#cw non-permanent death

[peachdues]

Phantasmagoria (Part III)

Tell Me to Stop (Sanemi’s Version)

Sanemi x F!Reader • Modern AU • NSFW

A/N: read the fucking warnings before you report.

Massive TW: grief • loss of a parent • canon character death • drug and alcohol abuse • panic • references to previous attempted S/A • violence between characters • more descriptions of Douma getting his ass kicked (still deserved) • situation requiring a hospital

CW: 25k words. MDNI. explicit sexual content ahead • multiple creampies • oral (f! and m!receiving) • face sitting • swearing • angst with a good ending • non-sexual intimacy

Oh boy. It’s done.

This one is super personal to me, so I really hope you guys enjoy. Thank you for showing this story your love, I adore you all.

Without further ado!

Sanemi’s Playlist

PART ONE • PART TWO

(Sanemi’s POV)

The Party on 52nd Street

Sanemi couldn’t bring himself to say that he regretted how he’d ended up in handcuffs. Sure, his knuckles were bruised to shit and covered in blood that was and was not his, but at least his face was still a hell of a lot prettier than the sniveling, cowardly asshole curled onto his side on the gravel outside his house.

Granted, the severe swelling of Douma’s face was because of Sanemi, but truthfully, he thought it was an improvement. By the time Sanemi had been yanked off of the barely conscious, campus-resident creep, those freakish, multi-colored eyes had been so blackened and swollen, it was a wonder that Douma had even been able to see the cops swarming his living room at all. 

Sanemi knew the only reason his ass wasn’t being thrown into the back of the police cruiser waiting out behind Douma’s hell den was because Tengen had been the one to escort him out. And, because the local police had been itching to bust Douma for his little drug operation for months, Douma had been hauled out as well, handcuffed for good measure (and for insult) by Tengen.

It also helped that Douma was a dumbass, who’d sent the incriminating photos of his assault on Y/N to the groupchat that included all three of Tengen’s partners. Once he was sure they were safely out of view of spectators and witnesses giving statements to the other responding officers inside, Tengen took care to slam the greasy asshole to the ground, getting a few good kicks in as Douma curled pathetically against the asphalt. 

“I will sue your ass,” Douma wheezed as he struggled to catch his breath. Through the purple black swells of his eye sockets, Sanemi could just make out the sliver of jewel-toned irises as they glared in his direction. “The whore fucking wanted it rough.”

Sanemi lunged for the cowering bastard where he lay, ready to stomp the fucker’s face in once and for all, but Tengen roughly threw him back against the side of his cruiser before he could.

“He’s trying to rile you up. Don’t fall for his shit,” Tengen’s magenta eyes were full of warning as he held Sanemi back. “He was stupid enough to send proof of the assault; ain’t no way in hell anyone buys that it was consensual.”

But Sanemi could only see red, the image of Y/N’s tear-streaked and terrified face burned permanently into his brain, worse than any scar that he bore on his skin.

“I don’t give a fuck, it’s working,” Sanemi snarled, struggling against Tengen’s iron-clad grip on him. “I want him fucking dead.”

“Y/N needs you not to be in prison. Don’t you two have something goin’ on?” Tengen shot back hotly. The young cop’s words stilled Sanemi’s struggle against the police cruiser, his fury deflating slightly.

As Kyojuro’s car had jumped the curb in front of the house, both boys agreed to split up once inside the house. Kyojuro was tasked with retrieving Y/N from wherever Akaza had hid her, because Sanemi had viciously vowed that he would be the one dealing with Douma.

And so, he had.

Party attendants had taken one look at Sanemi’s stony face as he’d made his way through the house to the main living room and parted, not wanting to be caught in the crossfire of the violence promised in his eyes.

He’d found Douma, standing back near the speakers that crackled with some out-of-date, heavy bass music, laughing like he hadn’t a care in the world. Those monstrous eyes had met Sanemi’s for only a split second, but the delighted malice they beheld was enough to make Sanemi want nothing more than to make the monster bleed.

Douma’s answering smile had been brief, unable to withstand the smash of his fist as the enraged Sanemi knocked him to the ground and lunged to pin him down.

Kyojuro’s car was long gone by the time Sanemi and Douma had been dragged out of that party house of horrors by Tengen in handcuffs, Sanemi smirking at the way Tengen kicked at the whimpering bastard’s feet every few steps. But that meant that Sanemi had no idea how Y/N was even doing – or whether she’d sustained more serious injuries than what Douma had shown off.

He didn’t want to think about what else might have happened in that room. If he did, Douma would surely not survive the impending ride to the police station.

Sanemi knew, however, that Tengen was right, however much it pissed him off. Y/N was the priority here, not him or his righteous, violent fury. He would restrain himself – for her. Nonetheless, Sanemi felt a rush of gratitude for the young cop, who, despite cautioning Sanemi away from ripping the cretin apart once and for all, spat directly on Douma’s bruised, bleeding face.

Half an hour later, and Sanemi was being escorted by his friend through the familiar sliding doors of the police station. It took only five minutes of him speaking with two other detectives before he was strolling leisurely back out of the station and into the small parking lot with Tengen, who offered to drive him back to his apartment.

All it had taken was for Sanemi to whip out his phone to show them the picture Douma had sent of Y/N around for them to agree that the benefit of letting Sanemi go outweighed the burden of booking him; besides, the baggies of Wisteria they’d found on the famous party-thrower meant they’d caught the larger fish anyways.

If it weren’t for the looming threat that Douma had perhaps inflicted far more harm upon Y/N, Sanemi almost would have felt good striding out of the busy police station, but the fact that she might be with Kyojuro at a hospital somewhere, in need of treatment, sat in his gut like an icy stone, tempered only by the murderous rage he still felt.

In his stewing, Sanemi almost didn’t realize that Tengen was speaking to him.

“Look, I’m not sayin’ I don’t get your reasoning. I do,” Tengen said lowly, pausing near his cruiser to face Sanemi, though his eyes scanned the parking lot to ensure unwanted ears weren’t listening in. “Frankly, if I didn’t have my job to worry about, I woulda let you keep going. He deserved it.”

“But I don’t wanna see you falling back into old habits.” The young cop sighed, clapping Sanemi on the back. “You’ve been doing so well.”

Sanemi grimaced. “I’m not,” he bit out darkly. “This wasn’t about me. It was about her.”

Tengen eyed him incredulously but sighed. “It’d do you good to remember that. You can’t work things out with her if I’m haulin’ your ass to prison.”

Sanemi didn’t have the heart to tell him he’d long since fucked up any chances of working things out with Y/N.

----------

“This is the third time you’ve been brought in this month,” the young cop chastised him, crossing an ankle over his knee as he folded his massive arms across his broad chest. “And we’re only two weeks into December.”

Sanemi grimaced as he shifted in the dingy metal seat, his wrists going numb behind his back as the metal of the handcuffs around his wrists dug into his skin. He scrunched his nose, trying to stifle the drop of blood sliding down from his nostril before it could reach his mouth, though without much success.

He was growing more agitated as he waited on his best friend to come collect him – yet again, from the Ubayashiki police station, but Kyojuro had yet to show.

“Listen – Shinazugawa, is it?” The cop had a peculiar shade of silver hair, and a cursory glance-over by Sanemi revealed that he had an apparent penchant for fuschia eyeliner, an almost perfect match to the hue of the discerning eyes which watched him. “You’re a student at Ubaya-U, right?”

Sanemi only nodded, ducking his head down to avoid holding the officer’s gaze for too long, lest he see how dead the nineteen-year-old truly felt.

“My name’s Uzui – Tengen Uzui -- I graudated last year,” the man called Uzui said, somewhat proudly. “So I know you’re a smart kid, but you can’t keep getting hauled in like this. You’ve got too much goin’ for ya.”

Sanemi finally made a sound. “I got nothin’ going for me,” he scoffed, finally lifting his eyes to meet Uzui’s stern face. “Spare me the ‘you’re better than this,’ crap.”

Uzui only rolled his eyes. “Look, kid, whatever happened to you before you got here, you’ve gotta deal with it – but not like this.” Sanemi opened his mouth to snap back, but the young cop paid him no mind, only continuing his lecture. “I’m not gonna ask, because frankly, I don’t care that much. But I know a good kid when I see one, and I don’t think you want to live this way.”

Uzui sighed. “Surely you’ve got someone in your life you wanna do right by? A parent, or a girl, maybe?”

Sanemi’s already sour mood dampened even further. He was about to bite out that no, he had no one, when Kyojuro finally pushed through the doors of the police station, amber eyes scanning the intake area until they narrowed in on him.

And he looked tired. So goddamn tired, that for once, Sanemi felt something other than the numbness he’d felt slowly swallowing him whole over the last three months.

He felt guilty; he’d forgotten, that while he may not have cared about his own stupid actions affected himself, he did care about how they impacted his best friend. Sanemi’s only friend, really, though that was entirely his own fault.

But Sanemi’s guilt could not stop him from checking back out as Kyojuro walked over and spoke in a hushed voice with Uzui, both tossing concerning glances his direction every few minutes. Before he knew it, Uzui was standing and unlocking the handcuffs from around Sanemi’s wrists, the latter’s shoulders relaxing as his arms were released from behind his back.

“I’m letting you off with a warning, but with a condition” Uzui said simply, tossing the handcuffs back onto his desk. The young cop produced a small, white card from his pocket and pressed it into Sanemi’s hand. “I want you checking in with me every couple of weeks. We can do it here, or wherever you want – but it ain’t optional.” Uzui smiled wryly at the baffled look on Sanemi’s face. “Think of it as an unofficial probation. Until you settle down a bit.”

Uzui parted with a shake of Kyojuro’s hand and a wink at Sanemi before sauntering off down one of the adjacent hallways abutting the intake area, leaving the two boys behind.

Sanemi shoved his sore hands into his pockets, barely noticing the stinging in his bleeding knuckles as they chafed against the fabric of his pants.

“I can’t keep doing this for you, Sanemi,” Kyojuro’s voice said quietly from beside him, and Sanemi’s head snapped over to his friend. “You’re destroying yourself. I can’t just sit by and watch it.”

Deep down, Sanemi knew his friend was right, and he was a little afraid that he risked losing the fiery blonde for good, just as he apparently had lost his other best friend, though, it wasn’t like she’d been around after…after he died.

But if Sanemi lost Kyojuro for good, he’d truly have no one left, and so, he fingered the card that Uzui had given him as it sat in his pocket, and resolved he would try; if not for himself, then for the last person on earth who still gave a shit about him.

-----

 Later, the nineteen-year-old managed to stumble his way back to his dorm and he collapsed in his bed, not bothering to nurse his bleeding nose or even change out of his dirty, rumpled clothes. His knuckles stung and his body ached from the scuffle, but he found that he much preferred the throb of the bruises blooming across his body to the deep numbness he felt in his heart.

As he began to slip into a dreamless slumber, a pair of pretty eyes and a sparkling smile that had once filled him with so much warmth flashed through Sanemi’s mind. If he concentrated hard enough, he thought he could just recall the sound of her laugh, though it had been months since he’d last heard it.

He frowned as he tossed and turned in his bed, desperate to throw out thoughts of her, because she tended to disrupt his sleep and to make him feel even lower than he already knew himself to be.

And he didn’t want to think about what Y/N would say if she could see him now.

Though, Sanemi supposed, that would assume she would give enough of a shit about him to have an opinion on him at all.

He winced at the thought, so callous and bitter. He didn’t truly mean to be so cruel to her, even in his thoughts; he knew she didn’t deserve it. Sanemi knew it was his fault things had gotten as bad as they were between them – knew it was because of his piss-poor reaction to her admittedly badly-timed love confession that had driven her away.

After Genya’s death, Sanemi hadn’t much of a heart left that he could claim, but he’d known that whatever of it remained surely belonged to her, just as he always had. So, he’d tried to reach out after his brother’s funeral, during one of those rare moments of clarity when he wasn’t just existing on autopilot, detached from the world around him, but she’d never responded.

Her silence had been slowly needling him to death by a thousand sharp pricks to what remained of his pitiful heart, threatening to whittle it away entirely.

Sanemi imagined himself a pendulum that couldn’t decide whether he was angrier at himself or at her; forever swinging between his shame for lashing out the way he had at the train station and anger with Y/N for thinking his reaction had anything to do with her at all.

He’d never imagined himself worthy of Y/N – his best friend, so beautiful and intelligent and kind-hearted, even though he’d been so stupidly in love with her since they were small children. He’d always been too rough, too scarred, too…much. But he’d hoped, no matter how foolishly so, that perhaps one day, he’d work himself up to being worthy of her, be the reason she smiled and laughed and loved.

But, as Sanemi felt his stomach squeeze uncomfortably at the memory of her tear-streaked face, staring at the platform before the train he’d boarded, he was reminded that one couldn’t be worthy of the person they loved if they insisted on shattering their heart like a piece of glass.

-----

In the absence of semi-regular beatdowns, Sanemi had found other ways of distracting himself from the gnawing pit of despair and loneliness that was swallowing him whole, day by day. At the start of the spring semester, he’d finally hooked up with a girl in his mathematics seminar, and then began sleeping with another a month later. For months, he’d alternated between the two, thankful that neither of them had been interested in pursuing what he could not give them. And he’d enjoyed himself, because yeah, sex felt fucking good, but at the end of each affair, he hadn’t been able to shake the way his stomach clenched with the deep-seated disgust and oily squeeze of guilt.

Guilt, because he’d felt like he’d betrayed her, which was ridiculous considering she wasn’t his even if he’d always been hers; even if he knew, deep in his soul, that he always would be.

-----

A few nights later, he was out grabbing dinner on campus with Mitsuri and Obanai, the two lovebirds happily holding hands the entire evening, when they passed Shinobu crossing the green, ignoring her roommate’s kind greeting.

Though, Sanemi reasoned, she’d likely been trying to avoid having to make eye contact with them, so as to conceal her new black eye. While Sanemi would never raise a hand to a woman himself, that hadn’t stopped him from feeling a small bit of satisfaction at the memory of Makio stalking right up to the petite pharmacology student and nailing her square in the face.

In retrospect, Sanemi didn’t know if it was fair to blame Shinobu for Douma’s actions, but it was clear Makio did. Given the general iciness of the group toward the young woman who’d garnered a reputation for dealing Wisteria around campus, it seemed as though the others did, too.

He’d decided to withhold his feelings towards Y/N’s roommate until she, herself, indicated how she wanted to approach their friendship. It was her call to make, given that she was the one who’d been the target of Douma’s retribution.

Not that Sanemi would know of Y/N’s thoughts on the matter anytime soon; they hadn’t spoken since that morning in his kitchen, and she’d not returned any of his texts or calls in the days since the incident at the party. He knew she likely needed her space, so after the third straight day of no response, he resolved to give it to her.

It was hard to accept her radio silence, because it sent him right back to that feeling he’d had last year when he’d been urgently trying to find her after he’d learned her mother had died, and he feared she would disappear yet again. However, the group was set to go to Tengen’s family’s lake house that weekend for one last summer hoorah before classes began once more, and Kyojuro had already confirmed that Y/N was planning on going.

All of them were, except for Shinobu and Giyuu, according to Mitsuri that night as they ate too-greasy food at their campus grill. The pinkette sheepishly admitted she’d spoken with her roommate the night prior, and both agreed it was probably for the best that she stay behind, especially since Y/N was going. The pair of friends, though they lived together, hadn’t spoken since the Douma incident, either. Giyuu wouldn’t have gone without Shinobu anyways, but he was already out of town visiting his sister and her new husband.

So, Sanemi was left to anxiously anticipate the upcoming weekend. The thought of being at the Uzui lake house with Y/N filled him with both longing and dread, especially because he simply did not know the extent of the harm she’d suffered at the hands of Douma.

He’d known that she and Kyo had talked and worked things out – but Sanemi knew his friend wouldn’t divulge details without her permission, so Sanemi hadn’t tried to ask, wanting to respect both of his best friends’ boundaries.

The not knowing, however, was slowly eating him alive; he’d wanted to kill Douma that night, and truthfully, he thought he still might, if the opportunity presented itself.

Not that he was one to claim moral superiority over the bastard; not when he’d spent the better part of the last two years as one of the direct causes of Y/N’s emotional pain.

-----

“It’s Mrs. Y/L/N – she … she died. Last week. The funeral was yesterday.”

-----

Kyojuro’s words split Sanemi’s heart clean in half. There had only been one other time in Sanemi’s life when he’d felt the earth beneath his feet split open and swallow him whole, and that had been when his foster mother called him to tell him his little brother was lying in a morgue with a bullet hole in his chest.

But Sanemi found himself free-falling back into the earth’s molten center, and he couldn’t help but think he deserved to burn away inside its fire, because he’d failed yet again to be there for someone he loved.

Tears burned in his eyes as memories of Y/N’s mother flashed vividly through his mind, a slideshow of kindness and love that he’d been so grateful to receive from the young mother in the wake of his parents’ deaths.

For the first few weeks following the Shinazugawa boys’ discharge from the hospital, Mrs. Y/L/N had been a stand-in mother to them both, and they’d clung to her like dew on grass, craving her motherly comfort and assurance in the wake of the violent collision which had killed most of their family.

She’d been the one to apply ointment on his and Genya’s scars every night, her hands so warm and gentle to make up for the light sting of the medicated salve as she dabbed it delicately against their skin. She’d been the one to make their bag lunches for school, always making sure to pack extra for his younger brother, who never seemed to be full no matter how much he ate.

And now, she was gone. And he hadn’t even known she was ill.

That night, Sanemi sat on the floor of his shower and cried.

He cried, because his still-mending heart had been re-broken with the news of the death of the closest thing he’d had to a second mother.

He cried, because he’d failed to be there for someone he loved yet again, and Y/N had shouldered the death of her mother and the burden of planning a funeral without her two childhood best friends to lean on, and that wasn’t fair.

But even through his tears, Sanemi felt his resolve harden. He’d failed to be there for his brother when he needed him most; he’d failed to be a decent friend to Kyojuro, in the months following the younger boy’s death as he reeled from the pain of the loss. But he would not fail again; he swore he would find her and be there for her going forward. He would track her down, and he knew she might curse at and rebel against any offer of help, but he wouldn’t balk; he’d do anything, be anything for her, if it meant ensuring she wouldn’t fall into the infinite void of despair and grief that he had.

And maybe, just maybe, he’d prove himself worthy of being her friend once more.

-----

The Uzui family’s summer house was a sprawling manor that abutted a pristine, turquoise lagoon of a private lake, complete with a secluded beach area and a large section quartered off for bonfires, should the group of college-aged guests decide they were sober enough to light it.

The house itself was three levels, with a basement and a half-loft. The considerable size of the estate meant, plus the fact that several of them would be sharing rooms with their partners – Hinatsuru, Makio and Suma all sharing one with Tengen, and Obanai and Mitsuri sharing another – meant that Kyojuro, Sanemi, and Y/N each got their own private guest room.

Sanemi had no interest in being anywhere near the room with Tengen and his three, equally loud partners once they all retired for bed later that evening, and so, he’d claimed the room on the first floor, located just down the hall from the grand kitchen, decked out in new, state-of-the-art stainless-steel appliances and marbled countertops. Kyojuro and Y/N had both taken separate rooms on the second floor, apparently sure they wouldn’t be bothered by the sounds that were sure to emanate from their host’s room until the wee hours of the morning.

They’d arrived only an hour earlier, barely setting down their bags before everyone began to change into their swimsuits to head for the sun-warmed water before nightfall, the girls eager to work on their tans. Now, as Sanemi strolled alongside the sandy shore of the lake, only Y/N remained on land, lounging out on one of the luxurious beach chairs the Uzuis had installed in a finished seating area about fifty feet from where he stood, gazing out at the group’s newest couple as they splashed in the water.

A pang of jealousy reverberated through his chest as Sanemi watched Y/N’s pink best friend giggle in the arms of her new boyfriend as he swung her around in the shallow of the lake.

Ever since Obanai had finally confessed his feelings – and his fears – to Mitsuri, the two of them had been joined at the hip, the dark-haired boy's eyes perpetually clouded in bliss every time the vibrant girl fluttered her eyelashes at him or pressed against him to whisper softly in his ear before kissing his cheek.

-----

“If you can’t be honest with her, you’re going to lose her,” Sanemi said quietly as the two men stood at the bar, both nursing sodas as they watched the objects of their heart’s desire dance wildly and carefree on the Kizuki dance floor.

Obanai looked over at him, his eyes full of the kind of pain that he’d come to know far too well over the last few years. “Maybe it’s for the best,” he said quietly. “I’m not good enough for her – I don’t want to hurt her.”

Sanemi felt like he was talking to a mirror. “You’re already hurting her,” he took a sip of his ginger ale, though he hardly tasted it. “Cause you’re breaking her heart by staying away.”

The tortured boy’s misery was palpable as he looked back to where Mitsuri danced, lively and carefree.

“You’ll regret it as long as you live if you don’t tell her now.” In his mind, he saw only Y/N’s face as she transformed from the smiling girl of his memory to the cold, numb woman of his present. “Trust me.”

-----

He was happy for them, truly; but he couldn’t deny feeling a little jealous of the couple. After all, they both got to be with the person they loved.

Sanemi knew he had no one to blame but himself, but still; he wished he hadn’t fucked it all up with Y/N.

When Sanemi discovered the speckle of blood on his sheets the morning after he’d first brought Y/N home, he’d barely made it to his bathroom before throwing up.

It was too grotesque – the thought that the Wisteria had made him lose control so badly that he’d made Y/N bleed was too much for him to bear.

But the reality had been far worse than a simple case of lost control under the influence of an experimental drug and alcohol.

Far, far worse.

-----

(Three weeks earlier)

“Oh please, we all fuck each other here,” Mitsuri laughed, and Sanemi rolled his eyes.

The pretty, bubbly girl was unshaken by Sanemi’s terse rejection of her offer to join her and Obanai in the back of Tengen’s Volkswagen van for a “good time.” Though, whether her unflappability was from the drink she nursed in her hand or from an unshakeable confidence, developed over a lifetime of being beautiful and adored, he couldn’t say.

“Well, actually,” the pinkette chewed on her lip for a moment, in thought. “I guess that’s not totally true. Y/N didn’t sleep with anyone until you, Shinazugawa.”

Sanemi’s hand, which had been reaching for his plastic cup full of water, froze mid-air.

“What.” His voice was hard, monotone.

The pink-haired girl was oblivious as she laughed. “Yeah, that’s why Makio called you ‘The Cherry Popper,’ that one night - since, y’know, you were Y/N’s first.”

Sanemi felt his vision tunnel, his heartbeat loud in his ears as it thudded uncomfortably against his chest. Something pressed against his lungs, making it difficult for him to breathe as the weight of Mitsuri’s confession settled over him.

All this time, he thought he’d simply been too rough with Y/N, under the influence of that cursed Wisteria.

But this was worse.

He’d assumed Y/N had already lost her virginity when they slept together. She’d had no hesitance in stripping him of his clothes, had begged him to go hard, and fast.

But now, as Sanemi’s breath came rough, he’d wondered if he’d misinterpreted her screams of pleasure — had they been cries of discomfort?’

Or her nails digging into his back — he’d assumed they were to spur him on, to beg him to go faster, but what if she’d been clawing at him to slow down? To stop?

If he’d known, he’d never would’ve done it — not like that, not when he was so blitzed out of his mind that he couldn’t make sure she received the kindness and gentleness she deserved.

It should’ve been special; she should have known how special she was to him. Instead, he’d fucked her no differently than any other hookup he’d had.

Was he no better than his father?

He’d been so elated that she’d responded to his kiss with enthusiasm, that admittedly, he’d lost his ability to reason. He’d pined for her for so long — years really — that the moment her lips had met his, all rational thought had flown from his head. And his heart had nearly stopped in his chest when she insisted that they keep going, when she’d laid back against his sheets and told him she needed him.

He’d hoped she would’ve felt some of the happiness he had, when she awoke the following morning; he’d hoped that he’d be able to make her breakfast, and then the two of them could talk and he could apologize for every stupid thing he’d done over the last two years. Maybe she would’ve forgiven him. But he’d gone and fucked that all up.

Because when he awoke, all that was left of her was her blood on his sheets.

-----

(Y/N’s POV)

Y/N watched her friends sprint into the shallow of the turquoise lake with a small bit of envy. She wanted, so very badly, to join them, but she’d miscalculated the coverage that her swimsuit afforded her, and to her horror, she’d realized that the mark Douma’d left on her would be on full display the moment she removed the oversized button-down she’d used as a cover-up.

“Y/N! C’mon!” Mitsuri entreated her as her head popped back up from under the surface of the water, her hair tinged a dark pink from the water.

Absentmindedly, her hand raised to the spot where Douma had soiled her and rubbed, the slight pain from her stimulation of the still-healing wound forcing her to remain in the present instead of back in that blasted, dark bedroom.

“I think I’ll work on my tan for now!” Y/N called back, plastering a wide, fake smile on her face to assuage any worry. Not that she needed to, because before Mitsuri could question her further, Obanai snuck up from beneath her and raised her out of the water on his shoulders, the pinkette laugh-screaming as she flailed about to keep herself upright.

A crunch of gravel next to her caused her to tense, because she knew that all of her other friends were accounted for, splashing about in the serene crystal of the lake.

All of them, except for him.

Sanemi said nothing to her as he drew up next to her, though he maintained a respectful distance. He too, watched their friends laugh and play in the water for a moment, his hands shoved in the pockets of his red swim trunks.

Y/N tried to be sneaky as she allowed her eyes to roam the sculpted plains of his exposed torso, marveling at the muscle that seemed to be carved from stone. Since the summer, he’d gained a bit of a tan, his skin now a lustrous nutty gold, that, against the white blonde of his hair, created an attractive contrast that made her mouth water.

God, he was beautiful; it pissed her off.

The tension between them was electric, as neither wanted to be the first to break the silence growing ever louder between them.

“No one will stare, y’know,” Sanemi caved first, though he did not tear his eyes away from where they were fixed resolutely on the horizon beyond the lake. “They all want you to feel comfortable, so they won’t look.”

Y/N was about to snippily ask him why he was butting in on her business, even though her irritation was because he’d read her mood so easily – too damn easily, for that matter. She tilted her head up, readying her venom, but before she could bite, the words died on her tongue.

Sanemi’s tan hadn’t been able to obscure the scars of varying lengths and thickness which crossed his chest, forearms, and half of his face; if anything, his sun-kissed skin only made the silvery, jagged slashes stand out.

As she’d looked up at her former friend, she was reminded that he knew exactly how she felt at that moment – had felt that insecurity, every day, since they were eleven and a drunk driver had slammed into his parent’s station wagon, killing everyone but him and Genya.

I don’t care if you have scars! She’d told him, once. I’ve always thought you were…were..pretty!

She winced at the memory, but painful and intrusive though it was, she still couldn’t find it within her to throw his attempt at reassurance back in his face. Y/N’s heart might have been a lowly, misshapen, shriveled lump, but she still had one.

And besides, she wouldn’t lie to herself; his words had soothed some of her anxieties, damn him.

“Thanks,” she said softly, and she gave him a small, tentative half-smile. She hated the look of hope that flickered to life in his eyes at the sight.

She hated the guilt that sunk into her gut even more.

-----

It was late and she was restless.

Most of the house had already retired for the night; Tengen had disappeared with his three girls, and Obanai and Mitsuri had snuck away back to her guest room, giggling softly, as the pair had been unable to keep their wandering, eager hands to themselves.

Y/N stayed up a little longer with Kyojuro, laughing and talking about everything and nothing as Sanemi lingered awkwardly by the shore of the sprawling lake that sat before the Uzui family’s handsome summer home. By the time Kyojuro had yawned, the moon hung high in the sky, and even the chirping night cicadas had long fallen silent.

She’d hoped that returning to her own guest room – located on second floor of the Uzui home – would trick her brain into thinking she too, was tired; but hours later, she’d realized, grimly, that she’d not be enjoying such luck.

And so, she’d found herself braced over the pristine kitchen sink in the Uzuis’ kitchen, unable to shake the incessant nag of sleeplessness that prickled under her skin.She’d thought herself alone, until a noise over by the entryway caught her attention, her eyes flashing over to see who’d joined her in her restlessness.

Y/N’s stomach roiled at the sight of Sanemi standing there, shifting his weight from foot to foot, as though he too, would rather be anywhere but there at that moment.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I couldn’t sleep.”

Y/N shook her head, busying herself with dumping out her water glass and rinsing it out. “Neither could I, I guess.” An awkward pause ensued, only disrupted by the squeak of the faucet as Y/N wrenched it off to towel off her drinking glass.

“I tried calling you – last week,” Sanemi said carefully, leaning against the door jam, his arms folding loosely across his chest. “But I never got an answer.”

Y/N chewed on her lip, wincing slightly. She didn't want to admit that she hadn’t really returned anyone’s calls, but that was because she’d spent the majority of the week hunched over her toilet, alternating between dripping with sweat and half-freezing to death as she weathered through the brutal withdrawal from Wisteria.

She wasn’t ashamed per se – but admitting she’d gone through withdrawal meant admitting that she’d become reliant enough on it to have a physical reaction to cutting herself off from it, and that meant admitting she was weak.

“I was…dealing with a lot,” she decided after a moment. She realized that she was oddly grateful that Douma’s assault on her had been the catalyst for her stopping her Wisteria misuse, given that it gave her away around talking about the pitiful way she’d spent the last seven days.

Besides, it wasn’t like it was a lie; between puking her guts out, she’d spent a lot of time replaying the events that had led her to Douma’s bedroom, terrified and crying.

“A-and are you – you okay?” He stuttered, fidgeting with the drawstring of his sleep pants, twisting it nervously around his finger.

Y/N exhaled but gave him a half-smile that was almost genuine. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

Sanemi continued to shift nervously in the door, as though he wanted to ask her something else, but was warring with whether he should.

Ultimately, he decided to risk it. “Did he -“ Sanemi’s eyes screwed shut, and when he opened them again, he was fixed on a point over her shoulder, as though the question on his tongue was too much for him to risk meeting her eyes.

“Did he… hurt you,” Sanemi hesitated, his voice quieting to a whisper so soft, Y/N had to strain to hear it. “In a way I can’t see?”

Y/N’s eyes widened, her gaze softening as the weight of his question settled. “No, Sanemi, he didn’t. I promise.”

Her hand jumped absentmindedly to the faded mark where Douma had bit her and rubbed. “He wanted to, that much was clear, but Hakuji…Hakuji came just in time.”

Sanemi’s shoulders curled inward as he relaxed, and to Y/N’s heartache, she saw him nearly shaking under the weight of his unshed tears. “I’m sorry — I’m so sorry I wasn’t there.”

Y/N’s eyes hardened, and she let out a sardonic laugh. “That’s what you’re sorry for?”

She shook her head. “Why in the world would you have expected to have been there, Sanemi? You weren’t there any other time I needed you.”

“That’s not-“

“Too bad that’s the only thing you’re apologizing for,” Y/N sighed. “If only you would be sorry for the pain you’ve caused me, not for someone else hurting me.”

Sanemi’s gaze was hard, if not a little weary as he considered her words. “Okay Y/N, you’re right. It’s past time for us to do this,” he walked to the door that led out to the patio area, a little away from the house. He looked back to her, and in response to the eyebrow she had raised in question, he exhaled. “We’ve gotta have it out.”

Y/N did not move from her spot, standing with her back to the stovetop burners, merely crossing her arms over her chest and glaring at him, her hip jutting out. “I’m not going anywhere. If you want to do this, we can do it right here.”

“Fine,” Sanemi bit, voice stony as he folded his arms across his chest, matching her stance. “Then go ahead.”

Y/N merely raised an eyebrow at him, keeping her mouth clamped tightly shut. She refused to let him order her around, to let him goad her into being vulnerable after two years of nothing from him.

Sanemi watched her expectantly for a moment before sighing. “I guess I’ll start,” and he rubbed at his tired eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me it was your first time? That night?”

To Y/N’s shock, Sanemi looked genuinely upset, and she despised the way it made her ache. For all her attempts to keep him forever at arm’s length despite her need for him, the first sign of his pain was enough to make her want to fall to her knees.

But she kept her face neutral, disinterested. “Why does it matter?”

“Because I-,” Sanemi hesitated, his fingers curling against his palms, hands forming fists. “You should’ve told me.”

This conversation was nearly impossible to have sober, and for a brief moment, Y/N craved the sweet oblivion of flashing neon lights and pounding music and purple pills.

“It was none of your business,” Y/N decided, fingers toying with the ends of her hair as she avoided his gaze. “It was my decision.”

Sanemi opened his mouth as though to argue with her, but she cut him off. “God, this is so like you, isn’t it?”

Her fists clenched, and the anger she’d so carefully kept tucked away inside her began to bubble over. “Is it some weird male possessive thing? You fucked me, so now you think you have some kind of claim to me?”

“I care about you, you idiot, and I thought I’d hurt you,” Sanemi replied hotly. “If I’d’ve known, I wouldn’t have done it at all.”

“It’s not about you caring for me,” Y/N snapped. “Admit it — you feel entitled to me.” You’ve always felt entitled to my affections, ever since we were kids.”

Her leg began to bounce with her irritation. “You’d get huffy if I showed the slightest bit of affection to any other boy — don’t try to deny it. You’d cross your arms and get all broody and it fooled no one.”

Y/N laughed, though it was without humor. “You’re a possessive, jealous asshole, who keeps me around because I stoke your ego. You can’t tell me you never thought, not even once, that I had feelings for you.” Y/N’s eyes burned with angry tears.

“Of course I thought it,” Sanemi shot back. “You think I was that fucking blind?” He cracked his knuckles, an anxious tic he’d had since they were small. “You think I didn’t see the way you looked at me, like I was your goddamn favorite person? How could I ignore that?”

Sanemi shook his head. “Did you ever stop to think, for one moment, that maybe I didn’t say shit because I knew — have always known — that I’m not fuckin’ good enough for you? You’ve always been the smartest out of the three of us, Y/N — but did that thought ever cross that pretty head of yours?”

“That’s such a bullshit fucking reason,” Y/N said, exasperated. “Spare me the ‘I’m not good enough for you’ crap, Sanemi. This isn’t a fucking novel,” Y/N ground her toe into the expensive, stone tile of the Uzui’s kitchen floor in frustration. “Because for all your talk, nothing changes the very simple fact that you cut me off like it was fucking nothing. Like I was nothing.”

Sanemi’s jaw went slack as he gaped at her. “Is that how you remember it?”

-----

“Though, I guess it would’ve been hard to know it was you, anyways.”

-----

(Nine Months Earlier)

As he lazily strolled to his next class, Sanemi’s eyes casually roamed amongst the faces of fellow students as they brushed by him, heading in the opposite direction, when something caught his attention. Or rather, someone.

That someone was a wisp of a person, hunched over and curled into themselves like a wounded animal. From the cursory glance he gave them, Sanemi could see that the student was one, a girl, around his age, and two, looked as though she was about to blow away in the brisk, November wind.

He almost passed her without another thought, when her eyes lifted briefly and collided with his, and Sanemi felt his stomach drop, though he couldn’t explain why. Perhaps the flip in his gut had to do with the deep-set shadows beneath the girl’s glassy eyes, or the heavy hollow of her cheeks, as if she’d not known rest or a decent meal for months.

As quickly as her eyes met his, they lowered again, and the girl brushed past him. Sanemi kept walking for a few steps, content to let all memory of the girl fall into the recesses of his mind.

But her eyes. Something about her eyes made his mind snag, pulled at something in his chest that urged him to stop, turn around, and go back to her.

He stopped; he stopped, in the middle of the crosswalk, though the light was quickly ticking down the seconds he had to finish crossing the busy intersection, because he knew those eyes, even if, to his horror, he hadn’t recognized the face, so worn and thin under the crushing weight of her grief.

He knew those eyes, because he’d spent his entire life loving them.

Sanemi whipped around, eyes frantically scanning the dissipating crowd of students in search of her once more. Though his next class was in the opposite direction, he sprinted back across the street to where she’d been walking, calling her name as he darted in and around scowling students, annoyed at the panic-stricken man calling a name that wasn’t theirs.

He felt the burn of his frustrated and desperate tears begin to sting his eyes as he realized, to his torment, that Y/N had evaded him once more, vanishing like smoke in the wind.

Sanemi felt the familiar howl of crippling, raging despair gathering like a violent sea wave in the midst of a storm within him rearing its ugly head to smash him to bits against the rocky shore of his anguish at the realization that Y/N hadn’t just lost her mother.

She’d been suffering. For months.

And he hadn’t known; hadn’t been there for her to lean on, to make sure that she wasn’t bearing the entirety of the weight of a sick parent by herself, only a nineteen-year-old girl. So stuck in his own grief over Genya he’d been that he hadn’t known the depths of Y/N’s endless distress.

He’d abandoned her, and now, the woman he loved was a shell of her former self; a living ghost, forever out of his reach despite always haunting the corners of his shredded heart.

Any thought of his upcoming class faded from his mind as he began to stumble towards Kyojuro’s apartment, desperate to share the news with someone, anyone, who would understand the depth of his despair, and Sanemi broke down into tears.

-----

“And where have you been hidin’ all this time?”

“I’ve been right here.”

“Nah, you haven’t.”

-----

(Six Months Earlier)

“It’s been months, Sanemi, and we haven’t caught so much as a whisper of her,” Kyojuro’s voice was heavy with resignation as the blonde looked pleadingly at his best friend.

The muscles in Sanemi’s forearms flexed as his grip on his phone tightened while he fiddled with it. “We haven’t looked everywhere – have we tried the Pillars?” Sanemi began searching the address for the nearby apartment complex where over two-thirds of the Ubaya-U upperclassmen student body resided.

Kyojuro shook his head. “The Pillars house over two thousand units – we can’t just start going door to door. We’d look insane.”

But the silver-haired man didn’t reply as his eyes narrowed at his screen. “I’ll bet most of the students are in the same building – most residents don’t wanna put up with a bunch of noisy, drunk college kids.”

Kyojuro only looked at his friend in pity. “Maybe she doesn’t want to be found, Sanemi. Not by us, at least.”

Sanemi finally looked up from his screen and cringed at the docility in his friend’s eyes. “What do you suggest we do, Kyo?” He tossed his phone on his kitchen table in annoyance. “Just give up? D’you really think it’s best to just leave her by herself?”

“You don’t know for certain whether she is alone, though,” Kyojuro countered. “She might’ve found her own group here. Maybe she already has support. Maybe she doesn’t need us anymore.”

Kyojuro’s words hit something soft within him that he hadn’t realized had been left unguarded. For deep down, one of Sanemi’s many fears had always been that Y/N would one day outgrow him, though he’d always maintained that he wouldn’t hold her back should the day come.

But that wasn’t what happened; Sanemi had checked out after Genya’s death, and had only snapped back into reality a few weeks before the news of Mrs. Y/L/N’s passing had reached his ears, threatening to send him back to that dark, lonely island amidst the never-ending sea of his grief.

All he wanted was to make sure Y/N hadn’t been marooned on her own isle. As long as she had someone, then Sanemi could accept that he’d fucked over any chance he’d had of remaining in her life, in any capacity.

But until then…

“We don’t know for sure,” Sanemi said hoarsely, leaning back in his kitchen chair, the worn wood creaking slightly under his weight. “And until we do, I ain’t risking her being left alone to deal with this.”

Kyojuro looked at him with such pity and sorrow that it made him want to squirm. Refusing to meet his friend’s fiery, discerning gaze, Sanemi reached to pluck his phone from the table once more, scrolling through his phone contacts list, scanning the names.

“D’you think she might still be in contact with her old roommate?” He asked though it was more of a rhetorical question, given that he’d already begun drafting a message. “I’ve gotta catch my train here in an hour – but we could always try texting her.”

-----

“D’you really think I didn’t try to find you?”

-----

(Three Months Earlier)

“Three – you’re dating three women?” Sanemi asked, equal parts stunned and impressed.

The suave, silver-haired man nodded, a dreamy grin spreading wide across his handsome face. “Sure am,” Tengen produced a sleek black phone from the pocket of his joggers, and opened his social media profile to search a username. “Suma, Makio, and Hinatsuru. They’re all seniors at Ubaya-U, and roommates.” Tengen wiggled his eyebrows. “Which makes life very convenient for me,”

Sanemi met Kyojuro’s ochre stare as Tengen scrolled, as though waiting for his friend to call bullshit on the young detective’s brag, but the blonde only nodded.

“Hold on, they all went out with a few friends the other night, and I think Suma uploaded a pic with all of ‘em,” Tengen’s eyes narrowed in on what Sanemi assumed was the girl’s profile, scanning. “Aha! Here,” he held his phone out for the two boys to inspect, a proud, smug smile etched into his handsome face.

The photo was of five girls, three of whom Tengen identified as “his girls.” One of the remaining smiles was that which belonged to a girl with curious pink and green hair, wearing what could only be described as rave attire, given that most of her considerable body was exposed, even under the dim light of the club. As for the remaining girl --.

Sanemi’s stomach dropped as he looked closer at the image on Tengen’s phone. For there, sandwiched between the pink girl and one of Tengen’s partners, was the girl who’d held Sanemi’s heart since the day they’d met in preschool.

Y/N.

Only, she didn’t look like herself, not really. The sultry smile she gave the camera didn’t quite reach her eyes, which held that hollow, deadened look of someone who’d long since lost their will to live; who’d long since stopped caring they had.

Sanemi was only able to tear his eyes away from the image of Y/N’s frozen not-smile when Kyojuro pressed his elbow into his gut. He looked back to Tengen, who watched him with an odd expression, and sheepishly, Sanemi realized he’d snatched the phone right from the young detective’s hand.

“Sorry,” he muttered, handing Tengen back his cell. “I’m just surprised. It’s been a minute since we last saw her.”

“Who?” Tengen frowned, looking back at the photo, before recognition lit his eyes. “Oh! You mean Y/L/N? You two know her?”

Sanemi found it difficult to speak, so Kyojuro answered for him. “We grew up together back home. We haven’t really seen or heard from her in a while,”

Tengen hummed disinterestedly, apparently aloof to the way Kyo’s voice had cracked. “I’ve met her a few times – Suma dotes on her.” He smiled as he clicked off his phone, leaning back in the booth. “She’s been over to the girls’ place a few times before, and she seems pretty cool; kind of a party girl, though.”

Sanemi gaped at him, finally finding his voice. “She’s a what?”

Tengen shrugged. “Yeah, one time I met up with their friend group at one of the clubs downtown – the Kizuki Lounge, I think? – anyways, she and Makio decided to have a drink-off, and it ended with my ass having to carry them both out to the car and drive ‘em home.” He chuckled, shaking his head at the memory. “They argued the whole drive back about who won.”

Both Kyojuro and Sanemi sat in dumb silence as the silver-haired man leaned in, his voice lower than it had been. “One of their friends – she wasn’t in that picture just now – but apparently she’s some sort of chemistry whiz. Made a new drug that’s like ecstasy, but lasts longer and has an easier come down.” A conspiratorial smile spread across his face, a devious light in his eyes as he whispered, “The girls swear it helped give them the most intense orgasms of their life. I kinda wanna try it out for myself.”

Tengen leaned back and winked. “Are either of you interested? Even if you don’t want it, you should try hitting up the Kizuki every now and again. Most of Ubaya-U’s student body goes to party there during the summer, and they tend to offer decent deals on drinks.”

