#fluorescent snippet

[sixtysixproblems]

disaster ramble about my headcanons for how the batch got their names & etc*

*this is related to a fic of mine (fluorescent mistakes/mistakesverse), tho having read it is 100% unnecessary to understand the post, and I'll likely use some of these for other fics as well.

the only HCs you (sort of) "need" to know is cody, fox, and wolffe are "triplets", and i say fuck canon and Rex is 3 years (1.5 years) younger than CC batch. bits in italics/blue are less applicable outside of the fic itself, but still make sense without the context or i give the context.

Cody (Kote) - got the name Kote pretty young, changed it to Cody tho around 16-17ish?

>Jango gave it to him, when he was 10ish..? Possibly even a little younger. Jango intended as more of a nickname for just him to use, but obv it didn’t stay that way. Was very proud of "earning it" for a long time. >Changed it to Cody later in a not-so-subtle rebellion against Jango/the Kaminoans, and partially in an attempt to choose something for himself/have a part of his identity outside of his skill as a commander. >Still uses Kote on very rare occasions with the batch and other old friends from kamino ONLY (only exceptions to use it more being Fox who gets to call him Kot'ika, Rex who get a free pass for anything/everything) >his name backstory is probably most plot relevant cause his arc deals a LOT with identity issues & such. Might even have a flashback to him snapping at Jango that "it's cody now" > The final nail in the hammer for changing it was probably Ponds getting reconditioned**, and him partially blaming Jango for it :(

Fox - before rex was around (so pre 13)

>Got called a “fox” due to him being a sneaky clever bastard, but it wasn’t a nickname until he made it one >chose it not long after cody,  probably? >this was a pretty big deal since it wasn't a) widely used by trainers, mostly other vode, and b) he made it clear it was his name. not a nickname, not a title, his name, as opposed to his designation number >I'm considering backstory that him & colt worked together to come up with the idea to bulshit the kaminoans with "it's actually more tactically useful in battle to have recognizable nicknames for the clones", which is true, but also to limit consequences for getting caught using names. >in addition to joint guilt in the creation of Ponds's name, he's also responsible for Thorn's name by repeatedly calling him a "prick" and "thorn in my ass" on kamino (tho that's it's own post lmao).

Wolffe - before rex was around (so pre 13)

>inspired by fox, but also spells it that way to spite fox (cody gave him the idea for it lol) >cody was annoyed that wolffe clearly chose it to match fox (bitey twins, lol) since they're supposed to be triplets. wolffe enjoys pissing him off but didn't want him to feel actually left out...so cody got to help with the god awful spelling. >confused some people into thinking it was pronounced "wolf-y". this is brought to you by my friend reading fluorescent before any other piece of star wars media and assuming that. >i love the potential meaning u can take from it of him being family/"pack" oriented and how that translates over to him being very loyal, protective, etc. Aka on the surface level he's this scary grumpy guy, but deep down is just a bit of a softie/just wants to keep his family safe. >but on a less serious note, i also love all the jokes i can make cough cough omegaverse

Rex - age 10-11ish

>encouraged to pick a name out by cody to help cope with being newly reconditioned/placed with the CCs as i imagine there’d be some identity issues after that :(  >perhaps nicknamed king or little prince or smth and that's where he got the rex idea. tho tbh i have no idea >abridged fluorescent lore is that he was a particularly talented/borderline defective CT, tho albiet from a "troublesome" batch. consequently he was reconditioned pretty heavily around 9-10ish, and Jango came up with the great (sarcasm) idea to use him sort of as a "test" of what CTs were actually capable of, and had him mixed into CC training. >this is how he met the batch, after not remembering his own/many details of his life pre-recon. they were supposed to train him once or twice, but predictably adopted him.

Bly - after rex arrived (and rex got his name) but not long after, so 13?

>litterally just chose a name they liked the sound of and thought fit them like a sane person. literally the only one to pick a normal name a normal way out of the whole batch. we stan >i like the hc being short for smth (like butterfly, etc) but i dont think it works for fluorescent :/ maybe in another fic. >possible them & rex worked together to find names that fit them bc i think that'd be sweet. i dont focus on their relationship much at all so maybe a little bonding, albiet in backstory only, is in order. >she's very likely gonna be trans (mtf) in fluorescent (tho it wasn't always the plan + she is not out yet (to herself or others) in the fic itself) so I'm considering implying Bly is traditionally a female/gender-neutral name in whatever star wars culture it's "from" (aka i make shit up) >considering a joke where someone asks her if she's picking a new one after she comes out and she's like "absolutely not, it was so hard the first time i refuse to do it again".

Ponds - last to get one, 14-15ish?

>went by “four” or 54 before he got his name. >Bly sometimes jokingly called him “squared”/ ”square”/ ”cubed”/etc when they were tweens cause of the two fours in his designation number + 64 is a perfect square in math. the vode assumed he'd pick one or one would eventually catch on permanently. >...and then he shoved three separate trainers in a pond, on three separate trips no less, during off-planet training (and since I'm guessing off-planet training was very rare, wtf buddy) >and the triplets went “you know what would be funny” and just. Picked it for him, and wouldn't stop calling him that, and eventually it caught on. And there was nothing he could do about it <3 >**yes, he was reconditioned at 16-17ish. Yay....Not much of a spoiler hopefully? this may somehow be related to why he was the last to "choose" (read: accept defeat) a name, despite being a outspoknen/protective ori'vod nightmare for the Kaminoans. >dw it's not too angsty. they didn't fuck with his memories much, and were trying to change his behavior to be "less inclined to rebelliousness/contempt for authority". And if you've read his arc in fluorescent, you know they failed spectacularly at making him less likely to break the rules. >tbh I think its fitting for (how I write) his character that his name was chosen by his siblings. i think he was and is "salty" about it, but not-so-secretely touched and/or proud about it.

this whole thing was very ramble-y and i'll be surprised if more than 2 people read it, lmao, but i couldn't stop myself. a lot of this is sort of "background" and may not be actually referenced in the fic itself...but who knows.

[idiopath-fic-smile]

so literally eight years ago i posted a snippet of a modern retelling of Much Ado About Nothing set in a student co-op and for no particular reason, the concept is tickling my brain right now. so uh here, have this? i guess?

“So, Ursula, my dear,” said Lee, taking the seat across from her at the dinner table. “My fluffy little crumpet. My buttery brioche bun. My tangy slice of pumpernickel—”

Ursula squinted up from her Anthro reading. “Uh-oh,” she said. “You only call me bread when I’m in trouble.”

“Happened to glance at the meeting notes this morning,” Lee continued, her voice rising. “You’ve got anything you wanna explain or defend?”

Ursula flicked her highlighter from one finger to the other, determined to play it cool. “I think it’s all pretty self-explanatory. Which meeting notes, exactly, were you glancing at?” She peeked out of the corner of her eye to check how this was going down. 

Poorly. 

Lee stared at her, apparently at a loss for words, which was not a great look for the house president.

“You did this more than once.”

“I take notes every meeting, Lee,” she said, as levelly as possible given how Lee’s ‘I’m not angry, just disappointed’ Mom vibes were oozing from every pore. “It’s my job, as house secretary.”

“Is it?” said Lee tightly. “Is it your job?” She whisked opened her laptop and read aloud: 

“Benedick’s eyes blazed with passionate fury. His nostrils quivered. ‘Well,’ he said in a low growl, hair resplendent under the environmentally friendly fluorescent lights, ‘personally, I think if anything, there's not ENOUGH lentils—’ Beatrice gasped. It was so wrong, and yet…”

Ursula winced. “‘Said in a low growl’ is wordy. I should’ve just put ‘growled’.”

Lee pinched the bridge of her nose. “Ursula,” she began, “just how much of our official co-op house notes, which by the way are formally submitted each month to the Co-op Board, are written as if Benedick and Beatrice’s stupid arguments are some kind of torrid Harlequin paperback?”

“That depends.” Ursula steepled her fingers, dropping the highlighter in the process. “How much of my notes do you have access to?”

“All of them,” Lee gritted out. “Because they’re public. That’s what I’m saying.”

 “Look,” said Ursula. “I don’t think I said this when I ran, but I wanted to be house secretary in the first place because a lot of the time, taking notes is the only way I can make myself concentrate. I would literally be taking notes during the meeting anyway. It’s an ADHD thing.” 

Ursula sighed. “And pretty early on, it became clear that meetings in Messina House are basically just a Sexual Tension Thunderdome for Benedick and Beatrice. They go back and forth for pages sometimes. I can feel every electrical connection in my brain fighting to zone out. So yeah. For a while I rewrote their fights as rhymed couplets, for a very short bit of time I had Balthazar set them to sea shanties, and since last December, I’ve been transcribing very close to their actual words, with very close to their actual intentions, plus just a tiny bit of genre trimmings. If they’re gonna waste my Saturday and test my focus, I’m doing what I can to stay awake and keep my typing fingers limber. I’m up to 75 WPM, by the way.”

“December?” Lee repeated. “Ursula, it’s October. You’ve been doing this for over a semester?” A terrible wave of realization seemed to sweep over her just then, regarding the general pacing and content of a standard Harlequin. “Please tell me,” she whispered, “there is no sex in the meeting notes—”

“There’s no sex in the meeting notes,” Ursula interrupted. “Per se,” she added under her breath.

Lee’s lips were pressed together into a thin line. “One year,” she said. “I want one year where nobody drives a motorcycle down the hallway or accidentally mixes up chlorine gas during their bathroom clean, or spends almost a full calendar year slipping smut into the public record—!”

“Excuse you,” said Ursula. “Smut’s a different genre altogether. This is romance. Slow-burn, enemies to lovers.”

Lee threw up her hands, nearly knocking over her laptop. “What are you gonna do if Benedick or Beatrice sees this?” “Oh.” Ursula froze. “Uh-oh.”

“Yeah, uh-oh,” she said. “Look, clearly there’s only one thing to do.”

Ursula nodded. “Right, we have to execute a series of far-fetched shenanigans designed to turn those two fighting fish into a pair of cooing lovebirds, stat.”

“No,” said Lee. “What? No, you need to go back and rewrite all of—”

Pedro slid into the room in his socks. “Oh sweet, are we hooking up Benedick with Beatrice?”

“Hell yeah,” said Ursula. They high-fived.

Lee closed her laptop with a snap. “Ursula, what are the odds,” she said, “that you actually buckle down and rewrite all of the meeting notes to read like they were written in the genre of meeting notes?”

“Oh, like, zero,” said Ursula, as Pedro chimed in, 

“Yeah, that will not happen.”

Lee looked despairingly back and forth between Ursula and Pedro. “What do you think is the likelihood that playing love gods will like, actually, genuinely work?”

“Twenty percent,” said Ursula.

Margaret glanced up from the other end of the table, where she was gluing together a collage of every restaurant on campus that had ever given her food poisoning. It was for class, was the thing.

Art school kids, man.

“We’re tricking Benedick and Beatrice into giving themselves over to their intense chemistry?” asked Margaret.

“Thirty percent,” said Ursula, because Margaret was inscrutable much of the time but surely they would have a fighting chance with more of the Humanities on their side.

At “intense chemistry,” Lee shuddered. “That reminds me,” she said, standing and scooping up her laptop, “I need to post a sign in the basement bathroom warning people not to mix bleach with acid.”

“Are you in?” said Pedro as Lee attempted to slip out the door. “Love Gods?”

“Jesus Christ,” said Lee.

“Not a love god,” Margaret announced. She had found the sequins, and was applying them with enthusiasm. “Except in the general Peace on Earth sense, I guess.”

“I’m texting Hero,” said Ursula, digging for her phone. “She knows Beatrice better than anyone. She’ll have tips. That puts our potential success rate at 45%, easy.”

“If we’ve got Hero, we’ve got Claudia,” Pedro added. “And she’s been BFF with Benedick since freshman year.”

“This is a terrible plan,” Lee muttered. “Yeah,” said Ursula, “but you implied it yourself. If, uh, certain parties see my meeting notes, they will murder me. Do you really want a fellow co-oper’s blood on your hands?”

Just then, Benedick burst into the room, Beatrice on his heels.

“I’m sorry,” Beatrice shouted, “are you genuinely trying to argue that soybeans are the superior legume? Soybeans? Over chickpeas? Over kidney beans? Hell, over peas?”

“Soy milk,” said Benedick, counting on his fingers, “silken tofu, miso, tempeh, firm tofu—”

Beatrice took a step closer to him, eyes flashing, “I have never in my life had tempeh that tasted like anything other than an evil Cliff Bar.”

“It’s not my fault your tastebuds were installed backwards,” said Benedick. “This from the woman who still, in the year of some people’s lord 2024, thinks lattes are ‘too trendy’—”

“Espresso is a waste of coffee grounds,” said Beatrice in a low, dangerous voice.

Benedick gasped. “You take that back.”

Beatrice took a step closer. “Coldbrew has more flavor and more caffeine.”

“Coldbrew,” Benedick echoed, stepping even closer. “You’re defending that swill over a nice mocha? Get latte’s name out of your mouth.”

Benedick and Beatrice were standing almost nose to nose, breathing hard.

“You know what?” said Lee from the door. “Ursula? Fuck it, I’m in.”

Ursula whooped. Margaret reached for the glitter glue. Benedick and Beatrice visibly both ran through their mental rolodexes of coffee-related insults. 

From the entryway came the distant revving of a motorcycle engine. Borachio was no doubt doing wheelies in the foyer again, but that was a problem for house presidents, not innocent house secretaries who had done no wrong, thought Ursula as she returned to her reading and her growing mental to-do list.

[diamonddaze01]

69. "You know my name?" + chan omg im begging u or ill beat u to it and write it (lol stares at all my wips 💀)

call me by my name

Pairing: lc x f!reader | wc: 971 words prompt: "You know my name?" au: university au! | warnings: none a/n: HANEULLLLL thank u for the ask this was so cute and fun to write i hope you love it <33333

The lecture hall buzzed with the usual pre-class noise—pens tapping against desks, chairs creaking as students settled in, snippets of conversation floating from every direction. The air carried a faint hum of fluorescent lights, blending into the background chaos. You sat at your usual spot in the front row, pen poised and ready, eyes skimming the lecture notes you’d pulled up on your laptop.

Behind you, it was less preparation and more pandemonium.

“Seungkwan, what the fuck! Stop throwing shit at me!”

You didn’t have to look to know it was Soonyoung. His voice carried, loud and incredulous as always.

“That’s not throwing—it’s called handing,” Seungkwan shot back, his words dripping with mock seriousness. “Get some spatial awareness, idiot.”

The sound of a paper airplane slicing through the air followed, landing somewhere near your seat. You glanced down briefly at the crumpled attempt at aerodynamics before looking back at your notes.

“Is that supposed to be a plane or modern art?” another voice chimed in—Chan this time, laughter in his tone.

Turning your head slightly, you caught sight of the trio in their usual seats toward the back. Soonyoung had crossed his arms, glaring at the offending paper in Chan’s hand. Seungkwan was smirking triumphantly, leaning back in his chair with his arms behind his head.

“Give it here,” Chan said, snatching the airplane and inspecting it with exaggerated care. “Yeah, no. This isn’t a plane. This is, like… a bird that forgot how to fly.”

The paper flew again—this time courtesy of Chan—and barely made it past the second row before nose-diving onto the floor. The resulting laughter spread like wildfire across the room, even prompting a raised eyebrow from Professor Lee, who was just arriving.

“If the three of you could channel even half this energy into engineering,” the professor said, setting down his coffee with a thud, “you might actually pass this class.”

A round of chuckles rippled through the room as Chan held up his hands in mock surrender. “We’ll consider it!”

You shook your head, letting the familiar chaos wash over you. It had been like this all semester—Chan, Seungkwan, and Soonyoung acting as the unofficial class entertainment. Their antics had a way of filling the space, loud enough to distract but not enough to pull you from your work.

Professor Lee called the class to order, his voice steady as he launched into announcements. You settled in, fingers flying over your keyboard as you took notes.

Until he dropped the bomb.

“Alright, folks, listen up,” Professor Lee announced, raising his voice over the chatter. “Big news today—it’s time to kick off your group projects.”

Groans and murmurs spread through the room like wildfire. People immediately started swiveling in their seats, calling out to friends to lock in their groups before anyone got left behind.

You stayed put, as you always did. You’d learned from experience—being the quiet one meant waiting out the storm. Once the dust settled, you’d deal with whatever scraps of a team were left.

“The project is worth thirty percent of your grade,” Professor Lee continued, adjusting his glasses. “So choose wisely.”

“Thirty percent?” someone whispered behind you.

“Yeah, that’s fucked,” another voice muttered.

You ignored them, jotting down the project details from the board. If no one picked you, you’d just work alone—it wasn’t ideal, but you’d survive. Your eyes flicked back to your laptop, but before you could even finish writing down the assignment details, a shadow fell over your desk. You blinked up, startled, only to see Chan grinning down at you, hands stuffed in his hoodie pocket.

“Uh, hi?” you said cautiously.

“Wanna be in a group with me and my friends?” He jerked his thumb toward Seungkwan and Soonyoung, who were mid-wrestle over a pencil in the back corner of the room.

Your pen froze mid-word. “You… know my name?”

Chan tilted his head like you’d just asked him if the sky was blue. “Uh, yeah? Considering you’re the one who ruins the curve every time… yes, I know your name.”

Oh.

“But also,” he continued, “you clearly know what you’re doing, and we’d be stupid not to team up with you.”

You blinked, your brain short-circuiting for a moment. “Okay.”

His grin widened, and he gestured for you to follow him.

By the time you reached Seungkwan and Soonyoung, they’d paused their argument and were now watching you with matching mischievous smirks.

“So,” Seungkwan said, leaning closer to Chan, “you actually got her to join us, huh?”

“Guess today’s my lucky day,” Chan muttered, side-eyeing him.

Soonyoung jabbed Seungkwan in the ribs, grinning like an idiot. “Told you he wouldn’t chicken out.”

“Shut up,” Chan hissed, his ears already pink.

But Seungkwan wasn’t done. “You didn’t have to use the whole ‘you ruin the curve’ thing. You could’ve just said, ‘Hey, I think you’re super smart and pretty, and I totally have a crush on you.’”

Chan’s eyes widened as if someone had just slapped him with a textbook. “What the fuck—”

“Or,” Soonyoung added, tapping his chin theatrically, “you could’ve been, like, ‘I sit two rows behind you every day because your hair smells like strawberries.’”

“I do not—”

Seungkwan gasped, fake-shocked. “Oh my God, you’ve smelled her hair?”

Chan groaned, scrubbing a hand over his face. “I hate both of you.”

You couldn’t help it—you burst out laughing, covering your mouth as the trio dissolved into chaos.

“Don’t listen to them,” Chan said quickly, turning back to you with an apologetic look. “They’re dumbasses, but I promise we’ll actually get work done. Eventually.”

You raised an eyebrow, still grinning. “As long as no one brings paper airplanes to the final presentation.”

“See?” Soonyoung crowed. “She’s funny too. You’re screwed, Chan.”

Chan didn’t answer, but the flush creeping up his neck said more than enough.

send me an ask for my drabble game!

[biolumien]

palette

hajime umemiya x graffiti artist!reader only a little snippet, but it might become bigger later, word count: 899

you were at home right here with the collection of paint markers and aerosol cans at your feet. your free hand adjusted the filtration mask on your face as you sprayed a nonsensical pattern onto the wall using a fluorescent green so bright it almost hurt your eyes. as you began to draw on the concrete wall using a black paint marker, you felt the sneaking suspicion that eyes were on you. 

that was odd. 

you did most—hell, all your graffiti work in the dark of night, hidden from sight. you’d been chased off by a few townsfolk when you were tagging signs or walls in broad daylight, which you supposed was fair. you were technically doing something utterly illegal, after all. but you kept at it at night, painting flowers and animals, or just random letters onto whatever surface you could. 

bofurin boys often covered it up—as was their right, too, you supposed, but it always irritated you when you’d come back around and find work you’d slaved on all night be covered up with a fresh layer of white paint. 

but back to the feeling that you were being watched. 

“who’s there?” you call out, pulling off your filtration mask slightly. 

“so you’re the one doin’ all those green tags!” a boisterous voice said, and you felt a sudden presence right behind you. you whirled around, dropping your black paint marker across the floor, wincing as it skittered across the alleyway. “did you know that this taiyaki place has called us every day for a week about the graffiti?” 

fuck. you did know that voice. hajime-fuckin’-umemiya, leader of the bofurin, who had essentially annexed and reformed furin high school by force. not only were they vigilante heroes of justice—they also practically were civil servants that served the community—and now their fucking leader was staring at you with a strange, open look in his eye. 

he wasn’t even dressed in his furin uniform—you think you’ve seen it a few times, the whistling long coat that he wore out on patrols with some of the other furin boys. despite it all, he somehow had that sort of aura of warm authority about him—paired with a brilliant and curious smile on his face.

“so what?” you ask defensively. 

“you do know the graffiti’s illegal, right?” umemiya questioned, raising an eyebrow as he walked over to where your marker had skittered across the floor, picking it up. “you could be put in jail for up to five years, you know!” he flipped the marker around, holding it out to you. 

“like i need someone from furin lecturing me about that,” you say, taking the marker back from him. umemiya seemed to deflate a little, almost like a sad puppy, upon your very subtle furin insult, so you hastily add a, “no offense.” 

“mm. i get it, i get it! i do. all the work i did to rehabilitate bofurin’s image doesn’t mean much when people remember how dangerous it was before,” umemiya says sheepishly, rubbing at the back of his neck. “but! i figured i’d come around the taiyaki shop at night, see if there was some repeat offender doing the graffiti, and here you are!” 

umemiya spreads his hands magnanimously, and you can see how worn and callused his hands are from years spent brawling against other students. there was no way he was going to start fighting you, right—?

“i just wanted to ask you to stop,” umemiya says. “i mean, i respect your artistic visions! i always thought it was a waste to paint over your works—i remember one time you did this bright yellow rabbit on a blue moon, very cool, by the way—and—“

huh?

“i really like your art! i was wondering, if maybe…”

you held your paint marker, watching umemiya seemingly steeling his nerves for a moment–

“do you want to come to furin and paint? there’s a lot of graffiti already, and most of the time when we patrol we never use the classrooms anyway, so if it was anonymity you were worried about, that’s covered—and plus, at night, you’d still get a lot of time to do whatever you want—”

“… you’re offering me a place at your school to just—paint?” you ask confusedly, raising an eyebrow. 

“well, yeah!” umemiya says. “i mean, it’s a waste to paint over your hard work, right? it’s different than the other tags.”

“... is it?” you ask, staring at your half-finished graffiti, joining other fresh tags on the wall. 

“well, i’m not really sure if i fully believe in the idea that art carries intention–but i’d like to think yours does! and it’s kind. and i think there’s people at furin who might appreciate it.” 

“well…”

you sigh, running a hand through your hair.

“well, okay,” you say. “but if anyone tries to start something–”

“please,” umemiya says. “we’re not animals. it’ll be great to have you.” and then he holds out his hand to shake, and you stare down at it.

are you really doing this?

umemiya’s expression is bright, warm. 

you shake his hand. 

his grip is firm, his thumb squeezing the space between your index and thumb–and you laugh with a hint of exasperation in your voice. here you were, pulled right into umemiya’s thrall–lured in by him like a sweet siren song.

“fine. see you tomorrow, then,” you mutter, your cheeks heating up.

[rockyteriyaki]

i wasn’t quite able to finish my other halloween fic in time for the deadline, so i dragged out a carcar snippet and wrote a little bit for a tumblr fic! 1.5k words, guardian angel au 🪽 @motorsport-halloween

The first place they steer him after a race is the guardian angels tent.

It’s small, made of slippy plastic tarping and held up by thin aluminum, cheap like everything in F3. Water slides off the top and pours down the sides in a clear curtain. Today, there are more guardians than usual: a dense cube of feathers packed together to avoid the worsening storm. Probably because everyone and their mother was sliding around the track just now. Perilously.

Oscar stands on his tiptoes from his spot under an awning, trying to profile the crowd before running out in the downpour. He’s seen his angel exactly one time before- when he’d gotten into a particularly nasty collision and had to retire from a race. He remembers dark wings, dark eyebrows, dark eyes. An accented voice not that much older than his own.

“That was stupid. Do not- like that, you shouldn’t. Be smarter.”

Oscar had just stood there, gaping. Hadn’t closed his mouth until his angel had sort of huffed and turned away, back to the tent. The sparkling rip in the atmosphere was starting to stitch itself up, by then, swirling plastic cones into it like a vacuum. Saved by the bell. It hadn’t been until after he’d left that Oscar realized what he’d really wanted to say was fuck off.

Now, Oscar watches the rest of the grid flock to the tent, skittering in under the rain and finding their angels. He watches them idly recount their race stories to various levels of enthusiasm, subject themselves to pat-downs and wellness checks and lectures as needed. There’s genuine affection in their touches, especially in those whose drivers lost control of their cars or locked up in the rain. Who maybe got a little bit closer to the edge. When he gets to F1, this part won’t be televised, but it’ll be more thorough and more often. Because he’ll be closer to the edge, every single race.

But Oscar was pretty damn close today and his angel isn’t here, so. Maybe not.

Halfway through the F2 season, Oscar decides he officially hates his angel.

Whenever he feels his tires start to slip, whenever he clips the barrier or botches a turn, the adrenaline that rises in his throat is partially because he thinks that maybe his angel will have felt it. That he’ll be waiting for him under the tent or in the cooldown room, this time, and his dark eyes will be filled with something other than cool indifference. Like, a shred of concern for Oscar’s life, maybe. But he’s not, and he never is, and Oscar kind of really hates him.

The next time he sees him is in a bland conference room with Mark, his legal squadron and the team principal of Alpine who’s name Oscar can never remember. His black hair catches the shitty fluorescent-looking light of his halo and Oscar almost walks right back out.

“What is this,” he whispers to Mark. It’s not a hiss. “Why is he here.”

“I have to be here. To make sure your life is not ruined,” his angel says, at full volume. Oscar dislikes him so much.

“You are so—“ Oscar starts and doesn’t finish, which is a tactic he uses when he’d like to say something rude but shouldn’t. “Wait.” He turns to Mark. “Is my life about to be ruined?”

