#even if it takes four months to move and mentally recover that leaves eight still. that's still a lot of time. I have time to work with

[neverendingford]

.

[honeymoonjin]

𝑝𝑎𝑖𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔: fanboy!taehyung x artist!reader

𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑑 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡: 13.7k

𝑠𝑢𝑚𝑚𝑎𝑟𝑦: still bitter about a scandal that ruined your painting career, you’re recommended a getaway by your therapist to a small island off the coast of seoul. expecting a tranquil location to wallow in self-pity, you’re startled when on your first night, you encounter an avid fan of your work. instead of annoying you for an autograph, kim taehyung ends up being the very thing you need to fall in love with art again.

𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠: sexually explicit content, reader suffers from poor mental health but nothing serious, unprotected sex, oral (f receiving), fingering, praise, that’s kinda it, it’s pretty soft tbh

--

The breeze is light here, broken by the gentle rise of the sand dunes behind you. It runs over your skin like water, a warm current that lasts long after the sun slips below the horizon line.

You sit for hours watching it, the tail of pinks and oranges and ochres that reflect thickly on the top of the water, the shallow crests of low tide. There’s a pull in your heart, a twitch at your fingers. The you a year ago would’ve had her paints out already, an easel with legs precariously shoved in the dry sand. The you a year ago would have been tossing up whether cadmium yellow or cadmium orange would suit the last slip of sun above the water, and whether you should wait til it was gone entirely to save making the decision.

Then again, the you a year ago would never have needed to come here.

The you today just waits, silently, you don’t even know what for. You’d been told this was a getaway. That you just needed some time to recover your muse, or some bullshit like that. But the more time you sit in silence and watch the sky blacken to navy and the stars prick the darkness with dazzling clarity, you think your therapist was wrong. How was this a getaway when all your problems were still festering inside you?

“Oh my god, Y/n L/n?”

You groan and sink back into the sand, head cushioned on the warm piles. Just your fucking luck. “You’ve got the wrong person,” you call out with eyes squeezed shut, praying the stranger will leave you alone. The last thing you needed was a green reporter or psycho fan to spill your location to the rest of the world. You can only imagine the headline. Disgraced painter Y/n L/n found hiding away on a tropical island eight months after she ruined the Met Gala.

“Oh my god, it is you! I’m a massive fan, wow!”

Fuck. At least there was a chance they’d keep quiet. You crack open an eye, staring up at the figure beside you, cast in shadow. From the glint of moonlight, you can see a crown of ruffled hair that’s a faded teal. It reminds you of the impressionist painting of a mountain lake that threw your work into the public eye. Just as faded as the dye on his hair, that time feels worn and aged, like from another life. A reminder of how far you’d fallen. “Look,” you confess lowly to the silhouette, “I just wanna be left alone, I’m not- I’m just here for a break from...everything.”

The figure shifts his weight in the sand, raising an arm to scratch at the back of his neck shyly. “I don’t mean to disturb you,” he apologises. With the slight breeze, his baggy clothes buffet around his lean figure and in the darkness he looks like some vengeful angel, towering over you with the moon behind him. But his voice is so soft, so genuine, so- so warm. Perhaps not vengeful, then, but definitely an angel. “You’re a hero of mine, I wanted to thank you for how much you’ve inspired me, saved me. Gosh, it’s crazy that you’re even here, I-”

“I’m sorry,” you force out, sitting up, wincing as grains of sand work their way down the nape of your neck, “really, I am. But I’m not the person you’re thinking of. Not anymore, at least.” You hate the way your voice rings out so thinly in the night air, nothing like the deep honey of his. You hate the way you sound broken.

He senses it too; he takes a step back, turns towards the dunes. “I should be going, I guess,” he murmurs. “For what it’s worth, I hope I see you around. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

You don’t respond, wrapping your arms around your hunched knees and staring at the silver ocean until you can no longer see him in your peripheral vision.

—

It’s over a week before you see him again. Though you’d never admit it to anyone, you keep an eye out for the boy with the teal hair. There wasn’t enough light that day to make out his face but still, with hardly any people for miles, you hadn’t anticipated he’d be all that difficult to find.

Truth be told, there had been a deep curl of regret and dissatisfaction that took root inside you shortly after you left. He was just trying to be nice, and you could use a friend. Could use someone.

You had asked for privacy when your therapist began recommending a break, a getaway, but you hadn’t expected it to this degree. The place you were staying at was a rundown bungalow just behind the dunes, tucked away in a sliver of land where sand met forest, rising up into hills. The only people you saw were the employees that ran it: a maid that stopped by every day at 1pm, even though you had already made the bed and cleaned up after yourself; an older gentleman that delivered you fresh groceries every couple of days in his ancient-looking four wheel drive; and finally, the electrician you’d had to call out a few nights prior after the power went out.

The mysterious fan hadn’t been dressed like an employee; then again, it was long past the workday when he’d approached you. Mulishly, you find yourself lugging a picnic blanket and a pillow down to the beachfront every evening, monitoring every inch of the coastline that stretches around this edge of the peninsula.

It’s only on the ninth night, when you’re folding up your rough blanket with a disappointed grumble, that a sudden yap catches your attention. You whirl around, toes sinking deeper into the light sand, and gasp as a familiar silhouette approaches, stumbling down a sand dune to your left.

He hasn’t seen you yet; so focused on the tiny fluffball that tugs restlessly at its leash. It’s a lot earlier tonight than the last time you’d seen him, and there’s enough remnants of sunlight in the sky to cast him in a warm golden glow.

He’s in baggy clothes like last time, a long-sleeved white t-shirt with a v in the center, unbuttoned and sagging over the shoulder of the arm that’s getting yanked along, and some tan linen shorts. It’s hard to tell with how he sinks to his ankles in sand with every step, but he’s barefoot, almost sliding down the steep dune more so than walking.

You can’t hear him at this distance, but his lips are moving, parted in a boxy grin as he responds to the constant yipping of the tiny dog at his feet. He’s gorgeous, tanned skin to fit the honey of his voice - the voice you’ve been unable to shake from your head - and the roots of his hair are the colour of brown sugar, lightening into the dyed teal ends, whipping over his cheeks and neck in the seabreeze.

He turns off when he reaches the base, following his dog, who pulls in your direction, short bursts of energy that get cut off by the length of the leash. Your heart jumps, and you find yourself waiting in anticipation, breath caught in your throat.

But the moment he glances up and sees you, he halts in his tracks. Stepping back, his smile falls, bowing his head to you apologetically and pulling on the leash so that the small black-and-tan puppy at his feet turns around with him.

They start walking away from you, and you don't have time to think before you're calling out to him, jogging over with your blanket and pillow forgotten behind you.

He stops walking, though he doesn't turn, and when you finally come to a stop beside him, he keeps his head down.

"Look, I'm sorry about yesterday," you rush out, slightly out of breath, "I was in a really shitty mood, and I had kinda come here to get away from...everything in the first place. I wasn't expecting a fan, and I reacted badly. I'm sorry."

Even after standing still, you can't seem to catch your breath. You haven't seen him this close, in this much detail, and it makes the air catch in your lungs. His eyes are an intense burnt umber, dancing over your face with an unreadable depth to them. He's taller than you, but not bulky. Though his shoulders are wide, he's lean, with a narrow nose and soft cheeks. The wind plays with the ends of his hair, revealing glimpses of a strong brow. He's beautiful.

"I didn't mean to bother you," he says after a moment, and you almost jump at the timbre of his voice so close to you, "I should be the one apologising. I'll leave you alone, honestly. I can find another place to go for a walk, or go at a different time-"

"Do you walk here a lot at this time?" you interrupt, the euphoria of finally holding a conversation after so long loosening your tongue. "You haven't been back since that night."

He tips his head to the side, shoulder jerking when his dog impatiently tugs at the leash, quiet snuffles and yips of disapproval ignored in the air between you. There's a flicker of something in his eyes - surprise? Amusement? "You were looking for me?"

"I-" Your voice fails you, and you realise how pathetic you must look. Your shoulders sink. "I was... I wanted to apologise," you land on finally.

That strange flicker in his eyes settles into a grateful warmth. "I normally do, yeah, but I had to go back to the mainland to pick up this guy." With a genuine smile, he glances down to the ball of fluff that's now lying over his bare foot. "I stayed there while he got his first lot of vaccinations. You can pat him, if you want."

You can recognise that offer for what it really is; an olive branch. In other words, he's apparently not holding a grudge against you for being an asshole. You smile gratefully, crouching down to pat the tiny animal. "What's his name?"

"Yeontan," he answers cheerily. "he's nine weeks old!"

You coo, chuckling at the soft fur wriggling beneath your fingertips, at the wet nose prodding at your palm for more pats. "Yeontan..." you muse. "Why does that name sound familiar?"

You hear a sheepish laugh from above. "Your, um, your painting of the old barn in Icheon? There's a kennel that's beside it in shadow, but you can just make out the name Yeontan painted on the front. I-" He breaks off awkwardly, falling silent.

Your hand freezes, and you feel yourself slump from a crouch to sitting fully on the sand, still hot from the afternoon sun. Yeontan. A detail you couldn't even remember painting, yet he'd named his dog after it. The dog continues to cover your hands in slobber and stray fur, but you just stare at it blankly.

"I'm sorry," the man winces, tone low with defeat. "You probably think it's stupid. I swear I'm not one of those crazy obsessed fans! There was just..." His voice changes then, closes up to cut off any emotion. "I shouldn't say. Sorry."

Your shoulders slacken. "You don't have to keep apologising," you say softly. After a moment's thought, you push up off the sand to stand up again, grains clinging to the skin that's damp from the dog's affections. The handsome stranger's face is stricken, reluctant as he watches you get up. You miss the boxy smile he'd held when he made his way down the dunes. You wonder if he'll ever smile that way at you. "I wanna hear. What you have to say."

Hand flexing on the leash, he looks down at Yeontan and back up at you, eyes squinted slightly as the sun glares onto his face; a radiant, sharp orange. "One of the reasons I'm such a fan of your work is the emotion you can actually see on the canvas. I don't even know how to explain it, but I feel it. And with the Icheon barn painting - I actually saved up for years to buy the original - there's something so sad and lonely about that kennel, that patch of shadow. The rest of the scene is so bright and open, it feels like a party that the kennel wasn't invited to. I don't know, it's stupid. But I thought if I ever bought a dog, I'd name it Yeontan so that it wouldn't feel so alone." He faces the horizon as he speaks, wincing into the light, and a broken laugh bubbles out of his throat once he's done. "Like I said; it's stupid."

But you don't think it's stupid at all. "Did it work?" you ask instead, nose prickling as tears build behind your eyes. The more he spoke, the more you remember the painting. It was your last work before the Met Gala disaster, and after everything went down in flames, desperate online tabloids went back to it, citing it as a 'cry for help'. You hadn't really painted it like that though, not really. You'd seen that beautifully painted barn in the countryside when you were driving between cities to visit your parents, and was taken by the dilapidated dog kennel tucked just beside it. Painting it wasn't some sort of clue to your nosedive, but more like a solidarity with that kennel, the dog that once lived there. The story that had been forgotten. And to hear this man had seen it, had wanted to ease the suffering just like you had... The emotions inside you, ones that had felt so dull and monochrome, now churn inside you in indecipherable technicolour, too many to count. But you think one of them might just be hope. "Did- did getting Yeontan work?"

He's looking at you now. He stays silent for a moment, the softest smile tugging at your lips, and it takes your breath away, watching the colours of sunset play across his skin while his brown eyes seek yours out intensely. "Yeah, it did," he answers eventually, his voice almost a whisper. It's only once he starts speaking that you realise the two of you have moved closer inwards without realising, so that it would only take a half step forward to be pressed against him. "But I think talking with you has helped more."

You let out a breath you didn't know you were holding. The whirlpool inside you settles, leaving you feeling lighter than you have in years. You don't know what it is about this man that makes you feel...sane again, but you want more of it. "I think talking with you has helped me too," you confess, voice lilting in uncertainty. "Can... can I see you again? I don't even know your name, but-"

"Taehyung," he answers immediately, and even with the fall of night, the sun well and truly gone, his eyes are bright. "I could come back tomorrow?"

Your toes flex in the sand fighting the urge to jump in relief. "Yes! Yes, I'd like that," you chime, a smile tugging at your lips. "It was nice to meet you, Taehyung."

"The pleasure is all mine."

--

You sleep well that night. You can’t remember the last time the peaceful rays of sun have woken you so gently, but you certainly aren’t complaining.

You’d spent the past week or so moping in your cabin until late afternoon and then moping on the beach. Only now, after finally meeting the boy again - Taehyung - you realise how much you’ve been wasting your time buried in your own thoughts. Now all you want to do is explore. You’d been told on the ferry over here that the island was only a few hours’ walk around the coastline, and that your cabin, a street of shops and a small village of houses were the only signs of life. No bar to drown your sorrows at. No club for finding faceless strangers to make you forget who you were for a few hours. All your coping vices had been replaced with open stretches of nature in all its colours; the cool grey rocky beaches on the southern shore, the lush greens of the hilly forests, the glinting turquoise of the sea, and open plains of pastel sky for miles and miles.

The walk isn’t particularly intensive, but it’s long, and your feet ache in their sandals by the time you reach the docks again, having marked a full loop around the island. The dock, empty this late in the morning, leads directly to the main street via a cobblestone path that weaves between dunes, flax bushes, fields and a skinny stretch of trees, and you follow it to the center of the island, resting in a small cafe.

There’s no free WiFi here, so you sip at a tall glass of homemade strawberry lemonade and watch the streets through the storefront window. From your seat, you can see the people wander back and forth, the odd few with kids, but almost all are retirement age. Slow-moving couples with walkers and canes, elderly men jangling the keys to their vintage cars (that surely didn’t have much road to drive on), women with age-spotted skin and heavy beaded jewellery.

You can’t work out how Taehyung fits in this picture. It’s almost impossible to picture him walking down the same street as everyone else; his dyed hair, clothes two sizes too big, tall and slender frame hurrying down with a dog leash in one hand and a grocery bag in the other-

Wait.

You straighten up, eyes widening as you watch the man himself pauses to let Yeontan cock his leg on a patch of grass by the intersection. Physically, he’s entirely incongruous with the rest of the villagers, but he looks entirely at home, glancing up to smile in recognition at every figure that passes by him. One goes so far as to reach up and ruffle his hair playfully as she talks, and his face brightens with crinkled eyes and a boxy grin, greeting her warmly.

The same feeling of longing and dissatisfaction stirs you from the other time you saw that smile. You want to be the one that makes him so happy. You frown, unconsciously chewing on the end of the paper straw. It’s too hot in here. There’s not enough ventilation, and with the sun streaming in, the heat just pools inside, sticking to your thighs and arms. That’s why you leave the cafe before finishing your drink. The heat.

The lady has left by the time you cross the street, and you fake a cough noisily as you pass him, eyes cast away but face turned so he’d easily recognise you.

“Y/n!” Your heart warms, keens at the calling of your name, and you turn to him, smiling broadly. Taehyung grins when Yeontan rushes over to greet you too, whole body rocking with the force of his tail wagging. “Fancy seeing you here,” he remarks, and you take in a deep breath of air, feeling lightheaded with his attention back on you.

“I decided to explore a bit,” you answer, eyes dropping down to the supermarket bag in his hands, white plastic taut and digging red lines into his palm with the weight of it. “Retail therapy?”

He laughs goodnaturedly, but there’s a flush of pink high on his cheekbones, standing out beside the strands of green that he’s tucked behind his ears. “It’s actually, uh, something for tonight. I didn’t know if you’d- If you still-” He breaks off his stammering with another laugh, this one more self-conscious, and the pink deepens to red. “I thought you and I could paint together. I bought us some materials just in case you didn’t bring your own.” You fall silent, mouth slack and parted in surprise, so he continues on, lifting up his hand for a moment, bag rustling, then changing his mind and letting it fall again. “There isn’t a proper art supplies store here, so it’s just from the toy store. I know you’re probably used to proper stuff, but a bad worker blames his tools, you know! Not that you would- that you’re a bad-”

“You paint?” you ask finally, ending his nervous rambling.

His whole body slackens a bit, like you’ve cut some tension from him, his head dipping down to break eye contact. “Um. I’m- learning,” he answers with an uncertain wobble to his voice.

You tilt your head to the side with an expectant smile. “That’s really cool. How long have you been studying?”

He swallows, looking up to send you a hesitant smile. “I, um, I studied the instructions on the back of a paint-by-numbers kit in the toy store. Just now.” His voice lifts at the end of each sentence like it’s a question, that same bargaining smile plastered on his face.

You let out a genuine laugh, the first one you’ve had in a while. In too long. “Is that so? I better bow down to the maestro then.”

“Hey!” he whines playfully, shoulders rocking forward like a toddler feeling sorry for himself. “I learnt everything I know so far just from your art. And did you hear that speech I gave you about The Barn at Icheon? That was pretty good, right? You have to admit, that was good.”

His hand, the one loosely holding Yeontan’s lead, reaches out to grasp gently just above your elbow as he speaks, rocking you slightly like he’s pleading for you to agree. You find a constant stream of laughter bubbling out of your throat as he does so, feeling so light in the sunny midday breeze. “Okay, okay, that was good,” you confess, “you get a point for that.”

Once your laughter subsides slowly, you find yourself looking up at him with a residual smile, the same of which is spread on his face, eyes glimmering with something fond. He waits for the air between you to fall silent, tongue slipping out just slightly to wet his lips as you hold his gaze. “Y/n,” he asks softly, your name like molten sugar on his tongue, thumb unconsciously rubbing at the sensitive skin in the crook of your arm, “will you paint with me?”

Though the thought of painting still sours inside your chest, with his skin on your skin and his smile just for you, you feel like you could do anything. There’s only one answer. “Yes, I’ll paint with you, Taehyung.”

--

Painting with Taehyung is less painting with Taehyung and more staring desolately into the middle distance as Taehyung decides to make the clouds purple, bottom lip sucked between his teeth in focus.

“Don’t overthink it,” he stresses for the millionth time, glancing over at your blank canvas, “I’m not judging you.”

But it’s not about him judging you. If it wasn’t for him, you don’t think a paintbrush would have ever found its way into your hands again, certainly not so soon. It’s just that- you feel an overwhelming burden, a historical pressure of all your mistakes before. If you put brush to canvas now and create a work of art, then was your complete mindblank for the Met Gala all for nothing? Though your therapist advised against it, you had rather become attached to the idea that you’d somehow gotten artistically injured somewhere, and that eventually you’d broken completely, irreparable. It made the constant white void easier. Your first death.

“Happy little accidents,” Taehyung says lightly, dipping heavily into orange and catching a dollop on his wide-leg jeans. Not noticing it, or not caring, he swipes the orange into the canvas in a wonky line down past the horizon line, forming the neck and body of what looks vaguely like a giraffe. “And, um, happy little- happy little trees. If you want we could turn around and face the forest?”

Though a glum cloud is settling in your stomach you flick him a soft smile. “So you watch Bob Ross too? I thought you said you learnt everything from me.”

Using the same brush, he scoops out some black, using a pinkie finger to mix the colours together inside the bristles, a murky brown. “Maybe just a little,” he admits, daubing rough patches onto the giraffe, half of them overlapping the edges of its body. There’s an endearing quality to his carefree worksmanship, and you can’t deny that his painting looks good, wonky lines and all. “But don’t worry, you’ll always be my first,” Taehyung adds, not looking at you but smirking all the same.

The double entendre isn’t missed on you, but still, as you sit on a picnic table right on the edge of the village, blank canvas in front of you, you can’t bring yourself to laugh at it. All you can see is the paint drying on the tip of Taehyung’s finger, the messy pots of basic acrylics, and the warm smile that doesn’t leave his face.

He’s having fun. How long has it been since painting has been fun for you? Annoyed, you grab the clear green plastic brush from the set, dipping it into black. Muscle memory tingles across your knuckles and down the muscles of your wrist, an instinct to hold the brush in a certain way, tap off the excess, but your frustration overrides it, and you take the paintladen brush and smear it directly across the center of the canvas, a gaping maw of glossy shadow that bulges on the lower edges, gravity pulling at the thick stripe. You go completely still once it’s done. Staring.

Taehyung looks over after a moment, watching you carefully. “Is everything alright? If you didn’t want to paint, we didn’t have to-”

“It’s terrible,” you interrupt, a frown marring your face. “I fucked it up.”

“You didn’t,” he chastises softly, pushing his canvas to the side and leaning over your shoulder. “It’s a promising start. Maybe the duck pond is black in your world.”

Your eyes slide lower, unfocused. “Maybe the whole ocean is black in my world,” you murmur.

He’s silent for a moment,  unsure what to say. “Then how will the fish see?” he asks in a light tone, bumping your shoulder gently with his, but you just let out a broken sob, tears spilling over your cheeks like they’d been triggered by his contact. Taehyung’s mouth opens in a rounded o, eyes wide, and as the dam breaks, you feel an arm find your back, rubbing soothingly, and long, warm fingers wrap around the hand that holds the brush limply, cradling it. “We can fix it, it’s okay,” he soothes in a kind whisper, “here; it’s that mailbox now, yeah? And behind it is the candy shop-” His voice cuts off while he guides your shaking hand to the green, mixing it with white in the plastic pottle to make a pale pastel. You feel the pressure of the brush in your hand shift as he moves the bristles over the canvas in a roughly rectangular shape, but you’re unseeing, crying tears that sting like turpentine into that black ocean behind your eyelids, letting him move you.

The two of you stay like that for what feels like an eternity, you curled in his embrace as he quietly paints for you, commenting on each step of the process so you know what he’s doing, even with your eyes closed. At one point, your energy leaves you, and you collapse into him, pressing your cheek against the stable warmth of his chest, heartbeat audible through his thin t-shirt. He doesn’t complain, just adjusting his stance to better support you and resting his chin on your head.

“I’m sorry,” you blubber thickly at one point, tasting salt.

“You don’t have to be,” he assures, “just keep breathing. Look; let’s put some trees in, hm? One for you and one for me.”

You open your eyes with a sniffle, feeling your hand lower in his secure hold, and you twist around your head to watch him dip the filthy brush in a green which has already been tainted by white and red in places. Your eyes follow it up again, until he fearlessly swipes in the graceful branches of the fir trees which cover the highest points of the island. You look at the rest of the painting, and a disbelieving giggle bubbles out of you, a smile across your face despite everything.

Unlike the mental image you’d been plotting in your head with the narration, this square of canvas has a line of slightly leaning buildings stacked beside each other tightly, colours smearing on the borders. In the middle of the uneven grey strip of cement down the middle to mark out the road, two trees stand proud, mostly green but with bleeding patches of muddy purple and brown too. Entire drops of paint spatter and run, creating a chaotic but vivid daydream of the end of the street in front of you.

