#because he's paranoia i think an eye would be fitting

[sanders-sides-uncorrect-quotes]

More Virgil in the White Lies AU because I just can't stop drawing him

[murdrdocs]

pied piper

murdrtober oct 12th. father charlie mayhew description. between paranoia, extra shifts at work, and the comforting embrace of a catholic priest, you can hardly keep up with everything happening in your life these days. you can only go about it all one day at a time.

includes. SMUT 18+ MDNI, oral (f receiving), paranoia/anxiety, slight religious manipulation, religious doubts, catholicism (but inaccurate i was barely raised baptist)

wc. 5.8k+

a/n: one night only! come one come all and see the weird priest get with the girl who honestly does not know what is happening

You see him often. 

The first few times were from afar. He always elected to sit in a section that wasn’t yours, switching every couple of visits as if he were testing out the spots in the diner. You believed every spot was just like the others—equally as shitty. But there was the spot you liked most. The corner seat in your section, situated between two of the large windows. When there weren’t any spiders or ants nesting in the corner, it was a favorable spot. 

And within the past month, it’s been his spot. 

It’s the longest he’s ever sat anywhere. You initially attribute it to the spot, but then there are things that make you believe he sits there because of you. 

The way his crestfallen expression brightens up when you come over, even if it's barely a noticeable difference. The hefty tips he leaves you, always in cash and always delivered right to your hand. The whispers from your coworkers whenever he comes in on a day where you weren’t working. 

“The priest was looking for you yesterday,” spoken right into your ear as if it were a secret that others would die to be let in on. 

Your coworkers thought it was flattery, maybe his attempt at flirting. But you’d seen what it was like for men to flirt with you through work. The jeers they gave you, the way they eyed your ass in your work pants and made direct advances, no matter how many times you turned them down. That was flirting, not politeness from him. 

Besides, he was a priest, he’d sworn himself to God. Maybe his vice was just a greasy meal once a week, and he didn’t mind a smiling face giving it to him. You didn’t think much of it. 

You didn’t think much of the pamphlet he gave you with your tip today, either. 

“I don’t know if you’re religious, and if you aren’t, I don’t mean to offend. It’s just, um, I preach at this church. Every Sunday.” He scratches the back of his head, watching you look through the tiny pamphlet in your hand. “If you’re interested, everything’s on there. The time, dates, location … yeah.”

You grin down at him. “Thank you,” you say, knowing in your head that you won’t go to a service. Sunday’s are your reset days, a time dedicated to putting yourself in breathable clothing, lounging around a newly cleaned house, watching whatever show you thought about the night before. Church service for a religion you don’t practice doesn’t fit in that schedule. 

Still, you tuck the pamphlet in your apron along with your tip. “I’ll see you next time, Father.”

He nods his head with security, as if he knows that he will only be seeing you at your job and never at his. But he doesn’t say anything, only pulls his mouth into a thin smile before reaching over and taking a final sip from his drink. You walk away from the table, going back to the kitchen and watching him leave from the window. 

You’re lingering. 

Should you stay and say something? Everyone seems to want to speak to Father Mayhew, and you would just be yet another pupil itching to talk to him. But leaving without saying something seems improper. It feels rude. 

You stay put, standing near the door in the lobby, watching the small crowd form around Father Mayhew. 

He looks in his element like this, grinning, nodding along to whatever is being said to him, but there’s something off. He looks a little dissociated, a disconnect between the smile on his lips and the look in his eyes. 

You’re busy analyzing him, pulling up your high school memory of Psychology to throw half assed theories about his attitude around in your head, when he looks at you. It’s quick, nothing but a glance that could have been directed in your general area. Maybe he was simply looking at the door and he ran into you instead. 

But he sees you and he pauses. He doesn’t stop listening, but the grin on his lips contorts for just a second. It loses the rough edge, and then it softens. He looks back at the person he’s engaged in conversation with and you watch as he ends the conversation within the next thirty seconds. 

It’s unprofessional how he dodges those wishing to talk to him in favor of reaching you. You think it’s even more professional for him to grin the entire journey over. 

He says your name like he’s shocked you’re here. 

You’re shocked you’re here, too. 

“Father,” you greet, clasping your hands behind your back. 

“What did you think?” The question throws you off kilter. 

Does he actually care about your opinion on his profession?

Your eyes lift to the ceiling as you think, trying to find adjectives to describe the hour you’ve just sat through. “Um…” you hesitate, flicking through the less favorable adjectives as you attempt to find something positive to say. 

“You thought it was boring.” 

You’re ready to do damage control, your mouth already open with reassurances that are all lies. But Father Mayhew is smiling at you with more conviction than you’ve ever seen from him. When he looks at you like this, he looks more like the young adult that he should be and less like the figurehead of a church that he is. 

You don’t pretend any longer. “It wasn’t that boring, I’m just not a churchgoer,” Father Mayhew nods. He tucks his hands into his pockets and you try not to notice how the sleeves of his black shirt have been rolled up to sit right beneath his elbows. You do get a glance in, though, nothing longer than a second, and when you look back up at him, he doesn’t seem to have noticed. Feeling awkward with nothing else to say, you add, “As you can tell by my outfit. I have been in a church in a while. I didn’t know what people wore these days.”

The implications of asking a Catholic priest to form an opinion on your clothing doesn’t enter your brain until after you’ve said the words, but Father Mayhew doesn’t appear uncomfortable. 

He stands there for a second, just looking at you with too much of something in his eyes. It makes you uncomfortable and you squirm in your church shoes. The movement reminds you of the pain in your toes and on the back of your ankle. 

Father Mayhew’s gaze sweeps down your body, slowly taking in every aspect of you from head to toe. 

“That’s okay. I’m just glad you came. And for the record, I think you look beautiful. Angelic, even.”

God, why is your stomach fluttering from this tiny interaction? You need to get out of here before things go in a direction you hadn’t intended. 

You smile politely at him. 

“Well, thank you for the invite, Father Mayhew. It was … interesting.” 

He laughs as he nods. “Yeah, yeah. Of course. I guess I’ll see you around?” There’s more hope to it this time, like this one excursion has given him the idea that you’ll be back. Will you? 

You stick to nodding, not verbally confirming anything. You turn around, heading for the door, but then he calls your name. 

You turn back around, watching him make up the step that you took away from him. “You can call me Charlie if you like.”

You test his name in your mouth. “Charlie.” It feels wrong without the title in the front. But you still grin, unsure of how often you’ll call him just Charlie, especially when it feels less professional than you would have liked. 

Charlie grins. He says your name once, too. 

And then you reach for the door and step out into the day. 

Despite your initial intentions, you see a lot more of Father Mayhew after that first Sunday. 

He starts to come into the diner just to sit, sometimes steadily sipping a milkshake or a sweet tea while he reads a mass market paperback. In turn, you go to Mass more often, once a month at first, then every other week, and eventually every Sunday, showing your face so often that he starts to look for you in the crowd. Well, at least you think he’s looking for you. 

The crowd he brings in is mixed—some of them younger, drawn in by his relaxed nature that’s a breath of fresh air from the other priests, but most of them are older. You’ve made friends with a couple women, an older woman who sees her grandson in Father Mayhew, and a middle aged woman who understands Father Mayhew better than she’s ever understood any other priest before. 

You sit in a pew with them, listening to them praise the teachings of the lord as it comes from the young priest’s mouth. You nod along with them, ignoring your confusion as you try your hardest to listen. A lot of the material seems contradictory, either to itself or your own personal beliefs. So by the first fifteen minutes, you end up just staring at Father Mayhew, hoping your eyes hold platonic interest even if your emotions are anything but. 

You’ve begun to crave the routine of it all. Waking up early Sunday morning, showering and getting ready just to sit in a church pew, retiring back home where you cleaned with nothing else on your mind except for how dark and deep Father Mayhew’s eyes are. 

It didn’t occur to you that you were lusting after him until later. 

 The weather had begun to cool down, even though it was never really cold here. You could still feel the implications, recognizing how the night began to greet the sky quicker than before, feeling a bite in the air when you finished a closing shift and sped to your car. 

There was a lot happening in your little town, horrors that you couldn’t even begin to fathom. You didn’t feel safe anymore, you couldn’t feel safe when someone was out there committing crimes that only the sickest minds could conjure up. It was inhumane to the point where you couldn’t imagine a human being conducting the murders. There had to be another force at hand. 

Father Charlie understood this. He preached with sympathy towards the victims, and condemnant towards the perpetrator, but there was something else there too. He preached as if he were inside of the killer's mind, painting an understanding for each of you in the pews. When Father Charlie explained it, the killer was humane, with interests and desires just as you have. He was an extremist, yes, but he was an artist all the while. 

You felt less fear when you had the safety net of Sunday Mass. When you had the safety net of Father Charlie. 

“Am I safe to call you an avid churchgoer yet?” 

You’ve grown used to the sound of Father Charlie’s voice, but you weren’t expecting to hear it so close to you. When you jump in your skin, he laughs under his breath. 

You turn around, your eyes wide and your hand pressed over your heart. Your immediate instinct is to expel the Lord’s name, but you know Charlie’s stance on taking the Lord’s name in vain, so instead you tell him, “You scared me, Father.” 

“My apologies.” He reaches his hand out as if to touch you but he stops midway. “You’ve been coming every Sunday for what, the past two months? Three?”

“Yeah. I guess I would technically be considered a churchgoer.”

He places his hands in his pockets, squaring his shoulders, and this isn’t the first time you’ve noticed how strong his structure is. Still, you ogle like this is new information to you. 

“Do you see yourself becoming a Catholic somewhere down the line?”

You go to disagree, preparing to spew the same opinion you’ve had for a while now. You might be coming to church, but you’re here for the community, not much else. But lately, things have begun to change. There’s no reason for you to not consider it at least. 

You shrug. “Maybe.”

“Why maybe?”

Weighing how to formulate your reasonings, you shift from one foot to the other. Father Charlie doesn’t say anything. He just patiently waits for you to respond. 

“I guess there’s just so much that I don’t understand.”

“Like the rules and sins? Along that territory?”

“I guess, but also just in general. Like foundational. Maybe since I didn’t grow up with it I’m just left in the dark.”

Father Charlie’s face lights up. “How ‘bout this, I will explain it to you. Whatever you want. Even if you want me to go from the very beginning.”

You’re quick to politely decline. “Oh, you don’t have to, Father. I can just look things up. Not like I’ve been getting much sleep these days anyway, might as well use the nights for something a little more productive.”

Father Charlie doesn’t let you go without reinstating his proposal. “Seriously. It would be no problem for me. I get to do the two things I love most: spread the word of Christ and help out those in the community. I’ll give you my number and then we can go from there?”

There’s no room for no in there, so you pull your phone out, hand it over to Father Charlie, and watch his thumbs click onto the digits until you have his number saved in your phone. 

You meet with Father Charlie after Wednesday Mass. 

You come in once the others have trickled out, and Father Charlie is always in the same spot—sitting atop his chair in the center, leaning back with his legs spread, appearing contemplative as you humbly approach the altar. 

Whatever expression he had on his face before he sees you is always wiped away as soon as he looks down at you. He grins, big and comforting, and takes you to a small office off to the side of the church, where he patiently listens to your questions and answers them. 

Comprehension entices you, pushing you further and further into religion’s embrace. Session by session, you start to hate the idea of confirmation less and less. 

It’s all thanks to Father Charlie. 

It’s not necessarily comparable for the two of you, but Father Charlie meets you at your workplace, too. When he jokes about it, likening your work to the same level of achievement as his, you sweetly laugh. 

“Not really the same though, is it? Your job is a little more … aspirational, right? No one really aspires to be a waitress at a diner.”

Father Charlie raises his eyebrows as if he’s reprimanding you for negative self-talk. “Hey. Who knows maybe there’s some kid out there who really wants to make ten fifty an hour.”

The bell above the door dings and you glance over your shoulder to see two customers walk in. They hesitate, looking around, before eventually heading off to a table not in your section. 

You turn back around, a little grateful to have more time to speak to Father Charlie. You haven’t seen him since last Wednesday, and you won’t admit it to anyone out loud, but you’ve definitely missed him. 

You’ve missed the smell of his cologne—something fresh and a little earthy. You’ve missed the low timbre of his voice, the dark stare he fixes you with when he’s explaining a Bible verse, the slight twitch in his eyes when you question something for the umpteenth time. 

It’s a slow day today, no one really comes in at 3 o’clock on a Tuesday, so you take a seat across from Father Charlie in the booth. 

His eyes flicker down as if surprised by your actions. You raise your eyebrows, challenging him to comment. 

“Slow shift?” he asks. 

You nod, taking a fry and placing it in your mouth. “You mind if I sit? Keep you company for a bit?”

He only sits back in his seat and pushes his basket of fries to the center of the table. 

He watches you silently finish off the remainder of his fries and whenever you hesitate, he instantly slides his drink over to you, too. A diet coke, you know it before you even wrap your lips around the straw. 

There’s a lipstick stain left behind, but that doesn't stop Father Charlie from leaning forward and wrapping his lips around the straw once you’re done. When he holds eye contact the entire time, you try to ignore the flashing sign in your brain that tells you there are sexual implications there. Surely, he wasn’t thinking that way. 

Father Charlie continues like nothing happened and you maintain your belief that whatever just happened was really nothing on at all. 

“We still on for tomorrow, right?”

You hum, mentally trying to find a work around for the third time today. No matter how many times you run it through in your head, you just can’t do it. Without enough gas, and short on a paycheck, you don’t think it’s responsible for you to drive to Father Charlie, especially for a meeting that will only last an hour tops. Besides, you picked up a shift tomorrow that ends right when you usually meet with him. 

You tell him this, and you shouldn’t be surprised that he’s quick to suggest a solution. 

Father Charlie is so adaptable to your needs, pushing your meetings back by a half hour or a week if you need. You should have known that a small complaint that was out of his hands would have him scrambling to make up for the inconvenience. 

“It’s really no biggie, I can just come by your place then, if that’s okay. We can do later, too, give you some time to freshen up.”

You don’t see why not. Father Charlie has been nothing but kind to you thus far. Besides, he’s a devout member of the community. You don’t think he could ever mean any harm. 

“Yeah. That’s totally fine. I’ll send you my address.”

Having Father Charlie in your home provides a different atmosphere. 

Thus far, you’ve been pushing down your desires for him. Throughout the past few weeks, you’ve been able to avoid the churning in your stomach when he places a—platonic, you think—hand on your lower back as he leads you out of the office after your sessions. 

It was easier to convince yourself that you were just being typically delusional, holding onto small moments to give you giddiness that would push you through a particularly grueling day. Father Charlie’s small smiles and acts of kindness outside of the four walls that you call home was attributed to being a public servant, a member of the community, a priest. 

But here, when he stands close and stares down at you, sending you a small smile while you attempt to hide the grin that wants to rise to your lips, things feel more intimate. 

You need to get away from this moment. You won’t be the one to tempt a Catholic priest’s faith and devotion, no matter how many times you picture tearing his clothes off and letting him take you right on the couch. 

“Could I get you something to drink?” 

Charlie looks around your living room, taking inventory of the decorations hanging on the walls, strategically placed to cover chips in paint and suspicious holes that you’ve never gotten around to patching. 

“What do you have?” he asks as he stuffs his hands into the pockets of his jean jacket. 

It feels weird to see him out of clerical dress. You’ve always thought the mock neck and collar suited him, it worked well with the square structure of his face. But he looks younger like this—dressed down in a plain white tee shirt, jeans, and a jean jacket. 

He looks like the 20-something year old man that he actually is. 

“Lemonade. Soda. Water. I could make you tea, if you’d like. I have earl g—”

“Lemonade sounds fine. Thanks.”

You stalk off to the kitchen to grab him a glass, filling it with ice and lemonade. It’s a task that takes no more than a couple of minutes, maybe a few at most, but you take as much time as you can, standing in the kitchen cursing yourself. Accepting Charlie’s invite yesterday seemed like no big deal, but now you’re regretting it tenfold. 

If you don’t end up succumbing to your own desires, you’ll end up driving yourself insane.

Either way, you don’t think you’ll ever be the same after tonight. If anything, you’ll just have to hope Charlie doesn’t come into the diner for the rest of the week while you cleansed your mind the best way you knew how—disastrously horny imaginative scenarios and masturbation until you were too sensitive to walk. 

You hand Father Charlie the glass of lemonade, trying your best to ignore the satisfying sigh he gives when he takes the first sip. You smile politely when he does it again, folding your hands in your lap as soon as you sit down. 

He downs half of the glass without interruption, and then places the half-full glass on a coaster atop your coffee table. 

“So,” Father Charlie wipes his hands on the denim gripping his thighs. “Should we pick up where we left off last week?”

Last week, you and Father Charlie got into a discussion about sinning. It was trivial, nothing that hasn’t been discussed before, but it has always been on your mind. After knowing him for some time, you felt comfortable enough to discuss it with him, not exactly giving him complete detail involving your many sins, but you alluded to them enough for him to understand your trepidation towards committing to a religion that frowned upon human nature. 

You found yourselves going in circles with the conversation, and you thought today would be different. Apparently not. 

“Everyone sins. That makes us all sinners,” Father Charlie assures. 

“Well, yeah but—”

He doesn’t let you speak. “For example, when’s the last time you judged someone? Held hatred in your heart? When’s the last time you’ve done drugs, smoked weed? Or,” he shifts on the armchair, bringing himself closer to you as if he’s about to tell a secret. “The last time you masturbated?” 

You stay silent, blinking at Father Charlie. How has the conversation pivoted here? Was he just simply giving an example, one he felt you might be able to relate to, or was this something else?

“I’m not saying that I don’t sin, Father. I’m just saying that I don’t think I could be a sinner, and join a religion that despises sinners.”

Father Charlie’s face contorts into one of confusion. “I wouldn’t say Catholicism despises sinners. Sinning is a part of human life and nature. I’ve always believed this. And yes, some sins are worse than others. But some of the cardinal sins are just preposterous. Those who lust a little too much shouldn’t be given the same punishment as a murderer, that I don’t agree with.”

You blink at him when you notice that the conversation has steered back to lust yet again. “Where are you going with this, Father?”

“Charlie,” he corrects, his tone sterner than you’ve ever heard it before. 

You suddenly feel smaller than you did before. Sitting in your home, on your couch, you feel out of control. 

Charlie stands and approaches you. He looms over you for a second, standing with his torso right in your eyeline. You stare at the material of his shirt for a moment, nervous about the sight you’ll see if you lift your eyes. But when Charlie doesn’t move, you know what he wants from you. 

You look up to find him already staring down at you, 

“The point that I am making is that without sinning, we would not be human. I understand this, but I don’t think the Church will ever understand. They would rather sit by, follow tradition, and let the Church die. But things are changing. Slowly, but they are changes happening.” Charlie kneels down but he doesn’t break eye contact. He slowly raises a hand, and you watch it meet your knee from your peripheral vision. 

“My conversations with you these past few months have been insightful. I … I used to think about the Church like you do. The contradictions, the injustices within the Church… I thought I moved on from that but now I’m not sure.” He trails off, breaking eye contact to stare off to the side. 

“Charlie, are you questioning your faith? Did I make you question your faith?”

His eyes snap back to you. “No.” He takes a moment, as if considering, and then he repeats himself, a little firmer this time. “No. But I am beginning to realize that not all evil should be turned away or casted out. Some evil is natural. We should shine a light on it, give it our attention, give it room and allow it to grow. One can be a sinner, while also being a member of the Church. I am living proof of this.” His hand trails up your thigh as he speaks. You don’t think you’re following his train of thought, mostly because you can’t concentrate when he’s touching you like this. 

“Do you understand what I’m saying?”

You blink down at him. You could ask him to repeat himself, but you don’t think you need to. He might be speaking in a way that’s going in one ear and out of the other for you, but the implications that he’s feeding you with every touch and every glance up at you through the long fan of dark eyelashes framing even darker eyes are clear. 

You know what Charlie wants from you. 

“Yes. I understand.”

He smiles, just a small, almost shy, quirk of his lips. 

“And do you feel the same way? Do you see things how I see them?”

This time you only nod. It happens in a flash, Charlie’s hand cupping the back of your neck, pulling your face down to his. You almost fall off of the couch with the movement, but you hold yourself up with both hands on his shoulders. Immediately you feel the thick structure of muscle beneath his shirt. 

“I need to hear you say it.” 

You don’t mean to hesitate, but you do. You want Charlie, you have wanted him since the first time he sat in your section. But he’s a priest for God’s sake. What type of person willingly sleeps with a priest?

When you tell him this, his nostrils flare and his jaw tenses. 

“What type of person?” he repeats. “A sinner. That’s what you are, right? You told me that when we first started having private sessions, didn’t you? You told me you sin too often to commit to the church. You couldn’t possibly find yourself in the home of Christ if you are out sinning every weekend, and then be forced to confess each and every sin in excruciating detail.” 

His hand slides up your inner thigh now. He tilts his head, staring up at you as if he’s innocent. “And you never did tell me about those sins, did you? About the times you went out partying, brought some guy back here.” He slides his fingers up until they reach the button of your jeans. “Did you let him fuck you right here? Slip your dress up and your panties down for him. Sit yourself on his cock. Let him defile you like you’re nothing but a common whore.” 

He pops your jeans open and glides your zipper down. “You’re not, by the way. I think you’re more than that. If you were a common whore, you would’ve put out by the third, maybe fourth, session. But you’ve been a good girl. You’ve been holding out on me.” He pulls your pants down, quirking an eyebrow up at you when you don’t lift your hips to allow him to pull them down the rest of the way. You eventually lift your hips up, and you watch Charlie smile to himself. 

“I had to be the one to make the first move.” He laughs, but the humor in it doesn’t allow you in on the joke. 

You expected Charlie to go slow. In the brief moment where he continues pulling your jeans down your legs, you thought he would take his time, prolonging each moment and every movement. But he doesn’t do this. He speeds taking off your pants, throwing them off to the side without much consideration at all. One of the legs almost hits the glass he has on the coffee table, and you watch in horror as it barely misses it. 

Even if the glass was knocked over, you don’t think you would have wasted time to clean the mess up. This was your main priority now. 

There’s no hesitance to his movements. He’s done this before, maybe more recent than you think. 

He’s presented with your cunt, still clothed by the thin layer of your panties. He licks his lips, a small smile tugging up one corner. He doesn’t say anything, but you know he’s noticed how soaked you are, definitely soaked through the cloth.  

He reaches his hand out and pushes his fingertips beneath the waistband of your panties. He pulls them down slowly, presenting your bare cunt agonizing inch by agonizing inch. And then, when he has your panties thrown off to the side, he doesn’t waste anymore time. 

His big hands grip the outsides of your thighs, calloused fingers pressing into the miscellaneous bruises you have. As soon as he finds them, he digs his fingers into the tender spots, holding you still even when you writhe around in his grasp. Charlie keeps you still, his mouth remaining flush against your cunt, not like you’re trying to get away from that. 

The discomfort paired with the pleasure is a new one for you, and you fear that once this is all over, you’ll crave this combination more and more. But you know you won’t ever want it from anyone that isn't him. You only trust Charlie to give it to you like this. 

You trust Charlie to devour you while you sit on your couch, your hands tangling in his dark hair, pushing his nose into the low cut bush that tickles his skin. You trust him to guide you to an orgasm. 

It’s like he’s your pied piper. 

Charlie puckers his lips and sucks, gliding down from your clit to your entrance throughout. He flicks his tongue out, lapping up your essence, and then shallowly inserts the pointed tip into your walls. He flattens his tongue then, nuzzles his nose into your clit, and shakes his head. 

Your nails scratch Charlie’s scalp and he groans right into you. You watch his eyelids flutter, long lashes fanning out, so you repeat it. This time he comes up for air, licking his lips just before he pants into the open air. 

