place, at that time, wearing a pair of shoes, and everything would have worked out for her. Everything else was a matter of his own convenience.

Wurtchel kept walking, thoughts tumbling loosely through his head, weary, but with the sort of comfortable weariness which comes with knowing that you’re going back home. The shoemaker’s shop came into view over the hill, and he realized that his shoes weren’t pinching nearly so badly anymore, felt like they halfway fit. He was breaking them in, he thought. Maybe he’d be able to wear this pair just fine.

[saltyandsassynomad]

Oh boy - I thought 2021 was going to be a “new year” but man was I wrong.  

I started the year determined to make some of my dreams/passions come to fruition this year.  As I’m driving down the road, heading back from my lunch break, I think to myself, “I’m MAKING this year different.  I will choose to be happy and see the beauty in life.  I will work hard every day to not only give Love and Light but to not dwell in the darkness. I am making my dreams come true.  This year will be different.”

A split second later I hear what sounds like tin cans rattling behind my car.  You know, like in the old movies when they’d tie cans to the cars of newlyweds?  I pulled over only to realize that my tailpipe was the reason for the sound; she was dragging on the ground.  I was in a somewhat rural area but was fairly close to the high school I was subbing at so I crept along and parked in the staff lot.  

I called for roadside assistance and was told that my policy didn’t have that coverage.  I was able to add the coverage but they put a five day hold on the service.  Luckily this happened on a Friday.  I explained this to the principal and he agreed to let me leave my car in the lot until the 6th day when I could have it towed.  

Now I had to figure out how to get home as the public transit doesn’t go out that far.  The closest bus stop was about a thirty minute walk so I made everything was zipped up tight and got ready to head out when the principal stopped me and told me that he would see if he could arrange a ride for me.  Every school has resource officers (usually the local police or sheriff) and he was able to get one of them to drop me off at home.  

Once the five day hold was up, I got up early that morning and called to have my car towed.  Then came the next obstacle - getting back to my car.  I had the keys and the tow truck couldn’t pick it up without them.  Again - no bus.  Being a substitute teacher I didn’t go back to work until late in January so I was basically off work for about a month.  So needless to say, I really didn’t have the money for a taxi.  I tried everything I could think of to get out there but wasn’t able to.  Normally I’d walk, I like being outside, especially when it’s cold but this was too cold.  It was close to 0.  I had to break down and spend my last $20 to take an Uber out there.  

Once the tow truck got there and loaded my car up, off we went.  On the way he tells me he needs to pull over.  When he comes back he tells me that my muffler and tailpipe have fallen completely off, no longer attached in any way.  He drops me and all the pieces off at the shop.  They are kind enough to give me a ride home.

I get a call from the shop the next morning and am given a cost of $1800 to repair it (I’m not surprised as she is over twenty years old & I don’t think she was all that well maintained).  But seeing as how I have only worked three days so far this year and I only paid $800 for the car, I decline.  They give me the number of someone else who might be able to do it for cheaper as he is a dedicated muffler shop. I call and explain the situation to him.  He agrees to take a look at the car but won’t be able to until the following Tuesday as he is semi-retired and only works T, W, Th.  I make arrangements to see him first thing the following Tuesday.

I hang up and begin getting the worst migraine I’ve had in a few weeks.  I’m out for the next two days.  Admittedly, I have issues with depression, anxiety, and mental health and this definitely did not help at all.

I get up bright and early the following Tuesday morning so I can hop on the bus and head to the first repair shop.  As I’m stepping off the curb, I slip and go down hard.  Instantly my brain starts screaming, “I BROKE MY FOOT, I BROKE MY FOOT, I BROKE MY FOOT!!!!”  I’m crossing a busy street and traffic is coming so I quickly jump up and limp/hobble across the street.  Knowing this isn’t good, I change direction and head to the closest ER.  Five hours later, I’m sent home with crutches and numbers for two follow ups.  They wanted to put me in an orthopedic boot but didn’t have my size.  They didn’t see any significant breaks in my foot but thought I possibly tore a tendon or something.  

It’s icy and snowy outside so the crutches were basically useless as I was on public transit but I took them anyway.  

I made it home but was unable to fill the prescriptions they gave me because I wasn’t able to walk to the pharmacy.  Back to bed I went with another migraine.  

I wake up the next morning and hobble to the bus stop so I can get my car from shop A to shop B.  It’s snowing outside but I have to leave my windows down so I can breath.  If I don’t, I’ll get carbon monoxide poisoning (no muffler = no protection).  Shop B tells me he can repair everything for about $650 but is unwilling to take payments so I politely thank him for taking a look and walk out to my car.  

