#he’d forget to feed it and it would die and he’d level a city about it

[monsterboyblood]

I truely think Wily could fix Bass’ “can’t listen to instructions” issues by giving him a tamagotchi.

You might say “but he wouldn’t care if it died or not so he wouldn’t learn anything” he would if Wily turned it into some kind of competition.

[navegandoaciegas]

Broken Wings {2/2}

Pairing: Lee Bodecker x Reader

Summary: You’re a small town girl with big city dreams, set on leaving Knockemstiff and its Sheriff behind for good. Lee Bodecker would do anything to make sure you stay with him.

Warnings: smut, explicit language, non-con, breeding kink, unprotected vaginal sex, creampie, overall dark themes, kind of a slow build up to the nasty.

A/N: Sorry for the delay, I’ve had an eventful couple of days. This is part 2, read part 1 here.

The adrenaline that rushed through your veins blocked out the pain in your body and the noises around you. Your breathing came out in short, panicked huffs as you sprinted through the woods, Lee hot on your heels.

You thought back to the past 12 hours, and how they’d changed your life.

Leaving Knockemstiff and boarding a bus for New York, with your big dreams and a small bag. Almost reaching Pennsylvania’s border before your hopes were snatched away. Lee chasing said bus, blasting the sirens of his patrol car and pulling the driver over. The dread that settled in your stomach when you met his enraged stare, your hopes of a better life shattering in a million pieces, the anger and humiliation that had filled you when he’d dragged you, kicking and screaming, out of the bus, under the judgemental or pitying stares of the passengers.

“You can’t run from me, dove.”

His voice echoed in the woods, tantalizing and terrorizing you all the same. You’d managed to bolt away and hide in the woods before he could handcuff you, but you hadn’t made it too far before he’d found you.

In the event that he’d ever caught you, you’d imagined that he’d fall on his knees and beg you to stay. Lee dragging your ass out of the bus like any drunk bastard he’d escorted home after a fight was certainly not the reaction you’d expected.

You pushed the branches out of your face, feeling a new tear in the skin of your cheeks whenever you’d barrel through a bush. You had no idea where you were going, all you knew was that you had to keep running until your feet bled. Hide. Disappear.

Just a couple more miles and you’d find another town, you could catch a bus then, and maybe you’d be safe-

One second you were sprinting through the trees, and the next your foot was caught in an exposed root, and you tumbled down the slope with your arms stretched out to protect your face.

You hissed in pain when you lifted your palms from the ground. Debris stuck to the abrasion, and it burnt and stung when you flexed your hands. You tried standing up, but fell back among the leaves, feeling lightheaded.

You registered some more cuts on your knees, but you couldn’t tell whether it was blood or tears that streamed down your face.

The branches contorted around you, and the shadows they casted danced around the edges of your vision.

New York, new life, new beginning. Your mom’s smile in her Sunday dress when she’d waved you off. The stench of alcohol in Lee’s breath when he’d caught on the bus.

You thought you’d heard a voice call your name in the distance before your vision went dark, and you let the void envelop you.

-

The sky had turned dark when Knockemstiff’s rusty welcome sign came into view, and he hadn’t spoken a word to you since you’d woken up in his car, with his dark leather jacket draped over your shoulders and bandages on your bruised skin.

You’d stopped sobbing, and you’d run out of pleads, apologies, and tears.

For the first time in your life, you were afraid of him.

His car pulled to a stop in a deserted parking lot. He killed off the engine, and clenched his jaw, inhaling a deep breath before he spoke.

“What was goin’ through that dumb head of yours, sweetie? What made you think you could up, and fuckin’ leave me like that?” he bit through gritted teeth, chest heaving. “One of the boys called me this morning, said he heard your mother talk about you to one of her old hags, babblin’ ‘bout leaving for good, New York, a job.”

He let out a bitter laugh, gripping the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white.

“He thought she’d finally done lost her goddamn mind. Ain’t no sheriff’s girl leaving town for good, he said.”

“I’m sorry, Lee, I should've told you, I was selfish-”

“Yes, you fuckin’ were, fuckin’ selfish is what you are.” he screamed, and you jumped in surprise, because he’d never raised his voice at you.

“I’m sorry, I can’t give you what you want. I don’t want that. You know I don’t belong here Lee, just lemme go, forget all about me.” you pleaded once again, voice small and broken.

He stayed silent for a moment after your little rant, before bursting into a fit of laughter. His body shook with the vibration, and he clutched his stomach, as if no joke had ever sounded so fun in his ears.

“Forget about you? Sweetie, you know I can’t do that. I love you too much.”

“If you love me, let me go Lee, I’m begging you. Please.” you sobbed, gripping his hands in yours, hoping your wobbling lips would move him.

He sighed, and enveloped your hands in his warm ones, bringing them to his lips. He left a trail of kisses from the inside of your wrists to your knuckles.

“Come with me, then. Leave this shitty place behind for good, Lee. Ain’t nothing good’s come out of ‘ere anyways.”

You thought you’d seen his resolve break. You thought he’d choose you for once. Choose you over his thirst for power.

“You know I can’t do that,” he snapped, raising his voice again, “I’m so close to gettin’ myself elected, the campaign is going well, I can’t give up now.”

“Can’t or won’t?” you pressed, anger hardening your stare.

He held your gaze for a moment before looking ahead, eyes unreadable for the first time since you’d met him.

“You know I’m selfish too,” he shrugged.

He reached for his belt, and held up the metal handcuffs, wordlessly securing them around your wrists, ignoring your protests.

“Just stay here.” he grumbled before swinging the door open.

The cold, unyielding cuffs dug in your wrists as you attempted to tug them free from the metal hook on the dash where they were attached to.

It was useless, but it made you feel like you were actually trying. You were mad at Lee, of course, at whoever had tipped him off, and at yourself.

Especially at yourself for your wistful thinking, for convincing yourself that Lee would have given up on you as you’d had on him. For not running fast enough, being strategic enough.

You huffed in annoyance when the metal hook refused to give in, and fell back on the headrest with a groan.

Your calves and shins were sore from your crazy sprint in the woods, and the palms of your hands were scraped from your fall. Lee had cleaned the cuts, but they still stung when you’d inadvertently brush them against each other.

You were mostly unscathed, except for your wounded pride.

You wished your glare could incinerate Lee on the spot when he opened the door to the driver’s seat with a smirk on his lips. The car creaked and swayed when he sat down.

“Fries and vanilla shakes, your favorite.” he announced, opening up the brown paper bag on his lap.

“I’m not hungry.” you mumbled, turning your head to observe the diner’s feeble neon lights in the distance.

Your stomach chose that moment to betray you, and let out a growl when the waft of fried food reached your nose. You hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and you were starving.

“Your tummy seems to think otherwise, dove.”

You used to think that his cocky loopsided grin gave a youthful glow to his face, but now you couldn’t help but hate the satisfaction it oozed.

“Open up.” he chirped, a handful of fries in his hands.

You rolled your eyes, sighing to yourself. “You’re not actually going to do that, are ya? Just uncuff me, Lee.

“I won’t uncuff you until I’m sure I can trust that you won’t run off on me, dove. Might take a while, tho. Now open up.”

You parted your lips, deciding that this one wouldn’t be the hill you’d choose to die on. Glaring at him, you took a bite out of the fries. He hissed when your teeth snapped hard against his fingers, but let out a chuckle seeing you in the state you were in, amused by your pathetic struggle.

“Good girl.” he praised you, feeding you some more like you used to do on those long nights patrolling the streets. Back when feeding each other was an act of love, not a humiliating punishment.

“So how was your little trip in Ohio, sweetie? Enjoyed the fields?”

He hummed when you refused to speak, and brought the milkshake to your mouth, studying your lips as they closed on the striped paper straw, and your cheeks hollowing when you sucked.

“Could’ve drove you myself if you’d asked. Could’ve brought you somewhere nice on holiday this winter. Someplace outside of Ohio.” he continued, taking a sip for himself, “Maybe we can go to a beach on our honeymoon, whaddya say, huh?”

You snorted at his audacity, almost inhaling the milkshake.

“What honeymoon are you talking about, Lee? Ain’t no way I’m marrying you now.”

He shook his head again, a small smile forming on his lips.

“Yes, you are, dove. You are marrying me.”

Your eyes almost bulged out of your head as you gave him an incredulous look. Had you been blinded by love, or was he showing his true colors now?

“What, you’re gonna drag me by the hair and force me to sign the papers? Don’t think the preacher or the fine citizens of this shitty fuckin’ town are gonna like that too much.”

You scoffed, feeling your vision blur with tears again.

Lee levelled his face with yours, eyes darting between your own. You’d never noticed the darkness in him, and it made your heartbeat spike for all the wrong reasons.

“I don’t need to drag you, dove. You’re gonna come to that altar with a smile on these pretty lips. And you know why?” he whispered in your ear, and you felt a shiver go down your spine.

His calloused hand caressed your thigh, slowly hiking up your pleated skirt. “Because I’m finally gonna put a child inside you tonight, and nothing’s gonna stop me.”

Before you had time to react, or panic, he’d climbed to the passenger’s side, caging you in with his large body. He slanted his mouth against yours, forcing his tongue between your lips that you’d parted in a surprised gasp.

You pushed your shoulders against his, trying to pry him away, but he groped you relentlessly. Panic gripped you when you realized you were bound and at his mercy, and he wasn’t joking about his intentions.

“Gonna keep you chained until I knock you up, dove. Keep you in my house, can’t trust that mother of yours,” he huffed between kisses, hands roaming over your body.

“Stop, Lee, have you lost your goddamn mind? Don’t fuckin’ touch me, you asshole. Lemme go.”

You managed to kick his stomach, but in the frantic haze that had overcome him, he barely took notice, continuing his exploration of your body.

You shrieked when his hand dipped in your panties, and to your utter shame, found them soaked.

“You really want me to stop? Because your pussy is telling me a whole ‘nother story, sweetie. Feel how wet you are for me, you like this, don’t ya?”

He brought his finger to your lips, forcing your mouth open until you’d sucked him clean of your juices. He hummed when he dipped down and kissed you again, tasting your arousal on your tongue.

Your teeth snapped on his bottom lip until you’d drawn blood, and he released you with a hiss. His hand gripped your jaw, and tears began blurring your vision.

You couldn’t find adoration, love, and care in his eyes, only cruel determination.

The screams you let out sounded like a muffled gargle.

“Scream all you want, no one’s gonna hear you, and if they do, what’re they gonna say to me? I’m the sheriff sweetie, I’m the law. You were just stupid enough to think you could escape me.”

You pushed, kicked, screamed, thrashed until the metal cuffs had scrubbed your skin raw, fighting the hands that were pushing your bra down until your tits spilled out.

His fingers grazed your heated skin like they’d done a million times before, staining your loving memories forever.

“Fuck sweetheart, you’re gonna look so good with my baby inside you, all round and swollen.” he groaned, nipping at the juncture between your neck and shoulder, sucking on the skin hard enough to hurt you, “All the men in this town are gonna be jealous of me. Might have to keep you locked up all the time.”

You couldn’t deny the throbbing in your core when his tongue licked a stripe behind your ear, nor the arousal soaking through your panties when slid his hand over the hair on your mound, teasing you.

“Gonna keep these tits full of milk for a long time sweetie.”

You moaned when his thick fingers breached your entrance, feeling the pressure build up as he kept pumping them in and out of you. He kept his thumb on your clit, the way he knew you liked, until you were so sensitive and overstimulated that you couldn’t tell pain and pleasure apart.

“You can never leave me, never again. Don’t you understand, I’m nothing without you. I need you.”

He played your body so well that it made you sick.

“Please Lee,” you panted, clenching your jaw to suppress your wanton sounds, “Don’t do this. There’s no turning back from this. Please.” you pleaded, lips wobbling.

“That’s the point,” he huffed, struggling to fit in the space between the passenger’s seat and the dashboard.

He forcefully spread your legs open, making a quick work of ripping your cotton panties to shreds. Bringing his face down to your glistening cunt, he inhaled a deep breath before delving into your folds, tongue lapping at your juices. The lewd, slurping sounds soon mixed with your moans that you could no longer keep in.

By that point you didn’t know if you were fighting to keep his head where it was or to rip it out of his neck.

“You taste like heaven, so fuckin’ sweet.” he grunted before latching onto your bud, hollowing his cheeks arount it as he sucked you off.

Fireworks went off in your lower belly when pleasure exploded inside you. Waves of pleasure crashed through your body, rendering your limbs limp and heavy.

All rational thoughts thrown out the window, you melted into his body when he surged forward to slant his lips against yours. He swallowed your moans with his hungry kisses, cradling your face like the most precious artifact.

It felt wrong, yet so right. He was still Lee. Your Lee. The one who’d drive and sing with you, who’d found your dad a job after he’d lost it, who’d made love with the most care unlike any other man who’d ever laid a finger on you.

At least, that’s what you tried telling yourself when he pushed his hard, leaking cock inside your swollen cunt, and your body welcomed him in your warmth without any fight.

You both snarled when he sheathed himself inside you.

“I love you so much sweetie, I can’t lose you again.”

It was wrong and dirty, but it was okay to feel good because it was your Lee between your legs.

He hoisted your legs over his shoulders and slumped against the seat. His cock reached deeper than you thought possible, and you felt every ridge and veins slide over your walls.

Teeth clattering, bruising touches. You ached to touch him, maybe claw his eyes out or caress his chubby cheeks.

Electricity jolted every nerve ending on your body, and the next words he whimpered in your ear would have been a cold shower, had you not been so far gone already.

“I’m gonna fuckin’ cum inside you, dove, fill you up with my cum over and over again until I’m sure I’ve put a baby in you. Fuck-”

He snapped his hips harder against yours, thrusting his cock in and out of you. Your cunt quivered around him, gripping him tightly. He pushed you over the edge over and over again, until you were a drooling mess who couldn’t form coherent thoughts anymore.

“I told you sweetie, it’s only a matter of time.” He punctuated each world he panted in the crook of your neck with a harsher thrust of his hips. “Ain’t no more parking lots, just a big ole bed. Yeah, people like me in this town, you know that, dove. I’ll get myself elected-, get a- cushy place up on Brewer Heights. We’ll be happy, have kids and all. My pretty wife, fuck- every man in this shitty town will envy me.”

You bucked your hips against his, wildly chasing your release. He could feel another one of your orgasms near by the way you clenched around him.

“Fuck-, God, you’re squeezin’ me. Fuckin’ cum on ny cock dove, I want to feel you come all over me, make a mess on me.”

You pushed out the muscles of your pelvis, and the intensity of your pleasure almost blacked you out again as you gushed all over him, soaking through your skirt onto the seat.

His cock swelled and twitched, and he released himself inside you, painting your walls with his hot spurt. The feeling was unlike anything you’d ever felt before, a fullness you never thought you could experience.

Your chest heaved as you slumped on the seat, arms aching and wrists scrubbed raw.

His cock softened inside you, and he watched enthralled his seed spill out of your cunt, your abused hole still clenching around nothing.

“Jesus, I hope it takes, dove.”

He droned some more, but you’d stopped listening. You kept staring ahead, letting him dress you back again like a motionless doll.

Had you been more aware, you would have seen the shadow of guilt creep on his face, soon replaced by cool determination when he blinked the tears away and hardened his stare once again.

Your body didn’t feel like your own anymore.

Static noises interrupted his actions.

“Any cars around-...got a call from Hawk at the bar- anyone can check that out?”

“Fuck,” he groaned, picking up the radio, “I wanted to go at it a few more times, just to make sure.”

Minutes, or maybe hours, passed by in a blur. You had no idea where you were, or how long it’d been since he dragged you back in this hellhole.

New York, a new job, a new beginning. It all seemed so far.

There was only one thing you knew for sure.

“I’m getting out of ‘ere again, Lee.” You murmured in a daze, “I’m getting out and God himself couldn’t stop me if he tried.”

Drained of all energies, you let the soothing sway of the car lull you to sleep.

Lee sighed to himself, watching you so defensless, bound at his mercy. He’d take care of you until the end of his miserable life, and protect you from everything, even yourself.

“I'm the only God here, sweetie, and I can assure you, you’re not going anywhere.”

Afterall, his dove couldn’t fly away from him with broken wings.

-

I hope you enjoyed this! Please, leave some feedback. It means the world to me! 💓

[itwoodbeprefect]

decided to just compile a bunch of comments about my sga 1x01 rising rewatch into a single post because i don’t actually want to make a hundred posts in a row, so here, under the cut, many rambles:

announcer guy does, in fact, speak english upon a second attempt. well done on not forgetting to not speak german, announcer guy.

“i’m afraid of the thing” elizabeth says, about the drone chair, while standing next to it and looking like she wants to fuck it

rodney in that orange sweater! very orange! very warm!

john is on screen. john’s first words are helicopters he knows how to fly. john KINDA LIKES IT in antarctica. john has barely done anything and i already feel like crying a little bit about this guy who LIKES ANTARCTICA because he just wants to fly

POOR CARSON when he almost kills two people. “ai told ya ai was the wrong pursohn” :(

i really love how john sees the drone coming at the (landed) helicopter and yells “get out!” and they throw open their doors and john JUMPS and then it’s just “ugh.” and he’s belly-down on the floor and still like, almost under the helicopter. an attempt was made, for sure. just not a very succesful one.

the way john looks around like he’s never seen a ceiling before when he enters the base is just. very funny. and then some guy in particular is looking at him because he’s a bit of a weirdo and john looks back and the guy sort of looks him up and down and john looks away as if to check if anybody saw that. hmm.

john’s face of “oops” after he sits down in the chair and it ACTIVATES and carson RUNS OFF to go get literally everyone and john is realizing he MAY have just made a very giant big mistake. PRICELESS

teyla: my people have long believed the wraith will come if we venture into the ancient city. sumner, when the wraith come after he ventures into the ancient city: [surprised pikachu face]

gotta love how john insisting on saving his people is what wakes up the wraith, and saving his people is also what landed john in antarctica in the first place because he tried it in afghanistan once before. which wouldn’t have happened if there hadn’t been an american war in afghanistan in the first place, which there wouldn’t have been if bush hadn’t thrown the us into it, which wouldn’t have happened without 9/11, so... bin laden woke the wraith?

on the other hand john would never have had to go on a rescue mission on his first day in pegasus if sumner hadn’t gone into that city against the wishes of the people that already lived there and had a history dating back thousands of years with the place, so more realistically, the expeditions’ colonizer mentality woke the wraith. and then they just kinda... kept going with that for the rest of the show, because it worked out so well on that first day.

anyway i’m not even there yet - puddlejumper! it jumps puddles!

have to love the moment john realizes the puddlejumper is pretty literally reading his mind and giving him anything he can think of that is within its power (so no turkey sandwiches, but that’s okay). john is already in love with it just based on the fact that IT CAN FLY AND GO FAST (“i kinda like it here”, restored) but then all the ancient technology just seems to know him and love him back and gives him way more than he even thinks to ask for. which, for john, who doesn’t really do well expressing desires? a FLYING SHIP that then READS HIS MIND? starstruck. love at first sight. john&puddlejumper, instant bffs. i bet it would have popped a compartment with some stray bits of wire if he’d asked for a friendship bracelet right then and there. ford sitting there witnessing this doesn’t even know how hard he’s thirdwheeling it in that moment.

now i am at the bit where sumner is taken from the wraith prison to see the actual wraith, and look, obviously they’re evil and feed on humans etc etc, but this particular wraith’s sense of dramatics? unparalleled. she has them bring her victims one by one to a large foggy room with a looong table set with a wonderful dinner and then she LEAVES a DEAD BODY sitting at the head of the table (implied to be the athosian that was taken before sumner?) and drops down from the ceiling while sumner has his back turned for no reason except the spectacle of it all, and dracula himself literally couldn’t have made a better display out of this. it’s maybe scary in the way that it makes clear she’s a cat toying with a helpless mouse before she eats it, but it’s also hilarious in the way that this is absolutely a very bored immortal being who had to stay up while the rest went to sleep and is inventing high school improv plays with her dinner for some diversion. don’t play with your food, wraith queen. you’re scaring your dinner.

life signs detector!!! ford didn’t get to name the puddlejumpers gateships, but that one stuck, no matter how much “we can name it later” john was trying to throw at it!!!

(god. there’s a ficlet somewhere in there about season 2 john having a moment where he realizes he’s on the hunt for ford using the thing they first discovered together and that ford gave its name.)

getting sidetracked here, but when john and ford find the group of humans caught by the wraith teyla goes “major!” and it makes me think that. well. how are the athosians supposed to know things like “major” and “colonel” are military ranks? what are the chances the pegasus galaxy uses the same designations? (don’t really know how the language thing works here - we’re hopefully not supposed to think they’re all speaking english, are they? i’ve never watched sg1, there’s probably lore about this, i assume. maybe alien titles somehow get perfect translations to earth ones and vice versa.) but i mean, teyla is too smart, she’d have it figured out already even if those words don’t exist in her galaxy, but some athosian somewhere is going to be very confused by this earth tendency to name way too many kids private and lieutenant, and then put all of them into the army. strange, to have your job decided for you at birth like that. earth people are weeeeird.

fjdkl john is like bye, gonna go find colonel sumner all on my own, run if you don’t hear from me in twenty minutes, and ford’s like “you’re the only one who can fly these people out of here” and “i’m saying i should be the one to go, sir” and john, with his savior can’t-leave-anyone-behind-gotta-do-this-personally-or-i-will-literally-die-from-not-almost-dying complex DOES NOT LISTEN to ford’s EXTREMELY ACCURATE objection. which is his right, as ranking officer, but is also a perfect showcase of why john Should Not Ever be in charge of atlantis, and why sam saying he was totally on the shortlist when she takes over command in s4 is funny but frightening if you’re on atlantis and like being alive.

sumner: “we travel through the stargate as peaceful explorers.” FDJKFD. god, that line, from that character, hilarious.

rodney comes to elizabeth full of enthusiasm about all the interesting stuff they’re finding in the city only to find her staring at the empty gate and when she says she should never have let them (the rescue party) go, he sobers up and says awkwardly “for what it’s worth, you made the right decision” and that’s GOOD that’s KIND.

back on the planet with the wraith everyone is running to the jumper while there are wraith darts whizzing through the air and teyla turns back, catches up with ford who was told to cover their six, disarms him (because he was firing at illusions, revealing their position), hands him back his weapon, pulls him in the direction of the puddlejumper, and PUSHES HIM ASIDE when they’re almost scooped up by a wraith dart, and i’m so here for teyla being allowed a moment of heroics that saves specifically ford, guy with a gun, and not a random athosian damsel in distress. teyla is fully on their level. teyla is perhaps above their level. thank you.

that scene at the end of this episode!! in which there’s a sort of party on atlantis and it’s all buzzing and relaxed while the athosians are mingling freely with the expedition members and they’re talking of friendship and ugh. UGH. there’s a better version of sga in an alternate universe where the expedition didn’t decide atlantis was totally theirs, actually, and they cooperate with the people that were already in the galaxy when they came there and learn from sumner’s mistake to actually respect what they have to say and form a single front and teyla takes over as head of the expedition in s4 when there’s a void left by elizabeth’s absence.

final thought that has always haunted me a little: john suddenly becoming the ranking military member on atlantis after sumner’s death is ?? one of those things where i wonder what the sgc was thinking in their personnel assignments. john wasn’t even supposed to BE THERE. if john hadn’t gone and sumner had still died (which was something they should have considered as a possiblitiy! they didn’t know what they were walking into at all! sumner is apparently the type to lead his own missions!), then what exactly would they have done? i don’t know much about how the us military operates but i’ve watched enough mash to have figured out the order of the ranks and it just seems. very odd to me? to take one (1) colonel on this mission and then ZERO lieutenant colonels OR majors (if john hadn’t stumbled his way into it, that is). like, are there any captains on atlantis? (i think there are?) or would ford, a lieutenant, have ended up ranking military member? this is like the surely-they-only-need-a-single-medical-doctor-right thing. WHAT IS THE SGC THINKING.

anyway. this was good. i liked this. i hadn’t rewatched the pilot in a while, and i only just now figured out how much of a while, because there was a bunch in here i didn’t remember. ON TO EPISODE TWO.

[mypoisonedvine]

Hunt (dark!Slayer!Bucky x vampire!Reader)

a.k.a. Bucky the Vampire Slayer

a.a.k.a. Bucky the Vampire Layer

full credit for this idea goes to @deceitfuldevout​ who shared her genius with us for the concept of witch/witch-hunter, which morphed over time into vampire/vampire-hunter, which I eventually adapted into a weird amalgam of a Buffy AU and a Supernatural AU

@giorno-plays-piano​ asked to be tagged if I ever did it!

Warnings: smut, blood play (just a lil tho, but lots of talking about blood bc she’s...literally a vampire), degradation kink, sex that turns dub con/non con, kidnapping

(we are sadly deprived of any gifs of Bucky in the new jacket but please know the pic below is the Bucky we’re working with here)

Bucky clenched his jaw in frustration as his head fell back against the headrest.  His grip on the steering wheel tightened with a squeaking noise as his skin skidded along the leather.

He was irritated because he knew what was waiting for him at the end of this road.  The headlights only illuminated a little of what was ahead, but the predictive power of past experience told him everything he needed to know.

