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chemical override (5)

Ewan Mitchell x actress!reader

a/n: the support for this fic has been amazing, so trust me when I say that I take no pleasure in all the angst and heartache that follows (or do I?) I'm sorry, readers. I'm sorry, Ewan. We'll sort this out somehow - all my love, Freyja <3

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A beginning. A first date. Whispers, sightings abound. Falling in love. A necessary lie. Hearts breaking. An end.

Ewan stands in a studio backlot in LA, bouquet of flowers clasped in one hand while the other is nervously stuffed in his tracksuit pocket.

He's itching for a smoke, but he stops himself from doing so, in some lovesick attempt to keep himself as clean and nice-smelling as possible when he sees you again. He already mentally kicked himself for not dressing better, clad in his staple Adidas blacks. But he couldn't wait any longer.

His flight from New York to LA hadn't been the most pleasant. His mind raced for hours, the thought of you being his only consolation. His meeting did not go well.

But enough of it. There is you, here, now.

In this moment, you are all that matters.

The first couple of workers make their way out the studio doors, chatting enthusiastically despite their tired faces. Ewan shuffles on his feet, keeping an eye out for you. Soon enough, your assistant Clara exits, and he waves in an attempt to get her attention.

"Ewan!" she greets brightly. "She'll be out in a while. Are those flowers?" A blush materialises on her face, and she looks so excited Ewan awkwardly thinks she would take them for herself.

"Yeah, do you think she'll like them?" he asks, giving the bouquet a once-over. The classic dozen long-stemmed red roses, kept together with black-dyed muslin wrap.

"She'll love them!" As if perfectly timed, the doors open again, and they spot you walking out with several of your co-stars. Clara smiles to herself as she walks away to give you two some space.

When your eyes land on him, it's like everything falls into place, the ear-splitting smile you give him enough to quell any worries he might have. You meet each other halfway, melding together in an embrace so tight he nearly drops the flowers to the ground.

"Look who it is," you say, still wrapped in his arms, "the internet's babygirl."

"Just your baby, darling." He pulls apart, but only just enough to look at you. "I missed you."

"Mmm, I can see that."

You're about to comment on the flowers, but he can't hold back any longer.

And so your first proper kiss happens behind an LA studio, adjacent to the parking lot and surrounded by prying eyes. The burnt orange haze of the sunset peers from the horizon, casting a glow on the scene. And it's perfect. His lips are gentle as they dance with yours, his warm breath fanning your face when he breaks apart for mere milliseconds, only to resume the kiss as if he can never get enough.

A moment later, there's a couple of woohoos from a distance, your costars oooing and aahing at the sight, making you giggle against Ewan's lips.

"Shall we, then, darling?" Ewan asks.

"Shall we?" Your brows raise, mirroring his question.

"Our first date." He takes a step back, but only to ceremoniously hold his hand out for you to take. "Will you do me the honour?"

"Why, good sir, are we going on a regular date or some super fancy ball?" you laugh, lacing your fingers with his anyway.

He only smiles, planting yet another kiss on the corner of your mouth. "God, I missed you."

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You can't help but cast glances at him every now and then. Ewan, effortlessly cool as he drives the both of you across LA, with one veiny hand gripping the steering wheel while the other envelops yours on your lap.

His thumb draws circles on the back of your hand, and you're thankful for it; you need the comfort because you're growing nervous. A first date.

A first date! And not just with anyone.

"What is it?" he smirks, his eyes finding yours as the car idles at an intersection. There's a smugness there. He caught you staring.

You avert your gaze, a pleasant wave of heat rising to your face.

"Hmm?" he leans across, pecking your cheek and resting his forehead against your hair, eager to get a rise out of you. "I mean, I've been told I'm handsome, darling. You already know, something of a babygirl. But it's even more special that you think so."

The light turns green. You grab his jaw, and lightly push him away, raising your eyebrows. "Careful, baby," you smile knowingly. "Your Aemond is showing."

"Oh, yeah?" The car revs up again, rows of palm trees speeding past in a blur. "Does that - uhh - turn you on?"

Your head snaps to him at his bold insinuation. He gives off an unaffected air, smirking to himself in an undeniably hot what-are-you-gonna-do-about-it way. But you make him nervous too. He swallows, and clears his throat, anticipating your response.

"Maybe," you bite your lip, squeezing his hand harder, "but you don't need to put on your Aemond to turn me on."

"Just me, then?" he chuckles lowly, feeling lighter.

"Yup," you shrug. "But if you ever wanna put on a blonde wig and an eyepatch, I won't stop you."

"For when, darling?" Oh he knows what you meant. It's been a constant on his mind too. He's lost count of the nights when thoughts of you consume him, and what happy news it is that you might have been going through the same.

"Mmm... " You look out the window innocently, but you guide his hand higher up on your thigh, allowing his fingers to splay open and squeeze at the flesh covered only by the material of your jeans.

