#come to think of it maybe being sick is distorting my sense of taste too

[luncheon-aspic]

I ordered my standard lunch (fried fish rice) from a new vendor today and I feel like the dipping sauce is overly salty. Is this valuable customer feedback that I should send the lady (along with how much I enjoyed the other components) or should I MYOB?

[strtravels]

“Don’t I dare - WHAT, Romana? – Speak the truth or speak my mind? I remember our people never being particularly fond of me doing either!” Wasn’t this how this had all started in the first place? He had stood in front of the High Council and spoken his truth, until frustration had driven him away from the planet – running to the vaults, where he had taken the Type Forty TARDIS still in his possession and… LEFT. Gallifrey’s political system and maybe the very core of its people had never agreed with him, and back then he had been a younger man with a temperament still lingering somewhere inside him now. His face had changed over half a dozen times, but he couldn’t change WHO he had was. Or what he stood for. Change. Help. – Not a warrior, despite what everyone seemed to claim. COULD THEY NOT SEE HE WAS NOT MEANT TO FIGHT? He was an old man now, tired of the mess his people had created. Like children, who didn’t want to listen until it was too late. Arrogant children, who thought they knew best and were better than anything and anyone.

Did Romana think herself better now, too? It was hard to tell, and perhaps he was blinded by her title and the robes still burning like a fire around her. A bright red as a warning to not get too close to her, or he would burn himself and his principles. A reminder she could be dangerous. If she wanted to be. If she saw it necessary. That wasn’t new, but…

It was another reason why he had left her. Romana was more than capable of caring for herself, finding her own way and making her own decisions. When they both had been younger, he had underestimated her, and now, he feared, he had overestimated the power she had held – not only as the President of their forsaken home-world, but also the power she had over people, when he had left her to rebuild. IT HAD BEEN TOO MUCH?

“I have a right to my anger, just as you have one to hold your own anger as well. You brought me here despite me not wanting to be a part of it – you kidnapped me – my TARDIS!” Where was she? In metaphorical, and maybe even literal, shackles, he presumed. Bound to this place. Immobilised. Could as well be forcing the doors open and rip her apart. Wasn’t that what they wanted to do with him, too? HE HAD SEEN ROMANA’S ANGER, and he had felt the anger of others before her. Their people. Interesting choice of words, when he was doing everything to turn their back on the Time Lords. But you couldn’t fight them. Perhaps he had been too right with this statement.

“If you don’t even know what you want, Romana, how am I supposed to know what you would decide?” But again his anger had calmed down; her words having the ability to hold back the waves. INNOCENCE AND MELANCHOLY; a sound to her words that had been there in their conversation back in the TARDIS, too. Lifetimes ago.

HE SHOOK HIS HEAD; had started pacing again like a wild animal trapped inside a cage. “ – Having me on your side will just…” But he never got to finish his sentence. Something was wrong. He could sense it before he could hear it. The terrible voice of the enemy they had been talking about. PAINFUL IN HIS EARS for reasons beyond the high-pitched, distorted nature of the mechanical shell.

And their attackers brought a change in attitude towards his former companion with them. A LOOK SHOT AT HER, worried, for a moment, because he knew what would happen if the Daleks captured Romana. They would know who she was. They wouldn’t just kill her.

“We wasted all this time! Tell me where my TARDIS is, Romana!” It made him sick to his stomach, knowing there was nothing he could do but run now. The irony wasn’t lost on him, but left a bitter taste instead. He had wanted to run, and he had wanted an opportunity to do so, but this hadn’t been what he wanted. But there was NOTHING he could do now! Romana and him would be outnumbered by the sound coming closer, and they were in a barren room with nothing more, but a table bolted to the floor and two chairs to defend themselves with. A chair against a Dalek? One didn’t have to be a genius to calculate the chances of winning that battle.

“This is what having me on your side is!”

the tips of her fingers press into the underside of the table, were it not bolted to the floor she is certain the urge to flip it over would be unbearable, some manner of impotent rage unbecoming of herself, of who she used to be. “ don't— you dare. ” her breath shakes, cinders burn beneath her eyes. oh, how she'd enjoy tearing his flesh apart with her bare hands if she had the means. stick him in the lungbarrow house loom, the tomb from which the doctor rose millennia back, & see his very being weaved into a shape suited for war by needle & thread. everything he is now, a coward & a liar that thinks himself some savior, turned into loyal soldiers for a war she knows they could win. every other renegade had been a failure, the master was a poor template & the war council went ahead despite her warnings. now a thousand different versions litter the battlefield, some dead, others misshapen beyond recognition & some who look at the war as an opportunity for power.

she takes a few steps backwards, releasing her grip, her hand wiping away the stains beneath her eyes. romana makes distance, she can't think like this, can't act on impulse. the lord president isn't meant to give in to mere sentiment. she is to be composed, courteous, cunning in all things & unburdened by emotion but romana was no stranger to anger, living amongst her people was a consistent test of her patience. in the centuries before the war her anger came from passion, from the hope for a better, brighter gallifrey, a planet anathema to change or progress, stillness coded into its genes by rassilon's edict. she had tried to shape her home into something beautiful, a legacy of small victories to push her people forward that brought disaster to their doorstep, a presidency they would now see undone the very moment she falters in her convictions, her dedication to victory. this conflict ensured that gallifrey would coil around her like a snake around its victim, choke her beliefs from her & leave nothing but a woman suited for war.

now her anger came from hatred, for herself, for what gallifrey has turned into, for their enemies & whatever else stood in her way. romana wants to hate the doctor too, look upon him & find catharsis in the emptiness of his existence, how he travels through a universe void of wonder & watches everything around him die. trying & failing to preserve what little is left. & she does, in part, she hates him for his words, for his inaction, his unwillingness to fight for his people. only offering help as some kind of limp-wristed gesture whenever he stumbles into the war council's plans. but even after all this, raw emotion ripped from beneath their ribcage to drown the room in sanguine anguish, she wants to see him as an old friend. an ally at her side as everything falls apart, when she has lost almost everyone else. narvin has looked upon her with trepidation ever since she regenerated, leela was gone & maybe that was for the best, to love a time lord & see them change so drastically is a pain romana couldn't inflict. the doctor is all she has left.

the truth had brought them here & she changes its shape, a new side, a new tactic, but real enough, “ i— i don't know what i want. not like it even matters. did you think the revenant initiative was mine? that i'd let them use you for it? that was all trave, mantus, the war council skulking behind my back, the presidency means nothing these days. ” innocence & melancholy line her words, a sort of lost authority, slipping from her grasp.

“ i want you to fight, of course i do, but you've seen what our people are becoming. it's my fault, my failure, trying to move the needle on our home planet. but i wouldn't want to give up hope & if i had you on my side, doctor, it'd give us a chance. ”

[randomwritingguy]

The Myth of Y/N (Korra x Reader UNREQUITED) Part 10

THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY...

Korra's POV

I weakly open my eyes as I begin to awake from my slumber. I'm still so exhausted, I've never felt so tired before in my life. I feel my hand being gently squeezed and I look to its origin.

It's Mako, his face flashing to a warm, gentle smile and his eyes becoming full of life again.

"Hey," he says softly, "you're finally awake."

I hum to his comment. "I'm still so tired...and hungry."

My stomach coincidentally grumbles right afterwards, making the firebender chuckle.

"I can tell." he replies with amusement. "Do you wanna get ready and get something to eat?"

I nod. "Yeah...thank you, by the way, for being with me."

Mako's warm smile grows even more wide. "Anytime. I'm always there for you if you need me. I'll let you get ready,"

I send him a gentle smile back and he walks out. After getting dressed and headed to the dining room, I see Mako, Bolin, Asami, Kyuni, Tenzin, Pema, and Lin already there waiting for me. On the table there is a plate of food already waiting for me and I dig in, hoping to satisfy my hunger. The food is absolutely delicious.

"The food tastes amazing, Pema." I tell her, showing my gratitude. "I'm finally starting to feel like myself again."

Pema sends me a small smile. "We're so thankful you're home safe."

After I finish my food and Asami and Pema come to pick up the plates, I see Tenzin and Lin gazing at me with curiosity and concern.

"Korra," the airbender begins, his eyes full of sympathy, "I realise you've been through a lot, but I need to know everything that happened."

I really don't want to think about last night, but I guess I have no choice in the matter.

"Well, first off. Tarrlok isn't who he says he is. He's Yakone's son."

Tenzin and Lin's face flashes with surprise, their jaws dropped.

"It all makes sense now." the former Chief remarks. "That's how Tarrlok was able to bloodbend us without a full moon."

Tenzin turns to me again, his surprise still evident. "But how did you escape? And where's Tarrlok?"

Oh no...no not this moment again. It's making me think of...Y/N.

Still, I owe them an explanation. I take a deep breath to prepare myself. "Amon captured him and took his bending."

"What?!" Tenzin blurts out, his surprise intensified.

"Yeah." I confirmed, "He showed up out of nowhere. He took Tarrlok...and Y/N. He...he almost got me too."

Tenzin frowns in concern and worry. "This is very disturbing news. Amon is becoming emboldened. Taking out a councilman, capturing Y/N and almost capturing the Avatar. I fear Amon is entering his endgame."

I grimaced at the idea. That monster is stepping up his game all right. It won't be long before he tries capturing me again. I need to find Y/N before its too late. If anything happened to them...

"I had a vision."

I gasp and look back up to Tenzin, everyone's eyes on me now. "Something else happened too. Y/N had a vision."

Everyone gasps in reaction, with Tenzin's eyes widening in particular. "A vison?! What was it?"

"They told they couldn't remember anything other than a distorted voice." I explain to the rest.

The airbending master frowns slightly. "What did the voice say?"

I sigh melancholy. "They were about to tell me but Tarrlok showed up."

Tenzin strokes his beard as he goes silent for a few moments, thinking about the situation. Then he finally speaks up. "Is it possible the vision had something to do with Amon?"

I sigh again as I think about the possibilities. "Maybe. But...I've never seen Y/N so terrified. They looked like they were gonna be sick."

We all stay in silence for a few moments. Thinking about Y/N has gotten me sad again. The guilt has come back, stronger than ever. I can feel tears threatening to spill.

"I'm gonna get some fresh air." I wearily tell the rest and I get up and leave the room.

When I finally reach outside I can finally feel tears stroking down my cheeks.

This is all my fault! If I paid more attention I could have saved them! I'm so sorry, Y/N.

"Are you okay?"

I quickly wipe my tears and I turn and see Mako, his eyes full of concern.

I tell him the truth.

"No. This is all my fault."

The firebender rushes to me and pulls me into a tight hug. "Nonsense. None of this is your fault, Korra. You hear me?"

I return the hug with equal passion. "But if I paid more-"

"-No buts." he interrupts me. "This isn't your fault, Korra. And if Y/N were here, I know that they would be telling you the exact same thing. We're gonna find them, Korra. I promised you that last night, and I'm gonna keep it."

I nod frantically whilst burying my face into Mako's chest. "Thank you, Mako."

I hope you're alright, Y/N. We're gonna save you. I promise.

Y/N'S POV

I awake in a flash as a bucket of water is dumped on me. I ignore the sudden coldness as I look around my surroundings. The room is almost completely dark with the exception of small green bulbs emanating some light into the place.

I look downwards and see my arms and chest are tied up. Dammit. I can't move my arms at all.

"I hope you've had a good rest."

That voice. I know that voice.

I look back up and see Amon standing really close to me, appearing out of nowhere. His eyes are barely visible through the mask, giving him a ghoulish appearance.

I ignore the sudden fear swirling in my chest and put on a tough act. "Mock me all you want, but I'm not telling you anything, you monster!"

Amon doesn't react to my insult. In fact, he's silent for a minute. What is he doing?

"Well?" I bark out, "Aren't you gonna torture me? Interrogate me? Come on, you said you were gonna make me talk! Why aren't you saying anything?"

He remains silent a few seconds afterwards...and then finally speaks up.

"Why are you on their side?"

I lean backwards out of confusion. "Their" side?

"Whose side?" I ask him.

"The benders." he growls out, his hatred evident.

I frown at his choice of words. "I'm not on the benders side. I'm on the side of the innocent lives you're terrorizing, benders and non-benders alike!"

Amon growls again in anger. "Innocent? You think the benders are innocent? The benders who threaten and abuse their non-bending brothers and sisters? The same benders who thought it was acceptable to place a curfew for all non-benders, restricting their rights and freedom? They are innocent?"

I stare at him in bewilderment for a few seconds from his response. He really hates benders.

I frown at the man, glaring at him with all my rage I can muster up. "Those benders you are angry at are the minority! And yes, what Tarrlok and the other council members did was corrupt, but you escalated it to that point! You think you're doing good for non-benders? You think attacking the pro-bending arena and taking bending away is gonna help? You're just making it worse!"

I can see Amon's eyes squint slightly. I think I made him angry.

"This is the only way to make benders listen." the extremist confidently replies.

"You don't know that!" I shout at him, my frustration growing and growing.

"Oh, really?" Amon asks me. "Look me in the eyes and tell me that if my followers and I led a peaceful protest or brought the problem to the council they would have listened."

I stare into his cold eyes. I open my mouth, about to tell him that they would, only for it to close. My mind flashes back to these past few months.

I think about Tarrlok's task force and how all of them were benders when I was with them. If I didn't ask to join, it would have just been full of benders. Spirits, the force is full of benders now.

I think about Lin's officers and how none of them were non-benders.

I think about how the council members besides Tenzin introduced the non-bender curfew without hesitation.

And I finally think about how Tarrlok, the task force, and the police were willing to arrest innocent non-benders without due process under the law.

And I come to my conclusion.

I sigh, and drop my head in shame. "I can't."

I expect Amon to laugh in victory, or mock my defeat...but he doesn't do any of those things.

I look back up and despite only seeing his eyes, I can see...sadness. He isn't happy about my answer either.

He finally speaks up after moments of silence. "Exactly. And the one time the council actually listened was when I told them to cancel the pro-bending finals."

I glare at him. "You wanted them to disobey you."

"True." he admits, "But my sources tell me that if it wasn't for Chief Beifong then they would have cancelled the finals. Don't you see? Violence is the only thing benders understand. I've heard a lot about you, Chi-Blocker. You are an inspiration to many. Which is why I wish to offer you an opportunity."

I tilt my head in confusion. "And what would that be?"

He leans forward until his mask is a few inches from my face. I can see his eyes completely, and the sadness from earlier is gone. Now they are so cold and so lifeless.

"Join me. Join me and become my right-hand. Together we can finally vanquish the evil and corruption of benders and bring peace to Republic City and the world."

Join him? He really thinks I'm gonna join him after what he did to Korra?! How he made her break down and cry right in front of me? How he made the woman I lo-care for feel so helpless, so terrified?

Never. I'll never join him.

I glare right into his eyes, my anger burning inside of me. "If you think for a second that I'm going to join you, you're delusional. You're right, the council is corrupt and many benders take advantage of non-benders, but violence is not the right way to go about this. Stop this and I can help! I'll talk to Korra and her and I can fix this! I'm sorry about what happened to you and your family, but this is wrong!"

He stays silent for a few seconds, his eyes now full of anger and disappointment.

"How unfortunate." Amon finally says, standing back straight.

Before any one of us can say another word, someone else enters the room.

"Amon, we have finally arrived."

Wait, that voice-

"-Excellent, Hiroshi. It is time to take back our city."

Hiroshi Sato.

"Hiroshi." I spit out, sending him a glare.

Sato's lips form a mischievous grin. "Ah, Chi-Blocker Y/N. Long time, no see. How's my daughter?"

I send him a teasing smile of my own. "Better now that she is far away from you!"

The man growls at that and walks closer to me. "Watch your tongue!"

I chuckle without humour. "Let me guess, you telling me that I was "the perfect representation for us non-benders" bullshit must have been really hard for you, huh?"

"Indeed." Hiroshi confirms. "You're not a hero. You're a traitor to all non-benders!"

"Like your daughter, right?" I shoot back. "Do you really think your wife would have wanted this?!"

A split second later and large hand slaps me across the face, my head sent flying to the right and my left cheek burning like the sun.

"I AM AVENGING HER FROM THESE BENDING SCUM!" Hiroshi shouts at, his spit landing on my face.

He moves to strike me again, but Amon grabs his arm before he could land another hit.

"Enough." the extremist commands. "Leave them, we must witness our revolution."

Revolution?!

"What are you talking about?" I quickly ask, my panic rising.

Hiroshi recovers from his rageful moment and chuckles at my confusion. "We are taking back our city. And you will be right in the action."

My panic now at its peak, I lean forward, desperate for an explanation. "What do you mean "right in the action?"

The engineer grins. "Haven't you wondered where we are? We are on one of the airships I designed for the Equalists. You are getting a front row seat to the main event."

NO! THEY CAN'T DO THIS!

"No!" I shout at them. I turn to Amon, completely desperate now. "Amon, please! Stop this before its too late!"

Amon looks at me for a few seconds...and begins walking away.

"You made your choice, and so have we."

Two Equalists enter the room and get close to me.

"Take them to the holding area. We'll take them to the pro-bending arena when we have finally reclaimed our city."

Both of them grab me and begin carrying me, despite my attempts to escape from their grasps. On my way there I hear explosions going off outside. Hearing that their attack has already begun, my attempts to break free grow wilder. Growing tired of my antics, they knock me unconscious. When I finally wake up, unaware of how much time has passed, I realise I'm at the holding area.

I let out a groan of frustration. They didn't even have the decency to untie me. How am I supposed to-

"-You're finally awake. I take it you're talk with Amon didn't go so well?"

Wait a second...that sounds like...

I whip my head to the back of the room, and there I see a slumped back, messy, and tired Tarrlok.

"Tarrlok?" I ask him, my confusion evident.

"Y/N." he shoots back.

We sit in silence for a few seconds, me processing what's going on.

"What...what are you doing here?" I ask him, finally breaking the tension.

Tarrlok sighs. "Same reason as you, I'm getting a front row seat to the revolution. After that, I'm getting transferred to Air Temple Island."

I tilt my head in confusion. "Hold on, I'm being transferred to the pro-bending arena. Why are you going to the island?"

"Because no-one can interact with me while I am there. I am going to be the only prisoner there." the former councilman explains, his head dropping down slightly.

That makes me confused even more. "Why are you going to be the only prisoner there? What makes you so unique?"

Tarrlok looks back up at me with a neutral expression, impossible to read. "I'm Amon's brother."

WHAT?!

I gasp in surprise. Amon and Tarrlok are brothers?!

"Seriously?" I spit out, my brain still trying to process the revelation.

Tarrlok sighs and brings his attention to the floor. "Yes, it's true. Amon is from the Northern Water Tribe. He is a waterbender and a bloodbender, just like I was."

Seriously? If that is true then Amon's entire backstory about his family getting killed and being scarred was a lie! He's been lying to everyone!

"How long have you known?" I ask him. Did he know about this all along?

As if he read my mind, Tarrlok shakes his head. "Not long. I only realised the truth after he captured me. When he took my bending, the sensation was somehow familiar. Soon afterwards I recognised it as my brother's bloodbending grip."

Wait...does that mean?

"Your brother bloodbended you before?" I ask him with horror. "Why?"

Tarrlok sighs again. "It's best I start from the beginning. You already know about my father, Yakone. He was a notorious crime lord in Republic City for years. His bending was taken away by Avatar Aang and he was sent to prison. But with the help of his former gang, he escaped and underwent surgery to change his appearance. He assumed a new identity, and started a new life in the Northern Water Tribe. That was when he met my mother. She was always so loving and caring. Not too long after that, they started a family together. Amon was the firstborn son, where he was named Noatak. I was born three years later. Noatak had a good heart, he was always there for me. They were the good old days so to speak."

I stand up to get closer to him and sit down across from him. "Sounds like you two were happy."

Tarrlok nods in agreement. "We were happy. But that all changed when we discovered that we were waterbenders. At first we were excited, I was excited, but our training brought out a different side of my father. A bad side. But my brother still defended me from his verbal abuse, even back then he wanted everyone to be treated fairly and equally. When I was seven, my father took us to a hunting trip where he told us that his true identity was the crime lord and bloodbender Yakone. He told us that we were bloodbenders too, and that we must avenge him and take control of Republic City. It was at that moment Noatak and I realised that the good days had come to an end. Every full moon, our father took us on another "hunting" trip, where he secretly trained us in bloodbending. We never told our mother what we did. A few years later, my father taught us to bloodbend anytime without the full moon at all. We practiced constantly, and I hated every minute of it. I had no stomach for manipulating helpless animals. On the other hand, Noatak seemed to revel in his power. He was a prodigy, in fact by fourteen years old he was able to master my father's psychic bloodbending technique."

My heart breaks as Tarrlok tells me everything and a massive wave of sympathy hits me. "I can't imagine how hard that must have been for you two."

Tarrlok nods at my comment. "Yes. I often faced my father's verbal abuse for not being as good as my brother. And although Noatak was the favourite, it wasn't any easier for him. He carried the burden of all Yakone's expectations and demands. Something changed in him over the years. The loving brother I once knew became cold and detached. Our father pushed us to extremes. And one day, he made us bloodbend each other. My brother bloodbended me, but I refused to bloodbend him. After I told my father I never wanted to bloodbend again, he was about to strike me. But then Noatak intervened, bloodbending him into submission. He told me to run away with him, to leave our father behind, but I refused. I didn't want to leave my mother behind. After that, Noatak ran away, leaving my father and I alone. We searched for days, but we never found a sign of him. We thought he perished in the storm. The loss of my brother changed my mother, she was never the same after that. My father stopped training me, his hopes for revenge withered, and he passed away a few years later."

As he finally finishes, the room goes silent.

He and his brother should have never gone through that abuse.  And I feel so sorry for their mother too. She didn't know what was really going on and one day she is told her son died? Yakone is a monster.

I lean forward. "Tarrlok," I say sympathetically, "I am so sorry for what you and your brother went through."

Tarrlok sighs, and his eyes are focused on me again. "And I am sorry for everything I did to you. I thought I was better than my father, but his ghost still shaped me. I became a soldier of revenge, just like he wanted me to be. And so did my brother. Amon's story may be a lie, but I think he truly believes that bending is the source of all evil in the world."

"And he is going kill the source...with his bloodbending." I add on. "He uses his bloodbending to take people's bending away."

Tarrlok nods in confirmation. "Yes. I don't know how he does it, but then again, I've never encountered a bender as strong as Noatak."

I sigh in melancholy. How can anyone beat Amon now?

Wait.

His whole backstory is a lie, right?

That means...

"We can expose him! We can tell everyone that Amon is a bloodbender! He will lose his support!"

Tarrlok doesn't seem enthusiastic about the idea as he frowns and shakes his head. "That won't work. To the Equalists I'm a corrupt councilman and you're a traitor to all non-benders. They won't listen to us."

That doesn't stop me though, my determination rising. "Maybe, but if one of us tells Korra they might listen to her!"

Before one of us could say anything else, the door unlocks and opens. There I see the Lieutenant. I guess the Equalists busted him out of prison. Dammit.

"We meet again, Chi-Blocker." the Lieutenant mockingly comments as he grabs me and pulls me upward. "You're going to be transferred to the pro-bending arena. Let's get a move on."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it." I tell him. I send Tarrlok an apologetic look as we both leave the councilman alone in the room.

We finally exit the airship and enter the arena. Once full of pro-bending posters and equipment now full of Equalist propaganda. As we walk towards to the newly-installed cells, I speak up.

"You're leader isn't who he says he is you know."

"Be silent." the Lieutenant immediately tells me, having no patience for me at all.

Despite his command, I continue with what I have to say. "It's true. Amon's a bloodbender. He used his bloodbending to take people's bending away. He's been lying to you all!"

The Lietenant growls at my claim. "Don't be ridiculous. Like I would believe you, traitorous scum!"

When we finally reach a cell he shoves me right in and I fall to the ground in pain.

"You and the Avatar have lost." he continues, taking pleasure in my pain. "Republic City now belongs to the Equalists. It won't be long before we equalise it, and as soon as that is done we will continue our quest to equalise the world. The Avatar doesn't have the power to stop Amon, and neither do you!"

After his speech he walks away, leaving me alone in my thoughts.

He's right about one thing: I don't have the power to stop Amon.

But Korra does.

I believe in her.

I know she can stop Amon. And she will.

I close my eyes in an effort to get some sleep.

The Equalists may have won this battle.

But Korra will win the war.

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And that's it! Hope you enjoyed it!

Constructive criticism is appreciated!

See you all in the next chapter! :D

[whumpinggrounds]

Hide n Seek

sooo this doesn’t have a title but Liam came into my head and would not leave so? here we go? 

lmk if you like it or you hate it or want to see more. or if you have a title or anything to say or for any reason at all :) talk to me!!

CW: failed escape, escape attempt, environmental whump, big whumpee, tiny whumper, female whumper, nonconsensual drug use, drugged whumpee, scrapes and bruises, gaslighting, uhhh i forget what else. nonconsensual touching but it’s also nonsexual

Dark branches tear at Liam’s skin hard enough to draw blood, but he won’t stop running. On either side of him, trees loom up, huge and bristling with needles. The ground tilts sickeningly under his pounding feet, and as he slips and skids over icy ground Liam throws his body from side to side, trying to dodge the obstacles that pop up, seemingly out of nowhere. He’s pulling it off – barely – and then a towering red spruce appears out of nowhere. One of its lower branches, thick around as a lead pipe, catches Liam in the side of the head and sends him reeling.

Liam lands on his knees, breath whooshing from his lungs. The blow to his temple makes his head spin worse than it already was, and his whirling vision isn’t doing any favors for his roiling stomach. An unbearable heaviness in his limbs makes him long to stop, rest, maybe lie back on the frozen, muddy ground and let the blessed chill ease the fever heat in his brow.

As the desperate, exhausted thought crosses his mind, a faraway sound reaches his ears.

“Lavender’s blue…dilly-dilly…lavender’s green…when you are king…dilly-dilly…I’ll be your queen…”

The words are sung in a voice that’s high and light and almost fey. The sound stops Liam’s heart, makes ice water run through his veins. Dashing frightened tears from his eyes, Liam scrambles to his feet, ignoring the bleeding scratches, the ache in his bruised and frozen knees. Behind him, the voice drifts piercing and eerie through the trees, and, driven before it like a sacrificial lamb, Liam picks himself up and crashes onward.

