#and being dragged down by every dead thing he still clings on to.

[the-gay-prometheus]

You get it!!! You understand!!!!

Or, well, it's not Euclydia per se - it's what was left behind when Euclidia was straight up erased from existence. Energy cannot be created nor destroyed so when an entire dimension is torn out of the multiverse by force, something has to be left behind. That something would reasonably be a chaotic, lawless mess of energy floating in the hole that exists where a dimension was supposed to be. But the multiverse demands an equilibrium of sorts, so of course soon (give or take a couple million or billion years) after it comes into existence it begins to decay and become part of the literal void of nothingness surrounding every other dimension.

Somebody asked Alex during a book signing "What does Bill need?" And Alex's whole answer is fantastic btw (15:05-17:15 of this video) but the biggest clues are (paraphrasing) "He needs things that he can't have - he needs to be able to undo things that can't be undone" and "Being Bill's therapist would be like trying to piece together the truth from all of the different versions of his backstory that he tells" and "He needs to be honest with himself, and I don't know if he's capable of that."

I think all of those things really paint my own picture of what's going on with the whole Nightmare Realm situation because at the end of the day, what has he been desperately trying to do this whole time? He's been trying to merge the Nightmare Realm with a healthy dimension (if he really just wanted to 'hop into another dimension' he would have literally done that already), likely because maybe by merging it with a healthy dimension, there could be enough order to stave off the coming decay, and also still enough chaos for he and his friends to continue their fun. Point is, though, he cannot, for some reason, let this specific place go, which seems incredibly sentimental of him even if he tries to make it sound as unsentimental as possible.

I think that he thinks he needs to undo the things that can't be undone in order to heal, but the real truth behind what he needs is: he needs to learn how to let go. He can't accept endings, so he'll tighten his grip on whatever it is he can't let go of, regardless of the damage he causes to others, to himself, or to the very thing (or person in one case...) that he's holding on to.

Rotates in my brain the way Bill says his dimension was burned out of existence and the way that the Nightmare Realm is described as smelling eternally of burning hair. Which is probably just coincidence and was just the most obnoxious smell that Alex could think of but.

I am thinking about the Implications.

[milla-frenchy]

In the cold night

3k1 | Joel Miller x fem reader | ao3 | Masterlist

Summary: being on patrol, Joel and you spend the cold winter night together in a small house

Warnings: 18+ mdni. mention of a past SA attempt (not by Joel), protective!joel, feral!joel saving reader, friends to lovers, one bed, soft!joel, praise kink, masturbation (f), thighs rubbing, oral (f), piv. No age specified

a/n: this is written for @justagalwhowrites 's “Joel Miller birthday celebration”. I chose Jackson!Joel/one bed- Thank you for this event 🙏 Thank you @arcanefox207 for the gif in the mood board ❤️ Please, check out the full gif here and some others, they are stunning 😍 Thank you, Ally 🙏❤️ @aurorawritestoescape thank you as always for beta-ing, baby 💕🫶 dividers @saradika-graphics 🙏

The crunch of your footsteps in the snow echoes in your head. Two rabbits are hanging from Joel’s back, clinging to his shoulder. His brown jacket has lost its shine long, long time ago, and the leather is frayed at the elbows and sleeves. Every time you pass him, the smell of old leather rushes into your nostrils. A reassuring, familiar scent.

You’re heading to an outpost, as you have done so many times before. You know each other's reflexes by heart, the way your bodies tense in case of danger, the glances that make speech useless. You no longer count the number of infected you have killed during patrols.

You look around a small wooden house. Searching for footprints, anything that might put you on alert. You scan the area, whether for infected, or worse- hunters or raiders.

You feel safe with Joel, ever since the day he snatched you from the hands of raiders. Two dirty, skinny men. They surprised you, during one of your first long patrols. They knocked Joel out, and dragged you on an old mattress of the shelter you just arrived at. They did not even pay attention to the dead duck that you planned to eat that evening. In this world, with some men, food is not the first thing they crave. 

You punched one of them, then tried to grab your knife, but two men were too much to handle. When they threw you onto the mattress, you struggled, screaming, biting, then one held your arms while the other removed your pants. Tears obstructed your view. You would have preferred to be bitten by an infected, rather than that. 

Just as the first man was about to lie down between your thighs while you were crying with rage, you heard a dull, cold, unexpected noise. A knife thrown from the opposite side of the room, just stuck in the skull of the man, holding your arms. As soon Joel threw the knife, he rushed to rip the man off your body, and then punched him so many times that his face got swollen from the blows and turned unrecognizable.

“Piece o’shit!” Joel growled from the depths of his chest. You looked at him, still half in shock at what had almost happened to you, feeling relieved. The man was lying on the ground, barely breathing. Joel let go of his collar and retrieved the knife from the second man’s skull. He pressed the tip of the blade against his heart and slowly pushed it in, his dark gaze fixed on the man’s. The raider’s feet twitched for a few moments, before they froze for eternity.

Then Joel rushed over to you and covered you with an old blanket pulled from the foot of the bed. As soon as he sat down on the mattress, his worried eyes fixed on you, you wrapped your arms around his waist. Wanting to forget your fear, to curl up against his reassuring presence. He took you in his arms, rocking you slowly, holding you close to him.

“ ‘m sorry, sweetheart. I’m so sorry. I didn’t hear them coming, because of my damn bad ear.”

“It’s ok, Joel, it’s ok. They didn’t do anything to me,” you muffled in his chest.

“No it’s not. They did way too much. But I got you, now. I got you. Won’t happen again. Not on my watch.”

He held you against him for several minutes, patiently, one hand caressing your back, the other resting on the nape of your neck, until you stopped crying. He then asked if you were feeling a little better, if he could get the bodies out of the outpost. He didn’t want you to see them anymore. You nodded, watched him as he dragged the bodies out into the surrounding woods. 

He was sitting next to you until you fell asleep. He stood guard all night, staring at the shadows of the trees through the window, letting you rest.

From that day on, you knew that nothing would happen to you as long as you were with Joel. He was the type of man who, when he said something, stuck to it. He was reliable, loyal, and serious. He was your patrol partner, and you couldn't have asked for a better one.

Once you reach the shelter, you prepare the fire in the hearth of the old fireplace, while Joel goes around this old house, half buried under the snow. It is the first time that you patrol here in the middle of winter, and the walls and the ground are icy. You eat one of the rabbits, trying in vain to warm yourself by the fire. As you get ready to go to bed, Joel puts a blanket on the floor.

“What are you doing, Joel? You can't sleep there. You're gonna freeze and die, it’s too cold!”

“There's only one bed, sweetheart. Ain't gonna sleep with you.”

“Of course you're gonna sleep with me. Come on, Joel, don't be silly. We can share the bed, we have to keep each other warm or the next patrol will find our two skeletons in this damn house.”

“Jesus, you’re so stubborn! Alright then.”

You smile, thinking that you had never met someone as stubborn as him, and if he hadn't noticed your slightly blue lips, he probably wouldn't have changed his mind.

You undress and slip under the thin blankets, wearing your t-shirt and panties. Grimacing at the contact with the cold and damp covers. He joins you in the small bed, and even though warmth radiates from his body, your teeth still chatter.

“Christ, you're freezing. C’mere, I’ll keep you warm,” he says, as you take off your t-shirt and he discards his too, leaving only his boxers.

“Told you we had to sleep in the same damn bed… and I'm the stubborn one?”

He chuckles, and takes you in his arms, his chest pressed against your back.

“Better, sweetheart?”

“Yeah, you’re as warm as a boiler. How is that possible? Icicles are practically falling off these blankets.”

“Alright, you’re exaggerating a bit, don’t you think?”

You scoff and muffle a laugh, then fall asleep.

You wake up during the night, Joel's light snoring in your ear. His arms are still around you and you're much less cold. His scent surrounds you. You shift slightly, putting the blanket that had slipped back on both of you. The movement makes him mumble in his sleep and you smile, getting ready to fall back asleep, until you feel him twitch against you. His cock, asleep until then, has just woken up in his boxers when your ass brushed against it.

You open your eyes suddenly. It’s been a long time since you felt a body- a hard cock - against you. You try to move away from him a little, to not wake him up, to not create awkwardness between you. But he holds you tighter against him, letting out a sigh of contentment when his cock finds its place against your ass again.

You get a rush of arousal and you're not sure if you'll be able to fall back asleep. Your walls are contracting painfully, calling for a release of the pressure from your crotch. You close your eyes, placing your hand under the pillow. Trying to think of something else, until his cock jerks again. Once, twice. There���s no way you’re gonna be able to fall back asleep. 

So you think that maybe, if you do it discreetly, you can make yourself come. Even though he's lying against you, his chest against your back.

You slide your hand south, slowly, so as not to wake him, and start brushing your swollen folds through your panties. But it's not enough. You slide your hand under the hem, finally whirling your clit under your finger. Joel growls against your ear and you freeze for a few moments, until his breathing becomes calm, steady. Gently, you stroke yourself, finally starting to feel the fire in your crotch calm down a little.

You vaguely feel his nose brush your hair, not paying much attention to it, thinking he does it in his sleep. Then you feel his hand slowly slide down your arm, and you jerk, hastily removing your fingers from your panties, realizing that Joel is awake and that he has caught you.

“It’s ok, sweetheart,” he whispers softly in your ear in his sleepy voice, taking your hand and gently bringing it back to your pussy.

You feel the heat reach your cheeks and think about getting up, but you're too ashamed to face him. There had never been any sexual tension between the two of you. You're what you could call friends, in this lost world. You trust each other, he told you about Sarah, you told him about your late husband and son. You trust each other, and honestly, you never thought about him as more than a friend. And you don't want to ruin your friendship.

“I just want you to feel good.”

You stay silent for a few moments. Thinking about what he's telling you. You know he's sincere. 

You feel your clit pulsing and you bite your lip.

“Ok, Joel,” you breathe out. 

You're unsure of what will happen between the two of you after, but you let him lead your hand and slide your fingers under your soaked panties. You're already moaning at the first touch and you feel your nipples hardening. 

Delicately, the tips of his fingers pressed against yours, you let him lead the dance and travel through your folds. Then he slides both your hands into your panties, and makes you touch yourself so delicately, as if you were the most fragile thing in the world, that new moans escape you.

“Keep going, Joel, please…”

He hums, grazing your ear with his nose. You hear his breathing deepen, then he presses his forehead against your shoulder blade, still using your finger to brush your clit. You feel your pussy dripping. The fact that he is using your fingers, so perfectly, is perhaps the most sensual thing you have ever done.

You feel his cock stuck in his boxers harden even more as he keeps touching you. You crave to feel him against you, without any fabric between your bodies. You forget your shyness, your reserve, your worries.

“Would you… pull down your boxers? So I can feel you?*

“Of course, sweetheart.” He lets go of your hand to pull down his underwear. His hard cock springs out and this time you feel it fully against you. Big, hard.

“Between my thighs, please…”

He kisses your back and grabs his cock, slides it into this tight space, then comes to rest against your fingers again, in your panties. You slowly move your pelvis back and forth, rubbing yourself against his shaft.

“Christ, sweetheart… Feeling you against me, like that…”

“I know, Joel. It’s… good, really good.”

You no longer remember your fear that this will change things between you. The feeling is too good, too powerful, to think about anything else.

His shaft slides easily between your thighs, your pussy soaking him continuously.

“You’re so wet for me, baby”, he whispers in your ear, and a new flow trickles from your walls. His free hand caresses your shoulder, then he kisses it. You feel his mustache brush your skin, and your moans fill the room.

“You’re gonna come for me, sweetheart?”

“Fuck… fuck yeah, I'm gonna come, Joel.”

He keeps playing with your fingers with the same rhythm, feeling that you are close. Your mind goes blank. You only think about the pressure growing inside you, ready to explode.

“Come on baby, be a good girl for me,” he murmurs.

The orgasm washes over you, and you arch your back under its power, your ass pressed against Joel’s crotch. “Always such a good girl for me,” he praises, holding you against him, your hand in his, until your jerks stop.

Your breathing slowly goes down. “Damn”, you say. “That was so hot.”

“It was,” he smiles, kissing your shoulder. He doesn't ask for more, doesn't put any pressure on you, but you need more. You need your bodies to be one. You don't think too much about it, then add quickly, “Joel… I need to…” before shyness overwhelms you again, and he asks softly “tell me, baby. What do you need?”

The soft tone of his voice reassures you, and you add “I need to feel you… I need to feel you inside me.”

“Turn around, sweetheart. Lemme look at you.”

You do as he says, and face him. You barely see his face in the darkness of the night. Just enough to perceive the intensity in his gaze, behind his usual sweetness with you, as he strokes your cheek gently with his thumb.

“Can I kiss you?”

You nod, of course. Ready to take whatever he wants to give you. His warm lips land on yours and press against them. You hear him take a deep breath, then his nose rubs yours. He kisses you again, with more intensity, and sensations you thought forgotten forever jostle throughout your whole being. His tongue tastes your lips, then slides between them and finds yours. He moans as your hand grabs his shaft softly, wet with his precum and your desire. You jerk him off slowly as you continue to make out. He's big. So big. But you don't wonder if your body can accept it, after all this time. You know it will. And you know Joel will be soft. You nestle his cock at your entrance after pushing your panties aside, murmuring “I wanna feel you,” your forehead against his.

You tilt your pelvis forward and his tip slides inside you, making you hold your breath for a few moments.

“You’re ok?”

“Yeah. I just have to… get used to it.” 

He doesn’t move and lets you handle the rhythm. You kiss him again, and you feel your pussy dripping, eager to be filled. You put your hand on the back of his neck and squeeze his bicep with the other, sliding further down his shaft. Your walls spread as you glide on his tip and again, you feel that forgotten feeling. Your breasts are pressed against his chest, nipples tense. Your hand runs through his neck, and you feel his prominent veins under your fingers. 

“Oh my god,” you whine, when he is fully inside you. You pull back then push forward again, to reassure his worried eyes on you. You are so wet that the sounds echo in your ears and the whole room. Joel holds you against him, gently, sensually. One hand on your hip, the other on your back.

“Joel?” you ask.

“Tell me, sweetheart.”

“Can you lie down on me? I'd like to feel you deeper.”

He caresses your cheek and tells you yes, of course.

You lie on your back and he removes your panties, kneeling between your thighs.

And he looks at you, from your face to your cunt. "You're beautiful," he says. His stare stops there, then he glances at you. As if he was asking you silently if he could taste you. You nod and he settles between your thighs, spreading your folds with his fingers.

“You're so wet for me, baby,” he adds, before licking your pussy in a long stroke. Pointing his tongue at your clit, then running over your folds again. Your knees are bent, legs spread as wide as possible. His head moves between your offered thighs, your hands lost in his curls, while his tongue laps at your dripping pussy. He pushes two fingers in your core, and places his lips around your clit, sucking it. Then swirls it under his tongue, while his fingers thrust in at a perfect, regular pace.

“Joel,” you whimper. “I'm gonna come again.”

Your nails tighten on his scalp as you come on his tongue, your walls squeezing uncontrollably around his two fingers. He pulls them out and replaces them with his tongue, drinking in everything that flows from you. The feeling is so strong, forgotten for so long, that you feel like you're going to burst into tears. But he stops, careful not to overwhelm you, and lies down between your thighs. He places his hand on your cheek and searches for your eyes before pushing his tip into you with his other hand, eyes lowered to you.

“Damn sweetheart,” he breathes. “You feel so good around me.”

His words envelop you and lull you. His voice is low, calm, as slow and sweet as the rhythm in which he sinks into you.

All his weight is on you and you have never felt so safe in your entire life. His arms surround you as you kiss. Your hands roam the top of his body. His arms, his shoulders, his back, his cheeks, his neck. His cock slides inside you, pushing your walls in the most perfect way with each thrust. Your knees are spread wide to welcome him between your thighs. He straightens up, leaning on one hand, and looks at you. Looks into your eyes filled with desire.

He watches your neck throbbing. Your chest heaving.

He watches where his cock is digging into you.

“I'm not gonna last. Can you give me one more, baby?”

“Yeah, it's... yes.”

He lies back on you, eyes locked on yours, and slides his arms under your shoulders. Your hot, sweaty chests rub against each other. He doesn't take his eyes off you as he thrusts into you, his shaft rubbing exactly where you need it. Your fingers dig into his flesh as you come on his shaft and he stops moving. Eager to keep watching you twitch beneath him, but trying not to come too. Not yet, not inside you. He wants to let you come until the shaking stops. 

He looks at you, and focuses on a mole, chosen at random. To focus on something else, than your pussy perfectly squeezing him. When your trembling finally stops, he grabs his cock hastily, just in time before his cum coats the inside of your thighs and your lower stomach, then his heavy body rests against yours.

“Christ, sweetheart… that was amazing,” he says, smiling at you. You kiss and then nestle against his chest. You feel his heart beat hard, then gradually calm down. You fall asleep without even realizing it.

When you wake up, it’s daylight. The smell of coffee rushes into your nostrils. For a moment, it’s like life is almost normal.

You sit up in bed, holding the blanket against you.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” he says. Smiling, warm. Joel.

You smile back at him, thinking that you would like to wake up next to him every single day, from now on. 

Thank you for reading 🙏

Comments and reblogs are greatly appreciated ❤️

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[saetoru]

✩ ‧₊˚ ✩。what if you’re someone i just want around (i’m falling again)

synopsis. somewhere along the line, you started to hate suguru—that doesn’t mean you stopped loving him too

— word count. 9.5k (i am in misery)

— contents. post canon! au — fix it! (we all need a good fix it fic with suguru don't lie), this fic was started before recent manga chapters so the higher ups are still alive—just go with it ok :,), geto survives + lives free of kenjaku, exes to lovers, kind of redemption i suppose, mentions of blood, injuries, and weight loss (geto), mentions of canon character deaths (nanako, mimiko, nanami), mentions of wanting to raise children with geto and have a family, no gendered terms but reader has a personality and actual thoughts and feelings, references to the hunger games (you have movie night lol), BFF satoru (he is babie), there is a kiss y’all !! (scandalous i know :O)

— notes. i started this fic back in march and i had trouble with it and put it on pause for a while. i’m very glad i finished it in the end. i always like fix it! fics and this is self-indulgent and idk if ppl will read it bc it’s sfw but it’s ok if they don’t, i loved writing it. thank you koi for beta-reading this whole bad boy. mwah <333

the day suguru is declared a free man is actually the day he signs away his freedom for good. 

you say nothing, but you know it’s the truth. satoru fights tooth and nail to plead suguru’s case—you think it’s perhaps a little too desperate for it to be in the best interest of suguru and not himself. but satoru has suffered enough, and admittedly—although you deny it—a small part of you does not want to lose suguru twice. you watch as satoru argues that suguru has already died once—surely he can’t die again? and losing control of his body and mind is paying for his crimes enough, is it not? he argues that there are no ideals left for a man like geto suguru to chase after losing himself to every principle he had left. 

and then satoru wins. 

you expect it, but it doesn’t make it any easier. you watch numbly as suguru is assigned under your watch. you should be happy. you love suguru—you never stopped. but it doesn’t change the fact that he’s not a free man, and now he drags your freedom with his. you’ll never break away from him, never cut through the ropes that tie your hands behind your back and bind you to him—and then you wonder for a moment, unsure if it’s selfish or selfless or some cruel in-between to think this way, if geto suguru was better off dead. 

whether that’s for your sake, or his, you’re not sure. 

and yes, he’s let off alive, and sure, there’s no real punishment for all he’s done, but you know deep down he’s as chained and shackled as he’s ever been. he’s not allowed to leave the house unless you or satoru are there to chaperone, and it’s never to be anywhere near non-sorcerers. he’s not to live in a place of his own until the higher up’s deem him trustworthy. he has to ask you to buy the things he wants from the grocery store. he can’t even step outside for a smoke unless you’re aware. 

for a long time, he doesn’t speak much—can hardly muster a barely audible mornin’ back when you force a smile and greet him cheerily for breakfast. slowly, it turns into half-snarky conversations that get cut short by one of you leaving the room. finally, you’re civil—maybe even friendly. you’re not so sure where you stand with him as of now.

it’s not the same suguru you remember falling in love with, it’s not even close to the version of the man you fell for all those years ago. it’s hard having him here—some days you’re angry and want to throw him out, to scream at him for haunting you again just when you think you’ve moved on from the horrors of your past. some days you want to cry and cling to him, bury your face into his neck and thank him for being here again, for finding his way back to you. and some days you wish you never met him at all, that this would all be easier if it didn’t exist in the first place. 

he’s not the same geto suguru you loved, but somehow, because life is as bitter as it is ruthless, you fall in love with this version just as hard no matter how much you deny it. 

“i made your favorite,” you smile gently, placing a neat plate of french toast with freshly cut strawberries on the side. you even take great care to get the syrup-to-powdered sugar ratio he likes right, but he doesn’t make a move to reach for the plate. instead, suguru sits at the table stiffly, like he has to be here or there are consequences for that too. it almost makes you sad—even here, he’s not free. 

“thanks,” he says quietly, “but i’m not hungry.”

“you said that last night, suguru,” you sigh, “and at lunch. and at breakfast. and at dinner the night before—”

“i’ll eat it later,” he cuts you off, playing with the ends of his hair. 

it’s a lot shorter now. it’s you who finds his body battered and bruised after the smoke clears. he’s almost unrecognizable, not the same charming and perfect suguru you’re used to seeing. not the same silkened strands and smooth skin, not the same muscled and toned body, not the same chiseled jaw and soft cheeks. instead, he’s a shell of himself. his hair is matted in knots, his body is almost frail, and you notice the sunken hollows of his cheeks and dark undereyes as you lift him from the rubble a little too easily. but his body is his own—that much you can tell from the way the stitches have disappeared. 

it takes shoko a long time to nurse him back to health—it takes even longer for him to open his eyes.

you waited day and night by his side, hand over his as he breathed slowly, unconscious and unsuspecting. it would be so easy, you think one night, it would be so easy to kill him and forget and move on. 

you’ve already grieved him once before. you’ve felt and conquered the pain of loving geto suguru and losing him first to himself and then to death. but love is as selfish as it is selfless, and it’s under your mercy that you let him live—yet it’s under your cowardice that you keep him close. 

“you have to gain back the weight you lost, suguru,” you sigh, “you’re w—”

“weak?” he finishes for you, eyeing you for a second and then grinning. it’s unsettling, a grin that makes your skin crawl and your heart stop for a moment before he’s reaching for the fork and stabbing into his toast. “is that what you wanted to say? that i’m weak?”

“suguru, you know that’s not how i meant—”

“you’re not wrong,” he hums, chewing on the first bite as he speaks, “i suppose i am pretty weak right now, huh? couldn’t even kill you in your sleep if i tried could i?”

your throat is dry as you shrug, “i suppose not,” you whisper. 

“ah,” he grins again, “but that doesn’t stop you from locking your door every night, does it?” 

suguru is still healing. his body is weak, and sometimes, he leans against the wall as he walks. his arm is healed—you’re not entirely sure how, but you catch him rolling the shoulder out every now and then like it’s sore and stiff. he’s lost a lot of weight—part of it is from being bedridden for as long as he was, injured and half alive, and part of it is from barely eating—save for the few bites you force into him. you never thought there’d be a day when you could say this—but the odds of you beating suguru in hand-to-hand combat are high, and the reality is an everlasting reminder that he is not who you fell for. 

you swallow, letting out a shaky breath as he watches you closely, diligently cutting another bite from the french toast sitting on his plate as he stares you down like he can see past your soul. you don’t know what’s scarier—that suguru can still practically see yours, or that you’re unsure he even has one anymore. 

“you tried coming in?” you ask, unsure what else to say. he merely shrugs, takes another bite, and sets his fork down. 

“thought i’d check on you,” he pops a strawberry half into his mouth as he speaks.

“is that what it really was?” you raise a brow, “or was i right to lock the door?”

you’re not sure why you lock the door at night. maybe it’s because you don’t trust him, or maybe it’s because you don’t want him near you just yet. you’re not sure. you’re not sure how satoru can go back to his cheery self, how he can step through your door and boom a loud yo, suguru! before settling beside suguru on the couch with his feet on the coffee table as he rambles away. maybe it’s not real—maybe it’s satoru desperately pretending that if he tries hard enough, things can go back to how they were. 

but you don’t know how he still has the energy to try, and you don’t know if you have it in you to try anymore yourself. 

you and suguru stare each other down like that for a bit, the tension rising with every silent second that passes. you’re sure he doesn’t want to be here as much as you don’t want him around—but you’re also sure he’s glad it’s here with you as much as you’re glad it’s with no one else.

“you tell me,” he smirks after a bit, the hint of amusement making your fists clench. how dare he have the audacity to look at you like that in your own home? like he has the upper hand over you without trying? “what do you think i was there for?”

“i think you should stay in your room, suguru,” you say carefully, “i bought a new bed just for that room.”

“how sweet of you,” he hums. he sips the tea before him—it’s cold by now, but it’s just how he likes it, rose with one sugar. “you must have been excited to have me.”

“hardly,” you mumble bitterly—you can’t help it. you want him to feel hurt, even just a little. you want him to know that just because he’s back, it doesn’t mean you’ve waited all this time for him to be. liar, a part of you says, you’ve always waited for him, haven’t you? but suguru doesn’t seem phased—he doesn’t even blink.

“then tell me, why am i here?” suguru asks, his tone is as casual as ever. 

i wish i knew, you want to say. i wish i knew but i don’t.

“because satoru asked you to be,” is all you can say.

he nods, pushing back his plate and standing up, offering you that same grin. “you’re right,” he hums, “that’s exactly why i’m here.”

it hits you why his smile is so unsettling once he leaves—it’s almost genuine, like he’s still loved you all this time. impossible, you tell yourself. suguru stopped loving you a long time ago. and you need to stop trying to figure out why. 

————————————————

even despite telling yourself you don’t care what suguru thinks, a small part of you needs to prove to him you’re not scared of him. that you don’t fear for your own safety in your home, and that him being here is not some form of him haunting you. you don’t care. he shouldn’t get the luxury of thinking you care. he can come in and watch you sleep like the creep he is if he wants—you couldn’t bother to give it a second thought. 

the first night you take a chance and leave the door unlocked, suguru slips into bed beside you. it wakes you up instantly, and before you can question it, his head tucks into your neck, and his hand grasps your shirt tightly. you notice the panting almost instantly—and then you realize, it must be a nightmare. 

you fall into old habits, even after all these years, defaulting to care for him like it’s second nature. 