Mark inhales, reaching for his manila folder. The Alpine people wince. His angel waggles his incredibly thick eyebrows.

Oscar doesn’t sign with Alpine. He gets a text from an unknown number that says “See you should listen to me yes?” and he thinks about doing something crazy like throwing his phone against the wall. Instead, he shoves it under his sweatshirt and lets it rest against his stomach. It goes up and down as he breathes.

The issue is that his angel doesn’t leave.

Apparently he has to stick around until the ink is dry on Oscar’s contract, now that he’s waded into this whole mess. He has a little phone-like thing, sleek and rectangular, that lights up every once in awhile with indecipherable notifications about the state of Oscar’s life, or whatever. Oscar is 99% he has it on whatever the all-seeing equivalent of “do not disturb” is. He’s the worst.

“What’s his name again?” Oscar asks, around a mouthful of eggs.

“Carlos,” Mark says.

“Carlos,” Oscar seethes.

“You’re gonna have to nut up, mate,” Mark says. He sounds tired. “It’s standard procedure.”

Oscar wants to ask if it’s standard procedure to be concussed and have the doctors at the track refuse to take you to A&E without guardian angel signoff, and for that signoff to never arrive because your angel can’t be fucked, but he doesn’t.

Carlos is never around unless it’s to steer Oscar away from people and look smug. After the seventieth awkward handshake with the shadow of Carlos looming over his shoulder like an overgrown, disapproving hawk, he pulls him into a corner.

“Can you just tell me what I’m meant to do?”

“What do you mean,” Carlos says. It would have sounded sarcastic, if he hadn’t physically flopped his head to the side as he said it. Something evil settles around Oscar’s heart.

“My fate. My destiny, God’s plan, whatever the fuck, I just—I can do it myself. Please.” It comes out a little bit more desperate than he intends, but still north of begging, so he chalks it up as a point.

“No, I cannot,” Carlos says. “This is my job. Sorry,” he adds, because Oscar has the heels of his hands pressed over his eyes.

“Okay, so what if I—I dunno, disobey you?”

“Then you are making a big mistake,” Carlos says, so solemnly. His wings twitch a little bit, rising and flexing through his shoulder blades. Oscar swallows.

“You can’t stop me.”

“I can. This is my job,” Carlos repeats. His wings flare even further. The tips of the darker feathers almost block out the light, closing Oscar into the corner.

“I’ll sign with Alpine,” Oscar challenges. He doesn’t really want to do that, but there’s some kind of rabbity panic jumping around in his chest and making him stupid. “I could. They want me.”

“They don’t.” Carlos’ eyes are blazing the same neon as his halo. He could be seeing all possible futures right now, for all Oscar knows, and yet he still sounds like a moody toddler, shooting down everything Oscar says.

“I’ll show you the contract, mate, they definitely do.” Oscar is no better than him, apparently.

Except maybe he is, because Carlos steps forward until they’re practically chest-to-chest. All Oscar can see in his periphery are reflections of halo-light and Carlos’ heaving chest, his aquiline nose. “You don’t even—“

Somewhere, an alarm starts going off.

Carlos says something in Spanish, short and sharp. His eyes are wide. He fishes his angel-phone-thing out of his jeans. It’s angry red, flashing and beeping and buzzing all at once. An instinctive panic rockets through Oscar, far away from the warm anticipatory one from a few seconds ago.

“Isn’t that,” Oscar says. Clears his throat. “Um, is that bad?”

“Shit,” Carlos says in English. He does something weird, after that: like his whole body flickering, disappearing for a few milliseconds and then popping back in. “Shit. Oscar. We just—you just made a mistake.”

His accent makes it sound more deliberate. Mees-tek. “What? No, I didn’t.”

You’re not supposed to, like, try to kill your angel, but if Carlos thinks that’s what just happened then he’s even more delusional that Oscar had thought. Actually, it had been sort of exactly the opposite. Carlos had been so close, it was like—Oscar was worried he might—forget himself, or something. Try to do something crazy. Like grab Carlos’ hair and shove his head down and feel his nose against his throat.

Carlos shows him his phone screen. The text, in some archaic angel language, unscrambles before Oscar’s eyes. IMMEDIATE INTERVENTION REQUIRED, it says, scrolling across the top. Then, in bolded lettering in the middle: This message is for CARLOS SAINZ regarding OSCAR PIASTRI. Oscar’s eyes skip around the paragraph, can’t quite take any of it in. They’re not going to let Carlos leave. The angel system—fate, destiny, whatever—registered a god-tier fuckup on Oscar’s part, and they won’t let Carlos leave until he fixes it.

“What did you do?” Carlos asks, his voice annoyingly even as his phone wails and shakes in his hand. “Oscar, what did you do? Did you really sign with Alpine? You take it back and I will be gone, I promise.”

Oscar wants to say it’s just as much Carlos’ fault as it is his, but he can’t quite get the words out around the sudden, vicious longing to have Carlos squared up against him again, ready to fight, so he can watch it all drain out of him. He wants to take him apart, enact his revenge, put him back together again better and more tolerable than he was before.

MISTAKE, Carlos’ angel-cell cries. MISTAKE.

[notiddygothgf]

4. Taste Like Nicotine

★ pairings: aki hayakawa x fem reader

★ ❝ Go back to Himeno. ❞ ❝ No. That's not what you want. ❞

★ c.w.: suggestive themes, drinking (more content warnings and tags)

★ a/n: HELLO AGAIN MY POOKIE DOOKIES!! IM BACK AGAIN. bc i have nothing better to do atm and i wanted to give yall a lil sum sum before i moved away to uni. please excuse the pacing of this chapter -- this fanfic was supposed to be a oneshot and uh... now its 160 pages in google docs LMFAOOA.. things get spicy in this chapterrr! so yeah anyway, you know the drill, keep me entertained -- keep your funny little comments coming, I absolutely love reading them. You guys motivate me to keep going! Love yall

★ w.c.;4.1k

shameless ; chapter index

THE OFFICE WAS QUIET, the hum of fluorescent lights and the occasional rustling of papers the only sounds that broke the silence. You were alone, finishing up some last-minute paperwork after hours. The mission had gone surprisingly well—no casualties, a rare feat in your line of work. The team had even managed to kill a large Devil containing a piece of Gun Devil Flesh, a significant victory. Yet, instead of joining the others to celebrate, you had chosen to stay behind. Partly to avoid any awkward encounters with Himeno, but mostly because you felt restless, unable to shake off the events of the past few days.

As you finished up the last of your reports, you glanced at the new message on your phone.

HIMENO| you didn't come tonight.

Typing...

YOU

| I didn't think you'd wanna see me after the stunt I pulled.

HIMENO| I dont, but I wanted u to know that everyone is talking abt u

YOU

| ??

| wym

HIMENO

| your shadow didn't come tonight, either.

Typing...

YOU| look, himeno, ive actually been wanting to talk to you about that

| would you be able to meet up and talk it out?

HIMENO| id rather not honestly.

| ur a grown woman and i cant stop u from doing what u want

| but just know that people in pb. safety talk

| dont mess up a relationship with a perfectly good man for aki

| u should leave him for someone who can actually give him what he needs

YOU| I understand that I've hurt you, Himeno, and I'm sorry

| I have no intentions of being with Aki.

HIMENO| good

| dont get him mixed up in ur fucked up marriage

|  he doesnt deserve that.

You sighed, pocketing your phone. There were certain battles you simply couldn't win. This would undoubtedly be one of them.

It was late, and you knew you should head home. You gathered your things and made your way down the dimly lit hallways, your footsteps echoing in the emptiness.

As you passed the breakroom, you heard voices. One familiar voice, more specifically.

You slowed your pace, not wanting to intrude but curious enough to catch a snippet of the conversation. The door was slightly ajar, and you could see two figures inside.

"You look desperate, dude," the unknown person said, barely audible. "It's not attractive."

"I'm becoming ridiculous," Captain Hayakawa said, his voice low and strained. "I'm losing hope."

"Hope of what? Convincing a married woman to break her vows?" the other person retorted, a hint of incredulity in his tone.

Are they talking about me? You asked. You knew the answer. You simply did not want to confront it.

Hayakawa sighed. "I thought she would call me by now," he admitted, the vulnerability in his voice making your stomach churn uncomfortably. "I just... there was something there."

There was a pause, then the other person sighed, his voice softening. "God, you are ridiculous." After a moment, he added, almost reluctantly, "Shit, sorry, man. I know you like her."

"No, you're right," He replied, a note of resignation following his words. "She doesn't want to speak to me. I'm driving myself crazy waiting for someone who's never gonna call."

You felt a knot tighten in your stomach, guilt and confusion swirling together. You hadn't intended to eavesdrop, but now you couldn't just walk away without feeling a pang of something—regret, perhaps? The slip of paper with his number, still in your possession, weighed heavily in your mind. You had been avoiding the situation, avoiding him, and now it was clear how much it had affected him.

Aki's words echoed in your ears as you stood frozen in the hallway.

He was right; you hadn't called him. You hadn't even acknowledged the note, too caught up in your own turmoil and guilt to consider his feelings. Now, hearing him speak so openly, you felt a rush of emotions—sympathy, guilt, confusion. There had been a moment between you, an undeniable spark, but you had chosen to ignore it, to pretend it didn't exist.

When would it all come crashing down – your efforts? This whole situation?

The conversation in the breakroom continued, but you couldn't listen any longer. You turned away, your heart pounding. As you made your way to the exit, you couldn't help but replay Aki's words in your mind.

He had been waiting for you, hoping you would reach out, and now he was losing hope. Fuck.

He had been waiting for me.

The idea thrilled you, for some strange reason. Maybe because you hadn't felt desired like this in years – it made your head spin. But another part of you was terrified—of what it might mean, of the complications it would bring, of the impact on your marriage.

You couldn't help yourself. You did what you always did. You ran away from him.

You knew you couldn't avoid him forever, but for now, you needed time to think. .

7:45 PM

Typing... 

Hey. |

Typing...

Hello, |

Typing...

How are you? |

Typing...

Hey. They're taking me out for drinks tn as a sendoff party. I think you should be there.

SENT.

YOU | Hey. They're taking me out for drinks tn as a sendoff party.

I think you should be there.

| At the Sip-n-savor in downtown Tokyo

Seen 8:00 PM .

The night went on without a flaw. The atmosphere was infectious, and you had been trying to let loose, drink in hand, as you chatted and danced with the others. But as the night wore on, a sense of unease settled in. Maybe it was the drinks, maybe it was the memories of the overheard conversation in the breakroom, or maybe it was the subtle disappointment that someone hadn't shown up.

Excusing yourself, you made your way to the bathroom. The mirror reflected your flushed cheeks and slightly smudged makeup. You sighed, turning on the faucet and splashing some water on your face. As you washed your hands, you found yourself thinking about Aki.

Despite everything, a depraved part of you had hoped to see him tonight. You had been both relieved and disappointed when he hadn't shown up—relieved because it meant avoiding an awkward conversation, disappointed because you had been... well, actually looking forward to seeing him.

As you touched up your makeup, you couldn't help but reflect on your own conflicted feelings. You were married, committed, and yet, Aki had stirred something in you that you simply couldn't stand to ignore. It was confusing, disorienting. You weren't sure what you felt more strongly: guilt for being drawn to him or frustration that you couldn't just let it go.

"Ugh," You groaned, pressing your forehead against the sink. "'M g'nna be sick."

Feeling a bit lightheaded from the drinks, you decided to step outside for some fresh air. You left the bathroom and – completely drunk – maneuvered through the crowds to the nearest door.

The cool night breeze was a welcome relief against your warm skin, and you leaned against the balcony railing, taking deep breaths. The city lights twinkled below, and you watched them in a daze, trying to steady your thoughts.

That's when you saw him.

Aki was just entering the party, his sharp suit and dark hair making him stand out immediately. You felt your heart skip a beat. Then another. He was killing you.

He came, you thought, a strange mix of emotions flooding you. Relief, excitement, and that persistent undercurrent of guilt all tangled together.

He spotted you almost immediately and made his way over. As he approached, you couldn't help but think how painfully gorgeous he looked, the dim lighting casting a soft glow on his features. In that moment, he seemed almost like a knight in shining armor, a figure out of place in the lively, chaotic setting of the bar.

"Hey," he greeted, his voice smooth and warm, a balm to your nerves.

"Hey," you replied, trying to keep your voice steady despite the fluttering in your chest.

"What are you doing out here?" he asked, a slight concern in his tone. "You're not cold?"

He always seemed to be worried about you and the weather. Still, the chill felt nice against your hot skin, oddly enough.

I missed you, you didn't say. You didn't even think about it. You knew that in a day you would be back on the train and all of this would just be a bad dream, anyway.

You shook your head, a small smile playing on your lips. "No, I just needed some air. It's a bit stuffy in there."

Aki didn't respond immediately, and when you turned your head up to look at him, his expression was unreadable. The noise from inside the bar seemed distant, the world narrowing down to just the two of you in that moment. You felt a tug in your chest, a pull towards him that you couldn't explain, couldn't deny.

"Did you pregame the bar, or something?" You laughed quietly. It felt nice, being able to pretend nothing had ever happened between the two of you and just... enjoy each other's company. "You smell like beer."

"I was having a few drinks with my roommate before you texted me," He answered. Then, looking out onto the street, he added, "He told me I shouldn't come tonight. Said you're driving me crazy."

"So, why are you here, then?" You asked.

He looked at you. "I think you know why I'm here."

There was a brief silence, comfortable yet charged with the unspoken. You glanced at him, noticing the way his eyes lingered on you, soft but searching. It was the same look he had given you in the seminar, the museum, everywhere else, and it stirred something deep inside you.

You hated the way he made you feel.

"Can I buy you a drink?" He asked you. His voice was as deep and rich as ever, and you had about half a mind to take him up on the offer.

You shivered. You knew it wasn't from the cold air. It was him – the smell of him, his cologne, the distinct scent of nicotine that let you know he had just finished smoking a cigarette. It was an aroma so unique to him that you had grown to like it.

You were looking at his lips before you knew it, giving way to a craving you couldn't explain, "I'll try a cigarette, if you have any."

He smiled softly, reaching into his pocket and flipping open a carton of cigarettes and a lighter. He placed a cancer stick between your lips, and you felt a part of you die a little. He struck the wheel of the lighter, bringing the cigarette to life.

You coughed so hard that you nearly hacked up a lung. It had been years since your last cigarette.

Hayakawa stepped behind you, cupping a hand around your elbow, sliding it up your arm, your wrist, your fingers before he plucked the cigarette from your digits.

"First time?" He asked, warm voice hot against your neck.

"Wanted to give it a try," You shrugged. You didn't know what, exactly, had gotten into you. It seemed that with every sip of liquor you took lately, you crept closer and closer back to your old self. The sort of liquid courage that made people make very bad decisions. "Sorry. I'm a little," You waved your hands around yourself, trying to gesture 'drunk' without actually saying it.

"How brave of you," He murmured, pulling a hit from your cigarette and exhaling. He was the picture of sin – face flushed with alcohol, messy bangs, pink lips wrapped around a cancer stick. He was so pretty it hurt.

"I'll try it again when I'm sober," You offered.

"When?" He asked, breathing smoke out into the air. "Where?"

As persistent as always, you thought. Still, you didn't necessarily mind the attention anymore. You told yourself that it didn't matter – you would be out of here soon anyway, and everything would be far behind you before you knew it.

"Why is it that every time I'm inebriated... God tests me by throwing you in my way?" You laughed, Truly, you wished you had considered the implications of your words a little more before you had said them. "Just as I thought your manners had improved since the party. You behaved badly, then. You know that? Very badly," you hiccuped. "You should be ashamed of yourself, throwing– hic–throwing yourself at a married woman like that."

He didn't acknowledge your drunken ramblings, and he also didn't deny the fact that he had been doing exactly that – throwing himself at a married woman.

"Hardly my fault," He breathed out. "I just can't seem to resist you."

"Don't worry," You replied, eyeing him up dubiously as he pulled another hit from what was left of your cigarette. "I'm leaving tomorrow. Won't have to worry about resisting me after that."

"I know," He answered back. "Selfishly enough, I spent the last few hours wishing your train got delayed one more day, or something like that," He exhaled, then snuffed his cigarette out on the balcony, "Still, I'm glad I could see you before you went home."

"I wish I could say the same about you," You replied before you could stop the words from coming out.

He poked his tongue through the inside of his cheek, retorting, "You're gonna sit here and act like you didn't invite me? Like your eyes didn't light up like a child when you saw me pull up?" He turned around, commanding even more of your attention, standing at least a foot and a half taller than you. "You wanted me to come tonight."

It was true. That's the worst part. Everything he said was the truth.

"So that I could say goodbye," You said with remarkable finality, "I'm leaving after this."

You hadn't originally planned on leaving so soon, of course, but you wanted to get the hell out of here before you made another bad decision.

"Already?" He asked.

"You're the one who ran late," You replied. "This ends tonight. I'm going to say bye to everyone else, then I'll be gone."

With that being said, you made your way back to the door. You would go inside, bid everyone farewell, collect your belongings, and then–

He called your name before you could go back inside. You froze in place.

"Am I misreading the signals?" He asked.

You sighed, turning around one last time to clear the air, "This has to stop, Aki. You make me feel like... like I'm guilty of something."

He implored you, "What do you want me to do?"

"Go back to Himeno," You answered, a biting undertone seeping through your words. You were undeniably bitter about the whole situation, and under any other circumstances, you would have tried to be a good sport, but...

Himeno's words were a heavy weight on your heart.

'Don't mess up a relationship with a perfectly good man for Aki.'

'You should leave him for someone who can actually give him what he needs."

You could never be what Aki wanted. He wanted all of you – not just a week of you, clearly. You were married, and you couldn't let all of that go over a guy you'd been toeing the line with for what seemed like ages.

He was a young man. The fact of the matter was that you were a grown woman. A married one.

"She's a sweet, kind woman," You continued. You felt like you were going to be sick just being near him. Unknowingly, tears began to prickle at the corners of your eyes. "Go back and beg her to forgive you. Go be with someone who wants to be with you. Who can be with you."

"No," He answered simply. There was an intensity in his eyes that frightened you, like he would die without you, as he continued, "That's not what you want. I think we both know that. I refused a mission in Hiroshima to stay here with you. I planned to let go of another one in Beijing," He swallowed, "I can change my mind, and you'll never see me again."

"If you have any consideration for me," Your voice was a shuddering whisper, like someone could walk out any minute and hear the two of you going back and forth. "Any semblance– a shrivel of compassion, you'll give me back my peace."

He shook his head, "I can't. You know I can't. You've consumed every inch of my peace, every inch of my mind. How can I give you your peace?"

Fair point.

You had nothing to say to him. So, silently, your vision blurred with tears, you glared at him. Glared and frowned like that would make you believe he was the sole contributor to this issue. Then, again, you turned on your heel and went for the door. You entered the bar quickly.

He followed not too long after you, "I'll go to Beijing, then."

"No." You said. Your teary-eyed fury caught the eyes of more than a few confused bar patrons. "I don't want you to go."

Everyone was looking at you. Seriously, everyone. Your old coworkers, the bartenders, everybody.

You swallowed down your pride, bowing down before them all. "Good night, everyone," You said. You plucked your purse and your jacket off of the barstool. "Thank you for everything. I'm leaving."

Ignoring the confused looks and hushed whispers from the patrons, you exited the bar, your mind a whirlwind of emotions. The rain had started to fall, a soft drizzle quickly turning into a steady downpour. You barely noticed, too wrapped up in the turmoil inside your head. The cold, wet sensation of the rain soaked through your clothes, but you couldn't bring yourself to care. You just needed to get away, to clear your mind.

But of course, Aki followed after you. You could hear him calling your name, his voice barely audible over the sound of the rain. You quickened your pace, almost running, your heels splashing through puddles as you made your way down the block. His footsteps pounded behind you, matching your speed. You couldn't escape him, couldn't outrun him.

Finally, he caught up to you, grabbing your arm to stop you. "Wait, can we please talk?" he pleaded, his voice breathless and desperate.

You turned to face him, rain pouring down around you both. His hair was plastered to his forehead, his suit jacket soaked through. The intensity in his eyes matched the storm, a fierce determination that made your heart ache. You met his gaze begrudgingly, not wanting to deal with this, not wanting to deal with him.

"Have I really been imagining all of this?" He asked. He sounded broken. "Is it really all in my head? Tell me if it's a lie. Tell me to leave you alone. Tell me you mean it—all of it," he paused, taking a shuddering breath. "Or tell me the truth."

You swallowed hard, the weight of the situation crashing down on you. "I don't know how to feel, Aki," you finally admitted, your voice barely a whisper. "I'm trying to be good, but you just keep fucking—popping up everywhere. And you say these pretty things to me, and," You choked back a sob, struggling to find the right words. "I can't help myself around you."

"Running from your problems won't make me go away," he said, stepping forward to put his hands gently on your waist.

There was a long pause as you stood there in the rain, staring at each other. The world seemed to fade away, leaving only the two of you. The storm, the bar, everything else was just a blur. You were tired—tired of running, tired of the confusion, tired of pretending that everything was fine when it wasn't.

He added, "You can't run from your feelings."

This time, it was his eyes that dropped to your lips. His tongue darted out to dampen his own, and then his eyes flicked up to your face. When he spoke, his voice was huskier than before, as if it had been tainted by an emotion that hadn't been there before. Was it lust? Passion? Whatever it was, you wanted more of it.

Your eyes widened. Your mouth had run dry. You didn't know what to say. Even being like this right now -- as close as you were, -- was against your wedding vows. This was wrong, and you couldn't do that to your own husband.

Your own husband who loved you so dearly.

Your own husband who left you hanging so many nights on end.

Your own husband, who acted as if he couldn't care if you lived or died.

As if he had sensed your train of thought wandering, Aki placed two fingers beneath your chin, lifting your face up until he was the captor of all of your attention. Him and him alone. Not your husband, but him.

"I could treat you like a princess," His eyes wandered down to your lips again, but this time there was an unspoken hunger within them. "All you have to do is ask, and I'm yours. I already am."

And, God, what a fool you had been in uttering the words, "Don't toy with my emotions. You don't want me."

He paused, awaiting something, anything. His eyes pleaded with your own, luring you in with promises of pleasure and happiness. Gently, he grabbed your hand, placing it over his breast, right above his heart.

"I want you so badly it hurts," He breathed, "For a night, for a day, for a week..." Aki closed the gap between the two of you – brought your faces closer together. Closer, until you could feel the warmth of his calm breath fanning out against your cheek. Closer, until he uttered, "As long as you'll let me have you."

"Aki, I can't-...." You paused. Yet, still, you never moved. Your body betrayed your words, dilated pupils and trembling hands giving way to your internal dilemma. "This is wrong. You know I can't do this."

You were being a hypocrite. You knew you were. One spare glance down at the placement of your hands on his chest -- one over his breast and one looped around his tie -- and you knew he could tell you were only putting up a front.

"I know," he murmured softly, words practically dying beneath the volume of the rain, "But I can't stop thinking about you."

You folded. Your eyes dropped down to his lips one last time, and that's when you knew he had already won.

Fuck it.

"Fuck you," you muttered, feeling a surge of reckless abandon.

Without thinking, you reached out and pulled him towards you, crashing your lips against his in a desperate, frenzied kiss. It was messy and wet, your tears mixing with the rain, your hands tangling in his hair as his arms finally wrapped around you.

The kiss was filled with all the pent-up emotions, the longing, the frustration, the desire. It was passion, it was anger – it was tongue and teeth and lips smearing your lipstick over the lower half of your face. It was two black holes finally colliding after circling around each other far too long.

"I can't make sense of it. I want... you," you sighed, pulling away, voice trembling, "I don't know what any of this means anymore. I don't know what to think."

"Then don't," he whispered, his breath warm against your lips. He tasted like cigarette smoke, beer and mint gum – a flavor so utterly addicting that you couldn't seem to get enough of it. "Don't think. Let me take you back to your room."

You hesitated, the reality of the situation hitting you. This was crossing a line, a line you couldn't uncross. But as you looked into his eyes, saw the same turmoil reflected back at you, you felt your resolve crumble.

You were tired of pretending.

"Okay," you whispered, your voice barely audible over the rain. It was a final, resigned acceptance, the last nail in the coffin of your restraint.

You were tired of running from the inevitable.

a/n: dont hate me. LMFAOAOAOOAOA. i had to! i absolutely loved writing this chapter and i loved writing tipsy obsessed aki. i headcannon that he's a touchy needy bf and no one can tell me otherwise. i think you all know what happens next. im not sayin nothin tho. hehe. ANYWAYYYYY LMK WHAT YALL THOUGHTTTTT i look forward to hearing it!!! lmk what yall wanna see in the next few chapters/over the course of the story. and if youve already watched anna karenina (or read, in which case... how...) shhhhhh youve seen nothing. muah! x

credits: UNKOWN ATM. I found the cover pic on pinterest unfortch. If you know the artist, please let me know, so I can credit them properly for their work!!! This is NOT MY BEAUTIFUL DRAWINGGG. I obviously do not own csm or anything related to it. please do not reproduce, copy, or translate my works anywhere. dont fk w me im a bruja.

also: come find me on my wattpad if u wanna interact more!

taglist: @mitsuyeahhh , @sleepysnk , @enneadec , @noaabean , @em1e , @drakensdarling , @bertholdts--butt , @satanlovesusall666 , @mitsuwuyaa , @noctifule , @scaraphobia , @ask-the-insect-hashira , @lovingranchturkeyweasel , @bontensbabygirl , @slvdsjjk , @novacrystalli , @hanmastattoos , @kodzuksn , @hqtiny , @ohmaiscool15 , @redlittlequeen , @leivane , @goldeneagles-posts , @yeahblahlame , @no-oneelsebutnsu , @cookiesandcreammy , @cawwn , @the-haitani-baton , @littlelovebug98 , @armani78 , @mindurownbussines , @kokos-property , @violetmatcha , @hp-simp505 , @acethebrave , @mitsuyeahhh , @sleepysnk , @enneadec , @noaabean , @em1e , @drakensdarling , @bertholdts--butt , @satanlovesusall666 , @mitsuwuyaa , @noctifule , @scaraphobia , @ask-the-insect-hashira , @lovingranchturkeyweasel , @bontensbabygirl , @slvdsjjk , @novacrystalli , @hanmastattoos , @kodzuksn , @hqtiny , @ohmaiscool15 , @redlittlequeen , @leivane , @goldeneagles-posts , @yeahblahlame , @no-oneelsebutnsu , @cookiesandcreammy , @cawwn , @the-haitani-baton , @littlelovebug98 , @armani78 , @mindurownbussines , @kokos-property , @violetmatcha , @hp-simp505

wanna join the taglist? | shameless ; chapter index

[creadigol]

iff you want could you maybe continue this? this ask is a request ofc and idk if you do continuation, so if you don't want to then it's okay!! ^_^

Hey y’all! Apologies for the long absence, but I’m back in town and have finally come up with a continuation of my Hero Domestic Violence/Abuse snippet. 