Sanemi had frequented bars, but never clubs, and Kyojuro rarely found himself in either. However, if Tengen’s comments about Y/N were to be believed, it was more than likely she was a regular patron of the local joint. She’d managed to evade every other attempt to get in touch with her, but perhaps meeting her on her turf would give him the opening he’d been desperately holding out for.

And Sanemi wasn’t about to waste the opportunity to find out.

He took a swig of his coffee before setting it down, meeting Tengen’s stare evenly, though he fought to conceal the way his hands trembled. “What are you doing this Friday?”

-----

“I looked for you – everywhere, I looked for you.” Sanemi promised, his voice trembling as he pled with her. “Y/N, I knew what you were going through – I know what it’s like --,” his eyes begged her to just listen, but she couldn’t, not when she’d spent so long staying so silent.

“You have no idea!” Y/N burst, and for the first time in two years, she spoke of the night her world had ended, even though for everyone else, it kept spinning.

“I was alone when she died! It was just me in that hospital room,” Her tears flowed in a steady stream down her face, though her voice remained steady and sharp. “I was moving her hand over my hair because I knew I would never again get to feel her stroke my head whenever I was sad or stressed. It was so fucking late, and I was so tired, but I felt something shift, and I looked at her and watched her take her last fucking breath, Sanemi!”

Y/N ‘s hands wrung in her grief. “I had to call the nursing attendant and tell them – even though I could barely speak, I had to tell them my Mama stopped breathing.”  As she spoke, she saw only the image of her mother in that damn bed, still and pale, and her mother but no longer.

“And do you know what happened next? They told me I needed to leave and sign fucking paperwork,” She laughed, derisively, though she only cried harder. “I had to sign fucking release forms and then they just – told me goodnight. I walked to my car. Alone. I drove home. Alone. Without her.”

“I was with you when you found out about Genya – we made sure you weren’t alone! But me? Who was there for me?” Y/N was sobbing into her hands, her shoulders shaking with the weight of all the bitter loneliness she’d been forced to endure over the last two years. “Where were you?”

“Y/N, I get it, I do –,” Sanemi began but Y/N shook her head.

“No, Sanemi, you don’t understand!” Her voice was no longer angry, but pleading, begging him – anyone – to understand just how much she’d been struggling and for how long. “Every night when I close my eyes, I see her, lying there. I hear the beep of her oxygen monitor going haywire because she wasn’t breathing, and I see her take her final breath. Every night, over and over, and I just want it to stop.”

Y/N slumped back against the kitchen counter, exhausted and defeated. “You asked me where I’ve been the last two years, and you were right – I haven’t been here; because I’m still there –in that hospital room. I never left.”

Her sobs finally quieted beneath the press of her hand to her mouth as she tried to stifle the hysterical way her breath struggled to catch. “And I don’t think I will ever leave. It’s been two years, Sanemi, and I’m still sitting there, right where I lost everything.”

“So yeah, I was desperate for an escape. Because, that next day, I woke up, and for some reason, morning, still came, even though my Mom would never again see another sunrise, and even though my world had been obliterated,” Y/N’s voice quieted to a near whisper, her voice hoarse from her tears. “And everybody else just moved on. I wanted to pretend that I had, too, even if only for a little while.”

“I was alone,” Y/N cried softly into her hands. “I’m still alone.”

When Sanemi spoke, his voice was rough and cracked. “I know I left you alone then,” but for some reason, his validation didn’t soothe her the way it had with Kyojuro. “But you’re not alone now – I tried, so hard, Y/N, to find you and make sure you were okay, and I failed,” His eyes shone with his own unshed tears. “I refuse to leave you alone, now. I know that probably pisses you off, but I can’t – I can’t leave you, not when I know --,”

“It’s too late,” Y/N interjected, lifting her head up to meet his eyes. “You can’t just waltz back into my life and decide you care now, not after all this time.”

“It was never about me not caring,” Sanemi sat down in the seat opposite from her, his head braced between his hands as his fingers tugged at his hair in frustration. “I don’t get why you can’t understand that.”

She gaped at him. “You stopped talking to me because I said I was in love with you – I fully understand that it was piss-poor fucking timing on my part, but you tossed me aside like garbage.”

Sanemi’s head snapped up, his eyes wide. “You think that’s why I stopped talking to you?” And suddenly, devastation pulled at his face as his shoulders sagged. “Y/N – that was never the reason --,”

“What other reason was there, Sanemi?” Her tears had dried, but the gnawing ache in her chest only deepened at the look of his despair, because, angry as she was with him, she would never wish him to be in as much pain as he appeared to be in right then. “Even if you weren’t really that angry, it doesn’t change the fact that you stopped speaking to me because of it,”

“Y/N – that’s not –,” Sanemi began, but Y/N wanted no part of it, and she could tell they were only gearing up for another fight. She opened her mouth, ready to unleash all of her acidic, biting remarks about how comfortable Sanemi had been to use her, knowing that she was probably still in love with him, when he spoke once more.

“You aren’t the only one who has been grieving.” Sanemi’s words hit her with a force that knocked the breath from her lungs, and the fight from her blood.

“I lost the last person I could call ‘family,’ too, Y/N.” Sanemi spoke with a brokenness that she knew only she recognized as grief – boundless and all-consuming. “I failed as your friend, that’s true,” Sanemi’s voice quieted to a whisper. “But I failed as a brother, first.”

-----

(November, 2 months after Genya’s death)

Sanemi laughed as the enraged bar patron’s fist slammed into his nose. The blow wasn’t hard enough to break the bone, given his intoxication, but it was enough for Sanemi to taste the blood as it dripped into his mouth.

“You’re fucking crazy,” the man spat, stumbling slightly.

Sanemi’s grin only widened. “I bet your wife would like some crazy in her life. You look as dull as a sack of shi-,” his taunt was cut off as the man landed another sharp to his gut, the breath wheezing out of him as Sanemi felt something inside him crack.

Probably another rib, he groused, gritting his teeth slightly. Just down the darkened alley, Sanemi could see people slowing down, watching as the balding drunkard threw lazy and disjointed punches at the bloodied, laughing man, and he knew it was only a matter of time before the cops were called. And Sanemi, to his annoyance, had promised Kyojuro he would try to stop needing the blonde to bail his ass out of jail every other week. He hadn’t known why he’d made such an inane promise to his best friend in the first place; it wasn’t as if he mattered.

Because the days following Genya’s death had blurred into weeks, which bled into months. For Sanemi, life became marked by the amount of time that had passed since he’d become the only Shinazugawa left on earth.

Since he’d last been someone’s brother.

Two days. Twenty-three. A month. Four months. Nine. A year.

Life post-Genya was a series of blurs; droplets of water on a page that smeared ink into something vaguely recognizable, but ultimately rendered useless.

Just like him.

For so long, his identity had revolved around being Genya’s big brother — his Aniki, as the boy had affectionately called him.

Could one still be an older sibling when they had no sibling left?

Genya had been Sanemi’s pride and joy. He’d been eager to get settled into college, to get his own place so Genya wouldn’t have to share a bunk bed with other kids the state had squeezed into their foster home. He’d lined up jobs to ensure he could buy Genya whatever food he wanted, whenever he wanted it, because Genya was always hungry, and their foster parents had never seemed to have enough to go around.

But then, Genya had wound up dead, and Sanemi hadn’t even been there to protect him. What kind of big brother was he, if he couldn’t even be counted on to be there when his little brother needed him the most?

He didn’t even get to say goodbye. He’d left his brother only a couple of weeks prior, with a promise to come and visit him as soon as he could. Genya had tried his hardest to stifle his tears, but despite his brother’s somewhat hardened appearance, thanks to the scar that cut across his face, Sanemi knew Genya was a sensitive boy, prone to wearing his heart on his sleeve. So the elder Shinazugawa had pulled his brother in tight, ruffled his hair, and told him he’d see him soon.

It had been a lie; the next time Sanemi saw Genya, the fourteen-year-old was a body on a metal table, awaiting Sanemi’s approval to be sent to a funeral home for burial preparations.

And so, the days passed in one, monotonous, never-ending cycle. Wake up; stare at the ceiling; force himself to eat, shower, and go to class. Then, Sanemi would grab his fake ID, head to a bar, take a few shots of some burning, acidic liquid, and then identify the meanest, biggest thug in the joint and pick a fight. He’d let himself get beaten to a bloody pulp and then he’d limp his way home, barely making it to his bed before passing out in the sweet stupefaction of oblivion.

Occasionally, he’d wonder why on earth he was the one who was left alive; why fate had demanded Genya’s life and not his, because Genya had so much more to offer the world than he did.

After all, Genya hadn’t even picked the fight between the two boys from their old foster home, and he’d still ended up dead.

The time never seemed to stop even though his little brother’s heart had; and with each passing day, Sanemi felt himself growing number and number. As the pulsing ache between Sanemi’s ribs dulled, he mused that, with every moment that passed, he was growing closer to becoming just like the little brother who now slept six feet under the frozen ground of the cemetery plot that also now housed their parents and other siblings.

Nothing more than a corpse.

If only it had been him.

It should have been him.

-----

“After Genya died I —,” Sanemi hesitated. “I wasn’t a good person, Y/N. You didn’t need to see me like that.” He ran a hand down his face, his weariness a heavy shadow beneath his eyes. “I’m honestly surprised Kyo stuck through it as long as he did.”

“I fucked up, I know that.” He admitted, his eyes shining with his own unshed tears. “I was an asshole to you, and I could’ve done more,”

Sanemi’s voice dropped to a whisper. “But I needed you, too. And you vanished. You told me you loved me and then you vanished. And it was like losing another person I loved all over again, and I’d barely started mourning Genya.”

Y/N felt her stomach drop to the floor and her vision tunnel. The weight of Sanemi’s words slammed into her with cataclysmic force, and she shot out a steadying hand against the counter to keep her knees from buckling.

She remembered now, the point at which she’d fucked it all up; and he was right.

Y/N had felt abandoned by her friends, but she’d forgotten that it was she who distanced herself from Sanemi first; that she’d done so to protect her own stupid pride and heartache after his apparent rejection of her love. She’d evaded him first, because she’d assumed that was what he wanted, even though he’d tried texting her once. She’d neglected to consider that perhaps, his ignorance of her hadn’t anything to do with his anger that she’d dared to confess; that perhaps, his neglect of her had been part of a general disconnect from the world, in the wake of it taking yet another person he loved away.

At the time, Y/N hadn’t understood what it meant to grieve; hadn’t been able to comprehend the ways in which it could engulf someone like a wildfire before they could ever see the smoke.  

He’s dealing with a lot right now, Kyojuro had told her, sternly. But perhaps Kyojuro’s admonition hadn’t been that at all; perhaps it had been a tired, desperate effort to remind her that Sanemi’s introversion from the world had nothing to do with her at all.

“I’m sorry,” Y/N gasped, her hands shaking. “I didn’t realize – I just knew I felt alone. All I wanted was you, Sanemi. I didn’t care how. I just wanted my friend.” This time, Y/N did not try and steady her voice as the tears welled up in her eyes. “I needed you — I needed my ‘Nemi. But you weren’t there – I-I didn’t think-,”

“I promise you, I wanted to make it right. I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did at the train station,” Sanemi gave a great sniff, lifting his head to meet her eyes. “When I snapped out of it, I tried so hard to find you by then, it was too late; you were gone,” His tears fell fast and hot down his face. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry, Y/N.”

“I failed you; I know that --,”

But the girl shook her head, collapsing back against the kitchen counter. “We failed each other.” She wiped her cheeks, her arms winding tight around her middle as she tried to hold herself together even though the weight of the words that followed threatened to tear her apart at the seam for good. “And I don’t know how to fix this – how to fix us.”

Sanemi leaned back against the table, opposite her. “Maybe we can’t…maybe we can never go back to the way things were.”

Even as he said it, Y/N’s heart seized. She knew he was right, but she wanted so very badly to believe he was wrong; wanted to believe there was still a them to salvage.

“That doesn’t change how I feel about us,” Sanemi continued. “And that doesn’t mean we can't try to make something new.”

His words, so brutally honest and yet hopeful, tugged at the bleeding, mangled pieces of her heart. For the first time since they’d reunited, Y/N felt as though she could finally see him – all of him – and he broke her heart, and not for the reasons she thought he had before. The remnants of her heart ached for him because he looked just as broken and lost as she was, and she realized that perhaps, they hadn’t meant to hurt one another. Perhaps, they’d both been merely victims of their own grief.

All Y/N knew was that she was tired, so very tired of running from him, especially when he’d always been inevitable. And she wanted, more than anything, to ease some of the burden that she’d failed to notice he’d been struggling to carry, too consumed by her own grief and pain and rage.

Sanemi’s stare was weary as she slid off the counter and approached him timidly, hesitating just once before winding her arms around his neck and kissing him, gently.

She kissed him because she did not know what else she could do at that moment. There were no words she could say, no promises she could offer him, other than this small act of physical comfort.

Sanemi kissed her back, soft, though the hand on her face felt more like an effort to restrain himself from going any further. Y/N’s suspicions were confirmed when he broke away from her lips, panting slightly, and moved when she tried to reconnect them.

He pressed his forehead against hers. “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he murmured, apologetically. “We’re both all worked up.”

Y/N opened her eyes and peered up at him, nodding. He was right; of course, he was right, but his rejection stung anyways.

He must have sensed it, for he pressed his lips tightly against her forehead, his thumb stroking her cheek. “Let’s just take some time, okay?”

Her lips trembled with the effort to keep herself from crying once more, but she nodded, nonetheless. Briefly, Sanemi’s lips brushed her forehead once more, before he pulled away, and silently retreated to his bedroom, leaving Y/N in the dim light of the kitchen.

-----

The next day and a half passed without event, and Y/N was grateful for it. She’d managed to smile and laugh with Mitsuri and Kyojuro, and goofed around with Tengen’s beautiful girlfriends, but her heart remained heavy in her chest.

Though, it wasn’t an unwelcome weight, even if it made her uncomfortable at times. The fallout from hers and Sanemi’s talk two nights earlier had been both the final knife to her blackening heart and its bandage, and she’d been left to work through the complex tapestry of her feelings towards the man who’d held her heart before she’d even known she’d given it to him.

Such thoughts, however, had not quieted. It was just after midnight when Y/N gave up on trying to sleep. The house was too large and too quiet, and it made the thoughts in her head all the louder and sleep all the more evasive.

With a sigh, she kicked free of her blankets and rose, padding out of her temporary bedroom and into the dark, silent hall of the Uzui lake house. Trust that Tengen, of all people, would come from a family that not only had a summer house, but one large enough that each of her friends had been afforded their own private bedroom for their short weekend.

Clad in only a pair of black boy-shorts and a matching, cropped tank, Y/N clandestinely made her way down towards the large staircase which led to the first floor, but paused before beginning her descent, as she remembered that Sanemi’s room was on the first floor – just before the kitchen.

He’d wanted space, and she’d given it to him. Over the last two days, the pair hardly spoke to one another except for, when necessary, by virtue of the group’s activities under the sun. It hadn’t been out of any malice or anger, not like before. Rather, it seemed that their mutual avoidance of one another had been born out of a curious shyness that had bloomed between them, as both worked through the snarled tangles of their hearts.

If she went to the kitchen, as planned, there was a chance she’d wake him, and even if every fiber of her body missed him, the last thing she wanted was to be the cause of his loss of sleep – at least, more so than she’d apparently already had been.

On the other hand, she was thirsty, and there was a restlessness buzzing beneath her skin that would not quiet, that hadn’t quieted since she’d given up those treacherous lilac pills.

Y/N decided to take her chances, resolving not to turn on any of the stair lights or the light in the kitchen, instead navigating only by the dim light of her phone as she eased her way down the polished wood stairs. She held her breath as she slipped past the door that led to Sanemi’s room, as though the very sound would risk disturbing the handsome man slumbering within.

Once in the kitchen, Y/N blindly felt around for the cupboard containing sparkling glasses and managed to fill one with water without making a great deal of sound. Using the light of her phone screen, she managed to hop up onto the cool, marbled countertop and leaned back against the cabinets as she nursed her drink.

For the last two nights, sleep had evaded Y/N because of the way Sanemi’s words had played, over and over her head, a never-ending tape that showcased her own selfishness on a loop.

You aren’t the only one who has been grieving, he’d told her, brokenly.

He was right, and she was horrible.

For as long as she could remember, Y/N had always feared being selfish. She didn’t know where the deep-seated aversion to looking after he own self-interest had come from, but it was one that was so deeply ingrained within her that she’d long since stopped trying to overcome it. Instead, she’d found herself always trying to do the best for other people, desperately trying not to put herself over her loved ones, for fear they would leave her the instant she did.

When she’d found out her mother was going to die, she’d been left by the doctor to break the devastating news as her beloved mother lay in that hospital bed, fighting so hard to keep her oxygen levels up so that she could get out. Her mother had been asking Y/N to describe all of the autumnal decorations she’d seen go up in town, as though the prospect of seeing fake leaf garlands and pumpkins would be enough to make her lungs work properly once more.

For as long as she lived, she would never forget the broken disbelief in her mother’s eyes as Y/N had tearfully told her she would not live to see the end of the week.

“I thought I had more time,” her mother had wheezed, brokenly, clasping Y/N’s hand as tightly as she could with her dwindling strength.

She’d looked so scared, so lost, and what had Y/N done?

Y/N had cried; sobbed and had been utterly unable to stop. Her mother had needed comfort, and she hadn’t been able to toughen up and stop crying.

I’m sorry, Mama, she’d bawled, I can’t stop crying, I’m so sorry.

Her mother, with tears in her own eyes, had only shaken her head. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

As though it were her fault she was dying; as though Y/N didn’t know that if death were a matter of will, her mother would be here, on earth, with her still.  

In her mother’s most desperate moment, Y/N had been utterly incapable of providing comfort, instead needing to be comforted, like the child she’d been. It was despicable; she was despicable.

To her horror, she’d been nothing but selfish. So, so very selfish, for being unable to check her emotions when it mattered most. And her mother had barely been conscious after that final conversation, which meant Y/N hadn’t been able to apologize for making her mother comfort her in her hour of greatest need. But Y/N had added that great regret to the list of things that would likely haunt her for the rest of her life, hopeful that maybe its presence on her list of regret would serve as a warning for her in the future.

It hadn’t; because Y/N had fallen right back into the sticky trap of her own selfishness and had failed to account for all the ways in which Sanemi had been suffering, right alongside her.

Worse, she’d relished his suffering because she’d thought she’d been the cause of it, and it had felt so damn good to finally get him back for the two years of hell she’d endured, never realizing that he’d been burning, too.

They’d been victims of a shitty hand dealt to them both, but too young and too stupid to be able to see the world outside of their own heads. And now, she had no idea where things stood between them.

Deep in thought, Y/N did not sense the shift in the air that signaled another was stirring until the kitchen light flipped on, and Y/N’s head shot up to see the person she’d most wanted to both see and avoid.

Sanemi looked just as surprised to see her, perched on the kitchen counter. His hand still lingered on the light switch, and his eyes were wide. He seemed to realize he’d been staring, and he quickly looked down to his feet, the faintest trace of red crossing his cheeks.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Couldn’t sleep.”

Y/N huffed a watery chuckle, wiping quickly at the tears that clung to her cheeks. “Neither could I – just a little restless, I guess.”

There was so much she wanted to say, and yet, she couldn’t think of a single word to speak, as he continued to hover by the light switch, uncertainty turning his muscles rigid. An awkward silence ensued as Y/N gave a great sniff and tried, but failed, to fake an ‘everything is fine’ smile.

Not that she would’ve been able to fool him anyway, but still, she mused, it would’ve been nice to try.

“I’m sorry – I’ll go back to my room,” She put her water glass down by her side and braced her hands against the edge of the counter to hop down, but remembered that she was still only in her underwear. It was foolish, she knew, to feel suddenly self-conscious being so exposed in front of him, given that Sanemi had spent the entire summer exploring every nook and cranny of her body with his mouth and hands, but the emotions of the weekend still weighed heavily on her – made her feel vulnerable.

Especially under the microscope of his burning stare.

Sanemi didn’t respond, nor did he comment on her failure to move off the counter. Instead, he only continued to watch her as she wiped at her cheeks, that fathomless heat and longing and hurt in his stare.

“I’ve always hated seeing you cry,” he finally murmured, and Y/N was surprised to see that he had inched closer to where she sat, perched on the kitchen counter.

A door was opening, and Y/N found herself wondering if she should walk through it or remain here, where the line between them was tenuous, but a line nonetheless; safe, and capable of being enforced, if she needed to run.

Y/N recalled a conversation they’d had about Mitsuri and Obanai before the pair had begun dating – back when they, too, had been chained to their own doubts of the other’s sincerity.

They should let themselves try, he’d quietly insisted.

She’d rebuked his words, only to find herself eat crow later; Mitsuri and Obanai had let themselves try, and now they were together, mending and growing as one instead of as two.

Maybe they could try, too.

“But why?” Y/N pressed, because though she’d decided at that moment to walk through that door with no reservations, she still wanted to hear him say it; wanted an explanation, after all these months.

“You know why,” was his only reply, his voice growing hoarse as he drew up within an arm’s reach of her.

Y/N shook her head again, but Sanemi did not stop; his hands boxed her in on the counter, one thick forearm coming to brace on either side of the kitchen counter, thumbs just grazing her thighs.

“You know why,” he insisted.

Y/N finally lifted her eyes to his, the last wavering thread of her resolve dissolving as she beheld the timid, pleading sincerity in his stare.

She exhaled, softly, but she did not move away from him.

“Then show me.”

She’d never seen Sanemi look so shy as he lifted one hand to cup her delicately under the chin. As he leaned in close, Y/N felt a curious tingle in her stomach that only grew in its intensity as his lips – so warm and soft – brushed against hers.

It was butterflies, Y/N realized as her eyes closed, that she’d felt fluttering in her stomach as Sanemi kissed her, because it was everything their first kiss should have been. It was not rough and sticky from mixed drinks and being pressed against dirty club walls in the dark, like the act itself was a shameful secret driven only by lust.

It was gentle, and soft, like the first fall of snowflakes against her cheeks. It was warm like a summer breeze, gently messing the tendrils of her hair against her bare shoulders, as it caressed her skin and promised precious moments of levity and of peace.

Sanemi’s lips moved against hers, still so gentle, and Y/N felt not just the love she’d come to accept he held for her, but also his hope, as tentative and uncertain and yet as eager, as a newborn fawn taking its first shaking steps in the spring.

It was everything; he was everything.

Their kiss grew more heated as they both grew more desperate to consume one another, the desire to make up for all the time lost between them morphing into a base need, as though their minds knew they needed the other to help put themselves back together again; to make themselves whole.

Sanemi’s hands found the sliver of skin exposed between the top of her underwear and the bottom of her tank top, and Y/N moaned, her legs wrapping around his hips to lock her closer to him as she let Sanemi engulf her in his strong, sturdy arms.

He lifted her effortlessly from the counter, his lips never leaving hers, and he began to walk them toward his bedroom. As Y/N’s legs wrapped eagerly around his waist, and her fingers tightened their grip in his hair, she found herself grateful that his room was just around the corner.

His tongue danced slowly with hers as he nudged the door to his room open with his foot and blindly pushed it shut once they were safely inside.

Sanemi’s lips dropped to her neck as he carried her to his bed, laying her out beneath him as his hands skimmed under her tank top, rough fingertips gliding up the sides of her bare waist until his palms rested against her breasts, rolling the mounds between his hands until she was moaning into his mouth, her wetness gathering quickly in her underwear as Sanemi pressed his groin against hers and rolled.

He made quick work of discarding her sleeping top, his mouth closing around one of her nipples as he gave it a hard suck, his hand cupping the other to roll her stiffening nipple between his fingers with a surety that had her whining and tugging at his hair, begging him for more.

Y/N’s fingers clawed at his back, eager to tear his t-shirt from his back so that her hands could greedily roam the stony ridges of his back, his chest. Sanemi groaned as she raked her nails across his shoulders, and he nipped her breast in response for making his way down to where her underwear struggled to conceal her arousal from him.

His tongue grazed over the thin scrap of fabric that separated her bare cunt from his waiting mouth and he groaned, his fingers digging into the sides of her thighs. “I can taste you through your damn panties,” he growled, his eyes dark as they lifted up to her face, flushed bright pink as she watched him slowly drag his tongue up her clothed slit. “Are you that needy for me already, baby?”

Sanemi withdrew himself from between her legs, and Y/N thought she’d fall apart at the loss of his warmth above her. Any protestations she had bubbling in her throat, however, died, as Sanemi shoved his sweatpants down his legs, his thick length springing forth and bouncing against his navel.

No matter how many times she’d seen it, the sight of his cock, long and with considerable girth, with a pretty, mushroom-like tip that grew an angry red the longer he went without stimulation, never failed to make her mouth go dry.

“Let me take care of you, sweet girl,” he cooed, slowly kneeling before where she laid sprawled on his bed as his hands smoothed up her thighs to the bottom of her underwear. Gently, his fingers curled under the fabric and began to slide them down the length of her legs, until he’d pulled them away from her feet.

Before he returned to her, he balled the discarded cloth in his hand and brought it to his nose, eyes closing as he inhaled deeply the scent of her arousal, a soft growl reverberating from the back of his throat as he opened his eyes, amethyst irises full of heady want for her.

“Fuck, I’ve missed that,” he said quietly, his movements slow, teasing, as he knelt on the bed, the mattress dipping under his weight, as he settled between her thighs.

Y/N huffed a shaky laugh. “It’s been two weeks, you nymphomaniac,” though she nearly gulped at way his eyes darkened as he exhaled softly along her glistening, throbbing core.  

Sanemi sat back from her, eyes roaming her bare body as he considered her words. “You’re right, it’s been two weeks,” he said evenly, as his hands slide under backside, lifting her up to work himself under her until she was perched on his abdomen, its rocky ridges brushing deliciously against her bare folds.

“W-what are you -!” Y/N’s question was cut off as Sanemi’s broad, warm hands gripped under her thighs and hauled her up his torso, bringing her to hover just above his face as he settled beneath her.

“It’s been too long,” Sanemi grunted, his voice like gravel with his desire. “I need this. I need you.”

His strength had always greatly outmatched her own, but Y/N did not try to struggle as he lowered her bare cunt onto his mouth, his hands braced on her hips as he pushed her full weight down onto his face, groaning loudly as her essence enveloped him.

Sanemi’s head had spent a great deal of time between her thighs since the start of the summer, and yet this was somehow far more intimate.

Intimate, because she was utterly helpless as he held her throbbing core flush against his face, his arms caged tightly around her thighs, prohibiting her from moving away even if she’d wanted to do so, as he devoured her.

From beneath her, Sanemi let out a deep groan as his tongue sank between her folds and began lapping at her. Sanemi’s expert tongue wove in and out of her folds, periodically grazing over her entrance with such teasing fervor that Y/N felt her lower abdominal muscles seize, and she could not stop her hips as she began to grind into his mouth, her head tossed back.

A sharp prick against her inner thigh had Y/N’s eyes flying open as she looked down, surprised to see Sanemi licking the inside of her thigh where he’d nipped her. Even in the dark, Y/N could see the moonlight reflecting off his lavender irises he held her gaze, the hands around her thighs tightening and Sanemi slid his hot, silken tongue into her opening.

Y/N’s responding moan was loud, wanton, her head falling back as her hips ground down into his mouth as she began to ride his tongue. Below her, Sanemi groaned, his laps and sucks at her most sensitive area growing louder as he greedily slurped her juices.

Y/N began to feel that coil deep in her stomach grow tighter as her clit began to pulse and throb against Sanemi’s relentless tongue and lips. One hand slid under her to play with her entrance, his rough fingers circling her opening, sliding into her until his first knuckle before withdrawing, teasing her as her hips bucked wildly against his face, as she grew more desperate for him to fill her.

“Sanemi – p-please,” Y/N begged as his deft fingers avoided sinking into her spasming heat once more, a small scream of frustration tearing from her throat as he continued to tease her.

Though her white-haired lover was prone to continue teasing her, the grip around her thighs tightened as Sanemi pressed her harder against his face, his tongue thrusting in and out of her as his teeth grazed her aching bead over and over. Y/N’s cries grew louder, closer together, as the rough stubble of his jaw scraped against her sensitive flesh.

It was too much; with a sharp cry, Y/N’s thighs seized around Sanemi’s head as she felt a rush of her juices gush out of her, coating his face. The vibrations from Sanemi’s groans of satisfaction intensified the ripple of pleasure that rocked through her, and Y/N could not stop herself from grinding even harder against him in a desperate attempt to prolong her release.

Y/N fought to keep herself upright as she bucked against his face, but the sensation had become too much, and she found herself falling back against his legs. Sanemi didn’t seem to mind, his arms remaining tightly locked around her lower hips as he continued to rock his face against her core, her thighs shuddering around his head at the scrape of his stubbled jaw against her heated, sensitive flesh.

She turned her head and was surprised to see how close Sanemi’s cock was to her face, standing thick and tall as it bounced proudly against his abdomen with every flex of his stomach muscles and thighs as he continued to eat her out like she was his final meal.

Y/N’s lips went dry as her eyes took in the leaking, red tip of him, so demanding and eager, and yet he’d been utterly content to ignore his own need in favor of satisfying hers.

She struggled against his iron-like grip on her hips, trying desperately to turn so she could take him fully into her mouth, but he was too lost in her cunt to realize she wasn’t trying to get away; she wanted him, wanted to pleasure him as must as he insisted on pleasing her.

“Sanemi,” she whined, trying to turn once more, but his arms only tightened around her, a growl of warning reverberating from his chest.

Straining, Y/N leaned as close as she could to his aching cock and stuck her tongue out, just managing to graze the side of it before she had to pull away.

It was enough. At the first caress of her wet tongue against him, she felt Sanemi freeze beneath her, his tongue momentarily pausing mid-thrust into her core as he realized what she was trying to do.

“Fuck this,” he muttered, finally tearing himself away from her lovingly abused cunt and throwing her off him to the side, her breasts bouncing as she settled against the mattress. “I need you – now.”  

Sanemi covered her body with his own, her legs falling to the side with practiced ease as she accommodated his hips. Despite his gruff words, Sanemi bent down to kiss her softly, his lips warm and gentle, as one hand rose to caress her cheek. Y/N locked her arms around his neck, happily sighing into his mouth as his tongue slid between her lips to stroke hers, each caress making the fire in her lower belly burn hotter and more urgent.

Sanemi shifted, keeping one hand on her face as the other moved to grip him at his base, aligning himself with her entrance. His eyes flitted back up to hers one more time, seeking her permission, and it made Y/N’s heart seize. Even after more than two months of sleeping with her, he still insisted on ensuring he had her approval.

Had she been able to form a coherent sentence, she would have begged him to take her, but she’d long since lost her ability to speak thanks to Sanemi’s skilled hands and mouth, and so, she only rolled her hips towards his impatiently, whimpering with her need.

Sanemi groaned in response and the hot, flared tip of his aching cock pushed into her. Ordinarily, Sanemi took his time working his way inside her, given his considerable size and girth; but, thanks to the way he’d insisted she ride his face, Y/N’s core had become impossibly slick that Sanemi sunk into her molten heat in a single, fluid motion, not stopping until his base was pressed flush against hers.

A hitched breath blew past Sanemi’s lips as he buried his face into the crook of his neck. He locked one arm around her upper back, the other encircling her thigh to hold her open for him as he began to rock into her, sloppily and hurried, as though he were getting lost in the feeling of her tight, soaking heat as she clenched around him.

“S-Sanemi!” Y/N gasped, her fingers burying themselves into the pale cornsilk of his hair as she tugged, eliciting a deep groan from the Adonis that ground into her from above with abandon.

Y/N’s hips moved of their own accord as she desperately sought to meet his frenzied thrusts, circling and pushing against him as Sanemi’s cock hit that spot within her that made her toes curl and her stomach dip. She was as wanton and desperate as he was, though the harder she moved against him, the more needy she became.

She needed him to be closer; so much closer.

“’Nemi,” she cried, begging him though she did not know what she begged for, as she moved her hands from his hair to rake her nails down his back, needing him to do something, anything to bring her closer -.

Sanemi locked a steely arm around her middle and in one fluid motion, flipped them, bringing Y/N atop him.

Both groaned in unison as the new position allowed Sanemi to reach even deeper within her, and Y/N felt nearly intoxicated by the sensation of being filled and stretched to her limit. Sanemi’s hands braced at her waist as he began to help her roll her hips against his, his head falling back as his eyes fell shut in bliss, a deep moan falling from his mouth.

Tears stung Y/N’s eyes as she ground against him because she understood what his actions meant even if he’d not uttered a word.

Sanemi Shinazugawa said he’d never let anyone ride him.

But he wanted to be hers.

So, with an unfamiliar yet welcome warmth spreading through her chest, Y/N began move, her hips softly rolling and grinding against his as she braced her hands against his rocky abdomen, fingers digging in slightly as she tilted her head back and moaned his name, loud and unrestrained.

“Nemi,” Y/N gasped, her hips rising and falling and grinding against him with a fervor beyond her control, as she could not get enough of how it felt to fuck herself on him. “Am I — ah — doing this right?”

A loud groan from deep in Sanemi’s chest was her only answer, as her lover lifted his head from where it’d been thrown back against his pillow as he basked in the feeling of Y/N’s silky cavern milking him for all he was worth.

 “Baby, I don’t think you could do wrong if you tried,” he grunted, his voice trembling with his unbounded desire.

She was inclined to agree, because god, even after months of being fucked by him, none of those previous encounters could compare to the way he was making her feel right then, his warm, sturdy hands braced on her hips as he helped guide her up and down his hot, steely length, the room filling with the sound of their skin clapping as she bounced and ground against him.

Y/N’s hands found his at her waist and she pulled them away, in favor of tightly interlocking their fingers as she increased her pace, bringing herself up off his cock before dropping her hips back down again for a needy grind, her walls fluttering around him with each push and pull against him.

She fell forward slightly, pressing the back of his hands down into the mattress and holding them there, just over his head, their fingers tightly interlocked together. She shifted, so that she could brace a little of her weight into him, pressing them even harder into the soft bed as she increased her pace, rolling into him faster as she circled her hips around him.

With his hands pinned above his head, and his eyes squeezed tightly shut as a needy moan echoed from his throat, Y/N swore she’d never seen sight more beautiful than that of Sanemi completely at her mercy.

“I want to finish like this,” Sanemi’s voice had an uncharacteristic desperation in it that bordered on begging, he threw his head back harder against his pillow, the tendons in his neck tensing as he groaned unrestrainedly for her. “Please, Y/N –,”

She only ground down against him harder, his pleas choking off in his throat as his fingers dug harder into her hips. “Sh-i-it,” Sanemi groaned out, his hips thrusting wildly up into her, so lost in just how deep he could reach within her vice-like, silky heat.

Guided by pure instinct, Y/N released his hands and sat up, her own drifting behind her as she began to fondle his swollen, heavy balls while she continued the relentless pull and drop of her hips up and down his throbbing cock.

“Fuck!” Sanemi bucked harshly up into her, his head pressing harder against the pillow beneath him as the muscles in his neck strained, his eyes falling shut in his bliss. One of his hands found its way to her lower abdomen, pressing down slightly so she could feel him pressing against the front wall of her core, Y/N’s voice cracking as she moaned. His other hand lowered to where they were connected, and he began to swirl his thumb around her aching clit, his ministrations causing the walls of her cunt to pulse and constrict around him as her end neared.

Y/N’s thighs began to burn with exhaustion as she bounced up and down his cock, but she could not stop, not until she reached the dizzying height of her pleasure that was quickly coming on the harder she rode him.

Sanemi, however, appeared to sense her growing tiredness. “C’mere,” he said gruffly, one hand lifting to cup her face as the other shifted to press against the small of her back, guiding her to lay flush against him as he claimed her mouth with his own and began to thrust up into her, holding her securely against him.

Y/N groaned into his mouth, as their new position allowed Sanemi to hit a spot within that had her seeing stars as he kept her crushed against him, his tongue dancing languidly with hers. The hand on her lower back moved so that his arm could wrap around her waist and embrace her, as his other hand moved from her jaw to brush a lock of hair back that had fallen in front of her face.

“N-Nemi,” Y/N whimpered, her hips beyond her control as they dropped and rolled and ground against him, in desperate search of her release.

“I know, sweetheart. I know,” Sanemi’s voice was raspy, his arm tightening on her waist in a poor effort at restraint. “I feel it, too.”

Sanemi began thrusting up into her spasming cunt, a renewed string of curses falling from his mouth as the messy sound of Y/N’s honeyed core filled the room. Y/N felt herself begin to tighten around him, the thighs trembling against either side of his waist as she slammed herself back onto him, her cries growing louder as Sanemi brought her closer to her peak. His hips began to lose rhythm as he wildly jutted into her. Y/N’s eyes were squeezed shut as she began to babble, alternating between cries of his name and nearly incoherent pleas for more.

Sanemi’s hand found hers and brought it up against his chest, holding it tightly as his other arm cinched around her waist. “Let go for me, baby,” his voice was hoarse as he leaned up slightly to brush a kiss against her lips.

One, strong grind of her hips later, Y/N shattered around him, her inner walls seizing him like a vice as she tipped her head back and wailed for him, so pretty and so completely undone by him that she did not think she could ever be put back together and be wholly her own, without his touch forever imprinted on her skin, or upon her heart.

She knew, at that moment, as Sanemi’s grunts turned into loud, unrestrained moans as he bucked wildly into her, that running from him had always been futile, because she’d only ever been running in circles, only to find herself as she was then, right back on her knees before him, utterly his.

The difference was, she realized as he gave one last mighty push of his hips up into her still-spasming core, his seed shooting into her with blinding force, as a strangled shout-cry tore from his throat and his fingers seized around hers against his chest, that he’d been running in the same circle, too, just in the opposite direction. But now they’d run out of track to tread, and he’d smacked right into her, knocking both of them off their axes, stumbling and spinning together until they’d finally hit the ground, with only each other to face and nowhere else to run; and she was tired of running, anyways.

Because she knew, as Sanemi’s hips finally stilled against hers and she collapsed against his chest and he on the bed, leaking cock still nestled between her legs, that she loved him.

She loved him.

She loved him.

-----

Neither of them spoke for a long while, both panting hard as they caught their breaths.

“You said you think I’m possessive — maybe I am,” Sanemi said after a long moment, as the two came down from their mutual highs. “But it’s because I want to be yours. I’ve always been yours.”

He paused before continuing, his arms around her tightening. But when he spoke again, his voice was perceptibly softer, more timid, as though afraid of her rejection. “And I want you to be mine, too.” 

Let him into your heart, and he will gladly give you his.

Y/N’s hand found his at her waist, and gently, she removed it. As she brushed her lips over the calloused pads, always so soft whenever they touched her, she lifted her gaze to his.

“You are mine,” she repeated softly, before moving his hand to press against the valley between her breasts, where her heart beat strong against her sternum. “And this has always belonged to you.”

Sanemi’s cheeks burned red as he bent to graze her lips with his, his hand still pressed against her chest. So innocent and chaste was the kiss that it was easy to forget that his cock remained buried within her, his seed still gathering on the sheets beneath them as it trickled from her.

Sanemi’s thumb stroked the skin of her sternum absentmindedly. “What comes next, Y/N?” He murmured, his eyes tracing over the features of her face as she rested her cheek against his bicep. “What do you want this to be – what would make you happiest?”

Y/N thought for a moment and weighed all of the emotions that had sat heavily in her chest for the past two days – the past two years – untangling each knot and snarl that had formed to obstruct the heart of her true desire.

When she spoke, her voice was as soft as a feather.

“I want to be with you. I’ve only ever wanted to be with you. That hasn’t changed.”

Sanemi’s eyes widened with a hope she knew he’d not dare let himself feel ever since their fateful reunion at the Kizuki. “So you’ll stay? With me?”

Y/N’s answering smile was wide as she leaned up to brush a gentle kiss against his lips. “Yes, ‘Nemi. I will stay.”

And for the first time in two years, Y/N felt just as hopeful as him.

“Can I kiss you again?” Sanemi breathed, staring down at her in awe, as though he could not believe that she was real, despite having just had her in the most real way he could have.

Y/N didn’t answer, instead raising her lips to his, as she threaded her fingers through his hair to hold him close to her. Sanemi responded with a soft groan and pressed himself into her. His cock began to twitch to life within her once more as her tongue slid into his eager mouth, gliding alongside his own.

She moaned into his mouth as he began to roll into her, her legs falling to the side to accommodate his body as he settled himself between her thighs. But Sanemi’s warm, rough hands slid underneath her backside and shifted her to lay on her side next to him, her chest pressed flush against his as he began to rock gently into her.

Y/N lifted her leg so that it wrapped around his hips, and Sanemi groaned, one of his steel-like arms wrapping under her upper thigh to hold it in place. “That’s my girl,” he murmured, his lips trailing along the underside of her jaw and down her throat. “Just focus on me, baby.”

The hand of the arm gripping her thigh moved to splay across her backside, pushing her against him as he rolled into her. A cracked moan broke from her throat as Sanemi began to massage her cheek in time with the slow, languid pump of his cock into her, the walls of her cunt tightening around him.

They continued to rock into one another like that, softly groaning and gasping every time Sanemi’s hips stuttered against hers, or every time Y/N’s nails sunk harder into the muscular slope of his back, so lost in the feel of the other’s body that Y/N was sure she did not know where she ended, and he began.

“Sanemi,” she cried, because the feeling of him this close, of him being this gentle, was so overwhelming to her because it was more than just fucking. This was them, raw, and unguarded, moving imperfectly against one another and letting their bodies speak in the words their mouths had not.

“It’s okay, baby, I’m here. I’m right here,” he promised, his lips brushing against hers once, twice. His arm tightened around where it gripped her upper thigh, hand splayed across her backside, as he rocked harder into her, both of their ends rapidly approaching. “I’ve got you.”

Y/N pressed her lips desperately against his, needing him to soothe the ache that grew in her core as she drew near the summit of her pleasure. She hitched her leg higher up on his hip to allow him to push deeper into her, and her eyes rolled into the back of her head as she felt Sanemi’s balls begin to tap against the curve of her backside as he picked up his speed.

“Come with me,” Sanemi grit out, his brow pinched as he stifled another groan. Y/N chased a bead of sweat as it rolled down his neck, mewling in agreement as she tugged him closer, pressing her chest flush against his.

“I’m close – fuck, I’m close,” Sanemi gasped, his lips crashing down against hers, his teeth tugging at her lip before he pulled away. “Are you?”

Y/N nodded desperately, as a long, high-pitched whine tore from her throat. “I wanna cum – ah – Sanemi, please, I want to cum.”

Sanemi’s hurried thrusts up into her melted into rutting, as his thick length hardly slid out of her sopping and spent heat. “Eyes on me, baby,” he managed, his fingers digging into the plush of her ass as he began to twitch inside her – a sure sign he was mere seconds from his peak.

With great effort, Y/N opened her eyes and met those violet eyes that she loved so dearly, and Y/N’s climax slammed into her with a force that had her crying out. She was the rough, coarse wave that crashed and broke around the steady rock that was Sanemi.

His free hand fumbled for hers, bringing it close against his chest, fingers tightly locked together. Her eyes still locked with his, Sanemi’s soft grunts turned to loud, wanton moans, his thrusts sloppy and jerky, as he came in time with Y/N, filling her with his hot, thick seed until it spilled over where they were connected, staining the sheets beneath them.

Sanemi did not stop pumping into her, could not, as he continued to unload within her, the hand on her ass locking her against him as his hips finally stilled against her with a final, strained cry of her name.

