#constant too hot/too cold . endless suffering .

[hinamie]

for @cherryys who (rightfully!) hcs lategame megumi as having a bunch of scars befitting his status as resident punching bag

[sunfloweraro]

LUtober day 1: Hearth

Four isn’t feeling all that well. Sky takes care of him.

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 .

The fire popped and crackled before him. Its glorious, golden warmth washed over his shivering frame, soothing the worst of the cold-induced aches he couldn’t seem to shake. Four shifted closer to the flames, so close he nearly rested within the hearth alongside the fire itself, and held out his palms to the warmth. This week had been long, with endless battles, constant rain and sloshing through mud. It hadn’t come as a surprise when he woke this morning with mild sniffles that quickly grew into feverish shakes and rippling aches and a permanent chill to his skin that left one quarter of him particularly anxious. He turned his hands around to warm the backs, sending a pulse of comforting warmth to the blue side of himself in hopes of calming him down.

“Here,” a soft voice said, and Four lifted tired eyes to see Sky standing by his side, holding out a mug for him to take. With a smile, Four took it, eyes crinkling when warmth burst across his fingertips as they met the plain white mug. Whipped cream topped the warm drink, dusted with chocolate powder.

“Thanks,” Four croaked, wincing when his throat chose to announce it, too, was suffering.

“Hot cocoa,” Sky said, settling a blanket across Four’s shoulders, before he sat next him. He drew one edge of the blanket across his own shoulders too, scooting closer. Four wanted to tell him to be careful, lest he pick up the illness too, but he was much too exhausted, and Sky would no doubt tell him he already knew that, and stay put regardless.

Instead, he shifted closer, leaning into Sky’s side and sighing when Sky easily curled an arm around his shoulders. He took a sip of his hot cocoa, humming appreciatively as sweetness danced across his tongue, warm and delightful. His eyes slipped shut, and he took another sip.

“Thanks, Sky.”

Sky squeezed his shoulders, drew him even closer, as if he wanted Four to fall asleep against him. Four might very well take him up on the offer. “You’re welcome.”

[brattybaddiee]

You look down on where you came from sometimes

But you’ll have this place to call home, (in my heart) always

To my friend. To my soul sister.

I’ll always miss you Jaymie.

_________________________________________________

Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.

The sound of your breathing vest beating your chest filled the camp dorm room.

It was just me and you in an empty dorm in the middle of a hot day in June.

Summer camp was the best growing up. The one week in the year where me and our favorite friends just got to have fun and hang out with seemingly endless time.

For you and I the only interruption to our day of fun was this. A constant reminder that just being here could land you in the hospital.

I watched from my bunk bed as you sat there and coughed while the contraption beat all the junk in your lungs back up for you to cough out. It was a miserable process. One you often tried to convince me that you didn’t need to do some days. But even when you had to. We often sat there laughing and talking about which boys we liked.

Camp would end and you would go back home and more often than not the week of fun would end in a month long stay at the hospital. I visited and sat by to hold your hand as my petite little bubbly friend suffered. You hated the hospital but you never let the staff know because you didn’t want to hurt their feelings. Only ever did you admit it when they were gone and it was just us.

Our whole childhood was like this. Then we became adults together and things only got worse.

They said you wouldn’t make it to twenty-five. I watched as you beat those odds. I also watched people drift in and out of your life. Friends. Guys. Family. By the time we were twenty-six you had been engaged twice. Left twice. Because who wanted to marry a dying girl?

I will always hate them for that.

Who could not love the girl who found my lap at every event and plopped down in it to giggle and talk about life? To silently judge everyone, to laugh about the latest gossip and to share about how life was going. You genuinely listened, cared, and loved.

Then the best news. After cystic fibrosis had ruled over your life from the moment you were born, you were finally getting NEW lungs!!!

New lungs meant no more dying girl stigmas. It meant getting to go on girl trips without the fear of the hospital at the end of it. It meant getting married together. Having kids and raising them together. Experiencing more of life…together.

I was overjoyed for you. Your new lungs were awesome. Perfect in fact. You were finally living life at the speed you wanted to.

We planned a girls trip with all of the joy of being able to fully enjoy it together that October in 2022. A few weeks passed and I decided to check in but never heard back. Finally my phone dinged one day. “Rain check on the girls trip? I’m in the hospital.”

The dreaded sterile place. The place that smelled like crap and bad food. We hated that place. Then the words came that forever will haunt me “rejection”. “My body is rejecting my new lungs.” The news didn’t even come from you. Family members had to notify me because you were too weak to.

Not that. Anything but that. This felt like too big of a problem. They put you on lockdown. You slowly slipped away, refusing to be put back on the donor list, you just seemed to dwindle away. You were tired and I didn’t blame you. Tired of fighting but mostly just coming face to face with the reality that maybe this was the end of your story.

And then you were just gone one night. I’ve never wept that hard before. I didn’t get to say bye or hug you or hold your hand. Or tell you how much you meant to me. The last vision I got to have is you in a casket, fully open to show off how meticulously you planned for your death. And it suited you Jay.

A emerald green designer dress. Curls. Heels. Jaymie from head to toe. Beautiful. Stunning. A light to many even in a cold casket.

But I won’t remember you that way. To me you’re forever the girl who always plopped down in my lap and loved me with the entirety of your heart. So much so that 2 years later. I still feel it. And I know I always will.

[sleepless-prose]

The number of things I wished I had been told outnumbers that of a casualty list.

The bullets have been fired, they lay cold on the ground, but the wounds remain infected and bleeding. 

What I wish I had been told is pointless, I say to myself. It changes nothing. 

But to her, it would have been everything.

To tell her with a smile that those glasses didn’t make her look withered and grey.

That she was eight, old shouldn’t have even been an afterthought. 

I want to tell her that she wouldn’t be walking alone forever, that the constant loop of the football oval by the sea would eventually trickle to an uneasy end.

That one day, she wouldn’t have to try and nurture friendships with girls who won’t even live in the same town as her in five years, ten.

I would tell her that she wouldn’t be chasing them forever, praying for once they would turn around and see her. 

I would tell her that she would get what she wished for.

I would lie if I had to, should she ask if she should be afraid; change comes to all, an endless loop of disruption. 

I want to tell her the chilly sunsets would come to their own sudden end, that one day she will miss the long drive back to her home, at least for the weekend.

There’s hot air blasting from car vents as she stares at the moon from the passenger window like an old friend, too far to hold. It’s midnight. She’ll be in bed soon. 

It’s a matter of time. 

I want to tell her she’ll miss the old pine tree she could never climb, and the makeshift wharf of rocks and sand. The bonsai on the back step, and the roller-skates under the bed she never learned to use.

I want to tell her to savour what time she has. To clasp it greedily in both hands, for it was all she would be given. To turn around, and for once, to ask for more.

You have a right to ask for more from calloused hands. 

It will feel bitter one day, I will tell her, that a mattress was asking for too much. 

I will tell her how she will never see that boat again. How the room she was growing to love would abandon her. How she will never know what happened to her desk, or her lamp.

Are her things still there?

Are they torn, and cracked, as he had done before? 

I will tell her, warn her, not to grieve the anger she should feel.

I will tell her;

I know the muscles of your shoulders will strain. They will beg to give way, as if Atlas stood in your stead, suffering the weight of your half-formed identity. A task you cannot bear the majesty of. It will come in due time, I will say.

You won’t believe me. 

Thirteen, you look for it.

Fourteen, you stumble. 

Fifteen, you try your best to discard it completely from prying eyes. You paint it over four walls it will never leave, or so you hope.

Four walls, a shade of lavender you hated, that you will never see again. You will fear judgement, and laughter, and trudge awkwardly in your own skin.

Those four walls did nothing. 

I would apologise for not seeing myself sooner. 

For being afraid of change, for hesitating to bring scissors to my hair, for being cruel to the skin that held me together; I would apologise. 

For sacrificing wellbeing for faces and voices I will be lucky to hear in the background of a snapchat story once a month, for friends with which three years were wasted. I would apologise for the fact that they will never look twice at you on the street again. 

It’s a matter of time. 

In five years, ten, twenty, it won’t matter what colour you dyed your hair. It won’t matter if you’re the tallest in your class, or if your shoulders are ‘too broad for a girl’ — you won’t care, you’ll feel lucky.

It won’t matter if you cried.

The identities you pride yourself on will fade. You won’t remember which cookie-cutter jokes you would use to impress the ever-changing table of faces, you’ll find your own. 

It won’t matter if you want to change your name to fit barely a syllable, three measly letters for such a heavy decision. It won’t matter. 

There are things I wish I had been told sooner, and I know that in time this list will grow. When I am truly withered, old, and grey, I won’t possibly recall each one. But I will know.

I will know it’s a matter of time. 

I will know it’s a matter of growth. 

It will have to be enough.

[usagimen]

                                     @achroanimus :    ❛ you don’t have to be afraid of who you are. ❜ // from fox bestie with a hug <3

               In pouring sunlight, the wisp of a shadow curls tightly, knees to chest && heavy breathing. Echoes, she can hear the restless voices among those who gossip softly; though she makes little sense of their nonsensical ramblings. Every wound has been meticulously cared for, the ache that spreads within the chest, it does not subside. She wonders, when will it end? Pulsing hot, like a white flame && penetrating into the confines of her sternum, wrought iron that twists as if to evescrate the still beating heart. It never served her well to begin with, what is the point? He towers over her, perfect in ivory, albeit slightly marred. Every aunt fawns upon him, cooing && awning in spectacular glory, meanwhile, the depth of emerald hues latch onto gold. “A-ah, you don’t need to check on me so frequently” she hates the fretting, the constant remarks or cries that shriek in a shrill voice, the beloved moon could have vanished. Always a jagged thing, too sharp to love, too cold to possess, even when her love stood shattered into shards - she could never admit it. Lovingly, a set of bandages sits upon a lacquered tray, scissors to cut && the binding begins once more. Arguments break out more than usual, the viper’s shoulders remain heavy, order she urges - order in the midst of tremendous loss, their world will remain unscathed while the rest shall plunge itself into the abyss.

      What is the point of containing a God? Those who challenge utter despair, if the heavenly being is now encumbered, there was no point for an old regime that never served them, never blessed them, they should cut their losses from this vile realm && remain hidden amongst the weeping wisteria. “It’s so unbelievably noisy, for once I should have taken refuge with the Zen’ins, the lot can give less than a damn we’ve lost the Honored One” a clever lie, she wishes to seep into the confines of the underworld, escaping in the midst of an endless winter that felt like home, ice that runs thick within the blood. Shikomi’s with their bland visages, monochrome in colors all speak in timid voices, the question is irritating - will the God Hand recover swiftly? How dare they view her as salvation, an answer to their misguided prayers, holy.

        “You’re quite brazen, showing your face when the objective failed, we know our enemy yet the cost was significant” her tongue lashes out not in ire or boundless fury, grief, overwhelming mourning that cannot be contained && must be spun into a torrent of gritted teeth. He always had an uncanny ability, the most empathetic being she has ever crossed, the cruelest being to ever flash their teeth && peel away bit by bit all she kept secret. Does he know she keeps shattered glass to her chest? Laced in crimson, the wiring has all but been distorted && the memory remains the same; gentle souls cannot thrive in this world, but she was monstrous, even in youth her melancholy laugh echoed, I will be the blade - you will never know suffering while I stand. Dreams of sapphire waters, sea salt brining her lungs, come quickly && vanishing just as fast. She wishes to grab him, unleash a caustic poison, maybe then the eloquently numb sensation would trickle back into the marrow. Instead, her petite form unravels, “I am not afraid, I am lost. Even in girlhood, the notion of delicateness was foreign, but I would not become another idle beauty that ensnared her prey. Instead, I would grow to be steel, sharp as the knife to be held by those who I love” a futile mistake, one she would regret. “They refused && for that, I should have cursed them” scornful, she could never be such a thing, even if she feebly tried to convince him it was possible, her morality would not allow it.

      “The fox survives, fleeing from ruination, yet I am heavy with the knowledge this shall not be the last we know of strife” a few stray tears, they slip down the smoothness where bone should protrude. Bruised hands, battered fingers, thousands of times broken && each one, put back together. They reached for him, fear kept her moving, fear was the only thing that held the thin veil of vice && virtue. “You are always too kind, too warm, would you stay with me?” swallowing the pit within her throat, she laughs softly.

                         “You who is the sun, indulge the moon just this once, the lonesome sky for which I dwell is all too much”

[mahayanapilgrim]

Meditation Instructions - Suffering

Begin by contemplating suffering, focusing on the six realms. Vividly imagine existence within each one. Your mind can enter other realms through the power of visualization, which allows them to unfold in your experience. The potential for any experience abides in the mind.

In contemplation, extrapolate from a moment of pain you have actually felt - scalding water, perhaps, or biting winter winds numbing your toes and fingertips — to the extreme, all-encompassing pain of the hot or cold hells.

Moments of hunger and thirst magnify into the famished, parched deprivation of the spirit realm. So your mind can journey.

If the experiences of other realms lie too far outside the scope of your imagination, contemplation of human suffering is enough.

For example, put yourself in the place of someone caught in a war zone, in constant fear of being maimed or killed, surrounded by devastation, separated from friends and family, confronted by brutal inhumanity and hatred. Even to rejoice in violent victory over enemies creates terrible karma. How much more tragic the forced participation in the killing!

No one is exempt from the downward spiral - not the leaders who will be karmically accountable for every injury and death that occurs because of their orders; not the soldiers who carry out the killing; not the victims who are catapulted into the bardo with their minds inflamed with anger.

This human realm has no scarcity of suffering. The depth of your contemplation depends on really placing yourself inside such situations and allowing yourself to feel what others have felt, to stand in their shoes. When this has been accomplished and the mind yearns for cessation, drop all thoughts and rest.

When thoughts intervene, generate compassion. Think of the countless beings in the six realms. In the course of innumerable rebirths, each of them has been your parent.

They are caught in cycles of misery and have no idea how to extricate themselves.

Think of their predicament until compassion wells up as the wish that their present suffering be alleviated immediately and that ultimately they be liberated from the sorrows of samsara altogether. Then, again, drop all thoughts and rest.

When thoughts flood into your meditation, direct them toward prayer. Pray that suffering not sweep you away and that you see whatever arises as purification. In the confusion that suffering brings, pray not to create karmic causes for more misery. Pray as well that you attain the power to lead others from the depths of samsara to a state beyond sorrow. Pray that all beings be liberated from the endless cycles of samsaric suffering. Relax in uncontrived meditation.

When thoughts arise once more, make a firm commitment to practice the path until you attain liberation from suffering, for the sake of all beings. Before, as you yourself were drowning in the ocean of samsara, you could not rescue others. Now, by the skillful means of the path, there is hope of escape. Resolve not to sink back, not to abandon others, and then rest in the peace of natural relaxation.

Chagdud Tulku - Ngondro Commentary - Padma Publishing

[seasonsbloom]

bad habit (hangman)

read part ii, read part iii

pairing ; hangman x female!reader

synopsis ; the moment you meet hangman, you know you hate him. and then suddenly, you're not so sure anymore.

“Sweetheart,” he drawls, “when you look like me, you don’t really need any lines.”

wc ; 15k

warnings ; angst, explicit language, mentions of previous character death (reader’s mother dies of cancer), mentions of sexual activity, (some) explicit sexual activity, horrible dirty talk, age gap, hangman is sort of an asshole but not really, inexperienced reader

note ; i cannot believe i am posting this, it is so LONG and i am so embarrassed... at first it was just supposed to be pwp and then it suddenly had a LOT of plot and backstory and then i was at 15k and hadn't even really gotten to the smut part yet and now... i'm thinking... part 2? maybe? let me know if you're interested lol. anyways... first fic... yay?

Fightertown is all sand, suntan lotion, and contrails crisscrossing like latticework across the endless stretch of baby blue that is the Californian sky.

At first, you don’t know how to handle it. You’re from Seattle, which means an average of 156 rainy days a year, and here it feels like the only water you’re ever gonna feel again is the Pacific Ocean and the layers of sweat drying sticky on your skin when you wake up every day. You’re too stingy on your electrical bills to leave the fan spinning circles that herd stale air through your room all night, and it gives you a stuffy nose anyways, so you just suffer through it. Then, in the morning, you spend ten minutes standing under ice-cold water until your teeth chatter with enough force to hurt your jaw, only to forget once more what it feels like not to be hot minutes later.

Penny says you’ll get used to it eventually. But, two months in, you’re wondering if maybe she’s wrong.

“‘Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,/ Men were deceivers ever,-’” you read from the book in front of you. “‘One foot in sea and one on shore,/ To one thing constant never.’ Now, what does Shakespeare mean by that?” 

Amelia is starting to look like she’d rather be anywhere else. You’ve been at it for about 55 minutes, meaning you’ve got approximately 5 more left for today’s session. Usually, you’d call it quits by now and let her enjoy the remainder of her afternoon because she looks tired enough to fall asleep right here at the dinner table, but you don’t want to leave yet. You’d like to think it’s because you’re a sensible teacher. Most likely, though, it’s because the Benjamin residence is airconditioned, and Penny keeps that shit racked up to a moderate 71 degrees all day, and apparently, you’re a selfish bitch who will put her own need for heat relief before her student’s need for a reprieve from Shakespeare.

Which, like. Semantics.

“I don’t know,” Amelia says, chin resting in the open palm of her hand. She probably would know if she’d listened at all, but you’re pretty sure her mind is as much on the popsicles in the fridge as her eyes are on the clock on the wall.

“It means men are moody assholes who can’t stay faithful,” Penny says as she steps into the living room, ignoring her daughter’s scandalized Mom! “Pretty self-aware for the 16th century, don’t you think?”

You hum. “Pretty true, too.”

Penny laughs. “Don’t you know it? Take it as a life lesson, Amelia.” Then she extends something wrapped in colorful plastic in your direction. “Fudgesicle?”

Maybe some part of you should feel bad about exploiting the Benjamins for their aircon and free ice cream, but you’re sort of past that point.

“Thanks.” You take the fudgesicle and start unwrapping it without any further ado.

“Mom,” Amelia, her phone in one hand and her own ice cream in the other, asks as she gets up, “can I go upstairs now?”

“Ask your tutor,” Penny responds with a thumb pointed in your direction.

You shrug, preoccupied mainly with the flavor of chocolate and fudge melting on your tongue. Your bank account doesn’t really allow for luxuries like popsicles anymore, but, God, this must be heaven.

“Yeah, we’re pretty much done with Shakespeare today. Go over those pentameters again before the test, okay?”

“Sure.” Amelia smiles at you, already halfway to the door. “Thanks. See you next week.”

You wave at her turned back, and wait until she’s disappeared before you say, “She’s a good kid.”

Penny snorts. “A little glued to her phone, maybe.”

“I think that’s sorta par for the course.”

“Not very good with Shakespeare, either.”

“Now that’s definitely par for the course with a fifteen-year-old. Be glad they aren’t reading Hamlet.”

Penny laughs. She sinks into one of the unoccupied chairs at the dining table and stretches her legs out with a sigh. She’s already switched her usual cotton shorts for jeans which tells you she’s about to head over to her bar for the rest of the night.

“I guess I should count my blessings,” she says. “At her age, I’d already hijacked two planes with two different pilots.”

Penny’s stories about her teenage transgressions are always enough to make you feel stuck somewhere between awe and profound jealousy. Your own life is downright dull in comparison.

Then again, your life - and especially the romantic aspects of it - are downright dull compared to most things.

“You must have given your parents gray hairs,” you say, packing up your pencil and notebook in your tote bag. It’s not easy with only one free hand, but somehow you manage without leaving a trail of chocolate across Penny’s tabletop.

“I sure hope so.” 

You’re down to the part of your Fudgsicle where the wooden stick pokes out of the ice cream, and try to avoid licking at it accidentally. You hate the feeling of the wood against your tongue, but the whole thing is a bit difficult, as you’re also trying to eat at a pace you know will give you a stomach ache later.

You have to get out of here before Penny sinks her talons into you and…

“You should come by the Hard Deck today,” she says, and you bite back a groan.

Too late.

“I can’t,” you say semi-automatically, “I’ve got work tomorrow.”

Roughly a month ago, you pinned a sheet of paper to the bulletin board at the gas station where you’ve been picking shifts up since you arrived in town, advertising Tutoring for English, Grades 1 to 12. Penny was the only person who answered. Since then, you’ve been coming to the house once a week to tutor Amelia and, unofficially, to be lectured by Penny on all the joys life has to offer.

Her words, not yours.

“No, you don’t. You never work Sundays,” Penny shoots back immediately. Then, at your frown, she just shrugs. “You can’t lie to me, sweetie. I used to do it professionally. It takes one to know one.”

You sigh. “I don’t know that I feel like going out tonight.”

“You’ll feel like it once you’re actually out.”

Having finished your fudgesicle, you place the stick carefully in the wrapper before getting up. You reach across the tabletop and heft up your complete edition of Shakespeare’s plays. The thing is thick enough that you like to keep it by your bedside, just in case you ever wake up to an intruder in your apartment. It definitely doubles as a defensive weapon.

Penny lets out the long-suffering sigh of someone over going through the interminable motions of this spiel the two of you have inadvertently established. “What are you going to do then, tonight?” she asks. “Eat Cup Noodles and read Shakespeare?”

You can feel your face heating up. That really had been the plan.

“Jane Austen, actually,” you mumble without looking at her, clutching the book to your chest like a shield.

“Just… come down tonight, yeah? It’ll do you good to see some people. You’re twenty-three, sweetie. You shouldn’t be sitting around all on your own,” she says gently. “Please?”

The thing about Penny is that beneath her cool-girl veneer, beneath the tough-as-steel attitude of a bar owner, beneath the badass single mom allures, she’s really, really kind. It lets her get away with stuff that would be unacceptable coming from anybody else, but it also means she’s coming from a place of love, most of the time. 

You know this. Which is why the next thing you ask is, “Does your bar have aircon?”

+

The dress was a mistake.

You know it the moment you step out of your Uber. It’s too short, so you just know you’ll be spending the rest of the night tugging at the hem every few minutes. It’s also low in the back where the tightly tied straps of the halter-neck slap against your shoulders, and that means everyone can probably see the patch of acne your dermatologist promised would subside after puberty. Turns out, all men really do is lie. So you’re also going to have to find a wall to perch against and maintain that position until it’s socially acceptable to leave without Penny being angry with you.

In short: you’re deeply uncomfortable.

You don’t even remember why you picked this out earlier, let alone why you bought it in the first place. A mixture of misplaced bravado and alcohol on a night of online shopping, probably. It’s just that there’s this thing you sometimes get, this peculiar tug in your stomach, this strange desire to be seen at the same time that you’re terrified. You want to be invisible, but sometimes you think you’ll die if you don’t get any attention.

Maybe you just want people to perceive you, but without any of the negative consequences that might come with it.

That’s not how the world works, though, a voice at the back of your head tells you that sounds so much like Penny it scares you.

You spend a good five minutes idling by the parked cars, turning your keys over and over and over in your hands. You have half a mind just to go back home.

The Hard Deck is spilling buttery yellow light into the darkness of the night, and people migrate to it like moths to a lamp. You can hear the music and the chattering of voices even from where you’re standing in the gravel parking lot. It’s the sort of thing that should probably make you excited, but instead, you feel the familiar swoop of anxiety in the pit of your stomach.

Ridiculous, you scold yourself. You can’t honestly be afraid of a night in a bar.

Even past ten o’clock, with the sun set beyond the horizon in a display of pinks and oranges and blues so ostentatious it bordered on smugness - like the sky was saying, hey, look what I can do! - it’s still too hot. You can feel pearls of sweat beading in the nape of your neck, the tops of your thighs, the peak of your hairline. If you don’t go in now, the make-up you spent an embarrassingly long time perfecting will melt down your face in a puddle of mascara and lipgloss.

I’ll just stay for a while, you think. I’ll let Penny make me a pink and fruity cocktail, and then I’m going home in an hour. It’s gonna be okay. I’m gonna be okay.

You’re really trying to hype yourself up as you climb the few steps to the front porch. A few people are milling about here, nursing beers, a couple making out towards the railing where the light doesn’t reach.

Inside, the air smells like sweat and beer and good times. There really is air conditioning, but it doesn’t do too much to dispel the heat of too many people pressing into too little space. People crowd towards the bar, a throng of them, as they nudge and poke to beat each other to the next drink order. It’s mostly people from the Army base, you realize, a little taken aback. A sea of short hair and tan uniforms, beers in hands, and smiles on faces. The jukebox is playing a Springsteen tune.

You’re distracted enough that when somebody bumps into you, you let out an actual yelp and almost lose your footing.

Large hands come up to steady you by the elbows. “Sorry, sweetheart,” someone says from behind you.

You turn on your heel quickly. The guy is beautiful, because of course he is. The sort of beautiful you can recognize even when you get only a glimpse of his jaw and shoulders. Tall, tan, fit.

Your heart skips a beat.

He’s also not looking at you at all, hands already gone from you, neck craned to presumably look for someone in the sea of people.

“Didn’t see you there,” he says, and then he’s strutting away from you just as quickly as he’d come.

And, okay… ouch.

Now you regret wanting to be invisible earlier. Turns out the actual thing does not feel good. Not one bit.

A pit opens up in your stomach, and you need to swallow down whatever emotion is rising in your throat. You have the sudden, embarrassing, debilitating urge to cry.

