#and that someone keeps parking on the grass and that's not allowed | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

the-midnight-blooms · 6 months ago

Text

till death do us park | psh

pairing: yandere!park seonghwa x wife!reader AU: modern au word count: 7.9k warnings: yandere themes, mentions of a miscarriage

masterlist

Obsession (n) : the domination of one's thoughts or feelings by a persistent idea, image, desire. Obsessive (adj) : being, pertaining to, or resembling an obsession.

Her fingers ran down the brown page of the old dictionary, reeling in the words typed in classic typefaces of the past, the primitive vanilla scent reaching out to her. Gently she leaned her forehead against the window; the sway of the leaves, billowing, with the howl of the wind. The thin branches always reached out for her, and she wanted to grab onto them, allow it to ensnare its coarse body around her frame. To transgress from one form of entrapment to another. Moving between one space to another was to honour the mere notion of liberation. Freedom was her ecstasy, to get intoxicated on the thought had her stumbling down the hallways hands gripping onto the walls as the doors flung open. The void beckoned her, called for her, summoned her. She'd heed its call if only it wasn't for the shackles tied to her feet. Or for the demon that could penetrate his hand through her skin and ensnare his slender fingers around her spine; staggering her movements through the room he called his home. Under the guise of what he deemed: love.

"All you have to do is feel my love for you. Then you'll love me back all the same." Those words from the night after she married him, echoing within the pits of a dark chasm beneath her soul. Loving was a difficult emotion when she never had the privilege of experiencing it before. All this pent up sentiment and with nowhere to put it, loneliness was something she had to get used to.

Then there came Park Seonghwa.

He took that conviction without asking.

Seonghwa first saw her in a park, sat on a red and white checked blanket sketchbook on her laps, pencils scattered around her. One behind her ears, one between her puckered lips as she nimbly rubbed away at whatever mistake she had made. Alone, she came. Nothing but the comfort of herself to entertain her with no friends to listen to her, no husband to ease the persisting empty ache in her heart, not even a child to make her laugh with their extraordinary antics. Nothing but a vast emptiness contempt to haunt her. Thus she had the park with the rustle of the bushes, the laughter of children to cease the war roaming within her soul. Even the saccharine scent of the flowers eased the loneliness gnawing away at her. Seonghwa, too, was sat alone with a book spread across his laps enjoying the cool wind tousle his long hair. His wide eyes latched onto the shape of her perfect eyes, the smooth round of her cheeks, the curvature of her pink lips- her head snapped up feeling a pair of eyes burning into her. Searching the grass, high on some delusion that someone would willingly want to look at her, they finally bored into another's. Her muse. The man drawn on her sketchbook. Unbeknownst to Seonghwa, she had been hypnotised by his presence ever since she saw him. The face to the blurry man of her dreams, his sweet demeanour was enough to keep her intoxicated. She was an idiot for thinking that a man as gorgeous as himself would want anything to do with her.

To an extent it was concerning for herself to have a drawing of a stranger sitting in her notebook. Peering over at him through her lashes, he looked as if he wasn't going to leave anytime soon. Packing up her utensils and throwing them into her bag, she slung it over her shoulders sketchbook in hand. The beat of her heart quickened, as she approached him. Clearing her throat, his wide brown eyes piqued up. A pleasant smile rested upon his features as she timidly plucked up the courage to piece her words together.

"Hi, I actually drew you." Great start, that's not weird at all. Hastily, she handed over the piece of cartridge paper. Gently, he took it from her hands a small gasp escaping from his lips.

"It's great, thank you so much." Nodding, gratefully. “I- it’s very accurate.” He complimented, his beam so adorable it swayed her heart.

That’s all it took, didn’t it? He was a dream; eyes studded with stars scintillating in their wake. His name itself: “to be a star”. His soul, an unmapped constellation. There was something particular about him, like a magnet drawing her to his depths. Falling into his arms as if he was a safety net, enamouring her befallen entity. If only she knew not get trapped by a man’s insatiable beauty. Didn’t they say? A pretty face doesn’t mean a pretty heart.

Where she had adored Seonghwa, the man had become fully infatuated with her. After work, he found himself outside her home peering through her window as she carried out mundane chores: folding and ironing laundry, vacuuming and dusting the home after her own working hours. Then on the weekends, like clockwork, she woke up at 9am, and left the house by 9:30 to walk to the supermarket and collect groceries. Occasionally she’d meet up with her ‘friends’, people she’d agree to hang around in hopes of having someone to talk to even if it wasn’t allowed to be about the way her mind was collapsing in on itself. Sometimes Seonghwa was present himself- just at the back of the coffee shop, in another aisle of the grocery store staring between the space in the shelves, head down staring at a book as they exchanged whispers in a bookshop.

When he had finally plucked the courage to talk to her, he’d bumped into her in the convenience store after work-where she was rendered under contemplative thought over which drink she wanted. Through her peripheral vision she caught Seonghwa staring at her from where he was stood with a few snacks in hand. A friendly smile dawned on her, giving him a wave to which Seonghwa issued as a sign to engage in a conversation.

“Hi! How are you?” She asked, almost a little too enthusiastically for her own liking.

“I’m great, how have you been?”

“I’m good. How is the drawing?” She teased, almost a failed attempt at a joke.

“I actually got it framed, it’s on my wall.” She laughed at him, but god knew Seonghwa was not joking. He indeed did get it framed, and it was proudly sitting on the wall of his study. Her arms outstretched from the door of the fridge, pulling it open to release a massive gust of cold air. Reaching for the coffee, Seonghwa subtly shook his head in dismay. He was concerned about her coffee consumption, she averaged about four to five cups of strong coffee a day. He’d change that. “Listen, I- I was wondering if you’d like to go on a date with me?”

Her first biggest mistake was agreeing to the date. So destitute of attention she latched onto the idea of being with a handsome man at that-whose unfathomable beauty was what other's may have labelled as 'way out their league'. But how was she to know how insane the man was for her? On their first date, Seonghwa took her to an art museum.

"Who's your favourite artist?" she asked. It came as a surprise to her when he proposed the idea of going to an art museum. Out of all places, she didn't think art was Seonghwa's forte but his extensive knowledge of art movements had astounded her. His sweet honey voice was delightful, when he spoke it was almost as if flowers were falling from his lips.

"Michelangelo Buonarroti." The infamous obsessed artist himself. She gasped in surprise.

"He's my favourite too!" she chirped. But Seonghwa already knew, because he saw the art books aligned next to her anatomy books and pieces of Buonarroti's work on her messy worktop, littered with unscrewed paint bottles, pencils, paintbrushes and charcoal. At first he felt repulsed at her untidiness, but when he watched her clean up after herself afterwards he felt a swell of pride in his heart.

That’s my girl. She is so much like me and me, her.

“Do you draw?” She quizzed.

“Not really. I’d love to be your muse, I can sit perfectly still.” She giggled at him, shaking her head as she strolled further into the museum. At the end of their date, Seonghwa offered to walk her home as darkness befell among them.

“Will I see you again?” He questioned, as they stood outside her front porch.

“I think you will, as my muse.”

That was her second biggest mistake. Meeting up in cafe’s, parks, each other’s homes with hours filled with silence as she drew him. He learnt to draw from her, translating some of her tips and tricks for a true likeness. Instantly, she had become his muse. Gradually, the art dates had blossomed into something more. She’d come to terms with her feelings for him.

At this point, having her as his girlfriend wasn’t enough for him. He wanted all of her, every last part that existed. He wanted to come home to her every evening, her arms outstretched for him and only him. He wanted her to bear his children, to begin a family with him. He became so fanatic with this domestic fantasy, he began to start plotting ways to plaster her at his side. Especially when he came home one evening, and she was baking in his kitchen. Her hands, dusted with flour reached towards the Windsor knot. Pulling his tie, she leaned in pressing her lips to his to which he reciprocated. He smiled, placing his hand on her lower back, deepening the kiss.

“Welcome home, husband.” She joked, before shooing him out, to get changed for dinner. Slightly dazed, from the deep kiss, Seonghwa smiled to himself in the bathroom.

She wants me too.

“Here.” He placed a cup of tea in front of her, a frown complacent. “No, no coffee for you madam. Too much coffee is not healthy, then you complain about not being able to sleep.” He nagged, repressing a smile she rolled her eyes playfully raising the hot beverage to her lips.

“Hold on, I need the bathroom. I’ll be back.” He nodded, occupying himself with the cookies. She skipped out of the kitchen and up the stairs of his home. Before she ambled down the steps, a door creaked open swaying back and forth; parrying against the push of the wind. Sauntering to the door, it hauled itself open the light from the hallway spilling into the room.

The sheets of paper littered upon the desks grabbed at her attention, allowing curiosity to get the best of her she inched forward. They were pictures of her. Pictures of her going to the grocery store, coming home from work, doing the laundry. Pictures of her bedroom, her sketchbooks, her work. Frantically, her hands gathered through every page dissolving the sight of every little thing about her sprawled across the pages. Copies of her birth certificate, her passport, bank details. Where had he obtained these? Tears rushed to the brim of her eyes, her mouth slapping her lips shut to prevent any sounds from escaping.

“Nae sarang! Are you ok?” He called from the bottom of the stairs. Holding back her tears, she left the sheets as they were rushing out of the room- closing the door, but not fully shut to raise suspicion. She descended down the stairs, her pale face raised Seonghwa’s attention. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I feel a bit unwell. My head is pounding.” She proclaimed, the truth nonetheless. She could barely even look into his eyes now, feeling vulnerable and stripped bare. He knew everything possible about her that there was to know. And for what reason?

“Have you started your period? You’re not due yet, you always start at the end of the month.” Her cheeks flushed red with embarrassment, god he knew that too? “Ach, don’t be shy you told me.” She didn’t remember telling him, ever.

“You know I keep sanitary towels in the cupboard if you need-,”

“No, it’s not that. I’m just exhausted.” He furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. She was full of energy when she first arrived at his home. What had happened that all of it had dissipated within a few minutes?

“Take some rest-,” she’d interrupted him once more, a sense of irritation fulfilling him.

“I’m going home.” Without a word more, she grabbed her bag from the kitchen and fled from the door as fast as she could. Seonghwa’s heart sunk in his chest, a pang settling deep as she left without kissing him- like she always did.

She didn’t call him once, after that night. Not even a message to ask him how he was. Sitting on her bed, with her knees tucked up and pressed against her chest, she pondered on what to do next. What was there even left to do? He knew everything about her, what were the chances he was still watching her in this very moment? She couldn’t go back to her hometown, he’d know where to look first. She didn’t have a friend’s house she could go to. She could move, but to where? There was the matter of her job, moving all of her personal belongings, then having to change her billing address on all legal documentation. That was fine, she could suppose, the real problem lay in how she was going to execute all of this without him knowing.

A ferocious knock on her door snapped her out of her thoughts. Darting to the window, her eyes carefully peered outside to find the devil himself on her front step. As if he could sense her fixation, he looked up sending a patronising wave. Dear god, help me. Tentatively, the door unlocked Seonghwa teared through the open space; stumbling backwards as he strode to her. His pale hand settled on her cheek, bringing her closer to him.

“What’s wrong, baby? Why have you been ignoring me?” Words lodged in her front, pathetic stutters escaped her- unable to construct together a rational sentence.

“I’ve not been well, and I’ve been wanting to be alone.” Her reasoning was good enough, yet he knew that there was something brewing beneath the surface. After all, he found that the pictures in his office were not in the exact order that he’d had them in. He was particularly meticulous about that sort of thing.

“You could at least return my calls, no? What’s on your mind?” His soft voice no longer soothed the pervasive yearning that existed for centuries.

“I think we should break up, Seonghwa.” She stated, attempting the control her quivering voice. Balling up her palms into tights fists at her side, she avoided gazing into his eyes for they were wrought with such brutality.

“Why? What did I do wrong? What did you see?” Squeezing her eyes shut, her bottom lip began to tremble as he bombarded her with those treacherous questions. What did I do wrong? Everything and anything that was humanely possible for a man to do wrong. “WHY? WHY DO YOU WANT TO LEAVE ME?” He roared, tears burst through the banks, pitiful cries echoed into the home.

“The pictures!” She shouted, “The pictures, the birth certificate, the passport, everything. The way that you know things about me that I haven’t even told you, the way that you’ve thrown yourself into every aspect of my life and have left nothing for myself. The way that you attach yourself to me, its suffocating.” Heaving breaths infiltrated the empty space, pearl drops slid down her cheeks, the tears tickling her jawline as they gracefully blessed the floorboards beneath them. The objects in her line of sight all began to bleed together, her head pounding with an incessant pain.

“I need you to leave, Seonghwa. Before I file for a restraining order.” It was sheer stupidity that she had not gone and done that first, yet with the persisting fear and delusional hope that it had all just been some sick dream- she refused to go to the police station. Beads of sweat lined upon her brow, her body convulsing under his despotism.

“I’m not leaving.” He ordered, a cunning smirk falling on his perfect features. "You don't understand, my dear, how long I have wanted you. Do you think that now that I have you in the palm of my hand, I'm going to let you go?" Her heart began to palpitate, as the shaking of her body cultivated a booming agony that seemed to exponentialise.

"Took you long enough, do you feel it now?" He tutted, the dissonance jarring in her ears. "Poison takes too long but I am a patient man." Black dots clouded her vision, the walls were caving in on her. Stumbling backwards her, the ground slipped from beneath her feet-meeting the floor with a distasteful grunt she glissaded into unconsciousness.

The throbbing at her temples persisted, as her eyes fluttered open finding herself in a dark room with the curtains drawn. The room was particularly large, painted in a navy blue yet adorned with light coloured furniture, including the soft, white blanket that was thrown over her. With a heavy grunt, she sat up blinking rapidly so her eyes could accustom to the surroundings. Getting out of the bed, she staggered out of the room and out of the steps, the surroundings completely different than what she knew. This wasn't Seonghwa's home, but a completely different one at that. To begin, she remembered the stairs being on the right of his room in his home. Here, the were built on the left. The kitchen was still across from the stairs, his slender figure was fixed by the kettle. Upon seeing her, he rushed to her side helping her settle at the table in the kitchen.

"How are you feeling?" He brushed the hairs from her face, paying no attention to her disorientation.

"Seonghwa, what am I doing here? Where are we?"

"This is our home now, just you and me and nobody else for miles." He spoke with a dreamy face, oblivious to her apprehension. "Never mind that. Here, sign this." He placed a sheet of paper in front of her to which her eyes reeled over the page sinking in the words. A marriage certificate. Snickering, she gritted her teeth in resentment.

"A marriage certificate? Have you gone mad?"

"What do you mean? We both love each other, what more do you want? We should just get married."

"Seonghwa, I used to love you. Until you decided to be a creep and fucking steal my personal documents. I used to love you until, you poisoned and kidnapped me to a house, god-knows-where." Her chest suspired furiously, he looked back at her as if she had just said something cursed. "This isn't love, this is obsession, and you need help." Grabbing the neck of her dress, her body gravitated towards his.

"Sign. The. Sheet." He ordered. A consternation stormed within her, his face like an angel, heart of a devil. Her hands trembled as the ink pierced through the paper, indenting the sheet. With a smirk on his face, Seonghwa looked over her shoulder only to cock his face head to the side as his tongue poked the inside of his mouth in annoyance.

‘F U C K Y O U’

Roughly, he grabbed her wrist her body falling over the chair bare feet slapping against the floor. She wrestled for hand back, as he dragged her up the steps but his strength overpowered hers. He shoved her into a bedroom, scrambling backwards until her spine hit against the foot of the bed, convulsing as he edged closer.

“Maybe you’ll learn the hard way.” He whispered, “but a pretty face shouldn’t say such hideous words.” Storming out of the room, his arms grabbed for the door handle, door narrowing the space. Clambering to her feet, she darted to the door, twisting the handle only for it to be locked in place. Her fists pounded against the wood an panicked breaths escaped her.

"Seonghwa! Let me out!" Please.

He returned at evening around six o’clock, like clockwork, with a tray of food in hand. Ignoring the pathetic rumble of her stomach, the lethargy of her muscles, the tugs and pains all digging into her heart, she denied herself his food. Because Seonghwa was a madman and even the act of accepting his morsel would give him a glimmer of hope that she’d sign the wretched document. On some days he’d sit on the chair in the corner of the room, to see if she’d eat but she never did. With her body tucked up in the bed, her face sunk into the pillow-the dim of the dusk light spilling into the room. Suppressing a groan, her fist was buried into her stomach as if it would cease its cries for food.

“If you don’t eat, then I don’t eat. How does that sound?” He provoked, getting off the chair to sit on the edge of bed where she was aimlessly drawing patterns over the bedspread.

“Delightful.” She croaked out, her throat parched, begging for a sliver of water.

“You don’t want me to fall ill, do you? If I fall ill then I can’t go to work. If I can’t go to work, how am I going to provide for you and our children?” Thwack. Her hand collided with his cheek, sending a stinging jolt through his pale flesh. Weakly she grasped at his formal shirt collar, his body oscillating back and forth.

“How dare you? I am not your wife, Seonghwa.”

“But how could you not understand that I am so in love with you?” He pushed her hands away from his collar, locking her wrist within his tight grip to place them at his chest. “I’ll tolerate all of this, just for you. Know that it hurts me to see you like this.” Tears rushed to the front of her eyes. She could not bargain with him, she could not ask for help since he deprived her of any source; having locked her in this bedroom. Whether it was days or weeks she’d been isolated, her knowledge was indifferent with her perception of time being distorted. The only option was to sign that goddam marriage contract, but even then, self-annihilation seemed preferable. She was just waiting for her body to deteriorate and one day when Seonghwa would walk into her room, he’d find her stone cold dead. With an exhausted huff he got up from the bed, still clad in his work attire. Closing the curtains, he walked out of the room shutting the door behind him. But the lock did not click in place.

A sense of hope entered her as adrenaline flooded through her veins. Silently, she got up from the bed, resting her ear against the door. When she heard no sound, carefully the door swung open the vast hallways empty as the door to Seonghwa's bedroom was fixed shut. Hurriedly, she scuttled out of the room descending down the steps-darting straight to the kitchen; the emptiness catalysing a surge of disconcerting emotions within her. Twisting the lock on the kitchen door, she sped out feeling the soggy grass beneath her feet as she headed straight for the mass of trees.

It hadn't occurred to her that the house was isolated in the middle of the woods, with at least no other home for about three miles. But she knew that the nearest town could not be too far away as Seonghwa still made his way to work every morning and to the shops on the weekends. He heavily prioritised work being a commutable distance from where he lived. She fled down the woodlands-the abrasive bark lacerating her bare feet the cold mud clenched around her toes manifesting feelings of disgust. Whilst her body ached, with no fuel but adrenaline to keep going she spared a look behind to find the dark obscuring her view of the home in the distance. Nevertheless she dashed through the woodlands.

Seonghwa realised that he hadn't actually locked the door to her room. Shit. Stalking out of his room, he twisted the handle to her room swinging it open to find it completely desolate. Releasing a tired sigh, he shook his head casually wandering out of his home to find his lover.

Sinking to the floor, the sizzling of her throat sent an abiding anguish through her the leaves crackling under her weight. Her name echoed through the trees, being carried through the wind, its entrails infiltrating her ear. Every octave raising like the pulse of her agitated heart. Picking herself up again, heavy pants penetrated the woods as panic flooded through veins- the night carrying her through. Weighty footsteps had caught up behind her, breaths quickened as her pace accelerated tiredness tugging at her aching muscles. Her throat burned as blood hammered through the arteries, ventricles contracting. A biting grip wrapped itself around her wrist her body jerking backwards towards the perpetrator, a small weight settled on her waist as he manoeuvred her body to face his.

"Where do you think you're going?" His husky voice whispered into her ear. Exhaustion domineered her, with her legs giving out she collapsed to the earth defeated tears rushing down her face. Squatting down to her level, he grabbed the bottom of her cheek, her neck snapped back, cheeks paining from the intensity of his brutish grip- as if she wasn't subdued to enough pain already. "I asked you a question." His patience was wearing thin.

"Let me go, Seonghwa. I won't tell anyone what you did. Please-." His palm connected violently against her cheek.

"How dare you even suggest that. Get up. We're going home." Remaining settled on the ground, she wrapped her arms around herself to generate a sense of warmth to parry against the biting winds burning her supple skin. "Fine, I'll drag you there." Balling up her hair in his fist, he turbulently hauled her body in the direction of the home; her hands flinging to his to push away his tight grip.

"Seonghwa, please stop." Her cries were futile, he paid no attention to her. Upon entering the home, he lugged her up to her bedroom; her ankles hitting harshly against the edge of the stairs. Throwing her into the room, as if she was a doll, her body fell against the floor, incessant cries persisted in the haunting atmosphere.