You were going to be waiting for him, and he never looked forward to that.

Memories resurfaced of the last time he had seen you.  He’d found you in the forest and though he couldn’t prove it, he was pretty sure he’d interrupted you feeding on a deer.  It was disgusting.  Yet, you moved with this grace he couldn’t ignore and spoke with a smile that he couldn’t forget.  You greeted him with a familiarity that he wished wasn’t merited.  He was a Slayer, you were a vampire; there shouldn’t ever be a second meeting.  He should’ve killed you the first time, however many months ago it was.  He couldn’t even remember why he didn’t, but you slipped away that night and he swore to track you down.

He did, but he didn’t kill you that time either, because you’d proven useful.  You’d sold out a vampire who pissed you off and Bucky got to put another kill under his belt.  That was definitely the only reason he’d left you alive.  

Then the forest.  You were more feral that time, and he saw more of your monstrous side than he had before.  So why was that the time he thought about when he tossed and turned at night, when he was too pent up from years of solitude, when he forced his eyes shut and slipped his hand into his boxers under the sheets--

Destination is on the right, the GPS alerted with a robotic voice.  Thank god.

Bucky pulled the car into the driveway of the dilapidated mansion, shifting into park and turning off the engine; the metal blasting from the radio halted unceremoniously.  

He didn’t hear the commotion inside the house until he was quite a ways from the car and halfway to the door.  Of course he considered that it was a bad idea to just walk in the front door of a suspected vampire coven as a Slayer, but he wasn’t here on a hunt.  At least, not the normal kind.

Before he was even on the porch, the door opened with an outpouring of pink light.  He shielded his face with his arm as his eyes adjusted, but put it down when he saw it was your silhouette in the doorway.

“Slayer,” you hissed with a smile that blended pleasure and disgust.  He knew the feeling.

“You could call me Bucky,” he offered.

“It doesn’t suit you,” you explained, leaning against the splintered wood of the frame.  “I wasn’t sure you were going to come.”

“Neither was I,” he admitted with a shrug, “but how could I resist a chance to jump into the lion’s den?”

“You’re here to take on a coven?  By yourself?” you laughed.

“I’m not looking for a fight,” he denied.  “I’m looking for information.”

You raised a brow as if to say go ahead.

“A girl in the city,” he continued.  “Mysterious death.  Coroner is stumped, thinks it could be anything from an animal attack to a blood disorder to a ritualistic murder.  Has your name all over it.”

“‘Girl’?” you repeated, as if you’d never heard the word before.  “Girl, no, I don’t remember any girl.”

“White, blonde, 5’2”, 26 years old,” he listed.

“Oh!” you stopped him.  “26!  You mean a woman.  Yes, I remember feeding on a woman.”

“So you’re confessing?” 

“To what crime?  She was going to die in less than a year, easily,” you shrugged.  “She did have a blood disorder.  Leukemia.  She didn’t know it yet.”

“And do I want to know how you knew it?” he shuddered.

“It’s a unique taste,” you grinned.  He felt a little unwell hearing you say that.

“I’m not sure if you’re familiar with human law,” he frowned, “but it’s still murder even if they were going to die soon.  It’s murder if they were actively dying.”

“I was human once,” you deflected.

“In 1447,” he growled.  You would’ve blushed if you could; you were flattered that he remembered.

“Yeah, murder investigation at that time was… very surface-level,” you admitted.  “Is your plan to arrest me, then?”

“I’m a Slayer.  Not a cop.”

“What you are is a wet blanket,” you grimaced.  “We’re busy in here, you know.  Big party.”

“I was hoping so,” he smirked.  “That’s what you promised.”

“Then why don’t you come in?” you asked coyly.  You hadn’t really expected him to do it.

Everyone inside jumped and scurried away the second he set foot in the door.  “It’s cool,” you told them, “he’s with me.”

That didn’t seem to comfort them that much, because what business would you have with a Slayer?

They must have figured it out when you slipped away to a secluded room and dragged him along with you.  He didn’t seem to figure it out until you were pushing him back against the wall, running your hands over his body through his clothes. 

“What I would give to feed on you,” you whispered, running your lips over his neck.  You took in a deep breath and felt a little light-headed at the overwhelming smell of his blood.  He, unfortunately, reeked of Slayer, and you pushed back your instinct of fear to appreciate the man underneath.  AB positive-- your favorite.  “Wanted you ever since I first saw you,” you admitted.  “You looked so fucking delicious.”

You pulled back to look up at him and you didn’t need vampiric hearing to know that his heart was racing: just the way his eyes darted across your face and down to your lips was proof enough.

“Why did you come here today, Bucky?” you asked quietly. 

“I’m on a hunt,” he answered in a low growl.

“For me?”

“For you.”

“You have me alone,” you noticed.  “You could get out your wooden stake and end this for good.”

He nodded, but didn’t move.  Instead you felt his hands trail along your sides; he jumped when he brushed the skin of your arm.  “You’re so cold,” he realized.

Meanwhile you thought you could burn up from the heat of him, radiating out of his body and through the thick layers of clothing.  He was so alive, so awake, so present.  

You pushed off his leather jacket and he didn’t even think to stop you, letting it fall to the floor.  You never cared for it.  He looked as good as sin in it, yes, but it smelled of death and dead things, the skin of something you wouldn’t have eaten when it was alive 40 years ago, and you wanted only to experience the life of this particular being.

And what is life but wanting?  Fuck, you wanted him so goddamn bad.

He wrapped a hand around your neck and pulled you into him, kissing you with instant need and dizzying aggression.

Even now you weren’t sure if he would let you live to see the end of the night.  But you couldn’t see the sunrise anyway, so what difference would it make?

He made embarrassingly quick work of your dress, tearing it straight down the front.  Downside of wearing something you’d had for nearly 100 years is that it’s flimsy.

His hands were back on you the second your skin was exposed.  His touch was so hot that it almost hurt; his hands were so rough and strong that your heart almost clenched.

You clawed at his shirt and gasped with delight when you accidentally nicked him with a sharp fingernail and broke the skin.  The flavor hit the air hard and fast; you grabbed his shoulders and pulled him forward so you could lean down and lick the thin red stripe you’d left on his chest.  Just a taste, but the best taste you’d had in… you couldn’t remember anything tasting this good.

“I won’t kill you if you don’t kill me,” he offered breathlessly.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” you agreed quickly as you began to work open his belt because the last thing on your mind right now was survival.

You groaned when you felt his cock in your hand.  There was a lot of blood in that thing and you could feel it pulsing in your palm.  You knew better than to put it in your mouth; you didn’t have the restraint for that.  

You were thankful you hadn’t drank any more of his blood because clearly he had a better use for it.  It was so big you wondered how he hadn’t passed out from it getting so hard because seriously, this man’s cock was a monster; takes one to know one, eh?

“Fuck me,” you demanded, “I want you to fuck me, oh my god.”

He nodded as a low groan echoed out of his chest.  His grip moved to your hips as he pulled you up and put you on the table, pushing you down and bending over you with another bruising kiss that trailed down your body.

“Don’t fucking tease me,” you whined, “I need your cock.”

“Wait,” he instructed, kneeling before you and licking through your exposed folds.  You gasped, unprepared for how strange it would feel; your hand grabbed his hair and pulled harder than you meant to, but thankfully, he didn’t slow down.

Little moans and grunts were lost against your skin as he tasted you eagerly.  You were so overwhelmed with the sensation that he had to hold your hips down to keep you from squirming away.  You’d been feasting on humans for 600 years, and now it seemed like he was attempting to even the score.  Even you never ate with this enthusiasm.  But you’d never thought about a meal so much before consuming it as he had thought about you before this moment.  

You were already embarrassingly close to orgasm, and it was apparent from the way you moaned and writhed and begged.

“I’m so fucking close, just like that, please don’t stop, yes, yes, oh fuck, yes,” you yelped.

It all came to a screeching halt as he stood up and grabbed your face with his hand.  You looked at him with wide eyes, confused but still appreciating how good he looked with wet lips and dark eyes and his hair all fucked up.

“You aren’t gonna come,” he explained between raspy breaths, “until I’m inside you.”

You nodded in agreement, again arching your back as if you could will him to fuck you.

He slid his cock through your folds, coating himself in your arousal which was embarrassingly plentiful.

Finally, he pressed his cock into you all at once and you gasped, head falling back against the wooden table.  He groaned as he gripped your hips, steadying you so he could piston into you with brutal force.  

And to think you thought he was going to stab you through the chest with a wooden stake.  To be fair, he still could.  

He scooped you into his arms, pulling you up until your face was right against his.  “You’re warm here,” he informed you with bared teeth, “did you know that?  So hot and tight around my fuckin’ cock.”

You could only moan, your eyes darting to his parted lips, and then his neck.  You were thoroughly tempted, but didn’t want to do anything that might stop him from fucking you so perfectly like this.  His hand came up to wrap around your throat-- the metal one, specifically.  You were pretty sure he’d lost the arm to a monster fight of some kind but that didn’t matter now.  All you knew was that this one was strong enough to crush you and it was making your head dizzy and your pussy wet.

Your moans were lost to his grip as he choked you, and you could hear the ragged sounds of his breathing as he fucked you deeper and harder.  “You like getting fucked by a Slayer, huh?  You’re such a whore.  My whore.”

You gasped when he released your throat and you could breathe again.  “Yes,” you agreed with a sob, “yours, baby.” 

He chuckled a little at that, slipping a hand between your bodies to rub your clit with his thumb; you yelped and grabbed his shoulders tightly.

“You’re gonna come already aren’t you?” he mocked.  “Dumb fucking slut.”

You hissed at his harsh words but you were too lost in pleasure to complain.  Your eyes shot open when you felt two of his fingers slam into your open mouth and hit the back of your throat.  “Choke on my fingers while you come, bitch,” he growled.  “And I swear if you fucking bite me, you’ll regret it.”

It was like asking you to take a sip of sweet wine but not swallow it.  His skin tasted fucking delicious on your tongue, which you swirled around the digits eagerly.  He laughed: “such a fucking slut, sucking on my fingers like that.  You want it so bad.”

You nodded breathlessly, whimpering as you took his fingertips down your throat.  He groaned and slammed into you harder, which only served to bring you that much closer to the edge.  

“Come on my cock, right now,” he demanded, and you liked to believe it was just lucky timing and not his command that struck you at that moment.  Your nails dug into his shoulders as you felt yourself flexing and clenching around his length, another gush of arousal easing his way as he relentlessly pounded you.

“Good girl,” he praised, pulling his fingers from your throat to hear you pant with exhaustion.  He stopped to lift your legs onto his shoulders, pushing you back but leaning over you.  When he slammed into you again that time, you nearly screamed-- he was hitting something so deep in you that it was actually painful.

“Stop, it’s-- it’s too deep,” you moaned.

You tried to move back but he held you down firmly, a dark glimmer in his eye.  He thrust in again, even harder, and you cried out as you tried to grab onto the table for dear life.  He grabbed your wrists with each hand and pinned them beside you, laughing as you tried to fight him off.  

Any normal human you could overpower in an instant.  But you were no match for a Slayer.  Both of you knew that.  

“Let me go,” you begged, “you’re hurting me.”

“I could do a lot worse to you if I wanted.  You should be thankful I’ve let you live.”

“I could say the same,” you snarled.  He pulled back and rammed his cock into you so hard that you instantly screamed, tears sliding down your temple.

“Don’t talk to me like that,” he ordered.  “Just be a good little whore and take my cock.”

He started to move inside you, hard and fast, and you couldn’t help but struggle against him as he hovered above you.  

“Apologize,” he demanded, and just as he sensed you were about to tell him to fuck off, he accentuated it by holding his hips to yours a little longer than normal, reminding you that he could hurt you so easily if you didn’t obey.

“I’m sorry,” you sobbed, “I’m sorry, Bucky, please don’t… please don’t hurt me.”

He grinned as he watched you cry.  “This is what you fuckin’ get for teasing me.  You killed that girl to get my attention.  You wanted me to find you and fuck you the way you’ve been missin’ out on for the past few centuries.”

You shook your head to deny it but he suddenly let your arms go to slap you across the face.  You tried to use your free arm but in an instant he had your wrists pinned to your chest, putting all his weight on you until you could barely breathe.

“Just admit it, baby,” he said in an oddly sensitive way, like he was taking pity on you.  “Just admit you need me.”

“Please,” you sobbed, near-silent from the lack of air, “please…”

“Aw, look at you,” he cooed, “begging for more.”

He trapped your wrists under his left hand and used his right to roughly grab your jaw until your mouth was forced open.

“Show me your teeth, gorgeous,” he purred.  You hissed as your fangs glistened in the candlelight.  “Mmm, you wanna bite me, don’t you?”

You tried to nod but couldn’t move your face much.

“The feeling’s mutual,” he grinned.  “Fuck, I’m gonna come.  Gonna fill that tight little cunt.”

Your fight was renewed as you tried to kick and squirm away but it was useless.  You grunted as his thrusts became erratic but even more painful, somehow.

“Beg for it,” he growled through his teeth.  “Beg for my fuckin’ come.”

You tried to fight but only got another slap to the face, the sting making your eyes water instantly.  

“Beg, whore,” he repeated, yelling.  “I won’t come until I fucking hear it.”

“Please!” you yelped, and in a sense it was genuine, because once he came this would all be over, and maybe-- just maybe-- he would let his guard down long enough for you to feed on this evil son of a bitch.  “Please come, Bucky, come in me, I need it!” 

“Yeah, I know you do,” he laughed confidently, holding you down by your throat as he pumped into you one last time with a shattered moan.  “Fuck!” he sighed, savoring the feeling of your unwilling body forced to accept his seed.  The truth was, you were tighter when you struggled.

He only let you breathe once he was done, and you choked and spluttered for air as he pulled out.  The second you thought you had your bearings together, you were sitting up to lunge at him.  You felt something press against your chest and even before you looked down you knew it was over.

A wooden stake.  He’d had it the whole time.  You looked back at him and he was smiling, the bastard, even as he was still catching his breath from fucking you.  The sight made you shudder.

“I was gonna fuck you, and then kill you,” he admitted, “but now I think I’ll keep you.”

You hissed with a grimace, flashing your fangs, but knew you had no recourse, no options, no way out.

“You look so cute when you’re scared,” he smiled.  “Can’t wait to take you back to mine, trap you in a little salt pentagram, and fuck you senseless whenever I want.”

You whined, closing your eyes as you realized how well and truly fucked you were.  

“It won’t always hurt so bad.  You’ll get used to me.  And I’ll feed you enough to keep you alive.”

Sounded like a cruel existence, but you weren’t ready to get the business end of your stake, so you swallowed dryly and nodded in acceptance of your fate.  

He laughed and placed a chaste kiss on your cheek before guiding you to stand on weak knees.  “C’mon baby, let’s get you home.”

[silvysartfulness]

I'm sorry If you've answered something similar to this already but I'm really curious about the mental gymnastics Song Lan must be doing.

This is a really interesting question!

I think the very first thing to keep in mind with these three is that their context is not a modern, Western one.

They live in a highly traditional, stratified society, with social rules that are in many ways very different to ours. Having to get along with, fight alongside with, even help and support people who have caused you unimaginable pain is not unheard of. Probably not even particularly rare - Nie Mingjue had to put a smile on and play polite politics for years with Wen Rouhan, well aware that he was without doubt the man who caused his father's death.

It's a society built on warriors' code, a merit of fighting and war. People die. People are killed. People kill, and are applauded and rewarded for it.

Of course wanton murder is still a crime, still wrong! But people killing and being killed are not rare occurrences in and of themselves – learning to use your blade, even against other people once they're declared enemies, is part of the core of what cultivation is. And so it becomes more a question of when killing is wrong, and who is allowed to do it, rather than a divide between outlier killers and everyone else.

Song Lan will never forgive Xue Yang for Baixue. Will not forgive that Xue Yang ruining his eyes led to Xingchen losing his. Will not forgive his own undeath – and especially not making Xingchen an unknowing, unwilling executioner. Will never forgive him tricking Xingchen into killing innocents, ruining his moral code, his soul in the process.

But Xingchen is, ultimately, all that matters.

So if keeping Xue Yang around a bit longer is what it takes for Xingchen's soul to heal, or at least keeping it from shattering further, he is willing to suffer it. Again, in this world, cooperating with people you very much dislike or even outright hate is often necessary.

It's also at the very heart of Daoist philosophy, attempting to achieve the non-action state of wuwei - taking things on as they come, without attachment to things or events. Not clinging to the past, not holding onto negative things, not hungering for revenge or poisoning yourself with hate or envy or regret. Striving for patience, compassion and simplicity, and allowing things to just be.

And you know, once you start feeding a stray dog...

Song Lan doesn't like Xue Yang. But throughout the many weeks of journeying together, Night Hunting together, making their grand plans together... he's getting used to him. While he finds pretty much everything about him vastly aggravating, there are times when he's useful. Oddly friendly. Even, at times, though he'd never admit that, funny.

It's a very slippery slope, and he's really digging his heels in. But unlike Xiao Xingchen, who once learned to love Xue Yang because he didn't know who he was, every one of Song Lan's bitterly reluctant concessions come knowing exactly who he is and what he's done. There are no dark secrets that could shock him and turn him away – every small, jaw-clenchingly resigned piece of cooperation and companionship is with Xue Yang, not the illusion of a more palatable ”Chengmei”.

And it really is a see-saw, because Xue Yang is callously used to being judged and despised, is used to people's disgust and hatred. But he has zero defenses against kindness. So once Song Lan made the call to save his life in that river, when they both knew he could have just looked away... He starts lowering his walls somewhat. He sets out to be helpful and friendly – we help each other out of companionship, right? That's what you said, what this is, right? Companionship, not even letting people you dislike come to harm. Another word for trust.

And once you're on the receiving end of the blowtorch happy friendliness that is Xue Yang genuinely liking you, it gets even harder to hate him. And Song Lan resents it! But he's not immune all the same.

It's not forgiveness. He will never forgive, or forget.

But they've all been given this second shot at life – he literally died and was raised from the dead. As did Xingchen. And he did plunge Fuxue through Xue Yang's chest, with every intent of killing him. In many ways, Xue Yang died in Yi City too – certainly welcomed death at that time. As surprised at this fragile second chance as the two daoshi.

So in Song Lan's mind, there is a disconnect between the past – the time when he held his strong but ultimately naive beliefs in clear-cut absolutes, the time where he lashed out at Xingchen, hurt him and lost him – and now. This new life, where he is trying to make up for his own past mistakes, trying to do better. And while he doesn't fully trust it, he can see that Xue Yang is supposedly trying to do the same, if in a very trial-and-error way and only for Xingchen's sake.

Not forgiveness. No absolution. But allowing the past to stay in the past and building something new here, on the other side, like they all are. Together.

He doesn't like it, not yet, but he's reached a state of resignation about it. So that once Xiao Xingchen had his awful wake-up call in Yueyang and spoke his condemnation, Song Lan still wouldn’t use that situation to his advantage, to request they get rid of Xue Yang for good. Partly because there's still a chance Xingchen would have regrets later, partly because Xue Yang is still an integral part of their plan to build a dream with the help of the Chief Cultivator...

But also, unfortunately, because at this point it would feel... wrong. There is a companionship there, no matter how bitter and jagged and frustrating. A pity and a parallel he doesn't want to admit to, but which doesn't make it less true.

And for all his distressed lashing out, Xue Yang does on some level recognize that, and clings to it. Scraps of belonging, of companionship, now that his position is so very precarious.

So a certain amount of mental gymnastics, absolutely, but in many ways fewer than one might expect!

Thank you very much for this ask, this is a dynamic that is super fun to dig into!

[implexedactions]

Hello, Little One - Shoto Todoroki

So, do any of you like microphilia? No? Didn’t think so, but here it is anyway! A yandere giant Shoto Todoroki

Shoto is aged up and a pro hero!

Warning for Yandere Content and Microphilia

Beta’d by best person: @patchworkpiper​

---

“Hello, little one.”

You shudder at the sound of his voice as he steps through the door. What had been a nice nap to escape from reality was pulled away as you found yourself once again in this prison. You move off of the small bed, and to the bars of the metal cage you’re trapped in.

You barely knew why you were bothering to respond at this point, but he was the only human you had seen in…however long you have been here. The room you were in seemed to have the singular purpose of housing you, with very little else here. Your cage was in the north of the rectangular room on a table, with the door at the south, and the couch along the west wall. There was a large window (deadbolted with curtains, of course) in the east wall.

As his colossal form walks through the room towards you, his footsteps shake your cage. Shoto Todoroki, one of the city’s most well-known hero’s strolls over to you. He crouches down, his cold eyes peering through the bars at your tiny 2-inch form.

“How is my favourite little pet doing?” He questions, as you hide behind blankets and pillows. He is standing at his full height, making you eye level with his crotch. Looking down from his nose at you.

“Terribly. I hate it here. I want to go home. I wish you would die.” You state listlessly back to him.

His eyes thin as he sighs, exasperated.

“We have already gone over this, MULTIPLE times… If I let you out, you won’t be mine. You won’t be safe anymore. That would be unacceptable.” You feel the room get warmer as he grows more tired of your antics. You guess today wasn’t a good day at work.

“I’m not yours! You just stole me and shrank me!” You shout back at him, voice rising as you get angrier and angrier.

“…Pet, disrespect is not welcome here. I’m willing to overlook the odd comment here and there, but you know what will happen if you fight back…” His threat hangs in the air, as you reminisce about…that day.

--

“Little one, stop struggling, I NEED to wash you.” Probing hands prodded at your form as you moved backwards in the small basin, huddling in a corner, treading water, and using your nails to try and dig into his skin whenever it came close.

“Fine then. I hope you learn your lesson, brat.” His fingers grabbed you and shoved you underwater. You tried with all your might to pry them off, but they wouldn’t budge. Your breath was running out, lungs burning as your brain tried to force you to take a breath.

--

“…Sorry…” You avoid his eyes and look at the ground, hiding your face.

“Now little one, I have a surprise for you. I’m SURE you’ll appreciate it, right?”

He opens the cage door, reaching his hand in and grabbing you. His fingers close forcefully around you as he stands and strolls to the couch. Sitting upon it, he places you on his lap. You try not to think of which organ you're standing on as he continues speaking.

“Close your eyes for me, okay? I’m sure you’ll love it. I’ll have to touch you to put it on, but I promise I’ll be gentle.”

You close your eyes. You’ve already been disrespectful, and there’s only so far you can push Shoto before he’ll push back.

As he touches your neck, a bell is heard. Something coarse gets wrapped around your shaking neck with gentle precision. You open your eyes and your hand touches what you assume to be a collar. He brings a mirror up, so you’re able to see it in better detail. You see a red collar, sturdy and utilitarian. It carries with it a small gold bell, which jingles when shaken. It also has a nametag at the front.

“It says ‘pet’, in case you were wondering. I’m unsure if you can still read to be honest…It HAS been a while since you were intellectually challenged; living this life of luxury and whatnot.”

“I can still read!”

“Now THAT is a shock.”

“I don’t want to wear this! I hate it! It’s so uncomfortable!” All you're able to do is mess around with it helplessly and hope he doesn't choose to tighten it.

“Pet. Stop fussing. It was custom made, and if you break it, there WILL be consequences.”

“Why should I care?!” Punishment be damned, you can’t take him anymore.

“Hmm?” He raises an eyebrow, and peers down at you.

“I HATE it here! I hate you! What gives you the right to do this to me! I'd rather live out my days in that godforsaken cage than have you touch me again!” You scream the ugly words at him, you’re sick of him, sick of your life. He pinches the bridge of his nose and growls in frustration.

“Just give up already! We both know you’re not getting out of this! Why are you so disobedient?!” He glares at you, roughly grabbing you off his crotch and bringing you up to his face.  His fist encapsulates you, only letting your head move around.

“I want my old life back! I’m sick of YOUR hideous face being the only face I see!” As you shout the words at him, he drops you as he recoils in shock and hurt. 

Oh no. You cower, knowing you’ve fucked up. NEVER talk about his scar. 

He drops you back on his lap and brings the mirror to his face, his other hand touching the scar in a forlorn expression. His eyes scrunch up a bit, mouth wavering. This is the most vulnerable you’ve ever seen him. That vulnerability quickly dissipates into rage. Letting out a roar, he throws the mirror against the wall, shattering it into a thousand pieces. 

“Wait! I didn’t mean it like that! I’m sorry!”

He angrily glares at you as you feel less confident in your words. You can feel his hot breath hitting you as he seems to be thinking. He pulls out his phone with and starts typing furiously, before a few chimes emit from the phone. He hasn’t said anything for a good while, and your heart is pounding. His face returns to a more self-satisfied expression as he looks back to you.

“Hmmm. Okay. That’s possible.” He says, a hint of malice in his voice.

“Wait, what?” Your eyes widen as you fear his sudden change in attitude.

“I said that is possible. I can arrange for you to see someone else for a while.”

“Are you letting me go?” You aren’t that hopeful, but maybe?

“That isn’t what you said, pet. You said that you wanted to see a new face. THAT I can provide.” You don’t like the sound of that.

