#Sharks Stalk Surfers

[spilledreality]

Outer Banks S1E1: Pilot

The first minute starts in media res, but if you pay close enough attention, you’re front-loaded with the basics. John B.—tan, sandy blonde surfer hair—is balancing on a roof in white All-Star high-top Converse. We see him standing at the structure’s very apex, one foot down, the other floating in empty space. He's framed by the sky and the ocean—it's just him, the roof, and the horizon, so that he resembles Caspar David Friedrich's Wanderer above the Sea of Fog. His arms are spread slightly, to help him balance, or like wings with which to fly, or like a crucifixion pose. He's all of these things this season: trying to keep the balance; trying to lift off and leave the ground behind; trying to be a martyr. It all gets set up here, PBR can in-hand, as his fellow Pogues try to keep the mood light-hearted while running damage control, talking him out of his insanities. "That's what, a three-story fall to the deck? I give you about a one in three chance of survival," says Pope, who's sheltered, but has the tightest-screwed head among this show’s regularly unhinged cast. John B. sticks an index finger in his mouth, wetting it with saliva and holding it up to the wind to see which way it blows. He's got a ragged blue bandana around his neck, his whole get-up matching the PBR can—they're laying the "working class" on thick—and asks rhetorically whether he should do it. J.J., backwards red cap, PBR can, some beaded bracelets, camo cut-offs with cargo pockets, raises his eyebrows, stays out of it on the sidelines while Pope, in his cardinal button-up—buttoned to the neck even the collars are fastened down—hoists an electric drill, revs it up, tries to keep the situation under control but casual through irony. "Yeah, you should jump; I'll shoot you on the way down," holding up the drill, as we put together that the gang’s snuck illegally into a construction site.

So that’s the boys. Warm beer and transgressed boundaries. Balanced on the brink of catastrophe and wondering if they should jump. Testing each other’s limits of caring under a mask of indifference. J.J. knows John B. best, which is why he's staying out of it; he's been through a suicidal shit-tests or two in his time, and knows instinctively, i how way recklessness is performed to get a rise. He’s been there before himself, and his old man didn’t give two shits, so why should he? Next we’re intro’d to Kiara, a girl in Boysland, so we immediately know three things: (1) She’s not like the other girls, i.e. she can hang (2) She’s in love with one of the boys, and one of the boys is in love with her (3) It’s not the same boy. But she's also way more than this; despite these tropeish reductions—which are really not about her, so much as they're about the structural dynamics of both real life and teenage drama—this show demonstrates an admirable Zoomer television trait, which is the ability to half-imagine men and women being friends in a way that isn’t inevitably undermined by sexuality. Mind you, it doesn’t fully manage this—teen drama is teen drama, teens want what teens want, and the show, post-S1, jumps its shark pretty thoroughly. But it half-manages, for a while. 

Kiara—and this is more stereotype now, but an admiring stereotype, like "feminine intuition" or “Asian academic excellence”—cares a lot about the environment, about sea turtles and the great Pacific trash-island and global warming. She stalks out from the under-construction Kook infrastructure, emerging behind drywall and ducking under scaffolding. "They're gonna have Japanese toilets with towel warmers." J.J.: "Of course they are, why wouldn't they?" Kiara: "This used to be a turtle habitat." I like this from J.J.—it’s an underwhelming first line, in some sense; everyone from John B to Pope to Kiara has gotten their proper, character-defining intro, and J.J. has been apparently overlooked, but something important about his character is being relayed here. Kiara can still be surprised and disappointed by the world’s falling short of her personal ideals. J.J. is long, long past that. 

Kiara, as the lone woman, is also the one comfortable with, you know, straight-forwardly expressing affection rather than cloaking it in indifference. Well, mostly. She looks up at John B.—"Can you please, not, kill yourself?" J.J., pragmatist-cynic, is mostly concerned that John's gonna drop his beer, which he does, and groans. "I'm not giving you another one." At that moment, hired security pulls up; Pope's first to notice and sounds the alarm. "Let's go boys," says Kiara, with a smile that shows how secure she feels, despite the apparent threat. It’s her, and her guys, against the world, and nothing can hurt them, and nothing can hurt her, and nothing will break them apart. Except time. But there’s no reason to think about that now, when high school feels eternal, when a summer is a lifetime. John and J.J. scramble down the scaffolding, dancing under the Tyvek logo, darting through a half-finished oversized living room. We get a Cops-style shaky action cam—the cinematography on this show can is one of its creative standouts—which follows the Pogues from a pit bull’s-eye-view, hopping fences and piling into their Mystery Van of a VW camper.

The security guard—a middle-aged, beer-bellied guy named Gary—chases after them on foot as the Pogue boys taunt him. "Check out Gary, gunning for a raise." "C'mon Gary, you're so close, you're so close," says J.J. before tossing him an empty PBR can. Kiara dutifully plays her role of both checking and amplifying the boys' bad behavior, as both the voice of conscience and their audience to shock. "You're gonna give him a heart attack," she protests; "Stop, stop." J.J. cools it, but balances the ledger through retort: "That sort of initiative is just begging to be punished." 

And that’s our cast. We’ll get proper intros soon, but it’ll just unpack what we’ve already discovered, in their dress and digs and one-liners. The camper zooms past a sign which welcomes them to the Outer Banks, "Paradise on Earth." John B. narrates for us, because it’s really his story. "It's the sorta place where you either have two jobs or two houses. Two tribes, one island." The haves and the have-nots. The set-up for a proper Romeo & Juliet arc, natch. The Pogues, of course, are the underdog have-nots, otherwise we couldn't root for them. Same reason punch-up jokes are more comfortable sources for laughs. Mind you, this whole “have-not” status does not, of course, entail anything so troublesome as our protagonists working two jobs—or even one job, for that matter. They'll have money troubles on this show, but mainly the sort that come from vandalizing thirty-thousand dollar boats, not everyday problems like paying for groceries and gas. Like all great teen dramas, the teens don’t actually go to school or work. The Pogues are on summer vacation,  which is why we won’t see any of them in school this season. Not that they’re working summer jobs either. Actual working class lifestyles tend to be monotonous and uneventful, a dynamic incompatible with the Teen Drama’s quota of adventure and sex. A few transcendent cinematic works in our time have squared the difference, see e.g. Adventureland. But the rest make do with fantasy and freedom. Duty, obligation, and constraint regularly rear their head on this show, but only ever as threats. The authorities will keep knocking, threatening to institutionalize our heroes—to ground them, put them in foster care, throw them in jail. But bail is swift, like how broken bones heal overnight, and there is never any prolonged interruption to our characters’ agency.

As the camper van cruises along the Banks, we get introduced to its two cultures—first the privileged “Kooks," with their immaculate marinas, their columnade plantations, their rolling golf courses. (Expensive boats, the legacy of slavery, and the reputation of #45, DJT.) Then the bus crosses a bridge with a middle-aged black man fishing beside a no-fishing sign. (Our ost quintessentially coastal South scene yet, from bayou to pluff mud.) Over the railroad tracks, so to speak. We’re toured around the South Side, "The Cut," with its mobile homes and run-down shacks. Home of the Pogues, our crew in question, so named after "the throwaway fish, lowest member of the food chain." John B: "The downside of pogue life is we're ignored and neglected. But the upside of pogue life is we're ignored or neglected. Which means we do whatever we want, whenever we want. The crew's hanging on John’s boat, the HMS Pogue: Pope is shirtless in a bucket hat, reading Kafka short stories, a huge black roach adorning the book's cover. Kiara's looking as fine as she ever will, in an olive bikini with African-Mediterranean ornaments and a rusty brown bandana, looking every inch a brown pirate goddess, notwithstanding the orange wired earbuds that pipe music from her smartphone. (What years is this? 2010?) John B., still with his trademark blue bandana and the addition of a baseball cap—backwards, natch—hauls a net full of sardine-sized fish—pogues, we must assume—onto the deck, where they spill out, squirming and suffocating in the closing scene of their short lives. J.J. says they’ll make good bait, a way to undermine the catch. Cycles of food chains: our kooks are “pogues” to kooks higher on the social pecking order—read, elites living anywhere that isn't the Carolinas. And our beloved pogues are kooks to these, more literal, pogues. And so on. That's how food chains work; power and identity are relative and relational concepts, never absolute ones; and there's always a bigger—or smaller—fish.

And now we get the proper introductions, the structure recapitulating the compressive first minute. The structure goes: "We're the Pogues; hear us roar; this here’s Loki; that there’s Thor." Name, role, origin story; difference recognized and ultimately subjugated to collective; everyone’s got a role in the micro-economy of the friend group. We see J.J. mowing the lawn, shirtless, with Calvin Klein abs—then surfing, then taking parts out of car engine. (John B: "Mild kleptomaniac and a future tax cheat.") The scene shifts to a kegger; Kiara's lecturing a long-hair with an acoustic guitar and a Solo cup: "Don't even get me started on microplastics..." We see her wearing rose-tinted hippy glasses, which she takes off and puts on J.J. in a little gesture we call "symbolic foreshadowing." "That's Kiara, or Key as we call her, and when she's not saving turtles, or listening to Marley, or getting a dolphin tattoo, she hangs out with us. I'm not really sure why though. She's a rich kid actually, foot in both worlds." Rich kid here in context means her dad owns a small fish’n’chips restaurant, a proper mom’n’pop affair with a couple wait staff that brings in annual grosses in the lower six-digits. Finally Pope: "The brains of the operation, finalist for the Lucas T. Vanderhorst Merit Scholarship, and the smartest person I know." Vanderhorst—like van der Woodsen, one of those names that breathes “Old Money,” Lucas no doubt being a descendent of good old Arnoldus, a South Carolina planter who commanded the local militia and served as state governor in the final years of the 18th century. Pope wants to be a coroner, apparently, and is a bit of an “oddball." "Doesn't matter. He was a Pogue." Once a Pogue, always a Pogue; we get a shot of the Pogues at sunset, staring into the horizon, Kiara the feminine energy that unites them, her spread arms bringing them together in a hug they would never initiate on their own. That's my crew, John B. tells us, shirtless as usual, blue bandana around his neck as usual, a kind of captain-on-shore, a stoic and troubled preacher on the pulpit, an Ahab after lost treasure. To recap: J.J.’s the brawler-cynic cum closet-sweetheart. Pope’s the bookworm and voice of civilization. Kiara’s the heart and conscience. John owns the boat and the hangout spot, provides the energy and narrative arc, and in most other ways is captain. He lives on an "old fish shack on the marsh"—the "Chateau," as his dad used to call it, before he "disappeared at sea." His mom bounced years ago, so it's just him right now, adolescent playing adult, which is another part of the Teen Drama fantasy, cf. Chuck Bass. 

But there’s always a bigger fish, and Child Protective Services is threatening to toss him in foster care. They schedule an imminent home visit from authorities—but then John B catches a break. Hurricane Agatha, a maelstrom of disruption, is about to shake up the status quo of the Outer Banks. The power grid will be out for weeks. Authorities and the local PD will be busy handling a thousand other responsibilities. The momentum that was disrupted—as it tries to reassert itself—and the new momentums engineered by the disruption—which struggle to maintain themselves—will drive the story-arc of our show. Some things that were on the surface will be submerged. And some things that were lying submerged will be brought to the surface. And all the opportunities and threats which emerge, and bring us out of routine normalcy into a proper routine-breaking plot, emerge from this one great disruption, the high winds and back-breaking waves of Agatha’s sea-storm.

But all that comes later. For now, it’s just another routine storm, and no one’s sweating it too serious. Pope and John B head out to surf the storm waves; Pope has his reservations—those aren't surfable waves, he protests—but John B bites back "Says who?" and they paddle past the break. This dynamic—this asymmetry in care and concern—is fundamental to understanding the show and how it evolves. It isn’t just that Pope’s more anxious or easily worried; it’s that he literally has more to lose. Half the Pogues—that is, John and J.J.—have nothing to lose. They don’t have families or futures. J.J.’s dad is an abusive alcoholic, which depending on your perspective is only slightly better, or slightly worse, than not having a dad at all. Both moms are out of the picture. Both J.J. and J.B. are academically truant; J.J. has a criminal rap sheet and J.B.’s not far behind. Whereas Pope and Kiara are probably bound for good colleges and solid middle-class jobs. They’re about to be seniors in high school; in a little over a year, Kiara will no doubt be studying marine biology at USD, and Pope will be at Columbia or NYU, wearing black turtlenecks and sipping box wine with future N+1 contributors who will meet his “Metamorphosis” and raise him Amerika. Whereas John and J.J.… will still be here, in the Outer Banks. Catching waves and going to keggers and getting in fist-fights with polo shirts. At least, that’s what would have happened. The friendship will prove more powerful than these life-scripts, and it will be simultaneously beautiful and tragic. That comes later: For now, we’re with Pope and John B as they buck and roll in the waves, catching a few, tossed by others. And we’re with John B when, cresting on his board, he sees an apparition on the horizon, a ghost ship tossing in the wind as it heads out to sea, as the hurricane descends. A confused—even worried—look comes across his face. Title screen: Outer Banks. 

[persephoneyss]

So Far.

Pairing: jeon jungkook x f!reader.

Genre: Yandere, dark themes, Angst, hybrid au!.

Summary: ❝He should make sure you never had the sole thought of having a chance to escape him. Obviously you couldn't do it with your swollen belly with his son, right? ❞

Warnings: Yandere behavior, obsession, harassment/mild stalking, humiliation, implicit murder, mention of suicide, shark hybrid!Jungkook, death threats, mating/breeding season, fear, is it cannibalism if it is a human eating hybrid?, Sexual relations dubc*n/nonc*n near the end very slightly created let me go:(, explicit creampie, oral sex (male and female receiving), forced pregnancy, rough sex uhg!, regular dirty talk, reader feels very embarrassed by everything, light voyeurism (Jungkook spies on reader while changing), nonc*n touching, past story in Jungkook's life that I hope you understand, slapping, hitting, slightly broken reader, unprotected sex (don't do this), cruel and scary Jungkook.

Number of words: 6k+

Order made by: jeonsookyun♥ (on wattpad)

︙Author's note: This fic was a request that I received on wattpad, I really liked doing it. It's pretty dirty so... well I hope you enjoy it.

Read the warnings well, this fic is a bit dark due to the contrasts in the scenes and also Jungkook is crazy and I hate him, but I love him:)... By this I mean that maybe I lost a lot of things that are very important and that I did not put in the warnings.

(Sorry for any mistakes, my first language is not English and I am not fluent either.)

Puedes leer este fic y más aquí en español.

So far.

You could never explain what the sea made you feel, something so big and mysterious, carrying waves that crashed against your feet on the shore.

You used to sit in that same place for as long as you could remember, your parents liked to walk on the sand together and holding hands. Faithful admirers of the beautiful landscape of the sun hiding on the horizon with its last rays, giving a meaningful last goodbye until the next day. The black cloak of the night covered the entire sky, along with a call from your mother advising that it was time to go home, your body perked up when you woke up excited to run into her arms and tell her about what you saw in the crystal clear waters, hidden in its depths.

Now, with her sudden absence, you could only tell your thoughts to the sea that loomed proudly before you. Its devastatingly strong waves, that for a few seconds you thought about obeying your partner who warned you about the danger of angry water, in days like this it was better to just avoid it.