With no option left for her, she tiredly picked her body up from the floor crawling towards the nightstand. Her hands shook as she picked up the pen, resting her cheek against the cold surface of the tabletop. The nib scratched against the crisp, clean sheet forming the outline of her signature.

“I knew you’d sign it. Thank you, jagi.” He pressed his lips to her forehead, tucking the stray strands of hair behind her ear. He had sewn the strings to her back, the day that he met her. Every limb of hers beckoned to his command.

The car parked in the parking lot of the supermarket store, her face pressed up against the glass almost repelled against the sight of so many people present at this time of day. How long had she gone without seeing so many people in one space? She was just used to herself and her husband at home. Opening up the door, a gust of wind followed them through the automatic doors, her eyes travelled up to the tall ceilings of the store gratified by large shelves packed with all sorts of comestibles. He grabbed a basket from the entrance, looping his arm through the handles-strictly adhering to his list whilst his wife reeled in the endless sight of jars which seemed to stretch out for miles.

“Do you remember what else we needed? I’ve got all the vegetables, the pasta, the jam you wanted. Need anything else for the cake?” He quizzed. Her lips pursed in deep thought.

“Ah yes! I need double cream and…light brown sugar. I’ll go get it.”

“It’s just here, I’ll go with you.” He offered. Oh, there goes my freedom. They moved to the following aisle drifting their eyes over the reams of sugar packets. “If you see the 1.5 kilo pack get that, it’s cheaper.” Humming in agreement, she inched away from him grabbing the pack of sugar from the shelf.

“KCN followed by dilute acid, it’s the reagent needed for the reaction.” She smiled, as flashbacks from chemistry lessons in college flooded back to her.

“CN?”

“Yes, you know C triple bond N. Cyanide.” The girl rolled her eyes as if her brother should have known the answer. It gave her a sense of nostalgia, knowing it was the exact same way she used to react with her own brother.

“Is there anything else we need? I got the double cream.” Seonghwa’s voice snapped her engrossment away from the siblings’ conversation.

“Can we get cherries?” He nodded, a loving smile gracing his lips. Their hands entwined moving back in the direction of the fruit aisle.

Hand rested meekly upon her belly, he urged himself closer in her direction- pressing a gentle kiss on her bare shoulder. They laid on their shared bed; the afternoon light swallowing them whole, nothing but the comfort of each other. Rubbing it softly, a small warmth generated from the friction easing the cramps in her stomach. He didn’t know yet. He still very much thought that there was a child, his child, growing in her womb. How did she submit under his despotism?

He was so excited, jumping all over the place when she revealed the news of her pregnancy to him. So much so, he spared her his anger for slipping out of the house to see the doctors without telling him. One evening he came home to her lying in bed, wracked with exhaustion. Her head picked up at the sight of him, hiding something under his coat. Raising a questioning eyebrow, he sat himself next to her-the head and arm of a bunny peeking out of his coat. Moving the arm of a bunny as if it was waving at her, she snorted nudging him with her knee.

“I got it for the baby.” Her fingers ran down the white fur, the softness relaxing the tension in her muscles. “What should we name it?” He asked.

“That’s not for us to decide. Our baby can name it.” Our baby. Our, the pronoun shocking them both. There was a prescience of acceptance that lay beneath that word; a notion that the crazed obsession he had with her was worthy of her forgiveness. Perhaps she had gone mad, tipped over the edge- her hands kicked over the precipice.

When she had asked her mother, “Why do some married couples still have children even though they don’t love each other?” Her mother laughed in her face, more mocking than it was endearing.

“You think if I didn’t love your father, I would let him get close to me?” She shrugged, was it lust that they were drawn by? Was she drawn by lust, the temptation to have her husband in all the ways no woman had ever had him before? To feel the heat of his bare skin pressed against hers, body moving in swift rhythm pumping her desire. His passion cut deeper than a knife cut through skin, bestowing his wild emotions through littering kisses as if it would seal the rupture of her soul. Mine. Mine. Mine. “I loved your father when I was having your brother, when we had you? Not so much. We just had another child, so I could separate myself from the fact that I may have been falling out of in love with him.” She often thought where her mother was now. Her brother had moved out with his wife a long time ago, severing any forms of contact. She thought they loved each other, as siblings did. They spent their nights sneaking into the kitchen, raiding their pantry, comparing each other to the ugliest, fattest people they’d seen on the internet. Perhaps it was their mother. When she had moved out for university, her mother told her not to speak to her again. At the time she thought her mother was just upset over her leaving, refusing to talk to her- barely engaging in a conversation when she came back home for the holidays.

It wasn’t until, the last year of her degree- perhaps the most stressful time of her life she had ever faced; trying her hardest to balance academia and job interviews. Eventually, she tore through the burden completing her final exams, leaving her shared dorms for the last time to go back to her home.

Except it wasn’t. For when she knocked on the door, confused as to why the key wouldn’t fit through the lock, the door opened to reveal a man she had never seen before. Toddlers were scuttling up and down the stairs behind him, a woman (who she could only assume to be his wife) worked diligently in the kitchen taking the dishes out of the cupboard. Who was this man and what was he doing in her home?

It only seemed he could ask her the same question.

“I live here, this is my property.” He demanded.

“I’m really sorry Sir, but I’m the daughter of the woman who previously owned this home. I wasn’t aware that she was selling this property.” A look of pity fulfilled his features, his once stern face softened under her statement. “If you could just let me know, if you do by any chance, where I can reach her, where she might possibly be now?” It was a desperate attempt, but here she was looking like a fool with a suitcase in hand, her small car parked behind her loaded with boxes of her University material. Hungry, exhausted and just wanting nothing more than to crawl into bed; she was deprived of that now, refused that.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know. I can contact the estate agents and ask for you.”

“That’s fine, I’ll give you my number. Please reach out to me if you have any news.” Taking a scrap piece of paper and a pen from her bag, she scrawled her number across the page; handing it over to him. Bidding him goodbye, she displaced her luggage back into the car; driving off and away from her childhood home, knowing it was the last time she’d ever see that street again.

It was safe to say that the subsequent years had been the most difficult years of her life. Living alone was never the problem, but she was already wrought with so much university debt and finding apartments with reasonable rent was difficult. She wasn’t proud to admit that for two weeks she had to live with a friend who was beginning to despise her, work a few jobs during the summer where she was supposed to relax in order to cultivate enough money to rent an apartment. Even after she managed to land a good job at a revered company, the struggle persisted with wanting to maintain a good image in front of her superiors. There was no money to spare for herself, a majority had been lost to rent, the remainder for food and basic necessities.

It was a punishment from her mother, she was so sure of it. A punishment for being born, a punishment for unknowingly making her life the misery that it was. She wasn’t struggling as much, especially now that Seonghwa was the primary breadwinner. He earned good money from his corporate job, enough so that he stopped her from going to work.

At the end of the day, Seonghwa was right. Nobody in her life cared about her as much as he did.

“I’m so sorry for the way that I hurt you, Hwa. You don’t deserve that.” She choked out as her body wracked with sobs. An endless stream of tears ran down her face, her husband encircling her in his arms peppering gentle kisses over her face. He wiped away her tears, before lifting her face up with a single finger to stare deeply into her eyes.

“It’s ok my love, I know why you did it.”

“No, you don’t understand. I am not a good wife to you, I lost our baby.” His face had dropped, bottom lip culminating into a quiver that ached her heart more than it should have. “I’m such a failure.” She sunk her head further into the pillow, letting her tears consume her. Slipping his hands around her waist, he brought her closer to him, her entire figure almost dissolving into him. With gentle hushes, he wiped away her tears, again, easing her wails.

“You are not a failure, these things just happen.”

Things like being poisoned and kidnapped by your ex boyfriend just didn’t happen. Things like being forced to marry him just didn’t happen. Being pressured to have his child just didn’t happen. Yet here she was, in the same situation her mother had been prior to her birth thinking that a child could be an escape from this hell hole, and the universe snatched it from her hands, mocking her desperation for emancipation.

If she went any further, she knew she’d feel obliged to slit her own throat in front of him. It was either his life or hers. Wasn’t the number one rule to prioritise your life over anybody else’s?

"Honey, I'm home!" He called out into the foyer. Ambling into the kitchen, he sought his wife pulling a cake tin from the oven. Leaning against the fridge door, he drunk in her impalpable beauty. Her hands reached for his tie, pulling his fabric, she pressed her lips to his to as she did once ago.

"Are you thirsty?" She pondered. Handing him the glass of cold squash perched on the countertop, he gratefully took it from her hands. He shot her smile, gulping the drink. Resting her head on his shoulder, he draped his hand around her pulling her closer to his body. Her eyes darted to kitchen clock, the hand circulating dreadfully slow as it usually did. Finishing the rest of the drink, he settled the glass in the sink.

Hoarse coughs had disrupted her from her slumber, her bleary eyes shot open twisting to find Seonghwa's body shaking as he violently coughed into a tissue. Beads of sweat began to form on his forehead, skin paling significantly. With squinted eyes, she sat up-he jumped out of the bed swinging the door open. Hastily, she followed after him. Light from the bathroom illuminated the dim hallway, treading closer she sought him hunched over the toilet, vomiting. When his sickness ceased, a painful gasp released from his lips- he began to wheeze slumped against the bathtub as his body continued to convulse.

"Hwa?" Lingering in the doorway of the bathroom, she questioned his dishevelled state. It was perhaps the first time she had ever seen him so ill and vulnerable. "Can you get up?" He sat up wearily, shaking his head no. His entire body wrought with agony, limbs limp as if they were tied down by shackles.

"Get me some water, please." His weak voice had barely travelled to her.

"Do you know what it feels like to be tied down, now?" With creased eyebrows, he stared at her bewildered. The objects in his line of sight were bleeding together, her figure wavering. Head pounding, he attempted to crawl to her but his arms felt heavy. Was this her doing? What had she done to him? At first, he thought it was food poisoning but he hadn't eaten anything from outside of this home. He had made sure to overlook all of the dates on the food packages, after all he could not have him or his wife eating expired food. "How long were you going to keep me here, trapped like a bird in a cage?"

It was her. His mind ran at a million miles a minute, barging through the barriers that blocked his rationality. Each thought was strained, as if a metal rod had pierced straight his head severing the nerves in his brain. It was the drink. She had poisoned him. His breaths quickened, as panic coursed through his veins.

"You deserve to suffer, Park Seonghwa." Malice present in her tongue, a humourless chuckle left her-she moved away from the door frame speeding back to her room.

"Help me, jagiya!" he shouted. The nerve of that man. To be in such pain and still dare to address her as if she was his. Grabbing the packed bag from her wardrobe, slipping her phone into her pocket she raced down the stairs. Slinging the jacket over her, she rushed out of the home shutting the door behind her. The slam of the door, silenced the voices in her head. Was that all it took? A low, soft hum propelled her away from the home, the light of the bathroom blaring into the woodlands. Birds chirping in the warmth of the morning air, lotus flowers blooming from the grass of his front lawn. Wind blew at the loose hair that sprung from the loose knot. The scent of liberation was as rousing as it could get.

It had taken over a year for her to not jump every time someone had approached her. She was so sure that Seonghwa was dead now, when she laced the cup with poison, she didn't expect the effects to kick in so quickly. Poison, usually took its effects several days after consumption. It was the cyanide inside the cherry seeds that had inspired her, the most deadly chemical compound capable of causing death within a few minutes or hours. She wasn't sure if she had extracted it carefully, having crushed the cherry pits or stored it since Seonghwa had the habit of rummaging through every cupboard in the house as if she was hiding things from him. Regardless, she prepared herself: packing a bag of essentials with rolls of cash and ID, and completely moved into a new city far away from Sacheon. Though her hand would freeze when filling out forms. Was she still a 'Mrs'? Were you still bound to your spouse in holy matrimony if they were dead? Is that why they said, 'Till death do us part'. Staying hidden in a city fearing that Seonghwa’s ghost would haunt her through the streets, was not enough to keep her alive and paying the bills. So, she took up a job at a college lecturing in Chemistry, it was more than enough to stop her from going insane. Despite the impartial pupils, the overachievers, and the lesson planning and marking that had accumulated, she enjoyed her job nevertheless. For a while it felt like she had freshly graduated University again, struggling to make ends meet. When the load lightened, it was as if mercy had finally been bestowed upon her.

Why did the grocery store never have anything when she needed it the most? No cocoa powder. No demerara sugar. Lemon juice? No, it seemed that they had run out of them too. Drifting down the aisle of supermarket, she huffed throwing the apples into her basket before drifting into the second aisle for jars of pasta sauce. With her mind elsewhere, her body collided with another's the poor shopper dropping the things from their hands. Apologising profusely, she knelt to pick up their items. Raising to lock her eyes with another familiar set.

"Mum?" She blinked, the cans plastered to her palms as her heart began to palpitate. Her mother's mouth was agape, an unreadable expression tightened across her features. "How are you?" Wasn't this the question that you'd ask over the phone, after a long day at work-followed by promise to see her when you had a day off. Not a question to be asked, as if you had bumped into an old friend from high school.

"I'm great. I saw you, a few years ago. In Sacheon, with a man."

"Yes, he was my husband."

"Was? I knew a handsome man like that wouldn't stick around with a woman like you." She bit her tongue in annoyance. Of course her mother never changed with the snide remarks. There didn't seem to a scent of an emotion on her face even having seen her daughter after a long time.

"He passed away, Mum." The remark faltered the smirk on her mother's face. Then when her mother asked if she had any children, she shook her head in dismay. "I miscarried. I lost my baby, the same way you lost yours."

“You’re still my baby.” The nerve of that woman to make that preposterous claim. Had she even felt the maternal bond each woman had felt to their child?

“Am I? Am I really? Because I wasn’t your baby when you left me abandoned outside my childhood home, leaving me to question if you were dead or alive. I wasn’t your baby when you told me you never wanted me. I was never your baby. But you were always my Mum. And that means more to me than me being your child does.” A tear slid down her mother’s face, under the dim lights in the empty aisle of the grocery store where she poured out her soul. “I never had, and perhaps never will, have the privilege of being a mother. Regardless, I swear that if I ever neglect my child the way you neglected me, I would let them kill me in cold-blood. Such is a death that is deserved for a woman like me.” Dropping the cans into her mother's basket, she looked down at her feet.

"I don't even want to know why you became estranged from me. I just want to know if you regretted it." An uncomfortable solicitude hung in the suffocating air. Tragic. Refusing to let the tears escape from her own eyes, she stalked off in the opposite direction ignoring her mother's melancholic call for her name.

When she entered her home again, she dropped the bags onto the kitchen worktop-walking to her bedroom to tear the jacket and scarf off her body. A bunny was perched on the bed, encrusted between the two pillows encased in a cotton light blue cases. She froze. Her breaths accelerated, fear pulping through her.

It couldn't be.

It wasn't possible.

"I've missed you, jagiya." A single tear slipped down from her eyes, her sobs lodged in her throat. His warm breath tickled her ears from behind her, he pressed his lips to the nape of her exposed neck.

“How?” She whispered, refusing to look around and stare him in the eye. As if that would take back the fact that he wasn’t dead, stood behind her in a home she’d built far away from him.

“I knew what the cherries were for. I saw the poison, I just replaced it with something less toxic.” He whipped her body around, her body hitting roughly against his chest. “You’re mine, and you belong to me.” He sang, sliding his hands down to her waist, he swayed their bodies to the rhythm of his saccharine hums which serenaded the air, tantalising her ears. Once again, he attached the strings to her back, controlled the movements of her body. Resting his face in the crook of her neck, he fluttered his eyes close in the night. “You’re mine, until death do us part.”

•••

DO NOT REPOST, TRANSLATE, REPURPOSE, OR PLAGISRISE ANY OF THE WORK HERE

A/N: yes, I am inherently deranged for using such a cutie pop banner for this fic. BIG thank you to the loml @n0v4t33z for helping me decide on the name of this fic!

let me know if you’d like to be added to the tag list for any future fics I post!

#ateez #kpop #ateez angst #ateez fanfic #ateez x reader #ateez imagines #park seonghwa #ateez fanfiction #seonghwa x you #seonghwa x reader #seonghwa #ateez imagine #ateez fic #yandere #yandere x reader #yandere x you #ateez yandere

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wynnyfryd · 7 months ago

Text

Trailer park Steve AU pt 67

part 1 | part 66 | ao3

cw: recreational drug use

Waiting around to die or get arrested or whatever fucking sucks. Partly because there’s no running water (Steve’s never wanted to take a stress shower so badly in his life) and partly because Eddie won’t let him stay sober. Has it in his head that altering Steve’s mental state will keep Vecna away, like hanging a mosquito net over the opening of a tent.

It’s not not working, he guesses.

He hasn’t fallen in to any more hallucinated open graves, at least.

He comes down the stairs a little before noon, towel-drying his hair after a bottled water sink bath, and finds Eddie in the kitchen: Reeboks on, hair a cotton candy mess, head-to-toe teddy bear tie-dye under his leather jacket — a matching shirt and sweats that he fished out of Rick’s dresser. He’s stirring Spaghettios in a small pot at the stove, and when he sees Steve come in he turns to offer some, the wooden spoon held out with a sort of desperate perkiness. “Morning! I found food that isn’t expired. You want some?”

Steve shakes his head.

Eddie shovels the whole spoonful into his mouth; wipes sauce off his chin, speaks before he’s finished chewing. “I also found blotters in the freezer and shrooms in the bedroom closet, so uh. Pick your poison.”

Steve picks the shrooms. They wait a few hours to take them because Eddie swears the sunset while you’re tripping is unparalleled, man, although Steve kind of suspects that he’s just giving him time to work up the nerve to eat them. He still gets nervous about chemicals — probably always will, after the shit the Russians did.

In the meantime, Eddie rummages through Rick’s cassette collection, and Steve talks to Robin on the walkie; gets all the new details in staticky half-sentences — something about mind flayers and mental hospitals, what else is new? He tells her to be safe; tells her that he loves her; keeps his eyes trained on the clock.

—

Shrooms smell and taste like ass. Steve can’t stomach them; spits into the grass while Eddie laughs sympathetically and hands him a little square of paper to put on his tongue instead, and they spread out side by side on a few old beach towels by the water and wait for it to kick in.

Nothing, at first, not that Steve expected different. Twenty minutes; forty-five.

“Still nothing?”

“Nothing.”

And then.

Eddie holds up a glossy aquamarine pebble, squinting at its glow in the late afternoon sun. “I should give this rock to Skye. Bet she’d love it.”

“That’s a shard of glass.”

Eddie blinks at it. “Oh, shit.”

Steve snorts, and when he looks at Eddie sideways there’s a glimmer of that same cerulean shade outlining his whole body, a low-frequency feather of energy rolling off of him in waves. Eddie moves his arm and the color chases it, a long-exposure photo of high beams on rain-slick roads.

“Oh,” Steve says, mouth slack. His voices echo in his head; all six of them. “I think I’m…”

“Yeah?” Eddie asks, eyes alight, pupils blown.

“Yeah.”

All at once something slots into place, attunes itself inside of Steve, and it’s like… he can see Eddie’s mind; touch it, cradle it, reach out to it with its own. It feels crazy. Psychedelics are fucking crazy. He reaches out a hand, slicing through ribbons of shimmering light, tasting the colors as they fade, and Eddie’s emotions spread out in high-definition before him — like the image has always been there but now it’s crystal clear; someone’s shifted his focal point, filled a kiddie pool with Epsom salt and left him there to float.

“I see you,” he says nonsensically.

Eddie frowns. “I’m sorry.”

“…That I can see you?”

“I usually am.”

That’s not right. Eddie’s thoughts shouldn’t sour on his account, shouldn’t sag in the middle like a moldy tangerine. “I can close my eyes?”

“Fuck,” Eddie laughs, thin and strained. “Don’t say shit like that when I’m not allowed to kiss you.”

“You’re not?”

He hesitates. “Am I?” Antsy fingers drum the grass, overgrown with vibrant clover and dandelion stalks. “Just feel like we should talk first, if uh, if it’s safe.”

Steve probes his own mind, tests it for outside threats, but there’s nothing. The acid forms a fractal fortress. Penrose steps, paradoxical and strange. “It’s safe.”

He moves to lie on his side, invites Eddie to do the same. “Talk into the kiss,” he suggests when Eddie joins him — face to face, chest to chest, Steve can see the thrum of Eddie’s heartbeat in the hollow of his throat; wants to press his thumb to it, so he does, the sense memory of ripe cherries bursting on his tongue.

Eddie’s lips against his own; hovering. Static electricity like the scent of summer rain. “I think my pride makes me a coward.”

Steve rubs his dry lips across Eddie’s, chapped skin and shared heat.