Head reeling, body aching, so sick to his stomach he spends every step fighting not to vomit, Liam runs. He runs until he slips and falls, hitting the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of himself, mark bruises on his skin. Then he gets up and runs some more, staggering, faltering, missing steps, head empty of any instinct besides move forward, get away. The headlong sprint through the woods feels like it lasts forever. Snatches of song reach Liam’s ears, distorted and giggly. The forest rears up on every side like so many dark green walls – towering large, endless in every direction. Liam’s ears are ringing, his throat is dry, he can hear his own breath heaving unevenly in his chest. The terror in him is so raw and real that he can almost taste it, salt and iron, blood on his tongue. He’s choking on tears as he staggers onward, but scared as he is, all he can think is what if his sobs are too loud?

When Liam sees light through the trees, he thinks he’s dreaming. Stumbling forward, hardly daring to believe, he feels new hot tears spill down his face. Like a drowning man, he stretches his arms toward salvation, straining as if it’s something he can hold in his hands. Then he’s stumbling again, toppling forward, knees and then hands and then body kissing pavement.

Unable to stop himself, Liam sobs in simple, blessed relief. Pavement. The ground beneath him hard and unforgiving, solid and uniform. Above him, big plate glass windows spill yellowy light into the gathering darkness. The miracle of sidewalk, of concrete, of buzzing phosphorescent light!

Liam is weeping like a baby into his scratched up, icy hands. Now that he’s horizontal and staying there, now that the adrenaline has done just about all it can for his body – now, Liam starts to let go. His body feels both distant and incredibly close. He can feel every individual bit of concrete against his skin, and he can feel himself buzzing against the inside of his skin, and there’s a cloudiness in his head, a big and growing white threatening to envelope him, leave him blissfully out and unaware.

“What in the - ? Son? What the hell is wrong with you, son?”

The voice is gruff, incredulous, more than a little suspicious. Peering up through hazy eyes, Liam sees an older man coalesce into a hazy double-focus, bearded and grizzly as his tone suggests. The flannel-clad bear of a human recoils at the sight of the tears on Liam’s face, lip curling as he takes in Liam’s disheveled appearance.

“H-he-e-elp,” Liam manages, one hand reaching up, wavering and buzzing static in his vision. Even to his own ears, his voice wavers, rises and falls, distorted by hoarseness and God knows what else. “I n…need hel-l-l-p.”

Narrowing his eyes, the man continues to regard Liam with blatant doubt. Liam tries to morph his face into something acceptable, an expression that’s beseeching without being desperate or deranged. His muscles respond slowly, sluggishly. He can’t remember how to manipulate his face. Giving up, Liam leaves his mouth slack and just looks up, inches a little closer, pushing his body over the pavement, ignoring the way the cement rasps against his skin. He doesn’t want to try standing, yet.

Strange things are happening to the man’s face – his cheeks bloat, blow up grotesquely as he talks. His eyebrows, thick dark beetles, worm and writhe over his deep-set eyes, which are more like holes than real eyes. He’s towering over Liam, so tall the man on the ground can’t help but shrink a little bit against the pavement. His mouth is moving and Liam watches it with a dull kind of fascination, forgetting to pay attention to the words that emerge as shapeless sounds from that dark cave of a mouth.

“Help,” Liam tries again, seeing the way the word feels on his tongue. It sounds like it’s coming from very far away. “Huh…help?”

“Boy? What is wrong with you, boy?”

The man is waving his hand around in front of Liam’s face, looking for some kind of a reaction. When Liam just keeps staring hazily up, the man shakes his head. He starts talking, but the words dip and circle around Liam’s head, refusing to find his ears, refusing to find his brain. Every so often a word or two comes through – a revelation.

“…fucking cops…”

“Hellllp,” Liam whispers, turning his head to rest one hot cheek against the concrete. His head is pounding so bad it makes him feel sick. Or maybe he just feels sick. Either way, he’s wrung out, exhausted, ready to be done. Liam is tired. He gives up. He’s ready to be done.

Shutting his eyes to try to block out the loud and angry spinning world, Liam forces words out as best as he can make them. “Pl-l-l-e-e-eease. Please.” In his chest, he feels a little hitch come with the word, a shaky breath that prefaces a whimper. The sound is so small, so utterly pathetic. Liam didn’t know he could make a sound like that. “Ple-ease help me.”

The man squats down now to peer a little closer at Liam, at the young man laid out flat on the ground, not even trying to get up. “…what is…come from…”

The words aren’t landing with any greater frequency, nor are they making much sense, but Liam imagines he hears a grudging warmth in the tone that wasn’t there before. Maybe concern, instead of suspicion. Maybe aid, instead of exasperation. He lets himself slit his eyes open, see the hazy outline of the figure above him, leaning in. He lets himself hope.

Then he hears the gasp from behind him, long and loud, high and flighty and dramatic. Suddenly, Liam can’t breathe. He shuts his eyes again, trying to block the nightmare out, but it’s too late. She’s already here.

She throws herself down beside him, drapes herself on top of him, small hands roaming from his broad shoulders down to his waist, as if checking that he’s still whole. She’s so small. She’s always been so small. Doesn’t make sense that she can be all over him, everywhere at once when she’s so…damn…small.

“Philip!”

She trills it, sweet as any songbird. There are tears in her voice, real tears, and a burbling wet kind of laugh of relief that would tug at the heartstrings of anyone who had a heart. “Oh God, Philip, oh, don’t scare me like that.” She presses a warm kiss to his temple and Liam groans out loud. “Oh, sweetie. Oh Philip. Oh.”

One finger traces down the side of his face. The feeling comes through hideously clear and sharp. If it were a picture, it’d be Technicolor, while the rest of the world scrapes by in staticky black and white. Liam presses his face harder into the concrete, wanting to escape, to sink through, to disappear. She picks up his head and cradles it with one little hand.

“…know this…?”

Liam wishes, more than he’s ever wished for anything before, to understand the words of the man standing over them. Instead, the man remains indistinct, distant, unreachable, while every word she says rings loud and perfect in his ears.

“Philip is my brother,” she explains, voice so sweet it conjures honey on the tongue. “He’s…he’s…well, he’s not right.”

“…see that…”

“Well.” A firm but gentle hand smoothing over his wild hair. “We don’t know what exactly it is that’s…wrong.” Locked inside his head, Liam is screaming. All that emerges from his mouth is a low, indistinct moan. Above him, Delilah chatters on, her voice taking on a tragic tone. “We suppose it could be genetic. Or it could be…well, he was in a bad way with drugs, my brother.” She strokes his back, a long, possessive touch. “It’s not his fault.”

The man above them grunts. His voice is still so distant, coming in and out like radio waves. “…damn fool thing…cold.”

“I try. I really do try. He’s just…he gets away from me sometimes, I guess.”

“…huge motherf…little thing like…”

A laugh, carefully calibrated to sound just a little forced. “Philip is my brother.” Another long, tender caress down his back. Liam pants into the pavement, head spinning. “I love him. Of course I’m going to look after him. I have to.”

“…need help?”

Sprawled out on the ground, Liam heaves a dry sob. Those words, words he wanted to hear so badly just minutes before, now offered to the exact wrong person. The conversation goes on above him, but Liam can’t waste his focus listening to it anymore.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Liam takes stock of his aching body. His knees are bruised and sore, his body scratched all over. He’s exhausted and cold and his muscles feel distant, tingly and out of touch. Even lying on the ground, his head pounds and spins. If there was anything left in his stomach, he’d definitely have thrown it up by now. All he wants is to stay where he is and rest. He wants to feel right again, in control of his body and his mind. He wants to give up, give in, be allowed to sleep and heal and rest. Liam just wants this to be over.

But he can’t just yell surrender and expect Delilah to leave him alone. She’s hopping to her feet now, standing to shake the stranger’s hand. If he has a last chance, this is it, so Liam grits his teeth. Dredging up every last bit of meager strength, he places his palms on the ground beneath him and pushes up. His arms are shaky, and nearly give out, but he manages to slump into a sitting position before his strength fails.

From his place sitting on the pavement, Liam can peer up pitifully at the two people above him. The flannel-wearing man is facing Liam, which means Delilah is facing away from him. He has a window, a precious small amount of time, in which he can just maybe make his escape. Swinging his head to the side, Liam examines the storefront he’s ended up outside of. The vinyl booths, the matching countertops – it’s a diner, all the lights inside aglow. If Liam can just make it inside. If he can just get his story out.

He has to move quickly. Sucking in a quick puff of cold air, Liam leans back and pushes off the ground, flinging himself to his feet. Almost before he’s all the way up, he’s throwing himself into his next step, staggering forward with all the grace and control of a drunken grizzly. Speed is his only chance, and also his greatest enemy. As Liam lunges forward, his body gives out under him. He stumbles, wailing in frustration, stretching his hand out for the door even as he goes down.

Before he can hit the pavement for the second time in ten minutes, the stranger catches Liam. It sounds like it takes a good amount of his strength, because the man grunts as Liam’s chest smacks his shoulder, but he stays where he is, all but holding Liam up.

Even though the guy seems to have decided to take Delilah’s side, gratitude leaves Liam breathless.

“Your brother is heavy,” the man complains, his gruff voice booming through the air right next to Liam’s ear.

“He was a football player,” Delilah explains, and surely anyone could hear that smug, faintly covetous tone in her voice? Surely, this man can see the way she squeezes his bicep as she runs her hand down his arm?

The man throws one of Liam’s arms over his shoulder and drags his unresisting body toward a parking lot. Stumbling along, Liam tries to stay on his feet, though now his hectic vision is starting to fade entirely. On his other side, Deliliah hovers along, her hand so light on his back that he should hardly be able to feel it. Somehow, though, while his entire body is distant, prickling, offline, that handprint burns in his awareness, heavy and hot and stinging like nettles. Liam whines under his breath, trying to make his thick tongue form words.

“Shh,” Delilah soothes, drawing so close he can feel her breath on his arm. “Shh, Philip, honey, it’s gonna be all right.”

Still whining like a kicked dog, Liam is dumped unceremoniously in a foreign backseat. Crawling up next to him, Delilah waits until the man is seated in front of them to perch herself basically in his lap. With greedy, grasping fingers, she tugs his leaden body over so Liam’s head is resting on her shoulder. At first, Liam fights it, but when the car starts up the winding mountain road, he subsides. The curving motion of the road sets his stomach roiling, so he’s too nauseous to do anything but let his head flop back as he tries to open his airway and breathe.

Cooing, Delilah cards her hot little hands through his hair. “Poor Philip,” she murmurs, voice sweet and conciliatory. “Poor honey. Didn’t I tell you no one would believe you?”

[paperpocalypse]

neodymium.

50 Cliché Tropes and Prompts: 49. You caught me doing something dangerous and flipped out + 50. I’m scared but won’t admit it so you take my hand

Pairing: Five Hargreeves x Reader

Word Count: 1,572 words

Warning: Swearing, science applications that would probably shame your physics teacher

It’s starting to snow.

You keep your hand on the cold, metal cross bar, pressing down but unwilling to open the door. The thin, plastic bag in your other hand rustles as you twist it up in your fingers, pills rattling around in their bottles as you swing it back and forth. A frown tugs at the corners of your mouth.

Winter is here, and you don’t like it. You used to. But that was back then, when you were allowed to wear winter jackets and gloves and scarves and thick, fluffy hats to protect your ears from the biting cold. The snowflakes were a lot prettier when you didn’t have to feel them melt through your hoodie, cold and wet, every time you had to go outside.

Now you have to toughen up because heroes deal with the cold.

“Warm thoughts,” you mumble to yourself, gritting your teeth and pushing the door open. The bell jingles as a freezing slap of air greets your face. “Warm thoughts.”

You step out of the drugstore and into the night, pulling your hood on and tugging the drawstrings taut. The streetlamps light a path across the road and down the sidewalk towards home. At least it’s just a fifteen-minute walk.

For the past few years, on account of you attending the Umbrella Academy, you’ve never felt unsafe walking through the City alone. One of the pros of being trained as a hero, though you’re not quite sure if it outweighs the cons of Mom selling your warmest clothes and the grueling, rigid routine of training and missions during the week. The crime rate in this part of the city isn’t that high, anyway, on account of it being one of the nicer, richer areas. Mom had been delighted when the two of you moved here to be closer to the Hargreeves mansion. (The fact that your stipend’s now enough to fully cover it this year is even better.)

Arms crossed tightly over your chest, you press the crosswalk button with your elbow. Cars screech to a stop and honk at you to hurry up as the traffic lights turn red. You scurry across, legs stiff.

(Halfway there.)

But just because you feel safe walking alone doesn’t mean you like it. Being alone means that you have to deal with your thoughts without being able to share them, and it stinks. You prefer the nights when you sneak out with Klaus, buying a tub of ice cream from the drugstore and eating it outside the 24-hour café nearby until the owners shoo you away, or going to the movie theater with everyone when Sir Hargreeves is gone on a trip. You like walking home with Five or Klaus after your Mom started getting too tired to pick you up for the weekends.

Somberly, you step out into the street towards your apartment complex.

You like being part of the Umbrella Academy when you don’t have to think about being a hero …

BEEEEEEEEEEEP

As if in a dream, you turn your head toward the sound. Your bag falls gently to the ground.

It’s a car horn. Loud, deafening. Distorting, blurring. A car.

It’s not slowing down.

You should move.

You raise your hands instead.

The force hits you like a giant fist. Your blood burns hot as you push, and push, and push, jaw clenched so tight you think your teeth might shatter. The air is getting squeezed out of your lungs. The tires screech. The horn screams. They’re all you can hear.

Push! PUSH!

The pressure rises and rises –

And then it’s too much.

The fist shoves you back. Your back hits the ground.

You don’t even have time for last thoughts. But before you can catch one last glimpse of the tires that would dash your brains across the road, something grabs you, and the next thing you know, you’re somewhere else.

The engine roars, and the car speeds away. What’s left of your lunch promptly ends up on the ground next to you, and that’s when you start crying, nauseous and cold.

“Am I dead,” you choke out, eyes screwed shut. Whatever had grabbed you is still there; you can feel their weight on your shoulders. Your mouth tastes awful and sour and bloody. “Am I …”

“You’re not dead.” A breathless voice pierces through the fog in your head. It’s familiar, and close, and you pry your eyelids open to see –

You see Five.

His face is stiff and pale, his voice even, but as you blink away your tears, you see unbridled panic just beneath the surface.

“Shit. Shit,” he hisses as you close your eyes again, trying to make sense of what had just happened. Why is Five here? How did he – “[Y/n], don’t close your – don’t go to sleep, for fuck’s sake …”

You do your best to listen as he shakes you a bit. Don’t cry. You’re okay, you’re fine … your … “My pills,” you slur out, hand feeling around for his arm so you can sit up. Looking at the road, you see the limp plastic bag, ghostly white against the dark asphalt. Your stomach roils again. “Ugh, I feel so sick …”

“I wonder why.” Five looks at you, mouth pressed into a thin, grave line, before blinking to the middle of the road to grab your things. He blinks back immediately. “Can you stand?” he asks tightly.

You swallow, wincing, and nod gingerly. You’re fine. “Yeah.”

The snow is falling harder now. Five helps you stand, and after a few minutes of regaining your bearings, the two of you slowly make your way up to your apartment. When you fumble with your key, Five takes it and unlocks the door himself.

“Couch or bed.”

“Bed,” you mumble as you scrape off your shoes. Thankfully, Mom isn’t home. You’d hate to have to explain all of this – she’s been so stressed lately …

The nausea is pretty much gone now, but the prickling fuzziness in your every limb remains. A little steadier on your feet, all you have to do is hold onto Five’s arm as you shuffle towards your bedroom.

“Get changed and wait here.” He fixes you with a steely gaze before disappearing. A few moments later, you hear the sink run, followed by the sound of the microwave opening and closing.

Is he mad at you? Biting the inside of your cheek, you take off your wet hoodie, putting it in your laundry hamper. Then you peel off your socks, and after closing the door, everything else that the snow had soaked through.

A few minutes after you change into your pajamas and settle onto your bed, Five knocks on the door, and you tell him to come in.

He hands you one of two mugs, this one filled with water. You take it. The other, filled with hot chocolate, is set on your nightstand.

“Are you mad?” Your voice is small.

Scoffing, Five glances away from you, a bitter smile on his lips. “I’m wondering what the fuck you were thinking,” he mutters.

“I almost did it,” you say. “That was the most I’ve ever done.”

“And you almost died.”

You look down into your mug. “It’s not that much different from a mission.”

“Actually, it is,” Five replies, his smile spreading – it doesn’t take a genius to know that he’s beyond ticked off – “because there are people looking after you during a mission. Who would’ve saved your ass if I hadn’t happened to be there? Nobody.”

“Maybe that’s what I needed,” you mumble, taking a sip of water.

Five narrows his eyes at you.

“What?”

You speak louder, a little indignant. “Maybe I needed to know that nobody could bail me out so I’d actually try.”

“You’re always trying!” he snaps. “Wanting to improve your ability doesn’t warrant a goddamn near-death experience, because as I’ve said before, you almost died!”

His chest is heaving when he finishes, and as you gape at him, startled by his loss of composure, you realize.

“I scared you,” you say, voice soft and wondering. “Didn’t I?”

Five just stares back at you. That is answer enough, but you set your water down anyway, stand up, and take his hand.

“Five?”

“I almost didn’t make it.” All the anger from before trickles out of his tone, and all that’s left is something quiet and uncharacteristically desperate. He clutches your hand until it’s almost painful. “That split second before I blinked, I thought …”

You step closer. “I’m okay now.”

“Don’t do that again.”

“Okay.”

“Please,” he says.

“Okay,” you murmur, a lump in your throat. “I won’t.”

Five looks at you, searching. Then he closes his eyes and sighs a very old-sounding sigh, and as he does so, you lift your free hand to brush his cheek.

“Sorry,” he eventually murmurs, and you can tell, by the way he looks down and says it quietly, that he’s not quite used to using the word, “for shouting.”

You smile. “I forgive you. Sorry for scaring you.”

“You should be.”

“Aw. Hey.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay, Five.” Feeling very warm, you take his other hand, chuckling at the awkward look on his face. (Honestly, the two of you are a mess, aren’t you?) “I love you a lot. You know that, right?”

At your words, his eyes soften. You wonder if he knows.

“I know.”

“Okay. Good.”

[theultimateultimateweapon]

Kirby: Meta Knight and the Knight of Hades (Chapter 8)

The third night had arrived in Hades. The gray flowers all deflated at once. Meta Knight only has one night before the flowers open again. If the red butterfly doesn’t appear tonight, Meta Knight may never be able to return.

As expected, Meta Knight was concerned. For the past three days, he hasn’t taken a rest and has walked without eating. However, he wasn’t tired or hungry at all. He was scared. He wouldn’t feel tired or hungry again if he stayed in the underworld.

Meta Knight began to ask Papi questions while they walked to shake his fears. “Papi. Do you have any favorite foods?”

“Eh? Food?” Papi replied.

“When you were alive. What did you like to eat?”

“Um… yellow!” Papi said in a slightly joyful voice, perhaps because his memories were coming back to him.

“...Yellow?”

“Yeah! It’s refreshing and delicious. Pink is good, but it’s a little too sweet. The purple color has a nice taste. What color do you like, Meta Knight?”

“...I asked about your food preferences, not colors.”

“That is my favorite food. I like yellow flower nectar the most.”

“Oh, I see.” 

Papi is a butterfly, so when it comes to food, flowers fit his appetite.

Meta Knight replied, “I have never tasted flowers.”

“What? Really!? Why!?”

“Because I’m not a butterfly.”

“Oh… sorry. I’ve never tasted anything better than nectar. So what kind of food does Meta Knight like?”

“I…”

He recalled various meals and desserts he ate with Captain Vul and his men. He was also often swayed by the gluttonous Kirby and King Dedede.

Would he ever be able to eat with them again?

Or…

Meta Knight shook off his sinister thoughts and looked at the trees growing along the road.

There were gray fruits.

They didn’t look delicious, but he wasn’t hungry anyways. He reached out to the fruit anyways. They could remind him of eating. It might give him the sense of the original world again.

He thought about it and tried to eat the fruit.

“Ah, ah, ah…?” Papi made anxious sounds.

Meta Knight looked at him. “What?”

“Uh… yeah… nothing...no… uh! Ehe!” Papi laughed brightly.

“You’re quite odd.” Meta Knight tried to eat the fruit again.

Then, Papi made a desperate cry. “...No! Don’t eat it, Meta Knight!” Papi slammed into his hand and knocked out the fruit.

Meta Knight was stunned. “What are you doing, Papi?”

“No… it’s…” Papi looked unprecedentedly sick. “Don’t eat it.”

“...Eh?” Meta Knight saw the fruit at his feet. “Don’t eat it…? Is it poisonous?”

“Sort of. Well, not really, but…” Papi folded his wings and explained. “If you eat something from Hades, you will never be able to return to the original world.”

Meta Knight was surprised. “What!?”

“It’s a rule. If you take a bite here, you will become a permanent resident. You won’t be able to return to the original world anymore.”

“That…” Meta Knight had a heavy heart. “Papi, you…”

“...Yup.” He fluttered again and stopped on a tree branch. “I didn’t know the rule. I came to the underworld and just tasted the flowers.”

“Why…”

“I wasn’t hungry, but I was wondering if I could eat something and get better! At that time, my body was still in the original world, still alive despite being seriously injured, just like you. So, if I had the chance, I might have been able to come back, but because I tasted the flowers of Hades… I had to stay here forever.”

“Is that so…”

Papi apologized. “I’m sorry, Meta Knight.”

“What are you sorry for?”

“I thought for a moment that you should eat the fruit, then you’ll be with me forever… I’m sorry…” HIs voice disappeared.

Butterflies don’t shed tears, but to Meta Knight, Papi seemed to be crying.

Meta Knight called out kindly, “But you stopped me. Thanks to you, I was saved.”

“But I…”

“You are my savior, my butterfly hero. Thank you, Papi.”

“...Butterfly hero! I like the sound of that! Ehe!” Papi laughed shyly and spread his wings.

The night of the country of Hades quietly continues.

Meta Knight kept walking. The end of his time was approaching. The gray buds are bulging like they are about to open.

Meta Knight spoke, “Papi. Apparently, I have no hope.”

“...Meta Knight?”

“Soon, the morning of the fourth day will come. I’m out of time…”

Suddenly, Papi shouted. “Wait, Meta Knight! It’s nearby!”

“...What?”

“It’s the red butterfly! It’s nearby!”

“What did you say?” Meta Knight looked around, but there was no red butterfly.

Papi said. “I can feel it. It’s a butterfly thing. This is it!” He flew through the trees.

Meta Knight hurriedly followed Papi. Beyond the trees was a small fountain.

“Here!” Papi shouted.

The red butterfly was flying over the fountain. While Meta Knight was watching, Papi flew towards the red butterfly.

“He, he, hey! Red butterfly! Nice to meet you!” His voice was shaking.

Terrified, Papi put on a brave face for Meta Knight. “Listen to me! Um… um…!”

“Thank you Papi. I’ll talk from here.” When Meta Knight called out, Papi was relieved and fluttered back, hiding behind him.

Meta Knight called out carefully. “...Red butterfly. Can you hear me?”

It didn’t react at all and flew over the spring, fluttering.

“I want to go back to the original world. I want to know how to do it.”

The butterfly did not turn its face. As Meta Knight stepped towards the fountain, it fluttered away.

Papi screamed. “W-wait…!” 

Suddenly, they heard a voice from somewhere. It was a low voice, like a moan, like a growl. 

Papi said mysteriously. “Hmm? Can you hear me? What is this…”

Meta Knight looked around.

No reply. The voice grew louder and louder.

Papi was restless and panicked. “Somehow… I’m scared… I’m scared, this voice!”

It was no wonder Papi was frightened. The voice heard from somewhere was tinged with a dark feeling. Defeat, regret, hopelessness…

“This, no way…!” Meta Knight was stunned.

He didn’t know whose voice it was. However, he remembered hearing such a voice before. This was the voice of a person with tremendous power who had been sealed away. 

Somewhere, someone with overwhelming power was about to disappear. They were screaming for fate.

“The agonizing death scream…!” Meta Knight shouted at that moment.

Suddenly, the appearance of the red butterfly changed. Its wings began to shine in response to the cry. At that same time, the space around it was distorted. The butterfly gave off a fiery light and fluttered loudly. The space was twisted and a gaping hole appeared. Beyond the hole was darkness.

Meta Knight shouted. “The road has opened! Beyond that… the original world!”

It was a miracle. A hole in the sky of Hades was torn, opening the way to the original world.

The red butterfly disappeared as if it was sucked into the hole.

“Wait…!” Meta Knight enthusiastically jumped off the ground and chased the butterfly. 

However, he did not reach even slightly and fell into the fountain. 

Splashes rise. The hole made by the butterfly is closing.

Not enough time…!

At that moment, Papi jumped out.

He flew straight in and fluttered with all his might at the edge of the hole in space.

“Hurry, hurry, Meta Knight!” Papi shouted, desperately trying to widen the hole as it was closing.

“Papi!”

“Hurry~! I’ll be crushed~!”

Meta Knight spread his cloak into wings and jumped out. 

He poked his head into the hole as it was closing.

Papi was relieved and moved away from the hole.

“Papi!” Meta Knight turned around and shouted.

Papi fluttered over the fountain.

“Good~! You’re just in time, Meta Knight!”

“Papi! Papi…”

“Goodbye, I’ll be fine. Don’t forget about me!”

Meta Knight was sucked into a passage to another dimension with a strong force.

The hole was getting smaller and smaller. 

The last thing Meta Knight saw was a blue light, as small as a star.

Kirby and King Dedede were taken aback.

The moment Galacta Knight fell, a red butterfly appeared out of nowhere. Butterflies fluttered all over the fallen knight. This wasn’t a good sign in the heat of a fierce battle.

“What, that butterfly… where did it come from?”

“How strange. Is there a flower blooming somewhere?”

As they were wondering, the red butterfly stopped softly on the tip of the lance.

Kirby said in a hurry, “He’s dangerous. Why would it go to him if he’s not a flower…”

The butterfly fluttered its wings and scattered bright light.

Hmmm.

Galacta Knight’s body began to glow white.

“...What?” King Dedede’s eyes widened.

Galacta Knight disappeared as the light broke.

“Wa!?” Kirby and King Dedede screamed and fell at the same time.

“What was that!? Hey, where…!?”

A butterfly was left in the place where the knight stood. It stopped flapping and floating in the air. Its red wings were brighter and brighter, shining like flames.

Both Kirby and King Dedede finally noticed. This was not a normal butterfly.

“Watch out, Kirby. This guy…!” The king picked up his hammer back up.

The butterfly turned into a fireball, sparkling light. The fireball swelled greatly.

“Waaaah!” Kirby and King Dedede stepped back, afraid they were about to catch the sparks. However, the scattered lights were not hot at all. 

