#but honestly that chapter is the third of a three part thing

[silvershewolf247]

This is one of my favorite tropes and I continue to try and write scenes between Andy and Chucky around it.

[spideyjimin]

Bloodlines entwined: epilogue | jjk

⤷ having a baby alone was supposed to be easy. but an accidental twist of fate pulled you into a hidden world of werewolves, and ancient bloodlines. navigating your already complicated life becomes even harder as you uncover your past; one tied to a legacy you never knew existed. and in the middle of this chaos stands jungkook, the werewolf king… and the father of your child. 

—  pairing: werewolf!jungkook x female reader 

—  genre: strangers to lovers, parents-to-be au, royalty au, werewolves au, soulmates au, angst, fluff, and smut 

— rating: 18+ 

—  words: 3,077

—  warnings: swearing, breastfeeding, mention of blood, mention of abortion, and teasing

—  author’s note: the adventure with this jk and oc has come to an end, and it honestly makes me so so sad! 😭 i am not ready to say goodbye to them because man, i enjoyed so much writing this series 🫶🏼 i’m gonna drop a little note because i’ve so much to say and don’t want to make this part long as hell 😅 thank you for everything, guys!! hope you’ll enjoy this last part of the series 🫶🏼

Epilogue: papa and mama

SERIES MASTERLIST | previous

“Fuck,” Jungkook groans the second your baby’s loud cries echo through the house.

The cries yank you out of sleep like a slap. You throw a hand over your ear in an attempt to muffle the noise, but it’s useless. With your werewolf super hearing, it’s like your baby is crying right into your ears.

“I’ll go,” Jungkook whispers into your mind before dragging himself out of bed.

Slowly, you turn around to grab your phone from the nightstand. It’s 6 am, so it’s time to wake up. In a matter of time, Kai and Arya will storm into your bedroom. With a quiet groan, you sit up against the bed’s headboard, rubbing the sleep from your face and bracing yourself for the chaos about to hit.

Seconds later, Jungkook makes his way to the room, holding your third child, Minho, tightly in his arms. A smile grows on your face as you see them. Minho isn’t crying anymore, he seems absolutely delighted to be in his dad’s arms.

“This little man is starving,” he says.

Jungkook places your baby in your arms so you can breastfeed the little monster. When your eyes meet your son’s, it’s like the world stops moving. Your hand caresses his sweet face. Even though it isn’t easy at all to raise a little being, it is so fulfilling and filled with love.

While you breastfeed your youngest, Jungkook—or should you say your husband—sits next to you. Three years after the birth of Kai, you got married to Jungkook. You wanted to take your time because marrying him wasn’t a small thing.

Through this marriage, you’d become the werewolf queen, and you’d leave behind your normal and human life. You took your time because you wanted to mentally prepare yourself for it. Saying goodbye to your students was hard, but it felt like a new chapter was starting.  

A year before your marriage, you had given birth to your daughter, Arya. Just like her brother, she was a very desired child. However, she wasn’t born from an insemination. She was born out of an act of love. Well, a very dirty one, but still a loved one.

Right after your marriage and coronation, you got pregnant. Well, actually, you got pregnant on that exact day. Minho was born a couple of days earlier than the due date, but yeah, nine months after that special day, you gave birth to your third baby. Minho was a surprised baby. It was not in your plans to have a baby at that time.

At the time, Arya was still very young, you had just become queen, and you wanted to give yourself a little time to adjust. But life had other plans. Minho arrived sooner than expected. Now, with Jungkook, you're both open to the idea of a fourth child, but you're not rushing it. You're not actively trying for another baby, just leaving it to fate. After all, Minho is only six months old. There's no need to add a fourth little one just yet

Having three young kids is quite a challenge. They run everywhere, constantly want to play, scream whenever they aren’t happy, but they love with their entire hearts. Minho is a bit too young for that, but he still screams when he’s not happy. And let’s not speak about their powers.

All three of them are incredibly powerful for their young age, far stronger than any other werewolf you’ve ever known. Kai, as the firstborn of a ruling king, seems to hold the greatest strength. You believe that’s why his power surpasses even Arya’s and Minho’s. Both of them radiate a fierce energy too, but like all young ones, they haven’t yet mastered control over their abilities. At least not fully, because when it comes to being silly, they seem to know how their powers work.

You and Jungkook have been trying to guide and help Kai and Arya to deal with it. But sometimes, they don’t get it, which you understand perfectly. How can a four and a two-year-old child understand how to control their powers? Thankfully, they haven’t turned into a wolf yet, which reassures you and your husband. Since this is all uncharted territory, you’re constantly scared that they’ll shift too early.  

Together with Jungkook, you’ve been running blood tests on your babies, searching for answers to the mysteries behind their strength. Their blood is remarkably close to yours, a clear proof that they are fully hybrids, carrying almost as much human blood as you do. But it’s their father’s blood that gives their werewolf side an extraordinary power. And layered on top of that, the Shadow’s blood stirs a force that neither you nor Jungkook ever possessed.

With Kai, you’ve already seen what that means. He inherited both the Blood’s healing abilities and the Shadows' vanishing powers. When he loses control of his emotions, he can simply disappear, turning invisible even to Jungkook’s keen senses. Only you can still see him. For his healing abilities, you remember the first time so clearly: Kai healing a bruise on Arya’s knee with nothing but a touch, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

What you've learned is simple, yet staggering: your blood and Jungkook’s are equally strong. Neither side overpowers the other, and the human blood didn’t collapse under the sheer force of the wolf; it stood its ground.

And because of that, because of the balance inside them, your children are something rare, something powerful. A new beginning.

The three of them were born with a blue and a red eye, making them the first three werewolves belonging to two packs. They clearly are the new generation of the royal family. They are going to be the first mixed and hybrid werewolves. And you’re proud to be their mother.

“I wish we could sleep a bit more on weekends,” Jungkook mumbles while pressing a gentle kiss on your shoulder.

“Then, you shouldn’t have had kids,” you say, looking at him.

“I know,” he whispers. “Can’t wait for them to be older.”

You shake your head with a big smile on your face.

“And you’re also the one begging for a fourth,” you add.

Before Jungkook even gets to answer, you hear little footsteps behind the door. Very slowly, the door opens before Kai’s head pops out to check if you’re awake. As he notices you both sitting in bed, he opens the door and walks with his sister to the bed. They literally push Jungkook and sit down between you and your husband.

“Always pushing me away from you,” Jungkook says through thoughts.

The good thing with this soulmate connection is the fact that you can speak through minds without being heard by your kids. Jungkook definitely uses it to whisper the nastiest things when the kids are around.

“Good morning,” they both say while looking at the two of you.

Arya instantly goes into her father’s arms. She’s definitely a daddy’s girl, and Jungkook isn’t going to complain at all about that.

“Grandpa Felix is coming today to pick you up,” you tell your kids.

Felix will be looking after these monsters for the next four days because you’re going on a little romantic trip with Jungkook. Since you became parents, you have barely had any alone time with your husband. You do get some, but the kids are always around. This time it will be just the two of you. There won’t be Kai, Arya, and Minho.

“And you will be staying with him and Iris for four days, okay?”

Your father found love again almost three years ago. He was very hesitant at first, but man, he’s head over heels with her. Iris is an incredible woman, and she deeply loves your father. She has three children of her own, and they became like family, too.

“Will Atlas be there?” Kai asks.

Atlas is Lexi’s child. Surprising, right?

Atlas wasn’t supposed to exist, he was a little accident. The result of a broken condom. Lexi and Elias, her boyfriend, didn’t want to keep him because it was never in their plans to become parents. But after a lot of thinking and consideration—and a lot of crying too—they decided to keep him. However, they made sure that Atlas would be their first and last child. She got her tubes tied, and he got a vasectomy.   

Kai was only ten months old when Atlas was born, and they are very close today. You hope this bond will never be broken, and you’ll make sure it never does.

“Yes, and maybe, Iris’s grandchildren will be there too,” you add.

Iris already has quite a few grandchildren, and they regularly visit her. Your babies and Atlas have been growing up with her grandchildren, and you’re glad your children have more cousins to play with.

“Yeaaah,” Arya jumps with excitement.

“No jumping in bed, Arya,” Jungkook scolds her.

“But papa…” she pouts, trying to push her father to let her do whatever she wants.

“There’s no papa,” he tries to resist. “We don’t jump in bed.”

Jungkook is, without a doubt, the coolest dad on earth. He showers your children with affection, always prepared to whisk them away on spontaneous adventures or sneak them a treat when no one is looking. With him, laughter is never far away. He makes even the smallest moments feel magical.

But as much as he spoils them with love and attention, he’s also firm when it comes to what truly matters. Rules are rules in the household, and Jungkook stands by them. Respect, kindness, and responsibility; he ensures they grasp the significance of these values.

He’s the kind of father who can turn discipline into a lesson of love, making your children feel safe rather than scolded. And somehow, he strikes that perfect balance: being their hero and their anchor, all at once.

“Pff,” she mumbles before sitting down next to you.

“Now she doesn’t love me anymore,” he says to you through thoughts and rolls his eyes.

You smile while brushing Minho’s hair with your fingers.

“You know it’ll only last 5 secs,” you answer. “She loves you too much.”

“So,” Jungkook begins. “Let’s get dressed while mama finishes nourishing Minho.”

Your husband grabs your son and daughter, carrying them on his shoulders before disappearing. Your eyes focus once more on your youngest.

“Very soon, you’ll be joining those two munchkins and make our lives miserable,” you whisper to him.

Even though he can’t speak yet, his powers express everything his tiny heart feels, and the words he hasn’t learned to form. A strong, tender warmth wraps around you like a second skin made of pure love. It hums in the air between you, vibrant and alive, pulling you closer without a single touch.

This energy, this invisible bond, was something you felt even during your three pregnancies. Each of your babies radiated the same fierce, protective warmth before they even opened their eyes to the world. It never gets old, never loses its magic. Every time, it settles into your soul like sunlight through the clouds, comforting and anchoring you all at once.

Around them, you feel safe in a way that nothing else could ever replicate. Like nothing in the world could ever truly harm you, not while these little lights exist.

“It never ceases to surprise me how strong you are,” you add. “Just like Kai and Arya.”

Arya and Minho were different babies than Kai. Since they both heard their siblings' voices during the pregnancies, they instantly protected them as well once out. It’s always so incredible to see. And to be honest, you can’t wait to see what they will become once older. You also want to see their wolf shapes, but there is still time for it. Hopefully, you still have six years before Kai has to navigate through his first shift.

Once Minho drank all the milk he needed, you both decided to join Jungkook, Kai, and Arya in the dining room after putting on some clothes. The two little monsters are already driving Jinwoo, Jungkook’s footman, completely crazy. Poor man. You absolutely feel sorry for him.

There’s a little crib in the room, and you put Minho there so you can take your breakfast. It’s definitely not going to be a peaceful one. There hasn’t been one since Kai’s birth.

“Arya,” Jungkook says with a threatening voice. “Sit down and stop running around with the bread.”

She looks at you, searching for a savior, but you only shake your head.

“Listen to your dad,” you tell her.

The little monster vanishes, a move she's mastered whenever she doesn't want to be caught. But Jungkook, ever prepared, doesn’t even stand. He slides his chair back, extends an arm, and effortlessly grabs the back of her t-shirt, pulling her right out of thin air.

Out of the three kids, Arya is the troublemaker. Bold and mischievous, she does as she pleases. She’s already skilled at wielding the invisibility power she inherited from you. She doesn’t bother trying it with you anymore, she knows it doesn’t work. But Jungkook always knows how to catch her.

“Do I need to punish you this early in the morning?” Jungkook’s voice cuts deep.

Kai, sitting quietly on his chair with a piece of bread in his hand, attentively watches his dad holding firmly his sister’s shirt. Clearly, this isn’t new to him.  

“Papa,” she whines.

She reappears before he places her on the chair next to his.

“Now stay here and finish your bread,” he says. “Then, you’ll apologize to Jinwoo for the mess you made on the floor with the bread.”

She only nods, cheeks puffed out in defiance. You almost laugh, but you keep your poker face. A skill you’ve perfected ever since your kids decided your life was a full-time comedy show.

“Don’t laugh,” Jungkook’s voice echoes in your mind. “It’s not funny.”

“I’m not laughing.”

“But you’re dying to…” his eyes meet yours. “Should I also punish you?”

You roll your eyes. “It’s too early for that shit, Jungkook.”

“It’s never too early.”

“You’re so nasty,” you almost sound disgusted.  

“Last night, you weren’t complaining…”

Before he even continues, you cut his thoughts short.

“Don’t ever continue that sentence with the kids around.”

Jungkook bites his lip, trying and failing not to laugh, especially after scolding Arya. The kids wouldn’t understand that you’re talking silently. They would probably think that the situation is funny, which it shouldn’t be.

As Jungkook struggles not to laugh and you hold onto your last shred of parental dignity, a sudden thud pulls both your attention. You both turn just in time to see Kai standing on his chair, trying to spread jam on his bread, and managing to get half of it on his face instead.

"Kai, sit," you say, trying to sound stern, but your voice wavers with amusement.

"I'm making it fancy, mama!" he beams proudly, showing off the very questionable, and very sticky piece of bread.

Jungkook shakes his head, a chuckle slipping out despite himself. It was surprising that Kai hadn’t done anything yet. Kai and Arya always create a mess when having their breakfast. It’s like they can’t start the day without going wild.  

"Artist in the making," he mutters, wiping his mouth to hide his grin.

Arya, now back on her chair and pretending to be the model of good behavior, speaks up.

"I'm better at making fancy bread,” she says, shaking her bread in the air.

"Nooo, I'm better!" Kai insists, waving the jammy bread dangerously close to his hair.

Before a full food disaster can unfold, you lean over and steady his hand with a smile.

"You're both amazing," you say sweetly. "But maybe let's keep the fancy on the plate, okay?"

“Papa, can you put more jam on my bread?” Arya asks as she keeps shaking the piece of bread.

This little girl has been leaving breadcrumbs everywhere in this room. You already feel sorry for the staff who will need to clean.  

Jungkook grabs the bread, places it on her plate, and carefully spreads the jam. Arya studies his every move, making sure he’s putting enough jam.

“Good?” your husband asks her.

She nods before grabbing it and resuming to eat it.

As you look around you, a big smile spreads across your face. The house is a mess, the bread is on the floor, and two of your children are showing off their jammy breads, but you wouldn’t trade a second of it. Even amidst the chaos, nothing fills your heart more than being in the middle of it all.

Your entire life, you dreamed of having even just one child. That desperate, stubborn hope led you down the path of insemination, a journey paved with fear, strength, and a faith you had to hold onto even when everything seemed uncertain. And you got your miracle, and then life, in all its wild generosity, gave you three.

The past four years have been a beautiful blur: filled with laughter that shook the walls, cries that shook your heart, and love so big it sometimes felt overwhelming. There were sleepless nights, tearful days, and moments you doubted yourself, but there was never a moment you wished for another life.

Watching Kai, Arya, and Minho grow into their mischievous, stubborn, endlessly fascinating selves fills you with a pride so fierce it almost hurts.

The journey you started alone, driven by pure longing, didn’t just give you Kai. It gave you a partner who loves you fiercely, two more children you never knew you needed, and a life that is louder, fuller, and infinitely richer than you ever dared to dream. Being their mother feels as natural as breathing, as inevitable as the sunrise.

And when you think back to life before them, it feels distant and pale, like a story that belonged to someone else.

It isn’t easy every day. Some days, it’s messy and frustrating and exhausting. But even then, even in the hardest moments, their laughter cuts through the noise. Their smiles light up the darkest mornings. And their love—raw, unconditional, and chaotic—is the purest magic you’ve ever known. You wouldn't just live through it again, you would choose it. Every single time.

This is the life you fought for, and it’s more beautiful than you ever dared to imagine.

[blueberrybirdsworld]

The Cat Distribution System 3/5

Summary:

When a stray kitten adopts Lando Norris, the self-proclaimed cat hater accidentally starts a soft-launch spiral with his secret girlfriend the ballerina Ariana Riverria.

Pairing : lando norris x original female character

Genre : Fluff, SMAU

Warning : none, just yeah the kitten will be different in some pictures

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

CHAPTER THREE :

Lando came straight from the airport, suitcase still half-zipped and hair a mess under his hoodie, but none of that mattered the second he walked through Ariana’s apartment door.

Because Charlie came sprinting.

“Hey, little gremlin,” Lando grinned, dropping his bag and scooping the ginger kitten into his arms like he hadn’t just been gone for a week. Charlie immediately nuzzled under his chin, purring like a jet engine.

Ariana stood in the doorway to the living room, arms crossed, eyebrow raised.

“Hi to you too,” she said flatly.

Lando looked up. “Oh, hey, baby.”

“You cuddled the cat before your girlfriend.”

He plopped down onto the couch, Charlie still glued to his chest like a furry magnet. “He missed me. He told me. With his eyes.”

Ariana padded over in her fuzzy socks, climbing beside him with a mock pout. “I missed you too. But sure, let’s prioritize the four-pound fluff ball.”

“Jealousy doesn’t look good on you,” Lando teased, leaning in for a quick kiss—careful not to disturb Charlie’s position, of course.

“Mmmhmm.” Ariana settled beside him, watching Charlie stretch and promptly curl back up in Lando’s lap. “You’ve changed.”

“How so?”

“You used to talk about getting a dog named Charlie. Now look at you.” She gestured at the kitten. “This is your son now.”

“Look, I didn’t choose the cat life,” Lando said dramatically. “The cat life chose me.”

Ariana snorted. “More like you got emotionally blackmailed by toe beans and tiny sneezes.”

“…You weren’t supposed to say that out loud.”

They both looked down at the kitten snoozing peacefully between them.

Right on cue, Aria—Ariana’s majestic white cat—jumped lightly onto the couch, making a beeline for Charlie. With a regal air, she sniffed him, gave him a light headbutt, and proceeded to curl around him like a living blanket.

“She’s adopted him,” Ariana whispered, watching the two cats nestle into one another.

“Guess we’re stuck with two cats now,” Lando murmured, his arm wrapping around her shoulders.

Ariana leaned her head on his shoulder, lips brushing his collarbone. “Honestly? I kind of love it.”

Lando smiled down at the sleeping fur pile. “Yeah. Me too.”

@landonorris

"you think he can come to podiums too? asking for a friend."

@maxfewtrell: is this permanent?? is the kitten a full-time team member now??

@oscarpiastri: i’m concerned and also emotionally invested

@charles_leclerc: does he need a seat for the team briefings?

@f1spygirls: not lando planning his life around a kitten now 😭

@catsoftiktok: we love a proud cat dad

@arianasribbons: i swear to god this is the same kitten that was cuddling ariana's white cat weeks ago

@arianariverria

"house is no longer mine. i live under feline rule."

@pliésballet: WHY ARE THEY ALWAYS TOGETHER NOW

@kitteninfirst: aria has literally adopted him i’m crying

@balletxpitlane: are they dating or are the cats dating?? at this point idk

@pietra: the cat co-parenting is real

@softverstappen: this is how we piece things together and i feel ALIVE

But what really set everything off was a clip from a post-race press conference. It was a short interview, nothing out of the ordinary—until it wasn’t.

The question came from the third row.

JOURNALIST:

"Lando, there’s a lot of talk online about you adopting a kitten. Is it true? Weren’t you famously anti-cat?"

Lando chuckled, clearly caught off-guard, but not rattled.

LANDO:

"Yeah, well... things change. He found me, actually. I didn’t choose the cat life, the cat life chose me. I named him Charlie."

He grinned at the laughter in the room. A few seats down, Carlos raised an eyebrow.

CARLOS:

"You like cats now, huh? Just cats?"

Lando:

"Don’t start, man."

CHARLES:

"That kitten has better PR than some of us."

LANDO:

"He deserves it. He’s cute."

The internet, naturally, exploded.

Twitter Thread by @f1slashballet:

[1] OKAY this press conference is the most accidentally revealing thing I’ve ever seen.

[2] Not Carlos throwing shade with that "just cats" line 😭

[3] Charles literally dragged his whole PR team to the grave in one sentence

[4] AND LANDO DIDN’T DENY A SINGLE THING. He said the cat found him. The cat. AKA Charlie. AKA Ariana’s kitten-in-law

[5] And then there's this frame-by-frame comparison: hoodie match. Couch pillow match. Cat pattern match. Everything matches.

@balletzone: the men are messy and i support them @chaosandchoreo: charlie the kitten is the main character and everyone else is just background @catdadconfirmed: love changed him. and a kitten sealed the deal

@landonorris insta story (deleted)

"Okay maybe i like all cats now."

The story was gone within minutes.

Deleted.

But not fast enough.

Fans immediately recognized the white cat as Aria—Ariana's famously elegant companion. Screenshots spread like wildfire.

Twitter Comments:

@balletxgrid: THAT'S ARIANA'S CAT. AND THE CAT IS NAMED ARIA. I NEED A MOMENT.

@chaoticpolecat: why is he deleting stories now???? BE LOUD

@slowmo_softlaunch: i’m so sorry but they literally adopted a kitten together didn’t they

@f1cryptic: this is the softest rollout i have ever witnessed

@teafortwo: charlie + aria = chariana canon

Back at Ariana’s apartment, the cats were curled up together on the windowsill.

Aria had started grooming Charlie’s ears lately, and Charlie followed her around like a shadow. It was ridiculously wholesome.

And maybe, just maybe, Ariana was finally starting to understand why Lando had fallen so hard, so fast for this little kitten.

Even if she still had to fight for cuddles when Charlie was in the room.

It wasn’t just co-parenting anymore.

It was... something else.

Part 4

Taglist : @angelluv16, @httpsxnox, @anunstablefangirl, @chocolatemagazinecupcake

Let me know if you want to be added to the taglist !

[stillalivebydemand893]

Death, Desire, and Double Trouble

Ian Mckinley x Reader x Erik Campbell

Story:Three best friends. One deadly premonition.🫣

CHAPTER ONE 🚬: THIS RIDE’S A DEATH TRAP (BUT YOU’RE HOT, SO LET’S DIE TOGETHER?)

The sun was too damn bright for a place this cursed.

Your hangover was throwing a mosh pit in your skull while your stomach debated a full-blown rebellion. Tequila and edibles? Bold combo. Stupid combo. Past-you was a menace.

You wiped cherry slush off your sticky fingers using a napkin that disintegrated on contact.You leaned against the metal railing outside Devil’s Flight—the jankiest rollercoaster this side of hell. It screeched and rattled past you like a dying animal in heat. Honestly, it sounded like it wanted to be put out of its misery.

This shithole is a death trap, you thought.

Next to you, Ian McKinley, local goth menace and full-time funeral poetry enthusiast, flicked his Zippo open for the hundredth time. Just for the sound. He hadn’t lit anything, just stared ahead like he was waiting for Death to drop a sign from the sky or a hooker’s business card, honestly, whichever came first.

“You ever think this ride sounds like it’s moaning?” he muttered, not looking at you. “Like, weirdly sexual?”

You didn’t even blink. “You need therapy. Or a blowjob. Maybe both.”

Ian cracked a grin, still staring ahead. “Therapy’s expensive.”

Erik Campbell, the third point in your tragic love triangle of a friend group, choked on his soda. “And blowjobs are free if you say please,” he said with a grin, straw between his teeth, looking you up and down like he was about to say something worse. He didn’t, but the silence was filthy.

You rolled your eyes so hard they almost dislocated. “You’re both insufferable.”

“Hot, though,” Ian said, bumping your shoulder.

You shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”

That stopped them cold. Both of them stared like you’d just announced you were secretly married to Jason Voorhees.

You just smiled and walked ahead, hips swinging a little more than necessary.

You’d been best friends since high school. The cursed trio. Trauma, tattoos, and zero impulse control. You bonded in detention over who had the worst therapist and who was on the best antidepressants.

Somewhere along the line, things got… complicated.

The kind of complicated where Ian’s hand lingered on your lower back just a second too long. Where Erik started calling you “baby” when he was drunk, then backpedaled like it didn’t melt your whole nervous system. The kind where you’d wake up in the middle of the night, sandwiched between them on a couch, heart pounding for all the wrong reasons.

But none of you ever said anything.

Instead, you rode rollercoasters.

And every time they pulled shit like that? Your panties didn’t stand a chance.

The line was long, but it was tradition. First ride of summer. Front row. Always the three of you.

Even when Ian almost threw up on a group of toddlers six years ago. Even when Erik got a black eye defending Friday the 13th Part 2 in a bar last July. You always did this.

You slid into the middle seat ,your seat—between them. Buckled yourself in. Erik leaned over you to adjust your harness, his arm brushing over your chest. Slowly. Like he didn’t notice. (He definitely noticed.)

Neither of you said a word.

Ian leaned in from the other side, his breath warm at your ear. “Hope it derails. At least it’d be a cool way to go.”

Goosebumps danced across your skin. That wasn’t just adrenaline. It was them. It was always them.

You snorted, forcing yourself to breathe. “Morbid fuck.”

The coaster lurched forward.

And then:

everything shattered.

You weren’t there anymore.

You saw it.

Screws flying. Metal shrieking. The track ahead warping.

Ian’s body slamming into yours,blood on his lips.

Erik reaching for you,his scream, then silence.

You,helpless. Weightless. Falling. Dying.

Your body jerked back to reality, gasping like you’d been drowning.

Your fingers trembled on the harness. “We have to get off.”

Ian blinked, surprised. “What?”

You were already panicking. “We have to get off this ride. Now.”

He reached out and placed a steady hand on your thigh. “Breathe. Hey-breathe.”

“No. I saw it.” Your voice cracked. “It crashes. You die. We die. I’m not making it up, I swear-”

Erik leaned in, brows furrowed. “Peach, you okay? Look at me. You’re scaring us.” His voice was gentler than you’d ever heard it. Worry flickered in his eyes.

He glanced at Ian, and they shared a look,an unspoken agreement: Get her off this ride. Now.

You were already fighting the latch, nails digging into the plastic. “I’m not fucking kidding.”

Ian unbuckled first. No hesitation.

Erik followed without a word.

The three of you pushed past confused teens, ducked the safety bars, and ran.

Two minutes later, the rollercoaster derailed.

Just like you saw.

Screams. Metal. Blood.

Bodies.

Fire.

Later, the three of you sat on the hood of Erik’s car in the back parking lot, staring at nothing.

“I saw it,” you murmured. “Before it happened. Like a vision. It was so real.”

Ian was beside you, thigh pressed flush to yours, heat radiating off him like he was still burning from inside. “You’ve never had that before?”

“No.” You swallowed hard. “I’ve had anxiety. I've had intrusive thoughts. But not a… death trailer.”

Erik stood in front of you, arms crossed, jaw clenched, veins tight across his forearms like he was one heartbeat away from punching Death in the throat. He looked pissed. Not at you-for you. At the universe.

“So what now?” he said finally, voice low and sharp. “We just… wait around until it comes back for us?”

“I don’t know,” you whispered. “I don’t even know why I saw it. I just knew I had to get you off that ride.”

“Hot phrasing,” Ian muttered under his breath.

You snorted, the sound raw and shaky. Erik rolled his eyes.

He stepped in close and cupped your cheek. His hand was warm, calloused, grounding. “Next time you see something? You grab us. You scream. You tackle us to the ground, slap us if you have to.I don’t care. You don’t wait. You run. Got it?”

You nodded, a lump thick in your throat.

Then Ian leaned over and pressed a soft, fleeting kiss to your temple. The kind of kiss that wasn’t just friendly. The kind that said thank you and I almost lost you and I might be in love with you but I’ll die before admitting it first.

“You saved us Sweets,” he said quietly. “That’s all that matters.”

The moment stretched. Too heavy. Too quiet.

You realized, in the middle of that suffocating silence, how close you came to losing them. Your boys. Your dumbass chaos lost sons of Satan. Your favorite people on the entire planet.

Erik looked down at the ground like it had insulted him. Then up at you. Then at Ian. Then back at you. “I swear to God,” he muttered, “if one more near-death experience brings us closer to an accidental threesome, I’m blaming fate.”

You blinked. “Accidental?”

Ian gave a low laugh, deep and smoky. “Oh, sweetheart. If we go down, we’re going down filthy.”

You laughed. A real one. Ugly and loud and cracked around the edges. And suddenly Erik was laughing too, rubbing his hands over his face, and Ian was smirking like he knew how badly you wanted to climb him like a haunted tree.

The tension shifted-tipped.

Something in the air felt... sharp.

Too much heat. Not enough space. You could feel the weight of their stares.

Erik stepped closer. Too close. “You okay?”

You nodded.

He leaned in, barely a whisper away. “You scared the shit out of us.”

“You think I wasn’t scared?” you said, breath catching. “I saw your face, Erik. I saw you die. I watched it happen and I couldn’t stop it. And Ian was there all bleeding and I-”

Your voice cracked.

And then his mouth was on yours.

Not gentle. Not careful.

Like he’d been waiting.

You barely had time to register it,his hands in your hair, lips crushed to yours, heat and teeth and tongue,before Ian pulled him back by the shirt.

“Okay, not fair,” Ian said, scowling. “You don’t get to make a move first just because you’re taller.”

Erik turned, eyes wide. “What are you,are you seriously trying to-”

“Yes,” Ian deadpanned, already pulling you into his kiss.

It was different. Slower. Hotter. Like he wanted to savor it. Like he was learning every curve of your mouth by heart. His hand slid along your jaw, thumb brushing your bottom lip when he finally pulled back.

You blinked, dazed, panting. “That ‘s the hottest panic attack I have ever had.’’

“No shit Peach,” Erik muttered. “I blacked out. Did we just-did we just throuple-initiate?”

Ian shrugged. “Seems efficient. Death’s on our ass. Why waste time?”

You stood there between them, lips swollen, heart racing, your pulse pounding so hard it felt like it was trying to escape your skin.

Erik shook his head, clearly trying to re-oxygenate his brain. “If I die tomorrow, I’m haunting you both. Naked.”

Ian rolled his eyes. “Yeah, because we wouldn’t be into that.”

You clapped a hand over your mouth to stop from cackling. “Oh my God, you fucks. We’re being hunted by death, not starring in a MTV bisexual romcom.”

Erik raised a brow. “Yet.”

Ian nodded. “Give it a week.”

You groaned and leaned back on the car. “We need a plan. We need food. We need to not be murdered by a freak toaster accident.”

Erik: “And maybe a hotel room.”

Ian: “One bed, obviously.”

You: “I hate you both.”

Both of them, grinning: “No, you don’t.”

[evertidings]

— MARCH 2025.

Accomplishments.

What a month, huh? I glanced back at my update for February and wow, I really did not accomplish much in that month. In all fairness, I had a lot going on, but hey! That means my March update in comparison looks really good lol.

We’re already a third of the way through April by the time I’m writing this, so I’m a little late (when am I not, really?) but because of that, I can confidently say that the writing portion of Chapter 12 is nearly done! I was powering through it for most of March and now I’m slowly pushing through to the end; it’ll probably be done sometime this week, if everything goes well. After that comes editing, which is always the most frustrating part of doing this for me.

Because I’ve been working on this for so long, some of the chapter was written as early as October 2024, which, when you have my short-term memory, can be pretty bad. It’s kind of amusing when I stumble upon information that I already wrote at the beginning of the chapter, repeated again at the end because I forgot I mentioned it. That usually means more work for me though, since I have to cut it out and fill the empty space leftover, so you can imagine that I’m not very excited to start proofreading.

But, onto happier things. In terms of chapter content, I think this is the most RO-centric chapter I’ve ever written. I might have gone overboard, but there are three separate scenes with the RO of your choice. Some scenes are shorter than others, of course, but I’ve never fit so many in a chapter—it’s kind of exciting. It also makes sense since the romance lock is very soon (I may or may not have a chapter planned for it and am just keeping my lips locked), so I want you to have as much time possible with your potential choices. All of them are unique in their own way, though admittedly similar. Even so, I feel like they all make sense considering the content of the chapter and honestly, I doubt any of you will complain haha. They’re nice to have.

It’s a nice reprieve to the heaviness that Eliana brings to the chapter. I know she’s my character, but she’s honestly taken on a mind of her own and evolved so much throughout the writing process. My goal was to make her difficult to understand and, well, it seems like I successfully accomplished that. Aside from Sebastian, she’s probably been my favourite figurehead-like character to write. Her intrigue makes her so interesting, especially since she doesn’t like showing all her cards from the beginning. It’ll be a while until you’re able to put a finger on her character.