A minute passes. Driving past a street of exclusively only mansions and expensive cars. Then downtown, low-rise buildings as far as the eye can see. Another minute, slow and steady.

Then he says, "You're going to fucking drive me insane, baby."

A soft sigh escapes your lips. "Well, you started it."

He sneers, accompanied by a humourless shake of his head. "I think you overestimate my self-control." The air is thick, but it's quickly diffused when he pulls into a clearing. You realise you're out of the main road, the car slowly coming to a halt in an empty lot beside a low brick building.

"We're here, darling," he says, but he gives you a look that clearly means this matter isn't over. You have something of his, and he's going to claim it.

He half-jogs over to your side, opening the door for you and taking your hand in his.

"Where are we?" The building is nondescript, with a plain white facade, a small cafe and a laundromat on street level, both of which happen to be closed.

"Had to call in a favour from an old mate of mine. His family moved here from Derby a couple of years ago, and they own that laundromat over there," he explains, leading you inside through a door in the side alley.

You're met with a narrow flight of stairs and he gestures for you to go ahead. "What have you got up your sleeve, Mitchell?" you ask, excitement taking root as you climb up to the very top.

It only takes three floors before you reach the heavy steel door of the roof deck. He shuffles to your side, one hand on your back to keep you steady, and pushes the door open which relents with a loud squeak.

You're met with something you have only seen before on Pinterest boards - the rooftop is softly aglow from hanging string lights. In the far side, a screen projector is set up, and in front of it is a low plush sofa cocooned amidst throw blankets and cushions. There's a wooden tray on one on the blankets, containing treats of all sorts and a bottle of wine glistening in its ice bucket.

You take in the magical ambience of the scene with widened eyes. The haze of faint LA sunlight only serves to make everything more beautiful, though it seems hardly necessary.

"Do you like it, darling?" he asks and what a ludicrous question it is. Do you like it?

He continues, "I admit I didn't have to lot of time to set it up, and I had a bit of help but - mmmpph - "

You lace your hands around his neck, silencing him with a searing kiss. He moans unto you, his tongue dipping past your lips as he nearly relinquishes control. He could forget about the set up, the date he had planned, and just take you here on the rooftop. Would you let him?

"I take it that everything is to your liking?" he purrs, watching you in adoration as your head swivels on its own accord to canvas the scene yet again.

You spot something in the corner - a bouquet of fresh flowers surrounded by some lightweight paper lanterns.

"Oh no!" you moan. "The flowers you gave me... I left them in the car!"

He laughs fondly at the sheer panic on your face. "Don't worry about them, my love. I've got more flowers for you here." He points to the bouquet you just saw.

"But those ones... won't they wilt or something? I don't want them to go to waste."

His heart swells at your genuine concern. The furrow between your brows, the way you chew on your lip in worry, your fingers absentmindedly clutching his wrist - it all makes him fall even harder.

"They'll be fine, darling."

"Are you sure?"

He nods once, pulling you in, "Mhmm, just... come here, please." Another kiss, gentler this time.

This is bliss, he thinks, sweet solace after his days in New York, days he aims on forgetting from now on.

You eventually find yourselves on the velvet seat, the tray of food nestled on your laps. He pours wine into the paper cups as you reach for a chocolate-covered strawberry and bring it to his lips.

"Thanks, love," he mumbles with his mouth full.

"Oh, baby, you've got chocolate on there," you motion to his bottom lip.

He sets the cups of wine on the tray, making a move to wipe it off, but just as his fingers hover, his mind takes on an alternative action.

"You do it, then," he leans close, tilting his jaw.

"Okay." With a smile, you begin to oblige him, but you halt when he playfully says, "Not with your hands, darling."

You feel your heart race at his teasing, and at the way he stares at you with blatant desire. Never mind the fact that you were just making out moments ago. The rush of being with him has not subsided. Maybe it never will.

You kiss him, paying mind to the smudge on his lip, licking your own lips afterward to savour the taste.

You pull back slightly. "All better," you say, patting his cheek lovingly.

"Hmm," he hums, "I suppose I'll just have to make a mess of myself more often."

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Nightfall had already descended when the credits to The Princess Bride start rolling, dotting the sky with twinkling stars.

Ewan has his arm wrapped around your shoulders, pressing a kiss to the crown of your head, before he declares, "If they ever do a remake to this film, I'll only take the role if you would be my Buttercup."

"As you wish," you smile, nuzzling closer against his black hoodie. "I remember watching this when I was a kid. Believe it or not, it was one of the films that inspired me to get into acting."

"Did you wanna be Buttercup, my Buttercup?"

"No," you respond. "I wanted to do what Inigo Montoya was doing. He's so insanely cool."

"Of course you did," he says affectionately, "my darling."

"What about you, hmm? Did you always want to be an actor?" you ask. You might have read an interview of his where he explains something to that effect, but he doesn't need to know that now.