The fireball burst in front of the stunned two allies. What appeared was a knight with a fearsome, masked face!

“Ga- Galacta Knight!? Has he been resurrected!?” King Dedede shouted.

Kirby said, “No, that’s not Galacta Knight! The weapon and colors are different!”

It’s as Kirby says. Unlike the pure white Galacta Knight, the knight who appeared here held a new sword and wore a crimson mask. What he had on his back were not wings like Galacta Knight’s, but bright red, butterfly-like wings.

“The red butterfly…! Then, did that red butterfly and Galacta Knight come together to look like that!?”

“I don’t know… but!”

They didn’t have time to think. The knight with the red butterfly wings swung the sword in his hand and attacked them.

“Waaa!” Kirby quickly held his sword and took the attack. It was a tremendous shock, he was about to drop his sword. “He’s… strong! Maybe stronger than Galacta Knight!”

“What…!?” King Dedede squeezed his face and swung his hammer up. His hammer hit the knight! The moment he thought he made the attack, the knight changed and countless red butterflies danced.

The king was blinded by a flock of butterflies and screamed.  “WAAAA!? Butterflies…!?”

The red knight appeared and rushed on the king.

“King Dedede-!” Kirby tried to help, but he wasn’t in time.

The red knight swung his sword down at King Dedede.

“GWAHH!” The king was blown away and struck on the stone floor.

The red knight turned to Kirby. Kirby glanced at his enemy. He didn’t know who he was, he didn’t even know where he came from.

However, the overwhelming strength that surpassed Galacta Knight’s could be felt.

Kirby held his sword and saved his strength. The red knight also seemed to see Kirby’s power. He didn’t try to slash right away, but was watching. Kirby unleashed his last-minute power.

Twister slash!

The red knight flew lightly and fled, holding his sword and saving energy. Meanwhile, the sword grows huge. Much larger than Kirby’s body.

Kirby drew back. “Eeee!? That’s huge-!”

The monstrous sword was swung down. Kirby desperately tried to avoid it, but the sword was too big. It was impossible to escape the attack range.

“Waaaaa!” After the strong blow, Kirby was knocked over.

With the hit, his copy ability was lost. Blade Knight had come out and Kirby returned to no ability.

Blade Knight was sitting on the floor, trying to get up. He shook his head, looked around him, and noticed Kirby lying down.

“...Kirby? What? What’s wrong, Kirby? What about Galacta Knight…?”

Behind Blade Knight, the red knight was preparing for a blow. Kirby raised his face and squeezed his voice.

“Ah… no… get out of there… Blade Knight!”

“Eh?” Blade Knight looked back, feeling an ominous presence.

But the sword of the red knight had returned to normal size, probably because it used up its energy in the previous attack.  However, the power of the sword was still increasing.

Blade Knight screamed. “W-w-waaaahh! W-what the heck is that!?”

Blade Knight hugged Kirby. Kirby looked at the red knight, but he couldn’t do anything anymore.

The moment when the red knight tried to slash at them, the space above Kirby’s head broke and someone rolled out.

Blade Knight was so scared he closed his eyes tightly, not even noticing.

Kirby opened his eyes and screamed.

“Me...Me...Meta Knight-!?”

(Chapter 7 - Table of Contents - Chapter 9)

[yurtletheturtlehenderson]

COSMIC - S3:E2; Chapter Two, The Mall Rats - [Pt. 1]

A Will Byers x Reader Series

Baffled with Mike's sudden behavior, El seeks out Y/n and Max for advice while Will struggles to get through to Mike and Lucas. Billy takes his co-worker on a field trip, and Steve and Dustin enlist a helpful ally in their top-secret mission.

WARNINGS: possible allegory to r*pe when the mind flayer does his little ✨ possessing ✨. It's not meant to sound like it, but when I wrote Will getting possessed I'm pretty sure some people compared it to that and I just want to be sure yall are safe reading this so [■■■■■■] these guys are back. Hope this helped! + oh yeah also brief mention of gore and v*mit [yes I censored that, let's move on] but they all fit inside the warning markers.

A/n: can't remember if I put this before but f/d = favorite drink

||𝟑𝐫𝐝 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐏𝐎𝐕||

An eerie silence stretches across the town of Hawkins, from the bustling new heart in Starcourt Mall all across town to the edge of its grassy hills. Sitting in the shadows of these grasslands, tucked in with blankets of discarded steel and machinery all being pulled back into the earth to be properly claimed is the stomach of the town; Brimborn.

Unlike the heart, it is shrouded in darkness, death, and decay. It sits abandoned just miles off the main roads and welcomes nothing but trouble. Once nothing but an empty husk of potential had long since reared its head and swallowed a darkness—the sickness of Hawkins—that now resides deep in the belly to be digested.

And it had just gotten its first taste in months.

Billy Hargrove stumbles out of the darkness of the steel stairway and into the forgiving light of the moon.

His face nearly collides with the concrete on at least three occasions in the time it takes him to run back to his car. His adrenaline spikes with every frantic beat of his heart and heaving of his lungs. The rubber soles of his boots punch the concrete, only hammering in the fear of being pulled back under. He can't understand what he just saw, nor can he hold off the feeling of nausea brewing in his gut much longer as he fumbles for his keys in his pocket.

It would seem he has enough luck to get inside the car and start it. The sound of tires squealing against the pavement is music to his ears. He's back on the road just as soon, head pounding painfully as he tries to keep his shaking hands that grip the wheel from throwing him off the road. And they are able to do so for several minutes—several minutes of Billy choking down air and adrenaline while the smell of burning diesel from his car stings the back of his throat. And yet still it wasn't the worst sensation in his mouth by far. He could still taste the rot sitting on his lips and tongue... from that... that thing...

He doesn't know where he's going apart from away—as far away as he could get from Brimborn until he sees a box of light in the distance just off the side of the road. A payphone. He could call someone. Hell, if this thing was chasing him—if it got him someone should at least know what little he did. His car lurches off the road with one swift yank on the wheel and suddenly his tires are screaming against the asphalt again. Clumsily Billy throws open his door and tumbles out onto the streets, stumbling to the payphone he had spotted.

He's already on the phone before he realizes; time was still moving in blurs catching every other moment as he blacked out. Yet another miracle he managed to make it down the road safely in his car. Billy's chest heaves up and down as he drowns in panic, trying so desperately to get ahold of each breath.

His eyes, bloodshot and wild, sweep the darkened streets and he jumps when a soft click goes off in his ear.

"911, what's your emergency?"

At once, everything comes back to Billy, still in flashes.

He remembers a lurch in his gut when the car spun out, followed by a searing pain in his temple that spread throughout his skull in a dull ache. He can smell smoke from the busted engine. It was covering up a smell of rot and sewage and... and an overwhelming sense of copper like an old change jar. It was similar to the smell coming from the blood running down his face. Its texture almost similar to the slime he felt on his fingertips when he saw the state of his windshield.

Another lurch in his heart when something shrill cried out as it scurried by.

And then his face was in the dirt. Something had hooked his leg and reeled him in. Billy remembers the pain of his nails clawing at the dirt. And then concrete and then metal stairs. He can feel it all burning his stomach too like road rash. A blood-curdling scream tore from his throat as his fingers burned, they were in searing pain as they clung so desperately to the iron doorway where they eventually lost their battle.

[■■■■■■]

What followed never held the absence of more pain, that was all he knew. From his chin colliding with every metal step, to the thousands of tiny feet clawing at his body as the swarm closed in. And ultimately the unbelievable anguish of that thing invading every cell in his body. It all happened so fast, even in the moment and he was left but nothing but the horrifying image of a bloodied tentacle attacking his face.

Every attempt at a scream was shoved back down his throat along with the dark and bloodied mass spewing from its insides like icy vomit. He could feel it going everywhere, soaking through into his bloodstream and it traveled throughout his body.

[■■■■■■]

And just as Will Byers had experienced half a year ago; Billy felt every essence of warmth cease to be, and all that existed was icy darkness. And there it remained.

He could feel it even now as he stood underneath the flickering lights of the phone booth.

I̵̢͖̘̪̞̻̜͍̪͛̌͘͝s̴̮͈̮̟̮̥͔̃͘ ̶͉̂͛ş̷̳͉͖͖̠͉͉͇͖͆ó̴̝̰͉̟͙̘̝̥̲͂͌̒̿̅͝͝m̵̖̐̌̽̐͋̊̏͝e̵̛̜̘̰̫̩̋̅̊ͅo̷̢̫̻͙͕̫͚̮̅͗̃̃̐͊̋̕͜͠ǹ̶̡̞͖̪̯͉͓̖̜̳̉͝e̷̬̞̣̝̬͕̱̫͊̏ ̴͕̇̌͆͑̄͋̄t̴͎̯̥͉͌̕h̶̹̚͜e̴̯͔͓̬̗̞̥̳̠͜͠r̶̨̬͎̬̙͉̩͐͜ë̸̥̣̺̘̭́̇̽̉̓̐̕͘?̵̼̠͛̋ ̸̪͒͋H̸̭̺̞̬̖̎̓̇̐͆͐̚͝͠ͅe̸̢̲͎̭͊̄͗̌͌͝l̶͉̉͜͜ḽ̵̠̟̻̅̏͗̏̒̌͜͝o̵̖̙̼͓̽̓̎?̶̩̱͎͍͉͓̅̑̈͋͝

Darkness. That was all that was left after the distorted voice died out with the rest of the booth. His eyes flew everywhere, but not for long. An impossible chill fell over his already frozen body when he realized what was so wrong.

The world outside the phone booth was not how he left it—not how it was only moments ago. The beautiful summer night sky was swallowed by storm clouds, taking all warmth with it. The air was heavy and sticky, a combination of humid and cold all at once. It was hostile, and it wreaked of decay. But what startled Billy most was the glistening array of vines that engulfed the earth and everything on it.

In a sickly daze, he stumbled in front of his car. Its headlights seemed to shine brighter than the moon and yet it was not enough to illuminate the oncoming army of figures marching through the fog.

"What do you want?" He asked, feeling brave. When they didn't answer, he stalked forward several steps and raised his voice in a panic. "Hey! I said, what do you want?"

No answer. Just the haunting sound of the marching of the faceless army. He matched their step, just a notch slower thanks to the fear filling his lungs. Billy was too afraid to notice the scarlet lightning raging up above his head.

"I said, what do you want?!"

The faceless army stopped but its leader remained in a steady march straight for him. Try as he might, Billy couldn't bring himself to take another step. He could only watch with bated breath, heart in his lungs beating so loud he could hear it in his ears as the figure revealed himself to him. When he did, Billy's next breath was stolen right out of his chest.

Standing there before him was another Billy Hargrove.

||𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫'𝐬 𝐏𝐎𝐕||

"Are you sure you know how to ride that thing?" I quip, watching as Max tumbles off her board for the sixth time since she got on.

"Do you wanna give it a try?" she asks, smirking. "Wanna see if you can do a kickflip?"

"Oh, that's not a question I need answered," I say, finishing another sip of my f/d. I put it back down on the curb beside me where I sit, and lean back with my hands propping me up in the grass. "The question is, can you do a kickflip?"

"I can, I told you," she huffs, turning her board back over. "I did one this morning,"

She mounts her board and tries again. The board flips under her feet but never comes full circle. Her feet land on the edge of the underside and she stumbles back. Max releases another frustrated huff, moving the bits of hair that had fallen over her face.

"I'd give that a solid 4.0," I comment.

"Why are you here again?" She asks, stopping to look at me. Her face is stern but anyone could see she was teasing. Mostly.

I laugh and stretch out my legs.

"Cause you love me?" I offer, sheepishly.

Max clicks her tongue, pretending to think about it. "Mm, no I don't think that's it."

"But you don't deny you do?"

"Whatever," she scoffs, hopping back on her board.

"You do love me," taking a long, loud sip of my drink I grin with my eyes and she rolls hers.

I tip the f/d all the way back, lick my lips, and sigh.

I ultimately decide I've put it off long enough and I rise from the curb.

"I'll be back. I gotta whiz,"

Max eyes the empty glass of f/d I have in my hand and smirks. "Surprise, surprise. You're gonna run us dry at this rate,"

"You guys ate all my Mac n Cheese," I wink, and she blushes. "I'm just doing the neighborly thing and repaying the favor,"

Max rolls her eyes and scoffs, and feeling victorious I disappear inside.

||𝟑𝐫𝐝 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐏𝐎𝐕||

Max's eyes linger where Y/n had disappeared and her lips threaten to hook upwards in a small smile. She quickly shakes her head, forcing herself to focus back on the task at hand.

Maybe if she got a running start.

Max takes off on her skateboard and gives it another try. The board barely moves.

Her third attempt is the closest but still wields no results.

And when she tries a fourth, her board flies out from under her and cruises down the road.

Where it lands at El's feet.

Max straightens, unsure of where this was about to head. She watches carefully as El picks up the skateboard and makes her way over.

Was this really happening?

El had never wanted anything to do with anyone other than Mike, and Y/n.

So what was she doing here?

"Hi," she says.

"Hi?"

El hands her skateboard over to Max, her steely composure melting a little.

"Is Y/n here?"

Max's shoulders fell, any hopes she had growing in her chest dashed.

"She's inside," Max said, trying to mask her disappointment. "She'll be back out in a minute,"

Max took her skateboard and returned it to the concrete, ready to hop back on. But El's words stopped her in her tracks.

"Can... we talk? All of us?"

⊹ ⊹ ⊹

Welp. Another day, another migraine for Robin Buckley. She couldn't even pretend to care anymore as she numbly hands over what had to have been the sixth dozenth ice cream cone of her first shift.

"Have a nice day," she drawls, passing the cones to the over-eager couple.

"Thanks!" They turn away, heading for the door, revealing the next over-eager customer in line.

He bounces up to the counter, wearing a Roast Beef tee, bright yellow ball cap, and a toothless grin.

"Hi!"

Robin blinks. "Hi," she says carefully.

His smile never wavers, even when he seems to catch on to her cluelessness. He gestures to himself.

"I'm Dustin," he clarifies.

"I'm Robin,"

"Pleasure to meet you," man, this kid's optimism was a little unnerving. Impressive, but unnerving. But hey, at least it was something new. He glances over her shoulder and back to her expectantly. "Uh, is he—? Is he here?"

"Is, who here?"

The sudden and obnoxious sound of rubber shoes squealing against the freshly waxed linoleum floors ripped their attention to the employee-only door. It had been thrown open as the figure before them had nearly crashed through. There stood an overzealous Steve Harrington wearing his usual Scoops Ahoy uniform and a growing grin.

His mouth falls open in a gape, unable to contain his excitement and he throws his arms up.

"Henderson,"

Dustin laughs excitedly as Steve begins bouncing around the counter to greet him.

"Henderson! He's back!" He cheers. "He's back!"

"I'm back!" He cries, gesturing past a Robin and her startled expression to the giant Scoops Ahoy sign. "You got the job!"

"I got the job!" Steve blows an imaginary trumpet before going in for their handshake.

As it always did, the handshake gradually morphed into a false battle, imaginary lightsabers drawn and clashing. Each of them create their own sound effects. Dustin thrusts the invisible blade of light into Steve's abdomen, who in turn illustrates his fake wounds. The pair of unlikely friends fall into a fit of giggles, while a less than impressed Robin watches in boredom behind the counter.

The name had already registered, but she was still a little shocked at the other Henderson she never had a chance to meet. She always forgot there were two, and if Robin was being honest, she preferred the other one so far. Sure, the girl stared a lot but she seemed less... well whatever this was.

Looking at her coworker, she tilts her head and cocks a brow. "How many children are you friends with?"

The young man sighs, exasperatedly swiping a hand over his mouth as he gestures to her, giving Dustin a tired look.

⊹ ⊹ ⊹

"No," Steve laughs through a cracked smile. "No way! Hotter than Phoebe Cates? Nah,"

Dustin hums, swallowing a bite of his ice cream, and nods excitedly.

"Brilliant, too! And she doesn't even care that my real pearls are still coming in. She says kissing is better without teeth,"

"..." Steve nods, trying his best to not let his nervous laughter shine through. "Wow! Yeah, um—well that's great! I'm proud of you man, that's rom— that's kind of romantic. That's like... wow!"

Dustin hums happily in agreement, swallowing another bite of his ice cream. He shakes his head.

"Do you really get to eat as much of this as you want?"

"Yeah," Steve shrugs. "I mean, sure. It's not really a good idea for me though. You know, I gotta keep in shape for the ladies,"

-"Yeah, and how's that working out for you?" Dustin and Steve follow the voice across the shop to see Robin shooting them a knowing look.

"Ignore her,"

"She seems cool," Dustin's smiles.

"She's not," Steve says, eyeing the foot traffic outside Scoops Ahoy momentarily. "So, where are the other knuckleheads?"

"They ditched me yesterday,"

As Dustin digs out a spoonful of his U.S.S. Butterscotch Sundae, Steve laughs off the boy's last comment in disbelief.

"What? No way,"

"My first day back. Can you believe that shit?"

Steve's face falls when he sees the look on Dustin's face. He sits up in his seat, growing angry.

"Woah, seriously?"

"I swear to god, mhm."

"No, no not Y/n though?" Offered Steve, sounding genuinely surprised. "I mean, I don't think she wanted to admit it but she was pretty psyched about you coming home,"

"Yeah, Steve. Even Y/n," Dustin snaps. But judging by the look washing in after his outburst, he doesn't seem very committed to his anger. He sighs into his ice cream. "I mean, she tried to stick with me but she had to leave with Byers or something. Said she was worried,"

"That blows," Steve says, sighing into a hunch over the table. "I'm sorry, man."

Dustin nods, eyes still drilling into his Sundae. No doubt dwindling on his growing separation from his sister and friends. Feeling bad for the kid, Steve still remembers the events of the previous year. And if, like then, it had something to do with Will, then... Well, he couldn't really blame her. But he was broken up just seeing Dustin like this.

"Hey, I'm sure it's fine," Steve tries. "You know her better than anyone; if she's worried about something she has a good reason. I'm sure she's just being cautious, but that doesn't mean she doesn't want to be here with you. I'd just give it time,"

"I guess," Dustin frowns, his spoon playing with a cherry on his ice cream. He suddenly perks. "Doesn't matter now, though. They're all gonna regret it, anyway. Big time. When they won't get to share in my glory."

Steve sits up, growing curious.

"Glory? What glory?"

A sort of cocky smirk grows on Dustin's face and he scooches further in the booth, closer to Steve. His voice lowers a considerable amount, only doubling Steve's curiosity.

"So last night," he begins. "I was trying to get in contact with Suzie,"

Unfortunately for Steve, he catches the playful look on the kid's face and nervously nods along. The 'no teeth' comment and the small, uninvited image it forces onto his mind threatens a shiver.

"and I uh," Dustin leans in further, pausing to scan the ice cream shop as he hides his mouth behind his hand. When his next words come out, they're barely a whisper as he looks into his bowl."I intercepted a secret Russian communication."

Steve only blinks, his mind racing to catch up with the words he thought he heard. He blinks again.

"What?"

"Uh," It's clear Dustin is trying to look as casual as possible, but every attempt at doing so was only obscuring his words more. "IinterceptedasecretRussiancommunication,"

"Just speak louder,"

"I intercepted a secret Russian communication!"

The shop goes quiet, everyone including Robin who stood behind the counter stopped to look at them. Steve shifts in his seat, hastily shushing the boy as discreetly as possible.

"Jesus, yeah. OK, well that's what I thought you said." Both of them look around the shop again, relieved to see everyone had gone back to their conversations assuming they misheard. Either that or wanting to keep out of it. "Wait, what does that mean?"

"It means, Steve, that we could heroes. True American heroes."

"Ahh," Steve says through a blooming smile.

"Mm-hmm,"

"American heroes," Steve said, liking the sound of the words on his tongue.

"Just think. You could have all the ladies you want. And more."

"More?"

"More."

"I like more."

Dustin hums, and as the two think on it they can very nearly picture their glorious, hopeful future before them.

"What's the catch?"

"No catch, I just need your help."

"With what?"

Dustin only smiles, turning to his backpack beside him. Unzipping the bag, he retrieves a small red book that he displays with a hopeful smile. The title read,

RUSSIAN - ENGLISH

ENGLISH - RUSSIAN

"Translation."

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

5 Ways To Help Palestinians Through Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions - [link]

20 Organizations That Support Black Women During Black History Month and Beyond - [link]

Stop Asian Hate Linktree: A variety of resources dedicated to helping those affected by, and stopping Anti-Asian Violence - [link]

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

Tag List:

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[skrltwtch]

Starving

Prompt: I work at the butcher shop and we've never spoken, but I recognise you from when you come in to buy fresh meat every month. I don't mind keeping the store open a little past closing since you're running late and seem kind of desperate. This may be weird to mention, but did you know your teeth are getting sharper while we talk? (Source in master list)

Word count: 2,782 words

Genre: Feels, supernatural

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

Someone had the bloody cheek to enter as I was getting ready to close up shop. Our opening hours were indicated on the door. The door. You couldn’t get any clearer than that. When did schools and parents stop teaching their charges not to enter business premises two minutes before closing time?

It was her.

I could make an exception this time, I suppose. She came in often enough and bought more than enough for me to consider her a regular. And she was a lovely person to deal with; I couldn’t say the same for a decent amount of my other regulars, whose business I accepted with gritted teeth.

‘I’m sorry. I know you’re closing soon. Just — please, I’ll take any cuts of meat you have left. I can pay extra for the trouble,’ she said.

Oh, God, what had I done to earn that kind of impression?

‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine, thank you.’ Her pale skin and quivering form said otherwise. ‘I just — I just lost track of time at work. I got here as quickly as I could once I could leave the office. I’m really sorry.’

‘Don’t — it’s okay.’ I packed whatever I had left that would also match the typical volume of her purchases. From the corner of my eye, I saw her pacing up and down the shop, holding herself tightly. Every breath she made reached my ears. She wasn’t fine. Forget small talk then. Just like it wasn’t my business what she did with enough meat to feed a large animal in a day every month, it wasn’t my business why she looked close to falling over.

Maybe it was.

I called her over to the cashier, where approximately four kilogrammes of raw meat awaited her. Despite her stature, she never had any difficulties making it out of the shop with that much in tow. That might not be the case today. She was having a tough time simply getting her wallet out of her bag, and she looked absolutely sickly. Were those … were those tears in her eyes?

I really shouldn’t.

I really should.

‘Hey, are you alright? You don’t look too good,’ I said. Understatement: she appeared to be deteriorating by the second.

‘I’m fine,’ she insisted as she struggled with her wallet this time. I narrowed my eyes at her for a better look at what I thought I saw: her canines extending and swelling into fangs. A cross between a hiccup and a sob squeaked past her throat and into the open.

‘You can come back for payment tomorrow. I can help you with this to your car.’ No, it was now my social responsibility not to let her get behind the wheel. She was barely able to stand. ‘Or I can drop you off at your place … or somewhere nearby if you’re more comfortable with that.’

‘I’m fine,’ she growled.

Literally.

‘Shit, I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to.’

‘It’s … okay …?’ Sorry, my attention was hijacked by the sight of claws, honest-to-God claws, fucking splitting her fingernails open.

She left £100 on the counter and grabbed the parcels I made for her. ‘Please keep the change. You’ve been so kind. I can’t — I can’t come back here anymore.’

I wasn’t given a chance to question why she felt that way. Whatever was plaguing her — and scaring me a little, I had to admit — didn’t give her a chance either to make it out the door, as she’d collapsed not far from the counter. I had no idea how I could even let her walk out alone in the state she was in. I rushed to the phone. ‘I’m calling for help,’ I said.

She got to her hands and knees. That was … encouraging. I think. ‘No, please don’t. You need to go.’ Her voice was distorted and rumbly. Her blouse started to tear across her back, revealing a thin, but growing, layer of … hair. Fur, more like. Not so encouraging anymore.

‘I can’t leave you here alone. What is happening to you?’

She buried her face in her hands — or whatever they were becoming as they stretched and popped. Her feet burst out of her shoes, the same changes happening to them. ‘Don’t laugh.’

‘I promise.’ The rapid decline of her health from when she came in, the physical changes wracking her body, and the animalistic noises she was making drained what I was witnessing dry of any humour. I doubted there was any to begin with. I felt almost like I was seeing something I wasn’t supposed to.

‘Werewolf. I’m a’ — a bark, involuntary, broke up her sentence — ‘werewolf.’

I went to her. Outside, the shades of violet and orange the sky had been awash with were muddling into a dark blue. I ducked my head a little to verify the shape of the moon tonight. None of the passers-by thought to look inside. At this point, I was more worried about someone else becoming privy to her secret than I was about the image of my shop. I didn’t understand how this was happening. It made sense and no sense at the same time.

‘You can stay in the storeroom tonight. You’ll be safe.’

She kept her head down. ‘Your boss? Okay?’ Her speech was strained.

‘I’m the boss of me.’ I knew my decision not to hire extra help would pay off someday. ‘Come on.’

‘Thank you.’

She stood up. I shifted my gaze elsewhere, as tempting as it was to see what a werewolf looked like mid-transformation. I showed her the way to the storeroom. It was due for a cleanup anyway. Her constant twitching and whining next to me didn’t go unnoticed. I took it to mean that she was controlling herself from either changing completely until I was out of her way or hurting me. I could be completely way off base, of course. The only piece of werewolf media I ever consumed was An American Werewolf in London (I was more of a zombie person myself), and … well, from what I’d seen tonight, the filmmakers got the transformation right, I’d say.

She took off what was left of her clothes once she was inside, and her transformation … accelerated. I closed the door to give her privacy — and to drown out the horrific noises. Nothing about the human body should produce what I was hearing. Things went quiet, eventually. I opened the door ever so slightly. ‘I’ll be here all night,’ I said despite not knowing whether she’d know what I was saying, ‘so you won’t be alone.’ I should be safe on this side of the door: the change had stripped her of opposable thumbs. The keyword was ‘should’.

The darkness coupled with her black fur made it impossible for me to see the creature she had become. Did I want to see? I still couldn’t shake off the feeling like I’d been some kind of voyeur; her appearance mattered naught to me, though I’d understand if she thought — she likely did — it would. Then she threw herself against the door, slamming both the actual thing and the door to my maiden glimpse at a real werewolf shut.

She loosed a howl that drove home the point that I had a werewolf in my storeroom. That I had been selling meat to a werewolf for her consumption. That the sweet, cheery petite lady who came in once a month was a werewolf. I wondered, then, if what she was like as a human carried over to her wolf self. If it did, I should be safe, right?

… There it was again: ‘should’.

