#but I can feel the little rubber band in my head growing taut

[pool-core]

[backandimbamon]

Plzz write Bamon + their baby :)

i’ve never written about this!!! ty for the prompt this was so fun to think about (: <33 ask + u shall receive!!

….

Sometimes, Damon can’t believe it.

Life is a very funny thing, both haha funny and strange funny, and it’s moments like these where he sits and reflects on the doors that he’s opened, the doors he’s closed, the ones where he’s stayed a while, kicked off his shoes, grabbed some wine, and never ever left.

Bonnie is meeting him for movies and popcorn, their typical Sunday routine, only this is no ordinary Sunday because Friday, he broke up with Elena. Bonnie is supposedly emotional support though he keeps it to himself that he doesn’t need it. He will milk every ounce of affection he can out of his bestie if it means she’ll stay a while longer.

Just like that, everything that he fought hard for he decides to let go because despite the incredible sex and history Elena and Damon have… things still aren’t…right. With every obstacle out of the way, the house quieter, just the two in each other’s presence, it is loud that they will probably never mesh well.

Plus, even a few years after Stefan’s death, Damon notices the room in her heart for him shrinks in size and maybe it’s the fact that the only common ground they have now is Bonnie Bennett- everyone else is either dead or annoying enough that Damon refuses to discuss them, (Caroline, Matt, Jeremy,) they can’t talk about Stefan since his absence still hurts too much. And while Elena is a tad exhausted by only chatting about “his little witch,” Damon can go on and on for days.

Like word vomit, he’s all Bonnie this and Bonnie that in discussions to the point where he’s inwardly cringing at himself but he just can’t stop.

“You know she was my best friend first,” Elena says to him one day after he fusses about Bonnie not answering her phone within the first three rings. There’s a strange look in her expression that perturbs Damon- of course he knows that. Of course.

“Yeah, yeah, but I could’ve been dying over here. I could’ve already been dead. You know she doesn’t have anything to live for if I’m not around,” he jokes snidely.

Elena is folding clothes in the laundry room, she doesn’t laugh or look at him, just continues bending dried garments into a convenient, placeable stack.

Tough crowd.

….

“You ever thought about… I don’t know…? Dating?” Alaric says this, a glass of golden whiskey to his mouth before he knocks it back down his throat and the only thing that’s left is the large, sparkling ice cube. When he slaps the glass down, the ice klinks characteristically. It’s been perhaps a month or two since Damon and Elena’s split.

“Me and Judgey? Are you insane? That’s my-“

“Best friend. Yeah. Everyone’s aware.”

Damon’s brows knot up in confusion, and his eyes hold an expression of disbelief.

“It’s Bonnie,” He says, blue eyes twinkling with an almost believable mirth like he thinks it’s a joke that Alaric would even ask.

“It is.” He confirms.

A minute passes of Damon rubbing the back of his neck, Ric staring aimlessly at his empty glass before he speaks up again.

“So you haven’t… you know…”

“What?” Damon makes a hand gesture of the obviously forbidden word before shaking his head vehemently. “Of course not.”

“Oh, I know that. I was going to ask if you’ve ever…thought about it?”

Bonnie? With her legs wrapped around his waist as he makes every inch of his dick disappear into her hot and gushy anatomy? So deep inside her that their hips touch?

He clears his throat.

“Of course not.” Damon repeats.

….

It’s a momentary lapse of judgement-the kiss- and when she doesn’t reciprocate or move at all, really, the awkwardness is a brick that sinks in the bottom of his stomach.

Leaf green eyes and a beating heart too panicky to be calm but she just brushes it all away like eraser marks on a timed essay.

Damon never imagines rejection to be so simple that he can just pretend that it never happened. He takes the exit and sits back in friend zone where he’s always belonged.

Things are kinda sorta normal for a week.

….

“Truth or dare?” Bonnie suggests that they play it and on queue, Damon throws out sexual innuendo in an insert-line-here-fashion. She cringes, rolls her eyes, tries not to laugh.

Normal.

But then she dares him to kiss her again and things are so far from normal that somehow they end up in bed together, completely naked, and completely wild.

And God, Bonnie begs, pleads, when she’s under Damon but when she gets on top, it’s him that’s asking for permission.

“Fuck, Bon,” he mumbles before leaving a long stream of cursive inside of her.

Their eyes are crystallized, perhaps it’s the moonlight.

….

He shouldn’t feel this betrayed when he hears it, the second heartbeat, but something inside of him snaps.

“Found another best friend?” Damon asks, they haven’t had sex since that wonderful, miraculous night a little over one month ago but the sexual tension between them is as taut as a rubber-band.

She laughs, not noticing the pain in his tone. “With what time?”

It’s a solid question. He’s had Bonnie to himself practically every evening, her stuff is vicariously thrown around the house; she’s in all the rooms at once.

But there’s undeniably an extra heartbeat, he hears it with each pause, each breath she takes, the incessant thump.

“Um,” Damon’s tumbler slips out of his grasp and crashes to the floor.

Bonnie backs away from the mess.

“Um?”

….

Pregnant Bonnie is his favorite Bonnie, from her cravings, to her glow, to her new abundance of cleavage. The two of them can’t stop thinking how this could be, how their lives keep getting stranger and stranger, how nature keeps being redefined, and the rules keep bending and breaking.

Her new favorite things are chocolate chip cookies with salty chips baked in, chocolate-and honey-covered strawberries, spicy sausages, pickle juice.

His hands find their new home in rubbing Bon’s baby bump until she drifts off into a nap.

When her breathing gets heavier indicating she’s in a deep sleep he says into her hair, “You should marry me.”

And he means it.

….

Luna Bennett-Salvatore arrives with soft brown skin and Heterochromia iridum: one ice blue eye and one leaf green one.

Damon nicknames her Bam since Bonnie decides to scrap his name suggestion altogether.

“Bamon! It’s our names combined,”

“No.”

“But what if-“

“No.”

And Luna aka Bam grows very fast. She smiles a lot. Babbles a lot. To Bonnie’s dismay, she says “dada” first.

“Look at Daddy’s Girl,” he says, holding his princess high in the air. “You know what, Bam, I better not say that too loud. Mommy was Daddy’s Girl before you.”

“Oh my God,” Bonnie mumbles, hiding her smile.

She likes to fall asleep with her little arms hugging Bonnie’s neck, the side of her face pressed against hers.

“Don’t be jealous,” Bonnie says when Damon crosses his arms.

“Jealous?” He tsks. “I can do that too,” He bundles Bonnie and Luna up in his arms. “you should marry me,” he says into her hair.

And he means it.

[dwaynepride]

slippin’ through the cracks

summary: after a fight, reader drives off into a thunderstorm.

words: 2,526

warnings: a car accident

tags: @6adb0y​ @thegoodlonelydalek​ @consultingdoctorwholock @starryrevelations @thebeckyjolene​ @diaryofafan17​ @specialagentlokitty​ @pageofultron​ @stanathanxoox​

If you were being honest with yourself, this argument has been a long time coming.

You couldn’t have ignored the growing tension between you and Dwayne even if you wanted to. The quiet moments - something that was once so peaceful - is almost a deafening silence. It’s a tension that’s akin to holding your breath to see how long you can go without air. Or watching a rubber band pulled taut, knowing sooner or later, it’ll snap and hurt someone. 

Yours and Dwayne’s rubber band - it snapped tonight. 

“You promised we’d be able to have the weekend together.”

To his benefit, Dwayne does look guilty when you bring up his promise. His eyes avert away, back down to organize the case files sorted on his kitchen table. “I know, honey. And I’m real sorry. I feel awful, but somebody from the team’s gotta drive up to Baton Rouge. And I’m the only one with enough clearance.”

Logically, you know it’s a good excuse. But when did emotions ever listen to logic? “Why can’t Hannah go?” You ask him.

“She and Naomi’s got a thing this weekend.” Dwayne’s eyes glance up for a brief second. “You know that.”

Yeah, you did know that. She’s been so excited and talking about it enough for you to remember. But even then, you can’t help that betraying stab of jealousy right in the center of your chest. Maybe it makes you a bad person, but it’s not fair to always be the one sacrificing time with Dwayne. 

Especially when he promised it.

And what’s worse, this isn’t a rare occurrence. Missed dinners, shortened dates, waking up to an empty bed. All made bitter by the fact that Dwayne had promised to make time for this relationship.

“Well, isn’t that convenient,” you mumble. Low and flat as you turn away from him. Making for the front door to leave and take a special sort of pleasure in slamming the door shut on the way out. 

But the sound of his hurried footsteps follow you instantly. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Dwayne asks sternly.

And you take this opportunity to whirl around and face him head on. Meet his hardened eyes because now the hurt is fueling a hot anger in your gut. And you really wanna take it out of something. “It means that you always seem to find some excuse to skip out on spending any actual time with me. I keep trying and it feels like you don’t even care.”

Yeah, maybe that was a cheap shot. Hitting him low and saying something you know would knock him back on his heels. And from the way Dwayne’s face pulls into a hard frown and his spine straightens, you can tell you hit a nerve. Maybe reminding him of the harder times in his failed marriage. “That’s not true, and you know it,” Dwayne replies. His voice is hard, but steady somehow. Only barely. “I do care-”

“Well, you haven’t been showing it. Just once, I want you to put /me before anything else. Especially work.”

Now, you can tell Dwayne is getting mad. He steps closer, shoulders squared, his eyes locked on yours but you don’t waver away. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but things have been pretty hectic lately. I’m /trying to make everybody happy, and if I’m bein’ honest, you’re not making it much easier,” he says.

“You’re not listening to me, Dwayne.”

“And you don’t get how much stress I’ve been under.”

“Maybe I would if you’d actually talk to me!” Finally, your voice rises up to a yell. “Nowdays, it’s like you barely want to talk about anything other than work. How do you think that makes me feel?”

And finally, he has no response. You’d like to think that maybe he knew you were right - maybe he’s noticed the drift, as well. He just didn’t want to admit that because it would mean he’s been failing as a romantic partner - again.

So, shaking your head, you turn away from Dwayne and start walking back toward the door. And this time, Dwayne says nothing to stop you. Makes no move to put himself between you and the door in some desperate need to keep you from being angry with him. That did hurt, though. Maybe more than the yelling. He never likes to end things badly after an argument.

Now, it just feels like he’s given up.

Even before you get outside, you hear the harsh roar of a thunderstorm. Out on the street, it’s louder and the rain instantly soaks through your clothes and hair. But you don’t pay the rain any attention. Right now, you barely feel it against your skin and maybe you can pretend you’re not crying as hard as you are.

Once inside your car, the roar of the rain muffles some. Enough so it’s too damn hard to keep the fight from replaying in your head. And somehow, you resist the temptation to tilt your head and look up to Dwayne’s apartment. Would you find him by the window, watching you get soaked in the rain and drive away? You tell yourself that you don’t care if he is.

The bar eventually disappears out of your rearview mirror. Soon enough, so does the city.

The rain continues beating down against your windshield, unrelentlng in its force and you try your best to focus on driving on the dark road. But your eyes are still clouded in tears, and it’s hard to pull your thoughts away from the fight with Dwayne. 

Anger was still there, rest assured. As well as the hurt, and it did hurt a whole hell of a lot - Dwayne was usually so good at knowing what the problem was. Understanding you and listening to you. Going out of his way to find out the problem so he can come up with a solution. 

But lately, it’s like he doesn’t even care. Or at least, can’t find the time.

Being so lost in your own angry thoughts, it’s only the sound of a car horn that really brings all your focus back to the present. It was loud as hell, even over the rain. Coupled with a pair of headlights that instantly blind you and turns the world into a bright, harsh white. 

As a federal agent, it's easy to pride yourself on having quick reflexes and good reactions. It’s something drilled into you during training - dealing with high-pressure situations in a fraction of a second. But now, it’s like all that training and experience flew out the window into the harsh thunderstorm. Panic gripped you tight; such a fierce hold that you carelessly yank the wheel around to avoid hitting the oncoming vehicle. 

But the rain’s made the street slick - the tires simply slide over the black pavement with little care that you’re slamming on the brakes. 

There’s a loud screech of tires before your car flies off the road. The impact tosses you forward against the steering wheel, and that’s really all you remember. The rest is just darkness and faint sounds and the knowledge that your head is pounding even if the pain hasn’t fully set in yet.

And there were little gaps of clarity - a stranger coming up to see if you were okay, the flashing lights of an ambulance, somebody asking over and over for your name or if you knew where you were. Answers didn’t come easy because everything was fuzzy and cloudy and the sound of the car horn still somehow echoed around in your skull. 

But apart from it all, there was one constant thought - you were afraid, and you wanted Dwayne there.

-

Your eyes don’t work right whenever you’re fully conscious again.

The walls, the sheets, the floor - it was all white. You could catch sounds and voices of a hustle and bustle; can understand that you’re in a hospital room without needing to see the finer details. Even then, you force your arms to move so you can rub the sleep out of your eyes.

They weigh as much as boulders. And sore, just like every other muscle in your body. But the pain is so much worse when you breathe, and the bright lights aren’t doing your headache any favors.

Your brain isn’t even running at full capacity before that familiar sense of primal fear starts to rise up in your chest, nearly knocking the rest of the wind from your lungs.

It’s a struggle to remember why the fear is there. You remember driving in the rain. It was dark as hell and you weren’t really focused on the road and suddenly there was another pair of headlights, like they came out of nowhere...

Your eyes fall shut to try and push away the memory. Everything hurts a little too much to think about it, right now. And even trying to put you on edge - when a nurse opens the door, it makes you jump nearly out of your skin.

“Oh! Sorry, honey,” she says lightly. “I was just about to check on you. How’re you feelin’?”

With the ache in your ribs, it takes a moment to breathe and calm yourself down before trying to shrug. “Sore,” you answer her slowly. “What happened?”

Her eyebrows knit together, looking sympathetic in the doorway. “Nasty car accident. You weren’t seriously hurt, thank the Lord. Worst you got is a couple cracked ribs. But I got your emergency contact here - he can tell you more about-”

“My what?”

A soft smile appears on her face, and she moves to push the door open a little wider. And from over her shoulder, Dwayne’s face appears suddenly. His eyes are wide, eyebrows pulled together in that worried-sick look that always twists your gut up tight. And for just a few seconds, he stands there. Watches you in relief before turning to the nurse. “Thanks for all your help,” he says, tone polite but it’s obvious in the way he quickly moves past her that he’s eager to get to you.

Once Dwayne is inside, the nurse closes the door. And you’re alone with him.

You were so angry with him before. Could barely even be in the same room with Dwayne - that’s why you left the way you did. Part of you wonders if you should still be mad at him because the fight is still very fresh in your mind, as much as it’s pounding. 

But seeing Dwayne - having him in the same space as you - instantly makes you feel so much less afraid. Less confused and alone. Still, your eyes fall away as he nears.

Dwayne is slow in his movements. Careful, even - as if moving too fast might hurt you somehow. But you can feel his eyes on you, as tangible as the hospital sheets. “Are you okay?” He asks you, voice soft and careful.

“I’m fine,” you tell him. And that’s probably a dumb thing to say, right now. You obviously aren’t fine and Dwayne knows that. Maybe if this were any other time, he’d scold you about downplaying your injuries; as if he never does that exact same. And you’re glad he’s not, because honestly, you don’t want another argument. Not right now. He must feel the same way. 

He takes a tiny step closer. “I, uh- they called me a couple hours ago. Told me you got in a bad wreck, and I came straight here. I was real worried-”

“You’ve been here for hours?” Your head instantly comes up to face him. Dwayne blinks at the sudden eye contact, as if it startled him. 

But his gaze is still so soft and worried. So different from before. “‘Course. You got hurt. I wanted to make sure you were okay.” And he says that like it’s the most simple thing in the world.

You try to sigh, but it pulls on your ribs and you just end up wincing hard. And even without seeing him, you can tell Dwayne is on edge, seeing you in so much pain. But you bite out your next words anyway. “I’m sorry,” you croak out.

“Sorry?” He repeats.

“That they called you all the way down here.”

Dwayne is silent. And you can only just barely take the quiet before it becomes too much and you’re finally letting your eyes rise back up to him. Dwayne has his eyebrows furrowed together, as if you’ve suddenly started speaking another language. But then he shakes his head fervently. “Listen to me: I’m glad they called me. If you got hurt - or worse - then I wanna know about it. So I can be here for you.”

He sees how doubtful you look. Like you don’t truly believe his words. It stirs Dwayne on to continue. “Listen, sweetheart, I know the fight was bad. I know you’re probably still pissed at me, and you got every right. I’ve been a real asshole, but right now, I don’t care about any of that. I came because I was scared to death and I needed to see you.”

His words are honest - you know they are. Because you know Dwayne too damn well and you know something stupid like a fight wouldn’t have been enough to keep him away. 

Knowing this, your eyes still find it hard to meet his. “I guess I just thought you wouldn’t want to see me,” you confess. 

You hear Dwayne scoff a little. And it comes as no surprise when his hand is on your cheek, gently tilting your head over and up to look at him. Now, he’s leaning in so close, you see the green in his eyes. A warm green that you didn’t even know you missed, until now. “If we’re bein’ honest here? I was scared of the same thing.” You blink in surprise, and he nods once. “Thought for sure you’d chase me right out the hospital.”

He says it like a joke, but you shake your head fervently at him. And out of nowhere, tears start building up in your eyes. The sight of them makes Dwayne frown. “No, I’m glad you’re here,” you say, voice choked back but it’s still music to his ears.

The words are barely out before you’re actually crying. Dwayne starts to wipe the tears away as gently as he could, and his words are much harder than his hands. “I’ll always come when you need me, baby. No matter how many times you storm outta my place.” Suddenly, he leans in to press a long kiss against your forehead. His breath is warm against your skin - a stark contrast from the rain. “I love you, understand? And I promise, things’ll change. No more puttin’ you on the back burner. I’m sorry - about everything.”

Words are hard to come by, so you simply nod. And Dwayne comes closer until you’re able to lean your head against his chest. He’s warm and solid and his heartbeat is slow. Helps calm down your frayed nerves and serves as an anchor. And as Dwayne’s fingers start to run through your hair, you’ve never been so happy to forgive him.

[backwardscapsmh]

in a moment of weakness, i listened to the greatest showman soundtrack. fuck p.t barnum but the soundtrack slaps. also zendaya was great in that film. anyways, enjoy some angst about my least favorite blond hockey player! comments and constructive criticism are always appreciated! 🥰

so i risk it all just to be with you // and i risk it all for this life we choose // hand in my hand // and you promised to never let go // we’re walking a tightrope // never sure, will you catch me if i should fall?

- tightrope from the greatest showman

Kent knew the risks going into this. He knew what he was getting himself into. He knows Jack. He knows himself. He knows the NHL. He fucking knows it’s risky. He knows that this could ruin them.

But, god, for something that Kent knows isn’t good for them, this feels heavenly. 

The sneaking around. The quick kisses in dark crevices and hallways. The sneaking glances across the locker room. The fact that someone seems to finally want him enough to stay more than one night. It feels good. And Kent’s happy.

Mostly. 

Sometimes it feels weird. The tension overflows. Emotions get pulled a little to taut. A string near snapping. Sometimes it gets to be too much. The pressure inside the rink feels suffocating. Kent feels it. He’s sure Jack feels it. Probably more than him because he’s Bad Bob’s son and he’s practically been raised for this. 

So when it gets weird, it doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel heavenly. It feels like they’re hiding. It feels like they’re ashamed of each other. It feels like it’s too much of a risk. Kent doesn’t like it. Jack doesn’t seem to like it either. It’s weird. Yeah, that’s what it is.

So they say things that they don’t mean. Kent lashes out. Jack pushes back when he gets caught in Kent’s verbal attack. Kent ends up yelling, too scared to talk about his feelings so he gets loud. Jack ends up quietly backing into himself. And then it’s really weird. 

They’re distant. Miles apart it seems. The few steps they’re apart on this tightrope they walk seems infinite. Jack won’t take those first steps toward him, too scared to make it worse. Kent won’t either, too scared to be vulnerable because being vulnerable means someone can hurt you. So the distance stretches, and stretches, and stretches. 

Until it can’t seem to stretch anymore. The rubber band between them gets too tight and snaps back together. Someone takes that first step.

Then they’re glued to each other’s side. The kisses get more insistent. The glances burn down Kent’s spine, flames flickering at each vertebrae. The brief touches leave his skin tingling. It’s better now, he swears. This time it won’t get weird.

But it does get weird again. The cycle continues. They continue this dance they’ve perfected. The balancing act goes on. They still walk across the swaying tightrope, stretched high above everyone, the distance between them growing and shrinking with every passing day. They’ve somehow avoided the eyes of every big homophobic hockey dude in the locker room. The secret stays secret. No one can see them. 