"As far as I can remember, yes. It was always going to be acting for me. Even when everyone laughed it off when I brought it up in primary school." He shakes his head, the once bitter memory reduced to an anecdote. "I... I find purpose in what we do, being able to slip inside different skins, different lives. It allows me to explore the human psyche, you know, and to make sense of all this madness."

You listen intently, in awe at his words and his sheer sincerity. The world is made better with Ewan able to live his passions. And you feel fortunate that his life is one he may be willing to share with you, if everything goes well down the line.

"I almost forgot - you have to tell me about how your big meeting went."

He shifts slightly, eyes darting downward as he pouts on instinct. He realises he can no longer keep the subject under wraps.

You sense his reluctance, and immediately try to soften your approach. It could have gone either way, and though rejection is part of an actor's bread and butter - you certainly would know - there are some instances where you just let it get to you.

"Is this producer as scary as they say?" you ask lightly, poking his chest.

He smiles, but his expression is still clouded. "You know those mafia dons in Scorcese's movies? This guy practically inspired them, I'd say."

"Goodness."

"He did try to give off a welcoming air, but there was still something... sinister underneath."

"I suppose when anyone is afforded this much power..."

"Especially in this industry..."

"Mhmm." Face half-burrowed in the soft material of his hoodie, you tilt your head up at him. "So it was a bust, huh?"

He shrugs, "The role just wasn't for me. It's all for the best, I reckon."

You hold his hand tight, eager to soothe any worries he might have. "That's a shame. They would have been damn lucky to have you."

He smiles, flattered by your comment. "I am lucky to just be here with you, darling."

You smile in return, tilting your lips to his, coaxing him to lean in close and seal the kiss.

And he does.

And this is the most perfect first date there ever was or ever will be.

"Darling?"

"Hmm?"

"I think I've fallen in love with you."

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The next few weeks pass blissfully slowly, you and Ewan caught in the euphoria that only a fresh relationship can bring.

Rehearsals for your upcoming movie had ended, and you get a month off before filming begins in Atlanta. Ewan also stays in LA, keen on spending every waking minute with you. His team takes advantage of the situation, booking him for several interviews and a feature with Esquire. You were more than happy to accompany him - or rather, distract him - on these occasions.

Once, the team even jokes that you had to stay in the other room because Ewan keeps looking over at you behind the camera and forgetting what to say. Ewan, of course, quickly protests. "My girl stays with me," he confidently says.

It doesn't take long for news to spread. Rumours, at first. Allegations bred from blurry fan photos and supposed encounters with yourself and Ewan while out in LA.

They were holding hands!

They're not just friends, I swear. He was kissing her the whole time in the restaurant!

What about her and Jacob? I thought they'd been dating all this time?

House of the Dragon stars spotted on a date in Hollywood!

Headlines. Gossip fodder. Statements made by people who claim to have seen you.

Sure, you do meet some of the sweetest and friendliest fans during all this, who only gush at the sight of their favourite actors getting together.

There are others, especially online, who are less pleasant, accusing you of cheating on your supposed lover Jacob Elordi.

Jacob, already used to rolling with the punches, gives you a call so the two of you can laugh it off together.

"I'm happy for you, mate," he expresses, voice muffled from the other line. "You and Ewan... you guys just make sense. Do you remember that night when he stormed in all jealous like? Holy shit..."

As if on cue, Ewan shifts underneath the sheets from behind you, peppering your naked back with soft kisses. "Tell him I said hi," he whispers, his tone doing nothing to mask his possessiveness.

And so the days roll on, and it couldn't be more perfect.

That is, until the first cracks started to show. As they always do.

You're in a meeting with your publicist Mallory, at one of the many quaint hipster cafés in LA, discussing your upcoming filming schedule and the other things you have booked in between.

"You've got a busy few months ahead, but the film is of course top priority," she says. "It's slated to be the top rom-com of next year."

"That's great, Mal."

"I mean, I think you know that Ewan was meant to lead that romance-fantasy franchise? That's a big deal, and people are saying it'll be bigger than Twilight!" she gestures wildly with her hands. "But since he had a falling out with Bruce Haversham - and trust me, if he ever sets up a meeting with you, you do not want to go against him - what was I saying? Oh yeah, the release for that will be delayed so your film will get prime spot for a summer premiere."

You grow apprehensive at her words. Ewan never got into detail about that meeting, and you didn't really want to pry. But if that producer's reputation is indeed accurate, it doesn't bode well for Ewan's career that he might have done anything that displeased him.

With a sickening dread, you realise that Haversham might have something to do with Ewan failing to book the two films he went for in the past month. Despite the fact that the local casting director practically raved about his audition, and stated that he pretty much had both of the roles in the bag.

"Mal, you know Donna right? Ewan's publicist?" you ask, knowing that she and Donna are under the same agency. "Does she talk to you about Ewan at all? About what went down in New York?"

"A little, honey, yes," she admits. "But about that meeting, I thought you would know. He didn't tell you?"

"Not in too many words, no. Just that it didn't work out, and that the film wasn't meant for him."