I went back to what I was doing before what I knew about this world had been violently upended. I thanked God — should I? Did He or did He not exist? — that tomorrow was my day off. I was going to spend it with a good book and minimal to no human contact in the comfort of my living room. Now I was only interested in contemplating my place in the universe. What else was out there? Were any of the people walking past as I went to advertise the shop’s official closure for the day harbouring similar secrets as well?

Baleful whines transcended the door and filled the air. I picked up the parcels she’d dropped. Could she be hungry? It was worth a shot. I unwrapped one parcel. The closer I got to the storeroom, the more charged she got. I never dreamt I’d get to know the extent of damage a werewolf’s claws could do to a door in this lifetime. I threw the slab of meat as deep inside as I could. While she went to examine what it was that I’d left to her mercy, I turned on the lights to benefit us both.

What I got to see at last was ineffective in reeling in my disbelief. Where I’d left a quaking, infirm woman now stood a massive black wolf rending raw meat like paper. Despite looking almost indistinguishable from an ordinary wolf, there was an unsettling quality to her proportions and demeanour that made it hard for me to remember my manners and stop fucking staring. She was … beautifully horrifying and frighteningly stunning all at once. In some sick, twisted way, it made sense that something like her — something like what she’d become — couldn’t have come about naturally.

She turned to look at me, her jaw dripping with blood and her tail … wagging.

I regained control of my senses quickly enough to leave. The slamming of the door failed to mute her whimper at — missing out on her chance at a tasty human? Being alone in the storeroom again? Best I didn’t read too much into it. I fed her the rest of the meat she bought. She refused to eat the last piece, yet she wailed when I left her be.

‘I don’t think I’d taste very good. I’m lean and stringy,’ I said through the crack in the door. ‘And bland, like most English food.’

I didn’t know what to make of the bark that followed my attempt at a witticism.

I felt bad for her. Wolves were social animals, weren’t they? Then again, who’d feel bad for me upon discovering my mutilated body in my shop? No one had attempted to romanticise werewolves like the likes of Anne Rice and the Twilight author had done with vampires, and probably with good reason, as I willed myself to remember how she, a soft-spoken woman an hour ago, devoured almost four kilogrammes of meat in record time. The ending of An American Werewolf in London wasn’t a happy one, for God’s sake! (Maybe I should stop invoking God’s name for now.)

‘Can you understand me?’ I said. ‘Bark … um, bark twice for yes’, so it wouldn’t be a coincidence.

And she did.

Well, fuck me.

I sighed. ‘Are you … are you lonely? Bark twice for yes.’

Silence.

For the longest time, until she barked again, softly, mournfulness plain to hear in the two notes.

✦✧✦✧

My back! G— fuck, my back. How the fuck did I sleep last night?

Right. I slept in a chair outside the storeroom.

I stretched to get rid of the kinks in my back. Yeah, that was it. That was the spot. No, that one. That other one was definitely it. Relief — sweet, glorious relief. How the hell did I even fall asleep in a chair anyway?

‘Hey, you’re awake.’

I turned to the direction of the voice that had no reason to be here at this time of day. Or at all. No one was allowed here but me. Why was I in the shop? Wasn’t today my day off? What happened last night? Why, of all things instead, did I remember not to use God’s name as a synonym for ‘fuck’? I also didn’t remember finding religion last night. I pinched the bridge of my nose. I needed water.

I focused my eyes on the figure in front of me.

It was her.

Oh.

Oh.

‘Yeah, I am now.’ Without a doubt. ‘How are you?’

She declined my offer to have my seat. My legs demanded that I continue standing to get the blood flowing. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. I could believe her this time. She was wearing one of my aprons over the tattered remnants of her clothes. ‘Thank you for … um.’ Her pause made me think her admission last night was the first time she said those words out loud to someone else. ‘Thank you.’

‘It was nothing. You looked … really sick yesterday’: I took a leaf out of her book

She smiled. ‘It’s okay. You don’t have to be polite. I know what I am.’ Her words were shaded with the same tint of sadness as when she confided in me about her loneliness.

‘No. You — the wolf — you were …’ Tame? She wasn’t an animal. She was … ‘You didn’t hurt — I’m fine.’ I held up both my hands to show her the absence of any marks, and she could very well see I wasn’t missing any limbs. ‘I’m fine,’ I repeated, ‘except for this sudden bout of scrambled egg for brains, but in my defence (or not), this is how I am a fair bit of the time. Who put me in charge of a meat slicer?’

‘You’re very kind. And cute,’ I thought I heard her say under her breath. ‘Thank you. How can I repay you for last night?’

‘You don’t have to. The meat’s on the house, too.’ Nothing to do with what I thought she said. ‘I’ll return you your £100 on the way out.’

‘No. Please. I could’ve done something bad to you.’

‘But you didn’t.’

‘Please. There has to be something I can do for you. I’d feel terrible otherwise.’

I truly wanted nothing from her. I survived a night with a werewolf. That by itself was a fantastic reward. I couldn’t have asked for anything better. Well …

‘Were you serious about not coming to my shop anymore?’

‘I … if that’s what you want, I can go elsewhere. If you’re going to tell the other butchers not to sell to me because of what I am, that’s okay, too. I’ll figure something out.’

‘No. G— shit. That’s awful. I’m not —’ Why did she always jump to the worst conclusions about me? ‘No, promise me you’ll come back to my shop. That’s all I ask. And … your name. You’ve been coming here for years, and I don’t even know your name.’ I knew some of my customers’ names — and not necessarily the ones that mattered. Like her. ‘It’s not about the business I get from you, by the way. I don’t care what you are. I don’t know why you are what you are, and I have so many questions, but I do know it’s none of my business. I won’t judge.’

She nodded. ‘Thank you. I promise. I’ll come back. I’ll come back when it’s not the full moon and I didn’t skip lunch because I was too busy with work. And my name’s Eloise.’

‘I’m George.’

‘It’s lovely to meet you, George. Now you know why I buy so much meat on one day of every month. You’re the only person who knows what I am.’

‘I won’t tell anyone. You have my word.’

‘Thank you. I know I’ve said that a lot of times already, but I mean each and every one of them.’ Her eyes roved around the space. ‘I should go now. I have work in a couple of hours at best … or I’m late at worst. And you probably need to get ready, too. You should be opening soon … or I’ve made you late. It’s on your door.’

‘I have the day off today. Great timing, huh? Are you sure you’re good to drive?’

‘Yes, I can definitely manage much better today than I would’ve have yesterday. I don’t know what I was thinking. I was just so hungry …’ She shook her head, expelling a breath signalling disapproval. ‘I’ll return this’ — she yanked at an apron strap — ‘to you tomorrow as well.’

‘Actually … one more thing. So we’re really even.’

‘Yes?’

‘Would you perhaps like to meet for coffee later, please?’ I could only navel-gaze for so long.

She looked taken aback. That and her response, articulated in three softly spoken words — ‘I’d love to’, led me to believe that what she was like as a human did indeed carry over to her wolf self.

[chaoticallysapphic]

the great trial part two

summary: This was meant to be the easy part. The part filled with brightness and love. The war was over and you had the love of your life all to yourself. No more Baatar, no more secrecy and no more lies. But with the calm comes the realization as all the adrenaline finally leaves you. Now you know, this is the hard part.

a/n: thank you to @medeliadracon​ for beta reading this and @ladyxffandoms​ for looking it over <3 

word count: 3k

Kuvira already hates this. She hates how the both of you are seated on the couch yet are on opposite ends while some middle-aged woman with a notepad on her lap is seated across from the both of you. She hates the question at hand, despite it being the first one. “How did it start?” 

The only problem is she has to go along with this because she just heard you say her name for the first time in weeks when introducing the both of you to Dr. Hanika. Because you spoke to her directly just a few days ago when telling her about this visit after your mother left. So she has to suck it up, for you. 

It. This wasn’t an It, this is a relationship. It was delicate and warm and the fact that this stranger expects both of you to just pour yourself into this, sharing every little thing, pisses her off. 

“Oh…” Your eyes flit across the contents on the coffee table as you try to make sense of your memories. 

“This relationship started almost four years ago” Kuvira replies. “We met at Suyin’s dance studio, she asked me for help.” Dr. Hanika clicks her pen and begins to write something across her notepad. Kuvira leans over a little to try and peek, but she’s too far away to see what’s being written. 

Your shoulders slump, wetting your lips. You don’t want to talk about this, you want to talk about how to get over the cheating. “When are we going to talk about… everything else?” 

“Y/n what can you tell me about the start of your relationship with Kuvira?” 

Kuvira looks away, frowning. She knows what you're referring to. Dr. Hanika sets her pen down and sighs “We will get to the root of your problems soon, but I think the best way I can help the both of you is if I know how it started.” 

And so you tell her, despite not wanting to, about meeting Kuvira and practicing after class with her for weeks before she finally kissed you. You keep out how she kissed you in other places, deciding to keep that between the two of you. And then you tell her about the recital, about wanting to introduce her to your parents but didn’t because Baatar was there with his arm wrapped around her. 

Hearing your point of view on things leaves a sour taste in Kuvira’s mouth. She didn’t know you wanted her to meet your parents that night. After she watched you race out of the room she had quietly scolded Baatar for not waiting like they originally planned.

“And you never told her about the relationship you had with Baatar?” You scoff at his name, turning your gaze out the window, not wanting to see her reaction to the question. 

“No… I didn’t want to hurt he-” 

“That’s rich coming from you,” you spit out, Kuvira turns to face you, her brows pinching together as she tries to keep her temper in check. “It’s the truth!” 

“If you didn’t want to hurt me you would have ended it with him!” You twist around, finally meeting her eyes for the first time in what feels like forever. Whatever words were on the tip of Kuvira’s tongue died the minute you do. “But you didn’t, instead you made me keep us a secret for three years!” 

“Alright, let’s calm down” Dr. Hanika looks between the both of you. But you ignore her, tired of keeping your mouth shut to keep her happy. 

“You cheated on me as some sick form of punishment over the smallest of things, fuck, I’m pretty sure you liked crawling into his bed those nights with how many times you chose to do it!” You grip the couch so tight your knuckles begin to turn white. 

The look in your eyes is like nothing she’s seen before and her heart begins to pound. She doesn’t know this version of you and it scares her. “How about you do us both a favor and go crawling back to him instead of staying here!”  

Tick, the clock mounted on the wall is all that’s heard as silence descends upon the room. 

Scratch, Dr. Hanika begins to write on her notepad, and the sound of pen meeting paper mixes with the ticking. 

Chirp, a bird in the tree by your living room window is giving its babies lunch and the excited chirping from the babies blends with the other two sounds.

The fourth sound to join the makeshift symphony is the whimper that leaves Kuvira’s lips before she storms away to your bedroom where she slams the door so hard the bookshelf next to it shakes, a book falls off. 

“Maybe we should start with individual sessions and then work our way up into group sessions,” she says calmly. You nod, thickly swallowing as you slowly let go of the back of the couch, your knuckles cramp a bit from how hard you held the cushion. 

And so you tell her the rest, all of it including every lonely night and every fight. She aggressively writes away on her notepad as you stare at the vase of light pink flowers. At some point, you grab a pillow from beside you and clutch it close to your chest as you get to the engagement. Tears are freely falling from your eyes now and you don’t move to wipe them away. 

“I think this will take a long time and there’s no guarantee on what will come of this, but we can only hope it’s something positive. For now, I think both of you should try to find interests separate from one another since it seems like there are some codependency issues we’ll need to work on.” 

You nod, trying to think up what you can do in this small apartment as you wipe the last of your tears away. “Okay, I can do that.” 

“What you're feeling right now is valid, Y/n, and I want you to know it’s good that you are seeking therapy to help resolve these issues,” she sets her pen down on the pad and sighs. “I think I’d like to speak to Kuvira alone, then I’ll take my leave for the day.” 

Biting your lip you set the pillow down beside you and look at the bedroom door. “I’ll go get her, maybe you should stay in the bedroom once she comes out.” Dr. Hanika stands up and gently knocks on the door. Kuvira, who feels like a knife has been driven through her heart, is sitting on the edge of your bed with her head in her hands. 

She hates herself and hates this. All of the arrogance she carried just a few weeks ago has vanished as she’s left with this warped version of you. Kuvira knows she deserves this but fuck does it hurt to hear. 

The knock has her head tilting up, hoping it’s you and that this tense tightrope you're making her walk has finally come to an end. But it’s Dr. Hanika saying something Kuvira only half hears. It feels like her head is underwater, like her words are distorted.

You hear her talking to Kuvira through the door, but she’s being too quiet to understand what's transpiring. Slowly the lock clicks and the door opens up, revealing a red-eyed Kuvira who won’t look at you.

She walks over to the other side of the room so you can lock yourself in the bedroom, suddenly she wishes she had put up a fight about doing this. Kuvira wishes she could take it back, so she never had to hear you talk like that. 

When she sits down on the couch she doesn’t know what to do, so she ends up sitting with her elbows propped up on her knees with her chin resting in the palm of her hands as she tries to keep calm. Her whole body feels like it’s buzzing and her world feels off-center. Maybe she should deal with your silence, seeming to prefer it over your malicious words. 

“Kuvira?” The young woman snaps out of her thoughts and looks up at Dr. Hanika with a quirked brow. “I’ve been trying to talk to you for a few minutes now.” 

“Oh.”

“How did Y/n’s words make you feel?”

“Awful,” Kuvira doesn't want to talk to her but what's the alternative? “Like she doesn't love me anymore.” Like no one loves me, not even her. 

“Do you think she would go through with this if she didn’t love you?” Dr. Hanika tilts her head in question, her hands delicately placed over each other as they rest on her pen and notepad. “Do you think she would put in all this effort if she didn’t want to be with you?” 

Kuvira frowns, she never looked at it like that. “Don’t you think she would have requested to be sent to her parents?” 

“I guess so…” Kuvira trails off as she leans back and looks down at her hands. Why would someone still live with someone they didn’t love? It was obvious you no longer tiptoed around her feelings so it can’t be just to appease her. “But if she still loves me, how do I fix this?” 

“This is something you both will need to work on, not just you. It will take a lot of time, and we will have to talk about your feelings but also your past to help you, do you think you can do that for me?” 

It took her months to give you a nugget of her childhood and even longer to finally talk about her feelings with you, it’s something she still isn’t good at. Both are something she has difficulty with, but for you? Well, she’d traverse the whole world for you, give it all to you if asked. 

“Okay,” Kuvira breathes, “Okay I can do that.”

And so you take up gardening, your father brings you supplies along with a shelf to place in front of one of the windows to place different pots so you have more to work with. He teaches you the basics and smiles when he sees you get lost in thought while gently patting the dirt around the newly placed Mint Plant. 

It’s not as easy for Kuvira, her hobbies consist of sparring, dancing, and at times she liked to silently geek out over Varrick and Baatar’s inventions. The apartment is too small to practice fighting stances or to dance, and there isn’t an invention insight to focus on. So one day when your dad is about to leave, Kuvira asks him to help her find something she might like. 

He offers a smile and nods. A few days later he comes over with a basket full of things for her to try, when he places the ball of yarn along with a handbook on the basics of knitting, Kuvira scrunches her nose up at the idea. 

Then he places a cookbook down and a beginners' origami kit down before placing a medium-sized package that has ‘Embroidery’ scrawled across it in chicken scratch writing. Lastly, he carefully sets down a blank sketchbook with three different types of ways to fill it in. 

“If you don’t like any of these I can bring more,” he says with a smile. Kuvira feels so grateful for your father, the few times your mom has stopped by since that fateful day she’s never acknowledged her existence. But your father always asks about her day and tries to spend some time with her before leaving. It’s surprising, but not unwelcome. 

“Thank you, hopefully, one of these works out,” she smiles back and goes to pick up the cookbook to flick through the pages. He walks away to go check on you as he always does and as always you’re in the garden lovingly tending to your plants. You seem to put more care and affection into your work than you do with Kuvira. How can she be jealous of plants?

The cookbook has some decent looking recipes inside, to be honest, the only cooking Kuvira has ever really done was that night with the dumplings. She grew up on the Beifong estate where they had a chef and when she moved into the barracks after becoming a guard they had a team of men and women who cooked meals for them. She even hired someone to cook for them on the train. 

It would probably be best for her to learn, especially once your year on house arrest is up, so she carefully sets it back down to use later before shifting through the other items with a curious eye. 

The next few weeks she tries them all out, knitting lasts two days before she throws the damn yarn and needles into the trash with disdain and Kuvira accidentally breaks the embroidery hoop fifteen minutes into trying it out. She’s okay at origami but it’s boring, she finishes all the different designs quickly and stares at the collection of stars and swans with a dull expression. 

She kind of likes cooking, with the book in hand she ends up making breakfast, lunch, and dinner, much to your surprise. The eggs are a bit overdone, so she’ll have to work on that and lunch has a bit of a char to one side of it which she sees you try to scrape off. But dinner is decent and to her, that’s a win. It could use more salt and the soup probably would be better if she let it cook for longer, but she’ll take this small victory and wear it like a badge of honor. 

Lastly is the sketchbook, she stares at the blank page in frustration as nothing comes to mind, what is she meant to do with this? Your father brought a beginner's water coloring kit, a set of charcoal pencils, and colored pencils. She bits her lip as her eyes flit between the three and she grabs the charcoal, that seems good to begin with. 

She spends the whole day trying to draw a panda lily that never turns out quite right which drives her mad. The first attempt just looks like a blob, the second a slightly nicer looking blob and the third finally has a hint of the shape she's going for if you stare at it hard enough. So she works with that and tries to remind herself that when she picked up sparring she could barely throw a punch, everything takes time and practice. 

When you enter to fill up your watering can you sneakily peek over her shoulder, surprised to see her drawing, before walking back out of the house. It’s good she’s picking up a new hobby, part of you is proud of her, not that you’ll tell her though. 

The sessions with Dr. Hanika continue and with each one, Kuvira forces herself to open up a bit more with the motivation that maybe you’ll finally start to talk to her like Dr. Hanika says you will. 

When she tells Dr. Hanika about her pursuit of drawing, she tries to play it off by saying “I’m only doing it because I don’t like being bad at things.” They both know that's a lie, drawing has pleasantly consumed her time as she strives to draw beautiful things to one day give to you. 

Nights are spent the same, you go to bed and when Kuvira enters an hour later you’re passed out with two pillows placed at the center of the bed to block her from touching you. Her heart breaks as she takes a chance to look at you, the first time that day. There’s a small smile on your lips, you have the blanket tucked up to your neck with one hand resting under your head. You're having a good dream and she silently hopes that she’s part of it. 

She knows she can’t sleep in the living room like that first night, even if neither of you touches one another the heat of her body still comforts you, the slight dip that lets you know you aren’t alone. So she changes into her pajamas and slides onto her side of the bed with a sigh. One day those pillows will be gone, she tells herself. 

Your routine is broken in the third week of the second month on house arrest. Kuvira is getting lunch ready when there’s a knock at the door, breaking the peaceful silence that lulls through the air. 

You place your dirty gardening gloves on the table which has Kuvira letting out a sigh, knowing one of you will have to clean that up before eating, as you walk towards the front door. Your father just barges in at this point with a cheerful hello to announce his presence whilst your mom knocks three times every single time. This is one knock, which means it's someone new. 

You don’t know who you expect on the other side of the door, but the avatar was far down on your list of prospects. “Oh, hello,” you say, your voice laced with confusion. 

“Is Kuvira here?” She asks and then seems to realize her mistake. “Oh yeah, can I speak to her?” By now Kuvira is done making lunch and heads over to the front door upon hearing her name. She tries not to show her shock at seeing Korra here, but she must be doing a bad job because the younger woman continues. “I need to talk to you about Commander Guan.” 

You both let the avatar in, neither of you thinking this conversation should take place in the hallway of your apartment complex. The times you’ve spotted your neighbors they send a hateful glare your way. Talking about an old Empire commander will not help ease the anger they hold towards you. 

She slowly walks into your home, looking around with furrowed brows as she takes in the walls, the furniture, and the over-abundance of plants. Whatever Kuvira just made smells delicious and the scent wafts through the living space, confusing her further. 

She knows it’s stupid, but Korra expected Kuvira’s apartment to be a lot less homey and a lot more cold and lifeless. She sits down in the cream armchair, whilst the two of you sit down on opposite ends of the couch. That action confuses her more than the apartment does, last time she saw the two of you, you seemed attached at the hip. 

This placement reminds Kuvira too much of the first therapy session, she has to bite her tongue and will herself to stay put instead of walking away to brood in the bedroom. “What do you need to know about Commander Guan?” you ask. You sound so calm that it drives Kuvira mad, doesn’t this make you uncomfortable, doesn’t it remind you of that day as well? 

“Were you aware his troops never surrendered?” You let out a gasp of surprise as Kuvira balks. Was this another one of her secrets? Another grand plan up her sleeve, just wait and stay quiet with you, playing some form of pretend until he came to get her? 

“I swear, Kuvir-” 

“No I was not aware,” she says in that all too familiar tone she uses when trying to hide her anger. She side-eyes you, looking hurt at your accusation. Do you really think so little of her now?

None of this goes unnoticed by Korra as she looks between the two of you for any kind of clue that she may be lying. Kuvira forces herself to speak, “Guan is a cunning strategist with a keen mind. I put him in charge of the southern forces because I knew he could keep that region in line.” 

“If Guan hasn’t surrendered by now then that means he’s plotting something. I’d treat him like a barrel of blasting jelly with a very short fuse.” You’ve only met Guan a handful of times, each time as unpleasant as the last. He was an asshole who treated everyone that wasn’t Kuvira or Baatar like shit, including yourself. At one point Kuvira had to calmly put him in his place when he tried to demand you go fetch him a glass of whiskey. 

“If you were in my position, how would you deal with him?” 

“I’d take someone with me who Guan respects. Someone who can reason with him and bring him into line.” Your eyes widen, fully turning to look at Kuvira now. You know what she’s hinting at and you hate the idea with every fiber of your being. 

“No,” is all you manage to say. 

“You want me to bring you?” Korra leans back in surprise, an incredulous look taking over her features as she stares Kuvira down. 

“Guan’s not going to roll over just because the avatar asks him to. But if I meet with him face to face I guarantee I could convince him to concede defeat.” You might not be able to stomach the sight of Kuvira for too long without thinking of her betrayal or manage to talk to her but the idea of her leaving frightens you. What if she escapes and never comes back? 

Korra stands with her fists clenched as she walks over to the door, “Thanks for the info but I think I can handle Guan without you.” The door slams behind her and the instant she’s out you’re storming over to the table to grab your gloves. You want to scream at her but you know it won’t do any good. 

Kuvira turns to you, she has this desperate kind of look on her face as she tries to scoot closer to you. “I can be of help to them, Y/n.” You ignore her as you walk away, back to your little sanctuary. 

[starfaring-princelotor]

-

First Scent

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Summary: Emperor Lotor makes a full recovery.

-

★ Disclaimer: I do not ship Lotura and I respectfully ask that this story to not be tagged as Lotura. This is a Lotor x Reader/Self-Insert OC story which is in no way related to Allura at all. Please be respectful of my chosen pairing.

★ Warnings: N/A

Touch Series: Part One___Part Two___Part Three___Part Four___Part Five

Taste Series: Part One___Part Two___Part Three___Part Four___Part Five

Sight Series: Part One___Part Two___Part Three___Part Four___Part Five

Scent Series: Part One

-

“We are all on the same side. It doesn’t have to change our future together.”

Kylan would never dare consider doubting Lotor, but he was also no fool to leave loose ends hanging, so to speak. He worked along with their leader and his intentions - his goal - was always about keeping Alteans and the invaluable culture of said race alive. Against all odds, all naysayers and doubters, he kept to it. And he succeeded. 

“You enslaved countless Alteans! How many innocent lives did you destroy?!”

Slaves? No. They were not slaves. They were not treated as such. If anything, they were flourishing and well on their way to becoming a better society than the one led by King Alfor. The progress was well on the way and the future looked bright. So, what happened? He needed to hear it, needed to have the physical evidence right in front of him. 

“Surely, you can see the greatness we’ve already accomplished -”

The audio distorted then, signifying Sincline was most likely damaged from an unsuspecting attack. 

“-llura, stop! You and I - zzt - Altean culture. We were meant - kkzzt -”

The black box was heavily damaged. Being exposed to the elements, especially quintessence, no doubt rendered it beyond repair. Except, Kylan knew how to save the proof and secure the device for future use. Plan B. Have a backup. Always have a back up. 

“You’re more like Zarkon than I could have imagined.”

He closed his eyes slowly, releasing a solemn and heavy sigh of disappointment. He wasn’t going to say he knew everything, even if the hidden picture was revealed right in front of him. No, what he has here ultimately didn’t matter in terms of putting Lotor back on the throne. 

“Who are you to question my tactics - “

But it was enough to clear his name. It was enough to show that Voltron started a whole new, deadly, and severely costly war by attacking the Emperor. 

*

They had suggested putting him in a pod to stabilize his quintessence levels. Lotor’s soul may have returned, but that doesn’t mean his body was in a relatively safe state. Logically, it made sense to use the technology at hand to quicken the process, but you convinced them to keep him on a bed instead. Convinced was putting it lightly. You wouldn’t move on your decision, even if it meant using logic as a tool to get what was best for Lotor.

“I will siphon it from him, as I do with the other patients,” you explained, “It’s safer this way.” 

It was your reasoning and also what you used to convince yourself, too. Your hand was loosely holding his as the steady flow of quintessence ebbed through the contact. When he had collapsed from exhaustion in your arms, you already knew that a confined space wouldn’t do well for his recovery. He needs to wake up naturally in a comforting environment, somewhere open, somewhere...safe. You promised him that at the very least. 

But the longer you stayed with him, the more you came to the haunting realization at exactly how bad it was for the Galra Emperor. His skin was shriveled, no doubt either from over exposure or the action of his soul literally being sucked out of his body. Maybe even both. But the inside is what worried you the most. Starvation. His organs were scarily dehydrated. Lotor’s system was off for so long, you weren’t sure he could even eat anything nourishing. 

And, oddly enough, there were times you couldn’t...see him as a patient. You saw him as something more, something beyond just Emperor. Allowing those buried thoughts to unfurl left your stomach stirring in uneasiness. 

Lotor wasn’t talkative. Recovery was slow and, sometimes, he barely woke up long enough to sip water or open his mouth for ice chips. You weren’t even sure if he was coherent enough to answer the typical questions for patients who experienced such acute delirium. Do you know who you are? Where you are? What happened?

No. No, overflowing with too much would stunt his progress. Plus, you often found yourself hesitating to even speak with him. Maybe it was wrong of you to take advantage of his illness to push your own discomfort away. If he didn't ask, you don’t need to answer. But there were urgent questions lingering between you two and you know they will come around to rear its ugly head eventually. You’ll have to face them, whether you like it or not. You’ll have to hear what he has to say. What you’ll say. What you’ll feel. 