They’re so high above the world, thousands and thousands of feet in the air, and yet they keep walking. With each step, they risk everything. They keep walking across the slim rope, hand clasped together, because they’re the only ones who seem to understand each other. 

Jack seems to trust Kent, whispering about the overwhelming pressure in the dark, head rested on the pillowcases embroidered with the small Holiday Inn logo. And Kent trusts Jack, trusts his steady hands to not drop him, keep him upright on the swaying rope. Jack won’t let him fall into the dark pit below. Neither of them will fall, because they’re together, holding on to each other. 

And Kent believes that. If Jack starts to tip, Kent will haul him upright again. If Kent starts to wobble, Jack will steady him.

He’s so sure of this, he almost misses when Jack’s foot slips and Kent’s too slow to react. He watches, hand reaching out, not even brushing Jack’s fingertips, as he falls thousands of feet to the ground. 

And Kent’s left on the tightrope, with no one to catch him if he falls too.

[pinnithin-writes]

Good Jokes

Chapter 17

Benrey very wisely made himself scarce after that. Tommy wasn’t sure where he was or what he was doing, but he was grateful for the brief reprieve as he and the other scientists fought their way through another underground tunnel.

Gordon tried his best to lighten the journey somewhat by engaging the others in conversation when he could. Tommy was struck once again by his rapid-fire mouth, still able to speak non stop while going through literal hell. It became a comforting white noise to him, a gauge on how well things were faring as they picked off aliens and crossed more toxic waste. Screaming? Generally a bad sign. But Gordon asked him what his favorite TV show was when things were calm, and for a second Tommy almost felt normal.

He was having difficulty stringing words together in response, he was so tired. The arm still full of shrapnel ached. Tommy trailed wearily behind, letting the others take the lead and vent their frustrations by filling soldiers with bullets.

A deep, basslike rumble up ahead sent vibrations rippling down the hall. The hair on the back of Tommy’s neck stood on end. He had a guess why Benrey had suddenly vanished.

“What is that sound?” Gordon wondered aloud as they approached an industrial sliding door.

Bubby cocked his head, listening intently. “It sounds like a… like a dog?” he guessed.

He wasn’t wrong - this was the sound a dog would make if its lungs were the size of loveseats. It echoed fantastically against the metal walls in this tunnel deep within the earth. Tommy’s pulse kicked up, questions racing through his head as his teammates continued to speculate.

“A dog?” Gordon repeated, sounding troubled. “Oh, they got attack dogs? Oh, come on.”

Coomer was shaking his head, the grip on his assault gun steely and tight as the barking steamrolled over them. “No, no I don’t think Black Mesa has ever had any attack dogs,” he said.

“But, the military - I - we,” Gordon paused, contemplative. “We wiped out the military,” he reasoned.

The floor shook with the powerful bass of the sound. Tommy’s breathing was becoming irregular now as he shouldered his rifle. How had this beast wound up miles underground? Why were they all still standing around out here talking about it?

Tommy found his voice, urgency making his syllables thin. “Why I - that sounds familiar,” he said. “Open the door.”

Gordon shot him a puzzled look. “What? What do you mean, familiar?” he asked.

Tommy could only stare pleadingly back, unable to find the verbiage to explain. He needed to see for himself. The corners of Gordon’s eyes softened from their confused crinkle. Perhaps it was because Tommy so rarely asked anyone to do anything that he didn’t waste time waiting for a response.

“Hit the button!” Gordon commanded, gesturing to the panel. “Someone hit the button.”

Bubby was way ahead of him. “I gotcha,” he said, punching in the door code.

The barking persisted, rattling their teeth as the entryway slid open. An identical door lay only a few yards beyond, and Tommy’s stomach turned anxiously as they stepped forward. Gordon approached with his gun at the ready, the others following with some trepidation. Tommy felt sick. He knew that bark all too well. He’d know it at the end of the world.

Bubby unlocked the remaining door. As the steel panels hissed back, Gordon muttered an astonished, “Oh my god.”

He was here. Tommy’s brilliant, perfect star of a dog, surrounded on all sides by turrets. The massive beast sat in the center of the bristling circle of guns, coat glittering with starshine, eyes as fathomless as twin black holes. His paws alone were enough to crush a man, and his teeth gleamed long and dangerous. Sunkist swung his head in their direction and let out an angry bark that blew their hair back.

THOMAS. YOU HAVE ARRIVED.

A wave of relief rolled over Tommy, followed by a crash of distress shortly after. Sunkist wasn’t supposed to be here. Yes, the creature was immortal, but he was also intelligent, steering clear of danger like a good dog was trained to do. The fact that he was this far from home didn’t bode well, if the guns pointed at him weren’t already indicative of that.

Tommy felt his own voice rise in octave as he cried out. “No Sunkist, what are you - Sun - doing here?”

“That’s Sunkist?” Gordon asked. He sounded awed, eyes wide as he took in the sight of the two ton juggernaut of an animal in front of him.

Sunkist wagged his long tail in a powerful sweep. I WAS BROUGHT HERE BY AN INSUFFERABLE MAN.

Before Tommy could wonder who this insufferable man was, a rough voice called out from behind the circle of turrets. “Welcome again!”

Oh, christ. This guy. Tommy felt Sunkist’s rage run through his own body, an undercurrent to his very blood. The paratrooper from before was standing a healthy distance away from his dog, a detonator clutched in one hand. Even from this far away, Tommy could see that he was terrified, quaking in his little soldier boy boots. Sunkist barked again. He wanted to use Forzen as a chew toy.

“Hey,” Gordon answered loudly, crossing the threshold. “What are you doin’ to his dog, man? Why do you have his dog?”

“Let Sunkist go!” Tommy called over his shoulder.

This man was going to get eaten alive, in quite the literal sense. Sunkist was the perfect dog, obedient to a fault, but he could only fight instinct for so long, poised as he was like a cosmic bear trap. He could feel the beast’s  ire rolling off him in waves.

“What are they doing to that poor dog?” Coomer remarked.

“The fiend,” Bubby spat.

Forzen brandished the detonator in a threat. “Do not - do not come any further,” he shouted, raising his voice over Sunkist’s barking. “I’m the remaining - I’m the US military… left.”

Tommy almost pitied him, he sounded at such a loss. It’s possible he may not have taken into account all the dangers associated with angering an immortal, telepathic dog. Tommy suspected Benrey had sprung him out of the pocket dimension he’d banished him to a few days ago, but how the entity convinced the soldier to set up this elaborate scheme was beyond him.

“Gordon, bad news,” Dr. Coomer interjected. “There is one remaining member of the United States military, and he’s taken Sunkist hostage!”

Tommy frowned. Hostage was a strong word.

“He’s got us pinned against the wall,” Gordon agreed. “Okay-”

Forzen cut him off, ignoring Gordon to stare directly at Tommy. “Viens pas pres du chien sinon je vais le tuer!”

Don’t come near the dog or I’ll kill it. Tommy worried at his bottom lip, feeling Sunkist’s animosity crashing against his own. Did Forzen know? Had Benrey informed him of Sunkist’s nature? Or was this just some scheme the entity had put together to get his former best friend torn limb from limb, inconveniencing Tommy in the process? He wasn’t sure what to think. All he knew was that he was growing angrier by the second, stress pulling him taut like a rubber band.

“What?” Gordon called back, his voice confrontational and harsh. “Was that French?”

“Do you speak French, Gordon?” Coomer asked, inclining his head.

Gordon ignored him. “You speaking French, motherfucker?” he snarled. “Do I have to shoot you? What do you want?”

A flicker of Forzen’s old smirk flashed across his face. “Je vais tuer le chien,” he told Gordon unhelpfully.

“Gordon, this is French for ‘he’s going to kill the dog,’” Dr. Coomer intoned.

Sunkist rumbled the room like a generator as he growled low in his throat. I AM UNKILLABLE.

Tommy nodded sympathetically, his throat tight. I know you are, boy. His hands were beginning to shake. He balled them into fists and stuffed them in the pockets of his coat.

Gordon did not seem to remember this particular detail, either, keeping his aim trained on the soldier as he negotiated the situation. “Why - what do you want from us, man?” he asked.

“I am the remaining member of the US military!” Forzen reiterated, spreading his arms wide in some sort of sick triumph.

The sob that escaped Tommy surprised him. “Let Sunkist go!” he cried again. He was so angry. He was so tired. This week long nightmare had taken everything he had, and now even his dog was a part of the cosmic bargain. He bowed his head and sucked in a shuddering breath, blinking back the tears that were rapidly welling in his eyes.

This was so stupid. Sunkist was immortal, for fuck’s sake. He should just turn the beast loose, cut him free with a single word and let him sink his teeth into the soldier. It was what he deserved for kidnapping someone’s dog, after all. Stupid. Stupid circumstances in a stupid warehouse in a stupid facility in a stupid apocalypse. Stupid, stupid, stupid-

A warm hand squeezed Tommy’s shoulder, and he looked up to meet Gordon’s eyes, flooded with concern.

No words were spoken, just a fleeting exchange of expressions.

You good?

I’ll be fine.

Anything I can do?

I’ve got it, thank you.

Gordon nodded, released him, and turned a glare back on Forzen.

The emotional one-eighty of feeling so cared for and understood in the middle of such an upsetting situation gave Tommy pause, but only for a brief moment. No, he couldn’t let Sunkist dismember this mortal right before Gordon’s eyes - he had already seen enough gore and bloodshed for an entire lifetime. Use that big brain of yours, Tommy. You can think your way out of this. “Okay y- Okay,” Gordon addressed the man with the detonator. “You're the last remaining member of the military, but what do you - what d - what?”

As the two of them spoke, Tommy slunk around the perimeter of the room until he could tuck himself into the operating booth for the warehouse lift. Sunkist’s eyes swung to follow him, expectant. The creature’s hackles were still raised, but he was relaxing by the second now that Tommy was there. He wagged his tail, nearly taking Forzen’s head off in the process.

THOMAS. DO NOT BE UPSET. LET US ENGAGE IN A PLAYFUL ACTIVITY.

Tommy scanned the controls, wiping a tear track from his face with the sleeve of his coat for Sunkist’s sake. He was such a good dog. “Maybe later, buddy,” he murmured. He found the lever that controlled the lift Forzen was standing on and gripped it in his hand, waiting. His eyes tracked the conversation between Gordon and the soldier like he was watching a tennis match.

At last, Forzen presented his demands, once he recovered from narrowly avoiding decapitation. “Please dispel the rumor that Irate Gamer ripped off Angry Video Game Nerd,” he said.

His words rang in a good ten seconds of subsequent silence. Gordon’s mouth was partially open, brow drawn and uncomprehending, while Bubby and Coomer exchanged a perplexed glance. Tommy rubbed at his temple with his free hand. He knew fear made people say some wild stuff, but this was some nonsense even he couldn’t parse.

“Exc- what? What?” Gordon managed to ask.

Tommy threw the lever. He was sick of this guy. Forzen may not deserve to be ripped apart by a beast the size of a snow plow, but he had still threatened his dog and held up their progress with his inane bullshit. He could rot in the belly of Black Mesa for all he cared. Metal squealed against metal as the lift began to descend.

Gordon was in action as soon as he noticed the platform moving. “Oh shit, get the dog!” he shouted. “Get the dog!”

Bubby patted his knees and beckoned to Sunkist, which was a pretty funny sight considering the animal was twelve feet tall. “Come here, boy, come on!”

Sunkist turned his fathomless, starfield of a gaze on the prototype, unimpressed. SNAKE. I HAVE SEEN YOUR INTENTS, AND YOUR FOUL DEEDS WILL NOT ESCAPE MY JUDGMENT.

Tommy sighed while Bubby took a faltering step backward. It’s okay, Sunkist, he’s with us. He peered down the shaft where the lift was descending, raising his voice to be heard over the distance. “Let Sunkist go,” he called. “I hit the button!”

“I’m gonna shoot the dog!” Forzen hollered back.

Gordon vaulted up onto the catwalk beside the pit, hanging over the railing to get a bead on the soldier. “Oh shit, move, he’s still got the button for the turrets!” he barked.

Sunkist looked to Tommy for confirmation. He nodded, and the ground shook with the beast’s pawsteps as he stepped out of the circle, knocking over one of the firearms in the process. Coomer and Bubby gave Sunkist a wide berth as they joined Gordon on the catwalk.

Forzen had no idea what was happening up top as he sank slowly downward. He waved his arms wildly. “I’ll activate the turrets!” he screamed. “I’ll kill the dog!”

Sunkist’s black hole stare landed on Tommy again. THOMAS. I WISH TO DESTROY HIM.

Tommy shook his head as he exited the control booth to gain a better vantage of the situation. Not this time, buddy . Sunkist whined, and it sounded like the screeching brakes of a semi truck. He ambled back into the circle of turrets so he could peer down the shaft at his desired prey.

“No! What the fuck!” Gordon’s voice rang shrill across the warehouse. “T-Tommy, how did you train your dog - he just walked back into the turrets!” He took a step toward the animal, but Dr. Coomer flung out a hand in warning stopping him in his tracks.

“Gordon, look out,” he cautioned, “the dog is in the firing line of the turrets.”

“Yeah, he went back!” Gordon cried in exasperation. Before Tommy could open his mouth to assure him he’d be fine, Gordon returned his attention to the soldier growing smaller and smaller on the lift ramp. “Hey, up here, you're talkin’ to me.” he said, squinting as he focused his gaze. “Is that you, Forzen? You rat fuck? You’re-”

“Irate Gamer Chris Bores did not rip off Angry Video Game Nerd James Rolfe!” Forzen interrupted distantly, sliding out of view. “Goodbye!”

A perplexed laugh leapt out of Gordon. “What do you-?” he waved him off, giving up, and called across the warehouse to Tommy instead. “Hey, can - Tommy, can you just grab the dog-” but the rest of his words were drowned out by a cacophony of artillery fire.

Sunkist was the perfect dog. Immortal, resplendent, made of star stuff. He stood unaffected in the crown of bullets pelleting his coat, dissolving them in a flashfire upon impact. He was a testament to the cosmos, a splendid blazing canid star. A creature the Sirius constellation itself would admire. Tommy’s heart swelled with pride as man's best friend lolled his tongue out and wagged his tail through the sheet of gunfire.

Across the chasm, he could see the other scientists staring, openmouthed, at the animal. They passed a few stunned remarks to one another, but Tommy couldn’t hear them over the roar of the artillery.

“Sunkist lives forever,” he told them, shouting over the din. “I was just worried that - that would - would, like, trick…”

He trailed off, realizing his teammates probably couldn’t hear him. Sunkist’s jaws slavered with anticipation as he peered down the shaft at the soldier he intended to eat, paying the gunfire no mind until it finally died down. There was a beat of silence, and then Gordon was filling it with words again.

“Can you call the dog out of the turrets?” he asked.

Tommy paused, raising his eyebrows authoritatively as he addressed his pet. “Sunkist, can you move two feet to the right?”

Sunkist lifted his head and stared at him, eyes like the bottom of the ocean. VERY WELL. He reluctantly padded away from the turrets, nails clacking on the metal floors. Tommy stepped down to join him. This good boy deserved some scritches.

“Okay, he’s pretty receptive,” Gordon said, giving an impressed nod. “Alright, cool. Hey, I’m gonna go confront him,” he called to the team, steadying his gun arm. He plunged down into the darkness without a second’s hesitation. “Hey, son!”

Chuckling at the man’s fearlessness, Tommy tangled his hands in Sunkist’s soft golden fur. Some of the tension melted out of his shoulders as he pet his dog repetitively, feeling his heart rate slow as he let out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding. He needed this. Sunkist stooped down and sniffed the blood on his clothes with interest.

THOMAS, YOU ARE INJURED. WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS.

Tommy winced, remembering the shrapnel embedded in his arm. “I’m - it’s okay. They’re not a problem anymore.” he scratched his silky coat idly as he went on. “Why are you here? How did he find you?”

THE HELLION FROM THE OTHER REALM LOCATED ME AND LEFT ME WITH HIS INSUFFERABLE FRIEND.

So Benrey did have something to do with this. A sigh of frustration climbed out of Tommy. What was the point of all of this? Just to yank his chain? “Why did you go with him?” he asked.

Sunkist panted like a gale force wind as Tommy scratched him in a particularly enjoyable spot. I THOUGHT DOING SO WOULD MEAN FINDING YOU FASTER.

Tommy’s heart squeezed. ‘God’ spelled backwards really was ‘dog.’ He pressed his face into the animal’s fur, closing his eyes and wishing he was home in his living quarters, or at his father’s house, laying on the floor with his best friend. Pondering what he would make for dinner. Where they would go on their next walk. Nothing tried to kill them and nothing smelled like blood.

He ached with how badly he wanted this to be over.

Sunkist raised his massive head, pricking his ears toward the yawning chasm. YOUR COMPANIONS ARE LEAVING YOU, he noted.

“They won’t,” Tommy reassured him, pulling back to collect himself, and as he said it he knew it was true.

Gordon would never abandon him, and he was almost certain the same fact applied to Dr. Coomer. Bubby’s loyalty was questionable, but he would at least allow himself to be bullied by the others into holding back. It was a new feeling, one he wasn’t used to. Having friends. Knowing they were there for him.

They would wait up, but he shouldn’t leave them hanging. He tilted his gaze fondly up at Sunkist. “Let’s go.”

At the bottom of the industrial lift, Tommy was met by the others and the fresh corpses of numerous aliens. They were smears of yellow and green on the floor of what looked to be a storage room for shipping containers. Gordon was pacing the area and running his functional hand through his hair frustratedly. Tommy folded his arms and leaned back against a crate to watch him while Sunkist sat obediently at his side.

“Where’d he go?” Gordon growled. “He got away again. Fucker.” He caught sight of Tommy and his eyes lit up. Correcting his course to approach him and Sunkist, he flung out an animated gesture of agitation. “I wanted to shoot his ass for endangering a poor, sweet dog.”

Tommy found that funny, snorting as he tried to imagine Sunkist as anything other than the dazzling and dangerous creature he was. Gordon gave him one of those signature dimpled smiles Tommy loved so much before sliding his gaze up to the twelve foot beast before him.

“So Tommy, that’s - that’s Sunkist?” he asked.

“Sunki - yes.”

Sunkist studied Gordon critically before passing his judgment. YOU ARE A FOOL IN A MAN’S CLOTHES, he decided, addressing the man directly in his mind. Tommy didn’t miss the shiver of awe that raced down Gordon’s entire body as the message was received.

“I dunno, Sunkist,” he said, shrugging and grinning over at Gordon. “I kinda like him.”

The deep blush that colored his cheeks made Tommy’s smile pull even wider.

Sunkist wagged his tail good naturedly. PERHAPS THAT MAKES YOU A FOOL, AS WELL.

Maybe it did. That was fine by him. He’d put on the cap and the jingly shoes and do a little dance in front of a king and his court. There goes Tommy Coolatta, certified fool. His feelings for Gordon ran so deep by now that he was sure he’d drown in them if he tried to fight it.

Gordon reached out his hand, hesitated, and looked to Tommy for permission. He was still blushing. “Can I pet him?” he asked.

“Go ahead.”

After tackling his initial trepidation, Gordon got that misty-eyed look on his face that people so often did when they were petting a dog. He kept his modified arm at his side while he combed through the silky fur of Sunkist’s chest, his smile open and relaxed. God, he was gorgeous. He could imagine him petting Sunkist like that in front of the television in Tommy’s living room on a hot summer evening. He tossed the fantasy from his mind before he could dwell on it.

Instead, he tore his eyes away to address Bubby and Dr. Coomer, who were hovering awkwardly a few yards away. He inclined his head in invitation; they could all use a little dog therapy right now. The two of them, however, shook their heads. Perhaps the appeal of a handsome golden retriever was somewhat diminished when that retriever could eat you in one bite.

“He looks a little… too pristine,” Gordon commented.

Sunkist huffed directly into Gordon’s face, trying to look irritated despite the wonderful petting he was receiving. I AM PERFECT.

Tommy tipped his head in amusement. “Why, what’s wrong with him? Do you think there’s something wrong with him?”

Gordon faltered as he met the eyes of Tommy’s greatest invention. “No, I think - I don’t think he’s - I think he’s okay,” he stammered. “But, like… is this just what he looks-”

“Oh, he better be better than okay. This is - Sunkist is the perfect dog.” He patted the creature’s side approvingly.

Gordon opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again, struggling as he chose his words carefully. “He looks kinda like a JPEG, man,” he finally said.