“you’re safe, suguru,” is what you settle for saying after a moment of contemplation. it’s all you can really think to say, so you brush your lips over the top of his head as you murmur, “you’re safe,” over and over again. 

as difficult as it is to have suguru around, as painful and cruel and aggravating as it is to be reminded of his distant existence even as he’s two doors down, this part feels natural. it’s almost like you’re back in jujutsu high, waking up to him sneaking into your room as he presses his weight over your body and wakes you with soft kisses along your face. 

except this time, he’s not annoyingly demanding cuddles or telling you about his weird dream, he’s not stealing your blanket and demanding you play with his hair. this time, it’s not the same suguru—and this time, it’s not jujutsu high. 

it’s your room. the one you got on the other side of town to leave the sorcery world behind, somehow still stuck right in the center of it no matter where you go. and yet, just like all those years ago, your legs tangle, and your arms wrap him up, and you murmur, “you’re safe,” while he catches his breath. 

“but they’re not,” he mutters in between labored pants, making you pause. 

and then you remember. 

faintly, you recall the blonde and black hair from a distance, you remember bitterly wondering what’d it be like watching suguru fathering children of your own as you came to the reality that it would never happen. sometimes, you wonder if you hate nanako and mimiko for existing, for living as the dreams you never got to live through with suguru. 

it’s selfish—to hate two children because they are what you do not have. 

but then you feel something wet hit your neck, and then you wish they were okay—for his sake. and just for a moment, you’re selfless again. 

“they’re not safe,” he mutters, making you sigh. 

“they are,” you whisper, hesitating for a moment before letting your fingers slip into his hair. you scratch gently at his scalp, feeling his body melt into yours almost instantly—like it’s a response that’s natural to him. “they’re not suffering. not anymore.”

“is that supposed to make me feel better?” he scoffs. you shrug, letting your cheek press against the top of his head as you sigh.

“it helps me feel better,” you say softly, “‘s just how you learn to cope.”

it’s an understanding you both silently come to. loss on both sides. bloodshed on either ground. defeat no matter which ideal you take. to love is to bear the pain of mortality—it’s a lesson that you never cease to learn until the ends of time itself. 

“the jujutsu world is one of suffering,” he grits, sniffling into your neck. you hum, pressing a kiss to his head as your eyes close. 

“every world is one of suffering, suguru, you can’t erase them all. the sooner you realize that, the easier you’ll find peace.”

you fall into a slumber after that, faintly aware of the way he shuffles closer to you, faintly aware of the soft kiss pressed to your skin as sleep takes over your body and drifts you out of consciousness. 

when you wake up the next morning, suguru is gone, and the door is closed. the blanket is tucked up to your chin, and your neck still tingles from last night. 

————————————————

“get up,” you throw a pillow at suguru, waking him up with a start as he sits up. his hair is tousled and messy from sleep—it’s now long enough that he can put it in a bun without strands slipping from the bottom anymore. you chuckle as he glares at you, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes as he groans. 

“the fuck was that for?” he grunts, holding the blanket up to cover his exposed chest. 

it’s funny that he does that, in a way. it’s not as though you haven’t seen his chest…and then some too. it’s not like you haven’t torn his shirt off to stanch the flow of blood from his injuries before or feel the bare skin with your palm under the pale moonlight as the lingering scent of sex breezes through the room. 

but somehow, even though he doesn’t need to cover his chest around you of all people, you’re glad that he does. truthfully, it keeps you slightly comforted to know that he’s aware you’re still technically strangers—no matter how well-versed you are in each other’s pasts. but you don’t ponder on it too much. instead, you grin, shoving aside the visual of the small glance you caught at his pecs, and you clap your hands to motion him to hurry. 

“we are going grocery shopping,” you say casually—as though it’s not something to make him raise a brow in shock.

“me?” he points a finger at himself. you roll your eyes, and he challenges you with another raise of his brow. “aren’t i supposed to stay away from civilians?”

“yes, you,” you nod, pointing back at him, “and satoru has worked overtime to get you granted permission to roam around with me. he says you’re welcome, by the way.”

“tell him to go fuck off.”

“that’s ungrateful,” you say flatly, “his feelings will be hurt.”

“his feelings will find a way to cope,” suguru huffs. “i don’t want to be around…them,” he says bitterly. 

you suppose it’s wishful thinking to hope suguru has let go of his past beliefs. perhaps he’s long abandoned the possibility of the vision he once planned on bringing to life, but you can’t say you expected him to revert back to the old suguru who fought alongside you and satoru. you yourself certainly have no intention of returning to the sorcery world after all the events, so you can’t say you’re shocked by the lack of change he seems to show. but then again, you suppose suguru has changed. whether he sees it or not. 

he stays here and doesn’t put up a fight to leave even though he can now that he’s healed. he eats lunch when you tell him and even washes the dishes. sometimes, when you come home a bit late, dinner is even ready on the table as he sits and stares at you expectantly. his plate is empty like yours—like he’s been waiting for you even though he doesn’t need to. you suppose you can see he’s changed in the way he doesn’t scoff at the tv channels you surf through, he silently sits on the opposite end of the couch now and watches with you, and perhaps if you’re lucky, you’ll hear a light chuckle or a quiet sigh as the scenes roll on the screen. 

you suppose this suguru is a step closer to your suguru every day he spends with you, but you don’t know if any suguru is what you need right now. perhaps that name should’ve been buried away as a distant memory, perhaps it should’ve only been something you unlock once every year on his death anniversary—when satoru clambers through your door drunk and unsteady as he clutches the hand that killed his best friend, only to share pancakes with you in the morning and pretend like you don’t notice the dried tears on his cheeks while he acts like he doesn’t catch the way your hand shakes as you cut into your breakfast. 

but suguru is here now. whether it’s as geto, one half of the strongest duo in jujutsu high, whether it’s as suguru, the love of your life and the sole reason you exist, or whether it’s as geto suguru, the curse user and mass murderer who haunts your past, present, and everything in between. 

so you simply sigh, grab the pillow again, and hit the top of his head before walking over to the door as you call over your shoulder, “i’m gonna wait for you by the door in fifteen minutes. be ready or face the consequences..”

“no thanks. don’t wanna,” suguru grumbles petulantly, frowning at you as you stick your tongue at him, smirking as if you’ve just played your ace. 

“too bad,” you sing before swinging the door shut.

he’s at the door in exactly fifteen minutes, like he waited until the last possible second to join you as a move of spite. but you simply gesture him out the door and lock up, taking your sweet time as he stands there with an annoyed face. you stare at the doorknob once you’re done, taking a deep breath before turning to him with your best smile. 

“let’s go,” you hum.

“after you,” he mutters.

—

he grimaces as soon as he sees the people going about their business, clearly unhappy with the idea of being around non-sorcerers, but one sharp glare from you has him sighing and trekking along. the grocery store, admittedly, is not as bad as suguru thinks—in fact, there are lots of things he doesn’t realize he misses until he watches you grab a shopping cart. 

suddenly, he sees shadows. the silhouette of your figure climbing into the cart, the angry wave of satoru’s hands as he claims it's his turn to be pushed around, the figure of shoko pinching the bridge of her nose in irritation from the back—and then, he sees the dark shadow of baggy pants and a small bun. it’s him. suguru watches himself almost in slow motion through the remnants of his imagination as he gently shoves satoru out of the way and reaches to poke the tip of your nose before he pushes the cart with you in it.  

it’s a happy memory—and it’s gone all too soon.

as soon as he blinks, the shadows have disappeared—instead, it’s you waving a hand in his face, concern written on your features as you call his name. 

“suguru? hey, hello? are you with me?”

he exhales, pulled from his trance as he gently grabs your wrist from in front of his face and sets it down as he nods, “yeah, i’m fine. just thinking,” he mumbles. 

for a second, you hesitate, like you almost mean to say something. but in the end, you only nod before turning to grab the shopping cart. but he stops you—grabs the handle and turns to you with a small smile on his face, making you raise a brow as he gently moves you away. 

“what are you—”

“get in,” he grins, making you stare at him in bewilderment. 

“what?”

“just get in,” he sighs, “you love it when you get to sit in the cart.”

“i’m not a teenager anymore—”

“get in, will you?” he groans, “always so damn difficult.”

“hey,” you pout, glaring at him with your hands planted at your hips, “that’s rude.” it’s cute. suguru stares at you with amusement in his eyes and a soft look on his face that you don’t think you’ve really seen in years. 

“humor me,” he hums, “just get in, okay?”

so you do. 

with a huff and a grumble under your breath, you fight back a smile and climb into the damn cart just like old times. you swallow and try not to let it get to you when he reaches over and pokes the tip of your nose and pushes the cart around, letting you name off the things you need from your list while he grabs them. and when he sneaks snacks into the pile, you roll your eyes and glare at him in the way you always did—the one that isn’t actually annoyed. fond. happy to let it slide because it’s him.

“we need candy,” you murmur, “that’s the last thing on the list.”

“okay. what kind?” he asks, turning the cart into the candy aisle and smiling softly down at you.

“doesn’t matter, satoru eats anything as long as it’s sweet. he’s more likely to die from sugar than fighting a curse, i think.”

“you buy candy for satoru?” he asks, making you shrug as you reach over and grab a few bags of candy off the shelves, setting them down beside you. 

“he comes over a lot so i learned to keep stuff stocked up for him. you know how he gets when he’s hungry.”

suguru feels something he hasn’t felt since he was a teenager. jealousy—specifically of satoru. 

suguru is not foolish. he knows as soon as he meets gojo satoru that of the two, one of them is stronger and it’s definitely not himself. for the longest time, he’s okay with that, okay being the strongest only when alongside satoru—until he’s not. and even if suguru always had a bit more attention in the romance department than satoru, in his head he’s always known that perhaps satoru can keep you safer, more well off, maybe even happier. with smooth smiles and eyes as welcoming as an oasis, gojo satoru would never leave you in the dark pit of misery as suguru once had. 

something about the thought of you and satoru keeping each other company through the lonely years, filling that empty spot suguru left behind, sharing moments over candy and empty wrappers makes suguru wonder for a moment if perhaps he’d be happier if he stayed. maybe he could have worn a heartfelt smile in a world that carves them off the faces of sorcerers with bloody knives as long as you were there to wipe the blood.  

but before he can dwell on it, you snatch one more bag—this time of his favorite candy, placing it into the cart and grinning gently up at him. 

“i haven’t bought this one in years,” you admit, “i almost forget how it tastes.”

“me too,” he says quietly.

“well,” you hum, “we’ll have to have some when we’re home.”

home. you say it as though it belongs to him as much as it does you, and then like you always have, without even meaning to, you wash away the dark stains of his jealousy with no trace left behind.

“yeah,” he chuckles, “we—”

“daddy, look! candy!” suguru is cut off by the gentle pitter-patter of two tiny feet running into the aisle, pointing at a bag of candy as a man follows close behind. 

his breath hitches. 

she’s small, the girl—she has two pigtails with soft strands of blonde hair falling out of the loosely tied bands. it reminds suguru of the first time he perfected tying up nanako’s hair, the soft giggles behind her tiny hand as she twirled in the mirror. 

there’s another girl in the man’s arms—dark hair on her head as she curls into her father’s chest and tucks her head into his neck when she sees you and suguru in the aisle. she’s shy, he realizes, like mimiko, and suddenly he remembers the tiny fingers that used to hook into his pants when she got too overwhelmed by the people around her, waiting for suguru to scoop her into his arms. 

perhaps in another life, suguru would redo everything differently—he’d be happy with you and satoru and shoko, and nanami and haibara would be there too, well and alive. but no matter what, he’d never redo nanako and mimiko differently. he’d never change a thing about them, not even the way nanako whines too much about small things or the way mimiko never speaks up even when something is clearly bothering her. he’d never change the way he saved them and took them in at the tender age of eighteen, too lost to be a father but choosing to raise them anyway. he’d never change the feeling of pure joy and unbridled pride when they climbed into his bed for the first time, shushing each other so as not to wake him—even though he’d awoken as soon as the door to his room opened. 

because he realized that night that yeah, maybe he’d made mistakes in his lifetime, lots of them too. maybe he’d made a bad choice choosing the path he did, or maybe he didn’t. he’s never been completely sure—just that he had to try at least to make his vision for a different world come to life. but one mistake he never made was his girls. one thing he was always sure about was the soft clutch at his pants and the tiny hands reaching for his own.

suguru wouldn’t change anything about nanako and mimiko—except maybe the fact that they aren’t here, gone because of him. 

“suguru?” you ask softly, reaching for his hand as he grips the cart tightly and pulling his gaze away from the family in the distance. 

he blinks, meets your eyes, and knows that you know. with one glance at your face, he knows you understand. the world is cruel, one filled with suffering, he thinks. but then he remembers what you said, that every world is full of suffering, not just his—that it’s a truth he has to come face to face with.

but it’s hard. it’s hard when this man has his two little girls and suguru does not—it’s hard to watch someone have what he wants with no worries of losing it, all because of people and their own weaknesses. he thinks for a moment that he’s been right all along—that non-sorcerers are too weak for this life, that the jujutsu world has always suffered so they don’t have to. 

but then the man speaks up, catching both of your attention. 

“your mother used to love those,” he says quietly to his daughter, a pained smile on his face. instantly, you and suguru both seem to understand the weight of that single sentence. 

every world has its own pain, suguru realizes. its own cruelties and unfairness, its own way of bringing suffering in its wake as it rips away the things closest to you from your begging fingertips, leaving them cold and empty and numb from the lost weight underneath them. 

“let’s go, suguru,” you whisper, “we have everything we came for.”

“yeah,” he whispers back, clearing his throat so his voice doesn’t crack, “let’s go.”

suguru leaves the grocery store with you after you pay, and for a brief moment, he’s unsure. unsure whether he’s grateful to satoru for fighting for him to be able to come and grateful to you for dragging him along, or if he wishes he died along with the rubble, gone before you could find him and turn him into this.

“before you even think about hiding away in your room,” you say, grabbing the bags from the cart as you put it back where it belongs, “you have to help with putting away the groceries.”

“sure,” he says smoothly. he grabs all the heavy bags from your hand, and you make a move to protest that you don’t need him to take the heavier ones, that you’re fine and can handle them like you’ve always handled them. 

but he walks off, and finally, you decide to simply follow.

————————————————

satoru likes to come and visit—you’ve started a routine movie night every week (unless he’s away, of course.) it’s fun, but it also means he makes your veins pop because he’s a headache like that—always makes himself right at home and eats your snacks like this is his place and not yours. he helps himself to your already limited candy and puts his sock-clad feet up on the coffee table no matter how many times you tell him not to. 

you try sitting with legs as long as these, he always whines, earning a harsh glare from you as you smack at his shins until he ultimately caves and begrudgingly sets his feet down. 

but then they always make their way back up to the coffee table, and you’re too busy enjoying his company to care—although you’ll never admit it. 

satoru is endearing like that, swallowing the dark clouds from your shoulders whole and eating up your burdens with that side of responsibility that you don’t think you could ever stomach. satoru is just like that, you realize, taking the brunt of the weight and laughing off every concern until you can’t help but not take them seriously yourself. 

it’s hard to remember that sometimes you didn’t just lose suguru, the love of your life, that night. everyone lost something. shoko lost someone to smoke with, yaga lost a student to scold, nanami lost a headache to avoid, and satoru?

well…satoru lost what you think might’ve been the only filled void of his miserably empty life. 

it’s hard to remember that satoru lost his best friend—the only best friend he’s ever had (although you like to think of yourself as a close contender)—because he’s so good at letting you forget. he brings you ice cream (that he eats half of because it’s only fair he gets a share), and he sits and hogs your couch (that he argues you don’t really need as much space as him on because your legs aren’t as long), and he watches those stupid sitcoms that are dry with boring jokes (that you used to make suguru watch back in the day).

it’s hard to remember that satoru also lost as much as you because he’s so damn good at making you forget about your own loss, you don’t care to think about anyone else’s for a while. just a short while. just until he’s yawning that obnoxiously loud yawn and stretching those awkwardly long limbs of his before he claims he really should go and that being the world’s best teacher requires as many hours of beauty sleep as you can squeeze in. 

and then he’s off. and it’s empty again. and just like that, you’re reminded of why he was there in the first place—to fill in that sick and painful void that geto suguru left in you. 

it’s gaping, like he tore a chunk of you right out with sharp teeth, like you’re just a piece of meat for him to get his fill of. if suguru really loved you, would you be so easy to let go of? why couldn’t he smile? because you could—god, you could smile just from the sight of him alone, you realize a long time ago. him with his cigarette tucked between his lips, those death sticks as you called them, hung loosely from his mouth as he gives you a lopsided grin. 

geto suguru is enough of a reason to smile. the world could crumble at your feet and leave you with nothing but rubble and dirt, and still, suguru is the core of the earth you’re searching for. 

so why couldn’t you be the same? what is it you were missing? what about you was just not enough for him like the way he was enough for you? 

it dawns on you one night, through bitter tears and shaky sobs, and that sick, twisted, pleading feeling in your gut that begs the wind to carry him back to you—geto suguru has never loved you the way you loved him.

and for that, you can never forgive him, you don’t think.

“you tryin’ to go bug-eyed?” he asks, settling down on the couch next to you, making you snap out of your trance. you shake your head a little, stare back at him for a moment before putting on that look on your face where you roll your eyes and pretend everything is fine.

“no,” you huff, “i’m just thinking.”

“about…?”

“satoru has rarely ever missed a movie night.”

“maybe he’s sick of you,” he shrugs, grinning slyly at you as you narrow your eyes with a glare, “there’s someone here to keep you company now so he’s probably taken his opportunity to run.”

“you’re hardly company,” you scoff, “freeloader.”

“hey,” he defends, shrugging as if it’s not his fault. you suppose it’s not. “i didn’t ask to be rescued. you can’t be high and mighty and petty. ‘s not how that works.”

“says who? you don’t make the rules. i can be graciously kind and a jerk all at once.”

“complexity,” he nods, “i like it.”

“i’m not as complicated as you might think,” you grumble, crossing your arms as you stare at the time. yeah, satoru isn’t making it—which, he told you as much, but he’s strolled in at the last second too many times to count before. you figure today would be the same. “as long as you don’t skip movie nights with me, i’m pretty simple to keep appeased.”

“alright,” he props his feet up on the coffee table—seriously, what is it with asshole men putting their feet on your table? satoru is a terrible influence. “let’s have a movie night.”

“what?” you blink.

“movie night,” he repeats, “you said you don’t like skipping movie night—”

“well, i meant i don’t like satoru skipping movie—”

“well, it was me before satoru, wasn’t it?” he says with a smile. his eyes are closed, crinkled at the corners, but his voice is carefully neutral—like he takes extra care not to let you see any emotion behind it. 

but that only means there is an emotion, isn’t there? is he jealous? does he hate the fact that you and satoru have a routine of your own without him? that you don’t need him to continue living your life? 

good. he should be. he walked out on you all those years ago. he killed a village. killed his parents. you never even got to meet them—he never even got to take you home and introduce you to them before he ripped away every fantasy you ever had with him. 

and now he’s back—he has the audacity to live, to laugh in your face with his existence that yes, geto suguru is here. and he was supposed to be executed, but your stubborn friend didn’t let that happen. he was supposed to be your husband by now with kids and a happy little home, and you were supposed to be his parent’s new addition to their family that they loved so much. but none of that is even close to happening, and it’s suguru’s fault, and the least he can do is show you some regret and maybe feel just the slightest bit bad that you now have to watch shitty movies with his best friend instead of him to feel normal. 

ex-best friend? half best friend? you don’t even know—do they still consider each other their best friends? does anyone consider suguru anything? you don’t know what you consider him. but you think the least he can do is act just the slightest bit pathetic after making you feel so pathetic for so long just to even the score. 

he should be a stranger. he feels like an old friend. but either is dangerous. 

“alright,” you sigh, “let's bring back movie night. don’t fall asleep.”

“i get plenty of sleep nowadays,” he hums, “i have more than enough free time for that now.”

“how lucky of you,” you snort. 

—

picking a movie with suguru is difficult. he actually has standards—satoru watches anything so long as he gets snacks, and he can make anything fun to watch with the way he comments from the side like a critic. suguru, on the other hand, actually cares about the quality of a movie, the metrics that make it good. 

so you pick the hunger games just to piss him off. 

“seriously?” he raises a brow, “this is your pick?”

“yes,” you grin, “i like these movies.”

“of all movies—”

“my house, my rules,” you grin cheekily, “you can pick the movies as soon as you start paying the bills.”

“wow,” he deadpans, “stooping to use my financial status against me? i thought you were better than this.”

“oh suguru,” you sigh dramatically, grabbing a bag of chips from the table, “you don’t know me at all.”

all things considered, you think it’s a rather enjoyable experience. it’s not as fun without satoru’s stupid comments that you pretend to hate, but suguru provides his own commentary that earns a giggle out of you here and there too—although his are not meant to be funny. but that’s the appeal of it, you think. 

“she should have picked gale,” he mumbles. you raise a brow.

“peeta was always there for her, did you miss the rain scene?”

“so was gale,” he says smoothly, grabbing a chip from your bag and making you scowl.

“gale killed her sister,” you point out, “and a lot of other people too. he was ruthless. she needed peeta.”

“gale did what he had to do,” suguru mumbles. 

suddenly, it doesn’t really feel like you’re discussing the movie anymore. it feels more than that. it feels sickening—the air is heavy, and your throat is dry and god, you just wanted a movie night and not this heaviness as you talk about stuff from the past without actually talking about it. 

you blink before turning to your chips, playing around with the bag as you shrug. 

“in the end he didn’t get katniss, did he?”

suguru studies you for a moment, stares a little too deep into you that you start to feel the urge to bolt to your room and go to bed. 

“guess not,” he says quietly, “guess that’s the one regret he has, huh?”

you think for a second, as suguru stares at your eyes with something you can’t quite read, that you might cry. you might cry and throw that half-empty can of soda in his face for speaking in codes and making you question what he means and remember your past. you might cry because suguru could’ve always gotten you—in fact, he had you.

it’s not fair. nothing is, but you can’t help but dwell on it.

“i’m going to bed. it’s late,” you mumble after a few moments, standing. he only nods, staring at the tv as the credits roll. when you make it to your room and the door shuts behind you, you debate clicking the lock in place. 

in the end, you don’t lock the door. suguru climbs into bed with you once more later that night, shaking slightly from his nightmare but calmer than usual. he’s still gone by the time morning comes, and you still never mention it.

it hits you one night that maybe he still has you—maybe you never let him stop having you, no matter what you say.

————————————————

suguru is good at cleaning while you’re away. you have to go out and do adult things like breadwinning and grocery shopping and bill paying. he dusts and cleans and even takes out the trash when you’re home to monitor him as he steps two feet out of your front door. sometimes, because you like to get on his nerves, you accidentally mess up a corner of the house just as he cleans it, laughing as he shoots you an unimpressed look. 

“stop getting crumbs on the floor,” he mumbles, “i just vacuumed.”

“you make a good malewife,” you giggle, “vacuuming and everything. how cute.”

“don’t call me that,” he grumbles, sitting down on the couch. 

“but you missed a spot,” you point to the crumbs you’ve sprinkled from your fingers as you snack away, making him glare. “failwife.”

“i’m going to divorce you and take everything,” he snaps, making you snort as you put your hands up in surrender.

“you don’t have to, you know,” you murmur, “clean, i mean. i can handle it.”

“i think i should carry my weight around here,” he shrugs, “since you are basically sugar babying me around for now.”

“dangerous curse user to the world, but sugar baby to me,” you tease, pulling a chuckle out of him as he rolls his eyes. 

sometimes it’s nice to have his company. suguru is good with banter like that, he’s not annoying like satoru where you run in circles. suguru makes you laugh from your belly, makes the hiccups catch in your throat as you double over. he’s always been like that, always known how to make laughter pour from your lips and trickle down your chin. it’s comforting to know he still knows how. it leaves a small amount of bitterness that he’s still able to make you feel like this. 

“by the way, next time you go shopping, take me with you,” he says casually, “i need to buy stuff for my hair. it’s growing.”

“you’ll finally see the sun just for your hair?” you gasp, “who knew that’s all it’d take?”

despite the playfulness in your words, there’s still shock. suguru is willingly stepping foot outside your house. he’s finally choosing to return to life after living like a recluse no matter how many times you and satoru have tried to beg him to get up and go somewhere. the most you can get out of him is a walk around the neighborhood before he goes back to wandering your home and hiding away in his room. 

suguru is returning to life, his life, and you can’t help but wonder where that leaves room for you.

“my hair is my charm,” he reasons, “wouldn’t you agree?”

there’s a smirk on his lips when he asks—it’s like he’s seventeen and teasing you again, giving you that unfairly flirty smile that used to make you stutter as a kid. back when you were hopelessly in love. back when it was you, suguru, and the world in your corner. back when you had dreams of your future, practically giggling as you planned it away in a notebook. 

suguru was always perfect like that, the kind of guy you could only dream about. he’s always been handsome—he’s always been the center of attention everywhere you went. you used to huff about it, about all the attention he managed to get from walking into a room alone. but then he’d smile, give you that tender look of his as he’d chuckle, and you’d be hopeless again. 

he shouldn’t have that effect on you anymore after over a decade. but he does. it’s cruel, the way the universe works. it’s like there’s a magnet that pushes you together no matter how far you try to go, still pulled by gravity straight into his awaiting eyes and devilish smile.

“i cut your hair off once, i can do it again,” you huff. he laughs, it’s good-natured and kind. 

“i was a bit heartbroken when i realized it was so short, i have to admit,” he says, “i didn’t look like me.”

“you looked good,” you say quietly, “i think you’d make anything work, to be honest.”

“yeah?” he grins, “any requests? i might consider it if it’s you.”

“oh shut up,” you roll your eyes, “how about shaving your head bald? let's see how much charm you have without all that hair.”