It must have been perfect timing because my insurance policy was about to expire and needed to be renewed; I have eight days left on the policy.  I can’t afford to repair the car; my only option was to scrap it.  There’s no point in having insurance if I don’t have a car.    Grocery shopping, laundry, etc is pretty difficult when you’re on a bus so I decide to spend the next eight days getting as much as I can done before the insurance runs out.  I do a major grocery shopping trip (thankfully I was approved for Food Stamps), get all the supplies I need for my furbabies, do laundry, and get appointments made for my foot.  

I had two different appointments for my foot and was ultimately put in an orthopedic boot.  A follow up, with additional x-rays, was scheduled for two weeks out. The x-rays didn’t reveal any signs of healing; I have bad feet to begin with and the doctor was trying to determine if the abnormalities she saw in the first x-rays were from the accident or if I was born with them.  With no signs of healing that indicates I was born with them.  The final prognosis was a torn tendon.  But with progress being made, I was only given an additional two weeks in this super fancy boot.  

Keep in mind it’s snowing and sometimes dipping below zero.  Plus the sidewalks aren’t getting shoveled so I’m having to walk in the street.  All while trying to keep my foot dry and warm.   

I wasn’t able to sub anymore but thankfully I tutor two kids in the afternoons and that at least gives me enough to pay my phone bill.  

But wait...the kid that I tutor five days a week, he fathers sends me an email that was meant for his teacher.  The email goes into detail how he doesn’t think my tutoring is helping his son at all, how disappointed he is in my performance, and he wants to switch to another tutor but can’t do so until he finds a replacement.  The funny part is he has said the same things about the teacher to me and I am his son's fourth tutor.  The problem lies in the fact that they do NOTHING to help the kid at home, nothing!  He has attention problems to begin with and he is in remote school.  

Let’s not forget the father telling me that DCFS (department of child and family services) was called on him by someone from school.  That’s a whole other story.  Ugh!

I replied to the email and simply said, “I don’t think you intended this for me.”  His response was to pay for the one day I tutored his son that week and cease all contact with me.  So the main source of money that I did have is gone.  I only tutor the other child two days a week.  It’s better than nothing but it definitely doesn’t pay the bills.  

I’ve applied at the other district right next to my house but they only have two schools in the district (it’s tiny!).  I haven’t worked for them yet.  It’s almost March and I’ve only worked three days this year.  

So I’m basically unemployed, can’t pay rent or utilities, having a hard time getting around with a bum foot, and seriously struggling to keep my head on straight.  

I see your 2020 and I raise you my 2021.  

[repulsivepangolin7]

Fic: Movement

Building on: ‘Earthquake’ ‘Night out’ ‘An old buddy’

Word count: 2226

*Another few months later*

“Now, Mr. Luca…” the doctor smiled, “Are you ready to get this cast off for good?”

Luca took a deep breath, steeling himself. “Sure.”

“You’re going to have to wear a brace until after the knee surgery we have planned.” the doctor informed as he prepared the gear to remove the cast.

“Are you sure it’s okay to drop the cast?” Luca hated how shaky his voice felt, “My leg was crushed.”

The doctor nodded, “The X-rays, and the CatScan show that all the breaks have fused. If it wasn’t for your knee, I would’ve set you up with a physical therapist to teach you to walk again.”

Luca nodded, “I can barely believe that I’ve come this far already…”

The doctor nodded, “Starting to look like keeping your leg was the correct choice.”

“It was a bad injury…”

“Sure was.” the doctor nodded, “Any one of the injury types you got could have been indicators to amputate your leg. If that rotary dislocation your knee suffered had torn your popliteal artery, or pressed against it and not been reset in timely fashion, that would not have made your leg viable. The fractures you suffered were extensive enough to question if it would heal, even with surgery… And on top of that, we have the crush injury which wreaked havoc on your muscles and soft tissues, causing compartment syndrome and might have killed off your muscle tissue.”

Luca swallowed hard.

“You got lucky.” the doctor smiled.

“Yeah, I really did.” Luca nodded, “So… When I have surgery to reconstruct my knee… What will that mean.”

“Oh…” The doctor nodded as he picked up the cast scissors, “Dislocating your knee, you tore your anterior and posterior cruciate ligaments. That’s the bands inside your knee which keeps the shin bone from sliding back and forward relative to the femur, -the bone in your thigh.”