Confusion clouded Tommy’s thoughts as well as his expression. A JPEG? Like, a digital image? He searched Gordon’s face, trying to parse his meaning behind the lenses of his glasses. Oh. Oh my god. His glasses were still broken.

“A what?” Coomer asked, while Bubby uttered, “Rude.”

Tommy stifled a laugh, wondering how badly his depth perception was fucked right now. “What do you mean, what’s a JPEG?”

Gordon could sense he was being made fun of, but wasn’t quite sure how, brow wrinkling in a curious smile. He withdrew his hand from Sunkist’s fur and gave the dog an up-and-down gesture. “He looks pretty - he look kinda flat,” he insisted.

Sunkist whuffed. DID I NOT TELL YOU HE WAS A FOOL?

“I don’t - I don’t understand what you mean, because I - it - everything looks like an image in real life, Mr. Freeman,” Tommy wheezed. “That - are you goin’ crazy?”

But he took pity and fixed his glasses for him with a gentle wave of his hand. Gordon blinked, removing the lenses from his face both to inspect them and to give Tommy a humorous, head-shaking smile. He pushed the frames back up the bridge of his nose. Yeah, Tommy should have taken care of that sooner.

Dr. Coomer spoke up, continuing the joke. “Gordon, did you know that our eyes perceive everything as images?”

Gordon turned to offer him a sunny retort, cutting himself off midsentence when his eyes caught something behind one of the shipping crates. He took off at a rapid clip, gun raised in a threat. Tommy exchanged a glance with Bubby and Coomer and they all hurried after him.

Turns out Forzen had been hiding amongst the containers this entire time. Why he didn’t take this opportunity to shoot any of them was a mystery to Tommy, and he pondered this passively as Gordon cornered the soldier, backing him against the wall with the minigun pointed at his face. The rest of the team clambered atop the structure, flanking Gordon and Forzen on all sides. Even Sunkist loomed his bottomless gaze at their target, the ruff of his neck standing on end with impatience.

Gordon tried once again to make heads or tails of the paratrooper’s insane request. “You want me to dispel the lies about Chris Bores,” he said, keeping his aim steady. “Who is that?”

Forzen, scared shitless by the collosal animal peering down at him with all the radiation of the sun, barely stammered out an answer. “Chris Bores Angry Video Game - uh - Irate Gamer!”

“What?” Gordon demanded. “I don’t know what that is. The fuck-”

“Youtube,” the soldier spat.

Beside Tommy, Coomer adjusted his grip on his weapon while he slanted Bubby a questioning look. Bubby shrugged idly as he switched out the magazine for the AR he carried.

“So you’re the last member of the military and you kidnapped his dog,” Gordon stated, snatching a glance at Tommy. “How did you know that was his dog?”

Forzen tipped his chin back to meet the swirling eyes of the animal he had placed in a corral of turrets. Tommy saw his face blanch to white as Sunkist spoke to him.

FOUL MORTAL. YOU SHALL PAY FOR YOUR MISDEEDS WITH YOUR BLOOD.

Forzen held his trembling hands up. “Listen to me.”

“Okay, I’m listening,” Gordon said. “But you’re at a loss here. You lost your advantage. I don’t know why you didn’t press the button sooner.” he paused thoughtfully before adding, “and even if you did, the dog’s immune to bullets.”

Tommy admired the restraint Gordon was showing. His own hands were itching to snap this cruel, pathetic little man out of existence, and Sunkist was beginning to drool. He couldn’t let his dog eat the soldier alive, but he could spatially launch him far, far away from them.

Forzen seemed to sense his approaching fate. “Wait, hold on!” he begged.

“What?” Gordon asked.

Tommy raised his hand, palm out. The soldier folded in on himself with a pop .

Gordon stood there, staring at the place the man had once been. He flicked a questioning look between Tommy and his dog, but Tommy kept his expression neutral. Gordon didn’t need to know what Sunkist would do to the soldier if he ever encountered him outside of this room.

“We lost ‘im,” Gordon finally said, numbly. “But hey,” he went on, “if he confirmed our suspicions, That was the last member of the US military. We are one kill away from wiping them out.”

Sunkist licked his chops. The team dismounted the crates and regrouped.

“How are we gonna handle this dog with us, though?” Bubby asked as he leapt lightly from his perch.

Gordon’s dark eyes were still a little wider than usual as he took in the beaming, two ton animal that had cramped itself in the storage room with them. “We do - we do have a - just a dog…” he uttered, at a loss. “He’s so big! What do you-” he looked to Tommy. “What breed is he, a golden retriever?”

Sure, something like that. Tommy gave his best friend a loving pat. “I made him extra big,” he allowed, smiling. “Big dogs are better.”

“I - I agree,” the man answered. “I love big dogs. But like. You ma - he’s huge!”

Sunkist blinked at Gordon. MY EXISTENCE STRETCHES FARTHER THAN YOUR MIND COULD POSSIBLY COMPREHEND, PEON.

Tommy tugged gently on the beast’s coat, drawing his attention. “Sunkist, it’s not - it’s not safe here,” he told him. “You need to go home.”

‘Go home’ meant find Dad. Sniff him out from wherever he’s hidden himself in the folds of time and space. Tommy needed answers, and he was tired of clawing around blindly for them in the dark. Get help. I need to talk to him.

Sunkist blinked again, slowly this time. AS YOU WISH. I LOVE YOU, THOMAS.

He was struck by a sudden tightness in his chest, a miniscule well of tears springing hot to his eyes. He gave Sunkist one last grateful pet, reluctant to see him leave. I love you too, buddy. You’re a good boy.

Then he flung a ‘go fetch’ gesture above his head. “Go, go!” he urged.

Sunkist bound upward, dissolving through the ceiling in a brilliant explosion of light. The science team shielded their eyes from the sunburst, and a millisecond later, the creature was gone.

Gordon dropped his arm and gaped, openmouthed, at where Sunkist had vanished. “How did you train him that?” he asked.

Tommy grinned with tearful pride. “Sunkist is the perfect dog.”

Chapter 16 <-----> Chapter 18

[gaycrouton]

Gentleman

Words of Love 7/27 [Our favorite pair has to deal with a bout of bad luck while on a road trip.]

Gentleman: (noun) a chivalrous, courteous, or honorable man.

From her mere five years assigned to the X-Files, Scully had traveled thousands of miles, experienced most of the fifty states, and became an expert at navigating highways with just a map and compass in hand. Mulder and her had a routine that had been going moderately well. When he found a case he wanted to investigate, he would get the airplane tickets, rental car, and motel while she tied up loose ends at the office and reported back to Skinner. It was a routine that had never led them astray. Until now, that is.

Everything had been going normal; Mulder found a case in Missouri, they had flown to the St. Louis international airport, and their rental car was there waiting so they could make the two hour drive to Grafton. Retrospectively, she should have known this would end badly.

“Mulder, what is that?"

“It’s a vehicle of opportunity, Scully!” She cocked an eyebrow waiting for him to reveal this was an elaborate joke. Mulder, apparently in all seriousness, was currently leaning against a beaten up station wagon that looked like it hadn’t been used since the 70’s. Her presumption had been correct when she noticed the “Vote Jimmy Carter” bumper sticker clinging to the back of the car.

“Did you request this car?” She didn’t know if he was motivated by some unknown nostalgia or if this was an accident, but she was truly at a loss for how this museum on wheels made its way into his hands.

“Well,” he started guiltily, leaning off the car, “actually, I had forgotten to call ahead of time and this was all they had left.”

“Do you think it will make the drive?” She asked hesitantly. She didn’t want to dampen his excitement, but realistically this car was near twenty years old.

“I guess we’ll have to find out,” he replied, making his way to her side of the car to open her door for her, bowing an arm in a show of gallantry, “your chariot awaits.” Scully chuckled and made her way into the passenger's seat. She saw him glance to make sure all her arms and legs were inside the vehicle before he shut it.

She had a moment to fully process the interior as Mulder made his way to the driver’s seat. It looked as old on the inside as it did on the outside. While Mulder sat down she laughed, “The floor mats are made of shag carpet, Mulder,” gesturing to the bottom of the car.

He took a glance down to check and a grin broke out on his face. Meeting her incredulous gaze, he smacked the red dice hanging from the mirror, “Groovy.”

They had made it about thirty minutes before the air conditioning let out its death rattles. In their usual luck, Missouri was experiencing a heat wave in the middle of August. Their only reprieve was the fact the afternoon was weaning.

Scully was uncomfortable, but when she glanced at Mulder after the AC stopped, she could tell he was feeling guilty and didn’t want to make him feel worse by complaining. Most of her current irritation was at herself. She had checked the weather before leaving and she knew it was going to be hot. With a desire to remain professional, she had decided to wear her normal attire, minus the suit jackets, thinking that would make a difference. Wrong.

Now she was sitting in the Missouri heat in a long sleeve white blouse, tucked into a knee-length skirt with pantyhose on underneath, and she was boiling. Trying to subtly alleviate her discomfort, she looked around for something she could tie her hair up with. She usually didn’t carry hair ties on her because her hair was so short that it was usually a redundant effort. Right now she would do anything to keep her hair from sticking to the back of her neck. Her eyes ended up fixating on the only thing that could work, a rubber band that was resting on Mulder’s slim wrist. “Mulder can I have the rubber band around your wrist if it’s not important.”

He glanced at her curiously, but complied nonetheless. He took the rubber band clad hand off the wheel and pointed it in her direction, making her remove it for him. Trying to avoid snagging any of his hair near the band, she placed her fingers on either side of his wrist and slipped them under the band, rubbing her fingertips along the side of his wrist inadvertently. She saw him take his eyes off the road to glance at her ministrations, fixated at her touch. She stretched the band taut and removed it, muttering a shy “Thanks.”

“What’dya need it for?” He asked returning his hand to the wheel and his eyes to the road.

“I just wanted to tie my hair back, and I don’t have a hair tie.” She scooted forward in her seat so that she could move her hands up without hitting her elbows on the seat or the window. Putting the band on her own wrist for the time being, she gently combed her fingers through her slightly damp hair, removing all the tangles. Once she was satisfied she started the age old dance of hair braiding, parting her front into three strands, gradually picking up more hair into each as she made her way down her scalp to the base of her neck. By the time she was finishing, she was bending over slightly in her seat so she could have better access, the top of her head nearly touching the console.

She started to grab the band off her wrist when she felt Mulder graze the nape of her neck with his fingertips. “You missed some,” he said softly. She felt him use one finger to loop some stray hairs into a tendril and gently met her fingers with his own to put the hairs in place. After her initial surprise, she used her thumb to collect the hair being offered and then wrapped them all up with the band, twisting it five times before it would hold on its own. She self consciously ran her hand from her hairline to the two inch-long ponytail sticking outward, making sure there wasn’t any hair sticking out of place. She could feel Mulder’s eyes on her, and her suspicions were confirmed when he said, “It looks nice.”

Sitting back up, she met his gaze and mumbled an appreciative, “Thanks.”

In this moment, she was temporarily happy for the heat. She knew she was irrationally blushing from Mulder’s unrelenting attention, but she could blame any flush on the temperature. However, much to her embarrassment, he still felt the need to ask.

“Scully, are you okay? Your cheeks are flushed,” she looked over at him and saw there was a slight smirk on his face. Asshole.

“In case you forgot, we’re in the middle of a summer heatwave with no air conditioning.” She tried to sound curt to hide her embarrassment, but she knew her voice hadn’t hidden anything.

“Want to roll down the windows? It may get windy, but it might help a little?” He offered. She didn’t give him an answer, she just grasped the window mechanism and rotated it until the window was down as Mulder did the same on his side.

Since the were going seventy on the highway, it was a little aggressive. She felt thin strands of hair escape from her braid and fly around her head, as if caught in a tornado. The strands of her hair that weren’t flying around ended up sticking to her red lip gloss, she assumed she was making quite an image. Taking a glance to her left, she saw Mulder leaning back in his seat with an arm hung over the steering wheel, the other resting on his lap. His shirt sleeves had been rolled up and were bunched up around his elbow, revealing his muscular forearms. Since his hair was so short, the wind was just brushing it back, making it look sleek. Scully couldn’t help but think that he looked like a model in an Armani ad, and she yet again was thankful she could blame her flushed face on the heat.

They were able to make it another hour before the next problem.

“Uh, Scully do you see that?” She had been trying to figure out what crop was growing next to them when he pulled her out of her reverie. When she turned to ask him what he meant, she immediately saw it. Blackish smoke was tufting from under the hood of the car. She gave a concerned affirmation and he pulled the car off onto the shoulder.

They got out of the car together and she watched as he went into full Mulder-mechanic mode. Rolling up his sleeves as high as they could go, he lifted the hood, leaned over the engine, and started assessing the situation. Scully thought she should help, but she was having fun assessing Mulder. She had seen him wield a gun, she had seen him chase down bad guys, but for some reason, seeing him focused this intently, was insanely hot to her.

She didn’t realize she was gawking until she heard him amusedly call out, “Earth to Scully?” Her eyes adjusted quickly, and she was embarrassed to see he was looking at her with a shit-eating grin. “You okay?”

She cleared her throat before offering a weak, “It’s hot.” You’re hot.

He chuckled lightly, “Wow, I never knew you were so affected by heat.” So affected by me. She knew he was on the same page and just offered him a lighthearted glare.

“So what’s the prognosis?” She brought their attention back to the car and away from their loaded innuendo.

“I don’t feel safe driving in it right now. I was never really taught much about cars, they weren’t in my area of interest, so I’m not sure what’s wrong,” he said sheepishly, running a hand up and down the base of his neck, his nervous tick.

“Let me guess, in terms of transportation vehicles, UFO’s were more in your area of interest.”  she teased.

He grasped his heart in mock-admiration, “My, Scully, you know me so well,” earning a chuckle from her.

“So what are we going to do?” She asked, taking in the sun starting to set behind him.

He took his hand off his chest, getting serious. “We passed by a rest stop just about a mile or two back. I was going to walk there and ask them about what to do. You can wait here if you want, I don’t want to make you walk a mile in this heat. Do you have your gun on you or is it in the trunk?” She could tell by his rambling that he was thoroughly uncomfortable with the idea of leaving her in a broken down car on the side of the highway. He didn’t want to insult her though, but was still imagining every worst case scenario in his mind.

She tried to suppress an amused smirk from showing, “It’s fine. Truck drivers love picking up pretty young things on the side of the road. With legs like that, I’d feel much safer walking with you so no one tries to take you.”

He let out the breath he had been holding with a laugh. Obviously relieved that she knew what he had been worried about and wasn’t mad at him. They made their way down the highway talking about different things that came to mind.

When they were about a quarter mile from the rest stop, out of absolutely nowhere, it started to pour. Letting out a disbelieving laugh, they looked up at the sky.

“Luck is really in our favor today,” she sarcastically mused out loud. When she turned to look at him, she noticed, for once it was him who was blushing.

“Uh-Scully,” he started, all the sudden acting like a shy school boy.

“What?” She pressed, worried he had realized something bad. He glanced back to her and she noticed his eyes remained glued to her shirt. Lifting one hand up, he weakly gestured for her to look.

Glancing down, she cursed every god in the book. Today was filled with bad luck and poor decisions. She hadn’t realized how many bad decisions she had made until this very moment. For one, she decided to wear a white top today because the sun isn’t as attracted to light colors. Two, she didn’t wear her usual camisole or tank top underneath because she thought it would be too hot. Third, she didn’t bring an umbrella even though she checked the fucking weather forecast before they left. And Fourth, but most importantly, she decided today was the day she was going to try out her new, nude, sheer bra. The rain left her white shirt absolutely see through and clinging to her skin, but her bra, aided by the rain, left absolutely nothing to the imagination.

Wide-eyed, she looked back at him and noticed he was staring around, at the sky, at the ground, anything to look like he hadn’t just gotten a total eyeful. She crossed her arms over her chest and noticed, with a slight cheer, that he was also crossing his hands in front of himself to hide something. A very impressive something. When he saw her hands move, he decided it was safe to look back.

“Uh-” She muttered awkwardly, not really knowing what to say.

“Do you want my shirt?” The words tumbled quickly out of his mouth.

“What?”

“Do you want to wear my shirt? It’s black and I’m wearing something underneath. We’re almost to the gas station, and um, I don’t want anyone in there-I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable,” he stuttered his offer, trying to lessen her embarrassment.

And they say chivalry is dead. Scully smiled at Mulder, literally offering the shirt off his back to help her protect her modesty. Usually shows of manliness irritated her pride. But every time he did it, she felt her heart flutter. When he opens doors for her, helps her, tries to hide his boners for her, it was always out of respect for her and she adored him. Fox Mulder, pure-hearted gentleman.

“Yes please. Not everyone deserves to see me half naked.” But you do. She saw him pick up her hidden meaning, and she was rewarded with a full toothed smile.

He quickly unbuttoned his shirt and draped it over her shoulders, helping her ease her arms through the holes, while trying not to stare at her re-exposed chest. Even though the shirt was wet, she was encased in Mulder’s scent. She buttoned the shirt up and was amused at how much it engulfed her small frame. She looked up to see that Mulder was equally as amused with this development, but her mind was preoccupied with something else. Within seconds, the roles were reversed, and Scully was staring at a rain-drenched Mulder in a clinging white tank top. She could see every muscle though his shirt, and it’s all she could stare at for the rest of the walk.

[star-going-supernova]

The Nightmare’s Just Begun

This is what happens when I write while in a less-than-stellar mood—primarily anger. Title from the song Monster by Skillet. And a bit of a fun fact: the pain I describe is all from personal experience, just exaggerated a bit for the story.

Warning: this is not a happy story. There are clear and detailed depictions of gory violence and pain. Murder and injuries ahead, so proceed with caution. 

read it on Ao3

When Bendy opened his eyes, he thought everything was going to be okay. The hit to his head that had knocked him out didn’t matter, because Henry was standing right in front of him. He’d get Bendy out of whatever mess he was in now, he just knew it.

But then his gaze drifted past Henry and locked on Joey in all his crimson madness. He grinned at his Creator, cruel and victorious.

“You’re awake,” Henry said. “Good. I was worried I hit you too hard.”

Bendy’s stomach flip-flopped and bottomed out, and his heart felt lodged in his throat. “What?” he whispered hoarsely— because no. No, Henry couldn’t mean what it sounded like.

Henry smiled, and it was full of condescension. “Did you really think that just because I came out on-model that I’d automatically be on your side? That I would forsake my friends, my family, for you?” He shook his head and tsked. “You’re a fool if you thought I’d care.”

Trying to find words to voice his thoughts proved impossible. How could you articulate such heartbreaking betrayal?

He had never seen Henry’s eyes— usually so bright and warm and caring— look so terribly, horrifically cold.

“Just remember, you made me this. You gave me the potential to stop caring.”

With those ominous words ringing in the silence— something about them seemed familiar, like Bendy had forgotten some important detail— Henry turned away to face what Bendy realized with growing horror was an actual pile of toons. His friends, his employees, nothing more than bodies ready for slaughter.

Bendy’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly, his breath lodged in his throat.

Henry seemed to come to some decision, one that lifted one corner of his mouth up in a wicked smirk as he looked back at him. “You know what would be fun?” he asked, approaching Bendy. “Making you feel them die, so you can suffer for your sins.”

Eyes flaring, Henry pressed a single finger against Bendy’s chest, over his racing heart.

“Let’s see how you like it, pain worse than death but with no mercy waiting at the end of it.” And without giving Bendy a moment to even try and process that, Henry turned back, snatched up one of the unconscious toons, and slowly began to tear one of his victim’s arms off.

There was a delay, a long second where Bendy thought maybe Henry had done something wrong, but then—

He shrieked, his body convulsing, as he felt his bones and cartilage creak under the unimaginable pressure, and a sharp, shearing pain wracked through him as his muscles stretched taut like a rubber band before snapping just as easily. Eyes clenched shut, his back bowed and he lost all sensation in his left hand, and it felt like ice was overtaking his shoulder in shards, piercing and severing his ink.

With a popping splat, the toon’s arm came off their body like a chicken wing being split open. Ink erupted over the trio from the force of it, and Bendy went limp as though paralyzed. He couldn’t move his arm— in fact, he couldn’t feel it at all. If he wasn’t capable of seeing it right there on his body, he would’ve believed without question that Henry had just torn his own off instead of someone else’s.

Henry’s hand wrenched his body forward. “One down,” he whispered. “And so very many to go.”

Bendy couldn’t have contained his whimper if he’d tried. “Please,” he begged the angel. “Please don’t.”

Behind Henry, Joey spoke up for the first time in a while. “Why should we stop,” he snarled, “when you never did?”