However, even after all that you couldn't help but be curious to explore his darker side. The rocks collided with the water with ferocious roars, fear did not invade you at any time while you took your most reliable board, raising your body on it with the certainty that you would return to shore soon and could go home, you swam to the perfect place with a smile. Your body swayed slightly, you were standing riding the wave chosen for you by the sea, the air of a sunny day on your face, your eyes fixed on the golden sand waiting for you.

Perhaps you did not remember the fear that suddenly came to you after falling into the water that at that moment seemed deadly cold, a storm approaching from the horizon where the sun could no longer be seen completely, its light just a flash of a memory. You were trying to survive, swimming between the storm and the unthinkable, you would probably die drowned in the immense waves that you used to like to challenge with your board in hand, you would smile along with your fellow surfers who encouraged you to join them. All that seemed to be left behind, being washed away like sand. Your lungs did not give more and your energy to fight was low, your arms began to tire in a few seconds until you fell unconscious by a new wave dragging your body hard against a reef, hitting your head and back repeatedly.

The pain of that moment was your most recent memory, your vision clouded by the light of the new day. It was in that place where you found yourself in confusion and fear, your arms covering your chest and stomach asking for food. You wondered how long you were unconscious, and how the same sea that condemned you to such an experience was capable of taking you safely to that island paradise. It was quite small compared to others that you had managed to visit with your friends, it seemed to be hidden and not far from your home, you would never be able to explain how you never saw it before, or because nobody spoke about it. Visually was very beautiful, her sand almost white and without signs of having been disturbed.

A distinctive noise in the waters near the shore caught your attention, a sudden fright made you stand up ready to scream. Naively thinking that a diver had managed to find you and would call for help. However, your face changed to an expression of total terror when you managed to see the unique fin of a shark rising between the water and the sand that it seemed to be removed by the animal, causing you to not be able to see it correctly. You go back, leaving him alone and looking for wood or something similar to be able to make a fire for the night, you hoped you would not be long in that heavenly place. Your feet left mark on your silent paths, sometimes stopping to take some fruits from the trees, they seemed too well cared for as to be so hidden, the doubt growing in your head if it was someone's private island. The answers to your questions were given by your own eyes, a small solitary cabin located possibly in the middle of the island, it seemed a little decayed and its wood began to deteriorate with time.

It must have been abandoned for years, you thought for a few seconds before choosing to bravely knock on the door.

The only song of the birds fluttering the vegetation confirmed that there was no one inside and that if you were completely alone in the gigantic surroundings, you touch again as a precaution. Your hand trembled when the rusty knob moved, with the noise of the door opening, screeching of wood and worn metal invaded you, the smell of damp and earth made you recoil in disgust. Inside it didn't seem to be any better, there was some small furniture in various places, a bed and curiously ... a baby crib. You internally thank the owners of that mysterious cabin for leaving blankets and canned food, as well as firewood and a light bulb, you tried the light that to your relief turned on, a solar panel outside caught your attention. Maybe it wasn't a house, just a resting place.

You would never believe that someone wanted to live so lonely. You joke in your thoughts that maybe a hermit or monster lived there, you try busy putting some order to the place. You sweep the floor as your last task, your head poked out of the door when you heard a noise and you quickly grabbed a knife hidden in one of the drawers under the bed.

It was just rain.

Your body relaxed, closing the door behind you. You set a fire in the small fireplace, beginning to warm up and fleeing the darkness of the night with the light from the spotlight, your arms covered your body with melancholy. Everyone would surely be looking for you on that cold night, or possibly they already left you for dead. You sob almost unexpectedly, with fury against yourself, you should never have tried to tame the untamed, the sea dragged you against loneliness and I punish you for your pride by challenging it.

Your body fell against the soft sheets, covering you with them from the freezing weather. Your warmth could make you fall asleep, your eyes closed wearily, without remembering to close the door as a precaution.

Unaware of the dangers of the mysterious and unknown place, you slept in peace.

Jungkook watched you for a few seconds, he had never seen a human so closely, your relaxed and beautiful face managed to attract his attention immediately. Maybe he should be angry, he thought, you were a stranger invading his territory and even more precious than that, his home. Your body moved unexpectedly, causing him to panic and recoil. Your hands came out from under the sheet to hug yourself and shiver, you were shivering with cold.

In a desperate act, I pulled out two blankets from his favorite drawer, hidden under his crib mattress, covered you until you stopped shaking. The heat seemed to comfort you, a slight smile touched your lips briefly, I wish I could see more of your beautiful expressions, his hands itched to touch you and feel the softness of your skin, the lightness of your hair, and how full it would feel if Someday you would hold him tight She imagined presenting herself to you, offering to stay with him and be his friend, forever.

You seemed very comfortable there, you even ordered her home that could now also be yours.

He sat down next to you with a sigh, his face dangerously and tantalizingly close to you, his lips an inch from touching. You opened your eyes, the light of the new day in your sight. You smile, but your happiness doesn't last long, the door was open.

Fearful you take the knife, ready to attack anyone who is a danger, you walk around without noticing anything strange. You wince, entering the safety of the cabin again, and this time you shut the door as tightly as you can. You open a can of beans, and surprisingly manage to find several bottles of water. The person or family that lived there had to come often, even so you try to take Io as little as possible, rationing everything for days, you only had food and water for three weeks. Later, you would die of hunger or thirst, or perhaps from some infection or bite of some deadly insect.

Your clothes began to be uncomfortable, you look around the corners until you find a fairly well-cared dress, and some shoes that accompanied it. You change in silence, putting your clothes aside and then looking for a place to wash them.

You walk out the door, still unsure of being able to be calm in that place alone and with many dangers.

Your feet always leaving footprints behind you, your eyes follow the emptiness of the crystal clear water, you expected to see a boat or sign of life but there is only water, water and much more water around you. A trembling sigh escapes your lips, you look down for a few seconds before seeing a small and curious necklace buried shallow in the sand, your hands took it trying to find the owner, the photo inside was that of a woman, the black and white colors highlighting her beautiful and delicate face. She was very beautiful, your fingers touched the gold of that mysterious necklace, you thought that the sea had brought it in its calm waves that morning. You keep it in a small pocket that the dress carried, continuing on your way and looking for more signs of life, you want to be able to see a boat or fishermen doing their usual day. But no, only the song of the birds accompanied you eternally, until the rain fell again from the now gray sky, a storm as deadly as the one that took you to that island was present.

You ran through the trees, scared that you could not find the cabin that was your temporary refuge, the waves of the sea rising without compassion for anyone. The dress that you found in perfect condition now stained with dirt and wet from the drops that fell like tears, your feet almost slipped in the infernal mud. You closed the door as soon as you managed to enter, your trembling lips and cold skin forced you to search among all the dusty things in the place. Your steps froze like your heart, which stopped beating for a few seconds, a knock on the door scared you notably while your breathing failed in advance to know who would be behind the door and those knocks. Your hand with the knife in it approached, you exhale before asking indecisively.

"Who is?!" You scream, waving the knife in warning. Although the person could not see it.

The person seemed to hesitate just like you, shyly returned the question "Hello?" His trembling voice approached the door, knocking again but more softly, "Does anyone live here? The storm made me fall off my ... Boat, I got lost and I swam to this island. Can you help me?" He was silent, until her now weaker voice whispered a little "please."

You shook your head, you couldn't help him because you were also looking for someone to help you. Tears accumulating in your eyes from the frustration of not being able to say "No" to him at once, you put yourself in his shoes thinking about how cold he must feel outside, he sure was hungry and scared like you. In a moment of pity, you removed the first safety, not without first warning him that you had a weapon and not to try anything. You opened the door slightly to see him, he was young just like you, he was shivering with cold just like you, he was scared just like you.

"Enters." You say harshly, letting me pass you by to close the door this time with all decision not to open it again for strangers. "Sorry, I didn't expect to have visitors so soon."

He face showed how nervous he was, instinctively you took a sheet from the bed to give it to her with a small smile, he quickly accepted it by wrapping herself in it. Both remain silent, sometimes crossing glances and communicating without words, you were curious to know where he came from or why he seemed calmer now, perhaps like you he missed his home but preferred to keep it internally and for himself.

They had spent several days together, sometimes separated or too close together, his name properly told you on a dark night, when both were lying in the bed they shared when there was no other, Jungkook was his almost silent whisper, I look at you for what It seemed like an eternity until you fell asleep. It felt strange to be so far away in that narrow place, his body approached yours looking to feel you for a few seconds, his arms surrounded you knowing that you could wake up at any moment and probably see the pleasure he felt from being able to touch you. The lovely smell of your hair invading his mind, his erection jerking in his pants as his hands ambitiously reached down so he could grab your ass to smash his cock against you, his rapid breathing and moans being silenced by the pillow beneath him. He could still remember the first night, the one where you had no choice but to change in front of him, your flushed face gently asking him to turn around in a vague attempt to preserve your modesty. I accept, giving you a simple nod, you would never know that his eyes were constantly glued to your back as you changed as fast as you could.

Maybe he felt bad for abusing your trust, at no point did you turn your head to confirm that he wasn't looking at you, you just continued until you could give a short confirmation that you were ready.

He remembered every detail of you.

Your eyes widen, the sunlight coming through the open door with suspicion, you wake up so hurried and worried to look for Jungkook who was not by your side. He would never leave without warning you, you knew him perfectly, your legs seemed weaker with each day you spent on that island, you had also begun to wake up with your wet crotch, your excitement sliding between your thighs while you tried every morning to clean it before it Jungkook managed to notice. You thought you might have had some suggestive or pleasant dream, but that possibility seemed less and less possible as the days passed.

You walked out of the cabin, calling his name in fear that something bad had happened. His face appeared before you unexpectedly from among the abundant trees, he seemed much more serious than normal. And it was terrifying.

"Hey, where did you go?" You ask with a small grimace, your heart still pounding in your chest. Jungkook seemed to be quieter than a predator hunting defenseless prey.

His dark eyes surrounded you until you felt intimidated, you walk away noticing how close they seemed to be to each other. However, he approached again, taking steps towards you with the same hard gaze.

"Kook?" You whispered, your lips now the tempting fruit of sin. I sickly wished I could kiss you so hard and take your breath away with the brush of his lips.

"I-I'm sorry, I went looking for fruits..." he replied, with a sigh.

You nod, expecting to see the fruit he was supposed to bring, but instead in his hand were two fish hanging on a fishing line. Before you could ask, he was already telling you about his little adventure.

"I found a boat on the shore ... I suppose its owner lost it." He shrugged, starting to light the firewood outside the cabin to cook the fish. "No matter-..."

"What? Of course... II..." Tears began to fall from your eyes unexpectedly, thinking of finally leaving that infernal island. You sobbed, wiping your face and letting Jungkook hug you, his face showing his concern. "Kook... we'll go home!"

"To home?" I mutter puzzled.

"Yes! Where is the ship? We can use it to-..."

"Not."

Your face froze, "What do you mean?"

"T-the ship is ... destroyed" he smiled, almost mockingly seeing your disappointed face. "I could only find these fish there."

"I-okay ..." You whisper, your voice weak and a stifled sob. Your hands cover you, a chill suddenly reaching your body.

Although your face managed to show a small fake smile, that same night you spent hours crying under the sheets next to him. I try to get closer to you to comfort you in his arms, but you always pushed away insisting that you were okay. That everything was damn fine. Despite being physically and mentally tired, hurt and lonely, she was fine.

His eyes were always fixed on your empty face when you seemed to have lost hope in getting out or running away from him. He simply couldn't help but feel happy about your state... Broken. You seemed to be surrendered and it was so exquisite to the sickness of him, perhaps it was selfish or disgusting how he enjoyed using your mind blinded by sadness to approach you with cunning, seeking affection in your vulnerable state. He sweet words confused you.

Seeing you every morning dressed in the old clothes of her mother was beautiful in endearing aspects, your angelic and confused face reminded her so much of her. He could never know for sure why she decided one day to sink into the depths of the sea and abandon it to her fate at thirteen years old. Perhaps it was because of her deteriorated mental state, which made her fear everything, even her own son. Years later, she was able to find her thoughts written on yellowed paper over the years, the ink almost invisible but still readable and paranoid in her texts.

"Today on a day like the previous one I am still scared ... Oh! God forbid I live eternally grateful for not dying at the hands of my beloved son. Jungkook, my little one, for whom I left everything behind so as not to see him suffer in cruelty of society that condemns the different and new. Now I am afraid to sleep next to him, I heard some stories and studied enough to know marine animals, I am terrified to think of my child going through the times of reproduction of his animal part . Will he be able to control that abomination? I am afraid. Taking care of him was my greatest achievement but now fleeing from him will be my salvation.

I will not fall into the condemnation of the flames of hell burning my soul forever when he is able to try to take me with force and contempt for me."

He burned every page and sheet he could find, angry and humiliated. He never thought of being so repulsed by her, her progenitor and beloved first friend, she was with him for years. Until in a cowardly act, he fled at the hands of death. He thought frankly that if she hadn't killed herself so unexpectedly, he would have gladly put her hands on her neck and choked her if he ever didn't allow her to be by your side. Nor would he feel remorse for that.

Now, in his present he could only wait for you to fall further into your inert state. Every night, he hoped to see you sleep as peacefully as the first time, he could stare at you for hours and he wouldn't tire of your beautiful, perfect unconscious face lying in his bed.

If you had been smarter and less trusting, you could have followed him to her hiding place on the shore. The blood of his last victim stained on the sand that would soon be carried by the sea as a mere memory, it was a poor fisherman who had the tragic idea of ​​invading his territory and his safe home with you. He couldn't help but feel furious at the thought of that man helping you to escape from him and his eternal love for you, it was that same anger that perhaps forced him to slaughter the poor idiot and have a delicious feast with his corpse.

Years had passed since he returned to eating human flesh.

His mother let him go to the waters of the sea to ward off fishermen and boats, in an unforeseen act he attacked a pair of divers who tried to escape. He couldn't let them go. He just thought of all those stories his mother used to tell him about humans, how they killed and burned people like him. The woman begged him for mercy when he led them to shore, ready to commit their next crime, she seemed so scared when she couldn't even sigh and her boyfriend was already bleeding to death, she begged him to spare his life and solemnly swears that he would not tell anyone that he had seen it.

Even after all those minutes of tears, he could only strangle his neck.

He remembers burying her in a remote area of ​​the island so that his mother would not suspect, he slightly freed himself from a sentence in hell. Although he knew that anyway after death, he waited for an eternity next to his mother in incessant flames as she used to say that she touched the damned who went against the goodness of God.

Blasphemy.

"You ... do you miss someone right now?" Your voice came from the depths of you, with the same vulnerability and sadness as always.

He hum, without answering you or giving you an accurate confirmation. Your eyes lost looking at the flame of the campfire that they had improvised on another rainy day, a soft tear slipping down your cheek and falling directly into the fire that was not affected in the least, it vaguely reminded you of Jungkook, he did not seem to be affected for nothing, despite spending days with you on that invisible island, which was lost on the maps with magic.

"And you? Do you miss someone?"

You lowered your gaze for a few seconds, "Maybe ... but if I'm going to stay in this damn place forever, I'd better forget them." Your body crouched on the floor got up, ready to sleep and forget you asked in the first place. It would be better to forget. "Good night, kook."