“This is going to be someone worse than you, isn’t it? You’re not that slick, Todoroki. You’re basic.” A grin overtakes the face of your captor as your stomach sinks. It appears you forgot your place again.

“Oh, getting cocky now, are we? Let’s see if you feel that way after a week with my old man.” Your blood runs cold. His father, Enji Todoroki?! You’ve seen the man before, on TV and whatnot. Shoto speaks of him sometimes, seemingly trying to use his trauma as a bonding tool. It mainly just instilled the fact that Enji Todoroki was someone to be feared, someone who wouldn’t give a second thought to anyone he didn’t think was worth the time. You highly doubt he’d even give you a first thought.

“W-wait, w-what?”

“He's a bastard. A lot less forgiving, if you catch my drift. He hates distractions, and I don’t think he’d be all that fond of you, pet. I do not envision dealing with him to be all that nice. He is a cruel person, and I think having a pet to torture would be right up his alley.”  

“I thought you hated him?”

“True, but he’s really been trying to gain my trust. And he’ll do basically anything I ask. Even looking after a pet for a week.” Your blood is pumping, you can hear your heartbeat in your ears.

“I-I-I-” You stammer, trying to find any solid ground in this argument. Shoto just grins and continues.

“Of course, he’s quite forgetful and dismissive. So, I wouldn’t expect him to remember to feed you or really care for you-”

“Why- why would you-”

“-or maybe he’ll just drop you on the ground and expect you to fend for yourself for the week. Surviving his day to day life. His footsteps, workouts, and daily routines, surviving off crumbs, stolen food, and the like.” You can’t take this, your sassy front has crumbled away. Shoto’s threats are too much for you to push back against. 

You can’t imagine surviving a week with Enji, him burning you if you don’t do exactly what he asks. You can only be so defiant against the person who rules your life. Shoto has won this argument. You can only give in and pray that he doesn’t go through with it.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to say what I said!” Shoto just looks at you, looking smug, and continues.

“After all, he doesn’t have much time for arrogant, stupid, tiny pests.”

“Please! I’m sorry! I don’t want that!” You are shaking now, on your knees in his palm, head sagging.

“Oh, am I scaring you, pet? I mean, there are other possibilities...” You jump at this chance to be good again. Anything to keep you away from Enji.

“Like if I behave, or make it up to you?” You’ll do anything he asks, you just need to not end up with Enji.

“I was meaning my father. He doesn’t have anyone in the house anymore and he seems quite lonely, he might take a liking to you. Constantly being around you, or demanding things of you. He might really take a fancy to you.” 

Wait, what?

“W-what do you mean, exactly?”

“Well. My old man doesn’t have anyone in the house, he’d probably latch onto anyone new he could care for…or train. I think it’d be cute, no? A huge, strong man like him, fawning and fussing over my pet. He might view himself as a grandfather.” Shoto chuckled to himself lightly. 

“Imagine a man like Endeavour, constantly wanting to be around you, hold you, feed you, bathe you, sleep with you. It’s not impossible to think that he’d be loving towards you.” It sounds better than Shoto’s treatment of you. Enji might be kinder, if he was like what was just described?

“Is…that meant to be a threat? He’d treat me better than you presumably.”

“Well, no, he wouldn’t. See, my old man is the type of man to get frustrated easily. His quirk is fire, and he has a VERY short fuse. If you don’t act like the PERFECT little pet, he’ll get mad, fast. And let’s face it, you’re a brat.”  You regret ever waking up from that nap. You also regret all the actions you’ve made since that nap.

“Think about it, burning large manly hands grabbing for you, or giving a downright villainous glare because you DARED deny his affection.” Okay, staying with Shoto was the better choice again. The idea of being around either version of Enji shook you to your core.

“I-I…Please don’t make me go with your father! I’m sorry for what I said! I really am! Please, don’t make me spend a week with him!” He seemed to stop and consider it, a thoughtful expression crossing his face.

“Hmm. Will you stop being such a brat?”

“Yes! Of course, I’ll do anything!”

“Kiss me, on the lips.” 

You step back, legs shaking, eyes darting to his lips in terror. He’s requested this before, but you always denied it. It’s too close, too personal, too intimate. It’s an act that would seal the corrupted relationship you two share.

“W-what?”

He brings his palm, with you on it, closer to his lips.

“Come now, little one. You said you’d do anything to prove to me you won’t be such a brat.”

Hesitantly, you move closer, wrapping your arms around yourself. Swallowing thickly, you slowly lean forward and place your tiny lips on his, sealing the deal. He’s holding his breath, waiting anxiously for you to prove your loyalty to him.

As you lean back from the kiss, he breathes out, warm breath washing over you. 

“Thank you for that my pet. You truly have established your loyalty to me. I just have one more thing to ask of you.”

“What is it? I’ll do anything, I swear!” You just don’t want to end up with the devil. You know how much ‘fun’ Shoto could have with the word ‘anything’, you’re not an idiot. But anything is preferable to Enji.

“In a couple of days, I’ll be going away for a week or so. International hero conference, you know the deal. You will have to stay with my old man for that period.” 

Your stomach drops as you start crying. He...he lied to you! He betrayed you!

“B-but…you…you promised!”

“I said nothing of the sort. I simply asked if you’d stop being such a brat, to which you responded enthusiastically. Not my fault you misinterpreted what I said.” A wicked grin overtakes his face, as his hand cocoons your body, leaving only your head.

“I HATE YOU! You’re a villain! What makes you think you can do this?! You’re just like your father! I hope you both rot in hell together! I hate you!” You’re past the point of caring with Shoto, he can burn in hell for all you care. Although considering he is giving you to Todoroki Senior, the feeling might be mutual.

“Hahaha, little one, ferocious as ever. I DO hope you’ll survive the week with my father, it’d be such a shame otherwise.”

[thefatedthoughtofyou]

Dirty Deeds (Done Dirt Cheap) - Part 16

Summary: Sam inherits Steve Roger's crime empire after a handful of his men betray and kill him. The rest of the crime world, sensing an opening, go after Sam and the territories he's inherited from Steve. Thankfully, Steve left him a number, someone to call if he ever needs help. Someone, Steve claimed, he can trust. But can Sam really trust a mercenary with that much blood on his name? And that many knives in his pockets.

WARNINGS: (there will eventually be all of these things) blood, violence, murder, shooting, stabbing, sex, blood play , food related things: malnutrition, feeding, blow jobs, bathing/washing, chronic pain. Limb loss and regrowth. Bullet wounds. Gore.

18+ Content: Make Good Choices Kids <3

Ao3

He wakes to the sun warming his face, and burning his eyes, as it shines through the heavy curtains over the window that isn't his. His sits up quickly, breathing heavy, before he remembers he's at Sam's. He rubs at his eyes as his heart calms, the pounding in his ears fading as he swings his feet out of bed. He rests his elbows on his knees and then rests his head in his hands. A knock at the door comes, he doesn't move.

"Mr. Barn- sorry, Bucky?" Comes Torres's voice through the door.

"Yeah?" Bucky asks, still not moving.

"Sam's in his office. Whenever you're ready." The kid says, Bucky nods and then realizes Torres can't see him.

"I'll be down presently." He says, as sarcastically as he can through his freshly awakened haze. He hears Torres snort on the other side of the door.

"I'll let him know." There's a pause, the sound of Torres taking a few steps and then turning around.

"There's some fresh cut fruit in the kitchen if you're hungry." His voice says, quietly, Bucky can practically see him blushing on the other side of the door.

"Thanks kid." He says, finally moving, lifting his head and watching as Torres' shadow disappears from the space beneath the door.

He sighs and looks at the ceiling, poping his neck before looking back down. There are blood stains on the carpet from the day before. He can see Helen's footprints in some of them. He'd have to thank her again. She was always saving him when he was being an idiot. He grabs at his boots near the foot of the bed. Pulling on the pair of socks that had been shoved into them. He tucks the baggy sweats he'd been given into his boots and laces them tightly, grimacing at the feel of left over blood around his foot.

He makes his way downstairs, passing the kitchen without a glance, stopping outside of Sam's office. He takes a deep breath and then knocks, three raps of his knuckles in rapid succession.

"Come in." Sam's voice says. He sounds tired. Bucky turns the knob and walks into the dark office, closing the door behind him. He turns to see Sam watching him.

"Feeling better?" He asks, and Bucky can't tell if he's genuinely asking or just being an ass. Bucky smiles at him and drops himself into one of the chairs in front of Sam's desk.

"All good. Shouldn't you be... not here?" Bucky asks, pointing around the room, glaring at Sam.

"I've been in here for ten mintues. And I wasn't having this conversation in that fucking panic room." Sam says, laying his hands flat on the desk and glaring back. Bucky looks at him, he still looks tired, and annoyed. Bucky fights a smirk, knowing he's annoyed because of him. He thinks back, remembers the one time he'd spent time in that room with Steve, and decides to let it go.

"Fair enough." He says, nodding. He watches Sam's eyes widen, clearly shocked, for just the fraction of a second before he schooled his features again.

"So. Who are these people?" Sam asks, leaning back, relaxing a bit in his chair. Bucky takes a deep breath.

"They are... assassins. Old friends of mine, actually. Well, friends is probably a strong word. Let's go with acquaintances. We've worked together a few times." Bucky explained, badly.

"Acquaintances." Sam says, his voice flat as he stares at Bucky. Bucky nods.

"You're acquaintances, are trying to kill me." Sam says, voice still emotionless.

"Past acquaintances." Bucky says with a tilt of his head. Sam closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, Bucky presses his lips together, trying not to smile.

"So someone hired them? To kill me?" Sam asks, his eyes opening slowly.

"I would assume so, yeah. That's usually how it works unless-" Bucky froze, his fingers curling around the arms of the chair so hard the wood creaked.

"Unless?" Sam asked, his eyebrows rising, impatience in his voice.

"Gimme your phone." He said, holding his hand out. Sam stared at him, not moving, Bucky shook his hand and Sam moved to dig it out of his pocket. He held it out, pulling it back a little as Bucky reached for it, his eyes widening again.

"I'm not gonna do anything bad." Bucky said, he was leaning foward now, his butt on the edge of his seat as his out stretched hand chased after Sam's. Sam moved forward again, dropping the phone in his hand.

Bucky tapped at the screen for a few moments, checking all the usual places, the number that popped onto the screen when he entered his passcode had his stomach turning. He grimaced at the phone and sighed, shaking his head.

"What? What is it?" Sam asked, his voice hard now, like he was reaching the end of his patience.

"They put a bounty on you." Bucky said, erasing the history in Sam's phone and tossing it back. He watched Sam check the screen and then put the phone away again. Watched him swallow roughly before looking back up at Bucky.

"How much?"

"A lot." Bucky said, licking his lips and shoving the baggy sleeves of Sam's shirt up his arms.

"How much Barnes?" Sam almost growled at him. Bucky took a deep breath and leaned forward.

"75 million."

Sam's eyes widened again, he stared at Bucky.

"Seventy five..." Sam trailed off, his eyes going a bit glassy.

"Million. Yeah." Bucky finished, furrowing his brow as he looked at Sam.

"They really want you dead man." Bucky said, grimacing slightly as soon as the words left his mouth.

"Yeah no shit." Sam said.

"Sorry." Bucky shrugged, leaned back in his chair again.

"What the fuck am I supposed to do now? I'm not fucking living in that goddamn panic room. I'll go insane." Sam said, pushing himself to his feet, his chair rolling backwards with the force of it.

"I don't know yet." Bucky said.

"You don't know? That's fuckin helpful!" Sam shouted, throwing his hands up at his sides.

"Hey, I'm working on it. These people? Everyone, that's gonna be coming after you? They're trained. Like me and Wade. They're not just a room full of mobsters trying to play highnoon at the O.K. Corral." Bucky tried to keep his voice level. Sam turned on him fast.

"Oh and that went so well didn't it? You got shot. Twice. And Wade lost a fucking arm. And a foot. Somehow!" Sam growled, stalking closer to Bucky. He stayed in his seat, not rising to the argument Sam was trying to start.

"What can I say? Shit happens. And the foot was... later." Bucky said, avoiding Sam's eyes at the memory of cutting off Wade's foot.

"Listen," he started, before Sam could shout at him again.

"I understand you're stressed. This shit, is stressful. But if you go into this half cocked, people are gonna die. Your people. And I know you don't want that. And I know that you're smart. You know it's not a good idea to rush this." Bucky stood finally, putting himself eye level with Sam.

"I know you're wound tight right now. But you gotta calm down. Just, take a breath. And we can brain storm. And then we can kill these fuckers, and get your shit back under control." Bucky reached out, aiming for Sam's shoulder and hitting nothing but air as Sam pulled away from him. He made a fist in the air and dropped his hand. Watching Sam stare at him, his chest rising and falling quickly. He took a deep breath, his hands moving toward himself, motioning for Sam to do the same. He held in the smile threatening at his lips as Sam did as he was directed. Bucky let the breath out, nodding as Sam did the same.

He watched Sam lean against the desk, his hand holding him up as he took another slow breath.

"Better?" Bucky asked, tilting his head to get into Sam's eyeline.

"Yes." Sam sounded annoyed. He moved his hand over his face and stood up straight again.

"We need a plan then." Sam said, his eyes going steely as he looked at Bucky. Bucky could see the gears turning, Sam's thoughts racing behind his eyes.

"That we do. A good one too. Like the ones Steve used to tell me stories about." Bucky said, smirking when Sam's eyes snapped to him, looking shocked again and forgetting to hide it.

"He was proud of you Sam." Bucky took a step forward.

"He wouldn't have left this to you, if he didn't think you could handle it." Bucky wanted to reach out again, give Sam's shoulder a squeeze, but he didn't, he bit his lip and nodded instead. His eyes locked on Sam's, waiting for him to respond. Sam nodded back, slowly, and opened his mouth to say something. The house shaking around them and the explosion that filled the air cut him off, making Bucky's ears ring as they both dropped to the floor, crouching next to Sam's desk, Bucky putting himself between Sam and the only entrance to his office.

Bucky looked to the door, Torres burst in, and he could see a cloud of dust in the hall behind him.

"What do we do?" Torres shouted, there was blood dripping out of his ears, he kept wiping at it. Bucky grabbed his wrists, stopping him.

"You all have to get out if here. Take Maria and Helen and go. I'll take Sam." He shouted, raising his brows at Torres until he nodded. Bucky looked at Sam, he was crouched next to him, his side pressed to Bucky's as he watched them, his eyes moving to the door over and over.

"Everyone else needs to scatter. I don't care where. There's safe houses all over the city. Get to one. And stay there." He looked at Torres again, waiting for him to process what he'd told him.

"Okay! Be careful!" He shouted back, each of his hands going to Bucky and Sam's shoulders, they nodded at him. Bucky watched him disappear again, coughing as he ran into the hall, shouting for Helen and Maria. Bucky turned back to Sam, the ringing in his ears quieting.

"I'm gonna get you outta here. Stay close to me." He grabbed Sam's hand, stood up, and placed Sam's hand on his shoulder.

"Do not let go until I say you can." He told Sam, staring at him.

"I won't." Sam said, shouting a little, his ears no doubt ringing as well. Bucky nodded, felt Sam's hand fist in his shirt, and ran out into the hall.

He stayed low, Sam right behind him, as he made his way through the dusty hall, he didn't see much damage. The explosion must have been at the other end of the house, or at least around the corner. Bucky couldn't tell, it had been loud, but that didn't mean it had been close. They ran into a few gaurds on their way, Sam echoing Bucky's orders to scatter at them and sending them on their way. Bucky pushed the kitchen door open slowly, looking into the empty room before dragging Sam through the door. He stood up then, moving to the pantry, he moved into it and shut the door behind him.

"You can let go." He told Sam, and felt his tight grip disappear.  He moved his hand over the shelf along the right wall, looking for what he knew was there.

"Why are we in the pantry?" Sam whispered, still staying close to Bucky's side.

"Because, somewhere around here, there's a..." Bucky trailed off, his hands moving under the shelf now, fingers searching.

"Aha! There's a switch." He told Sam, smiling at him as he pressed it, the wall sliding to the side, opening to show a small dark room.

"Come on." Bucky said, motioning for Sam to go before him. He stepped in after him and slid the wall back into place.

"What is this?" Sam asked, looking around in the extremely dimly lit room. Bucky looked at him for a moment, and then grabbed the rifle hanging on the wall. He swung the strap over his head, so the gun was resting agaisnt his back.

"It's a-" Bucky turned to Sam in the low light.

"It's a secret get away tunnel." He said, smiling an awkward smile. He bent down and grabbed the duffle bag that was waiting on the floor, hanging that around his neck as well.

"A secret..." Sam's voice trailed off.

"Get away tunnel, yeah. I know it sounds made up, but I promise it's not. Excuse me." Bucky gently nudged Sam out of the way, pressing him back agaisnt one wall before kneeling down. He pressed his hands to the ground, hard, and then lifted them, watching as the previously invisible square of concrete lifted from the floor. Bucky lifted the hatch to reveal a ladder and looked up Sam.

"After you." He said, smiling. Sam glared down at him before kneeling at his side.

"Where does this go? How long has this been here?" He asked, not moving. Bucky looked at him and sighed.

"It's been here forever. Since before the house was here. And it goes somewhere safe. Now can we please." He motioned to the dark hole in the floor. Sam looked at him skeptically for another short moment and then moved, setting one foot on the ladder and then climbing in.

"There we go. Okay." Bucky waited for Sam to disappear into the dark before lowering himself onto the ladder and following. Once he was far enough in, he reached up and pulled the hatch shut above him, sending them into complete darkness.

"Hey!" Sam's shakey voice called from below him.

"Sorry bout that. But we can't leave it open." Bucky heard Sam sigh in relief beneath him as his foot hit the floor. Bucky went down a few more steps before jumping down. He tensed when he felt Sam's hand on his shoulder.

"Hang on a sec i haaaave..." Bucky drug out the last word as he rummaged in the duffle bag. His hands found what they were looking for quickly and he brought it out, snapping the large glow stick and shaking it in front of him as light bloomed before them. He watched Sam's body droop as the orange light pushed the darkness back a bit.

"Afraid of the dark are we?" Bucky teased, handing Sam the glow stick and grabbing another for himself. He popped it and laughed at the look Sam was giving him.

"Not the dark. Dark, strange tunnels, underneath my house? Maybe." Sam said, rolling his eyes as he held the light up, looking at their surroundings.

Behind the ladder was a solid concrete wall, and opposite that, the tunnel stretched on in a pitch black square. Bucky took a deep breath, looking into the dark.

"We gotta go." He told Sam, taking a few steps, Sam didn't move.

"Where does this go?" He asked again, his eyes locked on the darkness ahead of them. Bucky rolled his eyes, moving back a step, he grabbed Sam's hand, snapping him out of the shock he was in.

"Come on. We have to go." Sam shook his head, as if to clear it, and Bucky tugged on his hand, pulling Sam into the dark without further explanation.

~

They walked for miles. Bucky never letting go of Sam's hand. He ignored the way Sam never once tried to pull out of his grasp. They passed one or two off shooting tunnles on the way, but nothing else. Not even rats. Which was Bucky was glad for, he fuckin hated seeing rats down here. Sam stayed quiet, keeping pace mostly, and staying close. Their dim lights eventually illuminated another ladder and Bucky finally released Sam's hand, ignoring the sweat on his palm, wiping it on his pants.

Bucky climbed up the ladder, pressed his thumb to the print reader there, and waited for the click. He shoved the hatch open with a grunt, squinting as light shown into his eyes, not bright light, but after being in the dark for so long, he may as well have been looking into the sun. He climbed a few more steps and noticed he didn't hear Sam climing after him. He sighed, and climbed out if the hole, turning and looking back down. He could see Sam, his hand on the ladder in the circle of light, looking up at him.

"What's up there Bucky?" He asked again, tucking his glowstick into the waist of his pants, resting both hands on the ladder now.

Bucky sighed, his neck feeling hot as he looked at Sam. He fell back onto his heels and rubbed at his neck, his fingers dragging through his hair as he rolled his eyes at himself, his stomach twisting. He cleared his throat and leaned back over the hole in the floor, looking down at Sam looking up at him. He took a deep breath.

"My place." He sighed.

"It's my place."

Sam stared at him for a moment, hands clenching and unclenching on the ladder. Bucky heard him take a deep breath before lifting his foot onto the ladder as well. Bucky's stomach swam nervously as he watched Sam climb toward the light, moving closer and closer to him. 

Closer to his, abandoned, dilapidated, mess of a building. Closer to his emtpy frigde. Closer to his sparce furniture and sheetless beds. Bucky watched Sam climb closer and closer, his heart beating faster and faster. His hands itching to slam the hatch shut with each rung Sam moved past. Why the fuck had he brought Sam here. Sam's hand hit the top rung and then reached out, startling Bucky out of his thoughts. Sam looked up at Bucky, his eyes squinting from the light.

Bucky grabbed his hand, a strained smile on his lips, his heart pounding in his ears, his stomach fluttering as his thoughts raced.

Bucky held onto his hand tightly, and pulled Sam out of the dark.

[clansayeed]

Bound by Destiny ― Chapter 11: The Many Discomforts

PAIRING: Kamilah Sayeed x MC (Nadya Al Jamil) RATING: Mature

⥼ MASTERLIST ⥽

⥼ Bound by Destiny ⥽

Nadya Al Jamil (MC) has been struggling from the day she moved to Manhattan, but her new job as assistant to the mysterious CEO of Raines Corp was supposed to turn her luck around. Until she finds herself caught in the middle of a war involving the Council of Vampires who secretly run the city. An evil from the birth of Vampire-kind stirs beneath, feeding on the conflict, and finds Nadya bound to a destiny she never asked for.

Bound by Destiny and the rest of the Oblivion Bound series is an ongoing dramatic retelling project of the Bloodbound series and spin-off, Nightbound. Find out more [HERE].

⥼ Chapter Summary ⥽

Kamilah helps Nadya get dressed. A mysterious couple surprise the attendees of the Awakening Ball.

[READ IT ON AO3]

She doesn’t tell either of them about the voices she heard outside the Library.

Part of her isn’t entirely sure she even heard anything. She had more alcohol last night than in her entire undergrad career and there could have been something in the air or the food that could lead to hearing… weird voices… And if she does choose to cast aside her veil of doubt — what would she even say?

Especially remembering one of those voices sounded an awful lot like Kamilah.

Kamilah who spends the entire evening doing what Nadya’s pretty sure is the two-thousand year old equivalent of pouting because apparently Adrian ditched her last night for some fun of his own.

“Well we did want him to unwind a bit, I guess?” Nadya tries to be a good friend; tries to defend him.

But their petty little fight means she can’t pry from either one of them how Kamilah spent her night. Or who she spent her night with. So she’s having her own little huff.

“One moment he was off coaxing donors into our booth and he didn’t even have the decency to announce that he’d been propositioned,” Kamilah continues her argument like Nadya was nothing more than a gust of wind, “and such things simply aren’t done in polite society.”

“I had a good night.” She shrugs it off but catches the way Kamilah pauses mid-air before grabbing her hairbrush. Her tone suddenly catching disinterest.

“Did you now?”

“Yeah. Met a really sweet couple. They’re here with one’s sister. I’m gonna try and find them again tonight.”

“Good. Though I would advise you stay close to Adrian and myself for the majority of the evening.”

“Why?” Nadya peers into Kamilah’s designer makeup bag seriously. It’s pretty much a bag full of money, right?

She sets her brush down gently; gives Nadya a serious look despite her gentle tone. “Have you forgotten already? Somehow you’ve made enemies on the Council by merely existing.”

Right, Nadya nods in silence. The Baron and Senator Vega were guaranteed to be in attendance… but they wouldn’t jeopardize the Ball itself to settle some sort of score with her — would they?

There’s a knock on the door and Kamilah blurs to it before Nadya can even turn her head. She peers around the doorway to see her let in Adrian — bearing a large black garment bag.

“Sorry,” he greets them both with a smile, “I think I left my card here.”

“Did Priya actually come through?” Kamilah takes the bag from him with a tone of sarcastic surprise. Unzips the top to peer at the contents within with a satisfied smile.

Adrian nods. “She wasn’t happy about having to bring it here but I promised her a suitable trade.”

“That would be…?”

“Raines Corporation sponsorship at her next show.”

Feeling like she needs to announce her presence Nadya clears her throat. Earns a bright grin from Adrian and a raised eyebrow from Kamilah. Though there’s no denying the subtle smirk joining it.

Adrian passes Kamilah to pour himself a glass of whiskey. “Did you tell her yet?”

“And spoil the surprise? Never.” The way she looks at Adrian — like all of her frustrations have gone away, their importance weighed against the eternity going forwards and back and found wanting — makes Nadya question just who the surprise is for.

Another soft cough and she’s going to break her neck if she looks back and forth any quicker. “Someone gonna enlighten me?”

“Do you want to show her?” asks Adrian. Kamilah drapes the bag over the back of a chair and retreats into their room to continue her routine.

“Shooow me what?”

“Well we figured you didn’t have anything that fit the theme of the Ball in your wardrobe.” He explains and grabs the bag to hang it over the front of the armoire in Nadya’s room. Starts pulling down the zipper before she can even follow.