After releasing Bendy, Henry tossed the remains of the toon at his friend, who promptly began stuffing the corpse into an ink-filled container. “It’ll dissolve now that it ain’t stable anymore,” Joey said when he caught Bendy’s gaze. “Whoever that was will just melt away. You lot are almost even less alive than we are.”

“Oh,” Henry said suddenly from where he was surveying the large pile of toons. “What have we here?” Watching the horror grow on Bendy’s face, he dragged Alice out from beneath someone else. “Look what Susie must’ve dragged in.”

“Henry, please,” Bendy begged him. “Please, you can do whatever you want with me, just— please stop hurting them!”

“Don’t you get it?” With a careless flick of his wrist, Henry sent Alice’s halo spinning upwards, where it zinged to hover over his own larger one. “I’m already doing whatever I want with you.” Turning to Joey, Henry shook Alice’s body. “Got any suggestions?”

Maintaining eye contact with Bendy, Joey said, “Tear her throat out.”

Slowly, agonizingly slowly, Henry wrapped his hand around Alice’s slim neck. He paused there, motionless, and for every silent second that passed, Bendy grew more and more tense. He could barely even see with the way his tears were blurring his vision, but Henry had already made sure that wouldn’t be a problem, hadn’t he?

Why watch the systematic destruction of everyone Bendy had ever known and cared about, when he could feel it all instead?

Henry’s fingers dug into her ink like claws, and he buried them deeper and deeper to the sound of Bendy’s cracking scream.

It felt like hot pokers ramming through his throat, colliding and searing his insides. His voice faded in and out and his body understood his vocal cords to be slowly ripped free like fragile threads being snapped. The pain extended into his head, and the back of his mouth began to peel away like flimsy paper, following after the bulk of his throat. His spine bent as Henry dug even farther in, as though trying to full on decapitate him by simply ripping away everything between his head and body, for as little as he had there in comparison to Alice.

His head lolled brokenly as Alice’s ink splattered over him, her own head connected to her body by only the thinnest of threads.

The world faded in and out around him, disjointed and blurry. If Henry and Joey were talking, Bendy couldn’t hear it.

With no way to tell how much time was passing, much less if he was even truly conscious as the minutes ticked by, Bendy just sort of floated. What little of his mind that was still working kept replaying the last few moments like a looped cartoon scene.

They were gone. They were all gone. Alice, taken so completely right in front of him, Boris was who knew where, and so many familiar faces had stared dead-eyed up at him from the pile of soon-to-be and already-were corpses.

A dull pain started in his lower stomach, weak and almost pleasant compared to having his throat torn out. The pain gradually grew until his body moved without his input, hunching as much as he could in his restraints, curling around the sharp, pulsing sensation. He groaned and began to come back to himself.

It felt like something was trying to break out of his gut, like a bomb was going off in slow motion, tearing him apart without killing him.

He heard laughter right in front of him, and through his slowly diminishing willpower, Bendy managed to raise his head.

Sitting on the floor, Henry grinned back at him. Beside him, Joey was happily digging through the gory mess of a toon’s torso.

“Thought you’d given up on us,” Henry said, “so we decided to give you a little wake up call.”

Joey twisted his hand, and Bendy cried out as the pain briefly spiked, something in him bursting like a balloon that was squeezed too hard.

“You missed it,” Henry continued. “While you were taking your nap, Sammy and Wally stopped by with Boris. Of course, Boris was already dead— Sammy tore his heart out to save Wally, wasn’t that nice of him?— but that means all the Creators have been accounted for.” He smiled at Bendy with his treacherous isn’t everything wonderful smile.

Bendy dropped his head, curling up again.

“Are you having fun, Joey?” he heard Henry ask. There wasn’t a verbal answer, but from the way Bendy’s insides burned, he could take a good guess.

Drained in a way he’d never felt before, of life and hope and any will to live, Bendy tried to let go, tried to just slip away. It was surprisingly easy. Darkness, pain-free and deep, crept over him like a living thing.

“Oh, Creator,” he heard Henry say. “Leaving so soon? We’ve only just barely gotten started.”

He ignored him, and forced himself further away from this living nightmare.

“Bendy,” Henry said, his tone full of dangerous warning. “Stop it.”

Hands wrapped around his shoulders and gave him a firm shake. Strangely enough, though, the action was gentle.

“Bendy?”

It had to have been working. Henry’s voice sounded so far away. Was he dying, or just losing consciousness?  

“Bendy!”

All at once, it felt like his bonds had melted away, and without so much as thinking about it, he swiped at the menacing figure he felt leaning over him. Henry managed to dodge the attack aimed at his chest, but Bendy’s right hand connected with his face.

In that moment, he woke up.

Falling over himself, he scrambled blindly away from a hoarse, pained cry, fully expecting to see a mutilated toon that hadn’t been unconscious to the world before being ripped apart by either Henry or Joey.

Instead, he was faced with a room empty of corpses. Even Joey had vanished, nothing more than a fading remnant of a nightmare, leaving only Henry in sight, kneeling on the floor. He was hunched over, clutching the left side of his face.

The pain was gone, Bendy realized. He could move again. It was only a dream.

Nevertheless, he refused to take his eyes of the angel before him. Panting harshly into the silence, he waited for some sign, something to tell him that he was for sure where he should be. His heart felt ready to burst out of his chest.

After a minute, Henry slowly straightened, unerringly turning to face Bendy even before his head was fully raised. He’d done that before, Bendy knew— he seemed to have some innate ability to always know exactly where his Creator was— but it’d never unnerved him so much as it did right then.

In his mind’s eye, he saw Henry cold eyes and cruel smile. Could he actually escape a creature that could track him so easily? Had he sealed his fate when he brought Henry to life?

A flash of color that didn’t belong dragged him away from the question lingering at the edge of his mind— could he even trust Henry? His eyes widened at the sight of the angel.

Three long, deep gashes were carved into his face, grotesquely splitting his skin. The topmost started at a high point of Henry’s hairline, cutting down through his eyebrow and over the bridge of his nose. The second went from his temple to top lip, narrowly missing his eye. The third split his lower cheek from the edge of his jaw to the corner of his mouth, fully puncturing the skin in some places, displaying the edges of his teeth. Crimson oozed from each, dripping soundlessly to splatter on the floor.

“Bendy?”

Bendy tore his transfixed gaze away from the jagged wounds to meet Henry’s eyes. For a moment, he thought he could see fear within them.

Fear of him? But— but Henry was the monster. He was the one going behind Bendy’s back, fraternizing with the enemy, he was the one planning to hurt Bendy and all his friends.

He flexed the fingers of his right hand, feeling something sticky on them. He looked down, and without feeling guilty like he expected, saw the terrible red smeared across a hand that wasn’t familiar to him. There were even bits of skin caught beneath his claws.

Claws?

Finally taking in the rest of himself, Bendy realized he was larger. More human proportioned, with longer limbs and sharper angles. Going by the length of his legs, spindly as they were, he’d guess that he’d tower over any of the humans.

The first thought that entered his mind was good, then I’ll be able to defend myself when Henry turns on me.

When, not if. He knew now, he understood, what his creations were capable of.

“Are you all right?” Henry asked quietly. He didn’t move from his position on the floor, carefully watching Bendy. “You started screaming in your sleep.”

Instead of answering, Bendy shot back, “Why were you awake?”

Giving him a strange look, Henry slowly stood, flexing his wings. “I was on first watch, like we talked about.” He made an aborted reach for his injured face before repeating, “Are you all right?”

Bendy stared at him long enough for Henry to narrow his eyes. What was going through his creation’s head? “I’m fine,” he finally said.

“Wrong answer.” Henry stepped forward, though he immediately drew up to a halt when Bendy flinched away. “Bendy? What did you see?”

“Nothing. I’m fine.”

Brows furrowed, Henry shook his head. “You’re not acting like yourself.”

Struggling to his feet— made difficult by both the tremors leftover from his nightmare and the new, strange limbs— he snapped, “And how would you know, huh?”

Hurt flashed across Henry’s face and he recoiled slightly. “Bendy—”

“How did this even happen?” Bendy asked, gesturing sharply at himself. He’d been right. He practically dwarfed Henry the way the angel did to him normally.

Each word spoken carefully, as though expecting something to set Bendy off, Henry explained, “The ink— your ink— is malleable. That’s why Joey and the others want it.” He nodded at Bendy. “New bodies. I suppose whatever you saw in your dream was enough to make you…”

He trailed off for a moment before whispering with a half-hearted shrug, “A defense mechanism, I’d guess.”

Bendy nodded silently. He wondered if he should try returning to his normal body.

After watching him for a few long seconds, Henry fiddled with the edge of his wing. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it? It’s supposed to help. Anything, please,” he nearly begged, looking like he desperately wanted to reach out to his Creator.

A day ago— even just a few hours ago— Bendy would barely have hesitated to confide in Henry, to accept whatever comfort the angel might offer, whether in the form of a wing hug or words of reassurance. But now, all he could see was the gory damage those hands were capable of.

“I don’t really remember what it was about,” Bendy said, fully aware that it didn’t sound even halfway convincing. Far be it from him to spill his guts— metaphorically this time— only to have Henry smugly confirm his worst fears. Unless, well. With Henry still obviously shaken and injured, and Bendy being so much larger— would it be better to confront him now and deal with the consequences while he had the advantage?

“Do you want to try and go back to sleep?” Henry asked, oblivious to Bendy’s internal debate. There was still doubt in his eyes, but he seemed willing to look past this whole incident. “Or do you want to keep moving?”

“Let’s walk for a bit,” Bendy said. Anything to keep him from being trapped in a confined space with the angel.

Taking a deep breath, Henry nodded and headed for the door, holding it open for Bendy as he always did. But that would put Henry behind Bendy while they walked, and— yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.

“You first,” Bendy said, leaving no room for argument.

Henry’s wings tensed up in what he recognized as a defensive action, and Bendy knew. He knew that Henry got the message— that Henry was a large part of the problem. He knew that in those two words, he’d managed to fracture the friendship that’d been growing between them. He knew that if Henry truly was plotting against him, he wasn’t doing himself any favors, and might even be solidifying Henry’s decision to betray him.

But he couldn’t bring himself to care. As he followed Henry into the hallway, his own body feeling so unfamiliar, he wondered— which of them was the real monster?

[lackataesical]

hate // shin hoseok.

~ a finals week drabble for anyone else who is also stressing about end of quarter one finals ft. wonho because I have zero self control with that man 😊

~ word count: approximately 900

~ a/n: i started this about half an hour before my exam this morning and i’m posting it with zero revisions so pls just take it. hope you lovelies still in school like me aren’t stressing too much this year 😁

“Hoseok, stop it!”

Silence pierces the room after your exclamation, and Hoseok draws his hands away from you as if he’s been burned. Your chest rises and falls rapidly with your heavy breathing, and frustrated tears begin to prickle at the corner of your eyes. Hoseok looks at you, confused but still concerned and you hate that.

You hate that.

You hate that you can shout and bitch and groan at this beautiful boy and he does nothing. You hate that you can snap at him for doing something as simple as wanting your attention and yet he refuses to get upset. He sits there and he stays worried about you. He stays, and he’s caring and helpful and tender, and you hate that. You hate that all of this would be easier if he just walked away and he doesn’t.

“J - just stop.” you stutter though your heavy breathing and he sits there, frozen. It feels like all of your stress and frustration is finally boiling over, and you wish he wasn’t here to get caught in the crossfires.

Because he’s always there. Hoseok is always caught in the crossfires with you. With you and your stupid steadfastness, and your indecisive heart, and the battle between your wants and your needs because at this point, Hoseok has become a need, and goddamn it do you hate that.

“I need you to just stop and leave me alone right now. I can talk to you after, but right now can you just please -- ” you cut yourself off with a choked sob, and those angry tears begin to spill over. And of course that stupid, sweet boy doesn’t listen to you a single bit. Of course he’s there, surging forward and pushing textbooks and papers and your laptop out of the way. And you want to complain, tell him that you’re studying, tell him that you’re busy. But any protest dies on your tongue because suddenly that magnanimous boy is there and he’s cradling your chin in his hands. He’s dipping low to brush away stray tears with soft kisses, which doesn’t do much except to form new ones in your eyes.

You’re annoyed with him, but on top of that you’re stressed. You’re stressed and tired and so overworked, and you don’t think anyone could blame you for letting yourself get pulled into the arms of this boy. This boy who was a magnate in caring for others. This boy who draws you in, folding you into his chest and tucking your head under his chin. This boy who gently pets your hair back as your shoulder shake with silent sobs.

“Come on, pretty girl.” he murmurs, and your heart cries at that too. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

And like a rubber band pulled too taut, you snap. Everything is pouring out, and you hate it. Suddenly, your worries come spilling out in wracked sobs, and you hate it. You’re telling him about the essays you have due, and the finals you’re taking soon, and the too long meetings for all the clubs you joined to beef up your resume, and the assignments due, and all the studying, and all the sleep you lost, and you hate it. You hate it, you hate it, you hate it. Because this saccharine boy just holds you throughout, and whispers sweet nothings into your ear when you’re done.

And you hate it most because this wasn’t part of your plan. He wasn’t supposed to be this wealth of comfort that you crawl to like you’ve been without care your entire life. You never meant for this, whatever it is, to be…..more. It wasn’t supposed to happen, but you can’t quite control yourself and you hate it.

Your sobs quiet down and your hands ball into fist and you push lightly at his chest. Lightly enough that he knows you don’t genuinely want him to let go, but he does anyways. He lets go and he turns to stack all your study materials on your bedside table. He lets go only to pull you back towards him a second later, gently nudging you downwards to rest your head against your pillow. You stare at him, eyes wide and confused, and he doesn’t answer the clear question in your eyes. Instead he pulls the comforter over the two of you before pulling your frozen form in to nestle against his chest.

And because you keep finding yourself helpless to this boy, you melt into his touch. You rest your head in the divot of his chest. Match your breathing to the rise and falls of his. Find comfort in the steady thump thump of his heartbeat against your ear. And maybe your heart is racing quicker now than it was earlier, but you let yourself indulge in this brief breach of the rules that only you know about.

“Stop stressing, pretty girl. You can let yourself rest for a little bit.”

You feel his breath even out to gentle puffs against the top of your head every so often. And you wonder how you’ve grown to be so weak for this boy. Weak enough to let him convince you to do this. And you lie there, and wonder, and listen, and eventually your eyelids grow heavy enough to flutter shut and you join him for a few minutes of blissful rest from your hectic finals week.

Maybe you don’t hate it so much, but you wish you did.

[himbowelsh]

“Is that really red syrup? Please tell me it’s syrup.” With Babe and Gene 🎃🎃

spooky scary skeleprompts (ACCEPTING)

As soon as the door opens, Babe’s heart almost leaps out of his throat.

Gene breezes in, in that same subdued frantic state he seems to exist in whenever he’s at work. It’s rare that Babe finds him like this at home, in his element, where the threat of someone dying if he stops to take a breath no longer exists. Seeing him so rushed is alarming enough without the mess of red drenching the front of his clothes.

He’s covered in crimson. Liquid soaks into his scrubs, staining his arms and hands. It looks like he went swimming in a pool of cranberry juice. It looks like he dove into the damn Red Sea (which isn’t really red, but that’s beside the point). His front is completely drenched in it, like he tripped in the middle of the blood bank and took a few pints down with him.

He springs to his feet as his boyfriend rushes past him. Gene doesn’t look back, even when the TV remote on Babe’s lap falls to the floor with a hollow thud.

“Is that red syrup? Please tell me it’s just syrup.”

“Can’t do that,” Gene replies shortly, making a beeline to the bathroom.

Babe follows, eyes wide. His biggest fear is that Gene will slam the bathroom door, shutting him out. Instead he leaves it wide open, enabling Babe to watch as he hunches over the sink, scrubbing frantically at his dyed palms. The blood (because that’s what it is, it’s blood, jesus christ it’s all blood) is stubborn, clinging even as the bar of soap turns a bubbling pink, and Gene’s nails gauge lines into his sensitive skin. Gene’s reflection is taut and terrified. His eyes look like two black holes in his ashy face. His mouth is pinched so small that Babe can barely see it.

“Gene, take off your clothes,” Babe orders. On any other day, these words would make them both grin; now they’re spoke with a note of urgency, fear Babe cannot swallow back. When Gene makes no move to comply, he says it louder. “Take off your clothes, Gene, they’re covered in the stuff!”

“Alright. Alright,” Gene finally exhales. His words are slow, like he’s dazed or half-asleep. He pulls the scrub top over his head, discarding it in the shower. His pants are quick to follow, and then his undershirt, leaving him standing there in nothing but his boxers. There are specks of blood against his collarbones. His hands and lower arms are still covered in the stuff.

What happened isn’t important right now. The most crucial thing is making sure Gene is alright. “Okay,” says Babe, stepping up to his boyfriend. Gently, he twines his arms around Gene’s own and guides him to the skin. The water is still running. Babe plays with the taps, waiting for the stream to turn from icy to warm, before he eases Gene’s crimson hands beneath the flow.

Gene is too shaken to clean himself up, so Babe does it for him. He washes the blood from Gene’s face, his hands, his chest; and, slowly but surely, he sees the light return to Gene’s eyes.

Only when he’s clean and no longer trembling does Babe dare to ask the question that burns the tip of his tongue. He hunches down next to Gene, who’s sitting on the closed toilet seat and staring at the wall as f he’s watching a very interesting movie. His hands play with Gene’s own, twining their fingers together.

“You gotta tell me what happened. Can you do that?”

“I did- didn’t —“ Gene stammers over his words, cuts himself off, and sighs. His eyes flutter shut, as if he can’t bear to keep them open any longer. “I didn’t mean for it to be so messy.”

Something in Babe’s chest feels right. There is a rubber band around his lungs and it is squeezing, squeezing, the pressure growing worse by the minute. “What do you mean, Gene?”

“We got so many — so many sharp things at the hospital,” he mutters. His voice is trembling as much as his hands were seconds ago, only this shows no signs of steadying anytime soon. “I’ve got a bone saw in my car. No one’s missed it. I found the guy’s address in the hospital records.”

“Gene, what did you do?”

Maybe it’s the question, or maybe waver in Babe’s own voice is what breaks Gene out of his spell. He turns in Babe’s direction, eyes suddenly alert and focused. One hand reaches up, and slowly moves to caress Babe’s jaw. Gene’s touch is as tender as ever.

“It’s okay,” he whispers. “It’s okay, Babe. I found him.”

“Found who?” Babe asks. Gene does not reply. “Gene, come on, found who?”

“One of the men who hurt you,” Gene replies. His voice is matter-of-fact. Babe would almost call it serene. “I made him pay, Babe. He ain’t never gonna hurt anybody again. I made sure of that.”

Babe’s eyes flicker to the ruined scrubs still sitting in the sink. The words bone saw echo in his head, over and over, forming a morbid nursery rhyme melody. He thinks of the haunted look in Gene’s eyes, the way he trembled, and feels sick.

(He’s seen that look before. He can’t remember where, but that same shell-shocked, awful look was on Gene’s face not too long ago. When? Why? He wishes he could remember, but it is all too far away.

“Babe?” Gene said, voice breaking. He stared straight ahead, not looking at Babe, as if he couldn’t see him. “You’re here? Is that — are you really here?”

Babe can’t remember what he said in reply, but he remembers grabbing Gene’s hand and squeezing it tight. He remembers the way Gene gripped him back, as if he never wanted to let go.

Memories before and after that are all fleeting, like echoes of a dream — but he remembers that with stark clarity.)

This morning, when Gene left, he seemed normal. Hadn’t he? Babe thinks so, but he can’t recall for sure — mornings blur into nights, everything seems a little the same. It’s hard to differentiate one memory from another, but he knows Gene left for work this morning without saying a thing about plans to kill a guy.

Jesus Christ, thinks Babe. This is nuttier than a movie.

This is real life. Gene is right in front of him. He’s shaking again. He needs Babe to be there for him. Whatever happened, whatever he did, they’re going to get through this together.

“I’m gonna find the other two, Babe,” Gene whispers. He still does no look at Babe, cannot see the love in his eyes, but he’s got a grip on his hand and he’s squeezing tight (like he never, ever wants to let go). “I’m going to make them pay. They’ll pay for how they killed you.”

The words don’t quite register in Babe’s head; it’s as if Gene has switched into a different language all of a sudden, one impossible for him to comprehend. He can’t understand what he means, but it’s alright.

For now, Babe just holds Gene’s hand, and squeezes it back.

