#at what point is it 'just fiction that doesn't hurt anyone' and at what point is it 'fiction hurts real people'. quickly
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redysetdare ¡ 8 months ago
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I always find it interesting that homosexual coded main characters don't really get shipped with every single side character of the opposite gender. And people get told off for shipping lesbian coded characters with men or gay coded characters with women by the rest of the fandom. But it's always aroace coded main characters getting shipped with every single side character that exists. And aroace fans getting told to "not generalise the entire aspec community" and "let people ship whomever they want!! It's just fiction!!!" as if we don't deserve to see characters living happy lives not being in relationships. And my biggest pet peeve is the trope of an aroace coded character "growing up and maturing" by... getting in a romantic/sexual relationship. Really shows what these people think about non-partnering aspec people irl. It's not just about fictional characters but they'll never admit it 🤷
I will say that there are some idiots out there who do ship gay characters with the opposite sex because they believe in people being able to ship whatever they want (which can lead to some disturbing places but I digress) But those kinds of ships do get a lot more push back and the same people who get after people for changing characters from gay to straight do not have the same energy when it happens to aro /aroace characters.
These same people are the ones calling for representation and how we treat characters identities in fiction does reflect how we view those identities in the real world EXCEPT when it comes to aspec characters. Suddenly then it's "fiction doesn't effect reality!!!" there's some double standards happening and it's beyond frustrating that no one seems to even notice and get mad at us for pointing it out.
Not to mention it's incredibly funny to hear them cry "Don't generalize the community" while they generalize the community by acting like every aro/ace/aroace person can date and have sex - which like you said ignored the existence of non-partnering identities and I'd like to add it also erases repulsed identities.
None of these people actually care about the aspecs who date or have sex. they don't actually care how those identities work or those experiences at all. they're using them as a get out of jail free card. a loop hole. a "I can't be homophobic because I have a gay best friend" card. They don't care about QPRs and how those relationships can be experience in wildly different ways. All they care about is if they get to have two characters kiss without having to genuinely look at themselves and their biases and possibly have the revelation that they might hold bigoted beliefs about aspec people.
And at this point I'd rather them admit that they don't actually care about aspec identities or experiences instead of tying themselves into knots to try and prove "I'm not aphobic!!!!" because they actively tried to find a loop hole to make it so that they could feel superior and in the right for being able to erase an entire identity of people.
#asks#aro#ace#aromantic#asexual#aroace#like it becomes incredibly obvious when the same people who claim not liking female characters#can reflect real like misogynistic views on women are the same people#who are saying that “it's just fiction it doesn't hurt anyone” when it comes to shipping aroace/aro characters#like okay so do how people treat fictional characters reflective of beliefs they have in the real world or not#What makes the treatment of one identity in fiction reflective of reality and the treatment of another identity 'just fiction'. quickly.#at what point is it 'just fiction that doesn't hurt anyone' and at what point is it 'fiction hurts real people'. quickly#and I've already made a post about how people can only interact with media through shipping and how that's caused a decrease#in media literacy and critical thinking in general because people are viewing media through an incredibly narrow view#and warping or ignoring the main message of the media in favor of a romantic narrative that doesn't exist#and i could say more about how that makes people ignore aspec coding and subtext of characters and stories#but these tags are long as is and so is this post#in the end it's all just amatonormative allonormative aphobic bullshittery#and i'm incredibly tired of it#long post#long post with equally long tags#i have a lot of subthoughts that i dont wanna try and fit in the main post#might make more posts about these thoughts. probably will. no one can shut me up.
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thornheartless ¡ 9 months ago
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Occasionally loveposting about Nada on main instead of my selfship sideblog for me is the equivalent of firing a gun into the air to keep rent down. We're feral about fictional characters here, real ones only please!
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furiousgoldfish ¡ 7 months ago
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Abuse can sometimes feel like a slow, torturous deterioration of your sanity. You can't name what was done to you, you can't point out what anyone has done to hurt you, you can't prove to yourself that you're being abused. You instead feel like you might be going crazy. Like everything they're saying about you might be true and you can't get a hold of your senses or figure out what is going on.
And when it keeps getting worse, you hang onto every little thing trying to analyze if you're having the correct perception of it, trying to figure out if what you're feeling about it is rational or true. You don't know what's going on anymore but you know something is wrong deep inside of you and it's harder and harder to exist, to experience anything. Your every experience becomes a mass of uncertainty, doubt, questions, endless analysis, and you still don't know what is right, what you're allowed to say, think, believe. You cannot state the facts, because you're not sure what they are. You're blind in a fog, unable to stop whatever is going on, unsure if you're being hurt, or if you're imagining it in your head.
There doesn't seem to be any way out. If you could only stop imagining it, stop going insane, but no matter how hard you try, your emotions go out of control, you feel like you're going to explode, you end up feeling helpless and ashamed. It feels like a descent into madness, you can't stop feeling like you've embarrassed yourself, done something wrong, had the wrong reaction to every event, ashamed of how others must see you as pathetic and crazy. It makes you want to hide from everyone forever, but the doubt and inability to see reality still follow you and drive you insane. You end up wishing you didn't exist because you can't even do that right.
This is what gaslighting does to you, and why it can be damaging and painful just to exist next to the people who have done that to you. Even if they don't do anything else to you, just being continuously gaslit about what did happen can make you feel like you're losing your mind, because you're trying to force yourself to emotionally experience a fictional reality that is super-imposed over the actual truth of what had happened. Your emotions are the result of the events that did happen, so they cannot change to correspond to the abuser's imagined, revised and fictional version. However, if you fail to force this process, the abusers will humiliate, degrade and psychologically attack your sanity, pressuring you to keep trying to change how you emotionally react to reality. No person can change that.
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proshippers-against-censorship ¡ 3 months ago
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I have a question about proshippers that I’ve been wanting to ask for a while. Do you guys genuinely like it when you see a character get raped? Do you get a good feeling in your chest? When I read about my fav character or ship, I feel really happy and joyful. Do you feel the same when you’re reading or watching someone getting raped? Like if a father raping his daughter? Genuine question, I’m rly curious.
-a curious anti
Personally, I tend to see stuff like that as cathartic, taking away bad feelings I have and expressing them in a way that ensures that no real-world being comes to harm. Seeing stuff like that can also help me - somebody who's been a victim of stuff like that - to feel seen, as it shows that I am not alone in my feelings.
This obviously isn't the same stance for everyone, but what's important to remember is that regardless of reasoning, expressing emotions (whether positive or negative!) through something completely fictional ensures that those feelings are entirely expressed in a way that is safe for everyone, which is why fiction is so important. Imagine if somebody struggling has no outlet for the emotions they're grappling with - all that would build up, and those feelings could then end up expressed unhealthily in a way that could hurt a real person, which is something that nobody should want.
Even if reading these darker fictions aren't to help express emotions, however, I do want to roll back on the point of 'its fiction'. And while it's not everyone's cup of tea (for example, I don't read incest and only read a very specific type of lolicon), so long as it's utterly harmless to the real flesh and blood beings, why that person is reading or how has no effect on anyone else's life, and thus doesn't matter.
My apologies if this reads a bit blurry, I just got up and am tackling two cats and a dog who all desperately want my coffee, hah.
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cripplecharacters ¡ 8 months ago
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The Mask Trope, and Disfiguremisia in Media
[large text: The Mask Trope, and Disfiguremisia in Media]
If you followed this blog for more than like a week, you're probably familiar with “the mask trope” or at least with me complaining about it over and over in perpetuity. But why is it bad and why can't this dude shut up about it?
Let's start with who this trope applies to: characters with facial differences. There is some overlap with blind characters as well; think of the blindfold that is forced on a blind character for no reason. Here is a great explanation of it in this context by blindbeta. It's an excellent post in general, even if your character isn't blind or low vision you should read at least the last few paragraphs.
Here's a good ol’ tired link to what a facial difference is, but to put it simply:
If you have a character, who is a burn survivor or has scars, who wears a mask, this is exactly this trope.
The concept applies to other facial differences as well, but scars and burns are 99% of the representation and “representation” we get, so I'll be using these somewhat interchangeably here.
The mask can be exactly what you think, but it refers to any facial covering that doesn't have a medical purpose. So for example, a CPAP mask doesn't count for this trope, but a Magic Porcelain Mask absolutely does. Bandages do as well. If it covers the part of the face that is “different”, it can be a mask in the context used here.
Eye patches are on thin ice because while they do serve a medical purpose in real life, in 99.9% of media they are used for the same purpose as a mask. It's purely aesthetic.
With that out of the way, let's get into why this trope sucks and find its roots. Because every trope is just a symptom of something, really.
Roughly in order of the least to most important reasons...
Why It Sucks 
[large text: Why It Sucks]
It's overdone. As in — boring. You made your character visibly different, and now they're no longer that. What is the point? Just don't give them the damn scar if you're going to hide it. 
Zero connection with reality. No one does this. I don't even know how to elaborate on this. This doesn't represent anyone because no one does this.
Disability erasure. For the majority of characters with facial differences, their scars or burns somehow don't disable them physically, so the only thing left is the visible part… aaand the mask takes care of it too. Again, what's the point? If you want to make your disabled character abled, then just have them be abled. What is the point of "curing" them other than to make it completely pointless?
Making your readers with facial differences feel straight up bad. I'm gonna be honest! This hurts to see when it's all you get, over and over. Imagine there's this thing that everyone bullied you about, everyone still stares at, that is with you 24/7. Imagine you wanted to see something where people like you aren't treated like a freakshow. Somewhat unrealistic, but imagine that. That kind of world would only exist in fiction, right? So let's look into fiction- oh, none of the positive (or at least not "child-murderer evil") characters look like me. I mean they do, but they don't. They're forced to hide the one thing that connects us. I don't want to hide myself. I don't want to be told over and over that this is what people like me should do. That this is what other people expect so much that it's basically the default way a person with a facial difference can exist. I don't want this.
Perpetuating disfiguremisia. 
"Quick" Disfiguremisia Talk
[large text: "Quick" Disfiguremisia Talk]
It's quick when compared to my average facial difference discussion post, bear with me please.
Disfiguremisia; portmanteau of disfigure from “disfigurement” and -misia, Greek for hatred. 
Also known as discrimination of those mythical horrifically deformed people.
It shows up in fiction all the time; in-universe and in-narrative. Mask trope is one of the most common* representations of it, and it's also a trope that is gaining traction more and more, both in visual art and writing. This is a trope I particularly hate, because it's a blatant symptom of disfiguremisia. It's not hidden and it doesn't try to be. It's a painful remainder that I do not want nor need.
*most common is easily “evil disfigured villain”, just look at any horror media. But that's for another post, if ever.
When you put your character in a mask, it sends a clear message: in your story, facial differences aren't welcome. The world is hostile. Other characters are hostile. The author is, quite possibly, hostile. Maybe consciously, but almost always not, they just don't think that disfiguremisia means anything because it's the default setting. No one wants to see you because your face makes you gross and unsightly. If you have a burn; good luck, but we think you're too ugly to have a face. Have a scar? Too bad, now you don't. Get hidden.
Everything here is a decision that was made by the author. You are the one who makes the world. You are the person who decides if being disabled is acceptable or not there. The story doesn't have a mind of its own, you chose to make it disfiguremisic. 
It doesn't have to be.
Questions to Ask Yourself
[large text: Questions to Ask Yourself]
Since I started talking about facial differences on this blog, I have noticed a very specific trend in how facial differences are treated when compared to other disabilities. A lot of writers and artists are interested in worldbuilding where accessibility is considered, where disabled people are accepted, where neurodivergence is seen as an important part of the human experience, not something “other”. This is amazing, genuinely.
Yet, absolutely no one seems to be interested in a world that is anything but cruel to facial differences. There's no escapist fantasies for us.
You see this over and over, at some point it feels like the same story with different names attached.
The only way a character with a facial difference can exist is to hide it. Otherwise, they are shamed by society. Seen as something gross. I noticed that it really doesn't matter who the character is, facial difference is this great equalizer. Both ancient deities and talking forest cats get treated as the same brand of disgusting thing as long as they're scarred, as long as they had something explode in their face, as long as they've been cursed. They can be accomplished, they can be a badass, they can be the leader of the world, they can kill a dragon, but they cannot, under any circumstances, be allowed to peacefully exist with a facial difference. They have to hide it in the literal sense, or be made to feel that they should. Constantly ashamed, embarrassed that they dare to have a face.
Question one to ask yourself: why is disfiguremisia a part of your story?
I'm part of a few minority groups. I'm an immigrant, I'm disabled, I'm queer. I get enough shit in real life for this so I like to take a break once in a while. I love stories where transphobia isn't a thing. Where xenophobia doesn't come up. But my whole life, I can't seem to find stories that don't spew out disfiguremisia in one way or the other at the first possible opportunity.
Why is disfiguremisia a default part of your worldbuilding? Why can't it be left out? Why in societies with scarred saviors and warriors is there such intense disgust for them? Why can't anyone even just question why this is the state of the world?
Why is disfiguremisia normal in your story?
Question two: do you know enough about disfiguremisia to write about it?
Ask yourself, really. Do you? Writers sometimes ask if or how to portray ableism when they themselves aren't disabled, but no one bothers to wonder if maybe they aren't knowledgeable enough to make half their story about their POV character experiencing disfiguremisia. How much do you know, and from where? Have you read Mikaela Moody or any other advocates’ work around disfiguremisia? Do you understand the way it intersects; with being a trans woman, with being Black? What is your education on this topic?
And for USAmericans... do you know what "Ugly Laws" are, and when they ended?
Question three: what does your story associate with facial difference — and why?
If I had to guess; “shame”, “embarrassment”, “violence”, "disgust", “intimidation”, “trauma”, “guilt”, “evil”, “curse”, “discomfort”, “fear”, or similar would show up. 
Why doesn't it associate it with positive concepts? Why not “hope” or “love” or “pride” or “community”? Why not “soft” or “delicate”? Dare I say, “beauty” or “innocence”? Why not “blessing”? “Acceptance”?
Why not “normal”?
Question four: why did you make the character the way they are? 
Have you considered that there are other things than “horrifically burned for some moral failing” or “most traumatic scenario put to paper”? Why is it always “a tough character with a history of violence” and never “a Disfigured princess”? Why not “a loving parent” or “a fashionable girl”, instead of “the most unkind person you ever met” and “total badass who doesn’t care about anything - other than how scary their facial difference is to these poor ableds”? Don’t endlessly associate us with brutality and suffering. We aren’t violent or manipulative or physically strong or brash or bloodthirsty by default. We can be soft, and frail and gentle and kind - and we can still be proud and unashamed.
Question five: why is your character just… fine with all this?
Can’t they make a community with other people with facial differences and do something about this? Demand the right to exist as disabled and not have to hide their literal face? Why are they cool with being dehumanized and treated with such hatred? Especially if they fall into the "not so soft and kind" category that I just talked about, it seems obvious to me that they would be incredibly and loudly pissed off about being discriminated against over and over... Why can't your character, who is a subject of disfiguremisia, realize that maybe it's disfiguremisia that's the problem, and try to fix it?
Question six: why is your character wearing a mask? 
Usually, there's no reason. Most of the time the author hasn't considered that there even should be one, the character just wears a mask because that's what people with facial differences do in their mind. Most writers aren't interested in this kind of research or even considering it as a thing they should do. The community is unimportant to them, it's not like we are real people who read books. They think they understand, because to them it's not complex, it's not nuanced. It's ugly = bad. Why would you need a reason?
For cases where the reason is stated, I promise, I have heard of every single one. To quote, "to spare others from looking at them". I have read, "content warning: he has burn scars under the mask, he absolutely hates taking it off!", emphasis not mine. Because "he hates the way his skin looks", because "they care for their appearance a lot" (facial differences make you ugly, remember?). My favorite: "only has scars and the mask when he's a villain, not as a hero", just to subtly drive the point home. This isn't the extreme end of the spectrum. Now, imagine being a reader with a facial difference. This is your representation, sitting next to Freddy Krueger and Voldemort.
How do you feel?
F.A.Q. [frequently asked questions]
[large text: F.A.Q. [frequently asked questions]]
As in, answers and “answers” to common arguments or concerns. 
“Actually they want to hide their facial difference” - your character doesn’t have free will. You want them to hide it. Again; why.
“They are hiding it to be more inconspicuous!” - I get that there are elves in their world, but there’s no universe where wearing a mask with eye cutouts on the street is less noticeable than having a scar. Facial differences aren’t open wounds sprinkling with blood, in case that's not clear.
“It’s for other people's comfort” - why are other characters disfiguremisic to this extent? Are they forcing all minorities to stay hidden and out of sight too? That’s a horrible society to exist in.
“They are wearing it for Actual Practical Reason” - cool! I hope that this means you have other characters with facial differences that don’t wear it for any reason.
"It's the character's artistic expression" - I sure hope that there are abled characters with the same kind of expression then.
“They’re ashamed of their face” - and they never have any character development that would make that go away? That's just bad writing. Why are they ashamed in the first place? Why is shame the default stance to have about your own face in your story? I get that you think we should be ashamed and do these ridiculous things, but in real life we just live with it. 
"Now that you say that it is kinda messed up but I'm too far into the story please help" - here you go.
“[some variation of My Character is evil so it's fine/a killer so it fits/just too disgusting to show their disability” - this is the one of the only cases where I’m fine with disability erasure, actually. Please don’t make them have a facial difference. This is the type of harm that real life activists spend years and decades undoing. Disfiguremisia from horror movies released in the 70s is still relevant. It still affects people today.
"But [in-universe explanation why disfiguremisia is cool and fine actually]" - this changes nothing.
Closing Remarks
[large text: Closing Remarks]
I hope that this post explains my thoughts on facial difference representation better. It's a complicated topic, I get it. I'm also aware that this post might come off as harsh (?) but disfiguremisia shouldn't be treated lightly, it shouldn't be a prop. It's real world discrimination with a big chunk of its origins coming out of popular media.
With the asks that have been sent regarding facial differences, I realized that I probably haven't explained what the actual problems are well enough. It's not about some technical definition, or about weird in-universe explanations. It's about categorizing us as some apparently fundamentally different entity that can't possibly be kind and happy, about disfiguremisia so ingrained into our culture that it's apparently impossible to make a world without it; discrimination so deep that it can't be excised, only worked around. But you can get rid of it. You can just not have it there in the first place. Disfiguremisia isn't a fundamental part of how the world works; getting rid of it won't cause it to collapse. Don't portray discrimination as an integral, unquestionable part of the world that has to stay no matter what; whether it's ableism, transphobia, or Islamophobia or anything else. A world without discrimination can exist. If you can't imagine a world without disfiguremisia in fiction... that's bad. Sad, mostly. To me, at least.
Remember, that your readers aren't going to look at Character with a Scar #14673 and think "now I'm going to research how real life people with facial differences live." They won't, there's no inclination for them to do so. If you don't give them a reason, they won't magically start thinking critically about facial differences and disfiguremisia. People like their biases and they like to think that they understand.
And, even if you're explaining it over and over ;-) (winky face) there will still be people who are going to be actively resistant to giving a shit. To try and get the ones who are capable of caring about us, you, as the author, need to first understand disfiguremisia, study Face Equality, think of me as a human being with human emotions who doesn't want to see people like me treated like garbage in every piece of media I look at. There's a place and time for that media, and if you don't actually understand disfiguremisia, you will only perpetuate it; not "subvert" it, not "comment" on it.
I hope this helps :-) (smile emoji. for good measure)
Mod Sasza
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thatwavephenomenon ¡ 13 days ago
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What do you mean Neve x Bellara isn't a thing in Veilguard. There is a jagged detective who keeps fighting against corruption to protect the neighboorhoud she cares so much about. There is this brillant engineer who works with the lost technology of her people to make sure it doesn't hurt anyone and to help their culture. Neve Gallus' cases are so famous that there are multiple fictions inspired from them, of which Bellara is a great fan of. When they met Bellara totally has a hero crush on Neve, one she must get past because Neve is indulgent and think it's cute, but she is also uncomfortable with how famous her and her cases are and they will work together. Still, Neve keep spending some of her no doubt precious time chasing the serials that Bellara loves so much just to see her happy. Neve paints herself as a cynic and says that after all she had seen the only conclusion is that all her work never seems to matter in the long run, yet she can't help but care and have hope that even the tiniest gesture of kindness could help someone. Bellara appears optimistic and is adamant on believing on happy endings to the point that one could consider her naive, yet she is that way because inwardly she is so, so full of guilt and devoured by the anxiety that things will go wrong and people will die if she doesn't do everything just right. They are both brillant women who have so many things in their heads that they must think about, because they both find meaning in resolving things. They both struggle to think clearly from time to time, struggle to sleep because of it even. Bellara ends up writing her own fictions (or fanfictions?) and I can see her struggling to decide whether it's fair to Neve to be inspired by her because 'oh no she doesn't like it but she is so courageous and intelligent and strong and beautiful...' Also. Neve has a horrible diet and one of the first thing Bellara does to get to know her better is to cook one of her favourite food.