"Oh, I see," she smiles, almost ruefully, like she feels sorry for you. That look compels you to ask, "What do you know, Mal? Tell me."

Her hand reaches and clutches yours atop the table. "From what I heard, he refused the role because of you."

"What?"

"It's rare with young actors like you guys, to be so devoted so early on."

Growing impatient, you say, "Mal, please, what are you saying?"

"Look, I don't know the details of it. But apparently Haversham wanted him to get into a PR stint with his love interest for the film, and to hide whatever real relationship he has going on with you. This ordeal was going to be more restrictive than the arrangement you have with Jacob, which is more or less over at this point."

"I didn't know that," you whisper hoarsely.

"Honey, don't worry about it," she consoles you, taking a sip of her coffee. "Like I said, I don't know much. I can get you in touch with Donna if you want to speak with her? I'm 100% positive it's not all bad. There's one thing we can be sure of, at least!"

You look at her expectantly, unable to formulate a guess.

"That boy loves you!"

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With only a few days left before filming, you had begun to make the final preparations before moving to Atlanta.

It's a late night, one laden with anxiety and nervous jitters, and the several shots of whiskey you had just taken do little to keep the walls from closing in.

Although, perhaps, it is better if they do. If they imprison you, even just for tonight, to keep you from whatever it is you plan to do.

It's for the best. I have to do this. I'm doing this for him, you keep telling yourself. You keep repeating the lies, letting them bounce relentlessly in the walls of your mind, until you fool yourself into thinking them to be true.

You had met with Donna a few days prior, and the whole situation was made clear to you. You didn't know for certain when the decision formed in your mind, but it's there, as real as the love you feel for Ewan.

The love you will have to bury.

He picks you up in his rental Rover, after you told him that you wanted to go for a drive. But you ask him to park his car behind the private apartment building where you're staying.

The car grinds to a halt, like a signal for you to get it over with. There is no going back now.

"Ewan... I - " You can't push the words out, more so when he reaches for your hands and squeezes. He looks at you with those eyes, expecting anything but what you're about to say.

"I'm sorry," you try again, and your voice breaks. His face slowly drops, the mood instantly changed, but the worse is yet to come.

"What are you sorry for, darling?" He rubs his thumb along your cheekbone, the sensation willing you to just abandon your plan completely. To abandon the lie.

"Whatever happens..." Just get it over with. "...I want you to know that I'll always be here for you. We are friends first, aren't we?" Peel the bandaid. Rip it off. Let it bleed.

"I'm afraid I don't follow," he says.

You sound robotic, emotionless. But one wrong turn and the floodgates may break. There's a lump in your throat and you push it down. Reminding yourself to act - use your fucking acting skills if you actually have any. Now's the time. "We can't be together, Ewan."

There it is, sounding itself into existence, ruining the love you have in front of you.

His hand drops, as if he recoils back into himself. Away from you. It's cruel, but you know you will have to do more damage. You have to make it stick. This becomes clear when he says, "No", with conviction. "No, darling," he repeats. "Don't be ridiculous."

"Ewan - "

"You're not being funny, darling." He tilts his head, testing you, giving you the chance to retract your words and start laughing at your twisted joke. Darling comes out a mockery, something to say out of spite.

He takes a deep breath, leaning back in the driver's seat. "I don't... I don't accept this." He looks straight ahead, his lips pursed and jaw taut. "Fucking... why ?"

"I just... don't think it's going to work out."

"Bullshit."

Your words come out rushed, "You should take that role. I don't want you to hold back just for me. This could be something really great for you, Ewan. This could be it! Most actors pray for an opportunity like that to come along and I wouldn't want you to - "

"That's the reason?"

" - refuse it because of me. So we should - "

"Stop."

" - end this."

Silence. Not a single sound in the near-empty parking lot. No sirens in the distance, no pedestrian chatter. Just slow, heavy breathing in this rental car, both of you looking out the windshield. It feels stuffy all of a sudden, and not in the heated way when your limbs entwined in a jumble in the backseat a mere week ago.

"Please. I... I don't want to end this," he pleads. His knuckles are bone white, harshly gripping both sides of the steering wheel in an attempt to anchor himself. He shakes his head, and with some sense of hope, he says, "I don't care about that role. Okay? It's not the end of the world if I don't accept it. Have some faith in me, darling. I'll make it work. Surely there are plenty of other things down the line."

"Ewan," you whisper. You knew he would say this, which is why you prepared something worse. If that were even possible. You suck on your teeth, pulling on whatever poison you keep hidden away. You sigh and look away, a gesture that lets him know nothing will change your mind. "This fucking PR relationship business... it gets to you, you know? We don't know any better. I for one never expected to feel this way about - "

"About?" he finally turns to shoot you a look of betrayal, the pain in his eyes clear as day.

"I might have feelings for Jacob," you lie, "or I might not, I don't know. But there's something there, and I... I can't let this - us - go on while I'm conflicted about everything. It wouldn't be right."

Nothing about this is right.