I have had many requests to continue this one so I spent a lot of time trying to make it good! 

As before, there are very heavy mentions of such topics stated above in this snippet as well as mentions of violence, emotional abuse and choking. Please be safe my darlings! I love y’all!

Part 1

Hero must have blacked out or entered into some sort of daze, because the next thing they knew Hero was sitting on an exam table in what must have been one of Villain's many bases. 

Though the room itself was no doubt a medical facility, Hero knew this by the various medical equipment and smell of antiseptic, but there was a certain ambiance about the room which did not match any hospital or medical offices Hero had been to before…and Hero had been to many. 

If Hero only ever went to one, people would catch on. So Spouse was always sure to bring Hero to a different facility every time. 

Everytime. 

God, this was a mess. 

This room wasn’t lit like typical exam rooms. Rather than harsh fluorescents of busy ER rooms the lights held a warm sunlit-type glow. Welcoming, yet still bright enough to see. Instead of the stupid grey-white walls which everyone had switched to in the early 2000’s, it was bright wood paneling. Oak of some kind, Hero guessed. It complimented the warm glow quite nicely. 

And it was warm! So warm! Villain must have had the heat up to at least 75 and Hero was basking in it! 

At home, Spouse kept the heating down to 65, due to their powers causing them to run hot. Hero didn’t mind of course, they understood, but it did cause Hero to feel cold constantly. They had never had much in the bodyfat department and there was more than one night when Hero would go and take a bath just to unclench their frozen muscles. 

Until Spouse complained about the water bill that is. 

Taking stock once more of the room they were in, Hero noticed that the main door had been left open by a crack. Not that they could have gotten up and run out, not with their side, but they wondered if Villain had done this to make them feel more comfortable. 

Speaking of Villain, they had yet to reappear. Villain and Henchman had helped Hero to a car after the rather embarrassing display on the rooftop and once they had made it to this base, deposited Hero here and left. That had been about twenty minutes ago. 

Maybe they were planning something nefarious? What if this was a kidnapping? Honestly, this was the weakest Hero had ever been in front of Villain. It would be easy, tricking them into willingly walking into a trap with the promise of medical help…Hero had been a mess after all. Supervillain wouldn’t have hesitated in killing Hero on the spot. 

But then again, Villain was not Supervillain. Hero had seen Villain display acts of humanity on several occasions. Sure, they broke the law and believed their government to be the ultimate evil, but they never went in for harming those who didn’t deserve it. 

Didn’t deserve it? God, Hero was starting to think like Villain. No one deserved to be hurt. That was Hero’s motto. 

Things really were confusing right now.

Maybe they should just go home. Surely, Spouse would understand why they didn’t answer their texts for the past few hours. An hour of yelling tops and then Spouse would see the error of their ways and apologize and try to make up for the original fight in the first place by a heated night of…

Hero stopped that train of thought. No, this had to stop. Hero had to get out of the relationship and start thinking straight again…but, then again, Spouse held all the cards. The apartment and car were in Spouse’s name, their bank account was joint, the phone plan was set up by Spouse because they could negotiate better on cellular deals…not to mention, Spouse was more powerful than Hero. Much more powerful than Hero. Even back at the Academy Hero had never won at hand to hand against them. It was what made them seem so strong and confident and…perfect at the time. 

Hero suddenly realized what they were doing and how it would not end well. There was no way Villain could hold against Spouse when it really came down to it. Spouse was constantly bragging about how if Villain had been assigned to them and not Hero, the problem would have been resolved years ago. Hero didn’t want that on their conscience. 

Perhaps they should look at the texts…just to assess the situation. Damage control. 

They picked up their phone. 

As the screen lit up a voice interrupted Hero before they could look at the no doubt anger fueled words. 

“Hero,” Villain stood in the doorway holding gauze, antiseptic, a board of some kind and an ice pack. “Sorry, had a hard time finding an ice pack that was the right size. We’ve gotta get that swelling down on your neck or else you’ll never be able to harass me with those classic witty comebacks again.” 

Though it was said jovially, Hero could sense the hardness behind the tone. Not to mention the look of hatred as Villain glanced at the phone. 

Wanting to respond, but not being able to, Hero nodded once. 

“Great!” Villain strode over and placed everything on the side table. Picking up the board, Hero saw it was a dry erase. Villain handed it to them along with a red marker. 

“Henchman uses this to put up daily reminders for everyone. They thought it would serve for you to tell us what ails you.” Villain glanced back at the door, “They wanted to come in and help, but I didn’t know if you would want that. Figured I’d ask first.” 

Hero couldn’t help the small smile. They had always liked Henchman. Like Villain, they certainly had committed their fair share of crimes and violence, but they also seemed to live by a code. Unlike Supervillain. 

If it hadn’t been for Henchman, Hero was sure they would have passed out on that rooftop and who knows who would have found them if that happened. Hero uncapped the marker. 

Henchman can come in. 

Villain smiled, “Anyone ever tell you your penmanship is crazy good? God, it’s like looking at Victorian script.” 

 They turned towards the doorway once more, “They said it’s fine Henchman!” 

In an instant Henchman was walking through the door. They must have been just waiting on the other side. 

“Hey Hero,” they said. “Hope you’re doing better.” 

Hero nodded at Henchman. 

“Good,” Henchman looked between Hero and Villain for a moment, it looked like they were debating who to talk to next. They settled on both of them. “Looks like it’s just going to be us. Doctor said they couldn’t make it until morning. Still at that conference.” 

Villain nodded as if they knew this was going to be the case and addressed Hero. 

“Anything serious? Or are you okay to wait for the Doc?” 

Hero thought for a moment. Their neck should be fine with the ice, their jaw had certainly been hit harder, but their side…

I think everything is fine, but I’m not sure about my side.  Hero wrote. They gestured to their left side as Villain and Henchman read the script. 

“Alright, let's take a look then. Shirt off.” Villain ordered. 

Hero hesitated. Oh, right. To look at their side, Villain would have to have their shirt off. And to take off their shirt was to expose the…history written across their chest, back and torso. 

Hero was shy about their body. Sure, there was the occasional scar made by Spouse, but most of them were from past fights while Hero had been off hero-ing. They knew it was an occupational hazard, but they also knew it wasn’t great to look at. God only knew the many times Spouse had commented on their unsightly appearance during their intimate times. 

Villain seemed to notice the hesitation and said, “What? It’s not like I haven’t seen it all in this line of work. You should have seen Henchman last month. Supervillain’s Henchman got ‘em pretty bad.”

Henchman nodded, “Not pretty. Gained me a few cool new scars though.” 

Cool new scars, huh? Perhaps it won’t be so bad. 

Hero took off their shirt slowly. It was difficult and painful at first, as it zipped in the back, but Henchman wordlessly walked to the other side of the bed and helped. Villain supporting Hero’s side as they undid the clasp and unzipped. 

“Want to take off the mask as well?” Henchman asked. 

Hero made a face. 

“We’ve already seen your face. Remember? Three months ago it fell off while we were grappling in the snow.” Villain smirked. 

Hero peeled the mask off. They had forgotten about that. The snow had made the normally sticky mask slide off. It was something they had never told Spouse. 

Once deprived of their shirt and mask, Villain took a step back and surveyed the damage. Hero tried not to squirm under the gaze. 

Hero expected Villain and Henchman to make disgusted noises or grunts of anger at their bruised up side and swollen jaw, along with their neck, but instead Villain looked calculating. A slight hint of irritation coming though with their twitching eyebrow. 

“Alright, I’ll have to feel those ribs. They don’t look broken, but it’s best to make sure.”

Hero nodded their permission to Villain and tried to sit straight. 

“No, no, don’t straighten up yet,” Villain flew to their side. They placed one hand on hero’s back while the other poked and prodded their ribs. 

Everytime Hero hissed or flinched, Villain apologized and would move onto another part. It was strange. This whole night was strange. Hero had never seen Villain act this way before. Sure they had their own scruples, but Villain was never…gentle. 

Henchman stood off to the side looking rather anxious as Villain examined Hero. That was another strange thing. Why did they both seem to care?

“Well, good news, they’re not broken. Bad news, I’ll still have to wrap them.” 

Henchman immediately grabbed some wrappings from the cupboard behind them and handed them to Villain. 

“So, Hero,” Villain began as they tightly wrapped their ribs. “Want to tell us how this happened? We need to know if we’re going to treat your injuries effectively.” 

Once again Hero could tell Villain was stating things conversationally for their benefit. Hero made no move for the marker board. 

“We already know who did it, all I want to know is how,” Villain continued. 

Hero thought back. It had seemed like a haze when it happened. All the adrenaline and fear. The normal evening that went from good to horrific. The slight mess up on Hero’s part, the yelling, the grabbing, the throwing…the hands. The hands on their person…the hands on their neck…

Hero felt tears slip past their eyes once more, the sadness and fear coming back. Their jaw shook with unshed sobs. 

They felt the marker and board being pressed into their hands. 

“You don’t need to push yourself. I just need to know what to check on you,” Villain’s voice was soothing and once again uncharacteristically gentle. 

Hero shook as they wrote; the script that Villain had complimented earlier suffered for it. 

It’s never been this bad. Hero wrote. 

They knew it was a cliche response, but they also needed Villain and Henchman to know that it had never gone this far before. Henchman made a noise in the back of their throat as they read the words.

“How bad?” Villain prodded. 

Before, Hero hesitated in writing. How could they word this? 

Before I could always justify it as my fault. I mess up alot. I’m not so good at relationships. 

They waited for them to read this before erasing for more room. Villain had their jaw set and Henchman’s cheeks were getting red. 

I know it’s stupid. I know it’s bad. I just wanted to pretend it away. That was easier. I’m not stupid, I know what’s happening. 

Villain nodded at the words. Hero didn’t know why they were starting out like this. There was just a part of them that needed Villain and Henchman to know that they were still competent. Despite putting themselves in this situation, they weren’t stupid. There was just so much more going on. 

“I don’t think you’re stupid Hero. I never have. I meant it when I said you’re the best this city’s ever seen,” Villain said this while not breaking eye contact or blinking. As if the stare itself would get the words into Hero’s brain.

Hero nodded with a small smile. They needed that. 

They’ve never gone so far before. The other times, I knew I would recover. But this time…Hero stopped writing again. Once again looking for words. They let Villain and Henchman read. 

“What happened this time?” Henchman asked softly. Hero couldn’t tell if the softness was for comfort or if they were so angry they couldn’t raise their voice higher. 

This time, Hero spelled, I really thought they’d kill me.

Their hands shook terribly now and they had to stop and take a breath. 

Villain looked up at the ceiling for a moment while Henchman turned around. It seemed this news really affected them. 

“How?” Villain once again looked Hero in the eyes. They didn’t even try to hide the anger now. 

I can’t remember everything. I know I was thrown into our coffee table. Spouse hit me in the face, Hero paused and let them read while gesturing to their jaw. 

Villain nodded for them to continue. 

They’ve never tried to choke me before… Hero couldn’t seem to finish that one. 

“I understand,” Villain said. “Anything else?” 

Hero thought for a moment and then shook their head. That had been the most of it. The violence itself had only lasted a couple minutes, but it had been the most painful couple minutes of their life. Not only physically, but emotionally. They had never felt so betrayed. 

“Are you going to leave them?” Henchman asked. Hero looked at them and noticed fear in their eyes. Henchman was very concerned with Hero’s answer. Villain made a gesture at Henchman, but they were undeterred. 

“Are you going to leave them?” Henchman repeated. 

Hero uncapped the marker again. 

I want to. 

“But you feel you can’t,” Villain finished the sentence for Hero. 

Hero nodded. 

It never ends well. I know I need to, but they hold all the cards. Hero shrugged sadly. 

“Who cares?” Henchman said angrily. “So they have your money or whatever? That’s not worth you!”

Hero was touched by the sentiment, but felt the need to explain. 

It’s not only that. They’re more powerful than me. More powerful than anyone really. I shouldn’t even be here. The last time someone tried to help…it was bad.

Villain felt their blood freeze, “What do you mean more powerful?” 

It was hard to think of anyone more powerful than Hero. Except themselves of course. 

“Who tried to help?” Henchman asked at the same time. 

Hero grimaced, 

Do you remember Other Hero?

“Oh god,” Henchman whispered. 

“Your Spouse did that?” Villain asked, shocked. 

Hero nodded. 

I don’t know what they will do to anyone else, or the city itself if I’m not there. I hate it, but it’s the only way I know to protect everyone. 

They looked at Hero to continue.

I knew it was bad not long after our second anniversary, but by then Spouse was too dangerous. They need to be in jail, not only for me, but for everyone else they’ve hurt. I just don’t know anyone who can take them. 

Villain made a noise, but Hero raised a hand to silence them while they wrote more. 

In a way this is my ultimate sacrifice to protect my city.

“Hero,” Villain breathed. 

Henchman looked like they had tears in their eyes, “Hero, I’m going to hug you now if that’s alright.” 

Hero looked at Henchman quizzically, but nodded. 

Henchman wrapped their arms around Hero carefully and squeezed with a force that was both powerful, yet calming. 

“You really are the best the city’s ever seen,” Henchman spoke against Hero’s hair. “All this time you’ve been living in hell and it was to protect all of us.” 

Hero released more tears. They patted Henchman awkwardly on the back. 

“They’ve always been a hugger,” Villain chuckled as they watched the scene. “If you can’t tell, Henchman has been a fan of yours for a while.”

Henchman released them with an undignified HEY at Villain. Villain shrugged and turned their attention back to Hero. 

“Hero, I don’t care what danger it might put us in. I knew this was going to be messy the moment I saw you on the roof. Anyone who can take you on is going to be a threat. I knew that and helped you anyway.” 

Hero nodded at Villain’s words. 

“But what I need to know now is who Spouse really is. I don’t think I’m far off in thinking that they’re a part of the hero agency?�� 

Hero nodded, there was hesitation in their eyes.

“And they’re more powerful than the other heroes.” 

Hero looked down, but nodded again. 

“And you two went to the academy at the same time didn’t you?” 

Hero winced and nodded. 

“And came to the city at the same time.” 

Hero closed their eyes and nodded. 

“Villain, what are you getting at?” Henchman asked slowly. In their voice Hero could tell they were on the same train of thought, but didn’t want to believe it. 

“Hero,” Villain waited for Hero ‘s red rimmed eyes to look up and meet their gaze. “You’re married to Superhero aren't you?” 

Hero nodded. 

“Shit.” Henchman said. 

Hero nodded their agreement. 

There was silence while everyone processed the news, Villain and Henchman the knowledge and Hero for sharing it. Finally Villain broke it. 

“Well,” they clapped their hands together, “Here’s what we’re going to do. Tonight we do nothing.”

“Hero, tonight I want you to focus on yourself. I know you want to look at your phone, but maybe hold off until tomorrow morning, yeah?” Hero made to protest, but Villain continued. 

“Look at it like this. You said this is how you protect the city. Now I don’t doubt that, especially knowing who Spouse is; but I want you to picture it like you're on a sinking ship. Lots of people need saving, but you can’t exactly help them into the lifeboats if you yourself are still in the water.” 

Hero wrinkled their eyebrows. 

“You’ve got to climb into the lifeboat first before you can pull anyone else in.” 

Hero was taken aback. That was…that was…really good advice. 

Villain smiled, “So for tonight, leave the phone and get some rest. We can make a plan tomorrow about what to do. You’re no longer in this alone. I don’t want someone like Spouse protecting my city.” 

“You’re not alone in this anymore,” Villain reiterated. 

Hero couldn’t help the smile on their lips or the hope in their chest. They weren’t alone in this. Perhaps this time, Superhero really could be caught. Hero could stop pretending. They suddenly felt so tired.

Seeing this, Henchman helped Hero lay down and placed the thin, long ice pack on their bruised neck.  

“I’ll stay here a while, there’s an all night Friends marathon on right now,” Henchman nodded to the TV on the wall, “I always fall asleep during that show.” 

Hero knew Henchman just wanted to keep an eye on them in case their throat swelled anymore, but they appreciated the company. It had been a while since they had people around them that knew everything and still wanted to be with them. They nodded. 

“Great,” Henchman walked over to the television to get it started. Villain followed them. 

“Once they fall asleep initiate plan orange,” Villain whispered so Hero wouldn’t hear. Henchman kept flipping through channels, but Villain saw their eyes harden a moment. 

“Are you sure?” They whispered back. 

Villain nodded as they looked at the channel guide.“Yes. Tell Supervillain we have a mutual enemy,” Villain glanced back at Hero, “And the key to defeat them. Once and for all.”

[helloheyhihowdyheya]

Rose Thorn Blues | pt. 5 (final)

Peter Parker x fem!reader

Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Masterlist

Summary: Spider-Man saved everyone he could. But this time, you have to save him — and yourself.

Word count: ~10.4k

Warnings: Enemies to lovers!! (We're finally to the lovers part <3) Canon-level violence. Swearing, blood, injuries. Angst. Fluff and more fluff!! Love confessions!!! And smooching ;)

A/n: Today's my birthday, so here's a little birthday present to all of you :) Thank you all for your patience with this story. It's the longest one I've written, and I'm grateful for everyone that's read it. Your comments mean the world.

I'd be happy to write an epilogue or little snippets of their lives during or after this story if anyone would be interested. Thank you, and I hope you enjoy <3

Pain. Unrelenting pain settling deep into your body was the first thing you noticed. Your closed eyes squeezed shut harder as the back of your head pounded, a shaky exhale leaving your cracked lips. You could feel dried tears stuck along the planes of your cheeks.

When you tried moving your arms, you found you couldn’t — not with them bound behind you to the chair you sat in, and not with the deep ache stretching from your shoulders down to your wrists. The skin there felt rubbed nearly raw by rope holding them together. Even your chest and ankles were tied to the chair. 

Despite the ache in your ribs, you forced yourself to take long, deep breaths. Each one shook through you. Blinking slowly, you let your blurry vision adjust. The bright fluorescents were now dimmer than before, only half of them on. You shivered slightly, goosebumps raising across your skin in the cool temperature of the warehouse. 

Forms of people here and there began to come into focus in front of you. They seemed to be packing things into large boxes, the same wooden ones you’d seen before. And as you took in the tall windows and many shelves, you saw that you were in a shadowy corner of this godforsaken warehouse.

You could’ve screamed if your throat wasn’t so dry and your head wasn’t swimming. Your jaw ached as you clenched your teeth together over and over again. Panicked, uncontrolled thoughts flew through your hazy awareness. No matter how hard you tried to swallow them back, you couldn’t ignore the worry festering in your stomach — one uneasy idea decomposing into another.

Where was Peter?

A thin breath punched from your lungs as you remembered the hurt in his voice over the phone. He’d never allowed you to see him like that before, but still, you could picture his face twisting and the blood staining his suit dark. The image floated on the edges of your vision as you scanned the people moving throughout the warehouse.

Somehow, no guard stood watch over you. If what Will had said before about his horrible suit being missing, his workers must have been scouring the city — stretching his people thin and unable to be everywhere all at once.

With a possible window of opportunity open and beckoning you to take, you shifted your wrists, testing out the rope around them. Wiggling your arms made the binding a tiny bit looser. Each movement stretched them out but brought burning pain with it. It wouldn’t get you anywhere but tired and too hurt to function.

Like Peter, desperate and hurt. Who tried to keep you from walking into your demise… using secrets and lies. You clenched your teeth, hoping the pressure of it could shove away these half-feelings twisting and knotting around themselves.

So, you looked around, careful not to turn your head too abruptly in case any workers looked over. Though, even from afar, all of them looked terrified to do anything but hastily pack. Orders from Will himself, you were sure of it.

From the corner of your eye, you caught a glimpse of a jagged metal beam broken and sticking out from a beat-up shelf. It looked dull, but it came to a point. It’d have to do.

As silently as you could, you used your feet to inch the chair backward — timing each push with the sound of people shouting at one another or loudly loading up a crate. Your ears rang and your rapid heartbeat dulled your focus, distracting you with each intense spike of your nerves firing off.

Over several minutes, you positioned your bound hands to the piece of metal shelving and began to rub the rope across it. You paused at each lull, each possible moment that you might be caught. It gave you temporary relief from the strain pulling in your shoulders as you continued sawing away at the rope.

Sweat beaded across your skin as time passed — how long exactly, you weren’t sure. But eventually, the strands turned thinner. They felt as tight and ready to snap as your resolve. But when the rope loosened, becoming big enough for your hands to wiggle out, it instead filled your body with quenching relief.

The rope had barely pooled along the concrete floor before you began working on the binding stretching across your chest to hold your torso to the chair. It was tedious and forced your aching arms in horrible positions, but you pulled and pulled at the binding, squirming around to even gain an inch of room.

It kept catching on the bunched-up fabric of your clothes, but it moved. So, so slowly, it moved. It was an effort to keep your breaths silent when you wanted nothing more than to just shout for anyone to come help you. But Peter wasn’t here to help, so you sunk your teeth into your lip and kept quiet as the rope loosened.

Pushing your elbows out, you slipped the rope over your head. You allowed yourself only one unrestrained inhale before bending at the waist and working on the knot tying your ankles to the chair. Your fingers worked quickly, your eyes constantly trained on the workers as you moved. But the sight of that rope falling from your body made you blink away stinging tears.

Your best bet would likely be looking for a back exit and hoping you could sneak by anyone there — or fight your way out if it came to that. On unsteady legs, you raised yourself up, ignoring the wave of sharp pain pulsing at the back of your head and down your spine.

But before you could even take a step, get a real breath of freedom in your lungs, a sharp blade appeared at your neck.

“Going somewhere, sunshine?”

Within an instant, William Beaumont appeared next to you, and had he not held a tight grip to your upper arm, you might have collapsed. Though the blade pressed against you, your body instinctually writhed to get away from him. But even in the dim lighting, you saw the darkness that clung to him, the stillness in his eyes, the heavy weight he held. This wasn’t the Will you met before.

“Or Rose, is it?” he asked, his voice cold and calculated.

He pulled you forward and yanked your arms behind you. Your throat felt tight, your chest ready to rip open as you felt a zip tie tighten around your wrists — the plastic rubbing right where the rope had been just minutes ago. It had been too easy. Did he give you that hope on purpose? Just a lion toying with its food? A wretched feeling of fear shot through you at the thought. 

Will shoved you back in the chair, a labored grunt shooting out of your lungs and a dizziness hitting you. Once he was sure you weren’t going to get up again, he took a step back, careful to keep the long blade pointed at your throat. 

You dully registered a piece of wood rolling to your feet as Will aimlessly paced before you, kicking scattered debris. Sweat coated his skin, his hair damp against his forehead. For a minute, he just wordlessly walked back and forth, his eyes staring unfocused toward the ground. But you couldn’t look at his face for long, not with the sunken shadows settling into each curve of his expression. He almost looked sickly. Your gaze instead dropped to the handgun tucked into the back of his waistband; then you looked to the sharp piece of metal in his hand, recognizing it as one of the wrecked pieces from the Green Goblin’s glider.

When he paused, your breaths stopping too, he turned to stare at you. “Where’s my suit?” he asked, simply and without room for negotiation.

Despite the nearly deafening roaring of your heartbeat, you held his stare and willed your voice to come out steady. “Where’s your father?”

He raised an eyebrow at you, and you wondered how you hadn’t ever seen the similarities between those two before — the eerie air around them. 

“Ellis is a bit busy at the moment. Why? Want to snoop around his mansion some more?” He tilted his head, pursing his lips just slightly. The look brought an anger next to your fear — anger and frustration that they could do good with what they had and keep their promises, but they were just adding more filth to the city.

He came closer then, squatting down so he was nearly eye level with you. You could barely stand to look at him this close, but you did your best not to flinch away. It was just another character you had to play. 

Almost unnoticeable, you saw him wince in pain as he lowered. Watching him, you swallowed the fear trickling down your spine and asked, “Feeling sore?” At his unimpressed look, you merely squared your shoulders, raising your chin.

A breathy half-laugh escaped his lips. He stared down at his hand as he flexed it.  “Jus’ some growing pains…” He shrugged. “ No change comes without a cost.”

“And is the cost worth all this?” you asked, your eyes motioning to the wreckage of the warehouse behind him.

“I’m just living up to the Beaumont family name. We’re cutting through endless miles of red tape with a snap of my fingers. I think you know the answer.”

“Your fingers?” you questioned. “Ellis is making you do all the dirty work?”

Will just rolled his eyes, his grip growing tighter on the blade. Letting out a sharp breath, he stood up, his body wavering just barely as he did so. Still, you went rigid as he towered over you. “Where’s the suit?”

You shook your head, trying to stay calm. But your resolve, this mask, pulled in all directions. “You said you wanted to educate people. What kind of change can be worth whatever you have planned? Worth a super suit and bodily experiments?” You remembered the way he’d bent the shelving’s metal like it was nothing.

“I prefer the term enhancements actually. Because they have made me better. Made it easier to ‘negotiate’ with clients. To educate the city on who really controls things around here.” He stared down at you, letting his words sink in.

Your tone rose, a tightness taking hold of your throat. “And who controls it? It’s certainly not you if your daddy’s bossing you around.” Despite the cold anger flaring behind his features, you continued. “Who says he won’t just keep you as his little lackey to do his bidding forever?”

His jaw twitched, his hand gripping the blade harder. You fought the terrified waves of nausea sitting in your stomach as he said, “Shut your mouth. You know nothing about the empire he’s planned for me.”