Your body fell on the sheets, with a sigh and closing your eyes. You couldn't even remember your dreams or nightmares, not when you again witnessed the darkness of the night before you. A tickle distracted you, your gaze quickly lowered only to realize that you were naked, you tried to cover your exposed chest with the bed sheet but a growl stopped you, almost like a lethal warning of what you should never do.

Trying to cover yourself with him was a sin in his world.

Jungkook watched you for a few seconds, still leaving soft kisses on your exposed stomach as well as your entire body, his hands touching your soft hips and leaving finger marks. So familiar. He had gone years without a partner, his breeding seasons were torturous, even more so for a lonely male like him who could do nothing but masturbate day after day for the entire period, which seemed longer with each passing year, his part Human achieved almost powerless control of her attacks of go by not being able to free herself completely, she would never do it if she could not find a partner who was willing to her total domination.

But now, you were there. He stared at you, his hands never moved away from your hips to prevent you from letting go or escaping from him, your eyes were wide with fear and you were completely paralyzed, unable to do anything but take a deep breath.

The pain from his grip was unbearable, a groan of pain came from your lips so beautiful. Everything about you was as beautiful as spring, your eyes, your hair, your lips or even your expressions, in all your ways you were perfect for him.

It didn't matter if you knew it or not, he could take you and claim you as his because it was you who invaded his home in the first place.

"K-kook?" The courage you thought you had long ago vanished in those moments, your hands trying not to move to try to cover you. You knew it bothered him the first time you tried, so you could only pray that he was reasonable and he will let you go.

"Hm?" He concluded without paying attention to your calls, his fingers tracing small figures on your bare stomach. A smile played on his lips and for the first time in your life, you felt the horror of thinking that your eyesight failed you and that what you were seeing was an illusion.

His teeth... They looked like knives or knives, your head was totally blocked without being able to have the proper reaction. Maybe yelling would be appropriate, but that would only make things worse and you were in no position to risk dying at his hands.

You didn't want to do it either.

"Please ... don't do this," your pleas went on deaf ears. With that same sinister smile, his body rose above yours, which was quite a bit smaller in size.

He was still dressed, his ice cold hands touching your dry cheeks. You weren't crying and he could only feel a little disappointed, "I can ... And you know? I will," he scoffed leaving a short kiss on your trembling lips. "You better not try anything, darling. If you run away ... better find a good hiding place, although it will be useless because I know every part of this island and every fucking hole where you will try to hide," he gave a funny but graceless laugh. "In the end, I will find you and you will wish you drowned in the damn sea instead of falling here because I will hurt you so much that you will not believe that you are still alive."

His threats were so intimidating that they only made you wonder if you really wished you were alive now, escaping was not in your calculations right now. Your mind was in a trance for a few seconds, just staring at the ceiling hoping it was a bad dream, a nightmare or worse. However, you were pulled into reality with his lips leaving kisses down your neck.

"Your skin is so soft darling ... So light it wouldn't be difficult to rip it off you," her sinister flattery contrasted with her sadistic teasing and her equally terrifying laugh.

You could not believe that you were really living that, you imagined a thousand ways to die on this island but none involved being eaten by a psychopath who seemed to be unreal and monstrous. Your hands against your judgment, tried to push him away from you with force. His kisses soon became something more possessive on your fragile skin, leaving red marks that will soon bloom to purple, he was painting your conviction along with her name on you.

You were his, only his.

"Since I met you I wanted to do this to you ... I can't believe that now I will be able to fuck you with my semen until you are swollen with my son inside you" Another smile made its way onto he previously angelic face, now you could see it behind the mask he drew on himself to deceive you, it was not a white angel with golden wings, it was a black one who fell from heaven into sin and now, he was dragging you with him to the same abyss.

He was damned.

"Please ... I'll do whatever you want," you begged, covering your face in shame.

"You will do that, dear."

His hands held your hips, his head lowered even further, with his knees on the floor right in front of your spread legs and your pussy exposed. He reveled in your grief, you obviously struggled to block his way from his precious delicacy, but just as quickly as before he immobilized you with a threat that he clearly did not plan to carry out. He would never hurt you, after all for something he kept you alive day by day, you were his partner and soul mate.

Soon I would find a way that you would never leave.

"Your pussy must taste delicious honey ... I can't wait to cum inside of you and raise you to be the mother of my son", your face contorted at his dirty words.

Your gaze still on the ceiling, the moonlight now present, leaving evidence of your surrender. What was the use of waiting, you would never leave that place alive. Jungkook imprisoned you, leaving delicate kisses on the inside of your thigh causing you to stifle some involuntary gasps and moans, so sensitive, he smiled. He couldn't believe that he could finally taste you, his tongue quickly plunged into your pussy. A scream came out of your mouth, begging him to stop out of embarrassment.

You could feel it inside of you, your body reacting to the inevitable pleasure you felt.

You bite your tongue before moaning for him, you squirm in his arms that hold you tightly as he continues to savor all your arousal that soon begins to seep through the sheets beneath you. A particularly strong suction on your clitoris clouds your view, your hands hold his hair, you don't know what to do but unconsciously you bring him closer to you. Now begging him to make you have your much appreciated orgasm, his tongue moving deftly inside you.

But it always seems to stop just as you are about to touch your climax, you sob in frustration now begging that I stopped playing with you, pleasure blinding your reason.

"Please ... let me cum", you plead with all your remaining voice, closing your eyes so you don't see him directly.

"Aw honey, I can't ..."

"Why?!" You scream, releasing her hair from your grip. Your hand ready to finish the job by yourself.

"Because it is on my cock where your pretty pussy is going to squirt, I will leave you marked forever that you will not want anyone but me to fuck you" her words make you squeeze your pussy into nothing, with a needy moan . Her hand holds your arm, preventing you from touching without her permission. "Shh, honey, don't be a bad girl. Or I'll have to punish you."

You moan trying to free yourself, your pleas like before make it wet in her pants. It can see the stain on the front of these, the precum leaking from his cock desperate to fuck you so hard. In the bed they shared together, in the bed where they would always sleep together, in the bed where I touch you so many times without you noticing.

"Do you want me to fuck you love?" You desperately nod, your hips trying to find hers to brush your aching pussy against her hard cock. "Tell me baby say you want me to fuck you now"

"Ko-kook fuck me..." you loose between moans and whispers, still unsatisfied he smiles. His fingers go down to your folds to touch them softly, so delicate that you cannot feel it but your orgasm is still present. You just needed something that will fill you, his fingers plunge into you but without moving, just stretching your walls for him.

He didn't want to hurt you when he got out of control.

"It's not enough for me, darling ... If you can't do it right, I can't fuck you the way I want", his endless teasing takes you to a side so submissive and needy that it is impossible for you to tolerate more.

You needed me to fuck you so much.

"Please fuck me! Jungkook fuck me!" You scream, leaving your dignity aside. Your hands move desperately to bring him closer to you.

Another proud smile appears, growls just as impatient as you. Release your cock from his pants making you moan in anticipation, he was very big, you were sure that it was enough for him to sink into you to make you come around him. His cock crashing against his stomach, his hands caressing it for a few seconds just watching your body twist with pleasure.

You were perfect for him, he couldn't wait any longer.

"Suck me." He ordered, your face went blank. You quickly got into four though, crawling across the bed towards him. Your body sitting on your legs, your shaking hands stroking his cock a few times.

"Good girl..." A moan accompanied by praise from him was enough to make you squeeze again around nothing.

Your mouth opened, taking it as far as you could, which was less than half. Grunts and groans came from his pink lips, his hands on your head guiding your movements, he never stopped having control over you.

"Enough honey or I won't be able to fill you with my cum, you don't want that right?", A nasty laugh from him in a hoarse voice, you denied so absorbed in his game as to think twice.

You only wanted something from him, while he wanted everything from you.

Soon, you find that nothing really turns out the way you want it to.

He gently pushed you against the sheets, his body lunging against yours helplessly underneath. He took a few seconds to observe you and preserve the beautiful memory of you, giving your whole life to his hands. He would take better care of you than before, after you got pregnant with him he could do everything for you and give you the world if you asked him.

Eager, I lower his hands to squeeze your breasts, subtle moans coming from your lips and whispering to fuck you. His cock got even harder if possible, he held your legs in his arms so he could enter you without any problem. He thought about turning your back but he wanted to see you without missing any of the cute expressions you made.

"I love you..." he whispered, placing a chaste kiss on your knee before burying his cock in your tight, wet pussy. His arms are on either side of your head, his cold, calculating eyes staring at you.

You thought you saw a flash of affection in them, but it disappeared so quickly that perhaps it was an illusion of the moment. You could feel it inside him, his cock crashing against your walls, you feel the pleasure that runs through you.

You close your eyes, curses come from his lips so close to your face, you can feel his breath against your cheek. Silent moans in your throat, your hand clenches into a fist to avoid screaming in ecstasy.

"Cry honey, do it every damn day I fuck you in this damn bed. So hard," he growled, his thrusts were soft as if he was trying to take time to get you used to it.

"Please..." You sob, not really knowing what you were asking. Which goes faster? What will not get you pregnant? Or that he will set you free? You had lost your thoughts long ago.

His arms folded, coming closer to yours. Your head was to one side, his lips sought yours but surprisingly you refuse to kiss him. "Kiss me," he commands, his voice raised in dominance.

You deny again, your hair sticking to your sweaty face with the frantic movements of your head to move it away from your lips.

"It's not a question, _____... Kiss me now."

"Not!" You scream, your hands in fists hitting his firm chest. Jungkook can't know what happened to you, you seemed so willing a few moments ago and now you were, albeit weakly, trying to free yourself from him. "No, I do not want to!"

"Enough", he tries to grab your arms but you continue with even more force. "Stop!"

At last, he manages to grab your wrists with one of his hands, now you were motionless again just looking at him with fear. He fucking hates it, he doesn't want you to walk away from him in fear, but he can't help but feel powerful with your eyes shining with unfallen tears. You looked so beautiful.

In an unexpected act, you manage to whisper as confidently as you can, "I hate you."

His heart aches inside him, his free hand holds your face so that you will look directly at him, angry black orbs making you moan, the pain of his grip on your chin that grows harder. "I wasn't expecting anything less than thoughtlessness from a whore like you, hm? Dirty bitch." His hand rises into the air before slamming into your right cheek with all the strength it can muster.

A tear falls from the same cheek, getting lost on the pillow below you. Your face burns, but you don't have time to cry, his thrusts turn wild, as if he wants to hurt you.

And maybe, deep down inside of him, he wants it.

The tip of his cock crashing hard against your G-spot, the lower part of your stomach clenches, you know that you are going to cum around him but you do nothing to prevent it. Just squeeze your eyes, it will pass, it will soon be over, you whisper to yourself in comfort.

Your wrists are released from his grip, you hope to hug yourself now, but Jungkook is already taking one of your hands to hold it. Interlacing his fingers, as if they were lovers surrendering in a night of passion and love.

"I love you, I love you, I love you" he murmurs incessantly, leaving kiss after kiss on your face that he hit before. "Say you love me please"

His hips do not stop being implacable against yours, the lewd noise of skins colliding fills the environment, you lose yourself without heeding his request. Jungkook shakes you in his arms, his thrusts slowing down with his near orgasm.

"Say you Love Me, _____"

Your mouth closes, he growls angrily accelerating his rough thrusts again. He can feel when you come on his cock, a sigh leaves his lips, without stopping even though you try to get away from the over stimulation and without taking any more from him.

"What a good girl, coming around my cock so hard." They scoff, "I bet you want me to fill you up, right?"

You don't have the strength to deny it again, you just accept it.

"I will make you stay with me forever, love. You will take my son, we will have a family and you will never leave my side."

He felt perfectly how you tightened around him, his semen running inside you and filling your walls with white. He smiled, his breath against your face, your chest rising and falling as your eyes closed with exhaustion. You couldn't take it anymore, you wanted to sleep forever, because if you woke up you would be in an eternal nightmare.

His cock slid out of you, his hand quickly went to your pussy dripping with his seed and your arousal, his fingers took a little of both liquids to look at his fingers, shining in the darkness. Lasciviously I wipe them on your cheek, you were asleep to stop him. His fingers sank into you again, pushing his cum into you.

He had to make sure that you never had the thought of having a chance to escape from him.

Obviously you couldn't do it with your swollen belly with his son, right?

So far.

So cruel.

persephoneys© All rights reserved, copying / translation or adaptation without permission is prohibited.

masterlist │ wattpad │ kofi │ previous fic.

(Questions are always welcome, any questions about the fic will be answered with pleasure)

[darlincollins]

dang it, now you got me thinking about Marine Biologist and Rehab Worker Angel who met David out at sea while tracking a newly released animal to make sure they're ok. David misunderstands and confronts them, of course, Angel just thinks he's amazing since they've never met a mer before.

meanwhile Asher saves sufer!babe who got caught in a sudden storm and was pushed out to sea while night surfing. keeps them calm while dragging the cold and tired babe back to shore. Now babe gets out to sea on their board on purpose so they get to chat with Asher as he tows them back to mainland. that is until Asher finds them a little cove to meet in.

OMG YOU'RE READING MY MIND i was thinking about marine biologist angel tracking unusual shark sightings and therefore accidentally stalking david but i love that so much too

so many flirting opportunities because angel really has no fear even though david is doing his best to act terrifying

SURFER BABE THAT'S SO CUTE... help i love that so much omg would you mind if i used it in the fic?

[lunarliza]

JJ Maybank Must Die | Chapter 3: Fanny Packs

fuckboy!JJ x Reader

series masterlist | prev. chapter | chapter one

JJ Maybank is the island’s most infamous fuckboy- not that you ever cared. But when a group of tourist girls come to your surf shop crying to you about him, you agree to help them plot revenge. Sabotage is all fun and games, until you find that the playboy you were sworn to ruin happens to be falling head over heels for you.

Yes, this is based on John Tucker Must Die lol

For once, you finally felt like everything in life was falling into place.

Sophia dropped off your Venus Panic ticket last night, you booked a ferry to the city for September, you just earned another ‘employee of the month’ title which basically meant you were a shoo-in for the scholarship, and you noticed in the mirror that your ass was looking just a tad bigger.

You were sorting out the application clipboards one afternoon when you heard the ding of the front door opening. In came a cocky head of blonde hair looking as smug as ever. You dropped the stack on sight. 

How did he know where you worked? Was he stalking you? Should you file a restraining order? 

“Uh, can I help you?” 

“So, this is where you’ve been hiding all this time, huh?” JJ crossed his large arms and surveyed the tiny shop.  

“Yeah... how the fuck did you find me?” You bent down to hastily pick up the mess. After the incident at the Boneyard on Saturday, you weren’t expecting to run into him again for the rest of the summer. You didn’t think he’d be this relentless. 

He casually shrugged. “Eh, I just asked around town for a y/n and they told me you worked here. Still amazes me how I haven’t seen you around.” 

You rolled your eyes. As if you and JJ didn’t have English together just this past semester. Nevermind living on the same island for how many years. 

“Anyways,” he continued, I came here to sign up for surfing lessons.” 

You flinched your nose. “You’re telling me you’ve lived here all your life and you don’t know how to surf?” 

This was coming from the boy that won ‘Most Likely to be a Famous Professional Surfer’ in your 5th grade yearbook. 