“A lot better in your head, wasn’t it?” Taehyung asks knowingly. You laugh again, the last few tears pressed out of the corners of your wet eyes. “It’s okay,” he replies easily, “it was better in my head too. But the one in our heads is boring, don’t you think? If I wanted to see the street in front of me exactly, I’d just look up. Or take a photo. But nobody can visit this place we’ve painted. It’s just here, brand new because of us. I think I like that more.”

You sit up, wiping your eyes with a tired smile. “There’s no way you learnt all that from me,” you deflect, voice still raw from crying. “But yeah. I think I like this one more too.”

“I’m glad,” he answers softly, letting go of your hand and removing his hand from your back at the same time. You suppress a shiver at the sudden absence of heat. “I’ll let this dry and hang it up right beside The Barn at Icheon.”

You laugh again, sniffing away the last dregs of self-pity. “You better not,” you warn playfully, “as semantically poignant as it is, it’s an awful paintjob.”

When Taehyung smiles, it’s bright and boxy. And it’s just for you.

--

Time passes, but not like in the real world. Out here on this island, you start counting the passage of time by how many occasions you’d met Taehyung. Then, once you’ve seen him too often to count, you let yourself lose track of time completely, remembering only the moments spent with him like vignettes on a fragile chain.

The two of you always meet in the town or on the beach, speaking about everything and nothing. One day, while waiting beside the blue metal mailbox for Yeontan to pee (though Taehyung still insisted it looked better black) you tell him of the time you accidentally turned all your clothes yellowy-green after accidentally putting an apron in the wash that had an opened sampler of chartruese in the pocket. On a rainy afternoon when you’d gotten caught in the downfall walking through the forest, Taehyung told you, while wringing out rainwater from his rumpled maroon sweater, that he was meant to be studying agricultural sciences on the mainland, but his grandmother was sick and so he bought a place nearby to care for her.

“One good thing about being on the island,” he’d chimed cheerily, dark teal and brown plastered to his cheeks and forehead, “is that property is super cheap here. My grandma paid half and I paid half, and now the one-bedroom I live in is all mine.”

“But isn’t that sad?” you’d questioned, feeling the ground turn to mud beneath your shoes. “Living on the island, I mean? You should be in a big city, partying with your friends, living life. This place is like one massive retirement village.”

Taehyung had just shrugged. “My grandma likes it. And I like living for someone else, you know? Makes me feel good.”

Long after you’d gone home, warming up by the radiator in your beachside bungalow, those words had stuck with you. You wonder if, with all this time he’s been spending with you, he’s starting to live for you, too. You wonder if maybe that’s a bad thing.

But still, time passes in this hazy, episodic way. Money continues to filter out of your bank account each week you stay, but you hadn’t worried about your finances for years now, enough successful exhibits from your productive days keeping a healthy sum.

Though he never pushes as much as last time at the picnic table, Taehyung keeps you creating. Backs of napkins, tourism pamphlets, the kids colouring sets at the local diner. No matter how scrawled or indecipherable, the soft-hearted boy compliments your work all the same, slipping the scraps into his pocket with a joking promise that he’s going to frame them. Somehow, every unthought, unplanned line of ink or lead or pigment that lights the page feels like one less needle buried deep inside your heart, one small salve to ease the burden. You don’t know if Taehyung knows it, but in all the ways that count he’s a better artist than you.

When he’s around you, the world is lusher, more vibrant. Your time alone is grey and muted; a dull beach, an empty bungalow. With him, you feel like the sky is bluer and the trees are greener. The bonfire you sit in front of now casts an intense orange glow on everything around it, including Taehyung’s hands as he deftly impales marshmallows onto a skewer.

It’s cooler at nighttime these days. At some point, you’d both exchanged sandals for sneakers, t-shirts for sweaters. Taehyung seems to fancy heavy cable knits and thick trousers even in mild weather, and you wonder if he’d still wear clothing typical of an elderly gentleman even if he was on the mainland in a modern city instead of around the older generation on the island.

Tonight, you’d tried and failed a traditional Korean barbecue over the open flame. While Taehyung had shoved his cut of pork right into the fire, ending up with a charred outside and raw inner, you’d diligently held yours above the flames, turning and turning until the muscles in your arm screamed and you had to give up and admit perhaps the meat from the local butcher was cut too thick, and that a bonfire was good for nothing more than toasted marshmallows.

“This is where it’s at, this is it,” the young man enthuses confidently, each skewer laden with four or five marshmallows, bunched together, “dessert for dinner. The way it should be.”

You’re content to sit back and let him work excitedly, wrapping the edges of the picnic blanket low over your shoulders and lap. Though Taehyung is always devastatingly handsome, he’s the most gorgeous like this: focused in his element and surrounded by all the colours and textures of nature, a painting come to life. The heat of the flames is curling his hair lightly, making teal ends flick at his temples and the nape of his neck. His hair was growing out steadily, but still he chose not to cut it, and you can’t deny the length suits him.

“There’s more brown than green now,” you mention softly. “Soon it’ll look like dip-dye.”

Taehyung glances back at you over his shoulder with a rougish grin, shuffling around so he faces you fully. “What; is this your way of saying it looks bad?”

“No,” you defend with a pout, reaching for the near-full packet of marshmallows. “I’m just curious if you’re gonna leave it like that.”

Taehyung hums like he doesn’t fully believe you, and he leans over to shove his hand in the packet at the same time that you’re rummaging for the soft sweets, your knuckles brushing together. You shiver at the contact. Somehow, that’s been the first time you’ve shared skin contact since that day at the picnic table. Wide-eyed, you wait til he’s grabbed a bunch and pull your own hand away, empty and white with powder.

“Sorry,” he adds reflexively, but you just shake your head. How are you supposed to tell him that you liked the feeling of his skin on yours? Taehyung pops a pink marshmallow into his left cheek, letting it bulge and slur his speech as he gives you a broad grin. “You could dye it for me! My hair, I mean. Pick a colour.”

Against your will, you smile back, cheeks puffing at the thought. “I have no idea how to dye hair, Tae.”

Something flickers in his eyes when you say that, or maybe it’s the dancing flames reflected in them. He chews quickly, swallowing with a jerk of his jaw, and licks the rest of the white powder off his lips. “I bet it’s a whole lot easier than painting a picture.”

You scoff, but there’s no bite to it. “Oh, so you didn’t want me to paint one of my works on your hair, then? Don’t fancy Jeju Dusk on your scalp?”

Taehyung grins at the name, recognising the title of one of your earlier paintings - one that had been relentlessly criticised for its blending of techniques, something that later became your signature. “That’s my second favorite piece, you know? I have a print of it at home, and I saw the original in the Leeum Museum last year.”

You remember the director of the Leeum fondly. In your beginning years, he’d fought for your works to be shown in some of the frequent exhibitions they held. Even though you’d barely made a name for yourself, and had only recently moved to Seoul, Director Kim Namjoon took you in like a mentee and gave you a job himself as his PA. The experience you’d gotten there, as well as that vital exposure, had kept you business-savvy throughout your career, and once you were in a position to give back, you donated almost all of your original canvases to the museum in his name. Maybe one day you’d return home to Seoul and tell Namjoon of the boy who lived on a faraway island, the boy who taught you to open up again. Would Taehyung still be with you then? Though it hasn’t been long, it’s hard to comprehend a life without Taehyung. All you can visualise is a great absence, a lack. You banish the thought from your mind with a shake of your head, glancing back up to see the boy himself boldly setting a skewer of marshmallows on fire in the orange heat. “I hope that’s your one,” you joke weakly as he puffs out the blue and orange that lick at the blackening lumps.

“Aren’t you going to ask me what my favorite work is?” he asks instead, ignoring your statement.

You stay silent for a moment, observing the way he discards the charred skewer in his lap and delicately toasts the other one, swivelling the base so that each side of the marshmallow stack warms to a golden brown. Once he pulls it out, he hands it to you with an expectant quirk of his brow. You take the stick with a slightly suspicious smile. “What’s your favorite, Taehyung?”

“Your next one,” he answers immediately, gaze locked on yours.

You blame the heat radiating off the bonfire for the warmth in your cheeks as you suppress a smile. “Alright then,” you say decisively.

“Alright what?”

“Alright, I’ll dye your hair for you.”

He grins broadly, eyes crinkling into crescent moons as he starts eating his thoroughly-burnt marshmallows. “Tomorrow,” he announces, melted strings of pink and white pooling in the corner of his lips. “Let’s meet at the convenience store and you can pick the colour.”

You smirk at the way he devours the toasted marshmallows with childish glee. “You’ll regret that when you come out of this with highlighter orange hair.”

He chucks his leftover stick into the grocery bag you brought your supplies in, letting himself collapse backwards onto the heated sand. “I think I could pull it off,” he deflects calmly. “Just you see.”

Breath taken away by the peace on his face as he closes his eyes, your mind works dizzily, desperate to find something to keep him talking, to keep this moment between you alive. “Maybe you could get a job as air traffic control. Or a streetlight. Just you wait; it’ll be orange orange.”

Taehyung’s face warms in a lazy smile as he hums. He looks so peaceful lying there that you’re tempted to join him, but you choose instead to shuffle back from the fire so that you can see his face better. His hair’s splayed out over the sand, and you can see the warm flickers from the bonfire play over his neck, his jaw, and the tip of his nose. Taehyung’s right; orange does suit him. “I had a dream, you know. Last night.”

You feel - with the gentle breeze and the silence of the sea surrounding you - that perhaps you’re in a dream right now. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” his low voice hushes, barely louder than the popping of wood on the fire. “We weren’t on the island, we were in Seoul. Your wing of the Leeum Museum.”

You laugh shallowly, not wanting to make much noise for a reason you couldn’t quite pinprick. “I don’t have a wing at the Leeum.”

“You did in my dream,” he defends resolutely, the beginnings of a boxy smile tugging at his lips. “Anyway, we were in your wing, and I remember being so confused because I didn’t recognise any of them. But you told me they were all new. They were paintings of m-” he cuts himself off a beat too late, lips pressed together.

Your heart falters, a rush of adrenaline that flows to the ends of your fingers and toes. You fight to keeo your voice steady. “Maybe it was a premonition.”

Resting on his stomach, Taehyung’s hands twitch, his fingers twisting together. His smile flattens into a tense line and his eyelids squeeze shut tightly. “I don’t wanna get my hopes up,” he admits quietly after a short pause of thought.

Looking back, you can’t remember your thought process, or where your boldness comes from. Maybe something about the way the moment felt detached from reality, a timeless bubble of the two of you that sat adjacent to your real life, separate from consequence. Maybe it was the brief glimpse of pink as he wets the inner seam of his lips. Maybe you’ve just wanted this for too long to think rationally anymore.

Whatever it is, you swallow past the dryness in your mouth, bend down, and press a kiss to his lips.

Taehyung goes completely still at first. You’re cross-legged on the sand, knees faced to his side, and when you kiss him, it’s on enough of an angle that you feel his nose brushing your cheekbone, and you can feel your hair falling down either side of your face like silken rain. He stays still, though, and you press a little harder, just for a moment, before his lack of response shatters your streak of confidence.

With a minute sigh of regret, you lift off of him, ready to sit up again and apologise profoundly. But before there’s more than a few centimeters of air between you, his hand is suddenly snaking around the nape of your neck, fingers slipping up into your hair as he pulls you back down.

When you collide again with a gasp, his mouth is parted, and his teeth scrape against your bottom lip with his urgency. Losing your balance, you throw your outside arm over him, palm plunging into the sand just beside his head, and let your upper torso rest on his his.

“Taehyung,” you sigh onto his lips, shivering when his free hand rests hotly on your waist, thumb slipping under the hem of your shirt to rub maddenly over the sensitive skin of your stomach. “Oh, Taehyung.”

His lips are sticky with the remains of the toasted marshmallows, and tentatively you seek out that sweetness, kissing deeper, letting your tongue slide over the pinkened skin. He holds you so gently, like you’re made of glass, yet his mouth on yours is pure fire, and your breath comes in little gasps, bursts of oxygen that only fan the flames higher. It takes you a few moments to realise the humming in his throat and the motion of his lips are words, so softly spoken, but once you do you slow your movements to a languid stream to better hear them.

“...so beautiful, I’ve wanted to do this for so long, I must be dreaming…” He speaks with his eyes half-lidded, like he doesn’t want to fully lose sight of you, uttering words between sweet kisses, strong hands cradling you so carefully. He presses his lips against yours one last time and moves his hand from your neck to your face, thumbing tenderly at your cheekbone. “God, I’m so lucky to be by your side,” he gasps. “And when you paint new works and attend exhibits, I’ll still be by your side.”

His words are sweet, but something about them strikes an odd note in your chest, and you pull back slightly, shaking off his hands.

He looks at you with wide eyes and swollen lips which are parted in a confused pout. “Is something wrong?”

“It’s my paintings,” you whisper disbelievingly, “isn’t it? That’s why you think you like me. You like my paintings, and you think it’s somehow the same thing.”

He frowns, shuffling back to sit up, further apart from you than you’d been all night. “No,” he says automatically, “I like you, I just… I think you’re talented, and I want to help you-”

“It’s not your place to help me,” you snap back, and Taehyung flinches. “I’m not some- some out-of-order printer that just needs some TLC to start pumping out pages again. You’re a fan, Taehyung, not a fucking therapist.”

He lets those words sit in the air until they sour, staring at you with eyes shiny and lips trembling. “I know that,” he says, voice cracking, “I know that. I just- Just because you had issues with the Met Gala exhibit doesn’t mean you have to run away and hide, you know?”

Your mouth falls open. “I… I didn’t have issues with the Met Gala, okay, Taehyung? I blanked. Every time I tried to paint something for the exhibit, it sucked. I hated it. And then, eventually, I stopped being able to paint anything at all. It was like I just- I just couldn’t. And the Director kept calling, but I couldn’t answer him because I was so fucking humiliated, and you get the day of the Met and the walls are empty because Y/n L/n is a fucking failure. So it’s not- You can’t fix me, Taehyung. I’m just broken.”

The fire spits, crackles, as it smoulders down, nothing more than hot coals that barely light the surroundings. Taehyung, face slowly darkening to shadow, doesn’t say anything. Just sits. Waits.

You sniff, looking down at your hands. “My point is, Tae-” and you scoff at yourself for using a nickname at a time like this, “You shouldn’t like me. I have nothing to give you anymore.”

Sand sticks to your bare legs when you stand, but you make no attempt to brush it off. Though it’s nearly complete darkness, you see Taehyung’s hair shift as he tips his head up to watch you. Rather than speak back, he waits in the pitch black of the extinguished bonfire and lets you go.

Later, in the unforgiving silence of your bungalow, you find yourself gravitating not towards your bed but towards your suitcase, to the small wooden chest of travel paints you had brought never expecting to use.

It’s easier to paint than to think on your regrets and mistakes, and so you let your mind go black, your palette filling with shades of brown, ochre and beige, as well as a single swatch of teal.

--

The entire next day sees you in a sleep-deprived fervour, the entire main room of your bungalow cleared out and transformed into a makeshift studio, paintings drying on emptied bookshelves, sheets of old newspaper covering the carpet covered in stray spots of colour, the kitchen bench housing your mismatched array of paints and tools.

After finishing your first painting, you’d collapsed onto your bed as the sun began to rise, too exhausted to wash the dried paint off your hands and brow. But it only took a few moments of rest before you felt yourself sinking into a glum quicksand, sucked in by all the emotions swirling in your chest. Suffocated by the sole image of Taehyung, sitting alone on the sand in the dark as you walked away.

So, you’d gotten up, fed the itch in your hands and picked up a brush once more, and let yourself be taken by the mindless haze of work, of colours and angles and perspectives, starting to paint the knuckles on one canvas while you waited for the eyes to dry on another.

Just after 10am, your housekeeper had knocked on the door, and you’d had to play sick so that she wouldn’t come inside. If they kept your deposit or charged you damages for a stray lick of paint on some surface, what did it matter?

You threw yourself so intensely into these paintings, that weren’t art so much as sighs of relief, or buoys in a churning sea. It was all too easy to let your mind latch onto the task of mixing colours, of choosing techniques, of mastering proportions. Normally, you’d work in front of a landscape, or take a photo and paint it later, wanting to get things right, but Taehyung comes to mind with startling clarity.

Soon, your bungalow fills with artworks - some painted on newspaper, or pages of a book when you run out of canvases. Vistas of those moments with him like clustered vignettes: his eyes with orange glints reflected in them from that night with the bonfire; his hands wringing his sodden sweater the day you got caught in the rain; a boxy smile, the first time he ever grinned at you like that; and finally, just as your hands begin to shake too much to hold the brush steady, a lone silhouette walking down a dune, tiny dog tugging at the leash in his hand. The memories flow in reverse, like some sort of undoing, a wish to go back in time and do things right, to be better for him, to do right by him.

When you set the brush down one final time, fingers trembling with exhaustion, it’s nearly midnight. You realise with a dull pang that you’d forgotten to go down to the township to buy Taehyung hair dye. You realise he probably wouldn’t have come down either.

Your face is stiff in places where swipes of paint have dried, and your hair is tangled, thrown up a half-hearted ponytail that keeps threatening to slip, but as you stare around the chaos of the room, at the fevered paintings of him, only him, always him, your heart knows what to do. Whether you like it or not, you can’t go back in time and start new, start fresh. But you can go forward, and you know exactly where your feet will take you.

Well, maybe not exactly, because you’ve never been to Taehyung’s house. But shoving on some sneakers and wrappin yourself up in a jacket, you figure you can find it. The island’s population was barely fifty, and all the houses were in the same sleepy neighborhood behind the main street.

It’s after knocking on exactly twenty-six doors that you realise maybe you should just ask if the stranger knew Taehyung’s address, rather than leaving when somebody unfamiliar answered the door. Shivering, even with the thick padded jacket you’re bundled in, you decide that the next house better be the last. If they didn’t know where Tae was, you could just come back and pick up where you left off tomorrow.

The street is so silent that your sneaker soles on the gravel fill the void entirely, amplified in the chilled night air. As you went on, and the moon passed the center of the sky, less and less people even opened their doors, some that did scolding you for waking them at such an hour. You’d feel bad, only your mind’s entirely locked on one single person.

The next house you reach is small, like most of them, but looks particularly well-groomed compared to most. A gleaming white postbox with the number 13B rests beside the driveway and footpath, both of which are bordered by lush, freshly-mowed grass, almost black in the darkness. Like a beacon, a single lamplight shines white-yellow above the front door, and your eyes ache with the warm brightness as you knock.

After fifteen or so seconds, you hear muffled movement inside, and straighten your back expectantly, mentally running through your speech. A light turns on behind lacy curtains to the left, and eventually a blurred silhouette approaches in the foyer, unlocking the door.

You put on your most sympathetic smile and take in a breath when it cracks, revealing an older woman in mismatching winter pyjamas. “I’m so sorry to wake you, ma’am, but I was wondering if you knew a boy called-” As your eyes search the old woman’s face, you freeze. You know those eyes. “K-Kim Taehyung?” you finish, blinking widely at the woman who somehow looks so familiar.

Rather than grumble about the time or huff, she smiles broadly, lips tugging up in a boxy smile. “Well, of course, he’s my grandson!” The smile drops, brows furrowing in concern. “Is he alright?”

You suck in a breath through your teeth, eyes widening. “I- oh my goodness, I’ve heard so much about you,” you gush, her eyes crinkling fondly at your words. “Sorry, uh- yes, Taehyung is okay, I just-” You stop yourself, trying to steady your racing heart. “Mrs. Kim, you probably don’t even know me, but I did something bad and I need to make it right with him and I just… I think I’m in love with your grandson.” The moment you finish, something in your heart settles at the sound of the words lingering in the air.

She takes her time to reply, letting the words sink into her with a thoughtful sigh. “Darling, am I right in assuming your name is Y/n?”

You swallow quickly. “Yes, that’s right.”

She nods with a fond smile, a glimmer in her eye. “Then I think there’s something you should come see.”

“Inside?” After she waves you in and guides you to slip off your shoes and step into some house slippers instead, you find yourself awkwardly following her down a homely, perfumed hallway. “By the way, I’m so sorry for waking you.”

She waves it off before you even finish your sentence, sending you a kind wink. “No bother to me, lovie. I’m just glad you didn’t wake the dog.”

“The dog?” you mumble to yourself, before halting suddenly as Mrs. Kim pauses in front of a door, hand resting on the glass knob.

“My grandson’s been visiting me more lately, you see,” she explains, turning the knob to reveal a room in complete darkness, nothing inside visible. “He had so much to tell me and so much to do, became as hyper as a boy on Christmas morning! He told me not to go in here, but I couldn’t help myself.”

You step inside on her indication, breath caught in your throat as your eyes struggle to adjust. “I don’t understand…”

“Lovie, don’t worry about whatever went wrong with you two. You love him and… Maybe I’m just a hopeless romantic, but it’s clear he loves you too.” And with that, she flicks the light on and the room comes into focus.

A barn. That’s the first thing you see. A painting of a bright, sprawling barn with a tiny dilapidated kennel in its shadow, wobbly letters spelling out YEONTAN. On the wall directly across from the door rests the original painting of The Barn at Icheon, close to a meter wide and half a metre high. The question of why he’d keep this prized possession of his in a random room barely bigger than a closet dies on your tongue as you turn, seeing the other walls.

A sketch of a bird you’d seen and wanted to show him, clumsily sketched on the back of a receipt with a pen from the lady at the grocery store checkout; a smudged map of your old neighborhood in Seoul that he’d made you draw on a napkin when you were explaining to him how far away the art supply store was; a tourism pamphlet that you and Taehyung had found on a park bench, drawing little Bigfoot silhouettes on the pictures of mountains and mermaids on the beaches. Every one of these thoughtless scrawls, careless scribbles and hurried drawings are here, each one framed or mounted like in a gallery, in order of the time they were made. You turn around slowly, barely noticing Taehyung’s grandmother in the doorway, giving you a knowing look. Finally, on the last wall, the trail of pieces disappear with a final creation, a canvas.

Feeling tears gather in your eyes, you look at the black smear of a mailbox, the wonky shops, the two tall trees incongruously planted in the middle of the street. And, in the bottom right corner painted meticulously in teal, the same teal as his hair, Y/n and Taehyung.

You let out a sob, turning back to Mrs. Kim. “Thank you for showing me this,” you make out in a voice thickened with tears, “but I really need to see him. Can you please give me his address?”

With a look of warm empathy, she steps forward to clasp your shoulders gently, maternally. “He told me about what happened, luvie. He doesn’t blame you.”

Trembling, you wipe the wetness from your cheeks and sniff. “He should,” you admit sullenly, “he’s too good for me. He’s been nothing but kind and patient and caring and all I’ve done is let him down.” Something occurs to you, and you frown in confusion. “Wait… Did he stop by and tell you?”

Her hands squeeze your upper arms comfortingly before dropping them and stepping back. “Oh honey,” she coos, and your heart stops as she steps aside out of the doorway, letting another, taller figure enter the room.

