#and i refuse to miss one of these bc i know ill get thrown off | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ddaenggtan · 5 years

Text

forever rain | knj | m

Being dead isn't anything exciting. Just a lot of walking the same halls of the same apartment day after day after day. Things change when the new tennant arrives, though. Kim Namjoon isn't anything you could have expected; not the way he's so careful and gentle with his plants because he breaks so many other things, not the way his friends joke that he's psychic because you refuse to let him get in the face one time, and certainly not the way he comes home after literal months spent moving things away from table edges for him and announces that he knows he's being haunted and he has some questions for you. You didn't know ghosts could fall in love, but he makes you feel alive again, like you're standing in the rain while thunder crashes around you. You should've known nothing good would come of falling in love with someone living, though. You should've known that heartbreak was the only way this could end...that the rain doesn't last forever.

part of the Love Yourself Collab, please please please go check out the other fics. Everyone involved is so freaking talented and I have been vibrating out of my skin with how excited I’ve been to read all of these.

pairing | kim namjoon x reader (unspecified gender, even!)

word count | 18.8k | cross posted to ao3

genre/warnings | ghost!reader, slight fluff, hard angst, literally the most angst ever it gets fluffy for a bit but litERALLY this is an angst fic, major character death, unprotected sex (idk what the etiquette for ghost sex is but you should still wrap it before you tap it fam), depictions of terminal illness (v mild), mentions of blood (several, but not graphic), major character death, allusions to violence, namjoon is a klutz whats new, depictions of terminal illness, major character death, i added that tag three times pls dont read this if you aren’t comf with mcd bc i literally tagged it three times so y’all would definitely see it, also probably have some tissues ready bc i cried while writing it so

a/n | this is, to date, the saddest thing i have ever written in my entire fucking life. formal apologies to this joon bc oh my god you poor soul. i’m not kidding when i say you might cry, because i’m a big baby wuss and cried while writing the fucking outline when i first decided to write this for the collab so like......rip my own heart. i was really honored when i was approached about the LYA collab, bc like,,,,,mE? WHAT? and i was really nervous because i’ve never been part of any collabs in any fandom ever, and to have to do something like forever rain and mono as a whole justice, like,,,,,,, *screaming* y’know?? so i went on mono lockdown and just had the whole thing on repeat and was like “alright. what emotions does this make me feel.” and i eventually settled on the loneliness and isolation that he expresses, and feeling like no one understands what you’re going through, but that ultimately the album as a whole and forever rain give off this feeling of like. things get better, you’re not as alone as you feel, and you just gotta get through the bad stuff to find the good stuff. basically i just got really in my feels about it and was like ‘lets make myself cry ahahaha’ and,,,i dID i cried several times while planning and writing and editing bc im a Soft Bitch and don’t read much angst for that exact reason lmao. so buckle tf up y’all, this a helluva ride!!

Of all the things you'd heard about death, all the different possibilities that existed in the world, the one thing you hadn't been prepared for was the boredom. You hadn't been prepared for any of it, really, too surprised by your own demise to plan at all, but even if you'd been able to, you don't think that this is what you would've counted on. An eternity - or however long ghosts existed - of being stuck in the same studio apartment you'd lived in when you died. The same walls, the same floor, the same view out the only window of the alley beside the building. It's boring and lonely and boring.

You've found more creative ways to entertain yourself as time passes. First, you started by figuring out just what being a ghost meant. You can't really communicate with anyone, haven't figured out how to make sure everything you say is heard, but you can manipulate objects pretty easily these days. The most difficult thing is becoming fully corporeal - completely visible and able to interact with things at the same time. It's hard enough to be visible, and you aren't really sure what the point of it would be when it would just scare whoever's living in your apartment; that's the last thing you want to do, run them off when they're the best source of amusement you've found.

You won't lie, you were a little offended when the first tenants moved in after you. It was difficult to watch your things get packed up and moved out by your friends, hard to lose all of the little things you loved in your apartment, like the shitty bead curtain you'd gotten as a gag gift or the photo collage of all of your loved ones. It's frustrating to not know how they're all doing these days; the one time you got brave enough to fuck with a laptop to check on them, you nearly broke the thing, and you haven't tried since. Still, it seemed cathartic for them to clear out your apartment, and it was a bittersweet sight, but you tried to focus on the positive side of it.

And then the couple moved in.

Not only did they fuck like rabbits - which is something you're going to stay pissed about, because there's no satisfaction to be had by you anymore, and it's the one thing you can think of that would be endlessly entertaining - but the couple was also grossly obnoxious. They had zero respect for your apartment , or you, and while one could argue that they didn't actually know you were there, it still made the sting of losing your entire life that much worse. You spent you don't know how many nights hovering awkwardly in the bathroom while they fucked, would constantly wander in to see them going at it on the kitchen counter at ass o'clock in the morning, and once you came in to see them tossing actual literal eggs at the ceiling like the absolute fucking weirdos they were.

So, naturally, you got a little mad. How dare they treat your apartment like that? They had no respect, but they were going to learn it real quick if they were going to live there with you, whether they wanted to or not.

They didn't last long after the first night of slamming cabinets and squealing hinges, but the thrown picture frame of their family was the conclusive end to their stay.

There have been others, since then. They haven't all been terrible, not like that first couple, but most of them have been sub-par roommates, and if you decided early on that if the rest of your immortal life is going to be locked in one shitty apartment with the absolute worst view in the city - because no one wants to see the drunken hookups and potential body dumps that take place in that alley - then you're at least going to share said apartment with someone nice to exist with.

You release a heavy sigh, staring at where your hand disappears through the shower wall. You've taken to testing the boundaries of the apartment again; you already know what the result will be, learned in the first few hours that you're stuck here, but you can't help trying when you get really bored. You just got distracted fucking around with the pipes in the meantime, because you're literally too bored to even focus. It's part of why you miss the last tenants so much, because you weren't ever really bored with them around.

A single mother and her two kids, crammed into a much-too-small apartment because it was all they could afford, and they were the light of your un-life. One a budding teenager that wrote angsty poetry who loved your trick of making things float around, and one an adorable toddler who adored playing peekaboo with you and coloring, and a mom that was too busy to notice anything out of the ordinary. It was like having a family again, made you feel useful when you could pull the meat out of the freezer for her to make dinner with or scratch a quick 'do your homework' on a steamy bathroom mirror. It was fun and it made being dead that much more bearable.

You really should've known that letting the toddler draw the two of you would be a bad idea, especially since there were several artistic liberties taken. It's not your fault the kid thought you'd look cool with fangs and bloody holes instead of eyes and claws that reached the floor. It was art, it was supposed to be a little different from reality. Still, you can't blame her for seeing the picture of her kid and 'my new best friend' and immediately calling the landlord. And a priest.

So, perhaps you gave the apartment a bit of a reputation. Maybe it's been a couple of months since the mom moved out and took your two buds with her. There might be the possibility that you've been the slightest bit salty about losing your friends and you've been extra-ghost-y whenever someone comes by to view the place in an attempt to make yourself feel a little better. Can you really be blamed for that? You just want a decent damn roommate for your life after death, and if that means putting the potentials through a little bit of a test, then so be it. You only feel a little bit bad for the landlord.

The creak of the front door pulls you from your thoughts, and the echo of a voice makes you narrow your eyes. Your first instinct is to slam some windows to scare off whoever's in your apartment, but you repress the urge. You'd die of boredom if you could die again, and whoever this is could provide a few hours' entertainment at the least.

You pop your head through the bathroom wall to see what's going on, and wow , who let an actual giant into your apartment? Fucking with the pipes could definitely wait for this guy.

"I know it's last minute, yeah," He says into the phone that's held carefully between his cheek and shoulder. His arms are loaded down with boxes and he's angled away from you just enough that you can't see his face, but he's tall and broad and wearing what looks like the world's comfiest sweater, and you want to badly to wrap yourself up in him. "But you know Joon needs the help. Don't pretend you aren't constantly willing to put off your thesis, I know for a fact that you went out to look at stationery with Tae last week, and everyone knows that's the most boring thing on the planet."

He's quiet, listening to the soft crackle of a voice from the other end. You slide through the wall completely, hovering as close as you dare to try and hear what the other person is saying. Tall, Broad, and Comfy scoffs.

"He can stare at one sheet of paper for at least ten minutes, Yoongi. Do I need to remind you of the time he spent an entire fucking hour debating which set of holiday scrapbook to buy because, and I quote, 'this one has the really nice rose pattern on it that would look great with the invitations, but, oh, look at the pinstripes in this one!'" His voice morphs into what you guess is an approximation of whoever Tae is, and you laugh at the high-pitched, nasally tone.

Tall and Broad spins, eyes narrowing as he looks around the room, and fuck , he's literally gorgeous. You've never seen someone more attractive in your life or your death and it would probably knock the wind out of you if you actually had breath. Comfy McGorgeous turns back around and sets the stack of boxes in the corner, continuing his tirade about Tae and stationery while simultaneously trying to talk Yoongi into coming, you assume, to help Joon move. You don't know who any of these people are, but they're already proving to be the most entertaining bunch that's ever graced these walls.

The door to your apartment flies open, making both you and Boyfriend Material whip your head around.

"Christ, Jin, you couldn't hold the fucking door open for us?" Someone grunts. Beauty Von Softness - or, Jin, as you should probably refer to him - winces and strides over to do just that as two more guys stagger in with a couch suspended between them. The second they're in the door they drop it to the ground and flop onto it, panting and sweaty.

"Listen, I was busy trying to get our resident hermit out of his cave to help us carry some of this shit," Jin spits back. "And you all know what it's like getting him out and about."

"Did you tell him that there's pizza after we're done? Because I've found that food is the best motivator for him," the guy closest to the door says. His hair is soft-looking and long and you wish you could pet it.

The other guy, the one who cursed Jin out and has the softest pink hair you've ever seen, laughs. "Jeongguk, you always think the best motivator is food."

"Well, yeah, because it is."

"For you, maybe. Other people require actual rewards."

"But food is a reward," Jeongguk mutters into the fabric of the couch. Jin tsks and smacks As Yet Unnamed on the back of the head.

"You're lucky I hung up on him when you bombarded your way into this place, or he'd definitely not come help us," Jin says as he leans against the back of the couch.

Unnamed starts to say something else but is cut off by someone running straight into the end of the couch. They all shoot to their feet, spouting apologies as the three of them maneuver the couch into the apartment properly.

"Sorry, sorry, Jimin distracted us from properly finishing our job," Jeongguk says quickly. He looks to the stranger with a small apologetic smile, and you're pretty sure if it were humanly possible, there would be actual literal stars in his eyes.

"Oh, it's okay, Jeonggukkie. I should've been looking where I was going." New Challenger walks straight towards where you stand, and you realize seconds before it's too late that he is not aware there is a massive stack of boxes in his path. Instinctively, you shove them to the side with your foot. Tall And Oblivious sets his boxes down without any trouble, none the wiser about any of it, and the three near the couch are too busy bickering in hushed whispers to have noticed you doing anything.

The newcomer straightens and turns to look at them all with a bright smile, and you think you might actually see The Light in the way his cheeks dimple. If you thought the other three were beautiful - which they are, no doubt about that, you're seriously wondering why the hell a bunch of supermodels are moving stuff into your apartment - then this guy is easily an Actual Fucking God or something. His brown hair is soft and shiny, his smile is warmer than the sun, and you're fairly positive that for the first time since you died, you feel goosebumps along your arms.

"Seriously, Namjoon, we should've realized you'd be up soon. You stay, start unpacking while we go get the rest of the furniture." Jimin shoves Jeongguk out the door while he's speaking, ignoring the taller's complaints, and Jin just shakes his head at the sight.

"Yoongi'll be here soon, he's finishing up another draft of his thesis. Hobi and Tae are stopping to get the pizzas and then they'll be here, too." Jin's voice is calmer than it was Jimin and Jeongguk, more soothing, and it makes you curious. Not only because of the tone change, but because you know Hobi, he owns the building and is the one who rented you the apartment when you first moved in. One of your favorite things to do is scare him when he comes by to make sure everything’s ready for a viewing.

"What? No, I said I was gonna pay for pizzas!" Namjoon looks distinctly more upset about this than someone should over not having to pay for pizza, at least in your mind, and it only makes you more curious.

"Yeah, but you also just moved out of your old apartment because it was too expensive, and had like an hour to load everything into a truck, so you're gonna let their trust fund asses pay for pizzas. We're seven adult men, and Guk could eat an entire horse and still be hungry. I'm not letting you pay for that."

Silence hangs in the apartment for a while before Namjoon gives a soft thanks to Jin. They share a smile before Jin makes his way back out. You follow each step, shadowing him all the way to the door before you're stopped. You lean your entire body forward, struggling against the invisible barrier keeping you inside, and the force of it nearly slams you back into the wall when you sag in defeat.

You aren't sure why you try anymore, but you know yourself well enough to admit that you're not going to stop until you can at least make it to the hallway.

Whatever you expected Namjoon to be like as a roommate, however unknowing he is about the situation, you don't think you could've guessed what he's actually like.

Out of the seven boys you saw the day he moved in, he's the only one living there. Not a complete surprise, considering it's a studio apartment, but you remember when there were nine people living there at one point, and there was barely room for anyone to breathe even if it had been pretty consistently amusing. Still, for one person, he's got a ton of stuff, and it's a shock it all fits. His bed is massive and comfortable and the best place to lay during the day because it's shoved between the brick half-wall and the large windows that take up one wall. The area's supposed to be for a dining table, you think, but you'd had your bed there, too, and the familiarity is nice.

His couch is small and old but manages to fit five of them, and it's a pleasantly jarring difference from the coffee table that looks like - and might actually be - an old steamer trunk. The exposed brick wall you love holds his mounted TV, a feat that took Jeongguk and Yoongi a solid hour and a half because they kept stripping the screws, and it's got one of those 8-cubicle bookshelf things under it that stores a frankly obnoxious amount of books.

He's got mugs for days, an adorable if odd collection of figurines and mini-statues scattered around the apartment, a strange obsession with some reclaimed wood shelf he's got hanging above his bed, but the absolute highlight of it all is The Wall.

It took them three hours to get it installed and set up the way he wanted, between the placements and the thick wooden shelf they’re perched on with supports and a small safety bar along the edge to keep them from falling off, but along the entire windowed wall and partway after it turns the corner runs a long shelf absolutely covered in plants. There are some elsewhere, like the one he keeps hanging from the bathroom ceiling and the couple in the kitchen, but most are on The Wall. Each one is in its own special pot, each a unique color with a name painted carefully along it, and most of them look half-dead. They're all distinct and unique from each other and they all surely have different needs and ideal conditions, but you'd never guess because Namjoon is so wholly committed to them all. He takes time every day to water them and prune them if he needs to, he checks on them constantly. He even reinforced the safety bar for the ones that sit beside his bed, so there was less chance he'd accidentally knock them around while sleeping.

It's fascinating, watching him tend to them. He's so careful and gentle, with absolute precision in every moment. He cares for his plants the way some people would care for a pet or a child. He doesn’t believe any of them are past caring for, slowly nurses all of them back to health and frequently turns up with more he’s saved from some department store. The most endearing thing, though, you decide as you sit curled among the haphazard blankets of his bed and watch, is the talking. It's every day, for as long as it takes him to care for the plants, and it's the cutest thing in the world. He's talking to some succulent as you just stare at him, filling the comfortable silence of the apartment with his soft, soothing voice, and you wish he could hear you when you talk back to him.

"I know they mean well, but at some point, I've just gotta live my own life, y'know? I can't study something just because everyone expects me to, and I can't pursue some dream just because people think I'd be good at it. I've gotta do what's right for me, don't I?" His tone is positive and bright, a contrast to the gloomy sky that casts shadows across the apartment.

You float over, hovering beside him to look at the plant he's lovingly stroking with his thumb. It's in a pretty periwinkle pot, with the name 'Mang' painted in careful but shaky black handwriting. It's not your favorite - that's the one in the bathroom that hangs over its light blue bowl, a quickly scrawled 'Koya' on the bottom - but it seems to be one of Namjoon's personal favorites based on how often he talks to it specifically.

"I think it's nice you do things for yourself," You tell him. He doesn't react, unable to hear you, but it's nice to hear your own voice after so long. You slide one of the plants - Chim, in a small yellow bowl - to the side and away from his elbow, and he doesn't notice. "You know yourself better than they do. You should trust yourself."

He keeps mumbling to Mang, something about everyone following their own dreams and doing what they need over what people want or expect, when you lay your hand over his.

Thunder cracks through the sky and the first raindrops hits the window as your non-existent skin hits his, and it's the most real thing you've felt in a long time. It's as if the scent of ozone and electricity is in the apartment itself, crackling in your hair and filling your nose with the overpowering scent of the sweet summer rain. You can almost feel the water hit your skin, the way the wind whips at your hair, and it's so intoxicating that you almost miss the sharp inhale from the man beside you.

He's not looking at his plant when you look up, but instead at the window in front of the two of you. You glance at it, and for a fraction of a second, you can see yourself in the reflection. The glimpse has you jerking towards it before you can stop yourself, desperate to know if something has changed. You haven't seen your reflection since you died, not in the mirror or the window or the toaster, and maybe, just maybe, it means something's changed.

Your hand stops against the glass of the window as you reach forward. You can't feel the cool of it under your palm, but it's no less a barrier for you as it would be for Namjoon. Something in you breaks as you watch the raindrops race each other to the ground.

"Ah, I forgot the forecast called for rain today," he mutters, eyes focused on the lightning that streaks by. He doesn't react when your fist slams against the glass, nor when you let out the scream that's been building in you for however long it's been since you died. You're so close, not even a hair's breadth from feeling something new yet familiar for the first time in so long, and you can't. You're still stuck in these four walls, unable to even reach the air outside.

You just want to feel the rain again.

You move dejectedly away from the window, ignoring the way Namjoon shivers as you pass. The temperature in the apartment has dropped considerably, you think, between the storm and your own mood. You can't tell, really. You haven't felt warm or cold or hungry or anything since you died that isn't the oppressive loneliness of life after death.

A dry sob tears itself from your throat and you hurry to hide in the bathroom as Namjoon turns to look around him. He mumbles something you can't hear and after a few minutes, he returns to tending to his plants, leaving you to your tear-less cries in peace.

It becomes quickly apparent to you that Namjoon should really have a roommate, if only to save him from himself. It takes a few weeks for you to realize this, but luckily he seems to narrate his life as he goes through it - which is overwhelmingly adorable to you, and you refuse to acknowledge that - and that means that you hear it every time he goes, "Ah, Namjoon, be more careful next time," or "Oh, shoot, that's not, fuck, I gotta buy more eggs now." It's painful to watch, even for you, and at some point, you just couldn't take it anymore. No one else is around to help, but someone needs to you, and clearly the universe means for you to be that someone.

It's a full-time job, protecting him from himself. You've saved countless mugs, pushing them farther away from the edges of counters and tables, and been just in time to shove bowls or vases an inch over so that his elbows glide harmlessly past them. It's almost exhausting, if you could get tired you would, but it's worth it, you think, as you catch the bookshelf under the TV as it tilts. You slide it gently to the floor, glad that Namjoon is distracted by how close he came to losing a toe to notice.

Because that's the other thing about this tree of a man: he's the most oblivious person you've ever fucking seen. It doesn't matter what it is you do, whether it's bouncing his spray bottle of water so it doesn't break on the hard floor or shake the counters so that the knife he's about to drop on his fucking hand falls the other way, he doesn't see a single fucking thing. You'd think he was blind if he wasn't so attentive to the way his plants grow. He notices nothing and you're glad for it because you really aren't sure what he would do if he knew you were going around haunting him just to keep him alive. You just want to help, want to keep the soft smile he wears more often around for as long as possible.

You don't dare to look into why you want that, too afraid of what you might find there.

It's also just fun to watch him and his friends, relaxed and unreserved. You never had many friends when you were alive, just a small handful that you really truly loved and whom you miss every day. Watching these seven boys fills you with nostalgia and a strange sense of joy because they really are some of the funniest people you've ever been around.

Like now, with four of them sprawled on the couch while Jeongguk and Hoseok make themselves comfortable leaning against the bookshelf under the TV - which has been bolted to the wall since it almost broke Namjoon's foot - and Namjoon watches them all from his bed since it's the only other place to sit. There are beer bottles scattered around and decorating the half-wall that separates the bed from the room proper, everyone is varying levels of drunk, and you're curled up close to Namjoon, leaning against the wall so you can stop him from knocking over any of the bottles nearby because you know him too well at this point.

"I'm just saying, I don't understand why they made him so over-powered in the new movies, because he's supposed to be some kid from Brooklyn! Giving him the high-tech suit essentially strips him of the friendly neighborhood persona that he's always relied on!" Jeongguk has been ranting for a while about the newest release in the Spiderman franchise - apparently, he's part of the actual Avengers now, which is a shock to you since the last thing you heard before you died was that the franchise was canceled until further notice or something.