But, you’ll find that out soon! I know I said I wanted to put Chapter 12 out this month, and I could if I worked myself to the bone, but I think pushing it to Early May (first week or so) is best. In the past, I’ve given myself very little time to edit and code the chapter once it’s written out and it’s stressed me out a lot. For something that is supposed to be a hobby, I’m very harsh on myself with deadlines and I don’t think it’s fair for me to lose sleep over this, so, hopefully, you all understand. I’ll keep you all updated if I do manage to push the date up though and, of course, there’ll be an announcement once a date is official.

With that said, I hope you’re all taking care of yourselves and have a wonderful April!

Stats.

Chapter Total: 55,738 words (+14,113)

Game Total: ~567,170

[kaysfanficcorner]

The Camgirl and the Millionaire, Part 2

Pairing: Harry Castillo x Camgirl Reader

Summary: You tell Harry what you don't do for a living, and the charity concert heats things up a bit.

Author's Note: Oh my goodness, I was not expecting to post the second part to this immediately after posting part one. But it was already written and I was happy with it so here ya go! Thank you for the love and support on part one, your interaction with that introductory chapter means the world to me! I am so stoked to share what I have planned for these two, and I'm aiming to tie this up as a neat little five part fic. But, I have a tendency to go overboard and find excuses to make my fics longer (looking at you, Out of This World), so we shall see if I can stick to that or not!

I want to go ahead and warn that I am not a fluent Spanish speaker. A novice at best. But, my partner and I are casually learning the language and there are a few moments involving Spanish in this chapter. Part two is heavily influenced by my obsession with a certain Latin American artist (you'll see), and so I make a reference to some lyrics. I did my best to ensure that the translations are accurate. I love the language and I would like to do it justice if I am going to reference it in my work.

New note, 6/25: I went back and made one small edit to this chapter. In it, Harry originally said it was June. For the outline I have planned I needed to move things up two months to August, so now I just made Harry make a vague reference to it being summer. You’ll understand when part 4 comes out!

Song Inspiration

Warnings: Drinking; Smoking THC; Harry is a little intoxicated and horny; Reader is too; Lying is stressful and bad, don't lie if you like someone a lot; Reader is bisexual; More descriptions of Reader's cam sessions; Cursing; Grinding; Kissing; Dancing; A little dirty talk; No Smut yet but we are edging towards it.

Minors DNI; Strictly 18+

Ao3

*****

Harry’s body is close to yours as you lean your back against the wall in a semi secluded corner of the venue. Sipping your drink, the third one since you started talking to him nearly forty-five minutes ago, any trepidation you felt about him before has left your person for the time being. The job subject hasn’t come up again. Instead you were able to slyly gloss over it, starting a new conversation by asking him his favorite thing about life in New York, and then things evolved from there.  

You’re both about to need a fourth drink by the looks of each nearly empty glass, but you’re not so sure if a fourth drink is a great idea. Harry seems to be holding his liquor just fine, but you’re a pot smoker at heart and you don’t normally drink this much. You know you’re tipsy, and you don’t want to take things too far and risk ruining the night for yourself. Vanessa never came back, and you’re not sure how she’ll react to know you’ve been getting semi drunk with a stranger. Then again, she’s been practically begging you to try and meet someone ever since she and Charles got together. Who knows, maybe she’ll be thrilled.

All you know is, you’ll be thanking her later when the two of you eventually make it back home. Harry Castillo is much better company than that silly vampire prince. 

You’re too lost in watching the skin around his eyes wrinkle with laughter at the dumb joke you just made a moment ago, and the beautiful dramatic curve of his broad nose when he turns his head to look briefly at the empty stage. He’s gorgeous from every angle, but that side profile of his is something else entirely. And his laugh? What a gift that sound is. 

“Are you listening?” The man you're mesmerized with asks as his chuckles fizzle out and he looks you up and down, brow lifting. “I asked you a question and you just stared at me.”

“Honestly, no. I wasn’t listening. You’re a little distracting when I’ve had three vodka sodas with generous pours. Have I told you that you’re handsome, Harry?” You’re unable to stop yourself as your hand lifts up and you run three manicured fingers through the hair just above his ear. You’re careful not to mess it up too much, and you revel in the softness of it.

Harry leans down, mouth hovering six or so inches from yours as his brown eyes bore into you. “Have I told you that you’re beautiful?”

Your chest swells and your stomach flutters at the question, lifting up towards him slightly. It would be so easy to kiss him, and it would also be utterly insane. Instead you force yourself not to. 

“Can we get some air? It suddenly feels like a million degrees. I guess I need to pace myself with these.” As you say that last sentence, you lift up your empty glass and send him an embarrassed little look while you shake it about and let the ice clink around. 

Harry’s eyes darken slightly with a vaguely lusty countenance, his free hand coming to rest on the wall right behind your head as he grins down at you. “I don’t think it's the booze heating things up in here. I could use to cool-off as well.”

With that, his hand slides from the wall and his fingers graze the side of your neck. A shiver runs up your spine as those fingers delicately run along the line of your jaw, before the tip of his index finger curls just under your chin. A small bit of pressure from him and you’re lifting up even more to meet him. You’re sure he’s going to kiss you for a moment, but then he simply shakes his head as if he cannot believe the sight before his eyes. 

“You really are beautiful.” 

Finger leaving your chin, his arm is suddenly weaving through yours, hooking at the elbow as he begins to pull you towards the huge glass doors of the terrace. Along the way you both discard your empty drinks, and then he’s leading you out into the warm summer night air. The two of you have the terrace all to yourselves, as everyone else seems to be inside anticipating the concert to begin at any moment.

“Do you smoke?” You ask him, squinting a little as you gauge his reaction. 

“I used to smoke cigarettes. Quit in my thirties.” Harry shrugs, eyeing you for a moment before looking out at the surrounding city. 

The view is pretty spectacular, and the night sky is as clear as it can be in a city this large. There’s a full moon peeking out from just behind the tallest building you can see at this angle. It’s picturesque, but none of that really matters right now in his presence. 

Pulling the thin little dab pen from your small black purse, you hold the sleek looking thing to your lips and take a long, satisfying drag. He looks back at you just as you decide to blow it out, so the vapor leaves your mouth through a sly grin as you hold the pen out to him. “What about weed?” 

Brows raising, he takes the pen from you and lets his warm fingers linger against yours for a long moment. That’s practically enough to make you dizzy. 

“Occasionally. Usually in more private settings and not at an event like this. It’s expected that I keep up appearances, you know.” Harry examines the thing, then he puts the mouthpiece to his plump lips and pulls a hefty drag of his own.           

God what you wouldn’t give to bite that bottom lip of his, body heating up as you watch the black plastic tip of the device rest indented against the pouty pink flesh there. A moment later he lets the vapor go with a sputtering, wide-eyed cough.

“Easy. Down, boy,” the phrase leaves your mouth along with a fit of giggles as you smack him lightly on the back.

“Jesus,” Harry blurts out between coughs, “you did that like a pro. I feel like a blundering novice.”

“I’m a seasoned veteran,” you say with a small bow, fully aware of the cleavage shot you’re gracing him with as you take the pen back.

“Apparently so,” Harry says with a chuckle, eyes lingering on your offered chest for a moment. “God, my throat burns.”

You frown a little, not wanting to have hurt him. “Yeah, sorry. Vapes are kind of awful. But they do nicely in a pinch, or when I’m out and about like this.” 

“So you go out often, then? Just not in the circles I run in, I suppose.”

“I can’t say that Van and I spend a lot of time with late forties businessmen, no.”

“I wish I didn’t. What kinds of circles do you run in, then?” As he asks this question, another more important question seems to dawn on him. A wild look of realization washes over his face. The dab pen certainly made him a bit more emotive, and you can’t help but find it endearing. “Oh! Do you have a boyfriend?”

A giddy little smirk finds your lips, happy to know that’s a concern of his. “No boyfriend. No girlfriend. No relationship. And, honestly, not that many circles. I have a handful of friends, but usually I enjoy doing things on my own most of the time. Reading, going to the movies, making food.”

Harry’s lovely brown eyes, red and squinting now, widen comically as a look of stoned pleasure takes over his handsome features. After that, his facial muscles relax considerably.  You know he’s feeling high when a warm hum escapes him as he says, “Mm, nice. I love movies. And books. And food.” Then his eyes grow even wider, as if he just remembered that food even exists. “Oh my god. I love food. We should get food after this. Something greasy?”

Harry’s enthusiasm sends you over with giggles, shaking your head at your handsome new friend. Clearly he doesn’t smoke as much as you do. “I’d get food with you, Harry. Who doesn’t love food?”

“Weirdos, I’m sure,” he chuckles confidently, smiling at you. “Do you speak Spanish?” He asks, suddenly changing the subject as he leans an elbow over the railing. “I got the impression that your roommate does.”

You nod, “She’s Mexican, so good call. It was her first language. I’m not fluent or anything but I’ve spent so much time with her that I can understand it much better than I can speak it. We watch a lot of Spanish language films together, and she’s influenced most of my current taste in music. But even still, I get so nervous that my accent is atrocious.”

“Say something in Spanish,” he softly commands, nodding once with more of that charming confidence of his. He’s going to send you over the edge just by existing, you just know it. There’s a gorgeous view of the city you love so much behind him, but he’s the only thing you can see right now.  

Stoned and nervous, you hide your face in your hands and say the first thing that comes to mind, “ Frijoles negros .” 

Harry barks with laughter and embarrassment immediately floods your system. You frown, looking down at the street below for a second. 

Harry seems to notice this, shaking his head and smiling at you fondly with reddened, squinting eyes. “Hey, no. I didn’t mean to laugh. Your accent is actually lovely. You should feel more confident in your Spanish. I just wasn’t expecting you to say black beans. ”

Shaking your head with a laugh, it’s a relief to know he wasn’t picking on you. You feel brave enough to shove him in the upper arm, deciding to use a term that Vanessa throws around a lot. “Yeah, well, you didn’t have to put me on the spot like that, cabrón. ”

He laughs even harder for a moment. Then a sudden look of realization washes over his face, and his brow furrows. “I just remembered. You never did tell me what you do for a living.”

There it is. He slipped it in so perfectly after your guard had fallen so far down.You nearly choke on the next hit of the dab pen, sputtering as you let the vapor leave your lungs and hand it over to Harry once more. 

Recovering, you try your best to smile and act as if that had simply been a cough. “Well,” you begin, prolonging the inevitable even more, “I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I’m a college dropout with no degree from a poor family. School wasn’t for me. Couldn’t afford it and didn’t apply myself so I stopped before I put myself in debt for no reason. After that I moved here to become an actress. That was a little over a decade ago. Acting didn’t work out, but that was never really my dream. This city was my true dream, and that part did work out eventually.”

He hits the pen twice more and hands it back, his handsome voice taking on a serious tone. “I don’t care if you have a college degree. Life is what teaches us how to live, not some expensive school. I was fortunate to have the money for that kind of an education, but ultimately my path was picked out for me regardless of my schooling. I learned how to do what I do by spending summers working as my mother’s assistant. Whatever you do, you don’t need to feel embarrassed about it.”

“Ha,” you scoff, looking away from him momentarily. “I usually don’t. In front of you, I do. You’re a little intimidating, Harry.”

Harry frowns, most likely at your continued reluctance to tell him. “Sorry, I don’t mean to pry so much. You really do intrigue me, that’s all.”

With a wave of the hand you try to brush that statement off. But inside you’re screaming with joy that a man of his caliber is saying things like that to you. “I’m really not that interesting.”

“Now that’s simply not true. Because girls like you don’t come to things like this. Your jewelry, for example.” Harry reaches his right hand towards the left side of your face, his thick index finger hooking behind your dangling earring. His eyes cast down at it for a long moment, and the most adorable little grin finds his lips. “I’ve never met a girl who wears bat earrings before. Especially not in the dead of summer, to an event like this. But it’s tasteful, and it fits your look very well.”

With a shrug, your left hand lifts to graze his wrist. “You can’t blame an ex-goth for hanging on to her old aesthetic a little bit, can you?”

Harry surprises you then by grabbing your fingers, bringing them up to meet his lips, kissing the matching ring. “That, I cannot.”

He nods thoughtfully, holding your hand close to his mouth. Close enough you can feel his warm breath. “You seem to have money despite your background. More so than your friend. The way you carry yourself suggests that this is a recent development in your life. I’m old money. New money is easy enough to sniff out when you’ve been stuck around these people your whole life. Maybe only a year or so for your financial success?”

“About two,” you blurt out, hand darting out of his grasp, flying to your lips. 

You stupid stupid bitch! Shut UP!

You’ve already said far too much to this man and if you’re not careful you could ruin what is turning out to be a beautiful evening. Normally you’re not shy about your profession. You’ve told plenty of the men and women you’ve casually dated over the last two years. You’re not ashamed of what you do when you’re talking to someone on your level, but you’ve never even been close to these kinds of people before tonight. 

To put it plainly, you simply enjoy expensive things because you had to grow up wanting for so much and having so little. Somehow you managed to find a job you genuinely enjoy, which allows for you to have the money to afford the life of casual luxury you always wished for. That doesn’t mean you look to surround yourself with other wealthy people. Most of your friends are still starving artists much like Vanessa. The fact that he called himself ‘old money’ just now is proof enough that he was born on a different plane of existence. 

Harry Castillo is so incredibly far above you on the food chain when it comes to New York City’s elite. He could chew you up and spit you out if you let him. Someone of his social stature could never know the truth about what you do and look at you the same way. You’re certain of it. 

If he knew that this time last night, instead of a designer dress, all you had on your body, or in your body rather, was a jeweled plug and a ring gag. If he knew there had been a weighted chain connected to both of your expertly hidden nipple piercings. If he knew that while you facefucked yourself with a pretty pink dildo, a much older and much less attractive man than Harry was fucking himself with a fleshlight to it on the other side of the video feed. If he knew that right after the session you used your wand to give yourself a quiet, grunting orgasm as your well earned treat after faking a big loud one for your client… If he knew any of that , Harry Castillo may not think you’re as beautiful and intriguing as he does right now. 

But he does think you’re beautiful and intriguing right now. He said so himself. And you haven’t said anything that could ruin your chances with him yet. So you scramble to think of something to say, and finally an idea comes to mind.

“I’m sorry I’m being so cagey about telling you. It’s just not something I like to discuss with someone I’ve only just met. I’m…,” your brain scrambles again, a split second of doubt stopping you from lying. But then the loosened inhibitions from the alcohol and smoke make you blurt out the only lie that makes any sense, and the decision is made. 

“An author!”

It’s not a total lie. While you haven’t completed anything novel-length yet, a handful of your short stories have been featured in a few fetish zines and smut compilations. Real, published ones. You never see any real money from those ventures, but it still counts. Your Ao3 account has about twenty-five contributions. All you ever read is smutty romance. This is a subject you know enough about to craft a believable fib around it. Guilty as that makes you feel, given that this is the most you’ve liked someone new in a hot minute. 

But, Harry Castillo comes off like a man you’ll never see again after tonight. So what’s a little white lie going to hurt in the grand scheme of things? The two of you are from completely different worlds. One night with a man like him is a blessing. Any more nights? That's asking for trouble.

His eyes light up at your not-true confession, lips spreading across his face in a wide, handsome grin. 

Oh no. Perhaps you’ve been in trouble from the very start.

Harry’s so enthusiastic as he exclaims, “You have to let me read your work!”

You’re blushing, and sweating a bit. “Oh, that’s kind of you but I’m sure what I write is not your speed whatsoever.”

Harry’s firm on this, shaking his head once. “I insist. I’m going to look you up as soon as I go home.”

Is this man fucking real? There’s no way he exists in this realm. 

“You won’t find me,” you say abruptly, quickly adding, “I use a pseudonym!”

He leans in, hovering close to your face as he pouts that damned lower lip ever so slightly. “Tell me your pseudonym? Please ?”

Your pulse quickens, palms moistening as you shake your head again. “I’d rather not, Harry.”

“Why? Do I make you nervous? I’m sure you’re a fine writer, and I’d like to see for myself.” Those big brown eyes are pleading with you, and it’s almost too much entirely. “At least tell me what genre you write in.”

“Uh, romance mostly,” you blurt out. “Like I said, not your speed.”

He shocks you when a bashful look crosses his features. “Actually, and please don’t out me for this, my guilty pleasure is romance. A night in with a bottle of wine and a steamy book or a sappy movie? Ideal. Please, let me read your work?”

Deflecting, you say, “My work is a little more intense than your mainstream romance. Steamy doesn’t even cut it.”

But Harry’s once again surprising you with his reaction. “Oh, really? You write erotica? Fascinating! Now I really must read something of yours.”

Your voice nearly waivers, but you hold fast. “ No , Harry.”

“Why not? Is it me?” Harry’s face falls, disappointment written all over him. A kind of shyness and vulnerability finds his voice, you’re certain of it.

You’re frowning, and for a split second you consider backtracking and telling him the truth. He really does seem to like you, and perhaps there’s a chance he would understand. But are you brave enough to take that chance? 

No, evidently you’re a coward. 

Fuck me, you think. And since you’d love for this night to end with Harry Castillo doing just that, you decide to speak from the heart as much as you can without revealing too much. The web of lies you’ve begun to weave is already starting to stress you out a little, so you take another decent puff on the dab pen and stick it back in your purse. 

“It is you, but not because I don’t like you. It’s because that is a very personal part of me,” you say. Not a complete lie. Okay, good. Keep going. “The smut I write comes from my real deepest darkest desires.” Worried that what you just said sounds sketchy, you quickly recover by adding, “Kinky, but nothing worrisome. My stories are not just about sex, they’re about the love between the characters. Those bonds are sacred, fictional representations of what I eventually want for myself with a real partner. Forgive me if I don’t feel comfortable sharing that with you when I don’t know you very well and I certainly don’t know if I can trust you. Perhaps if I got to know you better I would eventually let you read my work. But as of right now I reserve the right to deny you access. That part of my life is very private, and the small amount of success I see from it allows me to afford the lifestyle I want to live. So it’s important that my two worlds don’t collide. My parents don’t even know. Neither does my sister and she thinks I tell her everything. They all think I gave up acting to do clerical work for a law firm that happens to pay really well.”

Harry stares at you for a long time, but then his furrowed brow softens and he nods. A little smile creeps onto his lips, and the distance between you feels lessened all of the sudden. 

“You know,” he begins, a hand reaching up to move a curl from your eyes, the tips of his fingers finding your cheek, “that’s extremely fair. More than fair, actually. If you let me see you again after tonight I think I’ll make it my life’s work to earn that trust from you.”

Your breath hitches at such a forward statement, and you worry that you’re in much deeper shit than you meant to get yourself into. So much for never seeing him again after this.       

Attempting to deflect again, you tell him, “Just know that’s not an easy task. A lot of walls to break down and all that.” As you say this, he's leaning forward even more.

His lips are hovering just an inch or so above yours. “I have walls of my own, you know. Everyone does. Totally normal.”

Just as your lips graze his ever so lightly, a huge uproar from inside the venue causes you both to jump apart in surprise. Then some dramatic strings begin to play, followed by the beat of a hiphop style track.  

You shriek . Shrill and unforgiving. Harry winces at the sound of it. Without thinking, you grab Harry’s hand and begin yanking him towards the big glass doors you came out from. 

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god! Oh my fucking GOD! Vanessa wasn’t making this up!”

*****

“Is that the secret musical guest?” Harry asks, brow to his hairline in surprise as he lets you pull him easily. He can’t quite make out the song, but people seem to be going crazy inside for whoever it is. Then he squints, as if that will help him to hear better, and that’s when Harry realizes that your pen made him much higher than he usually gets when he partakes in the indulgence of marijuana. The three drinks, not including the one he had before he ran into you, aren’t assisting him to feel very sober now either. His senses are on a bit of an overload, but it feels good at the same time. Then a familiar set of music notes hits his eardrum, and a deep male voice sings the word dime in Spanish twice and his jaw drops a little. “Wait. Is that… Bad Bunny? ”

The wild look you throw back at Harry is absolutely adorable. This is clearly the reason you came to this event in the first place, and suddenly your presence here makes a little more sense to him.

“It IS! Holy fuck I am going to lose my MIND. Please come dance with me, Harry. I like you and I want to experience this with you,” you plead back at him with a soft and genuine expression that melts every single part of Harry Castillo into a helpless goo.

As if he was going to choose to be anywhere else tonight after meeting you. 

Your hand makes it to the doorknob, and as soon as you’ve pushed it open the cacophony from within is nearly too much. The screams from the crowd are more deafening than the music itself. The houselights have gone down and there’s a frenzy of new multicolored lights strobing Harry’s vision. It feels as if the two of you walked back inside to a completely separate event and Harry, for lack of a better term, feels high as balls. 

Harry has to really focus on raising his loud enough voice to tell you, “Wow, I can’t believe the guest is someone I actually listen to!” 

You turn to him, adorably wide-eyed as you yell back, “You like him too?!”

Harry nods, deciding that it’s time to be a gentleman and take the lead through the suddenly dense crowd. He switches things so that his hand is the one more in control of your now linked fingers, nodding down at you as he moves past and starts to lead you instead. “I do! One of my favorites!”

“I would have never guessed that in a million years!” You shout, expression dumbfounded. He frowns at you a little, mildly self conscious as he shouts back, “Why? Because I’m old?”

Harry feels relieved when that question seems to surprise you, and he loves the way you roll your eyes at him in a bratty sort of way, raising your voice to tell him, “You’re old-er, not old! And no, because you’re a fancy rich guy and this is not the kind of music fancy rich people listen to.”

“There’s more to me than meets the eye. And the pocketbook, for that matter,” Harry says, willing you to feel how true that statement is for him.

“Me too,” you concede, face softening.

The two of you lock eyes for a long moment, and Harry feels this swelling in his chest he’s never felt before. The pressure of it is nearly painful, but then it morphs into something else entirely as it unfurls through his being like a warm drink on a cold day spreading through his belly. He really must be more intoxicated than he realized.

What the hell was that?

*****

Harry leads you into the main room of the event space, and the crowd is literally losing their minds over the man sauntering across the stage with a microphone in his hand. As he spouts off lyrics in Spanish and the crowd joins in enthusiastically, a grin spreads across the musician’s handsome features. His stylish outfit is impeccable and his curly hair looks so soft, even at a distance. He’s more attractive in real life than you could have anticipated from pictures and music videos. But even still, he doesn’t hold a candle to the suave gentleman whose fingers are laced with yours. You’d thought Bad Bunny was going to be the one and only man holding your attention tonight, even back when it was still a huge possibility that Van was full of shit. 

You hadn’t accounted for meeting Harry Castillo. 

“Oh, fuck ,” you say to yourself, but loud enough for Harry to hear over all the noise. “I can’t believe it’s really Benito! This is not how I expected my day to go when I got up this morning!”

“Those are always the best days,” Harry responds, grinning as he yanks you forward more. “Do you want me to get you all the way down to the front? I’ll stay with you and keep you safe.”

“Please stay with me,” you agree, still marveling at the fact that there’s a man here who’s captivated your attention far more than the musician you came here to see. 

Harry nods once and tightens his grip on your hand, starting to strongly push his way through the crowd onto the main dance floor. It’s such a contrast to how this place looked an hour ago, and seeing all of these stuffy people in fine clothing bump and grind is a sight you didn’t think you’d ever see. The energy feels like that of the raves you used to attend as a younger woman. 

It takes a few moments, but eventually Harry’s able to shove his way through the various groups and couples and you’re right up in front of the small stage. A flash of familiar light pink to your right catches your attention, and you see Vanessa and Charles dancing together just beside you. Harry must have brought you to her on purpose. Good thing he’s tall enough to see over the crowd, because you never would have spotted her. 

When Vanessa notices you, she lets go of Charles and flings herself into your arms with a girly, high-pitched squeal of delight. 

“Thank you, bitch!” You scream to her, grinning like a madwoman.

“You’re welcome, bitch!” She screams back, and then, at no surprise to you at all, she presses her lips to yours in a quick but heated kiss. Her lips massage yours, uncaring if lipstick gets misplaced along the way. Just as your tongue flicks along the tip of hers, she breaks apart from you with a wink and a grin. You give her a disappointed little huff for ending that so quickly. 

When you both notice Harry and Charles staring at the two of you with slack-jawed expressions, you and Vanessa both burst out into laughter. It’s all barely audible over the concert. The men lock eyes for a moment and then share a quick shrug of confused comradery, and at that moment Vanessa flings herself back into Charles’ arms. She’s definitely drunk, because drunk Vanessa’s favorite thing in the world is kissing. And she’s already got her tongue buried so deeply in Charles’ mouth that you’re sure word of their confirmed relationship will have spread around to all of their coworkers by morning. So much for secrets. 

With a shake of the head you’re facing Harry again, and he’s looking down at you with lust in those inviting chocolate eyes of his. 

Slightly dilated pupils land on your lips for a moment, and his tongue darts out from between his teeth to wet his own a little as he lifts his hand to his own face. When his tongue appears again not a moment later, this time to run slowly over the pad of his thumb, a distinct and familiar throbbing heats up between your legs. All at once you’re desperate to feel that tongue run slowly over your aching, needy nub.

Harry’s palm finds your cheek, and he swabs his moist thumb just below the corner of your mouth. You just knew some of Van’s pink lipstick had smeared onto you, which is surely in contrast to your own dark red lip liner look. As he wipes it away, you can’t help but think that if you were in a different setting you’d have half a mind to draw the appendage between your lips and show him just exactly what your intentions are with a move far too sultry for a public place. 

You realize that you’re the one staring at his lips now, licking your own in anticipation. Once Harry’s finished ridding you of the unwanted lipstick, you nod at him in an attempt to give your silent approval if he truly wants to kiss you. A great thrill runs through you when he leans down and presses his lips to yours in response.

Finally , you think blissfully as your eyes close and your hands immediately find the lapel of his suit jacket, clinging to him for dear life. He tastes of whiskey and your dab pen, and his lips are so incredibly soft and inviting as you brazenly deepen the kiss with your own parting mouth. He lets you do it easily, and you’re so desperate to feel his warm tongue touch you anywhere if you can’t feel it touch you there .

His other hand flies to your waist, fingers gripping into the fabric of your dress. The two of you stay like that for a long moment, but then suddenly Harry is breaking the kiss, spinning you around to face forward towards the stage. His mouth is against your ear, “You came here to see him, so watch him. You can have plenty of me later. If you want me, of course.”

“I want you,” you breathe honestly, relishing in the truth of it. You feel his nose brush your bare shoulder, mustache tickling you before he presses a chaste kiss to the exposed flesh. 

Harry’s hips find yours from behind, and his hands find generous amounts of your body to hold on to as the music really starts to flow through both of you. Song after song you and Harry move in sync. 

Occasionally Vanessa comes back over and the two of you share a moment of joyful hip grinding, hands and lips briefly all over each other before she goes back to Charles. That only seems to rile your own dance partner up more.

Sometimes, much to your surprise when you first hear it, Harry dips his head in and you feel the rumble of him singing along to the lyrics as he presses into you. He hadn’t been full of shit when he said that this was music he actually listens to.

When Bad Bunny is halfway through HIBIKI , Harry has the audacity to sing the line “ b aby, te lo meto si me das permiso” which you know roughly translates to “baby, I'll give it to you if you give me permission.” The song itself is sexy sounding but angsty in content, and yet even still Harry is somehow masterfully using the promiscuous lyrics to his advantage. This man knows exactly what he’s doing. With his hot mouth up against your right lobe and what you’re sure is the beginnings of a hard on pressing just below the small of your back, you’re certain you’ve never wanted to fuck someone so bad in your entire life. 

Then a line later, you can feel him slip the hairpin holding your bun from your head, and your hair falls down over your shoulders in a cascade of waves.

Harry’s hand moves the tresses off your right shoulder and his voice is in your ear, singing, “Jalarte po' el pelo, despeinarte toda, después te doy chavo pal′ beauticion.” With that he very gently tugs on the locks once, before running his fingers up under your hair to massage the back of your head. As Harry sings the next line after that, his other hand slyly slinks around to bunch up the fabric of your skirt and you feel his warm hand grazing your inner thigh. “En ese totito cabe perfecto mi bicho.”

Pull your hair, mess it up, then I'll give you money for a beautician. That little pussy fits my dick perfectly.

Thank god the venue is so loud that you’re probably actively getting hearing damage, because otherwise the moan which escapes your mouth would have probably drawn attention to the increasingly inappropriate dancing going on between you and Harry Castillo. A quick glance around the pit suggests that nearly everyone seems to be dancing like that, some not holding back whatsoever, and so you suppose what you and Harry are doing probably looks tame. 

But it doesn’t feel tame. It feels like he’s tapped into that deeper part of you and you’re ready to let her out. 

Mercifully or tragically, you’re not sure which, the music switches over from hip-grinding hiphop to hip-swaying salsa, and Harry’s grip on you eases up. Your skirt drops back down just past your knees and the spot where his hand was feels empty. Wishing to see his face again, you spin around in his arms so that his hands are practically cupping your ass. 

You’re tired of shouting, so with hands on his broad shoulders you’re lifting up on your tiptoes to speak directly into his ear.

“Do you know how to salsa?” You ask.

He shakes his head, causing his earlobe to graze your lip. Then he’s brushing your hair to the side to speak in your ear again, “A little when I was a kid, but not really. I’d love to take lessons if I had a good dance partner.”

 “I would too,” you agree, looking over where Vanessa and Charles are doing the moves perfectly. “Those two make me so fucking jealous, but don’t tell her I said that.”

“So I don’t have to worry about her stealing you away tonight?”

“Nah, Van is a very lovey dovey drunk and I am her very willing and bisexual best friend. Usually we’re out at a club when she’s like that and I’d rather have her kiss me than some skeezey dude who might want to roofie her drink. That’s her boyfriend, Charles, she’s dancing with. So I’m off the hook tonight.”

“Mm, good,” Harry breathes, smirking as his eyes flick down to your lips. “More for me, then.”

*****

A few songs and an encore later, your favorite musician is gone as quickly as he appeared, and the surrealness of the last nearly hour and a half washes over you just as the houselights wash over the dissipating crowd. You’re covered in sweat and so horny you’re sure you’re going to burst. Harry hasn’t left your side since the moment the two of you locked eyes at the bar, and after feeling him grind into you like that for so long you’re determined not to leave his side until you’ve been satiated. This man has you so feral for him that you’re not even processing the fact that you just got to see your dream musical performance. 

He’s ditched his suit jacket, keeping it flung over one shoulder as he guides you away from the stage with a hand on your moist back. Vanessa and Charles are following close behind, attempting to keep their hands to themselves now that their coworkers can see them. You’re dying to tell her that ship has already sailed, but they can figure that out for themselves.

“I can’t believe that just happened,” you marvel, ears ringing in the quiet left behind from the show. 

Harry smiles at you fondly, “I’m glad I didn’t leave when I was going to. That was great, and I’m grateful I got to experience it with you.”

“Me too,” you agree, blushing a little from the genuineness of Harry’s tone. “So tell me how you got into him, because I am dying to know. You really knew your shit out there.”

Harry shrugs,  “My brother’s about your age and he’s obsessed. We did a week in Mexico for his bachelor party last year and he played Bad Bunny nonstop. After that I was hooked.”

“Mm, fair. Is your brother here?”

Harry grins wickedly, “No, he didn’t want to come. I cannot wait to rub it in his face when I head to the office on Monday.” Then he’s grabbing your hand to kiss the back of it. “Thank you for dancing with me.”

Seeing the older brother side of him for a moment strikes your heart with a little flare of something more than lust for this man. He’s wonderfully adorable. “You were an excellent partner, Harry. Did you enjoy being high for that?”

He nods, glancing at you almost knowingly. “It certainly enhanced things. It’s mostly worn off for me, though.”

A sly smile finds your lips. “I could use some more.” 

“You could use some water ,” Harry practically chides, though that smile he’s wearing for you doesn’t falter. “I’ll get you some, stay here.”

With that, he leaves you standing by a marble pillar as he slides up to the crowded bar. 