[n3rdlif343va]

happy birthday!!! word: butt character: yuuri katsuki

Oh geez anon, what have you done??? Ha ha ha here comes your 5+1, Five Times Victor admired Yuuri’s butt from a far and one time… he got a bit closer… lol (The whole thing is under the cut, just in case although not super NFSW, it is all about Yuuri’s butt ha ha)

Thank you so much for the birthday wishes and for prompting me in the Nerd Birthday Game!!!

1.

It would have been completely inappropriate, despite everything that had already happened, for Victor to grab the luscious backside of the man currently grinding against him. They had danced and laughed, bodies pressed tight for the better part of the night, but Victor had managed to restrain himself, only slipping over the gentle beginning of the glorious curve on a handful of occasions. Now though, Yuuri was draped over him again, hips pressed together tighter than needed for a selfie.

“Viiiccctooorrr,” Yuuri slurred, lying his head on Victor’s shoulder as soon as the picture was successfully snapped, “you’ll be my coach, right? I beat everyone tonight!” Nuzzling closer, Yuuri wrapped his arms around Victor’s waist.

His whole body was on fire as Victor tried to make his hands behave. Yuuri was leaning into Victor’s side, the champagne tainted breath ghosting over Victor’s neck and slowly peeling away the layers of his resistance. When Yuuri shifted again, Victor’s hand moved under the loosened dress shirt making contact with the softest skin Victor had ever felt. The waistband of Yuuri’s briefs was tempting the tip of Victor’s pinky finger and in a moment of weakness, spurred by the happy hum of Yuuri against Victor’s adam’s apple, Victor let his hand begin to drop.

“I’m sorry about this Victor,” a deep voice behind them said, a hairy arm breaking the space between them to pull Yuuri away. Celestino hoisted his skater to his hip, and spoke the last of his apology only with his concerned eyes as he carried the staggering body of Yuuri Katsuki from the ballroom.

“Victor… Victor… Victor…” teased another voice, causing Victor to spin around and face Chris. “What are we going to do with you?” Smirking, Chris ruffled Victor’s hair and moved away, swaying his underwear clad hips with his pants slung over his shoulder.

It had been the best night of Victor’s life and he had failed to capitalize on it or even give Yuuri his phone number. Glancing down at his own phone, Victor sighed, grateful to at least have photographs to remember it all.

Especially the photograph of Yuuri, suspended on a pole with his arm extended toward Victor. The man had a beautiful everything, and Victor was determined to find him again.

2.

Had Yuuri gotten even more irresistible in the months of his mystery absence from their joint sport? Pressing play on the YouTube video for a fifteenth time, Victor concluded that, yes, a slightly heavier Yuuri Katsuki was definitely doing things to him. The soft appearance of Yuuri’s cheeks made Victor want to trace the hidden cheekbones with his finger tips. The squishy roll of Yuuri’s tummy, exposed every time his t-shirt lifted with the force of a turn, made Victor want to cuddle against it for a long nap.

But his butt. Oh that beautiful plump butt was messing with Victor’s mind in a real way. It flexed and moved under Yuuri’s trainers demonstrating the still existing strength in the muscles while also looking so gloriously round and ready to be squeezed.

Victor threw his phone. It landed with a soft thud on the other side of the couch as he stared down at Makkachin. “Any interest in going to Japan?” he asked out loud, waiting for the bark of confirmation. When it came, with a tail wag and a silly flop of Makka’s tongue, Victor was already decided. Retrieving his phone from its landing place, he promised himself only five more viewings of the video. Then he would book his one way ticket to the rest of his life.

3.

Victor bribed Mari to borrow her bike. After three days of running with Yuuri to the ice rink, Victor knew that he had to find away to be faster than Yuuri Katsuki.

He had run into four railings, fallen down two (thankfully small) flights of stairs, and in one really horrible turn of events run directly into the ocean. Yuuri running in front of him was bad news.

Because Yuuri wasn’t quite in shape yet, so there was this hint of jiggle still bouncing with every jogging step and Victor was memorized like a cat following the always out of reach red dot. The butt was perfectly round and only a few feet in front of his hands every time they set out together. Once he had reached for it, his self-restraint pathetically snapping like a tired rubber band as his mind became a Yuuri-centric mush of lust. At the last second he had gained sense, throwing himself into the ocean to drown his embarrassment in a wave of water.

He had two choices… somehow convince Yuuri to run in a giant plastic bubble or find a way to finally touch the sacred butt.

4.

You have to be kidding me, Victor’s mind screamed in anguish as Yuuri stood under the water shower completely nude with the intent of sinking into the onsen afterwards. The droplets ran down Yuuri’s back, slipping like teasing beads over the perfectly shaped derriere that was haunting Victor’s dreams. The muscles flexed and Victor could almost hum a rhythm to the rise and fall of his favorite pair of cheeks. When Yuuri turned to face him, stepping toward the edge of the water, Victor wondered briefly how unsafe it would be to dunk his head into the boiling water.

Then Yuuri decided to stretch and Victor decided that this was the way he was going to die. Accidentally drowning in the onsen while trying to drive the aching need to hold Yuuri’s backside out of his brain. Grabbing a towel, Victor leaned back and covered his eyes, praying for death to take him.

“You alright?” Yuuri asked sliding in next to Victor, misjudging the space between them and partially sitting on Victor’s lap for an awkward millisecond. “Opps! I’m sorry!” scrambling to the other side of the water, Yuuri looked anywhere but Victor.

Under his towel mask, Victor was restraining his need to scream. For a brief moment, that glorious god-made ass had touched his skin and his brain was screeching in high-pitched incoherent Russian about the occurrence. “No harm, no foul!” Victor chirped from under his hiding place, lying through his teeth, because his self-control and sanity had both been harmed and fouled.

5.

“Victor?”

The call from the bathroom was sweetly hesitant and Victor pushed from the bed to move toward the door. “Everything okay, Yuuuri?” Leaning against the wall, Victor waited patiently for the answer.

“I can’t get the zipper up on my own. Would you…” Yuuri paused and Victor lifted an eyebrow toward the still closed bathroom door. When it opened, Victor’s heart dropped out of his body. “Could you zipper it?” Turning around, Yuuri stood in the black costume from Victor’s youth, the tantalizing back zipper laying against the slope of Yuuri’s number one feature.

He had been doing so well, Victor thought regrettably as he pushed from the wall. He hadn’t injured himself due to distracted staring in at least forty eight hours and he had managed not to become dehydrated from drooling in at least a week. Slowly he was building an immunity to Yuuri Katsuki’s butt, and he was quite proud of his own perseverance.

Moving behind Yuuri to reach for the zipper, Victor felt all of his progress disappear in an onslaught of indecent thoughts. The fabric separated right at the curve of Yuuri’s back, the resting place of the hidden zipper giving Victor no choice but to graze his fingers against the holy grail of skaters’ asses. When his skin touched the black fabric, pulled taut over the magnificent mound of holy flesh, Victor sucked his breath in through his teeth. Forcing himself to concentrate, he painstakingly slid the zipper up to close the back of Yuuri’s costume.

Then Yuuri, as the wickedly naive human who he was, decided to bend forward. “Well, I can move in it, so it isn’t too tight,” he stated casually, folding himself in half to grab his own toes. “And it looks alright doesn’t it?”

Staring directly at the perfectly presented ass lined directly in front of Victor’s growing hardness, he whispered, “it’s perfect, never take it off. EVER.”

That night, Victor showered in cold water until his teeth chattered hard enough to give himself a headache.

Plus 1

“Victor?”

There was never a time when the sound of his name coming from Yuuri’s mouth, wouldn’t make Victor’s entire world feel like it was being lit on fire. It didn’t matter if the sound was commanding or irritated like it sometimes was in practice or if it was soft and timid the way it was now; Victor simply loved hearing Yuuri say his name.

Toweling his hair dry, Victor stepped from the bathroom to discover Yuuri nestled in Victor’s bed. “What’s this?” he asked, the hope circling his mind, heart, and groin in fascinating spirals. They had officially been a couple for a little over a week, but Yuuri still escaped to his bed every night, leaving Victor to his daydreams of something more.

“Can I stay here tonight?” There was a nervous tilt to Yuuri’s voice as he anxiously surveyed Victor’s face. “I am… I don’t know… because we leave tomorrow…” Yuuri’s thoughts trailed off as he chewed on his bottom lip.

Dropping his towel on a chair, Victor walked carefully over to the bed. Calmly, he pulled back the sheets and let himself slide in next to his boyfriend. It was warm and welcoming, and Victor felt himself melt as Yuuri curled, cheek down on Victor’s chest. “Nervous?” Victor let his fingertips trace the line of Yuuri’s spine, stuttering to a halt at the waistband of Yuuri’s sleep pants.

“I guess…” The whisper tickled Victor’s skin as Yuuri spoke. “You know…” nervous brown eyes peered up at Victor, “you can touch it.”

“What?” Victor exhaled, pressing his palm flat against the small of Yuuri’s back. It had to be a dream or a massive jump to conclusions for Yuuri to actually be talking about the part Victor wanted to hold the most. He had wanted to get his hands on the butt for months, and his brain was short-circuiting with the possibility of it actually happening.

“I see you staring at it sometimes.” Yuuri was blushing, but he was still holding Victor’s gaze. “I don’t mind if you want to-”

Not letting his boyfriend finish the sentence, Victor shifted Yuuri on top of him and slid both hands down the back of Yuuri’s cotton pants. Fingers squeezing the toned cheeks, Victor was convinced Yuuri’s ass was meant to be his erotic stress ball. Kneading into the perfect muscle, Victor hummed happily while Yuuri embarrassingly chuckled against his neck.

And from that day forward, Victor happily grabbed Yuuri’s butt with cocky exhilaration that he was the only one allowed to do so.

[backandimbamon]

part I

Before, Damon thinks it’s okay because there’s really no plausible reason to stop Bonnie from drinking another tequila; she’s having fun at this party plus he has never seen her drunk so it gives him a pretty valid pass to say what the hell, what could go wrong?

He’s got a Hawkeye out anyway, making sure she won’t have any Britney moments in her tiny dress or no horny dickhead lays a finger anywhere near her. He’s feeling like the proper bodyguard, way more handsome than Kevin Costner could ever dream of, and his little Whitney Houston is perfectly under his control.

The first notion that maybe Bodyguard Damon did not have drunk Witchy Houston in control occurs when she kisses Caroline. Sloppily. But Caroline is in a slightly better state than she is, which doesn’t say much, so they both laugh it off like it’s just a friendly shoulder to shoulder hug. Now his curiosity is peaked as to what activities they partake in at their slumber parties. He smirks.

Then she approaches him, eyes glittering with mischief and (anger?) as she pokes a finger in the bridge of his chest and says, “You. Dance with me. Now.”

There’s no slurring or anything so she can’t be that messed up, he finds her little antics amusing. “Woah witchy, slow down on the tequila. It’s making you a bully.”

“It makes me wanna fight.”

She stares him in the eyes with her brows set low like she nominates him to be her punching bag.

“So you were fighting Caroline just now?”

“What?”

“That make out session?”

“Really Damon, you blow everything out of portion.”

“Everything out of proportions, Judgey. You’re clearly not smarter than a fifth grader.”

She sends another thump to his chest, right in the center and frowns. “Shut up.”

Truly, he thinks she’s adorable.

And yes, she must be extremely tipsy because he’s never really seen Bonnie dance before outside of the Slow Dance Side Step or a casual sway to mid tempo music but now he’s watching her dip it low, and swing her hair to a r&b artist singing runs about her body. And he can’t look away.

Baby, I’m talking crazy I,

Need you right in my space, for now

Need it, baby I’m late, but I

Still can check in with you

“I loveeee this song,” she draws out and grabs Damon’s wrist to come closer to her. He doesn’t put up much of a fight. Not because he enjoys it or anything, he just doesn’t want to harm little witchy.

He’s shocked because he never realized she could be so sensual, the lights are purple and she’s staring him directly in the eyes with this look of freedom that makes him wonder what chamber of secrets she keeps locked in her closet of skeletons. She turns around, back facing him and intertwines her hands with his, winds her waist in the seat of his pants and he knows for a fact that his cheeks are aflame. He’s never been this tense in his life, it’s almost like he’s been staked- Bonnie is dancing on him and he’s letting her because his mind is allowing him to think that she’s really, really, realllly sexy in this moment. What the hell.

The realization is a whisper in his mind; to admit to himself that he’s been hit with a heavy wind of attraction towards Bonnie leaves him feeling a pang of something uncomfortable in his stomach. Like he’s betrayed himself, searching for something in someone else that was always blatantly there in her.

“My mind, my mind and my body,” Bonnie soulfully sings along, breaking his concentration. “My mind, my mind and my heart.”

She faces him again, grinning and finger combing the wildness out of her hair. He watches her watch him as she pulls him close until they are chest to chest, tilts her chin up and braces herself on her tip toes, to say into his ear “You’re like this irresistible, ancient, hot vampire who can’t dance.”

He’s taken aback, one because of the compliments and two because of the insults. Plus, he’s still stuck in the trance she’s placed him in and he begs to differ because he can dance, he’s just not trying to now.

“Yes I can.” He can’t take the defense out of it even if he tried.

She gives him space again to throw her arms up to the music, obviously not interested in hearing his rebuttal. Her skin is dewy from her body heat as she comes back to him, and holds on to his back as she continues to sing along.

I don’t know what it it

I can’t tell you what it is

But you got me going crazy,

Sex with you is so amazing,

Her heartbeat is at this lazy languid pace, he can feel it pulsing against him, as she hums her way through the next line of the song and he pretends that there isn’t this nervousness that’s crawling on his shoulder from being this close to Bonnie while she’s in an unpredictable state. She’s already intensely touchy feely and it’s a tad unsettling. His prime role is Space Invader yet here she is. Draped over and around him like a careless scarf.

He can sense her body weight growing heavier, guessing a sleepiness must be washing over her as she barely muffles a yawn.

“I like you a lot, Damon,” her voice is heavy, lips brushing against the shell of his ear.

He hates himself for feeling something bubbling up and settling over him. In his being is this deep satisfaction that Bonnie is seeing him through a lens she would never admit to out loud under nearly any circumstance. He knows he is an attractive guy, and he knows women are aware by the way they vie for his attention when they sense his presence but Bonnie is different. There are countless times he feels the witch bite back on a compliment.

Tonight, however she’s delivering heady flirtation and admittedly, he’s giddy. It makes him feel victorious even if she is a little tipsy and tired.

She bats her eyelashes and once again he finds himself stranded in the hazy focus of her green eyes.

“God, you’re so pretty. Take me home, pretty boy.” she says, and he is quick to comply.

The drive to Bonnie’s dorm is quiet, he thinks she’s asleep but when he looks over there’s a pensiveness in her expression as she observes the passing street from the window.

“You okay?”

She nods, then nestles into the seat. Her eyes trace his scarily stunning features subconsciously and she admires the way his short hair cut complements his bone structure so well.

“I like your hair when it’s like this,” she hums. Her fingertips race through his scalp and he nearly swerves.

“Are you okay?” Bonnie echoes in response to his jerkiness.

He almost rudely says “Of course, witchy.”

“Sheesh, you pretty much gave me whiplash yet somehow you’re upset.”

“I’m not upset.” He replies flat-toned.

“I should be the mad one, I wanted to leave here with someone who could put me to bed in an entirely different way.” She smooths a fingertip over her bottom lip.

“And what way is that?” His brow lifts and it reminds her of a see-saw.

“In a way a friend can’t.”

A challenge drifts like smoke in the vehicle, then decidedly settles in their clothes and hair. The suggestion in Bonnie’s voice and demeanor leaves him feeling something he doesn’t want to admit to himself.

He can’t leave it alone. The metaphoric mic has dropped and Damon must pick it up because he wouldn’t be himself if he didn’t.

“But I’m your best friend.”

A vision of him pinning her up against the walls comes so intrusively that it’s stuck. It sits on his guilty conscience like water trapped in the ear.

“And? So is Caroline.”

“You made out with her tonight.”

“Now it’s your turn?”

Damon’s eyes are stuck between the glowing dividers in the road as he shakes off her words dismissively. Sober Bonnie wouldn’t push a subject like that, wouldn’t bait him into saying the thing that’s lying under his tongue.

He deflects with humor. “Maybe I’m jealous.” But he says it like it’s the most unbelievable statement in the world.

Lapis eyes on emerald.

“Maybe you are.” With a finality more conclusive than a period.

He’s in the middle of parking when she shuffles around in her seat, brings her face to the side of his and pecks his jaw.

Just like that, a press of warm lips on cold skin. He has no time to react.

And even after he parks, he looks ahead, unable to make eye contact. She doesn’t even move back to her seat, just hovers like a cloud, lashes swiping his cheek, before leaning in again and lightly biting the side of his neck. Her magic is there, inside him, in that spot.

He makes a sound so pained with want that he wishes someone could cuff his hands behind his back so he can do nothing but exist.

Such a small gesture of lips and teeth is like cutting into the thick cake of their bottomless sexual tension and serving it on a platter to the starved. Her scent alone consumes the space in his car with agave and alcohol. The natural smell of her lotion. The fruity smell of her lip gloss on his neck, right where that bite mark isn’t disappearing.

Nice to breathe you, Bonnie.

She is everywhere and not and he is just there, wrestling with the alternative parts of himself. The parts that would totally take advantage of a moment like this. Eat her alive or sex her to death?

He shakes his head like it could rid him of his nature. It somewhat helps. “Bonnie.”

Said cautiously because if that bottomless cake isn’t removed in enough time, the hungry man will tear in savagely, bread crumbs clinging to lip, icing boiling in stomach acid.

She snaps back in her seat like a taut rubber band. Very quiet.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.” It’s a mechanical response.

He’s too busy wrestling his mind to respond. Damon cannot trust himself to think.

He ends up in her dorm because she needs him; she’s wobbling when she walks and it’s dire that he’s with her so no filthy predator assaults her. She needs him in her presence because her steps are wobbly, she honestly could fall down the stairs and die at any moment so he trails after her like a curtain blowing in the breeze. One cautionary arm outstretched and wrapped safely around her waist. She’ll thank him in the morning.

Bonnie looks like a tiny ballerina, as she plops on her bed, then stretches. Her limbs lengthen but his eyes are trapped in the half dome of her back arch. They slide down curvy brown legs to pointed toes that accuse him, the intruder, who is still standing and tense. She finishes her lazy stretch with a roll of her shoulders, one strap of her dress slips down.

“Hey,”

“Hey.”

“I’m sorry about what happened.. in the car.”

He sits next to her. “Oh that thing? Don’t worry about it, Bon Bon.”

“Yeah. I’m a little-“

“Drunk? No way!”

“Tipsy, Damon. And I get kinda. You know.”

His brows stitch in mock confusion. “Kinda...?”

“Damon.”

“What? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You’re such a child,”

“Says the one who can’t say h-huh-hor-“

“Stop, Damon,” She nudges his shoulder and tries to fight the laugh from creeping up her throat. She poorly executes a pout. “Seriously. It’s been a really long time.”

“I’m celibate until Elena wakes up. I’m sure you’ll get laid before you’re an old cat lady.”

“We both know your sex ventures make mine look juvenile.”

“Jeremy is juvenile in general.”

She swats him.

“Can’t you like magical-woo-woo yourself into an orgasm?”

“It’s not better than the real thing.”

Damon is fighting so much suggestive imagery floating around in his mind of Bonnie and The Real Thing.

“You still have time.”

“But what if I die next year?”

“You won’t.” His expression hardens.

“Damon, you don’t know that.”

“I know I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“You don’t get it. It’s like Caroline gets to do whatever she wants, Elena was able to do whatever she wanted. They are both free in ways I’ve never experienced. I’m Bonnie. Just Bonnie. My magic is the only thing that I feel a deep soul-tying connection to, but I can barely call that mine. I want to be desired and worshipped and I want to explore.”

“Then do it.”

“I can’t!”

“And why the hell not?”

“Because you, Stefan, Caroline, Alaric, Tyler, Joe, Kai, Klaus, Elijah, Katherine, you’re all my life! Both living and dead, Damon. Elena is my life!”

Silence.

“There is no room for me, my love life, my orgasms, my magic. My mother, my father, my gram-“ She frantically swipes at the tears trailing her visage. “All of that is gone. It was taken away from me.” Her voice shudders with emotion and Damon Salvatore feels like shit. She buries her face in her small hands and cries.

There’s a new feeling of guilt creeping up his shoulder. Nothing can rid him of the filth he feels now, the years he’s allowed himself and others to use his best friend without thinking twice. Forcing her power unto them like it was communal. She, of all people, did not deserve that. Not one bit. The space where she bit him burns.

