#Probably too much trust and thirst I’m going to be sick | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

1kook · 4 years ago

Text

ZOOM CALL

⇢ meeting two

jeon jungkook x (f) reader

⇢ series masterlist

summary: Most notably, there’s one group project waiting for you, which leads you to Friday. Sitting at your desk, bright and early, absolutely dreading being assigned to your group. genre: fluff, slice of life, smut (tags tba) warnings: ITS A SLOW BURN OKAY...., sweetheart jk, campus crush jk, college crushes, social distancing, zoom -_-, jk owns a keroppi plush, oc thirsts over his hot bod, jk’s sweet attempts at flirting </3 he’s just 2 cute for his own good ratings: e for everyone <3 wc: 3.7k

notes: this took long bc i wrote one version but it was SO LAME u guys r lucky my friend and editor ( @kigurumu 🖤 ) stopped me from posting it. so then i had to reorganize my thoughts n b like girl. the ppl are waiting. get it together. anyway here’s zoom jk 😎

Being grouped with Jeon Jungkook (he/him) for your first class on the first day of your first Zoom semester truly sets the standard.

By no means do your other classes suck; they’re quite enjoyable, more relevant to your area of study. They’re familiar which makes them comfortable, your Zoom meetings filled with faces you’ve seen time and time again the last four years. The material interests you, so you definitely don’t have anything against them or your classmates.

That being said, no one is prepared for the awkwardness that comes with each and every Zoom meeting. You never thought you’d be embarrassed to turn your mic on— to speak in a class filled with your peers. And the meetings are all like that, filled with uncomfortable silences and endless black screens.

You wish there was a Jeon Jungkook (he/him) in every class.

Jungkook’s just got this bubbly aura to him, this magnetic presence that staples itself into the back of your mind with each passing day. No one fills a Zoom call like he does, making every person laugh and smile like him.

Wednesday rolls around and you find yourself a little disheartened when you don’t get sorted into the same randomized group as him again. Disappointment melts into annoyance when you find out how incompetent your other classmates are, refusing to speak in the small group or just completely clocking out all together. A lot of them didn’t do the reading— the one you stayed up all night doing —and your first partnered assignment of the semester finds you doing it all by yourself. Muted mics, black windows, complete radio silence; you hated it all.

You find yourself weirdly longing for Jeon Jungkook’s presence, even if he’s only there to talk about some movie he saw last night. No one is as much of a chatterbox as him, can’t even hold a candle to the way he draws everyone in with his mindless conversations. At least he speaks during Breakout Rooms, you think bitterly.

Anyway, the first week of classes ends and your brain is a frenzied mess. There’s schedules to memorize, professors to impress, assignments to plan out. There’s definitely no time to sit around and fantasize about the curly haired cutie in one of your general classes. The weekend is spent trying to organize your planner, filling in due dates and exam days ahead of time. It’s your last semester and you’re dead set on making it your best one yet. There’s a lot of written work this time around, analyses and research papers that need to be organized. The road ahead is manageable, but you’ll have to work hard to keep it that way for the next five months.

Most notably, there’s one group project waiting for you, which leads you to Friday. Sitting at your desk, bright and early, absolutely dreading being assigned to your group.

Jungkook is early this time, not like on Monday where he’d been one of the last to filter in, and he’s looking as chirpy as ever. Donning this horrendously hot pink shirt, completely unlike the neutral tones he’d worn during your last two meetings and that decorate his room, and the cutest pair of circle glasses sitting on his nose. He says his regularly scheduled ‘good morning’ to you all and receives a collective response from the rest of the class that not even your professor got.

Speaking of the professor, you’ve been giving him the stink eye this whole time. Not that he can tell, given the fact he’s probably miles away in his own home while you angrily glare at him through your webcam. It’s this old guy who’s decided to sort you all into semester long groups for the class, which is the absolute worst. These types of groups always go the same way: you make a group chat promising to study together, those plans fall through, and then everyone just leeches off of each other for homework answers. And in most cases, it’s you handing over your homework answers because no one else ever bothers to do anything. Sadly, it’s a routine you’ve had to suffer through many times in your academic career.

The thought makes you sick. Having to spend another semester being labeled as the bossy, nerdy dictator of the group? Not exactly how you wanted to spend the last few months of college, but there’s nothing you can do. Maybe this time around you’ll just let it be, won’t fight it (and by it, you mean your lazy classmates when they inevitably try to guilt trip you for homework) and simply let it run its course.

“I’m going to put you guys into Breakout Rooms with your new groups!” your professor claps excitedly, and then you and the rest of your classmates are forced to watch him lean too close to the camera as he begins clicking around to find the preset groups he’s assigned the class. “Remember, guys, this is it for the rest of the semester. So if something isn’t right, let me know by the end of today.”

Man, this was going to suck, you groan. The syllabus had said that the purpose of these groups was to keep you all connected with your classmates during these trying times, to give you the same opportunities in-person learning would. Frankly, you’re not too worried about making friends with everyone in this large class. Most of them are younger than you anyway, save for Jeon Jungkook (he/him) and a handful of others who are apparently in your year. Befriending lowerclassmen only to have to bid them adieu in a few months seems awfully sad, a little too heartbreaking. You really just want to get a good grade in this class, collect the last of your credits, and put this whole college experience behind you.

Your thoughts are wrapped up by the pop-up message that appears on screen.

The host is inviting you to join a Breakout Room: Group 12

You sigh, contemplate dropping this class for all of two seconds, before dutifully accepting the request. Worse comes to worst, you make up some lie to tell your professor that you’re allergic to group work and hope it works. (It won’t.)

You sit through the mandatory loading screen for a few seconds before being abruptly dumped into your new room, Group 12, or so the message had said. There’s no one else here yet, which isn’t really a surprise. A lot of your classmates are probably like you, scowling at the pop up message every time your professor sends you into small groups before accepting the request. So you chill by yourself, eyes tracing over your own mirrored image. The notes on last night’s reading are neatly laid out before you, your copy of the book off to the side.

Another beat and then, much to your surprise, Jeon Jungkook (he/him) is appearing in your room. “Oh,” he says, round eyes magnified by the thick lens of his glasses, the glare of the computer’s glow casting a funny shape across the lens that momentarily robs you of his pretty eyes. His pretty pink lips stretch into a smile, upper lip thinning out a bit when he flashes you those perfect teeth. “Hi, __,” he greets politely, bubbly.

It’s embarrassing how much his presence affects you, your back going ramrod straight in a terrible attempt to compose yourself. “Hi, Jungkook,” you manage to get out, fingers nervously reaching for something, anything, to ground yourself. They land on a pencil.

Jungkook doesn’t seem even the slightest bit aware of the commotion he causes within you. “I was really nervous for these groups,” he begins rambling right away, lips pushing down into an exaggerated frown as he shivers at the memory. “But I’m glad I got placed with someone hardworking like you!”

Despite how sweet he sounds, you’re not entirely sure if he’s buttering you up just to take advantage of your ‘hardworking’ attitude later down the road or if he’s genuinely being polite. The little information you know about Jungkook wants you to believe it is the latter; he’s very kind, sweet and nice in a way that makes everyone he speaks to feel warm. Still, for all you know this could be some elaborate ruse of his to make you trust him now and then convince you to do all the work for the rest of the semester.

Tentatively, you ask, “and how would you know that?” You try your best to keep your usual snappiness out of your voice, pose it simply out of curiosity. But everything you say or do feels like a stark contrast to Jungkook and his bubbliness.

His head tilts cutely to the side, imploring brown eyes looking at you for one hard second. And then, “I read your forum analysis from Wednesday,” he admits, breaking into a smile. Shy and tiny, bashfully looking down at his desk. “I thought your perspective on the piece was really interesting,” he says, lips pursing together as if he’s suddenly too embarrassed to admit such things to you.

Stunned, all you can manage is one slow nod. “Thank you,” you eventually choke out, trying to ward the heat away from your cheeks as Jungkook sheepishly nods back, cute smile still on his face.

“Oh, please,” he chuckles, raising his hand to rub at the back of his neck. “Don’t thank me!”

It is in this exact moment that you are suddenly made aware of two things.

One: despite his collection of soft sweaters and t-shirts, his bouncy curls and sweet smile, Jeon Jungkook’s body is neither as cute nor as soft as any of his belongings. In fact, Jeon Jungkook’s body is all hard planes and prominent veins. Arms beefy, biceps that bulge beneath the fabric of the short sleeve t-shirt he’s donned today. His shoulders fill out the material nicely, making him look broad and huge, but that’s not even the worst part, because—

—two: Jeon Jungkook is covered in ink. Dark streaks and swirls paint his forearms, curling around his elbow. Every inch of his pale skin is littered with tiny designs. They dance along the back of his hands, over his knuckles, and end at an unidentifiable point beneath the sleeve of his t-shirt. When he tugs at the neckline of his shirt in an effort to readjust it, you hope your eyes are deceiving you and that isn’t a hint of ink by his collarbone.

Your normal composure seems to slip away at the mere thought.

It’s Jungkook’s voice that brings you back, a soft timbre that asks, “aren’t we supposed to have someone else in our group?” You flinch as if you’ve been caught ogling him, never mind the fact he’s started mindlessly shuffling some papers around on his desk, not the slightest bit concerned with you.

“Oh— um, yes. I think,” you stammer, feeling like some creep for ogling your very cute, very sweet classmate. The memory of his inky skin nearly sends a shiver down your spine as you navigate back to the class syllabus. “We’re supposed to have at least three people,” you read off, glancing at the boy on your screen who frowns at the news.

“Do you think they dropped?” Given it was still only the first week of school, probably. There had been a fewer number of people in the call when it started, you remembered. Jungkook sighs, this rather light sound that ends in a hum. “Well, we can always wait a few minutes just in case.”

So you wait, nervously bouncing your leg up and down. It’s not awkward, or at least, not as awkward as it would be with anyone else. The other week you had silently sat with another classmate in a one-on-one discussion and hadn’t uttered a word for five minutes. It wasn’t because you didn’t care about the class, but because said classmate had been tapping away on their phone the entire time and hadn’t even responded to your simple greeting. That was awkward.

With Jungkook it’s more weird than awkward. You can tell the silence makes him uncomfortable because he keeps doing these tiny inhales like he’s about to speak, followed by a little head shake where he seemingly stops himself from saying anything at all. He wants to talk, very badly it seems, but holds back for some odd reason.

He’s scribbling on some sheet of paper, leaning forward to give you a view of the top of his head. From this angle, his shirt hangs forward and a silver necklace falls out from beneath the neckline, thuds against the table. And then your suspicions are nearly confirmed, and oh god, is that a chest piece—

You quickly look away.

Robbed of his handsome face and feeling like you’ll die if you look at his body any longer, you settle for your newly acquired favorite pastime: inspecting your classmates’ rooms over Zoom. Yes, you’ll admit it is incredibly nosy, but what else can you do? You can only look at your professor for so long until you inevitably grow bored, attention drifting off to your classmates tiny windows. And with no professor in sight, just gorgeous Jeon Jungkook, you quickly begin your examination of his bedroom.

Jungkook’s room is pretty much the same as you remember it, rather neat and plain. There’s not a lot going on in terms of decoration, which is a little surprising to say the least. Over the course of the week, you’ve watched your classmates’ dormitories and bedrooms gradually change, decorations and tapestries decorating the walls, mountains of pillows added to their beds. It’s only natural that everyone has an innate need to show off who they are now more than ever, and you thought Jungkook would be the same.

Apparently not.

Aside from the guitar you had spotted on Monday, his little dorm room remains unchanged. Blank walls, grayscale sheets. The same perfectly fluffed pillows and then—

A tiny Keroppi plush smack dab in the middle of his bed.

It’s adorable but a little out of place amongst Jungkook’s rather masculine decorations (or lack thereof). A tiny green doll sitting by his pillows, cute striped shirt and ridiculously dopey smile.

Leaning forward, you unmute yourself and conversationally say, “I love your Keroppi.”

At the sudden sound of your voice, Jungkook abruptly straightens up, glasses practically at the very tip of his nose. Eyes wide, it takes him a second to process your words before jerkily whipping around to stare at the aforementioned item. “Oh,” he jumps, slowly looking at his screen again, lips pulled into a tight line. “Um… it’s not mi—“

“It’s adorable,” you add, propping your chin in your palm, absolutely endeared with the rosy color that paints his cheeks, fades down the column of his neck.

He squirms, hurriedly pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He looks like he’ll deny it again, nervously nibbling at his lower lip, before eventually he settles with a sigh. “I won it from a crane machine,” he confesses with a sheepish huff of laughter, rolling backwards to the edge of his bed to snatch it from its spot.

(Of course he manspreads as he sits, dark jeans hugging his thighs as he rolls back your way. His arm looks so strong, covered in all that ink, you nearly drool.)

“It’s cute, isn’t it?” he says, abandoning his embarrassment as he shakes the little figure around, makes it look like it’s dancing for you. “My mom said it looks like me.”

At that, you laugh. Loud and boisterous because you were definitely not expecting Jungkook to say that, such an odd but weirdly fitting comparison that has you looking at the doll in his hands with renewed interest. And through the pixelated screen, you can see the similarities: Jungkook does have the same smile as Keroppi.

“Your mom was right,” you agree, wiping a faux tear from the corner of your eye. “Very cute.”

Jungkook’s got this big goofy smile on, shaking his head in disbelief that you would ever dare agree with his mom. Like he’s genuinely enjoying himself, you think, oddly proud to have evoked that reaction from him. Granted, Jungkook always looks like he’s pretty happy during class, but it feels nice knowing that you were (confirmed) the reason why.

A little caught up with the bumbling feeling in your chest, you’re not expecting his next words. “Does that mean I’m cute?” he asks, still with that same dopey smile on his face.

It’s a bold statement you wouldn’t have expected from him, someone who seems content being the world’s friend, but apparently Jeon Jungkook also craves compliments.

Slowly, you nod. “...yes,” you say, trying to keep the tumultuous emotions inside of you at bay while you grant him this one compliment. Outwardly, you give him what you hope is an obviously feigned look of disbelief, managing to lace it with a little amusement as you shake your head at his inquiry. On the inside, your mind and heart are a thundering racetrack, the roar of the engines and the screams of the crowd enough to momentarily make you lose your senses. “Very cute,” you repeat, hoping he can’t hear the same pounding of your heartbeat in your throat and in your ears as you do. “Like a little frog.”

Jungkook graces your robotic response with the most boyish laugh, head tossed back as one loud cackle (because, really, there is no other way to describe the sound that tears itself from his throat) escapes him, curls bouncing back from the movement. “Cute like a frog,” he wheezes, seemingly to himself as he shakes his head with a grin, scooting closer to the camera again. “That’s a new one.”

“You set yourself up for it,” you defend, busying yourself with the papers spread out in front of you before Jungkook can distract you any further. “Anyway!” you announce, neatly lining the papers up. “Our group.”

Jungkook does his best to wipe the glee off his face, but even as he reaches around for his things, it’s still there. “Right,” he agrees, “we have to, um—“ a huff of laughter “—group contract! Or, well, partner project.”

Briefly, you consider calling in your professor to inform him of your missing partner. He had said to let him know by the end of today if something was wrong. But, honestly, you didn’t see a problem with your group the way it was now. While you can only hope he’ll turn out to be as dedicated to his work as you, as it stands now, there weren’t any major red flags surrounding Jungkook’s character.

Besides, you didn’t mind being with him for the rest of the semester.

You nod, forcing yourself to ignore the glimmer in his eyes when he looks at you through the screen. “I think it’s safe to say it’ll just be the two of us, which I don’t mind,” you say, glancing at the time on the corner of your screen to see five minutes have passed since you agreed to wait. “Do you?”

On screen, Jungkook profusely shakes his head, curls bouncing all over the place. “Nope,” he hums. “I don’t mind at all,” he reassures you, resting his chin in his palm as he regards you, and then sweetly adds, “it’ll be nice with just us, __.”

Right.

You gulp, heart fluttering at the dreaminess he exudes through your screen, the soft strand of hair that falls over his forehead, tickles his brow bone when he flashes you another smile. He was so handsome. Before you say anything silly, you quickly attempt to move on. “But it does make us more of a duo than a group.”

Jungkook looks away from his screen for the first time in what feels like forever and you finally let your heart rest for a second. “A duo,” he murmurs, shuffling through his papers. “Like Mickey and Minnie?”

You nearly choke on your spit, coughing to hide the surprise from his rather cute suggestion. He’s not even looking at you, doesn’t even realize the absolute shock he’s thrown you in by comparing the two of you to one of the most famous couples— that’s what they are, a goddamn couple, not a duo! the words mean two completely different things! —in the world. Instead, Jungkook is humming the theme song to Drake & Josh.

This man was dangerous for your heart.

After having felt all the emotions in the world in the span of ten seconds, you eventually gather the courage to say, “sure,” and quickly try to move the conversation along. “We just need to, um, make some ground rules and responsibilities for us to follow.”

Jungkook nods, finally glancing up again, but not at you. He’s glaring at some point behind his computer, brows furrowed together as he begins brainstorming on his own. You try to, really, but his lips pout adorably when he’s deep in thought, and they’re just so pink and look so soft and would feel like—

“Well, we should probably exchange numbers first,” Jungkook says, interrupting your spiraling thoughts with a new topic to spiral over. He tilts his head to the side, brown eyes focused on you.

“Yes, of course,” you stammer, fumbling for your phone as Jungkook lets out a soft yay at your acceptance of his request. Quickly, he recites his number and you type it in with trembling hands into the number pad, giving him a quick call so he can have your number as well.

You save him right away, just his name followed by the class you share with him. Not like you know any other Jeon Jungkooks, and if you did, you doubt anyone could ever leave such an impact like this Jeon Jungkook.

“__, look,” Jungkook calls, that same excitement lacing his already lovely voice, and you raise your head up at the screen again. He’s waving his phone over his camera, so you don’t get to see his face when he says, “It’s a little mouse emoji and a pink bow— just like Minnie!”

Dangerous for your heart and, most likely, the death of you this semester.

#networkbangtan #bangtanhq #jungkook fic #jungkook smut #jeon jungkook fic #jungkook x reader #jeon jungkook x reader #bts smut #bts fic #jjk smut #jeon jungkook smut #jjk♡#mine

2K notes · View notes

funkymbtifiction · 3 years ago

Text

Enneagram Centers

Sometimes if you're not sure of your core type, you need to consider the "centers" in order to figure out where your focus lies. (And... don't allow yourself to tritype yourself until you're 100% positive of your core. It will explain most of your behavior and coping mechanisms, so tritype isn't an excuse to mistype.)

Centers... there are three. Each one makes decisions differently and focuses on different things. Sometimes you can narrow down your type to the center, and from there, decide which of the three fits you best.

Centers: heart, head, gut.

They are exactly the way they sound.

Heart types make decisions from an emotional place, because their focus is on earning love. How are you seeing me? What image am I presenting to you? What do I want you to see? They are all about a conscious crafting of "self" in comparison to others. Others can see them as emotional, as needing approval, or as making decisions based on what others think of them. It's an image center. How do I feel about this? What does it lead me to do? (2 - find love, earn love. 3 - impress to earn approval. 4 - too broken for love, separate, must show my uniqueness to get love.)

Head types make decisions from a rational place, because their focus is on being secure. They think, think, think. Over-think. Analyze. Observe. Gotta think about that. Need time to mull it over. Their energy is all in their head. Nervous energy. Active energy. Thoughts. What I think, not what I feel. Buzzing. Busy mind. Converting everything to thinking about it. Distrusts their emotions. Emotions lead you wrong. Must be rational! (5 - detach, observe, don't participate. 6 - too many thoughts, unsure, find something to trust, hold onto it. 7 - stay busy to avoid anxiety, lots of thoughts, run with them all, don't want to feel stuck.)

Gut types make decisions from an instinctual place, through body energy. How things "hit" me. What I "sense" is right. How the world slams up against me, and the barriers I build against it. Putting up boundaries to protect myself. Are these boundaries stable? Knowing what to do. Or not knowing. I just know. It's an obvious choice. This is where I'm being lead. (1 - set firm boundaries, I know what's right and wrong. 8 - be a wall others slam into, expand to maintain control, things anger me and make me push back. 9 - the world seems to be taking me over, it's easy just to go along with it, pretend to agree and then do my own thing, avoid conflict.)

Another thing, which goes for mistyping in MBTI as well -- lots of people think they are X so they "act like X" -- but acting is pretending; it's not real. A fix or a core or a type is real when there's no acting involved; it's just what you naturally do, the air you breathe. For a 2 fixer, pretending to be separate, and broken, and craft an identity as a 4... that is hard work, tiring. For a 6 to pretend to be a 9, and stay calm, and not be full of thoughts and over-thinking, is impossible. It's draining. People start acting THE BEHAVIOR instead of looking deep into their motivations. "Oh, I will act like a 7!" You can't act like a 7 and be convincing, a 7 generates those behaviors through their thinking process. Identifiable behaviors are the result of mental energy. Heart processes are the result of emotional energy. And gut responses are instinctual, immediate, no thinking necessary, my body is reacting, sometimes before I can even think about it. ("I felt sick through my body before I even knew what was happening...")

Social variants are much the same, in that your dominant trait is where your attention goes immediately when you are asked a question or forced to come up with a conversation on the spot. It's rapid. Your dominant instinct absorbs most of your thoughts and focus and concern, even if you aren't aware of it.