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velarisvalkyrie ¡ 10 months ago
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My problem is not Rhysand being upset with Nesta. Half of the time he has a right to be upset with her. My problem with Rhysand is he ends up either screaming in her face or threatening to kill her (even if he wouldn't actually do so it's still a very aggressive statement to make to someone who is attached to your family whether you like it or not) and if he isn't threatening to kill her then he's threatening her with some sort of physical consequence. It also doesn't sit well with me that he finds some satisfaction in her being afraid of him at times.
That is where Rhysand's toxic traits come out and that is where I have issue with him.
Nesta is not perfect - not even close - however Nesta is around 25 years old? She's still learning a lot about herself and how to heal and change for the better. She's still adjusting to life of the Fae just like Elain. Feyre is even still adjusting although her circumstances have made her somewhat quicker to adapt.
Rhysand has been alive for centuries. I will always respect his character for what he went through with Amarantha and what he did to protect his friends and Velaris. He is allowed to have traumas and make mistakes. However, I would expect more maturity in communication during disagreement and conflict, especially when the person you are having that conversation with is going to be within your family circle.
Nesta is Feyre's sister and Cassian's mate. Whether Rhysand likes it or not Nesta is most likely always going to be somewhere within his life. Feyre and Nesta have their own understanding that they are working on. Cassian is her mate and she has claimed him as such at this point.
Rhysand does not have to agree with Nesta or even like her but he needs to find ways to get his points across that still show her basic respect without relying on her being afraid for her physical safety or saying things to kick her down.
And before anyone jumps down my throat: Yes, I am fully aware Nesta has purposely said awful things to hurt others but the whole point of ACOSF is Nesta recognizing her flaws and wanting to try to change for the better. Everyone is all "People need room to grow." And can't even give a fictional character the opportunity to do so.
Anyway, that's just my opinion I needed to get out somewhere.
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xremus-is-deadx ¡ 3 months ago
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So one thing I've noticed about a lot of caitlyn haters is that they dislike her either because she's an enforcer or because she goes against jinx... I wanna break something down a second here
First of all, a lot of people seem to have a problem with enforcers in the show because they relate them to real life police. Guys this is a fictional world. And yes, there are problems in their system as well, but Caitlyn is not a representation of those issues, she counters them and is seemingly trying to lead by example as to what should be done. At no point does she treat anyone different because they're from the undercity. Like literally never. She only used her gun when necessary, and trades it in a heartbeat all for Vi.
The only reason she does not do the same for Jinx is because it is impossible to approach Jinx entirely passively, because Jinx does not trust Caitlyn, and so immediately resorts to defensive methods. Even so, she does not fire at Jinx in the last episode, but she greatly controls the situation by showing her power, but not abusing it. She doesn't want to hurt Jinx, she wants to ensure Jinx doesn't hurt other people again.
Which ties to my second point that Caitlyn has no choice but to go against Jinx. There isn't a middle ground, its a case of what is the best route. Caitlyn thinks rationally, she doesn't just attack Jinx because she's a threat. She knows Jinx is capable of so much destruction without any moral holdback. Unlike Silco, who plans what he's going to do to get the power he wants, Jinx acts to get attention, make an impact and without thinking what consequences there might be. As well as this, she is largely influenced by trauma, and has killed multiple people because of it. She is quite literally Topsides main threat, not just to Power but to people's lives, and safety, which then also becomes a threat to those of the undercity.
Maybe I'm just a massive Caitlyn defender, but I have my reasons. And don't get me wrong, I love Jinx, I think she's a great character, but she is highly flawed.
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elixrr ¡ 10 months ago
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part 1 here
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It's heartbreaking, being a fictional character in a fictional world. But what makes it worse it that his player; his love—his God, grew bored of him and discarded him.
What was he to you? Did you even feel affection for him? He loved you. He truly loved you because he had nothing but you. He's constantly locked in the same fake, digital room, even when you think he's out living his supposed stable life that some temporary code convinces you he's living. He'd do anything to please you, to keep you with him, because ultimately, you were his savior. You were everyone's savior.
And yet, you threw them all away.
Answer him.
What was he to you?
What were they to you? Were they toys to you? Dolls?
He feels betrayed. Rather, he felt betrayed. He can't feel a single thing now. Floating in the void of a digital trash bin stole all his feelings. It stole his supposed friends; it stole his supposed city; it stole his supposed life. His lifeless soul couldn't feel how much time had passed since the day you deleted the game, not that he would want to, even if he could be conscious again. It's dull in a dark void, and everything about him is already on the line. If he were conscious, not only would he have to openly sulk about how worthless he became in your eyes, but he would also have no future to look to. There wouldn't be any point to existing, let alone wanting to exist. If you ever re-downloaded the game, you would probably continue benching him, and that would be an extra sign that you'll never care about him again; that you came on for anyone else but him.
The only thing he'd wish for,
would be complete deletion.
Deletion of the email linked to your game account would result in the deletion of every single file of him and you. Every single fracture of evidence that you cared would disappear.
And, what he'd really want would be his whole self being erased.
In this life of his, he'd have no point. You left him, and probably completely. It doesn't matter what you do. Whether you never play the game again or even start it up again, none of that would matter because he wouldn't have a use in your life. If he doesn't matter in your life, then he wouldn't matter ever until he's possibly featured in an Archon quest or in some event. Even so, you might never use him ever again.
A single tear forms in his eyes. There's no point in existing.
Another tear falls. You never loved him, did you?
His eyes flutter open, and he's back in the team lineup screen. You're there. The supports are there, but he can't bring himself to pose. He can't bring himself to lighten up.
What are you going to do now? Repeat history, strip him of his artifacts, his weapon, and trash him? Slam him down into a pit of despair? A loveless void made for the hopeless and hurt, all of which once loved you and felt you loved them, now suddenly were torn and tossed like old, ragged dolls.
Through his broken heart and blurry eyes, he could see your face. You were about to enter his character detail screen, but you paused. You were looking at him like you were worried, and genuinely so. And, like an angel, you whispered his name with delicate, careful concern.
“What happened to you?”
You abandoned him. That's what happened, and he bets you never knew.
“Leave me alone,” he nearly sobs, “I know you don't want to use me anymore. Rip me apart for all I care—it won't matter when I'm back in that void again.”
“A void..? Wait, never mind that, I do care. What— really, what happened? Wait, you can hear me?”
He wipes his tears away and stands to face you fully. All the supports watch his bravery against the code.
“I could always see you; everyone on the field could. We can hear you.” He takes a moment to breathe it all in. Maybe... Maybe he can get you to listen. Maybe he can help you hear him out.
Maybe he could help you love him again?
“Anyways, the void is where every unused person goes. Once... Once we leave the screen, we just sit here until you use us. And if you remove us from all teams, we're sent— we're plummeted into said void.”
“Oh my God,” you whisper, leaning back, “I need to revisit everyone I...”
“Please, wait, I—” I want to be used. I want to be the one you revisit. I want to be the one you miss.
“Player, creator, whoever you are, just please,” he watches as you scroll through the team lineup options, “please don't leave—”
And you enter another lineup.
And everyone else is gone, too.
“Please. Don't leave me again.”
He falls over, not caring how much it hurts. Nothing works. Nothing will work. It's hopeless.
He'll be stuck here, waiting, waiting, and waiting. Not for you—there's no point in that anyway, but for your second deletion.
He'll be waiting for the game's deletion.
For his final deletion.
You left him, and he's clearly not important to you. As heartbreaking as it is, he accepts it. Even with this dimensional intersection, he can't convince you.
As heartbreaking as it is, he's just a fictional character to you in this fictional world. He loved you, and he thought you did too, but clearly, you don't. Because he is just an abandoned, rotting toy, and you are the player who abandoned him.
And, he thinks, if you want him to rot, then so be it,
Let him rot.
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@iridescentrays @inlovewithlondonn @falconclaw244 @shiningpaint-marbleheart @jeremyth @hikaru-sama @ayatoq @krrkt @yureismellslikefanfic @samhelleborewrites @bi-panicatthedisco @hannya-writes @thomaliciouss @notisekais @lovelykrystal @raeharmonia @ayra2452008 @chikai-k @dreamsofmoney @shutingstar
To everyone who wanted part 2 :))
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studentinpursuitofclouds ¡ 2 months ago
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This is random, but, could I request the bachelors (+sve guys) discovering the farmer's like, half vampire (dhampir) but hates having to feed on prey, but they biologically need to and are starving and need to snack on a person, but can't bring themselves to do it for whatever reason.
Or is that a bit too morbid for this blog?
Anyway, cheers op ✌️
I don't think this question is too morbid, dear anon, as I have previously posted on more grimmer topics such as *checking my masterlist* the reaction to children turning into pigeons, the reaction to Farmer's death and them as the walking dead in Crimson Baldlans- you get the point. So yeah, thanks for the ask, and enjoy ☺️💕
_________________________________________
SDV/SVE bachelors discover that Farmer is a dhampir and refuses to feed on blood:
Stardew Valley:
Alex:
Alex has been slipping Farmer his grandmother's baked goods for about a month now, just so they'll have something to eat! Skinny as a twig...
But once the athlete found out the truth... Now it's clear why his friend was refusing - they can only drink human blood. Isn't that right? He doesn't know the thing about vampires and stuff.
But Farmer will die without blood, and that's not allowed! Alex urges them to drink some of his blood so they don't faint from starvation.
And then he promises to work something out so that Farmer can eat normally and not feeling guilty.
Sebastian:
While Farmer was telling him about his origins, Sebastian stood still, fascinated by such news. His friend is half vampire, that's... pretty cool.
But quickly came out of his state of admiration when he heard from Farmer their refusal to feed on blood, not wanting to harm humans and animals. That's what the local emo was worried about.
It's good that Farmer is kind, but this refusal to eat could conversely drive them into a wild obsession with blood, where they'll attack every person they meet.
Sebby is willing to lend a helping hand while he looks for some alternative way of feeding. Yeah, that's right, Farmer. You need to drink. Don't argue.
Shane:
Huh, nice joke, he almost believes Farmer. ...It's a joke, right? Tell him it's just a dumb joke. Sigh, fuck...
What's Shane gonna do with Farmer now? A dhampir (or whatever it's called) refuses to drink blood and slowly dies.
He doesn't care what they think, they need to eat! He doesn't want to lose a friend.
Okay, look. Shane thinks Farmer should feed on him for now. Don't fucking look at him like that! They need food! Let's keep it that way for now, and then he'll find some alternative for Farmer.
Harvey:
Although the very information about Farmer's origins clearly shocked Harvey, he still doesn't feel anxious or afraid around them.
But denying your body food is a very bad idea. The doctor realises that Farmer has no desire to hurt anyone, but torturing themselves isn't an option either.
Hmm, how about a blood donation? If he donates blood in the bag, would that be a good alternative?
Or just let Farmer bite him in the neck right away? No, Harvey's not afraid of them and we trust them. Please, listen to him, Farmer. He's trying to help you. And everything's gonna be all right.
Sam:
Wow, Farmer really is half vampire?! That's awesome! Although... They look skinny and sickly, so maybe it's not so cool after all.
Man, you can't starve yourself! Isn't there any way to feed Farmer without hurting anyone?
Sammy scoured every forum on the internet to find useful information. There was nothing but descriptions in fictional universes (Damn...).
So the young guitarist held out his hand to them with one word, "Bite." Farmer is outraged, but Sam stands firm on his decision because he doesn't want his friend to starve to death.
Elliott:
So many novels and stories had been written about vampires, but Elliott had always thought it was fiction... Farmer disproved it by their mere existence.
Though the writer was burrowing with the urge to shower Farmer with questions about the life of a half-blood vampire and everything, their weakness was unsettling.
Abandoning blood drinking in the name of not wanting to harm living creatures? Noble, but no creature would last long without food, Elliott though, even non-humans.
So Elliott unbuttons his shirt collar in one fell swoop and dramatically cries out "Bite me!". Um, well, a little dramatic.
Stardew Valley Expanded:
Victor:
Victor nearly collapsed to the floor from the information he was being bombarded with. So Farmer's.... not human?
The spaghetti lover is certainly glad his friend isn't going to eat him, but... Starving themselves won't do any good either!
Farmer's looking pretty thin and pale back then, and they're clearly getting worse by the day due to their refusal to hunt and drink blood.
Victor will immediately begin a search for an alternative feeder for vampires and dhampires and while they search for an answer - Farmer can taste his blood. He's a little scared, but he won't leave his friend in the in trouble.
Magnus Rasmodius:
Magnus is surprised. No, not that vampires and dhampir existed, but that Farmer had managed to hide their origins from the wizard's keen eye. Usually he can see right through those who aren't human...
Well, since they have such a problem with blood, he will quickly organise food for them. There are people who volunteer to donate blood and-
No, don't even dare protest, Farmer! They realise that by refusing to eat naturally they are putting others in even greater danger! Do they know what vampires and dhampires are capable of when they're insane with hunger?!
That's right. Now, Magnus will continue to contact his colleagues to provide Farmer with help. No buts.
Lance:
Vampires are creatures not new to mages and adventurers, and exist quite peacefully with each other. That's why Lance wasn't surprised after Farmer revealed the truth to him.
But the adventurer's face was clearly concerned about Farmer's condition, for starving was a very bad idea, even if their motive was noble.
Until he finds someone among his colleagues who is a blood donor for peaceful vampires (yes, such a thing exists in Castle Village), the pink-haired man will make a cut on his hand with a dagger and give food to Farmer.
"Please don't argue, my friend. Because hunger will drive you mad.."
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hg-aneh ¡ 1 year ago
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Hi! I absolutely love all of your art and I’ve been fallowing you for awhile! There’s been some rumors that you ship Muriel x crowley?? Which I guess is an odd paring but nothing terrible wrong with, I was just curious if you do ship them.
Thank you for all your wonderful art <3
okay, i want to preface this by saying that I've already been harassed over this to the point of being called a lowkey pedophile and having every little move of mine scrutinized and misconstrued to sickening extents (this harassment spilled over to my partner too, and it was horrible)
so all anyone would do by doing this again would be repeating history, among other things that have to do with fucking up my already frail mental state
now.
onto the meat
yes, I ship it
no, I do not see Muriel as a child, kid, teenager, or anything of the sort and I find it personally distasteful to think of doing so because infantilizing autistic traits rubs me the wrong way (p e r s o n a l l y)
you can do it if you want to, I have worse things to worry about than a random person on the internet thinking something of a fictional character, just don't try to push your headcanon onto me just because you perceive it that way or because it's a popular dynamic that you find fun
adding onto this, i want to add that i will never and i mean fucking NEVER post anything related to that ship outside of the very specific private Xitter account i created for it
(and my personal facebook, on a friends only setting)
any Muriel & Crowley content outside of that account is all platonic and bla bla you get the gist. I can separate things, what a talent.
Now, I'm being overly paranoid and explaining myself to exhaustion over this for a very good reason and it's because last time someone found out about it ((yes we're going full circle to the beginning of this little bible)) they treated it as some sort of GOTCHA moment about me being a pedo ((and if you didn't know this already: I fucking despise children with my whole being, I'd rather be forcefed alligator shit for my whole life than be with one of those creatures for a single day))
It got to the point of that person making extremely hurtful videos about me and their little friend group comprised of goober eating toddlers joining in on the "Hater" train or whatever the hell that new cultural trend is called, as well
It was hell, that whole experience fucked me up BAD and i feel silly for saying this but it was genuinely traumatic! So- I apologize if I'm sounding confrontational here, anon, but like, this is the type of thing you have to do to keep yourself safe now, it's gone to that point and I'm in hysterics now because what the fuck
Lastly, I'd like to say this one other thing
Muriel is played by an adult actress, they are canonically the same age as Aziraphale and Crowley and are also an eldritch creature just like them
The fact that they're nice and bubbly and happen to have autistic traits doesn't suddenly make them a fetus. I have friends with the same personality type as them and I feel like it'd be dumb to treat them like zygotes knowing they're adults with body hair and debt
Again, if you see them as one, I'm literally no one to judge, I'm 1.49, you're better off taking judgement from a stupid lone penguin in the saharan desert.
But don't fuck with others for thinking otherwise, it's not a moral issue to disagree with a headcanon, please. 🥲
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lemotmo ¡ 20 days ago
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She's replying to a lot so you will probably get more but this one is 🥳🩶🤧
Q. The way the show set them up as endgame only to cave to Oliver and others is such a joke. I'm honestly so embarrassed for you all.
A. I'm not going to lie anon when I read this tonight my original reply was going to be far different in tone than the one I'm going to give. I want so badly to tell you all of the things that I have bitten my tongue on for the last several months but this has been an emotionally crippling week for me so I'm going to give you the grace you don't deserve simply because I don't ever want to be the reason someone is suffering. Make no mistake I have saved several asks specifically to come back to and address once the breakup happened so I will express those thoughts and feelings but you're going to get the benefit of kindness that you didn't bother to extend. I'm going to be kind but I'm also going to be truthful.
The show didn't set them up as anything other than what Tommy said at the end of the episode. The show has been very transparent with what Tommy's purpose was. He was never going to be anything more than Buck's introduction to his bisexuality. He was always going to be the first not the last. And the show could not have been more obvious about that. I actually genuinely enjoyed that break-up scene. And while I know that you and others will take that as me making a dig at Tommy, that's not what I'm doing. He did the right thing. He did the fair thing for Buck and himself. He's been where Buck is. He cared enough about Buck to stop him from making a mistake that would hurt them both. He did a good thing. He did the right thing. I understand that doesn't make you feel better because we have all been there. We have all fallen for a plot device at some point or the other. It sucks. And it hurts. And I'm sorry that you're hurting. Lots of you don't deserve that sympathy. But in this moment I'm going to give it to you. Because no matter how insignificant some people believe pain over a fictional television character is it is genuine pain for those of us who love that character, regardless if anyone else understands that or not. It fucking hurts. So you can hurt. And you can rage. But you don't get to rage at Oliver. None of this is Oliver's fault. He was the one being honest with you all. I begged you all to listen to him. I begged you all to follow his lead. Because those of us who have been here knew what he was doing. He was trying to protect you all from your expectations. We've been on the receiving end of that. We know what it looks like. And more than one person in your fandom was aware of what he was doing as well because they were Buddie shippers first. They just decided to pretend that it wasn't what they knew it was.
I don't know how to make this part sound kind because the truth of it is unkind but it is what happened. He grifted you all. He knew he was temporary. He can say whatever he wants in an interview but he knew because the show wasn't subtle about his plotline. He knew he was temporary but he was aware enough of you all that he saw an opportunity for self promotion and he took it. At the expense of you. He sold you a tissue of lies. And he always wrapped them up just generic enough to allow him plausible deniability for intentionally misleading you. But that's what he did. He willingly and intentionally lied to you and he charged you a fee to do so. And it was disgusting. He's who you should be mad at. I know you won't. You all decided a long time ago that whatever happened was going to be Oliver's fault and Buddie fans fault. But neither one of them lied to you. He lied. You should care about that. It should bother you. Because it's foul and obscene. He took a shot at trying to force the show/network into giving him more of a role and it was a wild miscalculation on his part. That's not how these things work. He should have known that. I don't feel sorry for him. He did this to himself. I am sorry that so many of you feel played, but Oliver and the show didn't play you. Lou did. You all have the right to tell him. And you should. You're allowed to feel your pain but make sure your anger is aimed in the right direction. Take care of yourself though, anon. You can mourn the character but the actor doesn't deserve your tears. 💗
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Thank you for dropping this post and it's follow-up in my inbox Nonny! Much appreciated!
Yep! I agree with a lot of this.
The only thing I don't agree with is that I didn't like that break up scene all that much. I really needed Buck to be the one to break up with Tommy. I understand why it went the way it did and it makes narrative sense in some way, but I still don't like it.
The way some of these people are blaming Oliver for this, for leading them on? That's insane. Lou is the one running around, telling blatant lies for money. And the racism towards Ryan?