“Damnit, Bon.” He scoops her up in his lap carefully because of her short dress and slides the strap that had fallen back up. His hand rubs her back lightly for comfort.

Bonnie Bennett is here, crying in his arms and he can do or say nothing because he is part of the problem. He cradles her and toes his shoes off because he will not leave her here alone.

a/n : i am very very excited to see where this story leads me (:

[lowat-golden-tower]

Embracing Darkness

Alright, so, here it is. Boy even though the outline came to me like breathing, actually writing the thing out was a little hard. I haven’t written much Dark or Yandere so it was an experience balancing out my personal interpretation with those that I’ve seen on Tumblr and AO3. Took a lot of inspiration from @alcordraws, of course.

Including the idea for the fic itself. So go give them some love! It's gonna revolve primarily around Yandere and Dark, with cameos from the other egos. Though third person, just a heads up that the POV will be switching from chapter to chapter between the two, just so we can get a clue as to what exactly is going on in their heads. ;)

Without further ado, let’s get this crazy train rolling!

AO3 Mirror

Chapter 1: Discovery

Dark liked to think of himself as astute. Observant. Well aware of not only his surroundings, but those occupying them. It was a key aspect of being a manipulator. If he didn't have a grasp on all the details, every last puzzle piece, then that left room for surprises. The unexpected. Things that could trip up his charm and psychological cues and alert his target to the truth.

Yet, it took him an exhorbitantly unusual amount of time to realize something was off about one of his own egos. The beings who lived and worked at Egos, Inc.; seeking to maintain their respective footholds in their creator's community and avoid simply fading out of existence.

Granted, the ego in question had always been difficult to read. He wasn't predictable like the rest of them. His emotions, personality and goals all tended fluctuate wildly from one given moment to the next. Just when Dark thought he had the ego figured out, he'd switch on a dime for seemingly no reason at all. Sometimes Dark wondered if the ego was even more unpredictable than Wilford Warfstache himself. Now that was a terrifying thought.

No, Yandereplier was certainly one of the more volatile, malleable egos. It wouldn't be such a big deal, were it not for just how unstable the ego was. Try as they might to understand his triggers and avoid them like the plague, something new would inevitably set Yandere off. Understandably, that meant most of the egos gave him a very wide berth. Not that he seemed to mind.

Dark was not one of those egos. Dangerous or not, Dark didn't fear any of his fellow creations. Fear was a form of control, and admitting to or showing the emotion would give that control to whoever dared cause it. Dark would never allow it. He was in control. He controlled himself, his aura, the building and all the egos within it. He'd worked far too hard to let anyone pry that iron grip from his icy hands. That included Yandere.

However, something seemed more and more "off" about the ego with every instance of their meeting. Yandere was never invited to the board room, but he occupied the same building as Dark. They were bound to cross paths even if Dark preferred the cool, shadowed sanctity of his office.

Most often, it was a quick exchange in the numerous hallways. Occasionally, they'd be taking a meal in the break room at the same time. Yandere never stopped by to visit Dark, and Dark reciprocated that decision.

Recently, however, some of the egos had been calling "family meetings," of a sort. Dark would always scoff at the term, seeing as they were about the farthest thing from a family that a group of people could get. Yet he attended the droll things anyway just to make certain they weren't plotting anything against him, and to be sure no one died. It always tended to be chaos when more than a few egos got together in the same room.

Apparently, during these meetings grievances and ideas were meant to be aired out for group opinion and approval or dismissal. It was supposed to help stop unnecessary conflicts and arguments which tore threw parts of the building and would leave it in shambles. Dark hardly cared; he only listened for the information.

These meetings were what truly tipped him off to Yandere's odd behavior.

They didn't use the board room for these. They would gather outside if the day was nice, or in the break room, or occasionally one of the nice sitting rooms that came with the building. Once or twice the meeting was even hosted in the studio. This meant the egos could lounge wherever they pleased, with whomever they pleased. There were no real rules and it became quite clear very quickly which egos got along with each other.

The Googs would always form their tight knit square in a corner. Bing would be nearby with Bop at his shoulder. Silver, Ed, Dr. Iplier and King would form an amalgamous sort of band and clump into pairs or one big group depending on their moods. Bim hovered near Wilford, always, with the Jims close behind. Host obediently sat at Dark's right wherever he happened to be. Artiplier and Yandere were the odd ones. Sometimes they'd be off on their own, sometimes they would be huddled together, and sometimes Artie would decide he wanted to be near the Host for a meeting.

Inexplicably, when this happened, Yandere would sit on Dark's other side. He wasn't sure if Yandere was simply protective of Artie or feeling left out, but so long as the ego left him alone he didn't mind.

Dark had to wonder if the subtlety of the changes were the reason it took him so long to catch on. Yandere had various ticks and warning signs to him, but it required paying severe attention to every little twitch and blink. Dark didn't have the patience for that sort of thing when he'd much rather be absorbing details about the egos he could control.

Yet when Yandere began to twitch and fidget anxiously beside him during a particularly long and boring meeting, Dark decided it was time to delve into this peculiarity. At least it would be entertaining. Calling upon his most soothing voice, Dark probed at the younger ego with his aura while he spoke at a low volume. No need to disturb the proceedings. "Are you alright?"

Yandere flinched, head jerking to the side in a manner that looked almost painful. When he glanced to Dark, his eyes were wide; pupils shrunk down to the point it was a wonder he could see anything at all. The smile on his mouth was beyond strained. "Oh! Yami. Yes, I'm fine. Just a little tired from studying for my exams, ha HA ha HA ha...."

Dark slowly quirked a brow. Yandere's voice, while still sugary sweet, was clearly as tense as the rest of him. The words sounded forced past his teeth and his laugh wasn't the "adorable" giggle it tended to be. No, everything about the young ego beside him screamed "unhinged." Dark prodded a bit harder, attempting to ascertain the cause. "I know you must study hard. Are you sure there isn't anything else? Anything that might be... bothering you? Making you uncomfortable?" His dark eyes settled on Yandere's hands; his fingers twisting and tugging at his pleated skirt. "You're fidgeting."

Yandere burst out an uncomfortable laugh at that, immediately removing his hands from the garment entirely. The sound drew a glance or two from the nearest egos but for the most part went ignored. Outbursts from Yandere were nothing new. "Am I? Oh. Maybe I had too much caffeine this morning. It always gets me so excited, ne!"

Dark wanted to grimace at the contrivity of it all. He understood what it was like to try containing emotions that eventually burst forth from a cracked shell, but Yandere was terrible at it. Host's muttered narrations at his back had changed tune, and in his peripheral he noticed Artie was no longer paying attention to the meeting. He seemed concerned. Dark made a mental note and pressed on. His understanding of the situation was deepening. "You don't seem excited. You appear nervous, Yandere. Am I... making you uncomfortable?"

He leaned further into the ego's space, pressing down with his aura. Yandere had never shown fear towards Dark before, but maybe something had changed. It felt like the power he pushed at Yandere just kept going. Rather than stopping and ensnaring or engulfing the ego, it simply... drained away. Disappeared somewhere. Dark didn't like it. "You can be honest. I'll move, if you like."

Yandere's muscles were growing more tense with each passing second. He was crumpling, slumping beneath Dark's looming posture but not leaning away from him. He wasn't showing apprehension, but the anxiety was still there. Dark's ego was doing its job- or at least, he believed it was. Yandere's next words were forced past gritted teeth. "Yami, you don't scare me. I'm fine. I just... I just think I need some air! It's too stuffy in here, ha HA ha...." The corner of his mouth dipped into a steep, nearly pained frown.

"Yandere..." Dark weedled just a bit more of his power forward. He needed to know where it was going. He could feel the Host at his back, debating an interruption. Artie was poised with feet flat on the ground and hands on his chair. Even Wilford, across the room, was beginning to shoot Dark squinty-eyed looks. He'd have to back off soon. His icy fingers touched Yandere's quivering arm. "I don't think-"

Abruptly and without warning, Yandere gave an ear-piercing wail. Immediately, any ongoing conversations ceased and all eyes whipped around towards the source. Several of the egos were cringing away or still covering their ears. Dark felt a rush of energy slam into him with enough force to push him back away from Yandere, giving him the space he needed to leap up. Behind him, Host folded over on himself and Artie toppled out of his chair. A quick glance at Wilford showed the ego resting twitching fingers on the gun at his belt.

Yandere stood, every last muscle in his body pulled taut like a rubber band. His arms stuck out to either side, fingers splayed and crooked into unsettling positions. As if they itched for a knife, or to wrap around someone's delicate neck. His head twitched ceaselessly to one side while he stared with wide, crazed eyes at the rest of the room. His mouth was pulled tight into an unreadable expression.

Dark could feel the power rolling off of Yandere in waves and for one of the few times in his existence, he was stunned. He could feel how his own aura tinged the energy flowing out of Yandere and his curiosity was instantly piqued. He stared with the rest of them, wondering what the snapped ego would do now.

Yandere heaved several ragged breaths through his teeth. The muscles in his face were all screwed up tight but he didn't seem to have a target for his sudden aggression. His eyes flicked among the egos present before he let loose a smaller scream, storming out of the room in a flurry of skirts. He'd ripped the door half off its hinges when he exited, and he didn't bother closing it behind him.

Various egos exchanged confused, wary glances as crashes and more screams echoed back from down the hall, but they eventually gave way to silence. Wherever Yandere had gone, no one was willing to follow. Hopefully he would take his destruction outside of the building.

Bim had come over the moment he felt it safe enough to help Artie back onto his feet. They both immediately turned their attentions to Host, who assured them he was just fine. Wilford, seeing how shaken the group was, called an end to the meeting and warned them all to give Yandere some space.

A lot of space.

Then he strolled over to where Dark was still sitting, contemplating everything he'd just witnessed. He rested his hands on his hips and shot the shadowy ego a suspicious, wary look. "And just what are you smiling about? You wouldn't have anything to do with whatever all that was now would you, Darky?"

Dark glanced to the ruined door. Slowly, he clenched his hand into a fist where it rested against his leg. He could still recall that surge of raw power; how his own aura had been funneled into it without his knowing. He understood, now. He'd put the pieces together and the possibilities set the gears to turning within his mind. He tried not to look too smug as he met Wilford's withering gaze. "Of course not. He was already tense. Something must have just made him snap. You know how teenagers are, Wilford."

Yandere could feed off his aura. Yandere could feed off his aura, and apparently he didn't even know. But Dark knew. And Dark didn't plan to let the possibilities slip through his fingers.

[venfx]

Oh boy, I got another idea for a prompt, something I was discussing in the Discord: After the day Phil and Rita spent together and her waking him up, he's steadily getting better and better. But it's not totally linear. Though being good to people is making him feel good, it feels more like a distraction from the larger aching emptiness still inside him. Even as he finds new ways to fill his time, he still sometimes longs for an end in sight. One morning, in a moment of weakness, he makes (1/2)

one more attempt. However, he doesn’t actually die this time and wakes up in a hospital bed. For once, it hits him how real his body and what he’s been doing to it truly is. He’s pissed at himself for falling back into this and doubts if he’ll ever be able to just look on the bright side like Rita said to. To his surprise, before the day resets, his mom shows up at the hospital to see him, having urgently booked a flight over there. She’s pretty angry and scared and upset and gives him some harsh words, and she also loves him so, so much. They talk and she stays with him until it’s 6AM again.

why do you make me hurt him so. anyways this was a doozy but also weirdly fun to write mostly because i just got my EMT certification and am therefore allowed to throw in useless medical jargon

(again sorry mrs. connors you don’t deserve this)

send me fic prompts here!

CW for suicide mention/attempt

It’s impossible to put into words just how much Phil despises the inventor of the alarm clock.

“That’s right, woodchuck-chuckers, it’s-”

He slams his hand down onto the snooze button.

He’s never been a morning person.

Lately, his days look a little like this: sit up, stretch. Answer the phone on the first ring. Make sure to get the girl’s name- it’s Lisa- and wish her a good morning before heading out the door. Compliment Jonathan’s new sneakers, fix the coffee pot, meet up with Ned to chat about his family.

Then, get coffee for the crew and Rita, do the broadcast, change a flat tire, rescue a cat. Practice the piano, charm his way into staying a few extra hours.

Try to save the old man.

Fail to save the old man.

Drive Ralph and Gus back from the bar.

Wake up, do it all over again.

And, like, okay, it’s not all bad.  

Phil’s a new man, with a new lease on life and a steadily improving rendition of Hot Cross Buns to prove it. The more time he spends here actually living, the more he grows to love each and every resident of Punxsutawney.

He has friends here, as bizarre as that sounds.

Even if those friends don’t, y'know, remember him.-Here’s the thing: sometimes, his life feels like the weird second act of some two-bit play. The fact that the curtain will never fall is irrelevant.

Helping people of this small, quiet town should be enough. 

It is enough.

In terms of eternity, he’s won the fucking jackpot.-Still, it goes without saying that some days are easier than others.

“That’s right, woodchuck-chuckers, it’s-”

"That’s right, woodchuck-chuckers, it’s-”

That’s right, woodchuck-chuckers, it’s-”

He’s getting better.

He is.

It’s just, well. Sometimes.

Sometimes, he isn’t.

Here’s another thing: Phil spends the night before his seventeenth birthday locked in his parents’ bathroom with a bottle of his mom’s sleeping pills and a flask of gas station tequila he’d bribed off of his sister’s boyfriend a month earlier. 

He’s sixteen years, three hundred sixty four days, twenty two hours, and seventeen minutes old. 

People keep telling him that it’s going to get better, that he’ll be okay, that his problems are small and that everyone feels like this every once in a while. 

Maybe they’re right, but Phil’s not stupid, either- he knows that people aren’t supposed to be this empty, knows that there’s something in him that’s always going to be small and broken and wrong.

He’s just so fucking tired.

"That’s right, woodchuck-chuckers, it’s-”

Twenty three years and a thousand endless days later, he barely thinks twice before swallowing the whole damn bottle.

Phil wakes up.

He wakes up.

He’s not in the bed and breakfast.

For one panicked moment, he thinks maybe-

He jack-knifes up, yanks the cannula out of his nose. “Excuse me!”

There’s a nurse passing by his room. She turns, looks at him with a special cocktail of muted pity and vague disgust, which Phil very politely ignores because he is a nice fucking person now, thank you very much.

“Sorry, but um,” he rasps, voice hoarse. It sort of tastes like something crawled into the back of his throat and died. “What’s today’s date?“ 

“February 2nd, dear. I’ll go tell the doctor that you’re up.”

February 2nd.

Right.

He wakes up again to a woman in a white coat standing at the foot of his bed, reading off of a clipboard. 

“Phil Connors, 40, found unresponsive underneath a bridge near Patsy’s Park. Presented with mild hypothermia, bradycardia, hypotension, and significant respiratory depression as a result of an alcohol potentiated benzodiazepine overdose." 

Phil just wants to go back to sleep.

“ER administered 0.8mg of Flumazenil intravenously upon admission and performed a gastric lavage shortly after. Vitals have been stable since seven this evening.”

“Huh,” he mutters. “Thought it’d been longer than that." 

His doctor sighs, like she’s unimpressed or something, which strikes him as kind of rude.

Phil almost died.

God.

"Mr. Connors, you went outside half naked in the middle of snowstorm to chase 220 mg of clonazepam- that’s fifty five pills, by the way- with a bottle of raspberry vodka-”

“It was grape, actually-”

“Regardless,” she says and, great, her voice is all gentle now, like being nice is going to change anything. “I don’t think we need to pretend that this was accidental.”

“Shit, what gave it away?" 

"Mr. Connors, was this your first attempt?”

And Phil-

Phil thinks of the toaster.

He thinks of suffocating, of bleeding out, of freezing to death, of walking into traffic, eyes shut, over and over and over again. He remembers the rope and the car battery and the fucking clock tower.

He thinks of the screwdriver- and, okay, that had been a little excessive, but whatever.

He feels sick.

"Yeah,” he says, slumping back against the pillows. “Yeah. First time.”

They keep him on mandatory 72 hour watch.

Not that it really matters, but.

Phil hates hospitals.

The phone rings when Phil’s on his seventh episode of Law and Order: SVU. He’s eaten, like, four things of green Jello and an entire bag of ice chips. 

On screen, Ice-T is arresting a pedophile with a clown fetish.

He’s pretty sure his nurse is avoiding him.

This kind of feels like a new low.

“Mr. Connors? You have a visitor. Should I send her up?”

Phil absolutely does not want to see Rita right now, but also feels like he owes her for blowing off the broadcast and then literally almost dying. 

Plus, he’s been trying to be less of an ass lately.

Really.

“Yeah, go ahead,” he says with a sigh. “Thank you.”

“Phil Connors, what the fuck.”

That’s not Rita.

He’s going to kill Rita.

“Mom? Jesus, who called you?”

“Is that how you greet me? We haven’t spoken in six months, and all I get is a Jesus-who-called-you?”

Joanne Connors is sixty four years old and 5'2”. 

She carries herself the way some people carry machine guns. 

“So, I’m in a hospital bed, don’t know if you noticed-"

"I noticed that you look like shit,” she says, scowling at the IV in Phil’s arm like it’s done something to  personally offend her. “So, I’ll reiterate: what the fuck.”

Phil’s been nursing a low level migraine since he woke up and the shrillness of his mother’s voice adds a special new dimension to this whole experience.

“Thanks, mom,” he says with a sigh. “Did you really fly all the way out here from Cleveland?”

“No, I was in the area,” she says bitingly. “Of course I flew out here. Your producer called-”

“Associate producer, actually-” he says, just because he’s feeling a little bitter.

“-saying that you were in the hospital, that it looked bad, that they found these pills-”

“I’m fine, oh my god-”

“-so, yes, I did fly out here in the middle of a goddamn blizzard. That flight cost me five hundred dollars, by the way-”

“I never asked you to-”

“-and that doctor you have is a real piece of work-”

“Mom! You’re yelling." 

She stops abruptly, looking stricken. 

With horror, Phil realizes that her eyes are welling up. 

He hates seeing his mom cry.

"You stupid, stupid boy,” she whispers. “You selfish, thoughtless child. What were you thinking?”

Phil can’t remember the last time his mother hugged him, but when she does, it feels like china, like glass, like something breakable and precious all at once.  

“Mom, I-”

He doesn’t know what he wants to say. 

There’s something ugly in his chest, some horrible emotion that makes his throat tight and his eyes burn. He can feel his mother’s tears seeping into the flimsy fabric of his hospital gown.

Phil grips her back like he’s drowning.

Eventually she pulls away, dabs at her eyes with a trembling hand.

“I’m so sorry,” she says. “Phil, I’m so sorry.”

“Um. Don’t be. This isn’t your fault,” he says thickly, scrubbing a hand across his face. “I just- uh. It’s been a long day.”

She chuckles weakly. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Phil doesn’t want to talk about it, and for once, she doesn’t push.

They just sit there instead, watching crappy crime procedurals and eating Jello. She tells him blatantly untrue stories about his childhood and pretends to be interested when he delivers a ten minute lecture on introductory quantum mechanics (his newest research project) and a half hour summary of the first four seasons of Game of Thrones (that he only watched for Rita).

At one point, she leans over to press a kiss to his forehead.

“I love you so much, Phil. So much.”

He closes his eyes.

Here’s a final thing: the day always resets in the time it takes him to blink. 

In that brief moment or space between seeing and not-seeing, a cosmic rubber band yanks him backwards, pulls him taut through time. He knows it’s happening before it happens, even though he’s never actually seen the clock hit six.

"That’s right, woodchuck-chuckers, it’s-”

He slams a hand on the alarm.

It’s a new day.

[oswaldsleeping]

Series: The Strange Case of Mr. Shimada

Chapter Title: no one said living in the forest is a good idea

Chapter(s): 2/3  Rating: E Wordcount: 5461 Warnings: sex, blood, gore (the three things that make life interesting jk) Summary: it’s their own little slice of paradise Author’s Notes: someone needs to get mccree a bandaid

  “Do not give me that look.” Genji frowns. He's got a light-up collar in one hand, the scruff a very big, very hairy, very whiny wolf in another. His jacket and boots are soaked, snow sliding down his neck, “I told you if you did it again, I would make you wear this.”

The werewolf in question whines again, practically pouting. But he sits still as Genji slips the collar on, pressing the “On” button. Bright blue begins to shine around the collar's center. “If you did not attempt to attack me every time I came back, you would not be wearing this, McCree.”

Jesse makes a cacophony of grunts and whines, trying to explain his point without using his words.

Well...speaking with a muzzle must be pretty difficult, Genji will give him that. Besides, he can make out the gist of what Jesse's saying.