Like the typing video I linked to the other day -- when asked questions, Megan Fox drew attention to sexual topics and encounters, because she views her past in an sx-dom way; she remembers school by the first boy she French kissed. When she wanted to interrupt her interviewer and pull him off a "boring topic," her brain said: admit you have a crush on him in a "there are only three guys I'd do" way. Again, sx. Her photos -- sx displays. Provocative clothing intended to elicit an sx reaction from others.

With variants, give yourself time and space to discover it. Your variant is probably more obvious to other people than yourself, because they see it's where your mind goes. You can't think your way through this, head types ;), you have to get an instinctual sense of things through comparisons. Think about the variants on their own, what they are about, what their focus is on, and then put them into the context of your core type and what that means.

If it's sp, look for sp's in the world around you. What's their focus on? Sp concerns. What does that mean? They focus on... my body, how I feel, what I can do, can my body withstand this? What's this look like? The guy you know who is an exercise master. The person neurotic about their health. The 2 who focuses on "health and home." (What does that look like? Well, he checks my tires, changes the oil, etc, for me without being asked! Mom makes lunches for us all, packs them, has them waiting by the door, and makes sure to take care of us at home!)

Socials? Inspiring others. Being the go-to person. Sharing what they know in a friendly manner. Focus on community, on inspiring, on being socially appropriate, on noticing when others AREN'T playing by the rules. What's that look like in person? The 1 who sets a moral example through their behavior and frowns on misbehavior. The 3 who wants to impress you with their inspirational journey. (Not their stuff, stuff is sp. Admire my new car? Sp 3!) The 5 who loves to share their expertise about ancient Egypt (their one thing). The likable 2 who runs a YouTube channel about "how to..."

Sexuals? Focus on sex. Heat. Attraction. Scent. Impact. Provocation. Am I turning you on or off? I want to find out, that's why I do it. People are either drawn to me or hate me. That's fine. Attracting them all isn't interesting to me. What's that look like in number terms? The sexy 2 who only "helps" their special person. The 6 who is protective of their mate, while also being anxious and suspicious and fearful of being left OR who goes to an extreme to become attractive in an expected way (the hot girl next door, the man who can protect you, the sensitive man, the tough girl). The 9 who molds themselves into another person and disappears into them (Bella).

It's an area of over-focus, neuroticism, a need you have to fill, whereas your second fix isn't that important. It's how you play, dabble, the stakes aren't as high, and your focus doesn't always go there first. I want this, don't always chase it. (Sx? Intense heat comes after social awareness or self-protection. Soc? Socially aware, but being an influencer comes after sx drive or "my health and home." Sp? Survival comes after public influence or awareness or sx pursuits.)

Being "blind" means... I rarely focus on this. It's not on my radar. Sp blind? Safety?? Survival? Eh, it'll all work out fine. :) Sx blind? Throwing myself recklessly after intense attraction, thirst traps, being super provocative, seems tasteless and risky. Soc-blind? Oblivious to how that statement made you feel about me, or judge me, unaware of how I dress or act being inappropriate to a situation.

#enneagram

165 notes · View notes

diary-of-deadweight · 4 years ago

Text

Masterlist.

Fic Idea by @leximills666

“Anything new?” You asked, sitting yourself in the spare chair between Darcy and Jimmy, who handed you your cup of caffeine. “If you consider Pietro teaching the twins how to stream snacks from the kitchen then no.” Jimmy spoke up, his eyes glued intently to the television for any missable details that could play in your favour. “But Jimmy did almost spill coffee onto Director Hayward.” Darcy shoots the mortified male a amused look as you slapped a hand onto his shoulder, trying so hard not to burst out laughing at the mental image that gave you an good amount of serotonin, “I’d pay good money to see you actually do it, serves him right for calling my friend a terroist.”

It was common knowledge that you and the Maximoff twins were close friends after their introduction to the Avengers as you were gaining some semblance of understanding of your teleportation powers and it’s limitations before trauma bonding with the pair over being Hydras successful lab rats. So when Hayward slagged off Wanda it took Darcy, Monica and Jimmy to hold you back from ending his whole career John Wick style. The bastard got real lucky but you couldn’t promise that the next time was going to have him leave a briefing room without a few bruises and even bruised ego. Fuelled by the frustration of recent events that left you feeling helpless as you were forced to watch the sitcom shenanigans Wanda and her dead yet somehow not dead husband and her adorable twins get into that only made it feel like a horror after they end, leaving you with more questions then answers that weighed on your darkening eyebags and breaking every last ounce of paitience you once thought you had along with the sleepless nights of theorising that went nowhere without someone bringing up a flaw made keeping your powers in check a little more difficult that you’d scare Jimmy, Darcy and Monica on a plethora of occasions.

You just wanted to get them out and be done with Hayward’s suspicious ass. I mean it was clear as fuck that vision was in bits and pieces in the video servalence footage. What was he doing with him? Why did he wait this long to show everyone something that would’ve benefited the opertation from the beginning? THAT was suspicious behaviour and yet no one was gonna question it?! Gotta love corruption I guess. “Anything new Dr Lewis?” Speaking of corruption, here it was in human form standing behind you there with his ‘stick up his ass’ attitude; it really pissed you off that you’d love nothing more then to slam your fist into him punchable bitch face until it’s unreagnisable. Sensing your hatred and thirst for violence, Jimmy places a hand on your shoulder and gave you a stern look that read ‘no...not yet at least.’ Sighing you gave him a passable smile before talking a long sip of coffee, making sure to slurp annoyingly loud as possible when Hayward looked at you unamused that you couldn’t help retaliating with a tight lipped smile and the middle finger. Darcy had to cover her mouth from bursting out in hysterics while Jimmy sighed like a disappointed parent but you knew he was trying to hold it together internally as Darcy was. “Nothing worth reporting back on sir.”

Hayward didn’t say anything other then let out a grunt then making his way out of the room not without a snarky comment from you of course, “don’t let the door hit you on the way out directior” to which he replied with as swiftly “appreciate the concern (l/n).” Making sure he was out of sight Darcy burst out laughing so hard she had to lean against you for support while Jimmy allowed himself to chuckle a little had your chest warming up, erasing any forms of pent up frustration like magic. Spending time with these beautiful bastards were what made the sleepless nights worth it in your opinion, knowing that you weren’t alone in wanting to help Wanda instead of harm. “What’re they laughing at?” Monica asked, a dazzling smile adorned her face as she nursed her own coffee between her hands; You shrugged nonchalantly looking back at her with fake innocence that told her more then she needed to know. “The sleep deprivation must’ve caught up to them.”

“Shut up!” The dark haired woman nudged you in the side, almost spilling your coffee in the process, “(y/n) threw some serious sass at Hayward earlier, should’ve been there Monica it was hysterical.” Monica only laughed in response as she patted you on the back, proud that she wasn’t the only one sick of Hayward’s shit, “I guess I should’ve. Would make a great memeory to share in the future” she sat in the chair next to Darcy turning her attention to the screen where Pietro was attempting to be slick and nab a snack while Wanda was cutting onions unflinchingly, only to slip and land flat on his back scaring Wanda as the unseen audicene laughed. Stupid and as cheesy as it was it didn’t fail to make you crack a smile while reminiscing of a similar memory that stuck out like a sore thumb. You and Pietro thought it be a great idea to compete against one another in order to see who’d get to the kitchen first, spoiler: he won by a narrow margin, that still had you calling him a cheat to this day, and decided to hide from you behind the counter like the little shit that he was. Long story short you entered the kitchen thinking you won, he jumps out scaring you so badly that you end up teleporting ontop of him.

“Hey (y/n).” Darcy’s voice brought you back from your thoughts and to reality. The thought of teleporting in there and getting your friends out has been a recurring one though your required to feel someone’s energy signature and with how well getting inside visuals went the likelihood of you sensing Pietro or Wanda for that case wasn’t going to be a piece of cake if it was you’d already have done it by now. “Yes Dr Lewis?” “Think you could-“ teleport inside? Trust me I’ve thought the same thing but the barrier is a major issue standing in my way of actually getting inside and out without trouble.” Despite all odds that didn’t stop you from wanting to give it a try if it meant trapping yourself also you wouldn’t hesitate to do it in a heartbeat. So it took your friends aback when you abruptly stood up from your chair, shoving your coffee into Jimmy’s hands and made a mad dash out of the room and down the corridor unapologetically shoving everyone aside with Monica and Darcy in hot pursuit while poor Jimmy placed your coffee down by your chair and bolted in hopes of catching up but when he did you were already teleported into the barrier that was dragging you into Westview before their eyes.

“(Y/n)!!!!” Monica yelled as she ran towards you, hand outstretched to pull you back but only grasped air when you disappeared form sight, she was so close to saving you but was too late non the less. Darcy and Jimmy shared a look as they came to her side as the feeling of helplessness became more evident within them. “Come on Monica, we can probably catch them on the television.” She said solemnly as they walked back to base.

-meanwhile in Westview-

Scared and confused you found yourself wandering aimlessly down the streets in your new attire of plaid shirt, leather jacket, high waisted trousers, converse and a locket that help a picture of you, Pietro and Wanda inside before finding yourself on your ass looking up at a silver haired male in a black leather jacket, Hawaiian shirt, jeans and worn down sneakers.

“What the-,” his chocolate eyes widened as they landed on your face, “(y/n)?! Is that you?!” His voice was just as you remembered it you smirked, outstreching a hand in a silent jesture to be helped up, “you think I’d let you wander too far?” He chuckled, hauling you off the floor and into his arms, face buried into his neck savouring the brunt sugar smell you’ve missed so much. “I should’ve guessed you’d be several steps behind.” He whispered into your hair, placing a kiss there, immediately comforting you before pulling away to drag you down the street without explanation towards a familiar house that belonged to the auburn haired female who was currently cleaning up after her kids when she saw Pietro, giving him that parental stare. “You’re a bad influence on my kids Pietro, you’re lucky to be my brother or I would’ve blasted across town by now.”

‘Well that ain’t foreboding at all.’ You thought to yourself as you took in the fact that you were finally reunited with the people who meant the most to you, you couldn’t remember when you got here nor how other then the fact that you wanted to visit Pietro and Wanda and that you could teleport. “If it’s any constellation, look who finally decided to pay us a visit.” The silver haired male stepped aside to reveal you in all your unsure glory as Wanda’s eyes widened like they did with Pietro but she didn’t any waste time in running towards you and holding your face in her hands, tears lining her eyes and you couldn’t help but lean into her warmth. “(Y/n)?” She whispered softly. “Hi Wanda, sorry I’m late.” You said as Pietro held both of you close to his chest protectively while Wanda laughed weakly her hand dropping you grasp yours tightly, “all is forgiven now that we’re together...as we should be.” Her eyes flashed red for a split second.

“Yeah, together at last.”

#wandavison imagines #wandavison fic #wandavison imagine #wandavison x reader #peter maximoff x reader #peter maximoff imagine #peter maximoff imagines #marvel imagine #marvel x reader #marvel imagines

377 notes · View notes

deonideatta · 3 years ago

Text

It's not peak brain hours for me rn, so I'm going to write everything about the sunah-mjh conspiracy and what it implies (or at least how I understand it) out to organise it in my head. Pls correct me if I've gotten anything wrong or missed anything

So all in all the goal was to plant ga on as a spy/weakness using isaac's face as an in. At first I thought that mjh had been the one to steer ga on towards being a judge, and I still think that's possible, but I don't think he approached ga on solely with the intent to use him tho. Based on his face at the graduation it seems he already knew her before that. She probably approached him and offered him a position as chief justice in exchange for manipulating ga on. (Also, what's his deal resigning then? What does he really want out of all of this?). I don't think he took care of ga on after his parents died solely for that reason tho, bc i think he's established as a friend of ga on's father, which is how they came to know each other.

Ga on would then be used to attack yohan in the future. On a basic level that meant feeding information back to mjh/acquiring evidence of yohan's shady dealings so they could take him down. Along the line yohan and ga on kinda grew attached to each other, which threw off the plan bc now ga on wasn't willing to betray yohan for mjh. However on a deeper level ga on was meant to serve as a weakness for yohan, emotionally, which was made more possible by them getting closer.

Mjh then uses soo hyun to plant doubts in ga on's mind surrounding the church fire. Then, they kill off soo hyun, and mjh uses soo hyun's death and the church fire to plant suspiscion. Yohan pushes ga on off the edge in the end with the death penalty thing, and mjh takes the opportunity to collect the returns on his investment, talking ga on into outing the court as fake. So in the end ga on's attachment to yohan ends up being beneficial to sunah-mjh, bc it drives him to reveal the truth so he can stop yohan from going too far.

It seems like things are over for yohan, but then it turns out the public still supports him, to the point of wanting to make him president. Deciding to go in for the kill, sun ah-mjh trick ga on into thinking yohan did the church fire and killed soo hyun, prompting the stabbing. Now it seems sun ah did this for the added emotional blow, bc she could have just framed yohan and left it at that. Rather she chooses to target what's closest to him, the two people he cares about most. And we reach the tragic conclusion.

Now, what does this mean for ga on's character? We know that at least his friendship with soo hyun came about free from sun ah's plans. It predated his relationship with mjh, so at least we can assume that his interactions with soo hyun were genuine, and her advice to him was as well, though it may have been influenced by mjh. We know that Ga on becoming yohan's associate judge was not a coincidence, but it's not clear if ga on going to the kang mansion was intended by sunahmjh, bc though we know that the foundation planted the bomb it would be a bit of a gamble to assume it would lead to yohan taking ga on to his house. Either way the closeness achieved there and the drive to help yohan and elijah and feel sympathy for them are all things ga on did on his own

As for ga on choosing to side with yohan over mjh. I don't think this was in the plan, bc obviously if ga on changes sides he'll stop leaking info to mjh. So we can assume that that was ga on's decision, influenced of course by yohan. Funny how we all analysed the ways that yohan manipulated ga on while the real manipulation was coming from mjh lol. Then again, while it might not serve mjh's agenda (whatever that is, we actually don't know) it also serves sun ah's agenda in that it makes ga on more of a weakness to yohan, as he grows fonder of him.

I also dont think sunah-mjh accounted for ga on's dark side. Yohan drew that out, and used it to convince ga on of his way of doing things. It seems mjh did put a lot of effort into making ga on the poster boy of 'righteousness', so that he would remain at odds with yohan, so obviously it doesn't work in his favour to have ga on secretly have a dark side that relates to yohan. Additionally, there's no way mjh or sun ah played a role in ga on's parents' death (or is there..? Mjh has been mentioned to be a friend of ga on's father. hmmm), so whatever effects that had on him (I.e. his thirst for revenge) would have been out of their control.

It seems though that when ga on went to yohan's side, they simply changed the plan to account for it. Sow seeds of doubt via soo hyun, then kill soo hyun and make it look like yohan did it. And then yohan himself inadvertently helped by busting out the whole death penalty. In the end it worked out even better for them, bc ga on gained a lot more insider knowledge by going to yohan's side, and again, his concern for yohan also spurred him into action in order to stop yohan from crossing a line he couldn't uncross, the only way that seemed available.

And then when the situation seems to be turning in yohan's favour, they decide to deliver the final blow, both to him and to ga on. It's devastating to yohan because it targets the two people he cares about most, and threatens to reveal the secret he has sacrificed so much to keep, for elijah's sake. And it's devastating to ga on because suddenly it puts his whole life into question, and he's suddenly faced with the realization that a lot of what he's done had been carefully laid out for him in advance, that a lot of his life has been a tool in someone's big plan. And in the process he has lost all the things he had that were real: his relationships with soo hyun, yohan and elijah. Imagine the weight of realising that all the choices you agonised over, that you made because you believed you were doing the right thing, turn out to be the result of careful manipulation from someone you trusted like a parental figure, and that all the things that could have stopped the force behind that figure have been destroyed because of you and those choices.

Overall it's a very insidious and downright evil plan, especially because it hinged a lot on taking advantage of a young man lost in the wake of tragic events in order to steer his life in a direction meant to serve your sick and twisted goals. And then continuing to do so until your plans bear fruition, then shattering his whole world and moving on. All for the purpose of mentally tormenting some guy who wasn't nice to you when you were a maid that stole things from his house

My only issue with all this is how sun ah knew yohan was going to do all the things he was going to do so far in advance that she could plan ga on's career path accordingly? You could argue sun ah planted ga on purely based on her obsession with yohan, not necessarily expecting him to wage war on the elites. She may have then seen the benefit of ga on as a weakness of yohan's when the fight started and played up that aspect of the plan. Or she set up the live court for the express purpose of having yohan and ga on meet? Not clear on this, if anyone has any thoughts help a sister out.

We'll probably get more info in the finale, and I'll update this post if I think of anything new

#we were all here analysing yohan's 5d chess while sun ah was playing 7d chess in the background skdjs #my head hurts skdj #the devil judge #i listened to the soundtrack for the first time as i wrote this and it did not help :'))#tdj meta

36 notes · View notes

yellowocaballero · 4 years ago

Text

Hunt!Tim: Five Times He Murdered Someone And One Time He Loved them <3

Just kidding. This is a fic set in my Roleswap AU, acting as a character study over the course of the series into...whatever the fuck was going on with that guy. I spent so much time and energy actually figuring out his arc and character that when I finished Solitaire I hadn’t said everything I wanted to say, so that’s why this exists. It’s...not funny at all. Tim takes himself far too seriously. I’m very sorry, there are almost no jokes in this. It just doesn’t work.

Content warning for story typical issues; but more explicit depiction of suicidal ideation, kidnapping and physical assault, just in general a very fucked up little dude, and gendered violence that is more explicitly discussed as a possible precursor to further violence. Rest under the cut.

“I’m going to fucking kill them!”

“Well,” Sasha said, tapping away relentlessly on her phone as she sat primly on his couch. During work hours she was always doing something mysterious on her laptop, and after work it was on her phone. She had once alluded to being the moderator of an improbable number of forums. She liked the power. “We could probably make that happen. It’s the Magnus Institute, it’s suspicious if nobody's dying. But four people at once may not be prudent.”

“I don’t care!” Tim yelled. He paced his living room in tight lines, turning sharply on his heel at the end of the room. It felt like he was bursting with pent-up energy and rage, sending his heartbeat thumping in his ears like a war drum. “They’re obstructing justice, withholding evidence from an investigation, probably acting as an accomplice -”

“I’m going to fucking kill them!”

Sasha’s head snapped up, eyes glinting at him behind the big glasses that she always hid behind. “So you do think they were involved in Gertrude’s death?”

“Who cares. They did something, they’re obviously guilty of whatever. Every one of them have rap sheets.” Everyone but that blonde woman, which seemed a little counter-intuitive. “We just have to find something.”

Sasha hesitated, just momentarily, and she carefully put her phone down. “You’re angry, Tim. It’s affecting your judgement. Remember when we talked about that? Deep breaths. Come on, in one and out two. ”

Tim grimaced, but Sasha was right. He stopped pacing, and at Sasha’s encouraging look he resentfully took a few deep breaths. It did make him feel better. His heart wasn’t thumping in his ears anymore. She was so good at calming him down. She was just so wonderful in every way.

Thinking about how great Sasha was effective in clearing his head, but it just highlighted how terrible those women were in comparison. No respect. It was disgusting.

“Thanks,” Tim said gruffly, eliciting a beautiful smile. He collapsed on the couch next to her, disgusted and frustrated. “We’re never going to solve this Robinson case so long as those women are in the way. I won’t tolerate any obstacles in getting justice.”

“I know, and that’s what’s brave about you,” Sasha soothed, clasping his shoulder gently. Her thumb worked into his shoulder, gentle and soothing. “But we have to do it quietly. We don’t just need them out of the way, we need information. I’ll work on the technological side. You can dig up an entire life online, trust me. But if they know any of the secrets about the Institute and the Archives, we have to press them. That’s your strength, Tim. You can get anything out of anyone, because you never give up.”

Tim turned his head and smiled weakly at her. “And your strength is that you’re always there for me.” Her eyebrow ticked, but Tim hardly noticed. “I’ll keep pressing. They can’t stonewall me forever. I have their boss’ address, I’ll just show up there.”

“He’s going to ask for a warrant -”

“Oh, who gives a shit, nobody cares.” Tim snorted. “He’s a pussy if he’s hiding behind those women, anyway.” At Sasha’s carefully arched eyebrow, Tim quickly added, “Coward, I meant coward.”

“So you do remember our conversation about being PC,” Sasha said, making Tim snort. Please. Those sensitivity training the department was always forcing on them was a joke. Tim laughed with the other guys about it afterwards. He didn’t know why Sasha was complaining; she laughed just as mockingly as the rest of them. But she just readjusted her glasses now, a sign she was a little nervous. “Tim, about what you said just before we left -”

“What about it?” Tim said sharply.

Sasha was silent for a minute, before adjusting her glasses again. “Nothing. Just - be careful, okay? People who get too close to the Magnus Institute end up dead.”

If only they would. But Tim grinned at her, bright and sharp, and Sasha hesitantly smiled back too. Tim’s conviction, his bravery, always seemed to make her feel better. Sasha thought too much. She rarely second guessed herself - that was why Tim liked her - but sometimes she just thought herself into twists. She needed someone like him to cut that Gordian Knot. “Don’t worry, Sash. The good guys always prevail.”

Tim would kill them. All he needed was a reason.

ii.

Tim had nightmares, now.

Not full ones. Strange, fragmented dreams that were quickly forgotten after he woke up. Most of the time. But not always. And they were so strangely vivid - as if he was really living that moment over and over again.

It was of that construction site. And of Danny, watching those murders and the corpses with a sick, fascinated smile. And of Tim, defenseless and powerless and trembling and weak, watching it all happen.

