#calebrity | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

calebrity · 1 day ago

Note

omg I saw your post about frontman!sylus in a squid game au! now the rot is taking over my brain

does sylus have a heartbreaking moment with the reader where he fake dies like the real frontman does in the show? I can imagine it so clearly where reader is devastated that someone she's become so close with is taken from her in one of the last few rounds of the game... until she wins and is escorted to the office where he unmasks and her heart drops in relief that he's alive! but wait... why are you up here, all cleaned up and in a similar uniform to the guards?.. until it finally clicks and the relief morphs into horror...

would love to hear your thoughts!

frontman! sylus

cw. squidgame! au, manipulation, being held hostage, yandere themes, 1.5k

an. nonnie i loooove the way you think!! 😣sorry i was sitting on this but im actually obsessed & just wanted to give it some extra thought bc your idea is 🔥🔥 MWAH sorry its a lil long im insane and sleepy lol :,)

Frontman! Sylus is unreachable to most guards.

With the attention the games require of him and other related matters (communication, keeping the place under wraps, organizing meetings, just to name a few), it’s gonna take a little more than just a red mask to score a conversation with him. He’s worked for. Not worked with. To most, he’s just a deep, mechanical voice who stands tall behind a wall of television screens, and someone in so much power that it’s implicitly understood that he is not to be fucked or toyed with. So all obey him.

He expects nothing but order and blind loyalty and even though it brings a certain monotony he can’t quite shake, he gets exactly what he demands.

Frontman! Sylus is disgustingly wealthy through underhanded means, but he’s oddly classy for someone who holds a mantle earned entirely through blood and violence. This is one big dirty game he oversees, but the contestants know what they’re signing up for, so he can’t really will himself into guilt when they’re all the same— different faces and names but identical minds and hearts. Corrupted. Selfish.

Sylus values a purity that cannot be found within the massive walls of red light green light as players push and step over each other; dalgona, as idiotic sheep use contraband lighters and sweat as a ticket to the next game; mingle, as the more irredeemable of the men yank women from their rooms and lock the door behind them. Sylus also values a purity that does not exist within himself, or not anymore: whatever he had of that is beaten to a pulp as hours pass behind an obsidian mask and he grows colder for it.

Richer, too, so powerful it’s scary— but that’s beside the point.

With every match he witnesses, he loses another scrap of faith he had in humanity. To be fair, he knows he’s no saint, he would never claim to be, but—

But when you come along— a bungling girl who’s landed herself in a debt she can’t hope to climb out of, surprisingly kind to the others but a bit too naive- resourceful, though, enough to inspire the success of several other contestants— his world tilts. A hand reaches through the static of his screen and dares to lift his mask. He sees your pretty face staring agog at the floating piggybank when he closes his eyes: the aquamarine jersey, the white label 109, seared into his conscience and there to stay.

And at first, he’s intrigued more than anything. It’s just curiosity. Maybe a little bit of mean amusement too, okay sure- he’ll admit it’s a whit hard to not chuckle when you cutely plead for the bathroom to a stoic guard(— it’s alright, let 109 in— ) who’s just not hearing you or nearly fall off your bunk amidst a very fitful sleep.

But those feelings that develop within the span of a couple days are nothing too crazy, nothing he can’t manage and process.

For a short time.

You seem a silly, clumsy girl at face value, your trembling hands, clear as day through the monitor, a blatant sign of the fear you do a damn bad job at hiding- yet it’s not enough to cloud your mind. You prevail through the games and pull some unexpected, winning move right when he’s convinced you’ll succumb to stupidity, a mistake (either yours or another’s), or the malicious will of someone you’d looked at as a friend mere moments before the timer started.

You’re clever. Adaptive. He’s reminded of bunnies and how even the smallest, fairest of creatures have the base survival instinct in them; you’ll do what you must to make it out of here.

Your half-baked plan of going along with the flow and later adjusting to it is as unreliable as it is unable to be helped- you don’t have much better options in such an unpredictable environment. It goes surprisingly well, though, and earns both the respect and attention of an otherwise unfeeling frontman.