“I thought what I brought was okay! Kamilah — you told me it was okay!”

Nadya looks at the dress she’s laid out on the room’s second bed. Sure it’s the same dress from the event at the Gallery but that whole ‘never caught wearing the same thing twice’ thing was only a movie trope, right? And even if it wasn’t only Kamilah and Adrian would be able to call her out on it.

What? It was expensive. And she fully intends to get her money’s worth out of it.

Adrian worries his bottom lip with vestiges of guilt. “It’s a nice choice, yes. But as Kamilah and I were planning to adhere to the theme — we figured it was the least we could do.”

He peels the black panels apart and takes Nadya’s breath away. She’s never found blue that attractive but somehow the dress looks both like a cloudless summer day and sparkles with night-time stars. Little Nadya, the girl who wanted nothing more in life than to be a princess, squeals deep in her heart but the adult on the outside simply can’t find the words.

He pulls out the skirts to let their size show proudly. Brushes his fingertips along the satiny fabric of the bodice and even at a distance she can tell it’s buttery; utterly perfect.

“Well,” Adrian looks as excited as she feels, “what do you think?”

It takes her brain a second to catch hold of her tongue. “Wait, you said Priya? As in —”

“Don’t think about that. Don’t think about the money, or who made it, or any of that. Just tell me what you think — really think.”

With a lot of effort Nadya tamps down years of apology-laden refusals. Reaches down inside to let that little princess girl shine through.

She bounces on the balls of her bare feet.

“I think I need some glass slippers.”

“They’re not glass — trust me on this one — but Kamilah has you covered.”

Then her arms are thrown around his neck and she’s kissing the same stubbly spot on his cheek over and over; she’s pretty sure she might have gotten a little spit on her boss but who the heck cares?

“It’s beautiful.”

“You really think?”

“I really really think.”

Coaxing her away, Adrian grabs the door handle on his exit. “Then I’ll leave you to get ready. We’ll be heading down in a few hours.”

Taking in the beauty of the dress before her is almost enough to make Nadya forget about the voice in the library. Almost.

“Adrian?”

Maybe a normal person wouldn’t have caught her soft voice; would have kept going and ventured off to prepare without a care. But Adrian’s not normal. Maybe that’s what she’s hoping for deep down.

“Hm — you say something?” He peeks his head around the door; blinks with an innocence that makes Nadya’s heart sink into her stomach.

She can’t ruin his evening.

“I just wanted to… to really make sure you know how much I appreciate this.” Holding up a bit of the dress skirts, she gives him the widest smile she can muster without seeming fake. If he doesn’t believe her he doesn’t show it.

“You deserve it.”

In the time that follows Nadya really thinks about that — considers wildly that he might be right. After everything that’s happened so far this may be the one thing she needs to actually celebrate for herself. To celebrate something good happening to her.

It’s so easy to get swept up in the bad; the Baron, Lily, Vega, that the good things get harder and harder to cling on to.

So this — this she’s not letting go of.

Until she very much wants to throw this dumb dress down some sort of chute into an incinerator. Old fashioned places like these have those, right? I need to find one. Because god, putting it on is pretty much impossible! She’s tried shoving herself into it in various directions nearly five times and, standing in nothing but her underthings with the deepest and most hate-filled frown she can muster, debates her plan of action for the sixth.

There’s a noise of bemusement behind her and Nadya almost misses it — almost cares too much about her perfect mental image of taking her mother’s sewing shears and cutting the thing into ribbons with maniacal glee — almost.

Almost.

With no dignity whatsoever she turns on her heel, shouts something that sounds an awful lot like “Eeep,” and tries to cover herself against Kamilah’s eyes with the complimentary dressing gown from the bathroom.

What are you doing, this is a good thing! Says the part of her brain that stopped making good choices the moment she realized she had a crush. And though normally her rational side usually came up with a good excuse… it’s falling a bit short at the moment.

“Kamilah! Knock please!”

The look the vampire gives her of oh, really isn’t entirely unwarranted.

The last time she had a roommate she needed to knock for was back when she lived at home. Lily, knocking? What a laughable idea. And habits die hard… until they’re driven into you by a privacy-inclined Kamilah.

She saunters into the room like she owns it. Technically, she kinda does. Not like something that trivial would stop her anyway. Like a jaguar on the prowl she circles Nadya, makes her little human heart work harder than it has in her entire life, before she stops and takes stock of the dress and its components.

“Relax; it’s nothing I haven’t seen already.” Kamilah gently cuffs the sleeves of her own sheer gown — oh holy Mother Mary she needs to tie that belt tighter — and starts working on the lacing of the whalebone corset. “Am I correct in assuming you’ve never worn one of these before?”

With a negative level of grace Nadya pulls the backwards robe off, lets it fall to the plush carpeting.

“I mean, if Ren Faire counts?”

Kamilah’s nose twitches slightly. She’s gotten to know at least a few of the woman’s little ticks — the nose being one of them. Confusion but too much pride (or too little care) to want to know more.

“You know,” Nadya moves her hips like somehow that will explain everything for her, “the Renaissance Faire? Jousting and knights and giant turkey legs bigger than your head?”

“Sounds like they got the period wrong… unsurprising.”

“Oh, right.”

Kamilah pulls the last lacing aside and holds it up in both hands. Normally it would take Nadya a few seconds to understand what’s going on but since she’s pretty sure she’s had this dream before the usual brain-delay doesn’t apply. There’s been plenty of time to pinch herself awake tonight already. She’s very much awake.

Slowly Nadya turns her back towards Kamilah; awkwardly raises her arms out only because she doesn’t know what to do with them.

Like with all things Kamilah takes the lead; she’s not a woman who abides ignorance and simply educates along the way. The cool touch of her fingers sends gooseflesh racing down Nadya’s arms as she’s positioned—not unlike a mannequin—with her arms slightly above her head and just enough space for Kamilah to wrap the corset around her front and begin securing the laces in the back.

“You’ll feel a little —” she tugs and knocks the air from Nadya’s lungs, “— discomfort. Seeing as this is your first time.” There’s a breath of silence and Kamilah’s next words sound almost like appraisal: “Though you have the figure for it.”

Nadya fumbles for a response, manages a stuttered out “thank you” as the form-fitting fabric begins to press harder around her middle.

“This way. Move with me.”

Kamilah taps the back of her leg to coax her forward. Nadya, dazed and growing hotter by the moment, complies in a stupor. Suddenly finds herself with her hands braced against the ornamental wall with nothing but the solid presence of the vampire behind her.

“Good. Now hold that stance. Your fore-mothers were quite insistent that beauty come at a price.”

Her laugh comes out a breathless whimper; makes her go scarlet in embarrassment when she takes note of Kamilah’s brief hesitancy before continuing.

Each pull of the strings is painful pressure — shaping, twisting, mangling her — for the corset’s desired shape. Kamilah surprises her with patience joining her firm touch. Her strength only needs one good pull to get the job done but she gives Nadya time to find the width of her new breath before moving on.

Only Kamilah’s very presence isn’t helping her find her breath in the slightest.

Neither is the hand that suddenly falls onto her newly-shaped hip.

“Relax,” Kamilah croons in her ear, lets her thumb trace a soft and comforting circle just below the corset’s base, “the more you think about it the more your body resists.”

Another noise comes out a note higher and Nadya spits hair out of her mouth. “No offense but you never had to breathe in one of these things.”

There’s a genuine laugh behind her; melodious and gentle. Something Nadya’s never heard the equal of but longs for the moment it fades. Laugh like that again, she wants to say — doesn’t, let me remember it for the rest of my life.

“True enough. Now ready yourself; last one.”

The hand vanishes, leaves her skin feeling cold and alone. She braces her sweating palms against the wall once more and on the count of two Kamilah pulls one last time and secures the lacing.

Just as Nadya readies herself to figure out how to breathe on her own there’s a weight on her hips. Kamilah’s nails dig softly into the swell of her body. There’s definitely not enough oxygen going to her brain.

It’s the kind of quiet that rings in her ears. Makes her want to fill it with mindless chatter, the television on in the background, something. But Kamilah’s a fan of it — like the masochist she is. Says it’s good for emptying the well of her thoughts but Nadya just can’t come to terms with it.

Until now. Because if anyone were to say anything she’s pretty sure she’d throttle them.

Finally Kamilah speaks; something rich like caramel on her tongue that makes Nadya’s body react in ways she’s forgotten. Makes her thighs tremble like they’re straining to hold her up.

“Better now?”

When she breathes it’s easier; it’s been easier, became easier while she was frantically thinking up something to say or do to break the tension between them. And she didn’t even notice.

“Uh — Mmhm.”

The pressure of centuries lives on her hipbones — Nadya turns with the woman’s touch until they’re face-to-face. She knows it’s just so Kamilah can make sure her work has yielded success but it makes her want to fly away to whatever place in the clouds her reason has gone. It’s gotta be freakin’ nice up there.

Kamilah hums — taps her fingertip against her lips for a moment before she moves. Nadya closes her eyes like she’s bracing for some sort of apocalypse-level impact.

The sudden frigid touch releases a trapped noise from inside her. There’s absolutely no way Kamilah doesn’t know what she’s doing; doesn’t know the reactions she’s getting aren’t utterly shameful. Doesn’t know there’s no way in heaven, hell, or anything in between that cupping Nadya’s flushed breasts where they rest trapped within the corset to adjust them isn’t going to drive her absolutely insane.

Nadya squeezes her eyes shut. Bites on her bottom lip so hard it hurts, so hard there’s definitely going to be an indent for hours, and waits for Kamilah to be satisfied with her work.

“Much better. You can open your eyes now, Nadya.”

Only she wishes she hadn’t — finds herself staring in the depths of Kamilah’s soul filled with ice so cold it burns her from the inside out. She knows what she’s done, what she’s wrought. And when her tongue wets her bottom lip and sends Nadya keening into an octave she didn’t know she could reach she knows that, too, was as purposeful as everything else.

There’s a cinematic version of Nadya in her head that would absolutely throw every caution to the wind and surge forward in a kiss. That version would press Kamilah down onto the bed — maybe even on top of the dress — and release all their tension in a rush of tangled tongues and the sting of teeth colliding.

That version is much braver than the reality.

“All — ah — All good?” she chokes out.

Kamilah’s brows knit together. “Indeed. Is that all you have to say?”

She barely has the time to consider a response before her hands are trapped above her head in an immortal grip.

Kamilah bears down upon her; every inch the perfect predator. Just when Nadya’s certain her heart is actually trying to push it’s way out of her chest she sees a flicker of red in those dark, alluring eyes and finds herself caught between reality and whatever dream she’s had but forgotten that makes all this feel like deja-vu.

She’s got a lot more to say. She just doesn’t know how to say it.

And like with all things — she ruins it. Her hesitance isn’t something Kamilah wants, makes her back off a vampire-step back, crossing the room backwards and putting a world of wants and desires between them.

Way to go, says the Lily-voice in Nadya’s mind. It takes her longer to recover her breath against the strain of the corset.

Maybe it’s a trick of the light; the way Kamilah takes advantage of the space to look Nadya over bodily. And maybe it isn’t.

“I — I should, uhm…” Nadya runs clammy hands over her face and gestures to the dress as a sudden exhaustion fills her from head to toe, “but thank you for helping. Really.”

Kamilah says nothing. Nods curtly and leaves. And that’s how Nadya knows she’s going to have a very very long night.

With all guests — human and vampire alike — heading to the same place this time around Nadya gets a full dose of reality of the attendees and their numbers. It makes her keep close to Kamilah and Adrian as they descend towards the Grand Ballroom.

It’s harder to tell the difference between them; at least to her mortal senses. No doubt the vampires know one another by sight. But she takes in the splendor of costumes from every period and society she ever read about in school; smiles sheepishly as they pass what looks like a Japanese samurai in full regalia accosting a Renaissance painter.

Nadya briefly touches the bodice of her dress; rolls her shoulders to shift her body back into a comfortable place.

“Are you in discomfort?” Kamilah asks quietly beside her.

They’d all departed the room together; all shared a toast of some strong honey-tinted cognac beforehand. It was like the whole thing hadn’t happened to Kamilah — except for the fact that Nadya can’t seem to meet her eye to eye.

With a pursed smile on her flushed cheeks Nadya shakes her head. “No — well, no more than I already was. You… uhm…”

Great, really great. Of course she has to fumble again, has to not know what to say again. And honestly this time the twinge of disappointment she sees reflected in Kamilah’s eyes is one she shares. Dumb girl.

The crowd bottlenecks at a pair of large and lavish double doors. The music of a live orchestra dances on the air out into the hall over the conversational chatter. Maybe Nadya’s imagining it but the air carries the faint smell of lavender.

They file in behind the rest — Nadya cranes her head to see what’s holding them all up.

Two footmen stand against either side of the doorway with heavy-looking leather ledgers in their hands. They take down the name of the attendant in front of them before taking turns with announcing the guest’s arrival.

“Lady Genevieve, and guest!”

“Mansa Adebayo, and celebrated Olamide!”

“Monsieur Robespierre!”

With a startled gasp Nadya smacks Adrian’s arm. “That’s not… No way!”

Adrian quickly looks to Kamilah; whose face has been beset by a deep scowl.

“Indeed it is,” Adrian replies, “but he’s been banned from Marcel’s very presence up until, well, now.”

“He must have done something considerably generous to earn forgiveness.” muses Kamilah.

The footman calls out another name: “Celebrated Nicholas Hall!”

“What does that mean,” she asks them, “when they say ‘celebrated?’”

Adrian coaxes them all into the left branch of the line as he explains. “I told you the Awakening Ball is a celebration first, remember? It celebrates the newly Turned of the decade. It’s more of a bigger deal if you were Turned within a year or two of the party, but anyone new is welcome to come.”

“If they have the connections for an invitation.”

“Well… yes.”

She doesn’t have to say it — one look down and Adrian knows what she’s thinking. It makes him lean down and whisper in her ear.

“It would be too dangerous for her to be here. If anyone recognized her as a local we’d run the risk of exposing her Turning.”

“I know.” Nadya replies in the same monotone. Yes, she knows. And she’s come to terms with it. Doesn’t stop her from feeling, though; from missing Lily and knowing she’d enjoy something like this so-freakin’-much.

When the trio comes up to their footman Kamilah takes the lead. “You’re here on my invitation,” Adrian reminds her quietly. Whatever title Kamilah gives makes the announcer — human; somehow Nadya can just tell — go flushed as he tries to keep up with it all. She tries to peer close enough to see it but the block of fresh black ink is unreadable from their distance.

A nonplussed Kamilah turns herself towards the ballroom without thought to the way the footman trips over his tongue. Nadya almost feels bad for the guy.

“Ah — ahem… the Esteemed Kamilah Sayeed; Nomarch of Maten, Founder and CEO of Ahmanet Financial Holdings, Leader of Clan Sayeed of New York, and member of the Council of New York.”

Even without microphones the announcement carries. Makes the crowds closest to the doors stop in their tracks — some mid-word — all to turn and witness Kamilah’s entrance.

She walks with a different kind of grace than Nadya is used to seeing. Kamilah will probably always be the exact opposite of the dictionary definition of ‘humble’ but there’s a different kind of pride in the rise of her chin and a rigidity in her spine.

Like she’s a queen putting on airs for her subjects; like she knows exactly how to catch their attentions. Nadya’s, too.

Adrian’s cold hand on her bare shoulder-blade rouses her out of the hypnosis of Kamilah’s entry.

“Come on. We’re next.”

Suddenly the footman seems daunting. Who could follow an arrival like that?

“Name and title, ser,” the footman doesn’t even bother looking up from his ledger as Adrian slowly articulates his name and title — and follows with one for Nadya too.

“Just follow my lead.” Mutters Adrian, and together they take their position to enter.

The right footman announces his guest and the woman steps forward with her dress train trailing several feet behind her. Arm linked tightly against Adrian’s, Nadya holds her breath.

“Adrian Raines; Founder and CEO of the Raines Corporation, Leader of Clan Raines of New York, member of the Council of New York, and guest Mademoiselle Nadya Al Jamil of Clan Raines.”

Red does not go with the shade of blue her dress is but that doesn’t stop her from being a literal tomato as they make their way inside.

“Mademoiselle, really?”

Adrian gives her a half-grin. “It’s not every day you get to be announced. I figured that’s one down for the bucket list.”

“I’m too young for a bucket list.” She grumbles, and wants to snatch the words from the air and shove them back in her mouth until her cheeks are full but she can’t, not with a ton of eyes on her, so she just watches them fly away with regret.

They follow the current of guests mingling their way into the Ball. Kamilah’s already been plunged into the depths — Nadya has to pull Adrian by their linked arms when she spots her over by the place where the dance floor meets arrays of standing tables.

As they approach Adrian’s face lights up. “Oh, good, she’s found Marcel.”

At first glance it looks like Kamilah’s in deep conversation with someone’s lost child. A child who matches the ballroom and the decor of the workers far better than any other. Their fast-paced French dies once the pair are within earshot and the child — who is very much not a child when Nadya meets his eyes — beams in delight when he sees Adrian.

Marcel Lafayette, the owner of the castle and the Awakening Ball’s illustrious host, had to have been Turned on the cusp of puberty; that point where children are starting to grow into their abnormally sized proportions but still maintain those round cheeks and slightly too-big ears. But children—regular children—have a sparkle in their eyes. They haven’t lost their innocence, haven’t seen how hard and cruel the world can be when it wants to.

Marcel has no such light. It’s like looking into a void. And it makes Nadya want to cry.

“Adrian, mon coeur!” Adrian has to nudge Nadya away as he ends up with arms full of exuberant young vampire. Marcel presses a butterfly kiss to Adrian’s cheeks; protests with a slight whine as his perfect golden curls are ruffled in response. “Non! Not my hair! You know this took me hours!”

Kamilah scoffs but the fondness on her face is unlike any Nadya has ever seen.

“C’est faux, Marcel, and you know it.”

“Well…” His mischievous smirk falters as his eyes fall on Nadya — namely on her dress. Every imitation the young boy at a grown-up party, Marcel clasps his hands behind his back and steps up to her to give a low bow.

“Forgive me, mademoiselle, for not noticing you before. With beauty such as yours you must be some sort of princess, non?”

Before Nadya can make a fool of herself the young man takes her hand and kisses the back of it — eases her into their greeting.

“This is the mortal I was speaking of,” Kamilah offers, “Nadya; Adrian’s guest.”

“I’m his assistant-slash-secretary, actually.” She corrects with pink cheeks. “I’ve heard good things about you from Adrian and Kamilah, Marcel. Thank you for the invitation.”

“Oh, I like her.”

Adrian’s honestly never looked so proud. “I do, too.”

Beside her Kamilah gives a soft and derisive laugh. “You haven’t seen the sheer amount of sugary sweets she can put away.”

“A-Anyway!” Only she doesn’t have anything to interrupt the conversation with and Kamilah knows it in the look in her eyes.

Marcel takes both Adrian and Kamilah’s hands in his and squeezes them fondly. “It’s been so long since I’ve had two of my favorite people in the same room. Especially since someone chose not to attend the last Ball!”

Under his glare Adrian at least looks ashamed. “If it had been any other night I could have come! I sent Kamilah with my apology.”

“Oh, was that what I forgot to bring along?” Her fake embarrassment makes Adrian’s jaw drop. “How forgetful of me…”

“The past is the past — of course you are forgiven. Just don’t do it again.”

“I don’t plan on —”

As far back as they are it’s difficult to hear the footmen and their announcements over the other voices. That is until someone hits the mute button on the party save the orchestra — and even they falter in a brief confusion before steadying their harmony.

Nadya strains to hear; her mortal ears letting her down. But whatever is called — whoever has arrived — has her friends in a strange way.

Marcel’s fingertips touch his rouged lips. He pulls a lace-woven fan from his breast pocket and fans himself frantically.

“Quelle surprise… I didn’t think they’d really come. I had to send their invitations so far!”

It’s luck and maybe a little bit of cosmic intervention on Nadya’s behalf when she catches the sight of Kamilah’s expression before she can ask who ‘they’ are. Darkness — an empty well where only the echoes of the lost ring among the stones.

Who the hell just showed up?

Kamilah steps closer to her young friend; lowers her voice so much that Nadya almost misses it.

“Where did you find them?”

“A small village,” Marcel whispers back, “on the border of Auvernal and Cordonia.”

“And you chose to invite them because…?”

“Because they’re family, Kamilah. And I miss them so.”

The young lord seems to remember himself, then. Stops whispering and straightens his spine like he’s just been reprimanded by a nanny. For the second time Nadya watches with wonder as Marcel Lafayette shifts from elated lad to wizened man.

The still-silent crowd parts in a sea of wealth and finery as a couple approaches.

They fit in with the rest of the jumble of history’s wealthiest fashions, all it takes is a glance to know they aren’t wearing costumes but the real thing. Dark emerald woven tight and sheer against the woman’s lithe figure and etched with golden thread that looks like it was spun from sunlight. The fresh aroma of the man’s bay laurel; the almost staged way his toga and wrappings cascade in a waterfall of fabric down to his sandaled feet.

Together they are easily the most beautiful things in the room. And underneath the surface, even from afar, Nadya is certain they know it, too. It takes her a moment to realize what else she feels from them; she doesn’t really understand until they’re in the same frame of sight as Kamilah.

She looks dwarfed in comparison. Young.

Whoever these vampires are… they’re so old they make Kamilah look gentile.

Then Marcel’s bowing beside her, and Kamilah’s eyes are cast down in her curtsy. Makes Nadya hastily grip the edges of her dress and bend her knee in something that would embarrass any actual royalty. Oh crap, are they actual vampire royalty?

Only Adrian remains standing. Which is definitely unlike him. Has Nadya looking through the curtain of her hair to see the unabashed surprise in his slack jaw.

“Domine,” Kamilah addresses curtly; stares directly into the man’s eyes as though he’s just made a threat on her life.

Instead the man in the laurel wreath gives a deep bow to Marcel.

“Young Lord Lafayette. Isseya and I were surprised to receive your invitation, and wished to apologize in person for not securing our place. I hope we’re not intruding…”

Marcel’s curls bounce with the vigor with which he shakes his head. “Non, not at all! I’m glad the invitations got to you in time.”

The woman, Isseya, laughs with her eyes more than her lips.

“Thank you for sending one for each of us, darling boy. The gesture was a kind one, and they were decadent.”  And Nadya remembers, then, the woman who brought their invite. Her stomach flips upside-down.

Nadya catches a strange noise beside her. Turns to see Adrian looking at Isseya and her companion with an expression she can’t put a word on. But she’s definitely never seen it before. It makes her lean in with a hand on his arm, ready to help how she can.

“Adrian —”

“Ah, so that is your name.” The man’s interruption makes Nadya jump — shivers running down her spine. There’s an almost erotic appraisal in his eyes as he and his companion both smile at Adrian.

“We were hoping to catch you again tonight,” and Nadya does not like the way Isseya’s words dissolve into a purr, not one bit, “Valdas —” she strokes the robed man’s arm with her fingertips, “— is not easily so impressed after a single encounter.”

Several times Adrian opens and closes his mouth in an attempt to speak. Eventually gives way to the silence when he realizes they would wait however long to hear his thoughts.

“I’m, ah, well that is to say…”

Valdas chuckles in bemusement. “Still speechless?”

“Give the poor thing a chance. You did keep him on the edge well until dawn.”

Adrian finally finds his voice — if strained. “When I agreed to join you two for… last night’s events, I wasn’t aware you were —”

“The Trinity?” Valdas supplies for him. Makes Adrian give a curt nod.

Kamilah, meanwhile, is fuming. “You spent La Soirée with the Trinity?”

“Don’t sound so pious, Kamilah. Your age surely hasn’t affected your memory so. I seem to recall…”

Isseya trails off when Valdas holds up his hand — but she doesn’t really need to say anything more. It’s all in her eyes. And Nadya’s struggle to keep up really doesn’t need the visuals.

Everything in Kamilah’s glare to Adrian screams ‘We’re not done.’

The tension is starting to make Nadya sweat and that’s the last thing she wants in a room full of people with enhanced noses. So she does the most Nadya thing she can and offers her hand out to the pair.

“Well since you all know each other I guess I’m the only one left,” she says cheerily; “I’m Nadya — Adrian’s assistant. It’s a pleasure to meet you both.”

She squeaks when Isseya brings her hand up to kiss the back. Feels the smolder in that immortal gaze that makes it harder to breathe than it already is. Her hand is traded off like a party favor. Valdas’ beard tickles his kiss.

“Yes… he mentioned having a mortal companion.”

“All good mentions — I hope?”

Valdas nods. “Adequate, indeed. I am Valdas of Persepolis. I present Isseya; High Priestess of Valdemaras.”

Something about the title makes Kamilah twitch — Nadya catches it out of the corner of her eye.

“Is that some Roman god they didn’t cover in the history books?”

Valdas’ eyes flash red.

“I assure you I was worshiped long before the Romans invented their feeble pantheon.”

If there’s ever a time to say “Well, this is awkward” it would be now — only she doesn’t because she prefers her head right where it is on her neck.

Luckily Marcel comes to the rescue. Pushes his way in the middle of the older vampires and grabs their hands — definitely the most uncomfortable family-style image Nadya’s ever seen — to drag them off in another direction. More guests to greet. More awkwardness to not have in their immediate vicinity.