“i could charm you without the hair still, couldn’t i?” he winks. 

it’s unfair how he acts like normal. like a few months in your home undoes everything he’s ever committed, all the atrocities he’s caused. the way he flirts with you feels like you’re his again. the way he’s aged and changed feels like you’re meeting someone new. you don’t understand how suguru is so natural with that—with seamlessly falling back into a rhythm with you like nothing has changed at all.

deep down, you know that suguru is just moving on with his life. he’s making the most of what he can. he can’t die, satoru would never let him have a peaceful death after all this. he can’t go back to the way things used to be, whether that’s his sorcery days or his curse user days, and he certainly can’t start over. so he’s making do with what he has—which is very little in reality.

it’s you, your home, and the biweekly visits from satoru and occasionally shoko. so he weaves you seamlessly into his life and treats you with a sense of normalcy you can’t hope to treat him with. maybe it’s because suguru was actually able to move on after he left. 

it’s the part you hated him most for. for building a family with new people. for having two girls that he raised as daughters. for finding people to follow him and trust. suguru, after he walked away from everything he ever knew, actually did something with his life—even if it could hardly be considered good. 

you? you fell deeper and deeper into a pit of denial until clawing your way back out was too impossible, until you had to leave behind everything you’ve ever known to get away from the remnants of his existence. 

it’s easy for him to weave you back into his life because he chose to cut you loose. it feels damn near impossible to let him weave back into yours after he tore himself from the edges and frayed away. 

“don’t do that,” you sigh, making him frown.

“do what?”

“you know what, suguru,” you pinch your nose in frustration, “stop acting like things are normal.”

“things are definitely not normal,” he snorts bitterly, “i think needing your approval to take the trash out is not equal to normal.”

“then why are you acting like…” you trail off, unsure.

“like what?” he raises a brow. 

“like we never changed,” you slam your hands down on the couch in exasperation. 

he stares at you for a minute, blinks once, then twice, and then furrows his brows.

“well, of course we changed,” he mumbles in confusion, “i know that—”

you shouldn’t have said anything. you quickly realize that. suguru is not trying to act like things are normal—he’s trying to be civil, and you’re just a fool. a fool who looks too deeply into everything and assumes what you want to out of things and god, you’ve embarrassed yourself in front of your one and only ex-boyfriend in over a decade who was once dead and somehow came back to the land of the living.

of course, he knows things are not the same. he doesn’t want what you think he does. it’s been years and suguru has moved on—he had already moved on all those years ago, and you’re the only one here that is still focused on the past. and now he knows it too. 

you stand before he can finish, nodding as you stare down instead of meeting his eyes, pretending to adjust your clothes. 

“right, of course you do,” you nod, “i don’t know why i said that. just ignore me, i’ll be going to my room now. i have…things to do, so i’ll be—”

“hang on,” he frowns, hand grabbing your wrist, “i don’t mean it like that,” he says gently.

fuck geto suguru for being so confusing and fuck him for being nice about it too. 

“you can let go, suguru,” you pull at your wrist, “forget what i said, i wasn’t thinking—”

“i still feel the same,” he cuts you off, making your eyes widen, “if that’s what you mean. i never stopped.”

never stopped—that’s almost worse than moving on. how could he have felt the same all those years and still never come back?

“that does not help even a little,” you swallow the lump in your throat. “that makes this so much worse, do you see that?”

“i know,” he sighs, “i’m sor—”

“don’t say you’re sorry,” you grit your teeth, “we both know you’re not.”

“maybe not,” he admits, “i had to try. and that meant leaving—i’m sorry that’s not what you wanted.”

“it’s not!” you turn around, pulling your arm out of his grasp—suguru, for what it’s worth, takes the shove to his chest like a champ. “of course i didn’t want you to leave and kill a bunch of people and have an execution stamped on your forehead and live your life without me.”

“i know—”

“and now you’re back. back! in my house, eating my food and sleeping in my bed for half the night and i just have to act like this is normal. how is any of this normal?” 

“it’s not,” he agrees. he’s calm. so calm, it almost makes you mad. why is he so calm? “nothing about anything in our lives is normal. it never was.”

“you ruined my life,” you blink back tears. he smiles sadly, taking a step closer.

“i guess i can take the blame for that,” he nods, hands finding their way to your hips. against your better judgment, you lean half your weight against his body. this is bad, very bad—but it’s also the best thing ever. 

being close to suguru feels like the sun’s heat tearing through your skin—it’s warm. it’s pleasant. it leaves you parched and drained with a dry throat. but still, you need it to survive. 

“why did you come back?” you ask tiredly. his hand finds the small of your back, rubbing slow circles.

“i don’t know,” he hums, “i didn’t really get a say. maybe i was always meant to, who knows?”

you look at him at that—tilt your head to get a good look at his features. his eyes are more tired, and his cheeks are a bit more sunken in compared to the youthful flesh you remember him with. his hair isn’t as healthy, and his forehead has the slightest traces of pale marks from the scars. but he’s still suguru—and you have always loved suguru, even if he gives you every reason to hate him.

“you make my life unreasonably difficult,” you mutter.

he hums, smiling. “can i?” he asks breathlessly, pleadingly. you stare at his eyes, he stares at your lips. you know what he wants—but fuck, you can’t let him have it so easy. 

“can you what?” you ask, raising a brow slowly.

“are you really gonna make me say it?” he grunts, lips almost curled into a pout. it’s cute, the way he looks longingly at your lips—it’s so cute and beautiful and dangerous all at once, just like suguru. 

“yes,” you say, “yes i am. i deserve to hear it suguru, after everything you put me through. you…you left me. i wasn’t enough for you. i mourned you. i grieved a body i never even saw. do you know what that does to a person? to lose them not once but two times? the least you could do is tell me what you want,” your voice wavers just a little. 

it shakes for the lost time. for the moments you’ll never have. for the memories you lost. for the past that’s tainted. time is cruel like that. but that’s the beauty of it all—the fragility. it’s like sand falling through the cracks of your fingers, every grain slipping from your reach but still soft and soothing against your skin as it falls. everything fades over time, everything starts to hurt one way or another. but it stops. it heals. it starts over. the sand fills the cup of your palms again, warm and delicate and just as beautiful as before it crumbled. 

“can i kiss you?” he asks desperately, “please?”

“kissing me is not a temporary thing,” you shake your head, “not anymore. it’s for good. only for good.”

“i want to kiss you for good,” he nods, hands digging into your hips impatiently. you’re close. you’re too far. he can feel you, smell you, hear your unsteady breaths. but it’s not enough. he needs to devour you, taste you on his tongue, and melt you with his touch. “i won’t stop this time,” he promises. 

“you better not,” you sniffle, tears blurring your vision. you hated suguru for leaving you. you hated him for coming back to you like this. you never stopped loving him, never will stop loving him—and maybe that’s what love is. when the darkness is worth trekking through for the afterglow of the light. “if you fucking leave me again, you’re dead to me. i don’t care how many times you come back to life. you’re dead to me.”

“okay,” he agrees through a shaky chuckle, “i suppose i deserve that. let me kiss you, yeah?”

“yeah,” you breathe.

he kisses you—years too late, he kisses you. it feels like you’re teenagers again. it feels different and foreign. you know this feeling like the back of your hand. you don’t understand what this sensation is anymore. it’s new. it’s old. it’s perfect. it hurts. suguru is here. he promised not to leave—you don’t know if you believe him, but you’re going to trust that finally, for once, you are enough. 

you’re enough to make him happy. to give him a sense of purpose. to keep him swimming when his limbs start to sink. 

finally, for once, you’re enough. 

“i love you,” he whispers against your mouth, breathing the words into you like he’s offering you the air from his lungs, “i never stopped. i promise.”

“you don’t deserve to hear it from me,” you murmur back, panting against his lips, “not yet.”

“fair enough,” he chuckles, “you sure know how to leave a guy waiting.”

“i learned from the best,” you shoot back.

he grins—suguru smiles, heartfelt and real. life is full of misery, it’s painful, and nothing fucking makes sense. everything is cruel. everything dies no matter how carefully you water the roots. there’s always something, someone, ready to tear it from the earth. but if you keep planting the seeds, suguru will keep watering. 

maybe something kind can bloom from that, something big enough for him to hide under the shade when the scorching heat of tragedy becomes too much. 

in this world or in the jujutsu world; in this life or in the next. suguru is yours.

“why am i here?” he asks gently, his face digging into your neck. you hold him, cradling the back of his head as you hum. 

“because i need you here. will you stay?”

“yes,” he murmurs, “i think i’ll stay.”

hi. i have been working on this since march. its still not how i envisioned it to be originally but that's okay. i had fun writing it and it means a lot to me even tho its kind of. well....cliche LMAO like everything i write. but. i enjoy the cliches okay ?? i do. kxljchskdf hope u guys didn't hate it </3

also the fic banner is …. not the greatest. just ignore it ok

[earlycuntsets]

"DEATH COMES RIPPING" - SPOOKY ISSUE

'THE BLACK PARADE, THE TRIUMPHANT NEW ALBUM BY MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE MAY HAVE A TRAGIC STORYLINE, BUT IT'S NOTHING COMPARED WITH WHAT THE BANDMATES ENDURED TO BRING THE DISC TO LIGHT

PHOTOS BY JON WIEDERHORN PHOTOS BY JUSTIN BORUCKI

STANDING ON A BALCONY nine floors above the teeming streets of New York, Gerard Way overlooks the city in which My Chemical Romance began assembling their ambitious new album, The Black Parade. The newly peroxide- blond frontman takes a deep drag from a cigarette and exhales with a sigh. He knows he shouldn't smoke, but it's his only remaining vice.

"If I hadn't been sober, I think The Black Parade surely would have killed me," says Gerard, who climbed on the wagon in 2004. "We were going insane the whole time, and I had to cling to my sobriety to stay even a little lucid. The album became like this beast that was consuming us."

Following up a release as successful as 2004's Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, which sold 1.4 million copies in the U.S. alone, is never an easy task. And the various scares the band experienced as they worked on the new record-drummer Bob Bryar had a near-fatal staph infection, Gerard seriously injured his foot, and some restless spirits at the studio where they recorded kept them all on edge-did not help matters. And neither

did MCR's decision to make The Black Parade (Reprise) a concept disc. Together, Gerard and his bandmates-Bryar, guitarists Frank lero and Ray Toro, and bassist Mikey Way (Gerard's younger brother)-decided to craft a record about a dying young man who is visited by a cast of strange characters that help him examine his short life.

But diving into the conceptual deep end proved well worth the hassle. The Black Parade is not only MCR's most realized offering; it's also one of the most eclectic, enjoyable rock records of the year. One listen to tracks

like "House of Wolves," "The Sharpest Lives," and "Dead!" makes it clear that My Chemical Romance can still rip a good metallic punk tune. But the bandmates are now equally influenced by epic albums like Pink Floyd's The Wall, David Bowie's The Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, and Queen's A Night at the Opera.

"A lot of bands from the scene we came from try to strip down their music to 'keep it real," Gerard notes. "But the real you is what you've always had inside you and what you strive to be. So when we started compiling the material we had written, we were like, You know what? This has to be a huge, theatrical record."

MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE started working on ideas for The Black Parade in the back of the bus while on 2005's Warped Tour, after which they flew to New York and rented a rehearsal space for two months. And that's when things started to get weird.

"I was living in Queens, and I had to commute on the subway every day," Gerard says. "I was suddenly very scared and paranoid. I felt more like an outsider than I ever had, and I had no confidence, which is bad when you're trying to work on a record. And I had no anonymity because there were a lot of teenagers on the train." In reaction to the young fans he encountered on the underground,

Gerard wrote "Teenagers," a T. Rex-style romp with the chorus line, "Teenagers scare the living shit out of me." "The song came directly from commuting when school let out and being so terrified of them," the singer says. "I was like, Wait a minute. These are the same people that listen to our band. Why am I scared? And I realized it was because they're scared, too. Teenagers are made to feel like they can only solve their problems with violence. They lash out at each other in a really volatile way." After several months experiencing the joys of mass transit, MCR had completed only a handful of songs and felt like a change of scenery (and climate) might do them some good. "I couldn't keep working in New York," says Gerard. "We wanted isolation."

id: Gerard leads the way to what will likely be the band's second platinum record

So the group relocated to Paramour Mansion, outside of L.A. Nestled high in the hills, the deluxe estate overlooks the trendy Silver Lake area and boasts spacious rooms, a gorgeous pool, lush gardens, a state-of-the-art recording facility-and a few special guests.

"The place is definitely haunted," Gerard says. "Doors would slam, and the faucets would turn on. You'd get a bath drawn for you of freezing-cold water in your room, and you wouldn't know why." As unnerving as its mischievous spirits could be, the Paramour was also inspiring, and contributed to the haunting vibe of songs like "The End" and "This Is How I Disappear." More important, it led Gerard to come up with the bleak, surreal concept for the record. "I would have these night terrors, where it would feel like someone was choking me, and my heart would stop and I would stop breathing," he says. "I would wake up in the middle of the night and write these notes to myself, and one of them read, 'We are all just a black parade.' So I started thinking about how this band is kind of a black parade, like a funeral-procession rock thing. And I used that idea to piece together this story about the idea that when you die, death comes for you however you want." Gerard molded his concept into a narrative about a character he dubbed the Patient, whose strongest memory from childhood is of his father taking him to the city to see a parade. Two songs into the album, he dies, and the black parade comes for him.

"During the rest of the story, he meets this entity of death and all these characters, like Mama, who represents anyone who's ever lost their son in a war," Gerard explains. "It's almost like these Canterbury Tales, where he goes along on this journey, and at the end he decides whether he wants to live or die." With the concept in place, My Chem made the songs as sweeping and theatrical as Gerard's lyrics. They accomplished this, in part, by combing through their own eclectic record collections and pulling choice elements that would set them even further apart from other melodic punk bands.

The first two minutes of "Welcome to the Black Parade" stemmed from Gerard's love for Broadway musicals, the horns in "Dead!" came from Mikey's interest in Blur and Britpop, and the jaunty feel of "Mama" was informed by Tom Waits and Nick Cave. But the most poignant moment on the record, "Cancer," was (unlike its morbid moniker) something of a pleasant surprise. "I was very upset about something in my personal life, and that's when that song came out," Gerard says. "It was really spontaneous, and it was recorded pretty much live with Rob [Cavallo, the record's producer] on the piano and me in the vocal booth. Then we added layers of drums, which gave it a certain urgency. It's the song I'm most proud of because it was the most pure emotion we've ever captured, and it gets such an immediate response. You can't shake what the song is about."

As the CD approached completion, some members of the band began to show signs of nervous exhaustion. The group was scheduled to fly to England to play the Reading Festival, and as the date grew near, Toro, who has a fear of flying, got noticeably agitated. Then, after the band tracked "Welcome to the Black Parade," which was originally called "The Five of Us Are Dying," the guitarist lost it.

"I thought I had this premonition," Toro explains. "I was flipping through the TV channels, and on the news. there would be something about a plane crash, and every time I woke up in the morning, the clock would say 9:11. I was playing Tomb Raider the night before the flight, and on the level I ended up at, there was this whole flashback to a plane crash. So right before the flight I was like, 'That's it. I'm not flying."

Despite his misgivings, Toro boarded the plane, and when My Chemical Romance returned to L.A. (all of them still very much alive, thank you very much), The Black Parade was completed without further incident. Listening back to the record, the band members were in awe of what they had achieved and eager to share it with their fans. "There was a real confidence that came to us," Gerard explains. "Having survived it, we felt like we were changed forever. I feel different as a performer now, and I think we really finally discovered who we were as a band." But just because MCR were done with the record didn't mean that it was done with them. About a month later, the band was shooting a video for "Famous Last Words" with director Samuel Bayer (Garbage, Smashing Pumpkins) on a set featuring walls of flame, when-seized by the moment-lero grabbed Gerard's throat from behind and wrestled him to the ground. The singer rolled one way; his foot went the other. "It bent completely backwards, and I heard a crack and felt this agonizing pain," Gerard recalls. "I tore all the ligaments in my foot, but I got up and continued to perform." "I didn't know what I was doing," says lero, shaking his head. "I wasn't trying to hurt him. I felt awful. I still do." Gerard's injury was serious, and he still walks with a cane, but it paled in comparison to what happened to Bryar. At the end of the shoot, the pyro was so intense, the drummer could feel his leg burning, but he stuck it out for the rest of the song. By then, he had a nasty third-degree burn. And the misfortune didn't stop there. Bryar didn't take his antibiotics regularly, and he failed to keep the wound clean. By the time the band got back from a brief tour of Japan, the burn was severely infected. Then Bryar's face swelled up and, after doing the MTV Video Music Awards preshow telecast and a special club show, stumbled into a hospital emergency room in intense pain. "I thought I'd be there for 10 minutes, but as soon as they saw me, they got all serious and gave me an IV and said they had to do a CAT scan," recalls Bryar."They did all these blood tests and kept me there for 14 hours." Doctors discovered that Bryar's leg infection had spread to his blood and caused an abscess in his face that was creeping dangerously close to his brain. If it had been left untreated for another two days, he could have died. "The whole thing was such a nightmare," Bryar says. "This doctor stuck my cheek with a needle about six inches long and the width of an IV tube. Then he went in and out of the inside of my mouth with the needle about 10 times. Fortunately, the treatment worked, and Bryar left the hospital three days later. With tragedy averted, My Chem are now focusing on touring for The Black Parade. They'll be in Europe for most of November, and when they get back at the end of year, they'll start rehearsing for a U.S. arena tour that starts in February. "We want to put on a full show with props and staging like The Wall," Gerard says. And MCR plan to keep the Patient alive long after they're done touring for the CD. "I would love to see the story turned into a play or a musical, and it could easily be a movie," enthuses Gerard. "Making this record, we cut ourselves open every day, pulled out every organ, and lay them on a table so it would be something we're completely happy with. We want The Black Parade to exist for a long time." "The whole hole thing nightmare. This doctor stuck my cheek with a needle about six inches long and the width of an IV tube." -BOB BRYAR

"I felt more like an outsider than I ever had, and I had no confidence, which is bad when you're trying work on a record."

-GERARD WAY

12/2006 revolver - mcrhollywood on flickr

[silv3rswirls]

soft moments with seventeen

Note: Happy Valentine's day everyone <3

♡Seungcheol♡

When you’re running late for work in the morning, darting around the apartment frantically trying to get yourself together. Seungcheol watches, holding your lunch and waiting by the door so you don’t forget it. You finally get to the door, stuffing your shoes on in a hurry, your coat hanging off one shoulder and your bag’s strap twisted and bunched up. He stops you, very calmly telling you to take a moment and breath before leaving. You do, and he takes your bag from you. He straightens up your coat, buttons it up for you, and loops your scarf around your neck. It’s freezing out, part of the reason you’re late as you couldn’t drag yourself out of bed. Carefully he puts your bag back on and pauses to sweep your hair wispies from your face. Seungcheol presses a quick kiss on your forehead, and the two of you share a smile before you leave.

♡Jeonghan♡

It's early, way too early for you to even consider dragging yourself out of bed, but Jeonghan was wide awake and in the process of getting ready to leave for an early schedule. You’re still cuddled in bed, having wrapped all the blankets tight around your body now that Jeonghan is gone. You can hear him walking around, the water in the bathroom running, his alarm going off for a third time and him rushing to silence it for you. You were dead tired, hardly able to open your eyes but for some reason, you could never fall asleep until Jeonghan left. The bed dips beside you, and his arms trap you in place despite knowing you are too sleepy to try and playfully getaway. You hear him softly saying his goodbyes, turning your head and pinching your cheeks until you open your eyes and smile. He kisses your forehead, then your cheek, and leaves a few rushed ones against your face before leaving.

♡Joshua♡

You’re pressed against him in the back of the car. Your head resting on his shoulder and your bottom lip trembling as you try to hold your tears in until you get home. But you still had fifteen minutes and traffic was getting worse; your throat was burning and your eyes overflowing with warm tears. You feel Joshua press his fingers into your hair, brushing through it, down to rub your back and press you closer. He was silently encouraging you to cry after the long, hard day you had gone through. You didn’t want to, but couldn’t help it as you sniffled and let the tears fall. He stays quiet, not wanting to draw the driver's attention anymore to you. He doesn’t need to say anything though, you feel comforted as he rubs your back and drags his thumb over your cheek to wipe the tears away.

♡Jun♡

You were so tired, so worn out from working that day. Your boyfriend had greeted you with your favorite takeout when you got home and afterward had drawn a bath for you. You were enjoying the hot water, your tense muscles trying to relax as you recounted all the things that went wrong at work to Jun, who listened quietly. He hums in response, his fingers working in your shampoo as he washed your hair for you. He had offered, quick to attend to your hair the moment you let him. His hands scratch and massage your scalp, dropping down to massage your shoulders now and again. You lean into his touch, smiling and thanking him for being extra sweet. He grins and tells you he’d do it every night if you wanted.

♡Hoshi♡

If there’s one thing Soonyoung does on a daily basis; it's cling to you. He can’t help it, he just wants to be close to you, touching you in some way. He isn’t even aware of it most times. Grabbing your hand absentmindedly while shopping, resting against you while in the car or at home relaxing. Wrapping his arms around your waist and following you around the kitchen. He comes home one evening, tired and a bit blue over how busy he had been this week. He hardly got to see you. You were lounging on the sofa, tapping and scrolling away on your phone when he came in, he kicked his shoes off and came trudging in. He greets you tiredly, immediately crawling onto the sofa, laying on top of you, and resting his head on your chest. Neither of you says much, he closes his eyes and listens to you breathe, and ask about his day. His arms lock around you and his nestles closer, neither of you will be getting up anytime soon.

♡Wonwoo♡

Wonwoo huffs and turns the tv off, finally dragging himself out of his gaming session for the night. He looks around, the room almost eerily quiet now that he logged off. He looks around, spotting you on the sofa behind him, hair wet and wrapped in a blanket as you absentmindedly brushed it, your mind wandering. He moves to sit next to you, tilting his head and reaching to brush the hair from your face. It draws you out of your daydream, leaving a smile on your face as he runs his fingers through your wet locks. “Let me” he gently takes the brush, adjusting his sitting position to be more comfortable as he focuses on the cluster of tangles in your hair. He apologizes quietly every time he pulls too hard, but you don’t mind. You lean into him, enjoying the feeling as he tenderly brushes your hair; leaving you with a kiss on top of your head when he’s finished.

♡Woozi♡

It had been a rough few weeks for the both of you. He’d been busier than usual at the studio; if that was even possible. While you both understood the demands of his job, it seemed lately it was taking a heavier toll on you. But today, by some delightful little miracle, you had gotten to take the day off at the last minute and Jihoon had just finished the biggest chunk of his work. You come by the studio, lunch made just for him in hand as you enter. You squeeze him in a hug and share the food. You laugh, sitting with him on the sofa and picking at your lunch; more interested in listening and watching Jihoon than eating. He has a little something for you, something he had caught you eyeing at the mall about a month ago but wouldn’t buy for yourself. He had saved a note of it in his phone and thought now would be a good time to surprise you with it. He's all smiles watching you open it, the food forgotten as you once again dive back into lighthearted conversation.

♡Dokyeom♡

You both have a day off, and Seokmin plans to make the most of it. He spends extra time in bed that morning, trapping you in his arms and taking his time waking up and cuddling you. You make breakfast together, he sits next to you and feeds you little bites of his food as you eat. He can’t help it, he wants to be by your side all day. Do everything together, even the mundane chores and running errands. At the end of the night, he’s a bit sad at the thought of having to go back to work tomorrow. He’s in bed with you, sulking but still wasting no time in pulling you in for some affection. Your voices mesh together as you giggle and promise you’ll still have plenty of time for each other despite your schedules. He nods, still pouty and really hamming it for more affection from you, you oblige of course, until his lulling to sleep under your touch.

♡Mingyu♡

Mingyu’s arms are locked around your waist, his head pressed into the crook of your neck. You're stuck sitting on the edge of the bed, he’s hugging you and about to fall asleep against your shoulder again. He doesn’t want you to leave, he’s begging you to call off work and just stay in bed with him all day. You try to wiggle free, but he hangs on tight and pulls you back onto the bed with him. You topple over, a mess of limbs as he rolls over with you and traps you once again. You have to leave soon, but he’s so convincing with how he nuzzles into your neck and murmurs for you to stay with him. 

♡Minghao♡

You weren’t even sure how Minghao and you had gotten here. He was holding your hand, massaging lotion into your skin gently. The hair dryer he had been using was left forgotten on the counter. He’s focused on you, rubbing up your arm before moving to the other hand. You bite back little laughs, his fingers tickling your palm as he gets back to massaging. He’s about to keep pampering you, but you stop him to finish drying his hair. He plots how he’s going to get back to focusing on you as you comb through his hair and dry it, carefully brushing and parting it the way he wants as he closes his eyes and takes in the sensations. When you finish he lets his head drop against your chest, leaning into you as you wrap your arms around his shoulders and press kisses against his cheek. 

♡Seungkwan♡

It's early, and your bedroom is a bit chilly as you whine for Seungkwan to get up and turn the heat up. He’s been awake longer already, relaxing in bed as you toss and turn, snuggling into him and snoozing the morning away. He complains and tells you to do it yourself a few times before giving in and turning it up for you. He comes back with another blanket, tucking you back in and letting you sleep in as he starts to get ready for the day. It's his day off, neither of you has anything to do. Normally he’d be pushing you out of bed by now, but your night had been long and emotional. You’d been up late crying, letting emotions spill over after bottling them up for so long. After he was done, Seungkawn came back to sit beside you. He watches you sleep, brushes your hair away, and makes sure you're nice and warm.

♡Vernon♡

He’s dead asleep despite it being midday. The curtains are open, the sun beaming in as you get home. You smile at the sight, he’s dead asleep, unaware of the world around him as he only shifts slightly when you hop onto the bed next to him. You decided to join him, pressed into his side and throwing an arm over his stomach. Later that evening, as he wakes up he finds you twisted uncomfortably in the covers, shifting with him as he sits up and tries to fix the blankets for you. He’s quiet, focused on you as he settles back down to go back to bed, opening his arms and letting you cuddle up to him this time. Neither of you had spoken a word to each other the rest of the night, simply content to lazy around and waste the night away cuddling and sleeping.

♡Dino♡

His nose scrunches when you drop the terrible news on him; at least, hearing that you haven’t eaten all day is among some of the worst news he could hear. He’s scolding you, pulling you towards the kitchen, and making you sit at the counter and wait for him to prepare something for you. He sits with you, not eating as he’s already had dinner with the boys before leaving the company. He’s taking the chopsticks from you every chance he gets, feeding you himself until he’s satisfied. All evening he’s coming back with snacks for you to share, always checking on you to make sure you’re feeling okay, want something else or some water. 

[fictional-reylin]

A simple one-shot of Aizawa and his cat gf. People usually write the reader as an opposite to him, but I wanted to experiment with a reader who has a similar personality, maybe even somber. Enjoy !