Well, it goes well up until it doesn’t. It goes well until it’s nighttime and the lights go out and Sylus braces for utter chaos to unloose itself between the bunks— unexpectedly stiff behind his screen as he searches for your figure amidst a collage of thermal shapes. Your ragtag group of misfits (the unwanted: elderly folk, females and the disabled) is attacked and takes an impressive stand, but you’re just a girl at the end of the day, and your foes are more numbered, so much bigger and infinitely more cruel—

Sylus rushes out the viewing room, briskly replacing his ominous, black garb for a teal-blue tracksuit. There’s no questions asked; the guards carry on with their jobs quietly, noting their boss’s strange behavior with a little jerk of their heads but no outward shock is risked beyond that.

They give him a wide berth because the look smoldering in ruby-red eyes is frightening.

Sylus decides right then, in the unfurling havoc, that he’s sure as hell no saint but he can play the part for a few games if it means saving your ass now.

And eventually, when it’s dwindled down to just a few players, he’ll even be a martyr. He’s not entirely sure why he does what he does where your presence is involved, the measures he goes to— all Sylus knows is that he needs to protect you from the fucked-up, dog-eat-dog world (and maybe the consequences of your own financial actions), and maybe endear yourself to him in the process.

…What better way to endear yourself to him than to watch as he consistently puts his life on the line for you throughout the course of the next few games-? snarling in the faces of other hostile, foolish players while you’re cowering behind his broad back, guarding you like a hound as you rest, suggesting his arms as your ulitimate safehouse and whispering shh, sweetie, I won’t let anything get close tonight, so sleep.

To hell with all that— what better way to endear yourself to him than to die in your place?

So he does. Or, you’re all but convinced he does, and that’s all that matters.

In the last round, more or less the grand finale of the whole game, he goes out like a hero, sacrificing himself for you with a few dying words and a gentle command ‘to remain true to yourself’ as you cup his face for as long as you’re allowed before the red-suited figures almost hesitantly step over and drag him away. Sylus knows telling you his name is risky- even making a short cameo in the activities is life-threatening- but he can’t find it in him to regret it when you’re howling it over the speakers, knelt to the ground and ugly-crying as you shake your fists. No doubt you’re blaming yourself, deciding in your heart that it should’ve been you instead of him.

No, it should’ve been everybody else, kitten, and he made damned sure it was.

Sylus is charmed by it, readying himself by the door as a muffled hubbub of boots echo on the other side, committing your each and every kindness to memory. It wounds him, again to his own surprise, to see you so devastated and know he’s the catalyst for it, but a part of him preens when you’re so wrapped up in your own heartbreak over his supposed death that you forget your handsome cash prize entirely.

Unselfish girl. Beautiful girl. His chest puffs with pride. You really are his girl.

And in the end, all of these rotten games were worth it, the time and violence and the better part of his humanity. Even if you don’t quite realize that yet, stumbling through his door with wobbling knees and a ruddy face that quickly warps with a plethora of emotions- confusion, relief, and then a brilliant look of mortification that steals the breath from his lungs- even if it takes time and patience on his end to work you through it. He’ll gently assure that he won’t hurt you, that you’ll never end up as an insignificant player in those childish killing fields again.

He’ll scoop your broken pieces up in his strong arms and tuck you under his chin, to his breast, murmuring sweet nothings as he sends his watchful unit of guards a quiet look to leave the room. And of course they do because they value their heads.

“You did well, Sweetie- but don’t forget about your prize, hm? Tonight, I’ll give you more than you could possibly imagine,” he plants a kiss to your forehead, sickeningly tender, and knuckles aside the hair matted there, damp from all your needless sobbing.

He chuckles lightly, voice velvety soft. “I think some… thanks are in order, don’t you?”

#love and deepspace #love and deepspace x reader #sylus x you #love and deepspace sylus #lads sylus #sylus qin #lads x reader #yandere #l&ds #l&ds sylus #sylus x reader #sylus x mc #calebrity #sorry nonnie i know its a lil long #frontman sylus is sooooo sexy tho i do think #on the topic of squidgame lads tho… i feel like rafayel could really fit the role of a VIP #calebs the brother that tries to find and bust mc out after she disappears 💀💀#anyway 💖

110 notes · View notes

calebrity · 2 days ago

Text

how the end begins

() chapter one. masterlist for the series here.

a ghost x reader x soap story set in the zombie apocalypse┊ please see content warnings and possible triggers on the masterlist!! you can also read this story on ao3 here :)

The cities are hit the hardest.