Then somebody calls your name across the room. It’s Penny, waving at you from behind the bar with a massive grin on her face, and you could fall to your knees with relief.

You push your way through the crowd, fighting elbows and knees until, finally, your palms hit the wooden counter. It’s sticky beneath your fingers. You cringe.

“You made it!” Penny cheers. She draws a perfect glass of beer from the tap even as she talks to you.

You’re reluctantly impressed.

“Yay!” you agree, miming sad little jazz hands.

Penny laughs, never one to let even the most pitiful excuse of a joke pass her by. “I was starting to think you wouldn’t show.”

“I did promise,” you say. You didn’t mean for it to come out as defensive as it does.

Penny shakes her head, still smiling. She deposits the beers in the waiting hands of a Navy pilot, then turns to you. “I don’t doubt your integrity, sweetie. Just your commitment to having fun.”

“Yeah,” you agree, slowly letting your gaze wander over the overstuffed bar. “Fun.”

This time, Penny actually snorts. “Just have a drink, yeah? Relax.”

People have been telling you to relax for years now. You’re too tense, you’re too uptight, you gotta loosen up a little. They did it in high school. They did it when you were studying for an English degree in college you haven’t used even once in the year since your graduation. Hell, you’re pretty sure somebody did it when you were still showing up to kindergarten Halloween costume contests dressed up as a Math teacher while everybody else was a Power Ranger or a Princess.

It’s just a little difficult to relax when all you’ve got is childhood trauma, an apartment you can’t afford, friends you don’t talk to anymore, and student loans to pay off until the end of your life.

“I haven’t been relaxed a day in my life,” you say drily.

You can’t be sure because she’s turning to fill a row of shot glasses lined up neatly on the countertop, but you’re almost positive Penny is rolling her eyes.

“I could help you relax.” You know it’s the guy from earlier before you even turn to confirm your suspicion. He’s sidled up behind you, leaning half over your shoulder. This time, he glances down at you and has the audacity to send you a wink. “I’ve been told I’m quite good at that.”

Now that you know he’s a total sleaze, you feel better about how he ignored you earlier.

“Seriously?” you say. “Has that line ever worked for you?”

A grin spreads over his features. You realize he has an incredibly punchable face.

“Sweetheart,” he drawls, “when you look like me, you don’t really need any lines.”

You bristle. A remark you hope will be scathing builds up on the tip of your tongue, but you’re interrupted before you can let it loose.

“Hangman.” You’re seriously confused by the tone of genuine affection in Penny’s voice. What the hell is that about? “What can I get you?”

“I’ll have a round of beers.” He lets his eyes drift down to you again, and his grin grows impossibly wider. “Plus whatever the little lady’s having. You can put it on my tab.”

Little lady. You’re about to vomit on the countertop. You’re definitely not feeling a strange tightening sensation in your stomach. Nope, no way.

“No, thank you,” you say pointedly. “I can pay for my own drinks.”

Never mind you know for a fact you have about ten dollars left in your wallet.

“Come on,” the guy says, nudging you a little where he’s still hovering over you. He’s so goddamn close. You can feel the heat he radiates, can smell the scent of his aftershave, something spicy yet sweet. When he speaks, his chest rumbles with the sound inches behind you. “See it as an apology for knocking into you earlier.”

So he does remember. You’re not sure if that makes you feel better or worse.

Penny is watching the exchange with a raised eyebrow and a twinkle of something you can’t name in her eyes. It’s enough to inspire actual fear in you.

“Let me guess…” The guy pretends to think about it for a moment or two. “You want something pink and fruity, yeah?”

You can’t believe it’s that easy for him to read you, can’t believe the way it has instant, white-hot shame flashing through you. Now you really want to punch him.

Shoulders actually, genuinely shaking with all the anger piling up inside of you, you turn to face Penny. “Scotch,” you say. “Neat.”

Penny is staring at the two of you as if she’s watching a tennis match. Then, you become suddenly and uncomfortably aware of a bar full of people tailgating behind you, waiting their turn to order their drink.

While you’re starting to feel your skin itch with all the attention, the guy seems to have no qualms. His finger appears in your field of vision as he points at you. “You heard the little lady, Penny. One scotch. Neat.”

He over-pronounces the word, the t crisp and sharp, mocking you, and you grab the countertop hard enough your knuckles protrude white beneath the skin.

Penny shrugs and reaches beneath the bar to retrieve a glass and a bottle of scotch. Then, as if calling back to some inside joke, she says, “You got it, Hangman.”

That stuns you.

“Your name is Hangman?” you ask, and you can’t keep the genuine disbelief out of your voice. “What, did your parents hate you? What the fuck kinda name is that?”

He raises an eyebrow, but the smirk remains unrattled. “You got a pretty dirty mouth, huh, sweetheart?” 

“I can curse as much as I like, thank you very much.”

He hums, says, “We’ll see about that.” 

And when you look over your shoulder, you find him staring at your lips.

You whip back around, elbows squished between your body and the bar, heart beating a hundred miles a minute. Blindly, you stare straight ahead, through the open back doors, to where the moonlight reflects off ocean waves. Something is itching beneath your skin now. You have to calm down before you blow your fuse.

“Hangman,” he explains after a moment of silence, “is my callsign.”

That clarifies just about nothing to you. “Callsign?” you repeat. “What are you, a phone sex operator?”

It was supposed to be an insult, but he throws his head back, laughing like you made the funniest joke he’s ever heard. Then he leans forward, all the way into your personal space, chest pressing to your back, shoulders brushing yours, his breath hot against the shell of your ear as he says, “If you want me to talk dirty to you, sweetheart, all you need to do is ask.”

It sort of wipes your mind clean. No thoughts, only your body reacting - stomach tightening, hairs standing on end, a shiver down your spine. Penny sets the scotch down in front of you, then breezes off to serve some other customers. You barely even see her. Your breaths are coming a little faster, your heart is beating a little harder.

Then he straightens up again, all points of contact suddenly gone. If you weren’t sandwiched between him and the bar with nowhere to go, you think you might tip over backward. It’s all so sudden it leaves you dizzy.

He chuckles, and you hold your ground. Refuse to look at him. If he has picked up on just how rattled he’s got you, you’d rather at least not know about it.

“Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not a phone sex operator,” Hangman says. “I’m a fighter pilot. More dangerous, just as sexy.”

You twist around to get a better look at him. Then, for the first time, you take note of the khaki uniform. Nobody, you think, absolutely nobody, should be able to make that color work for them. And yet somehow, it brings out the green in his eyes.

“Bigger environmental footprint.”

It’s pretty weak, admittedly, but this whole night has spiraled into a realm you didn’t plan for so quickly that you can’t come up with anything else. As a result, you’re uncharacteristically out of your depth.

“Bigger everything,” he shoots back, raising a single eyebrow in challenge.

You don’t know how to counter that, so you take a sip of your scotch and then have to concentrate way too hard not to spit it right back out. The first time you ever tasted alcohol, you snuck a gulp from your dad’s class of Whiskey on the rocks. This is almost as vile, if not worse. Years of consuming margaritas exclusively seem to have dialed your tolerance for straight, hard liquor down to a solid zero. 

“You still sure about that drink?” Hangman asks. The amusement is so evident in the upward turn of his mouth that it makes you want to kick his teeth in or hide behind the counter with Penny. One of the two, just as long as you don’t have to keep looking at him. “I’ll buy you something else. Maybe Penny serves juice boxes.”

Just to spite him, you down the whole thing in a single, long drink.

It burns a trail of fire down your esophagus, and you have to fight a coughing fit so violent you’re not sure you aren’t about to choke. Big mistake, definitely. Huge.

You try your best to keep your face neutral, but your muscles aren’t cooperating. At least if Hangman’s smirk is anything to go by, he’s definitely called your bluff.

“Well, you took that like a trooper,” he says drily. 

Anger lodges in your throat.

“You must be the most insufferable pilot in the whole Navy,” you tell him, hoping all the distaste you feel for Hangman translates into your voice.

Not that it matters. He seems to be one of those guys so infatuated with themselves that everything just rolls off their shoulders, like water off a duck’s back.

“I like to think so,” he says amicably. “I excel at most things I try. Always strive for excellence.”

You’ve never considered yourself a particularly violent person, but you’re pretty sure you would have broken his nose right then and there if it hadn’t been for Penny choosing that exact moment to swoop in.

“Here are your drinks, Hangman.” She places them on the countertop, then jabs a thumb towards the back of the bar. Her voice goes a little pointed as she says, “I think your friends miss you.”

He doesn’t look annoyed to be interrupted, and you can’t believe it, but it puts a little dent in your pride. 

Just how stupid am I? you ask yourself, making a point to face away from him again.

Hangman twists his upper body to reach around you, somehow balancing three bottles in each hand, clamped between his fingers like he’s the alcoholic version of Edward Scissorhands. For a moment, you’re completely enveloped by him, in his arms, and it’s too much, definitely too much, goes straight to your head. You can smell him again, the aftershave and the body spray and the sweat, and as his chest presses flush to your back, you swear you can feel the beat of his heart against all that bare skin exposed by the dress.

“You ever need some help relaxing,” he says into your ear, and for an instant, you feel the ghost of his lips tracing against your ear lobe, “you just ask, yeah, sweetheart?”

And then he’s gone, leaving you clutching at the bar desperately. Your legs feel like jello, ready to give out beneath the weight of your body.

What the fuck just happened? you ask yourself silently. Your mind is still completely, absolutely blank.

Penny pops up out of nowhere like a meerkat. Something on her face tells you you’d better run for cover right now unless you want to get wrapped up in one of her schemes, but you’re rooted to the spot.

“So…” she drawls, and the grin blooming on her face is downright devious. “Hangman, huh?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you mumble, rummaging through your purse just to have something to steady the tremors in your hands.

“He was so coming onto you.”

“He was not.”

“Oh, yeah, he totally was. That was aggressive even for Hangman standards, and, lord, that’s saying something.”

“Can I get, like… a glass of water?”

Penny ignores you. “You should totally go for it.”

She nods her head in the direction he disappeared, and you can’t help but follow with your eyes. A group of Navy pilots is shooting pool in the back towards the opened doors. Even among all the uniforms, Hangman sticks out to you - blond hair, tan skin, smirk you want to slap right off his face. He’s laughing at something the only woman in the group said - a real, full-bellied laugh - and then, out of the blue, as if he can feel your gaze, looks right up at you. 

Across the chaos of the bar, across the scattered tables, across the people swaying to the ABBA song playing from the jukebox, across the raised beer bottles and lowering shot glasses, he sends you a wink.

Feeling caught, you turn away instantly. Your cheeks feel like they’re on fire.

“No way,” you say. It doesn’t come out as firm as you want it to, your voice wavering, and you have half a mind to ask for a bucket of ice to thrust your head into. Maybe that could clear the cobwebs.

Penny laughs. “You sure, honey? You look like you’re about to spontaneously combust.”

“I’m sure I do,” you agree. “From anger. I’ve never met somebody that obnoxious.”

It’s pretty clear you’re grasping at straws here.

“I’ve known him since he was a student at Top Gun. He’s a good guy,” Penny says. “Deep down.”

“How deep are we talking? Like Mariana Trench? Center of the earth?”

Penny rolls her eyes. “Come on. Stop thinking so much. Go and have some fun.”

You point at the sign hanging above her bar, the one she’s so proud of she has mentioned it to you several times. “I thought you were supposed to help out when somebody disrespects a lady in here.”

It makes her laugh, a genuine laugh full of amusement and affection that bursts out from deep in her belly. She pets your hand gently.

“You can handle yourself. I know it for a fact.” The smile goes from genuine to mischievous. “Besides… you could stand to be disrespected a little. In the bedroom.”

You gape at her retreating back for a moment.

Then you drop your face into your hands and mutter to yourself, “Oh, God.”

Again… what the fuck just happened?

+

“Hangman asked me to give him your number.”

Penny doesn’t even wait until the end of the lesson this time.

You’re at the Benjamin dining table, watching over Amelia’s shoulder as she writes a short paragraph on misogynistic themes in Much Ado About Nothing. All the ice cubes in your water glass have melted, and the condensation leaves rings on the tabletop and damp against your palms.

When you glance up from Amelia’s work, her mother is standing in the doorway to the kitchen, arms folded in front of her chest. She’s grinning. You look back at the notebook and pretend your heart hasn’t just started racing.

Amelia, whose pen has stilled, asks, “What’s a hangman?”

“Who,” Penny corrects. “He’s a guy interested in your tutor.”

“There’s only one c in unnecessary,” you say. “A shirt has one collar, two sleeves.”

Amelia doesn’t seem to have heard you. “Oh my god,” she says. “Is he cute?”

“Very,” Penny answers at the same time that you grit out, “Not at all.”

“Is he a pilot, too?” Amelia asks, shooting her mother a look you don’t miss.

For all that she is just a teenager with all the eccentricities and dramatics that entails, Amelia has what some would call an old soul. She’s always looking out for her mother, always thinking things through to the bitter ends that Penny would rather look at through the lenses of her perpetual rose-colored glasses.

It reminds you of yourself, and sometimes you want to hug Amelia, hold her, tell her she doesn’t need to take on all these battles. That she deserves to be a child, should revel in it for as long as she can. You don’t want her to end up like you, all this baggage and no one to help you carry it.

“Of course.” Penny, unperturbed, pushes into the room and pulls out a chair for herself. “Nobody can resist those Military men.”

You hide your snort behind a coughing fit just so you don’t give Penny the satisfaction of thinking she’s actually funny. She doesn’t deserve that.

“When did you meet him?”

“Saturday, at your mom’s bar,” you explain, pulling her notebook towards you. “And we didn’t meet. He almost knocked me over and then proceeded to mock me for ten minutes. Not exactly romantic.”

Penny rolls her eyes. “Oh, please. He was flirting with her like crazy.”

You pretend to be busy scanning over Amelia’s writing, but you don’t register much past the words Hero and Claudio.

“Which one is Hangman again?” Amelia asks. She sounds much too invested in this for your liking.

“The blond one.”

“Oh, with the green eyes?”

“That’s the one.”

“Wait, he’s so cute.”

You groan and drop your head onto the tabletop.

So yeah, maybe there are people out there with real problems. People that are starving or people that have lost their homes. Compare your situation to them, and your toil will seem like nothing. All that is true. But right now, at this moment, you can’t imagine a fate worse than having both Benjamin women pouncing on you like this.

“Don’t be so dramatic, sweetie.” Penny pats the top of your head like you’re a small dog. A miniature poodle or something. “If anything, Hangman will be a good time.”

You turn your head so your cheek is pressed against the wood of the table and glare at her. “Maybe we shouldn’t discuss this in front of your teenage daughter.”

“This isn’t the worst conversation she’s had in front of me,” Amelia says. She’s doodling something in the top corner of her essay. At your skeptical look, she shrugs. “Mom gets chatty when she’s drunk.”

“What I’m saying,” Penny continues, voice rising just a little, “is that you won’t regret giving Hangman your number. You need to loosen up a little.”

“I’m gonna pretend I didn’t notice that innuendo,” you mumble under your breath, then sit back up abruptly. “Absolutely no way. He’s not getting my number.”

“I think it would be cool if you had a boyfriend,” Amelia interjects.

“You and me both, baby,” Penny agrees, leaning across the table to take a sip of Amelia’s sugar-free Mountain Dew.

You are going to start screaming spontaneously any minute now.

“I’m perfectly fine being single.”

Amelia grimaces. “You literally know half of Much Ado About Nothing by heart.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing,” Penny reassures quickly and gives her daughter a placating look. “Just that you might have a bit too much time on your hands.”

“That’s not true. I work six days a week.”

“Exactly!” Penny smiles from ear to ear. It’s almost angelic, that smile. You can’t believe there’s an actual demon hiding behind it. “Which is why I should give Hangman your number. You have to have some fun at least one day a week.”

“I agree,” Amelia says.

“Am I still getting paid for this?” you ask, glancing at your phone to get the time. “Does this stay on the clock?”

Penny doesn’t answer your question. “I just think anybody in Fightertown needs to go on at least one date with a Navy pilot. It’s a rite of passage, really.”

“Aren’t there any other eligible pilots around then? Somebody nice? Literally anybody else?”

Penny’s smile turns soft. “You’re not seriously trying to convince me you’d be content with a nice guy, are you?”

That gives you pause. “What’s wrong with nice guys?”

“Absolutely nothing. Just… I don’t think nice is what you need at all, sweetie.”

You exhale loudly and then sit up, shaking away the strands of hair plastered to your cheek. “I don’t think I could stand being around Hangman either.”

“I’m not saying you should get married to the guy,” Penny acquiesces, “just… go on one date.”

You think about it for a moment. Think about dressing up in your prettiest dress, waiting outside your shitty apartment complex for Hangman to pick you up. Would he wear his uniform again or civilian clothes? You imagine him in jeans and a t-shirt, a hoodie for when it gets colder, the way the fabric would hug his broad shoulders. Would he take you to a restaurant or to the movies? No, Hangman seems like the type of guy to take you somewhere he can show off, you decide, to go bowling or surfing or something equally embarrassing for you, gratifying for him. You think about sharing a bottle of beer on the beach, the ocean spreading far and wide and blue in front of you, waves cresting, the moon gleaming, his warm hand on your back, his voice so close to your ear. Think of drawing him closer, his breath on your mouth, his touch on your hips…

You shake your head to banish the thoughts.

No way, you think, and something inside of you flutters with the sudden fear of it all, no way I can do this.

“I don’t think so, Penny,” you say. Your voice has gone quiet, dispassionate but firm, and you know Penny will know not to push further. “We should get finished with this lesson.”

Penny is quiet for so long that you know she’s swallowing down words. So you make it a point not to look at her. 

There’s a fear inside of you, a fear that stands in doorways and won’t let you pass. A fear that blocks the pathways of your life. You’ve been static for so long now that you don’t know how to shake it. Sometimes you don’t even know if you want to.

There’s something reassuring about not moving. It means you won’t get lost.

Finally, Penny sighs. “Alright,” she says, rapping her knuckles against the tabletop. “Be good, you two.”

You concentrate on the words blurring and sliding off the page in front of you and ignore the insistent, nagging voice at the back of your head chanting coward coward coward.

+

It’s Friday, but you’re not feeling at all inclined to thank God for it.

The gas station is deserted, which, in your humble opinion, is much worse than when it’s busy. Because no costumers mean nothing to do and nothing to do means nothing to occupy your mind with, and nothing to occupy your mind with means thinking, thinking, thinking.

You’re like a broken record - getting halfway through a thought before you circle back to the beginning, endless loops cartwheeling around and around.

It goes: Penny, Amelia, Hangman, Saturdays at the Hard Deck, Arizona Ice Tea spill in aisle four, Hangman, Hangman, Hangman… record scratch, pause, tape spooling, rewinding, replaying.

You’re so bored you’ve counted all the ceiling tiles four times. On the radio, they’re talking about the weather. The slushie machine is spinning cherry-colored ice with little, gurgling sounds.

The bell chimes, and you barely look up from your phone screen. A few lowered voices, the sound of laughter, and shuffling feet on linoleum floors as the group approaches the glass walls behind which row after row of drinks stands huddled can to can in the blessed cool. You blow a strand of hair out of your eyes.

“Well, well, well, what do we have here?”

And you must have done something really horrible in a past life - there’s no other explanation for why the universe keeps doing this to you.

Hangman is leaning against the counter, one elbow braced on the top, the other arm lifting to flick his sunglasses down to the tip of his nose. He’s smirking, and the expression has become so familiar already that you think it might be melded with his face. You pretend not to notice the sleeve of his uniform straining against his bicep.

“Are you stalking me?” you ask.

“Definitely not.” Stepping away from the counter, he lifts a sixpack into the air. “I’m buying beer.”

You raise an eyebrow. “You got any ID?”

It punches a laugh out of him, and you don’t like it. You weren’t aiming to amuse him - you want to annoy him. You want to make his skin crawl the way he does to you. You want to slip inside his mind and burrow there, stay there, get lodged there. A splinter in his finger. A thorn in his side.

The intensity of it scares you, and when you reach for your water bottle, playing with the cap, your hands are shaking.

He reaches into his pocket and gets out his wallet. The picture on his driver’s license is old; He’s younger in it but no less handsome. His hair is just as blond, his eyes just as green. There's nothing ridiculous about it, unlike the botched photo you took at the DMV years ago.

You glance at his date of birth belatedly, almost like an afterthought, then do the mental math quickly. Not because you think he isn’t old enough to buy the beer. Just to find out how big the gap between him and you is.

Seven years. Seven years… you don’t know what that means. You don’t know why you care.

“Alright.” You move to ring up the sixpack, but he shakes his head.

“Waiting for my friends,” he explains with a thumb thrown over his shoulder.

“You have friends?”

He laughs again. “You’re funny.”

“I’m not trying to be,” you mutter and, resolved not to engage with him any further, pick your phone back up and settle in against the shelf of cigarettes behind you to ignore him.

He is having none of it, and you’re not even surprised.

“I liked the dress better, but those shorts aren’t half bad either.”

You look down at your work uniform of white denim shorts and a hideously orange vest with your name tag pinned to the chest. It is a downgrade from Saturday’s outfit, that’s for sure, but you haven’t settled on how you feel that he remembers it yet.

“I didn’t think you noticed my dress,” you say.

“Sweetheart, you’d have to be an idiot not to notice that dress.”

It has you lifting an eyebrow, seeing an in. “Oh, so you admit you’re an idiot then? Since you ran into me and all?”

His smirk goes just a fraction wider. “Maybe I did it on purpose.”

“You run into girls on purpose often?”

“Only the real pretty ones.”

It makes your head spin because… things like this just don’t happen to you. Not with guys like Hangman, at least. And it’s not even because you think you’re ugly or unappealing. Rationally you know you’re not. It’s just that he’s so… he’s so…

“What, am I so handsome you’re speechless?”

He’s so goddamn insufferable.

“You torturing this poor girl, Hang?” 

You recognize the woman from last Saturday, her sharp cheekbones, the glossy hair sleeked back into an army-mandated but nonetheless impressive coil at the back of her neck. She’s pushed her sunglasses up to the top of her head, which already makes her less of a show-off than Hangman by a mile. The smile she gives you is genuine and warm, and you feel yourself relax.

Anything’s better than being alone with Hangman.

“Oh, hardly.” Hangman shuffles to the side to let the woman heave another six-pack onto the counter. “If anything, she’s the one torturing me.”

There’s a literal ball of fire in your stomach, radiating heat all the way up to your cheeks. You must be looking like a deer caught in headlights right now.

The woman purses her lips. There’s so much derision in this one minuscule expression that it has actual jealousy jolting through you. Man, if only you could look at Hangman like that, you might actually make some sort of impact on him.

“Stop lying, man.” The woman rolls her eyes and then shares a look with you, something conspiratorial, something long-suffering only women can share in the presence of a man severely overestimating his own desirability. “She’ll punch you before she lets you take her out.”

Hangman shrugs. “Fine with me. It’s a fine line between love and hate.”

“What the fuck,” you mumble and busy yourself with the register.

“Is he bothering ladies again?” Two other men in Navy uniforms step up. One, tall, dark-skinned, mustachioed, dumps a whole armful of snacks on the counter, then grins at you a little sheepishly. 

“Always,” the woman answers without missing a beat.

Hangman says, “I’m not bothering her if she enjoys it.”

You’re almost entirely positive that he winked at you again, but you make it a point not to look up and start scanning items instead. 

“You guys need any bags?”

“That’s alright,” the woman answers.

They chat among themselves as you ring them up, but you can feel Hangman’s eyes on you the whole time. It’s enough to make you feeble, clumsy, and try your best not to drop anything.

You don’t know what compels you to say something. By all means, you should stay quiet. Let him leave. Never think about it again.

Instead, you pick up a bag of flaming hot Cheetos and say, as casually as you can manage, “Are you having a party?”

“Bonfire,” Hangman corrects. His elbow is still balanced on the counter, all that tanned skin, and you let your eyes follow the trail of his arm, up to his chest where his name tag spells SERESIN, all in capital letters. You pause there, staring at the name. “On the beach.”

You think that’s going to be it, that you’re going to ring him up and send him home. You’ll bite your tongue bloody before you say another word.

But then he continues, “You should come.”

He hasn’t been exactly subtle in his flirting, so this shouldn’t come as a surprise, and yet somehow it does, enough to stun you. Maybe it’s just your lack of self-confidence, but such a blatant invitation to spend an evening not just with him but with all his friends, makes your brain short-circuit.

“I have to work,” you answer almost automatically, brain operating completely on auto-pilot.

He lifts his shoulders in a noncommittal shrug. “After work, then.”

You open your mouth but can’t come up with another excuse, so you just settle on, “Your total is 42,98.”

You think he will fight you on it like he’s been fighting you on everything since the first time you met. But he just smirks, only one side of his mouth lifting, and gets his card from his pocket.

“I’ll pay,” he says.

When you accept his card, you take painfully meticulous care not to let your fingers brush against his.

The woman watches the whole exchange, and as you glance at her, something unreadable, some tiny flicker of emotion crosses her face before a genuine, slight smile replaces it.

Hangman stores his wallet in his pocket and starts collecting snacks in both arms, as do the other two men. You watch it all with a strange feeling fluttering in your chest, something that grows in your throat, threatening to choke you.