Your voice lowered with venom pooling around your tongue, one eyebrow raising. “Oh, and he’d never lie for his own personal gain, right? Even at the harm of others?”

“Where’s the suit?” he gritted out.

“I don’t know.”

You jolted backward as he slammed the metal blade against one of the shelves. The echoing clang of the hit made you curl into yourself, the blood draining from your heart.

His hand raised high, clenched above his head, before it slowly unfurled. He pressed his fingers into his temples. “I’m not in the fucking mood for this.” Punctuating each word with a step closer, he said, “Where. Is. The. Suit?” 

A pulsing vein appeared along his neck, his breathing coming harder. Your hope of getting out of here dwindled with each second he got closer to losing it. 

Trying to keep your voice calm, you said, “Will, I swear I don’t know.”

He charged toward you then, gripping your chin in his hand despite the yelp you let out. “You’ve come to this warehouse before. You’ve been in our house. You stole blueprints. And you think I’m going to believe you?”

You let out a shaky exhale, muscles twitching and screaming at you to get away from him. “I never broke in here. I wouldn’t be able to take all those boxes of the suit by myself, not without being seen. I don’t know where it is.”

His gaze considered you, roaming across your face like he was listing all the ways to torture the information from you. “Then you had help. Maybe that little ‘husband’ of yours knows — he might talk more than you when we find him.” He paused, his hold on you growing a little tighter, making you wince. “And that spider will talk when we string him up and force it out of him.”

Your expression dropped, your eyebrows tightening together. So they didn’t know Peter was Spider-Man, at least not yet. And if you could get out of here alone, it could stay that wa-

A flash of red flew past the windows near the warehouse’s ceiling. Any sense of calm, no matter how forced, dissipated into uncatchable smoke. No, he couldn’t be here. He couldn’t bring himself right into the waiting mouth of the beast that was hunting him. Silently, you pulled at the zip tie holding your wrists. 

“Speaking of cutting through red tape…” Will muttered as a thud on top of the roof had his gaze shooting upward. Silence covered the entire building — all of the workers immediately stopped their movements. 

You could barely slump forward when Will let go of your chin before he brought the blade back to your neck, his body standing behind you. His words echoed as he called out, “Come on out, Spider-Man! I promise we’ll let her go…”

Your eyes squeezed shut as the pain in the back of your head pounded harder, tears threatening to pool on your eyelashes. You whispered, “And then what? Where does this end, Will?” 

A jagged smile was evident in his words. “Who says the fun ever has to end?” His hands forced your head to turn, your gaze pointed toward the warehouse entrance. “Isn’t that right, father?” Will asked loudly, calling to the man walking toward you both with a gun at the ready.

The sight dropped a deadening weight into your stomach. Ellis looked wild, his chest rising and falling with heavy breaths. His usual well-kempt look was forgotten, his suit ragged and hair free from its slicked-back style. More guards continued to enter the warehouse after him, and you couldn’t stop your entire body from shaking.

“Or maybe the fun’s just beginning,” Will said into the curve of your ear. It made you stretch to get away from him, but that only pushed your neck further into the blade — pain prickling along your skin.

You revolted against the dread, the horrific realization, that you may watch Peter die here — while he was trying to save you. It took everything in you to not let it incapacitate your ability to think or even function.

Ellis directed the guards this way and that. You watched with unfocused attention as he followed the large group up toward the roof. Normally, you would say he was sending them to their demise with Spider-Man up there. But an injured, desperate Spider-Man? That struck icy fear into your veins.

And you’d never known Spider-Man to have a noisy approach — careless enough to make noise and draw the enemy’s attention to himself. He’d have to play it smart, which became evident a few minutes later when Will yelled to one of his guards… and got no response. Peter was picking them off one by one in here while they searched for him outside.

Will’s free hand gripped tightly to your shoulder, his body continuously moving in small twitches. You could feel how on edge he was, and you wondered just how dangerous this family could be. Full power over the city, and all they needed now was to remove the one man stopping them.

You fought to keep your breathing even, your mind clear, so you could stay calm. And it worked to ground you just as a web shot from the sky. At blinding speed, it hit Will’s arm, sending the blade flying away from you. It clattered across the floor, the sound the sweetest thing you’d ever heard. Before he could fully realize what had happened, you lifted your foot and brought it down against his knee using every bit of strength you had.

By the time he’d crumpled to the floor, you’d run the other way. His scream froze your heart, but you knew he wouldn’t be down long with whatever experiments were coursing through him. Weaving between shelves with your hands still bound behind you, you tried to find somewhere safe — maybe the back entrance you’d planned to go to before.

But there were sure to be more guards outside now, and you couldn’t get far with your hands tied together. Your steps slowed, trying to become silent as you looked around for something sharp. Among the debris were ammo, rope, chemicals… but nothing to cut the zip tie. 

Will’s words sounded far enough away, but that didn’t stop your head from whipping in his direction as he yelled, “You’ll fucking regret that!” Without so much as a breath, you took small steps backward away from the threat.

You only got a few feet when a gloved hand wrapped around your mouth. Before you could even scream, you were lifted into the air. The warehouse passed in a blur, but relief broke through as you felt summer night air hit your skin — as you recognized the sounds of the man swinging you both a few blocks away.

The two of you landed in a different alley, this one empty and finally safe. A second later, you felt the snap of the zip tie, and your wrists came free.

“Thought you might need a han-”

He only spoke those few words before you turned around to lunge into his arms. A quiet grunt shot out of him as you hugged him until your arms shook. You sniffled back tears budding up, your fingers clenching tight onto his suit. You breathed in him.

“Peter,” you whispered against him.

“Uh… I’m not sure who that is. The name’s Spide-”

“Shut up,” you interrupted, shaking your head as you pressed in closer to him. You could have sobbed when his arms wrapped around you too. To have him here, real, and breathing felt like the aching quiet after waking up from an unending nightmare, like the first rays of morning sunlight peeking above the horizon.

But the memory of when the two of you last spoke washed over your senses in an unrelenting tidal wave. You pulled back, your hold on him tightening as you looked at him. Your breath fizzed away like bubbling remnants of the crashed wave.

Blood splattered across his suit, broken up by dirt and rips along his body. His chest rapidly rose and fell, tired in a way you’d never seen the superhero. He’d pulled his arms from you— one of his hands rested against the building, using it to hold his weight. His other hand wrapped around his left side where blood-coated webs held together what looked to be a bullet wound. But what stole the breath from your lungs, what grabbed you and forced you to come to terms with all that’d happened, was his face. 

A jagged tear in his mask stretched from his cheek to his forehead, leaving one of his bloodshot eyes exposed. The skin around it looked marred with cuts and aching bruises. At the top of the rip, pieces of his shaggy hair stuck to his forehead. He was barely recognizable. Your bottom lip trembled, no matter how hard you tried to stop it. But before you could open your mouth, Peter brought you back in against him, hugging you tight. He whispered, “Thank God you’re okay.”

Pressing your hands against his chest, you created a little bit of space despite how your body protested. “Peter… are you okay?”

His exposed eye traced across your face, the soft brown looking paler than usual. “I’m fine. I got the suit out — and hidden. That’s what matters.”

You gave him an exhausted look because that was not all that mattered, not as he stood there looking like that, but you didn’t argue further. He was here. And stubborn.

So you just allowed yourself to do what you hadn’t done before the fundraiser. Raising your hand, you paused for a brief moment before gingerly fixing his hair. You tucked the strands back under the mask before swiping a thumb across his forehead. 

His hand came up to grab your wrist, lowering it from his hair but not letting go of you.

“How are you doing?” he asked. His fingers were gentle against the marks on your wrist.

You blinked against the throbbing in your head but nodded, breathing out, “Uh… yeah. I’ll be okay.”

And too many other things to say passed your mind, some you wanted to tell him and others you couldn’t. With a hoarse voice and downcast eyes, you settled on, “You came.” 

You hoped he heard all you meant underneath those two words.

And you didn’t have time to register his answer — “of course” — as he moved his grip from your wrist down to your hand. He squeezed once then let it return to your side.

“Okay, I need to head back,” he said, raising his arm to shoot a web back in the direction of the warehouse, “please head to the hospital, and stay safe. I’d bring you there myself, but–” He gestured to his injured side, his face wincing in pain.

Instantly, your face twisted, a dizziness coming over you as any relief you had shattered to the ground. “You’re not going back in there. Not like this,” you nearly pleaded, your words coming out faster. “You’ve done enough. Call- call the police, and let them handle it.”

He shook his head. “I already called them. But with Will’s powers, it’ll be a massacre. I’ve got to go.” He said it with such certainty, with no room for argument. He tried to step past you, his gaze stoically not meeting yours. 

“Then I’m coming too.” You stepped to the side with him. You hurriedly explained, “Something’s not right with Will, like his body is struggling with whatever’s coursing through him. So I think if we-”

“What? No. I mean, yes,” he told you. “Will is using DNA from supervillians, and I think his body’s rejecting it. But no, you’re not coming with me.”

“Could we somehow increase his symptoms then, or speed them up?” Your palms came up to rest against his chest. His heartbeat pounded rapidly beneath your touch.

“I mean, probably. If we incubated it with heat or lights maybe, but…” He cocked his head. “Stop talking like we’re doing this together. We’re not.”

Turning your chin up at him, you argued, “Well the plan where you get yourself killed sucks.”

“Well I happen to like the plan where you get killed a lot less, so you’re staying,” he said, raising an arm to shoot out a web again. He held stern, but you heard the exhaustion coating his words, how tired he really was. 

Spider-Man always had a plan, Peter always knew what to do. And now it seemed his only plan was to stop Will at all costs — even at the cost of his own life. You shoved away the emotion that thought brought bubbling up your throat.

You clenched your hands into fists, refusing to let him go so easily. “Peter, you’re not leaving me in the dark anymore. The secrets and hiding have to stop here.”

You watched his eyebrow sink into a frown, his voice becoming more serious than you’d ever heard. “Secrets and hiding? Yeah, I have to keep my identity hidden, but don’t you get why I did all of this?” He asked as if it was the most obvious question. His hands gestured out to the side as he took a step back — your own hands falling away from him.

He turned his head away from you, and you could only watch his jaw clench and unclench with each passing second. The silence rang in your ears, until he breathed out, “It was to keep you safe. ‘Cause all this? It does no good if… if you’re gone.”

You held your breath, feeling your heart beating wildly throughout you. Heat crawled up your body at his words. Quietly, you asked, “What does me being gone have to do with stopping Beaumont?”

Shaking his head, Peter breathed out the ghost of a laugh. In an instant, he stepped so closely that it nearly gave you whiplash. Slowly, the tips of his fingers slipped under his mask to pull it above his mouth. He shifted even closer, his lips merely an inch from yours as his hands cupped your jaw. His body overtook all of your senses. He whispered, “Christ, are you this dense on purpose?” 

With that, his lips pressed against yours, your eyes fluttering shut on instinct. At first, you didn’t move at all — afraid that it would break whatever moment you somehow found yourself in. Thoughts and emotions yelled for your attention, for you to analyze what was happening, but none were quite as loud as the feeling of his body melding against yours. That familiar warmth of him enveloped you, and all you could do was melt with him.

It wasn’t like the hurried kissing at the fundraiser, all teeth and tongue and newness. This almost felt familiar, as if you could come home to this every day. Your hands snaked up, holding onto his shoulders as he dulled your senses into a fuzziness. You felt your mind nearly go blank — but not completely.

With waning will power, you pulled away, trying not to relish in the soft noise that escaped his throat as you did so. You both caught your breath — the yearning exhales mingling in the small space between you. And with the way his hands still held onto you, now dropped down along your body to find a home on your hips, you knew there was no way he’d let you go with him.

“I… you, uh, need to get back” you began with a long, heavy breath. Swiping your tongue across your bottom lip, you took a resistant step backward. He kept one hand on yours as you moved. “Just, Peter, please be safe.”

He slowly nodded, and you watched every movement as he grabbed his mask and brought it back down. His thumb rubbed along your skin. “Yeah, yeah. Of course. And after…”

“After?” you asked, smiling at him.

“Yeah,” he breathed. “After. Let me take you out.”

“After,” you promised. You swallowed, wrapping a hand around his forearm and squeezing once. But before he could move away, you said, “Wait! Do you have anything I could use? To defend myself, I mean. I’d just feel safer — in case I happen to run into their guards on my way to the hospital.” You offered a closed mouth smile, one that told him not to worry too much about you.

“Uh, yeah…” he said, patting along his suit and up to his wrists. Removing part of his left webshooter, he set a small metal piece into your palm. You thought it looked almost like a flash drive as he curved your fingers over it.

“It’s not ideal, but it’s the best I have right now. It helps control my electric webs, so you can use this part as a sort of taser if someone comes at you,” he explained, waiting until you nodded before pulling you into a hug. It crushed your body, feeling like a hug you’d give someone you might not see for a long time. Or ever again.

So, you whispered, “Good luck,” and watched as he stepped away and swung away slowly. One of his hands still held tight to his side.

You waited there for a minute, bringing a thumb up to your lips. You felt how they still tingled and how they curved into a smile. But as soon as you were sure Peter had made it back to the warehouse already, you began making your way there with quick steps.

Maybe you were in over your head. Peter would probably call you stupid or reckless. But if he couldn’t handle if something happened to you, then he’d have to understand why you weren’t leaving him to go in there alone.

So you found yourself marching back to the place you never hoped to return to. Intense pounding went through your head with each step. Your palm felt slick with sweat, but you held tight onto the makeshift taser until your knuckles began to ache.

You were glad the warehouse was so secluded — hopefully no passerbyers would get caught in the fray. Or hear the commotion coming from inside. The muffled noise came from the far side of the building, near the front, so you hugged the opposite side of the alley as you made your way to the back. You guessed that they all concentrated on where Peter must have made an appearance, which only left one guard standing at the door.

Eyes flicking to the ground, you caught a glimpse of rock sitting in the cracks of the alleyway. Silently picking it up and pressing yourself into the shadows, you took a steadying breath that did little to calm your nerves in the midst of this insane idea. Still, your shaky arm reeled back to throw the rock up and over the guard, making it land on the other side of him.

As soon as he turned away from you, gun trained on the strange noise, you stepped from the dark and crept toward him. You gave yourself no time to second guess yourself before coming up behind him. Your internal monologue repeated, Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god as you raised the taser.

But as you went to press the taser into the guard, he turned back around in shock — throwing his elbow into your cheek in the process. A silent groan sat in your throat as your mouth hung open, a loud ringing going through your head. Pain bloomed outward from your face, and it took a moment to push past your swimming vision. Using all your strength, you lunged at him again and shoved the taser into the flesh of his neck.

In an instant, his body began convulsing. You did your best to try and let his weight down gently, but he just slid to the ground alongside you, unconscious and still twitching. Pushing him off, you sat on your knees and tried to catch your breath. You let the pain slowly dull with each passing second.

As you sat there, a glimpse of white against his dark uniform caught your eye — an ID badge hanging off his hip. It worked perfectly against the card reader at the back door, unlocking with a soft click for you to slip through. And there you were again, stood in the mouth of the beast once again.

In the back hallway away from the open floor, you could hear crashing and yelling coming from across the building. You only made it a few feet before footsteps sounded from the end of the hallway. Deep voices echoed off the concrete walls, each word louder than the next. You didn’t move or breathe until eventually, finally, they began to grow quieter.

From where you stood, heart still in your throat, you could tell the warehouse lights were still dimmed. So you searched along the walls, ears always listening for anyone coming back. You opened up the door after finding a circuit breaker, tracing a finger down the length of it. None of the switches were labeled, so after a moment of consideration, you flipped them all on — washing the building in bright fluorescents.

And just a few feet down the hall sat the thermostat. It was set to 65 degrees, but your hand quickly turned the dial up to the 89 degree mark. Within a few seconds, you heard the heater turn on and rumble through the vents. 

You nodded, hopeful that this could begin weakening Will enough for Peter to take him out. While bleeding and injured. While dozens of guards also tried to kill him. How could you let him come back here? How could he come back here and make you come back here to help his ass?

You began to turn around to go find him when a heavy hand landed on your shoulder.

“Freeze-”

A gasp caught in your throat as you whipped around out of instinct and fear, immediately shoving the makeshift taser at the woman. It connected with the bottom of her jaw. With wide eyes, you watched as her body shook and fell to the ground just like the other guard. Your hand came up to cover your mouth while you stared. You didn’t think you would ever get used to that.

Slowly, you backed away down the hall. You did manage to grab her gun and hide it on a shelf when you made your way out there — rather than take it and risk shooting yourself or Peter, even if he did have superpowers.

Superpowers that you almost began to resent as you stepped into the open area of the warehouse — and the man himself immediately dropped down in front of you. You placed your hand over your mouth and swallowed the yelp that threatened to escape. Instead, you watched Peter as he guided the both of you behind a shelf. 

His chest rose and fell much too quickly, his stance wavering and unsteady. Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to affect his attitude though, as he came closer and angrily whispered, “What the hell are you doing here? I can’t believe you did this.”

You gave him a soft, disbelieving look, a closed-lipped smile on your face. “Yes, you can.”

He brought his fingers up to pinch the bridge of his nose. A long sigh left his mouth. “Alright,” he said, “I can believe it. But you need to leave now.” He tried weakly pushing you toward the back door again.

You didn’t budge. “Oh, okay. Yeah, now that I’ve snuck in to help — by electrocuting two guards into unconsciousness, by the way — I’ll just go on my merry way,” you whispered back, twisting your face into a mocking expression. “How about you shut up and just let me help?”

“That’s why you asked for the weapon?” He quietly groaned before looking at you again, his head cocking. “Two guards? That’s not bad.”

“Thank you. Now, I’ve turned up the heat and lights. So let’s go.”

For a moment, he considered you. His eye covered by the mask looked expressionless, distant. But his exposed eye made you pause — his gaze feeling resigned, desperate in a way that made your heart twist. You didn’t want to imagine the other compromises or sacrifices Spider-Man has had to make over the years. And you didn’t have time to. So you swallowed those thoughts and simply grabbed his hand, entwining your fingers with his to pull him farther into the warehouse.

As you slowly moved down the aisles, you whispered, “Give me one of your web shooters.”

You already knew his answer from the blank stare he shot sideways at you. “I’m not giving you one of my web shooters. I need them.” Part of his words told you he really did need them to get you both through this. The other part said he didn’t trust you to not accidentally shoot him with his own webs.

“Well don’t you have an extra one or something?” you shot back.

“Do you see this suit? Where could I even keep an extra web shooter on me?” he quietly asked, his free hand raising outstretched and exasperated.

You let your eyes trail across the suit per his suggestion — until Peter said, “Okay, that’s enough ogling.” And even for the briefest of moments, it felt good to smile with him. 

But at another crash several aisles down, he stiffened. You felt his rapid heartbeat pulse against your skin as he held up a hand. “I’ll be right back,” he promised.

You tried to squeeze his hand, to give him some sort of mention to be careful or to not get himself killed out there, but his fingers slipped through yours as he instantly swung away. Your palm radiated leftover warmth as you hid, thinking through the plan. Hopefully, the two of you wouldn’t have to wait long for Will to show symptoms, which would just leave many guards and Ellis. Peter seemed confident that they couldn’t fight their way out of this.

But under the commotion of guards around the warehouse, yelling and fighting coming from seemingly everywhere, you didn’t hear the heavy footsteps until they were too close. Whipping around, you saw Ellis appear at the end of the aisle, his chest rising and falling in heavy breaths. He raised his gun, aiming it right at you as he said, “Found you now.” His voice sounded colder, void of any of the charm he had when speaking to the public.

Instinctively, you backed away from him — from the man that made cold dread creep through your body and steal the breath from your lungs — but your steps stuttered when a web came from the ceiling and yanked the gun from Ellis’ grip. It flew upward, but you didn’t wait to see Ellis’ reaction before silently thanking Peter and sprinting the other way.

Only to be met with Will standing on the other side of the long aisle. 

His twisted smile and disheveled hair falling into his face fueled the icy weight dropping into your gut. His bloody fingers tightened around the end of the blade he held in one hand. The other gripped a pistol.

You turned to look back at Ellis to see him fighting against more webs. As Will approached with heavy steps, his arm shaking as he aimed his gun at you, you forced your body to move.

Without thinking, you ducked and crawled past boxes sitting on the large shelf and emerged into the next aisle. You couldn’t think about the thudding sounds of bullets hitting metal around you.

You knew he’d be on you soon, his mutated powers making him too powerful. So you crawled across to the next aisle, pushing aside scattered equipment before throwing yourself through that shelf too. You went through a few more aisles and shelves to create at least a little distance. In the last shelf you passed, you hid yourself between the boxes. You stilled just a second before you heard him enter the aisle.

Clamping a hand over your mouth, you squeezed your eyes shut as his footsteps grew louder with each passing second. Your other hand began to ache from gripping the taser between your fingers.

“Run all you like. It won’t change how this all ends,” Will seethed, his voice becoming closer to you. A raggedness filled his words, and you hoped that meant the plan was working.

Still, Peter’s name repeated over and over in your mind, a silent prayer for him to come help. But you could hear more guards approaching, each one feeling like an extra shovel digging your graves.

The guards seemed to be coming to find the commotion, but from the sounds, it seemed like Peter was holding them off. You could only imagine the exhaustion and pain riddling his body as he never stopped fighting.

And you hoped he wouldn’t stop as a shaking, powerful hand wrapped itself around your arm and yanked you from the shelf. No sound could escape your mouth — every inch of it went dry in the face of Will’s bloodshot eyes. 

One hand reached to claw at his grip while the other brought the taser up to his neck. But he knocked it away before sending you flying from the aisles into the open space. You heard a growl rip from his throat before it disappeared under the ringing in your ears, a breathless groan dribbling from your agape lips, as you fell against the concrete.

In between slow blinking and painful winces, you caught sight of Peter coming down and fighting against Will. Even with the sweat starting to bead along your skin, the extra heat and lights weren’t enough yet to weaken him. You saw how fast his punches were, how slow Peter was to dodge them.

Your arms trembled as you pushed yourself onto one elbow. Gritting your teeth, you ignored the ache throbbing behind your eyes. You began to stand up again only for a blow to knock you back down and sliding across the floor.

“God, I’ve just had fucking enough of you. Stay down for once, sweetheart. Okay?”

Past watery vision, you raised your head to see a bloody Ellis pointing a gun down at you. You held your breath, not daring to move as nausea and fear turned to sludge in your stomach. His knuckles look torn and raw, his suit ripped along his shoulders and arms. One hand of his ran through his hair, leaving a smear of blood along his hairline.

Just as you were to silently call for Peter again or to close your eyes and wait for this all to be over, a strangled groan echoed throughout the warehouse. A second later, Peter’s ragged body flew from the shelves and hit the ground, sliding until he slammed into the building’s wall. A cry escaped your mouth at seeing his limp form, and you only breathed again once you saw him beneath the debris and dust. Blood dribbled from his shoulder. More rips spread along his suit. But weakly, slowly, you could see his chest continue to rise and fall.

Before you could try to crawl over to him, Will emerged from the aisles — his smile victorious even as his muscles shook. From where you lay, you couldn’t see any more guards. Peter must have gotten them all. Now you just needed a little more time.

“His current state is going to make it harder to get answers out of him, William,” Ellis said. He stretched his neck side to side as he continued to train his gun directly at your heart.

Will let out a breathy laugh as he made his way closer. “I was just having some fun testing out my powers.” He flexed his hands in front of him, his heartbeat visible in the raised veins just beneath his skin. “Besides, I’m sure there are ways to get him to talk…”  

His gaze rose to connect with yours.

He dropped the end of his blade to the ground, letting it drag against the concrete with each step. The slicing sound may as well have been the blade itself running along your throat.

You began to shuffle backward, needing to get as far away from him and his torture plan as possible. Your teeth dug so far into your cheek that you began to taste blood. Fresh tears pooled along your eyes as you called out, “When were you going to tell him, Ellis?”

Still several feet away, Will paused for a moment, the blade hanging looser from his grasp. His eyes flicked to his father’s.

Ellis' shout echoed across the building, making you flinch. “What are you doing? Grab her. We need to leave.”

You didn’t let either of them think before blurting out, “When were you going to tell your son that his body’s rejecting the DNA? That they’re going to kill him?”

Ellis nearly growled out his next words as he stalked closer. “Shut. Up. You don’t know anything, you worthless girl.”

You scrambled back farther, your hands searching for anything along the ground. Your fingers grasped a broken shard of glass, bringing it in front of your body. It looked so miniscule, so useless, trembling before him.

“Is that true?”

Will’s words broke through, and for a brief moment, you recognized him again — he was the man you danced with. Only this time, he looked empty.

The question made Ellis stop this time, his eyes squeezing shut for a second.

“Father?”

You saw how Will’s skin looked red and blotchy, how his breathing became harder with each passing second. He knew something was wrong.

“Tell him, Ellis. Tell him why he’s becoming weaker by the minute.” You tried to keep your voice steady, and though it wavered and scratched, it still struck the tense thread holding them together.

For too long, no one spoke. You fought to not look away from Ellis’ stare that pierced through you. Every breath, every tiny move he made, you watched him from behind the broken glass.

Will pleaded, shouting,“Dad!”

Finally, Ellis broke from the trance and dropped the gun just slightly, turning toward Will. You took the brief moment to glance to Peter. In… out. In… out. He was here. He was okay. He would be okay.

You turned back when Ellis let out a resigned sigh, refusing to fully meet his son’s gaze. “We are working on a cure… a treatment to stabilize your body’s reactions. There was no use in worrying you before we found it.”

“Except that tiring his body worsens it — it kills him faster,” you gritted past split lips, despite flinching when Ellis aimed the gun at you again.

“Shut the hell up!” he yelled, gripping the gun’s handle until his knuckles turned white. You raised your chin higher.

“Is she right?” Will asked.

“I…” Ellis began, groaning and dropping the gun to his side. He reached his other hand toward Will, turning toward him completely. “It’s…” And for once, you heard Ellis Beaumont have nothing to say — no lies to spew. Still, he approached Will, trying to embrace him.

But Will backed away, his tripping over one another. “You did this to me,” he whispered, almost in awe. Then, his voice rose with each word until he was shouting. “You used me as some lap dog and knew that it was destroying me from the inside out?”