You feel heavenly, but you can’t help but worry that you’re at fault when you let Charlie have you like this. You’re the one who leads a mostly normal life. You never consider the religious implications of lying with a man at night, because that’s not who you were. But Charlie had never suggested that this was the kind of person you were. You were just having trouble figuring out if that was just a falsehood by omission, or if this simply isn’t the man that Charlie usually is, and he’s been turned this way by you. 

Guilt begins to perch on your shoulders, taking the shape of a vulture. It sits at bay for now, but you know it’s there. 

It’s too much for you to handle right now, too much to consider when your brain is mostly fog, so instead you spread your legs a little wider and tighten your hold on Charlie’s hair. 

The heels of your feet dig into Charlie’s back and you feel something beneath his shirt. A form of abrasions, healing skin raised off of his back. Your eyebrows pinch together and you bring your head down so you’re looking at Charlie instead of the raised bumps in your ceiling. You’re about to ask him about it, his name beginning to form on your lips, and then Charlie sucks your clit into his mouth and twists the finger he has in your walls. 

Your orgasm kills the unasked question. 

Charlie grins up at you the entire time; you feel it while you’re noticing the way the corners of his eyes crinkle. 

The relationship you have with Father Charlie is weird. It’s unorthodox.

You’ve attempted to keep things separated with Father Charlie after that first night. You refuse to address him by just his first name. You’ve kept up with your sessions, but they only happen in the church and never at your home. You’re trying to be considerate of his faith. 

But things aren’t right. 

You still aren’t a confirmed member of the Church, but you find yourself at mixers, knowing the names of the others, even beginning to address the Sisters like you’re one of them. Father Charlie stands at your side the entire time, a smile on his face, a look akin to that of a proud mentor in his eyes. 

Either way, you still find comfort in him, especially when the killer—Grotesquerie is his name, Sister Megan told you one morning over coffee—continues to strike. 

That’s where you find yourself now, seeking comfort from Father Charlie in the center of the otherwise empty church. It’s Wednesday, service will be starting soon and you should be heading out for your shift. But you couldn’t possibly leave and drive on your own without expelling some of your worries. 

“I’m scared, Charlie,” you admit for what feels like the first time, your voice wavering. 

Charlie shushes you. He takes a step closer, circling his arms around your shoulders and running a calloused hand over your hair as he pulls you into his chest. “Don’t be. There’s no reason for you to be scared, okay? He’s not targeting you.”

You shake your head. “How do you know that? You can’t know that.”

“I do. He’s going for sex workers. Remember what Sister Megan said in her article? ‘Women of the night’. That’s not you.”

You are still with your head against his chest, your ear positioned over his heart. The thrum of his heartbeat is steady, something that should be comforting. You can’t be comforted right now, though. “I know but … I just can’t … I can’t–” The words won’t find you, not without your eyes and nose burning at least. 

Charlie inhales, the sound restricted by his teeth. He rocks you side to side, the circle of his arms sliding down to your waist. “Look, if it makes you feel any better, how about I make sure you get home safe? Alright? What time are you off?” 

You shouldn’t have agreed, but you did. 

That night, you lay with Charlie on your couch. Your bed felt too intimate, too inappropriate for a relationship that was not really supposed to be a relationship at all. You try to sleep, and eventually you do. 

You dream of Charlie, standing in the center of your living room, watching you get off. His hands are bloody and his back is scarred. 

When you wake up, he isn’t there. 

[animeyanderelover]

Anon: May I request Platonic Mukamis with a little sister?

Tw: Yandere themes, toxic relationship, possessive behavior, obsession, overprotective behavior, clinginess, delusional mindset, isolation, manipulation, threats, self-harming tendencies

Little sister

None of the Mukami brothers are related by blood yet their bond surpasses that of even siblings who are related. They have been sticking together ever since they found each other and fought for their survival in the unforgiving world. They find you when you are but a mere baby, a few months old at best, left behind in a side street as if you are disposable trash. Whilst Yuma and Ruki show some hesitation as they don't know how capable they will be to provide for you, especially since you are so young and dependent, Kou and Azusa are immediately enraptured when you look at them with innocent doe eyes. Azusa even starts crying as he begs his older brothers to take you in and ultimately Ruki gives in to his pleas. It is always difficult but they try their best to cater to your needs as good as they can and even give you a name after a lot of small arguments about what name fits you best. Your wellbeing is prioritised over even their own as your presence is like rays of sunlight, warm and welcoming. When Karlheinz offers to transform them, all of them immediately take the offer as they realise that this is their chance to give you the treatment that you deserve.

Ruki Mukami

📘​Even if Ruki has expressed his doubts when the four brothers found you back when they were still humans, he has grown into the role of your oldest brother. Perhaps even a little bit too well. The fact that he didn't immediately want to take you under their care when you were still a baby is something he hides from your knowledge even so many years later and he has urged his brothers to do the same. He fears that if you were to ever find out about his initial hesitance, you would turn your back on him and favor his younger brothers over him. He takes immense pride in the fact that he is your oldest brother as he likes to treat it as if it would give him some special rights in comparison to his younger brothers. Those special rights include making most of the decisions for you as he claims that as the oldest he naturally has the most experience and knows what would be best for you in every situation of your life. If you have anything that worries you, Ruki encourages you to seek him out. He is the one who oversees your homeschooling as his brother and him have all agreed that attending school with humans is far too dangerous for you. He can teach you all you need to know.

📘​From all of your brothers, Ruki is the one who places the most restrictions on you, even as you grow older. His motivations lie largely within his paranoia and his overprotective tendencies because even if you are a half-vampire just like them, he can't stop himself from still seeing that little, toothless baby in you that smiled whenever she saw his face. It is only natural for you to grow older and more independent yet Ruki finds himself despising that process as he worries that one day you may intend to leave the mansion and go on your own adventures. You are his little light and you have always been and he has always been your big brother and intends for you to continue thinking that way. He is quite adamant on family events where all Mukami siblings participate and his brothers have never once rejected that idea because it means spending precious time with their adored, little sister. The happiness you five share is not an illusion and he really wants you to realise that whenever such a family event happens. You could never get the same amount of happiness with anyone else besides them. Do you understand him? It is best and safest for you to always stay with your beloved brothers.

Kou Mukami

​🎤​From the very first moment your bleary eyes met his own, Kou has known that he would do everything for you and turn into anyone if it meant to keep you and protect you. You are a little princess that deserves the world yet surviving on the streets always meant that he couldn't treat you the way he wanted to. When Karlheinz transformed them and gave them capabilities and riches they could have never dreamt about before, Kou finally could do what he hadn't been able to do before. From the very first day since they started their new life to the current day, your second-oldest brother has never stopped spoiling you absolutely rotten. Whatever you have wanted throughout your life, you have always gotten from him as prices nor rarity of the object you wanted have never mattered to him. Kou is quite playful and he proudly claims that title as your favorite playmate. Whether you want him to play with your puppets with you or want to play hide and seek with him, he has always entertained you. Ruki has reprimanded him already due to the risk he sees in some of the games he plays with you but Kou has always reassured him that he would never allow you to get hurt.

​🎤​From the first night they took you in though, Kou has always sung for you. It always made his heart swell when you would start crying during the day or night but would slowly calm down the moment he started singing a lullaby for you. It is one memory he greatly bemoans the older you grow and lullabies start being less important to you yet he still sings for you quite often. He composes a lot of songs and many of them he has written for you during his life, soothing melodies and kind words to calm your frightened young mind as you grew up. You still love his voice and his music though and that knowledge fills him with pride and with warmth and he gladly allows you to try to write a song of your own or teaches you how to play an instrument. He finds himself playfully pouting whenever he notices that you prefer spending time with another one of his brothers, he can't help the tinge of jealous he feels whenever he witnesses that sight. He tolerates it though as he knows that Ruki, Yuma and Azusa are mindful of the time they spend with you. Such jealousy always evaporates the moment you compliment him though or tell him how much you love your big brother.

Yuma Mukami

​🌱​Yuma has his doubts when they initially pick you up because he knows how harsh the environment is that they live in. He has always been tall and physically very strong which allows him to protect those who are important to him. You are still a tiny and fragile baby though. How are you supposed to survive on the streets? Even when Ruki agreed to take you under their care, he still has his doubts. It is the moment he holds you for the first time and you wrap your tiny fingers around one of his that he gathers the determination to defend you till his last breath. After he has been turned into a half-vampire and gained even more physical strength, he has only strengthened that vow in his mind. His tall physical build has always led him to be exceptionally gentle with you, especially when you are still only a small child. A part of him has always been worried that you may be scared of him because of his strength and tall build yet you have never expressed once any anxiety as you always come running to him and stretch your arms out, your large eyes begging him to lift you up and twirl you around. He has never been able to deny those cute eyes of yours, even though he has always been careful.

​🌱​Whether lifting you up, letting you sit on his shoulders or giving you a piggyback, Yuma has always been the equivalent of a human amusement park for you and this is something he takes pride in. He has been taking you to his garden from a very young age too and you are the only person who has ever gotten away with jumping through his patch without getting chased down angrily by him. He enjoys teaching you how to cater to the needs of a plant and how to tell if the fruits and vegetables are ripe or not. Whatever of the harvest you prefer the most is what he ends up sowing and growing the most in his garden just to watch the excited glimmer in your eyes whenever he informs you that it's time to harvest your favorite fruits and vegetables. You are in general quite isolated from other people yet the few times you are taken out, Yuma is terrifyingly efficient to scare away anyone who looks like they consider to approach you. Very few have the guts to chat with you if he is always right behind you after all. All that frightening strength that could easily crush someone's skull is never shown to you though as Yuma has always been only gentle and careful with you.

Azusa Mukami

​🗡️​Azusa has been attached to you from the very start, his heart nearly bursting when he found your little form in a basket all alone as your mother has left you behind. He begs Ruki to let them keep you as he fears that no one else would take you in and that you would end up dying lonely and afraid without having ever experienced love and he even bursts out in tears as he pleads to his older brothers. He even volunteers to take care of you all by himself if no one from that would agree to keep you. He has stayed the most attached to you even up until now, although he has been forced to limit the time he spends with you as you grow older and require a bit more privacy. When you were a baby he would always be right next to you or hold you even himself as you fell asleep, his fingers playing with your small ones and he would read bedtime stories to you, always happy when you came running to him with a book clutched in your hands that you wanted him to read to you. The youngest brother of yours often finds himself bemoaning the time when you were so cute and tiny, even if you will forever be his baby sister for him. Sometimes he still asks you if he can read a book to you.

​🗡️​Whilst his older brothers care for him, Azusa has some self-harming tendencies and they have always been worried that he might set a bad example for you. They care for him and want him to stop because it saddens them to see him like that but they are also afraid that you might pick up on it or would get scared once you are old enough to realise what Azusa is doing. To all of their relief helping to raise you seems to rid Azusa of that unhealthy behavior of his for the most part as he instead dedicates much more time to protect and raise you lovingly. Yet he has some relapses at times, mostly when you have an accident or fall ill. He cares deeply for you so seeing you in any kind of pain induces him with such anxiety that he feels his throat tightening and his vision blurring. In a very twisted sense of wanting to suffer with you, he resorts to grabbing a knife and cutting himself over and over again to show solitude with you. Azusa never tells you the truth behind all the bandages and the band-aids he wears the next time you see him though as all of his brothers have warned him that he might make you feel guilty. Being the reason for your sadness is the last thing Azusa would want.

[what-am-i-doing-in-this-fandom]

You. You get it 🥹

Stan taking Ford's identity is so NotThem from The Magnus Archives coded send tweet

[tooscaredtopostonmainrip]

Hi bbg can u write a reverse comfort with Lilia and Ruggie (comforting lilia + ruggie ) where they think the reader does NOT like them back because they’re always seen with another person so They confront them and turns out they like each other !! Basically it’s overall fluff + angst !!

a/n: MY FAVOURITE READER HAS ARRIVED ,.,,,,,, i MAY be biased. ANYWAYYYY HERE U GO ALSO IM SO SO SO SORRY I GOT WRITER'S BLOCK. IM EMBARRASSED OF MYSELF SORRRYRYRYYR --- ALSO ... I TWEAKED IT A LITTLE BIT TO FIT THE WAY I'D THINK IT WOULD GO, SO SORRY IF ITS NOT TO UR LIKING

CW; BOOK 7 SPOILERS IN LILIA'S PART (if you dont want to read it, skip the first and second paragraph!!!)

🦇 LILIA VANROUGE

Lilia never really had time for romance. Between the war and the constant paranoia of being on the receiving end of an ambush, he never let himself lower his walls - to truly form an intimate bond with somebody that wasn't immediate family.

Infact, during the war, falling in love was one of the worst things that could happen: It meant having an open weakness. And if that person never came back, you wouldn't have time to wallow in despair since they'd immediately call you next to the front lines. It was one of the worst things to happen to somebody, and Lilia, therefore, found no interest in bonding in such a way. It would be truly unwise, especially since he had to lead an army. He'd have to split his attention between the army and the partner of choice, and he wasn't gonna add to his workload just for fun.

Now, it's all different. Times have changed, and instead of worrying about whether you'll survive the day tomorrow and what you will eat, you worry if your homework is due today or tomorrow at midnight, and if the test's results are gonna be coming back soon. Yes, almost everything has changed, but Lilia never really let his past ways go. Old habits die hard, as they say. (Especially after Meleanor and Levan...)

Well, they did until he met you. Sure, it wasn't love at first sight - more like, interest at first sight. But with time, he truly did feel as though you were an old friend. With time, he started letting his walls down and truly enjoy life with somebody beside him.

Now, he knew of your little crush on him. Why? Well, it was quite obvious. The way you'd fidget when you were around him, or how your eyes seemed to shine when you saw him loitering around in your peripherals. Yes, it was quite obvious. But on the other side, his own affection was, on your end, left unnoticed. It was fun to flawlessly conceal his own beating heart and the blinding grin he'd let out whenever you gave him a compliment - while also, at the same time, giving you mixed signals. He'd have no hand in you later realizing he was a lot more buddy-buddy with blurred boundaries with you than others, even though he denied all allegations. The game of cat and mouse was just too amusing, and he wanted to keep it going for as long as he could.

Everything you did drew him in, and your sweetness left him wanting for more. In his old age, he didn't feel like he should indulge in this, but your honeyed smile and warm embrace held a tight grip on his heart, and so he relented. The heart wants what it wants, he'd say.

Well, for as long as he could, that's true. He knew it would have to end someday, but it would've been better on his own accord. Well, he'd muse. Guess the fun has to finish one day. And today's the day, as much as he may loathe it, somewhat.

Recently, you've been hanging out with someone. He didn't even bother remembering their name, as they were so unimportant he just didn't feel like even putting the minimal effort to put an identity to that face. He didn't want to be petty, but when the person's "hanging out" times bled into his own alone time with you, that truly did the trick. Behind a toothy smile hid a thin-veiled annoyance that stuck to him like tar and ink. It made his nose twitch in annoyance, but he quickly smoothed it all over and kept his composure. He'd let the person have their fun with you for a while, but if they overstepped they'd be done for.

But at the same time, he'd started doubting himself. If he were his past self, he'd be absolutely scandalized that he'd let himself stoop so low as to not trust his own instinct, and he was sure that you were still somewhat interested in him, but the way you kept spending time with that person, and the way you'd immediately stop everything and help them, and the way you'd share laughs with them almost like you did with him... It was getting increasingly harder to keep his calm. (he's in denial, he was never calm.)

Next course of action? Talk to you. For the first time in a while - he'd open up to you, and tell you what he truly felt. He didn't want to be the one to talk about this, but since the problem wasn't going away, he'd have to take drastic measures. At the time he was sure you did like him back, but now it was all up in the air due to that uninvited variable. Maybe he was still sour about the game you were playing with him having an early end. (No, he's sour about someone trying to steal you away. But he knew that very well.)

And that leads to... Right now. The wind seemed to be trying to soothe him, but his thoughts were entirely elsewhere. On another dimension, where he thought about the way you talked to him and the way you always seemed joyous with him. But... Maybe he read it wrong? He scoffed at his own insecurity, but in a silent, small part of his mind... He'd still think about it. No one can grow if they don't admit they're wrong once in a while, yeah? Even though he thought he did all the growth he needed in his youth. Guess there's always room for improvement.

His bat refined hearing immediately picked up on you jogging over to him, and he quickly went back to his bright persona, but unlike with others, it was a little more relaxed. Dare I say, more real.

Your beaming smile, and your soft demeanor made him feel a little less on edge, and he thought that maybe, it'd be alright. That you truly did see something in him. He loathed being so vulnerable, but this wasn't a war zone. You wouldn't mercilessly use him and his feelings, you weren't the kind of person to do that. So, he waited for you.

On your end, you were excited to see Lilia. With all the hanging around you did with your new lab partner you'd been randomly paired with, you hadn't had time to give him the attention you desperately wanted to give him. He wasn't used to you not spending every bit of your day with him, you'd joke to yourself. Maybe he will demand an explanation, with a dramatic flair, of course. He'd always had a penchant for the theatrics.

But the moment you stepped in front of him, you noticed... something, in his expression. Now, everyone who'd hear you say that would side eye you because, on what basis are you saying that? Well... The vibe was off. He wasn't as cheerful as usual, and with how long you've been talking with him, you knew a few of his tells. All of this, on what basis? Well, on a best friend basis, of course. Even though, you'd prefer a title more intimate... But that's something that no one will catch you dead saying.

"My dear bestie!" And thus, his theatrics ensued. You cringed a bit at his use of modern slang, but it was endearing nonetheless.

You chuckled a bit but still greeted him with a quick "Hi Lilia!", afterwards - addressing the elephant in the room. "What's up? Any news?" You inquired.

His grin beamed, and he played up his tone of voice, making it a bit exxagerated. "Oh there is something up!" You definitely agreed with him. Something was up. And it was something wrong.

"Yeah? What is it?"

"You left me alone for oh so long! You'd do that to a cutie like me?" Why was he being so weird?

You were a bit put off by him acting so weird. "Lilia, what's really up? Please tell me."

His face soured, and the thin curtains opened for a second. You saw how he was internally berating himself for something, and how he was truly annoyed. It was a mix and match of emotions that you didn't quite get, so you waited for Lilia to explain himself when he'd be comfortable doing so. The curtains closed, and his eyes kept boring holes into you.

"What do you mean? I'm perfectly okay!"

You bit your lip, and tilted your head slightly. "Come on, what's up?" You squinted your eyes, and he decided that enough was enough, no more games.

"Do you like your new friend?"

The question shocked you, but you didn't let it show. Looking at his face... It didn't seem like he was joking... What was the best course of action? You didnt know, but you decided to stall the conversation to understand what was going on.

Your question was probably futile, but you tried anyway. "As a friend?"

"You know what I meant."

You glanced around, and feeling a bit embarrassed you tried to reason with him. "Come on Lilia, I-" The cutoff was quick, and he immediately asked the question again.

"Do you?"

He wouldn't let it go if you didn't tell him the truth. And so, with a bit of red dusted on your cheeks, you answered his query.

"No, I don't."

The silence was overbearing, and the way Lilia studied you made you want to hide in a hole and forget all of this. But you soldiered on, keeping a brave face and waiting for his move.

His eyes seemed to light up after a while, and you let out a breath you didn't know you were holding.

"Why so tense?" His light chuckles helped to alleviate the tension in the air, but you still thought that maybe... It was time to pop the question.

Lilia would've never, ever seen that coming. "Now why would I answer that first? You first-"

"Do you like me?"

And with renewed courage, you answered.

"I do."

His shock shined through, and he dropped all notions of dancing around the topic. His jaw was almost ajar, and he looked at you like a newborn hearing the sounds of nature for the first time.

Then, his grin came back at full force. But this version... It was sweeter. Like a childhood blanket enveloping you. Or your favorite candy from your childhood.

"I love you too."

And with that, he held your hand and smiled at you, the best smile you'd ever seen. He didn't need to know who was near you all the time, because he knew your heart belonged to him. And so did his, to you.

BONUS

("I knew it! Never shall I doubt my instincts again!"

"Uh oh... Your ego grew 10x in size."

"You say that, but you're still here!"

"Yeah, I am <3" )

🦇

Being from the slums isn't for the weak hearted, to put it lightly. Falling in love was a luxury few could afford - while sharing meals with somebody and having more manpower sounded cool and all, you're never truly sure if the other will one day just up and go with all the stuff you've gathered. Ruggie never wanted to gamble when it came to his belongings, so he didn't take the risk during those times. When he came to Night Raven College, he still found no reason to fall in love, it wasn't like people would really lower their walls easily, and he didn't feel like putting all the effort in doing just that. Plus, everyone was all so slimy, and to love you'd have to also lower your own walls - no doubt they'd take advantage of him. Overall, not an advantageous position, so no way.

🐆 RUGGIE

That's what he used to think. You... changed his view, somewhat. Of course, he didn't fall immediately like some fairytale. Unlearning all his instincts would be a death wish, and that would've been an insult to every hyena and beastman that was from the streets - he just had a bit of interest. He knew the stakes, so he didn't try his luck too much.

You showed him kindness, a warmth that was rarely, if ever, genuine. You weren't a happy go lucky like those snobs from Royal Sword Academy, but you weren't exactly gloomy either. You were, different. You showed him a world he'd never dreamt of seeing, and you were way too in the role to be lying to him. Still, being cautious was never a wrong move.

To be honest, his first thoughts were to just use your kindness. He, at the time, held no hard feelings about taking advantage of you. Lets be real, he never expected someone to just blatantly give him some warmth and not be expecting him to not even have at least one thought about what he could do with that, and not in a nice way.

But you were clever. You didn't let him take any chances, and you didn't let him backstab you. You were always one step ahead, and to his attempts at stealing and using you? You didn't bat one eye. He should've been deterred, but... Why? why are you making him feel so protective over you? Was it a mishap during potionology? What's this... warmth?

With time, he began to begrudgingly accept your kindness as it is, with no catches. He didn't try to find any flaws in your walls, and didn't try to use you as much as before. Food was game, though. You couldn't delete that part of Ruggie even if you tried. It was hardwired into his skull since day one.

He was in constant denial of his feelings, escaping all confrontation inside and outside his mind, and living "blissfully unaware" until it came to bite him in the ass. And when did that happen? You guessed it. Today.

Not exactly today, your switch up happened a week or so ago. It was more like, his tolerance ended today.

Long story short? you began hanging out with this no name low rep student, and you ditched your (self proclaimed) best friend. Now that was the plot twist of the century!

Had you... began to think he's using you? Well, the food part is obvious. But he never used you in other aspects! Well... You didn't give him a chance to, but that's just details. And now he's so attached (hurts to say, but denial cant go any longer) so even if he uses you he doesnt know how'd that end on his side. Seeing you get all chummy with... that. hurt him more than he'd like to admit.

He wasn't sure if he should've talked to you and just upped and confessed, but he also reasoned that he'd lose the free food. (and something more.), so... he waited for a bit. And he waited. And waited...

Each day, he felt more and more high strung. What was that no good scum doing? Why was he hogging you all to himself? What was he planning? Now, you don't even come over at lunch and hang out with him while giving him some of your food. You just... Go and sit with that idiot.

That's it, he thought. He would tell you that he wasn't okay with you breaking your (made up) deal of giving him food. Using stupid excuses, of course. You'd see right through him, but he'd try anyway.

And then, came the fateful day. He texted you to come over, and you did. The classroom was empty when you arrived, other than the hyena beastman looking a bit nervous.

He looked at you and gave you his trademark grin, before breaking into an exasperated facade, shrugging his shoulders and acting like a parent with a child.

"Wow, have been so caught up hanging out with your newest 'friend' that you forgot about the original!" He found himself emphasizing the word 'friend' with a slight snark that'd be missed if you hadn't known him for so long. That immediately caught your attention, but to be sure, you let him speak to hear what he had to say.

Ruggie noted the silence and kept going, finding no reason to just make the conversation die already. "Listen, you can't go back on our deal-" "-I chose to give you food out of my free will-" "-and expect me to not say anything!" Cutting you off while talking was uncalled for, you'd think. But you didn't care all that much. This was pretty amusing.