“Hey, it’s been a while since I’ve hit the water. Maybe I need a refresher.” He flashed you a shit-eating grin- the kind girls around here would swoon over. But in that moment you were just plain uncomfortable. 

“Sorry, we’re booked for the summer.” 

He inched closer to the counter. “Well, at least let me take you out to dinner. Come on, when are you off?” 

You glanced side to side in agitation, racking your brain for some witty remark.

“December.” 

“I’m serious, y/n. I want to take you out! You know, get to know you better,” he prodded. 

You weren’t born yesterday. But he sure was if he thought he was going to take you out anytime soon. Or ever. 

“Yeah well, I think I’ll pass. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have my last session of the day in ten minutes.” 

Luckily, you were able to slip past him and out to the beach for your beginners’ class. It was a small group- an old couple and two boys around the age of nine. 

You greeted them with you usual work-charm and had them set their boards around you. Just as you situated yourself, you hear a faint “Wait!” followed by JJ sputtering towards the pack with a board under his arm. 

You wanted to rip your hair out. 

“What the hell are you doing?!” you spat, startling the old couple with you vulgarity. 

“I’m here for the lesson.” 

“Like I said,” you sneered through gritted teeth, “We’re booked.” The glare on your face was very, very potent, and you knew this wouldn’t be good for the reviews. 

“Yeah, your co-worker in there told me one of the guys that was supposed to be here said he couldn’t make it. So that leaves a spot open for me.” 

Cody. That rat! 

You sighed in defeat, motioning for him to situate next to the younger boys. “Fine, just take a seat and be quiet. You already missed the safety instructions!” 

All throughout your session JJ was an absolute pest. He could have at least played the part of someone who’s never picked up a surfboard in their life. Instead, every time you went into detail about a specific step, he’d pitch in his own comments no one asked for. 

“Well actually, it’s better if you add a jump when you stand up, you’ll go faster.”

“Well actually, if you try to pivot your board when they wave’s under you, you can ride it longer.”

“Well actually, if you attempt a big wave first, you’ll learn how to balance better.”  

The next ‘well actually’ you heard, you were going to fling JJ to the sharks.

When it was time for the group to hit the water, you tried to guide them through the motions, but everyone was too busy listening to JJ ramble on and on about his personal tips. 

For the remainder of the session, you sat on the shallow end, watching JJ have a rat-a-tat time with your customers. Blowing away a stray hair that fell on your face, you continued to glare at the light-haired boy cheering on the kids as they attempted the baby waves. 

There was a point where one of them leaned over onto JJ’s board and threw their arms around him. You softened at bit at the scene. It was very cute. 

Once the hour was over, you called everyone back to shore to give your closing remarks. JJ darted up behind the lot, sparklets flying everywhere as he shook his wet hair. He beamed at you, but you just averted your eyes. 

While everyone headed back to the hut, you tucked the cash you were given into your fanny pack and gathered your items to leave. That was, until you felt the player boy grab onto your hand. 

“Hey, the waves are absolutely insane out there. This is your last session today right? Come surf for a bit, you didn’t really get to do much earlier,” he offered, blinking down at you with his sky-blue eyes. 

“Well I would have if someone wasn’t running my class.” 

JJ let out a soft chuckle. “Look, everyone was happy with the way it went. And I’ll even tell your boss that you’re an amazing instructor. Which, to tell you the truth, you are.” 

You huffed and picked up your board to tread back into the water. You had to give it to him, though. The waves were indeed on fire that afternoon.

You were able practice a few moves you were working on, executing them perfectly. JJ, too, was flexing his tricks and you made a few mental notes to try a few of them later when he wasn’t around. 

When a pipeline wave began rolling your way, JJ tossed you a devilish grin, looking like a kid ready to break something. It was supposed to be one of the hardest ones to surf on. 

“Bet you won’t get this one!” he hollered. You flipped him off with a smile. 

“Bet I will.” 

You both eyed the target, determination evident, as you paddled. JJ quickly bounced up once it tumbled in while you waited a couple seconds after. 

Immediately, he plunged from his board while you expertly pivoted and glided along the tide. Poking his head from the water, he yelped seeing you nail it. 

Afterwards, you plowed back up the sand with him while he raved about what just happened. “That was so sick y/n! It was a pipeline! A fucking pipeline! I’ve never seen anyone do that before.” 

You blushed and tucked your hair behind your ear. “Well, it’s kinda my job.”

As you reached the shop, he turned to face you. “Yeah, speaking of, when do they give you a break around here again?” 

You chuckled and shook your head. “JJ, I had fun out there, but I’m still not going out with you.” 

“Alright! Alright! I get it. Can’t hate a guy for trying.” He held his hands up in defeat. 

You bid him goodbye and started getting ready to close the store. 

Later that evening, you met Sophia and the others at Annalise’s condo, spilling the beans on what happened. They all collectively gasped and hung onto their seltzers. 

“He actually came back?” Maia repeated as Arabella anxious gulped her drink. 

“Yup! Bothered me for my entire session and everything. God, he’s so delusional thinking I’d actually go on a date with him.” 

All the girls giggled except for Annalise who stared at the ground in deep thought. “But what if... you did?” she finally spoke. 

You grimaced. “Why on earth would I do that?” 

“No, like, fake date him,” she re-emphasized, “Think about it- you can fake-date him and we’ll go on your dates and sabotage the fuck out of him! Then, for the cherry on top, you can dump him before he even gets the chance to run! It’s the perfect ploy guys! We need to make sure he never messes with any girl ever again.” 

“Uh, I don’t know,” you scratched your head, “Can we really pull it off? It sounds so messy don’t you think?”

“Relax, we’re not killing him,” Annalise assured, “Also, it’s what he deserves! He’s broken practically every heart on this island. It’s time we take a stand in the name of our womanhood!” 

“That, I agree with,” Sophia added and the other two nodded. 

You were kind of shocked that Soph would be on board with such a preposterous plan. But, then again, this wasn’t the worst thing she’s ever agreed to. 

“You know,” your best friend continued, “I heard after you ditched him at the Boneyard, he hooked up with Emma Cohen the same night and ghosted her too. The boy just won’t stop!” 

Arabella gasped. “See! Rejecting him just isn’t enough! We need to kick him straight in the balls!” 

They did have a point. A twisted, ridiculous point. But you weren’t all gung ho about being the one to beat JJ at his own game. You- the girl who couldn’t even get Pope Heyward to take her to a dance. 

“All you’d have to do is bear him for a few dates. I’m sure we can take care of the rest,” Maia noted. 

Reluctance was still evident on your face. You could tell Annalise was getting desperate. “You know, y/n, I saw all the UVA gear on your locker at the shop. My dad’s best friends with the chancellor. He owes my family a lot of favors. How about I make a deal with you. If you do this for us, I’ll have my dad write you a rec letter and talk to his friend. You’ll be pretty much guaranteed a spot at UVA when you apply.”  

You let out an exasperated breath. Now that was an offer you couldn’t refuse. You wanted to put up more of a fight, but you didn’t want to let an opportunity like that slip from your fingers.

“Alright,” you sighed, “Fine. You sold me with UVA. Count me in your little scheming game again.”

Your friends cheered and clinked their drinks, eyes hungry for revenge. You sat back meekly and sipped yours, knowing the next few weeks were going to be an absolute train-wreck. 

“But wait!” you raised in the midst of the group’s plotting , “I shooed him away today. What makes you think he’ll be back to ask me again?” 

“You rejected him twice today?” Arabella questioned. You gave her a quick nod. 

“Oh girl, he’ll definitely be back.” 

-----------------------------------

Sure enough, JJ was back at the hut bright and early the next morning when you started your shift. 

“It’s you again,” you greeted as he leaned his arms against the counter, flashing you a smirk. 

He had on black aviators and a gray crewneck. For a second he seemed like a cute, innocent little puppy. Until he opened his mouth. 

“Don’t act so coy, babe, you know you’re happy to see me.” 

Oh God. This was the guy making half the island bawl in tears? You really couldn’t wrap your head around it.

You sighed, ignoring his corny-ness. “What do you want? We’re booked for the day.” 

“Ouch, is that any way to treat a customer?” He pretended to have gotten shot in the heart. 

As if on cue, Cody’s stocky legs strolled out of the back room, acting like he owned the place. He slid behind the counter to face you, disregarding JJ. You scowled and rolled your eyes.

“Y/n one of my customers had a complaint yesterday,” Cody stated.

“What? They had a shitty instructor? I could’ve told them that,” you shot back nonchalantly, inspecting your bare nails in disinterest. 

From the corner of your eye, you could see JJ snort in amusement. 

“Actually,” he prevailed, “They were complaining that their board was wobbly because someone let their customers take all the new ones.” 

You remained emotionless at his petty grievance. “What? It’s not my fault I don’t make my students do a hundred push ups at the start of the session. Maybe quit the crossfit and then they’ll actually leave better reviews.” 

Cody narrowed his eyes. “My students are grateful for my complimentary body-weight routine! They need to be fit for the waters. Whatever, stop fucking taking all the good boards! You’re taking away my customer experience, my good reviews, and my scholarship!” 

He proceeded to storm out the front door to his first set of victims for the day. You shot daggers at his back before JJ’s giggling snapped you back to reality. 

“Done,” JJ said, lifting his eyes from his phone.

“What are you talking about?” 

“I just left a bad review for that guy on your website.” 

Your eyes widened. “What do you mean?” 

JJ flipped his screen to you with the post pulled up. You read it out loud. 

“Do not recommend having Cody as your instructor. Made me do a hundred push ups before I got in the water, voice was too demanding, and shorts were uncomfortably short.” You erupted in laughter and playfully swiped his arm. “No way JJ!” 

“What?” he grinned and pocketed his phone. “Dude was being a real asshole to you.” 

You lightened up a bit at his kind gesture. Well, kind to you.

“Anyways, look,” he went on, “I know we might’ve started off on the wrong foot yesterday, but I wanted to come here and ask you out again. Properly.” 

You opened your mouth to speak, but he persisted with his rehearsed spiel. 

“And before you say no, I just want to say that it won’t be nothing grimey or weird. Just dinner. Tonight. It’s not gonna be the best night of your life or the worst, I just wanna get to know you.” 

You sighed and cocked your head to the side. “If I say yes will you leave and stop bothering me while I’m at work?” 

“Abso-fucking-lutely.” 

You blinked in disinterest. “Pick me up at seven. And don’t be late.”

--------------------------------

note: dUN DUN DUN!!! 

chapter four

tags: @obxlife @rudyypankow @yeehaw87 @ilymarkchan @jellyfishbeansontoast @tangledinsparkles @toloveortobeinlove @pixelated-pogues @normatural @teamnick @drizzlethatfalls @hazelgirl355​ @wicked-laugh​ @jjmaybankswife​ @ponyboys-sunsets​ @5am-cigarette​ @everydayimfangirling​ @angvelics​ @poguecollins​ @xealia​ @floridabornandraised​

[moccahobi]

It’s Raining Sharks Part 1 [TaeGi]

Summary: A sharknado! They’re real! Follow surfer Tae, badboy Yoongi, drunk Jimin, and intelligent Namjoon as they try to survive!

Genre: Sharknado AU, Horror (if you count sharknado as a horror movie), action, angst, 

Warnings: Gore, Excess alcohol use, grossly incorrect use of sharks, smoking, cussing, blood, a few sharks eat people, sharknado, guns, major character death

WC: 3.7k

A/N: This is for @thebtswritersclub​‘s monthly prompt! This month is monsters! And... @aroseforyoongi​ wanted a sharknado au! So... BOOM! And I am activly working on a part 2! And is also my submission for the Taegi square for @btsholidaybingo​!

Happy screams filled the cloudy skies as adults and children alike were running and playing along the soft sand. Frothing white waves crashed in the surf, people riding on top of them with concentrated faces. Despite the cloudy skies, it was a clear day and the lifeguards on duty were spread out on their perches, relaxing and taking the job easy. 

One of them, a caramel skinned man with deep purple hair and classic red lifeguard swim trunks on was even reading instead of doing his job. A slender finger pushed his round (and very dirty) spectacles back to a secure spot on his nose, the pair seeming to slide down endlessly in the heat of summer. Every once in a while, he raised his eyes and looked around the beach slowly to make sure that everything was ok and when everything was ok (as it always was), he went back to reading. 

Next to the reading lifeguard was a good looking brunette with sharp eyes and strong brows sprawled out on a rainbow beach towel, his other supplies sitting in the sand next to him. He’d been training for the past hour, his small speedo gently cupping and accentuating his body while allowing him to tan almost every part of him. Once he felt like he had been tanning for long enough, he got up and started to apply more low spf sunscreen. Through thick brows, the brunette checked out the lifeguard, his pink tongue momentarily peeking out and running across his lips, a small mustache and goatee framing them. The lifeguard didn’t notice or didnt care. 

Once the sunscreen had dried, the brunette took out a wetsuit from his duffle bag and got suited up, his board resting just a little ways away. Once suited, he picked up his board and ran off to the water. Silently, he looked back at the lifeguard to see if he was watching. His eyes were glued to whatever book he brought with him. 

In reality though, the water wasn’t nearly as safe as everyone thought it was. Rough skinned, mangled fanged sharks on their migration path south were passing by the beach. Blood thirsty and hungry, they could easily mistake a swimmer or surfer for a tasty snack. Yet as long as they didn’t breach, no one seemed to pay notice of the stalking swimmers as they leisurely patrolled from below, looking for a quick meal. One of the sharks wasn’t too stealthy though. It breached the surface of the water and its fin caught the attention of one of the working lifeguards. Very quickly after the fin was spotted, lifeguards were blowing their whistles, putting up a red danger flag and helping to get people out of the water. None of the sharks even had a nibble before the waters were cleared of people.  

Shortly after that, the purple haired lifeguard was back to reading his book and counting down the minutes until he could clock out and drink at the nearest bar. He had forty five minutes left. At the parking lot was the brunette, now in an unbuttoned hawaiian shirt (his chest was on display for all to see) and blue board shorts. He’d begrudgingly trekked back to his car after the red flags were raised, upset at only catching one good wave. The only thing that could have made his day worse was if it rained. That would completely ruin his plans of drinking a smoothie and relaxing in the sun. 

The sour stench of cigarette smoke drew his eyes up to a somber looking man in dark blue skinny jeans and a black leather jacket, his lips loosely puckered around a cigarette. He took one last drawl before throwing it on the ground and snuffing it out under chunky black boots, a wink shot at the surfer as he did so. 

Slowly he licked his lips and gave the brunette a once over, “I’m Yoongi.”

“I’m Taehyung.”

“Would you want to have a drink with me?”

“Sure.”

“Now?”

“Sure.”

“Well then… sure.”

Yoongi started to walk towards the closest bar as Taehyung quickly locked his car and ran to catch up with the gloomy man that he felt an attraction to. The two of them walked to the bar in silence, Yoongi focused on getting a drink in him and Taehyung struggled to find something to talk about. Once seated at the bar, Yoongi ordered two scotches.

“Oh. I don’t drink. I’ll have a sprite though!” Taehyung told the bartender.

Yoongi grunted, “How come?”

“I don’t like feeling drunk. Plus I don’t find most alcohol tasty.” 

“Makes sense. Alcohol is an acquired taste. I remember not liking it when I first had it.”