Vanessa moves in beside you, poking you in the cheek with a pink fingernail. Charles seems to have gone off to do his job. 

“Someone’s going to get laid for real tonight!”

“Shh! Keep your fucking voice down!” You hiss, mortified. What she said was vague enough that anyone within earshot would just assume you masturbate a lot or something, but that feeling of dread in your chest just sobered you up more than the dancing had.  “He doesn’t know about that.”

“Are you going to tell him?” She asks.

You shake your head grimly. “I told him I’m a smut author.”

Vanessa scoffs loudly. “Bitch your Ao3 does not fucking count.”

God, you could kill her just as much as you could kiss her sometimes. “It was the best I could come up with, Van. I’d like to see you come up with something better if you were in my position.”

She frowns, looking at you seriously. “If you see him again after tonight you need to come clean. He seems like a catch and he seems completely enamored with you. Maybe you can actually reel this one in.”

“He’s not a fish,” you say with an eye roll. 

“No, he’s a sexy rich man who’s exactly your type.”

“I don’t care that he’s rich, you know that.”

“But you do care that he’s devilishly handsome and older than you.” 

“Boy, do I,” you say dreamily as you watch him turn from the bar with three bottles of water. 

“He doesn’t have to be a sugar daddy to be a daddy.” Vanessa sends you her signature wink at that last statement. 

You shove her playfully. “That’s enough out of you. He’s on his way back. You and I will discuss this at home.”

“Aye aye, captain!” Vanessa says with a giggle and a salute, clearly still feeling her alcohol. Then her eyes widen as she looks over your shoulder and suddenly shouts, “But I’m going home with Charles, just so you know!”

Glaring sharply, you know exactly what she’s doing despite whisper-asking her, “What are you doing?!” 

“Getting him to take you home,” she whispers back. 

As if you needed help. 

“Did I hear that you need a ride?” Harry asks, handsome as ever as he looks down at you. He looks so good that it’s overwhelming, dark hair even darker now that it’s damp from dancing, the pink flush in his cheeks slowly starting to fade. His white dress shirt seems damp in a few places and he’s rolled his sleeves up to expose his toned forearms. Harry hands you and Vanessa a bottle of water before unscrewing the cap of his own and downing several gulps with his head turned slightly. There’s that beautiful side profile again.

Christ have mercy, how are you turned on by watching someone drink water? The way his lips are pursed against the bottle, the bob of his Adam's apple as the drink flows down his throat. The little flick of his tongue on the edge of the rim to catch that last stray drop. 

Fuck .

Vanessa elbows you, and you have to literally shake your head to dislodge from the stupor he just had you in. Words? What are those?

“Uh, yes, I was just going to grab a taxi,” you say, taking a generous sip of your own water while you recover. 

“I’ve already called for my driver to come pick me up. I’m happy to take you somewhere.” Harry offers generously.

You smirk. “I distinctly recall someone wanting to get greasy food after this.”

He grins. “I did say that, didn’t I?”

“You did.”

“I was really high, wasn’t I?”

“You were. But I liked it, and I’m craving a cheesesteak.”

“A cheesesteak it is, then.”

The two of you stand there, staring into each other’s eyes for a long moment, sharing a silent mutual agreement that the rest of the night is about to be shared in each other’s company. Though, as is the delicate dance between men and women, and despite how forward Harry had been with you on the dance floor, you’ll both still skirt around the subject until it actually happens. 

*****

Next

Previous

Masterlist

[joseigamer]

Interview with the Vampire Manga Adaptation (Yoake no Vampire) by Udoh Shinohara + DL Link

DL LINK HERE

Happy new episode of IWTV AMC day! Today though, I want to share something I've teased earlier on my blog, which is the Japanese manga adaptation of the Interview with the Vampire gothic horror novel. See under the cut for more details!

It came out in 1994, a bit after the movie, but it only referenced the book itself. It consisted of a single volume made up of three chapters, so events are condensed and abridged, and it skips Part II in Eastern Europe. The first two chapters were scanlated into English by a group named Trine and distributed on the aarinfantasy forums in 2007, but the third chapter was kind of lost to time, especially after all the links to the raw Japanese scans went down years ago. However, I discovered that a now defunct Portuguese scanlation group did the whole thing (individual credits included in the .zip), and I was able to recover chapter three, use heavily cross-checked and edited MTL (PT-ENG), and deliver the final product to you all. See more notes about this process or where to read the PT version in the readme file included in the .zip! It's not 100% perfect and I would not call it true 'scanlation' obviously, so if anyone can do a better job I welcome them to! I hope more visibility on this manga makes the raws become available again so a true JPN-ENG translation can be done on the last chapter!

This manga obviously has major IWTV book spoilers, but it does NOT include anything from later books in the series and is honestly quite faithful overall. It even includes Lestat's father. I might actually call it slightly gayer than the book, since Louis and Armand become more obviously in love. I would recommend it to anyone who's watching the series and hasn't read the book yet, as well as to anyone who enjoys the books alone! The art style is very 90s, but it has some really beautiful visuals sometimes, especially with Claudia. I hope everyone enjoys reading it!

[holybibly]

IT'S YOU |Woosan x reader| Part II

Part I If you haven't read it

Genre: smut, from friends to lovers!au, college!au

Word Count: 9.4k

Summary: Sometimes drunken decisions lead to the most unexpected results and the most shocking confessions. Or, after your boyfriend cheats on you, you propose a threesome to your best friends and it might just be what they have always wanted.

WARNING: only!18+ unprotected sex, Dom!San, Dom!Wooyoung, Sub!Reader, fingering, choking, degrading, pet names, spit kink, manhandling, threesomes, dirty talk, explicit sexual content, explicit language, squirting, pussy slapping, overstimulation and more.

Tag list: @staytiny816 @woosmaid @jiminssluttyminx @liknws @pearltinyy @haebaragisworld @bts-iris @bleachpolaroid @wisejudgedragonhairdo @ginger-coffee-addict @pricessthings @rockstarsanie @lilmackiee @minaizum1 @shotahime @vixensss @meljoongiee @ivsjake4evr @love-me-a-little @seonghwaddict @onmykneesforateez @meeitany

A/N: Okay, we're here. I couldn't be more excited. Really, they've got a lot going on and I hope you're all ready because it's gonna be intense, hot and messy. Seriously, I really appreciate everyone's feedback and consideration for this series. It's become one of the most popular things I've written, but it put some pressure on me, because I'm worrying about whether the second part would please you. Well, I think we'll see.

Enjoy the chapter, even though it's practically nothing but smut.

The third and final part! takes us back to where it all began, but not without an emotional roller coaster ride. By the way, I wanted to point out that T/N doesn't remember what she promised them a year ago. So don't be surprised by the plot changes in this issue. In the finale, we're sure to get a hot threesome.

I'm still learning how to write smut, so please be gentle with me.

Besides, I can't help but talk about the results of the poll. The majority vote was for Alpha/Beta/Omega!au, and honestly, it's one of the ideas I'm most excited about, and I was hoping it would be the winner. I look forward to your comments. In general, feel free to write me about anything.

dividers by @cafekitsune

Much love, everyone.

Now. The morning after graduation.

It's a late, lazy morning when you wake from a deep and well-earned sleep. You blinked slowly, trying to adjust to the bright golden light flooding the room, which refracted through your bedroom's stained glass. It was beautiful and annoying at the same time, just as Hongjoong himself, who had inspired you to do this.

You should have shaded the windows last night before you went to sleep, but that was the last thing you thought of as lying in bed between the restless, wet San's and Wooyoung's bodies. You were more preoccupied with the touch of their rough hands on your heated body, the warmth of their breath on tender skin, and the sounds of their hoarse moaning right by your ear.

They were an absolute mess, slowly driving you crazy. Emotions raged in your stomach, making you feel guilty, embarrassed and… lustful. You practically dozed off at dawn, when the boys managed to calm down a bit and fall into a deep sleep.

The apartment is incredibly quiet; you can't hear a single sound, and only the soft sniffle on your neck, with the feeling of warm breath dancing across your bare skin, breaks this peaceful silence.

Wooyoung is still fast asleep, clutching you in his arms like a favorite teddy bear, his leg wrapped possessively around your thigh as it always has been. Even when he was asleep, he couldn't bring himself to let you go for a second.

You ran the palm of your hand over the sheet and felt nothing but the cold under your fingers. Sannie has been awake for a while now, and for a moment you're annoyed by this fact. You wish that he was still in bed with you, soft and gentle as he always was. So that the three of you could spend this special morning together. The graduation robes are scattered all over the room in a mess of things, and all you want to do is push them further and further into the wardrobe and forget about them forever. The dog days are finally over. You are now official free.

Sensual, full lips touch the sensitive spot on your neck, and the sensation sends shivers down your spine. The throat is suddenly dry, sweat begins to form on your neck from the abruptly increase in desire, and you close your eyes tightly, aware of every touch and breath coming from Wooyoung more clearly than before. It's as if your whole body is completely focused on him, reacting to every fleeting movement and every sound with even more eager devotion.

You're still too receptive from last night, and you need more space to try and keep all those dirty, depraved thoughts from taking over and you. You studiously ignore the slight shiver of excitement that is happily tickling your breasts and causing the muscles in your lower abdomen to ripple in a pleasant way. You bite your lip to keep yourself from groaning in frustration as the images and sensations of the night flash in front of your eyes. You need to stop right now. It's too bad, but it's too sweet.

You start to wriggle, trying to get away from Wooyoung, who is still sleeping, but he just pulls you closer to his chest, as if he wants to dissolve into your body completely, and you melt.

Wooyoung has always been so insatiable and greedy for any kind of physical contact that you can offer him, like an adorable little puppy, that you can just wag your finger at him and he'll come running to you. He always had "too much space between you"; it was important to him to hold you constantly, to touch soft skin with his fingertips, to leave butterfly kisses in every possible place, to knead your thighs and squeeze waist possessively, to pull you so close that there wasn't a centimetre between you. You were his darling, soft and sweet girl in all the right places, and he just couldn't help himself.

San used to tell him that he was being a bit greedy and that he needed to learn how to share you with others. After all, sharing meant caring, and you were also his chagi.

Yes, you wanted to be taken care of, and that frightened you to the depths of your most forbidden fantasies. You wanted to be nervous about them; you wanted them to use you as they pleased, to make you take everything they had to offer, even if it destroyed you completely.

Your desire for them was more than you should have as friends. And that feeling had only grown stronger over the past year.

But despite Wooyoung's obsession and possessiveness, his touch always soothed you. He gave you the comfort you needed whenever you felt the need. And in the end, his hands would always nudge you in the direction of San, so that he could have his own moment of sharing with you. You were their own personal cuddly toy, and that was fine with you, because there was no place in the world where you could feel more protected and cuddly than in their arms.

But at the moment, you wanted nothing more than to get away from his touch and calm down your excitement. You'd been so needy since last night, and Wooyoung had only added to your frustration.

He's shirtless, his skin warm and smooth, and you can be sure it's golden like caramel where the sun has licked it. Delicious. You can almost taste him on the tip of your tongue, and suddenly you're tempted to sink your teeth into him for a taste, but you just bite down harder on your lower lip and stifle a moan.

You need to stop being so intensely... aware of him.

Maybe you were still drunk from the last night; after all, you couldn't remember exactly how many shots of tequila you'd consumed before dragging Yunho into the ladies' room to start kissing passionately. And you found yourself in an even more suggestive position with Seonghwa after another round of colourful, unnamed cocktails.

From then on, every innocent act made you feel lustful and hungry for intimacy.

Was it karma or something? You weren't sure, but you were more inclined to think that it was the lack of passionate sex you hadn't been having for a year now. You hadn't been able to find anyone suitable for a long-term relationship after you'd broken up with Suho, and boys-toys hadn't given you any pleasure.

You wanted more than ten minutes of gasping under the covers with awkward fingers poking into the pussy. They were cum faster than you were able to get yourself aroused. Pathetic.

You needed to satisfy that hunger that was eating you from the inside out, that oppressive feeling of emptiness inside you that could only be filled by a big dick that you could choke on for the rest of your life. A thick and long one, with visibly bulging veins, that could really hit all the sensitive places inside you, causing you to have orgasm after orgasm. And having not one but two perfectly matched options handy hasn't made things any easier.

If you offered to suck them off, Wooyoung's dick would be in your mouth in no time. He was always a fireball, passionate, and impatient, and San…San liked to play with his food before getting down to business. You were in awe of how perfect their dynamic was with such different personalities.

You wanted to see how attractive they would be when a warm throat closed around their cocks, when their beautiful faces were contorted with intense pleasure, and when you heard them moan out your name.

Damn it.

It's moments like these that make you realize that moving in with Wooyoung and San was the best and worst decision you ever made. Unless you count buying a pair of designer jeans that make your butt a magnet for people's hands.

The time went by far too quickly for your liking. It was easy to get lost in the succession of school days, week after week, punctuated by movie nights, spontaneous outings and a seemingly endless stream of student parties. Everything in your life changes. From the big renovation of your apartment, which was Hongjoong's job - he was still over the loss of his favourite vintage sofa - to the move in of San and Wooyoung. Things started to move at an even faster pace the day the boys dragged their suitcases into the dark space of your ultra-modern living room, to a general "You should have done this a long time ago".

It was a spontaneous and hasty decision. But what could have gone wrong? It's always been the three of you, and you had no idea that sharing space would have any effect on your relationship. God, how wrong you were. They played cat and mouse with you, testing your mettle and your patience. The memory of that moment is still so vivid in your mind.

"Come on, chagi, try it; it's quite tasty." San brought a spoonful of the dark green liquid, which Wooyoung proudly called the best hangover soup in the world, to your lips.

Jung Wooyoung and his ego, of course.

"Go ahead, baby; be good and open your mouth. It'll make you feel good, I  promise." That last sentence was full of innuendo, and it didn't take a genius to see it. In fact, everything that came out of Wooyoung's mouth was absolute filth.

He was practically purring in your ear, touching your delicate skin with every word, and you swear you could feel the touch of his tongue on your earlobe. Oh, fuck. His hands slid down your shoulders, deftly kneading the muscles that had gone stiff, his thumbs sliding up the vertebrae of your neck, and he dug a little bit into the hair at the back of your neck. In that moment, you were ready to do anything for him, whatever he asked.

"That's my Chagia, so docile and sweet." San would continue to feed you slowly with a spoon, smiling sweetly at you as if it were the most pleasant thing in the world to do. From time to time, he would wipe away the drops of liquid that ran down your lips with his thumb, as if in a romantic drama. You were perfectly capable of doing it yourself. But San's meaningful raised eyebrow made it clear that it was better to let him take care of you without resistance. San's language of love had always been to serve, and he took every opportunity to remind you of that.

The silence around you was nice and cozy—you'd even say relaxing—especially since you could still feel the humming bass of last night's music in your head. And all in all, you weren't feeling your best. Hell, that shit you drank last night was strong. This went on for a few more minutes until the plate in front of you was empty and Woo's face was pressed against your cheek in a cute puppy way. 

"Woo, and I wanted to talk to you about something, Y/N," San began, his voice suddenly becoming so sweet. He took your hand gently, his thumb stroking your knuckles lazily. He obviously wanted something from you.

"Sure, I'm all ears."

"We'd like to move in with you, peach, what do you think?" Wooyoung was pecking at your cheek, acting like a real sweetheart, but you knew every one of his tactics to get what he wanted.

"You're not going to get it if Woo keeps licking my cheek."

"But, Peach…" He whined, pursing his puffy lips in a resentful manner. Okay, he was cute as hell, but you were never going to tell him that.

"Chagi." You turned your attention back to San, who looked like he was confessing his love to you: Are this hearts in his eyes? Or are you still drunk?

"Agreed, we are practically living here anyway; I even have my own toothbrush in the bathroom. It's just a formality." He was awfully proud of it, squaring his shoulders and imagining himself under your gaze.

"We want to take care of you, baby."

And this is where you should have told them to fuck off and forget the way to your apartment, change the locks, and give San his toothbrush back. But whether it was the soft and somehow loving look of San's cat eyes paired with deep, sweet dimples or Wooyoung's gentle hands that started to knead your shoulders again in a languidly seductive way, you nodded affirmatively.

They were right; you were all practically living together. The amount of their stuff in your flat was unreal—the T-shirts you slept in, the perfume bottles left everywhere, study notes, games, pajamas and scarves, Wooyoung's luxurious leather jackets, and San's books—you could start a collection, but their stuff was just as much yours. It was also the constant cause of your and Suho's fights; he was always jealous of you and them, completely unaware of the dynamic between the three of you. They'd been glued to your thigh for years, and the fact that you had a boyfriend wouldn't change that. Narrow-minded prick.

"I think you're right. Let's give it a go."

"My little darling." San gave a dazzling smile, showing off his dimples even more, and pressed your hand to his lips. God, Choi San was a real menace. It was hard to believe that this pretty cat in front of you was none other than the one who was caught many times having rough sex in the middle of the university library. Once, he was even caught in a threesome, but you didn't want to point the finger at Wooyoung for putting him up to it.

"Yeah, that's our girl." Wooyoung pressed his lips to your cheek once more, salivating as much as he could along the way.

"Jung Wooyoung!" You squealed, wiping the drool from your cheek in disgust, but Woo was already happily scurrying into the living room, laughing loudly.

"We'll look after you, chagi."

That was San's last sentence before he ran his tongue over your hand, licked his fingers like a cat, and ran after Woo with an evil giggle.

"Choi San, come back at once!"

You are going to have so much fun here. Too much fun for your own good.

"Mmm… Peach, you are already awake." The soft touch of plump lips on your shoulder means that Wooyoung has woken up and wants to have your full attention.

"It has been some time. But I don't want to go anywhere. How are you feeling? Last night, when we came home, you and San were really drunk.

Wooyoung hugs you even tighter, nestling his face between your shoulder blades and taking a deep breath of your scent. Your skin is tickled by the tips of his long hair. A light touch on your lower back sends a jolt up your spine, making you arch slightly in his arms. Wooyoung is always like this; his defiant and needy attitude shouldn't be anything unusual for you, so you should stop reacting to him like this.

"Thank you for looking after us, peach. You're always so nice. Sannie and I don't deserve you." He kisses your neck. This time the touch lingers a little longer, and a feeling of excitement rises in your chest. "We haven't caused you any trouble, have we, little girl?" He purrs as he rubs his nose up against your shoulder. You couldn't help but notice how San's habits have become Wooyoung's habits, and vice versa. Now you have to put up with all that twin feline energy.

You turn to face him, and even after a night of sleeping with his hair tousled and without his usual cheeky grin, Wooyoung still looks pretty damn good. He's comfortable, a little sleepy, but no less seductive than he ever was. Woo has always had this sensual aura about him. Underneath the overt sexuality and the bitchy attitude, there was something else—something dark and seductive. You want to kiss him right now, so badly. Your hand runs through his silky hair, letting it fall in soft waves on either side of his face. Dark strands that are long enough to be pulled through easily. The world's handsomest boy.

It's all too easy to fall in love with him.

He kisses your palm playfully and pokes his nose into it like a cat hungry for affection, and you don't mind his purring with pleasure.

You wonder what he's going to sound like when he cums, God, you need to help yourself.

"Let me think." You run your fingers through his hair, lightly massaging his scalp. It's a deceptively gentle gesture before you pull hard on the roots of his hair, causing him to cry out in surprise.

"Oh, babe, why?" He purses his lips in offense, hoping you'll fall for his cute look. But you've known Wooyoung for years, and judging by the mischievous gleam in his eyes, he knew exactly what he was getting at.

"Firstly, you robbed me of my chance for great sex with your whining and dragging me home. Secondly, you behaved horribly when I tried to persuade you to take a shower and you kept me awake until the morning by clinging to me and fidgeting on the bed. Today I demand the royal treatment because you really messed up last night. This was not part of my plan for the prom at all."

Woo smiles back wickedly, practically baring his teeth in a wolfish grin.

"Peaches, are you really such a needy girl? Well, what are we going to do about it? San and I will have to do our best to make it up to you." He suddenly turns you over so that you are lying on your back, sandwiched between the mattress and his lithe body. Wooyoung is hovering over you, his hair falling all over your face, and you can't help but notice how sexy he looks in this position, which is annoying the hell out of you. He doesn't even have to try very hard to send you over the edge.

Strong hands are resting on the sides of your head, letting you enjoy the sight of the seductively bulging veins that run down his forearms. Fuck, you've always had a weakness for his hands, and who wouldn't when they look like this? Woo leans his head towards you until your noses touch, like a predator cornering his prey.

"Baby, I have my doubts that you'll be satisfied with anyone, so don't sulk. And you know Sannie and I will have to approve of someone running their fingers down your knickers." He smiles broadly at you, clearly enjoying your annoyance when you roll your eyes at him.

"Jung Wooyoung, stop it!" Your hand leaves an angry red mark on the bare skin of his chest, and he grunts. It will take all the patience in the world not to beat him to death or kiss him. "I swear I'll wash your mouth out with soap someday." Or maybe you'll lick him from the inside out. "And stop sticking your pretty little nose where you shouldn't. You don't have to worry about who I'm gonna fuck."

"So what if it bothers me? What are you going to do with it, Peach?" He bites his lips in anticipation and raises an eyebrow in expectation, as if he were challenging you to go on.

The way that smug look is on his face makes you feel a little pissed off. You get a little cocky and decide to use the same tactic he did. Wrapping your hands around his face, you're pulling him even closer, resting him on your forearms and your lips nearly touch. He has siren eyes that are deep and mesmerising, and the intensity of his gaze causes your cheeks to flush and you to bite down on your lower lip. The gleam in his fox eyes is proof that he is enjoying every second of your little game.

"Seonghwa kisses you like he's fucking your mouth with his tongue, it's fucking heaven and you can do whatever you want with that fact, baby. I would have ridden him like a stallion in front of everyone last night if it wasn't for you and San's drunken arses". You push him off of you, and Wooyoung rolls over to the other side of the bed as you sit up.

There's something in the air, and you feel you've said something wrong, judging by the way Wooyoung's eyes are flashing with an emotion you can't quite describe. It's a weird mix between anger, envy, desire and something else. But whatever it is, it is making your pussy clench in anticipation of it.

Damn, when did you start thinking with what's between your legs instead of your brain?

He stares at you intently, as if he's trying to decide whether he's going to scold you or fuck you senseless. As lust flashes through his languid onyx eyes like a shooting star, fast but unmistakable, and his pink tongue flicks out to wet his swollen lips, Wooyoung knows exactly what he's going to do to you.

You reach out to stroke his shoulder, and just as you expected, his skin is the most delicious shade of caramel. You can't help but want to run your tongue all over it.

Oh, shit. Now would be a good time to remind yourself: He's your best friend.

"Where`s San?" He asks you.

The expression on his face is, for the most part, neutral, with just a slight hint of lust and anticipation. He slowly licks his delicious lips and looks at you with bedroom eyes. You feel the warm moisture building up between your thighs. If he keeps looking at you like that, you're going to make a puddle of lust where you're sitting right now. You squeeze your thighs tighter to keep the liquid from dripping shamefully onto the bed, praying to all the gods that Wooyoung won't notice.

"I don't know. He wasn't in the bed when I woke up."

"Good."

What the hell is 'GOOD'? You need to collect your thoughts and leave this stuffy room, but the way Wooyoung's eyes slide over your body before, and slowly sucking his lower lip tells you there's nowhere to run. 

"Come to me, sweetheart; I want you in my arms." He is stroking himself on his thigh, the silk fabric of his pajamas leaving no room for imagination as it outlines the taut muscles of his gorgeous thighs. His legs are spread a little wider to draw your attention to where he wants you now, and you can clearly see the imprint of his thick dick through the fabric. Damn. It's completely hard, and you can't help but notice how big it is.

His actions send signals straight to the nerves that control your cunt. The wet heat is running between your legs and your arousal is increasing. A palpable shiver runs through all body as you squirm and writhe under the intensity of his gaze.

The rational part of you is literally beating in a hysterical frenzy. It's your hope that your stupid brain will realise the full implications of what's happening, and that you'll be able to put a stop to it. Even if the boundaries of your friendship were highly questionable, you were friends. While the evil voice in the back of your head was cheering you on: "C'mon, what's the bad that can happen?"

He was inviting you, and who were you to refuse? Not that you wanted to.

They'd go crazy if San and Wooyoung knew what thoughts and fantasies lived in your head every day. Huh. They had no idea their sweet chagia had such a dark and dirty mind. You take a deep breath.

Screw it.

You slowly crawl across the bed towards him. He watches you with a squinting, predatory look on his face until one of your legs has been thrown across his body and you're almost sitting on top of him. Almost, as your thighs struggle to keep you in that rigid position, but apparently Woo wasn't in the mood, and his broad palms force your hips down so you're sitting all the way in his lap. Before you realise what you're doing, you're pinned against his crotch, his hard cock touching your aching clit as you move against him, demanding physical stimulation. The contact was so good that it sent a shiver down your spine, and you almost moaned at the tiny moment of pleasure it gave you. Damn, it was massive—so thick you started salivating in your mouth. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. You're up to your neck in shit. 

"There you are, starlight, in my hands." His voice, once so high and soft, was now hoarse and deep. He wrapped his arms around your waist and pulled you even closer to him, so that there was hardly any space between the two of you. "Baby girl, are you still upset about Seonghwa?" It's a nickname he rarely uses, and it sends an electric shock through your lower abdomen, triggering a feeling you're not sure you can control right now. He leans in close to you and presses his wet lips against the side of your ear. "Tell me what I can do to stop you being angry with me."

"Kiss me, make me feel good." The evil little voice in the back of your head chimes in with glee. "Blow my brains out until my head feels empty and light." It says.

A whole new sensation takes over. Your body starts to heat up in anticipation of what is to come. Then the room will seem to shrink and the air will fill with a tension and a desire.

"I don't know. You've really pissed me off." You look up at him through your impossibly thick lashes, your lips in a fake pout. You weren't the innocent one; you could have played just as badly as they did. "You'll have to try harder, pretty boy." You let your finger nails run down the length of his neck. Wooyoung tilts his head back to reveal a chin line that could have been carved from the finest marble.

As his hands lazily caress your thighs, lifting your T-shirt higher and higher, your skin burns under his palms. Damn, he's scalding you.

The wetness between your legs is becoming more and more intense as the conversation goes on and on. Your juices seep through the thin lace of your panties, dripping from your pussy, leaving little dark streaks on the silk of his trousers where they touch your thighs. The air between you crackles with tension and desire; you feel yourself sweating; you're so hot and needy; and Wooyoung is no help at all.

His aura is one of dominance, and you swallow in anticipation. A storm is about to break and you don't want to be safe.

"I'll do whatever you want me to do for you, Y/N."

You're done for.

"Then kiss me, stupid boy, make me feel good."

He growls back at you, embracing you on the back of the head and practically forcing your faces together. The palm of his hand clenches possessively on the back of your neck with palpable pain, and the sound that comes out of you is something between a sob and a moan. With the sudden movement, you feel yourself pressing even harder against his dick, and it sends a pleasurable pulse through your clit.

Wooyoung presses his forehead against yours and your lips are just a breath away from each other.

You stare back at him without blinking. His eyes are half closed as he watches you in silence, like a tiger stalking its prey, ready to pounce with its jaws clenched. It is in a low, dangerously calm tone that he speaks. "Are you sure this is what you want to do, baby girl? I'm biting." It's mixed with your sighing and seductive lips, and you can barely make out the words.

"P-please…"

His moan is loud, guttural, and mildly painful, and then…

O MY GOD.

Those soft lips are pressed hard against yours in an urgent, hungry kiss. His mouth is insistent and demanding, his thumb digging into the skin of your neck, turning the touch into a rough grip, and his tongue gliding along the bottom of your lip. Slowly, as he pulls your lips apart, he moves in quickly, and you shudder at the sensual sensation as he runs his tongue over the roof of your mouth and licks your teeth. It should have been dirty and rough, but instead you find yourself moaning with wanton need.

"Wooyoung..." The moan of his name was so desperate, so needy, so full of lust and desire.

"Goddamn, I love it when you say my name."

He kisses you with renewed ferocity, biting your lips almost to the point of bleeding. Wooyoung is too passionate; he licks your mouth with his tongue, and literally shoves it down your throat. He kisses you like he's dying of thirst and you're the only way to make him drink. Spittle runs down your chin, it's wet and dirty, but you can't stop, you don't want to stop. Wooyoung's tongue is practically fucking you in the mouth.

And God, you want more. It feels unreal, too extreme to be a reasonable response to a kiss, the heat between your legs, your clit throbbing with need, your nerves on fire.

Wooyoung lets go of you for a moment and you stare at him with your eyes wide open. Your heart is pounding wildly and your breathing is so ragged that you're practically choking to death. Licking away any remnants of the kiss you shared, his wet pink tongue pokes out from between his plump lips.

His hand slides down your face, cupping your chin and tilting your head slightly so that your eyes meet his, his gaze clouded with lust as if his fingers were digging deep inside you. You can't say a word as a wicked smile spreads across his sharp, enchanting face.

Now you have a better understanding of all those damsels who are ready to spread their legs at the flick of his fingers.

"Tell me you want more, baby. I have a feeling this apology isn't enough. I need to do more than that. I'm so desperate for forgiveness.

"Don't I need to be forgiven too, Woo? You shouldn't be so greedy. That voice, oh shit.

You turn sharply around and find yourself staring into San's beautiful cat eyes. He's so damn good-looking you swallow a groan. It must be illegal for someone to look this good in normal jeans and a plain black shirt. But San had a body worth dying over.

A real girl's dinner.

What the hell are you going to do now? How long had he stayed there?

"San-ah… how…" You find yourself stuttering. Your mouth dries up and you can't utter a word, but even if you could, your brain can't form coherent thoughts. You can't bring yourself to look away from him, and something deep inside you knows that he will punish you if you try.

"What is it, Gongjunim? Did the cat eat your tongue?" He raises an eyebrow at you, a shit-eating grin playing at the corners of his lips. As if in mockery, his soft, patronising tone of voice slides over your skin. San combines a sensual, gentle nature with a seductive one that makes you feel he's looking for a weakness before pouncing. His fucking duality. One moment he's a little sweetheart, the next he's a lecherous demon who wants to sink his teeth into your throat and devour you. "Come on, Chagia, I promise I won't disappoint you; I'm very good at excuses."

Responding to his sultry purr, your pussy clenches shamefacedly.

The excitement of it all makes your brain feel like mush and sets your skin on fire.

You start squirming in Wooyoung's arms, and now that San's here, you belatedly realise what you've gotten yourself into. Is it time for a change of scenery or something? No, you want to stay. Desperately.

You need them to blow your brains out, to make you dumb and submissive and a pretty little toy for them to play with. Sometimes you have to stop before you cross the line, but where is the line when you're literally sitting on your best friend's hard cock?

Hell, you don't know what you're supposed to do - run or beg - but you clearly know what they want to do to you, judging by Wooyoung's dick twitching between your thighs and San slowly licking his lips as he looks at your bare ass peeking out from under your shirt. His shirt.

There must be some kind of telepathic connection between Wooyoung and San. After a few seconds of intense eye contact, San pulls his T-shirt over his head, tosses it aside and slowly walks over to you. The grin on his face seems to have changed; it has become even darker than before. Hungrier.

And you don't think this is a good time to start drooling. But damn it, you want to lick him from head to toe.

Between the three of you, there's a chaos of emotion and desire. It's mixed with adrenaline and a distant fear of what's going to happen. There has to be an end to this game of predator and prey, and why not do it now? Sighing, you finally give in.

In the morning, you'll consider the consequences.

"Maybe you should kiss me too, San-ah, and I'll start thinking about forgiving.

Hot lips instantly press an open, wet kiss to your shoulder. The bed buckles under the weight of another man's body. San's strong arms are wrapped around your waist and his fingers clench your t-shirt into a fist. He's hot, warm and hard, and you can feel the hardness of his dick through your trousers as he presses down hard against you. His mouth is sucking, biting and licking your skin as if his life depended on it. Sharing an understanding look with Wooyoung, San slides his lips higher up your body.

"Sannie…" Before planting a hot kiss on your neck, you whimper as his teeth sink into your sensitive flesh.