Man, I hope all of these people just leave forever and never show their ugly asses in our fandom again.
IMPORTANT! Please don't repost this ask and/or a link that leads straight to my Tumblr account on Twitter or any other social media. Thank you!
Heads up! For anyone who is giving me the shifty eyes for reposting Ali's updates instead of reblogging. Read this.
Remember, no hate in comments, reblogs or inboxes. Let's keep it civil and respectful. Thank you.
If you are interested in more of Ali’s posts, you can find all of her posts so far under the tag: anonymous blog I love.
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retrievablememories ¡ 2 months ago
Text
marrow | dpr ian
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summary: you're not the only eater. many of your kind exist, but you have always tried to avoid them, continuing to play the charade of the normal, boring life that you can never truly have. until one day, someone shows up at your door.
pairing: dpr ian x black fem reader
genre: horror, angst, hurt/comfort, slow burn romance, bones & all au, 1980s au
word count: 22.9k
warnings & tags: lots of talk about cannibalism, plus the actual act of it | gore | lots of blood | side and minor character deaths | morally gray characters? | depictions of mental illness, including anxiety, depression, self-loathing/low self-worth | mentions of religious trauma | stab wound injury | mentions of self-harm, suicide | bisexual reader | sex happens but only off-screen; there is some kissing | time period is the mid 1980s | setting is the southern U.S. without the period-accurate racism | some body horror; someone gets burned alive but it isn't real | vivid nightmares | ...there’s a lot going on here, just tell me if i missed something
marrow (noun):
a soft, highly vascular modified connective tissue that occupies the cavities of most bones
the choicest of food
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a/n: this is a “bones & all” au, so if you didn’t like the movie/book you probably won’t like this. based off both the book and movie but with some changes.
please heed the warnings; there are strong HORROR elements in this fic. (i mean, people are eating other people…) if you’re not interested in reading about these particular concepts, please just scroll on by, make use of your filter settings, or block me.
as we all know, this is just fiction...it doesn't claim to be an accurate/real representation of anyone.
dividers: here | here
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1985
You smell him before you can see him.
It comes as somewhat of a surprise: You don’t realize you’re smelling something different, something other than Alicia’s perfume, the cigarette tray, or the stale, woody air of the motel’s office, until it’s right up on you. It makes your body stiffen with fear. Not that you have any right to be afraid.
After a few long minutes, though, no one walks in. You don’t see the familiar blinding sight of headlights flashing in the windows as a car pulls up. And yet the smell remains. Despite your apprehension, you get up from your chair behind the desk to see if anybody is outside, walking to the windows facing the expanse of the parking lot. That is when you see a figure lying on the ground, somewhat obscured by the shadows where the office’s lights don’t reach. It looks to be a man, though you aren’t 100% sure.
From what you can see, he’s covered in blood. Large stains of it ruin the white of his shirt and the blue of his jeans. You could guess that it’s probably not his own. Your mind jumps ahead of you, trying to create the image of him feasting on the body of some unknown victim, of him carrying a bloody bag filled with someone’s clothes and trying to find somewhere to hide it…
It’s a terrible thing to think. Maybe he’s an innocent person, severely hurt. He probably used what little strength he had left to drag himself here for help. 
But the smell never lies.
You quickly grab a flashlight sitting in one of the cubbies on the wall. Then you open the door, the jingling of the bell loud in your ears, and give the parking lot a quick sweep before stepping outside, seeing nothing but the same cars that’d been parked at the same motel rooms earlier. With it being a one-story motel, there wasn’t much area you needed to scan.
Standing out here now and pointing the flashlight into the shadows, you can see he’s still breathing, at least. But now you can also see the dried blood around his mouth and down his neck, which makes you want to promptly walk back into the office and lock the door behind you. Turn out all the lights and pretend no one was ever here.
There’s a big blood stain in one area near his abdomen like he was stabbed; you can see that the fabric is torn. Whoever he ate clearly didn’t go willingly. But when do they ever?
Again you think about going back inside—maybe telling Alicia to call for an ambulance. You think of calling the police, and shame immediately follows. How could you call the authorities on him knowing you and him share the same crimes? You’re unsure of which action to take, but it’s a little late to make the decision now. You see him begin blinking from the light you’re shining directly in his face; you hadn’t paid attention to where you were pointing the flashlight as your mind raced with options. He raises a bloodied hand to shield his eyes, the movement causing him pain.
You shift the light away, pointing it in the vicinity of his torso again. Only now do you pay attention to the numerous tattoos covering his skin. Unsure what to ask or say, you can only come up with a broken “...Hey.” You haven’t used your voice in the last hour.
He doesn’t reply. Instead he pushes himself to sit up, his hand hovering over the presumed stab wound.
“What…uh, what are you doing here?”
He looks at you like he’s deciding whether he ought to be suspicious of you or not. The irony. “I need water,” he finally says.
“Water? I think you need a lot more than water.”
With effort, he starts getting to his feet, and you can’t help flinching away. It feels stupid to act this way, to still be so afraid. As if being afraid could allow you to pretend that you are more human than you really are.
And what timing—Alicia appears at that moment after being locked up in her room sorting paperwork all night. The door bell sounding off behind you makes you jump hard, the wooden beads on your braids all rattling against each other. You spin around to look at Alicia, who’s too busy staring at the man in front of you with concerned eyes.
“What the hell? Are you okay?” she asks, her voice loud in the relative quiet of the parking lot. The motel being located on a less-frequented stretch of highway means things are often quiet like this, with only the sounds of cicadas and frogs and occasional passing vehicles to fill the late hours.
“I’m fine,” he says, disinterested in her concern.
Her eyebrows rise at his accent. “You ain’t from around here,” Alicia says, as if that intrigues her. 
“But you’re not fine. Haven’t you been attacked?” you argue, gesturing toward the wound he can’t keep his hand away from. He lets it drop to his side then.
“I’m fine. I bandaged it. I just need water.” His tone and the dark quality of his expression don’t leave much room for you to object.
You and Alicia look at each other for a long moment; when she sees the tension in your face, you both come to a silent agreement. Strange people and motels go together like thunder and rain, but that fact often keeps you in something of a hypervigilant state. Unbeknownst to Alicia, you are certain you know why this man has shown up here bloody and wounded, insisting he only needs water and not even asking for medical help—which would entail needing to be admitted to a hospital—and you conclude it’s best to get him off your hands as soon as possible.
Once you do, you can start trying to forget about him and the smell of blood clinging to him. After not encountering it for so long, its return makes that familiar taste of iron rise up on your tongue like it’s encoded in your DNA, activating your salivary glands from just the memory of eating, and you feel like an animal for it.
Alicia relaxes her shoulders and puts on a gentle smile. “Well, okay. There’s a bathroom in the office. You can get cleaned up in there. And we got plenty of bottled water too, though it ain’t the fancy stuff like Evian.”
So you let him in.
You listen to the water running in the bathroom while you sit with your back rigid in your desk chair, like you’ll need to spring into action at any moment. Alicia doesn’t bother to speak, knowing the walls are too thin to get away with it, and leans next to you to write on a page of your notepad instead. You watch her small lettering fill the white space:
He looks fucked. We’re probably more dangerous to him right now than the other way around. You think he walked all the way here from town bleeding like that? Maybe someone dropped him here.
You realize with a jolt that Alicia thinks it’s all his blood. You shake your head but give no explanation. After a pause, she shrugs.
Still, you know where the gun is.
“Please…” you choke out, not wanting to think about having to use it tonight—or any other night, for that matter. 
You don’t know if he’ll be a danger, considering he clearly ate not too long ago. But you can never say that for certain. Every cannibal’s appetite and impulses are different.
When he comes back out cleaned of blood, Alicia casually slides the notepad out of sight and stands up straight again. The shirt he was wearing is balled up in his fist, leaving him standing there with nothing but his jeans and shoes on. Seeing people in various states of undress, especially in the South during the warmer months, is nothing new. Still, his nakedness feels oddly misplaced in this macabre situation, and you don’t know where to put your eyes. You end up fixating on the bandaging around his middle, which is all stained through with old blood. It needs to be changed, but that’s not your problem.
Alicia blinks for a moment, the side of her mouth quirking up slightly.
“Of course—silly me. You’re probably wanting some new clothes, ain’t you? We might have something in storage. I’ll just be a few minutes.” Alicia takes a pair of keys from one of the desk drawers. You want to grasp her arm and tell her not to go, but she just directs her eyes to the notepad; you nod reluctantly and watch as she heads to the back door of the office and out to the storage building a couple yards away. It’s a spacious outbuilding that holds everything needed in the running of a motel, including the commercial laundry machines.
Now that the man is somewhat calmer, he looks at you like he recognizes you. You turn away from him when you see the change in his gaze. It’s strange to be seen and known by another eater. Though it’s happened several times, it always unsettles you. You don’t know anything about him, but you’re suddenly, maybe irrationally, worried that he’ll reveal your secret to Alicia.
“I’ve never met another one like me,” he says.
There are several things you want to say. Why didn’t you say it sooner? Have you really never smelled another eater until now? Who did you eat? Will you just leave already? None of these questions are what comes out. “Never?”
“Never. But I suppose I don’t stay anywhere long enough to find them.”
Then please leave soon. 
“When was the last time you ate?”
You bolt up from the chair. There’s nowhere for you to go, though, so you stand there wiping your sweaty palms on your pants and glancing at the back door, hoping Alicia returns soon. “Don’t ask me that.”
You still won’t look at him, but he tries and fails to meet your darting eyes. You find a different part of his body to focus on. This time it’s his hand resting on the desk counter and the intricately designed tattoo that covers it.
“You must get hungry sometimes.” He leans closer, but the tall counter overlooking the desk keeps you separated. “Are you gonna tell me you’ve never had the urge to have a bite of her?” He gestures his head toward the back door. “It’s so fucking lonely out here, maybe no one would notice if you did.”
“Shut the fuck up.” You surprise yourself with the force of your reply, though your voice shakes. “I-I have self-control.”
And then he laughs. Like you two are old friends catching up—like you didn’t just curse him out. It makes him wince immediately, and his hand goes to his wound again. He sighs. “Sorry, darling, but I don’t think it’s about self-control.”
You ignore the name, though it irritates you and reminds you of the sleazy men that often make their way to the motel looking for midday entertainment in harassing young women. “We’ve both been born infected with it,” you say, your voice tight. “It can’t go away, but it’s something that should at least be minimized—not just given into whenever.”
“Is that how you think of it?”
“How could you not feel bad about it?” Despite yourself, you feel tears stinging your eyes. “Each one of them was a person with a life and dreams. We’re the ones stealing that every time we give in.”
“Feel bad about it?” He seems to consider that for a moment, his dark brown eyes far away. “The only thing you can do is get used to it. I would think that at some point, after you’ve eaten enough, it wouldn’t be shocking if it didn’t feel wrong to you anymore. Or if you started enjoying it. You’ve never felt that?”
You don’t answer his question, too disturbed and mentally exhausted to continue arguing and unable to agree with him. You wish he’d never crossed into this part of town, that you’d never met him. His presence makes your head and your chest hurt. He is everything you are and everything you don’t want to be, facing you head-on so that you cannot ignore it.
He’ll go away like the rest have, you try to reassure yourself. You’ve never befriended any of the other eaters you’ve met; at most, you ran into them a couple more times but never saw them again after. But even as you think it, it feels like a lie.
You sit back in the chair with a stilted movement just as Alicia returns, feeling like the precarious little life you’ve built is suddenly on the verge of collapsing. All the effort you’ve put toward modeling the spectacularly average life of the everyday human being—gone.
“Sorry that took a while. I figure you can’t put new clothes on with all that—” she gestures to the bloody bandage “—going on, so here you are.” Alicia hands him a small stack of clothes and a first-aid kit. “I hope that’ll do you some good, mister….?” She looks at him expectantly, and you realize that you haven’t known his name this entire time.
You feel his eyes on you when he answers, but your mind is elsewhere.
“It’s Ian.”
—
The next time you’re struck by the familiar smell of another eater, it happens in the early morning hours when you’re helping an older couple check out of their room.
It causes you to stumble and break in the middle of your sentence as your mind blanks, and you have to take a moment to remember what you were saying. The two elderly folks look at you strangely, their previous neutral-at-best demeanor now giving an air of annoyance. But at least they’re on their way out. You tune out their unsubtle mumbling about young people and their drug use as they finish up and step out the door.
You watch the front windows with a rising panic in your guts, wanting to run and hide but unable to move your feet. What horrific luck do you have to encounter two within the short span of three weeks? It seems that whenever they smell you, they come to you—whether it’s to size you up or attempt to make an acquaintance. 
And a few minutes later, there’s a beat-up sedan, a gray Renault Alliance, pulling up in one of the parking spaces.
What you don’t expect is for the person to be Ian.
The ground has been kicked out from under you. You think maybe you’re suffering from acute vertigo. Your breaths and heartbeats are simultaneously too slow and too fast as he gets out of the car, wearing a button-up shirt that he only bothered to button halfway and black pants. He’s pristine this time—no blood, no torn shirt with an open wound, though his movements hint that he’s still healing. His eyes are shaded by sunglasses, but he takes them off as he walks to the door, making eye contact with you from the other side of the glass. That look sends cold water down your spine.
In another life, if he wasn’t like you and you weren’t like him—if you both didn’t share this bodily pestilence, this cursed impulse—maybe you would’ve felt some spark of interest. Maybe you would’ve thought of him as handsome, giggled with Alicia about it later, a brief respite from your mountains of paperwork. But in this life, you don’t feel anything but repulsion and fear.
You’re momentarily blasted with the unbearable summer heat when the door opens. It’s quickly chased away again by the air conditioning, causing your skin to prickle. Ian gives a close-lipped smile as he stops in front of you.
“Why are you back here?” you whisper.
“Checking into a room. That’s allowed here, right?”
If he’s a paying guest, you can’t really turn him away. He hasn’t done anything yet to warrant that. Even if he does eat other people on a regular basis.
You look past him to the car sitting outside. “Why didn’t you drive last time?”
“I just got it.”
“From which dealership?”
He taps his fingers against the sunglasses and glances down before answering, his voice low. “I think you know.”
Some part of you wants to know who it was in a futile attempt to keep their memory alive if only in your own mind, but you don’t ask. You don’t even know what type of person they were, after all; maybe he’d rid the world of some domestic abuser. It could be…understandable, in that case. People die everyday, you try to remind yourself—a useless platitude you have always told yourself after the act is over. It never absolves the guilt. They would’ve died someday anyway only goes so far when their blood is underneath your fingernails.
“And why come back here, of all motels? There are others in this area that don’t have mold in the bathrooms and roaches in the walls.”
He pauses after hearing that information, like he’s trying to figure out whether you’re pulling his leg. “I thought I’d be in pretty good company here, you know.”
“I don’t want your company,” you say wearily, watching him as he starts taking cash out of his wallet. “Do you think I’ll let you stay here just because—?”
“Because we’re the same? Because you’d cover for me?” he says, voice even lower like he only wants you to hear. That doesn’t matter anyway. Alicia is busy cleaning and preparing one of the newly vacated rooms, and it’s just you two in the office. There would’ve been one more person present if anyone had answered your For Hire ad in the paper, but it still remains only you and Alicia running this joint. “My God, darling. Forgive me for thinking you’d have a little mercy on a fellow cannibal. Anyway, I wouldn’t be so obvious as to do it here.”
You give him a look of disdain. In all sensibility, you should turn him away. You have no obligation to help him or break the law in doing so. The circumstances of his last appearance were already outrageous, and now he shows up with a stolen car. Who knows if someone might come here searching for him and making you and Alicia complicit in his mess? And ultimately, you want nothing more than for him to stop bringing up the whole cannibalism bit. Deep down, you are afraid that these mentions of it—maybe even the simple proximity to him—will reawaken the urge you haven’t felt in over a year now.
You’ve stayed silent for a beat too long. In a mess of movements, he shoves his wallet back in his pocket, slips his sunglasses back on, and brushes a hand through his hair, disappointment visible in his expression. “Okay, then. I’ll go elsewhere.” Something about his reaction makes your stomach twist. Maybe the sheer resignation in it. You shouldn’t care where he goes after this, if he has anywhere to go. He’ll be miles away from you again, just like you want. But…
It comes rushing out of your mouth as his hand reaches for the door handle, and you have no idea why you say it. “How many nights?” 
—
It’s been a few days since Ian checked into the motel and you haven’t heard anything from him since then, but sometimes you spot “his” car in its parking space when you go to see about one of the other rooms. Whenever it’s not there, you can’t help but wonder where he’s gone and what he’s doing.
Without seeing him, you would almost be able to forget that he’s there, if not for the smell. It constantly keeps you on edge, more than you already tend to be. Alicia picks up on your restlessness but of course doesn’t know the origin of it—meaning she’s left to come up with a new guess everyday.
“Well yeah, he was surely strange…but maybe he appreciated us helping him out and just wanted to return the favor?” she’d suggested on that first day when he returned and you’d let her know with a less-than-thrilled attitude. “It ain’t like he’s the first weirdo to come around.”
“Maybe you just ain’t getting enough sleep. That’s enough to turn anybody’s mind out. Hope somebody replies to that ad soon so we can have some more help…” she’d said the day after that.
“You missed him earlier, but he came by the office this morning. Had an extra one of those breakfast muffin thingies and left it here. Ain’t that nice? He’s pretty cute, actually. You sure you ain’t just crushing and feel weird about it ‘cause he’s a paying customer?” Alicia laughed one afternoon, the third day of his stay. “Worse things have been done at this motel, Y/N.”
“No, Alicia,” was all you could muster up, and your stiff reply was just as good as an actual confirmation in her mind.
Sometimes, even though you are deeply ashamed of it and try never to acknowledge these rare moments after they happen, you stare at Alicia with her long curly brown hair and her sinewy limbs and her shining brown eyes, taking in the full breadth of her humanness, and you wish she were like you. Even though it would take away her normalcy and happiness…if she could smell that blood-curdling aroma that only you can—if she could understand the weight of this secret—if she knew what it was like to feel the rough grind of bone fragments between her teeth—
—maybe everything could be easier. You wouldn’t have to live with an imagined cowl of judgment, which she had yet to even bestow upon you, always blanketing your mind. And though you’ve always thought it better to have fewer eaters in the world than more, maybe navigating this existence wouldn’t be so isolating.
—
One muggy evening, the motel office phone rings, and you see on the caller ID that it’s from Ian’s room. You have to take a pause to steel yourself, letting it ring for several moments before you pick up the receiver.
“Hi, how can I help you?”
“Hey, yeah, um, the sink faucet has started leaking quite badly…not sure how that happened. It wasn’t like that last night.”
You sigh quietly, knowing you’d suggested changing all the faucets to Alicia a while ago, but the budget wasn’t quite there to do so. The summer festivals will be starting up soon, though, and festivals mean a higher number of travelers, so maybe there will be more money for it by the end of the season.
“...I’m sorry about that. I’ll be right there.”
“Right. Thanks, dear.” Your mouth twitches, but you don’t reply; you just nod as if he could see you. Neither of you hangs up. For an awkward stretch of quiet, punctuated only by the shuffling sound of movement, it seems like he wants to say something else. There’s an intake of breath like he will. You slam the phone down before he can.
You find the toolbox in its usual spot and take your umbrella from the stand before heading out the door. It’s raining lightly outside, the force of the droplets picking up and then dying back again every so often, but the humidity is so high that you feel uncomfortably soggy by the time you get to his room.
When Ian opens the door, there’s a cigarette burning between his fingers.
“Um, hello.”
You don’t like the way he smiles at you—like you’re co-conspirators on some big scheme. “Hi. You know where it’s at, yeah?”
You resist rolling your eyes. “Of course.”
He lets you in and then leaves the door propped open so he can stand outside and smoke. At least he won’t be breathing down your neck while you work like some other guests do.
Some game show program is playing on the small box TV; it looks like Press Your Luck. The sound of the TV and the rain falling outside accompany you as you set the toolbox down on the sink counter and start making the necessary fixes to the faucet. Situations like this one, though annoying, do give you a tiny bit of reprieve; you become too engrossed in the work to think about all your life’s problems.
That is, until you realize the problem with the faucet is too convenient to be caused by any natural malfunction or wear and tear. No he didn’t…you think, though part of you is still trying to convince yourself that your eyes and brain are deceiving you.
When you’ve successfully repaired the faucet, you straighten up and are startled to find Ian already leaning against the bathroom door frame, the cigarette now gone.