Sometimes there would be a man. Just once or twice. The man, who would always be wearing really stupid pyjamas that contrasted wildly with how attractive he was, would frown at Tim.

‘Hey’, Sims said, ‘aren’t you that prick?’.

And Tim would wake up, heart beating fast, thumping in his ears, afraid in exactly that same poisonous metallic way that he hadn’t felt since he was a child.

Tim was going to kill that monster.

****

On a Monday afternoon, Tim sat in the driver’s seat of his car, checking his gun.

Gun, check. Rope, check. Shovel, check. Lighter and gasoline, check. Axe with belt, check, just in case things went really south. Gag, check. Tim had no idea how many secret powers that thing had, he wasn’t taking any chances.

Monday was the only night that they all went home alone. It took two frustrating weeks of stake-outs to realize that. Since he had cornered that bitch Melanie she even walked home with Daisy, who apparently lived close by. It was worth it, though. She was finally feeding him useful information, even though Tim knew that she thought she was giving irrelevant information about what they really wanted. He gave most of it straight to Sasha, who was salivating over all of the puzzle pieces Melanie was casually dumping on them as if they were meaningless. Whatever. That was Sasha’s job.

She had been worried about him lately. Probably. Tim hadn’t really noticed. He was focused on the case. Tim was a perfectionist like that.

Finally, at 5:20, Tim saw the monster - Jon, whatever, he wasn’t scared of him - round the corner. He was a little hard to distinguish in the darkness, but that was why Tim had left the headlights on.

His heart was thumping, roaring in his ears. Tim was giddy with excitement and anticipation and thirst. Catching them wasn’t the best part, but this would feel so good. He had been vividly imagining the look of fear on the thing’s face for the past month, ever since he assaulted Tim. He just couldn’t decide how he wanted to kill him - he brought his nightstick just in case he wanted to bash his face in, but fire was practical and incredibly painful.

Showtime, Tim thought, as he opened his car door and stepped out. After Tim took care of this, he and Sasha would be safe. That was the important thing. He was protecting Sasha from that thing. That was why he did it, all of it.

Jon startled a little when he saw him, but his face was backlit from the headlights and his features were probably obscured. It wasn’t until Tim stepped forward, easily and casually, that Jon began the slight speedwalk of a pedestrian encountering a persistent panhandler on the street.

“Stop right there.”

Jon froze. Not as stupid as he looks, then. Still pretty stupid.

Tim walked forward until he was standing at Jon’s back, already silently drawing out his handcuffs with one hand.

“Detective Stoker,” Jon said, and Tim almost respected the way his voice didn’t shake. “I wish this was more of a surprise.”

Normally Tim appreciated a good intimidating monologue, but he could be more efficient right now. Besides, there was time for that later. Jon turned his head backwards slightly, trying to see his face - perfect - and Tim waited until he could see his expression before he jammed the barrel of his gun on Jon’s throat.

There it was. The expression that few people besides Tim had ever seen, that secret face of man that each person felt so few times in their lives if they felt it at all. The face of a man who knew he was about to die.

It was Tim’s little secret.

“Why -”

Tim bashed it over the head with the barrel of the gun, and it dropped on the gun like a lanky puppet with its strings cut. No use letting it finish a question.

Handcuffs, rope, trunk. Carefully just under the speed limit, barrelling out of London into the cold and emotionless woods. Turning on the stereo - some mindless Amy Winehouse song. Tim found himself whistling along with it, fingers drumming on the steering wheel.

It wasn’t that Tim liked killing people, or even things that looked and begged and cried like people. But it was just something you had to do. Tim shouldered that burden, so innocent people wouldn’t have to. As a police officer, he had sworn to be the wolf that protects the sheep. That was Tim - that loyal and heroic wolf.

The thrill was overwhelming. That was why people had sex in public - that excited thrill over possibly getting caught. Not that he would, and even if he did Tim basically had carte blanche to handle his cases how he wanted, but he could. His skin was prickling, his heartbeat thumping in his ears. Saliva was pooling in his mouth, which he wiped off with one hand. Adrenaline did weird things. When he looked at the rear mirror inside the car to check on Jo - the monster, he saw the light of the headlights glinting strangely against his eyes, but in another second it was gone.

Tim didn’t have a ‘spot’ because that was fucking idiotic, but all of his dumping places had basically the same characteristics. You had to drive a while to get something really private. It took an hour, but they got to Chiltern hills eventually, and Tim was forced to squint at Google Maps to find the GPS coordinates he had planned out. It felt a little ridiculous to use Google Maps to find a burial spot for somebody but - well, life was weird.

When he stopped, he carefully took out the gag, the axe, the shovel, his own hunting knife, and dumped them in the spot he had picked out. He held the gag and holstered the hunting knife before carefully popping open the trunk.

Jo - the monster was awake. Which was fortunate; there was no fight when they were unconscious. He stared up at Tim with big brown eyes, all innocent and pleading, and Tim rolled his eyes before bending down to securely jam the gag in his mouth before grabbing him by his tied hands and dragging him out. The thing made a bunch of sad noises, and from the sounds of it he had wrenched a shoulder, but that wouldn’t be an issue in a few minutes.

The thing’s legs had clearly fallen asleep, and he stumbled onto the ground the minute Tim let go of him. He kept his eyes on Tim almost frantically, as if he could brainwash him by his eyes alone - could he? Could he? His eyes were fucking freaky.

Jesus. What if he could. Fuck, Tim barely knew anything about his freaky powers. But if he could brainwash via eye contact, couldn’t he -

No. Tim shook himself. That was the fear talking. Which shouldn’t exist. The fear should be gone. He had the thing bound and gagged at his feet, terrified out of its life, he couldn’t possibly still be scared of it. Fucking stupid. He was just cautious. That was caution. Tim was a cautious person.

Time for his favorite part, then.

Tim grinned lazily down at the thing, letting his white teeth flash in the lit headlights of the car. He hadn’t been able to sleep last night, writing all of this out in his mind. “Not so great on the other side, huh?”

The monster’s eyes widened.

Tim dragged him away from the car, not bothering to be gentle. He kicked and pushed on the ground, and although he was bony as hell the guy was tall and desperate, and Tim was forced to kick him down on the ground and draw his gun. He hadn’t wanted to draw the gun - they never fought and kicked and snarled and bit with the gun - but he wasn’t taking any chances here.

“I want you to know,” Tim said, friendly and warm, “that I’m doing this because I made a promise. On my badge and on my life, I protect the innocent from predators. I defend society from threats. There’s a corruption in the world, a sick and rotting infection, and it’s my job to tear it out. But I get no joy from this, okay?” He didn’t know why it was important that the monster knew that. It wasn’t like he was going to hold a grudge. The monster tried to sit up, but Tim kicked him again until he hit the ground again. Tim hated how he was shorter than him when they both were standing. He wanted to look down on him for once.

The monster was always looking down on him. With his little girl gang and his bestest buddies. With that - that moral superiority. He thought he was so smart and popular. Just because he could rip someone’s deepest secrets out of someone, he thought he was better. Just because he knew Tim’s worst fear, he thought that he had power over Tim.

Nobody did. Nobody had power over Tim. Not anymore.

“But you,” Tim hissed, “you, out of everyone I’ve ever killed - I’m going to enjoy you. You’ve crept into the lives of all those humans. You even got fucking Sasha telling me you’re not all bad. Is that what you do? Convince everybody around you that you’re a good person, when you’re a piece of shit inside?” His hand was trembling on his gun - that wasn’t in the script. Why was that happening? “Well, guess what. No matter how great you think you are, you will always be a monster.”

The handle of Tim’s gun was coated in sweat, making his trembling hand slide. Why? The gasoline and lighter were standing by his feet, ready to burn the body. His heart was thumping in his chest, not from anticipation and thrill - why? Why? Why?

“Tim, no!”

Tim, so focused on what he was doing, jerked so hard he almost fired the gun. He whipped around to the source of the voice, and found to his shock a familiar car and a familiar woman standing by it, face set in a fierce determination.

It was Sasha. Somehow, the sight of her was deeply wrong to Tim. She shouldn’t be here. Sasha should never see this. She knew, she had helped - always the finger pointing in the direction to unleash Tim - but she shouldn’t see it. He knew it wasn’t real to her, what he did.

“Sash,” Tim said weakly, hand drooping.

Jon screamed from behind his gag. He might have been calling for help.

“Put the gun down,” Sasha said coldly. She was just dressed in jeans and a messy t-shirt, as if she had come here in a great hurry. How had she kno - okay, Sasha knew everything, it was no surprise.

“Why? Sasha, what are you doing here?” Tim cried, in genuine confusion. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong is that Jon is innocent of everything!” Sasha yelled, and Tim almost flinched back. “He didn’t kill Gertrude, he doesn’t know anything about what’s going on! Trust me, Jon and his team have nothing to do with any of this!”

“He’s a fucking demon, Sash,” Tim said incredulously. How could she take his side? How? “Don’t you remember what he did to me? How can you forgive that?”

“You’re not a saint either!” Sasha screamed - the first time Tim had ever heard her scream at him. He couldn’t believe this was happening. How had he lost control of the situation so badly? “If you kill him you will break his team.”

As if a single coworker nobody dying will upset anybody. “And how long until he attacks or kills his team?” Tim asked furiously. “They’re the biggest bitches I’ve ever met, but they’re human. Monsters hurt humans, Sasha. It’s in their nature. How long until he hurts someone else? How long until he hurts you?”

“If you kill him,” Sasha said, quiet and strangled and hurt, “I will never forgive you.”

Nobody had power over him - nobody, perhaps, save Sasha. She held his heart in his hands, ready at a moment’s cue to crush it or rip it out of him. He couldn’t bear her disapproving face, her quiet disappointment. If she didn’t love him, if she took that away - he wouldn’t have anything. Nothing would be left. He had to protect that love, protect her.

“Sasha,” Tim said weakly, “out of everybody, I thought you would understand.”

“I do. I’m the only one who will ever understand. That’s why you have to trust me.”

Maye that was the problem. Tim did. She was the only person he had ever trusted.

Tim flicked the safety, and dropped the gun.

Just to make himself feel better, he bent his leg back to kick Jon, but - but, for some reason, he didn’t. It just seemed so tiresome. What was the point? What was the point of any of this?

The point had always been to protect humans from the monsters. To protect Sasha. But Sasha didn’t want his help. What did he have now?

“Take him back to his house,” Tim said dully. He glared fiercely at Jon, whose face was falling in relief. “If you tell the police about this, nobody will believe you and nobody will care. If you tell anybody else about this, I’ll find you again and beat you half to death. Got it?”

Jon nodded fervently.

After that, it was all a blur. Sasha helped him up, took him to her car, and he saw her cut through his restraints once he was safely inside. Tim just gathered up his materials and dumped them in the trunk of his car, sliding into the driver’s seat and gunning the engine.

He drove home in a depressed haze, feeling worthless, feeling powerless, feeling exactly like Jon always made him feel.

His hands clenched on the steering wheel. If Jon didn’t know shit about what was going on - and Tim believed that, guy was fucking stupid - then who did? If Jon hadn’t turned into a monster on purpose, then who had turned him into a monster?

Elias Bouchard always gave Tim a bad feeling.

He’d collect some evidence. Give it a few weeks, then confront him. Bouchard would bend and crack. Then Tim would be free. Free of the Magnus Institute, free of how it made him feel.

He roared towards home, unsatisfied and angry, still afraid.

iii.

“Can you pass the rice?”

Tim silently passed Mom the bowl, staring intently at his own plate and silently shovelling potatoes in his mouth. Dad was doing his usual thing and just kind of squinting at his plate and chewing like a cow with cud. Danny was, from the outside, eating food like a normal person. Tim knew that he was vibrating with anticipation.

“So,” Mom continued, faux-brightly, “it’s been a while since you boys came home. Too good for your old folks, huh?”

The passive aggressive route - deal with the criticism, but if you bit back then it was ‘just a joke’. Favored tactic of Ha-eun Stoker.

“Sorry, Mom,” Danny said, one arm thrown over the back of his chair, utterly unrepentant, “work’s been hell lately. Big case came in, and if I want to be promoted to junior partner…”

Sure enough, Mom brightened right up. “Really! Tell us all about your case, Danny!”

Then they were off. Tim zoned out, blankly spooning gamja jorim into his mouth as Danny endlessly rattled off about his accomplishments and Mom cooed and aah’d relentlessly. Dad just chewed, occasionally grunting in satisfaction and approval.

Wow, the coveted paternal approval. Way to make them all jump through hoops for it. Tim rolled his eyes.

Unfortunately, he was caught. Mom turned her piercing gaze on him, smiling pleasantly with perfect teeth. Of course they were perfect; she had work done. All of the other women in the neighborhood do it, Tim, we should fit in. Oh, this necklace is just so in style, I saw Ms. Wallace down the street wearing it. Fucking lemming.

“What about you, Tim?” Mom asked. “How’s work going? Normally you’d be telling us all about your big arrests.”

Ah. The reason why Tim had done everything possible to avoid family dinner. They had this once a month, the only time they could all be assed to talk to each other, and Tim had jumped through hoops to try and escape.

Danny didn’t let him. This was way too entertaining to him.

He knew. Tim didn’t know how, but that was irrelevant. Danny always knew. He couldn’t lie and make up some case. Tim took a careful sip of his dak gomtang, stalling.

Finally, he said, “I took a new job, actually.”

Dad looked up from his plate. Mom’s jaw dropped.

“But you loved your job,” Mom said, for all appearances broken-hearted. “What happened?”

Danny leaned back in his chair, hands folded behind his head, grinning. “Yeah, brother. You loved that job, you’d never quit. What happened?”

“My work partner was caught and forced to sign an employment contract by a middle management stoner, blackmailing me into working with her so I wouldn’t get arrested by the police for my dozen murders.”

Everybody stared at him. Tim sipped some water.

“That isn’t very funny, Timothy,” Mom said.

God, these people were so serious. In the stupidest second of his entire stupid life, he missed the Archive team just a little bit. At least they had a sense of humor. He’d never known those bitches to take anything seriously. But even when they were literally engaging in cult-level shunning of him and Sasha, they were always together. What was with homos and that gay found family shit?

“Kidding. I don’t know, Mom, I was just going stir-crazy. Being a copper just felt like such a dead-end job.”

“But you said you were on track for Lieutenant,” Mom gasped. “How could you throw that away?”

“I don’t know, Mom,” Danny said, shit-eating grin plastered on his face. “I don’t think Tim would quit his job voluntarily.”

Mom’s jaw dropped. “You were fired?”

Tim was too dead inside for this. “Sure. I’m a librarian now. It doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t matter?” Mom positively screeched. “What am I supposed to tell Mrs. Walker now? That my son’s not on track to Lieutenant, that he was fired? I’ve never been so ashamed of you. You’re going to make me a laughingstock, Tim. In all my life, you’ve never once cared about how your actions affected me. Let me tell you right now that this is disgraceful. You’re a grown man, and you’re still acting like a child who blah blah blah. Tim’s a disappointment and we hate him blah blah. How could I have raised such a lazy yammer yammer yammer. I only pay attention to you when I’m yelling at you and I’m totally in the right because Rachel Granger said that yada yada -”

“Well, this was fun,” Tim said pleasantly, wiping his mouth with a napkin before balling it and tossing on the table. He put his chopsticks down and stood up, dusting off his hands. “Great to see all of you again, so much fun, but I have a cat to go iron.”

But Dad was staring at him, even when Mom was fuming in rage. In Korean, he said, “You’re disrespecting your mother, Ji-hoon.”

“For god’s sake, Richard, we speak English in this house. His name’s Timothy,” Mom snapped. Danny rolled his eyes.

“Why not?” Tim asked in Korean, just to piss off Mom. Basira would have sneered at her respectability politics. Melanie would have lost her temper an hour - no, thirty years ago. Why were they stronger than Tim? “You don’t respect her.”

Almost silently, Danny whistled.

“Timothy,” Mother started, scandalized, “listen to your -”

“Why? What can she say to me, besides the same shit I’ve been hearing my entire life? She’s not saying anything interesting.” Tim smiled brightly at his family, flashing all of his teeth. “You know what? In comparison with my life lately, you three are pretty fucking boring. Bye.”

That was when his mother burst into tears, and his father started yelling at him at the top of his voice and thumping the table until the dishes rattled, and when Danny started laughing. If they did anything else, if Dad was about to get out of his chair and smack him, if Mom was going to disown him, Tim didn’t wait around to see it. He grabbed his bomber jacket and stalked out the door, letting it fall behind him.

He breathed heavily on the pretty little sidewalk in front of their pretty little house. The pretty little roses in the pretty little garden bloomed perfectly, and their thorns were all cut off. Down the street pretty little houses made of ticky tacky loomed, and they were all within HOA compliance in their gated little community. Nobody in. Nobody out.

When he was fifteen, Tim hated it because his parents were always trying to impose normalacy on him and he had never fucking measured up. When he was a young adult, he had hated it because he had fancied himself a gritty, street-wise cop who grappled with the dregs of society and always came out victorious. The perfect little families here thought that their gates could protect them from the cold and hard outside world - but the monsters in the world lived and breeded in their backyards, and they were too busy trimming their lawns to notice.

He should go home. It was late, and he had his ridiculous, evil, gloriously imperfect job tomorrow. God, Melanie would hate this place. She would sneer at him for ever having lived here, chalking it up with his infinite list of sins. All you pigs are the same, she would nag, privileged and sheltered. Bitch. Why was she always right?

But Tim just couldn’t work up the energy to drive all the way home. His heart felt scooped out with a grapefruit spoon. Instead he stumbled into the little alley next to the house, where the garbage trucks and the alley cats roamed, and he collapsed into a little patch of scrubby grass. This had been his favorite place to sulk as a child. Or hide from Danny. Danny always found him, of course, but it was the principle of the matter -

“Man, I can’t believe I got that show for free. You should have charged, Ji-hoon.”

“Fuck off, Danny,” Tim said, tone dull with how rote the phrase was.

When he glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Danny was dappled in night. The only light was from the streetlights, and the lights of their porch. In the dim lighting, Danny was lit by a bright aura but his features were hidden in the dark. Like an angel, Danny shone, and like a devil, Tim hid in the shadows. Hidden in the corner, like a powerless child.

“It’s a compliment! Normally you’re the most boring, predictable bitch alive. Wind your key and watch you go. But not even I could have predicted the shit you pulled today. Fantastic.” Danny grinned, a slash of the mouth. “You’re dead disowned, buddy. You crossed a line. They’ll never forgive you.”

“Fuck off, Danny.”

“I’m looking forward to being an only child,” Danny mused. “Mom and Dad were always so obsessed with you, it’ll be nice to have them all to myself. When I make junior partner, do you think Dad will clap me on the back? Give me a hug?” He affected a sad look, pulling his face into a mockery of tragedy. “I’m really going to miss you. You always lowered the bar for me.”

“Fuck off, Danny.”

Apparently that was one ‘fuck off’ too many, because Danny kicked Tim in the ribs. He always knew exactly where to hit - right in an old scar in the ribs, a bullet wound that he had never told him about. Tim wheezed, but he didn’t move. No point.

In a brief, strange flash of memory, Tim remembered bending his knee back to kick Jon in the stomach. Jon hadn’t flinched. Had there been no point?

“I know you spent your entire sad little childhood thinking I ruined your life. That’s bullshit and you know it. You didn’t need anyone else to ruin your life, Timbo. You’ve always been good enough at that yourself.” He pulled a faux-surprised face. Every expression Danny ever had was fake. Everything was a mask, plastic and fake. “Even your relationships, right? How’s that Mexican bird you got following you around? She still refusing to fuck you? I should pick her up, I bet she’s real easy -”

Tim saw red.

It was easy, in the end. Maybe too easy. He leapt up, in one easy and smooth motion, and tackled Danny to the ground. Tim had always been bigger but Danny had always been stronger, no matter how long Tim spent at the gym, but that didn’t matter now. Tim was faintly aware he was snarling as Danny hit the ground hard, head bouncing on the grass.

There was no time for him to recover. Tim punched him in the face, keeping him down, before punching him again. He felt bone break under his fist. A nose.

He didn’t remember anything after that. Everything fuzzed out a little, trapped in the swirling of his rage and the thump of his heartbeat. It wasn’t Martin’s anger, it wasn’t Sasha’s cold chase. It was just hatred.

It wasn’t that - that thing inside Tim, the thing he had spent years denying. It was just Tim. Or maybe Tim was that thing, and that thing was Tim.

He was faintly aware that somebody was grabbing him by the elbows, pulling him off. There was screaming. Wailing. He couldn’t really tell. Tim was dizzy, hands wet and sticky. Someone was crying - the nauseatingly familiar sound of his mother sobbing.

Just boys roughhousing, Tim wanted to say. That was a good line, snappy and sarcastic. Just boys being boys, the same line he had heard time after time after time when Danny coated his entire torso in bruises. Monsters, acting like monsters. Men, doing what men always do.

Tim left the scene. He wouldn’t be back. Never return to the scene of the crime, ha ha ha. He wouldn’t be welcome back. It should have felt crushing, isolating, terrifying.

But instead, Tim just felt free. As if a crushing weight had fallen off his shoulders, and he no longer felt suffocated by endless picking and prodding and pushing. It...he didn’t feel scared.

Tim walked down the street, taking the long way home, whistling happily. He hated himself a little bit less than usual tonight. Things were looking up.

iv.

Tim stared at Melanie as she slept.