He collapsed against her, his full weight bearing down on her as they struggled to catch their breath. After a few moments, Sanemi shifted like he was going to pull out of her and away, but Y/N whined in protest.

“’Nemi,” Y/N panted, her arms locking around his back and holding him to her as she circled her hips against his, Sanemi hissing as she began to overstimulate him. “Please, can we stay like this for just a little longer?”

She hardly recognized the breathy, needy tone with which she spoke. For so long, she’d denied herself of any intimacy with him that extended beyond allowing him to cum in her, always pulling away and fumbling for her clothes the second his climax ended. But now, Y/N could not bear the thought of tearing herself away from him, because she belonged to him, and he finally belonged to her.

Sanemi’s hands dug into her waist as his head dropped into the crook of her shoulder to bury his face into her skin. She felt him inhale deeply, as though she was the air he needed to breath, and he nodded, apparently unable to form any words as he came down from his high.

After a few, quiet moments, the air around them only occasionally disturbed by the sound of their breathing, Sanemi answered her. “I will always want you to stay.”

-----

Y/N did not remember the last time she’d slept more peacefully than she did that night wrapped in Sanemi’s arms.

When the bright light of the sun finally broke through the gossamer-like curtains hung on the guest room window, Y/N sleepily blinked herself awake, turning to bury her face into the mattress to hide away from the bright, unrelenting light of morning. But what lay beneath her cheek was not the feather-plush soft of the luxurious mattresses the Uzuis had in every room of their summer home; it was rocky, hard muscle covered by warm, scar-speckled skin that made up the man she loved with every fiber of her being.

Sanemi groaned as he felt her face press against his upper abdomen, his hand raising to caress up her spine as he drew his other arm over his eyes to block out the sun. “’S too early,” he protested, drawing a light chuckle from Y/N.

“We have to leave soon,” she whispered, pressing a kiss against the rigid plane of his abdomen before trailing her lips down to where his cock was already beginning to stir. “Let’s at least enjoy the morning.”

Sanemi did not protest as she ducked beneath the covers to take him into her mouth, sighing happily as his hands softly stroked her hair while she bobbed up and down his length. Sanemi, however, was too impatient to feel Y/N’s walls around him once more, and lasted only a minute before he tugged her up his torso and sank her down onto him, his face buried into her neck as his teeth bit into the sensitive skin of her throat.

Y/N spent the remainder of their morning fucking herself once more on Sanemi’s stiff length, relishing the way his broad hands slid under her thighs as she rode him to lift them up so he could watch himself thrust up into her, admiring the way his cock glistened with the pleasure he helped to give her.

A couple of hours later, the group of friends loaded up their respective cars, Tengen and Obanai grumbling under the bright light of day as both fought of their mutual hangovers from the previous night’s inhibitions.

Though Y/N was set to ride with Mitsuri and Sanemi with the boys, neither of them could conceal the small, contented smiles they bore as they loaded their bags into the trunks of their cars, the pair occasionally sneaking a furtive glance at the other, smiles only broadening as their eyes met.

Just before Y/N opened the passenger door of Mitsuri’s vintage Volkswagen, she felt a pair of fingers, rough yet warm and familiar, brush shyly against her own.

“Text me when you guys get back, okay?” Sanemi murmured. On the other side of the car, Mitsuri’s jaw fell open, and her jade eyes gleamed with poorly-concealed excitement.

Y/N closed her hand around his and jerked him down, muffling his grunt of surprise as her lips met his. “I will.” She said as she released him, Sanemi’s cheeks turning pink as he grinned back at her. His hand closed around hers where it rested on the door handle of Mitsuri’s car, and pulled it open, holding it for her as she turned and lowered herself into the passenger seat.

Mitsuri practically tripped over herself as she scrambled into the driver’s seat, though she restrained herself from squealing until the door was shut safely behind her. Keys turning in the ignition, the pink-haired girl turned to her best friend, nearly vibrating with excitement.

“Tell me everything. Now.”

Y/N laughed as the pinkette pulled out of the manicured driveway of the Uzuis’ lake house, and she began to fill her friend in on everything that had changed between her and her childhood best friend.

-----

The lightness that Y/N felt leaving the lake house lasted the entire drive back home with Mitsuri in the latter’s car, her chest feeling full and warm as the two scream-sang along to every song on Mitsuri’s playlist.

The sun was nearly setting by the time the pinkette parked her car in front of their apartment building, the pair having stopped to grab sushi for dinner for themselves. As the two exited Mitsuri’s car, Y/N noted Shinobu’s small, purple sports car parked at the far end of the lot and smiled to herself, knowing her friend was home, where they could talk. As they’d picked up their to-go order from the sushi restaurant down the street, Y/N had made the last-minute decision to grab one of Shinobu’s favorite rolls, having resolved to talk to her other roommate and work things out between them.

Not that there was truly anything for them to work out – Y/N had concluded she didn’t blame her friend for what had happened; Y/N had made her own choices, as had Douma.

The pair of best friends giggled as they walked up the steps to their apartment, takeout bags in hand, ready for a night of relaxing on the couch with sushi, some facemasks, and trashy reality television. Y/N’s key unlocked the front door, which swung open to a darkened apartment. Her fingers flipped the kitchen light on and the sushi bag in her hands dropped to the floor.

For there, sprawled on the linoleum by the kitchen counter in a puddle of her own vomit and blood, was Shinobu.

She wasn’t moving; it was hard to tell if she was breathing.

Everything seemed to slow down and speed up all at once. One moment, the two young women were laughing and talking as they returned from a life-changing weekend at the lake, and the next, Mitsuri was screaming while Y/N heard nothing but the strong roar of panic echoing in her ears. 

“Call an ambulance!” Y/N managed to bite out at her hyperventilating friend as she dropped to her knees beside her unconscious roommate, her hands shaking as she tried to feel for a pulse. “Mitsuri!”

As the pinkette scrambled for her phone, Y/N took note of the odd violet hue of Shinobu’s vomit and the sickly-sweet scent of flowers and synthetic fruit.

With trembling hands, Y/N brushed back a strand of her friend’s inky-violet hair that had fallen in front of her face. There, mixed within the dried blood beneath Shinobu’s nostrils, was the faintest trace of lilac.

Wisteria.

Over the roaring in her ears, Y/N vaguely heard Mitsuri crying into the phone with the emergency dispatch operator.

“She’s twenty,” Mitsuri sobbed. “We don’t know what happened, but it might’ve been an overdose. But there’s blood, too.”

Her pink-haired friend was right; there was an alarming amount of blood, dark and sticky, that had pooled beneath Shinobu’s head. Y/N suspected she’d hit her head on the edge of the counter, either because she’d tripped or because she’d passed out and hadn’t been able to catch herself, but Y/N couldn’t tell where the wound was, and she was too afraid to risk moving her friend’s head and worsening her injuries.

“Is she breathing?” It took a moment for Y/N to register that Mitsuri’s question was directed at her. “Y/N is she breathing?” 

“I don’t know,” she whispered, “I don’t know, Mitsuri.” And, because she was panicked and scared, and utterly useless, Y/N began to cry. “I can’t tell; my hands won’t stop shaking.”

“I can’t tell.”

-----

Half an hour later, Y/N stood against the wall of the small waiting area in the emergency room, leg bouncing in agitation and anxiety. Beside her, Mitsuri sat with her head in her hands as the two waited for any news as to their friend’s condition.

The outer doors to the emergency room slid open and the girls were joined by Hinatsuru, Makio, and Suma, the latter of whom was crying softly to herself. A few moments later, Obanai arrived, face severe, aiming straight for the pinkette as he crouched before her, covering the hands she had buried in her hair with his own and pressing a kiss to the crown of her head. 

The waiting room had become too crowded for Y/N’s frazzled nerves to handle. She tore herself from the wall against which she had been fixed, opting instead to pace the hallway between the waiting area and the main hospital. Makio may have called her name, but the roaring in Y/N’s head had become too loud, the jitter under her skin too incessant, for her to remain still in the waiting room a second longer. 

Y/N finally exhausted herself enough to slump back against the wall, the passing sounds and beeps of the hospital only faint echoes in her ears. But then there were thunderous footsteps walking quickly toward her, and Y/N’s eyes lifted just in time to see Sanemi’s stormy face as he reached for her. 

He crushed her against him, one hand buried in her hair as his other arm wrapped around her waist, holding her to him as though he needed to assure himself that she was real and there, and not the one getting her stomach pumped on the other side of the sealed emergency room doors. 

His lips pressed hard against the top of her head, Sanemi inhaling deeply before pulling back from her, his hand rising to cup beneath Y/N’s jaw so he could tilt her face up toward him, those lilac eyes scanning her frantically for any sign of external injury.

“I didn’t know,” he said hoarsely against the crown of her head as he pulled her back against him. “Tengen called -- only said an ambulance was being sent to your apartment – that a twenty-year-old woman had overdosed.” 

Y/N shook her head against his chest, breathing in his comforting scent and allowing it to still the jitters crawling beneath her skin. “I haven’t used in a week, Sanemi.” 

Her – boyfriend? paramour? exhaled shakily, his arms tightening around her. “I was scared. After last night, I-” Sanemi swallowed thickly. “I was worried you regretted it.” 

Y/N closed her eyes as she let herself melt against his stabilizing warmth. “Not you,” she murmured, “Never you.”

-----

An hour later, Y/N stood in her kitchen, chest heaving as she looked at the wreckage of Shinobu’s bender scattered around her.

There was an empty bottle of peach vodka lying on its side on the floor. Lilac residue was smeared on the kitchen counter, likely the result of Shinobu having snorted it the night before. A puddle of her vomit, streaked with purple, still lingered where the petite woman had lost consciousness. 

Sanemi came around the kitchen counter, his hand resting at the small of Y/N’s back as he guided her away from the cabinet below. He bent to pull out a bottle of bleach and a roll of paper towels, as well as a pair of cleaning gloves that he pulled over his scarred, callused hands, and he set to work scrubbing at the floor. 

Y/N watched him for a long moment before she moved to begin rounding up all of the bottles of liquor and wine that had been stashed in their apartment. One by one, she dumped their contents into the sink and chucked the empty containers into the garbage.

Next, Y/N gathered up all traces of Shinobu’s Wisteria from their various stash spots around the apartment. It had taken her a while to hunt through pharmacology student’s room, given that the young woman had become rather adept at squirreling away those poisonous little pills. Over the course of an hour, Y/N had managed to locate every little baggie and loose pill shoved under her friend’s mattress, tucked into her sock drawer, and slotted between pages of textbooks she’d never opened. 

She’d stood over the toilet where she’d flushed them for a long while after the last of those lilac devils had swirled down the drain. It was not until a pair of warm, comforting arms encircled her from behind that Y/N was aware of the tears slipping hot and fast down her cheeks. 

Sanemi pressed a soft kiss into the back of her neck as she cried, allowing her to press her face into his muscled forearm until her sobs had quieted, before he turned her around. He’d kept one hand on her shoulder as he leaned to tug her shower curtain open and turn the water on, before returning to her. Slowly, and with more gentleness than Y/N thought she deserved, Sanemi began to undress her, chucking her vomit and sweat-stained clothes into her laundry bin before helping her into the shower.

Y/N stood numbly under the hot spray of the water as she waited, the sounds of Sanemi’s belt and pants hitting the cold tile of the floor before he parted the curtain and stepped into the bathtub with her. 

The moment he’d re-oriented the shower curtain to close them in, Y/N melted against him. Sanemi’s hands came to her waist, gently turning her so that her back was to him, as though he knew she was losing the battle against the weariness that had seeped into her bones. His arms locked tightly around her, he guided them to sit on the floor of the bathtub. He situated Y/N between his legs, her back resting against his chest. One arm was wrapped around her upper shoulders, holding her to him, as the other wound around her waist from behind, gripping her hand in his. His lips found the juncture between her shoulder and neck, brushing softly against her wet skin once before he buried his face there and held her, as the hot water beat down upon them. 

They stayed like that until Y/N could no longer tell whether the water on her face was from her tears or the spray of the shower nozzle above. 

Only after the water had begun to cool and their fingers had turned wrinkled did Sanemi help her stand, reaching behind her to shut the shower off. 

Sanemi stepped out first, grabbing a towel from where it hung on the back of her bathroom door, to secure around his waist. He then produced two more from Y/N’s bathroom closet – her two fluffiest – and held them under his arm as he used his free hand to help Y/N out of her shower to stand on her bathmat.

Had she’d any tears left, Y/N was certain they would have been shed as Sanemi gently toweled her hair and body try before he scooped her up and carried her to her bedroom.

Sanemi set her carefully on the edge of her bed before leaving to return to her bathroom once more. Y/N’s eyes were fixed blankly on the carpeted floor of her room, her mind blank and that howling numbness that had become her constant companion over the last two months threatening to swallow her whole once more. She barely registered Sanemi’s return to her room until he, in all of his shower-dampened glory, knelt at her feet, with a bottle of her favorite lotion in hand.

Wordlessly, Sanemi pumped some of the lotion into his hand and began to gently massage it into her skin, starting at her feet and working his way up her legs. Once he’d reached the tops of her thighs, he repeated the action once more, carefully taking the time to ensure that he worked the lotion on every part of her body. With every stroke of his hand against her skin, Sanemi chased away that encroaching numbness, replacing it with the warmth of his adoration and love for her.

“Have you eaten today?” Sanemi’s voice broke the comfortable silence that had settled over them.

Y/N shook her head. “But I’m not hungry – really,” She urged as Sanemi opened his mouth in protest. “Can we just – just lay here?” She patted the soft down of her bed, motioning for him to join her.

Sanemi nodded, rising to turn towards her dresser to pull out a pair of underwear for her and digging out a pair of briefs of his that he’d let her borrow as pair of shorts after one of their earlier trysts.

Once both had pulled their respective pairs of underwear on, Sanemi squeezed himself into the small crevice between her twin bed and her bedroom wall and held out his arm in an invitation that Y/N did not hesitate to accept.

She curled against his bare chest, warm against her own naked skin, and wrapped her arms around him, holding him close as she sighed deeply, inhaling his scent and allowing it to wash over her, and still her mind.

Sanemi’s hands absentmindedly stroked her hair, his lips periodically pressing against her hairline as she began to doze in his arms. Just before the exhaustion commanded her to fall into sleep’s embrace, she spoke.

“I meant what I said earlier – I haven’t used Wisteria in over a week. I stopped drinking. I’m done, Sanemi. I swear it.”

Her face was pressed against his pectoral, so she did not see the tears of quiet, exhausted relief that filled his eyes as he pressed his lips against her forehead once more. “I know. Kyo mentioned on the way back that you’d been dealing with withdrawal for the last week. That it was why you weren’t answering your phone.”

Sanemi’s arms tightened around her as she began to drift off. “I’m proud of you, Y/N.” And then, he added in a voice so quiet that she almost didn’t hear it before sleep’s sweet lull pulled her under. “Thank you for choosing to stay.”

-----

She slept soundly through the night once more, until Sanemi awoke her in the early hours of the morning with his head between her legs, Y/N gaining consciousness just in time to come on his tongue. In the throes of her climax, Sanemi replaced its position at her entrance with his fingers as he dragged it up her messy folds so he could suckle at her clit.

Sleepily, Y/N clawed at his back, an impatient demand for more falling in the form of a whine from her lips, and Sanemi complied. He turned her onto her stomach and his cock found its way between her thighs as he began to fuck her from behind, his hips setting a leisurely pace as they slapped against her ass, Y/N’s soft moans only growing in their vibrato as he brought her to orgasm yet again, his warmth flooding her shortly after as he sighed her name.

They remained in bed for another few hours, talking and holding one another, trading lazy kisses and gentle caresses because they could not get enough of touching each other like they were right then – soft and meaningful, because Y/N and Sanemi were now a them, rather than two people who alternated running from the other.

Sanemi, it seemed, especially couldn’t keep his hands off her, which she found amusing, given that as children, Y/N was always the one who initiated any kind of affection with him, though she suspected that his begrudging acceptance of it had really been a front to conceal his true feelings.

His hand was smoothing up and down her bare thigh as she stroked his hair, his eyelids fluttering shut against her touch, when his phone rang from its place on her nightstand.  Groaning, Sanemi blindly felt for the buzzing device, answering it only with a grunt as he kept his eyes locked on her, his hand still gliding up and down her shin.

His brow furrowed in seriousness, and he nodded, as though whomever was on the other end could actually see him, before he muttered a soft, “thanks, man,” and clicked the phone off, tossing it back onto her covers.

“That was Iguro. Shinobu is awake, and they’re allowing visitors.” His eyes were full of a quiet concern as he regarded her gently. “Are you okay to go right now?”

Y/N was already making her way out of bed, nodding. Of course she was okay to go – she needed to go, needed to assure for herself that her friend was awake and knew she was supported.

She dressed quickly, donning only a matching black workout set and sneakers before pulling a jacket over her bare shoulders. Sanemi merely tugged on the clothes he'd worn the day before.

“I’ll stop at my place on the way back,” he added, a faint blush coloring his cheeks. “If you want me to stay again tonight, that is,”

Y/N turned away so he wouldn’t see the small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth as she quieted a laugh, so as not to make him feel embarrassed. “I want you to stay.”

Sanemi drove them, though he kept his hand firmly locked around hers the entire ride. Ever since they’d began their physical relationship back at the start of the summer, she’d been adamant that she wouldn’t allow herself to accept any affection from him if he didn’t have his cock buried inside of her while he gave it. It seemed too risky at the time, as though allowing him to care for her would blur some line she insisted had already been drawn, even though she’d been the one to hold the stick marking the ground.

Now, in hindsight, she couldn’t believe she’d denied herself of his intimacy for so long – not when it felt this good to have his steadying, grounding warmth wrapped firmly around her hand, his thumb running over her knuckles as he smoothly worked the steering wheel with his free hand.

This -- whatever this was. It was good.

-----

By the time Sanemi drove them back to her apartment, the evening sky was beginning to shift from a pale blue to a creamy orange, the sun beginning its descent towards sleep for the night.

Y/N, herself, felt an exhaustion so heavy, she wondered whether it had infiltrated the marrow of her bones. Her head ached slightly after a solid hour of crying with Shinobu, the latter offering apology after apology as Y/N held her trembling form close, shushing her with assurances that she’d never blamed the pixie-like girl for what Douma had chosen to do just a few weeks earlier.

Shinobu had confessed she hadn’t been trying to harm herself – not really, anyways. Rather, she’d been so overcome by her guilt and self-loathing that she’d stopped keeping track of just how much alcohol she’d been drinking or how much of her accursed Wisteria she’d been ingesting. The cut on the side of her forehead truly hadn’t been that deep, but it had been the result of a fall she couldn’t break, just as Y/N expected.

Y/N had sat, curled beside her roommate and dear friend, for another couple of hours, until Giyuu materialized in the doorway, deep-set shadows under his eyes and breathing hard, as he took in Shinobu’s vulnerable form, hooked up to various hospital machines, with a thick bandage wrapped around her head.

Y/N had quietly untangled herself from her friend and quietly exited the room, patting Giyuu’s shoulder as she passed him, though the ravenette did not acknowledge her, far too focused on his crying girlfriend as he wrapped her in his arms and held her tightly against his chest.

As they’d walked back to his car, Sanemi told her that Giyuu had driven straight through the night from his sister’s the moment he’d received word of Shinobu’s condition, too frantic to be by her side to even stop for food or rest.

Sanemi swung by his apartment, as he promised, and emerged a few minutes later with a bag full of his clothes and toiletries before he drove the rest of the short drive back to her shared apartment with Mitsuri and Shinobu. Her best friend, however, had decided to stay over at Obanai’s, and given that her other roommate was unlikely to be discharged before the following day, Y/N and Sanemi had her apartment to themselves once again.

After a dinner of vegetable omlettes, prepared by Sanemi, the pair fell back into Y/N’s tiny twin bed, both exhausted from the excitement and stress of the previous four days. Y/N, in particular, had felt more emotionally zapped than she had in a long while, having spent the majority of the holiday weekend crying for one reason or another, and wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of her evening wrapped securely in Sanemi’s arms as she listened to his heartbeat lull her to sleep.

She’d stripped herself of her clothes, leaving herself in only her thong, as she pressed herself against Sanemi’s bare chest. Sanemi, however, could sense her weariness, and so they did no more than kiss every now and then, both merely content to simply hold the other and bask in their shared warmth.

“Thank you for being here for me – yesterday and today,” Y/N murmured quietly, her lips grazing his collarbone.

Sanemi’s fingers brushed under her chin as he tilted her face up to meet her eyes. “I told you already, I’m all in. Whatever it is you want from me, I’ll be it.”

Y/N smiled wryly at him as her eyes roamed his face in consideration. “So, does that mean we’re official? Are we boyfriend-girlfriend?”

His responding smirk made her thighs squeeze together as he leaned in close to her face. “You can call me whatever you want, baby,” he kissed her nose before lowering his lips to hers, though he held back, teasingly. “And for however long as you want.”

She giggled as he kissed her and it felt like coming home, and Y/N couldn’t remember the last time she felt like she’d had one of those.

He broke away from her after a moment, hand coming to a rest against the side of her head while his thumb stroked her cheek, a profundity creeping into his eyes.

“I love you, Y/N. With all my heart.”

Y/N thought her heart would fly out of her chest as Sanemi repeated the words she’d uttered to him nearly two years prior. She thought hearing them would cause her to clam up, that they would send her careening back to the dark, lonely hole she’d spent the last half of her university experience trying desperately to claw out of, but they did not.

Instead, Sanemi’s words – her words – mended something within her that she’d long thought to have been irreparably broken. There was no emptiness left in her, no gnawing wound; it had been healed by him and his earnestness, and she only felt her love for him. Love that made her feel pretty, soft, and new, mending her broken heart with its golden light.

“I never stopped loving you,” Y/N’s voice grew thick with the tears that filled her eyes. “Please know that. No matter how mad I was, no matter how low I felt, I always knew I loved you – and I still do.”

Sanemi’s answering grin was so beautiful, so bright, that she wondered why she’d waited so long after making up to say it. His smile made her feel as though she could soar through the sky, breathless and wild and free.

Once upon a time, she’d believed love was pretty; she imagined it would be soft, pink, and shiny and make her feel warm and pretty in return.

Then, as an adult, she realized that love was pretty, but not in the way she’d imagined it would be when she listened to stories of princesses and their knights as a little girl. Love was a blur of many hues, some soft and bright, but some dark and harsh too, melding together to create a kaleidoscope of light and shadows. And it was because of this phantasmagoria of joy and pain and laughter and sadness that love was so beautiful, and so worth fighting for, because in the end, finding herself in the arms of the only person she’d ever loved outweighed any of the heartache which preceded it, and it would be worth whatever heartache was sure to come.

Because loving Sanemi Shinazugawa was worth it all.

EPILOGUE – 2 months later

The sun was golden and bright and the air as crisp as an apple as the couple de-boarded their train at the small station in their hometown, hands clasped tightly together. The blazing heat of summer had quickly given way to October, and the autumn harvest brought with it a new tiding of ruby and ochre yellow leaves.

Y/N was grateful for the loose sweater she’d worn — stolen from Sanemi’s dresser one day several weeks earlier when she’d insisted she needed his scent to take back to her apartment with her, to help her get through the first wave of reading and papers she’d been slammed with. Initially, Sanemi had protested with a grumbled “fuck off,” as she’d tried to lay claim to his favorite sweater.

He’d change his tune rather quickly, however, when his girlfriend then donned the garment whilst giving him what he later called “the best head of his life.” And so, the worn, dark gray sweater had remained safely in Y/N’s care.

As the train doors slid shut behind them, Y/N took a deep, steadying breath, mentally preparing herself for the reason they’d risen early that Saturday morning to return to their sleepy hometown.

The gentle squeeze of Sanemi’s hand around hers as he brought their interlocked fingers to his mouth for a sweet kiss, helped abate some of her nerves and grounded her.

“You ready?” He murmured, his eyes warm and so full of love and concern for the woman beside him that Y/N felt her heart lurch.

She smiled at him, softly, and rose on her toes to press a chaste kiss against his lips. “I’m ready.”

The advantage of living in a small town — no more than a village, really — was that nearly everything was within walking distance, as long as one did not mind a few steep hills here and there. And so, the couple set off from their town’s small train station, towards the grocer to pick up flowers — two bouquets, one for each grave that marked the final resting spot for their loved ones.

Autumnal arrangements in hand, the pair walked in a comfortable silence up the hill leading to the cemetery.

“Genya’s with the rest of my family,” Sanemi said quietly as they passed the iron-gated entrance that gave way to the sprawl of headstones that lined the grassy hilltop. “They’re just over here.”

Y/N nodded, squeezing Sanemi’s hand in assurance as her boyfriend led her up a small trail to a row of graves gathered beneath an old willow tree.

When Sanemi had shared with her that he made this bi-weekly sojourn to visit and lay flowers on the graves of his family, Y/N had cried. She’d held him tightly, offering a litany of apologies for not being there for him more, for the fact he’d been doing it alone.

He wouldn’t hear of it, insisting that she hadn’t anything to apologize for, which only made her cry harder.

A hush fell over the pair as they drew up upon the Shinazugawa family graves, Y/N’s heart breaking a little more as her eyes scanned each name, the life spans etched into the stones far too short.

Wordlessly, Sanemi plucked a flower from the bouquet he carried and laid one at the base of each gravestone, repeating the process until no more flowers remained. Once the last flower was placed, just over Genya’s grave, Sanemi straightened, gripping Y/N’s hand tightly in his own as his other lifted to wipe at his eyes.

“He’d be over the moon, ya know, that we’re finally together,” Sanemi murmured, his voice hoarse with his grief, nodding at the last stone bearing the name of his beloved brother. “He used to give me all kinds of shit for not making a move sooner.”

“He always was wise beyond his years,” Y/N sniffed quietly, her own tears slipping freely down her cheeks. “He used to pester me about it, too – would always ask if I was single, and if I said ‘yes,’ he’d mention that you were also single.” She huffed a watery laugh as the image of the boy’s smiling face flashed through her memory. “Though, I think he did it more so to tease me, because I’d always turn as red as a tomato whenever he’d mention it.”

Sanemi smiled softly as he squeezed her hand. “It’s a family trait, I s’ppose.”

The couple remained at the site of Sanemi’s family’s graves for a little while longer, the last living Shinazugawa tucking his girlfriend tightly into his side as he held her close, her warmth helping to keep him anchored here, to life, rather than wishing he slumbered beneath the hardening ground with his family.

Eventually, they agreed to make their way toward the other grave that had drawn them there, Y/N taking a deep, steadying breath as she prepared herself to visit her mother’s final resting place for the first time since her death.

“I think the map said she’s over this way,” Y/N nodded at a small, winding path that led down a gentle hill to the south of the Shinazugawa plot. “I remember I wanted her over there by the walnut tree – she loved them in the autumn.”

Sanemi nodded and let her lead the way, her fingers clutching tightly around the bouquet in her hands as she drew nearer to the tree which marked her mother’s plot, her stomach twisting with anticipation.

Because she knew, the moment her eyes settled on the stone with her mother’s name and dates of birth and death, that reality would hit her all over again; but she persisted, for the sake of her mother, who’d loved her more than anything.

“Mr. Shinazugawa!” A voice called, and both looked over to see the old cemetery caretaker waving in greeting as the pair made their way towards the section where Y/N’s mother rest.

“Good morning, Mr. Urokodaki,” Sanemi answered, nodding respectfully in greeting. “I can’t believe they have you working on the weekends.”

The grandfatherly caretaker chuckled. “Only the departed sleep; I do not.” He shifted the rake he was holding from one hand to another as he wiped his brow.  “It’s been a few weeks since I last saw you!”

“School has kept me busy, sir.” Sanemi’s hand around hers squeezed and Y/N smiled softly.

“Well, I had a feeling I’d be seeing you soon, so I went ahead and cleared any leaves off Mrs. Y/L/N’s grave for you – and I took the liberty of clearing out the flowers you brought last time.”

Y/N’s breath died in her throat as she looked between the old man and her boyfriend, her eyes wide.

Mr. Urokodaki appeared to mistake her shock for confusion. “He’s such a kind lad, your friend!” The old man smiled warmly at Sanemi, before continuing his explanation to her. “He brings flowers not just for his family, but for a woman he knew growing up – like clockwork, every two weeks, for the last year. That’s why I was worried when he didn’t show up last week!”

Sanemi chuckled softly. “I’m back to the regular schedule now, sir!” And he bid the old caretaker farewell. He turned back to his girlfriend, but froze at the expression on her face, mouth slightly open and eyes as round as saucers.

“Y-you, you’ve b-been,” she stuttered, her eyes welling with tears as she began to shake.

Sanemi hesitantly reached for her, brushing her hair back behind her ear. “I’m sorry. I know I should’ve asked, first, but we weren’t talking yet, and I wanted to make sure --,” Sanemi’s explanation was cut off with a small mmph! as Y/N grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and hauled his mouth down to hers.

After a long moment, she broke away. “T-this whole time, ‘Nemi — you —,” Y/N could hardly speak through her tears. Sanemi’s arms wound tightly around her waist, locking her to him as she buried her face into his neck.

Her boyfriend’s lips found her side of her head and he smiled softly into her hair. “Tch, idiot,” he said, affectionately. “I told you already — there hasn’t been a single moment that’s gone by that I haven’t loved you.”

“And I loved her, too.” He added quietly after a moment.

Sanemi’s words only served to make her cry harder, her arms tightening around his neck as she poured every ounce of her love and gratitude into the force with which she hugged him tightly against her.

Y/N couldn’t stop herself from peppering his face with kisses, as Sanemi’s smile stretched wide across his face. The brilliance of his happiness was nearly blinding, but Y/N knew she would never desire to look away from it – from him.

Y/N pulled back to study his face, her hand coming to rest against the side that bore his scars, her thumb gently stroking the one that crossed his nose. “I love you,” she whispered. The tears still shone in her eyes, but beneath them lay a fierce sincerity. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

His lilac irises glimmered with his own emotion at her words, and his hand reached to intertwine with hers once more, the other lifting to brush the last, errant tear that escaped down her cheek.

“C’mon,” he said thickly after a moment, “Don’t wanna keep your Ma waiting.”

Cries. Thanks for reading!

[milesplayshu]

cw: death and illness

I haven't seen anyone talk about it on tumblr, so I'm bringing the bad news from twitter.

The voice actress behind Dead By Daylight's Unknown, Zoey Alexandria Wendorf has passed away on April 30th. After a long time battle with an autoimmune disorder, (GAD65 based Non-paraneoplastic Limbic Autoimmune Encephalitis and Stiff Person Syndrome). There wasn't long term cure, and the treatments she received had side effects she described as "absolutely horrendous", so a couple months ago she decided to permanently stop receiving them.

Unfortunately, that means her illness progressed much faster and today it has been announced in her obituary that Zoey passed away.

Rest in peace 💔

[flowercrowngods]

🤍🌷 @stevesbipanic and @the-winged-doe asked to see ugly unpolished unrefined words, soo—

cw & tags: past major character death, grief, attempted time-travel fix-it(s), eddie&robin besties || potential wip

Eddie takes a long drag of his cigarette, the biting hot smoke hitting the back of his throat and clawing its way into his lungs, going as deep as he allows and leaving a permanent mark that brings neither relief nor calmness tonight. His fingers shake where they’re pressed to his lips, but the rest of him is unmoving where he sits on the front porch of their new trailer. 

It’s quiet out here. It’s always quiet in Hawkins these days, the city a fucking ghosttown. 

And he knows it’s not because of the one they lost. He knows it’s not because of him. But still the emptiness is stark and the silence oppressivem more so than it ever has been. 

Everyone still looks for him, months later. Dustin still begins to speak, cutting himself off mid-sentence, and Robin still stands with enough space to either side, like she expects him to just show up and invade her space like the home he made for himself in there. 

And somewhere among all that is Eddie. With his very own history. Or, non-history, as it turns out. But history and non-history leave wounds alike, and the memories feel just as real. A small mercy, at the end of the day, for them to feel real when they’re all he has left anymore. 

He takes another drag, not quite exhaling before he obliterates the cigarette and fishes for a new one before the butt even hits the ground. 

Fumbling with the lighter in his pocket, he only gets as far as placing the butt between his lips before a hand snakes into his field of vision to snag it from his mouth. 

“Hey,” he complains halfheartedly but makes no attempt at getting it back, watching instead as Robin comes up to sit beside him, grimacing at the stink of tobacco that must be heavy around him. 

“You’re disgusting,” she says with no real heat behind her words.

Eddie shrugs, because yeah, sure. He’s been called worse things. Robin’s called him worse things. This is her being nice. Her complaininig about his incessant smoking is nothing new. What is new is what she does next, placing the cigarette between her own lips and reaching for the light he’s been holding in a loose grip since she arrived. 

She starts coughing immediately, pulling a face at the disgusting feeling of smoke in her lungs and tobacco on her tongue. But she keeps going. Eddie can only watch in surprise and mild horror. 

“These things’ll kill you,” he says then in an echo of her usual sentiment, aware that he sounds as bewildered as he feels. 

“Well,” Robin says, aiming for casual, but quickly interrupted by a wheeze and a cough that’s almost adorable. “Let them try.” 

Eddie huffs, a pale little smile lingering on his lips as he leans back against the stairs behind him, resting his weight on his forearm to watch her. There is something captivating about her. Eddie always wonders what it is, wants to study her forever. 

Maybe it’s only the lingering traces of Everything Steve Harrington that clings to her every breath, her every move, her every fucking cell, with how much he was a part of her and she of him. Maybe it’s their shared grief that has made Eddie fall a bit in love with her and with the way the moonlight catches in her hair and in the smoke wafting from her cigarette. 

But somehow he refuses to believe that all he loves about her is merely the memory of Steve. 

Robin, in turn, is kind enough to let him stare. Kind enough to let him find out what it is between them. If this friendship is more than a misguided projection of grief and mourning and trauma; more than co-dependence and the obsessive will to keep this one person in your life. This one person who understands. 

After a while of Robin just holding the cigarette between her fingers, becuase no matter how strong her will to self destruct, she never quite got it right with the smoking, Eddie snatches it back before it goes to waste completely. As if pulled in by a string attached to his hollowed out chest, Robin leans back and into him in one smooth motion. It’s too calculated, though, and Eddie can feel how much she sags once she doesn’t have to hold herself up anymore. 

He’ll hold her. It’s fine. She gets to rest if she wants to. God knows she needs it. 

The night is warm for mid-September, but still Robin shakes against him. Eddie holds her closer. 

Silence settles over them, and it’s not an easy one. Silence is never easy anymore, especially with them. He feels so deeply hollow that even the silence echoes in there, creating an ever-present, uncomfortable thrumming of apprehension and anxiety within him. A certain sense of doom, one that can’t quite decide if it’s only an echo itself. 

“I wanna stop time,” Robin says at last, the cigarette long dead between Eddie’s fingers, but he somehow can’t bring himself to flick it away. “I don’t want tomorrow.” 

I don’t ever want a new day. I don’t ever want another tomorrow. I just want Steve. 

They ring in his head still, another echo that only hollows him out further every time it reaches him — Robin, overcome with hysterical grief, screaming and crying, curled up on that hospital floor, her cries quieting down and making Eddie wish she would be loud again, because the quiet was what killed him. The quiet, the whispered words, the declarations that tomorrow could go fuck itself if it came without Steve made him wish, irrationally, desperately, that their roles were reversed. That he could have died and Steve could have lived, and Robin would never have to wish tomorrow never came. 

He’s not entirely sure if she remembers the words, too. If she even said them in this world. 

So he takes a deep breath, breathes away memories and non-histories, feels the heavy weight of his guitar pick hanging around his neck, resting on the scarred flesh of his chest, and tries not to think of the one string left on his acoustic guitar. Tries not to think of his one last attempt. One last try. 

“I know,” he tells her. “Me neither.” 

He peers over her head, lifting his left wrist to check his watch. Ten minutes until midnight. Ten minutes until Steve’s birthday. 

“It’s not tomorrow yet,” he tries lamely, and Robin huffs — the sound wet and bitter and hopeless, making Eddie’s eyes sting. 

“It’s always fucking tomorrow,” she rasps, her voice flat and wavering, and Eddie knows her well enough to know she’s about to cry. And she knows him well enough to do it. 

“I know,” he says again, and reaches for his necklace through his shirt. One more attempt. One more try. One more chance. His eyes burn. 

She turns to him after taking a moment to compose herself, peering up at him through her lashes. 

“Tell me again?” 

His heart falls, the tense apprehension vanishing from the air, bur quickly replaced by something a lot more heavy. Something that looks and smells and feels like grief. 

They both know he’ll do anything she asks. He can’t really bear saying not to her. And not about this, anyway — she’s the only one who knows. 

She’s the one who should have had the chance. 

“Which part?” he asks, holding a new cigarette out for her to light it. She does, and the both follow the flame of the lighter Robin always keeps in her pocket these days. 

She leans forward and takes a drag. Eddie lets her. 

“All of them.“

Eddie sighs, pain welling up inside him, and he closes his eyes against the night sky. “Robbie,” he pleads, but he doesn’t finish his plea. He’ll do it. He’ll do anything she asks. 

But before he starts recounting the tales of how he almost saved Steve Harrington, he finds himself saying something he never thought he’d tell her. 

“There’s one more.” The words hang in the air, and Robin doesn’t react. Has no idea what’s coming; what he’s about to tell her. The guitar pick is heavy on the necklace around his throat. “There’s one more try. One more chance. I’m… I have one more—“ 

He can’t even finish the sentence. Can’t bring himself to say it, lest it all be jinxed forever. He doesn’t want to hope. Wants to carry this weight for all eternity and never think about all those times he failed to save someone he was never meant to save at all. People like Eddie, they’re not made to save anyone. Hell, they can’t even save themselves. 

Steve was supposed to be the one doing the saving. 

And he did. God, he fucking did. But he was never supposed to— 

Cold fingers wrap around his own as Robin fits their hands together. 

“I hate you a little bit for telling me.” 

Eddie nods, trying to focus on the cold hand and the nicotine in his lungs, trying not to let panic and grief and guilt and the heavy weight of one more chance win. “I know.” 

“Hey, Eddie?” Robin says after a while, the silence stretching on, and it’s almost midnight now. “Can you— Would you do something for me?” 

He turns his head, flicking the butt of his cigarette out into the darkness beyond them. “What’s that?” 

“Don’t— Don’t try to, to save him. Don’t— Just… Just maybe, could you celebrate his birthday with him? Make sure he knows he’s… God, make sure he knows he’s loved? Last year, no one really made time on his birthday and we just moved it backwards but God, could you— It’s almost midnight, and—“ 

“Robbie,” Eddie interrupts her, his voice hoarse and wavering, his eyes burning with tears as he tugs her close and holds her to his chest. “You should go. Don’t you wanna…” 

But she’s shaking her head against him with a vehemence that can hardly be misunderstood. 

“No,” she cries, and it’s more of a sob than anything. “I think if I ever saw him again, I’d… I don’t know what I’d do. Burn the whole fucking world to the ground for him or some shit, I can’t— I’d probably just cry all the time and that wouldn’t be helpful, really.” There’s a weak, wet laugh that bubbles out of both of them, and Eddie’s wiping at Robin’s face, drying the tears and making way for new ones to fall. 

“I’d light a fire for you,” Eddie says, the same weak smile on his lips that Robin meets him with now. “Nineteen fucking fires, you hear me?” 

She laughs again, then buries her face in his neck in a way that never quite fit. In a way that Eddie always knew was supposed to be someone else’s neck. 

But he’s not here anymore. And Eddie can’t get him back. No matter how much he aches for it, no matter how much he learned over and over and over again how easy it is to love Steve Harrington and how hard, how fucking impossible it is to lose him. Over and over and over again. 

And to live without him. This one fucking time they all get. It’s not fair. 

And now Robin is asking him to go back one more time and make sure that Steve knows— That he knows. 

Somehow the thought of that feels nobler than any attempt to save him, to bring him back; to rewrite history from a lonely boy’s perspective and hope that no one else is reading along. 

It feels right, too. Fundamentally and suddenly, and with such an intensity that Eddie knows the decision has been made the second he started telling her. 

Still he hesitates. Robin’s sobs have calmed down, and Eddie’s hand finds its way into her hair. 

“Do you really mean it?” 

She nods.

He nods, too, but slower. Like he’s trying to sway himself. Which way, he doesn’t know. 

“Make him happy.” 

“Okay,” he decides after a while, feeling hollow and desperate, but feeling purpose burning underneath his skin again. “One last time.” 

He unwinds his arms from around her and heads inside to grab his acoustic guitar. The last remaining string, badly untuned because he never dared to touch it, stares back at him in both mockery and invitation. A dare. A chance. A promise. 

Outside, Robin is waiting for him, looking anxious. Eddie wants to hug her. He doesn’t, only tightens his grip around the guitar’s neck. 

“Listen, Eddie, if this is goodbye or something—“ 

“It’s a birthday party, Robsie,” he interrupts her, aiming for light, aiming for brave. “I’m coming back right here.” 

“I know,” she rushes to say, taking a step toward him and wringing her hands. It’s endearing. It’s genuine. Eddie really is a little in love with her. “But, y’know, you don’t mess with time, and I don’t know what all you already changed before and I don’t wanna know but… If this is goodbye, if something happens, I just wanna tell you that I’m gonna miss you. And that I think you’re really cool. And that Steve’s— he’s really missing out, okay. Okay?” 

Eddie breathes, taking in her words and letting them soak into his body, his every last fibre. 

“Okay,” he smiles. “Thank you. You’re… I’m kind of in love with you, Robin Buckley. So there had better be no change in the universe, ‘cause that would really suck.” 

They smile at each other, Eddie with his guitar and Robin with her lighter, and somehow this feels like a deja-vu. The antithesis to a moment forever burned into his memory.

Make him pay. 

Make him happy. 

Eddie tugs on his necklace and plays the string before he can think about it too hard; before he can decide otherwise. 

Distantly, he hears the church bells announcing midnight as the world around him fades. 

🤍 permanent tag list gang: @skiddit @inklessletter @aringofsalt @hellion-child @cryptic-cryptid @hotluncheddie @gutterflower77 @auroraplume @steddieonbigboy @n0-1-important @stevesjockstrap @puppy-steve @izzy2210 @itsall-taken @mangoinacan13 @madigoround @pukner @i-amthepizzaman @swimmingbirdrunningrock @hammity-hammer @stevesbipanic @bitchysunflower @estrellami-1 @goodolefashionedloverboi @awkwardgravity1 @devondespresso @bookworm0690 (lmk if you want on or off, for this story or permanently)

[cookie-crumblr]

GN!READER x 3 YANDERE OC’s

thinking about how Enix, Lucy and Issac would be the first three of my OC’s to cut our legs off if we disobeyed them or tried to run away an i MMMMMMMMMM

CW: GN! Reader, no body descriptions for reader, dismemberment of reader, reader referred to as they/them, murder, drugging, vomit(non descriptive dw), spoilers for lucky, permanent body mutilation, non con, p in whatever hole you have, somno(in Enix’s part), reader has hair in lucy’s part mentioned (not described) Not proof read!

!!MINORS DNI!!

Enix~

When you first awoke in shackles, you couldn’t imagine staying! this guy that you had once thought was just a shy nerd, turning out to be a psychopath to this extent!? You can’t!

You think of a plan to escape as soon as you can.

He let you loose after a while. you promised you’d be good, schmoozed up to him too, pretending nothing had changed. And he believed you.