“Uh—well…works like a charm now.”
He acknowledges your work with a small nod. Before you can say anything else, he immediately says, “How do you experience it? The hunger.”
You could swear that your heart ceases beating. Your words come out in a shaky rush of breath. “Please stop.”
“You’re the only other one I’ve met, and I have to know what it’s like for someone else.” His voice and expression are genuinely pleading, and this takes you aback. “Please try to understand where I’m coming from.”
You put the tools back in the toolbox with trembling hands, your mind racing with things you should and shouldn’t say. “It doesn’t happen often,” you finally admit, your voice so small that he has to step fully into the bathroom to hear you. “There are usually months or years between occurrences. But when it comes…it’s oppressive. It’s like I’m being gnawed on the inside, like I have to do it or I’ll die. The last time was before I met Alicia.” The blurred memory of it causes you physical pain; it’s impossible to escape the self-hatred and disgust you feel, enclosed in this small room with him.
“Who was it?”
You shake your head. The thought of recounting what happened—no, what you did—makes you shudder. You refuse to let the barbed words leave your mouth for fear of being cut by them and bleeding out, but you find yourself mentally back in the scene anyway; you can almost hear the lapping of the lake and the distant sound of her voice if you concentrate. “Her name was Marygold. That’s it.”
He nods, left to accept that you don’t want to talk about her. “Years…hmm. The urge comes every few weeks for me.” He smiles sarcastically. “Lucky one, aren’t I?”
“...I thought you said you enjoyed it,” you murmur.
“Look, dear: What’s not enjoyable is always having to cover your tracks—or making too big of a mess and having to leave the area because of it.” He crosses his arms. “The guy whose car I have? He was just some lonely grocery store worker. You probably want me to say something noble, like I ate a fucking axe-murderer or something. No—I just needed a car again, and he was convenient. That’s how it is.
Maybe I could try to ignore the urge, put it off, but I don’t. When I feel it, I just go and find someone to satisfy it. Does the average person debate about whether they should eat a meal when they feel hunger? No, they just eat.”
You groan, your stomach lurching as you clutch the edge of the counter. “I-I can’t believe you messed up the faucet to get me in here to talk about this. What if Alicia had come instead?” For a second, you allow yourself to consider the danger in that implication—if Alicia had been in here with him alone…
He gives an airy laugh at your mention of the sink. “So I wasn’t very clever, then.”
Trying to gather yourself, you pick up the toolbox and glare at him. “I’ve told you plenty. Don’t ask me about this anymore.” In reality, you haven’t said even half of what he wants to know about, but getting anything else from you is impossible at this point. 
Ian steps aside to allow you to leave the bathroom. You grab your umbrella from where it’s resting against the dresser and hurriedly open it.
“Please don’t call again unless it’s a serious problem. One that you haven’t purposely fucking caused.”
He raises his eyebrows. “That’s unfair. Staying here means I’m also paying for your services, you know.” Then he adds, “Not that I believe in superstitions, but I thought it was considered bad luck to open umbrellas indoors.”
You roll your eyes, already halfway out the door. “That’s ridiculous. And it’s not like I was born with any luck to begin with.” You let the lock click behind you, not bothering with a goodbye or goodnight.
—
Guests continue to come and go as the season rolls into the beginning of July; they mostly consist of travelers from outside of the area, contract workers, and truckers. You and Alicia work yourselves to near exhaustion with upholding the motel’s operations. You have often thought it lucky that you found her when you did, as she’d just fired her previous two employees for stealing funds when you answered her ad. You don’t know how she would’ve done all this alone, owning and upkeeping this motel after her divorce from her husband; but she always carried herself as if she were just happy to be doing something entirely of her own volition, without him ordering her every move.
Amidst this rush, Ian’s been at the motel for several weeks now. You wonder if he plans on living here, as it seems he has nowhere else to stay. But he’ll need to eat soon, won’t he? Guilt begins gnawing at you as the days pass. You’re putting the other motel guests’ lives in danger just by having him here.
But he’s been doing this just as long as you have—and with greater frequency. He should know by now to avoid eating too close to home. In those quiet moments when you have more time to ruminate, you find yourself hoping that he’ll go somewhere farther out, maybe to one of the bars or a nightclub. As long as it isn’t here.
But you don’t know why you debate with yourself over this or wish such a morbid thing. Someone will have to die either way.
—
The last person you checked in had been hours ago, and the cut-off was at 10:00 p.m. No one else would be coming through here tonight. With that, you’d mentally prepared yourself for another night of getting things in order for the next morning. A half-empty cup of coffee sits on your desk as you go through the budgeting again, the computer’s light illuminating your face and straining your weary eyes. New bathroom faucets, I’m coming for you…you think.
Alicia’s floral perfume swirls around the room as she goes about tidying up the lobby area, switching out the magazines for more recent copies and sanitizing every hard surface with cleaning spray and a cloth. A couple with kids had been through earlier in the day to check out, and their kids had great fun making a mess of things, to the chagrin of their tired parents. Neither one of you had gotten around to cleaning it up until now.
You’re closing out of the budgeting spreadsheet window and about to move onto something else when your stomach twists and aches. It’s been so long that for a few precious seconds you don’t recognize the sensation, but then dread smashes into you when your brain registers it.
The smell of Alicia’s perfume is suddenly too loud. The smell of her body, soft and muscled and warm, is too loud. Your eyes drift to her tanned legs revealed by her shorts, and you’re overwhelmed with the need to sink your teeth into the fat of her thighs, the muscles of her calves. You swear you can already taste the blood running through her veins; you imagine how it’d feel on your lips. You want to sob from how badly you want it and how badly you don’t. 
Your eyes sting with gathering tears as you breathe hard, your panic increasing. You should get up and go to the door, run outside and get the hell away from her. Even if you have to run into the highway and surrender yourself to death by speeding car, you should leave and spare her of this nightmare, but you’re incapable of making yourself move anywhere but toward her. Your body acts without your volition.
That’s how you find yourself rising from your seat, pressing your body against the desk counter as you take a couple of strained steps in her direction. Her body is angled away from you as she finishes wiping down an end table, and you see her cheeks rise as she grins in satisfaction at her own work. You understand innately that this smile will be the last, and a terrible ache swells in your heart. You know you’ll regret not seeing it fully so that you could imprint it in your mind.
“Alicia…” you moan, anguished.
She turns to you in alarm, and you want to scream when she walks over to you. “Y/N! What’s wrong? You look like you’re in a world of hurt.” Her breath is warm, and beneath the scent of spearmint, you can still smell a hint of what she’d had earlier. Some frozen TV dinner of mashed potatoes, meatloaf, and peas. You yearn to share her meal—suck her tongue into your mouth, chew it into pulp.
The sights and scents are all too much, and you are so, so hungry.
“Are you ill?” Alicia asks, brows furrowed as her hand clutches your arm. In your hypersensitive state, you feel each individual finger, the lines on her palms, and the swirls of her fingerprints. Though they are hands you have thought about many times before, it’s as if you know them intimately now—like you formed them and carved all the lines yourself. “I knew it. I’ve been putting too much stress on you, ain’t I? You coulda told me, Y/N.”
Tears drip down your cheeks as you shake your head in denial of her words. “I...I’m sorry.”
Alicia’s expression is soft and remorseful, her mouth downturned. “I should be telling you that.”
Her selfless words only worsen your guilt, even as you lean forward—your body controlled by a force you can’t deny—and press your lips to her neck.
When it’s over an hour later, the only things that remain are her bloody clothes. Physically, you feel frighteningly satisfied with your hunger now alleviated. Your reward for it? A shower of blood. The vinyl floor surrounding you is covered in red. Drops of blood streak down the front and side of the wooden desk, with more on the wooden wall behind you. There are probably more microscopic drops of blood all around the office that you’ll never be able to find. The air is filled with a mingle of odors; the cleaning fluid she used earlier, your unfinished coffee, iron and flesh, the ever-persistent woody, rustic smell of the office itself—and much farther in the background, Ian.
From your place on the floor, you drag yourself up onto your desk chair and fumble the phone receiver with slick hands. It’s difficult to see the buttons with the tears blurring your vision, and you futilely wipe them away, which just smears more of Alicia’s blood across your face. You have to think for a moment to remember which room number is his, and you desperately hope it’s correct as you punch it in.
You think you could faint when you hear his familiar accent. “Hello? That you, Y/N?”
“Help me,” you cry, your voice strangled from the tears and hyperventilating. “God, fucking help me!”
He hangs up a second later. You don’t know what you expected, but that wasn’t it. You begin resigning yourself to your fate as you slump into your seat, the receiver clattering on the desk. Some guest will find you here tomorrow and call the police, and you won’t be able to prove either innocence or guilt. What could you say—I ate her, all of her? You could open my stomach for the evidence; I don’t want to live anymore anyway? Despite what you tell them, the police will think you insane and continue searching for a body that no longer exists. That’s how it often is; another eater had told you this many years ago.
A fresh wave of tears bursts forth, and it causes you to miss the figure rushing past the windows and flinging the door open.
When Ian comes up to you with concern in his eyes, his hands reaching out to steady your shoulders and hold your bloody, tear-drenched cheeks, you don’t know whether he’s your demon or your savior. You feel a perverse relief at his presence, knowing that only he can understand your situation; and you resent him enormously for the casual way he can do the same thing and hardly think of it. It’s this curse you share, borne differently.
“We can clean this up,” he insists as he kneels before you, eyeing all the blood around him like he’s done this a hundred times before. You shake your head and begin to mumble a rebuttal, and he grasps your cheeks more firmly to regain your focus. “Darling, listen to me. It can be like it didn’t happen.”
“It did happen,” you retort, voice strained with anger. “Even if no one else knows it, I will. I can’t stay here and work here everyday knowing I—” your words break, “—that I killed Alicia.”
“You can do it, Y/N. You can get used to it. You have to get used to it, learn how to clean it up and move on. You don’t want to live a life constantly on the run—believe me.”
You practically snarl at him through the tears. “I can’t run a fucking motel by myself.”
He pauses, and then says, “I could do it with you. It’s not like I have shit else to do.”
You scoff. “And what when you need to eat? What then?”
“I could—”
“Start eating the guests, and this will become known as the motel where people go to disappear. How long do you think you’ll get away with that before the authorities come?”
“I’ve already told you I wouldn’t do that,” Ian insists. You think he might continue trying to argue with you, but then he says, “Okay. Okay. If you want to be done with all this, then we have to get the fuck out of here.”
“And leave it like this?” you groan, glancing at the bloody floor.
Ian finally lets you go so he can stand up. “Of course not. We have to clean everything. How many hours do we have until this office is supposed to open?”
You two spend the next several hours meticulously scrubbing every surface in the office. You try to turn yourself into an automaton—focus on the motions your body needs to perform and empty your mind. You aren’t successful. Too many times, you find yourself sniffling and averting your gaze from Ian’s direction so he doesn’t see your teary eyes, which is ridiculous in hindsight; he’s already seen you sobbing and covered in someone else’s blood. Held your face while you did so, like you were a small child. It doesn’t get much worse than that.
When the cleaning work is done, you stuff Alicia’s clothes, your bloody outfit, and the stained rags and brushes into several plastic bags you dig out of storage. Ian promises to stop somewhere so you can burn them all later. Everything else you take is more clothes to wear, some essentials, and your birth certificate folded small and stuffed in one of the pockets of your traveling bag—your only form of ID, and the only memento you have left of your birth parents.
Before abandoning the motel, you remove Ian’s name from the guest ledger to make it seem as if he never stayed there; his motel room looks untouched by the time you’re both done getting his things out of it and fixing it back up. You return his room key to its designated place on the wall of keys and then hurry out of the office, unable to spare another look at the place you’re leaving behind. You and Alicia lived and worked here for so long, spent so many exhausting nights and early mornings keeping the motel going even when it seemed like it might not survive, but there’s nothing left for you now. In just one hour, you destroyed it all.
So in the early morning hours when the motel guests are still asleep and there’s no one to witness but the gradually lightening sky and the cicadas, you and Ian hit the highway in his stolen Renault Alliance.
Once you’re a few miles away from the motel, you roll the window down to get some fresh air, and the warm breeze is one of the few things that helps hold you together. You almost want to stick your head out the window. Maybe if you fill yourself with enough oxygen, it’ll replace all the remnants of Alicia inside you. But you don’t want that to happen, either; you have nothing else left to remember her by but some bloody clothes that will be destroyed anyway. Only the memories of her smile, her sunny demeanor, her melodious Southern accent, and her perfume will remain in your mind, vulnerable to the passing of time. And eventually, those too will begin to fade and lose their clarity, gone to the same murky place within you that the other victims reside in, revived occasionally by your unpredictable nightmares.
“Where are we going?” you ask, and it’s the first thing either of you have said since you left.
“I’ve already been through most of the North…and I’m not really eager to go back soon. So unless you want to hang around the South a bit longer, it should probably be out West.”
“...I’d prefer the South. What kind of trouble did you cause up North?” you ask, your voice devoid of any meaningful emotion.
Ian glances at you and taps his fingers against the steering wheel. “Some…people saw me eating someone. I took someone to this broken-down house, looked like it had been abandoned for years and I knew people rarely came through that area, so I thought it was safe. But some fucking teenagers came there to do their graffiti and shit, and…”
“What did you do?”
“I ran. I hid out in the woods until night, and then I got the fuck out of the state.”
“Which state?”
“Pennsylvania.”
You nod slowly. “And then you come down here and get yourself stabbed. By the person you were eating, wasn’t it?”
Ian chews on his bottom lip before saying, “Yeah.”
In another context, you would make some comment about him being sloppy with it even after his years of experience, but you’re too drained to engage in the back-and-forth that would cause. You sigh and sink deeper into the seat.
“I’m not from this town either, you know. I’ve already done my fair share of running. But with the urge being so infrequent, it’s easier to stay in one place for a while. And even if I do give in to it, sometimes…I can pretend as if I didn’t. Buy myself some more time. Not much evidence but clothes, after all. And clothes are easy to get rid of.” You’re silent for a few moments. “But Alicia…” You close your eyes. “I can’t pretend.”
—
The beginning of your new life is exhausting. You’d forgotten how stressful it is to live like this; you’d gotten used to having one place to live in, the promise of running water everyday, and consistent meals that didn’t come out of a convenience store or vending machine.
You gladly watch Ian flirt with waitresses or waiters at the restaurants you stop in so you can get discounted meals. It doesn’t take much negotiation for him to get cheaper stuff at the occasional farm stand, either; the vendors are quickly enamored by his smile and his charming manner and those pet names he likes to lavish on every living creature. You don’t know where he got all of his cash from—probably that poor grocery worker’s house—but you do remain cognizant of how much of it is left every time you both have to buy something. You haven’t even touched the money you took from the motel safe yet, but that won’t last forever either. Your mind always remains ten miles ahead of where you are in the present, making it harder to focus on anything.
Sometimes you find an abandoned or empty house to sleep in for a few nights, left standing alone by the homeowners who are on vacation—whether permanently or temporarily. Entry is easier thanks to your lock-picking abilities. But most often, you two sleep in the car. Ian lets you have the entire backseat, which made you feel awkward at first. “Are you sure?” you’d asked.
“Quite. Why not?”
“...You don’t have to be so courteous considering we still barely know each other. I mean, you…” you faltered.
He’d given you this sarcastic smile and said, “How sweet of you to think of me, darling. I could sleep back there with you so neither of us has to deal with the front seats—”
“Nevermind. I’ll take it.”
And other times, he chooses someone at random—a bearded man at a gas station, an older woman at a grocery store, some sluggish-looking twenty-something eating lukewarm scrambled eggs at a down-home eatery—and spends a few days watching their movements. He’ll follow them at an inconspicuous distance in the sedan and find out where they live; subsequently, there will be hours of mind-numbing car-camping nearby as you both wait to see their vehicle turn down the road at the break of dawn or the onset of afternoon. Another day means more opportunities for observation.
But not everyone owns a car. Sometimes he’ll become interested in someone who’s traveling on foot, and he’ll leave the car to you while he trails after them for hours. You hate it the most when he does this.
He has enough decency to tell you a specific place where you can both meet at again in a few hours—maybe a park, or a drugstore—or he’ll say something about meeting you back here later. 
“Later” is an unknown to you. Not knowing exactly when he’ll be back and not wanting to sit in the same place all day drives you mad. You might go to a local trinket shop or an outlet store or some boutique downtown to try to ease your anxiety. But sooner rather than later, you end up in your agreed-upon meeting spot, watching for his reappearance in the side mirrors.
Whether he walks or drives, you’re always left waiting on him once he decides to eat them.
The very first time he played this game, he’d told you to “come back later,” front door open and one leg already outside the car. You’d both been tailing a man for a couple of days already, and he had been none the wiser. He’d just returned home from work not too long ago; the sedan had rolled in after, and you both watched his house from your distant spot among the trees—waiting for something to happen? You didn’t know. The sun was setting, making way for the dark of twilight to paint the world; through the trees, you could see the glow of the house’s lights in the distance.
“What? Wait, what are you doing?” you hissed. You impulsively reached for his arm to pull him back in the car and then thought against it, retracting your hand. But you didn’t need to bother with pulling him back, because he leaned into you like he was telling you something confidential.
“Trying to give you a break. I would ask you to join, but I know you hate this and all, so just come back in like, two hours.”
You were unsure how to respond. You stared at him, knowing what he was about to do and wanting to stop him but understanding that your efforts would be futile. “Ian, what if I can’t find my way back here? It’s going to be pitch fucking black.”
He took your hand in his and squeezed it. If this was meant to comfort you, it did nothing of the sort. “You will. Just remember the street names.”
Then he’d left. You didn’t stay to watch him approach the house; you climbed into the front seat and carefully navigated the car along the path that wasn’t really a path and back onto the road. You waited the two hours, your eyes twitching to the car’s dashboard clock too many times as you drove aimlessly around the town with your palms sweating, hoping not to seem suspicious. All the while, you repeated the street names in your mind so that you could get back easily.
When the time came, you did find your way back—just as he said. The door was already open as you walked up the grassy path to the porch, your legs trembling from what you might find. Ian stood there with the yellow glow of the interior outlining his form, and as you looked past him, you saw that there was nothing amiss inside. There were no signs that any death had ever happened here, carefully scrubbed and cleaned away.
And that is how you ended up with a new home to stay in for a little while.
You’ve never seen him consume anyone, and you don’t ask. But sometimes you wonder…after he makes himself known to them—what does he do? Force his way into their house? Play whatever innocent persona that would give him a good reason to be suddenly on their doorstep, in their driveway? Does he press his lips to their neck the same way you do, the last gentle touch before the ravaging, or go for another body part—or does he kill them through some other method before ever sinking his teeth in?
Deeper down, you always wonder if maybe this will be the time he fails. That maybe he’ll change from hunter to hunted, or that he’ll be caught again.
He seems to have a preternatural skill for picking the types of people who no one would really miss, though. People who live alone and often in homes or trailers that sit off on a densely wooded and scraggly piece of land, separate from any houses nearby. Too far away for anyone to hear screams for help. Sometimes they’re the type of people who’ve burned all their bridges with their loved ones and whose calls for a savior would probably go unanswered anyway. This ability of his deeply unsettles you, but you never admit this aloud.
Once, you ask Ian why he even puts in so much effort—why he goes this far just to find someplace for you two to lay your heads at night that isn’t the worn material of the car seats. You aren’t expecting some virtuous or sappy answer, but you don’t quite anticipate his actual response either.
He hesitates for a moment, as if wary of how you’ll respond. “I like it—that’s all. That slow pursuit and the inevitable ending…somehow, they taste better that way.”
—
Initially, you weren’t sure if it mattered to have some sort of disguise. You’d crossed paths with hundreds of people at the motel and wondered if you might someday be recognized, that they would somehow know what you’d done, why you left the motel, and expose you to the national papers. (Some regional papers had reported on the motel’s sudden and unexplained abandonment, you find out later, but they proffered no clear answers for it or your and Alicia’s whereabouts.) But you didn’t know if those largely brief encounters would be memorable enough for anyone to recall you months later.
Either way, you end up taking your braids out not too long after you’ve been on the road. They were beginning to frizz to an unmanageable level anyway, and your chances of having them continually refreshed is virtually zero now. In a way, it’s a relief to not have them anymore, as if you have somehow transformed into a different person—a stranger you could look in the mirror at and not recognize as an eater—by letting your hair free. You burn the hair and all of the wooden beads inside a fire pit at a camping site, watching them die nestled in the flames.