But...

Lotor first. Your thumb ran over his knuckles softly, gaze longingly focused on your conjoined hands. Lotor first. That’s how it felt like when trapped in Sincline’s…

*

The Black Paladin has seen many haunting horrors in his life, but nothing will be more traumatic than seeing his own body as a corpse. No...his alternate self was alive, he just looked shriveled and sick and rotten. Sunken eye sockets, skin blemishes from what he knows as quintessence burn. The bite marks, oh, there were so many torn in his suit. Different sizes, different states of decay. 

But he was safe and, more importantly, alive. Now, the matter of what state his mind will be in is something not even he can help with. 

“I will pass the message on to the doctor once Emperor Lotor is in stable condition,” Kylan accepted the letter handed to him by the Black Paladin then carefully slid it into his coat pocket, “Thank you, again. You have done us a great honor. Saved us all, actually.”

Yet, as much as he would like to accept such gratefulness, he couldn't help but keep his lips set in a firm line. Saved them? Or condemned them? This war in his reality wasn’t theirs to deal with, but wouldn’t it be just as neglectful and dispassionate to allow the hoktril to be exposed to other realities? A double edged sword. Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't. 

“I only hope that his return was not too late. Unfortunately, time does not appear to be on our side as of late.”

Kylan nodded in agreement, “You have your duties, we have ours. And yours must be urgent if you need to leave so soon.”

Nebulous orbs slowly closed, easily remembering the scribble he quickly jotted down for your eyes only. A message, a dire one, explaining why his leave of absence was absolutely necessary, but not for the reason anyone would assume. The Black Paladin had received a distress call, one he had not heard from in a very, very long time, and he had every intention to answer it. Sven’s voice rang in his ears clearly, as if he was standing right behind him. His hushed whispers panicked from hiding. He knows the tone well.

“I implore you to use the communication stone with utmost discretion. However, as soon as matters have settled here,” Paladin Lotor gave a wave, a vague gesture at all of this, “Let me know when your forces are ready to fight.”

He gave a noble, respectful bow. He shouldn’t have regrets, but perhaps he had one nagging the back of his head. Chewing on his tongue, he wonders if it was his cowardice that told him it was better to leave without telling you face to face. 

*

If there was one thing Emperor Lotor despised about hospitals, it was the smell. The acute, sanitized scent of alcohol and sterilization never brought him comfort when awake. Even now, during every odd moment he would rouse from a deep comatose-like state, he found it absolutely much worse. The air was cold, chilling his nostrils, yet there was a warm blanket covering most of his body, all the way up to his shoulders. Warmth...something he cherishes now that he had the cold touch of death’s finger beckon his soul from his body. 

It took days for him to realize he was alive, longer to know that the doctor had dutifully tended to his recovery. It wasn’t easy, regaining his senses and awareness. His thoughts were slow, as if relearning everything that which went dormant in his mind. Words, thoughts, actions, feelings. Feelings...like your hand gently clutched in his. Not at all unlike that memory of falling in a pit of darkness, tethered by the mere simple contact of entwined fingers. 

And damn, to remember that utopia-esque simulation. Was it a simulation? It all felt too real. Too perfect, too...happy, one he thinks he will never really get to experience ever again. That love, that peaceful life, that completion. At the time, he didn't question it. Who would? But now, now as you read the holographic screen and scanned the details about his vitals in silence, he has so many to ask you.

Was it a hedonistic crime to still feel that inkling of love as he stared fondly at you? 

Or maybe...that was just a lingering side-effect. A sort of after-high from being forced into an addictive drug-induced state of mind from a mere memory. 

You knew he was awake. Lotor made it clear with his silent shifting, a gentle squeeze of his hand in yours, and a slight, almost quiet, groan of discontent when he felt his body ache in the worst possible ways. Part of him would've chuckled at the thought that maybe you were avoiding him, or rather, avoiding looking at him. Then another part would caution that it was wise of you to do so, for both yours and his sake. 

Maybe, just like him, neither of you were ready to ask questions about the intimate life you shared. Maybe if he kept his mouth shut, both of you can pretend it didn’t happen. It was a trick. A ruse, a test. One conjured deep from within the heart’s desires and brought to the surface without warning or care. 

The light above was dimmed in a cool blue hue, offering him a sense of peace and tranquility, but what really helped calm his nerves was the smell of a warm cup of hot chocolate wafting through the air. A promised treat, giving him the freedom to choose if he wanted to drink or simply hold it in his hands. And yet, he didn't reach for it.

Lotor reached for your hand. You gave it willingly, almost instinctively, and he was quite aware of how his heart beat just a little louder at the gesture. Lotor wasn’t sure he liked that or not. Well, he did, but he shouldn't. He really shouldn't because it was wrong to harbor such feelings for you considering the circumstances. But the heart wants. The heart yearns. 

Lotor can control it. He swears he can. 

So many unspoken words between you two, yet silence was clearly winning here. Then again, he can’t complain too much. Or at all, really. Your thumb slowly roving over his knuckles was nearly entrancing. The simple touch made his body compliant, whether because it was you or because the action itself was an unconscious act on its own, he would never find out. 

You stopped suddenly then gave him a light squeeze, “How are you feeling?”

“I’ll be…” he paused, recalling how he felt when falling out of that cockpit, the panic, the pain, the cold, so, so cold, “fine.”

And while normally, those few words would be firm confirmation that you’ve done your job flawlessly well, you can’t help but let your heart seed doubt in your mind.

“And you, good doctor?” 

Was he asking about your health or how you felt coming out of that life-like experience?

You twisted your wrist, closing the holographic screen before giving him your full attention, “Coming back to life is not what I expected, but neither was dying. It was different than-”

A twinge in your shoulder pulsed, reminding you of the last time you danced with death so romantically. 

“I recovered faster than you. Kylan informed me i was gone for a mere few minutes. Clearly not long enough for all the heat to leave my body, but long enough to give him a fright.”

Lotor had a certain look behind his eyes, a certain longing for the truth. You turned away.

*

It’s been a week. The metaphorical wall was back up. But it wasn't just you that decided avoidance was the best course of action for now. He, too, opted to shove those unanswered questions in the back of his mind as far as he could. Lotor only wondered exactly how long he can let it fester. How long you could let it fester. Maybe the two of you were more alike than you want to admit. 

When the deepest, most intimate, most raw secrets and desires surface, that exposed vulnerability suddenly becomes a dangerously choking weak point. Becomes something to fear. Becomes tangible and no longer yours to hide. But to acknowledge such a thing now? What? Were you two going to sit and talk about it? Have a coffee date and reminisce of those fake nights of feeling safe in each other’s arms?

No. It was much easier, much smarter, to stay focused on the goal. It was more important. 

Was it awkward? Not at all. You dressed him in silence with careful fingers, wary that the lightest of touch could bruise his still-healing body, and he watched the concentration consume your task. Such a simple thing spoke volumes to the careful observer. Lotor was the patient. You were the doctor. Play the roles well and everything will be fine. 

But just to be sure…

“We are not going to talk about this, are we?” he asked his one question, voice just a tad lower than normal, meant only for you to hear. 

Slipping the new bracelet around his wrist, you waited a few moments until the indicator glowed green, “No. Not now.”

Lotor’s hands went slack at his side, a sign of obedient understanding. He offered his hand to you, not as a gesture of intimacy. It was for his health, of course. His quintessence levels were still a little high. He was sick, still out of sorts, and a full recovery only worked if kept to schedule. 

For his health, you told yourself as the two of you walked out of the room hand in hand. 

*

“Dear Esteemed Doctor,

By the time you receive this letter, I will no longer be in your reality. I have been called back with urgent news and must return post haste. Please accept my humblest apologies for the sudden leave. If I had the time, I would have stayed to offer you my aid at any cost. With your Emperor under your care, I have no doubt that the next step with our alliance will be needing as much resources and command as possible. Rallying the forces as soon as possible will be difficult, though if there is any advice I may impart with, it is this: 

Galra are survivors, through and through. 

When civil wars raged upon our brothers and sisters, history has repeatedly shown that it is not the toughest fighter who wins. Rather, it is the one who fights to protect the one at their side. 

I look forward to seeing you once more in the near future. Please, stay safe.

Sincerely,

Lotor”

His handwriting was eloquent, not a curve or line extending awkwardly in the entire paragraph. At first glance, anyone would take in the script as romantic at face value, but the prose itself was completely opposite. He wasn’t here anymore and, as the Black Lion Paladin, of course the he had to tend to his duties. With Voltron, no doubt a shining beacon of hope for those suffering in his reality, he couldn't risk squandering his time. 

You folded the letter then pocketed it in your coat, waiting for orders from Emperor Lotor, who was sitting at the helm of the ship and staring deeply off into space. Kylan had updated him about the current situation. Colonies displaced, warlords razing worlds for their own, Haggar’s search for him. That last one put him on edge. Yes, he’s well aware you worked for her, but he is also aware of your need for self-perseverance.

Or perhaps, it was for a completely different reason? If Sincline utilizes memories from souls, then he should’ve seen his mother’s memories mixed in yours, as well. Assuming, of course, you were brainwashed like his previous... 

Lotor isn't such a naive fool to believe you would never lie in the face of certain death. He caught on faster than expected, knowing full well that sometimes telling people what they want to hear is for your own benefit, not theirs. Manipulation was often a tactic swept under the rug and reserved for those who were labeled as cowardice rats. Weak. Not strong enough. Not smart enough. 

No. Not you, though. In the short time he’s known you, words were your choice of weapon in a fight. And apparently, his mother was desperate enough to fall for your schemes. One day, he’d compliment you on such a ruse. One day, he’ll tell you that she was actually the one who gave birth to him. How would you take it, he wonders? Anger at leaving the minor details out? Distrust? Betrayal? 

“-of Marmora have gone underground. There has been news of Voltron recently en route to Earth months ago in response to Sendak’s battalion overthrowing the planet. Olkarion has been devastated by unknown forces and survivors have been scattered. Currently, no one has claimed the throne at the main headquarters and the next crowning ceremony will begin in but a few short weeks. Many separated factions are - “

Lotor had options. Many paths he could take to begin repairing the split and broken empire. He could free planets that were overtaken by warlords, spreading hope and securing rogue armies. No, that was what Voltron did and they failed to protect those they promised. Perhaps return to headquarters then declare his status as alive? He will certainly have more resources at his hand then. But no, Haggar and her spies would discreetly sabotage his throne.

Recruit the scattered Alteans? No, he doesn’t have the forces necessary to defend them all right now. They were safer with their captains, fortified with the necessary firepower and supplies. What of the Blades of Marmora? Should he spend valuable time searching for them? Their espionage skills will be most beneficial, especially with their network of spies spread out all over the universe. Then again, what about Voltron? 

What about Voltron, indeed. 

In truth, Voltron had more use as a gun than anything else. Perhaps there were still people faithful that it was their savior, their answer to all this despair and death in the galaxy. Yes, he could save them. That fight when he was piloting Sincline showed him where Voltron’s strength truly lies: as a false ray of hope. It was weak, in more ways than one. 

However, the problem with saving Voltron would confuse many people. If he were to align with them again, that would leave many to doubt his role as a leader and the Emperor of the Galra Empire. He would lose support in the time of need and Voltron itself wasn't good enough to go around. He needed numbers and he would take a loyal military over a disillusioned vigilante any day.

A conundrum, indeed. 

“Doctor, Kylan. A moment of your time, please.”

The Emperor ordered the rest of the crew around to give you three some much needed privacy. You stood at his left, Kylan at his right, both in silence. It was no surprise that just like Lotor, you were already calculating what the best course of action would be. Or at least, the best without risking potential deaths and destruction.

 “Sir, rallying the Blades would greatly help connect our network with those still loyal to the throne. Although it may take some valuable time to search for their leader and the rest of their members,” Kylan took a deep breath before continuing, “We simply do not have the power alone to protect the Colony and the entirety of the universe, let alone the upcoming war with the other reality.”

Lotor glanced at you from the corner of his eye, awaiting your input. While Kylan’s plan was sound, he couldn't afford to make a hasty decision so soon. 

“Sendak has taken over Earth, where Voltron currently resides. I don’t know the lore following the mech, whether the pilots need to be dead before the lions accept a new paladin, but leaving a nuclear cannon that can rip holes into other realities is not something we should leave to a power-hungry warlord. Find out if the paladins are alive. If they are, fight Sendak with both Voltron and Sincline on your side.”

“And if they are not?” the Emperor asked, partly curious about how you would react to your friends dying and partly curious as to why Earth, the one place you didn't want to return to, was even an option you’d consider. 

“If not, then…” you trailed off, “If not, steal one of the lions. Voltron cannot be formed without all 5 pieces together. At the very least, it will prevent Sendak from using it to its full potential, regardless if he has located new paladins.”

“Stealing requires stealth. Something the Blades can provide,” Kylan interjected. 

“A distraction works just as well. Drawing Sendak’s eyes off of Earth, even for a short time, will give us a small chance to enact our plan,” you countered, then placed a finger on your lips in thought, “If Sincline can attack his battalion, that’s more than enough attention to keep Sendak on a trail.”

Lotor found both plans sound, but there was a small problem, “Sendak will not take the bait. He fights with the ferocity of a thousand suns, but he views a proper battle for the throne as an honor. To taunt him to fight me, use my status as alive in order to claim rights over the empire is not how he views righteous combat.”

“You are the Emperor. If strength is not what determines loyalty, then perhaps it is better to show him with fealty and duty.”

You knew little to nothing about Galra culture, but that letter folded in our pocket did tell you one thing: Galra are not savages. Their history goes beyond blood and guts and gore. It’s a mystery you hope to read about one day, discover how wise veterans compare to the current warriors of the Empire. If what Lotor says is true, then maybe one of the strongest warlords in the galaxy will yield to the rightful emperor. 

“Very well. Here is my thought: Kylan and I will send for a search party to locate the Blades of Marmora. They will need this ship and I will not risk the Alteans on board near Sendak’s sights. While we are carrying out our side of the plan, doctor, you will go to Earth and infiltrate the military base as a slave. Give us the details of where the lions are and generally pass on the intel about what is going on. Because you are human, I would imagine it would be quite a simple task for you to blend in,” Lotor bit the inside of his cheek, “Blend in carefully. You are going into the mouth of the beast, after all. From there, we go either two ways: take a lion or confront Sendak. I will leave that judgement up to you, doctor.”

“It’s risky. I don’t suppose you know how long it would take for you two to find the Blades?” you questioned, though already knowing the answer.

Kylan pinched the bridge of his nose, “No. We are not even sure if the Blades still exist. If that be the case, then we should have a back up plan.”

“Regardless of how this turns out, doctor, we will need updates about Voltron and Sendak. Can you handle this on your own?” came Lotor’s final question, but there was a hint of...concern visible in his tone. 

Earth, the place you were born in. Earth, the place you left behind for good. Earth, the place soon to be used as a slavery planet for Sendak’s militaristic needs. You’re not heartless. You don’t like the idea of death and destruction on any planet. And that’s what Earth was to you, after spending so many years away, it was just another planet. The attachments you had all died with your father. 

For what reason did you have to keep any ties with the land? This was for the safety of the universe and much more.

“Yes. yes, I can. Just don’t leave me behind if things take a turn for the worst.”

Again.

*

 There was a knock at your door, drawing you to pause from packing what little belongings you had into a rucksack. 

“Come in.”

And so he did, all of his tall glory stepping into your meager room. Bland, plain, empty and void of sentimentality. Lotor wonders faintly if you lived your entire life like this, with little color and even littler personality. It looked remarkably like the room back on the Castle of Lions. The door behind him closed slowly, but he had no intention of leaving soon anyways. 

“Was there something important I missed?” 

Lotor stayed silent, watching you and trying to think of how to exactly say his thoughts. He was a man of action when the time was right and right now? Part of him was choking at the very thought of you being alone on a planet ruled by Sendak. His heart screamed at him when he suggested the plan, calling him a fool, an idiot, a bastard that keeps risking those he loves -

No. No, it wasn't love. He had to remind himself that. It was NOT love. 

If it wasn't, then why did you come here? 

Wordlessly, he bent over to unclasp his boots and pile them neatly by your door. Next came his gloves, followed by his waist cape, and then the rest of his armor until he was standing before you in nothing but his skin-tight body suit. The entire time, you watched in silence with only the beating of your heart getting louder and faster in your chest. 

The heart wants. The heart yearns. 

“May I stay here tonight?” he asked, but surely he already knew you would say yes. Surely he did. Surely you would. 

With a soundless nod, you slipped off your coat then hung it up, just for tonight. Not a doctor, not a soldier, not fighting, not running. Just...being. Existing. Like when trapped inside Sincline’s simulation, except this will be real. Was it okay to do that one more time? 

Lotor slipped under the sheets with you, trapping you between the wall and his solid frame. He was never one to call himself a man who hesitates, but he did exactly that when he cautiously slid an arm over your waist to pull you closer. Closer still, until his chest was flushed with your back and his nose nuzzled the top of your head. This let him take in your scent, as if trying to burn it in his memories. 

That’s when it clicked. As much as part of you wanted this, you needed it. You both did, after cheating death together. The way he held you tight. The way you leaned into him. He was … scared, just like you. There was no certainty you would not be killed, nor him surviving the trek to find the Blades. You two just found each other again and, while your partnership before wasn't deemed as together, as someone to fight alongside the other, the idea of being separated so soon started to leave an uneasy tension in the air. 

There were other ways. More safer, less isolating. He could come with you. Or you can stay with him. Strength in numbers, right? 

Oh, where did the confidence go?

Gentle fingertips touched over his knuckles, asking permission to hold, to thread together and seal an unspoken vow between you two. A promise that you can do this, that he will find the Blades, that everything so far is only the beginning and it will work out in the end. It was two simple words. Just two.

Trust me. 

[purple-nana]

Barriers

Part 10 - angst, fluff

1.2k words    ( Part of the Dorm of us Series)  

Warnings: Panic attacks

“Still nothing?” Jeno deadpans at you.

“Nope. As in z-e-r-o.” 

You sighed, it has been at least a week since you started giving Jaemin the cold shoulder. You thought it would frustrate the shit out of him but it turns out—it frightened him more.

“So? What are you gonna do now? Wait here and do nothing?” Renjun asks, completely sick of your ‘lover’s quarrel’ with Jaemin.

“How am I supposed to know idiot! I should probably be all dumb and be the one to say sorry, would you want that to happen Mr. Huang?” You rolled your eyes at him. 

Plopping to the couch in frustration, you massaged your face as if it was some kind of molding clay as you thought about your next moves. With Jeno, and Renjun—just looking at you hopelessly, when all of a sudden—

“Haechannie is here!” 

Haechan appeared, out of nowhere. Hands cupping his face, using his sickly sweet voice that is bothersome to the ears. And yes—he has been doing that since he moved in, it was some sort of ‘dramatic entrance’ as he would say.

“Can you please stop doing that for pete’s sake?!” Renjun complains blocking his ears in complete disgust.

of course, Haechan ignored him and went to throw himself on the couch right next to you.

“Soooooo, my dear y/n what seems to be the problem?” He pats your head, and is still—using that high-pitched voice.

You remained silent, arms crossed and face distorted in a frown. 

Haechan raised his arms in defeat, looks like he finally understood your siganl and kept his hands to himself.

“Don’t—”

“—touch you, yeah yeah whatever,” he rolled his eyes. “I’m trying to be a good friend here while you were being ‘ugh don’t touch me’, you have such an ungrateful ass.” He mocks you while making straight up ugly faces.

You showed him your fist. “Do you want to get another taste of your own medicine?” 

He immediately got up and went behind Renjun to hold his shoulders as if he was a child on the other hand Renjun just shook his body to get rid of the boy who kept on clinging on to him.

“As I thought.”

“But seriously, nothing really happened? Like—nada??” 

Jeno shooked his head in confirmation. Looks like things didn’t went as you and every one else thought it would. You thought that maybe a little time off each other might be a good idea but clearly, it wasn’t.

 You sighed and closed your eyes, you’re worried that this might become the last reason before you and Jaemin drift apart. And of course, you didn’t want that to happened. You’re terrified that things might go down hill from now on and it clearly shows.

The boys knew exactly how you felt.

Renjun sat down beside you on the spot where Haechan Had previously sat on. You looked at him and saw a concerned expression on his face, the same with everbody else.

“You know, y/n. I don’t think it’s a good plan to just wait for Jaemin to come and apologize to you.” Renjun starts.

You were confused, what does he mean? 

“What do you mean?” You asked, eyebrows furrowing in wonder.

He scratches the back of his head, thoughts battling in his mind on whether he should tell you or not. He glanced at the two boys who was analyzing the situation, which then they gave a nod of approval.

He glanced back at you. “It’s just that, don’t you think your pride is too high by just you know—waiting for him?”

You stopped for a moment, processing Renjun’s words. You didn’t thought about it before, it seemed to you that Jaemin was the one who was being pride-y here but when you think about it—it makes sense.

It doesn’t mean that Jaemin was the person who made a mistake that he should be the only one to try and talk to you.

Maybe—you are also being selfish.

“I mean yes, Jaemin is the one at fault here but it’s been a week y/n, if you want to save this relationship it’s only you and Jaemin who could do this. Now that nothing has happened—like literally. The outcome of your relationship is at the palm of your hands.” 

Renjun is right. It’s up to you on how this relationship will continue. It can only go further, or end—right here, right now.

And you absolutely don’t want to lose Jaemin.

You love him way too much. It’ll be the death of you if you lose him just because of your pride. You didn’t spend years of suppressing your feeling for it to end in just a month?

You’ll do anything just to make things better, but there’s one problem. You don’t know how and where to start.

“B-but, I don’t know how Renjun,” You pulled your hair back in frustration,”I really don’t know know what to do, I don’t want to lose him but I really really don’t know where to start.” You sob into your hands.

Jeno stared at you with worry in his eyes. He didn’t want to intercept with your relationship because he knows that it’s what’s best for the both of you, but he can’t bear to see you like this.

Confused, lost and is full of frustration.

At this point he was doubting if it was even the right choice that you have made but what can he do, you love Jaemin too much. He himself should know that.

He walks up beside you and pat your head. “Everything will be alright y/n, why don’t you start by talking to him?”

“Yeah, we could get out of here so you two can talk in private.” Haechan suggests before going to his room to get ready to head out.

Renjun turns to you, his expressions indirectly asking you if you wanted to do it.

“Thanks guys, I appreciate it but—how can I possibly talk to him if he’s not even here in the first place?”

“Don’t worry, I got it.” Jeno says while grabbing his phone and dialing Jaemin’s number. It shouldn’t be a problem since it’s past 3 which means his classes are over.

Jeno puts it in loudspeaker before Jaemin picks up.

‘Hey what’s up’

‘Hey Jaemin, are you about to go home?’

‘Erm, no. Not really. At least for the next 2 hours, why do you ask?’

Jeno looked at you to which you mouthed him an ‘it’s okay’. He went back to the call, your disappointed face engraved in his mind.

‘Nothing, what are you up to?’

‘I was asked to show a new student around, her name is Hee-young. In Hee-young if I wasn’t mistaken.’

Your eyes grew wide, fear evident in your face. Renjun immediately notices it and quickly signaled Jeno to end the call.

‘Bro sorry gotta go.’

‘Wait why—’

*beep beep*

Jeno kneeled in front of you, holding your shoulders as he and Renjun tries to calm you down. “Y/n what’s the problem?” 

You try to speak the words but your mouth was dry.

You were too scared, why does everything have to be happening all at once?

“Y/n answer us please.” Renjun begged you, almost breaking his phone by his tight hold.

“S-she—”

“What?”

“She’s back.”

A/N’s note: Owkie, I kennat promise you dis time my updating schedules. I hate my modules, really. as in. I literally had a whole new plot in mind but then these freakin modules came in the way ugh. but anyway, i was motivated because we had ONE HUNDRED FOLLOWERS. That means a lot to meeeeeeeee, tysmmm!! I hope you enjoyed thiss chapterrrr, i have a lot more in mind for the nextt onesss *smirk*

                                                                         -A<3

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[ruffboijuliaburnsides]

and yet, here we are (pt3)

So I can’t focus on my homework for shit, but I’ve written more in the last three nights than I have in probably over a year, and I’m not complaining.  More voiceless!Jaskier au, and since the fic’s on AO3 now it has a title!

This is not a full chapter, I don’t know when the next chapter will be done, but I’ll keep posting pieces as I write them for y’all here on tumblr. <3 It’ll all get over to AO3 eventually tho if you prefer reading there.

(Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 4) (Part 5) (Part 6) (Part 7) (Part 8) (Part 9) (Part 10) Now on AO3

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"Come on," Jaskier protested, exasperated with Geralt's refusal to even engage in a little conversation and mild flirting just because he didn't want to go to a party. "You must want something for yourself once all this... monster hunting nonsense is over with."

Like, for example, settling down with a bard, somewhere near the ocean maybe? Jaskier was trying to build Geralt a path to a conclusion, and the damn man kept stealing the cobblestones to build a wall.

"I want nothing," Geralt growled, shifting unhappily in the wooden tub, and Jaskier sighed. Fine. It's not like he hadn't tried before and wouldn't try again. He could let it lie for now.

"Well, who knows?" He tried to smile, or at least not look disappointed. "Maybe someone out there will want you."

"I need no one," Geralt snapped. "And the last thing I want is someone needing me."

"And yet..." Jaskier grunted softly as he crouched and rested his arms on the edge of the tub, meeting Geralt's eyes and wanting to say so many things, things that would end with him losing what little scraps of his Witcher he was allowed to cherish. "Here we are."

"Hmm," Geralt grumbled. "I just want some damn peace."

Jaskier frowned. Wasn't he... didn't Geralt want his clothes back? "What?"

"I just want some damn peace!" Geralt shouted angrily from the lake water he was sitting in, and a wind whipped around Jaskier, pain suddenly shooting through his throat, blood flooding his mouth and choking him.

"Ger- Geralt," he gasped, blood dripping from his mouth as he tipped back onto the ground, struggling to breathe. "The djinn..."

"Blessed silence," Geralt said, and lay back in the water as Jaskier drowned on his own blood on the shore. Jaskier desperately scrabbled at the wizard's seal and the shards of pottery, cutting his hands as he coughed blood all over them.

Roach plodded up curiously and shoved Jaskier's shoulder with her muzzle. "Jaskier," she said, in Geralt's voice, and that didn't make any sense, but everything was getting hard to focus on, Jaskier couldn't breathe, and he was going to die here on the shore of this damned lake.