It wasn’t hard. They kept the lights on, although after a few days Melanie had started to use a sleeping mask. She had recovered from what happened fairly quickly. She still let him keep his arm on her.

It tingled, just a little, where it touched her. She was warm and soft, breathing softly in a gentle rise and fall of her chest. Her face was slack with sleep. No nightmares. Melanie only looked gentle when she was asleep: any other time, her face was screwed up in intent thought or a mean comment or an exaggerated face made behind someone’s back.

It was the first time Tim had slept in the same bed as a woman without sleeping with her. At Sasha’s, he always slept on the couch. It was a little weird. It was really weird. He kept on telling himself to pull away, to rebuild that bridge that had been so effortless with Sasha, to act normal and stop being desperate and needy.

But he didn’t. He couldn’t. Every time he let go of her, he was alone. No matter how many people surrounded them, no matter how big the room or busy the sprawling London streets, when she was out of the room it felt as if she would never come back.

He hated the way he felt. It was disgusting, crawling in his gut and heart like rot. He hated himself for feeling it, he hated the world for doing it to him, and he hated Melanie for making him feel this way.

He didn’t know love could be this painful.

***

Did he love her?

Tim was fairly sure he couldn’t love anybody. Whatever he felt for Sasha, it couldn’t be love. It could only be a selfish, disgusting poison. Or maybe he really did love her, and love really was poison - if it was the kind of love Tim felt for other people, if it was all he could give.

But Tim knew Sasha, down to her soul. He knew her dark secrets, every skeleton in her closet. He knew what she was running from, why she had landed in England and never left, why she felt just as passionately for Tim’s crusade for justice as he did.

Justice. What a joke.

But Melanie wasn’t like that. She was rough and bitchy and meddling and willfully idiotic, but if you scratched that surface she was perfect. Kind, understanding, forgiving, patient, supportive - the kind of girl Tim had always wanted. Not that Sasha hadn’t been - but Sasha was somebody he should probably stay away from, for her own good.

Melanie had saved him. Melanie was trying to fix him, and she wouldn’t stop until she did. She wouldn’t give up - she never gave up on anything or anyone. Even Tim. Maybe, if it was her, Tim could be fixed.

He squinted at her in the soft lights keeping away the dark lingering in the small windows. Did he want to kiss her? He should, right? Any emotion this strong, anything that made him feel so vulnerable and desperate and insane had to come with wanting to be with her. Not that she could ever like him that way back…

The idea was oddly nice. Men and women couldn’t be friends. But maybe Tim and Melanie could - Melanie, who would never love him in that way, freeing Tim of the obligation to reciprocate.

He settled a little bit more, tucking her a little bit closer under him until he could no longer see her face. The idea was heady - that she was letting him do that, that she could be open and vulnerable in front of him too. That Tim had never really protected anybody, that Melanie was the first person to ever protect him, and that maybe he could pay that back.

Maybe she could fix him. Give him love that was pure instead of corrupted; selfless instead of selfish. Tim needed her.

He tried not to hate it.

***

That night, Tim had a dream that he was fucking Melanie in his old bed in his old flat. Danny was there, somehow, constantly mocking Tim on how badly he was doing, and every time Tim would yell at him to get out he would just laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh -

***

Melanie dragged him to work with her the next morning, as Tim chugged a shitton of coffee and considered braining himself with a hammer so he could forget the dream he had last night. He would literally prefer the construction site nightmares. He could barely meet her eyes, and lived in relentless paranoia that somehow she knew and was going to call him disgusting which would be fair and true and -

“Do you think the old man in Home Alone is a Jesus allegory?”

Tim blinked blearily at her, still chugging his coffee. They had gotten his car keys and car back from Sasha - she still had everything he ever owned, but he didn’t want to deal with that - but Melanie was driving, since Tim’s reaction time wasn’t that good anymore and he tended to zone out. They would take the tube and avoid London traffic except, well…

“I have no opinions on Home Alone,” Tim said blankly. He had been reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra on his phone. So far he had several points of disagreement, his largest was the man’s weird obsession with atheism. Granted, it was hard to be a nihilist and be religious, but Tim had insider information on the nature of the universe and he was working on a thesis - anyway. Anyway. “Why?”

“It’s a good movie, right? We should watch it for movie night tonight.”

“I thought you wanted to watch T2 today.”

“Aw, fuck, right.” Melanie slightly slapped the steering wheel. They didn’t move - traffic was really hell. “I am a slut for fictionalized violence. Isn’t Sarah Connor the most badass action hero ever?”

“She’s awesome,” Tim agreed warmly. “But Schwarzenneger in that movie is just peak. Have you ever seen Predator? It was his best role.”

Melanie snorted. “Predator was so boring. Just a lot of oiled up men flexing at each other.”

Typical. Tim rolled his eyes, propping an elbow below the window, but he found himself smiling anyway. “What do you want me to watch instead, Blue is the Warmest Color?”

“Laugh all you want, idiot. You’re getting the whole rota of required watching for gay people. First on the list is the Birdcage, then right after that Paris is Burning -”

Tim groaned theatrically, drowning her out, but all that did was hit him with the musk of his small, battered car. The smell of Melanie hit him like a truck - her Melon shampoo, her 24 hour deodorant, the dust of the Archives, something unique to her that he just couldn’t place.

To Tim’s horror, the scent pulled at that deep pit in his stomach. Don’t think about it. Don’t tell anyone. Don’t let them know - except for Sasha, who always knew. It made him want to do - stuff that he didn’t want to do. Not really. Tim didn’t want that. Whoever Tim was.

Counterintuitively, the hunger made it easier to keep that fake smile and forced manic energy when they got to the office. He wasn’t really up to it today - some days were easier than others - but that didn’t really matter when he had to aggressively convince everybody that he was fine. The alternative was everybody giving him sad and pitying looks, which was a thousand times worse than any infernal hell torture.

It wasn’t. But he still didn’t want to deal with it.

So he kicked the door open, yelled something meaningless about how the bitch was back, and let Basira ignore him and Martin roll his eyes and Sasha very pointedly ignore him. He noted that Daisy wasn’t in this morning - ever since their planning session, she had been dropping by more frequently to flirt obnoxiously with Basira, but she obviously couldn’t spend all of her time here if she wanted to keep up the pretense with Peter Lukas.

Which was...somewhat of a relief.

Tim collapsed in what used to be Daisy’s chair at her desk, which was for far more important reasons than just because he didn’t want to sit next to Sasha. The upside is that Melanie sat diagonal from him, across from Basira, who didn’t give a shit what he did if she wasn’t using him as a meaningless sounding board for her constant venting. It wasn’t all bad, if he didn’t look too hard at whatever the fuck Martin was doing at any given time.

So he swiveled in his chair as Melanie, Basira, and Sasha disappeared into the library. He stood up to go with her, but Melanie made a gesture that sent him sitting down again. Martin, who was writing something ornate in his journal, snickered.

Six months ago Tim would have snapped at him, but instead he just leaned back in his chair and squeezed his grip trainer. The grind never stopped. “Writing love poetry, buddy? In the Romantic tradition or the...fuck, I don’t know any other poets.”

Martin silently held up his journal. The only thing written was ‘murder kill murder’, repeatedly, up and down two pages.

Well. That was enough teasing Martin for one day. He really had no idea how Melanie was brave enough to get Martin to listen to listen to her - or, worse, why he did.

After an hour or so, spent reading Plato and disagreeing with a great deal, Jon slunk out of his office and blinked owlishly at both Tim and Martin, who had been politely minding their own business.

Tim realized - in the same way that, whenever he saw Jon, he was inescapably reminded that he knew what he looked like when he was about to die - that the room was filled with two guys who had tried repeatedly to kill him. Fuck, he was probably uncomfortable. Good job, Tim. Way to keep terrorizing people. But he really wasn’t capable of doing anything else, so it was hardly a surprise -

“Hullo, Martin. I’m picking up some food from the vending machine, do you want anything?”

Oh. They were going for ‘disturbingly banal’ today. Martin smiled shyly at Jon, who blushed in response. “Surprise me. Thanks, Jon.”

“Want any razor blades in the apples?”

“You know that’s a myth, Jon,” Martin said disapprovingly. Or maybe not.

“It doesn’t have to be.”

“You are the sexiest guy I’ve ever met,” Martin whispered.

Then Jon flushed, and leaned casually in what he probably thought was a hot pose and unfortunately totally was against Martin’s desk, and Tim was subjected to their absolutely fucking atrocious flirting for the next ten minutes. At that point, Tim found his breaking point and left the Archives, the terror of being in semi-public outweighed by the terror of Jonmartin. That was what Basira and Melanie kept calling it. He really didn’t know what that meant, but whatever.

But after fifteen minutes of standing in front of the vending machine himself, quietly overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of choices and colors and flavors and sugar, he heard someone else approaching. He snapped his head to the left to see a gawky, hunched scarecrow slouch down the hall, raising a hand apologetically. That man put no effort into his appearance, how as he still that hot -

Maybe Jon and Martin were normal, Tim secretly wondered, and Tim just didn’t understand gay courting rituals. He had to find out, right? How do you flirt with guys? It wasn’t as if he could practice with the two guys in the office. Especially Martin. Tim had never really paid a lot of attention to him before he came back to life, writing him off as a beta male - which ended up being so hilariously incorrect it forced Tim to sit down and reconsider his entire framework of alpha and beta males. Melanie had given him a sticker.

“Uh. Hey.”

Tim stared at him blankly.

Jon rubbed the back of his neck. “How...are you?”

Tim blinked at him.

“Well. I would, er, enjoy using the vending machine.”

Oh. Obviously. Tim stepped aside, cheeks burning, and silently let Jon punch in the code for a Mars Bar (for Martin, probably) and a granola bar (because an alarm went off on his desk if he didn’t eat a snack at 3pm).

It wasn’t their first time being alone together since he came back, but as Tim had been more or less catatonic at that period in time he was inclined not to count that. Jon hadn’t seemed scared, anyway. Probably. Tim hadn’t paid much attention.

He should do this. He had to do it. It was all about making up for the shit he did, right? He had to face this. Then Jon would forgive him, not that he had to, and - and something vaguely good would happen. He would find that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and the hunger would go away, and the intrusive thoughts would be all gone. Melanie would give him another sticker. Or something.

“You can go for it, you know.”

Jon whipped his head around, shocked at Tim addressing him directly for the first time in a very long time. “What?”

Idiot. If this guy had been in a single fight in his life, he’d eat his hat. From what Jon had seen of his childhood friend, Georgie’s girlfriend who he hated for absolutely no reason, she had probably defended him from every bully. It was almost cute.

“You can get a good one in,” Tim repeated slowly. He turned his cheek. “Promise I won’t punch back or anything.”

“I - do you mean punch you?” The Mars Bar rattled down the machine, dropping heavily into the tray. “Why would I do that?”

Jesus, the guy was thick. “Do you remember when I kidnapped and tried to kill you, or is that just me?”

Jon blinked owlishly at him. “Lots of people try to kill me.”

“Don’t you want to?” Tim cried, a little bit higher and a little bit louder than he intended. “Come on, as if you’ve never wanted to do it? Wouldn’t it help? You got in a week of being a passive aggressive asshole, that isn’t enough. It doesn’t make up for anything. This would.”

“How would that fix anything?”

Tim’s breath hitched. But Jon was just staring, as if he could see right through him. Maybe he could. “What?”

“How would hurting you make me feel better?” Jon repeated slowly. “It won’t change what happened. Punching you wouldn’t change what you did to me. All it would do is make you feel better, as if that fixes it. It doesn’t. Is that how you solve all of your problems? That explains a lot.”

His breath was coming faster, hitching again. He couldn’t control it. “I’m trying to do you a favor, asshole.”

“No, you’re trying to make yourself feel better.” Jon smiled politely and, before Tim could jerk away, clapped him on the shoulder. “I forgave you a long time ago. Not because of you. But I just didn’t want it hanging over me. I gave myself closure and moved on. Sometimes bad things happen to us, and we have to get up the next day and go to work anyway. My friends helped. My family did too. I’m sorry you don’t have that, Tim. You’ll get closure one day.” Jon looked thoughtful for a second. “I mean, getting closure about being almost killed one time must be a lot easier than dealing with the fact that you killed fifteen people in your life? Twice that supernatural people, I think. You know you’re technically a serial killer? I won’t judge, this is a safe space, but I thought you ought to know.”

Somehow, inanely, all Tim could think of to say was, “It’s not serial killing if it’s part of your job.”

“Which is why I’m sure you took that job,” Jon said brightly. “Let’s get back to the office before Martin decides to amuse himself.”

For a second, just for a second - or two, or ten, or a minute - Tim vividly imagined himself ripping Jon’s throat out. Killing him properly this time, putting that look on his face again. It had felt so good, and - and it had made him feel so bad, but that felt good too, and he still didn’t know why, and he wanted to eat Jon so bad. Jon, who was innocent in everything, gentle and kind. Nothing like Tim. That was why everybody liked Jon and hated Tim.

From what he had heard, while Tim was going insane hyperfixating on the chase a few years ago, the girls had spent ages talking Jon down from a breakdown and steering him away from the same path that Tim had barrelled down. Who had done that for him? Sasha made a big show of keeping his head level, but she had used him just as ruthlessly as he had used her. She never had an investment in keeping him sane; just functional.

If somebody had done that for him, would he still be cruel?

They went back to the office, and Tim pretending that the hunger swirling in his gut was just self-hatred. But, then again, they really were the same thing.

When Melanie came out of the library with Basira and Sasha on her heels, talking quietly about some new scheme they were cooking up, Tim found himself reaching out to her. Melanie smiled and squeezed his hand, before gently heckling his choice in literature.

Some stupid part of him - maybe even a large part - thought that once he was clasping Melanie’s hand again, the hunger would quiet down. It had protected him underground, it felt as if it should protect him in the world above.

But it didn’t, and it didn’t solve anything, and Tim tried not to think about the fact that he was slowly unwinding, and that he didn’t want to see what was inside him when everything that was Tim Stoker fell away.

***

A short yet tumultuous time later, Tim was called into Jon’s office.

He hadn’t wanted to come to work. But the alternative of stewing at home - Melanie’s flat - was much worse, and Basira had reported that too many skip days made them all way too sick. Might as well come in. Melanie had spent the night at Georgie’s - like she had the past two days, what a fucking coincidence - so he didn’t have to worry about that awkwardness.

After too long memorizing the face after too many sleepless nights, Tim could imagine it vividly. Soft, uncreased, innocent of how hard the world could be. Tim couldn’t bear it. He had to ruin it. He just couldn’t bear it.

He was the first one in the office, so it was easy to see the poisonous death glare Basira shot him when she walked in. So Melanie had told them - of course she fucking told them, she hadn’t done anything wrong, she wasn’t obliged to lie. Daisy was hot on her heels, and she actually properly snarled at him before Basira pulled her back while somehow giving the full impression that she wanted to do the same thing.

He should probably go hide in the library before Martin came in. He couldn’t decide whether or not this was worse than the shunning. The shunning had driven him absolutely crazy, but at least he hadn’t been legitimately afraid that Martin would stab him and that nobody would stop him.

There was the faint sound of raised voices in the cowpen. Tim knew that they were arguing about him. He already knew what they would decide - wait for Melanie’s verdict. But are you sure she isn’t too close to this? No, she knows the fucker better than anybody else, she would judge if they needed to do anything. What are we going to tell Sasha? The truth, fucking obviously.

Sasha. Tim wanted her to be surprised. He knew she wouldn’t be. That hurt more.

After what felt like an infinite amount of time but he knew was only a few hours, pouring over Sasha’s collection of Vast and Spiral Statements, he heard the library door open. It was Jon, standing at the threshold, and all Tim could think was - oh, man, here we go.

It was a regular walk of shame into Jon’s office, and he couldn’t miss the way everybody’s heads snapped to look at him. Sasha, just as he thought, looked resigned. Melanie was frowning.

Jon’s office was the same as ever, not that Jon went in too frequently. The only strange thing about it was that Jon locked the door behind him. Tim didn’t know what that boded, but it wasn’t good.

Well, might as well take control of the situation. He collapsed on the chair in front of his desk and propped his boots on Jon’s desk, wishing he had a drink to obnoxiously sip. “Is this the part where you threaten me?” He affected a fake baritone, somehow still not even hitting Jon’s register. “ ‘Touch her again and you’ll answer to me’. ‘Stay away from her or you’ll face the consequences’. Come on, I’ve read a thousand creeps the same riot act. Get it over with.”

Jon sat down heavily in his office chair. The office had chipped in to buy him a new one as a birthday gift, much more comfortable than the old one. But he was leaning forward now, arms folded on the desk.

“Would that make you feel better?”

Great, this again. “Yeah, it evokes the emotionally absent father I was raised with,” Tim snarked. “If you aren’t going to say it, what am I in here for?”

He was afraid to know what he was in here for. Melanie had told him that if he did it again, she’d sic Jon on him. And Tim knew what it looked like when Jon was sicced on someone. This wasn’t it.

“Tim,” Jon said seriously, and he was somehow kind about it. “You know what this looks like, right?”

Something ugly and ashamed twisted in Tim’s gut. He fought the urge to sink in his seat. “Yeah.”

“You know why we’re worried now.”

“Yeah, I know.” Tim looked fixedly at the wall, unwilling to meet Jon’s eyes. “I - I’m not going to do it again. I swear. And - and it wasn’t like that. I promise. I’m not - I’m not a creep, okay? Ask Sasha. I’ve never - I’ve killed people, but that’s not nearly as bad as - I’m not going to do it again. It was a mistake.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Tim’s head snapped back to Jon, and before he could think about it he found himself half-rising from the chair. Jon’s cold stare had him sitting back down again, but his heart was thumping a drum in his chest. “Then what do you want?” Tim just barely restrained himself from yelling, knowing that the girls were probably listening at the door anyway. “What can I do to convince you that’d rather chop off my own hand than hurt her?”

“You can give your permission to let me ask you some questions.”

Tim faltered. “What? Just questions?”

“Uh.” Jon waved his hand in a circle in the air, as if that meant anything. “You know. Questions. I haven’t really done it since - since I think I did it to you? But I think I can do it on command now. I don’t like to.” His eyes sharpened, and for a second Tim could have sworn that they glimmered. “But I can’t take a chance. Not on this.”

It was like he was falling again, through that infinite void that was the last taste of freedom he had thought he would ever have. It was like he was suffocating again, a mile of dirt piled on his chest, banging incessantly at the lid of the coffin. Nobody saved him, until she did. He was distantly aware that he was barely holding back hyperventilating, but all Tim could feel was dissociated horror.

“You - you can’t. Jon, I - I won’t do it again, you can’t.”

Jon’s mouth twisted into a frown. “I won’t if you give me a flat no. I don’t like doing it.” That was a lie and they both fucking knew it. “But if you don’t, we can’t trust you again. We’d convince Melanie to let you stay with Martin. We wouldn’t leave you in the same room together. You’re not stable, Tim. It’s obvious. We thought it was harmless - or, at least, the only person you were hurting was yourself - but it’s not anymore. We’re all scared. I don’t want to hurt you just because we’re scared, but Melanie is the only one here who couldn’t really defend herself if you decided to do anything else to her.” He grimaced slightly. “Not that she admits it. She always puts herself between us and any enemy. But we have to pay that back. I know you understand.”

He did.

Hate burned in his stomach. What a hypocrite. Giving all of that big talk about choice and options. He knew that there was no option, not if they were going to rip him apart from the one person who he felt safe with.

The one person who wasn’t safe with him.

Tim deserved this. Even if it had been his worst fear a year ago - well, Tim had experienced much worse than that since then.

When you did shit to other people, you make up for it. You make sure that you can’t hurt anybody else again. Jon was right - gestures didn’t mean anything. He had to commit. He had to improve, be better. Otherwise he’d be sent straight back down to that place when he died, and there would be no saving him.

“Yeah,” Tim said, mouth dry, “you can do it. But - but no personal questions this time, okay? Just stick to the subject.”

“They seem to always end up a bit personal,” Jon said apologetically, “but I’ll try.”

Deep within Jon, inside of the unassuming and kind and gentle man, the subject of Tim’s nightmares rose. His eyes flashed green, then shined with a bright and sickly radioactive green. His hair strained against its bun and fuzzed at the end, but it didn’t break free.

“What’s your name, Tim?”

The worst part about the compelling, Tim had decided long ago, was that you didn’t feel brainwashed.

You felt exactly as if you were talking normally, that there was nothing strange about Jon or you. His words didn’t ring with a mysterious power. If you had entered it thinking you were talking of your own volition, you probably wouldn’t notice. But if you knew what was happening, the curtain was lifted, and you were deathly aware of the way the words were ripped out of you with fishhooks. It left Tim gasping, straining for air.

“Timothy Ji-hoon Stoker,” Tim said, and it was almost as if he wanted to. “My dad just calls me Ji-hoon though. So do my grandparents. My last name’s made up as fuck - I think Mom just saw a book at the airport and picked it out from the cover. Kind of ironic, considering everything.”

“Oh, really? Daisy says that she got Tonner because her English wasn’t great and she misheard someone at the airport asking her for a tenner - right, right.” Jon coughed. Wait, was the reason why Daisy barely talked when he first met her was because her English was bad? “On topic. Tim, do you want to attack Melanie again?”

“Of course not,” Tim burst out, and these words, at least, came easy. “I love her. I hate hurting her, I hate how I’m constantly fucking up and doing it anyway. I’m just violent and I don’t know how not to be violent. It’s the only way I deal with things, being violent, and I know it’s eating me up inside but I just can’t stop it. But if there’s one person who can help me stop, it’s Melanie. She’s going to fix me, I know it.”