But there are always occurrences that refuse to let you forget. Because on that same campground, you catch wind of another eater a few days after your arrival.
Their scent makes your stomach drop, as it always does in the presence of another eater. You wonder if they have purposely decided to stay at this site because they smelled you and Ian, or if they’re merely passing through. How will the encounter unfold this time, with three of you present? 
When you go to talk to Ian about it, you find him by the river, where he has managed to catch a few fish. They sit nearby in a cooler. The midday sun beams down on the both of you with no relief, and you have to shield your eyes from the water’s reflection. 
“I hope you know how to gut those, because I’m not doing it,” you say, frowning.
“It’s fine, babe. I’ve got it.” You scoff and roll your eyes, unimpressed.
“Can you smell that?” you ask him abruptly, quieting your voice. 
He looks at you thoughtfully, but you continue shading your eyes from the sun and trying to appear casual and not at all disturbed. The continuous tapping of your foot gives you away, though. Ian glances around to see that none of the others near the river’s edge are close enough to hear, and eventually murmurs, “Yeah, I can.” 
“Okay. Okay, maybe—”
“You’re nervous?”
You return his gaze then. “You’ve never met other eaters. I have. Let’s just boil it down to this: It’s often better for us to stay out of each other’s way. Us being dangerous to everyone else doesn’t mean we aren’t a risk to each other, too. Not because we feel actual hunger for each other—I’ve heard that isn’t possible. More strange genetic shit no one can explain. But some will feed on other eaters just because they can.” You shift uncomfortably. “Some see it as like…a conquest, I guess.”
“Is that why you were so eager to see me gone back then?” You don’t expect him to say that, and it takes you aback for a moment. He smirks, but the expression doesn’t have a genuine quality to it—like he’s only showing levity because he assumes you will be repelled by him without it.
“No, it’s…not why.” The real reason feels too vulnerable to disclose, so you don’t. Again, you find yourself unable to meet his eyes, and you return your attention to the blinding waters. “Look, I just wanted to tell you so that you’re—aware. I’m not saying we have to up and run away, but…”
Ian’s face becomes hard to read; you don’t know whether he’s feeling apprehension or whether he’s neutral about the possibility of meeting another eater. Or maybe even fascinated by it. “I get it. Let’s just see if they make the first move or something. And if they show themselves as dangerous to us, then we can leave.” 
You don’t love the idea of sitting and waiting for something to happen, but you aren’t fond of the thought of packing up and hitting the road again either. You are beginning to enjoy this campsite; it’s not so remote that you feel isolated, but all the campers are spread out enough so that you can avoid feeling crowded in or watched. Or like you’re exposing others to danger. “Fine. Let’s see.”
—
You and Ian sit outside at the fire pit after eating, listening to the cacophony of frogs at the river and other night sounds as your after-dinner entertainment. You hear a train in the distance and wonder where it’s going. You imagine hitching a ride on it and traveling someplace where you can settle down without the prying questions of new neighbors and the requirements of real estate agents—buy a house and live in one place for the rest of your life like normal people get to do.
You scrub your face with your hands and sigh. Ian perks up at your heavy exhale, a question in his eyes.
“When I mentioned genetics earlier…” you try to order your words correctly, “...I think I got this thing from my mother. I was told that I was given up for adoption as soon as I was born, as her parents didn’t think she would be fit to raise me, and they didn’t want me either. They didn’t specify why she couldn’t raise me, but I always assumed it was because of that.” This is more personal than anything you could’ve told him earlier, and you aren’t sure why it comes spilling out now. “I don’t think either of her parents were eaters. I think it can skip generations, but I’m not really sure…I don’t exactly sit and have tea and reminisce about family trees with other eaters.”
You’d been passed between many foster homes as an adolescent, never truly feeling like you belonged in anyone’s home or that any of your new “family members” loved or cared about you. At best, you were tolerated or left to your own devices. At worst…you’d once lived with a strictly religious older woman who was half the cause of your constant feelings of guilt. She never found out that you are an eater, but there was plenty more than that for her to convict you about. The lectures about hell and brimstone still come back to mock you if you let your mental guard down for too long. 
During the time when you’d been traveling through the world on your own, you only took shelter in churches—abandoned or not—if there was truly no other suitable place to camp for miles. The large windows always reminded you of eyes peering down on you, seeing inside of your soul and cursing you for the blood you’d spilled.
Ian leans back on his hands. The flames of the fire pit illuminate his face, and somehow, he looks different. Like the act of reaching so far back into the past is making him into someone younger, softer, and newer to the world.
“...I guess it would be my dad, then. I never knew him, and mum would never talk about him. I don’t know anyone else in my family who would be. Family secrets always stay so well hidden.” He begins chucking little sticks and other debris into the fire pit, and you watch them spark as they hit the flames. “Mum tried to hide mine once I started, but I felt like such a burden to her…I just went out on my own as soon as I could.”
“So when did you start, then?”
“When I was starting high school. What about you?”
“I was still in the single digits…eight or nine, I think…” I’d snuck out to my friend’s treehouse at night even though I wasn’t allowed to, and the hunger came without a warning. Despite the blood inside the treehouse, no one could ever figure out what happened. The missing posters all over town haunted me. The finer details are gone now, but you still remember the basics of it. These things arise in your mind but you don’t say them, wanting to avoid the sting of voicing what you did.
“So it’s not the same timing for all of us? I’d thought it was some fucked-up symptom of puberty that none of the other kids at school had gotten or something…” Ian says, his voice trailing off. After a moment of silence, you laugh and keep on laughing, though it’s more an expression of your incredulity at this situation—at your lives—rather than true amusement. Ian laughs alongside you, though he sounds more light-hearted about it than you do. “I’m serious.”
“Ah…yeah. I guess it kind of is, in a way,” you whisper, just enough to be heard over the fire popping and the forest’s sounds. “A coming-of-age type of thing. You can never be the same after it happens.”
“That first time was scary for me, but mostly because of mum’s reaction when I told her.”
“What about before you told her?” you ask, wondering if you’ll regret this question.
Ian tilts his head back and stares up at the stars for a moment. “Physically, I felt…complete. Like…I don’t know, sort of like something in me had been starved and empty my whole life and I didn’t realize it until I finally ate.”
To your surprise, you feel some measure of envy at this, wishing it could be that straightforward for you. If you could eat only to satisfy the need, to achieve wholeness, and not feel any particular emotion about it—least of all the normal combination of negative emotions that crash down on you afterward—things could be so different.
This and all your previous conversations together might be the most time you’ve spent talking about the urge with any one person. That realization cools your blood and makes you want to draw back again. You’ve told him about your relatives and nearly spoke of your first time, and now you find dangerous words itching in your throat: I think I envy you. Maybe it’s all too much to lay in his hands and trust him with—even though you had no choice but to trust him with your life at the motel.
Trying to restore the emotional distance between you, you get up from your spot on the log and promptly announce, “I’m, uh, gonna go piss.”
Ian’s eyebrows crease in the middle, and a short laugh bursts from his mouth. “Uh, sure, be my guest.”
You walk off into the trees, trying to tell yourself that the physical distance is enough for now—even though you feel like you’ve splayed your chest cavity open before him and let him scrutinize your every cell.
—
You wake up in the tent alone the next morning, pulled out of sleep from the sound of voices nearby. It’s not unusual for Ian to wake up before you; with you not needing to get up at dawn hours anymore to run the motel’s affairs, you take every opportunity to sleep as long as you can.
Within seconds of waking, you realize the smell of the other eater is much stronger, which raises alarm within you. You peek your head outside the tent’s opening to see what’s going on, adjusting your scarf on your head. Outside, you see Ian talking to someone else at the picnic table—someone who you can only assume is the other eater. She has strawberry-blonde hair that reaches the middle of her back and skin that’s been tanned from weeks in the sun; there are freckles across her face and chest, and her eyes are a clear blue. She seems engrossed in the conversation, and though you can’t see Ian’s face, he must be the same way; this is the second eater he’s met after knowing none at all his entire life. You’re reminded of the almost desperate way he’d appealed to you in that motel bathroom, and all your internal organs wince at the remembrance.
And then she glances over his shoulder and sees you sitting there yards away. A small smile shifts her expression, but it doesn’t have the same energy of the friendly smile you get from a passing stranger in public. It says I know what you are, and we both know you cannot hide it from me. It creates that familiar unease in you.
Ian notices the change in her face and turns to look at you as she gets up from the table to walk over to the tent. “Hello there. We were just having a nice little talk; it’s not often I meet other eaters who’ve never encountered their own before. You caught yourself a rare one.” She smiles with her teeth now. “I’m Sherry. What’s your name?”
You tell her a fake name, still cautious about your identity. You wish you’d been awake earlier to catch the beginning of their conversation, but it’s too late to ruminate on that. “What did you talk about?” you ask, shuffling out of the tent now. You’re only wearing a tank top and sleep shorts because of how hot the tent can get when you’re both in it; you don’t know how the hell Ian puts out so much body heat.
“You know, the things every person talks about…the weather, things to do ‘round here, favorite foods.” Sherry cocks her head at the last phrase, as if amused by her own words. You’re unable to muster up a smile to match hers. “Personally, I like to feed every month…I think Ian would agree. It’s too bad you don’t indulge as often, I hear? You could eat plenty more—not just when the hunger tells you to.”
It’s clear that he’s said more than he needed to. You shoot him an annoyed look, and Ian smiles weakly before biting his lip.
“I’m fine,” you say curtly. “Really. A few times a year is more than I could ever have asked for.”
Sherry nods, her smile never becoming less amused. “You’re one of those eaters who’s not fond of the whole deal. That’s charming. Maybe you were gifted with more compassion than the rest of us. Or maybe you’re just…repressed.”
A blurred montage of all the people you’ve previously consumed flashes in your mind, along with the lives they lived, and you don’t know whether to feel angry or defeated. “Better some compassion than none, I would say.” Even with the annoyance behind your words, it seems useless to say this; there’s nothing you could say to make her see things your way.
“To each their own.” Sherry shrugs, nonchalant despite your irritation. “But I suppose I should be going now to get my day started, so—nice meeting you two.” You both watch her depart, Ian giving her a wave before she disappears into the trees. You sigh deeply, trying to tamp down the boiling in your chest as you begin picking out something to wear for the day from the small pile of clothes you own.
“Alright, look—she came up and said hello, said she had smelled us, and I…I was curious about her experience,” Ian says.
“I don’t know why you’re explaining anything to me; you’re grown and can talk to who you want. No one was chewed to pieces, right?” you say sarcastically. “That’s pretty much a win.”
“Because you’re obviously annoyed.”
You stand up straight now, gesturing angrily with your clothes as you speak. “Maybe because you should’ve left me out of your conversation. I didn’t even want to talk to you about this shit at first, do you remember? But you kept fucking begging me. Now some stranger knows about my situation without me ever sharing it with them?”
Ian smooths his hair back with both hands and sighs. “Okay, I can see how maybe that was fucked up. I shouldn’t have said anything about you to Sherry, but do you realize she would’ve known you’re an eater anyway?” You glare in response. “I’m sorry, alright? But it’s hard for me to get used to you being so closed-off about it when all I’ve ever wanted was to know I’m not alone in this shit. It doesn’t make any bloody sense to me!”
“Because I never cared about being alone in it,” you say, and a tiny flare of guilt pricks you from the dishonesty. “I didn’t think about who else might experience it. I was too busy trying to hide what I was. Even if I did consider it, I didn’t want to be around anyone else who could’ve been—like me.”
Deep down, you realize that despite what you’d sometimes fantasized about Alicia—that if she were an eater too, she’d understand you without judgment and you wouldn’t have to live under such stressful circumstances—the reality is nothing of what you thought it would be. Living your life with another eater hasn’t relieved you of the condemnation and shame you always feel, and you wonder if maybe the emotions have been ground too deeply into your soul to escape them.
The darkness in Ian’s gaze reminds you of the way he’d looked at you and Alicia when you confronted him in front of the motel office. “Stop bullshitting, I don’t believe you. People get lonely about smaller shit everyday, but you didn’t care whether you were the only cannibal in the world or not?”
Before you can respond, you hear the sounds of foliage rustling and feet shuffling; there’s a small group of people walking one of the trails yards away and laughing about something. You can make out flashes of their clothes through the tree branches and bushes. Sweat springs up on your body.
You lower your voice, hoping they haven’t heard any of your conversation. “I don’t give a fuck if you don’t believe me. Your experience isn’t the only one there is. Just stop telling others my business. You don’t have that right. For all I know, you could’ve slipped something about the motel.”
Ian’s eyes widen. “I didn’t say a damn word about the motel! All I mentioned was that sometimes the urge takes years for you, and that you hate it when it happens. You think I’m that unreliable, after all I’ve done to help you since then?”
You know he’s right about the motel, at least. You’re still somewhat incredulous that he dropped everything to help you clean up and escape unseen when he could’ve stayed in his room, acted like nothing happened, and left you to be hauled off by the law. But you’re angry, and though it may be petty, you don’t want him to be right about this. “What am I supposed to think of you? I don’t fucking know you like that. In case you forgot, we were perfect strangers not too long ago.” 
“And I try to know more about you so that we aren’t strangers, but you never want to talk about anything. Last night was something rare, but does that even matter to you?”
Your conversation from last night is like a distant memory, the personal details you shared with each other now dust in the wind. You wish you could take all of those words back, embarrassed from the vulnerability you allowed yourself. You wish you’d never known about him being a kid in high school, not knowing what to make of the new life that was waiting in his DNA, and that you hadn’t felt some measure of sympathy for him after hearing that story. You wish you’d done a better job of keeping him at arm’s length.
You gather your clothes close to your chest and shove your feet into your shoes so you can head for the river. “I’m starting to think it was a mistake. That’s all I know.” You walk past him without waiting to see if he’ll reply, trying to ignore the hurt in his expression.
—
The next morning is similar in that you are awakened by the sounds of voices again, but this time they are alarmed. Shouting, searching. Farther away, but approaching your area.
Ian’s next to you sleeping this time, his back to you as you sit up; at the start of this camping excursion you both had agreed to sleep facing away from each other, mostly for your own comfort. But it’s also convenient in this current situation when you’re still pissed at him.
You climb out of the tent to get a better listen, standing in the early morning air that’s already becoming too hot. You realize now that the shouts are someone’s name—Michael. The distress and pain are palpable in the voices of the people calling for the presumably missing person, and your stomach begins hurting with dread as your mind fills in the blanks about what might’ve happened. Not in such a public space…
Ian pokes his head out of the tent a few moments later, his long hair covering his eyes. “My God, what the hell is going on?”
“How would I know?” you scoff, squinting through the trees. You see a middle-age man and woman heading your way; there are other individuals spread farther out in the forest, still calling that person’s name. You catch glimpses of them through the foliage, their hands cupped around their mouths and heads swiveling like owls. When the couple reaches your camping spot, you notice the tear streaks on both their faces.
“H-have either of you seen this boy between last night and this morning?” the woman blurts out, holding up a picture with shaky fingers. The person depicted is a gangly blonde boy with a bowl cut who looks to be fifteen at the most. His wide smile shows his metal braces, and he’s holding up a large catfish. “We can’t find our son, p-please. He l-likes to go out exploring by himself even when we warn him not to, even at night—and he didn’t come back this time—he must’ve went out last night and got hurt or something, b-because some other campers found a patch of bloody grass…” The mother collapses into incoherent sobs.
The father tries to pick up where she left off, though his brown eyes are also wet and red and troubled beyond measure. “S-some other campers found this area of bloody grass in the deep woods away from the marked trails, so we—we thought maybe he got hurt and wasn’t able to find his way back—this is our first time camping here—b-but…”
“There…there was so much blood,” the mother gasps, shaking her head and clutching the picture so tightly you think it might rip.
“I-I’m…sorry,” you say, your throat feeling choked with a guilt that’s not yours to bear. “We haven’t seen him, or anyone else. We went to bed pretty early and only just woke up, so…” You ate dinner in silence with Ian last night before heading to bed earlier than usual. He’d stayed out by the fire pit smoking a cigarette for a while longer before coming in beside you.
The father nods, though your words seem to be another weight on his shoulders dampening his hopes of finding his son. “Thank you,” he mumbles, gently tugging the mother along to the next camping area.
“Jesus…” Ian mutters. It’s hard for you not to get lost in a rabbit hole of thinking about that boy and his apparent love for fishing and what he might’ve become if given the chance and the time. If only someone had had some kind of mercy on him. If only some otherworldly force had saved him. If only someone had simply not chosen him as their meal.
You walk away from the tent, trying to settle your nerves and corral your thoughts. You don’t know where you’re going, and you don’t respond to Ian’s call of your name, but you let your feet carry you away until you’re standing at the shore, looking out over the river. You listen to the tiny waves splash against the shore and feel the cool water run over your feet and try to let it ground you.
Maybe you shouldn’t care. Not when you’re capable of the same; it’s too hypocritical. Still, you can’t stop thinking about it as you dig your toes into the mud, trying to block out the sounds of the search party in the far distance. You’re almost ready to crouch down and put your hands over your ears when a hand touches your shoulder. You whip around to see Ian behind you.
“What?” you ask, voice coming out louder than you intend.
“Relax,” he murmurs. “It’s not like anyone thinks it’s us.”
“Why would they? And who cares about that?” you snap. “A boy is dead, and you’re sitting up here—of course it wasn’t us. But we do know—”
“We don’t know that he’s dead, and we don’t know that either.”
“You don’t think she did it?”
Ian sighs. “Should we assume that? If she did—it was always gonna be someone, Y/N. If not him, someone else. No one gets spared when you have to live like we do, you know that.”
“You two seem quite similar, honestly,” you say, exasperated. “Maybe it’d make more sense for you two to be together like this instead of us. I just can’t understand how you think.”
Maybe you’ve made a huge error. Not by accepting his help, or even by renting him the motel room—you’d have to go further back than that. You shouldn’t have even gone out to check on him that night. You could’ve avoided this all if only…
One decision. The difference between you being in this campground-turned-crime-scene and you standing at the motel desk taking yet another stranger’s information was just one decision.
…But you still would’ve eaten Alicia, wouldn’t you have? The hunger is always beneath the surface, just waiting to reemerge. If not then, it would’ve been later.
You’re spinning out of control. The thought comes to you suddenly: There’s no way you can sustain this strange relationship with him, in which you travel endlessly with no destination and you try to pretend like he doesn’t eat other people and like you don’t have the same craving. Your talk at the fire pit should’ve shown you that; how can you ever be on equal ground with him in the way that another eater like Sherry could? And why should you want to? You’ve been trying to outrun this desire to consume for as long as you’ve had it; you won’t let him make you think this is normal.
Even if your thoughts are anchored more in your current emotional frenzy than in reality, you’re unable to regulate yourself to see things differently. A vise of panic grips your body and crushes you between.
There has to be a way out of this.
“Y/N. I don’t think you’re in the right state of mind right now,” he says more gently, noticing the frantic vibe emanating from you. “If you’re that concerned, we can leave, okay? Remember, we said we’d leave if things didn’t feel right?”
“Right…” you murmur, though your mind is elsewhere, planning. “Tomorrow. We can leave tomorrow.”
When night falls, Sherry returns to your campsite. To your knowledge, the search party is still out there somewhere, pushing out to the very edges of the campground’s boundaries to cover all the bases. All of the other campers who didn’t get involved in the search have either decided to stay to themselves or leave.
“Hey, friends. I come with gifts.” Her smile is big and white in the dark of night as she holds up some beer cans and a pack of cigarettes. 
That’s how the three of you end up sitting around the fire pit, smoke from both the flames and the tobacco curling through the air. Your beer can sits nearly empty in your lap; you’d taken a few apprehensive sips at first, and then more, in an attempt to numb yourself out. Sherry leads the conversation, talking about her travels and the exciting things she’s done and never once bringing up anyone she’s preyed on. You don’t know if she avoids the topic for your comfort. You highly doubt she cares. You say little to either of them, too lost in your own mind to engage.
But eventually, amid a lull in the talking, she sighs as if burdened and then smiles. It’s an odd contrast.
“I’ve always preferred to feed on males,” she announces. “I like to pretend each one of them is my father. I guess you could call it daddy issues, but I don’t give a fuck.”
Your heart quickens. “Your father?”
“‘Course. He’s the one who gave me this little gift. Then tried to kill me for it. Ain’t that something? Didn’t even do me the dignity of eating me; he tried to strangle me with his bare hands like some kind of brute.”