The moan that comes from the back of your throat is so deep that for a moment you wonder if it's coming from you at all.

Pure pleasure shoots through you as you feel Woo's long tongue on the other side of your neck. He lets out the sexiest moan deep in his throat, as if he's having the time of his life, savouring every second of the way his lips explore the nape of your neck. You're distracted. Your eyes roll back in pleasure as he pulls the skin between his lips, leaving a purple hickey on the back of your neck.

"Oh, my God, boys."

"That's my darling, Chagia." His voice is sultry and seductive, and you can clearly hear the saturi again, as it tends to do at times when San is in a highly aroused state.

"You're so beautiful, my peach." Wooyoung whispers to you, and you just melt away completely.

You whimper as Woo begins to run his hands up and down your thighs and arse, squeezing and pulling. He mooed softly as you made little circular movements with your hips and rubbed his cock against you. Woo punishes you by slapping your bottom if you cuddle too hard. You'll need to be obedient as they play with you.

The sound fills the room along with the collective moaning of Wooyoung's and San's.

"What a dirty little girl you are. I think you need to be taught how to obey." Woo spanks you a few more times and you wiggle your hips in an impatient way.

It feels so good.

San pulls your t-shirt up to your breasts while all your attention is focused on Wooyoung. Your little thong is completely transparent and does nothing to hide your sex or the excitement building within you. They are practically digging into your needy pussy because of the position you are now in. A chorus of gasps and moans can be heard from your best friends as their eyes focus on that big, wet spot. San's greedy hands press you even closer to his body, so that you can feel his full erection on top of your plump, bare bum.

"You're so fucking wet." Wooyoung hisses. "Like a bitch leaking just thinking about our cocks in your tight little cunt. We'll destroy you, Peach."

Before you realise what's happening, Woo's hands slide down your back, your nipples tensing in the cool open air. The soft fabric of your t-shirt falls to the floor, and suddenly, hot wetness envelops your left nipple and he sucks hard on it, the pressure causing pain that turns to pleasure as his tongue touches the hard bud. Your head immediately falls back onto San's shoulder as you open the soft space of your throat to his insatiable mouth. You let out a long groan, and your hand rests on Wooyoung's head, tugging lightly at the soft lengths of his hair.

You feel like you could explode at any moment, even though they haven't done anything to you yet. You're burning, almost feverish, as the growing fire between your thighs reaches unbearable levels. You can't breathe; your skin is hypersensitive. Your head tilts to the side, and you whimper San's name in the most pathetic intonation possible. His hand slides lower and lower, past your waist and your stomach, to the place where you most want to feel him. It hasn't even come close to touching your pussy yet, but the thought of it is enough to make you squirm with excitement.

His hands move down low enough to touch the skin of your naked legs and up slowly, frantically, until he reaches where you are starting to get aroused. The palm of his hand encircles your pussy in a possessive way, the small mound of flesh lying so perfectly in the palm of his hand. You tremble a little at this, and try to spread your legs wider so that his fingers can rub against the moist slit, so that he can dive in between the warm folds until your pussy spreads out beautifully for him, so that he can rub your clit with ease.

"Mmm… what a wet little thing. I bet my Gongjunim has the most beautiful pussy I have ever seen in my life. Fleshy, shiny, and pink - just the way I like it. He gasps for breath. He puts his hands on your hips and rubs his hard cock against the curve of your ass a couple of times. "Do you feel that, Chagia? No one can make me as hard as you can." On your skin, his breath feels like fire. Hoping for a little more friction, you arch your backside. The gesture reveals a hiss from his side.

San's fingers, one tempting back and forth with a feathery touch, spread the excitement building in your slit beneath the thin material. Your pussy clenches around nothing at all in the most uncomfortable way, and you know that he can feel it.

"Do you like this chagi? Wooyoung's mouth on your full, pretty tits? My fingers on your sweet little snatch?" San's tone is almost mocking. His tongue is licking his lips; his fingers continue to stroke your clothed pussy in a leisurely manner; and he watches intently as Wooyoung literally chokes on your breasts. "We are gonna fuck you until you squeal like the slutty little bitch you are." He growls into your ear, and the sound of it makes you pull on Woo's hair with all your might.

And you always had the impression that Wooyoung's mouth was dirty.

A soft moan slips out of the brunette's swollen lips, which are now wrapped so tightly around your nipple that you're sure they're going to leave a mark on it. As he pulls back with an audible pop, you let out a small sound as you look at his ecstatic face. His eyes are half closed, his eyelids flutter slightly and a beautiful flush of colour has appeared on his cheeks. His plump lips are glistening with the saliva and the service he is giving to your tits.

"Are you feeling good, peach?" He chuckles weakly as he watches you fall apart in San's skilled hands, leaving you as beautiful as ever in his eyes. Woo gives your nipple a hard pinch, only to then let his tongue run over it. The sudden change in sensation causes your head to begin to spin, and you let out a loud moan of pleasure.

"Please… I need… more… Youngiee." You stammer out the words, your voice shaking and your body trembling.

"You look so pretty when you beg. But do you want to know something, сhagi? You'll look even more beautiful with your cunt stretched around my dick. I will ravage your tiny pussy, Gongjunim. I'm going to make you mine." San finally kisses you; though it's hard to call it a kiss, he dives into your lips like a hungry man, sucking them so deeply and passionately, with an insistence that you don't even think you'll ever understand.

His tongue is merciless as he explores every millimeter of the inside of your mouth. This kiss is heavenly, and with every second that passes, you find yourself wanting more, wanting him to spoil you in every way that he can. To have his way with you until you have no more patience. And it is these thoughts that make you wriggle in Wooyoung's arms. You try to rub your thighs together, hoping to relieve the unbearable heat inside you.

"The taste is so damn good."

You can feel Woo squeezing your breasts almost in sync, his warm tongue sliding over the plump flesh once more, licking at the aroused nipples, and his teeth scratching the sensitive skin with the lightest of touches. You savour the lightning bolts of pleasure that the two of them cause to bounce around your body. It's almost painful, but you know you're loving this.

Half gasping, half squealing at the sheer, blunt pressure of San's nimble, kneading fingers finding their way to your labia through the mesh of the thong. Your lower abdomen clenches in a reflexive spasm, and your hands are sticky with sweat as you grasp the wrist of his hand.

"Oh, your pussy is so sensitive, isn't it, Chagia?" San cooed with feigned tenderness, and with a strange sadism, he pressed his middle finger against your cunt, sliding it right over the spot where your clit was, causing your hips to shake. The lubrication of your arousal made it much more effective for him to stimulate you, and he would literally bring you to orgasm with minimal effort. He purred softly as you responded, like a big cat purring, and just when you thought he couldn't fuck with your sanity even more, he turned his head and spat on your lips, a glob of saliva dribbling into your open mouth and you choked out a moan.

It's so rough and dirty, but your body responds the best it can, arching into his arms and pressing your breasts even harder against Wooyoung's face.

The brunette moans in response and lifts his foxy eyes to you. You can see the corner of his lips curl into a smirk before he bites down hard on your nipple. Fuck, your life will never be the same. And they haven't even got around to fucking you properly yet. It's like heaven and hell at the same time.

"I want to hear you whimper, Gongjunim." San's hand grips the back of your neck very tightly, causing you to gasp for breath from the sudden lack of air. Your eyes begin to roll up at the possessive touch of his hand on your throat, and you begin to jerk your hips, your clit pressing against Wooyoung's cock, and he lets out a long, hard moan.

"Please, Sannie." You're breathing out.

"Look at her, San, our girl, slobbering like a brainless slut." Wooyoung wipes the viscous saliva from your parted lips, then pushes his fingers into your mouth with a sharp, deep thrust. For a second you choke and begin to gurgle around the long phalanges.

He hadn't removed the rings yesterday and now the heavy metal makes your tongue feel cold. "Think of the way my dick is fucking your little throat, starlight. Suck it hard." You wheeze and gurgle, your saliva bubbling at the corners of your lips, but you have done exactly as you have been told.

It was rough, it was horrible and it was so wet that it was almost disgusting to watch. But Woo enjoyed it; he literally raped your mouth with his fingers in a sort of sadistic sense. A few thick strands of saliva would stick to your swollen lips as he pulled his fingers out of your mouth.

"Look at you. Taking my fingers in your mouth like that. Such a good girl."

This whole game has been nothing more than a distraction from the main action. There's a short circuit in your body as a sharp sensation pierces every nerve in your body. San suddenly slaps you hard on your wet pussy, the contact sending sparks of pain and pleasure flying across your skin, and you let out a squeal.

"Oh my God. Oh, my God. I'm going to… I'm going to…" You go over the edge as you feel your juices pouring down your legs, your vaginal muscles contracting, forcing more fluid to pour out of you, the combination of their names coming weakly from your lips as your orgasm washes over your weakened limbs.

"Fuck, Peach is so hot… You're squirting." You belatedly realise that Wooyoung is also cumming as he throws his head back in pleasure, his eyes rolling up and his mouth opening in a long, whimpering moan.

You can hardly catch your breath when you feel San rest his chin on your shoulder, his grip tightening around you, whispering in your ear.

"One more gongjunim; give me one more orgasm and then I'll caress you."

"Ah, San." The searing sensation of his fingers roughly pinching your clit through the wet material of your thong causes you to cry out hoarsely in agony. The sound of your wet, sensitive cunt splashing was clear and vivid; the sensation was brutal, but so indescribable you were ready to faint from pleasure.

He's going to tear you apart.

"Cum for me, Chagia. I know you can do it. Sperm for us; make Youngie and me proud of you".

Your eyes rolled back in your head and you swore that your cunt was on fire, your whole body shuddering in electrifying spasms of pleasure that made your toes curl up and your thighs shake. San's hand was still firmly around your throat, holding your head upright as you had your orgasm.

It had shattered you so badly that the fall seemed dramatic, and you went completely limp as the orgasm dissipated, turning you into an inconsolable, whimpering, disorderly mass.

They had blown your brains out.

"There you are, Gongjunim, I got you. You did so well." San muttered, but your mind was too tired to admit it. Amused at how angry and lost you looked, you saw stars as Wooyoung's hand tilted your head to the side in a teasing way to look at your confused face.

"You're no longer angry with us, are you, Peach?"

San removes his hand from your throat and allows Wooyoung to pull your face up to his own. Gentle fingers caress your cheekbones and soft lips wipe away the tears rolling down your cheeks. At one point, you didn't even realise you were crying. It's such a contrast to his previous behaviour; here he is your usual adored Jung Wooyoung, a little clingy, a little annoying and with an unrealistic maternal instinct. Your best friend.

Fuck. Now it is time for you to start crying for the real time. You begin to sob, pushing Wooyoung away from you in a desperate attempt to get out of his arms. You can feel the wetness underneath you and it makes you feel worse and worse. You need to get out of here now. Your behaviour frightens them to death and San's hands are on your body again, squeezing your shoulders gently.

"Stop, stop for a second, Y/N. It's all right, Chagia. We have you."

You freeze at the sound of your name, like a deer caught in the headlights.

In anticipation of his next move, your whole body tenses like a string. Wooyoung's fingers intertwine with yours. It's a familiar gesture, so familiar to you, so ordinary, so perfected over the years of your friendship. San lets you go when he realises you're not going anywhere, and his face comes to rest next to Wooyoung's as you look at him.

He's handsome, too, to the point of madness, and trembles at the knees. His cheeks are flushed. There's still a lingering gleam of lust and excitement in his eyes, but with a touch of strange emotion. His plush lips are soft and swollen from all the kissing, and his body glistens with sweat. And the reason he looks like that is because of you. You look at Wooyoung and see that he looks exactly the same, but the emotion in his eyes is more obvious than ever.

You want to crawl off his lap and cower in shame in the corner of the room so you don't have to look at all that tenderness and loveliness in his foxy eyes. You can handle his cheeky, flirtatious backside with ease, but this kind of Wooyoung is new territory for you.

"We… shit. This shouldn't have happened. This is the first rational thought to come out of your mouth all day. And you should have said it a lot sooner, before your two best friends made you cum twice with a squirting orgasm.

"Chagia, I think there's something we need to talk about, but first let's get you back to your normal self."

You don't argue; just nod and realize that San is absolutely right. You look like a complete mess, covered in saliva and lubricant. You can feel Wooyoung's cum seeping through the fabric of his pajama bottoms and drying on the inside of your thigh.

You look fucked.

"Yes, I think we have a lot to talk about."

It sounds terribly stupid, but what else can you say? Can we forget it? Or can we fuck again?

All your years of sexual longing for them have turned into a resounding slap in your face.

"Go take a bath, Peach, and we'll talk. San and I will take care of the rest."

For some reason, this sentence gave you a vague feeling of déjà vu. But you pushed the thought out of your head as quickly as it had come.

"Okay."

You finally slide off Wooyoung's lap, ignoring their stares at your almost naked body, there's no point in covering up or acting like a shy maiden, San's fingertips were rubbing your pussy just five minutes ago, bringing you to some kind of crazy orgasm, and the entire lower half of Woo's body is drenched in your secretions. If you've ever wanted to imagine how your friendship would turn out, this is it.

You trudge to the bathroom on your tired legs, pulling off your disgustingly wet thong on the way and throwing it on the floor. You turn on the light, turn on the tap and the whole room is immediately filled with the warm steam of hot water. Outside the door you can hear the muffled voices of the boys, who seem to be having some sort of heated argument, judging by San's irritated moaning and Wooyoung's loud whining.

You don't want to go into details; you still have time to destroy yourself. Your eyes catch sight of your reflection in the mirror. Tomorrow has come much earlier for you, if the fucked-up look on your face is any indication. Dishevelled hair, hickey marks, bruises and swollen lips from biting. What a beautiful morning after graduation!

"Wooyoung, you should have waited for me." San's voice is much louder now.

"As if I'm the only one who fucked her. Don't try to tell me it's all my fault."

You still don't want to join the conversation.

A pink, glistening puddle of something that smells like candy spreads across the bathtub. Thanks to Mingi, you have a whole collection of these colourful bombs. He's always had a soft spot for all things cute and charming, and he's taken every opportunity to spoil you to death with them.

With a tired sigh, you take another look at yourself in the mirror. So, Peach, are you ready for the consequences?

Turning away from your reflection, you lock the door with a click.

[blackbirdsblackberries]

AQUIRING A ZOO

Chapter 1: A Ruff Day for two

Damian is humiliated. Who wouldn't be? Joker had teamed up with a bunch of other villains and had stolen a magical device that turns people into animals - why? Damian doesn't know!

While fighting however he was split from the rest of the family and hit with the ray.

You want to guess what animal he got the luck of turning into?

If you guessed a Yorkshire Terrier then you'd be correct.

It's not that Damian doesn't like the animal, he adores all animals no matter what, it's just offensive that that's what he ended up being. Couldn't he have been something cooler? A Doberman? A German Shepherd?

Whatever... Either way he is now wondering the streets trying not to get picked up by strangers - or stepped on for that matter.

While lost in thought about how he will get back to normal and whether his family are okay he didn't see the pair of legs standing in front of a closed shop.

He bumps into them, as soon as he does he dashes back and starts to growl - it's really all he can do.

He looks up at the figure who looks more confused than anything, they have a phone in their hand and pajamas on. They look half asleep.

Damian quickly deducts that the person was harmless.

Honestly, Damian was ready to just leave, walk around this person, yet when he attempted to a loud bang filled the air.

He swears it was the dog instincts, that it wasn't his own instincts, that made him run behind the person.

He's Damian Wayne! An al Ghul for crying out loud! No way is he scared of an explosion, even if it was even louder as a dog.

The person reacts slowly, clearly extremely tired. They turn to look at Damian and after a couple seconds they speak up, pulling Damian from his fight or flight response.

"Poor puppy... Are you lost?" The person bends down and slowly and carefully pats Damian. Damian is tempted to bite the person's hand off but refrains in case they call the pound.

"your coat is so well taken care of... Not to mention the fact that you're a handbag dog. You must belong to one of the wealthy elites... That part of town is so far away from here though, poor thing" their voice is soft, clearly tired. They yawn slightly.

"it's pretty late right now so the pound is probably closed, I'll take you tomorrow to check for a microchip because I don't see a collar."

Damian wishes he could scoff as a dog. Why would this stranger help him? Especially the breed he is. They're noisy, skittish and more, definitely not the type for run down apartments that this person definitely lives in.

Yet, he doesn't bite or growl when they pick him up. He squirms slightly in discomfort but soon enough they hold him properly.

Fine. He'll stay the night then in the morning he'll make his way back to Wayne Manor and find his family.

You have decided that your luck is absolute shit. It has to be. You're pretty sure whatever god is watching is purposefully planning your demise.

First, your lover of three years cheats on you.

Second, you fail two of your exams and forgot to hand in an assignment.

Third, your favorite convenience store closed early so you couldn't buy a tub of cheap ice cream so you can act out how a person in a movie would react to all of the above.

Fourth, a dog stumbles into you, clearly from some wealthy douche and now you've spoken before you thought and moved before you could comprehend.

Your landlord is going to have your head. A great way to end the shit show of a day, not to mention Yorkshire Terrier's are the most yap filled dogs imaginable. Luckily this one is quiet... Hopefully for the rest of the night.

You look down at your phone in your other hand, you were messaging your dad to ask for more money because you were recently fired from your last job.

It's not like you like asking others for money, it's embarrassing, but your dad is well off enough to send some over.

You and your family are stable, something a lot of people in Gotham can't relate to. Sucks to be them you guess.

The only reason you're living alone is because they live in Metropolis and you were studying at Gotham University.

Was the degree worth living in this dump of a city? You sure hope so. If not you'll actually become a villain.

You glance at the dog from time to time, checking for any discomfort. The dog is still, eyes blinking occasionally. Was it in thought? You didn't think dogs would think like that.

Eventually you make it to your apartment complex, it was better than the one next to it, but to be fair the one next to it was abandoned after a fire.

You head upstairs to your apartment on the third floor.

Turns out the higher the apartment from the ground is, the higher it will cost. Luckily for you your mother is paying for it, you just pay utility bills.

You struggle with your keys and the dog in your arms. Eventually though you open the door and all but throw the dog down, he was super heavy.

That or you just weren't used to holding anything that breathes.

The dog walks in and sniffs around.

"I suppose I should name you.." You speak aloud, closing the front door of the apartment and walking to the kitchen right next to it.

"how about... Buddy?" The dog huffs.

"No? Okay uhm... What are dog names? Give me a second." You search up dog names and click on an article.

"Uh, Oreo?" A huff.

"Max?" A huff.

You continue going down the list before groaning.

"Fuck me... Forget it, I'll put on the TV and the first name I see will be your name."

You grab the remote and turn on your shitty old TV. The news pops up, one of the headlines reading:

Robin seen being hit with animal ray!

"huh... What about Robin?" The dog rolls it's eyes but doesn't seem to object. You smile, relieved.

"Good. Robin it is."

[chimcess]

⮞ Chapter Eight: SOL 320 Pairing: Jungkook x Reader Other Tags: Convict!Jungkook, Escaped Prisoner!Jungkook, Piolet!Reader, Captain!Reader, Holyman!Namjoon, Boss!Yoongi, Commander!Jimin, Astronaut!Jimin, Doctor!Hoseok, Astronaut!Hoseok Genre: Sci-Fi, Action, Adventure, Thriller, Suspense, Strangers to Enemies to ???, Slow Burn, LOTS of Angst, Light Fluff, Eventual Smut, Third Person POV, 18+ Only Word Count: 17.1k+ Summary: When a deep space transporter crash-lands on a barren planet illuminated by three relentless suns, survival becomes the only priority for the stranded passengers, including resourceful pilot Y/N Y/L/N, mystic Namjoon Kim, lawman Taemin Lee, and enigmatic convict Jungkook Jeon. As they scour the hostile terrain for supplies and a way to escape, Y/N uncovers a terrifying truth: every 22 years, the planet is plunged into total darkness during an eclipse, awakening swarms of ravenous, flesh-eating creatures. Forced into a fragile alliance, the survivors must face not only the deadly predators but also their own mistrust and secrets. For Y/N, the growing tension with Jungkook—both a threat and a reluctant ally—raises the stakes even higher, as the battle to escape becomes one for survival against the darkness both around them and within themselves. Warnings: Strong Language, Blood, Trauma, Smart Character Choices, This is all angst and action and that's pretty much it, Reader is a bad ass, Survivor Woman is back baby, terraforming, some mental health issues, survivor's guilt, lots of talking to herself, and recording it, because she'll lose her mind otherwise, fixing things, intergalatical politics, new characters, body image issues, scars, strong female characters are everywhere, cynical humor, bad science language, honestly all of this has probably had the worst science and basis ever, I researched a lot I promise, let me know if I missed anything... A/N: Will she make it or not?

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Inside the sealed cocoon of the Speculor, the rest of M6-117 faded to a low hum.

Y/N adjusted the volume dial on the rover’s console with a gloved hand, tuning the half-busted stereo with the care of someone who’d done this ritual a hundred times before. The speakers crackled, fought her for a second, then gave in. David Bowie’s “Starman” poured into the cabin—grainy, warbled around the edges, but intact. The first familiar notes stretched through the air like a warm thread pulling taut.

She leaned back in her seat and let the music fill the empty space around her. It wasn’t loud. Just enough to soften the edges.

Seven months.

That was how long it had been since the mission trajectory changed—since NOSA had quietly shifted from contingency to possibility, and finally, to planning. Seven months since she’d stopped thinking about dying here and started thinking—cautiously, carefully—about leaving.

Now it was close. The actual launch was days away, maybe less, and Y/N was almost too tired to process what that meant. She’d expected emotion, something big and cinematic, but mostly she just felt blank. Not numb. Just emptied out. Worn smooth by repetition.

In that time, she’d spoken with CAPCOM every day—lagged, distorted, half a minute behind real conversation. Still, it was something. The Starfire crew’s updates. Mateo’s cautious optimism. April’s careful questions, always logged, always transcribed. They’d become part of the routine. A strange kind of company.

Inside the Speculor, the air was dry and recycled, the temperature cranked just high enough to keep the frost at bay. Her gloved fingers twisted the volume knob on the console. Static at first, then the music settled into clarity: Starman, again. The same bootleg copy she’d looped more times than she could count. Bowie’s voice filled the cabin, staticky and familiar.

She let her head lean against the side panel for a moment, just listening. The song didn’t feel triumphant anymore—not like it had that first week after contact—but it still felt right. Like a rhythm she could breathe to. Something just hers.

Beyond the windshield, M6-117 spread out in all directions. A quiet, unforgiving ocean of red dust and fractured rock. Nothing moved except wind and memory. No birds, no trees, no clouds. Just light—too much of it—poured from twin suns that hovered low on the horizon like sullen watchmen. The shadows they cast were long and doubled, stretching at awkward angles.

The land looked ancient. Like it had been waiting a long time to be seen.

The Speculor groaned under her as it crawled up a slope she knew by heart. She’d rerouted this leg of the journey after last week’s storm took out the northern ridge. Her notes were accurate. They always were now. She didn’t have room for error.

The rover’s suspension—rigged together with leftover couplings and patched metal—complained as it dipped into a shallow trough. She adjusted the throttle gently. The vibrations traveled through the seat and into her spine.

“There’s a starman… waiting in the sky…”

She didn’t sing along. Her throat was cracked from the dry air, and her voice didn’t sound like her own anymore. But she tapped her fingers against the throttle in time with the chorus.

Some things became ritual. The song. The route. The moment right before she checked the nav screen, pretending she didn’t already know what it would say.

Battery: nominal. O2: green. Power margins: close, but acceptable.

Everything holding, for now.

The route she followed traced along the eastern lip of Sundermere Basin, skirting the high plateau where thermal anomalies had been pinging weak but persistent signals. She’d flagged it a week ago. Maybe residual power from a buried unit. Maybe nothing. But “maybe” was enough to justify the trip. Any task was better than sitting still, waiting for time to pass.

Because the truth was, after seven months, she’d gotten very good at surviving.

She’d fixed the antenna four times. Rebuilt the filtration unit twice. Repaired the rover’s lateral drive with nothing but a welding arc, spare bolts, and one of her own belt loops. She’d catalogued every sample she could reach. Updated the entire geological substrate map for the quadrant. Even completed two of Oslo’s abandoned mineral tests, down to the data formatting.

She’d done it all mostly to keep her mind from slipping.

Being alone hadn’t turned out to be the worst part. Not exactly. It was quieter than she’d feared, but not in the way people imagined. Not peaceful. There were no clean silences, no meditative stillness. It was crowded in its own way—crowded with memories, with thoughts that looped and snagged and repeated themselves until they lost shape. Some nights, lying on her bunk in the Hab, she’d listen to the wind battering against the canvas wall and pretend it wasn’t real. Pretend she was back in the deep quiet of space, where nothing moved unless you told it to.

She hadn’t cried in months. Not because she didn’t want to. Because crying felt indulgent, like something you did when there was room for it. And she didn’t have that luxury. There was always something to fix, something to check, something to prepare. Emotion was a liability. She couldn’t afford to dissolve—not when she had to be ready to get off this rock the moment the window opened.

And now, finally, they were close.

Close enough that NOSA had started using language she hadn’t heard in over a year—terms like maneuver window and vector drift allowance showing up again in the reports. The tone of the transmissions had shifted, too. Koah’s voice had taken on a subtle urgency. He sounded focused. And hopeful.

That part scared her more than anything.

The rover crested the rise with a long, slow groan. She tightened her grip on the controls, steadying the frame as dust curled up from the tires and blurred the windows. Beyond the glass, a new stretch of Martian terrain unfolded—deep ochre and rusted red, horizon layered with jagged ridgelines that looked like broken bones under the hard light of the twin suns. Shadows stretched in every direction, stark and sharp-edged.

She didn’t speak. Not yet.

In her mind, she’d pictured rescue countless times. She’d let herself imagine the roar of thrusters, a hull breaking through atmosphere like a second sunrise, the sound of someone—anyone—saying her name over comms. Something cinematic. Big. Emotional. Deserved.

Instead, it had come in pieces. Quiet, unremarkable pieces. Data packets. Checklist confirmations. Engineering logs buried in jargon. 

And now she was preparing to launch herself into orbit in a vessel that was never meant for a second use. A stripped-down ascent vehicle rebuilt out of scavenged parts and crossed fingers. One shot. That was it. The math didn’t leave room for mistakes. If she missed the intercept by even a second—or came in too hot, or caught the wrong wind shear—it was over. They wouldn’t be able to course correct. She’d drift, and Starfire would keep moving, and it would be no one’s fault.

She could hear that knowledge in the way Koah paused at the end of every transmission. In the way Mateo no longer filled the gaps with empty reassurances.

They knew.

But she also knew this: if it failed—if she didn’t make it—they’d still try to bring her home. She believed that. Her body, her suit, the black box of sensor data she’d logged with religious devotion. They wouldn’t leave her here to vanish under the sand. They’d find a way to retrieve her, even if it took years.

There was something oddly calming about that.

She reached for her water tube and took a long sip, swallowing slowly as her eyes drifted to the sky through the rover’s sloped windshield. The upper atmosphere shimmered faintly, copper-hued and blinding at the edges. Too bright to be beautiful. Too dry to feel real. There was something about it that always looked fake to her—like a badly rendered simulation of sky instead of the real thing.

Somewhere above that sky, Starfire was moving into position.

Somewhere, someone she hadn’t touched in over a year was punching burn times into a nav system and checking the margin for intercept.

She tapped the screen to bring up her next waypoint. A new line of coordinates blinked back at her, hovering like a challenge. This stretch would take her closer to the MAV site. She knew the route by now—every rock, every soft patch of sand that could tangle a wheel or throw her off-course. It wasn’t a road. It wasn’t even a path. Just something she’d made up as she went.

Outside, a dust devil spun briefly to life, danced across the basin, then collapsed into stillness.

She watched it for a long moment, then blinked and let her breath go slow.

“Almost over,” she said. Not a wish. Not a hope. Just a fact.

She adjusted the throttle, checked her oxygen levels, and logged the next coordinates.

And then she drove on, toward the place where everything would either begin again—or end clean.

Far above the scorched horizon of M6-117, past the reach of its sulfur-tinged winds and the shifting red haze that rolled endlessly across its broken terrain, the Iris-2 probe slipped free from its booster with a silence only space could provide.

There was no flare, no echo. Just the faint tremor of separation—a soft pulse through the clamps, a subtle release of inertia. One moment the booster held it; the next, it was drifting on its own, untethered, alive with purpose.

It had taken seven months to reach this moment. Seven months since Y/N’s first garbled transmission managed to claw its way out of the storm-battered surface and into NOSA’s deep-space relay. Seven months of restructured flight plans, emergency committee briefings, late-night simulations, and orbital trajectory scrubs. Seven months of wondering if they were already too late.

But now—now it was real.

Koah Nguyen leaned in over the Starfire’s flight deck interface, his back rigid, shoulders braced like a sprinter in the blocks. The booster telemetry had already zeroed. Now it was just Iris—free, exposed, and on approach. The margin for error was thin. Technically, the docking could’ve been automated. But Koah didn’t trust automation when the numbers were this tight, and when the payload was carrying a woman who hadn’t heard another voice in nearly a year.

His fingers hovered above the haptic interface. Every subtle shift of thruster power, every microdegree of drift correction—it was all on him now.

“Velocity differential .0025,” came Cruz’s voice through comms. “Approach vector within limit.”

“Still too fast,” Koah murmured, mostly to himself.

He nudged the left lateral thruster with a feather-light tap, correcting the probe’s arc. A flick of a button dampened yaw drift. The image feed from the hull camera refreshed, showing Iris-2 gliding in slow, steady increments—like a needle threading an invisible eye.

Behind him, Commander Jimin Park stood at a respectful distance, arms crossed, a silent sentinel. He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. This was Koah’s op. But he was there, steady as gravity, watching the same numbers tick past. Ready, if needed.

Inside the airlock prep chamber, silence reigned. No chatter. No alarm bells. Just the deep, consistent hum of ship systems and the soft tap of Koah’s inputs.

“Switching to visual,” Koah said. He pulled the camera feed into full resolution, bringing Iris-2 into clearer focus.

The probe was sleek and small, more skeletal than anything designed for people. Its primary hull shimmered under the binary light of the two suns, panels catching the harsh white-blue glare in sharp angles. It was close now. Too close for hesitation.

Koah swallowed. “Clamp arms deployed.”

Onscreen, the Starfire’s docking arms extended like the limbs of some patient, mechanical insect—open, waiting.

“Approach… good,” Cruz said, breath tight. “Hold your line.”

Koah’s eyes flicked to the distance meter. Ten meters. Seven.

His voice dropped. “Five… three… steady…”

Then, softly: a clack. Followed by a second, heavier thunk as the magnetic locks triggered and the alignment ports sealed.

A tiny green light blinked alive on the deck screen. Docking complete.

For a beat, Koah didn’t move. He stared at the light, at the clean diagnostics flickering to confirm: pressure seals holding. Hull connection stable. No deviation in thermal equilibrium.

Then, finally, he exhaled—and leaned back, dragging a hand across his face.

“…Alright,” he said, voice low but calm. “We’re on.”

Jimin let out a quiet breath of relief, his lips twitching into the first real smile Koah had seen from him all day.

“That was smooth,” he said. “Stupid smooth.”

Koah allowed himself a small smile. “If it wasn’t, I’d never live it down. Not with Bao watching.”

Jimin chuckled. “No pressure.”

Koah didn’t respond right away. He was already leaning into his terminal, posture tight with focus as his eyes moved steadily across the rows of readouts. Internal diagnostics were holding—so far. Docking pressure looked clean. Hull temperatures stable. Battery output nominal.

The Iris-2 probe was more than a delivery system. It was a lifeline. It carried compressed rations—enough for a six-week extension if she rationed aggressively. Oxygen scrubber refills, thermal patch kits, reentry stabilizers for the MAV, a replacement navcore chip for the flight interface. Things no human should’ve had to live without this long.

And buried in the center supply bay, packed deliberately between a vacuum-sealed cluster of electrolyte gel tubes and a bag of freeze-dried vegetables labeled "PASTA—MAYBE" in Val’s handwriting, was something smaller. A note. Handwritten. Folded and secured with a strip of recycled polymer tape.

Koah hadn’t asked what it said.