The world narrows down like some sort of slow-motion film; Kamilah turning her heel with an entire scolding already on the tip of her tongue. Nadya looks around in a panic for something — anything — to not, and spots the most dangerous weapon of all approaching on a literal silver platter.

“Hold it!” She holds up a literal finger to pause them and makes a mad dash; returns to watch the vampires’ confusion quickly evolve into rightly-felt panic.

Kamilah looks between Nadya and her prize with pursed lips. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Giving you… uh…” should’ve thought this through better… “— a choice. I’m giving you — both of you — a choice.”

Adrian holds up his hands with caution. “Nadya, think about what you’re doing.”

“I don’t think. Come on, now. All my best ideas are complete erratic impulse.”

“I wouldn’t mark this down as one of your best.”

“What exactly is this… choice?” Kamilah asks.

Now filled with a confidence unlike any before, Nadya gives both of them a stern finger.

“Your choice is this: either you two table whatever is going on — or I eat this.”

She holds up the metal skewer in all its glory; slowly turns the handle so Kamilah and Adrian can see every gruesome detail of each of the five cubes of gourmet cheese impaled on it. She’s never been a fan of fancy cheeses; prefers her food to smell as good as it tastes which is very rarely the case with such things.

But she’s deadly serious and they know it. Especially when Adrian steps forward to take it and Nadya jerks away into the path of another server.

“Okay — okay. We’ll save it for later. I’d rather wait anyway.” He looks to Kamilah and feels his panic rise at her stubborn refusal. “Kamilah…”

“You’re going to let a mortal threaten you with something so trivial?”

He doesn’t even have to think it over. “Yes.”

Only when she looks between them and realizes their seriousness — and possibly loses a chunk of respect for both of them — does Kamilah relent.

“Fine,” with a flippant wave of her hand, “very well, whatever you must hear. But this will not go undiscussed, Adrian.”

Nadya lowers her dairy-carved threat. “Just don’t do it now. We’re gonna have a good-freakin’-time. Got it?”

Kamilah’s stuffy “Yes” and Adrian’s resigned “Okay” are enough for her. Who ever said lactose intolerance wasn’t useful?

[keeroo92]

Hunger Ch4

@dmcvvitale @tehrevving Here’s part four! Other than hints of necrophilia and a quick murder, this came out surprisingly vanilla. Enjoy!

Word count - 4,048

Part 1 --- Part 2 --- Part 3

___________________________

The city was quiet, subdued in the darkness of night. Only bars and nightclubs remained open, all other businesses unlit and hidden behind protective grates. Old newspapers skittered across the pavement in the breeze, accompanied by the thumping bass from the warehouse across the street. The streetlights offered periodic refuges from the shadows, a place for his prey to feel safe.

She was anything but.

The vampire crouched on the lip of a brick building, watching her every move as she pulled her phone from her bag. He’d been waiting for her to leave the club for hours, keeping himself occupied with memories of you, but at last his prey was in sight. Slim fingers tapped at the screen and the foolish woman forgot to pay attention to her surroundings. A mistake she would not repeat.

He licked his lips, running his tongue over his razor-sharp fangs. Her scent was a pale imitation of yours, her flesh several shades too dark, but the same silent need emanated from her like a siren’s call. It would have to be enough.

He slithered down to street level, keeping to the shadows until he was ready to make his move. His prey remained clueless.

Fool.

He crept closer, waiting for the familiar thrill of the hunt to flood his senses. This was his purpose, as a predator. To hunt and feed and kill those unfortunate enough to be his prey. What a perfect example tonight’s prey was, in her revealing mini dress and heels. A night of fun and revelry, only to end in blood and death. All that she could’ve become, could’ve done with her life was his to take. His to ruin.

Yet he felt no excitement, no anticipation or lust. He was empty.

Bored.

He shook himself, trying to recapture the joy of hunting. What a masterpiece she would be, eyes glazed in death with her own blood splashed across her frozen limbs. She was a canvas, and he the painter. A statement of broken dreams and stolen possibilities, begging to be realized.

V sighed.

He didn’t care.

She was nothing, a boring and plain human. Her lack of attention made hunting her too easy, child’s play. It left so much to be desired, and he was nothing if not a creature of desire. Perhaps she’d scream, beg for her life? He did so enjoy it when his prey begged…

“Please, Master…”

The vampire smirked. Your begging was sweeter than all others. Just remembering the whine of your voice sent surges of need coursing through his veins, a flood of endorphins only you had the power to summon.

He needed to decide. Were you worthy? Would you truly be his equal, or would you fall short? You had yet to disappoint him, in all the months of lustful and hungry experimentations, but the possibility still echoed in his mind. What if he turned you and everything changed? What if you lost your appeal?

A sharp pang of hunger twisted his stomach; he needed to feed, pondering your future could wait.

He flitted into the light and covered his prey’s mouth, other arm tugging her into the darkness. She tried to scream, her throat vibrating in terror as her eyes darted around, but barely a whimper slipped past his tight fingers. The cheap plastic of her heels clicked on the pavement as she struggled, desperate to free herself.

Her panic did nothing for him. If anything, it felt like he was taking the trash out. A chore, dull and tedious. What once brought him immense joy and satisfaction now barely required his attention.

Unacceptable.

He shoved her against the wall and leaned in, taking a deep sniff. The aroma of blood was enough to pique his interest, but only just. It was maddening; where was the thrill? Where was the excitement, the overwhelming rush? What was wrong with him?

Frustration pooled in his belly and he growled. His fangs sank into her flesh with no mercy. The moment he once drew out as long as he could was now only a task to complete. The crimson gush was flavorful and satisfying, but it tasted muted. Like a watered-down soda, lacking the body and decadence of the past. He had to force himself to keep drinking.

Venom dripped onto his tongue and he forced it into her wound; he didn’t care enough to keep her mouth covered any longer. She reacted quickly, pressing her body against his and humming as he slurped. What a pathetic creature. So utterly inferior, his cock twitched out of habit alone.

“Fuck me, Master…”

He snarled. Even thinking of your voice caused more of a reaction than the mewling chaff he was feeding on. Images of you flooded his mind, sprawled out and drenched in blood and ropes of his cum with that blissful afterglow. No matter how he tried to focus on his prey, you refused to leave his thoughts.

So lovely, such a good pet…

His meal moaned and tried to grind against him, lost in the grip of his venom. She tugged at his clothing, clumsy fingers scraping on his shoulders. It annoyed him and he sank his fangs even deeper. The river of scarlet flowing into his mouth quickened and the girl keened, arching her neck to give him wider access. As if he needed permission.

The thudding beat of her heart was fading. Even the knowledge that she was almost spent did nothing for him and he bit deeper still in irritation, tasting cartilage and gristle. Her arms fell away to the sides and her head drooped, her weakness growing every second. The torrent slowed to a pathetic drip and he reluctantly held her up as the last dregs passed his lips.

The girl went limp and he pulled away, watching as her features froze. What a disappointing meal, barely adequate to quench his hunger. She was so ordinary, truly a dinner to forget. He frowned and lowered her to the ground before turning away, wiping his face clean.

As he headed home, he pondered his dilemma again. You were the only one who held his attention now, the only meal he craved and yearned for. If nothing else, the girl in the minidress proved that much.

Yet you would die, and he would be left to return to old habits. It wasn’t a matter of if, but when. While turning you wouldn’t eliminate the possibility of your death, it would halt the aging process. You would gain considerable strength and power and no longer be at risk for several common ailments.

He already knew you’d embrace the dietary changes, and the idea of sharing a meal with you sent lightning racing up his spine. You always looked so delightful with blood smeared on your skin. To see you feed would be marvelous; how enticing it was to picture you making your first kill, looking back to him with blood dribbling from your reddened lips. The possibilities were endless.

You’d be more than his pet; you would be his equal.

The only potential downside was he would lose his dominance, but perhaps you were worth it. Never had a human held his attention this long, nor had he ever considered turning someone. Throughout the centuries, he’d met numerous remarkable people, yet you stood alone above them all. Unique. Irreplaceable.

Worthy.

It’s time.

Within minutes, he arrived at your door and knocked. Your car sat in the parking lot and a dim glow of illuminated bulbs made it clear you were home. He shifted his weight and peered through the glass, spotting your approaching form with ease. He stepped back to make room for the door to open.

“V? What are you doing here?”

He raised an eyebrow and stared at you until you remembered to invite him inside. Easily his least favorite side effect of his condition. You led him to your living room and sat beside him on the small couch, angling your body to see him better. The tasteful pajama set you wore brought a smirk to his lips.

“I have a proposal for you,” he began.

You leaned back, a startled look on your lovely features. “Uh, what?”

“You enjoy our time together, yes?”

He had to choose his words carefully. It shocked him to find how nervous he was, butterflies in his gut and palms clammy. He wanted this, more than he’d known. To have a companion, someone to soothe the loneliness of his existence, to share in his hunts and meals… and you were perfect for it, already acclimated to his needs and discovering your own. Though it was obvious to him how perfect a sanguisuge you’d be, convincing you would take some effort. He couldn’t afford to miscommunicate.

“Of course! Isn’t it obvious?” you replied with a light blush.

He smirked. “Indeed. But have you considered the long-term aspects?”

“What do you mean?”

He rested a palm on your knee, tattooed fingers rubbing circles in your flesh. The next few minutes would change everything, for better or worse.

“You are human, I am vampire. You will age and die, yet I will not.”

He stared deep into your eyes, letting his earnestness shine through. It wasn’t easy. He hated being vulnerable and to do so made his skin crawl. He was a predator; never should he feel so exposed.

He swallowed. “I can change that.”

The spike in your pulse was audible, going from a normal rhythm to a pace that would alarm anyone in the medical field. Your eyes went wide and you stiffened, frozen like a deer in headlights. He didn’t speak, letting you process his offer before explaining any minutiae.

“You mean… you can make me a… a vampire?”

He nodded. You stood and began pacing, arms crossed and brow furrowed in thought. It was a good sign that you didn’t dismiss him outright, yet as you turned around for the fifth time he grew annoyed. Surely you had questions? Why didn’t you speak? He licked his lips.

“I do not make this offer lightly.”

You hummed in acknowledgement but kept pacing. The vampire sighed and leaned back to wait, rubbing his temples to ease the first twinges of a headache. Another ten minutes passed before you broke your stride and came back to the couch with a sigh.

“I don’t know. Don’t get me wrong, I’m interested. But there’s so much you haven’t told me about what you are.”

He nearly growled. He was offering you the gift of eternity, and you didn’t know? Perhaps he’d overestimated you after all. “What do you want to know?”

You brought your legs up and turned to face him fully, cross-legged like a child. Glimmers of curiosity and excitement shimmered in your eyes as the questions poured out. “Can you die? I mean, are we talking total immortality or just invulnerability to certain things? How old are you? What’s the best thing about being a vampire?”

He smirked. Where to begin…

“I am three-hundred twenty-six years old. Quite young, for my kind. Barring an accident or a rare illness, I will live forever.”

He paused. What was the best thing about being this way? It wasn’t something he’d thought about before. There was the power, of course. The heightened senses. Longevity. Supremacy over all.

But the best part?

Freedom.

He met your eyes again with sparkling eyes. “The best thing about it is the freedom. Not a soul can command me, and I have all the time in the world to achieve whatever I wish. I never feel rushed, as I did before.”

He fell silent, waiting for the next round of questions. Perhaps he should’ve told you more before now but sharing his secrets did not come naturally to him. With an internal groan he scolded himself, struggling to remain patient instead of tackling you and turning you right then and there, just to get it done.

Three hours passed before you ran out of questions and fell silent, considering all he told you. Again he stifled the urge to take what he wanted and turn you, but he knew from personal experience how toxic an unwilling change could be. If he was going to have you for eternity, he couldn’t afford to start off by forcing you into it.

Don’t think of her as something to hunt, think of her as a comrade.

It was odd to realize how differently he saw you now. No longer were you just prey, or a pet to be used whenever he pleased. Weak as your body was, your mind was formidable. How else had you survived his attentions without breaking? Not to mention you kept coming back for more.

“I… I’ll do it,” you said, breaking his thoughts.

The vampire’s lips stretched into a feral grin. You were so perfect, why had he ever doubted you?

“Lie down, then.”

Your eyes widened. “Here? Now?”

“Why wait, pet? Are you going to change your mind?”

You glared at him and crossed your arms. Even petulance looked lovely on you and he smirked as you stammered a comeback, already scooting into a prone position.

“No way!”

He barked out a laugh and crouched, brushing your hair aside and dropping his fangs with a click. A glance at your eyes showed him how sure you were and he hummed in approval, lowering his mouth to your neck.

“Wait!”

He leaned back with a quizzical look. Your hands were at your belt, pulling away the denim with a bit lip and tinted cheeks.

“Can you do it while we’re… um…”

He smirked, a knowing twinkle in his gaze. “Yes, but why?”

Your flush deepened and you looked away, unable to hold his stare as you answered. “I… I want my last moments as a human to be… with you inside me.”

Truly, you were a delight. Such a perfect complement to his perversions, it sometimes seemed as though you read his mind.

He trailed his fingertips down your stomach, dipping under your top to caress the soft skin and leave goosebumps behind. Blood flooded his cock and he leaned down to kiss you, a rare treat for your honesty. Your lips opened to his without preamble and he flicked his tongue forward, teasing you.

He pulled away to tear off his clothes, impatient to feel you around him again. What would it feel like, when you changed? Would you massage him or go limp? If he timed it right, maybe you’d change mid-orgasm.

He smirked.

Your fingers stroked his naked thigh and he refocused his attention; you had undressed while he was distracted and already had yourself on display for him. Such a good girl.

He grabbed his belt and used it to tie your wrists over your head, draping them over the armrest. You whimpered at the sight of his hardened length and he arched his hips forward, allowing you to taste him. Your lips looked so lovely, wrapped around his cock.

He fisted your hair and forced your head into the right angle, rolling his hips faster and deeper as you started choking.

“Look at me,” he commanded.

You moaned, the vibrations echoing up to his balls as you opened your eyes and met his gaze. What a vision. He rolled forward again, tilting your head so he hit the back of your throat with a muttered curse. The things you were doing with your tongue had him panting, reeling at the glorious wet heat. The resistance of your gagging was bliss, knowing how easily he could force his cock further despite your body’s revolt.

“Good girl,” he sighed.

When he felt his peak approaching, he jerked your head with such force it felt like he was taking you from behind. Your neck was straining to take him, muscles spasming as tears leaked from your still open eyes. He knew you couldn’t take much more and pulled away, using his hands to stroke his saliva-covered length into ecstasy.

You were still gasping for air as he climaxed with a deep groan, hot ropes shooting into your open mouth and across your face. The gooey white mess complimented your skin perfectly and he shot the last few strands across your collarbone to drip onto your breasts as you swallowed.

But he was only getting started.

He climbed onto the couch and lowered his hips to meet yours, his still hard cock coming to rest against your folds. With a subtle motion he had his head teasing your clit and you whined, begging him to send you over the edge as your arms reached up to scrape at his patterned sides. His earlier recollections of your pleading were nothing compared to the music of your cries.

Just this once, he did as you asked, bringing you to a shuddering climax just as he sheathed himself. It always felt incredible to be inside you, but to have the very first thrust feature your quivering walls was sinfully decadent. You massaged him well, like you were made for him. Arcs of lightning danced across his nerves. Fire trailed after your nails as you clawed at him, red trails mixing with the black of his tattoos. He leaned down and rested his weight on one arm, using the other to rub at the bundle of nerves between your legs.

“Are you ready?” he asked, popping his fangs with a sharp click.

You nodded, determination coloring your eyes alongside the arousal.

He slammed into you as his teeth descended onto your sternum, right over your heart. The blood that flooded his mouth tasted like honey and strawberries, so much more delicious than his earlier meal. He suckled as his hand drew lazy circles around your sensitive core, his cock still plunging deep inside and making you curse between moans.

He gorged himself, slurping away until he knew you were almost dry. Years of practice made it easy to know the exact moment to strike. Your arms fell away to rest by your hips, even the flush on your cheeks muted from blood loss.

As the flow slowed, he increased his pace and dripped a dose of venom in your system. The last few beats of your dying heart were thunderous as you clenched around him and wailed, hands twitching feebly as if you wanted to touch him but lacked the strength.

Three seconds after your heart stopped, he bit deeply into his cheek and laved his own blood over your wound. His hips slowed as you went completely limp, internal muscles sagging around his length. For a few seconds, he couldn’t help but worry he’d done something wrong. What if it didn’t work, what if he killed you?

Come on, come on!

He gave you more of his blood, siphoning off every drop that leaked from his cheek. How long did this normally take? To lose too much of his own blood was unacceptable, but how much did he have to spare?

I should’ve called Michael before attempting this.

But then he felt it.

A single thud under his lips.

He stopped breathing and focused. Another thud.

Then another, and another. A steady rhythm; you were coming back.

---Reader---

The first thing you noticed was sound. A wet slap, panting breath and creaking furniture. A delicate hum in the background, electricity flowing through the walls. You heard the wind outside, the flies in the next room buzzing over the fruit bowl. Everything, all at once.

For a single heartbeat, it was too much. An overwhelming storm of noise, too much for your mind to comprehend.

Then V spoke.

“Keep your eyes closed for now,” he murmured. “You’ll get used to it.”

Every fiber of the couch beneath you was a copper wire, scraping at your sensitive skin. Flames of arousal licked at every inch of your skin, begging for his attention and release. His weight hovering over you was like the sun itself as he rolled his hips. Your nerves sang a heady opera at his touch, howling glorious ecstasy to the skies as you instantly shattered. The slick fluid leaking from your body tingled on your skin, the white lines on your face and chest radioactive in their intensity.

Holy fuck!

You keened his name, wrapping your trembling arms around his body and pulling him closer. All you wanted was more contact, more stimuli, more, more, more. Every ridge of his length inside you was so detailed you could’ve drawn it with your eyes closed. The hairs on your arms stood on end as waves of energy pulsed through you, a torrent of wanton delight. You arched your hips and met his pounding thrusts and felt your ass reverberate with each slam.

The sweat on his skin and yours, the taste of his breath and the scent of the air freshener in the next room left your nostrils twitching, hungry for more input. The dishes in the sink, musty rain on its way, plastic and cotton. You smelled everything.

I need to see, need to look at his face.

You opened your eyes slowly, a millimeter at a time. Dim outlines of V’s body and the couch seared into your mind, the light so bright you wondered if you’d go blind. You waited for what felt like years as your eyes adjusted, instantly staring at the vampire above you in awe.

His skin was breathtaking, alabaster streaked with onyx. The planes of his shoulders dipped and shifted as he brushed the damp strands out of his eyes, and his eyes…

Shades of emerald and jade mixed together in filaments, a line of hazel here and there. A ring of dark pine surrounded his pupils, a frame for the mesmerizing gaze half-hidden by dark eyelashes. It was like you’d never seen him before, so many facets and details never even hinted at with human senses.

You knew you were staring, but you didn’t care. Every inch of his flesh was brand new, smooth and sculpted and beautiful.

He looks like a Greek sculpture come to life…

Fangs popped out of your canines, piercing your lower lip in a flash of sweet agony. He grinned down at you and twitched to scrape at your walls, tapping at your cervix. It was too much and you crested again, gripping him with all your new strength as pleasure rolled through you. You cursed and went rigid, turning to ash and basking in the scorching light. His hips stuttered against yours, following you into paradise and making a deliciously lewd noise as he spewed his seed deep in your body.

His grunts were a beacon and you smirked as you reached out to pull his shoulder to your lips, sinking your new toys deep into his flesh and getting a taste of his blood. He threw his head back and hissed as the fluid filled your mouth, the flavor so much more intricate than ever before. It was a fine wine, notes of cinnamon and something you couldn’t identify that fit him perfectly blended together.

“Not too much, pet. Wouldn’t you rather go hunting?”

Hunting. Right. You struggled to focus through the euphoric haze clouding your mind, releasing his shoulder and lying back on the rough couch. Your nerves were jangling, exhausted and energized by everything they’d endured so far. A deep ache of hunger tugged at you, demanding satisfaction. You licked your lips, savoring the last taste of V’s blood.

“Yes, please…”

He pulled out with a wet shlorp, smirking at you as he stood. A smear of red decorated his shoulder where you marked him and your hunger howled for more. Only the knowledge that his blood would do nothing to ease the gnawing emptiness kept you from pouncing.

“Get dressed, then.”

You pouted and fought your way to vertical, legs trembling as fluid leaked from your core. When you looked down to find your clothes you smiled as you spotted the two black dots over your heart, a mark of your new existence. It was a thrill to know you had eternity to spend with your vampire. Forever to dwell in bliss and euphoria, time to explore all the possibilities.

Your hunger screamed for a meal.

First things first.

Time to hunt.

Part Five

[galadrieljones]

A Funeral: Chapter 2

Fandom: Red Dead Redemption 2 | Pairing: Arthur x Mary Beth | Rating: Mature

Content: Existential Angst, Friendship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Nature, Touch-Starved, Humor, Fluff and Humor, Fluff and Angst, Violence

Summary: To help her process Sean’s death, Mary Beth asks Arthur to take her on a hunting trip, somewhere far away. He agrees, and on their little journey together, they find quietude and take comfort in their easy bond. In their desperate search for meaning, they endure a number of small trials, which bring them closer to one another as well as to the unchecked plights of the natural world.

Masterpost | AO3 

Thanks @bearlytolerablethethird for the banner!! ^_^

Chapter 2: Inside

About a week later, while asleep in the hotel above the saloon in St. Denis, Arthur had a dream. He dreamed that he had killed and skinned a polar bear, and he had stepped inside of its skin whole. It was wet and chilled inside. He lived there for ten whole years while in the dream, aging and growing soft for his lack of movement and oxygen. Just as he was about to die from starvation, he realized he had grown a beard, and he stepped out of the polar bear skin and back into the world which had all burned while he was away. The cities and the railroads were all ashes, and the trees were black sticks going straight up into the sky. It was a hellscape. Everyone he had ever known was dead.

When he awoke, he was out of sorts. He looked around at the empty room and he fell into a kind of panic. He was thinking about Mary. He had forgotten what year it was and what day it was and he realized that when he was looking around, he was looking for Mary. Where was Mary? He was looking for Mary, and he was thinking about her, and about her skin for some reason, and of all the things about her, he thought of her skin and the ways he once knew its shapes and colors. Why was he thinking of her skin. And then he realized that, along with her skin and the way she felt and the way he felt when he was inside of her—all that had faded now, in his memory like an old pair of boots. He could not remember. It all happened so fast. It was a complete shock.

It had been such a long time since he’d been with any woman in any meaningful way. He never thought much of it, but now, he asked himself why. Why, Arthur. Why. He should have married Mary. He should have just married her, he thought. Fuck her father, fuck Dutch. That was his anxious brain now at the age of thirty-six. He should have married Mary Linton and put a child in her, and they should have lived somewhere in the warm woods far away where it snowed in winter and it was his only job to chop firewood and perhaps be some sort of warden in the local town. He should have been a fisherman. He should have been a trapper. He should have gone to college. He should have been a father. Where was Mary. His heart was beating like a fucking drum in his chest. He held himself until the panic went away and then he curled back into a ball beneath the smooth covers and he tried to close his eyes and return to sleeping, but that was all he could do. His body and his mind. His whole soul was awake. He felt ruined.

Downstairs in the saloon the next morning he had a bowl of soup and the bartender was a nice man who tried to make conversation. He wanted to talk about Arthur’s hat and thought the red feather in its strap was neat. Arthur tried making good with the bartender. He did not wish to seem surly as he knew he looked surly. He smiled and tried to explain the origin of the hat, but the bartender was shining a glass and seemed confused.

“You skinned an elk for that?” he said casually.

Arthur didn’t know how this could possibly be so unbelievable. He had skinned much worse than elk for must less than hats. He finished his soup and tipped his feathered hat, and he went outside to feed and water Sarah. Then he was on his way.

This city is getting in my blood, he thought. It’s getting in my dreams. He rode out into the swamps to fish. But Sarah drew constantly skittish due to the gators. He was sick of killing them, as they were a waste of bullets, but they always seemed to be getting in his way. He caught a fourteen pound catfish and then another. He killed and pruned a white heron for its decorative feathers. He cooked its tough meat over a spit and ate it while surrounded by wet bugs and trees. Somewhere in the distance he thought he heard a woman screaming. He stood up with his ears wide open and his shot gun in his hand for five whole minutes trying to hear it again.

“My fucking imagination,” he said, tucking away the shotgun and sucking on a sugar cube. He was out of smokes. He bit his nails a little and drank some water, and after heading back to the butcher to sell off his catch, he bought a pack of cigarettes and a new neckerchief and then he rode back to Shady Belle.

I have been actually choked, he wrote in his journal, still saddled on Sarah just outside the perimeter of their camp. He smoked. I have been actually choked by a man’s bare hands and yet it is nothing so suffocating as this swamp. If I have to kill one more gator to save my horse from heart failure, I may just lose my composure. I have thought of beating men senseless and I have done it on occasion. This place has sucked a great deal of life from my bones. I need to get the fuck out of here, if only for seven days.