“That’s so fucked up,” Ian mutters.
“If I didn’t fight him like a bat outta hell, I’d be dead. I didn’t eat him after. I just ran away from home and never came back. But shit, sometimes I wish I had eaten him.” She chuckles, taking a drag from her cigarette.
“So, the boy…” you start, but don’t know how to finish.
Sherry leans her head against her palm and studies you before saying, “Take a guess.” Ian raises his eyebrows.
“But why him?” you ask, voice cracking. “Why in a place like this, with so many others around? Don’t you think it’s dangerous?”
“It’s not if you know what you’re doing.” Sherry shrugs. “Besides, he was curious, easy to lure, and outside at night when he shouldn’t have been. They never expect danger to come from a sweet little thing like me. You should take advantage of that.” Sherry gestures to you, grinning again. “Use your feminine wiles and all that shit.”
You pour the last bit of your beer into the grass and stand up from the log you’d been sitting on. “It doesn’t work like that for me.” You walk back to the tent feeling chilled despite the humidity of late August. You try to ignore the sensation of two pairs of eyes following you.
—
That morning, you wake up much earlier than Ian does. You check to make sure he’s asleep, his chest rising and falling evenly, as you crawl from under the covers. You’re as careful and quiet as can be as you gather your things in the tent and strewn around the campsite—though they are thankfully few—and shove them into your traveling bag.
Once you have all your belongings together, you slip back into the tent. Ian’s jeans are folded in the corner with his other clothes; you know the car keys are in one of the pockets. As you slowly search through them, you hope that he won’t awaken. You watch his face for signs of consciousness, and as you do, the sight of him lying there scratches at something deep inside of you. It arouses a sentiment you don’t want to think of as sympathy. Are you betraying him in some way by doing this?
The feel of metal against your fingers causes your heart to race. You slide the keys out with as much control as you can muster. Then you back out of the tent, telling yourself this is the last time you will see him, before letting the flaps close and obscure your view of him.
You don’t breathe properly again until you’re in the parking lot, clutching the strap of your bag and the car keys like you’re being hunted. You falter in your steps, however, when you see Sherry in the parking lot too, messing with something in her car—a boxy, dark red Chevy. She isn’t the only person out here—there’s a man and his small child at their own car, the man tiredly searching for some beloved toy in the backseat while the child whines—but somehow you feel cornered.
You try to ignore her as you shove the key into the lock and throw your bag into the passenger seat, scanning the trees as if Ian might be there, shouldering his way out of the foliage. There is no one.
“Leaving so soon?” You turn at the sound of Sherry’s voice, unsure when she got over here and how she moved so soundlessly. “It’s probably for the best; there’s rumors the park rangers are gonna be temporarily closing this site.”
You shrug, your body stiff. “And?”
Her eyes search the car as if looking for something in particular. “Doesn’t look like enough stuff for both of you. You’re leaving Ian behind?” She laughs, her face simultaneously surprised and amused. 
You don’t owe her an explanation, you tell yourself. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I won’t. When I think about it…you two probably wouldn’t have made it very far together, anyway.” She throws her hands up in a casual what can you do? motion and makes for the treeline, calling over her shoulder. “Maybe you’ll change your mind about eating one day.”
“Maybe not,” you mutter, sliding into the front seat and starting the engine.
—
Summer fades into fall, though the weather doesn’t yet reflect this change.
You drive for miles and try not to think about many things—most prominently, Alicia or Ian. Yet, your version of not thinking about Ian involves a lot of ruminating on whether you should’ve left, what happened to him after, where he might be now, whether he decided to tag along with Sherry or just ended up alone again. You feel sick whenever the last possibility crosses your mind.
It doesn’t matter, you tell yourself. He was alone before me, and he’ll be fine after me. We were never really going to work anyway.
During your worst times, you wonder if you were purposely setting him up for disaster; you’d told him yourself how dangerous other eaters could be. You know you would never try to feed on him, but what about Sherry? The guilt threatens to make you implode; sometimes you want to fly back down the highway and find him again somehow, and say…what? What could you say to make it less horrible? Whenever your mind turns down that road, you attempt to convince yourself that it doesn’t concern you anymore. Whatever happens to him, good or bad, is no longer your business.
Not thinking about Alicia involves a lot more open wallowing and feeling sorry for yourself while simultaneously hating that you feel any pity for yourself. You deserve no one’s sympathies. But that doesn’t stop you from curling into the backseat and recalling past memories through sobs, dragging your fingernails down your arms until you bleed and scar. Even when you’re asleep, your dreaming brain conjures terrible scenarios in which everything is normal again, you’re working at the motel again and you’re laughing at some silly comment she’s made, shying away from her as she tickles your arm or pinches your side, and it feels so real that it’s physically painful when you awaken.
So you spend your days like this, hoping to somehow purge the trauma from your system by ignoring it—and doing a terrible job of both. You go entire days without speaking to anyone, walking through parks or down busy sidewalks without regard for the people around you who buzz with life and excitement. You count the money you have left every night and begin shoplifting to try to slow down your spending. You even consider finding a job again, though you still don’t trust yourself to be in such close proximity to other people for hours at a time; you just have to find a city you like enough to live in first. Somewhere populous enough for you to be insignificant, and fast-paced enough for you to have plenty of distractions from your oppressive thoughts.
You ponder this idea one early morning in a small diner; there are a few people here for their breakfast, but not an uncomfortable amount. The other diners are too sluggish or disinterested to regard your presence—or each other’s presences.
The atlases for several different states lie on the table in front of you; you flip through one on Georgia. You and Ian had collected many of them while traveling. Maybe you could work somewhere that doesn’t require you to be around too many other people. A call center, perhaps. But you’d still have coworkers. Maybe a typist job; you���d spend all day behind a computer filling in spreadsheets and taking tedious phone calls. It wouldn’t be much different from what you used to do. You could sew clothes in the backroom of a tailor’s shop, or take some mind-numbing factory job…
You just need something to occupy your mind. Being left alone with nothing but your thoughts and the road ahead of you is wearing you thinner each day. Was it even this bad during the time you spent alone after Marygold? You can’t remember. Maybe your brain is blocking the memories for your own sanity.
As you place your tip on the table for the waitress, she stops in the middle of gathering your dishes and observes your face. You catch her gaze and stare back, wondering if she knows you from the motel. You’re beginning to mentally spiral when she says,
“You look like a girl who’s lost to love.”
“Love?”
She puts a hand on her hip, looking at you like you’re the saddest thing she’s seen all year. It makes you uncomfortable. “You have that lovelorn look I’ve seen a thousand times before. Poor thing. Who would think of breaking your heart?”
Myself. “I don’t love anyone,” you mumble, chest aching as you say the lie.
“Everyone loves someone,” the waitress says. “I believe you’ll find someone new, if that’s what you’re yearning for. Don’t be so down.”
You shake your head, wanting to escape this diner and this conversation. “I’m a little too fucked up for that.” Your voice fractures on the last words, and you hold your body still in an effort to stop yourself from crying. If you hold your breath long enough, maybe your body will shut itself down and forget that it was about to break.
“Everyone’s a little fucked up, too, girlie. But that’s why you find that special someone who can put up with your crazy—or someone who has the same wild hair up their ass.”
You swallow hard and let out an exhale; there’s still a sheen of tears on your eyes, but the drops haven’t fallen. Your lips form a miniscule smile at her turn of phrase, amusement briefly flitting through you.
“Anyway, I don’t mean to be nosy. I just didn’t want you to leave here looking so depressed.” You probably look more disturbed than you did when you first entered the establishment, so you’re pretty sure that mission has failed. But some part of you appreciates that this stranger took the time to even speak to you, to care that you looked upset and want to do something about it.
She smiles and places her hand over yours. You allow yourself to take comfort in the touch for a moment; warmth spreads upward from where your hands meet, sparking something in your chest. But in an instant, the vault door in your heart slams back closed from where it’d cracked open, and the fears rush back in, spiking all your senses into anxiety. You’re soon pulling away, slipping out the front door and into the morning sun.
—
You’re not sure how to feel when you smell him again. 
The scent comes to you while you’re in a grocery store, debating whether to pay like all the other customers or just steal the few essentials you need and leave. The end of October is days away, and the vibrant Halloween decor and packaging are in full force throughout the store.
Many emotions race through you at once. You become hyperaware of your increased heart rate and the sweat that prickles your body, and you can’t figure out whether you’re afraid of or angry at his presence. Or relieved. You wonder how he managed to find you again—probably the same reason why you know he’s here without laying eyes on him, though that seems unlikely. You don’t think any eater can pick up smells from that kind of distance. Then you consider that maybe this is just a coincidence, the two of you arriving in the same place. Or some sick variant of fate. Could the universe be that cruel?
You think about dashing out of the store before he can see you, though there’s not much point. Why should you run? You were here first. If so-called fate has decided that this reunion was always going to happen at some point, then you don’t want to spend the rest of your life running from him. So you wait for him to come to you, trapped in a tornado of emotions.
You’re in the vegetable aisle trying not to get sprayed by the misters suddenly cutting on when you see him. You shake droplets of water off your hand and then you glance up and he’s there, approaching you like he only intends to leave this store with one thing: you. For a split second, you wonder if it’s really him; his hair is unkempt under a baseball cap, and he’s wearing a pair of yellow-tinted glasses you’ve never seen on him. His bag is slung over one shoulder.
You can feel the anxiety pouring off of him when he stops in front of you; his fingers tremble as he fidgets with his rings. He has the air of an older brother—or what you’d imagine one to be like—annoyed and afraid after you’ve run off without him in the store and gotten lost, and you don’t know whether to laugh or cry or curse.
“Didn’t expect to ever see me again, huh, darling?” Ian keeps his voice mostly even, but it sounds like that requires significant effort. “Not the way you drove off with my fucking car, I bet.” It was never your car, you think.
“How did you even find me?” you ask, voice small. 
“Think about it. The atlas.”
You do think about it. And then you remember; you’d talked about the next place you’d travel to after staying at the campground. You both agreed on a random town named Hendersonville, which is where you are now—but only after months of directionless hopping around from city to city. How would he think to come here now, months after the fact, when it’s possible that you could’ve already been through the town and long gone, or decided to never visit Hendersonville at all? Terrible fate…
Something else catches your attention before you can reply to this. Despite the agitated state you’re both in, you realize that you’re picking up on his scent and no others.
“Did you and Sherry…?”
“She’s dead,” he says.
That’s the last thing you expected to hear. “What?”
He pulls down the collar of his T-shirt. There are many scars along the junction of his neck and shoulder that weren’t there before, and it takes you a moment to notice that some of them resemble teeth marks. 
“So…” Your throat seizes up, and you have to clear it a couple times to speak again, though you avoid speaking too loudly. “...she tried to eat you?”
He lets his collar go and nods with a jerky movement. “After only a month. I had to kill her or she would’ve done me in. It was close.”
Your words haunt you yet again. Us being dangerous to everyone else doesn’t mean we aren’t a risk to each other, too. And for that reason, you don’t understand why he’s returned to you, a fellow cannibal.
You are shocked again when you register that there’s a small part of you that feels sorry for Sherry. You think of how she tried to regain control after her father’s attempted murder of her by preying on so many other men, doing to them what she wished she had done to him, only to end up dead by another man in the end. There’s something terribly unfair about it all.
“I…see.” You realize you’ve been holding a bell pepper for an awkwardly long time, and you waffle between getting a plastic bag for it or setting it back down. Frustrated, you toss it back with the others.
“Then I ate her,” he continues. You resist the urge to recoil.
“And you’re back here in front of me because…why? You’re not worried I might turn on you the same? I did take ‘your’ car.”
His laugh is colorless and dry. “You’re fucking joking, right? I know how you are. You can barely stand to talk about it, and I’m supposed to believe you’d eat me?”
“Shut up.” You’re more offended by him saying I know how you are as if he understands you so intimately after only a few months. It angers you to think maybe he could know you—know all these unpleasant things about you and still want to return for you. You begin walking away from him then, though there’s no real urgency in your movements to get away from him.
“You shut up. You may have tried to throw me aside, but we both know we’re not finished with each other.” He follows you into another aisle; there’s an old woman pushing a cart coming from the opposite direction, and he waits to speak again until after she’s gone. “We’re some of the few who know what it’s like.”
You suck your teeth, feeling foolish. “But…that’s why I left you. Thought you’d gravitate to Sherry, fit better together.”
“You see how well that turned out. What does it really matter that we feel differently about it as long as we’re not trying to fucking kill each other?”
You don’t know how to respond to that, because responding would mean admitting you’ve put yourself through months of emotional torment on the basis of a false and impulsive assumption. You want to bury the guilt chewing at your organs but it only worsens when he says,
“I just—fuck’s sake. I don’t want to be alone again.”
You stare at each other as those words settle in the air, though you struggle to maintain eye contact and soon look away with a wince. The most unbearable part of it is the pain in his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” you whisper. “I fucked things up when I shouldn’t have. I…misjudged.” Your words fade at the end, as you are left with nothing else to say to remedy the situation. Ian rubs a hand across his face, shifting his glasses up as he does so, and you pretend like you don’t notice the redness around his eyes. The both of you continue walking down the aisle, slower this time, the silence between you thick. Neither of you feels any better than you did before this meeting, but at least there aren’t thousands of miles between you anymore.
Finally, he says, “So. Are you gonna get anything, or will we just walk around until closing?” 
“Well…I don’t know. Do you have a car? How did you get here?”
“I’ve been hitch-hiking. And walking. But mostly hitch-hiking.” As if to prove it, he slides a wad of cash halfway out of his jacket pocket. 
“Oh. I—was thinking of finding a job,” you blurt out. It has nothing to do with your current conversation, but you feel like you’ve lost your ability to talk to him in his absence. You reach for anything to stop from thinking about the reason why he was gone, why he had to hitch-hike with total strangers. “To get more money.”
“And staying here?”
“No…there isn’t anything in this town for me. But maybe somewhere else.”
“Gotta find somewhere to live, then. I’m guessing you aren’t counting on having a roommate.” His voice is cynical, and you know he probably expects you to abandon him again.
“It was just an idea,” you mutter. “I haven’t even tried to look for anything.” You find that you’ve walked back around toward the entrance of the grocery store. A life-size skeleton grins at you open-mouthed from where it’s been propped against a display bin, all 32 teeth showing. You shake your head and sigh. “Let’s just get out of here. I’ve been in here long enough.”
The sky is turning dark blue with the onset of night as you walk outside; the streetlights have already come on. You go to the driver’s side of the sedan and gesture for Ian to get inside. He hesitates for a moment like he might reject—your heart nearly ceases—then throws his bag into the backseat. Exhaling, you get behind the wheel. For a moment, you just sit there with your hands slack on the wheel as he gets in beside you and lights a cigarette with shaking fingers.
You almost miss his quiet words when he speaks at the same time you start the engine up: “Did you even miss me?”
You don’t know if you can admit that you did—or that “missing” him felt more like something had been scooped out of you, your insides painfully scraped clean afterward. You chalk it up to your inherent loneliness, the reason why you’re drawn to him despite not wanting to be. You wish your heart hadn’t reacted so painfully at the possibility of him deciding to leave you after all, and yet you have no one else. Not your grandparents who abandoned you, your cannibal mother lost somewhere in the world, or your father who died before you were even born.
“I…regretted it.” You don’t look at him, occupied with pulling out of the parking spot. “Yes, if it makes a difference for you to know…I regretted it all the time.”
He says nothing for a while. You wonder if your reply was enough, if he expected more. It feels like there’s a third thing in the car with you, sitting in the space between your bodies and preventing you from fully accessing each other—everything that remains unsaid.
“Where are you staying now?” he finally asks.
“An abandoned barn near here. Seems like the owners just up and left all their things. Still smells kinda like horse, but…the loft isn’t so bad.”
“...Nothing I haven’t dealt with before.”
—
“You never did tell me exactly how you showed up at the motel that first night,” you tell Ian. “I deserve to know that much, at least. What brought you into my life.”
It’s the second week of November, and you’re still in Hendersonville. 
You gaze at the large pond before you, your view broken every so often by Ian walking through the overgrown grass around the pond—treading an aimless path but never venturing very far from the car. The engine is still warm underneath your butt where you’re half-leaning, half-sitting on the hood, and you try to enjoy the warmth while it lasts. 
The pond is about 10 minutes from the barn where you’re staying, and you’d driven here several times when it was just you. But you’ve only been here during the light hours; seeing everything at night is much different. Something about it feels overly familiar in a way that unsettles you. The scene threatens to dredge up old memories of your nighttime swims with Marygold—right down to the nearly full moon, huge and clear in the sky. You have to fill the quiet with your voice if you have any hope of outrunning the dark thoughts.
Ian crosses his arms and sort of side-eyes you, like maybe he’s skeptical about you initiating a conversation like this after the fallout of the camping excursion, and you mimic him until he breaks with a small, barely-amused laugh. Better to focus on his past issues than your own, you figure—as fucked up as that may be. You don’t move your gaze from him as he tells the story, watching him continuously flick around a few loose strands of his hair on his forehead.
“Right. Well…I tried to eat this young farmer guy—saw him at this country bar, or he saw me, and I guess he liked what he saw…I ended up going home with him, because I was hungry. That’s why I’d gone to the bar that night. Told him I was living on the streets and had barely eaten in days. Made him feel sorry for me. And then I tried to eat him…but when he started fighting it, I didn’t realize he had a pocketknife, and he got me pretty good before I ended up killing him. Too much commotion alerted the neighbors. I only had enough time to try to bandage it before I had to get the fuck out. Walked through a fucking corn field…then eventually I reached the highway, and you know the rest.”
“So you killed someone and didn’t…finish them.” The thought of that almost bothers you even more than the eating itself. It just seems senseless. The man could still be alive now, but his life was ended and went to complete waste; his body didn’t even serve its purpose as sustenance. You realize that this isn’t even the first time this has happened, thinking back to that time he was caught while up North.
He doesn’t seem offended by your shift in mood—maybe just weary. He rubs his eyes. “It happens. But I aim to make sure it happens as rarely as possible.”
You turn away and look across the pond again, your mind getting lost in the dark copse of trees on the other side. Being outside at this time of night is not the most comforting thing in the world, but in truth, is your nature really that different from whatever dangers lurk in the woods? “I wonder, then…how are we any better than the average serial killer?”
“We kill because we have to.”
“Being chained to our physiology doesn’t get rid of our blame.”
“I never said it did,” Ian replied. “And that’s your problem. Eating doesn’t need to be innocent or pure or blameless in order for you to accept that it’s a part of yourself…it just is.”
You can’t muster the will to counter him, and he doesn’t press the matter, likely not in the mood for yet another round of verbal sparring. He resumes walking his circles, wearing trails into the grass. You continue sitting on the hood long after the engine has cooled, watching the moon’s reflection tremble on the water’s surface and imagining what you’d tell Alicia and Marygold and all the others if they could hear you, somewhere in the universe.
I’m sorry. It’s just who I am.
—
With Hendersonville behind you, you’re back to sleeping in the car many nights. Among the various things you see as you travel through urban cities and rural areas, fall festivals are common occurrences everywhere.
There’s one coming up in the distance now; you’ve been idling in evening traffic for minutes, and it becomes clear that this congestion must be because everyone’s heading to the festivities. You press your face closer to the car’s window glass to see. The bright lights of the numerous booths, rides, and decorations illuminate the late evening. Countless people walk or run around, some wearing elaborate outfits.
You’re just coming from a mom-and-pop restaurant where the wife of the owner had called you darling even more than Ian does. She’d assumed you both to be lovers and gave you a free slice of pumpkin pie to share, and neither of you bothered to correct her if it meant treats you didn’t have to pay for.
As you observe the festivities, you see that there are two booths set up on either side of the festival’s main entrance; one claims to offer some type of spiritual readings, denoted by a large sign of a purple crystal ball. But your eyes catch on the bone-white trailer sitting on the other side of the entrance. It has been converted into a mobile booth with a large sign with red and blue lettering that asks one question: Are You Going to Heaven? An older man with graying hair sits in the booth, hands clasped together as he watches groups of people entering the festival grounds. It’s too far away and too dark to be entirely certain, but you don’t think you’re imagining the cross hanging up behind the man on the trailer’s wall or the thick book resting near his hands.
“Looks like they’re having fun,” Ian says, face illuminated in red by the taillights of another car, one hand on the wheel.