He hadn’t wanted to know.

It wasn’t cowardice. Not exactly. More like self-preservation. Valencia Cruz had been the most unwavering presence in his life outside of this ship—and one of the most unpredictable. They’d worked together for four years now. Long missions. Endless briefings. Inside jokes and midnight coffee rants and more engineering arguments than he could count.

For most of that time, she’d been engaged to a man who’d never set foot in orbit. That ended months ago. Quietly. Without explanation. And he hadn’t asked. Not because he didn’t want to know. But because when it came to Val, timing was everything—and pushing was how you got shut out. When she was ready, she’d tell him.

And maybe—if they were lucky—he could open her letter in front of her and see what happened next.

“Telemetry check in ninety seconds,” Koah said, eyes flicking to the countdown icon in the corner of the screen. His voice was steady again, pulled back into rhythm.

Jimin was already there. He shifted slightly at his own station, fingers dancing across a field of translucent data. Orbital maps, storm models, launch windows—each one another layer of the puzzle.

“Sundermere’s heating up faster than expected,” he said, not looking away from the screen. “Atmospheric shear’s rising. We’ll be inside the corridor for twenty minutes. Maybe less.”

Koah gave a small nod. “She has to be ready to launch the second we clear.”

Jimin paused. Then said it like it didn’t need to be said. “She will be.”

Koah didn’t answer. Not with words. His gaze moved to the monitor again—one of the external cams feeding a constant image of the probe, now firmly docked beneath the Starfire’s main cargo cradle. It looked small compared to the bulk of the ship. Delicate. Temporary. But there was power in it. And purpose.

And inside, packed with quiet care, was everything that might keep one woman alive long enough to come home.

He tapped through the flight logic menus, making sure the data packets were queued correctly. Command chains, safety interrupts, hardware checks.

They were ready.

She would be ready.

The MAV on the surface had only ever been designed for one ascent. A precise launch, a short burn, and a controlled interception at low orbit. What they were asking it to do now—what Y/N was being asked to pull off with half a crew’s worth of gear, an aging suit, and the worst terrain in NOSA’s catalog—was borderline absurd.

And yet.

She hadn’t quit. Not once. Not in the footage. Not in the comm logs. Not in the whispered scraps of signal that crawled through the storms.

She was still there. Still building. Still thinking five steps ahead. Still surviving.

Koah leaned forward again, hands steady as he keyed in the final approach command.

Inside Airlock 3, the world was stripped down to essentials—light, metal, breath.

Hoseok floated just off the deck, his boots loosely hooked into the restraints, waist tether coiled at his side. The overhead lights cast a hard gleam across his visor, blurring his reflection into a ghost hovering behind the HUD readouts. His EVA suit was snug but familiar, worn in all the right places, and silent now but for the low hiss of life support in his ears.

Just ahead of him, suspended in the docking corridor, the Iris-2 probe waited—sleek, burnished, and utterly still. It hovered inches from the port like it belonged there, though everyone on the ship knew better. This part wasn’t automated. This part relied on human hands.

He exhaled through his nose, steady and slow, eyes narrowing on the alignment grid overlaying his screen. No error margin. No wobble. No alarm tones. A clean approach.

“Five degrees counterclockwise,” Cruz said in his ear. Her voice was flat and even, but Hoseok had worked with her long enough to hear the strain buried under the calm. Not fear—focus. Like she was holding her breath through her teeth.

“Copy,” he replied, reaching for the guide arm. His gloved fingers curled around the control joint with practiced ease.

The movement was subtle. Delicate. A feather’s weight of torque to rotate the probe just a hair to the left. The probe responded with elegant grace, drifting that final fraction into perfect alignment.

A small vent of nitrogen hissed from the attitude jets—barely audible, barely visible—but it was enough.

In the observation alcove just beyond the airlock, Cruz leaned forward against the glass. She didn’t speak. Her fingertips tapped out an unconscious rhythm against the edge of the display—counting maybe, or praying. Her eyes were locked on the seal point. Her other hand clenched tight around the metal railing in front of her, as though she could muscle the docking into place just by willing it.

They all knew what was riding on this. Iris-2 wasn’t just carrying spare parts and food pouches. It held the only atmospheric sweep array that could scan Sundermere before the stormfront made landfall. If it missed, if they lost sync, the window closed—and so did their shot at recovering Y/N.

Outside, the planet rolled beneath them. M6-117, red and raw, broken by tectonics and stripped bare by wind. The storm was visible from this altitude now—like a bruise spreading across the horizon.

Hoseok leaned into his final adjustment. His wrist flicked, just slightly. Then—

Click.

The probe settled into the collar. The magnetic latches extended from the Starfire’s hull, reached out like fingers, and grabbed hold.

A deeper thud followed—one that vibrated faintly through Hoseok’s suit.

Seal engaged.

Green lights blinked across his HUD in rapid sequence: docking clamps secured, pressure gradient stabilized, power sync initialized.

Still floating, still tethered, Hoseok stayed perfectly still and let the final status pass.

“All green,” he said, voice low. Measured. “We’re locked in.”

For a beat, there was nothing.

Then Val let out a breath like she’d been holding it for hours. Her hand slid from the railing, her shoulders dropping as tension drained out of her in one long wave.

“Thank God,” she whispered. “Nice work, Hobi.”

His mouth twitched in the closest thing to a smile the helmet cam could pick up. “You were a great audience.”

“I was trying not to pass out.”

“Appreciated.”

From down the corridor, someone whistled—a short, sharp note that turned into a wave of claps and shoulder pats from the nearby crew. No whooping. No shouting. Just the kind of shared relief that came from people too tired to celebrate but too proud not to show it.

Even Koah, the most seasoned engineer, let himself breathe.

Val wiped her forehead with the sleeve of her jumpsuit. “We’re officially online. I’ll initiate payload unlock.”

“On your signal,” Hoseok said, already unfastening the tether and reaching for the interior bulkhead grips.

A voice crackled in over comms. Koah, dry and efficient, but with a faint lift at the edge of it.

“Good seal. Get the diagnostics rolling. We’re up against Sundermere’s last pass in six hours. That sweep data needs to be live before then.”

“Understood,” Val answered. “We’re already on it.”

The pressure in the room eased, just a fraction. The tension didn’t vanish—it never did—but it reshaped itself into forward momentum. They had the probe. They had time, if only barely. Now it was just a matter of moving fast enough to make it count.

Hoseok floated back from the hatch and turned his head just enough to see the curve of the planet out the small viewport behind him.

It didn’t look like a place anyone could survive.

But Y/N was still down there, somewhere in that rusted wasteland, defying every expectation.

The suns of M6-117 hung low in the bleached-orange sky, casting long, rust-colored shadows across the desert. The planet didn’t just look lifeless—it felt it. Wind tore across the endless dunes in soundless sheets, carrying with it a fine red dust that settled into every crack, every crevice. It was a world built from silence and scorched stone, unforgiving and unchanging.

But she had changed.

Y/N sat cross-legged on the floor of what was once the main operations hub—now little more than a cracked shell stitched together with thermal blankets, sealant foam, and salvaged wiring. The walls creaked under the strain of too many pressure shifts. Sunlight leaked through patched seams, casting jagged lines of gold across the dust-caked floor. Inside, the air was dry, metallic, and heavy with the scent of old wiring and recycled oxygen.

She adjusted the angle of the camera, then sat back, letting it focus. Her face filled the frame: leaner than it used to be, the softness worn away by hunger, exposure, and time. Her eyes were sharp now—not hard exactly, but watchful. Alert in a way that came from sleeping with one ear open and always knowing how many hours of oxygen she had left. Her hair was wild, hanging in uneven waves to her collarbone, tangled in places where she’d given up trying to tame it.

The corners of her lips twitched up into a crooked smile. “So,” she said, her voice scratchy from days of silence but steady, “I’ve been thinking about space law. You ever hear of the Treaty of New Hope?”

She let the question hang for a moment. Outside, the wind howled against the Hab’s patched outer shell.

“It’s this old international agreement—was supposed to prevent exactly the kind of thing I’m about to do. Basically, no planet or government can lay claim to any celestial body beyond its own solar system unless they’ve got approval from a special council. Sounds bureaucratic as hell, right?” She reached over, picked up a wrench, then set it down with a quiet clink on the table beside her. “And yet, here we are.”

She gestured loosely around the space. “M6-117? Technically, it's unclaimed. That makes it... international waters. A lawless sandbox floating in the middle of nowhere.”

The camera feed jumped to an exterior shot. Her two speculors stood side by side, their once-pristine frames warped and beaten. Speculor One bore the scorched wreckage of Prometheus’s stabilizer fin bolted onto its chassis like some kind of makeshift figurehead. Speculor Two had been transformed into a mobile life-support depot—tubes, solar panels, and crates of salvaged supplies lashed down with webbing, its interior barely holding together.

It looked more like a junkyard on treads than a research vehicle. But it moved. And in a place like this, movement meant survival.

Y/N leaned in closer to the lens. “Technically, NOSA still owns the Hab. Aguerra Prime funds it, insures it, claims jurisdiction over it. But the moment I walk out that airlock?” She pointed over her shoulder. “I’m in the wild. No flag, no oversight. Just me, a couple of Frankensteined rovers, and a whole lot of empty red sand.”

She exhaled slowly, looking off-camera for a moment before glancing back. “And that brings me to today’s little project.”

Her expression shifted—something between excitement and resolve. “There’s a Helion Nexus lander at the edge of Sundermere Basin. It was part of a failed recon drop a few years back. Long story short: it’s still out there. Mostly intact. And I’m going to take it.”

She said it plainly.

“Not borrow it. Not radio in for authorization. I’m going to walk up to it, override the lockout codes, and take control. And technically... that makes me a pirate.”

There was a beat of silence after she said it. The word just hung there, lingering in the dry air of the Hab like a joke no one had laughed at yet.

Pirate.

It sounded ridiculous. Out of place. Like something out of an old holo-serial—leather jackets, glowing blades, dramatic standoffs on the hull of a freighter. She almost laughed at how far from that image she really was.

She exhaled through her nose and let the smallest smile tug at the corner of her mouth. “I always thought space pirates had flashy ships, called each other by code names, maybe carried sidearms they didn’t know how to use,” she muttered, her voice quiet, worn at the edges. “Turns out, all you really need is a wrench, a patched-up suit, and no one left to stop you.”

The Hab groaned as if in reply, the metal frame straining under the pressure difference outside. A gust of wind smacked the outer wall with a dull, thudding resonance. Something metal—a panel, maybe a loose strut—clattered loose in the corridor behind her. It struck the floor with a single, hollow bang and then went still.

She didn’t even blink. Not anymore.

“Y/N Y/L/N,” she said quietly, almost like she was testing the sound of it. “Space pirate.”

Her voice wasn’t proud, not really. There was no grandeur in it—just tired honesty. The title fit, in its own twisted way. No one had granted her authority. No one was watching. Whatever rules had once existed out here had dissolved the moment the resupply missions stopped.

She stared past the camera lens, her gaze drifting toward nothing in particular. Maybe out the small port window, maybe into memory. The expression on her face changed—just slightly. A softening around the mouth, a release of the tension in her brow. The guard she wore like armor seemed to ease, just for a moment.

It had been a long time since she’d let herself feel anything.

She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d smiled like this—really smiled. Maybe it was back when the comms were still up and she’d trade messages with Earth. Maybe it was before the storm fried the signal tower and left her to rebuild the antenna with parts scavenged from broken rovers. Or maybe it was even earlier—before she started counting the days not by dates, but by how many liters of filtered water she had left, how many oxygen canisters she had to seal by hand.

Back then, there had been routines. Schedules. Hope.

Now? Now there was just this strange quiet. And the freedom that came with having absolutely nothing left to lose.

She let out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh, wasn’t quite a sigh. “Honestly,” she said, more to herself than to the camera, “it’s better than a Nobel.”

It was a joke, sort of. She’d once dreamed of those things—awards, recognition, her name in journals and press conferences and history books. It had all felt so important. Necessary. Now, it seemed absurd. What was a prize compared to surviving six months alone on a planet no one was coming back to?

She leaned back slowly, her shoulders brushing against the cold metal of the Hab’s rear wall. Her eyes drifted around the space—at the tangled wires stuffed into ceiling panels, at the insulation duct-taped to the window seams, at the corner where the water recycler had leaked for three days before she managed to reroute the flow with plastic tubing and sheer guesswork.

The Hab looked like hell. Worn down. Held together by nothing more than willpower and the leftover scraps of a better plan. But somehow... it had become hers. A shelter. A prison. A home.

And as ridiculous as it was, she felt a twinge of sadness settle in her chest at the thought of leaving it behind.

Not enough to stop her, of course. She had somewhere to be. Something to take. But still—she hadn’t expected to feel anything when she finally walked away.

She closed her eyes for a moment, listening to the soft whine of the fans, the hum of the power cells she’d rebuilt twice now. The Hab breathed like something alive. Flawed. Fragile. Just like her.

When she opened her eyes again, her voice was quieter. “Guess I’m gonna miss this place after all.”

Then she stood, grabbed her helmet, and reached for the hatch controls.

The airlock hissed.

And just like that, the pirate stepped into the desert.

The last day in the Hab didn’t feel like a goodbye. Not at first.

It felt... disjointed. Like she was moving through someone else’s memory. The edges of things were too sharp. The air too still. Everything was quiet in the way things are just before they disappear. Y/N moved slowly through the cramped living quarters, half-expecting someone else to emerge from behind one of the bulkheads. But of course, there was no one. There hadn’t been anyone in a long time.

She sat on the edge of her bunk, knees drawn up, one foot resting on the makeshift water crate she’d repurposed as a stool. The cold metal handle of her razor pressed against her palm as she tilted the blade, dragging it carefully along her calf. The skin prickled in protest. The act was mundane, almost absurd. Shaving. On her last day. On a dead planet. She hadn’t touched the razor in weeks. Months, maybe. There hadn’t been a point. But today, somehow, there was.

It wasn’t about vanity. There was no one here to notice if she was clean-shaven or covered in patchy stubble. She wasn’t doing it for an audience. She wasn’t doing it for NASA, or NOSA, or anyone watching from Aguerra Prime. She wasn’t even sure the cameras still worked. This was for her.

It was the movement, the familiarity. The echo of Earth routines. A way of reminding her body that she was still human. That she still existed in a way that wasn’t only about surviving.

The razor made soft, whispering strokes along her thigh, and she worked in silence, methodically. She checked her arms next, running her fingers over the fine hairs that had gone unnoticed for too long. The action was precise, mechanical. Muscle memory from a world that felt galaxies away. The kind of world with mirrors, and warm running water, and idle mornings where grooming was just a part of the day—not an act of defiance against desolation.

When she was done, she rinsed the razor in a shallow tin of recycled water and set it down with care on the tiny metal shelf beside the sink. Her fingers lingered on it for a moment longer than necessary, like it might vanish if she looked away.

She moved on.

The Hab was barely holding together, but she still walked its length like a steward. Every corner bore the marks of her time here—scorch marks from the battery incident, a tear in the flooring she’d sealed with epoxy and hope, the scratched notes she’d carved into the bulkhead with a screwdriver when the pen ink dried up. She paused at the stack of crates where she’d stored what remained of her research—dozens of boxes sealed in vacuum wrap, carefully labeled in her blocky handwriting.

Some labels were purely scientific. “Regolith Core B12.” “Atmospheric Trace: Western Quadrant.” Others bore the weight of her humor, dry and necessary. One in particular made her huff a quiet laugh through her nose: "Das Soil Samples."

She shook her head. God, that’s stupid. But it had kept her sane on nights when the storm screamed outside, and the Hab felt like it might fold in on itself. It had been just her and the sound of the wind, and her own voice narrating nonsense to the camera because silence had become unbearable.

Each box she packed felt like tucking away a piece of her life. Data. Debris. Documentation. It wasn’t just science—it was evidence she had been here. That this had all happened. That she hadn’t imagined it.

By the time the final crate clicked into place, a strange calm had settled in her chest. Not relief. Not even closure. Just... quiet acceptance.

She suited up with practiced efficiency. The MAV suit was stiff, but familiar. She knew the feel of every joint, every seal. As she clicked her gloves into place, she glanced around the Hab one last time. The lights flickered as she powered down the systems one by one. Air filtration. Oxygen cycling. Communications—already long dead. She hesitated at the heaters, watching the indicator lights blink out like stars snuffed from a night sky.

And then the lights dimmed for good. The whir of machinery faded into silence.

The Hab was still.

She stood in the airlock for a long while before cycling it open. The suit insulated her from the raw bite of the planet’s thin atmosphere, but she still felt the temperature drop. The sun hung low on the horizon, casting long shadows across the red, cracked terrain. The dust stirred under her boots as she stepped out. The wind was nothing more than a whisper here, but it carried weight—a dry breath from a planet that had been waiting four and a half billion years for someone to hear it.

She turned once, looking back at the Hab—its patched panels, its makeshift antenna straining upward.

“Thanks for keeping me alive,” she murmured, her voice muffled inside the helmet.

She made her way across the stretch of dust toward the speculors. Speculor 2 sat half-buried in windblown grit, holding the last of the rations and samples. She secured the final crate with practiced hands. Among the bland, utility labels, one box caught her eye: "Goodbye, M6." Just black marker on a storage lid, but it hit harder than it should have.

She lingered over it. Let it settle. Then climbed into Speculor 1 and powered up the system.

The familiar hum vibrated through her boots. The engine engaged with a low, steady growl, and the treads rolled forward, carving a new path through the empty landscape. She didn’t look back.

She didn’t have to.

The Hab was done. It had been her shelter, her cage, her sanctuary. But it wasn’t hers anymore. Now, it belonged to the silence again.

The terrain ahead was endless. Red and cracked and ancient. As the vehicle crawled across the dust, Y/N watched the ground roll past beneath her, and for the first time in months, she felt something like purpose return.

She stopped the speculor near a shallow rise and stepped out. Her boots pressed into the soil, leaving fresh imprints where no human had ever stood.

She looked down at her feet. “Step outside the speculor?” she said, the words dry in her throat. “First girl to be here.”

The hill was steep, but she climbed it anyway. The suit resisted her movements, each step a deliberate struggle, but it was worth it. At the summit, she paused and looked back.

Nothing. Just dust and sky.

“Climb that hill?” she whispered. “First girl to do that, too.”

The loneliness hit her harder up here, maybe because the view was so vast. It swallowed her. The wind blew gently against her helmet, like the planet was breathing around her. She rested one gloved hand against a jagged rock and stood still for a long while.

Above her, the smaller sun hung low—soft and bluish, casting a pale glow over the land. She’d named it “Bubble.” It reminded her of Earth somehow. Fragile. Distant. Constant. It was always there, tracking her through the days and nights like a silent guardian.

She stared at it for a while, letting the strange comfort of its light settle over her.

“I’m the first person to be alone on an entire planet,” she thought. The words felt like they belonged in a history book. But they were just hers.

No crowds. No cameras. Just the sound of her own breath, the press of the suit, and the impossible stretch of a world that had never known life.

She was the first. And she was alone.

The speculor’s solar panels were out, angled toward the faint sun, drinking in what little energy Hexundecia had to offer. The motors had gone quiet, the systems at rest, the caravan still and grounded for the next recharge cycle. Out here, time didn’t pass with the urgency of a ticking clock—it stretched and drifted, wide and open like the desert around her.

Y/N sat a few meters from the vehicle, suited up and leaned against a slab of fractured basalt that jutted from the earth like a half-buried monument. Her knees were drawn up loosely, arms resting on them, hands relaxed. The pressurized joints of her suit creaked softly when she moved, but for the most part, she didn’t. She simply sat there, head tilted back, eyes closed behind her visor.

The sounds were minimal. The low hiss of her rebreather. The occasional chirp from her suit’s diagnostics. Farther off, the gentle ticking of the speculor’s cooling systems. It was white noise to her now—background ambience that had faded into familiarity. What she focused on wasn’t sound at all, but presence.

The planet stretched in every direction, its reddish soil and dust-coated rock formations glowing faintly under the soft light of the smaller sun she’d dubbed Bubble. The sun’s blue-tinged glow bled across the ridgelines, casting long shadows that shifted almost imperceptibly as the hours passed. It was beautiful, in a way that didn't care whether anyone saw it or not.

She inhaled, slowly, deliberately. The oxygen from her suit system was clean, filtered, cool against her throat. It wasn’t fresh—nothing here was—but it was breathable. Reliable. She’d come to appreciate that more than she ever had back home. You learn not to take air for granted when it’s something you have to ration.

There were no thoughts of mission logs or data packets or next-stage objectives just now. No status checks. No timelines. Just her. Her, the suit, and the silent gravity of a world that had never known the touch of human life until her boots cracked the crust.

This planet wasn’t lifeless. Not really. It breathed in its own way—slowly, deeply. It had its own rhythms: the rise and fall of light, the cycle of wind carving its signature across stone, the whisper of ancient minerals shifting beneath the surface. It had been here long before she arrived. It would be here long after she was gone.

And yet, for this moment, it was hers.

She opened her eyes, and the horizon blurred in heat shimmer. There was a strange peace in knowing how small she really was. Not irrelevant—just tiny, and in the best possible way. There was no audience here. No live feed. No applause. Just the quiet realization that this... this was what exploration really looked like. Not flag-planting or dramatic speeches. Just being here. Alive. Observing. Bearing witness.

She let her helmet rest back against the rock behind her and murmured, more to the suit than herself, “Still beats the office.”

The sun shifted a fraction, casting a new shape across the dust. Y/N sat in silence, absorbing it all. This was the kind of stillness you only found when the nearest person was 40 million kilometers away.

The speculor rattled gently as it picked its way along the ragged rim of Marth Crater. Even with its stabilized suspension, every jagged rock and uneven slope sent a tremble through the metal frame. Inside, Y/N sat with her boots planted and hands on the console, watching the terrain roll by. The sun had dipped lower now, painting everything in muted tones of burnt sienna and faded rust.

The landscape was a frozen sea of iron-rich dunes, crumbling cliffs, and wind-shaped ridges. To anyone else, it might’ve looked like a wasteland. To her, it was a kind of poetry—brutal, ancient, and honest.

The lights in Mission Control were dimmed to reduce eye strain, but the room still hummed with quiet focus. A soft, bluish glow came from the wall of screens lining the front of the command floor, each of them tracking some fragment of a much bigger picture—system vitals, solar intake graphs, environmental stats, satellite relays. But the one April watched most closely was centered on a single blinking dot, creeping steadily across the digital topography of M6-117.

She leaned in closer, forearms resting on the edge of her console, her eyes narrowed behind the thin-framed glasses perched on her nose. The arc of telemetry traced the slow, deliberate curve of Y/N’s path around Marth Crater. One rover. One person. A single line of movement on a planet that had otherwise never known life.

It was a small signal on a massive canvas, but it was moving. That was enough.

April’s fingers moved across the touchscreen with practiced precision. She pulled up the diagnostics feed and ran a quick check—battery health, suit vitals, cabin pressure. No red flags. No anomalies. Everything looked clean.

So far.

Beside her, Mateo stood with a half-empty mug of coffee in one hand and the other shoved into the pocket of his jacket. He hadn't taken a sip in at least fifteen minutes. The drink had gone tepid a long time ago, but he kept holding it like he might remember to drink it eventually.

His eyes flicked toward April’s screen. “How’s she doing?”

“Still on schedule,” April said without looking away. “She shut down at eleven-hundred local, angled the solar arrays by about twenty-two degrees. Charging’s underway now.”

Mateo tilted his head. “Vitals?”

“She’s stable. Oxygen levels are good. Hydration’s down a little, but within threshold. Pulse is resting at seventy-nine.” She glanced at the biometric overlay, frowning slightly at the uptick in cortisol, then dismissed it. “No spikes. Nothing that says she’s in distress.”

He nodded slowly. “Holding it together.”

April finally leaned back, stretching her shoulders with a soft crack of tension, then gave a dry little smile. “She sent a message this morning. Said she wants us to start addressing her as Captain Blondebeard.”

Mateo blinked. “Wait—what?”

“She said since M6-117 isn’t under any planetary jurisdiction, it technically counts as international waters,” April said, arching an eyebrow. “She’s invoking salvage law. Claimed if she makes it to the Nexus site and gets the lander operational, it counts as a lawful prize.”

Mateo stared at her for a second, then huffed a short laugh. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I’m not,” she said, already pulling up the message thread. “‘Henceforth,’” she read aloud with mock seriousness, “‘I am to be recognized in all official comms as Captain Blondebeard of the Free Hexundecian Territory. Long live the Republic.’”

He gave a low whistle, the kind that said that’s insane, but I get it. “That woman has officially been out there too long.”

“She’s coping,” April said, quieter now. “Making jokes, building little myths around herself. It’s how she keeps her head straight. I’d be more worried if she wasn’t doing that.”

Mateo sipped his coffee and grimaced. “Cold,” he muttered, then gestured toward her screen. “Solar efficiency?”

“Still solid. Panels are at full capacity. We might see a dip after nightfall, but she has a reserve buffer if things slow down.” She flicked through the energy graph, tracking the intake curve. “She’s pacing herself. Four-hour drives, long recharge windows. It’s working.”

He nodded again, tapping his thumbnail against the side of the mug. “She’s about halfway to Nexus Five, right?”

“Just past the midpoint now,” April said. “Three clicks out from the rough terrain at the edge of the basin.”

Mateo leaned forward slightly, squinting at the updated satellite overlay. The crater’s rim was jagged, uneven—sections of it scattered with sharp ridges and loose shale deposits. The kind of terrain that could break an axle if you weren’t careful. “That’s going to be a tight run.”

“She knows,” April said, her voice steady. “She’s seen the topographic scans. She’ll take her time.”

Mateo exhaled, slow. “Still,” he said, more to himself than her, “she’s out there. Just... one person. Alone.”

“Alone,” April repeated, a bit softer now. The word felt heavy every time they said it.

They both watched the blinking signal for a moment. It moved at the slow, deliberate pace of someone with nowhere else to be—and all the time in the universe to get there.

“She’s going to be fine,” April said at last.

Mateo didn’t answer. Not because he disagreed, but because there wasn’t anything more to say.

They just stood there, side by side in the dim light of the command center, watching that little dot crawl its way across an alien world—quietly willing it forward.

Out on M6-117, the speculor crept forward, one cautious meter at a time.

Y/N sat at the helm, her gloved fingers hovering just above the control panel, ready to correct if the suspension caught on something unexpected. The terrain ahead was uneven—loose shale sloping downward into a shallow depression, just steep enough to be unnerving. Beyond it, a low ridge cut across the horizon like the edge of a broken plate, and she couldn’t see what waited on the other side.

She leaned in slightly, squinting through the viewport. The external cameras confirmed what her gut already told her: unstable ground. Could be a minor inconvenience, or it could be the kind of problem that ended her progress for good.

Still, she pressed on.

Not recklessly. Not out of impatience. Just... forward.

There was no deadline here. No finish line. No one waiting at the other end with banners or applause. But each meter gained was one more mark on a world no one had ever touched. The simple act of moving through it felt important. Not just survival. Something deeper.

She adjusted the throttle slightly and the speculor responded with a low hum, its wheels biting into the dust with steady determination.

Out the side viewport, the solar panels caught a glint of Bubble’s soft light—the smaller of the two suns that loomed over this planet like a pale sentinel. It was low in the sky now, casting long, diffuse shadows across the red dust, turning every ridge and rock into sculpture. She paused for a moment to watch it.

Always there. Bubble had become a strange kind of compass for her—a reference point in a world that offered few.

“This is your captain,” she murmured, mostly to herself, lips curling faintly into a crooked smile. “Course laid in. Planetfall... ongoing.”

Her voice crackled through the helmet’s mic, but no one responded. She didn’t expect them to.

She toggled the next waypoint, and the speculor rolled ahead with its usual quiet determination, the tracks crunching softly over dust and fractured rock.

Inside the cabin, the atmosphere was warm and dry, thanks to the internal regulators still holding steady. The hum of electronics was a constant backdrop—cooling fans, battery feedback, and the subtle rhythm of the environmental system circulating air. After months, the mechanical noises had become comforting, almost like breathing.

Her own breathing was slow and measured. The suit’s monitors recorded everything—oxygen levels, hydration, core temperature—but it was the old pilot instinct that kept her tuned in. Feel the road. Listen to the machine. Watch for patterns.

Outside, the wind had picked up. Dust skittered across the surface in short, chaotic gusts. The external sensors detected a minor pressure drop—nothing serious, just the planet reminding her that it was still indifferent to her presence.

Y/N kept one hand lightly resting on the control yoke, the other hovering near the manual override. She didn’t need to steer constantly; the speculor handled most of the navigation itself. But she preferred to stay alert, to feel connected to the movement of the machine beneath her. Autonomy was great. Awareness was better.

Her eyes tracked the outline of the cliffs ahead—Marth Crater rising in jagged, broken layers, throwing long shadows that danced across the red earth as the sun moved. The geology here fascinated her in a quiet, persistent way. There were ridges that looked like wave crests frozen mid-motion, deep gashes in the rock that hinted at ancient violence. Once, she might have stopped to take more samples, but today was about distance. Efficiency.

Still, it was beautiful in its own way—harsh, yes, but undeniably beautiful.

As the rover climbed a shallow slope, she allowed herself a brief mental detour. Not memories exactly, just echoes.

Mission Control. The soft rustle of bodies leaning over keyboards. The hum of ventilation systems. April’s voice on comms—precise, calm. Mateo muttering about stale coffee. People who couldn’t see her, but still cared. Still watched.

And then there was Captain Blondebeard—the half-joke she’d tossed into the void weeks ago, a silly placeholder to make the isolation feel less heavy. It had stuck, somehow. Maybe because they all needed it—something a little ridiculous to hold onto amid the silence.

She smiled at the thought, just briefly, and shook her head. “Captain Blondebeard,” she muttered. “Defender of dust. Ruler of red rocks.”

No audience. Just her and the rattling hum of the speculor.

She checked the diagnostics again. Solar intake: optimal. Battery: 92%. Environmental systems: nominal. No signs of mechanical stress. For now, everything was working.

That meant she could keep going.

The next waypoint lit up on the map—marked with a dull amber glow. Just over the ridge. She exhaled slowly, letting the air hiss softly through the suit’s filters, then leaned forward and tapped the throttle. The rover surged forward a little harder this time, climbing the incline with a low growl.

Dust kicked up behind her. The sky stretched pale and infinite above.

Mateo barely had time to sit before a heavy binder slammed onto his desk with enough force to rattle his coffee. The mug wobbled, then steadied. He glanced up with a sigh, already bracing himself.

Marco stood across from him, posture too casual, arms folded like he was trying not to smile. There was a spark in his eyes—half brilliance, half mania—the kind that made engineers dangerous in the best possible way.

“You’re not going to like this,” Marco said. No preamble. Just straight into it.

Mateo raised an eyebrow, flipping open the first page of the binder. “Why does that always seem to be your opening line?”

“Because I’m usually right.”

Mateo didn’t respond. He just scanned the schematic diagrams on the first few pages—wiring, load calculations, modular systems torn down to their bones. It looked like someone had disassembled the MAV with a crowbar and a grudge.

In the corner of the room, Creed stood with his arms crossed, expression unreadable. Always the measured one. Where Marco was all spark and adrenaline, Creed was the one you sent in to keep the reactor from melting down.

“The problem,” Creed said, stepping forward, “is velocity. More specifically, intercept velocity.”

He tapped the tablet in his hand, bringing up a holographic projection of the M6-117 Ascent Vehicle—its sleek body now marked in red and yellow overlays. Next to it, a ghostly outline of the Starfire hung in orbital trajectory. The gap between them wasn’t just spatial. It was mathematical.

“The MAV is rated to hit 7.8 kilometers per second at peak ascent,” Creed explained. “The Starfire’s intercept window requires at least 9.2. And we can’t dip the Starfire lower. Not without burning half the return fuel and risking re-entry on a compromised arc.”

Mateo leaned back slowly, processing. “So… the MAV needs to go faster. But it can’t. Not as is.”

Marco stepped in again, voice animated now. “Exactly. So we make it lighter.”

Mateo looked up. “How much lighter?”

“Five thousand kilograms.”

There was a long silence.