“It’s like… I kept trying to tell myself that I was being… I don’t know, valiant, or some shit? Like, ‘oh, he’s so much better without me. I’m the town pariah; I’m keeping him safe by running away.’” He thumps his fist against his heart as if beating a shield to shining armor, and Steve can’t see his eyebrows with their foreheads pressed together, but he can feel Eddie scrunching them into a picture-perfect hero frown. Almost has to laugh — so fucking theatrical even when he’s serious.

“But if I’m honest,” Eddie murmurs, “it wasn’t like that at all. Nothing fucking brave about vanishing on you. Like, what?” His voice shifts again, lilting but critical, a comedian doing crowd work. “I get a liiiittle fucked up by townies two too many times, and I sabotage my whole life over it? Ruin the best thing I’ve ever had over it? As if this goddamn horseshit hasn’t been happening to me since— forever! Shit.” He blows his bangs out of his face; calms himself. Goes a little cross-eyed trying to look Steve in the eye. “I got scared, Steve. There it is. That’s the ugly truth of it.”

He swallows harshly in the dense silence that follows.

Robins chirp; cars pass.

The lake laps at the shore and casts prisms like fishing line, spiderwebs of rainbow light flashing behind Steve’s eyelids. He brings his hands up to Eddie’s face.

“Christ.” Eddie shudders; lets himself become dead weight, rubbing his cheek into the touch, warm stubble scratching over the pads of Steve’s fingers. “Am I making any sense? I feel like I’m not making any sense.”

Yes. No. “You’re making sense. I mean. As much as anything is right now.” The sandy brown freckles on the bridge of Eddie’s nose are swirling like snow flurries. Steve traces them with curious hands. His knuckles blur and swivel, too. “You left because… you wanted to protect me from… yourself?” He sums up, not sure if he’s getting the math right.

“I left because I’m a scared little shit who couldn’t handle getting bullied in a parking lot, but uh. Yeah. I guess I, like, didn’t want to…” His eyes go big and startled, cheeks flooding bright pink. “Oh, shit, I was about to say I didn’t want to curse you, Jesus Christ.”

Steve honks with laughter. Loud and deep and punched out without warning, because the irony of that — that there’s a literal big bad running around cursing people, and the person who was actually doing some real good in his life decided that he was the problem — it’s fucking— hilarious! Hysterical! Steve giggles himself sick, lungs burning as it tapers to a silent wheeze, and Eddie joins him, confusion giving way to compulsion; contagion in the manic giddiness spewing out of Steve.

“You thought—” Steve struggles through hiccups, tears beading in his lash line, “you thought you were the bad luck charm in this relationship?”

“Don’t mock me!” Eddie whines, still laughing. “I already said it was dumb.”

“It’s so dumb.” Eddie may be the cutest, dumbest thing he’s ever seen. He rubs his thumbs over his cheekbones, smile fading. “If anyone’s a curse, it’s me.” Four for four here on getting dragged into supernatural shit. Does Eddie really think homophobes are more dangerous than hell dimensions?

Eddie’s already shaking his head. “You’re a fucking blessing.”

Warmth radiates through Steve, drips from the crown of his head like a downpour of holy water. He feels anointed. Ascended. He feels— “Please tell me we’re allowed to kiss now.”

Their mouths crush together, impossible to tell who moves first, whose tongue is in whose mouth, whose desperate breath Steve swallows as Eddie rolls him onto his back. Hands roam and pull and clutch, molding the shape of him into the earth. Maybe someday, Steve thinks, if aliens invade, they’ll study these imprints like crop circles, trampled declarations of how much Steve loves this boy. “God,” he gasps into the kiss. “Missed you so much.”

“So much.”

“Don’t do that to me again. Don’t go.”

“Never,” Eddie swears. His grip tightens on Steve’s waist. “Never again, baby, I fucking promise. I think I—”

On the far side of the house, leaves crunch and branches snap as a car pulls up the drive. Boots on pavement, rowdy voices; unfamiliar; red alert.

“Spread out, boys!” the voice of Jason Carver bellows. “If that Freak’s in here, we’ll find him.”

—

part 68

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#trailer park steve au #steddie #steddie fic #my writing #my fic #steve harrington #eddie munson #reefer rick #jason carver

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am-i-the-asshole-official · 7 months ago

Note

AITA for taking my dog to sniff in the grass near an apartment building?

🐶 for reference so i can come back to it

I (20) am back in my home city for the summer while i'm away from college, and i'm staying with my family which includes my dog (almost 4f) who is the love of my life. she's very sweet and cuddly around people but requires a lot of exercise and LOVES to sniff around, but we can't take her to dog parks because she was a covid puppy and was never socialized properly and thus ends up pretty aggressive towards other dogs. (this is an us problem and i am trying to work on this with her this summer).

i'm trying to reinforce some of the training i did with her before i left for college, which my family hasn't really kept up. part of this is recall training, which she always responds to if there's treats involved. i want to keep that ingrained in her in case of an emergency.

there is an apartment about a block away from my house, which has this huge lawn right next to it and a couple of benches. i never see anyone there, but it's a really nice grassy area and my dog loves to go sniffing around there. since there aren't any significant triggers for her around, usually what i do is drop the leash (i keep it connected to her) and follow her around for a bit. i also always call her back every so often and treat when she comes to reinforce her recall. it's a fun time for both of us: for her because she likes to sniff and roll around in the grass, and for me because i like spending time with her!

today we were doing what we normally do when i heard some knocking. i looked around and saw an old lady in one of the ground floor apartments knocking at me (i knew it was at me because nobody else was there). once i finally made eye contact with her, she made this aggressive pointing motion with her hand for us to go away. she kept doing that until we left (i'm super conflict-avoidant so it didn't take much).

i'm worried that i might have accidentally broken a law or something. as far as i'm aware, anyone is allowed to just go hang out there. my dad says he's seen other people and their dogs there as well, and i also know for a fact that the building is pet-friendly as there are a couple of dogs who bark from inside sometimes when my dog and i walk by (this doesn't bother her). i also am never more than 15ft away from her at any given moment, and she's very well behaved and comes when she's called. the worst she'll do is pee on the lawn or poop, in which case i'll pick it up and throw it away. i think i'm a responsible dog handler, and i don't do anything with my dog that could potentially danger her or someone else.

so AITA?

#aita #am i the asshole

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morimemichael · 8 months ago

Text

Not Allowed

Dbd!Myers x f!Reader

Reader it’s new to the realm, she gets a good first impression on everyone; killer and survivor. Tho there’s certain someone who seams to became too obsessed with her. She doesn’t get it, she thinks this killer hates her with all their guts. Sooner than later she finds that some interactions and relationships are not allowed in the realm.

WG: Some angst and cursing Michael actually talks but this is not actually a warning lol mentions of death, blood and gore. Michael and Ghostface have a bromance cause deep down they are besties. Dbd!Michael it’s based on RZ! Michael here. Use if y/n twice on the entire fic. Ghostface removes his mask. Michael removes his mask. Big old Pewpaw Kazan Yamaoka, aka, the ink is a great hugger. Happy ending(?)

You were brand new to the realm, like a new born baby. You didn’t understand what was going on, one night you went to bed and the next thing you know it’s the uncomfortable feeling of grass and wood sticks on your back. This was beyond clear that it wasn’t your bed.

You woke up scared as hell in an unknown forest to you, it’s was late at night you could tell and you didn’t met a single soul this far. All of that was vanished when the sound of what it seemed a camp fire stroked your ears, and for your surprise it wasn’t just a camp fire you could distinguish the sound of human voices too. It didn’t seem too far from were you currently were. So you walked a little faster while covering your chest with your own arms in a sutil attempt to combat the cold weather.

You stepped closer to the people in the camp fire to ask for help and maybe an answer to what was going on here. As you got closer could see a bunch of girls and a few boys. One of the girls had red hair and running clothes, the Oder one had short black hair, she was wearing glasses, the other one had also shirt hair, she was wearing a black and red shirt and loosen pants, on the other side; one of the boys was tall with very short black hair and when you herd him taking he had a british accent, the other boy had also black hair but it reached the mid of his face.

“Uhm, excuse me?” You said. Your voice low but clear. The red hair girl turned around to look at you. Suddenly everyone stopped talking.

“Oh my god…” The red hair girl stated. “Guys…I think we have a new partner!” She continued.

Everyone smiled at you and presented themselves. It turned out the red hair girl’s name was Meg Thomas, the girl with the glasses was Claudette Morel, the other girl was Nea Karlson, the British guy was David King and the other guy was Jake Park.

“Did you just arrived?” Claudette asked.

“Yeah…I don’t know where I am.” You stated.

“What’s your name girl?” Meg asked.

“Where are you from?” Another question, this time Jake.

“She’s gonna need a lot of help.” You herd David talking.

“Guys, why don’t we just let her sit with us and let her talk?” Nea said. It was the first time she talked.

You smiled for the first time.

You sat next to Meg and Nea and proceeded to tell every detail about you, your name, your age, where were you from. You told them that last night you had a fight with your parents and when you went to sleep you woke up here.

“We get you, we really do.” Jake spoke.

Everyone told you their personal story. How they end up here, but most important of all they told you what was going on in this place.

“There’s uhm…there’s something that we call the entity, that rules all of this place. She can do what she pleases with us and with everyone.” Nea talked looking at you.

“To survive and to keep every thing, no matter how small it might be, here with us, like some food and water, we have to go through trials.” Jake explained.

“Trials?” You asked confused.

“Yeah, we must repair five generators to open the exit gates.” Meg continued.

“That’s it? Just five generators? It’s a piece of cake…” you laughed.

“I wouldn’t say that if i were you…” David looked at you.

“Why not?” You talked back.

David sight, then he explained the most difficult part.

“We must face a killer that will be with us in the same place.”

“WHAT!? A real killer? Like from slasher movies?” You stated.

“Yes, a real killer.” David stated.

“N-no, no, I wanna go home, please!” You yell at the sky hopping this entity would hear you and somehow pity you.

Everyone looked at you with sad eyes, they knew you weren’t going home anytime sooner.

“Wish we could do something about it, I’m so sorry.” Jake spoke again after a long time.

You moved your head to the sides and looked down, a long sigh scapes your mouth. “Shit…” that’s all that came from you. Everyone remained silent for a while until you spoke again.

“So, how this trial thing works?”

“Well, the entity select some of us for the trial, four survivors to be exact. To help you in the trial you can carrie an object with you, this objects being a toolbox or a flashlight or a med kit and others. Every object has their own use, the toolbox can be use on the generators or to sabotage the hooks the killer use to hook us, by the way; the killer’s main goal is to hook us all in those hooks, flashlights are meant to blind the killer and save your teammates that se going to get hook, and last but not least the med kit as its name suggests can be use to heal yourself or your teammates. Also when you get hook-“ Claudette was interrupted by survivors who just came back from a trial. Four survivors emerged from the dar fog of this place.

“Gosh, that trial was so easy, I need something more challenging!” A young girl with blonde hair spoke.

“Hey Laurie, who was the killer this time?” David asked her.

Laurie? Like the same Laurie from the Halloween movies? You thought to yourself. The intrigue of knowing if you were right was eating your brain, you know you wouldn’t last any longer so you had to ask her.

“The trickster.” This girl said looking at David.

“Uhm excuse me, Laurie? Like Laurie Strode form the Halloween movies?” You finally asked her.

“Yes! I’m her. You must be new right?” She smiled back at you.

“Yes, in fact I got here a few moments ago.” You then proceed to present yourself.

“So nice to meet you! I know we’re gonna be good friends, watcha say new girl?” Laurie had a content face. New girl huh? You liked the new nickname.

“I hope so! By the way I loved that nickname!” Laurie smiled back at your words.

Nea joined your conversation with Laurie explaining further more how the trials work.

“Continuing with the trials, we’re gonna spawn in a map. In this map you will find certain constructions you can use to loop the killer, evade them or confuse them.

“Ok.” You listen very carefully to what Nea said.

Sooner than later you realize that some of the survivors that came with Laurie were from the Resident Evil game franchise. Leon and Jill were here, you wondered if others form the same games were too. You smiled when you saw Chris and Claire in this place too. You presented yourself like you did with everyone else and they seemed to like you as much as the rest did.

“We should tell you that some survivors came along with their respective killers, generally they are related to them. For example, Leon and me came along with Nemesis.” Jill explained.

“So…if you guys came along with Nemesis that means you Laurie came along with M-“

“Yes, I came along with Michael Myers.” She finished the sentence for you. The second you hear that afirmation you knew you no longer wanted to get back home.

“Gosh that’s awesome! I love the Halloween movies, as much as the Resident Evil games or the Scream movies. I love Halloween season so much, and Halloween loves me.” You gave the guys a mischievous smile.

“That’s great! But do let me tell you that most of the killers aren’t nice as us survivors. Some of them lack empathy and act rude. Tho I have to say some killers are nice sometimes.” Leon’s voice was calm but it sounded firm.

“I see, so uhm…Michael?” Your question was meant to find out how he acts in this place.

“Well, Michael has his “I think I could spare you” moments sometimes, but most of the time he just hooks us…he’s very accurate I would say.” Laurie didn’t have anything left to say about Michael.

You couldn’t help but feel a mix of disappointment and excitement, you wanted to face him so bad by now. Eventually the time for your first trial came, thankfully you weren’t alone, Laurie got picked too. You asume that the most optimal object to take with yourself for your first trial was med kit.

Soon the trial started and you couldn’t believe your eyes when you saw that the killer you were going against was none other than Michael Myers himself. You were over excited, you wanted to say hi, let him know how much you liked his movies. You wander how he was going to act this time, you assumed since you were new maybe he could spare you. He was lurking near the generator you were currently working on, unaware you were conscious he was there.

Something inside you made you leave the generator and get closer to Michael. You could see he was stalking Jill, who was also picked with you, David was here too, somewhere on the map. You got closer and closer to Michael until you were near his back. The sound of a wood stick breaking under your feet gave you away. He stopped on his track and tilted his head to the left making you know he heard you. Your heart was ricing at this point. He turned around completely to face you. You could hear him breathing behind his mask. His blueish eyes analyzing you. The leafs under his feet made a cracking noise as he slowly walked towards you. Walking in circles around you he kept looking you up and down. Something form you caught his attention, maybe you reminded him form someone, he didn’t know. One thing was certain, besides looking you he was also stalking you. He made a final step in front of you, this time he was very near you. You instantly thought it was your end when he lifted his kitchen knife at you. You closed your eyes ready to get hit and downed, but the empty feeling of nothing tearing your flesh apart made you open your eyes. Yes, he was still there but his didn’t made a single move against you, he didn’t even tried to down you.

“I-i uhm know you! I love your movies.” You didn’t know why you said that. You felt so stupid. He didn’t answer of course he just tilted his head to the left.

He started moving forward through the map that’s stroke you late it was Haddonfield. You were following him, you didn’t fully understand why he didn’t try to kill you or stab you. Asking him questions didn’t seemed a bad idea to you tho. “So, how you end up here?” And another one “How long have you been here?” And another “Why don’t you talk?”, “Don’t you miss your home?”, “I told you i love your movies right? I think i did..” You even told him your name and your age and the place you came form, even how you end up here. But he never answered, all he did was stopping whenever you asked something and turn around to look at you.

Later than sooner you realize he was heading toward Laurie, who happened to see all the interactions between Michael and you.

“New girl? What are you doing?! RUN!” She screamed at you. She stepped forward to grab your hand, and just as she saw Michael was going for you she stepped in the middle of you to. Michael grabbed her instead. He grabbed Laurie by the throat and buried the long kitchen knife in her abdomen.

“OH MY GOD LAURIE!” You scream in panic. The young blond girl struggled against Michael who buried the knife deeper fully killing her.

“LEAVE HER ALONE PLEASE, DON’T HURT HER!” Blood leaving Laurie’s body as he throws her on the street asphalt. He lowered his knife for a second and walked to your side, he looked again at you, this time inches away from your face. You closed your eyes waiting for your inevitably fate, which it never came. He lifted his knife again and went for the rest of the survivors, Jill and you were left until it was only you.

“Shit…” you muttered to yourself. You were just meters away from Michael who was facing back at you and still had his knife up.

You heard a little noice of something opening near you, but Michel herd it too. This time walking towards you, ready to curse him you saw how he walked pass you a few meters away and turned to look at you again, this time putting his knife down. He look down at what it seemed to you like a little door on the street, and look back up at you. You didn’t understand. You catch up with him and looked him dead in his dark eyes.

“Fuck..you..and this place and your stupid movies!!” He gestured down to the little gate again.

“I don’t get it!! I don’t know what it means…freak.” You were really starting to hate him, or you were just scared. Claudette didn’t finish to tell you that this things happen frequently. Deaths happen frequently, but you just didn’t know it. Michael gestured one last time to the little door and then looked up at you.

“FUCK! I don’t want it! Screw you bastard!” You push him a little bit, you knew this time you went too far when he grabbed you by your throat and push you against the nearest parked car. You tried your best to hit him hard, unfortunately he didn’t even react.

“I-i can’t…can’t breath Mich-michael…” You felt your air leaving your lungs. He gave you his signature look and move his knife closer to you. Then you finally felt it. Cold, it sting like, you finally felt the pain. Then all over again, and again, and again. He stabbed you, more than once. He wasn’t stabbing vital points, he was going slow.

“Please…” You pleaded, in vain, cause he didn’t stop. Instead he got out all the knife and finally stabbed you deeper. Little pain sounds scaped your mouth, and for the first time on this place you cried. Then all turned black. Just like that you were gone.

Michael put your body down, surprisingly with gentle moves. He kept looking at your dead body noticing what was left of your tears. He wasn’t going to kill you. When he saw you for the first time moments ago something woke up in him, he didn’t know what it was. You intrigued him in a way nothing ever did before. He wasn’t bother by your questions, the first time he looked at you was because he didn’t know what to do, he analyzed your gestures your face, your eyes...the other times he stopped when you asked him a question was on purpose, he wanted to look at your precios eyes just to be sure he wasn’t making it all up. He didn’t want to kill you, but…why did you act like that? He wanted you to leave, damn he even offered you the hatch. The second those hurting words left your mouth he felt attacked. He was trying to be nice, to do something nice…why couldn’t you be nice to him too? He was hurt, you caught his attention, but you hurt him. Why? You even said you loved his movies, why were you being so rude to him? He let his knife fell to the street, looking down he brought one hand to his masked face and one single scream was heard on Haddonfield that night. He was the only one left there.

The feeling of your death still lingered on your body the first time you came back to the camp fire. Laurie, Jill and David were already there due to that they have been killed earlier before you. You couldn’t help but feel awful.

“He…killed…he killed us. Like we were nothing.” You sounded so disgusted.

“Yeah new girl…most of the time it is like this. We forgot to tell you that killers hook survivors to sacrifice them to the entity. Or sometimes they can kill us with their own hand…like Michael did.” Laurie explained. You were so relieved to know that even if you or anyone gets killed they came back.

“I tried to be nice…i-i really did. I even want sure if he was going to kill me, but then he got you Laurie…” You continued.

“I saw all of it. And it was rare! He never acted like that with new survivors.” Laurie exclaime surprised.

“What you mean?” You replied back.

“He wasn’t just stalking you…he seemed to be analyzing you as well…who knows for what or why?” Laurie confirmed.

“Well that didn’t go well did it? I think he hates me…”

“I think he saw something in you. He likes you…” Laurie’s word were spoken so low you didn’t hear her, tho the rest of the survivors did, and they shared the same theory. Because killers can be nice sometimes, you heard killers like Ghostface, or Deathslinger, or even Oni had a good side….but Michael? He was known to be nice just three or four times since he got in the realm. It was unusual his behavior. And they know it, specially Laurie who came with him and Danny the Ghostface who seemed to grow closer to Michael over the years.

On the other hand, in the distant across the camp fire were the killers. They were all in the same place, hanging and resting like survivors did. It existed a physical barrier that separated the camp fire form the killers. Both survivor and killer could get near this barrier but couldn’t cross it. Survivors could meet the killers on trials or if the decided to go to certain map or place. Once there they could interact. But some interactions were not allowed. It’s not like something bad would happen to the survivor or the killer, it was the fact that the entity didn’t want that in her realm. It was known that when a killer didn’t do well in the trial, the entity would punish them, maybe she would make them see something they fear or hurt them the most, something about their past maybe. This only happens when the entity consideres it necessary.

Danny, Kazan, Caleb and Herman were watching the trial. They were also surprised Michael tried to spare the new girl. Of course the also saw how you rejected the offer. Michael came back to the other side of the camp fire with the rest of the killers, head pointing down.

“Hey Mike, you’re okay?” Danny asked him, his vice distant due to the ghost face mask. Michael didn’t answer he just looked at him. It’s not that they didn’t hear him talking tho, this time he just chose to remain silent and walk away. Danny was going to follow him but Caleb stopped him.