You wonder what it would be like to live in the moment, to stop thinking of consequences, stop weighting every decision with scales, overthinking every issue until you’ve looked at it from every angle and still haven’t found a single solution. You wonder what it would be like to throw your hands up in the air, say fuck it, who cares, wait for the end of your shift and drive down to that beach, get drunk on the beer you sold to the most obnoxious pilot in the history of the Navy, to take him home later and then have him inevitably never call you or text you or even speak to you again.

You wonder what it would be like not to feel the weight of the world drag you down, down, down.

“See you around, sweetheart,” Hangman says, smirking, pushing his aviators back up the bridge of his nose until the green eyes disappear behind the dark shades, until he’s obstructed from view. Until he becomes once more just a guy you pass on shopping streets, too beautiful to be real, too beautiful to ever talk to you. He turns towards the door, the other two in tow.

If he looks back, you think, torn between wishing and dreading, if he looks back, I’ll go.

He doesn’t look back.

Only the woman hangs back, looking at you with the same expression you can’t make light of. Curiosity, maybe. Interest.

“He’s not giving you too much trouble, is he?” she asks after a moment.

Her voice is different now, less harsh somehow. Softer.

You can’t even imagine what it must be like to try and make it as a woman in a world that’s still as obviously run by men as the army. You suppose there’s some amount of adjustment involved, some posturing. A shell as thick as armor.

“It’s… it’s fine. He’s harmless.” You’re surprised at your own words but not as surprised as you are to find that you actually mean them.

No part of you feels threatened by Hangman; no part of you feels unsafe or intimidated. You’ve been hit on by enough sleazy men in bars to know that that’s a rarity.

“He can be a lot, sometimes.”

You snort. “I can tell. If anyone’s in danger here, though, it’s him.”

She raises an eyebrow, and her sunglasses, still pushed into her hair, climb with the movement. “How so?”

“If he keeps going as he has been, I’ll punch him in the face.”

She grins and says, “I don’t doubt it.”

It’s nice. Pleasant. Easy.

You can’t remember the last time you spoke to somebody close to your own age like this, almost like you’re friends. At the realization, your heart gives a painful pang.

“I’m Phoenix, by the way,” she says, offering you a hand across the counter.

You take it without hesitation and smile at her as you tell her your name.

She nods. “We usually hang around the Hard Deck on Saturdays if you ever want to come by.”

“Oh,” you say, “Thank you.”

It’s a genuine offer, you can tell. She doesn’t strike you as somebody who says things she doesn’t mean, and that’s why it’s special to you.

She nods again, says goodbye, and pushes off the counter.

By the door, she pauses suddenly. Then, with one hand already on the handle, she glances back at you.

“He’s not a bad guy,” Phoenix says, face gentle, and you don’t need to ask who she’s talking about. “He’s just… he’s just Hangman. He acts like an asshole, but he’s a softie on the inside.”

You sink your teeth into your lower lip, unsure how to answer.

Phoenix shrugs. “I just thought you should know,” she says.

The bell above the door rings as she steps outside. A gust of warm wind blows in. The aircon groans once and pumps more stale, cool air into the room. The radio is stuck on a Katy Perry song. You tap your fingers against the countertop in a rhythmless pattern, squeeze your eyes shut, and think of the long, long stretch of nothingness that extends before you.

+

Three months ago, you packed your life into a car.

It had never been part of the plan. Because that was a thing you used to have, once upon a time - a plan. You knew exactly what you wanted, from the job to the dog breed to the car. There was a house down the road from your parents, a house with a blue door and a white fence, and a tire swing dangling from the branches of an old, twisting willow tree, and you had known you’d buy it one day since you were five.

When you were eight, you used to run past that house every day to catch the school bus, thinking what it would be like to be up on that swing, kicking your legs and soaring higher, higher, higher, up into the blue of the sky. When you were fifteen, you wondered what it would be like to live in a house with two stories, a house where things wouldn’t be cramped, where you didn’t have to spend fifteen minutes waiting for the only bathroom to be free, where you didn’t hit your elbows and knees and shins and toes on all the nooks and crannies and rusting nails protruding from wood. Finally, when you were twenty, you wondered what it would be like to come home from work to a husband who loved you and kids who smiled at you.

So you used to have a plan. Go to college, get a job, grow up, get married, buy that house. You used to have things figured out.

And then your mother died.

You remember watching her as she began to fade, as she went translucent like the paper she used to wrap your sandwiches in. As cancer dissected her, flayed her open, ate away her edges, a little more each day. As she went from vibrant colors to shades of gray, film history reversing itself. You remember when it got so bad, you left college to go back home, to sit by her bedside every day, to feed her by the spoon as she had once fed you, to read to her from the books you had once studied in 8 am classes, from Bronte and Joyce and Fitzgerald.

One morning you walked into her room, expecting to see her awake, and found that she’d gone cold in the night instead. To this day, you’ll never forget how that felt - the grief of it, instant and cleaving you in two, the panic of practicality, of not knowing what to do or who to call. And then the relief, that horrible, warped thing that welled up inside of you, that you still can’t forgive yourself for, because at least it was finally over, all that suffering and all that waiting around for the inevitable.

It was a small funeral. Your parents divorced years ago, back in the cartoon and apple juice days of your life, and your father was clumsy as always, a stranger in the face of the familiarity you’d shared with your mother. Just a touch of his fingertips to your shoulder at an open grave, a downward twist to his mouth, whispering sorry, kiddo, before he disappeared back into the lovely townhouse with his new family and the younger, more agreeable versions of you, the children he’d actually wanted. Back to sending you a birthday card a week late or a month late or not at all and never calling and never visiting and scheduling Facetime calls he forgot about in favor of dance recitals or school plays.

So then you were alone. Resoundingly. Irrevocably.

You finished college in a daze, graduated just because you had gotten halfway there, and dropping out seemed like a bigger hassle than finishing. Found yourself with a degree you no longer remembered what you had wanted to do with in the first place and all those crippling student loans. 

That house with the blue door and the white fence and the tire swing on the willow tree had lost its meaning. Your plan had turned to dust and slipped through your fingers, had been buried right alongside your mother.

So you sold your mother’s place (because who wants a house full of ghosts anyway, a house where each room reminds you of something that will spend the rest of your life missing from you) and got in your car, and you drove. You drove along the coast, through the thick trees of Washington, past the streams of Oregon, through the deserts of California, and when your car finally broke down in Fightertown, you said, fuck it, whatever, might as well, other places suck too. And you stayed.

It has remained the only time in your life you have ever acted on impulse, ever let your heart decide instead of your head, and you’re still not sure if it was the right decision.

You spend your days now trying to scrape together enough money to pay for your electricity bills and your rent and your gas. Just enough to get a frozen yogurt every once in a while. Just enough money so you don’t have to think about money all the time, counting it, saving it, missing it.

It’s sad, you think, when you’re alone at night, spread-eagle on your bed, limbs dangling off the sides of the mattress, staring up at the water stain spreading like a plume of smoke across your ceiling. A sad, little life with no direction.

You’re wallowing, and you know you are. Your penchant for dramatics is getting the best of you.

Most days, it’s not so bad. You like Penny, and you like Amelia, and the other day you went to see a movie at the theater, and that was nice. You like your books and your music and the Reese’s peanut butter cups you buy with your employee discount at the gas station. You like the beach, the taste of salt on your lips, and how the sun feels on the tip of your nose.

So most days, it’s not so bad. And then sometimes, it is.

Then it settles around like a dark cloud, like a fear you just can’t shake. That nagging anxiety in the pit of your stomach that seems to have no cause and no solution gnaws at you, yaps around your ankles, sinks its fangs into you, and won’t let go.

That’s when you curl into bed (but not under the covers because it’s still California and still too hot and still too expensive to keep the fan spinning) and blink into the nothingness and don’t move. And that’s when you dream, or else the dread of it all will swallow you whole and never spit you out again.

So you tell yourself that’s why you’re here again, at the Hard Deck, for the second week in a row, choosing to spend your Saturday with a bunch of sweaty drunk people instead of a family-size pizza. It’s just because you want to avoid the maelstrom of your mind.

It’s definitely not because you couldn’t stand the echoing loneliness of your shitty apartment anymore. It’s definitely not because Phoenix invited you and just seemed so goddamn nice. And it’s most definitely, a 100 percent certainly, cross-your-heart-and-hope-to-die, not because of Hangman. 

You’ll go to your grave swearing that.

When you shuffle into the bar, Penny stares at you like you’ve grown a second head. It’s early enough that there’s still space to move.

“What the hell?” she says, abandoning her task completely in favor of turning to gawk at you. “What are you doing here?”

You shrug your shoulders, trying for nonchalance even as you feel like there are tiny bugs wriggling beneath your skin. Too many eyes on you. “I was craving a drink.”

Penny raises an eyebrow in what you recognize as the international sign of not convincing enough.

“Who the hell are you,” she asks, “and what have you done with my daughter’s tutor?”

Ducking your head, you clumsily climb onto one of the barstools and fold your arms on the counter. Then you try to look around the bar as inconspicuously as possible.

“He’s not here yet,” Penny says.

“Huh?” Feeling caught, you busy yourself with adjusting the hem of your skirt, so it covers as much thigh space as possible. “What?”

Penny doesn’t even pretend to buy it for your benefit. “Hangman,” she says. “That’s why you’re here, right?”

You stiffen, alarm bells going off in your head. If she can read you this easily…

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you lie.

“Oh, come on, sweetie.” She pats your hand in a gesture you can’t describe as anything but pacifying. “It’s alright.”

Your face feels hot. “It’s not like that,” you say, but even you can tell it’s a feeble attempt at an argument.

Penny chuckles. It’s not a mean sound, quite the opposite, actually, but it still makes your heart sink an inch or two.

“There’s nothing wrong with being attracted to someone, you know?”

That has you bristling. “I’m not attracted to him,” you protest. “I hate him.”

Utterly unbothered by the note of distress that has snuck its way into your voice, Penny shakes her head, an affectionate smile playing about her mouth. “There’s nothing wrong with a little bit of hate-fucking either.”

The gasp her words elicit from you is downright scandalized. You throw a furtive look at the patrons around you to make sure nobody heard, but that just makes Penny’s smile grow.

At least one of you is having fun.

“I’m not going to hate fuck anybody,” you say and then immediately wish your voice had sounded more firm. Less squeaky.

Penny shrugs. “Alright. It’s a fine line between love and hate anyway.”

“Why does everybody keep telling me that?” you whisper.

Either Penny doesn’t think that worthy of an answer, or she didn’t hear you. Which is fine either way. It was more of a rhetorical question anyway.

“So what do you want to drink, then?” Penny asks, finally seeming to decide to indulge you just a little.

Finally you perk up. “Can you make me a Mojito?”

You spend the better part of an hour sitting at the bar, telling yourself you’re definitely not waiting around for him. You’re only here to get drunk.

But the longer you sit alone, watching people around you enjoying themselves, watching as the chatter goes from quiet to deafening, as the place fills up with a steady stream of patrons, the worse of an idea the whole thing seems like. You can’t remember what provoked you to come in the first place for the life of you.

Suddenly, your bed, a gaping, looming lion’s mouth earlier, seems like the most inviting place in the world.

“Penny,” you call, leaning across the counter and waving your hand to get her attention. “Can I just pay, please?”

“You’re going home?”

“I… yeah. I think so.”

With the way Penny is frowning at you, you can tell she isn’t too pleased, but she doesn’t fight you on it.

“I’ll let you go home, but you’re not paying,” she says.

“Penny, you already pay me. You don’t need to let me drink here for free, too.”

She chuckles. “Oh, I’m not. Hangman said to put anything you drink on his tab if you ever show up again.”

That gives you pause, your stomach tightening. “I can’t accept that,” you say, and your voice comes out strangely choked.

“Oh, but you can.”

It’s Hangman, because of course it is. He seems to have an uncanny ability to show up whenever you do so much as think of him. Like he can sense any mention of his name even from miles away. His ego is certainly big enough.

Grinning, he claims the empty space at the bar next to you, leaning his back against it with both elbows braced on the wood. “I wouldn’t be much of a gentleman if I let a girl as pretty as you pay for her own drinks, now would I?”

“Gentleman,” you repeat under your breath. “We’re just saying whatever now, huh?”

He ignores that, twisting around instead to chirp, “Penny, darling, light of my life, will you get her another… what is that, a virgin Mojito?”

You wish you could come up with something witty, but you’re distracted by the long, long stretch of his legs, and all that comes out is, “I drink them with alcohol, actually.”

“Really? Is it only scotch you have trouble with then?”

Now this reminds you just why you hate this guy. Who cares if he’s handsome? Who cares if your heart starts cartwheeling every time he smirks at you? He’s a certified, purebred bastard, and you’re seriously considering if the satisfaction of breaking his nose would be worth the inevitable lawsuit.

“I don’t need you to pay for my drink,” you say, voice firm this time.

“I know,” he counters, still smiling, “but I’m pretty sure the Navy pays me better than whatever you’re making at that gas station, so I don’t mind. Just stop being difficult and let me pay for whatever you order.” 

The anger settles in your throat, already familiar. It’s difficult to keep it down, to keep your head from exploding.

“Fine,” you grit out from between clenched teeth. Then you turn away. “Penny? One round for everybody. It’s on him.”

The smile slides off Hangman’s face, his expression morphing into something stunned. For a moment, he actually looks impressed.

Then he laughs and shakes his head. If you didn’t know any better, you’d say there was something like begrudging admiration flickering across the planes of his face.

“Alright,” he says, “I’ll hand it to you, sweetheart. That was well played.”

He gives Penny the okay, smirk once more firmly in place. And you, triumph so short-lived that it dies inside you like a pathetic little candle snuffed out by a typhoon, consider letting loose a long, echoing screech. 

Is there anything that will break that steely resolve of arrogance he carries everywhere he goes?

Penny rings the bell, and the answering cheer almost pops your eardrums. You turn away from Hangman before you do resort to violence and drain the last of your cocktail in a single sip.

“I’m going home,” you say and hop off the barstool. It brings you inevitably closer to Hangman, your thighs brushing his, and you pretend not to notice.

“So soon?” he asks, and you don’t need to turn to know he has raised one eyebrow. “I only just got here.”

“Hence my leaving,” you counter drily.

“And here I was thinking you wore this dress for me.”

He doesn’t touch you, but for a moment his fingers hook into the soft pink fabric of your dress, where it flares out around your hips. It’s enough to send a shiver down your back.

The worst part of it all, you think, is that he isn’t wrong. You upended the contents of your wardrobe earlier tonight until every available surface in your room - from the bed to the chair to the floor - was covered in clothes you deemed just not right. This number - flimsy, tight, low in the chest but a little more modest where the hem hits almost halfway down your thighs - was buried at the back of your closet, practically forgotten and with the price tag still on. Even as you laughed at how ridiculous you were being, part of you hoped he might notice.

And now that he has, you’re wishing you could rewind time and exchange the infernal thing for sweatpants and an old flannel.

“You’re way too full of yourself,” you tell him.

“So I’ve been told.” He gives you another once over, and suddenly you feel as if you’re standing naked in the middle of this bar. “This one’s spectacular, too, sweetheart, but I still maintain that first dress was my favorite.”

Somewhere between flattered and fed-up, you shoulder your purse. “Goodbye, Hangman.”

“Oh, come on.” He steps to block your path but makes no further move to touch you. “Have another drink with me.”

You’re about to protest when a gentle hand lands on your shoulder.

“You really need to learn how to take no for an answer, Bagman,” Phoenix says. “The lady’s not interested.”

You can feel the smile spreading on your face. Just in time, you think.

Ignoring Hangman completely, she turns to you. “You wanna shoot some pool with my friends and me?”

You glance at Hangman from the corner of your eye, unsure whether you hope she counts him among those friends or not. Then you nod because Phoenix is still nice, and you don’t actually want to go home to your empty apartment, and playing pool sounds fun just about now.

“Sure. Why not?”

As Phoenix leads you toward the tables in the back, you feel Hangman’s eyes on you like hot irons.

+

You’re five drinks in by the time you give up on pool.

“God,” you whine, lowering your cue. “I suck at this.”

“I’d disagree,” Payback says, staring down at the green felt of the table like he might be about to cry, “but I think you’re right.”

“Hey, we’re supposed to be on the same team!”

He grins. “Sorry, but my mother didn’t raise me to be a liar.”

There’s a warmth flooding your chest, something liquid and light. It might be the alcohol or the unfamiliar levity of it all. You’re more used to intense fits of worrying and anxiety than laughter with people you met only about an hour ago but still almost feel like friends.

“Want me to teach you, sweetheart?” 

Hangman’s sitting on a barstool not far away, nursing his beer. He’s been staring at you since you started the game, and maybe it's part of the reason your cue stick kept going in directions you didn’t mean for it to. Now you can just hear the smirk in his voice.

If you were less drunk, you’d come up with a witty response. But, as it stands, you just say, “No.”

Hangman ignores you. You can feel him behind you even before he steps up, your fingers tensing around your cue, your whole body locking up as if in anticipation, as if in dread. And then he’s there, solid and warm behind you, fingers curling around your arm and moving it backward.

The place he touches you seems to tingle.

“Like this,” he says, voice low and chest rumbling with the sound. He’s speaking right into your ear again, and suddenly it’s impossible to talk, to think, to breathe.

He brings you into position with one hand on your waist, and you can’t believe it, but he’s practically bending you over that pool table in the middle of that bar, and you’re just letting him. His hips press into your own, an insistent weight that makes your head spin, makes you feel like you’re about to slide right off the face of the earth. The table's edge cuts into your abdomen, but you barely even feel it. You can’t register anything past the feeling of his skin gliding against your own as he lets his free hand wander slowly, slowly, down the expanse of your arm.

“Now, just gently…” He guides your arm backward as he speaks, his voice right in your ear, right in your head, his breath against your cheek, the side of your mouth, and you’re dizzy, can’t even see the ball that’s right in front of you, have no idea what he wants you to shoot at. “... thrust.”

The ball lands in the pocket with a resounding thunk.

For a moment, you just blink at where it disappeared.

“Good girl,” Hangman says, so quietly that only you can hear, fingers squeezing just once where he still holds you by the hip, and then he steps away.

It sends a jolt of molten heat through you. Your knees, which felt wobbly before, threaten to buckle. You just stay there for a moment, frozen, bent over that table, feeling like the earth beneath your feet is rolling in waves. A sound escapes you, something from low in your throat that gets swallowed up in the bar's noise - all the chatter and the music and the sounds of the engines running in the parking lot.

And then it’s an ice-cold panic that has you scrambling, standing upright, stepping away from the table, turning towards the group of people around you, and pretending you’re not trembling all over, that your panties aren’t soaked through.

“I’m done, I think.” You raise your cue above your head like a sports trophy. Your voice is remarkably firm for how frail you feel. “Who wants to take over for me?”

There’s a shuffle as a few of the guys whose names you can’t remember start fighting each other for your spot on Payback’s team. You give up after a while and just drop the cue. Somebody catches it before it can clatter to the ground, and you turn your back on them.

Tugging at the folds of your skirt, you try desperately to regain control. The evening is slipping through your fingers like wet rope. You feel unmoored.

Phoenix, grinning from her perch against the jukebox, offers you a swig from her beer bottle. “I think you weren’t too bad.”

“Well, I did keep forgetting if I was supposed to hit the stripes or the solids, so, like….” you admit, accepting the bottle and taking a tentative sip. Maybe this will help calm you. The taste hits your tongue, and you grimace. “Ew. I don’t get how you guys drink this.”

Phoenix laughs at you. “It takes practice.”

“I don’t wanna practice that,” you say. “I’ll just get another Mojito, I think.”

You’re not going to survive this night unless you have another drink. Hell, you might not survive this night even if you have another drink.

You don’t think you’ve ever been this confused. Your mind is a thicket of thorns that bite your skin at any move.

Hangman leans forward in his seat until he’s in your field of vision. His eyebrows are furrowed in a way you haven’t seen before, but beneath them, his eyes glint. It hits you suddenly that he knows exactly what he’s done, that he is perfectly aware of the effect he has on you.

You consider getting that cue stick back and whacking him over the head with it.

“You sure you want another one, sweetheart?”

You frown and say, more forcefully than necessary, “Why? You don’t wanna pay for it?”

“Oh, I’ll pay for it,” he says. “I’m just thinking somebody will have to carry you home if you have another one.”

“Don’t act like you wouldn’t love to carry her home,” Coyote chimes in, grinning and wiggling his eyebrows. At least you think that’s Coyote. Things are starting to go a little blurry.

As you approach the bar, you say, a bite to your words, “I’ll make your dreams come true, then.” 

Penny is busy at the opposite end, so you order from a girl who seems a lot less interested in serving you than the group of aviators currently trying to get her attention. Which you can’t really blame her for.

From behind you, maybe-Coyote keeps going, “You should make some of his other dreams come true, too.”

Phoenix lands a well-placed elbow between his ribs. “Shut up, man. You’re being creepy.”

“I don’t sleep with drunk women,” Hangman says as the bartender deposits a dispassionately assembled Mojito in front of you. “My mother raised me to be a gentleman.”

Your snort is decidedly unladylike, but you couldn’t care less. You’re so far gone. 

“You keep saying that, but I haven’t seen you act like one even once.” Then, as an afterthought, you add, “Also, I’m not drunk.”

You pull your drink towards you, the glass cold with the ice cubes swimming in it, and promptly spill a healthy stream across your own arm and the bartop.

“Sure you’re not,” Hangman agrees smoothly. He procures a stack of paper napkins from somewhere and starts dabbing at your elbow, soaking up the worst of it. You stare at his movement with your head spinning. Why is he being nice? “I’m not a gentleman in the bedroom, though, I’ll have you know.”

He winks at you, and that’s more like the nefarious Hangman you know. It lets you relax a little.

“Christ.” Phoenix looks like she might hurl. “You want to lay it on any thicker, Hang?”

He just shrugs, so casual about it all. You wonder if he’s ever been rattled by anything. If he’s ever felt as out of his depth as you do every time he enters a room. 

“Who doesn’t like it a little rough in the bedroom, Phoenix?”

You can’t believe he said that to her. Part of you expects Phoenix to roll her eyes and give him a piece of her mind, but she just grins, shaking her head.

“Me, actually,” she says. “Just leaves you sore. I prefer it slow.”

“Slow?” Hangman repeats. “You and Rooster would be a match made in heaven. Masters of the geriatric pace.”

“Who’s Rooster?” you ask, wondering if Hangman is trying to set Phoenix up with someone running a poultry farm.

Nobody answers your question.

“It’s been my experience,” Phoenix says, “that most guys only like it rough cause they have no idea how else to do it.”

Coyote laughs at that. It’s obviously meant to taunt Hangman, but he doesn’t react much beyond a tiny upward twitch of his mouth.

You’re left wondering if these are normal conversations people have with their friends. Are you just a prude? You feel like you’re going insane.

And then Bob, who has been quietly snacking on peanuts for most of the night, pipes up, “I think it just depends on your partner. You gotta listen to them.”

Hangman stares at him like he’s just revealed he likes to take his clothes off and perform an Irish jig on top of an aircraft every Sunday. “Am I just supposed to believe you’ve had sex with multiple partners?”

Before you can stop yourself, you slap Hangman’s chest. Admittedly, both the alcohol and the way your head is still reeling have the move lacking any real vigor, but it still leaves you a little stunned at yourself.

“Don’t be mean,” you say. His chest feels very firm beneath your palm, muscles hard and heartbeat steady. Then you realize you’re still touching him and withdraw your hand as if you’ve burned yourself.

Hangman is grinning from ear to ear. “Oh, don’t act like you don’t like it when I’m mean.”

That almost makes you choke on your Mojito. 

“Right,” Coyote says. His teeth gleam white when he smirks at you. “So, how do you like it?”

You freeze. Your mind stumbles, then short-circuits.

“Oh, god, boys. Just leave her alone,” Phoenix sighs. She gets up to sling an arm over your shoulder. It’s a reassuring presence by your side, one that makes you feel a little less like you’re about to levitate off the face of the earth. “You don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to.”

Hangman is staring right at you. He’s still smiling, but something in his eyes has shifted.

You can’t look away from him. Your heart stutters in your chest.

“I… I don’t…” you falter.

Across the distance between you, Hangman raises an eyebrow. “What are you, like a virgin?”

It hits you square in the chest.

You know you need to laugh it off, know you need to counter with another quip, another insult, another jab, but your mind is blank. Time seems to freeze for a moment. You can’t breathe.

Your eyes burn, and you realize with a sudden, horrible lurch that you’re going to cry, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Several emotions pass over Hangman’s face in quick succession. The glint is gone from his eyes now, replaced by something like genuine guilt. That’s how you know he was just joking around, but it doesn’t soften the blow at all.

Anger, humiliation, and, worst of all, the remnants of your earlier desire pump through your veins. You feel weak and tired and helpless. A snowglobe shattered on the floor. All of it hits you at once.

You’re painfully aware of all the eyes on you. You’re painfully aware you haven’t said a single thing in way too long.

Hangman says your name, his tone caught somewhere between concern and apology.

I can’t, you think. I just… can’t.

So you turn on your heel and all but sprint for the open doors.

Out back, the air has cooled down to a more bearable temperature, but it does nothing to calm you. Your skin feels several sizes too small, the world is tilting a little bit to the left, as if everything’s written in cursive. In your ears, your blood rushes like a roar.

You’ve never been so embarrassed in your life.