Mateo let out a low breath, staring at the screen. “You’re serious.”

Marco nodded. “Dead serious. But don’t worry. We’ve already found two-thirds of it. The MAV was originally specced for six passengers. Y/N’s solo, so that’s an immediate thousand kilos—crew support systems, internal seating, storage compartments.”

“Fair enough,” Mateo said cautiously. “What else?”

“We’re pulling the scientific payload,” Marco added. “Soil, core samples, atmospheric sensors. All of it. It’s dead weight now.”

“That’s another... what? 500?”

“More like six-fifty. Then we strip internal comms—no need for multi-band systems. She won’t be piloting anyway.”

Mateo frowned. “What do you mean she won’t be piloting?”

Creed stepped in again, quiet and calm. “Nguyen’s going to fly the MAV from orbit.”

Mateo blinked. “You’re talking about a fully remote-controlled launch? With a human on board?”

“It’s been done in simulations,” Creed said. “The theory is solid. Remote guidance with live telemetry. As long as we maintain lock from Starfire, we can get her into intercept range. There’s a latency window, but it’s manageable.”

Marco waved that part off. “Honestly, it simplifies things. If she’s not flying, we can rip out the cockpit interface. Panels, redundant circuits, glass—gone. Another 400 kilos easy.”

Mateo’s jaw worked. “She’s going up in a vehicle with no controls, no backup comms, and no seats.”

“Correct,” Marco said brightly. “Also, no airlock.”

That stopped him.

“I’m sorry—what?”

Marco walked over to a scale model of the MAV sitting on the table, casually popping off the nose section like he was dismantling a toy. “The nose airlock’s nearly 400 kilos by itself. Hull Panel 19 adds another 200. And those windows?” He plucked one off the model. “Decorative. Total waste of mass.”

Mateo stared at the half-gutted model. “You’re launching her into space with a hole in the front of the ship?”

“Not a hole,” Marco said quickly. “A reinforced pressure barrier made from Hab-grade canvas. Layered, sealed, and structurally supported with internal cross-bracing.”

Mateo was silent for a long beat. “So... a tarp.”

Marco smiled. “A flight-tested environmental membrane.”

Creed, to his credit, didn’t flinch. “The structural integrity holds up at altitude. Once she clears the atmospheric drag—which on M6 is minimal—it’s all vacuum. The canvas doesn’t need to withstand pressure from the outside, just keep the inside pressurized.”

Mateo shook his head slowly. “And this is the plan you’re bringing me. After thirty years of aerospace development and risk management protocols, this is what we’ve come to.”

Marco shrugged. “You want to get her home or not?”

Mateo pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes closed. “You didn’t even get to the worst part yet, did you?”

Creed hesitated. “Well...”

“Oh, come on,” Mateo muttered.

Marco dropped back into a chair opposite him and spun the model slowly in his hands. “We’ll need to pre-load her EVA suit with everything she needs. She won’t be able to access the cabin once it launches. No movement. No cabin pressure.”

Mateo looked up, eyes narrowing. “So if something goes wrong—”

“She’s dead,” Marco said plainly. “But if we don’t do this at all? She’s also dead.”

The room went quiet again.

The logic was brutal. But clean.

Mateo stood in silence at the wide observation window overlooking the control bay. Rows of terminals blinked below, casting soft glows onto the operators’ faces. The quiet hum of the operations floor, the muted rustle of people moving through data, speaking in low tones—it all felt distant. His eyes tracked the orbital map, projected across the far wall. One small blue marker labeled Starfire. Another in orange: Y/L/N – MAV Prep.

Just two dots, drifting across the edge of a planet no one had ever intended to be a rescue site.

He didn’t speak. Not right away.

Behind him, Creed stood with arms folded, still, waiting. Marco was halfway through unscrewing the cap of a protein bar, but had forgotten about it, caught in the quiet tension that had settled over the room.

Then Mateo inhaled slowly and spoke without turning.

“Start building the launch profile. I want a complete risk breakdown—every failure mode, every backup system we’re cutting, and how long we think that tarp will hold under load. Flight surgeon and engineering get briefed at sixteen hundred. No exceptions.”

The wrapper crinkled, finally splitting under Marco’s thumb with a soft snap. The faint smell of synthetic peanut butter wafted out, but he barely noticed—already hunched over the console, typing fast, his mind three steps ahead.

“Copy that,” he mumbled, not looking up, already pulling up the MAV’s mass budget and internal schematics.

Creed stood off to the side, more deliberate. He pulled out his tablet, fingers tapping rhythmically as he opened a clean modeling slate and began sketching out the updated launch profile. No one needed to ask if he was running simulations—he always was.

Mateo stayed still.

He stood at the edge of the room, eyes fixed on the massive screen on the far wall—Earth to the left, M6-117 hanging silent and red to the right. Two markers moved in parallel arcs above it: Starfire, already in decaying orbit, and the blinking orange dot that marked the MAV’s last position. Y/L/N – Ready Hold. It hadn’t moved in six hours.

His reflection stared back at him in the dark glass, half-obscured by the flight data.

“And someone get her on comms,” he said finally, his voice level, clipped.

Marco glanced over his shoulder. “You want to tell her?”

Mateo turned slowly, just enough to meet his gaze. The expression on his face wasn’t one of authority or resolve. Not entirely. It was the look of someone who was doing the math—risk versus time, life versus chance—and coming up short on both columns.

“No,” he said. “I want to ask her if she’s willing to launch into orbit under a tarp and a prayer.”

Then he walked out.

The hall outside the planning bay was quiet, sterile, and dimly lit. A few staff moved briskly from station to station, heads down, focused. No one stopped him. He crossed the length of the control floor with long strides, ignoring the buzz of conversation and telemetry chatter around him.

NOSA Mission Control was housed in the heart of the Aguerra Prime complex—underground, shielded, secure. It was built like a vault, and today it felt like one. A place built to preserve life, now trying desperately to save just one.

He stepped into the comms wing and paused for a second in the threshold of April’s unit. She was already hunched forward, scanning her screen, lips pressed into a hard line. Her hair was pulled back into a quick knot, and the half-empty thermos beside her keyboard said she’d been at this since before dawn.

April glanced up as she felt him approach. “I already sent the initial uplink,” she said. “Low-band width, direct ping. She’s on reply hold.”

“She read it?”

A nod. “I think so. Just one line so far.”

Mateo exhaled. “I need you to be straight with her.”

April’s brow creased slightly. “She already knows we’re scraping the bottom of the playbook. You want me to sugarcoat it?”

“No,” Mateo said, stepping around to lean beside her console. “The opposite.”

She studied him. There was something in his face she hadn’t seen before—not panic. Not resolve either. Something heavier. A tiredness that came from trying to beat physics with ingenuity and spreadsheets.

“I want you to tell her exactly what we’re doing,” he continued. “The canvas patch. The missing control panels. That she’ll be sealed into a pressure suit with no way to pilot the MAV, no physical interface, no real fallback.”

April leaned back slowly. “That’s a hell of a sell.”

“I know.” He looked at the screen again. A message was still blinking in the inbound queue. “But I need her to say yes on her own. No pressure. No angle. She deserves that.”

April turned back toward the console, jaw set. “She’ll ask why we’re even considering this.”

“Because it’s the only window she has.” Mateo’s voice was quiet now, almost too soft to hear. “The Starfire won’t last another full orbit at that altitude. If we miss the next intercept burn, we’re not getting a second chance.”

April’s fingers hovered over the keyboard. “So what happens if she says no?”

“Then we stop,” Mateo said. “We scrub the launch, pull Nguyen back into safe orbit, and pray the resupply launch next month doesn’t get delayed again.”

April didn’t move for a moment. Then she sighed, rolled her shoulders, and cracked her knuckles.

“Alright,” she murmured. “Let’s ask the girl if she wants to fly a missile wrapped in tent canvas.”

Mateo let out the smallest laugh, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’ll be on the floor.”

He turned to go, but April caught him just before he crossed the door.

“Mateo,” she said, quietly. He paused.

“She trusts you,” she added. “You know that, right?”

He nodded once, without turning around. “That’s why I’m not the one asking.”

Back at her console, April read the message again.

Are you fucking kidding me?

There was no punctuation. No follow-up. No emoji. Nothing to signal tone. Just those five words.

She stared at them for a long moment, then leaned forward, her fingers moving carefully across the keys as she began to compose her response.

She typed, paused, deleted, retyped.

We know how insane it sounds. You don’t have to do this. There’s no protocol for this kind of ask. But if you say yes, we’ll make it work. And if you say no, we’ll find another way. No one’s giving up on you.

She hesitated again, then added:

But we need your answer soon.

April hit Send, then leaned back in her chair, rubbing a hand across her forehead. The cursor blinked on the screen, waiting for a reply.

Y/N stood just outside the MAV, the wind tugging at the loose ends of her suit hood and streaks of red dust whispering past her boots. The Helion Nexus site was empty—eerily so. The dunes stretched out in every direction like a sea frozen mid-tide, the early evening light casting the terrain in muted copper tones. She stared straight into the lens of her camera, visor up, her eyes locked onto the feed as if the people on the other side could feel the weight of her stare.

She wasn’t smiling.

She hadn’t smiled much in days.

But her expression now—that flat, tight-lipped calm—wasn’t anger. It was disbelief. Controlled, deliberate disbelief.

“This,” she said, after a long pause, her voice dry and low, “is what we’ve come to.”

The wind rattled against the MAV’s lower hull behind her. One of the loose external thermal blankets snapped like a sail.

“I read the specs,” she continued, shifting her weight slightly, eyes still locked on the camera. “And for the record, yes, I understand the mission parameters. I understand the orbital window. I understand why this launch has to happen now or not at all. I get it.”

She took a breath, steadying herself, and then—just barely—she let a flicker of something wry creep into her voice.

“What I don’t get,” she said, “is how we went from 'cutting-edge escape system' to... ‘canvas and sheer fucking luck.’”

She shook her head slowly, almost laughing—but it didn’t come out that way. Not quite.

“They’re calling it the ‘lightweight launch revision.’” She looked off for a second, as if picturing the phrase on a government memo. “Translation? We’re stripping everything non-essential. Seats, insulation, pressure seals. Controls. Windows.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Because who needs windows when you’re flying into orbit at nine-point-two klicks per second?”

Another gust of wind swept through. The MAV loomed behind her—tall, white, sterile. Unwelcoming. It looked like a machine built for six. Not one.

She glanced at it, then turned back to the camera.

“So here’s the plan,” she said, more quietly now. “They’re going to fly this thing remotely from orbit. I’ll be inside. Not piloting. Not navigating. Just... sealed in a suit, strapped in tight, and praying Koah doesn’t sneeze while he’s on the joystick.”

The corner of her mouth twitched, but again, it wasn’t quite a smile. It was more like disbelief wrapping itself in the thinnest layer of humor to keep from cracking.

“There’s no cockpit. No redundancy. And the nose panel?” She paused. “Gone. We're replacing it with three layers of Hab canvas and a reinforced support frame. Which, to be clear, I stitched together yesterday with thermal glue and what used to be my sleeping bag.”

She stepped toward the camera now, voice still level, but her eyes sharper.

“I am, effectively, going to space in a sealed tin can with no front door. And the part they seem most excited about?” She leaned in slightly, as if sharing something private.

“I’ll be the fastest human being in recorded history.”

She let the words hang in the air for a moment. The absurdity of it settled around her like the Hexundecian dust clinging to her boots.

“I guess that’s supposed to be the upside,” she added. “A footnote for the textbooks. My name next to some velocity record no one will remember.”

She folded her arms, staring past the camera now, into the nothingness stretching beyond the ridge.

“But I didn’t come here for records,” she said. “And I sure as hell didn’t come here to die wrapped in duct tape and space-grade nylon.”

She paused, and then finally, something shifted in her expression. Not quite resolve. Something messier. Acceptance, maybe. Something that resembled courage, if courage wasn’t always so clean.

“But I did come here to finish what I started.”

She didn’t bother to say more. She didn’t sign off.

She just reached out and shut off the camera.

The MAV’s outer shell still looked intact—at least from a distance—but the closer she got, the more the damage and modifications became apparent. One panel had been pried off to make room for the external fuel purge; another was half-covered with what looked like insulation tape. The “canvas” they were so excited about was already prepped in a neatly folded stack near the nose—thin, reinforced, flexible, held together by thermal gluing agents she’d tested twice already, just to be sure it wouldn’t split during ascent.

She stood at the base of the ladder for a moment, helmet tucked under her arm, toolkit heavy in her other hand.

Up close, the MAV looked nothing like the sleek, composite-shelled ascent vehicles she had trained in back on Aguerra Prime. The ones in the simulations had been graceful—modular, insulated, and precisely engineered to cradle human beings through the brute violence of launch. They’d had padding and ergonomic seats, clean touchscreen interfaces, carbon-slick handholds designed for comfort under G-force compression. Everything had a place. Everything made sense.

This one didn’t. Not anymore.

This MAV had been stripped bare.

It stood squat and pale under the low red sun, a skeleton of what it had once been. The heat shielding was intact, but the skin panels rattled softly in the wind. Most of the insulation had been ripped out for mass reduction. There were exposed wiring bundles at the base of the hull, sealed hastily with patch tape and thermal epoxy. The side hatch was propped open with a metal brace that should’ve been part of the original ladder assembly, but even that had been cannibalized and reattached by hand, joints imperfect and scorched.

She stood at the base of it now, helmet off, toolkit in one hand, the other resting against the first rung of the ladder. The sunlight caught on her visor, throwing a dull amber reflection across the metal. She glanced up at the hatch. It looked like a mouth. Black inside, open. Waiting.

Y/N took a slow breath and climbed.

The rungs flexed slightly under her boots. The structure moaned—just a little—as she pulled herself up and stepped inside.

The air inside was still and heavy. Not from lack of oxygen—the filters were operational, barely—but from disuse. It smelled of cold metal and polymer outgassing. The kind of dry, stale odor that got into your nostrils and stuck there. It was like stepping into the bones of a machine that had forgotten it was ever meant to hold a person.

The interior was gutted.

No seats.

No panels.

No foam padding, no modular cabin walls, no interface displays.

The cockpit was nothing more than a narrow chamber of exposed beams and equipment housings now. Every surface that could be removed had been. The floor plating was gone. The wall paneling too. Even the soft sealant around the window apertures had been stripped away—there were no windows left to seal.

There was just metal, wiring, the occasional warning sticker half-peeled off, and the sound of her own breathing as she stepped deeper into the vehicle.

She crouched by the side wall and set the toolkit down. The foam inside was worn and cracked, and the latch had started to loosen weeks ago, but it still held. She unclipped the wrench—carbon-steel, standard hex-head—and got to work.

The first bolt came loose with a metallic groan. Then the next.

The remaining seats hadn’t been designed for easy removal. They were bolted directly into the structural base—six of them, each one reinforced to handle launch stress and vibration. It took her nearly an hour to pull the first one free. She had to brace herself against the bulkhead, digging in with the heels of her boots, twisting the tool with both hands until her wrists ached. When the last bolt finally came free, the seat tumbled awkwardly to the side. She grabbed it, shoved it toward the hatch, then crawled over to the edge and pushed.

It hit the ground outside with a muffled thud, sending a puff of dust into the air.

One seat down. Five to go.

She didn’t stop. Didn’t even look at it. Just moved to the next one.

Every minute was precious now. The launch window was fixed. The Starfire would pass into final intercept in twenty-two hours. Koah’s orbital drift correction had already been executed. Once the line closed, it wouldn’t reopen for another 18 days—and there was no chance the MAV would survive that long in its current condition. Not with the limited onboard power. Not with what little she had left to eat. And not with the storm systems brewing again on the eastern ridge.

Another bolt. Another pop. Another seat came free.

She shoved it toward the hatch, muscles burning. It was heavier than it looked.

Outside, the wind had begun to pick up—more sand drifting across the horizon, loose pebbles bouncing softly against the MAV’s hull. Every few seconds, the gusts made the outer structure creak. It sounded like the ship was breathing. Or groaning.

Y/N pulled her suit collar down, wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of one wrist. It clung there—salt and dust and heat.

She turned back to the third chair.

The wrench slipped once, barking her knuckles on the raw edge of the bolt. She hissed, shook her hand out, and went back in.

No complaints. No curses. Just movement.

She didn’t bother checking the comms feed. There wouldn’t be any new messages from April for at least another hour. The distance, the relay lag, the signal decay—it all meant she was on her own now. No lifeline. No hand-holding. No updates.

Just her, and the wrench, and the cold echo of metal against metal.

By the time the last seat came free, her shoulders were burning, and the back of her neck throbbed with tension. She dropped the final chair out through the hatch and leaned back on her heels, staring at the empty space she’d cleared.

The MAV was down nearly four hundred kilos already, by her rough count. Another couple hundred from the stripped wiring. Maybe more, depending on what else she could cut before the systems started to protest.

She turned to the forward cockpit interface.

The main control assembly was still mounted to the wall where the pilot’s seat had been. The screen was dark. Inactive. Most of the data routing had already been disconnected from the ship’s mainframe—April and Koah had walked her through the shutoff protocol the night before.

Still, it looked wrong, somehow. Like it still thought it was meant to be used.

She studied it for a second. Then reached forward and began to dismantle it.

One panel at a time.

She took no pleasure in it. There was no thrill, no rush of rebellion or recklessness. Just the cold understanding that it had to go. Every ounce she stripped now was one less kilo for the rockets to lift.

The screen popped free after two minutes. The control column took another five. She snipped the cabling with wire cutters, bundled it into a rough coil, and set it aside. It would make a decent handhold if she needed one during launch.

The MAV was quieter now.

Hollow.

The wind outside had picked up into a steady moan, the dust slapping against the outer skin in brief, muted bursts. Occasionally, she heard something shift on the landing struts—some subtle tension in the way the wind pressed against the upright body of the vehicle.

Y/N sat back, leaning against one of the inner support beams. Her shoulders were soaked through. The EVA undersuit clung to her, the cooling pads barely keeping up with the heat she was generating. Her breath echoed in the silence.

She let herself rest there for a moment. Not sleep. Just stillness. Just one minute of stillness.

She looked up at the interior of the MAV. It didn’t look like a spacecraft anymore.

It looked like an escape pod built in a garage.

She reached for her comm tablet. The screen lit up, the signal flickering once before stabilizing.

No new messages.

She flipped open the reply channel anyway and typed with slow, deliberate fingers.

Interior’s stripped. Control interface removed. All six seats gone. Pressure barrier is still holding. Will install final harness next. Wind’s picking up. If this thing doesn’t fall apart, I’ll be ready to light it when the crew is. Tell Koah I hope he remembers how to fly blind. Because this ship’s not going to hold my hand.

She hit send, then turned off the display.

By the time she stepped outside again, the light had shifted. The sun—low and pale-blue on this side of the planet—was dragging the long shadows of the MAV across the dust. It cast the stripped-down vehicle in stark relief: every exposed rib, every bolt she hadn’t had time to replace, every scar left from the dismantling process. The ground was littered with the remnants—seat brackets, cracked insulation, lengths of coiled cable, and one final wrench she hadn’t bothered to bring back inside.

Her arms ached. Her back felt like it had been through a hydraulic press. There was a raw spot under her left elbow where the EVA suit padding had bunched up during one of the anchor installs, and her hands were trembling with the aftershock of muscle fatigue, the kind that didn’t fully hit you until the job was done. Her visor was streaked with fine red grit, the kind that clung to everything, the kind you’d still find in your boots six months after you’d left the planet.

The MAV loomed behind her—unfinished, exposed. It looked less like a spacecraft now and more like something welded together out of salvage parts in the middle of a desert. The kind of machine desperate people might have built after the end of the world. Everything extraneous had been pulled: life-support subsystems, insulation, windows, comm redundancies. Even the pilot’s control column had been replaced with a blank wall and a data plug tied directly into its core systems.

There was no illusion left. No polish. No design elegance. It wasn’t a vehicle anymore. It was a shell. A slingshot with just enough thrust to throw her back into orbit—if the math held.

Y/N stood in the silence and stared up at it.

And for a long time, she didn’t move.

Wind brushed past her legs, carrying dust across the flat expanse of the launch site. The air was so thin it barely had weight, but it was just enough to make the suit’s outer fabric shift against her skin. She flexed her fingers once, twice, trying to ease the burn in her knuckles. She felt tired all the way through. Not sleepy—just... used up.

She reached down into her toolkit, fumbled past a spare patch kit, a pair of stripped fasteners, until her fingers closed around the compact speaker unit. She hesitated, just for a second, then pulled it free.

She rubbed a tired thumb across the surface of the speaker, clearing a streak of dust from the side panel. The LED took a second to respond, then blinked on—soft and green, like it was waking from a long nap. The speaker had been through a lot. It had fallen off shelves during storms, been buried under equipment, and once—briefly—served as a weight to keep down an emergency tarp in a wind event. It wasn’t meant to last this long, but like everything else out here, it had adapted.

No ceremony. No speech. No last rites.

Just habit.

She tapped through the tracklist, muscle memory guiding her. Most of the audio files were practical: suit diagnostics, training walkthroughs, comms recordings she’d archived months ago. But tucked near the bottom of the directory was a small folder labeled simply Misc—leftovers from a data transfer, probably. A few compressed files, an outdated playlist from her tablet. Nothing she’d listened to in weeks.

She hovered over one of them.

It was a dumb choice. Something absurdly out of step with the dry, red world around her. Upbeat to the point of satire. But that was kind of the point. When you were about to launch yourself into orbit in a ship held together by glue, canvas, and a few good intentions, irony wasn’t just a luxury—it was armor.

She tapped Play.

The speaker chirped once, then crackled. And then came the unmistakable first notes of Waterloo. 

The music was grainy, a little warped at the high end, like it was playing from inside a tin can—which, technically, it was. But it was there. Real. Loud enough to carry.

Y/N let out a small, involuntary snort. Not quite a laugh—she was too wrung out for that—but something close. A dry, exhausted sound that cracked in her throat before it fully formed.

“Of course,” she muttered, barely audible over the hiss of her suit. “Why the hell not.”

She turned her face to the sound, let it roll over her like a warm breeze. The melody skipped slightly as the speaker rebuffered, then found its footing again. It echoed out over the flats, skipping across dunes and bouncing faintly against the far wall of the crater.

It sounded completely ridiculous.

She could only imagine what it might look like from above—the MAV standing like some stripped-down monument to desperation, half-disassembled, with ABBA blaring into the Martian dusk. But she didn’t care. No one was watching. No one was here.

Except the camera.

The old Hab cam had been hauled out from storage that morning and mounted onto the tripod she’d built from three scavenged rover legs. It had taken three tries to get it to stand upright in the wind. The joints were loose and she hadn’t been able to stabilize the footing without wedging a rock beneath it. The lens was scratched at the corners, fogged with grit. But the recording light was on. That was enough.

She turned to face it.

Her visor was up, streaked with a smear of red dust she hadn’t bothered to clean. Her face was drawn, jaw tight, sweat-matted hair sticking out from under the edge of her helmet ring. There was a tiredness in her eyes that couldn’t be faked. The kind that didn’t come from a single long day—but from all of them.

And still—after everything—she found something like a smile.

Not much. Just a flicker. A small, human thing that tugged briefly at the edge of her mouth and vanished again.

She looked into the lens and said, quietly, “If this is how it ends... I’m at least going out with a beat.”

She didn’t stay to dramatize the moment. There was nothing left to say. No pithy sendoff. No final look back. She adjusted the straps on her suit, flexed her sore fingers once, and turned toward the MAV.

The music kept playing behind her as she walked. Her boots crunched over loose grit, and the wind swept her footprints away almost as quickly as she made them. The speaker fought to keep up, the chorus jumping slightly with every gust, but it held. Just barely.

She reached the base of the ladder and stopped, one hand resting on the rung.

The MAV loomed above her like a relic. The tarp covering the nose cone flapped gently in the breeze, held in place by thermal glue, epoxy seals, and a prayer. The hull creaked faintly as the wind pushed against it. She’d sealed the hatch an hour ago and double-checked the pressure rings, but she still felt that pinch of doubt in the back of her throat. The kind that whispered what if it doesn’t hold?

She didn’t answer it.

Instead, she climbed.

Her arms protested the movement, joints tight and sore, but she moved deliberately. One step. Then another. By the time she reached the top, the sun had slipped closer to the horizon, the shadows stretching long behind her like threads pulled from the sky.

She placed her hand on the outer hatch and paused. Not to deliver a final line. Not to think of Earth. Just to breathe.

The MAV groaned softly under her weight.

The tarp held.

She ducked inside.

The music continued for a few more seconds outside—one final chorus warbling faintly through the thin Hexundecian air—before the speaker choked on a memory buffer and went silent.

She heard the cut from inside the MAV. A sudden, brittle silence where the absurdity had been.

She blinked. Then, after a long pause, she let out a sound halfway between a breath and a laugh.

“Figures,” she said, voice echoing faintly in the hollow chamber. “Survived a year out here. Dies right when I need it.”

She eased herself down into the harness. Felt the straps bite into her suit. Tensed her shoulders, then relaxed them.

Outside, the wind kept blowing. Inside, the MAV was quiet. And for the first time in a long while, everything was still.

Koah’s jaw was clenched tight, his shoulders stiff, his fingers working furiously over the simulated flight controls. A soft sheen of sweat glistened along his temple, and the soft hum of the Starfire’s artificial gravity system did nothing to mask the rising sound of his own pulse in his ears.

Then—red.

COLLISION WITH TERRAIN.

The alert flashed across the screen with an abrupt, terminal finality. The simulator screen froze, the MAV’s virtual ascent freezing mid-frame as the telemetry dipped off its plotted trajectory and straight into the surface of M6-117.

Koah swore under his breath, leaning back and scrubbing a hand through his hair.

Val, standing behind him with arms crossed and a silent kind of patience, finally spoke.

“Well. That’s one way to kill her.”

Koah didn’t turn around. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

Val cocked an eyebrow. “You grazed the ridge by sixty meters and still lost control.”

“I misjudged the crosswind,” Koah muttered, already rebooting the program. “There’s a lateral shear the moment she clears the crater’s upper edge. I didn’t compensate fast enough.”

“You didn’t compensate at all.”

Koah didn’t argue. He just started again.

Across the room, Jimin was watching quietly. Always watching. His arms were folded, a tablet resting against his hip. He didn’t say anything for a moment, just watched the new simulation load in—silent desert terrain unfolding on the screen, the crude profile of the MAV climbing into view.

Then, calmly: “Run it again.”

Koah gave a tight nod, jaw grinding. “Already on it.”

No one said it aloud, but they all knew: he wasn’t just practicing for a sim anymore. The next time he guided the MAV, it wouldn’t be theoretical. Y/N would be inside. And if he screwed it up—if he overcorrected or waited a half-second too long—he wouldn’t be watching a failure animation.

He’d be watching her die.

Far below the slow arc of Starfire’s orbit, deep in the wind-scoured silence of M6-117, Y/N wasn’t thinking about flight paths or burn trajectories. She wasn’t thinking about orbital windows or the terrifying precision of a rendezvous 200 kilometers above her head.

She was thinking about the last bolt.

The MAV no longer resembled a spacecraft—at least not in the traditional sense. Its body had been stripped to the skeleton, gutted of everything not absolutely essential to flight. The clean panels, the instrument clusters, the ergonomic chairs—all gone. Dismantled. Ejected. Abandoned in neat or not-so-neat piles outside the hatch. The floor was bare save for hardpoints and wiring channels, some of which she’d rerouted by hand. Others she’d torn out completely, judging them expendable.

Anything that didn’t help her leave this planet was dead weight. And dead weight didn’t fly.

Inside the airlock, the carnage was undeniable: bundles of severed cables coiled like veins, seat frames stacked like broken bones, polycarbonate display shells cracked and tossed against the far wall. Her makeshift bin overflowed, and the overflow had started to scatter—bits and pieces rolling down the slope toward the edge of the launch pad in lazy arcs. To anyone else, it would’ve looked like the wreckage of a crash. But it wasn’t. It was controlled destruction.

Intentional.

Necessary.

Y/N leaned back against the inner hatch rim, trying to catch her breath. She’d been working for hours without pause, and her body was registering its protest in every possible language: throbbing shoulders, forearms trembling from tension, joints stiff with grit and fatigue. The wrench in her hand felt heavier than it had any right to. Her grip had started to falter an hour ago. She kept working anyway.

Her gloves were caked in rust-red dust, fraying at the fingers. Her right thumb was raw—no skin left on the pad, the fabric beneath damp and tacky. Every time she flexed the joint, it stung like fire, but she didn’t have time to think about that now.

She looked down at what was left: the forward access collar—what had once housed the MAV’s primary nose airlock. The interface was compromised. She’d known that for days, ever since she first checked the weld seams and found stress fractures spidering out from the lower ring. The airlock itself had always been heavy, armored to resist high-speed debris during ascent. But now it was just another liability—too much mass, too many structural risks. And completely useless.

It had to go.

She dropped to one knee with a hiss of effort. The joint in her suit pinched, and her back seized as she twisted awkwardly to brace herself. The fasteners weren’t difficult, not anymore. Four had already been loosened days ago during prep. Only two remained, and the metal was corroded enough to complain with every turn.

She grit her teeth and leaned into it.

The first bolt groaned, spun twice, then popped loose with a sudden give that nearly threw her off balance. She planted a hand against the inner bulkhead to steady herself, breathing hard through her nose.

The second bolt was more stubborn. It refused to move at first, stuck tight by a decade of cold and pressure and the fine silicate dust that wormed its way into everything on this planet. She repositioned the wrench, dug her boots into the deck, and hauled.

One turn. Two.

Then—snap.

The final bolt sheared away. The access collar sagged, shifted, and with a dull metallic pop, it tore loose from the surrounding frame. For a heartbeat, it hovered there—still clinging to its old shape, its old function.

Then it dropped.

The mass of it caught a gust of wind as it fell. The panel spun as it tumbled, crashing to the ground with a heavy, final thunk that reverberated across the dry surface. The noise wasn’t loud, not really. But in a world so quiet, so still, it felt seismic.

Y/N stepped back automatically, too fast, and her knees buckled.

Her legs simply gave out.

She hit the ground sideways, dust puffing up in a loose swirl around her, the wrench slipping from her hand and bouncing once before it landed beside her in the dirt.

She lay there, unmoving for a long moment, face turned to the sky.

Her pulse was in her ears. Her arms refused to lift.

Everything ached.

She could feel the crust of sweat drying beneath her undersuit, her body swaddled in fatigue and grime and the kind of exhaustion that made the idea of standing again feel almost hypothetical.

She didn’t bother trying to sit up.

Instead, she tilted her head back just enough to see the MAV above her, its patched-together body silhouetted against the dimming sky. The canvas at the nose—once her sleeping tarp, now layered and bonded with thermal glue—fluttered slightly at the edges. It held.

Somehow, it held.

The whole thing looked absurd. Makeshift. Unbelievably fragile.

But it was all she had.

She let out a sound. It wasn’t quite a laugh—too hollow, too dry—but it came from somewhere near the part of her that used to have the energy for humor.

Her gaze drifted sideways, to where the old speaker still sat on the ground a few meters away, half-buried in dust. It had been playing earlier—something upbeat and ridiculous, a holdover from her playlist of songs she’d used to fill the Hab with noise when the silence became too loud.

She hoped Waterloo had been the last thing it played. That felt appropriate somehow. Too bad.

She closed her eyes, her breath coming in slow, shallow pulls.

“Finally facing my Waterloo,” she murmured.

Her voice didn’t carry far. The helmet mic was off. The camera wasn’t rolling. There was no audience this time. No log entry. No flight team monitoring her vitals.

It was just her.

Just the dust, and the ship she’d rebuilt by hand, and the infinite silence of an alien world that didn’t care whether she lived or died.

The wrench lay beside her, forgotten.

And for a while, Y/N didn’t move at all.

Onboard Starfire, the mood had shifted.

Gone was the casual rhythm of deep space routine. No idle chatter, no coffee mugs clinking against console rails, no playlist humming through the speakers. The rec deck had been empty for hours. Everyone had drifted toward the core of the ship—the main operations bay—drawn there by necessity, by duty, by the quiet pull of something heavier than protocol.