"And I'm saying that if they didn't give him the suit then it would've made no sense how he was able to do those things," Yoongi responds. You're pretty sure he's just arguing to be contrary at this point, because you remember him telling Namjoon the other day that he prefers DC over Marvel.

"Garfield's Spiderman could do those things," you mutter, "And he didn't have a fancy suit."

"Okay, then how do you explain Andrew Garfield's version being able to do that stuff? He doesn't need the suit, he never has!" You preen at the way Jeongguk echoes your thoughts. "I'm telling you, I don't care how good the relationship with Holland's Spidey and Iron Man is, by giving him the tech and the advancements they did, they've undermined everything that Spiderman is supposed to be about."

"Jeongguk come off it, everyone knows Garfield's Spidey was just all bad writing. I mean, what kind of person can do all that stuff, realistically? He's the one that really needed the Stark suit." Taehyung's voice is slurred and quiet, definitely as drunk as the rest of them.

"What-! No! I could do half of that without being bitten by a weird science spider!" Jin scoffs at Jeongguk's words.

"Yeah, sure, Guk. The same way you can do that bottlecap challenge."

"Bottle cap challenge, and yeah, I could!" The youngest stands and you don't bother to hide your grimace.

"This isn't going to end well, is it?" You ask. No one acknowledges you, too busy finding something Jeongguk can kick the cap off of as the boy readies himself. He's steady on his feet but his face is red and he can't seem to stop giggling.

"If I do this, you gotta call me SpiderGuk from now on, okay?" He says. No one agrees, but it doesn't stop him from laughing again and doing a couple of roundhouse kicks to warm up.

"Okay, okay, Joonie doesn't have any regular water bottles, but we found a screw-top beer in the fridge so ya gotta use that," Jimin says as he stumbles over with said bottle. Jeongguk just nods, an adorable focused expression on his face. Jimin holds the bottle in the air, and you can already tell his grip isn't tight enough to keep the bottle still when Jeongguk kicks it.

The next ten seconds happen in slow-motion. Jeongguk's leg flies out to kick but his drunken body isn't able to handle the sudden shift in balance, and he slips. His foot hits the bottle slightly too low, and it goes flying out of Jimin's weak grip into the air. Everyone in the room watches as it hurtles straight towards Namjoon's face, and you react out of habit and instinct, catching it in one hand before you even realize you've moved.

Everyone freezes, staring at where the bottle hovers in front of Namjoon's face. You're the only one able to see your fingers wrapped around it. A shock jolts through you at the realization of what you've done and you drop the bottle as if it burned you. Fuck, they were all going to freak, then Namjoon would move out and you'd be stuck alone once more. You should've just shoved him out of the way, what were you thinking, you're so fucking stupid-

"Dude," Hoseok mutters from where he's perched on the arm of the couch. "Holy shit, Joon, you're fucking telepathic."

Yoongi rolls his eyes and smacks his chest. "Telekinetic, you fucking-"

"Holy shit, you've got fucking superpowers!" Jeongguk squeaks. "Do it again!"

Namjoon isn't even able to get a word out before there's a book flying at his face, and you panic. You can't catch it, too rushed, but you manage to deflect it so it hits the bed with a soft thump instead of braining Namjoon straight in the nose.

"Woah, you really do have superpowers," Jimin whispers. He lobs a bottlecap at Namjoon, and you catch it in your palm before letting it drop onto the half-wall.

"I don't have...what the fuck you guys," Namjoon insists. His eyes are as wide as saucers behind the thick glasses he has on. He looks freaked out and you want nothing more than to hug him. Your hand reaches out of its own accord, halfway closing the distance to stroke his hair before you catch yourself.

"Hey, levitate your plants," Jin demands. Namjoon looks panicked as he glances at the wall of plants, and you heave a sigh. With any luck, they're so drunk that they'll remember this as a strange fever dream, but you can't just let them keep throwing things at him. You crawl over to the wall, avoiding Namjoon as you do, and grasp one of the plants tight. It's a white pot with red polka dots, a simple RJ on the side, and it's fucking heavy. You only get it a few inches off the shelf before you're forced to put it down.

"Oh my god, catch this!" Taehyung throws a coffee mug straight at Namjoon's head and you panic again. You catch it, and you've decided you're fucking sick of them throwing things at him, so you lob it back and dart across the room to bounce it safely to the counter before it can break.

Everyone in the room stares at the mug and then looks back at Namjoon, who hasn't moved from his spot on the bed.

"Oh my god, you're a superhero," Jeongguk whispers, awe in his eyes.

"That's fucked up," Yoongi mutters, wincing when Hoseok elbows him.

"Maybe we should get some sleep," Namjoon says quietly. The others look like they want to disagree with him, and you have no doubt they want to explore the newfound 'abilities' of their friend, but they still start gathering trash together before they head out.

Namjoon lays awake for a long time that night, glasses folded and sitting atop the half-wall beside you. He's oblivious to the way you watch him, too lost in thought to feel the weight of your stare or the chill in the air.

"I don't understand," He says after a while. "I really don't, but there's got to be a reason for it." He doesn't elaborate, merely turns over and evens his breathing out until he starts snoring, but you watch him for most of the night. He's fascinating, this human, and you wonder what makes him so different from the others you've met.

He apparently decides to experiment. You've known Namjoon is intelligent since he first moved in and you saw his collectible encyclopedias, but you hadn't realized just what it would be like in actuality.

It starts simple. He'll toss something in the air and let it clatter to the ground. Nothing big, just little things like pencils or bottlecaps, and not far, just enough that his eyes narrow as he apparently tries to use his telekinetic abilities to manipulate them.

It slowly graduates from there. Next comes the way he stares at something across the room, hyper-focused on whatever it is until you notice and move it around for him. It's a guessing game, sometimes, trying to figure out just what he wants to move or how he wants to move it, but each time you're successful, he smiles so brightly, dimples on full display. Who wouldn't want to make him smile like that?

It's hit or miss, sometimes. You're only so strong, and while you've had a lot of practice, you still get tired. You lifted his bookshelf almost a full inch before blacking out. Next thing you knew, a couple of days had passed and Namjoon was staring at a coffee mug. That was a significantly less fun day; between losing time and having to catch coffee mug after coffee mug, you were exhausted and a little shaken.

So when he stops staring at things for extended periods of time, when he starts to go back to reading and scrolling the internet and bingeing all the completed shows that Netflix and Amazon had to offer, you're grateful for it. He still occasionally tests it out; he's always subtle about it, choosing to stare quietly until you notice and make whatever it is float around for a minute. Once you wandered around looking for him - a feat in a studio apartment - and found him just sitting on the bathroom floor, staring at a shampoo bottle.

You'd like to say that you don't move things entirely because he wants you to. It's a good test of your abilities and how far you can push yourself until it becomes too much, and it's always nice to have actual evidence that you still exist - in some form, at least - in the world. The validation that comes from seeing him smile every time you lift a pencil or slide a coffee mug to the side, it's not for any reason but the satisfaction of knowing that you have some kind of existence. Some kind of impact on the world, even if you can't be seen and can't leave the apartment.

It's part of why you start moving things around yourself more often; you're hoping he just blames it on his overactive 'abilities' if he notices because you really aren't sure what he would think otherwise. But you also know for a fact that just seeing that you have some kind of sway over the world still - over the things inside this tiny apartment - makes you feel just that bit better about being dead.

Which is why it's such a fucking shock when the door to the apartment slams open one evening just for Namjoon to slam it closed again and announce into the air, "So I know you're haunting me, please don't try to deny it, I only want to talk to you."

You freeze where you are, halfway through the closet door from where you were reorganizing his clothes because they made no sense and you were bored. He's looking around the apartment, almost desperate in the way he's searching, and you can't bring yourself to move. It's obvious he can't see you, and you aren't even sure if he's being serious, but the way he huffs and clenches his jaw before moving into the kitchen tells you that he probably is.

You follow him, curious, and watch as he pulls a small package out of his bag and starts ripping it open. You float the remains of what looks like gift wrap over to the trashcan, because you know Namjoon will forget, before going back to watching him. He's only a little careful as he cracks something in his hands and then slaps it onto the fridge, and you peek around him to see that it's some kind of words or something. There’s a wide variety, with no clear theme to them, as well as at least one of each letter of the alphabet. It's then you remember the throwaway comment Yoongi made during that night - "You need, like, poetry stuff, like those magnets that go on the fridge that people write that deep shit with, y'know? I'm gonna buy you one," - and realize that he'd followed through on his vow.

"Alright," Namjoon says, leaning against his kitchen counter and staring at the magnets. "First and foremost, am I really being haunted or is this some kind of hallucination?" His gaze never falters, doesn’t ever drift from the magnetic words now spread across his fridge doors. It takes several minutes to build up the energy and the courage to move closer to the fridge.

You don't look at him as you move the words around, but you can hear the sharp intake of breath. That's likely all the confirmation that he needs, but still you clear a spot and let the words ' I am here ' sit where he can see them clearly. You wrinkle your nose, disliking how formal it sounds, but you have to make do, you suppose.

"Okay," Namjoon breathes. "Okay, prove it. My brain could work this into a hallucination. How do I know you're really a ghost?"

"Seriously?" You huff. "What the fuck am I supposed to do that wouldn't work into a hallucination, dude?"

He gets fidgety in the few minutes that you spend wondering how the fuck you're going to prove that you're a real actual ghost to someone who clearly doesn't believe in them. His foot taps at the floor and he scratches at his hand, which only makes you want to wrap your own hands around his until he stops, much like your best friend used to lay her legs across your lap to get you to stop shaking your knee.

The realization comes in a flash, and you're moving letters around before you can stop yourself.

Face book, Park Jihyo, best friend.

Namjoon stares at it for a long while before he brings his phone out of his pocket and begins to tap at the screen. You don't get too close; you've got a history with shorting out electronics, and you aren't sure you want to know what your best friend is up to without you there with her.

"Okay," Namjoon says. "Okay, I've never seen her before, so I don't think my brain could work her into a hallucination. Okay. Alright. I'm being haunted. This is fine."

"Calm down, I'm haunting the apartment, not you." He doesn't react to your words, as usual, but it still makes you feel the slightest bit better. He stares at his phone for a little longer, and the curiosity burns under your skin, but you resist. You know from experience that if you try to get too close, his phone will stop working. Just like TV, the stereo, the laptops, everything. You've had enough experience with that kind of thing to know what will happen.

"Okay, Casper," Namjoon huffs out after several minutes of waiting. He looks up and his eyes dart around the apartment, and you wonder if he's just nervous or if he's trying to spot you. "Where are you right now? Can you make yourself visible? I mean, I know you're a ghost, but it feels rude not talking to you to your face."

You huff a laugh but reach for a coffee cup. You know you can't just make yourself visible at will; you've only done it a couple of times, to your knowledge, and none of them have been on purpose. It's even more difficult to make yourself corporeal and physical, harder than just manipulating objects, but you did it once. Back when the single mom still lived here, when her toddler was falling and you had no way to cushion the fall except with your own body; you still aren't sure how it happened, but you remember being able to feel the floor against your back and the warmth of the baby on top of you for a split second before you were gone again. You won't forget that any time soon.

You float the mug towards where you stand, holding it in front of your face long enough that when you pull it away, Namjoon's eyes don't follow it. It's a strange feeling; you know he can't see you, can tell by the way his brow furrows and his eyes slide around the space, but it feels like he's looking straight at you. It feels like you're being seen for the first time since you died.

"So, where are you from, Casper?" His tone is forcibly conversational, as if he's trying his best to keep himself calm. You roll your eyes and move the magnets to show ' here ' and he nods. "You're not gonna try to possess me, or kill me, or run me off, are you? No offense or anything. I figure you would've already at this point, but...cover my bases."

No. Am nice. I think.

"You think? You don't know if you're a nice ghost?"

Does anyone truly know if they are nice? You frown, trying to figure out how to say what you want to say with the limited words available. I can only try. It's still not perfect; there's more that you want to say, more that you want to be heard, but this has to do for now.

"I can accept that. Alright. Just talking to a ghost in my kitchen. Okay. This is totally normal." He rubs a hand over his face, and you're a little impressed. Everyone else that's lived here has freaked when presented with the knowledge that you're a ghost. Namjoon looks very much like his world is exploding, but he doesn't have the same fear and apprehension in his eyes. He's certainly coping better than the single mom.

"Are you the only ghost? Here, I mean, are you the only ghost here?" He breathes a sigh of relief at your 'yes.’ "Can you see other ghosts? Do you know any other ghosts?" The 'don't know, no' that you move around on your fridge seems to unsettle him a little, but there's a curiosity burning behind it that makes your skin tingle.

Can't leave, is what you say next, cutting off whatever question he was about to ask.

"You can't leave at all? The building, or the apartment?"

The second.

"Wow. You're really stuck here?" He looks around the apartment as if seeing it for the first time and sucks in a breath. "What do you do all day?"

Watch. He cocks a brow. You are... You hesitate. The word you need isn't there, everything that comes to you is too poetic or corny for you to actually say, but the weight of his eyes is heavy on your hands. Fun is what you settle on, but it's not right either. 'Interesting' isn't there, nor is 'fascinating' or 'lovely,' and you don't want to scare him off by telling him that part of the reason you watch him so much is that he's so full of life that you feel less dead when he's around.

He laughs at your words though and shakes his head ever so slightly. "Alright, well, I'm gonna shower, so just, don't...watch that?" You squawk at the insinuation that you would, quickly rearranging the letters to spell ' privacy' and making a large angry face out of the rest of the words. He's already turned away, though, and it makes you angrier.

You don't want him thinking that you would peep at him. You already make sure that you're facing the windows when he finishes showering, you've been determined to not be creepy since the day he moved in, and to have him think otherwise is like a slap in the face. You slam the mug against the counter and he startles, turning to gape at it. You carry it to where your words and make-do emoji sit waiting for him to notice them.

"Okay," He says quickly. "Okay, privacy, yeah, got it. You respect my privacy. Appreciated."

"How fucking rude," You mutter as you set the mug back down. You don't adjust the magnets as he disappears into the bathroom. You want him to see them, want him to be reminded of the fact that being dead doesn't mean you don't have basic decency.

You can't get him to shut up now that he knows you're there. He still forgets sometimes, mostly when he's talking to his plants or narrating the way he carefully constructs some origami creation, but more often than not, he's talking to thin air. He spends a lot of time perched on his counter, watching you move magnets around his fridge through the thick lenses of his glasses before he spouts off some other question for you to answer.

He covers the basics first: how old you were when you died, when your birthday is, your favorite color, what you were studying in school, and of course your name, though he insists on calling you Casper. You aren't sure why but you also don't get a chance to question it, because he hits you with more and more questions every day. Sometimes you don't answer because you can't, too limited by the poetry magnets to be able to really converse; sometimes you just don't have the energy to move the magnets around, but those are days are rare. The only times you use the tired magnet are when you find your limbs too heavy to move, weighed down with the memories of what it meant to be alive.

Those are the bad days, but his questions make them just a little easier.

"How do you move around? Do you just float everywhere?" Walking, but different. No weight. Soft.

"How are you able to manipulate things in my world? Are they different from things in your world?" Focus. Takes time. Same.

"Do you sleep at all? Do ghosts dream?" No sleep. Just existing.

"You don't eat, do you? Should I be stocking up on snacks for you?" No. Save your sustenance. "What was the last thing you ate?" Don't remember. "Huh. I hope it was something good." Same.

"Were you ever in a relationship?" Once. A long time before. "Do you miss them?" Not anymore.

"What did you do while you were alive?" School. "Oh, really? Do you remember what you studied?" Boring. Important then, but it made me forget to live. Not important now. Namjoon goes quiet for a long moment after this one, staring out the window at something you can't see. He nods but doesn't ask any more questions, and he reads for the rest of the night.

It only takes a couple of weeks for both you and Namjoon to get tired of standing in his kitchen fucking around on the fridge. His legs get tired and he gets distracted by his thoughts, and you can barely keep up with the rapid-fire questions you get.

So Namjoon buys one of those cheap cookie sheets with the slightest lip at the edge and dumps the magnets on that. He leaves it on the coffee table, usually, there for you to pick up if he asks something but out of the way for when he stretches out to nap lazily in the afternoon sun.

You like the cookie sheet more than the fridge. He watches you as you work out your responses, can see the way you start to move one word before moving another instead; it makes it feel more like a conversation.

It becomes a favorite pass-time of Namjoon's, curling on the couch and putting some sort of music on in the background and just talking to you. A lot of nights his questions stop with a lingering silence from one or both of you; yours because you don't have the ability to share the words running rampant through your mind, and his for reasons still unknown to you. Still, you've missed it. You've missed talking to someone, being heard when you speak, having someone ask how you are at the end of the day.

It's the little things.

"You said you can't leave, right, Casper?" Namjoon's curled up on his couch, tucked into the arm with a blanket thrown over his lap, a mug of something warm in his hands to combat the chill of the season, and some R&B track playing lightly from his phone. You knock your fist against the cookie once - a sign for yes that you'd both agreed on. "So, are you just always here then? You don't go anywhere else?"

"Fuck, how do I explain this?" You mutter. You stare at the magnets in front of you for a long time before rearranging them. Not always. Tired sometimes, disappear.

"Disappear?" He reads. "What do you mean? You just, what, stop existing?"

Don't know, you respond. Only happens when tired. When used too much of me. He hums an acknowledgment, eyes focused on where the cookie sheet sits on the couch between you. You? What entertains you?

"Everything," he answers without hesitation. "I'm trying to work through my stack of books I want to read and finish all the shows I'm interested in, but the guys would have my head if I didn't get out and do things like a normal person."

That's where you leave to?

"Yeah." He sets his mug - now empty - on the coffee table and settles into the blankets. He looks cozy and soft and you would wrap yourself up with him if you could. "I take a lot of walks, and bike rides. I like to see the river, the trees, all the animals that live there. The beach is always fun, I get to see all the crabs and whatnot that wander in and out of the ocean."

"I wish I could go with you," you whisper.

Fun is what you spell on your sheet.

"I guess," he mutters. "It's enjoyable, at least. I'll bring you some souvenirs, or pictures next time."

You let the sheet settle on the couch as he turns the TV on, setting up a drama that he's on recently. He doesn't say anything else for a few hours, waits until the sound of rain hits the windows and stifles the apartment in an otherworldly haze.

"How long have you been dead?" His voice lingers in the air. You've been expecting these questions, and you're honestly impressed he's held them back for as long as he has. That angsty teen hadn't hesitated a single second to start asking you questions.

A while. Years. I think .

"Do you ever get tired of being a ghost?" There's something in his voice that you can't place, something that tells you this is more than just his usual morbid curiosity. Every part of your soul - whatever's left of it, anyway - is screaming at you to lie to him, to tell him that no, being a ghost is great. You've never wished he could hear you more than this moment, when all you want to is wrap your arms around him and ask him why he looks so much older than he is.

Sometimes, you tell him. It is lonely here, and boring. Fun to be unseen, but unable to do much more.

He nods like that makes all the sense in the world to him, and he brings the blanket up around his shoulders. "Do you ever miss your friends, or your family?"

Would you not? He huffs out an unamused chuckle, nodding again.

"Yeah," He says softly. "Yeah, I would. Do you want me to help you check on them? See what they're up to?" The single knock that echoes in the room is deafening to you, filled with a hope that you haven't felt in years. You've never let yourself think about them for long; if you did, you don't think you'd be able to come back from whatever that place is that you disappear to when things become Too Much.

Namjoon pulls his phone closer and starts fiddling with it. He doesn't hesitate when he types in your name, and you feel an emotional blush fill you when you see that he doesn't even have to finish typing for your profile to pop up. You glance at him, the way his brows are furrowed behind his glasses and his tongue pokes into his cheek just a little while he concentrates, and you wonder how many times he's looked at the pictures of you when you were alive. How many times has he scrolled through, reading the words people shared after you were gone, scrolling through the grief and loss to get to the words you posted yourself, the little snippets of your daily life that you would give anything to be able to relive?

"Do I still look like that?" You wonder aloud. As expected, he doesn't react, just continues tapping at his phone.

You two spend the rest of the night like that, each curled at opposite ends of the couch while Namjoon slowly looks up your friends and family and updates you on each of them. Jihyo got married, to someone she'd gone on a date with a few weeks before you passed, and she's apparently trying to start having kids; Your mother and father aren't very active, but they never were. They both share pictures of you when you were a baby each year on your birthday, and more recent photos of you on the anniversary. They have a dog now. It's cute. You wonder if it helps them cope with the loss.

Your other friends are doing well, too; most of them are still figuring out their lives, but it seems like all of them are settling in their skin and finding comfort in who they are. They're out there, navigating the world and doing things they enjoy, meeting new friends and making new memories.

You stand by the window for a long time, cookie sheet of magnetized words pressed against your chest as if you can feel the cool of the metal against your skin, and watch rain drip down the panes as you imagine what your life could have been.