"Jaskier!" Geralt's voice came again, but this time in his ear, shaking his shoulder, and he was laying on his bedroll, and Jaskier rolled out onto his hands and knees, retching and gasping. He could still feel the ghost of the pain, gagged on the taste of iron lingering in his mouth.

A dream. Just a dream.

Jaskier didn't move, still breathing heavily and his arms trembling, not sure if he might actually be sick or if it was just the memory of the taste making his stomach twist. He felt one of Geralt's large warm hands come to rest between his shoulder blades, not rubbing or soothing exactly, but at least providing an anchor to here and now.

"Bad dreams?" Geralt guessed once Jaskier's breathing had evened out somewhat, his voice soft and lacking in any apparent irritation despite the hour. Jaskier nodded. The details of it were already fading, but he remembered enough. Geralt hummed in response, and the solid presence of his hand lifted as he moved away. Jaskier lifted his head to track Geralt's movements, to his pack to rummage, and coming back with a water skin.

Jaskier forced himself to push off his hands and knees at least so he could sit, gratefully taking the waterskin. One mouthful to rinse his mouth, spat out as far to the side as he could, and then a mouthful to swallow. He let out a deep breath, his hands already shaking less. Geralt was standing next to him, practically looming, but in a way Jaskier recognized as concern. Jaskier patted the dirt next to him, because frankly even if he knew it was concern, having Geralt looming over you after you'd just had a terrible nightmare was not exactly soothing. Thankfully, Geralt seemed to understand that too, because he carefully settled himself down next to Jaskier, their knees bumping lightly together.

They sat there silently for a few minutes as Jaskier's heart slowly stopped racing. The dream had been the worst kind, trauma and distorted memories making everything worse, and Jaskier hoped it would continue fading until he could hardly remember he had a nightmare in the first place, but... No, it had to incorporate one of the most vivid memories he had and use it to remind him of the awful things Geralt had said without thinking, the terror Jaskier'd felt when he'd thought he was going to die.

He wondered if Geralt even remembered the conversation, or if it was just a coincidence he'd chosen the same words Jaskier had reached out with that night.

"Was it about the djinn?" Geralt asked. Jaskier wobbled his hand. Sure, the wish and the damage had made an appearance, but it was really more about--

"Was it about me?" Geralt asked, his voice quieter. Jaskier grimaces, and knows that response alone was answer enough even in the faint grey of the pre-dawn, judging by Geralt's small "Hmm" of unhappiness. Jaskier didn't know how to reassure Geralt that it was just a nightmare - an awful one, one sparked by his actual recent near-death experience, but still just a dream - and that he just needs to breathe. He wasn't sure if bumping their shoulders together just resting against Geralt's shoulder would communicate that, but he could give it a shot, right? He wasn't sure if he imagined Geralt shifting slightly to lean into the touch, but at the very least Geralt didn't move away, and if Jaskier can't say something reassuring to Geralt, at least he could do this.

Jaskier thought about finding a patch of bare dirt to scribble on, looking up at the growing light, but Geralt stopped last night instead of pushing to the nearest town only because Roach had gotten a stone in her hoof, and if there was one thing you could depend on Geralt for, it was taking good care of his horse. They'd probably get started early, since they were both already awake, get to town in three hours or so, and then Jaskier could find some paper. If he was lucky there'd be enough call for it in town that it wouldn't be so expensive and hard to find for sale as it often was.

He could wait until he had paper. It wasn't like anything he'd be saying in the dirt was particularly important or necessary, anyway.

"Do you need to write?" Geralt asked, quiet and considerate and Jaskier felt torn between it being nice and terrifying. Jaskier loved it, loved being treated as though Geralt actually wanted him to stay, rather than the usual gruffness that, admittedly, Jaskier usually saw was more bark than bite, but was still there keeping him at arm's length always. On the other hand... if the situation was bad enough that Geralt was being gentle, it almost seemed like Geralt thought he'd drop dead at any second.

Jaskier shook his head quickly and flashed a tired smile. Geralt didn't need to know about how torn he felt about being treated kindly (and really what did that say about him?), or about the weird conflicting feelings he had about whether or not he was angry at Geralt (mostly no, and again, what did that really say about him?), or especially about what happened in his dream.

Geralt frowned deeper for some reason, despite Jaskier's attempt at being reassuring. Was that the wrong answer somehow? Did Geralt need more than him than being able to nod? He could try to figure it out, but he'd been so uncertain about trying to communicate through gesture and expression when words were what he knew best. Maybe he'd let it be, but if he did Jaskier easily saw the next few hours unspooling, worrying and overthinking things and ultimately learning Geralt had frowned because his stomach was gurgling or something. So Jaskier tried to draw up some of the verbal bravery he'd managed to (usually) scrape up in the past to actually try to ask what was going on in Geralt's head. All he could do was lean forward to catch Geralt's eye and then tilt his head with a confused frown and hope Geralt understood, but he did it, and he thought that was quite brave of him.

"Hmm," Geralt rumbled. "I'm... not used to you being so quiet," he said after a few seconds of consideration. Geralt pointedly did not look at Jaskier while he spoke. "Even if you can't say them, feels wrong you're not trying to fill the whole forest floor." There was a pang in Jaskier's chest at the word wrong, because... yeah. It was wrong. It was wrong for Jaskier the bard, who couldn't stay silent for thirty seconds without good damn reason, had so few words in him.

The trouble was that Jaskier wasn't sure he was that person anymore. Wasn't sure he could be, with his voice and his music gone, with his wit confined to his own head or the patience of his audience while he wrote down his reply. Whoever this silent Jaskier was, he hadn't found out, and his words seemed to have fled when they weren't trying to choke him as surely as his blood did.

All he could do was shrug helplessly and hope Geralt felt or sensed the movement. When there were no responses or further questions from Geralt, Jaskier stared out into the trees as the light grew and warmed. They sat like that, shoulders pressed together, silence unnaturally heavy between them, until the sun finally broke the horizon.

"We should get moving," Geralt said, pushing himself to his feet and offering Jaskier a hand up. "Might be a job in town I can take."

(Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 4) (Part 5) (Part 6) (Part 7) (Part 8) (Part 9) (Part 10) Now on AO3

[spacegaywritings]

CoS - Chapter 6: Of Family and other Nightmares

Summar: Logan's nightmares happen. Tags: food/eating, talks about suicide and guilt and self-blaming and pedophilia/CSA. nightmares (with dying/burying alive metaphor) I am warning you: This chapter can be triggering. ao3 clicky Story under the cut:

Logan felt his lips freeze. The situation before him felt oddly appalling, despite Patton being before him. He was always a tad too affectionate for Logan’s personal comfort but it was never quite too much and they both had learned that the IT student would voice his displeasure and demand more space to be between them instead of them being a space that was filled out. The two were sitting together on the couch, the clock in the warm living-room was ticking with an unusually high volume. It was quite disruptive. Logan had trouble focusing on the silly cartoon before him. Honestly, he had never quite liked them too much. To be frank, he found himself to detest these shows completely despite him being able to name quite why the delight he used to have taken in those was suddenly so shallow. They were like an apple he had bitten into. Red and tight in his hands. So full and robust but when his teeth would break through the candy red blush of the fruit, he tasted mold and dust. He was left with the taste of decomposition and nothing in his mouth. Something had turned his delight into a nightmare, a product of disgust and nothing but retching could be detected within him whenever he saw the bright pictures of too round faces and smooth animations. Something about these holy worlds and the wholesome story lines seemed to disturb him. It was shaking him to the core and it was.. deeply unsettling to say at last. He pushed his hands into his thighs and slid them over to his knees where he pressed his thumbs into his skin. For no reason, he was wearing shorts. Was it bed time? It felt like bed time. Why else would he wear shorts in the commons. It was just then that his eyes caught sight of the sofa they were on. They were not in the commons, they were not on their usual couch. This was another place and even the TV seemed so much older. It seemed like a decade ago, maybe even two, when people had bought and used these big blocks of black screens that seemed to use magic in order to display moving pictures with so many colours and so much sound. The nerd shifted. ‘’Patton, perhaps we should switch channels, should we not?’’, he suggested. His voice was meek and his mouth felt dry. If he did not know better, he would think himself to be a wooden clock. Hollow on the inside, thick layer of wood on the outside. All he felt was the ticking against his lungs, the steady throbbing of his pained heart. His biological alarm clock stunk of adrenaline and it tasted of more and more empty disgust. His roommate next to him let out a deep chuckle. Normally, he would giggle and give him the remote but today felt different, today seemed so off. Where was Roman? Why was his uncle not here, why were his parents not here? Actually, now that he focused on it, it seemed as if he could hear the distant chattering, the clinging of glass cups crushing together and the light-hearted giggles of his mother at ease whenever she was with her brother. He liked his uncle. His uncle was nice. But why was Patton here with him? Did they finish playing on the swing? Mom did not like him being so much inside when he had a friend and could do so much better than watch cartoons. Maybe Patton was over for a sleepover? Logan turned to face the kitchen that was just next-doors. He was ready to call out for his mom but a certain sensation stopped him. A hand was on his thigh and pressed into his flesh. The touch was uncomfortable, it forced a cold into him that Patton did not have. ‘’Loganberry, you wanted to play with me. You promised!’’, the other cried out in a drastic voice before he chuckled again. The sound snuck into his marrow and rattled his comfort again. Patton did not call him that- ‘’I don-’’, Logan started but the words were stuck in his throat. It was so dry, so dry. His mouth was too dry for him to speak any more and the hand on his lap was suffocating him. ’’No’’, he whined but Patton’s hand stayed on him. Suddenly, the hand was on his and he was pulled to his friend’s chest, the observant smirk on Patton’s sharp lips dug into Logan’s sight and he squeezed his eyes shut for another moment. ‘’Come on, let us play!’’ Logan felt his lips seal shut. His tongue as gone, it was far and even further away. Out of sight and out of his mind. All was blank and stale and simple. So bland, so white. So shockingly white without even a hint of innocence in it. Patton’s fingers traced over his body, inching closer, intruding his space. Taking him, tainting his innocence. The kid gasped but the sound was muffled by Patton’s gaunt fingers slapping over his mouth. A distorted mouth was by his side and he felt kisses trail over his body as his body grew stiff. ‘’Loganberry’’, the stranger moaned, ‘’my love!’’

Logan shivered and squirmed but the hand was fitting over his mouth so well, he felt barred and fully blocked from speaking as the restricting human gag of a memory was silencing him into obedience and took his weakness for consent. The other hand was so close, so so deep in his clothing that it scared him because the touch was could and it hurt and he could hear his mom giggle and get tipsy with her brother and Patton was trapping him and flipped him down onto the couch just to trap him and turn his world upside down. When he sat up, Patton was gone and so were his shorts. They were replaced by black and it was stiff and long on him. It covered him wholly and mulled him into feelings he did not know to be his or someone else’s. The black was everywhere, it was on other people, it was in the sky and on the ground. There was charcoal even in the air and in his heart was nothing but spilled ink over his cool white that used to be his and his only. ‘’He had nothing else to live for’’ But who? ‘’He had left a letter. He apologised to his family’’ ‘’I know, I know. His parents are devastated. They will never be the same.’’ ‘’He said he did not see the sense in life without the love of his life with him.’’ ‘’Love of his life? But he was so young. I have never seen him with a girl.’’ Logan swallowed. There were white lilies in his hands. Lilies like death. White like the rotten unknowing that was dead and beaten and would be buried in the black of this ground, vored by a hole and forever graved into a wholesome memory of treasure and value. He stepped forward to put them on the casket. The wooden prison suddenly opened and he was pushed inside. ‘’You killed him!’’, the voices yelled. He could only see violence and hands stretched out to get to him, to come for him and destroy him. ‘’You rejected him!’’ ’’You! You killed my baby!’’ He was pushed into the narrow space. It was perfect for his size, It was made for him and his sins. ‘’You knew you would hurt him. You knew he loved you!’’ ‘’Why did you not just accept his love!?’’ He swallowed the lump in his throat but it remained and tears started blurring the darkness of his vision. ‘’If it had not been for you, he would still be here!’’ ‘’You should have died instead or accepted your feelings like a man!’’ Logan started squirming as his prison was lifted up and he was soon lowered into the hole, his own burial. It was to make up for his sins. Dirt and flowers were thrown at him as the voices continued to chant. ‘’I thought I could trust you.. my own son destroyed out family!’’ ’’Such a sweet child and you were so selfish. How could you?’’ Logan wanted to speak but the hand was forever on his mouth, keeping him still as the black and white were thrown at him. Finally, he cried, sitting up and feeling the familiar heat of blankets on his skin. Virgil, awake as always was immediately by his side and his voice was clustering onto his lap like cereal spilling form the original package into a bowl of cereal. The voice was the same but the content of words was colourful and had a variance Logan could not keep up with, considering all he perceived was a small light somewhere in the room. Not the main light but a little light source that did not seem like a candle. And there was the warmth of his blankets and Virgil who was a blob of colours next to him with these sounds that were so different and so similar at the same, so similar he could not tell them apart or focus on what he said. ‘’Logan, it is okay. I am here’’, the punk assured carefully. The nerd still did not understand him but he understood his name. He knew the sound of it and he welcomed the clear version without any fancy letters attached to it. He hated diminutives anyway. He did not even know why but they made him sick and want to fucking puke. Not all, just some.

Virgil’s hands were raised and the palms were flat, facing Logan for him to see. Oh.. It was so hard to see. Logan narrowed his eyebrows and squinted at the sight. He just did not have any focus ... all was blur and such a fast twisting mess of whatever you would see when riding a merry-go-round when absolutely out of your mind. Like wasted or whatever. There.. no.. one of the hands was curled around something but Logan could not see what it was, he could not make it out but Virgil carefully placed it in his hand and he felt the object with his fingers, wrapping around the familiarity of something he had used so often and had liked so much. His glasses. He carefully put them back on and nodded. The world looked less confusing now but everything was still too much. All impressions on him were so overwhelming and there was barely anything, there was just so much in his head, so many thoughts, so many voices. So much heavy weight of a past guilt. And he still did not feel like the coal in his throat would ever get out. All he did and said was tainted in black with the ink of his sin and the darkness of his actions. He did not even regret it, did he? Logan just shook his head. He did not even what he tried to say with it but.. but he could not, all was too much, everything was too much. His had turned to the side, away from the weak light that was so far away. It was so so far away and it could not even hurt him or bother him but it hurt and it annoyed him. He wanted it gone. Virgil moved into the sight of the source of light, effectively blocking most of it. The second-year student nodded carefully and slowly turned back to face the other. He could not really make out much of his face since the shadows were chased away from the light and bled onto Virgil’s usually softer features that almost made him look like a delicate flower. ‘’Log’’, the other said and Logan nodded again. Acknowledgement. He understood that name. He liked it. It was even shorter and it was a nice reference. It was about the only little joke he liked and Virgil had always used it ever since the two had met on the job. With their firsts shifts together, Logan had worked on something on his laptop and had focused on typing away so much, he had not realised his break had been over. It was only when the other’s voice had piped up, dark and light at the same time, a perfect mix of being in-between and yet so iconic for his brooding appearance. He had called him ‘log’ as a joke since this had been on Logan’s screen and it was probably the first thing he had read when looking for the other.

Logan had fallen behind his usual schedule and had yet to get a university project finished but one of his partners had just dropped the course. In the middle of the whole semester, he had decided to change courses and left without another notice. Nothing but a short message that was only a screenshot of a mail sent to the administration. A confirmation of abandoning his studies since he was accepted into another course of studies. Virgil had noticed that he was just not his usual self and had promised him to cover and take the work onto his shoulders. Logan had almost cried. Half-way through his shift he had gotten to finish his project. Without anyone knowing, Virgil had spent basically all his time to work for two people. Logan had basically used all his working time to finish his group assignment and submit it with a string of notes from how much his partners helped (of course his chat history had been attached as screenshots in order to back up his claims. ‘’V’’, he returned. For some reason, his voice was so raspy and it felt like the coal within his throat was scratching madly against his throat and it hurt and dragged and rubbed and the friction felt like another bruising fire starting up within him and he hated it. He wanted to cough out his coal. He was sick of carrying the blackening piece of dark history with him. Logan was so much more.. He had so much good in his life. Right now, Virgil was smiling at him even though he did not look very much like smiling. His face look tired and so so void of any life. It was like flaccid skin being pulled over a skull after being bleached with the strains of being awake for days on end. Did Virgil even sleep? ‘’Log, hey. Can you hear me?’’

Focus. Yes. Yes of course he did. He even understood his words. ‘’Good, good.’’ Virgil sounded so soothing. He could not even sound ridiculing to Logan even though he just admitted that his greatest accomplishment was being able to decipher spoken verbalisations in his mother tongue and effectively respond to it. Well, not exactly verbally but at least he could react at all. Virgil chuckled a little. It sounded so little like him. It sounded so much more like a desperate crying fit and Logan was so confused about this. Emotions rarely ever made sense but this was like trying to summarise a book and instead just praising it with meaningless reviews. It was something that Logan hated with a burning passion and he had ranted so often about it with Virgil, it had eventually turned into a game. They would read some of the books review of the books they had to sort in. Logan would usually just glance over the back of one book and start reading it, voice heavy with the tone of his judgmental sarcasm as he presented the ridiculous reviews to Virgil. The punk would then have to find out what it was about. It was nearly always wrong but they eventually added the book cover as hint so the game would be easier. After that, Virgil would come up with the funniest story ideas. If Logan was a writer, he would ask for help with Virgil’s ridiculous creativity. His ideas were nonsensical yet strangely amusing. Logan smiled. Virgil smiled back, the desperation seemed to fade from his lips and the curl of their corners seemed more genuine and it resembled the natural snorting expression the artist would display whenever someone he was comfortable with made a joke. It was magic to Logan. ‘’Listen, is it okay if I touch you? I just wanna sit next to you and look around the room, okay? It is not bad if you say no. You can always say no.’’ Logan tilted his head. His head was so heavy and his thoughts seemed to weigh him down. They were soaked clothing on a person who tried to make it through the every day insanity of life. It was so much harder and it did not have to be. Nobody needed this. He tried to contemplate on the question and carefully let his head drop before his unfocused gaze, that was just anyway, narrowed onto the space pattern around his blanket. The librarian carefully moved to the side and nodded again. His lips twitched upwards into a little smile and he nodded again when Virgil did not respond. The artist slowly climbed into his bed and despite the confirmation that he was very much okay to touch Logan, there was an invisible barrier that kept the two apart. Their bodies were not touching. He curled up and stretched out his left hand to allow Logan to take it. ‘’Hey, I know the light sucks but I need you to focus. I know you are tired and exhausted but can you please focus?’’ Another nod. Virgil felt Logan’s hand slip into his and the fourth roommate nodded softly. ‘’Can you do me the favour of naming five things you can see?’’ Logan dragged his gaze over the room, fixating on nothing in particular. The objects before him seemed to float down the stream of a waterfall and he was not quite quick enough to catch the concept of all these things. It seemed so lost, he was so lost. He carefully squeezed Virgil’s hand that was between them. He trained his eyes on his lap and and slowly moved his hand over there. Maybe for comfort, maybe because his cluttered mind would understand that this hand was moved by him - into his own lap. But honestly, there was no knowing since he himself did not know at all. The first things started coming into focus. Despite his glasses it felt as if he was squinting in concentration and his nose did scrunch up a tiny bit. Logan was helpless and lost but he looked utterly uncontrolled and, for some reason, much more human than on average. Of course, a common exception is whenever he just woke up and had this little look of confusion and needed adjustment on his face. It was when he was loose like the straps of a recently purchased backpack - it was only a matter of time until it was adjusted to the given circumstances. Before his eyes, the familiar darkness of his blanket came into focus and slowly, like an old camera, the blurriness faded until everything seemed clear. He was still floating, as much as the things around him that seemed out of place and as if they were homeless at the same time. None of them belonged. ‘’Blanket’’, Logan started and Virgil gently squeezed his hand in encouragement. The elder one smiled mutely and gave a curt nod as response. At least he saw something. ‘’The space’’, he started but the words did not make sense, not even to him, ‘’space pattern’’. Virgil nodded wisely. Maybe it was just in imagination that Logan brought onto himself. Perhaps in his mind it did not make sense but it somehow made sense after all. Just not to him. It was like Patton’s jokes that he missed out on so often that he just felt the heat on his face stay away and instead, cold settling in his chest. It was almost too common for him to feel like he was the only one to not get it. The only one to not feel it. His fingers brushed against Virgil and the other immediately opened his hand around Logan’s. It seemed the other had pressed the right button to convey what he wanted to express because the other was quick to give in to his sudden movements. Sudden, nonetheless slow and careful. His palm rested back on the bed and he brushed over the blanket. The pattern was not just dark hues. Well, it mostly was but there were sparks of stars and sources of shine in the nice illustration of a space-themed look. The best part of it was that the other side of his blanket, the one which was currently covering his legs and touching his toes, was a mash up of different stars and constellations of them as well. They were connected and Logan would often just look at them and appreciate them. It was a gift from Patton and he still found comfort in the blanket. Logan’s hand retreated to the grip of his roommate’s fingers. He gently squeezed it again, the warmth welcoming him and inviting him to a more beautiful and stable world. For some reason, everything seemed more complete at this moment. The grip was more like a grip on his life and and Logan breathed out. There was relief on his tongue and he slumped a little against the wall behind his bed before he curled up against Virgil. It was a light contact at first, their heads brushing together like a lover’s caress. Their shoulders lightly bumped together and the outside of their thighs lined up next to each other like best friends would sit together whenever they share time to have some good moments together and make a little less complicated and bitter like it usually was with all the stress. ‘’Our hands’’, he said. His voice was genuine and dipped into a softness that seemed so different, nearly alien coming from the usually so factual nerd who barely conveyed any sort of emotion. No strong one. His emotions were usually the verbal pastels of colours while others came on so strong. Roman, for example, was always strong like his red jackets he liked to wear so much. They were the intense crimson, a deep carmine, sometimes the slightly softer but still rather bright poppy. His emotions were so bundled up and came in less than they stormed the scene with lime light and speakers as they started the rush of feeling. Virgil swallowed, a lump building up in his throat but he gently shifted their hands so his thumb could brush over the back of Logan’s larger and much paler hands. Logan truly had this glorious nerd tan that came from being solely exposed to the sunshine instilled in LED lamps. It was admirable, truly enviable. At least, if you asked Virgil. ‘’One more, my dear’’, the punk encouraged and Logan settled against his side by now. His head slipped to his chest and he let out a little sigh. ‘’The light. It is a real nuisance’’, he said. The hands on his back seemed to be gone. The grabbing cold stopped trying to drag him into the abyss of decay. Virgil scoffed at that and Logan joined with a little huff. His sounds were breathless and he had to keep inhaling deeply in-between his fits of laughing that easily degenerated into aimless giggles. He collapsed into Virgil’s lap and the other carefully brush through his blonde curls with a smile so faint yet so prominent on his features. His eyes were light with the feeling of elation between them and the light was the least bothering by now. It gave them the opportunity to lock eyes whenever Logan’s throat cried for more oxygen and gasps ripped from his insides as he split his mouth and sucked in needy breaths just to fall into his self-intoxicating chuckles once more. ‘’You did well, Log’’, he praised gently and softly petted his hair, ‘’you are doing very well.’’ Logan hummed softly, his chuckles dying down as a smile of contentment splayed itself over his features. The nightmare was far gone. It had hit him like a truck but after the initial harm, he was back to himself and the violence has brushed past him. He had recovered from the impact and was back in the sweet sweet care of other people making him realise that life was so much sweeter than the bitter aftertaste that trauma left on your tongue every other morning even after years of remission. ‘’Thanks..’’, Logan mumbled softly as he curled into a large ball of his gaunt but somewhat bulky form. Sure, he was much more compromised like this, like a human espresso of everything in time and space that is worth universal adoration, but he was still so much taller than Roman or Virgil were. ‘’Don’t sweat it, nerd’’, Virgil chuckled but his amused sounds were quick to fall from the air like heavy drops of bombs and they clashed onto the ground to leave the crushing destruction that was his mind. ‘’Do you want to talk about it?’’ Logan curled up further. It was foolish to think that simply taking the position of a fetus in a physical sense would transform him into a similar responsibility as much as capability. Well, it turned out that the student was still very much able to feel the pain in his chest albeit his lungs had calmed into a regular breathing rhythm. His mind used to be a galaxy but at this moment, it was sucked in by the gravity of something too big and too heavy for him to comprehend and he had yet to try and figure it out. It was then when his mind gave him a little spark in the wide darkness of himself. Hope. If he did not know how to free himself because he was too weak to break the power of attraction, maybe he would do good in getting help. He had dismissed the idea of therapy for so long. His family would find out. Even now, he would not be able to handle the shame of being any less than idea, of being someone who did not fulfill all expectations the world pored over him. The biases and dragging limits were running over him like a painfully slow bulldozer. Well, there was Patton. But the thing was, Patton did know Logan when he was not ready to talk about things, when he was in the most horrible state of mind. To him, it felt too wrong to just suddenly come up with all these things and spout them out like they had been buried under his tongue all along, waiting for him to just get loose enough. Another point, of course, was the plain fact that Patton was studying Psychology and was currently conducting a study with residing therapist Dr. Emile Picani. Sure thing he would not actively try and analyse Logan but he would at least tell him to see a therapist. He had done it before and Logan was not just unprepared and, in some ways, unable to handle this (talking about the financial burden would just be another issue he did not want to consider). Patton was his best friend. They had been best friends for years, for over a whole decade by now, if only by a few mere years. Whenever something new came up, they supported one another and now that Logan grew up more and had the time to be away from his family and think for himself while studying, he just realised that there was so much in him, so many untackled things he had never considered to be an issue. Especially the talks and the co-studies he took by supporting Patton and generally having a broad interest in all kinds of sciences had left Logan understanding just how much there was wrong with him when he had not noticed in so many years. The master student was much more knowledgeable about Logan’s well-being and his coping mechanisms than anyone else. He had his little skill kit Patton had helped him with in all glory and support. Just... He could not, he did not feel like he was the person who could break it to Patton just how fucked he was in senses where he knew that his dear friend was hurting. He could not, it would be wrong, so morally wrong like some Martha Nussbaum would probably argue for the sake of moral philosophy and the regard for human dignity. Virgil was waiting while Logan pondered, still waiting as Logan was rotating endlessly as he slowly billowed through the darkness of his own universe. The librarian sighed and carefully shifted. Ever since he had moved into Virgil’s lap to curl up like the baby he was in his vulnerability and emotional exposition, he had let go off the other’s hand in favour of holding onto himself, kind of. Well, it had not been too much of a loss since the punk was patiently caressing his hair and making the swirls of thoughts and memories less nauseating to him. Roman was out of question. He would never be able to gain this emotional depth with him. He did not know why but there seemed to always be something between them that just split them apart in ways that made it unable for him to reach out. Maybe they were too stubborn. Maybe they were not open. Perhaps it was a matter of pride and being honest with yourself and others. Logan knew it was all three but he dismissed the thought in favour of just breathing into his current acceptance at this moment. It could be that he was in some lightheaded blur but as the worlds around him kept moving and he was wafting thorough the cosmos still, the sickness seemed to fade and a sense of something special sparked within him. There was a warmth, a belonging in him and he knew it was not hope, it was so much more. It was the first time of lighting up a candle, seeing the fire spark from match or lighter over to the wick of an untouched potential. ‘’Ye...yes’’, he murmured silently. His voice did not sound like him. Not quite. Was this a new he? A he who would face his past and finally spill the truth? ‘’I mean, I think so’’, he vaguely stated but doubt quieted down his honesty, ‘’I guess..?’’ The hand in his hair stilled for just a moment before it continued again. A new tenderness seemed to be in the movement and suddenly, it was not just his hair getting gentle caresses but his whole scalp would feel the pads of now ten single fingers gently applying different degrees of pressure to his sensitive skin. ‘’I can try’’, Logan concluded. With his mind being handled like this, the whole ponderosity seemed but a fleeting incident. It was the passing of time, the sound of the steady breathing, the daily growth of nature and the movement of a river’s perpetual stream. It just.. was. Silence. After a while, Logan spoke up again. Sounded like a lot of talking he would have to do. Might as well get used to it. ‘’Can I stay like this?’’ Virgil smiled but Logan could not see it. His eyes squeezed away the possibility of rejection. ‘’Of course you can’’ It was okay?? ‘’And Logan?’’, he asked softly. Logan might as well have missed the sentence. It was not silent, no, not really. The mutter was clearly audible. Virgil’s form was so closely connected to his and his head had to be facing his as he was pronouncing his words for him. He hummed in acknowledgement, prompting the other to go on. ‘’If you ever want to stop or think better of it, that is okay. You don’t have to tell me anything, I mean, ever. Not just now. It is okay. I am here whenever you need me, as much as I can.’’ A part of him wanted to add that he owed Logan but it was not about that. It was not about any of this at all, it was more of a thing he wanted to do rather than some principles or mutuality. In the past he had been eager to please people but now all he wanted to do was give back and encourage. Maybe just open worlds and being a good friend for the sake of it rather than fulfilling some cryptic purpose he wanted to believe others would serve him in their relationships to him. ‘’I mean..’’, he mumbled and sighed again. Logan’s hand reached up to rub the eyes under his glasses, the backside of his hand pushing his glasses up like some annoying person a bully would shove out of the way. He glanced over at the alarm clock on his night stand. It was on his side, the left one. Closer to the door. Virgil’s mattress was on the right side of his bed when you were laying on it and did not face the wall the bed was cuddling with but rather showed it your back. For some reason, Virgil liked it that way. The clock was glowing in a signal red. It was stinging and intense and Logan did not particularly enjoy the sensation of craning his neck just enough off his friend’s lap so he could stare into a bright pillarbox red. It read something along the digits of 2:38am. What a shitty time to be awake when you had lesson early up in the morning but well, winter time was his personal nightmare. The shorter the days got, the more he seemed to ponder, think, deliberate. The memories would start swallowing more time of his day and block his mental capacity and cognitive abilities. As a person who took pride in this, he absolutely despised this. But at the same time, he had met Patton in the days of snow flakes falling and marshmallow-adorned hot chocolate being passed out to children. But right now it was 2:39am and Virgil was still waiting for him. ‘’Hey, let’s go out’’, he stated eventually. It was not even a suggestion. He wanted to take the car he shared (he shared it with his roommates even though Patton had resorted to using it the most these days. Not that any of them minded since it was all up to them for using it whenever the day was free. Roman usually drove him to university when his schedule allowed it.) and get out with Virgil. For some reason, he felt hungry and he just wanted to get something from a stupid take out, have crappy 3am fast food and cry over something like disgusting donuts or whatever when talking about how much he actually hated life and himself and all that made him who he was. ‘’Holy shit, that is a good idea’’, Virgil chuckled and carefully nudged Logan. The IT student got the hint and slowly rose before a certain urge overcame him and he felt his lips beings pushed open for a big yawn that he immediately covered up with a quick hand. ‘’Aw Logan’’, Virgil teased in amusement. His voice nearly sounded appreciative as he got hs ass out of bed. It was now that Logan realised that yes, they were both very much in pyjamas because they were awake in the middle of the night because of a nightmare. It was not a thing that had actually happened even though his mind wanted him to believe it very much was a memory rather than the manifestation of his guilt about actual things that happened. His tired eyes lingered on the appearance of Virgil and his tattoos for another moment. Seeing him outside of his hoodies and jackets was a thing that just happened at home, even in summer. Every time he was blessed with the comfort of Virgil being able to show his body a bit more he just felt as if something great had happened but he did not quite know how to deal with it even though he desperately wanted to do something about it. ‘’Are you sure about that, though?’’, the punk asked again as he pulled his shirt off and Logan quickly turned away and put his glasses back onto his nightstand. The elder one shot another look back at him and caught a glimpse of something that seemed to shine, something that was a dim light and it was not this stupid lamp that Virgil had turned on in order to see something when Logan had suddenly started screaming. Possibly. This glow was weaker but it seemed like a bluish, glowing colour. ‘’Yes, I am’’, he retorted and fully turned back to him, his hands by now buried in his closet as he was fishing out some casual clothing. Maybe just some nice comfort hoodie and long grieving pants. After all, he did not exactly feel like running fireworks today and seizing the day like a participator in the Olympia. He felt more like some pancake that had too much water and size and ended up being soggy and abandoned and so cold. He continued fishing. ‘’What is that glow?’’, he asked. He refused to turn on the light and Virgil did not even seem to bother as he pulled up some hoodie to put on. So, apparently he would just wear a hoodie and the loose shorts he had put on before cuddling up to his mattress in the bliss of sweet and promising exhaustion. The reward was usually a goodnight-sleep, a full one. The art student looked back up at him and even in the dim light he could see the lazy grin that were his lips, the two rings on   his bottom lip slightly stretched to the side to present a lop-sided joke of a mischievous smile. ‘’Hey nerd, you checking me out?’’, he sad before his lips were pulled by his teeth that hungrily made the grabby hands for the black horseshoe-styled jewellery that was curling around Virgil’s lower lip as he looked up at the ceiling before he spared Logan another dark glare. ‘’Well, if you need to know, come closer.’’ He dropped the hoodie onto the bed as he stepped over to Logan and the curious man was quick to jump over his hesitation and how caught up his breath seemed to be when he swallowed his questions, his confusion and his desperate need to understand what he was feeling at this moment. Virgil carefully lifted his right arm and leaned his back against the closet for Logan to see his little glow. On the side of his ribs, a few inches below his armpit, there was a bunch of little lights, bluish in nature and rather intense to see. His skin seemed so smooth, so void of hair and simply soft. Logan had never felt this hungry for secrets. He wanted to unwrap the mysterious of his friend and eat them up like a delicately wrapped of chocolate praline. ‘’It is the Comae Berenices. That thing that looks like the tip of an unfinished triangle is her Diadem’’, Virgil explained as he carefully brushed over a connecting line. This one was in regular black, nothing too fancy, no special ink that seemed to magically appear in the light of darkness. ‘’I kinda associate it with the goddess of victory and success and thought it was kinda nice. The alpha star is called ‘Diadem’ like I told you. It is a double star and it is usually connected to beta and gamma of this asterism.’’ Logan leaned in as he followed Virgil’s browsing finger like a predator observed his victim. Curious, morbidly even so. And so hungry in his own fascination. It drowned him in something that did not quite satisfy him. Oh, now he regretted having taken off his glasses just to stare less but this was just another excuse to get his curly head of curiosity closer into Virgil’s life and find out more. When he carefully brushed over it with his own fingers, Virgil flinched away. The magic seemed broken and Logan’s captivity in this bonding moment was gone as the portal to the cryptic glow was closed off again and Virgil’s arm lowered and curled around his abdomen in defense. The IT student wanted to apologise, wanted to tell his colleague that he was sorry but then he heard Virgil’s chuckle again and he saw how the other squeezed himself into the closet and hugged his arms to himself in a sense of comforting his triggered tactile sense. ‘’I am ticklish’’, Virgil explained, his words effectively affirming Logan’s suspicions. He was merely satiated but he swallowed away his interest and nodded away, keeping up his usual business-attitude as he tried to not feel feverish and so unbelievably hot in his own skin. His face was glowing harder than Virgil's tattoo. And it was not even the only tattoo and Logan had just recently saw the snake one for the first time. Now he also got to realise that his chest and back as well as the asterism were tattoos on the slim body of his friend. A body full of ink and secrets. A person so soft and mysterious, it felt forbidden to be so close yet so far away when he was existing despite all the odds and all the rules of life and society.