But you go on, "I'll be off filming, with him, for a couple of months. And it's only going to make everything more confusing, and it wouldn't be fair to you, I know that - "

"I love you."

It's the first time he ever utters those three words, completely and without any doubt. He says them, despite everything you said before. And he means it.

A tear falls down your cheek, and you squeeze your eyes shut to keep the rest at bay.

"I'm sorry," you look at him, in finality, and you want nothing more than to passionately kiss him hard on the mouth, to hold on to him tight and plead for him not to let you go. With your quivering form, you amble out of the car. Every step worsens the weight of what just transpired. His side of the car opens, and he calls for you, but you can't bear to look back.

He catches up to you, breathless and with a wild look in his face. His blue eyes swell with tears, but his brows are scrunched down as if he isn't bothered by them.

"I want you to look me right in the eye and tell me we don't matter. I want you to tell me you don't love me," he says, and it's the most vulnerable you've ever seen him. He searches your eyes for something, anything to hold on to. Part of him is still desperate enough to grasp at straws, on the hope that you will change your mind.

But the other hardened part, has become angry. Indignant. Because how could you do this to him? The only girl he has ever loved. So he needs to hear it from you, clearly. He needs you to drive the final nail on the coffin.

"I do love you," you croak, and you do nothing to stop your tears from flowing freely.

"Darling..."

"But I can't be with you," you turn away, one last time. "Goodbye, Ewan."

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Some time ago, during the meeting in New York...

The lush office was laden with expensive wooden furniture, one side with built-in shelves displaying film awards and plaques of varying degrees of prestige. A full glass minibar occupied the other side.

The casting director introduced himself as Bruce, insisting that Ewan call him by his first name and not any of that "sir or similar stick-up-the-ass names". Ewan can see him as a mentor or maybe even a friend, Bruce insisted.

After all, they were going to help each other out a lot...

(to be continued)

Taglist: @sprinklesprinkle888 @namelesslosers @skymoonandstardust @valyrianflower @luckyfirebasement @omgsuperstarg @elissanatok @callsignwidow @sinistersnakey49 @darkwriteracademia @yyrzmomo @queenofshinigamis @luvaerina @shamelessblazecrown @mirandastuckinthe80s @elleinex0x0 @pierrotlu @aegonswife @strangersunghoon @lunampacheco @writer-ann-artist @gaiaea @of-swords-and-words @ateliefloresdaprimavera @m00n5t0n3 @helaenaluvr @peachysunrize @annie-ruk @luvly-writer @ananas26t @athenafaes @lovelyteenagebeard @mamawiggers1980 @moongirl27 @katherine93 @barnes70stark @justbelljust @cloudroomblog @somestufftoday @esposadomd @girl-in-the-chairs-void @insideyourimagination @hotdismylife @vyctorya @wildrangers @livcookesgf @dracaryxzs @aemondwhoresworld @aisselasstuff @onlyrealjoy

Update! Read the second bonus chapter here ~

💌 next chapter

HOW DARE YOU, reader. How dare you.

The gif above paints a clear picture of Ewan's heart breaking in the car 🥲 just in case you guys needed a visual aid 🥲���

Next chapter - the meeting in New York, the reader's conversation with Donna, and.... we see them move on from each other (?) You know these bloody actors, one relationship in the first half of the year and then another right after...

Feel free to come for me in the comments <3 it was the most heartfelt chapter, after all. Also, let me know what yous want the bonus chapter to be about!

[gyuswhore]

Never Shall We Die (1)

«« Nothing is too outlandish when it’s a life of liberty on the line. »» 

PAIRING: kwon soonyoung x reader

PLAYLIST: right here!

pirate lingo glossary (pls refer!)

SYNOPSIS: Deadliest pirate on the high seas or a damn fool? The stupid King and his men have snatched Hoshi's precious pirate ship with their too clean, too soft hands; grounds to question his own vices. Except, when he and his crew land in the quarters of a navy ship, revenge on their roster, they stumble across a princess in its gallows. Hoshi wonders if he's just struck gold, or if you'd become the final tread to his downfall.

GENRES: pirate!au, enemies to lovers, slowburn, angst, fluff, smut [minor dni], some pirates of the carribean vibes but ? idk

WORD COUNT [full fic]: 48.1k

Part 1: 17.07k | Part 2: 15.2k | Part 3 [final]: 15.8k

@highvern's out of context comment box: new fear unlocked: hoshi with explosives, victorian ankle moment, HATE HIM (need him carnally), hoshi covered in soapy water would distract me enough, strip for me pirate mingyu [hes litrally taking off his jacket], your honor hes a bitch, freaks!, mingyu crushes hoshi's head like a grape, WONWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, massive dick, the way i literally gasped like an old scandalized woman

masterlist

WARNINGS: slowburn, plot heavy, happy ending bc no angsty endings in this household, being taken hostage, knives, bombs, and guns, mentions of blood, mentions of SA (does not happen and it is not explicitly mentioned), alcohol, mentions of death (patricide), hoshi is ✨selectively moral✨but kind of moral nonetheless, side character death, [pls lmk if im missing something its alot] smut tagin following parts

[AN]: thank you so much to @highvern for betaing for me and helping out with the plot so much, this fic would not exist if it weren't for her!!!! and thank you reader!!! for clicking on this and reading it, this one's been about 7 months in the works and I would love to hear what your thoughts are when you're done, plsplspls leave a rb or a reply with your brainrot lol <3 happy reading

HOSHI’S BOOT IS STUCK in the ground. 