“And you like it now?” 

Yoongi snorted, “Yeah. Otherwise I wouldn’t drink it. Getting drunk is fun and all but I want to enjoy what I drink as well.”

While the two continued to talk (after finally finding something to talk about), the purple haired lifeguard came in, finally done with his shift, the man making a b-line to one of the bars regulars and a long time friend: Jimin. He had pastel pink hair that made him stick out like a sore thumb in the bar and always reeked of vodka… even when he wasn’t at the bar.

“They say a hoard of sharks are coming this way. Should we be scared, Doc Namjoon?” His words were slurred and he looked over at Namjoon with hooded eyes as he downed another shot of vodka. 

Namjoon snorted and rolled his eyes, “Of course not, Jimin. What the hell kind of conspiracy theories do you watch? Most sharks are completely harmless to humans. Some even really enjoy human interaction.”

“I watch really really…” Jimin smacked his lips, “Good things. Like three am documentaries on the… science channel.” 

“Wow. You must be so smart!” 

“I am! Like… I read one about… WOAHHH! You wouldn’t believe it,” Jimin giggled and grew animated, “A fucking tornado that… it… it sucked up sea life and took it allllll on land! It was… insane!”

“Sounds like a conspiracy theory. Or someone who doesn’t understand how nature works.”

“It’s true though! I promise!”

Namjoon snorted and gently patted Jimin’s shoulder, “Sure, buddy, and the movie The Meg is written about a real live event. Megalodons are totally real.”

“Well now you’re just being mean. Who's to say that sharks can’t be sucked into a tornado and survive?”

“Logic.” 

The two of them settled into a comfortable quiet, Jimin watching the nearest tv and Namjoon reading his book. The bar animated and alive as people celebrated a good day and relaxed after a hard day. Occasionally one could hear the loud laughs of a good conversation from Taehuyng and Yoongi, the two seeming to have hit it off well. The life in the bar suddenly stopped when the walls around them started to creak and groan, high winds pushing against them angrily. The only noise that one could hear was the newscaster on the tv talking about a tornado warning in the area.

Namjoon sighed and shook his head, turning to Jimin and speaking, “Whelp, you can’t drive and we should get somewhere safer than the beach so… come on up, Jimin.”

“What?! Namjoon, we have had so many tornadoes, why would this one possibly be different?” Jimin complained, grabbing the bar stool he sat on nonetheless and following behind Namjoon. 

“The fact that you haven’t been hunkering down is alarming.” Namjoon sighed and shook his head, not even paying mind to Jimin trying to steal the bar stool.

Before they even made it halfway across the bar, something heavy hit against one of the bar walls and shook the whole establishment. Everyone stilled as Yoongi slowly got up and looked out the window but aside from the grey skies of an approaching tornado, there wasn’t anything they could see.

WHAM!

Yoongi ducked down quickly, narrowly avoiding a whole shark as it came flying through the window, its tempered glass shattering into millions of small cubes. The thing flopped around angrily biting at anything and everything it possibly could. People anxiously jumped out of the way and ran towards the exit, even the bartender abandoned his post to leave the building. Yoongi was the first of the four left in the bar to reach, him grabbing one of the stools and jabbing it furiously at the shark with an angry yell. One of the dull legs of the seat punctured the sharks rough skin as blood spurted out from around it. 

Yoongi stabbed the shark a few more times, a grunt leaving him as he did so before the shark eventually stopped snapping at its surroundings. 

“WHAT THE FUCK! THAT WAS A FUCKING GREAT WHITE THAT-” Namjoon couldn’t believe what he just saw. 

A great white shark was flung through the bar’s window by a tornado.

“A SHARKNADO! I TOLD YOU IT COULD HAPPEN!” Jimin yelled happily, climbing over the bar to grab the entire bottle of tequila.

“Wha… what the hell?” Taehyung muttered, anxiously looking at the shark as if it was about to come alive again and kill him.

“It’s ok Taehyung. I will protect you. You have a big car right? I don’t think it would be safe for me to ride my motorcycle home.” Yoongi asked, turning his attention to Taehyung and trying to comfort the shocked man.

Taehyung could only focus on the blood splatter on Yoongi’s face as he silently nodded, opening and closing his mouth anxiously as he tried to formulate more words. 

“E-excuse me?” Namjoon spoke up suddenly, interrupting the tender moment between Yoongi and Taehyung and blushing as he did so, “Y-y-you probably don’t know me but I see you around a lot and I drank too much to be able to drive right now and,” He looked over at Jimin who was cuddling his chair as he nursed the bottle of tequila, “My friend is not in a state to drive… could you drive us to a safe place too? I promise we aren’t bad people!”

Yoongi coughed and gave Namjoon a once over, clearly not liking the idea.

“Namjoon, right? We’ve talked a few times. You’re the lifeguard who never actually works.”

Namjoon nodded.

“Sure… you can… just please make sure your friend doesn’t vomit in my car.” 

At that the four of them cautiously exited the bar before making a run (well as fast of a run as possible with Jimin) as people around them panicked and sharks were crashing into various objects. Namjoon even watched in horror as a large goblin shark crashed into his beloved lifeguard tower and started to eat the wood! Goblin sharks never got this close to shore, let alone on it! What type of craziness was this?!

By the time that the four of them had managed to get into Taehyung’s car, a fucking megamouth shark plowed through the bar. A gnarled brick and wood pile laying where the bar once was. 

“WHAT THE FUCK! WHAT THE FUCK! THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING! THIS ISN’T LOGICALLY POSSIBLE! TWO DEEP FUCKING SEA SHARKS JUST… WHAT THE FUCK!” Namjoon was yelling, tightly holding onto Jimin in fear as he looked out as flying sharked swallowed people whole.

 “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING, DUDE?! DON’T LEAVE- HE’S LEAVING THE CAR WHY IS HE LEAVING THE CAR?!” Namjoon continued to yell as Yoongi ran to his motorcycle and grabbed his concealed gun. 

“Woah. Yoongi, I don’t know about having a gun in here.” Taehyung said quietly as he cautiously eyed the gun that Yoongi clasped tightly. 

“Taehyung, how else are we going to fight these sharks? We don’t have another stool… other than… What’s your name?” Yoongi leaned back and looked at Jimin who scoffed and said his name. 

Taehyung sighed and shook his head before he started driving, quickly trying to drive away and avoid the flying sharks. Before their car could even get a mile, a large wave crashed over them and pushed Taehyung’s car almost half a mile away from where they had started. It shook the car violently and they could hear some sort of things hitting his car with loud THUMPS and THWAKS as water rushed by them. For the four of them, it felt like the moment was going to last a lifetime (and possibly be their last), but it only lasted half a minute before they had stopped moving, maybe an inch of water coating the ground now. 

When the waves finally did stop, the car was dead silent, Yoongi having instinctively grabbed Taehyung’s hand and Namjoon fearfully holding onto Jimin as he looked anxiously out at the car. 

Taehyung looked down at Yoongi’s hand and blushed, gently intertwining their hands before he looked around. He couldn’t be sure from the sharks squirming around the land and biting at everything in their path, but he was fairly positive that at least one of the things that hit their car was not a shark. Carefully he surveyed the road now in front of him. There didn’t seem to be any real dangerous things in the road that could pop one of their tires and with that in mind he once again started to drive, the car silent and tense. 

Of course none of them were prepared for what was to come. No one in the entire city would ever be prepared for the monster that the tornados had seemed to conjure up. The tornado seemed to suck up a beast that was more ferocious and scary than any of the other ones combined. And it was angry. Very angry.

Above the water, a water filled tornado had already made its way on land, spewing sharks every which direction that were causing mass destruction. From the tornado itself consuming whole buildings and leaving rubble behind to sharks flying angrily through the air and consuming anything that got in their paths before eventually dying from a lack of air, nothing and no one seemed to be safe. 

“All I am saying is that you often see these waves come in bouts of three… the last of which is always the strongest. If you really want us to get to safety, you need to put the pedal to the medal, Taehyung. I don’t want to be around water by the time the third wave comes.”

“I get that, I really do, Namjoon… but the cops here are ruthless. I don’t want a ticket. Natural disaster or not, I don’t want my record being tainted.”

Namjoon scoffed as Yoongi shook his head with a light smile, “Don’t worry, Namjoon. I’ll protect us.” 

“With your gun?! Are you crazy dude!? There are literal fucking sharks eating people whole and the water tornados! You really think a gun will do shit?”

“Totally. Plus, we can always stop somewhere and get extra stuff. I am pretty handy. I’ve dealt with sharks a ton in the past.” A distant look crossed Yoongi’s face, his mind clearly off in a distant land.

“Hey Namjoon?” Jimin mumbled from Namjoon’s embrace (who was still using the poor drunk like a stress ball), “Do you think that we’re going to die?”

“What? No, no. We won’t die, Jimin. Don’t worry. I’ll protect you. We’re going to survive.”  Namjoon punctuated what he said with another squeeze of Jimin before he finally let go and seemed to grow his composure.

“We probably want to actually think about where we are going… instead of just generally going inland.”

“Hmm… I was thinking that we could go to the inland. Like the part of town.” Taehyung said, anxiously tapping his steering wheel as he maneuvered around sharks.

“Taehyung.”

“Yes?” 

“The inland isn’t actually inland… you know that, right? It’s literally half a mile from the beach! Just slightly north!” Namjoon started shouting angrily.

He opened his mouth to keep yelling at Taehyung, another harsh wave crashed into the side of the car. From the force alone, the windows shattered and from Taehyung’s reflexes with driving, the car suddenly stopped. Jimin, who forgot to put his seatbelt on, went flying forwards and roughly hit his head against Yoongi’s seat before falling limply in his own lap. Namjoon on the other hand, was once again screaming, salty water filling his open mouth as he looked into the mouth of a large bull shark excitedly swimming into the now broken passenger window. In the rush of the wave continuing to pass through the car, a new, redder liquid started to merge. By the time the car passed, everything (and everyone) was coated in a faint pink color. 

Once the wave had passed the car, Taehyung and Yoongi were left staring back in horror at the bloody and half eaten body of Namjoon, their minds rushing to process what had happened. When Taehyung’s mind finally caught up, he immediately rushed to leave the car, his fingers stumbling to unbuckle himself and unlock the door before leaving the car with a strangled cry and budding tears. By the time Yoongi had left the car and reached Taehyung, the man was hyperventilating and crying. He hadn’t known Namjoon well but the two of them talked every once in a while and he never wanted him to die. Hell before he met Yoongi (and if things with Yoongi didn’t work out), Taehyung was still playing with the idea of asking Namjoon out. 

Yoongi shushed Taehyung quietly and gently wrapped Taehyung in a hug, the soft gesture seemingly uncommon for the stiff man. The two stayed there for an unknown amount of time before a scream from the car changed their attention. Jimin was clambering out of the broken car window, his eyes wide with fear before they landed on Taehyung and Yoongi.

“Were you fuckers going to just leave me in there?!” Jimin yelled angrily, walking over to them and wiping the fresh tears off his face. 

“Sorry, Jimin.” Taehyung looked down sadly, “I was shocked too… I… Fuck. This is such a scary time. I don’t know what to do.” 

“We need to go to a gun store. That is what we need to do.” Yoongi said calmly.

“What?”

“A gun store. We need to go get more guns. The wave ruined the only gun I had.” 

“We need to get to safety! That is what we need to do.” Jimin yelled again, “Namjoon said so!”

“And how can we get to safety without a gun?! We can’t use your fucking barstool to keep sharks at bay.”

“You used a stool before.”

“Guys…” Taehyung’s weak voice interrupted them with an uncertain wobble, “Can we please get a move on and not fight? We can find a store that sells guns and some other things… I don’t want to be here here or without something somewhat protecting us from any more waves.”

Yoongi looked over at Jimin as if to ask if that was ok before the three of them started walking along the road, neither of their electronics working. They were forced to walk along the road and take the first exit. At one point the three of them climbed up a tree at the edge of the road and waited for another wave to pass as wind dangerously whipped at their faces, hoards of sharks rushing past. They didn’t risk climbing down until all the sharks that were left in the area by the wave had passed. In the sky, they could see a tornado angrily throwing sharks left and right almost 100 miles ahead of them. None of them smart enough to notice that they couldn’t see its position change… which meant that it was on a path right to them… none of them observant enough to notice one specific, ancient looking shark that was angrily twisting and turning in the tornado. Somehow they managed to make it to an almost completely abandoned parking lot in front of a run down Hilton Hotel, one large, lone truck. 

Yoongi stopped and eyed it, Jimin distractedly meandering ahead and Taehyung waiting for Yoongi to say something, “We should steal it.”

“The… the car?”

“Yeah. We won’t make good headway on foot and we can’t easily guess when another wave will come. It would be safer.” 

“It’s illegal, Yoongi.”

“It would save us time and protect us from another wave, Jimin.”

“The last car didn’t protect Namjoon.”

“This one has larger wheels though. And it protected us during the first wave.” 

Before Jimin had any chance of arguing more, Yoongi tried opening one of the doors before grabbing a rock nearby and smashing one of the rear windows open to unlock one of the doors. 

“Well now that one of the windows is broken how will it protect us!” Jimin yelled angrily before going off on a rant as Yoongi worked on hot wiring the car and Taehyung floundered between the two. 

He had no idea what to do or what was better but as he anxiously looked at the still tornado, he knew he didn’t want to be outside for much longer and quickly climbed into the shotgun of the car. With a breath of relief from Yoongi, the car reved to life and Yoongi buckled in. 

“Well?” Yoongi looked over at Jimin who was angrily standing a solid ten feet away and gripping his barstool tightly, “Are you going to get in or is this where we part ways?” 

“I will not take part in illegal activities. A natural disaster or not. If you’re smart, Taehyung, you’d join me.”

Taehyung anxiously looked between Jimin and Yoongi, both of which were looking at him and waiting for his decision. What was he supposed to do? This was a matter of life and death… surely it wouldn’t be the end of the world if he did a few illegal things to stay alive… but did he want that hanging on his conscious? 

With one anxious look back at the tornado… which… somehow… seemed to look a little close, he resolutely closed the door and buckled in a small “Sorry.” leaving his mouth before Yoongi drove off, leaving Jimin in the dust, his frame getting smaller the farther they went. 

[rxsie-the-demon]

Brooklyn Baby | JJ Maybank

SERIES MASTERLIST | chapter one 

chapter summary: Nikki goes out of her comfort zone and bonds with Kie, while still remaining curious about what happened last summer. At a party, Topper gets a little too touchy, and Nikki (surprisingly) befriends Rafe and Wheezie.

warnings: drinking, smoking, HARD DRUGS, swearing (oops), HARRASSMENT (topper gets VERY touchy) so if that makes u uncomfy just skim over that, and a conversation about addiction/rehab and therapy

word count: 5029

Chapter 2: Cinnamon Girl

If I had to choose, B Days would be my least favorite. On B days, I have no classes with anyone I know, except English with Kelce at the end of the day.

And no one to sit with at lunch.

On my second day of school, when I realized I had no one to sit with, I ate in the library. You’re allowed to, so long as you clean up after yourself and stuff.

Walking into the huge cafeteria, with clean white titles and those long foldable school tables, I decided to do the same thing today; just sit in the library by myself, and maybe read or shop online, The tall walls of the cafeteria were decorated with motivational quotes and the school’s athletic accomplishments.