“That may be, but I do not need to be “kept on my toes”,” he leans down to gather the tossed-away jar of peanut butter. The oranges have rolled down the front steps, “If anything, you are the one that should be practicing, you mutt. You're getting lazy.”

Jesse snorts, plucking the cluster of bananas from the bushes and trotting into the cabin. They make quick work of it together, getting the groceries off the ground and into the kitchen. The eggs are (mercifully) intact, even if the cereal is a little worse-for-wear.

  In this form, Jesse may trot on the ground, but he can stand on his back legs should the need arise. His front paws can still open doors and manipulate handles (however, he's pretty poor at delicate tasks – he's broken plenty of forks this way). This comes into handy when Genji hands him the last bag of groceries and turns to to put the kettle on the stove.

“I got another request,” He says after a moment, listening to Jesse struggle to put a bag of rice into the rice container (they have containers for everything – cereal, rice, coffee, milkbones – a place for everything and everything in it's place, right?) Jesse huffs, deeming the rice to be a lost cause and trotting back to Genji with the half opened bag.

“Get me the tea box, won't you?” Genji takes the bag and puts it aside, turning back to the kettle. The water has begun to bubble, “I am glad they appreciate my work. I'll have to send word to Zenyatta, I keep forgetting to send his in the mail.” He takes the tea box (in reality, a particularly pretty box that once held papers and is now holds little tin boxes of loose leaf teas) from Jesse's jaws, searching over the little containers for the right one. Jesse huffs again, laying besides the stove, his feet tucked neatly underneath him (he looks very much like a cat when he does that, Genji thinks).

One ear perks, his tail beginning to thump against the ground. It's been awhile since Genji's spoken of his old master.

“He mentioned visiting the next time he gets to the states. It would be nice to see him again.” Genji pulls the desired tin out, measuring out the leaves and taking a clean mug. The peppermint leaves crackle in the hot water, “Would you like to?”

Jesse gives a soft woof and a yawn, his tail still thumping against the floor. Years and years ago, he'd met Genji's former teacher and good friend Zenyatta. Jesse mentions him from time to time - the monk had made quite the impression.

  Genji takes his tea to the front windowsill, settling in to watch the snow. From the side of his eye, he can see Jesse's back leg shaking – he looks like a rubber band pulled taut, ready to fly.

  “Do not leave for too long.” Genji says, taking a sip – Jesse gives another woof and barrels out the door.

  - - -

Mating season for North American werewolves starts in the middle of winter, when the forests are quiet and the nights are cold. It's a kind of twofold effect: fertile werewolves will produce litters in the late spring and it creates a tight bond between the mated pair. Things are...different for werewolf/non-werewolf partners. There's a slim-to-none chance of litters being produced. The few that are often are born too early and born sick. Furthermore, most non-werewolf partners have a hard time keeping up with their more energetic partners.

Ergo, most of these partnerships don't work.

But, clutching a cup of steaming tea and watching Jesse frolicking in the falling snow (actually frolicking - considering he's a full grown werewolf, this looks just as silly as you think), it seems so worth it. Genji sits against the windowsill, one leg tucked under him, the other swinging back and forth. He gets a weird sense of joy seeing Jesse chasing shadows, his collar a streak of bright-blue in the ever growing darkness. If you'd asked him ten years ago if he thought he'd ever feel so at home, he would have have laughed in your face.

They'd built the cabin by hand, cut every log in this house, sanded every surface smooth. It was theirs, theirs, this little slice of paradise. A cabin with two floors, located in the center of the forest, right across from the river. A tiny garden in the back, the stubborn pine littering the back steps with dark-green needles. Together, they sustained themselves and were happy with the life they'd chosen.

  Jesse could run around without fearing he'd become someone's rug and Genji...well Genji had peace and quiet. And that's all he'd ever wanted. It wasn't “loneliness”, like the townsfolk insisted, it was freedom. Jesse leaps, catching a particularly big snowflake between his jaws, falling back and rolling. The whole scene is really very cute, very...Jesse. It's hard to believe there's a late-thirty-something man under all that hair.

  Genji sits the cup in his lap, goosebumps rising on his arms. He closes his eyes, resting his forehead against the chilly glass.

    - - -

  “Come with me.”

  That's all he'd said, reaching his hand out. It must have looked so funny, this tall, burly, beast of a man standing over this tired, morose looking shell of a person, “Ain't nothin for either one'a us here.” Genji remembered the day. Hell, he could tell you the exact hour, minute, and second. The leaves were falling, the wind had been particularly nasty that day. Dressed all in black, clutching a photo yellowed at the edges and cracked on one side. Autumn smelled like rain, the ground soft and pliant and so very, very cold. He couldn't make himself turn around, couldn't make himself look at that fucking tombstone...

For a moment Genji had hesitated. He wasn't stupid, he knew how dangerous werewolves were. They were unpredictable, they were ruled by instinct, they were wild animals. This was stupid, fool hardy and practically signing his death warrant.

  “Do you trust me?”

  That was it. The thing that made Genji throw every fear, every worry, every unseeable detail out the window, because yeah, he did. He really, really did.

He trusted Jesse more than he trusted everyone else, because Jesse was real. He couldn't be arsed to lie about useless matters, had a pretty poor filter, and acted with his heart rather than his head and, Genji never felt the need to hide around him. He could be himself, giant gaping flaws and all.

So in the night, they left. Left appropriate letters to their families (well to Jesse's family; Genji didn't have anyone else) and decided to start anew.

  - - -

  And here he was, years later, sitting by a windowsill and watching his partner play in the snow. How time flies.

  His eyes flutter open. Jesse's not out front anymore, instead stomping into the house, his fur dotted with snowflakes, his tail wagging madly. Before Genji has a chance to stop him, he shakes the water from his back, sending freezing droplets everywhere.

“YOU MUTT!” Genji shrieks, nearly spilling his tea. Well, that certainly spoiled the mood. He's soaked, the flannel not doing much to keep him warm (hey, only so much one shirt can do). The almost-dead fire in the fireplace is finally snuffed out.

Jesse actually looks a little ashamed of himself, tucking his tail between his legs and laying his ears against his skull. He pads to Genji, giving a pathetic whine.

“Do not start with me. Why can you not do that before you come inside?!” Genji glowers. He feels like his mother, scolding his wayward brother and himself for something silly, “How many times must I to tell you? Not. In. The. House.”

Jesse lays his head against Genji's thigh. He gives a low grunting noise.

“You are ridiculous.” Genji pinches the bridge of his nose. Jesse pushes his head into Genji's thigh again, whining even louder. He taps his paw against the ground, nuzzling his muzzle against the inside of Genji's knee, “No, you are a grown man, I am not falling for that.”

Jesse plants first one paw on the windowsill, and then the next, raising his head to press it against Genji's chest. “Use your words.” Genji grumbles. His hands find those soft, sensitive ears, scratching in just the perfect spot. Jesse's tail begins to wag, “I would not get upset with you, if you did not shake in the house, mutt.”

Jesse gives a growly-whine, tail wagging furiously. His head drops onto Genji's shoulder, one paw swatting at Genji's shirt.

“Don't be rude.” Genji gives a him a firm tap on the nose, “Go get more firewood.”

Jesse gives another swat, ignoring Genji's request. There's something in his eyes, a feral mischievousness that Genji's oh-so-knowledgeable of. He smirks, taking the werewolf's head in both hands and holding it still, leaning down to press his nose against Jesse's cold, wet one.

“Get the firewood,” He murmurs, eyes half-lidded, “Be a good boy and go get it. And then you'll get a treat.” Jesse's off like a shot. Genji laughs, places his cup aside and walks upstairs – wolfish, indeed.

  - - -

  There's something nice about sleeping with a dog. Well, Genji knows better to call him a “dog”. Jesse's really not into that, but he's into praise, so it all evens out in the end.

It's awkward, but Genji reaches behind him to scratch one of those soft, floppy ears. Jesse huffs in appreciation. He shifts his hips, the thick knot inside of him still hot and heavy. Jesse grunts, one paw-like-hand clutching Genji's firm hip and keeping him in place. Genji has a tendency to squirm during their sessions, which pulls painfully on Jesse's knot. It takes the fun out of the afterglow!

“You were enthusiastic tonight,” Genji grumbles snuggling back into the werewolf's broad chest. His fur is thick and full, and so wonderfully warm, “Full moon have anything to do with that?”

Jesse grunts, one lazy ear flopping forward. He's not keen on “moon” jokes either, but Genji can't help himself. You can't just let these opportunities get away!

“No matter.” he yawns, eyes fluttering shut, listening to the soft thump thump thump of Jesse's tail against the bed. He's such a puppy sometimes, even while locked together with his mate, “It was nice.”

Jesse laves his tongue against Genji's neck, his tail still wagging against the bed. Something about the chill of winter gives him such a boost of energy. It's put to good use.

“We'll have to go hunting in the morning,” Genji says, half awake, “Maybe when the snow settles. I hate hunting when it's sleeting, the deer are getting good about hiding.”

    - - -

  There's a puff of auburn fuzz in the holly bush again. Genji sees it in the morning, standing on the back porch with his coffee, watching the storm progress. Jesse eyes the fuzz for a moment, eyes narrowed and ears pulled back. With a breathy woof, Jesse trots into the forest.

Genji flicks the puff away. Little puffs have been showing up all around the house – it must be the deers.

  - - -

  “Were you rolling around in the pines again?”

  Jesse shakes his head no, pine needles falling every which way. His fur is mattered with sap and he looks particularly...sticky.

“You're an awful liar.” Genji plucks him by the scruff and begins dragging him to the bathroom.

This is where the fight begins.

You need to understand – when he's human, Jesse is actually fairly good at these things. Takes a shower every other day, attempts to keep his beard in presentable order, tries to look like a normal human being.

As a werewolf, he's subject to werewolf whims. It's a far cry between a man's brain and a canine's – Jesse the Man knows not to roll in the pine sap and track mud into the house. Jesse the Wolf will get into the garbage and not give a damn.

Jesse had attempted to explain it awhile ago - "'s not like I can help it - somethin' 'bout strong smells is just so appealin'." They'd gone over the subject for a good two hours and in the end, Genji was just as clueless as he was in the beginning. Jesse summed it up as "it's a werewolf" thing and left it at that.

Learning to balance the two takes practice. Sometimes, it's like having a dog, especially when Jesse makes a high pitched howl and takes for the door.

Genji's faster; launches himself and catches Jesse around the middle, planting his feet on the floor. It's pretty difficult to wrestle a full grown werewolf into submission, but Genji's stronger than he looks. It's a slow, laborious process – Jesse trying to escape, Genji trying to get him into the bathroom. He's going to throw his back out, if this keeps up.

Genji gets them to the bathroom (after prying Jesse from the doorframe) and sits back, taking a deep breath. Jesse sits, pouting in the bathtub, his ears flopped over his eyes. This is his workout for the day, Genji decides as he rolls up his sleeves, he's taking a fucking nap after this.

The moment the shower head springs to life, the fight begins once again. Jesse yowls as Genji “calmly” reminds him that if he didn't thrash so much, he wouldn't get soap in his eyes.

  - - -

  Jesse's better for the hair dryer. Which is relieving because there was no way Genji has enough towels to dry him. Jesse pouts but stays still and only complains for a moment when Genji blows too close to his ears. It's actually very nice to see him clean – there's a multitude of colors in Jesse's coat that only appear after a good wash. He's got a good amount of red in him, flecks of yellow, and silver in his chin that make him look pretty distinguished. Jesse darts away when Genji deems the entire process complete. He's rolls in the laundry, trying to get his scent back in his fur (there's something so embarrassing about smelling like baby powder).

Genji drops into bed, pulls the covers over his head, and takes the best snooze he's had all month.

  - - -

  “It's been three days,” Genji says quietly, watching the snow fall. The storm's taken a liking to their home and has decided to stay. Genji's pretty happy he managed to do some grocery shopping in town before they ran out of meat, “Are you stuck?”

At the foot of the bed, Jesse sighs, his body curled into a tight ball. His muzzle nestled into his bushy tail. It seems like he's fast asleep, but Genji knows better. His left ear is slightly raised, his mane not entirely settled. It will be midnight soon, the fourth day just over the horizon. Genji's patient. He knows Jesse needs time. He'll wait but...well, no one likes the waiting game.

“I'm not in any hurry.” Genji says, before he rolls over and falls asleep, “But I would like to speak with you again someday.”

    - - -

      Lacing up his boots, it's hard not to laugh. Jesse's always excitable before the hunt, bouncing about like a fresh whelp. He gives a short bark, pacing at the front door, the bow in his mouth.

“Stop rushing.” Genji murmurs, looking over his equipment and picking up his quiver.

The bow is...a sensitive subject. Not something he likes to dwell on, a moment passed down from a long dead brother. There's etching on the side, neat, tiny kanji that Genji conveniently never reads and sometimes he wonders what his brother would think if he saw his precious bow now. Genji likes to think he'd be amused.

He counts the arrows before strapping the quiver to his back and tightening the holster around his combat knife. Genji takes the bow from Jesse's mouth and steps out into cold, the werewolf bolting around him and into the forest. The snow still falls, the storm calmed considerably but lingering within the pines. He can see a flash of a red tail between the trees.

God bless the hunt.

  - - -

  It's...a little bizarre seeing how Jesse changes while at work.

He goes from goofy and silly to serious at the drop of a hat. His ears are pricked forward, eyes narrowed and searching. Nose to the ground, he quickly picks up a scent, Genji following behind him as fast as he can.

Genji's job is simple. If Jesse can't take his prey down, then it's up to Genji to head it off, distract it, and incapacitate it until Jesse can catch up. It's a dance he's well versed in, one he prides himself on. They compete with one another, who will take down the strongest prey, the most prey, the weirdest prey. The house is rarely without meat.

They make a good team. Jesse is heavy, strong, keen on what's moving in the darkness and Genji is quick on his feet, quick to react, and a well trained killer.

“You'd make a good wolf, Genji.” Jesse had said once, dragging their kill back to the cottage – they'd spoken on it once or twice. Werewolf venom isn't what you think it is – it's not a “one bite and you've got fur” kind of thing. It's actually pretty dangerous – as the species evolved, the werewolf's venom grew more and more toxic. Plenty have died from the venom alone and those who don't often turn feral within the first few moons and must be put down. Some propose that was the whole reason for the venom turning so lethal. Too many werewolves who went feral too easily, too deformed to mesh with packs, and too unstable to sustain themselves. It would make sense that biology would become selective.

It takes a careful hand to transition a human to a werewolf and it's...quite the commitment. Not one to be taken lightly. They'd categorized as a “we'll cross that bridge when we get to it” and left it at that. Still, there were days where Genji wondered what color his fur would be...

    - - -

  Werewolf body language is an art all it's own. It's like any spoken language that's ever existed, it's changed in so many ways and in so many ways stayed the same.

Werewolves naturally walk on all fours – ultimately, it's more natural to them and is faster. Werewolves aren't really made for mortal combat - They can fight with best of the magical creatures, but they don't prefer to.

Much like their four-legged counterparts they're hunters at heart. Speed is a surefire friend when you need to eat.

  In all honesty, it's always slightly unnerved Genji how fast Jesse switches from two legs, to four legs, back to two. There's distinct differences between the two, differences he's learned how to watch for. A werewolf that walks on all fours is a calm, relaxed one. A werewolf that stands on it's back legs is...well, it's not great, but it's not the worst thing. It's usually a curious one, a nervous one, things of that ilk.

But when a werewolf stands on two and puffs his mane out?

That's bad.

  That's a “this is my place and you need to leave” and a “I have no problem fighting” signal.

Werewolves have thick manes for that reason alone - it's a barrier against teeth and claw and a status symbol (many compare them to lions in that aspect - Genji would argue they're more like peacocks)

  Genji stops the moment he hears that low, deep growl. Jesse's mane is fully bristled at this point, his claws unsheathed. It doesn't take long to see what's got him so upset: another werewolf, stands not 30 feet away, it's own mane ruffled to it's fullest.

This normally isn't a problem. Jesse's let traveling werewolves pass through his woods before – hell, he invites them to the cabin and gives them a meal.

  But this is very, very different. This isn't a traveler, this is a conquistador – a werewolf trying to take his territory. It's something of a rite of passage for fledglings, challenging an alpha. They test their teeth against a well aged fighter and, if they lose, learn what to do next time.

Here's the thing - it's standard procedure for fledglings to challenge alphas with packs. If they lose, they integrate themselves into the pack and learn from said alpha and his family. Pack alphas lead the tribe, train the children, and sure up the numbers for safety.

Solo alphas are an entirely different ballpark. Pack alphas have their tribe to fall back on to defend their territory, solo alphas are just that - solo. They don't have secondary ranks to fall back on, just their own claws and teeth. Solo alphas rarely take in fledglings and especially rarely take in fledglings that challenge them.

Goofy as he can be, Jesse's been the alpha of this forest for well over two decades, since he was a pup. It goes to show, there's a reason for that. In any other case, Genji would consider coming up against him suicide.

The new werewolf's tail wags low and straight, giving his mane a good shake. Sometimes it's all posturing – it's happened once or twice, an upstart pup who thinks he's hot shit and thinks he can take down a king.

Genji readies his bow, eyes trained on the new werewolf - he's only seen a fight get bad once and he'd rather not see it again. Jesse snaps at the air, snarling. The new werewolf responds in kind, stepping forward. They're getting closer and closer, growling and snarling.

  “Go home” Genji snaps over the barking (he never could keep his ever loving mouth shut) “There's nothing here for you.”

Jesse bristles even more (if possible), his muzzle swinging towards Genji as a signal to “shut up”

Genji's too busy staring at the other werewolf - he's finally noticed the human and the grin he gives makes Genji's hair stand on edge.

It happens so fast Genji can't tell you how it started. A flash of fur and teeth and the sharp clack of claws and suddenly they're fighting like their lives depend on it.

  Genji backs up, pulling the arrow back and steading his hands. His eyes try to track their movements. They're moving so fast, the other werewolf's teeth buried into the crook of Jesse's mane, Jesse kicking with his back legs, trying to tear the other's stomach open. He gets a good kick in, fur going every which way. The new werewolf doesn't seem to notice, digging his claws into Jesse's chest.

Genji wants to leap in the fray, to tear the werewolf off of Jesse, but he knows better. In this moment, Jesse's mind is one track and simple - get rid of the problem. Genji leaping in would get them both killed - so he steps back, plants his feet, holds the arrows still and waits.

Jesse gives a yelp as the other werewolf grabs a hold of his left ear. There a horrible ripping noise as the skin tears - Genji could cry. Jesse's ears are so sensitive, the new werewolf must have picked up on that.

He lets the arrow flight – it makes it's mark. The other werewolf rears back, howling in fury. The werewolf snarls at Genji and Jesse takes the advantage, sinking his teeth into the werewolf's flank. The werewolf trashes, still howling. Jesse flips them both, his teeth still buried in the werewolf's flesh - with a well placed kick, the werewolf launches Jesse back.

  Jesse launches himself again, but is flung back by the younger werewolf. The other one is gaining the upper hand, he's fast, he's...tricky. He grabs hold of tender areas and shakes his head fiercely to cause the most damage he can. In an awful way, it's actually pretty fascinating, the science of a werewolf fight. If it wasn't Jesse fighting for their (their) lives, Genji would actually watch nature play it's part.

  The other werewolf grabs Jesse by the scruff and flings him into a tree and suddenly Jesse just...stills.

The panic begins to rise in Genji. He's no lightweight, he can take down magical creatures quick as you please but...a werewolf riding on hormones and blood lust is outside of his ball park.

He can't leave Jesse. He won't leave Jesse, that's out of the question. The second werewolf licks his chops, slowly advancing on him. Genji rips arrows from the quiver, beginning to fire in succession.

He's no marksman, but the arrows find their marks, sinking in deep.

The new werewolf doesn't seem to notice them, too high on adrenaline, ripping the one still lodged on his arm out and careening towards him. With a howl, it leaps at him, throwing them both a good few feet away. They roll together into a clearing, struggling in the snow. Genji thrusts the body of the bow out, catches the werewolf's jaws between the solid wood. The bow's sturdy stuff, reinforced with steel but he can feel the material beginning to creak under the werewolf's back teeth.

  Struggling, Genji can feel the werewolf's soft underbelly with his feet. He gives a good kick, scrambling back when the beast gives a howl of pain (from the sound of it, he struck lower than intended). The arrows fly everywhere and in the darkness of the forest, he can't find them quickly. He rolls away, one eye still on Jesse's still form.

Genji snatches the combat knife from within it's holster – an anniversary gift from Jesse, believe it or not. He's used to working with stronger stuff, but beggars can't be choosers.