Luca nodded.

“On top of that, you tore your medial and lateral collateral ligaments. That’s bands on either side of your knee. Those stabilize your knee sideways. With all four of those bands torn, your knee depends on the muscles in your leg to keep it somewhat stabile.”

Luca nodded.

“Now, some top level athletes tear some of these bands every now and then. Take hockey players for instance, they usually have so much strength in their legs that surgery won’t be necessary. -Of course with some exceptions.” The doctor explained, “You on the other hand…”

“I don’t have any muscles left in that leg…” Luca nodded.

“Well, most of the muscles are still there, but they’re not what they used to be. They won’t be able to keep your knee from dislocating in either the same way as it did, or in more typical ways.”

“Well, we don’t want that…” Luca frowned.

“No, we don’t.” the doctor nodded, “You also injured your menisci… Both of them in that leg. Small tears will heal on its own over time, but unfortunately you have a complete buckethandle tear of one of them and one that’s slightly smaller in the other one. Those might lock your knee up if you were to use your leg. Now, your knee locking up from a buckethandle meniscus tear isn’t exatctly dangerous in any normal way, but I have it on good authority that it’s incredibly painful.”

Luca grimaced, “Yeah, don’t want that either.”

The doctor nodded, “So what we’re going to do is clean up the torn ligaments, and smaller nicks in your menisci. Then we’re going to use grafts from either your hamstring muscles in the opposite leg, or donor grafts, as your new ligaments. And we’ll be sewing the big tears of your menisci.”

“Donor grafts?”

“Yeah. Sometimes your own tissue won’t be right for your knee. Either because you’ve lost too much mass from where the graft would be taken, and to cut out a decent graft would leave you with a deficit in the healthy leg. Or because the site of the graft has some injury that would make the graft likely to fail. For example, we often use patella tendon grafts to fix ligament tears in the knees. Your left patella tendon wouldn’t be suited for that since we had to reattach about half of that tendon after the earthquake.”

Luca nodded for a bit, but had one more question for the doctor before he got as far as to start cutting up the cast.

“How much pain will I be in after the knee surgery? Don’t sugarcoat it.”

The doctor looked up from where he had placed one hand on Luca’s cast, “That’s not an easy question to answer. Grafts from your own body will hurt where they’re taken from. Think of it as having a partial tear in a muscle. It’s about the same pain. I know you’ve had that before.”

Luca nodded, “Yeah, tore some of my bicep tendon or muscle once. My whole arm was painful and bruised after that.”

The doctor nodded, “With donor grafts you won’t have that, but grafts from your own body is preferred in most cases. Less chance of graft failure.”

Luca nodded.

“The reconstruction itself varies a lot. I have some patients who experience minimal pain and swelling, and I have patients who experiences a lot of both as well.” The doctor shrugged, “Some never really need the aid of crutches after the ligament surgeries, and some will need it for a couple of weeks after. But you’re going to have to use crutches for a month afterwards anyway, since we have to sew up your menisci as well.”

Luca nodded. “Okay, and does that hurt?”

“Most patients feel fine after that surgery, in my experience.” The doctor winked, “Slight swelling might occur, but not usually accompanied by pain.”

Luca nodded.

“Now, I’m going to start clipping up your cast. Any more questions before I start?”

Luca shook his head.

 SWATSWATSWAT

  The best way to describe his leg when it was finally de-casted was skin and bones. -And scars. But then again, he hadn’t used any of the muscles in it for months now.

“The scars look good now…” the doctor offered up a satisfied smile, “Even where you ended up having that infection early on…”

Luca nodded, “It’s still a bit redder than the others, though.”

“Yeah, but you can think of it like this, it started healing a lot later than the other scars.”

Luca nodded.

“Can you try moving your ankle for me?” the doctor guided the conversation, showing with his hands how he wanted Luca to move his foot.

“Just go ahead and try?”

The doctor nodded.

Luca tried, but it was like the wrong muscles responded when he tried, and it didn’t work out so well in the first place either. “I can’t…”

“Let me try this one thing first, before you start worrying.”

Luca nodded.

“I’m going to grab your foot and above your ankle and manipulate it a bit. Just let me know if anything’s painful.”

Luca nodded again, and the doctor took hold of his leg.

“That feels weird.” Luca said as soon as he felt the doctor’s hands on his foot.

“Does it hurt?”

“No, just feels weird.” Luca shrugged.