The words were unbelievably humiliating, the kind of thing that Tim had never wanted to admit, but Jon’s expression didn’t change. Tim wanted to look away, to pretend that this was just an internal narration and that he wasn’t telling this his fucking coworker, but he found himself incapable. Their gazes locked, and Tim couldn’t pull away.

“Why did you do it?”

“Because I was scared, and I hate being scared so much. It’s what I always do, ever since I was a kid - I would get scared, and I would try to hurt something or someone about it. I did it to you, I was so scared of you that I obsessed about killing you and covered it up with some bullshit about justice or Sasha. It was just about me, it’s always been selfish. But - but- but -” The words were sticking in his throat, coagulating on the wound ripped open by Jon and his fishhooks. “But I hate her. I hate that I care, and I hate that I need her, and - and I don’t think I did it just because I was scared. I think I did it because I was scared, and I love her, and I hate her, and I’m beginning to think I have some kind of weird complex about women because of my mother’s overly dependent narcissistic personality and my father’s emotional detachment -”

“You just now figured that out?” Jon asked incredulously. “Sorry, you just now started realizing that your toxic masculinity controls your entire justification for your actions?”

“I’ve known for a while but I’ve been repressing it,” Tim said hurriedly, forced to answer that one despite Jon probably intending it as a rhetorical question.

Jon stared at him for a second silently, giving Tim time to catch his breath and try to control his breathing. He was one bad step away from a panic attack, and his hold was still clenched on this throat like a fist. Danny had done that to him one time, the son of a bitch, and he had never forgotten. Should he tell Jon that? Does he have to?

“Tim,” Jon said finally. He looked very uncomfortable, but also resolute. As if he didn’t want to ask, or maybe he just didn’t want to know, but he felt as if he had to. “Are you in love with Melanie?”

Tim opened his mouth to answer him, and found that he couldn’t.

The strange and evil magic didn’t like that. Whatever Tim wanted to say, if there was anything to say, it caught in his throat and made him gag. It choked him. He was well acquainted with the feeling, but it sent him into a panic anyway. His breath started shuddering and heaving, his vision swimming, and he kept on answering his mouth to answer because you have to answer but he couldn’t, he just couldn’t, he didn’t know how -

“Forget it! Forget it, Tim, don’t worry about it! Tim, what’s your favorite color? Tim, your favorite color! Answer me!”

“Grey!” Tim cried out. “Grey, it’s grey!”

He didn’t so much stand up from his chair as fall out of it. He didn’t so much let himself sit on the ground as found himself incapable of moving. He just breathed, waiting and waiting to spit up dirt and grime and rocks, but nothing happened. It was just a panic attack, because his hell was within him, and there was no escape.

No escape. There was no escape. Not from what he’d done in his past, not from how badly he’d hurt Melanie and Sasha, not from how he would inevitably hurt them in the future.

You had to cut out the evil things in this world. One bad apple spoils the bunch. When criminals are left to run wild, they corrupt and destroy society. Evil had to be eliminated. Evil people shouldn’t exist.

Evil people shouldn’t exist. It wasn’t a new thought for him. Neither was the thought after that. It was a thought he’d had for a very long time - before he even met Melanie, before he even admitted it.

“Tim, are you alright? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

After a few heart-wrenching seconds, Tim found himself calming down enough to answer. “You meant to. You just didn’t want to. I made you do this.” One bad apple spoils the bunch. “Is - is that enough? I can answer more -”

“No, that’s enough,” Jon said quickly. “It’s - it’s not my place to pass judgement on you, Tim. And your, uh, disturbed thinking. Melanie - anyway, we’ll work on it.” He smiled weakly, placatingly. “I’ve been there. The others helped. If it wasn’t for them, I’d be - I don’t know where I’d be, but I’d be a lot worse off. We can help you too. If you let us. I know it’s scary, but it’s worth it. I promise.”

“Right,” Tim said. “Can I go now?”

When he left Jon’s office, everybody was at their desks. He knew what the guilty expressions when they all pretended they hadn’t been eavesdropping, but they weren’t wearing them now. Maybe everybody had grown up a bit recently.

Tim slunk into the library, and for good measure locked it behind him. He pulled out a thick stack of books, a teetering pile of Statements. He needed to research. There was a decision he had to make, and he needed as much proof as possible and a well-laid plan. It wasn’t quite a hunt, but it was close. It wasn’t quite the apocalypse, but it was his own.

But, of course, it was a lie. Tim had made his decision a few minutes ago. He had made it a long time ago. He kept making it, every time. Everything else was just justification.

It wouldn’t fix anything - but it’d make him feel better.

#my writing #the magnus archives #tma #tma fanfic #hunt!tim #timothy stoker #melanie king #sasha james #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #this one's a roughie try not to read it if you're in a bad place right now #danny stoker #also keep in mind that tim absolutely one of the most unreliable narrators ive ever written if not the most #it was incredibly fun #anyway enjoy

52 notes · View notes

angstyaches · 4 years ago

Note

“Someone shyly asking, “Could you rub my tummy?” while groaning with pain because who doesn’t love that?” This scenario for Felix and Elliot please. With Fee being the sickee

Here it is! It was supposed to be a drabble, but in true Flick fashion I could just Not Stop. I might even write a part two about the car ride back to the townhouse (if I feel like it / if anyone expresses an interest). Also, I can’t believe I’ve written like ten sickfics for my vampire boys but in not one of them (?!) have they actually been sick because of drinking blood?!

CW: blood, slaughter of an animal, vampires drinking blood, spice (?!), nausea, drowsiness

___

Felix’s stomach felt like it was being pinched from the inside, caught in the grasp of something with claws that wanted to drag it right out of his body. It was impossible to tell anymore whether the discomfort was from nausea or prolonged thirst, because the former almost always accompanied the latter. He’d have pressed his hands to his belly if they’d been free, but they were working on another ache.

His fingertips were pressing into his face, just above the edges of his lips. He let out a low groan as he tried to massage away the throbbing pain that had gone from dull to distracting in the space of a few minutes. Pressure piled up on the roots of his upper canines, and to a lesser extent, his lower ones.

Ryan stood up from where she’d been crouched, feeding, and looked over her shoulder, rubbing at the red stain smeared across her pale white cheek. Her sleeve was white too, and as the blood soaked into it, Felix could already hear Nancy yelling about it as soon as they got back home.

“You should have a wee drop,” Ryan said smoothly. Her eyes were golden yellow and practically glowing after the hunt and the kill and the blood. It was always about the blood, wasn’t it? Her white hair looked brighter out here in nature too; back in the townhouse, it just matched the walls. “Just to tide you over.”

Felix looked down at his feet, getting momentarily distracted by his hands, which were trembling horribly by his sides. The ache in his belly was increasing from the sight and the sound and, indeed, the smell of feeding. The pressure building up in his gums was growing more and more intense, and it almost felt like his fangs were jabbing upwards, scraping at the bones below his eyes and making them water.

He knew he could refuse if he wanted to, and Ryan wouldn’t say another word about it, but he did need to drink, and it would be a while until he could get his hands on anything other than blood in its rawest form; warm and straight from the vein. Ryan knew he didn’t like it, so she would never suggest it if she didn’t think it was the best thing for him.

Fingers pressing even more deeply against his gums, he slowly approached the beast that had been breathing minutes before but wasn’t anymore, trying his best not to look it in the eye. He sank to his knees beside Elliott, whose back was so hunched over it looked like his spine had been bent in half. He was slurping and sucking at a wound he’d opened in the creature’s neck.

He didn’t notice Felix sit down next to him, not until Felix reached out to touch his leg, automatically seeking physical contact. He was nervous, and he was in pain, and Elliott understood him better than anyone he’d ever met. He didn’t stop to consider the fact that Elliott was currently a hundred miles away, in feeding mode, and probably could have turned and ripped his arm off without hesitation.

But when Elliott’s head snapped around, all he gave was a sound that was halfway between a snarl and a question. Hmmph? His eyes were practically blazing gold, his lips were furled back over sharp fangs, and his teeth and chin were painted brightly with blood. Spatters of it dotted his face and had gotten into the strands of hair he liked to wear by his face.

Felix, trembling and clean in comparison, couldn’t tell if the sight of his boyfriend giving in to his bloodlust like this was terrifying or beautiful. Either way, he didn’t flinch or move, besides the violent quivering that suddenly set into his lower lip.

The hungry look in Elliott’s eyes softened slightly, and his fangs began to ease back from over his lower lip. He unclenched one hand from the dead beast’s neck and laid it on the hand Felix had put on his leg.

The eye contact didn’t break until Elliott had leaned in close enough for their lips to press together.

Felix inhaled sharply, the sweet, metallic smell of the blood on Elliott’s face already making him dizzy with lust. The pressure inside his skull shifted, almost like a cork had popped deep inside his gums, and he felt his fangs beginning to contract and lengthen.

He let Elliott pry his mouth open for a deeper kiss, tasting blood on his tongue until he didn’t anymore. Their teeth clashed, and there was a trickle of blood that wasn’t animal blood, but Felix didn’t know if it was Elliott’s or his own. Either way, it didn’t put him off.

He needed more. He sat up higher on his knees and sucked the animal’s blood from around Elliott’s lips, barely aware of the low, desperate noises rising in his throat as his body demanded more –

“Whoa, hey – here,” Elliott half-laughed, leaning back and pulling Felix with him, so that the younger boy could drop against the open wound in the animal. Felix sank his teeth into the beast’s still-warm flesh, gasping and drawing in mouthfuls of liquid.

It tasted unbelievably sweet, almost unbearably so, and once he started, it felt like he would never want to stop. His body seemed to ripple with instinct and pleasure and relief. His stomach grew warm and heavy. He didn’t stop until his lungs ran out of air and he began to see stars. He ripped his teeth free and scrambled back on the forest floor, gasping. Elliott put a hand to his back to stop him from toppling over.

“Jesus, that was…” Elliott’s voice was close to a growl. “So fucking hot.”

Felix gave a shuddering sigh. Elliott was a lot more present and coherent now, it seemed. He was grinning breathlessly, jerking his shoulders slightly like he did when he had excess energy. “Are you okay, boo?”

Felix glanced down at himself and gave a shuddering sigh at the sight of his second-favourite skinny jeans and third-favourite green sweater patched with blood.

“I’ve got blood all over me,” he mumbled unhappily.

Elliott laughed at that, but Felix barely reacted. He felt like his brain was hovering somewhere outside his body; his eyes too, so that he was staring at himself in horror. The only thing that brought him back to reality was the loud gurgle that came from deep inside his body, a thing that he both heard and felt.

“Oh, gosh,” Felix gasped, folding his arms gently over his belly and leaning forward.

“Fee?” Elliott asked, leaning in a little closer. “Does it hurt? It probably shouldn’t hurt. Hey, Ryan, is he okay?”

Ryan appeared in front of them, dropping to a squat and lowering her head to get a look at Felix’s face. “Felix, are you going to vomit?”

Am I going to vomit? he asked himself very sincerely. No. Or, at least, he didn’t want to. An animal had lost its life, and he’d taken its blood, and that meant something; it meant he had to hold onto it.

Felix slowly shook his head, gulping hard and wishing he had something to rinse his mouth out with.

“Probably just drank too much too fast,” Ryan mused.

Elliott gently helped him to his feet, but as he stood, it felt like the contents of his belly were still down on the ground somewhere, dragging and weighing him down. He had no idea how Ryan sprang so delicately to her feet, like a pixie on puppet strings. He had no idea how Elliott looked so beautiful when he was such a mess.

He didn’t know anything except for one fact; his stomach was starting to ache. A lot.

He winced as he felt something shift in his gut, but instead of a gurgle, this was a deep, clenching rumble that made his knees feel a little weak. He pulled away from the hug so he could put his hands on his belly. He stared down at it as it cramped again, imagining his organs weren’t quite sure what to do with this amount of blood when he’d only ever consumed a fraction of that amount in the past.

His throat tickled with panic, and a different kind of pressure was building around his eyes.

Elliott hovered a few feet back, like he still didn’t trust Felix not to going to puke all over him. Not that it would have mattered, since he was already soaked in blood.

“You keeping it down, boo?”

“I – I hope…” Felix said weakly.

“I’m a bad influence, aren’t I?”

Felix grimaced through the faint sting of tears. Considering that Elliott was the reason he was half-vampire in the first place, he’d have said that was an understatement. He didn’t say it though, because his stomach and his jaw both clenched in unison, and all he could let out was a strangled whimper.

“Oh, boo,” Elliott sighed, finally coming close again so he could tuck some of Felix’s bangs behind his ear. The tips of his fingers were so gentle against the side of his neck that he shivered and sank his head against his chest again, desperate to be held and comforted.

“You can take it easy for a few more minutes while I’m working here,” Ryan said. She was still licking subconsciously at her lips as she readied the syringe that she used to take blood home for future use. “Then we’re going to have to get a move-on back towards the car, before it gets dark.”

“Mmhmm,” Felix said, nodding weakly against Elliott’s ribcage.

Ryan turned her back and crouched by the dead animal. With his head lowered and with Elliott blocking his view, Felix didn’t see her work after that, but he reckoned she was concentrating enough not to be paying attention to him anymore.

“Elli, darling?” he asked in a small voice.

Elliott touched the back of his head. “Yes, gorgeous?”

“Could you rub my tummy?”

Without another word or a single beat of a pause, Elliott ran his hands down over Felix’s shoulders. His touch lingered along his waist for a second, fingertips careful despite knowing every slight curve in his body like a map he’d studied for decades. He brushed the palm of his hand gently over Felix’s stomach, pausing as he felt the pressure just below his ribs, trying to assess how much pressure would be too much.

He got his answer not too long after, as Felix whimpered again, tensing a hand around Elliott’s elbow.

“Sorry,” Elliott murmured softly, smoothing his hand down over the tight, achy spot and kissing the top of Felix’s head again.

The smaller boy just continued groaning and whining in discomfort. He felt his face flush slightly as his belly bubbled under Elliott’s hand, its contents sloshing unbearably into his oesophagus. Something pinched at the bottom of his ribs and inched its way upwards, and Felix opened his mouth, covering it quickly.

He barely lifted his head as Ryan came back over and stood in front of them, stowing her syringe in her bag.

“Boys,” she said shortly, glancing back and forth between the two of them.

Felix began to straighten up, turning in Ryan’s direction. Along with the pressure leaning down on his internal organs, his bones and muscles were beginning to respond more slowly to his commands, and there was a fuzzy feeling in his head that told him he would be asleep as soon as he was out of the forest.

He felt Elliott keep his hand pressed to his stomach and step around behind him, pulling his back against his chest. Elliott was so much taller than Felix that he had no qualms about letting him take his full weight, and his skin tingled in relief.

Ryan looked at them blankly. “This display is not very dignified.”

“Your face isn’t very dignified,” Elliott murmured with a smirk, now smoothing both hands delicately over Felix’s belly. He could practically feel the heavy liquid sloshing around under his hand, and could only imagine how uncomfortable his poor boyfriend must have been. If the groans he couldn’t manage to suppress were anything to go by, it was quite a bit.

Ryan’s eyes flicked about lazily, not quite reaching the level of rolling. Most people would be too afraid to insult her, even in jest, but Elliott knew she simply viewed that kind of thing as beneath her, and wouldn’t rise to it.

“Love you,” Elliott offered by way of apology, letting his smirk soften into a warmer smile. “Your face is very nice.”

Ryan blinked and began to walk in the direction they’d come from, jabbing Elliott gently in the shoulder with a long, black fingernail as she passed him.

“You can both sit in the back if you’re going to continue with this,” she said, “otherwise I’m going to be losing my well-earned lunch.”

“What do you think, boo?” Elliott asked gently, leaning down towards Felix’s ear. He worked his hand back and forth across the swell of his belly, careful as ever not to jostle it too much. “Are we going to continue?”

It took a few seconds for Felix to register the question and mumble a reply because it seemed as though that post-feeding sleep was creeping in on him much more quickly than he thought.

#emeto mention #vampire emeto #but there's no actual emeto in this fic #blood #felix #elliott #belly rubs #stomach ache #tummy ache #sick boys #sick VAMPIRE boys #sickfic #vampire sickfic #guess you could call it a #SUCKFIC #no Flick stop that #spice #kissing

59 notes · View notes

janekfan · 4 years ago

Note

prompt! (cause ur one of my fav fan writers and i think this is up ur ally): i hc that helen just dumped jon in his office when she rescued him from the circus. maybe when he got back he just took a little while to have a good cry but martin found him in the middle of it and was like "where've you been whats wrong holy shit" and jons just like "hnngh... martin..." (and then maybe later martin is like "oh elias said u were on leave im so sorry" and jons like "elias said WHAT")

https://archiveofourown.org/works/27165962

You are so sweet!!! I hope you like it! :D

"I'll be seeing you, Archivist." In a voice so saccharine sweet in such juxtaposition to how empty and ashamed Jon felt twisted up on the floor where she'd dropped him. He tried to focus, to see her, where she was, or was not but she had slipped through her yellow door in a burst of static before he truly understood where he was. It was when his office began to coalesce around him that the tears came, stinging, burning, the idea that he might just be safe here for even a moment catching on the ragged attempt at a breath. Two. Three. Swift. Hyperventilating. No hands, no mannequins, no, no, no stripping, stroking, smoothing, touching.

But he must be silent. Silent if he's to be able to hide in this small bit of sanctuary and he muffled himself, calling upon years of practice crying in the dark alone, and dragged himself under his desk for another degree of separation against the world and its cruelty. Nevermind that he brought this upon himself, he intended to hide from it until the hunger and thirst clawing at his stomach, his throat, forced him from his hiding place. Leaning against the cool wall, Jon pressed a flushed cheek against it, wrapping his arms around his knees and collapsing inwards like a dying star.

No one came for him.

And while he knew he'd burned bridges and sullied relationships with his paranoid investigating the knowing of it ached in his chest, taking up so much room with its constant agony that there was nothing left for anything else and Jon didn't think he'd ever felt more alone in his entire life. It was silly of him to think anyone would look for him and that did nothing to sooth the hurt bubbling up at the thought of being so easy to abandon, so easy to forget. He cried. He cried and cried, nigh hysterical and so, so quietly because his assistants weren't that far away and he couldn’t allow them to see him like this. There wasn't much left of him at the moment and he wouldn't survive Melanie’s cold indifference or Tim's hot anger.

Had his disappearance even been noticed?

The handle of his door squeaked and he clapped trembling hands over his mouth, eyes wide and searching in the dim. Had they found him? Come to take him away again?

Quiet. Be quiet. Like a mouse. Like you did when you were small.

Whatever, whoever it was hummed in a very familiar way, as if they'd glanced around the room and found it wanting. That was fine. He was always found wanting. He'd been so awful to everyone that it was no wonder he was found wanting. They dropped something onto the desk’s surface, and the toes of Martin’s trainers were inches away from Jon's hiding place. He held his breath, closed his eyes tight.

Wished to be found.

Wished to be left alone.

Why wasn’t he leaving?

A whimper escaped, small. Barely there. But it was enough. Martin’s shoes shifted, stepped back.

“I’ve got a, well I’ve got a mug! But it will hurt!” Jon pressed back, curled up, just as Martin’s body blocked the minimal light to his hiding place. It took a few seconds for his face to come into focus.

“Don’t!” Jon flinched from his hand, shouting, the thought of being touched made him want to throw up, made him want to disappear, made him want to run. “Don’t. P’please.”

Martin didn’t know if he truly expected an intruder but he definitely didn’t expect to find Jon cowering away from him, rail thin, expression haunted, and dressed in clothes two sizes too large on him. In a cracked voice he shouted at him when he reached out and in the dim of his hiding place he could make out his wide, terrified eyes, lined with dark shadows and suspiciously wet.

“Alright, alright, Jon.” Martin sat cross legged on the floor instead to watch him ease the smallest amount and drop his forehead to the folded arms balanced on knobby knees with a shaky exhale. “So, haven’t seen you in a while.” His shoulders hitched in a damp laugh, hitched further when he began sobbing. “Oh, oh, Jon.”

“I, I, I--” he was gasping for air, crying too hard to speak, and Martin risked shifting just a little bit forward and talking in a low voice, just for them under the desk.

“Okay, okay. Elias didn’t tell us where you’d gone.” At that, Jon whipped his head to face him, confusion warring with the panic.

“W’what?”

“No one knew where you were.” Big tears slipped down his cheeks and he looked so betrayed, so small, that Martin wanted to wrap him up and protect him from all the awful things he knew were coming.

“I was. The Circus.” He scrubbed his face angrily with his forearm. “Took me. They took me.” He ground the heels of both hands into his eyes as if he could physically stop himself from crying. “They.”

“You don’t have to talk about it, Jon.”

“I wasn’t. I didn’t m’mean to.” His bottom lip was trembling, his words thready. “I’m s’sorry. I didn’t want, want.”

“This wasn’t your fault. Of course you didn’t want to be kidnapped off the street.” But he knew how this could look, especially for Tim with his history. The rest of the staff were likely to accuse Jon of pulling some sort of trick or long con. Melanie particularly hadn’t been shy in sharing exactly what she thought of the man weeping only a meter in front of him, hiding under his desk.

“Kept t’touching--” he choked himself off and Martin worried he was going to be sick but he just swallowed reflexively, sucking down great gulps of air, horrified and whispery. “Wouldn’t stop.”