You can always hear Namjoon before you see him. He whistles as he walks down the sidewalk, his small way of letting you know he's on his way back from wherever he's gone that day, and today isn't an exception. Relief sags through you and you move away from the windows, let your fingers trail against the ceramic of the newest succulent he'd bought, and head towards the kitchen. The kettle is turned on and heating a few moments later while you pull a mug down from your cabinet and set it carefully on the counter where Namjoon will see it.

It's a regular routine, for the two of you. He heads out, usually in the early morning after turning on some music or a show for you, and when he comes back, you make sure there's hot water for his tea or cocoa or whatever he feels like drinking that day. The sound of his whistling gets louder the closer he gets, a simple way to let you know he's safe and he's home. You glance through the cabinets and quickly make a note on the fridge that he needs to buy more of his special tea blend soon.

The lock turns and you smile, waiting patiently as Namjoon saunters into the apartment. He sets something down on the kitchen counter just as the kettle starts to scream, and you wait while he pours the water and gets it ready.

"The cherry blossoms bloomed," He says. You grin. "They look great. I got some really nice pictures while I was there, I'll show you tonight. I was thinking we could try to finish Voltron tonight if you want. We'll have to go back an episode though, I think I fell asleep during the last one." You knock once against the counter beside you, and he turns with a wide grin to glance at the spot where you stand.

It's ridiculous for your heart to speed up in your chest, for the hair on the back of your neck to rise, for breath to catch in your throat; you don't have a heartbeat, you don't have breath, you're a shadow of the person you used to be, and yet...

And yet, seeing his dimpled smile focused so naturally on where you are, as if it's just second-nature, is like a breath of fresh air after years underwater. It smells like flowers, like dirt and earth and a new beginning. It feels like you're alive again, and you don't want it to end, but too soon he's turning away to finish steeping the tea. Something lingers in the air for a moment after but it's gone too soon for you to place it.

You both settle on the couch, Namjoon tucking whatever he brought home with him under his arm, between his body and the arm of his ratty old couch. Your cookie sheet is in its place on the coffee table, unneeded at the moment. You can't help the glare that you give it; the things you would give to be able to just speak and be heard are endless.

It rattles a little and you look away.

Namjoon is quiet as the show plays. He doesn't react when you move to turn the oven on, but he does laugh quietly and thank you for it when he goes to put his dinner in. He eats and you don't bother him, though the way he keeps his little package hidden away makes curiosity burn through you. Eventually, once he's eaten and washed his dishes and laughed at the way you rubbed them dry before setting them carefully in their places, he settles back into his blankets and turns on the music he loves so much.

He's got a book balanced in his hands and your cookie sheet rests on the coffee table, and you both just sit like that for a long while, enjoying existing.

"You remember your life, right Casper?" You thump lazily against the wall in response, eyes drawn from where you watch the gloomy sky slowly get lighter with the dawn. He isn't looking at his book anymore; he probably hasn't been for a while, based on the way the pages have migrated around his thumb, too busy staring at the wall across from him. "Do you remember your death?"

You hesitate. You've tiptoed around the subject before. He's always been too afraid to ask directly, and it's too painful for you to offer it freely. You thump against the wall once more, and he nods like he already knew the answer.

"Are they very different?" His glasses are falling down his nose and your fingers itch to push them up. Instead, you reach for your cookie sheet. He makes a sound in the back of his throat when he sees it moving, reaching under him for his package. "I forgot, I got you this. Thought it might be easier."

He sets it down and you slide the contents out of the wrapping easily. Inside is a small dry-erase board, complete with markers and eraser, small things that should be easy for you to manipulate. You beam at him; he can't see it, but you think he might be able to feel it because he perks up and smiles a little.

"You don't have to answer," He adds. "I was just curious to know if being dead is really as different as everyone makes it out to be." You nod and thump once against the board before you uncap a marker and start writing.

It's a bizarre feeling, after so long. The muscles in your hand don't ache, no matter how much you write, and you can't feel the smooth surface of the board under your fingers or the weight of the marker in your palm, but it glides against it cleanly and leaves a thick black streak behind.

It takes you a minute to write everything out, get it worded how you want. Namjoon doesn't interrupt you, just watches the marker move against the board and smiles every time you go to erase something that isn't right. Eventually you show it to him.

There are similarities. I'm still me, I still enjoy TV and music and books. Things are duller now, like there's a filter over them, and it's harder to do things. Like when you're in water, or mud, like that. Resistance.

"Oh," Namjoon replies, "That's not what I expected. It makes sense though I guess." His hand moves against his chest, rubbing lightly as he looks over your words again. "Is there anything you actually like about being a ghost?"

"Well, being invisible is pretty cool," You say, writing the words as you do. "And it's actually really fun being able to walk through walls and stuff, even if I can't go anywhere outside of the apartment."

"I'm sorry you're stuck here," Namjoon says. You startle a little, looking up at him. You think he actually heard you for a split second, but his eyes are locked on where you're writing your words out on the dry erase board.

"Yeah, me too," You tell him. He stares at the board for a long moment, chewing nervously on his bottom lip as he does. "Ask what you want to ask, Joon," You write as you say it.

"How did you die?" He blurts. You sigh and he jumps a little, looking fully at where you sit. You're shocked; you know that sometimes little noises cross over, like when Jin heard you laughing, but it's still rare. You can't figure out how it works, but you want to.

You write for a long time, letters small so they fit on the board. The whole thing is crowded together, looks like one long string of letters instead of the story it is.

There's a lot of violence in this neighborhood. You probably know that by now. People are always getting robbed or mugged or something around here. Someone tried to break into my apartment by banging the door down. It didn't work, luckily, but I got really paranoid afterwards. One night I was cooking, and someone's door slammed really hard. I spilled the water I was boiling, slipped. Blacked out after a while, and when I came to, there were police everywhere. I guess I hit my head harder than I thought, because they carted me away, and I couldn’t follow.

"I'm sorry," Namjoon says softly. "You deserved more time."

Yeah. The universe had a different plan, I guess. He smiles at that, and it settles the anxiety thrumming under your skin. Wouldn't have met you, so I guess that's a bonus. He rolls his eyes at you but he laughs softly, so you consider it a win. You doodle on the board then, simple little designs that don't mean anything beyond being able to see your effect on the world.

Namjoon sucks in a breath beside you and you look up at him. He's always been good about looking towards where you are, doing his best to make eye contact with someone he can't see, but he still always tends to look through you.

Not this time.

This time, electricity sings through the air as your eyes meet his. You don't know how, but you know he can see you. His eyes roam over you, taking in the crumpled sweater you were wearing with the stain you like to think is pasta sauce on the arm, the hair you can't ever really tame, the way you sit cross-legged on his old thread-bare couch with a dry erase board in your hands.

Neither of you moves. He looks torn between fear and amazement, every emotion in between flitting quickly over his features, and you're terrified that if you move, whatever spell that's been cast will fade. It had been so long since you talked to anyone when Namjoon slammed those magnets on the fridge, and the conversation has been a reprieve, but to be seen for the first time in years...

It's invigorating.

Watching Namjoon just look at you is something you won't ever forget, not for as long as you exist in the world. He looks at you like he's memorizing every detail, every hair and wrinkle and pore, and just knowing that he can see you fills you with something new.

"Namjoon...?" You call hesitantly. His eyes fall on your lips.

"Again," He says. Your brows must furrow, maybe you frown, you don't know because it's been so long since you've needed to pay attention to your facial expressions, but he notices your confusion. "Will you say something again?"

Breath you don't have catches in your throat, wraps itself around a heart that doesn't beat, but you smile a little. "I'm glad I met you."

Namjoon smiles. It's big and blinding and knocks everything out of you except for that emotion that's been sitting in your chest since the first time you watched him talk to his plants. You lean forward, and you can tell the exact moment you disappear, because his smile falls and his eyes unfocus. A whimper leaves your throat, but he doesn't react, and that may be the most painful thing that's ever happened to you.

"Can I feel you?" His voice is hushed but the words reverberate in your head. His eyes dart around, looking for any glimpse of you, and your hand trembles as you reach out.

Goosebumps raise on his cheek where your hand touches him and his breath stops for a moment, but he smiles again and leans into the chill. You bring your other hand up to cup his other cheek, your dry erase board lying forgotten on the ground, and Namjoon's eyes flutter closed.

"I think I might love you," You say quietly just before you press your lips to his. He doesn't react to your words, but he lets out a soft sigh at your kiss. Thunder cracks through the apartment, a torrent of rain unleashed on the windows, but you don't move.

The two of you sit like that for hours, until he starts shivering and his nose turns red, like it does when he forgets his scarf on the cold days, and his breath puffs in the air. When you finally pull away from him, he smiles, and the blush on his cheeks has nothing to do with the cold air that makes up your form.

"Yeah," He says softly, voice nearly drowned out by the storm raging outside. "Yeah, I can feel you."

If you expected things to change much after that, you were wrong. At least a little. Namjoon still disappears to go on his walks, you still start the kettle the second his whistles drift up to the apartment. He still asks you a million questions, but they're more normal now. Your favorite music, color, what you wished you'd done with your life, if you've been able to corporealize again recently, what you wanted to watch that night.

"Come on, Casper," Namjoon groans. "I promise you can do it." You huff and he smiles, clearly having heard it. You're tempted to just disappear somewhere, rattle some pipes in the bathroom or the kitchen so he thinks you're in there and leaves you alone, but he smiles at you again and you're weak for that dimple.

You grip the watering can again, doing your best to lift it and manipulate it the way you need to. It's heavy, and something about the metal makes your skin itch, but the more you struggle the more you're able to pour the slightest bit of water where RJ - a giant plant that you don't even know the name of - sits in the corner of the room across from Namjoon's bed. It's the twentieth-something time you've tried this today, and you're ten seconds from just giving up completely, but you can tell this is important to Namjoon.

He's been talking all week, between the late nights where you lay over his blanket-wrapped form and the mornings where he ducks out with a soft goodbye. He's told you everything about his plants that you think he possibly could, teaching you about them and showing you how to care for them. It's interesting, you won't lie, and it's always fun to see him light up when you recall something he's told you, but you're exhausted and every part of you is shaky, and you're more than a little worried of what might happen if you push too far again.

Still, Joon hasn't looked great lately, like he might be getting the flu, and you want to be able to help him with all the things he does in the house. You've already started doing the dishes and folding laundry, since those were the two things he was the absolute worst at, but you feel like you should be doing more.

"Good job, baby, I'm proud of you!" You grunt and let the watering can fall back to the ground with a loud thump that almost definitely has the downstairs neighbors cursing Namjoon's name. "See, and now we're done for the day! C'mon, we can put on Sens8 and cuddle."

He's on the couch before you can stop him, wrapping himself in blankets except for one lone hand that sticks out, expectant. You roll your eyes and sit beside him, close enough that if you had a body you would be cuddling instead of just sitting awkwardly beside him.

You know that this is just going to make your hand all pink and gross, right?

He just smiles when the board flips around to reveal itself and wiggles his fingers. "It's worth it," He says. "I'd rather be pink and gross than never get to hold your hand at all."

You can't even feel my hand, Joon, there's literally no point to this. He huffs and wraps his hand around the marker in your hand, shivering at the chill that runs through him when he does. He grins and gestures down to where the tips of his fingers are already turning red.

"Clearly I can feel it, Casper."

You're glad he can't see you, that you don't have a heart that beats or blood that runs, because if you did, your face would no doubt be red. You have no doubts that Namjoon would tease you about it.

He's quiet as you both watch the show; he makes the odd comment here or there, but his mood seems to have calmed some. When he first got back from whatever place he visited that day, he'd been anxious and jumpy and entirely too on edge.

"Hey, Casper?" He asks quietly. You slide a hand against his cheek to let him know you're there, and he leans into the chill again. "What do you think about me?"

You don't move for several seconds, hand still poised around his cheek.

"Like, your feelings. What are they? Will you tell me?" You knock once on the wall behind the couch. Your hand stays poised over your board for long enough that Namjoon starts to get a little restless. Words refuse to come to you. Every time you start to think you have a way to describe to him what he means to you, they disappear as quick as fog on a summer's afternoon. Frustrated, you let the board fall to the couch and scrawl a quick 'hold on' so he knows you aren't just ignoring him.

It's been weeks since you've seen what you're looking for, your cookie sheet with the word magnets having been basically forgotten in lieu of the more personal and convenient dry-erase board, but right now you know that if words won't come to you, you'll have to go to them.

You finally find it, shoved under several encyclopedias and magazines, and the noise you make is so triumphant that even Namjoon hears it. You curl back up beside him, careful to make sure the blanket is wrapped tight around him, and make sure he can see the words as you move them. It still takes a long time, constantly changing and rearranging and stacking to make sure it conveys the things you need it to convey.

You are like music. A symphony of summer days and peach skies with soft rain. You are a storm in the moonlight. I'm not lonely when I have you pouring around me. You make me feel alive again.

Namjoon is silent for a long time, and you wonder if you've gone too far. It's more poetic than you'd like, too frilly and fancy and emotional than you usually are, but they're the only words you have.

After too long, he exhales. It's heavy and deep and it feels like he's trying to expel more than just air from his body.

"You make me feel alive, too," is all he says, whispered into the softness of his blanket in a voice too small for his long limbs. He shivers, and you hear him choke down a cough, and then he disappears into the bathroom for a long time. When he comes back out, he doesn't say anything, just slides into the mass of blankets on his bed and lays his arm out across the mattress. You spread out across from him, watching the rise and fall of his chest as he looks through you and out the window where the rain is letting up.

"Looks like the rainy season is gonna last longer than everyone thought." You slide your hands around one of his large ones and just hold them like that. His eyes sink closed and something like relief stands on his face for a moment before it's gone, swept away by the peace of sleep.

You wonder what it is that he sees when he looks out the window. If it's the plain brick wall and windows of the building next door, or something more.

You aren't sure you want to know.

Namjoon's flu only seems to get worse. He leaves early in the mornings, as if he thinks you might not notice the way he coughs into his scarf just because the sun hasn't risen fully yet. He stays gone most of the days, and even when he apologizes quietly during the twilight when he slinks back in to the sound of the kettle screeching on the stove and his tea already waiting to be steeped, he still doesn't stop.

You've taken to playing blues while he's gone, mostly the old school stuff, digging out the vintage record player he has buried in the closet and setting it up on the coffee table. It’s the only technology you can use without shorting it out. You don’t know why, but it makes you grateful the record collection Namjoon keeps tucked away inside the coffee table that you’ve learned is in fact an actual steamer trunk that he salvaged and restored himself.

The music fills the apartment, distracts you from the oppressive weight of his absence. He knows you wait at the window for him, you told him that back when the two of you were first getting to know each other.

You're so fragile, you had told him. He had laughed at you, quiet and fond, and waited for you to explain further. You're so full of life and breath and possibility, and the world is so big and so dangerous. I'm scared you won't come back.

"Of course I'm going to come back," he told you. You didn't even need to tell him that you're afraid of what being alone might do to you, now that you're so used to his presence. You're being heard again, sometimes even seen, and you don't know if you can go back to the stagnant depression of solitude. "I'll always come back to you."

That was the first time you thought you might love Namjoon. The feeling has only gotten stronger, and now that you wait at the window with your eyes focused on that tiny section of sidewalk you can see at the end of the alley, it threatens to consume you whole.

You wait at the window for hours. You know because you glance at the clock every minute and a half, mocking you with every tick as it hangs limply on the bathroom door. The sun sinks below the horizon, the moon rises to take its place, and they switch again while you wait. The dawn paints the sky in beautiful shades of pink and red and orange and the faintest purple, but you can't appreciate any of it, because you're too anxious.

He could be hurt. He could be gone, and you wouldn't ever know until his friends came to pack his things. He could have left, too; maybe he finally decided that living with a ghost was just too much for him and just ran. Maybe he figured out that you love him, that you would move heaven and earth if it meant he was safe forever if only you could leave this apartment, and it was too much for him.

What if he knows about how you lay beside him every night? How you tuck the blankets tighter around him, cover him in warmth and comfort before settling on top of them and closing your eyes and pretending that you can feel his arm draped over your waist and his breath on the back of your neck. What if he felt you, that night you wandered into the bathroom while he was showering to write on the steam-covered mirror that he needs to buy more eggs soon and got distracted by the way he looked stepping out of the shower? What if he knows your stomach flipped at the long limbs and the hidden muscles and the sheer size of him? What if he knows the real reason you were quiet that night, the way you kept replaying the moment in your mind and wishing you had a body so you could have just touched him, at least.

It's closer to noon than midnight when his whistle echoes up through the window.

"Hey, I'm home," He calls as he enters the empty apartment. You're upset, but you're more filled with relief than anything because at least he's safe and he's here now. He makes a beeline for where the kettle is just starting to whistle, already reaching for the honey and the tea you set out on the counter for him, and you do your best to calm the storm of emotions inside you.

Did you have fun, wherever you were? You ask him, floating the whiteboard in front of his face so he has to acknowledge it.

"Yeah, I did," he responds as he stirs his tea. "Jin invited everyone over for some end of summer thing. I didn't feel too great at the end of it, so I just spent the night there."

Don't party too hard, you might remember how to have fun, you joke. It falls a little flat based on the grim smile Namjoon gives you. Are they gonna come over here again anytime soon? I've missed scaring Hoseok.

He lets out a real laugh at that. "I don't know, maybe. My birthday's coming up, after Jeongguk's, so they could definitely be planning something. I'm heading over to Yoongi's later to help plan for Guk's party. I might stay there tonight, so try not to worry, Casper."

I'll try, you tell him. You both know you'll stand at the window every second he's gone, but you don't want to tell him why. You don't want to tell him that you love him through a dry erase board, or some fancy poetry magnets. It doesn't matter that you may as well have already said so by telling him that he makes you feel alive again; you haven't said the words to him, he hasn't seen 'I love you' in the messy scrawl that is your handwriting on some stupid board, and therefore he doesn't know.

You don't know if you want him to.

He stays gone that night, as he said he might, and reappears the next day to shower and change before he vanishes again. The next time he shows up, he takes a bag with him when he leaves, which only worsens your fears. He stays gone for three days this time, doesn't apologize when he turns up again and just mumbles a soft hello into the air before he makes tea and sags into his couch. He's asleep in seconds, and as much as you want to scream at him, you can't bring yourself to disrupt how peaceful he looks.

When he wakes, he takes a shower and ignores the ' can we talk ' you scrawled in the steam. He packs a bag of fresh clothes and doesn't say goodbye when he leaves, just disappears and leaves you standing at the window with the pail in your hand, caring for the plants he isn't. The slam of the door sounds like nails in a coffin and breaks what little was left of your soul.

He shows back up nearly a week later, and the relief at seeing him again is overridden by the sheer anger at being left in the first place. You don't start the kettle when you hear his whistle, the quiet and hoarse tune of a familiar song barely reaching the window, but there's plenty of noise when he enters.

The cabinet doors are quaking with your fury, the lights flicker and threaten to burst, and Namjoon just leans back against the door. He’s soaked from the storm thundering outside, even his jacket plastered to his skin, and he’s shivering slightly, but you can’t see anything past the rage.

"Where the fuck were you?" You demand; there's no point, it's not like he can hear you, but the way he sighs makes you feel like he can, so you continue anyway. "It's been almost a week, you didn't even think to stop by for ten seconds so I know you're okay? I thought you were dead somewhere, you could've been, like, shot, or something, I don't know, just bleeding out in some ditch, and I wouldn't know! And what about all the plants? I know how to take care of them, sure, but do you know how hard it is for me to do it?"

Namjoon sighs again, the breath catching in his throat and coming out in a cough, but you don't pay much attention to it.

"Why would you act like this, Namjoon? What did I do, is it because of the things I said? Do you not want me to feel like this about you? Because this a damn good way of making sure I don't, I assure you, so by all means, just keep disappearing and leave me alone with the plants you decided to rescue and save!"

His cough gets worse and he just shakes his head, covering his mouth and making his way towards the bathroom.

"If you want me to hate you, it's too fucking late, Joon!" The slam of the bathroom door punctuates your sentence, and you quiet at the sound of continued coughing. You knew his flu was getting worse, but it's never sounded like that. Even when you were alive, you knew that the wet sound that's muffled by the bathroom door isn't what a cough should sound like. The lock of the door clicks, and it shocks you into movement because he's never - never - locked you out of anywhere. He knows it wouldn't stop you, knows it as well as you know that you'd respect that boundary if he set it, and yet here he is, locking you out even as he coughs up what sounds like a lung in the other room.

You hesitate at the door, torn between respecting his boundaries and knowing what’s happening. You want him to trust you, always, and yet you find your hand disappearing through the door before you can stop it. You stand like that for a long moment, just listening to the sounds of his wracking coughs; the sound of a crash echoes through the apartment, though, and you’re through the door completely in the span of a heartbeat.

Nearly everything that had been on the counter is scattered on the ground, Namjoon himself gripping the sides of the toilet as if he would fall apart otherwise. A single glance tells you that the crash happened as he turned from the sink to the toilet, and if his jolting shoulders didn’t tell you why, the sounds of his retching would. That isn’t what fills you with dread though; the disorientation, the vomiting, all of it comes with being sick sometimes, but the red staining the bathroom sink?