His stance changed, and he furrowed his eyebrows while folding his left arm near his chest with a dramatic flair. "Gotta eat someway! How could you just leave poor ol' me to fend for myself? Did you realize how hungry I was?-" "-I saw you stealing food-" "-How could you be so cruel!" His ear twitched, and with time he realized he wasn't getting anywhere. You weren't buying it, as expected. But... You looked amused. He was glad you were enjoying yourself. Wait! Focus. He wanted to get rid of that person stealing you, and he got into the role so he had to see it to the end. Definitely not doing this for you to have fun, too.

"So, you wouldn't let your poor friend starve, right?" ... "Well, tell you what, I know a way to let you save me.

"Well, I cant."

What?

"What?" Inside his mind, he was panicking. Did he just lose his chance? He needed to keep a cool head. But... It was getting increasingly harder. Why? Why can't you?

"Come on... I know I don't have the best reputation, but give it some thought? Please?"

"Sorry, but can't." For now, at least. you thought.

He was getting more and more desperate, something new for him. He'd never been desperate for anything but food and money. Being desperate for a person? Now that was new. And he wasn't sure how to take it.

But right now, he knew that his friendship (gosh how he hoped for more...) with you might be in danger, and he had to find a way to keep you with him, and fast.

"Hey hey hey. What about, I give you 5% of all my income? pretty good odds, right?" His trademark grin would've persuaded you, if it hadn't a hidden side to it. He seemed nervous. You thought it was funny how desperate he was for the miniscule bits of free food.

"Not interested, again. Sorry, but can't really negotiate this."

His grin wavered, and his eyes kept looking at you, looking more and more weary and worried by the minute. "Hey. Think about it." His voice was about to crack, but that wouldn't have been very persuasive, wouldn't it?

Free food, huh. you thought. Why is he so adamant on this?

"Please." His pleading made you stop what you were thinking. What? That sounded way too real. Why?

"Why are you so insistent?"

"Because I love you!"

The silence in the room was overwhelming, and your shocked expression made him like he did the dumbest thing ever. Before he could say that it was a joke, you immediately replied.

"I love you too, Ruggie."

Another whiplash. He... Didn't expect to lash out like that.

"Funny joke. Real funny." His unbelieving gaze kept its place looking into your eyes, searching any tells of you lying. But... You didn't seem to be lying. His shock must've showed on his face, because you immediately rebutted.

"Ruggie, I love you. I truly do, I love all of you." Your gaze kept firm, and for the first time in a long time, Ruggie felt... Loved. Safe? It... was difficult to sift through and understand an emotion newly discovered. He never thought something like this would happen to him someday. He was still expecting you to get out a camera and say that it was all a joke. But as he waited, you... Didn't seem to have anything like that in mind.

He didn't cry, but you held his hand. And you promised to not leave him. And you told him that this wouldn't change anything, and that it's okay that he was jealous. It was weird for him, but he felt... Content.

Somehow, you made a hyena from the streets, one of the most elusive and mischievous species living on the streets, infatuated with you. Guess he did get a happy ending he never even dreamed of, huh?

BONUS

(Later that day, he found out that the person who led to all of this was actually a friend that was helping you set up a shop outside school so Ruggie could also work a bit at an honest job. Cue to him getting embarrassed and trying to brush it all off)

🐆

[lalunanymph]

BLACKMAIL KISS — h. ran

𓆩ꨄ︎𓆪 ─── a single night of rebellion against your husband, the mayor of Tokyo, in an underground Roppongi club, traps you right in Haitani Ran's web of blackmail and deceit—where every move you make could potentially be your last one.

𓆩ꨄ︎𓆪 ─── a bonten!haitani ran miniseries inspired by hametsu no itte

𓆩ꨄ︎𓆪 ─── bonten timeline, fem!reader, wife!reader, reader is feminine coded (wears dresses, heels, makeup), heavy tones of cheating/infidelity, DARK CONTENT, blackmail, political drama, non-con recording, drugging, mentions of cigarettes, mentions of alcohol & drugs, edging training, tease and denial, orgasm control, phone sex, petnames (princess, good girl, whore, slut), coercion, reader is forced to take nudes, HEAVY TOPICS PROCEED WITH CAUTION

𓆩ꨄ︎𓆪 ─── bittersweet blackmail with this playlist

𓆩ꨄ︎𓆪 ─── masterlist

#1: i made another mistake

As a child, growing up with any lack of good direction or faith gave Haitani Ran an almost scary sixth sense when a person was completely foreign to his world of sin and greed. 

Ran liked to think it was also his entire adult life spent in Kanto Manji, and now, Bonten which helped him discern the different types of brokenness in this messed up world. 

It was a game he played with himself; observing the way some of them walked—an errant glance away or a quirk which would draw his sleepy-sharp lilac eyes to their floundering presence. He could almost always tell which girls in his club were the runaways. The druggies. The ones with abusive boyfriends. Sometimes, he liked to make a bet with his brother, Rindou, and see which one of them could get close enough—fast enough—to fuck the truth out of these crummy girls. 

But, in all fairness, Ran’s game must be growing weak because the woman who had just entered his club was a complete enigma. 

The taste of Hennesy was strong on his tongue; his hand clawing the warming glass with an uncharacteristic tension. Mikey had just expressed his suspicions of a mole in the organisation this afternoon, and Ran was on edge from figuring out which of the newly onboarded goons seemed the most suspicious. 

In his heightened state of paranoia, he couldn’t be faulted for immediately spotting you from his perch in the VIP room the very second you stepped in. 

Neatly styled hair, with press on nails clutching a small Balenciaga bag to your chest. A dress which fitted you perfectly and looked to be cut from a designer’s hand. 

You definitely weren't the usual type of girl who swam with the sharks in these tanks. And so, the infamous older Haitani brother called over one of his men, nodding in your direction. “Keep an eye on the prissy one. She doesn’t look like she belongs here.” 

“Yes, Sir.” 

His bodyguard bowed, exiting down to keep an eye on this suspicious young woman who had caught his underboss’ attention. Ran lit up a cigarette, wishing he had something stronger with him besides menthol sticks when he noticed you crossing paths with someone in the middle of the dance floor. His eyes were quick to catch it. 

A cordial nod. Something passed in a tiny ziplock bag into your hand. 

Your smile which fractured a bouncing neon light across your surprisingly white teeth.  

Ran immediately stood up, cigarette clenched between his teeth. Maybe this kind of attitude would cut it in other territories, but the King of Roppongi would never allow such an offence right under his nose. The people of this neonscape should only be taking meth from his supplies and his supplies only. 

This could result in a potential gang war once word leaks out. 

Ran took matters into his own hands, stubbing out his cigarette, beckoning another guard to him. 

“Bring her up,” he pointed towards you. “And tell her the boss of the club wants to meet her up here for drinks. But, don’t scare her. I don’t want too much trouble tonight.” 

The goon nodded, marching out of the room. Ran pinched the bridge of his nose, massaging it firmly. Already, he could hear your protests coming up the stairs, and mentally braced himself to thoroughly search you. This was going to be a long night. 

“—I’m innocent!” 

“He just wants to have drinks with you, miss.”

“But, I can order it downstairs—” 

“—just for a minute, miss—”

“I have a husband—” 

Feisty. Ran was intrigued by your fire. Without warning, he stood up and pried the VIP door open, stumbling you into a halt mid-tirade. After years of honing his charisma and working on his natural good looks, Ran sensed more than knew when a woman was succumbing to his charms. Their wide eyes would inevitably look him up and down, like you did, lingering on his broad chest, the slicked-back lilac hair. The piercing purple gaze and the sharp, handsome lines of his face.

He plastered on his most charming smile. “You must be the woman who has captured my attention. Please—join me for a drink.” His presence was dazzling, like a Venus Flytrap opening up boldly and brightly to seduce its bug-eyed prey before devouring them. 

You were taken by the hand, deep into the heart of Roppongi’s most notorious club. Like entering a lion’s den, you didn’t know where to look first—the seedy velvet couches, the lines of white still dotting the glass tables, or the sight of empty gun holsters upturned carelessly on the cushion seats. 

Ran sensed your increasing panic and slung a long arm around your shoulder, drawing you deeper into his side. “Don’t be afraid,” he grinned, all sharp knives for teeth and false promises. “Nothing’s gonna happen to you here. I promise.” You looked like you didn’t believe him, not for one second, and Ran rushed forward to introduce himself, playing the part of the flustered club owner who was enamoured by you. 

“My name is Haitani. Ran Haitani. I couldn’t help but notice someone like you entering my club and I just had to know you.” 

“Why?” you were sceptical. Disbelieving. 

Ran hummed. From the corner of his eye, his bodyguard was tapping away on his screen, pretending to look bored when everyone in the room knew he had the most important job of all. It wasn’t hard to coax you into the velvet seat—you looked like you would bolt at any second, but at the mention of gin on the house, you visibly relaxed. 

There was a look to you that was familiar, Ran decided. You had a face someone would’ve seen somewhere in magazines. Pretty, but not pretentious. Just conventionally attractive enough to hold his eye but not to indulge in it. Someone like a Chief of Justice’s wife, or a President’s mistress. Maybe he shouldn’t think so lowly of your position just because you were here—you could’ve been a CEO of your own company, except most girl bosses he knew would be asleep at this time of the night to prepare for another day in their obnoxious offices. 

You sipped on a glass, careful to keep a distance from him. Ran noticed your lips never fully touched the glass rim, like you had practised all of your life to not leave a mark anywhere you went. 

Most definitely someone related to a politician. His mind was racing, sifting through the sudden wickedness arising in his putrid thoughts.

A daddy’s girl turned rebellious. A trust fund granddaughter looking to blow off steam. 

Something about you was familiar. And, you had mentioned a husband. 

Ran pursed his lips, and he was about to straight up ask you who you were, when his bodyguard passed him the phone he had been casually typing on. Those sleepy lilac eyes widened infinitesimally, his breathing stuttering.

He had seen your name before—it rang in the recesses of his memory.

But, that would mean…

Tsunake. Tsunake Y/N. 

It seemed like fate decided to extend a kind hand the years he spent trying to avenge his one and only best friend. 

Ran’s grin became predatory—tinged with a hint of excitement. 

“So… what’s the mayor’s wife doing in this part of the town?” 

Having blown your cover off, Ran was left with your comically alarmed expression. You nervously set your glass down, tittering through tight, red lips. “What makes you think I have a reason to be here?” 

Without warning, he slung his arm around your waist. It happened too fast—fading into a blur. One second, you thought he was going to force himself on you, and before you could even scream, this mysterious man had managed to flip open your purse and pry out the ziplock pouch of drugs. 

“H-hey—!”

“Ecstasy,” Ran pried open the bag, taking one sniff of the contents. “Mixed with a little bit of molly. Are you looking to have a cardiac arrest tonight, Princess?” 

You bristled, baring your teeth. Despite being filled with two glasses of gin, you were surprisingly still sprightly on your feet. “Give that back,” you muttered hotly, glaring daggers into his skull. “It’s none of your fucking business what I take—you have no right to search me like that.” 

“Oh, but I do.” Standing to his full height, Ran resisted smirking when you flinched and took a step back, bowed by his sheer size that towered over you. “I’m the owner of this club, sweetheart, and thanks to your stupidity, I now have you recorded through CCTVs picking up a trade on the dancefloor. I’m sure your husband—the Mayor of Tokyo—would hate to see pictures of his sweet wife blowing up in the tabloids in the middle of a buyoff, would he?” 

The fire in your eyes dimmed, and if it was possible, even your diamond earrings dangling from your lobes lost their lustre. “You… how did you know?” 

Ran shrugged. “I know a lot of things.” 

A snarl decorated your blush red lips. “Are you blackmailing me?” 

This time, Ran couldn’t help but grin. “You catch on fast.” 

Shifting your weight from one foot to another, your withering gaze alternated between faux contempt and dread. Your mind worked quickly, Ran observed. Those pretty eyes darted back and forth, between the languid stances of his men trained to lunge at your throat in a moment’s notice, to the gangly, smug man who held your reputation in his depraved hands. 

“What do you need me to do?” 

You expected him to list off money and favours, not to snort and say, “What do you think I would want?” 

“If it’s money you’re looking for, you won’t find it with me. My husband is not the generous kind,” you argued back hotly. 

“Pass. Not what I had in mind.”

You wracked your brain. “I don’t have many connections outside of my home. I can’t give you political leverage and my husband doesn’t listen to me.” Your hands were beginning to sweat, hoping with all your might he bought your shoddy lie. Ran appeared like he didn’t.

“Come on. A husband who doesn't listen to his wife? Impossible.” 

Sauntering towards you, his grin was a cocky curve standing out from the garish neon lights. Those half-mast eyes held a surprising gleam of reprehensible intent when they bore straight into your wide ones. “You’re lying to me. I bet you had to sneak out of your own castle to get here, Princess.” 

He wasn’t wrong. You bit down on your tongue to avoid blurting out those incriminating words. “I told you. I don’t have the kind of power and influence you’re looking for.” 

“Well,” Ran tilted his head to the side. “Seems like we’re at an impasse here. But, no matter. I’ve learned a lot in this life, Princess. And one thing that I can’t deny? How someone’s hand can move their own fate if they tried hard enough… or, they’re given a big enough shitstorm to wade through.”

You almost asked him what he meant when he pressed a hand onto your bare waist. The cold from his silver rings seeped into your skin, and you would’ve jerked backwards into the wall if it wasn’t for his grip tightening around you. 

“Easy,” Ran murmured, pinning those heavy eyes onto you. He looked like he would’ve nodded off to sleep if you hadn’t felt the steel in his grip—how easily he could overpower you. “I’m not here to hurt you. I want you to trust me.” 

Trust him? You almost spat back how stupid that idea was when he was steering you back to the velvet couches. Passing you a drink, he pressed it firmly into your hand with more force than necessary, and you sensed that you had no choice in refusing his offer. 

Ran tipped his glass to clink yours, downing his gin and tonic in one go. You tentatively sipped on yours, wincing at the alcohol burn when it went down. The music changed, and without much reason why, the room felt more at ease. Those guards went back to their corners, playing poker, talking loudly, laughing rowdily. None of them were paying you two any attention, and even the lights felt warmer somehow. More welcoming. 

You felt pleasantly sleepy, and Ran took your glass before it could spill onto the carpeted ground. 

“Are you okay?” 

“Mhm, tired,” you slurred, slumping forward to rest your head on his shoulder. He smelled nice—like warmed vanilla bourbon on a rainy day. “I dunno why. I think I need to… to close my eyes…” 

You had no idea how you ended up in his lap. Why his lips were on yours, tongue slowly tangling with yours in the deepest kiss of your life. You tasted the gin he downed, skin and something musky which reminded you of sweaty bodies writhing together. It made you wet; made you gasp into his mouth which heatedly spilled hoarse praises right down your throat. You were gripping his hair, his shoulders, his jacket. Trying to find an anchor to the sensations threatening to drag you under. 

Ran kissed down your neck, sucking and mouthing on the skin hard enough that you could feel throbbing marks left behind.

“Can I touch you?” he breathed into the shell of your ear. You had no idea what compelled you to nod, but the second you did, his hand was between your legs, prying the seat of your thong aside.

He cursed under his breath when he felt how slick you were; how your folds were all glistening and ready just for him. 

You started to rock your hips needily, little whimpers trickling past your clenched teeth. “Ran… Ran…” 

His name sounded like a chime—a mantra you repeated over and over again as your thighs shook and your head lolled back. His slender, nimble fingers were too good. They were made for edging a girl right to a cresting orgasm; those cold rings touching your heated flesh left goosebumps at their wake, the contrasting sensations enough to make you even dizzier.

“Ran—” you cried out, back arching and clutching his hair in your death grip. He kissed the rise of your chest, sticky and glittering with sweat.

“Cum for me,” he murmured, hooking his finger against a tender spot inside of you which made your hips twitch—a minute tick signalling your desperation. “Let go for me, Princess.” 

Every fibre of your being held no resistance; falling for his silky command. You remembered the searing heat, the tears beading on your lash line, how your hips were rocking to his mesmerising fingers which bullied more pleasure into your wrecked body. 

Ran kissed you deeply while you came all over his fingers, your sobs and gasps reverberating around the strangely still room. 

The last thing you heard was his voice in your ear, asking if he should call you a cab, and the next, your eyelids fluttered shut, the entire world going black. 

You felt more than heard someone coming into a room. 

Blinking your eyes awake, a weight settled at the foot of a soft bed, shirtless except for a pair of boxers clinging around his narrow hips. Silvery pale moonlight brushed strokes of pearlescent streaks on his inked torso, and slowly, the half-body of a dragon was coming into focus. Rushing to your senses, you gasped, sitting up, patting every inch of your body only to find you were still in your sparkly dress from last night.

“Morning, sunshine,” Ran mused, turning towards you with a cheeky grin on his handsome face. In your throes of deciphering the tattoos on his torso, you hadn’t noticed the ink at the base of his throat—a geometrical design which looked familiar, but you couldn’t quite remember where you had seen it before. 

“Where am I?” your hoarse voice sounded crass even to your own ears. You cleared your throat, and he passed you a glass of water by his bedside table. 

“My penthouse,” he said simply, like it was the most obvious answer. “I took you home after you passed out on top of me.”  

Blinking, you set the glass down. A crawling sensation was growing in the back of your throat, slithering down your belly and settling right in the base of your body frozen to this bed. You glanced at the doors, windows and crevices of this room, looking for a place to hide—to run. 

You had no idea what this man could want with you, but you sensed it was nothing good. 

As if he could read your uneasy thoughts, Ran chuckled. “I’m not here to hurt you. After all, I already got what I wanted from you.” 

Before you could prod deeper, Ran pulled up his phone, tapping on the screen. A grainy video of you straddling his lap while he kissed you with feverish lust came up, and you watched, struck with horror as your entire body fell apart for him, crying out his name with your toes curled in the periphery and back arched. All while you were already married to another man.

“No—” you swiped at the phone and he held it back, standing up tall and dangling it over your head. 

Tears streaked down your face, joined with snot and a cacophony of your bitter protests. “Please, don’t do this!” 

Your bleats barely phased him; after all, Ran Haitani was a man who had many begging at his feet to spare them or give them their sanity back. “No.”

The word devastated you, and you swore you felt your soul break into two. If word of this ever reached back to your husband…

District elections were just around the corner and your husband’s record had to be spotless. Any word of your actions tonight in the club, or even a whiff of your involvement with a man such as Ran, would ruin the airtight politically perfect reputation he had. 

I have to protect him. You tried to make a grab for the phone again, but Ran jerked it away, shark-like grin growing wider, amused by this little game you two were playing. 

“Ran, please—”

“I won’t tell him,” the bastard promised, a purple cowlick falling against his smooth forehead. Those neatly plucked brows furrowed together, and you could sense a ‘but’ somewhere behind his false reassurances. “But—I want you to do something for me.”

Here it was. In your mind, you pictured bribes. judging from his gang tattoo—shipments of drugs. A place to hide dead bodies. 

You never expected what he would’ve said next. 

“I want you to try and stop your husband from raiding our warehouses.” 

Stupefied, your shoulders slumped forward. Tears beaded in your lash line. “How do you expect me to do that? I told you, he doesn’t listen to me—”

“Mayor Tsunake is a reasonable man,” Ran eyed you down the length of his nose. “Don’t you think so, Mrs. Tsunake?” 

The sound of your married name coming from his rancid lips made you want to hurtle a fist right into his smug face. But, you sensed more than knew that Ran was a fucked up man in a position of high power—any sign of your rebellion will be met with consequences you couldn’t begin to fathom. 

You eyed the tattoo on his neck again. “I can’t make that promise. I’m sorry,” you added, hoping he would let you go and forget about this entire night. All you wanted to do was head back home, ransack your alcohol supply and drink the memories of this horrible meeting away. Maybe you were locked in a dream—tucked safely in your Queen-sized bed while your imagination presented you with your worst nightmare. 

But, this was more than just a figment of your nighttime terrors. Ran was real. This shitstorm you were in was real. 

And it was waiting for you to step into its eye. 

You swallowed. “What else do you want?” 

Ran’s smirk tightened around the edges. “Good girl. I knew you would see reason.” Putting his phone down on the bed, he patted the edge, asking you without words to sit next to him. The mattress sank under both of your weight, and you kept a distance from him, jaw tight and fists balled on your lap.

One heavily ringed hand reached towards you, and you tried not to flinch when he gently patted your cheek. 

“I want you to make yourself available to me. I’ve slept with plenty of women before, but never a mayor’s wife. It’s thrilling—this joy of trying not to get caught.” Those nimble fingers formed a loose cage around your throat, flexing them as if he were taken by a sudden, raunchy memory. “You were such a little slut in the club,” he crooned. “I want to push you harder—see what you’re capable of. All while you don’t let Mr. Mayor himself hear a peep from our little agreement, hmm?” 

Heat soused down your spine, dusting your cheeks. I’m dreaming. You were in a complete daze. I must be dreaming because this isn’t real. 

“Why are you doing this?” was all you could whisper, trying not to lapse into a tearful rage; your roaring emotions held behind a glass wall. You felt like the entire world could smell your shame—judge your stupidity. 

Ran moved his hand down the column of your throat, skimming just above the rise of your left breast. He palmed it without a single word, satisfied how you squirmed in distress but didn’t make a move to stop his groping. Fondling the plump flesh, he squeezed it, flickering those lackadaisical lilac eyes to your mortified expression.

“Why?” He asked nonchalantly, slowly playing with your stiffening nipple underneath the flimsy silk and lace. The sharp edge of his thumb nail dragged along the perky bud, and he flicked it once, as if reprimanding your instant arousal. You flinched, soft gasp echoing around the spacious room, and his grin widened.

“Well, why not?” 

Waking up alone in your large mansion, your entire body felt too heavy. 

After the events of last night, you had stumbled back home, tiptoeing past the maids’ rooms, careful to not wake anyone before you succumbed to your deluge of raging sobs.

You must’ve fallen asleep sometime in the middle of your temper tantrum. 

The space beside you was empty, and Makko must’ve still been out with his entire PR team, strategizing his winning message to blaze through campaign season. You barely noticed his absence last night—who would’ve thought a single excursion out to relieve your tension of being the perfect political wife resulted in your ensnaring tanglement with a dangerous, dark man.

Picking up your phone, you squinted at the sudden bright light on the screen, finding an unknown message. 

It was an attachment, and you dread pooled deep in your belly when you read the text.

Until next time �� H.R 

Tapping open the picture, you nearly choked on your spit when you noticed your thong peeking through his clenched fist which was casually resting on the half of his inked chest. Your eyes burned as they scanned through the dips and divots of his muscles, and your throat ran dry, remembering how he had moved your body in ways you hadn’t expected a stranger could.

It was like he knew you—knew what you liked and what you wanted.

Without warning, his next text chimed in. 

Are you awake? 

He was waiting for an answer.

Heart in your throat, you texted back. 

Yes, I am. 

His reply came a second later. Good. Take off your clothes if you’re wearing any and lay back in bed. 

Glancing at your modest cotton nightgown, you felt a shiver run down your spine which had nothing to do with the wind-free AC humming above you. 

Why?

His answer was instantaneous.

Why not? Or did you forget our agreement? 

The video. He was dangling it over your head like your deepest scarlet letter—goading you to deny him so he could make your marriage and husband’s career burn. It was with this single note of love towards the man whose ring was on your finger that you followed his instructions. 

Once you were naked and lying back on your bed, you texted him a terse: 

I did what you asked. 

Send a picture. 

The humiliation could’ve skinned you alive, but you complied. Angling your phone high up so your face was cut off, you snapped a picture of your bare body and sent it to another man who wasn’t your husband as you were perched right on your marital bed, fighting back the urge to find that bastard and kick him right in the balls. 

Ran replied a second later.

Good girl. I’m going to call you now.

Without another second to spare, your phone vibrated.