The werewolf snarls at him, lips pulled back all the way. He's beginning to froth, the white spotted with dark red. It's...almost reassuring – Jesse wasn't able to kill him, but he sure as hell was able to hurt him. The corners of it's lips begin to pull upwards. It's a macabre, unnerving smile, his eyes glinting bright yellow. They dance around one another, sizing the other up. The werewolf is obviously unimpressed, smirking.

“you've got spunk,” He snarls around blood-stained teeth, “no wonder he fought so hard to keep you.”

Genji doesn't respond to the taunt, dodges as the werewolf slices forward. It's a dance he knows well – keep them moving in circles, keep them on their feet. Genji's faster, he's agile.

The werewolf steps wrong, twists his left arm forward to strike at nothing and Genji swings, swings twice. Sprays of blood splatter the ground, the smell stinging his nose. The werewolf rears back and Genji gets him on the muzzle. The werewolf howls in pain, stumbling back to grab his nose. The fight's starting to take a toll on him – red meat drips behind the auburn fur. The beast's got murder in his eyes.

“No one keeps me.” Genji snarls, leaping back as the werewolf attempts to launch forward. He bounces off the tree behind him, onto the werewolf's back, fingers sinking into the blood-soaked mane. The werewolf bucks, trying to toss Genji off. Genji holds fast, crawling up yanking the werewolf's own left ear and slicing it off. The meat gives way like butter, the werewolf shrieking in pain.

  An ear for an ear.

  The werewolf slams his back into a tree. Genji swears he can hear something snap in his ribs. It's like a punch to the gut, the wind being sucked from his lungs, pain blooming immediately. The werewolf slams him again, Genji falls to the ground, his knife clattering away.

He's trying to catch his breath, his hand still clutched around the werewolf's ear. It's a weird moment of stillness, both of them trying to recover.

Genji pulls himself across the ground, seeing the tell tale glint of metal in the darkness.

The werewolf stalks to him on all fours, limping. Blood gushes down his mutilated face – he huffs, bloody, frothy saliva running down his jaws.

  “i'm going to enjoy taking his land.” He chokes, grabbing Genji by the leg and pulling him back. Genji tries to kick at him again; the werewolf bats his foot away, claws sinking into his thigh. The werewolf looms over him, the paw on his leg transferring to Genji's head. He pushes his face into the snow, his muzzle pressed against Genji's cheek, “but first i'm going to fuck you in front of him. gonna fill you with my pups on his territory.”

Genji growls, struggling. The werewolf stinks of gore, his hot breath starting to make him nauseous.

“gonna keep you for a good long time. make you keep my pack in his home – how's that sound?” The werewolf huffs a chuckle, torn lips pulled into a sneer, “c'mon chatty-kathy, whatcha say to that?”

Genji grumbles something into the ground – The werewolf gives him a good shake. He picks Genji up by the head, ignoring the gasp of pain and turning Genji to look at him, “speak up.”

“I said,” Genji grins at him, mouth bloody, “You're easily distracted.”

Jesse roars, ripping the werewolf off of Genji. It's not a fight this time – it's a massacre. The werewolf doesn't stand a chance and, as Genji leans against a tree to stand, it's a true reminder why Jesse's an alpha.

It's a flurry of fur and claws, bits of flesh, pink and raw. The werewolf's gone from growling and roaring to whimpering and screaming in pain.

Jesse slams him on the ground, forcing his head to look at Genji.

“APOLOGIZE.” Jesse snarls, claws sinking into the werewolf's skull. His voice is raspy and deep and a strange wave of terror washes over Genji. He's never heard that voice before. A spark of mortal panic leaps within Genji for a moment, this horrible thought of That's not Jesse, That's a beast, That's not Jesse, That's a beast ringing in his ears.

Genji can just make out the tiny “i'm sorry” beyond the broken jaw.

  Genji doesn't look away when Jesse snaps the werewolf's neck. It's really very merciful – the forest isn't kind to the weak, after all. Genji quells that spark of mortal panic - if he was "a beast", Jesse would happily keep him alive, let him suffer. Werewolves heal fast, it would be so easy to keep him alive enough to begin to recover and then return to re-injure him.

  Jesse is no beast.

  He heaves a sigh, sitting back on his haunches. He runs a paw through his mane – he's a mess. His fur matted with blood and snow and dirt and mud. His torn ear drips, the flesh hanging limply by a thread. He looks considerably older, Genji thinks.

They've got to get home, get them both bandaged up. Jesse looks like he's been shoved into a meat grinder.

Genji's in no better shape. He's no stranger to setting bones, but he'll need some help with his ribs. The blossoming pain is starting to make his vision swim.

He pushes away from the tree, stumbles to Jesse. Jesse accepts him easily, holding him close, tongue laving out to lick the cuts on Genji's cheeks.

“We are so lucky werewolf spit heals.” Genji grumbles into Jesse's chest.

“Thought I was gonna lose you.” Jesse buries his muzzle into Genji's neck, eyes squeezed shut. Jesse's mane has deflated, his fur hanging and he looks so...tired. They trudge back to the house, leaning heavily on one another. Jesse drags the dead werewolf behind him.

  The hunt ends.

[puckish-saint]

the mercy, reaper, genji, s76 s/o having a existential crisis because they are some type of monster(can you make more close of body horror, like 4 eyes or a third Eye, sharp teeth, they nail will be sharp enogh to cut someone if they dont trim them enough and a tummy mouth you can change these characteristics if you want) i really want to see how they'll comfort the s/o (bonus: s/o ask mercy to "cure" them/ reaper s/o say they envy reaper because he is a human and they arent)

Soldier: 76

During the first omnic crisis, you'reone of the soldiers under Major Reyes’ command. You don't belong tothe strike team itself, there's nothing special about you that wouldsecure you a place there, but you still follow his orders, no matterhow rarely you see him in person. Captain Morrison is more of afamiliar figure, as he makes a habit of checking up on the troops inperson whenever he has the chance. Which is increasingly often as thewar thins out the people and forces them closer together. And once,towards the end of the crisis, he leads what remains of your platoonin person. The major delegated the task to him and from the second hewalks up to you, orders in hand, you know just completing the missionwon't do. Captain Morrison flew up the career ladder and this,despite his rank, is his first real command.

He's nervous, eager to please, bent ongoing above and beyond the call of duty. He sees you all walking homewith medals.

Barely any of you walk home at all.

It's not his fault, you admit even atyour most bitter. For all his enthusiasm and pathos he's a goodofficer. It couldn't have gotten worse, but you're still glad it washim who led you into hell.

The moment you infiltrate the omnium,tasked with disabling the god program, shit goes up arse over tit.The omnic forces divide and conquer and as you flee towards the mainframe you are accompanied by the agonised screams of your people. Atthe end it's just you and the captain and neither of you expects tosurvive this.

“Specialist.” he says to you withthe gravity of a man who's about to send someone to their death.“Complete our mission.”

The parameters have changed, theoriginal plan no longer going to work. But you interface with the godprogram because captain Morrison gave you an order and you'll bedamned if the lives lost today will be lost for nothing.

Hephaestos overwhelms you withinseconds. You never stood a chance. You scream as the AI burns throughyour synapses, scream until your vocal cords tear and your jawunhinges. Your body twists and contorts, bones snapping, musclestrings pulled apart like rubber band. The AI keeps you consciousthrough it, forces is way into your brain and isn't afraid to makeadjustments to the hardware.

It takes hours, hours during whichCaptain Morrison is forced to listen and watch, powerless to act.

When it's over, Hephaestos fused you tothe machinery it inhabits. Part of your face is left, skin scarredand pulled over the tech jutting out of the side of your head. One ofyour eyeballs has stretched towards the back of your skull, givingyou a hazy and distorted view of your surroundings.

Your body is a mess of limbs in thewrong places, metal plating growing out of your bone, sharp halforganic spikes jutting out from your arms and hands. Your legs, whatremains of them are unusable. It looks like the AI was about toconvert them to its tastes, too,  but was interrupted. You feelits presence, inside your head but weakened. Dying. It tried to forceits way into a human body to escape imprisonment and failed halfwaythrough. It doesn't comfort you in the slightest.

Captain Morrison, although visiblyrepulsed, stays with you and waits for rescue.“Shoot me.” youask more than once. “No.” he answers every time. He won’tgive the killing blow, not when he just lost his entire unit but you.You’re the only survivor in the massacre that was his first owncommand. If he can keep you alive, he must think, he won’t havefailed completely.

“We killed a God Program.” he saysafter a while, to distract you from the oily pus seeping out of thescars where tech meets flesh. It’s hard not to look at.

“It killed itself.” you say,finding no satisfaction in your victory.

“Come on.” he says and for thefirst time you notice his despair through your own. “We did a goodthing. We did, we … I’m sorry.”He pulls his knees up to hischest, hides his face between them.

“I fucked up.” he says, digs hisfingers so hard into his arms the fabric tears underneath his armour.“I just wanted to make everyone proud but I already got my peoplekilled and you are practically begging me to finish the job. I’msorry for what happened, I am, but … I don’t know.”“Staypositive?” you mock and he flinches, shakes his head.

“Of course not-”“Good.Because I have to live with this for the rest of my life. I’m amonster, Captain. Look at me.”He does, forces himself to lookat the wires running along your exposed muscles, at the lump ofmolten metal that would have turned into your legs. At the hardwaresticking out of your brain, protected by skin stretched so taut ittears when you frown.

“You’re not a monster.” he saysweakly. “You’re a hero.”

He believes it, you realise as youstare into his sad but honest face. He really believes you’re ahero. That your actions may have saved the world, and that yoursacrifice was worth it.

You sigh, lean back against the wall asbest you can.

“You’re too damn naive, Captain.”you say, no heat behind your words. He manages a smile, reaches outand hovers over your arm, as if he really wants to touch you. Younod, give him permission.

“I just know good people when I seethem.” he says.

Good people, you think. Well, if yourcommanding officer says it, it must be true.

Genji

He���s the one who gives you your humanname. Your true name, given to you by your people (all dead, allgone) you’ve long since forgotten, hiding in the underbelly ofa castle so vast, hundreds of years you evaded the humans’detection. Until a little boy, impossibly frail, stumbles into yourlair and doesn’t cry or scream. He smiles.

“So cool!” he says, his voicedistorted as you try to adapt to the little one’s speech. It’sbeen almost a thousand years since you last heard human voices.Longer since you heard the songs of your own kind. But the telepathicwaves he unwittingly sends out with his excitement allow you tounderstand most of what he says.

“You’re kaiju. Like in themovies!”He wanders around your body, massive compared to him,and pokes and prods with his tiny little fingers, utterly devoid offear. When you wrap one of your appendages around him and set himdown at the opposite of the room, he clings to it and demands you doit again.

And so, having literally nothing elseto do, you heed his request.

He keeps calling you kaiju and thoughthe word’s meaning escapes you for the longest time, you accept itas your name. In return for his company you … play. Let him climbyour body, ride on your tentacles as you whip them through the air.He’s shrieking with joy, makes up adventures in his head and playsthem out in the catacombs, never in fear of drowning in the waters orgetting lost. He has you to watch out for him.

Genji grows under your watch, neverstops visiting you even when he jokes he’s getting too old to havea monster friend in his basement. When he argues with his brother heoften comes down here to sleep, nestled between your tentacles andcurling his hands around the rolling waves of your flesh. He’snever been repulsed by you, calls you cuddly and sings praises ofyour warmth. When he doesn’t feel like getting up to mischief, hebrings his computer down here and makes you watch his favouritemovies.

Until one day he stops coming.

You don’t know what happened, waitfor him as you always do. Days, weeks. Months. A full year passes bywhen you realise that Genji is not coming back. Even when you strainyour ears, feel the vibrations of the stone and listen to theemotions and thoughts that surround the humans above, you can’tfind him. There’s only sadness and grief until that, too, goesaway. Something horrible must have happened to him up there, whereyou couldn’t protect him.

Over ten years pass before you seeGenji again, looking different but that’s never mattered to you.He’s the same at heart, matured but as pure and bright as he alwayswas.

“Kaiju.” he says and by now themoniker has become a term of affection rather than a word describinga monster. You draw him close, explore his body, send him thoughts ofjoyful reunions. His kind is not telepathic but he can feel the moodin the air.

“I’ve made some new friends.” hesays after you welcomed each other duly. “They would like to meetyou.”

You cradle his cheek, wonder what he’strying to say. He’s never before suggested bringing others downhere. It’s too dangerous, both for them and for you.

“We, them and me, we’re trying tohelp, and there are a lot of weird people there. You would fit rightin.”“Leave these catacombs?” you ask, incredulous. Has hecome back just for this? To try and take you with him to whereverhe’s gone this last decade?

“You don’t have to. I just thought… you’re a good soul. And Overwatch, my friends, we can do a lotof good.”“They would not have me.”“They would. I toldyou, there’s lots of weird people-”“I’m not people.”

He stills, presses his forehead againstyour body.

“I thought the same of myself for along time. You trust me, right? Then trust me when I say you’repeople in any way that matters.”

You’re not convinced. Genji is tryingto do something nice for you, convincing you to join a collective,but leaving your hiding spot that has kept you safe for hundreds ofyears sits ill with you. The humans, what little you remember ofthem, don’t favour things that do not look like them.

“Please?” Genji says, so soft thatyou don’t hear him, only feel the vibrations of his speech on yourskin. “I have to leave again soon. I don’t want to leave you allby yourself.”

In the end you agree. A monster you maybe, but you trust Genji. If he says you will be accepted, you willbelieve him.

Reaper

Gabriel is, ironically enough, thefirst person you ever see unmasked. For the longest time all you knoware men and women in labcoats, experimenting, torturing. When theyhave had their fill, they lock you in a cage, far below in a placethat can be remotely shut off and blown up if you ever were to escapeyour prison. They take you up to their labs less and less often.Eventually they forget about you.

Time becomes a hazy construct ratherthan a guiding idea, but eventually you’re face to face with theman in black, tilting your head to allow all of your eyes to take inthis new apparition. He does not look like the scientists. It is notonly the colour of his clothes, or the nature of his mask that hideseven his eyes. It is the fact that even hidden, you feel his eyes onyou, looking at you rather than through you. What he sees you don’tknow, nor what moves him to unlock the cell and let you out.

You tower over him, able to stretch forthe first time in your entire life. Your third arm catches on hiscloak by accident, but the softness of it nearly overwhelms you. Youplay with it until he pulls it away with a snarl.

“I need you to be my meat shield.”he says. “Can you do that?”

You shrug. It’s worth giving a try.

Being a meat shield is easy work. Standin front of Reaper when bullets fly his way or carry him out ofharm’s way if that does not suffice. Your body soaks up the damagelike it’s nothing, regenerating uglier each time you bleed, butnever any less functional. Protecting the man in black becomes yourlife’s purpose, at least while you learn what else there is.

Reaper never tries to shelter you, denyyou information like the scientists have done. He even helps out whenthe mood strikes him, gets you gloves that go over your unnaturalhands that allow you at long last to use touchscreens. He teaches youhow to use voice commands to their full potential, gives you a fewplaces to start.

Omnic Crisis. Overwatch. Talon. Theworld out there is nothing like you imagined, but then again you hadvery little to imagine it with. Your best guess at what things looklike outside your prison were based on the pictures on the calendar.Raging seas, vibrant flowers, animals that the camera angle made youbelieve were 90% nose.

For the most part it’s dirtier. Andalso much more cruel.

The stone thrown at you causes no realinjury. The fear and disgust with which it came do.

“At least you’re human.” you sayas Reaper tries to get you out of your sullen mood. “Look at me.I’m a … a ... ““Golem.” he says. “Made from meat, notclay, but the principle is the same.”“Yes.”

He sighs, drags his hands through hishair under his cowl, mutters to himself.

“Figures I get the one monster in theworld that mopes around all day.”

Says the right person, you want to say,knowing how he can be. You bite it back. He is just trying to buildup a hard shell to survive the mushiness that’s about to follow.True enough he sits next to you, pushes away the third arm, thathas a life of it’s own and is still obsessed with the fabric of hisclothes. That’s what you tell him at least.

“You’ll never make them like you.You could be the born again Jesus but looking like that they’llstone you to death before giving you the benefit of the doubt.”

“What a pep talk.” you say drily.He looks at you as if he’s regretting ever teaching you what a peptalk is.

“My point.” he says sharply. “Isthat I may be human but even I won’t have a place in society with aface like that.”And with that he takes off his mask, shows youhis face, chin to forehead, scarred in some places, revealing barebone in others. As you watch one of his teeth falls out, evaporatesand is immediately replaced.

“You look like death.” you say. “Nowonder they call you the Reaper.”

The mask stays off, his shoulders slumpand then he takes your hand and squeezes it.

“Stick to the people you know. It’ssafer that way.” After a second of hesitation he adds: “And callme Gabriel.”

“Gabriel.” you repeat and smile,with all three mouths at once.

Mercy

There's a glass of black smoke standingon top of a shelf in a part of the laboratory that's rarely beingused. It stood there when Angela began her work here all those yearsago. Don't touch, the safety instructions say, don't interact, don'teven look at it.

And she doesn't. Not until she tries toresurrect Gabriel and fails. His screams, begging her to let him die,haunt her sleep and force her to walk the dark halls in an attempt tofind some measure of peace.

The jar of black smoke looks sofamiliar, so much like the form she forced Gabriel to take, thatbefore she knows it, she has taken it from the shelf and unsealed it.Nothing happens, which is rather anticlimactic considering thestories she's heard.

She upends the jar. The smoke fallsout. It stays jar-shaped.

When she carefully pushes a Q-tip inshe finds it's indeed just smoke. Nothing should keep it fromevaporating or at least spreading out on the table. But jar-shaped itstays and eventually she gives up for the night and returns to bed.

In the morning the smoke is stilljar-shaped but definitely, after carefully measuring the jar, larger.The reason becomes clear when she reaches into the bowl of sweetsthat always stands on the counter and finds nothing. Not evenwrappers.

Angela feeds it everything she canthink of in the next days. It eats sweets fastest. Easier for it todigest or maybe it just likes them most. Meat is almost as good,vegetables are a mixed success. It eats a bit of string from her coatand some pliers left behind by one of the others, but doesn't muchseem to favour the taste.

Three days after being freed, the blacksmoke is large and powerful enough to reboot its dormantconsciousness.

You open a quickly formed eye and useit to look at Angela. She's curious, but not frightened.

“Dr Gervaine promised me he'd turn meback into a human.” you say, creating more and more eyes to lookaround. “Guess he played me for a fool.”

Angela blinks. She knows the name fromseveral research papers and her own textbooks.

“He retired before the Omnic Crisisand donated his equipment to the war effort. Overwatch kept it safesince then.”

“But you’re scientist, too.” yousay, pushing the questions about what the hell the Omnic Crisis andOverwatch are to the side. “You can cure me.”

Angela doesn’t know if she can. Youwere Dr Gervaine’s project, one she never even assisted in. Anddespite superficial similarities all the tests she runs in the nextdays show no connection to what became of Gabriel. There’s nothingshe can do and so she tries a different approach.

“Why would you want to be cured?”she asks one day, months after first unsealing your jar. You give hera Look with three eyes. She points to her temple, makes a motion asif she wants to point your attention to a spot of dirt. The third eyevanishes.

“Because the best imitation of ahuman body I can manage makes me look like a slenderman knock-off?”

It’s true, she has to admit, andscared the living daylights out of Winston when he bumped into youone night on his way to get a glass of milk before bed. Neither ofyou have recovered from the incident.

“You’re getting better, though.Your face has the right number of orifices.”

You nod and, with a defeated sigh liftthe sweater she gave you to wear to make you feel more human. On yourstomach you stored all the extra eyes, mouths and noses you kept awayfrom your face.

“Alright.” she says, everoptimistic. “So it’s more of a … winter look.”But atleast today her jokes fall flat. She’s never been very good at themanyway.

You lose your form again, turn into themany-limbed heap of smoke so thick it seems solid and curl up againsther legs.

“You don’t understand.” you say,even your voice turning hollow without the effort of making it soundnormal. “I remember being human. I used to go to the beach and getmy fingers sticky eating ice cream. I had real skin, toes and fingersand now … look at me.”

Angela looks at the formless pitchblack mass to her feet, the eyes that keep popping up only todisappear by your increasingly frustrated efforts.

“I think you’re perfect.” shesays. You create a hand just to fondly smack her upside the head, butyour many mouths are smiling.

“I’ll still look for a cure.” yousay and she shrugs and lowers herself to the ground, fullyencompassed by you. She’s long since stopped worrying about beingsuffocated by you.

“And I’ll love you still, no matterif you find it.”