That’s not normal, and you know with every part of you that it’s the reason he’s been gone so much.

The temperature in the apartment drops with the sun, but your arms surround Namjoon as best they can. Goosebumps break out on his arms, shivers run down his back, but you don’t move away from him; he doesn’t say anything, just sits there with his forehead pressed against the cool of the porcelain. He stands eventually, ignores the way he passes completely through your body to rinse the sink and brush his teeth.

You let him stay quiet until you’re both on his bed; you’re pressed up against his side and running your hands along his forearms, idly wondering if you would be able to feel his heartbeat if you were alive.

“It’s not...it’s not gonna get better,” He says eventually. “There’s not a cure, just some things to draw it out and give me a little bit longer even if they come with more pain. I go once a week to see if it’s gotten worse, check how much longer I have. It’s why Hobi let me move in here rent-free. He pays the bills, says it’s the least he can do. I wanted to be closer to him anyway, so that’s a bonus, I guess.”

“I’m so sorry, Joon,” you whisper. Your board lies forgotten, somewhere on the couch maybe, you aren’t sure and can’t be bothered to pull yourself away from him long enough to find it. You don’t need it right now, though; he knows what you mean by the way the cold presses against his bicep with your palm.

“I didn’t want you to know.” You’re not exactly surprised at that; you’d figured as much. You just don’t understand his reasoning. “I didn’t want you worrying about me, or anything like that, like the guys do. They always look at me and it’s all they can see. Like they’re already mourning me, even though I’m still here. I didn’t want to feel like that with you.”

“I know,” you say. You don’t, not really. Your own death was sudden, a shock to everyone you knew; you didn’t get the luxury of saying goodbye, didn’t have the burden of knowing you would be gone soon.

The two of you sit in silence for a while, until you can feel Namjoon’s chest quivering under your palm. When you look up, he looks at you, really and truly at you , and he has tears in his eyes.

“I don’t want to die, Casper,” He whispers. You suck in a breath because he can see you, and you don’t even know why, but you don’t want to lose this moment. “I don’t want to leave all of this behind. I don’t want to leave you.”

“It’ll be okay,” you say softly. His brow furrows and a tear slides down his cheek. “I promise you it will be okay, Namjoon. It gets easier, and people remember but they aren’t stuck forever. And I…” You falter, and it takes his eyes meeting yours to make you realize he can hear you. And there’s only one thing you’ve ever needed him to hear.

“I love you,” You tell him. “I love you, and I will never forget you.”

He surges forward, lips meeting yours in a rush of air. You moan at the feeling of him against you, realizing that for the first time since you died, you can feel something under your fingers. His skin is warm against your fingers, his lips soft against your own, and when he reaches up to cup your jaw with his hand, he doesn’t pass through your form. Instead his hand settles heavy against you, and he moves your head to lick into your mouth.

Tears that won’t fall prickle at the back of your eyes and you climb into his lap before he can stop you. He’s still crying so you wipe away the tears before they can fall, pressing soft kisses to his cheeks, his dimples, his nose, every bit you can reach. A question sits at the back of your mind, and you can see it lingering in his eyes, but neither of you asks it.

“You’re so cold.” His whisper is nearly lost amidst the thunder that shakes the apartment, but it makes you smile a little.

“Warm me up?”

His chest is still quivering with unspoken sobs, but he nods. “Always,” he tells you. “I’m always going to be here.” It doesn’t take long to pry him out of his clothes, takes even less time for him to sink into you. It feels just like it did when you were alive, only magnified; you can feel him hot and warm inside you, can feel the beat of his heart in the firm muscle under your hands. His moans are quiet and hoarse but you wouldn’t have it any other way.

He keeps one hand on your waist and the other on your neck, holding you close enough that he can kiss whenever he wants. “You’re beautiful,” He whispers. “The most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.” You just press another kiss to his chapped lips and let him dig his fingers in hard enough that it would bruise if it could. When he’s close to his peak, he stops thrusting, just sits inside you as he grinds your hips down to his, and presses his forehead against yours.

“I love you,” He tells you, lightning casting his shadow across the wall for a brief moment. “I love you, I do, I wish-”

“I know,” you tell him before he can continue. “I know, Namjoon, I know, and I do, too. I love you, too.” He comes a few seconds later, the warm seed soaking into his sheets because it has nowhere to go. His warmth disappears from under your hands and his arms fall to his lap when the only thing holding them up is gone. All you can hear is your quiet sobs mixed with his and the rain against the window, and for the first time since you came back, you really, truly, wish you had died. There’s no point in being a ghost when you can still feel your heart breaking in your chest.

“Casper, are you ever scared?”

It’s the middle of the afternoon. Namjoon is sprawled across the couch wrapped in blankets while Lucifer plays in the background and you doodle aimlessly on your board. You don’t need it as often now; you’ve gotten better at focusing your energy into being heard, though being corporeal still eludes you. You don’t know how you did it that night, but you’re grateful for it.

“Of what?” You ask, looking towards him. He’s not looking at you or watching the show, just staring at the ceiling. He focuses at your words, lifts himself up into a sitting position. A shiver runs through him when his legs move through you, and you settle a weightless hand against his knee out of habit.

“I don’t know,” He replies. “Just...whatever comes next. If there’s something that comes next. Being forgotten. Being stuck here forever.”

You aren’t stupid; you know why he’s asking. The question lingers in the air, colors all of your conversations now, but the truth is that neither of you has the strength to ask it and neither of you knows the answer.

“Sometimes,” You tell him. “Sometimes I wonder what Jihyo is doing, if she ever had a baby like she wanted to. I wonder if my parents are still alive, and what they say if they visit my grave, what they tell me now that I can’t respond to them.”

Namjoon nods like he’s already thought of that, and he probably has.

“Most of the time I try not to focus on it, though. It’s not helpful, it only upsets me, and I don’t…” You trail off, unsure of how to word your thoughts. “I don’t know what might happen if I only focus on the negative. I don’t know anything about what’s true about ghosts and what isn’t beyond that I exist now, and I can’t risk becoming something bad. So I try not to focus on it. It’s easier when you’re here.”

He grins and blows a kiss in your general direction, and you pretend not to notice the blood on his cracked lips. He’s quiet for the rest of the episode of half of another.

“Have you ever seen a light?”

“What?” He doesn’t seem to hear you, and you repeat your question on your board for him.

“A light,” He echoes. “Like, the light.Y’know, the light at the end of the tunnel, ‘don’t go into the light,’ that thing.”

You hesitate at that. You knew what he meant, what he actually wants to know here. He’s easier to read now than he was in the beginning.

You watch him as he watches the space where you sit, curled up beside him on his couch. He can’t see you, of course, but he can see where the board rests in your hands. His gaze is heavier than it was when he first moved in; his cheeks are hollower, skin more gaunt with a grey tint that’s only made worse by the constant rain. The sun is just starting to break through the clouds, a brief reprieve after weeks of the dreary stone-colored clouds. It casts shadows along the walls, reflects off something in the window across the alley, and backlights Namjoon beautifully, casts a halo of light around the brittle brown hair you love.

Once, you tell him. Just once.

“Why didn’t you go to it?”

There are so many things you could tell him, so many different ways to answer such a simple question, but you find yourself lingering on the one thing you know is the ultimate truth.

Because I love you.

September comes with even more rain and a bittersweet atmosphere. Jeongguk spends his birthday at Namjoon’s apartment and then comes back a little over a week later, surrounded by the other guys and carrying enough food to last a few months. You stay curled on the bed, one of the only safe places for you to not mess with anyone or anything. Your board is tucked into the blankets, ready to be used but hidden from view just in case. You watch as Namjoon sits on the couch, tucked between Taehyung and Yoongi with both of them leaning into him as much as possible, Yoongi’s hands wrapped in one of his and Tae’s head on his shoulder.

The other’s aren’t far, leaning against the back of the couch and on beanbags they’d brought with them, all laughing as Hoseok does his best to act out whatever he’d been given in charades. He’s not bad at it - you’ve guessed the last few he’s done - but he is utterly ridiculous in his mannerisms. You know why; it’s the same reason everyone kept smiling when Namjoon refused all of the food he was offered, why Seokjin would crack a terrible joke whenever it got too quiet for too long, why everyone is resolutely ignoring the growing pile of tissues on the table.

It keeps a smile on Namjoon’s face, though, and a laugh in his eyes, and you can’t ever be anything but grateful for that.

Hoseok stumbles, nearly falling and whirling his arms to catch himself before eventually falling anyway. You laugh along with the others, grinning at the way Hobi pouts and rubs at his hip. You’re focused on the way Joon laughs, the way it lights up his face and brightens the entire room, which is why you see it first.

The tickle at the back of his throat quickly becomes a cough, wet and wheezing and enough to make him throw the blankets from his lap and stumble to the bathroom.

You’re there before he is, helping him slide the door closed and locking it behind him as he bends over the toilet again. The six of them are quiet in the main room, speaking in hushed whispers that neither you nor Namjoon wants to hear. You turn the knob on the sink, wetting a towel while you drown out the sound of voices, and letting a hand run over Namjoon’s back.

“I’m okay,” he mutters. You ignore the way his voice shakes, the way his lips are redder than before, the way this happens more often than before. Instead, you just press the damp rag to his neck and watch his eyes close in relief. When he stands and flushes the evidence away, you already have his toothbrush ready and waiting, and you stay as close to him as you can until he takes a deep breath.

“I’m okay,” He repeats. “I’m okay. It’s my birthday, and I’m okay.”

He goes back out with a smile on his face and a laugh in his voice, teasing Hoseok about the way he fell and reenacting it, even. When he settles on the couch, he urges the others to continue the game. There’s a brief moment of hesitation before Jimin declares that he’s next and pulls something from the bowl on the table.

You know you aren’t the only one that notices the way Namjoon’s eyes linger on the six men around him, but you are the only one that notices the way they also linger on his steamer trunk, the shelf with his books, the TV, the record player, the scrapbook of his life that they all worked on and Taehyung pieced together over the months, the plants on the wall that he had cared for. He looks around his apartment as if he’s looking at it for the last time.

As if he’s already planning who’s going to get what.

He finally asks the question you both have been thinking about, nearly two months later. His breathing comes in ragged pants, his lips stay chapped, and he keeps several blankets around him at all times to try to hide the shaking of his body. Your soft sobs echo through the apartment constantly; while you reheat the tea he doesn’t drink for the millionth time, while you quietly water and prune the plants he’s saved from death the way you wish you could save him, while you sit curled around him as he sleeps, soothing his coughs with quiet whispers.

Night has just begun to fall, the rain of the day turning into a soft drizzle, and you stare at him blankly, unsure how to process what you’ve just heard.

“Do you think I’ll come back?” He asks again, slightly louder. As if you hadn’t heard his shaky voice the first time. It’s not the question that floors you. You’ve been expecting this for weeks, months even. You’ve wondered it yourself as you prepare tea and ignore the sounds of him vomiting blood in the bathroom, as he disappears to the hospital and returns with a worse prognosis than before, as you’ve adjusted to the idea that you are dead and he is dying and you cannot do anything to help him.

You never would have expected the hope that his words carry though.

“Why does it sound like you want to?” You ask. Your voice is clear in the air and you’re glad for it, because this isn’t something you want to talk about through your board.

“Because I do?” His response is delayed and sounds more like a question than a real answer.

“Why?!” You demand.

“Are you serious, Casper?” His brow is furrowed as he sits up and lets the blankets fall away to sit haphazardly off the couch.

“Are you? Joon, why would you want to come back?”

“You’re seriously asking me that question? Why would I not? I’ve got so much I still want to do, I never thought I’d get the chance to after I got the diagnosis and now I might be able to. Why wouldn’t I want that?”

“Because it doesn’t work like that! You don’t get to just wander the world and fuck around, Joon, you’re dead.”

“Yeah, but you can still read and write and everything. I’d have all the time in the world to read the books I want to read, watch the shows I want to watch, write the music and stories and lyrics that I want to write.”

“Yeah, so long as it all stays in this apartment!” The light in the room flickers slightly with the force of your irritation. “You can’t do anything that isn’t in this room, Namjoon, you can’t use any of the electronics, you can’t read a book unless it’s here, you can’t write music unless it’s on actual paper, you can’t do anything.”

“Yeah, and I could make that work. Why are you so upset about this? I thought you’d be happy.”

“Happy? You think I’d be happy that you’d be stuck in these four walls forever, too? Why would that make me happy?” Namjoon stands, running a hand through his hair and shaking his head.

“Because I’d be with you! We’d be together, forever! Do you not want to be with me?”

“Of course I want to be with you, Joon, but not at the cost of you being stuck here. I don’t want that for anyone, certainly not the man I love.”

“And what if that’s what I want? What if I want to spend the rest of time with you? I’m already spending the rest of my life with you, I’m in love with you, I don’t want to leave you.”

“And I don’t want you to go, but Joon, why would I want you stuck here, too? This isn’t something fun. This isn’t anything that I enjoy.”

“Oh, so you regret it all then?”

“I didn’t say that, I just don’t want you to be stuck in a shitty studio apartment for who knows how long when you can’t fucking do half of the things you love! You wouldn’t go on walks, Namjoon, you wouldn’t go with Guk and Jimin to the movies, you wouldn’t get visits from Hobi, you wouldn’t get to shop with Taehyung or Jin, you wouldn’t get to drag Yoongi away from his thesis or celebrate with them when he finishes it! It’s not like being alive, Namjoon, you’d be dead and alone and in hell!”

“Whatever,” He mutters, shoving his arms into his coat. “Why can’t you understand for one fucking second that it wouldn’t be like that with you? I’d rather be stuck here forever than have to die in some shitty apartment and not even be able to touch the person I love.”

“Why can’t you understand that it’s still death? You’d be dead, Joon, your friends would go to your funeral and disappear from your life, and you’d be stuck staring out that window at that shitty alley for the rest of time. You don’t get it, you don’t how terrible it is to be stuck here and watch life pass you by.”

“Then why the fuck are you still here?” He asks. The door slams behind him before you can answer him, and your scream shakes everything in the room. You just barely catch one of the plants in the kitchen, a brown-potted one with ‘Shooky’ scrawled in Yoongi’s familiar handwriting, before it crashes to the ground. You return it to its place gently and huff another frustrated groan.

You wish you could explain it better, but you know he wouldn’t get it even if you could. He doesn’t understand what it’s like to be trapped between four walls and unable to do anything without massive amounts of effort. And he won’t, not unless he experiences it himself.

You’ve already watched him wither away. You’ve watched him become thin and sallow and a shadow of the Namjoon who first moved in, and you don’t know what you would do if he came back. You wouldn’t be alone anymore, of course, and you’d have him here with you, but at what cost? Namjoon was built for cherry blossoms and sunshine and the riverside. He would hate being trapped here even more than you do.

Still, you could have been more understanding of his view. You can admit that even being stuck in a shitty apartment wasn’t so terrible when you had Namjoon there to make you laugh or watch TV or read to you. It may even get better if he turned into a ghost; maybe you could hold his hands in yours, could feel him wrap his arms around you, could press kisses to his skin again.

You move to the window and stand there waiting. It’s not good for him to be out, even if the rain had stopped a few days ago and the forecasters promised it was the end of the downpours. He was still weak, you’d be surprised he even went anywhere to begin with but you know he likes to walk to calm himself down.

You worry for what feels like hours. You can’t focus on anything, not the way the sun starts to set, not the sound of cars passing or the neighbor leaving. You’ve worked yourself into knots by the time you hear his whistle echo up through the streets, nearly lost in the sound of some argument in the alley below you. You catch a brief view of his coat and smile when you see that he’s got some half-dead plant tucked under an arm. There’s the briefest glimpse of what looks like a Ca scrawled onto it, and your heart jumps in your throat.

You make your way to the stove, turning the heat up slightly too high so that it’ll be ready when he comes in. The arguing outside gets louder but you pay it no mind, pulling the honey out and setting it next to his favorite mug. You’re reaching for the tea when you hear something else. It definitely sounds like Namjoon’s voice, but it’s not in the hall or at the door like usual. It’s raised, like he’s yelling at someone, like it was just a while ago when he was fighting with you. A crash startles you and before you can even reach the window to see what’s going on, there’s a deafening bang.

You slam your fist against the window, watch the red mix with dirt, and the kettle isn't that only thing that screams.

“I think that’s the last of it,” Jeongguk says. His voice is scratchy and quiet, but it’s deafening in the silence of the apartment.

“Yeah,” Hoseok replies. His eyes are rimmed with red and his hands shake as he slides the last mug into a box. “Thanks for the help, Guk. I don’t, um.” He sniffles. “I don’t think I could’ve done it myself, y’know?”

“I know,” Jeongguk agrees. They’re quiet again, adjusting the things they’ve boxed and avoiding finishing what they’re doing.

“Oh, can you get that?” You don’t have to look to know what Hoseok is talking about. Jeongguk grunts an affirmation and makes his way over. It’s a strange feeling, having someone pass through you again for the first time since. His hands fly into the air as he tries to lift, clearly not having expected it to weigh anything.

His reflection in the window frowns, and he tries again, tugging on the pot.

“I can’t get it,” He says. “Do you think he glued these things down or something?”

“No,” Hoseok replies as he wanders over as well. “He used to pick them up to re-pot them, remember? And the others came up with no problem.”

“Well it’s stuck or something, you try.”

Hobi takes Jeongguk’s place and pulls hard at the plot, but your grip doesn’t waver. He huffs and disappears. When he returns, he’s got a butter knife in one hand that he does his best to slip under the pot. He tries hard to pry it up, so hard that you almost want to give in. You don’t though.

The knife clatters to the floor with as much force as Hoseok can put behind it, a curse following quickly behind it.

“Fuck it,” Hoseok says. His voice is shaky and you know he’s near tears again. “Just fuck it.”

“But that was-”

“You can try if you want, Guk, but I just-” He chokes back a sob, shaking his head and moving to pick up the boxes he’d set down. “I just can’t, okay?” He disappears out the door in a hurry, and you wish you could follow after him.

Jeongguk looks down at the small plant, with its painted periwinkle pot and soft leaves. He runs a quivering finger over the leaf and sniffles. He doesn’t try to lift it again, just stands and lets his tear soak into the soil.

“I wish you could come back to us,” He whispers. “We thought...we expected more time. It’s not...it’s not really fair, y’know? So if you can hear me, if you can come back to us, please do. Please.”

He turns and leaves, the apartment door slamming behind him like the lid of a casket. Your grip on Mang loosens now that you know no one’s going to try to take it. You’d watched them pack everything else up; you’d let them take the steamer trunk full of records, the shelf full of books and movies, the collection of mugs, the soft blankets, the ratty couch, the rest of the plants he’d cared for so tenderly.

Piece by piece they had packed Namjoon up and walked him out of the apartment, but this was the one piece they couldn’t have. This was his favorite and none of them knew how to care for it like you did, and you had to. You owed it to him. He deserved to come back to at least one familiar thing, never mind that you woke up not even a day later and it’s now been weeks. If there was one thing you wanted him to see when he got back, it was his favorite of his plants.

The sun glares into your eyes from where it shines down on the city. It reflects off something in the window from across the alley, would be blinding if you actually had eyes. You pay it no mind, focused instead on the remains of the broken brown pot down in the alley, the way you’ve pieced them together in your head a thousand times just to trace the word Casper with your eyes. You can almost hear his voice saying it, even now.

You whip around, eyes darting through the empty space of the apartment as your hands tighten around Mang.

All that rests there is empty space, mocking in its loneliness. You remember when he moved in, remember how it felt to test the boundaries of the apartment and wish you were free. The want is still there, to leave and never think of it again, never think of him. You know better, though. You could never escape the memory of him, the way he laughed and smiled and spoke. You could never abandon Mang. Not when he said he’d always come back to you.

You turn back to the window, cursing the sunlight with every other breath. It fades, slowly, into the black of night, before returning again, and again, and again. Days pass, each one feeling like years. Hoseok doesn’t appear to show the apartment, no one comes to collect the small periwinkle pot between your palms, and the ghost of his laugh echoes around you.

The sun blinds you again. You don’t even know how long it’s been, just that you’ve yet to move. Light glints off whatever hangs in the window across the alley. That's when you see it, a vague reflection in the weathered glass of a dimple and a grin, and warmth surrounds you.

“I told you I’d always come back, Casper.”

1K notes · View notes

your-iron-lung · 5 years

Text

No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross 10

aka ‘The House That Dripped Blood’; available to read on AO3 HERE

Story Synopsis: Some weird low-key occult parties start popping up that Steve can’t in good conscience ignore and takes it upon himself to investigate. Billy gets caught up in the consequences of his meddling, and isn’t it funny? For all the strange things the Upside Down has thrown his way, it’s werewolves that Steve has trouble accepting exist.