That night, he ate a little stew and drank whiskey to calm his nerves. Javier wrangled him into a game of poker, which he won handily, and then he decided to cash in and go to bed. Javier took to playing his guitar, and some of the boys continued to drink. Dutch was somewhere else in the camp, limited in his interactions and stewing in his obsessions. Arthur did not wish to speak to him that night. He was still tainted by that dream and did not wish to speak to most anyone about anything beyond the most surface level conversations.

Inside, he ran into Mary Beth again. In the dining room, she was having a conversation with Karen. The two of them seemed overcome with their private laughter. Seeing them like this, these women for whom, in some wide, chivalrous sense, he felt an overwhelming responsibility, it was a reassurance. There they were, existing. He thought the two of them were more like opposites—Mary Beth and Karen, but watching now, he supposed that opposites can attract. Karen was crass and immediate while Mary Beth approached all of her airs with distance. She was too sharp. They were sitting at the dining room table drinking bottles of beer by lamplight, and when they saw him, they invited him to come sit and to have a drink with them. At first, he thought to decline, but then Mary Beth held out a bottle like a right welcome, and with this small interaction, he gave in. Inside, it was softer. They taught him a card game he had never played before, one he would forget by morning, but it was exciting. Lots of slapping the table, and there was this entire mechanic where you had to hide a wooden spoon near your person and if somebody stole it from you, the hand ended, and you lost. They played several hands. Arthur won two out of three. When Karen left to get a refill on their bottles, he put his elbows on the table and breathed steadily. He felt something small release inside his heart, just sitting there, but he wasn't sure why.

He felt Mary Beth's hand on his then, a fast touch, then gone. "You all right, Arthur?"

He looked up and half-smiled. "Why do you ask, Mary Beth?"

She shrugged. "You seem tense. Then again that's not all that unusual."

"It was a long day," he said, shifting in his chair. He felt big at that table.

“What happened?" she said.

"Nothing much to make it seem long. It just felt long."

"I get that."

"What happened around here? I heard Hosea killed a damn gator."

"He did!" said Mary Beth. She was laughing. "You ought to have seen it. I think he emptied a full chamber on that bastard and it was still waddling away. Anyway, it's dead now. I think Pierson put it in the stew."

"Yuck," said Arthur. "I thought that stew tasted a bit green."

"You should check on Hosea and his heart health," said Mary, sliding the deck of cards across the table to him. "He's too old for that sort of activity, Arthur."

Arthur laughed. “Old Hosea will be fine," he said. "But I'll be sure to check on him anyway."

He lit a cigarette. She asked if she could have one, too. He lit it for her off the end of his, and they sat there, smoking, ashing right on to the table. There was a fly inside, bouncing off the lantern like some sort of idiot. Arthur swatted at it once, and it went away.

"So," said Mary Beth.

"So."

"What are you gonna do tomorrow, Arthur? You heading back to St. Denis?”

He studied the lit end of his cigarette. He remembered that goddam polar bear. He shook out his head. "No, no. I was thinking of leaving the swamps," he said. He looked at her. "I tell you this place is full of ghosts. Old things and people, ideas I can’t contend with no more."

"Where will you go, Arthur?”

"North."

“North for what?”

“Moose,” he said, giving her a look. “I’ve got it all marked on my map. Big moose there's supposed to be, up in the Roanoke Valley. I was thinking of heading up there to hunt a little."

She smiled like a lightbulb. She caught his meaning. She reached across the table and put her hands on his shoulders. “Moose hunting?”

“Yes, ma’am."

"Can I come with?"

"It’s a long ride," he said, dipping his cigarette into the table top. "Will you be all right?”

"You know it."

“That’s what I thought.”

“We're leaving in the morning?" she said, excited. "What time?"

"Sometime after first light," he said. "If you could get some provisions together, for us and the horses, that would be useful. About a week's worth and we can hunt the rest."

"I can do that," she said, sitting up real tall. "And warm clothes?"

Arthur nodded. "Warm clothes," he said. "And I mean it, too. Don't be dainty. You got a bed roll with wool or something?"

"I do."

“I’ll take care of the artillery,” said Arthur. “Make sure you’ve got a sturdy saddle on your filly. I can lend you one, if you need it."

“I’m good,” she said proudly. “I sold a couple a pocket watches last week, and just the other day I purchased a brand new saddle at the stables in St. Denis. I had them beat it with hammers to make the leather real soft.”

“That must have run you extra,” said Arthur, smiling. He shuffled the deck of cards. “Good thinking though.”

“I am always thinking, Arthur,” said Mary Beth, resting her chin in her hands, dreamy. She watched him shuffle those cards like it was no tomorrow. “Just like you.”

“I don’t know about that, Miss Mary Beth,” he said. “But I thank you anyway.”

"This is gonna be fun, Arthur," she said, smiling. "I know it. In my bones."

I sure hope so, he thought.

She sighed long and loud. That is when Karen came back with the beers, and she began to tease them. “You two talking about philosopbies of the weather or something?” she said. “You look about hundred miles in love.” And she laughed.

Arthur was a little confused by this, in a literal sense. He tried to figure out what the hell she meant by philosophies of the weather. “You know I met, uh—an archaeologist a few months back,” he said, dealing them each a hand of cards. “I don’t know nothing about the weather, but she showed me a gotdamn dinosaur’s rib cage. She was digging it right out of the ground.”

“A dinosaur?” said Karen. She flew up with laughter. "You got to be kidding me."

“Oh my god,” said Mary Beth. “Do you remember where it was?”

“Not really,” said Arthur, smiling at her. Of course he did, but he didn’t feel like remembering. He just took a drink from his beer. What had happened to him? Was he awake? “Now," he said, "am I dealing, ladies, or are we gonna talk nonsense all night?”

“Deal, Mr. Morgan,” said Karen. She had big rosy cheeks. It felt like a party, but it was any other day. “And do not expect any easy favors from us, not this time.”

“Oh I would not dare, Miss Karen,” said Arthur. In his ears, his voice sounded like gravel. But there was a fire in the hearth. It was almost enough to make him feel safe again.

[bigasswritingmagnet]

Once More, With Sincerity

Fandom: Deadpool (comics)

Pairing: Cablepool

Rating: PG-13, I guess?

Summary: There's a big, creepy, psychic tentacle monster making a mess downtown, and the X-Men are having some trouble coming up with a way to take it down. Nathan has an idea -- and this time Wade's going to like it.

Nobody else will though.

Sequel to Petty Doesn't Look Good on Us

AO3 link | I do commissions! | Ko-fi

“Why are psychic monsters always shaped like giant brains?” Wade asked. The monster turned slowly, one impossibly giant eye roving towards him.

Both Jubilee and Emma grabbed him by the arms and hauled him back down behind the half-destroyed wall, out of sight.

“Stop standing up!” Jubilee hissed at him. “It’s going to see you!”

“Well so-rry,” Wade grumbled. “Wait, one more time.”

“Wade-!”

“I knew it,” he said, dropping back down. “This thing is a blatant rip-off of the tentacle monster from Watchmen. Beak, weird brain head, tentacles—except the one in Watchmen didn’t walk on the tentacles and it didn’t shoot eyebeams, it just kinda landed on people.”

“Could someone please make him stop,” Jubilee asked the world at large.

“Greater men than you have tried, my dude.”

“Alright, I’ve seen enough,” Emma said, rubbing her forehead. “We need to go back.”

They awkwardly crouch-walked their way back to the mostly-intact 7-11 the X-Men (and Wade) had turned into their temporary base. Straight confrontation had gone disastrously: the thing was shielded from bullets and absorbed psychic attacks of any kind. Since the team consisted of three psychics, a walking sparkler, claws, and lasers (and Wade), they were going to need a very creative solution.

“We’re back,” Emma announced. She swept through the entrance with a level of drama that seemed wholly out of place amongst the debris of snack cakes and exploded soda bottles.  “Some news, and it isn’t great.” In a slightly softer tone of voice, she asked “how is she?”

Scott’s frown deepened.

“She’s awake. She says she’s fine.” It was clear from his tone that he did not agree.

Jean had tried a frontal assault on the monster, attempting to overload it with psychic energy. She had to be carried away from the battle.  Logan and Scott had refused to leave her side while Wade, Jubilee, and Emma went on their scouting run, preferring to stand vigil. It was exhaustingly predictable of both them and her. Wade hadn’t been worried; she’d just come back from the dead a year ago. She had a little more time before they’d do something like permanently stick her in a coma.

Wade made a beeline for Nathan in that way where he was trying to look like he wasn’t. Hovering by the twinkies for a while, pretending to debate between the cherry and strawberry twizzlers, all gradually scooting his way across the store until he was next to Nathan. The man was sitting with his back to the wall, legs crossed, apparently deep in meditation.

Wade knew better, though. He knew that particular wrinkle in Nathan’s forehead, and it meant he had a real monster of a headache. Nathan hadn’t suffered as badly as Jean but he’d been very pale when they fled from the monster. Wade didn’t like that At All.

He rattled a bottle of pills by Nathan’s ear, making his eyes snap open.

“I got you some aspirin from a CVS we passed on our way out. I don’t know if they’re any good against attacks from giant squid brain things, but it couldn’t hurt.”

Nathan smiled.

“Worth a try,” he said. “My head feels like it’s about to split in two.” He reached up, but his hand lingered, fingertips brushing at the small strip of skin between Wade’s glove and sleeve. A warm, bright smile smoothed away the worry line. “Thank you, Wade.”

“Whatever,” Wade said, not quite managing to hide the squeak.

If he keeps doing this, we might actually die.

Nathan had been acting very strange, the last few weeks. Always finding an excuse to touch Wade or stand near him. Sneaking away from the others when they were at the mansion so they could make out in dark corners and closets like teenagers. Watching him with a strange little smile whenever Wade wasn’t looking, but only smiling more when Wade caught him.  

At first Wade thought it was Nathan trying to make up for the whole “let’s get married to spite everyone who doesn’t take our relationship seriously” debacle, except Nathan knew he was over the whole thing and he was still doing it. (Well, relatively sure he knew. They hadn’t exactly talked about it. Wade preferred to pretend it hadn’t happened. It kept him from worrying that that might have been his only chance.)

Don’t get it wrong, the extra flirting and making out was great, and Wade really liked it. It was just that Wade liked it so much it made his brain forget how to do brain things right.

Nathan made to dry-swallow the aspirin, but Wade grabbed his wrist.

“Nuh-uh! Do you have any idea how bad that is for you? Take it with something.”

“Wade,” Nathan started, with a fond-yet-exasperated smile.

“Don’t you ‘Wade’ me, buster.” He began to rummage around in the busted refrigerators until he found a few bottles of room-temperature Gatorade ™. “Here. Replenish your electrolytes while not burning a hole in your esophagus.”  

“Be careful,” Nathan warned. “People might start to think you care.”

“I’m trying to protect your reputation as someone who isn’t a total dingus,” Wade said, watching carefully to make sure Nathan actually drank. “You should be thanking me.”

Nathan gulped the last of the drink and stood. He was just a little bit too far into Wade’s personal space again, giving him that same heated look.

“Thank you,” he said, trailing his fingertips up Wade’s arm. “I appreciate it.”

Then something happened to Nathan’s expression. His eyebrows came down and his eyes flicked over Wade’s face, like he was trying to read him through the mask. Which was weird, because Nathan never had any trouble reading Wade. Like, ever.

“Wade, I…there’s something…Look, I’ve been thinking, and—“

“Hey,” Jubilee called. “You guys coming or what?”

The weird expression rapidly morphed into a much more familiar ‘annoyance at the world at large’. Nathan sighed heavily.

“Nevermind. We’re coming,” he called back. Wade stared after him, mystified, then shook himself and followed.

“Emma, what can you tell us?” Nathan asked, now in full Messiah Mode.

“Not much, except that it isn’t just absorbing psychic energy, it’s feeding on it. I’m pretty sure its default is to sustain itself on the emotions of people around it.”

“Only pretty sure?” Nathan asked.

“I can’t touch its mind for too long or it starts sucking at me—don’t.” This to Wade, who had opened his mouth.

“So if we cut off its supply of emotions, it’ll shut down,” Jubilee said. Emma made a noise that, coming from a poorer and uglier woman, would have been a snort.

“And how exactly do you intend to shut down its supply?” she asked, nastily. “It’s in the middle of a city. Unless you can find a way to teleport it somewhere a good fifty miles in any direction from any sentient creature--“

“Tennessee?” Wade suggested.

“I can say this,” Emma said, ignoring him. “Every time I touch its mind and it starts sucking—don’t – I always feel one overwhelming emotion. Just one at a time, and always very basic. I don’t think it can handle anything complex.”

“So if we gave it a high concentration of a wide range of emotions all at once, it would overwhelm it?” Nathan asked. Emma shrugged.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?” Scott said. His voice was tight with worry and anger. “Maybe isn’t good enough!”

“Well maybe is all you’re going to get!” Emma snapped back. “I’m doing the best I can, Scott. I’m not a miracle worker! I’m trying to be careful.”

“Jean already tried overwhelming it, and it didn’t work. We need a different plan.”

“Jean tried a straight attack of pure psychic energy, and she didn’t do anything to shield herself. This is different.”

Scott bristled instantly.

“That was not her fault.”

“Scott, it’s fine—“  

“Of course it is! She decided to run in half-cocked—don’t!”

“I have an idea,” Nathan said calmly, taking advantage of the break in her tirade. “But we need to get close.”

“I don’t think I’d be much good,” Jean admitted. “Emma’s right. I’m burnt out.”  

“I’m staying with her,” Scott said, firmly.

“No, you aren’t,” Nathan said, firmlyer. “If this is going to work, you both definitely need to be there.”

They were less than a block away from the monster. They could hear the slick, sticky sound of its tentacles dragging along the ground. Whenever it let out that awful, piercing roar, they all flinched, feeling it rip straight through them.

“Okay, so we’re here,” Jubilee whispered, back pressed against the wall. “Now what’s this great big plan of yours?”

Instead of answering, Nathan grabbed Wade’s hand and pulled him slightly away from the others. Wade followed, finally starting to worry. Nathan was secretive about his schemes on a good day, but there was something about his demeanor that was setting off alarm bells in Wade’s head.

If this is another Providence type plan, I say we preemptively murder him.

Co-signed.

“Motion carried,” Wade murmured. Nathan didn’t seem to hear him. Once they were in a space relatively clear of rubble, he turned and took both of Wade’s hands in his own.  

“I know you wanted a big production. I was trying to think of a speech on the way over here but I couldn’t come up with anything good.” Nathan’s mouth twitched into something a little too sickly to be a smile. His throat worked hard and that weird expression came back, tight and twitchy and--

He’s nervous, Wade realized. When had he ever seen Nathan nervous? Scared, once or twice, uncertain several times, even uneasy, but nervous?

Nathan went down on one knee, and Wade’s heart stopped beating.

omigod

“I love you. Will you marry me?”

Wade’s palms went sticky. Was this actually happening? Was this a hallucination? It didn’t seem like a hallucination, since Nathan was still fully clothed, but this sure as hell couldn’t be actually happening.

“I, I’m, I don’t—wait, are you only asking me because you think it’ll kill the monster, because Nathan I swear to god—“

“No, Wade. I’m asking you for real, because I love you, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Only with you.”  

The word came out of Wade’s mouth so fast he almost choked on it.

“Yes.”

The monster let out a horrific, ear-splitting shriek of agony, so loud that everyone winced and clapped their hands to their ears. Everyone but Wade and Nathan, who were staring at each other and smiling. Nathan stood, slowly, Wade’s hands still clasped in his, as the monster exploded with a horrible shlorp noise.

Purple goo splattered down around them like sticky rain. Huge globs of monster brains crushed cars and left small craters in the streets. Nathan was wearing the biggest, happiest smile Wade had ever seen on his face.  Judging from the way his cheeks were starting to hurt, Wade was too.

“I know you mentioned fireworks,” he said. “I hope that’s close enough.”

“Shut up,” Wade said, trying very hard to pretend like he wasn’t about to cry, fumbling to pull his mask up over his nose. “Shut up and kiss me right now.”

Nathan leaned in and Wade went up on his tiptoes and there were car alarms shrieking in the background and everything smelled vaguely like fish and it was the single greatest moment of Wade’s life. Their lips were a millimeter away when--

“Are you out of your mind?”

Nathan sighed.

“Scott—” he started. Wade grabbed his head and yanked him right back down, kissing him hard. Nathan leaned into it, and the two wrapped their arms around each other. Vaguely Wade heard Emma saying "he's kidding, right? It's a joke."

"I think it's sweet," Jean said, defensively. Wade was momentarily surprised, then mentally wadded up everything that wasn't Nathan and tossed it into a trash can. Nathan was smiling against his lips, and Wade could feel that his heart was beating a little faster than normal. Who cared what the X-Dorks thought? Nathan was his. For real this time.

An astounding improvement from last time. A+

If I had hands I'd be applauding.

After a few more eternities, Nathan asked “Better?” Wade wasn’t sure if he meant the proposal or the kissing. Either way…

“I think you nailed it,” he said with a grin.

“Nathan!” Scott shouted, but they were already kissing again.

[hvlfseelie-blog]

hello it’s me...again. if you’re unaware, i’m sam, she / her, twenty - one, est timezone, and i also play ben the sourwolf, quill the brute and auden who has Had Enough™! i’m reposting / rewriting hal’s intro because i decided to revamp him a little, so that’s what’s gonna be under the cut! as always, please feel free to message me here or @mcrdices if you’d like to plot!

➰ ( DYLAN O’BRIEN, CISMALE, HE/HIM ) *✧.:°░｡ —- is that HAL CARPENTER ?! you know them, right? they are the 26 year old HALF SEELIE & HALF HUMAN !! they’re known for being PENSIVE & SOLICITOUS - but i’d be careful if i were you because they’re also DIFFIDENT & MOROSE.

nathan harold “hal” carpenter is a half - seelie / half - mundane from minnesota. his mother is a two - hundred year old seelie who left the seelie realm and pretty much everything else about the shadow world behind when she met and fell in love with a mundane man aka hal’s father.

( btw, the only people who would ever call him nathan are people who are very close to him and even then they would only do it to let them know that whatever they’re talking about is v serious )

so hal’s parents get married and he’s one of their nine kids, all boys. yeah, he’s got eight brothers and he’s one of the seven middle children

had a pretty typical mundane childhood out there in the middle of frozen minnesota. his dad worked as a used car salesman, his mother stayed home raising the kids and taking care of her v v beloved garden. they always had everything they needed but were still pretty poor. with only one parent working and eleven mouths to feed in total, things could be rough always sometimes. but, they managed! this is the rl weasley family okay. hand me down clothes, home cooked meals, brotherly teasing, lots of love!

hal knows the very basics of seelie magic & the shadow world thanks to his mother who taught him and all of his siblings how to control their abilities and the general basics of surviving out in a world filled with every kind of supernatural creature available

( also yes as a half - seelie he does have the ability to lie aaaand his pointed ears are visible at all times because he can’t be bothered with glamour magic and prefers to just pass it off as a “cool family trait” even though he doesn’t even like his ears but anYWAY )

he was just not that interested in learning about the shadow world as a kid. his mom being a seelie and & everything that went with that was never a secret in the carpenter household soooo...he just didn’t care that much

his hobbies of photography, hockey, and playing the drums were always much more interesting to him. 

he honestly just?? wanted to be normal?? he wanted to be mundane?? wanted absolutely /n o t h i n g/ to do with the shadow world at all ever??

tbh he was genuinely spectacular at staying out of shadow world business until about five years ago aka the moment a feral werewolf crashed into his life on a motorcycle and convinced him to run away with her

he was twenty - one years old, in his final year of studies at a small community college in minnesota where he took photography classes and worked a boring job he didn’t like just to be able to do that bc remember, the family is poor af 

he met raven calanoc, a wandering werewolf who happened to stumble upon his hometown and long story short, she convinced him to use the money he’d been saving for his last semester of college to buy a motorcycle and run away with her. they’ve been inseparable ever since.

for the past five years, he and raven have been traveling around on their motorcycles, hanging out in the woods and getting kicked out of bars after raven starts a fight aaaand that’s pretty much it. that’s all they’ve been doing for five years now and hal wouldn’t have it any other way.

he’s been in wilshire for a few months now and while big cities are definitely not one of his favorite things, he’s just been trying to enjoy his time in california!

so, i think that’s all for backstory which means we’re moving on to personality and other extra stuff!

he’s friendly but quiet & timid, modest but a little ~out there~ in an artsy way, a super loyal friend with a short temper that he got after spending sm time around raven

literally always has little cuts and bruises on his face & knuckles, a split lip, a black eye...all the typical i got in a fight at the bar last night type of injuries because that’s literally always true. raven starts fights and he helps her finish them, always.

tbh he’s basically raven’s ( mostly ) human familiar?? like she spends so much time in wolf form that she often forgets how to Human so hal helps her out when needed

he’s open to making other friends though and honestly he’s a pretty good friend to have if you can deal with his shyness, random picture taking, tendency to just sit around by himself and think...like if you can get over all of his annoying habits you have a great super loyal friend, the realest ride or die ever

hal is bisexual but doesn’t date much. tbh a lot of people see him and raven together and think that they’re dating and they actually do pretend to date sometimes just to get people to leave them alone lmao but nah

really really misses minnesota sometimes?? like, it was his only home for most of his life and he’s really close with his family so he’s very likely to randomly start reminiscing about how much he misses playing hockey on the frozen lake with his brothers during christmas break and being around for family dinners. he’s sentimental ig

so, like i said before, he knows the basics of seelie magic but he’s pretty rusty because he doesn’t like using it for the most part. outside of his family and raven he’s not even really comfortable with anyone seeing him practice magic

looks like a cinnamon roll but could actually kill you but would most likely just punch you in the face at worst

has a biiiit of a short temper but not like...Ben Level Bad ™. he can just snap and be a little snarky sometimes which might surprise people because he’s usually pretty quiet

fr though....he could stand alone in the corner of the room completely quiet for hours and startle tf outta everyone when he randomly decides to say smth because nobody even noticed he was there??

loves to take pictures and that’s most likely what he’s doing if he’s not hanging out with raven or playing the drums

lemme just stop now because the length of this is officially absurd. lmk if you’d like to plot!

[13eyond13]

Do you have any headcanons about B? Like if B had an older sister what would their relationship be like? Sorry if that's weird but I'd like to think If he had a better support system he wouldn't have done the whole LABB thing

Hi Anon, thank you so much for asking! I love getting headcanonquestions, especially about B.This is such an interestingquestion! I’ve never imagined Beyond as anything but an only childbefore, just because B’s only relatives mentioned in the novel arehis parents. He was seemingly orphaned after their deaths, so you’reright, he likely didn’t have a good support network or other closefamily capable of taking care of him. We were only told a fewvague sentences about B’s past: We were told:

[1]B had a father who was murdered by a mugger.[2] B had a motherwho died in a train crash.[3] B had the shinigami eyes sincebirth, somehow.[4]B knew what the lifespans meant, and knew that he was incapable ofever changing the numbers.

I really do like the idea of Bwith a protective older sister, though, and how that might have changed things for him. I’ll run through how Iimagine this AU might have looked if he did:(this turned out VERY long and very in-depth lol, like approx. 2500 words, and I totally understand if you don’t want to read the whole thing! I’ll put it under a cut here):

B’s BABY YEARS:

B’s sister is seven years older than him, because he was a surprise pregnancy for his parents.

She hates him at first, because she’s so used to being an only child, but he’s actually a very pleasant baby – quiet and alert and cheerful, doesn’t cry much.

His sister still hates him until he’s about two. She sometimes stands over his crib whispering mean things to him, but he just gazes up at her adoringly and smiles and coos at her until she feels very guilty about it, and goes away again.

B’s TODDLER YEARS:

 B follows his big sister everywhere as soon as he can walk. He is very affectionate, always asking to be picked up and carried around. He snuggles into her neck and plays with her hair, and calls her a funny bungled version of her name, because he has trouble pronouncing his R’s. This melts her heart pretty quickly, and she soon forgets she ever resented him.

B’s sister finds she really likes playing mother with him – she loves getting him dressed and feeding him snacks, and teaching him things whenever he asks – which he does often, because he is a very curious & bright child.

B hits his childhood development milestones very early, and it’s speculated that he’s very intelligent, likely a certifiable genius. His medical checkups reveal nothing unusual about his brain or his eyes, but he always seems much older than he really is – about double his actual age, mentally at least.

B seems to daydream a lot, and to easily be distracted, especially if he’s in large crowds of people. He often says strange things that nobody can make sense of, but his family mostly writes it off as a personality quirk, or a byproduct of his big imagination.

His sister is very interested in nurturing B’s intelligence; their parents are always busy, both working hard to make ends meet, and so when she babysits B she starts teaching him to read and do math. He’s reading grade six level chapter books out loud to her by the time he’s three. B starts asking his family very strange questions soon after he becomes literate.