You quickly grabbed your wireless buds, slotting them into your ears and pressed answer. 

“Those sheets look comfortable,” he hummed, as a way of greeting. Your sour silence made him laugh. “Oh, lighten up. At least look a little happy. I did give you a huge orgasm last night.” 

Ran was shirtless, the dips of his collarbones gleaming in the low light of what appeared to be his bedroom—the tattoo on his throat strikingly dark and haunting. His duvet was a downy white colour, the pillows under his head plush and inviting. 

You spared a glance at your locked door before flitting your gaze back to his half-mast purple eyes. “What do you want?” 

Ran hummed. “Is your husband there?” 

Your brow furrowed, and he had his answer. 

“Angle the camera to your pussy. Show me how you touch yourself.” Your minute hesitation earned you a hard glare. “Now, Y/N. Or, yesterday night’s video will be in the mayor’s inbox in less than 5 minutes.” 

The tattoo gleaming from his throat made you shiver, and you hastened to follow his orders. Lifting your phone and balancing it on your sternum, you aimed the camera right between your legs, thighs still chastely clasped together. 

“Good girl,” he purred. “Now, spread your folds. Touch yourself.”

You obeyed him, like a puppet to a demented master—you touched yourself for Haitani Ran to enjoy, your forced submission a feast which he devoured upon. Ran’s breathing grew heavier from the other end of the line, and you heard the hitch in his groan when you parted your slick folds, showing off the strands of arousal webbing in between your middle and index fingers.

“Taste yourself.” 

Your cheeks burned, and humiliation once again trampled all over your common sense to put a stop to this. In a sick, twisted way, the pain of not having control over your own body—your own reactions—was downright heady. 

A blissful buzz hummed in your mind, and you barely gave another lucid thought before your fingers were stuck down your throat, lapping at your own sweet and salty nectar. Ran couldn’t see you deepthroating your own digits, but he heard the soft squelch of your tongue and mouth. 

“Fuck—touch yourself again.” 

His command was met with little resistance. You rubbed your clit, mouth falling open, your soft pants filling the space of this luscious bedroom. 

“Are you close?” Ran’s husky voice filled your ears, and you suddenly came to the realisation of how pleasant his voice sounded. Not too brash or low. Just the right amount of husky and baritone.

“Mhm,” you murmured. So far, you hadn’t moaned or mewled—too stubborn to let yourself admit to your body’s baser needs and how Ran was adeptly pleasuring you, even when he was far away. You kept your teeth clamped onto your lower lip, only allowing yourself a few trembling breaths.

“I can see your hips twitching.” His voice was going to drive you insane. “Look at how hard those nipples are. They’re so aroused.” You glanced down at the buds straining in the cool air, and something about his casual observations on your body made your walls clench—sucking in your fingers deeper.

Without warning, a soft moan slipped past your clenched teeth.

Ran was quick to react—to swallow down on your shame. “What was that? Is the little slut getting turned on from this? That’s pathetic. I’m not even touching you.” He continued with his parade of casual cruelty, making you feel both small and desirable. “Come on. Moan for me again. You can show me you’re a whore again, yeah?”

What is wrong with me? It was like you had zero control over yourself; your body was responding to such blatant degradation—nipples circling and hips twitching. You could taste your orgasm in the back of your throat. 

“Mhm!” you cried out, glad he wasn’t here to see your mouth falling further open, or the saliva pooling down the corner of your lips. “S-Shit…” 

Your hips had a life of their own; they swirled, twitched and pushed against your furious fingers, pumping to try and take you down your high. You’ve never squirmed this badly for a man—never shamelessly moaned for him to release you from ecstasy’s hostage. 

“Please,” you gasped out. Ran chuckled softly. “I-I need—”

“No,” his voice, silky smooth, was deceptively drenched with pity. “You can’t come, baby. You know I won’t give you that so easily. Stop touching.” 

Your fingers couldn't seem to cooperate. Your whine was saturated with absolute need. “Wh-why? Please…” 

“No. Stop right now or I’ll release the video.” 

That threat was enough to throw cold water on your arousal, and you immediately ripped your hand away from your thighs, crying out softly in protest and embarrassment. Ran was quiet as your pants turned into ragged breaths, your thighs twitching like someone was running aftershocks through your veins.

“Turn the camera back to your face.”

You knew better than to disobey him. The second the front camera switched on, you almost flinched in shock. Your eyes were red-rimmed, like you had been crying—they were wide and glossy, not a hint of defensiveness in them. It was like Ran had stripped you free of your prickliness, leaving you in a ball of your own vulnerability. The shame and hormones coasting in your system left your cheeks flushed and mouth wet with spit.

You looked like a woman who had been purely ravaged, all desperate and teary.

Ran, in contrast, barely had a hair out of place. He still wore that same easy smirk, though the apples of his cheeks were a bit pinker than you recalled. 

“Go and take a picture of yourself and send it to me. I’ll be waiting, Y/N.” He didn’t give you a chance to protest, clicking the call off and leaving you stewing in your thoughts.

Your mind was on overdrive, the tips of your fingers tingling. Ran must’ve given you a choice to send in the picture when he left you alone to your devices; as a way for him to gauge how serious you took his threat. 

The burning shame pooled in the back of your eyelids, and you let your head fall back into the pillows, exhaling a hitched breath that sounded almost like a sob.

Why is he doing this? What does he want? 

Ran had taken your body through the wringer; testing both your patience and determination to protect your husband’s reputation at the expense of your sanity. 

But, was it worth it? 

The ticking clock on your wall counted down your minutes of procrastination. Ran had never mentioned when he expected you to send in the picture—did he want it now? A spike of anxiety clobbered your chest. Oh god, what if he had been expecting it a few minutes ago and was already about to send the video of you grinding on his fingers to your poor, loyal husband? 

Quickly, you sprang to your feet, ignoring the throb of neglect between your thighs to pose in front of the mirror. The morning sun splayed itself across your bare stomach, speckling across your chest and arms. In this angle, you were an erotic painting come to life; the spark of desire you felt had dimmed after all these years of being the steadfast, politically stable wife was flickering back up into a small flame, deep within your chest.

What is happening to me? Your thoughts were in a spiral as you angled your body, showing off your shapeliness and the feminine submissiveness dripping down your thighs. Am I going insane? 

You snapped one photo. Then two, for good measure. You kept your face hidden by your phone, smartly avoiding any chance of recognition. 

Tapping on the screen, you sent the photos to his number, praying he wouldn’t ask you for more—to push yourself further for his sick, pervasive delight. But, your hopes were dashed when he replied a second later, with a string of terse instructions. 

I want your face in them, Y/N. Kneel on the bed and spread your thighs. Take a higher angled photo so your face is in it. Do not disappoint me again. 

Unbidden, you felt like shards of glass were stabbing your soul.

Do not disappoint me again.

If your shame could be seen, it would be curling its shoulders into itself—whether out of self-preservation or despondency, you dared not uncover. 

But, you followed his instructions clearly. The photo came out better than you hoped for. Your flushed folds were the centre of attention, your fleshy clit fully out in the open as a reminder of your denied orgasm pulsing through you. 

Your expression, however, was the one which took you completely by surprise. There was open want in the curve of your brow, how your lips parted to reveal a glossy ring of spit. Shame and desperation shone from your eyes, giving you a coquette look which you hadn’t expected to see from a woman of your age. 

You wanted to touch yourself—hoped he would be kind enough to give you your release when he saw that you were trying. You were trying to be good for Ran; you were trying to follow his orders the best you could.

His response came a second later.

Good girl. I want you to repeat this again tomorrow. And again the day after. Deny yourself for me, and take a picture for me every time you do. Don’t cum until I give you permission to. 

Dread coursed through your veins, heady and pure. Did he expect you to never experience pleasure? What about if your husband fucked you and you accidentally came? The horror solidified in your stomach like a cold, festering fist. It was impossible to do this to you—to control you so harshly when your life was never his to own in the first place. 

Anger came next—coarse and bitter. Who did Haitani Ran think he was to blackmail and push you around? You were the mayor’s wife. You could get a cop on his ass faster than anyone in the district could. If you wanted to destroy his life, all you could do was lift a finger and it would be done.

But, as if he could read your mind, his response came in, timely and concise. 

I would advise you to not let anyone know you’re fucking a Bonten executive. It won’t look good for your husband’s records. 

Bonten. The fear crested, taking you down under. You dropped your phone onto the bed, slapping a palm to your mouth. 

Bonten. No wonder the tattoo under his neck was familiar—you had seen it before in your husband’s civil report, under the tab Illegal establishments: Yakuzas. 

Bonten. 

Japan’s most feared organised crime syndicate. 

A ruthless band of unknown men who controlled the vast underworld with a tight, iron fist. This is bad, you started to heave, the panic clamping down on your throat. This is really, really bad. 

Before you could spiral into your mind and start panicking, your screen flashed with another message, this one solidifying how utterly fucked your situation was; how you had unwittingly ruined your own life in one single, careless night. 

Don’t forget that your orgasms belong to me now, slut. This is our little secret now. 

Shit. 

Shit. 

Just what exactly had you gotten yourself into? 

© all works belong to lalunanymph. do not copy the concept, sentence structures and scenes without prior permission from the creator.

[edlucavalden]

Mithrun and non-visible disability

Yk, I've never seen people talk about this, but Mithrun is a very accurate depiction of having a non visible illness

I'd like to interpret mithrun's bastard origin to be an allegory for an invisible disability (I'd argue its neurodivergance, but it could be anything); An aspect of yourself that you are born with (in this case; born from) that is seen as inferior but it is not obvious.

He's even lucky—since that part of him is that of benefit. His infidelity gave him silver eyes and sharp ears after all (if you can catch the metaphor). from the outside, He's just a normal person, a person worth respecting because he's fits the standard.

However, he knows he does not fit the standard. it's just a lie. He hates himself—so, so much bc of that. It causes him to over-compensate through complete perfectionism and a high sense of self pride. He has to keep a big image in order to protect himself. it's the only thing that can get him loved.

However, that superficial ego gives him terrible imposter syndrome. He knows he doesn't deserve it, but he wants to. like everyone, he craves love and safety. So, he looks down at everyone, hyperfocused at their flaws (he can't be inferior if everyone is worse, right?) whatever it takes to prove himself that he deserves love.

He knows he's weak, but he has to show to everyone that he's strong because any slight sight of weakness would be detrimental since he knows that his humanity is conditional.

He knows that if he shows the truth and how he doesn't actually fit the status quo, he will be ostracized and rejected.

He knows—because his brother is proof of that.

Obrin's disability is obviously visible; Shown through his physical characteristics (his frailness and the lack of family traits). However, his discrimination may be due to this visible disability. he isn't nessesarily ostracized for those traits. His features aren't the (main) reason why he's perceived as inferior in the social hierarchy. it's instead because he's rumored to be a bastard child. This is why he hates his brother so much.

Obrins physical characteristics are just "symptoms" that perpetuate their prejudice towards infidelity (if were going by the disability allegory, think; this person is too sensitive, it must be bc of the autism...). By doing so, his brother indirectly taught him to hide that part of himself.

He hates Obrin because he is the physical manifestation of what will happen to him if his infidelity (disability) is revealed. He is the same plane as his brother after all, The only difference is that he's fortunate enough to be able to hide it.

It's very interesting how his hatred to Obrin isn't because he's genuinely bigoted and ignorant towards him, but because of his own personal internalized ablelism just projected. (It's ironic how contrary it is; he hates his brother because he sees him as equal) very much paralleling visible and nonvisible disability in intimate familial relationships.

The fact mithrun is the bastard child, not him. Imagine the burdening guilt and shame that comes with the knowledge that he could (or should) be one in his place.

He's constantly paranoid of thoughts that he's not good enough. That's why he was so upset when he was sent to the canaries or when he saw Obrin and Sultha together.

Because those are signs that Obrin is better than him and he could not forgive that (how can someone like him, completely ostracized from society, and be so content...?). And that sign proves his paranoia of not being good enough are correct.

mithrun's insecurities, fears, and behavior very much parallel that of being a high masking disabled person.

Hes is a flawed disabled character, but one you can also sympathize with.

He isn't a perfect victim. He delves on how a disabiled person who's so intrenched in a heavily ableist and bigoted society can be a victim to its bigotry and be taken advantage of (The demon. I didn't touch on that topic, as much as i would love an essay about how the demon preyed on mithruns vulnerability regarding his own disability but unfortunately, that might be too triggering for me lawl!) while also actively participating in it and perpetuate said beliefs

And that means so much to me

[amywritesthings]

silver underground. | chapter 22

( Read on AO3 )

Pairing: levi ackerman x f!reader (attack on titan / shingeki no kyojin) Word Count: 5k Summary: the past and present; levi's version Warnings: 18+ MINORS DNI - flashbacks, levi's pov, graphic imagery, sickness, medical conversations, panic / paranoia, mentions / canon divergence of the recently published 'bad boy' chapter (extra warnings under the cut)

Previous Chapter. / Next Chapter. | Masterlist.

CHAPTER 22.

note: there is a presumed major character death in this chapter. please do not read if you are not in the right headspace for this content. mental health first xo

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He can’t shake the adrenaline.

Kinetic energy thrums through his veins, destroying his focus.

For the fifth time since he returned to headquarters, Levi’s hands dip generously into the pool of ice-cold sink water in the corner of his bedroom.

His wrists flick up, quick, to splash it across his face like the whiplash sting will somehow calm the fever in his heart.

A sixth time.

A seventh.

He’ll keep going until that look on your face from the forest is wiped from his mind.

(Until he stops thinking of the before, when he wasn't enough.)

His lungs constrict as he forces himself to breathe, slow and steady, though the exhales exit like strangled gasps.

White knuckles resign themselves to the mouth of the sink as he leans in. His shoulder blades detangle themselves, sorting out the tension, while his eyes wearily stare at his reflection from the watery mirror below.

I know you, you said.

Of course you know him.

You said a long time ago you’d always know him, as if he’s an extension of your arm leading directly to the beat of your very heart.

How could I forget someone like you? you'd muse. If anything, you'd forget me.

(As if that was ever a fucking option.)

When you were just kids wasting away in the bitterness of the Underground City, you likened yourself to a shadow following Levi’s every footstep.

How could you look at yourself as a shadow when you were always the only light in his goddamn life?

You may not remember everything that's happened to you, everything that's made you, but Levi has silently volunteered to carry every burden in the interim.

Yours and his.

Up a hill, down a slope, through the mud, against raging snow — he'll carry the essence of you until you come back.

Because he was there.

For most, if not all, of it, he was there.

Twin fingers, reaching high for the stream of morning sunlight.

Shoulder to shoulder in a mess of sheets; you swore you’d never get over the sensation — the warmth of the light.

He'd never forget.

Levi would come to know warmth far better than the sun above — like the ghost of smile peppered over your lips.

He rolled over to selfishly block your view.

You were better than the goddamn sun, he'd quickly come to realize for himself.

He'd never forget.

"Can you believe there's really a world out there like this that can be real?" you murmured into the hollow of his throat as he peppered a crown of kisses against your forehead.

That the two of you could lay on a mattress easily fitting the both of you, not threatening to cave in on itself.

That you both could live this secret life, as Captain and Lieutenant, until you were old and gray.

For a second he so foolishly believed you could, too.

In comparison to the Underground, the surface could be considered paradise.

Maybe still hell on earth in its own right, sure, but at least it wasn’t a life buried in a tomb.

The vibrant green of the trees. The dirt that didn’t always stink of rot. The endless blue sky above.

Warmth was a comfort so many took for granted.

You knew. You both knew.

Caked sweat and congealed blood. Green bruises and busted lips. An abyss of gray, nothingness.

That's what he understood best.

 — especially after she died.

His mother; the first concept he had of the sun.

And for the short few years she was alive, she was radiant. 

The withering city wasn’t so bad under her wing, even if the men who berated and belittled her were. 

Levi vowed he’d grow strong enough, brave enough, to make sure one day they wouldn’t have to live in a cramped space surviving on the niceties of traded goods — bodies for money, lies for survival.

Then Kenny entered his life and everything became violent.

Bared teeth and closed fists. Selfishness and territories.

Mine, mine, mine.

Except it was all his — that bastard took every damn cent he could make off of him and then some, oftentimes working him to the bone.

(You got a meanness, boy. Meanness that can’t be taught. No, that’s deep in your blood.)

And Levi believed him.

He believed him because no matter how easy it could’ve been to lie down and die, to maybe one day see his mother at the end of his dining table again, he was fully prepared to do whatever he had to in order to survive. 

To endure. 

To come out on top and never let anyone — not even Kenny the Ripper — destroy him.

Because he had memories to hold onto. 

People.

The rest of the world may have forgotten his mother, but Levi refused.

Hell, it was his only driving force.

He might have known violence, it may have infected his blood, but he wouldn’t lose his humanity and disappoint her.

And when Kenny set him up for a betting fight, usually it was with men twice his size and triple his age.

Little kids were never on the roster, but you — you were an exception.

New, but just as ferocious.

A girl, sure, but you landed the punches on him so many others couldn’t.

He remembers the way your neck felt under his bony fingers. How your teeth clenched together. How you growled like a feral animal.

One more second of that fight and you would have been able to overtake his lead — he was too busy staring, searching.

Memorizing someone who had endured, too.

You said you were a shadow.

Levi knew shadows.

If you were a shadow, then maybe he would've ignored you.

Maybe he would have left you the hell alone.

(Because at the end of the day, all of this is his fault. The memory loss, the injuries — all of it.)

After the gun fired and the crowd scrambled, Levi couldn’t leave you well-enough alone.

He couldn’t let you find your own way in the maze of a miserable mausoleum where your bodies would eventually find peace together, perhaps even side by side.

All Levi could do was selfishly keep tabs, watch your fights, see that piece of shit you called Mother berate and harass you in the comfort of alleyways hidden from plain sight.

If you didn’t die in the rings, then chances are she would have sold you off — resigning you to live out the rest of your days like his mother.

He saw the way the world was cruel to her.

He’d be damned if he didn’t stop the world from being cruel to you.

So at the end of the day, yeah, it’s all his fault.

If he hadn’t convinced you to join his two-person operation all those years ago;

If he had pushed you harder before the final job to hate him;

If he had figured out a loophole in Erwin’s ignorance of what you are to him to push you into another division that wasn’t the goddamn Scouts, claiming disruption or inciting violence—

If, if, if—

So many possibilities, so many scenarios, where he holds your fate so selfishly against his own chest in fear of dissolving it.

Yet he was so willing to finally let you go.

To do the right thing now that you’re on the surface.

Now that you are free.

An invisible string that gleams crimson is tied to his ring finger.

It dips under the sink and snakes across the wooden floorboards of his bedroom, into the hallway, and straight to you.

If only he had caught you the first time.

If only.

.

.

.

.

.

.

  In the aftermath of falling straight to the forest floor, dust kicks up all around him, invading his lungs and choking him out.

It burns, but it doesn't deter him.

Here he has only one objective.

One goal.

“James?”

He calls your name, hoping to hear something.

Anything.

The only sound that answers is the bristle of the tree branches above.

A scene so ghastly concludes with serenity and the weightless chirps of birds.

Coughing, Levi swipes at the cloud of dirt with his hands, dropping his dulled blade to the earth.

It clunks as violently as he’s moving, scrambling to find your silhouette anywhere in this goddamn mess.

"C'mon, damn it," he growls to himself, swiping at the murky air.

One step, then another.

You can't be far.

He'd fallen down with you, trying to break both of your falls, but the momentum was far too great.

At the last second, he rolled away from you thinking you'd lean in and follow.

You did not follow.

—then he sees it.

You’re not vertical, head up and feet outstretched in a daze.

You’re horizontal, lying face-down in the dirt.

Motionless.

“James?!”

Levi repeats your name, louder this time, before nearly vomiting from how much debris he’s inhaled.

He wretches, arm wrapped around his stomach, teeth grit.

He manages to get ahold of himself, to stave off the sickness, before he drops to the ground and crawls to you on hands and knees like a child.

“James, hey—”

The world stops, then and there.

You don't move. You don't respond.

His hand halts in a hover over your body, painfully aware that he cannot pull you upright carelessly.

It's so quiet down here.

Quiet, as if...

Slowly his watering eyes widen, his mind going to the place where logic can follow.

“...James,” he murmurs, voice dissolving. 

He decides to then scoop the once-hovering hand to inch it under your wrapped emerald cloak. His other hand cradles the back of your neck, mindful of the worst case scenario.

The sickening heaviness of your body greets him as he turns you over, carefully, to find your lips parted and eyes closed.

He can't tell if you're breathing.

You look like you're sleeping.

No.

No, this isn't what it looks like.

“James, shit, wake up—”

His words crack, throat dry.

“Wake up.”

Louder this time, like anger might jolt you.

Where he goes, you’re meant to follow. 

You’ll follow his voice. You’ll follow it and you’ll wake up and he’ll never forget how you scared the living shit out of him.

(Even if he will eventually forgive you for dedicating your fucking heart to a cause you didn’t even believe in.)

Logic battles with emotion.

Reality fights with fate.

Cradling the back of your head with immense care, Levi takes action and head ducks to press against your chest, desperate to find —

There.

It’s faint, but a heartbeat is still there.

“Don't do this,” he pleads under his breath. “Don’t you up and fucking quit on me now. I know you can hear me.”

The wheeze of overworked gear flies past his head in a semi-circle.

Several boots land to his west, hasty in their descent.

Luckily his head is turned to the east.

(He can hide the growing terror from his squad. He can buy himself more time to harness his panic and push it away.)

“Captain?” It’s Eld, wasting no time to rush over. He hears the quick taps of his boots running right for him. “Captain, what the hell happened?”

“James?!” Petra yelps, and he can hear Oluo gasp with finality.

No.

No, you aren’t dying.

Not today. Not tomorrow.

“Wait, don’t,” Gunther interjects suddenly.

Levi assumes it’s to keep the rest of the squad back from crowding the scene.

The blonde scout drops to his knees beside his captain, panting heavily. Levi can smell the stench of sweat and exertion radiating from his uniform.

“Captain Levi,” Eld urges once more.

“We have to get her back to the Walls," he forces himself to say, voice steady.

Levi lifts his head with practiced precision.

He meets Eld's worried gaze with a deadened stare.

"Is she...?"

"Her heartbeat is faint," Levi answers the question Eld doesn't have to finish, "but it’s there.”

Eld's face falls.

Levi hates it.

I just said it's there, damn it. Don't consider her dead. Don't.

“She saved us!”

A meek voice peeks out from behind Eld's back.

Levi Squad turns in unison — a well-oiled machine built for crisis — to find Miro Squad riding to the clearing with the extra horses.

The entire squad looks haunted, worse for wear, but they still stayed.

They still fought to the bitter end.

Like true Scouts.

Miro hops off of their horse, running over to the group first.

“Several titans attacked us. If it wasn't for the Lieutenant, we would have all been eaten alive. Please, if we can help in any way, we owe her.”

They bow as one of the other shaken Scouts pulls Levi's horse by the reins from around the back of the formation.

“Sir, Scout Rini is a doctor," Miro continues.

“A doctor?” Oluo blurts incredulously. “Out here? In the field?”

“Formerly a doctor,” Rini anxiously states while dismounting from his horse, "before I joined the cause. I — I would say I could treat her here, but there’s nothing I can do. Too much blood loss. If we can get her inside the Walls—”

“Are we going to keep wasting time talking?” Levi growls, glaring daggers at the rest of the group. “I’m not letting her bleed the hell out. Help me get her on my horse.”

No one hesitates.

Both squads rush to his aid, lifting you with utmost care.

Twenty pairs of hands and ten bodies working in tandem to make sure they don’t jostle your neck or hurt your spine.

The captain only lets go of you to hoist himself up on his black stallion, before bringing you close to his body in a side-saddle.

He can ride one-armed and keep you steady.

He refuses to believe otherwise. 