Chapter Word Count: 7927

Pairings: Eventual Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington

Genre: Supernatural/Drama/Horror-ish

Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Next Chapter: 11

Notes: if you follow me you may have noticed i havent posted in a while- this is bc i spend all my time playing ffxiv instead of setting aside determined amounts of time to spend on writing/drawing and i have a bunch of artist alleys coming up that im ill prepared for and im terrible at budgeting UH YEP bad excuse but WHAT CAN YA DO here we are

(ive also set up a ko-fi account if you want to give drop me some tippy tips if u enjoy the word things i do) ((no pressure tho))

"Bigfoot."

Hopper leaned back in his chair; let it creak and groan under his weight until he knew it was at its limit, and then pushed it a little more. He studied the no-nonsense expression on the hunter before him, and intrinsically knew that the man was speaking truth.

"Bigfoot," the old man said again, speaking a little sterner than he had before once he recognized Hopper's amiable expression of disbelief. "I seen't him out in the woods just the other day."

The aging man had lumbered into the police station almost immediately after Hopper came in, bundled in some worn hunting gear that looked almost as old as he was. The deputies had offered to speak with him after hearing his initial claim, but they'd been refused when Callahan couldn't stop smirking. The old hunter had insisted on speaking with Hopper, who leaned forward now, taking the stress off of his chair to take a sip of the coffee Florence had brought in for him. He didn't look at the old man as he drank.

"So let me get this straight," Hopper began, setting his coffee aside to rub at his forehead, "you came in first thing in the morning worried about a missing friend of yours, but now you're telling me you're worried about Bigfoot."

"You know me, Jim," the hunter said, a slight hint of pleading desperation edging out of his voice. "You know I ain't some crazy old coot. I ain't seen Lamm in a long while, and yessir I'm worried 'bout him, but when I went out to his cabin to check on him I seen it: I seen Bigfoot!"

As incredulous as the claim was, Hopper believed him- not about it being Bigfoot, exactly, but he believed that the man had seen something out there in the woods, and it had the possibility of being that something he'd spent the last two weeks fruitlessly searching for.

Regardless, he didn't want to let the old hunter know he was taking him seriously. The last thing he needed was for his community to think he believed in this sort of nonsense, but people in town were going missing, and people he knew were getting hurt: if his only lead should turn up in the form of an old man believing he'd caught sight of an urban legend, then so be it. He'd follow it through, but he'd be subtle about it.

"You sure it wasn't just a trick of the light or something, Wes? You know your eyes aren't what they used to be," Hopper remarked casually, softening his voice to let him down easy. "And this isn't the first time Lamm's gone missing; you know he's one of those types of shut ins. Remember those weeks he was gone hunting 'vampires'? He's the kind of guy who lives in his own head more than he lives out here, he'll turn up again on his own time."

The hunter's lips twitched into a frown. "Alright, maybe Lamm is a little off kilter," he relented, averting his eyes for a second, "and maybe it weren't Bigfoot, but the tracks it left were huge 'n mighty, by God, and I ain't seen nothin' else like it before. If it weren't Bigfoot, then at the very least it had big feet, Jim, and I ain't never seen feet quite like 'em."

Interest piqued, Hopper became more attentive. "How's that?"

"Well, they was stretched out lookin', for one." The hunter paused, tilting his head slightly as he tried to recall the details of what he'd seen out in the woods. He held his hands up, spaced apart in an approximation of how long the prints he'd found had been. "Human lookin', almost, which is what had me thinkin' it coulda been Bigfoot. They weren't the tracks of somethin' native 'round here, and I only caught but the barest glimpse of it, but it was tall, Jim; taller'n you or I."

That sounded right; the prints he'd found and unsuccessfully tracked were, as the hunter said, 'huge 'n mighty' and matched the description of what he'd just been told. It didn't take an expert's opinion (though he had consulted one) to discern that the markings just weren't natural. Hopper set his mug of coffee aside and pulled out a notepad from one of his desk drawers. He uncapped a pen and held it to the page for a moment before writing down a few preliminary notes for himself on the top line.

The hunter cocked his head and leaned forward to look at what he was writing and said, "That don't look official."

"Because it's not; this one's just gonna be between us, alright?" Hopper said, looking up to meet Wesley's blue, watery eyes. He held the stare long enough to get his point across, waiting for a sign of affirmation before looking back to the notepad and pressing the tip of the pen to the paper. "Tell me where and when exactly you saw this 'Bigfoot' of yours."

The day was cold and grey at its start, with harsh, biting winds ushering in thick clouds that blocked out any hope of the sun ever making an appearance. Steve eyed the sky apprehensively as he made his way back to his car, wary of the way the clouds looked as though they might start dropping hail on him at a moment's notice. Billy feigned disinterest as Steve opened the rear passenger door and leaned in to shove the box of things he'd bought at the Hunting & Camping store into the backseat. Even with his vision obscured in part by the sunglasses he'd elected to wear, he didn't miss the strong look of annoyance that graced Steve's features when he came around to the driver's seat and entered the car with a pout.

"That guy give you a hard time or something?" Billy asked as Steve buckled in and put the BMW into reverse, turning in his seat to hastily jerk the car out of the parking lot. "Why do you look like someone shit in your cereal?"

Steve clicked his tongue. "He just kept asking what a 'kid like me' needed with a bunch of chains and rope and shit. My god, he just would not let it go, like he thought I was trying to build my own sex dungeon or something. Fucking annoying."

"You mean that's not what we're doing?" Billy asked, grinning a bit at the way Steve's face pinched up in disgust. "What'd you say?"

"I told him the truth; said it was to tie up a werewolf. 'It's a full moon tonight, y'know? Gotta tie 'em down or they go all crazy on you', I said to him, and you know what he said to me then?" Steve asked, speeding out of the little downtown shopping area Hawkins played host to and sounding every bit as gossipy as Carol did when she caught wind of a scandal.

"How the fuck would I?" Billy drawled, turning away from the conversation to watch the scenery pass by disinterestedly.

"He said, 'Damn fool kids will never learn'," Steve said, ignoring him. "'Damn fool kids will never learn', like, what the hell does that mean?"

Billy shrugged. "Who knows? As long as he accepted daddy's plastic then what does it matter?"

Steve clicked his tongue again in annoyance and rolled his eyes. "Fuck you."

Feeling the beginnings of a headache coming on, Billy declined to retort. They rode on in silence, the chains in the box Steve had bought clinking together softly in the backseat before the radio was finally turned on to mask the sound.

Regardless of whether or not Steve actually believed something was going to happen to Billy that night, he couldn't deny that the whole day leading up to that evening just felt… off. From meeting up with Billy earlier that afternoon to go by the camping store, to grabbing lunch together before heading over to the Henderson's house, it all felt wrong.

It was something Steve had difficulty pinpointing the origins of, but as they began work on clearing out enough space in the cellar for Billy to do whatever it was he thought he was going to do, he soon came to realize that the feeling of wrongness seemed to stem from Billy himself.

Few words could better describe Billy than 'annoying' or 'smart-mouthed', but he'd been uncharacteristically tight-lipped all day. He'd become a remarkably dull version of himself, and Steve wasn't sure quite how to handle that.

Usually one to argue and bite back at everything Steve said, when he'd begun dishing out instructions on how best to clear out some floor space in the cellar, Billy hadn't talked back to him a single time; merely lit a cigarette and blinked at him slowly, silently acknowledging what had been asked of him before getting on with it.

It was unsettling. Steve could almost say that he hated how submissive Billy was because of how used he'd gotten to the back-talk and smart-ass remarks Billy usually had ready for him, and though, yes, there were times he had wished for this kind of attitude from him, the silence and absolute subordination coupled with all of the other behavioral changes Billy was exhibiting were enough to set Steve on edge.

Billy kept tonguing the gaps in his teeth where they'd fallen out over the course of the week, and he never seemed to realize he wasn't alone. Sometimes he'd jump at the sound of Steve's voice, or shake his head and crease his brow in confusion when he turned around to see Steve moving stuff somewhere behind him, but arguably the worst part of it all was that he stank.

He'd tried to mask it with an overabundance of cologne that had nearly suffocated Steve when they began working in closer quarters, but buried beneath that was a hint of something that smelled awfully rotten. If he had to, Steve could liken it to the stench of the monster they'd encountered in the woods, but he chose not to, instead chalking it up to a severe case of nervous b.o. or something. The implications that the scents could be related bothered him too deeply to believe, and even then he wasn't sure he really wanted to know what the source of the smell was.

The stench of decay emanating from Billy's person was worrisome enough on its own, but with so much to do in order to get ready before sunset, Steve had a hard time figuring out where to primarily apply his focus: there were simply too many things going on for him to worry about one thing more than another.

The giant hole in the wall that Dart made to tunnel out of the cellar was his immediate concern, but Dustin had done a good job of hiding it from his mother by placing a tall shelf in front of it, essentially blocking it off. That didn't mean it wasn't entirely inaccessible, but Steve wasn't sure what more he could do about it. In all honesty, he'd forgotten about it until he'd tried to move the shelf aside and then found himself peeking into the eerie tunnel. He'd knocked over several things in his haste to put the shelf back in place, but Billy hadn't seemed to notice it, and if he didn't, maybe he wouldn't think to use it if- or when- he lost himself to whatever supernatural effects he was experiencing.

"Big if, though," Steve muttered aloud to himself. Turning away from the shelf, he looked over to where Billy was inspecting some old power tools, turning a nail gun over in his hands before setting it back in the box he'd pulled it out of. "So, are we good or what? This baby-proofed enough for you?" Steve asked, startling Billy out of whatever ruminations he'd been lost to.

Billy looked at Steve blankly, face impassive and emotionless. He frowned, and then looked around himself as though he'd forgotten where he was. When he spoke, his voice was monotone and devoid of his usual arrogance as he said, "I don't know, Harrington; is it?"

"You tell me, man, this was your idea." Steve watched as Billy returned his focus on the box of tools he'd originally been rummaging through. Picking up a hammer, Billy balanced its weight in his hands before gripping the handle tightly. Steve distrusted the look in Billy's eye as he held it. "What are you, a child? Quit rifling through their shit, put it back," he said.

Billy didn't reply or even acknowledge that he'd heard him. Ignoring Steve's demand, he stepped up to the abandoned work bench to splay his left hand out over the wood and lifted the ballpeen up.

"What the fuck are you doing? Put it down," Steve said again, his voice rising slightly in pitch when he understood what Billy was doing. He started towards him in an effort to stop him, but halted when the hammer was brought crashing down.

It missed his hand, but the force of the impact splintered the wooden table's surface. Steve gaped as Billy turned around, a cocky little smile turning up his lips.

"Someone could get hurt real bad down here if they weren't careful, huh, Harrington?" he said, a fierceness that Steve hated to admit he'd missed charging his voice. "But we've been real careful cleaning this shithole out, haven't we, pally?"

"You sick piece of shit, give me that," Steve snapped, snatching the hammer away from Billy's pliant grip. "Fuck you, Hargrove; you could've just said you wanted to move this shit out of here."

"Had you pegged as being more of a visual learner," Billy sneered as Steve threw the hammer back into the box of tools. "Your concern was touching, though, really."

"You're the one who came asking me for help, fuckface. Begged me, almost, if I'm remembering right. 'Oh, Steve, help me, I'm so scared of fake movie monsters!'"

Steve hadn't meant to rise to the taunt, but Billy's insufferable attitude had him stooping to his level as he hoisted the hefty box of tools in his arms and lugged them over to the stairway. Billy laughed dryly at Steve's mocking tone.

"We both wish that fucking thing had been fake," he said as Steve placed the box on the ground at the foot of the stairs beside the box of supplies he'd bought earlier. They were both quiet for a moment, their attempt at a conversation dying as quickly as it had been brought on.

"Only one thing left to do then," Steve said morosely.

Billy blinked and turned to face the stairway, eyes rising slowly up to where the cellar doors were propped open wide. Steve felt the guilt of having to lock him in prematurely and had to remind himself that he wanted to be locked in.

"Better hop to it then, Harrington," Billy said lowly, lips curling back into a familiar grin, but without all his teeth in place to flesh it out, Steve found the display to be more unsettling than annoying. "Let's get this sex dungeon set up."

Steve grimaced. "Not even in your wildest dreams, Hargrove."

"Nothing's off the table in my dreams, pretty boy." Billy breathed out a small laugh at the disgusted look on Steve's face, but the grin he'd been displaying slowly fell away. "Is it getting dark yet?"

"Uh, kind of, but the sun hasn't set yet," Steve replied, stepping up into the stairwell to check the status of the sky. It was as dull and grey as it had been all day, the overcast weather acting as a harbinger for the snowfall the local meteorologist had foretold was coming. "If you took off those fucking sunglasses you'd be able to tell."

"These are for your benefit as much as mine," Billy snapped, frowning suddenly.

"Yeah, okay, whatever that means," Steve said dismissively as he began to fish out the cords of rope from the box, letting them spool out onto the ground before gathering them into his hands. "How do you uh, how do you want to do this?"

"Aw, is this kitten's first time tying someone up?" Billy purred, not moving from where he stood in the middle of the cellar, directly under the light. "Who knew 'King' Steve's favourite flavor was vanilla."

Steve rolled his eyes as he brought the ropes over, wrinkling his nose at the mixed smell of rot and cologne that got stronger with proximity. "I've dated girls kinkier than you'd know what to do with," he retorted as he gestured for Billy to hold out his hands.

"Oh please," Billy said with a snort, "there are no kinky girls in Hawkins or I would've found them by now."

"You're obviously not looking hard enough," Steve muttered in response, gesturing again for Billy to hold out his hands.

Shrugging out of his leather jacket and tossing it over the work table he'd splintered, Billy held his hands up obediently and watched stoically as Steve wound the rope around his wrists, binding his hands together roughly.

"What's should our safe word be?" Billy teased, smirking as Steve wound another, longer length of rope over the original knot.

"There is no safe word because this isn't a sex thing!" Steve insisted angrily.

Flustered, he sighed irritably as he wound the long part of the rope around Billy's waist, hating how close he had to get in order to make sure the rope was tight enough, though Billy seemed to be enjoying how close he'd gotten. He kept shifting his weight around, trying, it seemed, to get Steve into a more compromising position. Annoyed, but determined to finish, Steve did his best to ignore Billy's constant movement and the disgusting, rotten musk that was wafting off of his person to finish tying him up.

"Why do you fucking stink so goddamn badly?" Steve finally asked with a scowl, repressing the urge to gag as he tied the ropes off into a clumsy knot. He stumbled away from Billy, reaching up to pinch his nostrils shut so he wouldn't have to smell the rot anymore, but the rancid scent seemed to have lodged itself deep into his nose. "You smell like a dead Calvin Klein model or something, holy shit, did you use a whole fucking bottle?"

The amusement Billy had held while taunting Steve left his face. His smirk shrunk into an awkward grimace as he looked away in embarrassment.

"I don't know, alright?" he admitted bitterly. "It doesn't matter how much I bathe, and between that and my eyes I have no idea what the fuck's going on with me."

"What about your eyes?" Steve asked hesitantly, unsure if he really wanted to know the reasoning behind why Billy had insisted on wearing sunglasses all day.

Billy faltered for a moment, hesitating briefly before reaching up and plucking the sunglasses off his face. With both hands bound together, he awkwardly folded the legs against the lenses and tucked them into the collar of his button up. He turned his gaze to Steve, who couldn't help but suck in a slight breath of surprise.

His eyes were so bloodshot they looked ready to start bleeding straight out of the sockets. There were hardly any whites left in the sclera to be seen as Billy winked at him, looking immensely uncomfortable at the way Steve was gaping openly at him.

"Do they- hurt? Or whatever?" Steve asked, unconsciously taking a few steps forward to get a better look. In the dim lighting of the basement, even the blues of Billy's eyes looked reddish.

"What's it to you if they do?" Billy snapped, suddenly irritable. He squared his jaw and looked away, unable to face the amount of concern Steve was showing him.

The worry Steve felt for the both of them in that moment grew stronger as he backed off, letting the matter of the changes in Billy's physicality drop, despite how alarming they were. "If I don't hear anything an hour after the sun goes down, I'll let you out," Steve said abruptly as he walked backwards towards the stairwell, grasping for the hand rail behind him blindly, unsure why he was so reluctant now to let Billy out of his sight. It was what they'd agreed upon earlier, and he said it meaning for it to sound reassuring, but the way Billy's lips twitched made it apparent he didn't interpret it that way.

Billy didn't respond.

"Well, uh, I guess that's it then," Steve said as he bent down, placing his box of chains atop the box of tools Billy had been messing around with before lifting them up together to carry them up and out of their man-made dungeon.

The cellar doors shrieked loudly as they were closed, a high pitched agony that erupted when the metal grinded against itself uncooperatively. Steve didn't mind that so much as he hated the sound the chains made as he wove them through the door handles, reminding him of what he was doing and who he was imprisoning as the steel rattled sharply against the doors. He winced at the commotion, but continued to loop them through the small door handles until no more could be fit between them. He tested their sturdiness by attempting to pull them open, and to his pleasure, they remained shut. The doors were secured; the cellar, as far as he was concerned, was now a suitable prison. All that was left of him now was to play the role of the jailor appropriately.

He stared down at his handiwork for a moment before the cold, blowing winds prompted him to seek shelter. Already a few snowflakes were fluttering out of the sky, flying into his cheeks as he turned away, re-gathering the box of tools in his arms and headed for the door Dustin promised he'd leave a key for.

Searching under the backdoor mat, Steve found the promised key, and true to the rest of Dustin's word, the entire home was empty, save for the cat that chirped a greeting for him from atop the kitchen counter. With a deep intake of breath Steve glanced at his watch, stepped inside, and shut the door behind him, wondering if he really was prepared for the worst. In the trunk of his car his bat waited for him, ready to be put to use just in case shit really did hit the fan, but he found himself questioning if he'd really be able to use it; bludgeoning monsters to death was one thing, but turning it on a boy he knew was only a monster figuratively was something else entirely.

For both his and Billy's sakes, he hoped it wouldn't come to that.

Shrugging out of his thick coat, Steve set it down beside him as he took a seat on the Henderson's couch. He glanced at his watch again, dismayed by the fact that time wasn't progressing as fast as he wished it was and sat in anxious worry about what the rest of the night might have in store.

But at least he was comfortable and warm.

The cellar was not.

It wasn't the cold that Billy minded, so much as it was the anticipation: when would the transformation start? Exactly at sundown? A little before? A little after? Would he actually end up transforming? And why the fuck did the word 'transform' make him so damn uncomfortable? The unknown factors surrounding his circumstances were almost worse than any of the physical symptoms he'd been experiencing as of late, and he'd been experiencing a lot.

Anxiety wasn't something Billy had a lot of experience with, but it was the only thing he could think of that explained why his heart had been beating oddly all day. It was running at a notably higher rate, as though he'd been playing basketball or working out extraneously, and brought on palpitations he wasn't used to dealing with at the elevated speed.

In short he felt terrible. His whole body ached like it was going through puberty again. Both his arms and legs were sore in ways that mimicked the aches that came with growing pains when he'd had them, but he couldn't understand why he would begin to hurt in that way again. He hadn't had the energy to work out in two days despite eating practically anything he could get his hands on, so the soreness in his limbs was unwarranted. Either his body was preparing itself for the coming night, or he was having an incredibly drawn-out heart attack.

Standing at the foot of the stairwell, Billy felt the cold permeating in through the closed opening and moved away to find a better spot to wait. He wanted rub his arms to bring some warmth into them, but couldn't with the way they were bound. Already the ropes were beginning to dig into his wrists, rubbing uncomfortably against his skin as he realized he wasn't actually that cold anyway, despite the frigid weather; his body temperature had been on a steady incline leading up to now, leaving him with a rosy complexion and a near constant fever, the long-term effects of which left him feeling severely disoriented.

He could barely remember meeting up at Steve's house only a few hours ago to carpool to his kid friend's house, riding with the windows down in spite of the severe wind-chill as they went into town to get lunch and buy rope. Even though they'd ridden together, he couldn't remember now if they'd actually talked about anything or not. All he could remember were the low tones of the radio and the resonating throbs of the wind as it swooped in through the open windows, rushing to fill the audial space between them. It was as though his mind had been steeped in a fog, and he couldn't accurately think through it: everything was clouded over, incomprehensible, like waking up the morning after a bender and being unable to remember everything he'd done the night before, but knowing all the same that he'd taken part in some memorable shit.

Would there be pain, he wondered, and would it come on as suddenly as it had to the character in the movie he'd made Steve watch? Even though 'American Werewolf' was just a movie, stories like that had to spawn from some sort of truth, didn't they?

The dim little lightbulb that hung overhead flickered briefly, drawing Billy's attention to it as he took a seat at the work table's bench, wishing his eyes weren't a dry and sore as they were.

Coming from above, he could hear the muffled sounds of a TV show permeating through the cellar's ceiling. He couldn't help but think ill of Steve in that moment, but if their situations had been reversed, he probably would have been doing the same thing; he couldn't fault Harrington for finding a way to pass the time, though he wished he had something similar to do for himself. There was nothing interesting to hold his attention, and time passed at a dreadfully slow rate.