But when I was walking towards the lunch line, I saw Kiara sitting by herself out of the corner of my eye, head down on the table. Which made me feel really, really sad for her.

I stood in line quietly, AirPods in my ears, scrolling through Instagram when I found Kiara’s page. I didn’t want to seem like a stalker, but my curiosity got the best of me and I clicked on it.

Her page reminded me of this social activist that I follow that of a social activist I follow, the difference being that Kiara’s page was mostly environment-focused, with the occasional selfie and pics of her friends.

Clicking on one of her them, a selfie with her and her four friends on a boat during sunset, I saw a slightly sunburned brunet with his arm wrapped around one of the most beautiful girls I’ve ever seen. She’s probably a TikToker, I thought. Sunburn had a dark blue bandana wrapped around his neck and had his shirt unbuttoned. Major surfer boy vibes. 

Next to Tiktok, was Kiara, with bright eyes and a bright smile. Completely different from the girl who sits behind me in APUSH. The boy next to Kiara had dark skin and curly hair. He was wearing a hat, like Sunburn and the other boy next to him. And judging from the way his arm was around her waist, Hat totally had a thing for Kiara.

But the last boy, holy shit, if I thought Sunburn was cute, Hot Blonde Boy was another level. He was the one taking the picture, with one arm stretched out to hold the phone and the other one, covered shiny rings, was posing with, like, the rock hand sign? I think that’s what it’s called: with his index and pink fingers up, and the rest like they’d be balled in a fist. His messy blonde hair was being held together by a red snapback, and he was shirtless except for his shark tooth necklace. His tan went well with his bright, energetic eyes and big smile but...oh my gosh. His hands. They were big, with long fingers, and his arms were a little veiny and-

I put my phone away. Nuh-uh, I’m not going to be thirsting over a random guy’s hands, especially when that guy could literally be dead, or worse, the crazy dude who tried to shoot Topper.

Not that I don’t understand why someone would want to shoot Topper.

I grabbed my tray, putting a Chicken Caesar salad bowl (yum), a bowl of grapes (double yum), and a water bottle onto my tray. Remembering that Kiara didn’t have any food with her, I grabbed a hamburger, too.

I paid for my food and walked towards the utensil holder, debating whether or not I should just go to the library or sit with Kiara. I mean, I should sit with her, she’s by herself and is going through a hard time, but then again, I hardly know her. Besides exchanging numbers with her yesterday and not even texting her, I never interacted with the girl. She’ll probably think I’m just talking to her to get tea for Topper and Scarlet.

But then again, I already bought her a hamburger.

I walked over to her table. She was wearing a similar outfit as she was yesterday, the only difference being she was wearing light blue jeans. So, yay? A bit of color?

I sat down across from her and put my tray down quietly, not wanting to scare her. “Hey.”

Her head shot up immediately. Her soft brown eyes looked so tired, her light brown skin looking ashy and dull. Her dark brown hair, with it’s nice, defined beach wave curls, was tied back in a bun in her hood. When she saw who it was, her face softened. “Oh, hi.”

“I hope it’s ok I’m sitting with you, I don’t know anyone else in this lunch and I thought it’d be good to discuss our project.” I waved my hands around a bit before opening the plastic lid of my salad.

She nodded, eyeing my food for a second.

My heart hurt. Of course, she has the money to buy food, that’s not the issue. She probably hasn’t been eating out of grief.

“So I’m Indian, duh,” I waved my hand in front of my face and she smiled softly, “and I thought this was a chicken burger, but it’s beef. And I can’t eat beef, because, ya know, Hindus don’t eat beef. So, like, could you do me a solid and eat this for me? I hate wasting food and I’d feel awful if I threw it out.” I slid the burger towards her.

She nodded, pulling it towards her and taking a small bite.

I poured my croutons into my salad and started quietly eating when I heard Kiara mumble, “Thank you.”

I glanced up at her for a second, only to look back down. “Don’t thank me. I bought that on accident.”

“I saw you staring at me in line. And...I haven’t eaten in the past two days.”

I looked back at Kiara, who was looking everywhere but me. I decided to just ask.

“It’s because of what happened to your friends, right? You’re mourning?”

She nodded, still not looking at me.

“I understand. Grief isn’t something that has, like, a definitive answer. You just gotta let it run its course,” I said, putting my hand in front of my mouth because I was chewing.

Kiara nodded again and took another bite, a bigger one this time. I mentally high-fived myself for getting her to eat. I didn’t think it’d work.

“So, what do you want to do for the project?” I asked.

Kiara shrugged. “We could do current events. Maybe something environment related?”

“Like, an advertisement? We make a video talking about pollution or something?”

“Yeah! Or maybe we could organize something and get a bunch of people to come together and, like, clean up the beach?”

“Or we could go out on boats and find trash in the ocean?”

“That too!” Kiara’s eyes were shining now, and she was smiling. Wide. Much like the girl whose Instagram I was stalking.

“Sweet. Ok, so, the environment is one thing, do we have any other ideas? Like, isn’t the Outer Banks also famous for shipwrecks or something? I heard The Royal Merchant sank here. Maybe we could do a project on that?”

Kiara stiffened up when I mentioned shipwrecks. Did I say something wrong? 

Shit. Her friends died at sea, how could I be so stupid?

“That’s...not a bad idea, actually. I happen to know a lot about The Royal Merchant. More than I want to know, actually,” She chuckled. She looked down at her hands, and then looked back up. “John B, my friend who died at sea over the summer, he and his dad were obsessed with finding it. We actually-,” she leaned closer to me. “We actually found it. But, uh, the gold isn’t there.”

My eyes went wide. I leaned forward, too. “Well, where is the gold then? Do you know?”

Kiara nodded. “In the Bahamas.”

“How the f- How did it get there, if the shipwreck happened here and no one knew where it was until you and your Pogue friends found it?”

She sighed. “Long story. I’ll tell you another day.”

“Wait-”

The lunch bell rang. I sighed as we stood up and grabbed our bags, walking towards the doors to leave for class. I really want to know how the gold ended up in the Bahamas.

“Well, thanks for lunch, Nikki!”

“Of course, Kiara, that’s what friends are for,” I smiled.

Kiara beamed. “Call me Kie.”

I was overjoyed. A friend. A real, actual friend. “Kie. Fantastic. Hey, Kie, do you know anyone named Rafe by any chance?”

Kie narrowed her eyes. “Yea, why?”

“Oh, nothing, I was just invited to his birthday party this Saturday.”

Kie rolled her eyes. “Be careful around him, ok? Talk to you later!”

“Uh, bye!”

************************************************

Yellow, or blue?

I held both dresses up to myself, looking in the mirror.

Saturday came, and it was time for Rafe’s party.

The party starts at 9 and was gonna last all night, but Topper wanted to take me out to eat, so at 7:30, I’m still deciding which dress to wear.

Both dresses are sundresses, short, flowy with shirred backs and knotted straps. They are literally the same dress, down to the little polka dots, just in different colors. I could wear either one, because I kept my makeup simple: concealer, nude eye shadow, mascara, and clear lip gloss.

I texted Kiara, asking her to choose a color, to which she responded yellow. We managed to get really close in just three days, which made me happy, because I felt that she was my only real friend at school, and, well, I was her only friend there.

I slipped the dress on and matched it with my white Birkenstocks. I went over to my dresser table (yes I have two mirrors in my room, sue me) and put on my white tassel fringe earrings. I kept my ‘Om’ necklace on.

I admired myself. My light brown skin looks good with the yellow and white, and my jet black hair, which I decided to not straighten, had slight waves, and reached my shoulders. I look like a rich, beach girl. A Kook, I suppose.

I grabbed my phone, taking a quick mirror selfie and snapping it to Topper, captioned ‘i’m readyyy’. He opened it immediately.

‘Damnn u look hot,’ he typed out. Ew.

‘aw ty,’ I typed back. ‘where r u?’

‘I’m omw. U have ur bag? The party’s on a yacht and there’ll be a pool.’

‘swim suit’s packed’

‘Fantastic. I’ll be there soon.’

I locked my phone, putting it into my purple and black NYU drawstring bag that also held my black bikini and a towel. I grabbed the bag hopped down the stairs.

Mallory and Krish, my sister-in-law and brother, were sitting on the couch, watching TV. 

“Hey losers. My friend’s gonna be here any minute to pick me up.”

Mallory turned to face me, smiling. “Aw, you look cute! Have fun, and be safe, ok?”

“If you’re gonna be coming in, like, super late,” Krish added, not taking his eyes off the TV, “try to be as quiet as possible. Diya is a really light sleeper.”

Diya, my 5-month-old niece, made baby sounds. I took a couple steps forward and saw she was spread out on the floor, in her fluffy pink blanket, chewing on her gloved hands. I waved at her.

“Don’t worry, if I wake her up, I’ll take care of her. I don’t plan on drinking or smoking or anything tonight. Well, maybe drinking, but that’s it.”

They laughed. “Ok, ok, just have fun,” Mal said.

I sat on the floor, playing with Diya, until 7:50, when the doorbell rang, revealing Topper, wearing a black button-down shirt that was rolled up to his elbows (bless), Air Force 1s, ripped jeans, and a Gucci belt.

He smiled. “Ready to go?”

I smiled back. “Yep.” I turned to face Krish and Mal. “Bye Mom, bye Dad!”

“Bye, hun!” Mallory called out. They smiled and Top, too, and waved.

I closed the door and left, and Topper grabbed my hand to lead me to the car. “Sorry, I’d have introduced you to my parents, but they were too busy, like, ogling at my baby sister,” I half lied.

Topper laughed, “No worries. I’ll have plenty of chances to meet them, I hope?”

I smiled. “Yep, I hope so too.”

A complete lie.

******************************************

Dinner with Topper was...interesting. Instead of taking me to some fancy restaurant or whatever, he took me to this cute little diner closer to the beach, but not close to The Cut, according to him. “There are a bunch of restaurants here in the Banks,” he had said. “But not a lot of people know about this one. That’s why it’s my favorite.” He winked, and I nearly vomited in my mouth.

The place was real old-timey, with the little booths and a jukebox. We had burgers and shared a plate of fries and a milkshake. And honestly? It would’ve been really romantic if I actually liked Topper like that.

Don’t get me wrong, Topper is hot. He’s sweet to me, like cotton candy sweet, and really affectionate. I love touchy boys (consensual, of course, or they get their shit rocked), but he’s always grabbing my hand and playing with my hair. Which would be fine, but I barely know him.

And ever since he admitted to drowning that John B kid, whatever potential feelings I had just...disappeared. That paired with his Holier-than-thou attitude and his blatant classism makes him everything I would hate in a person, let alone a potential boyfriend.

Besides, I know the real reason he’s flirting with me. The Kook King of High School needs a Queen, and with his ex gone, everyone wants me to step into that role. Any other time, I’d be happy to be That Girl. But something just feels wrong about this.

Lots of people have told me I remind them of Sarah, apparently because she, too, was a bit of a social activist and an environmental freak (no wonder her and Kie were friends) which just confirms the fact that I’m just a replacement.

But, besides Kie, I have no other friends at OBX High. I have no choice but to go with it.

Driving close to the dock, I could hear loud music playing from somewhere. Leaning forward, I saw the yachts, one of them in particular already pretty full of people and neon lights.

“Yeah, Rafe tends to go all out on parties,” Topper remarked, gesturing towards the boats as he parked. “But they’re always fun.”

I nodded, plastering on a smile. I grabbed his hand. “Fantastic. Lead the way.”

**********************************************

Ok, I have to hand it to OBX kids. They know how to get turnt.

At 9:30, the yacht left the dock and headed towards the sea. By 10, the party was in full form, with kids dancing, singing, swimming, smoking, drinking, everything!

It was a glorious mess.

Right now it’s 10:30, and I’d been dancing with Top when we decided to go get something to drink.

We went to the bar and I told Topper to just one of whatever he was drinking for me, so he got two Mai Tais. The bartender looked really worried, because, you know, more than half the kids at this party are underaged, so I slipped him a 50 for his troubles.

Top and I walked away, laughing at the bartender’s confused face. The familiar feeling of alcohol started to wash

We walked around and talked about life and the universe, and when we finished our drinks, we went to the deck.

I leaned onto the railing, staring into the ocean.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” I asked softly. Growing up in Brooklyn Heights, I was never one for the ocean. I mean, sure, there were beaches an hour or two away from my old home that I visited often, but I was always a city girl. But this, this was something else entirely. The way the pale, white moonlight shined on the dark blue ocean, it was comforting, almost.

“Yeah,” Topper whispered back, wrapping his arm around my cold body, “really is beautiful.” I turned and saw him staring at me, smiling just a tiny bit. I shoved him lightly.

“You’re so corny,” I laughed.

“Maybe, but I made you smile, didn’t I?”

“...Shut up.”

We laughed, and he wrapped both arms around me and pulled me close to him. I stiffened a bit. Calm down, Nikki. It’s not that big a deal. But it is. I hate leading people on and I hated that he was always touching me.

I snuck my arms around his waist and rested my head on his chest. I’m short, I’ll admit it, standing at a towering five foot four with my two-inch platforms. Topper, on the other hand, is six feet tall, so my head tucked in just underneath his.

We stayed like that for a bit, swaying softly to some pop song. I felt myself relaxing, but I knew it wouldn’t last long.

“Hey, Nikki?”

“Yeah?”

“I, uh, I really like you.”

I pulled back and looked at Topper, who was fidgeting with my hair, and I narrowed my eyes “Wait, actually?”.

I hope he’s joking. He’s known me for less than a week! I mean, sure, you can have an instinct attraction to someone, yadda yadda, and maybe he wants to get to know me better, or whatever. Fine. 

Maybe it’s because I don’t like him that, but I find his declaration of feelings a little ridiculous.

“Yea, I do. I know we just met, but I really want to get to know you more. No, I’m not asking you out...unless you want to date, that is, but I feel insanely attracted to you.” He brushed his hair back nervously.

I could reject Topper, and risk my popularity and social standing. It could end up well, it could end up terribly. But if I say I like him back, which is a lie, I guarantee my place as the most popular girl in the Outer Banks.

I place my right hand on his shoulder and my left hand on his cheek. Standing on my toes, I gently guide his face to mine.

As I close my eyes, I imagine that I’m not about to kiss Topper, but Hot Blonde Boy from Kie’s Instagram.

His lips are soft, really soft, and Top’s hands drop to my waist to pull me closer to him.

After we pull away, he tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear and gently kisses my forehead.

“I like you too, Top,” I lied, “but I don’t want to rush into anything. We just met, and I’ve rushed into things before, and they never ended well, and-”

“Hey, hey, I get it,” he takes his hand to my chin and lifts it up so that I’m looking at him instead of the floor. “We can go as slow as you like, all right?”

I smile and nod. Top cups my face in his hands, and right before he can kiss me, I pull away and say, “Let’s go swimming! I’m going to go change, ok?”

He nods, ruffling his hair. I turn, pulling my phone out from my duffel bag and sending a text to Kie.

‘sos i just kissed topper.’

I walk into one of the changing rooms and change into my bikini. As I’m stuffing my dress into my bag, I see I get a text back.

‘dumbass!!’