You ran the first chance you got. A neighbor saw you running in your underwear and hurried you inside. You asked to call the police, she rushed to find her phone.

But too soon after, Enix busts through her front door.

He has a pair of hedge trimmers in his hand… You tried to run but you were frozen solid watching him beat the old woman to death with them. You tried to tear yourself away from the gorey scene unfolding, you tried to run, but he caught you.

“Butterflyyyy~ Looks like Ill have to rip off your wings after all…” He holds you tightly in his grasp, his tall body fully encasing you. “I really didn’t want to”

He injects you with something as he’s holding you, and you feel your body grow suddenly so heavy and your vision fades.

Now he’s looking over your precious, sleeping form, you are even easier to watch and protect! and he can’t help but love how dependent you’ll be on him from now on.

His dick throbs.

You’re so perfect, even just sleeping under anesthesia. He lifts your stumps and gently feels his work… He shouldn’t. He stops himself. Not yet anyway, he wouldn’t want to injure you while you’re in a serious recovery phase.

But soon, he’ll definitely put you back under to fully enjoy what he’s done.

Upon waking you feel terrified… Something is so very wrong! you can’t move your legs! You shoot up into a sitting position, and see the reason…

You vomit over the edge of the bed.

Your legs are gone.

(He definitely mounts them on the wall in the bedroom with a little plaque and everything like they’re one of his prized specimens)

Lucy~

You’ve disobeyed her too many times recently, you’ve ran and hid yourself inside the forbidden red doored room.

You didn’t anticipate how obsessed with you she turned out to be.

The room is completely filled in every corner with something that has to do with you. Pictures and posters of you cover the walls, they look professionally taken. The shelves are filled with photo albums, journals detailing your days and old documents. Some have your thrown out med bottles, vials of what you can only assume is cum in some and blood in the others…. You shiver. You don’t want to keep looking, but it’s all around you.

There’s what looks like some kind of Alter at the front and center of the room.

You find it hard to breathe in here…

You think you might get sick if you stay too long.

There are two windows that don’t have screens on either side of the alter. You dash to one of them and try it, luckily, it slides right open.

“Where are they!?” She screeches. You hear her heels clicking against the wood down the hall. “Find them.”

You escape down a trellis covered in blue morning glories, and run into the gardens.

All too soon you’re being tackled to the grass, as one of Lucy’s guards finds you.

Lucy walks out next, taking her time to get to you, building up even more of your tremendous anxiety. Your heart is thumping in your throat, you can see each beat pulsing in your vision. You’ve never seen her so mad!

The guard holds you down obediently.

She’s got an axe.

“You don’t need both of your legs, right Y/N?” She stands over you.

“Wh-what??”

“Hold them still.” She says to the guard.

“Lu-Lucy!?”

She brings down the axe onto your thigh, a harsh, heavy pain bursts through you and you scream out. Your bone definitely snapped but she wasn’t strong enough to take off your leg in one clean hit….

She brings it down a second time, missing the same spot and just causing you more blinding pain, you scream until you’re coughing and almost vomiting.

“LUCY!!! STOP!!!!” You beg and plead but she looks wildly ecstatic as she brutally mutilates your body.

Again the axe comes down finally separating your leg from your body. the pain is immense and your blood soaks the garden bed. You’re so dizzy and you feel sick, you’re writhing and sobbing just glad the worst is over.

“Call the doctor. And a taxidermist.” She licks your blood off of the axe before she throws it and picks up her dress instead, and steps over you. Her body falls over yours, cradling your face in her arms as she now sits on your midsection. You’re fading in and out of consciousness and weakly try to do anything, but the pain is overwhelming.

“Aw… You’re so cute Y/N, I can’t stay mad at you~!” She pets you and wipes some sweat slicked hair off of your forehead.

Her soft lips come down to yours, you barely register the sensation. As you’re fading you feel her rocking her hips on you.

(She def keeps them in her worship room)

Issac~

“This is necessary, Y/N!”

“NO ISSAC PLEASE!!!!!” You threaten to rip your vocal cords with how loud you’re screaming!

He brings the hacksaw to your thigh, right under your cheek. You feel the rough metal touch you and flail wildly.

You’re on your stomach so you thankfully don’t have to watch…

“PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!” You repeat over and over, snot and tears staining your face.

“I hate to do this to you i swear! But you’ve made me! we told you not to run!!”

“I WONT I WONT I SWEAR I WONT!!!”

“We already gave you that chance.” He states coldly.

The metal touches your flesh once more, but this time he slides it across with pressure enough to cut right down to your bone. You feel the vibrations against the solid part of your body and shiver. The pain is intense and you don’t recognize the voice coming out of you anymore.

You writhe and curl into yourself against the concrete while he pushes the saw back over you, and then again.

The pain doesn’t stop when he stops cutting.

It’s the most intense thing you’ve ever felt.

You’re biting your lip and groaning and wailing when he puts it in you.

“What!!” You cant wrap your head around what’s happening! He’s entering you, while your bleeding out from your thigh!

He spreads your legs wider, you hear him sloshing around in the puddle of your blood.

He fully shoves himself inside you without regard, he can’t help himself every time that you’re completely at his mercy.

You’re all out of wailing at this point, you’re throat is too dry and torn. Your vision is filling with black spots and you feel terrified. All you feel is the throbbing numbness of where your leg used to be, and his huge dick slowly stroking your insides.

You feel the familiar sweat inducing sensation of a saw blade against your other thigh now, You can’t even scream anymore or beg him to stop, you just feel your skin start to be torn open all over again and pass out.

He cums inside you and it spills out around his length mixing into your blood puddle.

[angeart]

hhau rescue rambles - part I

>> hhau masterpost here << [cw besides the usual mess and violence: animal death mention]

It’s been months since the latest hermit got saved, and over a year since Hermitcraft imploded. There’s only two people to go: Scar and Grian. And they can’t seem to locate them at all. But they can’t stop looking. They can’t, they won’t. 

The rescue party is comprised of X (voidwalker), Doc (creeper), Ren (wolf), Impulse (partially demon), Cub (vex), Gem (deer), and Pearl (moth). Thanks to X knowing how to navigate and survive the void, they are able to get a void vessel (a sort of ship) to base in as they go around scanning different worlds and scouring for information. 

Until they come across a world that reads as permadeath, and somewhere in the world files, X flags Grian’s and Scar’s name. Not as players; there’s no list available here. What comes up is the wanted poster. It doesn’t have a date stamp. It could be months old, and they know Scar's track record with dying.

Still, they have to try.

They search for a place that seems to have good resources and Cub, Gem, and Pearl get dropped down. They’re equipped with bracelets that they can activate to send X a signal to teleport them back, and two extra for Grian and Scar, if they do find them, but they have to gather any other kind of equipment, including armour and weapons, on their own.

They quickly realise comms don’t work on this world, and as the player list is also non-existent or corrupted, they are going in blind.

Well… almost.

They use Cub’s vex bond with Scar to pick a direction to head in.

--

Grian and Scar, in the meanwhile, are not having a Good Time. 

Some awful things have happened prior to this, namely the ending of the Summer house arc. To quickly sum it up, Grian and Scar went up north, for as long as they could. Away, away, away from everyone. Until it felt like maybe they’re far away enough, and they tentatively set up a house. Which turned into a nest. Which turned into a semblance of permanence.

A lot of things went on here. Days turned into peaceful weeks and, tentatively, they started thinking that maybe they can start planning some kind of future here. They planted crops. Scar re-learned to glide with his torn wings. Grian unfurled his wings and re-learned the feeling of flying through the sky. And they found a bird friend! (A real, living bird in this world!)

The reality caught up to them eventually. 

Nobody’s really seen Scar or Grian for a while, but the avians in this world have dull wing patters, for survival reasons, and so Grian is really special. And the hunters don’t want to give that up. The reward on the wanted poster gets upped, and now the fever pitch to get this avian rises. The hunters go further. In bigger groups. Greedy and determined.

They find the nest house, empty at the time, and they burn it down. 

Scar and Grian come back to find it in flames, and to find themselves unsafe and hunted once again. All of a sudden, they have nothing again. The fire licks high, turning everything to ash, to a distant cheering and hollering of a party of hunters. There’s no sign of their bird friend.

(Grian finds him later. Dead, with wings cut off. The only creature that resembled him; the bird he befriended, the proof that a winged creature could exist here and survive. Ripped to pieces. Echoing the only fate that is bound to await Grian as well.) (It was a sun conure parrot, bright and beautiful.) 

The hunters are on their tail once they realise that Scar and Grian are here; that it wasn’t just some temporary base that’s now abandoned. With no remorse and still too much cheer, bloodthirsty and unstoppable, they go after them. 

Scar’s blood is absolutely boiling and he expects Grian to ground him. To talk him down. But Grian’s mind buzzes, looking at that bird, and— He’s as down to fight as Scar is. Because anger is easier than grief right now.

He’s so tired of grief. 

So instead, Grian goes angry and feral. (The other option is to fall apart, and he can’t.) 

They tear this particular hunting group apart, and it’s meant to make them feel better, but it doesn’t. It feels like a necessity; like just one more step towards survival. They loot what they can, and they continue moving, realising that stopping anywhere to do more than just survive is a moot point. They’re not going to outrun this. They'll never be allowed to stop. They’ll be hunted forever.

(Grian will be hunted forever—)

The word gets out, and more and more hunters arrive, wanting the trophy of violet wings and the wanted reward for themselves. It’s a sport to them. A way to get rich. Like a gold fever, they continue tracking Grian and Scar, relentlessly hounding them down.

There are times when things go worse in these encounters. Grian gets his wings grabbed and attacked, and it sends him spiraling back to never allowing anyone—including himself—to touch his feathers. (He was doing better and now it’s all gone.)

They internalise many horrible thoughts, during their run. It’s been a year-worth of culmination of awful events, a year worth of pain and fear and loss. 

For Scar, as a vex, he’s been expected to be a monster from the start. And all he wanted here was some peace. To be with Grian. He wasn’t allowed it, but now he finally got a glimpse at it—at what could’ve been; at who he wanted to be from the beginning (who he’s always been)—and it’s violently taken from him. So yeah, fuck it. If they want a monster, he’ll be a monster. 

(This leads him to thinking that he shouldn’t be trusted with soft things anymore, Grian’s feathers included, especially as Grian gets ground-bound again and starts pulling his wings tightly against his back and flinching at the mere implication of touch.) (It hurts to witness, after what Scar’s seen: Grian, freely gliding through the sky, violet feathers catching sunlight.) (He was allowed to preen them, tentatively, slowly, gradually, a couple of times.) (Not anymore. Not anymore.)

 Grian keeps thinking about the bird, and how they’re the same. He’s seen the brutal display, the way the wings were taken. He can’t quite stop thinking about it. 

But it’s more than that. He’s also thinking about [redacted]. About anything winged being doomed. About what happened with the vexes. It all spins and spins and spins until he can’t see himself as anything but harbinger of death.

The hunters wouldn’t care to go this far for one vex. They only go because of his goddamn feathers.

Naturally, this topples into him thinking that Scar will be safer and better off without him. They’ve been running on sleepless nights and exhaustion, trying to get away to no avail. They’re tired, and things are looking dire, and— Grian wants it to stop. He needs Scar to be taken out of this equation, separated from this fate. He needs him to be safe. (He can’t bring death to Scar.)

Grian can lead the hunters the other way. They only really care about him. ([redacted] already proved that point, after all.) 

So one night, Grian sneaks away.

He presses a soft kiss to Scar before he goes. (It’s a farewell kiss.) Scar is asleep, only kind of waking up to it—just that groggy, sleepy “mm?” Grian kisses his forehead again, oh so gently, and murmurs the quietest “Love you. Stay safe for me.” To Scar, it just feels like a dream, and he dozes off again, none the wiser.

The next morning, Scar wakes up to Grian gone.

For a while, he doesn’t even remember that hazy interaction from the night, but then he does remember, all of a sudden. An absolute vertigo slams into him, panic flooding his veins as he stares down the empty, quiet forest.

And this is when the Hermit Rescue Party finds him.

They only find Scar.

They only find Scar, and they instantly try to take him off world.

-- part II here

[sitkowski]

it's just fire alarms and losing you ( jolly karlsson x nick folio )

pairing: jolly karlsson x nick folio cw: 18+ MDNI ⚠️ i can only apologize ahead of time for this one, angst, accidents, non-permanent injuries, probably inaccurate medical information, nick is stubborn and jolly is overprotective. a character’s fate is unknown for a brief period of time. the boys are fighting again and this time it’s not okay right away, blowjobs (can blowjobs be given sadly?), makeup sex. just a lot of angsty feelings for the boys. word count: 3.1k author's note: right now, wifi is scarce and free time is even more so, but i wanted to get out a little piece of the riptide verse. i hope you all enjoy it. title comes from "death valley" by fall out boy, divider by @saradika-graphics ✨

⇉ masterpost || taglist signups || riptide verse masterpost

Nick leaves Jolly in bed sleeping and decides to go and get some early morning fishing in. They’ve only got so much time until shows start back up and he isn’t able to get out there as much as he’d like. In retrospect, it was stupid to go out there alone. Even if he told more than one person where he’d be. Even if he did it all of the time, the weather has been shit for days and the trails are still slick. It didn’t matter that he knew them like the back of his hand, one wrong step and he was falling backwards. It feels like slow motion, and then it feels like nothing, because everything goes black.

The thing is, Jolly shouldn’t have to worry about something like this. It’s just fishing, how dangerous can it be? He gets his answer when Matt calls him a few hours after Nick’s left to go to one of his favorite local spots. At first it doesn’t make any sense that Matt is the one calling him to tell him that Nick is in the hospital, but then it does. Because Matt is listed as a secondary emergency contact for all of them, and Nick’s parents are on the east coast. And then Nicholas and Noah are showing up at his and Nick’s place, because they’re just down the street and they don’t think that Jolly should drive.

He wishes he were only just worried about Nick. The worry is there, clawing around in the middle of his chest as they make their way to the hospital. But there’s another feeling just below it, and it’s one he wants to ignore but he can’t. Still, he keeps it to himself as much as he can, brooding silently all the way up until they’re in the room with Nick.

His injuries aren’t that bad, but they’re bad enough; a few bruised ribs, a minor sprain in his left ankle, a smattering of bruises on his face, the biggest one at his hairline above his right eye, because he hit his head in the fall hard enough to lose consciousness for a few minutes. Matt repeats everything that the doctor told him, and Jolly still hasn’t said much. He sits beside the hospital bed, hand resting on Nick’s wrist. His thumb slides back and forth over the back of his hand, and all he can think is he’s okay.

“On the bright side, I’ll be fine by the next show.” Nick says, carefree as ever despite the mild concussion.

“Who gives a fuck about the next show, Nick?”

Jolly’s outburst is loud in the hospital room, and Nicholas, Noah and Matt stand awkwardly on the other side of the bed. The smile fades from Nick’s face, and Jolly feels like an asshole. But he’s worried, and he’s mad. Mad at Nick for going out there when the trails weren’t the safest, going out there alone. Mad at himself for doing this now, for not insisting that Nick stay home.

“Can you give us a minute?” Nick asks everyone, but Jolly shakes his head.

“No, they can stay. Because you have a fucking concussion, and all you can think about is a show? When will it be enough? When you’re puking your guts out on stage and actually stop playing—”

“That was food poisoning, and this was just an accident. I’m fine, why are you mad at me?”

Jolly gets up and leans over the bed, grasping Nick’s face gently. “The shows are replaceable. Where am I gonna get another you if you get hurt worse, huh? Think about that and then ask me again why I’m mad.”

Before anyone can say anything, he gets up and leaves. Everything is a blur as he bolts for the elevator, tears burning in his eyes.

Nick wants out of the fucking hospital bed. He calls after Jolly, but he doesn’t come back. Whatever they’ve got Nick hooked up to starts beeping, and Noah presses a hand to his chest to try and calm him while Matt and Nicholas go to look for Jolly. It doesn’t even register to him at first that Noah is talking to him, not until he’s actually crawling into the bed with him.

“What are you doing?” Nick asks as Noah pushes at him.

“Scootch over,” he fits his long frame into the bed beside him, taking up nearly half of the thing. Nick can’t even protest, instead he lets Noah pull him against his chest. “God, I forgot how much I hate these things.”

Nick snorts and leans his head into him. “No one told you to get in here. The nurses are gonna be mad you’ve got your shoes on the bed.”

“Got your machine to stop making that noise, so it’s a win.”

Nick’s smile fades and he closes his eyes. “He’s not gonna come back.”

“I’ve got the keys, where the hell is he gonna go?” Noah pets his fingers through Nick’s hair in some sort of attempt to soothe him. “Hate to break it to you, but he’s stupidly in love with you. You just scared him, that’s all.”

Nick isn’t so sure, but he doesn’t say anything. He can’t imagine what Jolly must have felt when Matt called him and told him what was going on. Knowing that Nick had lost consciousness, and had been out there on his own. It scared Nick, so he knows it scared Jolly too. Bringing up the shows had been a bad attempt at making light of the situation, he knows that now.

“I’m stupidly in love with him too, you know?” Nick swallows around the lump forming in his throat, curls in closer to Noah. “Like, marriage and a future.”

“I know, bub,” Noah nods against him. “Don’t worry, I get it.”

“Like you and Ruff.”

“Yeah,” Noah nods again. “Like me and Ruff. He’ll come back, Folio.”

But when Nicholas comes back to the room, without Matt and without Jolly, something cracks inside Nick’s chest. He sinks his teeth into his tongue, tastes his own blood. It doesn’t keep him from crying. Not even when Nicholas somehow wedges himself into the bed with him and Noah, mumbling about how this felt familiar. He lets them console him, listens as they promise him that everything is going to be okay. 

Matt gives Jolly a spectacular lecture, but still offers to drive him home from the hospital. There might be a jab in there about Noah and Nicholas bothering to stick around to look after Nick for him. It’s not until Jolly’s home alone that it sinks in how much he fucked up. Nick got hurt, and all he could do was yell at him. It was just an accident, they happened all the time. And yet all he can think about is how much worse it could have been. What if it had been Nick laying out his motorcycle on the highway, what would he do then? Tell him he had to get rid of his bike?

A part of him wants to go back to the hospital and grovel, but the more stubborn part of himself stays right where he is. A few hours pass before he gets a text from Noah saying that he and Nicholas will be dropping Nick off to him, and that he better take care of him. Jolly takes the threat for what it is, and anxiously waits for his boyfriend to arrive. When they do, Noah is actually giving Nick a piggyback ride to be mindful of his ankle. He takes him all the way upstairs and deposits him on his and Jolly’s bed.

“These are the meds they gave him,” Nicholas says, handing him a prescription bag. Jolly tries to take it, but he snatches it away, leveling him with a serious look. “Fix this, Joakim. He didn’t think you were coming back, and you proved him right.”

“I’m right here.”

“Well you need to be right here, for him. With him. I’m not gonna be so nice next time I see him like that.”

Jolly knows that’s not a threat, but a promise. The four of them care about each other deeply, but him leaving Nick in that hospital room the way he did made Nicholas think a little bit less of him. He can see it on his face. All he can do is nod and agree. Nicholas sighs and pulls him into a hug, like he could tell that was exactly what Jolly needed in that moment.

Noah comes back downstairs. “He’s allowed to sleep, but you’ve gotta wake him up every few hours. The doctor said to ask him something easy, like his name. Maybe throw in a harder question. You’d know all of this, if you’d stuck around.”

He doesn’t say it meanly, but he doesn’t need to.

All Jolly can do is nod again. Once they’re gone, he hesitates to go upstairs. Instead, he makes Nick a sandwich to take up with him, as some sort of peace offering. When he finally walks into the room, he sees the way that Nick’s eyes light up, and it makes him feel both happy and disappointed in himself. He’s sprawled out in the middle of the bed, wearing different clothes than he came home in. Of course, he’s got one of Jolly’s hoodies on.

“Here,” Jolly offers him the plate. “You should eat, I don’t think you did this morning.”

“Yeah, thanks. I’m starving.”

Nick devours the sandwich under Jolly’s watchful eye, faster than he thought he would. He almost goes to make him another one, but Nick sighs and sets the plate aside on the nightstand.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly.

“What do you have to be sorry for, Nick? I’m the one who acted like a complete asshole to you at the hospital. I—” Jolly’s voice breaks a little and he clears his throat. “I left you there, and I shouldn’t have. I’m the one who’s sorry.”

Nick sits up a little and fists a hand in the sleeve of Jolly’s shirt, pulling insistently. Jolly gets the message and moves up the bed. He pulls Nick against him, not at all surprised when he immediately manages to fit himself against Jolly as closely as possible. Jolly slides his hands beneath the hoodie until he feels warm skin, and Nick lets out another sigh, this one much more content.

Jolly wants to tell him how scared he was, that the thought of some kind of injury that’s more serious haunts him. There are so many ways for Nick to get hurt, and he’s imagined every single one between the time that Matt called him and now. But he can’t. Instead he presses gentle kisses to Nick’s forehead, to the bridge of his nose. To every little mark on his face, saving the bruise on his temple for last.

They fall asleep like that.

Maybe Nick should have woken Jolly up to tell him that he was going to attempt a shower, but he didn’t think it would be that big of a deal. He manages it just fine, even with the twinge in his ankle. But when he’s getting out of the stall, Jolly is there, looking panicked.

“What are you doing?”

“Um, showering?” Nick grabs a towel and wraps it around his hips. “All I could smell was the hospital, even when I changed my—”

“So you wanna add a slip and fall to your list when you haven’t even been out of the hospital for a day?” Jolly asks.

Nick has to fight to push down the mild annoyance he feels at that. “It’s fine, I’m fine, Jolly. I’m not an invalid, I don’t need you to hold my hand while I try to take a shower.”

“Alright.”

The look on Jolly’s face is now defeated and he nods, before turning and leaving the bathroom. Nick hobbles after him, using the furniture for leverage the same way he did to get into the bathroom in the first place. His fingers catch on Jolly’s arm before he can walk out of the bedroom, because they’re not doing this, they’re not going to keep walking away from one another.

“What can I do to make this okay?” Jolly asks, finally turning to meet his eyes.

Nick shrugs. He’s still holding on to him. Mostly for balance. “Don’t treat me any differently than you would have before this?”

Jolly nods again, and then he’s moving Nick backwards, half carrying him until the backs of his knees hit the edge of the mattress. He almost asks what he’s doing, but then he realizes this is what he’d be doing under any other normal circumstance. Because this isn’t the kind of thing that requires an apology, but it requires the reassurance that everything is the same for them as always. So when Jolly tugs the towel away and gently pushes him down, Nick goes willingly. When Jolly sinks to his knees between his spread thighs, Nick immediately leans back on his elbows.

He’s got enough height that he can lean up to drag his mouth over Nick’s torso, and downward. Nick hisses out a breath that is tinged with pain when Jolly’s mouth ghosts over a bruise on his hip that came from his fall, but Jolly doesn’t relent. Instead his tongue traces the mark until Nick shudders and fists a hand in his hair. He pushes, a little impatiently, trying to get Jolly’s mouth on him. He knows better than to ask for that, because he knows the answer he’ll get. Jolly’s teeth nip at his lower stomach and he grasps Nick’s cock lightly.

Nick sucks in a sharp breath the second that Jolly takes him into his mouth, and he lets it out slowly. Jolly moans around him, pushing himself down to meet where his fist is wrapped around the base. Nick keeps his hands buried in Jolly’s hair. Not guiding him, just holding on.

“Let me see,” he pants, tugging gently at Jolly’s hair. His voice cracks as he pleads. “Look at me, please.”

Jolly tilts his head just enough so that Nick can see his eyes, shiny with tears. Nick’s fingers brush against his cheek, pressing a little to feel himself there, and his own eyes flutter, nearly closing.

“And you call me pretty. You should see yourself right now, you’re just so…”

He trails off, unable to really articulate what he wants to say. Words probably couldn’t describe how Jolly looks right now, the flush creeping over his cheeks as his eyes stay right on Nick’s face, his mouth sinking down as far as he can before raising back up slowly. Nick tries to lift his hips, but realizes that Jolly’s got him pinned to the mattress and he sighs, leaning back on one elbow, eyes bouncing between Jolly’s mouth and his eyes. They don’t really look away from each other. But eventually Jolly pulls off, replacing his mouth with his hand.

“Is this good?” he asks, voice coming out rough. Nick hears the unasked question in his words. Am I forgiven? All he can do is nod his head, and the corner of Jolly’s mouth tilts up. “You’re a mess, pretty.”

Just hearing that little nickname makes Nick’s entire body go hot. He can feel his orgasm building in the pit of his stomach, and before he can get a chance to beg for more, Jolly turns his head and swallows him down again. No teasing this time. Nick finally manages to get a little bit of leverage, rocking his hips up as he curls his hands into Jolly’s hair again. Jolly moves with him, hands digging into the blankets of either side of Nick instead of grabbing onto him roughly like he normally would. Even now, he’s still being careful.

He doesn’t get a chance to warn him that he’s going to come, and when Jolly pulls off after to catch his breath, he won’t let Nick pull him up on the bed with him. When he looks down, he sees that he’s got a hand shoved inside his sweats, jerking himself off. Nick curls himself down over him as best he can from the bed, tipping Jolly’s face up and pressing his mouth to his. Only after he comes does he finally crawl up on the bed beside Nick, wrapping himself around him.

“I was kind of hoping you’d let me use that to my advantage,” he murmurs and Jolly shakes his head.

“Didn’t wanna hurt you.”

“If you think fucking me into the mattress would hurt me—” As if to make a point, Jolly presses his fingers into that bruise on his hip, and Nick winces. “Fine.”

“Don’t pout at me like that, Nicky,” Jolly puts a finger beneath his chin and tilts his head up to kiss him softly. “The second you’re really feeling up to it, I’ll happily take care of you however you want.”

Nick wants to argue more, say that he’s up to it. But the truth is he’s tired. Last night’s sleep was fitful with Jolly waking him up every now and then to ask him questions that he could easily answer. His head is starting to hurt, and his ankle might be throbbing a little in time with his heartbeat. Before he can tell Jolly that he might be right, Jolly’s getting up and grabbing him a pair of sweats to put on. He accepts them gratefully, before grabbing the hoodie he’d discarded before his shower. Shuffling up the bed, he crawls beneath the blankets, watching as Jolly goes from the bathroom, out of the bedroom, and then he comes back with a bottle of water and some pills.

“Are you gonna come back to bed with me?” he asks after he takes them. His voice comes out smaller than he’d like.

Jolly leans down and presses a kiss to the top of his head. “Gonna take a shower of my own, and then I’m all yours.” he promises.

Nick sinks down in the bedding with a contented sigh, wrapping his arms around a pillow and dragging it to his chest. It’s not even nine in the morning yet, and he’s pretty sure eventually Nicholas and Noah are going to stop by to check in on him at some point, probably Matt and Zephyr too. It’s in the back of his mind that he’s gotta send out texts to those who had checked on him, and call his parents too. But he’s asleep before he can even reach across the bed for his phone.

He’s only half aware when he feels the pillow being pulled away from him. He grumbles but doesn’t open his eyes, especially when he realizes that Jolly’s replacing the pillow with himself. He snuggles against his chest, wrapping himself around him as Jolly tugs the blankets up over them further.  

⇉ taglist

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@rumoured-whispers @cookiesupplier @kinseysucks @collapsedglasshouses

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@collidewiththesavannah @sorrowsofsilence

if you ’d like to be added to the taglist, you can find the form at the top of this fic! thanks for reading/reblogging 🩷

[winterwandersland]

New Story: Paperwork

Summary:

“Who’s that?”

“‘Mare’. The Lieutenant’s Missus .”

“Why d’you call her ‘Mare’?”

“‘Cause she’s a right paperwork nightmare’”

Task Force 141 is in dire need of a linguist and on short notice. Their Lieutenant, Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley, knows who to call, and with loads of convincing, he finds the team’s linguist, his wife, Kamara ‘Mare’ Riley, her military records filled to the brim with write-ups for disciplinary action. 

Previously in a unit together that was imprisoned for months, only them two making it out, Simon has fought to rid the world of the people like the ones who imprisoned them, fighting on the lines, while Kamara has decided to stay at home with their adoptive daughter, Ellie. Leaving Ellie to her uncles, Joel and Tommy, while they are away, Kamara joins the 141 on a mission that could save or destroy the world, opening the door to a past they thought was left behind. 

Will Simon be able to choose between work and his family? Will Kamara be able to face the demons from her past? OR will a mission put the Riley family in jeopardy?

tw/cw: arguing, slight mentions of past torture but nothing detailed, mentions of death word count: 3.8k Simon knows the perfect linguist to ask to assist his team on an important assignment.

Chapter One

“I have already told you ‘no’, Simon. How many ways d’you need me to say it? Nein. non,  não, いいえ, нет, no, नहीं, He, Hapana-,”

“Alright, I get it.” It had been a grueling few days, every conversation seeming to lead to the same topic of one-sided interest, joining Simon on the Task Force, the same conversation that led to the same decision, ‘no’.

Usually, Simon respected his wife’s boundaries, but this subject was one of great importance to him. It was a matter of life or death, a few lives to save the many, but he hoped it would be one life to save the world. It was a reasonable price to pay. They kill the enemy, the world is saved and everyone, well, almost everyone, goes home. 

“But you do get why we need you, don’t ya?” She was very aware of why his team needed her and it was the very reason she knew they could find someone else if they tried hard enough. “Yep, and I get there are plenty of other linguists in the military y’all can call.”

His wife was his last hope, the only person he knew he could let on the team and trust. He trusted her with his life and therefore knew she would be the only person who he let near his precious team. “There ain’t no other linguists who can fight and translate like you do. No one else has a memory like yours.”

An eidetic memory was what he was referring to, a type of memory that allowed his wife to save her teams countless times, translating destroyed texts that she memorized beforehand, deciphering messages that seemed impossible to understand, even to the best trained and specialized linguists. “You all are the best of the best. I’m sure you can figure something out. I’m not leaving Ellie behind. It’s bad enough when you leave. What do you think two parents leaving her behind will do to her?”

Before their imprisonment, Simon and Kamara had already begun their secret affairs, Kamara sneaking into the men’s barracks, never being caught except for one time by her Captain, but because of her good behavior that week, he turned a blind eye, only giving her wry looks during their meetings. Their mission-gone-wrong had started as a joint operation to rescue a group of hostages taken by rogue scientists and military personnel that planned to release a virus that would have killed thousands. The team spent months in captivity, despondent that any inkling of help would arrive. Upon their escape, the inseparable couple had grown closer, seeking out the hostages themselves despite their injuries, Kamara more wounded than her counterpart and leaving with a permanent scar that dragged from below her eye towards her jawline, a constant reminder of the hell she endured. They spent weeks recovering and months searching for the whereabouts of the hostages, but by the time they found them, it was too late. Each hostage had already been brutally murdered, having suffered from the fatal serums they had been given. However, there were two people left, a mother and her young daughter. 

The mother was dying, pleading for the soldiers to take her child and care for her. She told them the child was special and that they couldn’t let the other soldiers or scientists take her. So, the child said her goodbyes and Simon silently put a bullet in the mother’s head, the room dark so no one, especially the child, could see, too young to fully recall the memory. Three years later, the child, Ellie, was finally comfortable and felt safe in her new home with her new parents. While the soldiers hadn’t planned on having children so soon, they knew that they had more than enough love to give her and that they were the safest people to raise her, so they did just that. 

“Listen, we won’t be gone long. She can stay with Joel and Tommy, get to know Sarah a bit more. Please, love, we need-“

The floor creaks behind the two, hinting at the presence of their child being amongst them, Kamara shuddering at the sound which didn’t go unnoticed by Simon, adding to his theory of his wife’s paranoia that someone was watching them. “Hey there, sweetheart. What’re you doin’ up so late?” Simon moved towards the young girl, squatting to her eye level before picking her up as if she were the same size as when he first met her. “I heard you and Mara talking very loudly.” Ellie never called Kamara her mother or Simon her father, and they thought it was best to never force her, letting her create her own boundaries in their household. “Sorry, baby, didn’t mean to yell and wake you up,” Kamara said, planting a kiss on Ellie’s cheek.

“You weren’t yelling, just loud.” Ellie was soft-spoken, only ever yelling when she was in great distress. The two had taught her to express herself, allowing her to communicate healthily without raising her voice too loud, something the couple was still working on. “We’re sorry, love. We’ll keep it down.” Simon was always gentle with Ellie, Kamara too, opposite of the brutish man that efficiently took down his enemies on the battlefield. 

“Actually, we were just finishing,” Kamara quipped, wanting the conversation to be over with and never reach the surface again. “We’re going to bed, aren’t we, dear?” Her brown eyes shooting Simon a look he knew all too well, accompanied by her smile that she used to cover up her annoyance in front of Ellie, but letting Simon know that if the conversation continued, their daughter would be complaining of yelling instead of loud talking. “Yeah, we are,” giving his wife his look of almost certain defeat, “You want to head to bed yourself or do you want t’be tucked back in?”

Having never had kids, Simon and Kamara didn’t know if Ellie was too old to continue to be tucked in, but it was a small act that they both wished they had in their childhoods, one they hoped Ellie would never stop asking for, but feared the day she would. “Can Mara tuck me in this time?”

“You don’t like the way I tuck you in?” Simon teased, faking his hurt emotions and eyeing Ellie, who smiled as she spoke, “I do, but Mara does it better.”

“I’ll make sure to take tips from the blanket-tuck expert, then.” Kamara reached for Ellie, who fell into her arms after Simon gave her a kiss on her forehead. Ellie was growing while Kamara was not, so holding her wasn’t frequently her first option, but the thought of leaving Ellie made her want to cling to her tighter, keeping her on her hip as everyone headed to the lowly dimmed bedroom.

There were lights that hung over the curtain hangings that loosely draped over Ellie’s bed, keeping her room dark enough to sleep but light enough to keep her from seeing her dying mother in the corner of her room. Kamara lightly placed Ellie in her bed, performing the same ritual she had done since the first time she had put Ellie to sleep, waving her blanket the same number of years old Ellie was, the last wave always falling perfectly over the child’s body, each limb protected from the bad men that come to take her when she sleeps at night. “Goodnight, boo,” Kamara gently said, placing a clinging kiss to her daughter’s forehead and pushing the loose straight strands of hair out of the child’s face as she laid in bed. “G’night, kid,” Simon said from the doorframe of the room, waiting patiently for his turn to give the child a kiss goodnight. “Goodnight, Mara,” Kamara heard behind her back as she exited the room, avoiding eye contact as she walked past Simon with her arms crossed, heading to their shared bedroom. He headed to Ellie, kneeling beside her to bring himself eye to eye with the tired child. “Are you both going to leave me?” she asked her father quietly, making sure that Kamara could not hear her. 

He choked on the words he couldn’t muster up, his brain racing to find the right ones. Kamara was right, if she joined the team, they would both be leaving Ellie. If she stayed, his team was in jeopardy, along with an entire country. “You know we could never truly leave you, right?”

“But you leave all the time.” The words felt like a punch to his gut followed along with a hand squeezing on his heart. “When I leave, I make sure I do everything I can to come back ‘cause I can’t leave you two forever, especially you. I’ve got a proper important job-,”

“Mara says you get rid of bad people, like the ones who killed my mommy.” Simon could feel a tear make its way to the front of his eye, and while he worked hard to teach his daughter that it is okay to be emotionally vulnerable, it was easier said than done, for him at least. “Yes. And that takes time, so I’ve gotta go away sometimes, but I always come back. I have to.”

“Why do you want Mara to leave with you? Does she get rid of bad people, too?”

“Kamara, your mother,” he emphasized, something he made sure to do whenever he remembered, not to erase Ellie’s memory of her biological mother, but to remind her that Kamara was her mother, too. “She’s got skills, ones that me team needs, but she dun’t wanna come ‘cause she dun’t want to leave you.”

“If Mara leaves, will I be here by myself?”

“No chance, love. We’d never leave you on your own. You’ll stay with Uncle Joel and Uncle Tommy. You can have a play with Sarah.” The conversation felt wrong, like he was using their daughter against his wife, something he only did when they plotted to playfully ‘scare’ their mother as she came into the house. “Will she help you get rid of the bad people?”

“If she wants to, yeah, but she doesn’t fancy it, and that’s fine. Just like we say to you, you don’t have to do summat if you don’t want to. ‘No’ means ‘no’.” He felt like a hypocrite, knowing that he had tried to convince his headstrong wife to join him for the past few days despite the number of times she told him ‘no’. 

“But if she doesn’t help, then the bad people will be free.”

“There’s plenty of other folk who can help me at work. They might not be as good as Kamara, but they’ll get the job done.” He didn’t want to worry the young child, already traumatized by the death of her biological mother. But something told him that his wife was his team’s only hope, and he felt like Ellie may have known that, too. Before Ellie could speak again, Simon broke the conversation off, “Get some rest, love.”, he said as he placed a firm kiss on her forehead.

When he made his way toward the master bedroom, he both hoped that his wife was asleep, but also had a sliver of hope that she stayed awake to continue their conversation. The bedroom was quiet when he walked in, the only sound being a spray bottle the Kamara was using to wet her long coarse coils, a routine she did before wrapping her hair in a scarf and heading to bed. 

Simon was always good at being quiet, defying physics given his size, a trait that Kamara both loved on the field but hated in their shared humble abode. She stared at Simon for a slight second before she headed to their bed, keeping the silence between them. “Love?” 

“Simon,” a name she only ever fully pronounced when she was pissed with him which seldomly happened, but the name also slipped past her lips when she thought they would die, scared it would be the last time she ever heard it, however in this instance, she was nearly infuriated, only keeping calm and collected to stop herself from waking up Ellie with her yells.

His eyes were pleading with her, but her eyes already told him her decision, every plea her husband had worn her ability to stay firm on her decision. “You can’t go to bed.”

“Well, why the hell not?” 

“‘Cause you’re angry.” It was a rule they had. Never go to bed mad at or upset with each other. However, that rule was out the window today, “Watch me.” 

She untucked the tightly made bed, unwrinkled because of the pair’s military training. Before she could get in, there was a tug on her arm and a familiar arm on her waist that spun her around and pulled her away from the bed that was so dear to her. “No,” Simon said, keeping his body in between Kamara and the bed. “Simon, move.” She tried to get around the large man, but it was no use because of her smaller stature, though she was sure with enough anger and determination, she would win the game that her husband was trying to play. 

“Can we have a chat first? Then you can lay your lovely little head on the pillow.” Somehow, he always knew his praises would find their way through Kamara’s stubborn barrier, the one she put up when she shut down, or in this case, wanted to cease the topic of conversation. “You’re not gonna give up, are you?” 

Simon shook his head, the first time he had ever pushed past Kamara’s final decisions. Whenever she said ‘no’, she meant it and he always respected that, but this time was different. Knowing Simon for as long as she had, she knew whatever mission he needed her for was of great importance to him, though most of his missions seemed that way, but this one was different.

“Fine. Run me the details of the operation in a timely manner. I would like to rest my lovely little head on my pillow,” she said with a forced smile going across her face. She stood with her arms crossed while she peered up at her husband who had a slightly sunken look in his eyes. The deep breath he took before he spoke was all Kamara needed to know that the mission sat heavy on his heart, her smile instantly fading, “The person we’re after plans to start a World War, one that could wreck loads of countries.” 

“Okay. How does this person differ from anyone else you’ve gone up against?” Every enemy wanted a war. It wasn’t uncommon. People want power and would do anything to get it, including starting a war if it meant their name would be on the paper. “‘Cause no one else knows this person better than you do. We need you, Mara.”

“Spit it out then. Who the hell is it?” Simon could feel a lump in his throat forming, not wanting to set off the beloved woman in front of him who was just calming down. “Zakhaev. Vi-,”

“Viktor Zakhaev. Yeah. No need to finish. I got it.” She averted eye contact with Simon, her gaze now staring at the floor, her head filling with memories of the man, well, indirect memories. She had never met the man, only subjected to torture by his men years before. The only information she knew about him was what she studied in his files, information decrypted from flash drives, and analyzed behaviors. 

“I hoped they would have caught him by now…”

“Every time anyone thought they had him, he slipped through their fingers. We reckon he’s got a partner helping him get away.”

“I wouldn’t shoot the idea down.” She was still grappling with the information she was just told. Only twenty-five years old and tortured twice, both times she blamed herself for whether or not she was assured it wasn’t her fault. Three times if you count the duration in her childhood. The last three years she had been in a bliss, away from violence and the only torment she faced was when she went to sleep at night praying to an unknown god that her husband would make it back home. The compensation and benefits she received from the federal government was more than enough for her and Ellie to live off of, and when Simon was home, it was just right. Enough to eat, keep a roof over their head, proper clothing for the winter, and the ability to take a few vacation trips during the year. It wasn’t enough to hold the wedding Kamara had always dreamed of, but none of that mattered. She had her husband and her kid. They were worth more than any wedding she could have had. 

“So what do you need a linguist for?”

“There’s a set of documents that we can’t make out. Just in case it’s got confidential info-,”

“You need someone you can trust.”

“That’s right. You’re the only person I trust and that Price can trust.” It was almost unbelievable, how could anyone trust her knowing her history? “How? How could you trust me with anything of that caliber?”

“Kamara,” his voice pitying his love, the person who blamed herself more than anyone else, “it weren’t your fault.”

“I’d believe you if it were the first time. After the second time, there’s a pattern. I almost got my team at the bureau killed. Our unit is dead because of me.” Before the military, Kamara was an informant for the FBI, gathering any information on her former agency that she was so determined to demolish. Being too close to the case got her removed, but she was the youngest to join and the most stubborn, all thoughts of the consequences if she continued with the case on her own nowhere to be found, ending with her team having to be put into witness protection for an extended duration of time. 

“Neither of those were your fault, love. Nowt was ever your fault.”

“If that’s what keeps you in bed next to me at night, sure.” No matter how many times someone told her it wasn’t her fault, she couldn’t find it in herself to believe them. Simon had been trying for years, but to her, all the evidence pointed to every reason her team’s death was her fault. Everything wrong was her fault. That is what she believed.

Simon reached his hands to cradle both sides of the woman’s face, forcing her to look at him, revealing the guilt she carried hidden in her stare and the forced smile she tried to give him, though her lip quivered. “Listen to me. What Zakhaev did to you weren’t your fault. The bureau weren’t your fault. The Red Room weren’t your fault.” 

A tear escaped from her eyes, something she tried so hard to fight off, but if anyone could make her cry, it was Simon, even if he didn’t mean to. He never had any malicious intent, but he seemed to be the one person that found access to the emotions she fought so hard to hide. She hadn’t heard anything about the Red Room in years, something she was grateful for, hoping that the agency would one day collapse, ending the suffering of the next class of Widows. 

She hadn’t mentioned feeling guilty for her actions at the Red Room, but leave it to Simon to know that Kamara’s one wave of guilt turns into a spiral down memory lane. The two had both struggled with mental health, but they did their best to manage it without medications, only taking them when needed. Sometimes, Kamara felt like Simon was always ten steps ahead of her when it came to regulating their mental stability, but little did she know the turmoil that he constantly went through, using the military to blow off his steam. 

They were similar in such a way that they both turned their emotions inward, only seldomly lashing out at others. Since she’d known him, Simon was able to keep his calm demeanor, having to learn to manage his anger issues when he returned to the military after a tragedy. He learned to turn his anger toward his enemies rather than his friends, though the friends who knew his anger were now dead. 