Stretching out on the bench, he laid himself down slowly, mindful of which parts of his back hurt the most, and gazed up at the cement overhead disinterestedly. He listened to the muffled sounds of the distant television, trying to conjure an image in his mind that corresponded with what little dialogue he could hear, but the rapid beating of his heart overpowered the noises coming from the TV. He closed his eyes and focused on his breathing in an attempt to lower his heart rate, but it just kept going, pounding in a determined rhythm that seemed to be quickening with each passing minute. A bead of sweat trickled down from his scalp and over his ear as he wondered if the tingling he felt in the tips of his fingers was because of the cold or from the ropes being tied too tight.

He flexed his fingers, opening and closing his hands into a fist to try and bring sensation back into his fingertips, but to no avail. They remained numb, and the cause of which eluded him.

Frowning, Billy stiffly sat up and began to pinch at his skin, belatedly realizing that the numbness was spreading slowly down the lengths of his fingers, a sensation that sent a chill running down the length of his spine.

"Oh," he said. "Oh shit."

The pain, when he finally did begin to feel it, started in his feet. There were still thirty minutes before the sun went down.

Billy licked his lips nervously as he tried to get his boots off, his numb fingers and bound hands fumbling uselessly with the laces as the pain centralized in his toes and grew in sudden intensity. He was no stranger to pain, but this was unlike anything he'd ever felt before: it was sharp and stabbing, with each throb of pain stemming from the bones in his toes, as though they were growing more pointed in an attempt to pierce their way through his skin as they elongated. He could feel them cracking; each joint slowly popping free of itself as the bones began to push themselves forward.

"Oh, shit," he repeated, and could hear the muffled sounds of a laugh track from whatever sitcom Steve had turned on upstairs roaring in delight as he struggled to finally pull his boots off.

The stabbing sensation didn't relent, even once his shoes lay discarded by his feet. He peeled away his socks with shaking hands and stared down at his toes.

They'd turned a bright, beet red and were bulging like they might burst apart, his skin bubbling up around toenails that were already starting to peel off. He couldn't help the whimper as he tentatively felt them, a pain like touching a freshly popped, skinless blister causing him to draw his fingers back.

It was real. It was happening.

Sweating freely now, he reached away from his feet to brush his dampened hair away from his forehead as sweat rolled down the sides of his face. He paused when he felt his hair pull free from his scalp, clinging to the back of his hand stubbornly. Billy stared at the loose, curly strands with a horrified expression and reached up with a shaking hand to grab more. When he pulled, a handful of his hair came away easily, eliciting another whimper from deep within his throat. Disgusted and frightened, he threw his hair away to the floor.

Breathing quickly, he hastily rubbed his hands free of the loose strands in a panic and tried to calm himself. His whole body trembled as he breathed in deeply through his nose, wondering if he should try to call out to Steve to alert him that the worst case scenario was indeed unfolding. Another laugh track from upstairs came through the ceiling as he felt a sharp, sudden stab of pain in his ribs, prompting him to gasp loudly and curl forward over himself. He could actually feel some part of his ribcage shifting inside his torso as he tucked his arms in to his sides. Any lingering thoughts of trying to remain calm left him as he transitioned from panic to full on fear.

He stood up not knowing what he was going to do, but regretted it instantly: as soon as he put weight on his foot, his ankle collapsed in on itself and brought him to the floor. A shout almost came out with his fall, but he managed to internalize the pain as he was used to doing and grit his teeth as his foot essentially broke itself in half.

The central part of his foot that arched snapped without warning. Billy swore loudly and reached for his foot instinctively, wanting to hold the break in place, but he couldn't bear the agony that came with the contact. Warm tears leaked from his eyes, and when his other lateral arch also split in half, he couldn't help but cry out.

From up above, the noises coming from the television ceased. Steve must have heard him and was listening for him now, trying to gauge whether or not he should intervene. Billy clenched his jaw tighter, determined to keep quiet, but gasped loudly when two of his molars gave out under the pressure, snapping to the side and coming loose of his gumline. The copper taste of blood filled his mouth as he spat the teeth out, shuddering uncontrollably when he felt the vertebrae in his spine begin to pop, one by one, pushing up against his skin that was quickly beginning to feel too tight.

Huffing in great breaths of air, he panted heavily as the bones of his tones finally pierced through his skin, causing most of the flesh surrounding them to burst open like little balloons. Blood splattered across the floor in gruesome, miniature arcs and Billy finally, finally became undone. He shrieked, unable to keep silent any longer as new appendages could be seen inside the flayed bits of bloody skin, slowly growing outward, already a part of him.

Warm tears of pain streaked down his face in thick lines as the skin of his feet continued to be ripped apart, making way for more muscle, new flesh. He wiped at his eyes helplessly and thought he could hear Steve's voice distantly calling out his name, asking if everything was alright.

He blinked, his vision blurred by the tears that would not clear away as he pulled himself over to the stairway.

Shaking wildly all over, Billy stretched out on the floor, realizing belatedly that the waistband of his jeans was growing tighter and tighter. Hissing sharply, he cursed himself for not having the foresight to undress himself as he hastily tried to undo his belt. A pain similar to the initial agony he'd felt in his toes was beginning to manifest itself in his fingers as both of his hands slowly began to turn red, swelling up under the bonds of the rope as he fumbled with the buckle, desperately trying to get it to come free.

"Fuck!" he shouted in frustration, his clothing growing ever tighter as his body continued to bloat. He felt like he was being pinched in half with his belt acting as an unneeded tourniquet. "Fuck! Fuck!"

"Hey! Talk to me Hargrove, what's going on?"

Steve's worried voice trilled down through the cellar doors as he continued vocalizing his frustrations. Billy felt an organ in his abdomen shift out of place before popping, prompting him to groan and curl in on himself before he threw up. His couldn't undo his belt as his vision began to darken.

"Hargrove!" Steve shouted, banging a fist against the steel door. "What the hell's going on? Talk to me!"

"Fuck you!" Billy screamed, unable to articulate anything else as he tried to rub the blackness out of his eyes, but the more he pressed his fingers to them, they more they began to hurt.

A pressure was building up behind them the more he rubbed, and as it increased, his vision grew ever darker. He kept blinking, over and over, feeling his eyes bulge out of their sockets and against his eyelids, trying now to keep his eyeballs in place. He was hyperventilating when he finally went blind, the pressure behind his eyes becoming intolerable eyes before it finally came too much, and his eyes popped free.

He felt them slide out onto over his checks and onto the floor, the slimy, blood-slick nerves leaving tracks of blood on his face as he became totally and completely blind.

"No," he whispered to himself, retching again on the floor as he scrambled across the cement, trying to find the stairs, unable to see. "No, no! This isn't real!"

Beyond the cellar doors, Steve had his ear pressed against the slight crack between the panels, desperately trying to understand what was going on. He wasn't sure what to make of the noises he was hearing, unable to determine if Billy was just trying to mess with him or if he was in actual distress.

"Hargrove," he said impatiently, turning his head to try and peak in through the crack to get a glimpse of what was going on, "you gotta start talking to me, man; what the hell's going on down there?"

"I'm fucking blind," he heard Billy shout, his voice rife with fear. "I can't see anything!"

His voice was shaking as he spoke, and Steve knew then that whatever was happening was legitimate; Billy wasn't one to openly show weakness.

"Okay, stay calm," Steve stammered, but he wasn't sure if that was actually sound advice or not. "It's- it's going to be okay, okay?"

Billy howled, and Steve understood that the pain that carried with his voice must have been terrible to get him to shriek like that. He licked his lips anxiously, not knowing what support he could possibly offer him. He continuously opened and shut his mouth, words of encouragement dying on his tongue before he could manage to speak them.

And then, all at once, the cacophony of agony ceased.

Steve couldn't hear anything over the rapid sound of his breathing for a moment before he finally spoke: "Hargrove? Is… are you okay?"

"Hurts." Billy's voice, quiet, strained, and barely audible over the sounds of things (flesh, fabric) slowly tearing, sounded disconcertingly like he was speaking with a throat full of water. It was gargling and grotesque; completely unlike the smooth, honeyed voice he'd become known for.

"Okay, what, uh, what… what hurts?" Steve whispered in response, fear quieting his previously urgent tone.

"Everything."

"Shit," Steve said to himself, backing away from the cellar door panels as the sounds of something large and heavy being knocked over made him jump. "Just, uh, stay calm," he said, though he wasn't sure if he was saying it to himself or Billy. From down below, he heard Billy groan loudly before going silent again.

Steve's heart was pounding as he hesitated, unsure of what to do. All the details of Billy's haphazardly concocted plan fled his mind as he tried to think back on what they'd agreed to do if something ended up happening, and his first instinct was to open the doors to go down and check on him. He looked at the chains wrapped tightly around the door handles and bit his lip before crouching down and pressing his eye to the crack.

The overhead light wasn't bright enough to reveal much, but at the base of the stairwell there was a small circle of illumination. Steve squinted, ignoring the cold of the steel as he pressed his face against the door, trying to see all that he could.

Blood stains. Torn bits of… something he couldn't quite make out. Dark masses on the stairwell; lots of evidence that pointed towards Billy transforming, but no trace of Billy himself.

"Hargrove," Steve whispered, and then shook his head to clear himself of his cowardice. "Hargrove," he said again, louder and with more emphasis, "dude, you have to talk me through what's happening down there."

He waited, unconsciously holding his breath as he waited for a reply. It was steadily growing darker as the sun slowly sank, making it all the harder to see into the cellar from the tiny slit. Frowning and unable to see anything, Steve turned his head and pressed his ear against the door. From somewhere in the depths of the cellar he could hear something breathing heavily. It was moving, too; he could hear something shuffling, moving around the floor space cautiously.

When he turned his head again to see through the crack, he caught a glimpse of... something large and hulking cross under the light, tall enough to set the lightbulb swinging. He couldn't help but suck in a sharp breath of air, his lungs and throat burning with the sting of the cold weather. The thing- whatever Billy had become- halted just outside the rim of light. Entranced, Steve found he couldn't move as it emitted a low, threatening growl that sounded more like a man impersonating a dog than an actual beast.

From his limited viewpoint, he couldn't see the way the muscles in its legs were tightening, or how it had begun to crouch; he didn't have time to react as it sprang forward, jumping up the stairs in a single leap to ram itself against the doors.

The chains held the doors shut, but the sudden impact smashed the metal against Steve's nose and soon all he could smell was blood as it drained out of his nostrils. He fell backwards, holding his nose as the Billy-creature growled again. Horrified, Steve could only sit in the snow and watch as the doors lurched forward when Billy rammed against them again, trying to escape. The second impact loosened the restraints, and all Steve could do in that moment was watch as they rattled uselessly in place, beginning to slip through the handles as they hadn't been properly locked into place.

Cursing to himself, staggered to his feet and rushed to grab the chains, but as Billy threw his body against the doors again it soon became obvious that even if the doors stayed shut, they were about to pop free of their hinges entirely. Blood dripped down over his lips and onto the metal panels as he tried to think of what he could possibly do to counteract the damage Billy had done. In an act of desperation, he threw himself against the steel and hoped that his added bodyweight would be enough to keep them in place.

If it managed to do anything, he couldn't tell. Almost immediately Billy was throwing himself against the doors again, nearly bucking Steve off.

"Stop!" Steve cried out, grasping for the chains to hold them in place. His fingers scrabbled against the cold steel links even as Billy let out another deep, throaty growl. With the doors as loose as they were, Steve was almost certain the doors wouldn't survive another body-slam. "Give it up, Hargrove!" Steve said again, desperately. "Just- fuck, Billy, stop!"

He braced himself for another impact, but it never came. Eyes closed in anticipation, Steve blinked them open and exhaled shakily, his fingers trembling as he let the chains go. Crystalized air puffed out in front of his face over and over as he rolled off the doors and stood up unsteadily, trying to wipe away the blood that had already frozen over and turned to crust on his upper lip. Somehow, miraculously, his pleading had worked, but before he could take comfort in that fact, other disturbing sounds began to creep back up to him from down below.

Things were being tossed around; the metallic clang of old paint cans being bounced off the floors and walls mixed with the hoarse, angry vocalizations of the creature Billy had become made his blood run colder than the air currently was. The noises Billy was making were at once both animalistic and human, deep and throaty and more akin to the bellows of a moose than a man or wolf.

Steve stood in front of the cellar doors not knowing what to do. Already their plan was falling apart, and he was quickly becoming aware of how vastly unprepared he was to handle the situation. He wanted the security of the bat in his trunk, but didn't trust himself to leave the doors unattended for the length of time it would take him to run back inside and grab his keys to get it, but he felt so weak without it.

Another loud, crashing noise came from within and Steve stilled, listening intently. Faintly, he could hear Billy snuffling about, and after the sun finally completely descended, all was quiet. His nose was throbbing as he stood attentively, but when nothing more could be heard, his stomach sank.

With trembling hands and his mind screaming at him to stop, he knelt by the doors and slowly unwound the chains from the handles. The fact that he couldn't hear anything coming from within didn't sit well with him; he had to make sure Billy was still down there.

He tried to shift the chains as quietly as possible, but with how nervous he was, he had a hard time keeping his hands steady. They rattled noisily against the door, grating on his already frazzled nerves as they slid free. Heart pounding madly, Steve carefully pulled the doors open and took the first step down into the cellar.

It was silent. He couldn't hear anything as he hesitantly took a second step, mentally berating himself over and over for being stupid enough to walk defenseless into the lion's mouth. He had no idea what Billy was capable of now, or if he'd even recognize him enough to (hopefully) have enough sense to not harm him. The lightbulb that dangled freely from the ceiling was swaying, throwing its light around erratically, showing him glimpses of the gore that lined the steps.

Eyes wide, Steve gagged at the sight of the flayed strips of bloodied skin that were splattered near everywhere. He had to avert his eyes as he took another step, making slow progress as he was careful not to step in any of the mess. At the bottom of the stairs he warily peered around the walls, hoping he'd only stuck his head into the lion's mouth figuratively. To his immediate relief, but long-term dismay, there was no trace of Billy to be seen in the space of the cellar.

Exhaling deeply, Steve tried to even out his breathing as he came to stand in the middle of the room, looking around to assess the damage. As the swinging lightbulb steadied, he turned towards where the shelf that was hiding the tunnel had been and found it on the ground, knocked to its side and several feet away from where it had originally been positioned. His shoulders drooped at the realization of Billy's escape.

He went and stood before the opening of the tunnel and felt all hope of remedying the situation vanish. A numbness overtook him as he recognized his responsibilities of keeping Billy captive had changed; he was the only one who knew about Billy's circumstances, and he was the only one who could do anything about it now. Distantly, and much further away then he would've liked, he could hear the muted, labored sounds of Billy's breathing as he escaped confinement through the underground system.

The burden of his responsibilities threatened to overwhelm him in that instant, but instead of letting himself be overtaken by despair, Steve took a deep, steadying breath and rolled his shoulders back. He hesitated for only a minute before he took charge and ran in after him, disregarding his urgent need to turn back and get his bat out of the car. There was no time, he thought; no time to get a weapon, no time to get a flashlight. If Billy was now as the werewolf in the woods was, then he was capable of speeds greater than Steve could muster, and every second mattered. If he lost his trail now, then it would be lost to him entirely. There was no time; he had to go now or he wouldn't go at all.

Alone and unarmed Steve ran, chasing after Billy into the dark, cold tunnel, hoping he would be able to catch him in time, and dreading the repercussions that would come if he couldn't.

#harringrove #harringrove fic #billy hargrove/steve harrington #billy/steve #steve harrington #billy hargrove #werewolf!billy #slow burn #long fic #stranger things #stranger things fic

29 notes · View notes

sidhewrites · 5 years

Photo

World Building. 1600 Words. Summaries of a few folk tales from around the world of Coriander of Cresce. I definitely want to add more though, so if anyone has any suggestions, please feel free to send them my way. As always, feel free to send Asks or Messages about what’s written or anything you’re curious about.

Cresce

The Maiden and the Knight, or Silent Little Poppy: Poppy is a young scullery maid who wanted to escape her miserable life while the Knight is a young man who isn’t named and got tired of being always on the move so they swapped places. Poppy fights in tournaments and learns to fight and becomes a soldier of the realm while the knight learns to clean and cook and they write letters of their adventures and fell in love and married.

Horrid Mungora and Rotten Lobetta: Two ugly witch wives who live in a forest and raise pigsies and play pranks on travellers, but usually get it turned back on them in some way and sometimes die at the end of the tale. There’s a BUNCH of stories about them.

One about them idk trying to lure kids in to eat them, but end up getting so involved with the luring kids that they step in their own snare trap and are left to hang by their toes above their own cauldron of stew.

One where they argue so long about what to save first in case something goes wrong that when something DOES go wrong (A boulder falls from the cliffside) it crushes them and everything they love.

Trying to steal horses from a farmer but then they end up getting all the flies that were bothering the horses instead.

Lavender the Shoemaker: An old woman who had no children and lost her husband at a young age, and was plagued by pigsies. She lured them all into one place with a bunch of shiny buckles, then trapped them each within a shoe that became enchanted and cured the bunions and sores of anyone who bought it from her.

Lady Hollyoak’s Crown of Leaves: A story from cresce taking place in Gaelgallah. A young elfin woman who travelled the world and collected leaves from every part of the world and put them together into a crown and idk something about how curiosity is a good trait but taking things from their natural habitat is bad so don’t take things that don’t belong to you kids, maybe the kingdom was plagued by pigsies whose leaves were stolen for Holloak’s crown. And she ends up returning each and every leaf and returning home in shame.

Felice the Bold: A young woman who could speak with wolves and refused to wear clothes and cut off her hair and ran away from home because no-one could love a girl like that but she didn’t want to be loved anyway. She became the leader of a pack of wolves and defended a forest from soldiers who wanted to cut it down.

Horace: A horse in the wrong place at the wrong time and got magicked into a human by a local witch. Through a series of misadventures, he ended up becoming king. It was written to make fun of King Horace, a notoriously inept king from a few hundred years ago.

The Ugly Shoes: One day a cobbler makes just the ugliest pair of shoes. I can’t remember WHAT they looked like. They’re just disgusting and she gets kicked out of her house for it. So she wanders the countryside and they follow her everywhere she goes, just looking for someone brave enough to put them on their feet but nobody ever does. Legend has it they’re still wandering to this day. Alternate ending: But legend has it that they did find someone and that that person has the world’s ugliest feet. And oh? It just so happens I DO remember what they look like -- and then you’d describe the shoes of whoever you’re talking to, or describe your own shoes as a practical joke.

Ninoom

Old Iskender: an ancient king who rejected the throne and arranged marriage and politics and left to sail the world instead, learned to speak with merfolk, and supposedly created some of the first maps of the world beyond the sea. Talking about how just because someone trained for a position all their life doesn’t mean it’s their passion and let people figure out what they want to do with their lives because not all talents and passions and people are the same. (Everyone is a genius but judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree and all that).

The name for sea foam in Ninoomi comes from the same language as the word beard because it’s said he sailed the sea so much he became a part of it and the waves are his beard or some such and he grew a long white beard.

Six Gold Rings: A king had six fingers and had a ring on each finger. He married a Seer who he mistreated and who he forced to tell him the future, and made bets on horse races and trades and everything but he got worse and worse to the point where he couldn’t be convinced he could be wrong ever. He usually said “I bet one of my six fingers that X will/won’t happen,” and usually it did so the person he bet would have to give him all the gold in their home or w/e. BUt then the seer said he was going to fall ill and lose all his gold so he sent the seer into the desert and made his own bets without them and ultimately lost all but his thumb and was thrown into the desert where he met the seer who had joined a nomadic group. They said he could join them if he agreed to a wager that it would rain that night, and if he won he could join them. So he said “I wager my thumb that it will not rain tonight” because it hadn’t rained in a hundred years but the seer told them earlier it was, and he lost his thumb and was left to wander the desert forever. This is the start of the phrase “You gonna bet your fingers on that?” or “Let’s bet six fingers” or other variations, meaning you’re doing something stupid and you ought to know better or your hubris will be your downfall.

Nashoth

Kate the Meek: a REAL dwarven toymaker, a young woman who didn’t speak but was very good at woodwork and stuffed animals. She was considered odd because usually it’s clay and stone carving, but hey. And so the dwarven prince who was like 5 would not stop crying and it went on for months so the queen said “hey. Whoever can make this kid can join the household” so kate shows up and the baby says he can’t play w stone toys bc they keep hurting his hands so she gives him wooden toys and dolls he immediately brightens up. Then the queen is like hey try that on the princex who’s been morose for months bc someone broke their heart so kate shows up and listens to what they have to say and the two of them fall in love and she makes lots of dolls and becomes queen the end

Beard Pigsies: A children’s song that talks about a dwarf who didn’t brush or wash their beard and got crumbs in it. Pigsies took up residence and he got so weighed down he couldn’t do anything and starved to death. Keep your beards clean kids or else BAD things will happen to you.