“Taehyung,” you whisper in shock, but before you can even comprehend his presence, his arms are around you, pulling you against his chest in a tight hug. You feel thick layers of pressure and worry evaporate off of you with a single moment, lungs filling with the familiar scent of him, body relaxing with his chin resting on your head and his arms cradling you. For what feels like a small eternity, you let yourself be fully enveloped in him, an indescribable catharsis of finally being in his arms once more. As your tears dry on the soft flanelette of his pyjama shirt and your fingers clutch at his back, you feel a thought transform into a certainty. “I love you, Taehyung,” you confess quietly, and his whole body shudders with a sob, arms tightening around you even more.

“I love you so much,” he confesses lowly, chest rumbling against your ear as he speaks. “And please don’t ever call yourself broken. You’re not. I didn’t love the art, I loved you. Because the art is a part of you Y/n, whether it’s perfect or not.”

“Tae,” you breathe shakily, his name the only word on your lips.

A soft voice comes from the hallway, Taehyung’s grandmother quietly excusing herself to “leave the two lovebirds alone.” You barely notice, lost in the way Taehyung gently rocks you back and forth in his arms, soothing you.

“I missed you,” you hear Taehyung whisper into your hair, nuzzling his nose gently.

Though you shiver at the feeling, you let out a teary laugh. “I saw you a day ago.”

“But it wasn’t the same then,” he insists softly, and a slow breath escapes you weakly. “It’s okay; you’re here now. You-” he breaks off to swallow, and when he speaks again his voice is much quieter, paper thin. “You won’t walk away again, will you?”

You answer by tipping your head up to look him in the eyes warmly, rising onto the tips of your toes so that you can reach his mouth, pressing a kiss against it tenderly. “Never,” you answer surely, “I promise.”

When he smiles, it’s beautiful - that big, boxy grin you saw that day on the dunes, that day you agreed to paint with him, and so many times since. But it never fails to make you melt, lips automatically returning the gesture. “Now,” he announces with a bemused lilt in his voice. “As much as I love this makeout session in my grandma’s closet, it is 2am. Shall we go get some rest?”

Sleep comes quickly once you have Taehyung’s arm around you and your face in the crook of his neck, and you let it take you, knowing you’ll have time to savor the feeling of sleeping beside him for many days to come.

--

You take him home the next day.

He hadn’t ever been to the bungalow before, but now there was something you desperately wanted him to see. You hadn’t cleaned up before you’d suddenly began roaming the streets of the island, and as he stares around at the chaos, you kind of wish you had. “It’s pretty messy, but…”

“No,” he deflects, mouth parted and eyes wide in wonder, “don’t apologise, this is- wow.” He steps further into the room, stepping over discarded paint tubes, dried canvases and uncleaned brushes. He takes a moment to take in each work. Every single one of them a snapshot of him. “How- When did you do all this?”

You bite your lip, loitering in the entryway. “From when I got back that night until I decided to come looking for you.”

He furrows his brow, fingers gently skimming the top edge of the painting that rests on the easel in the center of the room, the first one you’d painted. His teal growouts, his uneven eyes, the moles dotted so intricately on his face. Your Tae. “You haven’t been able to pick up a brush in months, and then...all this?”

“This was easy,” you say with a shake of your head, “it was easy because it was you.”

He turns, then, glancing at you over his shoulder with eyes brimming with affection. “You really love me.”

A disbelieving grin stretches across your lips. “The midnight confession didn’t make it clear enough?”

“It’s not that, I- I can read it,” he explains, stepping back over to you. “The Barn at Icheon is filled with loneliness, and a lot of your other works talk about fear or curiosity or patience. But this is all love. And it’s me.”

“It’s you,” you confirm with a soft smile, “I love you, Taehyung. So much.”

His eyes light up, then, a cheeky glimmer as his hand reaches out, gripping your elbow and giving it a playful shake. “If I’m your mojo then, you should paint something else today,” he bargains, “I wanna see your genius in action. The black mailbox sadly doesn’t qualify.”

Your mouth drops open in mock outrage, shoving his chest with a whine. “That’s not fair! You said you liked it better black.” Looking around at the disaster zone of the bungalow, you sigh. “I also don’t think I have any paintable surfaces left. I missed the housekeeper so I’ll probably get a fine as it is.”

“Use me, then.”

“Haven’t I painted you enough?” you fire back, but Taehyung just shakes his head emphatically.

“Paint on me. Here,” he says, and his hands leave yours in order to find the hem of his shirt, peeling his shirt off and tossing it into a far end of the room. “A big old waterfall, right down the middle. Rock pool at the bottom.”

“Stop it!” You blush fiercely, hands coming up to cover your cheeks as your eyes feast on his chest, the smooth planes and taut skin, a beautiful golden bronze. “Taehyung…”

For the first time, he doesn't press further. Instead, his shoulders sag, teasing facade slipping. "I'm sorry, you don't have to. I'll stop."

Inexplicably, you find yourself wanting to prove you aren't fragile anymore, unbroken just as he'd insisted you were last night. "I can do it," you protest, stepping away from him to fossick for some usable brushes. "Lie down, then."

Taehyung freezes. "Uh. Yeah, yeah, okay, gimme one sec, I'll just-" With the enthusiasm of a boy having his first kiss, Taehyung hunkers down on the newspaper-covered carpet, shuffling some tools and tubes and palettes out of the way. He looks beautiful like that, chest rising and falling shakily with anticipation, warm brown eyes widened on you. "You don't have to paint a waterfall, you know," he assures hurriedly. "Whatever you do will be perfect."

Heart leaping at his words, you feel a streak of confidence deep inside you, and instead of sitting beside him, you straddle his hips with a newly-filled palette in one hand and a brush in the other. "I want you to guess," you announce from above him, eying his chest and wondering how the colours might fill the space. "Guess what I'm painting. It'll be fun!"

Taehyung's throat bobs with a harsh swallow, nodding quickly. "O-okay, yeah, let's do that," he agrees weakly.

You smile warmly, and begin dipping into a forest green, coating the tips of the bristles. Bending down, you mark a single point of green on the top of his chest, just below his collarbone. The moment the cool paint touches his skin, Taehyung shudders, eyes falling shut. "Okay?" you check. He nods again, chest heaving, and so you continue tracking colour, gradual swoops downwards. Each drag of the brush makes Taehyung's breath catch, and you watch as goosebumps break out on his bare arms.

"Feels nice," he mumbles, lips barely moving like he didn't even intend to speak.

Your lip twitches, but still you focus, topping up the brush whenever the lines became too spotty. After trailing down to just above the level of his belly button, you raise the brush again, starting a new form on the other side of his chest, this one smaller. "Any idea what it is?" you question, but Taehyung just sighs airily.

Once you're finished with the forest green, you wipe your brush off on the edge of your palette and go for a deeper shade, pressing in shadows under each swipe of green. It's once you're working on the bottom half of the second structure that you begin to feel a hardness between your legs, the point where you're straddling him. Shocked, you look up, but Taehyung's covered his eyes with the back of his hand, face turned to the side with reddened cheeks.

"I'm sorry," he croaks out once he feels you stop. "Didn't mean to."

With a fond smile, you lean down, careful not to smudge the wet paint, and gently kiss the corner of his mouth. His fingers twitch and his lips part in surprise, but he otherwise stays still. "It's okay," you soothe, "if it's any consolation, I feel the same way right now."

Like a switch is flipped, Taehyung lifts his hand and tucks his chin, looking down at where the two of you are pressed together, then back up at your face. "Seriously?"

You laugh warmly. "Taehyung, I love you and you're currently lying beneath me, half-naked, writhing every time the brush touches you. Of course I'm turned on."

His cheeks flush hotter and he bites his lip. "You can- you can keep going. Keep painting."

Obediently continuing to fill in the shadow across his stomach, you grin. "Still no guesses on what I'm painting? I'm almost done, you know."

He cranes his neck down further, but the angle prevents him from seeing much. "Some-something green? I'll be honest with you, my focus really isn't-fuck!"

You suppress a laugh as he shudders, hands reaching out to clutch at your pants. Having finished the shadow, you'd mixed a paler green to add some light points on the tops, and one of those swipes had just happened to land across the top of one of his nipples, already stiff from arousal. You continue dipping colour here and there, smirking at the paint that covers the dark brown of his right nipple.

"You tease," Taehyung complains with furrowed brows. "Fuck, that felt good. Please tell me you need to paint the other one too."

You hum in mock thought, transferring your brush to the hand with the palette so that you can reach out, swiping a thumb over the sensitive flesh. Taehyung's whole body jerks, his hips beginning to grind under you, the dull friction pulling a pleasured sigh from your lips that's blessedly drowned by his drawn-out moan. "Why the pout, Tae? This was your idea."

"Next time I'm holding the paintbrush," he promises, hips moving slowly beneath you, eyes lidded as they focus on you, "then you won't be so cocky."

His words send a hot rush of arousal through you, and you rock your hips unconsciously, swallowing a moan. "Next time," you repeat breathily, "but for now I'm almost done."

It only takes a few more touches of pale green, followed by two vertical strokes of brown, before you're putting your tools aside, and standing up off of him.

Taehyung groans in complaint when your hips leave him, his casual grey sweatpants tented and a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead. "Where are you going?"

"Come see," you guide, tugging at his hand. "I have a mirror in my room."

He gets up, palming himself with a pout before following you down the hall, pulled along by your interlocked hands. Once in front of the mirror, Taehyung lifts his eyebrows at just how wrecked he looks. Bottom lip swollen from biting at it, hair mussed and sticking up, and a burst of green slowly drying on his torso. "It's...trees?"

"It's us," you explain softly, "like that painting we did together the first time." From beside him, you reach around to gently tap each figure, two tall fir trees, the one on his right taller than the one on his left. "One for you and one for me."

Before you can pull your arm back, his hand comes up to flatten yours against his chest, hands going cold where the paint is still wet in places.

"Tae, you'll smudge it."

"Y/n," he said slowly, head turning to look at you, eyes brimming with affection, "will you let me make love to you?"

Your breath catches, and rather than trusting your voice, you nod wordlessly.

With a deep exhale, he bends down and joins your lips with his, a hand coming up to bury itself in your hair, keeping you close. His lips are hot against yours, passionate and wanting, and your stomach warms with desire. Clumsily, your fingers find the hem of your shirt, lifting it as far as you can before you have to break apart from him, flinging it away once it clears your head.

"The bed?" Taehyung pants in the moments his mouth is free, and you nod, shucking off your jeans before getting onto the mattress in just your bra and panties. "God, you're beautiful," he chants, "how did I get so lucky?"

He slips out of his sweatpants and joins you sitting on the edge, but your eyes linger on his face, the way his eyes soften and crinkle when they meet yours. "I'm the lucky one," you reply simply.

You shiver when a large palm runs up your bare thigh, warm and grounding. "Can I go down on your first?" he asks with a pleading gaze.

You laugh weakly. "I'm definitely the lucky one." In confirmation, you lie yourself back, scooting so your head rests on the pillows.

Hand now having slid down your leg to rest over your ankle, he wraps his fingers around and lifts it off the bed delicately, your knee crooking and legs parting. Smoothly, he slips himself in the gap, lying on his stomach and letting your raised leg rest on his shoulders. With eyes heavy on you, he leans forward slowly and licks a strip over your clothed pussy, a dull kiss of friction across your clit. You groan, head lolling back, and he takes it as his initiative to continue, sucking at the juices that have dampened your panties until the whole crotch is wet, your thighs shaking slightly with your increased sensitivity.

"Tae, please," you breath out, "I wan' more."

A finger slips below the hem of your panties, just over your hipbone. "Should we take these off?" You nod with a needy whimper, lifting your hips to give him easier access.

He sits up to slide them down your legs, calmly spreading your thighs again when you get the self-conscious urge to close them. With only your bra on, you feel so vulnerable, but rather than scaring you, you feel at peace, so happy to be having this moment with Taehyung.

When he shuffles back into place again, he takes his time, his warm breath tickling your inner thighs. At your needy wiggle of your hips, he chuckles and rubs soothingly at the top of your leg where it's crooked over his shoulder, finally dipping his head again to lick at you.

He starts out maddeningly light, the very tip of his tongue flicking slowly over your clit, tentatively venturing out to dip between your folds. You reach out for his hand, needing something to anchor you, and he smiles against you as he interlocks your fingers, keeping you grounded.

"So good, Tae," you encourage, moaning openly when his tongue trails lower and dips between your folds, over your entrance. "Fuck, so good."

Rather than answer verbally, Taehyung doubles his efforts and begins to speed up, lapping at your core and suckling your clit.

Every breath is a moan or a whimper, overtaken by pleasure, but you let yourself drown in it, letting Taehyung eat you out like a man starved. With one hand on your upper thigh and one entwined with yours, he's got no fingers free to play with you, but expertly he brings you to your peak with just his tongue, thrusting it inside you as his nose nudges at your clit.

When you feel your orgasm quickly approaching, your moans heighten and your back begins to arch, hips grinding against him desperately. Taehyung chuckles, the sound vibrating against you and making you shudder, and his hand slips high to press against your waist instead, holding you in place for him. Your thighs tense around him, praises and curses and his name spilling from your lips incoherently.

It's one last nibble at your clit, pulling it into his mouth and dragging his tongue over it, your vision whites out with the force of your orgasm, jerking beneath him and crying out wantonly, overcome with pleasure. He works you through it diligently, groaning as you come down from your high with weak shivers, his tongue never ceasing until you push at his head from oversensitivity.

He lets your leg down carefully, kissing his way up your bare stomach, the swells of your breasts and your throat until his lips are on yours and you can taste yourself on him, feel the ends of his hair tickling against your cheeks.

"That was incredible, Tae," you pant out, feeling boneless beneath him as he takes charge of the kiss, tugging at your lips and licking into your mouth. "I need you," he gasps, and you moan throatily when his clothed crotch grinds against your bare core, the fabric of his underwear catching on your sensitive clit. He's hard, probably painfully so, and all you want is to feel him inside you.

Desperate, your fingers slip behind you, arching your back so that you can deftly release the clasp of your bra, pulling it off hastily before reaching for his underwear. "I need you too, Tae," you plea, "please hurry."

His fingers, slightly cool from the air, slide down your stomach and between your thighs, making you jump as he slips two inside, thrusting them slowly. You're still sensitive, and his mouth falls to your ear, hushing you and pressing encouraging kisses to your temple as you whimper. "Doing so well for me," he praises, "just gotta make sure you're ready, okay?"

"O-okay," you make out, sucking in a breath when he pulls out and presses a third finger inside you, picking up his pace. Gradually, the prickling overstimulation warms into pleasure again, and you rock your hips to seek more friction, free hand coming up to wrap around his neck and shoulders, holding him close.

With no bra on, your full chest is flat against his, and as the paint dries it drags over your nipples, making you arch your back, seeking out the friction.

The warmth between your legs tightens with the extra stimulation, and your breath begins to catch, feeling another orgasm oncoming.

"Close?" Taehyung murmurs in your ear as he widens the gaps between his fingers inside you, scissoring to stretch you even more. You nod hastily, moans getting stuck in your throat, pushed out with every gasped breath. Taehyung hums in response, and you whimper when you feel his fingers slipping out of you completely. Before you can protest, the blunt head of his cock slips between your sopping folds, Taehyung running it up and down to coat himself in your slick.

"Fuck, yes, please Tae, I'm ready," you babble, legs lifting to wrap around his hips, attempting to pull him in closer.

He chuckles, but it's cut off prematurely by a hissed breath of pleasure as he lines up and begins to sink his length into you, a delicious feeling of fullness after his fingers left you so empty. Taehyung enters you slowly, letting you adjust, and you feel completely enveloped by him; his voice in your ear, his hand in yours, his cock inside you.

"Need you, Tae," you whine once he stills, bottomed out, "please move."

"Are you ready?" You wiggle your hips with a groaned yes, arm tightening around him as he pulls back. He stops when just his head still rests inside you, pauses for a moment with a moan as you clench around him, and then plunges back in with one slick thrust.

You cry out, satisfied smile stretching tiredly across your face as he finally begins a steady rhythm, favoring deeper thrusts that make your toes curl. "Yes, Tae, so good!"

"God, you're still so tight," he groans throatily, "so good for me."

On the edge before, you find yourself close after only a few minutes, and you tell him with a shaky breath. Taehyung lets out a relieved exhale as he continues to thrust into you. "Thank fuck," he huffs out, panting a word at a time, "I'm not gonna last, you drive me crazy."

You press your head against his, nuzzling at it as you unwrap your arm from around his shoulders, instead seeking out your clit for the needed friction to push you over the edge. The added stimulation has you clenching, and Taehyung swears desperately, his pace picking up but shuddering as he gets close.

The two of you pant loudly into the otherwise silent room, filling each others' ears with whimpered moans and slurred praises, until you finally catch the tip of your peak, and with one final drag of his cock inside you, you're falling apart, not suddenly and violently like the first time, but rather a slow, hot wave of pleasure that works its way out from your core, down to your toes and fingertips, clenching tightly around Taehyung until he curses and spills inside you, shuddering through his release.

"I love you so much," you whisper once you come down from your high, a contented exhaustion seeping into your bones.

"I love you too," Taehyung says with a final press of his lips on your temple.

---

"This one's gorgeous. I love the broad lines on the ocean compared to the texture of rocks on the shore. This is at the island, you say?"

You hum in confirmation, smiling at your old friend. "You should see, it, Joonie. There's this little cluster of houses and shops right in the middle but the rest is just open nature. Forests, beaches, everything in the middle. I go there every year."

Kim Namjoon, Director at the Leeum Museum in Seoul and avid nature buff, takes one last look at the landscape canvas and grins. "Ah, twist my arm..." You follow him as he moves down the line of mounted canvases, stopping at a familiar portrait. He furrows his brows and cocks his head. "I feel like I've seen this guy before, something about the face... He didn't have green in his hair though, I must be confused."

You laugh at your friend, spying a shock of red through the swathes of people. "You have seen him before," you explain, catching the figure's eye, "you would have seen him here tonight."

In front of you, Namjoon raises his brows. "Oh, really? Who is he, then?"

Over Namjoon's shoulder, you watch Taehyung approach, turning heads with his scarlet dye. He gives you a wink, and you grin back. "He's my husband."

[ammocharis]

OC Interview: Vatna

Thanks for the tag @cleverblackcat, @mageofholyandraste, @darethshirl! It sounds fun!

Introduction

This event was organized a few weeks prior to the Winter Palace ball. Ambassador Josephine Montilyet had invited a few Orlesian journalists to Skyhold to interview the newly appointed Inquisitor.

Can you introduce yourself?

Vatna Einarsdotten Selkesdotten of Two Falcon Hold. (a moment of silence) In the Frostback Mountains. (another moment of silence as the interviewers wait for her to say something else) Inquisitor of the Second Inquisition. (it seems that she won’t say anything more, so one of the journalists asks the next question)

What are your gender identity, orientation, and relationship status?

Is that what you ask every Lowlander? (grumbles) Alright. I see myself a woman. Who I invite or don’t invite to my bed is my very own matter. I am unmarried and have never been before. If you’re curious, yes, the Avvar may marry multiple times in their life if they wish so. Does this answer satisfy you?

Where and when were you born?

I was born in Two Falcon Hold, eighteen... no, nineteen winters ago. (she corrects herself as she remembers that winter came and went when she was away from home, making her one winter older than when she left)

What is your weapon of choice and fighting style?

I am a mage. Unlike most spellweavers in your Circles, we in the mountains train with all sort of weapons, just like any other warrior. I prefer fighting in close quarters. When I came of age, I chose an axe as my preferred weapon. It was commissioned from the dwarves of Orzammar. The blade is engraved with runes and the handle has lyrium core that I can easily channel my magic through. It has been... misplaced for the first few months that I spent with the Inquisition, but it was recovered. Fortunately, the gods blessed me with another weapon in the meantime - the fire-staff that belonged to the Avvar-Mother. I’ve been told this topic is a source of confusion, but I’m not sure how to explain it better. Yes, I do use both an axe and a staff now. I had a battleaxe when I arrived into the Lowlands. Then I lost it. Then I claimed the staff of Tyrdda Bright-Axe. Tyrdda was called Bright-Axe because she had a staff with a fire-focusing crystal. But the word ‘axe’ used to mean every hafted weapon. Then I got back my axe, my regular axe... Let’s go to the next question.

Are you happy?

I’ll be happy when the Lady’s Veil is fully repaired and Corypheus lies dead. Until then, I have work to do. Would you be happy if there were world-dooming critters in your house? Because there are. There are cowards in Orlais scheming together with Corypheus, maybe even people you know. (a lady in a pale blue mask exchanges looks with the others and suggests a lighter topic)

Family and friends

What should I say? Just talk about my family and friends? Well, my father is called Einar, my mother is called Selke. In my hold, we take bynames after both our parents, so I actually already revealed their names. My father was born is Two Falcon Hold, my mother moved from another hold further south. They’ve been married for twenty three years now. They were rather mad to promise such a long marriage without extensions. Eighty-eight knots, can you imagine? I mean, they could always as the Thane to cut the rope short if they grew tired of each other... But it works well for them. I hope they’ll live together until it the last knot. (the interviewers prompt her to explain what she meant by knots and ropes) Oh, I run away with that. The number of knots is the number of years the marriage is supposed to last. Before the wedding, the bride ties a number of knots into a rope, and the groom’s task is to untie them. On the wedding day, the bride starts to sing hymns to the Lady of the Skies. The groom begins to untie the knots then. However many he’ll manage to unravel before the hymns ends, that many years they shall be married together. After the promise ends, they can get married again if they wish. But my parents vowed to get married for eighty-eight years right away. Eight is a blessed amount. Eighty-eight, doubly so. I’ve been told the ritual took all day to complete. By the end of it, my mother’s throat was sore and my father’s knuckles were raw. But they got married how they wanted, and the bond has been steadfast for many years now.

I have a younger sister, Hirka. She’s only four winters younger than me but she can be a real brat sometimes. We used to be inseparable as children. Then we both grew a bit. I got my magic and had to spent a lot of time mastering my abilities. She had other things to do too. But she’s my sister no matter what.

I have some (she pauses to rememeber the right word in Common language) aunts and uncles, but most of them and their families live in other holds, so I haven’t seen them a lot. Only a few times, never in some cases. The word still travels through the Mountains, so we do hear news from them every now and then. 

In the end, the whole hold is your kin.

Have you ever run away from home?

Once or twice, I skulked outside of the hold and refused to go back until well after nightfall. But I never really run away, I wouldn’t abandon my family like that.

Would you consider marriage or having children?

I don’t know.

Do you secretly hate any of your friends?

No, I do not. Those who I call my friends, I think as such. I make my dislikes known. Too easily, I’ve been told.

Which friend knows everything about you?

There is someone who knows my soul, but I’m not going to talk about it.

Asked by fans

Are you literate? Have you been to school?

Yes, I can read and write. Not everyone in the Mountains does, but more than you imagine, I think. Augurs, skalds, merchants, those who aspire to be thanes... Many are able to tell the numbers, in order to trade with dwarves, but haven’t practiced beyond that.