Simon pulled Kamara into his chest, holding her tight as she cried so very gently to ensure her tears were only heard between the two of them. The flow of tears felt nonstop, staining Simon’s shirt and leaving their salty taste on her lips, and the air becoming less able to go through her nose. In Simon’s embrace, all of her worries went away and the safety she was never guaranteed formed, allowing her vulnerability to be completely displayed. “I’ll do it,” she cracked through her tears, inaudible to Simon. “What?”

“I’ll do it. I’ll help you.”

“No, no. Kamara, I didn’t say that just for you-,”

“I know. Just…I’ll do it…just bring the files here.” Just when he thought that the weight was lifted from his chest, it drops once again, him letting out a deep sigh. “I wish we could,” Simon started, knowing that the next words that came out of his mouth may end the first physical moment in months they were having, “but nowt can leave base. Price dun’t want nowt to happen to the files if they were to leave.”

He was telling the truth. The files couldn’t leave base and it would be a breach of confidentiality if they did. “M’sorry,” he whispered in advance. Kamara pulled herself away from her husband, him wiping her tears once she peered up at him. “It’s alright,” she said, sniffing up the invisible snot that blocked her nasal passages, another reason she hated crying, “Base is only an hour away from Joel and Tommy. We can drop Ellie off and each night I’ll spend the night with them, so it’s not like both of us are leaving her.”

He embraced Kamara again, taking advantage of the rare time that his wife actually let him touch her after three years. It hurt his heart to hear those words, implying that only one was leaving their daughter, knowing that it was him she was referring to. He left every time, putting his job above his family, but to him it was for a good cause. He put into his head that completing the mission would bring his family back together, and more importantly, bring his wife back.

Next Chapter

[cypressvs]

PAPER RINGS

pairing: blade/gn!reader

cw: reader is a stellaron hunter, vague blade lore, possibly ooc

wc: 0.7k | join the taglist

“What’s this.”

The unenthusiastic tone that had transformed an innocent question into a scalding statement made you smile sheepishly, tangling your fingers with your partner friend ally. At the face of his unchanging expression, uncertainty swelled under your ribs—a silent whisper that surely such childish activities would be unappreciated by someone who’s always so stretched thin by uncountable and inexplicable concerns. It was what lead you to peering into those devilish eyes, seeking something, anything that can quell the brewing storm of embarrassment from under your skin. Whether it was a product of your imagination (as delusional as that sounds) or a fickle tolerance you managed to instill in him (again, another delusional statement), the tiny beginnings of curiosity and maybe amusement bedazzles his ruby glare.

“It’s a paper ring,” you reply as soon as you muster enough audacity to flash him a cheerful, deceivingly innocent smile.

“For what?”

You press your lips; a small popping sound escaping as you fall into thought. “Dunno… A good luck gift, maybe.”

Blade makes a noncommittal sound before leaving you to your devices. With nothing now to distract you from your pessimism, you think that this conversation too, despite your efforts, would fall into the category of unremarkable memories that did little to bridge the gap between you and the not-so-stranger strange stranger.

01:46:40 System Time.

A weathered sword swipes through the mara-struck, dispersing the air with a sharp whoosh that accompanied practiced movements. The wielder does not do so much as flinch as he evades an incoming attack. He just swings and thrusts and pierces through armor and wood, ignoring the scent of undying death being emitted from both his and his enemies’ skin. It dampens his mood, somewhat, and the brief opportunity casted by his sudden somberness makes his breath hitch almost imperceptibly.

“Hey.” He seethes before falling into a long period of unnerving silence where no tangible thing dared to step close to him—not the mara-struck, not the wind, not the faint rays of the moonlight from high above. He drops his gaze to the ground, to the sheet laid untangled from the meticulous folds it once remembered; to the white that has now become a crimson as blood seeped into its every nook and cranny. For this, he rages.

“Where do you think you’re cutting?”

His skin fizzles as the open wound on his knuckles stitched itself together. He glowers under the shadows of the night before everything falls into the permanence of nothing.

10:21:38 System Time.

You groan into your sheets as you untangle yourself from the claws of sleep. It was rare for you to be granted the opportunity to wake up relatively late when your group of rag tag criminals are fewer in number compared to the intergalactic crimes that needed to be committed. With a sigh, you move to scrub away the remnants of sleep from your eyes. However, you end up freezing as you eye the little something on your ring finger that you were dead certain wasn’t there when you fell asleep. It was a simple silver band, nothing too special save for the pretty red gemstone embedded in it. 

“You’re awake.”

You stifle a scream as you glance at your doorway where Blade, as disinterested as ever, stood with his arm folded over the other.

“W-what are you doing here?”

“That.” He motions to your hand—or rather the ring.

What does ‘that’ mean? Did he give it? Did he mean to take it back? Was he waiting for gratitude or any other reaction from you? What does ‘that’ mean?! 

At your continuing non-reply, Blade sighs. Out of pity, you surmised hours later, he breaks the off-putting silence. “I was under the impression that you have to pay back what you are given.”

“Pay back?” You repeat before tilting your head. “For what?”

He thinks of the paper ring—of what it symbolized—the sincere well-wishes, the silent promises, the warm concern, and all of the tender affection you had naïvely but so very sweetly offered him. He thinks of the sheer anger that filled his being as he allowed hell to dampen the earth as that cretin tore it before he can ponder over it or store it or preserve it or love it behind the safety of his room. Blade thinks of many things but he voices none of it, only flashing you one of his near-crazed and far-from-decipherable smirks before departing from your bedroom, ignoring your baffled cries and appalled confusion.

TAGLIST:

@yevene @haiitsley1603

© 2023 CYPRESSVS. all rights reserved. do not copy, claim, repost or translate in any platforms.

[kaytrawrites]

QSMP - Crowbeast

Summary in which qPhilza is not ok, and goes off the deep end.

Notes CW // multiple main character death (non permanent), violence against semi-humanoid creature This is also very long (9.7k+ words)

---

Chayanne was slain by Code Beast Tallulah was slain by Code Beast Chayanne was slain by Code Beast Tallulah was slain by Code Beast

The feeling of icy, cold hands gripped Phils heart. He froze, staring at the words displayed upon his communicator. “Chayanne!? Tallulah!?” he screamed. He bolted past Fit, who was also staring down at his communicator in silent shock.

Messages from the other Islanders flooded the communicator.

<Etoiles> WHERE <Etoiles> WHERE <Etoiles> WHERE <Etoiles> WHERE <BadBoyHalo> WHERE ARE THEY??? <Etoiles> I WILL KILL THAT SON OF A BITCH <Etoiles> I WILL KILL THAT SON OF A BITCH <Etoiles> I WILL KILL THAT SON OF A BITCH <Etoiles> WHERE <Etoiles> WHERE <Etoiles> WHERE <Tubbo_> IM COMING

Fit followed after Phil, who was racing down the halls of the dungeon, occasionally screaming his children’s names.

Then Phil stopped dead in his tracks.

And Fit saw what had stopped his friend.

Shattered eggshells were scattered around the area, slashes and splashes of red covered the floor and walls. The air smelt of rot, blood and s̷̳̓t̵͕̿a̸͚͒ț̷͆i̷̱͝c̵͖͌. And in the center-ish of the room was a glitchy black and green figure; hovering above Chyanne’s rubber floaty and Tallulah’s red beanie. 

Phil was completely and utterly silent as he slipped his scythe off his back and into his hand. He shifted his weight and leapt toward the Code Beast that had killed his children.

Fit bit back a curse and grabbed his potato cannon from its holster and loaded it up with a golden apple. He carefully lined up the shot and fired. The power of the apple shot out and blended into Phil’s aura, providing an extra boost to the enraged man.

Fit reloaded his cannon, the crushed apple core dropping to the ground. He aimed and fired again and again, trying to keep his friend alive as the Code Beast laid into Phil as fiercely as the man did to it.

The Code Beast knocked Phil back, its claw catching on the strap of Phil’s backpack, ripping it off. Phil’s ruined wings flared out to help catch his balance. Fit fired two more golden apples at his friend in quick succession. Then swapped his cannon’s ammo to golden carrots. He fired several shots toward the Code Beast, forcing it away from his friend for a moment.

He grabbed one of his splash potions and threw it at his friend’s back. The potion bottle shattered, the elixir infusing Phil with a burst of instantaneous healing. Fit threw several more, taking advantage of the small moment he had bought by swapping his ammo. Phil took advantage of Fit’s support and lunged forward to slash the beast.

“I'm here! I'm here!” Etoiles cried out, sprinting past Fit, toward where Phil and the Code Beast were locked in combat.

Etoiles whipped his shield around and blocked a strike that would have dealt a horrid blow to Phil. “Strike, my bro!” Etoiles called out as he surged forward, knocking the Code Beast back.

Phil paused for half a breath, and leapt forward to land a strike upon the Code Beast. His scythe morphed, becoming an ax.

Tubbo bolted past Fit, his own scythe in his hand. He paused for a heartbeat, looking over the battle arena. He froze when he saw Tallulah’s hat and Chayanne’s duck floaty. Tubbo screamed and leapt at the beast, screaming curses that would burn Bad’s ears. 

Fit swapped his cannon’s ammo back to golden apples, rapidly firing and reloading.

Under the near unrelenting attacks of Phil, Etoiles and Tubbo, the tides of the battle turned, and Code Beast fell.

Code Beast was slain by Ph1lza

Phil stood above the body of the beast, his ax slowly lowering, and wings limp.

“Phil?” Fit asked. Phil’s knees buckled, and Fit dashed forward and caught his friend.

His eyes were vacant, his gaze flat. Fit carefully lifted the smaller man in his arms. Phil did not resist. 

Tubbo picked up Chayanne’s floaty and Tallulah’s hat, and silently followed Fit back toward the waystone.

Etoiles stayed for a little longer, glaring down at the body of the Code Beast. But he followed after Fit and Tubbo.

The waystone at spawn whooshed as the group arrived.

Bad jumped at the sound, Bad freezing in his pacing back and forth. “Hey-” The words Bad was about to say died as he took in their utter, defeated silence.

Tubbo shook his head and Bad’s eyes went wide. “Are they really gone?” He asked. Tubbo nodded, and sank to his knees where he stood. Sunny sat down next to her Pa, leaning against him.

“Fit?” Bad turned to Fit for confirmation. Fit nodded, walking past Bad toward the elevator up to Phil’s home.

Bad stood in silence as Fit and Etoiles walked away. Tubbo was utterly silent, his grip on Chayanne’s floaty and Tallulah’s hat tightening. Bad turned on his heel and walked away from spawn. He was barely 50 feet away before he let out an unholy scream, and began to sprint away.

Fit took the elevator up to Phil’s home atop the wall. He flicked open the trapdoor down into the Garden of Hope and Music, and carefully descended to the air locked doors, Etoiles closing them behind. Fit pushed open the doors, and carefully set Phil down on the bed.

“Want me to stay, man?” Fit asked quietly when the man stirred slightly.

“Just go…” Phil muttered. “Just go…”

Fit slowly nodded, and rested a hand on Phil’s shoulder. “I’ll be here to listen if you need me.”

Etoiles and Fit left the quiet space. The last sound they heard from their friend was a shuddering sob.

—

The next few days were notably absent of Phil’s presence. The other islanders had gotten used to him appearing sometimes, silent and silly, when the bakery quests refreshed for the day and Chayanne and Tallulah weren’t getting up for the day. But those who usually spotted him doing the quests couldn’t catch neither hide nor hair of the man.

On the fourth day Phil finally emerged from the basement. His clothing choices were notably darker. He was utterly silent, responding with only one or two words when Fit tried to talk to him. He quietly did the quests as usual. Tucking the cookies into his backpack as usual. Leaving extra items for the quests in the barrels as usual.

But he didn’t stay out and about for long, quickly returning to the basement.

Each day he emerged he looked worse than the last time, which Tubbo mentioned to him. Phil didn’t even refute it. The next morning he wore the plague doctor gas mask he had brought back from Purgatory.

It quickly became a rare sight to see Phil out and about without the gas mask.

Well, it also became a rare sight to Phil at all.

After he hadn’t been seen for an entire week, Fit and Tubbo went to search the basement for their friend. The space was utterly silent. Fit examined the space. It was tidy. Too tidy.

Then he found the letter. It contained only 4 lines, 9 words.

“I can’t bear it. I’m gone. Don’t look. Sorry.”

Fit and Tubbo tracked down Etoiles by N.I.N.H.O, just as the sun started to go down.

“We found this.” Fit explained, handing Etoiles the letter.

Etoiles read the letter, the parchment crumpling slightly in his grip. “That son of a bitch.” Etoiles muttered. He paced back and forth. “He hates to talk about what he’s going through. I am more than ready to help!”

Fit nodded along with Etoiles’ angry ranting.

“Even The Goat needs help!” Etoiles snapped. “And Phil helped when I needed help! That old man doesn’t know when to ask for help! And he is too good at hiding when he needs help…”

Fit nodded. “Yeah. Getting information about his mental health is like pulling teeth. I just barely got out of him that he was having hallucinations a while back.”

Etoiles stopped and snapped around to stare at Fit. “Explain.” Etoiles ground out.

Fit paused, then sighed. “Yeah. So, you remember when the eggs vanished before Purgatory; well, Phil disappeared for about a week or so during that time. At some point after he came back, he took me to a part of a forest and told me that was where he had been trapped.”

Etoiles frowned. “Are you absolutely sure that?”

“Phil would not lie about that.” Fit crossed his arms, letting out a huff. “As I said, getting information about his mental health is like pulling teeth. Healthy teeth. So if he admits that he’s having issues, you can Always. Trust. His. Word.” He growled, more angry with himself than with the French cucumber.

“And how do you know what he’s like?” Etoiles asked, cocking his head.

“I faced him in War.” Fit replied. “When you face The Angel of Death in war, you learn something about him. And yourself.”

He huffed. “Look. What’s important to know is that Phil is gone. He’s left no clues about where he is…” His head snapped around, locking on a shadowy figure that zipped out of the bakery and ran toward the spawn warpstone.

Tubbo bolted toward the warpstone just as the figure reached it and vanished.

“Fuck!” Tubbo cursed.

“What the fuck was that?” Fit asked. “It wasn’t a nightmare stalker.”

“What’s more important is that it can use waystones…” Tubbo muttered. “I’m gonna need to move mine and put them in a secure box.

“Fuck man!” Etoiles said. “Now that I know you are moving yours, I’m going to secure mine too.” He palmed his warp stone. “I will talk to you soon.”

Fit nodded. “Alright. I will keep everyone updated if anything turns up.” He palmed his warp stone, warping to his base.

He turned and looked up at the wall. An aura of subdued mourning hung over the entire structure. Even the glowing trees that Phil and his kids had planted along the top were dimmer.

“Fuck!” Fit cursed. He turned and laid a hand on the waystone. He teleported back to that dungeon. He had been back here twice in the past month since Chayanne and Tallulah’s final deaths. But both times he could not bring himself to enter the room.

He slowly walked down the halls of the dungeon; the only sounds he heard beyond his ever-present tinnitus, were his own footsteps.

All too quickly he stood outside the room where the battle had occurred. He stared through the doorway, gritting his teeth. This place hurt his old friend in the worst way possible. Fit took in a slow deep breath and reached into his pouch for some of the sticks of tnt he kept there. He had to destroy this place.

He took a step in, Then a second, Then a third.

He stood over the few remaining crushed shells of Chayanne and Tallulah and flicked open the lighter. He flicked the wheel, and brought the small flame to the fuse. “Sorry kids…” He mumbled.

“NO!” A young voice yelled out, and a relatively small frame slammed into Fit. “Tio Fit! No! No! No!”

Fit lifted the lit stick away from the small person, and looked down at the raven haired child, then up at the brunette that ran up after them.

The hair of both youths were unkempt, and they had what looked like very dirty bed linens wrapped around themselves.

Fit threw the single stick away from where he and the two young ones stood.

He dropped to one knee to better look at the one who had grabbed him, face to face.

The one who had grabbed him had dark hair, with small glints of golden strands that caught the torchlight. Their eyes were a bright blue. And most notable was the skull shaped mark on their face.

Now, Fit hadn’t interacted much with Missa to memorize his facial features, but he knew Phil’s face. And this raven haired child looked an incredible amount like Phil.

Fit glanced at the other child, and even though their eyes were blue-gray, their curly poof of brown hair was identical to Wilbur’s; except far longer. And although they were darker than Wilbur, they unmistakably inherited his features. 

“Chayanne?” Fit said, hoping beyond all hope.

The black haired child- no. The black haired dragonling nodded rapidly.

Fit glanced at the other child. “Tallulah?” He asked.

The brunette dragonling frowned and silently mouthed what Fit had said for a second, then nodded.

Fit lifted his hands and slowly signed out ‘Tallulah, remember the first time we met? Found you in basement by me, your papi and Forever?’

Tallulah grimaced at the last name Fit said, but shook her head. “It was only you and papi who found me. I was in an attic. Not a basement.” She corrected, her tone of voice a bit off due to her current lack of hearing aids.

“And Chayanne, do you remember that first meal I gave you? It was hashbrowns, wasn’t it?” Fit asked, praying that Chayanne would remember.

Chayanne shook his head. “Big Breakfast.” He said, insistently. 

Fit let out a breath. They probably are Chayanne and Tallulah, but something was different. “How are you two… human?” He asked.

Tallulah glanced at her brother, having not caught what Fit said. Chayanne frowned then lifted his hands, flipping them back and forth, palm then back of the hand, repeatedly. While the light in the room may be dim, it was bright enough to catch on the scales on his hands and arms. He reached up and squished down his hair, exposing a handful of small horns crowning his head. “Not human.” He said.

Fit blinked. “Yeah. Not human.” He said. “How are you two even alive?” He asked, enunciating as clearly as he could.

Tallulah pointed to the shattered egg shells on the floor. “Hatched.” She tapped her chest. “Rules for life are different now.”

“Died after hatching.” Chayanne nodded. “Didn’t feel in danger like when small.”

“So, now that you two have hatched, that means you’ll revive like me or any of the other islanders?” Fit asked.

Chayanne and Tallulah nodded.

Fit let out a breath. “Ok. Then let’s get you two back to spawn.” He stood and started to leave, but stopped when he felt his sleeve being grabbed.

“No xp.” Chayanne said.

“Oh! I’ll set up a sharestone and ask Bad to bring some solid experience so you two can get back.” Fit explained. Chayanne nodded, and reached behind himself to grab Tallulah’s hand.

Fit started walking toward the waystone and sent a message to BBH.

You whisper to BadBoyHalo: I’m setting up a red sharestone. Bring solid experience or experience bottles. You whisper to BadBoyHalo: They are alive. You whisper to BadBoyHalo: I found them. BadBoyHalo whispers to you: what? BadBoyHalo whispers to you: im coming

Fit set up the red sharestone and messaged Bad the name.

The far taller man appeared a few moments later, quickly followed by Dapper, “Fit, how did you run out of experience so quick-” His words died as he saw the pair that quickly ducked behind Fit. “Who shrunk Phil?” He asked.

“I’ll explain a bit more when we get Chayanne and Tallulah back to spawn and make sure their spawn points are there.” Fit insisted.

Dapper was staring up at Chayanne and Tallulah. And now that Fit could see an egg next to the pair, if one of them curled up real tight, they would be able to fit inside a space about as big as Dapper is. Would Ramon be like these two when he hatched?

Fit shook off the thought and turned his focus to BBH, who was staring down at Chayanne and Tallulah. “Bad. Focus.”

Bad nodded. “Yes. We need to get them back to spawn.” He handed Chayanne and Tallulah a few blocks of solid experience. “You two head there first. Fit and I will follow after.”

Chayanne nodded, and he squeezed the solid experience, absorbing it. Tallulah did so too and the pair rested their free hands on the sharestone, and vanished. Dapper followed a few moments later.

As soon as the pair vanished, Bad turned to Fit. “That’s them. Without a doubt.” He said.

Fit let out a breath. “Demon thing, I guess. Weight off my chest having that confirmation.” He walked past Bad, who seemed to be visibly shaken. “We need to get those two tidied up. And see if anything about Phil’s turned up.”

“Wait. Hold up.” Bad said, grabbing the back of Fit’s jacket. “Explain about Phil.”

Fit paused, “Phil’s gone awol. Tubbo and I found a letter in his base telling us to not look for him.” He shook his head. “Look. Let’s just focus on the kids.” He warped to spawn.

Tallulah and Chayanne were sitting in the entrance to the spawn waystone room, Dapper was standing just outside. Fit glanced up at the wall and frowned. “Let’s head over to NINHO and get you two cleaned up.”

Chayanne looked up. “Dad?” He asked.

Fit glanced at Bad, who smiled. “Fit will go get him. Let’s get you two cleaned up.”

Chayanne grabbed Tallulah’s hand and signed one-handed to her, repeating what Fit and Bad said. She nodded and stood to follow Chayanne and Bad.

Fit headed around the other way from NINHO toward the elevator up to Phil’s place. He grabbed his communicator and sent a message to Tubbo.

You whisper to Tubbo: Do you still have Tallulah’s hat and Chayanne’s floaty? You whisper to Tubbo: If you have them, take them to NINHO asap. Tubbo whispers to you: I have them. Tubbo whispers to you: Why do you need them? You whisper to Tubbo: I found Chayanne and Tallulah

Fit opted to ignore Tubbo’s spamming of his communicator as he descended into Phil’s basement. He grabbed Chayanne and Tallulah’s main backpacks from where they had been placed carefully on their beds. He paused beside Phil’s neatly made bed, then walked past and grabbed Phil’s extra bucket hat.

Fit left the bunker, a bundle of clean clothes from Phil’s closet in his arms, along with the kids’ backpacks. As he approached NINHO, he saw Sunny and Empanada perched on the edge of the garden bed outside with Tubbo. 

“Hey, Tubbo.” Fit said. “I’m guessing one of Em’s moms is inside helping Bad?”

“Yes. Tina is.” Tubbo folded his arms. “I would have come with you to find them, you know.”

“I did not know they were there.” Fit crossed his arms. 

Tubbo looked down at the red knit hat and yellow rubber floaty in his lap. “What happened?” He finally asked.

“I found Chayanne and Tallulah in the dungeon. They are different, but Bad’s confirmed that it’s them without a doubt.” Fit confirmed.

Tubbo looked up at NINHO, and nodded slowly. “Ok. I will trust you on this.”

Fit headed in, followed by Tubbo. They headed to the bathing area. A curtain had been set up around one of the baths, Bad was knelt down by one of the others. Fit set the bundle of clothes and the backpacks down. Bad glanced up and nodded, acknowledging Fit and Tubbo’s presence, then returned to helping Chayanne scrub off a month’s worth of dungeon grime.

Fit started sorting through the clothes he had grabbed, making sure every article of clothing was clean. 

Bad and Chayanne finished first, and Bad brought the raven haired dragonling over to Fit and Tubbo, bundled in an oversized, fluffy towel. Now that Chay was all cleaned up, he looked even more like Phil. Bad looked over the selection of clothes then shrugged off his backpack to grab some things. “I prepared these ahead of time for Dapper. I can make more.” Bad set some articles of clothing beside the ones Fit had grabbed.

Fit nodded. He hadn’t seen any in Phil’s base. Granted he hadn’t been looking very hard.

Chayanne slowly dressed, choosing brown trousers and one of Phil’s open back undershirts. Bad had to help get Chayanne’s wings through the shirt, being the only other person present who had wings. 

When Chayanne was dressed, Tallulah and Tina had finished. Tallulah was bundled in a similar towel, and with her hair washed, it was far easier to see her twin dark purple horns. With the dungeon grime gone, the scales on her hands and arms were a pretty purple-pink. Her steps were quite unsteady, clutching Tina’s hand for support.

“Men, turn around, or get out.” Tina said sharply. Fit and Tubbo immediately turned around, shuffling toward the entrance to the bathing area. Bad stayed behind to help get Tallulah dressed.

It didn’t take long for Tallulah to be dressed, at which point Fit and Tubbo were called back. “Gonna need new hearing aids for Tallulah.” Tina said.

“I thought so.” Fit nodded. “I’ll see if Ramon wants to work on it.”

Chayanne grabbed Phil’s spare bucket hat that Fit had brought. “Where’s dad?” He asked.

Fit glanced at Tubbo. “We don’t know, right now.” He started. Not a lie. “I think it would be best for you two to stay with someone until Phil gets back. Is that ok?”

Chayanne glanced at Tallulah who looked back. “That is a good idea.” Tallulah said, nodding. 

“Ok.” Bad said cheerily. “Who would you like to stay with?” Bad asked the pair.

Chayanne thought for a moment, but Tallulah spoke before her brother could answer. “Godfather Tubbo.”

Tubbo nodded. “Ok.” He knelt down in front of Tallulah and held out her red beanie. She took it carefully, flipping it around in her hands. Tubbo had cleaned it well. She put it on, tucking it under the back curve of her horns.

Chayanne stared at his old duck floaty. “It’s not going to fit.” He said. He looked over the sweaters that Fit had grabbed from Phil’s wardrobe. He grabbed a gray one that had little duckies knit on it.

Bad helped him get the sweater on, guiding him on how to tuck his dark feathered wings in comfortably.

“Who shrunk Phil?” Were Tubbo’s first words to Chayanne when the dark haired dragonling finished dressing and had plopped Phil’s spare stripped bucket hat on his head.

Chayanne snorted. “Tio please…” He giggled.

“Are you two sure about staying with me?” Tubbo asked.

Chayanne grabbed Tallulah’s hand, and nodded. “You are our godfather. Dad trusts you to care for us.”

Tubbo nodded. “Ok. Sunny’s house has some empty rooms I can set you two up in.”

It was a slow walk over to Sunny’s house, since Tallulah was having difficulties walking without support. Tubbo insisted that he’ll make her forearm crutches so she didn’t have to wait on someone to help her. And to have something to smack people with, he had slyly whispered after making that promise.

Sunny tried her best to make the space welcoming for Chay and Lulah, but Tallulah wanted to go straight to bed. Chayanne stayed up for a little longer, but was sent to bed within the hour because he was dozing off on his feet.

Over the next week, Bad checked in on Chayanne and Tallulah pretty often. Tubbo put together forearm crutches for Tallulah within 48 hours and she gleefully sat down to decorate them almost immediately. It took an additional day for Tubbo and Ramon to put together new hearing aids for her.

All through the week, various islanders reported seeing the dark figure around the spawn and the bakery. When spotted, it either bolted toward the spawn waystone, or vanished in a puff of purple particles after a few seconds. Fit managed to snap a picture of it and posted the picture at spawn for everyone to see.

A full week after Chayanne and Tallulah were found and brought home, Chayanne cornered Fit and demanded to know where Phil was.

And that was a conversation Fit had to drag Tubbo into.

“We don’t know where Phil is.” Was the hardest sentence Fit ever had to say. And the looks Chayanne and Tallulah gave in response were even harder for him to bear.

Fit and Tubbo explained that Phil had vanished leaving only a letter maybe a week or so before Fit had found Chay and Lulah in that dungeon. Tubbo showed them the letter, and Tallulah’s crestfallen expression broke him.

She silently left the house, probably heading to her casita. Chayanne left too, probably to the bunker.

Fit quietly left for spawn to check on the cookie quests. As he arrived, he could hear Bad muttering minced oaths in the room under spawn. Since Phil’s absence, Bad had been much more present to work on getting mobs for the cookie quests.

The shadowy figure that the islanders had been seeing raced out of the bakery and toward the spawn waystone. Fit sighed, but froze in his steps at the small figure that dashed out of the bakery after it. “Leo!” Foolish cried out, racing after the two.

The shadowy figure disappeared into the spawn waystone room and the sound of the waystone activating echoed out.

The small pursuing figure emerged from the room. “¡Maldita sea! ¡Casi lo pillo esa vez!” They growled, their tail swishing back and forth. Fit’s translator helpfully supplied the translation: ‘Damnit! I almost caught it that time!’

Foolish stopped his pursuit and dropped a large hand on the little dragonette’s head. “Yeah. You’ll get it next time!” He declared proudly.

Leo shoved his hand off their head with a “¡Deja de tocarme el pelo!” to which Foolish only laughed. ‘Stop touching my hair!’ 

“Oi Foosh!” Fit called out.

“Hi Fit!” Foolish called, waving happily at him.

“I see Leo’s hatched too.” Fit commented.

Foolish grinned. “Yes sir! My Leo’s awesome looking!” He declared. Leo lifted their chin, a broad grin on their face, as sharp toothed as their papa. Leo turned in place so Fit could see.

Their hair was deep, shiny black making their trio of golden horns stand out. Their usual red cap was flipped around backward. Cheeks and arms were covered in shimmery purple scales, and the tip of their tail boasted a webbed fin. Someone, most likely Foolish, had braided their hair into a beautifully intricate multi-braid style with pretty golden and purple beads throughout.

Fit nodded. “You look good, Leo. Dangerous.”

Leo grinned. “¡Apuesta a que lo hago!” They declared, lifting their chin in pride. ‘You bet I do!’

The clack of rubber on cobbles drew Fit and Foolish’s attention. Tallulah and Chayanne had arrived. Seeing Chayanne and Leo in close proximity, Fit would hazard a guess that Leo was shorter than Chay. Which Leo seemed to have noticed as well by the fact they started trying to stand up taller, nearly standing on tiptoes.

“Hola tio Foolish.” Tallulah said, smiling slightly. Her eyes were a bit puffy, but she looked fine otherwise.

Foolish gasped happily. “Talulu!” He exclaimed, grinning. He opened his arms, requesting a hug, which Tallulah accepted by simply thumping into his torso.

“Why is everyone here?” Chayanne asked.

“Well, Leo and I were working on the cookie quests,” Foolish started. “But when we got here, that goddamn shadow monster was already inside. Leo tried to catch it but it ran off and took the waystone again.” Foolish pouted, rocking side to side a little, still hugging Tallulah.

“Shadow monster?” Chayanne asked, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword.

“Not a nightmare stalker.” Fit added. “It hasn’t tried to attack yet. If spotted it just runs toward the waystone and disappears.”

“When did it start showing up?” Tallulah asked, having turned in Foolish’s gentle hug.

“Right around when Phil disappeared.” Fit said. “He… wasn’t doing good after he thought you guys died… He started wearing his Bolas mask more often and didn’t really want to talk much.”

Tallulah extracted herself from Foolish’s hug and pulled her teleport stone out of her pocket. She stared into it, sorting through the waystones she had saved. “Where did the Chunk Error Alley waystone go?” She said, aloud.

Chayanne frowned then pulled out his own teleport stone to flick through his saved waystones. “I recognize every waystone in my list. The Chunk Error Alley waystone is the only one missing… oh.” He looked up at his sister. “Remember what dad said when he showed us that place.”

Tallulah blinked. “¡Maldita sea!” She cursed.

“Language!” Bad called out from the room below spawn.

“Papa exiled himself to Chunk Error Alley.” Tallulah grumbled, shoving her teleport stone into her pocket.

“Chunk Error Alley?” Fit asked.

“A place dad found a ways-out that was really weird. Big tall cliff walls on either side of a valley. He said that if Lulah and I ended up dying at some point, he was gonna go there and just build.” Chayanne explained. “I already checked Rose’s Sanctuary, The Nest and both Uppies. Chunk Error Alley is probably the only place he could be now.”

Tallulah nodded. “That’s probably where he is.” She looked down at her arm crutches.

“I can go check.” Fit interjected. “What are the coords?”

Chayanne looked up at Fit. “No. I can go. He’s my dad.”

“And Phil’s my friend and I don’t want to let a kid go out on his own.” Fit countered. “Especially one of Phil’s kids.” Chayanne glared up at Fit. “I’ll place a sharestone when I get there and come back to bring you and Tallulah.” He offered.

Chayanne huffed but nodded. “Fine.”

Fit leaned back then pulled out his communicator. “I should see if Tubbo’s ok with Ramon staying with you guys for a couple days while I make my way there.”

Tallulah nodded. “He should be.”

“Yup. He is.” Fit confirmed when he got a response to his message to Tubbo almost instantly. “I’ll see if Ramon’s awake and let him know what’s going on.”

Fit palmed his teleport stone and vanished in a puff of particles.

Foolish rested a hand on Chayanne’s shoulder. “We’ll find your papa, I promise.”

Chayanne looked up at Foolish, and nodded. “I hope so…”

Across the server, Fit pushed open the secure door to Ramon’s little home. “Ramon? My beautiful baby boy~...” He froze as he saw what looked like Ramon’s shell shattered into two pieces on the floor by Ramon’s bed. “Ramon!?” He shouted, his heart dropping. He dropped to the floor beside the shells, and reached out, hesitant to touch.

“Ramon?” He whispered.

“Fit, shut up…” a young voice grumbled from the bed. Fit spun to look at the bed, where a groggy tanned dragonling was peeking out from under the covers. A pair of brassy horns peeked out of his dark, messy curls. Slightly off white scales were speckled across his cheeks like freckles, and his visible arm was completely white because of the scales. His face was notably more draconic looking than Chayanne and Tallulah, also having a set of asian dragon style whiskers.

“Ramon?” Fit asked, his voice soft.

“Yeah, I’m awake now, Fit…” Ramon yawned. 

“You’ve hatched?” Fit asked, trying to keep the tremble out of his voice.

“No duh, Fit…” Ramon shuffled the blanket around so he was able to sit up properly. He was wearing what looked like-

“Is that my shirt?” Fit asked.

Ramon crawled out of bed and yawned. “First thing I could find.” He said, rubbing his eyes.

Fit had to hurry to scrounge together clothes that fit Ramon while he explained what was going on. He let Ramon keep the shirt and found a pair of coveralls Fit had gotten from the federation that were too small for his larger frame. Ramon was pleased with them; and was perfectly happy staying with Tubbo and Sunny for a few days.

Ramon packed his tools while Fit packed for the long trip away from the settlement, and followed Fit to spawn where Tubbo was now waiting with Chay, Lulah and Sunny. 

Sunny immediately ran up and hugged Ramon’s leg. Ramon gladly picked up his little sister, holding her gently.

“Alright. Chayanne. What are the coords for Chunk Error Alley?” Fit asked.

Chayanne relayed the coordinates and Fit added a waypoint on his map. He flicked through his other waypoints to see what waystones he had that would be close by to reduce the amount of time he would be traveling.

He found a couple. “Alright. I'm off. I’ve got a red sharestone. I’ll set it up when I get there and come back to gather everyone.”

Chayanne nodded. Tallulah grasped Fit’s hand. “Come back safe.” She whispered.

Fit nodded, then used his teleport stone to warp to the waystone closest to Chunk Error Alley.

It took a little under twenty-four hours to get there.

When Fit arrived, he paused atop one of the cliffs and looked down over the valley below. A road cut its way up the center of the valley, various houses were pressed against the walls of the valley, flanking the road. A number of hanging bridges spanned across the expanse.

Fit looked down across the valley, looking for any sign of life. His eyes were immediately drawn to the only being.

The shadowy beast that had been seen at spawn numerous times.

It was building a house.

Fit grimaced and backed away from the edge of the cliff. He set up the red sharestone in a little depression a little ways away, and warped to spawn.

Bad was just emerging from the room under spawn. “Fit! You’re back!” Bad chirped.

“Hey Badboy!” Fit replied. “I found Chunk Error Alley. But I also found that shadow beast we’ve been seeing here.”

Bad paused, his tail lashing back and forth. “I see.” Someone emerged from the room after Bad.

The woman was brunette, a bit on the shorter side. “I have the rest of the mobs in cages, Bad.” She started to say, then looked up and smiled at Fit.

Fit recognized the woman instantly. Granted, the last time he had seen her, she was over 90 feet tall. Phil’s amazing wife, Kristin. Also known as Lady Death.

“Hi Fit!” Kristin chirped cheerily.

“Kristin! Hello! When did you get here?” Fit asked. Shit must be going sideways for Kristin to be here.

“Late yesterday!” Kristin smiled. “I finally got vacation time, and Phil’s been telling me about the island, so here I am.”

“Oh.” Fit grimaced. “How much have you been told about what’s been happening lately?” He asked.

Kristin frowned. “Well, I know that Phil’s awol right now. I can vaguely sense where he is because he’s my Angel and that he’s alive.”

Fit let out a breath. “Well, that’s a relief to know Phil’s alive. Have you met the kids yet?”

Kristin nodded. “I have! I did some baking with Chayanne earlier, then helped Tallulah in the garden. Phil raises good kids.” 

“Ok.” Fit glanced over to Bad. “Bad, call everyone you can to Phil’s garden. I’ve got news.”

It only took twenty five minutes for almost everyone to arrive. It took another thirteen for everyone to shut up so Fit could recount what he had seen. “So, the area has changed from how Chayanne and Tallulah,” Fit nodded to the pair of dragonlings sitting on either side of Kristin, “described the area. There’s now a road and buildings. And the shadow beast we’ve been seeing around spawn.” Fit finished.

Whispers and grumbles washed over the assembled group.

“I wasn’t able to see if Phil was there. But Chayanne and Tallulah want to go to look for themselves, so I think a guard would be a good idea to come with.” Fit continued. “Anyone want to volunteer?”

“If it’s for my bro or bro’s kids, I’m always happy to go!” Etoiles answered instantly.

Fit nodded. “Anyone else?”

Kristin and Bad raised their hands simultaneously. “Phil’s always been a help. Yeah, he’s emotionally constipated to the point he doesn’t admit when he’s having issues, but I want to help him.” Bad said.

“He’s my husband.” Kristin nodded.

Fit nodded. “Alright.”

Missa also raised his hand. “I’ll more than likely be useless, but I want to try to be of help.”

Cellbit, Baghera and Roier all raised their hands at the same time.

“He is Bolas.” Baghera said. “No Bolas left behind.”

“As Baghs said, Phil is Bolas. He is also a friend.” Cellbit nodded.

“I’m not letting Cellbit go without me.” Roier said. “And if it comes to a fight, I can take a few hits with my Mexican Lag.” 

Fit chuckled and nodded. “Is that everyone?”

“I want to come.” Tubbo said. “Ramon can watch Sunny.”

Fit nodded. “Alright. Anyone else?”

Silence. After a few moments, Fit nodded. “Ok. So the raid party is: myself, Chayanne and Tallulah, Kristin, Bad, Cellbit and Roier, Missa, Etoiles, Baghera and Tubbo. Anyone else planning on coming with?”

No one said anything, so Fit nodded. “Very well. Everyone in the raid party, pack your bags tonight, and when the sun rises on the morrow, we will set out for Chunk Error Alley.”

The group dispersed, leaving Kristin, Missa, Chayanne and Tallulah alone at the top of the wall. Fit was the last to leave, offering a nod to Missa and Kristin.

Chayanne and Tallulah dragged Kristin and Missa down into the bunker. Chayanne shoved all the beds together into one large bed, and had to drag his papa back away from the trapdoor down to Tallulah’s greenhouse with a “Don’t you dare go back down there. This is YOUR home.”

That sleep was the best Chayanne and Tallulah had in quite a while.

In the morning, the raid party gathered at spawn. Backpacks were topped up with consumables, exp tanks were filled with experience, armor was double checked to ensure it was at its best.

The raid party silently used the red sharestone Fit had set up to Chunk Error Alley.

They approached the edge of the cliff and looked down over the valley below. A waystone was resting on a raised dais down below. Etoiles was the first who leapt off the cliff toward the waystone, his glider catching the air, allowing him to land safely.

He activated the waystone, and brought his shield up, looking around for any sign of the shadow beast. Nothing. Etoiles waved to the rest of the group, who also used their gliders to descend to the waystone. 

“It’s changed…” Tallulah said. “The cliffs are softer.” Chayanne nodded in confirmation.

The cliffs rose high into the sky, casting parts of the valley into shadow. Slightly ruined houses and twisting trees lined the foot of the cliffs; bridges spanned the expanse overhead.

It was a beautiful sight. And almost utterly silent; except for the bird cries.

High overhead, birds flew and screamed. Crows. Thousands of crows.

A small flock landed on the roofs of the buildings flanking the road further down the valley. At first it was the one, soon joined by seven more. An additional two joined the resting flock. Then three more landed to silently stare at the raid party.

Fit felt a shiver go down his spine at seeing the thirteen gathered corvids.

The sound of their caws high overhead grew more and more fervent. Something was coming.

A large figure leapt down from the cliff, landing silently before the gathered beings. And the raid party saw the shadow beast clearly for the first time.

It was almost totally covered in feathers, vibrantly red eyes peered upon the group above a wickedly sharp beak. It was easily taller than Fit, probably somewhere around three, maybe three and a half meters tall. It was somewhat humanoid, with two legs and two arms, but it had an additional pair of limbs in the form of two massive feathered wings extending from its back.

Its eyes narrow as Chayanne steps forward, his scythe in hand. “Where the hell is my dad, monster!” The dark haired dragonling demanded.

Purple particles swirled around the Crowbeast, and a few moments later, it vanished. The particles trailed off further down the valley.

“Fuck!” Fit cursed. “Looks like we don’t have time to search the place for Phil. We might need to fight that thing.” Fit glanced at the avatar of the Goddess of Death. “Can you sense Phil in this area?”

Kristin nodded. “He is here. It’s very hard to pinpoint exactly where.”

Fit took the lead with Etoiles and Cellbit on either side. Following behind were Kristin and Baghera flanking Chayanne and Tallulah. Roier and Missa were behind them, with Bad and Tubbo covering the rear.

The group made their way down the road, keeping an eye out for the Crowbeast.

They had to pause a few times because despite the cobbled road being relatively flat, Tallulah was struggling. Tubbo ended up carrying the small dragoness.

All too quickly, they arrived at the far end of the valley and were faced with a courtyard. Where the Crowbeast was waiting.

Chayanne pushed past Fit, his scythe in hand. “I’m going to kill you…” Chayanne growled.

The Crowbeast’s eyes narrowed. ”Leave”. It growled. ”There is nothing for you, child”.

“SHUT UP!” Chayanne screamed. He leapt into the air, his feathered wings giving him extra lift. Chayanne landed the first strike.

He clung to the Crowbeast’s head, laying into it with his scythe. The other adults spread out around the courtyard, beginning their assault.

Fit loaded a gapple into his potato cannon, firing at Chayanne. Missa grabbed his throwing knives, each tipped in a different potion effect, and threw them into the Crowbeast’s hide.

Baghera revved her chainsaw and leapt at the beast with a scream. Cellbit followed after his blood-sibling, echoing her scream. Their madness fueled screams brought the Crowbeast’s attention to the pair.

Etoiles and Bad attacked from the far side, laying into the Crowbeast’s wings. Tubbo acted as support for the trio with his potato cannon, firing gapples, occasionally swapping to golden carrots to do chip damage to the Crowbeast.

Kristin took position beside the entrance to the courtyard, and fired volley after volley of tipped arrows at the beast. Tallulah released her battle beasts from their cages, trilling a tune on her flute, directing them to attack the Crowbeast.

Fit swapped between gapples and golden carrots. Aiming at his allies between the strikes to the Crowbeast.

The Crowbeast bucked, throwing Chyanne off after about 12 seconds, and the dragonling scrambled away from the beast and took up position beside Kristin to fire more tipped arrows at the beast.

Baghera and Cellbit laughed as they carved into the Crowbeast’s hide, tanking its focused strikes with the help of Fit’s gapple support.

Etoiles was bantering easily as he blocked the few heavy strikes from the Crowbeast that were aimed his way. “Oh! I almost felt that one! Come on! Come on! You can hit harder!” His taunting was helping Baghera and Cellbit immensely as it was drawing the Crowbeast’s agro away from the pair and toward the man with the near invincible shield.