The Candlemaker: A dwarf who became so obsessed with their craft and making the Perfect Candle they did nothing but make candles to the point where they ignored their spouse and family and children and worked through holidays and everything. Finally, they did what they thought was the perfect candle, and took it out to show everyone, only to find they had missed the ceremonies and weddings of all their children, their spouse had divorced and remarried, and no-one liked them anymore. Be friendly with everyone kids. Its ok to not be perfect, because life is more important.

Wedding Wine: Literally that one story where two people got married and tradition said pour your best wine into the vat for celebrating and this one family decided that they’d just give water bc who would notice one bit of water among wine. But then when it was the wedding day and it came time to break out the wine it was only water and as it turns out everyone did the same thing the family did. A drop in a bucket goes a long way kids, don’t do nothing just because you assume other people are gonna pick up your slack.

Gaelgallah

The Stars are Whispering: It’s in old elfish and everyone who doesn’t speak the language thinks it’s a reverential, almost spiritual song based on the tune alone, but actually it’s all these puns about how the stars are huge gossips so don’t do anything bad at night because the stars are gonna tell EVERYONE. It goes on for 57 verses and chronicles various stupid things people have done and the shame that came upon them. It’s a game among elf kids to see who can memorize the most verses at once, and people make up their own verses as well. Popular for teaching old elfish grammar and pronunciation as well.

Probably like half of all elf travelling songs are pun based.

One verses is about a guy who licked a metal fence in winter. Come morning everyone came out to laugh at his sorry ass.

Another guy was practising his music in a field at night. HIs pants ripped and now everyone knows him as underpants mcgoo

Tag List: @madammuffins@aurisadventure@purpleshadows1989@fearlings-lament@maitretmaitresse@jewishdragon@mlmerry-wlwinter@kered555@vaxildab @blueroseguardian

Send a message to be added/removed from this tag list. Like my writing? Buy me a virtual coffee to support it!

#writeblr #coriander #coriander: world building

3 notes · View notes

teruthecreator · 5 years

Note

macknerva time.... ill be back with some ship asks but feel free to use this as a place to put some random headcanons about the girls....

every day, every Ding Dang Day, cro walks into my house and proudly proclaims: Macknerva Rights! and for that, we (and by “we”, i mean the Committee Of People Who Still Own Griffin Mcelroy’s Rights, which you are on but ignore that) offer you this award, for being The Only Motherfucker Who Can Handle Me

their honeymoon phase lasts D U M M Y long (in fact, one would say it probably never ended, even when they eventually do get engaged). these two are just so damn excited about their relationship, they just want the whole world to know! they both always find reasons to bring the other up in conversation, just so they can gush about how in love they are. and if they’re in the same room? Game Over, Dude. it is PDA-Central, babey!! so much handholding and nuzzling noses into cheeks and little kisses dotted all over the others faces. mack tries to keep it professional at work, but some days she just can’t help getting Soft On Main.

don’t get me wrong, the two aren’t dependent on each other. it’s not one of Those Things. they’re just really happy to be together! and honestly if their friends were that bothered by it they’d stop, but no one can openly admit to how much of a relief it is to have mack and minerva in a relationship than to deal w them Pining forever. kirby repeatedly reminds himself, “just think of the pining, just think of the pining” when mack stops what she’s doing to coo at her girlfriend from across the theatre for the fiftieth time. he’s Very Tired.

mack has never been in a serious relationship before, and minerva’s an alien from another planet, so traditional dating rules and milestones are pretty immediately thrown out the window. the only reason mack hasn’t caved and asked minerva to move in w her is bc she knows how much minerva enjoys being surrounded by friends, and her house is kinda far. she has thought abt it before, and the domestic images that have come to mind left her red in the face and sappy for a whole four hours.

speaking of the two’s lack of dating knowledge, they both pretty equally are at a loss as to what’s considered a “date”. like, sure, mack’s been on a couple Tinder dates before, but those were never date-dates. and they never ended well, either, so mack doesn’t typically think of dinner when dates come to mind. a lot of the beginning of their relationship was hanging out and then one of them being like, “is this a date?” and the other not having anything to prove it isn’t one. after a while of dating, though, the figure out what they like and their go-to date activities are as follows: dinner at mack’s (w the Chosen Squad and their so’s, sometimes the rest of the Pine Guard trio will come w their so’s as well), nights on the roof stargazing, movie nights cuddled up on the couch, hiking trail (minerva’s gotta get her Runs in, and mack is just happy to watch her hot girlfriend sprint through the woods w her), or just driving around the neighboring cities to dick around (mack has recently gotten minerva into Knick-Knack Collecting so rip to duck’s already cluttered apartment).

i’ve mentioned this before, but it takes mack A While before she learns about Sylvain/monsters/Minerva being an alien. like, they are several months into dating before mack realizes something’s up. it is the dumbest fucking thing and everyone is so baffled as to how mack couldn’t tell right off the bat that something was up w minerva.

ned: she has glowing tattoos.

mack: i thought it was a trick of the light!

aubrey: okay, but, she has glowing eyes too, mack.

mack: i assumed that was just my gay poetic brain turning my imagery to life!!!

duck: aight, but she talks like she’s one’a those stereotypical aliens tryin’ to blend into human society.

mack: i wasn’t about to look the Hot Gift Horse in its Fucking Mouth, duck newton.

i’ve been thinking abt this idea all day so lemme just talk abt it rn: the first time mack has to leave on business, minerva is distraught. like, mack finally has enough leverage as a theatre owner/proprietor that she goes to New York to talk shop w a couple off-Broadway theatres (that she happens to still be connected to bc of her past endeavors), so she leaves for a week or two to just...figure shit out. she probably takes kirby (which makes minerva pout bc why does he get to go and not i, my love?) just to have someone there, but she leaves minerva moping on her couch as she hops into her truck w kirby already in the passenger seat.

“i’ll be back before you know it!” mack calls out to minerva before shutting the door. minerva is Very Aware of her absence.

she’s not mopey, per se, bc she has plenty of friends to keep her company. but there are nights where all she wants to do is cuddle up to her girlfriend, and then she remembers halfway to mack’s house that she’s not there. mack gets A Lot of voicemails begging her to come home soon. she can’t check her phone during the day bc she’s so busy (and also Kirby’s There), but when she’s nestled in her hotel bed late at night she’ll open all of minerva’s little texts and voicemails and just melts into a puddle right on the spot.

mack would probably never admit it, but Kepler has become so much of a home to her that the “home” she once considered to be the line of theatres she once frequented as an adolescent/young adult have grown cold and way too crowded. she misses her little nook of a theatre, where friends are bountiful and so is affection from one Particularly Lovey Set Builder/Girlfriend.

vice versa, minerva has to leave kepler for a few days without mack (her and the Chosen Squad leave on an epic quest to Finally Get Sarah A Fucking Sword). mack is not as openly despondent as her girlfriend, but she spends as many nights working in the theatre as she possibly can (bc going back to her bed alone, despite the fact that minerva only sleeps over a couple times a week, is too sad of a thought for mack) until kirby shoves a pillow in her face and loudly proclaims, “Sleep, Bitch”. she’ll send minerva her good morning/good night texts like she usually does, but sprinkled between those are little updates on her day/funny memes she thinks minnie might like/things that remind mack of her. minerva positively delights in these messages, and announces their contents to the squad w glee (unless they are for Minerva’s Eyes Only, in which she just smiles goofily at her phone for a solid twenty minutes).

when minerva finally gets back, mack silently just walks over and jumps into her embrace, refusing to let go until minerva took them to the nearest soft surface so they could cuddle.

this is all my Sleepy Binch brain has for rn in terms of random hcs, but feel free to send in whatever macknerva thots tickle your fancy, folks!!

#ignorance cloud on #mack attack tag #fellow keplerians #macknerva #thank u cro As Always for enabling me!#u a tru friend ily

2 notes · View notes

percyinpanties · 7 years

Text

UPDATE - before it gets better the darkness gets bigger CH 02

i should have picked a shorter title.

anyway, here it is. almost 8k long because i have a death wish.

read below or on ao3. format here is a bit funny bc I have to write in gdocs. sorry about that.

warnings in the tags.

Lance rarely ever dreams these days, but this time when the darkness surrounds him, he find his mother’s face looking back at him. It’s been so long since Lance has dreamt of her, or thought of her at all for much longer than a small, painful moment.

In Lance’s dream, his mother is smiling.

Her lips are moving, too, and while Lance cannot hear her words he wishes that she is reminding him how much he has been loved back when she was still among them.

When Lance was a little boy, he wanted to grow up to be just like his mother. Being the youngest child in his family, Lance had always been very close to her, especially once his older siblings had all moved out.

His mother was always a loving and kind woman, and she had held their family together for as long as she was alive. Even though she was an omega, it was always her who made the decisions in their house, Anyone who would bother to look close enough would realise that Lance’s mother was the head of their family rather than the alpha she had married.

Lance was only fourteen when she passed away as the last straw in a series of tragedies.

They were nothing without her. Her death broke Lance’s father’s heart and it tore their family apart like nothing else had before.

For a long time, it turned Lance bitter. Not knowing or understanding the circumstances and reasons for her passing only made accepting it more difficult and Lance had never handled grief well to begin with.

In Lance’s dream, his mother is reaching out to him. Lance wonders how she would feel if she’d known he would present as an omega two years after her passing, how she would feel knowing her son carried the same trait that had been her demise.

Lance tries to move forward, to fall into his mother’s arms, but finds that his legs refuse to obey him.

His mother’s smile falls and her arms drop. She looks sad, rejected, and Lance feels as if someone stabbed a hot knife through his heart.

It is not an expression he has seen often on her face, which only makes it ache more. It reminds Lance of times he would rather not remember.

Just after Lance’s thirteenth birthday, the late King’s daughter and her husband ascended the throne. They had a young son, a strong alpha boy who Lance would later get to know as the Prince, and they were a popular couple. Lance remembers his mother being so hopeful when she heard that the Princess would finally be Queen.

The years leading up to the King’s death had been rough ones. Political quarrels, civil war and a worldwide economic crisis had wrecked their kingdom and its people.

Even though Lance’s family was well off they had felt the impact of it, had suffered through the consequences.

Many, including Lance’s family, had believed the Princess would be able to turn things around for the better. The next years, however, proved that the people’s trust was wrongly placed.

In all fairness, the new Queen hadn’t dealt the best cards when she took the throne after her father’s death. The kingdom was still struggling to recover from the crisis of the past years, birth rates were at an all time low while poverty and unemployment were at an all time height.

The young Queen was determined to change things for the better, pushing through economic and social reforms almost on a daily basis for her first few months in office.

Initially, it worked.

Jobs were created, the economy experienced a small boom, trade went up again. The media adored the Queen, as did Lance’s mother. He can’t recall having heard a single bad word thrown her way during the first year of her reign.

Sadly, it didn’t stay that way for all too long.

Two months before Lance’s fourteenth birthday, a new kind of suppressants were released as one of many new drugs funded by the government’s healthcare reform. Many of the old drugs were not supported by insurance any longer, but the royal pharmaceutical corporate group had allegedly been working hard on replacements.

Lance’s mother, his oldest sister and one of his brothers were only a few of the millions of omegas that switched to the new drug when it came out. None of them would have believed that it would be their downfall.

There were no side effects at first. No headaches or mood swings, no weight gain or uncalled-for pains that the traditional medicine sometimes came along with. Those who previously reacted sensitive to suppression chemicals got along much better with the new option. The government funded the drug, making it cheaper and easier available to the public and of course, people soon believed that it was the best option available.

That was when things started to go wrong.

The day of Lance’s fourteenth birthday, his oldest sister went into a sudden, violent heat.

There were only a few occasion then that brought their entire family together and they had been celebrating, sharing food and stories that afternoon when Lance’s sister broke into a fever.

It was a sight Lance hasn’t forgotten since. Watching his sister wrecked by cramps and seizures, shivering and whimpering and crying had been one of the scariest experiences in Lance’s life.

Her wife carried Lance’s sister upstairs to one of the guest bedrooms while Lance’s mother ushered their other guests to leave. Lance’s sister hadn’t gone into heat since she’s had her twins five years before. Her body didn’t remember how to cope with the sudden onslaught.

No one understood why her suppressants would so suddenly fail. Her wife had been sure that she’d taken every pill on time, Lance’s sister didn’t drink and wasn’t on any other mediaction.

Up to that day, she had been in perfect health.

Lance can see her now, in his strange memory-laced dream. She is passed out on the bed with an unnaturally pale face and dried tears on her cheeks. His mother sits by her side, runs her fingertips over her forehead.

She is not crying, not yet, but Lance can tell how close she is to breaking. He remembers being able to smell his mother’s fear.

Lance and his parents were worried sick for the next month that came. His sister’s wife took her home the next morning, and then called them almost daily to keep them updated. At first, it looked like Lance’s sister was recovering, improving again.

Lance remembers guiltily that he’d felt hopeful, how sure he was his sister would come out on top.

The sudden heat had left her weakened though.

When a new virus began to spread, one that seemed to specifically target omegas, her immune system didn’t stand a chance. No one understood where it had come from, or why only omegas seemed to succumb to its symptoms.

It was a tragedy.

It was the first time Lance had seen his mother cry.

He can hear her sobs now, echoing through the dream. He can feel himself crying too, tears hot on his cheek. Lance knows he is out cold, that this is not reality. It does nothing to give him control and nothing to lessen the pain.

The morning after they learned of his sister’s death, Lance mother went into heat for the first time in fourteen years. No one knew then if it was the stress, the trauma of losing a child, if she’d forgotten her medication through her worry.

She didn’t survive long enough to contract the virus.

There was nothing that could compare to the pain Lance felt when his mother closed her eyes forever. He feels an echo of that pain now, but he’s grown almost numb to the feeling. He misses her with every day that passes, but he has stopped seeking someone to blame.

It seemed like a coincidence, back then, losing both his mother and sister. Until more and more omegas reported their suppressants failing, until more and more omegas were admitted to hospitals all over the kingdom with the same strange virus no medical professional had seen before. Until Lance’s brother fell ill, and until not even the best doctors money would buy could make him last any longer than Lance’s sister had.

Over the next weeks, the situation escalated. The kingdom was at a tipping point, and a single step in the wrong direction might have set off a chain of reaction that could never be reversed.

The virus was mutating. It began to attack betas and alphas, whose immune systems are not subject to their reproductive cycle.

Finally, the government started properly funding research into a cure, much too late for most of the virus’ victims. Too late for Lance’s sister. Too late for Lance’s brother.

Reports were leaked that accused government of approving many of the new medications despite them not having been researched to the extend they should have. Worse even, in their rush for any improvement at all, they released drugs with known side-effects and malfunctions.

Tensions rose, the same people that had loved the Queen so much were now quick to blame her for the lost lives of their loved ones. She disappeared from the public eye and their kingdom’s newly won stability tumbled down like a house of cards.

Attacks and riots began, ministers and government officials fled the kingdom.

The people were angry, livid even, and they had every right to be.

There was no Queen to diffuse the situation, every day it escalated a little more.

Soon, Lance believed then, there would be civil war. His father had considered taking them away somewhere safer.

A month of chaos and violence had passed when suddenly the head of the biggest pharmaceutical company came forward publicly.

The news were transmitted live all over the kingdom, and Lance remembers sitting in their living room growing paler with every word.

The man admitted to having released ineffective suppressants and birth control, purposefully and behind the back of the reigning Queen and King. He admitted to giving ill advice to the young Queen when the virus surfaced, suggesting to let it run its course rather than take immediate action to contain it.

The man had tears in his eyes as he spoke, Lance can’t recall now if he believed they were genuine. Apparently, this man had lost his own family to the virus, to his own bad decisions, and ridden with guilt he turned himself over to authorities and the public.

There was no word from the Queen, still, but over the next days several advisors, ministers and high ranking officials were arrested and publicly put on trial. Only then did Lance and his family finally get an explanation for what had happened to Lance’s mother, his sister and brother.

It was a scandal like none their country had seen before.

The plan, allegedly, had been to forcefully increase birth rates. Not enough children were born, their economic boom wouldn’t last but soon collapse if there wasn’t a new generation to carry it.

At the time of crisis, manipulating the reproductive cycles of those who carried the kingdom’s children seemed like the best option.

None of those involved had realised how violent a heat would be after years on suppressants, and they had not listened to the doctors that warned them about such side effects. More so, no one could have expected the virus.

What had been simple on paper had turned so much more complex in reality and had spiraled out of their control before they had realised what had gone wrong to begin with.

The day their verdict was passed was the first time the Queen showed her face in weeks.

Their kingdom was torn and people were grieving, and if there had ever been a time they needed a strong monarch, it was then.

Lance can see her in his dream now, which strikes him as strange. He had watched the transmission with his father, sitting alone in their estate.

The Queen had held onto the podest she stood behind, her features uncharacteristically pale. There was sorrow in her eyes, and her voice wavered with unmistakable pain when she spoke.

She has the same tone in Lance’s dream, but her features begin mixing with that of Lance’s mother. Lance feels conflicted, he knows those are just his memories blurring together, but even so he doesn’t understand why he is recalling the worst years of his life now.

Hands on the podest, the Queen spoke slowly, carefully picking her words.

Two nights before, she announced, she had lost her husband, the King, to the same virus that had taken so many loved ones from her people. She had been deceived by her most trusted advisors, and she loathed herself for her own blindness. There was nothing left to do for her but beg her people’s forgiveness, as they would need to stand together - united and strong - if they wanted to prevail after this terrible tragedy.

The memory sharpens.

Behind the Queen, Lance sees her son. He hadn’t known Shiro then, but he recognises him easily now that he relives the moment. For once, the prince is not what catches Lance’s attention however.

Behind the Queen, he sees the woman.

Lance gets ripped out of his dreams by a sharp pain on the skin of his thighs. He tries to flinch away but neither his legs nor his arms move very far, held back with a metal clang. Lance's eyes fling open, but for the first moment he can’t see anything against the blinding brightness of the room.

Lance blinks a few times, forces himself to still so he won’t hurt himself in a panic - even though all he wants is trash and scream.

The room slowly comes into focus as his eyes get used to the light: against all improbable hopes that today had only been a nightmare, Lance finds himself in a room that is definitely not his own.

He's still in the palace.

They drugged him, tied him down. From the feeling of soft sheets against his sensitive skin, Lance can guess they stripped him too. Humiliation makes his cheeks burn and before he can stop himself this time, he tries to rip his hands free again.

They turn out to be restrained with soft leather cuffs above Lance’s head. The metal clank must have come from their links catching on the bed frame they are secured to, giving Lance very little hope that he can violently free himself even if he tries. Although the actual restraints around his wrists are made of soft leather, it is too thick to give even slightly as Lance pulls once with all the strength he can summon.

Despite them opting for leather over more secure metal, undoubtedly to avoid any marks on Lance's skin, they didn't take any security risks.

“He’s awake, Ma’am.” A voice, deep but surprisingly gentle, comes from Lance’s right.

Startled, Lance stops tugging at the cuffs. He hadn't thought to look around, to check what or who had woken him and if he was alone.

When he turns his head, eyes wide like those of a spooked animal, Lance’s eyes land on a young man about his own age, although much larger compared to Lance’s lean build. The guy is holding a thin wooden stick, like the ones usually stuck into popsicles, but the tip is sticky with some blue substance.

Wax, Lance realises.

They’re waxing his skin.

That must have been the pain that woke him.

Lance feels the colour drain from his face as he takes in the setup.

There’s a soft mattress under his back and curtains drawn around one side of the bed. He can hear voices distantly, so he knows there must be people right outside the door.

Most of his skin feels unusually sensitive, especially where it is touching the sheets, which must mean they have been going at this for a while before the pain brought Lance back to consciousness.

He doesn't want to consider what else they might have done while he was out.

What is going on here?

“Perfect.” The woman. Her voice makes Lance still. “I was wondering when you’d come back to us, Lance.”

When he looks up, he finds her standing at the edge of the bed Lance has been deposited on. She is smiling down at him, but there is no sympathy in her expression now. She looks downright cruel, and some part of Lance finds comfort in the fact that at least she is showing her true colours now.

“You can't do this.” He whispers hoarsely. Every word hurts his throat on the way out, and Lance guesses he must have screamed and fought more than he had thought when they'd tried to put him down.

In Lance’s head, it sounds like it must be a nightmare, so obscure that it cannot possibly be the truth. He’s being held hostage at the royal palace, to be forced to marry a prince he hadn't spoken to in years, and every grain of common sense wants Lance to reject this reality rather than accept it as what it is: the terrible truth...

The Shiro Lance knows… the Shiro Lance used to know - he would never have allowed this, Lance refuses to believe that with every ounce of his being.

Time may change people, and maybe, the prince has changed as well, but this… Lance doesn't want to accept that Shiro would put him through this against his will.