His inner Sherlock wanted to take him in and explore all of his body and analyse the stitches and scars, the ink and the moles on his skin just so he could know him better, so he could understand. It was probably just him panicking now that he decided Virgil was a safe space to reveal himself to but at the same time, it was a step for him to realise just how little he knew about the other. Family? Hobbies? Friends? He knew of some but he was not happy wit many of these and he was just so shocked about how much there was hidden under the piercings and the confident smirks that came from the same person who would just rush over to Logan and beg him to take over a costumer for him as he was sweating and trembling and biting his lips and brushing over that tongue piercing of his by pushing it against his gums. He could see it in his jaw movements whenever he had too much social pressure. And then he was such a playful tease, so  confident and slithering with his words and deeds. What was this man? Who was this man? He was a good friend at least and he gave him a comfort like Patton did but it did not seem so conditioned, not so tainted by their past and the length and depth of their relationship. It was odd but it was so free and spacious. It was like a grip that was completely open, a touch you barely felt and the support that was there the second you were about to turn your head for them and call for help. Logan was pulled from his thoughts and observations that were clustered around the mystery of his friend. When this was over, he should try and get to know Virgil more. They surely have learned more ever since they moved in together but there was still so much left unsaid. With the pressure of exams coming up and assignments being due, he just was rather busy and honestly, Virgil and Logan saw each other during work more than at home despite sharing the same room and sleeping next to each other (if not in the same bed). Virgil was rather occupied as well. If he was not working or staying in university until much later so he could finish and even hand in his art projects, then he was out late or on a run like he had explained to Logan. Apparently, he had frozen this activity for a few days when the cut incident happened and now Logan was none the wiser. He quickly pulled his own little hoodie on. It probably looked cliche but he loved his NASA merchandise. After he had visited the place with his family (he had just been a teenager and pushed them into doing something fun for once), he had never lived down the greatness of this experience. They had even taken Patton with them at this time and it had been amazing. Up until now, he had kept these memories and pictures saved in his heart and files. Well, now that he was all cuddled up in his slightly too big hoodie (it was rather hard not to be too big for Logan when he was still rather slim compared to people like Patton), he also added some regular jogging pants and made sure to take his phone and wallet with him. He felt like eating weird weird stuff. The punk was still rather next to him and chuckled when the other was ready, he just tapped his shoulder and passed him, on the way to leaving the room when Logan quickly reached out for him and pulled him close by his wrist. ‘’Wait’’, he ordered suddenly, his words in the tone of a police officer who did not joke around but was there for the serious busy and looking all gloomy and professional, ‘’Patton and Roman cannot hear about this. They will just ask questions and get worried or annoying. I..- I cant do this right now.’’ Virgil narrowed his eye, his small snub nose scrunching up a tad as his upper lip rose just enough for him to open his mouth in protest. Did Logan want to not go anymore? Was he scared? The taller man sighed and gently took Virgil’s left again. ‘’We gotta be quick and silent. We need to rush over there. We will not shut this door here. You go to the front door and open it when I join you, I just need to quickly get the keys. Patton did not have shift but we need to be back until 8 for him to not notice and also not to interfere with his schedule.’’ Virgil’s expression forged back into a smile and his nose settled as well as he nodded. It was just a few more moments and a conspiring exchange of nods before they followed Logan’s proposed steps and quickly exited the home together in joint silence. When they were outside, they only looked at one another and giggled before they descended the stairs and hurried into the cold night. *** Virgil and Logan were laying on the bonnet of the car. They were in the middle of some more or less abandoned part of the area after having driven for ages and now they were there, laying there in the middle of nothing. The darkness around them was patiently cruising around them instead of trying to swallow their light and make their bodies disappear. They were peacefully coexisting with a bunch of junk food between them, separating them but at the same time uniting them whenever they went for the food at the same time and giggled or simply smiled in silence at the little gesture of similarity. The feeling of being understood and having a common ground. Their bodies were a little twisted away from one another, their heads resting on the beginning of the windscreen’s sharp upward-angled curve. The food rested in the space next to their thighs and stopped right at their knees like the perfect length for a dress of nightly munchies. Just without the whole teenage regrets and late night pot-mistakes. Logan was drinking his milk shake while Virgil dipped onion rings into ice cream. None of them could count just how much fast food they had gotten this night but they had stopped at a few places before they felt satisfied. Now, they were just laying there, peace brushing over their limbs and the exhaustion of not having gotten enough sleep dragged at their eyes but neither of them wanted to let this night end. The stars above them illuminated their new world, their shared twosomeness. Logan lifted his lips from his cup. Yes, he had no straw or whatever. He had nearly glared daggers at the proposal of any while a sleepless and overworked student had just stared into him, with soulless posture and underpaid heart on his face. Virgil just had hissed and taken Virgil’s hand with some sort of eye roll before saying, ‘’He watched ‘Happy Feet’ and now he is really sensitive, you know?’’ Once his lips were unoccupied, they pressed together. Numb and wet from the cold drink, he ran his tongue over them in order to clean off the sweetness of his artificial peanut butter and jam cocktail of flavours and crushed ice particles with enough lactose to kill a man. Or just trigger some explosive tummy aches of death. And then, he giggled. His body curled up to his side, away from Virgil and he faced the side of the field that was in his line of vision. A bit of car lights were emitting enough human-made sun for him to see a bit of wilted nothing and brownish leaves all over. Aw, autumn could be so depressing.. and now it was almost winter, huh? Virgil immediately shot up, his body jerking into the position of dropping his food and support Logan in case his sucks for air and little gasps turned from delighted to pained and regretful. None of it. The nerd simply curled back, breathing out hard before his giggles continued, if not a little subsided by now. Eventually, he had calmed himself and turned back to face the other. ‘’I barely remember the last time I did anything so unpredictable and spontaneous, anything I just wanted to do at that moment for no reason at all. Just going out at’’, he wanted to check his watch but it was at home on his desk. Instead, he checked his phone as he brushed off the habitual movement of bringing his wrist into his vision, ‘’oh what not? Nearly 4 am by now. Can you believe that?’’ A faint smile was still playing on his lips and he let his head rest back to where it used to be and Virgil took the invitation to return into his previous position and put another ice-cream covered abomination of greasy onion rings into his mouth. Seriously, how did this kid eat any of this? Logan was rather sure Virgil was still underage. Allowed to drive and pay his bills but not allowed to drink or be ‘adult’. Weird laws. The elder student sighed and took another thick sip of his sugary treat. He would never sleep with all these amounts of monosaccharides flooding his system but well, his body had to suck it up now. H was having fun and despite his nightmares, he was still smiling and talking and able to interact with Virgil like it was the easiest thing he has ever done. ‘’Well, Virgil. Now to what we wanted to discuss in the first pla-’’, Logan started but Virgil interrupted him ‘’Okay, nerd. I respect you but give yourself the time of the day and stop being so formal. This is a personal shit thing so treat it with emotion and let yourself be upset. It had you shaken up like crazy there and it is okay to feel shit. It really is. And if someone tells you otherwise, I will eat them and we have a problem less in the world. We got a deal?’’ Logan moved his neck, turning his face just enough to glance at his friend who, in response, extended his right for him. He had his glasses on but he was sure he only saw a few fingers hanging in the scarce light, presenting themselves to him. His left extended itself without his mind following. He was still hung up on the fingers. But his fingers stretched out for the other, longing and eventually meeting them and curling around the empty hand. It felt so strange holding these fingers, it was not even a full hand to him, it felt so little, so unlike Virgil. ‘’It is a deal now, stop staring’’, Virgil laughed with a mock-offense in his tone as he nudged his shoulder against Logan’s and carefully tended to the rest of his food. Right now, it was burrito into his ice cream. There was not much left so maybe at least this crime would find its own end. ‘’Okay okay but will you stop eating gross food?’’, Logan retorted and Virgil scoffed, nearly choking on his food and the nerd was merciful enough to offer his milkshake weirdness for Virgil to mix it into his confuzzling mix of whatever the heck his taste buds had to identify in his mouth. When Virgil did not seem to choke anymore, he took another gulp of the milkshake and handed it over. ‘’I swear, Log, you need more of this attitude of yours when we are at work. With these guts, you would obliterate everyone by simply giving some assholes these deadass stares and no-bullshit tolerance.’’ He did not understand, he really did not. But he understood that Virgil gave him a compliment and laughed at a stupid thing he said. It made him feel lightheaded and warm inside, no matter how much freezing cold there was around them or pooling around the actual area of his guts when the milkshake seemed to just run down his insides like rapid snowfall. ‘’Whatever you said, Virgil, I might as well give it a try and be less patient, if you will.’’ Virgil shrugged and finally, finally finished his ice cream at last. The empty container was stuffed into the bag of trash between them that held all the wrapping and other stuff they had already discarded by consuming the different food items. One by one. He sighed and patted his stomach, a little smile on his face. Logan was not sure he had even seen him eat so much food at once. He had quite the appetite for some small guy, really. Anyway, he could not keep dodging the topic by getting desperately interested in everything else. He just set himself a mental reminder to update his journal on Virgil later on so he would learn something and maybe understand his friend a bit more. He just wanted to help him, too. ‘’Okay, well..’’, Logan started. This time for real. ‘’I was pretty young. It was before we moved and met Patton. I was still attending elementary school. We probably moved because of this all.’’ He looked up into the stars, the scattered white somewhat attracting him, soaking him in and giving him a feeling like the night sky was just a blanket curled up around him and helping him sink into the sleep. The calmness was slowly covering his body and mind and it was a comfort, so far from human but so close to understanding and a sense of belonging that it left him confused. The universe was just so much bigger and all he could think of is why he loved it so much and how trivial all seemed before him. There was something more, maybe a plan and order. ‘’My cousin is dead, Virgil’’, he eventually stated. The words were as cold as the night and Logan’s face seemed to freeze into a statue of who he could be at any other point in time. ‘’He is dead because he killed himself when I was young and it is my fault and I don’t care.’’ Virgil carefully slid up against the windshield and looked at his friend, his face unreadable and in deep rumbles of thoughts. That must have been shocking, huh? A nice friend telling you he did not care about the death of a family member. Him saying that he was at fault, maybe a major cause to the whole thing happening. Logan did not know what the minor thought, he did not know what to think or how to feel about this but he did know for sure that the hot shame was rising in him and he suddenly felt sick with the guilt and pain in his younger self’s struggle. His heartbeat was the only tune in the memorable night. It sang and it sang in its remorseful wails and sputtering helplessness before it started sobbing. Logan felt tears pricking at his eyes, the heat making him feel dizzy and out of his body, in a weird way. ‘’That is okay, Logan’’, the other said without another moment of silence to make them drift apart any further. The words fell so easily but when they hit the goal, they seemed to crash into Logan’s heart like a car into a wall at full speed. ‘’It is okay to feel or not feel. You cannot control what you feel. It is okay. You can keep going. I don’t care about what you did.’’ Logan forced a shuddering breath out of his system and discarded the rest of his milkshake in their little trash bag. He hugged his arms around himself and gave in to the violent shivers that ran through his body by now. Despite the hoodie, he was still cold. He was so cold inside because he never felt and he never lived and now he did and it was horrible and terminal. Like he could never go back to not feeling this wretching pain anymore despite the feeling f someone just slowly pulling his heart apart, peeling it like a tomato with slow yet precise movements and the patience of someone who wanted to inflict high-quality torture. ‘’It is my fault, Virgil. It is my fault. He mentioned me in his suicide note, he listed me as reason. I did this to him, I destroyed a whole family!’’, he cried out and curled up, his tall legs coming back up to his chest to suffocate him further. The weight on his conscience was much heavier and breath-taking than his body felt. His voice faded into a mere whine, his wails downgrading into the volume of a pleading whisper when he repeated his words, his self-blaming, his accusations. ‘’I did it. I killed a man, I made him, I did that - Virgil, I killed someone, it is my fault, my fault, my fault!’’, he puled. His words were nothing but the twisted reflection of his despair and personal all-time low as he dug for all the shit he had on himself, all the crap and pain and shame he had buried within him and was now trying to get out. He was in a sinking nutshell of a boat. It had a leak and he could not help but keep staring at it as he felt his body being more and more immersed in the salty depth of the abandoned ocean around him. Salty like his dishonorable tears he still shed despite him being at fault. He was undeserving of any pain and sadness, considering he has triggered the whole grief with his own selfishness. And he was collecting the water, oh he was. Logan was gathering it with all he had, his hands, his shoes he had taken off and used as bowl in order to let the water back into the ocean, throw it out of his little nutshell. He was prolonging the inevitable. It was trying to postpone death when it was a certainty to come but he faced worse than death, he was living a life of guilt, subjected to the own pain he had sentenced himself with in an attempt at repentance. But then there were warm hands around him and Virgil pulled him closer, pulled him over to the other side of the junk barrier between them and held him close, let him cry against his shoulder and keep repeating his shame again and again as he softly hummed and rocked the other. Logan just wanted to sleep and never feel again, just stop being so miserable and never go back at all. ‘’That is bullshit, Log. You did not do a thing. You did not give him anything to hurt himself, you did not do anything that could have made him do it. You were just a kid, you were dumb and unknowing and you tried to make it and that is okay.’’ Virgil gently brushed over his arms and Logan nodded but he did not know whether his heart understood the words like his mind did. He processed the words, he had made sense of them but he did not feel them, not yet.. it was not all, it was not the whole story. ‘’But I did- I... I did!’’, he stubbornly spat through his teeth as more snot and tears mixed on his face and washed away the mask of a good man to finally reveal the ugliness beneath. He was a monster, a killer, a selfish criminal and he had never once tried to be a man about it and face his fears, accept his guilt and live with it. No, he was still denying and now he was even manipulating Virgil into supporting his personal denial. It was ugly, so ugly, he was so ugly. ‘’What did you do, Logan. It is okay. We can figure it out, we can get behind this together.’’ The sweet smell of a promise, the warm notion of relief and forgiveness was shining before him, wrapping him up and letting him breathe out his despondency. Virgil was the light to over his shadowy self the turn of events he was asking for, the possibility to finally stop hurting and instead change the there and now, feel the past fade into the black and white of long forgotten memories. ‘’I... He told me he loved me’’, he breathed out, his tone flattening as he steadily forced himself down to deep and intense breaths that hurt but felt so soothing as well. ‘’He.. loved me and I.. I was.. I did not. .. I told him to stop b-because he touched me. He touched me a lot and so often and I .. It hurt, it was bad and I hated it. I hated it!!’’ He felt his face grow hot again, the wrecking heat finally raising his temperature and settling the agony in his heart. ‘’He.. He would watch cartoons with me’’, he hiccuped softly as his voice turned from enraged and fierce back into the begging tone he had obtained in his miserable tears, ‘’he would watch them and touch me and told me to not move and it was so bad. I did not want that and he hurt me, he hurt me so much but he loved me and and-...’’ Virgil gently brushed over his back and carefully hugged him closer. ‘’Shh’’, he hummed gently and cradled the other closer, ‘’It is okay. It is okay. You are with me, you are safe. You are an adult now. You are in the fields with me.’’ Logan acknowledged the words mutely, his head nodding them off and he took another courageous breath of sweet, cold oxygen. It bruised his lungs and wrung his wind pipe from the inside. His throat was hurting so much and his voice still felt hoarse and broken from all his crying he entitled himself to. ‘’I was sick of him hurting me. It was so mean and he was so sweaty and he forced- He.. he forced me and told me to be silent and then gave me things and gifts and was so nice. I could not hate him but I did and he never stopped. Virgil, he never stopped but I asked him too because it was so painful and he made me bleed a lot and it hurt. It hurt so bad!’’ Virgil gently held his friend and he nodded. ‘’I know. I know, Logan. You did nothing wrong. You never did anything bad. It is good you told him how you felt. Lies are mean. You are not responsible for how you feel, it is not up to you to make others feel better about how you feel. You were just honest, Log. You were just an honest kid and he hurt you so much and left you with all this guilt.’’ Their hug became more as Logan broke under his words and acknowledged the meaning. He was free, he was gone. Virgil had broken down his own prison of guilt and told him it was fine. It was fine. It was okay. He had never done a mean thing, right? ‘’You did good, Log. You did a very good job with all these things. If he had loved you for real, he would have respected you and your needs, he would not have forced or hurt you.’’ His heart squeezed painfully as he pronounced his own daily mantra. ‘’Love is about loving someone for who they are and wanting the best for them. He did not love you when he made you feel bad about being yourself and feeling what you feel.’’ Logan nodded again and again. They sat together and cried longer and longer. The sky was forming and changing around the feelings they shared in their little bubble. It was so long and tired until they got back.

[whumptasticwednesday]

The Mind Of A Mutt (Hunger Games - Mockingjay)

Alright guys, As promised, Whumptastic Wednesday has returned. 

Just some background, this fanfic takes place during Mocking Jay Part One. I do reference some stuff from the books that weren't in the movie, so if you haven't read the books and you are confused, then read the damn books because they are incredible (AND VERY WHUMPY!!!) That’s all for now. Please enjoy, and don’t forget to give me some feedback. I would love to know what you guys think. 

-Jimmy

Word Count- 2,299

Warings- violence 

The cold floor of the cell sends goosebumps crawling up my arms. My hairs stand on edge, and every couple seconds my whole body twitches. The tracker jacker venom runs thick through my veins from the last "session." That's what they call them: President Snow and his team of doctors and nurses. Their only objective is to keep me alive long enough to torture me, to damage my brain and fill my head with artificial memories meant to brake me. Day in and day out, they show me pictures of Katniss, her voice rings through my head as they beat me. I have violent hallucinations of her doing unspeakable things to me. I feel every second of it. Why can't they kill me? Send my conscious mind into a desolate never-ending state of nothingness, because that's too easy. Nothing in the capital is easy. That's why twenty-four kids are sent to the Hunger Games every year. Because somewhere in Snow's sick distorted perception of reality, watching kids slaughter each other and celebrating the victors whos lives will be forever plagued with nightmares and flashbacks, is the only way to keep the districts in line. The only way to hold off the rebellion. Well, not anymore.