A few tiki torches light a path from the Hard Deck’s back entrance towards the sand of the beach. You follow almost blindly, stumbling down the two steps. The ocean stretches endless and dark blue in front of you. Your sandals fill with sand that scrapes against the soles of your feet.

You walk a few steps until you reach a weathered tool shed with the blue paint eroded by years of wind and salt spray. Only when you’ve found shelter behind it, when you know you’re hidden from view, do you allow yourself to cry.

They’re bitter tears. You’re embarrassed about your display earlier, about letting Hangman get to you, embarrassed because everybody saw. Embarrassed that you didn’t deny it when it isn’t even really true, not technically. Embarrassed that you’re twenty-three and practically a virgin, embarrassed that it matters to you. It shouldn’t matter.

Virginity is a social construct, you remind yourself, and then you just cry harder.

Most of all, you’re embarrassed because you want Hangman. 

It’s the first time you admit it, even to yourself, and the truth of it settles heavy in your stomach. You don’t think you’ve ever wanted someone as much as you want him, and you don’t even like the man. 

It’s ridiculous, humiliating, mortifying, and suddenly you wish you had stayed home tonight, had never come here in the first place.

And then he says your name.

The moonlight paints his hair a blueish shade of silver. He looks impossibly handsome, standing just a step or two away from you with his hands in his pockets, backlit by the flickering of the torches.

Immediately you straighten up and rub your cheeks to get rid of the tears. Your fingers come away stained black with the remnants of your mascara.

For a moment, you and Hangman just stare at each other. The distance between you gapes like an open wound, like a canyon, like an ocean.

Finally, he asks, “You okay?”

You don’t trust your voice, so you just nod.

He looks torn. His jaw moves as he grinds his teeth.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

You don’t have to ask him to clarify. You know exactly what he means.

“I don’t know you,” you say quietly.

He makes a strange, strangled sound at the back of his throat, then buries his face in his hands for a second. When he re-emerges, he looks honestly distressed.

“If I had known,” he says softly, “I would have stopped being so aggressive.”

You don’t know how to tell him that that’s the opposite of what you want. You don’t know how to tell him that you don’t know what you want.

You don’t know how to tell him that you know exactly what you want.

Everything’s a mess.

Shrugging, you say, “It doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t matter?” he repeats, disbelief in his voice. “Of course it matters. I never meant to make you uncomfortable.”

That makes you frown.

“I didn’t say you make me uncomfortable.”

Aggravated, sure. Annoyed, wound-up, frustrated. All of that. But uncomfortable? Never.

That gives him pause, but only for a moment. He goes on, “I shouldn’t have… it was too much. I’m sorry.”

You can’t explain any of this, but you want to. You wish you could just make him understand, but you can’t even make sense of yourself.

Your insides are all tangled.

“It’s not like… it’s not like I’ve never done anything,” you rush to explain. “I did sleep with someone when I was sixteen, but I just… and then there was always so much other stuff that I didn’t have time to date, and then other stuff happened, and I didn’t even want to date, so I just….”

At the look he gives you, you trail off.

“So you’re not a virgin, then?”

“Not… technically,” you confirm, then cringe at how ridiculous it all sounds.

He just stares at you.

“It… what does it even matter?” Suddenly, you’re angry. “Even if I was a virgin, there wouldn’t be anything wrong with it. And it’s none of your business. Why do you even care?”

One of Hangman’s eyebrows raises. “I don’t care if you’re a virgin,” he says, voice perfectly calm. “I care that you’re comfortable.”

That staggers you. “I… why?”

He shoves his hands back into his pockets. “Because I happen to like you.”

Now you’re the one staring. 

That can’t be right. Hangman’s not supposed to like you, not when you’ve just established that you can’t stand him. Not when you’ve spent every night since you’ve met him listing all the reasons why you need to stay as far away from him as possible.

When you don’t answer, he starts talking again. “Why didn’t you just say you’re not a virgin in there?” he asks, jerking his head back in the general direction of the Hard Deck.

You shrug and look away. “I’m not… experienced.”

He waits for you to continue.

“It was just once, with my first boyfriend, and it wasn’t… I didn’t… well, after it was over, I never wanted to do it again.”

Hangman’s expression is unreadable. The breeze picks up, and you shiver, crossing your arms over your abdomen. 

“I’m not…” You swallow. “I’m not confident. I can’t talk about it the way you guys do. So easily.”

He looks at you for a long moment, and when he speaks again, his voice is gentler than you’ve ever heard. “I’ll stop, then. This was too much. I’m sorry.”

But there’s something there, in the words. A challenge. He’s giving you a way out at the same time as he’s giving you an in.

The way he’s looking at you seems to say, Ball’s in your court now, sweetheart.

In your life, you’ve always taken the familiar path. You thought things through thoroughly, made decisions with your head and not your heart. You liked to be safe, too scared to step out of your comfort zone. And so the house with the blue door stayed a dream, one that eventually moved so far out of reach it lost any appeal it ever had.

But then you think of your life stuffed into a car. Arriving in an unfamiliar city and deciding to stay. Diving headfirst into the unknown.

If you have done it once, you tell yourself, there’s no reason you can’t do it again.

“I don’t want you to stop,” you say, voice quiet, hands shaking. “I like it.”

It might be the hardest thing you’ve ever done. Being honest. Here in this moment, with him, bathed in moonlight that dips the worlds in shades of mercury.

It’s almost impossible to get the words out, and then they dangle awkwardly in the air between you. You feel exposed, stripped, flayed open in front of this man who is practically a stranger to you.

Over the beat of your heart hammering away in your chest, you can barely even hear the roar of the ocean.

And then Hangman steps closer to you, bridging that distance. His features are dipped in half-shadows, but you see his eyes flickering down to your lips.

You swallow around the lump in your throat.

“When I saw you for the first time,” he says, and his voice is husky, low, “in that little dress… I wanted to bend you over the bar and fuck you right there. With everyone watching.”

It knocks the air out of you. You let out a choked sound that might be the beginning of a gasp. A jolt goes through the core of you.

He comes even closer, and, instinctively, you stumble backward. He crowds you against the wall of the shed. The wood is rough and cold where it presses against your back.

The stupid nametag is right in front of you then, and it occurs to you suddenly that you don’t even know his first name.

“Look at me,” he says.

In spite of yourself, you listen immediately. There’s something in his voice, not just demanding but commandeering. You don’t think you could disobey him even if you wanted to.

And Hangman’s so close now. Close enough that you can see the specks of gold swimming in his eyes, close enough that you could probably see yourself reflected in them if it wasn’t so dark.

One of his hands is braced against the wood by your head, palm down, and the other goes to cup your cheek. Fingertips trace across the jut of your cheekbone, down, down, down over the planes of your face, avoiding your mouth to ghost toward your chin and then the line of your throat.

You don’t dare breathe.

“You’re so beautiful,” he says softly.

It’s such a stark contrast to his earlier words, so crude, that it leaves you light-headed.

You can smell him; over the lingering ashes of burnt-down bonfires, over the salt of the ocean, there’s the scent of his aftershave. Cinnamon and spice. You think you could get drunk on that smell.

“Hangman…” you whisper because you can’t think of something else to say for the life of you.

He shakes his head, tuts gently. “My name’s Jake.”

“Jake,” you repeat. It’s like you’re in a daze, dumb with the intensity of it all. If this night is giving you anything, it’s a severe case of whiplash.

He hums in response, eyelids going heavy. Lets his fingers trail from your throat, where your pulse is beating like a sledgehammer, down your chest, between your breasts, over the flimsy fabric of your dress. He pauses on your stomach, lets his fingers spread out like a starfish, and just watches for a moment as his hand moves with each breath you take.

When he speaks, his voice sounds almost pensive. “Has anybody ever made you come?”

The sound you make is much too close to a whimper for your own comfort. Involuntarily, your thighs clench together, and you realize faintly just how wet you really are, the skin just below the lines of your panties sticking together.

You don’t need to look at Hangman to know that he’s noticed your reaction.

“It… no,” you admit hesitantly. You’re going to spontaneously combust, you just know it. “Just… myself.”

He grins at that, but it’s not a mean expression. “So you touch yourself?”

It’s so hard to swallow. Even harder to talk, to find words, even to form a coherent thought.

Jake leans closer still, so close his breath traces across your face. “Answer me.”

“Sometimes.” Your voice has gone so quiet you’re sure he wouldn’t have heard you if he wasn’t standing so close to you. Like he wants to climb into your skin.

You’re becoming painfully aware of all the points where he isn’t touching you. A minuscule but safe distance between your hips, your faces, your chests. That arm curving around you, braced against the wall. No point of contact except for the large hand on your abdomen.

You shudder.

“What do you think about? When you touch yourself, what do you think about?”

The muscles in his arm flex, straining against the fabric of his uniform, veins protruding blue through the skin, and it shouldn’t be this hot, but it is. You’re on fire and he isn’t even touching you, not really, but you’ve never been so turned on in your life, wound so tightly, a kite dancing higher and higher into the sky.

You shake your head quickly, unsure if it’s supposed to be an answer or just a way to get rid of the fog that’s descended on you.

Jake’s hand wanders a little lower, almost imperceptibly, just about half an inch, but you think your heart almost fails you.

“I…” you swallow again. Your mouth is dry, and your palms are sweating. Your core pulses with the sort of desire that’s impossible to ignore. “I don’t know. I don’t…”

God, if only you could be casual about this sort of thing. You wish you could say something sexy, something teasing, something that would make Jake feel even a fraction of what he’s making you feel. But you’re just you. Inexperienced, unsure even of what you want.

You choke up, and, to your mortification, tears pool in your eyes again.

“Shh,” Jake immediately shushes you, and his face is almost tender. “That’s okay, sweetheart. I’ll give you something to think about.”

“Oh,” you say dumbly, blinking up at him.

And then it’s back, that signature Hangman smirk, the same one you’ve wanted to slap off his face so many times, only it’s making you weak in the knees now, makes your lips part, makes you wish he would just touch you already.

“I’m not going to kiss you tonight.”

It’s almost shameful how quickly you try to protest, really. If it hadn’t been for those five and a half Mojitos, you would have stuck your head into the sand right here.

Hangman laughs at you, the sound just a little mean. “You’re much too drunk, sweetheart.”

You suppose it doesn’t make much sense to argue. Now that you think about it, you really are drunk. The fuzzy, warm sort of drunk. Just on the right side of intoxicated, where everything feels packed in cotton, and nothing feels impossible.

Even that someone like Hangman might want to dirty talk to you behind the Hard Deck’s tool shed.

“Can you do something for me?” Jake asks.

You can just bite down on the anything that threatens to spill from your mouth the moment he’s uttered the question, and, god, what’s wrong with you? This is getting out of hand.

Dumbfounded, you nod silently.

He leans impossibly closer, his nose trailing along your jawline, and whispers, “The next time you touch yourself… When you’re alone, I want you to lie down on your bed. I want you to spread your legs, and I want you to touch your pretty little pussy for me.”

You clench your eyes shut, breath stuck somewhere in your throat, as Jake’s hand lifts from your stomach. He takes a fistful of your skirt and pulls it up, using his other hand to hold it away from your body. The cool breeze caresses your legs, but that’s not why you shiver.

His fingers slide along the inside of your thigh, from kneecap up to the very tops of them. You can’t breathe, can’t blink, can’t do anything but stand there and hope you won’t dissolve into a puddle.

“And when you fuck yourself,” he whispers, “I want you to think of me.” 

And then he touches his fingers to your core, over the lace of your panties.

If you weren’t so far gone, you think you’d never forgive yourself for your reaction. 

You all but squeak, back arching off the wall, pushing yourself into his palm, mouth dropping open as pure heat spreads through you, like an ache, like a tightening at your very center.

“Jesus,” Jake says, and his voice sounds breathless. “You’ve soaked these through, sweetheart.”

It’s the first indication that he’s affected by this, too, that you’re not the only one impacted, and somehow that’s enough to make you want him even more.

You wonder what it would be like to get him off. What he would look like, sound like. Taste like.

Your exhale is a tiny, shuddering thing. 

“Can you do that for me?” he wants to know. “Touch yourself for me like I asked?”

“I…” You think you would have agreed if he had asked you to lasso him down the moon.

Anything you say, Hangman. Anything you want. Just keep touching me. Please.

“Yes,” you agree. “Yeah, I… okay.”

“Good girl,” he says. His lips press to the side of your throat just once, right where your pulse is pumping at a rapid pace.

And then he steps away, fingers gone from your panties, mouth gone from your neck.

The loss of him leaves you reeling, dizzy, plastered to the wall like roadkill.

Even Hangman looks a little disheveled, but it's minimal comfort.

Again, you feel on the verge of tears.

Hangman clears his throat and asks, “Do you have a ride home?”

It takes an uncomfortable amount of time for the question to even register. You just stare at him at first, blinking owlishly. 

You barely even remember your own name. How are you supposed to answer this?

“I… Uber,” you say.

It’s not even a complete sentence, no verb at all, but it seems enough for Hangman. 

He nods once. Then he takes a moment just to watch you.

Finally, he says, “I changed my mind about the dress.” 

He takes a step back to admire you head to toe. As he looks at you, the torches reflect in his eyes until it looks like they’re gleaming. You’ve never felt so exposed in your life, and it makes you squirm.

You’re still so wet, wetter than you’ve ever been, and you’d do anything for him to touch you. Slide his fingers into you and fuck you right here, behind Penny’s bar, out on the beach where anyone might see. Think you might just die if he doesn’t.

Jake reaches once more for the skirt of your dress, but this time he doesn’t pull it up. Instead, he just lets his fingers dance through the folds once, the touch featherlight. Just a whisper of his digits across your thigh. You barely feel it.

You’re going to shake apart right here and now.

“I think this is my favorite after all,” he says, grins that Hangman grin, and then he’s gone.

You’re left leaning against the shed, breathless, panting, head and heart a mess. Alone, as you stare out at the white foam cresting on the waves, wondering what the fuck just happened.

read part ii

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[the-darklings]

headcannon/drabble about how wanderer met destruction and how they became friends?

wc: 1.3k+

notes: should preface this by saying I have not gotten to Destruction in comics yet, so any feedback from comic readers on his characterisation would be greatly appreciated because, at this point, I'm glueing the man together by sheer will alone. also suffering from a small post-travelling cold, so if this is a lil clunky, it be like that. expect a new part of tibyim on Saturday because your gal is recuperating.

part one | series masterlist | ao3 |

The man bending over you is broad and red-haired. A quick grin stretches across his face when he spots you’re awake, nearly lost in his thick beard. 

“There you are,” he calls out. “I was wondering when I’ll get to meet ya.”

You blink. Then again. “Who are you?”

The large man chuckles—a deep, soothing sound that washes over you like a warm bath. He stretches his hand your way, large, and if you squint, you can just make out tiny, faded scars marring his skin.

“Destruction of the Endless at your service.” He grasps your hand in his, tugging you upwards effortlessly. He squeezes your hand once, letting it go, but the grin remains. Friendly and warm, utterly at odds with his robust build, armour, and fire-kissed appearance. Rugged and handsome in a surprisingly earthy way. “You must be the Wanderer.”

This is all incredibly weird. “Uh, you know me?”

“My siblings have told me about you,” he confirms with a nod. “It is not every day that a mortal can trespass other realms. Or survive the journey.”

“Barely.”

You suck in a subdued breath at your subconscious sarcasm—that you’ve long since learned doesn't get one very far when traversing the universe. Usually, it gets some limbs removed or several. One must respect other magical realms and their sovereigns properly or suffer for it.  

Destruction of the Endless doesn't appear wrathful despite what his disposition may imply. He seems all too pleased by your retort. 

“Yes, I think I understand now.”

You blink. “What?”

The Endless only grins brighter. 

.

Destruction lives on an island inside a supernova. 

It took several visits to stop flinching from every brighter flare of self-contained destruction and creation around you. You’re not sure what power swirls through this place, but Destruction’s realm is a swirl of unending creation and destruction wherever you look. Apt, and horrifying. Some invisible walls hold back the devastation from touching you, but it does little to ease your apprehension. A landscape of red, orange, gold and white is a painting smearing in and out around you. But after glimpsing Delirium’s realm, you take Destruction’s bright, explosive home like a comfort blanket. It’s cold and hot simultaneously, but at least things make sense here. Somewhat.  

Destruction finds your constant wary glances at the splitting galaxies around you an absolute riot. 

“Dear Wanderer, fear not. Everything in my realm is caught in a perpetual state of undoing and becoming. It is the nature of all things.”

“You do realise that’s not reassuring at all, right?” you grumble. 

Destruction wipes the sweat from his brow using the back of his hand. His heavy arm drops around your shoulders, squeezing you close. There's comfort wrapped in the gesture. He’s so warmhearted, so unlike what you envision one wearing Destruction’s moniker to be, that you can’t help but lean into him. 

“Indeed not. But it is the way of things.”

“Well, the way of things is horrible.”

He’s quiet for a long, heavy moment. “Yes,” he whispers, none of his usual liveliness present. “It is.”

.

“You’ll see.”

Destruction considers you. “You have great faith in them.”

“Well, I’m human, mortal, whichever you prefer,” you argue quietly, so nothing is disturbed. “I have to believe in my own.”

You tread through a battlefield together. Nothing stirs—nothing breaths. It’s too quiet. Death has passed by here already. You are here together only to oversee the aftermath of destruction. 

The man beside you gazes upon the dead warriors with great sorrow, his expression betraying the same weariness you’ve caught glimpses of on Dream’s face, on Death’s face, even Despair’s and Destiny’s. Though the latter you’ve never cared much to comprehend or relate to. 

“I admire your faith, Wanderer. I hope eternity does not strip it from you.”

You pause, your features softening. Reaching for Destruction, you wrap your smaller hand around his. He swallows, giving it a slight squeeze in return. 

“No one is just one thing,” you say patiently. 

Destruction absorbs those words silently, his hulking form leading you towards the nearby village. Atrocities await you there. Ransacked, pillaged, bodies everywhere. Some huts still smoulder. No happy laughter or mothers chiding their squealing children, unlike this morning when you first spotted Destruction's solitary figure on a nearby hill; a sure sign of impending doom. Your heart curls torturously at the lives lost. 

“Do you truly believe so, Wanderer?” he questions with quiet desperation. “Even after all the horrors you have witnessed? How many times have we met on the eve of battle? Do you truly believe in mortals, my friend, or is destruction in your blood also?”

Your thumb brushes gently over his hand. “I don’t know,” you say honestly, pausing by a small hut. “But I do know that I don’t believe in destiny. I believe there’s a choice. Always.”

Your foot sweeps over dirt and soot behind the hut, over and over, revealing a hidden hatch. You release his hand, leaning over to pry open the hatch door. Terrified murmurs and cries reach you. 

“It’s me,” you call down gently into the darkness. “You’re safe now. Come on out.”

A handful of young, dirt-covered faces stare back at you, tear streaks still visible on their ruddy cheeks. One child holds a newborn baby in his arms, born just as the battle began last night when you rushed them here and hid them. 

New life, for the old taken. 

“My destiny is to wander. To be cursed and suffer for it. It’s not to save everyone. If I try, worse things occur. I know that now. But it’s not about saving everyone, my friend. It’s about saving someone. That’s enough.” You look over at the Endless situated behind you. You cannot describe the sheer, overwhelming emotions painting Destruction’s being until his giant fists tremble at his sides. “Destruction, yes, but also creation.”

Destruction laughs, and laughs, and laughs until you hear tears in his thick voice. 

.

“I am sorry, dear Wanderer.”

“I get it. You can’t help me. Don’t worry.”

You suppose discovering your unconscious body, waiting until it pieces itself together from the cruelties inflicted upon it, would shake anyone’s empathy. The Endless get but glimpses into what is everyday living for you. For them, with such demanding responsibilities, it’s all too simple to forget you’re cursed. Not another demigod creature prowling realms and dimensions as you please.  

On Destruction’s haggard face, you read the quiet despair, the shame about the severity of the ruin inflicted upon you. 

“It’s not your fault,” you reassure, forming each word carefully. “It’s the curse.”

“Is your curse not a force of destruction, Wanderer?” 

It is. That much is clear. Your curse…   

“Don’t,” you whisper, pressing closer to him, your palm covering his beard-covered cheek. “Don’t look sad on my behalf. You didn’t do this to me.”

“You’re the loneliest mortal I’ve ever met. How can I not?”

Your hand slips from his face like a deadweight, dropping in your lap. Your stare falls to your bloodied palms, all of it yours. You’re not sure what you can say to that declaration. 

“What a pair we make,” you joke tiredly. 

A slight smile rests across his mouth when you glance up. It melts slowly, concern simmering in the heedful way he observes you. “Can I take you to my brother? Dream would want—”

“Better not,” you cut him off, swallowing. You don't want Dream to see you like this. “Curse doesn’t like it. Death took me once. Then I got torn out by force for two years. It wasn’t nice. It all happens for a reason.”

Reading the seething resentment in your words, Destruction lowers himself to the blood-covered grass beside you. He’s sporting ordinary bright clothing, you note, surprised. None of the old warrior armours you’ve grown to associate with him in sight. 

“Then I shall stay here,” he declares. “It is impolite to leave a friend alone.”

Your head lowers, and you pretend you don’t taste tears pooling in the cracks on your lips. 

an:

so Destruction's realm is not shown or mentioned in the series at all, so I had to Katify it. Mr Neil Gaiman, hope you don't mind, king. Destruction now lives in a supernova because I think that's neat. I love these two together. Nice and quick, but was really written to check where I am at inspo-wise. New chapter Saturday.

[elysianslove]

hi💗 i saw that you opened up your requests to jujutsu kaisen and i was wondering if i could request something,,reader is dating our favorite bandaged shaman sensei and they are both teachers at the school. and a little scenario when they invite the 3 first years over to their house for Christmas or winter holidays,,since they all have complicated family situations and the reader notices this and tells satoru they should do something,,so a cute little mom and dad moment 🥺 thank you

hi anon!!! this request was so, so cute i hope i did it justice hehe, and i hope you enjoy <3

━━ satoru gojō feels like home. in every sense of the word, he feels like home. he smells like it too, but that’s possibly because you’ve lived with him for much too long, and been with him for even longer. he’s your safe haven, your safety net, a constant, grounding presence in your life. you think that, maybe, you’ve always loved him, before the confessions, before the friendship, in another lifetime even. if you’re willing to believe in curses, you can believe in blessings too, right?

that said, anywhere with him is home too. you could be stranded in the middle of nowhere and still sleep just as well as you would’ve in your own bed, so long as his arms are around you. the too busy streets of tokyo somehow lessen in their overwhelmingness once his hand fits against yours, once his thumb is lightly brushing against the back of your hand. the quiet, eerie atmosphere of a random motel the two of you had no choice but to stay suddenly feels lavish and luxurious as soon as his lips find yours, and immediately the dim, sombre light of the room only illuminates him more.

it had never mattered what your life had been before meeting him, before loving him. all the pain and hardship and suffering was completely erased from memory, as if the first glance from him was an offer of a blank slate, a new beginning. of course, every relationship has it’s unstable moments, and with laughter come tears, with excitement comes dullness, quiet, and with sunny days come cloudy, rainy ones. it’s inevitable, but you two are strong pillars of it. the pain and suffering comes crawling back to you, but you brush it off, reminding yourself that this is your home now. he is your home now.

and every moment with him matters. especially holidays.

although neither of you properly celebrate christmas, the festive atmosphere still exists within the four walls you two share. small marshmallows sway in an ocean of hot chocolate in a mug, flames dancing proudly in a fireplace before you, a knitted blanket offering you both warmth and comfort, snow piling on your windowsill. the winter holidays are mostly spent like this with gojō. there’s just something about the cold that drives the both of you to utter laziness, and it’s not unlike you to easily welcome any source of physical affection from your lover.

it’s the night before the last teaching day, before you’re sending off your students to their homes for the holiday. the room is dark, save for the light from a lamp to gojō’s right, and the light that comes from the tv playing in front of you. it’s some movie that you’re not entirely focused on as your cheek rests against his chest, his arm slung around you. despite the fact that you’re as tired as ever, your mind is alive with endless thoughts, and gojō seems to notice when he lifts a hand up to poke at your temple.

“what’s going on up there?” he asks, shifting slightly to sit you up straighter. he disregards the phone in his hand, placing it next to lamp, before turning to face you properly.

“gojō,” you start, your voice smaller than usual. this doesn’t go unnoticed by him, and he nods encouragingly. “where’s itadori going for the holidays?”

it’s quiet for a moment, and you watch his expressions carefully. he looks thoughtful, slightly bothered. “i—“ he begins, his voice wavering slightly as he admits, “i didn’t consider that at all.”

you hum sadly. “he has no family, right?”

gojō shakes his head in response, adding, “none.” the silence stretches out between the two of you, the background noise of the tv a filler, not disrupting, but balancing. “all three of the first years have familial issues, now that i — now that i think about it.”

“do you think they can stay here?” you suggest, without a second of doubt. you don’t entirely regret it, but you wince slightly at the look of his face. you’re ready to drop the subject if the matter is too uncomfortable for him, but you know your lover too well, well enough to know he’ll agree to it just as eagerly as you’d suggested it.