They don’t bother much with targeting the countryside, but the disease manages to slip through the winding rural roads regardless, and survivors die in those dirt paths trying to escape the boroughs.

Out in this old, dilapidating barn though, perched up on the floor overseeing the one below, hidden behind a ring of bales, it’s safer.

You’ve heard rumors about how it went down. When things first started, the news flared with flashy headlines and alarms rattled throughout town- almost every electronic buzzing with a robotic voice- but it was still so new and the story never finished developing by the time everything crashed and burned. Nobody’s in front of the telly anymore, nobody’s scooping the paper off their porch step. There is just life and death out in these parts and that’s all- normality doesn’t exist anymore and probably won’t ever again.

Humanity can’t come back from this; It doesn’t.

That used to instill a sense of existential, poignant dread in you, the cold reality of it all wresting your hope away and tossing it into a deep cavernous ditch. But now you know there’s better things to worry about, better things to let occupy your mind.

Thinking wastes time. Time is precious. And you can only last so long without food or water or another weak prayer thrown up to God.

(Today, you pray He’ll answer the last.)

Before sunset- a whole handful of hours- you set out from the enclosed barnyard, now barren and crawling with maggots where the stinky remnants of a cow lay (bees swarm it, carving out a hive in its rotted ribcage. You’d risk a finger in for a slab of honey, but you’re allergic and the sight of the worms wards you off just fine), to hunt. You try your luck westward this time, untucking your gun from the waistband of your pants, keeping it tight in your fist the whole time, head on a swivel for freaks or scampering critters. Anything that moves. Anything that has meat on its bones.

The untainted kind.

By the day’s end, you’re rolling on your cot, your bag lumpy under your head as your tummy clenches on nothing. Hunger pinches and pulls your gut. Fuck. You haven’t eaten for four days now- by experience, you know you can last at least a few more, but the last thing you ate was a small mound of wild berries, and they had upset your stomach and shortly thereafter pumped it. The last thing to pass your lips was not food but vomit.

Tomorrow, you squeeze your eyes shut and nuzzle up in the hay, flaxen needles pricking your bones, I will hunt again.

This time you’ll try east again- worst comes to worst, you can whittle down a wooden spear and head for the creek; maybe, if luck is on your side, you’ll snag a smelt or a few bite-sized fish.

Minnows.

Crawfish.

Anything. At this point, anything.

For now, you force yourself to settle.

Up in the overhead loft, it’s safer, shrouded in shadows that pour from the rafters, the big window latched and allowing only slivers of moonlight to weasel through the decrepit cracks.

Crickets chafe their legs from the surrounding field. Frogs hiccup and roll their tongues. A mosquito buzzes by your ear and you slap it to oblivion, your cheek smarting red as you, with half a mind, decide it’s better off not to eat it. Not that you’re not hungry enough for it- because you most certainly are- but the bug is so insubstantial it won’t do you any favors.

Who knows if it’s carrying something, anyway. Better to leave it.

As silence comes, you pray for sleep to come and save you from it. It breeds negativity, lets the creative part of your mind start to run, really reminds you of how fucked up you’ve become. Hungry and broken and lonely.

Guilty.

So, so guilty.

Awful memories revive themselves like a bony hand from its grave, bent on taking you down with them.

Part of you wants to let yourself be buried. Once and for all. It’s morbid, maybe, but it’s hard to not feel a little influenced by your circumstances when all you can see is the darkness they bring.

Sometimes you can almost will yourself to believe it’s all a bad dream, a rotten nightmare so vivid that you can feel it in your fingertips and trace it in the scars it left hugging your limbs. About six years into the end, not quite delusional enough to partake in complete fantasy- yet- you shake off the tempting world of make-believe, put on your big girl pants, and convince yourself that stupidity will get you killed if you indulge in it.

And the real world- the dead world- says that pretending what you see and feel to not be real is a cheap ticket to a gruesome death.