The gravity was steady, calibrated to Earth-norm, but it still felt like the floor had tilted slightly. Like something was waiting.

Overhead, the orbital burn countdown ticked down in cold blue digits.

Jimin stood at the forward console, his hands braced against the reinforced edge, leaning slightly as if anchoring himself. The navigation display glowed in front of him, lines arcing across the interface: the MAV’s projected trajectory, the intercept corridor, and Starfire’s adjusted orbital path. Three bodies, four variables, one window.

The final window.

Behind him, the others moved in quiet coordination.

Cruz was already seated at Systems Two, hunched over a terminal, rerouting power protocols through the MAV telemetry relay. Her fingers moved fast, practiced. Efficient. There was no margin left for error. Anything they didn’t handle before launch would have to be handled mid-flight—and there were too many unknowns between now and then to trust in mid-flight.

“Nguyen’s got full remote,” Jimin said, his tone even but clipped, his eyes not leaving the screen. “Cruz, you’ll manage override routing from Bay Two. Keep a hard link to the MAV all the way through primary burn.”

“Copy,” Val replied, not looking up. “I’m tying in emergency telemetry now. One-minute intervals on the backup ping. It’ll lag by three seconds on the fallback line.”

“We’ll take it,” Jimin said.

He turned, scanning the rest of the crew.

“Hoseok. Armin. Airlock Two. You’ll be suiting up once we hit the two-minute mark before MAV ignition. Tether lines stay deployed. Outer door stays open.”

Armin nodded once, already halfway through checklist sync. “Lines are staged and calibrated. Anchor’s clipped. The MMU packs are charged.”

“Good.”

Hoseok leaned forward, his tablet on his lap, ascent data scrolling in a slow, inevitable stream. His brow furrowed as he traced the curve of the launch.

“She’s going to hit twelve Gs during the climb,” he said, voice low. “She’ll black out somewhere between eleven and twelve if the suit’s not aligned perfectly. Even if she doesn’t lose consciousness, she’s going to be borderline hypoxic by engine cutoff. Muscle tremors, potential cerebral edema, disorientation.”

He paused. No one filled the silence.

“She might not be coherent when we make contact.”

Jimin didn’t react. Not outwardly.

“That’s why you’re going out,” he said. “That’s why it’s you.”

Hoseok met his gaze. “You’re assuming she’s still conscious when we dock.”

“I’m assuming she’s alive,” Jimin said.

Hoseok nodded once, accepting the weight of it.

“We’ve got a 214-meter tether,” he said. “I’ll be in the MMU. If we hold her velocity at five meters per second or lower, I can intercept manually. Any faster, and it’s going to feel like jumping onto a moving train. With no brakes.”

Jimin shifted his attention back to the trajectory map. The MAV’s projected arc skated along the edge of the capture envelope. Tight. Risky.

“And if she’s coming in hot?”

Hoseok didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice was quiet. Not afraid. Just honest.

“Then I miss. Or I grab and get pulled. Or we both spin. Worst case, we bounce off the line and watch her drift out into space.”

Another silence.

Jimin exhaled through his nose, measured and slow. “Engine cutoff gives us a 52-minute window before intercept. That’s our margin. Cruz will give you live telemetry as soon as thrust cuts. Until then, you’re just watching the clock.”

He turned to Armin.

“You’re backup. Stay tethered. If anything goes wrong, you stabilize and pull him back. No solo retrievals. No free-floating. You don’t follow unless he’s secured.”

Armin, already double-checking MMU thruster settings, nodded once. “Understood.”

Jimin finally stepped away from the console, circling toward the center of the room where the rest of the crew had settled in. Koah stood near the wall, pale but steady, his hands tucked under his arms. His eyes were fixed on the simulator feed looping in the corner screen—replaying the MAV’s predicted trajectory frame by frame.

“You ready, Nguyen?” Jimin asked.

Koah nodded slowly. “Ready or not, I’ll fly it.”

“You’ll fly it.”

There was no encouragement in Jimin’s tone. No pep talk. Just fact.

He looked around the room one last time.

Cruz, fingers still moving. Hoseok, pulling on his gloves. Armin, checking O2 flow levels. Koah, staring at the screen like he could will the outcome into submission.

They were tired. Stretched thin.

But they were here. Focused. Professional.

Jimin straightened.

“One shot,” he said. “That’s all we’ve got. We do this clean. No improvising. No ad-libbing. Stick to the numbers.”

A pause. 

“Let’s bring her home.”

Inside the pop-up shelter, the air felt heavy despite the pressure regulators still holding steady. Not hot. Not thin. Just dense in the way quiet places get when they've been silent for too long. The fabric walls rustled faintly in the wind, a soft, steady whisper that only made the silence inside more absolute.

Y/N sat cross-legged on the floor, the knees of her suit stained from weeks of kneeling, crawling, wrenching, fixing. Her back pressed against the outer curve of the tent wall, the thin material bowing slightly behind her. It wasn’t a real shelter—just the emergency module meant for temporary use while a permanent hab was being assembled. She’d been using it on and off for weeks now. Long enough that it had started to feel like her shadow.

The floor beneath her was a layer of insulation fabric over packed dirt, the dust already seeping through at the edges. She barely noticed anymore.

In her lap, she held a ration pack.

Foil-wrapped. Worn soft at the edges. The printed label had faded in the sun, but she could still make out the marker she’d scrawled across it months ago, back when she'd still thought labeling it would be funny, or maybe meaningful.

GOODBYE, M6.

She hadn’t meant to save it this long. At the time, it was just something she did—something to help her hold onto a timeline. A plan. Something resembling control.

She turned the pack slowly in her hands, thumb grazing the corner seam, feeling the slight give in the foil where it had crinkled. She could remember labeling it. She’d been tired even then, but not like this. Not spent. Not stripped to the nerve.

She had thought she’d open it on her last day here. Maybe even in orbit, on the way back. That it’d be part of a ritual. A small victory meal. A full-circle moment.

Instead, she was on the floor of a half-collapsed tent, staring down at a meal that hadn’t changed, even though everything else had.

Her fingers hesitated on the tear notch.

It was a stupid thing to hesitate over.

But still, she did.

Not because of what was inside. Just... because once she opened it, there’d be nothing else left to mark the moment. No more lines between before and after. Just the long blur of now.

She broke the seal with a jerk.

The foil hissed and gave. The sound was too loud in the confined space, and she winced instinctively, though she wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like anyone could hear her.

She stared down at the contents for a long time. Rehydrated rice. Some kind of protein paste. Technically flavored, but she’d stopped believing the labels weeks ago. Food wasn’t about enjoyment out here. It was function. And now, even that was ceremonial.

She took the first bite without thinking. It was automatic. A routine. Chew. Swallow. The texture was soft and faintly gritty, like every other meal. It filled her mouth with the memory of nothing. No comfort. No warmth. Just fuel. The bland kind.

She kept eating, mechanically. Chewing slower with each bite.

She didn’t want it. She wasn’t hungry. But there was a gravity to finishing it now, to not leaving it half-eaten like so many others. If she was going to say goodbye to this place, she’d do it clean.

The name on the packet felt like a joke now. Goodbye, M6.

As if a single meal could contain all that. As if the act of opening it, eating it, could somehow make peace with everything this place had taken.

The dust storms. The silence. The endless repairs. The isolation so thick it had begun to feel like part of her own skin.

She glanced around the tent. It had held up better than she’d expected, all things considered. One corner had a slow leak that never quite sealed, and the interior fabric was stained along the floor seam from some leak weeks ago that had never quite dried. Her helmet sat nearby, a faint film of red dust still clinging to the visor.

There was no light here, not really. Just the pale wash from the tablet screen on standby mode across from her, casting a soft glow over her boots and the half-empty water pouch at her side.

There were no clocks anymore. Not physical ones, at least. Just the countdown in her head. The one that had started ticking the moment the mission shifted from survival to escape.

She took another bite. Slower this time. Her jaw moved like it was made of something heavier than bone.

How long had it been since she’d last spoken to someone face to face? Since someone had looked at her and not through a camera feed? The last message from April had been clipped like all messages from the girl were.

We’re locked in. Launch is yours. Be safe.

That was hours ago.

Possibly longer. Y/N had long since stopped being able to tell the passage of time on this planet. She did not even know if the days on her camera were correct. She would not know until she was on the Starfire, truly, if she'd been out here for over a year.

Y/N swallowed the last bite, feeling the dense weight of it settle in her stomach. It sat like lead. Not unpleasant. Just... full. In that way things only feel full when you know there’s nothing else coming.

She held the empty foil pouch in both hands for a moment. Then flattened it. Folded it once. Then again. The label was barely visible now. Just a faint smudge of black ink against silver.

She placed it carefully beside her helmet.

She leaned back against the wall of the tent and let her eyes close for a moment. She didn’t sleep. Didn’t even try. Just let her mind rest against the quiet.

The wind rattled faintly outside. The fabric creaked. Somewhere deep in the MAV’s systems—now half a kilometer away—the flight prep sequence was probably already ticking through a checklist.

She’d get up soon. She’d suit up. She’d climb inside that gutted, patched-together vehicle, and trust it to hold long enough to throw her into the sky.

But for now, she stayed where she was. Just a woman in a tent, finishing her last meal on a planet that never welcomed her.

She looked at the empty ration pack one last time.

“Goodbye,” she said quietly. Not to the food. Not to the tent.

Just to the dust.

To the silence.

To the part of her that would always stay behind.

Taglist: @fancypeacepersona @ssbb-22 @mar-lo-pap @sathom013 @kimyishin @ttanniett @sweetvoidstuff @keiarajm @sathom013 @miniesjams32 @haru-jiminn @rg2108 @darklove2020

[readerstories]

When You Touch Me - Wolverine x male reader x Deadpool 5/?

Reader has a bike now ^_^ Also thought it was time to change up the gif, since it's both of them now ;3 Next chapter in a week! (AO3) (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4) (Part 6) (Part 7) (Part 8) (Part 9) (Part 10)

Warnings/tags: male reader, canon-typical violence, enemies to friends to lovers, slow burn

Wordcount: 1382

Summary: You’ve heard many stories about how people met their soulmates. Everyone crazier than the last, ranging from typical meet cutes, meeting with one of them at death's door, in war, meeting at your soulmate's wedding to another, and everything in between and outside of that. You had just never expected to add yours to the crazy list, meeting yours in a fight, only realizing after trying to kill each other for at least half an hour. And you certainly don’t expect to have another.

It’s been another week since your last run-in with Wade, two weeks since you met them both. An ache has settled in your upper back, flowing through the muscles any time you bend over just the smallest amount. It feels like soreness after a hard workout, but you have done no such thing, doctor’s (Evelyn) orders.

You have taken another job though, you can’t just sit around and wait for your cuts to fully heal (luckily they are healing well), you would become too restless. You need to do something.

Which leads you to where you are now.

The warehouse has three levels with a big opening in the middle to hoist up crates and goods. You were there to keep watch over a shipment of guns on the upper floor, when they had stormed in on the first floor.  Wade had been yelling, you don’t hear what specifically, but the gunshots following his words leaves you no doubt that it wasn’t nice. 

Because of fucking course they are a package deal even with this. Not that Logan’s claws had given you the impression that he was a demure housewife, but still. You hadn’t expected the yellow and blue suit, complete with a scowl with pointy ends on top that covers the upper half of his face. You don’t recognise him at first, but then there’s claws, and Wade jumping around in his Deadpool suit, so it’s not hard to tell it’s Logan under the yellow. 

Red and yellow. 

Like ketchup and mustard. 

You snort to yourself. 

Being able to recognise Wade’s voice even without words already should irk you, but this time it leaves you with an advantage, as you can stay back, and don’t rush into something unknown, or a situation you know you won't win.

You still haven’t made yourself known to them, preferring to watch as they utterly fuck up your job. You have to admit, they are effective as a team. Knowing when to split up, and when to draw back together. It’s not perfect, both of them absorb several gunshots, but thanks to their apparent unending healing factor they just keep going. 

They end up in the middle of the first floor, with people coming at them in a seemingly never ending attack. You lean on the railing around the hole on the third floor, gun in hand, just watching. Logan slices through people with ease, claws glinting in the light even when they are soaked with blood. Wade switches between his guns and katanas, seeking out targets with precision. Their fighting styles are very different, but their legs are hard at work. Logan moves around in bursts, occasionally running on all fours, sometimes kicking when he’s in range of people so they stumble and he can easily skewer them with his claws. Wade bounces around, kicking with purpose, breaking bones, and necks when he hits perfectly. Once even strangling someone with his thighs.

Your bond hums with excitement even in its muted and mostly blocked state when you pay attention to it, because of course they are having fun with this.

As much as you are enjoying the show, you are honestly just starting to think about slinking away before they notice you, but then there’s suddenly another henchman rushing in next to you, firing down as he yells at you.

“Why the fuck aren’t you doing anything?!” He hits Logan’s shoulder as he yells. This gets Logan’s attention, making him look all the way up to you. He spots the man next to you first, as he is still firing, but he now starts missing Logan as he starts moving towards a column in the corner of the opening. He spots you next, and it’s only because you’ve been watching him move without hesitation for several minutes that you see the minute stutter in his step.

Next thing you know, his claws are digging into concrete, and he’s fucking climbing the fucking column. 

“You fucking idiot.” You hiss at the man next to you as you both draw back. He reloads his gun, you turn around to look for an exit.

You spot the red exit sign and door just as you hear a thud behind you. You move towards the door. There’s a scream behind you, another thud, before the warehouse falls mostly silent except from a scuffle somewhere below you. 

Then Logan calls your name. 

You freeze, fingers tightening around your gun. You could use it, but all you’ll likely get in return for your effort is a gun sliced in half (you had already seen Logan do that to others), and a pissed off Logan.

So you keep it down as you turn around, gaze as neutral as you can keep it as you look at him, absentmindedly noticing it’s mostly quiet around you now. You realize his mask has white eyes in the black, similar to Wade’s, but a little smaller. His claws retract, slowly disappearing into his hands as you watch them.

“Logan.” Your voice offers no warmth. “Fancy outfit.” He licks his lips, shifting on his feet, seemingly not knowing what to say to you now that he has your attention, not that he gets much time to speak, as you hear Wade yell for him.

“Where are you hiding peanut?”

“Third floor!” Then there’s footsteps on the stairs, and Wade appears, red suit and all. He spots you and Logan standing several feet apart, both tense, and starts, what you can honest to god only describe as skipping, over to Logan.

“We have to stop meeting like this pookie.” He slings an arm around Logan, winking at you. “Would ruin our reputation, fraternizing with the enemy.” He glances to the side, noticing the body laying there. “Thank you convenient anonymous henchman.” You tilt your head at them, squinting at Wade as anger simmers through you, muting anything that might be sent through their bonds to you.

“Don’t fucking call me that, and we are not doing anything.”

“You sure? The tension was thicker than Al’s oatmeal when I got here.”

“I was thinking of where to shoot Logan so I could run, and not get stopped.” A little white lie, because you weren’t then, but you are now. And Wade too of course. Logan scowls, you see his fists clenched tight, making you wonder how close his claws are to coming out again.

“Like I said, tension! Also, since you insist on keeping it professional at work, it’s Wolverine when we’re working.” You blink. Huh. You raise a brow.

“A weasel?” 

“A mustelid actually! Weasels are part of it, but so are badgers an-”

“Shut the fuck up Wade.” Logan, or Wolverine apparently, growls out as he looks between the two of you. He still looks unsure of what to actually say or do, but you’ll make that decision for him. For both of them.

“I’m just gonna keep doing what I was doing, and leave.” Before they can say anything or protest, you raise your gun, shooting off two quick shots. The first hits Wolverine’s knee, shattering his kneecap, the other does the same to Deadpool.

“Motherfucker!” They both lose their balance at the unexpected hits, Logan grunts in pain and Wade swears loudly as they crumple to the floor.

You turn around and sprint for the exit, finding yourself on a roof with a fire escape, which you run over to and quickly climb down. Your breath is in your throat, you hear Wade yell your name just as your boots hit the ground. You look up, both of them are looking over the edge of the building. You look away, running over to where you parked your black Yamaha R7 when you arrived earlier. You almost forgo the helmet to make it out of there quicker, but remind yourself through the urge to get away that that would suck with the wind and insects, so you put it on. The bike purrs to life, drowning out another call of your name. 

This time it's your turn to burn out of there as your soulmates watch your tail light disappear into the night.

Your shoulders ache as you lean forward, trying to make yourself as aerodynamic as possible as you rush away from your soulmates. 

(Part 6)

[animasolaoriginal]

INFATUATED ♦️ TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER ONE ♦️ SERIES MASTERLIST ♦️ AO3

Because she tried to run away from him, he punishes her with solitude, but quickly realizes that he can't leave her alone for long.

ruthless nightclub owner ❌ innocent young woman with a crush

WARNING: NSFW! Explicit sexual content. Age gap. Size difference. Dubcon elements. Dom/sub dynamic. Free use/power play. Collars/leashes. Roofies/sleeping pills. Somnophilia. Spanking/bruising. Vaginal sex. Anal sex. Creampies. (For even more tags, check it on AO3!) // WORDS: 3.7k

A/N: Welcome back to Season Three, part one! Sorry for the long wait! Friendly reminder that this is tagged DEAD DOVE: DO NOT EAT. You know what to expect from this story, don't expect anything less. Especially this chapter is not holding back (little side note: I wrote this while having a fever, maybe you can tell), so beware. MIND THE TAGS!!! Sir is still an asshole, or is he? (Don't worry, there has not been a change in POV, I'll keep it third person, the following is just a little experiment.)

P R E V I O U S L Y

AITA for fulfilling a girl's deepest desires? I (35M) didn't even do anything until this girl (19F) stared me down in the club. She was clearly infatuated with me, was I really supposed to ignore such a willing offering? Probably, but then again I never cared about rules or conventions. I take what I want, and I took her. I let her into my life, allowed her into my personal space, invited her in, and she came (in every sense of the word). I did give her the tiniest push to make the transition easier, but even after she woke up in my bed, she was still willing. Eager, really. Who am I to deny her? She asked me to take her virginity, the polite little thing, and really, didn't I save her from the other predators out there? She'll have a good life with me, all I asked in return was for her to submit to me, to become mine. Of course she agreed, what other choice did she have? I may have taken things a bit further than she could have imagined, but really, girls have to learn eventually, and I taught her well, and thoroughly. I may have become a little obsessed with her innocence, tainting her beautiful, pure soul, one depravity at a time. One might argue I didn't particularly ease her into it, didn't take my time with her, but I did. Ask the other girls, if they can still answer you, that is. She changed me, this little obedient thing, made me cherish the softer moments with her. I was never interested in aftercare, not to the extent she is receiving from me now. Is she making me weak? Some may say that, and it surely wasn't easy to accept just how infatuated I became with her as well, how I want to spend every second of the day buried inside her (I'll spare you the details of what I really want to do to her), teaching her new pleasures, new pains, new rules. She is so willing to learn, too, I know she is, despite her tears and struggles, despite the mistakes she still makes sometimes (that I am more than happy to punish and correct). She wants this, wants me, all of it, she just doesn't know it yet. I saw what she wanted the moment I met her eyes under the strobe light. She wants to be mine, wants to give herself to me fully, and I indulged her. I gave her a new home, severed those pesky ties to her old life (which has been a pitiful excuse of one to begin with), made her a new girl. I hadn't planned for it to develop so quickly (it's been an intense extended weekend), but by the end of it, I knew that I had to make her mine completely. And how beautifully she submitted, on her knees in front of me, eyes trained on me and me alone, her tender neck asking to be collared. So I collared her, allowed her to indulge in her deepest, darkest fantasies. She wants this, and I am only giving her what she wants. She is mine now, and I honestly don't even care what others think (don't ask why I'm sharing this in the first place). So, call me the asshole for fulfilling a girl's deepest desires, call me a pervert, predator, abductor, manipulator, abuser, rapist? I know better, my girl knows better. She is mine, and I am hers, and I will do anything to remind her of that. Don't even dare trying to get between us. You will thoroughly regret it.

TWENTY 🟥 TWENTY-ONE 🟥 TWENTY-TWO

He stares at the fairy lights on the wall. The bed squeaks in a steady rhythm, metal headboard slamming into the wall with every thrust. His breaths are labored, rough, loud in the otherwise quiet room. The girl beneath him is silent, it's just her wet cunt that squelches deliciously under the rough assault of his cock pushing in and out.

His hands are braced on her hips, fingers digging into soft flesh, deepening the bruises he's already left there. He's meticulous to always leave the same marks, night after night, as he follows the same pattern.

It starts with him bringing her dinner which includes her birth control pill and one she never questions, and he waits till she swallows them both, then leaves her be. Waits for her to eat, to get ready for bed, take her time in the bathroom, then slip into bed, careful not to strangle herself with her leash.

As soon as she turns the lights down, he's back in her room, the lock clicking softly. She's on her side, breathing deeply, the covers almost swallowing her whole. He pulls them off her, carefully, until he sees the bruises on her ass cheeks and thighs, remembering the moments he's used his belt and his hand on her fragile little body. The way she had squirmed and screamed and ultimately taken it, giving into her fate, had been special to witness.

He moves his hand over the irritated skin, feels the warmth burning beneath it, the blood pumping through her wounds. She doesn't stir. She can't. The pill made sure of it. He turns her onto her back, pushes her hair out of her face, watches her for a few heartbeats. So peaceful. So beautiful with the black collar around her slim neck and the thin metal chain attached to it. He leans over her and unhooks the leash, like he does every night.

He wants to punish her for attempting to run away from him, but he doesn't want her to strangle herself in her sleep. She always wakes up without it, wondering, but never long enough before he returns in the mornings to attach it again when he brings her breakfast. It's the third night now, and for two days, she's only seen him at the start and the end of it, and he knows it troubles her – because it troubles him too.

He misses her noises. The mewls and moans, the gasps and cries, the soft hum of her voice. And he misses the way she used to look at him, with those big eyes, somewhat hopeful, with her own wants swimming in those dilated pupils. Now she looks at him pleadingly, every time, to stop this torment of denying her her most treasured thing: him. It's part of her punishment, to make her understand what she would miss if she ever (really) ran away, if she ever abandoned him. Yet as much as it pains him too, at least he doesn't have to deny himself any pleasure.

Making sure she won't wake when he returns once she's in bed, he's found a good routine. It's his right to use her whenever, and he's almost perfected it. First he inspects her bruises, memorizes them, deepens them, makes new ones. That first night he's rolled her onto her back, taking special care of her small breasts.

His eyes rake over the bruised nipples. Two nights later, they are pink and swollen, her soft little mounds shining in irritated skin and broken blood vessels just beneath it. He crawls over her and pulls her legs over his thighs, then moves his hands to her chest, kneading those tender tits, rubbing his palms over them until he feels her nipples harden, before he puts them between his thumb and forefinger and squeezes.

He'll have to do this again when she is fully conscious. The look in her eyes will be priceless, the tears brimming in them, the idea of her pained cries already thickening his cock. He keeps rolling her nipples between his fingers, then pulls on them, hard enough to lift her body a little off the bed but careful not to break her skin. Sometimes she issues a little whine that makes it through the fog that keeps her unconscious. Tonight, she is silent, just breathes deeply.

He lets go of her buds, rubs his palms over them to soothe them slightly, then lifts his hand and slaps the side of her left breast, then the other, then switches hands and repeats the motion. He will never do this when she's awake. He did it before, with the other girls, slapping, spanking, spitting, all kinds of degradation he will absolutely never utilize on her. She's too good for that. She isn't a slut, a cumdump, a worthless whore. She's his good little girl, so willing and submissive, a beautiful body with beautiful holes, his to use and fill, and she'll look at him and encourage it, wanting it, yearning for it.

He's spanking her tits now only to leave those beautiful marks on her soft skin, a reminder of what could be. She'll be sore, but it'll be a lot less painful than if she'd be experiencing this kind of treatment fully awake. He doesn't want to hurt her, blemish her too badly. It's just to show her that he is in charge.

Once her breasts are nice and red, he leans over her and kisses the warm skin, feels her blood pumping against his lips, an intoxicating feeling. He moves his tongue around her nipple, then sucks it into his mouth, tasting her, inhaling that sweet scent she's emanating. There's a balance to his torment. Pain, then pleasure, and she deserves it, she needs it. So he gives it to her.

After that, he moves his mouth higher, kissing her collarbones, nibbling on the soft flesh above them, then gives her neck some more attention. The love bites shine dark on her soft skin, a colorful mix of old and new, some deep purple, some light pink, others already fading in greens and yellows, accentuated by the shining black leather band around her neck. He always keeps her covered, from the soft skin behind her ear down to her shoulder, along her pulse in a crooked line, above and below the collar, sucking, nibbling, biting.

It's almost art at this point. He feels her heartbeat against his lips as he closes them around her pulse, licks up and down her soft neck, her steady breaths like a calming song in his ear. His hand moves into her hair, still a little wet from her shower, and while he traces his mouth over her face, kissing her cheek, her temple, her forehead, he slips his fingers around her head and massages her scalp, then moves them lower, pushes them under her collar, strains it against her throat, watching her nostrils flare as she struggles to breathe.

Leaning back eventually, letting her go, he watches her, her beautiful face, peaceful in slumber, but he remembers the times it was contorted in pain, in bliss, in shock and surprise, her eyes shining in fear, and then, in adoration. He presses his lips onto hers, lets his tongue lick between them, savoring her soft taste. He misses kissing her properly, misses feeling her small tongue pressing against his, hearing those soft mewls when he robs her of air by kissing her long and deep.

It's over soon, her punishment. And then they'll start their new life, together, and he'll continue using her but she'll be with him, in his arms, clinging to him, small hands clawing at his shoulders, nails raking over his skin, legs wrapping tightly around his waist. He can't wait, but he has to.

For now, it's only him and her boneless body. Moving back on his knees, he flips her onto her stomach, making sure her head is turned so she can breathe, and inspects the welts and bruises on her backside. They're fading slowly, some faster, but he wants to keep her ass bright red, it's too cute to look at. So he raises his hand and smacks it down hard on her left cheek, watching her body bounce, then the right, bounce, smack, bounce, smack. He misses her whimpers.

Once her ass is properly spanked (and she'll wake up wondering why the pain just won't go away), he shifts on his knees again and lifts her hips up, spreading her thighs, tilting his head as he looks at her glistening cunt. Despite being knocked out by the drug, her body still reacts to his ministrations, and as he prods her core with his finger, he finds her drenched and ready.

He still gives her some preparation, pushes in two fingers, eases the passage, before he pumps his cock and quickly lines it up with her entrance. It's one fluid snap of his hips, and he's seated fully inside, a move he hasn't done with her before, always paying attention to her discomfort, always trying to ease into her, gently pushing past her resistance, but he doesn't care when she's unconscious, she'll feel it tomorrow, but that's part of her punishment after all.

He rests for a moment, feeling her cunt clenching lazily around him, assessing the intruder, while his hands hold her hips, digging deep, fingers lining up with the deep purple spots he left there the first night by gripping her a little too tightly, but he likes the look, so he keeps doing it. Inhaling deeply, he pulls her against him, then starts drawing his hips back and slams into her hard, a relentless rhythm that would definitely make her cry if she were awake.

But she isn't, so he just keeps rutting into her, hard and fast and deep, until his stomach tenses and his balls throb and he unloads deep within her wet warmth, a small groan escaping him as he does. It's not the same. Now she's just a hole, a breathing fleshlight for him to jerk off into. It doesn't feel right, but it is her purpose, and soon they'll be back on track, and he'll watch her squirm and convulse and chase her own pleasure as he builds up his.

And he'll hold her after and caress her sweaty skin and cradle her into his chest, with their heartbeats joining rhythms. He can't wait.

He pulls out then, watching his cum drip from her clenching hole, slowly making it onto the sheets. The first night he's cleaned her up, left her wondering why she was sore, but the next he's left his cum on her skin as a reminder, a clue of what is happening while she's out cold. Maybe it's even a consolation for her, evidence that he hasn't forgotten about her, that he visits her even though he doesn't during the day.

He's seen it in her eyes the following evening when he has brought her dinner, as she's knelt next to the bed, worrying her lip between her teeth. Waiting for confirmation, but he hasn't said anything, barely looked at her, leaving her with her raging thoughts. It's cruel to promise her this head-empty-feeling and then let her drown in her doubts and fears for three days. But she has to learn, she has to realize that she needs him, craves him, so she will never attempt to flee from him ever again.

It's been his own fault, though. He's been too focused on making her jealous, too deep in flirting with women he wouldn't even normally look at longer than necessary, and he has turned his back on her, literally, in the crowded mall, and it surprises him deeply that she hasn't tried this earlier. He even understands why she did it. It makes sense. She felt alone, abandoned, his attention that she's had for almost four days straight turned away from her.

If he would be able to, he'd feel sorry.

But in the end, what matters to him most is that she came back, stumbled back to him, literally fell right in front of his feet, and back then, he had no idea why she'd been so emotional, but then she's confessed it, after his spanking, after the punishment for former mistakes, and in his mind he'd built up this plan, the ultimate punishment, blending together ideas he's had ever since she approached him in his club.

The collar, the leash, the nakedness, the loneliness. The using her in her sleep after drugging her. The bruising and marking. It's morbid, and frankly, much more elaborate than anything he's done with the other girls. Their punishment was brutal, rough, until their minds were broken and they were willing to submit, and even then he'd keep punishing them for the littlest things, just to keep hearing their screams and seeing their tears, and once they turned silent, defeated, broken, he'd send them off, to be used somewhere else.

But his beautiful little girl deserves better. She'll get why all of this is necessary, to make her understand. He doesn't want to break her, turn her into a drooling mess and a limp body, a soul that's burned out completely, he wants her to continue to want this, want him, turn that crush she's harboring into something more. He doesn't know love, and he's sure it's not possible to love someone who keeps treating her like he does, but he knows of obsession, and he wants her to crave him, wants him to be the only worry on her mind.

And if he were perfectly honest with himself, he already feels the same about her. A deep obsession, a need to be with her, use her for what she is, but also to care for her after, to protect her and to ravish her, all in equal measure. He needs her as much as she needs him.

His cock is weeping just thinking about it, even as he kneels behind her, having just climaxed inside her, watching her small body move slightly in sleep, soft breaths fanning over the pillow. He gathers her in his arms and pulls her onto his lap as he sits on the edge of the bed, cradling her, kissing the top of her head as it lolls against his shoulder, taking in that scent that makes him dizzy, sweat and sex and one that's only her, sweet like honey, fragile like a leaf in the crisp autumn air.

His eyes move back to the fairy lights on the wall, then move around the room. It was a good idea to transfer her old bedroom into his penthouse, a little transition between her old life and her new one. To get her accommodated, adjusted, and he's sure once her punishment is up, she'll hate spending time in here, and he'll take her old stuff away then, giving her new things to pass the time with, and she'll do it, play with herself and the toys and anything he'll ask of her, because she can't stand spending another minute in a room he's left her alone in for several days.

Kissing the crown of her head once more, he puts her back on the bed, rolls her onto her side and slips in behind her, holding her pressed to his chest, arms around her torso, swollen nipples poking into his skin, his cock firmly nudging between her ass cheeks.

He ends the night with grabbing her leg and lifting it, opening her up for him before he slips back into her welcoming warmth, using his last spend as lube to coat his already hardening member (he never takes long to become erect again after using her, it's a strange thing, the power she has over him and his libido), and while he thrusts deeply into her clenching cunt, he slips a hand between them and pushes a finger into her tight ass, getting her ready for more.

It's probably the most cruel thing he does to her, taking her ass raw and barely prepared and with only a shine of cum on his cock, leaving her hole sore and gaping, the rim stretched and swollen from the rough handling, probably not a nice feeling to wake up to. But then her muscles are particularly tight and it would only take him a few deep, hard thrusts to come if he wouldn't prolong the sensation and keep rutting into her ass until his stomach hurts and his balls are ready to explode and by doing so abuse her poor hole a little too much.

Then again, it would be far worse if she'd be awake for this, so he gets out all his harsher ideas during the night, and she'll only have to deal with the aftermath, not the act itself. It's the best he can give her. This is still a punishment after all.