The augurs learn how to read so that they may study old magics. I was an apprentice to the Sky Watcher of my hold - uh, a Sky Watcher is like a... priest to the Lady of the Skies. I was supposed to become his successor. So I studied something almost every day since I was eight. One day, I would memorize the shapes of protection sigils, and then try to draw them myself. Another day, I would study the uses of all mushrooms found in caves. But we don’t have any schools like there are in the lowlands. You learn from your mentors and from the gods, and most importantly, from your own mistakes.

The eeriest prediction you made that later came true?

Eeriest? I’m not sure. I dreams of many things. Some come true, but not in the way I imagined them to.

What is something you were embarrassingly late to realise?

I had no idea those lap dogs your Orlesian ladies carry around are really dogs. I’d never guess they share blood with wolves. I thought they’re some sort of magic toy.

Do you have mental or physical problems?

Do you honestly expect me to reveal my weaknesses to you?

What is your current main goal?

As I said before, restore the Veil and kill Corypheus.

Drink or food?

Am I supposed to choose between the two? Food, I guess. I could live on soups and stews, maybe. Does goat milk count as drink or food?

Cats or dogs?

Birds.

Optimist or pessimist?

I learned these words only recently. I must say, I do not fully understand why your sages would divide people like that. Is there someone who truly sees everything in bright colours? And someone who sees everything in black? Isn’t everyone a little bit of this and a little bit of that? Perhaps I’m more on the pessimist side.

Sassy or sarcastic?

Eh, sarcastic.

HAVE YOU EVER:

Have you ever been caught sneaking out?

Yes, I once got so bored with my healing lessons that I decided to sneak out while Jokka wasn’t looking. She of course noticed me right away. I never tried to sneak out again.

Broken a bone?

I broke my left wrist while climbing. My mentor healed it quickly but he left a scar to serve as a reminder to not be so reckless.

Received flowers?

I... (she bits her tongue) Josephine tells me I had received several bouquets of flowers this last week. She had placed them in the guest hall where everyone can enjoy them.

Ghosted someone?

Ghosted? (a man in a green mask explains mirthfully) No, never. I wouldn’t leave someone hanging like that. I’d tell him straight in the face. (she replies sharply)

Pretended to laugh at a joke you didn't get?

I have yet to learn how to pretend so well as to laugh at something I don’t understand or find funny.

~

Tagging (no pressure, of course, this is just for fun): @dreadfutures, @tejaswrites, @serenpedac, @molliehaswords, @crackinglamb, @a11sha11fade, @rakshadow, @samuraisaucefrites, @noire-pandora, @1000generations

[quazartranslates]

Welcome to the Nightmare Game II - CH34

**This is an edited machine translation. For more information, please [click here]**

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-----

Chapter 34: Star Death Reality Show (XVII)

In front of the laser corridor, the world in front of them was dark, and even the corridor’s emergency lights were not turned on. Standing here was like standing on a dark cliff, and taking one step forward would lead to falling into the abyss.

Qi Leren turned on the flashlight, its dazzling light reflecting off the metal wall.

He walked forward carefully, for fear that the power would suddenly come on, but he also knew that it was impossible, and that there was still ten minutes before the time he and He Yi had agreed upon. He could successfully reach the door and wait for the power to be restarted. The defense system in this corridor and the identification system on the door were started at the same time. In theory, there was enough time for him to brush open the door with his ID card and leave the underground research institute.

Even if there was an accident, such as an early recovery of the power supply, this time he had already made an escape plan, which wouldn't be as awkward as the last time—that is, if he had to use S/L again. Thinking of the Prophet's warning, Qi Leren felt somewhat guilty.

He solemnly apologized to the audience, saying that this adventure might scare everyone, and then turned off the camera. Without doing this, there was no way to not make the audience suspicious. If he really let them see the abnormal situation in the laser corridor, there was no way to explain it!

Once again, Qi Leren stood in front of the door. The electronic card reader for the ID card couldn’t work because there was no power, so Qi Leren could only wait silently.

Eight minutes to go.

Qi Leren was a bit absent-minded. He was eager to get out of here and return to the world on the surface. He would tell Dr. Lu and Du Yue what had happened inside, and then they would think about it together. Time was running out. They had to find the four contestants who had been infected as soon as possible, kill them, and isolate the suspects.

There was still much to be done.

If the situation got out of hand, Qi Leren intended to ignore He Yi's dissuasion and bring Dr. Lu and Du Yue into the underground research institute, which was probably the simplest clearance method for this copy, but by doing so, there will be very few rewards... A bit of a loss.

With a zi sound, the sensor lights lit up, first far away then nearing. Qi Leren were shocked and stared at the card reader, which showed words he couldn't understand and the patterns of fingerprints. Qi Leren was overjoyed and quickly raised the ID card.

At the moment when the ID card was about to touch the card reader, the card reader suddenly went white. After a few seconds, a pattern reappears on it—a circle that looked like a clock, and there were strange numbers blinking in the circle. The symbols changed as the dots appeared in the clockwise direction...

People who have restarted electronic devices must be familiar with this pattern, but the vicious timing of its appearance made Qi Leren stunned.

The alarm of didididididi— sounded in the channel behind him, stinging his eardrums, and the laser beams at the end of the channel appeared again!

He couldn't say if he was angry or relieved. Qi Leren felt at this moment that the boot had finally dropped. He even thought wryly that he was still suffering from bad luck. Fortunately, as long as he waited for another half minute, He Yi would cut off the power again… If he didn't make any mistakes there.

Qi Leren, who had confidence in this venture, suddenly became suspicious.

Would He Yi really turn off the power? Would he really do it? If he didn't turn on the power, and he waited stupidly at the door and missed the best time to escape...

No, he couldn't wait. Take a gamble! Believe He Yi or believe in himself?

Qi Leren took the initiative, swiftly jumped up, and rushed forward, making a leap and running again. He crossed two laser lines and the next three were skillfully crossed. However, when the laser net was formed, he still could not rush out of the corridor, because the first group of mesh laser networks was formed too early.

But if he saved once, it would be enough!

Qi Leren ran the whole way. At the moment when the first group of laser nets was about to touch him, he saved his position. The laser nets collided with his body and destroyed him in an instant. At the same time, the laser nets that had destroyed the intended target disappeared.

Qi Leren was resurrected in the same place, unable to hesitate, and rushed out of this death trap without looking back before the second laser net could form!

The agreed 40 seconds had already passed, and the power supply had not been cut off, but Qi Leren was relieved: Fortunately, he chose to believe in himself. Reality had taught him never to gamble on any luck.

He leaned against the wall and recalled the Novice Village from when he had just entered the game. He had met a murderer in the hospital. What were his choices at that time?

He chose to hide, wait, and pray. If it was him now... Qi Leren smiled silently. Now he would want to kill that chainsaw killer, so would he even need to use S/L? After all, it was just an ordinary weak human being.

It had only been two months, but he was totally different from before. This change was not only reflected in his combat effectiveness, but in his sense of fighting. He had somewhat gotten rid of an ordinary person’s mentality of wanting to hide and had begun to deal with the endless dangers in a more active way. It was thanks to Chen Baiqi—her demonic training methods had made Qi Leren realize that shrinking from fate was much worse than "just don’t act recklessly".

After recovering quickly, Qi Leren took his gun in hand and set off, walking towards the power room.

He Yi must have had an accident over there. Qi Leren didn't believe that He Yi deliberately sabotaged him. He Yi knew that he had survived going through the laser corridor once, so he wouldn't be sure that this method could kill him. If Qi Leren had a narrow escape, he would be in big trouble. If he really wanted to plot against him, He Yi could have shot him in the head when he wasn’t paying attention, there was no need to wait like this.

A pi sounded in silence, and Qi Leren suddenly stopped and looked back in confusion. This sound... It seemed that the door at the other end of the laser corridor had opened.

Did someone find an ID card and come in? Qi Leren ran back quickly with his gun. He saw that the door at the end had indeed opened, and there was a figure poking around.

"Qi Leren! You’re still alive!" From the end of the long corridor, Dr. Lu waved excitedly at him.

"Qianbei, qianbei, are you okay? We’re here to save you!" Du Yue emerged from behind Dr. Lu, and they were like two mice clinging to the door, eyeing the cheese in the mousetrap.

"Don't come in! There are lasers!" Qi Leren shouted frantically.

"Okay, Du Yue and I found another ID card and finally got the door open. What should we do now?" Dr. Lu asked.

"You just wait, don't close the door, I'll go to the power room and turn it off, then you can come in safely," Qi Leren said.

"Then hurry back," Dr. Lu said.

"We’re waiting for you!" Du Yue shouted.

Relieved, Qi Leren turned to leave, took two steps, and then stopped. After learning his lesson, he explained, "He Yi is here. We figured out that the glowing stone is a parasitic monster called amphioctopus. It will parasitize the human body and multiply rapidly to infect other people. At present, about four people have been infected. Mark and Xue Jiahui are almost certainly infected, and Annie is also very suspicious. I’m not sure about the other one. Don’t trust anyone and don’t wander around until I get back!"

"I understand." Dr. Lu waved him away.

This time Qi Leren really left and went to the power room.

It was quiet, quiet everywhere, a disturbing silence. Qi Leren moved very fast, but his steps were very light. How did he develop these cat-like steps? Qi Leren didn't really want to recall it. But thanks to Chen Baiqi's demonic training, he had learned how to do this in three days, which was more than enough to cope with the current situation.

Coming to the floor where the power room was located, Qi Leren held his gun and quietly moved closer to his destination. The power room door was open. There were bright lights inside and rows of tall machinery and equipment running with a buzzing sound, but no one there. He Yi was not there.

Qi Leren frowned. Where was He Yi? At this time, he couldn't run around by himself. His sudden disappearance seemed to tell him that there was a new danger here.

What could it be?

Qi Leren didn't know, and he couldn't search for it now.

Dr. Lu and Du Yue were still waiting for him at the door. Should he continue to delay here, or turn off the power and go out?

Qi Leren hesitated for a moment, then flipped the switch.

The old machines made a slow plaintive wail, and they stopped working altogether. After doing this for several more times, these machines that hadn’t been maintained would likely break down completely. Qi Leren felt that if they weren’t in a copy, but in the real world, it would be impossible to turn on the standby power that had been idle for hundreds of years.

The lights went out, and this underground research institute became a dark paradise.

Qi Leren's ability to see in the dark hadn’t improved after the shell was broken, so it was impossible to see his surroundings clearly without any light source. He had to turn on his flashlight and run along the emergency passage towards the top floor.

This time, Qi Leren ran very fast, as if some monster was chasing behind him, and he didn't have light footsteps. After all, for a man running in the dark with a flashlight, the weight of his footsteps was meaningless. He passed through the winding halls and returned to the front of the laser corridor smoothly with his excellent memory of the terrain—

It was as if he had a faint premonition in his heart.

The door was open, but Dr. Lu and Du Yue were gone.

In the boundless darkness, in the boundless silence, as if he was the only one left on this deserted planet, stationed in the long night, watching the awakening monsters open their jaws and come towards him.

-----

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[trulycevans]

our perfect little family

Warnings: swearing, a bad pregnancy experience 

Summary: anon requested:

“hi!! i absolutely love ur imagines 🥺 i was thinking maybe u could do one where chris�� gf is pregnant and they break up (unrelated to the pregnancy) but chris still is in her life and they get back together after the baby is born 👉👈 just an idea! hope u’re staying safe! <3″

Word Count: 1.7k

Pairing: Chris Evans x Reader

[A/N I’ve never been pregnant so I don’t know much about the ins and outs of it, I’ve tried as much as possible to be accurate but if anything isn’t quite right you know why]

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

You paced the bathroom of yours and Chris’ shared home. Heart in your throat as you watched the timer on your phone. You sat down on the toilet lid, knees bobbing, head in your hands. Never had you expected to feel the amount of dread you did at that moment. While many people in a relationship feel excited about a possible pregnancy, you on the other hand felt a sense of impending doom. 

The alarm beeped on your phone causing your breath to hitch in your throat. “Ok [Y/N], you’ve got this. No matter what it says you’ll be okay” You muttered a pep talk to yourself as you twisted to pick up the pregnancy test from the sink. “Fuck,” the two lines on the pregnancy test were bold and dark. There was no denying or doubting whether your child was currently growing inside you. 

Your head began to spin. Yours and Chris’ relationship had been rocky for a few months and was hanging on by a thread. Virtually every conversation you would have would be an argument, which lead to Chris sleeping on the sofa and an awkward apology the next morning. However, this was cyclical and happened most nights. You ached for the relationship you once had, one filled with laughter and joy. With stolen kisses and romantic endeavours. 

Your hand moved down to your stomach, “Hello baby,” You whispered, your eyes beginning to well with tears. “I’m gonna protect you no matter what-” You were interrupted by the sound of your boyfriend shouting you from downstairs. “Where are you? I’ve been looking for you. I-” He pushed the door of your en suite open, his gaze dropping to the pregnancy test in your grasp and your hand held softly on your belly. 

“What’s that?” He asked softly, frozen in his spot in the doorway. You didn’t respond, silently handing him the pregnancy test. His poker face while studying the white stick in front of him made you flood with concern, your hand never leaving your stomach as your knee continued to bob anxiously. 

“You’re pregnant?” He finally whispered looking up at you with watery eyes, causing you to nod. He cautiously walked toward you, kneeling next to you on the cold tiles. He delicately lifted his hand so that his fingertips could brush your cheek softly, causing you to look at his face, a small smile etched on his face, as slow tears trickled down his cheeks. 

“I know things haven’t been great between us recently...” He hesitated, taking a second to breathe and observe your reaction. “But you don’t know how happy this makes me.” His voice was barely audible.

“We-We’re gonna make this work right Chris?” You questioned, “No matter what happens this baby is always gonna have us right?” 

“That’s what you’ve been worrying about?” He asked incredulously, “No matter what I’m gonna be there for our child... Nothing in the world would ever stop me from being the best Dad.” His hand hesitantly drifted to your own that rested upon your belly, as if seeking permission from you, unsure of how you would react. 

“That’s our baby in there Chris” You whispered, and he gave your hand a tight squeeze as he interlocked his fingers with yours. A comfortable silence washed over the two of you, and you prayed that this feeling would never end. 

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

But of course it did. A baby was never going to fix the problems you and Chris had had. You both quickly realised that the stress of your relationship was not good for you or the baby. So just as you entered the second trimester you and Chris had ended your relationship, a mutual decision that pained the both of you each day. 

Chris had moved out of your shared home, not wanting you to have to put too much pressure or stress on yourself by being the person to leave. So as you spent the first night alone in your large Boston home you had cried whilst sitting on the sofa, Dodger curled up on your lap as the sounds of your sobs echoed across the empty halls. Your phone beeped on the coffee table in front of you and you leaned forward to retrieve it and read the message.

chris 🤍: I’m so sorry for everything. I’m so grateful for everything you have, had and will do for me and our child. Sleep well, I’ll see you soon x

Silent tears trickled down your face as your heart shattered even more.

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

The pregnancy passed in a blur and you had hated every minute of it. Not only were the hormones surging through your body making you feel emotionally, mentally and physically horrendous, but your crippling loneliness made it awful as well. Yes, you had yours and Chris’ family around you in the day which made it that little bit easier. But at night when it was just you and Dodger alone in the house, the house that was a constant reminder of your failed relationship. 

Chris had tried to be there for you in any way he could, and it pained him to see you so damaged by the pregnancy. He felt to blame, and yet it was inappropriate of him to try and help relieve some of your symptoms. 

Chris on the day that marked exactly four weeks before your due date had found himself parked up on the driveway of your home just watching you and waiting in case anything happened. You were struggling to walk at this stage and while you had insisted to Chris that you could take care of yourself (”Chris I’ve got this, go home I’ll be fine” you had winced as a sharp pain shot through your back). However, he knew that was just your stubbornness shining through. 

So to settle his nerves Chris had camped outside of your house in his car, just in case you needed him, and as he watched you through the window standing at the kitchen. He smiled, staring at your swollen belly as you chopped vegetables at the island. His adoration for you had only grown throughout your pregnancy, he craved your attention and affection, he wanted nothing more than to be able to stand behind you now hands on your swelling stomach, kissing your hair comfortingly as you talk about your day. 

His affection was quickly converted to concern however as he watched your eyes widen and hands clutch your stomach. He leant forward as he watched your look down at the floor and then grab your phone, his own beginning to ring immediately. 

“Hey!” He answered, “What’s wrong?”

“You’re still outside aren’t you?” You questioned wincing. 

“Yeah, why?” Chris breathed, anxiety piling up with every second that passed. 

“I-I think my water just broke” You breathed, Chris immediately jumped out of the car, dropping his phone into the centre console. He raced into the house, fumbling with his keys to open the door. When finally the lock gave and he was able to rush inside he found you knelt on the kitchen floor trying to clean up the fluid that had leaked.

“Babe what are you doing?” He questioned incredulously, the nickname rolling off his tongue out of habit.

“Labour could take days, and then I’ll probably stay at the hospital for a few more. I’m not coming back in pain after having this baby and having to clean up the floor,” You explained, causing Chris to let out an exasperated laugh. “And what do you think I’m gonna be doing when this baby comes, just watching you do everything. I’ll clean this up for you” He knelt down in front of you taking the cloth from your hand. “Why don’t you head out to the car?” He questioned, “I’ll grab the bag and take Dodger round to Mrs. Dalloway.” All you could do was nod as a contraction occurred, causing your face to scrunch up and you to moan in pain. 

Chris dashed around the house making sure everything was in order as you shuffled to the car. When he eventually climbed into the car, the faint sound of the radio as you text yours and Chris’ parents to let them know what was happening so they could meet you at the hospital. “You ready to have a baby?” He questioned, and you nodded wide eyed. A sense of fear reverberating between you. 

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

36 hours. That’s how long it took for you to bring Emilia Grace Evans into the world. But it was so worth it. The moment you and Chris heard her cries you had made eye contact and shed tears. You fell back onto the hospital bed exhausted as the nurses shuffled to take care of you.

“Well done,” Chris whispered brushing your sweat-ridden hair away from your face. “You did so well,” He pressed a firm kiss to your temple as the midwife congratulated you on your baby girl. She was placed onto your chest, and at last you felt at peace. You felt normal again for the first time in eight months, and as your eyes moved from your beautiful newborn daughter to your ex-boyfriend, you knew that you couldn’t do this without him. The adoration in his eyes as he watched you whisper comforting words to your daughter. 

It was an unspoken agreement to continue your relationship. It naturally just happened. The moment you were discharged from hospital Chris had gradually moved back into your home. You shared a bed again, he cared for you as you recovered from the ordeal that was giving birth. 

And after a month of living this way you had asked what you were while rocking Emilia to sleep on your porch swing. “We’re just us, [Y/N]” Chris whispered. “We’re just our perfect little family” He smiled as Dodger nuzzled his leg.

“Our perfect little family,” You repeated, looking up at him and leaning up to kiss him as the evening sun washed over you.

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

taglist

@onetwo3000​ @tvckerlance​

[nothingeverlost]

On the Wings of an Owl (1/?)

A single moment in time altered, two lives spared, and four lives changed forever.  What would have happened if Euphemia and Fleamont Potter had lived?

Slow burn Remus/Sirius.  Sirius raising Harry.

Some drinking and language.  Rating T for now, will possibly change later.

This was my Nano for November so there's currently over 50,000 words.  Did I mention slow burn?

II

Prologue

II

In the winter of 1978, five months after the Marauders graduated from Hogwarts and eight months before Lily and James married, the Dhawan family owl died.  The death of an owl is not a very important thing, in the grand scheme.  The family mourns, as they would any pet, but other than an inability to send letters until a new owl is adopted, very little is affected.  Usually.

By the time Janya Dhawan’s husband brought home a new owl she was close to delivering her first child, and the letter she had intended to send to her aunt about attending the birth never got written.  Her aunt never made plans to visit the home of her youngest sister’s youngest daughter.  She and her husband instead stayed in England where a particularly cold winter was paired with a particularly vicious strain of dragon pox.  Euphemia and Fleamont Potter both caught the pox from a friend’s grandson and died within hours of each other less than two weeks later.

But what if the owl had lived even a few weeks longer?  What if a letter had arrived and Euphemia had made plans to visit her niece?  She and her husband would have stayed for a few weeks, visiting family.  When they returned to England the epidemic of dragon pox would have subsided and the winter, though still just as cold, wouldn’t have been as wet.  Lily and James would have hosted a welcome back dinner.  A few months later it would have been the elder Potter’s turn to host an engagement dinner, and eventually a wedding.

The death of an owl can not change a great many things.  The war had been set in motion years ago.  Battles still happened, people still died.  A prophecy was still spoken and on one horrible day in Godric’s Hollow He Who Mush Not Be Named still tried to kill a baby.  Lily and James Potter were still the final two victims in the last battle of the war.

Here is what did change.  The blood oath needed to protect Harry Potter came from his grandparents and not an aunt who had no interest in his welfare.  The family on Privet Drive never woke up to a baby on the front steps.  Dudley Dursley was forever an only child both in name and spirit and never learned to share.   Whether their lives were better or worse for it we can only speculate.   It’s of little consequence to the people that make up our story.

On that terrible night when James and Lily were killed and their son was rescued he was taken to an estate in Weybridge rather than a muggle suburb.  Monty Potter was the one to break down, brought to his knees by the death of his only child.  Euphemia pushed her grief away for long enough to take her grandson in hand and see to the practicalities of a clean diaper and a warm bottle.  This was the first life that is irrevocably changed, a boy who will grow up in a loving home instead of a cupboard under the stairs.  It is the first ripple from a small pebble tossed into the river of time.

The second ripple changed three lives dramatically, two for the better.

Sirius Black was under arrest for suspicion of being a Death Eater and responsible for the deaths of Lily and James Potter.  In another time there was no one to defend him or believe him, no one but a guilty man who had no interest in helping an innocent man he pushed away long ago. In another time he did not have Euphemia Potter in his corner.  He would have sat in a cell until it was decided that there was no point in a trial, not when the Potters were dead and not even Albus Dumbledore would speak up for him.  After a week it would have been a cold boat ride to Azkaban and then a cell from which he was never expected to return.

Sirius Black had spent most of his summers and holidays with the Potter family from the time he was thirteen.  Euphemia and Monty worried about the lad and tried to fuss over him and look out for him as much as they could, knowing something about his home life.  And then came the winter of sixth year when he showed up with a bruised arm, a haunted look in his eye, and a trunk full of everything he owned.   From that moment he was their son every bit as much as James.  Euphemia knew that her son would not betray his brother, just as she knew that James would have given his very life to keep Sirius safe.  Her Sirius was not a Death Eater and she would do whatever necessary to prove it.  

It took two days of pulling the right strings and crossing a few palms with galleons to get in to see Sirius.  Fleamont stayed home with the baby, leaving her to sit alone in a drab grey room in the bowels of the Department of Ministry.  