“Leave him be, give him some space…” Danny looked at him, then his head turned to look at Michael walking away. His eyes looked down behind his mask. He then decided to walk away too.

“Rejection can hurt.” Kazan said. His English still had a fainted Japanese accent.

“Sure does.” Herman added.

Michael made sure there was nobody with him. Once he realized he was all alone, his hands reached the bottom of his mask and pulled it up, reveling his face. Long blond and a little dirty hair covered part of his face. He couldn’t stop thinking about you. Your eyes, the way you walked with him while asking questions, your hair, your face…then he remembered those harsh words leaving your mouth. He wanted to understand, he needed to understand so bad why, why did you do that? He was trying to be nice, he usually isn’t. He knows he’s mean, selfish, he has a dark twisted heart, if he even had one. He find himself surprised by the choice of letting you go, to leave through the hatch. He lives for the hunt, the cat and mouse play, the adrenaline he feels when he kills. He’s no good and he knows it very well. On the other hand he felt hurt at your words…he felt…something was wrong with him, it must be right? He never experienced anything let along feelings. So he got to the conclusion that he was just offended by some words. You had offended him, yet here he is, thinking non stop of you.

Back to the others, Caleb was taking with Kazan.

“I think…I think he either likes her or she became his obsession. I mean, she seems like a nice girl, we didn’t cross paths yet. He’s the first one she goes against.” Said Caleb.

“Dark, twisted, small and very broken, but he has it.” Kazan abruptly said. Caleb wasn’t following.

“Excuse me?

“Soul.” Kazan explained. “His soul is dark, twisted, small and very broken, but he has one.” He finished. Caleb rises an eyebrow at Kazans words as to say he is not understanding him.

“Souls, I can see. Souls, I can sense.” Kazan said.

“It’s that so? How’s mine then?” Caleb teased.

“Baka…” It wasn’t rare at all for the Oni to speak Japanese now and then, he just told Caleb he’s a moron.

“Oh come on Kazan! You know my Japanese it’s not fresh!” Caleb protested then saw Kazan walking away.

Days turned into weeks in the realm and you were getting better at trials and so far killer you face killer you got to like you, not as much as Michael apparently. The things with him didn’t change unfortunately. Whenever you two go against each other he tries to give you hatch even if he didn’t sacrifice anyone. All the words that left your mouth were hate words and curse words. You decided if he was going to hate you you will hate him back. Tho deep down you didn’t like that idea. Now and then you catch yourself waking pass the limit of the barrier, just in case you see him. At this point it was like a dynamic. You would face him in a trial, get at his nerves, sometimes he would try to give the hatch anyway but you always complain. And that ends in painful death. You felt like he kills you slower than the rest on purpose. He won’t admit that he also walks pass the limit of the barrier, but in his case he does see you, he sees everything thing you say or do. Of course he does this intentionally. He doesn’t know why he keeps torturing you like he does, or even why he keeps torturing himself watching you knowing nothing will ever happen. Maybe all he wants is to make you hurt, because that way he gets to hear you begging him and saying his name so low.

Michael…please. Stop it.

A soft beg said in a soft voice. All you ever mean by this is for him to stop killing you like he does. He gets you sacrificed sometimes, but you rather get sacrificed a million times than to feel the cold of his kitchen knife stabbing you deep in your guts in the most slow way possible.

By now, you have met all the survivors and went against every killer. But you were closer to Laurie, Nea, Jill, Leon, Yun Jin, Feng, Yui, Oni, Ghostface, the Deathslinger, the Spirit and Wesker. It’s not like you didn’t like the rest of killers and survivors, you just were closer with some. You would often speak with Wesker to hear about genetic stuff, and then you would tease him about some random word you thought it was funny. He would look at you and say something like:

“Hey don’t push me new girl, you will not want me to go Michael!” He laughed. His sense of humor was evident not shared with yours.

“That was not funny Albert.” You said, he looked down.

“I apologize.”

“Rude..” You smiled when you heard Kazan saying that when Albert left.

This far you couldn’t really complain about your staying here. You wish things with Michael were different tho. There was this time when you faced The Doctor, and you were carrying a flashlight, you were getting good at flashlight saves, everything was laugh and fun. You blind him several times, and save your teammates a couple of other time too.

“Hey stop it with the flashlight, new girl! I can call you new girl too right?” Herman asked, annoyed but with a yet friendly tone. In response you pointed the flashlight to his face and granted permission to call you bay your nickname.

“Come on!!! Stop it! I’m warning ya!” He yeld.

“Or what doc?” You really weren’t taking him seriously. Next thing you know is you’re hooked then unhooked, and hooked again. The second time one of your teammates unhooked you, Herman tunneled you and killed you with his own hands.

When you came back to the camp fire you were laughing like a maniac. You really had a good time, not fully caring if you got tunneled or not. Michael, on the other hand, didn’t like that. Not.a.single.bit.

What happened next? The next trial you went on, you and Feng were the only ones left, and guess what? Your were going against Michael, again. This time was different, he actually down you with normal hits and hooked you, it was your first hook when Feng tried to rescue you. It’s not necessary to say Michael grabbed her before she could unhook you. He grabbed poorFeng by the neck and then looked at you, then back at Feng, she knew what was coming. He killed her with his own hand many times before, she didn’t mind at this point. But you? Oh boy you did care…

“Michael…” You say terrified. He tilted his head, he didn’t say a single word but you knew he meant to say “what?” He lift her from the ground and started to get his knife out.

“No please…Michael,” You knew he saw that trial with Herman, you were having fun with the flashlight, then you got tunneled, but you didn’t care, why did he? You could tell it was some type of pay back on Herman, because Feng was his survivor. But..you weren’t his…

Of course Michael was getting his pay back, he just wasn’t going to admit it to you. Pay back exactly for what? For the tunneling? Or maybe was cause he saw you laughing and having fun with Herman instead of him. He thinks he deserves that from you too. Or maybe not, by the way he kept killing you he didn’t doubt why you hated him so much. He just didn’t know what to do. Deep down he must feel that he has to hurt you bad because you hurted him, you kind of rejected him, and one part of him resented you for that. But his other part knows that giving you the worst death of the trial was the only way to get you to talk nicely to him…the way you beg…maybe he wanted so bad to hear you beg cause he couldn’t let himself beg you for attention, for that thing he felt only wfor his mother and his little baby sister, a little bit of love.

Him? Begging? Michael Myers never begged. Victims beg him for mercy, beg him to spare them. He wouldn’t allowed to do that himself.

“Please!!! PLEASE!! LET HER GO!” He didn’t listen any of your words, and the tip of his knife threatened to go deeper into Feng’s belly. You didn’t know what else to do, what else could you say.

“I’m sorry Michael! I’m so sorry, it’s my fault!” The desperate plea for Michael to stop for a second. He knew you didn’t mean to apologize for how you been treating each other. You meant that Feng death was your fault. He turned to look at you. For a second you thought you got it, he would stop. Reality hitter you like a truck when you heard Feng’s desperate cries of pain.

“NOO! PLEASE! FENG!” You cried and sobbed hard. “I’m so sorry Feng.” You apologized to your already dead friend laying on the cold snow of Ormond.

“Why…” Tears falling from your eyes like waterfalls. “Why are you doing this to me? Why I’m not even allowed to have friends…I need them Michael…” you continued.

He remained silent.

“I fucking hate you…your making it impossible for me to be here!” You reclaim.

Imposible for her? He thought. You were the one who put his world and all he knew this entire time upside down. If your harsh words hurt him, this hurt him even more. All of a sudden he got closer to you, and closer….to the point you two were face to face. He hit you with his knife while you were hooked. It was already too late when he noticed that the sharp blade of his knife had cut deep on your throat.

Your face of sudden realization he sliced your throat and your were bleeding out was too much for him. He closes his eyes every time he kills you, but this was too much. This felt way more painful that his normal killing mode. Tears running down your face as you tried to cover your bloody throat in pain. Not being able to tolerate seeing you die like this in so, so much pain, Michael left. He left you there alone to die in the cold.

The trial ended and Michael came back before you, stepping into the other side of the camp fire with the rest of the killers, he was met with Danny, Kazan and Herman.

“Bro…was cutting her throat open really necessary there?” Danny asked him, not really judging him, cause after all you got sacrificed and that what counted. Michael leaned back against the nearest tree there. He looked at Danny, and for the first time since he met you he decided that talking wasn’t going to hurt him that bad.

“No it wasn’t. I don’t know why I did that.” He answered Danny’s question.

Herman decided to join the conversation too.

“Are you okay Michael?” Herman asked. Michael didn’t reply what he expected. He looked at Herman, and for one second he felt ashamed of what he did to Feng Ming, but specifically why he did it. And then something he never thought he would say.

“I’m sorry about Feng Ming.” Herman opened his eyes more…if that was even possible.

Michael gathered himself from the tree and walk away. Kazan made a gesture to Danny. Follow him, that’s what he was tending to say. Needless to say Danny got the hint almost immediately. Danny stood up and quickly tried to put up with Michael.

On the camp fire side, desperate cries and tears came down your face. It turns out that, since Michael cutted your throat while you were still on hooked, when you came back you found out by Laurie’s words that a thin but long scar adorned you neck. You couldn’t believe it. You loved using necklaces and stuff, but now? You wouldn’t be able to use one without the scar sticked to your neck like a bad tattoo.

“I can’t believe this…” You cried. You were so weak that Laurie was holding you by your left arm as Rebecca told you to go to the medical support room, which it was only another part of the camp fire, but with the few things Rebecca could gathered around to help, heal and examine other’s wounds.

“It’s ok girl…we got you.” Laurie reaffirmed. You wouldn’t stop crying. Rebecca was walking in front of you, and Laurie still by your side. You heard a distant “Michael wait!” You recognized that voice immediately.

Ghostface…Danny. You thought. You knew He was close with Michael so you figured out he must be with him.

If I see him I’ll kill him. You thought to yourself. Of course you knew the odds of actually killing a Killer were none, %0. But this time Michael has gone too far and now all you wanna do is tell him how bad he has hurt you. Was he even going to react at your words? Probably not. You turn to look at your left were the barrier was, and you were right. Ghostface was trying to keep up the pace walking Michael had. Laurie seemed to notice you notice Michael on the other side, and gesture to Rebecca to stay with you for a moment.

“Hey, Michael…HEY!” She spoke caughting his attention. Michael stopped and turned to look at Laurie as she got closer and closer to the barrier.

“What’s your deal with her?! You went too far this time! She came back crying and sobbing like an animal!” Michael didn’t react to her words, which only made you angrier. You stepped closer to the barrier as well next to Laurie, this time you were beyond hurt.

“Why…? Why you hate me su much?!” That’s all you could ask.

Michael looked at you but to he was showing no emotions, and you were really starting to suspect it was not due to his mask, you truly believed he hates you for something you couldn’t completely understand.

“You know what? Fuck it I’m done trying to talk to you and to ask-no, beg you to speak back to me and tell me what I did wrong…” tears running down your face.

Michael saw you crying, leaning against Laurie for help. The effort you did in your last trial with him was too much to handle for your little frame. Besides, the feeling of getting your throat cut open was awful. His eyes looked down behind his mask, he couldn’t stand seeing you like this. The sound of your cries and sobbing were tearing through his chest, straight to his heart, if he even had one. He didn’t put a name to what he was feeling and experience when you were with him or near him, all he knew was death, blood and pain. He couldn’t afford to feel anything else…right? With that in mind he turned around and walk away silently.

“Yeah, walk away…like you always do.” You said in a low tone. Throat still hurting for the previous abused it received. He pretend no to listen to what you say. He couldn’t help but feel how something inside started to break.

Michael wondered if the entity was going to do something about this eventually. Little did he know that in reality, the entity was amazed by you and how you treated Michael the first time you met him. Needless to say, that the entity knew how both of you felt for each other. And the only reason she was going to allow what she was going to do, was because she knew both, you and Michael, would react eventually and arrange the differences between you two.

The entity had a plan.

Michael kept stalking you from the dark the rest of the night, that’s how he found out you wanted a choker to cover up the nasty scar. He wasn’t alone tho, Danny was with him. “Ahh…I really would like a choker.” Those were your exact words.

“You heard that Mike?” Danny asked looking at him, smiling behind his mask. Michael nodded.

“I..want to apologize..for..everything I did to her.” Michael said, looking down, eyes to coward to look at you complaining about the scar, a scar he gave you.

“Hey! Now we’re talking!” Danny’s voice a little bit enthusiastic. “How you plan on doing that? I don’t think by just saying that she will even consider to forgive you man…”

“I’ve got an idea…” Michael looked at Danny, then proceeded to whisper in his covered ear what he was going to do.

“It sounds great Mike! You’ll will need lots of paper and fabric. Maybe your mask supplies might work that thing as well!” Danny said looking at your throat’s scar.

“I’m going to Haddonfield.” And with That Michael made his way to his own home town.

Michael spent all night on Haddonfield working on something to give you as for an apology. On the other hand, you didn’t do much, you didn’t had trials that day, until like 6 o’clock you spent your time talking with Kazan, and Danny.

“I don’t like my scar…”

“Scars are sings of fight, if you survive fights it means your strong, therefor scars shows strength.” Kazan spoke.

“I agree with this big red guy here.” Danny added.

“I guess your right guys.”

Somewhere meters away from you, on the killer side, Evan and Caleb were sharing a interesting conversation. You see, Evan since he’s been here long before most of the killers he can speak with the entity sometimes.

“So…your telling me the entity’s plan is basically hope for the best? There’s no way we can know how he will react to it. He has never been punished before!” Caleb said.

“We gotta trust her plan Caleb.” Evan said, his gaze looking up where the entity is supposed to be.

“I hope she don’t do wrong.”

“She never does, Caleb. She never does.”

Time passed and you keep talking with Kazan and Danny from your side of the camp. Danny telling you something about his camera you didn’t quite catch the meaning. It was so specific and technical you didn’t even try to understand it. Then you asked Kazan to tell you everything he knew about the Samurai. You’ve always loved Japanese culture, you wanted to go someday to japan too.

“I would have loved to travel to Japan…” Your voice flooded with sadness.

“It’s so beautiful…my country…I don’t doubt you would have love it.” Kazan replays.

You were so focused on your conversation with Kazan and Danny that you didn’t notice Michael joining them. When you saw him all the joy on your face instantly disappeared. It’s like you couldn’t had one minute alone, not even a day! Kazan and Danny didn’t understand your sudden change of mood.

“What the hell do you want now?” You said, eyes wouldn’t dare to leave that white mask of his.

Both Kazan and Danny looked at each other, raised their shoulders until they looked behind themselves.

“Guys, can we move somewhere else please? I don’t have time nor the energy to deal with this freak.” You said looking dead to Michael’s eyes. Danny examined Michael for a moment and noticed something in his right hand.

“New girl…” Danny looked at you.

“What??” You already sounded pissed.

“Please, just give him a moment…” He said. It was the first time you heard The Ghostface say “please”, so for the sake of it you listed.

Michael stepped closer to the barrier, Danny and Kazan gave him space so his now was positioned in the middle. He reached his right hand to the edge of the barrier beneath him and tossed something to your side. You looked at it confused.

“I don’t get it, the hell do you want?!” You yeld at him.

Michael looks down at the object then back up at you. He wanted you to grab it. You sigh ruin discomfort as you bent down to grab it. Still didn’t catching what it was. All you knew it was soft to the touch.

“And I’m still don’t getting it, maybe I’m just stupid or perhaps you should fucking talk to me already!!” You were getting angrier every minute.

“I think you should open it..” Kazan has an idea of what could it been, you said earlier that you hated your scar, so he though maybe it was a necklace. You looked at Danny for his opinion too. He just nodded.

“Agh!! The things I do for you guys…” You said, your voice still angry. Michael couldn’t help but to feel bad you wanted to spend time with them but not with him.

Your eyes filled with anger when you saw this thing was a choker, and you didn’t even know why. Deep down you wanted to forgive him, you just couldn’t seem to find a reason.

“Sorry.” A single word scaped Michael’s mouth. It was the first time he ever spoke to you. Yet you felt it wasn’t enough. This wasn’t a worthy apology.

“Sorry? SORRY?! That’s all you could came up with?

“New girl, I think you shou-“ You didn’t let Danny finish.

“Your pathetic! Your fucking pathetic you hear me? I can’t believe I told you I loved your movies. How I regret that, I regret being nice to you..” You were angry as ever.

The bad treat continued, once, twice..you couldn’t count how many bad, nasty and hurting things you said to him.

“Childish!”

“Coward!”

“Fuckin evil!!”

“I hope you die fucking bastard, I want you dead!”

You tossed back the choker to the other side in contempt, and when you finished something scaped your mouth. Something that even in the most agitated of situations you wouldn’t even think of saying.

“Your mom was a fucking whore, a filthy slut. I bet she didn’t even wanted to have you in the first place!! Why don’t you just leave me alone, damn it!” You yelled at him hitting the invisible barrier that separated you from him and your friend killers. You knew thanks to the movie his mom used to be a stripper. His heart skipped a bit when you said that. Now he knew for sure he had a heart.

If he was hurt before now he was torn to pieces. But what torn apart his heart the most was knowing that, despite what you had just said, what he felt for you didn’t change a damn bit. With no more further a do, he proceeded to walk away. Danny followed him as usual, trying to get him to stay.

“Come on Mike! Don’t leave.” He yelled. “You went way too far kid…Kazan, looked at the choker.” He continued, he notice something written inside the choker, you just hadn’t seen it. Kazan took the little fabric from the dirty ground, wipped of the dirt and read it. Danny far gone by now.

“Kazan…? What does it say?” You asked him.

“You made me human…” This words stabbed you right in your chest. You knew very well the pain of getting stabbed, but this? This can’t be compared.

You felt awful. Why did you said that? It’s not like you even meant it. You felt your eyes filling with tears again at what you just said to him. All alone you thought that hurting him back the way he’d hurt you would make you feel better. But it didn’t. It just made you feel worse. Like you had no soul.

“I…I really messed up here, didn’t i? Kazan?” You looked at his red Oni mask.

“I’m afraid you did…” He confessed.

“Oh my god…what did I do?” You tried to see if you could find Michael with your eyes from your side of the camp. What you didn’t know was that the moment Michael tossed you the choker he made the entity put to work her own plan. You could hear a distant voice, again it was Danny.

“Hey, Mike! Hey!! Michael!” Danny exclaimed, yet no answer from Michael. Danny’s exclamations for Michael became more and more audible. Something was wrong, you knew it, you could feel it. You ran in direction of Danny’s voice.

“Dude wake up! Michael!” Danny kept saying. You got there panting and sweating. Kazan followed a little bit after.

“What’s wrong with him?” You asked.

“I don’t know, he was like this when I catch up with him.”

You could see his body was struggling. His left hand holding his knife, knukles white as milk. His breathing could be heard from where you were. He was getting trouble to breathe. Soft pants and groans suddenly left his mouth too. He sounded like he was in pain, but physically he looked fine. No blood or sings of injuries. It take you a lot of effort to notice through his eyes of his mask that his real eyes were glued shut and a few tears running down.

“Oh my god…his eyes! Look at his eyes.” You told Danny.

“He’s crying!” Danny said surprised.

“Something’s wrong with him. Something’s wrong with him!” You exclaimed. His groans and pants became louder.

“Ahh agh…” Michael complained. Hearing him like this putted you on desperate mode. You tried hitting the barrier unsuccessfully, even kicked it several times.

“Please let in through!” You yelled at the sky, knowing the entity will hear you.

“Do something, guys. Help him! I can’t do anything from here!”

Danny tried to shake his body. No responce. Kazan snaked his body even harder. Again, no response. You noticed some pamphlets in the ground near his boots. You pointed this out to Danny and Kazan. It didn’t took you long to realize that those were her mother’s stripper pamphlets. So did Ghostface and Oni.

“He’s being punished…” Kazan said.

“What? Why?!” You cried. “It’s because of the choker?” You asked.

“Maybe, we don’t know.” Danny spoke.

“No! Please, it’s not his fault it’s mine! I’m the one who should be punished. Please!” You begged to the entity. At this point Michael had his head looking up. Grantings of pain still scaped his mouth.

“No Michael, Michael…listen to me!” You looked at his poor suffering form. “I was wrong. I was wrong! All of this wasn’t your fault. I overreacted, okay? And your mom? Your mom was a beautiful person. She did everything she could for you and both your sisters! I was wrong Michael. I’m so sorry…so so sorry! I didn’t mean anything of this to happen…” You sobbed while explaining yourself. Michael managed to look down at you.

Desperation taking over your body, you punched and kicked the barrier. Demanding the entity to let you in just this once.

“Please!! Please, i-I’ll do anything!” You begged her.