“that’s a great idea,” he confirms for you, and the careful expression you had morphs into glee. you beam up at him, before leaping into his arms, wrapping your arms around his neck as you embrace him tightly. one arm weaves around your waist, with the other travels up, leaving his hand cupping the back of your head as he holds you to him. “you’re too good for this world, my love,” he tells you, whispering his confession in your ear. you only push back with a smile, and plant a heavy kiss to his lips.

you announce the decision to the first years right after the teaching day ends, while alongside gojō. he’s standing comfortably, hands pressed into his pockets, an easy smile on his face as he surveys both you and the students before you. they’re standing with careful, solemn looks on their faces, as if they’re about to be sent off on a serious, life endangering mission.

“what is this about?” nobara wonders, her eyes narrowed slightly in suspicion.

you only smile widely back at her, before softly saying, “gojō and i are inviting the three of you to stay at our home. for the holidays.”

nobara’s eyes soften slightly at the words, while megumi’s face remains impassive. yuuji, however, has his eyes wide and jaw slack, clearly the only one capable of speaking because he yells out a rather aggressively shocked, “what!”

“is this —“ megumi starts, breaking off and interrupting himself to swallow thickly. “are you being serious?”

you nod eagerly. “i want you three to feel safe and to enjoy the holidays too! only if you’re comfortable with that, of course, but our home is your home,” you address them.

gojō hums playfully from next to you, adding, “every night is hot chocolate night.”

yuuji and nobara are automatically sold, to the exaggerated point of throwing their arms around you, collectively suffocating you in their embrace. megumi still looks wary of the idea, and you notice this easily. offering him a soft smile, you reinstate softly, “i just want you to feel safe.”

he smiles.

“you have a really nice home, sensei,” megumi comments as he surveys the living room. you’re not sure which of you he’s addressing, or if he’s addressing the both of you, but either way your heart softens at the awe in his eyes. you’re curled up next to gojō comfortably, the three first years surrounding the two of you, and there’s an array of food options before you.

for the first day, you’d eaten dinner out in a restaurant, but it’s way past nighttime now, the stars visibly shimmering in the sky, the moon lost within a blanket of them and the clouds. the snow falling isn’t heavy enough to have your world disappear in white, not yet at least, but it’s slowly and surely piling up.

“hot, hot, hot—“ yuuji whines, sticking his tongue out and fanning it as he places his mug down. you huff out a laugh at him, watching as nobara pinches at his arm and scolds him for ‘being stupid.’

you lean more comfortably into gojō, admiring the scenery before you. he shifts, leaning his lips nearer to your ear as he whispers, “i’m glad we did this for them.”

you nod in agreement. “me too,” you say.

“you know what it makes me realize?” gojō starts. you hum, urging him to continue. “how good of a person you are, how lucky i am —“ your smile widens at his words, cheeks aching as they start to flush. “— how good of a parent you’ll be one day.”

you freeze. “parent?”

gojō only smiles when you move back to observe his face. although his smile is teasing, his eyes are serious. he’s serious. “one day?”

you try to imagine it. your own family, with him, raising your children with him, sharing hot chocolate with them, watching as they bicker with each other. spending eternity with him. the image and fantasy comes so easy to you, it’s dizzying. gently, you fall back into his arms, curling up against him as you whisper, “one day.”

[silverstarlightwrites]

An alternate AU to this one that occurred to me just now

Team Seven take the mission to the Land of Waves. On the bridge, they fight Zabuza and Haku.

On the bridge, Naruto dies.

Something in Sasuke breaks, and he goes berserk. Haku and their ice mirrors scream as they flashboil in the black flames Sasuke summons forth, and it takes only a howl and a wild gesture to send Amaterasu blazing across the bridge to consume Zabuza and Tazuna as well. The stone melts underneath them, while Kakashi snatches up Sakura and flees, and it’s not until Sasuke feels the weight of wet clothes - crushing Naruto’s body to his chest, bloody and so absurdly hot - that he realises the bridge has disintegrated, and the water is burning.

It’s instinct and desperation that let Sasuke to douse the fires he’s conjured, and even then it aches and tastes like blood and acid, and he’s sinking when Kakashi whips across the surface to catch him, the moment the flames are gone.

Sasuke cries into Naruto’s chest, and refuses to let go. Sakura is cold and silent, and she neither speaks nor eats for the grim, slow trek back to Konoha. And it is slow, even further drawn out by the constant fluctuation of chakra from Naruto’s corpse, carried awkwardly and painfully by Sasuke alone.

It’s not Naruto’s chakra, of course. Kakashi dreads the inevitable questions, resolves not to lie when they come, and somehow their absence is even worse.

The moment they walk through the southern Konoha gate, there are Anbu all over them. They pry Naruto’s body from Sasuke’s arms, despite his shouting and kunai, despite the way Sasuke’s eyes ignite into blood red to fight-- But he doesn’t summon Amaterasu again, doesn’t expend the chakra he doesn’t have to try and kill their own. Sakura touches his shoulder, just two fingers, and her face is pale and hollow when she shakes her head, but it’s still more interaction than she’s allowed for the whole trip, and Sasuke obeys her. Blinks his eyes black, slumps in place, and then sags against Sakura.

She catches him, and he’s shaking, and she stares over his shoulder, unblinking, at the Anbu wrapping Naruto’s corpse in chakra-absorbing paper scrawled endlessly with Seals.

Kakashi isn’t sure what she sees, and he isn’t sure he wants to know.

One Anbu stays behind, and they instruct the gutted remains of Team Seven that the Hokage wants to see them. Kakashi can’t bring himself to intervene when Sasuke snarls and lunges, or when Sakura lets him. Doesn’t step in when Sasuke tells them to Fuck Off or when he punches them weakly in the chest - and the Anbu clearly thinks he’s simply not going to get involved, because when they try to catch Sasuke’s wrist they aren’t expecting Kakashi to move. Too fast to be safe, too fast for the chakra use not to burn.

Sasuke leans back into Kakashi as the Anbu trips, and Kakashi feels himself close his hands on Sasuke’s shoulders. “Don’t touch my kids,” he hears himself hiss, and if he doesn’t quite know when he accepted them as his then he doesn’t quite care either.

One of them is dead, and they won’t be permitted to mourn him properly because of the beast caged inside him without his knowledge.

The thought makes Kakashi sick. It all does, all of it. Konoha’s abuse of an innocent child, Kakashi’s complicitness in allowing it to happen. Hiruzen’s cruelty in allowing it also.

In allowing all of it.

Sasuke has lost enough.

The Anbu doesn’t need telling twice, and they leave Kakashi to cajole his kids into seeing Hiruzen. It takes more effort than he’d care to admit. Just physically, the three of them are a wreck - and it’s worse emotionally. Mentally.

“You let them take him.”

It’s the first thing Sakura has said since Naruto died - in a burst of blood and scarlet chakra - and Kakashi suddenly thinks he’s never felt anything so cold as her voice. When he meets her gaze, it’s like drowning.

“I had to. The Hokage will explain.” Because Kakashi is bound not to. By an oath that maybe he shouldn’t have taken, by a promise extracted by force. Why shouldn’t he tell them?

He doesn’t, of course. He scoops Sasuke up, and despises that Sasuke simply allows it, and offers Sakura a hand as they start walking. Sakura ignores it, striding ahead with her back too stiff and her hands clenched too tight. The walk to the Hokage Tower, while significantly shorter, is the same as the trip from Waves to Konoha.

Hiruzen ushers them into his office, tearful, and Sasuke struggles stiffly out of Kakashi’s grip. Red flickers and whorls through his eyes, and it’s impossible to know if he’s fighting to ignite his Sharingan or if he’s fighting not to.

“I’m sorry.” It’s low and mournful and wet. It’s insulting.

Sakura snaps. She flies into a rage, screaming obscenities. Her teammate is dead, and she’s never experienced loss like this before, and gods but she watched it happen, and no pitiful, pathetic ‘I’m sorry’ can ever undo that. That Hiruzen even tries sends her over the edge.

Nobody stops her. By the time she burns out, the office is torn apart, papers scattered everywhere and the desk overturned. Sakura has scratched her nails bloody against the woodwork. When she collapses to the floor and howls, Sasuke finally approaches her, sinks to her level, and wraps his arms around her.

Perhaps he understands, then. Perhaps a hug - so tight as Sakura clings back that it may be the only thing holding her together - is all he wanted after the horror of his clan’s slaughter.

Kakashi catches himself wondering if Sasuke ever got that hug, but he knows the answer.

Of course he didn’t.

Hiruzen explains to them what a Jinchuriki is. He explains the basic concept of a Bijuu, and gives them a short summary of the Nine-Tails. They take it blankly, too much to process over the top of their raw grief, but they look to Kakashi as if searching for confirmation and Kakashi nods. Tells them it’s true.

And then, because it’s not enough, it’s pathetic an explanation, he hears himself continue.

Because “He deserved better. We failed him.” Hears it spin, feels more than sees the way Sasuke and Sakura twitch and shrink, and then corrects himself. His own voice is like tar in his throat.

“You failed him.”

Sasuke and Sakura follow him out of Hiruzen’s office, and Hiruzen doesn’t try to stop them.

Kakashi sets the pack to watch them when they all end up at the war memorial. It wasn’t exactly a decision to go there, of course, but it never really is. All eight ninken are there already when they arrive, and they encourage Sakura and Sasuke to collapse and curl up with them, but Kakashi resists. He has something else to do.

And it’s dark by the time he comes back, his kids and his pack all bundled up in his far-too-tiny apartment, but he wakes them all the same. Demanding Naruto’s body back hadn’t been easy or clean, and the results of the chakra-draining done to preserve as much of the stray Nine-Tails chakra bleeding out of where it had torn free upon Naruto’s death is... messy.

Naruto’s body stays wrapped up the way Kakashi walked out of the Anbu Blue Vault with it. Only his head is visible, and his hair is knotted and matted with blood and oil, but it doesn’t stop Sakura from running her hands through it, or Sasuke from laying his head against Naruto’s chest.

Not enough people come to Naruto’s funeral. The whole fucking Village should mourn him, the child who protected them from the Nine-Tails for his entire, short life. His loss should have been overwhelming - it should have brought all of Konoha to a fucking stop.

But it doesn’t. Umino Iruka attends, and he’s quiet but he weeps ceaselessly the whole day. Sakura and Sasuke seem to welcome his presence, so Kakashi doesn’t nothing to discourage it.

Hiruzen shows up, perhaps halfway through. It takes all of Kakashi’s still-wan strength to hold Sakura back from trying to maul him, and Sasuke doesn’t fight one way or another when he lights up his Sharingan at the Hokage’s approach.

“Go. Away,” Sasuke snarls at him, and for just a moment it seems like Hiruzen might scold the boy, who’s been stripped of his family in half a dozen different ways, over and over again, as if he’s expressing his grief incorrectly, and that moment is all it takes for Kakashi to speak over all of them.

It’s the voice he used as the Hound. He hasn’t heard it for years. “You should go, Hokage-sama. You don’t want to make me choose a side here.”

Because Kakashi is loathe to fight Konoha at all, let alone its leader, but he knows without a doubt that he will. For Sasuke. For Sakura. If ever the decision must be made, Kakashi knows he will turn on Hiruzen in an instant if it would protect his kids from ending up like him.

Konoha would not make a broken blade out of Sasuke. It would not strip Sakura of her soul.

Orochimaru comes. He seeks out Sasuke, and the power he offers is too tempting for Sasuke to pass up - but he refuses to sneak away in the dead of night. Team Seven’s progress has halted in the aftermath of Naruto’s death; Hiruzen has tried several times to full the gap in their unit, but Sakura and Sasuke vehemently refuse to accept one, and Kakashi does not make them. He will not.

Naruto cannot be replaced. The gap can never be sufficiently filled.

And so comes the morning that Sasuke asks for their company in leaving. He’s been suffocating under Konoha’s weight for a long time, Kakashi realises that morning, and he’s finally reached his limit. Kakashi doesn’t try to talk him out of it; he won’t succeed. There’s no point. Revenge has been his motivation for so long that Sasuke will never quite learn how to give it up, and now he has so much more for which to seek vengeance.

It will only be Itachi first. After that, all of Konoha is culpable for Naruto’s death, and the endless suffering he endured before it. Kakashi is not fool enough to think he can change Sasuke’s mind.

Sakura agrees on the spot. She’s unrecognisable from the bubbly genin Kakashi took custody of from the Academy. She’s gaunt and messy and angry, and she’s forsaken her friends in order to follow Sasuke into the dark. She’s clinging to him, ferociously, in a different way than she’d tried to before.

She’s clinging to Sasuke the same way Kakashi had clung to Rin - how Rin had clung right back - after Obito’s death. Sasuke is her constant, her reassurance that Naruto’s absence won’t just be for nothing, that someone is going to pay for it. That she’s going to help make that happen.

You don’t want to make me choose a side, Kakashi had told Hiruzen, as if they were words of fucking prophecy. Because here are his kids, minds made up, choosing a side that Kakashi would rather flay himself than join - and yet, here he is too, and he knows already he’s going to go with them.

Choosing against Konoha tastes like ozone and fear and self-loathing, but choosing against Sasuke and Sakura is unconscionable. Even this, even this, Kakashi will do. Watching them die is a terror that keeps him up at night, a nightmare with its hands around Kakashi’s throat, a dread that’s getting ever colder. That this might lead to that outcome takes his breath away.

But the thought of not being there is even worse. Konoha forsook Sasuke when his family was wiped out, and Konoha forsook them both once again when they came home bloodied and shattered. Konoha has gone on the same as always, as if nothing even happened, and it always has when the whole world was supposed to shatter and didn’t - with Obito’s eye in Kakashi’s skull and Rin’s blood on Kakashi’s hands - and that truth does absolutely nothing to stay Sasuke’s hatred or Sakura’s wrath. They are young and angry and wounded, and there is no words Kakashi can say that will convince them to reject the power on offer, no matter how dangerous and untrustworthy the source may be.

And he refuses to let them do this alone. Everyone will want their heads, but Kakashi has fought and killed the best of them, and if - in the end - his only purpose is to protect his remaining kids, where he failed to protect the third, then perhaps the Hound yet serves a purpose still.

So Kakashi selects a kunai, and helps them score through their Konoha hitai-ite, and lets them lead him into hell.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

If you're still doing these, how about alamort from the prompt list?

alamort (adj) : half- dead of exhaustion

CW: Blood, trauma response, memory loss/traumatic memory recovery, callous talk of murder, nonsexual nudity, pet whump references, guilt, referenced stabbing

Jake Gets Fucking Stabbed: One Two Three Four Five

The water went cold a while ago, but Antoni hasn’t moved. The chill of the porcelain along his lower back soothes the itching, aching burn scars underneath, the icy blast of the shower raining down on his locks his muscles into a constant teeth-chattering shiver, but it feels good.

It feels so good

It feels like what he deserves.

“How did you fuck up this badly?” Artyom asks, snapping the words in Russian as he cleans the wounds down his little brother’s arm. Misha won’t look at him, all gangly teenage elbows and knees. “Huh? What am I supposed to tell Mama if this happens again?”

“It won’t,” Misha mumbles, sullen, looking off to the side and not anywhere near him. “I’ll figure it out. Anyway, he’s not going to tell anyone, so it doesn’t matter, does it?”

“Doesn’t it?” Artyom reaches up, gripping Misha’s chin, leaving a smear of red blood along the line of his jaw as he forces his brother’s eyes to meet his own. “Did you wear gloves, Misha? At least did you do that?” 

Misha doesn’t answer, but Artyom knows what the lack of answer really means, and groans, letting go and sort of throwing Misha’s head to the side at the same moment with his frustration. “Misha! We talked about this!”

“Well, it’s not like I’ve done it before,” Misha says, still in that sulky mutter. “And i was by myself, you didn’t exactly help.”

“I’m not going to help you kill people!” Artyom wraps the bandages over Misha’s arm so viciously his little brother hisses at the pain. “I am no killer, Misha. And I’m not going to be one just for you.”

“Fine. We’ll see how Mama feels when I’m in prison and you have to tell her it’s because you wouldn’t help me.”

Artyom takes a breath, lets it out. Closes his eyes. There’s already a headache throbbing in his temples. “Misha... fine. Where did you leave the body?”

Maybe they can find it before the police do.

There’s red on his palms, even as the rest of his skin is clammy and pale from the water. Red on his palms and in the burns he is covered with, beginning at his wrists and covering every inch of his torso and back. Burns he earned, burns he took to make up for the crimes he was a part of.

Right?

Antoni shudders, scrubbing at the inside of his left hand, but the red gets worse, if anything. So much blood on his hands, and it won’t come off. It just stays there, a stubborn stain a decade old or more. All of the others, those were only the avalanche, but the first body is the shout that brought down the snow.

Antoni is a collection of rotted bodies and hidden bones, he is all the things he did not stop, he is all the ways he helped hide evil from the light. 

Jake’s blood had run from him first, when the shower water was still hot, when it scalded his skin until he could barely breathe for the pain. Jake’s blood had swirled pinkish in the water, gone down the drain and disappeared. Jake’s blood had been worthwhile to carry, to wear on himself. That had been saving a life, but the bloodstains left everywhere else are from lives taken.

He stares at the scar on the inside of his left wrist, where he and Chris had their barcodes removed together. It’s pale, a shimmer of skin that isn’t quite the same as the skin that surrounds it. No burns, but he is struck with a sudden urge to find Mr. Davies and ask for one. 

Mark me this way, how you marked all my other sins.

He shudders, lets out a choked-off sob that even he can barely hear over the water.

He was a pet for a reason, he was a pet because of what he’d done, but he hadn’t known. He hadn’t known what he did to deserve it. He had suspected but he hadn’t known, he hadn’t-

He knows now.

He could fall asleep here, the unlocking of a whole life inside his mind leaves him half-dead from the exhaustion and guilt, but he can’t sleep. He can’t stop. Not until the blood is gone.

It won’t come out.

“Tyoma!” Misha catches him in a hug, and the two of them laugh. “I missed you!”

“Missed you, too, Misha.” The airport is a busy hum around them, but Artyom has eyes only for his little brother, as always. ‘Mama is waiting at home. How was everyone?”

“Good!” Misha glances side to side, and then leans in to whisper against Artyom’s ear. “I did one there, in Russia, Tyoma. Just one.”

Artyom felt a bit of ice in his heart, lodged there unmelting, a pain he can’t dig out. “Misha, you promised-”

“I couldn’t help it. What are they going to do, Tyoma, track me from thousands of miles?” Misha laughs, and pulls away, and Tyoma follows him, taller and older but endlessly lost in the circle of Misha’s life, endlessly bound to the results of his choices, endlessly putting his small, once-sickly little brother first.

Family first.

Artyom spends the next few months waiting for a call that never comes.

Antoni hears voices outside the bathroom door, muffled but shouting, and he puts his hands over his ears to block them out. Maybe this is it, the end of the life he worked so hard to build, the end of the life of caring for one family because the ghosts of the other will no longer allow him to rest.

He has to turn the water off eventually.

His hand shakes almost too badly to manage it.

Even after it stops, he sits, shivering and dripping and naked in the bathtub. He can’t remember how to stand up to go get a towel. He can’t remember where the towels are. He can’t remember where he is, only the list of deaths that linger on his back, in his mind.

He tastes bitter and salt on his tongue, and starts to cry, holding himself in the tub. Every inch of his skin is burning, every round circle a brand new flame pressed there, Mr. Davies’s voice impassive and soft against his ear.

You deserve this, love.

“I kn-know,” Antoni chokes out, his voice low and broken. “I know, I know, I know...”

You deserve to suffer for what you’ve done, and everyone you ever touch will suffer, too.

Antoni thinks of Jake, bleeding out onto the kitchen floor, screaming as Antoni packed his wound, crying out for his mother.

They always cry for their mothers, while Misha-

Antoni can’t let the thought finish.

Desperate for something that will hurt him the way he deserves to be hurt, he lets Mr. Davies back into his heart, his mind, his body, and remembers his heavy hands in Antoni’s hair, the loathing in his British lilt.

You deserve this, my pretty little ashtray, this and far, far, far worse than I could ever give you.

Antoni rubs at his hands but the red stain there won’t ever come out. He sobs over the blood on his hands and whispers, to the voice in his mind, “I know.”

-

@astrobly @burtlederp @finder-of-rings @whump-tr0pes @raigash @moose-teeth @orchidscript @doveotions @pretty-face-breaker @eatyourdamnpears @boxboysandotherwhump @whumptywhumpdump @whumpfigure @outofangband @downriver914 @justabitofwhump @thehopelessopus @butwhatifyouwrite @yet-another-heathen @nonsensical-whump @newandfiguringitout @gonna-feel-that-tomorrow @oops-its-whump @cubeswhump @whumpiary @endless-whump

[oldbay-on-apples]

Dystopian Larry Fic Rec

Inspired by some of the lovely people and fic recers on here, I’ve decided to start making my own fic recs.  If you’d like, you can request recs in my inbox and I’ll see what I can do <3!

Please read the ratings and tags to these fics (because some of them are dark or have dark themes) and enjoy!

You Try To Be Everything (I Need) by lululawrence - @lululawrence​  (NR, 36k)

Wars, and rumours of wars, were nothing new for the world in the twenty-fourth century. The fighting had evolved over the years, and rarely did it involve traditional weapons. A group most widely known as the Southern Powers gained strength amongst portions of the western European continent and spread quickly. There was a fight the Southern Powers didn’t expect coming from the north of England, though. Resistance came in the form of an organised underground; a group comprised of people with the Touch that did the best they could to enforce a line that would not be crossed. Slowly, that line was moved from the Channel to boundaries further and further north. It seemed only a matter of time before the Southern Powers took over everywhere. Until that time, people did the best they could to live their lives in some semblance of normality. For Louis Tomlinson, that sense of normality was about to change when his best friend, Harry Styles, goes missing. Louis embarks on the journey of a lifetime where he uses his newly developed abilities to search for his friend, even when it takes him to places he never thought he would see while surmounting trials he never could have imagined. -

I loved the way the magic and technology in this fic intersected in such a unique way and the way the world was built was extraordinary!

red hands by reveries_passions - @dystopianharry​ (T, 132k)

I’ve never told anyone,” Harry murmurs, voice so soft no one else would be able to hear, if it wasn’t just the two of them. “But you’ve told someone,” Louis says firmly. “And that’s not gonna fucking happen around here. You don’t speak a word of it, or someone’s going to kill you, and we can’t let that happen.” * a dystopian au in which harry, an ex-soldier who’s escaped from his government run camp, accidentally stumbles across the biggest rebel movement in the country, and louis, one of the rebellion’s mysterious leaders who appears to hate him, seems to simultaneously have an obsession with keeping him alive. or: harry is wanted for treason, niall hasn’t changed in four years, liam is always smiling, and louis is angry. like, really angry.

- The plot of this is just *chef’s kiss* in so many ways!  I love the way the characters interact with each other and I’m weak for Niall and Harry’s friendship in this.

Love After the End of the World by writing_practice - @mercurial-madhouse​ (E 158k)

“Wait. Just so I’m clear in me fucking noggin,” Niall says. “An international worldwide takeover is well under way and the only thing standing between having hot showers and a second end of the world is us five fuckers?”    -----    Society shattered when all electricity suddenly cut off across the globe, plunging the world into darkness. Now, Prometheus Industries is the sole remaining supply of power, a saving grace to those who survived Lights Out. As fugitives in no-man’s land struggling to break into Prometheus HQ, death lurks around every corner for Louis and Zayn. Things get complicated when a routine recon falls apart and Louis collides with Harry and his mates Niall and Liam, survivors with their own agenda.    When staying alive is already a constant battle, the deadliest weakness is to be in love. For Harry and Louis, finding each other sits on top of the endless list of What Else Could Go Wrong.

-

This just came out in the most recent Big Bang (that’s still on going so you should definitely check that out) and this fic is so amazing!  I think it does a great job of just really immersing you in the world the characters exist in.  Love After the End of the World is also a Soulmate AU and I love the way those parts come together.  It also has an amazing prologue called PROMETHEUS RISING (M 5k) that I enjoyed immensely set in the same world!

at last, at last by suspendrs - @suspendrs​ (NR 41k) Locked

“Come with us,” Tommo says, stopping at the other end of the gymnasium, near the doors. “Don’t let them make you suffer any longer. Come with us, and be human.”

   Before Harry has even finished thinking it through, he’s on his feet, gaining the attention of every single person in the gymnasium. What has he got to lose, anyway?

   Or, Harry is born into a cult in a post-apocalyptic world, and Louis is the leader of the rebel group tasked with the mission of shutting them down. Together, they make a rather effective team.

-

This fic does a great job of making you feel like you’re experiencing with the characters, like I could practically smell what the characters were smelling!  The world it’s set in is so cool and the entire fic feels so well thought out and everything is so consistent!

my love will never leave you by we_are_the_same @so-why-let-your-voice-be-tamed​ (T 10k)

In a world where memories are used as currency, Louis will do anything it takes for Harry to get better.

-

I loved the idea behind this. Like the entire world is so brilliantly done! And it was all based on ONE word (because of the wordplay challenge).  Even though it’s set in a different world everything feels so grounded and realistic and I really really like that about it.

a prayer for which no words exist by Eliane (M 34k) Locked

"Louis is a few seconds away from blowing up a rather important section of the New York subway when he sees Harry for the first time."

-

In this fic the characters motivations are so clear (to the reader) and I love how it goes from Louis accidentally sort of, kind of, kidnapping Harry to them becoming friends then more.  I also love how no matter where they are the fic has a real sense of place. This is part 1 of landscapes of war.  The entire series is really good!