You are welcome to send requests/asks. Just make sure to read my rules.

As you sat by your desk, working away on your computer, you could hear the sounds of rain hitting on your window. Despite being partially a cat, you liked the rain, it brought to you a strange sense of comfort that you couldn't really explain, like it was a sign that this was going to be a peaceful evening for you.

You looked out through said window and began staring at the droplets sliding down the glass, watching them connect as they slid down, until you saw Shōta's reflection. Not very clear, but you could still see his usual tired expression that greeted you every time he came back from UA.

"You look dead" you said turning around to face him, your usual deadpan expression in place. "Did someone steal your sleeping bag at work ?”

"Verry funny y/n. Did the rain traumatise you ?” He said referring to your face. Never mind his tired state, he quickly made his way over to you and pulled you into a hug by your waist, burying his face into the crook of your neck.

You let out a hum of contentment before wrapping your own arms around his shoulder, hiding your face in his chest, seeking shelter from the cold weather that managed to get into your shared apartment. He was always so warm, it always made you sleepy.

You stayed like this, almost falling asleep, until he started toying with your tail and you shot your eyes open in slight annoyance. Looking up at him, you saw that cocky smirk that adorned his face every time he would do something like this.

“Seriously ?”

“Blame yourself for dating a cat person” He answered, kissing the top of your head.

You were never really annoyed at him. You enjoyed his little shenanigans, how he would always scratch your ears, tell you to purr for him or play with your tail. It was a sweet reminder that your quirk wasn’t just something that made your life more difficult because of loud noises or tail getting stuck somewhere. For him it was a cute part of yourself that he could adore as much as the rest of you.

Of course, you would never admit that to his face. Communication wasn’t really your strong suit, and neither was it his, but you always managed to understand each other through your actions, and that’s what made him all the more attractive in your eyes. You could still be this quiet and introverted self, and he would still get you as if he had read your mind

“But seriously, you look tired. We should nap” you dragged him towards your bed without waiting for his answers, pulling him down with you and laying on his chest under the covers. In the short amount of time that you two dated, you quickly understood that he enjoyed this, being able to wind down, with you clinging to him, your soft purrs rumbling through your chest and your tail wrapped somewhere around his body.

He wrapped his arms around you, scratching the back of your head as he could finally relax in your embrace. He sighed, looking down at you with half lidded eyes.

“I love you, you know that ?”

“You show it to me like a million times a day”

“You say it like it’s a bad thing”

Not wanting to further this discussion you just kissed him, smiling against his lips as he returned the gesture

“Now shut up and let me sleep. Love you too”

And with that, you both felt asleep in each other's arms, the sweet sound of your purrs and the rain echoing somewhere in the back of your minds.

Thank you so much for reading ! If you want to join in my daydream, consider checking out my navigation.

[haveyouseenthisskeleton]

skeletons first thunderstorm on the surface, light's go out and S/O is completely chill obviously being used to this so they light up candles and comforts and reassure skeletons that they will be ok and it gets calming once you get used to it. S/O even goes outside to the front porch to watch the thunderstorm (s/o loves rain including thunderstorms)but will stay by skeletons side if they need them or if there too scared

Undertale Sans - He's a bit nervous but you staying perfectly calm is helping him so much to calm down. Obviously, it's nothing to worry about, so it's ok. He still jumps one or two times when there's thunder, but he gets over this quickly.

Undertale Papyrus - Well there's no Papyrus around and you're a bit worried about that, until you find him in his room, inside the closet. He's... He's not scared! The great Papyrus isn't scared of anything. But if you could just stay with him until it's over he would definitely be thankful lol.

Underswap Sans - He's actually very excited by the pretty lights in the sky and keeps asking you to go see them closer. Uh... You're not too sure how to explain the "pretty lights" can actually kill him if he finds them. Blue is fascinating though!

Underswap Papyrus - The first time the thunder hit, you hear his panicked steps in the corridor as he runs to hide behind you lol. Hell no, he hates this so much. He's clinging to you the whole time, the face buried in your neck and he refuses to let go. You can feel all of his bones shaking.

Underfell Sans - You two were talking when you saw his expression shift from perfectly fine to terrorized in three seconds. Red isn't listening to you anymore, frantically searching for a place to hide as fast as he can. He throws everything out of one of the kitchen cabinets and somehow manages to push his entire body inside. All you can hear from him while the thunderstorm continues is terrified whimpers every time there's a loud sound. Guess you didn't know yet about this scare of his uh. You're going to have a long talk after that.

Underfell Papyrus - He screams "CAVE IN!" and before you can say anything, he drags you by the waist inside the closest wardrobe and locks the both of you in here. You're so confused, but Edge insists you two stay in there until it's done. He only realizes afterward that there's actually no cave-in since he's literally not in a cave anymore. But you never know!

Horrortale Sans - He's agitated, and kinda wandering aimlessly in the house, not sure what to do with himself. Each time the thunder hits, you can hear him let go of a long cavernous growl at the emptiness, unsure if something is attacking him or not. Once he finds you, he's clingy and holding you protectively by the waist, growling at every noise. He doesn't like that.

Horrortale Papyrus - He's stress cooking. You said it's not dangerous and he believes you, but he still hates it a lot so he has to make something useful with his hands to not think too much about it. He baked six or seven cakes in two hours you think.

Swapfell Sans - He looks very cool from the outside but if you look closer, all of his claws are deeply buried inside the couch and he's so tense you're pretty sure he's going to explode if you touch him by surprise.

Swapfell Papyrus - He looks at you, then raises an eyebrow. "wow. if you're that hungry we can order something you know." "But it's not my stomach!" "oh, i'm not judging either if you didn't digest lunch." "It's not a fart either, Rus!" "sure thing, bud, we all know it's never a big old fart." You're a bit desperate, and not sure if he's messing with you or not. Rus head pats your pathetic little head.

Fellswap Gold Sans - He panics and starts to push everyone out of the house thinking a bomb just exploded inside the house. He's so confused when actually the house is... fine? Uh??? You try to explain him the concept of thunderstorms but he's really not listening to you. Because what if it was an invisible bomb and you're all dead but you actually don't know it? How do you know you're dead? Huh.

Fellswap Gold Papyrus - He's singing out loud in his bed, hiding under the blanket, trying to cover the noise outside. It's fine, he's fine, nothing is going to kill him. He screams every time the thunder hits nearby, then cry-sings to try to comfort himself. He can't wait for the storm to end.

[romana-after-dark]

Rooms on Fire: Losing My Religion

Dark!Santiago Garcia x Fem!Reader

Dark!Francisco Morales x Fem!Reader

Dark!William Miller x Fem!Reader

Dark!Benjamin Miller x Fem!Reader

Also: FishBen, and an assortment of other M/M relationships (no Millercest). Everyone is Bisexual

Series Masterlist: Main Masterlist

Spotify playlist

Summery: Madonna has to make a stand.

Warnings and Content:

DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT

DUB CON MOSTLY but there WILL BE NON CON. Major character deaths, forced breeding, physical abuse, brainwashing, manipulation, violence, gore, alcoholism/addiction, BIG OLE BLASPHEMY WARNING like this cult appropriates a lot of religious themes and they call reader their Madonna, Santi is called the Pope, like all that stuff. However, this is a cult so I mean. It happens. None of it are my thoughts on religion or meant to make fun of religion or demonize religious people. Disgusting views on virginity. Attempted rape outside the boys. T*m warning. Age gap. Creepy terrible men. Non-reader rape, dub con, violence. Covert incest, massive mommy issues, sexual abuse all around, past grooming by parental figure. no CSA but the victim isn't much older. some Bates Motel type shit. I cannot properly warn you for everything, without just telling the story but consider this a major warning that there are dark dark themes. No one involved here is morally clean, and who you perceive as the good guy cannot be relied on. Don't come to my story and say im romanticizing these things until at least the story ends.

Extra warnings for chapter: Pretty standard tbh

3.6k words

A/N Please know tags have been spotty so check and make sure you're caught up!

"That's me in the corner That's me in the spot-light Losing my religion Trying to keep up with you And I don't know if I can do it Oh no I've said too much I haven't said enough I thought that I heard you laughing I thought that I heard you sing I think I thought I saw you try." ~Losing my Religion, R.E.M

“Will, take her.” Santiago orders Will, and the stronger man tries to take you away from where you cling to Frankie.

Frankie, however, steps away. “No! You aren’t taking her from me!” He looks back and forth between Will, Ben, and Santi. Through the silence, they can all here Iris wailing over Rey’s body in the kitchen. “You’re all fucking insane! None of you get her!”

Ben scoffs. “She doesn’t belong to you, Frank.”

“YES SHE DOES! She’s my WIFE!”

Will steps forward, taking a hand on your leg assertively, looking Frankie in the eyes. His dominance quells the room. “She’s my wife too, Frankie. Let me take her.” In a lower voice, he adds just to Frankie. “It’s gonna be easier if you just go, you know that. I’ll take care of her. I promise.”

Frankie glances at Santi, rage bubbling in him. Will was right. “Sent someone to get Rey’s body, help Iris move him. She’s… she’s not gonna wanna leave his body. We are not making her clean up his blood the way she did Jonah’s, got it?” Francisco rarely spoke this firmly… but he cared about Iris and he wanted Rey’s body respected.

“I will, I promise.” Frankie watched as you left the room in Will’s arms, crying into his chest.

*

Francisco was dragged down the halls, Ben trailing after then after being told to follow, Santi yanking along Frankie’s still-soar arm.

“Slow down! Ow!”

“Shut the fuck up!” When they got to Frankie’s bedroom, Santi told Ben to stay outside until he was called. When the door closed, he delivered a crisp slap across Frankie’s face.

“Shit!” Frankie cried, holding his face and tasting blood.

Grabbing his shirt, Santi shoves Frankie against the door, making sure Ben hears every Santi is doing to Frankie that he can’t stop. 

“Don’t you EVER disrespect me like that again!” He screams, slapping Frankie again and making his head lul to the side. “I AM YOUR GOD!”

Frankie shoves him back. “YOU’RE MY BROTHER! This whole thing is FUCKED Santi!”

Santi went for Frankie’s shirt, tearing at the fabric and buttons as Frankie tried to fight him off. There was a scuffle, slaps to faces and arms and chest before his shirt was pulled off him, showing the scars on Frankie’s arms. Scars that matched Santi’s. Neatly in a line, they were scabbed and new, bruising still around the wounds, each an inch or two long. Santiago pressed their arms together. 

“Blood brothers, Frank. Blood brothers. You were made for me, I was made for you, you know that, don’t you?”

Frankie winces at the memory, how Santiago laid him down with a knife, cut into their skin together until they bled. On a bed of blood they fucked, sealing their commitment to each other, or that’s what Santi thought the ritual meant. The whole time, Frankie tried to imagine it was Ben.

Santi didn’t let go of his arm, fingers tracing up and down the scarred skin, picking at a scab until it bled. “You’re mine, Frank. Certainly not Madonna’s. She’s here to have our child. And you’re not Ben’s either.”

His eyes went wide at that, going into defense. Deny, deny, deny, or Ben would be dead.

“Santi, no, we’re not- AH!” Santiago ripped the scab, causing blood to spill out.

“Don’t lie to me! I know you fuck him behind my back. Is that why you care so much about Saha? You fucking him too, just like Madonna?”

Bent over in pain holding his arms, Frankie looks up at Santi in anguish, tears in his eyes as he screams. “HE WAS MY FRIEND! HE WAS HERS! FOR FUCK SAKE SANTIAGO NOT EVERYTHING IS ABOUT SEX!” He stood up straight, speaking strong even as he cried. “He loved Iris! He loved Iris only and Ben killed him! That girl lost her father and now is sobbing because of her lover's dead body!”

Santiago scoffs. “That’s your fucking boy toy, not mine. I don’t control Ben.”

“That’s the problem! You and Beatriz indulged his every whim, Will protected him from any consequence and now he’s a spoiled slut!”

“And what do you think you are? You live in comfort, in excess even, you get fucked by me, Ben, Will, even sliding your cock into Madonna’s little cunt for hours in those meadows because I allow it! You’re just a cockdumb, petulant child who's mad because the world isn’t perfect! You’re no better.”

Frankie locked his jaw, staring hard. “Yes, I am.”

When Santi closed in on him, Frankie braced for impact. Instead, when their bodies were crowded together, Santi simply opened the door. Ben sat there ont he floor, legs pulled up to his chest like a child whose parents were fighting, looking up at the door with wide blue eyes.

“You hear all that, Benny?”

Ben blinked, “Yeah.” He stands up, his long legs wobbly.

“Ben…” Frankie wanted to say he didn’t mean it, they were all fucked… but Rey’s blood still covered him. It was an odd sight on a boy who looked so young and innocent when he really wanted too. Or needed to.

Terror filled him, afraid Santi was going to hurt Benny, and despite just watching him kill a man in cold blood Frankie felt the need to protect him. He looked so much like that young underweight half-frozen boy in Will’s arms so many years ago. What happened to them all?

Instead of harming him, Santi beconned him in the room and kissed him so tenderly, softness Frankie hasn’t seen it since they were teens promising to be different from Beatriz. 

Ben made no effort to rebuff. He was taken aback at first of course, this was not the response they were expecting from him. He locked eyes with Frankie as Santi deepened the kiss, and narrows his eyes at his lover. Ben does not take kindly to being insulted. Arms snake around Santi’s middle, Ben grinding his cock against Santi’s stomach, moaning into his mouth. Frankie heard drops of blood drip from his arm into the wood floor. He needed to wrap it up. Instead, Santi told Frankie to get in the chair. 

*

It took everything in Santi to not watch Frankie watching them. To not see his face as he slid inside Ben’s asshole, to not see how much it pissed him off when he made the younger man moan as he sucked on a nipple. He didn’t need to look, however, because he knew, he knew just how badly it was angering Frankie, how it hurt him. Santi fucked Ben the way he knew Frankie liked, slow and tender, lots of kisses. He knew Frankie longed for those soft days so long ago, teenagers sneaking around, falling in love in closets and up in trees. Before Madonna came and fucked everything up.

That’s why they were made for each other. Raised together, brothers, as close and two people could get. From the craddle to the grave, Francisco Morales belonged to him. They were meant to be, their bodies were created by Beatriz to fit together, to bring each other pleasure. Frankie was his eve, the mother, the god of nature and fertility and-WHY COULDNT HE GET PREGNANT?!??!? None of this would have happened if Mother God had allowed them this, if he could fill his lover with his hot seed and create the savior Santiago couldn’t be. They could birth the savior together, Mary and Joseph, Frankie as the Madonna instead of that cunt causing all the problems. 

Santi was sure not to harm Ben, opening him up slowly as the boy moaned like a slut with his asshole clenching on Santi’s tongue, fingers poking their way inside in contrast to the way he liked to ram into Frankies cunt. 

Ben was so tender, so sensitive, his cockhead beat red and slick with precum as Santi slid his thumb around it. He repeatedly pulled back the skin, making Ben moan in wonton madness. He gave Ben the gentle love making he knew his Frank desired, the kind of soft touches Santi hadn’t been giving lately. No, ever since Madonna came he was ravenous. He didn’t like watching anyone inside Frankie, making exceptions on occasion for Will and Ben because he thought he could trust them.

Despite not being threatened or even ordered to watch, when Santiago turned to the chair he saw Frankie watching. santi knew Frankie liked to be watched, liked to be heard, so he wondered how being put as the watcher affected him. Frankie’s face was set into a hard glare, eyes red and burning with tears and his knuckles going white with clenched fists.

Still, his cock was hard in his pants.

*

You cried. And cried. And cried. 

Hysterics paused only long enough for Will to occasionally get some water in you as he held you close. It had been hours at this point, unsure what is happening to Francisco, what was happening to Iris, what would happen to Rey’s body.

Dead. He was dead. Your best friend was dead, Jonah was dead and Iris hated you. Everything was over now. You hold your stomach, realizing how disconnected you were from this baby in you. At month 7, there was a whole child and yet you felt like… like it was in you, not a part of you. There, not connected. You loved the baby, of course you did, you were its mom but… why didn’t you feel like it? Lately, you’d felt like you were just… here to do a job.

Eventually you calmed down, exhausted from the hysterics, and Will held you close to his chest. He calmed you down slowly, gentle hands brushing over your body. You could not fathom how the hands you’ve felt healing your body were the same as the fist that beat Jonah to death.

“Will?” You ask, listening to the beat of his heart. It was strong.

“Yes, my Madonna?”

“What happens now?” You couldn’t tell if he was pausing to think or in confusion, so you elaborate. “Jonah is dead. Rey is dead. I can never see Santi and Ben the same again-”

He sat up a bit to look at you. “You forgave Santi?”

Was Will really this naive? Really? Santiago had violently raped you, allowed your pregnant body to be burned and Will thought you forgave him? You and your baby could have died, and he thought you forgave him? Will was who you trusted. No matter what happened, you’d always trusted your Will, your smart handsome brave husband, your God of War and Medicine, your protection and your healing. 

You can hear Jonah’s voice in your head, begging you to have a shred of survival instinct, to trust your gut.

For the first time, you lie to him.

“I did…” You fib, just a little. “It’s just been a lot lately and… he did something bad. I just can’t forget all of that.”

He nods in understanding. “I get it…  I do.” His fingertips trail over your scarred skin. “To answer your question… I don’t know. I really don’t but… we’re married, we all love you and I know, I know Ben messed up today…”

Messed up? Ben killed your Rey, an innocent man. Your friend. Frankie’s friend. Dead and cut up on the kitchen floor where Iris, for all you know, is still sobbing.

You feel the walls coming up around Will. 

He continues. “But we’ll find a way to move on as a family.”

You were not a family with these people.

“Yeah, yeah okay.” 

*

Iris fell asleep on the floor, durk curls caking in blood as she rested on her lover's stabbed-open chest. It didn't matter. She wasn’t going to get up.

They won. Those fuckers won.

Santiago had beaten her into submission, cutting up parts of her she’d never had the chance to show Reyansh.

Ben raped her for years and years and year and Iris managed to hold on because she had Reyansh and to a certain extent Jonah. Jonah was disappointing, Jonah’s shortcomings were clear and she would never forgive what he tried to do to that poor girl, whatever it was, but the day he died she lost one more person.

But Iris wouldn’t clean up Reyansh’s blood the way she had to Jonah’s. She’d die here in his arms. If Ben wanted to touch her again, he could fuck her dead, rotting corpse. Iris doubted Ben would let anything as simple as death set her free.

*

When she woke up, she was being pulled away from Rey’s dead body. Iris screamed, but that didn’t matter to anyone anymore. Another few guards start pulling Rey’s body away, congealed blood dragging out from under him, and that’s when Iris started fighting. They couldn’t take him. They couldn’t have him. He was hers.

“I’m sorry.” The guard behind her said. Scott, a nice, naive young man. Many guards were loyal to Santi above all else, but Will held the most control. Still, Rey was well liked. With the exception of those who were hardcore true believers amongst the guard who knew Santi’s recent turn on Reyansh, Iris had no doubt they were, actually sorry. It didn’t change the fact she was being separated from her lover even in death.

*

“Just do what he says” Frankie tells Iris, hands planted firmly on her shoulders, eyes intently boring into hers. “He’s gonna fucking kill me for coming down here but Iris, you have to just do it.”

Her eyes burned with tears of anger as she stood near the door to the backyard, underneath the balcony. “What’s happening, Frankie.”

He closed his eyes a moment as he heard the door unlocking. “I can’t lose you too, Iris. Please. I need you with me. I don’t have Jonah, I don’t have Rey-”

“I don’t either!” Iris spat. “What makes you think I want to live after watching that?” It had been hours since she watched her rapist stab her Rey to death, powerless as Frankie held her back. Ben would have killed her too. Should have. 

“I need help! I can’t keep her alive alone, Iris! We have to be a team, for each other, for Madonna, for our ch-”

The door opened, Will bringing Madonna down with a guard. You looked awful. He hadn’t seen you since Will took you away, dealing with Santi’s shit… Blood was still on your nightgown.

“Madonna…” Frankie was no longer pleaded with Iris, went to hug his wife. Will instructed the guard not to harm Madonna in the slightest, and Iris appreciated Frankie’s addendum not to hurt her either, but Iris knew she was a second thought.

“Francisco, what’s happening?” Your hands pressed to his chest, looking up at him. 

Frankie told you the same thing he told her, to just do as we’re told and it would be okay. Iris had a sick, sick feeling. “Trust me.” He said, hugging her. He looked at Iris. “Please.” Then made his exit with Will. Iris heard crowds outside, and wondered what sick, perverted show Santi was going to make you do now? Would he make you hurt her? That was fine by Iris. 

You turned to her, those scared eyes chipping away at the ice in her heart. Iris knew you didn’t mean to get Rey killed, and blaming you for Jonah’s death was unfair and cruel… but she needed to be angry. 

“Iris…” You whimper, wet eyes trickling tears down your pretty face. You held your stomach in fear.

When the door opens, you and Iris are quickly ushered out into the courtyard where hundreds of people looked on. Taking in the scene, Iris heard your heavy breathing. What she didn’t need, was you having a panic attack… When she turned to see your horror stricken face, Iris couldn’t help feel that ice melt a little more. Fuck, you were young. 23, just a child. You deserved better. Iris took your hand.

But you were looking past her. “Iris…” You said with wide eyes. Iris turned around.

On the courtyard, Rey’s body was tied to an X on top of a funeral pyre, strung up and limp and lifeless. She felt sick to her stomach, turning up towards where the four wanna be gods sat upon their ivory tower, daring to look upon her love. She couldn’t read their expressions, but watched as someone lit the pyre. Reyansh’s body went up in flames.

Santiago spoke not to them, but to the crowd. “Reyash Saha is guilty of high treason! As is custom, those closest must dance as he burns. Not even the Madonna is above the will of Divine Mother.”

He emphasized those last words, Iris knew, to put you in your place. You weren’t a goddess to him, you weren’t his mommy dearest. You were a womb.

The music started up.

“DAAAANCE!!!!” He screamed down to you both, and as the smell of burnt flesh filled the yard, you began to dance. It was scared, it was erratic, it was for your life and the life of your child. Iris understood that fear. But she wasn’t going to dance. It’s been a while since the last public burning, 2 years, she thinks, but she’d been at plenty, danced in several. This is not how it was done.

Firstly, this was supposed to be execution. You didn’t burn dead bodies. If a traitor was dead already, the close family and friends were questioned but there was no grand show.

If this were a proper burning, there was a ceremony, there were prayers to Divine Mother, chants.

The yard would be filled with everyone the traitor knew. Most of the guardsmen would be here for Reyansh, the house laborers, townsfolk… not just trying to terrifying to women. If the Madonna isn’t above it, Francisco shouldn’t be either.

No, this was just a show for the girl.

“Iris!” You grab onto her. “You need to dance!” Your words were broken and desperte, but Iris shrugged you off. “PLEASE!” You sob, grabbing her hands to force her but Iris shoved you back.

“I WON”T BE MADE TO DANCE AS MY HUSBAND BURNS!”

“But-” You reach for her, but she slaps your hand away. If the guard cared about the abuse of the Madonna, they didn’t care. The music was too loud to hear even shouting.

“Tell me, is there anything in the world that could convince you to dance as Frankie burned?” The image horrified you, but you remained resolute.

“My baby! Please I know you can’t understand but I need you, I can’t lose anyone else- IRIS PLEASE JUST DANCE!” You scream, pulling on her.

Iris grabbed your shoulders, stopping you. “I’m pregnant too.”

You were frozen in stunned silence. “You… Rey…”

But Iris shakes her head. “I never had sex with him. Ben fucked everyone under the sun and I didn’t wanna chance giving him anything… But I told him, I broke down and told him… he’d figured it out.” Iris feels the tears coming, but forces them down. Don’t let them see you cry. Hadn’t she told you that before? “Rey said… said he’d raise it as his own. That he’d take me away and now he’s dead. And those men up there-” She pointed to the balcony. “Are why. I won’t tell you what to do, because you have your own child to think of, you are much further along, but me?” She pointed to her chest covered in Rey’s blood. “I refuse to give them anymore satisfaction. They cannot take my dignity. I won’t let them.”

*

Santiago watched from the balcony, smug as Madonna started dancing. Jesus she was pathetic. He expected Iris to not dance, giving him a reason to kill the brat finally. Maybe he’d take her for a little spin to see what Benny was so gunho about. But Madonna? Weak little thing like that had been trying to play big girl recently, acting tough, testing her boundaries like a fucking teenager and thinking her status protected her. It didn’t. But look at her now, dancing around as her best and probably only friend burned, just like she did, just like her paintings, just like her dad. 

It was amusing watching you try to save Iris. Your empathy was something that he was attracted to. You were sweet, he liked watching you paint. If you had behaved, he could have lived a whole life with you here with him, his Madonna, raising the savior for his roll… But no, you had to have a temper tantrum. You had to whore around as if 4 cocks weren’t enough. And yet, when it came time to really be brave…. You were like a little puppet on a string and he could toy with you as much as he-

What were you doing?

“Santi…”  Francisco tried to sooth as Santi’s knuckles turned white, gripping the balcony with a force as the sound of the music swelled around him. You stopped. Iris put her stupid fucking hands on you the way she put her stupid fucking hands on Ben’s body and tainted you. He watched with rage building inside. She was standing too fucking close.

“Will.” Santi barked, not taking his eyes off you two. Will was the most observant. Frankie could be naive and Ben wasn’t paying attention to most things. “Are they fucking?”

He swore he heard Will sigh. “No, Santi. Jesus fucking christ.”

Then they were conspiring against him. The two girls stilled completely. And then they turned around, looking up at him.

Santiago looked right back. They were fucking dead.

Okay!!! were so close to the end! I think it flashback chapter, then the finale might have to be split lololol.

Not a super eventful chapter, but I thought things needed to breathe before the last pieces. Still, I think enough is here to entertain!!

Thank you to everyone who has stuck through all the hiatuses. Ily!!!

If anyone is interested, I just finished my finale of Blessed Be the Fruit which took over a year for a short series. sorry ;-;

anyway its done!

Love you all soooooo much!

If you like Logan Howlett, check out my new series Be Quiet

Poll time!

LOVE YOU ALL!

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[tarabyte3]

Remember You Are Half Water

Pairing: Kino Loy x f!Reader

(7.2 k words)

AO3 link

Summary: Drowning is easy. It's surviving that's hard. Or: After the prison break, you and Kino hide out on Narkina 5.