From the distant, Caleb and Evan could hear your screams. They know what was already happening, that’s why the decided that not interfering was the best option. Nothing could have prepared the people on this realm for what was about to happen. Your hands banging the barrier were suddenly met with grass and dirt. You fall, that was for sure. But you had fallen into the other side of the camp. To everyone’s surprise, there was no barrier separating both camps anymore.

“Did just the barrier…” Caleb asked Evan. “What did just the entity do?”

“Allowing what was not allowed.” Evan sounded happy. The entity’s plan was working.

You didn’t have time to enjoy your new freedom nor did you killer friends. As soon you got up you went straight to Michael. Holding him by his broad shoulders, you reassured him.

“I’m here Michael! I’m here. Please come back to me.” You begged him, this time was different. You noticed his hands still struggling and clenched. You grabbed the hand that was holding the knife to see if you could easy some of that tension. Worried eyes examining his mask to catch any sign that he was okay.

Suddenly his struggling stopped and his head went down. Your hands fly up to grab his masked face only to be met by his free hand around your neck, squeezing tightly.

“Dude what are you doing?!” Danny yelled.

“Michael, it-it’s me…” Your air leaving your lungs. His hand dangerously tight around your neck. Threatening to break it right there.

“Judith…” He growled. The entity no longer had him seeing the posters of his stripper mother, his school bullies or his stepfather. Now he was having living flashbacks of his older sister, Judith.

“N-no, Michael please, y-you know me…” It was getting hard for you to speak due to the lack of oxygen.

“Don’t speak.” His hand squeezing harder. “I hate you.” The flashbacks of his selfish sister were really getting to him. It all was so real to him that without noticing he was getting his knife near your belly again.

“Dude-dude, if you killer her she’s not coming back, she’s it coming back Michael!” Danny said trying his best to help you. Michael looked at him for one second or two, then he continued to reach for your belly. In a desperate measure, Danny took off his ghostface mask and grabbed Michael’s hand that was holding his signature kitchen knife.

“Mike, who am i?” Danny asked. Another desperate attempt to make him come back to himself.

“L-loomis.” Michael growled at him.

“No, Michael you know me, come on! Who am i? He asked again.

“D-danny..Danny.” Michael said. You could see the tears in his eyes. He was fighting this.

“Good! Good, now, who is she? You got this you know her.” Danny cheered him up. Michael looked at you, eyebrows frowned.

“J-j…Judidth.”

“No..” You left out a sight. You cried even harder when you noticed Michael raising the knife up.

“Dude stop!!” Danny yelled again, this time ready to do something about it but Kazan had to hold him down.

“Let me go Kazan!”

“You’re only going to make it worst.” He stated, holding Danny down.

“Michael..” You sobbed. You prepared yourself when he got ready to stab you. One final stab, and you were going to see dark…fall to eternal sleep. One last thing scaped your mouth before closing your eyes.

“I love you, Michael Myers…” it was low, you hadn’t much air left. But you didn’t want to leave this world without letting him know this. You glue shut your eyes one last time to embrace his final stab. You even heard Danny screaming “Stop!! Stop it!!!” You were ready now, waiting patiently for your inevitable fate. You flinched your eyes anticipating the blade, but the blade cutted through nothing. You opened your eyes. Somehow you succeeded to get Micheal back. The entity’s plan had worked without you even noticing. He let you fell to the ground so as he did with his knife. Danny and Kazan ran to help you get up. You tried to reach for Michael’s arms but he rejected your touch.

“No…i-i” That was all he could say.

“It’s not your fault Michael.” You assure him. But he just took off leaving the three of you there. He wasn’t the only one afraid to keep touching you it appear. Danny hand left your arm and Kazan took a step back. You gave them a “I’m not following you guys” look.

“It’s just that…this barrier thing, never happened before. We never touched you before, none other than to kill you ir sacrifice you…” Danny spoke for both of them, Kazan and himself.

You reached your hand to Danny’s uncovered face, and cupped it in your warmth. He embrace it immediately. Closing his eyes and smiling.

“You look better with the mask off.” You laughed, he did the same.

“If you say so…”

“Kazan…come here!” You told him with opened arms. He seemed hesitant at first.

“Come…” You insisted, smiling.

“Hug?” He asked.

“Yes!” You exclaimed. The tenderness in his hug cought you by surprise for such a big and buffed man like him.

You stayed like that for a few minutes until Michael was the topic of conversation again. You asked Danny where he might have gone.

“I think I know where..” He said.

The single Street and the kind of trees in the block gave the map away very fast. You were again on Haddonfield.

“I know he sometimes comes here to make mask or whenever he feels bad or angry…I don’t know which house it’s his house tho.” Danny explained.

“Oh don’t worry I know which one is it.” You looked at his still uncovered face.

“Okay, good luck New Girl…if he doesn’t speak right away you should come back later.” He said ready to leave when you said one last thing to him.

“You know Danny…your not that bad after all.” It was the first time he heard you call him by his real name, it always had been “hey ghost!” Or “Ghostie!” It felt good hearing that coming from someone he considered a friend.

“You know y/n…Michael wasn’t wrong after all.”

“I don’t follow.”

“You did made us human after all.” You smiled at his statement then he walks back to the camp.

Once you reach Michael’s house you stepped in. Thinking to yourself he must be upstairs you went up. There was only one room with its door opened. Michael must be in there. You were reaching the end of the stairs, walking as slowly as possible to not give your self away. The house wasn’t helping much tho, with each step you made the wood underneath you cracked. He wasn’t unnoticed to the sound he thought perhaps was the wind since he had the windows open. Your small frame compared to his made a silhouette on his door frame.

Once inside his room you could see he had fully decorated its walls with handmade masks he had done himself. Just like in the movie, but that was on the prison cell instead of his real room. You saw him sat in a chair near a wooden desk. His mask still on, his head was down. His chest moving up and down.

"Michael…" You soft voice soothed his ears. He looked at his left, letting you know he knew you were there. "I'm not here to fight you. Not anymore." You said. Michael didn't react. His breathing sounded soft. Him not having any type of reaction made you move closer to him, until you were besides him. Your left hand resting on his right shoulder. Your eyes wondering the masks hanged on the wall in front of you.

"They are beautiful. You know that?" You told him giving his right shoulder little masages. He looked up to contemplate them. You didn't know how you went from looking masks to have him face to face again and your back pressed yo the wall. By now you were expecting nothing less than a kiss. He grabbed you by both your shoulders and lowered his head until it was pressed against your left collarbone.

This is not a kiss. You thought.

Soft sobs could be heard behind his mask, they were muffled by the same, but you were able to hear them. Then suddenly, he spoke again.

“I’m so…so sorry.” Your heart melted at his words and you couldn’t resist but to hold him tight against your little chest compared to his. More muffled sobs coming from Him.

“It’s okay…I’m the one that should be apologizing.” You replied back.

“You already did.” He lift his head to look at you.

You felt the urge to know how he looked behind that mask. What was he hiding. You didn’t have to take out his mask to know he was beautiful. Took your hand move to the edge of it. Michael moved his head back, hesistant.

“Let me see you Mike.” Hearing you calling him Mike was all he needed.

Pulling the mask up with little effort was necessary to take it off. And just as you spectated, he has long blond curly hair, blueish eyes a big, but yet straight nose, and plump heart shaped lips. A beautiful face, just as you thought. You cupped his face with your hands just as you did with Danny.

“You’re beautiful Michael.” Your voice like a sweet whisper. He touched your lips with his thumb, caressing them like it was a newly found treasure. His treasure.

The feeling of his chapped lips on yours was inevitable. Tho he seemed to be the first to started it, as soon as he started he wanted to finish, scared you wouldn’t like it. But you insisted to kiss him longer. You wanted more. It didn’t matter that his lips were chapped. Eventually you two separated to get some air.

“You’re beautiful.” You reassured him again. He put his forehead against yours.

“And you’re the most beautiful human I ever seen.” He replied, voice deep and low. “Y/n?” He added.

“Yeah?”

“I love you too.” He finally said it. Finally admitted it and gave it a name.

A little time went by and now you were sitting on his lap seeing how he made masks. Your left arm wrapped around his shoulders for support.

“So, I put more glue over here and…we are done.” He was showing you how he made his masks.

“This seems interesting to make.” You replied.

“Are you sure you never done this before?” His mouth forming a little smile. Not fully believing you never done a paper mask before.

“Oh well…you caught me. I did. But a like to see you make them.” You said honestly.

“How cute.” Your heart flinched at his words and your cheeks flushed. “I like it when you flush”

“Stop it Michael!” You gave him a little tug on his coverall.

“Never.” He said looking into your eyes and give your nose a quick kiss.

You spent the rest of the night like this, laughing your lungs out and doing disasters with his glue.

That night loud voices were heard at Haddonfield. The difference this time was that Michael wasn’t alone, he had the best company he could’ve asked for.

I hope you enjoyed this! Sorry if there’s misspellings, English it’s not my mother language, have mercy please 🥹 I’m open to requests!!

134 notes · View notes

g1rlken · 7 months ago

Text

┏ 𝐅𝐥𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐌𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐬 ┐

part3.

Alex turner x fem!actress reader

an: this part gives slightly “the Peter” by Taylor Swift vibes

word count: 3.6k+

Warnings: mention of depression

It was difficult to keep on going on your whim, time and time again looking for reasons to belittle or make it difficult for y/n to work on this project. She absolutely regretted come to this godawful grassland for the world’s pettiest man’s song. Not that he hadn’t moved on, y/n would see him: hand around shoulder, slipping down the waist as he’d laugh with one of those model stand ins. Every meal. The common dining area of the hotel they stayed at, Alex was the charming machine to all these lady guests of his. She couldn’t keep on distracting herself talking to the rest of crew, small talk was fine and longer conversations were embarrassing. She felt ambushed talking about her acting hiatus because the general narrative was that she got way too into her own head, she probably did but what business was that to the intern Sam who was a disguised coffee guy. She kept on telling herself and everyone else that the ‘whole thing’ wasn’t a ‘big deal’ but god forbid someone mentions an award function, her tone would immediately get guarded as if she was being tested. As if she was on that stage again being a laughingstock. Too much. She didn’t talk at all, hence decided to order room service for almost all her meals.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Y/n exclaimed slumping her shoulders down. There was a rain forecast on their original location so they changed production to a planned cliff, second day of the same shoot and the municipality shut down entry to the place because of supposed lightning forecast. It was taking forever to finish this godforsaken music video.

“They said they’re closing it for a week.” Richard informed her with a sigh, bummed out himself. Too much time on production as it is, getting to a peculiar location as such. From the centre to outskirts through the hilly roads it was already such a hustle only to find the place shut down. “The studio said we might as well extend a while for the location since we came all this way.”

The whole crew was growing increasingly restless on this project, no more than y/n and no less than Alex who was apparently enjoying the sights. A smirk on his face, clicking a picture of the no entry sign for the joke of it, snickering as he did so. It just fuelled her annoyance. “Cant we just shoot here? We drove four hours to come here!” Y/n proposed pointing to the open grass landscape, the whole place was just gigantic dunes of grass and grey skies. The first two days of shoot, it was beautiful. With more and more delays it was the most daft place ever.

“We have done the landscape part we need a cliff shot now…” Richard trailed off with a sigh, “Look, guys, let’s stay positive yeah? We can maybe find a new location”

“We can’t, they close the roads by sundown remember? It’s already 2, I don’t think we can make it.” Alex added into the conversation, his tone was laced with amusement so bad it made y/n infuriated but she didn’t say a word given he was a master of creating a scene. Absolute zero fellowship in him, he was enjoying everyone else’s suffering coming all this way just to spite her.

“Don’t we have a pass for it? With the shooting permit?” Y/n inquired about it, such remote locations generally allow access to a shooting team on permit.

“Guess who forgot it at the hotel?” Giving a disappointed look to Sam, the coffee guy/intern.

Deadpanning her face y/n rubbed her eyes, taking in a deep breath. Disappointment clouded her problem solving abilities “Don’t we have any cliff other equivalent location in this stupid place?” She said with a scoff. Every place looked identical anyways.

“What a great idea!” Alex exclaimed ironically joining his hands together, his classic taunting was about to follow “How about we find her a park bench, will that be cliff equivalent for you?”

It had already been a lot of days of this mockery and a miserable time here. At hotel, the locations, failed shoots, his constant jabs were resulting in a lot of piled agitation. “Shut the fuck up.” She said blatantly.

Richard widened his eyes as did the crew, they were busy in finding network to make the maps work and Google nearest new locations but this was rather difficult to not be moved by, Alex too, “excuse me?” he was taken aback to say at least. Raising a brow he leant forward as to express his offended demeanour.

“The whole crew is really tired, we all woke at 4 am. Packing, equipment, dress, make up-to drive all the way here only to not shoot. If you can’t contribute stop irritating people who are actually working.” She told him off crossing her arms, shifting her weight on one leg.

“Is that so? What are you doing except for whining?” Alex said with a bitter laugh.

“This is stupid” she shook her head, instantly deciding to not engage anymore given she was here for work not engage in petty conversation with him besides in front of the whole crew it was anyways unprofessional. “You’re unreasonable” she waved her hand in mid air, crossing her arms as she was turning away.

“You haven’t changed a bit. Go on go leave, you’ve never had it in yourself to stay when things get difficult.” Alex scoffed, absolutely unfiltered in front of the whole crew perhaps purposely harsh.

“Alex, I’m being professional here you don’t have to go that far.” She replied with a frown on her face, surface level comprehension of his words which she knew would hurt so much, they already were but she wanted to be removed from this conversation before he made matters worse.

“Oh you’re being professional now?” To him, anything to do with her wasn’t professional. For exaggeration, if she even breathed in his direction he was agitated. Just a huge grudge to not see beyond professionalism. “Such a professional in everything you messed up your most serious two year long relationship.”

“I know it wasn’t mutual and I regret you were hurt but this isn’t the place to have that conversation now-“ she tried to reason with him in a subtle way, instead of biting back like him she could’ve approached with bitterness of how it’s been half a year since they parted, how he was seemingly moving on yet constantly berating her for leaving.

“You don’t get to decide where and when we have this conversation? You’ve already decided enough for me.” He said mockingly, his gaze fixated on her as he stared her down. He wasn’t aware for the root of his hurt and anger, originally he knew it was because she left him yes. But other than that, the fact that she felt like just waltzing back into his life through small talk or the fact that she didn’t waltz back into his life. It was the later. She decided to break up without of a second thought because she deemed it right for him, thinking she was a burden. She decided to leave for him and all he wanted was her. Back then and even now he didn’t know what he was trying to prove to her but it was surely drifting her father from him and he didn’t know how to stop that so he just let his anger out, “Tell me, is it better now? You learned to cook did you? You take your own meds on time…if you actually do? You attend all possible award shows you’re nominated in?” He scoffed, reminding her all such things he was helping her through and she refused him. He couldn’t stomach that she wanted to heal without him and it was a rather low blow when he mentioned the award show thing, she didn’t attend award shows at all even now. He kept tabs even after the break up because It brought him a sort of reassurance that she wasn’t completely alright, not without him. He loved her so infatuatedly he didn’t know how to act.

Y/n was sick to her stomach as he went on and on, in front of everyone just spewing out her personal miseries. “You don’t get to play the martyr just because I didn’t want your help.” To think that man that once hand fed her all which he cooked, with so much love, the man who set alarms to remind her for her medicines and the award show thing. He knew it was and still is a sensitive subject for her, he put her in the exact same situation like back up at that stage again. Right now amongst the camera crew, it was just a handful of people and y/n felt increasingly uncomfortable yet he didn’t stop talking.

“I’m not playing the martyr but I didn’t asked to get left either.” He said emphasising on the word ‘didn’t’ right back at her. He wouldn’t say it but this whole lashing out was not because she didn’t want his help but because she didn’t want him and that still word.

“It’s been…” she paused, “six months.” It was really hard to see him say all that so easily and she could barely formulate words trying to fight back tears simultaneously. Just how could he show indifference so such extent.

“I’m aware.” He scoffed changing his stance looking away for one second, contemplating if he should go on because he did take a not of her quivering voice she always did that when she was about to cry, he could recall from their time together and that reminder just fuelled him even more. He knew her like the back of his hand back then, even now, yet she walked way. “You were scared I’d leave you if I got to know you were depressed but when I chose to stay you were even more scared and left me. It is so difficult to love let alone work with you!”

“Work, yes of course” she nodded slowly registering the hurt of his words bit by bit because he was going further from far. “I’m going to go revise…” she told Richard, rest of the crew as well. All who’d been witnessing this conflict awkwardly and painfully silently. Y/n couldn’t look at anyone’s faces as she walked back to the trailer, it was a bus in itself because the whole crew travelled together but if the universe had any ounce of mercy left for her nobody would join her this very moment. Her ears were numb to the silent background, she thought Alex would have the last word surely but he didn’t. She walked the longest walk back to the trailer, closing the door behind her. There was a heavy feeling in her chest, the mechanical setting of sadness. Her heart racing, mind replaying the whole ordeal. Every word, everyone’s surprised faces. She wanted to break down, tears already brimmed her eyes but then again if they were to resume shooting on a new location the very same day her eyes would be so puffy and displaying that to the makeup crew. After everything they witnessed, absolutely not. She paced back and forth air drying her tears, trying to divert her mind. She did. She thought about the dreadful night of their breakup again, she must’ve put Alex in this very situation back then. His pleading, begging voice. The man who was on his knees for her who wanted her to do anything but leave, just how right now she wanted him to do anything but keep talking. But well, both things happened and the later was the consequence of the first one. She had nobody but herself to blame and the inherent guilt crept right back in.

Thankfully, there was no resumed shooting later that day given the rain check was really bad to commute to another location as well so the crew all returned back to the hotel. Four hours, just staring out the window. Fixated completely y/n didn’t even look at anyone the entire ride and nobody approached her even. Straight into her room at the hotel, for dinner she ordered just room service. After an awaited long breakdown in her room she couldn’t go down and have dinner with the rest of them, the breakdown session was as it is evident on her face plus everything was so awkward after the whole ordeal. Everyone looked at her with agitating sympathy, as if her dog had passed.

She opened the door to “Room service!” knock, taking the food in, not exactly meeting the eyes somewhat hiding her face as if she was some alleyway dealer. “Thanks.”

“Miss y/l/n, I’m really sorry for what you’re going through.” The room service guy told her out of courtesy and also genuine compassion.

“What?” She was immediately confused, what exactly was he referring to?

“The whole…your ex-I was there.” He explained, not sure how exactly to term Alex lashing out on her in front of everyone. But he wanted her to know his sympathies lay with her “I was assigned by the hotel to the filming crew as a local here” he said referring to why exactly he was there in the first place.

“Oh.” Y/n nodded, wonderful. This whole interaction had the same feeling of a funeral when someone explains how they’re related to the person in subject however in this case y/n was full well alive. “Yeah…thanks. Thanks a lot.”

“For the record, I’ve seen almost all of your movies and I have loved you in every single one of them and your order is the most easiest order to make. So you’re not difficult to love or work with I’ll have you know.” He tried to be hospitable and also as a fan, he felt really bad for the actress in question. His heart was there, trying to offer kind words but it just made y/n feel ambushed.

“That’s-that’s really sweet.” She nodded with a small smile regardless. What a time! Even absolute strangers feel sympathetic to her and Alex who-no. “It means a lot…”

“Always. If you need anything, the restaurant is open till 11.” He said politely and pushed out the empty cart out of her room and bid her goodnight.

Just as she was about to close the door as the cart moved out, a foot stepped in the middle refraining her from closing it completely so she opened it instead to see who it was. “Hi.” Alex said as he tilted his head forward, he didn’t think she’d actually open the door to him.

Y/n just took a deep breath, visibly raising her guard she did not have anything to say him at this point and she couldn’t believe he had something more to say. She just stood there, trying to appear stiff but with just the first glance he could tell she had been crying. Crying really bad. He wanted to apologise, after a lot of thinking over the words shared he felt like he crossed a line. Especially with what he said, he said in front of everyone. He messed up. Apologies came cheap, he didn’t know what to say. “The shots from yesterday came in, it’s good. It’s great. Beautiful-you were beautiful.”

Tears were already formulating her eyes, just at the sight of him. The casualty of his tone after what he did, she wanted the slam the door in his face so that’s what she attempted too. Slowly closing the door but he stopped her again, “please, can we talk”

“Just go…” she sighed averting her gaze from him so he wouldn’t get the satisfaction of seeing her cry. He leant a bit lower to see her face, conforming the tears she was trying to hide. He wanted to reach out and hold her but he was just out here in the lobby. He experimented professing further and she did let him inside, dejectedly moving aside y/n just didn’t want to see his face anymore.

Getting inside Alex softly closed the door behind him, anxiously she was pacing back and forth. He once made fun of her, he called this method of hers “air-drying tears, love?” he asked. She did not want him here in the first place so he didn’t breach that boundary, stopping by the small of hallway to her hotel room a few steps by the door.