Roier kept up a fast stream of Spanish with his strikes with his orcish sword. He caught a few stray wing blows from the beast, but his Mexican Lag massively reduced the power of the blows.

”Enough!”. The Crowbeast bellowed, and a surge of power pressed down on all gathered, knocking almost everyone off their feet. Only Etoiles and Kristin managed to keep their footing.

The Crowbeast seemed to grow an additional meter in height, a shadowy aura cloaking it. The wounds they had inflicted began to close.

Etoiles struck at the Crowbeast several times. Then pulled back with a french curse as the pressure abated and the Crowbeast swung a taloned hand at him. “It’s Withering!” He called out, falling back to where Kristin and the kids were. He grabbed the bottle of milk Tallulah tossed to him, knocking it back quickly.

The Frenchman dashed back into battle, swapping from his scythe to a multishot crossbow. He loaded it with fireworks and fired into the Crowbeast. The fireworks exploded into multicolored stars, the scent of burning feathers joining the smell of blood in the air. The Crowbeast reared back, its wings flaring, before it dashed at the Frenchman, swiping at his shield.

Baghera got a bit too close to the Crowbeast’s swipes at its agile opponents and was knocked across the courtyard into one of the buildings. “Baghera!” Cellbit screamed, laying into the Crowbeast, ignoring how its Withering aura destroyed his skin and its talons rent his flesh.

Fit cursed as he fired gapples at Cellbit, the instantaneous healing almost countering the heavy blows the Crowbeast landed, and the Regen slowing the harm of the Withering. Roier leapt upon the Crowbeast’s back, hacking away at the back of its head and wings, his Mexican Lag once more protecting him, this time from the Crowbeast’s Withering aura.

Tubbo worked to keep Roier’s health high, occasionally swapping targets to Etoiles or Bad. The latter of whom had stepped back and was now firing his own bow at the Crowbeast.

Missa muttered under his breath in Spanish as he clambered to his feet and hurriedly opened his backpack to craft more throwing knives. Fit paused his attacks to hand Missa a pack of poisons to apply to his knives.

Missa quickly finished crafting new knives and applied the poisons. He returned to throwing, going slower to try to reduce the amount of missed throws, aiming for the open wounds the close range fighters had opened. And the Crowbeast’s eyes.

Bad quickly disengaged to locate Baghera. She was hauled out of the house rubble, Bad dumping Instant Healing potions over her. She revved her chainsaw again, and leapt back into the battle, driving her chainsaw into its side, shredding flesh.

Bad followed after the golden duck woman, his own withering aura surrounding his scythe. He leapt into the air, slashing at the Crowbeast’s torso.

The Crowbeast snarled and reared back. It screamed, and its wings flared and pumped down powerfully, knocking Baghera, Cellbit, Roier, Bad and Etoiles away.

The wounds the group had just inflicted began to close again, but the Withering aura seemed to lessen.

Baghera, Cellbit, Roier and Etoiles raced back in, followed by Chayanne. Bad fell back, swapping to his multishot crossbow to shoot fireworks at the now raging Crowbeast.

It attacked indiscriminately, its regen higher than ever before. Any shallow cuts were almost instantly healed.

The islanders laid into the Crowbeast with even heavier strikes, trying to wear down its stamina and overwhelm its regeneration.

It was slow going, taking multiple minutes to draw close to the point of exhausting the Crowbeast.

Baghera and Cellbit wailed on the Crowbeast’s wings, bone crunching under Baghera’s chainsaw. Roier pummeled the back of the Crowbeast’s head, being grabbed at least twice and thrown across the courtyard.

Bad had swapped from dealing damage to focusing much more on supporting the fighters, racing around the courtyard, throwing Instant Healing potions and swapping totems whenever they popped.

Tubbo had swapped exclusively to using golden carrots, shooting burning rounds into the Crowbeast’s feathered hide.

It was beginning to slow, the Crowbeast’s attacks were growing weaker, and less frequent. That spurred the fighters into one last push, attacking with everything they could. 

The Crowbeast’s limbs faltered and it dropped to the cobbled ground, heaving. Chayanne took a chance leapt into the air, his grapple squawk firing out and latching onto the Crowbeast’s head. He slammed into the Crowbeast’s skull, and swung his scythe to bury the blade into its eye.

The Crowbeast is bleeding. The Crowbeast was slain by Chayanne

A ragged cheer surged from the fighters, and Chayanne stood gasping before the Crowbeast. He raised his scythe. “Where is my dad?” He demands.

The Crowbeast says nothing, simply laying panting, slowly bleeding out.

“ANSWER ME!” Chayanne screamed. “I KNOW YOU CAN TALK! WHERE IS MY DAD!?” He sobbed, raising his scythe.

The Crowbeast slowly looked up at Chayanne, the red of its eyes slowly fading. It said nothing.

Chayanne brought the scythe down, tears streaming down his cheeks. His scythe landed the final blow upon the Crowbeast just as its eyes fully cleared, becoming a beautiful, piercing blue.

Ph1lza was slain by Chyanne [-]Ph1lza

The Crowbeast lay dead upon the ground, its hide shredded by the fighters.

Chayanne stood over the body, trembling. The death message displayed across everyone’s communicators sent an icy chill over every single person awake. Even those not present at the Crowbeast’s death.

Tallulah sagged against Kristin, trying to muffle her sobs.

Chayanne dropped to his knees, his scythe clanking against the cobbles.

Missa slowly approached his son, kneeling down beside the dragonling and the transformed form of the man who helped raise the kid. Chayanne collapsed against his pa, tears streaming down his cheeks.

It was a silent return to spawn. Even Kristin’s insistence that Phil’s soul was ok wasn’t a sufficient balm for the hurt everyone was feeling that day.

The feeling of losing one of their own bit deep into all.

Over the next few days, Chayanne, Tallulah, Missa and Kristin stayed with Tubbo; Chayanne and Tallulah refused to return to the bunker that Phil had built for them.

Tubbo and Sunny insisted that Chayanne and Tallulah get out of the house after their first day of holing themselves up in the room Tubbo had provided for the pair. Kristin accompanied them on the short walk.

When the trio approached spawn, Bad was climbing up the ladder from the room under spawn. Except he was a good meter and a half shorter than usual. He paused and stared at three. His clothes were different. Far more formal than usual.

“Chayanne. Tallulah. Miss Kristin.” He said, nodding. The voice was wrong. And going by the series of events that had been going on, this had to be…

“Dapper?” Bad called out from the room. “You still have the Love Potion.”

Dapper looked down then at the red bottle in his hand. A mischievous smile wrinkled his pitch black skin. “I don't have it dad. I tossed it to you before I went up. Is your magnet on?”

It was silent down below except for the rummaging sound of Bad looking through his numerous backpacks. Dapper grinned. “I love messing with dad.” He whispered.

“Dapper, I can’t find it.” Bad said, sounding frustrated. 

“Oh! I found it in my back pocket.” Dapper grinned.

“Dapper!” Bad snapped, quickly climbing the ladder.

Dapper was a near clone of his father, pitch black skin, large demon wings, a pair of small curved horns at his hairline, and pure white eyes; the only differences being Dapper had white hair while Bad had dirty blonde. And Dapper had scales.

He looked to be only slightly taller than Tallulah. Only slightly. And he didn’t look at all mad about it. Yup. If you asked him, that’s what he would say. Not mad in the slightest…

“Oh! Hello Tallulah! Chayanne! Kristin!” Bad chirped happily.

“Hello Bad!” Kristin replied cheerfully. “How have you been?”

The two adults delved into small talk while Dapper, Chayanne and Tallulah shuffled off to the side. “How are you two holding up?” Dapper asked softly.

Chayanne shrugged.

“Really shit.” Tallulah said. “I- I just want my dad back.” She let herself drop to the ground to sit, her arm crutches splayed out to either side.

Chayanne sat beside his sister, and she leaned and rested her head on his shoulder. “I want him back too…” He mumbled.

Dapper stepped around behind his siblings and hugged them from behind, also wrapping his wings around them. “I’ll see if there’s anything in my grimoires about summoning souls of the departed. It’ll probably take me like a week.”

Chayanne nodded. “When you find something, come grab me and Tallulah.”

Tallulah and Chayanne eventually drifted back to Tubbo’s place with Kristin. Each morning Kristin took the two out on a walk, and each night after dinner, Tallulah and Chayanne went on a walk privately, just the two of them.

On the fourth day after the events at Chunk Error Alley, Kristin burst into Tallulah and Chayanne’s room. “Come come!” She chirped. “Spawn! Something has happened!” Chay and Lulah followed Kristin to spawn, where Fit and Etoiles were waiting.

“Hey Kristin!” Fit said upon seeing the trio arrive. “Can I ask what’s going on?”

Kristin waved everyone over to the waystone. “Come to Chunk Error Alley!” She insisted, warping away moments after the words left her mouth.

Etoiles frowned. “Well. Let’s go.” He said, shrugging. He quickly followed after Kristin.

Fit glanced at Tallulah and Chayanne who were both hesitating in the entrance to the waystone area. “If you don’t want to go, I can send Kristin a message.”

Tallulah inhaled and stepped up to the waystone. “I trust her. Papa spoke highly of her, so I’m going to trust that things will be ok.”

Chayanne nodded slowly. “What Lulah said.” He agreed.

The pair warped to Chunk Error Alley, Fit following close behind. Kristin was pacing back and forth, waiting for Chay, Lulah and Fit to arrive. She waved to them, indicating to follow.

The group of five walked down the road down Chunk Error Alley, crows cawing overhead, eventually they reached the courtyard where they had battled the Crowbeast. Where they had slain Philza.

His warped body was gone, the blood from the wounds the islanders inflicted having long dried. Dark feathers were scattered everywhere. The courtyard now felt so large.

Kristin stepped around behind Tallulah and Chayanne and pointed toward the center of the courtyard. “Look.” She said softly.

They looked. They saw. They ran. They grabbed the man who they treasured most in the world.

Phil dropped to his knees to clutch his children. “Chayanne? Tallulah?” He said, his voice soft as he leaned back to look upon the faces of the pair.

“It’s us, dad.” Chayanne said, grabbing onto Phil as tight as he could.

“Don’t you dare leave like that. Ever ever again.” Tallulah thumped Phil’s shoulder, squeezing him like he would vanish in a moment if she let go.

The soft rustle of feathers surrounded them as Phil’s dark feathered wings wrapped around them. “I swear. As long as you don’t die on me again. I’ll stay right here. As long as you need.”

Tallulah nodded against Phil’s shoulder. “I promise we aren’t going to die. Ever.”

Phil gently folded his wings and carefully stood, letting his beloved fledglings keep hold of him as best they could. He looked up at the three waiting and smiled. “Kristin…” He said softly.

Kristin walked up and intertwined her fingers with his. “I’m here Phil.”

Phil glanced at the two others. “Fit. Etoiles.” He smiled.

“Phil! My man. You’ve been through some shit.” Fit quipped. “Certainly came out the other side looking a bit better.”

Phil burst into laughter. “Fit, oh my god.”

Fit unlooped one of the thin lengths of leather he kept around his wrist. “You might want to tie up your hair, Phil. It’s a bit longer than before you turned into a big crow man thing.”

Which was the truth. Phil’s hair was noticeably longer than a month ago. Where before it just reached his shoulders, it now reached below the bottom of his shoulder blades.

Etoiles grinned at his friend who was wrapping the cord around his blond hair into a fluffy tail, then gasped. “Oh no!” He cried out in his joking tone. “The tropes! You have the anime mother ponytail!” 

Phil paused then burst into laughter. “Nooo!” He cried dramatically, leaning back a little. “What will my family do? I will die offscreen for some mysterious reason and that’ll kick off the hero’s journey for my traumatized eldest child!”

Chayanne punched his dad’s shoulder. “Dad shut up!”

Tallulah had dramatically fallen over. “Noo!” She exclaimed in the same jokingly dramatic tone as Phil. “I shall be so devastated by my pa’s offscreen death that I shall give up all music until my brother completes season 3 of his hero’s journey at which point he will return home and suddenly I’ll be ok again!”

Fit laughed at the trio’s antics. Kristin giggled then leaned in to give Phil a quick kiss. “My adorable Tech Guy Weeb.” She said teasingly.

It was a quick journey back to spawn. Fit had brought some solid experience so Phil was able to warp back to spawn, startling Bad who was in the middle of sorting out stuff for the cookie quests. 

“Oh my gosh!” Bad exclaimed. “Philza!?” 

“Sup Bad!” Phil chirped.

“I'm so glad you’re back!” Bad said. Two small beings ran past him and right toward Phil. “Ah! Pomme! Richas!”

The two smaller eggs thumped into Phil’s legs, making little sounds. They placed signs simultaneously, Richarlyson finishing writing first. ‘PHIL WHERE DID YOU GO?? YOU MISSED SO MUCH!’ Pomme finished up quickly after with ‘everyone’s hatching left and right im so overwhelmed’

Phil laughed and carefully knelt down to hug the pair of rambunctious eggs. “Ye. I’m back. Glad you two are ok.” He looked up at Bad. “You alright mate?”

The tall demon’s shoulders slumped. “It was so busy when you were gone. I was staying up at all hours trying to track this shadow beast thing that kept showing up at spawn. AND TURNS OUT! It was a certain angsty crow.” Bad leveled Phil with a glare.

“Oh.” Phil grimaced, his wings flaring then folding tightly against his back. “Sorry bout that mate. Wasn’t in the right headspace.”

Bad sighed. “It’s fine, Philza. At least you’re back and can start to heal now.”

Phil nodded. “Yeah. I hope so.”

Fit went and raided the bunker for clothes while Kristin, Tallulah and Chayanne took Phil to Tubbo’s. Tubbo was ecstatic to see Phil alive.

Fit brought a bunch of clothes for Phil. He ended up going with his usual outfit, but since Chayanne was wearing his spare striped bucket hat, Phil borrowed one of Kristin’s wide brimmed hats.

In the following days, Chayanne and Tallulah refused to leave Phil’s side for very long. Although his appearance had barely changed, Phil seemed far older than he had ever been. And whenever Chayanne and Tallulah left him alone and returned, he seemed… off.

So they stayed with him. As much as possible.

And when they couldn’t, Kristin took over staying with her husband.

Phil was a broken man. The Crowbeast was evidence of that. But his family was bound and determined to fill those cracks with gold.

[snickerdoodlles]

📓 :3

:D!

@mortimerlatrice got me thinking about a KimChay Chrestomanci AU, so more of that.

the Chrestomanci series, sidenote, is an absolutely delightful fantasy series by Diana Wynne Jones. it's composed of mostly independent stories set in a universe of 12 parallel universes (called Series), each with their own string of worlds (except Series 11). generally speaking, every person has eight identical copies borne into other series than their own, but very occasionally all nine lives will be borne into one person. this nine-life enchanter has all the power of nine magical people in them and is therefore the only person powerful enough to fill the role of Chrestomanci to regulate magical use and prevent any abuse of it across the 12 series.

which cool, very fun story premise actually, but not what I care about here. I'm setting kp in one of the series that doesn't deal much with magic because I don't care about magic meet mafia, I care about Chay having nine lives and all the ways that could make things worse.

(cw: non-permanent but slightly graphic character death under the cut. ft a dash of actual character death, but that only applies to Tawan.)

Chay doesn't have all his lives when canon starts. he lost his first one the same day he and Porsche lost their parents when he fell out of his crib trying to investigate the noise. he lost his second to food poisoning, before Porsche started working for extra food money and they had to make every scrap stretch. he lost another when a debt collector hit him too hard and snapped his neck. (Porsche wasn't home for that day. Chay told him he wasn't either.)

Chay loses his fourth life in the warehouse. it actually wasn't intentional on anyone's part -- Tawan's hired meat weren't careful enough bringing him in, and Chay's luck has his head hit a curb or scrap metal at just the right (or wrong, as it were) angle to kill him instead of concuss him, and head injuries take so long to come back from. Tawan drags out the charade because he wants Porsche desperate, not angry, and Porsche is in too deep of denial to accept the possibility of Chay actually being dead not to fall for it.

Kim arrives before Chay comes back to life. it's...bad. Porsche is screaming for him to get Chay out. Kim first checks Chay's breathing. failing to find that, he frantically (but carefully!) hauls Chay upright. that's when Chay's head flops limply to the side and reveals the dried blood down the back of his neck, which Kim had already felt grabbing but refused to process.

Kim sees red.

Tawan knifes Big. Porsche's shouts break through the fog threatening to overwhelm Kim. then Tawan gets one very distraught, very angry, very murderous Kim materializing in front of him and going right for his eyes. it doesn't matter that Tawan's the one with a weapon, he could've had an armory and that couldn't have helped him. Kim is very, very, very good at fighting, and he's on a mission to hurt. but he's also missing his control, and kicks Tawan in the kidney so hard Tawan stumbles back into a pile of scrap and, in true irony, jostles it hard enough the end of steel beam falls on his head. as discovered earlier, metal and concrete are not kind to heads, and bullet proof vests certainly can't protect from that.

it's too quick and too kind, and Kim stares at him disbelievingly, half a mind to drag Tawan out and beat out the little life he's surely still clinging to, when Chay groans. Kim first thinks he hallucinated it, but then he sees Chay move and he's so relieved he was wrong that he shoves everything else out of his mind and just gets Chay out. then everything and one trailing shouty Porsche slams back into him the minute Chay's out of his arms and with the paramedics that Kim bolts to go hide in a dark corner in his apartment and fail to process any of it.

Chay misses all of this btws. He was dead, then he was back with a headache, and he loves Porsche but he needs Porsche to please shut the fuck up and get him some tylenol.

then apartment confrontation, where Kim says I'm sorry and shoves off even quicker because all he can remember are those moments when he'd been so sure Chay was properly dead. club scene goes down even worse when Kim yells at Chay for making stupid reckless choices that could get him killed, and Chay demands to know why Kim even cares, and Kim goes pale with anger that Chay doesn't care that he (only nearly, surely) died, and it's all very terrible and ends in them storming away from each other.

then comes Yok's bar.

Chay dies. Kim had taunted them into a direct fight inside instead of picking them off outside, and it should have been fine, would have been fine, had Chay not had a bit more awareness and looked over to see Kim pinned between two guys and rushed to help only to get shot by one of the goons on the other end of the bar. he bleeds out while Kim kills off the rest.

Chay comes back to a bar full of bodies and Kim (clutching) cradling him. Kim isn't crying. he isn't really doing much of anything other than clinging and staring off into nothing with a thoroughly haunted expression.

Chay blinks and tentatively lays his fingers against Kim's cheek. "Kim?"

Kim's eyes snap to him, but still don't quite see him. he stays looking blank for a few seconds that feel like hours before saying matter-of-factly, "I've snapped."

"Kim!" Chay protests, distressed.

"It's okay," Kim says, still matter-of-fact but smiling tenderly, "better to be mad with you than without."

it takes a while to convince Kim he's not insane and that Chay's really back. Chay's not certain he fully manages it. but his death also shook loose a lot of confessions Kim normally couldn't say out loud. ("why--" Chay starts, voice cracking, "why did you say 'I'm sorry' that day?" / "You were supposed to be safe," Kim replies hoarsely, mad smile slipping for tears.) there's more clutching and clinging, this time by Chay too. both of them manage to forget they're in a bar of dead bodies until Porsche and Kinn come crashing through the door.

"Chay!" Porsche yells when he first sees him.

"Chay," Porsche pleads brokenly when he sees Chay's blood soaked shirt.

"Not mine!" Chay says quickly, and would've been given away by how fast Kim's head snaps around in any other circumstance. "See?" he says, raising his shirt to show unblemished skin, "No injury."

this does a lot to reassure Porsche, but Chay can tell Kim still thinks he's a little bit insane. Chay decides that's fine for now, because dying takes a lot out of you and apparently everyone around you too and it's unfair to expect Kim to just bounce back from him bleeding out on him, he'll work on it after a shower and dinner.

I'm not writing this AU because I only really have these two vague scenes in my head, but Chay having multiple lives making his existence in the mafia hurt more than canon's calls to me, it really does.

oh, also: in the AU source material, one of the nine-lifers has one of his lives removed and stored into a ring for safekeeping. he later gives this ring to his to-be-wife as her wedding ring. I'm not sure yet how to work that into this AU because Chay's contact with magic and other magicals would be slim to none in this, but please picture how this would absolutely wreck Kim, because there's nothing Kim wants more than to safeguard Chay but as far as he's concerned, he's already failed Chay in that regard twice. 😈

[[ ask me about fics im not writing ]]

[berylcups]

Yandere Files: Ghiaccio X Foreign Reader

CW: stalking, imprisonment, death (mentioned), jealousy, hostess clubs, masturbation, phone sex(is it if it’s one sided?),immigration, outercourse, mild toxicity

Notes: just a disclaimer- I have no idea how immigration works in Italy or how it works across other countries but I thought it would be a good point of conflict for Ghia to act up to. Also- Ghiaccio was a tough nut to crack. (No pun intended 👀) He’s not very sexually motivated as a character he seems so I had to really try hard with this one! I hope it’s not too OOC and you ice fuckers like it though~🩵Beryl

Minors DNI

Y/N has been living in Napoli Italy for about 4 and a half years now. It’s tough living on their own but it’s worth it. They’re in college for design and work a job that they love. They work in a nice cafe as a hostess and it pays ridiculously well! The only catch is… there’s a lot of mafia activity. Y/N hears and sees things they aren’t supposed to- but that’s okay because they look the other way.

Now this was a special kind of cafe. It took heavy inspiration from the east for its heavily…attentive service. Hostesses would be pouring wine for their guests, lighting their cigarettes/cigars, sitting with them, conversing, laughing at their jokes, stroking their ego, and even joining them on drinks - non alcoholic of course! We can’t have the staff getting tipsy on the job!

Melone being the creep that he is, surveyed this place out for good mothers for BabyFace. But he also really likes the atmosphere so he got his other teammates to go along. Even Sorbet and Gelato! The two had no interest in the women but they enjoyed being pampered by them. But Ghiaccio… he didn’t really like it. Why would he want some host/hostess to be bugging him every 5 minutes??? He doesn’t get it! That’s until he met Y/N of course.

Aesthetics didn’t mean much to the man but he thought they were very gorgeous- it didn’t matter how tall or small, thick or thin, light or dark they were. He was enamored by their open mindedness and that they were willing to just actively listen to him. They gave their full attention to this man, and gave out intelligent thought out answers-to the best of their language capabilities.

“Oh uh sorry… what was the correct name for that pasta again? Shit. I can’t remember! It looks like little corkscrews. Like the part of the wine bottle opener you use to screw into the cork .” Y/N struggled trying to find the name.

“I believe the one you’re looking for is fusilli.” He replied, taking a sip of his coffee.

“Yes! That’s the one! Thank you Ghiaccio. Well I had the fusilli alla checca the other day and I was surprised. I really liked it despite me not liking cheese very much. I’m glad I listened to you.” They said cheerfully.

He couldn’t help but smirk from having his ego stroked like that. Of course he’s right! He knows everything about Italy and its wonderful culture.

“Sigh… I’m really gonna miss it here.” They said looking down at their coffee with a sad smile.

Ghiaccio nearly spits out his coffee. “What?!” He yelled. “ I mean- what do you mean by that?” He lowered his voice trying not to cause a scene.

“Well as you know I’m graduating from _____ University in a few weeks… and my Visa is almost up. I only have about 3 months left before I have to go back home to _______.” They said gloomily. “I really don’t want to leave because I love it here so much.”

“Go apply for a permanent residency! They should take you in since you've been here almost 5 years.” He replied.

“I wish I could…but my mom is waiting for me at home and I’m all she has. And the wait time for the documents will take longer than I am allowed here legally.” They signed sadly. “Well… let’s not let this ruin our time together! We still have 3 months. Let’s make the best of it right Ghia?” They chirped trying to bring the mood back up.

He wanted to shake them by their shoulders and tell them that’s not good enough and they can’t just leave him but he can’t just have an outburst. It will scare them away! He has to think of a plan to keep Y/N here with him. PERMANENTLY.

“Yeah, you’re right Y/N. Let’s just enjoy the time we have left.” He said, faking a small smile.

He was seething inside. How DARE they try to leave him. Of ALL PEOPLE it had to be Y/N to turn their back on him?! Not on his watch! He was going to use his resources and connections to make sure that Y/N doesn’t leave the country of Italy ever.

————————————————

Now that he’s smitten with you, some of your regulars stopped showing up. You wonder why? It’s starting to worry you a little bit financially. You have to make sure that you have enough money for the trip home!

“I wonder why people are showing up less and less… am I not doing good enough?” You asked dejectedly.

“No of course not! Their wives/husbands probably found out that they were hanging out here and probably put them on a tight leash.” Ghiaccio lied.

Anytime he’d see one of the patrons get a little too flirty or handys with you he’d corner them in the back alley and beat them with an inch of their lives. Or worse, do what he does best-freeze them till they shatter like glass.

While you’re still here he follows you everywhere and you are too distracted by everyday life to notice it. Oh! He just happens to be near your university! How about a ride home in his nice car? It beats taking public transport. Or when you happen to run into him at the grocery store? How about he gives you a quick ride back home so you don’t have to carry all those heavy groceries home? He’s so thoughtful!

When he’s home alone , or on a mission he’s always thinking of you . He’s sexually frustrated because when he furiously masturbates his hand isn’t enough anymore . He wants to feel your hand around his cock instead or better yet your warm hole.

He calls you often at odd hours of the night just to check in with you. You two have long deep discussions about random things like how English is just ridiculous, or learning about your culture and food, your hobbies, his hobbies, just about everything! In person he’s usually the one talking but on the phone you’re the one who’s doing most of the talking. When he talks he sounds winded, strained? Like there’s repetitive smacking sounds going on in the background. He says he’s just “multitasking “ but with what?

He knows you love your job-he gets it. But… he can’t stand the idea of another pair of eager balls or a thirsty pussy near you. He doesn’t wanna take your joy away but he doesn’t want to live in a constant state of anxiety! You're his! So he’s a straight forward man, so he’s gonna confess his feelings to you when he’s certain that he has a chance. You clearly pay more attention to him, your eyes light up when he comes in through those doors. You eagerly sit in his lap and listen to his usual complaints of the day.

“Aww I’m so sorry that happened. What a douche! He should have known better, you were right to stand up for yourself. You have a reputation to uphold. Is there anything I can do to make it better for you?” You cooed.

“Just having you around is enough to turn my day around.” He said, softening his tone.

“Aww~ Ghia! You’re too sweet. You’re the one I’m gonna miss the most.” You sighed. “Hey… I’m not really supposed to ask this because this could jeopardize my job but…do you wanna go out sometime?” You whispered. “I really really like you and I’ll regret not telling you how I feel before I have to go home… if you’re okay with long distance relationships that is- I understand if you don’t it’s not that easy and I promise I’ll visit as much as pos-“

He put a finger up to your lips to stop your nervous rambling “ of course Y/N. I was honestly going to ask you myself.”he confessed. “As far as long distance goes, we’ll make it work.” He lied, he had his plans in order to make sure you’ll never leave.

He agreed to a long distance relationship because that’s not what he had planned at all. He already got a hold of your passport and other legal documents when you were outside of your home at university. He made sure they were absolutely destroyed. He has Melone currently making him a perfect fake permanent residency card for you. Now you’re NOT going ANYWHERE.

On the days that you’re free he takes you to historic places close by and acts like a more in depth tour guide to you. He hopes this will make you want to stay even more and it’s working. He’ll show you all the best restaurants- not that touristy shit or the Michelin star nonsense. Just real authentic Italian cuisine!

He likes to drive the scenic routes and show you all the lesser known beaches, forests, parks, vineyards, etc. The lesser known the better, so he has the privacy he needs to mercilessly fuck you into the back of his car. He apologized for your first time with him being on top of the back of an uncomfortable car but he just couldn’t help himself. You looked so good with the nice outfit you were wearing!

He’s very athletic so likes to pick you up against the wall as he’s fucking you. He’s all about hard and fast. He’s gonna want to bite at your neck and leave tons of bite marks and hickies all over your body. He wants everyone to know that you’re taken and not available for anything outside your job. He doesn’t cum just once he goes at around 4-5 times with a very insane fast refractory period.

He’s not big on foreplay but he has a fixation outercourse. Watching his cock slip through your folds/ass drives him feral. But he’s not selfish, whatever you want he’ll give to you- within reason. He loves you but he’s very impatient!

He has an obsession with boobs. 👀 big boobs, small boobs, no boobs , pecs… all boobs are good boobs to this tit lover. He likes to use his cold hands and watch the nipples harden and hear you whine that he’s too cold 🥶 it never fails to get a chuckle out of him to hear you whine for him to stop making you so cold!

When it’s nearly time to go home he plays along and helps you pack up all of what you plan to bring back to your home country. Since you’re only packing sentimental items and necessities, there’s not too many bags. Thankfully they all fit in his trunk.

You crash at his house the night before you leave. Only one teeny tiny problem… you missed your goddamn flight!

“You missed your flight and you lost your passport? You know what this means right Y/N? You’re stuck here in the country .” Ghiaccio said very calmly for a tense situation like this.

“ I’m an illegal now! What will I do???” You cried with tears staining your cheeks.

“ I already took care of the problem myself.” He said calmly. He pulls out a fake permanent residency card. It was as realistic as the real thing. Only thing is your last name is the same as his.

You can’t just stay! You needed to go home! This is wrong! You wanted to argue, but there was just something ominous about his demeanor.

“I love you too much Y/N. I can’t let you leave.” He said eerily calm, taking a step closer to you. Was it the anxiety or did the temperature of the room just drop.

“But… you know I can’t stay. I have to go home.” You whimpered.

He took a firm grip on your shoulders and made intense eye contact.

“Oh Y/N… perhaps you're not really understanding the situation. Allow me to say this in a language you understand: You’re not leaving me or the country..”he spoke in your mother tongue and he did it perfectly.

You can tell he’s mad, and you don’t want him to get worse. He’s a part of Passione, you know this. You’re not dumb! Now’s the time to do what you do best, be obedient and do what he says. After all, Ghiaccio knows best.

Once you accept your fate that you’re stuck here with him: it’s till death do you part. But don’t worry he still treats you as if nothing happened. Just as long as you don’t mention anything about it ☠️ or you’ll end up in the chilly basement for a few days. But it hurts him just as much as hurts you! He loves holding onto you at night as he’s drifting asleep. He’d never lay a hand on you, he just wants to make sure you never ever leave him.

But as long as you leave the past in the past (aka- your home and family!) you have a bright future ahead of you with this loving man! 🥰

[peachdues]

Phantasmagoria (Part I)

Tell Me to Stop (Sanemi’s Version)

Sanemi x F!Reader, Modern AU

A/N: it's time. This one is very personal to me, and I've drawn a lot upon my own life/experiences to write this. I hope it lives up to expectations, but in case it doesn't, remember there is still a part two and a part three (so more smut/angst/feelings).

Massive TW: grief, loss of parent to cancer, canon character death (in non-canon way), drug and alcohol abuse, anger, unhealthy coping mechanisms galore.

CW: 10.5k words; explicit sexual content. Unprotected sex/oral (F!receiving), mildly dubious consent (Reader doesn't tell Sanemi it's her first time, and there's a question whether he would've done it); both Sanemi and Reader are under the influence. Creampie, lots of cursing, angst.

For the playlist, listen here.

Without further ado!

Speak in tongues / I don't even recognize your face / mirror on the wall / tell me all the ways to stay away

phan·tas·ma·go·ri·a – an exhibition of optical effects and illusions; a constantly shifting complex succession of things seen or imagined.

Once upon a time, as a little girl, she’d believed love was pretty; she imagined it would be soft, pink, and shiny and make her feel warm and pretty in return.

As an adult, she’d come to realize that love wasn’t pretty at all; it was cold, lonely, and painful.

Love was dull and harsh and all-consuming.

Love was black.

For Y/N, loving Sanemi Shinazugawa was like falling into one of the black holes she’d learned about in science class as a child. It was infinite and empty and there was no space for anything but the all-consuming void that promised to rip her apart and condemn her to oblivion.

This love had taken her naïve, romantic heart to chew up and spit back out, leaving her only with a misshapen lump held together by the leftover sinew of her hopes and dreams.

Y/N believed her love for Sanemi would be the death of her. It was a poison that had seeped into her veins and was slowly rotting her from the inside out. She knew it was stupid to love someone who would not and could not love her back, but she hadn’t yet figured out a way to stop.

And since she could not stop loving him, she could only resign herself to its toxicity until it killed her for good.

—————————————————————————

Summer had ended, and Y/N was dreading having to return to Ubayashiki University. Dreading it because she’d spent the entirety of the summer back in her – their – hometown, caring for her ailing mother, and that isolation had meant she didn’t have to wake up every day with a pit in her stomach at the thought of running into him. But then her mother had finally succumbed to her illness a week prior, and Y/N was now forced to carry on in the world as though hers had not just been blown apart.

Looking back, Genya’s death had marked the end for a lot of things, including the once-irreverent trio that had been Y/N, Kyojuro, and Sanemi.

They had been friends – the best of friends, really, since pre-school, in large part because of their parents. Kyojuro, as warm and as vibrant as the sun, had been their grounding force, always wise beyond his years but quick to laugh. Then there was Sanemi, and though he could be prone to his episodes of anger, he was a staunch, loyal defender of his friends and would do anything if it meant making them smile. Last, there had been Y/N, and she’d been so happy to just love her boys and be loved by them. She’d always felt invincible with them by her side, ready to take on the world, together.

And for a while, they did.

Their friendship withstood even the toughest of trials. It lasted through the death of Kyojuro’s mother and the subsequent decline of his father, so unable to cope that he could not function without the bitter sting of alcohol to soothe the pain of Rukka’s absence. Their friendship had even endured the deaths of both Sanemi’s and Genya’s parents at the hands of a drunk driver, the shrapnel from the crash permanently scarring both of the boys’ faces, though Sanemi had born the worst of it.

But because they’d had one another, they’d made it through. Y/N’s own mother, though a single parent, took in both Shinazugawa boys until the state placed them in a home, though that rarely stopped Sanemi from frequenting Y/N’s house after school. Even Kyojuro grew to be a constant fixture around her house, drawn to the warmth and love her mother showed both boys as if they were her own.

And then they all grew up, and they were set to begin their first year of university at Ubaya-U come the fall. The three of them had been eager to set out into the world, to grab at any and all opportunities that arose, and for each of them to become great in their own right.

But not two weeks into the fall semester, Sanemi received the phone call that had brought his world crashing down around him. Genya, his beloved, cherished younger brother, had been shot dead outside of their foster home, killed by some kid in retaliation for some fight Genya hadn’t picked.

Y/N hadn’t been with him when he received the news, instead only getting a text from Kyojuro to getthefuckoverhereNOW. She’d bolted from her class and ran to the boys’ dorm across campus. She’d found Sanemi, curled into a ball on the floor beneath a hole he’d punched into the drywall, sobbing, and she hadn’t known what else to do but hold him along with Kyojuro while her own tears threatened to blind her.

Hours later, when Sanemi realized he would have to return to their hometown to make final arrangements, he’d asked Y/N to accompany him to the train station. Kyojuro would have gone as well, but he’d been unable to call off from work, and so the three had planned for Y/N to return with him the next day, as she was the only one between the three of them with a car on campus.

Of course, Y/N agreed to drive Sanemi to the train station, because she couldn’t possibly imagine leaving him alone. He’d looked so lost, so broken, and she would’ve done anything, anything at all, to lessen the weight on his shoulders.

Because she loved him, and she’d loved him for years, and love meant giving everything you had, everything you were to the other, especially in times of need. So she agreed, and though he’d been unable to speak, Sanemi had rested his head on her shoulder in silent gratitude.

She’d not known that, in her efforts to love and support him at his lowest, she would doom their group’s entire dynamic.

In retrospect, she shouldn’t have said anything. It was the wrong time, the wrong way to tell him what was in her heart, and she’d known that; but she hadn’t been able to stop herself. She’d been unable to stop the way her heart clenched as she walked him towards the platform at Amane Station, his head hung low and his eyes rimmed red from hours of crying. It hurt her to see him in such pain, hurt so badly that she’d been desperate to alleviate it in any way she could. She’d thought it would have been enough to hug him, to give him a reassuring squeeze and a promise that she and Kyo would be back home the following morning and that he wouldn’t be alone.

But then, before she could stop them, those cursed words had fallen from her lips and ruined her, ruined everything.

I love you, Sanemi. With all my heart.

As soon as she’d heard herself say it, she’d known she’d fucked up. She knew, as Sanemi stiffened in her embrace and pulled away from her, that she’d indelibly altered things between them, and that she could never take those words back. And she’d known, the moment she saw the cold, bewildered look in his eyes, so angry it made her stomach drop, that he neither returned nor wanted her love.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?” He snapped, stepping back from her, creating a chasm between them that could not be bridged.

His train had finally arrived, and he’d stormed away from her, turned his back to her, and refused to look back as he boarded the car. She’d stayed behind, standing there amidst a throng of travelers and their families, for a long while, tears slipping hot and fast down her cheeks until the salt burned permanent tracks into her skin.

It hadn’t mattered that Kyojuro had called her later, Sanemi having filled him in on what happened, what she’d done, to tell her not to worry; that Sanemi had just been frustrated and overwhelmed, and that all would be well between them after the funeral.

Kyojuro lied. Sanemi hadn’t so much as looked her way the entire time she and Kyo were with him during his brother’s funeral and had refused to even acknowledge her small greeting. Y/N understood he was going through the worst pain imaginable, and she’d known he was angry because she’d dumped her feelings on him when he’d been in no place to receive them, but his rejection still fucking hurt.

Worse than his rejection had been his total ignorance of her, his obstinate refusal to so much as acknowledge her existence. Y/N hadn’t been able to understand how he could be so angry with her to not even treat her like a person, to pretend as though they hadn’t been friends – best friends – since they were in diapers.

Y/N had wanted to give him space, however, and wanted herself to stop loving him so things could one day go back to how they’d been, so she started to distance herself from Sanemi, believing she would still have Kyojuro, her sun, to lean on if she needed it.

But she’d been wrong, so very wrong. Because Kyojuro had defended Sanemi with a not-so-gentle reminder that ‘he’s dealing with a lot right now,’ which only fractured her heart even more because Kyojuro had taken a side and it hadn’t been hers.

Thus, Y/N was left to love them both at a distance, and she was forced to watch them carry on their friendship without her, even though they’d all come to Ubaya-U together and even though her exile from the group meant that Y/N had no friends at all.

So, her first semester at university, the semester she’d dreamed would be life-changing and exciting, became a cacophony of sobs smothered into her pillow at night so her roommate wouldn’t hear her winking out like a dying star. And she had no friends, because her best friend didn’t think she was his, and she couldn’t stop loving a boy who didn’t want to love her back.

—————————————————————————

Her mom got sick in the spring of her first year. Initially, it had been a good prognosis. Y/N somehow managed to balance her busy, pre-law class load with her mother’s care, fluidly alternating between office hours and hospital appointments. But no friends meant she’d had no one to talk to, no one to lean on in those moments when her legs gave out and sobs wracked her body because she’d been so fucking scared of losing her mom. But she’d been kept busy enough to be able to squash that loneliness down and ignore it like her boys had ignored her, and so, she’d pushed through.

By the time summer had come, however, things had grown exponentially worse. Several nights ended in Y/N having to call an ambulance to rush to her home, because her mom had fallen and Y/N wasn’t strong enough to lift her by herself, and there hadn’t been anyone else she could call.

There had been a few times – maybe two or three – when she’d passed Kyojuro on the street, home briefly to check on his little brother, and the fiery blonde would make a face like he wanted to say something like he wanted to talk to her or care about her, but Y/N would turn and run before he had the chance.

She never saw Sanemi, though that hadn’t surprised her. She hadn’t expected him to be able to stomach being back home so soon after Genya.

Her mother’s condition yo-yoed throughout the summer and into the early fall of her second year of university. Just when it finally seemed as though things were looking up for her mother, when she was just days from her last treatment, she died.

No one had been there to hold her – to comfort her – when Y/N began wailing as her mother’s chest rose for the last time and did not go back down.

Her mother had died, and Y/N had been left utterly and completely alone.

Her mother’s funeral had taken place on a sunny October day, the autumn air cool and crisp as an apple. She’d stood beside her mother’s casket as stranger after stranger passed, offering their condolences and personal anecdotes of her mother’s kindness.

Not once had she seen a familiar face. Not once had either of her boys made an appearance, not even for the woman who had loved them as her own.

She’d returned to campus a few days later, and because the universe had decided she’d not suffered nearly enough for some unknown crime, she ran into him. By the cruelest twist of fate, Sanemi decided to cross the street opposite her at the same time, and what was left of her heart skipped several beats.

For all her efforts to put distance between them, she still loved him, and it was a realization so bitter she thought she would start dry heaving right there on the pavement. She tried to duck her head, to avoid catching his attention, but the crosswalk light changed, and he was suddenly walking towards her, and she couldn’t help but chance a glance up.

Lilac eyes collided with her own, and Y/N thought the world was about to open beneath her and swallow her whole.

His gaze lingered for a touch longer than normal for a stranger, and Y/N feared he’d be able to see the scars from her tears on her face or see how her heart still bore the tattoo of his name. But then he blinked, and she took the chance to vanish among the throng of students, dashing back to her dorm before the tears could spill down her cheeks once more.

She barely made it to her room before her legs gave out from under her, her sobs choking from her throat.

She wished her mother had taken her with her.

—————————————————————————

It was fitting that Y/N met the personification of spring at the start of the spring semester.

Her name was Mitsuri, and Y/N sat next to her in her 8:00 AM class. The girl was so bubbly and bright that it was difficult, even for the drab Y/N to resist striking up a conversation with her. Mitsuri was a streak of color that bloomed across Y/N’s eternal gray sky, with her exotic pink and green hair and permanent blush. It took only a few weeks, but Mitsuri and Y/N became the best of friends, and Y/N could not get over how good it felt to have one of those again.

Mitsuri and Y/N began to do everything together, and bit by bit, Y/N felt herself smiling more, laughing as her friend flirted with every him, her, and them who crossed their path. They figured out they shared nearly every class together, and when they weren’t furiously taking notes during their lectures, they were studying together in small corners around campus, dreaming of what was to come after exams and graduation in a year and a half.

Her pink-haired friend helped Y/N feel confident again, like a person. Mitsuri helped bring Y/N back out of the shell she’d so carefully crafted in the wake of her abandonment, and she began to feel a little lighter, a little more buoyant thanks to the happy, beautiful girl at her side.

That wasn’t to say Mitsuri didn’t have her own demons – she very much did. At night, Mitsuri and Y/N push their beds together in the latter’s dorm (Y/N’s first roommate had long since moved out). There, huddled together under the mess of blankets and pillows, they would whisper the names of their heartache with one another – Sanemi and Obanai – and they comforted each other, wiping their tears away with soft promises that as long as they had one another, they would be okay.

By March, Mitsuri convinced Y/N to go clubbing with her. Y/N was hesitant until she looked in the mirror after her friend had spent the evening primping her and turning her into a woman Y/N scarcely recognized in the mirror. Her friend had dressed her in a short, emerald green dress that hugged every curve just right, a teasing slit going high up on her left thigh. Y/N’s hair had been slicked back into a high ponytail that swung tantalizingly between her shoulder blades. Her cleavage was a bit more exposed in the pinkette’s dress than Y/N was accustomed to, but damn if she didn’t look downright sumptuous.