B’s EARLY CHILDHOOD YEARS:

B starts asking his family about all the floating numbers and the names. He points to the spot just above people’s heads and recites exactly what he sees out loud. He is shocked that nobody else can see them. He knows the name of anyone he sees, whether or not he’s ever met them before. “Why are your numbers so much longer than hers?” he might ask his sister, or “Why does the man’s name say this when we actually call him this?” “Why don’t I have any letters or numbers above my own head when I look in the mirror, or when I look at pictures of me?”

His family is astonished, and somewhat frightened. They quickly realize it is not just the strange imaginative games of a small child. 

They start doing little experiments with him to make sense of it, and find it seems to be related specifically to B’s vision; he has to see a person’s face for it to work. He can point to any person in any photograph and tell you exactly what their name and number is, as long as their features aren’t obscured. The people in photographs only have numbers sometimes, he says; for example, his family shows him a book of old black & white war photographs, and according to B not a single person in it has numbers. He says the numbers are always changing for people he sees everyday, but that their names never do; he says that the numbers only ever get shorter for everyone, not longer. 

B’s parents ask him about their own numbers. They ask about his sister’s, too, but B senses that the whole thing is making his sister feel very anxious. B trusts his sister’s intuition with all his heart and is very loyal to her, so he refuses to divulge any of his family’s numbers to anyone. His sister is very relieved by this, though she doesn’t fully know why yet; she is very proud of B and his unusual gifts, but something about the numbers part of it always gives her a queasy feeling in her stomach.

The whole numbers thing starts making sense for everyone once their elderly landlady dies and they attend her funeral. Four year old B says her numbers are completely gone now when he looks into the casket. He says the numbers are always pretty short for old people, but that hers were the shortest ones he’d ever seen.

B’s LATER CHILDHOOD YEARS:

Once it’s discovered what the numbers actually mean, B’s parents start fighting about it. His mother wants to use B’s abilities to make money, and pressures his father constantly about it.

B’s dad is just obsessed with finding out his own lifespan. He tries to coax it out of B nicely at first, then pressures him with guilt, but B will not budge on the matter, and remains very tight-lipped.

Theirparents start fighting secretly every night when B and his sister arein bed, and it’s always about whether or not they should attempt to make money off B’s talents. They try to be quiet, but the kids still overhear all of it. They could use the money to put both the kids through school and to move to a nicer neighbourhood, his mother says. It would be good for the whole family, if they were smart and careful about who they partnered up with, she says.

B and his sister become inseparable through all of this familial stress. B often asks to sleep in her bed with her when he has bad dreams, and so her pseudo mothering of B continues as he grows. 

B’s sister never asks him about the numbers or the names, and just treats B like a normal person. She tries to focus his mind on other things, and aims to keep him feeling good about his abilities instead of guilty or stressed whenever he mentions them. 

He confides in her during one of their sleepovers that he knows how to mostly work out the lifespan formula automatically now when he looks at people, but that it’s not totally flawless yet; the numbers are very tricky, but he thinks he can narrow the timeline down accurately to within a few weeks of the death date. He does these calculations automatically without meaning to every time he looks at people now, and he hates it. 

He is very sad about finally understanding the lifespans of their parents, and says he wishes more than anything he knew of a way to make people’s numbers get longer instead of shorter.

B’s PRE-TEEN YEARS:

B’s dad loses his job, and starts seriously considering his wife’s insistence that B is their ticket out of their financial struggles. They start seriously scheming about maybe contacting some talent scouts to meet with, secretly after B goes to bed. 

 B’s sister internalizes B’s morbid knowledge about their parents’ lifespans, and starts growing up very quickly as a result. She takes on two part-time jobs while finishing up her final year in high school and saves up a lot of money. 

B’s parents never end up actually monetizing his talents, but they do end up divorcing due to the constant fighting.

B’s sister moves out on her own as soon as she turns 18, into a crappy two bedroom apartment in the city near her work.

B’s parents both die soon after, within a year and a half of each other. It’s a very rough time for B and his sister, as they loved their parents dearly in spite of their flaws and have no other living family. Their parents left them with some debt, but B and his sister are each other’s emotional support all throughout the grieving, and manage to stay strong all throughout.

B’s TEEN YEARS:

B’s sister becomes his legal guardian, and he moves into her spare room. They happily stop talking about his strange abilities altogether.

They make a pretty good team when it comes to splitting the domestic duties. He loves to clean and does it for fun, so the place is always absolutely spotless. 

B’s sister is generally an awful cook, but she knows how to make a mean sandwich, and she always keeps the place cozy and smelling nice by burning incense, and furnishing the rooms with the perfectly good things she finds thrifting. She has a real knack for interior design, and plans on maybe pursuing it someday, once B is finished high school and able to better financially contribute to the household.

When B is about fifteen years old, his sister notices that he’s never once shown an interest in girls. He also is very curious about her morning routine, and watches how she gets ready for work very closely. She never lets on that she notices this, but she starts casually narrating the steps she takes to apply her makeup and do her hair.

One day, B’s sister finds some of her foundation and eyeliner missing. It’s replaced again the next day, and neither of them say a word about it.

B is consistently the top student in his high school in all grades. He’s generally well-liked, though very shy, and doesn’t have many friends. His sister senses he’s afraid of getting attached to people because of his eyes, and feels sorry for him. She encourages him to join some sort of extracurricular program, saying he’d definitely have a better chance of getting into his dream schools if he was more involved.

B joins the drama club at school, and it helps him come out of his shell socially. At first he just volunteers as a stage hand, helping the actors with their costumes and their stage makeup, but eventually he works up the courage to audition for a play, too. He is a natural, and gets the lead part. B’s sister tries to help him practice his lines when she gets home from work, but she’s often too tired. She suggests that maybe he could invite some of the other cast members over to practice sometime, instead.

B invites only one other cast member over to practice; a very cute guy with long blond hair, leather pants, and a rosary around his neck. This guy seems to have been under the impression that there were other people coming too, and looks very uncomfortable about the whole situation. B’s sister feels the awkward vibes between them immediately and wants nothing more than to makes herself scarce, but she feels too bad for the guy to leave. She hangs around all night despite B’s pointed glares, and makes a pot of mushy, overcooked spaghetti for them all to share. The cute blond guy chokes it down politely and leaves as soon as he can, saying he just remembered he needs to go pick up his best friend Matt from work.

B’s school play goes very well, and the student newspaper reports his performance as the stand-out highlight of the whole thing. B tells his sister that maybe he’d prefer to move to Hollywood someday and pursue acting. She’s torn between encouraging him to follow his less practical dreams, and wishing he’d make something of his incredible smarts and aim for an ivy league school, instead. She decides to hold her tongue and let him decide on his own.

Eventually, B’s sister gets a nice boyfriend named Stephan Gevanni, and he moves in with them after a few months. He’s a sweetheart, and a very good cook, and he fills that hole in their home nicely by making delicious suppers every night. B is very blushingly awkward around Stephan, and hides in his room all the time, writing in his diary, obsessively reading manga, and listening to dramatic movie soundtracks on repeat. He gradually stops being embarrassed about his interest in makeup, as his time as a stage hand helps him feel more comfortable about it. Soon he’s wearing subtle eyeliner and foundation every day, and it looks very good on him. That cute blond guy he invited over even asked B for tips on how he pulls it off so well, he says with pride.

At some point, B comes home from school saying he’s just had the oddest day at school. He was pulled out of class all day for some very cryptic testing, which he was told was a standardized government thing. B didn’t believe for one minute that it was, but he couldn’t make sense of what else it could be, either. He said the test was the hardest thing he’d ever taken in his life, but that he had a lot of fun with it, too.

Two weeks later, B gets an elegantly embossed letter in the mail. He’s passed the cryptic testing with flying colours, and is one of the elite few finalists being invited to meet with a man who runs some of the most prestigious private schools in the country. The one they think B would make the best fit for is called Wammy’s House in England, which they would allow him to attend on full scholarship, no questions asked. B reads the letter out loud to his sister and Stephan over dinner with shaking hands, though he claims to find it silly and acts like he doesn’t care at all.

B’s sister thoroughly researches this school for the gifted, and finds she can figure out very little about it outside of the fact that it indeed exists. She’s extremely proud of B for being selected as a candidate, but her sharp intuition is giving her a very nasty feeling about it, nonetheless. She chooses to hold her tongue and see what B will choose, deciding she will whole-heartedly support his choice either way.

B decides after a lot of agonizing to politely reject the offer from the mysterious school, saying he’s finally feeling at home in his own skin for the first time in his life, and would miss his new friends at school too much. He said he needs some more time to figure himself out, first, no matter how flattering the school’s offer is. His sister breathes a secret sigh of relief, and she and Stephan makes B a lovely cake with strawberry filling for dessert that night, because they knows it’s his very favourite.

[5917]

Vampire AU

pairing: Kuroo Tetsurou / Kozume Kenma

a/n: Happy Halloween! I hope you all have a spooktacular day! Low-key related to Beware The Wolf

Warning: it gets a little gore-y (at least possibly so I just want to put that warning there)

ao3

The night was dark and cold, wind howling as it moved between stores and trees. It was a classic autumn night.

Kenma buried further into the coat he’d successfully nicked from Kuroo – though it hadn’t been much of a challenge when Kuroo willingly gave his clothes over to Kenma. Something about the aesthetic of it. Kenma didn’t get it. Nothing new there.

A particular gust of wind had him shivering again, sniffling as he raised his phone higher. He had almost beat the level and didn’t plan on getting a Game Over just because of some wind. A notification appeared at the top of the screen. It went ignored.

Unsurprisingly Kenma beat the level and saved his progress. He opened the notification and read the message Kuroo had sent. They were still on his movie night.

When Kenma tuned back in to his surroundings, eyes rapidly cataloging the street and buildings, he was anxious to find himself alone. While he wasn’t partial to crowds – staying at home much more preferable – being the only one on a street at night screamed trouble. It didn’t help that something had been terrorizing the city as of late.

A clatter had Kenma jumping. His ears picked up the sound of heavy foot falls. Inhaling sharply, Kenma typed off a quick message to Kuroo knowing that he wouldn’t get there in time.

“Leach,” one of the men spat.

Kenma didn’t respond, there would be no use and he didn’t like sullying himself with such trash. He frowned at the thought. Five men boxing Kenma in forced him to a stop, scrutinizing each man. They were laden with hunting gear but Kenma heavily suspected these men didn’t follow the hunters’ law, at least not if they were antagonizing him.

“What wrong blood whore?” another man teased, gun in hand.

The insult rolled right off Kenma. Instead, his eyes tracked the second man’s movement, smelling the aged would in the barrel. It was a rare and deeply protected secret that only the wood from a hundred year or older Rowan tree could kill a vampire. That and decapitation or blood loss – but that last one was a bit iffy since a vampire could easily fall into a blood coma.

Blood coma; it was a state of being a vampire might inflict on themselves if they were low on blood or close to dying. It either killed the vampire or kept them in existence long enough to find some unwilling victim. The down side to blood coma, besides the low possibility of inexistence, was the bloodlust that followed an awakening. Some vampires, those who barley had any blood in their system when they entered coma or unbelievably strong ones (such as Kuroo) could level an entire town, sucking it dry within one night.

Kenma, unfortunately, had had his own experiences with blood coma. Usually it was due to forgetting to feed but his old age certainly helped raise that number.

As it were, Kenma kept calm. He’d been faced with hunters before and always got out of them still existing. Though, Kuroo or some other member of their clan was with him. But there had been a time before the Nekoma clan.

“I bet his sire’s just as much of a blood whore as this leech,” Another man taunted.

Kenma felt the rare emotion of rage setting in, fangs dropping but hidden at the insult.

“Maybe,” the first man said, smirk cruel and a malicious glint in his eyes, “We should have this leech beg and call for his vile sire and then hang him up to watch as we bleed his blood fucker for all he’s worth.”

Kenma snapped.

The next couple minutes were filled with flying blood, snarls, yells, and gunshots. Kenma ignored the bullet wounds in his shoulder and thigh. Miraculously both shots were through-and-throughs so the aged rowan wood didn’t have much of an effect on him. The stab to his gut and multiple slashes to his back were easy to ignore as well.

The last hunter, the first one to have spoken and the one to insult Kenma’s sire, to insult Kuroo, was killed last and very painfully. Kenma relished in pulling his claws down the man’s chest, removing his manhood and carving blood whore onto his forehead for the world to see. He was in a trance by the time he slit the man’s throat, dazed from the blood loss and drunk on the sweet metallic scent that filled the street.

A cough brought Kenma out of his stupor, the spurt of blood that landed on the pavement shocking him even more. Absentmindedly his hand touched his throat, eyes widening at the open cut and fresh blood he felt there. Kenma stumbled away from the gruesome scene, blood and guts everywhere, uncaring as he stepped on someone’s intestines. He walked and walked until his body could go no further, collapsing into a heap on the ground.

With the last of his strength, Kenma turned over. He knew already that there would be no salvation. Blood coma couldn’t help him with a cut to his throat, the blood would continue to flow until hunger clouded his mind and when his body couldn’t follow the desire to feed, he would go crazy with lust and eventually turn to a husk left to burn in the day like all blood-deprived vampires do.

What a terrible way to die. Without Kuroo, his first friend, sire, and lover beside him to send him off.

*

 “Kenma!” Kuroo crashes into the ground next to Kenma, dried leaves crunching underneath. He pulled Kenma’s limp body up, cradling it tenderly to his chest. Blood quickly seeped into his trousers. A small pool lay around them, having grown as Kenma’s wounds remained unattended. Anxiously, Kuroo pushed Kenma’s hair aside, smearing blood on his cheek and forehead. Rage lay just under the concern, furry to rip someone – whoever had dared hurt his dear boy – to pieces.

Kuroo moved his hand to Kenma’s neck, to the gaping wound there. Blood spurted from the ugly cut occasionally, stopping a blood coma from saving him.

No pulse.

Panic began to finally set in, pounding against’ Kuroo’s breastbone in a pale imitation of a heart. His teeth tore at his wrist, unmindful of the brutality of the act, and held it over Kenma’s mouth.

Far too many seconds passed before the drops falling into Kenma’s mouth turned into a steady stream. Kenma’s mouth quickly filled until it began to spill over, drops gliding down Kenma’s cheek and neck.

And then, against all odds, the spurts on his neck began to weaken before completely tapering off. Kenma’s whole throat moved as he swallowed. Again and again the movement continued, mouth emptying quicker than it could be filled.

When there was nothing left, Kenma surged upward, eyes glazed as he wrapped a mangled hand around Kuroo’s arm, claws dug into his flesh and mouth latched itself to the Kuroo’s wrist. He began to drink, large, loud gulps. At some point his eyes slipped closed, his other hand going to clutch Kuroo’s shirt, tearing the fabric with his razor fingers.

Kuroo only had so much blood in him and eventually had to roughly grabbed Kenma’s hair to get his attention. “Kenma, enough! I haven’t fed recently.”

Kenma gave a soft whine that Kuroo only caught because he was so focused on his childe. With one final suck, Kenma released his bounty, tongue lazily cleaning off the wound that has practically healed already. By the time he pulled away for good, Kuroo’s wrist was pristine.

“Kuroo,” Kenma said monotonously as if he hadn’t almost died, died. His voice was rough from nearly being severed and Kuroo felt his dead heart sigh in relief. Kenma still existed. At least for now.

“Let’s go get something to eat,” Kuroo said by way of response. He was reluctant to let Kenma go but did so anyway, giving the smaller vampire a hand up in exchange of releasing him.

“Shouyou should be home,” Kenma suggested, allowing Kuroo to hold his hand as they walked away.

It seemed like their movie plans for the night were ruined.

[sinning-sister]

I did a thing!

Okay, first and foremost - I made this post, because I am down as fuck. Feeling to develop a nice little depression session and I am not into the mood for that kind of fun, so I decided I will do what I wanted to do before mood swings kicked in. On the personal level, it happened mostly because of my work, my huge decision about quitting that work and the usual fear of finding a new one. I didn’t quit yet, I will do at Monday, so I am stressing about that. I also work with my mother, so when she will get the news, she will nag me and won’t stop complaining, telling me how stupid I am to leave this job, etc. So I am stressing about that too. I really don’t want to be home for months, between the four walls, because that will do no good to me - stressing about that too. Adding the constant worry, because of my soon non-existing payment and stuff - so yeah, I am trying to see the bright side of life! And not creating nice, little suicidal thoughts I used to do every time, when this happened or dragging myself so down and think about myself so low, I cannot even look into the mirror.

Adding that almost all of my RP partners are busy - so nothing can distract me really, plus I can create nice dark thoughts about how people from the internet are hating me too - I really have to solve this forming fucking huge problem.

Thanks for hearing me out.

Now, back to the fic. Two things: very big and very special thanks to @poethrotsvitha and the @theyoungerfryetwin, because both of them encouraged me in this project. I started to work on this... a month ago? 1,5 months ago? Wrote it, re-wrote it, deleted it, asked poethrotsvitha​ to send it again to me and then wanted to delete it again. (Oh yes, my friends are sooo blessed with me.) At this point theyoungerfryetwin joined in, she edited this bunch of words for me and endured my never ending complaining as well.

And now I am presenting it here.

Fucking enjoy.

The streets of London were always busy and interesting. Jacob knew that very well and wasn’t fascinated by it anymore, not like the first time he made his first steps in London and, like a baby, was completely marvelled by it. All the people, all the possibilities to have a good fight and earn good money. It was now all normal to him.

Time made him see London’s true face – the ever-grey streets, the dirt and horseshit on the cobblestone, the smog in the air from the factories. The heavy rain was the very extra London could offer. Luckily today was nice enough outside to take a walk.

Spend some years here and you’ll feel tempted to either run away or jump off of the Westminster Bridge. Especially if you often visit Whitechapel.

But not everyone shared his opinion about the city, like the 6 year-old at his side, holding Jacob’s big hand with his tiny one and still adored the street life. But Emmett had totally different reasons then his father had when he first arrived.

The people around him and their clothing, funny talking, what they were doing - it all fascinated him. However, his absolute favourite were the carriage horses. Jacob simply had to make some time to take a walk to the station once or twice a week, where the carriages were waiting for a ride, so Emmett could visit his favourite horses and pet them or sometimes feed them carrots.

The boy loved all the horses, but two of them were really close to his heart: Admiral, the black gelding and Jacqueline, an old grey mare. Their owners quickly befriended Jacob - Of course, who could say no to the leader of the Rooks? And a knight too – so sometimes Emmett could sit on the horses’ back for a short few minutes and this delighted him, laughing loudly and caressing the soft mane of the animals.

This always melted Jacob’s heart a little. Emmett was a good kid, had a soft heart. Like his mother… he inherited so much from her.

A soft tug woke him up from his thoughts and he looked down at his little one. He looked a little tired and Jacob knew this look: time for a ride.

Without a word, he bent down and grabbed the boy and like that, he was sitting in his neck, small hands fisted in his hair. Maybe people stared, but he couldn’t be bothered to care – if Emmett wanted to have a proper view of the street, he would have it. He was so short still, no wonder he got tired of seeing feet and waists only.

“Are we going to the horses?” He exclaimed happily as he noticed the familiar route.

Jacob chuckled. Some horses and he was the happiest boy in the world. “Yes we are. I promised, didn’t I?”

He just laughed and started to blabber about the animals, how happy he is to see them and what he will ask from their owner about them, and how he hoped Jacqueline will be happy too, and things like that. Kids.

Later that day, when Emmett woke up from his afternoon napping and played on the floor with his wooden toys, Jacob sat at his desk with his papers covered with numbers and reports. From time to time, his gaze drifted towards his son, who was very busy with his carved and painted wooden tiger. Apparently, the tiger had devoured half of the soldiers.

Jacob quite often wondered about his parenting. Being an assassin and a gang leader meant a hectic life, running away in the middle of the night or going away for days to fulfil a mission. Of course, he never left Emmett alone – there was a Rook girl, Elizabeth, who was more than happy to help him out, watching the boy over for him, even when he was away for a long period. In those cases, Lizzy just moved into his flat. Emmett always told him what they did while he was away, like walking to the park or to the countryside to see some more horses and some cows too, sheep and the other farm animals. Jacob was thankful for her, but worried maybe he just missed out too much. Was he around enough? Nevertheless, he needed to deal with London too.

Being a father changed him. Before having his son, Jacob was a reckless man, lived for the today only and did not really think about the tomorrow or further into his future. He always assumed he would die young – he was an assassin after all, often challenged death as he chased his enemies and tried to make the a better place. Looking back now… Did he really make the world better? Will Emmett grow up in that better world? To be honest, nothing had really changed. There will always be enemies, problems, bad people…. because that is how the world works, isn’t it? Jacob did not care, not really. He tried to make people’s lives easier, that was what he trained for, yes, but he could not change the whole country. The Queen still had her Empire, women were still not equal to men and there was still child labour. Where is his better world?

After his son’s birth, he tried to live a better life. Dying young wasn’t an option anymore. Now he had to care; now he had someone to take care for, now he wasn’t alone. And Jacob was grateful for that.

Looked down at him, the boy was still playing, but changed his mind and the tiger magically flew to the bookshelf in his owner’s hand, run to the end of it, and stopped near his desk. Emmett knew Jacob was not happy about messing with his papers – he tended to forget, but not this time. Eyes turned towards the adult man and just simply blurted out; “Why don’t I have a Mommy?”

His father wasn’t prepared for this question, literally out of nowhere. Jacob looked at him, frozen to the spot. The silence began to stretch way too long and the boy looked like he had done something wrong – Jacob was rarely angry with him, but when he was, a hard stare was enough to let Emmett know he was out of line. He raised his voice only once or twice. His hand – never. Therefore, this long silent moment clearly scared him.

Jacob cleared his throat and turned back to his papers, as if nothing happened.

“Of course you do.”

Emmett thought about that for a long moment. Did he? He really, really did?   Was he allowed to ask a second question? Well, he asked anyway. “And where is she?”

Jacob closed his eyes for a moment.  “Far away.”

“Will I ever see her?” The hope he felt found its way to his voice. He had a mother! Of course he wanted to see her! When could he see her? Now? Tomorrow? Will they visit her?

But the answer wasn’t what he’d hope for. “No.” Simple and short.

Emmett wanted to keep asking: why not? Did she hate him? Didn’t she want him and Father? Where is she? In London?

Jacob sensed his son was about to ask even more questions and he also knew maybe one day he has to face those questions, but this was not that day. He sighed, sliding to the floor next to his son. Time to explain some things to a 6 year old.

“Your mother is…. Your mother loves you, that’s important for you to know. But she can’t be with us, here. She has to be somewhere else, she is needed somewhere else… And I don’t know if we will see her ever again. She wanted to be here, to be with you… but she can’t.”

This was the most he could offer his son for now. Of course, he could never tell him the whole truth.

The little boy looked at him with those painfully familiar blue eyes. “Oh…” He looked sad for a moment, of course he did. “But… does she love me?” His eyes were on him again, full of hope.

Jacob smiled. If there was something that was for sure, was that she loved Emmett “Of course, kid! She loves you very-very much!”

Emmett could somehow manage to put a smile on his freckled cheeks. Kids were amazing, he just acknowledged he will never see his mother, but could still smile, while Jacob wanted to scream and sob.

“That’s good! I love her too! Could you tell her that? That I love her?”

He literally heard his heart breaking in two if that was even possible after what happened. “Yes, when I can, I will.”

With that, the boy turned back to his toys, continuing his campaign to help the tiger eat the remaining soldiers and Jacob just sat there for a moment. If only he could be this naïve again.

Later that night when he managed to put Emmett down to sleep, Jacob sat down at his desk again and grabbed some paper and an inkbottle with a pen. Time to fulfil the promise made to his son - their son. He pondered over the blank page for long minutes, thinking hard of what he should write, how should he put his thoughts into formed words. ‘Well, let’s start at the beginning, I think.’

 Dear Evie,

[badly-drawn-piplup]

Happiness Overload Chapter Nine

There stood a lady in a lab coat watching someone being disintegrated. Metal claws retracted back into the floor and ceiling. Electricity ran wild, and I wasn't too sure what I was being exposed to. Before I could turn away, she looked up, her gaze locked into my own.

″Um, don't mind me. Just passing through,″ I put my arm behind my head and shuffled my feet. I already knew I wasn't in the best of situations. You didn't have to tell me that. In fact, I would have at least fared a little better if I kept that stupid armor on.

″No, you're right where you should be,″ she uttered.

Footsteps. Their sounds cluttered on both ends of the hall. I was surrounded. Those goons with guns were going to shoot me down. I knew I shouldn't be here, but I could never find the exit. This lady had me trapped and she knew it. I ran into the room. It was the only thing I could think to do.

She smiled a smile that seemed to grow wider a mile a minute.

″You're still going to die, you know,″ she told me, relishing in such a fact.

″Well, fuck!″ I complained, tears welling up. ″What was I supposed to do? You had me in a corner!″

I could no longer see the body of whoever that was.

″Say, who was that?″ I pointed down, figuring if I was going to die, I may as well ask a quick question.

″Don't you know? That was you.″

″Oh, right. That makes sense.″

″What the hell was that?!″ I stood hunched over in disbelief. Conrad just stood beside me shaking his head, not giving much of a reaction otherwise.

″Damn, the feed cut out,″ he muttered.