Katniss is the rebellion, the Mockingjay, and President Coin has got her. She's the reason I'm tortured in a cell in the capital. Katniss is the rebellions weapon, and I'm the capitals weapon. The only difference is never-ending suffering experienced by those saved by the capital. They are turning me into a Mutt, wearing me down little by little till I snap. Until my mind reaches depths of madness incomprehensible by a sain human. This issue is, it's working. Every day I feel my self becoming angrier and angrier. With every injection, every beating, every drop of my blood spilt, my anger grows. I can feel it festering in the back of my mind.

I try to sit up, but my arms feel week and numb. My vision begins to look fuzzy, and my eyelids feel heavy. The black polished shoes of President Snow standing in front of me is the last thing I can remember before I finally let my eye's close. In seconds I'm overtaken by sleep.

I inhale sharply as my eye's shoot open. Where am I? How long was I out? My breathing quickens as I try to move. My arms and legs are strapped into a chair. My heart begins to rase in my chest as I thrash violently, trying to escape.

"Don't struggle," I shoot my head up. President Snow is standing in front of me, two doctors wearing all white at his side. "You will only make it worse."

I grit my teeth. I've been here before. I know what's going to happen. I'm so tired, so fucking tired.

"Please." I plea, hot tears well up in my eyes. "Please, not again. I can't take this anymore." My voice cracks as I look up at President Snow. His cold face is unnerving. His dead stare sends a shiver down my spine. He nods, signaling to the doctors that its time. The doctors in their clean white coats approach me. I close my eye's, hoping that maybe if I think hard enough, this might all have just been a bad dream. I could wake up in a cold sweat, next to Katniss in our house in the victor's village. We could spend the morning talking about my nightmare like we always do when one of us has a distressing dream.

The prick of the IV being inserted into my arms knocks me back to reality. Reminds me that I'm not in my bed, I'm strapped to a chair in the capital, and I'm definitely not dreaming. I hold my breath as a cold liquid fills my veins. Suddenly my head feels like it's a thousand pounds. I let gravity do the work as my head goes limp against my chest. All at once, my ears begin to ring, louder, and louder, and louder. I squeeze my eyes shut. I think my eardrums might burst. I bring my knees to my chest and my hands to my ears, my throat letting out a blood-curdling scream. As abruptly as it began, it was over. Replaced with a silence that's equally as uncomfortable. I open my eyes, my arms and legs are free, I'm not in the capital anymore, I'm in the cave, from the first games. I prop my self up on my elbows; I look down, my wound is as bad as ever. Blood and pus seep out of the jagged cut — my whole body aches. Sweat drips down my face, and I have to bite my lip to stop from screaming.

"K-Katness," I pant, the pain is worse than the first time I experienced it. "Katn-ness, p-p-please!" I call out, where is she? Why isn't she here with me? Abruptly she appears beside me.

"I've brought you a treat. I found a patch of berries a little farther downstream" she says, brushing the hair from out of my face. Not again, I am not falling for this trick again. Katniss brings a spoonful of the mashed berries up to my mouth. This time they look different. Not red, and they don't smell like the sleeping syrup my mom used to give me. The mash is jet black. NightLock. Katniss is trying to kill me. I back away, dragging the lower half of my body with my arms. A malignant smile creeps onto Katness' face as she traps my neck under her arm. I choke and scream, trying to kick her off of me.

"Shhhhhhh, it will be over before you know it," She whispers, prying my jaw open like its nothing. I cringe as the sour taste of the nightlock berries hit my tongue. I heave as Katniss lifts her arm from off my throat. My relief is short-lived as she instantaneously clamps her hand over my mouth and plugs my nose. "This doesn't have to be difficult. One swallow. One swallow and all this pain will be over."

Nightlock, dead before it even hits your stomach, I remember. I fight underneath her. My lungs burn; they are screaming at me for oxygen. Black spots start the cloud my vision. I'm going to die. Whether that's from asphyxiation, or nightlock was my choice. I finally give in. My throat burns as I swallow. Katniss releases her hands from over my mouse and nose, and I gag and choke. My limbs start to feel heavy; the world around me begins to spin. I can see Katniss mouthing words to me. Why can't I hear her? I can feel her brush my hair out of my face. The pain I once felt begins to splinter away into a raw numbness. Soon the only thing I can discern is my heartbeat. Slow and unnatural. Like the heartbeat of a mutt.

Catching me off guard, the pounding in my ears begins to quicken. As I come back to my senses, I can hear my self gasping for breath. My vision returns soon after my hearing. I see the world speeding past me. More specifically, I see trees speeding past as I sprint through the forest. I feel like I'm not in control of my body. My lungs are on fire, and my muscles feel like they are threatening to snap. But I keep running. Suddenly my head shoots backward, and I know all too well what I'm running from. Mutts. A huge wolf-like creature is sprinting close behind me. But there is something different. I remember the mutts who chased after me in the first games. How could I forget? But this wolf was different, but at the same time... familiar. The smooth brown coat and piercing stern green eyes were all I had to see. This mutt was Katniss. Similar to the wolfs the capital made from the dead tributes in the first games. Katniss was hunting me. And I bet anything, that one stumble, and she wouldn't hesitate to rip me limb from limb. The forest floor becomes a minefield of sticks, rocks, and other things I can't identify given my current situation, but would undoubtedly lead to my inevitable demise if I were unable to avoid them. I feel in control of my body again. The first thing I notice is that the adrenaline that kept me running fast enough to stay ahead of the mutt has warn off. I'm starting to fall behind. Humans weren't built for this kind of physical exertion — my whole body cramps with every wheeze of my exasperated lungs. I feel my eyes begin to roll back into my head. My brain feels like static. Any minute my body is going betray me. I'm knocked back to reality as my foot gets caught on a rock, sending me tumbling down the steep hill. A scream tears through me as the mutt's teeth sink into my leg, dragging me down the hill. Blood smears the dirt behind me as the wolf finally slows down, stopping in the middle of the forest. Pained sobs erupt from deep within my chest. I scream through clenched teeth as the mutt's jaw opens, releasing teeth that were buried deep within my leg. Without warning, it lunges at me, teeth showing, ropes of drool cascading down its chin. I hear a sickening crunch as it jumps on me with all its weight. Hot tears spill down my cheeks as blood bubbles up my throat, leaking out my mouth. I kick and thrash, trying to release my self from under its weight, but I'm too weak. It snarls and snaps at me. I put up my arms in defense, trying to cover my face. Within minutes, my arms are a blood bath. Full of bite marks and cuts. I wail as the rabid dog rips me to pieces. I begin to lose feeling in my limbs, and my vision starts wavering in and out. I'm too weak to defend my self. Deep lacerations scatter my body. It's Tearing into me like I'm nothing but it's next meal. All the while, I stare into its eyes. Katniss' eyes. I feel my mind begin to deteriorate. Please end this. Please end me. I can't take this anymore. My body slowly slips into an empty numbness; this feeling isn't new. This is how most of my hallucinations end, with a numb body and a broken mind. My vision abandoned me a long while ago. Leaving me alone with my thoughts. It's hard to describe how I feel in these moments. When my body is numb and my brain has shut off anyway for me to identify where I am or what's going to happen next. My mind is in such a drug-induced haze; it's forgotten how to perceive the world around me. My eye suddenly shift as sporadic visions of Katniss and Gale flash into my brain. No, please, no. Like my own private movie under my eyelids, I watch Katniss and Gale laughing and smiling as they touch each other in a lust-filled haze. Please make it stop. Every touch, every kiss, fuels a fire buried deep within me. I can feel jealousy brewing in the pit of my stomach. This isn't real. I try to distract my mind, but the hallucinations win every time. I can't stop them. They start to get faster, flashing in and out of my mind like strobe lights. I see visions of my mom, of my family. Of the bombing of District Twelve. I watch as bombs rip them apart — peacekeepers making sure to put a bullet in the heads of anyone who survived the initial explosion. I feel sick to my stomach. My brain is moving at a mile a minute. This isn't real. I repeat it over and over in my mind. Start simple; start with what you know is true. My name is Peeta Malark. My home is District Twelve. I was in the Hunger Games. Katniss was saved. I was left behind.

My eye's open. Fluorescent lights blind me. Where am I. My arms and legs aren't strapped down? I look down; I'm wearing a clean white hospital gown. I look up. A group of people wearing gray jumpsuits are conversing around a clipboard. District thirteen is written on the back. I'm not in the capital anymore. They saved me.

"Should we bring her in?"

Their voices are muffled; I can almost make out what they're saying.

"Are you sure he's ready?"

My head begins to pound, and I lay back down on the bed. Coving my eye's with my hands, taking deep breaths. I'm processing a lot right now. I feel adrift of cool air as the door to the room opens. Looking up, suddenly im staring into those familiar green eye's. I feel my chest begin to swell with anger. My mind flashes back to everything that happened to me in the capital. All the pain I endured. All that emotion, all that damage, it's all because of Katniss. I looked into her eye's as she stabbed me, kicked me, mauled me, drugged me, burned me, killed me. I let my anger control me as I lurch forward, grabbing her by the neck and slamming her down onto the porcelain floor. The look of shock and horror spreading across her face only makes my desire to watch the life drain from her powerless body grow. Hot tears stream down my face. I don't want to kill her. But the resentment I feel needs an outlet. I don't know how to stop it. The need to strangle her feels compulsive. Just a side-effect of a damaged mind. The mind of the capitals weapon. The mind of a Mutt.

[edward-richtofen-queen]

A Little Piece of Jealousy

A commission for the lovely @quentinneedssleep! Thank you so much for the support and please enjoy!

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"The way love finds one over another is quite something to relish, isn't that right, Frank?"

Leaning against a tree, Quentin stared into the bland sky as fake stars twinkled in the distance. His fellow survivors were either snug in their sleeping bags or currently in a trial, which left Quentin to his lonesome to stay awake for his days. Sleep was never a comfortable escape, thoughts and fear of Freddy Krueger playing over and over again—no, he must stay awake. Standing from his spot by the many trees, Quentin walked straight into the thick fog and wood to try and clear his mind and stay awake to only come across a killer leaning against a tree.

Of course, this was normal—The Entity let the killers and survivors mingle at a certain point separating one site from another. It was nicknamed The Veil by the survivors—the darkness and fog a little thicker around this area. "Quentin! Restless as always," Frank's voice came lowly and muffled by his mask, lifting a hand to the blood smeared object and shifting it to leave his mouth and tattoos exposed. "Why are you always out here?" Quentin asks, fingers fumbling mindlessly with his jacket as Frank chuckled. "I could ask you the same thing, Quent," Frank spoke as he stared over at the restless man.

Quentin sighed and pouted, Frank's smile widening as the other male crossed his arms. Quentin stared aimlessly over into the thick fog, having nothing else to occupy his mind but the bits of conversation with the killer. Slumping to the ground, Quentin leaned against the hard bark of a tree. "You know, you're kinda cute all tired and not screaming," Frank gave a cocky smile as Quentin cocked an eyebrow. "I'm always tired and the only time I do scream is if you throw me on a hook," He mutters, not registering the flirts the killer constantly thew at him.

It had been like this for months now—slight flirty touches and snarky comments in trial, along with meeting each other "on accident" after the trials. Frank, as the head of The Legion spoke nothing of his blooming infatuation with the insomniac and his constant flirty acts and gazes. Quentin was blissfully oblivious to his advances, too tired or just too anxious to notice them. Frank wasn't the type to bluntly state the fact that he liked him, so he stuck to his subtle flirts and constant fake hatred. He liked it this way—until a new killer joined the fog....

Ghostface

❉ ╤╤╤╤ ✿ ╤╤╤╤ ❉

"I love everything you do, when you call me fucking dumb for the stupid shit I do—I wanna ride my bike with you, fully undressed; no training wheels left for you—I'll pull then off for you~"

"Aren't you cute?" The distorted voice spoke as Quentin wiggled in the man's grip, attempting to get loose. "That's not funny, asshole," Quentin hissed through clenched teeth, extremely upset and annoyed with the new killer. "Aw, come on sugar," He coos sadistically, throwing the brown-hair boy on the hook in the basement as he hollered in pain.

The masked killer laughed as he exited the basement, Dwight pressing the door to his locker open as he gave a slight smile. "I think he likes you," The anxious leader snorted, shifting to fix his glasses as he pulled his friend off the hook. Quentin grunted softly as he rolled his eyes. "Too bad—not my type. Now can we get out of here so you can heal me?" He grumbles, holding the bleeding gaping hole under one of his shoulder blade. Dwight nodded slightly, pulling him from the Killer Shack and wrapping his wounds in bandages.

The distant howl of the exit gates gave Quentin a rush of adrenaline and hope, sprinting off to an exit gate to open it. Tensing at the telltale signs of a heartbeat, his figure squeezed through the slow opening exit gate doors as Ghostface swung and hit the door instead of flesh. Not looking back, he could hear Ghostface laugh from behind him. "You'll play my game, Quentin—I can promise that!"

Returning to the welcome comfort of the campfire, Quentin grunted and crawled into his sleeping bag. Grabbing a ranger medkit, his hands dug for a pill bottle of Hypnocil and downed the white and blue tablets. Closing his eyes, his exhaustion finally caught up with him as he passed out not long after.

❉ ╤╤╤╤ ✿ ╤╤╤╤ ❉

"Just lay with me, Waste this night away with me—You're mine, I just gotta say!"

Frank growled under his breath, his knife stabbing the thick wood of an aged tree. The new killer had been going on and on about some of the survivors, but mostly Quentin. "He was squealing and so feral, it was adorable," He laughed, shifting his mask up to show off his lips. He had then realized that he was extremely jealous, his mind stuck on the one of many people he was supposed to sacrifice. Fingering a stray curl in his rouge hair, he tugged the jagged blade from the tree trunk and shifted to lean against it. Just as Frank relaxed, the cool wisps of black began to wrap around his legs. "Dammit," He muttered softly, his body engulfed in black as he was placed into a trial.

Still mildly upset, he reached into his pocket and threw a Mori into the fire—maybe killing someone would calm him down. Dropped off into The Shape's realm, he stretched for a second as he twirled his knife. The overwhelming sense of bloodlust filled his lungs as he set off to find his next sacrifices.

❉ ╤╤╤╤ ✿ ╤╤╤╤ ❉

"Bittersweet kisses of iron as the knife plunges into flesh. It always tastes so much sweeter than the last."

When Quentin awoke, he felt quite like a new man—no nightmares, no Freddy. Yawning, Quentin stretched and crawled from his sleeping tent. "He's alive! We thought you died in there," Meg teased, her fingers playing with her braided hair as Quentin laughed. "You'd see the Entity spit me back out, Meg, you know this," He smiled half heartedly as he rubbed his eyes.

Moving into the fog, he smiled a little when he was that masked face—he wouldn't admit it, but Frank made good company. "Frank," Quentin spoke softly as the masked man perked up, the mask shifting to reveal his lips once again. "Missed ya," He spoke, Quentin shrugging slightly. "Finally slept after god knows how long of being tortured. I think I may be able to survive the trials."

Time passed quite quickly when one was occupied or enjoying themselves, they say—it seemed true in this case. Not long, Frank noticed the fog crawling up Quentin's leg as he shivered. "Guess it's time to leave. I'll see you later, asshole," He joked, smiling weakly. Frank howled in laughter, responding, "You too, fellow asshole." As Quentin disappeared with a little wave, Frank sighed contently. His face was the softest shade of pink as his chest warmed—damn, he was in love.

"Finished talking to your boyfriend, Frank?" Julie's playful voice called as the leader flinched. "Jules! When did you get here?" Frank asked, ignoring the question with another question. "Don't give me that, tell me about your new survivor crush, idiot," Julie cooed sweetly, sitting next to her leader and friend. Frank sighed, shrugging as he gave up—no point of hiding it from Julie.

"Yes I like him—that new masked fucker kept flirting with him and it pissed me off. He would not shut up about him and I got really damn jealous. So I uh, burned a couple Mori's to kill him once," He confessed, wiping the blood from his blade to his smiling mask. Julie removed her mask and gave a cheeky smile, Frank removing his own to pout. "I knew all along that you were Bisexual, Frank. I'm not mad, it's actually kinda cute and sick at the same time," She smiled sweetly. "I actually thought Quentin liked him when he didn't show up, but I was proven wrong," He sighs with content, a smile of his own on his face.

Julie gave him a pat him on the shoulder, placing a soft friendly kiss to his forehead. "Go get him, tiger. I better not wake up to find him in the realm screaming, alright?" She teased as he blushed, looking away shyly. "Give him this," She speaks, handing him a bracelet quite like their own. "He'll love it for sure, plus it shows he's family if you do decide to date him." Frank silently thanked her as you was taken to a trial, leaving Frank to cradle the gift.

"It's so dark tonight, but you'll survive—certainly. It's alright, come inside and talk to me..."

[ramimami-blog]

Radical Emotions

Josh and Sam have gotten close since the disappearance of Hannah and Beth, and that makes things complicated for the reader, who has crushed on Josh for as long as she can remember.

A/n: Requested by @fahrenheit39! This is gonna be a miniseries because I like how this turned out. Sorry it took so long!

Warnings: strong emotions, conclusion jumping, and angst. No smut, sorry! This is really sappy. Like... you won’t find a tree as sappy as this fic. 

For so long, all I wanted was to see Josh smile. All I wanted was to see him become playful again. I found myself longing for the days when he would run up behind me and scare the crap out of me, with that smirk on his face and that laugh looming in his throat. 

Time after time, I wanted to forget what happened that night. I wanted to forget splashing water on his face to wake him up from his drunken stupor only to tell him we had to find Hannah and Beth. The look of desperation on his face when he realized the severity of the situation... it still haunts me. I wish I could unsee it.

But now, someone else is making him smile right in front of me. My best friend. Sam. 

I noticed it sooner rather than later, but I almost wish I hadn’t noticed it at all. Josh started hanging out with her, talking to her more. I would often text Sam and ask to hang out to receive that text, that damn text that made me want to scream. ‘I can’t, Josh needs some support.’ 

Support. 

What was that? Support... it had to mean something else. It had to mean more than Sam talking him through what happened, keeping the demons of his mind away, telling him it would be alright. It had to be more. When Josh and Sam were together, it often felt like I was third wheeling, like I was floating around in their orbit, Josh was clearly so deeply into Sam that our friendship didn’t matter anymore.

Was it something I had done? The prank on Hannah, I hadn’t been involved. I had walked away, told everyone how childish it was. Because it was, and look at what it had caused. The rift in our once content circle of friends had become massive.

Josh was a wreck. And it killed me to see it, to see him like that. Even with his meds, he was sad. That grin had less power, his jokes weren’t as funny but I laughed anyway because he was Josh, and Josh was perfect to me. 

Even if he had the stability of a house on a pin needle, he was still Josh and he still made my heart flutter. His eyes still made goosebumps over my skin, his voice made my hair stand up on edge. 

His scent was intoxicating too. Josh smelled like lavender, patchouli, hemp, and musky cologne. Those scents had become my favorite a long time ago, because of him. I found myself diffusing lavender essential oil in my bedroom, burning patchouli sticks, and using hemp-based shampoo just to bask in a taste of what it would be like if he held me. 

I soon realized why he smelled of lavender and patchouli after doing just a minute of research... anxiety, grounding. Those two scents were fantastic for keeping yourself grounded in reality when delusions or anxiety started to boil over. Josh had smelled like this for a long time, he had anxiety for a while. And it made me sad to realize it. 

It was hard to pull myself out of bed. For the first time in years, I turned off my diffuser and stopped the flow of lavender into my senses. It would probably take years to get the scents out of my room, for so long I had kept those smells close to my mind, to my very soul. For so long I drowned myself in lavender patchouli and hemp, how could I get my soul to unlatch from them?

I almost felt sick to my stomach thinking about it. It physically pained me to even fathom losing things that kept me happy. Losing the closeness Josh and I had, had hurt too. But maybe it was time to let go.

When my phone vibrated, it almost startled me, and I was thankful I was already on the toilet. It was a text from Sam. I didn’t even have to read it for my heart to drop to my stomach. Did I want to read it? These days I expected it to be the big announcement... something about her and Josh being official.

Without looking, I held my thumb down on our conversation and deleted it, breathing a sigh of relief into my bathroom mirror... until the group chat buzzed. Sam. 

That had to be it. It had to be the big reveal. I could see it all in my head, how everyone would be happy Josh was coming back to reality, how everyone would congratulate them and anger would boil in me. I didn’t want that yet. Not yet. 

I swallowed hard, blindly thumbing through my phone as I left the group chat, and held the power button on my phone, turning it off... not today. I wasn’t ready for it, I was not ready to watch Josh officially be in love with my best friend.

Avoiding my phone? That was the easiest part of the day. But I couldn’t avoid my mind, that had no applicable power button. There was no delete function on the emotions I had for the flannel-wearing son of a millionaire. 

How I wished there were. I wished it was that simple, easy to pluck him from my brain altogether and go on with my life.

Personal care... that would be the key to surviving that day. I took another deep breath, exhaling again and leaving the bathroom, shutting the door to my bedroom on the way to the living room. I had to avoid my lavender haven, my patchouli paradise like it was the plague if I wanted to keep my emotions calm.

Mentally I made a plan to try new essential oils and replace the filter in the diffuser, and maybe new incense. Perhaps... peppermint? My knowledge of essential oil and incense was very limited aside from... well, the scents Josh gave off. 

I barely knew what to do with myself. I turned the TV on and scrolled through my DVR, and settled on reruns of (tv show), even though it made my heart drop. The last time I had watched this show had been with Sam the night before the trip to the lodge, before everything changed. 

Ignoring the pain in my stomach, I started the show at the beginning of the first season, tossed a blanket over my legs and laid down on the couch. 

-

Bang! Bang! Bang! Ring! Bang! Ring! Ring! 

I jumped hard, startled by the sounds coming from my front door. It was dark now, at some point I had fallen asleep... I didn’t remember which episode I had fallen asleep on, but now my DVR was off, the blue light of the screen saver mocking me in the darkness of the living room as someone banged on my front door and furiously rang my door bell. 

Swallowing hard, I stood up, wrapping the blanket around my shoulders as I approached the door... I could see him through the window, the imprint of flannel and short brown hair.

Josh. 

My eyes closed, as if they were pained by the fact he was there, even though I was confused beyond reason. I had no idea why Josh was on my doorstep. But I couldn’t stand there in the dark and stare at his distorted frame in the window anymore... I had to talk to him, he was right there. 

“I’m coming!” 

Pulling the door open, Josh walked in, making me step back a bit as he turned my hallway light on. His eyes were filled to the brim with worry, scanning me up and down before walking past me and looking into my living room.

“What happened? You yote out of the group chat, and no one heard from you for a solid seven hours...”

I tilted my head, pinching the brim of my nose. “Please stop using ‘yeet’ in the past sense, Josh...”

But it was clear to me that he wasn’t joking, Josh was purely serious as he turned around, his hands moving to rub down his face in frustration. 

“You... you can’t do that. You can’t just disappear and not tell me why,” he scolded, and for some reason it hurt more than I anticipated. “So spill it. What the fuck?” 

I groaned loudly, running my hand through my (y/h/c) hair and trying not to look at him. I could get lost in those eyes, the scent of lavender could draw me back in if I wasn’t careful... I had to avoid him.

“Josh my dad’s gonna flip if he comes home and I have a boy over...”

“Fuck your dad, (y/n)! I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s happening!”

Shivers ran down my spine in waves, I hadn’t liked hearing Josh yell, it always made me nervous, always told me how serious his issues were but this time... they were my issues he was screaming about, my problems, my inability to handle Josh Washington being in love with my best friend. I could feel the hot tears peaking in my eyes, threatening to spill out and boil over. 

What was I supposed to say? Seconds of silence continued to pass between us, my eyes dropping to the floor. It simply hurt to look at him, to be so close to him. 

Josh began closing the gap between us before I could try to move away, grabbing my face and forcing me to look up at him. I hadn’t seen him so distraught in almost a year, hadn’t seen him so desperate for answers since that fateful night everything changed... I had to tell him. He deserved to know. 

My hands moved upward, grabbing his wrists and yanking his hands off of me, making his jaw drop softly, a look of shock on his face. I decided not to let him wonder why I had done that, and immediately spoke. 

“I can’t handle the anxiety of wondering when you and Sam are gonna come out with it! I figured today was the day, and I shut myself off from all of you.” 

His eyes narrowed. “Come out with what?”

Another groan passed from my lips, was he serious?! Josh had a tendency to be dense but this was more than I was expecting from even him. 

“I’ve seen you two. She’s blown me off so much just to be with you. I’m not stupid and I’m not ready for it, I’m just not!”

Confusion washed over his face, he seemed to be putting together what I said in his mind, mulling it over, and trying to figure out what to say, perhaps how to let me down easy. 

“Why couldn’t you handle Sam and I being together, (y/n)?”‘

I swallowed hard again, and the tears finally spilled from my eyes, hot and heavy, streaming down my face. I sniffled hard and could feel my breathing becoming jagged, the blanket falling from my shoulders as I tossed my hands up in defeat.

I had to tell him. I had to say it so we could move past it.

“Josh... That night... at the lodge, the night Hannah and Beth disappeared...” Could I do it? Could I finish my sentence, could I even say it?... I had to, no going back. “Beth was helping me...” 

“Helping you with what, (y/n)? Just... just come out with it already!”

Josh looked like he was at his wits end with the whole situation, I couldn’t keep him in the dark for a moment longer about how I felt. 

“She was helping me figure out how to tell you I loved you! Three shots in and I chickened out...” 

I watched his face, watched it soften a bit, almost in shock, my most intimate secret on the table to the person it pertained to. Every second felt like literal hours, waiting for him to response, watching as he looked away from me and turned his head to the side, staring at the floor as if he was shocked. 

“Dammit, (y/n)...” Josh cursed my name, sending chills down my spine. “I’m not, I’m not dating Sam, I’m not taking her to the bone zone, I’m not... courting her, whatever you’re thinking we’re doing that’s not it. I’m into someone else.” 

I felt my heart drop to my knees, anxiety releasing itself all over my body, my chest swelling with heart palpitations. What was I supposed to say to that? How was I supposed to handle it? At least... it wasn’t Sam. That fact did make me breathe a sigh of relief.

“Well whoever she is... she’s--”

“You. She’s you.”