Y/N was determined to let loose, to not think about the black stain on her heart that was him, and so she greedily accepted Mitsuri’s hand as the two braved the chilly, early spring air. Mitsuri pulled her through the doors of the club -- the Kizuki Moon Lounge -- and for the first time in a year and a half, she felt alive.

Beneath the strobe of multi-colored lights, amidst the pulsing bass of the techno-music threatening to rupture her eardrums, Y/N had found herself anew; no longer was she the sad, morose girl who barely existed. Under Mitsuri’s care, Y/N transformed into a raving princess, who owned the sticky floor of the Kizuki’s club each time she and her friend traipsed onto it in their too-high heels, wearing too-short dresses and clutching too-strong drinks in their greedy hands.

In April, Mitsuri introduced her to Shinobu, a wisp of a pharmacology student who was every bit as beautiful as she was terrifying, though Y/N could not exactly place why the petite girl could scare off any ill-intentioned man that tried to swagger over to them, given her ever-present, sugary-sweet smile.

She also met three girls – Hinatsuru, Makio, and Suma – who were beautiful and fun-loving and rounded out the newly-formed friend group with their fire-and-ice personalities.

First, there was Hinatsuru – quieter, but still capable of throwing it back and having a grand old time, especially once her drink of choice (rum and Coke) had the opportunity to work its way through her blood. A pretty blush was always the telltale sign that Hina was ready to jump up on a table and captivate anyone who had the pleasure of watching her dance.

Next, there was Makio, brash and bold, but fiercely loyal. Some asshole had made the mistake of snapping the thong-like top of Mitsuri’s skirt once and found his head shoved down on the table, his arm pulled back in a self-defense maneuver as the dark-haired beauty threatened to wrench the man’s offending arm from its socket.

Finally, there was Suma, who often clung to the other two like a lost child, but once she gained her confidence, would flirt with absolutely anything and everything that moved, with a sultry giggle and a bat of her pretty eyes. Within only twenty minutes of knowing her, Suma had convinced Y/N to make out with her, the beautiful girl tasting like cotton candy and summertime as their tongues lazily danced together beneath the throb of the club lights.

With her new group of girlfriends, Y/N began to lose herself to the alluring beck and call of Ubayashiki’s local rave scene, her nights quickly becoming defined by sticky drinks and jeweled makeup, and the skimpy outfits Mitsuri always shoved her into. But she could not find it in her heart to care, because for once, her mind was on something else that didn’t involve the smell of pine, or lavender eyes, or the feeling of a home that no longer existed.

But even though the sour drinks made her feel so warm and vibrant while she danced, there were still moments when clarity hit and she missed them.

She missed the way Kyojuro’s strong arm would drape around her shoulders, heavy and warm, and how his embrace always felt like home, his deep laugh infectious.

She missed the way Sanemi would pretend to hug her unwillingly but would leave his hands lingering on her back or her waist once she moved to pull away, a small smirk tugging on the corners of his tantalizing mouth. She missed the smell of his cologne, woodsy and clean, as he would lean in close to her face to tease her until she blushed.

She missed them so much that the sharp sting of alcohol eventually stopped dulling the pulsing ache in the cavity where her heart once beat. No matter how many shots, no matter how many sticky acid drinks she tossed back, that gnawing in her chest would not cease.

Then, one night, Shinobu pressed a small, lilac pill into her hand, and everything changed.

Initially, Y/N was apprehensive, because the pill perfectly matched the hue of the eyes of the person she wanted to forget most. But Shinobu promised her that this pill she’d created in a lab for school – Wisteria – will have her feeling like a kid on Christmas, and that promise, coupled with a flutter of Shinobu’s pretty eyelashes made Y/N cave.

At first, she felt nothing, no impact beyond the slight buzz provided by the round of shots she’d done upon first arriving at the Kizuki. But then, as Mitsuri twirled her beneath the flashing lights of pink and yellow, Y/N’s world exploded with a vibrance she’d neither seen nor felt in nearly two years. Everything, all at once, became magical; effervescent; infinite.

The Wisteria seeped into her veins and made her feel like Christmas lights had been implanted under her skin. Y/N felt shiny and beautiful and sparkly under the combined effect of Shinobu’s magical concoction and the balancing burn of her tequila, and with her new group of girlfriends flanking her side as they bumped to and ground against one another to the beat of the music, Y/N felt almost like she did when it was just her and her boys. Only now, Y/N felt even better, because, with her girls, she could ignore the way the black in her heart was slowly beginning to fester, even if that meant Y/N was beginning to feel more and more numb with each passing rendezvous at the club.

Because that numbness meant that at least she couldn’t feel the acrid bite of her unrequited love for him, and that was what she wanted all along, right?

—————————————————————————

(May)

Of course, Y/N should’ve known she couldn’t stay light and resplendent and numb in her neon and black light paradise forever. Because unfortunately, despite the large student body at Ubaya-U, her new friend group just has to intermingle with them.

Really, it was all Shinobu’s fault. Towards the end of the semester, Shinobu began dating a quiet, withdrawn boy named Giyuu, who happened to be good friends with the man that Hinatsuru, Makio, and Suma all have a thing for – Tengen.

Tengen was a recent graduate of Ubaya-U, and an even more recent hire at the local police department, his imposing size and discerning ears a coveted asset amongst the group of detectives who’d scouted him out. Having someone affiliated with the local police be part of their group ended up being a huge advantage to them, however, given the general inclination for people to look the other way whenever Shinobu began dealing her Wisteria in the secluded corners of the Kizuki’s lounge.

What was not an advantage, however, were Tengen’s friends, because Tengen, apparently, had become best fucking friends with Kyojuro, and by default, him.

Y/N stood awkwardly between Mitsuri and Shinobu as the latter presented her group of girlfriends to the new, rag-tag medley of boys that now included the very two Y/N had gone to great lengths to avoid. She tried to ignore the burning weight of both boys’ stares as Y/N finally introduced herself to Shinobu’s new boy toy. Only when she could not possibly avoid them any longer, not without raising questions, did Y/N finally allow herself to turn to them.

“Y/N!” Kyojuro looked so surprised to see her and yet, so overjoyed that it didn’t feel fair.

Y/N could tell by the jerky way the blonde’s arms twitched towards her that he’d been about to envelop her in one of his signature bear hugs, but he’d hesitated, apparently uncertain whether he was still permitted to do so.

Ultimately, Kyojuro’s elation at seeing her once again won over his doubt, and he pulled her in tightly against his chest, his arms squeezing her with a security she hadn’t realized she’d been missing. For the briefest moment, Y/N’s eyes fluttered shut as she allowed herself to thaw, ever so slightly, in the fierce warmth of her friend’s embrace.

It was a mistake; the moment she’d allowed herself to relax, she’d felt the damning prickle of tears behind her eyelids, and an uncomfortable lump had begun to take form in her throat. So with more reluctance than Y/N wanted to acknowledge she felt, she stepped away from Kyojuro, hoping that the dim lights of the club concealed the mist clouding her eyes.

Unfortunately, the end of Y/N’s reunion with her former, fiery friend meant there were no more obstacles, no more distractions, between her and the white-haired, scar-speckled man who gazed at her with an intensity that, to her annoyance, still made her want to squirm.

And as his eyes bore into her, she chanted over and over in her mind for him not to say it, to not let her name fall from his lips, because she could not bear to hear it. It would’ve been easier, so much easier, if he simply pretended like she didn’t exist, because then she could go on pretending like she wasn’t walking around without a heart; like he hadn’t been carrying it with him even all these months later.

His eyes did not match the smirk he had as he said her name, but it still took everything Y/N had not to fold right there.

But she couldn’t, she wouldn’t let him know that he still held any power over her, and so she merely raised an eyebrow at him and smirked back, challenging him.

“Sanemi.”

—————————————————————————

“’Sanemi’ is your name when I’m mad at you,” Y/N warned him, tapping his knuckles with the spoon she used to stir the cake batter. “Otherwise, you’re just ‘Nemi.’”

Sanemi smirked at her, sticking his finger back into the bowl to swipe another glob of cake batter as Y/N mixed Kyojuro’s birthday cake together. “And what about when I’m being annoying?”

Y/N flicked a bit of batter at him, nailing him perfectly on his nose with the chocolate mixture. “Asshole seems the most appropriate.” She squatted down to pull a baking pan out from below her mother’s stove. “Did you remember to get the candles?”

The grocery bag crinkled as her white-haired best friend shook it, the box of candles within jostling. “Sixty-one candles for the sixty-one-year-old man,” Sanemi said proudly.

“Haha,” Y/N mocked, though she swiped the bag from his hand to check to ensure he’d actually bought sixteen and not, as he claimed, sixty-one candles. “I’m impressed. It seems you are capable of following directions.”

Sanemi leaned across the counter and peered up into her face, that damn smirk of his widening as he saw the faint blush creep across her cheeks. “I always follow your directions, Y/N.” He said lowly, raising a finger to wipe a speck of cake batter from her cheek.

“Hardly,” Y/N scoffed, using the need to get Kyojuro’s cake in the oven as an excuse to turn away from him and hide her warming face. “I think you prefer malicious compliance.”

“You wound me!” Sanemi protested, splaying across her mother’s counter in mock-injury. “When have I ever not followed your instructions with a smile on my face?”

Y/N turned back to him with a teasing grin. “’Nemi, since when do you ever smile?”

—————————————————————————

Shinobu’s eyes flickered back and forth between them, a smile forming on her face even as Mitsuri tugged pleadingly at her hand. “Do you two know each other?”

Sanemi said “yes” at the same time Y/N said “no,” and the former’s head snapped to Y/N’s face, who fought to keep her features neutral and cool. “Not anymore, anyways.” She clarified though she refused to acknowledge the way Sanemi flinched in response.

Shinobu looked between them again, her smile fading to something more pensive. Kyojuro only continued to watch Y/N, his expression sad and so very out of place in this castle of infinite pleasure and fun, and Y/N found herself desperate to escape it – to escape them.

Suma, the gods’ gift to the universe, interrupted the tense moment with her arrival, and she produced a small baggie of those lilac pills that promised Y/N’s escape. Y/N could feel both Kyojuro and Sanemi gawking at her as Suma pulled her in close, the little lilac pill already dissolving on her tongue, and kissed her, as they’d done so many times before.

When the raven-haired girl pulled away with a giggle on her lips, Y/N looked back to her former friends and held her tongue out, Suma’s pill now almost completely dissolved in her mouth, and she winked at them. Let them realize that their Y/N was long-gone, buried alongside the mother whose death they refused to acknowledge.

Suma offered the newcomers a pill each, and Y/N was surprised that both accepted. Kyojuro hesitated more than the ivory-haired man next to him, who held Y/N’s eyes as he placed the little tablet on his own wicked tongue, an answer to her earlier challenge. Y/N grimaced at the idea that Sanemi was willing to play along in this little game, willing to impose upon her paradise if it meant torturing her a little more.

So Y/N tossed her hair over her shoulders and turned her back to him, letting Suma and then Makio, tug her back into the crush of people on the dance floor to twirl and grind to the music, as both boys stared after her and she let herself be lost to them once more.

—————————————————————————

He found her the following Friday, as she waited against the bar for her drink.

“And where have you been hidin’ all this time?” Y/N fought the shiver that threatened to lick up her spine at the sound of that cursed, gravelly voice that had always made her weak at the knees.

But Y/N hadn’t spent the last twenty months learning how to keep off of Sanemi Shinazugawa’s radar for nothing, hadn’t learned to keep her grief and rage and pain locked deep inside the empty cavern of her chest, just to crumble under the intensity of that lilac stare.

Y/N threw her head back to swallow the shot of tequila the bartender had placed in front of her before turning to face him. Sanemi looked every bit the simpering, cocky asshole she’d always known him to be, leaning up against the sticky wood of the bar, one fist resting idly under his cheek as he watched her.

She met his gaze evenly, shoulders loose with a relaxedness that she didn’t feel. “I’ve been right here,” she replied smoothly.

Sanemi shook his head, clicking his tongue disapprovingly at her. “Nah, you haven’t,” he downed his own shot of vodka before returning his eyes to her, looking her over in consideration. “Though, I guess it would’ve been hard to know it was you anyways.”

Y/N bristled at the comment but kept her voice light. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

Sanemi watched her carefully for a moment, though his eyebrows furrowed, as though he was struggling to choose his words. “I just wouldn’t have expected to see you in a place like this.” He decided, after a moment, a frown tugging at the corners of his sinful mouth.

It was Y/N’s turn to smirk. “That would assume you knew me at all to begin with,” she challenged, motioning to the bartender for another shot.

Something tightened in Sanemi’s eyes as he held her gaze, and it clenched the knot of unease that had balled in her stomach. “I did, once.”

Y/N kept her face impassive. “Maybe, as a girl.” She accepted her second shot from the bartender and brought it to her lips, biting down on a wince as the sharp burn of the cheap liquid slid down her throat. “But not as a woman.”

Though she did not show it, his words struck a wound deep within her that she’d not realized still festered; because, as hard as she tried to pretend that the man beside her was a mere stranger, his words reminded her of the harsh truth.

She was still in love with him; had been, ever since she’d learned what love meant.

A shadow flashed across his face before disappearing, that insufferable smirk sliding onto his face once more. “I guess you’re right; a girl doesn’t wear a dress like that.” Sanemi purred.

Y/N fluttered her eyelashes at him, a foreign boldness taking over her mind even as the echo of her heart begged her to flee. “Do you like what you see, Sanemi?”

Her former friend’s answering grin was wolfish. “I’ve always liked what I’ve seen of you, Y/N,” he grabbed her last shot from her hand, ignoring the protest in her eyes as he tipped the tequila back easily down his throat. “You just always seem to disappear before I have a chance to properly appreciate you.”

Y/N knew she should run away from him, and fast, but her hand betrayed her as it reached up to brush a bit of confetti from his hair that lingered from earlier. She nearly hummed in satisfaction at the way Sanemi’s breath hitched in his throat as she drew close, her fingers just barely grazing the skin of his forehead.

“Guess you’ll have to catch me.” Was her only response, before Y/N departed for the dance floor and her friends once more.

Sanemi’s eyes remained locked on her the entire night.

————————————————————————

The days blurred into weeks, as Y/N and Sanemi’s new relationship took form.

The convergence of their friend groups was inevitable, though Y/N resented it; but now, they all went out as a unit, rather than as two separate groups which just so happened to run into one another, and it annoyed Y/N to no end.

More annoying was the fact that Sanemi seemed as willing to partake in the sacred ritual of taking Shinobu’s precious Wisteria with them, though he seemed to do it less out of a desire to feel like the flashing strobe lights of the club and more so because he wanted to get on Y/N’s nerves.

“Drugs are bad for your health, y’know,” that damnable gravelly voice snapped her attention away from the Wisteria that sat in Shinobu’s palm.

Sanemi’s shoulder bumped into hers as he came to stand beside her in a darkened corner of the Kizuki’s seating lounge, out of sight from prying eyes as Shinobu dispersed her latest batch of tiny purple pills, a smirk on his lips and a challenge in his eyes.

Y/N scoffed, reaching to take the small offering from her friend’s hand. “And so is that vodka you keep slugging back.” Y/N’s fingers were about to close around the Wisteria when Sanemi plucked it from the dark-haired girl’s hand, a cry of indignation squeaking past Y/N’s lips.

Sanemi held the pill teasingly in front of her mouth as Y/N glowered up at him. “Open up,” he ordered, pinching her key to paradise between his thumb and index finger.

Eyes locked with his, Y/N slowly let her lips part and held out her tongue. Sanemi leaned forward, taking her jaw in his free hand as he placed the small tablet on her tongue with the other.

 “Good girl,” he murmured, eyes lowering to her mouth as he watched her, hungrily.

As she accepted the Wisteria from him, Y/N let her tongue flick out and graze against his skin, dragging it lightly up the calloused edge of his index finger before she closed her mouth, letting the tablet dissolve on her tongue. Sanemi exhaled harshly through his nose, his hand gripping her chin possessively as he stared down at her mouth, and Y/N thought for a moment that he was about to give in right there and kiss her.

At the last moment, Kyojuro clapped him on the shoulder as he returned from the bar, and the spell was broken. Y/N blushed slightly as she turned back to Shinobu who made no secret of her raised eyebrow at the exchange between the two former friends.

Later, as she broke away from her friends dancing on the floor, she’d noticed Sanemi for once, was not looking at her, but at the hand he’d used to slip her the Wisteria, an unreadable heat in his eyes.

————————————————————————-

Sanemi liked to watch her while she danced.

At first, it had been unsettling to feel a pair of eyes boring into her back as she bumped and ground against Mitsuri or Suma, head tossed back as she let Shinobu’s pills work their magic, but she’d grown accustomed to it. Now, she craved the knowledge that he was thoroughly transfixed by her, because that meant at the very least, she was filling his thoughts while they were out almost as much as he filled hers every moment of the day, despite her efforts to numb him out of her life.

She’d confided her secret joy in Mitsuri, who’d conspiratorially promised her they would do anything and everything to drive the lilac-eyed man wild with desperation so that he might feel an ounce of the pining he’d shackled Y/N to feeling every time he so much as looked her way.

One night, a gaggle of them had gathered over in one of the Kizuki’s seated lounge areas as Shinobu pressed her Wisteria into their greedy, waiting palms. Sanemi’s eyes were locked on Y/N, as they usually were, as she’d exchanged a knowing glance with her pink-haired best friend and placed her pill beneath the heavy glass of her discarded drink and ground the violet pill into magic dust.

Eyes on Sanemi, Y/N delicately cupped the powder in one hand and brought her free fingers to the low bodice of her corseted top, tugging lightly on the strings to loosen it, inching it down lower to reveal the tops of the twin swells of her breasts, though stopping before she could be accused of exposing herself in public. She then turned her attention back to Mitsuri, her pink-and-green friend watching her with a sugary deviousness that made her stomach bubble with excitement.

Wordlessly, Y/N leaned back on the table, to the cheers and cat-calls of her friends, and she sprinkled some of the violet dust along the exposed top of her cleavage. Mitsuri leaned over her body, all vanilla perfume and pink hair tickling Y/N’s delicate skin as her friend held one nostril closed and inhaled every speck of the amethyst powder with the other. Y/N’s eyes rolled back into her head, and she let out a wanton moan beneath the black lights of the Kizuki, as her best friend kissed her collarbone in thanks.

Sanemi had gruffly excused himself for the bathroom and did not return for another five minutes. In his absence, Mitsuri had slyly let Y/N know that his eyes hadn’t once left her face throughout the entire vulgar exchange, much to her secret delight.

Y/N knew she was dancing closer and closer to the fire.

She knew that Sanemi wasn’t far from snapping, from losing whatever restraint he thought he had when it came to her, as she deliberately pressed each one of his buttons every time their group ventured out.

The next time he came close to breaking was when he saw another put his hands on her.

A hand gripped her ass, and Y/N turned and saw a man with long white hair and odd-colored eyes give her a wink. He was attractive, that was certain, but there was something predatory in his eyes that made her feel gross, so she moved closer to her circle of friends, keeping an eye over her shoulder.

Eventually, the strange man wandered off, and Y/N felt as though she could relax once more as she swung her hips to the beat thumping over the stereo strongly enough to make the dance floor vibrate. Shinobu held out a hand that Y/N eagerly grabbed, her friend twirling her as she laughed, carefree and alive beneath the resplendent rainbow of lights.

The song slowed to something more sensual, and Y/N was about to take her cue and move toward the bar when a hand grazed her upper arm.

Though it had been nearly two years since she’d last felt his touch, Y/N knew only one person capable of bestowing such a warm and gentle caress, even in spite of his hardened appearance.

Sanemi, to her eternal surprise, had made an appearance on the dance floor – his first if she remembered correctly.

His eyebrow was raised in question at her, and Y/N couldn’t help but appreciate he was asking permission to dance with her, rather than just sidling up and grinding on her like any other man would.

Sanemi looked so god damn handsome in that printed short-sleeve shirt. His sleeves had been cuffed to further show off his considerable biceps, and he’d left the top three buttons open, revealing his scarred but downright divinely toned chest. As he leaned in slightly, waiting for her permission, Y/N caught a whiff of his cologne, and it smelled like home.

Fuck it, she thought, her lips curving up into a siren’s smile as he stepped closer to her, bringing one large hand up to hold her waist as they began rocking to the beat of the music. Their foreheads were nearly touching as their bodies pressed closer and closer together, Y/N’s hips completely flush against his as they danced. Their noses brushed, and Y/N realized how dangerously close their lips had come.

Sanemi brought his other hand up to press against the small of her back, the one on her waist tightening slightly. Y/N looped one arm around his neck, her other hand coming to rest against his chest as they ground, Sanemi setting the pace perfectly in time with the beat.

Through her eyelashes, Y/N could see Sanemi’s amethyst gaze drop to her lips.

She knew she should pull away; she knew if she let him close the distance between their lips, she would also be closing the distance she’d spent so much time carefully crafting between her, and him, and even Kyojuro.

But Y/N also knew she couldn’t pull away, either; she’d waited, for so damn long, to know what his lips would feel like, and she was drunk and a little high, so the inhibitions that would normally have sent her running had long since been overshadowed by her unbounded want for him.

She felt his breath against her lips, and she closed her eyes.

Before she could finally achieve her lifelong dream of kissing Sanemi Shinazugawa, the music changed from the slow, sensual beat that they had been grinding to, to something louder, faster, and more exciting.

A scream grew louder as Mitsuri returned from heaving her guts up in the bathroom, and grabbed Y/N’s wrist, wrenching her from Sanemi’s grip and hauling her deeper into the dance floor to rave alongside her.

By the time Y/N was able to emerge from the surging crush of people dancing and raving, Sanemi was already back at the bar, leaning against it with his beer in hand, watching her.

She’d half expected him to look angry, but he only raised his drink at her, in toast.

The smirk that tugged on the corners of his mouth was full of promise.

—————————————————————————

Y/N supposed it was inevitable that this game of cat-and-mouse they’d been playing would end, and end like this.

She’d known where the night was heading the moment she showed up at the club in Mitsuri’s emerald green dress – the one she’d worn her very first time there in that strobe light palace – and saw his eyes darken from lilac to eggplant. Y/N felt the blazing heat of his stare in her bones even as she danced with her girls, could feel his magnetic pull as he watched her like a predator eyeing its next meal.

The more sober part of her was nervous, knew that she was about to cross a line she couldn’t walk back from. She knew that what was about to happen – giving her first time to Sanemi – would do nothing but exacerbate the poisonous love in her heart, but that part of her was so small, so feeble against the fire she felt in her blood as she approached the bar where he stood.

She pretended not to notice that he watched every move she made as she leaned over the ledge to order another shot. Only after the bartender placed the little glass in front of her, only after she tipped her head back and let the acid liquid slide down her throat, did she turn to meet his punishing gaze.

“You really should try joining in on the fun, Sanemi,” she kept her voice at a normal volume, forcing him to lean in slightly to hear her over the pulsing beat of the club music. She resisted the urge to close her eyes as the familiar whiff of his cologne hit her nose, the smell of a home and of a time before he ripped her heart out and stomped it to dust.

Sanemi smirked, and her stomach dipped at just how beautiful he looked, standing there below the pulsing glow of the lights. “I’m havin’ fun watching from here.” His lips were close enough to her ear that she shivered, gooseflesh erupting over her bare arms.

She wouldn’t let him know how much he still got to her, but she also couldn’t resist teasing him a little further, curious to see how far she could push him until he broke. She lifted her hand to pat the part of his chest he’d left exposed, his skin burning under her touch, as she made to pass him.

Sanemi snapped.

He grabbed her hand before she could pull it away and tugged her closer to him, knocking Y/N’s breath from her as he whirled her around and pressed her up against the dirty club wall to kiss her like she’d never been kissed before. He pinned the hand she’d had on his chest against the wall, over her head, while the other burned its imprint onto her waist. His kiss was demanding and hard, but Y/N was addicted to him. She brought her free hand to his neck, digging her nails in slightly to the sensitive skin to elicit a growl from him as he nipped her bottom lip.

Sanemi released the arm he’d pinned to the greasy club wall to hold the side of her face, tilting her head to he could deepen their kiss, his tongue sliding into her mouth to dance with her own. Y/N couldn’t control her body as she pressed into him, desperate to feel him against her, to feel him fill every empty part of her until she felt whole again. She knew she was dooming herself further, knew she was only setting herself up to fall harder than she already had, but she couldn’t stop because it was Sanemi, and she loved him.

She felt his growing hardness against her thigh, and she couldn’t stop her hips from grinding against him, heat pooling in her belly. Sanemi moaned into her mouth as her hips undulated against his, and Y/N felt herself go molten at the sound. She wanted to make him do it again and again, but Sanemi tore his mouth from hers before she could.

His chest was heaving, and his eyes were wild and dark as he looked at her. His eyes fell on her reddened, kiss-swollen mouth, and even in the dim light of the club, Y/N could see his pupils explode. He grabbed her hand, and suddenly he was tugging her through the crowded dance floor, through the groups of people near the exit, until they were outside, the night air cool on their overheated skin.

Together, they stumbled down dark, empty streets, though Y/N could not find it in herself to feel afraid, because Sanemi was there, and while he may not have cared about her enough to love her, he was still a gentleman who wouldn’t let her be hurt by anyone but him. They walked as she laughed because he kept stopping and pulling on her hand to kiss her again and again, as though he too, could not get enough of her.

Y/N didn’t know where they were going, but eventually, they arrived at an apartment complex, and it dawned on her that he’d brought her to his home. His lips were on hers the whole walk to his door, never breaking even as he fumbled for his keys. Sanemi finally unlocked the door and pushed her inside his dark apartment, kicking the door shut behind him.

Sanemi’s hands shot for her waist as he crushed her against him, his tongue licking the roof of her mouth. Y/N was sweaty and slightly sticky from the club, but the way Sanemi held her to him made her feel so god damn pretty like he’d been set adrift in a starless sea and she was his only lifeline. Sanemi’s hands moved from her waist to cup her ass, kneading her flesh as he moaned into her mouth again. His hands slid lower, grabbing her thighs to lift her up so her legs could wrap around his waist.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” she murmurs, her head tilted back as Sanemi’s lips laid claim to her neck, his hips pressing her harshly against the entryway wall of his apartment.

The snow-haired man groaned, his hands fondling the soft curve of her ass beneath her dress. “Then tell me to stop,” he whispered, his breath hot as his tongue teasingly traced across her collarbone.

Y/N whimpered as she tightened her legs around his hips, locking him closer to her. If he stopped then, she thought she would fall completely apart.

“Tch, just as I thought,” his teeth nipped harshly against her throat as Sanemi pulled back to look into her eyes. “You can’t.”

Sanemi set her down, but he did not pull away, instead kneeling before her to run his large, warm hands up the length of her calves before bringing them around to the back of her knees. He tapped each leg one at a time, signaling her to lift it slightly. With a jolt, Y/N was completely suspended in the air with both legs over his shoulders, as he buried his face into her cunt.

He did not even bother removing the flimsy, lacy thong she’d worn under her dress, choosing instead to bypass it entirely as his tongue dragged right up her slit. Y/N’s head smacked into the wall behind her as she moaned, and she couldn’t tell whether it was the Wisteria or Sanemi that had her seeing fractals of light behind her eyes. She found that she didn’t much care either way, however, because what Sanemi was doing to her felt fucking incredible.

Her fingers fisted in his hair as Sanemi fucked her with his tongue, his teeth grazing across her clit in time with his thrusts into her. He was groaning lewdly as he feasted upon her, eyes lifting every so often to meet hers, to ensure she was enjoying it as much as he was.

“I knew you’d taste fucking sweet,” he muttered as he broke for air, fingers digging firmly into her ass as he hauled her back onto his mouth. His tongue darted in and out of her folds, lapping up every drop of her essence that he coaxed out of her, before he dove right back into her entrance, forcing her to ride his tongue as she writhed above him. Y/N desperately sought to grab onto anything for purchase, so that she could grind harder against his face, but Sanemi had her pinned in the middle of the wall, rendering her helpless to let him tear her first orgasm from her, followed by another, and then another, never once lifting his mouth off her tender core.

Eventually, Sanemi decided he’d had enough, and he moved to carry her to his bedroom. Just after he tossed her onto his plush mattress, there was a moment before he pounced on her when Y/N could really look at him. The only source of light was from the full moon outside, casting everything in Sanemi’s bedroom in its silvery glow. The moonlight illuminated the soft platinum of his hair, made his lavender irises melt into precious gems of amethyst as he raked his eyes over her panting, blushing form. His gaze darkened at the sight of her dress strap, hanging off her shoulder, before dropping to the hem that has ridden up her legs.

Y/N barely had time to take another breath before he was on her again, almost ripping the fabric from her in his haste to get it off, to expose her.

“This fucking dress,” he growled in her ear, finally tugging the zipper all the way down and shoving it down her legs, chucking the flimsy material behind him.

She was almost bare to him, but he was still clothed, far too clothed. Y/N sat up and ripped his shirt, the buttons popping all over the bed while he smirked down at her. She couldn’t find it in herself to be embarrassed, however, because then his skin was touching hers, and it felt like heaven even if Y/N knew she was only descending deeper into hell.

Sanemi graced her lips with one more bruising kiss before beginning his descent down her body, and Y/N felt electrified under his touch.

His hot mouth first came to her bare breasts. “Fuck,” he whispered as he let his tongue trace the first of her mounds, swirling around her hardened nipple before letting his teeth nip gently at her. Y/N squirmed under his ministrations, the sensation foreign to her and yet somehow, it felt wholly right, that the first person to explore her body this way would be him.

Not that she would tell him, of course; she didn’t want him to hold back, she needed him to fuck her as though there was no tomorrow. If he knew it was her first time, he would slow, or perhaps insist on stopping altogether, given that they were both high, and she couldn’t have that.

Sanemi pressed his hips down against hers, pinning her against the mattress and stilling her movements as he took his time lavishing her breasts, covering her in small marks that he soothes with sweet kisses that were enough to get her utterly drunk on him. Y/N let out a high-pitched whine as she felt Sanemi grind against the mattress as he sucked on her other breast, his abdomen pressing deliciously against her aching cunt still covered by the lace of her thong, as she desperately swiveled her hips, eager for him to relieve her once more.  

Her desperation spurred his movement, as he detached himself from her breast with a low groan, resuming his descent down her body, pausing only to suck and nip at her stomach, before settling between her legs once more. Sanemi’s lips met the band of her thong and he growled, deep and guttural as he pressed his nose against her, inhaling deeply and letting his tongue flick out once more to lap at her wetness over the rough lace obscuring her from view.

Y/N was nearly sobbing from overstimulation, Sanemi having already ensured she’d finished on his tongue three times in the hallway. Now, she needed him to fill her, and quick, or else she thought she would combust.

“Sanemi,” she whined, and his eyes flicked back up to hers, dark with want. “Please, I need you.”

Her words had an instantaneous effect on the heaving man between her legs, because suddenly his body was covering her own, his weight pressing down on her, and his pants were gone, and he was slamming into her with a force that left her screaming and writhing against his soft sheets.

“Shit!” Sanemi snarled in her ear as his cock plunged into her dripping heat, so tight and so unaccustomed to the thick length now bullying in and out of her with abandon. “You’re so – ah – fuckin’ perfect.”

Y/N was sobbing on his mattress, but not from any discomfort. The combination of Sanemi’s body mixing with the Wisteria had utterly blurred out any pain or unease she felt at the intrusion of his rigid length into her core, and instead, Y/N felt herself shatter into a million pieces, only to be fucked back together again by Sanemi, who kept one bruising hand on her hip while the other ensnared itself in her hair as he thrust wildly in and out of her.

But she was not close enough for him. The silver-haired god above her pulled her legs over his forearms and braced his hands on her inner thighs to spread her wide as he pounded into her, leaning down into her face to make her blush, just like he used to do. Only now, instead of teasing her, he was whispering filth that had her turning scarlet and begging for more.

“Fuck, Y/N,” he grunted, his hips snapping in and out of her with a ferocity that left her breathless. "You've no idea –”

The speed with which he drilled into her propelled them up his bed, but Sanemi moved an arm to come between her head and the wrought iron of his bedframe, protecting her.

“You’re a fucking dream,” he snarled, sitting back on his knees as he began to bounce her against his groin, her breasts jolting with every forceful snap of his hips.

“Sanemi,” Y/N moaned, her back arching off his luxurious sheets as her legs tightened around his hips. Under his breath, Sanemi swore.

“Again,” he croaked, the sticky pap pap of his hips slapping against hers filling his room with the sweet music of their dance. “Say it again.”

Y/N could hardly process his demand over the sensual drag of his cock in and out of her needy walls, Sanemi’s movements chasing every breath from her and replacing it with him, as though there were some parts of her that remained untainted by him.

“Again,” Sanemi insisted, his groin pressing against hers as he ground against her, his rough base swirling over her aching clit demandingly, causing her legs to spasm around his hips.

“S-Sanemi!” Y/N howled as he lifted himself from the mattress by his knees, taking her hips with him as he suspended her half in mid-air and pounded relentlessly into her, rendering her incapable of making any other sound that wasn’t a devotional to him.

Through bleary eyes, Y/N looked to see Sanemi’s own gaze fixed on the way her mouth was frozen in a perfect “o” as he pulled moan after sigh from her throat with his hips, his fingers digging into the plush of her ass as he bounced her up and down his aching member again and again. Y/N arched her back even more, allowing him to hit deeper within her and she felt an unfamiliar pressure begin to build in her stomach.

It was similar to what she felt out in Sanemi’s hallway, beneath his tongue, but this time was different. Every push and drag of his cock into her syrupy wetness had her feeling electric like the lights of the Kizuki club were being strung beneath her skin and plugged in, and she was slowly becoming a beacon of light for the man chasing his own release above her. Her eyes rolled back into her head as that coil wound tightly, Sanemi’s name falling from her mouth like a plea as she begged him to let her fall apart in his arms.

Above her, Sanemi fared no better, as his hips began to jerk and press into her without the steady rhythym he’d so carefully built, a cacophony of snarls and moans pouring from his mouth along with the filth he muttered against her skin as he sucked harshly at her neck.

Sanemi readjusted his stance above her, his thighs pressing hers down into the mattress, and Y/N lost control.

“N-Nemi!” Y/N gasped as the unfamiliar coil in her belly suddenly unwound. She was far too overcome by her pleasure to recognize she’d accidentally used her old, affectionate nickname for him as she reached her peak.

But the slip did not go unnoticed by the snow-haired man rutting into her from above, as the moment the nickname fell from her lips in her haze, Sanemi’s own release followed, his seed barreling into her hot and fast as a pleasured cry of her name tore from his throat.

Sanemi’s hips rolled into hers for what felt like hours as he poured every ounce of himself into her greedy, demanding core, Y/N taking every drip of his cum. It felt exquisite, to have the man she’d so desperately loved for so long be reduced to such a mess by her body, and Y/N savored the way his warmth filled her, as though it were possible of bestowing life back upon her even though it was he who’d chased it away to begin with.

He collapsed atop her, finally spent and satisfied, an arm winding around her waist as he sleepily pressed a kiss into the juncture between her neck and shoulder. Sanemi rolled to his back, pulling her with him, and locking her against his chest as though they were lovers. But the combination of the night’s activities with the dwindling effects of the Wisteria had exhausted him, and it was not long before his chest began rising and falling in a steady pattern of sleep.

Y/N giggled quietly to herself, marveling over the fact that her tolerance for Shinobu’s Wisteria was apparently much higher than his. Under the moonlight, she found her dress puddled in a corner of his room and shrugged it back on, gathering her heels in one hand and locating her bag with the other. She turned back and looked at the sleeping face of the man who still held her heart and smiled slightly, before closing his bedroom door gently and taking off into the summer night.

There was a new ache between her legs, no doubt the product of having her virginity taken in such an enthusiastic way by the man she’d left sleeping in his apartment, though he was none the wiser. Y/N felt oddly satisfied, as though she’d achieved some lifelong goal, as the summer air caressed her face. As she stumbled down the night-warmed pavement back to her apartment, Y/N laughed, her chest feeling light and empty for the first time in a long while.

Want more angst? Smut? Pain? Stick around for part two and see shit literally hit the fan.

Likes, reblogs, tags, and comments are always appreciated!!

[thevegandarkelf]

Finding Myself, Finding You: Chapter Thirty-Four

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Story is 18+ for mature content/themes, minors do not interact please

TW/CWs for this story--implied/referenced past rape, canonical violence, non-canonical violence, blood, gore, referenced past suicide, swearing, surgery, excessive drinking, nightmares, panic attacks, mention of scars, vomiting, amputation, medical procedures, non-con medical procedures, referenced past medical torture, referenced past drugging, attempted sexual assault, panic attacks, mental health struggles, referenced sibling death, referenced parent death, PTSD

Each chapter will have its own TW/CWs listed

This story, Lydia Vector, her family & bestie (c) me, TheVeganDarkElf

TWD & its characters (c) AMC & Robert Kirkman, the writer of the comic series

TW/CWs for this chapter--swearing, discussion of scars

Word count: 5.9k

Daryl and I had our coffee together, and shared plenty more kisses, before he had to go relieve the overnight person from watch. I tried to return his vest to him, but he insisted on me wearing it for the day. Wanted me to “show these pricks what’s up” and “it looked better on me, so I should be the one wearing it anyway.” After he went and got changed, I met him at the front door, brushing his dark hair out of his eyes and fixing it so it looked a little less crazy.

“Gonna be hard bein’ away from ya all day after that,” Daryl said as he snaked his arms around my waist. I tugged him by the collar of his button-up and pulled him in for another kiss, this one a bit longer than the others.

“Will that hold you over ’til later?” I asked, dropping my eyes to the floor and blushing heavily. With the amount of time I’d spent blushing since I first walked through the front gates months ago, my cheeks might as well have just permanently stayed pink. He gave me another few soft, quick pecks before pulling me close for a hug.

“Now it will,” he replied. I couldn’t see his face, but I could hear the smile in his voice.

“Try not to miss me too much,” I joked, giving him a flirtatious wink as he went out the door. He should’ve been the one saying that to me. I was already aching to be back in his arms.

There was an extra pep in my step as I bounded upstairs to get dressed. Before my series of very fortunate events, I planned on just wearing a regular pair of shorts and a t-shirt with Daryl’s jacket. But now, especially knowing he had some kind of surprise planned for later, I decided to wear the beautiful sundress he’d gotten me all those weeks ago, back when we hardly knew each other. I put his vest over top of it and looked at myself in the mirror. I was glowing, the smile on my face stretching from ear to ear. I was a giggling mess as I went back downstairs, taking some deep breaths to regain my composure before stepping outside.

The leaves had almost fully changed colors now, beautiful shades of red and orange creating a stunning visual, the branches swaying in the gentle breeze. The sun had almost completely peaked over the horizon, and there were hardly any clouds in the sky. Lights were starting to come on in people’s homes as everyone began to awaken and get ready for the day. Alexandria was like a painting.

I promised Aaron I’d stop by and help him practice walking before spending my day in the infirmary. My plan was to hang out in there all day, and I’d let everyone know to just stop by if they needed anything. And I of course encouraged my friends to come by if they wanted to chat. I softly knocked on the front door, hoping they were awake and I wasn’t disturbing anyone’s sleep. After a few moments, Aaron answered the door, the scent of whatever he or Eric had been cooking wafting out.

“Mornin’,” I greeted in a sing-song voice.

“Well you’re awfully cheery this morning,” Aaron acknowledged, “I’m ready when you are. Figured we could walk circles around the community for a bit if that’s good with you.”

“Actually, could we maybe…go to the infirmary?’ I asked, gesturing to it over my shoulder.

“Uh, yeah, sure,” Aaron replied, looking puzzled, “do you need to check something?” I shook my head.

“No. I, umm, I need to talk to you. We can walk after, I promise,” I explained, practically stumbling over my words. My pink cheeks were quickly turning red. His eyes wandered down and grew wide when he realized what I was wearing, and a big, silly smile spread across his face.

“Ok, yeah. Yeah, we can go,” he agreed. He put his shoe on his good foot and came outside, taking my arm to balance as he closed the door behind him.

Once we got to the infirmary, I shut and locked the door. Everyone knew that when the door was locked, it meant I was with someone & to come back later. Y’know, doctor-patient confidentiality and all that.

“So I think I have…an idea as to what you wanna talk about, but what is it?” Aaron asked. I laid down on one of the infirmary tables, my arms folded across my stomach, and Aaron took a seat on the other one.

“It finally happened,” I said, unable to suppress the giggles any longer and gently kicking my feet on the table, “he asked if he could kiss me.” I could see Aaron’s goofy grin in my peripheral.

“And what did you say?” he asked, joy slipping into his voice. He knew damn well what the answer was.

“Dude, what do you think I said?” I responded, biting my lip to prevent myself from squealing with joy.

“Aah, that’s awesome!” he gushed, “I’m so happy for you! How was it?”

“Aaron, it was like a dream,” I said, staring up at the ceiling and smiling big again. I covered my face with my hands, turning blood red as I recollected the events of that morning. “I’ve been waiting for him to ask for weeks. My knees got so weak, I nearly collapsed. God it was…it was amazing. It was electric, it was perfect.”

“So would you say you two are official?” he asked.

“We didn’t talk about that. He’s supposed to be surprising me with something later.” I took my hands off my face and let my arms fall beside me, hanging off the sides of the table. “Maybe he’ll ask me then.”

“You two are joined at the hip,” Aaron said, “you’ve been practically dating for weeks now. He’d be silly not to.”

“I don’t know. He doesn’t seem like the type that’s into labels,” I sighed.

“Doesn’t matter. If he wants to be exclusive with you, he needs to tell you,” Aaron assured. The brotherly tone he used reminded of talking with my own brothers, and it warmed my heart.

“Yeah, you’re right. Oh my god, wait, I have more!” I exclaimed, throwing myself forward and sitting up on the table, folding my legs to the side. I brushed a hand through my hair to fix the frizzy mess. “So I have these pictures in my notebook. Most of them are of me with my family and friends, except for this one, which is a picture of me from a Renaissance festival in this beautiful blue gown. I look stunning in it, I won’t lie. Anyway, I showed them to Daryl weeks ago, and he dropped them all over the floor before giving them back to me. Well turns out, that was a clever little plan he concocted to steal the photo of me, and he’s been carrying it around in his vest this whole time.” I buried my face in my hands again, and adoration, joy, and giddiness swelled in my chest. It was so cute, it almost made me sick. “He fucking takes a picture of me out on the road with him!”

“Oh he’s in love with you,” Aaron gushed, that big, goofy smile returning to his face, “a hundred percent.”

“I think we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves now,” I said, “if he is, I don’t think he’s going to reveal that right away.”

Aaron and I took a few long, slow laps around the community, him using my shoulder or arm to balance himself as he walked. He’d been making great progress in terms of being able to walk on his prosthetic. He was still using the cane a lot of the time but had been practicing walking around his house without it. I was proud of him, both for his determination and the progress he was making.

After I got Aaron home, I spent the day in the infirmary. Rick came by at one point, and while he didn’t make a comment about me wearing Daryl’s vest, I knew he saw it based on the face he made. Other than a few people coming in, I was mostly doing some writing and rummaging through some old stuff I’d found that I somehow missed during my initial deep clean weeks ago. And to my surprise, I found a white coat tucked away in an old bin. It was blank, with no name stitched above the pocket. I was going to have to take it home and customize it. I never received my long white coat, so to find one filled me with an excitement that I couldn’t put into words.