Who Painted the Moon Black by throughthedark (E 95k) Locked

   “People died,” Harry whispers so quietly Louis strains to hear. “People died, and I killed some of them. How does life just go on after something like that?”

   Louis shakes his head. “I don't know. It just does.”

   Hunger Games AU where Louis Tomlinson is district six's victor from the 69th Hunger Games and Harry Styles is district seven's victor from the 72nd Hunger Games.

-

This fic is a hunger games AU that both people who have and haven't read/watched the Hunger Games can enjoy. I like how it explores the world of the Hunger Games in a way that isn’t explored in the Hunger Games canon.  It’s really intense (like the E is for the darker themes and violence) and I enjoy it a lot.  There is a happy ending (as the author assures in the tags) and I really enjoy all the struggles that the characters go through.

Nobody Marks You by graceling_in_a_suit @graceling-in-a-suit​ (T 33k)

“The plan is: we’re gonna put on a play. Now, I see some doubtful faces–” Louis looked around and found zero doubtful faces. Liam looked intrigued, Zayn looked bored, and Harry looked scarily blank. “But this is what’s happening. We’re gonna do some fucking acting, we’re gonna perform our hearts out, and we’re not going to think about anything else. The past, the future; none of it. All we’re going to think about is... “ Niall trailed off, eyeing the bookshelf to his left. He closed his eyes and reached a hand out towards it, running his fingers over the covers before pulling a book out at random. “William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.”

AU: Five assholes stuck in a bunker put on a play.

-

This is one of my absolute favorite fics.  I just love the way the characters interact and they way the story is told.  It’s nonlinear so you jump around in time and it shows the way the character's relationships change throughout.  I’m a sucker for Much Ado About Nothing and though you don’t need to read it to fully appreciate the fic I think the use of the play throughout is genius. 

@1dfanfictionbookcovers​ has a really cool cover for the fic as well HERE

With a whimper by kitundercover  @kitundercover​​ (M 132k)

Dystopian AU. Louis has been alone for too long to remember how not to be, and Harry has too much to worry about to deal with a scrawny, wild, stranger.

---

The man grips his arm tightly. “You’re not going to say anything.” It’s not a question.

Louis shakes his head, his body twitching.

“Fine.” Large green eyes survey him before letting go. “It’s cold. Take this. Wear it.”

Louis can’t help another flinch as the man’s long scarf is wrapped around his tender neck, it’s still warm. He touches the soft material. “Thank you.”

The man bears his teeth. “Don’t thank me. Don’t ever thank me.”

-

The thing this fic does really does is showing emotional reactions.  Louis’ inner monologue is so well done and I really like the plot of the story.

these bountiful silences by tommoandbambi (T 123k)

they live in a world where they can only say four words per day. harry meets some people that don't want to live that way.

-

I really, really, really, like this plot and the story! The world that the characters exist in is so interesting and I just love the way in which it is a dystopia.

[robininthelabyrinth]

Delight in Misery (ao3) - part 1, part 2, part 3

-

Sometimes, Lan Wangji would weigh the various downsides of being injured against each other to see which one was the worst.

It was not, in Lan Wangji’s opinion, the pain.

After all, he’d long ago learned to cultivate through suffering, subjecting himself to discipline and the bite of the Cold Springs. Yes, the wounds of the discipline whip took a long time to heal, a constant throbbing agony, but Jiang Cheng faithfully applied a salve to them twice daily (sometimes after kicking the bed to get Lan Wangji’s attention if he happened to be in a stupor, because the man had no notion of grace) and prepared for nourishing soups and bitter medicines to help ease the feeling.

It took Lan Wangji months and an unfortunate incident with Jin Ling sliding himself forward on his belly towards the kitchen with remarkable speed to realize that Jiang Cheng prepared the food and medicine himself. It was supposedly to protect Lan Wangji’s privacy and better keep the secret of his existence, according to a flustered Jiang Cheng upon being confronted, but Lan Wangji knew that he was lying.

Lan Wangji had good hearing, after all, and Jiang Cheng sometimes left the door to his room open a crack, especially if Jin Ling was asleep in his crib in the corner, and, well –

Jiang Cheng talked to himself when he cooked.

(“Damnit, jiejie, did you have to pick the world’s most finicky recipe?” he’d grumble under his breath. “So many onions! I swear you secretly increased the number just to make me cry more – is that why it never tastes like yours?”

A pause.

“I didn’t mean it, jiejie. I know you’d never mess with your recipes, you always said that making us food was how you showed your love for us…what do you mean the soup’s just like me? I’m not finicky.”)

That had eased the pain even more. To know someone cared enough to –

Lan Wanji didn’t say anything about those conversations, or the worrying things they suggested about the state of Jiang Cheng’s mind. After all, a man was entitled to his own grief; wasn’t that how they’d ended up in this situation to begin with?

Anyway, if he were to start hallucinating Wei Wuxian, he’d probably talk with him, too. He’d never stop talking to him.

Of course, he thought, no one would notice it if he did. The conversations would entirely consist of him listening and occasionally grunting in acknowledgment while Wei Wuxian chattered on and on –

He didn’t hallucinate.

No, no matter how bad the pain got, Lan Wangji remained painfully lucid, excessively sober.

There had only been once that it truly got to be too much for him, and he asked Jiang Cheng to bring him wine to drink in an attempt to not think about it –

Jiang Cheng refused to tell him what he’d said or done that night, telling him that nothing of interest occurred, but he never brought him any more wine, either, so Lan Wangji didn’t believe him in the slightest.

He didn’t ask again.

(No one ever answered Inquiry, either)

So no. It wasn’t the pain that was the worst – whether the physical pangs of his body or the mental lashing of his endless heartbreak, he could, and would, survive.

Nor was the worst part the forced bedrest.

After all, staying still for long periods of time was nothing to a member of the Lan sect, and the immobility allowed him time to contemplate his thoughts, turning them around and around in his head until they were as smooth and polished as a stone washed by the river.

He had a lot of thoughts.

Very few of them were good ones.

It might have been too much, if he’d been alone and in seclusion – if Jiang Cheng wasn’t always blowing into his room like a hurricane, loud and always blowing hot and cold; if he didn’t have A-Yuan coming to him for lessons, regular as clockwork; if he didn’t get Jin Ling dropped into his lap whenever Jiang Cheng was otherwise occupied. But even when they weren’t around, there was always fresh paper and ink if he wanted to write, his guqin close at hand and a never-empty pot of incense…even a weiqi board that they sometimes unmercifully tortured.

There were books as well, of course; all the books that the Jiang sect’s recovering library had to offer. By being conquered, the Jiang sect had escaped the fate of the Lan sect, and while their official library had been plundered of all its manuals and textbooks, many of the personal books remained – especially the ones hidden in the walls or ceiling by mischievous children.

Sometimes mischievous adults.

Lan Wangji read the stories to a fascinated A-Yuan and Jing Ling. Sometimes, if it was a good day, Jiang Cheng would come by as well to tell stories of memories that the stories evoked – that this one was the one Wei Wuxian had insisted on hearing every single night until they were all sick of it, that that one had been purchased on an outing to an especially boisterous market town downriver, that yet another had been read to him first when he’d been sick with a cough and Wei Wuxian had never let him forget how he always seemed to cough whenever the love interest’s name was mentioned.

(If it was a bad day, Lan Wangji would read the stories at a louder volume, trying to drown out the sound of sobs from the room across the way, and ignore as best he could the smell of bile and blood.)

Yes, the bedrest was manageable. Fine, even.

No, Lan Wangji thought, reaching the same conclusion as always – the worst part of being seriously injured was, without a doubt, the getting better.

“Time for physical conditioning!” Jiang Cheng crowed, looking far, far too cheerful about it.

It wasn’t even as if he had any room to complain about Lan Wangji as a patient! Even in the worst days of the injury, Lan Wangji hadn’t once complained about needing to turn over to avoid getting sores or to the endless sessions of acupuncture designed to help maintain his internal stability, he’d submitted to Jiang Cheng helping him stretch his arms and legs without anything more than a grunt of pain – he’d even carefully maintained a regular circulation of qi throughout his body to prevent his muscles and bones from deteriorating too much no matter how bad his mental state would sometimes get.

Lan Wangji had always intended on subjecting himself to a harsh physical regimen to regain his fitness once his wounds were not so dire that excessive movement would rip them open or cause his qi to become unstable. Yet Jiang Cheng took a truly gruesome joy in (unnecessarily) forcing Lan Wangji to do things, things like walk around the room, or lift weights, or – now that he was doing better – exercise.

And he was being such a pest about it, too.

He’d forced Lan Wangji to start by doing the horse stance again, like a child.

In fact, he seriously suspected that A-Yuan’s conditioning training routine and his own were identical, a suspicion supported by the way A-Yuan would mimic him and claim he was just practicing.

“It’s good that he’s so diligent,” Jiang Cheng said with a suspiciously straight face. “And has such a reliable role model.”

Lan Wangji glared at him, exhausted and pushed past his limits from the last hour of performing the most painfully basic sword exercises to re-habituate himself to it now that his back was most of the way healed. “Get lost.”

Jiang Cheng exaggeratedly brought his hands to his chest as if in shock. “It can’t be! Have I reached Wei Wuxian levels at last?”

Lan Wangji, who’d been trying to slowly execute a maneuver he’d had down since he was younger than A-Yuan was now, missed a step, then turned and glared to cover up his amusement.

(Any mention of Wei Wuxian had once immediately summoned a flood of sorrow and regret, but Jiang Cheng simply brought him up too often; Lan Wangji had by now become somewhat inured. He thought that Wei Wuxian’s spirit, wherever it was and however resistant to his summons, might enjoy that.)

Jiang Cheng squinted at him with a suspicious expression. “I think you found that funny, but with an ice-block like you, it’s impossible to say.”

“Feel free to chisel an expression you prefer.” Lan Wangji finished the maneuver and started it over again. The scars on his back pulled, but held without breaking or bleeding anew; it had been nearly two years since the discipline whip had fallen on his back, and while he was still far too weak to risk going out, it meant – irritatingly enough – that Jiang Cheng was correct and this level of exercise was indeed appropriate.

That didn’t mean Lan Wangji had to like it.

“Can I? You mean that you come in an option other than ‘mildly peeved’?”

“‘Faintly murderous’ is also available. Continue on your present course to see it.”

There was a snort from the door, a voice so familiar that Lan Wangji continued another five steps in his current maneuver before realizing that the voice shouldn’t be there, that it was familiar from his memories of Gusu rather than his present day at the Lotus Pier.

His fingers tightened around Bichen. “…Brother.”

Jiang Cheng had finally told Lan Xichen that he knew where Lan Wangji was, and apparently the entire thing had been a fiasco of such epic proportions that he refused to speak of it again.

(The few hints he’d given of the situation suggested that tears might have been involved, and possibly a black eye or two.)

Of course, he’d then followed it up by banning him from the Lotus Pier until Lan Xichen felt that he could come visit without immediately demanding (or requesting, which was more likely) that Lan Wangji return to Gusu with him.

Lan Wangji hadn’t been especially impressed with that requirement, given that he’d already told Jiang Cheng that he would not succumb to any such requests; it had led to several days of cold war between them until Jiang Cheng broke and confessed that he assumed that Lan Wangji would want to leave the second he laid eyes on Lan Xichen and so was postponing it as much as possible.

Lan Wangji had magnanimously forgiven him, since in truth he’d been a little concerned about the same.

He turned around.

Lan Xichen’s eyes were wet and glistening, his body a little thinner than Lan Wangji remembered, but it was still him in all the important, fundamental ways. His elder brother, who loved him, and Lan Wangji was suddenly full of so many feelings that he couldn’t even begin to understand them, much less express them.

“You know, I think I hear someone calling me urgently,” Jiang Cheng – who must have known that Lan Xichen was visiting, since entering the Lotus Pier required reporting his presence to the Sect Leader – said, turning and fleeing from the room at once.

“Coward,” Lan Wangji said mildly, knowing that Jiang Cheng’s cultivation was sufficient to let him hear the word without him having to raise his voice.

“Don’t blame Sect Leader Jiang,” Lan Xichen said, and his voice was warm as the summer days of their childhood. “I came several days ago; he had no idea of which day I would finally work up my courage to see you.”

Lan Wangji blinked, surprised. “Courage?”

Why would his brother require courage to see him?

“Wangji…” Lan Xichen’s hands were clasped together in front of him, a sign of anxiety. “I was worried you were still angry at me. That I would come, and you would turn me away.”

Lan Wangji would not have extended the invitation if he hadn’t been willing to see him. “I would not have turned you away.”

“But you’re still angry,” Lan Xichen said wisely.

Lan Wangji shrugged, meaning a little, meaning the love of my life died alone and you lied to me about it, meaning that I understand why you did it does not lessen how I feel about it.

“I am sorry,” Lan Xichen said. “I was wrong.”

Lan Wangji was surprised. He knew his brother well enough to know he would never say the words merely out of guilt or convenience or a desire to make peace; to say them aloud, he would have had to think over his actions, truly think them over, and to decide that he had in fact been wrong.

Lan Xichen saw his surprise and ducked his head a little. “I confided in my sworn brothers, and each one of them told me, in very different terms and for very different reasons, I was an idiot,” he said. “Even if I feared for your life, even if I doubted your choices – you are an adult, and I treated you like a child. I broke your trust. It was wrong, and I should not have done it.”

They were still in dispute as to the quality of Wei Wuxian’s character, then, but – Lan Wangji could live with that. It seemed more real, somehow, than a complete turnaround would have been.

“You are forgiven,” he said, and mostly meant it. The remaining part of that ‘mostly’ was only a scar, and could be – and would be – ignored by strength of will. And then, because he did love his brother no matter how much pain he had caused him, he added, “I missed you.”

Lan Xichen rubbed his eyes, which caused a dull ache in Lan Wangji’s chest. “I missed you too, Wangji. I – oh, I was so worried!”

Lan Wangji took an automatic step back from the unexpected exclamation, but he supposed it was reasonable. He had disappeared with his back still torn open from the discipline whip, and he had become feverish to the point of fainting – yes, worry was a reasonable reaction.

Especially since Lan Wangji had stubbornly remained missing for two entire years.

“I meant you to be,” he said honestly, because Lan Xichen deserved to know that his perfect little brother had an unexpectedly spiteful side to him.

Lan Xichen smiled at him, unbothered. “I figured as much, when we couldn’t find you no matter where we looked – the cultivation world is not so large that you could go unnoticed, even hurt and suffering; you must have found a place to shelter. We were fairly sure you weren’t dead, and that meant it had to be intentional. I was angry, for a while, but eventually – well, in the end, I’m just happy to see you.”

Lan Wangji was happy to see Lan Xichen, too. He’d missed his big brother, so calm and gentle; that he was angry at him did not mean that he did not love him, that he didn’t want him around.

It was a sudden breath of wind on a pleasant day, a sudden gust of Gusu tranquility in the middle of the now-familiar ruckus of the Lotus Pier.

“Can I serve you tea?” Lan Wangji asked, suddenly full of the desire to show his brother his room here – to show him that he hadn’t suffered during this time. He wanted to show him the weiqi board so that he could laugh at the appalling (and yet disturbingly successful) way Jiang Cheng played, to show him the books and the sandalwood incense that reminded Lan Wangji so much of Gusu that there was no way that Jiang Cheng hadn’t ordered especially for him, to let him meet A-Yuan and get punched by little Jin Ling who was too small for his version of his uncle’s temper to be anything other than cute.

To show him that the Lotus Pier was not merely a shelter for Lan Wangji, but a home.

Lan Xichen nodded, and they went.

Lan Xichen seemed pleased with Lan Wangji’s room, nodding in approval as Lan Wangji showed him around. But when there was nothing else to be pointed out, he looked sidelong at Lan Wangji and murmured, “Sect Leader Jiang informed me that I was not to raise the possibility of you returning. Was that your will, or his?”

If he’s keeping you here by force, I will put aside all etiquette to fight for you, he meant, and Lan Wangji was touched.

“Both,” he said. “I am not ready to return to the Cloud Recesses.”

They both knew that it wasn’t his injuries that were preventing him.

“You like it here, then?”

“I do.”

A pause, and then – “I’m glad.”

They had tea, then, and spoke of other things. Lan Xichen, always the more talkative one, told Lan Wangji of the way life in Cloud Recesses had at long last started to resemble the days before fire and war, of the rambunctious child that their uncle had adopted and couldn’t seem to bring himself to scold, and even of the way his sworn brothers who could scarcely tolerate each other had managed to come together in agreement to help him search for Lan Wangji.

“I may have let them search a bit longer than I needed to,” Lan Xichen confessed. “Things were getting bad for a while there, very bad – did you hear about Xue Yang?”

“Mm. Disappeared before trial.”

“Yes, in the end. Before that, though, there was a period when da-ge’s temper was getting worse and worse, and A-Yao was doing everything he could to irritate him while pretending he’d never done anything wrong in his life, which of course irritated da-ge even more…I honestly thought one of them might try to kill the other. But then I ended up having a small fit while the two of them were bickering, and by the time I recovered they’d somehow managed to get over the worst of it.”

Lan Wangji raised his eyebrows.

“I think they realized that I couldn’t handle losing either of them at that time,” Lan Xichen said with a shrug, indicating clearly that the fit in question was not a subject that was open for discussion. “I’d had the abrupt realization that I really might never see you again, if not even they could locate you...it really was a surprise that Jiang Cheng turned out to be such an accomplished liar.”

“Did he actually lie?” Lan Wangji asked, truly curious. The Jiang Cheng he knew was a horrendous liar, but surprisingly good at omitting details.

A Yunmeng trait, according to Jiang Cheng. It made Lan Wangji wonder what secrets Wei Wuxian might have been keeping hidden behind his smile.

“Well, he was very good at misdirecting away from any direct questions, at any rate,” Lan Xichen said with a smile that was a little tense around the corners. Lan Wangji suspected that he hadn’t quite forgiven Jiang Cheng for his part in hiding Lan Wangji, for all that Lan Xichen would never permit himself to seek revenge for the slight. “Often with anger, or with bluster…do you truly enjoy his company?”

“Very much,” Lan Wangji said, and almost chuckled at Lan Xichen’s somewhat disbelieving face. “Was his confession to you as much of a disaster as he made it sound?”

“There were tears,” Lan Xichen said. “And not just mine.”

Lan Wangji hid away a smile.

In return, his brother’s eyebrows went up. Lan Wangji didn’t blame him; he knew that Lan Xichen was not accustomed to his ever-serious younger brother smiling, even a hidden one.

Lan Wangji did not know how to tell him that the only way to put up with Jiang Cheng for any period of time was to learn to find his antics funny – how to tell his brother that he’d smiled more, here in the Lotus Pier, than any period of his life to date.

Even the parts with Wei Wuxian in them had been too full of confusion for smiles, confusion and love and denial. He dearly wished that Wei Wuxian could see him now, occasional smiles and lowering himself to engage in banter with Jiang Cheng – he thought Wei Wuxian would like it.

He thought, perhaps over-optimistically, that Wei Wuxian might have liked him. This version of him.

There was a familiar creak, then, and Lan Wangji shook his head, even more amused.

“He’s about to kick the door open,” he told Lan Xichen, who looked even more surprised at the unexpected prediction. “He always does.”

Sure enough, a moment later, Jiang Cheng burst into the door like a blast of the south wind, hot and blustery; his arms were unsurprisingly full of children.

“You forgot to stretch before you left the training field,” he said conversationally, which was a tone that, to judge by Lan Xichen’s expression, sounded to a normal person like an angry, dismissive growl. “You get an extra hour of acupuncture as penance. Also, I hope your bonding time has been enjoyable, because it’s over now - I need you to watch the kids before they ruin my trade agreements.”

It was a demand, not a question, and Jiang Cheng didn’t wait for an answer: a moment later and he was gone again. But now there was Jin Ling and Lan Sizhui there, looking curiously at Lan Xichen, and Lan Wangji nodded at them to indicate that his presence had been sanctioned.

Lan Xichen, in turn, recovered himself quickly and smiled at them. “My name is Lan Xichen,” he said, opting for a far more informal introduction than would normally be appropriate. “You can call me Uncle, if you like. What’s your names?”

“I’m Lan Yuan, uncle,” A-Yuan said formally, and tried to salute the way Lan Wangji taught him. “And he’s Jin Ling. He’s not yet two, so he doesn’t bow yet. Hanguang-jun, should I take him to paint?”

Lan Wangji nodded his permission, so A-Yuan took Jin Ling by the hand – not hard, since Jin Ling was not-so-subtly trying to hide behind him to block Lan Xichen’s curious gaze – and led him over to the corner of the room where they’d stored all the children’s supplies.

“Lan Yuan,” Lan Xichen echoed, and turned his eyes on Lan Wangji. “I’d heard of him before. The stories made him out to be the product of some sort of tragic love affair or a mistress of Jiang Cheng’s. I hadn’t put it together with your presence here before. Does that mean…?”

Lan Wangji nodded, confirming Lan Xichen’s suspicions that he was the one raising him – that he’d agreed to share his surname with him.

“Where did you find him?”

Lan Wangji shook his head, refusing to answer.

Lan Xichen nodded slowly. There was a little pain in his eyes: they had once been so close that there had been no questions that wouldn’t be answered, or subjects that couldn’t be discussed, like Lan Xichen’s breakdown or Lan Yuan’s origins. “You’re right; it doesn’t matter. If you say he’s a Lan, then that’s enough for me…I’ll have him included in the family register at home, if you’ll consent.”

Once in the register, Lan Sizhui would have the right to wear the cloud-patterned forehead ribbon. It would give him the backing of being a member of the Lan clan, with all the responsibilities that came with it – the ones Lan Wangji was trying to teach him, and which he could learn better in the future if he went to the Cloud Recesses to learn.

It would be good for him to have that option.

“How will you explain it?” Lan Wangji asked, meaning I don’t want them to know I’m here.

Lan Xichen smiled faintly, and that was agreement – reluctant agreement, but agreement nonetheless. “I wasn’t planning on explaining it.”

For once in his life, Lan Wangji was almost looking forward to hearing the gossip.

[bluegarners]

The Call

Later in life, he’ll understand it was the void that spoke to him. Right now though, it screams in Dick’s ears.

When he was younger, maybe between the age of five or six, he heard it. The particular wording wasn’t exactly correct, he never actually heard anything, there was no sound or noise to hear, but he understood it.

It was a call. A command. And whenever it surfaced, it was loud and it was in his face until he listened and did whatever it asked of him.

When he first heard it, he was with his parents, practicing for their next performance. It was normal and peaceful. But when he mounted the bars and was reaching out to grasp the swinging rope before him, it spoke and tugged gently.

Stop.

At the time, he hadn’t known what it was. It was soft, quiet even, but it had startled him enough to the point where his grip slackened, and he was falling. The feel of air rushing past you, whistling in your ear like a taunt as the world laughed; the first time you feel it, you never forget it.

He was lucky. It was only a practice and the safety net had caught him before gravity had had its way with him. His parents had been frantic, leaping down to help him and reassure themselves. It had been scary seeing a Grayson fall. Graysons flew, toyed with the idea of plummeting like it was merely a myth. To see one shot down, so suddenly, so quickly, and so young, it was horrifying.

Dick did not perform that night.

When his parents died, flashes of red, yellow, and green, it whispered again. It tickled against his ears, brushed against his hair, as he looked down at the brokenness of their bodies, displayed and framed with pools of black against the sawdust. 

Follow.

It had only been a whisper, just a breath, and he had dismissed it. The shrieks of the crowd below, the shouts of the ringmaster demanding for everyone to remain calm, his fellow performers stock still like statues. It was easy to dismiss a whisper when there was chaos. When the police came and the sirens ceased their wailing, everything was silent and weightless, like the world had forgotten what noise was.

When the social worker told him that he could not continue traveling with the circus and was instead to remain in Gotham, be “placed” in an orphanage like he was some object, some discarded thing that needed to be relocated, he was angry. He was upset. He was baffled. He was ten.

In those few months he spent with the other dozens of “placed” children, Dick Grayson was a lot of things, but none of them what he wanted to be. There was an endless buzz deep within his bones, a steady thrum in his head that would not dissipate no matter how many nights he snuck out or how many purse snatchers and petty thieves he beat with his fists. The kids he roomed with, ate with, shared a bathroom with, knew he was a circus freak. That he was some weirdo who could perform tricks on command like a dog. That the people who he had once called family were all thousands of miles away from Gotham and buried in some nameless cemetery with plain gravestones.

One day, as he lay in his rotted mattress, the nagging, ceaseless, ever present urge to flee covering his entire being, another social worker came by and told him he was going to be taken away by Bruce Wayne. That the man had offered, in a generous and beautiful display of sympathy and desire to help, to take the ten year old in as his ward. That he better behave and thank the man when he came to pick him up and smile for the cameras when they flashed in his face.

Dick was confused. He was desperate. He was grateful to be rescued from the looming and smelly walls. Mostly, though, he was indifferent.

Arriving at the Wayne Mansion was overwhelming and scary. It was absurdly large, immaculately clean, and much too empty. Most of his first week getting “settled”, because that’s what you have to do when you relocate and get removed, you must settle for what you have, was spent with the singular butler. Dick found it impressive that the older man was in charge of maintaining every detail in the massive home, but he soon saw reason for it.