Ellis approached again. “Son–”

“No! Get the hell off me,” Will screamed, pressing his hands into his father’s chest and shoving with all his strength.

Ellis stumbled, and you relished in the way his mouth opened and shut without saying anything. 

“No. Don’t say another goddamn thing. No more telling me what to do like I’m a child,” he paused, his jaw clenching. His irises seemed to glow a sickly green, his voice becoming deep and alien. “Like I’m just some tool to get you your money.”

What lit the awaiting wick, though, was Ellis — in all his confidence and cowardice for his own safety — raised his gun at his son. You swore you saw the instant Will lost all semblance of control.

His body surged forward, tackling his father to the ground. Ellis yelled out, but it cut short when he hit the concrete. Any noise he made disappeared under the sound of Will’s fist hitting his dad. An animalistic growl rang out, and for a moment, you sat entranced, watching the pain pass across both of their faces as they battled. 

You stared at the tears flying from Will’s eyes until your arm could no longer hold up the shard of glass. Its sharp edges pressed into your skin, but as they continued fighting, you dropped it to crawl toward Peter’s body.

Your eyes stayed on the two men while you passed over debris and the occasional webbed-up guard. You pushed away the wreckage despite the aching fire licking across every part of your body. Glimpses of red peaked through as you uncovered Peter. Immediately, you felt his chest for a pulse, for his ragged-but-stable breaths. A gasp escaped your mouth as you felt it dimly beating. You then moved to put pressure on the bullet wound on his side. 

The pained groan he let out choked your heart. On the tip of your tongue, his name stood begging to leap off the edge and surround his body until he was okay again.

Instead, with darting eyes and trembling lips, you whispered, “Spidey.”

When he didn’t respond, you took hold of his arms and shook him slightly. Tears dripped down your cheeks, your voice becoming more desperate. “C’mon. We have to go. You have to get out of here.” You pushed his exposed hair back under his mask again. He barely stirred.

“Please,” you cried out, pulling on him, prepared to try and drag him out of there. “You can’t ditch me, asshole. I’m not doing this alone.”

Beneath the yelling of Ellis’ pleading and Will’s incessant punches, you heard Peter murmur something. You didn’t dare breathe, only whispering for him to repeat.

“You’re… an… asshole,” Peter grumbled, his face twisting as he opened his eyes. His head lolled to the side, a dry swallow passing down his throat. If he wasn’t in so much pain, you might’ve thought about hitting him for that. Instead, a splitting smile overtook your face.

But you didn’t have time to stop when Peter’s hands tensed around you. He moved just slightly to look toward the Beaumonts, prompting you to whip your head in their direction again.

You looked just in time to see Will wavering above Ellis, his eyes blinking slower and slower. A second later, he slumped forward and off of Ellis’ body onto the ground. Will appeared to be breathing still, but he was weak. 

Any momentary relief you felt vanished as Ellis sat up, that wild look back on his face. Your hold on Peter tightened, your body thrown back into desperate fear. Ellis reached a few feet out to grab the blade Will had before training his eyes on you — like a predator locked onto its prey.

“You little-”

Grabbing Peter’s nearly limp arm, you repeatedly pressed down on his web shooter’s trigger before Ellis could finish his sentence. Webs flew out and encompassed the man, wrapping him and sticking him to the floor.

“Thank you,” Peter muttered. “He was giving me a headache.”

You were sure it was the multiple head injuries doing that, but you appreciated the humor while your heart rate returned to normal.

“C’mon. We’re leaving,” you urged him. With all of your strength, you did your best to support Peter’s weight as he slowly stood and staggered onto you. You could hear the groans he continued to bite back.

You held onto him tight, keeping him balanced. “Okay, do you have your phone on you?”

“Yeah…”

You waited for him to fish it out from a slim pocket. Using your free hand, you took several pictures of the Beaamonts lying there and the ruined warehouse. Your investigative heart wanted to take a hundred images from every angle, but your rational mind told you to leave. It took all your effort to move on. Trying to ignore the dizziness in the corners of your vision, you wrapped an arm around Peter’s side and walked to the back of the warehouse.

You both passed through the back door, out over the threshold of that place — finally out into the night for good. He’d be okay.

Along the warehouse’s high windows, flashes of police lights reflected down onto Peter’s face. He gritted his teeth and raised his arm to the skyline, staring into your eyes. “Ready, sunshine?”

You let yourself be pulled in closer to his side, blinking away the stinging tears.

And from this angle, with cascading cherry and violet lights raining down onto Peter’s profile, you found that you didn’t mind red and blue so much anymore.

Nodding, you slowly drew your eyes to his. “Ready.”

—

Your words spilled through gritted teeth, your jaw clenched tight. “I hate you so much, Peter.” 

Your palms were sweaty as you forced yourself to stay focused despite that rage building in your chest. It continued up your body, crawling along your throat.

“Really? After all I’ve done for you?” Peter asked, his tone incredulous. You could feel the waves of heat rolling off of him.

Your expression sinking into a frown, you muttered, “It’s only fitting, considering that you lie and hide secrets.”

“Oh come on…” He scoffed, holding up a hand. “That’s low. And if you think about it, it was really only one secret!”

“That you lied about multiple times!”

He sat back next to you against the couch cushions, the weight of him drawing you closer. “You’re just a sore loser, and you’re angry that I whooped your ass in Mario Kart. Again,” he said, and you finally turned your gaze from the screen to look at him.

Light streamed in through his apartment’s window, the afternoon sun dancing across his face. His eyes turned to a soft caramel under its attention. His hair was undone, feathering along his forehead. Slowly, he grew closer, raising one eyebrow as if daring you to tell him he’s wrong.

Crossing your arms, determined not to be affected by his stare, you told him, “I literally beat you in the last game.”

He rolled his eyes. “Cause you cheated!”

“Look who’s the sore loser now,” you laughed out, your mouth turning into a gentle smile.

The two of you were face to face on the couch, breaths mixing together. A moment of silence passed, Peter’s softening eyes roaming across you. His thumb reached over to brush along the outside of your thigh. “You’re lucky you’re adorable.”

You didn’t try to fight your wide grin or the heat rising to your cheeks. In a whisper, you asked, “You think I’m adorable?”

His only answer was a slight huff as he leaned forward, kissing you. It only lasted a moment, your lips chasing his when he pulled away. “I’m gonna grab a drink, don’t sabotage my controller while I’m gone,” he teased, pressing a kiss to your cheek. “Want anything?”

“I’ll take whatever’s on tap,” you said, laughing when he rolled his eyes.

Slowly, he rose from the couch, taking heavy breaths as he winced. His healing injuries — mental and physical — were better, but they weren’t gone altogether. Neither were yours. 

They probably wouldn’t be for a while. Though, after waking up panicked and breathless from repeated nightmares, it helped having someone there to bring you back down. It helped having someone take care of yourself when that seemed impossible. And it helped knowing you weren’t alone in this.

You watched him make his way to the kitchen, rummaging around in the fridge. In these past days since the warehouse incident, it sometimes scared you how easy this was. Staying at his apartment together, helping one another recover. Your things sat scattered around his place, like they belonged. You wondered when he was going to say something, to ask you to go back home and tend to your wounds alone. When you both healed, would it all go back to how it was?

When a notification sound came from Peter’s phone, your eyes drew down to it for a second. Not knowing whether it was urgent Spider-Man business — not that he should’ve been doing it given his state — you called out, “Your phone dinged!”

Head still in the fridge, his words muffled, Peter called back, “Can you check it for me?”

You paused for a moment, letting a feeling of warmth settle in your chest before grabbing his phone. Just from the notification preview, you could tell what it was.

“Add another tally to your offers to interview for a job,” you told him, shaking your head — a smile evident in your voice. “This one’s for a junior photographer position.”

“What does that bring us up to now?” he asked, closing the refrigerator. He brought a glass of water and what you assumed was Dr. Pepper that’d gone flat.

“I think we’re tied at three each — though they’re just asking us to apply and interview.” You let out a sigh, trying not to get your hopes up. “It’s no guarantee of a job. They’re just interested in our story.”

Peter pointed a finger at you from around the glass. “Our story that kicks ass and put the corrupt city manager and his son away. That’s a piece that belongs on something bigger than The Daily Bugle.”

“You really think so?”

You looked up at him, chewing on your bottom lip.

“Sunshine, the greatest compliment Jameson could spit out was that it’s a ‘mighty fine’ story — before obviously yelling at us for not getting more pictures of Spider-Man during it… and that our injuries were no excuse, of course,” he told you with a wry sarcasm as he set the glasses down on the coffee table. Sitting next to you, his expression softened. His hand wrapped around yours. “But now you have the chance at something bigger.”

You grinned back at him. “But how could I ever pass up a job with… how’d he say it? ‘Minimal benefits and guaranteed maximum overtime’?”

Peter’s laugh rumbled through his chest, vibrating a comforting rhythm against you. Next to you, your phone buzzed this time. Picking it up, you told him, “Oh, another one! It’s 4 to 3 now — I’m in the lead.”

His grin made yours even wider, and you were unable to fight it as his hands cupped your jaw, his fingers careful to avoid the bruises along your cheekbone. “You see? You’ve got the whole world in the palm of your hand.” His eyes pulled you in, begging you to fall into him completely as he pressed his lips to yours once again.

You could’ve stayed there forever, sitting on that ripped couch in Peter’s apartment that you swore to never return to. Your fingers twisted in the ends of his hair pulling him even closer. The rest of the world melted away for at least a little while, leaving just the two of you in this bubble. When you eventually pulled away, your foreheads rested against one another, your nose nudging against his.

“Oh!” you said, leaning back, “I almost forgot. I picked up a frame while out grocery shopping — I couldn’t help myself.” You stood up, grabbing a bag from the dining table and pulling out a cheap picture frame. The story you’d already cut out from the newspaper felt smooth between your fingers as you carefully placed it in the frame.

You kept it close to your body while looking around for a good spot to hang it up, not that the walls had much — or anything — really on them. Deciding on a nice place between the door and living room, you asked, “Want to do the honors?”

Fishing out a nail from his tool drawer, which was really just a kitchen drawer full of scattered household items, you held it out to Peter along with the frame. It took some willpower to not gasp as he merely pushed the nail into the wall without a hammer and hung up the frame.

Straightening it just right, he stepped back and wrapped his arm around your back. You took it in, the first real decoration in his apartment — the story that brought the two of you together framed against the pale walls. Your names shone clearly at the top, next to the large letters spelling out, “Fundraiser or Fraud? The Beaumont Empire Falls.”

Leaning into him, your palm rubbing circles on his lower back, you asked, “Do you like it?”

His voice came out soft, the words curling around the ends of your body. “It’s perfect.”

It wasn’t, not with the ill-fitting frame or the story that likely needed further digging and refining. But right now, with Peter, it was perfect. You let your mind run through everything you two had gone through together, how you’d ended up here.

After a minute of thinking, though, something kept drawing your attention. Pursing your lips, you turned back to him. “Hey Peter?”

“Hmm?”

“I just have a quick question. When we were trying to get into the fundraiser, you said you ‘knew a guy.’ Did you just mean yourse-”

“Myself? Yeah. I’m the guy,” he told you, nodding repeatedly. Nonchalantly.

You scoffed, slightly laughing. You really were insane to have gone in on this project with him. “And then you made fake IDs and gave me some fake wedding ring so we could sneak in…” you said in disbelief.

Turning to grab his drink from the table, he furrowed his eyebrows. “The ring you borrowed? ‘S not fake — do you still have that, by the way?” he asked, taking a sip. “Need to return that.”

You took a beat staring at him wordlessly. Your mind crossed several things to say that you decided to hold back. “Peter, what do you mean it’s not fake? That giant rock on my finger was real?”

“Yeah, I borrowed it as a favor from a jewelry store. I saved the place from robbers breaking in.” He shrugged, the flannel his wore swaying around his body.

This relationship was going to take years off of you… 

Your fingers pinched the bridge of your nose. “I’m going to kill you,” you half-heartedly murmured. Your eyes raised to meet his, your finger pointing at him. “You know, you’re so careless about all this. I fucking knew you were Spider-Man for so long.”

“Oh, bullshit,” he laughed out, walking closer to you. “Now you didn’t. And as long as we’re being honest, I was going to give you the Daily Bugle job offer at the end of the internship the whole time. So really… you didn’t have to do any of this.” His face morphed into a teasing cockiness that sparked a fire in your chest.

The two of you stared at one another, eyes alight but mouths fighting back smiles. All at once, a calm washed over you. “Are we done bickering?”

Peter rested his hands on your hips. He nodded softly, sweetly, as if nothing but you filled his mind. “Yeah, we’re done.”

You leaned forward, kissing him once before whispering against his lips, “Great, now grab the controller — ‘m gonna kick your ass in Mario Kart again.”

@dil3mma @hollandweather @reidslovely @a-lumos-in-the-nox @keepingitlokiii @thedevax @sincericida @agent-tempest @olivezgalore @qwintlimon7 @eddieslooneymoonie @aheadfullofsteverogers @bitchy-bi-trash

[sachirobabe]

Chapter 1

Gojo Satoru x reader

Wc: 478

Curseless au

Summary: Amidst the zombie apocalypse, your courage shines as you not only saves lives but capture the heart of Gojo Satoru. Together with his first-year students, you all embark on a perilous journey, not only for survival but in a quest for a cure that adds a poignant layer to the unfolding romance.

Masterlist | Next —>

The fluorescent lights flickered overhead, casting an eerie glow on the sterile white walls of the hospital where you were assisting the staff in your residency years. As you rushed through the busy corridors, your mind replaying the unsettling images from the news. Reports of a mysterious virus spread like wildfire, turning cities into battlegrounds.

In the emergency room, patients flooded in, each one exhibiting symptoms beyond any medical textbook.

You sensed an unspoken fear among your colleagues. It was as if the very air held a silent dread, portending something far more ominous than any routine emergency.

The hospital buzzed with activity, but an uneasy tension lingered. Rumors of a rapidly spreading contagion fueled paranoia. Colleagues exchanged worried glances, and the urgency in the air intensified.

A patient emerged from a curtained room, his eyes blood shot red, sweat prickling his skin, and no vibrant color in his skin as before. You watched in fear as he approached one of your coworkers and violently bit her.

She screamed, and as if a switch had been turned on, all of the infected began attacking. Biting and clawing anyone in sight. You watched as your coworker who was bit lose the color in her skin, no longer human. 

Exiting the hospital, you witnessed the first signs of societal unraveling. Panicked civilians rushed by, some sporting makeshift masks, while others clutched loved ones. Sirens wailed in the distance, blending with distant screams that painted a chilling symphony of chaos.

Violence seemed to be amplified as you looked around, the city was panicking, finding shelter to these things. You were pushed down by a stampede of people, you groan and begin to get up. As you lifted your head you saw what they were all running from.

A group of the undead were making their way over to you, you screamed as one of them grabbed your leg. You quickly kick several times and it falls back, the rest of them were still making its way to you.

Adrenaline hit you, your body was moving before your mind could even think. You're running as fast as you could to your apartment, finally making it and slamming the door shut before any of those things got close.

Bangs and groans were heard throughout the apartment, you couldn't believe what was going on.

You fumbled for your phone, trying to reach family and friends. Communication networks were strained, and snippets of apocalyptic news reached your ears — a world slipping into an abyss, a virus turning the familiar into a nightmarish unknown.

Everything was silent online, service officially had cut out. All of your searches were loading and ultimately failing. There was no way you were leaving the somewhat solace of your home.

'Everything will go back to normal tomorrow.' You thought to yourself. 'This isn't real.' Tears flooded your eyes, threatening to escape.

[amuromi]

★ ₊ ⊹ ⋆˙ ┈ 𝐀𝐑𝐌𝐈𝐍 𝐀𝐑𝐋𝐄𝐑𝐓 X ᶠ!ᴿᴱᴬᴰᴱᴿ

✦ ⋆˙ 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐓 ┈ 7.0k

✦ ⋆˙ 𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐒 ┈ NSFW! modern!au, semi-established to established relationship (fwb to locked in), pet names (baby, baby girl, princess), fingering, overstimulation

✦ ⋆˙ 𝐀!𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄 ┈ This was partially inspired by this little snippet so everyone say thank you Miss Ginger! @ginger4sugar

✮ 𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐎𝐑𝐒 & 𝐀𝐆𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐒 𝐃𝐎 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓!! ✮

Armin is out front. It’s dead quiet and pitch black aside from the sparse dotting of streetlight and the fluorescent haze of the neighbor’s porch light that activated as soon as Armin mosied his ass up the front walkway. He can’t seem to hold still, swaying and bouncing on the balls of his feet. Either dizzy with alcohol–hopefully not because you heard the loud slamming of his car door before your doorbell announced him–or high on nerves. Probably the latter as he runs his hand through his hair before stuffing it back into the pockets of his sweatpants, then he seems to think better of it and rings the doorbell again. 

He knows that you know he’s there. The Ring notification pops up on your phone as you view the live feed of him milling around on your front stoop. He knows just as much as he knows you won’t be letting him in. He can stay out there all night, and knowing Armin he just might. Because he’s annoying and stubborn and will do anything to prove his point when he thinks he’s right. Even if that means sleeping on the welcome mat instead of walking the twenty feet back to his car and driving home. 

He has his own place. A nice apartment about fifteen minutes away and your locked door isn’t inhibiting him from going there. And honestly, you don’t much care where he goes as long as it’s somewhere off your property. There’s no sense in doing something as stupid as calling the cops on a guy like Armin. He smiles like he swallowed the sun, all bright teeth and half-moon eyes that would lull even the most hardened officer into giving him a light scolding at best. Yeah, calling the police would only serve to make you look like the crazy one for calling the authorities because your not-really-boyfriend showed up at your door. And his cooing and whining theatrics haven’t drawn the attention of any nosy neighbors, so there isn’t any use holding out hope that someone else will make the call for you. 

It shouldn’t be so hard to get him to leave but he clearly doesn’t respect your authority over your own house. Well, your parents’ house that you’ve been put in charge of while they’re out of town for a while. They’re gone and he knows it–why had you mentioned their anniversary trip to him?–but that’s just as well seeing as your mother would’ve let him in the moment she heard it was him knocking. She dotes on him like he’s her own son, always making heavy handed allusions to your future together. A house of your own, a dog, maybe some children because “isn’t Armin so good with kids?” Of course your whole family loves him because he’s managed to weasel his way into way too many family gatherings, tagging along at your mother’s request because surely, he can’t upset his future mother-in-law. He always beams when he says it like it’s not a joke, like he’s dead serious about being your husband someday. It’s enough to make your head spin when he shows up with that pretty boy smile of his to help set up tables out back and play with your little cousins once everyone arrives. 

It’s all far too milquetoast for the type of relationship you and Armin actually have. A pleasant fantasy propped up on half-truths and short glimpses of your time spent as Armin’s kinda-girlfriend. Most of it is marred with sweat and the scent of sex, but little beyond that if you can help it. The doorbell rings through the empty house again, another notification popping up on your phone. And there’s Armin in the camera. Clearly, upset with the audacity–the nerve!–you have to keep him locked out. He whines about how absolutely unfair you’re being. 

“Baby, please, just open the door. I just wanna see you. Just wanna talk. You aren’t really gonna leave me out here like this, are you?” He tries to sound pitiful, absolutely heartbroken that you won’t just give in and unlock the door. It’s almost believable with the way his voice has lost its usual jovial edge. He should’ve known better before he dragged himself over here. It’s past midnight and you could’ve been asleep! Surely, he assumed you were after all his messages went unanswered. You hadn’t even bothered with the cruelty of a read receipt. Nope. All twenty-seven of them sit cluttering your messages. And the two phone calls? Straight to voicemail. If he tried to FaceTime you, you might’ve blocked him completely. Or at least put him on mute. 

He deserves it. Every ounce of this punishment he brought on himself for wanting a mile when you only gave him an inch, yet he can’t seem to accept that sometimes actions have consequences and that he can’t always get what he wants by thinking real hard about it. No amount of begging and pleading will make you get off your couch to let him in. Because the second you do, he won’t ever leave again. He’s strong. Strong enough to manhandle you however he likes because you didn’t have the sense to stay away from a man with military training when he smiled so sweetly at you. You’ve tried moving him before and it’s like pushing a brick wall. If Armin doesn’t want to move, he simply won’t. Which makes his occupation of your porch that much more frustrating. If he’s still there come morning you can only imagine the hell he’ll raise trying to keep you from getting past him if you have to leave the house. Wrapping his thick arms around you and lifting you up so you can’t take a single step away from him. 

“Go away, Armin.” He’s been outside doing his little Romeo schtick for nearing twenty minutes and it’s getting a bit tiring. Unfortunately, your voice crackling through the little speaker only seems to renew his dedication. To your dismay he sits. Just plops himself down in the dirt and dust, smiling at the camera like you’re on a video call. 

“There you are,” he coos. “Knew you wouldn’t leave me hanging. You’re not that mean. You like being nice to your boyfriend. I know you do. Always been so sweet.” His rambles err on the side of delusion but you can tell it’s more so desperation. He knows he’s not your boyfriend. An affectionate situationship, maybe. One that’s clearly rooted deeper than you imagined if he’s so torn up about you cutting contact. The two of you are meant to be on a break. He’d been opposed to it the moment you broached the subject, but he begrudgingly agreed once it was clear his pragmatic rebuttals weren’t going to change your mind. Unfortunately, his resolve lasted all of forty-eight hours before he and his big ol’ puppy dog eyes came rolling up on you. 

“Seriously, Arlert, get off my porch.” 

“Aw, c’mon, baby, don’t call me that. I’m not Arlert to you, you know that. Your man can’t get some love anymore?” He’s been in military schools since he was little. Got brought up hearing everybody call him by his surname. Still has friends that call him that from time to time, but hell if he ever lets you call him anything but his first name. He seems so assured of himself as he watches the tiny camera. 

His confidence is exasperating, and the way he’s talking makes you glad your parents don’t understand how to operate their new security system. If they caught wind of this live feed of Armin scratching at the door like a stray pup they’d probably have your head for treating such a nice boy so cruelly. The angry phone call from your mama would pop up on your phone with a swiftness. It makes you regret agreeing to let him meet your parents–your whole damn family!–to begin with. Such a big milestone is meant for actual partners and Armin certainly isn’t that. At least not in your eyes.

“Do you want me to call the cops?” It’s a last resort but one you’re hoping will scare him off, upstanding as he is. At least for the night. 

His smile widens, looking absolutely deranged in the black and white night vision filter. His light eyes are two dots of glowing white as he stares at the camera as if he’s looking directly at you. 

“You won’t.” He calls your bluff with an insufferably sweet laugh. Of course you won’t. The worst the cops will do is tell him to go home and Armin will smile and nod, saying something about “of course, officer!” But it’ll only make him more eager to see you. How could you call the cops on him? For just wanting to see his pretty girlfriend? Your phone will turn into a brick of lava from how many calls and texts he’ll be blowing you up with the moment he gets home. 

“Armin, please, just go home.” You’re getting exasperated, made worse by the late hour. The show you’d been staying up to watch has rolled to credits and you’d like to be able to go to sleep now, but you won’t sleep soundly knowing Armin might still be camping out on your porch. 

“Uh-uh, I’m not leaving without seeing you.” He’s dropped the humor again, voice going flat and serious, and you know he means it. Your neighbor’s porch light has gone off now that he’s out of range of the sensor but he’ll happily sit in the dark until you give in. You groan and toss your phone on the cushion next to you, trying to remember if you locked the storm door. It’s made of thick glass and heavy metal and Armin wouldn’t risk property damage just to prove a point. That would actually get you to call the cops and they’d have more to say than a light scolding for trespassing. You distinctly remember clicking the lock into place when you got home and decide you will open the door. 

The one leading inside, the one he can’t reach without shattering glass. The TV and living room light are turned off. Each step feels heavier than the last as you approach the front door. The second the deadbolt clicks out of place there’s a frantic shuffling outside the door, assumedly Armin jumping to his feet. The storm door rattles but doesn’t open and you unlock the bottom lock with a bit more confidence. But it withers just as quickly as it blossoms as your eyes find Armin’s. 

His hands are leaving prints on the glass as he presses against it like he’s trying to will the barrier away. His expression is more heartbreaking when it’s not filtered through a screen, all glassy eyes and pouty lips, looking every bit like a kicked puppy as his breath makes little gray clouds on the glass door. 

“Hi, baby.” His tone is disarming. He says it so sweet and gentle, soft like he thought he’d never see you again. With just two little words he’s managed to shatter your resolve and you take a shaky breath to try to regather your composure. It’s nearly impossible when Armin is hugged up against the glass, forehead leaving a mark high up on the door as he smiles down at you. The plan had been to open the door so you could spout off something cruel enough to chase him away face to face, but the words wither and die on your tongue with the way Armin is looking at you like your hands hung the stars in the sky. It makes no sense that he seems so desperately in love when he can hardly wring a romantic word out of you if he doesn’t have you tucked up underneath him, sprawled out on his bed. That’s when you’re nicest to him. Cooing and crying for him because he makes you feel so good, and that’s why you like him in the first place. The rest is secondary, unnecessary, but he wants it so bad. You can see it burning like blue flames in his eyes and it singes at your determination the longer you meet his gaze. 

He laughs when your eyes break from his, something real low like he’s really trying to get you weak in the knees. “Can’t look at me, baby? Where’s my sweet girl? I miss her real bad.” 

He presses his hand on the glass again like he’s waiting for you to mirror his touch. It’s something easier to look at as you rest your hand over his. He dwarfs you in every aspect, from the shape of his hand to the size of his heart and it makes a grisly feeling start to fester inside you. Feels like pressing on a bruise as you mull over how long you’ve been stringing Armin along with no real end in sight. In your mind you weren’t looking for anything real or permanent despite your mother’s insistence that Armin is most definitely The One. Because what other boy would come over just to help her in the garden and do all the heavy lifting for your father’s weekend projects? Mama was so insistent that you had to take them where you could get ’em and it would definitely be your ass if she caught wind of you chasing Armin off. On purpose, no less!

“What are you doing here, Armin?” You ask, pretending like you’re not pressing closer to the glass where you can feel the cool pane warming up everywhere his body is touching. 