After a long period of my head buried in my notebook, I looked out the window. The sun was starting to go down, and since I told everyone that I would be available until it started to get dark, I started to pack up my backpack. As I slung it over my shoulder, the rusty door creaked open, and Rosita came skipping in.

“Hi,” she greeted, “I don’t need anything. I just wanted to say hey. Are you going home now?”

“Hey girly,” I replied, “yeah, I was going to. If you want to stay and chat for a bit, I’m down.”

“No, it’s ok. I was going to go home anyway. I just wanted to stop by for a moment.” Her eyes wandered down to Daryl’s vest, and she lit up. “Umm, hey Vector…what’s that you’re wearing?” she asked, gesturing to my attire.

“What does it look like I’m wearing?” I sassed, biting the inside of my lower lip to contain my giddiness.

“Do you have an update to share?” she inquired.

“Maybe.” I let out a series of soft giggles and averted my eyes from hers as I started blushing. “This morning, he, umm, asked if he could kiss me,”

“Aah!” Rosita squealed, running over and throwing her arms around me for a hug, “finally! How did he do it? Tell me everything!”

In order for the context of the kiss to make sense, I had to explain the question I initially asked Daryl, and that would require explaining what happened a few days ago, which I didn’t want to get into. “He just asked me this morning. I got up before him, I was drinking coffee downstairs, he came down, and he asked. And holy shit, it was fucking magical.”

“Took him long enough,” she said, “I’m happy for you, dude. That’s so exciting!”

“Thanks.” I bounced my leg anxiously and looked past her to the door for a moment before looking back at her. “Could you do me a favor? Can you go see if Daryl’s home?” I requested, “he told me to not get home before he did.”

“Why’d he say that?”

“He has a surprise of some kind. Told me not to get home before him so I wouldn’t ruin it.”

“Like a…like a bedroom surprise?” she teased. It was like she was more excited for me to sleep with Daryl than I was. Rosita wasn’t aware of my history, so I couldn’t blame her for assuming that was the direction tonight could be going in. But I knew it wasn’t, and that’s exactly how I wanted it.

“Rosita, please,” I sighed, “could you just go check?”

“Ok ok, fine,” she said, holding her hands in the air as she walked over to and out the door.

I tapped my foot on the ground anxiously. The minutes she was gone felt like hours. She threw the door open when she returned, causing it to slam into the wall and startle me.

“He’s back,” she explained, and I let out a sigh that was both one of relief and nervous energy.

“Alright, I guess I’ll go home now,” I sighed, grabbing my bag once again and slinging it over my shoulders, taking the white coat I’d found and doing the same.

“You’ll have to tell me what happens,” she requested as she led us to the infirmary door and opened it for me.

“I don’t know why I’m so nervous,” I said, discreetly scratching at the side of my thumb with my index finger. Rosita stopped me and stood in front of me, putting her hands on my shoulders.

“You’re gonna be fine,” she reassured, giving me another hug, “you got this.”

“Thanks. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

I rubbed my arms as I walked back home, the cool October air nipping at my skin as the sun continued to set. Porch lights were coming on, and people were gathering in their homes for dinner. The door was unlocked, as it usually was, and I kicked my boots off and set my bag on the ground next to me.

“Hey Daryl, come look what I found,” I called out, taking his vest off and resting it on top of my backpack. I slipped the white coat on, the familiar feeling of that cotton-polyester blend on my skin soothing my anxiety like a blanket of comfort. It was a bit big on me, but not too bad. Better than it being too small, I suppose. The sleeves were a little long, and it hugged my body just a hair, which I was happy with. Happy tears welled in my eyes as I started to get emotional. Since the world had fallen before I completed my residency, I didn’t think I would see the day I got my long white coat. I just wished my family had been there to see me. Daryl came out from around the corner upstairs, probably from in his room.

“Well, look at that.” He wrapped his arms around my waist and picked me up, bringing me to eye-level and kissing me like it had been months since we’d seen each other, “ya became a princess after all."

It took a moment for me to understand what he was talking about, but then it clicked. The story about what made me first want to become a doctor, with the lady in the floral dress and the white coat who saved my brother’s life, who little 3-year-old me asked if she was a princess, and she said yes…I’d become the princess little me had dreamed of being.

“Well hello to you too,” I greeted, blushing and kicking my feet.

“How was ya day, sunshine?” he asked, giving me a kiss on the cheek.

“Not bad. Helped Aaron with his walking, saw some people,” I explained. I ran my fingers up the back of his neck and into his hair, scratching lightly at his scalp. “How was yours?”

“Borin’ as hell, which I guess is good. Coulda been worse. Been thinkin’ ‘bout ya all day. Was excited to get back.”

“Likewise.”

“Now c’mon, got something to show ya,” Daryl said as he set me back down, “g’on out back. I’ll be there in a sec.”

I took off my white coat and tossed it onto my backpack. I couldn’t be bothered to put my boots back on. I skipped out the front door and around the side of the house, the soft grass tickling my ankles. In all my time here, I’d never actually spent any time in the backyard. I preferred to be around Daryl or my friends, but when I did have alone time, I liked to stay in bed. After not having a bed for a year and a half, I wasn’t taking the one that I finally got for granted.

The backyard didn’t have anything in it, just a stretch of grass that led to some small trees. My blanket was laid out on the ground, and there was something small in the center. As I approached it, I realized that the small item was a glass mason jar filled with daisies.

I for sure thought my heart was going to explode.

I sat down on the blanket and took the jar in my hand, tapping my fingers on the glass. I caressed the soft petals with my fingers, careful not to tug on them so I didn’t pull them off on accident. I brought the jar to my nose and breathed in deeply, taking in the comforting scent the little flowers emitted. The scent of daisies was one of my favorites. A few minutes later, Daryl came around the side of the house and joined me on the blanket.

“Ya like ‘em?” he asked as he sat down next to me, scooting closer to close the space between us.

“Are you kidding? I love them,” I gushed, “this is so sweet of you.”

“Got somethin’ else for ya too,” he said as he reached into his pocket and pulled out some pieces of cloth, “put ya hands out.”

I looked at him, confused, but did as he instructed, setting the jar down and putting my hands out in front of me. He took one of the pieces and slipped it over my hand onto my wrist, then did the same with the other. They were little wristbands, made out of one of Daryl’s old bandanas that I often saw him use when he would work on his bike.

“Had Carol make ‘em,” he explained as he adjusted the one on my right wrist, “now ya don’t gotta look at ‘em all the time.”

He had wristbands made for me, out of one of his own bandanas, so that I wouldn’t have to look at my scars all day. That had to be the nicest thing anyone had ever done for me. In an instant, I was overcome with emotion, and I buried my face in my hands and started crying.

“Hey, are ya ok? Didn’t mean to make ya cry,” he soothed. He snaked an arm around my back and rested his hand on my hip, kissing me on the cheek.

“They’re happy tears,” I assured, taking off my glasses and rubbing my eyes with my fists, “it’s just so sweet, I’m so overwhelmed, but with happy feelings. Thank you. I love them. Seriously Daryl, you're incredible.” I wiped my cheeks with my hands, the tears still flowing freely, laughing softly. “God, I’m such a crybaby.”

“Just got a lotta emotions,” Daryl said as he used his sleeve to wipe tears from my cheek, “ain’t nothin’ wrong with that.”

A lightbulb flickered on in my head, and I had an idea. “I actually have something for you too,” I said before slipping my glasses back on. I gave him a kiss on the cheek before skipping back inside, grabbing my notebook and coming back to join him on the blanket.

“A few weeks ago, you asked if you could read something of mine. Well, this is why I never let you read anything,” I explained as I flipped through to find the page I was looking for, “practically everything before I arrived here is about…what happened. Everything from the last couple of months…is mostly about you.” It had gotten dark at this point, and while I hoped the lights inside would be enough for him to see, I hoped it was dark enough to conceal my flushed cheeks.

“Ya write ‘bout me that much?” he wondered.

“I’ve been writing about you since the day I got here. If I showed you how much there actually is about you in here, you might laugh at me,” I replied, continuing to rifle through the pages to find the exact one I was looking for. If I had thought of it ahead of time, I would’ve bookmarked it for easier access. But allowing Daryl to read a piece of my work about him was more of a last-minute decision.

“Nah, it’s cute,” he admired. I could see him watching me in my peripheral, meticulously eyeing every move I made.

“Here,” I said, holding it out to him, “I picked something for you to read.” He took my notebook, brushing his hand against mine as he did. “It’s a bit of a long one, but I think you’ll like it.”

I don’t think he’d ever say it, but I knew based on the look on his face that he was excited to finally be getting a peek at this notebook I spent so much of my time buried in. I watched his eyes scan over every word, the anxiety in the pit of my stomach beginning to make its way up the further he got.

Hi everyone,

So I made it to this community called Alexandria, and I met this guy. His name is Daryl, and I like him. A lot. Here's why I know you all would like him too.

Mom: He makes me happy, Mom. Like really happy. Like the way I imagine Dad made you feel. You would see him, lean over to me, and tell me you can see the sunshine radiating off him. You'd welcome him into the family with open arms. You'd be impressed with his knowledge of the local flora and show him your garden. You always loved showing people your garden. You'd offer to make him a few day's worth of food, and despite his protests, you'd do it anyway. "Everyone deserves a good home-cooked meal," you'd always say. You never let anyone leave the house without food.

Dad: Daryl is everything you taught my brothers a man should be--a protector, a confidant, a friend, a lover, and a good example. He's kind, compassionate, and sticks up for the little guy. He's a shoulder to cry on when you need one. Daryl's respectful, caring, loyal, and such a sweet soul. He claims not to have a way with words, but that doesn't matter because his actions speak for him. He doesn't care about things like what you look like or who you love. He just cares about whether or not you're a good person. He's truly one of the most stand-up people I've ever met. I hope you're out there Dad. I want you to meet him.

Preston: Being the oldest and the most protective of me, I know you'd have your reservations at first, but those would fade quickly. After your big-brother interrogation, you'd fall in love with him too. Sure, you'd let him know that if he ever hurt me, he'd have to deal with your wrath, but that's not something you'd have to worry about, and you'd know that. You'd see how happy he makes me and how well he treats me, and you would know I was safe. You always trusted my judge of character, so you'd know if I was bringing him around you, he'd have to be a good one.

Jay: Oh Jay, you and Daryl would be the best of friends. You'd bond over outdoor activities, maybe even go camping together. You'd have a drink together and take hunting trips and talk while you gutted your kills. Maybe get a little too drunk and share things you'd otherwise not. You had a habit of oversharing when you were drunk. Like Preston, you'd have to interrogate him a little, but you'd be nothing short of impressed. His sense of humor is very similar to yours, and I know you'd love that. You admired strong morals, and while the world has gone to shit, his moral compass hasn't. If you're out there Jay, maybe you'll get to meet him.

Eli: I know it would take you longer to warm up, being the shy one between the four of us. Once you did, you'd adore Daryl. You'd look up to him, see him like a brother. You were always about getting to know people on a deeper level, you sensitive soul, so you'd wanna get to know him and his interests. You'd show him your music and ask him to be your concert buddy when I couldn't go. Your favorite thing, though, would be his loyalty to his family and the people he cares about. You always admired that in people.

Kathryn: Oh bestie, I think this might be the one. Daryl's a gem, a true diamond in the rough. He's every woman's dream man--attentive, romantic (in his own way), an absolute sweetheart, loyal to death, the list goes on. He's the type that, in a normal world, would run out and get me tampons at 3am if I needed them. Not to mention, he's incredibly handsome. He's so hot, dude. Like I almost don't know what to do with myself. He's a bit shy with a hard exterior, but once you crack that wide open, that's when he really shines. You were such an extrovert, so you'd enjoy watching Daryl come out of his shell as you got to know him. But most of all, you'd love how happy I am with him. He makes me really happy, Kathryn. And he makes this scary world a little less scary to be in.

When he was finished, he ran his fingers over the edges of the paper, tapping it lightly. I tilted my head to get a better look at his face. He looked like he was trying to suppress a big, goofy smile, but a little bit of it broke through. The look on his face indicated positive feelings, but his lack of response worried me. What if he hated it and was trying to figure out how to tell me? Or what if he was laughing at it because it was stupid? I didn’t know which was worse.

“So…what do you think?” I asked. The nerves and anxiety were obvious in the shakiness of my voice.

Rather than responding with words, he set my notebook on the ground in front of him. He looked at me with a longing and adoration I’d never seen before, and he lightly bit his bottom lip. Daryl interlocked his fingers on the nape of my neck, careful not to tug on my hair, and brought his lips to mine. It was fucking electric, the sparks dancing between us causing my lips to tingle. He tenderly massaged the area behind my ears, and I couldn’t stop myself from smiling like an idiot into our kiss. He rested his nose and forehead on mine as he pulled away.

“Does that answer ya question?” he asked.

Sure, we were tucked away in a dark backyard, most of the community in their homes minding their own business, but for Daryl to show this type of affection in a semi-public setting was…riveting.

“Yeah,” I giggled.

“I love it,” he beamed as he continued to massage the sensitive area behind my ears, “thanks for sharin’. Could…could I maybe keep it? Or could ya write one for me?”

“I had a feeling you might ask me that.” I leaned past him to grab my notebook from its spot on the blanket. I tore along the edge, removing the paper from its spiral binding and handing it to him. “Yes, you can keep it.”

“Add it to the collection,” he joked as he folded it up and slipped it into his pocket.

I took my notebook and started to flip back several pages. “Do you wanna hear the very first thing I ever wrote about you?”

“Hell yeah.” He put one arm around my back, the other under my legs, and scooped me up into his lap, crossing his legs. He wrapped his arms around my waist and rested his head on my shoulder. I went back too far and flipped forward a few pages before finding my first entry since arriving at Alexandria. My first entry about Daryl.

“Well, I did it. I finally found Alexandria. No sign of Jay though. Hopefully that means he traveled south to Florida to find Dad. But there’s someone else here. When I showed up at the gates with the man whose foot I’d hacked off on my shoulder, I was knocked out and woke up in a little cell. There was a man with a crossbow aimed at me, but that wasn’t the first thing I noticed about him. The first thing I noticed was his voice. It’s—“ I paused, chuckling and blushing a little as I read ahead. “God, did I really write that? Anyway, it’s nice and gravely, and I like it. A lot. The way he called me sunshine gave me butterflies. Then I noticed how handsome he was. Surely someone that gorgeous had to be off the market, but I guess he’s a free man. His name’s Daryl, and we’re sharing a house. I don’t think he likes me all that much. Hopefully, he’ll eventually be able to at least tolerate me.”

“Definitely more than just toleratin’ ya now.” He was drawing small shapes up and down my spine with his fingers, switching between circles and swirls and shapes that I was now certain were hearts. “When ya got here, definitely thought ya’s married.”

“Why’d you think that?” I asked, confusion lacing my voice, “I never had a ring on or anything.”

“Have ya looked at yourself? Any man’d be crazy not to wife ya up.”

“Said the same thing about you,” I echoed, holding my notebook up and flashing the entry I’d just read him before tossing it on the blanket next to me. “What did you want to show me?”

“Look up,” Daryl said as he craned his head to the sky. I mimicked him, tilting my head up as well.

It was almost pitch black now, the only light coming from the ones on in our house and the ones next to us, and there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky, giving the stars a chance to, for lack of a better phrasing, really shine. The sky was decorated with them, each one twinkling like glitter. Growing up in a small town, I spent lots of nights in our backyard, staring up at a cloudless sky filled with stars. After moving to a big city for medical school, those nights became few and far between, and they were an experience I savored when I visited my hometown. After the world fell, my sole focus, like everyone else’s, was survival, so I never bothered to take a moment to appreciate the scenery of wherever I was. But now, I was in a walled-in community, and it was safe enough to kick back and look at the stars.

“Whoa.” It came out as a soft, breathy whisper. I was in complete awe, hardly able to speak. Funny to see ya speechless since ya talk so damn much, Daryl would probably say.

“North star’s up there,” he explained, pointing up to a particularly bright little star, “little dipper comes off it. Follow it down—“ he drew an invisible line with his finger as he pointed from one star to another “—and ya get the big dipper.”

“It’s like us.” I was smiling big, and despite not looking at Daryl’s face, I knew he was looking at me with a confused expression on it. “Y’know, like big spoon, little spoon. One of these nights, I’m gonna treat you to being the little spoon. Trust me, you’ll love it.”

There was silence between us for a bit as we admired the stunning sight above. It was like someone had taken fairy dust and sprinkled it across the sky, each little flicker of a twinkling star causing my eyes to dart around to keep up. I was in awe.

Of course, I couldn’t look up at a night sky full of stars without thinking about my dad. It comforted me to know that, if he was alive, whether that was up in space or down here on Earth, we were looking at the same view. Daryl’s beautiful voice pulled me from my dissociation.

“Hey Lydia?” My name sounded so sweet when it dripped off his lips like that. “As much as I like watchin’ ya get all excited ‘bout the stars, ain’t the only reason I brought ya out here. There’s somethin’ I wanna ask ya.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?” I wondered. Like I didn’t know exactly what he was about to ask me.

He shifted a bit, putting his hands on the ground behind him to lean back and balance himself. It was difficult to make out his facial features with how dark it was, but it looked like he was biting his lip anxiously. If he was going to ask what I thought he was going to ask, he had nothing to be anxious about. I’d never heard Daryl’s voice shake when he talked, unless it was shaking in anger, but he was nervous, and it was obvious in his voice. “Was wonderin’ how ya’d feel if I…if I started callin’ ya my woman.”

I was over the goddamn moon.

“Daryl, my sweet, are you asking me to be your girlfriend?”

He shifted more, and the anxiety radiating off of him was palpable. “Guess I am.”

Every ounce of joy, excitement, giddiness, enthusiasm, and happiness my body was capable of experiencing flowed through my veins, replacing every drop of blood, all of which was gathering in my cheeks. My heart rate skyrocketed, and I could practically feel my pupils dilating. I was grinning ear-to-ear so hard that my jaw was already beginning to ache. Every square inch of my skin was tingling in the most magical way.

I leaned into Daryl, our lips colliding before I could even close my eyes. My hands wandered up the back of his neck and into his hair, delicately twirling those dark chocolate locks around in my fingers. My big, silly smile broke through, causing me to laugh into our kiss and elicit a little smile from him in return.

Every kiss with Daryl was nothing short of absolute magic.

“Does that answer your question?” I replied, tickling the tip of his nose with mine.

The excitement and happiness were quickly overshadowed by anxiety, the butterflies in my stomach being swallowed whole by intense feelings of guilt. All I could think about was the one thing I might not be able to do for him, or if I could, not for a long time. I bit the inside of my lower lip and looked down, hanging my head in shame as my arms fell around his neck. “I, umm, I just have some…concerns. Regarding…uh…”

My voice trailed off, and I couldn’t even form the words. Sex, Lydia, just say it, I thought, you’re a doctor, just say it. Thankfully, I didn’t have to worry for long, as Daryl seemed to know the exact direction I was going in.

“Hey.” He had the softest, most reassuring tone to his voice. He took my face in his hand, stroking my cheekbone with his thumb and doing that thing with his eyes again, where he looked deep into my soul, past all of the trauma and the bullshit. It made me weak in the knees in the best way. “Take all the time ya need. Ain’t goin’ nowhere just ‘cause of that.”

Not that I thought he would, but it was nice to be reassured anyway. And coming from someone as honest as Daryl, I knew it was true.

“Remember the other night when we were talkin’ ‘bout rememberin’ things the other person said?” he asked, and I nodded, “I remember when ya’s pukin’ after drinkin’ too much and said ya could kiss me at that moment.” It may have been dark, but I was blushing so hard, I was confident my cheeks were glowing & he could see it.

“Damn,” I sighed, “was hoping you’d forgotten about that.”

“The first time ya talked ‘bout wantin’ to kiss me? Ain’t never forgettin’ that,” he cooed, pulling me in for another long, tender smooch.

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Divider found on Google via searching for stock images

[hollowwhisperings]

Jojen is Fine, Actually: "Weirwood Paste" is Weirwood Paste.

CW: humanitarian diets, body horror, general blasphemy, mention of grooming (in the context of creepy tree wizards).

Okay so my being a HUGE Jojen (& House Reed in general) fan gives me an Obvious Bias against the idea of Jojen Dying Offscreen.

My being a huge literary nerd & lore geek, however, informs my Metaphor Senses that Jojen is Fine*, Actually.

The "Weirwood Paste" is Weirwood Paste: made of weirwood seeds, locally sourced. Said "Local Weirwood Tree" being. Y'know. Brynden Rivers.

It's Brynden Paste.

(*Fine: chronically ill, majorly depressed, freezing cold, surrounded by creepy tree people, stuck in a zombie wasteland, if he ever goes home he Dies, repeatedly dreaming of his own death... but, at least, Not Dead nor Being Eaten by the Prince of his Dreams? He's "Fine".)

First and foremost: storytelling conventions, even in a series as "deliberately unconventional" as ASOIAF, tend to tell audiences that NO ONE is genuinely "dead" until you see a body. And personally check its pulse. And test for rigor mortis. And maybe stab them in a lethal place, jusr to be Sure. And then burn the body, scatter its ashes, send couriers off in different directions to hide what remains in Remote Places never to be known of by the other couriers. Maybe Silence the couriers if they come back.

Er, you get the picture.

Most subscribers to "Jojenpaste" are in it for the lolz or assume The Worst due to Jojen's non-presence in the latest Bran chapters (aaand Jojen's being Very Permanently Dead in That Dragon Show). It's also an "easy" assumption that Since GRRM Is GRRM, any & all opportunities for Humanitarianism will be fully utilized.

Except... the weirwood paste is ALREADY "made of people" just because it's Weirwood (specifically, weirwood seeds) and the series has consistently described weirwood trees as "[human]".

Weirwood have "bone white" bark; they have Faces carved into them; they "Watch" and "Listen" and "Witness": this is consistent across POV characters, even before Jojen casually brings up "oh they're what Greenseers Become" or any meetings with a Literal Tree Man.

Weirwoods are described in human terms, doing human things, and at least 1 major character has been directly equivicated with Weirwoods for Plot Purposes: Ghost the Direwolf (and wolves, of course, are consistently used to mean "someone of House Stark" and the Starklings especially).

Then there is The Creepy Tree Man in the room: Brynden Rivers, called "Three-Eyed Raven" by Bran and Jojen (for that was how their Dreams interpreted him) or "The Last Greenseer" by the Singers (...despite BRAN very pointedly Being There To Prove Otherwise).

Brynden is also, as mentioned, a Tree Now.

A Weirwood Tree.

Y'know. Like the ones whose seeds make the Paste Bran's been eating.

So, unless the Singers have been sneaking about in Others' Territory to collect seeds from a different weirwood tree... that Paste is made of BRYNDEN.

Bran being fed "Brynden Paste' while Brynden Indoctrinates Teaches Bran to be a Tree Wizard makes far more sense, logistically & thematically, than Jojen getting shanked offscreen to belatedly be revealed to be "part of Bran all along".

For one thing, Meera would gladly set the Cave & everyone in it on fire if anyone so much as looks at her baby brother suspiciously. For another, Brynden is Right There for the eating & is filled with all sorts of Prophecy Juice: he's a Blackwood, he's a Targaryen, he's a Royal Bastard, he was an Infamous Spymaster with "A thousand eyes and one", he's done weird sacrifice BS before, he's a Greenseer (Jojen "only" has Greensight), he's a Living God (as per Singer & First Men Lore), the Cave Cult is trying to turn Bran INTO him...

There is a lot more "logic" to Bran's Magic Lessons featuring his knowingly (subconsciously, at least) eating Brynden than his secretly eating his friend. Human sacrifice tends to require Knowledge of the cost being paid & being Willing to do it anyway: Bran might be too tripped up on Paste to consciously connect the "Weirwood Paste" he eats with "that Human Weirwood Tree i'm sitting next to" but the Singers explicitly tell Bran the Paste is made from Weirwood Seeds. Bran "knows".

Godeating (metaphoric & literal) is a trope that is most commonly found in JRPGs, nowadays, but it has Precedent throughout western mythology: the Titan Kronus ate each of his children as they were born, Zeus alone escaping, in an effort to Dodge Prophecy; Zeus inherited Said Prophecy and, being his Father's Son, ate his first wife. The details of the Titanomachy (the War against the Titans by their reasonably upset kids) are Lost but Zeus, at least, gained all his Wife's Wisdom (& her pregnancy too) after eating her: Athena may or may not have Taken It Back upon breaking out from her Eaten Mother & Dear Old Dad.

Consuming something in order to "become" what is eaten is Fairly Common, if not with that specific phrasing: vampires seldom explain their reproduction as "eat me to become me", whilst the adorable Nintendo character Kirby & his method of Powering Up via Playing Vacuum, is Rephrased out of Sheer Self-Preservation (no one, not even I, likes to admit that The Cute Pink Blob is an Eldritch Abomination). Many JRPGs & works in eastern media use similar themes of "monster eats monster" and "let's eat god" for the purposes of High Stakes Action. Japan & East Asia has a lot less "baggage" when it comes to utilizing themes from Abrahamic verse, meaning that western works using themes of [consuming the divine] and [apotheosis] use Vampire Methodology. Such is the case in the Dragon Age series & its Order of Grey Wardens (who are, From A Certain POV, dragon god vampires).

Within the ASOIAF series itself, Dany's eating a horse heart (raw) has Humanitarian Themes in service of Prophecy and [Divinity]: the horse heart to the Dothraki, a society of horselords, could be what weirwood seeds are to First Men (especially given Jojen's whole "btw, the trees are gods are former greenseers").

Brynden & the Cave's Singers (whom I dearly hope are some long-exiled Cult & not reflective of Singers as a whole) are not particularly subtle in their Intentions for Bran: he is to be their New "Last" Greenseer. Bran is to Become Brynden or Brynden is to Become Bran: either and possibly both are plausible, though how compliant with the Singers' goals Brynden may be has yet to be revealed.

(the Brynden of F&B and D&E strikes me as someone who would gladly bodysnatch some poor kid for his own Agenda: the Singers seem unlikely to support fire-breathing foreigners, not without a Contingency Plan; somewhat likely to want Bran for the purposes of installing a Tree Hivemind Police State; and maybe, possibly... "just" wanting a Second God for their Cult in Bran, who probably Smells Better).

SUMMARY

Weirwoods are Personified in almost every appearance. Weirwood Trees are considered Gods. Jojen (& some Singers) have stated that the Next Evolutionary Phase of a Greenseer is "Weirwood Tree". Brynden "the Last Greenseer" is part of a Weirwood Tree.

Brynden & the Singers are Turning Bran Into A Weirwood Tree.

Bran's current diet is Tree Paste. His magic teacher, Brynden, is Part-Tree. The Nearest Tree to make Paste from is Brynden. The Paste is made of Brynden.

(Let's NOT think too hard on which parts of Brynden: I've only gotten this far in this Meta by using "Hunanitarian" as a pun.)

Eating Gods to Become A God is an existing Trope. Brynden is a God, by Singer & First Men definitions. Bran is being Groomed to Become Brynden, a God. To Become Brynden, Bran must Eat Brynden.

TL;DR

The Weirwood Paste is Weirwood Paste and Brynden is the Weirwood: the Paste is not "Jojen", it's BRYNDEN.

Jojen is Not Paste: Jojen is Alive but Not Well & Very Depressed.

[advertingpizza]

What’s the lore behind Sykobe & Waves? I must know all there is to know about them :0

i had a whole draft i was working on throughout the day and lost it in the last 5 minutes of finishing a heated wii sports golf match 🤠

i've had a few asks for sykobe so i'll just use this as a single reply. you ask, i deliver. context, a lot of togruta society is a headcanon that i can explain in a later post.

also i love answering stuff like this!! i could talk about by boys all day long

cw for bad parenting and non graphic limb amputation

Sykobe Eyros is a 24 year old bounty hunter hailing from the Togruta clan Rivalke based on the abyssal planet Yxoha. Born to clan lead and force sensitive parents Sycante and Nalake, Sykobe and his older sister Neyti were both brought into the Jedi Order at a young age. Due to their unique background, both siblings had experience being involved in their cultural traditions, making them potential competitors for the throne. Sykobe's father, Sycante, constantly saw this as a threat to his leadership and actively sought to get both of his children dispelled from the Order by ensuring their training was ruthless and impractical.

While Sykobe survived far into his Padawan years , his sister succumbed to an unfortunate spinal injury after being ambushed by an alleged Sith. Sykobe always knew that his father ultimately played some role in what had happened with his sister, yet there was nothing he could do to prove involvement to the Order. Shortly after this time, Sykobe was left to complete his trials for knighthood, in which he was left in charge of the 307th Special Operations legion under the command of Alpaha-40, better known as Waves. With the aid of his newfound unit, he successfully completed his Jedi trials after running a successful rescue operation to save his master, Ezo Rizi. During this specific mission, Sykobe unknowingly tanked a blaster shot straight to his chest that penetrated his armor, leaving him with permanent damage to his heart. Thanks to the quick decision of Captain Waves to board another Jedi's Venator without permission, Sykobe was gotten into a bacta tank to heal a majority of his wounds.

Later into the Clone Wars, Sykobe was once again cleared for duty, relying on the use of a modified BD unit to administer a special medication that allowed him to remain in the field without risking death from his prior injury. He was quick to reunite with his legion, of which he began to treat like family. During this time, Sykobe's loyalty to the Republic began to falter as he uncovered a corrupt plot between his father and a Sith scientist, but no amount of hunting could get him the proof he needed. Instead of breaking his back to save a government that refused to protect him, Sykobe decided to expend his time by protecting each member of his legion. It was during this time that he unexpectedly began to foster a relationship with clone captain Waves after a shared recovery process following an orbital bombardment gone wrong. This was also around the time Sykobe and Waves decided to adopt two abandoned Togrutan children, Paka and Loha, as Sykobe was sworn to protected them under his clan's tradition.

Time was not in Sykobe's favor. Only a few months after settling into a position on the outer rim to avoid any run-ins with his father's fleet, Sykobe and the 307th were dispatched to locate 3 missing Destroyers. 2 of the 3 were presumed lost in deep space, whereas the 3rd orbited a small rocky planet far from charted space. In a freak accident where the group uncovered a very early prototype of the later Project I71A, Sykobe was overrun by infected reanimated corpses while evacuating his legion. He and his small squad were able to escape, although Sykobe sustained a mortal wound to his right leg. Not wanting to lose the only general that ever cared about them, Waves, as well as the other clones belonging to the small team, unanimously agreed to amputating Sykobe's leg to save his life. Trace amounts of the virus remained in his blood, yet it was not enough to severely inhibit his day to day life.

The remainder of the Clone Wars was quick. A final encounter between Sykobe and his father Sycante resulted in a duel to the death. With Sykobe's loyalty to the Republic already faltering, as well as his horrible lived experiences at the hands of his father, he did not hold back as the two initially dueled for leadership of the clan. Unfortunately, Sykobe had been blindsided by a second lightsaber wielded by his father that slashed across his stomach. Standing before the entirely of his legion, Sykobe was pushed off a cliff into a bottomless ravine as his father stood tall, claiming the victory for killing his only son. Months later, Order 66 rolled around. Despite Waves and the other Alpha-class troopers in the 307th being completely resistant to the order, all 4 of them at the time very religiously ambushed Sycante, executing him in cold blood for what they considered to be the only acceptable revenge.

Alpha-class ARC Trooper A-40, known as Waves by his brothers, is a special operations captain within the 307th legion. Born in the very beginning round of clones far before the creation of his quicker aging Beta brothers, Waves had the luxury of being trained by Jango Fett and the Mandalorians as many of the Alphas had been. Being unaltered, he and the rest of his batch, consisting of Alphas 41, 42, 43, 44, and 45, appropriately dubbed the 40 squad, all specialized in performing high stakes operations as well as injecting in multiple combat scenarios in order to turn the tides of the war.

Like many of his Beta counterparts, his first significant battle was upon Geonosis, where he very quickly learned that no matter how good he and his brothers were trained, many of the normal clones were painfully inexperienced and unfortunately, even if he tried, he could not save them all. This very quickly led to his distain for the Jedi Order, as he happened to have striking amounts of independence and self awareness when it came to the overarching reality of his purpose.

After serving his purpose as a special operations leader for many months, he and the legion he had led were eventually appointed a Jedi General. At first, hearing about the news that there would be a Padawan, he and the rest of the 40 squad were all appalled, seeing as a literal child on the battlefield would be no better than his undertrained brothers. Though his concerns held very real truth, he found that as a means of keeping his small team of Alpha troopers and the normal troopers they had adopted along the way together, the only option was to accept being under a general or else they would all be effectively disbanded and reassigned. This led to Waves working as a captain under Pantoran Jedi General Ezo Rizi, alongside his wild and disobedient Togrutan Padawan Sykobe Eyros.

In his first mission alongside his new general to apprehend a shapeshifting criminal responsible for stealing a holocron, Waves ended up getting tackled off a hill and stuck in an underground Separatist bunker after Sykobe unknowingly took a blaster shot that would've otherwise taken his life. Even though the Padawan was injured, the two were able to escape the bunker through a cavern encasing it by relying on Sykobe's echolocation. The two shared a brotherly bonding moment on the field shortly after escaping once Sykobe quite literally saved Waves from being eaten alive by the shapeshifter. Later finding out about the grave injury the Padawan had sustained, Waves slowly began to form a protective bond with the Togruta that put everything on the line for him, a feature he had not once observed in any other Jedi.

By now, Waves and Sykobe had become a relatively formidable force, as the young Jedi ascended to knighthood and inherited control of the legion. Almost every day, Waves and Sykobe spent hours training drill after drill, as they both shared the same passion for protecting the clones that served alongside them. Many battles later, the 307th found their way onto Kavado in a large offshoot conflict as a direct result of the slaves from Shili being rescued by the Republic. Waves and the 40 squad, as well as their adopted members ARC troopers Loch and Boulder, as well as a squad medic dubbed Tide, were assigned to evacuating a base while Sykobe investigated a trail of explosives that was far too coherent to have been planned out by a droid.

Unfortunately, Waves lost one of his own, Alpha-45, better known as Mesa, after he self sacrificed to save the rest of the squad from getting stuck in a collapsing building. Alpha-43, nicknamed Click, took a shot to the thigh while the baby of the squad Tide dropped limp after taking a shot to his helmet. Suffering heavy losses, Waves called in a desperate request for Republic backup after realizing that they had been sent straight into an ambush. All the while, Sykobe uncovered a Sith masterminding the attack and engaged him in a duel, catching the attention of the incoming fleet commanded by Jedi Master Sycante Eyros, a feared and dangerous force when it came to clone standards.

Instead of receiving the backup they had requested, a nearly impossible evacuation notice came as the Jedi Master's fleet prepared for an orbital bombardment on the entire outpost, an act that would cost an unfathomable loss of life. Waves attempted to detest the decision, as not only were many clone lives at risk for the possibility of killing one Sith, but a Jedi was in the middle of it all. Yet, the Jedi Master from above refused to withdraw his order for the sake of exterminating the Sith, although it became increasingly obvious that his only real purpose was trying to make the death of his son seem like an accident.

Although he ended up caught in the middle of an intense cultural drama between leading father and challenging son, Waves was lucky to escape the ordeal with his life. After running into the field to help escort his wounded brothers to safety, he got caught in the heart of the bombardment. His armor saved his life long enough for Sykobe to find him after the battle, in which the young Jedi used what he could of the force to stabilize the captain. During this shared moment as the two of them sat alone in the battlefield, it seemed that a deeper passion than just friendship fueled Sykobe's motives as he restlessly tended to Waves' wounds. Though Waves hadn't ever really had the luxury of being in love, he knew almost instantly after rousing from his state of unconsciousness that something about the Jedi lingering over him was far too important to ignore.

The first kiss was extremely out of the blue as Waves and Sykobe thought they both lost each other. Time only began to fly after that. It took a few more weeks, but after a rescue mission to save more Togrutas that had been taken into slavery and rescuing to Clan Rivalke children, Waves and Sykobe both came to realize their feelings for each other. Behind closed doors, the two would fantasize about a life after the war, thinking about all of the possibilities when it came to raising their family far, far away. Sykobe always spoke about a planet deep in an abyss that he grew up on, yet the idea always seemed horribly farfetched. Alas, it was a fun thought that always kept the two entertained as they survived day by day in the corrupt Republic. It was an honor at one point, as Waves had been trusted enough by Sykobe to be made an honorary member of his clan, allowing the two to become a pair mated for life by Togrutan tradition.

Losing Sykobe to his vicious father was the turning point that left Waves' heart shattered. Left with the two children and his squad to protect, Waves was on a quest for blood the moment Order 66 hit. While he had the independence to resist it, he sought retribution for what had happened to his fallen lover. Being trained in just about any scenario possible, there was no escape for Sycante as Waves and the 40 squad passionately hunted him down, ending his life with a blaster shot to the back of his montrals. Within hours, Waves and his entire squad defected, leaving for the promised safe haven Sykobe had always gone on about years in the past.

Two years passed since the loss of Sykobe. Waves had settled down in a small village on Yxoha with his small squad of clones, as well as Pantoran Jedi Jaira Rizi, who had come to trust Waves following the loss of her husband Ezo, who had formerly commanded Waves' legion. The two had come to share a soft love for each other, as they had both lost a lifelong partner to the war. Being together was healing, yet it could not replace the pain of losing the Togruta he had quite literally paired to for life. Yet, through some strange combination of luck and hopefulness, in the middle of the night, Sykobe simply showed up. Nobody really ever knew how, or why, but he was there again, and that was all Waves needed.

[mthofferings2023]

nostalgicatsea

See nostalgicatsea’s existing works here and here.

Preferred contact methods: Tumblr: nostalgicatsea Twitter: nostalgicatsea Discord: nostalgicatsea

Preferred organizations: - Médecins San Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) - Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) - Transgender Law Center - Waterkeeper Alliance - World Central Kitchen (See the list of approved organizations here)

Will create works that contain: Tropes/elements: character studies, angst, soulmates, slow burn, mutual or one-sided pining, self-sacrifice, amnesia, time travel, reincarnation, fake relationship, relationship of convenience, hurt/comfort, de-aging, dream world, presumed dead, temporary or permanent death, post-breakup, getting together, getting back together, post-Infinity War to post-Endgame, substance abuse and recovery, grief/mourning, parental/child and mentor/mentee relationships, friendship over the years, Tony’s family issues, dark Steve, pre-serum Steve, Hanahaki, hauntings, betrayal, forgiveness AUs: canon-divergent, mafia/gangster, magic, sports, non-powered, high school or college, supernatural, horror, sci-fi, etc. I love AUs! For writing, I tend to focus on one specific moment or a series of small moments, feelings, and relationships more than action-packed plots.

Will not create works that contain: I’m up for most things except some extreme kinks, incest, adult/minor romantic relationships, and infidelity or partner abuse in a ship (unless you're referencing a canon plot point). I'm fine with infidelity and abuse involving a villain as long as it's not OOC. I don’t have any triggers. If you want me to elaborate on my do-not-wants or have a trope, kink, or plot point that you’re not sure I’ll be okay with, please contact me beforehand. Betaing: A/B/O, D/S, OOC, PWPs, OCs, self-inserts, pure fluff without plot, Darcy-centric fics, Hydra character-centric fics, unbalanced CW plots. I’m not that fond of coffeeshop AUs, but I can help with them Writing: A/B/O, D/S, poly, comedy, complicated plots, crack, 100% pure fluff/domestic plots, kidfic (unless it’s canon), AUs that require a lot of specific knowledge (e.g., historical AUs or military AUs), reality TV AU, zombie AU, animal transformation, unbalanced CW plots, Hydra Steve

  -- Fic or Other Writing --

Auction ID: 1145

Will create works for the following relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark - AvAc, MCU, Noir Bruce Banner & Clint Barton & Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark & Thor - MCU Miles Morales & Miles Morales - Earth-42, Spider-Verse (animated films)

Work Description: This fic will probably be 1.5–3k. It’s possible that it may end up longer as has been the case before, but I can’t make any promises. It might take me a while to finish it as I’m slow at writing and RL keeps me busy, so please keep that in mind when bidding. I’m very interested in writing canon-compliant fics or fics set in canon, especially ones that act like snapshots of the characters at a specific time in their lives or a character/relationship study. I do love AUs as well, but I’ll only write AUs for Steve/Tony for this auction. I would appreciate it if you gave me several prompts, both general and specific, to choose from as that will increase the likelihood of the story being finished faster and lessen the likelihood of me getting writer’s block. If you have any questions about what I will and won’t write, don’t hesitate to reach out to me! I’d also like it if you reached out to me before bidding if you’re thinking of forming a pod bid.

Ratings: Gen, Teen

Can pods bid on this auction? Yes - Podbids welcome!

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-- Beta Service --

Auction ID: 2072

Will create works for the following relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark - Any Universe Bucky Barnes/Sam Wilson - MCU Iron Man fandom any gen - 616, AvAc, MCU Captain America fandom any gen - 616, AvAc, MCU Avengers fandom any gen - 616, AvAc, EMH, MCU Shang-Chi fandom any gen - MCU Black Panther fandom any gen - MCU Black Widow fandom any gen - MCU Ms. Marvel fandom any gen - 616, MCU Spider-Man fandom any gen - Earth-42, Spider-Verse (animated films)

Work Description: I can help with SPaG/copyediting, flow/structure, continuity, and America-picking, and I particularly love discussing characterization, world building, plot, and character development. I love character and relationship studies and contemplative pieces that dive deeply into who the characters are and how they feel, but I also like plots that tackle serious issues or big canon points, complex plots, and plots with multiple layers/levels. I'm also up for cheer reading if you're looking for that instead! Turnaround depends on fic length and my schedule. I’m relatively fast, but if something comes up, I’ll let you know immediately. If you need references from people I betaed for, let me know. Notes on relationships: I’m willing to beta some ships along with gen/platonic relationships for the fandoms listed above. Notes on characters: There are some characters whom I’m not that fond of or interested in. I’m open to betaing almost anything, provided it follows my wants/DNWs, even with characters I’m less keen about/don’t care for, but feel free to contact me if you have questions about this. Notes on universes: For 616 and Ults, I’ll only do an AU or a story that doesn’t require specific knowledge of canon events for me to beta properly. I’ve only watched a handful of AA episodes. I’m open to Noir, AvAc, 3490, EMH, AA, 1872, Bullet Points, and Earth-TRN634 (Civil Warrior) for Steve/Tony as well.

Ratings: Gen, Teen, Mature

Can pods bid on this auction? No - I'd rather not be bid on by pods

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-- Digital Work --

Auction ID: 3026

Will create works for the following relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark - Any Universe Bucky Barnes/Sam Wilson - MCU Iron Man fandom any gen - 616, AvAc, MCU Captain America fandom any gen - 616, AvAc, MCU Avengers fandom any gen - 616, 1872, AvAc, EMH, MCU Shang-Chi fandom any gen - MCU Black Widow fandom any gen - MCU Black Panther fandom any gen - MCU Spider-Man fandom any gen - Earth-42, Spider-Verse (animated films) Ms. Marvel fandom any gen - 616, MCU

Work Description: I’m offering a mood board for a character(s) or a fic of your choice (no NSFW shots) according to the theme or tone you want. Examples here. I’m up for all gen and most ships for the fandoms listed above with a few exceptions. If you have any questions, please contact me! You’ll get your mood board in 1–3 weeks, depending on whether I need to read a fic or not and how packed my schedule is. If the winning bid reaches $20, I’ll make two mood boards. For every $10 after that, I’ll throw in an extra mood board.

Ratings: Gen, Teen, Mature

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