“You shouldn’t be here.”  Euphemia’s first thought when Sirius spoke was that his voice sounded as if it had broken and only been half put together again.  Her second was that he was too thin; it had been a few months since she’d seen him and he clearly needed some feeding up.  She started a mental list of meals she needs to make for him and the sweets she would need to bake.  He’d always been fond of her butter chicken and her mysore pak.

“Monty is taking care of Harry.  I would have been here yesterday but there was paperwork.”  There was a table between them, but it was not quite wide enough to keep her from reaching out.  He jerked away as if he’d been burned.

“James is dead.”  Someone who didn’t know Sirius might think his emotionless statement of facts meant he didn’t care.   Euphemia knew that he cared too much.  He’d learned at a young age that showing emotion meant more pain, a lesson she daily cursed the Black family for teaching him. “And it’s my fault.”

“Did you kill him?” She could barely say the words and can never believe the answer would be affirmative.  Sirius would never hurt her son and Lily.

“If it weren’t for me they would still be alive.”  There was a circle of sigils on his right wrist, slowly moving.  She remembered when he’d come home with the tattoo months ago before she’d heard of the prophecy and the plan to protect her son’s family.

“Because you were their secret keeper?”  

“Because I wasn’t.”  The whole story came out then, fresh and painful.  She grieved again for one son as she grieved with the other, and when he was done she assured him that going to Azkaban would not bring James and Lily back.  It won’t make anything better.  He had to tell the truth instead of the stone silence he has been giving the Aurors.

“Besides,” she reminded him, “Harry needs his godfather and Monty and I need our son.”

It took almost a week to get him released, but he never had to go to Azkaban.  By the time he was free there were wanted posters for Peter Pettigrew posted.  He was not found, which troubled Sirius in the middle of the night, but during the day he was busy with Harry.  The difference between playing godfather when the whim suited him and raising a child was overwhelming, and for his sanity as well as Harry’s protection he moved back into the bedroom that had become his long before he officially moved into the Potter home at the age of 16.

Three lives, other than Harry’s, dramatically changed because of one owl.   Sirius was home once more, escaping the fate of Azkaban and Dementors.   Peter, hunted by the Aurors, never to know a moment’s rest.  And the third?  At the moment Remus Lupin was in the basement of his old family home in Wales, recovering from the full moon.  In another time he was destined to spend the next 127 full moons alone, certain that two of his best friends were dead, the third was a murderer, and that the safest thing for Harry Potter was to stay as far away as he could.  His fate in this time was less certain than the others and rests in the hands of Sirius Black.

[hedwigstalons]

High Expectations - Ch12

Just a little sketch to see if I could tackle proportions and pose, no references used.  Yes I know I have made absolutely no attempt to make the brothers look like anyone, particularly Scott, I’m very much still learning (and struggling).

I’m normally very clean with my fics but one or two swears crept in this time, blame Scott.  It’s not littered with profanity though.

This chapter (and the next one) were really saved by @willow-salix​ who stopped me from deleting the whole thing in a crisis of confidence.  She is lovely.

Earlier parts: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven

AO3 chapter link

Chapter 12

Virgil ran his fingers through his hair and wondered what the hell to do for the best, he was completely out of his depth and floundering.  He had made it his personal duty to keep an eye on Gordon ever since that fated visit to Denver but now the red flags were flashing and he was feeling ill equipped to deal with it.  His cheerful brother, normally so driven and bursting with barely contained energy, was wilting before his eyes.  

With each passing call Gordon had become more listless, less talkative, dropping into the stupor of the repressed.  He should have been worried when Gordon switched from video calls to voice only but he had been too busy with his own course to pay much heed to the change of routine until today.  He was pretty sure that Gordon had activated the video screen by accident; the face that greeted him was sallow, the eyes red rimmed and framed by heavy black bags.  It hadn’t taken long but Gordon’s lean and athletic form displayed change quickly, his little brother was a mess and looked visibly ill.  

Of course he had heard all about the Marineville incident and their father’s ultimatum so he knew the cause but not the solution.  He couldn’t even have Gordon up to stay with him again because Jeff’s total control over Gordon’s life had extended to him refusing even this escape for the teenager.  He had already tried that route but their father had held firm that Gordon had not yet earned the right to freedom.

With his father holding on to the unshakable belief that Gordon needed tough love and firm handling Virgil turned to the only other person he thought could make a difference.  After a quick check of the time he picked up his phone again and called Scott.

“Hi Virg, what’s up?”  Scott took in his brother’s agitated demeanor causing his usually cheerful tone to change to one of concern.  “Hey, are you ok?”

“Not really.  I think I need your help.”

“Everything ok with your project?  Or have you finally got girlfriend trouble?”

“This is serious Scott” Virgil admonished, not impressed at his brother’s attempt to lighten the mood.  He ran  his fingers through his hair again, it was a sure tell of his barely contained worry and a gesture that made Scott sit up and take notice.  “I’m fine but I’m worried about Gordon.”

“Gordon?  What has he done now?” With Gordon pretty much confined to quarters since Marineville Scott wondered how much trouble could his brother could get into really?  Surely if he had run off again it would be Dad on the phone to him, not Virgil.

“Nothing, as far as I can tell.  But I spoke to him tonight and I’m worried about him, he seemed so low and upset.”

“Are we talking ‘Alan breaking his octopus model’ upset, or ‘losing the state final and nearly being booted from the national squad’ upset.”

“I mean looking like he hasn’t eaten or slept for a week levels of upset.”

“Shit.  That bad?”  To Gordon the body was a tool and a temple, the words ‘optimal nutrition regime’ had been bandied about from an age when most kids would still happily eat candy for breakfast if given half the chance.  Gordon had never not taken care of himself.

“Yes, that bad.  I’ve never seen him like this before, it’s like all the spark has gone out of him.  He’s got nothing to aim at and nothing to live for.  Dad is adamant that he needs to go to college but that has never been part of his life plan and he has got absolutely no confidence in his own abilities even if he wanted to go on to further studies.  Do you think you can go back and check on him?  I know it’s a big ask but I’m tied here for the next few weeks otherwise I’d go myself.”

Scott knew that Virgil wouldn’t make this request lightly.  They had spent so long looking after the kids together back in Kansas, each supporting the other while their father focussed on his business or his grief, that he trusted Virgil’s judgement to be sound.  If direct intervention was requested then that was what was needed.

“I’ll see what I can do.  I’ve got some leave due at the end of the month, I might be able to get it brought forward.”  He made a mental note to cancel his airfield slot in New York, whether his leave got moved or not it looked like he was going to be spending it in LA rather than the Big Apple.

“Thanks.  You know I wouldn’t ask this if I wasn’t sure it was necessary.” 

“I know.  Look, it’s fine.  I’ll get down there as soon as I can and report back to you.  Now go get some sleep, you look done in and it must be gone midnight for you.”

“Okay.  Night Scott.” A wave of relief washed over Virgil as he closed the call.  If Scott hadn’t been available the next step would have been to head back himself; he would have been on a flight already if his project wasn’t at a time-critical stage.  Scott would soon get to the heart of the matter and everything would be fine.  He hoped.

Several states away Scott ran his fingers through his own hair in a gesture that mirrored his brother’s earlier action.  He hadn’t seen Virgil this rattled about a brother’s health since John’s suspected appendicitis eight years ago.  That had been for a scary time for them all with Jeff away on a business trip and Scott left in charge of the kids, ably backed up by Virgil as his reliable second in command; a role his little brother had assumed without asking ever since their mother had died.  Now Virgil was asking him to step up again and it was time to answer the call.  They had worked as a team then and they would work as a team now.   

xoxoxox

In less than a week Scott found himself outside the apartment door.  He hoped Virgil was wrong and that this was a wasted journey but his brother had an uncanny skill at being able to see beneath the surface.  It was his trust in Virgil’s opinion that had him citing ‘family emergency’ and ‘compassionate leave’ at his own commanding officer before making the trip south.  

He entered the cool darkness of the hallway and was hit by the wall of sound spilling out from the cracked doorway of Gordon’s room; a telltale sign that his brother was there but noone else was.  There was no way Jeff would have put up with that sort of racket as the beat of the music thudded through his bones.  He wasn’t particularly keen himself but at least it meant he could make his entry undetected.  It also meant that he was guaranteed some time alone with Gordon; Alan should be out at school for at least the next few hours which would give him the opportunity to try and get Gordon to open up without the pressure of an audience.

Pausing only to deposit his kit bag in the room that had never really felt like his, Scott made his way to the kitchen and started digging through cupboards until he found the cocoa.  It was a comforter, a treat reserved for those times when someone was particularly upset or recovering from illness.  The dark playlist that was still reverberating around the apartment suggested it was going to be necessary. 

Bearing two steaming mugs Scott nudged the door to Gordon’s room wide open and stepped in.  The curtains were still closed despite it being the middle of the day and the room smelt stale.  The figure on the bed sat up with a start at the sudden intrusion and confusion crossed Gordon’s features at the unexpected visitor.  For Scott the shock was different in nature, even in the darkened room the physical change in his brother was profound.  Gone was the tanned skin and glossy hair, instead Gordon’ locks sat limp and flat, framing a face that was several shades too pale making the dark eyes look like wells into oblivion.  The haunted look that greeted him caused Scott to curse himself for for not realising that things had gotten this bad, for not being there and for leaving Virgil to be the one that kept a check on everyone’s wellbeing.

He put the mugs down and hit the off switch on the stereo, causing a deep silence to fall over the room, before throwing open the curtains.  The sudden change in light levels made Gordon wince and the natural light he was now bathed in only served to enhance how pale he had got.   Scooching Gordon’s legs out of the way so he could perch on the end he joined his brother on the bed.

“I couldn’t find any of that caramel syrup you like, sorry.” 

“S’ok.  Coach doesn’t like us having too much refined sugar.  Didn’t like.  Don't suppose it matters any more.”  The reminder that he no longer had a coach was like a punch to the gut and his shoulders slumped just that little bit lower. 

Picking up the mug Gordon took a deep pull at his cocoa.  The warm sweetness hit the back of his throat invoking memories of Kansas; recovering from a cold or mourning a lost race, Scott’s cocoa was a band-aid for the soul.  Even without the syrup the hit of sugar that came with the drink gave his thought processes a jump start.  He blinked, then looked at Scott as if properly seeing him for the first time.  Yes, big brother really was in his room. 

“Why are you here?” Suspicion crept into his voice.  The last time he’d seen Scott it was Marineville; he wondered if this was another visitation orchestrated by their father, have big brother there during the day as another layer of control.

“Had some annual leave to use” Scott shrugged.  “Didn’t have any plans so I thought I would stop here for a few days.”  

“You’re a terrible liar.” Gordon rolled his eyes at the blatant falsehood.  “Try again.”

“Okay.  Virgil was worried about you and asked me to look in, call him if you don’t believe me.  It’s true I had some leave to use up though.” 

“Does Dad know you’re here?”

“Not yet.  I wanted to see how you were for myself first and frankly Gordon, you're a mess.  When did you last swim?  When did you last even shower?” With the curtains now open and the sun streaming in the room was warming up, amplifying the odour of unwashed body. 

“Was at the pool maybe 2 weeks ago.  Don’t really know any more.  Not much point now I’m off the squad.”

“C’mon Squid, you’re better than this.  Finish your drink and get your running shoes on, you need some sunshine and you need it now.”  

“Can’t.  Gotta get my personal statement finished before Dad gets home.”  The half-empty mug was set down with thud, the cocoa suddenly seeming bitter.  Storm clouds brewed behind his eyes at the reminder of their father and the rules he imposed.

“And how’s that going?”  Scott raised an accusatory eyebrow at the rumpled bed sheets.  There were some jotted notes on the desk but it didn’t look like Gordon had made much progress.  “I’ll give you a hand with it later but I need a run and you are coming with me, it’ll make you feel better.”

Gordon knew better than to argue.  The Scott of Kansas, the one that provided cocoa, was also the Scott that had spent night after night getting him to complete his homework or making him tidy his room.  He’d had a counter to every single one of Gordon’s tricks or arguments then and the look on his face showed he wasn’t going to take no for an answer now.  He hauled himself up and hunted for his running shoes in the closet while Scott disappeared off to his own room to get changed.  The very fact that he couldn’t lay his hands on his running kit straight away just showed that Scott was probably right, he had been shut away and static for too long and needed to move. 

The pair set off at an easy pace, their feet thudding against the sidewalk as they headed towards the nearest green space.  For Gordon, who had been neglecting his fitness regime of late, it took a while to shake the stiffness out of his limbs.  The sun felt dazzling as it reflected back up from the flagstones after shutting it out of his room for so long. 

Scott made sure to stay a couple of steps behind to start off with, supposedly so that Gordon could direct the route, but really so that his younger sibling could dictate the speed without being pressured.  He had always been the faster runner, his long limbs easily able to outstrip his brother’s stockier build, but the pace as they set off felt particularly sluggish.  There was no attempt at competition either.  Despite their differing talents the Gordon of old would always put up fight, trying to achieve the impossible and beat him to the finish but there was no fight today.  Staying a few steps behind also gave him a chance to take a proper look at his brother.  Scott noted with worry that the muscle definition in his arms and legs was softer, his steps heavy and less springy and the tee-shirt hung limply off a form that seemed thinner than before; the family athlete was a long way off peak condition and far from his usual energetic self.  Compared to the powerful figure he had watched sprinting to the finish of the assault course at Marineville Gordon was practically unrecognisable.

They ran in silence along shaded boulevards and down wooded paths, the sounds of the city muted by the greenery of the park.  The path looped and twisted and you could almost forget the world that existed on the far side of the railings.  As they approached the gates that would release them back into the city Scott turned onto the grass and slowed to a halt leaving Gordon to follow him with a puzzled look.

“Stretches” Scott answered in response to the unasked question in Gordon’s eyes, “or have you forgotten how to do those too?”

Gordon didn’t grace that with a response, just rolled his eyes and started running though his post-workout routine.  It really had been too long since he had given his body a proper challenge and his limbs were protesting.  He was still fit by average standards but he knew that if he hit the pool now he would be miles off gold medal pace.

Stretches complete Scott flopped down on the grass and patted the ground next to him in a gesture that was more command than invitation.  Gordon’s legs complied, gratefully collapsing to the floor, and he was soon sprawled beside his brother on the warm turf gazing up at a sky criss-crossed by contrails.

“So Gordon, what the fuck were you thinking?”

Gordon’s head snapped round at the blunt outburst.  “Don’t you start too, I’ve already had all the lectures I can handle.”

“I’m not here to lecture.  Seriously though, what the hell has been going on?  First you’re storming your way to a world record, then you’re putting yourself through one of the toughest military selections in the world and now you look like you couldn’t do either.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t need to be able to do either, do I.  Dad has made it perfectly clear I’ve got to go to college.  I’m not allowed to compete any more and you hauling my ass out of Marineville kinda blew any chance I had with WASP.”  

A look of anger flashed across Gordon’s eyes as he threw out that barb.  He was pissed at himself for how hard he had found the run and cursing his lapse of discipline, Scott was an easy target for his frustrations.  For Scott it was the first spark of real emotion he had witnessed since arriving. 

“Yeah, sorry about that, I didn’t really have a lot of choice.  I must admit I was surprised though, you’ve never shown any interest in the military before.” 

“Never really had the time.  I’d spent so long throwing everything I had at my swimming I really thought that was going to be my life.  I honestly thought I could make him proud.  Turns out in Dad’s eyes though it could never be more than a hobby.  Now Coach won’t have me back on the team even with Dad’s permission; he said he needs commitment and can’t risk putting in the work only to have me pulled again.”  

The pain in his brother’s voice was clearly evident and Scott couldn’t blame him.  Gordon has spent years devoting himself to his sport, making significant sacrifices along the way.  Their father had always told them to give whole heart to a cause, that half measures would only lead to failure, and when it came to swimming Gordon had followed that advice to the letter.  To have all that dedication and commitment wiped out in the eyes of his Coach by the actions of that same father must have been a bitter blow.  

“Ok, forget Dad for a minute, tell me what you want.  I don’t care about what Dad thinks or what your Coach says.  If you could do whatever you wanted with your life what would it be?”

If Scott was expecting to be left waiting for an answer he was in for a surprise.  There was no hesitation in Gordon’s response, a small part of him might still doubt Scott’s intentions but it felt good to actually be listened to and to get his frustrations off his chest.

“WASP.  It...it felt good there.  I felt good.  I felt like I belonged and I could actually see myself having a decent life.  I honestly thought I could make it but I guess now I’ll never know, I’m probably permanently blacklisted.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.  Ok, faking the forms really wasn’t the smartest of moves but you won’t be under age for much longer.”

“I still couldn’t get it past Dad though.” The thought of his Dad had Gordon curling his fists in rage.  A handful of grass stems ended up decapitated with a satisfying ripping sound as they were torn up by the roots.  “I can’t just fly up there and try again, Dad would never arrange the ticket and my allowance has been cut off completely.”  Another handful of grass lost its grip on the ground.  “I can’t even call a cab without needing to run it by him to get some funds released.  Hitting 18 isn’t going to buy me any more freedom.”

Scott winced inwardly as the pile of broken stems beside his brother grew with each angry tear at the ground.  The restrictions being placed on Gordon’s life were draconian to say the least.  The stupid thing was they were doing more harm than good but evidently their father was too certain of his own righteousness and was blind to the damage he was doing.  He knew that if this carried on much longer Gordon could end up both mentally and physically broken, cowed into submission with all his spark gone.  

Just recently Scott had begun to have some appreciation of what it felt like to be under the controlling shadow of his father.  Every phone call between them came with the reminder that he was expected to become pilot in his father’s rescue organisation idea.  He hadn’t been asked, just presented with the future as if it were a foregone conclusion.   The difference between him and Gordon was that he had already stepped away from his father’s control.  Jeff couldn’t tender his resignation for him, much as he might like to, and so he still had a say in his own future.  Gordon had no such power .  His resolve to help his brother hardened.

“You leave Dad to me.  If you’re sure WASP is what you want…”

“Yeah, it is.” The response was strong, showing some of the old confidence Scott was more used to associating with his brother.

“...then I’ll do what I can to see you get your chance.  Of course, actually getting through selection will be up to you but from what I saw before you seemed to have that sorted.  Now come on, up with you.” Scott hauled himself up off the grass and extended a hand to his brother, pulling Gordon up and then into a hug.  He stood there for a moment, arms wrapped around the shorter form, feeling the head buried into his shoulder in silent thanks, before reluctantly breaking the contact that his brother obviously needed so desperately.  “We ought to be heading back, it’s getting late.  And you seriously need to hit the shower.”

[zwiezraczek]

hi! i have no idea if your doing requests but i was wondering for a four x reader where she’s also a doctor like five and she’s in charge of taking care of billy after a particular rough missiob

What's Up Doctor? [Request]

Bloody mission, bloody stupid rules, bloody One. You had enough of staying behind all this but he mentioned, insisting on it: you had to stay here because it was a dangerousmission, because you were new and they hadn't the time to train you. And because in case Five would get hurt, you'd be the only medical support they'll have. Bullshit, bullshit, they just saw you as the weakness of the crew, just that. No experience, my ass, you thought as you looked through the window of the car before looking at your babysitter, Three. He was the one to lose this battle, as he had to play backups, because of you, and stay away from the mission. One knew you too well to leave you alone in your hotel room, and your hands would be probably needed.

“Not too stressed,” Three asked, looking back at you with a small warm smile. A concerned smile.

“You know, when you work with the Doctors Without Borders, you learn to put stress aside, but you all seem to forget that I'm not that fragile,” you replied frankly. You trusted Three, he felt like a soulmate to you, a guy with whom you could laugh about stupid things, and mostly share your thoughts. Mostly.

“Please, mami, Eight, don't be so upset about it, you'll be able to do the next mission with us,” he reassured you, still beaming before he winked, “next time you'll get blood on your hands, promise!”

“She'll got blood on her hands sooner than expected,” One intervened through the earbuds they had, making Eight jump a little, not accustomed to that. “We have two people down, Seven and Four, Five tries to take care of both of them but it's pretty damn hard,” he managed to say as Three and you heard Five cursing in the background. “Two's heading to our medical post, we'll meet there!”

“You wanted blood, the Lord provided blood,” he grinned before putting his foot down abruptly and you had to held yourself to the grip and thanked the Lord for putting your seat belt on.

“If you drive like this we'll need Five's help,” you remarked, as wheels screeched again.

“Don't you worry Eight, everything's under control!”

Nothing was under control as you remarked yourself when you arrived in the hangar which became your medical post. Five greeted you with information, all at once, your head almost exploding from what she said to you, not skipping a beat. She was on Seven's case, his wound were heavier and she already started everything, and Four was unconscious. You had to deal with an unconscious Four who fell off a building, his foot impaled on a fence that Five left in place, because she felt that operating this would be way too difficult in the car and Seven was loosing too much blood compared to Four.

Four's carelessness, you assumed, leaded him to a concussion. Nothing sure, as he passed out, but from what you heard he fell dangerously from that building. And the operation on his foot was the ultimate proof to that, bandage, stitches, rest. His state could have been much worse, he was lucky enough to not die from that height, and you could only imagine what a loss it would have been for the team. And you too, probably. Even if you refused to admit it to yourself, you really appreciated Four for his courage and carelessness. He was everything you were not – minus the courage, you were courageous indeed – and you could argue that in the team everybody was, but Four had a special aura around him, making people gravitating around him happy, smiling, comfortable. And that soothed you a lot, even gave you confidence as he tried to teach you how to hold a gun once, with Three's supervision.

Four woke up after a few hours, sore and tired. His eyes widened as he saw you standing above him, light blinding him a lot.

“Where am I,” he asked, his voice still weak.

“Heaven, Eight's your doctor now,” you joked as he blinked twice. “You fell off a building and I got to repair you a bit. Do you feel like throwing up?”

“I feel like standing up and checking on the others,” he quickly replied before moving his feet before hissing in pain. “The hell!”

“I said I had to repair you,” you told him again, putting your hand on his shoulder. “Fence on your feet, Four, impaled. You're lucky you still have your feet and can feel it.”

“I will be able to walk, right?” His question was full of doubt, you could see this in his eyes, and your reply was, for him, right now, the most important thing in the world.

“If you rest properly and follow my lead for your rehabilitation, you'll be able to jump off that building again,” you said, with a small grin. “But for the moment you need to rest Four, you did a great job up there from what they said to me.”

“Thank you for taking care of me,” he said, smiling as you felt your cheeks burn a bit.

“No problem,” you tried to brush off the blush but it didn't work, “going to check Seven and tell the others that you're awake then.”