“Why are you even here?” She asked firmly as she had been successful to air dry her tears back. It wasn’t pride, maybe on the prideful spectrum but she would not cry in front of him even though it hurt like hell.

“I know I can’t make things right after what I said today, I shouldn’t have said that. Especially not in front of everyone like that-you, you were at work.” He said in a calm tone leaning against the wall, “I’m sorry…I’m really sorry.”

“Okay.” She nodded without even looking at him, barely acknowledging his words because she was fixated on not breaking down at this very second.

“That’s it?” He asked, not frustrated just underwhelmed that his genuine apology accounted for so much less? “Okay?” He couldn’t tell if she was okay with it in a true sense or if she was being passive aggressively ignorant about it.

“What do you want me to say?” Y/n asked scrunching her brows as she crossed her arms.

“We are not at the best terms, I know. We both messed up, you were trying to be civil. Today I crossed a big line, I know. I really want to just make things right-“

“Then why don’t you just leave?!” She stopped his self serving closure set apology mid way, “You are here in the first place just to spite me aren’t you? To give me a hard time and so far Alex, you have been very successful-“ she was so angry, she couldn’t hold her her tears anymore as they streamed down her face breaking her voice.

“Hey, hey” he cooed softly as he approached her in small steps. Ever since he saw her face, evidence of a long breakdown on it he had wanted to just pull her into his embrace. Now she was crying again and he couldn’t fight the urge as he gently placed his hands on her shoulder to soothe her.

The familiarity of his touch, his consolation punched y/n back to the good years just him and her and they rarely had these moments where she would be falling apart but she knew that if she did, he’d be there. Just like how he was here. But this time it wasn’t healthy, this wasn’t right even if it felt so. She pulled herself away from him shaking her head as she sat on the bed of her hotel room crying into her hands.

Hesitantly he followed her, this was all so instinctive. “Y/n…” he trailed off as he knelt in front of her as she sat on the edge of the bed. She had covered her face with her hands so he tried to gently remove them as to see her face. “It’s alright, you’re alright.” He soothed as he finally got to see her weeping face. He kept on wiping her tears as new flew down her face. “You are so much stronger than this, you’ve been okay before. You’ll be okay again, just breathe.” This is what he was perfect at, piecing her back together. She held the colour only his paint brush knew.

This scenario was almost like an extremely long déjà vu, this exact scenario y/n had been here so many times. Him comforting her, so willingly and so warm. As if it was worth being this hurt, she couldn’t get words out through her crying, that perfectly but she didn’t have to for he already knew. To be loved is to be known and he knew her like she was the last thing he’d ever know, the last he’d learn. “Can I hold you?” He asked softly, eyes expectant for a yes.

Nodding she hesitantly met his eyes and she recognised Alex for Alex. After so long, she didn’t think about anything else but the familiarity of the lover she once held. The one who was holding her now. He stood up and sat beside holding her, enlacing his arms around her. A warm embrace shielding her from an awful time he inflicted on her.

She returned his embrace as well, his hand rubbing her back in a repetitive motion her weeping dying down but he didn’t let go. He didn’t want to.

Alex nestled her closer to him, words unsaid and a vague understanding. Neither of them broke the cocoon of warmth. It almost felt like a fever dream to y/n, she wasn’t aware of any reality she’d let herself be in this situation in. But here she was. Slowly drifting off to sleep in his arms. He could tell she was, he settled the two of them in a lay-down position on the bed. He didn’t think she could fall asleep and he also didn’t want to move. With her small grip at his shirt with the two of them cuddling he figured she wouldn’t want him to leave either.

He planned to leave silently once she was sound asleep, as time went on he didn’t realise when he drifted off to sleep too. Just holding her in his arms, cuddling the two of them slept on their grievances entangled with one another.

—

HIII!!! I’ve got like two more chapters left to this pls let me know what you think or I will d!3 and don’t forget to drink water xx

@indierockgirrl @turnersverse @ladydraculasthings @libertyybellls @kelizai @sagegreensimmr @supernaturalandpain

#alex turner x reader #alex turner #alex turner fanfic #alex turner x y/n #alex turner x reader fluff #alex turner x you #alex turner imagine #arctic monkeys x reader #arctic monkeys fanfic

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drabbles-mc · 7 months ago

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Static on the Line

Benny Cross x Johnny Davis

Warnings: 18+, light angst, pining, sorta AU/sorta missing scene

Word Count: 1.9k

A/N: is it shocking to anyone that I'm still thinking about these two??? because it is not shocking to me 😂 hoping that i keep getting hit with inspo for these two, and for this universe in general. happy reading!

It’d been six months since Benny left. It slipped away in the wake of Johnny’s last conversation with him, when Johnny had to admit that he couldn’t give Benny what he wanted. Even though Benny hadn’t said it then, hadn’t said much of anything really, there was a knot in the pit of Johnny’s stomach that told him Benny was going to be gone. He had ridden off into the night and that had been the end of it. No phone calls, no letters, no post-cards. Disappeared off the map like he hadn’t even been there in the first place.

Johnny would hear a murmur here and there—rumors, nothing more substantial than. As far as he was concerned, anything that anyone said about Benny and his whereabouts was the truth and also complete bullshit. He had no way to prove it regardless. Maybe Benny found somewhere, someone, who could give him what he was looking for.

For Johnny, it had been six months of waiting for him to turn up again. Six months of purposely driving his car past Kathy’s place looking for Benny in the least obvious way possible. Not that he was ever there. No bike parked on the grass, no cigarette butts littering the blacktop. The place looked respectable again, the way that she had wanted it to.

He was sitting at his usual table in the bar. The beer on the table in front of him was almost gone, about to be another empty bottle stacked up against the others that were scattered around. He didn’t remember when this place became so busy during the day, too. Nights were always hectic, and in a way they always had been. But this was different.

Over the conversations, the music, the swearing, the clanking of bottles on tabletops, he heard it. The same telephone that everyone had almost argued their way out of getting in the first place was ringing. Ever since the club started growing the way it had, it seemed like the phone rang less and less. The table that Johnny was sitting at started to feel less and less like a spot at home base with each new chapter, each new member.

No one else seemed to hear it. Wahoo and Corky were too wrapped up in their conversation with each other to hear it. Most of the other guys around probably didn’t even know that there was a phone on-premises. No wonder it never rang anymore.

When the ringing didn’t let up, Johnny pushed his chair back from the table. The scraping of it on the floor is what got the two men sitting across from him to snap their attention to him. They asked him what he needed, where he was going. He waved them off, not even bothering to give the short explanation that he was going to answer the phone.

He stared at the phone for a moment, let it ring one more time, before he finally reached and grabbed it off the receiver. Clearing his throat, he held it up to his ear. “Yeah?”

Silence. Slight crackling through the line but no one returning his greeting. Johnny was aware that he wasn’t in the quietest environment at the moment. A couple years prior and he would’ve been able to hear the person on the other end of the call without an issue. As it stood, he brought his other hand up to cover the ear that wasn’t pressed against the phone, just in case someone was talking and there was too much background noise to hear it.

“Hello?” he said, almost as annoyed as he was confused. He gave it another beat before he shook his head and pulled his hand away from his ear, noise of the bar rattling against his eardrum full-force once more. “Alright. I’m hangin’ up, then.” He shook his head. “Gonna call and not say—” He stopped himself short. His chest tightened, air catching in his throat as he allowed himself to entertain a moment of pure hope. “Benny? That you?”

There was a crinkling from the other end of the line and for a terrible second Johnny thought the call was going to die without ever getting a certain answer to the question. But then he heard it, a breath of a scoff that turned into a quiet chuckle by the end of it. Not a single word said but Johnny still knew. He didn’t know how many miles stood between them, but it was irrelevant. He could still feel Benny sparking through the cord of the phone.

The laugh that Johnny let out was short, choked with more emotion than he meant for it to be. He pinched his nose for a moment, sniffling as he pulled his hand away the same way he would when he was gearing up for a fight. This wasn’t a fight, but the stakes felt just as high.

“Should’ve known,” Johnny finally said when he realized how long they’d stayed on the line in silence. “No one knows the number here anymore.”

“I do.”

His voice was still low and smooth despite the static of the line, despite how little he seemed to speak. His voice never rusted from lack of use, not even in the six months of silence that had spanned between them. For Johnny, Benny’s absence was something that was felt, not heard. But when those two small words trilled down the line he felt each day that had gone by without hearing from him.

“That’s good,” Johnny made himself speak. He tried to keep his smile muted, not wanting to draw anyone’s attention in the bar. But he knew that he wasn’t successful in hiding the emotions in his voice. He didn’t bother trying. He cleared his throat. “Bail call?” he asked.

“No,” he replied simply, but Johnny could’ve sworn he heard the smirk in his tone.

“Hospital call?”

“No.”

Now the grin was starting to break across Johnny’s face, small and defiant. He covered his mouth with his hand for a moment as he tried to figure out what he wanted to say next. “That’s good.” He paused, finding comfort in the short exchanges and long silences. There weren’t enough of those anymore. “They said you’re in Indiana now.”

“Yeah, for now.”

“Leaving soon?”

“Maybe.”

He wanted to ask. He wanted to ask where Benny was going next. He wanted to ask if Benny was going to come back to Chicago, come back home. If he wasn’t coming back to Chicago, if he wasn’t going to stay in Indiana, would wherever he was going next have room for the both of them? If Johnny packed a bag and filled the tank on his bike and took off, would Benny wait for him somewhere? Long silences in person felt so much better than this. But it was something. After six months of nothing, this was something.

It felt wrong to offer Chicago back to him. He knew it was there—it’d been there since the night he left. But selfishly, Johnny wanted to remind him. Home is still here waiting for you. I am too, if it matters any. He held his tongue.

“I’m sick of the cold,” Benny said. “Might go south. Back west. Don’t know yet.”

There it was again, that twinge of hope. “Backtracking?”

Benny heard the shift in Johnny’s tone as he asked. He didn’t acknowledge it outright, but he allowed the tenor of his voice to change too. “In a way.”

Johnny nodded and it took longer than it should have for him to remember that Benny couldn’t see it. “That’s…that’s good.”

He was never good at coming up with bullshit to talk about just for the sake of keeping the conversation going. Neither was Benny. That was part of the reason they got on so well—no one felt like they were being forced to perform in front of the other all the time. None of that had changed. Only thing that changed now was that Johnny had what felt like a million things to say, to ask, but he knew that he couldn’t say any of them. They lived in his chest with all the feelings he never learned what to do with. Johnny wished that they were sitting across the table from each other. It wouldn’t make it any easier to ask Benny to come home, to take him with him. But if they were looking at each other maybe Johnny wouldn’t have to say it. Benny could look at him and know, and he wouldn’t have to say anything either.

“Didn’t take as long as I thought it would,” Benny said.

“What’s that?”

“Chicago to here,” he clarified. “Didn’t take long.”

Johnny knew that he should fight the impulse to say the first thing that came to his mind, but he was running out of room. “Won’t take long to come back then.”

There was a moment of quiet static and Johnny was braced and ready to the click of the line going dead. Wouldn’t be the first time he said the wrong thing and pushed Benny into leaving without a goodbye.

Then he heard the pull of a breath and Benny’s steady voice saying, “I’ll see ya.”

Maybe it was just a goodbye, one that he didn’t get before. It could’ve meant nothing, but with Benny every word felt like it meant something. If he meant goodbye, he would’ve said it like that.

Johnny knew that Benny would hear the way that he was talking through the breath he was holding but he didn’t care. “Good.”

The line clicked and Johnny felt his body deflate. All the worry and tension that he’d been carrying around for half a year suddenly felt lighter, felt bearable. It wasn’t gone. Wouldn’t ever be, he figured, unless Benny came back or if he finally left right along with him. But bearable was more than it’d been for a long time now. He focused on that, and on the sound of Benny’s voice still rattling around in his skull.

He set the phone back on the receiver. Looking around, no one even seemed to have noticed that he was talking on it. He had no idea how long the conversation had lasted, but clearly it wasn’t long enough to draw attention. His hand rested on the phone for a few moments longer, like it was a tether keeping him connected to a man a myriad of county lines away.

When he went back to the table, Corky and Wahoo were gone. They were up and at the pool table, one thing that they could still beat most of the new guys at. The two of them were the only ones who noticed Johnny standing by the table, staring at the empty beer bottles deep in thought. They waited for their turn and for the leader of their club to do or say something to cue them in.

Johnny contemplated his next move as he studied the tabletop. He had no real direction, no definitives. But he never did—that was always how it went with him, with the club. Just making up things as they went along. Kathy was right about that. Rules and plans cropped up out of nowhere and they were all just along for the ride. Maybe this was no different.

He was silent as he wove through the clusters of people to get to the door. Wahoo was the only one who noticed and managed to say anything. “Johnny, hey!” he called after him, a little surprised when the man actually stopped and turned to look at him. “All…all good?”

The neutral expression on Johnny’s face didn’t betray any of the feelings or thoughts that were currently darting around his head. He nodded, taking another step towards the door. “All good.”

The Bikeriders Taglist (if you'd like to be added to any of my taglists, please let me know!): @garbinge

#the bikeriders #the bikeriders 2024 #the bikeriders fanfiction #benny cross #johnny davis #benny cross fanfiction #johnny davis fanfiction #benny cross x johnny davis #johnny davis x benny cross #my writing #fanfiction #drabblesmc

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t43andbooks · 4 months ago

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Pairing: Ranpo Edogawa x reader

Wc: 500+

Note: very short..

————

It was autumn, the crunch of the orange and brown leaves you stepped on reminding you with each step. You had just finished a grueling, time consuming mission given to you by the boss, you had decided on the way back to the agency that you would take the time to relax under one of the trees that held the most shade.

In the middle of the empty park you stood in front of, there was a gigantic oak tree, large spots of shade rest under it, the best place to relax really.

It was eye catching, orange leaves falling and gathering underneath it, the smallest streaks of light shining in the spaces through the leaves and branches. It was calming enough for you to take a nap under— though you shouldn’t take long, Kunikida might scold you for missing work.

Walking towards it you had checked the time, at least twenty minutes to rest wouldn’t hurt.

Reaching it, you laid down, brushing a few leaves away so they wouldn’t tangle and get stuck in your hair.

You shut your eyes slowly, relaxing into the grass hill you laid upon, ready to fall asleep.

Until, you heard the quiet click of someone’s heels nearing you with every step, you instantly recognized the familiar sound.

You didn’t open your eyes though— waiting for him to announce himself to you. You could hear the sound of clothes rustling as he crouched next to you.

You could feel a slight tickle underneath your nose , opening your eyes your gaze flitted to the man next to you, with a hand on his hat to keep it from falling and the other holding a small leaf, the culprit. He had a smirk on his face as he greeted you.

“Where have you been?” Ranpo asked (more like whined.) as he tossed the leaf to the side, you turned to lay on your side and face him entirely. “Lay with me, will you?” You uttered, he had a reluctant look on his face— but ultimately gave in to your wishes.

Your faces were much closer now, “I wanted to take a break, I had finished my mission a bit early but it was pretty tiring.” You answered his question after a moment. While you talked, his hand raised to play with your hair, lightly twirling a strand between his fingers.

He stopped after a few moments and cupped your face with his hand, bringing you even closer in the process, eyes fluttering shut— your lips interlocked, leaving butterflies in your stomach.

You don’t usually exchange kisses like this, surround by your coworkers on the regular wouldn’t allow you to. Though when you can, you absolutely revel in it. Not many people know about your relationship, save for Dazai, that nosy bastard, and the boss.

Separating, you take the time to admire his features. You raise a hand to wrap around his waist as you nuzzled your noses together.

“How long do you plan on staying here?” He asked in a modulated tone, “‘bout ten minutes or so? Mm, stay with me.”

You know he would like to sit at his desk snacking on the candy he hoards in his safe— but if he has a chance to sleep with you, even for just a little while he’ll take it.

He tucked his head underneath yours as he answered, “Fine.”

#ranpo edogawa #bsd ranpo #bungou stray dogs ranpo #ranpo x reader #ranpo edogawa x reader #reader insert #Spotify

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therethatstar · 5 months ago

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pondphuwin au where phuwin seems to be having a bad day or at least that's what pond thinks. he's been mostly quiet the whole day, keeps it to himself. they're shooting for something and between each break, phuwin is either on his phone or sleeping. which isn't odd for phuwin since he barely has time to rest. but something is off and pond can tell the moment he saw phuwin in the morning.

once work is done, pond asks if he needs a ride home. phuwin waves him off, saying that he's going straight to his condo which is only a few bts rides away. but pond insists so phuwin gives in eventually. once they're on the road, pond goes, "go somewhere with me. promise you, it's going to make your day." and phuwin just kind of raises his brow at him to which pond just grins back at him. soon enough, they're at the house that's a little bit on the outskirt of bangkok. once he parks his car, pond turns to glance phuwin who looks a bit perplexed with their whereabout.

"this is the house where i adopted parker from. come on."

parker seems to recognize pond right away the moment the door is open, running straight to him. after greeting with owner, she tells them to feel free to bring parker outside to play so they end up on sitting on the grass as parker runs back and forth between phuwin and pond. pond keeps stealing glances phuwin and phuwin knows this because nothing slides for him when it comes to pond. that's what happens when you're around someone so much. he knows pond wants to ask but he also knows pond respects his boundaries more than wanting to know. pond knows that if phuwin wants to talk he'll come to him first. so phuwin kind of just sits there quietly, playing with parker whenever he comes to him.

eventually at one point, pond has parker on his laps as he talking to puppy, introducing him to phuwin. "parker, this is phuwin. you're going to see him often so remember his face okay." he points parker towards phuwin and phuwin can't help the way his lips curled upward. "he's a really nice guy but he can be a bit quiet sometime. and you'd think he might be mad at you but then maybe you're just overthinking everything. but give him alot of affection, he says he doesn't like it but i think he actually really likes it. he's just tightlipped that's all." pond doesn't look at him as he says those things, but phuwin keeps his eyes on him. "he has a cat named hana and she's super cute. almost as cute as the owner. almost." phuwin rolls his eyes at that but the smile on his face can't be helped at this point. "you're going to meet her later so remember to be nice to her cause she's little scared with strangers at first."

they end up spending most of the evening playing with parker and end the night after having dinner together. pond drops him off at his condo later, before asking, "better?" phuwin watches him for a moment before he says, "i wasn't mad at you. in case, that's what you think." pond smiles, "i know." phuwin nods at that, presses his lips together, "just a little stressed with work. but i feel alot better now. thanks for today."

pond chuckles lightly, "yeah. parker kind of has that effect. these days, i don't even want to do anything. just want to go see him until i can bring him home."

and phuwin wants to tell pond that yes, parker is part of the reasons why he's feeling much better now. but while it has something to do with parker, he wants to pond that it has everything to do with pond, himself. and once phuwin is in bed that night, he wonders what it would be like once pond actually has someone in life. if he'll be placed in the backseat in pond's life then. if pond won't be paying attention to him as much or the mood that he's in. he can't help but envy the person who's going to occupy every part of pond's mind. and he knows today's evening wasn't a day but it sure felt a little too much like a date and for once, he allows himself to wonder what it would be like to actually go on a date with pond. to be so enamored by pond that he simply doesn't know what to do with it.

#sorry but parker is taking over my brain #and i can't stop thinking of different scenarios where he finally meets phuwin #and the moment where parker and hana meets #pondphuwin #pondphuwin au

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ectoentity · 11 months ago

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Ectoplasm Gives You Wings - Flying Lesson

New scene for this fic! This one is a bit of a doozy: nearly 3k words just for one scene.

Masterpost/Subscription Post for this fic.

DPxDC, T-rated Genfic

Context: This scene is the second time Danny has met Red Hood.

The problem with a city like Gotham - or at least this part of it - was that there were very few open spots away from prying eyes. Even rooftops often had cameras near the access door, or looking over from the next building over. Danny got that people here were paranoid about crime and potential supervillain attacks. He didn't blame them. He just wished he had somewhere private to practice flying.

After weeks of searching, he finally found something. There was a corner of one park that looked like it had been allowed to grow wild for years. The remnants of a half-collapsed pavilion were completely overgrown with vines and flowers. There were even skinny saplings growing out of what might have once been a sandbox. People didn't go there. Danny couldn’t find any cameras aimed at it. This was as close to privacy as he could get.

Danny found a stump that was about two feet tall and stood on top of it. He spread out his wings. The muscles ached as he stretched them, too used to being folded close against his back. Danny awkwardly flapped them. It felt a bit ridiculous. He knew the basic physics of how flight worked. The air underneath the wing moved more slowly than the air on top of it, creating a pressure differential that caused lift. He just wasn't sure how that translated to flapping. Did he have to lean a certain way to get the right angle?