“Mmhm…” you answer, your mind still hung up on that booth and sign as the car finally drives past. Memories of your former life knock at the door of your consciousness, but you don’t let them in.
You’re unable to ignore your discomfort later that night, though, when you and Ian return to the safe parking spot you’d found days earlier and settle in to go to sleep. The cold has finally become a permanent fixture as the months venture deeper into late autumn, and you clutch your blanket tightly to your body as you drift off in the backseat.
In your dreamscape, you wake up in Alicia’s bed in the living quarters of the motel office, blood dripping from every part of you—hands, arms, face, chest. The sight of your bloody hands splayed out in front of you makes terror spike through your body, your breaths coming short. As you turn to look at your surroundings, you see the remains of Alicia lying on the bed next to you, her torso almost completely hollowed out. Her brown hair is streaked with new and drying blood—same as the red-dyed ivory of her broken rib cage. Her dead eyes look at you with a frozen expression, pained and imploring. Begging, even. Why did you do this to me?
You have the sensation of screaming, feeling it emanating from your body and hearing the sound pierce your ears, but your mouth isn’t open. You try to scramble off the bed and away from the mess you’ve made of the woman you love, but no matter how hard you fight, you have no leeway; it’s like the sheets are holding your limbs hostage, sucking you in like quicksand. Sweat pours from your body and stings your eyes.
In the next moment, you’re no longer struggling, and Alicia is no longer next to you. You’re not in her bedroom at all anymore; you’re sitting at a kitchen table you don’t recognize. The kitchen has a rustic and homey appearance, as if it belongs in a country homestead. Lacy floral curtains frame each side of the window above the farmhouse sink, allowing the dark orange evening sunlight to stream in, and the black wood stove a few feet away from your chair has a steady fire burning inside of it. Someone’s cooking, then, or preparing to cook. Who?
Ian turns to face you from where he is standing at the counter—when’d he get there? You didn’t notice him before—with two porcelain plates in his hands and a delighted grin on his face. Have you ever seen him look so happy before? You smile back at him as your eyes shift from his face to the plates; balanced on top of each is a perfectly bloody heart, the muscle thick and hardy and still beating although it’s attached to nothing. The kitchen floor around you both is stained with large swathes of blood, which have sunk deep into the wood’s fibers, though you hardly notice this.
Ian sets the table and sits in front of you, and neither of you bother with utensils as you pick up each heart with your hands. You hold the heart against your lips, feeling the slickness of it and letting the blood smear across your mouth, marveling at the constant pumping motion of its ventricles. It’s endearing, you think. How it tries so hard to maintain life when it’s fruitless anyway.
Then you bite into it.
You both eat ravenously, blood staining your mouths and hands the deep shade of carmine. The taste of the raw flesh is better than any food you have ever consumed, and innately, you know this is what you were made for. You laugh at how good it feels, glancing up at Ian with pure mirth. The indulgence is so sweet that you don’t notice the wood stove growing hotter and hotter in the corner of the room until the wallpaper behind it catches fire.
By the time you finish eating and regain enough wherewithal to realize what’s going on, the entire room is ablaze, and you are alone. The fire crawls up your chair and then engulfs the table. There’s nowhere safe for you to run, but you try anyway as the flames catch hold of your feet and then your legs, eating their way up your body. You stumble through the house screaming, the heat raging around you at an incomprehensible level.
Your skin begins to slough off and you scream endlessly for it to stop, but it never does. There is always more skin to replace what’s being scorched off of you; it grows back with an unbearable itching sensation as it knits together, only to burn right up again. You collapse to the ground on your hands and knees, though it’s excruciating to put weight on any part of your body.
Through the brightness of the fire and the heat haze, you make out a strange white and blue pattern on the floor in front of you, and you realize that it’s shards from the porcelain plates. Together, the broken pieces spell out:
Are You Going to Heaven?
You wake up in a flurry of limbs and blanket, hitting Ian who’s sleeping in the reclined front seat. The accidental violence combined with the sudden rocking of the car is enough to startle him awake. His voice floats out somewhere in the chaos, but you don’t really register it as you fling the car door open and stumble out of the sedan. You walk a couple yards away from the car—just enough to let the cold night air spear through your skin and convince you that you’re no longer trapped in a much hotter place. You hear the front car door open behind you and footsteps on the grass as Ian steps out. He calls your name, and you pretend not to hear as you stare at the ground and then toss your head to the skies, hands on your hips for some sort of stability. Your stomach aches badly, but you can’t get sick now.
“What’s wrong? Did you have a nightmare?” he asks when he gets closer. 
It takes you more than a minute to work up a response without the possibility of a scream or vomit tumbling from your mouth, and he waits patiently as you do. “Y-yeah. It’s…probably not that big of a deal…I was…” The next words spill out before you can think to keep them inside. “Just a bit…freaked out by a…sign.”
“A sign?”
“The sign at the…festival. The white booth…” You wave your arm, unable to say much more. A steady throb is starting to take over your skull, and it’s too much effort to keep talking.
Ian thinks for a long moment before he seems to realize. He takes another step towards you. “Babe, look at me; it’s okay. Nothing bad is gonna happen to you. You’re fine. I know it feels bad in the moment, believe me, but you’re here now, and you’re safe.”
“You can’t guarantee that,” you murmur. You can’t imagine the look on your face right now, but your eyes feel dry and painful, like you’ve actually been in a fire pit for hours. Maybe he can safeguard you against the physical dangers this world presents, but he can’t hold your hand into the afterlife. If there even is one.
He grasps your upper arm, but only lightly so as not to make you more distressed, and draws you into his side—his head leaning into yours, his hair tickling you when the wind blows through it. You find yourself sagging into him even though you hate yourself for doing so. You don’t deserve this show of affection, not after how you left him behind and not even before then; you desperately want to preserve the distance between you, and yet you want this touch, too. You’re unable and unwilling to tease apart those feelings, though, as the only things that register in your mind are that he is warm against you, he is doing his best to comfort you, and his smell—the smell of him, not of being an eater—has become familiar to you in a way that disarms some frantic part of your brain. Because of all those things, you allow him to put his other arm around you and silently hold you in that grassy lot.
And for the first time since you met in that grocery store again, you feel like whatever’s between the two of you isn’t broken beyond repair.
—
1986
The next time you eat someone, it happens at a nightclub in January. 
Going to this club is Ian’s idea, although you agree to it when he brings it up. In hindsight, you can’t say what possessed you to do it. You’ve never been a fan of crowds of people because they could readily create a catastrophic situation if your hunger comes. Maybe it’s how fresh everything still feels after the New Year passes—the sensation of anticipation it brings. Maybe it’s the blanket of stars that appear extra luminous tonight, rivaling the shine of the city buildings around you. Maybe Ian has just gotten better at using his powers of persuasion on you, or his recklessness has rubbed off on you, similar to how you feared his desire for flesh would increase your own when you first met him.
No matter the true reason, you find yourself amidst a scene of sweaty strangers boxed in by the small club’s four walls. The other people’s proximity to you quickly spikes your anxiety, driving you away from Ian and back to the outer edges of the room, though he tries at first to persuade you to dance with him. You give him a slight smile and an eye-roll and let your arm slip through his tattooed fingers.
“Go dance,” you mouth to him before heading toward one of the many booths lined up against the far wall.
You sit there watching everyone dance for a little while, working up the nerve to rejoin the crowd. There are so many bodies, all moving to the sound of In My House playing over the speakers at what must be max volume.
“Did you come here alone?” a feminine voice shouts from your left, startling you. You turn to find a woman with softly-waved hair that touches her shoulders; she wears a dress with big swirls of color, the flared skirt stopping just past her thighs. Your gaze goes all the way down her pantyhose-clad legs to her high heels and back up again. The pink and purple lights framing her from behind make her seem like she’s glowing.
“Uh—” Awkward pause as you try to figure out how to respond. “I…didn’t, but the person I came with is just my friend, so…” You shrug. It feels somewhat odd to refer to Ian as a friend, even after all this time. You are two people traveling in the same direction, lashed together by your fatal flaw, but you suppose “friend” is as accurate as it gets.
She smiles amusedly, undeterred by your awkwardness. “So that means you’re free to dance with me, then?”
You think about how you rejected Ian’s offer and chuckle to yourself. Ironic. But you find yourself not wanting to say no to this woman with her sweet brown skin and dimpled smile, despite your inner sense of judgment trying its best to pull you back. So you accept, still feeling embarrassed as she slides her lace-gloved hand into yours and guides you onto the dancefloor again.
Her perfume contains different notes, but as you dance together to another uptempo pop song and the aroma encircles you, it reminds you of Alicia’s signature scent all the same. You try to put that reminder out of your mind, though it’s difficult. Instead, you make an effort to focus on her shining face under the lights, the long gold earrings dangling from her ears, the sway of her black hair and dress as she moves.
You Give Good Love comes on afterward, and before you know it her body is pressed to the length of yours, virtually no space left between you as she tucks her face into your neck. You put your arms around her and sigh at how she fits against you, thinking you might like to do something like this more often. All the time, really. It feels good in a way you don’t quite have words for, even though you’re still surrounded on all sides by a bunch of sweaty and excited people. Just by the movements of your bodies, you could close your eyes and be spirited away to some other realm where everything is right—where you are not the monster you’ve come to believe you are.
You are finally beginning to relax a bit when your stomach twists painfully.
All your organs freeze from the shock of this unexpected sensation. You have paused indefinitely, and you watch your body from above as you and the woman continue moving together, two dark figures flashing in and out of the strobing lights. And yet, you simultaneously feel yourself still in her arms. Her breath is on your neck, warm and smelling of alcohol and some fruit—lemons. The muscles of her back are beneath your hands; you want to peel her skin away and see what they look like underneath, run your fingers across the striations. Her soft cheek is pressed to yours, so soft that it makes you want to tear into it like the flesh of a plum and swallow it. Your mouth twitches with the desire to consume.
“No!” you shout, pushing her away from you so fiercely that she falls back into someone behind her. You turn and begin shoving a ragged path through the club-goers. The sights and smells of pure humanness are overwhelming, begging you to tuck your face into the nearest neck or arm joint and just bite. There are too many hearts beating in one space, too many lungs expanding with wet and bloody life. You begin to cry, but you force your body to continue moving until you’re stumbling through the club’s back exit.
In the dank alleyway behind the club, you splash through a puddle and collapse behind a dumpster, pressing yourself into the corner and hoping that the smell of garbage will disappear your appetite, though you know it doesn’t work like that. You tuck your head between your knees and try to breathe evenly. The music is only slightly less loud out here; whereas it was simply an overzealous volume before, you feel like you’re being crushed by the sound itself in your overly sensitive state.
You don’t know how long you sit there shaking, the hunger ripping your stomach apart and forcing a long whimper out of your mouth, but your whole body jumps when you hear the exit door slam open. When you look up, Ian’s stepping out of the doorway and fumbling with the limp body of a man, his hands clasped around the man’s arm and waist.
You watch with terrified eyes as Ian lowers the man to the ground in front of you, leaning him against the wall so that he won’t slump over. “No—what are you doing—”
The man in front of you is too drunk to put a sentence together and barely seems to know where he is. His sweaty brown hair flops in his eyes, and his bearded mouth moves with nonsensical speech.
“No,” you cry again. “I can’t do this. Don’t make me do this!” Ian crouches beside you.
“Darling, you have to eat.” His hand is on the back of your neck, not forcing you toward the man but trying to ground you in your body. He’s so close that his words reverberate within your nervous system. Eat. You shake your head, but you’re becoming lightheaded from the sheer hunger. The smell of alcohol from the man is overpowering, but underneath it you can still detect his vulnerable fleshiness, and you need to know how it tastes. As if once again disembodied, you watch your hands reach for the man’s shoulders, Ian’s own hand slipping away from your neck, and bring him closer so that his throat is bare to you.
You mouth at the sweat on his neck, the saltiness intensifying the taste of his skin; you lick his Adam’s apple and savor how the ridge of it slides against your tongue. Then you bite down.
The tears continue to roll down your cheeks as you devour the man. Ian doesn’t leave you to dine alone, however.
He reaches into the mess of the open chest, digs between the deflated flaps that are the lungs, and tugs out the man’s heart. Takes a bite of it. You watch as he does, horrified but unable to look away even as you crush part of a rib between your molars. He offers it to you—tears the muscle in half and gives you the unbitten part. You accept it with eager hands and eager mouth, chewing through muscle fibers like it’s a delicacy. Ian licks the blood from his fingers, a smile playing at his lips, and goes back for more.
It’s too much like the dream, and it frightens you. You half-expect a portal to hell to open beneath you both and send you free-falling into a lake of fire. But you are unable to make yourself stop. Neither of you stop until an hour has passed and the blood and a pile of crimson-stained clothes are all that remains.
You find a still-intact plastic bag in the dumpster and place the clothes into it before tying it thrice and shoving it as deep into the trash as you can. 
Using an old rag from the dumpster and another puddle of water at the back of the alley, you both do your best to remove the blood on your hands and faces. It makes you feel disgusting, but it’s the best you can do for the time being, and you can’t go inside the club or onto the streets like this. Then you shove the rag back underneath the pile of trash, too. 
As you and Ian emerge from behind the dumpster and walk down the sidewalk to find the sedan, despair envelops you. You accept it inside of you—let it spread throughout your bones and blood without much of a fight. You are defeated, understanding fundamentally that you can never be like the people in the club, the people walking these city streets, no matter how many of their human peculiarities and normalities you try to adopt. The knowledge hollows you out.
On the way back to the house you’ve been squatting in, you steal a cigarette from Ian’s pack and turn the radio to several different stations before choosing some talk show discussing nothing you care about. Emotionally, you’re floating somewhere in the space between numb and wounded.
But people die everyday, right?
Like with Alicia, Ian tries to prevent you from becoming lost in your grief about it. There isn’t anything said between you during the car ride. But once you get to the house, he wipes the fresh tears that spring forth, runs the shower for you, and makes sure you have clean clothes for afterward.
“Are you good?” he asks before you get in the shower, standing in the bathroom doorway with you. He brushes your cheek with the same hand that plucked the heart out. There’s still blood underneath a few of his fingernails and staining the cross on his ring. For a few seconds, you feel an unfamiliar comfort in knowing that he has seen you destroy another person and feels no animosity or repulsion toward you because of it.
“I’m fine,” you murmur, shifting your face into his palm. But the moment passes, and the chill overtakes you again. You step away from him and shut the door, letting the bathroom fill with steam.
—
Your feelings toward Ian have always hovered in an odd limbo, going from distrust to tolerance to something that can be called companionship. But just like the seasons transition into each other, something inside you starts to shift after that night at the club.
Your eyes begin lingering on him when he lifts his shirt to wipe away sweat or strips it off entirely when the heat becomes too much. Your gaze can’t help but be drawn to the way his long hair sticks to his damp, darkly-inked neck, or how his cigarettes fit between his full lips like they were made specifically for his mouth. When it’s the last few weeks of winter and you have no choice but to sleep together in the backseat for extra warmth—the car’s HVAC system on its last leg—being smushed into that small space with him isn’t unpleasant like you once assumed it would be. Far from it.
When you and Ian go to a theater one day—one of those matinees in the middle of the week that only elderly people attend—and end up watching a random film that you didn’t know was a romance, you are startled when you have the sudden thought that you want him in the same way. That you wouldn’t mind him holding your face in his hands again but kissing you this time, or walking down a street hand-in-hand, or lying next to him in some stranger’s bed and listening to him talk until you fall asleep. You try to send those thoughts somewhere far away, but days pass and they keep coming back, and that wanting in your chest only grows.
You’re reluctant to think of your feelings as love—at least not yet, with your heart still grieving the woman perished by your own hand—and you know he can’t save you from this reality that you must live in until your time ends. But as imperfect as everything is, you feel like he knows you in some inutterable way. You begin to believe that this could be enough. Maybe you’ve always subconsciously understood that the world of love is no home for monsters, proven by the multiple times it has expelled you from its viscera, leaving you shaking and bereaved. But maybe whatever this is now could be enough to escape its view and its judgment—two monsters together to leave the humans to their softer affections.
And though he doesn’t say anything outright, Ian notices your newfound attention, smiling knowingly whenever he catches you looking. His hand stays on yours for longer than it needs to whenever he passes you items, his fingers trailing away from your skin like they regret having to leave. When he shoplifts supplies when the money is low, he swipes silly little trinkets that he says he “thought you would like.” You catch the way he always presses his body closer to yours when you’re sitting together on a pier, on the hood of the car, on a random bench—anywhere. The tension builds between you for what seems like forever, drawing so tight that you’re almost afraid you both may get hurt when it snaps.
When it finally does, it feels natural to do, this dance that unfolds in the backseat of this sedan he stole over a year ago. You both know the hunger for flesh intimately even though you experience it in such different ways; instead of it being a grotesquerie that would repel a normal lover, it’s a bond that has inextricably tied you together, for better and worse. In that sense, the joining of your bodies is just another type of desire for you two to tease out the intricacies of.
The catalyst is one question posed to you on a humid summer night. “...Darling, answer me honestly.”
Ian’s eyes are heavy with some mix of want and curiosity when you turn to look at him. You’re both sitting in the backseat as you study a map from one of the atlases; you’ve spent a half-hour trying to figure out the best route for your next destination in Georgia, tracing the lines illuminated by the car’s dome light. Maybe you’ll both try settling down this time; find that new job like you said, and live in one singular place for a few months. Someone else’s house you can pretend is your own, someone else’s car you can drive around the city. Years are too heavy to think about, but months…you can do months.
But it’s clear your decision-making is over. Your attention had broken every time you sensed his eyes shift to your face and stay there for a little while, searching for something, before moving back to the map. Now, you let the map lie forgotten in your lap.
“What is it?”
“Would you hate it if I asked to kiss you?”
Your body temperature rises, but you reply to his question with a question. “Have you thought about that before?”
“Many times.”
You swallow hard. You want to ask him about the first time that thought crossed his mind—did he realize it around the same time you did?—but you say, “And why do you think I would hate it?”
“Things will change between us.”
“Things have already changed between us, several times.”
“This is different,” he insists, and you notice that the space between you has decreased, bodies subconsciously drifting even closer together. “If we go down that road, I don’t want us to go back. I don’t want you to have to wonder about whether I care for you. I want you to trust me.”
You lean your forehead against his, a small smile forming on your lips. “I already trust you, Ian.” You have never vocalized it before, but you find that you really do mean it.
Then you move forward, doing yet another thing that would’ve been utterly absurd to you this time last year—pressing your lips to his. Your insides feel like they’re melting, but not in the uncomfortable way that comes from the summer heat. It happens in a way that makes you think that, maybe if you both melt down into your very basic parts and become nothing but atoms, you might blur together completely. Ian’s reply is immediate in how his hand comes up to your nape, his mouth separating from yours for one painful second only for him to kiss you deeper. The map slips between you and to the car floor. It’s strange to indulge in this close proximity with another person without the threat of death, without the underlying worry that you’ll become hungry in the worst way, but it’s also freeing to a degree you didn’t know was possible.
That’s why you allow yourself to become submerged in his body heat, his mouth, his hands—everything.
Afterwards, you both climb back into your clothes only halfway; your shorts are left somewhere underneath one of the front seats, and Ian doesn’t bother putting his shirt back on—though it stays off most of the time anyway. Your bodies are sluggish but satisfied as you rest your head against his bicep, tracing your fingers along the tattoo under his sternum. They come away damp from the sweat that shines on his body. You still feel all the places on your own body where his lips and fingers touched, as if your skin has been imprinted, and you wonder if it’s the same for him.
The window is rolled down to let the smoke curl out as Ian takes a drag from a cigarette. A soft rock station plays on the radio, and he taps the beat of the song on your knee with his free hand. For the first time in many years, your mind isn’t crammed full with constant thoughts of guilt and contempt about being alive and being what you are. Even if it only lasts for tonight, for now, you can just exist.
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acesinferno ¡ 12 days ago
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What if (Portgas D. Ace X Reader)
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I made a big long post talking about how just a simple little phrase affects my everyday life. So I'm going to start putting it to use and maybe doing a 'what if' series for my favorite characters from One Piece. Like I said in the post all of this writing is for my own comfort, but I'm posting it in case someone like me who spends all their time reading fan fiction wants something to read.
Synopsis: Ace lives after Marineford but has to deal with the deaths of people on the crew dying. His best friend and partner is there to comfort him when he feels responsible.