Bruce was never there. He was always working, always away, and too busy to properly help “settle” his new ward, of which he had yet to explain. Why? Why him? Why this random orphaned boy out of the other hundreds of more pitiable kids?

Alfred tried his best to explain it to him, that Bruce saw himself in Dick because they had both become orphaned at such a young age, and god, didn’t that sting? To be reminded in such a stark manner? To be told his sole purpose in occupying space in the Wayne household was because of a mutual trauma?

And then one night, it makes sense. He discovers the secret to Bruce Wayne and his near constant absence. And he wants in.

When it comes time, after three days of convincing, a week of searching and preparing, and two days staking out, Dick is ready. The mask he wears hides his eyes, hides the fury, the hatred, the absolute glee he feels as his fist drives into the man who took everything from him. Over and over again, and he thinks he’s smiling when he pauses for a moment to truly look into the bloody and disfigured face he’s beating. 

Do it.

It had been months since he’d last heard it, last felt it, but he thinks he’s ready to listen. No more startling, no more ignoring. In fact, he might even embrace it. 

There’s a batarang in his hand before he’s even processed it all, reeling back his arm to deliver the final blow, to avenge his parents, avenge the life that could’ve been his but was instead snatched from underneath him all because of some stupid money. Some fucking paper bills. 

Do it.

“Robin, that’s enough.”

The weapon falls out of his grasp as if he’d been burned by it, getting up and off the unconscious man. The gloves he’s wearing are dripping, his skin hot from the red that splatters his front. Beneath the dock lighting, it almost looks black.

It begins yelling at him, pushing against his mind for every step he takes away from the misshapen body tied to the lamp post. It goes away eventually, its screams fading away into the background as days pass by. The endless thrum in him stops, the buzzing static in his bones melting away as he realizes how tired he is. 

How awfully tired and done he is.

He holes himself in his much too large room, coming out only to eat and prove he is alive. For two weeks, he keeps the same routine. He tells nothing of his thoughts from that night, nor wishes to. Alfred attempts to keep him company, assuring the ten year old that he has someone to talk to, but his lips are sealed and his head is wailing.

Finally, he emerges, and after awkward greetings, apologies, and long suffering sighs, he gets to work. Training under the Batman, becoming yet another symbol to Gotham in the form of a bird his mother loved, it keeps his head on straight. For the first time in a long time, Dick is strangely optimistic and happy.

Alfred tells him that his smiles brighten both his and Bruce’s day, even if the latter says nothing of it. He learns that Bruce, even out of the cowl and under the name Wayne, is still a very stoic and quiet man, even cold at times. But Dick reminds himself that by letting him become Robin, by letting him work by his side and live in his home, this was the billionaire’s way of showing he cared. On the good days, when Dick could get the reserved man to smile or even chuckle a tiny bit, he was a ball of light and energy, doubling down on his efforts to keep Alfred and Bruce happy with him.

Because if they grew tired of him, or his presence no longer brought joy, what would they do with him? Under a legal obligation and public image, Bruce couldn’t get rid of him so soon, but there were worse things. Like taking Robin away. Taking his only connection, his only outlet, away. Letting the buzz and the ache return.

The day he debuted officially as Batman’s sidekick, his new partner, Robin, was one of the happiest days Dick thinks he’s ever had. It’s a slow night, a slow patrol, but it’s amazing. Everything he could have ever dreamed of. When they come to rest, perched on some high rise skyscraper looking over the dingy city, Dick breathes in the smog and smiles. Next to him, Batman stands, silent and brooding, but even Robin knows that he is satisfied as well. Below them, down, down, down below, there is the city life. The homeless, the hookers, the drug dealers, the thieves, the ordinary civilians. From where they perch, the people look like ants. So tiny and minuscule. 

He’s seen this view before. Seen it in his trial runs through the city. Seen it from lower buildings. The air is thinner and just that amount colder, the wind is whistling in his ears, brushing against his hair, laughing. Taunting.

The longer he stares downward, the longer his eyes remain trained on the perhaps only dozen people below, the longer he allows the call to beckon him, the harder his heart beats. The louder the wind screams in his ears. 

You never forget it after the first time.

Jump.

It’s the first time it has echoed so loudly, so demandingly. 

Batman turns his head to stare at the boy, watching as his feet shuffle and his back hunches. There’s a strong gust, powerful enough to make his cape billow wildly, and suddenly, Robin is leaping.

Robin is plummeting.

There are no second thoughts as he fires his grapple hook, jumping down after the boy who falls so serenely. The wind bites at his face, Gotham is cold tonight, and as he yanks at the boy’s arm, securing him stiffly to his side, Batman feels his stomach churn. He hadn’t thought of this outcome.

Later, when they return to the Manor, Dick goes straight to his room, shutting the door and locking it. Bruce stays in the cave, troubled, unsure, and mildly terrified. 

“I was just playing around, B. It was no big deal.”

“What you just did was reckless and unnecessary.”

“I was gonna catch myself.”

“Were you?”

Bruce still isn’t sure what exactly had happened. The boy hadn’t shown any alarming tendencies before. Red flags all but absent. Even after consulting Alfred, both adults were stumped. Dick was happy, right?

What bothered him the most was that Robin hadn’t even reached for his grapple. There was no fear. No thrill. Nothing in his actions or posture or face that would indicate he jumped for the fun of it.

He leaped and did nothing. 

He just fell.

Dick gets “suspended” for three weeks after. Bruce never said anything, never implied a suspension or anything of the sort, but Dick knew. He stays in the Manor with Alfred, goes to school, and is quite normal. He never attended a proper school whilst traveling with the circus, and he can’t say he likes the atmosphere.

He knows he’s been forgiven when Bruce joins them for dinner, asking what he’d learned that day and investing actual thought into the conversation. When they go out for patrol, and god, does it feel good to be out again, Robin stays close to Batman and Batman keeps an eye on Robin. All goes well and nothing big happens. It’s a good night.

As time passes on, and Gotham finally learns of their new hero, all thoughts of Robin’s leap vanish. Even the villains note how chipper the smaller vigilante is beside the ever dark and stoic Bat. There are always comments about his age, speculations on why a child would be strung along for the ride. Batman ignores them and Robin sticks out his tongue. Simple.

Months pass and Dick realizes that Batman doesn’t do holidays. Bruce Wayne hosts galas and attends them, but Batman does not. When Christmas Eve arrives, and with it the seventh gala of the month, Dick tries his best to remain collected. As Bruce Wayne’s ward, he has to maintain an image, but there is an empty feeling inside when Christmas morning comes and there is no real festive cheer. A simple breakfast and a normal day accompany it, and even Christmas dinner is no more than a nice ham and some plum pudding. 

Dick cries that night. He’s never missed his parents more.

Spring arrives, and so does March 20th. Honestly, Dick hadn’t been paying attention, a small part of him perhaps even ignoring the date existed, but he’s forced to reckon with it when Alfred delivers him breakfast in bed and a small card that reads Happy Birthday.

He is eleven now. It is his first birthday, ever, where he has not been woken up by a hug pile and loud, borderline obnoxious singing from his parents. When Alfred leaves to let Dick get dressed, because “I’m taking you out shopping for a nice suit; Master Bruce has a pleasant dinner planned,” , he takes extra long in the shower, begging the hot water to do something about the numbness that’s closing in. He does not cry, he’s promised himself not to do that anymore, but he feels hollow.

Dick isn’t sure he likes his birthday anymore. It doesn’t feel the same. Not with the lavish presents, the fancy food, the primness of other rich people wishing him well and congratulations.

He wants his parents. 

He wants them to smother him and take too many pictures. 

He wants to laugh and complain when his face gets shoved into a slice of cake. 

He wants to hold them tightly and tell them he loves them.

Instead, Dick says thank you and smiles brightly.

 Later that night, when they’re back in the Manor, safe from the flashing cameras and intrusive questions,

“What’s it like to be the ward of a billionaire?”

“What were birthdays like in the circus?”

“Is it hard adjusting to normal life?”

Dick climbs out of his window and sits on the roof. Even as far away from the city as they are, light pollution steals the stars away. The sky is cloudy, the moon hidden, and Dick has never felt so small. So alone. The world is vast, larger than even he can stretch his imagination, and somewhere out there, Haly’s Circus was traveling, performing.

They must be thinking of him, right? At least one of them must remember him. He grew up in the circus, grew up around “strange” people, people he called family. He loved them, so they had to have loved him back, right? At least, once in a while, be thinking of him.

Or maybe. Maybe, he was just another act. Another stage performance. Dazzling, flashy, and brief. Time ran out, the clock struck twelve, and the show was over. Curtains close, they say goodbye, and that’s it. 

The Graysons were never supposed to be permanent.

He teeters, four stories above the ground below, and breathes. Balancing at the tip of some outdated and strangely well fit spike, Dick feels the wind come and brush against his face. Is this what he’ll always think of when the air gets cold? Of cheering crowds and brightly colored outfits? The cheers turning into screams of horror, sawdust becoming saturated with a red so black it looks like some blank and open void?

Fly.

I’m scared to, he thinks. The horizon ahead of him is endless, boundless, but the ground beneath him, just barely sixty feet away, is so close. An abrupt stop.

Fly.

When he tries to breathe in again, his lungs spasm and a short and quiet hiccup escapes instead. For the first time, Dick is scared of flying. Scared of what will happen if he falls. Scared that there will be nothing waiting for him except something cold and hard, left in another unmarked graveyard. 

Scared that no one will care if he falls.

But, it keeps telling him to go. To jump. To leap. To take flight. It’s loud and annoying and it won’t leave him alone.

He shuffles a bit, keeping his eyes fixed on the Gotham city lights. They become blurry, too obscured in his tears, and that scares him even more to think that if he falls, he won’t have the comfort of light to guide him. 

Fly.

The suit he wore to dinner is starchy against his skin, the feel of pressed fabric and metal buttons stark. He feels out of place, even by himself where no is to judge him except the sky and the open air. The jacket is too thick, too warm, and he thinks that if he were to take it off, peel back the heavy layer and throw it away, he thinks he might actually be able to do it.

Actually fly.

“Dick?”

Fly.

The breeze plays with his hair, untied shoelaces and unkempt tie fluttering. They tease him in their effortless play. How tangibly wonderful must it be to play with the wind, forgetting gravity altogether?

There’s a shadow behind him, the moon peeking out and casting a soft glow upon the moor. It’s a heavy but solid presence, the shadow that stands behind him, and somehow, he can feel the concern emanating off of them. Sometimes, he forgets that Bruce is still fairly young. Only twenty six. 

Fly.

“I’m scared,” Dick says aloud, still teetering, still balancing, still deciding. Still only eleven himself.

Fly.

“What are you scared of?”

It’s genuine, nothing mocking or patronizing, but Dick struggles to come up with an answer. Bruce is close behind him, maybe only a few feet away, tense and ready to make a grab for him. Ready to leap and snatch him out of the air again. 

Fly.

Dick wishes it would shut up. Wishes the thing would go away, out of his mind, away from his head. It always sounds so nice when he’s by himself, when there’s no one else around, and it's just whispering into his ear. Speaking of reassurance and comfort. When there are others, when more people arrive, it gets so angry. So loud. Demanding. He doesn’t like it. He hates it. It never leaves him alone.

He wants it to die. He wants it to shrivel up and never come back. He wants to…

“I’m scared of flying,” Dick finally answers, stumbling away from the edge and back onto the roof. “I don’t want to fly. I don’t want- I can’t fly anymore.”

Bruce’s arms wrap around him, secure and tight and grounding. They hold him in place, even as the wind still laughs in his ear, whisking away leaves and letting them drift gently as if to say, This is what you’re missing out on.

“That’s okay,” Bruce rumbles, voice deep and perhaps somber. “You don’t have to fly if you don’t want to.”

Fly.

“I don’t. I don’t want to.”

And Bruce nods like he understands what Dick is talking about, like he understands the sudden fright of flight. Maybe he does. Maybe he doesn’t and is merely humoring Dick. It doesn’t matter much though, the security of his hold enough to stabilize and keep him attached to the roof. 

Enough to make him stop shaking out of fear of accidentally flying.

Enough to quell the screams.

[realityhelixcreates]

Dance of the Spheres Chapter Six: Meteoric Mambo

Chapters: 6/?

Fandom:  Marvel Cinematic Universe

Rating: PG 13

Warnings: kidnapping, forced marriage, death mention, mild body horror

Characters: Loki(Marvel), Heimdall(Marvel)

Additional Tags:  Loki Goes Overboard, But When Doesn’t Loki go Overboard, Mature Reader, Disabled Reader, Political Intrigue

Summary:  

Gave my love to a shooting star But she moves so fast that I can't keep up, I'm chasing I'm in love with a shooting star But she moves so fast, when she falls then I'll be waiting                                              Shooting Star-Bag Raiders

Loki leapt for the door, bellowing for somebody to fetch someone named Eir. Then he was at your side, lifting you effortlessly in his arms and carrying you through your beautiful rooms, to lay you down on your warm, comfortable bed, where you writhed uncontrollably in terrible pain.

Loki unbelted your dress, and drew the blanket up to your chest, then seated himself next to you, holding your hand, stroking your face, and murmuring things you could barely understand through the pain. Eventually a graceful, middle-aged woman appeared with several handheld devices, and a sound scolding for Loki for being so irresponsible with the Apple.

You couldn't even take pleasure in the dressing-down he was receiving, as the woman attached one of the devices to your arm, and set the other one above your bed. A projection of your body appeared above you, hovering in midair. It showed all kinds of information that you didn't understand, like the graphics in a science fiction film.

“It's started in her spine.” Eir said. “That's why the pain is so severe to begin with. It's effecting her nerves first.”

“What does that mean?” you cried, your voice twisted into squeals of agony. “What is it doing to me?”

Eir began to launch into another scolding, but Loki drowned her out with speedy explanations.

“The Apples of Immortality contain enzymes that act as catalizers on the genetic codes of certain species. So far, we know for certain that they effect Vanir, Asgardians, Jotun, and Humans. They effect us in slightly different ways, but in humans, the change is most drastic.

The Apples give humans greater strength and durability, energy efficiency, speedier healing of wounds and resistance to disease, and a greatly extended lifespan. However, it does this by stimulating the cells of your body to divide en masse, and changing the DNA as it is replicating, resulting in one cell that it original, and one cell that is enhanced. The enhanced cell then devours the original cell, eventually eradicating all traces of original DNA in the body, and leaving a fully enhanced individual behind.”

“My body is making a new me, and cannibalizing the old me at the same time?” you shrieked.

“That's a remarkably lurid way of putting it, but yes, it's accurate. Don't worry, you will still be you at the end of it. Only stronger, and with greater longevity.”

He was so desperately trying to reassure you of the good that would come of this, but all you could do was scream curses at him for the pain, and the lack of permission, and the recklessness. You didn't care if you destroyed the illusion of complacency you had planned to weave-the agony stripped you of any guile you'd thought to employ. But he stayed by your side anyway, gently kissing your hand and wiping your face with a dry cloth as you writhed and screamed.

It didn't matter that you couldn't tell the time; time was meaningless. There was only moment after moment of suffering, an endless, enduring, torturous present. Each minute brought fresh distress, and greater disorientation, as your senses altered under the effects of the Apple, and the agony spread throughout your body as if carried in your blood.

Perhaps it was the trauma of pain effecting your compromised mind, but you were sure that your sense of touch had been so enhanced that your could feel your body devouring and replacing its most sensitive and delicate parts. Your eyes, your tongue, your throat and lungs-you were certain that you felt them rapidly dying and changing. You saw sparks as you writhed helplessly, the colors so bright that you had to squeeze your eyes shut.

And still he babbled on, and still Eir monitored the illusion body, and still you suffered without end. You expected to fall unconscious into exhaustion, begged for it to come, but remained trapped firmly in the grip of the eternal Now.

It reached into your heart, slowed it so much you could hardly move or breathe, It reached into your brain, dampened everything, sound, sight, and finally, even the pain. As your brain ate and replaced itself, your screams faded, and you found yourself unable to feel, think, or do anything. It was a form of death, and you welcomed it with gratitude, though remained conscious throughout.

You vaguely registered that Loki was panicking, believing the Apple might have somehow killed you, blathering about love and apologies, snapping at Eir, who coldly shut him down.

He was insane, this whole ordeal really proved it. Mad royals weren't uncommon, mad, immortal, super-powered rulers were a much rarer problem, but a problem you now had.

Maybe not for long. Maybe you really were dying. Maybe your brain didn't replace itself fast enough. Maybe other parts of your body were failing. Maybe you would be free of this nightmare soon.

But the replacement must have gone well, because pain began to fade back in, from the parts of you that weren't finished with their self-cannibalization. Loki threw his arms around you when he noticed you beginning to writhe and gasp again, holding you firmly, yet tenderly. Some small and guilty part of you took comfort in it, even as you hissed hatred into his ear.

Time did pass, even if you couldn't perceive it, and you only had so much body to devour and rebuild. The pain finally dissipated, but ache and shock remained. If what Loki said was true, if it wasn't just a lie that Eir was going along with, then you had been changed; irrevocably changed without him even asking or letting you know what was happening until it was already happening. No choice, no consent. And he dared babble about love.

The shock dampened the resentment, and the exhaustion kept you from struggling; Loki kept holding you like it was okay, like he hadn't just subjected you to a trauma nearly equal to the one you had already endured. You could feel your leg. It had been years since you'd felt those phantoms, but this brought it all back.

All you could really do was cry in the arms of the monster that now held you, tenderly as a beast cradling a chick.

You could feel his horrible strength, his cloying warmth, his humid breath on your hair was hot in the dry air. You hadn't yet thought about him having a scent, but he did, the kind of scent that any living animal had, similar to another human being, and poorly covered with soap or cologne, also like a human being. He smelled alive; alive, and breathing, and warm, and you were cold with sweat, ravenous and sore with exertion, weary with exhaustion.

“Don't...want to be here.” you breathed piteously.

“Shh.” he soothed, dabbing your tears with his cloth. “It will be alright, my dear. I will make it so.”

He said it with such firm confidence, as if nothing in the universe could stand in his way. But then, he was perfectly capable of just killing inconveniences, wasn't he? All authority was; from the small-town cop with their false drug or gun allegations, to entire governments who politely asked their people not to call the internment camps at the border 'concentration camps' please.

All your life you had been under the thumb of that authority, and all your life all authority had done was try to take more and more control from you-from your mind, with constant propaganda and psyops, and from your body, with never-ending financial drains and restrictions. But it had never been as direct as this. It was exhausting and soul breaking, but it wasn't like this.

This man held you like a lover while he destroyed you.

“Let yourself rest. Rest.” he murmured  “Nothing else will hurt you. You'll be safe from now on, I'll see to it. My precious bride, just wait. After this, we can look to the future. After this, I can make you deliriously happy. Just let me.”

You were already drifting off, but you didn't miss the command behind that. What would he do if you were unable to comply? Would he find some way to 'make' you, like he had 'made' those people follow him when he first came to Earth? Or would he just remove you somehow? It was clear now that he wasn't planning to replace you with some other woman, not after this. This 'mistake' was permanent now.

You didn't fight the slumber as it came over you. It seemed like the only thin that would free you, if only for a little while.

                                                                         ******

Loki didn't want to leave your side, not even while you slept, but Eir all but dragged him away by the ear, to scold him for his recklessness.

“This is not one of your magical experiments, your highness, this is your wife! She is human! She is delicate, and distressed, and you have dropped a great deal on her in a very short time. Humans are not that strong, my prince. You must treat her gently, moreso than her own people apparently have.”

Loki took the tongue-lashing as he deserved, guilt gnawing at him. He had been reckless. He'd rushed things that hadn't needed to be rushed. Things that, in fact, should have been taken much more slowly, so that this case of mistaken identity could have been revealed and safely resolved.

It was far too late for that now. Loki was tied to you, and you were immortalized, and there would never be another for him, and your life would never be the same. More than his overflowing love for you, he now owed you quite a bit, for the tremendous disruption he had caused you.

He needed to find out what happened. Why had this all gone so wrong? It was tempting to attribute it to a curse upon his life; like every great plan he had ever made, it had come crashing down disastrously. But no, there was something else at work here, something outside of his knowledge or control. Someone was working against him.

Only a handful of humans knew he still lived, and was here. Several key U.N. leaders, those Thor had deemed either the most powerful, or the most trustworthy. It was a knife's edge of political power balance: if Loki stepped too far out of line, those leaders could reveal to the world that he still lived, and all of humanity might turn against Asgard for it. But likewise, Asgard could turn it back on them; after all, those leaders knew he lived, and ignored it for their own gain. Human lives were so brief, and human leaders were so terribly aware of their own mortality, so terribly obsessed with holding their power until they died. To lose that was the greatest fear of each and every one of them, and he was entirely willing to use that against them as viciously as necessary.

Showing mercy, while making it clear what unmercifulness would look like was one of Asgards oldest and most powerful negotiating tools.

Had someone in power in your homeland interfered with the selection process? Had an enemy of your homeland done it? He had expected a relative of your country's leader, a daughter, niece, or cousin. Perhaps an even more distant relation. Had a third cousin objected to their daughter being sent to him, and replaced her with you at the last moment? Treachery.

Why had they deemed you a suitable replacement then? Was it the leg? Was it that you were poor? They must have known that you would become rich beyond measure as his wife.

What had happened?

He couldn't shake free of the memory of your face, contorted with agony, begging for death, cursing his name for hours. It had taken nearly a day for the transformation to be complete, but it had been so long since a human had been blessed with an Apple, that Loki didn't know if that was normal or not. Maybe that was why they were given to humans so rarely. Few would go through that kind of torment willingly.

You hadn't even done it willingly.

His heart squeezed tight in his chest. He had to find out what had happened.

                                                                       ******

“Ah. If it isn't my favorite face, before me once again.” Heimdall said, voice as flat as always.

“How is it possible that you've gotten even more insufferable since the last time we met?” Loki shot back. “All this extra sunlight must be overheating your brain.”

“And yet, it was your highness who decreed this be my new lookout point. Do you complain now?”

“No, no, look. When I picked up my wife, did you see anything unusual? Anything surrounding the event at all?”

“I saw two men, dressed identically, in a vehicle that lacked some of the marks that they usually have. They threw her walking aid into the grass a few miles away from your pick up site. A dog dragged it away. I did not see them escort her, as I did not know who I was looking for at that time.”

“Could you find them again?”

Heimdall gave him a stoic look. Loki sighed and nodded.

“Find them again. I wish to know what they are doing right now.”

Heimdall gazed out, ignoring the beating sun, and sought his targets.

“One is eating a sandwich at an outdoor cafe. He has an iced coffee. The waitress is flirting with him, but he does not respond to it.” he said in the hollow voice he got when he was far away like that. “The other...rots under the desert, naked.”

“He's dead?” Loki exclaimed. It had only been a day since he had received you. What could the man have done that warranted his death? He had delivered you, as promised.

Unless the men weren't supposed to deliver you. Unless they had been part of a plot, and perhaps one man had sacrificed his partner in order to escape. Unless...any number of possible intrigues.

“Extremely.” Heimdall confirmed.

Loki sighed and shook his head. There was too much missing information.

“I will need to speak to him.”

“The dead man?”

“No, of course not! The one having lunch. But not right now. When he is alone. Keep an eye on him.”

Heimdall said nothing, but merely settled into his long distance gaze. Loki approached a nearby worker. He was dressed in the heavy duty working clothes of a miner, and looking over a stack of reports. Loki joined him under his sun shelter.

“Find anything new?”

The miner started at his sudden appearance.

“Your majesty!” he exclaimed. “I didn't know you were coming.”

“I just happened to be in the area. How are your findings?”

“Uh, well,” the miner shuffled his reports nervously. “the iron has turned out to be substantially more that the traces we initially assumed, and we have discovered more water to be extracted. Several locations, in fact. We've also discovered  titanium, however...”

“Is there some kind of problem with it?” Loki asked.

“It's pretty far to the south...on land that technically hasn't been ceded to us.”

“A complication, to be certain. Well. Let's look at it as Midgardians would.” Loki began ticking points off on his fingers. “One: does anybody else live there? No, this entire rock is uninhabited, save for us. Two: Has anyone else laid claim to that land? Doubtful. I believe there have been treaties regarding that. Treaties which, incidentally, we have not signed. Three: is there any indigenous wildlife in the area that needs to be protected?”

The miner laughed.

“So the problem we are faced with here is largely non-binding. And if we keep our operation mostly underground, they might never notice in the first place. And even if they do, wasn't this land-gift meant to be a way for them to observe how we transform difficult terrain into livable space? They cannot observe us if we do not do it.”

“As you say, my liege.” The miner said.

Loki left him to his business, and made his rounds to each of the workers who were out plying their trades under the bright sun; water gatherers, stonecutters, road builders, brick makers, and maintenance workers, listening to their worries and spreading encouragement.

This was something he felt Odin must have forgotten; that kingdoms were not built on secrets, but by the hands of every member of society. Addressing their concerns was important, and often not all that difficult. The commoner was most often interested in simple things, such as food and safety for their family. The worker was usually concerned for their project, and their concerns were worth hearing, as they knew what they were doing. Loki did not know what stone was good and sturdy, or what stone was flawed or too weak for building with. A stonemason did.

Also, it was worth the time to be known by the people he was meant to lead and rule. Who could proclaim allegiance to a mystery?