No, that’s a branch. 

Or is it a plank? 

He doesn’t try to find out as he yanks his foot out of whatever stopped him from moving. A tree root, he finds as he kicks the remnants of jungle rubbish from the surface of the shrouded root. He kicks it to satisfy himself. 

His crew resides on the beach; where he can see them attempt to build a fire before sundown, the mound of discombobulated twigs making up most of the sad pile of wood. Hoshi trudges up to it and drops another handful of puny branches into the mix. 

Exhaling loudly as Mingyu calls for him, he falls to his bottom and sits cross legged on the sand. Mingyu trudges up next to him to inspect his pile, sighing when he realised this was all he had to work with. He picks up two hefty looking stones and begins to strike them together, putting his faith in the primitive fire. 

Hoshi stares into the horizon, watching the died down waves drift onto the shore, moving closer by the minute. 

Hoshi thinks, which he can’t say is something that he does very often. Perhaps that’s why he was sat on this nature-overrun island as a shipless captain of his shipless crew. He chews on his tongue as he thinks of his Tigress, his beloved hunk of wood and metal; the beloved hunk of wood and metal that he could not see on the shoreline, because she was taken by the royal navy. 

He wonders if Tigress would ever forgive him for letting that happen to her, for letting those clean, soft handed soldiers rip her away from his grasp. 

Hoshi needs to start thinking more often.

Mingyu is frantic over the small flame that erupts in the middle of his leaves, dropping his rocks to blow into the fire, encouraging it to grow. 

“Captain, it’s done! We can rustle up those fish we caught, have supper sorted.” 

“Hm.”

The bustle of the entire crew lasts until night has fallen and they’ve gotten food in their stomachs. Hoshi hasn’t moved from his spot for hours, something the others noticed very quickly, but decided not to mention for fear of waking something dangerous. They understood he was suffering from a broken heart. 

It isn’t until the first of the crew had begun to doze off that Hoshi speaks. Chan is propped up against a tree while Seungkwan laughs at the dangerously low coconut that hangs above his head. Mingyu readjusts his trousers after a full meal. Minghao stretches onto the sand, feet facing the water. 

His voice isn’t loud, nor is it commanding, nor does it have his usual edge of jest—in fact, it sounds nothing like Hoshi at all. 

Or does it?

“Who wants to steal a ship?”

YOU'RE AWOKEN BY THE sound of yelling. Which is never a good sign in any case, but especially not when it’s pitch black outside and you’re on a ship in the middle of the ocean.

The grogginess is quick to fade as you try to understand what’s going on outside your quarters. Your room isn’t a mess, all the trinkets and royal seals remaining in their places on the walls and shelves. Nor is the ship lurching or moving in odd angles to indicate an unexpected spat from the skies. A quick peek outside the window shows you clear, calm water amidst the mostly dark expanse of ocean. 

There is only one other answer in your head that would cause this much commotion—especially on a boat where the admiral resides (and a princess). 

Slipping out of the covers, your feet hit the cool hardwood floors of your quarters, a small shiver going through your spine from the cold, with nothing to cover you but your thin nightgown. You’re in the middle of tying your robe to see what the ruckus was about outside when a particularly loud thud hits outside of your door. You immediately freeze. 

Staring at the doorknob, you attempt to move backwards in the space, heart beating faster as you watch the knob move slightly. The back of your knees hit the bedside table with a thud, the sound has you gasp out loud. Whoever it was outside your door jiggles the knob harder, the force exerted having you scan the room for something you could use as a weapon. 

Spotting the letter opener on your desk, you lurch across the room to grab it, holding it in front of you as you back away from the door. The knob continues to bang against the wood as you refuse to take eyes off of it. There’s sounds of men outside, loud and rambunctious, momentarily halting the grievances. 

Until the knob moves again, slower this time, a light click that could be heard as it unlocks itself, opening into the low light of your quarters. 

You recognise the frazzled looking soldier at your door. 

“Lieutenant,” you voice in recognition. “What’s going on?”

He eyes the letter opener that you hold defiantly in front of you from across the room, and it has you retracting your force slightly. 

“Pirates, your Highness,” he breathes out. “We must get you to lower deck—”

“Where is the Admiral? The Captain?” you ask as you take a couple steps forward. 