Because Levi sees it on their faces — beyond the faintest breath against his hand, there’s next to no indicators that you’ll survive.

But they don’t know you.

Not like he knows you.

“Don’t you die on me,” he murmurs against the crown of your head, lips close enough to count as a kiss.

Then he’s off.

He speeds off like a bullet on his horse, crouching over with his jaw so clenched he can feel his teeth nearly cracking.

Forward. His only goal is to push forward — past the trees, past the old villages, and doesn’t stop to look back.

“You’re not allowed to die.”

From this distance the other won't be able to hear, but you might. So he keeps talking.

Come back to me.

“Still got all that shit you wanted to do up here, right? You remember that?”

Levi wishes you could answer.

He wants to believe you would if you could.

“You still gotta get those dumbass cats of yours. You know how many of those filthy things are on the streets? You can fill an entire fucking house for all I care.”

Anything.

He’ll do anything, at this point.

“Didn’t give me a chance to… to find a damn house, to figure everything out—”

A whole world left to discover.

(You asked for his last name. A last name worth nothing, yet somehow it still held something for you. God damn it, he’d give you that last fucking name in every lifetime so long as he could still keep you in this one.)

He stops speaking when Gunther and Eld take it upon themselves to push their horses to their limits, flying past him.

They surge forward in their journey to the nearing Walls, determined to carve a seamless entrance for Levi to enter. 

Eld leans back and holds an arm up high, shooting off a red flare for the Garrison Regiment stationed at the perimeter to see:

Danger.

(Once they reached the gates, they could explain everything. A red flare is enough for now.)

Flicking his wrist to snap the reins, his horse picks up the pace and gallops harder.

Levi pulls you into his chest, ignoring the tremble in his limbs.

From fear or adrenaline. 

From both.

“We have an injured Scout, but she’s still alive!” Eld shouts to the Garrison Regiment above with an urgency Levi’s never heard from the typically stoic man. “We need a wagon and medics, now!”

Between the flare and Eld’s command, the action is already set in motion.

The gears churn, slowly opening the large stone gate just enough for humans to clear in passing. 

Eld and Gunther are first.

Levi, not far after. 

The others, including Miro Squad, arrive seconds later.

Several Garrison soldiers pull up to the gate with a wagon suitable for approximately eight, maybe ten people.

Levi continues to hold you protectively to his chest as they prepare, cradling your neck with the utmost care.

One false move and the light goes out. 

(He knows how easy it is to take a human life.)

“Levi!”

He hears the wail of Hange’s voice in the midst of the panic.

His eyes search for them in the commotion, body stonelike, only to spy their unruly ponytail flying in the wind — with Moblit not far behind.

And...

Commander Erwin?

The tall blonde causes the crowd to divide in half, shoulders adorned with the Scout emeralds.

Hange and Moblit look just as horrified as he feels.

They run right up to the side of his horse calling your name, but their voices are all but mumbles to him.

Not when Erwin’s eyes bore into his.

Although the commander's expression is one of stone, Levi can sense what Erwin wants to say.

Unspoken deja vu; they’ve seen how this played out before.

Except this time, Levi has you in one piece.

He made it back this time.

He didn't forsake you.

(And he isn’t letting a titan take you from him. Not like Isabel. Not like Furlan.)

“Levi, what happened?!”

Hange rips him out of his trance, bringing him back to gruesome reality.

Medics finally arrive on the scene. Below him he can see Scout Rini directing them, immediately stepping back into his former occupation with ease.

On the sidelines, the remainder of Miro Squad huddles together.

Eyes watery and body trembling, some cry into their hands.

Some hide their faces in the shoulders of their comrades.

She’s not dead yet, he wants to snap at them. Don’t act like she’s gone. Not yet.

(If he repeats it enough, then can he make the impossible true?)

“She played hero, that’s what fucking happened," Levi seethes after he manages to find his voice, forcing it not to crack. "Saved a goddamn squad on her own against orders. She needs a doctor. I don’t know—”

“They need to take her, Levi,” Hange interrupts with an understanding softness in their tone. “Let her go.”

The captain’s under eye trembles.

“I’m going with her on the—”

“You will,” Hange promises, nodding quickly, “but you have to let her go so they can start working — before it’s too late.”

They're right.

The medics are waiting, just on the other side to receive her.

Slowly Levi unfurls his arms, one by one, and helps gently transfer you to the people he's entrusting your life to.

As soon as you're off of his lap, however, Levi swivels his legs off of his horse to follow suit.

Hange’s eyes widen as he dismounts, but Levi’s too busy watching them set you down in a sea of blankets and gauze. 

“Levi, your shirt. It’s…”

Briefly he turns his chin to glance up at his comrade, registering what they're saying before looking down:

Maroon.

Deep, deep maroon.

His once-white button down is stained with a mixture of grimy dirt and blood.

“It isn’t mine," is all he can think of saying back.

Hange's expression shifts in seconds, a certain slant of pity he hates witnessing.

He doesn't have the energy to fight Hange, Erwin, any of them.

Not when he has to get to you.

He has to stay with you no matter what.

With that statement lingering in the air, Levi abandons Hange to trudge over to the wagon. In one swift motion, the captain hops over the siding of the transport.

His knees fall just above your head, settling in place for the ride to the hospital.

Most of the medics are too busy ripping up your uniform to check for deep gashes and broken bones, documenting them as they gear up to leave, but a few glance at Levi with uncomfortable shock.

Then one brave soul speaks.

“Sir, we’ll need you to stay back.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Levi firmly states.

“But it—”

“The wagon fits ten. If you have a problem with it, we can talk later. She's on my squad.”

She's my responsibility, damn it, and I'm failing her.

The wagon dips once again in newfound weight, and a pair of knees come into view.

On the other side of James’ head rests Hange.

“I’m going, too," Hange states firmly.

Levi can feel his expression smoothing, one of reluctant gratitude.

He catches the sentiment, buries the emotion down his throat, and drops his chin to focus on James.

“C’mon, c’mon!" they shout to the medics for him. "Let’s go! We can't waste anymore time, damn it!”

With Hange’s order, the wagon takes off. 

In the initial jolt, Levi abruptly reaches both of his bloodied palms to rest on either side of your head, keeping it in place as the horses run the wagon to the Trost hospital.

The medics and Doctor Rini continue working amongst themselves, with Hange on the ledge observing.

Seconds feel like hours.

It's agony.

“We’re almost there,” he murmurs under his breath, to you and you alone. “Just a little longer, alright? We’re in the Walls. You went back and saved almost an entire squad by yourself, you overachieving piece of shit. So don’t give up now, damn it. Keep fighting.”

Despite not being alone this time, the captain is unwilling to stop talking for a single moment.

He can sense Hange’s eyes boring down the back of his neck, but he doesn’t care for decorum.

He doesn’t give a shit if this brings more questions at his front door.

This may be your last few moments with him.

So he won’t leave.

(He never left Mom, and he sure as fuck isn’t leaving you.)

“She’ll need extensive surgery.” 

A rogue murmur catches his attention.

When Levi looks up, he sees one of the medics addressing the doctor scout. Gravity brings a grimace to her face. 

A second medic frowns. “Do you think she’s going to—”

“Don’t say it,” Rini replies softly. “What she needs is our undivided attention. This is a Lieutenant of the Scouts, and she saved my life. Treat her life as your highest priority.”

Levi decides to say nothing.

There is nothing to be said — no argument will change the outcome.

As the wagon finally arrives at Trost medical, they’re received by staff with a gurney.

They begin prepping you to be transferred, but—

In a flurry, Hange gasps and leaps out of their seat to fiddle with your neck.

The sudden touch completely throws him off, causing him to protectively curl around you.

“The hell are you doing?”

“Her necklace, Levi,” Hange swiftly states, their own voice shaking. “The doctors could break it during surgery. You know she’d never let us live it down if they destroy it.”

His heart seizes.

Hange’s act of kindness isn’t lost on him.

You loved that damn thing. 

No, you love.

You’re still there.

It isn’t just a mere memory yet.

Belatedly nodding, the dark-haired man clears his throat. "Yeah, she'd be pissed."

"I thought so," Hange exhales, finally detaching the clasps.

It's the first time he's seen you without it since you were teenagers.

(Doesn't look right, being off your neck like that.)

Eventually the medics successfully transfer you to the awaiting gurney.

Without another word to Hange or himself, the team dedicating to saving your life run into the building.

Everything was a flurry until there was nothing.

Silence.

Levi’s shoulders slump as he’s forced to watch you disappear from his sight.

There wasn’t a chance to save Furlan or Isabel.

They’d been destroyed, limb from limb, before he could stop it from happening.

He’d managed to get you this far, but…

Now it was out of his hands.

His fists clench, determined to keep your blood close, protected, in his palms.

(Helpless.)

“Do you want to hold it for her?”

Hange’s voice enters his mind as he slowly turns his chin, blue-grey eyes finding the taller scout frowning.

Their eyes are glassy in a way he refuses.

Mourning.

Slowly they extend their arm, unfurling their fingers.

A lump forms in the middle of his throat at the sight of the glittering silver in their palm, the pendant still just as beautiful as the day you accepted his gift.

“Keep it, Four Eyes, and give it back to her when she wakes up.”

(If he touches it, then you might actually disappear. He already possesses enough keepsakes from the dead with a self-inflicted burden to carry them all. The world may have forgotten them, but he hasn’t. He won’t.)

“Levi…”

“She’s going to live, Hange.” 

Whether he says it to convince Hange or himself, Levi doesn’t know. Perhaps it’s for both of them.

He knows how much they adore you.

He’s no stranger to the fact that you’ve made your own home outside of him — they love you as much as he loves you.

“She’s a fighter. Always been once, ever since we were kids.”

The lack of shock in Hange’s gaze makes him wonder how much you’ve told them about the two of you.

“She’ll fight tooth and nail to get the hell back here.”

“I know she will,” Hange laments.

A blanket of silence envelops them as they continue to wait for any news outside of the hospital, together.

The longer he waits, the closer he feels to being ten years old again.

Alone.

So fucking along and so goddamn terrified to wait for the truth.

Because it’s either one or the other.

You live, or your story ends.

Levi inhales, holding his breath.

And holds.

And holds, childishly wishing it could be enough for the both of you.

Like if he doesn’t let go until you gasp for life, then he can save you.

He can keep you.

.

.

.

.

.

.

  He finally exhales, giving in to the collapse of his shoulders.

He can’t save you, just as much as he can’t keep you.

Levi knows this.

He’s known it since the second you woke up in that hospital bed without an ounce of warmth in those eyes of yours.

That was when he made his choice to leave you be, to give you a running shot at the life the two of you had always talked about.

He thought one day was grueling.

Impossible.

One day became one week.

One week into months.

He stayed away, but at what cost?

He hasn’t slept right in this bed.

He barely eats.

He opts to show his face at the mess hall with his standard cup of black tea to keep up the appearances.

If the real you died that day, then he was certain he died right alongside you.

Now, within six agonizing months, you’ve saved yourself — chose yourself — to still somehow end up right back where he left you.

(That kiss, tattooed with the permanence of the loss of you, still burns his lips from yesterday.)

You might remember.

You might know who you really are.

You might know him.

The sink below rattles.

It takes a second, but when he shifts his dissociative stare to his thumb, he notes the tremble.

He grips tighter, squeezing, before giving up. He pushes away from it altogether, cradling his forearm to suppress it himself. 

Focus.

Find your sanity and ease it back.

Maybe you won’t say what he wants to hear, but he promised like a fool.

Don’t push me away. Don’t shut me out.

I won't, he promised. I’ll never.

Hearing the horses whinny to a halt outside, he scrubs his face with his hand and chooses to turn on a heel to stalk towards the door.

He’ll scope out how everyone’s doing, make a cup of tea, mull all this shit over—

Then he opens his door to your face.

You stand before him, hand raised like you were about to knock.

Frozen in time just like he feels.

James.

Levi can’t feign indifference when he stares back at you, not when it’s almost unsettling how much more… you, you look right now. 

Life radiates from a dead body. You’re not apologetic in getting caught, just apologetic that you nearly slammed the knuckles of your fist into his face.

For a moment, there’s silence. 

He can hear the other scouts talking amongst themselves downstairs.

And before he can say a word, you speak.

“Can we please—”

“Yeah.”

He doesn’t let you finish.

There’s no reason.

Rip the bandage off the congealed blood.

Call it a day, if he is meant to lose it all.

His hand extends the door on its hinge, inviting space for you.

“Yeah, might as well.”

You step in, and Levi prepares for the worst.

.

author's note: a lot of you had asked for levi's pov on the events that went down, and i've been waiting to get his side of the story.

thank you for reading the final few chapters of this journey. you are all so very wonderful for the encouragement, the engagement, etc. on both here and ao3. i hope all of my rebloggers have a good night's sleep and a little treat; you are the soul of this story.

[halcyone-of-the-sea]

Hi Hal!

Congratulations on finishing all the requests (there were so many good ones!!) and thank you for opening them up again!! I’m excited to see what you have in store for us with all your other projects, bestie!!! 😊😊

I was unsure of who to request at first because there are so many good ones but then I saw Hesh’s name and an idea hit me.

If you’re ok with it, could you possibly write one for Hesh where the reader is part of the Ghosts has been taken/captured by the Federation and after some time, they get intel on where she is so they go out to rescue her and she and Hesh are reunited? I don’t know if you want it to be a pre-established relationship or one where they both admit their feelings after they get her back, so I’m leaving it up to you. But I need a little rescue/reunion fic to fill the void in my heart that the ending of Ghosts made.

As always, feel free to change it up as you see fit and do whatever you want. I just think that Hesh deserves more love and I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing Riley again (aka: the best dog in the world)!!

Thank you and remember to take care of yourself and I appreciate you and your work!! 💕💕 Love you, bestie!!!!

Lengths Of Love

PAIRING: David 'Hesh' Walker x F!Reader

SYNOPSIS: You'd loved Hesh for as long as you can remember, and you'd pulled him out of trouble for even longer, but you'd never had the courage to tell him how you feel. Until you do. Until you're being dragged away from his broken body.

WORDCOUNT: 10.7k

WARNINGS: Major spoilers for CoD: Ghosts, heavy angst, blood, guts, descriptions of wounds, canon-typical violence, weapons and firearms, death, torture involving: drugs/hallucinogens, physical violence, mental stress, talks of PTSD, anxiety, paranoia, rescue fic, best friends to lovers plot, wounds that would 100% kill you that you live from (plot armor fr), etc.

A/N: Bestie, I don't know what you put into your prompts, lmao, but I always end up writing so much for you!! Thanks so much for sending something in <3<3

*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*

The beginning of the end started with good intentions and one statement. 

“You hear this? It’s Rorke. He’s here. They’re evacuating on the train system below.” Hesh’s green eyes darted to you and Logan, his painted face a collection of rage and surety. The three of you were, in an instant, in agreement of revenge—there was no question as to what had to be done. Merrick couldn’t stop you, not on this. 

Rorke had made one of the most dangerous decisions of his life, and that was underestimating the Walker boys and their partner in sinful crime. 

“Harp,” you look away from the body of the warhead as it enters the atmosphere, locking onto Hesh’s hard eyes; the ones that had grown steadily colder since the death of his father, Elias. But it wasn’t just him—the patriarch had been close to you as well. The knowledge of his passing, witnessing it as the rope restraints seared into your flesh, had lit an all-consuming fire in your gut.

Like hounds, the scent of blood had hit the air. 

“Let’s get the bastard. Now or never,” you ease out, and Logan darts his gaze down to you from behind his balaclava. 

“Damn right,” Hesh barks, nodding firmly to you.

Anyone would have missed the way your gaze lingered on him as he darted off and began rushing down the stairs from the control room, Logan ever quick at his heels. But they wouldn’t have missed the way your breath pushed out a soft sigh as your eyes kept locked on the back of Hesh’s head as you followed after. 

You’d been childhood friends since practically infancy, a neighbor to the Walkers. It was natural that Hesh would grow to be the object of your daydreams ever since grade school; a constant and digging knife into your heart when he’d repeatedly pick other girls over you.

But such was life. 

All that mattered now was bringing down Rorke, silly love could wait.

“Merrick,” Hesh yelled down his line, the world outside this building rampant with open war. “The missile’s away and we’ve got a lead on Rorke, we’re going after him!” 

The white double doors meet the three of you as you all rush to them, and the panicked man’s voice flashes down the line immediately. 

“Negative Hesh! You three get back here and return to the rally point. We’ll track him down together.”

You call, “Isn’t an option, Merrick. We can’t let this one go.” 

You and Hesh ram your shoulders into the doors, Logan darting through first with his weapon drawn down the hallway. The brunette’s and your shoulders brush in a jostling of gear—pulling the back as your eyes lock. Cold light seeps from overhead, metal under your feet clanking in-key.

You look away before Hesh agrees and levels with the Ghost over the line to push your point. “Sorry, Merrick. Your mission is complete…ours isn’t.”

Federation heads pop up from behind makeshift barriers of barrels and other stacked items and as you all enter and clear rooms, alarms blare with the ferocity of fighting lions. Hesh keeps by your side, offering you openings that you greedily take as another soldier falls with a stiff twitch of your finger on the trigger. 

Darting behind cover, the man slams to the space beside you, calling over above the noise and the whizz of bullets.

“How long till impact?!” You shove a new clip into your FAD, brushing sweat and blood from your cheeks, smearing patches of your own paint. 

Glancing at the watch on your wrist, you hear Logan pushing the line. You dart out of cover to help—locking onto hostiles and backing up the younger brother with quick feet.

“Eight minutes, Hesh! You got a plan that doesn’t leave me with scorched hair?” He finds it in himself to laugh, clocking a soldier to your left and riddling him with bullets. 

“We need to get to that train, Harp. Don’t worry—I’ll kiss the burns away for you.” He rushes past and sends a smirk over his shoulder. You’re left stunned for a second, wishing that the teasing tilt to the older brother’s words was more than that. You blink, and the feeling is forced away.

Later.

“Keep pushing, Logan,” Hesh moves on. You all sprint down descending ramps, farther and farther underground with every step; adrenaline building to a breakneck level like weight slowly being added over and over to a chest. “We need to get to Rorke!” 

You didn’t want to tell him, but, while revenge was on your plate as well, this was a very reckless idea.

As you grab for a grenade from your belt and jerk on the pin, you chuck it down the way and call out a warning to the boys, who, like a well-oiled machine, dart and wait for it to detonate. Bodies fly, bloody splashes of torn limbs, and three Ghosts materialize from the smoke with masked and painted faces; eyes like fire and veins boiling. 

“Fire team suppressed in 3-1,” Hesh shouts through the line as you slide your knife into a man’s eye, his goggles breaking in a shattering of glass. “Advancing to loading bay!” 

There’s a large elevator ahead for transporting crates, and all of you jog inside as the gate creaks shut.

Merrick’s stiff voice replies, “Roger that.”

Silently, you click into the channel and mutter out as a moment of relative peace coats your body like a blanket, even if for a few small seconds. 

“I’ll keep ‘em safe,” a small twitch of your lips, “Commander.”

A deep and unimpressed voice wafts into your ear with a large sigh. “Know you will—just remember to keep yourself safe in the process, Kid…Don’t do anything stupid.”

You shift your gaze to Hash and find green already staring at you. Blinking, the man quickly darts his vision away and after a moment you turn your face back down to the connection and huff through a burning epidermis.

“Haven't you heard?” The elevator shows the train as it descends down, and you call to the boys, ‘six minutes’, with a firm voice. 

“Stupid seems to follow us three everywhere.”

Hesh points as the figures of more soldiers walk around below. “There’s Rorke’s train, straight ahead!” Sure enough, the worm of black and gray metal extends to your eyes across the large room

“He’ll be on there soon. Logan, take left.” You order and the brown-eyed man nods from beside you, shouldering his rifle and checking the clip. “Hesh?” 

“Taking right—you got Point, Doll.” He stares at you, licking his lips. “Clear the way?” You tilt your head at him as the elevator jumps to a stop, the barrier sliding away. It pains you to look away.

There were so many things you had to tell him. Too many things. 

“Always.” Shiting your face forward, you take a breath and take notice of points of cover, scoping the room in three seconds flat. Screeching wheels and alarms ingrain your eardrums. “On me.” 

As you head out first, fire the first bullet, the two peel off in opposite directions, Hesh only sliding up beside you and uttering into your ear.

“Be safe.” 

That comment makes you want to be anything but, if only he’d whisper into your ear like that again. 

Clearing the room, you can’t get your mind off the fact that this crush was overtaking nearly every part of your life—years of quiet agony and staying your tongue in fear of losing what great friendship you had. 

The stock set into your shoulder recoils with another burst of fire, Federation soldiers scream in pain, but you barely register over the shadows in the sides of your vision. 

“Damnit, Hesh,” you growl, bullet grazing your shoulder as you grunt and slip behind a concrete divider. 

“What’s that?” Your eyes widen comedically. Shit…had you forgotten to close the line? 

“Eh,” you clear your throat, grimacing at the small sparks of pain in your shoulder. “N-nothing.” 

There’s a bout of silence and then a panting voice, rough and growing more serious. “You alright over there, Harp?” You can’t even respond before Hesh quickly continues. “I’m comin’ to you. Stay there.”

You violently shake your head, although he can’t see it.

“Hesh, I’m fine! Keep right and clear that hallway.” 

There’s a deep grunt. “Fine, but if I see one scratch I’m makin’ Riley chase you down the Base when we get back.”

If we get back.

You roll your eyes with a growing smile, steeling yourself and slamming your weapon to the top of the divider before locking onto your targets. “Please, we both know he loves me too much for that.”

“Most I’ll have to do is put a treat in your pocket, Sweetheart.” His sly smirk is heard easily, and you swallow tense-like and breathe shakily. That low drawl in his tone left you more distracted than you could ever get used to. “Hell,” There’s a struggle over the line before the shink of a knife meeting flesh. A breathless chuckle that leaves your gut swirling. “Maybe I’ll just chase you down myself.”

Logan coughs over the line and you have to click off before you scream. Your face flares up until your ears ring and you have to duck behind your cover again before you get metal right to the forehead. 

Behind the barrier, you glare at the floor.

When did general teasing get so hard for you? Jokes and jabs carrying weight—since when? Sure you’d liked—more liked loved—Hesh since before all of this, but you’d carried on well enough. 

“Fucking hell,” you grumble, shaking your head to clear it and rushing. 

The brothers pop through the side hallways to flank the enemy, taking out the one or two hostiles that were still breathing after you level your barrel with the last standing head; firing with a burst of gunpowder.

“Train’s leaving, let's go!” Hesh screams, waving an arm quickly at you, walking backwards on quick feet. “Harp, C’mon!” 

You chuff, hopping the divider and sprinting as the metal object speeds up—there’s a moment where you fear you might miss it, Hesh and Logan both forced to hop on even in your absence.

“Harp!” Green eyes flash, one hand on the railing and the other extended out. 

“On it!” Snapping, you slam your palm into his and feel his strong fingers curl to clutch you. Logan grabs your collar and helps; the both of them easily yanking you over just as the wall of the tunnel engulfs you all in illuminated shadow.

Back meeting the train’s body, you pant and chuckle as Logan shakes his head, amused, and pats your shoulder. You wink at him jokingly. 

“Good save there, Walker Number Two.”

Hesh grabs the side of your neck, looking you over as he leans back with a breathless chuckle at the title for his brother. He blinks quickly at your shoulder, eye narrowing before he reaches out and looks at the blood on your gear.

“You mind telling me what this is, Doll?” You make a nose in the back of your throat as the smell of his musk hits your nostrils; the deadly concoction of his scent and his digging gaze.

Stuttering, you huff. “Eh…bullet graze?”

You’re leveled with thin lips, but Logan grabs his brother by the upper arm and peels him off you, motioning to his radio as the train gains even more speed. Wind whips past your face as Hesh clears his throat, quickly avoiding your eyes. 

The man’s splotchy paint shows his red skin under the darker pigment. 