You spent almost a week in that place, because of Seven's difficult condition. You had to assist Five sometimes, as she needed another eye for what was happening with that strange bullet that hit him, and the strange substance in which it was soaked. Seven felt dizzy mostly, but Five and you managed to stabilize everything, and now he felt better. Four felt better too, quicker than Seven did. He walked impatiently with crutches, almost ran everywhere with these, trying to be a crutched-parkour-expert and you scolded him too many times for that, and he pouted too many times for your own good. His foot had to recover from that, and it seemed that he never had an injury disabling him from doingwhat he loved the most. So, he had to find other things to do, but with Seven outside the frame, he relied on you. Because you told him that you were the one to take care of his rehabilitation, he took it for granted, he wanted a mental rehabilitation too it seemed.

He spent more and more time with you, only the three of you: him, you and his crutches – so technically four. He curiously asked you about your previous work, and how you managed to keep your mind sane with all these horrors, and strangely, telling him all of that relieved you a bit, emptied your mind from some horrible memories you couldn't collect yourself to share with your family in a past life. But here, with another dead person, an anonymous one, everything seemed easier.

When Seven's condition allowed you to move back to your place in the desert, you had to take Four's real rehabilitation in charge. And as One held Three as an hostage for his informatics researches, you had to stay with Four mostly, trying to separate your “work” from the friendship slowly blooming, and merging into something else. He first had to begin to walk without the crutches, which took him about three weeks. Three impatient weeks, you had to change his bandages everyday, applying products on his wound as he carefully looked at your concentrated face, trying to not combust when his hand was putting the strands falling before your eyes behind your ear. And slowly, smoothly, he began to walk, and you walked with him for almost a month. He opened up, telling you how his funeral was shit and how he couldn't gather himself after he saw his mother crying, how the crew he once had abandoned him, how he found a real family here. How much he wanted to kiss you, but that, he didn't tell.

And when finally the day on which he could try to jump from a spot to another came, you could feel his excitement, yet some fear. Three months without being able to do parkour, it seemed to hurt him more than you imagined in the first place. But he listened to you, hoping that what you did would bring him back into shape quickly. His spectacular health helped a lot in the process.

You rose your eyes, letting him know that he could go, with you watching him from there in any case. He exhaled before running and jumping, landing flawlessly on the other plane, before quickly jumping off it to reach you, taking you by your waist and turning you around in happiness. His laugh was so contagious, his happiness so vivid, your mind so blown.

“Thank you Eight, thank you so much,” he said after putting you down and embracing you. “You're a hero.”

“I'm not a hero, not as much as you are,” you replied shyly, trying to hide your blush and emotions.

“You are my hero Eight”, he corrected as he looked at your face now, putting a strand of your hair behind your ear. “My one and only hero.”

Your heart raced as he leaned towards you, you never felt hotter in this bloody desert than now. His lips were pressed against yours now, you internally thanked him for holding you by the waist because you could fell at any moment, jelly legs.

“Thank you doctor,” he whispered against your lips.

“Somehow, I hope that you'll be injured again so you can kiss me as much as you get injured,” you whispered back.

“I think I can kiss you without needing your medical help, doctor”, he replied before kissing you again.

[anoutlandishfanfic]

Metamorphosis AU: Ch. 24, Pt. 1, Convalescence.

The AO3 link to this chapter was posted earlier, but I haven’t posted the text in full here yet. This is not a new chapter, simply adding it to Tumblr.

You can find previous chapters here or over here at AO3.

_______________________________________

Three Days Later; End of December, 1743.

“What’s your pain level, luv?” I murmured, brushing the curls off Jamie’s brow.

He’d been fever free for a solid forty eight hours now, but I still felt like singing the Hallelujah Chorus every time I found him as such.

“I’m fine, Sassenach,” he assured me with a weary smile, “Dinna fash”

As ironic as it might seem — what, with me being six and a half months pregnant with twins and him recovering from major surgery and an assault that brought him to the brink of death — sleep was at a premium these days.

Jamie was able to doze most of the day away, his body unable to keep slumber at bay entirely, but he fought hard against the tow of a truly deep sleep and the demons that accompanied it. I was haunted by nightmares of my own, each more terrifying than the last, but my body’s aches and pains trumped anything my hormone-riddled subconscious could concoct. Intense muscle spasms accompanied by nagging hip pain combined with persistent nausea and frequent trips to relieve myself made it nearly impossible for me to achieve a full night’s sleep… and so I often joined my husband in drifting off in the middle of the day.

I shook my head at his insistence, suppressing a grin at what I knew without a doubt was a complete bluff and patted his cheek patronizingly, “I won’t, but give me the number anyway.”

“Four.”

I rose a brow at this and his smile grew as he added, “And a half.”

I chuckled, leaning in for a kiss and he gladly obliged.

“Mmm,” he intoned, bringing me back in for another one. “A few more of these an’ you’ll have me down to a two, Sassenach.”

”I’m aiming for one,” I quipped cheekily as I sat back and took a good look at my patient.

The color was slowly beginning to creep back into his cheeks and the light back into his eyes. Jamie had endured the unthinkable — I knew he had — but remained silent about most of what had happened at Wentworth. It weighed upon him tremendously, stooping his shoulders and furrowing his brow…

While his body was healing rapidly, his mind and spirit limped far behind.

Jamie’s good hand brushed against my leg and I instinctively pulled it into my lap, curving it around the ever growing swell of our children. He jumped slightly in surprise — I mentally kicked myself, for I knew he startled easily these days — but he quickly recovered and responded in delight.

“They’re growing,” he murmured, his gaze softening.

You’re growing is what he means, I internally groaned. You’re bigger than a horse, Mother Goose.

Jamie was silent for a moment before he sat up more fully, lifting his injured hand to touch my face. His thumb stroked my cheek and I turned my face to gently kiss his palm as my eyes drifted shut, trying to mask my insecurities. He lowered his hand slightly, cupping my chin and waiting for me to look at him before speaking.

“Have I thanked you yet, mo chridhe?”

My brows furrowed in confusion as I asked, “For what?”

“For my children… for the lives you carry a’ the risk of your own.”

My face melted as tears rushed to my eyes. I kissed him, my lips trembling at his tender words as my arms slipped around his neck.

“Oh,” I uttered insufficiently, completely overcome.

I buried my face in his neck, breathing in the scent of him, filling my lungs with the anchoring truth of his presence. His arms came around me too, holding me close as my hot tears hit his skin and we both realized just how much we missed the others touch.

We clung to each other for many moments in reverent silence before I added, “It’s my pleasure.”

A low noise — not quite a chuckle and not quite in negation of my words — rumbled within him, making his chest vibrate deliciously against me.

“Aye, but I ken tis no’ always so… when you were so sick a’ the first, or when they make you change so… when your time comes?”

I shook my head against him, whispering, “Even then.” ... A few days after that.

While he hadn’t ventured far from the bed yet, Jamie was now officially up and about. He puttered around after me as I worked at my table and often followed me to my chamber and back, but today we were going on our first walk around the abbey.

His left arm was looped comfortably through mine, not so much for assistance but rather assurance, as we slowly wandered the halls. Murtagh trailed several paces behind us to ensure we didn’t get lost — the maze of passageways was far more complex than I’d realized — and I thanked my lucky stars that he had, for we rounded a corner and came face to face with none other than Dougal McKenzie.

“Good to see ye on yer feet, lad,” he sneered, his words entirely insincere.

A chill ran down my spine at the sound of his voice and I flinched involuntarily as he took a step closer. Murtagh was at our side in an instant and edged his way between us and our foe.

Jamie’s arm slid out from under mine and wrapped protectively around my waist.

I’ve got you, he promised with a squeeze. He’ll have to get through me to get to you.

“Tis good to see you too, uncle,” Jamie lied through clenched teeth, “but I’m afraid we must be returning to our rooms. I hope to speak wi’ you again before you return to Leoch.”

Dougal waved the notion away as if he were swatting at a pesky fly, scoffing, “Ach, I’ll be here for a while yet… too many redcoat patrols for my taste. Wouldna want to leave ye and have them swarm the place.”

A noise of shock and dismay left my lips before I could stop it and Murtagh sprang into action, all but shoving us in the right direction. Large black spots suddenly appeared at the edges of my vision, obscuring the sudden image of a hangman’s noose around my husband’s neck. My knees buckled beneath me and I latched desperately onto Jamie’s shirtfront.

“Easy, Sassenach,” he crooned as I sagged into him, trembling violently. “I’ve got you.”

“If ye’ll excuse us,” Murtagh growled as we sidestepped Dougal and continued guiding us down the hall, nearly pulling the both of us along behind him.

They wouldn’t, would they?

Religious sanctuary was irrevocable, our protection irrefutable so long as we stayed within the abbey walls…

Wasn’t it?

Father Anselm and the other elders would uphold our right to sanctuary here at the cost of their lives, I knew, but they didn’t stand a chance against an overwhelming military force with a legitimate claim of action. They were harboring not only an escaped convict, but a posse of murderous Highlanders besides. The religious laws and traditions of a Roman Catholic monastery — decidedly Scottish — would be tossed aside without a moment’s hesitation in order to capture the enemies of a mighty, entirely Protestant army.

Get a grip, Beauchamp. This is the seventeen-forties, not the fourteen-forties.

I had no recollection of the rest of the walk back to Jamie’s room, but suddenly blinked and found myself perched on the edge of Jamie’s bed, his pale face studying mine with marked concern.

“Are you alright, mo chridhe?”

“No,” I let out a shuddering sigh. “That bloody man scares the fucking daylights out of me.”

A decided snort sounded from the edges of my vision and I turned to find Murtagh all but bolting the door shut.

“He willna be layin’ a hand on ye, lass,” he vowed. “No’ if I have anythin’ to say about it”

I rather thought Murtagh would have quite a lot to say about the matter, should it be pressed, but I shoved the thought of that away.

Jamie is here.

Murtagh is here.

I am safe.

“You’re safe, Claire,” Jamie echoed my thoughts aloud, using the phrase I often reassured him with.

I nodded with an attempt at a smile, but knew I didn’t quite manage to pull it off.

“We’ll find a way to be out of here an’ his reach, aye?” He continued, tucking a stray curl behind my ear before brushing a tear from my cheek.

“To France, maybe? We’re no’ far from the coast… if we left soon, we could be to Paris or Le Havre a’ least before the bairns came.”

Murtagh seized this idea with an eager determination, “Aye, ye’ve many a kin who’d aid ye there… both Fraser an’ MacKenzie, come to that.”

“Then it’s settled,” Jamie pulled me into his arms, his lips moving against my neck as he announced, “We’ll leave wi’ the first ship tha’ll take us.”

…

One week later.

This proved to be a more difficult task than we’d anticipated, for travel across this area of the channel in the dead of winter was rare, and it seemed we would remain at the abbey for a good while yet.

“Any luck?” I asked unnecessarily as Murtagh entered the room, answering me with a decided shake of his head.

Jamie had dozed off and I’d hoped — in vain — to get some sleep while he did, but it was not to be. I’d found myself restless and the lives within me even more so, and so I’d given it up entirely… returning to his side instead and attempting to sketch out rough schematics for a Pinard horn.

I turned back to my paper, tapping the pencil impatiently against my drawing as I thrust the idea out into the open.

“Could you make something out of wood for me?” I blurted, not quite making eye contact with him.

“Hmm?” he intoned in grumpy confusion… perhaps this wasn’t the right time to ask him for a favor.

He grumbled, “What do ye need?”

I shoved the paper into his hands, explaining hastily before he tuned out entirely, “A Pinard horn… it’s a medical instrument in my time that lets you hear a person’s heartbeat more clearly… mostly used by midwives to hear baby’s within the womb.”

Murtagh’s eyes widened at this and then dropped to study what I’d given him.

“You can hear… them… wi’ this?”

“Yes,” I nodded eagerly. “I don’t remember the exact measurements… only that it’s shaped like this,” I pointed to curve of it.

“It might take a few tries to get it right,” I warned, but he shook his head.

“I dinna mind,” he assured me, then launched into a series of questions that left me without a doubt that we’d soon be able to hear my babies’ heartbeats.

I took hold of his hand, once he had all the information he needed, and squeezed it tightly, murmuring, “Thank you.”

A slow smile spread across his face as squeezed back, an acknowledging nod his response before he added, 

“Tis just wha’ the lad needs, no?”

[holylulusworld]

It was right for a short time

Summary: It’s just wrong…but at the same time so good. But all the wrong things have their consequences.

Paring: Bucky Barnes x Reader, Steve Rogers x Reader, a stray cat (named kick-ass), Natasha Romanoff, Sam Wilson, Sharon Carter

Warnings: angst, pregnant reader, language, a bit of comforting, arguments

Wrong-Right Masterlist

“Great you are back, Y/N. How do you feel?” Sam asks and you eye him suspiciously.

“Why do you want to know? You were one of the people ignoring me after what happened at the wedding.”

“Listen, Steve is my best friend and I was mad as you cheated on him but now I know the whole situation was way more complicated. Cap is a bit…uh…crazy about you.”

“He’s a sick asshole!” You mutter.

“Wouldn’t call me like this, Baby but Sam is right, I’m crazy about you.” Steve chuckles entering the room Natasha prepared for you.

“Where is my cat? Have you seen her?” Worriedly letting your eyes wander you can’t see kick-ass anywhere.

“I’m sorry, Y/N. The little bitch ran out of the room this morning. I tried to find her but so far I had no luck.” Nat stammers seeing your pained expression.

“No! What if Bruce starts to hulk or Tony tries a new suit and stomps on her.” You sniff as your hormones are working on overload.

“Okay,” Steve says clapping his hands. “Sam you and Nat take this floor. I’ll call Wanda to look on her floor Vision and Bruce can check the labs while Y/N and I will take the kitchen and the living room. Somewhere in here, we lost an important member of the team so we will make sure we find this little fur ball.”

Stunned you look at Steve, but he simply shrugs. “She is important to you, so she’s important to me. Let’s start searching for her. If anyone finds her, call me and tell me where to pick her up.”

“Aye, Aye, Captain!” Natasha chuckles leaving the room.

“We need to find her, Steve. I have to give her the meds in my purse.”

“Meds?”

“She got hurt pretty bad, I told you so. These are her antibiotics.”

“Is that the reason you took your purse with you?”

“Hmm…partially. For the meds and the phone to blow up my house.”

“We should better hurry then.”

-----

Leaving the living room without success you are close to tears. You can’t let your furry friend down. Your only hope is the kitchen of the headquarter. Maybe she got hungry and ran in there?

Steve is leading you to the kitchen while his eyes are glued to your swollen belly. Barely recognizing anything else his eyes snap upward when you start squealing.

“Kick-ass!” You call out.

“Yeah, she’s here for a while, doll. Shared my breakfast with the rotten stinker. Look at her, she likes me, just like her mommy.” Bucky chuckles watching the cat lapping at his metal arm.

“Eek…kick-ass don’t lick at him. You don’t know where he had his hands before.” You say carefully patting your cats head.

“You could’ve called me, Buck. We were looking for the furry beast for over an hour by now.” Steve mutters.

“I didn’t know you were looking for the little bastard. Look at her neck, I let Tony made her a cat collar with GPS, so you can find her anywhere in the tower.” Bucky states proudly and your eyes widen.

“You did?”

“Uh, well…I tried to bring some stuff into your room and while I was carrying something into your bedroom this asshole ran out of the room. I was chasing her the whole morning till I finally got hold of her in the kitchen. We shared breakfast as we were both hungry as hell.”

“You let her escape?”

“I’m sorry, Y/N. I called Tony and he made this nice collar for her. No more running away.”

“Do you want to put one around my neck too?” You ask and Bucky’s eyes widen.

“I’m not into this whole degrading stuff. I mean I’m a bit dominant in the bedroom, but I don’t like to…ya know…”

“I meant this way I can’t run away you pervert!”

“That’s one great idea, doll. Stevie make a mental note, I need to ask Tony to make us a ring or something to make sure our girl doesn’t get lost in this large building.”

“Asshole!”

“Doll!”

“Guys!”

“What Captain Grumpy?” You mutter.

“Can we not fight about stupid things? We should talk about the future, the babies and how to protect you and our children from Hydra.”

“You’re right…”

“Did she just agree with you Stevie or did I mishear?” Bucky teases but you do not react. Your stomach starts rumbling and you lick your lips seeing the pancakes on his plate.

“Hungry? You can have mine, here.” Bucky says shoving the plate toward your side of the counter. “Eat, they are still warm.”

“Smells good.”

“Buck is good in cooking and stuff. You wouldn’t believe it looking at the long-haired punk.”

“I know he’s good at cooking, Cap. When we used to be a thing, I mean at the times we were better, he made me some food. This was before he lost interest and turned his attention toward other women.”

“Doll?”

“It’s true, James. I refused to have sex with you after three dates and you stopped being nice. You never even called me again. After months you stood in front of my door, drunk and beaten. I had to call Steve as you were babbling stupid things like you only love me.”

“I meant it back then, and I mean it now,” James whispers.

“That’s the reason you were gone three days later?”

“I was gone as I wasn’t good enough for you.”

“But you came back. Forced your way into my life.”

“It wasn’t all bad…”

“No, it wasn’t James. It was right for a while until you decided you had what you wanted and left once again. My mom told me to never let you in again after you took my innocence that night.”

“You took it?” Steve gasps.

“The next day I had to go on a mission, Y/N. It was not my decision. I didn’t want to leave but it was important and top secret. I couldn’t tell you anything.”

“You could’ve said goodbye or told me you will come back, James.”

“I know, doll…fuck I know. When I came back after over four months I saw you sitting in the café with Nat. You looked happy, carefree and so fucking beautiful. I needed to win you over again.”

“And you did but then you left me again. This time it was not for a mission. For over eight years you came into my life and left me alone; over and over again. Every time you came around I knew you would leave. The first years I always hoped you would stay but later I was relieved when you were gone as I had some time to recover, to cope with the aftermath of your presence.”

“Did he hurt you?” Steve asks angrily clenching his jaw.

“Not physically, Steve. I mean he spanked me or stuff, but I wanted him to do so. It was the emotional hurting I couldn’t bear. Every look he gave another woman made my stomach drop as I knew he would go after her and leave me. James was always into breaking up with me so he’s not a cheater…”

“Damn you make me sound like an asshole, doll.”

“You are an asshole! I gave you my virginity and you just left. No even a kiss goodbye.”

“Doll, I’m sorry. I really am but I had my reason. I was just not good for you and so I left but at the same time, I couldn’t stay away. You’re like a drug I’m addicted to.”

“Sure.” You mutter starting to stuff the pancakes into your mouth.

“Whew…and I thought I messed up.” Steve says sitting at the counter.

“You messed things up too, Rogers. Don’t believe you are better than this punk over there.”

“Damn she’s pissed and still so sexy. Do you love it too? I mean when she yells and mutters it goes straight to my little Bucky.”

“You goddamn pervert! Can you think with your upstairs brain for one minute? We are in a beyond messed up situation. I’m pregnant of both of you while Hydra tries to get hold of my babies. I really got no time to discuss your needs. If you need a good fuck call, Claire, same goes for you. Call Sharon, she should know by now it was me sending her the messages.”

“Baby, we only want you and we will prove it to you. Right, Stevie?”

“Right. Now let’s make a plan. The building is safe but as we know by now at least one Hydra agent, your therapist, made it behind safe lines. Tony and I decided to restrict access to our private rooms. The floors with our rooms will only be accessible with special key cards, and only the Avengers will get one, and you of course. Maybe kick-ass gets one too.”

“You think someone might be already lurking somewhere in the tower?” You ask looking worriedly at Steve.

“We don’t know anything, Y/N but Tony wants to make sure you are safe. He messed up with the therapist and feels guilty.”

“That wasn’t Tony’s fault, Steve. He only tried to help me.”

“Next thing…your room is too small for all of us and it’s in an area which can be accessed by only one way. We need an emergency exit, just in case.”

“Why is my room too small for me and kick-ass?”

“Not just for her and you…Bucky and I will guard you from now on. One of us will sleep in your room to make sure you are safe.” Steve explains and you ball your hands to fists.

“No way! I will not allow this pervert to sleep in my bed.”

“Not in your bed, Y/N but I appreciate the offer. That’s the reason we need a bigger room, or rather one of the penthouse suite’s Tony keeps under his thumb.” Bucky says.

“Can this day become more miserable?” You whine resting your head onto the counter.

“It’s for your safety, Y/N. We swear we will not cross a line. Bucky will act completely professional, just like me.”

“Can’t Nat sleep in my room?”

“Please believe is we are doing this to protect you and our babies. Natasha is a hell of a fighter but she’s not Steve or me. Let us be there for you, for once in our life.”

“Fine. But if you or Captain Pervert tries anything I’m going to move into Natasha’s room.”

“Great…uh…so can we show you the room we prepared? Honestly, I didn’t bring something to your room, I was grabbing your stuff to move it into the other room.”

“Lies again, James. Seriously?”

“This was the last one, I swear. Did I mention you look pretty today?” Bucky tries and you roll your eyes.

“Compliments won’t work. Show me the room.”

“Follow me and don’t forget your cat.”

----

Walking behind Steve you ignore the looks Bucky gives you. Distracted by your cat pawing at your shirt you don’t see Sharon standing in the hallway. Her smile is sweet but her eyes, well if looks could kill Bucky would be dead by now.

“Can we talk, Stevie?” She says sweetly and you want to vomit.

“I got no time now Sharon, I have to check a room for Y/N.”

"The crazy chick kidnapping you and sending me these obscene messages. Seriously? Where is the little slut?” Sharon mutters not seeing you standing behind the tall Avenger.

“Uh, Sharon if I were you…” Bucky tries but she cuts him off.

“No one asked you for your opinion, Barnes. You and your sick obsession with the boring, crazy girl. You two are a perfect match. Leave Steve out of this sick game.” She spats now.

“Sharon…” Bucky tries once.

“Shut up! I got to talk with Steve about our relationship. We were so close to getting happy but then this insane chick disturbed our luck. Now she’s gone we can get happy, Stevie.”

“Oh, you didn’t hear she’s back?”

“What? Don’t lie Barnes!”

“Obviously you are not good at your job.”

Glaring at Bucky her eyes darken and she starts clenching her jaw. “That little slut better stays away from my man.”

“I’m trying…I’m really trying, but obviously not just Bucky is obsessed with me and my babies.” You chuckle walking past Steve to give her a wink.

Face pale, lips formed to a thin line she just stares at you, or rather at your baby bump. When her eyes meet Steve’s she knows it’s his baby.

“You are the father of her baby?” She yells.

“Not just Stevie. We are damn good, Sharon. Knocked her both up with our super soldier sperm. If you excuse us now we want to check our new room. Steve will be busy helping the mother of this child getting comfortable.” Bucky says and for the first time, you want to hug him.

----

“Sharon was beyond pissed.” Bucky chuckles opening the door with his keycard.

“What do you think?” Steve asks.

“I think James is right, Sharon was pissed and I was wrong. She’s a bitch, just like Claire.”

“Honestly I meant the penthouse.”

Letting your eyes wander you smile. The penthouse is huge, everything looks warm and cozy. There are huge windows so you can see the skyline.