He heard Heimdall softly call for him, as if the watcher was right next to him. He wished the man he was talking to well, and made his way back along the sun-drenched road.

“Well?” he asked.

“The man has retired to an inn. He is alone in his room.”

Loki smiled thinly. “Perfect.”

[emachinescat]

That I Could Fear a Door

A Tales of Arcadia: Trollhunters Fan-Fiction

By @emachinescat

Summary: Jim had thought that going back home, back to the real world, would be an easy and painless process. He thought it would be simple - it should have been simple. It wasn’t. A reimagining of Jim’s return from the Darklands, where he quickly finds that adjusting to real life after so much trauma isn’t as easy as one might think. 

Words: 5,639

TW: PTSD, depression, panic attacks

Keep reading here, or on AO3!

Years I had been from home,

And now, before the door

I dared not open, lest a face

I never saw before …

I laughed a wooden laugh

That I could fear a door,

Who danger and the dead had faced,

But never quaked before.

- From "Home" by Emily Dickinson

Jim had thought that going back home, back to the real world, would be an easy and painless process. After all, during his weeks in the Darklands, first alone and searching the endless shadows, then hunted like an animal, then captured and beaten and forced to fight for the sport of others, hadn't he dreamed endlessly of just that? Of seeing the sun again, of seeing his friends, of hugging his mom, of cooking and eating and training and playing video games and slacking off on homework? He thought it would be simple - it should have been simple.

It wasn't.

The first few moments after crashing back into the over world were indeed euphoric. There was the sun, filtering in through the branches of the trees. It took all of his self-control not to stare straight into it. Even in the evening breeze, there was a warmth in the air that he hadn't felt in so long that it seemed more like a memory. He lay there, flat on his back in the grass, wishing he could feel the soft tickle of the blades on his skin, but trapped in his Eclipse armor. Still, he was free.

Much of the next hour was a blur. He later would recall a few hazy moments - hugging his friends, receiving the amulet from Blinky and finally - finally - shedding the stifling second skin of the Eclipse armor, trying to convince Nomura to stick around, Claire semi-joking about how bad he smelled, and the word free chasing itself around in his head like a dog after its own tail. Free, free, free!

He would always remember in perfect clarity the moment he hugged his mother again, but that hadn't come until later the next week. He wanted more than anything to go to her immediately upon his escape, but Toby and Claire convinced him otherwise.

"What's she going to think if you come home looking like … well, looking like… that?" Toby demanded, gesturing unhelpfully to Jim as a whole.

"And the smell…" Claire added, also unhelpfully.

"You have been through a great ordeal, Master Jim," Blinky reminded him gently. "If you go home now, there will be questions you cannot answer and not the rest you need."

And so Jim reluctantly agreed to go home in Toby's stead with Aaarrrgghh while Toby covered for him at home once more.

It was surreal, Jim found himself thinking as he stood in the Domzalski household's upstairs bathroom, shower already running hot behind him and Aaarrrgghh just across the hall, waiting for him in Toby's room. Just this morning, he had woken up in a cage on cold stone, in a state of perpetual, gnawing hunger that had become the norm, hanging on to the tiniest thread of hope that today might be the day he was finally rescued - but knowing deep down that it was much more likely to be the day he finally died. Now, he had a full stomach for the first time in nearly a month. He was with his friends, safe, electric lights warding off the darkness that had been his hell for so long. Hot water waited for him, beckoned for him. He could be warm and clean again. Just a few days ago he had said something about how much he missed soap. He should have been happy, he thought miserably. Maybe happy wasn't the right word. He was very happy to be away from the Darklands, from Gunmar and Dictatious and goblins and monsters. But he wasn't content.

He also couldn't bring himself to undress. He had been standing in front of the mirror for a good five minutes now, as steam billowed out from behind the curtain and fogged the glass, obscuring the face he'd barely recognized anyway. Good riddance, he thought half-madly, for the boy in the mirror was a warped doppelganger, touched by death and despair, with his sunken eyes, wan skin stretched too tight over abnormally prominent cheekbones, dark, puffy bags under his eyes, and a smattering of bruises and cuts pulling the whole package together with a sickly little bow. His hair was a bit longer than he usually kept it, matted and caked with dirt and blood. It felt crusty to the touch, and brittle somehow, as if it would crumble to dust if he tried to brush it.

He looked bad enough as it was from the neck up. He had no desire to see what awaited him beneath his filthy clothes. He wondered blearily how they had gotten so disgusting when they had been underneath his armor the whole time. Sweat and revoked shower privileges would do that to a person, he finally reasoned, and at once he found he couldn't get in the shower quickly enough.

He stripped off the offending garments with an urgency he hadn't felt even at his most desperate moments in the Darklands, nearly tripping over the edge of the tub in his haste to get in. He was relieved that the mirror had fogged, but he still avoided making eye contact with it just in case.

The water burned his skin, but he turned it hotter, attacking his hair first with nearly half a bottle of shampoo, applying and rinsing, applying and rinsing, until he couldn't see from the suds cascading down his face and the murky water ran clear. He conditioned once, something he'd never done before. He didn't know if it did anything, but it made him feel cleaner.

And then he was scrubbing himself all over, the water reddening the skin on his arms (he studiously avoided looking anywhere else), again and again, as if trying to peel his very skin off. Dirt and sweat and blood poured off of his battered body and he watched it meander toward the drain in a detached sort of way before resuming his frantic washing.

It wasn't until his skin was so raw that he felt like he was an onion peeled of its top few layers that he stopped, breathing heavily, exhaustion threatening to overwhelm him, nausea roiling as he regretted the deli sandwich he'd scarfed down earlier. Knees weak, he found himself sinking to the floor of the tub, knees drawn up awkwardly to his chest. The water pounded on his head, back, shoulders, and he let it, slipping into a kind of sleep-trance, watching the water swirl around his feet before making its relentless way to the drain. He thought of nothing, felt nothing, and only broke out of the haze when the water grew cold and panic lanced through him at the loss of warmth. He turned off the water, more tired than he could ever remember being in his life, somehow managed to stand up on wobbly legs, wearily slid back the shower curtain - and froze.

Since he'd been in the shower so long that the water had gone cold, the mirror had also de-fogged, and he found himself unwillingly confronted with the specter that he had been hoping to avoid - his reflection.

Before he'd been captured, he'd scavenged for food and found himself eating something mostly every day, so he'd been nourished but always hungry. After he'd been taken, however, any meals - and he used that word lightly - were few and far between. They'd fed him just enough to keep him alive. He could see now from his emaciated frame that they had still essentially starved him. He'd been Gunmar's prisoner for what felt like years, but it had to have been a week at most.

Still, close to a month without a reliable food source had done its work: He'd always been skinny, but now he could see, fully defined, every rib. Any muscle mass, lean though it might have been, that he'd gained during his training was gone, his arms weak and frail looking. His armor had protected him from extensive physical damage all the times that he had been beaten or tossed around like a soccer ball, but his whole torso was mottled with bruises of all colors, shapes, and sizes, all in different stages of healing. A good deal of them were centered over his ribs, and he winced as the pain that had been his constant companion flared up. He wondered vaguely if he needed to see a doctor. He wouldn't be surprised if Gunmar had cracked a few in one of his rages. He cast the thought aside - how would he explain the state he was in? - and turned abruptly from the horrible, somehow shameful image of his battered body and quickly dressed in the pair of pajamas Toby had let him borrow. They would have swallowed him whole on a normal day, but now they made him feel tiny and breakable and pathetic and weak, and he only kept them on because he hated the way he looked underneath even more.

He offered a simple "G'night," to Aaarrgghh before falling into Toby's bed, expecting to fall asleep the instant his head hit the pillow.

To his surprise, and to his irritation, sleep refused to come. He couldn't get comfortable. The bed was too soft, the blankets too warm, and the moonlight making its way in between the cracks in the curtains toyed with him, tickling his eyelids with the suggestion of light and making it impossible to fall asleep. There were none of the noises he'd come to grow accustomed to, either - no faint buzzing of the magically reinforced bars holding him in, no tromping footsteps of the guards, no click-clacking of goblin claws or snorts or whistled operas or snarls or distant, echoing screams…

In the end, Jim tossed and turned, sick with fatigue and enraged at how cruelly sleep evaded him. He finally, mercifully fell into a restless, nightmare-filled slumber around five in the morning, but even the worst of the dreams didn't wake him, exhausted as he was, and he was trapped back in the Darklands, suffering torture after torture at Gunmar's hands, until he woke again eighteen hours later, on a cot in Troll Market.

He had been moved there at dusk the next day when his coma-like slumber pressed on and his friends, who had not realized the extent of his injuries or exhaustion, grew worried. Vendel had examined him while he slept, expertly bound ribs that had indeed been cracked, and performed all the healing rituals and magic he knew to be safe for a human. Even so, he'd warned Jim, who felt numb and wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep, it would be a week before he could even begin to regain his strength and pass as his old self, and longer for him to truly be back to the same physical shape he had been in before he'd gone to the Darklands.

And so Jim stayed in Troll Market, under Vendel's care, for another eight days, while Toby got to put on a magical mask and pretend to be him and have his life and hug his mom. Jim tried not to be bitter about it, but it was hard. Blinky and Aaarrrgghh spent all their spare time with him, and Claire and Toby came to Troll Market after school every day and kept him company until they were expected home. Jim talked to them, laughed hollowly, took the homework they gave him, and then retreated within himself as soon as they had disappeared out of sight.

It will be better soon, he kept telling himself desperately. I just need to get out of Troll Market, go back home, get back to my normal life. Once I'm feeling better and things are back to the way they were, it will be like I never left.

Once again, he was very wrong.

***

In the weeks that followed his re-emergence into his real life, Jim discovered very quickly that the life he had left was either very different than he had remembered it to be, or that he himself was very different than he had once been. He supposed both might be a little true.

Being in his mother's embrace was the only thing that felt completely safe and normal after his return. He didn't care that she had just grounded him; when he finally saw her again, he hugged harder and longer than he could ever remember doing, and he had felt better, more like himself, until he'd tried to go to sleep that night and the cold returned. The next morning, he had attempted to do his usual routine like nothing had ever happened, but even that familiar motion felt hollow and the smile he flashed his mom before leaving for school barely concealed the emptiness just beneath the surface.

Other than that first hug, everything else around him, including his friends, school, good food, trolls, even his mom - all things he had coveted during his time in the Darklands - were strange and foreign to him.

Claire and Toby, though they did their best to be understanding and supportive, were obviously thrown off by his sudden mood swings and sullen attitude. They seemed distant and somehow unfamiliar, and Jim found himself feeling awkward around them, unable to figure out what to talk about or why he should laugh at the joke Toby had just made. Didn't they understand that none of this really mattered? There was so much darkness and pain and fear just beneath the skin of this world, and if they scratched the surface just a little too deeply, it could break loose and destroy them all. So he did what he could to avoid these awkward moments all together, and barely noticed the hurt and disappointment blooming in their eyes as he shut them out and walked away.

He'd thought school would be a great return to normalcy, but everything about it grated on his nerves. Even the cheers as he returned to campus - Congrats on beating Jim Lake Disease! - made him feel claustrophobic. He barely held it together anytime Steve cornered him, his heart racing madly in his chest like it wanted to escape, with or without him. The teachers were demanding, the sound of the lockers made his head ache and reminded him too much of the sound of a cage door slamming shut, and once, when Coach had grabbed his arm to show the class proper movement for a volleyball serve, raw, animal fear had overtaken him, and he'd flipped the teacher onto his back and scurried, terrified, under the bleachers. He barely remembered it, except for the pain in his chest, the short, insufficient puffs of breath, and Claire finally coaxing him out after class dismissed and herding him to the nurse. It was a panic attack, she'd said, eyeing him with concern, and had he had any drastic life changes, any unusual stressors? He lied, because he couldn't do anything else, and she told him to consider seeing a counselor anyway.

"Maybe the nurse is right," Claire said on their way to Troll Market that evening. "You're obviously struggling with this. Maybe you should go to counseling, or something." Her voice was soft and soothing, like she was talking to a wounded beast. Perhaps she was.

Jim laughed, a harsh, cold sound that stopped his best friends in their tracks. "Oh, sure, I'll just do that," he said sarcastically, hating himself as the bitterness dripped from his lips like an overflowing witch's brew but unable to stop the words or the emotions that spawned them. "I'm sure there's plenty of shrinks out there that can help me with my troll-induced trauma."

One of the things he'd missed the most was food - good food, not soupy nightmare-creature eggs or slimy soup made from monster meat that was probably not good for humans but that he had scarfed down on the rare occasion that Gunmar had deigned to feed him. Now, he ate because it was expected of him, but he barely tasted the food. Even his favorite recipes were like ash in his mouth, and cooking didn't bring him the pleasure it once had.

If Claire and Toby were baffled by his behavior, their confusion was nothing compared to that of Blinky and Aaarrrgghh, his two closest friends and trainers in Troll Market. Blinky had fretted on more than one occasion that perhaps they had brought home a changeling Jim somehow, not the real one. After all, Jim Lake, Jr. was kind and funny and fun to be around, and this new Jim was brooding and dull and never truly present. Jim saw the worry in Blinky's six eyes and in the anxious set of Aaarrrgghh's jaw, and it saddened him - just not enough to shake him from the waking hell his life had become. Training was a monotonous routine as he gradually built his strength back up, and even Draal, perhaps the least emotionally-inclined of the trolls save for Vendel, found himself hesitantly asking the young Trollhunter if he was okay, if there was anything he needed that might help him feel better. Jim gave him a half-hearted smile, truly touched, but said no. He wasn't sure anything could fix this hole that had been drilled inside of him. It was too dark, too empty, and it hurt too damn much.

His mom had noticed a difference in him too, but she was at a complete loss. Jim tried his hardest to be his old self when he was with her, and being in her company did bring back a spark of his personality, but even so, he saw the concern in her bright blue eyes whenever she looked at him, and he'd seen her at school in conference with Seňor Uhl, and knew that she was trying to get any inkling of what was eating away at her son. Claire and Toby were no help to her, either, for after she had cornered them after school one day, demanding to know what had happened and why Jim was behaving so uncharacteristically, they had taken extra care to avoid her, unable to say or do anything to ease her worry.

***

And so this went on for nearly two weeks before Toby, Claire, Blinky, Aaarrrgghh, and Draal met up with the sole intention of finding a way to bring their friend back. He was suffering so much, and no one could truly understand what he had gone through.

"He clearly has signs of PTSD," Claire said heavily, clarifying for a befuddled Aaarrrgghh: "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder."

"This… order?" Aaarrrgghh drawled, eyes wide in concern.

"Disorder, big guy," Toby corrected, heaving a weary sigh. "It means he's been through something traumatic, and he can't deal with it."

"Well, how do humans usually deal with their trauma and stress?" Blinky asked, always straight to business.

Claire and Toby exchanged knowing glances. "Most of the time, we don't. We just avoid it all together," Claire admitted. "But when someone has been through something like Jim has - extended periods of isolation, being a prisoner, abuse - it's not enough to pretend it doesn't exist." A tear rolled down her cheek and she brushed it away with the heel of her hand angrily. "I knew he'd be in bad shape when he came back," she admitted. "But he was so happy to see us when we rescued him that I thought that maybe he would be okay."

"What do humans do if they cannot ignore this trah-mah?" Draal enunciated the unfamiliar word. It was quite endearing to see such a hulk of a beast with so much concern in his dark eyes.

"Usually, they see a therapist," Toby supplied.

Aaarrrgghh frowned. "There - I - pissed?"

Toby snorted in almost manic laughter. "Therapist," he repeated, still chuckling. "A person who goes to school to know how to help people with their problems and stuff."

"Well," Blinky said, a new light in his eyes, "we shall venture forth and find Master Jim one of these therapists! Then he'll be back to his old self in no time!" He noticed the dubious expressions on the humans' faces. "What? Are the therapists extinct?"

"No," Claire replied. "But Jim was right - he can't talk to anyone but us about what has happened, and he obviously has no interest in talking to us!"

"Yeah," Toby chimed in, "if he went up to a shrink and told them that he had been stranded in a dark, forbidden hellscape searching for a lost child and then was the prisoner of a crazy troll that wants to escape his eternal prison and conquer the overworld… he'd be thrown in the loony bin for sure."

"So it's hopeless." Blinky's arms fell limp at his sides. "We can do nothing to help Master Jim escape the clutches of PDSC." Neither Toby nor Claire bothered to correct him. Blinky continued, "Is there anything else that might help Master Jim? Anyone else that he might talk to that would not throw him in this 'loony bin'?"

Claire opened her mouth to say no, but shut it abruptly, the light of an idea sparking in her eyes. "Actually," she said, the hint of a real smile making an appearance for the first time in a very long time, "I think I have an idea." When six pairs of eyes locked onto her hopefully, she added, "And it might even be a good one!"

***

When Jim got home from school two days after the secret meeting between his friends he was surprised to hear someone bustling about in the kitchen when he opened the front door. His mom worked late on Tuesdays, and anyway, her car wasn't in the drive. He reached his hand into his bag, paranoia growing, and his fingertips had just brushed the curve of his amulet when a tall Asian woman wearing a smart pantsuit limped into sight. His bag fell to the floor.

"Nomura?"

It was odd seeing her in her human form; after spending so much time around her changeling form in the Darklands, he had forgotten that she was quite pretty as a human. "Hello, Little Gynt." Her voice was also much less grating in this shape, but he found he didn't like the softer tones as much anymore.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, picking his bag up and hanging it on the stair rail, though he closed his hand around the amulet first, clutching it tightly in one fist. It wasn't that he didn't trust Nomura - she had proven herself to be a loyal, if reluctant friend - but because he had come to associate her presence in general with danger. If she noticed his cautionary measure, she didn't mention it. "I thought you left," he added as an afterthought.

"I did, but I came back," she replied vaguely. A stab of annoyance shot through Jim, and even the negative emotion came as a relief - he had felt nothing but fear and numbness since returning home. The change was nice, even if it was fleeting.

"Why?" His eyes narrowed. "Don't tell me you were worried about me?"

She studied him with dark, serious eyes for a long moment. "I don't worry about anyone," she finally responded.

Jim felt a small smile tug at the corner of his mouth. She said this, but he could see beneath the surface now. Their time as prisoners of Gunmar had shown him that there was much more to the changeling than met the eye. He waited for the consuming awkwardness that always set in when he was around his friends to descend, but to his surprise, he continued to feel relatively comfortable around Nomura, more at home than he had in a long while.

"Shouldn't you be in a wheelchair or on crutches or something?" he asked, gesturing to her legs. Normally she wore dresses, so he could only assume that the legs of the pantsuit hid some spectacular bruises. "I thought your legs were really hurt."

"They were broken," she agreed. "But my kind heals quickly." She moved forward slowly, then sat on the couch. "They still need a bit of rest to recover fully, though."

Jim sat down across from her in an armchair. "I can't remember if I ever said - thank you, for believing me, for helping me escape." He paused, eyes on his fidgeting hands in his lap. "For being kind."

"Well, I'm more than just a pretty face," Nomura said, and it was impossible to tell if she were joking or not. After a companionable silence, she asked, "So how have you been holding up, Little Gynt?"

Jim didn't know what it was about her, but something made him want to tell Nomura about sleepless night after sleepless night, about the nightmares that plagued him whenever he finally collapsed from exhaustion, about the cavern that had been dug seemingly overnight between himself and his friends, about how he either felt nothing or everything at every moment, about how loud footsteps made him anxious and how physical touch - except hugs from his mom - made him want to wither into himself or run away screaming, about how he had had all these expectations about what life would be like on the other side of Killahead Bridge, and how none of them had come through. He gave her a weak smile, and said, "I'm fine."

An undefinable expression flitted across the changeling's features. "Yeah, kid," she said finally. "I'm fine, too."

***

After that, Jim came home on Tuesdays and Thursdays, his mom's late days, expecting Nomura to be there, because she always was. Sometimes they'd have a cup of tea and sit in silence. Often they'd talk about mundane things - Jim would talk to her about school and his mom, and Nomura would talk about anything from opera to history to art to the strange old man who had flirted with her at the laundry mat Sunday night.

These visits, as ordinary as they were considering she was a changeling and he the Trollhunter, slowly seemed to draw more of the old Jim back out into the light. Talking to Nomura was different than talking with his friends; perhaps it was because she had been there with him in the Darklands, had suffered alongside him at the hand of Gunmar. And the more he talked to Nomura, the easier it was to talk to his friends, too. Slowly, the cavern that had been dug between him and his friends, troll and human alike, began to shrink, and he laughed aloud at a stupid pun Toby made at lunch, and he didn't retreat into himself every time a locker slammed. Still, there was a barrier between himself and his real life, the one he wanted back more than he could express but that was always just out of reach.

He found himself actually complaining to Nomura about this three Tuesdays after he had first found her waiting for him in his home. "Toby spent weeks wearing a magical mask and pretending to be me and to have my life," he said. "Sometimes I just wish that I could put that mask on and be me again too."

Nomura was quiet for several seconds, and then she told a story that seemed to be very much off topic: "When I was a child, I was told stories of the human world. It was a wonderful place, full of light and life and the sun…"

"What does this have to do with-?"

"Shut up and let me talk." When Nomura told you to do something, you did it or risked life and limb. So Jim wisely shut up and let her continue. "I grew up longing to go to that world, to see the sun and to feel the warmth and the light. The surface world was a fairy tale, and I was a little girl who grew up in the dark. Nothing else could have spoken to me more.

"But when I was finally given my chance to come into the world, to take the place of a little Asian-American girl named Zelda Namura, I was separated from my parents and my home, all alone in a world I did not understand, and it didn't matter how much I had dreamed of the sun, it wasn't what I had expected at all.

"Adjusting was… difficult. It was not until the human body I had replaced had grown older and was taken by her family to the opera that I found something that connected me to this world, something to enjoy, something of beauty. But it wasn't until I met another one like me, here in Arcadia, while under the employ of Bular, that I truly felt at home."

"Mr. Strickler," Jim realized.

"Yes. There's something very special about talking with someone - even if it's someone you're not crazy about - that understands you, where you've come from, and what you've been through."

"Is that the moral of this story?" Jim asked, partially touched, partially exasperated. "Are you trying to tell me that talking to you is going to make all of this go away because we've been through the same thing?"

Nomura shrugged. "Who knows? I just think it's a good story. You can take what you want from it."

Jim smiled.

And then everything, like water pushing relentlessly at a weakening dam, broke.

***

Jim could never remember crying the way that he did that evening. He didn't think he was sad, exactly, or hurt, or even angry anymore - he was just exhausted and overwhelmed with everything that he had gone through but kept to himself. The fear and humiliation of his capture, the paranoia that his friends were never going to trust him after he betrayed their them and went to look for Enrique without them, anxiety about Gunmar and the paralyzing horror every time he wondered if there was any way he could have followed them out of the Darklands, how he was having trouble connecting with the world he'd always known, the sleepless nights, the nightmares, the numbness and terror that followed him interchangeably, the way that every touch to his arms sent him back to his prison, being dragged painfully between two trolls strong enough to rip him in half with one swift yank…

He talked and cried and had no fewer than two panic attacks, and Nomura just sat there quietly all the while, watching with an unreadable cocktail of emotions in her eyes. When he had finally quieted, his heart feeling both emptier and lighter than it had since before he had made his journey to the Darklands, she simply handed him a packet of tissues she had packed in her purse and asked, "Better?"

He offered her a sniffle and a watery smile, unable to speak anymore, too stunned to fully process what had just happened. She stayed by his side, just being there, until his mom's headlights shone through the blinds. She would climb out the bathroom window and into the night.

Jim slept peacefully that night. If he had bad dreams, he didn't remember them.

***

It was a slow process, even after the cathartic conversation with Nomura. Jim slowly found himself acclimating more and more to his old life, with friends, school, home life, and even troll hunting becoming things to look forward to rather than dread. Loud noises and unexpected touch still startled him, but he was able to ground himself more easily now. He fell into a routine very similar to the one he'd had before, what seemed like a lifetime ago.

Cracked ribs, bruises, and cuts healed much faster than emotional scars, but at least he knew, in time, he would be okay. He was acutely aware that nothing would ever be exactly the same as it had always been, though. What he had gone through was something no person, no teenager especially, should have to experience. And while he had entered the Darklands of his own volition, none of what had happened to him there was his fault (at least that's what they told him; it would take a long while to truly believe that himself, but that knowledge, like everything else, would come in time). He had been isolated in the dark, on the run, hunted, captured and held in deplorable conditions, starved and beaten, forced to fight for his life, and nearly broken beyond repair, but he had made it this far.

Things might never be as they were, but he could forge a new path from here. He could grow stronger, adapt, overcome, and prove to Gumnar, to his friends, to troll kind, and to himself that he was more than what had been done to him. He was more than pain and trauma and helplessness and fear and rage.

He was James Lake, Jr., Jim to his friends, the first ever human Trollhunter, the son of Barbara and student of Blinky, Little Gynt, and even, he supposed, Buttsnack. Some days he would only feel like some of these things. On bad days, he wouldn't feel like any of them.

But he wouldn't forget the truth. He wouldn't lose sight of who he was so completely, not again. And, if by some horrible twist of fate he did, he knew now that he had an odd but utterly complete assortment of friends - humans, trolls, and even a couple of changelings - who would help him fight his way out. Out of the Darklands. Out of the past and pain and dark recesses of his own mind.

And into, as cliche as he knew it was, the light.