“Merrick, we’re on the train,” he speaks, shifting past you without another look. “We’re going after Rorke.”

“Solid Copy.” You watch the brunette walk away and hold your breath, though you don’t know why—heart beating not just because of adrenaline. 

Embarrassment breeding in your stomach, you ignore Logan’s knowing stare and push off the wall, rubbing at your bleeding shoulder with a stiff hand. 

—

You break a man’s neck against the wall, hand on the back of his head before you slam it into the hard metal. There’s a crunch of bone and a broken rattle before the broadcasted feed from the screen on the train’s panel spits out a message in panicked Spanish to the already deceased men.

“Evacuation protocol C is in effect. All personnel secure cargo and supplies—”

Hesh interrupts ahead of you as you let the body drop, scowling at the heavy sound of its dead weight. At his angry voice, you perk and tune in.

“Tell Rorke we’re comin’ for him.” There’s a quick shove from the other end of the feed, the previous man disappearing as the individual that takes his place makes your eyes go to slits. A great growl like a wolf echoes from your heart and seeps from between your clenched teeth. 

Rorke’s scarred face appears with a smirk and a cocky voice.

“Why don’t you just tell me yourself?” You look at your boys, more concerned for them as you watch firsthand the trauma the death of their father brought them. 

Logan holds his weapon tighter, fixing his grip. Hesh is a bit more direct. He leans closer to the screen, bearing his teeth like a dog and snarling with rage and hatred.

“You’re done, Rorke.” All of a sudden he peels back a fast fist and sends it careening into the screen—making a shattering of glass and a hard thud emanate deep into your bones. 

Blinking quickly, you tense as it happens, not expecting that. But as soon as you try to make sense of it, the brunette is already banking off to the side door, calling a sharp, “Let’s finish this!”

He grabs the side of the train car and wrenches on the handle, grunting and pushing with all of his might.

“Hesh,” you try to reason, stepping in now before things get too hot. “We need to think of a plan before you rush into things. This could get us in a heap of shit that we might not be able to get out of.”

It’s like he doesn’t hear you, and you spare a glance with Logan for help. But he, too, has already joined his brother with a swish of gear on the handle. With one great push, the door opens to the outside brightness, making your face turn away for a moment. 

Along the far expanse of open sand dunes outside; mountains flanking the bridge this train flies across, you get the perfect view of a warhead meeting the ground in an explosion of fire and death. It bursts far across the valley, and you cover your eyes as the sharp ball of light burns your retinas. 

The shockwave hits moments later, and Hesh says easily as the train shakes and squeals like a metal pig, “Looks like Icarus got control of the rods!” The boys step out onto the platform along the train, and you have no option but to follow. “All that’s left is Rorke, let's go!”

“Hesh,” you try again, hissing out his name, and you’re graced with a quick glance.

“Harp,” he comments, “what is it? We can’t wait any longer—”

“What we can’t do is go in blind!” You shout above the wind, legs stanced to help you stay up. Green eyes twitch with confusion, perhaps even a little hurt. 

“Blind? What are you talking about, we push forward and take what’s owed.” You know how much this means to him—to Logan—but there was a point where pride and stubbornness outweighed sense. This was dangerous, especially for Hesh. 

You were always the one to keep him level; keep him from becoming too much like his dad. 

You’d promised that old bastard you’d look after his boys, albeit in a teasing sense, but to you, it had been a stark vow on your soul. Logan was a brother to you, and Hesh…Hesh would always be more, but that only made your love for them both grow. 

“You keep those two from getting in their heads, you hear? They mean well, but there’s no one I trust more than you to level them out, Harp. I’m proud of you. And I’m sure your folks would be too.” Elias had said that, and when he died you bottled it up and used so much force that coal had turned to diamond. 

You would keep Logan and Hesh safe. Safe, and level, and not hard-headed. 

For as much as you secretly loved your brunette, he sure was stubborn as all hell.

“If you want out, Harp,” Hesh calls to you, gritting his teeth. “Just wait back in the train car. This is something we can’t put off like everything else—this ends now; today. I’m not letting Dad’s killer survive.”

“Son of a bitch, that’s not what I’m saying!” You’re quickly losing your standing. Logan jogs ahead to scout, time ticking. “Hesh, you know that I loved Elias as much as you two did—not one is denying that this needs to happen. I'm with you. But this is too damn dangerous! We can’t rush into this without a plan of attack; of exfil! Do you even know how we’re going to get off of this thing?!” 

Hesh had been isolating the few days he had on the U.S.S Liberator, keeping to his room. The man idolized his father and put him on a pedestal of gold even when he was a teenager. He’d even pushed away from you, which all together was unheard of. Logan had nearly had an aneurism when you’d come back to the cafeteria and shook your head in disappointment after trying to get him to open his door. 

The two of you told each other everything. Always. That was just…how it was.

But the man that Hesh had donned the skin of was not the man you loved.

Hesh glares at you, eyes going alight with anger. 

“If you were with me, you wouldn’t be holding me back.” He turns and runs after Logan, leaving you behind in the open air as the train banks left and right with the sway of the bridge. 

Staring. Barely breathing. Mouth parted and eyes wide. 

When the man is at the end of the current train car, having to jump a small distance to the next, he pauses. His back is tight, and under him, his feet shuffle. 

There’s a moment you hope he’ll turn around and come back, take you into one of his hugs, and squeeze the life out of you. It wouldn’t be such a cruel way to die, you think, to be held in his arms. 

But the next moment you see the back of his head shake, and he jumps over to the next section, not even giving you a second glance.

You don’t want to admit how long you waited there, your mind jumbled and confused. 

Don’t take it personally, you try to tell yourself, sucking down a breath before slowly walking forward. He’s hurt. Grieving. He didn’t mean it.

Rationality was a tool of the level-headed, and you were anything but that nowadays.

Over the line Hesh’s voice makes you flinch as you slowly follow after, train car after train car.

“Rorke must be at the front of the train!” You step over dead bodies and lend merciful bullets to the ones still writhing, boots coated in crimson. Following a trail of wreckage with stiff lungs. 

Stay out of his way? Fine, you could do that.

You stayed back from the head-to-head fighting, laying covering fire and keeping off the comms—whenever Hesh managed to look back at you, you simply moved on to the next hostile. 

Eventually, you all ended up on the rooftops, the boys far ahead and yourself blank-faced at the rear. Logan was acting more concerned than Hesh was, glancing at you constantly in confused worry. But it was very much short-lived.

“Incoming!” The right side of the railcar bursts with fire, and you gasp before grappling for the opposite side of the train, keeping you there before the swaying beast leveled out. “Helos. Take cover and take out the gunners!”

You scoff, quickly making your way behind a connector joint to lean your back against it and catch your breath. Two helicopters fly alongside the train, Logan already firing at one, and Hesh…your eyes narrow with annoyance. Hesh was already running ahead of the pack, his low grunts and growls over the line giving way to his impatience. 

You click your jaw and try to remind yourself that this is the same man who held you close during movie nights and carried you to bed when you fell asleep. Made you waffles when your boyfriend in eighth grade broke up with you on Valentine’s Day.

Stitched your wounds before he gave them a teasing ‘kiss better’ and looked up at you through dark lashes. 

You wildly shake your head to force yourself back to the present.

The gunners are harder to hit not only based on wind and distance alone, but on the erratic movements of the pilots. It’s several clips before you down the second Helo, and Logan’s follows immediately after as they both collide and ram into the mountainside.

You both share a glance and rush after the misguided brunette. 

At the end of the train, only the engine remains. 

“Clear!” Hesh relays, jumping down from the roof of the railcar and hurriedly walking to the white door, leaning against the wall. “We’re at the last car, Logan. Rorke’s pinned, he knows we’re comin’.”

You gaze down from the top as Logan follows, silent and brooding. Your hands along your FAD tighten under your gloves. You don’t even look at the man. 

“Merrick, do you copy?”

“Copy, Hesh.”

“We’re moving in on Rorke.” You slide him a look, seeing him glaring those pretty greens into the ground. “If you hear the word “Checkmate”, you will fire on our position! Confirm?” Your eyes snap with horror, heart lurching.

Surely, you hadn’t heard that right.

Merrick’s voice echoes your frozen confusion. “Say again, repeat your last.”

You jump down and stagger for a moment, barking out a harsh, “What the fuck are you doing?” Inside of your chest, your heart rampages like it never had before. “That’s suicide!”

He was going to kill everyone to bring down Rorke, and you get no answer beyond a clenched jaw and a quick side-eye.

“You heard me, Merrick, on “Checkmate”, hit this train!” The connection is cut and Logan gets into position to shoulder the door open, you watch, stuttering. 

Hesh levels with his brother, “We can’t take any chances, Logan. Even if we fail, Rorke dies.” Panic builds, and you’re taking quick steps forward.

You keep those two from getting in their heads, you hear?

You have to stop them, you have to drag them away—but even you know that deep down the only thing that will stop these two is a bullet. 

Eyes snapping back and forth, you only get close enough to try and snatch at Hesh’s arm right as he finishes a countdown of three; at the end, Logan kicks down the engine room door with a violent connection of his boot.

Even with the drop on the three guards inside, it doesn't stop the bullet from ripping through your lower side, preoccupied and distracted yet again. You yell loudly, balking back into the door frame and hunching over as blood spurts out of you. Hesh’s head whips your way immediately, jaw going slack and a soul-deep hysteria takes over.

So now he pays attention.

“Shit, Harp!” So little time. 

Logan can’t take care of the last remaining Fed soldier by himself, and in a large act of self-sabotage, that very soldier just happened to have a missile launcher. 

The entire left engine explodes—the train jerks; everyone is sent in a back-and-forth motion, first hitting off the last train car before being sent right back through the engine room entirely. A transference of force gives you whiplash as your head bounces off the door frame. 

The world goes blurry, body hitting and slamming through layers of glass and pain before the control room is suddenly where you end up, using the body of a stunned guard as a cushion. 

There’s a second of muffled gunfire, struggling and yelling—and then it all comes back into focus like a sniper’s scope being correctly sighted. You gargle an expletive and shove the guard under you back down despite the searing heat in your side and head; struggling to unsheathe your combat knife as the world tilts. 

Hands push at your cheeks, grip at your neck futilely, but when you get the blade out and struggle the hands down once more, you hammer the point into his throat with a thump of your boot pressing for purchase on the floor. 

The man spasming, you push off of him and slam to the ground, coughing in great lung-shattering segments.

“You can’t win, Rorke!” Hesh’s voice brings you back from the swirling, and you hear your blood patter to the metal floor like rain.

“Shit,” you mutter, gasping for air. 

Gazing up you see Rorke holding Logan in a chokehold, free hand pointing a gun at Hesh. Your eyes bulged, trying to push onto your knees and reach for your weapon as you saw Hesh continually looking away from the target and worriedly watching you. His hands at his sides are loose, but when you lock eyes with him, they clench and shake. 

“It’s over—” He tries, but the loud gunshot bounces off the train’s enclosed space. You’re yelling before you can think, darting forward and leveling your gun right to Rorke’s head as Hesh’s form collapses to the ground.

Standing on unsteady feet, you pant and stumble, but the devil’s brown eyes hold you captive. Rorke smirks as you guard Hesh behind you. 

“Well, well, well, seems the girl’s just as promising as you, eh, Logan? She’s the other one who slipped her binds in Las Vegas.” He laughs. “Look at me, I’m surrounded by young talent.” 

“I don’t exactly care if you are or aren’t,” you growl, shuffling to keep Hesh even farther behind you as you instrumentally cough again. Your legs are wobbling. “Just that you put my fucking friend down.”

“You willing to die for him?” Rorke looks demented, with his scar and his intimidating build. Whatever torture he had been through to make him like this—a Ghost killer—it had worked perfectly. There was no coming back from this. He whistles lowly. “That’s some loyalty you have there.”

His mind was dead to all else.

You don’t hesitate in an answer, even as the man behind you grabs your leg, trying to move you with a wheezing breath.

“H-Harp,” his spine moves in a cough. “Don’t…please.”

“Always.” Interest alights in those dark, tiny eyes. Logan tries to give you messages with his gaze, but you ignore him. Ironic. “That’s not something I’ll break on. Unlike you.”

“Shit, Kid,” there’s a grand laugh, “now that’s heartless…but good,” Rorke glances at Hesh, raising a brow and chuckling. “I’ll love to see the look in his eyes when I—”

“Checkmate!”

“Checkmate confirmed.” You look down at Hesh and see him watching you, his gaze open and bare. 

“I’m sorry,” he gasps, but all you can do is watch. 

There’s no time to think.

“I love you,” you confess in a fleeting moment of bare nothingness, blurting it out. “I’ve loved you.”

Hesh’s body entirely halts, jaw slowly slackening in horror; something shifts behind his eyes but before he can open his mouth, a rageful bark bullies the smooth tone of his throat back.

“What did you do?!” Your form is bodied into the controls behind you, colliding as you snarl and are forced to recover. With a snap of your finger, you fire a shot into Rorke’s foot. 

He yells and whips his wrist back, slamming the butt of his gun into your temple. 

As the bridge ahead of the train explodes, Hesh drags himself to cover your body, muttering into your flesh words you cannot name as the darkness sets in.

“It’s over,” Hesh speaks grimly to Rorke, turning to look at him silently as he presses your head into his chest, sharing a nod and thin-lipped look with Logan still stuck in his arm. “It’s over.”

“Shit, Son…” The train gets thrown and broken in a wave of utter destruction and rebirth; and through it all, Hesh never lets go—not even when the water below comes up to meet you.

—

The beach’s sand is coarse, and it sticks to your gear with a fervent hold. To your skin, the paint, and blood, for the moment washed away as hands dragged you from the water, small puffs of breath and whimpers greeting you. 

“C’mon, Sweetheart.” Hesh. And he sounded frantic. “C’mon, open…open your eyes, dammit. Please, you just told me the best thing you possibly could. Please.” 

Water slips off your neck, and as you’re weakly lying back, propped against a rock, hands slip to your cheeks, moving the skin as a barely conscious body tries to make you wake up. 

A forehead hits against your shoulder, a deep groan of pain emanating from the man who grips at your gear.

“No, no, c’mon,” Hesh can barely keep himself sitting up, bloody and broken. Logan had to drag him from the water not seconds prior, and in turn, Hesh had grabbed what little strength was left and helped him get you. “Logan!” Green darts to brown, and the older brother pleads in a broken voice, “Help me!”

You bend your head forward and cough up blood and water, shoving Hesh away from you so you can collapse on your side and expel your stomach.

“Harp,” the man quickly mutters, dragging himself over and grabbing your shoulder to keep your face out of the sand. “Fuck, okay—it’s okay I’ve got you.”

“You,” your voice cuts out, and you shake as you gasp and sputter, “A-are a fucking idiot!” 

Hesh chuckles, and you feel his head hit off your arm, his struggling breath. “God, I know. I know, Sweetheart.” 

Logan crawls over to you, pushing you back against the rock and grappling for his medical pouch as Hesh patches into the comms. You grunt and look down at the younger brother, head swirling in colors and ears pounding with your pulse. 

“Merrick, do you copy? Merrick, come in.”

“Hesh! Hesh, is that you?” You weakly smirk at the shock and relief from the tone, letting your head tilt back as Logan hurriedly packs your gunshot wound with gauze. You wince and stare at the sky—blood infectiously tinging the sand below you. 

Hesh tries to help too, but you and the man are in far worse shape than Logan. The older brother’s shoulder leans into yours heavily, and you shift your eyes to the side as they flutter.

You haven't forgotten what you told him, what you confessed, but right now pushing back the black in the sides of your vision was more important.

And Rorke. What had happened to Rorke?

“Yeah,” Hesh watches you, face screwed with concern. “Yeah, I’m with Harp and Logan. We’re…we’re alive. Rough shape, but alive.”

“And Rorke?” You hold your breath.

“Dead.” Logan ties off a quick tourniquet and your spine tightens in agony, hissing out as your nerves spike with electricity. The brown-eyed man spares you a sorry glance but you shake your head in dismissal. “He’s dead.” 

Out in the water, the enemy warships are firing off missiles inland, some smoking and others already sinking. Merrick gives you the news as Hesh brings a hand up to your chin, tilting your head his way. You go willingly, skin on fire from the scrape of his gloves. 

Logan moves back, having done what he can, before he collapses back into the sand, panting with an arm over his stomach. His older brother’s forehead bumps into yours, eyes stuck. 

“Copy that. The Federation is in full retreat—the rest of the payload is inbound to finish the…”

Whatever else Merrick relays is lost and Hesh’s lips splay over yours, his nose letting out a long breath and body sagging, dead-weight. Cheeks hot and mind running, you let instinct take over and reciprocate, quick fingers pulling at his vest straps.

“Since when?” He asks, breathless when he moves back an inch. 

“After you introduced me to your first girlfriend, Cassie Albrook,” you smile, eyes crinkling. “Seventh grade. The one with the black hair? God, I was so jealous.” 

Hesh chuckles deeply, body jerking as he kisses you again, pulling back and holding your cheek in his hand. His eyes are wide and open.

“You mean to tell me, I could have been kissin’ you all the way back since seventh grade?” Your face moves with pure love, flesh going soft—even the pain diminishes somewhat. 

Merrick’s voice still gruffly moves down the line, and the last bits of his sentence are heard. 

“...Sit tight, Recon’s comin’ for ya.” Everything was looking up. 

Missiles slam into the Federation ships out in the water, the sudden burst of liquid and fire making Hesh briefly cover you with his side to protect you from the shockwave. When you turn to look, nothing but sinking metal remains. 

“I’m sorry,” Hesh tells you, and you don’t have the energy to pull away from his neck as you let your head rest—the thumping of your brain and the calming shadow of his form giving way to believe you had a concussion. 

“Hm,” you hum, letting him continue. His voice echoed in his breast.

“I…I’ve been an ass these past few days, weeks, I shouldn’t have said what I did—wanted to take it back as soon as I turned away from you.” You close your eyes and sigh long, sarcastic even now. 

“You owe me dinner and a movie, then I’ll see if I can forgive you.” Hesh chuckles, nose pressing down into your scalp. He kisses you there as water falls from his chin.

“Sounds like a plan, Doll.” The man lets himself rest, curled around you and waiting for the recon team as the sand and the water move. “I love you too…just so you know. Long time.”

Your failing mind lets off a scoff. But a happy one.

When you wake again, not remembering when you’d fallen asleep, it is to the sound of screaming. 

“Logan!” You jolt up and have to place a hand on your head to stop the pounding. Hesh is struggling to move, fighting to get to his younger brother who you turn as quickly as you’re able to face. “Logan!”

Your face voids of blood. 

Rorke is dragging the other man away, pushing him to the ground as Logan tries to fight like a dog on his back, with only one arm working properly. Growling, you try to stand—body falling and sliding right back down as Rorke kicks Logan’s combat blade from his hand, walking over to you and Hesh. 

He stands and pants, limping from your shot to his foot and a hand across his abdomen in obvious pain.

“Look what you did,” Rorke motions behind him to the still-falling missiles being disposed of from space into the ocean; atop the wreckage of what Rorke had been a part of. Falling to your side, you leave behind a raging Hesh who attempts to move and get to Rorke while you go to Logan. The devil wheezes and points from you to the boys, forcing a grunt of approval. “You’re good.”

Hesh is shoved back by a ruthless boot into the rock, and you snarl, coming over to Logan and his very broken arm as he weakly writhes on the ground. You place your body over his and bare your teeth as if a beast. 

“Rorke!” You bark. “It’s over! It’s done. Everything you’ve built is dead and recon is on its way for us…you’re finished.”

“Nothin’s finished, no,” Hesh tries to lunge again as Rorke’s body stumbles closer to you but falls into ragged coughs and stays on his side in utter agony. 

“Stay away from them!” The man you’d just confessed to hisses, hand grasping futilely at the sand. Green eyes run back and forth from you to Logan, desperate and breaking by the second. “Rorke! You son of a bitch!”

“Nothin’s ever finished.” Grabbing you by the scruff of your neck, you’re being tossed off Logan and thrown to the side in a cloud of sand, body screaming at you as you yell out loudly. 

Rorke bends a knee to look Logan in the eyes, shaking his head.

“You’d of been a hell of a Ghost.” Yelling, you wrench at the combat knife in your vest, set your feet, and tackle Rorke off of the Walker boy with a feral curse on your breath. 

“Get the fuck off of—” Your leg twists with a defining crack as you’re grappled and thrown off, only able to slice a nice long cut down his jaw and at the beginning of the man’s throat. 

Screaming you hear briefly Hesh’s rageful bellow, his calling of your name in high keens of helplessness. Promises of revenge and justice. 

Breath breaking as tears line the back of your eyes, Rorke comes over you and pins your dominant hand to the ground—you look up and grimace, trying to make your body function. 

Move!

Rorke laughs, great shoulders shaking with glee. He’s fucking demented as he continues his sentence from before your fruitless attack. 

“...But that’s not gonna happen, is it?” The man smiles and you struggle as Logan and Hesh rapidly try to assist. 

“Harp!”

“There ain’t gonna be any Ghosts.” Rorke’s eyes shift to Hesh, and you follow with a sense of dread and horror. The man’s mind had been made up when he turned back around, disregarding Logan entirely in favor of you and your ‘unbreakable’ loyalty. 

The joy it would bring him to destroy you and set you loose after such. Set you loose on Hesh. 

He leans in close to you, so you can feel his breath and his conviction. 

“We’re gonna destroy ‘em together.” 

“Harp!” You’re shoved back, knife grasped and ripped from your hand as your broken leg is grabbed and pressure is applied. 

You scream again, arms carding across the dunes as Rorke begins dragging you backward like a child holding onto a stuffed toy. Blown green eyes meet yours, Hesh reaching out and screaming at the top of his lungs for you. 

But he can’t move.

“Harp!” 

And you can’t feel your fingers. 

“I love you,” you whisper, perhaps for the last time and he sees your lips move. Hesh screams and slams his hand into the ground, Logan stumbling to his knees but immediately dropping back with a small cry. 

And Rorke chuckles.

—

You don’t know where he took you, but you do know the jungle floor is cold and wet, and the mud under your fingernails makes you feel gross. 

What you do know is that the earthen walls of the pit you are in are pointless to try to climb—the top is slatted with a covering of long sticks with wide square openings. You know it’s going to rain by the smell in your bloodied nostrils. 

You know that your leg is broken, your bullet wound is festering through the tourniquet, and your concussion is making you sleepy. 

In your head, you count these ‘knowns’ and sprinkle them like seeds as you stare blankly at the sky far above. Everything aches; hurts. When you breathe, it comes in and out with a wheeze. 

You know that Hesh loves you, and perhaps that’s the only fact you care about. Wherever he is, you’re glad he can’t see you like this. 

Rain patters against your head, the storm clouds finally rolling through. Leaves can be heard shuffling on their branches. You breathe in and out, rising and settling your lungs slowly. 

You can’t break—not like Rorke. 

No matter what he did to you, you can’t betray the Ghosts. Logan. Hesh.

Elias’s words echo as you curl into a tiny ball, shivering and whimpering as your wounds move and pull. 

...I’m proud of you. And I’m sure your folks would be too.

You know this game. Torture. They’ll pump you full of hallucinogens, starve you, beat you within an inch of your life; and through that you cannot give in.

But it’s easier said than done.

In the middle of the night, the top of the pit is pushed away and there are the voices of multiple people that dance above the rain storm. They jump down and in the state you are, there’s nothing you can do to stop them from hooking their arms under yours and hauling you up, limp and motionless. 

The words are in Spanish, and you still can make out some over the commotion and the way your hearing dips in and out. 

“Where do we inject….”

“...neck, I believe…arm could work too…”

“...nasty…was it? I heard…mix of drugs…Who knows?”

Your head is harshly yanked back, and the sharp pinch of a needle digs into your neck, the action making your good leg kick out in panic but there’s little you can do. 