“Why is the bed so big?”

“Tony likes it comfortable.” Steve lies.

“The bed looks like it’s brand-new, Rogers.” You say pointing a finger at the huge bed.

“Sue me…I thought we could…I mean…I want to sleep with you in the bed, along with Bucky. We want to be with you and that’s the reason there’s a huge bed. I want to feel my babies and you every night.”

“No way, Steve. You promised to give me space and time.”

“I know and we will do so, promised but give it a thought. I will never hurt you again. I love you and Buck is the same.”

“Steve…”

“Just give it a thought, Y/N. For now, one of us will sleep in the room over there. I’ll take the first shift as Bucky will help Tony with the interrogation of the therapist.”

“Will you hurt her?”

“Not if I don’t have to, Y/N but she’s the only lead to Hydra. Maybe she even knows about more moles within the headquarter.”

“You think they will try again to get hold of me?”

“You are pregnant with our babies, doll. They lost me and the others. I guess Hydra would do anything to get hold of you.”

“Then I will stay here…with one of you. I can’t let them get my babies.”

----

“Here’s Agent Carter. I thought about your offer and I want more than money and a position in your organization. I can tell you where to find Y/N Y/L/N. I also can help you get hold of her but I got two conditions. Firstly, as soon as the babies are born you will kill her and the other condition…I want Steve Rogers on my own.” Sharon says glancing at you and Steve talking outside the penthouse.

“You will get anything you want, Agent Carter.” The voice says.

“Then you’ve got yourself a deal. Give me a week and she’s all yours.”

 Marvel Tags

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@allonszassbutt, @joe-mazzello-is-my-dad, @gracethegeek9902, @geekysimmerthings

All Works Tags

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[eponymous-rose]

This isn’t a post I really wanted to make, and I feel kind of shitty making it because parts of it aren’t my story to tell, but not talking about it isn’t working, so hey. Weirdly comforting internet void, please don’t reblog this. 

There’s discussion of mental illness below, but not (directly) firsthand. This is mainly discussion of the impact mental illness is having on my family. Please avoid this post if this is a topic that is likely to cause you pain or discomfort. I think I just need to have it out there.

About a year ago, my brother was diagnosed with Bipolar I. His seeking out a diagnosis was the direct result of the way his mental health was horrifically mismanaged when he lived in the US in his late teens: he was misdiagnosed as schizophrenic and, a few months later, a pharmacy error cut him off anti-psychotics cold turkey. It was absolutely horrible, and he wound up leaving school and moving back in with my parents for a time just to recover. That diagnosis was still on file for him almost a decade later, but recently his job finally had decent enough benefits that he could afford to go in for a barrage of psychiatric testing to rule things out. Bipolar I wound up being the diagnosis that fit.

And I think, for him, there was a sense of relief that came from that initial diagnosis, because a lot of things started to fit. Our immediate family is very close and very loving, but also almost comically controlled and disciplined and logical and isolated. As a kid, he would frequently spiral over something small (I clearly remember being baffled by the fact that my teenage brother would still have full-on tantrums), and my parents and I would just be staring wide-eyed in silence because strong emotion??? what do????? He was comforted and loved, and outright tells us all the time that he loves us and feels really lucky to have had such a supportive family, but I can’t help feeling like we were just... overwhelmed by inertia and kept thinking “this is probably healthier and more normal than the way we repress our emotions”.

I suspected depression was always there, and I’d reached out to him a little about that based on my own experiences, but mania hadn’t even occurred to me, even when he was sending us e-mails at 5 AM about the new opera he stayed up all night writing. It’s incredible what starts to feel like normal when you’re in denial like that.

Regardless, that’s where we were last year: he called us up when I was visiting my parents and we chatted for about an hour about what we all knew about this illness and how he’d be going forward. We all assured him that we loved him a lot and were here for him in whatever way he needed us.

And then, in typical us fashion, we repressed it. My dad yelled at a server out of nowhere for bringing the wrong drink that afternoon; this is the most empathetic man I know, who’s raised his voice maybe three times in my life that I can remember (he called the server over afterwards to apologize and tipped hugely for having to put up with him). My mom’s anxiety spiked. I stopped sleeping well. It took us a few months to realize we were all struggling because we were so worried.

My brother tried a few different meds, none of which had a really strong impact. We all got together for the holidays, and when he arrived, he was furious in a way that felt familiar, like back in high school when he’d be so angry it was like he wasn’t fully in control of his body, wasn’t hearing the things he was saying. It was weirdly a bit of a relief, because I realized then how much he must have been putting on an act before: after high school, he’d always been extremely quiet and positive every single time I talked to him (always for short visits with big chunks in between). He was finally comfortable not being perfect around us. 

The precipitating factor for this particular blow-up was one of his coworkers e-mailing him and asking for one more article even though he was on holidays: dick move, sure, but in no way deserving of flinging his luggage around and teary-voiced ranting at the restaurant we took him to for dinner. We made sure he knew he was being heard and understood, and we sympathized with him, and we set up an hour that evening so he could just sit quietly in his room and work out how he was going to reply to the e-mail. And then things were fine again. He told us stories about how great that same coworker was the next day.

My parents stayed at an airbnb, mainly because my place is a little small for four, and he and I stayed here and just had a wonderful time. I realized how much I’d built things up in my head in a worrying way: this was still my brother, who I love very much, who’s sensitive and feels things deeply and sometimes gets upset, but I knew how to talk to him and I hope I could help him feel better; he certainly helped me feel better. We watched old cartoons and played NBA on the Switch and got milkshakes and ordered in pad thai and had a fantastic time just chilling and talking about whatever crossed our minds. I never once felt nervous or weird around him in the three weeks we were here, and I very clearly remember thinking, “Hey, future self, remember how natural this felt next time you’re catastrophizing: this is one of the few people in the world you’d happily have as a roommate.” We get along so, so well, and some of the new initial tension between him and my parents (that awkward combination of “well-meaning” and “absolutely out of their depths” made for a couple of baffled moments before they hit their stride) just never bled through to our friendship.

It came out during that trip that he’d accrued some pretty hefty credit card debt (overspending being an extremely common thing when you’re in a manic phase... and also in your twenties living alone in a big city when a big chunk of your job involves socializing every night); my parents very calmly and supportively told him they’d help him pay it off on the condition that he cut up those cards and take a serious look at the gaps in his budget. He was more embarrassed than anything, but my mom’s no-nonsense, logical attitude broke through and soon they were happily sitting down and setting up a budget.

He went back home, and things started getting worse. His landlord was an asshole who wouldn’t let him and his roommate control the heating and insisted on controlling it from off-site, so he’d come home to a sweltering apartment every night and couldn’t sleep. He took a sleeping pill to help him get some rest, and that triggered a major depressive episode. Through a series of accidental events (mainly getting stuck on hold with a crisis line for 45 minutes and calling 911 out of desperation), he wound up getting picked up by the cops one night and brought to a mental hospital, which he said wasn’t his intention, but he was glad it happened in the long run (the hospital, not the cops, obvs).

He was only there for one night, after which point they set him up with a social worker and amazing outpatient care, including psychiatrist visits every week and a new set of mood stabilizing meds, and I cannot stress enough that this would have been a much shorter story if he’d lived in the US. With my parents’ help, he wrote a letter to his landlord threatening to go to the city if he didn’t fix the heating situation, and his landlord caved (thank goodness, because there’s no way he’d be able to pay rent anywhere else in that city). Things stabilized, a little.

Now, though, it looks like he may lose his job. He disclosed his illness right after the diagnosis, and after some initial missteps, they started putting in effort to work with him on it---in my brother’s e-mails to us, the HR person went from an obnoxious jerk to a determined ally, if only to avoid liability issues. But on his new meds, while he feels great in the mornings, he’s exhausted by the afternoon, and he often has minor depressive episodes in the evenings, so clearly the dose isn’t right yet. He’s up to missing a couple days of work a week, and they’re clearly trying to lean on him to switch to contract work so they can let him go without running afoul of legal protections. It doesn’t help that what started as a wide-open, exciting startup (he still says the first eight months were his dream job) has turned into an ad revenue-grabbing mechanism where all his colleagues are white homophobic tech bros who ignore him at best and resent his “special treatment” at worst.

A lot of his friends happened to move away around the time of his diagnosis as well, and now a lot of his remaining friends are distancing themselves. A common factor in his last few jobs toward the end was people telling him, “You just looked miserable all the time,” and it sounds like it’s starting to impact his personal relationships. His time online is spent in the deepest of “cancel culture” discussion, where being mostly good but fucking up once is almost more reprehensible than being wholly awful (he quit Facebook for a while, but wound up reopening his account to let people know about his hospitalization... and now he’s just back there again). He and his boyfriend broke up. His friend who initially suggested he apply for this job now ignores him at work.

It’s that awful combo of “people are being assholes about my illness” and “my illness makes it hard to believe that someone who initially reacts poorly will ever come around, so I’d better shove them away first”.

My parents are understandably so worried for him. They’re going out to visit him for three weeks starting tomorrow, staying at an airbnb nearby and occupying themselves with their own retirement pursuits so he can come visit if he likes, or ignore them if he needs space. They’ve told him that, if he’d like, he’s welcome to come stay with them for a few months (they live on the other side of the country); they’ll cover his half of the rent while he’s gone, and he’ll have a bit of an opportunity to just heal, considering he went straight back to work the day after his hospitalization. They’ll also help him strategize about whether he wants to switch to part-time on his current job and see about picking something else up. I suggested they bring up the possibility of going back for a master’s---I know it’s an absolute minefield for mental health, but in his particular case, a flexible schedule plus project-based creative work with specific deadlines has always been a pretty good fit, and he excels academically.

They’re also preparing for the possibility of moving him out to stay with them on a more permanent basis, but they obviously don’t want to disrupt his care (his current appointments are at the best mental health facilities in the country). They can’t afford to live in his city on their pension, but they’re also talking about giving up their retirement condo and buying out his roommate’s half of the rent, and just being there to help him out when he needs it. I don’t think he’d go for that unless things really deteriorated quickly, but a few months away from the city definitely sounds like what he needs.

And I’m just... so angry. I’m pissed off that so much of the stress weighing on him (and so many others!) right now comes from him being nearly 30, in debt, without a hint of a way to start saving for retirement, with these little one- or two-year gig jobs with two-hour commutes full of toxic people stretching out into eternity. I’m pissed off that this awful disease has made it so my parents probably aren’t in a place where they’re going to be able to do their big retirement trip, and they may be giving up their idyllic retired life for good. I’m angry with myself for that little burrowing resentment that, because my parents are older, I could wind up a financial, medical, and emotional caretaker for them and/or my brother at a moment’s notice, and I don’t feel ready to take all of that on. I’ll never feel ready.

(As a bonus, bipolar I has a genetic component, and now I’m thinking back to that one time I stayed up all night determined to save the world by learning all of biology in eight hours, or the time when as a grown-ass adult I started crying like a ten-year-old because I felt left out from an activity friends were doing, and I’m thinking, is this it? And then it’s not those extremes, it’s every normal human emotion that was previously muted by my own situational depression years ago. Is this it?)

I feel so, so entitled to the life we should have had as a family, and so frustrated at all these external factors that’ve brought it crashing down. More than anything, I’m scared for my little brother. I know bipolar isn’t something that magically disappears, and that things are likely to get worse, but I want those external stressors to go away and just leave him alone for half a minute so he can heal and find the right combination of meds and maybe, maybe get to think about thriving rather than just surviving. I’m so grateful to my parents for finding the right things to do and say to help him recover. And I know that, if something goes horribly wrong, I can try to fill those shoes.

I’m still losing sleep, but only every now and then. People at work occasionally comment that I don’t look so good, but that’s much rarer than a couple months ago, and the people I’ve confided in are very kind and check in on me even when things seem to be going well.

After the move this fall, I’m going to find someone to talk to professionally about this. In the meantime, just typing this all out makes me feel a bit better. I am finding better ways to cope; I had to mute him on social media because my overwhelming tendency to overthink his posts was very dangerous (turns out that famous self-deprecating millennial sense of humor is terrifying when you’re trying to work out if someone’s in danger). I have a generally positive attitude about this, and I can now usually catch myself when I’m starting to spiral. I send my brother goofy links, and he sends me funny stuff in return. I’m going for runs and eating better and playing video games and hanging out with friends... 

... and I’m genuinely very happy a majority of the time (not just content, but happy), which wasn’t true even a couple months ago.

I’m scared and angry and coming to grips with it being okay to be both of those things, as long as I’m also supportive and loving. This is my little brother. This is my family. They’re the best. 

And all we can do is take it one day at a time.

[consultingsister-aa]

SYDNEY ASTRID KELLAS. aka syd vicious. TWENTY-NINE. EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT AT BRITISH VOGUE. LONDON, ENGLAND. MARRIED TO MICHAEL ‘MIKEY’ AXTON.

Sydney, who almost exclusively goes by Syd, was born in Berlin, Germany to Siegrid Weber, a German psychology lecturer, and English artist, Edward Kellas in 1990. At the time of their daughter's birth, they were aged thirty-nine and forty-three, respectively and unmarried. When she was only two years old, the family moved to New York City but eventually moved to London, England in 1994 and settled in Westminster. Syd has a very happy childhood and could only describe her as bohemian. At the dinner table they were often joined by artists, writers and intellectuals that inspired and intrigued Sydney. Although doted on and very much cared for by her parents, she was always treated like an adult, with valid opinions and ideas that she was encouraged to share. At home to spoke German and English and spent time with her German grandparents in Berlin for many summers. However, by the time she was finishing high school, she became a little lost. She applied to do Fine Art at The Royal College of Art but after one semester she left. For six months she travelled around Europe before coming home to London in search for a job. It was around this time, aged twenty, that she met Michael Axton, an aspiring boxer. Unlike her parents, who never married and met much later in life, after only year, Sydney and Michael married when she was twenty-one. 

Oh a whim, in 2012, Sydney applied for an internship at British Vogue. Knowing how coveted these internships were, she was surprised to hear she has been successful and would be working with editor, Cecelia Holmes. It was made pretty clear to Sydney that this wasn’t exactly a good thing. Holmes had a reputation at this point but Syd took on the challenge and impressed Celia. After her internship was over, Cee asked if she would consider staying on as her personal assistant, having just fired her third one that year. The rest, as they say, is history and Sydney has now worked for Cecelia for six years and even moved to New York with her. When Cecelia moved back to London to take the Fashion Director job, Sydney was promoted to Executive Assistant. Although, Syd has bigger dreams now and hopes to soon leave Vogue and begin working as a fashion stylist. In 2017 she took the year off to have her first son and only child, Michael Ziggy Axton, known as Ziggy, who is godson to Cecelia. 

Syd is fiercely protective of the people she loves, and can be just fierce in general. She is very opinionated, argumentative at times but almost always well informed, so probably right. She is an extremely hard worker but will always put her family first. After Charlotte died, Syd basilly became Cecelia carer and bodyguard. She once headbutted a paparri who was waiting outside Cecelia’s house and shouting insults at the editor whenever she left the house. Cee still has no idea how she managed this, since Syd only stands at five-foot-two. 

MICHAEL HUXLEY AXTON. aka mikey, or hux. THIRTY-FIVE. EX-BOXER AND PERSONAL TRAINER. LONDON, ENGLAND. MARRIED TO SYDNEY KELLAS. 

Born in Brixton, London in 1984 to Jennifer and Michael Axton, Michael quickly started going by Mikey, or sometimes Huxley or Hux, to differentiate between himself and his father. He has one older sister and one younger, although he was always the protector of the family. From a young age Mikey was aware of the gang culture in Brixton because his dad would often taken on jobs for them. However, in an attempt to keep him off the streets and away from the high knife crime rate in the area, his mother got him involved in a boxing club set up by a local gym. It was the local council's own attempt to keep young kids out of organised crime and at first, Mikey wasn’t keen to join. Clubs like these were often dubbed as a ‘sissy’s way out’ of gangs but after a couple of months, Mikey had found his passion. 

He left school at sixteen and started to train professionally, eventually moving out of his parents home. He was good, got signed by an agent even, won a couple of impressive titles but times reamined tough for him. At twenty-four he had to take a step back from boxing because of his mother’s failing health, and by the time she had recovered and he got back onto the ring, many had already forgotten his name. At twenty-seven he was well on his way to becoming an international name and while celebrating an impressive streak in a London club, he met twenty-year-old Sydney. They began dating off and on, but Mikey was keen to keep distractions for a minimum and often tried to break things off with Sydney, without ever managing to convince her she would be better off without him. After a year she convinced him that the best course of action wasn’t to break it off, but get married, and let her support him financially and emotionally. That she did and for the past eight year, his wife has been his biggest fan and his hardest coach. In 2013 the pair moved to New York and Mikey began working with a new coach, finally getting back into international rings and winning various titles and championships. He was now earning enough to get his mother and sister’s out of Brixton, along with his nieces and nephews. His father however sadly died in 2015. 

In 2018 he returned to London with his wife and their baby son, Ziggy Axton, and retired from boxing to open his own private gym and boxing club. He is now a personal trainer to many famous faces, in the competitive sports world, boxing and beyond. Although he’s incredibly proud of his boxing career, his first love is his family and is a very proud stay-at-home dad while his wife conquers the fashion world. He is easy-going but passionate about anything he puts his mind to. Since making it big, he’s financially support various charities in Brixton that support young people with activities like boxing, and mental health support. 

[scripttorture]

Hey I have a young character who was kidnapped around the age of eight and tortured. Most of it was things like being filling awake and unfrozen for surgery’s and being stuck in tight cages. He was stuck with his kidnappers for about three months before he was saved. In my story the kid’s around twelve now and despite having many resources to help him he still has many issues (1/2)

(2/2) . Such as: severe social anxiety (can’t look strangers in the eyes, hates talking to strangers and when he does talk it’s one word answers), is absolutely terrified of being touched, has attachment issues, and he has tiny things that will trigger him into a panic attack. He has two siblings that he’s really close with so he gets to socialize with them. Anywayshe grew up in somewhere really isolated and rural and now he’s moving to a big crowded city. How do you think he should handle this?

I think you might have underestimated the level of symptoms a child in this situation would have. Not by a huge amount, but enough that it seems noticeable to me.

What I’m getting from your description is that the character has two symptoms; anxiety and panic attacks. Both of which you’ve described at a realistic level of severity and you’re characterising them well.

I think you’re doing a really good job with the symptoms you’ve described but I think you should consider adding another symptom. It doesn’t have to be as dramatic or immediately noticeable.

Looking back over the ask it’s possible you’ve already done this and just described the ‘main’ symptoms that are an issue years later when the character moves. If that’s the case please bear with while I make some suggestions for further symptoms. It might not be useful to you but it could be useful to other people reading the ask. :)

I think you could include a memory problem here at a less severe level then the other symptoms. I’ve got a post on the four main types of memory problems torture causes here.

All of these problems are incredibly common in survivors. With anxiety that is this severe, this noticeable, a less severe memory problem could easily be overlooked.

It doesn’t need to be at a plot-effecting level the way the anxiety is. Something like- establishing that the character is ‘a little bit forgetful’ or showing that he ‘seems to think about what he went through an awful lot’ wouldn’t need to take up a lot of narrative space. And it adds in a type of symptom that’s rarely portrayed well in fiction but is experienced by most survivors.

You might also be able to include insomnia without changing much. Long term sleep deprivation (ie insomnia) does have some really dramatic and awful effects. One of which is that it makes anxiety (and problems with social interaction) worse.

But I think you could use it without changing the severity level of the character’s current symptoms. It could be used instead to highlight the main two symptoms ‘he’s not making any improvements right now because he isn’t getting enough sleep’.

I also suggest caution when using vivisection as a torture. It was generally not done in a way that’s survivable.

I’m not saying ‘don’t use it’ in this case. But I would recommend going back over what you’re putting the character through and then looking up an analogous surgery done for health reasons. Does it take more then three months for a complete recovery? Because if so then having the character survive multiple unnecessary procedures with less medical care in the same time frame- might not be possible.

You might also want to look up Japan’s Unit 731 which vivisected prisoners and civilians during World War 2. Some of the victims were children. This is- pretty heavy stuff even if you’re involved in reading about things like this regularly. It might help you with your story but it is extremely effecting.

I think that brings me to the question itself.

Honestly? Crowded cities and these kinds of manifestations of anxiety are often not a good mix. There’s a limit to how much anyone, but especially a child, can do to mitigate that.

Generally I’d say that there will be days the character just can’t go outside. In this particular situation it sounds as though his triggers and the ways his anxiety manifest would combine to mean that he usually wouldn’t be able to leave the house without a panic attack.

I think he’d spend a lot of time feeling exhausted and miserable and there’d be very little he could do to stop that.

If he’s strongly triggered by unexpected touch then he wouldn’t be able to walk down the street at rush hour or on the weekend. That means he’d be cut off from most parts of city life. That isolation would in turn feed into his symptoms and make them worse.

Based on what you’ve described he wouldn’t be able to regularly attend a mainstream school. The crowded, noisy, social environment would lead to almost constant panic attacks. Which means even if he managed to show up and be physically present during the school day he wouldn’t be learning. His energy would all be going on getting through the day, rather then taking in new information.

And due to the effects stress has on memory it’s unlikely he’d take in much.

I think how well the character would do going forward would really depend on the culture in your setting. Because he’d need a lot of accommodations and specialist care to recover in this sort of environment.

And well, even if he wasn’t being moved to a triggering environment, he’s twelve. Moving somewhere completely different is stressful at that age. Even more so when the child in question is a trauma survivor.

I moved countries when I was only a little bit younger then your character. It is incredibly stressful and isolating. In ways that make mental illnesses worse.

One of the things survivors really need to be able to recover is a stable environment. This scenario takes that away. It would take at best months and at worst years for the character to adjust to his new environment even if it wasn’t actively triggering.

In a culture that makes a lot of allowances for mental health and supports survivors then some things which might help the character include:

Specialist housing

Home schooling by specialist teachers (preferably with his siblings)

Regular scheduled visits from therapists

Regular scheduled socialisation with children his age in a non-crowded, out-of-home environment

It would mean keeping regular schedules of when the character is likely to come into contact with others and who those people would be. As well as allowing the character to withdraw at any time if things become too much.

In an environment more like the modern Western norm-

Essentially the character would be forced into situations that would give him panic attacks almost all the time. He would withdraw. He would get worse. And he wouldn’t really be able to do anything about it because as a twelve year old he doesn’t really have any control over where he lives, who he sees, whether/where he goes to school and what his home environment is like.

In that kind of scenario a family might choose to move somewhere more isolated again for the sake of the child. But they might also insist on the child ‘toughing it out for his own good’, resulting in- well a lot of harm and broken trust.

Asking how the character himself should handle this skips over one of the most important effects of his age: he can’t make the kind of changes that would help.

He can’t choose his house. He can’t arrange his schedule. He can’t choose his school.