Warnings: (18+) Explicit, angst, enemies to lovers (kind of), they argue and not in the flirty way, vaginal sex, rough sex, unprotected sex, grim realism, survival situation, descriptions of drowning, descriptions of resuscitation, cpr, thoughts of death, thoughts of dying, talk of dying, mentions of suicidal thoughts, mentions of imprisonment, themes of death, themes of drowning, description of pain, dreams, nightmares, illness, self-indulgent melancholia

A/N: I accidentally wrote this after getting a random idea in my head while working on I Want You to Show Me Weak (my brain will do anything but finish a fic 😌), so have a surprise Kino oneshot. Just please mind the tags, especially with the events currently happening in the real world. This isn't a dark fic, but the tone is quite grim. (Mostly. I am still a filthy hopeless romantic, after all.) Also, I'm well aware of what Narkina 5 is supposed to look like, however I simply Do Not care 😌

Fic title is from The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood. Collage quote from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Ocean.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me) it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

- e.e. cummings, maggie and milly and molly and may

Your lungs burn.

There's a weight across your shoulders, pulling you down and under the waves. Your arms are spent and heavy with exhaustion. You have no idea how long you’ve been swimming—dragging something through the water, but your muscles are on fire. Your lungs are on fire. It would be so easy to just give up.

To just let go.

Because you're so tired. You’ve heard drowning isn't so bad. Like going to sleep, they say. You can do that. That's nothing compared to this.

You catch sight of a face at your side, barely breaching the surface. His face. His eyes are closed and his mouth is slack. Like he's sleeping.

You go back to swimming.

“Breathe, goddamn you!” You sob. Even though you're numb from the cold, your hand is trembling as you pound against his back with your fist. Between the shoulder blades, behind his lungs. Every hit makes a wet slap. His white uniform is soaked through and nearly translucent. It clings to him. The water, greedy, still won't let him go. “Don't you fucking do this, you prick! Wake up!”

He doesn't flinch under your assault. Not even when you roll him back over onto the rocky sand and press a rhythm into his ribs.

This is worse, you think, because now you can see his face and feel the ghost of his angry stare, even through his closed eyelids. His skin is grey and clammy, his lips nearly blue, and his beard and hair are slick and dark with water. His expression is relaxed. Peaceful. Not asleep. He's never looked like that before. This isn't how he's supposed to look.

The only movement beneath your hands is the jolt of his body from the compressions.

You let out a scream of frustration.

The waves lap at your face, forcing salt up your nose on an inhale. You splutter, losing your grip on that arm slung around your shoulders, and for a moment it slips. You kick frantically at the water as you scramble for him.

“No—” Your voice gets choked off by the whitecap of another wave.

You grab at his face, drive it back above the surface, even as you plunge below it. Whatever else you were going to shout is lost in a cloud of bubbles. You're the only thing keeping him from sinking to the bottom now. Just you, clinging to the hope of life.

You can't think about that dead weight.

You fight back to the surface with a cough, spitting out a mouthful of saltwater. You have to keep moving. You have to keep—

You’re being shaken awake. The hand on your shoulder is warm, but the grip is almost harsh—unforgiving as the fingers dig into your flesh.

You blink your eyes open to find Kino staring down at you with a frown. The light from the small fire throws shadows across his face and deepens the lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth and along his forehead, making him look even more severe than he usually does.

“You were dreaming again,” he grumbles. Then he releases your shoulder without warning, nearly shoving away from you in the process, and he shuffles back across to his side of the small cave to resume lying down.

Now that you're conscious, all of your injuries and pains from the past few days come rushing back to fill your awareness. You let out a groan as you push yourself up off the cold stone floor. Not that sitting is any better—there’s a rock digging into your ass to prove your point, and you send it skittering. It doesn't make a difference. With a sigh, you rub the heels of your hands into your heavy eyelids in an attempt to clear the blurriness from your vision.

“Sorry,” you try, your voice hoarse with sleep. You quickly clear your throat and try again. “Didn't mean to wake you.”

He only grunts in response.

The sky at the mouth of the cave is a slate grey. It’s been raining the last few days—as if the water is trying to follow you ashore—so you aren't sure if the muted light is the growing dawn or due to the thick storm clouds that leave the landscape darkened, no matter where the sun is overhead. It's made everything damp and chilly, and you can feel it in every joint and bone. Between that, your desperate and adrenaline fueled escape from the prison, nearly drowning, and laying on the hard, rocky ground, your entire body aches.

You're both still wearing your white and orange uniforms, though they're worn and filthy now. More brown than white. The fabric is also next to useless outside of a temperature controlled environment, but you have nothing else to keep you warm and nothing at all for your feet. You’d gotten lucky that there had been driftwood piled inside the seaside cave, brought in by the tide and left safe from the rain. Kino had found several more pieces along the beach on that first day and dragged them into the shelter to dry out. Neither of you dared to venture any further afterwards, either from fear or exhaustion.

The last of the wood is burning between you, and, when it’s gone, there won't be anything left to keep the chill at bay. You know you’ll have to recommend sharing body heat at some point soon, but you're reluctant to do so because you also know it won't go over well. You're certain it's the last thing he wants, even if the alternative is stubbornly dying from exposure.

“Think they’ve moved on yet?” You ask, just to have something to distract you from your thoughts.

“Doubt it,” he replies in that gruff voice.

“Yeah,” you sigh. You slump forward and let your forearms rest on your knees, suddenly weary. “But we're going to have to leave eventually. We need food and real shelter.”

“You��re too weak to walk it,” he says to the cave wall.

“I’m fine,” you insist.

Kino's head whips around, and he meets your eyes with a glare. “No, you're not.” You let out a noise of disgust before you can reconsider, and his jaw clenches in response. “You nearly died.”

“Don’t start this again.” You mean it as a plea, but it comes out merely resigned in your exhaustion. You’ve lost count of how many times you’ve had this argument since you first woke up to him coughing and shouting on the beach. You don't want to have it again.

“Like you’d listen anyway,” he says. And then he scowls, like you're the problem.

Alright, maybe you'll have it one more time.

“Gods, that bit of power really did go straight to your thick skull didn't it?” You laugh in disbelief. “Why can't you just accept that it was my choice? Mine!”

“I’m well aware of your poor decision making!” He shoots back. Then he sits up to face you, and now it's a proper fight, you think. “I’ve already told you, no one was supposed to die because of me!”

“And I already told you to get over yourself!” You fight the urge to roll your eyes. “Do I look fucking dead to you? Hmm?”

“Don't act like it wasn't a close call!”

“I never said it wasn't.” You pinch at the bridge of your nose in an attempt to keep your frustration at bay. Screaming won't make him listen to reason, no matter how good it will feel. “What would you have had me do, Kino? Just let you drown?”

“Yes,” he replies without hesitation.

“Well, I didn't.” Your arm flops to your side, too heavy to hold up now. “So maybe you should just consider being fucking grateful instead.”

“I didn't ask for this!” He snaps. It's followed by an immediate look of regret.

Oh. That's new. You take a moment to study his face—the way he can suddenly no longer meet your eyes, like he's ashamed of all things.

“What the fuck is your problem?”

You ignore his sardonic, “You.”

Because you don't understand him. Is he really this upset or his pride so wounded over the fact that he needed to be saved? Is he truly this angry just because someone—or more specifically you—saw him when he was weak after being in control for so long? Those are convenient reasons. They're probably even contributing to his horrid mood, but they don't feel as if they’re the reason. It's almost as if—

“You wanted to die.” The shocked realization tumbles from your lips before you can stop it.

There's a long, deafening beat of silence.

“You don't know what you're talking about,” he says quietly as he gathers those strong arms around himself and crosses them like a shield.

Part of your mind is screaming at you to just drop it. You’ve entered new territory. You've never made him defensive like this before, and you don't know how he'll react. But based on all of your previous interactions with him, you know it won't be pleasant. Which is an understatement. The stubborn part of you, however, hopes that this means you're actually making progress. And if you’ve come this far…

“Is that why you won't even try to leave this shit hole again?” You press. “Is that why you're trading one prison for another?”

“That has nothing to do with this,” he says as he narrows his eyes at you, and you're almost disappointed to hear some of his anger returning.

“Yeah right,” you scoff.

“Listen, neither of us is in any condition to evade the searches. All we’re going to accomplish is getting caught.” It sounds almost reasonable, but you know better. You know it for what it really is: a deflection. You did hit a nerve.

“That's only going to get worse,” you argue back. “The lack of food is going to weaken us further, assuming we don't freeze to death first.”

“And it will still be easier if we're not being hunted. We have to be patient,” he says as his frown deepens, frustration beginning to take root once again. “Let them think we’re dead or gone.”

“And how long will that take? Days? Weeks?”

“A hell of a lot longer than three days!”

“Fine. Then we should at least go out and do some scouting so we have an idea of which way to go when the time comes,” you offer instead. “We might even find supplies.”

“It's too risky,” he says dismissively as he waves you off. You bristle against the gesture. “We’re safe here. The cave entrance is hard to find, but if we go in and out too often, we’ll draw attention to ourselves.”

“There's always going to be risk, Kino, whether we leave tonight or a week from now. If we wait, it could be too late,” you point out. “For all we know, the Empire is sending a blockade to keep us all trapped here! Then what?”

“They aren't going to send a blockade for a prison break,” he scoffs.

“And how can you possibly know that?”

“How can you?”

“Why is it so hard for you to trust me?” You hate the hint of misery that seeps into your voice and betrays how much that idea pains you.

“Why should I? If I recall correctly, your judgment has nearly gotten you killed once already,” he says in a mocking tone.

You glare at him. “My judgment saved both our lives.”

He glares right back. “I'm starting to think that was sheer dumb luck.”

Oh, how fucking dare he. After everything you went through—

“I didn't realize you were such a coward,” you say coldly, desperate to hurt him as much as he's hurt you.

The tendons in his neck go taut with rage. “Fuck you,” he spits, but he no more than gets the words out when he's racked with a violent coughing fit. The force of it makes him double over onto the cave floor, and his body heaves with each one.

You wince at the sight, feeling ashamed of your comment now. You didn't want this.

The coughing spells are a parting gift from Narkina 5—the water still won't let him go. He's had a few of them since you got him to shore and forced the ocean from his lungs, and each one sounds a little bit worse than the one before. You're no healer, but that's obviously not a good sign. He needs medicine. You also haven't broached the subject with him because you know it will just start a fight.

As if everything you say doesn't start a fight.

You lean back to wait it out, letting your head thunk tiredly against the cave wall. There's nothing you can do to help him and trying will only make it worse—you learned that the hard way. Plus, it doesn't seem fair to argue with him while he's like this, even if you're only doing it to get through to him for his own good, the stubborn jerk.

It takes several minutes before he finally stops coughing long enough to get his breathing under control. Then he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, rights himself with as much dignity as he can muster, and gives you a cold, hard stare. “Go, then, if you're in such a hurry to end up back in a cell,” he grits out, his voice a strained, wet gravel.

“Fine,” you huff, pushing yourself to your feet. “Stay here and waste away if you want. See if I care. I can find a way off this slag heap by myself.”

You almost make it past the mouth of the cave.

The moment your foot touches the rain slicked rock, the combination of fatigue and an unsteady gait causes you to slip. You hit the ground with a grunt, landing hard on your hip. Sharp, hot pain shoots through the joint, curling up your spine and down your leg. The shock of it takes your breath away, and your eyes sting with fresh tears.

Oh, brilliant, you think caustically. Of all the times to fall on your ass.

Behind you, Kino swears. A second later, you hear the slap of his bare feet on rock as he stomps towards you.

“Broken?” He doesn't quite snap the question at you, but it's a near thing.

“No,” you choke out.

“You have a fucking death wish,” he growls before he hauls you to a sitting position.

Despite the pain, that statement makes you laugh, though it's a bitter, near hysterical sound. You tilt your head back to grin up at him. “Guess we make quite the pair, huh?”

He doesn't respond.

He just shoves his hands under your armpits in an attempt to get a grip on you with those thick fingers. Then your laughter quickly dissolves into a wounded hiss as he drags you back into the cave with no care for your new injury. You're not sure why you suddenly expected him to start coddling you. He never did before.

He dumps you back into the spot you’ve been occupying, glad to be rid of you, and you catch yourself with your hands before you land in a heap.

“Asshole,” you mutter under your breath.

After that, neither of you speaks for a while, content to sit and lick your wounds in what passes for peace now. Eventually, the pain in your hip lessens to a dull throb and the fire is reduced to embers, the long hours sucking the heat out of both.

Outside, the sky has gotten a bit lighter, but is still that dreary mask of grey that makes time feel nebulous. Unknowable. The rain, at least, had turned into a mist about an hour ago. Without the sound of the drops echoing throughout the cave, the silence is unforgiving. Every shuffle along the rock, every sniffle or sigh, every brush of clothes is harsh between you.

“Why are you so mad at me?” You finally ask, desperate for any noise that isn't him heavily exhaling a whistle through his nose.

“I already told you,” he replies, emotionless.

“I’m not talking about that,” you sigh. “You hated me the moment I stepped onto the floor.”

In the low light, there's a brief look of shock on his profile before his scowl returns in full force. “I didn't hate you.”

“Yes you did. You could barely look at me. And you yelled at me all the time.” He opens his mouth to protest, but you continue on so he can't interrupt you. “Look, I understand, in a way. I was slower than nearly all of the men, and you were pissed about being stuck with me. But it's not like I did it on purpose.”

“It wasn't that.” There's a renewed touch of exasperation in his voice. You're intimately familiar with that tone. You’ve heard the way he normally sounds when speaking to other people—got to see what it was like without ever experiencing it yourself—but you’ve never spoken to him without receiving either his impatience or his distaste. You prepare yourself for another fight.

“Then why? Because I was a distraction?” Your bitterness bleeds from you, an anguish built from months of labor and fear. And loneliness, you think. Because, even though you’d been constantly surrounded by people, you’d never felt so completely and utterly alone.

“It's nothing.” He rolls onto his side to face the cave wall, intent on ignoring you.

“It clearly wasn't nothing,” you respond dryly.

“Just drop it,” he says over his shoulder.

“No.” You cross your arms. You're done listening to him just because he tells you to. You don't have to now. You're not in there anymore. “After everything, I think I deserve to know what I did to have you treat me that way.”

“And I don't want to fucking talk about it,” he growls.

“Well, too damn bad! Because there's nothing else to talk about, and I want to know why you hated me when all I wanted was—” You cut yourself off with a hitched breath before you accidentally finish that sentence.

Fighting is one thing. That's easy. Safe. But this is something big and messy that you're still trying to come to terms with, made all the more complicated by your current situation, which was already plenty complicated before. This will only make things worse. You know it will. And despite all the hurtful things you’ve said to each other, you wouldn't be able to stomach his rejection. His pity. His disgust—couldn’t handle being forced to endure it while stuck in this damned cave and made to wallow in the forced intimacy of the space that's anything but. No, this is the one truth you could never take back.

To your embarrassment, your voice is rough and raw with emotion when you speak again. “When all I wanted was to be treated like a person.”

“If that's what you wanted, you were in the wrong place,” he says coldly to the cave wall. “Now shut up and let me sleep.”

“No!” You shout. You no longer care if you’re being petulant because you are angry about it. You’ve been holding onto the feeling for months, but you're tired now. You don't want to carry it around anymore. “I won't let you bully me into silence. I want the truth.”

“Keep your voice down!” He hisses as he flings himself upright to glare at you. Every bit of him is rigid with tension. Dangerous. At least he's looking at you again.

“Then answer me!” You stubbornly glare back at him. “You owe me that much.”

“Fine! I was afraid, alright?” He finally snarls, reminding you of a cornered animal, spitting as it lashes out. “Is that what you want to hear? That you were right? That I'm a coward?”

“What?” All of your anger leaves you in a sudden rush. The hiding, the running, the water—that fear you can understand. But this? You stare at him in genuine confusion. “Why?”

“Because I was scared shitless about what could happen to you! That place was cruel to the men it was designed for. Whatever it had in store for you was going to be much worse. I thought…” He runs a hand down his face and over the scruff of his beard, now grown out beyond a neat trim. The action wipes his own anger away, and underneath it is something human: exhaustion and vulnerability. “I thought, if I kept you at a distance, it would hurt less when it finally broke you, but you made it so damn hard.”

“Oh,” you breathe out in shock, as though you’ve just had the wind knocked out of you. You have, in a way, because, gods, what can you possibly say to that? It's the last thing you were expecting—realistically, you thought he was worried your lack of strength or speed would get someone else killed. This, however…you couldn't have even imagined this. The implication of it… “Kino—”

“Don't. Okay?” He cuts you off. And then he turns away to shut you out as well. “Just…fucking don't.”

So instead you sit there in the uneasy quiet of the cave, feeling adrift. Helpless. Like you're right back in the middle of the ocean, at the mercy of the waves, with nothing to hold onto to keep from sinking; there’s only water in your fumbling grasp. At least then you'd known which way you were supposed to go, it was the getting there that was the problem. Now you don't even have that. You wonder if you’d have the energy to even try if you did.

A part of you wants nothing more than to reexamine every interaction, every look, and every word he’s ever spoken to you and see what you might uncover that you'd missed, but you can't do that with him right there. His presence just muddles everything up until you can't help but mix reality and memory, past and present, assumption and realization. You're nearly dizzy with it.

Plus, knowing that things weren't so black and white between you doesn't change what happened or how you feel. You’ve been hurting and angry for a while—especially at him, and most of which he still deserves for how he treated you. That something more existed lessens the intensity of those feelings, but it doesn't erase them completely. Not yet. Reconciling what you know and what you thought you knew will only come with time.

To the rest of you, however, that reconciliation doesn't seem as important as your fear at almost losing him or the realization that there is something more than just hatred on his end. Even if that thing is nothing more than kindness and compassion, it's something. And you could have died not knowing that. Or worse, you could have lived without knowing instead.

Gods, complicated is an understatement. If only you could have wanted something easy for once. You wonder if he thought the same thing as he watched you from across the work floor. And it feels odd to think that maybe it's not such an unrealistic hope anymore.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, breaking the silence between you at last.

He laughs, and it manages to sound condescending. The familiarity of it is grounding. “What do you have to be sorry about?”

“I guess…” What are you apologizing for? For misunderstanding him? For making his life harder, even if it wasn't your fault? For not agreeing with him? For being unable to shoulder his anger? For continuing to push and push and push. Maybe all of it, you realize. For your part in the making of this. “I guess for saving you when you didn't want me to,” you answer with a shrug instead.

At first, you think he isn't going to respond to that, and you can no longer find it in yourself to blame him. But then, with a voice that’s softer than you’ve ever heard from him—weren’t even sure he was capable of it—he says, “It's not that I didn't want to be saved.”

“Then why? Help me to understand, Kino,” you plead, praying that he won't clam up or lash out again. Not when you've come so far. “Please.”

He gives you a heavy, resigned look before settling his attention on the cave entrance where his gaze becomes unseeing. Though there are only a few feet between you, he suddenly seems miles away.

“When we were planning all of this, I knew what was waiting for us on the outside. I mean, they built the fucking thing in the middle of an ocean and I can't swim. How ironic is that? All that work, and I was gonna make it to the door just to drown.” Then, quietly, “I never gave a thought to what I would do if I didn't. Now I've got no clue what comes next.”

“Neither do I,” you say in disbelief.

He lets out a dark laugh. “Sure don't act like it,” he mutters.

“I’m just better at hiding it.” You give him a small smile that he cannot see.

“Maybe I should be, too,” he muses to himself. “It’d be a hell of a lot better than feeling so lost.”

“Hiding it doesn't make that go away,” you say sadly. You know that all too well.

His only reply is a non-committal hum, and it suddenly occurs to you that he has no clue what you actually went through. How could he? He lept into the water and woke up on shore with nothing but darkness in between. All he knows is that you saved him. Without the rest, he thinks he's struggling alone.

“I almost gave up, you know,” you admit quietly.

That gets his attention again. He turns to look at you, and his eyes are wide with fear and concern. “What?” He gasps.

“I could barely see the shore when the adrenaline wore off. When faced with that distance, all that water, and no strength left?” You shrug in an attempt to seem unbothered, even as the memory fills you with dread. “For one horrible moment, I suppose drowning just seemed easier.” Like going to sleep, you don't say. “But I couldn't. I looked at you, and I couldn't. Not without trying first. And before you say anything, leaving you behind was never an option. Not for me. If this place was going to win, it was going to have to take us both.”

“I never wanted that,” he says helplessly. “When I came to and saw you laying there, I thought you were dead.” His voice breaks and he takes in a deep, shaky breath, but it does little to steady him. “I knew then what you did for me, and I thought it killed you. That after everything, it was me. I broke you, and it wasn't worth it. Not me.”

“You didn't,” you insist, desperate to make him listen. You recognize that despair because it's the same one that haunts your dreams and doesn't let go when you're awake. It's the same fear that grips your chest in icy fingers whenever you catch his sleeping face or you're forced to sit by and listen to him cough—the water still won't let him go. You understand now that he needs the reassurance that it's over just as much as you do. So you push yourself to your knees and dare to move closer, despite the protest of your aching body. “I’m right here. See? I was just tired afterwards, that's all. Just tired. I’m right here.”

Without warning, he reaches for you, and, even though he's never harmed you, you flinch thinking maybe you’ve finally pushed him too far. Only, he grabs the front of your uniform and pulls you to him, just as unkindly as he dragged you across the cave. And then you think he's going to scream again, but when he opens his mouth, he leans in and crushes your lips together instead.

You freeze against him.

Because Kino Loy is kissing you, and that can't be right. He hates you. His mouth can only scowl and scream and cough and—there’s a little grunt from the back of his throat as he adjusts the angle of your lips, and, oh, this is real. Without another thought, you're kissing him back.

At first, there's only tentative relief—at the reassurance, the sensation, at finally getting something you want—but heat starts to build in the breath-humid space between your bodies the longer you kiss and kiss. Something born of more than lust or desire. And though they flicker in your belly as well, it's a bone deep desperation to feel alive that drives you forward and aches to be quelled.

When you break apart to catch your breath, he rests his forehead against yours. Close enough for your noses to brush together and to feel each hard exhale—that blessed, life sustaining air—across your skin.

“I’m sorry,” he says with a sob. His voice is low and thick with grief against your mouth. The sound and shape of it is so different from his anger—in the low light, only a ghost of that harshness is left, clinging to the shadowy lines of his face. You don't have to ask what he's apologizing for.

“Show me,” you whisper back. You let your lips brush over his again in invitation. He responds by delving into the wet heat of your mouth and wrapping you in his arms with a moan.

So you give yourself over to the exploration of his tongue against yours and his large, callus roughened hands as they engulf the sides of your face, caught in the whirlwind of him. It leaves you breathless faster than you like, and when you break for air again, you don't want to give him a moment to change his mind or to pull away completely. So your mouth wanders to his cheeks, the scruff on his jaw, his Adam's apple, the hollow of his throat above the collar of his uniform—seeking out every bit of him that you can reach as he pants and swallows beneath your lips.

He smells like sweat and smoke and saltwater, and his skin is sharp and briny on your tongue as you lap at a spot on his neck. He tastes like drowning, and for a moment you're lost in the memory of him in the water, his weight pulling you beneath the waves. His lifeless face staring up at you from the shore. But then he sucks in a sharp breath, jolting you back to the present, and his lips are on yours again. Warm. Alive. Not the cold flesh you forced air through. Not the same shared breath.

“Wanna see you,” you gasp into his mouth as you lift at the hem of his shirt.

Without a word, he moves to obey.

You both peel away your filthy uniforms with trembling hands, revealing bodies that are just as dirty and unwashed to the chilled air, but beneath all of that is color. His flush of arousal. Bruises that are starting to fade, a gruesome rainbow of healing. The shadows playing in the shifting of muscle as he reaches for you to pull you back into the warmth of his arms. Alive.

He's the first soft thing you’ve touched after days of nothing but rock. And before that, months of only tools and labor and struggle. You bask in the sensation: The greying hair on his chest, the roundness of his belly and hips, salt dried skin, his palm on your cheek. The other on your thigh. He’s softer than you remember from when you were hauling him through the waves—

You wrap your hand around his cock, and his heartbeat throbs in your fist. Alive.

He lets out a groan when you stroke him, something deep and guttural that rumbles through the cave like thunder. The sound sends blood and heat rushing to your core, where it pools between your thighs and leaves you aching and empty. You tease the silken foreskin over his length and work your thumb along the underside of the swollen head just to hear more of it.

With a growl, he falls upon you, pulling you in for a bruising kiss, all teeth and tongues and hunger. His hand cups the swell of your breast while his thumb circles your nipple. You cry out and arch into the roughness of his hand. Then you're both eagerly groping and learning all the ways you can draw more noises from each other until you're left squirming against the insistent throbbing between your legs.

“I want you inside of me,” you murmur into his mouth.

He clenches his eyes shut as his breath hitches, and you're thrilled you can get that reaction out of him. But then he opens his eyes again and, in a shaky voice, asks, “You're sure?”

“Yes!” You growl, impatient. “Fuck me, Kino.”

He lets out a groan. “If you keep that up, I’m not gonna last very long.”

“Don't care as long as your cock is inside me first.”

“Fuck!” He hisses. His hips involuntarily jerk forward at the thought, and said cock grinds into the bend of your groin. “Then I'll give you what you want.”

After that reaction, you think he's going to throw you down and do just that. Instead, his touch gentles, his palm cradling the base of your skull as he lays you out along the rock. The movement doesn't make you feel delicate or like something that's injured and cowering in a cave, but rather like something to be revered.

This is his apology.

A caress along your inner knee has your legs falling open, leaving you exposed before him. Before you can be self-conscious about it, he gives your arousal a heated look that drives the thought from your mind. Then he traces a fingertip up the tender skin of your thigh, and fire licks from your thigh to your belly.

For a moment, you wonder what it would be like to have this on the other side of the galaxy. Not in a cave, but in a bed, warm and clean with a full stomach. Maybe it would be sweet like this between you the whole time rather than something that's taking an effort just to maintain. Because you know this is only a moment—a reprieve. It can't last, not when that cold desperation and panic are rebuilding within your gut.

It's a lovely thought. But by the time he kneels between your thighs, you need again. You pull him down and he goes willingly, falling to brace his hands on the stony ground on either side of your shoulders. Then you hold your breath as he closes the distance, slowly, until the length of his cock is resting and throbbing, flush against your sex.