“Okay, I’m going to slowly start moving your foot up and down a few times, that will probably feel really weird as well.”

Luca nodded.

“Just let me know when I need to stop.”

“Sure thing.” Luca nodded.

 SWATSWATSWAT

 The doctor was right, it did feel really weird. His ankle had been locked in one position ever since the injury.

The doctor moved his ankle like he was making Luca speed and slow down a car, without using the breaks. He made the motions smooth and paused at each turn.

It felt like he was gradually making the movement bigger, but Luca couldn’t exactly be sure without looking.

“Ah, stop, stop!” Luca winced on one of the turns as the doctor pressed his toes up.

The doctor backed up the movement a bit, “That hurt?”

“Stretched my calf like crazy…” Luca cleared his voice, “Can you go back there again? I just wasn’t prepared…”

“Sure…” the doctor nodded and eased back to the position which had made Luca squirm, “Want me to hold it in this position for a bit?”

Luca thought, then nodded.

After about fifteen seconds the doctor started pressing Luca’s foot back down to a position he felt like Luca could handle, “Now, if you try to move your foot with me, it might be easier for you to connect with the correct muscles when you’re going to try it yourself the next time.”

Luca nodded, and tried.

The doctor chuckled once, “Now, try to relax your thigh. That’s not the right muscle groups. Neither is your seat.”

Luca laughed, “it’s really hard.”

“That’s alright. It is to be expected.” The doctor reassured. “You haven’t moved your ankle in about five-six months, and with all the damage from the injury… It’ll be exactly like learning to move from scratch.”

Luca nodded.

“There, you’re doing great!” the doctor grinned, “Can you feel that you’re using the right muscles now?”

Luca grinned, “Yeah, yeah I think so…”

“I’m going to let go of your foot, try to keep moving it just like we’re doing now…”

Luca nodded, and continued the motion when he felt the doctor let go.

The doctor watched for a few rounds, an amused look on his face. “Well, I’ll be damned…”

Luca paused, “What?”

“You’re impressing me…” the doctor grinned, “Usually I would expect that anyone who had a similar injury to the one you’ve had, would develop drop foot. That they would be unable to lift the front of their foot properly, or raise their toes… You’re actually leading with your toes when you raise your foot. I did not expect that.”

“So, good thing?”

“Great thing.” The doctor nodded, “Now, over to the next exercise… Can you try to move your foot sideways like this…”

The doctor explained the movement by showing it with his hands once more.

“Can you make my stupid muscles understand which of them is supposed to work first?”

“Sure thing…” the doctor nodded and carefully grabbed Luca’s foot, “We’ll start rotating it inward a bit.”

Luca nodded, but yelped when the doctor gently rotated his food a few small degrees.

“I’m sorry, that sounded like it hurt…” the doctor apologized, “Can you tell me where?”

“That stabbed at my knee…”Luca answered, trying to ride out a grimace.

“Okay, like through the joint? From the side in some kind of way?”

Luca nodded, “Just like that…”

“Inside or outside of your knee?”

“Mostly inside.”

“That’s probably your medial meniscus disagreeing with the movement. We’ll skip inward rotation for now.”

Luca nodded.

“Let’s try rotating it the other way.”

Luca nodded again.

The sharp inhale Luca did caused the doctor to stop, “Sorry. That hurts as well?”

“Not as much, but it’s not good…” Luca nodded.

“Same spot?”

“Yeah, not as much… But the back outside of my knee doesn’t like that motion.” Luca shrugged once the doctor had helped his foot back in a normal position. “Not as painful as the other way, but… Still painful.”

The doctor nodded, “Okay, we’ll just wait with rotation until after your knee surgery. Since it’s causing you this much pain.”

Luca nodded.

“Does it hurt anywhere else than your knee when we tried rotating your foot?”

Luca shook his head, “No, didn’t hurt anywhere else. Tingled a bit above where some of your fingers were, but not anything I can call painful.”

“Alright, that’s good.” The doctor smiled, “Then that problem will likely solve itself once we’ve taken care of your menisci…”

“Cool…” Luca grinned.

“Now, try to just relax here while I go grab the brace you’ll be wearing.” The doctor instructed, “I don’t think you’ll need a drop foot brace, but I’ll bring one anyway. Justin case you overwork your leg and it gets too sore to keep your foot neutral.”

Luca nodded, and started gently moving his foot up and down once more.