“Jon, you’ve got to breathe. Slowly, okay?” He was going to pass out if he didn’t and Martin wasn’t altogether sure that wouldn’t be a bad thing, caught as he was between extremes, exhausted and strung out. Martin wanted to hold him, let him feel safe if he even could anymore, let him rest for a few minutes without fear of being hunted, chased, cut, burned, kidnapped.

“I’m coming apart. It’s too, it’s too heavy, Martin. I, I, I can’t breathe for the weight of it.” Syllables tripped over each other, manic, frantic, they tumbled from his mouth like a waterfall. “I know, I, I’ve been. Cagey? For lack of a b’better term? No, no, paranoid. I know. It’s. I’ve been, but things keep coming after me. They want to hurt me--have hurt me! And, and, and I. Trust. I don’t trust anyone. Not really. Not really. I can’t? I don’t. I don’t know how.” Thin, quaking fingers ran over innumerable scars unconsciously, tracing them in constellations. “I’m. I’m just so s’sorry and I can’t. I can’t fix it.” He grit his teeth, smothering himself before hanging his head. “I’m so tired, Martin.”

“I can help with that.”

Jon didn’t expect much after his outpouring. He hadn’t meant to say all that, to burden Martin with even more awful things on top of what they’d already experienced, but to his surprise he offered nothing but help and Jon wasn’t altogether sure why he was humoring him. Jon didn’t want to leave the office. He didn’t want anyone else to see him like this. He didn’t think he could take the inevitable and scathing comments. Not right now. Not yet.

“We can make that work.” He smiled, something small and sweet and open, shrugging out of his jumper and holding it out, still keeping his distance. His kindness was a balm, one that he thought might hold the disparate pieces of himself together long enough for him to scrape up the will to hold them together himself. “You’re cold. You’ve had a shock. A, a lot of shocks.” He raised an eyebrow, still with that same soft grin of understanding. “I’ve seen you nick them before.” Jon ducked his head, reaching out for the warm wool still holding remnants of Martin’s body heat and leaned back against the wall. It was almost like a blanket and the thick knit was well worn and pleasant on his hypersensitive skin. The weight of it soothed his frayed nerves and somehow, against all odds, Jon was dragged under a tidal wave of sleep.

Martin stood guard and watched Jon’s heavy lids fall shut over tired eyes as he unspooled under the safety of his desk. He sank lower, sliding down deeper into the jumper until the only visible part of his face was above the scarred bridge of his nose. He’d begun dreaming of something, making small noises and speaking scraps of sentences that were devoured by the dark. Martin scrutinized him in an attempt to discern whether or not the dreams were in fact nightmares, but he seemed alright for the moment and he let himself relax. He passed the time on his phone, wondering for a fleeting moment if anyone in the office realized where he went and ultimately decided that a little time away from the anger and the blame and the helplessness was probably good for him.

“S’a...mmn…” Jon’s face was pulled into a pained grimace, his fingers winding into the wool. “No’st, no!” Jon’s eyes flew open, flecked with unnatural green and blank with terror when he didn’t recognize or remember where he was. He fought with the cable knit swallowing up his body and tangling him up in his confusion. “No! No! No, no, no!” Panicked murmuring filled up his hiding place and he swiped frantically at his arms, trying to tear his way out of the binding constriction. His hands finally met skin but he didn’t recognize it as his own, fingers curling as he clawed dark angry marks from elbow to wrist and when Martin took hold of them in an effort to protect Jon from himself he had to exert incredible strength to keep him pinned, keep him from hurting himself. But he was so scared, bucking and wild and Martin was sure someone was going to burst in here at any moment, surprised that they hadn’t already, and demand answers to questions he couldn’t even begin to parse.

“Jon,” Martin tried, “hey, it’s me, you’re safe, you’re here in the Archives with me. The Archives, Jon.”

“Stop, stop, stop!” The tears were back, caught in his throat and stealing away his pleading voice and Martin hated every entity they’d ever encountered. He hated Elias, he hated whatever was happening here that they were so powerless to prevent.

“Jon, Jon, I’m here. Hush, now, hush, shhh.” Martin tried to hide his own panic behind a calm exterior, wrapping around him when he finally wrenched himself free and swiped at him. He held Jon tight, almost too tight, crushing his arms to his sides until the fight went out of him and he went completely slack, chest heaving, short panting breaths rushing in and out beside Martin’s ear. “That’s right. Okay, okay, I’m sorry, that must have been frightening. I didn’t want you to hurt yourself, I’m so sorry it scared you.” Strung tight as a bowstring and just about ready to snap, it took long minutes before his rabbit-quick heart began to slow and Martin could feel his bones stamping themselves in rigid lines where he was pressed against him. He kept up his nonsensical chatter, smoothing back unruly tangles.

“M’martin?” Barely an exhale as he turned his face into Martin’s neck. “Not, not. Plastic.” And while it didn’t make any sense to Martin, he let Jon have the comfort it gave him, gently loosening his grip, surprised that instead of putting as much distance between them that he could he collapsed inwards, curling into the pocket the curve of Martin’s body made and laying his ear over the rhythm beating beneath it. “Sorry…” His lips didn’t move, the apology carried on a deep, weary sigh.

“No need to apologize. You’ve done nothing wrong.” Martin ran a hand up and down Jon’s narrow back. He was quiet, calm, as he gathered up handfuls of his shirt and held on tight, a boat unmoored and lost at sea just searching for an anchor.

“Please, I’ve. I’ve no right to ask.” An all over shiver, like a string plucked, and it resonated from Jon and into Martin.

“You can.” He waited for him, giving him the space to speak without feeling any more pressure.

“Please, just a, a moment more?” He hugged him and Jon clutched back, burying his face into his shoulder to block out all else.

“Oh, Jon. Of course. All the time you need.”

#TMA #the magnus archives #jon sims #martin blackwood #nightmares #kidnapping #panic attacks #emotional hurt/comfort #crying #tears #touch starved #touch averse

82 notes · View notes

theodora3022 · 4 years ago

Text

Processing(Continuation of Fairy)

Part 3 of the Fairy series?! I’m almost done thirsting over Kai lol.

Stay tune for the finale- Part 4 Consequences

Warning: Child Abuse, Yandere content

All I am going to say is he will put in as much efforts as he can until you got those two lines on the pregnancy test.

When he sees the positive result Kai will become eccentric with happiness. It would be the first time you heard him laugh. Before he would smirk or chuckle, but never a heartfelt laugh. It is...not as scary as you thought it would be.

In the first three months he would deduct your time with Eri from one hour to fifteen minutes. When you complain, he said the first three months is when the fetus is the most vulnerable. He promises you he will make it up to you afterwards.

Do not worry about morning sickness. Kai would give you the appropriate medicine so you would feel nothing.

He will made you read maternity books. Kai himself would do research as well, after all you two are the baby’s parents. Surprisingly, Kai does not think raising children is solely the woman’s duty.

In the first three months you will be put on a strict diet. Your diet before is already way healthier than what you used to. But now everything on your plate has to be approved by Kai himself. The occasional junk food, rewards for good behaviours are gone for good. Sometimes he even cooks simple dishes for you, while you watch with immense disbelief.

You will move into Kai’s room and remain there unless Kai decides it is time for your exercise. Instead of just using your quirk, you need to complete basic stamina exercise too; he cleared out a room in the base as your personal gym.

One day he read an article about how sunshine is good for pregnant woman and decides to let you see the sun more often.

That is how his subordinates got the order of building a solarium in the backyard.

“Boss is spoiling his wife.” They are right. So Kai did not punish them for gossiping this time.

Once the solarium is complete, you would be there once you got up, and before he finishes his work. Two of his henchmen would be at the door, ready to tend to your needs, but also keeping an eye on you. You feel like you are living in a retirement home for elderly; you did not expect this to happen this early in your life.

Once the first three months pass, Kai would allow you to see Eri for two hours each day. He thinks spending time with toddlers like Eri helps to improve your motherly instincts, since he recalls you said previously in an interview that you do not like children. Eri would touch your little bump and ask why you are getting fat. You would laugh until tears come out and explain to her this is her unborn sibling’s doing.

Seeing you being so comfortable with Eri irritates Kai. Not that he does not want you to feel happy, it is just you and Eri seems like a real family. And even though you are carrying his child, you two never feel like a functioning family. He understands why, you are here against your will, yet he cannot help but feel at loss.

You two now sleep together in the same bed, even with separate quilts: Kai cannot let you catch a cold because of him.

Sometimes you would dream about your crime-fighting days. How your job used to be punching villains, not reading parental magazines. It was not too long ago, five months maximum, yet it feels foggy already. This time last year you were assigned patrol duty for a chaotic area and was drowning in a busy schedule. Now you are being kept here by this Villain as his pet and carrying his child. Can life get any weirder?

You were not that ambitious, but you expected yourself to reach at least No.20. But there is no point dwelling on it as it has become impossible.

Spending time outside had made you think how Eri stays underground all day. So you pleaded Kai to let Eri come up to the backyard with you, even just for a little while.

You asked so sweetly, with those puppy eyes, Kai cannot bring himself to refuse.

It has been so long since Eri had seen natural sunlight. You requested a kite and use your quirk to play it with her. You had decided since she calls you mom, you will be Eri’s mother and try to let her have a normal childhood.

Recalling your sixth year, you were a first grader in elementary school. You would play outside all the time, training your quirk, not stuck in a dark basement, and being experimented on (you assume that is what Kai is doing).

“What do you mean, she cannot read and write? This is unacceptable. I’m teaching her, starting tomorrow.”

For Kai, who only seen Eri as a fodder to his plans, her education never crossed his mind.

You have become demanding, huh? A bit more like yourself before he took you. You knew he will not lay a finger on you due to your current state. Because he was not sure if the quirk-erasing drug would damage the baby or not, Kai is not taking any risks.

Would 100% hold a meeting with his subordinates and discuss baby names.

Chrono would be like “???wtf Chisaki? I know you love your child but this?”

You have not been flying since your bump starts to show, as the extra weight had made balancing a lot harder. Instead of watching you fly, Kai would take you on scrolls in the nearby park, hand in hand. You have to wear a mask just like him, though. You are supposed to be dead, not being Overhaul’s pet.

As your pregnancy progresses it become harder to carry daily duties, so Kai hired a nanny from outside, she is under strict confidential contract.

As your due date draws near Kai is even more stress then you.

“It’s not you who’s going to get a human out of you, why are you so stressed?” You said as you swallow the tablets with water. “I should be the one freaking out.”

“I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Somehow, you trust him.

When he holds his son for the first time, he cried.

He cries? He is capable of that?

Just what the hell is happening?

You will probably have a two-week confinement, luckily you had the nanny tutor Eri in your absence.

#bnha #bnha overhaul #bnha reader insert #bnha kai chisaki #yandere overhaul x reader #yandere overhaul #yandere bhna

95 notes · View notes

bonjour-rainycity · 5 years ago

Text

The Long Way Around ~ Chapter 4

Link to previous part: https://bonjour-rainycity.tumblr.com/post/623116614605357056/the-long-way-around-chapter-3

Pairing: Jasper x Reader

Word count: 2092

Warnings: None

Y/n’s POV

The next three weeks pass in a now predictable sequence. I spend the majority of my time getting to know my new roommates, for lack of a better word. Esme, who is quickly becoming my favorite, does whatever I want with me. We read books, watch movies, go for runs in the woods. The doctor, Carlisle, isn’t home very often. He and Edward spend a lot of time in town making sure the Cullens are not suspect in my disappearance. They decided it would be best to continue ‘business as usual’ to avoid suspicion, but also so they don’t have to give up the advantageous location in the woods and risk moving with me. Bella tends to keep to herself, though she does occasionally join Esme and I in our book club. Alice and Arthur are quite friendly, and I enjoy spending time with them, even if Alice does treat me like a Barbie doll. I swear, I’ve never owned more clothes in my life! Rosalie is slowly warming up to me. She’s not rude, exactly, but I can tell my presence is hard on her. Her husband, Emmett, is a whole lot of fun. He invites me for races and arm wrestling matches which, obviously, I win. I suspect that won’t continue forever, though. Once my newborn strength fades, he will likely be the strongest in the house.

Then, of course, there’s my shadow. Jasper doesn't say much, but he is a constant presence. I can tell he doesn’t trust me. The minute I get frustrated or upset he invades my personal space and uses his ability to calm me down. I do resent it slightly, but I understand the need. It’s as he says: I’m dangerous. It amuses me though to know that, as Jasper has taken the task upon himself to never leave my side, he has to do everything I do. So he watches sappy movies with Esme and I, he sits quietly while Emmett and I play board games, he sulks in the corner while I ask Alice endless questions about her psychic ability, and, of course, he hunts with me about four times a week.

My bloodlust is insatiable. This newfound life and the thirst that accompanies it keeps me in a near constant state of pain. My throat burns badly, and, even when I am drinking animal blood, the burn remains. I have a feeling that, at this stage of life, not even human blood would satisfy my thirst.

At the thought of human blood, a delicacy so far denied to me, venom pools in my mouth. From across the room, Jasper shifts uncomfortably, feeling my desire. I imagine it must be harder for him than the others, because he not only has to fight his own bloodlust, but everyone else’s.

He eyes me evenly. “Do you want to hunt?”

“I’m fine,” I lie. We just went yesterday, and I feel like a burden asking people to go with me constantly. I usually have an entourage of three minimum when I hunt, and I can tell it interrupts the daily flow of things.

Jasper’s eyes don’t leave mine. “Taking you hunting isn’t a burden. Trust me, we would much rather go with you twenty times a day than have you get too thirsty and lose control.”

I purse my lips at his uncanny ability to know what I’m thinking. I know his emotional radar detector must help, but seriously, sometimes he rivals Edward.

“It would probably be a good idea,” I acquiesce. “I’ll go see if anyone else wants to go.” I push myself off the kitchen floor-I had been busy reading through one of Esme’s architecture journals-and walk into the living room where Emmett, Rosalie, Carlisle, Esme, and Arthur are gathered around the TV.

“Hey does anyone wanna-” My words die as I register the news anchor’s words.

“The search continues for local Y/n, Y/l/n, who was reported missing over three weeks ago.”

It feels like the breath has been knocked out of me. I grip the back of the couch, grief ripping through me. Five vampires turn their wary gazes at me.

“Turn it off.” Jasper’s command comes from behind my shoulder.

“No,” I breathe, deeply hurt but desperate to know what my friends and family could be seeing.

The anchor continues. “Authorities say they have a man in custody who confessed to stabbing the woman, though claims he can’t remember what he did with the body. Witnesses to the crime seem to suffer the same memory loss. Police have refused to offer further comments, though locals speculate a conspiracy or the presence of illegal drugs. While the two witnesses to the crime, Kaitlyn Myers and Blake Hannigan, have faced backlash surrounding their involvement in the case, police have cleared them as suspects at this time.”

The couch snaps under my grip. I take two quick steps back, shocked by what I just heard and the jarring display of my physical power.

“Oh, sweetie.” Esme is in front of me instantly, reaching out to envelop me in a hug. Before I can even blink, Jasper is standing between us, acting as a barrier to Esme.

Hurt pierces through my gut. He only sees me as a threat.

“I’m not going to hurt Esme, Jasper. Back off!” I wish my words didn’t waver.

His voice is hard when he responds. “You don’t know what you’ll do. Newborns are governed by their emotions more than anyone else. I’m not taking any risks.”

“Well how about getting to know me instead of just generalizing?” I throw my hands up, properly yelling now. “I’m sick of feeling like I’m a prisoner with you. Everyone else is giving me a chance, so why can’t you?” I spit the words out, my hurt growing by the second.

“We’re hoping it’s all a terrible dream, that we’ll wake up soon and everything will be alright.”

They hadn’t turned off the TV. On the screen is a video of my parents. Hearing my mom’s tearful voice is like a kick to the stomach. I sink to the floor, gasping for air I don’t need.

“I just want our little girl to come home.” Mom’s voice breaks, and she stares into the camera. It’s like she’s staring right at me.

“Jasper, it’s alright, really. I appreciate your concern very much but I promise, it’s alright.” Esme’s soft voice vaguely reaches me through my sobs.

A pair of arms-Esme’s, likely-envelopes me, but I barely take notice. I only feel the pain. It’s so much worse than the burn in my throat. It almost has me wishing for the fiery torture I felt while becoming a vampire. But wishing very seldom equates to reality, so I’m left to allow the gaping hole in my chest to consume me.

I don’t know how long we stay like that, only that it’s dark when I finally regain control of myself. Esme never left my side, and even Rosalie had come to join us at some point. She says nothing, only rests her head on my shoulder and holds my hand.

Jasper is noticeably absent.

“I think I scared him off,” I mumble, guilty.

“He’ll recover,” Rosalie replies, sounding unconcerned.

“He’s coming from the right place,” Esme assures. “Jasper is a very passionate person who gives his all in everything. This is no different. I think he sees keeping you and us safe as a chance to redeem himself for his past indiscretions, though those are long-ago forgiven. He’s trying to keep you from making the same mistakes he did.”

I look at the floor, mulling Esme’s words over. I don’t really know what to say to that.

Thankfully, Rosalie saves me from having to craft a response. “Do you still want to hunt? I can go with you.”

I smile and shake my head, exhausted from the recent emotional turmoil. “No, it’s okay. I think I’ll just go to bed.” I say the word lightly, knowing I’ll probably just spend the next eight hours reading or something to keep my mind busy.

I stand, intending to exit the room. On the way out I see the poor couch, broken in two. I grimace. “Sorry about the couch.”

Esme smiles sweetly, waving it off. “Don’t worry about it. It just gives me an excuse to go shopping.”

I give her a quick hug, grateful for her endless kindness and patience.

Once upstairs in the room Alice and Esme courteously set up for me, I flop on the bed, grabbing the nearest book. I do my best to let my mind go blank and focus only on the words in front of me. About two hours into this exercise, I hear a soft knock on the door.

Jasper stands in the frame, looking repentant. “I’m sorry. You were right. I haven’t tried to know you. But I’ve got some time now if you’re free.” It’s then that I realize he means to do this now. Not wanting to smile because I really am still upset with him, I bite it back.

I decide to play coy instead. “I suppose I could clear my schedule. Though, a little more groveling might help…”

He smiles softly, almost hesitantly. With exaggerated movements, he gets on his knees and clasps his hands together in an excellent show of desperation. “Please do me the magnificent honor...of telling me your favorite color.”

Now I can’t help but crack a smile. “You may approach, peasant, but remember that my good grace can easily change.” I pat the foot of my bed, and he sits, facing me. “It’s green. Like trees and moss and emeralds.”

“What’s your favorite thing about this new life?”

“The running. I had asthma as a human but now I can run for as long as I want and be completely fine.”

He nods, filing the information away. “If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you be?”

I answer without hesitation. “London. The culture, the history, the accents.” He chuckles, teasingly exasperated. “I bet it’s amazing.”

He smiles, a faraway look in his eyes. “Oh it’s great. I was there back in the ‘90s...I bet it hasn’t changed too much though.” He grins. “Maybe in a couple of years we’ll all be able to take a trip.”

I look down at my fingers. “Maybe a few more years than a ‘couple’. I can’t even think of human blood without…” Venom floods my mouth. I offer a humorless chuckle. “See?”

Jasper shakes his head emphatically. “No, you’re really doing good.” I try to protest, but he shakes it off. “I wouldn’t say it if it weren’t true. You are doing remarkably well for three weeks in.”

I sigh, ready to tease him a bit. “Well I couldn’t do so well without my shadow micromanaging my every move.”

He smiles sheepishly and looks at his lap. “I’m sorry I seem a bit…,” he sighs deeply, “intense. I will try to ease off.”

I grin, pulling my knees up to my chest. “Thank you. I’ll try to be a little less emotionally hectic. It’s gotta be hard on you.”

Too quickly, he shrugs. “Don’t worry about it. You’re going through a lot, it’s okay.”

I chuckle, feeling much lighter now, either thanks to his ability or the natural resolution of tension between us, I don’t know. “Yeah well I could stay away from the movies that make me feel all the things.” Now he grins, raising his eyebrows. “Next time we’ll try something bland, like High Noon.”

“Hey now.” Jasper raises a hand, a comically disbelieving look on his face. “High Noon is a masterpiece, don’t knock it.”

I grin broadly, smacking him on the shoulder with a pillow. “I knew you were a Western guy! Gosh, that’s gotta be like, what, forty percent of your personality?”

He rolls his eyes good-naturedly, taking the pillow from me. “Mhm, somewhere around there.”

I like this Jasper, I decide firmly. This new, witty, freer Jasper is so much more fun to be around. I could stand to have this Jasper follow me around all day.

As if he has come to the same agreement, that Jasper stays at the foot of my bed well past the time the sun rises, talking and joking. We get to know each other.

And, for a while, I forget about how sad I am and the near constant burning in the back of my throat.

A/n Thanks for reading! I’m having so much fun with this story and I’m glad you guys are enjoying it, too! Please let me know what you thought of this chapter and if you would like to be added to the tag list!

xx,

Bjr

Link to next part: https://bonjour-rainycity.tumblr.com/post/623283543296049154/the-long-way-around-chapter-5

Tag list: @puer-de-infinitate @charliestuff @hindustani-diaspora @one-thread-can-save-a-life

168 notes · View notes

imlostinsantacarla · 5 years ago

Text

(a/n: to the anon that requested this, i’m so sorry this took me a million years to complete and post! i hope you find these and you enjoy them, thanks for requesting! - admin kat 🌙❣)

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

Felix with a Human s/o that’s Afraid of Turning Headcanons:

° your fear of being changed into a vampire is definitely going to be an issue for felix. i mean, the man wants to literally spend forever with you and will not allow you to stay mortal. now that he’s found you, his mate, he genuinely would not be able to live without you.