A flood of thick fluid enters your veins and like sap seeping out of a tree some drops exit the wound and mix with the rain weighing down your clothes. They’d taken your gear, only your undershirt and cargo pants still clothing you. 

When they’re done, they let you drop back to the floor, where you flop and smash your face into the mud with a weak drag of your cheek along the sludge. With calls from above, a rope is tossed down and they all ascend. The top is clattered back over moments later. 

Laying still and groaning, teeth clenched, already you feel ten times more strange than before. 

“Ah,” you grasp at your head, which was bursting to begin with, as it gains a looseness to it—the mud below you shimmered with puddles, the chill got colder, and your clothes felt grating against your skin. “Not good. N-not good.” 

You pull at your shirt collar, coughing as your eyes bulge; your heart breaks itself as it immediately can be felt hammering into your ribcage far more sensitive than you’d ever experienced. It felt like your chest was going to rip open. 

Panicked sounds emanate from the back of your throat, fingers digging into your scalp as the drugs carry their venom through your blood. 

Your wounds blazed.

You start screaming, babbling for nothing, and pulling at your flesh, but the overhead striking of lightning leaves the desperation mute to all but the trees.

—

Hesh stares at you from the corner of the pit, but his eyes are not green. You watch, silent, barely moving, from where you curl into a tiny heap of bloodied flesh. You’d torn at your skin for days; time looped together with more injections and no food. Water you got from the sky.

They had offered soup, but you knew better even as you dug harsh lines into your neck. There were just more drugs in the broth. 

But Hesh. Hesh.

He wasn’t right—didn’t stand like him, or breathe like him; there was something off about his smirk as he watched you gaze at him in an addled stupor.

“Feelin’ good over there, Kid?” Not Hesh. Not. Hesh.

You’re panting, your body sweating profusely in the humidity and so, so hungry.

Not Hesh takes a step forward and his image tilts like the turning of a page with Rorke taking his place, but as soon as it happens it flips back on itself to your Love.

“N-not right,” you hurriedly whisper.

Not Hesh puts a hand to his ear, kneeling down in front of you. “What was that, now?” A long chuckle. His voice is…is…deeper. Your eyebrows flinch up and down. “Who do you see, Sweetheart?”

“Hesh,” you whimper out. “Hesh, what are you talking about? What’s going on? I…I feel like I’m…I’m twisted inside out.”

“Hesh, huh?” The man looks to the side, smiling. “Well, that’s better than I expected. This’ll be fun.”

“W-what—” A fist connects with your face and you get catapulted into the wall. Before anything else, your stomach is kicked, making your call of alarm get forced out as a gasp as your clotted bullet wound reopens in a great tear. A large hand grips you hard by the chin, snapping it forward to stare into those wrong eyes but the familiar face of Hesh. 

What was he doing to you?

“H…Hesh,” you can’t even stutter out his name before you break down into coughs and gagging; tears rolling down your cheeks, and blood and mud everywhere.

“Yeah, that’s right. You just keep lookin’ at me.” You dry heave and push at his hands, fingernails digging into his skin to create crescent moons. “Keep lookin’ at Hesh.”

—

It’s three months of the same, and you can’t go on anymore.

You lay in a near comatose state on the ground, flesh completely covered in mud and open wounds—maggots eat at your dead skin, wriggling deeper. Not having the heart to pick them out, or even move the few non-broken fingers you have, you lay in blank agony. Pain so deep you can’t scream or make a single noise. It would make it worse; it is making it worse. 

Breathing is becoming a chore.

“Is today going to be the day?! God, I sure hope so.” Hesh looks down from over the edge, fiddling with another syringe of drugs. “Enough blood down there to make a fuckin’ painting out of. Shit…You lasted longer than I thought, Kid.” You don’t look at him. At his dark, wrong, eyes. 

“I’m nearly impressed.” There’s a low chuckle and the crackling of branches. 

You close your eyes and try to think of a single kiss and green eyes, but the rest of the image is tainted to you. Your mind can’t call it forward without the corruption of the puppet ahead of you, this shifting specter of mist and smoke.

Memories that used to bring you comfort call to fear and spine-curling hurt. 

This couldn’t be Hesh, you told yourself for the millionth time, but…who else could it be? Your body was too broken to try and work through the hallucinations, to think or rationalize.

There’s a thump of boots and a grunt. Someone coming closer as birds speak far above. Singing. It's the first you can recall another living creature being this close to the smell of infected decay.

 “Now, now, let’s see that neck of yours.” You’re seized and pushed onto your back, head lulling and eyes fluttering. Hesh’s image shifts and bends into another, one you should be able to name but can’t quite recall. It’s hard to focus. “Just one more, and we can fix this. Together. No more Ghosts, huh? We’ll make it right.”

Birds songs. Birds and flying shadows. Rapid wing beats like an eagle or the pound of paws on the ground. 

There is an un-godly snarl and a call of rage. 

“Rorke!” The dark-eyed Hesh snaps his head away, his needle stilling in his grip only inches from your flesh. He’s grappled and ripped away, thrown up and slammed down into a full-body jerk of pure strength not a second later with a cry of shock. “Get the fuck off of her!” 

Shadows roll and wrestle, feral yowls like that of beasts bounce off your impaired hearing, mud stuck in your ears. You think your vision cuts out for a moment because the next there’s a different man gripping your shoulders, slightly shaking you back awake.

Blue eyes like the ocean. Your brow barely twitches in confusion. 

Keegan? 

“C’mon, that’s it. Right here.” A light is taken and directed right into your eye in the fading light. “You’re doin’ great, Harp. Just keep lookin’ at me.” 

The light passes over your blood-coated eyes and barely diolates. Keegan’s lips under his balaclava thin to an alarming degree. 

“Fuck,” he grunts, looking down at you before he darts his vision over to Hesh, the actual Hesh, who’s locked limbs with the former Ghost; fists to guts and primal anger. 

In his haste to get to you, Hesh had damned himself—he’d left no opening for any of the others to get a clean shot at Rorke. But no one could blame him, even if it was reckless; incredibly stupid. 

The man had been on your trail nearly every day since you’d been taken. Barely sleeping, eating little. A man possessed. 

The Ghosts had been half convinced something had taken over his image and scooped out his personality.

“Merrick,” Keegan patches into the secure line, looking back down at you. “Positive ID on HVT, three klicks West. Hesh has engaged—we found Harp.” 

There’s an instantaneous response, worried breath. “Solid copy…how’s she doing?”

“We need MedEvac immediately. She won’t last another night.” There’s a curse on the other end, a loud and quick call to the rest of his squad. 

“Copy! I’ll call it in!” Keegan tries to stabilize you as Hesh and Rorke rip each other to shreds, and Hesh, who had the upper hand in the beginning, is quickly losing it.

“Awe, look who tracked ‘er down!” Rorke snatches at Hesh’s collar and lays two jabs to his ribs—there’s a definitive crack as the younger man shouts in pain. “Young love! So fucking pointless.” 

“I’m going to rip you into pieces,” Hesh bares his teeth, eyes wild and unrestrained. For a moment Rorke looks taken aback by the utter conviction in his green gaze. “And make you choke on your own damn teeth! You hear me?!” 

Ripping away with a tear of fabric, Hesh bends low and tackles the former Ghost to the ground, splaying him out on his back before his fist is snapped back and brought down; again and again and again. 

“Hesh!” Keegan shouts, pressing deeply into your wounds and trying to give you fluids with one hand. “This fucking kid.” The Sergeant gives up, shaking his head. 

Trust had to be given, and Keegan knew that at this moment he had to trust Hesh to hold his own. He needed to keep you conscious. 

“Easy, Harp.” You can feel the cracks in your dry throat as the water seeps past them, and you cough up droplets before the blue-eyed Sergeant tilts your head and helps you. “Easy, Sweetheart.” 

Keegan doesn’t even want to look at your body as the brutal sounds of a fist on bone continue, clothes scuffling and gargled breaths—the savagery and barbarous remnants of mental and physical torture too much even for him. 

“Christ,” he hisses. 

You gulp down water slowly and let it fill your stomach like a brick. 

Hesh reduces Rorke’s face to a mess of flesh and busted bone, sweating and not even stopping as his knuckles split under his gloves or his fingers dislocated from their sockets. His eyes burn, his face goes red—he looks insane. 

He looks like a spirit of utter revenge. 

Only when Logan and Merrick drag him off the spasming body does he stop, but not after he tries like hell to fight out of that hold as well. Whipping around, he attempts to land a punch on Merrick before Logan is forced to put him in a restraint hold. 

Hesh’s cheek meets the mud, face being sunk into it as his right arm is twisted so far behind his back it nearly breaks. The older brother growls, free arm and legs moving—back sliding. 

“David!” Merrick barks at him, face pulled in a sneer, enraged at the man’s lack of sense. “Shut this shit down. Look at her, dammit!” Logan gets bucked off, but the youngest Walker boy has enough sense to wrestle him back down and grab onto his chin; forcing those green eyes to lock on you and Keegan. 

The second he sees you, he entirely freezes.

Merrick sighs out harshly, jogging over to you and already checking in with the MedEvac that Kick’s flying in. There would be no resistance—all the other hostiles were dead. 

“Jesus Christ,” the Commander breathes, kneeling by you instantly and studying your body. 

Hesh’s reaction is slower, but the spread of vile tears burns the back of his eyes. Logan lets him go at seeing this, standing and holding out a hand, but the brunette stays on the ground a moment longer; utterly still. 

Hesh’s mouth opens and closes. 

All at once he’s rushing over and limping up at your side as Merrick grabs more medical supplies from his packs to help you. 

“Oh my God,” Hesh breathes, and Keegan sends him a glance. You’d drank all of the water. “Harp, hey, you’re going to be okay—it’s gonna be alright, you hear? I’m right here, Logan and I are gonna get you home. Back to California, okay? Riley’s waitin’ for you, Doll.”

You flinch at that voice, and Merrick looks sharply at the blue-eyed Sergeant. Their eyes lock, holding for a long moment. Logan’s brows tighten in confusion. 

The brunette seems not to notice it at all, hands finding your cheek before Merrick can give him a warning. Your eyes slowly shift to him before they peel back with fear.

Hesh’s vision goes glossy, clenching his jaw. “Shit, what did he do to you—”

“Hesh!” 

You yell and yerk back, shoving the man off of you with a fear-filled sob. 

“No!” Keegan and Merrick grapple to keep you down, not wanting to aggravate your wounds as Hesh falls to his ass, hands slapping behind him before he hisses and brings them back up. He blinks quickly in confusion and panic.

Logan rushes over and hides him from your view, beginning to understand what was going on. 

“No!” You call again, Keegan having to hold your head into his chest to hide you away. Merrick yells down his comms to hurry the Helo up, and that he doesn’t care about anything else. “No,” your voice gargles off as you sob into Keegan. “Please, no more.”

“Shh,” the Sergeant mutters, looking over his shoulder at a pale and shaking Hesh. “Nothin’s going to happen to you. Not anymore.” 

“Harp,” Hesh whispers, jaw slackened. “I…I don’t…”

“Hallucinogens,” Merrick says grimly, watching you shake and wail. Logan has to look away, his fists clenching. “Who knows what she’s seen. Reckon it wasn’t anything good.”

It’s like he doesn’t hear anything besides your cries. Whenever you gasp Hesh tenses as if he wants to run to you—comfort you the best way he knows how. 

Hallucinogens? He thinks and feels tears dribble down his cheeks as he blinks, rubbing at his jaw and shakily placing a hand over the back of his neck. Logan puts a heavy grip on his shoulder, weighing them down even more.

—

Rorke’s death should have been a time of celebration—of honoring the fallen. Elias Walker, Ajax, and countless others. The Federation was nothing more than broken factions now. Dust to the wind. 

But no one can celebrate when they’re trying to fix one of their own.

You were being kept in the secure medical ward under twenty-four-hour surveillance and around-the-clock care; only Keegan was allowed in, seeing as you were the closest to him outside of Logan and Hesh and had no adverse effects to his presence. 

Merrick had said he didn’t want to risk Logan going in, as it might worsen things. Hesh was taking it hard. 

He just got you back, how was this right? How was it fair that you’d had to go through that right when it was supposed to be over and done with? The man got sick over it, thinking about what Rorke had done to…break your mind like he had. 

Two months. 

Two months of nightmares plaguing him, of your eyes when you looked at him. If Hesh had just been stronger, then that bastard would never have dragged you away on that beach. He resulted in working out more, running laps around Fort Santa Monica with Riley at three in the morning—he grew bags under his eyes. He grew quiet. 

When all of his broken ribs and fingers healed, the artificial wounds, he was offered awards for taking down Rorke; even a summon by the President. 

He’d denied all of them. 

If a medal was going to get you better faster, he’d have taken them in an instant. But he wasn’t that stupid. Hesh was withering, and everyone saw it. He loved you more than anything—more than fame or recognition. The man lay awake at night fearing that you were too cold or uncomfortable in the far-off ward, he was paranoid about your safety. 

More often than not, the nurses found him and Riley fitfully sleeping outside of your door on the hard ground, arm used as a pillow. They didn’t have the heart to move him.

In the last two weeks before the third month of your isolation and evaluations, in his nighttime routine, Hesh finds your door open. 

He stares at it now with a blank expression, fatigue once burning his eyes all gone for a deep and pounding panic. With a hand gesture, Riley halts and sits, and, sensing his handler’s mood, lets his ears go straight up in attention. 

Hesh reaches for the gun in the back of his pants, peeling it out slowly and taking a nearly silent step forward. Ready, his ears strain for a sound…but there is none. 

His free hand reaches for the door, the short sleeves of his gray sleep-shirt bunching. A moment later, he lightly taps the barrier farther out before entering the room with the gun drawn.

He said he wouldn’t get distracted, but it would be a lie to say his eyes didn’t immediately go to you. 

You were there, asleep, curled up on the far recliner chair instead of the bed. Head lulled to the side and knees kept close to your chest. But it was the scars that broke Hesh.

They were large and long—on your face and arms; legs. All moving and stretching like a child’s drawing up your sleep shorts and shirt, disappearing only to reappear somewhere else. Healed over but still fresh.

Hesh drops the gun and turns his body slightly away, staring at the side wall before he takes an unsteady breath. He re-hides his weapon and turns to leave, not seeing anyone else.

Maybe Keegan had forgotten to close the door…he’d have to chew him out for that. Already a dull point of anger was making his jaw clench at the sly older man.

“Bastard,” Hesh mutters.

Before he can exit and close the door softly behind him, he hears a broken squeak of alarm. He halts as you stare heavily into his back—awoken by the sound of nearly silent feet. In a steady motion, the man’s hands are by his sides, open and visibly holding nothing. 

“I was just leaving,” Hesh whispers, not looking at you. His heart hammers. “I’m sorry, I thought someone else was in here—the door was open, okay?” 

Your hands twitch, body still and breath held tight.

“Hesh?” He flinches, eyes closed tight. 

Don’t look at her. Don’t turn around. Leave.

“Are you really…him?” You ask silently, eyes darting nervously around the room and quickly waking up fully. 

It’s a moment before he answers you. 

“Yeah,” he forces out, voice tiny and sad. “Yeah, it’s me, Doll. Just David Walker.” 

Your throat bobs with a thin swallow. Treatment was still ongoing, but it’s not every day you wake up to find the man who you had nightmares about standing in your room. 

Breathe, you have to remind yourself. It was the drugs. Not Hesh. Never Hesh. Rorke.

But you were still scared. 

“I…I need to see your eyes,” you say. 

Hesh turns carefully, staring hard at the floor. His heart lurches, hands going clammy. 

What if she has a setback? He asks himself. What if I mess this up…Shit, Hesh, you couldn’t have minded your own business?

Oh, but he never could when it came to you. 

“Then look at me, Sweetheart.” The man breathes slowly, darting his eyes up to your face. “They only belong to you.”

But your gaze can’t slip to his sockets, only able to glare fearfully into his neck. But this Hesh felt different, more like the one you grew up with—those memories still coming back but tainted; you need to see green, but it was hurting you to think that you might not.

“I’m scared,” you admit, shakily. The man’s thighs tense, but he stops himself before he can go and take you into his arms. That wouldn’t help. “I’m…I don’t know what’s real anymore.”

“I’m real. I swear to you, Harp, I’m real. I’m right here and I’ll wait for you as long as it takes. Even if it’s years, I will always be right here.” He pleads, hands still at his sides and going nowhere if you don’t tell him to. It’s like a floodgate opens, months of internal pain and heartbreak spilling out. You needed to know this, even if he never got to see you again. 

“I have loved you since I saw you get jealous over Cassie Albrook in seventh grade and tried to hide it because you thought she made me happy—she could never make me happy, Harp. That was you. That was always and will always be you. I…I can’t breathe when you’re not near me, I don’t know how to act right when you’re hurt. Seeing you hurting is…is…” Hesh’s voice breaks and he falls silent. 

“Please, if you need to look into my eyes, I’m beggin’ you, Sweetheart, please, do it. Even if it’s only one glance.” Your breath is stuck in your throat, tears welling and sliding down your cheeks. 

In your skull your brain pounds, bordering on hysteria and an urge to flee. There was so little that you trusted anymore. Keegan, yes—the nurses and doctors? You had no choice there. 

You knew that the Hesh you’d seen in the pit was Rorke, Keegan had explained it all to you after the drugs had been pumped from your system; you understood that part. But it didn’t make the sickening confusion any better.

Symptoms of severe PTSD, paranoia, anxiety—you’d seen the charts when the nurses thought you weren’t looking at them. 

You still wouldn’t let anyone with a needle anywhere close to you, had to be put under for it. 

But you’d been so lonely here. A simple kiss seared into your mind before the horror set in, a stain of a smile on your lips. A chest vibrating with a content purr. 

Hesh. You want your Hesh back. 

Taking a stuttering breath, your eyes dart upwards. You push through your misty gaze and lock on a color that can only be described as a grassy field of verdant growth. Great open plains of viridescent being—showing you a world bathed in tender belonging. 

Home. 

You sob and rush from the chair on legs that still hurt even now, meeting Hesh in the middle as he takes a step forward and wraps his arms around you. You’re covered and kept in a hold so tight it’s like he’ll never let you go, heart pounding and his face loose with shock.

But he says nothing beyond a loud shuttered exhale of relief, pressing you to his chest and burying his face into your scalp, breathing you in; taking you down like a sinner in church until all that remains is you. Your fingers digging into his shirt, your face in his neck, how you call his name as if calling a ghost back from the dead.

“Oh, my Girl.” Hesh chuckles through the tears in his eyes. “My Girl. I missed you so much, you won’t even believe it.” 

You push yourself into him tighter. 

Riley, at some point, had come to stand in the doorway, his dark beady eyes seeing only the colors in gray, brown, yellow, and blue, though that never truly mattered. Color was only half of the picture. 

And the rest of the image in front of him was seeped with the pigment of love. 

The dog’s tongue lulls from the side of his mouth, and in the air behind him, his tail moves back and forth into a soft arch.

TAGS:

@luuvbuzz, @emerald-valkyrie, @anna-banana27, @blueoorchid, @cryingnotcrying, @writeforfandoms, @homicidal-slvt, @jade-jax, @frazie99, @elmoees, @littlemisstrouble, @alpineswinter, @phoenixhalliwell, @idocarealot, @lavalleon, @facelessmemories, @h-leigh, @20forty9, @glitter-anon-asks, @emily-who-killed-a-man, @neelehksttr, @aeneanc, @escapefromrealitysm, @i-d-1-0-t, @pparcxysm, @hawkscanendme, @caramlizedtomatos, @waves-against-a-cliff, @sanfransolomitatm, @maelstrom007, @jemandderkeinenusernamenfindet, @pheobees, @glitterypirateduck, @uselsshuman, @fan-of-encouragement, @halfmoth-halfman, @ghostlythunderbird, @I-inkage, @pukbadger, @kopatych11, @0nceinabluem00n, @cocrorapop, @knightofsexyness, @abnormalgeil, @smallseastone, @jacegons, @330bpm-whiplash, @simon-rileys-housewife, @4-atsu, @tiredmetalenthusiast

[oddballwriter]

Post-Nap Lunch

꒦꒷꒦꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒦꒷꒦꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒦꒷꒦꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒦꒷꒦꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦

Summary: A blurb with Marc just being a new dad and doing new dad things 

Warnings: It's mentioned that reader was the one who carried and birthed the baby and breastfeeds so yeah, take that as you will. 

Author’s Snip: Girl dad Moon dads are best Moon dad.

Notes: I didn't proof read this I just wanted to make something 

I’ll shut up now. Enjoy! And don’t be afraid to request.

꒦꒷꒦꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒦꒷꒦꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒦꒷꒦꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒦꒷꒦꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦

"She's so little." Steven mused from the inside as Marc fronted as he looked at your newborn daughter, Abigail, Abi for short, napping in her crib.

"Well of course she is, Steven. She had to fit in there somehow." Marc said as he also looked at the infant lay peacefully and occasionally suckle on the pacifier in her mouth in her sleep.

"She kind of looks like a potato." Jake commented as he also watched from the inside of the head space, earning a small scolding from the rest about saying such a thing about their daughter. Even if she did look like one, a little.

This was the first time they were actually alone to take care of Abi. You had healed enough from the birth and decided to try and get back to work bit by bit. They, of course, knew the schedule that was settled for her since they've been right beside you in taking care of her but this was that first time that they were actually left to tend to her. And it was a bit intimidating since they're all new dads and worried that something would go wrong.

"Why are we watching her sleep again?" Jake asked.

"This is usually the time she wakes up from her nap, and she's usually hungry when she does." Steven explained. At least that was his reasoning. Marc agreed with him, and that was partially why he was there, but also because he just has a paranoia that something will happen while she sleeps.

"Well why don't we just do something till she wakes up. We have the baby monitor." Jake mentioned, "The most that would happen is that she'll fuss for a bit before we get her." Jake added before Abi starts to wiggle causing everyone to go silent.

She lets out the faintest little grunts before stretching out her little limbs. It takes another moment before she opens her eyes and looks around, now awake.

"Hey there, babygirl." Marc says softly as to not scare her. It takes only a second for Abi to realize that Marc is here before raising up her arms and making little grabbing hands as she makes a few louder noises, wanting to be picked up. Marc unlatches the bars of her crib and gently scoops her up and cradles her closely and securely to his chest, making sure he's doing it right. He's used to the small amount of weight that Abigail has to her so he's less offput by it and slowly walks out of the dimly lit nursery to the brighter rest of the house so that her eyes can adjust.

Abi rubs her eyes a bit before gripping at Marc's shirt. "Yeah, yeah. I know. You want lunch. Don't rush me." Marc comments as he walks towards the kitchen. Though Marc paused once he got there, a thought just now hitting him.

He'd have to get the baggy of milk from the freezer, a bottle from the cabinet, put some of the milk in the bottle, and heat it up while holding Abi. He knew that it was possible. Jake can cradle using one arm, Marc saw him do it. But he doesn't know how to do it and he can't just switch, especially while holding a baby. Marc took a moment before Steven budded in "Just set her down, mate. Her rocker is right there in the living room.".

"But I'm already holding her, and she might fuss or cry." Marc mumbled more so to himself. "She can still see you from there and it just takes a minute to make the bottle." Steven answered.

It took a bit of thinking but Marc managed to think of something. He gently placed Abi in her rocker and hit the mobile above it. And it actually worked. She got distracted long enough by the spinning and trying to grab at it that Marc was barely able to prep the bottle with milk and place it in a pot of hot water to warm up before the infant noticed that her dad wasn't there anymore. Only letting out displeased noise.

"I'm still here, sweetheart. Don't worry. Daddy didn't go anywhere." Marc said as he knelt down next to the rocker so that she could see him. It was so heartwarming to see Abi's face go from agape and confused to a gummy smile once she saw him again. And something that would be more heartwarming to you, if you were there, was Marc referring to him as "daddy" instead of just saying "I didn't go anywhere.". That was more of a thing that Steven and Jake did.