“They’re handling the situation, your High–” 

An arm has come up behind the soldier that pulls him into a headlock, a swift pull to have him dragged away from your vision. You would’ve gasped if your voice hadn’t been caught in your throat, refusing to make itself known as fear brews in the pit of your stomach. Your hold on your makeshift weapon is tighter than ever before, yet you doubt how it’s going to help you as the culprit finally steps over something to appear in your doorframe. 

His clothes are in a disarray; slashed, torn and covered in grime. There’s a deadly looking machete in one hand, the blood that coats it has you eyeing the trail that drips onto his hand and on the floor. His forearms are perched up on the doorframe as he inspects you, tongue to cheek as he stares. 

Threatened as you feel, there was less hunger in his gaze as you had expected, more like he was trying to figure out who you were. He eyes your tiny letter opener you hold like a knife and lets out a little exhale you think might be a laugh. It has you gripping the handle impossibly tighter. The man moves his face into the hallway, to where you know the staircase to the main deck is. 

“Hoshi!” he yells loudly. “How’s this for bait?” 

Your back is pressed inexplicably against the wall, wanting to sink into the wooden boards as you attempt to gain your bearings amongst the nauseous bouts of mortification that surge through you. Your only exit is blocked.

No. You have one more option. 

The sound of more men bounding down the hall has you praying there were more soldiers here, but the calm regard the man has for the approaching people has your heart sink to the depths of this very ocean itself. 

More faces peer into the room, men with the same haphazard, grimey clothing complete with  equally sinister weapons in their grasps. One of the men breaks out into the biggest grin as he lays his eyes on you. You nearly throw up. 

For the first time in your life, you wish you’d listened to your father. 

“Jun, you savvy motherfucker,” the grinning man explodes, slapping the man who found you on the back. 

Another voice speaks from behind him, “Ships cleared, captain.” 

“Perfect. Bring a spring upon ‘er. Get as far away from those cleans as you can, let them fend for themselves in a tiny boat for once.” 

Captain. The grinning, stupid looking one is their captain. 

He regards the rest of his crew as he finally steps through the threshold, waving them away as he enters your quarters.

It was taking everything out of you to not buckle your knees as you stood, every step he takes is turning your strength into dust. He keeps his eyes on you, eyes on your sorry excuse of a weapon. He registers the mix of fear and determination in your eyes. 

He stops a few feet away from you, looking directly at you past the makeshift knife you hold. 

He says nothing as he drops the knife in his own hand to the ground with a loud clang. He removes a pistol, a couple more knives, a grenade and a sword. Weapons drop to the floor one after the other, emerging from all over his body and clothes. All in a pile on the wooden floors. He puts his hands in the air.

“No weapons on me. I merely wish to talk.” 

The look on his face is not ordinary, some strange combination of mock innocence and jest. You don’t answer him.

He continues, “You can keep your… scalpel… if you so wish.” 

“What did you do to the soldiers?” you finally rasp out.

“They’re not dead, if that's what you’re asking.”

“Yet?” you ask with a slight tremble to your voice. 

“They’ve been shoved into a boat with a map and a compass to fend for themselves. I’m not entirely ruthless,” he adds with raised brows and a hint of a smile. “Admiral, were they calling him? You must be his wife.”

“W-what?”

“Oh, guess not. Daughter? Captain’s wife, Captain’s daughter?”

Your previously stagnant brain is now running a derby with all the thoughts galloping across your mind. He doesn’t know who you are. Yet, anyway.

He’s scanning the room now, nodding at the trinkets and trophies scattered across the place. “Can’t imagine giving a lieutenant’s anybody quarters like this.” He circles back on you, eyes sharp. “Who are you, darling?”

You don’t think you have anything that should give you away, but the way he starts pacing the room has your anxiety going through the wooden roof.

He has his back turned to you. You’re not sure if he’s confident or careless considering you could drive your weapon into his back and make a run for it. But then what? By the looks of it there’s an entire crew of pirates pacing the deck. Perhaps the soldiers haven’t gotten that far; they know you’re still on board, they know it’s their heads on a pike if they leave you here. 

He’s reached your desk during your thinking, inspecting your stationary, picking at the bejewelled quills and paper weights as he mutters nonsense to himself. 

“Oh!” he announces, a little too enthusiastic. “What’s this?” 

He brandishes the loose leaf of paper, and you recognise the print on the back immediately. It was a letter from your father, the King.

“How on Earth did you read this, the writing is illegible.” He flips the paper over, double taking when he sees the royal seal on the back. He looks into the letter closer now. 

You wait with baited breath. 

“The kingdom needs their princess…your father…ah.” 

Should you plunge the knife into him anyway? You almost do it, but stop when he begins to turn around to face you again. His eyebrows are raised, a slight hint of exasperation on his face when he begins to laugh a loud, loud cackle. 

It’s mortifying, especially when you don’t understand what on earth was so funny to elicit a reaction like that. The man is downright hysterical. He wipes a lone tear from the corner of his eye as he drops the letter back onto the desk.

“W-what’s so funny?” you try to sound brave.