When he eventually presses his tip against her puckered hole, he sighs deeply, feeling the tight grip, the resistance, the warmth awaiting him. And it's not as if he would just ram into her, he takes his time, eases his length into her, feeling her hole stretching around him, her muscles fighting the intruder until he nudges them long enough to give way.

Slowly he rolls his hips against her rear, holding her leg, using it as leverage, pushing in and pulling back, savoring the squeeze, the heat building inside her, the blood pumping through the bulging veins along his shaft, her muscles rubbing along them with every push and pull.

It's an intoxicating feeling, and he wants to relish in her tightness forever, making sure to never stretch her too far. She's not a hole to punish, but to worship. She needs to remain as tight as she is, and he'll do his best to stick to his own words and not fall back into old patterns of destroying his toys until they become useless to him, too loose to enjoy anymore. It'll be different with her.

His mouth finds her soft neck as he picks up the pace a little, one hand on her leg, the other arm curled around her chest, holding her against him. She's breathing deeply, but there's a little hitch in her noises, almost a whimper, a subconscious whine that breaks free sometimes when he's pushing her particularly close to the edge of pain, or pleasure, he can't be sure.

Kissing her flushed skin, he slams his hips into her, over and over again, pushing deep, still fighting her protesting muscles, his cock throbbing, painfully hard, his balls twitching, ready to blow his load into her, but he refrains, pushes further, savors the tight grip, the way her body makes space for him, lets him in deeper, and when he finally manages to bottom out, he stills, presses her as tightly against him as he can, just to feel how his cock pushes against her insides.

The little bulge in her tummy is a sight to die for. His palm rubs over it, and he imagines his tip throbbing against her flesh from the other side. He pulls back, watching it disappear, then pushes in again, nudging against his hand from within. A mesmerizing thing to witness. The way her body allows him to deform it, even for just a moment, how he fits into her so perfectly, how she molds to him and him alone, ignoring how much smaller she is compared to him.

“My perfect little girl,” he breathes into her ear, nibbling on her soft skin. “You were made for me.”

Closing his eyes, he inhales her, savors her warmth, both inside and out, and starts moving against her again, in and out, slow and steady, until he can't hold back any longer and pounds into her hard and fast, his groans in her ear, replacing the whispered praise, until he grunts loudly and stills, body jerking, cock twitching, his cum spurting out of him almost violently, filling her up to create another little bulge.

He relaxes with his cock still buried deep within her, and he waits for his heartbeat to calm down, his breaths to ease, and before the soothing claws of sleep can grab him, he pulls away, pulls out, her tight muscles clinging to him, her hole almost denying him exit now. He rolls her onto her stomach and rubs along her rim, spreading his cum, calming her stretched muscles, then smacks his hand against her soft, reddened ass cheek, once, twice, sometimes more, watching her drooling hole winking at him.

Sighing deeply, he moves her to lie on her side again, the way she fell asleep, and drapes the covers back over her body. He can't help but lean over her to press his lips to her cheek, whispering a few more praises she might never remember, but he still feels the need to utter them. She deserves them. Such a good girl for him.

One more day of forced solitude, and tomorrow night he'll end her punishment, make her his again, properly, with her eyes glistening and her lips parted and quivering, her soft little noises filling his ear. And her small hands reaching for him, grabbing him, holding onto him, a pliant body but with the right amount of need and desire to make her jump right into his arms and stay there.

He throws her one more glance, gripping his cock as he takes in her soft breaths, watching her sleep, the need to take her all over again growing stronger every time he has to leave her at the end. He can always repeat this, even after her punishment, and he probably will. It's his right. Her purpose.

Exhaling loudly, he steps back and pulls the door shut behind him, then locks it and turns away, ready to leave one last load in the shower, the one that was reserved for her sweet little throat. He just couldn't bring it upon himself to facefuck her in her sleep, too afraid he might overdo it and choke her and ultimately lose her.

He's almost done it before, he will never do it again. He's in too deep now. And she's supposed to stay with him forever, breathing and blushing, crying and cooing. Forever his to use and hold.

TWENTY 🟥 TWENTY-ONE 🟥 TWENTY-TWO

End notes: And we're back, as dark as ever. Next we learn Darling's side of things and how her punishment will conclude! Stay tuned!

By the way, if you like moodboards to your stories, I have a few Pinterest boards you can check out.

Thank you for reading! Next chapter on Saturday!

TAG LIST: @untamedheart81 @cyan1decandy @bimbos-are-angels @voiceactivated @reader-1290 (I'm using the old tag list, lmk if you want out - or in?)

CHAPTER / / / ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE

SIX SEVEN EIGHT NINE TEN

ELEVEN TWELVE THIRTEEN FOURTEEN FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN SEVENTEEN EIGHTEEN NINETEEN TWENTY

AO3 / / / MASTERLIST

[whoistartaglia]

not necessarily a request but in response to your “i’ll save you a seat” post, i’d like to imagine scenerios where you (reader) gets to the door before xiao and open it and he just—malfuctions—error error!! and he silently closes the door infront of you only to open it again for you!! maybe this even turns into some strange competition where you and xiao fight to open the door for one another lol (xiao will always win because he just closes the door again and then opens it)

ANON DKSOEMLSLS I DIDNT EVEN THINK OF THIS BUT HE TOTALLY WOULD

spiritual successor to this (i suggest reading first)

as for the rest of them…

wanderer puts his hand over the edge of the table only to accidentally smack you in the head. hey, it’s not his fault! at least, that’s what he tells you when you’re rubbing the welt on your forehead. you bent down so suddently that he had no choice to move quickly. should you mention that he probably did more harm than the table, he’ll grumble that he would have picked whatever you dropped up for you.

diluc double flips over your pillow. you left to get up, he flipped it over as a sleeping diluc does and then he does it. again. maybe he was extra tired or thought you got up again. to be honest, you didn’t really know of this habit of his until the mistake. you come back to a warm pillow and snoring diluc, and turn it over yourself. this may or not may wake up diluc, and he may or may not flip it over onto the warm side yet again.

kaveh reminds you if you have everything but he should honestly save a reminder for himself. once or twice or three times he’s left the house without his keys, his work, his shoes (that was a strange occasion and he still didn’t realize for a solid ten minutes). you’ll have everything you need to get through the day, but kaveh will have to make a pit stop back at the house to pick up his own forgotten items.

childe makes you too many snacks at once. when he brought over the first one, you thanked him with a genuine smile. the second time, you still had some of the first snack left, but thanked him anyways. the third time you got a little concerned; the fourth… well, you at least finished the first snack by now. you have to tell him that it’s okay! you don’t need a fifth right now! (he already has it ready to go—you’ll find him eating it alone in the kitchen).

zhongli goes into debt. listen, he’s still getting used to this whole mortal thing, and honestly, not having access to infinite mora definitely blows. he’ll find some gift he absolutely must buy for you only to realize he has only one golden coin left on him. later that night, he’ll still give you that gift, and if his smile looks somewhat strained, it’s because he had to get a certain someone to pay for it.

kaeya’s brain kind of short stops when he sees you get to the tavern before him. oh, you’re already sitting down, look at that. that’s fine and all, he wants to be the one to save you a seat. so you’ll look over when kaeya still hasn’t joined you and find him sitting at another table alone. that’s strange, what’s he doing there? you walk over to him and he pulls out the chair for you, and so your seat for the night as once again been saved.

alhaitham will get annoyed if you fall asleep during a good part of the story. like, yeah, that’s point of him reading to you but, really, did you have to fall asleep during the best part? he has two options: gently shake you awake to finish the chapter, or let you sleep like intended. his choice will depend on what book he’s reading, but if he wakes you because it’s a research paper and you just got to the oh-so important findings, feel free to take the paper of his hands, drop it on the floor, and go back to sleep. he can continue in the morning.

[lomahdu]

Nothing more

☀︎—pairings:keum!seongje x oc!character

☀︎—warnings:swearing, no seongje (sadly)

☀︎—Lena's note:Soo this part isn't much but i wanted yall to meet Sooah and Sooah to meet Juntae (possibly besties?).What do yall guys think about Sooah?

☀︎—word count:661

☀︎—Chapter 2

I was sitting in my room, watching yet another TikTok tutorial on how to curl your hair using socks. Hopefully, this one would work—though, considering it was already 9 PM and I’d been trying for the past half hour, I wasn’t feeling too optimistic. My arms were going numb from holding them up for so long when suddenly, someone rang the doorbell.

“Ugh,” I groaned, getting up from my chair, only to trip over a pair of jeans that had been abandoned on my floor. I fell forward, just barely catching myself with my hands before my face hit the ground. Damn, I really needed to clean this room. Honestly, I was walking on top of my own clothes.

The doorbell rang three more times—insistently.

Who the hell is at the door at this hour?

I pushed myself off the floor and made my way to the front door. On the intercom screen, I saw a sweet-looking boy wearing glasses, staring directly into the camera.

“Um, hi… Is Sieun home?” he asked politely.

I opened the door, and he gave me a weird look—kind of confused, kind of surprised.

“Uh… you have socks on your head,” he said—not mockingly, just pointing it out.

I ignored the comment and answered, “He’s not home yet. Should be back soon, I guess. And you are…?”

I gave him a quick once-over. He didn’t look like someone who’d be friends with Sieun. Then again, since the whole Suho and Beomseok thing happened, my brother barely talked to anyone besides me.

“I’m in Sieun’s class. I came to return his phone,” the boy said, holding it out toward me.

“Newton’s third law,” he added, flashing a smile with perfect white teeth.

“…Right. The third law of Newton,” I replied, raising an eyebrow as I took the phone. What a weirdo.

“I’ll give it to him. And your name is?” I asked, still unsure what to make of him.

“Juntae. Seo Juntae,” he said with a nod.

“Mhm. Well, Seo Juntae, thanks… on his behalf,” I replied.

“Oh no, really, it’s the least I could do,” he said, lifting his hands a bit in a dismissive gesture.

I gave him a small smile and started closing the door. “Good night.”

“Wait!” he said quickly. “Are you his sister?”

I frowned slightly. What else would I be? His girlfriend? Now that’s a good joke. I don’t think my brother will ever get a girlfriend.

“Yes, I thought that was obvious,” I replied.

“Oh… okay. And what’s your name? Since you know min-" he started.

“Sooah,” I said, cutting him off before he could ask anything else. This boy yapped way too much.

“Right. Um, good night. I mean… evening, I guess,” he said and disappeared.

What a strange kid.

I shut the door behind me and placed Sieun’s phone on the dinner table. Grabbing a notebook, I tore out a page and scribbled a note:

“Here’s your phone, dumbass. I’m going to sleep. And next time, PLEASE don’t lose it. Lots of kisses—your sister.”

I slid the note under his phone and looked up at the clock. It was 9:15 PM. Normally I didn’t go to bed this early, but last night I stayed up until 3 AM reading, so I was surviving on three and a half hours of sleep. In my defense, the enemies had just become lovers.

I went back to my room, stepping over the chaos of clothes like I was shopping during a store-wide clearance sale. Reaching my bed, I turned on my red LED lights and collapsed onto the mattress, only to realize how ridiculously uncomfortable it was trying to sleep with socks tied to my head.

This hairstyle better turn out amazing or I swear, I’m suing this chick on tiktok.

After about 10 minutes of tossing and turning with sock-curlers yanking at my scalp, I finally fell asleep.

[sygneth]

YES YES IT'S THEM AGAIN. I COULDN'T RESIST AND Y'ALL ASKED SO NICELY.

In this episode: messy haired Holmes

I have their story in my head up to the point of Victor's leave, and it's highly probable I will draw it all... I can roughly divide it into three chapters: 1st that is finished, 2nd concerning the events of the "Gloria Scott" and 3rd dealing with the mess afterwards.

Chapter 1 Chapter 2: part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4 - part 5 - part 6 - part 7 - part 8

Holmes College Adventures Masterpost AO3

A couple more of my thoughts and headcanons on the topic that came up in the meantime (hopefully no spoilers?):

I wanted their relationship to be a queerplatonic one, so if you're here for romance, you'll be disappointed. Holmes has some things thought through (as I tried to show in the previous part), he does like Victor on a different level than he has ever experienced, but he doesn't know where his boundaries of being comfortable are, and, at least for now, this is all too confusing for him to experiment. So he's just enjoying the time that they have and doesn't dwell on in too much.

Second thing is, Holmes seems to be alright with thouch, at least the way I read him. (Honestly, the amount of touch provided by him, to Watson in the first place of course, but also to other, random people? That's a LOT to me. But my view may also be biased, I don't like touching at all.) Yes, so, Holmes is alright with casual touch, and the closer he is with someone, the more alright he seems to be. I can see him as a type who will start treating friends like furniture, if they're close enough.

Ah and the third thing. I believe Holmes to be the kind of student who did a lot of extracurriculars in his fields of interest, and barely passed or had to repeat all the rest. And I hc astrology to be his sworn enemy. Because what influence does it have on the results of his chemical research or crime? Exactly.

[gh0stly-pages]

Out of Our Minds (Part Three)

Ledger! Joker x Harley Quinn-esque f!reader (18+)

CW: swearing, mentions of violence

Words: 4.1k

Chapter Summary: The third session with the Joker, and as you try and delve into the man he is, you can't help the connection you feel. Seems he might feel it too...

previous part: part 2 | next part: part 4

Notes: Hello everyone! Apologies for the wait, took a bit longer because of Halloween, was having too much fun to write. But here we are! This series is def picking up the pace now and soon we will dive into some real chaos lol. Please enjoy :) (I love inputting bits of Arkham dialogue in these because i can >:) )

_____________________________________________

On your way to work, it seems Gotham is in shambles. 

There seems to be some type of announcement going on, by someone from the GPD. You could care less, honestly, especially since you need to get to work before you’re late, but what piques your interest is the crowds of people. There is an obvious rift amongst them. Some of them hold signs displaying the infamous bat symbol, crying out in favor for Batman, it seems, some holding children at their hip who cry for the man they’ve lost. The other half push back against the pro-Batman crowd, yelling things like ‘murderer’ and ‘fraud’. The tension is so thick you can taste it. These people might tear each other apart.

Oh, if only Joker were here to see this. He’d never shut up.

A woman bumps into you, clutching a sign with that bat symbol painted on it, with words beneath it reading ‘come back’. You sneer, and she retreats back to her other Batman groupies. How could anyone get so worked up over a man in a mask? Take the mask off and we’re all messed up inside. Batman had worn the mask of a hero, parading around as Gotham’s salvation, and yet he killed people just like his enemies had. Like Joker had. Except Joker didn’t pretend to be someone he wasn’t. 

Mr. Dale may be right about keeping all this from Joker, but you can’t help but feel a twinge of guilt. He’s going to get out eventually and see all this mess. They can’t hide it from him forever. Even if he’s on house arrest for the rest of his damn life, he’s the Joker, and they won’t be able to stop him. They’re just scared. Scared that the Joker may have won. 

You walk through the city, broken into chaos, all the way to Arkham.

———————————————

This time when you enter Joker’s little conference room, he lacks his usual straitjacket, and you’re both surprised and relieved that your bosses actually listened to you. His asylum garb has been replaced with the usual Arkham patient outfit, an orange baggy shirt with matching orange pants. Immediately, as ashamed as you are, your eyes go to his arms, which are surprisingly lean and toned, probably from numerous fights. You trace his arms down to his hands, each of which have a separate handcuff linked to a man made circle jutting from the table. You look at every crinkle, every callus, every line. Human hands. Dangerous hands.

“Uh, doll, my eyes are up here, ya know.”

Shit. You look up into his eyes as you take your seat, shifting uncomfortably. “I’m… sorry, I was just-“ You try to search for an excuse, but it’s clear from the teasing look Joker gives you that he’s not looking for one. You flush. “I’m surprised they let you out of the jacket.” I’m surprised your hands are so normal. 

“Well, it certainly wasn’t from my good behavior,” he clucks, his tongue hitting the top of his mouth. “Did you ask them to get rid of it?”

You can’t tell if he’s angry or not. “I did.”

He breaks into his signature, manic grin. Not angry. Good. “I knew I liked you, doll.”

Joker doesn’t say ‘thank you’ or ‘I appreciate it’ but somehow, this is better. It’s probably as close as you’ll get to hearing those words from him and it ignites something in you. You feel proud of yourself. Proud that he’s proud of you. Before you can return his smile, you remember ‘hey, wait a fucking second, this is my patient The Joker we’re talking about here’. You settle for a small smile. Be professional. “Mr. J, I wanna start this session off by just saying I think we’re making some good progress-“

“Doctor y/n, you seem to have quite the fascination with my hands,” Joker interrupts, a giggle rising in his throat. 

Dammit. Were you looking at his hands again? You didn’t even fucking notice. You’re not trying to. You’re probably just a little shocked. Again, it’s like pulling back the curtain, getting a glimpse at the man behind the act. And there he sits, with such human looking hands. “Excuse me, I’m just…” You search for the words. “I’m not used to seeing you without being all wrapped in a jacket.”

“Well, ah, they’re just hands. Did ya think I’d have talons?”

“Maybe. Or maybe, like, robotic hands. Rocket launchers for hands. Something cooler.” Are you teasing him? Your patient? You might be teasing him, just a little.

At your teasing, his smile shifts sideways into a smirk, eyes thinning. “Cooler? What’s cool is, ah, what these hands have done. They’ve been the cause of the end of so many lives.” He tries to lace his hands together, but the handcuffs keep his arms too far apart, so his fingers touch only slightly. “Now, ah, where were we?”

You stumble to find the words. So much for professionalism. “R-right, sorry. I think we’re making real progress here. Yesterday was a good session, and I’m hoping today will follow suit.” You bring out your clipboard. Click your pen open. “Now, why don’t we pick up where we left off? We were analyzing your crimes-“

“Spectacles.”

“Whatever you wanna call em’. Now those are only one part of the man you call the Joker-“

“That is, ah, my name, doll face.”

You hold your hand up. “Let me finish. We haven’t talked about you. About this person you present as the Joker. And yes,” you say roughly, before he can cut you off again, “I know you say that you and this character you present are one in the same, but nobody is exactly the person they put out. I mean, you did say we all hide behind a facade. So, let’s talk about Joker, the one we see on TV getting the best of Batman.” You scribble a little picture of him, smiling wide and in his signature purple suit. Jutting your chin, you gestured for him to look at it. “This will be the outside Joker…” You do another little doodle, one of Joker without his makeup and in the Arkham garb. “And this will be the you in here.”

The Joker looks down at your drawings and bites the inside of his cheek. “Not much of a difference, doll face, except that I look even crappier in here.”

You roll your eyes. “Are you proud of the person that Gotham has come to know?”

“Define proud.”

“Do you feel a sense of satisfaction over the person you allow Gotham to see? This crazy clown figure?”

Joker tilts his head back, thinking, and you can’t help but stare intensely at his neck, tracing down his throat to his Adam’s apple, which moves as he swallows. Geez, what is up with you and the staring today? Luckily, he doesn’t think for long, tilting his head back down to look at you. “I’m just fine with whatever I showed to Gotham. And I don’t regret-tah one bit of it.” Looking all smug, he smirks. “I’m not proud of who I am, I relish it. Bask in it. The Clown Prince of Crime, they call me! Nothin’ better than that, doll. Means I’ve made a difference.”

“You’ve certainly made an impact, Mr. J. For better or for worse.”

“And whaddya get out of all that, doll? That I’m some kind of egotistical maniac?”

“Let me do the analyzing, please, Mr. J.”

He grunts. “Yeah, yeah,” he mumbles, and you can’t help but smile. “You say you’re proud, but clearly it’s not enough,” you tell him, scribbling notes underneath the doodle of him. “When you get out of here, you’d like to go back to all that, wouldn’t you? Go back to testing the B-Man?”

“Batsy and I just fit so well together, dolly. We’re meant to chase one another to the end of our days!”

If you can find him. “All the stuff you pulled then, did it really amount to anything if you want more?”

“Oh, doll, it’s not that I want more. I’m not just some kinda freak gettin’ a good fix when I cause havoc. My point just keeps needing to be made!” He winks at you. “Course, I know that if I get out of here I’ll have to behave.”

You seriously doubt Joker even knows the concept of behaving. “B-Man would just get you again, would he not?”

Joker cackles. He laughs at everything but you’re always confused when he laughs at something you don’t find remotely humorous. “That’s the fun part! He and I, we’re like a cat and mouse, like in those old cartoons. We’re just chasing each other in damn circles and, ah, the fun doesn’t-tah stop until one of us falls.” With a cruel smile, he flicks his fingers, as if toppling something over. “And I don’t intend to be the first to fall.”

“And after B-Man falls?”

“You’ll just have to wait and see, I suppose. Doesn’t sound very fun. Why, you got a soft spot for the Bat?”

“For Batsy?” Technically, you’re not supposed to be very vocal in your own opinions, especially when they do nothing to help, but wouldn’t it be good for Joker to know you’re with him on some things? Not that Joker has too much disdain in Batman, he clearly loves to mess with him, but obviously the two are on very different sides. You want to show Joker you stand with him. “Absolutely not. The Bat hasn’t done anything to benefit me. If anything I feel more… useless. This man in a mask gets to go around fighting criminals and gets praised and here I am busting my butt everyday and what do I get? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” You clap a hand over your mouth. Way to go overboard. “I’m sorry, I’m rambling.”

The Joker, of course, doesn’t care that you rambled on. He looks amused. No, not just amused, he looks pleased. His whole face contorts into an evil grin. “Well well well, doll face, nowwww we’re talking. Why didn’t you tell me you loathed the Batman so much?”

“Didn’t think it important.”

“Well, ah, I find it important. Looks like we wanna both go after the Batman, don’t we?”

“Go after him?” Now it’s your turn to laugh. “Obviously I’m not going to do that.”

He scooches forward. “But you’d like to. Come on, doll, given the chance, wouldn’t you wanna, ah, take the Bat down?”

For some reason, you actually think about it. If you really did have the chance, would you want to bring down the Bat? He was already down now, obviously, but if you had had the chance before then, would you have taken B-Man down? Before you can even dive into it, you snap yourself out of it. Why would you even care to do all that in the first place? Imagine you, beating up Batman? You’re not crazy. “I’m not so sure about that.”

Joker shrugs. “That isn’t a no.”

Things are going far from where you need them to be. “Let’s take this conversation back to you, Mr. J. How about we talk about the Joker in here? Nothing left for you to do except sit and think. You’re not out causing havoc, you’ve been stripped of your weapons and your makeup, what do you feel about yourself now?”

Already, you can tell the Joker isn’t too fond of the question. He squirms uncomfortably in his chair, muttering things under his breath that all sound nonsensical to you. For some reason, you kinda like it. It’s about time you get under his skin too.  “I feel like I wanna hurt someone,” he answers, clenching his fists. “I just wanna get out there and get back to everything.”

“Okay… see, you’re angry at being in here, and you don’t know how to handle your emotions so you’re resorting to violence.” As much as that’s probably true, you’re almost sure that if you were stuck in Arkham, you’d wanna hurt a few people too but that won’t help.

“Violence solves a lot more problems than ya think.”

“Not mental ones. I think I’m seeing what’s going on here, Mr. J.”

Joker taps on the table, a random pattern of noise. “And that is?”

You point with your pen between the two Joker sketches. “Both these people have unresolved problems, problems coped with by violence. Plenty of people do this, but they don’t go around trying to make their points to the whole damn city. These huge acts of violence are outcries and you don’t even realize it. You have no one to turn to to sort your feelings out with and this is what the outcome is.” You look back up at him, and it’s clear he’s confused. “I told you at our last session, you need company. Someone you can relate to, empathize with, talk through these feelings with.”

He frowns. “And what about you, huh? You’re, ah, just as alone as me, not a soul to talk to, and yet you’re not blowing up hospitals.”

Will he ever quit trying to analyze you? “I have other means of coping, Mr. J. Whatever happened to you… it made you hurt. And this hurt, it turned you away from people, even though we need companionship. We seek attention and validation and yet I fear you’re seeking it in all the wrong ways.”

“Who says we need companionship?”

“Human nature. Our hearts. Your mental state,” you say harshly.

His tongue pushes out his scar as he licks the inside of his cheek. “Feistyyy. I like it when you’re all, ah, riled up.”

Joker was really pushing your buttons now, and it was worse that no matter how upset you got at him, he’d find some kind of enjoyment in it. You really couldn’t win some of the battles he put you up against. Yet, the purr in his voice made your cheeks heat. You could never tell when to be angered or enamored. “I really do think that whatever happened in your childhood resulted in your detachment from emotion, and a distrust in people, and this mix of the two… well, it hasn’t been the best for you.”

“So, whaddya suggest? I go mingle with some of the other Arkham patients? Spend some quality time together finger painting and singing Christmas carols?” His laugh comes out as a sharp exhale. “I don’t think friendship is gonna fix me, doll.”

“I wasn’t going to suggest any of that,” you assert. “I just think that isolating ourselves from not just people but also feelings, now that doesn’t get us anywhere good.”

“Clearly,” he giggles, lifting up his cuffed wrists. “But I’ve been doing just fine, doll, aside from this little incident of being locked up in here.”

It was like the Joker just considered Arkham some bump in the road before he could continue his anarchy. That wasn’t good. He couldn’t have his heart set on going back to taking down Batman, no matter how good his reason. Especially considering, well, Batman was nowhere to be seen. Gosh, you wish you could just tell him. Maybe he wouldn’t see it as motivation, maybe it would shut down all his ideas. There was just far too much risk with everything. Say something, say nothing. The Joker was a lot of uncertainties. “But you shouldn’t have to be locked up in here. You don’t have to be if you just try and listen to me. I really want you to get better.”

“I don’t need to get better,” he growls. “The way other people feel, it’s just a soft spot for others to exploit. I’m already winning because nobody has anything on me. Chaos stirs something inside me, isn’t that enough?”

“No, Mr. J, you need more than that,” you plead. Why is he so stubborn? “Just a little company can do wonders. Just some faith in someone.”

“So they can do what? Push me down on my knees like some kind of sinner, making me beg for forgiveness? Making me change my ways? You really are crazy if you believe that.”

Joker is impossible, really. You don’t know how else to get your message across, how to make him listen. So instead, you think back on your deal, take a deep breath, and give him a story.

“When I was ten years old, the kids at school all decided they hated me so much that they all pretended I didn’t exist. I’d try and approach people and… and they never even acknowledged me. It followed me all throughout the rest of my school years.” You mess with your coat, fidgeting with the buttons, not quite able to meet Joker’s gaze. “I know how it feels when people hurt you.”

You wait, wondering if the Joker will give you a story back. You’re surprised when he opens his mouth to speak. “Once, ah, when I was just starting out, one of the criminals I hired managed to sneak up on me, knocked me to the floor real good. Kept babblin’ on about how I was a freak, how I’d never amount to anything, the heel of his boot digging into my back.” He stops, taking a deep breath, and you wonder for a moment if he’s going to stop all together but he continues. “Course, with all his ramblin’, he failed to notice me grabbing a blade. I stabbed him right in the foot, and oh boy, did he scream. I gave him the nastiest beating of his life, I’m sure. Blood all over the floor. And right before I was done, I made sure to give him and I matching smiles. Die with a smile, no?” Joker holds his chin up. “I don’t need people. People don’t care.”

It’s only a single story yet you realize the Joker has so much behind him. So many incidents that seemed to have fueled the thunderous rage beneath his skin. This man, finding humor in the wickedness of the world, wanting to show that everyone is essentially just as rotten as he, has been torn apart over and over again. Society had crushed the both of you yet here you sat, a doctor, and there he sat before you, a madman. In your anger towards the world, you had sought to try and help it, and in his anger, he wanted to burn it all down. You still had hope left in people, he had let that all die away.

He said people didn’t care, but you cared. This was more than just a way towards a paycheck, you really did want to help him. That’s what you’d always wanted for every Arkham patient. Yet the others did not quite distrust people as much as Joker did. Joker didn’t have anyone for him. How was it that Batman, a murderer playing superhero, still had half the city on his side and yet everyone just wanted Joker to rot away in here? You think about yourself, and how much better you would feel if you did have someone, if you had been given love and support along your miserable journey. If you could give Joker the support you’d always wanted, well, maybe that would change something in him.

“We’re both pretty messed up, huh?” you finally say, deciding not to comment on anything specifically about Joker’s anecdote. No need to keep talking about something so horrific. Joker didn’t need that. He needed comfort. 

Joker blows air from his nose, smiling softly. “We are, aren’t we? Just a buncha freaks.”

“Freaks still need to stick with other freaks.”

“And who have you got exactly, Miss l/n?”

You freeze. Nobody. Absolutely nobody. He knows it. Yet for a moment you feel… well, embarrassed. Your hand creeps to your warming face, your eyes feel suddenly watery. You don’t have your parents anymore. No old friends from school or college, not that there were many to begin with. No coworker friends, shitty bosses. All you have is yourself and you hate it. 

Joker seems to notice that his comment didn’t go down well, and he holds up his hands like he’s gesturing for you to stop, his eyebrows knitting together in confusion. “Uh, doll, I didn’t mean to pry…”

“No, no, it’s fine…” You quickly wipe at your eyes with the back of your hand. “Just wasn’t expecting the question, I guess.”

“Right,” he mumbles. “It wasn’t, uh, meant to be an insult.”

You let your eyes flutter close for a second and take a nice, long breath in. When your eyes open again, you straighten yourself out, contemplating your next words. “I know how it feels to be alone, Mr. J. More than anything.” Your voice comes out as a whisper, your fingers drifting towards his own, which are splayed out on the table. He sits up very still, unmoving save for a twitch in his jaw, as he watches you place your hand on top of his. You’re not sure what you’re doing, but you need your point made. “I… I know how much you think you don’t need people, but people offer support and guidance, and if I could have some of that right now, for fucks sake, I would.” You sigh. “I don’t have a lot of friends.”

Joker’s tongue slowly traces along his chapped lips. You wish you knew what he was thinking. You hated how well he read you and you could hardly get anything on him. Finally, he speaks. “Well, you got one now.”

The Joker, a friend. It sounds like the stupidest thing in the entire world. This was someone who had hurt and killed and destroyed. Someone who was close to no one, the people around him with one purpose: to serve him. He had said how loyalty didn’t come for free, that it needed to be bought. If something so simple as loyalty was seen as a transaction to him, did he even comprehend the concept of companionship? He must have, at some point, whoever the man before the Joker was. But the person you were dealing with was not that man, you were dealing with Joker. Joker did not seem a man who connected with anyone yet he tells you how alike the two of you are, and you can’t help but believe it. Alone in the world, the two of you. Maybe he can’t yet bring himself to make a real connection with anyone but, goddammit, you wanted him to try.

Why not be alone together?

It would all be in hopes of helping him, you told yourself. Whatever relationship the two of you were forming. If he could have someone to talk to, not just in a professional sense, but someone who would really be there for him, you think that would help a lot.

That’s all this is. This is to help him.

You squeeze his hand. “I like the sound of that, Mr. J.”

—————

It started off as a joke, really. 

Joker didn’t want to be analyzed. The first night he had been brought into Arkham, he had been poked and prodded, as doctors tried to decipher what kinda pills to stuff him full of. Joker had tried to fight them off, but they had injected him with something that made him sluggish. Just a few hours later was when they had sent in all the psychiatrists to try and fix him. Joker didn’t need to be fixed. He was an agent of chaos, a force to be reckoned with, something they just couldn’t comprehend. Then you’d come along, and you were so lonely, and Joker liked toying with things that were easy to break. Except you’re nothing like the others. There’s something about you, this way that you interact with him, the way you don’t see him as some freak. When you stare at him, you don’t look at him like he’s a monster. It’s strange.

Joker doesn’t do friends. The term itself means nothing to him. It’s a meaningless word. Most words are meaningless to him, empty sayings. Yet when you look at him with those eyes, like he’s your equal rather than beneath you, Joker does feel something. Some kind of connection. He’s never thought about killing you, which says something. It’s the only way he can describe this feeling towards you, something other than the pure disdain he usually feels towards others. There is something… warm about you. Joker didn’t like it. Yet he let it happen anyways.

Long after you’re gone, when he’s strapped onto the metal slab the Arkham guards call a bed, he thinks on some of your words. You thought a companion would help him. Someone he could rely on. Someone who would truly be loyal.

He smiles wickedly to himself. You might just be right.

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