"Come on, Fenton. Bird brains do this every day. It can't be that hard."

He crouched down on the stump, wings arched over himself. Then he leapt into the air. He desperately flapped his wings downward. For a moment it actually worked. Instead of falling, he stayed where he was. Half a second later, the sensation was gone. Danny tilted to the side and hit the ground with a heavy thump.

"Ow."

Someone laughed. Danny shot up in an instant and spun to the source of the noise. A tall woman with red hair and green skin leaned against one of the pavilion's remaining pillars. Danny instantly knew why this part of the park was overgrown.

"You're not the kind of bird I expected to find out here," Poison Ivy said with a faint smile.

"I. Uh, I am really sorry, Ms. Ivy. I didn’t realize this was your park. I'll just..." Danny edged back towards his backpack. Poison Ivy rolled her eyes.

"As long as you don’t hurt the plants, you're fine. Stay away from the red flowers if you like keeping your limbs."

Danny stared at Poison Ivy. "What. Really? You're not gonna murder me for stepping on the grass?"

"Nature is more resilient than you think. If you get too rough, you'll get one warning." She smiled at him. Danny didn't know if that was good or not.

"My friend thinks you're cool," he blurted out when he couldn't think of anything to say. "In junior high she got detention for wearing a Justice for Ivy shirt she made. She's like. Extra-Vegan or something? I don't really get it, but she's really into environmentalism and stuff." The words sounded lame to his ears, so Danny couldn't imagine how dumb he must sound to the supervillain. Her eyebrows raised for a bit, looking a bit surprised, and then her face shifted to a muted frown.

"Well, I'm glad to know there are some children with sense." It looked like she was going to say something else, but her gaze was caught by something in the sky. Now that Danny was listening, he could hear the sound of wings. He wasn’t terribly surprised when Red Hood landed in front of them.

"Two visitors in a day? What a surprise." Ivy didn't smile at Hood, but she didn't seem like she was about to attack him either.

"You're a popular lady," Hood said. "How've you been, Ivy?"

"Just tending to my garden, keeping some rodents on their toes. I'm sure I can find something to keep you busy if you're bored."

Ivy's words were sharp, threatening in a way they hadn’t been when she was talking to Danny. He started to slowly edge his way closer to his backpack. If they were about to fight Danny didn’t want to be anywhere near it.

"Mask's keeping me busy enough, thanks," Red Hood answered. His head moved to keep track of Danny. Shit.

Apparently Ivy noticed it too. She smirked, her posture relaxing. "Oh, I see. Are you starting a little flock of your own?"

"Hell no," Danny sputtered at the same time that Hood said "Cut it, Isley." For some reason that only made Ivy smile more. Were they enemies or friends? Danny couldn't tell what was going on.

"You ought to teach your baby bird how to fly before he gets eaten, Hood."

"Hey! I'm not doing that bad."

"You landed on your face," Poison Ivy, the superpowered ecoterrorist with a doctorate, tattled. Red Hood snorted.

"I was about to offer," he said. "Sorry for trying to be polite."

Danny reached his bag and picked it up, but didn't put it on. Putting it on over his wings without going intangible was a frustrating task, and he wanted to be able to run if he had to. "I can figure it out on my own. I don’t need a babysitter."

"Do I look like a babysitter, kid?" Red Hood drawled. He dropped his hands to his sides with the palms facing Danny, as if to emphasize the twin pistols holstered at his waist. It would be a fair point to anyone whose parents didn’t regularly work on ray guns at the dinner table, Danny supposed. "I just wanna make sure you know how to get out of trouble. If you can't fly, all those things do is make you a bigger target."

Danny glared at him. That blank helmet didn't give away any indication of what Hood was thinking or how honest he was being. If there was anything he'd learned in the last few weeks, it was that good things usually came with a catch.

"For what it's worth," Poison Ivy interjected, "you're safer with Hood around than most other places in this city."

Oh great, the supervillains were teaming up against him.

"Do you offer to tutor all the homeless kids you find, or just the ones that remind you of yourself?" Danny spat. He didn't want some fruit loop in a helmet projecting on him. Poison Ivy burst out laughing like it was the funniest thing she'd ever heard. Red Hood seemed to sigh.

"I do tutor kids, actually," he grumbled. "You should come by the community center on Seventh sometime."

That caught Danny off guard. He had seen that there was a community center there, but he wasn't sure whether it was another place that would hand him back to his parents. If Red Hood was involved with it, maybe they wouldn't. Who cared about catching a runaway kid when the area's murderous gang boss was there?

"Fine," Danny said. "But we're staying here. Uh, if that's okay with you, ma'am." He belatedly looked to Poison Ivy for her approval. Danny might not entirely trust Poison Ivy, but he figured it was better to stay here than to follow Red Hood off somewhere else. Ivy had recovered from her laughing fit. She looked over at Red Hood with narrowed eyes and slightly pursed lips, thinking it over.

"As long as you both behave, you're welcome to stay."

"Thank you, Ms. Ivy."

"I promise not to step on your murder begonias," Red Hood said. Instead of being angry, Ivy just rolled her eyes.

"I'll leave you boys to it." Poison Ivy waved at them as she walked off, the branches of trees closing to block the path off behind her.

"She's a lot less murder happy than I expected," Danny commented when he figured she might be out of hearing range.

"Ivy isn't as scary evil as a lot of media claims," Red Hood said. "She won't hesitate to feed you to her plants if you come out here with a hatchet, though." He shrugged and started taking off his heavy jacket. Now that Danny was looking, he could tell it wasn't a normal jacket that he'd just cut the back out of. It was made with holes for his wings, and the fabric between the lower part of his wings and the bottom of the jacket buttoned together to look a bit like a normal jacket. Red Hood undid all the buttons before pulling the whole thing up off his wings. Danny was a bit jealous. He'd had to cut holes in his clothes, and it was a struggle to get them on right.

"Alright, kid, spread your wings out?"

Hesitantly, Danny did as he was told. He still wasn't used to seeing the limbs stretch out on the edges of his vision. Danny himself had only really gotten a good look at them once. He'd taken a nap in a mall fitting room not long after getting off the bus in Gotham. There he'd been able to take a look at his wings in the store's large mirrors. They were mostly white, with black on the lower edge of the wing. There were black lines higher up in three rows, each progressively more spotty. The pattern was the same on the back as on the front. If not for the fact that they'd gotten him chased out of his home, Danny would almost think they were pretty.

Red Hood circled around him, looking his wings over. Danny didn't know what he was looking for. Other than having wings in the first place, Danny didn't think there was anything unusual about them.

"Okay, first lesson," Red Hood said. "There are different kinds of wings. They're good for different things." He spread out his left wing all the way. "What can you tell about the shape?"

"Uh... other than big?" Danny looked back at his own wing and tried to compare it. What if he thought about them like plane wings? He knew a little bit about how those worked, and there were different types for different jobs."Yours are really long and wide. I know in planes long, skinny wings are better for distance flights, but wider wings have less drag."

"Huh. Good thinking." The gang boss sounded almost impressed. "Yeah, in birds it's something similar. Big rectangular wings are good for long, slow soaring. They've got a lot of surface area so it's easier to take off than if they were skinny. So, what do you see with yours?"

Danny nodded and considered his own wings. Now that he was looking at them, it was obvious they weren't proportioned the same. Danny’s wings were shorter, more rounded than rectangular. He couldn’t think of any planes with round wings like that.

"So mine are, what, less good at soaring?"

"That's one thing," Hood said. "But they're more maneuverable. Think of it like being an acrobat when I'm a marathon runner."

That was neat, Danny had to admit. He liked the idea of doing cool aerial tricks. That would at least make this crappy wing situation a little more bearable. Except...

"I need to get into the air first."

"We're getting to that." Red Hood opened his other wing. "Alright, I'm gonna show you how I take off in slow motion and explain what I'm doing."

Danny wasn't sure how that would work, but he nodded and watched.

"First, I lean over a bit, but not enough to make me unbalanced." Hood did so, and bent his knees a bit. "Then raise up your wings as straight up as you can." Danny watched Hood stretch his wings up, up, taller than any person could stand. "When you do your down-stroke, it's not directly down. Imagine it more like you're trying to make your wings into scoops and push the air down and away." Slowly, carefully, Hood's wings lowered. Like he said, they went more forward than down. The wingtips stretched out in front of Hood, feathers fanned out as wide as they could.

"Okay," Danny said. "I think I can do that."

Danny crouched a bit, then raised his wings straight up above him. It was kind of like stretching an arm, but it moved differently. Then Danny flapped his wings like Red Hood had demonstrated. Instantly he could feel the difference. Air caught under his wings, forcing the rest of his body up. His feet left the ground. It felt amazing. Danny almost cheered, but he realized the one flap wouldn't keep him up for long. Danny's white feathers came up for another stroke.

Instantly he hit resistance. It felt almost like his wing slipped under the air pocket it had been above before. Danny swore as his feet hit the ground and he stumbled to his knees.

"You got some air that time," Red Hood commented helpfully. "Do you know what went wrong?"

"If I knew I wouldn't have done it," Danny snapped. He was suddenly struck by how weird this situation was. A couple months ago Danny's biggest concern was keeping away from Dash when he was near a locker. Now he was getting flying lessons from the Red Hood, of all people. The guy was a crazy gangster who'd decapitated people. He'd killed the Joker. Half of Gotham talked about him like he was a monster.

But then again, Danny thought, maybe that wasn't the whole story. Ivy was supposed to be a monster, too, and she'd just treated him like a normal adult would. Danny's parents had thought...

He shuddered, forcing his thoughts back to the present. Hood was looking at him silently with his head tilted slightly to the side.

"You alright there, fledgling?"

"Would you stop calling me that?" Danny folded his arms and tried to think about how it had felt when he tried to fly. "When I tried to bring my wings up, it felt like I hit a bunch of resistance, and then I slipped."

"You kept your wings wide open when you brought them up for another flap," Hood explained. "You gotta fold the primaries in a little bit, or you'll be fighting against the air above your wing." He stretched out one wing and demonstrated by halfway folding his wing, just the first part with the largest feathers.

Danny groaned. "How do birds make this look so easy?"

Red Hood chuckled. The sound was really ominous with his helmet's weird voice filter. "The birds that don't fly get eaten." For a moment Hood gestured like he was going to say something else, but then he stilled. "Shit."

"Uh. Should I run?"

The Red Hood shook his head. "Sorry, pollito, there's something I gotta go take care of. If you want, I can meet back here in a couple nights for another lesson."

"Why?" The word was out of his mouth before Danny could think. "I don't get why you're so worried about helping me. I'm not even from here."

Instead of making another stupid joke, Red Hood stepped towards him. Danny took half a step back on instinct, and Red Hood stopped. "Look, kid. Danny. I don't care where you're from. The minute you started sleeping on my streets, you became someone I'm here to protect, alright?"

Danny wanted to roll his eyes and make some flippant comment about capes, but he couldn't. There was something real in those words. Some kind of gut feeling told him that Red Hood was being absolutely honest. He didn't know what to do with that.

"Yeah. Okay."

Hood watched him squirm for another moment before he went and picked his jacket off the overgrown picnic table. It took him a minute to slide it back on and do up the buttons on the back. Danny was still kind of jealous of how easy it looked.

"Keep practicing, pollito. I'll be back in two days." He leapt into the air and took one huge wingbeat to clear the trees. Showoff.

Danny watched him go, trying to take note of how Red Hood moved his wings in the air so he could practice it. Then his brain caught up to something.

"What the hell is a pollito?"

#dpxdc #my writing #t's writing #EGYW

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jpitha · 11 months ago

Text

Between the Black and Gray 16

First / Previous / Next

The next morning, they were all gathered on the Command Deck for the final link to K'lax.

Fen was sitting in her usual chair, lounging with her legs hanging over the arms, watching. Gord sat in the Command chair going over the details and fine tuning of the link with Spyglass and Nal sat towards the rear in a jump seat, making notes on her pad.

"You ready Fen?" Since Fen had the most trouble with links, Gord always made sure she was ready for them. He knew how unpleasant it was to be surprised.

She nodded. "Good to go, Gord. I'm ready."

"Okie dokie. Spy, ramp up and prepare to link."

"Aye Gord."

Immediately the sound on board changed. Since they were at a full compliment of reactors now the HVAC didn't have to shut down, but Fen still heard the low thrum of the reactors climb to a whine that hurt her teeth. It was a sound just on the edge of hearing, something that she could almost feel. She glanced over at Nal, and noticed that she had quietly put her active noise cancelling earpro in, but still, her ears were flat against her head.

"Linking to K'lax in 3, 2..."

Fen was laying on the grass. She sat up, but this location was unfamiliar. Normally she'd wake up somewhere that was supposed to be a representation of Earth. Pure blue skies, no clouds, birds wheeling overhead, an endless sea of tall grass. This was different.

She was in a forest. Impossibly tall and spindly trees soared overhead, the light coming down was dappled and too orange. She took a breath and it smelled different too, spiced, soft. Almost like...

Ma-ren ran up to her, this time dressed in an ancient traditional K'laxi outfit. She planted her feet in the ground about two meters away and leapt.

The lower gravity allowed her to soar an impossibly far distance into Fen's arms. They hugged a long time. "Fen!" She buried her head into Fen's shoulder. "You're near K'lax!"

"I am. Is that why it looks like this? Is this your world?"

Ma-ren laughed. Fen nearly teared up at the sound. "Much like yours, it's a... representation. It's an idealized version. She looked up at Fen and Fen was lost in her eyes. "You're in danger, hon."

"What? Why? Because I'm near your homeworld?"

"Fen, it's practically your homeworld. You may have been born a human, but K'laxi raised you more than they did. I see your piercings, your tattoos, they're K'laxi. You can speak K'inmar as well as Colonic." Her ears twitched in amusement. "I notice you haven't told Gord."

She turned away. "Gord doesn't need to know everything about me, about us." She put Ma-ren down gently. "What did you mean, I'm in danger?"

"Just that. You know the rules, I can't go into details. Just know that I love you, always have, always will and that you need to keep your head on a swivel. Remember, be K'laxi!"

Fen came back as Spyglass re-entered space. Gord was used to it by now and after confirming that she was back, turned to his pad. Nal was watching her curiously again. "It happens to you, doesn't it."

Fen nodded. "Yeah. It's not... unpleasant once I got used to it. What about you?"

Nal's tail twiched and she shook her head. "No. No such luck, I'm afraid. Hem'it karmu"

So it goes. Nal spoke K'inmar. It was just an old idiom, but Fen knew the meaning. She worked overtime to keep her face neutral, but she had a hunch that Nal caught she was understood.

Gord hadn't caught any of that, he was busy working out a parking orbit with Spy and talking to Traffic Control. A panel at the far end of the room squealed for attention. Gord's head snapped over to it, and he practically leapt out of his chair to investigate.

Fen stood, but didn't follow. "Gord, what's that? I don't recognize the alarm."

"Wormhole detector. Someone just linked in. Spyglass, do you have a bearing?"

"Just a sec, Gord." Suddenly, there was a shift in gravity and Fen's inner ear told her that they were gyrating wildly. The sound of the reactors climed again and she fell into her seat. "It's three Super Dreadnoughts Gord! It's the Empire!"

"What?" Gord's eyes went wide and he turned to Nal. She looked up at him, her ears straight up. "Is this your doing?"

"Gord, I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Don't play coy, Nal. I know you're a spy. I just don't know who you're a spy for. Spyglass had your room isolated, so you couldn't have sent out a message, and I stayed aware the whole time, so I know you weren't snooping."

Nal crossed her arms - another human gesture - "so doesn't that mean it wasn't me? Maybe it's a coincidence. It's not like the Human Empire and the K'laxi are enemies."

Gord ran back to the Command chair and his fingers started dancing over the controls built into the arm. "Spy, this is bad. We can't pretend to be someone we're not. You're a five kilometer interstellar starjumper. They don't exist anymore. Spin up to War Emergency Power, and free the lasers. We might have to shoot our way out. I'm going to start prepping another link."

"Gord, I wasn't planning on a multi-link, the capacitors aren't charged."

Gord swore in his ancient language. "Charge them then. Tell me you have some juke charges at least."

"I have a few Gord, but I haven't needed them in-"

"I know, I know." Are they pinging us, or did they just loose missiles already?" Gord's voice is bitter through the stress.

"Nothing yet Gord. No ping, no sweep and no missiles. We're on the other side of the system, if they're not looking they have no reason to notice us."

While Gord and Spy fretted, Fen took out her own pad and checked out the ships. She had never seen a Super Dreadnought before. She could tell that they must have been based on a starjumper design, they had that same oversized look that regular starjumpers had, but in addition were so many more weapon blisters and lenses for the exawatt lasers, missile ports and generally looked more menacing. Spyglass was able to passively read their IFF And they were The Vengeance of Lavinia, The Dreams of Hyacinth, and Ultimatum.

Fen looked up. "Gord, I think this is just coincidence. Why don't we dock, drop off Nal, and then leave. We can probably be gone before they even notice we were here."

Gord turned to Fen and opened his mouth to speak, and then shut it. He turned back to his task. "Spy, are we ready?"

"Gord, what about Fen's question?"

He shook his head. "Spy, it's time. Habs vs Bruins."

"What is-" Before Fen could finish her statement, she felt warm and soft and watched the world slide down to the floor, curiously detached.

Fen came to slowly, painfully, in fits and starts. Her head was pounding and her shoulders hurt. Her vision swam and she tried to make sense of where she was. As her head cleared, she learned why her shoulders hurt at least.

She was belted tightly into a seat. Where though?

Next to her Nal was still unconscious, also belted in tightly. They were in a small compartment with six seats in two rows of three. On the floor in front of Fen was her rifle, her go-bag and Nal's luggage. Why was her stuff here? What's going on?

As she looked up and tried to figure out where she was, she saw a window. She looked out and was able to see Spyglass rotate quickly around the window, growing slightly smaller with each turn. That's odd. Why can she see Spyglass from the outsi--

Oh. Recognition fought through the fog of whatever had knocked her out. She and Nal were in an escape pod tumbling away. "Gord!" Her voice sounded thick and blurry. "Gord! What's going on?"

The speaker in the escape pod was tinny, small. Gord sounded far away. "Hey Fen. Sorry about all this."

"What are you doing? What happened?"

"Fen, I have to say, I'm impressed. Spy said that she gave you enough to keep you out for more than 12 hours and it's been barely 2. We're leaving. We're going to boost away with the stardrive and get some speed before we link. I'm pretty sure the drive emissions will hamper their attempts to trace our wormhole links. I knew this was a mistake, but I couldn't say no to one of Vivenni's progeny."

"Who? What?" Fen fought against the drug mightily, but following Gord was hard in the best of times. When he got nostalgic it was nearly impossible even when she wasn't pumped full of a sedative.

"Don't worry about it Fen. I gave you your rifle and your clothes and your share of the money. You have more than enough to sign on with a Merc group or whatever. Hell, you probably have enough to buy at least a third ownership in a cargo freighter. You can keep doing what you're doing."

"But Gord... why?"

"Because of who I am Fen, because of the Empire. They don't want people like me to exist, and I am rather fond of existing. I'm not going to hang around and wait to be captured, shackled or shot. Not again. Never again."

Gord cut the connection. Fen reached out to stop their spin and watched as Spyglass lit her stardrive for the first time in more than five hundred years. A lance of pure white light, twice as long as the ship itself shot out of the rear of the ship, painfully bright. The window on the pod darkened to protect Fen's eyes, but it was still incredibly bright.

"They're boosting at at least five Earth gee, maybe more." Nal's voice was also fuzzy, but she seemed like she was able to recover from the sedative much quicker than Fen. "He's right too, the drive emissions will scramble most attempts to trace the link. He's going to get away. Even if it didn't he'll be going too fast for any missiles to intercept."

Fen turned to Nal. "What's going on?"

Nal's ears pointed to the window. "You're friend was spooked by the Super Dreadnoughts and decided to dump us and run."

"But why?"

"Fen you may be pretty but you are a little dim. That was Gord Beaverbrook. He's in history books. K'laxi and Human. He's got a two million star bounty on his head. Four million if he comes alive."

Gord? The old man who had a hard time keeping track of what year it was? "Two mill- Nal, I was raised in a refugee camp on a Gren station. I know very little about human history."

Nal's eyes widened and her ears flicked. "Well that explains some things. Like, how you can speak K'inmar. "Just how much do you know?" Nal switched to the K'laxi lingua franca.

"I know enough, Nal. My parents died when I was very young, I was raised by a K'laxi familial group. My partner is -was- K'laxi."

Nal nodded. "That explains the piercings and tattoos. You know what that pattern means, right?"