Despite it all, the depression that mars your mind when it screams survivesurvivesurvive like it’s the only word it knows- your trembling bones when your hand scrapes the bottom of your depleted food box- the singular photo of your brother that’s flimsy from holding it so much- you can’t just let yourself die.

…If you die, so do your memories of him.

And you’re too stubborn anyway. Too… lucky. At all the worst times only.

You’ve been close to it, you know. Sometimes it just gets too much and you slam that pistol to your head, teeth chattering with hunger and pain as old, long-dead faces resurface and come back to haunt you- and almost without thinking you pinch the trigger, and hard.

It jams. Clucks its tongue at you like, stupid girl. Now try it again, try your luck and its apparent love for you- have one last go at it.

You don’t. You never attempted a second shot, feeling deep in your gut that that bullet, the one you’d hoped had your name scrawled on it, getting stuck was a small act of God. Besides, too many people have pulled your bacon from the fire for you to just jump back onto the grill... It’d be a huge slap to the face of your neighbor, some of the folks from the old, now dissolved group, your—

Your big brother.

You let out a long, whistling breath through your nose. Hay brushes your cheek. Your belly howls.

You’re glad for the fence hiked up around this place and the yawning, grassy planes of ochre that border it, the remote location hidden far from the city; it’d be an embarrassing death if a zombie were to hear your growling belly and saunter on over before taking a chunk from your neck.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow, God, let me win.

ꕤ

The next day is similarly unlucky.

You feel unfortunate, chewing on the gummy insides of your cheeks as you wade through the tall weeds empty-handed, bare legs chafing on the strands. The barn is just as you left it upon your return.

The glare of the sun clumps your lashes with sweat, but you think it’s tears that blur your vision when frustration rears its head in you and you shove your pistol in your waistband, opting for the spear you sculpted instead.

I’ll just go look for fish, then. You decide with a huff before setting out towards the nearby stream.

Balancing on a bank of rocks lining the river, you fold your thighs over your calves and wait.

You’re pretty good at that. Back when you were younger, you and your siblings would gather on the front porch step and bet money on how long it’d actually take your drunken father to careen into the driveway and stagger out of his beat-up truck. More often than not, your piggy bank would be the one to remain perfectly intact. You took pride in that; some people are just easy to read and you suppose your father- his addictions- made him all too predictable.

But for as good as you are at waiting, you’re not nearly as fond of it.

Sunlight glitters on the liquid surface. It gives the somewhat murky water an almost lemony veneer, and the blue sky- clear in comparison to some days prior- is mirrored on it. The water is usually translucent, the sandy floor and all its wedged, mossy rocks perfectly visible from the bank, but the recent storm has washed in all sorts of grime and the color is still brownish.

Debris floats past your perch every so often, bunches of leaves and splintered, small branches racing past like paper boats in a gutter. It’s hard to see, but with your spear topped at the end of your crooked arm, you squint your eyes- wipe sweat from your dripping brow every so often- and bide your time.

Patience. Patience. Because good things, your grandad used to tell you as he bobbed you on his fat thigh, come to those who—

Something winks beneath the surface, a collage of colors flashing all at once. Sunlight bouncing off a scaly back.

—Wait.

Your pointed stick whistles through the air (oh, it looked like a fat one too; your mouth is watering at the mere idea of a juicy, tender fish to sling over your shoulder before roasting and devouring). It curves as it breaches the surface, slowing its own descent.

You catch another glimpse of something holographic beneath the drift, this time splitting in the farthest direction from you.

There’s no sound but the continuous thrush of the running stream and the leafy boughs overhead tossing their limbs against each other. But the should-be peaceful ambience resembles a cruel, bellowing laugh.

Ever since Mark, your brother, ‘went away’, you’ve been inwardly terrified that you’ll be good for nothing. And right now? your fears seem pretty grounded.

You clench your jaw, sweep the spear up from the rippling surface, and try again.

And again.

And- Just one more time.

Around an hour passes of expending your precious, rapidly depleting energy, the early hours of morning meshing into noon- and you have your final go at spear-fishing.

Nothing.

You battle off tears on the short trek back, the stirrings of panic starting up within you as your belly growls loudly. It churns with bile and the creek water you just inhaled in mouthfuls using your bowl-shaped palms.