“That’s great.” The doctor grinned, “And I want you to keep working on that, the goal is to eventually get the same range of motion as in your healthy leg. -But I also don’t want you to start out too hard. You’ll be sore from basically doing nothing now at the start. So don’t over-do it too much, alright?”

Luca nodded, “I’ll try.”

The doctor nodded and went out the door.

 SWATSWATSWAT

 “Look at you…” Street grinned as Luca came hobbling towards where he sat and waited, “How does it feel?”

“A lot lighter…”Luca chuckled, “Feels a bit odd.”

“Did the doctor say anything?”

“That it was looking good.” Luca beamed, “And that everything was ready for the knee surgery.”

“That’s awesome.”

Luca nodded, “Hey, we should invite the team over tomorrow night.”

“You up for that?”

Luca rolled his eyes a little, “I’ve been out with you guys like four-five times since my injury. I can take a party at home by now.”

“Just messing with you…” Street grinned,  “I say we order a few pizzas to go along with it.”

“Deal!” Luca grinned, “Now don’t tell too much about my leg to the team if they ask this afternoon or on tomorrow’s shift.”

“I’ll try.”

[cawolters]

Hello, here’s a little snippet from The Liar Alliance (Book II) — it’s a nightmare scene at sea!

Shiroin is haunted by a dream witch and in this dream Farrah is using a Not-Kiel puppet to get to our sweet sweet main character.

I’ll go ahead and spoil that it’s working. Nobody is made completely from stone.

Some horror themes/some mild gore

Pg15

1500w

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.

.

THE STORM SEA

The wind tore at the sails and as I looked up along the distressed, flailing sails, I was beginning to doubt they would hold. Far above the cotton and flaying rigging, the purple skies had gathered every cloud in Gailia and layered them, one on top of the next, in a dark ominous bruise.

Thunder rumbled from deep within the heavens, threatening with rain that had yet to spill.

“Your throne is only two months away, little pearl. A gleam of light in that deep crater of your thoughts is it not, Heiress?” It was a foul whisper upon the gust and I froze. I had recognized the voice immediately.

Farrah.

“Yes. I can hardly get any sleep, from pure excitement.” I said dryly with my jaw tense and my eyes searching the deck for Farrah’s dream shadow.

She laughed her bell-chiming laugh from all around me, already infecting every inch of my dream with her foul magic. This was a nightmare like all her nightmares, strange and twisted and no doubt about to split open my bowls and feed my organs to the gulls and crabs, but I was not worried because of that. At least not only because of that.

I was concerned because I had not noticed that this had been a dream before she had spoken.

The ship mast under my palm had felt entirely real, the wind tearing at the sails sounded like that had for a week at sea. Even my private thoughts about the storm, about to wash over my imperial ship had felt more real than reality, and it was not because I could not tell when I had a visitor in my head by now.

However, this time, the dream witch had slipped past my doze and directly into my subconscious without a fight. Maybe Farrah was getting better at enchanting me, poisoning me with her magic, or perhaps I getting worse at detecting her… I questioned if I was unhinging without noticing.

The beginning anxiety of her brewing nightmare started to flow down my arms and legs like a blood-carried venom, cold, tingling and faintly numbing.

“Have you found me, Snake Daughter?” She asked, the same maddening question ever night.

Find me, find me, find me Empress of Destruction, Pure One, My Love.

In that moment I wanted to grab her neck and strangle the words out of her, but if I did, the witch would only laugh louder. I knew. I had already tried in countless other dreams.

“Farrah. I found you once, I had you in my hand, but I speared you.” The most regrettable ting I ever did. “Even then you asked me to ‘find you’. Perhaps you need to elaborate what you want from me exactly.” I said, playing nice, but only playing and only because there was nothing else for me to do in here.

The ship creaked and moaned on Farrah’s conjured sea and the sway of the deck grew more vertical on the black storm-waves, timing with salty foam. I steadied my footing.

Now the clouds let their spiky icy rain, fall. It was a mute shower that immediately drenched the ship and I alike. A blurred silhouette of a woman materialized in the sizzle. She moved like a gliding ghost over the flooded tilting deck towards me.

“That is because you keep looking in the wrong places, Shiroin.” The distorted shape said softly. “The Divine Farrah wants you to triumph, but your gaze is facing the wrong direction, my little dove.”

It was my mother who stood before me. Her black thick hair flattened over her pale features by the unnatural heavy rain. It did not touch anything in my heart that Farrah should use the puppet of Ohtani Oi Hana. It was not a new trick and my face smoothed out in a plain mask as I closed off my emotions.