**********************************************

Apparently, when I said I wanted to go swimming, it translated to yeeting me into the pool and then jumping in after, and then us splashing each other, non-stop. I mean, I guess that is what you do at a pool party, but I have no idea. Usually, I just stand around and eat food and, you know, don’t actually go into the water.

It was fun and all, yea, but I was uncomfortable the entire time because he couldn’t- no, wouldn’t- keep his hands off of me.

After it became too much, I jumped out of the pool and sat down on one of the chairs, wrapped my towel around myself and feeling really uncomfortable. Topper climbed out after me and sat down at my feet. “Did I, uh, do something?”

Yeah, you won’t stop touching me, bro.

“No, no, it’s fine, I just got a bit claustrophobic, that’s all.” I checked the time on my phone. I had an idea. “Hey, I’m going to go find Kelce and Scarlet, ok?”

“Uh, sure, do you want me to come with you?”

Not really, no. “Uh, if you want, but I was just gonna have, like, a girl’s talk with Scarlet?”

Topper nodded and smiled. I stood up, shoved my towel into my bag, slipped my shoes on, and ran off.

I felt a little weird just walking around in a bikini, especially since I don’t know anyone here, but remembering that everyone else was just as scantily clad as I was made me feel a little better.

I went to the highest deck, where the eldest kids (and by kids I mean like seniors and 20-year-olds), hoping to find Kelce or Scarlet there because I hadn’t seen them anywhere else. But I couldn’t see them on the deck.

I walked around a bit and then decided to text Scarlet.

‘where are you?’

I got a text back immediately. ‘Top deck, near the front. I’m with the little kid.’

Little kid? I walked towards the front side of the ship and indeed saw Scarlet, wearing a dark red colored bikini, sitting in a lounging chair with a girl who looks like she’s in middle school. The kid was pale, with freckles, dark hair, and glasses. She was the only one at this point not wearing a bathing suit.

Why is there a kid here?

I sat down in the seat next to Scarlet and gave her a hug. “Hey!” I slipped my bag off my shoulders and leaned forward to face the young girl. “Hi. What’s your name?”

She smiled. “I’m Wheezie. My brother’s the birthday boy.”

“Wheezie?”

“It’s a nickname, my real name is- Oh, hey, Topper!”

I spun around. Topper was standing in front of me, arms angrily crossed over his bare chest. “Hey, Wheezie. Nikki, can I talk to you?”

“I’m enjoying the company of my new friend.” I gestured over to Wheezie.

“Yeah, well, I want to talk.” He roughly grabbed my wrist and yanked me up.

“Ok, jeez, lemme grab my bag.” I pulled myself from his grasp and turned around to grab my bag. Scarlet mouthed the words be careful, to me. I nodded.

“Bye, Nikki, it was nice to meet you!” Wheezie called out. I shouted pleasantries back. Topper grabbed my wrist again.

After dragging me halfway across the deck, he let go of me and turned around. “What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me?! What’s wrong with you?! You’re the one who, one, won’t stop touching even though we’re not dating and we barely know each other, and two, literally dragged me away from my friends when I was having a conversation with them! Are you like this with all the girls you like? Huh? Maybe that’s why your girlfriend left you for some Pogue, not because Pogues steal things, but because you-” I stepped forward and shoved Topper, “-don’t know how to treat a girl, no, a person, with respect!”

I stopped talking and realized that a lot of people had gone quiet. My face flushed with embarrassment until I heard someone shout.

“WOO! You tell him, Nikki!”

I turned and saw Scarlet and Wheezie jumping up and down and clapping. Soon, all the girls (and some of the boys) around me were clapping and cheering for me, congratulating me and telling Topper that he’s a dick.

I stepped towards Topper. “You and me, whatever thing you think we had going on, it’s done.”

I turned around and beckoned Wheezie and Scarlet to sit back down with me on the deck. The partying resumed, and I went off chatting with the two girls, but I saw out of the corner of my eye that Topper was getting all huffy and puffy.

I pointed that out to the girls. “Should I be worried?”

Wheezie wheezed laughed. “He’s probably just going to call Rafe and get him to tell you off.”

“...He’s gonna get the host of the party, who I don’t know and never met, to yell at me? Fantastic. Good thing he’s your brother.”

“Technically half brother, but yes, a good thing. Oh look, there he is right now!”

I turned around and saw Topper marching towards me with another equally tall, equally blonde boy right behind him. The difference is, this boy didn’t have as much of a hostile aura as Topper has right now.

“So, which one of you embarrassed my boy Top?”

************************************************

The boy, who introduced himself as Rafe, the host, beckoned Scarlet, Topper, and I inside of his suite. He closed the door on Wheezie, though. Bummer. I liked her.

Inside his suite were a bunch of twenty-year-olds, drinking hard liquor, dancing, and sitting around this big table. Rafe took his seat in the middle, told everyone else around him to fuck off, and had us, except Topper, sit across from him. Topper took the seat to his right.

He offered us a bag of white powder, to which Scarlet and I declined. Topper took it, though, and started setting it up to use.

“You use coke?” I asked Topper in disgust. I have nothing against most drugs, like weed or psychedelics, which can be fun to use sparingly at parties or whatever, but not hard drugs like opioids.

Topper shrugged at my question. “It’s not a big deal.”

“It is a big deal. What the fuck is wrong with y-?!”

“Ok, no fighting at my party, please?” Rafe sighed, rubbing his temples. “I brought you guys inside so that everyone else can enjoy the party while you guys have your little marital dispute-”

“WE’RE NOT DATING!” I shouted.

“Whatever,” Rafe sighed.

I stood up. “I’m gonna go hang with Wheezie. Scarlet, you coming?”

She was about to respond when Rafe stood up and said, “I’ll join you.”

I shot a confused look at Scarlet, who just shrugged.

I slipped my bag over my shoulder and walked towards the door, which Rafe held open for me, and we stepped outside, the air making me shiver.

Rafe pulled a pack of Dunhill cigarettes out of his pocket, put one to his mouth, and lights it. He gestured the box towards me and I take one, leaning forward a bit so that he could light it for me.

I rest my arms on the railing and close my eyes, breathing in the burning smoke and exhaling it slowly, being submerged in the light-headed haze of nicotine.

“How old are you?” Rafe’s voice interrupts my zen. I open my eyes and look at the boy, who’s very obviously checking out my bikini covered body.

I laughed and took another drag. “Sixteen,” I exhaled the smoke from my mouth.

Rafe’s eyes went wide, and he turned back to the sea. “Oh shit. My bad. Uh...how’re you liking the party?”

“It’s pretty good. Besides, you know, Topper being Topper, and you forcing me to talk to him.”

Rafe laughed. “Yea, I didn’t mean anything by it. I have a reputation of being a prick, and I’m trying to be better but, you know, not a lot of people respect you when you go from being a douche to a nice guy.”

I nodded, understanding what he meant by that. “Reputation with friends?”

He laughed. “Just,” he waved his hand free hand around, “Everyone. I wasn’t a good person. I’m trying to be better, but it’s hard when everyone already expects me to act a certain way and don’t give me a chance to change.”

I noticed the rings on his hands, like that boy from Kie’s Instagram. But unlike Hot Blondie, Rafe’s too old for me.

Which leads me to wonder…

“Did you know Sarah Cameron, by any chance?” I asked.

Rafe’s eyes went wide, and then he started coughing up smoke.

“W-Why do you ask?” He stammers, still coughing.

I gave him a weird look and just shrugged. “Curious, I guess.” I looked back at the ocean. “I’m the new girl, and everyone keeps telling me about all this stuff, but won’t tell me what actually happened, and I dunno, I’m just so confused.”

I turned to face Rafe, who was looking away, and I think I saw tears forming in his eyes. “Yea, Sarah’s my sister.”

Now it was my turn to cough up smoke. “W-”-cough cough- “Wait”-cough cough- “a minute.” I gasp for air and continue coughing. And after I finally manage to get some oxygen into my lungs, I say, “Sarah Cameron’s your sister? Shit, I’m so sorry, Topper never told me.”

Rafe shrugged, fiddling around with his rings. “It’s alright, I was just...surprised. No one asks me about Sarah or the Pogues anymore. After I came back from rehab-” He stopped, probably because he didn’t mean to say that, but he continued, “After I came back from rehab, I just...stopped beefing with the Pogues, especially JJ, Kie, and Pope. You know them?”

I nodded. “I know Kie, we’re friends. But not JJ and Pope. Never met ‘em, don’t even know what they look like, yet I’ve heard so many things about them.”

Rafe nodded. “They’re not bad kids, really. My time away made me realize how much of a prick I’ve been to them. Like, I caused them a lot of pain, and for what? For nothing. Literally just because I thought that, because they were poorer than us, they weren’t as good as us.”

I nodded. Then I turned and smiled, and stretched out my hand. “Well, it was nice to meet you, Rafe Cameron.”

He smiled and shook back.

_______________________________

chapter three

[thedopesurfsociety]

Amazing Shark Drone Footage | Sharks Hunting In The Shallows | Sharks Stalk Surfers @NSBinlet 

How many sharks can you count?

[balasekar]

Drone catches shark stalking a surfer

https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2019/09/18/drone-warns-surfer-shark-mxp-vpx.hln

[reincarnationofellewoods]

The helicopter 🚁 warns a 🏄‍♂️ that a shark 🦈 is stalking him and than crashes in the ocean 🌊. The surfer 🏄‍♂️ manages to get the pilot out safely and they make it to the beach 🏝 safe. Who, why a story!!!

[wolves-in-the-world]

[spoilers aplenty. brushing briefly on ptsd, abuse, suicidal ideation, drug misuse; the ep itself gets into things way more.]

— the first glimpse of cc is incredible. dude really committed to the long-haired trash gremlin look (@darkfinch's words) and I have only fondness in my heart.

— TWO MINUTES IN and I want to offer him a hug and respect his personal space

— his therapist just cracked a joke at his expense after offering no help

— (paused three minutes in to write up angry thoughts about talking therapy that I will not be sharing, it's going well, folks)

— just got the first jarring scene change to the gentle suburbia soap opera genre yes this would be very cute by itself

— cc has a Thing about ravens. I'm not sure what it is but he asked his therapist if it's legal to shoot them and now he's staring at one at the crime scene like it means something. I think (tongue in cheek) this is a nod to cc being in a wildly different genre of his own where being haunted by both one's own figurative demons and literal corvids is a thing that can actually happen.

— (finch tells me the ravens are sleep-deprivation-episode specific but I'm amused by my theory so it's staying.)

— suburbia soap opera dad is now asking the boss? friend? of his open and communicative wife, who was openly giggling over text messages that morning, whether she's cheating on him. (no-one is that bad at it, in a story at least, c'mon)

— CC enters the coffee scene yawn-first, as is right and proper

— he's still being stalked by ravens

— "hey uh, do you mind if I uh use your fancy little sophisticated, uh, thingim- uh, coffee?"

— I think he just electrocuted himself turning the coffee machine off. who let him out

— he's either testing whether he's having a stroke or he's not sure his hands are real, they're still questioning the rich dude about the death, and yes, his partner slapped his hands and hissed at him to stop it

— one of the side characters is apparently famous at a surfer bar for having punched a shark and saved several swimmers

— chasing-a-suspect time and cc is running alongside the police car because, and I quote, "it's more fun"

— cc launches himself at the suspect, yelling wordlessly, and topples a stand of fake flowers. folks I think he's feeling the effects of the caffeine.

— he then POINTS A GUN at a raven and his partner's like "hey are you okay" and not, for instance, "holy shit you should not be carrying a gun right now"

— cc is interrogating the suspect while cc's head is on his arms on the table

— suburban dad is crashing a fancy event and using his badge to get in so he can spy on his wife and catch her in the act??

— spoiler he does not catch her in the act and she and the dude are far more gracious than he deserves (I haven't even seen how they react yet I'm just safely assuming)

— correct

— cc is… going swimming, alone, at night, in search of boat wreckage that may have killed an unwary swimmer. oh buddy.

— at some point in replies somewhere finch said cc's hair is its own character in this and holy shit yeah. yeah I'm watching him with rapt attention. give that man an oscar.

— the LEAST homoerotic threateningly-getting-close-to-another-dude's-face I've ever seen, nice job

— suburban dad faux-apologises to his wife, immediately sneaks a look at her phone and questions her about it, then faux-apologises again

— rapid scene change to cc 'waking up' in a flashbacky nightmare looking exactly like a scared and confused kid, I swear

— I have like ten screenshots of him looking scared and bewildered and I'm not sorry. how does he DO this.

— there's this mounting fear and tension in this scene centred around his dad (with a gory hole in his face, possibly cc's work, probably self-defence after a lot of abuse) cooking him a meal and expecting him to eat it and I don't know how to convey just how much I DON'T want him to eat that meal

— cc, now awake, just apologised to his partner for ruining suburban mum's fancy event (by saying "hey, arrest a dude there, we have [shaky] evidence against him") and like. he clearly is not aware how much suburban dad had managed to ruin it by himself already. also suburban dad's response to this genuine apology is a slightly sarcastic "an apology?" before quizzing him about the "is my wife cheating" situation. (at this point, I kind of hope she is.)

— "I guess not everybody had a nightmare for a father" says cc's partner after witnessing him waking from a nightmare about his father. hey. hey. suburban dad, I want a word.

— "you broke into my office because you're looking for drugs." "well you're late for work, which is very unprofessional."

— cc has graduated from asking this therapist for sleeping pills to asking her for amphetamines so he can stay awake. buddy. how are you not falling over dizzy by now.

— he steals his therapist's mug to take a swig, ejects it slowly back into the mug while maintaining eye contact, then says "tea? this early in the morning?" and leaves

— side character now admits to having punched a dolphin, not a shark. "bailey, I could've taken out its eye. what does a dolphin do without peripheral vision, huh??"

— we have (unexpectedly) reached the white supremacists portion of the episode

— of course the white supremacists are a gang, criminal-coded criminals, gosh, is there even another kind of white supremacist that popular media can portray? (heavy sarcasm)

— the owner of the coffee maker is telling them how his son was doing great up until his mother died, and cc's face goes from disapproving and interrogative to this subtle awful introspection and hey. hey. stop it.

— "well, we have a few choices. bird, plants, pizza delivery." "tweet tweet." "tweet tweet." congrats on the buddy cop lingo boys but hey what

— there is a raven circling overhead, spooky

— ohhhh birdwatching as a cover, nice

— credit to the character but even wildly sleep-deprived, he gets attentive and careful when the stakes are high (I'm betting it's somehow adrenaline-related. no way someone that messed up handles messed-up situations well.)

— this is a nice action sequence, actually. I might be tempted to watch more just to see more like this.

— ha ha great time to start freaking out and hearing his dad's voice (if he's actually scared of the dark and that's not just his dad taunting him, then oh man, I feel for him. that's a thing it feels weird to never grow out of.)

— okay suburban mum and dad ARE cute. this is true of them. he's also an idiot. this is also true.

— uh oh it's the blue lighting of flashbacky nightmares again. also this dude lives in a trailer, which, no judgement, but feels a lot like "I lived in a house before my wife and child died and now I can't face that anymore"

— it is indeed a flashbacky nightmare and it is in fact worse than before. I shan't go into details here.

— the episode does end with cc Deciding To Talk To His Therapist which, good for him, this is possibly a good place to end my Lethal Weapon Experience since we have it on good authority it doesn't exactly get any better.