″Really? That's what you're going to complain about? Of course it cut out! Your friend is dead!″

″It was to be expected,″ he responded with nonchalance. ″At least Blanc was useful while they were around. I finally got to see the inside of their base of operations. Or at least one of them.″

″I can't believe you right now.″

We were both in my ship at this point and Conrad had pulled out a PDA that displayed the whereabouts of Blanc through the underground maze.

″I placed a camera on Blanc when we were hanging out. It was so small that they had no way of ever noticing,″ he explained as we stepped into the ship. It was quite the ordeal getting there, but we were heading out now and venturing off to find a new place to hide out and lay low.

He tuned in just in time to see Blanc dying in front of the scientist known as Dr. Etna (or Professor, she seemed to go back and forth between titles). He gritted his teeth and hit rewind until we were at the beginning. We watched the fight with Chester, a.k.a Albacore (why the psycho chose that name I'll never know, but he's dead now and I feel no sympathy for him) as well as what ensued with the guards in the hallway. Neither of us could explain how Blanc was fighting any of them, but we had to accept that they were and there was nothing else to it. It wasn't until the thing about Ecstasy that Blanc and Etna talked about that it all clicked. It didn't really click, but Conrad explained it nonetheless.

″Damn it! They had no need to melt the body! They must have known what I did!″ He complained.

″I thought you guys were best friends, but here you are talking like they were an asset, a tool!″ I had no attachment to Blanc, myself; my first impression of them wasn't all that great and I never saw what the big deal was about how supposedly great they were. All I know is that if I had a best friend just die, I would react a little more in grief and shock. Here I am instead shocked that after Conrad had acted like Blanc was someone he'd do anything for, he went and did nothing and used Blanc for such a small gain.

″You have to understand. There was nothing I could have done. Blanc would have gone in there regardless and I wouldn't have been able to do anything to stop them. I at least had to take advantage of the situation so it wouldn't be completely in vain.″

″There was nothing you could have done? You didn't even try!″

″We had more pressing matters, anyway,″ he passed off, pulling on the strings of his hoodie. ″We were trying to escape, remember?″

″Ugh! Missing the point 101!″ I raised my fists and paced around the ship.

True, we were trying to escape, and that was my bad (as well as Kelly Roger's. Don't forget, not all of the blame can be placed on me), but Conrad knew beforehand what was going to happen. Or at least it seemed that way. There should have been something, anything other than this whole ″oh well″.

Conrad sighed and glanced my way.

″Look, you think I'm not troubled by this?″

I nodded. That was exactly what I thought.

″That's not it. I've seen this happen before. It's not the first time Blanc died. There were different circumstances. We worked together and actually came close to defeating the entire Flashbulb organization, at least in this timeline. There was no 'Ecstasy' or anything like that. I simply saved Blanc from ever riding that elevator and figured out a plan to take them apart. Their base wasn't originally underground and things were a little different. Ugh! I can't remember all the details anymore!″

″What the hell are you rambling on about?″ I raised my eyebrows.

″Time has become so muddied. I shouldn't be able to remember any of this, since it never happened, at least, not this time. We were close but they still found us out and went back in time before we had even worked together. I was powerless to stop Blanc from riding the elevator. It was like a different Blanc entirely, even before going to the station. It's like the moth effect. Even the smallest thing changes how things play out.

″You mean 'butterfly effect'?″

″It used to be moth...″ he muttered.

I shook my head.

″Whatever. So you just give up? You watch them, but you don't do anything? What's the point in gathering all this information if you're not going to do anything with it?″

″We have to be careful. It's not that I don't want to do anything, but we have to make sure we can do something before we do it.″

I laughed, but it was one of defeat. ″They're already aware of our existence. What can we do?″

″I don't know. It's a wonder they haven't already changed how things again. If they haven't already. It's so hard to tell.″

I continued pacing. The ship was on autopilot, passing through solids and camouflaging itself to avoid detection. I recalled the cameras, how we were monitoring Blanc, up until their death. That was when I remembered: there were multiple Blancs.

″You want to do something?″ I asked, feeling like I was taking charge.

″Like what?″

″We can still save Blanc.″

″Are you kidding? We're already in the next city! By the time we get there --″

″I'm the pilot, aren't I? I say we turn this around and save your best friend.″

″They're not even the same person!″ Conrad protested.

″That doesn't matter! We're doing this!″ I yelled, shoving Conrad aside and sitting in the pilot's chair.

Euphoria was singing a wordless tune that to anyone else would sound grating, but to me, it was soothing. It was a comfort to know that she was by my side. Even still, there was a miniscule part of me that was just a little uneasy.

″I guess I should have figured beforehand, but it's not exactly 'normal' to float along and make objects 'happy'. Whatever that even means,″ I mentioned.

She grinned. ″EVERYTHING WANTS TO BE HAPPY!″

″Yeah, I guess so. I guess I was also just too caught up in the moment to think about such things like what's 'normal' and what's 'not.' I also guess you're not really human, are you?″

″I'M YOUR GUARDIAN ANGEL!″ She confirmed.

″Uh-huh. And what does a 'guardian angel' look like? Go ahead, show your true form. I can take it.″

I turned around and a mass of tentacles with teeth hanging around in odd corners and a giant brain hanging on top, pulsating and pieces falling off, only for a tongue on the side to continuously lick off the brain matter.

″That's not what you look like,″ I shook my head. ″That's only what I imagined you looking like.″

Euphoria changed back into the image of the girl in the angel outfit.

″EUPHORIA'S ONLY FORM IS THE FORM OF HAPPINESS!″ She cheered.

″So appearance means nothing, huh?″ That was disappointing. Such a pointless reveal.

We strode through the hall. I stopped to take off the armor I was wearing.

″I'm tired of this thing, to be honest. We haven't seen any guards in quite some time and I'm sure we're close to the exit now.″ After stripping off of the armor, I was back to feeling free in my usual clothes.

″Ah, that's so much better.″ I put my hands on my hips. ″So, anything else you can tell me?″ I asked.

″I CAN TELL YOU ANYTHING IF IT MAKES YOU HAPPY!″

″Can you tell me the truth?″ I asked that, but I didn't really know what 'truth' I wanted to know.

″WILL THE TRUTH MAKE YOU HAPPY?″

I had to ponder that. ″Maybe not, but...″

″WOULD IT MAKE YOU HAPPY TO KNOW?″

″I s'ppose so.″

″Do you know what 'truth' I want to know?″

She nodded with a great fury.

She entered the chamber, this unexpected guest. My database had no information on her but that didn't last long. It only took a second before I had a basic knowledge on just what she was capable of. The flow of information was a constant, ever changing asset.

″Greetings, creature,″ I beckoned. She flitted about before bellowing.

″THE ROOM WOULD BE HAPPIER WITH LESS LIGHTS ON!″

Any light source no longer mattered; the area was already dim as it was, but the air within changed to that of pitch blackness.

″Is that so?″

″I CAN ALREADY FEEL THE HAPPINESS LEVELS RISING!″

″I see. It seems we may have similar goals.″

″GOALS? WHAT ARE THOSE?″

″Wants. Desires.″

No response.

″What we desire is to make this world happier.″

″OH MY GOD! THAT'S SO WONDERFUL!″

″Do you desire it too?″

″I CAN MAKE IT HAPPEN!″

I already knew that. Which is why it was so important to have her in our disposal.

″Good. Tell us, do you have a name?″

″NAME? WHAT'S THAT?″

She must have known what names were. There were names for objects. Names for places. Names for people. Everyone and everything had a name, even if names differed between those giving and telling it.

″Very well. From henceforth, you shall be named Euphemism. If anyone asks what to call you, however, you are to address yourself as Euphoria. Understood?″

″My...name...is...Euphoria?″ She repeated, not giving her usual shout. From what could be gathered, she did not understand, but I had little patience for drilling it into her head. It was enough to know that I could call upon her.

If we were to gather even a small sample of whatever matter made up what she was, we could create many wonders. That much was clear.

Soldiers surrounded the door, guns loaded. I didn't have any special powers or anything. I wasn't a superhero, supervillain, otherworldly being, bitten by radioactive whatever, magician, etc. I never ate a magic fruit. I was just some lazy college student with nothing to lose. I wouldn't stand a chance against a dozen assault rifles, firing at once.

I knew all this, but I also have seen quite a few movies involving villains and it was clear that I was in the lair of one. I didn't have an exact clue what I was up against, but I knew what I could do.

″Hey, I'm going to die anyway. Why don't we talk for a bit?″ I asked.

″Very well,″ the lady in the lab coat agreed. ″Prinnies, hold your fire.″

I held in a chuckle. Out of all things to call a group of fearsome supersoldiers and they get called ″Prinnies″.

″So...uh...″ This wasn't good. I was granted a chance to stall and I couldn't even figure out what to start stalling with. ″What is this place?″

″Nothing you were meant to see.″

″Oh, I get that. 'Top Secret', right? Like Area 51 or some shit? That's why I can't be allowed to live, right? I've seen too much?″

″A valid answer. For anyone else, that would be true. For you, it is because you are a mistaken. An accident. You were never meant to be.″

″Hey! That's not very nice!″ I retorted. ″I'm sure my mom weighed the pros and cons about having a baby!″

″For all intents and purposes, I am your mother,″ she answered. I pictured her wearing a Darth Vader helmet. Otherwise, her revelation didn't really have a lasting effect on me. She was probably saying that to be dramatic. Which I totally get. Gotta play up that angle. ″You are a clone.″

″Yeah, I know,″ I replied, and gave a fake yawn for added measure. ″I'm a copy of a copy of a copy. Whatever.″

″You are aware? How?″

″Well, I kinda figured. Seeing another me will do that to ya, y'know?″

″Then you know why you must die. You are a loose end. There should never exist more than one of someone.″

″I guess I see where you're coming from, but just so ya know, you're wrong. I don't see a problem with there being more than one of someone, from a moral standpoint or otherwise.″

″You are inferior. You cannot match to the original.″

″So what? Maybe that's true, maybe I can be an exact replica and still different. Doesn't mean I'm not good in my own right. Think of it like an MP3 or pirating a copy of something. Sure, the quality may go down with each copy, but it can still be enjoyed throughout by many and most of the time the lower quality is so small that it doesn't even make a difference.″

″Why would you attribute yourself to a piece of software?″

″Why not? They say the mind is like a computer.″ I may not have been much, but I was nothing if not a bullshitter. Had to be in order to stay in college.

″Enough! I've grown tired of your stalling! A filibuster may work in a senate hearing, but such tactics are of no use here! Prinnies, open fire!″

Well, shit, I thought.

The sound of gunfire pierced through my eardrums. I covered both ears and got to my knees, but when the gunfire stopped I looked behind me and noticed something: I was still alive.

″What gives? Where's the earth shattering ka-boom? There's supposed to be an earth shattering ka-boom!″ I joked, knowing full well what went on.

Euphoria charged past the mercenaries, shoving them aside and causing them to fire their guns at the walls making up the doorway. The bullets ricocheted off the wall and fired back at each of their heads, the impact somehow strong enough to decapitate each and every one of them in perfect succession. While it seemed awfully improbable, I wasn't about to question it.

″HAPPINESS TO THE RESCUE!″ She cheered, waving her hands about and jumping at me.

″Euphy, right on cue,″ I smiled and stood proud.

″Ah, so you've met our creation, Euphemism, also known as the ETNA project.″

My face went blank. ″The what now?″

″E.T.N.A., stands for Euphoric Transdimensional Nature Alterer. Or you can think of her as Euphemism, a term for when a not so savory thing is giving a more appealing name.″

I sighed. I should have figured.

″That's not true and you know it,″ I told the lady, shaking my head in disappointment. ″Euphy has no true name, and she's not a project! Euphy is Euphy!″

Blanc had escaped within a hair of their life. There were now two Blancs roaming about. We couldn't allow such a thing, but there were already provisions in place to ensure things would continue as they should. Ecstasy, an experiment created from a trace amount of the creature that came to visit us and linked to my essence was already inhabiting the Blanc who had escaped. All that was left was to wait and the rest would fall into place.

Bad news: we just saw the second Blanc, Ecstasy and I saw with the same eyes, and yet she felt the same need to tell me, as if she was telling Blanc. Sometimes it was a burden knowing my system was still plagued with imperfections.

″Fear not,″ I informed her. ″Nothing is hindered.″

Only a short time later, we were wrong. As much as Ecstasy would lead Blanc to the same fate sooner or later, we still couldn't completely control their thoughts and actions. Blanc had the ″brilliant″ idea of telling their replica to try throwing a paper ball into the elevator. We already knew why; they thought it would save the replica as well as reveal the truth of what makes up the inside of the elevator. The unfortunate truth was that Blanc did not foresee a third Blanc being created, whereas we did. We could not allow such a thing to happen.

The creature, if she could even be called such a thing, was already in our chambers.

″Euphemism, go forth and act as the guardian angel of the one who goes by Blanc Slait.″

″AYE-AYE!″ She complied and vanished. We knew it would not be immediate, but all that was left to do at that point was wait and put our faith in this being which had already proved to be a valuable asset for us.

″So that's how it is, then?″ I whispered. I would say my heart sank at the reveal, but that wouldn't have been the right way to phrase things. It felt like the feeling in your body when someone tells you they're breaking up with you or that you failed a test. A bit of a cold feeling followed by tremors and a tightening of the senses. Your heart beats felt neither slower or faster, but rather more pronounced. Your face in a position as if you had a moderate dose of Botox. Your eyes in a state where you were at the beginning of your high after eating a couple of pot brownies.

″I feel like I've lived a whole life, but my life's just begun. All of these memories, they were made by someone else who I look like, whose name I share,″ I spoke up just a bit, but each word spilled were gasps for air. I was in a state where I both felt like I could burst into tears and break down yet also felt too numb to be able to conjure any up. I know it sounds dramatic, but it was a dramatic feeling. At least before I concluded.

″It really did make me happy to find out,″ I told Euphy.

″I'M GLAD!″ She replied, and even though it was her usual grin that she wore, there was something on her face that hinted at concern.

″I guess I should have figured. There were signs all over the place, but I was always open to other possibilities. That's how I've always been...when something comes out about government corruption I would always tell myself that they still have our best interests at heart and there was a good reason for what they did.″

I stopped. Euphoria hugged me, though she probably would have evn if I wasn't talking to the void over what she had revealed to me. I gave a little laugh. It was fake, but I probably would have still laughed even if I didn't feel like I had to force it.

″I say 'always'. I guess that's not really the case. I've only had these thoughts since I was born. Though, really, what's the difference?″

There was an increased confidence; something stirred in me that may have been brought on by the truth which I pressed her so hard for.

″Come on, Euphy!″ I took a step forward, after standing still for the past few minutes. ″We have to find the exit!″ My body was still shaking and each step was met with a heavy heartbeat. It didn't help matters that her embrace made it harder to walk and I wasn't used to someone hugging me, let alone someone with an indescribable nature.

Most of my so-called 'life' I hadn't really experienced, but that didn't mean I couldn't form any memories of my own. Besides, many people share the same name and are totally different people. Maybe I could be the same way.

″What gives?″ I asked. ″Why'd you stop?″

We had been crawling along with slow movements, still trying to get to the hanger where my ship was kept.

″We reached the vent,″ Conrad muttered. ″But I can see guards lurking about.″

Just my luck. Emphasis on my, of course. My life's been a string of ″just my luck's″ with a healthy dose of ″you've got to be kidding me″ sprinkled on top.

″Any bright ideas?″ I snickered, knowing full well that Conrad had none. I didn't know why I felt the need to rub it in when I was out of ideas, myself.

″I've got a laser pointer,″ he mentioned.

″C'mon, I wanna get on my ship, already!″ I fumed.

From what I could see, the guards had no idea there even was a ship, since the ship was cloaked at the moment and appeared invisible to the naked eye. Actually, even if they were to bump into it, they probably wouldn't notice since the ship can just pass through matter when cloaked.

Conrad fumbled through his pocket. I noticed the red light of the laser pointer and I could tell that he was about to shine it. I didn't know if I could classify whatever he was about to do as a ″brilliant plan″, but if we were thinking literally, it was a ″bright″ idea.

″What are you doing? You trying to get us both killed?″

He shushed me and I was about to push him (and probably be the cause of his death) when I heard gunfire and screams of pain.

″I can't believe it...″ he whispered.

″What?″

″I just made that guy shoot the other guy. I didn't think it would work,″ he remarked.

I gotta say: Conrad's 'pointing a laser pointer at the guard's head' idea was stupid, but the guard was stupider for falling for it. Now we just had to see if it would work for the rest of them.

Her expression changed to that of disgust.

″Who's side are you on?″ She demanded.

″THE SIDE OF HAPPINESS!″ Euphoria cheered.

″That's our side!″

I took the opportunity to try running up to her and punching her smack dab in her jaw. My fist was all ready to go and I took the leap, only to find myself going right through her and crashing to the floor.

″What the...″

I stared up. She turned around and flashed a smile that grew wider and wider. Static flickered through her body and part of her faded in and out.

″You're a hologram!″ I exclaimed.

″I am but an AI, the manifestation of the computer system known as ETNA,″ she explained.

″So what you're saying is that you're full of yourself?″

She frowned. So much for that smug look on her face. I couldn't help myself but laugh.

″Euphy, it would make me really happy if I could punch her right now!″ I called out.

″HAPPINESSS AWAITS YOU!″ Euphoria sang while skipping across the room.

I leaped to my feet and hit Etna, the not-so-hologram across the cheek.

″Wow, I can't believe that worked,″ I remarked.

She turned her head, her face a deep grimace. She pressed her palm against my stomach and I felt a surge of electricity push their way through me, working my blood and sending me flying. I could only imagine what my hair looked like at the moment. I guess I was fortunate enough to be alive, even if a bit crispy.

″You have quite the guile ,″ she complimented.

″No,″ I said with a smile, still on my back, and having difficulties getting up. ″I'm just dumb.″

″Alas, it is time for your existence to end,″ she announced as metal claws flew out from the floor and ceiling and shot toward me.

No! That would not make me happy! I thought. What would have made me happy is if I was able to call Life Alert, but I wasn't about to think that with Euphoria in the room.

I could still hear the claws whizzing toward me. Maybe Euphoria wasn't going to save me this time. Maybe she was on the side of this evil computer scientist. I held my hand over my face and looked away. I didn't want to face whatever was going to crush, strangle, or smash me. I wanted to see nothing at the time of my death. So close now. I could feel the wind from the claws brushing my short, black hair. The same hair that was probably standing up from the electric shock.

And then...nothing.

I pulled my arm away and looked up.

The metal claws were moving about every which way. Euphoria was floathing in midair, as she did, her arms outstretched as she seemed to command the claws with her very presence.

″Good job, Euphy!″ I called out to her.

″YAY! BLANC IS HAPPY!″

More claws shot out and started moving in conjunction with the previous claws. If they weren't away from me, I would have been in a deep fear. Instead, I just kept smiling and shaking my head.

″Those weren't there before!″ Etna cried.

″THE CLAWS WERE LONELY WITHOUT A DANCING PARTNER, BUT THEY'RE HAPPY NOW!″

″I've had enough of this nonsense! Prinnies, come to the control room at once!″

Shit. Of course there would be more of them.

Within just a moment, more guards entered the room, but instead of opening fire, they dropped their weapons and started dancing around.

″YAY! EVERYBODY DANCE!″

Etna watched in disbelief, helpless at her mercenaries not following her orders. She turned around and stared back at me.

″There are still ways,″ she growled, and pressed her foot against my stomach.

″Ech! Ech!″ I squirmed and struggled to breathe.

Before she could squish the life out of me, one of the claws grabbed her and carried her off toward the ceiling.

″IT WANTS YOU TO DANCE WITH THE REST OF US!″

I gasped for air. It took quite a bit of strength, but I leaned up and saw Etna being the one to squirm around.

″This is madness!″ Etna shouted, furious as ever.

I had an opportunity. I was going to seize it.

″No. This! Is! Euphoria!″

I then leaned my head back down and went hysterical. All of this unfolding before my eyes. It was like I was a kid at a party and the bouncy castle was just a few feet away.

I looked up and Euphoria was staring right at me, her bug-eyes reflecting my messy face. She wore a cuter smile then any I could have imagined.

″CAN I GET A PAT ON MY HEAD?″ She asked.

She leaned down and I reached my hand up, somehow our respective actions meeting somewhere in the middle and I was able to give her a little pat.

″YAY!″ She jumped off.

The tiles on the floor started bouncing up and down as if it really were one big, metallic, bouncy castle all along. The monitors all turned on and spelled out the word ″happy″ over and over. The ceiling made waves. The doors opened and closed on their own.

I shook my head, unable to break away from the smile I had on my face.

Etna, on the other hand, seemed to not be enjoying her new life.

″I want to be a hologram again,″ she whimpered.

Euphoria must have figured that would make Etna happy as without any hint of transition, Etna phased through the claw and brought herself down to the floor. From what I gathered, Euphoria did not have a sense of pity or sympathy, only a sense of what would make someone happy or unhappy.

She straightened her glasses and fixed her face until it was back to wearing a stone cold expression.

″The previous one was so much easier...″ she muttered.

I pulled myself to my feet. ″I guess I won't be able to punch you again,″ I sighed.

″Indeed,″ she agreed. ″This is goodbye for now.″ She, or rather, her image, disappeared. The monitors that previously displayed the word ″happy″ across every screen now showed nothing. In fact, there was no hum to be heard. No lights on on the monitors or the computers that accompanied them.

The floor was still. There were no claws. The prinny squad (as I figured I would call them) were writhing on the floor, giggling ceaselessly. Their laughs harmonized and through the helmets I thought I could hear the voices of demons reaching out from the pits of hell.

Arms found their way around me and squeezed me from behind.

″DID I DO A GOOD JOB?″ Euphy asked.

I nodded. ″Yes, very good.″

″YAY!″ She cheered, rubbing her head against my back.

Before I had a chance to step forward and examine the computers, a flight of stairs appeared.

It was only a few steps of stairs, and they didn't seem to lead anywhere.

″I dunno...what if it kills me?″ I reflected, recalling the imagery of the elevator. Sure, I remember riding it once before, but that was a lie. Someone else entered. Someone else who was me, but who isn't me now. ″What do you think, Euphy? Should I risk it?″

I turned around and she was nowhere to be found. I should have noticed that there wasn't anything pressed against me, but I was lost in thought and it seemed just like her to come and go without any hint of leaving.

I gulped. It could have been a trap, but nevertheless, I took the first step. Actually, that was a stupid thought. Since when has anything horrific ever happened involving stairs leading nowhere? I was almost there, and no spinning blades nor any other phenomenon. It was actually kinda disappointing.

On the very last step, I was about to walk back down, but just as I turned around, a hand reached out and grabbed me.

I fell onto the floor. But not the same floor that I had already fallen on twice. This looked to be a different room entirely.

Did I die? Is this a new body? Have I been teleported somewhere?

″Ugh, I can't believe I had to pull you in,″ a voice complained.

I turned around behind me. Nope. The voice wasn't coming from behind me. I did notice the stairs folding up, though.

I looked in front of me and was met by a pair of legs. I looked up further and was relieved to find that the pair of legs were attached to someone: a red head wearing some spy outfit or at least what I imagine a spy would wear.

″Stop staring at my legs and get up. It's making me a little uncomfortable,″ she commanded.

I picked myself up off my feet. ″Sorry. It's just one of those things where you're not sure if you're dreaming or just having quite the day,″ I tried to explain.

″You could have just said 'sorry' or 'sorry, I've just had a batshit day',″ she corrected.

″Uh, right. So, uh, where am I?″

″You're aboard my ship. We're rescuing you.″

My eyes widened. ″That's so cool!″

″Yeah, I guess it is. Though the charm'll wear off after a while.″

″Don't mind Velvet, she just loves to complain!″ Came another voice calling out.

″I do not!″ She complained.

I looked behind Velvet and saw a figure in a hoodie slouched in a chair.

″Who's the skeleton?″ I asked Velvet.

″That's Conrad.″

I looked back at the figure, then back at Velvet.

″So that's what he looks like underneath the hood and glasses?″

She snickered. ″You hear that, Conrad? You've got a fan!″

I ran over to where Conrad was sitting just as he was pulling his hood back up. My heart was beating at an unusual rate, though given the thrills I've experienced all in one day, it shouldn't have been all that unusual.

″I feel like I've known you most my life, and yet this is only my second time meeting you,″ I began. ″Even then, I feel like that other time doesn't count. I didn't know who I was then.″

″But you know now?″ He asked.

″Well, I know what I am, I've still gotta learn the rest.″ I wiped my face. There were tears that I didn't even feel forming, yet they trickled down my face. ″I feel like my life's just beginning.″

Velvet interrupted my little introduction and shoved me aside before taking a seat.

″If you two are done, we've gotta get a move on.″

I looked at the pilot's controls and then looked out the window, displaying the room we were in. Not much about the ship made sense to me. I shook my head and looked at her.

″Where are we going?″

″Egypt.″

I mouthed ″whoa″ before bracing myself, holding tight to the seats Conrad and Velvet occupied.

Even with a new adventure awaiting me, I felt Euphoria's absence. I wondered if she would ever reappear and if so, in what form. I took a deep breath and sighed.

I knew I wasn't yet happy.