“I wanted to see you.” He says it like it’s that simple. He wanted to see you, so he’s here. Just like that. He’s so startlingly earnest, the absolutely worst person to get yourself tangled up with in regards to something undefined. He wants to define it, set everything in stone so there’s no questioning where your loyalties lie because it’s painfully obvious that he’s only got you on his mind. It was your hope that calling it quits on your little not-really-a-relationship would free him up to find a girl that actually deserves his unrivaled loyalty, but it seems like Armin won’t have anyone if it isn’t you. Even if it means groveling to you in the dark just for a slight chance of seeing your face again. He probably would’ve stayed on your porch for as long as it took to get you to look at him and the dedication is enough to make your head spin. 

“Gonna let me in, baby girl?” That usual sweet tone is still gone from his voice, leaving only a stripped back timbre to grate over your already frayed resolve. 

“If I open this door you gotta behave.” His breathing comes quicker as your hand reaches for the lock on the storm door. “I’m serious, Armin. Clearly, we have things to sort out and I’m willing to talk since you came all the way here, but that’s all this is. Just talk.” He nods like he’s just been given orders from a drill sergeant, stepping back so you can open the door for him. 

The night air smells like bonfires and grass clippings, a soft breeze skimming over your exposed skin, but it only lasts for a moment before Armin’s arms are around you and you’re engulfed in the woodsy scent of his cologne. He clings real tight like he’s scared you’ll disappear if he lets up for even a second. He’s got one hand around your waist and the other on the back of your head as he tucks you up under his chin. It’s equal parts comforting and overwhelming as you melt against him. 

“You know that’s not why I’m here, baby. I didn’t come here to talk, I came to get my girl back. But since you wanna talk; let’s talk. Actually, I’ll talk. All you gotta do is listen.” When you don’t say anything back he just closes the door, locking both, then takes his shoes off. He’s been in your house enough times to know his way around in the dark and he leads you to the stairs with careful precision. Avoiding the end table you always bang your hip on and finding the stairway lightswitch on the first try. He’s ill at ease in your family home. 

“Go ’head,” he says, sending you up the stairs in front of him, like you’ll run the minute he turns his back. The thought hadn’t even crossed your mind. Armin is bigger than you, faster than you. And while you trust him to never turn his training against you there’s no doubt in your mind that he’d snatch you up if you tried to run from this. So you trudge up the stairs and down the hall to your room, turning on the light and settling on your unmade bed. Ever attentive, Armin catches you squinting beneath the brightness of the overhead light and turns it off in favor of the dimmer bedside lamp. For a minute all he does is pace, wearing tracks on the carpet before he seems to think better of it and crouches in front of you. He holds your face like he’s caught a star in his hands, thumbs brushing over the apples of your cheeks as he presses a searing kiss against your lips. He lingers and you can smell mint and something fruity lingering on his breath as he breathes your air before standing straight again. 

“Clearly, we haven’t been on the same page lately,” he starts. “So let me straighten you out.” 

“Your mama’s right, baby. I’m trying to make you my wife. I don’t need you to be as loud about it as I am but I need to know that you’re my girl. Here and now, tell me what you are. I wanna hear the words or this is over, and I mean that. Lemme hear how much I mean to you or you’ll never hear from me again.” Fuck. Your heart seizes up in your chest like he just punched through your ribs to wrap his hand around it. Pulsing and palpitating until your breath starts coming too quick in your lungs. Shallow and rattled, making you lightheaded as you try to wrap your head around Armin being gone from your life for good. This little break wasn’t meant to be the end of things, just a short reprieve from all his attention. You hadn’t thought of what it would be like for Armin to be gone forever. And there you go dragging him along again, wanting him close enough to keep but far enough that he wasn’t truly yours. Seems like he’s gotten wise to your game and doesn’t wanna play anymore. 

“I wanna have a family someday, baby. Wanna have kids and a wife I can love on when I come home from work. Want a woman who wants me and lets me love her how I need to.” He lifts your chin with a steady hand, forcing you to meet his eyes even as anxious tears start to swim in your vision, making everything warped and shimmery. “I want that woman to be you, baby. She is you. Just lemme hear it. I want you to say it’s me and you.” 

Your voice breaks, getting caught behind the lump in your throat as your skin prickles and your stomach flips. He’s asking for everything. No holds barred. A real relationship where you don’t get to pretend that he isn’t yours and you aren’t his. No more laughing it off when people say the two of you look cute together or giving coy smiles when the topic of you being single comes up in conversation. He’s put you at the edge of a cliff. In front of you is nothing. A yawning abyss that will swallow you the moment you say no, but Armin is still behind you with open arms, waiting for you to step back and accept him. Fully. No more running, no more games. 

When you finally get a sound to come out it’s soft and whispered. “It’s us.” 

Like tossing oil on a fire, Armin’s mood flares, that sunshine smile nearly splitting his cheeks as he falls to his knees. He’s real gentle, touching you softly as he runs his hands up and down your thighs.

“Yeah, baby? You and me?” He beams, sounding every bit as breathless as you are. 

“You and me. Just us. Only us.” You’re rambling, not even fully understanding the weight of what you’re saying. When Armin says something, he means it. And you tossing words around just to please him is gonna get you caught up, but you realize it too late. They’re already out, he heard ’em off your tongue and Armin has never been someone to let people take back what they’ve said. You gotta stand ten toes down on your every word around him. Because what other man would meet a girl’s parents and start talking real sweet about taking good care of her for them if he didn’t mean it? 

And like he can read your thoughts, Armin gets his hands around your waist to push you further up the bed, big blue eyes bearing down on you. “I mean that, baby. You’re mine now. From this moment forward. No more of this taking a break and runnin’ away shit. You’re mine ’til we die, and I’m being so serious.” It’s everything but a ring and it’s too late to take it back. 

He lays you down on your pillows and presses his lips over yours like he’s sealing wax on a letter. It’s hot and sloppy, spit dripping down your chin as you pant into each other’s mouths. He pulls away when you start sucking on his tongue, pressing wet kisses against your racing pulse as he tries to steady himself. His round nose comes to rest in the hollow behind your ear, breath skating across your throat as his hands grip tight to your waist.

“I don’t have the patience tonight, baby.” He’s back to whining as he thumbs at your shirt. “Want you, need you. I’ll treat you nice later, princess. Swear I’ll be real good, but right now I don’t think I can treat you like a gentleman. Just wanna feel you.” Armin has always been chivalrous when it comes to sex. Asking for clear consent every step of the way. Pausing to ask if he can take off your shirt like his tongue wasn’t just down your throat and asking if you’re comfortable to keep going the moment he catches wind of a hint of discomfort. It’s always been endearing if not a bit mind-boggling every time he’s kissing up your spine to ask if you’re okay when he has you bent over moaning his name. 

“Treat me bad, Minnie. I’ve been mean to you. Lemme apologize.” 

“Yeah,” he agrees, working you out of your nightshirt. “Yeah, you’ve been real mean. Trying to run away from me like I won’t chase you to the ends of the earth. Tell your man how sorry you are, baby.” He’s mumbling around a mouthful the second he gets your shirt off, mouth kissing over your breasts until he gets one in his mouth. Your breath hitches the second his tongue flicks over a sensitive bud, the heat of his mouth chasing away the chill of your bedroom. He lets out a sound of his own as your hands find his hair, nails dragging over his scalp as your back arches to get him closer. Armin’s arm finds the space left between you and the mattress, clinging close so you can’t run away when the feeling gets to be too much. He leaves a shiny mess across your skin as he mouths his way over to your other breast, kissing and sucking against your skin as his tongue traces tight circles over your nipple. He’s as close as he can get, knee planted between your thighs to give you something to grind on. 

“Feel good, princess?” To the uninitiated, Armin might look small, but his entire body is corded with muscle. His thigh flexes where it’s pressed up against you, dragging a whine from your lips at the sudden firmness. It feels good and you say as much, but it’s not nearly enough to feel him through so many obstacles. Your panties and leggings are soaked through, leaving a dark spot on his sweatpants but you want to be closer. Wanna feel skin on skin as you grind against him. One of your hands leaves his hair to dip beneath the waistband of your pants but it’s snatched away before your fingertips reach your clit. The arm under your back flexes and suddenly you’re upright, perched on Armin’s lap with his thigh still pressed up between your legs. 

“Uh-uh, princess,” he scolds. “You like trying to tell me how much of you I’m allowed to have so tonight you’re only gonna take what I give you. If you want to cum you gotta do it just like this.” His hands settle on your hips, coaxing you to go back to grinding against him and you do because you wanna cum even if it feels impossible with all the layers between you. A shiver trickles down your spine as Armin’s hands caress your bare skin, rubbing up and down your waist while he watches you try to get off on his thigh. It isn’t working and a whine falls from your lips the longer he has you working over his leg. It feels good, has you right up on the edge, but you still can’t cum. And he’s being so mean about it. Smiling in your face as his nose brushes against yours. 

“C’mon, baby, I know you wanna cum.” His hands are on your hips again, guiding your frantic pace to a slow crawl, laughing when you try to strain against his hold because he’s not helping. Everything feels hot and wet, a mess of sweat and slick building up as you pant against Armin’s neck, biting at his skin just to get back at him for keeping you from the orgasm that you so desperately want. It only seems to entice him as his head falls back to give you more space to dig your teeth into.

“That’s right, princess. Mark me up, let everybody know who I belong to. I’m yours right, baby? I’m your man and you’re my girl. Lemme hear it, princess.” His skin is already going red where your teeth were, crescent marks standing out against his pale skin as his hand settles on the back of your head to keep your mouth on his neck. You mumble out a soft litany of words, “mine, mine, all mine” as you suck a bruise into his skin. 

“Fuck, princess, that’s right. Yours. I’m all yours, only yours.” He pulls you up for a kiss, spit spilling into your mouth as he sucks on your tongue. It’s enough to finally push you over the edge but the feeling is pitiful. A few short spasms as you clench around nothing. It leaves you hot and frustrated, worse off than you had been when you were still chasing the high. Armin’s hands soothe over your shaking thighs, cooing over how good you did for him like he helped at all. 

“Lay back for me, baby,” he hums, guiding you to rest against the pillows once more. He helps you out of your leggings and panties as you cringe at the sticky sound the sodden fabric makes as he peels it off your skin. Your thighs are slick and shiny and Armin can’t take his eyes off the mess you’ve made as he tosses your clothes aside. His hands press your knees apart then move higher until the pad of his thumb is rubbing smooth circles over your clit. It’s almost too much after being neglected for so long and your thighs snap closed around his wrist. Armin kisses his teeth and pries your legs back open so he can press two fingers inside you. He mimics the sound when you whine at the feeling of his fingers curling against the spot that has your vision blurring and back arching. 

“Make as much noise as you want, princess. You’re not running from me.” You barely hear him over the sound of your heartbeat thundering in your ears and your hand grabs at his wrist, trying to get him to slow down as your thighs start to quiver again. It barely sounds intelligible the way you whine his name, choking on a moan when his eyes meet yours. 

“Hands. Off.” He says it like an order, sharp and clear, and your hand jumps away from his wrist in an instant. “Tonight I get to treat you how I want. You just gotta sit there and take it, pretty. Go ’head and cry if you need to, baby, but you’re gonna take everything I give you.” He sounds angry and it makes your pussy clench around his fingers. Your sweet boy is gone and maybe that’s what you get for playing around with his emotions to suit your own needs. 

“M’sorry, Minnie,” you slur as he works you towards another orgasm. His eyes soften as he stares down at you, the ghost of a smile playing on his lips. 

“I know you are, baby. I know my girl didn’t really mean it. You were just scared.” Were you? Maybe. Scared of how serious Armin was about you, how desperately sincere he was when it came to you. His lips brush against yours and you find yourself curling towards him, arms wrapped around his neck as the knot in your stomach winds tighter and tighter until the tension snaps. He swallows every sound you make as you ride your high out on his fingers, shivering like you’re about to fall apart at the seams. You sag against the sheets, panting and sticky as Armin sits above you looking unfairly pristine. Aside from his tousled hair and the developing bruises, he looks completely untouched. Still fully clothed as he licks the mess of your arousal off his fingers. 

It makes you feel more vulnerable than you already are. His intensity has seared at all your nerves and it makes you jittery every time his eyes meet yours. Armin seems to revel in your frazzled emotions, leaning in real close so you don’t have the luxury of taking your eyes off his. 

“Look at me, baby. Just me, only me, yeah?” You try to say something back, tongue tangling over a response as Armin brushes his nose against yours and kisses you with his eyes wide open. It nearly melts your insides the way he’s staring at you. The kiss devolves into a wet press of parted lips as Armin holds your chin so you can’t look away from him, bright eyes hollowing out your insides, scraping away any thought that isn’t about him, him, him. When you finally part there’s a string of spit sparkling like spidersilk between your mouths and he breaks it with a greedy swipe of his tongue. 

“Gonna fuck you like I love you,” he murmurs, finally, finally pulling his shirt off. “You know I love you, right, princess?” He asks as he shoves his sweatpants down his hips. I love you. Three little words to make your heartbeat stutter no matter how many times he’s said it. No other man would treat you the way Armin does if he wasn’t in love with you. It’s all too much. He’s too much. But Armin doesn’t seem to care if he’s overwhelming you as he reaches between your bodies to rub the head of his dick through your messy folds, your thighs jolting when he grinds against your clit. 

“Tell me you want me, baby, and I’ll fuck you like you deserve. Like the fucking princess you are.” You’re babbling before he’s even finished, tongue tripping over how fast you’re trying to get the words out. A sloppy mantra of “want it, want you, please!” as Armin presses inside you. He’s real slow about it, making sure you feel every single inch of him as he feeds you his dick. His forehead is pressed against yours, damp bangs sticking to your skin as he bottoms out inside you. He’s got you sweating and shaking, nails digging into his skin hard enough to raise welts but he’s just as fucked out on the first stroke. He presses a kiss between your eyes as his hands squeeze at your hips when you try to move, pining you steady against the sheets. 

“Fuck, hold still, princess.” He’s panting against your mouth, kissing over your parted lips like it’ll distract you from the way he’s twitching inside you. You shift again, not sure if you’re trying to run or get closer but all it takes is a flex of Armin’s hands on your hips to make the decision for you. You’re not going anywhere with the way he’s pressing you into the bed. “Still, baby. Keep moving your hips like that and I’m gonna cum too fast.” He presses another kiss to your pouty lips, mumbling about “be still” as he pets his hands over the plushness of your thighs. You drag your nails over his shoulders and feel his muscles tense and relax as he shivers through the feeling, hissing where he’s sucking bruises into your throat. He’s never been one to leave obvious marks, too much of a gentleman to let you go around looking like you got attacked, but it seems like all bets are off with the mood he’s in. He’s trying to prove something, to stake his claim and make sure you don’t forget it. It’s hard to forget anything about him when he’s bottomed out inside you, so deep you can feel him in your throat. And he won’t move. 

“Minnie,” you whine, nuzzling against him because you know he likes it. He smiles like you expected, pushing back against you until you’re nose to nose again. 

“What’s wrong, baby. Tell me what you need.” His hands on your hips have lessened their restraint, tracing shapes over your bare skin as he smiles down at you. 

“Need you. Need you to move. Please!” Your voice pitches upwards, cracking off into a whine as he finally moves. He pulls out real slow before fucking into you with enough intensity to drive you further up the bed. Armin has always been pretty. Blonde hair and big blue eyes. But he even sounds pretty when he’s inside you, whining and moaning like he’s not the one fucking you into the mattress. He balances himself on his forearms, caging your head in so you can’t look anywhere but up at him because he knows you wanna look away. You can’t stand staring at him for too long and seeing all the adoration welling up in his eyes. It’s too much. His hips grinding against your clit while he’s staring down at you, panting about how much he loves you. Your eyes pinch shut as you try to turn your face away from him. 

“Uh-uh.” His hand is quick to find your jaw, holding your face steady even as you refuse to open your eyes. There’s light leaking through your eyelids, brightness going in and out as Armin’s shadow moves above you. It all goes dark for a second as you feel his lips press against both of your eyelids, then your nose before settling over your lips. His tongue drags a messy streak over your mouth before he kisses you again, nipping at your bottom lip. The sharp edge of his teeth is enough to have your eyes popping open and he’s there to see you, giving you another open-eyed kiss as the hand on your jaw slips lower. Down the column of your throat, teasing over your nipple, over the dip of your navel, before his fingers find your clit. The feeling has your eyes rolling back but the second you lose sight of him everything stops. His fingers, his hips. Everything. 

“Eyes on me, princess. Don’t take your eyes off me.” He’s so pretty but even still it all feels too intimate and tears begin to burn in your eyes. Armin kisses each of them away in turn when the tears start to spill down your cheeks. 

“You okay, baby? Need me to stop?” You whimper, more tears coming faster now as you shake your head and cling closer to him. Legs around his waist and arms around his neck as he splits you open with each rock of his hips. Armin smiles and kisses the tip of your nose, murmuring “there’s my sweet girl” as you pull him closer. Each breath feels too short and sticks in your throat as Armin works you to the edge. He’s starting to lose his rhythm, hips stuttering and arm shaking next to your head. 

“Fuck, I’m close, princess. Want you to come with me. Need it.” You’re already there, close to pushing at his stomach to get away from the feeling of his cock bullying that sweet spot inside you as his fingers refuse to let up on your clit. It’s driving you to the edge real fast, melting your insides and scrambling your mind. When you try to speak, nothing intelligible comes out. Just a dumb wash of babbling whimpers as your hands tangle in Armin’s hair to pull him into a spit-soaked kiss. It’s hard to keep your eyes open when you come. Armin has you knotted up tight, every muscle clenched as he works you to the edge and you can feel your eyelids trying to flutter as the tension finally breaks with a blinding flash of ecstasy. It sings through your body, has you wound up so tight Armin is whimpering about your pussy choking his dick. 

“S’too tight, baby. Gotta relax for me. Gotta let me go, princess.” Somewhere in your addled mind you find the audacity to be upset about him telling you to let him go. Wasn’t he just telling you it would never be that easy to get rid of him? You wrap yourself tighter around him with a petulant “no!” 

“Not letting you go. You’re mine!” Armin’s nodding along, whimpering and squeezing at your waist. 

“That’s right, princess. I’m yours. And you’re mine, right?” He’s given up on really trying to move and starts grinding against you, stirring up your insides like you didn’t just come hard enough for your vision to go white for a second. Now you wanna let him go as he digs his cock into your gummy walls, making a bigger mess between your legs. It already sounds sloppy enough, each shift of his hips punctuated by the slick sound of your pussy leaking a frothy mess onto your sheets. You must’ve agreed with whatever Armin said ’cause he’s smiling–positively beaming–down at you as he sits up and pulls you up into his lap. When your hand starts to shove at the hard planes of his stomach he just laughs and slides right back in until he’s pressed as deep as he can get. 

“You’re so warm, baby, I don’t wanna leave. Don’t wanna cum yet.” He whines as he works his hips real slow. 

“S’too much!” It feels like you’ve been struck by lightning, the jolts of static singing through your body as Armin keeps you on his dick after he’s already pulled three orgasms out of you. 

“You can do it, baby.” He sounds just as fucked out as you do, skin sparkling with sweat as he works himself up to the edge. 

“C’mon, Minnie. Please. Love you. Need you to cum for me.” You hadn’t expected your desperate coaxing to have such an immediate effect but Armin tenses up immediately, cumming with a hoarse shout of your name the second you start whining about loving him. He fills you up and then some, leaking down your thighs as he works himself through it. He’s crying and shivering as he pulls you up until you’re chest to chest. 

“Again. Say it again.” He’s got your face in his hands again, keeping your eyes on him. You’re both crying now, tears spilling over his fingers as he kisses you like he’ll die the moment his mouth parts from yours. 

You say it again, “Love you.”

“Again.” 

“Love you, Minnie.”

“Who, baby?” He presses. “Who loves me?”

“I do,” you whisper. “I love you, Armin.” 

“I love you, too, baby. Fuck, I love you so much. My girl. I’m gonna fucking marry you, baby, I swear I will. Gonna take such good care of you.” Each admission is another nail in the coffin. This isn’t how the night was meant to go. You were on a break. Separated. Armin shouldn’t even be here and yet here he is carrying you down the hall to the bathroom and sitting you on his lap while he fills the tub with water. You’re too tired and boneless to protest when he sits in the bath with you, pulling your back into his chest so he can kiss over the marks he left on your neck and whisper about how happy you’ve made him. 

“I’ve been waiting so long, baby. Been waiting for you to say it back. You know I’m not letting you go after this, right? I’m gonna get you a ring, so everybody knows you’re mine. Something real pretty for my princess.” He promises, lifting your left hand to his mouth so he can press a lingering kiss to your ring finger. 

“Just wait, baby. I’m gonna talk to your dad when your parents get back. Ask his permission so I can do this right. I swear I’m gonna make you my girl forever.” 

[sixtysixproblems]

snippet because I cant seem to finish this chapter. monnk buddy I don't think reuniting all your kamino friends in the same group chat is a good idea

[twisted-wonderland-shenanigans]

Twisted Wonderland Marine Biologist!AU Snippet: Mini!Yuu meets a Mermaid

Ugh, I've been so busy with real life stuff lately, but to show you guys that I am reading everything that's being sent in, here's a snippet of a fic response to an ask! The person asked about the mermaid!AU/Marine Biologist AU and wondered: would the boys be more comfortable/curious interacting with mini!Yuu versus older Yuu?

Some notes as a reminder: the boys in the Marine Biologist AU don't speak human languages, but they can understand words based on context and observation. Aside from the Octotrio, everyone is a mermaid/harpy based off of the animal nicknames that Floyd gives them in game!

Also to note (and I will be working on designs once I sit down long enough to do so), the boys will have a less human look to them yet will retain enough details for us to recognize who they are supposed to be.

----------------Begin Snippet----------------

When Yuu woke up, they found themselves alone in the room. Rubbing their tired eyes, they looked around in confusion before they called out, “Mama? Mama!” They waited to see if she would appear, only to be met with silence. This wasn’t the first time they’d woken up in one of the rooms at their mom’s job, and it wasn’t unusual for the adults to be busy with their work.

It also wasn’t the first time they’d snuck out to see the animals.

Excited at the thought of seeing the pretty fish and cute animals again, Yuu climbed out of the cot and pulled their otter plushie Felix with them before toddling out of the room. The hallway was empty, the ceiling towering over them as their footsteps were muffled by the fish tanks and computers. Creeping quietly past the rooms where they could hear adults talking, they couldn’t help but catch a few mumbled words. “-maid…otter……turtle…”

Of all the words, however, the one that caught their attention was ‘otter’, a happy grin crossing their face as they hugged Felix close. They had otters again! Maybe they could play with them and give them shiny new rocks to play with and feel better? The thought was enough to make them hurry over to one of the largest rooms nearby.

Yuu stopped and gasped in awe, staring up at the vast size of the room and the seven large tanks willed with different colors and decorations. Some were more sparkly than others, while some had a more rough and mysterious look to them. Giggling, Yuu toddled over to the closest tank and peered inside. “Oooo,” they cooed, watching as some of the glowing fish flickered in and out of the dark tinted glass. Even the jellyfish looked so gorgeous, mesmerizing the tiny toddler. Seeing a tiny fish flickering close to them, they giggled and waved Felix around to make him dance as they sang, “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming~!”

The fish seemed to follow along with the dancing otter toy for a moment before it suddenly bolted away, Yuu giving a disappointed pout…until something caught their eye. It was big…bigger than anything they’d seen in the tanks before. For a moment Yuu thought that it might’ve been an adult swimming with the animals again, but the shape looked…wrong.

Closer and closer the dark form got, flickers of pink, green, and blue lights running along its body before it emerged into the bright fluorescent lights. Pink and black mottled skin flashed with colorful lights, bright red eyes that seemed to glow staring down at Yuu as they gazed up at it. Short octopus tentacles shifted and settled on the sand as the creature leaned in to get a closer look. The face looked human-ish, but the vampire fangs in its mouth and the flared hair on its head gave them the impression of being a vampire octopus. The sight of this creature with large arms and an eerie look would have unnerved anyone. Yuu, however…

“Wow,” they uttered, eyes shining bright with awe as they reached out to touch the glass with a free hand. “Are you…a mermaid??”

A warm smile crossed the octopus mermaid’s face as it—he, they decided—reached down and placed his own hand where their own was, Yuu marveling over the sheer size of it. A soft, low warble echoed in the water, somehow managing to be loud enough to be heard over the tank motors yet soft enough to be soothing to the ears. He blew out a few bubbles, waving a finger from his free hand around them…and creating shapes in a shower of sparkles!

Gasping, Yuu happily stamped their feet in pure joy as the bubbles—guided by the mermaid’s finger—began to move like the animals he created from them. Dolphins spinning and twirling around, jellyfish gracefully drifting along, eels and octopus floating and swimming along…it was so magical that Yuu didn’t even notice the large form that had quietly landed nearby and was stalking up to them with bright green eyes.

--------------End Snippet-------------

Curious baby meets equally curious non-humans, more at 11!

I'm having so much fun writing this with mini!Yuu, so I hope you guys enjoy it once I find a good stopping point (which may take a while because thoughts of cuteness have taken hold of me 😂)!

[yanderedbdimagines]

Oh I saw the ask about the lock locker with the reader inside can you do it with the other killers The Doctor The Legion The Ghostface The Trickster of your choice ^^ like they got a chance to kidnap there darling but the entity lock the locker the darling is in to spite/punish them

----------------------

I like writing about this request a bit too much to only chose one of them, so I chose them all. >:D For the Legion I chose Julie Kostenko.

------------------------

WARNING: Mentions of torture! Blood, gore, cussing, etc. Very descriptive.

The Doctor

‘Damn it,’ is all you could think in complete and utter frustration as you found yourself locked within the locker on the main floor of the Huntress’s cabin. Just as you swore that the Doctor’s ran past you, you tried to get out and sneak out the way he just came through from, but the doors just wouldn’t give in. 

What makes the matter worse is that you’re the only one left. Your heart pounds in your chest as you fully realize that you are completely at the mercy of one of the most sadistic killers in the realm.