— standard reminder (because I often forget this) that cop shows like to do this thing where good-hearted cops need people's co-operation and honest, lawyerless answers purely so they can solve Big Bad Crimes and keep people safe, and that that is a nice fantasy that works in these stories, but a dangerous thing to believe.

general conclusions: his hair is an art form, it is nice to see him doing more fighty stuff (didn't realise I missed that with kittyfangs), and I once again wish to offer him a hug and respect his personal space. how does he do that.

not-quite-liveblogging of Lethal Weapon episode 2.7 "birdwatching", the sleep deprivation episode, having only gotten a vague idea of the show from finch's posts and googled to make sure of the names

[merikus]

Aerial footage captured by a news helicopter over Bondi beach in Sydney, Australia, shows several sharks lurking only meters away from dozens of unaware surfers and swimmers.

[wheezefeed-unsolved]

The odd death of Michelle Von Emster (theories)

Okay people, I haven’t yet written about this one so let’s do this.

I honestly think this was without a doubt, a murder case. A planned homicide, either driven by passion or revenge. The facts and hints of this case are way too specific for it to have been an accident.

I will start to explain why but let’s start from some interesting facts about the victim:

she quit a job due to a persistent stalker who by the way rode a motorcycle

she was known to have been living in a neighborhood related to drug activity addressed as the ‘war-zone’.

now to what we know about the investigation:

her injuries were located on various parts of her body. one of her legs was missing basically as if ripped off to the bone, like in a bamboo stick stripped down with a knife until to a point, her neck broken as if she had been in a car wreck, broken ribs as well as scrapes, bruises and contusions, and sand inside her mouth, throat, lungs and stomach.

the experts said that the bite of a white shark would’ve been clean and unmistakably have left vestiges of a tooth on her missing leg, and there was none found. and the only shark that could’ve done that was this species

the injuries were inflicted when she was still alive, thus excluding those from potential drowning. which means, she suffered the injuries, then drowned and bled to death until she was found.

Blue sharks did feed off her already made injuries when her body was already floating dead on the water.

Her purse was found 2.5 miles away from her body, in the sand of the base of the seawall. it contained her driver’s license, makeup, keys, paste stub, and a fanny pack containing 27$ in cash. bizarrely, the purse was found on a heavily used stretch of beach which means that it’s very unprobable that the purse sat there for 24 hours without any of the money or the purse gone. which means someone could have been keeping watch over it and make sure no one would interfere, indeed murdering michelle and planting the purse there to make it look like an accident. and if Michelle was found with sand inside her body it could have been possible if it were to be in the shoreline of the beach.

 the night before her death it was claimed that Michelle had drinks with one of the suspects, Edwin Decker, after they flirted for weeks, then went to kiss in his apartment and left at 5am from there in a cab. Albeit Decker also mentioned a friend sleeping nearby his apartment that night.

what some of the theories Ryan mentioned in the episode were (excluding the shark attack because it is obvious the shark wasn’t the cause of her death):

 Some believe she may have fallen off the cliff to her death, then drowned due to the injuries she presented. However, from the way the cliff is shaped, and even from such a fall, ripping off a leg in such a meticulous way would’ve been too perfect when falls from cliffs usually present random injuries in any part of the body that might’ve had contact upon hitting the harsh surface and full of irregular shapes and forms formed by nature.

She was murdered. This is the most likely scenario and the most plausable with all the facts and hints we have from this case, if we also take in account not only the physical but psychological evidence.

ANd with that I’ll get into my theory:

It was a combination of a bit of all three theories, but undoubtedly this was a murder case.

here’s how I think the murderer could have proceeded :

The murderer somehow encountered Michelle. Either planned or not is a possibility.

 Although, let’s focus on this one quote from Edwin Decker who, affirmed that Michelle often surfed naked by the latter’s own words. If this is true or he simply made that up we can’t know for sure, because he could very well also stalk her, but since he claims also that he had been flirtatious or even went as far as to the stage of kissing with her at his place this could have been very well normal. Until he mentioned:

Although, regarding seeing Michelle swim naked in that beach, surfers claim to never have seen her do so.

This could suggest Michelle and him had just been hanging out on casual dating, and not officially as a couple as it was hinted by Decker’s words that the relationship wasn’t clear. Therefore, we could assume that if it wasn’t clear either they were friends with benefits and Decker was very obsessed to a point where he even wrote that creepy poem probably implying that he wanted something more. what also bothers me is that the description of the poem was very perturbing :

Writing a poem in itself is not an uncommon practice to mourn the dead, but a sane, empathetic person would not focus on the lustful parts of the person in question when mourning them, instead only an obsessed person would. much as likely in a stalker like manner.

He also asked however for Michelle’s case, in 2008, to be re-examined. Let’s think about this. After the crime had been committed in 1994, why after so many years does he think of re-examining the case? Probable motive? to hide a piece of evidence perhaps, to ommit or confirm something.´

For these motives, I could see Edwin Decker as a highly likely suspect. Even more than the stalker claimed to have followed Michelle from another workplace to there. 

We don’t have however much information about this stalker, all that we know is that, besides stalking her, he often appeared at her workplace and that he requested all the copies of her autopsy. Could there have been an ulterior motive to request such copies when he was stalking her? Michelle as far as we know was not a wealthy person to be blackmailed, but perhaps she could know something she shouldn’t and therefore was being stalked somehow.

 however, most people who know too much are usually silenced, and the fact Michelle had been running away from a stalker but also be living in a neighborhood known for drugs is something that might have a connection to it. Although this we would have to access for ourselves in the site and ask witnesses and unfortunately only the authorities could do that. 

And what also seems very weird about this was that, they claimed the stalker asked for the copies of the autopsy which meant that firstly, they knew he was her stalker, and secondly, they also knew his identity. And autopsies are not just given away so easily to just anyone, much less to someone’s stalker so either: 

a) Michelle’s stalker was a relative or someone acquainted enough to have power to ask for those said autopsies, and wanted his identity to remain unknown to the press.

b) The responsible for those autopsies was in this together with  the stalker or  with both the suspects. 

c) the responsible for the autopsies was bribed or menaced.

 Also an interesting fact is that Michelle was found naked at the time of her death’sn announcement, when the body was found on the beach. There were no signals of any other kind of harm besides the injuries forementioned earlier, which meant that if indeed she had gone swimming naked and carrying a purse, dressed in a trench coat, , Michelle’s murder was therefore conducted as the following :

the murderer was with Michelle at the beach at night. possibly this theory would suggest both of them were acquainted enough and perhaps even taking a stride at night, when the murderer took a dvantage of Michelle's trust and started attacking her as he tried to murder her and Michelle struggled with them leavin g the bruises and scrapes she had on her body trying to repeal the attack.

Then the murderer hit Michelle with something hard enough used as the murder weapon that could inflict injury heavy enough to give her a broken neck and ribs similar to ones found in a car crash to put her unconscious and/or to stop struggling.

to make sure Michelle would not indeed fight off anymore once awoken she was dragged off near the shoreline, forced to ingest the massive amount of sand  into her lungs, stomach , throat and mouth somehow,

when Michelle couldn’t struggle anymore the murderer proceeded to cut off her leg in her already inanimate body, perhaps burying it in the sand to hide it, and give off the impression of a shark attack. although this demonstrated the lack of knowledge about the area’s sharks and their capacity or not to rip off the leg and the obvious nature of the bite which would have left tooth and a clean bite as the experts said. an attempt to therefore fool the police.

the final steps being  the body was pushed to the water left, to be found by the sharks and locals to give the impression of a shark attack provoked by a possible drowning or fall as the waves pushed the body around as he removed the clothes and planted the purse, before leaving the site., 

the problem is like Ryan said how come neither the money or bag was stolen? because if the murderer had been keeping watch over the bag for the night he could have soon be found by someone and interrogated about it. considering the rocky area the beach gave the murderer could have been hidden perhaps but still...how didn’t the bag get stolen or the money either?

The way I see it and knowing all the victim’s habits, the suspect and culprit for me could have very well  been Decker because he could  have lied about seeing michelle off in the cab and going home, instead also  going in the cab or drove her  to the beach per request of either of both of them, accompanied her to the beach , killed her,  got rid of the murder weapon in the sea, washed his hands off the blood in the ame sea water, planted the purse and left the  victim to die.  then when asked by police told a different story to prove his alibi. A reminder that he mentioned that Michelle had told him she liked to surf naked, so this could very well be a hint for it. . 

However without also knowing the stalker’s background story we can’t prove which  one of them could have been the real murderer. And for what reason . Which  is why it will probably  remain unsolved.

WHat do you think was missed in this theory? comment or reblog your opinions!

[orbemnews]

The Downside With Downside Sharks “Many of the shark researchers are considering, not the incorrect means, however in an incomplete means,” he stated. Considered one of Dr. Clua’s co-authors, John Linnell of the Norwegian Institute for Nature Analysis, research human conflicts with predators on land, and acknowledges that he’s not a “shark particular person.” Land predators generally stalk and assault people till they’re killed, he stated. Current historical past is filled with such examples, some nearly mythic. Two male lions nicknamed “the ghost” and “the darkness” had been blamed for killing dozens of individuals in southwestern Kenya in 1898. These lions had been tracked and shot by hunters. A decade later, a Bengal tigress often called the “Champawat Tiger” supposedly killed 436 individuals in Nepal and India. A hunter killed her as properly. Craig Packer, founding father of the Lion Middle on the College of Minnesota, stated these tales are true, although definitely embellished by colonial authors for readers again in Britain. Dr. Packer has studied man-eating lions in Tanzania and likened the phenomenon to an “outbreak” that may unfold by a satisfaction or be taught by mom to cubs. “Every so often, certainly one of them figures out we’re a free lunch,” he stated. Biteprinting received’t be so simple as sending hunters into the sphere to take out a tiger with a style for human flesh, Dr. Linnell acknowledges. However he stated that “something is best than the present unselective mass killing response.” If people reacted to bears the best way they’ve with sharks, Dr. Linnell stated it could be akin to “going out into the forest and randomly taking pictures the primary 1,000 animals that you simply see.” Nonetheless individuals react when shark assaults do happen, Dr. Shiffman provided the reminder that such incidents are uncommon. In keeping with the Worldwide Shark Assault File on the College of Florida, there have been 64 unprovoked assaults on people final 12 months and 41 provoked assaults, that means that an individual “initiates interplay with a shark not directly.” 5 of the assaults had been deadly. Extra individuals are killed by falling timber within the U.S. yearly. Whereas shark assaults are unusual, so are shark culls, though a outstanding surfer just lately known as for one on Réunion Island within the Indian Ocean, which is dwelling to bull sharks. As an alternative, various nations deploy shark nets, much like fences, past the surf at fashionable seashores. Harmful sharks get tangled within the nets, however so do innocent ones, together with dolphins, sea turtles and different marine life. Instead of these strategies, many seashore authorities have embraced extra humane strategies of prevention over extermination. Drones, blimps and tags connect with apps that warn lifeguards and bathers to avoid seashores when sharks are round. And after two deadly assaults occurred in New England lately, Cape Cod residents obtained tourniquet coaching. Supply hyperlink #Problem #sharks

[newslookout]

Pro surfer’s near miss with stalking shark | 9 News Australia

Drone footage from Surf Life Saving NSW has captured the near miss moment when professional surfer Matt Wilkinson was stalked by a shark. Subscribe: https://bit.ly/2noaGhv Get more breaking news at: https://bit.ly/2nobVgF

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[pkstudiosindia]

Shark breakthrough: Scientists name ‘completely enormous’ beast bigger than great white shark – Daily Express

Featured Post in Water Filter India dot com - Water Filter India

There are extra than 400 recognised species of shark, of which the lethal great white is the perfect-identified one. Thanks to movies like Jaws and 47 Metres Down, great whites have saved many individuals up at night time – and for good cause. The great white is among the many world’s greatest predators and is liable for extra assaults on people than another species of shark.

According to the Florida Museum’s International Shark Attack File, great whites are apex predators with only a few pure enemies.

The museum mentioned: “This species appears intelligent and inquisitive, and exhibits complex social behaviours.”

But it’d come as a shock to be taught the great white is just not the most important fish within the sea in spite of everything.

A examine revealed this week in Frontiers in Marine Science handed the titled to a a lot bigger beast stalking the oceans.

READ MORE: Shark breakthrough: Stunning discovery could rewrite creature’s origin

Shark breakthrough: Scientists have named the most important shark within the oceans (Image: GETTY)

Shark information: Great whites are among the many most harmful shark species (Image: GETTY)

Adult great white females have been identified to develop as much as 20ft (6.1m) in size and may weigh as much as 5,000lbs.

More sometimes, nevertheless, the sharks measure between 15ft and 15ft (four.6m and four.9m) on common.

Male great whites are normally smaller at 11ft to 13ft (three.4m and 4m) on common.

But researchers on the Australian Institute of Marine Science have discovered feminine whale sharks outclass the great whites within the dimension class.

In their newly revealed paper, the researchers introduced feminine whale sharks can develop as much as 59ft (18m) lengthy.

That’s completely enormous – concerning the dimension of a flexible bus

Mark Meekan, Australian Institute of Marine Science

Mark Meekan, a fish biologist on the marine institute, mentioned: “That’s completely enormous – concerning the dimension of a flexible bus on a metropolis avenue.

“But regardless that they’re large, they’re rising very, very slowly. It’s solely about 20cm or 30cm a 12 months.”

The unbelievable findings come after years of debate over which was bigger: whale shark males or females.

According to the brand new examine, feminine sharks outgrow males to achieve common lengths of 45.9ft (14m).

And figuring this out was no simple feat, contemplating how slowly the sharks develop.

DON’T MISS… Shark assault horror: Surfer KILLED after great white mauled his leg [INSIGHT] Huge 23ft great white tipped as ‘largest ever’ lurks ocean depths [STUDY] Mysterious predators ‘bigger than great whites’ lurking in ocean  [REPORT]

Shark information; Surprisingly, great whites will not be the most important shark species (Image: GETTY)

Shark information: Female whale sharks are formally the most important fish within the sea (Image: GETTY)

The researchers arrange a number of underwater cameras on a body that was pushed underwater.

According to check co-creator Brett Taylor, the tactic allowed for extra correct measurements.

He mentioned: “It works the identical approach our eyes do – so you possibly can calibrate the 2 video recordings and get a really correct measurement of the shark.”

The enhance in dimension on male whale sharks could give the females and benefit when having offspring.

And that may very well be essential as a result of whale sharks are thought-about a susceptible species.

They are sometimes caught for his or her meat, oil and fins, significantly in elements of Asia.

The Florida Museum mentioned: “Threats to this species embody bycatch, fisheries, vessel strikes, and poorly carried out tourism.”

And regardless of their giant dimension, whale sharks are largely docile and are filter feeders, which means they lazily swim round and gulp in water to filter out plankton, fish eggs and crustaceans.

Generally although to not pose a risk to people, there have been uncommon situations of assaults.

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[buddylistsocial]

WATCH: Bone-Chilling Video Shows Massive Great White Shark Stalking Six Completely Clueless Surfers A chilling video is going viral this week showing the moment a great white shark was spotted swimming near six surfers who were oblivious to the creature’s presence as they waited to catch a wave.