All the important decisions about where and how he lives, what he does, the kind of medical treatment he has- those are all made by other people. And by the sounds of things those other people have chosen to put him in an environment that is going to be incredibly bad for him.

Where that leaves you really depends on what you want from the story.

If part of the point here is that the character has a very difficult childhood that delays his recovery, causes him to struggle at school and has a severe negative impact on his social position as an adult- You’ve achieved it. This will work very well.

And in that kind of story you could easily use the extra stressors imposed by adults as a way of strengthening the character’s bonds with his siblings. They understand, the adults don’t.

If on the other hand you want the character to recover and do well in the city, if you want the story to be about him getting better in this environment-

Then you need to change the way he’s interacting with his environment, building up something that is not like the typical modern experience of schooling and city life.

Adults with these kinds of symptoms deal with them by carefully planning when, how and for how long they come into contact with other people.

There are other things that can help, like CBT in some cases, but they all stem from being able to expect and plan contact with others.

So if you want him to do well he needs that structure, scheduling and control. Giving that to a child means rather radical restructuring of urban life. Don’t be afraid of that. Don’t be afraid of imaging a society and a city that treats torture survivors far better then we do.

Beyond that- I don’t know much about childhood development and I think you’d benefit from looking at what both @scriptshrink and @scripttraumasurvivors have to say about traumatised children.

I hope that helps. :)

Edited for formatting

Availableon Wordpress.

Disclaimer

[the-rivers-sad-gift]

Andie, my angel border collie, left this world at just after one o’clock on the morning of October 31st. My own hands dislodged a tumor on her spleen the same night, the 30th, at eight thirty pm. She was a miracle gifted by the gods, she was my service animal for many years, and was sixteen at her passing. Her energy, charisma, and smile never faultered all those years. She never bit or otherwise harmed any person. Up to the months before her death, she still wanted to join us for trips to the store and car rides. We have been together almost every second of every day for the past three or four years, but even as a pup we would rarely part. I can remember when I would bike home from school, she was two, and howling at our gate for her old owner who had a tragic accident. I sat with her for many hours, petting her until her cries died down. I gave her my bed to sleep on, fed her each morning and night. She knew many brothers and sisters and was loved by all. Andie patched together a soul that had been broken by sexual abuse and trauma. She gave me, as a lost child, a reason to live. My night terrors would send my flailing with screams, and Andie would stand over me to gently wake me up, to let me know I was safe. Her eyes were intelligent, she knew who she was looking at. She had intention, her actions had meaning. As my mental illness progressed, she was always with me. I have lost so much of myself over these last few years, whatever little of me did exist has slipped away so so quickly. All of the times I have been lost to this world, Andie brought the universe to me. For the past year, as I’ve worsened, I’ve been able to leave the small room I stay in less and less. When I walked out my door, she would step out before me. She allowed me to exist in the world with the rest of you, to let me go grocery shopping, to go on walks to see the changing of the leaves. People have always known me only as the one she followed around, Andie had the real personality, real life. She has friends in our neighborhood, dogs and humans who know and recognize her and were always so happy to see her. Andie rarely needed a leash, unless she was all service suited up, she would trot happily alongside us no problem. A meandering pup, always wanted to sniff all the new smells. She loved making new friends and seeing people smile. In college, her favorite thing was comforting the students breaking down over finals. Everyone loved her, everyone does love her. Andie could have powered the world if ya found a way to plug her in. She didn’t limp around during her last days, or sleep more than usual. The day of her passing, she seemed so much more grateful for pets, if anything she lingered a little longer on her favorite smells, her favorite places. She rode one last time to pick up her dad with me. That night, she had come up on the bed with us for cuddles. She laid down with us, being pet by myself and my boyfriend. She stood up to hop down, and I rose to help her. I should have let her get down on her own, I picked her up wrong. I knew I was picking her up wrong and I kept going. When I set her down, she sank to the ground. No grunts or wheezing, no signs of discomfort. She just, laid down. We couldn’t get her to walk, I noticed distention in her abdomen and saw improvement when pressure was applied towards the upper thorax. We brought her into an emergency clinic immediately, I almost killed all of us by nearly passing out driving us there. I couldn’t go inside, I sat with her as my boyfriend went in to take care of everything and in a few minutes they’d brought out a gurney for Andie. He went back in to continue all the paperwork, my boyfriend Forest, of not even two years handling all of this, while I sat outside in the cold begging a damn tree for answers and scaring away passer-bys with my angered rambling. Finally, one of the hands on my body was real, as Forest helped me up and inside a room in the clinic where a doctor came to talk to us. She told us that a tumor by Andie’s spleen had been hurt, and was bleeding into her body.

It was my fault. My hands. My right hand, that dislodged the tumor. Even the most expensive surgery would only buy her another few painful months. I would give anything for her to be okay, I would’ve done anything if it meant they could make her better. But they couldn’t, there wasn’t anything that could really be done. The damage I had caused was irriversible. So I had to make the call to put her down. The clinic was so so kind, they helped cover many costs, even diagnosed her immediately. We both sat with Andie for many hours. My head was killing me, the walls reeling, I couldn’t let her go. We were there for three hours on a floor because I wouldn’t move. Andie was happy though, she wasn’t afraid. She smiled at me, at both of us. When we said it was time, they took her back to prepare her a bit and brought us into a comfort room. Andie came in on a tall gurney, they gave us a whole bowl of yummy yummy treats for her. I wanted to play, to entertain her, but I couldnt even see. I sat with her as she smiled and munched for another hour or so, till Forest called in for the doc to come. They gave her a sedative first, even though she was calm and not fighting we wanted to make sure she was comfortable. We held her hands, pet her head, and watched her close her eyes. I could not say goodbye, I still can not. We said goodnight, as she exhaled for the last time. They took her back for paw prints and to get little locks of hair for us. All I remember is violently vomitting into their sink as my head exploded and I lost consciousness. I woke up on their couch, nurses in the doorway with Andie in a blue bag. The same pretty blue of her collar. We took her home, and we are burying her tonight, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I can’t bring myself to leave her there alone, to go on in this hell without her. She would be so disappointed to see me so soon, I know that. But I promised. Fourteen years she has kept me alive, woke me from manic terrors, licked my hands as I bandaged my maimed flesh.

And now she’s gone. And I did this to her. I’ve been told over and over there was nothing I could’ve done, that this might’ve happened if she jumped down by herself. But she didn’t. It was me. My hands. I killed the angel who’s miracles kept me alive. I hurt the angel who gave every ounce of energy to help me. I can’t eat, or drink, I try to think of what to do and fall apart. I passed out multiple times yesterday, feeling like my head was full of sharp electrified nails. I’ve sat in bed, unmoving. I can’t feel her in me anymore, her energy, it’s gone from where I am. I feel like I’ve already died. I’m collapsing from the outer reaches of skin inwards to a snake of boiling void that won’t stop consuming me. I wish I could honor her, that I could recover and grow and live and heal others for her the same way she healed me. But I don’t think I can. I’ve lost my child, my daughter, my angel. I did this. Wiped the last good from this world with my own hands. Ended a miracle that was pure in this world. Who am I do be so retched? Who am I to deserve to live after killing my reason to go on? Who am I now.

be sound, sweet pup, know you are ever so loved. Nobody will forget you, Andie. I love you so much, and I will find you again. Thank you for blessing this world with your life, you are always going to be my miracle, my angel.

[firesoulstuff]

Could you please write 1+5 for Captain Canary?

1. Fake relationship

5. Enemies to lovers

Tension

Read on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12378978/chapters/45732691

———————-

There was a time what feels like a lifetime ago when Sara would have very much enjoyed pretending to be Leonard Snart’s wife.

However, that time is long gone.

“I don’t see why we both have to be here.” He grumbles, “Not that I had exactly stellar role models as parents, but I doubt that even yours went to these things together.”

She grits her teeth, even if it is true. Parent-teacher conferences were always handled solely by her mother when she was growing up.

“We’re in hot-water as it is.” She sneers in reminder, “The last thing we need is to give a teacher is something to pick at.”

Yeah, this mission has been complicated to say the least.

It was supposed to be a routine mission to 2004 to capture a gang of fairies, but nothing can ever go routine for them and the two of them ended up together on distraction duty while the rest of the team took after the fairies.

By the time they found them The Waverider was severely damaged and the team had all been turned into children of varying ages.

Gideon, just barely online, had managed to forge some realistic birth and adoption certificates so they could go on with a cover until the Time Bureau hopefully finds them.

They’ve already been busted for not having the “kids” in school, and now that they are enrolled in school all eyes are on them.

Charlie starting fights isn’t helping anything.

“I don’t see why we couldn’t be divorced parents.” Leonard sneers, and ouch. That hurts her, but she isn’t going to give him the satisfaction of that.

“Well if you would like to move off the Waverider that can be arranged.” She sneers back, and he only rolls his eyes.

“Mr. and Mrs. Hunter, sorry to keep you waiting.” Charlie’s teacher says as she comes in from behind them. She’s a short, plump, middle-aged woman with a bright smile who looks happy they at least showed up.

“That’s alright Mrs. Tomkins.” Leonard says, standing to shake her hand and his charm dialed up so high Sara wants to gag. “We understand you’re busy.”

“Oh yes, running paperwork down the principal’s office, how exciting.” She laughs as she gets settled in her seat and Leonard reclaims his. Sara shoots him a near disgusted glare, and while he act like he doesn’t she knows he sees it.

And so does Mrs. Tomkins, great.

“Now,” the older woman says, somewhat uncomfortably, with her hands folded together on top of her desk. “As you two know, I’ve asked you here because I’m worried about Charlie. Did she tell you what happened?”

They glance at each other, nervous. Charlie did tell them, but unfortunately she is currently eight years old and the de-aging magic gave her a voice to match, and with her accent she is nearly impossible to understand these days.

“She did.” Leonard finally answers, “Something about Trevor and calling her a name?”

Mrs. Tomkins nods.

“Yes, and I would like you to know that I have a meeting scheduled with Trevor’s mother tomorrow, he isn’t exactly an angel.” She leaves the “either” unspoken, because they all know Charlie is far from an angel herself.

“That being said.” She continues, “Charlie did escalate the fight rather quickly. I understand she is going through a lot; what with your move and being adopted into a new family, a rather large family from what I understand, and I just think her world may be a little unstable to her right now.”

You have no idea, Sara thinks to herself.

“We understand Charlie’s world is unstable.” She says instead, “We’re all trying to settle in and find our footing.”

“Oh I’m sure.” Mrs. Tomkins says quickly, and more important sincerely, “And I don’t doubt your awareness of it. But it’s been four months since Charlie started here, and this isn’t the first incident. I understand it’s going to take time, but I am worried about her, and I think she might benefit from seeing a counselor.”

Sara’s eyes go wide, and she looks to Leonard, their ill feelings momentarily forgotten and his expression is just as worried as hers.

“Mrs. Tomkins.” Leonard says, recovering first and leaning forward in his chair. 

“First I want to say you’re probably right, I’m sure Charlie would benefit from seeing a counselor. But that being said I was in counseling when I was her age, and while I’m sure it didhelp in the long run I was too young to understand why I was really there, but I was old enough to understand my friends didn’t have to go to that office once a week. Made me feel like a freak.”

For a moment Sara forgets to hate him. She forgets to be irritated by that smooth tone of his voice, the one that says he knows exactly what he’s doing. There’s a truth to his words, as there almost always is with his best lies.

“Now I know every kid is different.” He goes on, “But still, with what she’s been through, I’d rather not take the chance of making Charlie feel that way if I don’t have to. So, in your opinion, is there anything we can do at home that might help her?”

Mrs. Tomkins thinks for a second, during which time Leonard shoots Sara a gloating little smirk, and she has to bite the inside of her lip to turn her snicker into a scowl.

“Well, little things really.” The teacher says, “Tell her you love her; tuck her in at night, both of you if you can, and…” she drawls, her voice just all-so knowing. “If there’s any tension at home try and resolve it as quickly as possible.”

The walk back to the ship is… quiet.

Tense and quiet.

“Just to be clear,” Leonard finally breaks through the silence, and for the first time since he came back his voice is so welcome that Sara actually exhales in relief. “We’re not actually tucking Charlie in at night and telling her we love her, right?”

She wants to laugh, because the notion is ridiculous, but instead her eyes stay ahead and her mouth remains in a firm line.

“I don’t know.” She says, “I can’t tell if this was just Charlie being Charlie or… Charlie getting worse.”

Even if it wasn’t, she will be getting worse. It’s a side effect of the spell, according to the book they found in the library to explain it. While the physical effects of the spell are instantaneous, the mental ones take time. At first those who are affected maintain all their memories from their lives, but due to the stress that the spell puts on the body, if it isn’t reversed quickly the mind will start to accept the new reality as true.

Basically, all their teammates are slowly forgetting who they really are and are beginning to believe their cover story is real.

It’s getting bad too, after four months, and moments of lucidity are growing more and more rare. Sara’s pretty sure Zari is already, officially, mentally fourteen years old again.

“If we send her to counseling-”

“And she has a moment and says something we risk blowing our cover. I know.” She finishes for him, rubbing her temple with the oncoming headache; she’s been doing that a lot lately.

“For the record, she is eight.” He says, and if she didn’t know better she would say he is actually trying to make her feel better. “Do we really think anyone, especially someone who deals with kids every day, is going to take an eight-year-old’s claims about time travel seriously?”

“I’m more worried about them finding the Waverider, since we aren’t actually living that apartment we have the mail being sent to.”

He nods, a tad dejected, and it’s enough to make her smirk.

“So… If we want her to avoid counseling we have to resolve tension?”

He sighs, and at some point they’ve stopped walking. They’re in the woods now, alone, it’ll only be a few more minutes until they’re back at that ship.

“What happened to us?” He asks, “How did me and you, of all people, end up enemies?”

A chill runs down her spin at his words, me and you.

“I don’t know.” She answers, her arms crossed in front of her. “After Ava and I broke up… I thought we might get back to where we were but… It feels like we’ve only gotten worse.”

He nods, his face serious, and then for the first time in months he steps closer to her. Only a hair, but he’s now less than an arm’s distance away, which is something she hadn’t realized she’s missed so much.

“She and I are so different.” He says, “I thought I wasn’t what you wanted anymore.”

That makes sense, a lot of sense actually, but it hurts like a stab in the heart all the same.

“You are different.” She acknowledges, taking her own step closer and looking up at him with a very serious gaze. “But you’re the one I want.”

It’s only because they’re standing so close that she sees the miniscule drop of tension in his shoulders, only for it to return a moment later.

“Are you sure?” He asks and she smirks.

“Yeah?”

“How sure?”

She lets herself chuckle this time, as his eyes are sparkling with mischief, but she’ll play along.

“This sure.”

She brings her hands up to cradle his jaw, and after so many months of wasting time her lips meet his.

[teratoscope]

Enluss

The little shaggy guys started turning up at the camp perimeter the night after you cleared out the den of cunningbears that were sabotaging the mass drivers two klicks out west. You’re pretty sure they’re some kind of mutant. You get lots of those out in the green zones, and the brass gives you hell if you break protocol for indigenes, so for the time being you’ve let them be beyond reading them the packaged non-aggression pact speech. Not like they knew what you were saying. They kept so quiet that most of the crew was pretty sure they don’t talk. They’d shown up right at the edge of camp for two weeks straight, just watching with those big dark eyes that shine when you fix ‘em in the light. Then Tae got shitfaced last night and tried to punt one. They dogpiled him, jabbed him in the neck with this fuckoff huge needle, and vanished into the buffalo grass. Tae’s drinking buddies ran him to the field hospital and strapped him down so he wouldn’t break his own spine from the convulsions. Tae died sometime later that night. That’s what you’re hoping, anyway. That’s the story you’re telling everyone else. You were the one that got tapped for observation duty, and the one who sterilized the area when you realized he was starting to sporulate.

HD 1 MV 120’ AC 12 AT by weapon Special assimilator, virotech

assimilator—Enluss don’t have immune systems so much as they have re-education camps for foreign contaminants. They always have advantage to resist poison, infection, and toxic environments, and once they’ve made a successful save they never have to roll to resist it again.

virotech—nearly all Enluss technology is the product of powerful retroviral agents that directly alter the user’s phenotype. An Enluss can typically maintain one virotech infection per HD listed for an individual specimen. Virotech is contagious; any living thing that makes fluid-to-membrane contact with an Enluss has a 1 in 6 chance of contracting a system. Virotech is keyed to the user’s precise biochemical register, and the transition to a new host is messy at best. The infected must make a Constitution check; if they fail, they lose 1d3 points of Constitution permanently and the infection manifests immediately. If they succeed, their Constitution score is set to the raw result of the check and recovers by 1 point/day; the infection manifests when the infected’s Constitution score returns to normal.

1d10 Virotech Infections

1.     Bombardier Pox. Horny conical growths on chest, shoulders, and back spray caustic fluid on command. 1d6 acid damage in a 15’ radius centered on the user, Dex check for half.

2.     Gecko Palms. Subject gains a climb speed equal to ½ their MV.

3.     Froglung. Subject becomes amphibious, but only swims as well as they ordinarily would.

4.     Komodo Mouth. On a successful bite attack, subject’s victim makes a Constitution save after every full rest. On failure their max hp drops by 1d3. Effect ends after victim receives advanced medical care, dies, or manages three successful saves in a row.

5.     Kevlar Rash. Skin bunches and hardens when struck with a strong blow. Subject gains 1 damage reduction vs. kinetic attacks the first time they’re damaged each round; this effect dissipates after a full round without being hit. At DR 3, halve MV; at DR 6, reduce it to 1/3. Effect caps at 6.

6.     Accelerator Fever. Subject can move at double their base MV and act at the top of initiative on command at the cost of 1d3 hp/round.

7.     Vorpal Osteogenesis. Subject’s hand (determine which one randomly) becomes powerfully muscular to compensate for liquified bones, which erupt from fingertips reconfigured into inch-long talons. Subject gains a claw attack for 1d6+1 damage; this attack scores a critical on a 17-20. Hand is miserably clumsy for all other purposes.

8.     Transponder Blisters. Subject develops a cluster of antennae and subcutaneous resonators running from the base of the neck to the jawbone that allow them to tap and gauge distance and direction on radio signals within a 20 mile radius. Actively seeking a band to scan requires a Wisdom check and an exploration turn.

9.     Alzabo Syndrome. Subject’s tongue becomes extendable and develops a thorny, hollow tip designed to bore into spinal columns. Subject can take an exploration turn to hull and drain a recently-killed or restrained life form; for the next eight hours they gain access to all of the eaten party’s memories ranging from the moment of death to the last time they slept.

10.  Alcubierre Organ. Subject develops a faintly glowing growth just above the sacrum that makes the bearer passably spaceworthy and allows subtle massaging of space-time. Subject gains an EVA speed of 90’ and can teleport to any location they have a clear mental image of but will need to messily devour a full-grown person’s worth of calories within an exploration turn of arrival. Failure to satiate the hungers of warp-debt inflicts their own hit dice in damage each round.

1d6 Enluss Weapons

1.     Pherogun. 600’ range. Cast ceramic single-shot air rifle. Takes a full round to load. Deals no damage, but specially brewed ammunition vaporizes on hit and binds to the skin, making the target smell overwhelmingly confrontational/appetizing to most organisms. Wilderness encounters happen twice as often, and reaction rolls with wild creatures are made twice, taking the least favorable outcome. Counterscent is usually carried on the wielder’s person, rarely more than a single dose. Effect wears off after a month or if the victim is set on fire for at least 6 points of damage (cumulative).

2.     Babel Spore. 60’ cone. Sickly-sweet grayish haze deployed via back-mounted sprayer. Targets within cone make a Wisdom check each round; on failure they can neither use nor comprehend spoken or written language. Pantomime and evocative groans still work. Victims get followup checks to purge the spores after every full rest.

3.     Tracker Spear. As normal spear, but on a hit that beats AC by 4 or more, a section of the head breaks off in the resulting wound and puts down taproots. The head requires 2d6 days of dedicated care from a competent surgeon to remove, and so long as it has blood to feed on it will broadcast its pre-assigned radio signature. A target marked this way will never surprise a party of Enluss and attempts to cover tracks or shake off pursuers always fail if the pursuers are Enluss or know their encryptions.

4.     Slingbears. Like underfed, shaved, eyeless infant koalas. 30’ range, 1d6 damage on impact. Take a Strength check at disadvantage to dislodge, deal 1d6+1 at the end of each subsequent round attached as they savage with tooth and claw. You can try to kill them while attached; they have 1 HD, AC equal to their victim’s +2 if you’re trying not to hit your friend or yourself, and if you hit but don’t kill they deal maximum damage this round. Utterly helpless once dislodged; they have no notion of how to function without something to latch onto and maul.

5.     Starter Grenade. Fragile clay jar with an airtight seal, containing a voracious, quick-growing yeast culture. 30’ initial area of effect, can be hucked up to 60’ by hand or 120’ with a sling. Anything in the area of effect must make a Strength check to pull free of the sticky morass; otherwise they are immobilized until somebody else extracts them and their microbiome is savaged by the yeast’s rapacious hunger, granting an immediate extra Constitution check against any diseases they may be suffering from and disadvantage on all checks vs. disease in the future, barring three days of probiotic treatment. On the second round, the yeast mass grows another 60’, plus 30’ for each target it already trapped. On the third round, the mass solidifies into a huge, misshapen lump of hardtack. Starter Grenades are ineffective in sterile environments.

6.     Hornet Claw. Set of four pheromone-bound, heavily armored descendants of V. M. Japonica. Bred for obedience, venom potency, and stinger size. Each latches to a finger stinger-out, forming a sort of living bagh naka. On a bare-handed melee hit, the wielder deals 1d3 Constitution damage. A full rest and a successful Con check or healing check recovers 1d3 of this damage.

Enluss is not a species. It is a movement.

Enluss is the alternative to death. It is the struggle to create, regenerate, and sustain in a world that does not want you.

If you could see the kind of future that would come to pass without us, you would have no choice but to become us. Without us there would be no war, because there would be no world to fight over. You and me and everyone else here would have choked to death on the poisoned air many, many years ago, and nothing would grow here, and the waters would fall silent and still.

It has happened before, in another time.

If we had begun sooner, even a generation sooner, if we had been brave instead of desperate, we would never have needed to leave. We would have reclaimed our world from the worst part of ourselves with time left over to heal it. Instead we had time enough to run away and try again here.

We have seen your mistakes before. We made them. You possess the same craven attachment to false comforts and poisonous ideologies that nearly killed us. You live at war with your own bodies, which you refuse to meaningfully change. You weigh your actions based on outcomes that become irrelevant in spans of time shorter than a single life-cycle. You cling to a notion of self that treasures its worst features and diminishes all that makes you meaningful.

And until you see this and understand, the parts of this world that live and grow will be your enemy. So it was before we came, and so it will be long after we are gone. All we have done is given you a fighting chance.

When we are done, you will either finally deserve this world, or you will feed something that does.