They have callouses on them, little bumps under the knuckle that don’t register feeling when you experimentally prod them with your fingers. But they do tingle, though. And they do eventually start to burn when you clutch the gun too tight, or hold your hand a little too close to the small bonfire when you try to warm yourself later that evening. Salt wetting your cheeks that you greedily lick up- if only to have something to fill the taste of hunger in your cottony mouth. If you had meat, fuck it all you’d season it with your tears if you had to.

At least, then, crying would mean something. Crying means nothing.

Cranky, alone, and on a fast track to starvation, you will yourself to count your blessings.

The slightly tattered but otherwise intact picture of your brother in your bag. The moon that’s cleaved in two tonight, fixated behind a string of grey, clumpy clouds that have you thankful for the crisp air as they pass overhead, replacing the hot sun. Nighttime brings a mild chill that soothes the sunburn of day. For all of that, you’re grateful.

I mean, above all, you’re alive.

You’re… Alive.

And you don’t know why- you really don’t think you even want to be, which makes you feel so guilty because Mark-

He—

Sat on the barn loft’s window, the door of it flung wide as your legs dangle from the wooden edge, you tip your head back to watch the sky. Numbly, you drink the sight of it in.

Yawning, infinite, kissed with streaks of navy and a deep, intense grey. It’s beautiful. But to the yellowed moon and the cosmos— you mean nothing to either of them.

Knee-deep in an apocalyptic shithole, with zombies lurking within every shadow and sunbeam, the better part of humanity nullified, there’s something oddly… comforting. In knowing all of this means absolutely nothing to the thing above that resembles a big truckle of cheese.

You don’t know for how long, but you watch the stars. They blink back at you.

ꕤ

Today you’re headed for town.

All the forest animals must have gone on vacation, you bitterly decide as you pack your bag (a canteen of water, some invaluable souvenirs you absolutely cannot travel without, and the little weaponry you have).

Birds have migrated early, deer have tucked their tails and scampered off to other groves; bunnies are hiding deep in the bellies of old, hollowed out trees and even fish have swam upstream. Nothing to kill and eat.

Away. Everything has went away.

As you remind yourself of your dire conditions, you end up packing a bit more, mulling over your situation with the little energy you have left.

And then, you end up packing everything- which admittedly isn’t much- keeping your personal bag as your main inventory, the zipper shrieking as it struggles to close.

Clothes, old cans and empty bottles (because just in case, right? Who knows what they’ll be useful for, but you won’t kick yourself for it later if you find yourself needing them). An extra pocket knife to supplement the one tucked in your bra should that one chip or grow dull (or more probable: get left behind in a squishy, grey skull) and a little container of pills.

You’re not even sure what they do. But it must be worth it- medicine and drugs are a staple to the remnants of humanity that scrape by, and you’ve seen how vicious groups have gotten over just a handful of tablets- it makes rivals. Enemies. Dead men.

The frugal part of you decided that it may come in handy one day, and therefore refused to part with it.

Then you leave the barnyard.

Because if there is nothing left to stay for, then you will not stay.

And you have nothing to stay for. Not anymore. Probably (and if the pills in your bag are anywhere as unpalatable as this simple truth, then you don’t want to swallow them) never again.

So you’ll just have to look for some place new. A beaten, mousey piece of you that still persists somewhere within you whispers like an afterthought, ‘some place better’, and you want to humor the little hope it has. Because it certainly has courage.

It has stupidity, too. Enough to spare.

You shake the negativity off-

“No, stop it.”

-worn out sneakers touching down on a rural, seemingly endless swath of concrete flanked by verdant trees. But deep down you wonder as you walk if you will see the moon again tonight. Starvation could snuff you out. Today could be the day one of the rotters sneak up on you, or that your guilt catches up to you. You wouldn’t be able to stop it if it did. Size is power. And guilt is big. Bigger than you.

No, stop it, you go to chide again, but you think better of it.

You need to save the energy.

#ghost x reader #soap x reader #simon ghost riley #john soap mactavish #cod #call of duty #call of duty x reader #cod x reader #simon riley x reader #john mactavish x reader #calebrity #pls see the linked mlist (or ao3) for all the tags!!

84 notes · View notes