“Continue.” The woman addresses the man by the bed now, completely ignoring Lance’s words. “We don’t have time to waste before the ceremony and the seamster will be here in less than an hour.”

The man nods slowly, but he doesn’t reply.

He doesn’t seem too happy with this job, whether that is because of Lance or the situation they have found themselves in, Lance can’t tell. Chances are that Lance is the first omega this guy has seen in years and if he is an alpha… Lance swallows dryly. He tilts his head ever so slightly toward the man and inhales slowly through his nose, praying to every deity that he is being subtle enough.

Hardly any scent.

A beta, most likely.

Lance feels himself relax just a little. He has to stop panicking if he wants to stand any chance of escaping this mess, but the possibility of being alone with a strange alpha exposed to an omega for the first time is enough to set Lance off, nevertheless.

If he keeps going like this, Lance doesn’t like his chances from here on out.

The man sighs, which catches Lance’s attention. He looks vaguely familiar, but there are more important things to consider than whether or not Lance has met this stranger before.

Lance hisses when hot wax is applied to his skin again. There isn’t much left that Lance feels has been left untouched, and even though it is almost worse to consider what has already happened in the time that he was asleep, Lance finds some sort of comfort in knowing this ordeal won’t last much longer.

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. He can do this, but he needs to think.

There must be a way out.

Although… realistically, Lance needs to at least free one of his wrists from the cuffs linked to the bed frame. There is nothing he can do as long as his hands are tied, but Lance also knows he doesn’t have the physical strength to break the restraints.

However, they won’t be able to keep him chained down forever, especially if… if the ceremony is as soon as the woman’s words make it sound.

The wax is ripped off Lance’s skin once more and this time, a whimper escapes Lance’s lips. His thoughts scatter in the moment of sharp pain, concentrating on only this sole sensation.

Lance’s skin feels almost raw, although he knows that his mind must be exaggerating how bad it really is.

Lance has always loathed being touched by anyone who wasn’t family. He had believed to be a beta for most of his teens, and after presenting as an omega at sixteen, he was completely unprepared for all the new kinds of attention that came with this. It has left him wary and this treatment now, and the knowledge of how much more his privacy must have been invaded already, is soon becoming too much for Lance to handle.

“I’m sorry.”

Lance hears the whisper, but for a second he believes he’s imagined it.

“I’m almost done. One more. I’m sorry.”

Lance opens his eyes slowly to squint at the man next to the bed in disbelief. The image is blurry; Lance hasn’t realised that tears have gathered in his eyes.

The stranger avoids Lance’s gaze, but his expression is pained nevertheless. He must know Lance is being held in the palace against his will, and he evidently doesn’t enjoy this anymore than Lance does. He may have as little choice regarding his servitude as Lance does in being here… and if he is speaking up now…

Lance raises his head, lets his eyes scan what little he can see of the room. They seem to be alone. This is his chance!

“Please.” Lance whispers. It’s desperate, and he already knows it is most likely futile, but Lance cannot not try.

His voice is hoarse still, and the pain of speaking hasn’t lessened. He wishes he could ask for some water, but even if he believed they’d give him what he asked for, there is some pride left within him that won’t allow him this request.

“I don’t wanna be here.” Lance adds, and he makes sure that his voice carries all the emotion that threatens to take him over. “Please.”

There’s no answer. The man clenches his hands to fists, looks away and grits his teeth. His gaze goes beyond the bed, to the side obscured by the curtains.

Lance doubts that this man is here of his own free will only grow stronger at the sight.

Even so, Lance feels a tear slip down his cheek.

As much as he knew it wouldn’t work, being proven right still hurts.

Another tear follows, then even more. He feels pathetic for crying, but once the first drop has escaped it's near impossible to reign them in again.

And what can he do now, anyway?

Without outside help, Lance knows he doesn’t stand a chance. Deep down, he’s known that from the second the needle pierced his skin before, but the realisation sinks in a little more with every second that ticks by. It feels like an ever growing stone in the pit of Lance’s stomach.

If by some miracle, he manages to free himself of his cuffs, he would still have to escape this place. Lance doesn’t know the palace, if he’s even within the actual royal residence still. He wouldn’t know where to go or where to turn, he has no clothing on his back and his smell would be a dead giveaway even if he tried to hide or blend in.

He is most likely the only omega in the entire building. There is nowhere for him to go without risking discovery. And if he makes it out of the front door… the palace outside of town and getting to the suburbs alone would be extremely difficult - not to mention that Lance isn’t entirely sure a barely dressed omega would meet a better fate there than what Lance is experiencing now.

They planned this, so much is clear. There was never a choice, the second Lance accepted the invitation, maybe even before that, they had decided his future.

They won’t be reckless now and leave him any openings, not if they’ve gone to such lengths already to get and keep him here.

Lance’s hands clench into fists and he screws his eyes shut tightly in an attempt to stop the tears.

No. He scolds himself. No. Stop this.

Lance cannot afford to care about how hopeless it seems now. There is always a way out, there has always been before. And He will find it. He will not go down without a fight.

The last strip of wax comes off Lance’s skin and even though it stings just as bad as before, no noise leaves his lips this time. A moment later, those large hands are back on his thighs, spreading some sort of lotion or oil - the substance soothes the pain and leaves Lance’s skin soft and shiny, but even so Lance has to grit his teeth in order to not flinch away from the touch.

Lance only relaxes minimally when the hands are gone and he hears the man take a step back away from the bed. He opens his eyes again slowly, and luckily this time they are void of fresh tears.

Lance is regaining some of his composure, although he struggles to keep it that way. In his chest, his heart is still beating fast enough to hurt.

He needs to find a way out. He can do this. He has no other choice.

“Get him up on his feet.” Lance hears the woman again, and pales.

He looks around, but she is obscured by the curtains drawn around the bed. He hadn’t realised she was still here, but her hovering presence just out of sight might explain the man rejecting Lance’s pleas before… Of course she wouldn’t leave to of her captives alone to plot together.

Even so, Lance cannot help but feel a surge of hope. His first tactic might have been a fail, but if they want him up on his feet, they need to undo his cuffs. This is as much of an opening as he will get, Lance knows that.

He lies obediently still when the man comes back to the bed and unfastens Lance's ankle cuffs from the bed. His thoughts are racing, and he hopes that the rush of adrenaline accompanying them doesn't show on the outside as well. His core is tense, wound up too tight in preparation of what comes next.

A hand rests on his ankle when the cuffs come free, as if the man is expecting Lance to try and free himself or struggle as much as he had when Lance has woken earlier. Instead though, Lance only turns his head to the side and casts his gaze down sadly, miming as if he has given up already.

Another second passes by, then the hand moves higher, leaving Lance's skin entirely until it joins the other hand already on Lance’s wrists.

This is the moment. He has to make this count, Lance knows he'll likely not get another chance like this one.

Lance waits until he hears the cuffs release.

He only has a second. Before he can think better of it, he draws up his legs and pulls his arms forward hard. The man stumbles toward the bed but Lance uses this to kick him in the chest with as much strength as he can muster.

Lance would feel bad for the guy, given he doesn't seem like a volunteer here either, but he has no time for sympathy now. The man goes down with a pained shout and Lance rolls to the other side of the bed.

With too much momentum to stop himself, Lance falls through the drawn curtains on the other side onto the floor in front of the bed.

Clumsy after not having moved in so long, and maybe from some remnants of tranquilizers in his blood, Lance struggles to get back to his feet as quickly as he'd like. He can’t see the woman yet and a look around the room tells him all he needs to know: there is a door up ahead and while he has no idea where it leads, it's his best shot right now.

Lance scrambles forward, afraid that he's already lost too much time. He's sure he's heard the man grown on the other side of the bed, maybe already back on his feet as well. There's not another second to waste.

Lance's fingers touch the doorknob when suddenly a cold hand wraps around his shoulder. He's ripped backward, then hurled into a whole other direction until his back violently connects with a wall.

Lance gasps in pain and blinks, disoriented but trying to see who had caught him so close to having gotten free

The woman stands in front of him, eyes cold, mouth drawn into a sneer and one of her arms across Lance’s chest.

“Why do you insist on being so difficult.” She snarls. It is not a question.

Her free hand comes up and wraps wrapped around Lance’s throat, her sharp nails dig into his skin. It is a threat, Lance knows that, although he has his doubts she’ll actually hurt him.

“I’ve given you so many chances to make this easier. You have left me no choice.”

The hand drops from his neck, then her arm leaves Lance’s chest. At first, Lance believes she’ll just drug him again.

Instead however, she raises her hand and slaps him hard across the cheek. It stings so badly that it makes Lance's eyes water and head swim. He winces in pain even though he hates to give her the satisfaction.

“We all have to do our part. You will marry the prince whether you like it or not, boy.” She looks at him with distaste and Lance stares back at her defiantly.

It all she needs to justify another slap, this time backhanding Lance across the other side of his face. Pain blooms all over his face and his lip splits under the force of her hand. Lance can taste the blood on his tongue, his vision is swimming with large black dots.

When he raises his arms in a weak attempt to protect his face, she punches him in the stomach. Pain shoots through Lance, he doubles over as his knees give out below him and he falls to the floor.

He can smell her now, the pheromones of an angry alpha, and for the first time, Lance is actually scared of her.

Memories of school bullies who just loved pushing around the little omega come flashing through his mind and he curls in on himself, a new sob tearing out of his chest before Lance has even realised that he is crying again.

“The more you struggle, the worse I will make this for you.” The woman warns him in a low tone. This time, Lance takes her threat seriously. He doesn’t look up, only curls in further on himself and hopes she won’t inflict even more, worse pain on him.

She watches Lance for another moment, then pushes away from him and the wall. Lance is left shaking on the floor, but unrestrained and not held back, the door right in his reach. His head raises and his gaze flits over to the doorknob. Lance wonders how stupid it would be to risk it again now, if he’d even make it the few feet to the door while he is shaking like a leaf in the wind.

Before Lance can make up his mind, the woman catches his gaze and klicks her tongue.

“You can try all you might, boy. This door won’t open for you.” She informs him. A cruel little smile spreads on her features as she regards Lance a second longer, then she nods toward the door. “Go on. Try if you don’t believe me.”

This time, no one stops him on his way to the door and no one stops him when his fingers wrap around the doorknob. His knees are scraped from falling and then crawling over the floor, and his arms tremble - when he tries to pull himself up, he only sends a new spike of pain through his body.

He doesn’t need to be on his feet for this, Lance tries to tell himself, so he reaches up again and twists the doorknob from where he is kneeling on the floor.

Nothing happens.

Lance tugs, and the door stays in place. He pushes his second hand against the wall, doesn’t care that the woman is watching when he rips at the handle now.

It doesn’t budge. Angry tears stream down Lance’s cheeks, a sob threatening to break free, but even so he pushes and pulls at the door like a madman.

“Please.” He whispers without realising he’s said the word aloud. “Pleasepleaseplease. God, fuck- please. dammit.”

The door doesn’t move even a fraction of an inch. Of course not. Of course they would have locked the door. Why is Lance so naive and stupid and why would he believe they’d even let him get to the door if it was a legitimate way out?

Lance feels his eyes burn with fresh tears and anger light up his chest. After what has happened in the last twentyfour hours, he cannot believe what a fool he is, kneeling sobbing and bleeding in his underwear in front of a door that will never open for him. He must look even more pathetic than he feels.

Lance squeezes his eyes shut, drops his forehead against the wooden door and lets his tears run freely. He is sobbing quietly for several minutes before anyone says anything.

“When you’re done with this pitiful display,” The woman speaks up. She is approaching again but Lance hardly finds the strength to shrink away from her.

“The seamster is almost here. We need to make you presentable for the ceremony.”

Her words are salt in Lance's open wounds. He doesn’t need to be reminded of why he is being kept here or that, while he is their only option, he is a pitiful excuse for a bride.

Lance is trembling all over again, struggling to stop new sobs from breaking out.

“Get up.” She commands, but Lance doesn’t answer, doesn’t move, doesn’t even look at the woman as she stops behind him.

She is getting to him and Lance doesn't like that in the slightest. The more Lance struggles, the more difficult this will become for him, the more will she hurt him and the closer will he be monitored. If he played along, maybe he can at least spare himself some pain until a new opportunity for escape presents itself.

If he goes about this the right way, they might be more lenient with him in the future. Playing the docile omega they want him to be shouldn’t be so hard, and if they believe they have broken him...

Lance doesn’t get as far as making a decision. The woman grabs a fistful of his hair and starts pulling. Lance cries out at the pain, scrambles to move along as she drags him up to his feet.

“I don’t ask twice.” She hisses when Lance is standing, making himself small as she towers over him. “Over there, get yourself cleaned up.”

Reluctantly, Lance steps away from the door. He can feel a bruise forming on his cheek and his knees hurt with every step he takes away from the door. His gaze is fixed to the floor, his posture sagged and he doesn't have to pretend much to look like all fight has left him.

“You won’t get away with this.” Lance protests weakly even as he walks over to where the man that attended him earlier is waiting. Some of the resentment he feels still rings through, but it’s deliberate.

His change has to be gradual, or the woman will be suspicious. Lance has underestimated what he is up against twice now and he won’t make the same mistake again.

The woman laughs humourlessly and watches as Lance limps over to the other side of the room. There is a small vanity standing against the wall on the other side of the bad where the man is waiting.

Lance pales and hesitates when he remembers how he kicked the stranger. In contrast to Lance’s expectations though, the man doesn’t seem to hold Lance’s outburst against him. When he reaches for Lance’s wrists, his grip is a little firmer but still as gentle as any other touch had been before. Maybe he understand that an animal which is caged will lash out even against the hand that feeds it.

Lance is being led to the small table. There is a shallow bowl with water and a washcloth, which the man now takes to clean the blood from Lance’s split lip off of his skin. He checks Lance’s knees and palms too, which are luckily only a little scraped.

“It’ll be fine within the week if he doesn’t open the wound again.” The man tells the woman, who has taken a seat on a chaise by the foot of the bed. That is where she must have been hidden before too, Lance realises, as it would be convered from the bed and either sides of it.

Once the wounds are cared for, the stranger leads Lance to a small pedestal in front of three large mirrors that take up an entire corner of the room. Next to the space is a little working table with several long sheets of white fabrics draped over. They vary in opacity and quality and some are intricate lace - there is no doubt in Lance’s mind what they are for.

He’s seen a room like this before when his oldest sister took him shopping for a dress before her wedding. The memory is painful, even more so when Lance considers what she would think if she could see him now… He pushes it away, and steps onto the pedestal without complaint when he is being nudged toward it.

Struggling hasn’t gotten him anywhere and he doesn’t want to be hit again.

Behind Lance, a door opens. He has to grit his teeth so he won’t do any stupidly impulsive, despite knowing that even if he tries to make another run for it, the door will be locked long before he gets anywhere near it and he’ll likely just get another beating.

There’s quiet whispers, then someone claps their hands and Lance flinches before he can stop himself.

“So, here we have the little omega, eh?” A voice asks behind him.

In the mirrors, Lance can see a small, very old man looking up at him. His face is so wrinkly he hardly even looks like a human anymore, and his sparse hair is discoloured and greasy.

Despite the strange appearance, Lance has a feeling that there is more to this man than meets the eye.

He nods slowly, not sure what else to do but knowing that the old man expects an answer.

“Ah, very well. I just finished a truly beautiful suit for your groom.” He walks around Lance as he speaks with surprising agility, taking in every inch of Lance’s skin with his eyes. “I already know what we’re gonna do with you. All that nice skin, would be a shame to cover it all up, eh? Gotta do something about those scrapes though, what a shame.”

This time, Lance doubts it was a question as much as a statement so he just stays silent. He’s grateful those bony hands have stayed away from ‘all that nice skin’ so far and he’d rather not invite the man to touch by agreeing with his musing.

In a flurry, the man produces a sketchbook from somewhere within the ridiculous coat he is wearing. In a different life, Lance might have found him amusing or even liked the seamster.

The sketchbook is thrown onto the working table and opened to an empty page, then Lance watches as he produces a piece of coal out of one of the many pockets in the coat and starts sketching out Lance’s silhouette on the paper from a few angles.

“My tape.” The man commands then and holds out his hands. One of the people that had followed him in jumps into action and hurries over. As if handing over an ancient artifact, the young woman places a small roll into the old man’s open palm with utmost care. He makes a pleased hum in reply, but does not offer his thanks before he turns back to Lance.

“Hold still, little one. We’ll be done here in no time.”

The measuring process is humiliating to say the least. Grubby little hands touch Lance in all sorts of places that he would rather stay untouched by creepy old seamsters. Lines of coal are drawn directly on his skin, whether on accident or purpose Lance isn’t entirely sure. Every now and again, the man lets off him to scribble something into his sketchbook, but it’s never long until he’s back on Lance.

Lance would regret playing along with this if he wasn’t scared of punishment if he did anything to rebel. And anyway, he knows there isn’t a way around this now. If he struggles, they will simply tie him or sedate him, making the process take even longer than it does now.

Finally, the band wraps high around Lance’s neck for the last time, pulled taut like a collar before it’s let go.

“Perfect. You were a very good model.” The old man praises Lance and pats his thigh like one might with a pet. “Now, I need to work. We will have the fitting in the morning.” The old man announces as he finally steps away from Lance.

He turns to the woman, who has been watching the whole procedure with her cold and calculating glare, an ever constant threat in the corner of the room.

“Be sure the omega sleeps, that disgraceful split lip is already bad enough, I don’t want any of those ugly dark circles on his face tomorrow, too.” The little man tells her, apparently unafraid of the much taller presence.

The woman nods, but doesn’t step out of the seamsters way yet.

“There is one more thing.” She says, slowly. Her eyes leave Lance for the first time in an hour when she leans down to whisper in the old man’s ear.

Lance cannot make out the words, but the old seamster doesn’t seem overly pleased with the request as he frowns up at the woman as soon as she pulls back again

“But this -” He starts, then stops when the woman holds up a hand.

“I’m afraid I must insist. We don’t want the boy spoiling the ceremony now, do we? And this way no one will have to see that disgraceful lip either.” She says with a very pointed look at Lance.

Maybe she is just waiting to hurt Lance even more, waiting for him to step out of line so she has an excuse to show him who is the alpha in this room. Whatever the case, Lance doesn’t like the way she regards him now any more than before.

As soon as the seamster leaves, Lance is allowed to step down from the pedestal. His legs ache from the fall and standing so long, and he is almost grateful when he is being guided back to the bed.

Idly, Lance wonders how different this might have gone had he agreed yesterday. If he would have been allowed to go home to pack his things, allowed to call his siblings he’s only seen once in the past year and invite them. If they had let him see Shiro, the prince, beforehand and if Lance would have been allowed any say in this process.

He doubts it, somehow. They have shown him how little they care for his wellbeing and his comfort, that he is just a pawn in the Prince’s ascension to become King. Who knows if they will even keep him here once Shiro’s position is secured.

Some distant part of Lance wonders if he had agreed had Shiro asked himself, if Shiro had come to visit Lance to explain… evidently though, Shiro doesn’t care any more about him that this horrible woman whose care Lance has been put in does.

“It’s late. We need to get some food in him before putting him down for the night.” Again, the woman is speaking over Lance to the man who has had to handle Lance all day. It sounds as if she is talking about a dog rather than a human. “Leave the hands free for now, I will be right back.”

With that, she leaves out of the same door Lance had attempted to escape through earlier.

A large hand wraps around Lance’s upper arm and pulls him the rest of the way toward the bed.

This is the first time they are truly alone, the first time the woman has actually left Lance out of her sight…

If he speaks now, he probably won’t have to face a punishment as severe as the last one...

“I’m sorry I kicked you.” He whispers as soon as the door closes again. He doesn’t look up to the man, doesn’t have to pretend to feel bad about it to give the impression of a sad, kicked puppy. “I’m just so scared…”

This part is no lie, Lance doesn’t even have to fake the little shiver that goes through him. There is no answer, not yet, but Lance isn’t going to give in just yet. Not this time.

“I… I can’t believe they’re getting away with this…” He says and now looks up after all. There are tears gathering in his eyes and Lance pretends to try and blink them away before the first spill over his cheeks. There isn’t much acting involved in his pleas, which Lance hopes makes him all the more convincing. “How does no one care I’m being held against my will?”

The man’s free hand clenches at his side and he turns his gaze away from Lance, closing his eyes for a second before he turns back to Lance.

He seems to search Lance’s face for a moment, as if he is expecting something more that doesn’t come.

“After.” He says after a second, gaze not moving from Lance’s eyes for even a seond. “After the wedding. Wait until then… be strong.”

It is nothing but a small spark of hope, but it is catching the rest of Lance’s being on fire.

After the wedding.

#shance #voltron legendary defender #bbdb #bbdb update #WARNINGS:#mildy graphic violence #blood #past character death #non-consensual touching #non-consensual body modification #(no surgery or anything like that though)#///#my fic #my stuff #chapter update #vld #those who are wondering haggar is /the woman/

181 notes · View notes