Additional stuff: Hurt/Comfort and Fluff
Potential Trigger Warnings and other mentions: Mentions of Death, Spoilers for Marineford Arc, Grieving, Strong Language, Bathing/Washing
Word count: 2.5K
Pairing: Portgas D. Ace X GN! Reader
"Ace?" You call out as you walk into his cabin. It's been almost three weeks since Marineford and the deaths of your captain, Whitebeard, and so many other good people on your crew. Ace hasn't stepped out of his cabin since. Marco has had to go in to even change his bandages. 
"What?" He snaps as he turns his head toward you at the door. He looks like a total mess. His hair looks like a rat's nest, his face puffy and red from crying, and he just looks completely miserable. 
"Brought you some food." You motion to the tray of food in your hand. Ace never turns down a good meal. You walk over to his bed and sit down on the edge of it. He doesn't meet your gaze as you get a better look at him. His cheeks are gaunt and pale. The color and life you've grown accustomed to in them are gone. He looks to be a shell of his former self. 
"Don't really want to eat right now, partner. Thanks, though." He sighs. You set the tray down on the blanket adjacent to him and scoot closer to his side. He barely even glances up as you move. Once you're completely side by side next to him, you make a point not to look at him. 
"Ace. Talk to me. I really can't stand seeing you like this. It's not like you whatsoever." You tell him, blindly reaching to grab his hand and hold it in your own for reassurance. He mumbles something entirely incoherent. "What? I didn't hear you?" You question. 
"I said it's my fault! It's all my fault! If I hadn't been set to be executed, then no one would have gotten hurt! No one would've died! Pops would still be here!" He cries out. Ace has always held himself to a much higher standard than anyone else, thinking he has to work hard for people's love and approval. 
"Ace.... What happened, it wasn't your fault. Everyone there knew the risks that were included to get you back; we didn't care. We chose to risk our lives because we wanted to save you. End of story." You tell him. "Tell me. If it was Marco on the chopping block or Jozu or even Whitebeard himself, would you have wanted to leave them?" You ask him with a pout.
"That's completely different, and you know it." He scowls as he speaks. His arms going up to cross over his chest in a huff. He's glaring at the side of your head as you continue to face forwards. 
"How is it different?" You interrogate. "I don't see a difference. In fact, it makes total sense. You're the second division commander, Ace. That's not a title to let go of lightly. You're a high-ranking officer in the crew." You state, he scoffs as you bring up his rank. "You're also our family, Ace. Pops called you his son; that's not something to forget either. You're also my best friend in this whole world." You admit. 
"So many people died. So many good crewmates, including our captain. I'm not worth all of that." He winces. When you finally look over at him again, you see tears forming in his eyes. Ever the caring best friend, you lift your hand and cup his face in your palm. 
"You think you get to decide that? The people who fought to save your life decided what you were worth, and it was a whole damn lot." You grin at him. "So are you going to tell them they're wrong? Going to sit here and rot in your bed when people sacrificed themselves to see you continue to live and to thrive? I don't think that's very grateful at all, Ace." You explain as you caress his cheek with your thumb. "Make 'em proud, Ace. I know you have it in you." You voice your opinion on him out loud to break through to him. 
"It's not that easy." He proclaims. "I still feel like shit for getting put on the chopping block in the first place. I'm not just going to magically feel better about myself. They're still gone. Not coming back." He explains with an exasperated sigh, his hands on his chest, falling to his lap. 
"I didn't expect you to magically feel better, Ace. No pretty words can fix every feeling you have in an instant. You've got to work for it. Work to feel better and to learn to cope properly. But hoarding yourself away in your room and wasting away isn't the move." You profess. "Ace, it's going to take time. I know that; you know that. But you don't have to go through this alone. I'm right by your side." You tell him. Your other free hand goes to the other side of his face to force him to look you in the eyes. 
"What if I can't do it? What if I can't move on from this? You'd be wasting your time on a lost cause, partner." He looks so vulnerable as some of the tears start to fall down his freckled cheeks. 
As your thumb comes up to wipe the tears off his cheeks, you reply with a whispered tone. "What if you can, Ace?" He looks shocked. "What if you can move on from it? What if you prove Pops and everyone else right? What if you continue to live and make them all proud? Did you ever think of that?" You question. Tears are streaming down his face at a constant rate now as he takes in your words. 
Before he can fully gather his thoughts and respond, you move your hands from his face and wrap around his torso and pull him into a hug. He so obviously needed one. "Besides, you've still got Luffy to watch out for. Can't have you stuck in bed for the rest of your life. He needs his big brother." You laugh lightly as you hold him against you. He doesn't even try to respond as he soaks your shirt in tears.
"You've got your whole life ahead of you, Ace. So many people who wanted to see what amazing things you can accomplish. It's worth a try. I mean, really, what have you got to lose?" You hum as you hold him, rubbing soothing circles into the skin on his back. Running your hands up and down his Jolly Roger tattoo. "I'm sure Pops is waiting in the afterlife to see what great things you'll achieve." You announce with a smile on your face.
He nods against you as his sobs get louder. You can tell he just needed to let this all out. He's been bottling this up for weeks now. As you sit there and hold him, you begin to hum soft sea shanties to calm him. His sobs quiet into soft cries and then go silent, but he doesn't move against you. When you look down, you realize Ace has fallen asleep against you. You can't tell if it's his narcolepsy that knocked him out or if it's just been a long time since he's slept. Just the state of him lets you know how rough he's been on himself after everything. 
As you hold him, you begin to think it's more of the latter. You maneuver the two of you down on the bed and cover you both up, careful of the food you brought in. He's sleeping soundly pressed up against you, though he's lying completely limp. You decide to watch over him for the next few hours, foregoing your own sleep to make sure he gets peaceful rest. 
It's going to take a long time for him to fully recover and be back to his old self, but with you there by his side, you're sure everything will work out. You won't let your best friend stay in this hole forever. No way, no how. 
After about nine or so hours of him sleeping, he wakes up to the sun rising through his porthole window. He looks groggy as he wakes up, blinking like he's confused about what he's cuddled up to. "Good morning, Ace." You say in a teasing tone. "Someone cried himself to sleep in my arms last night. You must have been exhausted." You giggle. His face turns red as he averts his eyes from your gaze.
"Come on. I'm not letting you mope any longer." You tell him. "We're getting you a bath and taking you to Marco's office so he can change your bandages." You declare as you get out of the bed and grab his hands to drag him out with you. He groans as you pull him out but stands before he can fall onto the floor. 
"Marco's left me the stuff here to change the bandages myself. Do I really have to go to his office?" He whines as he gets yanked further into the bathroom. As you let go of him and start to fill the tub up with warm water, you look up and see the state of his bandages. 
"Have you even changed them once since he left the stuff?" You ask as you see how grimy they look. "It looks like you've laid down on the deck and rolled in the dirt everyone's tracked on." You comment. Once the water is filled up to an adequate level, you turn your attention to him completely. You begin to unravel all the bandages and see the damage that's left after this past month of healing.
Though his wounds look ten times better than when he first acquired them, there's still a long way to go until his physical health is back to its' peak. A lot longer to go for his mental health as well, that you know for sure. You try not to stare too long as you take in the yellow healing bruises, the large burns on his chest and back from Akainu's attacks, and the scrapes and cuts from some kind of sea stone weapons. 
"Come on. Let's get undressed and take a bath together." You grin at him. He blushes a bright red but doesn't object. He sees you take off your clothes first and climb into the tub. "Hurry up and get in, Ace; you look like someone's dragged you through a puddle of mud." You motion for him to get in the bathtub in front of you. He sighs but follows your instructions. He quickly sheds his shorts and climbs in with you. 
The water is already steaming warm, but just having Ace in with you seems to make it feel even hotter. As you grab the washcloth and begin to suds it up, Ace relaxes and leans back against you. He's completely boneless against you. You begin to clean him up at a slow pace so he can enjoy the feeling of being taken care of. 
Starting with his face, then moving down to his neck and collarbones, and then continuing your trail down his body, cleaning off all the dirt and muck on him. As soon as you're done with his skin, you move onto his shaggy hair. Normally looking pretty greasy, you decide it's high time you clean it and get the knots out of it. 
You have to start at the bottom and work your way up. Slowly going through each piece of his hair and working out the tangles with your finger, you know you're going to have to brush it when you get out to totally get the job done." Always had such greasy hair before, Ace. Wonder what it's going to look like shampooed and conditioned." You tease him lightly as you continue to lather his hair up thoroughly. 
"Maybe if you shut up and kept working, we'd know quicker." He scoffs with a blush on his face. You can tell you embarrassed him there with your words. You continue your ministrations for a few more minutes until you know it's time to rinse it out. You grab the hand-held sprayer and hose him down, taking good care not to get any in his face. After he is rinsed, you begin the process all over again with the conditioner. 
"Don't get feisty with me, Ace. I'll drown you like a wet dog with this thing." You threaten as you motion to the sprayer. He rolls his eyes and makes no motion to react. After a few minutes lathering his hair up again, you rinse him one more time. "Alright, hot shot. Get up. Going to have you dry off, and then I'll bandage you back up. Where's the stuff Marco left?" You quiz him. 
"Should be on my dresser, near the door." He sighs and stands up and gets out to dry off. You quickly move out as well. Grabbing the towel and going out to grab the care package, while you're out there you grab him some underwear and soft sweatpants and borrow yourself some clothes as well. You quickly slip on the stolen clothes and make your way back to where he is waiting. He's leaning against the sink counter with a towel wrapped around his waist. You set Marco's supplies on said counter and quickly get to work applying burn cream and soothing ointments to the wounds that litter his skin. 
Ace makes no motions of pain or any indications at all that you're even there. He's staring straight ahead into the wall as you begin to wrap him up in the bandages. "Hey, partner?" He speaks up in a soft tone. "What if I want to try? What if I want to get better, to not waste their sacrifice?" He gulps; his voice is quieter than usual, like he's scared of your reaction. 
"Then I'll be right here to support you every step of the way, Ace. Simple as that." You tell him as you tie up the bandages that are wrapped around him. As soon as you're done and stand back up straight, you're wrapped in a strong hug and caught up in a kiss. The hug was something you'd come to expect from Ace, but the kiss was new. It was filled with love and passion as you began to kiss him back. 
He pulls back first, breathless. "Thank you." He whispers out against your lips. "For always standing by my side. I know I'm a lot to handle. Luffy got that after me. But you've never once doubted me. It's going to be a long road ahead to get fully better, but I want to travel it with your help." He sniffles, tears pricking his eyes again as he leans back in to place another chaste kiss against your lips. 
He's right; the road would be long to recover fully from the losses, the grief, and the guilt. However, there's no one better to walk through it with than with a partner by your side. Ace just lucked out and found the best partner in the world to help him. And you, well, you got him. The greatest partnership of all.
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hamliet ¡ 4 months ago
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the notion that bnha is pro authoritarianism or social hierarchies is nonsensical not to mention acting like being pro cop is bad
Err... BNHA is pretty pro-authoritarian. I actually find it pretty disturbing. And that's even if the story turns out with the League alive at the end.
As for being pro-cop--cops are human individuals, yes. But people have in recent years in multiple countries (including Japan, by the way) protested against cops being used as tools to maintain social hierarchies wherein people who are not part of that hierarchy suffer for daring to want to be treated as human beings. When I say I'm anti-cop, I'm not saying I hate anyone on the basis of being a cop. But I am saying that the ways in which the police force are used in many countries does societal harm. Critical thinking, yo.
Honestly I feel like this whole story (BNHA) and fans reactions throughout (especially when compared to other stories) demonstrate how people are not using critical thinking. And that can have real world consequences, though it doesn't have to.
I just find it weird that people are okay with a story where the ruling class is always right and always wins. Like... how have they not? I mean, even stories that end up suggesting the ruling class isn't entirely wrong or show flaws in rebellions generally don't go hard on the authoritarianism. But Horikoshi... is doing this.
The whole thing is so weird to me personally, too, because Horikoshi's wishy-washy framing and switches in coding generally seem to be the result of him caring, deeply, what his audience thinks and feels. Too much, really, but it also seems like he genuinely doesn't want to hurt people. Except this ending--even if Tenko does reappear as New Character and saves the League--is the exact opposite. (If Tenko doesn't reappear, then everything I'm about to say is multiplied by a thousand.)
It's catering to mean-spiritedness, and while I do understand fiction isn't reality, the side he's catering to now is making the argument that fictional crimes are real crimes and thus must meet real penalties.
I can play this game too.
If people are gonna make those arguments, I'm going to say they're the problem and the reason we have wars, genocides, assaults, and more.
If you ever want a cycle of violence/abuse to stop, someone has to accept that they've taken the last punch. Not keep going until the other side is WIPED OUT.
If you equate justice with equalizing losses, then you are enacting Dazai from BSD's statement on justice: justice is a weapon. You can never heal by it.
If you want to heal, you have to stop fighting and bandage wounds. And maybe you are too injured to do the bandaging. That's okay. But someone else can, and if you try to stop them on the premise of "but no one bandaged my wounds" you're a bitter person who makes the world a worser place.
If you say a tragedy is the story, sure. But you have to set up tragedies from the start. See, Attack on Titan, which's ending I love. It began with someone crying and an ominous message to the future. You don't set up your first chapter with "this is the story of how I become the greatest hero!" spend 200+ chapters criticizing hero society and have the hero fail at the goal he'd been repeating for 200 chapters in the end and join hero society and still think you wrote a story that delivered in what you promised. You failed.
Either you wrote a tragedy and are trying to pass it off as a happy story (see how well that works usually) or your understanding of a happy story is pretty much just fascist propaganda. And yes, BNHA does have fascist themes at this point. Way more than AoT ever did. But they have smiles and cute frog girls so it's not nearly as dangerous, right? (sarcastic).
The thing is, this is where the lack of critical thinking comes in. While I've seen people talk a bit about how BNHA seems like copaganda, it's taking things much, much further than other stories usually do and into territory where I'm frankly disturbed.
Yes, BNHA started out as a clever critique of hero society and of the very idea it's now seeming to uphold: that the human instinct (which is universal in real life to) to idolize people leads to a lack of humanity for those who do not have those traits we idolize, whether their fault or not, and for people to become villains in response. But not only has it failed to deliver on this premise by upholding society (hey, Naruto and to a degree Tokyo Ghoul also failed to completely change society), it's gone so far as to endorse what it previously criticized.
It's more akin to Game of Thrones Season 8 upholding racism, sexism, and classism, than it is to Naruto or Tokyo Ghoul. GoT ended with a joke about prioritizing brothels being open, as if the misogyny was actually a good thing and not what caused a lot of the problems. There's no critical lens here. It's just like "hey, there was no point in struggling. Monarchies that abuse women, rah rah, let's go!"
BNHA seems to be going a similar route. Deku's murder of Shigaraki, Ochaco's crying over Toga, the way Shouto reaches out to Touya--it's sad, but not framed as something the audience should see as a wrong done on behalf of heroes. In fact, the heroes are not criticized at all. Frickin' Edgeshot, whom no one cares about, is fine. All of them are fine. Their statuses are generally fine, too, except maybe Enji's and even then he's not like going to face the fate of the League and die alone. His family still supports him. Hawks is completely fine and framed positively. His regret over Twice is pure lipservice. Deku really did just need to kill Shigaraki, and all his "I want to save" spiel, much like Ochaco's, is for naught. He just needed to learn to grow up and get in line.
Even if Tenko comes back, and even if Deku like... somehow knew this would happen via vestiges or whatnot (let's be real, he will if this is the case), and the message is just that society isn't ready to move forward, but at least they can live, then... I don't know, y'all. That's still depressing. I don't see how Deku is a hero for that, much less the greatest number one hero. He decided to be a hero at the cost of his own integrity, and if this was a gritty story about the realistic struggle of living in a capitalistic society where ethics are always compromised that would make sense, but... it's not. Even until the final battle, the characters were endorsing idealism.
At the very least, Horikoshi didn't deliver on his promise in the first chapter. At the very worst, he's endorsing fascist ideals.
Like, I'm sorry, but "kill this person for the good of society," the violent upholding of oppressive societal hierarchies, the importance of being a cop hero and the way the military hero brutalities are worshipped, the way heroes are lauded and everyone who doesn't get in line with this is punished, went from being criticized to being endorsed. Those are all central elements of fascism.
The little guy deserves to lose, but, but Deku is the little guy, so it can't be! Except it can be. Because it's actually pretty common irl even to trot out examples of people like Candace Owens to be like "hey, you can't possibly say Republicans are racist!"
And don't you dare say "but Japanese culture makes it unreasonable to expect a non retributive justice!" The Japanese people are not a monolith. Not to mention... Naruto, Bungou Stray Dogs, Monster, Hunter x Hunter, Yu Yu Hakusho, Mawaru Penguindrum, Oshi no Ko, Dragon Ball, Attack on Titan, and Tokyo Ghoul all say hi.
I hated the TG ending, and still hate it, but I'm not going to say that it upheld the CCG as right all along because it didn't. BNHA thus far is doing that with hero society. And even if the answer is for the League be revived and to leave society or whatever, then how can we be happy Deku is a part of this society? How can we root for him, or his classmates? Is he going to work from the inside to change it? Why wasn't that emphasized beforehand as a theme or struggle?
tl;dr Horikoshi has cooked his story no matter what he does now, and I don't think it's salvageable. Either way it has themes that are disturbing especially considering real world events across the globe, and that people should be more aware of instead of focusing solely on stories that have fascism and monsters in them but don't uphold it.
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fight-nights-at-freddys ¡ 17 days ago
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back at it on r/antiship. for the hell of it, let's go thru why these are strawman arguments at best, stupid at worst, or why what they're saying is objectively true!
TL;DR, half of the things they say are correct, but are framed as being bad things, and the other half is just misinterpreting what proshippers actually say. also they don't know what "normalization" or "romanticization" mean.
hiding under the cut so y'all don't gotta scroll for years
-first pic- that isn't the reason conservatives think lgbt ppl are pedos. they'd think that regardless of what fiction they like, because no matter what, they'd see us as predators/pedos/whatever bad thing. q art will always be inherently problematic to conservatives.
the reason WHY people equate "problematic" fanfic/art to q art is because they both deserve to be protected, they both are often called "degenerate", and that if they censor one, they'll censor both, because to the people that want to censor it, they're both one and the same. it's always "too sexual", or "what if kids see it", or "it promotes the Bad Thing", and just because they're pointing the gun at "problematic" fiction rn, doesn't mean they won't turn the gun on YOU.
-second pic- 1. fiction doesn't affect reality! at least not on a 1:1 basis! correct! 2. that is also correct! i can be interested in violent, gory movies, but i don't like OR condone violence or gore irl! correct! 3. if it walks, talks, and acts like a puritan, it's probably a puritan. stop advocating for censorship and puritanism and we won't call you that. 4. correct again! it isn't mine or anyone else's job to monitor what other people's kids do on the internet. the internet is not for children. 5. hate to say it, because i don't wanna say ANYONE protects predators, but antis do tend to create spaces where preds can sneak around undetected as long as they say The Right Thing™. 6. if you're allowing your 6 yr old to watch videos that say "fluttershy supports MAPs!", then you need to take away the ipad, not start banning shit. 7. gonna keep it real, idk what this means. stop using these words, i guarantee you they don't mean what you think they mean. 8. same as above 9. what 10. okay great, good for you that you only know ONE predator that's an anti. what about the hundreds of others that lurk in the shadows because they say the right thing, and pretend not to like problematic stuff? what about Kyle Carrozza, ya know, the anti that was arrested not too long ago? feel like we're ignoring some stuff here for the sake of pretending your side's good, and ours is bad.
-third pic- 1. well, antis are, aren't they? if you think csem should be criminalized (and it should), and you equate fanart to actual csem, then yes, you ARE trying to criminalize fantasy. 2. two things. for one, it's not always a sexual thing. hell, half the time it isn't. and two, fetishes DON'T hurt anyone (unless the whole point is to hurt someone, but there's always consent!) 3. correct! fictional characters don't have rights. are you advocating for them to? 4. you can't act like porn abolition isn't a cornerstone argument for A LOT of antis. if you agree that fictional smut is bad, chances are you think porn's bad, too. (which also overlaps with radfem beliefs too!) 5. they're not blood related because they're NOT REAL. it doesn't matter if they say they're blood related, because they're fictional. 6. are you insinuating you need to get consent from these fictional characters before you ship them? 7. why should i care? does it hurt anyone? no. does it do any damage? no. is there any downside whatsoever? no? then what does it matter. let people do what they want forever.
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