Your hips grind up against him, trapping him between your heat and his belly so that when he thrusts back, seeking more, he drags himself along your wet folds; the sensitive head of his cock rubs against your clit. Both of you moan, wounded and strangled sounds. So he does it again. And again. Over and over until you're both gasping and shuddering at the slick friction.

All the while he stares down at you, studying you. Taking in the way your face contorts and breaks with pleasure. His eyes are sea blue, you realize—the water, greedy—so wild and deep and pulling you in. It sets your pulse racing and makes your palms sweat against his shoulders. You turn away from the intensity in that gaze.

“No.” To your surprise, he takes your chin between his finger and thumb, not gentle but steady, and he forces you to look anyway. To face him. “Let me see you.”

He holds you there with the weight of his body as he shifts to nudge at your opening. It's so close to what you need. Your legs wrap around his waist in silent encouragement. Then, once he's lined up, he sinks forward with a groan and stretches you open on his cock until you're aching and full.

His mouth goes slack. Those eyes become heavy and lidded. Not closed—alive. Which makes all the difference to your wounded mind. So you drink in the sight of him like this, buried in the tight embrace of your cunt. A ruinous look.

You're drowning again.

It scares you, just how much you want to give yourself over and let go. How easy it would be to become lost. To believe that this is something more than desperation. But then his eyes refocus and whatever tenderness had gripped him is absent from that gaze. In its place is hunger. Need. Urgency.

“Gods, you're so tight,” he grinds out from behind clenched teeth as he gives a shallow thrust into you. The sound goes straight to your core, soaking him further. “Feels so good.”

Then he finally—finally—fucks you. Hard and fast.

The ground is cold and unrelenting beneath your spine where you're folded and crushed against it. Above you, he's blanketing you in heat and the delicious slide of flesh along your nerves. A lovely contrast already, but then his hand finds your hip, his fingers digging into your fresh bruise, and you gasp from the pain—it hurts, but if it hurts that means you're alive. He doesn't stop at the sound. Instead, there's understanding in those eyes as he pulls you in to meet each plunge of his cock, and, oh, that's even better.

You spare a thought for his knees right before he shifts. Then he's dragging against that spot inside of you, and your mind goes blissfully empty with pleasure. Your head falls back, weightless with it. At that opening, he buries his face in your neck, muffling every grunt into your skin. He presses the vibrations of them into your flesh and bones alongside his exhales, the scrape of his beard, the unconscious skim and purse of his lips. You shiver.

You won't come from this alone, but you don't care. This is enough. You just need to feel something—need the proof that he's alive. That you're alive. That this IS real and not some drawn out hallucination your dying brain came up with between the span of one heartbeat and your last.

But it has to be real. Even in your darkest moments, alone in your cell, you never allowed yourself to want this—the thing you could not have. The galaxy had been cruel enough on its own without any assistance from you. So there were no images or dreams in your mind to conjure this from. Which means these messy kisses, the wet noise of your joining, your sweat slicked skin, his hair, salt-stiffened and curled between your fingers, must be real. It also means every moment of this is new and unburdened by expectation or comparison.

It's everything else that haunts you.

All too soon, and just as promised, his body grows tense, and he starts to tremble above you. Between your exhaustion and his unrelenting pace, this was never intended to last. And he's so close, but when he meets your eyes, you see hesitation. Uncertainty. When he moves to pull away, you realize he means to finish by stroking and spilling himself across your belly instead. But that isn't what you need.

“No! Don’t,” you beg. Your legs tighten around his waist, and you grasp at his neck and shoulders, unwilling to let him go with a strength that surprises you both. Then you roll your hips and grind yourself onto his cock, dragging a hiss out of him. “I want to feel you.”

He groans as he yields to your plea, too near that edge to argue, so he falls right back into a punishing rhythm. Yet underneath the hunger and determination, there's anguish now, too. As if by doing this, he remains afraid he'll break you somehow. Still, he clings to your hips as every thrust turns short and sharp with purpose until, at last, he buries himself fully and chases that relief in the depths of your cunt.

When he comes, the only sound he makes is a harsh sob. And then his cock is pulsing inside of you, filling you with warmth. Life.

Alive. Alive. Alive.

He collapses heavily at your side with a few wet coughs, spent and too exhausted to hold himself up any longer. You lay there for a moment, listening to his ragged breathing, unsure of what comes next. You're afraid he’ll push you away once his mind clears. That he’ll go back to hating you from across the cave, now muggy with the scent of sex, as his come leaks down your thighs.

He doesn't.

Instead, he holds his arms open in silent invitation and you realize he's offering you a choice: move forward with or without him. And this time, you know he accepts that it's your decision to make. But you’ve already made this choice once, when you watched him slip beneath the waves. When you dove for him in the water, hauled him back out of it, and then forced it from his lungs. It was just as easy to make then. Maybe now he’ll understand what it means.

You go to him and curl against him in acceptance. He kisses the fragile skin of your temple, and then he helps you get settled by tucking your head under his chin and rubbing warmth in a soothing pattern along your stone chilled back. Your hand finds his waist. His leg entangles with yours. Back and forth until there's nothing but drying sweat between you, as if you have always fit together in this way.

You want to savor this. More than that, you want to have this if you can. If he’ll let you. If he doesn't go back to holding you at a distance out of habit and self-preservation in a day or so, always waiting for the worst to happen and scared of the hurt that might follow. As if anything could be worse than losing him now. Then he really would be the thing that broke you. A self fulfilling prophecy. You almost want to laugh at the irony.

All at once, the silence feels heavier than you can bear.

“Never again tell me you aren't worth it,” you whisper fiercely to the cave. “You are to me.”

He doesn't respond, but the hand splayed over your ribs twitches before clutching you tighter.

“We’ll try in the morning,” he says quietly instead. Under your ear, the compromise rumbles loudly throughout his chest. Beneath that, his steady heartbeat.

His statement doesn't fill you with anything as naive as hope. The Empire is still looking for you, and they aren't ever going to stop now. You’ve only traded imprisonment for the illusion of freedom. The thought claws at you, threatens to pull you under. But there's an arm around your shoulders that squeezes as it holds you close, and you remember that you can't let go. You can't lose him. You won't. You have to keep moving.

“In the morning,” you agree.

"Hey,” he said, half-asleep, “what were you before me?” “I think I was drowning.” A pause. “And what are you now?” he whispered, sinking. I thought for a second. “Water."

- Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

A/N: The song for this fic is Ocean Eyes by Billie Eilish btw.

[smurphyse]

Daddy's Princess

Smurph's Masterlist

Warnings: Daddy kink, exhibitionism, princess kink, choking, love confessions, biting, subspace, lil bit of crying, lil bit of aftercare

Summary: You and Eddie have been sneaking around for months now. You call him Daddy and he calls you Princess... but so does your father. Eddie takes advantage

"Oh I fucking love these," Eddie groans as he palms your ass. He's talking about your sundress with its thin straps and easy access, the way he can push it up anytime he wants and touch you. 

You're on his lap on the plush pink carpet of your bedroom, surrounded by the stuffed animals you tossed on the floor. The bed springs creak, especially when Eddie Munson is balls deep inside you and tossing you around. 

This all started a few months ago when you went out to a bar with some friends. In a baby pink sundress, you'd been abandoned by your friends for their boyfriends they invited without telling you. Eddie had waltzed up and leaned against the bar, smirking at you among the smoke and the neon. 

Well hey, Princess, he'd huskily drawled as you smiled shyly back. Don't you look like a dream? 

You still don't know quite how it happened, but that night started first with you being fucked in a bathroom stall…and ended with you on your back on the shag carpeting in the back of Eddie's van. The multiple orgasms cloud the memory, but nothing can mask the delicious way it felt to have him inside you, whispering devilish things and making you scream his name in the dead of night. 

It's a few years after high school, and you're still in college and living with your parents. They definitely would never approve of Eddie 'eyeliner and leather and tattoos' Munson, so you resort to scandalous rendezvous in his car, your car, his trailer, or your bedroom. He always complains about having to sneak in through the window, but you know how much he likes the idea of potentially getting caught. 

"Need you now, Princess," he groans against your neck, pressing his forehead under your jugular and bucking his hips up. 

"Need you, Daddy," you whimper, your hands tangled tightly in his hair. 

You aren't sure how that started either. You certainly don't have daddy issues. In fact you're really close with your father, but there's something so filthy about calling Eddie that and trusting him… especially under your father's roof. 

Eddie drags his hands regretfully from your backside to tug at his belt. He doesn't take it all the way off, just opens his fly and pulls his cock out. Best to have his pants on in the actual case he has to make a quick getaway. You grind your wet cunt against him achingly as soon as he does, his dirty talk and wandering hands always leaving you desperate. 

"Don't keep me waiting," he growls lightly in your ear, teeth grazing your lobe before pressing his lips to your neck. 

He's deft in the way he gets you like this… dress straps pulled down to expose your breasts, panties tossed somewhere in the piles of your childhood Teddy bears and unicorn stuffies, usually well kept hair wild and finger mussed from his tugging and pulling. 

Lifting up on your knees, your fingers wrap around his dick and give him a few gentle squeezes like he likes. You nuzzle close and kiss him as you brush his head against your folds, his precum smearing and mixing with your slick. You hiss as his blunt head presses against your hole, but Eddie swallows it with a fierce kiss. 

You sink down on him, stretching slowly. The gasps are caught between you, between tongue and nuzzling noses and gripping hands. It burns, it's excruciatingly full of ecstacy, it's everything. 

You haven't seen him in weeks, and as you cling to his shoulders and ride him with swirling snaps of your hips, every night you spent on vacation empty in your shared hotel room with your parents fades away. Eddie digs his nails into your skin, holding you down on his cock and hardly letting you fuck him the way you want. 

"So warm, so tight," he murmurs, almost whimpering in the dim light. "I've thought about this cunt every night."

Instead of your usual taunting and teasing, riling one another up, this is about fucking. This encounter is about getting it done and cumming just for one another. In the car it's like this but louder, and in his trailer you scream his name like even God himself couldn't see you, but in your room you have to be quiet. 

Your dad might hear you. 

"Missed you, Daddy," you groan, another deep roll of your hips. Your sundress crumples between your bodies, the denim of his jacket rubs against your nipples and forces a flood between your legs. "I've been so empty…"

"Don't worry, Princess," he whispers back, his thick length grinding up into you. The way he holds you keeps you spread over his lap, wide open so he can fuck balls deep into your sopping pussy. Eddie slips his palm around your throat, the other arm wrapped around your waist. "Daddy's here, just for you."

You love it when he talks like that… like all he thinks about is you. Over the past few months your life changed with Eddie. He likes to take you on surprise dates and give you random gifts, usually jewelry he makes himself or things he finds he thinks you'll enjoy. You've never felt this wanted. He never lets you forget how much he wants you. 

"Because I'm your Princess?" you pout, but you never stop grinding and working yourself over on his beautiful dick. 

Eddie smirks at you, squeezing ever so light around your exposed neck. When you extend it to give him more room, that smirk turns devilish. 

"You're my only Princess," he says sweetly, dark and full of fire. Eddie leans in and licks a stripe up the column of your neck, moving his hand only long enough to do so. The slick lets his palm slide over your skin, slippery and cooling between your body heat. "My sweet, slutty little Princess… a whore just for me."

You grin like a fool, letting yourself fall into that usual place of safety, of liquid warm passion with Eddie Munson, "Just for you, Daddy."

Knock knock knock!

You both still, Eddie's eyes going wide and yours hazy as you both look towards the door. He doesn't let you go, in fact…grips you tighter as the knob rattles. Thank God you locked it. 

"Princess?" your father's voice comes through the wood. Your pussy clenches around Eddie's cock as anxiety courses through you. You feel him twitch before he sneakily begins to fuck you again, slowly sliding in and out of your slippery cunt. 

"I'm getting dressed, Daddy!" you call out, trying to speak clearly with Eddie's hand wrapped firmly around your neck. 

He leans in and kisses your cheek, whispers, "I thought that was my name…"

Your cheeks turn to liquid fire as Eddie chuckles, his tight hold on you hot and firm. Each roll of his hips drives you crazy, and you bite your lip to hold back your moan. You can feel your heartbeat in your cunt. 

"Okay," your father replies, and you can hear how dejected he is with his voice. "Dinner in twenty minutes."

"Can't wait!" you manage to squeak out, nearly cut off by Eddie pushing against your throat until he presses you into the carpet. 

He leans over you, looming above with that dark look in his eyes. He kisses the tip of your nose and says quietly, "Tell Daddy you love him, Princess."

Your whole body trembles, even your jaw as you gaze up at Eddie. Tears prick your eyes, but the trust built between you means you know he won't judge you for how wet this makes you. Eddie won't judge you for the things he makes you do out of lust and desperation. 

"I love you, Daddy!" you cry out, voice shaking. Eddie grins like a madman.

Your father's rumbling laugh echoes through the door as you grip the fuzzy carpet for dear life, "I love you too, Princess."

His footsteps clunk down the hallway and then the stairs, and Eddie is on you in an instant. Pillow soft lips full of insistence and reverence slide against yours, his cock filling you with each pump and snap of his hips. His body holds yours down as he lavishes you with attention. 

"Good girl," he praises, the weight of him comforting and giving you safety in vulnerability. "Daddy's proud…and I love you too…"

Your brain fog clears for just a moment to realize that Eddie Munson just told you he loves you for the first time. He leans his forehead against yours as he watches your reaction, filled with wary nerves and caution. 

You cling to reality enough to see his own openness, his gratefulness that you've accepted his kinks too. You reach up to cup his jaw and rub the pad of your thumb over his plump bottom lip. You tug on it a bit then let it go. 

"I love you, Eddie."

That cautious stare slips back to a bright smirk, and then he's on you again. His kisses are rough, desperate, needy just like before. Your legs wrap around his hips to keep him close, fingers tangling in his hair and keeping him where you need him. 

Eddie's body presses against yours, hands wandering as he fucks you deep and hard. He swallows your moans, echoes his own back to you, and you take it all. His cock bounces on your cervix, glides through you like it was made to fit inside. 

"I'm never gonna let you go," he whispers between kisses, between fucking you into oblivion. "My sweet girl, my Princess. I love you so fucking much."

His voice strains, that vein popping out in his neck from the effort of holding back. You rock back onto him the best you can, the tingling warmth in your pussy reverberating through your body like lightning. 

"Don't let me go, Daddy. I need you. I love you," you murmur back, full of devotion and emotion you can't properly explain. "Wanna be with you forever!" 

The lightning bursts like thunder, and Eddie's hand on your throat moves to your lips to cover the cry that explodes from your chest. His denim rubs into your nipples, and you know it's going to chafe, but the thought only makes your eyes cross and roll back. 

Your whole body quakes with ecstacy, moans muffled beneath his palm as Eddie snaps. He fucks you like a maniac, pounding you into the soft carpet and holding you down. 

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" he whimpers, his jaw quivering like it always does when he cums. The seriousness of a scene breaks, and all of Eddie's emotion comes out like a flood. 

"I'm here, I'm here, Princess," he whines, rutting into you, cock throbbing. "I'm not going anywhere, I love you too fucking much!"

Eddie shoves himself as deep as he can, thankfully muffling your moan from the pain. His head drops to the crook of your shoulder, his teeth biting into your skin as his body coils and snaps like a livewire. 

Hot cum spurts in waves, flooding you as Eddie grunts like an animal. You hold onto him limply as he empties himself inside, filling your womb with his seed. Your body takes him, takes all of him like you are made to. He's told you enough times. 

Eddie collapses on you with a sharp exhale, sticky sweat cooling on your skin. His lips press sloppily to your neck, over and over until he gets up on his elbows to watch you. 

"You really love me?" he asks quietly, his eyes glistening with tears. 

You reach up again to touch him, to press your fingers to his lip like your staining a promise into his skin. 

"I really love you, Eddie."

This time his grin is nothing but relief, and when he kisses you it's full of reverence and care, sweet sticky dopey love. You moan softly as you kiss him back, holding him in the way he liked. Your fingers wander down his waist until you reach under his shirt and rub his back. 

Eddie nuzzles close, pressing feeble kisses to your cheeks and lips. He always gets like this after, clingy and needy, and you're more than happy to take care of him when he takes such good care of you. 

"I really missed you," he mumbles into your skin, letting out a long sigh. "Two weeks is a long time."

"Dinner tomorrow?" you ask, smiling to yourself. "I wanna see you."

Eddie pulls back to flash you a lopsided grin, "Only if we go back to my place after."

You nod slowly, anxious beyond belief. You'd been thinking about this for a while, but the thought of him saying no was terrifying. 

"I was thinking…you could have dinner here…with me… and my parents."

Eddie's eyes go wide, "You want me to meet them?"

"I needed to know you were all in first, y’know?" you whisper, blushing in the dark. "That this was real."

Eddie softens, and he brushes some of your messy hair back. He presses a sweet kiss to the tip of your nose and nods, "It's real for me. I'm all in, Princess."

You chuckle, "You can't call me that in front of my dad."

Smirking, Eddie leans in and pokes his nose against yours, "As long as you can hold back from calling me Daddy in front of them."

"I'll do my best. It's hard, though…" you pout playfully, "I'm Daddy's Princess."

Eddie laughs lightly, and when he pulls out of you you both groan a bit. He stuffs himself back into his pants and goes for your underwear drawer. You sit up on your elbows as he pulls out a cute pair of pink cotton panties and comes back to you. 

When he starts to loop them around your ankles, you kick lightly at him, "I'm gonna take a shower real quick."

Eddie flashes you a deliciously dark look, "No you're not. You're gonna go have dinner with your father with Daddy's cum leaking out of that pretty little pussy."

You know better than to say no, and even lift your hips for him as he tugs the panties up. He helps you to your feet and presses a sweet kiss to your forehead. You wince as you feel his cum glob into your fresh, clean underwear.

"I'll see you tomorrow," he tells you gently, and you nod. "Be good."

As he heads for the window, you wait until he's halfway out before replying, "Never."

Eddie points at you as a warning, but then he's gone, ambling down the trellis and disappearing into the moonlight. 

You straighten your dress and pull your hair back up into a ponytail before heading downstairs. 

Your parents sit in the dining room as you come in, and you kiss your father's cheek before taking your seat. 

"Your mom made chicken," he chuckles happily and pats his belly. "Your favorite, Princess."

"She really is Daddy's Princess, isn't she?" your mother sighs, but it's playful. 

You glance out the window only to see Eddie smirking at you through the glass. He winks one last time and points again before sneaking through the hedges. 

You give your father your most dazzling smile.

"I sure am."

Notes: Hoo... I'm sweaty

ST Taglist: @tlclick73 @theloser007 @sadbitchfangirl @chaoticcancer  

[scrollonso]

Undead — Pedroscar

Oscar is honestly beginning to regret every decision that’s led him up to this moment.

He knows why he let himself be talked into going to a scare park this year, but he’s having a hard time keeping it in mind the longer he’s there. The thing is, he usually doesn’t scare so easily. His boyfriend loves horror movies and supernatural-type shows, and they’ve watched plenty of them together.

When he’s living in a moment straight out of one, though? It’s a little different.

The Undead Outbreak walkthrough is killer; he’ll give them that. He’d lost his friends a little ways in, going opposite directions in the maze. Stupidly, Oscar is now left alone, no one to cling to, bracing himself for whatever jump scare comes at him next. The strobe lights and fog machines make it hard to tell what’s a person and what’s a prop, but he’s doing his best.

Rounding a corner, Oscar finds himself at a fork in the walkway. From what he can tell, one way is slightly better lit than the other — meaning that’s probably the better option, probably leads to somewhere he actually wants to be. Still, he hesitates a beat, squinting toward the darker passageway. He thinks he can make out what’s meant to be a door a ways down, blocked off with yellow caution tape that reads ‘do not open’ in bold letters, splattered with fake blood.

More than likely a dead end. There’s got to be a zombie lurking in the shadows down there, waiting for an unsuspecting victim to launch themselves at.

Oscar turns to face the way he’d just come from, debating whether or not it’s wise to backtrack and find more of a crowd to follow. Just so he knows he’s potentially going the right way instead of either of these new ones. He’s not having an easy time figuring it out on his own. Safety in numbers, or whatever, even if none of this is real.

Before he can commit to a decision, however, there’s a hand clasping at the back of his sweatshirt, tugging.

He’s not embarrassed to admit that he lets out a pathetically scared yelp, trying to squirm away from the firm hold. The snarl of a zombie is uncomfortably close to his ear as he’s towed toward the blocked-off door at the dead end’s walkway.

Logically, Oscar recalls a reminder from earlier in the day that the scare actors aren’t supposed to touch the guests. Unfortunately, the logical part of his brain isn’t firing on all cylinders as he’s being dragged through a horror maze he can barely see clearly in.

He’s shoved back into the wall, a forearm barred across his chest to pin him there. It takes him a moment, maybe two, to adjust to the dimmer flashes of light in this area. Then he recognizes what’s happened; familiarity in the zombie’s dark curls and sharp jaw, even painted with false blood and rot, filmy contacts blocking out grey irises.

“Hi, amor.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Oscar wheezes, thunking his head back against the wall.

Pedro laughs, snapping his teeth playfully at him. “Told you I’d find you.”

“Almost gave me a heart attack, you cunt.”

Oscar tosses his boyfriend’s arm away from his chest, but makes a grab at the collar of Pedro’s tattered costume shirt instead. Before he can pull him in fully, he pauses, hazel eyes flickering over the gash at Pedro’s hairline, the couple of zombie bites along his neck. Oscar brushes his thumb along the edge of the prosthetic piece at the exposed juncture of Pedro’s neck and shoulder, nose wrinkling faintly.

“These look so real,” he comments.

“Kind of the point,” Pedro chuckles. “I can give you one if you want.”

Oscar snorts, eyes rolling good-naturedly now that his racing heart has started to slow down. “Oh yeah?”

“Mhm.” Pedro leans forward to close the few inches between them, catching Oscar’s lower lip between his teeth and pulling at it.

When it snaps back into place, Oscar breathes in shallowly, muttering, “Baby, you’re at work.”

“I’m bored. Hardly anyone’s come down this way.” Pedro curls both hands at his hips, shifts to slot one leg between both of Oscar’s thighs, pressing until Oscar lets out a soft groan. Nosing along the line of his jaw, Pedro hums, “Best case, even if they do, they’ll just think you work here too, and that I’m eating you.”

“Interesting choice of words,” Oscar exhales, half a laugh.

“That might be a little more obvious, I’m afraid,” Pedro mutters into the side of his neck. He kisses gently along the soft skin for a moment, Oscar’s head lolling to the side to give him more room.

“Have to wait until we’re home, then.”

“Mm, can do this in the meantime, though.” Without further preamble, Pedro bites down, digging his teeth in in a way that toes the line between pain and pleasure.

Oscar gasps when Pedro sucks harshly at the bitten skin, inevitably leaving a mark behind. The grip at his hips tightens, guiding Oscar to rock forward against the thigh pressed to the growing bulge in the front of his jeans. Pedro drags his lips an inch downward, sucking another mark into pale skin just below the first. Oscar continues rolling his hips forward on instinct, digging his fingers in on either side of Pedro’s ribs.

“Pedro—” Oscar cuts off on a breathless moan when Pedro slips a hand into his back pocket, palming at his ass and pushing him forward still. “Baby, I’ve still got to walk out of here.”

“Plenty of time to walk it off,” Pedro mumbles against his skin.

Oscar hisses, hips jerking forward, when Pedro sinks his teeth in again, a third mark sucked in a straight line down the side of Oscar’s neck. One of his hands lifts, sinking his fingers into familiar silky brunette tufts of hair at the back of Pedro’s head and tugging slightly.

“Not really my dick still being hard that I’m worried about,” Oscar manages on a winded chuckle; it tapers off into another moan after the fact.

Pedro hums lowly, then licks a broad stripe up the trail of bruises he’s left behind, nipping at the line of Oscar’s slightly stubbled jaw. Despite what he’s just warned, it’s Oscar that chases Pedro’s lips, tilting forward to kiss him slow, sucking his lower lip between his own teeth. He doesn’t bite the same way Pedro has been, slipping his tongue beyond Pedro’s teeth instead. Moaning loud and lewd into his mouth when Pedro shifts to give even more pressure where Oscar continues to rut against the thigh between his legs.

It’s dangerous, playing this game. They’re where Pedro works. They’re in public. Not to mention that, by all accounts, Oscar probably shouldn’t feel as attracted to Pedro as he does on any normal day while Pedro looks like he came out of a grave.

Still, his hips rock in a continuous, fluid motion against his boyfriend’s thigh. Chasing a high that he can’t think past the static in his head just yet to realize he can’t properly deal with as needed at present. Coming in his pants like a teenager is not exactly easily handled in the current setting. He still has to walk out of here, maybe with a little dignity left, if he can manage it.

His brain and body don’t seem terribly concerned with that, however, because he doesn’t stop. He continues to ride the slim thigh that offers his aching cock a delicious friction. Pedro’s other hand snakes into the back of Oscar’s hair, fingernails scraping along his scalp as they drag through his shallow waves. They both moan into the twist of their tongues when Oscar squeezes tight at Pedro’s waist, hips moving faster for a brief moment.

They both need to breathe at this point — cheeks heated pink, labored inhales and exhales shared, Oscar so close to cuming he can practically feel it in his damn teeth. Pedro inches back first, panting shakily between slick lips. His lips trail up Oscar’s jaw until Pedro reaches his ear, grazing his teeth at the lobe. Oscar shudders, taking in an equally shaking breath between parted lips.

“Pedro, baby, fuck. I—”

“Straight down that way, two lefts, then a right,” Pedro murmurs right in his ear.

Oscar blinks his eyes open dazedly, the flash of strobe light above them further dizzying. “What?”

Abruptly, Pedro cuts all contact with him; hands falling and a large step taken backward, the thigh between Oscar’s gone. And it’s a downright wounded noise that slips past his lips as soon as it happens.

Pedro inclines his head in the opposite direction from the current dead end they stand near when Oscar gawks at him in question. “The way out.”

Oscar wheezes out a loud laugh, head lolling back and forth. “You’re actually the fucking worst, you know that?”

“Oh, I know, cariño,” Pedro coos tauntingly, shiny and reddened lips curled in a smirk.