° also, being a human in volterra is literally unheard of (apart from all the biancas a.k.a the secretaries) and there’re a lot of vampires prowling around the place so there’s a 110% chance that you could get bit or killed.

° which btw is a huge fear of felix’s. he wouldn’t forgive himself if you got killed by a vampire who fed on you or harmed you in any way. he’d literally rip them to pieces and burn them in two seconds flat. he’s not fucking around.

° it would be challenging for even him to not want to feed on you bc you smell tasty af lmaoo.

° but on a real note, your blood smells really good to him and he really doesn’t want to kill you.

° also, he’s a part of the guard, so he’s got a job to attend to, which he can’t do when he’s worried you’ll die every two seconds.

° when you first arrived in volterra he literally didn’t leave your side for 3 whole months, even when aro and the crew™ summoned him. he took you with him. alec and jane may have almost mistaken you for a snack and demetri struggled to hold him back from ripping the twins to shreds. fun times man! like y’all laugh about it now (minus felix who’s still mad af)

° whenever you get sick, he brings up changing you in 0.3 seconds.

° “you know if you’d let me change you, you’d never get sick.”

° “it’s just a cold, felix. get a grip.”

° “how can i get a grip when you’re so fragile? you know there’s no cure for the cold, right?”

° a lot of arguments ensue from the topic of changing you. felix takes this personally and begins to think that you believe he’s nothing but a monster. which he technically is and is a part of why you don’t want to turn.

° arguments often get heated between you two and felix has to walk away before they get too heated because without meaning to he could hurt you. as i said before, you’re fragile. like he doesn’t want to hurt you btw!

° even though he argues with you over your mortality, he adores a lot of things about it: like how your heart speeds up when he kisses you (lmaoo it stopped one time and he panicked bc he thought you died), he adores watching you sleep, how you need to eat three meals a day, etc.

° “i swear to god if you bring up me changing one more time i will shove my foot so far up your a-”

° boii is horny af though bc he can’t even get with you sexually bc he’d snap you in half.

° demetri teases tf out of him about it. you deffo join in

° like he eye fucks you now, which only makes you horny and now you’re suffering too.

° he’s frustrated also bc he can’t help to get you off either bc again he could literally kill you.

° felix doesn’t have much patience either, so if you don’t come to a decision he probably will make it for you or he’ll demand to know why you’re so afraid to change.

° also sexual tension™

° if you take too long deciding he’s going to just change you bc he’s savage af and kinda selfish. he’d rather you be mad at him for all eternity for changing you than have you die.

° but also he loves you and wants to respect your choices? so there’s a lot of turmoil over it, but i believe that his desire to spend forever with you would win.

° maybe you’re afraid of the pain, unclear of the whole process, etc.

° “what if i’m unlucky and i don’t make it through the process?”

° “that’s ridiculous! it works every time.”

° “okay... but what if i go on a murderous rampage-”

° “we have a process in place to teach newborns how to control their thirst.”

° “okay, okay! i totally understand that. but what if i end up being so out of control that i reveal the secret of vampires to humans? won’t i be killed then.”

° “that’s impossible, i won’t let that happen.”

° you’re kinda frustrated at this point bc for every inquiry of skepticism you have, he’s got an answer prepared.

° felix at some point begins to wonder if you feel the mate bond as deeply as he does. you feel an immense pull towards him, it’s unreal. you’re just afraid.

° “but wouldn’t you like me to fuck you?”

° “seriously?! in front of everyone?”

° “oh, we hear you guys argue about this fifty times a day. it’s nothing new, y/n.” demetri would guffaw.

° lmao felix literally brings that up so often in front of others you’re beginning to get immune to it.

° strong boii™ doesn’t want you to be turned by anyone else but him. so like he’ll practice to get the hang of it bc god forbid if he killed you-

° i mean, in the end you choose to allow him to turn you bc what would be better than spending forever with felix?

° “i swear to god, if you kill me i’m gonna come back from the grave and light you on fire...”

° “i won’t.”

° “you know i’ll be right here during the whole process, i won’t leave your side. and when you wake up, i’ll be the there too.”

° that honestly gives you so much comfort and even makes you smile.

° which gives him confidence too bc you trust him enough to do this when he could literally KILL YOU

° the process goes as great as it can go and like after you feel like you can fight god which felix has to remind you that you cANT’ JUST DEMAND TO FIGHT EVERY VAMPIRE YOU SEE WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO FIGHT

° it’s good that you chose to get turned bc he was about to do it regardless lmaoo. (i know i’ve said this fifty times already but i’m not kidding boii really would’ve done it)

° y’all are the most chaotic couple, like aro and crew™ are entertained but also mildly very terrified.

° y’all fucked.. A LOT... just sayin

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

please like, reblog and follow for more!

requests: open!

#felix #felix imagines #felix headcanons #felix x reader #felix volturi #felix volturi imagines #felix volturi headcanons #felix volturi x reader #twilight #twilight imagines #twilight saga #twilight saga imagines #twilight felix #twilight felix imagines #hope you enjoyed #admin kat

247 notes · View notes

whumpster-fire · 3 years ago

Text

Athanasia Part 4: The Peddler

Mostly a character-building chapter this time.

Tansy’s refsheet

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

CONTENT WARNINGS: Animal Whump, monster whump, discussion of past animal cruelty, marginally competent caretaker, Idiot Customers trying to get discounts they don’t deserve

For the first time in many, many days, the creature does not awake to the cold and wind and rough bars of rusted iron beneath her. But she still awakes to pain and hunger and thirst.

The traveler who found her lying helpless beside the smashed open cage where the people of the village kept her has cleaned her wounds, and wrapped them tightly in fabric. But two of her legs are still broken. She cannot walk properly, or run or jump or climb, and even to crawl causes such horrible pain it is hard not to make a sound. She is still starving, but he has no food for her in the morning.

She still does not know if she trusts him. He saved her, he fed her, he helped her, he speaks kindly and did not hurt her when she bit him out of fear. But he hurt her when he cleaned her broken front leg. He pinned her to the ground and bound her limbs and jaws so she could not get away or bite or claw him, and cut and poked and scraped at the dying, rotting flesh. It feels a little better now than it did before, and he did not cut it off like he said he might have to, but the pain has still made her afraid to let him close to her again. She was ready for it to be cut off, and what he did to her was gentler than what the other people did many times before, but it is too similar.

Even though the night was cold even inside, and even though the window rattled and wind howled and thunder crashed all night, and some part of her she had forgotten for many, many years longed to be close to the warmth of another, she stayed huddled at the end of the bed all night, as far from him as she could get, and she hissed and growled when he woke her to check on her. She had to get up before the sun rose to avoid wetting the bed, and she knew she could not get down by herself without falling, but she still tried to ignore the discomfort and fall asleep again, and she only worked up the courage to wake him when it became painful.

Right now the empty, tearing feeling in her stomach is almost painful. She had almost forgotten the dull ache, but that little bit of food last night made her notice it again. It was all she could eat, but it was not enough, and the hunger has come back as strong as ever. She sniffs at his pack, and there are old smells of food, but when she looks inside there is nothing but tools and cloth and metal in various shapes.

“I’m sorry, girl. I don’t have anything else for you,” the man says with a sympathetic expression. The creature ignores him, and keeps checking the rest of the room. There are the scents of mice, but she knows she is not fast enough to catch one right now.

Footsteps approach the door. Even before the knock, the creature is alarmed. When the sharp sound rings through the room, she scrambles under the bed and hides there, trembling and fighting not to cry out from the pain moving that much has caused her. It is not the young man from before, it is a woman who brings water and a bowl of something hot and steaming. For a moment she thinks it might be food, and as soon as she leaves she comes out to check, but it only smells of grain and milk and a little bit of fruit. But at least there is water. She does not realize how desperately thirsty she is until she tastes it, but when she does she cannot stop lapping at the bowl until she is almost sick.

“Careful.” He reaches out, and she flinches, expecting to be struck, but he just slides the bowl away. “Don’t drink too much. I’ll get you some food soon, don’t want you spoiling your breakfast.”

But the creature does not feel like eating anymore. Hungry, starving, but her stomach feels like it will burst. She retreats next to the bed and huddles there, hunched over, her body aching and trembling. A chill rushes over her, piercing right through her fur. It has been a long time since it has been clean enough that she can stand to groom herself. She tries to fluff it up to hold in more warmth, but the room wavers and her head is spinning. Her hurt foreleg is throbbing with a terrible, stabbing pain, like many small knives being jabbed and twisted in bruised flesh. The wound is tightly wrapped in cloth, but even so, when she sniffs at it she barely keeps the water down.

The chills eventually pass, but she still feels weaker and shakier than she did before. She barely reacts when he picks her up and puts her in the bag he carries on his back. Even when he closes it and she is alone in the dark, in a small, cramped space with hard things moving around under the cloth and jostling her. Even with muffled voices around her. She just sprawls miserably on her side, hoping he will carry her away from the people soon, and hoping she will not be sick in here where there is nowhere to get away from the mess.

“Tinware! Get your tinwares here! I’ve got mugs, saucers, spoons, ladles, and other goods for coin or trade! If you want it but don’t have it, I sell it, if you have it but don’t want it I’ll buy it, if you have it and do want it I’ll mend it!”

Jonathan Markeley counted the meager couple of coins left in his purse one more time, just to be sure, and grimaced. The sooner he got out of this town, the better. Both for the creature he’d found starved and half-drowned in the rain and mud last night, and for his own sake. Whatever the reason they’d locked her in a tiny cage and hung her out on a post at the edge of town, he knew he’d be in danger if it was found out that he’d saved her and sheltered her, and perhaps even if it wasn’t. He had an uneasy feeling that if they’d done that to an animal the size of a cat that couldn’t be a real threat to them, a yellow-eyed stranger wouldn’t be too welcome either.

But he’d spent most of what he had on a room for the night, and more on food. He’d given the creature the meager amount of meat in the stew the innkeeper’s son had brought him that night, but the porridge served for breakfast had none. Fortunately he’d gotten four eggs for a farthing, and less than half of that was a meal for a creature her size, but if she needed meat twice or more a day that could get expensive. And if he was going to splint the broken bones and dress her wounds better than the poor job he’d managed last night he’d need proper supplies. It seemed like the poor creature was sick, too. He didn’t know how to tell if she had a fever, or how to help her if she did. They’d always broken for him, even when it seemed a miracle, but she was in bad enough shape as it was. He wanted to just get out of this place, but he still needed to earn a living. For both of them now.

Roger Snelling eyed the peddler who’d spread his wares about at the side of the road with some suspicion. Roger made it his business to know who came and went from the town, and he was fairly certain he hadn’t seen this man before. Not recently, nor in previous years. He’d never felt the itinerant traders and craftsmen who frequented the town could be trusted – there had to be a reason for a man to always move on to the next village before anyone could get to know him – and it seemed a strange coincidence that this fellow would appear in the village the very same night that the gibbet post on the northern edge of the village had blown down. ~~

“Morning!” A middle-aged man with shoulder-length, graying dirty blond hair hailed Jonathan. He briefly glanced up, but his eyes quickly returned to the pitcher he was hammering a dent out of, and he kept them hidden under his wide-brimmed hat.

“Morning,” he grunted in reply.

“What’s your name?”

“John.”

The man sidled closer. He leaned against a hitching post, but didn’t come close enough to make it seem like he was ready to make a purchase. “I’m Roger. Haven’t seen you before, John. You just got in last night?”

“Aye.”

“Must’ve had a time of it in that storm.”

“Oh, I did, believe me. If it weren’t for my feet sinking to my ankles in the mud I’d probably have been blown clear off the road.”

“Where from?”

“Kenningsford.”

“From the South, then? So you’d have seen the gibbet post?”

Jonathan’s brow tensed. This man didn’t seem like he was part of the law in the village, just a busybody with too much time on his hands, but those could be plenty dangerous. He already felt like he was being interrogated, and he had a feeling he knew where this line of questioning was leading.

“What about it? Was there a sign up there I was supposed to read?” It seemed like a plausible thing to believe.

“It blew down in the storm last night. There was a cage hanging from it. Do you know anything about that?”

Jonathan ran his fingers through his beard in an attempt to look thoughtful. “I saw the post down in the road, aye. I didn’t notice a cage, but I was more concerned with getting out of the rain – and thanking the Lord the thing didn’t fall on me!”

Roger pursed his lips. “It was about this big… we found it smashed open this morning, I guess you might not have seen it in the mud -”

John decided the best approach was to pretend he had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. “What, that small? You can’t fit a man in a cage that small, can you?”

“No, but -”

“What would you even put in there, a man’s head?” he interrupted again. “Why’d that need a cage around it? Or a baby, but – well, I’d assumed you folk were more civilized. This ain’t France, eh?” John had a moment of panic as he tried to remember if the latest war had been against the French. It seemed like a safe bet.

“It wasn’t a head, it was an animal inside there!” Roger snapped. He was looking a little agitated. “Or something that looks like one anyway, we don’t know if it’s some sort of demon or something, but it’s not natural whatever it is. It’s been in there for a couple of months, and this morning the cage was empty!”

A couple of months. John’s grip on his hammer tightened. They’d left her in there for months… he hadn’t gotten a good look at the cage, but it looked almost too small to turn around in. But he couldn’t let on that he knew… and if this Roger wanted information out of him, he was going to get information back. “An animal?” he repeated skeptically.

“Aye. Was it there when you passed by?” Roger took a slow step closer, his eyes narrowed.

“Don’t know. Didn’t see one or hear one. Must’ve run off by then.”

“Run off?” Roger’s face lit up like a dog that had scented its quarry. “What makes you say that?”

John pulled his hat lower and glared at the saucer he was polishing. “You said the cage was empty, where else would it go?”

“It could’ve flown off. I never said it wasn’t a bird.”

John ground the polishing cloth into the metal. He’d slipped. Just a small mistake though, one he could cover easily. “You never said it was either. Look, if you’re accusing me of some crime or I’m not welcome in this town, just say so, but stop actin’ like I’m some common criminal.” He looked up, for once meeting Roger’s eyes directly. The older man’s probing expression quickly turned to intimidated discomfort, and he looked away. Older looking, at least. John knew that in truth he was far younger. “What, do you think I stopped in the middle of that bloody storm to chop the thing down?”

“No, no – my apologies, I wasn’t accusing you of nothing!” Roger quickly regained his composure. “You’ve got… unusual eyes.”

“Hmm. No one’s ever informed me before,” John replied with subtly, dry sarcasm.

“Sorry. Couldn’t help noticing. I was just wondering if you’d seen any… tracks in the mud the rain might have washed away by morning, any other signs...”

“Can’t say I did. I’ll keep my eye out, though. What sort of creature was it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s even really of this Earth. It was… near cat-sized, with black and white striped fur -”

“A badger?”

“No, smaller than a cat, not larger. It had this long bushy tail with black and white rings on it -”

“What, like a squirrel?”

“No, it was a beast of prey. Long, slender body, ears near as big as its head...”

“Ohh...” John let a look of recognition cross his face. “You mean a tabby cat? Aye, I’ve heard of those. Think I saw one on the church roof this morning.” He suppressed a grin at the consternation on Roger’s face. He was starting to enjoy this.

“Not a cat, no! A cat’s… closer, at least, but you’d know it from a cat if you saw it.” He scratched his thin goatee. “You know, old Tom Porter’s theory’s that a wildcat crossed paths with a vixen in heat and that thing was the result. I think it’s a bit more ferret-ish, but I’ve never seen anything else like it, and I don’t know anyone who has. It’s got eyes like a cat, though. Big yellow ones… a bit like yours, actually.”

“Are you suggesting it shapeshifts now?”

“Eh? No, don’t be ridiculous!” Roger laughed.

“So, why was it caged up out there? Going to show it off at the fair?”

“Oh, we have. A few times. But to tell you the truth, people’ve gotten tired of the thing. It stopped putting on as good a show after a while, so they just hung it up there to… make an example of it, I suppose. I don’t know if there’s more of ‘em out there to scare off, but even if it’s just punishin’ the damned thing, that’s fine by me.”

John raised an eyebrow. “Seems a bit… excessive.”

Roger leaned in close with an angry sneer. “Listen, the damn thing’s vermin, no different from a fox or stoat. Worse, even. Poor Farmer Brown lost a whole henhouse in one night, it just… ripped them all to pieces. Blood everywhere. I’ve seen foxes kill for sport, but not like that. It’s torn men’s hands to shreds – did this to me not long after we trapped it.” He rolled up his shirt sleeve, revealing a series of messy, badly healed scars.

“I wasn’t arguing against killing it,” John said. Good for her, he thought. He struggled to keep his voice level. “Just… why not just shoot it?”

“Oh, we tried, believe me. It just… came back.”

A thrill of exhilaration ran through John’s chest. He was right. She was like him, a creature of the same nature. “You’re sure it wasn’t just another creature of the same kind?”

“Aye, that’s what everyone thought at first, but wouldn’t it be a strange coincidence? No-one’d ever seen one before, but then three turn up, here, in just a few months? First I heard of it was Lord Hawkwood apparently caught a strange beast on a fox hunt. They said what was left of it after the dogs were through with it wasn’t worth bringing the pelt back, but it sounds like it was the right size and color and least. But not days later somethin’ starts raiding henhouses. Finally we’ve had enough, a few of us track it down, and Brown shot it. The thing was still moving after half its chest was blown open, thought it was going to limp away until he shot it again. So I thought, well, that’s the end of that, now all we’ve got to worry about’s if Charles – he’s the lord’s gamekeeper – will try to cheat Brown out of a bounty on account of no one ever seeing it before so there’s no price for whatever it is.” Roger was becoming more and more animated and excited as he talked. “Well that worked out fair, Charles strung it up, but a few days later the carcass just up and disappeared off the gibbet. And that was the very same night poor Jack Brown lost his chickens. Not any of the other farmers it was going after before, just the man that shot it.”

At this, John gave a forced, exaggerated laugh. “Ahh… Good one, you had me going for a while!”

“What do you mean? Do you think it’s funny? What’s funny about an honest man losing his livelihood?”

“Nothing, it’s just… come on, mate, I know you’re playing me for a fool. Do you tell that story to every stranger who comes this way? You’re saying it came back from the dead for revenge? Sounds more like something took the body and ate it, and either it or something else ate the chickens.”

“No, not for revenge, it just… comes back. Mrs. Brown saw the damn thing slinking away from the henhouse, eyes burning like torches. It took weeks before they caught the thing. I can’t recall if the pattern of stripes was the exact same as the one we shot before, but Charles slit its throat, shoved the body in a cage just to be sure it wouldn’t wander off again, and the very next day it was on its feet and angry. We’ve tried gutting it, cutting its head off… even burned the damn body to ashes once. I’m telling you, it ain’t one of God’s creatures, if you know what I mean. But even the Bishop didn’t know what it was or what to do with it. So, like I said, we started making a sport of it. Show it off at the fair, make a show of drowning it or setting dogs on it, something like that, then have the people come back the next day to see it… not usually good as new after just a day, but definitely not dead.”

John’s heart was breaking as the story went on. He stood up and hid his hands in his pockets to avoid making fists. God he wanted to knock that grin off Roger’s face. When he was a lad there’d been older boys who thought it was good sport to hold him down and beat him with sticks, because the bruises and even missing teeth would be gone in a few days. And he’d believed for the longest time that it was wrong for him to fight back, because even a broken nose might never be the same. These days it was more about caution, about not drawing attention to himself. But he’d always hated men who took pleasure from tormenting those they saw as below them. Their wives, their children, those of lower social standing, animals.

“It’d be more convincing if you actually had this animal,” he remarked through a strained veneer of casual indifference.

“I know it sounds ridiculous, but I swear it’s real. You can ask anyone in the village and they’ll tell you the same. Not sure I’ll sleep easy knowing that thing’s loose, though.” He suddenly swooped forward like a hawk, picking up a finely shaped pewter teapot. “Ooh, the wife’d love this! Could you… hmm, could you make a set of matching teacups and saucers to go with it?”

“Sorry, no custom orders. I have to be on my way before tonight. If she enjoys the pot I might have her in mind the next time I come this way,” John lied, having no intention of returning to the village any time soon. Maybe not ever, or at least not until every current resident was dead and buried. “Or I have several cups and saucers to choose from.”

“Well yes, but I was hoping for the flower-patterned engravings.” Roger sighed. “I suppose just the pot then. How much for it?”

“A shilling.”

Roger scowled. “A shilling? What kind of fool do you take me for? He turned it over in his hands, but seemed more preoccupied with making a show of inspecting it than actually doing so. “I’ll give you fourpence.”

“I didn’t take you for a thief, but that’s what you’ll be if I let you take it for that.” John extended a hand. “I’ll be having it back if you can’t pay a fair price.”

“Four’s fair, especially with this scratch on the handle. I might be willing to pay six if that were fixed… or the full shilling with two cups and saucers.”

“Four’s barely what the metal’d be worth as scrap. If you’re going to insult my work you can clear off.” This was ridiculous. The teapot was one of the heavier items he had to sell, and he was eager to be rid of the weight and bulk, but not if he couldn’t at least cover the night’s stay. “I brought the price down from sixteen because of your story, but I can get at least that much in Sheffield.”

“Ehh… I’ll give you eight.”