As if sensing your fear, the Doctor's fluorescent eyes peer down through the slats in the locker's door. You can feel his gaze burning into you, and a shiver runs down your spine. You try to stay quiet, but the static in the air only grows stronger, indicating that he knows that you’re in there. As result, your skin’s being prickled by the crackling air that found its way inside of your little space. It’s highly uncomfortable as a continuous tingling sensation, which borderlines to a humming pain, is affecting nearly every patch of your skin.

Suddenly, the Doctor's twisted laughter fills the air, and you realize that he has been toying with you all along. Your stomach churns with fear and anger at the realization that you have played right into his hands.

You fall back against the wall with a defeated sob before sliding downward, your heart haven jumped up into a frenzy and with your lungs already gasping aloud since of a sudden shortage of air due to an ever larger amount of fear jolting through your veins- aware that he could open the doors at any second.

You’re getting sick and you feel like you’re about to puke all over yourself. You can already imagine various scenarios in which he’s already torturing you to death. Very slowly flaying off your skin and precisely trimming through the flesh underneath in order to pick apart your nerves, nails pulled off before traded in by electrodes, skin around your head skinned wide open for better access to your skull before that’s broken wide open… You’ve involuntarily seen short snippets of the videos in the Lery’s memorial institute during few of the trials you’ve ran so far, haven showed you what he’s capable of.

One other method springs out to you the most; how he’s about to fry your brains out in the most painful way possible. His way of how he prefers to kill nearly each and every survivor. Quick, but very, very painful. The survivors who died this way can only remember that it hurt like hell, but they can’t fully remember how hellish it was after they were resurrected by the Entity shortly after. Obviously, you don’t want to find this out yourself, but it seems like this is about to be your first time.

You proceed to close your eyes and cradle your own body as pure panic consumes you from the inside out… But…

“Oh?~” The killer hums.

You dare to open your eyes again, only to see him turn away from you.

You listen closely to the fading footsteps before slowly standing up as the prickle of the skin disappears along with it. Peering out through the roster, the Doctor is nowhere in sight.

You swallow. He must be trying to give you this false sense of security. For all you know, he may be staring at the locker right now and waiting for the moment where you may end up succeeding to leave the locker.

Decided, you stay put. And just as you started to question if you should make a mad dash for it after all after a few minutes has passed by, something dark twisted and swerved around your body.

From just outside of the room, the Doctor witnessed how the Entity took you, and he could already imagine where to.

He sighs deeply before chuckling to himself.

Herman had hoped for this to be the moment to bring you back to his territory and have you all to himself, but the moment he pulled at the handle of the locker, he already knew that he wasn’t even allowed to. This was confirmed just a few minutes after as he closely watched and waited of what would happen; also yearning for the moment if you did get out just so that he could catch you off guard and kidnap you by force.

Still…

Maybe he’s not allowed to have you right now, but the Doctor will do everything in his power to be allowed to have you in the near future.

The Ghostface

You find yourself huddled in the cramped confines of the red locker, your heart pounding in your chest as you hear Ghostface’s raspy breathing just inches away. You had been separated from one of your teammates during the chase, and had to duck into the nearest hiding spot which you could find after you swore you’d lost him. But now, you’re trapped, with no way out and no one to help you- made evident by an intrusive thought that barged through your mind of how you somehow know that they've left through the gates.

The other survivor just went up and abandoned you.

Ghostface's voice suddenly crackles through the locker's vents, startling you out of your thoughts. "Hey there, little bird," he says in his signature distorted voice. "What are you doing hiding in there? Come out and talk to me."

You stay silent, hoping he'll give up and fuck off. “Shit. Now that’s just rude. Staying quiet like that.” But Ghostface is persistent, and he keeps talking; "You know you can't stay in there forever," he says. "Why not come out? I promise I won't ruffle your feathers too badly."

You can feel the panic rising in your chest as his words sink in. You know that if you stay in the locker too long, the Entity might jump in. But the thought of facing Ghostface, with his razor-sharp knife and twisted mind, is almost too much to bear as well.

As the minutes tick by, Ghostface grows increasingly agitated, his breathing becoming more erratic and his words more desperate. "Fuck! Come on, come on, come on," he mutters under his breath. "Why won't you come out? The clock's ticking, sweetheart."

You grip your head. And for a fleeting second, you start to think it actually may be better to face his blade than to feel a spider's leg puncture through your stomach. The killer senses this, and he tries to speak again- perhaps one last attempt to get you to come out.

A low groan suddenly rattles through the air and interrupts him, a sound similar to that of a sinking ship. Only one source is capable of making such a noise.

A thick black mist begins to seep into the locker, swirling around you in thick tendrils. He suddenly screams in anger, haven seen the occurrence the second he looked down. “NO! Don’t you fucking do this to me!” A loud bang follows- indicating that the killer’s rammed his body against the doors as a desperate attempt to get inside.

You suddenly find yourself back at the campfire not long after, surrounded by the other survivors. Jake is there, looking concerned, as he asks you what happened.

You try to explain what happened in the locker, but your words come out jumbled and incoherent. All you can remember is the feeling of being trapped, the sound of Ghostface's voice, and the overwhelming sense of relief when the mist swept you away.

As the other survivors comfort you, you can't help but wonder what would have happened if you had stayed in the locker a moment longer. Would Ghostface have managed to coax you out, or would the Entity have intervened regardless?

One thing is for certain: the horrors of the Fog are not to be underestimated. Including the unpredictable kind as the Ghostface’s just showed to you.

The Legion(Julie Kostenko)

“I’m not here to kill you.” You hear from the other side of the wooden surface.

You take a deep breath and steady yourself, trying to push away the fear that threatens to consume you. You glance at Julie through the narrow slits in the locker door, trying to read her body language. She seems sincere, but you can't be sure for as long as she’s donning that signature mask of hers. “Listen; I know you’re very scared right now, but I mean it when I say that I don’t want to hurt you.”

She's saying that now because she can't get inside. Still...

You considering Julie's words carefully. It's true that she hasn't harmed you, but that doesn't necessarily mean you can trust her. The Legion is known for their cruelty and unpredictable behavior, after all.

“Please, know that I'm not like the others. I don't enjoy hurting people anymore. I just...I just want to be understood, you know? I mean, have I ever hurt you as of late?"

She’s right. To date, she’s basically the only killer who hasn’t, and there has to be a good reason why the Entity has locked you in here because of that.

But at the same time, this could also be a ruse. After all, it’s a stone-cold fact that she’s a killer, and you simply do not know what it is that she’s trying to pull here. For all you know, she’s been playing around with you all along and simply wants to kill you once you’d set a foot outside- mocking you in one of the most twisted of ways just so that she could tell it in full detail to the other Legion members later on.

"Why should I believe you?" you ask, your voice coming out in a shaky whisper.

Julie sighs, leaning against the locker from the other side. "I get it. You don't trust me. And I don't blame you. But you have to understand, we're not like the others. We're not just mindless killers. We have a code."

"A code?" you repeat, incredulous.

Julie nods. "Yeah. A code. We stick together. We don't hurt each other. And we don't kill for fun. Only when we have to. Only when the Entity forces us to."

You consider her words, weighing them against everything you've seen in the Fog. The Legion has always seemed different from the other killers. More... human, in a way. But that doesn't mean you're ready to let your guard down just yet. Not for as long as you remember how they killed any other survivor during a trial, especially the way Julie did.

"I appreciate that you're trying to reassure me," you say finally, your voice shaky, but obviously tainted by semi-sarcasm. "But I don't trust you. And I don’t think I’ll ever will."

There's a long moment of silence, and you can hear Julie pacing outside the locker as if she’s morphed into a starving animal. You hold your breath, waiting for what's next.

But suddenly, something cold swiftly crept up your legs, and you hear a surprised gasp, the sound of a knife falling to the ground before distinct clattering of someone repeatedly pulling against the doors infiltrates your sense of sound.

You feel the familiar sensation of being transported away by the Entity's power as everything shortly goes black.

You blink, disoriented, as you find yourself standing at the campfire.

Julie is obviously nowhere in sight, and you can't help but wonder what might have happened if you had trusted her and stepped out of the locker. But for now, all you can do is try to stay alive and hope that you'll eventually make it out of this seemingly never-ending nightmare.

The Trickster

Yun-Jin Lee had told you and the other survivors everything she knew about the Trickster when she was the newest one to arrive in the Fog. A tradition held so that each and every survivor could make plans and mental preparations in case they’d face him for the very first time- making sure the chance would be as low as possible that they’d ever get caught off guard by one of the newest killers.

Yun-Jin had described each of the Trickster's inhumane killings, displaying his unique style of general torture method.

You had listened intently, taking in every word and committing each detail to memory. You didn't want to be caught off guard by the Trickster, not like the way some of the other survivors already had been.

In exchange, all of you filled her in about the other killers roaming the Fog.

Her words replay over and over again as you found yourself shivering underneath the yellow gaze of the killer in question, separated only by the locked doors of the infamous red locker, and all that preparation seemed to be for nothing.

Your breath catches in your throat as he starts to talk to you with a very thick Korean accent coating each and every word; “The things I’d do to have your undivided attention on me like this more often. The things I’d do now to have this moment last forever. The things I’d do for you. The things I’d do to you.” He chuckles dryly. “Sadly, the Entity has already decided that I’m only allowed to have so very little of you.”

He presses his forehead against the roster, his eyes never wavering from yours. It almost reminds you of a kid trying to be as close to their favorite zoo animal for as far as the fence would allow them. A creepy and downright murderous kid…

"Say my name," he demands suddenly, his tone firm and unwavering. “Say it. I know you’re aware of what my name is.”

You freeze, unsure of how to respond. A braggart laugh flees him- clearly crazy and psychotic in content. "Silence? Shame, but I'll find a way to get you to say my name once I've dragged you back to my place. Now that I think of it, when do you plan to get out of there?” He tilts his head as his almond-shaped eyes narrow in feigned amusement. “Soon, I hope?"

You try to push the fear down, but it's overwhelming. You are trapped, with no way out. You pray that the other survivors will come to your rescue, but deep down you know that it is unlikely. The Entity apparently has its own rules, and it wasn't always on your side.

You are quickly proven wrong as a sudden cold encircled your body, shadows soon overtaking most of your vision.

You feel something flutter on top of you the moment the darkness enveloped you in its cold embrace completely. At the campfire, you realized that it was a signed photograph of him that he has slid inside at the last possible second.

You couldn't help but shiver at the memory of the Trickster's twisted charm as you instantly chuck it into the fire. Yun-Jin Lee had warned you about him, but nothing could have prepared you for the sickening thrill that he brought to the Fog.

[irellia]

516.

Snippets of Vi's life in prison as she grows from a girl into a woman. / word count: 4,182 / blood, death, violence cw

i.

She looks up when the cell door rattles. Despite the deep dark bruise she can feel blooming on her left cheek, the crack in her jaw that makes her whole face ache like it's being split in half every time she inhales, she musters every drop of bitterness in her blood to say, with an impeccable tone of cheery hostility, "back for more? can't get enough of me?"

She has been a Stillwater Bay prisoner for five years and eight months when the nameless soldier standing guard that is now leaning heavily against her cell door says, “I knew you... when you were a kid. I knew your father... Vander?”

Vi stares up at the ceiling, watching the lightbulb overhead ripple red, hating the lazily-amused tinge to his voice.

"congrats. so did I." she dead-pans, and does not look at him, her eyes are hard and on the ceiling, her hand curled into a fist at her side on the bed, and she can smell the salt tang of her unwashed sheets,  her knuckles (thin-skinned, still healing) cracked and bleeding all over them. She's got blood on her mouth, too, a tooth missing, and the old scar on her upper lip is throbbing. She does not mind it; she sinks her teeth in it and bites, listens to the slow rhythm of the guard's breath, the low chuckle that escapes his throat at her sneer.

"he was a good man. a decent man. You could count on him to make things right. He saw reason." the guard won't take a hint, won't go away, and Vi snorts, does not ask what reason means to people like him whose whole life has been a smooth trail, does not even wanna know. Her eyes are on the ceiling and her hand is bleeding on the bed and she digs her nails into her torn palm, blood gushing from the wound and sinks them deeper, her teeth snagging her lower lip.

She hears the fizz and flicker of the fluorescent lamp overhead, feels the sweat that is trickling down her back and soaking the waistband of her trousers; she can smell the hot blood spouting between her nails, the ripe heat of the air that's drenching her cell, the reek of her bed.

“What happened to you?” the enforcer asks, holds onto the bars of her cell door. “I mean—fuck, you were a cute kid, a good kid. Vander was proud of you.” and she can't stand the shape of her father's name in his mouth, she wants to tear it from his tongue, does not wanna hear it, not from someone like him, another asshole criminal in a fancy suit, biting off more than he can chew, thinking that he somehow knows anything about them, just because he didn't kill her people, didn't shoot them dead, didn't drag Vander away into a cell like they had done to her; he still came for them like the mouth of a gun held to their head, still pushed them deeper into the cold dark mouth of their death, stripped them off their freedom, their choice, him and his asshole friends, every last one of them.

How fucking pathetic, to think that she will give a fuck about what he has to say about her, or Vander or what he thinks be knows about them.

Vi opens her eyes, watches the ripple of the fluorescent light overhead, like the shimmer of heat, like water. Her hand curls into a fist, blood leaking through her fingers, hot and thick in her palm. Her sheets are crimson next to her thigh, they stick to her gloves. Under the top bunk, someone has scratched be well in tiny handwriting. She blinks at it.

She says, finally, “you've no idea what you're talking about.”

ii.

Perhaps she should have tattooed a chemical hazard label right across her mouth: this woman is highly reactive, warning; contents under pressure, will explode right into your face if pushed the wrong way.

She's got one ear scarred from where she launched herself at some asshole cutting in line in the chow hall, and got his teeth in her face. He had gotten her fist in his throat and her nails in his left eye, and she had been sent to solitary confinement for a month.

She's got a bruise twice the size of her hand on her left thigh, another sprawling black and purple across her lower back.

She doesn't remember the last time she's eaten more than soupy, green slop and dry bread.

She doesn’t remember what it is like to feel the sun;  all that she knows is the soreness of touch and the pain of every breath, blood on her hands and broken bones. Her fists fly when someone touches her food, shoves her out of their way, sneers at her; she picks fights with every last one of them, every last little bitch they haul off whatever little hole Silco's got them working in and stuff them in her block; she's got thunder in her blood and she is angry, she is furious, years of being shoved into cold, dark places have left her dark and cold herself, her body scarred and bruised; every bone, every surface of flesh, aches.

Her senses are simultaneously numbed as well as in overdrive; she's got a warning in her mouth and her eyes are sharp like the blunt edge of her knuckles, a fist through a drywall.

They throw her in solitary at the drop of a hat, for the slightest reason; it's like she's got eyes stuck on her back 24/7 and she can't throw them off, they are a hand around her throat, choking the air out of her: she breathes the wrong way, does not show up at work, stares at a guard a little too long, a little too hard, and it's over; they steal her meals, stall her in the maintenance room until she's missed dinner, or outdoors time, and the dark, deep anger inside of her flares up and explodes; she's always one step away from flying off the handle, but takes the taunting anyway, takes the beatings and the sneers and the laughter, because she's got to, won't bend for them, won't fold herself into something smaller. She gives as much and as violent as she gets; she's on her way to the chow hall, once, when a guard forcefully steps in her way and sneers, blows his cigarette smoke in her face, patting her down, a sudden inspection, but she's done nothing, she's worked all day at their maintenance room, and she's hungry, she's fucking starving, and he is in her way, his hands on her waist, on her thigh; her fist flies before her mind registers what it's doing, and it's her knuckles, hard and bloodied, smashing through his teeth, a feral, crippling blow to his throat, and he is howling in pain, reeling back in shocked agony, blood gushing down his chin; "fuck you!"  Her entire body heaves as long, shrill, dark screams pour out of her throat, "fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!" and she now uses one hand to grab onto his shirt, her other hand curled into a hard fist that plunges into his face over and over again. She heaves forward once more and topples over him as they crash onto the floor with her on top of him, and her fist is a dark, black blur in his face. "fuck you!" her hand is numb and aching, scarlet with blood, "fuck you!" her eyes are blurry and heat consumes her. Her whole body is shaking, her other hand furiously clutching at his throat as she lands blow after blow into his face, and then, there are hands on her shoulders, grabbing at her, a foot in her side, kicking out viciously and she screams, like a wild, feral animal, she bucks against them, growling and shoving at them as they drag her down the halls and push her into some cold dark cell. Her cheek smacks the wet floor. She moans, feels the hard sharp edge of a boot in her side, and a dark rivulet, meaty and viscous, slips from her mouth. There are hands and boots all over her and her body is burning with the pain of them, her head is spinning and she cries out, a long, shrill, deafening wail of pure, hot rage, swimming on her elbows on the wet tiles, dragging herself to the corner. She hears the steel door be slammed shut with a clang.

She lays on the freezing floor curled up in a ball and screams, clutches at the tiles furtively, her throat raw and gutted, making clogged snorkeling noises.

She passes out.

It’s an image that she has replayed a thousand times in her mind — a glimpse into her safe haven, a recollection that invokes a cosmic sensation of solitude and mental quiet.  Though they seek to break her:  in mind, in body, and in spirit, when her mind is at its wit’s end, she thinks of her, of that moment just before dawn, Powder and herself sitting on that rooftop, watching the lights of the city blink like fireflies and laughing; her little sister's hand in hers; Vander, a warm, soft shadow at their backs, and she is well.

She can do anything.

Take care of Powder. Protect the family.

She gasps awake, her heartbeat shattered in her throat.

She sways on her feet and, groans, slapping her hand around in search of the bed. She can't find it, and she blinks furiously, eyes straining against the darkness that's swallowing her up. There's no bed in the cell, and she slumps against the wall, a pathetic, pained little whimper spilling from her lips.

She's no longer herself, she is anger trapped in tissue-paper skin, netted between bones like gunpowder— balanced on the precipice between death and the silent vastness of her guilt.

I can't. I can't... I couldn't. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry,

she answers him in her head, and passes out again.

This time, no one comes for her, the both of them dead and gone; even the ghosts that haunt her dreams abandon her, she's well and truly all alone.

iii.

She sits on the edge of her bed and peers at herself in the cracked mirror, her hands on her ear, needle piercing into the shell of it, splitting it open. Her cellmate stands at her back, looks down at her, says, "let me do it" and Vi shoves her hand away, says "I'll do it."

Blood trickles down her wrist and she can feel the sharp ache of the hole she is puncturing open. She can feel her cellmate's breath against the back of her neck, and when she feels her hands on her now, carefully sliding the earring through the fresh piercing, Vi does not flinch away. She pours alcohol over her ear and Vi hisses through her teeth and bangs her fist against the wall, and that earns her strange laughter from her, a flick in her cheek. "there. pretty." she says, and Vi snorts, meets her eyes in the mirror. "lets do your nose." she says and when she reaches for the needle, Vi lets her pry it from her hand.

iv.

Something about her feels wrong as she makes her way from her cell to the gym down at rec like she’s more storm than woman, a danger-zone high-risk disaster area, full of sharp bone slabs and a dark snarl on her lips, rough calloused hands swathed up in wraps soaked through with blood. Her lower lip is split but it’s healed over, congealed dark blood in the corner of it.

She takes her anger out to the walls and the punching bags; but she does not stop there; she takes it out to anyone bold enough to get on her bad side, give her a look she does not like, sound a little too condescending for her liking when answering a question she's asked or demanding that they return something they've taken or she believes they've taken from her; she takes it out on the assholes at chow hall that cut in line, to the prick that steals Zeri's smokes, and the guard that gets too handsy with Janna.

She doesn't mind the solitary anymore; if anything, she almost welcomes it. Whatever they throw at her, she takes and gives back twice as much.

The next time a guard gets all up in her face, she does not hesitate.

She swings at them with everything that she's got.

v.

The only time she finds herself actively pouring every last ounce of willpower she's got in her to behave and stay out of trouble is when she starts working on her tats. She doesn't wanna fuck this one up, doesn't wanna have to spend half a month in solitary, tattoos half finished, or worse, ruined in her hurry to get them done before they throw her equipment out.

She's been given a sketchbook and a pen at one of the art classes this Piltie (that Vi vehemently thinks fancies herself some sort of noble saviour) holds every week down at the rec, and although she does not actively participate, sometimes she'll sit and silently watch them work with a snarling smirk draped across her lips, chugging coffee (she's put too much milk in it and it's burnt but she chugs it all down anyway) and when Noble Lady who fancies herself a saviour of poor misguided souls looks her way, tries to catch her eye, Vi pretends she does not see it. She's been staying up at night in her bed, scribbling away in it until she passes out, pen in hand, sketchbook sprawled open next to her pillow. When she runs out of pages, she scowls and doesn't say anything, but she doesn't take her sketchbook down at the rec anymore. She shoves her hands into her pockets or chugs down black coffee, standing against the wall, pretending she's not there for the class.

Somehow, a brand new sketchbook shows up on her bed. She does not question it, won't look a horse in the mouth.

She's got so much art in her that she doodles on her hands until it spills up her wrists and on her kneecaps with their little goosebumps, ink splashing onto her neck and arms and even her back, the part of it that she can reach.

Something's snapping in her mind, synapses flashing, and for the first time in years, she feels alive, she's crackling with it, the fire, the want, the exhilaration.

She gets down to work: makes a tattoo machine from the motor of a portable record player she steals from rec. The barrel for the needle is made from a hollowed out pen. She scoops the plastic out and fills the tube with sooty, thick ink she's made out of burnt plastic, makes the outer case of the pen shorter by cutting it in half. A sharpened guitar string from Zeri's old guitar is what she uses as a needle, shoves it through the barrel and connects it to the motor.

She sets to work. For days, she sits in her little cell and plunges the needle through her skin, feels its sweet, sharp kiss as she moves it along her arms.

When Zeri silently comes to sit next to her on the floor and eyes her doodles in her sketchbook, Vi gives her a strange look. Zeri offers to do the parts of her back she cannot reach, and Vi tells her to fuck off.

Later, when their cell block's dark and quite and there's only an hour of light left before they're forced back into their cells to sleep, she slips into Zeri's cell and leans against the doorframe, watches her bury her nose deeper into her book, sprawled across her bed.

She says, "Sooo..." and strange, sly bashfulness pauses on her lips, frothing at the corners of her heart-shaped mouth, tugging gently at the seam of her lips. "You still wanna help, little one?"

She does.

vi.

She remembers this one time when she was 9. Powder had been sick, burning with a fever that had been refusing to abate for days, and she had helplessly sat on the floor by her bed and had sellotaped her entire hand for some unholy reason, probably because she had been going fucking stir crazy with worry and guilt that she could not make this right, she could not punch the hurt away and Pow had been whimpering in her sleep, calling for their mother and Vi, mother and Vi, and Vi could have never given her mother but she had sat there curled up close to her and whispered that she was there, she wasn't going anywhere, she was never going to leave her, it would be okay.

She had sat fuming in her helplessness, had sellotaped her hand from her elbow right down to her fingers, and then, she had just knelt there, at the side of Powder's bed, sobbing because she had been terrified that she would never get out of it, she couldn't move her hand, couldn't even lift her fingers enough to touch Powder, and she had sat there and sobbed into her little sister's sheets until Vander had come in to find her crying and had had to cut her out with scissors, and to this day she could still remember him patting her head, telling her that it was going to be okay. "Why'd you trap yourself?" he had laughed, ruffling her hair.

Vi hadn't given him an answer.

It comes back to her one morning as she stares at her ruined cell after a sudden inspection (she had been the only one in the whole cell block to be marked for it, then again, she had kind of been expecting it after beating those assholes up with the barbell and her fists down at the courtyard during mandatory exercise; she had come to know now it was common procedure after a malfeasance— huh, what a ridiculous fucking word to use to say that she's beaten some dick's face into a bloody pulp), her whole life scattered along the floor: her wraps, her pencils, the few clothes she's got, an empty can of beer that she has been using to spill the ink she makes out of burnt plastic cups she steals from the chow hall to draw.

She cries over her torn sketchbook with a laugh in her throat, alone in her cell.

vii.

Pink, they keep calling her.

Pink, they sneer it at her like it's her name.

Pink, and Kid, and 516, sometimes just "five one' six" or "five sixteen!" like she's some dusty file shelved away in their cabinet that they suddenly need to spread open and read through, nothing more than the color of her hair, a number, an age.

She's pretending to sweep the floor when it happens, a chore she's never willing to do. The constant flicker of the lightbulb overhead is pissing her off, and she lifts the broom and taps it hard, shaking it back and forth. The buzzing stops.

Someone howls into the silence, a bloodcurdling, dark shriek of terror.

The block is flooded with enforcers, and she stands in the hallway in numb confusion, and gasps when they drag a dead girl from a cell.

She can hear the wet, slick noises her body makes when they drag her out into the hallway, blood streaking the floor like a ribbon tied to her throat.

Someone tries to pump the life back into her heart, but she doesn't come back.

Vi watches the red ribbon of blood around her throat, blinking hard.

They ask for her name, and no one gives it to them, but they keep asking. The air ripples, filled with the metallic stench of death. A fly buzzes around her ear.

There's a rough, hard hand on her shoulder, and she's shoved back, spit splattering against her cheek, and she's shaken out of her daze. She growls out "I don't know." teeth snapping.

"two ninety." someone calls the girl on the floor. She's two ninety to them. "She's dead." She's two ninety to everyone. She doesn't know her name... She never asked.

"hey, grab her legs. Help me pick her up" one of the wardens says to the other.

"Hey! Hey! Five sixteen! clean up the mess!" They bark in her ear, and as she watches her broom swirl the last of the girl's blood on the floor, something inside of her snaps.

She's got a fucking name.

The next time she walks down that hallway, she stops to stare at the floor, the fading crimson stain that has soaked through the tiles, won't ever be completely scrubbed off as though some part of the world is refusing to forget her.

Her name had been Alys.

Vi's name's tattooed on her left cheek.

viii.