“Do you want to fail, Shiroin?” Another shape came up to me in the impenetrable shower of dark rain. My father. His face was wet stone and granite, carved with hate.

I could ignore him too.

“The world will drown in its own blood. They had it coming, but she will let me live if you let her in. You and I can be together then. Be free. Once you have ridden the realm of its scars.” Kiel spoke next and my face slipped. His gold eyes cut through the water veil and then the rest of his long body stepped out of the rain.

My logic told me it was not Kiel, only Farrah’s mirage, but the tug in my chest was no illusion. I should be running from her magic, avoid to look directly at it and find a way to wake myself up, but my feet were nailed to the planks while I stared at him.

“Is that not what you wanted?” Not-Kiel asked. His pointed teeth fleetingly showed between his lips when he spoke. “To be cut loose from yourself?”

“Farrah...” I breathed.

He took another step to me and I tilted my head back to meet his eyes that looked so much like polished amber. The tug in me grew painful.

Farrah’s image of Kiel was slightly amiss though. The lines of his face were too smooth and his eyes too warm. I could tell but something in me wanted to believe her magic. I had not seen his face this clearly since he had kissed me goodbye under the heritage roses and my pitiful longing heart wanted Kiel this close.

“That is why you called me Blade, right? Let me help.” There was a mild smile on his scared lip, almost like the one that Kiel really made, but not quite. Farrah’s interpretation of him was too gentle. It was a picture that the witch thought I wanted, not a picture of the true man.

And if she thought I ever wanted Kiel to be clement, she did not know me to my marrow. That comforting realization woke some of my willpower and I tore my stare away, fixing it down on my clenched fists instead.

“Always with the pathetic puppets, Witch.” My right hand gabbed the left and I dug my nails into the back of it.

“Pathetic?” Not-Kiel asked, he sounded on the verge of a manic laugh.

A laugh my Kiel would never make.

“Are you trying to leave me?” His hand slipped on top of mine. He curled his fingers around mine, and when he spoke again, I felt his breath in my hair as he bend down and whispered in my ear.

“Why are you denying us a way out? I love you with all of my soul.”

I glimpsed how not-Kiel’s other hand undid the buttons on his black clingy shirt.

“Kiel would never say it like that.” I retracted from him and found the mast at my back.

“I died for you. For your rage.” He whispered and the rain trickled in steams down the pale skin of his chest. The clear water ran red with blood on his left side.

I had to get away from the dream. I tugged at the hold not-Kiel had on me. His fingers on my hands turned to bones: held together with tattered strings of gray tendons, and so, so cold.

“I died so that you could feel alive for a moment, you selfish lying girl.” Not-Kiel’s hiss made me shiver.

Not Kiel. It’s not Kiel.

“He wouldn’t say that.” I tested his skeletal gasp again but he had locked his hand around mine in an iron clasp. I shouldn’t have looked up then, but I did. It was a frightened reflex. Where the deep pools of honey usually dwelled in his handsome face, now only pits of black rot sat. No eyes. No mouth. He was a dead man filled with black holes and gray decaying skin that slowly opened up to yet more holes.

I gasped and tore my hands from the undead cadaver.

His voice was ragged.

“You killed me Shiroin. You stabbed my heart out and then you filled it with more death.”

I shook my head.

“You killed me.” Not-Kiel was decomposing. Tuffs of his white hair dragging off his head with the rain and strips of flesh peeling away to reveal the cranium under it.

“My death was your fault.” He croaked.

“And mine.” Mother howled in the acid rain that rotted her too.

“And mine!” Father gurgled.

“AND MINE!” Yonta, Ehka, Maida, Jhon, the little girls, the soldiers, the bandits, the Elsalvians I had eaten in the Endlands all screeched and cried and staggered towards me.

Rotting. Bloating. Dragging their useless bodies over the slimy deck that rocked unrested on the stormy ocean. Their shrieks pitched, closed in. Ten, twenty, thirty! All shouting at me with their haunting voices. All sobbing and crying out in pain. Growing louder with the rain. Loud enough to make my head split open. Growing so loud I had to cover my ears.

“Stop! Stop it! Stop it!!” I screamed and flattened my back to the mast.

It was an unbearable wall of sound, drowning me in until my whole being filled with their pain! UNBEARABLE!!

Then Farrah snuffed it out and everything got deafeningly mute.

Abruptly Kiel’s quick whisper sounded deep within my skull.

“Demon girl.”

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-Ciao-