Fen leaned forward trying to make her belts looser. "Of course I know what it means. It's the pattern of Gen'mil." K'laxi from the northern latitudes of their planet would decorate their clothing and bodies in patterns of lines and dots and whorls. The difference in the patterns were also a way to determine things about a person from a glance. Gen'mil was the pattern for a group that Ma-ren's family identified as. Fen having the tattoo meant she was a member of that group as well. It was a sign of her and Ma's partnership.

Nal raised an eyebrow. "Okay, so you were mated. You're in K'laxi space now with a K'laxi marriage tattoo and K'laxi earrings, speaking K'inmar. I am willing to admit you are the real deal, but... she turned and looked out at Spyglass boosting away. The starjumper was noticeably smaller. "You're going to be seen as an... oddity here." She looked back at Fen. "There will be talk."

"Hmmph." Fen frowned. "You think this will be the first time people 'will talk' about my choices? Nal, I grew up on a Gren station among Humans and K'laxi who ran away from the Empire for their beliefs. Her eyes were hard. "Let them talk."

There was a blinding flash. Fen looked out the window, and they were only a few kilometers away from one of the Super Dreadnoughts. "Looks like the Empire is interested in us. Guess we're taking a detour before we go to K'lax." Nal tipped her head towards the window. "Doesn't it seem like a wormhole link like that should make a noise? I know we're out in space and there's nothing to carry the sound, but something like that? Full of light and drama? Should make a noise."

Fen stared at Nal, her mouth open slightly. "You're not the smallest bit worried about the Empire?"

Nal shrugged around her belts. "Why should I be? We're not AIs. We're a K'laxi and a human that grew up K'laxi. They'll pick us up, ask us what happened, grill us about Gord and let us go."

It took another hour for the Super Dreadnought to get close enough to them, and a large grapple hooked the pod. They were dragged inside.

#humans are deathworlders #humans are space orcs #sci fi writing #humans are space oddities #humans and aliens #jpitha #writing #humans and ai #humans are space capybaras #humans are space australians #Between the black and gray

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thetomorrowshow · 8 months ago

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seven

empires superpowers au masterlist (not up to date)

this story takes place about a year after the end of ‘poisoned rats’.

cw: light eye horror

He’s still new to the whole going-to-work thing. It’s kind of like school, and Jimmy had never liked school, but it’s different in the way that he’s getting paid for his work. And it’s a decent bit more enjoyable than school—he’s learning about cars, getting familiar with the inner workings of machines, and he hasn’t properly had the chance to pop open a hood since he was a teenager and would help his dad with checking the coolant and whatall.

It’s nothing glamorous, but Jimmy really likes his job—more than when he worked as a call service agent, at least. Today he’d learned how to even the weight of a motorcycle, and even though he’d pinched his fingers between the exhaust pipe and the engine, his boss had praised his efforts and let him off early.

Scott usually picks him up from work—they’ve got a second car, but Jimmy doesn’t take his driving test until this weekend so he’s not really meant to be driving himself anywhere—but Scott isn’t free for another hour, so Jimmy meanders around downtown.

He used to live on these streets, so it’s more instinct and less purpose that leads him down to the park across the block from his old apartment building—now closed, he observes, for renovations. The park is lonely at this time of day, two rusting swings hanging silently and a plastic slide gleaming in the sun.

Jimmy stops for a moment, stares at the yellowed grass and bleached plastic playground equipment. He’d never allowed himself to go anywhere near this park, a spot of joy for the kids living in the rundown neighborhood.

He can’t hang here long for risk of being chased off by some bathrobe-clad mother, accusing him of being a predator, so Jimmy turns back to the main part of downtown and heads back in the direction of the mechanic. Maybe Scott’s patrolling in the area, can show off some ice tricks.

There’s a handful of other walkers starting to appear when he makes it back into downtown proper, mostly those returning to work from lunch and high schoolers skipping out of school early. Once upon a time, Jimmy knew how to blend in perfectly with this crowd. Once upon a time, he could never stay in one place for too long.

He slides in among them just as easily as he once might have, moving at the same speed and keeping to the common footpath. He keeps his eyes down and dodges anyone coming from the other direction without issue.

Which is why it’s weird when someone runs right into him.

“Oh, geez—sorry, can I—”

“Well, isn’t it great to see you!”

Jimmy blinks, flinches as the man he’d run into slaps him on the back a couple of times. He . . . he has no clue who this is.

His mind instantly cycles through various brutes from Xornoth’s manor, but this face doesn’t match any of them. This man is a bit stocky, straw-colored hair hanging over his forehead, thin beard a bit darker in color. He’s smiling widely, even as he takes Jimmy by the hand and starts dragging him off.

Jimmy can’t help it—some strange man is pulling him away and he panics—with a snap of adrenaline—

The man jumps back, Jimmy coming with him, as a chair is thrown out of the window of the building beside them, narrowly missing them. He chuckles, taps his nose knowingly.

“You aren’t getting me with that one! Don’t worry, I just want to talk. How about in that deli?”

He doesn’t point anywhere, strangely enough, so Jimmy just glances around until he sees a deli.

All the well-trained alarm systems in Jimmy’s brain are firing, but. . . .

Now that he thinks about it, there is something familiar about this man. Maybe it’s his cadence, or his eyes—

And Jimmy realizes with a start that the man is blind, his eyes clouded over, faded scars stretching across them.

He’s shocked enough that he lets the man lead him into the deli, grab them a table, and order himself a sandwich.

That’s when he notices that the man is not only blind, but has earplugs in.

“I’m sorry,” he finds himself saying loudly as the man tucks into his sandwich, “I think you may have mistaken me with someone else.”

The man winces. “You don’t have to shout, I’m right here,” he says around a mouthful of sandwich. “And no, Tim, I know who you are.”

If that isn’t ominous. And also the wrong name, though it once again scritches at the part of his brain that finds something about this man so oddly familiar. “Jimmy,” he automatically corrects. “Not Tim. And I really ought to get going—”

“Back to Scott?”

Jimmy freezes, halfway out of his seat.

“Because I’m pretty sure he’s patrolling around the East side of the city, y’know. Unless you want to call Lizzie. Pretty sure she’s not busy at the minute.”

The man takes another bite out of his sandwich, scratches his beard.

Jimmy’s stomach goes cold. How did he—how can—it’s—

“See Tim, there’s not a lot that I don’t hear about,” the man continues. “However, there is something that I need to know, if you wouldn’t mind answering.”

He needs to get away. Fight or flight has fully kicked in, and Jimmy needs to run. Jimmy raises his hand, ready to do—something, shatter his chair or collapse the table or hurt him in some way—but the man only tsks.

“Come on then, none of that. The three of us have got to stick together, really. Wouldn’t be good to start fighting, especially with the way Nine acts.”

Slowly, Jimmy sits back down. It’s not because he’s intimidated, he tells himself. His fingers twitch. He could kill this man in an instant, and no one would ever know.

The man puts down his sandwich in its wrapper and leans in, head tilted a bit to the side. “So,” he says lowly, ��did you kill them?”

Jimmy knows, instinctively, that he means Xornoth.

And it’s not intimidation that makes Jimmy answer. It’s some strange feeling that he knows this man, and cares about him. Something familiar in the line of his nose and the color of his hair.

“Yeah,” says Jimmy in the same low tone. “Yeah, I did.”

The man sits back, a wide smile spreading across his face. “Good. I figured you did, y’know, but I was sleeping when it happened. You could’ve pulled a runner, y’know? Could’ve been someone else to get them. That wouldn’t have been right, though. It had to be one of their . . . erm, what did they start calling them? Subjects?”

Jimmy swallows, then mutters an answer in the affirmative. He keeps having to remind himself that he doesn’t know this man, as familiar as he is. How does he know so much?

“Right. Back in my day, we were ‘participants’. What a joke.” The man shakes his head, then takes another bite of his sandwich. “Well, thanks for the info. I won’t tell anyone, promise—well, I’ll tell Nine, but Nine isn’t much of a talker, so it won’t get out or anything.”

“Right,” Jimmy manages. He checks his phone; Scott should be coming to pick him up soon. He casts his eyes about, trying to think of anything to say to the strange man with white scars and earplugs.

“What happened to your eyes?” he asks eventually. The man smiles ruefully, one hand going up to trace over the scars. They aren’t precise in any way, some smaller ones littered around the corners, long ones down the middle. If Jimmy looks closely, he can even see the places the irises are entirely missing along with the scar, leaving the man with cloudy white streaks through his eyes.

“Let’s just say—next time those scientists of theirs have you on the table, make sure and ask ‘em to strap down your hands,” the man says. “Not that that should ever happen to you again, but you never know, y’know?”

Well.

Jimmy feels slightly ill, staring at those scars. Most of his aren’t self-inflicted, nor nearly as visible as those. Sure, he has one across his cheek, and a small one above his eyebrow, but they don’t usually attract much attention. Scott even thinks they make him look rather dashing. He can only imagine the stares and questions this man gets on a daily basis.

The stranger finishes his sandwich, wiping his fingers off with the wrapper. He stands, tips an imaginary hat toward Jimmy.

“Well, I’ll be off. The city’s a bit loud, don’t you think? Oh, and thanks for footing the bill.”

And then he’s gone, and Jimmy sits there in stunned silence until he shakes himself, heads up to the counter, and pays.

He tries to forget about the man. As weeks pass, he moves on, his days taken up by work and Scott and his friends. And he mostly does forget about the familiar stranger, too busy to spare the mental energy needed to try and figure out who he was.

That is, until one night, nearly a month later.

Lizzie had managed to get a hold of their high school’s yearbook from when she was a senior and Jimmy a sophomore, and together with Scott and Joel they paged through it, laughing at Lizzie’s galaxy-themed outfit and Jimmy’s unbrushed hair.

They stop on the page of the soccer team, and Jimmy knows from the coos and laughs that they’re looking at him and his ridiculous hair, but his eyes are caught on a familiar face.

“Who’s that?” he finds himself saying, pointing to the boy beside him, the boy who has his arm slung around his shoulders, the boy who—in one small picture off to the side, is knuckling Jimmy’s head.

And then he remembers.

He pages through the yearbook until he finds him.

A senior that year. One of his friends, and one of the only people who tried to still hang out with him after his powers got out of hand.

He’d almost completely forgotten about Martyn.

Martyn, the dude with the new Playstation. He’d been powered—not strongly, but with some fairly average super hearing and far vision.

Jimmy thinks back to the man he’d met, blinded by his own hands, hearing so intense that he has to wear earplugs at all times.

And then he wonders, dreading the unknown answer, what kind of mistakes had been made with the experiments before his own—and who on earth Nine might be.

#empires smp #empires smp fanfic #empires superpowers au #esh au #jimmy solidarity #scott smajor #flower husbands #martyn inthelittlewood #mas writes #051424 #finally. he's here #after all the fighting he did to get here #when i explicitly told him no #martyn: that sign can't stop me bc i can't read! im blind!#the number seven really just suits this man huh #somebody guessed that martyn would have been one of the subjects lol #you were correct! congrats!#lmk what you guys think #love you guys

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red-n-ded · 2 years ago

Text

The Ultimate Team-Up (reverse!AU)

Miguel Davidson, also known as Mirage, tries to steal rare 1994 Dodge Viper for money, unaware that it's a young Autobot in disguise with a protective green Dodge Challenger as a brother.

A Transformers Reverse AU of Noah meeting Mirage and the Autobots in Rise of the Beasts then joining forces to get the Transwarp key

Ao3 Fic Sneak Peek Below

Miguel Davidson remembers what the world looked like before it all went to shit. He remembers living in a beautiful home under blue skies and luscious green grass with smiling parents.

But that was when he was barely out of college.

Smog and grime fill the atmosphere and the smiles on his parents’ face are lifeless and covered in blood. Manipulated and brainwashed civilians walk the streets cheering the names of Megatron and his Decepticon task force with UniCorp’s face and logo painted on every flat surface on Earth.

For a while, Miguel felt alone in this dystopian world, just messing with officials and stealing cars and technology left and right when. He couldn’t leave all the credit to him, much thanks to his charisma and maybe a bit of help from his hologram tech. At least he's putting his optical engineering degree to some use.

They call him the Mirage, the illusionist thief. Kind of flattering.

Mirage.

Kind of dumb but it fits.

Luckily for him, he’s not the only one with a dumb nickname.

Benjamin O’Brien, or Bumblebee the young speed demon insists Mirage to call him, was the first friend he made while wandering the 1984-remake environment. They met during a protest and they found each other as roommates when they were hiding.

Months later, they found each other as teammates when the scout convinced his leader, Orion Cullen or Optimus, to let the thief join their rebellion.

Bee doesn’t talk much, both literally and figuratively. Mirage knows a little bit about him.

He’s a few months younger than him, likes 80’s music, hates the Smiths but listens to them 24/7, dreamed of being a race car driver since he was little, and is a scout for the Freedom Racers, followed by stories of raids he led with the yellow Camaro he built from scratch in the racing pits of Optimus’ speedway.

Bee is also mute.

After a year living and working together, Bee told Mirage the story of losing his voice in a riot a few years back. Decepticon member Blaze Sobolov, nicknamed Blitzwing, shot him in the throat, getting multiple pieces of metal lodged in his vocal cords. From that day on, Bee now speaks through a built-in radio and soundboard in his smartwatch with the occasional sign language.

It didn’t bother him before but as time went by, his throat started to get infected, swollen and red. The team feared the worst if left untreated but they’re not in the position to go to the hospital and get help, afraid of getting caught by the Decepticons.

Mirage isn’t willing to wait for Bee’s throat to fully close up and goes out to do what he does best; Steal.

He got a tip that someone is willing to give loads of cash in exchange for luxury cars, specifically ones hiding in UniCorp parking lots. That money will allow Mirage to buy the materials he needs to build a magnet that could keep the metal pieces away from Bee’s throat and temporarily save him. It's only until the revolution is over and they can go to a real doctor.

Sneaking in was the easiest part. A few holograms here and there and he was within seconds. He wandered the parking lot holding a photo of the targeted car, careful to not make noises in the cramped concrete building. Luckily for him, it didn’t take too long for him to find it.

Two cars lay in front of him in the corner of the first floor.

One is a forest green 1970 Dodge Challenger, looking slightly beat up with scratches near the bottom of the metal and the bumpers.

Parked right next to it is a bright orange 1994 Dodge Viper RT/10. It shined as a distinct opposite of the old Challenger. The paint is shined and polished with a brightness that burns his eyes and the metal looks so smooth as if it was manufactured straight out of the factory.

“Goddamn!” He exclaims almost jumping in excitement. Getting this money will be easier than he thought.

“Do you hear that?”

“Shit.” Mirage quickly covers his mouth, realizing the echo from his excitement. Footsteps and mumbles of soldiers made Mirage flinch, quickly crouching down to hide behind the Viper.

The thief muffles his excitement, giddily shuffling towards the orange Viper, brushing his hands over the clean paint, a smile leaking onto his face. He does smell some rust near the undercarriage as he crouches. Mirage worries for a moment that it might affect the price but waves it off. Some air fresheners and a bit of charm could cover it up.

Ignoring the rust, this car alone would be enough to pay for Bee’s magnet five times over. In addition with the Challenger, which with a bit of paint and buffers, doesn’t look too banged up-

“We’ll check it out later.”

Oh well, one will do.

Mirage quickly got to work. He stands up next to the driver’s seat, pulls out a wire from his bag and snuck it into the lock, pulling it to hear the click of the lock.

“Mirage is in.” The blue-haired rebel whispers, excited to get his ticket to extra cash out of the concrete parking lot. Unfortunately for him, it was quickly short lived when the lock went back down.

CLICK!

For a moment, Mirage was confused but quickly brushed it off to try again.

Then he tries again. And again. And again.

CLICK! CLICK! CLICK!

“You’re a real piece of shit.” Mirage wants to laugh. It’s as if the car is making fun of him, like it’s playing a game that only it knows the rules. Or maybe it just doesn't want Mirage to get inside.

“That’s how you want to play then.” Mirage grumbles, trying to ignore the fact that he’s scolding a car like a naughty child, before pulling on the wire again to get the lock loose. Before the car could lock it back in, Mirage pulls on the door handle to open.

“Ah ha! Gotcha!”

The thief immediately hops into the navy blue and black leather interior, bouncing on the seat and drumming his palms on the steering wheel. He sits back and lets himself breathe, taking in the mix of bitter iron and new car smell and feeling the plastic of the dashboard and radio.

“Now this is what we call a car.” He mumbles before bending down to hotwire the car, pulling out a piece of the dashboard under the steering wheel to reveal multiple wires hanging out but burnt red and black dust fall from the compartment making Mirage cough. There’s even rust inside? Jeez, who owned this thing? Some car care.

Small sparks light up the dark car as he tries to start up the car with routine ease. The car starts to rumble a bit, waking from the sparks. For a moment though, he sits back up with a smirk to look back at the black and green Challenger, “Don’t get jealous, baby. I’m coming back for you later.”

“NYPD! Come out of the vehicle with your hands up!”

Shit.

Mirage turns towards the window and outside a couple feet away from the car are two police officers, aiming their guns at him with stoic expressions. The thief doesn’t even flinch, rolling his eyes and his cocky smirk returning his face. He rolls down the window and leans his head out the door.

“Hello officers. How may I help you?” Mirage asks with a natural suave, hoping the two will be distracted enough for his two hands to finish hotwiring the car.

The police don’t waiver from his charisma but are confused at his unshaken confidence. “The hell? We said to come out of the car! Or we will engage!”

Mirage laughs but he fumbles the wires a bit faster, “Sounds like the night shift is getting to you. How about we relax, go out for donuts or somethin’?”

One of the officers leaned over to the other, guns still pointing at the thief, “Sir, that’s Mirage. He’s one of the rebel racers. The one with the holograms.”

Mirage’s smirk grows into a big grin, “I see my reputation precedes me. Want an autograph or-”

The car’s radio buzzes to life, interrupting Mirage’s retort. His smile shrinks into a worried stare. The dials spin frantically between different stations before buzzing in white noise. If Mirage listens close enough, he can hear a voice.

“Kris! Bzzt! Kris! Bzzt! Can you hear me?” An urgent voice filters through the static, almost too buzzed for Mirage to translate but enough for him to slightly recognize a few words.

“The hell?”

“Are you listening to me?!” Mirage’s head shot up from the radio to the officers, looking more annoyed than before and slowly creeping up towards the car. “Get out of that car or we will shoot!”

“Screw this. I’ll get you pretty boys later.” The white noise continues to buzz in the back and Mirage, not willing to push any more buttons, rushes to open the door. He grabs the door handle and pushes to open but the sudden noise of the lock startles the thief, even more when the door refuses to open. “What the hell?”

“Kris. Bzzt! Please calm down. Bzzt! Just unlock the doors.”

“Who’s Kris?” Mirage yells amidst his confusion.

“Get out of the car!” The officers are barely five feet away from the car door and his grip on the handgun grows tighter on the trigger.

“I can’t!” Mirage yells through the glass, banging on the window and kicking the frame, "It won't open!"

“You have three seconds to get out of the car!” One of the officer’s threatened as the safety of the gun clicking.

His original confidence has all but faded away, staring at the two uniformed men with panicked eyes. He’s not going to get caught now. He punches the doors and digs his heels into the plastic interior hoping to loosen the door but the car refuses to budge. It even seemed to flinch at every hit.

“Stop kicking me!” A child’s voice drips out from the car but oddly enough, not from the radio. “Noah! I can’t… I can't breathe!”

Was that a kid?

“Three!”

The green Challenger comes to life as well. The angry-sounding roars of a waking engine thundering so loudly that it made the concrete of the parking lot shake. Mirage and the police officers jump at the mere sound of it. The headlights flash on and the car inches towards the orange Viper ever so slightly.

“Kris, stay with me.” The voice returned, with an accent Mirage recognizes to be Puerto Rican, muffled by distance and no longer coming from the radio but from the other car. The urgency didn’t leave but it sounds gentle, comforting to the ear as the child’s voice starts to hyperventilate. “Please calm down. Cadimus Prime said to stay hidden.” Cadimus Prime?

“They have guns!” The child’s voice cries with a desperate voice that makes Mirage’s heart crack, his kicks faltering at his begs.

“Two!”

“Kritical, listen to me.” The hispanic voice, edging from urgent gentleness to growing fear, and softly grumbling to reassure the other car.

The orange Viper doesn't respond. The wheels begin to squeal and spin so fast that black rubber stained the stone floor like the car was having some kind of panic attack.

“Three!”

Mirage stops kicking the car, his head spins towards the police and hands pressed against the window in surrender. “Don’t shoot!”

BANG! BANG!

#transformers rise of the beasts #transformers rotb #transformers #rotb mirage #mirage rotb #noah diaz #kris diaz #reverse au #reverse roles au #freedom racers au #fanfic #fanfiction #read on ao3 #cross posted on ao3

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