“you can be so nice when you want to.” her hands are on Vi's lap, they are sitting in her bed, in her cell, and Vi is painting her nails with delicate strokes of the brush. Her teeth have left bright marks on her lips from the searing tangibility of her concentration. Her patience astounds the other girl, she's never seen Vi hold still for more than ten seconds at a time, yet here she is, brush in hand, lips pinched; the detail is so miniscule and there are small red marks on her skin where Vi has pinched her for fidgeting. Vi's eyebrows have long since been furrowed into harsh lines, so drawn, she's cocooned herself with her thoughts. Her voice is absent when she responds, noticeably lacking in any interest.

"Hey! You gonna let me do this, Miss Chatty, or not?"  Vi taps her leg once. “Keep still.” Is all she says.

There’s a fleeting smile in her eyes. 

ix.

"hey" she smirks her way to where this massive dude is standing, broom in hand, sweeping the floor. He doesn't recognise her, that much she can immediately tell by the way his eyes (dark, cold eyes, eyes with teeth) sweep over her like she's something he needs to scrub clean too, and sudden, furious anger swells up like a flood in her throat. She swallows.

"I didn't know they locked up little kids."

Her cheek spasms.

"funny. They don't."

He just stares at her meaningfully, like she's some kind of a joke, and laughs. Sharklike, his missing teeth feel like they make the bark harsh.

"you gonna give me what I want, or we gonna have to add another missing tooth to your fucking collection?" Vi growls.

He blinks, his eyes empty and on her, like the barrel of a gun held to her teeth.

She's been his shadow, sleek, unassuming, watching him for days now; he's got answers and she will not walk away from him without them.

He pats his thigh, and Vi knows what he's got stashed away there, has watched him use it on another dude at mesh, unblinkingly chewing down her dry bread as her eyes trailed after his every little move like a hook, sinking into the prey.

"I know what you're in for. I know who you and your little friend work for. So." Easy way or hard way, goes unsaid, she cracks her fingers hard, violently rolls her left shoulder into a slow shrug. "Where's my fucking sister?"

"I've no idea what you're talking about." A shrug, more laughter. Rotten, yellow teeth.

"bet you fucking do."

"Don’t let ugly words touch those sweet lips baby, I’ll wipe your mouth clean."

Her fists clench, her mouth twitching spasmodically, "and I'll color you purple." she plunges forward, follows her anger like a fishing line. She cuts out safety and speeds towards the ocean of her fury.

When they drag her away from him, she's laughing, her hands are numb and aching, crimson with blood.

"I got all I wanted." She hisses in triumph, and they have to rip her off of him, but she doesn't struggle when they haul her off, clawing at her back, shove her back into her cell block. Her laughter spills like gasoline through the hallways, waking everyone up, even the air is thrumming with it, sharp and hot.

That night, before she sleeps, she adds the spiked knuckles she's stolen from him in the collection, under her bed.

"fifty-two..." she whispers, and tosses the t-shirt that she was wearing the day they had brought her here, back over the weapons, shielding them from view. They'll be fucking gone next time they toss her cell, but for now, no one's gonna get their hands on them.

Her head feels lighter when she lays her body down on her bed.

She stares at the tally marks on her wall until she falls asleep.

[coffehbeans]

Sinking Chips Chapter 1

Okay I'm done editing, new story aaaaaahh

This is the story written after the result of this poll! Thanks sm for voting and for your patience! It took a looong while aaaaah

These two characters are very dear to me. They're one of my oldest g/t ocs alongside Juhren and Sunflower, and I've even made art for them years ago. (funny how I said back then that I'd write about them soon and it took me SIX FREAKING YEARS)

Anyway, I'm very happy to finally share a snippet of their story! Enjoy! <3

Summary: Caytlin Brooke, a sophomore marine biologist student gets stranded in the middle of the sea, with no hopes of rescue. But a chance encounter challenges all she knew about marine life, and a bond is formed in the proccess.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The whales’ singing blasted like trumpets in the cave, a sign that a new Heir was about to be announced. With King Freyr’s last breath on the day before, it was a matter of time until the Ocean declared a new protector for the North Atlantic.

Merfolk swam and gathered at the center of the plaza; a large outdoors space made of polished stone. Bioluminescent creatures illuminated their path in a spiral shape, and a large crowd formed as they cheered with clicks and whistles. In front of them laid a magnificent castle, bigger than the length of two blue whales, and with towering, pointy towers. It was made of the same dark blue stone material as the vast cave, and if it wasn’t for the glowing plankton and the blue gemstones decorating the walls in spiral patterns, the intricate carvings of the castle would merge with the walls of the cavern.

Inside the palace, Queen Haliae watched her tears float upwards, the pain of losing her King like a fresh wound in her heart. On each arm, she held a baby, non-identical twins that would never meet their father. One had pale blue skin, as light as the sand on the seabed at night, and dark turquoise hair that flowed like the ocean waves. His tail was a greyish shade of blue, mimicking the pattern of a blue whale, just like his mother’s. The baby cried as the light of the Ocean’s Oracle shone like a chandelier on the ceiling, a ball-shaped crystal filled with flowing, glowing water. It was too bright for the little mer’s small, fragile eyes. The other twin on Haliae’s arm had shorter, unrulier hair as light as the sand with a distinct turquoise undertone, and his skin was a darker shade of blue. His tail was a deep blue like his father’s, mimicking a humpback whale. Unlike his brother, this baby was transfixed by the glowing orb over his head, giggling every time light pulsated from it.

The mother swam up to that crystal with unwavering determination in her eyes, eliciting a prayer to the Ocean, which flowed as easy as a whale’s call. She finished it with a personal supplication, one she whispered so only Mother Ocean would hear.

“May whoever you choose be a beacon of guidance in this kingdom, much like their father were... And may the other find his footing as the New Heir’s shadow.”

As if answering her, the Ocean’s Oracle shone a light as bright as the sun, blinding the mother, her children, and all merfolk gathered inside the palace. The crowd waiting outside whistled and twirled, knowing that the time for a new Heir was soon to come.

When the light dimmed and the Queen opened her eyes, one of her kids was glowing.

It was not the giggling child, no, for Mother Ocean chose the crying, screaming child, who now sobbed louder while glowing a vivid blue. The teardrop-shaped necklace he wore filled with cerulean, fluorescent water, a sign that he was now the New Chosen Heir.

The mother smiled, melancholy shining in her features. So, this was the one that would carry her husband’s legacy. She kissed the unchosen child on the forehead, giving him to one of the servants so she could present the chosen child to the people.

The glow dimmed from her son as Queen Haliae swam towards the outskirts of the castle, and the crowd praised their Majesty with louder cheering. She raised her kid up high, swimming further above her kingdom, and the whistling of merfolk and sea creatures alike shook the foundations of their cave. She cradled her small son in her arms, who was looking at her with pure, round eyes, unaware of the reason for the commotion around him. It was customary for the royal merfolk of the North Atlantic to name their children after the Heir was chosen, and so she thought of a name much fitting for him:

“Your name will be Aegir Sonhavet.” She whispered to his tiny ears.

…

Warm temperature of 77 degrees Fahrenheit. A soft breeze by the sea, no sign of storm in sight. No prediction of wild waves today either.

Today, Caytlin would go cruising.

She shot up from her seat at yet another cell development class, huffing as she shoved things inside her bag before waving bye to her friends and hurrying outside. Pushing her strands of light brown, shoulder-length wavy hair aside and fixing the collar of her white and blue stripped shirt, Caytlin searched for her house’s keys in her jean shorts pockets. Her hand curled around a cute dolphin keychan and she sighed in relief. Putting her keys away safely in her pocket, Caytlin walked out of the university with wide steps.

She walked, no, dashed away from the building, saying hello here and there to the people she knew in her hurried way, until arriving at the bus stop. She recovered her breath as she waited anxiously, pacing left and right, and celebrated when her bus finally arrived.

A few minutes later and Caytlin was close to her home by the harbor. She walked on the sidewalk, glancing to the calming sea to her right, the view of its gentle waves and its deep blue color filling her excitable heart with absolute joy. There it was, in the distance, anchored by the harbor: her, oops- their, well-kept cabin cruiser.

‘Dad is definitely not home today. Soo, I will definitely come back before he arrives!’ She thought, a mischievous smile on her face.

Caytlin checked the inside of her house, which was on the way to the port, to confirm her suspicions. Yep, he wasn’t home. The winds were sure favorable today.

Passing by her house to pick some lost supplies, which she piled on her arms with hurry, Caytlin strode towards the awaiting ship she and her father had for over ten years already. He had taught her everything about the ocean, from how to maneuver the cruiser to curious facts about sea animals, all of which cultivated her deep passion for marine life to begin with.

Loading the ship with supplies, Caytlin boarded it and steered out of the port, giggling with excitement.

And off she went, towards the open sea.

…

It’s jammed.

The engine is jammed.

Caytlin pushed the lever again. Nothing. She tried kicking the engine. No results. She tried opening it with a screwdriver and seeing the inside, and her body ran cold.

The wires were burnt. Completely burnt.

And she had forgotten to bring the reserve components.

“W-well, it was an old boat, after all…”

Caytlin’s heart hammered full swing. She’s in the middle of nowhere, for she cruised too far away from shore, way ahead of the safety margin she and her father had stablished. There’s no land in sight, no signal on her phone and no way of returning back safely.

“I-it’s fine! I-I’ll find a way. Dad will notice I went to the sea. Yeah.”— She said in-between panting breaths.

She’d be rescued safely, that’s it. She’ll just have to wait out in her pretty little ship until help arrives.

That is, if the ship doesn’t topple over or break down when that huge, dark cloud in the sky reaches her.

Caytlin gasped and dashed outside of the cabin to look at the storm that was nearing her location. She gripped the railing tightly.

“No way! The weather forecast said there was no rain today!”

‘But the weather isn’t always predictable’, her father had said once.

Caytlin groaned and clutched at her hair, sucking in a breath. She had to find a way out. She had to.

‘The radio! Maybe the radio would work!’ She ran back inside the cabin and pressed a number she memorized all too well – her father’s.

“No signal. Why there’s no signal?!” – Caytlin flailed her free hand while bouncing on her feet and begging under her breath, as the phone ringed in her ear. – “Please work please work please work plea – “

A heavy slamming of something against the bottom of the ship sent Caytlin flying to the ground with a scream.

“AAH! What was that?! —”

The perturbation made the ship swing side to side, as the ocean waves rolled under it. Caytlin got up, clutching her head, and left the cabin, looking for the source of the sound.

What she saw underneath sent shivers down her spine.

There was a huge shadow under the water. Bigger than two to three times her cabin cruiser, and it was moving.

Despite being knowledgeable of marine life, Caytlin’s heart still hammered against her chest.

“Must be a curious whale. Yeah! Just a whale… But…”

Realization set deep within her, heartbeat rocking inside her ribcage.

“But whale season hasn’t arrived yet –”

The shadow hit the ship in the bottom and Caytlin fell with a shriek. Supporting herself on her hands and knees, she turned around, out of breath as she feared the ship toppling over and making her fall into the cold depths below.

Just as she was reaching for the railing, a shadow covered her frame.

Caytlin hugged the metal bar and closed her eyes shut, preparing herself for the splash of a humpback whale but, nothing came.

Instead, all she heard was breathing, like the creature was right by the crook of her neck.

With wheezing breaths, Caytlin clutched the railing with clammy hands. A huge droplet of water fell to her right, hot, humid air blew on her back, making the hairs on her skin turn up to their end.

She turned around.

The visage confused her. Something light blue covered her field of vision everywhere, but it moved, no, it contracted like muscle tissue. Adorning it were dots of bright blue and teal-colored spots, trailing up the fleshy surface and towards a –

A face. There was a billboard-sized face right over her. White, round eyes covered her field of vision, the cerulean blue irises staring down at her. Its unnaturally grey pupils alone must be bigger than a basketball, massive eyelids covered them. A blink.

Caytlin screamed from the top of her lungs and tried to get up, only to slip and fall hard against the floor. A clicking sound reverberated above her and the ship swung under the creature’s blunt force. She scrambled back with wide eyes until she hit something soft and wet and – Oh gosh, it was the creature’s hand, a gigantic hand brushed against her back, claws longer than her head hovering above her.

Caytlin screamed until her throat went hoarse and the creature backed away, rocking her ship with it. She skidded over the slippery surface until she managed to stabilize long enough to sit still and stare at whatever was staring back at her, a few feet away.

The creature was more distant than before, but very much there and not going anywhere. Only when her screams subsided did Caytlin manage to try and process what the hell was going on with panting breaths.

The ocean got eerily silent, the only sound being the ripples on the sea, the huge creature’s breathing, and Caytlin gasping for air. She attempted to calm her racing heartbeat with deep breaths, one after the other, to process whatever was it that was floating right in front of her, glancing at her small frame with widened eyes.

Directly in front of her field of vision, there was a human-looking chest wider than her boat’s length. Three slits laid on top of its torso on each side, which looked like gills, as they opened and closed under the water. She looked up, and up, at something that resembled very much a male chest, blue in color, with those same splotches of bright blue adorning its – his, vast shoulders and —

That face again. Human-looking, too human and not human at the same time, with almond eyes, no visible crease on its eyelids, blue irises and translucent pupils. There were two thin lines over the eyes in the shape of eyebrows. A flat nose that resembled nothing that could be found in a human, as its nostrils opened and closed like the blowhole of a whale. The spots on his face were like freckles, a darker shade of blue than the blotches on his shoulder.

Despite the foreign appearance, he looked… Beautiful, Caytlin exhaled, lost in wonder. Wavy hair flowed from his head like waterfalls, a dark teal color with light blue tips, which curled at its ends just like waves that crashed on the beach. On one of his pointy ears, which tapered on their ends like a fin, adorned three purple jewels, made of a crystal she couldn't recognize. Around his neck there was a glowing, teardrop-shaped necklace with purple beads, while one arm had a silver-colored arm ring. His arms had dark blue spots and stripes scattered in a random fashion, and Caytlin wondered if they were natural markings or painted on.

He looked like a mermaid out of a fairytale. Except the 80-something-feet in height.

“I-I… Am I dreaming?” – Caytlin whispered.

The creature chirped in return in what sounded like a very loud whale call over the water, way louder than any whale she has heard. Caytlin yelped and covered her ears.

The creature sank itself lower in the water, sending ripples through the ocean, but not taking its huge eyes off her.

Such a creature shouldn’t exist. She must be hallucinating. Yup. That must be it. And yet, why did it look so real? Caytlin looked up at him with widened eyes.

“Y-you’re not gonna eat me, are you?”

She only received a confused noise in return. The creature didn’t open its mouth, yet the sound coming from its throat was just as loud as if it was from a speaker. It must be its way of communication, similar to that of whales and dolphins. That was…

Fascinating.

With buckling knees, Caytlin got up, maintaining eye contact with the creature while clutching the nearby railing with all her might. The merman stayed on its place, observing Caytlin with what she guessed was mighty curiosity. The expressions looked so human… It was like she could see what it – he – was thinking. He widened his eyes as he watched Caytlin get up, sucking in a breath and closing the gills on the side of his neck.

“H-huh, looks like you aren’t going to eat me. Phew.” She sighed and gave the creature a crooked smile.

The creature, however, looked down at her with a confused, but curious expression.

And then it got closer.

“Oh gosh, no no no –! “

He raised himself more above water, waves crashing as he loomed over her with a long shadow and – yep, definitely bigger than 80 feet – Caytlin made a note inside her head. She had swum next to blue whales before and what was before her was certainly bigger than a blue whale, so pretty much over 100 feet tall. When the creature noticed she was shaking and backing away, it raised its eyebrows and sank a little to the ocean, with only its face at view.

It came closer to her, anyway.

Caytlin gasped and sealed her eyes shut when the merperson got so close she could feel his breath – and oh, he was carnivorous alright – her heart racing as she gritted her teeth, pressing herself so hard against the wall outside the cabin she thought she would merge with it. It seemed to be observing her, looking her up and down with a curious expression, moving closer and leaning his large hand over the boat, which was on the verge of capsizing as the metal groaned under the heavy weight.

His eyes observed her just like she has seen whales do before. Was this creature intelligent? Was it a fish? A mammal? Caytlin had so many questions…

She slowly got up again, not taking her eyes off the creature, and sighed shakily, calming her accelerated heart.

If she wasn’t hallucinating right now, this was the greatest discovery human kind had ever seen. And she was its first witness!

Caytlin took one step closer towards the merperson – ‘Yeah, I’m really going crazy’ –she thought, raising her hand with a nervous expression. She knew she had to be calm but, it was so difficult! His face rose far above her and she had to crane her neck up to meet his eyes. Taking a deep breath and closing her own eyes to disperse her fear, Caytlin reached out with a trembling hand, little by little until –

A gasp echoed from above her and she opened her eyes.

She had touched the creature’s nose and he looked at her tiny hand with widened eyes. Caytlin raised her eyebrows. For that moment, time had stopped, her green eyes lost in his. It felt so…So out of this world. She smiled, noticing how both were so curious about each other.

And soon the creature acted the same way.

Caytlin yelped when a wet appendage – the mer’s finger, she realized – caressed her arm up and down as it peered at her with those glossy, cerulean eyes. A sigh ruffled Caytlin’s hair, and she gulped down her nervousness as the creature touched her arm, claws grazing her, heartbeat rocking loudly in her chest.

Satisfied, the creature backed away from her and started lowering his head back to the ocean, with a frown on his gigantic face. ‘Was he sad…?’

When the creature sunk his face completely, Caytlin realized with sinking dread that it was leaving her alone.

“Wait!” she shouted, reaching out towards the ocean.

The merperson raised his torso up again, surprising Caytlin as she fell on her back towards the floor with a yelp. ‘Ow, I really have to stop falling down.’ – she thought. He sunk his body again, whistling and clicking with an apologetic expression, and left only his eyes visible. Caytlin got up and sighed in relief when the merman returned. An impulsive idea lightened up in her head: She could ask for the merman’s help!

But… How would she do this?

“I’m, um, you see, I need help!” – she said, waving her hands around. The merman only tilted his head in confusion.

“Oh, u-um, how am I going to do this…” – Caytlin looked down pensively until an idea popped up, and pointed to the vast horizon behind her with her hand.

“Um, shore, land! I need to get back there! See?”

She made a motion of sea waves with one arm, while cupping her other hand over it, mimicking the vague shape of a boat.

“Boat, um, crashed!”

She ran to her cabin, which made the merman raise his head above water, and tried to turn the engine back on, which failed with loud noises.

“S-see? It’s not working! And, and –” Caytlin ran back to the railing, where the creature looked down at her with a puzzled expression.

“So I need help! Got it?” she gave him a tentative smile. The merman’s frown got deeper.

Yeah, he didn’t seem to have understood a thing. Caytlin groaned and sat on the floor, holding her face with both hands.

“This won’t work…”

And just as she lowered her head, loud splashes sounded all around her. The merman was probably going back to the ocean. It was better this way. Help would arrive soon, anyway.

But when Caytlin kept hearing the sounds, she opened her eyes and looked around. What resembled a blue whale’s tail appeared in her field of vision, splashing gently around her. The creature was swimming around her boat, looking it over. As if analyzing it. Her eyes widened in wonder. Yeah, there was no way he didn’t have similar human levels of intelligence. His behavioral patterns were unlike any other animal she has seen. The merman swam back to be in front of Caytlin, with his eyes lit up, as if he had understood something. He covered her once again with his shadow, looked down at her and nodded.

That was the only warning Caytlin got.

The creature’s heavy hand collided against the bottom of her boat with a loud thump, sending her sliding backwards with a yell until she hit the wall of her cabin again. The boat moved towards the direction Caytlin had pointed before in her previous attempts to communicate. She got up on shaky knees, supporting herself until she entered the cabin, and looked straight ahead, widening her eyes in realization.

The creature was moving the boat back to shore. It was helping her. It had understood what she meant!

Caytlin giggled, leaning over the front window with a gleeful expression on her face. The boat glided quickly on the ocean with the help of the merman’s hand, and from the distance, loud splashes resounded from the powerful flaps of the creature’s tail. Caytlin walked out of the cabin and looked up to the merman, who blinked down at her.

“It’s working!” she raised her hands in triumph.

And then, just when Caytlin thought she could not be more surprised, the creature glanced back at her, and the corners of his lips tilted up.

He smiled.

Her jaw went slack. She could not believe this. This mermaid-like creature, despite his gigantic and intimidating size, not only was intelligent enough that they managed to communicate somehow, but was also helping her get to shore. Not to mention his many human-like mannerisms. She was so… So mesmerized. She gazed at his focused face.

‘I need to know more about him.’

But the rocking of the boat followed by a complete stop made her leave her blissful moment. The merman had stopped swimming, so Caytlin turned around, realizing why. She could see the shore in the distance, close enough so she could be seen and rescued, but far enough so that the creature could slip back into the ocean unnoticed. She looked back up at him, who answered with a sympathetic frown, as if to say “That’s as far as I’ll go.” Caytlin looked down.

“Right, guess this is it, huh?”

She approached his face once again, capturing every single detail in it, hoping to write it all down on her journal later that day. Caytlin reached out a hand for him, who complied, leaning his face against it, as she felt the wet and smooth texture of his skin.

“Thank you… I just hope I can see you again.”

Caytlin looked up, and backed away, leaving space for the creature to dive deep into the ocean again. It lingered by her company for a few moments, as if to also capture her every detail, and with a nod, he dived back into the ocean.

…

The rescue team didn’t take long to find her, even in the pouring rain of the heavy storm. When she stepped safely onto the beach, soaked from head to toe, her dad Charles hugged her tightly, scolding her right after. He was mad, but that was understandable. She wasn’t a teenager anymore, but she sure acted recklessly like one. Caytlin took her dad’s sermon with a saddened but understanding expression, nodding at everything he said, even if her mind drifted somewhere else, back to that encounter by the sea.

Later at night she wrote everything down, from the moment the engine got jammed to the time the merman swam away, as well as observations regarding the creature’s fascinating behavior and appearance, all in precise detail.

Caytlin plopped into her bed, looking at the ceiling with longing and determination.

‘I’ll definitely find you again.’

…

Looking up at the vast stone ceiling of his room. Aegir’s mind drifted back to that excitable, fearful yet curious human face. He remembered the way her tiny hand touched the tip of his nose, how her dry skin brushed against his fingertip.

Humans were, fascinating. She was fascinating.

‘I want to see her again.’

Aegir raised his body up, and secretly swam out of his room towards the dark of the night ocean. He left the cavern, where his kingdom resided in, with a silent whoosh of his tail, swimming up to the surface. Taking in the moonlight, Aegir closed his eyes, opening his nostrils to breathe in the fresh air, and leaning on his back over the ocean’s surface, letting the relaxing currents drift him away.

Dread sank heavy in his mind.

He had just made a grave, grave mistake.

And he did not want to go back on it.

Aegir looked at the moonlight, lost in the recollection of that human’s face, yearning to find her again.

‘Mother Ocean, what am I going to do now?’

[direwombat]

remember when i said that my last wip wednesday was probably going to be the last snippet of ch7 that i'll share? yeah that was a lie. have some more.

He drags her out the door and down a series of hallways. They wind their way through the dark and hauntingly vacant corridors, twisting and turning through the labyrinthine hospital. Every step the soldier takes echoes heavily down the hall, heavy thuds bouncing off the chipped plaster walls.

The whole place is eerily empty.

Her shadow stretches grotesquely in front of her, its shape flickering in time with the unsteady buzz of the fluorescent lights overhead. The sharp, lemony smell of antiseptic stings at her nose, but it's quickly overwhelmed by the heavy, metallic taste of rust and fresh blood that comes to rest on the back of her tongue and throat. Bloody claw marks mar the wall they're following, only to divert down a hall where, somewhere further down, a helpless victim begs for death.

Her stomach lurches. The hair at the back of her neck stands on end as she's hauled past the pained wails and pleas for death; away from yet another victim of the cult she couldn't save.

The man drags her through the Veterans Center until finally cutting through an empty industrial kitchen and shoving through a side door that leads to the building's dumpsters. Gingerly, he unhooks her arm from around his shoulders and leans her against one of the bins. "Wait here," he mutters. "I'll be right back.

She slumps against the dumpster as her Friend scouts ahead. In her sudden sense of stasis, the weight of her body comes crashing down on her and the haze over her mind returns. Her knees buckle and she slides down the metal siding. Her stitches prickle, the skin itchy and tight. That aching throb begins to resurface without the painkillers to dull it. She leans her head back, knocking against the hollow dumpster and producing a resonant clang.

She goes stock still. Eyes wide, breath held; her muscles coiled to push herself upright and bolt at the slightest sign of trouble. Shit that was loud.

Her teeth are bared, fingers curled, prepared to claw and bite anyone who dares come to investigate.

She waits.

But no one comes.

The fine hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Her heart hammers against her rib cage. Her teeth fucking itch.

This is a trap.

It has to be.

Why else would her Friend carry her so close to freedom only to abandon her? Why else would he discard her behind a dumpster like some stray animal?

It has to be some sort of sick, twisted game.

Catch and release.

Jacob and his men have to be out there, watching. Waiting. Lurking in the shadows, patiently waiting for her to run, all so they can chase her down and haul her ass back, like demons dragging a sinner's soul down to Hell.

She'll be damned if she doesn't take at least one of them down with her, first.

All she sees is the flash of red rounding the corner and she's on her feet. She lunges, one hand grappling the stranger's arm while the other wraps around their throat. With her bare feet planted firmly in the dirt, she swings the other person's weight around until she's holding them against the grimy brick exterior of the building. The webbing between her thumb and index finger notches just under their Adam's apple and she presses against their windpipe, teeth bared and snarling.

"Easy—" She chokes them harder. "—Easy! It's me."

It takes longer than it should for her to recognize the voice. The choked, frantic whispers are so different from the hurried and hushed ones she'd heard from her Friend as he was dragging her through the halls. But in those pleading, dark brown eyes, she finds a sense of familiarity. She's seen these eyes before.

Her Friend sucks in a quiet, shuddering breath. "You're in control here, Deputy" he whispers evenly. "Kill me if you want, but if you do, you'll be on your own in a den of hungry wolves."

The threat doesn't escape her, but his logic is enough to get her to release her grip around his neck.

But only barely.

"What's your game?" she growls, and she pulls him towards her only to slam him back against the wall. "The fuck're you gettin' outta helpin' me? Who are you?"

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