The fake blood around his mouth is smeared even more than it already was, meaning there’s some mingling with the fresh bruises on Oscar’s neck, probably around his mouth, too, all things considered. Oscar may look like he really was mauled by a zombie.

He takes a couple of slow, deep breaths, trying to steady his racing heart and ease the tension humming through his veins like electricity. Every muscle in his body feels charged, thrumming with an ache that refuses to dissipate. His legs are shaky as he shifts his stance, subtly adjusting his current predicament in his jeans, though he’s well aware there’s no hiding it. Pedro’s lips quirk up in a knowing smirk, his eyes gleaming with amusement.

Oscar steps forward, bridging the small distance between them, his fingers reaching up to gently catch Pedro’s chin between his thumb and forefinger. The touch is intimate, possessive, filled with unspoken promises. His voice is rough, still breathless from the tension between them. “I’ll see you at home.”

Pedro, always quick with a teasing retort, snaps his teeth playfully, eyes sparkling with mischief. “Can’t wait,” he murmurs, his lips curling into a wicked smile that makes Oscar’s pulse race all over again.

Oscar lingers for just a second longer, the temptation to pull Pedro back into him almost too strong to resist. But he knows they can’t continue here, not now. With a soft sigh, he pulls back, his hand slipping away from Pedro’s chin. He takes one last steadying breath, forcing himself to remember that they’ll have all the time they need once they’re home — far away from the strobe lights and haunted maze, and definitely without the threat of being interrupted.

But as Oscar walks away, his body still thrumming with need, he can’t help but throw one last glance over his shoulder. Pedro’s eyes are locked on him, dark and filled with heat, a promise of what’s to come later hanging between them like a palpable force.

Oscar grins to himself, his pace quickening slightly as he heads toward the exit, anticipation already building once more. There’s no denying it — Pedro has him wrapped around his finger, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

[snickerdoodlles]

📓 :3

:D!

@mortimerlatrice got me thinking about a KimChay Chrestomanci AU, so more of that.

the Chrestomanci series, sidenote, is an absolutely delightful fantasy series by Diana Wynne Jones. it's composed of mostly independent stories set in a universe of 12 parallel universes (called Series), each with their own string of worlds (except Series 11). generally speaking, every person has eight identical copies borne into other series than their own, but very occasionally all nine lives will be borne into one person. this nine-life enchanter has all the power of nine magical people in them and is therefore the only person powerful enough to fill the role of Chrestomanci to regulate magical use and prevent any abuse of it across the 12 series.

which cool, very fun story premise actually, but not what I care about here. I'm setting kp in one of the series that doesn't deal much with magic because I don't care about magic meet mafia, I care about Chay having nine lives and all the ways that could make things worse.

(cw: non-permanent but slightly graphic character death under the cut. ft a dash of actual character death, but that only applies to Tawan.)

Chay doesn't have all his lives when canon starts. he lost his first one the same day he and Porsche lost their parents when he fell out of his crib trying to investigate the noise. he lost his second to food poisoning, before Porsche started working for extra food money and they had to make every scrap stretch. he lost another when a debt collector hit him too hard and snapped his neck. (Porsche wasn't home for that day. Chay told him he wasn't either.)

Chay loses his fourth life in the warehouse. it actually wasn't intentional on anyone's part -- Tawan's hired meat weren't careful enough bringing him in, and Chay's luck has his head hit a curb or scrap metal at just the right (or wrong, as it were) angle to kill him instead of concuss him, and head injuries take so long to come back from. Tawan drags out the charade because he wants Porsche desperate, not angry, and Porsche is in too deep of denial to accept the possibility of Chay actually being dead not to fall for it.

Kim arrives before Chay comes back to life. it's...bad. Porsche is screaming for him to get Chay out. Kim first checks Chay's breathing. failing to find that, he frantically (but carefully!) hauls Chay upright. that's when Chay's head flops limply to the side and reveals the dried blood down the back of his neck, which Kim had already felt grabbing but refused to process.

Kim sees red.

Tawan knifes Big. Porsche's shouts break through the fog threatening to overwhelm Kim. then Tawan gets one very distraught, very angry, very murderous Kim materializing in front of him and going right for his eyes. it doesn't matter that Tawan's the one with a weapon, he could've had an armory and that couldn't have helped him. Kim is very, very, very good at fighting, and he's on a mission to hurt. but he's also missing his control, and kicks Tawan in the kidney so hard Tawan stumbles back into a pile of scrap and, in true irony, jostles it hard enough the end of steel beam falls on his head. as discovered earlier, metal and concrete are not kind to heads, and bullet proof vests certainly can't protect from that.

it's too quick and too kind, and Kim stares at him disbelievingly, half a mind to drag Tawan out and beat out the little life he's surely still clinging to, when Chay groans. Kim first thinks he hallucinated it, but then he sees Chay move and he's so relieved he was wrong that he shoves everything else out of his mind and just gets Chay out. then everything and one trailing shouty Porsche slams back into him the minute Chay's out of his arms and with the paramedics that Kim bolts to go hide in a dark corner in his apartment and fail to process any of it.

Chay misses all of this btws. He was dead, then he was back with a headache, and he loves Porsche but he needs Porsche to please shut the fuck up and get him some tylenol.

then apartment confrontation, where Kim says I'm sorry and shoves off even quicker because all he can remember are those moments when he'd been so sure Chay was properly dead. club scene goes down even worse when Kim yells at Chay for making stupid reckless choices that could get him killed, and Chay demands to know why Kim even cares, and Kim goes pale with anger that Chay doesn't care that he (only nearly, surely) died, and it's all very terrible and ends in them storming away from each other.

then comes Yok's bar.

Chay dies. Kim had taunted them into a direct fight inside instead of picking them off outside, and it should have been fine, would have been fine, had Chay not had a bit more awareness and looked over to see Kim pinned between two guys and rushed to help only to get shot by one of the goons on the other end of the bar. he bleeds out while Kim kills off the rest.

Chay comes back to a bar full of bodies and Kim (clutching) cradling him. Kim isn't crying. he isn't really doing much of anything other than clinging and staring off into nothing with a thoroughly haunted expression.

Chay blinks and tentatively lays his fingers against Kim's cheek. "Kim?"

Kim's eyes snap to him, but still don't quite see him. he stays looking blank for a few seconds that feel like hours before saying matter-of-factly, "I've snapped."

"Kim!" Chay protests, distressed.

"It's okay," Kim says, still matter-of-fact but smiling tenderly, "better to be mad with you than without."

it takes a while to convince Kim he's not insane and that Chay's really back. Chay's not certain he fully manages it. but his death also shook loose a lot of confessions Kim normally couldn't say out loud. ("why--" Chay starts, voice cracking, "why did you say 'I'm sorry' that day?" / "You were supposed to be safe," Kim replies hoarsely, mad smile slipping for tears.) there's more clutching and clinging, this time by Chay too. both of them manage to forget they're in a bar of dead bodies until Porsche and Kinn come crashing through the door.

"Chay!" Porsche yells when he first sees him.

"Chay," Porsche pleads brokenly when he sees Chay's blood soaked shirt.

"Not mine!" Chay says quickly, and would've been given away by how fast Kim's head snaps around in any other circumstance. "See?" he says, raising his shirt to show unblemished skin, "No injury."

this does a lot to reassure Porsche, but Chay can tell Kim still thinks he's a little bit insane. Chay decides that's fine for now, because dying takes a lot out of you and apparently everyone around you too and it's unfair to expect Kim to just bounce back from him bleeding out on him, he'll work on it after a shower and dinner.

I'm not writing this AU because I only really have these two vague scenes in my head, but Chay having multiple lives making his existence in the mafia hurt more than canon's calls to me, it really does.

oh, also: in the AU source material, one of the nine-lifers has one of his lives removed and stored into a ring for safekeeping. he later gives this ring to his to-be-wife as her wedding ring. I'm not sure yet how to work that into this AU because Chay's contact with magic and other magicals would be slim to none in this, but please picture how this would absolutely wreck Kim, because there's nothing Kim wants more than to safeguard Chay but as far as he's concerned, he's already failed Chay in that regard twice. 😈

[[ ask me about fics im not writing ]]

[greenrazberrysoda]

I Will Go To You Like The First Snow

pairing : annabeth chase x percy jackson

word count : 765

tags : angst, dead percy jackson, grief/mourning, no dialogue, post-tartarus, post-house of hades annabeth chase-centric

!! notice !! : this fic was written on november 1st, 2023; it was originally posted on what's now my main but i have no idea if you can transfer posts from a primary to an alt,,,, sooo,,,,

cross posted from ao3

Before she had him, she didn’t realize the world she was in was this bright. Now he was gone.  

She stared out the window, cheek resting against the icy glass, her breath turning to fog and clouding the transparency of the pane. It had been such a long time—years—since she stayed at Camp Half-Blood year-round. With her being the only occupant of Cabin #6, and with the absence of Percy, everything was so, so quiet. Deafeningly quiet.  

She studied shrubs that patterned the forest outside of the Athena cabin. The pretty flowers had withered, though she knew that they would soon flourish beneath the gentle touch of the spring’s sun, blooming once more. The season of him would never come again.  

Annabeth recalled everybody’s pitiful gaze, unwilling to look her in the eye as if she were an active grenade, ready to explode and wreak havoc at any given moment. She remembered the way Grover clung to her like she was going to disappear next, the way he sobbed into her shoulder and left stains of his tears on her sleeve. She missed being able to cry into Percy’s shirt like that.  

She remembered the way Piper had pulled her into the tightest, most loving hug and told her that she was there for her. Annabeth remembered how warm she felt. It warmed every part of her but her hollowed chest. She appreciated the gesture when Piper told her that she knew how loving Percy was, but she didn’t know. Not like Annabeth did, never like Annabeth did.  

She remembered the way Thalia kissed her cheek and told her how strong she was. Annabeth didn’t want to feel strong, though. She wanted to come home after a long, exhausting day and be able to fall limp into Percy’s arms like a ragdoll, melting into his touch knowing that he would never take advantage of her vulnerability. Thalia embraced her tightly and called her strong. Annabeth wasn’t strong. She was a husk of the woman she once was.  

She remembered the way she saw Nico cry for the first time. It was like watching him slowly regress back into his 10-year-old self, sobbing into the sleeve of his sweater, saying it was his own fault. She held his hands and told him it would be okay, but she knew it wouldn’t and he knew it wouldn’t. Later that day, she watched Will cradle Nico in his arms gingerly. Annabeth bitterly wondered if they would be able to get the happy ending that she was promised.  

Promise.  

Annabeth remembered when she was dangling at the mouth of Tartarus, darkness dragging her down into the hollow. The way she clung onto his hand, trembling and weak, but clinging. “We’re staying together,” he said, with such sincerity that she wondered if he had ascended from Elysium, pure love wrapped in blue ribbon for her. “You’re not getting away from me. Never again.”  

Percy promised her. He swore to her. And it had been shattered into trillions of pieces, enamorment reduced to nothingness. Utter, complete, nothingness.  

Annabeth remembered all the anger she felt towards Percy. Every dumb, life-risking stunt he pulled in favor of saving her life, every time a girl tried to flirt with him, every little thing that irked her. She took all the better moments for granted, never savoring how lucky she was, how perfect her situation was before it was torn from her hands no matter how hard she tried to hold on.  

Before she let go of him, she didn’t realize that the world she was in was this lonely.  

The snow descended from the sky still. Annabeth fluttered her eyes shut and tried to envision where she would go once she would die. All she saw behind shut eyelids was him. The tousled sable hair, the sun-kissed freckles that flit across his blushed cheeks, the tanned skin patterned with scars that silently spoke of his strength and devotion, the hypnotizing smile with those dimples that poked into the sides of his face, the sparkling sea-green eyes that spoke of a million years' worth of love. Annabeth wondered when she would be able to cup his cheeks in her hands like she did before and brush the hair out of his face and admire how much she absolutely adored him, when she would be able to wrap her arms around his warm body and feel the steady rhythm of his heart beating against her chest.  

Some day, they’ll meet again.  

And she will go to him like the first snow.  

She will go to him.  

a/n : hope you enjoyed ^_^ i love ailee's music sm and her voice always makes me tear up </33 im gonna be real honest i wrote this for a hot minute thinking i was cooking and then i put it through a word counter and was like ಠ_ಠ... but im still proud of it and i hope u like reading this as much as i liked writing it !!! :P

[eternal-love-song]

Who You'll Be When You're Already Dead

Years after the killing game, the participants keep meeting up once a year to keep in touch and Kokichi is sick of it. When Kaede decides to talk to him about his attitude, the two end up becoming oddly tangled with one another.

[Kokichi/Kaede] [Post VR AU, Kokichi POV, Unhealthy Coping Mechanism, Angst, Character Study]

Written for @dr-rarepair-week-blog

Kokichi hated these reunions. He spent the mornings watching Kirumi and whoever else decorate like it was a birthday party, hanging streamers and putting up posters. It was a ploy to make them feel welcomed and invited, instead of what they really were, shackled and miserable. It was a masochistic practice, seeking out their fellow killing game survivors and pretending that they were happy to see each other instead flagellating themselves over the fact that they'd signed themselves away.

Kokichi never helped, but that didn't make him better than the rest of them. He still showed up early every year to watch the decorating like he was staring at a sinking ship.

Kokichi didn't know who he'd been before the killing game. Those memories were gone for good. It was supposedly his signature on the contract that had signed away the life of his past self, but he'd never know that for sure. Just as surely, who he was inside the killing game was also gone. Murdered just as soundly as his virtual body had been. 

All these years later, it hardly mattered. It was all that mattered. 

"Could you at least do that outside?" Kirumi asked, watching him with a disappointed frown.

Kokichi took an extra long drag on his cigarette for that and blew the smoke into the air between them. "If I go outside, I'm not coming back in."

It shouldn't be a loss, but for whatever reason, everyone treated his attendance like it was the most important thing imaginable. Not just his, of course. He wasn't the only one that had to be hunted down and dragged into this practically against his will. Maki and Korekiyo were treated much the same, as if the whole thing would fall apart if even one of them was missing.

Kirumi walked around him and opened the windows, before going on her way to finish decorating. 

Kokichi didn't get it. Most of them died in the killing game and woke up someone else. Kirumi was one of the few that seemed desperate to cling to the tatters of her in-game persona with both hands.

When Tsumugi arrived, it was always with her head held low and an apologetic smile on her lips. Kokichi always stared at her, surprised that she had the nerve to show her face even if she hadn't chosen to be the mastermind, and she shrunk back from his gaze like Shuichi used to when she noticed. Red face went red with shame, but after the first time she had offered an apology to him for her roll in the killing game, just after they had all woken up, and Kokichi had laughed in her face and refused to forgive her, Tsumugi had gotten the idea to steer clear of him.

Angie stepped into his line of sight, smiling as she blocked Tsumugi from his glare. "Hey there, Kokichi. Can you do me a favor?"

"No," he replied immediately.

Angie didn't listen. She never did. It made her one of the easier people to interact with. She placed her hands on his shoulder and turned him toward the windows. He wasn't sure whether he was being put in time out for bullying Tsumugi or being redirected because of his smoking, but he found it amusing either way.

"Stay right there, okay?"

"Anything for you, beloved."

He could hear Angie trying to convince Tsumugi to ignore him and enter the building. Amusingly, it took ten minutes for Angie to talk her around. You'd think it would get easier the more time passed without him doing anything, but it seemed like it never did.

Kokichi hung out of the window until his cigarette was down to the butt, tossing it carelessly out the window and privately hoping that it would set the whole place on fire. Sadly, there wasn't anything out there for the cooling embers to catch on, but he could dream.

"You could at least try to enjoy yourself." 

Kokichi raised an eyebrow as he turned, seeing Kaede staring him down. Somehow, she looked more like herself than she had in the killing game. Shorter hair, sharper eyes, but exactly the same amount of presumptuous and bossy. "What's to enjoy?" he asked.

"The food that Kirumi made," she answered immediately.

"Just what I need, to be fed by a murderer," he said flatly.

"The decorations that Angie made."

"The same decorations that I see every single year, joy."

Kaede glared even harder. "The room full of all your friends?"

This one gave Kokichi pause, if only for the hard laugh that forced its way out of his throat. "Are we friends now? Wonder when that happened."

Kaede opened her mouth to say more, but Kokichi wasn't in the mood to listen. He walked away, vaguely taking stock of the room as he went toward the hall that led to the bathroom. 

Miu was making a scene at the bar. Maki had dyed her hair and kept self consciously running her hands through it. Rantaro was telling stories to everyone. Seemed like the gang was all there finally. Whoop-de-do.

"I wasn't done talking to you," Kaede said, but not until after he'd already left the main room. He wasn't sure why she bothered. He was sure none of them really wanted him there, even if Miu or Ryoma occasionally spoke to him. It would be easy enough to just not invite him to one of these little reunions and get on with their lives, or else just not have them altogether. He was more sure than ever that it was Little Miss Piano Song that was the driving force behind these things.

Kokichi sighed as he turned to face her. "Can I help you?"

It seemed he could, because she opened her mouth and didn't close it for the next five minutes. Kokichi did not listen. He'd heard it all before, if not from her then Kaito, if not from him, then from Gonta. It all added up to the same thing in his mind. If Kokichi wasn't around then they would feel guilty and if they felt guilty they couldn't pretend that they were getting over it.

Which they weren't. It couldn't be more clear that they weren't. If they really wanted to get over they would all go their separate ways and never talk to each other again. Or else only when they accidentally see each other in the streets five years from now when it can be awkward and the sight of each other covered in blood wasn't still the most prominent thing on everyone's mind.

Kaede couldn't be convinced of that though. She was too stubborn. It had to be all or nothing with her. Kokichi gambled for nothing.

He took a few quick steps into her space, startling her enough that she stopped speaking for just a moment, then he pressed his lips to hers. 

The silence really was golden.

Kokichi was pretty sure that she was with Shuichi. He'd seen the not really a detective nipping at her heels the same way that he had while in the killing game and assumed. It was an assumption that he hoped would make her back off, run back to her boy toy, and be too embarrassed or angry or whatever to talk to him again. He didn't need her to nag him about being friends. All he needed was to be left alone.

That wasn't what happened though. Instead, she froze. For much longer than he thought was reasonable. When he finally pulled back from the kiss, he found that she was red from blushing and her pupils were blown.

"Huh." He took a step back. "If nothing else, you're still not boring," he told her. Then he continued on his path away from her to the bathroom.

He didn't actually have to pee. He just hoped to pass some time until he could leave without anyone nagging him about it. The last time he'd tried to duck out early, Kiibo had tried to make small talk with him to get him to stay and it was almost more painful than the press. Almost. He was considering just taking out another cigarette when the door burst open and Kaede barged in.

"You can't do that!" she yelled.

Kokichi decided not to make a joke about the immense delay of that reaction. "Pretty sure I already did."

Kaede slammed her hands against the wall, interestingly choosing to box him in against the wall. "I'll have you know that I'm happily seeing someone," she proclaimed.

"I don't recall asking," he smirked.

Kaede practically growled in frustration, making his smirk widen. "Why do you have to be so-"

He kissed her again. It just seemed like the right thing to do. After all, you didn't follow someone into a bathroom and practically push them against a wall just to yell at them he was pretty sure. The fact that she didn't pull away really just proved his point.

Kokichi made this kiss last longer than the first, grabbing onto the front of her shirt and pulling her closer. Kaede didn't make an attempt to pull away. When he slid his tongue along her lips, she parted them easily, welcoming him with an enthusiastic moan. The first kiss had just been to shut her up, but he actually enjoyed this one. He was smiling when he finally pulled away.

"You're awful," she told him quietly once he broke the kiss, unable to meet his gaze.

"Yeah? I'm not the one dating someone," he replied. 

"You didn't have to-"

"Neither did you," he said. "You could still leave, you know. Someone could walk in here any minute."

Kaede made a pained noise of uncertainty that actually amused him. This wasn't the same person that had been inside the game. Kokichi didn't know who she was, but he had to admit to finding this Kaede much more interesting.

"I think," he said in a low tone, "that you have two options here. Either go back out there and pretend that nothing happened or go into one of those stalls and accept that whatever happens next, you choose it."

Kaede's face only got more red, her gaze only dropped lower and lower. When she finally stepped away from him, he thought for a moment that her good sense had returned to her and that she was going to leave. 

She didn't. 

Kaede took several steps away from him, raised her gaze to meet his own, and then stepped backwards into one of the stalls. 

For a moment, Kokichi considered just leaving. That would be the surest way to get her to leave him alone, to leave her embarrassed and humiliated in a stall in the men's room. The truth of that matter was that he didn't really want to. Kokichi wasn't his game self either, he wasn't better than her. Better than this. 

He followed her into the stall. 

They didn't speak. They had said all that needed to be said already. The only thing that was left was for Kokichi to burn a mistake into her skin. He left marks under shirt, hickies and scratches as punishments for the fact that she'd bothered him long enough for it to come to this. In turn, she left the feeling of her hands in his lingering hair for days after they parted and the sound of her soft cries practically haunted him. 

When they parted, Kokichi left quickly, hoping to avoid the regret in her eyes and the hesitation in her movements.

He didn't.

Kokichi avoided her for the rest of the night and managed to be the first person to leave.

---------------- Kokichi didn't think about them much the rest of the year or he tried not to. Remembering his not friends mostly just brought up bad memories. There were some things that were unavoidable though.

He woke from nightmares that he couldn't remember with a full body ache. He froze when he saw a weird shade of pink and had to remind himself that blood was really red. Sometimes it didn't sink in until he pricked his finger and then the bright red would remind him of cold, vicious eyes waiting for him to die. It was a constant struggle between thinking of nothing and being followed by these tiny snapshots of life that wasn't his.

The Kokichi Ouma that he used to be would bottle it all up and smile. He would be loud enough to walk right over those thoughts, stubborn enough to push them aside. That Kokichi had been someone that would fight until the very end. His weapon had been wits, and he'd wielded them to the very end.

This Kokichi armed himself with a bottle and a cigarette and constantly wondered how big of a mistake he could make with them.

Like clockwork, however, the invitation came. He always told himself that he wouldn't go. He didn't want to see them, that much was true, and he repeated that truth over and over as he turned the envelope over and over again in his hands. He watched it burn beneath the ashes of his cigarette. Then, just like clockwork, he found himself standing outside the meeting place once more.

Angie smiled at him and looped her arm with his to drag him in. He almost never walked in himself, someone always dragged him. Kokichi thought if they didn't catch him, he could probably just walk past content in the knowledge that they were there and he wasn't. Unfortunately, no matter how he dragged his feet, nothing ever changed.

It was a good thing he was dead, otherwise he was pretty sure that he would hate himself.

"Have you come to help this time?" Kiibo asked. He never got used to seeing him in flesh and blood. Kiibo moved like it was awkward to be in his body, as if his hands and feet never quite did what they wanted him to. He wondered if Kiibo wasn't used to it yet either, if he never would be. 

Kokichi answered his question by reaching into his bag, holding up a bottle of alcohol, and taking a long drink.

"It's much too early in the morning for that," Kirumi sighed. "At least allow me to make you something to eat."

Kokichi raised an eyebrow at her. "Don't you have better things to do?"

Kirumi pressed her lips together as she frowned. He could see it easily, when he looked at her, the way that she tried to figure out what the maid in the game would have said or done. The way she tried to step back into herself like it was a favorite shirt she could no longer fit. 

Kokichi turned away from her to save her the trouble, sitting himself on a table and settling in to watch as he always did.

The day passed in snapshots as he tried not to think too much, not to watch them, not to see the ghost of their former selves overlaid with the people in front of him. The more of them that arrived, the harder that became.

One blink and there was a plate of toast beside him. 

One blink and Angie was stealing a swig from his bottle.

One blink and Tsumugi was peeking her head into the room, spotting him, and backing out again.

Until finally every blink became the same as there were more bodies and more bodies and more bodies in the room. 

"Hey, can you get off the table?"

"No," he answered immediately, before finally turning to see who it was. He was surprised that the subdued voice he'd heard was Kaito's. He knew that the idiot was still stubborn, still self righteous, but he guessed he'd left being loud back on his gravestone.

Kokichi hopped off the table, wobbled, then reached back to take his bag. His bottle was empty, between his own drinking and Angie constantly stealing sips, that wasn't really a surprise. He decided to leave it where it was.

"Where you going? It'll be time to eat soon," Kaito called after him.

"Smoke," Kokichi answered without turning back. He could feel the ground beneath his feet a little too keenly. If he turned, it would be obvious that he wasn't steady on his feet, if it wasn't already. Best to just retreat now and hope that no one followed him.

That hope was sadly in vain.

"What's wrong with you today?" He didn't even have to turn this time to know who was nagging him.

"Still have that boyfriend?" he asked as he tried to fumble around for his cigarettes. He wasn't sure that he really wanted one, but he didn't want to stand still either. 

"Huh?" It was a little surprising that he'd taken her so off guard with that. "Why would you ask..."

"Because it seems like you could be bothering him instead of me."

Silence followed. Silence in which he finally discovered his half empty box of smokes and hoped that she had gone on her way. That was foolish though. Not even this new Kaede seemed like the type to give up so easily.

But she was the type to fuck boys in bathrooms when she had a boyfriend. Funny that.

"If this is about last time--"

"It isn't," he told her. But it was. He might not have thought about it if she hadn't sought him out again, if he wasn't tipsy, if he didn't think his hand would be too unsteady to light a cigarette. He could still feel the grip she had on his hair that night when he wasn't paying close attention. Anothing thing to haunt him, to follow, like the guest hall full of ghosts that he'd just walked out of.

Kaede huffed as she stomped around to stand in front of him. "Everyone is trying their best!" she yelled.

Kokichi looked up to meet her eyes. "I never asked them to," he said. "I didn't ask anything from any of you."

"After everything you did," she said, stepping closer. "After how hard you tried, you're going to just... throw this away?"

"That person is gone," he said firmly, glaring at her. He held up his hands, bringing one down on top of the other. "Crushed, just like my concern. Shouldn't have savored him while you had him."

Kaede shook her head again. "I don't believe you."

"I don't really care what you believe. Doesn't change anything." He shrugged and half turned away from her. "All this Kokichi can do is fuck you again, and probably not even well since I can barely see straight. There's nothing here for you."

Kaede stormed forward to turn him back toward her, almost knocking him off his unsteady feet. "There is."

He knocked her hand away. "There isn't!" he yelled back. "You're not that fucking desperate for cock, are you?"

"You don't know what I am," she yelled back.