“I won’t sell it for any less than ten. Take it or leave it.”

“Hmm...” Roger’s eyes darted around. “Nine and that sugar bowl? It’s plain, but -”

“Ninepence and you take the pot and the bowl as they are.”

Roger hesitated for a while. “I’ll take ‘em. You’re a hard bargainer and a fine craftsman.”

“As are you, sir. But you’ve got a good eye. It’s a pleasure doing business with you – and give your wife my regards.”

But as soon as Roger was safely out of earshot, Jonathan growled under his breath. “You’re a ball-less cur, and your wife’s a bitch if she married you and hasn’t poisoned you yet.” He almost wanted to use tweezers to count out the coins so he wouldn’t touch anything Roger had touched. But at least he’d told him what he needed to know about the creature. And he hadn’t gotten as much as he’d hoped for the teapot, but it was enough. It would get them to the next town. And if he could make another sale or two, perhaps buy some medicine. It probably wasn’t a good sign that she’d been hidden right there in his pack all this time and not made a fuss.

Roger Snelling turned the teapot over in his hands as he walked away, whistling a jaunty tune. The peddler was a surly fellow, and suspicious, but he had to admit it was good workmanship.

Good workmanship, but Roger wasn’t so sure it was his. He’d gotten a look at the man’s hands as coin and goods were exchanged, and they weren’t smooth, exactly, but they were… odd. Rough and calloused like a working man’s should have been, but not a scar on them. Not from a burn or carelessly touching hot metal or a slip with a knife or other sharp tool. It was strange. All the smiths he knew had at least a few marks, no matter how careful or lucky they were. He was half inclined to believe the man had stolen them, but then a thief’s hands wouldn’t be so pristine either. Probably just a trader who bought and resold things, that must have been why he was so reluctant to change or mend things, because he couldn’t. But the little scratch wasn’t really noticeable. Roger had only pointed it out to try to get a better price.

#whump #my writing #Tansy (OC)#Jonathan Markley (OC)#animal whump tw #monster whumpee #broken bones #fever #past animal cruelty discussion #immortal whumpee

5 notes · View notes

thelovelyghostwriter · 4 years ago

Text

Why I started to like Neon Nostrade more (and why she’s more than just a spoilt girl)

Not gonna deny it, I disliked her when I first watched the 2011 anime. It pissed me off that she was gonna sneak out and that's how Chrollo managed to steal her Lovely Ghostwriter ability - which helped him save the Phantom Troupe. By right, Kurapika was supposed to wipe half of them. BUT, let's take a closer look at her character:

1) Most people just say she's spoiled. True! Yet, if you think about it, why is the Nostrade family so affluent in the first place? It's because of her talent. She is her father's cash cow, he's the reason why he had climb through the ranks and possibly gained income. Is it wrong for the girl to shop and spend on clothes that is because of her contribution? A large part of it is her contribution. In fact, her father is the one that is using her, commercializing her talent. Usually, it's the father that churns the cash and the daughter spends it - however, we see it as the other way round.

2) Neon's upbringing is rather wayward. We don't see her mother, and her father's likely more concerned about her ability than his own daughter. Their relationship seems transactional - "you do this, I give you expensive gifts". Because of this, it seems that Neon bathes in materialism (clothes, expensive dead body parts etc.) as a way to fill the void. She actually reminds me of Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby - another woman who is so despondent that she ends up prioritising materialism more (she also gets a lot of hate, but I find her really interesting!)

3) Emotional detachment from the dead. We don't really know why she has a disgusting/weird hobby of keeping dead body parts - an indirect contribution to the Kurta clan's demise. But we can infer what she thinks of people in general, and how she sees the dead. On top of materialism, it seems that Neon is emotionally detached from people in general - probably because of the lack of affections from her father. Her father's sincerity doesn't entirely appear genuine. She was more worried about the auction items when Kurapika informs her that some of her bodyguards died, and we see the rest surprised by her reaction. She actually even tells Chrollo that she does not believe in the afterlife and that her fortune-tellings are for the living. To me, this is a complete juxtaposition to Chrollo's crying when he realised that Uvogin was dead, and Kurapika's emptiness and thirst for revenge because his clan was massacred. Yet, I do think she is capable of sympathy - given her shocked reaction when she saw Eliza breaking down. It was the reason why she wanted to go home early. It seems that she lived in a bubble (maybe girlie just needs a wake-up call?), up until that moment when she saw her attendant being devastated over her lover's death. It's actually called "Dismissive Attachment Style", which is largely influenced by how your caretaker/parent has treated you.

4) The way she behaves with her attendants/bodyguards/father vs the way she behaved around Chrollo is a stark difference. I'd argue that the whole throwing tantrums and escaping shenanigans is a manifestation of wanting attention from her father. Being surrounded by bodyguards, not being able to have the freedom and being on constant surveillance - it's exhausting. She is more genuine and laidback when she had a conversation with Chrollo. It's also surprising how she trusted a random stranger as a desperate attempt to do whatever she liked (and yes it's selfish on her side), I'd argue that it's due to living in a bubble. Unfortunately, this interaction with Chrollo is not genuine on Chrollo's side - it's mainly to steal her ability, which helped Chrollo change the fate of the Phantom Troupe members. Again, we can see that her interactions with people are mostly not genuine - most of her employees only put up with her because of their jobs, her father is more concerned with her ability, her "fans" adore her because of her fortune-telling ability etc. Even Kurapika seek employment from her because of her hobby, so that he can fulfil his mission to collect the Scarlet Eyes; and protecting her to appear more trustworthy to Light Nostrade (we eventually see Kurapika as leading the Nostrade mafia family in the current arc). It's pretty much no wonder why she's emotionally detached.

5) Emotional detachment + spoilt + materialistic + weird-ass flesh collector hobby - not really your role model or someone you could relate to. In fact, morality in Hunter x Hunter characters pretty much don't really exist or it's not clear cut? We got homicidal thieves, a kid that smashes a cat-ant's skull, a freakin' hypersexualised borderline pedo(?) clown, a family of assassins and of course my all-time favourite: the sexy chain-wielding avenger who willingly compromises his moral values to achieve his goal. But, that's kinda why I started to like her? She's so twisted in her own way (like other characters) and justifiably because of her poor upbringing - yet it appals me that many fans dislike her flaws as if she's the worst when the other characters are 10 times worse, but the same fans probably like another morally deprived character. I don't really know the reason, maybe because she's a non-fighting female character or too little screen-time? Lmao.

In fact, her actions are a foil to Kurapika's plans (that was actually the reason why I disliked her initially). Kurapika could have found Chrollo first instead of Zeno and Silva, but her father called Kurapika and he's forced to prioritise her safety. Getting her ability stolen by Chrollo changed the fate of the spiders when Kurapika was supposed to wipe out half of them (but hey, we get the spiders and they're cool). It's kinda weird how she didn't do much, yet the chain of events (pun-intended) altered for Kurapika and the Spiders.

Of course, I'm not saying you cannot dislike her. That's up to you. I guess I just wanted to share why I started to like her and also to share certain characteristics of her that people may have missed out. I'm pretty much sick of people saying that she's just a spoilt brat, she doesn't have character depth... when out of all the female characters, she's one of the few where I can actually dig deeper into her character (maybe I haven't paid attention to the rest, but even my favourite girl, Machi... can't really say I have any analysis on her). All the elements of Neon's character are there, it's just not spelt out for us.

I would like to thank @aspoonofsugar and @anotherworldash in their analysis that helped me think about her character more and really appreciate Neon.

#neon nostrade

22 notes · View notes

kpop-zone · 5 years ago

Text

I’ll Always Find You | Jennie

Genre: Vampire AU

Wordcount: 3,163

Request: you’re a vampire and your girlfriend is the leader of the coven, old, regal and powerful. You’ve been feeling out of sorts lately and afraid you’ll lost control. So you made her promise to kill you if it happened because you don’t want to cause any trouble. And here comes the angst: you lost control. Will your gf keep her promise?

You looked at yourself in the mirror. Your eyes were bloodred with little veins surrounding them, making you look like the monster you were. From the beginning you had trouble adjusting to the life as a vampire. You had already been very impulsive as a human, but with your new gained abilities and sharpened senses that impulsiveness had developed to something life-threatening for everyone around you.

But then you had met Jennie. As cliché as it was, after you had been turned, you had thought that you were either doomed for a life as a serial killer or as a hermit, living in the woods. You were struggling, wandering around the city, half-dead, half-alive, because you didn’t want to accept your fate. Your stubbornness almost forced you to your knees. That was until you crossed paths with the most ethereal creature on earth. Jennie.

She had found you while you were fighting the urge to rip open the throat of an innocent pedestrian. As soon as you had seen her, you were mesmerized. Everything about her screamed superiority and power. Nevertheless, she hadn’t ended your lowly life back then. She had actually felt pity and decided to take you in.

You had learned that she was the leader of the oldest coven in the city. Because despite your original believe, vampires didn’t only have to be serial killers or hermits. They had a third choice: hide in plain sight as part of society.

Her coven owned a huge building in the middle of the city and consisted of around 20 vampires. Some of them were living a completely normal life and even had a job, while others decided to spend the majority of their live in the shelter of their four walls. They were like a big family and when you first entered their home, they treated you with suspicion. But because you were under the personal protection of their leader, no one dared to touch you.

From that moment on, your new life began. You became a part of a new family while learning to control your thirst. And in the process, you also found love. Jennie hadn’t left your side during your journey. Therefore, she had won your trust and your heart in no time. She had been an immense help, but soon you found that her affection went beyond that of a leader. For some inexplainable reason she had fallen for you too. It took a while, till the two of you admitted your feelings. But eventually neither of you could deny it anymore and you officially became a couple.

The two of you had a better love story than anyone else ever had and you became the rulers of the city. Together you took care of your family while keeping the other covens of the city in check and covering up any traces that could lead the humans to your secret.

Of course, you had planned your life to go differently. You had never wanted to be a vampire. But now, you didn’t want it any other way. You were meant to be with Jennie. Therefore, you were grateful that you had been turned, because otherwise you could have never been found by the love of your life.

For 10 years your life continued to proceed almost smoothly. Of course, you were at no point in your life the most trustworthy vampire on this planet because of your impulsiveness. But Jennie had given you a lot of useful tips on how to control yourself and you had gotten a lot more careful. Therefore, you were allowed to move freely around the city.

But then something changed.

From one day to the other, you started feeling more and more out of control. You were tensed up all the time and felt an insatiable thirst sometimes out of the blue, leading to moments like this. You were standing in the public bathroom of a mall right now, trying to get your thirst under control again, while your vampire form was clearly showing. Some innocent person could walk in every second now and you didn’t know if you would be able to hold back. Panicked you tried to gain back your composure.

Fortunately, no one came in though and after staring at yourself in the mirror for another couple of minutes while doing the breathing exercise that Jennie had taught you, you were feeling like yourself again. But you knew that it had been a close call this time. You had almost lost control.

It was time to talk to your leader and girlfriend. She needed to know what was going on with you lately.

But because you dreaded the conversation, you wandered around the secluded areas of the city until it started to get dark and you knew that your girlfriend would start worrying about you. Therefore, you slowly walked back to the busy streets again until you stood in front of the old, mysterious building that you called your home. As you entered the house, you immediately ran into Chaeyoung, one of your most trusted friends.

“Finally, Y/N. Jennie’s worried sick about you.”

She said with a concerned look on her face and you tried to muster a smile.

“I’m sorry. I just forgot the time. It won’t happen again.”

You lied, quickly patting her shoulder before rushing upstairs.

Jennie had already heard you entering the house, so as soon as you opened the door to your apartment, she was waiting for you with her arms crossed.

“Where have you been?”

She asked with a stern look and you gulped thickly.

Despite dating her and knowing that she wasn’t even half as cold as others always drew her out to be, you were still aware of the fact that she could end our existence without even having to put any effort into the act. She was much older than you and therefore, much stronger.

“I was shopping in the mall.”

You replied nervously and Jennie narrowed her eyes at you.

“Then where are your bags?”

She continued her interrogation, probably already knowing that you weren’t telling the truth.

Nervously you started fidgeting with your fingers, because you didn’t know how to tell Jennie that you were spinning out of control lately. You wanted to be honest, but it wasn’t so easy, because she was also your leader and had responsibility for a whole coven. You were searching for the right words to start your confession when you suddenly felt cold air hitting your skin. When you looked up, Jennie was standing right in front of you and her stern expression was exchanged by a soft one.

“Are you hungry?”

She smiled while already grabbing your hand and gently pulling you into the kitchen. She could truly read you better than anyone else.

You exhaled in relief and sat down at the counter while Jennie put the content of a blood bag into two wine glasses, causing you to chuckle. It was still funny to you how Jennie tried to remain classy and refused to drink out of a bag.

“What? We are no savages after all.”

She joked and you shook your head. You were grateful that she tried to make this conversation easier for you.

Together you cuddled up on the couch and you rested your head on your girlfriend’s chest. You knew that Jennie was still demanding an explanation from you. She had just wanted to give you more time to sort your thoughts. Therefore, you inhaled deeply before coming out with the truth.

“I have a favor to ask of you.”

You started and Jennie’s body tensed up behind you, so you knew that she was listening to you.

“What is it?”

Jennie asked and you could hear the nervousness in her voice.

“I need you to promise me that you will do what I ask of you. There is no other way if you truly love me.”

You explained while continuing to avoid Jennie’s gaze.

“Of course, I love you. And I will comply to your wishes.”

She answered a little hesitantly, but you knew that you could trust her word.

“I’m feeling a little out of it lately. I am unpredictable. And I need you to promise me that you will punish me like anyone else if I should lose control.”

Jennie’s breath suddenly hitched in her throat, and you knew that it was because of your wish. The common punishment for vampires in this coven that lost control, was to kill them.

Finally, you turned your head to be able to look at your girlfriend.

“I need you to promise me, Jennie. If this occurs, the person you fell in love with, won’t be there anymore. And I know that I won’t be able to live with this guilt.”

You explained but Jennie kept looking at you motionlessly.

“Y/N... do you know what you’re asking of me?”

She breathed shakily and you rested your hand on her cheek to stroke it softly with your thumb.

“I know. But it’s the only right thing to do. So promise me. It’s what I want.”

You demanded another time and Jennie closed her eyes, while nodding her head slowly.

“I promise.”

She whispered hesitantly and you pressed a quick kiss on her lips.

“But this case won’t occur. We will start training again. And you just won’t leave the house on your own for a while. It’s just a phase.”

Jennie added quickly and you knew that she was scared despite always seeming like she had everything under control.

Wanting to cheer her up, you nodded, although you could almost physically feel your time running out. Therefore, you cuddled up to Jennie again, because you were aware that moments like this wouldn’t occur that often anymore.

And you would be proven to be right. With every day in the following weeks, you started to feel less and less like yourself. You started to black out occasionally and only came back to your senses after a few minutes. You were a ticking time bomb, and everyone knew it, even if Jennie pretended not to notice it. She simply didn’t want to keep her promise. And until a certain point, she could justify her hesitation by saying that you weren’t out of control yet by her definition.

But then one day, even she couldn’t ignore it anymore. You had followed her order to not leave the house without another coven member up until that point, but one day you just disappeared. Jennie didn’t hesitate to mobilize the whole coven in order to find you.

They searched several hours until Jennie finally stumbled upon you in a secluded alley. You were just leaning over the lifeless body of a poor soul that had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, sucking all life out of him. Jennie quickly ordered two of her subordinates to rip you away and to check on your victim.

Chaeyoung, the right hand of Jennie, was struggling to hold you back, but because she was older than you, she eventually managed to hold you in place. Jennie slowly made her way over to you and wiped away the blood that was dripping off your chin.

“I’m sorry about this, my love.”

She whispered before cupping your face despite you fighting her hands, indicating that you were still stuck in your bloodlust.

Her soft smile was just bringing you back to your normal self, when your head was suddenly whipped to the side and a second later everything turned black.

You didn’t remember anything following this, but when you woke up again, your throat was dry, and your head was pounding. Slowly you fought your eyes open to be able to scan your unfamiliar surroundings. This was definitely not your apartment. You were surrounded by cold stone walls and metal bars that prevented you from leaving this place. This had to be the dungeon that your coven had in the basement of your building. You looked down on yourself and could see that you were laying on an old bed that was stained with blood, making you remember what you had done.

Tears sprung to your eyes, when you remembered the fear in the eyes of the man that you had attacked. You buried your face into your hands and started to sob loudly, causing you to catch the attention of Jennie who quickly rushed to the metal bars.

“Y/N...”

She called your name and you looked at her in despair.

“Did I...kill him?”

You asked hesitantly. You weren’t even sure if you wanted to know the answer.

“No. He’s upstairs. Jisoo healed him. We will keep an eye on him for some time and then we will wipe his memory and let him go.”

Jennie informed you, making you sigh in relief.

“Everything’s fine.”

She added with an encouraging smile, but you shook your head.

“Maybe this time.”

You said with disappointment resonating in your voice.

You had tried to be strong, but your transformation had made you to a monster. The vampire venom slowly turned you ruthless and once you killed someone, you knew that there was no going back, and you couldn’t let that happen.

“You know what this means.”

You looked at Jennie while tears streamed down your face and she covered her mouth with her hand to muffle her sobs.

“I’m out of control, we both know it. There isn’t any breathing exercise that could fix this. You need to protect the world from me.”

You tried to reason with Jennie, but she kept standing in front of the cage like glued to the spot.

“Jennie, you promised me.”

When she heard your words, her gaze snapped up to meet yours and she reached into her pocket to pull out the keys for the door.

Hesitantly she looked at you again, but when you nodded, she slowly turned the key in the lock and entered the cage.

You smiled at her assuring, but when your eyes scanned her body, you suddenly realized that she wasn’t only holding one but two wooden stakes in her hands.

“Jennie?”

You asked confused, but your girlfriend calmly sat down next to you.

“It’s ok, jagi.”

She tried to calm you down, but you quickly leaped to your feet, backing away from her. Suddenly it sunk in to you what Jennie was planning to do. She didn’t need two wooden stakes to kill one vampire.

“No.”

You stated determined, not wanting to be the reason for your girlfriend’s death.

Jennie, however, stayed calm. She pulled you gently back next to her and wiped away your tears.

“It’s alright, my love. I lived a long life. But I have never been happier than during the years that I was allowed to spend with you. I don’t want to be alone again.”

She explained with a soft smile playing on her lips, causing you to sob loudly. Why couldn’t you be strong enough? You could have spent eternity with Jennie by your side. There were so many things that you had wanted to explore together. The two of had planned to move to the seaside and enjoy a slow life for a while, opposing to the rush in the city. But you needed to ruin everything.

You rested your head against Jennie’s chest, and she placed her hand in your neck to pull you closer.

“Don’t worry, Y/N. Our love is strong enough for five lifetimes. We will meet again, and we’ll start over; grow old together and have the life that we deserve.”

Jennie’s words made your heart flutter and ache at the same time. Quickly you pulled her into a tight embrace and let her wrap her arms around you.

“I love you, Jennie.”

You whispered into her ear in need for her to know how much she meant to you.

“I love you too.”

She responded before pulling back.

Shakily you took one of the wooden stakes and Jennie followed your move.

You looked into her eyes and she smiled encouragingly. Gently she placed her hand on your cheek and the stake against your chest. You wanted to do the same, but your arms were too weak. Therefore, Jennie let her free hand fall to yours and slowly lifted the stake to her own chest.

“Come on, Y/N. You know that I always wanted to go out with a bang. This is the perfect opportunity.”

Jennie tried to lighten the mood, but you gaze was fixed on the weapon in your hand that was bound to kill the love of your life.

“Look at me, jagi.”

Your girlfriend demanded, causing you to eventually look into her beautiful eyes.

Jennie seemed to be calmer than ever, and her aura passed over to you.

“On a count of three, ok?”

She ordered and you nodded hesitantly.

“Ok. 1...”

Your gaze flickered to the stake once again and panic filled your body. You couldn’t kill an innocent person, could you?

“2...”

Jennie continued her countdown and you looked into her eyes again. You remembered how hard this had to be for her. She had wandered this earth for centuries on her own. Eventually, she had found a family, but nevertheless, her heart always ached for more. And then she finally stumbled upon you. The one that she called her soulmate. But now you were forcing her to take your life.

Would you want to stay behind if Jennie asked you the same?

Of course, you wouldn’t. You loved Jennie more than anything and you knew that she felt the same about you. She had told you several times during the time that you were allowed to spend together.

One day when the two of you were watching the sunset from the rooftop of your house, she had even told you that she was convinced that the universe had only made her immortal, so that she could meet you. You had laughed at her back then, but now you weren’t so sure anymore. Nothing had ever felt so right in your life than this love. So wasn’t it more cruel to let Jennie roam this earth alone again? She was merciful enough to end your torture, so who were you to leave her behind to make hers begin. Therefore, you took a deep breath and nodded to Jennie.

“3”

At the end of her countdown, you closed your eyes and pushed the wooden stake as harshly as possible despite the resistance, while you felt pain filling your own body.

When you opened your eyes again, you could see that Jennie’s skin slowly started to turn ash grey. Nevertheless, she looked peaceful, almost relieved and you knew that you had made the right decision. The world started to fade around you until Jennie’s weak smile was the only thing, you could see anymore.

“I’ll find you again.”

Were the last words you heard before your last breath left your lips.

#blackpink scenario #blackpink #jennie scenario #jennie #jennie imagine #girl group imagine #girl group scenario #girl group #kpop scenario #kpop

193 notes · View notes