After a while of talking to and cooing at Abi, and distracting her with another mobile spin, Marc got the bottle.

"Okay. Now time for what you actually wanted, huh." Marc stated looking down at Abi and trying to get the bottle into her mouth, but she wouldn't put her mouth on it for some reason. Instead she just turned her head and made a grunt noise in disapproval. "Yeah, I know it's not the real thing but the real thing isn't available right now so we gotta do it this way." Marc said as he tried to coax the nipple of the bottle into her mouth some more.

After a few more seconds of trying, Marc decided to change position... literally, and scooped Abi up and sat on the couch to comfortably hold her and her bottle. Which, with her now being cradled, was now taking the bottle just fine and started drinking.

"There we go." Marc relieved. "Yeah, you would be used to eating this way wouldn't you?" Marc asked humorously while looking down at his daughter. Not like she'd really understand since she's an infant, or care since she was too busy going at it with her food.

Marc honestly had to take the bottle away for a moment to force her into a break because she was eating her post-nap lunch so fast, earning an "Okay, calm down.".

[thezombieprostitute]

The Arrangement - Part 6

Summary: Jake's done a lot of things to keep his sister, and then his niece, safe from his parent's influence and manipulation. If he wants to keep them safe, he has to marry you.

Warnings: Bad parents, Implied physical abuse. Let me know if I missed any!

Chapter 5 -- Chapter 7

Series Masterlist

Your sleep is fitful at best. Between waking up in an unfamiliar place and waiting for Jake, your husband, to break his promise and demand you consummate your marriage, you may as well have not gotten any sleep. Checking the time you opt to just get ready for the day as best you can. As much as you want to take your time in the shower, your paranoia keeps having you on the lookout for your husband so you can't relax under the hot water.

The only thing that gives you pause is your clothing. He had called you beautiful while you were wearing your comfortable clothing, even after Clay had left. But can you trust that? Was he messing with you? That abrupt switch in him, his rambling, almost shy, personality shift could still be a ploy. Still, you really didn't want to wear those too-tight, can't-breathe-comfortably-in-them clothes that your mother bought. You decide it's worth the risk to wear the more comfortable clothing and leave the overfull closet alone.

Tiptoeing out the door you keep your eyes and ears out for your husband. You hear a bit of snoring from one of the guest rooms. He must've made do with one of the recliners instead of the living room couch. Probably for the best, you think. This way if you get surprise visitors, there's no obvious evidence of sleeping in different rooms. You can only imagine the lectures you'd get from both parents if they found out. Undoubtedly they're expecting a grandchild within a couple of years.

Stepping into the kitchen you let out a little sigh of relief. As much as you don't want to wake up your husband, it was agreed that first person awake cooks breakfast. Plus, cooking gives you something to do. You hate sitting idle, letting your thoughts overwhelm you. Cooking, cleaning, working in general is a good distraction.

It takes a bit to remember where everything in the kitchen is but you're able to get all of the items you need for some omelets and diced potatoes. You pause for a moment as you realize you don't know if your husband has any food allergies or what his preferences are. But surely he would've said something last night? Your body shakes a bit with the fear of him getting angry because you didn't know. Yes, you can just cook up something else, but would he accept that? Would he yell at you for not knowing? For wasting food?

"Hey." His voice behind you makes you jump. "Sh--shoot, I'm sorry," he frets. "I swear I didn't mean to scare you."

It takes a few breaths for you to steady yourself. "It's...it's okay. Um...I was going to make omelets and diced potatoes?"

"That sounds delicious!" His eyes light up. "Do you need any help with anything?"

"N-no, thank you," you shake your head. You just want him out of your safe place.

"Okay," he nods. "And since you're cooking I'll do the dishes." That gets your attention. "I know it's not entirely fair," he concedes. "After all, we've got the dishwasher, but it's the least I can do to help out."

"Um...thank you," you blink a few times, trying to process his words. "I should really get to cooking."

"Okay, I'll get showered and dressed," he says as he backs away. "And thank you, again, for cooking."

As Jake steps out of the bathroom he's hit by the delicious scents from your cooking. His stomach growls in a way that surprises him. That pasta dish last night was so good, you'd think it would last longer. That's when he realizes, he didn't see you eat at all yesterday. Did you have a plate for yourself in the kitchen? Are you starving yourself? Is there something else going on with your eating habits that he should be worried about? How does he even ask about that without sounding creepy?

When he gets to the dining area he breathes a little easier at seeing two plates of food. But where is his wife? He walks to the kitchen and almost runs into you as you're carrying two mugs of very hot coffee. You stop short but it causes the beverages to slosh, spilling onto your hands, causing you to cry out.

"Shit, shit, shit!" Jake yells as he takes hold of the mugs, giving you the opportunity to let them go. He immediately goes into action, setting the mugs on the counter and practically dragging you to the kitchen sink where he turns on the cold water and gets your hands settled under the faucet. He double checks the water temperature, making sure it's cool, not cold.

"I'm so sorry," you sob.

He looks at you, confused, "for what? It was as much my fault for causing you to spill."

"I'm sorry I spilled the coffee."

"The coffee isn't important," he chides, trying his hardest to keep his tone soft. "What's important is that you got hurt."

The tears start falling, unbidden, "but I messed up breakfast."

"No, you didn't," he reassures. He starts to wonder if you're suffering from some kind of shock. "It was an accident. If anything, I should be apologizing for getting you hurt." He thinks for a moment. "I really am so sorry about this. I was just trying to check in on you and wasn't thinking. And now you're hurt because of me."

You both stand there awkwardly for a minute before you mumble, "I think I'll be ok, sir."

Jake does a double take before letting go of your hands. "'Jake'. Please just call me 'Jake'," he pleads.

"Sure, Jake," you nod. The two of you lock eyes and, for just a moment, you think you'll be ok. "We, um, we should go eat breakfast before it gets cold."

"Good idea!" Jake affirms, trying not to lose himself in your eyes again.

Chapter 5 -- Chapter 7

Series Masterlist

Tagging: @alicedopey; @ashdoctor; @delicatebarness; @ellethespaceunicorn;

@icefrozendeadlyqueen; @lokislady82; @ronearoundblindly

[sanders-sides-uncorrect-quotes]

I saw a few posts floating around about an AU where Janus is introduced first instead of Virgil and is the one to get accepted first and tbh I absolutely love that idea and I may have to draw something for it

Janus gets to sing in the song Lies like he wishes he did in canon

He was the one who kept the other darks hidden and slowly let them out so it'd be interesting to see him trying to do that whilst being a recognised good guy, sure he has 6 arms but is 2 enough to hold each dark side at bay when he's not there?

If he ducks out there'd have to be a montage in the first part of Thomas going around and telling the truth about everything and it making his life start to crumble

Janus leaves the dark in the same way Virgil does after AA

Without him there the dark side is basically in anarchy

I imagine Orange to be Wrath/Rage/Anger/smth like that, so I imagine without Janus there he'd just be screaming and throwing stuff around nearly 24/7

Remus' is somehow even more unhinged

Being left alone to deal with those two maniacs (mentioned just above) leads to Virgil basically going insane and hating Janus even more than he does in canon because he used to be the one to calm down the other two (I imagine he and Virgil used to sip coffee together whilst watching Remus and Orange fight in the living room)

Even though Virgil is terrified of him, he forms a very shaky friendship with Remus and they bond over their what-ifs and pain over Janus

Janus is so focused on his friendships with the lights and Thomas that he lets his guard down for a moment and that leads to the dark sides to start rebelling (not sure which one would be revealed first, my gut says Virgil but maybe it'd be cool to leave him til later)

I'm super curious of what Virgil would be like as a villain introduced in season 2, how he would look, if he would still be called Anxiety or something else like Paranoia (which I think could be fitting if he was introduced later on like I said in the last point)

After Accepting Anxiety in canon Patton and Virgil formed a familial-like bond, in this AU Patton and Janus are more marriage-coded

Janus and Virgil's dynamic is a very obviously one-sided hatred. Virgil looks ready to jump at him and rip his head off whilst Janus looks at Virgil with pure grief and regret (because there's absolutely no way that Virgil will trust him ever again, at least in his eyes)

[punkxcalibur]

this post probably doesnt have a target audience, but i wanted to combine some of the fears from the magnus archives with merlin characters, because i thought it would be cool

these are based on season 4 and 5!! (of merlin)

explanations on why i chose each one under the cut

Merlin: the eye (paranoia, fear of secrets being revealed, being watched) i feel like this is self explanatory, merlin is afraid of his magic being revealed and in s5 he becomes more and more paranoid because of the whole destiny thing

Mordred: the lonely (isolation, disconnection) Yeah so i feel like mordred led a very isolated life until being knighted, but once he belongs, the whole thing gets taken away and he is lonely once again, with Morgana being the only option to turn to

Morgana: the spiral (madness, hallucination) Over the course of the show, we see Morgana descending into madness and in a servant of two masters it's even revealed that she has hallucinations and doesn't trust her own mind.

Arthur: The desolation (pain, loss, burning) now arthur was a hard one. i chose the desolation because of arthur's unwillingness to step into uther's footsteps, uther, who basically brought about everything the desolation stands for, to camelot

Gwen: the web (manipulation, being trapped, spiders) hear me out, gwen got kidnapped, enchanted and manipulated SO MANY TIMES. The web was the only one i could think of that fits her.

idk if these are truly accurate, so if you disagree feel free to tell me!

[gloomygloworm]

why is no one talking about modern edwin and crystal being besties because they have the same shitty hobbies? crystal exhibits rich kid mannerisms obviously yes but also abandoned kid mannerisms through shoplifting and stuff, i wanna see burnout edwin smoking a cigarette smart enough to pass his classes easily but failing every single one of them, doped out on drugs at house parties (ur friends only like you when ur "fun" and "dumb" like them) i wanna see a slightly jaded edwin that keeps his niche hobbies under wraps (collecting special and rare editions of books, taxidermy, thrifting/collecting antiques, aquariums??? maybe???) approached by smiley cheery charles (maybe they get tossed in the same tutoring program?) who slowly finds the will to live again cause charles is the sun breaking the storm clouds.

i want niko wedging herself between crystal's ribs. crystal who gets egged on by edwin because they're both tired and jaded. i want to see her drinking too much at parties and being cruel because shes made of broken glass. i want niko's sweetness to piece her back together slowly, gently collecting the shards of crystals actual personality (fierce, and loyal, and oh so GOOD) i want niko to make crystal feel warm and fuzzy and like she wants to TRY again.

everyones always talking about how edwin wouldnt really change if he was born closer to crystals years or whatever but i think thats wrong. i think the way the world has developed socially would make radical changes to the way he acts, to the way he thinks. i want modern exploration of how people think edwin would evolve - how his sexuality expands, the way he dresses. because i think he indulges. i think he dresses for fun at parties, a little more revealing a little more form fitting. i think he has dark circles under his eyes, that he showers every single day, that his hair is a mess. i think hes sassy and rude and bitchier than he should be because theres no one to dilute his salt laden personality until charles and niko show up.

i also need him to be ill. chronically. i need exhaustion to settle in his joints, for his paranoia to make him twitchy and unpleasant to talk to. i need him to grit his teeth and be on edge because i think he comes from a rich but large family and i think the dynamics there can be very backstabby.

really what i want is a fcking - 5 + 1 the 5 times charles panics and hides his cigarette cause edwin thinks he's quit and can't see him weak and the 1 time he catches edwin smoking on the roof and he just goes "yeah i dont like the smoke in the house or how crowded it gets here so i just do it when no one else is awake"

i also need edwin and charles fwb because edwin doesnt know how to be friends and the emotional exploration of attachment - charles thinks everything is fine theyre besties and having sex nbd but edwin has a panic attack every time charles leaves his room cause what if he just goes away and never comes back

[messiahzzz]

while it’s perfectly fine to have your own headcanons that are non-canon compliant — by all means, go wild. recognizing pieces of yourselves in fictional characters can be a very healing and validating experience. this is nonetheless a casual, well-intentioned reminder that gale, in fact, does not have bpd.

bpd is a pervasive pattern of instability affecting interpersonal relationships, self-image, and mood. the disorder is marked by impulsivity beginning in early adulthood and is present in a variety of contexts. a diagnosis requires at least 5 of the following 9 criteria to be met:

Fear of abandonment

Unstable or changing relationships

Unstable self-image; struggles with identity or sense of self

Impulsive or self-damaging behaviors (e.g., excessive spending, unsafe sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating).

Suicidal behavior or self-injury

Varied or random mood swings

Constant feelings of worthlessness or sadness

Problems with anger, including frequent loss of temper or physical fights

Stress-related paranoia or loss of contact with reality

source: [x]

i highlighted the criteria that do apply to gale in one way or another in a pretty purple.

i personally believe that it’s rather harmful to equate his relationship with mystra with her being “his fp”. she is a deity, his goddess, and the source of his powers, who is in in full control of the magic he wields.

gale: mystra commands all magic. salvation, if such a thing exists, is hers to bestow or withhold.

gale has been effectively groomed and conditioned to serve and revere her at every turn since early childhood. imo this comparison really undermines a lot of crucial points in gale’s story that deal with his overall trauma and abuse. after all, you wouldn’t call shar sh*dowhe*rt’s fp either.

gale doesn’t revile mystra, nor does he commit benevolent deeds solely motivated by the secret hope that she will somehow notice and take him back. when you meet gale in the game he has already fully come to terms with the fact that he has been abandoned by mystra with no hope of reconciliation whatsoever. he also had some very fitting lines in ea regarding this topic that i'm sad haven't been repurposed in the full release in some way.

gale: [the tadpoles] don't know that some things are impossible. they don't know that... they don't know. player: what is impossible about what you're being shown? gale: forgiveness. gale: it is mystra i see. and yet it cannot be her. there was a time when i would have believed - but no longer. gale: suffice it to say she would not bestow upon me the favors promised in these dreams. that is how i know they are delusions.

he has already reached the stage of acceptance. moreover, gale only starts to realize that mystra might have been in the wrong for requesting his death once the tadpole squad & tav speak some sense into him. and even then he doesn’t ever show that his emotions regarding mystra are anywhere along those lines. he is instead rightfully angered that she only saw value in his death, after he had been worshipping her loyally for years.

gale: i worshipped mystra loyally for years, and in that time she granted me the barest sliver of the power i was ready to wield. gale: even with the fate of the world at stake, she had little more to offer me than the means of blowing myself up at a more convenient time. she's done nothing to help us.

gale: you abandoned me in my hour of greatest need. i had no obligation to help you in yours. gale: because you had no right to ask that of me. you cast me out, remember?

gale doesn’t display rapid changes in mood either. he is a character who is generally very composed and has been known to remain nonchalant even in the face of utter horror. tim downie himself even commented on this once. source: [x]

the only instance i can think of is his sudden switch from resigned-to-death to utter-eye-sparkling-enthusiasm once he spots the crown of karsus. apart from crucial story reasons that i won’t touch upon in this post, i’d also like to add that it’s a rather common phenomenon for people who have just barely survived a suicide attempt to suddenly be filled with zeal and unbridled energy. he doesn't display impulsivity without thorough consideration when it comes to its acquisition either. he considers this a golden opportunity and is positively enthusiastic and elated that this might prove an alternative to him ending up in a cloud of netherese smoke. nonetheless, he knows what he is doing. evident in him actually succeeding in ascending in one of his endings.

gale: this is no passing whim, trust me. if i can obtain that crown, it will affect us all. it is not a decision i'll take lightly. gale: it's our future that i'm thinking of - we can't rely on anyone else to do it for us. gale: for now - we've learned all we can.

neither are his relationships that we do know of (namely elminster, tara, and morena) frequently changing. they are marked by years of mutual respect, care, and consistency. there is nothing unstable about them. while it's important to note that his relationship with tav is still in its honeymoon stages during the main game, there is no inclination of any push-and-pull dynamic between them whatsoever.

gale isn’t preoccupied with keeping up some sort of benevolent act in order to win (back) affection — he genuinely IS a good person and he proves this at every turn. moreover, to have a tressym become your familiar you must be of Good alignment.

(taken from tumblr user galedekarios's post.)

there is never a moment where his ideals or alignment suddenly change. in fact, i’d argue that he and wyll are most consistent in this regard when compared to the rest of the companions. gale makes his moral standpoint very clear from the beginning on and also explicitly states that he believes that in order to survive this entire ordeal it would be selfish of him if he wouldn’t be willing to compromise on his morals. this isn’t a sudden bout of ✨muahahaha wizard hubris✨ that he barely contained to hold in before, this is yet another act of selflessness — it is what he’s willing to do for the group and subsequently, the welfare of faerun.

player: i love unsavoury things. don't feel guilty on my account. gale: that's good to know. although i should say i do what i do out of a sense of utility and pragmatism, not a love of the unsavoury. gale: we're up against the greatest threat faerun has ever faced. i don't mind getting my hands dirty if it gives us a better chance of surviving. gale: whatever advantage i can gain for us. i will. and i refuse to feel guilty for it, no matter how much mystra's chidings might echo in my skull.

this is him, once again trying to be useful in whatever way he can. to give them an advantage, a slither of hope against seemingly impossible odds, so they might make it out of this in one piece. gale wouldn’t approve of those actions under normal circumstances, but their predicament is as far from any definition of “normal” as it can get.

gale is no fool, he realizes this is essentially about survival. he knows that he has no option left other than to tolerate, which is why he can be convinced to not immediately depart tav’s company even if they choose to commit atrocities. this is no character flaw of his or him displaying a previously dormant openness for cruelty, this is about recognizing the necessity.

player: you don't stand a chance alone. you're free to go. i dare you. gale: gods damn you - you're right. few things are more powerful than the will to live.

gale: i thought the orb to be the greatest of my sins, but i see now that there are darker depths to which i might yet sink. you may be content to sink into that abyss, but i assure you - i am not.

gale doesn’t lead a split existence. he has a very strong sense of identity. he knows what he wants, what he doesn’t want and he isn’t shy in expressing his boundaries either. which he has especially shown when it comes to his relationship with tav. i originally had intended to touch upon this in another post entirely but: i firmly believe his entire Gale of Waterdeep™ persona is more of a performance than him struggling to find a sense of identity and trying them on for size. it is an intentional decision to separate gale dekarios from the great wizard of waterdeep, to create distance and make sure his family name remains untarnished in case things should ever go sideways.

gale: i agree. and on the plus side, if i get myself into any truly cataclysmic straits during the remainder of our journey, my family name will go untarnished.

there is also a deep-rooted feeling of unworthiness and his firm belief that love and praise are conditional resources that he will only be granted through his talents alone, naturally. presenting himself as gale dekarios, the man, would mean highlighting his shortcomings and very human flaws, while distracting from the aspects of himself that are deemed praiseworthy, the ones that actually matter: his magical prowess.

i personally believe that part of the beauty of gale’s story is him realizing just how “little” it takes for him to be truly content. he gets his happy ending, with someone at his side who truly sees him, understands him and unabashedly commits to him. they worship and adore him in return — and it is well deserved. he isn’t reduced to be constantly and restlessly searching for some unattainable ideal to fill the gaping void within himself. he doesn’t secretly thirst for more power still or believes that in being with tav he is settling for something. instead, he is finally happy to just be. be and be accepted. teaching a class of unruly wizards and coming home to his spouse each day already fulfills him.

gale: that's how i feel with you - content. it's a rather unfamiliar feeling, i must say. not something gale of waterdeep ever craved.

even if he doesn’t pursue a romance with tav, he reaches a realization of “oh, it appears i am not irredeemably flawed and only able to reach true redemption through my own death. what i needed was actually with me all along.” throughout their journey and through his friend's support. i think that’s a very powerful and comforting message. he is very well capable of finding peace within himself.

devnotes: his default state is that he returned to waterdeep and became a professor of illusory magic at his former school, blackstaff academy. general vibe here is that this is a gale who's found peace with himself - he's a great teacher, one his students are mostly in awe of.

to repeat myself: sharing your headcanons is all in good fun, nor should you ever be discouraged from doing so. this is your personal tumblr experience, after all. but i personally think we should be mindful of unintentionally perpetuating negative stereotypes, such as narcissism being a general indicator or being deemed a classic depiction of bpd. i think we can all agree that the continuous longing for acceptance, connection, praise, and approval is something we all have in common deep down, regardless of whatever disorder we may have. [insert victoria justice meme here]

gale may be many things to many people, but he is no entitled narcissist.

[starlightshadowsworld]

Bsd except Atsushi was taken into the Port Mafia by the Old Boss.

After being given the cue to begin from Mori, Hirotsu starts his tale.

"About a decade or so ago, a couple who were quite high up in the Port Mafia ended up betraying us. The details I don't know of, but for whatever reason the Ex Boss took it personally."

It wasn't unusual. The Old Boss tended to deal with traitors first hand rather than leave it to his underlings. It definitely made the man terrifying. But taking it so personally was odd.

"They bargained with him. You see they had a son who possessed powerful ability. It worked, the Ex Boss was impressed with it and sparred them with the trade being he kept their kid."

Hirotsu took out his lighter and lit his cigarette.

"The Ex Boss grew to adore him, the kid was basically his son. Atsushi Nakajima was the crown jewel of the Port Mafia.

He was a good kid you would think he was bathed in light. And yet there was a darkness to him. He was as vicious and cold as he was kind and warm."

Mori raised an eyebrow.

"If he was so special, how is it I haven't heard of him?"

Hirotsu sighed "well, like I said the kids ability was powerful. But he couldn't quite control it, we had our measures and things in place of course. But as the Ex Boss started to sick, he became afraid of Atsushi."

He shook his head frowning.

"The kid he loved like his own was now a monster in his eyes. He locked Atsushi down underground, under more security that we have for Q. Forbade anyone for even mentioning his name, it was like the kid never existed."

Mori was intrigued by that "and was this extra security warranted or was it simply paranoia."

"It wasn't at first, Atsushi wouldn't have hurt any ally and especially not the Ex Boss."

Hirotsu knew, because even when Atsushi was fully transformed he remembered the scent and smell of his allies. He'd never attacked them, not unless they stepped out of line.

"But the longer he stayed down there... Any love Atsushi had for the Ex Boss turned into hate. The Ex Boss come taunt him, torture him and betrate him. Eventually the he got too sick to go down there."

Dazai hummed, sitting up in his chair. "And I'm guessing he's still down there?" Hirotsu nodded "I think the plan was to slowly starve him. But his caretakers continued their jobs, I've been down and he's still there."

Mori nodded "so you think he'd be a useful addition to the Port Mafia?" Mori already knew the answer of course but he wanted to hear it.

"Definitely. Atsushi never quite had a home before us, he values this city as his. His to protect, his to take care off. It's what convinced him to start taking training seriously.

It didn't fit the Ex Boss's vision, but I know he'll fit yours sir."

And that, that was all Mori needed but they chatted a bit longer. On exactly what this ability was, and it definitely was quite impressive.

Who knew he'd find a diamond below his feet?

"So my old man is dead? Did he suffer?" Asked Atsushi, watching as Mori approached his cell. He was standing, the chain around his neck taunt but he didn't seem bothered by it.

"He did, right go the end. I would know, I killed him myself."

Atsushi's look of shock turned into a chuckle. "So you did. So what do I get for choosing you hmm?" He sounded relaxed but there was hidden malice in his voice.

"Time out your cage, and the ability to protect this city as you wish." Said Mori. Atsushi looked at him in suprise, than smiled at that last part.

Hmm someone who cared more for this city than their own wellbeing, oh Atsushi definitely would be useful to the Port Mafia.

"I can do that, could also share some tales of dear old dad. He's got secrets buried in these walls." Said Atsushi nonchalantly and it was Mori's turn to chuckle.

"I can do that, so Atsushi Nakajima what do you say?"

Atsushi lowered himself onto one knee. "I swear my life, my blood and my loyalty to this organisation. I will be it's eyes, it's ears and it's executioner as you see fit all in the name of protecting Yokohama."

"Welcome to the Port Mafia, Atsushi Nakajima."