Kokichi stared at her. Her stance was like he remembered it, but her eyes were different. Meaner, sharper, louder somehow. It was much easier to see when there were so many of them swarming in his vision. He sighed, leaning back against the wall and closing his eyes. "You're right. Go home."

Surprising no one, she didn't leave.

What was surprising was when he felt her hands at his hip and he opened his eyes to see her on her knees in front of him. He opened his mouth, but found himself at a loss for words as he looked at her. 

Kaede's gaze seemed to get harder, more determined. "You don't know what I am," she repeated.

Well. Guess she was right on that one.

Kokichi hoped that the feeling of his hands in her hair would follow her the same way her touch haunted him. She hoped that when she went back inside it was with a sore throat and that his taste lingered longer far longer than it should. He wondered if he would remember this later or if it would fade away like the memories of his past self. He wouldn't mind if it did. He had survived losing worse, and better. He wouldn't mind losing this.

"Um, is anyone out here?"

By the time the soft call came, they had long since stopped. Kokichi was sitting on the ground, holding a cigarette that she'd barely touched, and Kaede was staring up at the stars. He wondered what she was thinking, but he didn't ask. Kokichi didn't have room for anyone's thoughts but his own.

"Shuichi?" Kaede leaned toward him, but she didn't move, rooted to the spot like she had been for the past several minutes that his cigarette had been burning down to the butt.

Shuichi looked both ways before stepping outside and coming to her side. Kokichi thought he might have been more anxious now than he had been in the killing game. He had a better hat to hide behind and a scarf around his neck that served almost the same purpose, as if he could bury his body in accessories and escape his fears that way. There was a time Kokichi would have considered helping him. A time when Kaito already would have been. A time when Kaede would have gone to his side and pulled him after her.

Where did the time go?

"We were looking for you both," Shuichi said. "Everyone, um, we're about to leave so..."

"Wow, the time went so quickly," Kaede told him with a laugh. It was fake, but was that because it was guilty? Nervous? Embarrassed?

Kokichi didn't listen to whatever they said next, tossing his cigarette butt to the ground and watching as it slowly fizzled out.

"Um, are you coming?" Shuichi asked.

"No." Kokichi didn’t need to look at him to know that his tone would make Shuichi shrink back and frown and retreat like he always did. He had more shadows now, but Shuichi really was the same.

Kaede sighed. "We're not gonna leave you out here."

"Then don't leave," he said. "I'm not gonna stop you."

 When Kokichi failed to be moved by Kaede's glare, she said something to Shuichi. A few minutes later he was being forced into Rantaro's car and driven home. When Kokichi refused to tell Rantaro where he lived, he was taken to Rantaro's house. 

Kokichi snuck out in the middle of the night, but he had the grace to leave a note.

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

Kokichi resolved not to go to the next reunion. They had to end eventually, didn't they? It wasn't like he enjoyed being there. It made him crazy sometimes, spending the whole day cataloging all the ways that they had changed. Who had changed their hair or their personality or their body this time? Who had died and who had come back to life? Who was desperately trying to be someone they weren't and who had stopped being anyone at all?

Maybe that last one was just him. Some of them were getting along just fine, dragging these chains from one room to another like they were treasures instead of shackles. He used to be good at lockpicking, he should be able to break free.

Kokichi was used to carrying around a lot of dead weight. He had been doing so at least since the second motive. Carrying around the dead weight of Dice, of his dead not classmates, of Gonta, and Miu, and his past self that had declared that he would win. He hadn't won anything though. No one had.

In the end, Kokichi was just as much of a loser as the mastermind had been.

Kokichi managed to spend the morning of the reunion in bed. He was hyper aware of the passage of minutes ticking by the whole time, but that was to be expected. Just like he had been very aware of the weight he'd carried in the killing, he was equally cognizant of putting it all down.

It was the middle of the afternoon when his doorbell rang. Kokichi dragged himself out of bed and to the door.

"How did you find where I live?" Kokichi asked when he opened the door.

Kaede brushed past him as she entered uninvited. "I asked Kirumi. She's the one that sends out the invitations. I figured she would know."

Funny that he never questioned their arrival. His past selves must be rolling in their graves.

"And what do you want?" he asked with a sigh as he closed his door. He was sure that if she'd come all this way, it wouldn't be that easy to get rid of her.

Kaede's eyes were downcast, making her look surprisingly like her killing game self. "You were late. You've never been late before."

"I wasn't going."

She looked up, meeting his gaze with a frown. "Yeah, I figured."

It was quiet as they both looked into each other's eyes. Kokichi couldn't tell what she was thinking or why she was here, but he waited for her to get on with it already.

Finally, Kaede sighed, crossing her arms and almost pouting at him. "I didn't want that to be the last time I ever saw you."

Kokichi blinked at her. "Why?"

Kaede huffed. "I wanted to get to know you better! Back then, I died so fast..." She meant in the killing game. She was surprised that she was acknowledging it. Almost no one did, not outloud. "So I wanted to do now what I couldn't do then."

Kokichi scoffed. "You wanted to do what? Save everyone?"

For a moment, she looked chastised. "Yeah... Only I couldn't. When I first woke up, I thought that I could but... I died... for them... and it didn't help. People still died and the killing game kept going and... And I'm so angry at them all!" Kaede began abruptly pacing. "It was all for nothing! I ki- I thought that I-" She made a frustrated noise. 

"You sound like you could use a drink," he told her.

"Yeah, maybe I could."

He didn't go get her one. Instead, Kokichi just sat on his couch and watched her to see what she would do next.

"You're a jerk," she told him. He didn't disagree. "But you're an honest jerk. You're one of the only people that isn't trying to be someone they can't be anymore and I hate you for it."

"Hmm, new reason to be hated, but I'll take it."

Kaede stomped her foot. "That's what I'm talking about! You just... accept whatever happens. You aren't fighting anything anymore."

"What's there to fight?" he asked. "We aren't in a killing game anymore. I'm not a supreme leader."

"Then what are you?" she yelled, stomping over to him. "Because I can't figure it out and it's driving me crazy."

"I'm a dead man," he told her. "And so are you. We're all just ghosts but the rest of you refuse to leave the graveyard."

Kaede's expression fell and she sighed. "I hate you," she said again, softer. "But I don't. You make me feel... something. Alive maybe. Not just pretending to be myself."

Kokichi reached out to grab her hand and pull her closer. She startled, startling and falling onto the couch next to him. He got onto his knees and ran his fingers through her hair. "You're not. The you in the killing game wouldn't be here and I'm pretty sure she wouldn't have had sex with me in a bathroom."

He expected her to blush and was surprised when she didn't. More proof that she wasn't the same, even if she did look away from him for a moment. 

"We broke up, by the way," she said softly.

"Oh? You and whoever?" He still wasn't sure if it was Shuichi that she'd been dating, but if he hadn't cared enough to ask when they were in a bathroom stall, he didn't see a reason to ask now.

"Yeah. After that time... well, it seemed like a sign, you know."

Kokichi watched her as she moved into a more comfortable position, which coincidentally brought her closer to him. 

"I don't want you to disappear, Kokichi."

Kokichi chuckled as he pulled back from her, slowly turning into an all out laugh. "I don't know why you would care," he told her. "You died so soon, I guess I'm the only Kokichi that you really know."

"I like the Kokichi I know," she told him. "Even though you hate it, you kept coming back to check on us. You care about us."

"I wouldn't say that."

Kaede smiled. "No, you wouldn't." Slowly, the smile fell from her face. "You moved on faster than the rest of us, but... I want to do that too. I don't want to feel trapped by a world that killed me."

Kokichi met her expression with his own serious one. "I can't do anything for you."

"I'm not asking you to." She smiled wryly. "I'm not even asking you to fuck me again. Just... don't go anywhere. Even though you weren't trying to help me, you still did."

"I wouldn't mind if you did," he told her. "It wasn't that bad."

Kaede laughed and he could see relief in her smile. "Maybe I wouldn't either. I don't know."

Kokichi pushed himself up off the couch. "Come on. My kitchen's empty, so you might as well come with me to get that drink I didn't offer you."

Kaede followed him out the door. This time, he didn't feel quite so haunted.

[caffeine-high]

Vuurtoren

Fandom: Ordem Paranormal, O Segredo na Ilha

Characters: Bárbara Lima, Amelie Florence, Olivier Florence, Milo Castello (mentioned), Miguel Castello (mentioned)

Tags: Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Isolation, Self-Destruction, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Character Death, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence

Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (complete)

Words: 1156 (Total: 6126)

AO3 link

Summary

When the chaos dies down, and they have some time to catch their breath, it dawns on them. They survived. Everyone would die in the morning, but now, it is morning, and they survived. Both Amelie and Olivier would like nothing more than to get away from this island, and never to return. Bárbara however, struggles; someone needs to stay behind, either to Keep, or to Destroy the Secret.

Chapter 1: Kijkduin

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When the chaos dies down, and they have some time to catch their breath, it dawns on them. They survived. Everyone would die in the morning, but now, it is morning, and they survived. Then they have some more time, and another realisation sets in. Not all of them survived. The glow of the electric, purple veins crackling all over Amelie’s body dim. The creature, who just a little bit ago had been aiming to destroy them. Now lays on the ground, nothing more than a particularly large puddle of reddish brown goop.

Clinging to her brother, giving him as much comfort as she could give, and taking all she that could get, Amelie glances inside the church. Ten. That is the amount of people that died in there. Ten people they couldn’t save. Among them, her friend Bárbara, and her friend Milo, as well as Miguel, and the tiny body of Amora. Amelie takes a deep breath, and steels herself. Slowly, she lets go of Olivier. Not fully! God no. Just enough to look around. Amelie takes his hand, gives it a firm squeeze and stands up, guiding him along with her. Olivier may be an adult, but he is still her little brother, she will take care of him.

They had directed everyone to go to Navia’s house, and as they are about to turn their back to the church and walk there as well, Amelie takes one last look at the church. Wait.. No.. It can’t be? Can it? Abruptly she turns around and runs inside, clumsily dragging Olivier behind her. When they near, she’s certain. She saw movement! Not from the horrid creature, no. From behind it. Bárbara’s body stirs, then groans, and then finally, slowly, moves to sit up. She is unsteady and almost falls over again, but Amelie quickly drops down to catch her by her shoulders. With Bárbera safely squished between them, they now actually, fully start making their way to Navia’s.

The first few minutes after are a bit of a blur. The siblings greet their mom, they try to get Navia to help Bárbera (though, there is not much she can do about paint), they watch in agony as Adrian comes over with his daughter’s dead body clutched tightly to his chest. Eventually they remember that The Ordo, whoever they are, would be on their way, and direct everyone to the beach. Somewhere in between they also went back to the mansion to pick up their dad, although neither of them were particularly happy to do so. On the beach they meet the two agents, who introduce themselves and ask them to consider joining. It is too much, all of it. They are exhausted, and whatever is being said barely registers. Apparently they want everyone to get on Adrian’s boat while they sweep the island, and then they want everyone to leave. Absolutely not a problem!

Both Amelie and Olivier would like nothing more than to get away, and never to return. But when they try to board, Bárbera stribbles back. This is her island. She grew up here. It is all she knows. Furthermore, what if the agents, in their sweep, discover more secrets? If, if, she were to leave the island, she would only do so knowing every single thing there is to know. And she doesn't yet. At the very least she should join the agents in their route!

Perplexed, but not willing to argue with this poor girl, drenched in blood and clearly in distress, they let her. She only has to promise to stay between the two of them, and to do exactly as they say. And, to run at the first sign of danger. Bárbara agrees without hesitation. She agrees, but she does not do what is asked. When they arrive back at the church, and the agents tell her to stay outside and out of trouble while they investigate, she sees one of the bodies stir. Before either of them could react, with a coldness that the agents have not seen in anyone, swiftly walks up to it and stabs it through its heart.

There is something methodical to her, as she helps them carry the bodies outside to burn. Not the blank nothingness of someone broken by their experiences. Something else. Neither of the agents quite manage to place it yet. Though they both know what it is like to lose people, or even, to lose your entire family or everyone you grew up with, this reaction is new. That is, until they get to the body of a boy. He seems to be around her age, curly hair with coveralls over a large blue jumper, no shoes. She doesn’t cry, but she seems to be gentler with this body. As he is laid down next to the others she adjusts his head, to lay more naturally. She brushes the hair out of the hole where the rest of his face must have been. The agents turn away to give her some sense of privacy, in which she can say her goodbyes. And if afterwards, if she is now wearing a locket they’re quite sure she was not wearing before, they won’t say anything.

As the modest pile of bodies burns behind them (8, there are 8 bodies. 9 people in total that died because they were too late The owner of the boat had been clutching the body of a small girl, but did not want her to be burned with the rest of them. Instead promising that, while they were making their round, he would burn her on the beach). They make their way to the mansion at the top of the hill. The girl with them, Bárbara, grows even more distant. The tenderness she displayed towards that boy all gone, just that coldness is left. The group makes their way through the mansion quite quickly, the agents taking note of the half transformed blood zombie, looking suspiciously similar to the girl in their companionship. She herself only taking a few seconds to glance at the body, before averting her eyes. Eventually they find a passage behind the large painting in the stairway, leading down into a cavern.

If they bothered to look for it, the agents could have seen a faint glimmer in Bárbara’s eyes; so there were secrets left to discover! That spark was quickly snuffed out though when they reached the actual cave. She didn’t care for the bell, or for the door, nor even really for that painting. What she did care for is that the paint, the source of all this despair, the source of every single trouble on this island, originated from here. Bárbera took one look at this source, this spring of paint and made her decision: She would not, under any circumstance, leave this island until she could be sure that it would never, ever, hurt anybody, ever again!

next>

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Notes: I wrote this instead of studying (。・∀・)ノ

or sleeping╯︿╰

This is the lighthouse where this chapter takes its name from, isn't it pretty?

Image source: https://www.vuurtorens.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Kijkduin-groot.jpg

[farity]

Enemies, part 4

WARNING:  There is a death that happens in this chapter.  It is a parental death, if this is something you might find triggering, please do not read this chapter.  You are welcome to DM me and I will tell you what happens in a very brief summary, but please, take care of yourself, that is the most important thing.

Pairing:  Aemond Targaryen x you

Summary:  Reader is Rhaenyra’s second child and her father is Laenor Velaryon (the only child they had together, the boys are still Harwin Strong’s)

Warning:  Death of a parent, smut

.

"You must go inside, now!” Ser Criston Cole yelled, and you felt Aemond pulling your arm, but you shook him off and ran down the courtyard to stand under one of the stone archways where you had some cover, but could still watch the dragons above.

You looked up in time to see Syrax unleash a torrent of fire into one of Sunfyre’s eyes, the latter roaring in pain.  A hand gripped your arm and you turned to see your husband.  “If you are intent on staying out here, I will stay with you.”

“You do not have to.”

There was a commotion somewhere behind you and you heard Ser Otto bellowing.  “Get the prince back in here!”

You kept looking up at the fighting dragons until you felt Aemond being pulled away from you, and saw three guards struggling to drag Aemond back to safety.  You looked from your husband, his face a mask of pure fury, to Ser Otto, standing there looking pleased with himself.

As he always does.

Aemond was yelling as he was taken back inside, you heard him say my wife several times, but then the dragons, bodies entwined, began to spiral towards the ground.  You held your breath as the great beasts shrieked and sprayed fire at each other, and then they disappeared.

A moment later, the ground shook, and then all was still.

* * * * * 

He would deal with his grandfather later, he would gladly smash that pompous face into the stone wall, but now, he had to see, had to know what had happened.

There had been no further noise from wherever the dragons had landed, but Aemond knew well that a beast was at its most dangerous when it was hurt.  He ran to the stables, found a horse, and rode out toward the field where the dragons had fallen.  At least it hadn’t been over a populated area, he thought, clinging to any positive thought he could come up with.  

He heard other riders behind him, and he thought of her.  He had considered riding to the gates to pick her up but then he started thinking of what he might find.  Was Aegon dead?  Was Rhaenyra?  He pushed his horse to go faster, his mind racing through every possible outcome.

* * * * * 

The first thing that hit him was the smell.  Burning flesh, blood, things he did not wish to think about.  

Ser Criston pulled up, dismounted.  “My prince, I would ask you to go back but I know you will not.  So I will only ask that you be careful.”

“They are dead, Ser Criston,” Aemond said.  “The dragons are dead.”

Beautiful Sunfyre had his chest torn open, one of Syrax’s claws still embedded amidst the golden scales.  One wing was also torn, the pink membrane almost ripped in half, and one side of his face burned.  Syrax, meanwhile, had part of her neck torn off.

“Here, get the maesters here!  He’s breathing!”

Aemond turned at the words, and ran to see one of the guards that had ridden out, cradling Aegon’s head.  His brother was mostly underneath Sunfyre, his eyes closed, but as he was pulled out Aemond saw that his legs were almost completely destroyed, bones sticking out through the skin, flaps of bloodied skin hanging off.  He didn’t think Aegon would make it.

He ran around the dragons, through the guards that searched through the carnage, and then he saw it.  The red of his half-sister’s cloak, the same cloak she had worn when she’d interrupted Aegon’s coronation.  Brighter than the blood red that spread everywhere else, he ran to it not knowing if he wanted to find her alive or dead.

* * * * * 

The silence that followed the fall of both dragons was deafening.  You had never understood that saying until now.  The stillness became heavy, weighing down on your head until you thought you might scream with the loudness of it.

You saw a group of riders head out from the side gate, your husband at the front.  You ran towards the stables, finding the first row of them empty.

“Here, Your Highness,”

You turned and saw one of the stable boys bringing up a smaller mare.  “She’s a fast one, and doesn’t scare easy,” he said.

“Thank you, thank you,” you said, letting him help you up onto the saddle.  “What’s her name.”

“Beryl, ma’am.”

“Thank you, I will bring her back safely.”

You rode out, the mare true to the boy’s word.  You began to hear the sounds of men yelling before you saw the carnage and stopped.  Beryl was quiet, neither frightened by what she saw nor alarmed by all the yelling.

“You’re a good girl,” you said, patting her neck as you dismounted.  “Stay here.”

You started walking, saw that Syrax was gone, and so was Sunfyre.  And then you saw Aemond walking around, and he saw you.

When you saw his face, you knew, and began running toward him.  He caught you, wrapping his arms around you.  “I’m sorry.”

Pushing him away, you tried to run toward a group of men closer to the bodies, but again, you felt strong arms wrapping around you, hauling you up off the ground and halting your progress, and you screamed at the top of your lungs.

“You don’t wish to see her like this,” Aemond said in your ear as you struggled against him.

“Let me go!” you screamed over and over and began kicking back at his legs.  He cursed, but he did not loosen his hold on you.

A quartet of guards carried something on a large piece of fabric, covered with a cloak, and the moment you realized what it was, you went completely still.  Some of her hair fell over the edge, the familiar silver white locks marred with blood and charred bits.  You stood, frozen, only your eyes moving as the grim parade went by you.

“Let us go back,” Aemond said gently, one hand rubbing your arm as he slowly released you.

“The horse,” you said absently, “I have to get the horse.”

“Then we will ride back together.”

* * * * * 

He had told the guards to take Rhaenyra’s body back to be prepared by the silent sisters.  He had told Ser Criston to tell queen Alicent that his wife was not to see her mother’s body in the state it was.  

They had taken Aegon back as well.  He would not walk again, Aemond knew.  Not with the gruesome injuries he’d incurred.

To no one’s surprise, least of all his, his wife had demanded to be allowed into the room with the silent sisters.  Alicent had pulled him aside and told him it would be a while because of “the parts that were missing” and he saw grief, regret, and anger in his mother’s eyes.  

“Why can’t I go in?”

Aemond was running out of ways of stalling, and he realized that eventually, the truth would come out.  His mother walked over and handed him a cup while signaling that it was for his wife, and he understood.

“I will ask how much longer,” Aemond said, and casually handed her the cup.  “Here.”  He hated himself when she immediately took the cup and began drinking, hated himself at her trust in him.

“She is in a very bad state,” he continued, taking the cup back.  She’d drained it, and he placed it down before taking her hand.  “This is not how you want to remember her.”

She glared at him and pulled her hand away before taking a step forward, “that is not your- not your choice to make,” she rubbed her eyes.

“I have seen men left in this state,” he added, “and you cannot erase such a sight from your memory.”

She took another step toward the door, as if she would start pounding on it, and had to step sideways to steady herself.  “What-” she shook her head, turned to look at Aemond, eyes wide for a second.  “No.”

“I am sorry.  I could not-”

“No!  How could you?” 

He grabbed her just before her knees gave out.

“How could you?” she repeated, her eyelids closing despite her best efforts.  “How could you?”

Aemond said nothing, ignored the slap that barely grazed his cheek, and reached down to slip one arm under her knees and the other around her back to carry her to their bed.

He had plenty of experience in self-loathing, but this felt like a different form of betrayal.  He placed her in the middle of the bed, saw the unshed tears that had left her pale lashes spiky.

He would take the hatred, the resentment that was sure to come from her, for he knew that if it meant sparing her from the bloodied, mangled sight of her mother’s burned body, it would be worth it.

* * * * * 

You awoke to a dull pain in the back of your head, and for a blissful few seconds you remembered nothing of what had transpired.

And then it hit you like the time you had jumped off of Bellerax too soon and the wind had been knocked out of you.

Your mother was dead.  

You slipped off the bed and ran down corridors, past servants, until you found the room.  Aemond stood by the door and you felt every emotion at once and just as swiftly, pushed it all aside to open the door.

The silent sisters inside nodded at you and filed out, leaving you with the wrapped body of Rhaenyra Targaryen.  You felt, rather than saw, Aemond walk inside, but he stayed by the door, and you let your eyes roam over all that was left of your mother.  

“Is Aegon dead?”

He took a few seconds to answer that and you realized that the answer was no.

“He lives, but barely.”

“I will prepare Bellerax to burn the body,” you said, and when you turned, you wanted to throw yourself at him, whether to let him hold you or to break his nose, you didn’t know.  Maybe both.  You stared at him for a long time and he stood there, his hands behind his back.

Then, he took a step toward you, eye still locked with yours.  Another step.  “You can hate me later,” he said softly, and pulled you to him, wrapping his arms around you.  He kissed the top of your head, stroked gently down your back, and you felt yourself start leaning into him, your need for comfort greater than your anger.

“They will come, you know,” you finally said.  “Daemon.  Jace.  Luke.  I might convince Baela and Rhaena to not-”

He grabbed your face and kissed you.  “Stop.  We can plan later.”

“There may not be a later.  Daemon will be out for blood.  Yours, mine, everyone’s.”  

“We will be ready.” he said, looking past her shoulder at Rhaenyra’s body.  The sisters had placed packs of herbs wrapped in cloth at various parts of the body, to fill in the parts that Sunfyre had bitten off.  He would never tell her that.  He would cut out Aegon’s tongue before he could tell her that.

She did not cry.  She had that steadiness that comes in the middle of battle, the clear headedness that one needs in order to survive, and Aemond was glad because she was going to need it.

* * * * *

Ser Otto was outside the door along with his daughter.

“When Daemon comes to burn us all, will you side with him?”

You felt Aemond tense immediately, and heard Alicent’s horrified gasp, but as she opened her mouth, you took a step toward the older man and summoned all the strength and calm you possessed.  

“One of these days, you and I are going to have a serious disagreement.”

You walked past him, your back straight, and Aemond followed you.  Alicent was muttering something to her father, but you didn’t care.  There would be much to do if Daemon or your brothers decided to strike back, and no matter what you said or did, someone was bound to hold it against you.  

You reached your chambers and once Aemond closed the door you took a deep breath.

“What can I do?”

Sooner or later, it had to be said, and you decided it might as well be now.

“Figure out where you stand, Aemond.  When it comes down to it, I want to know where you stand when it comes to me and your family.”  You ran your fingers through your hair, finding so much hair had come loose from your braid that you undid the whole thing to start over.  “If your grandfather should order you to be rid of me, would you?”

“No.”

He said it so easily that you stared at him.  “Your mother asks you to make me disappear?”

“I would not.”

“You sound so sure.”

“I am.  I would send you away to safety first.”

You went up to him, “I want to believe you, Aemond.  Because if you are going to be the one who strikes me down, I would rather know now, so I can erase you and every memory I have of us.���

He wrapped a hand around your braid, pulling your face up to his.  “You could do that.”  He shook you, and you gasped.  “You would-” he swallowed.  “No.”    Releasing your braid, he grabbed your shoulders, pushed you against the wall.  “You have not turned my world upside down just to erase me so easily.”

He had never hurt you, had never threatened you, but in this moment, you felt like the line between hatred and whatever else existed between you had thinned considerably.  

“I will have to,” you spat back, trying to shove him back.  “I have lost-” your throat tightened.  “I will not let you-” you felt the sob erupt from you, and as Aemond relaxed his grip on you to hold you instead, you pushed him again.  He did not move, just waited with his arms open around you, watching as the emotions swirled and changed in you.

In the end, you had to cling to hope, to life.  So you reached out, grabbed his face, and pulled him in. tearing and shoving at fabric and fastenings until he pulled out his dagger and you pressed your breasts outward, arms thrown back, so he could slice through the ties on your bodice.  

Trust.

You pulled him to the bed, tearing off his shirt and the eye patch to go along with it.  Aemond managed to get one leg out of his trousers before he pushed your thighs open and began sinking into you.  You wrapped arms and legs around him, clinging, trusting, your mouth brutal on his until you tasted blood, you were not sure whose.

He shoved a hand between you, and you bit down on his neck as you neared your release.  Aemond swore, whether at the pain from your teeth or the feel of you starting to pulse around him, you didn’t know, and you didn’t care.  You rocked your hips, reaching, your hands in his hair, until you came, a strangled cry against his pale shoulder, and then the sweet pleasure was flowing through you.  You felt him pound his hips against you, going faster as he sought his own release.  He grabbed one of your breasts, his large hand squeezing rhythmically until he groaned into your hair.

You stayed clinging to him, licking the mark you’d left on his neck.  You felt him start kissing the side of your face, so tenderly, you just closed your eyes.  “I am your husband,” he whispered, “before I am my mother’s son, or Otto’s grandson.  They chose to marry me to you, and maybe they did not realize it, but it made me loyal to you.  If you did not deserve it I would not feel this way, but you do.”

Despite your grief, your fears, you felt yourself smiling.  “They do not know what they have created, then?”  And you felt him smile against you.

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