“It seems, miss princess, that we’ve gotten more than we bargained for,” he says, looking straight at you as he sobers up. “You’re the King’s daughter, now, are you? What are the odds the first ship I hop onto with a royal seal slapped on it, held the crown jewel of the kingdom in its gallows.” 

And then he starts walking, towards you, for that matter. Imperative because you know for sure that this is how it all ends. 

You know you still have your one last option, the option that is now pressed against your back as you shimmy to it with miniscule movements. The window is cool on your hand that rests on the glass, you know the lamp will be enough to break it, enough for you to push through and fall into the abyss of the dark, dark sea. He knows who you are now, and you’d rather drown than die at the hands of a pirate—or go through whatever it was that’s curling the minds of all the men on this ship. 

He takes another step forward, hands on his hips. “He’s not going to like this, is he? His dear daughter in the hands of the Kingdom’s favourite degenerate captain.” 

What?

He then adds in a whisper to himself mostly, “Or least favourite with all the wanted posters off the churches and brothels.” 

Hoshi. Hoshi. Hoshi. 

The man who had found you had called him Hoshi. Hoshi the pirate. Hoshi the pirate that’s been giving the Kingdom and its court absolute hell for as long as you can remember. 

The man that you are now trapped alone with on a ship is the most feared pirate the Kingdom has ever seen. 

You don’t doubt your face has gone grey, feeling your breathing turn near erratic. “Oh God.”

He smiles wryly as the life is sucked out of your very soul. 

This was bad. Very bad.

“Now, fear not, you will soon be returned to daddy dearest,” he places a mildly dramatic hand over his heart. “Pirate’s honour.”

He paces back to pluck the letter off the table, pocketing it. “All you need to do is relax and tell me a few things so we can part ways as soon—”

“No.” The word blurts out of your mouth before you can stop it, horrified at the thought of giving information to any pirate, let alone this one. 

“No?” Hoshi looks genuinely shocked, his eyes wide, eyebrows raised. He laughs a little incredulously, “Oh, I see, can’t tell all the delicate details to a scary ol’ pirate.”

He smiles a little bit, “Worry not, miss princess, we shall only need a few minor details. Just enough to have your father sprinting to get you out of here. We all win.”

He stares at you almost expectantly, and you wonder if you look as confused as you feel. 

“Well, I’ll be bidding you goodnight now, I’m sure we’ve interrupted your beauty sleep enough. Rest assured we won’t be bothering you for the rest of the morning.”

Hoshi begins to make his way to the door, picking up his pile of weapons off the floor before wrenching the door open. He’s calm as ever, but your mind is in a disarray.

A ransom, but whatever for? Gold could’ve been retrieved by raiding any ship, and it sounded like he’d chosen to hop on a ship belonging to the navy. Come to think of it, as much of a nuisance this man has proved himself, you don’t remember a case where he’s directly meddled with the Kingdom. All of this can’t just be for gold. 

Steeling yourself, you bet your odds against your voice and asked him, “What do you want from my father?” 

You watch as he halts in his tracks, halfway through the door as he finally looks over his shoulder. The look on his face has you wanting to break open the window immediately and let the water flood in, once and for all as you take these bastards down with you. 

“Your father has something of mine. And I intend to take it back,” he says, before finally slamming the door shut. You hear a shuffle and a thud, and you do not doubt that he’s locked you in. 

Your knees give out almost immediately, dropping to the ground as you breathe in quick, shallow breaths. Trying to look past the dizziness, you try not to think about the last thing he’d said before he left, moreso the look on his face as he did. 

The first rays of morning sun are beginning to shine through the windows, casting the beginnings of a glow in your quarters. You think of the supposed assurance he had given you, that they wouldn’t hurt you, that they intended to return you. 

The thought leads to a faraway memory, yet one that’s tucked itself into a front corner of your mind, you can almost hear your father's voice as he says it; never trust a pirate.

You remain on the floor, and you remain wide awake. 

THE SUN IS HIGH in the sky by the time you put your limbs to work. 

The first hours after the pirate locked you in your quarters were spent trying to reign yourself to earth. You can’t be entirely sure your soul has come back to your body, but whatever little of it that has landed is whispering some very dangerous things. 

The lamp remains, the ornate jewels glinting almost enticingly in the afternoon light. The flame inside it has long died, but you itch to give it another purpose. You don’t note the trembling of your hand as you reach for it, pushing yourself to your feet as you get a feel for the heavy hunk of glass and metal in your hands. 

If there was a level of regard before, it disappears when you set eyes on the bright window and the creases of crystal blue water. With all your strength, you don’t think twice when the lamp makes hard contact, a loud thud erupting as a result, but no damage when you pull away. 

You go again, harder this time, and only vaguely register the glass of the lamp that shatters into your hands. Gripping the metal bit tighter, you swing for the third time, pulling back for the strongest blow yet. 

A hand wraps around your elbow and you’re yanked backwards, landing on the floor. There’s a kick at your hand that’s flown into the air, the one that holds the bludgeoned lamp. It goes flying across the room as you retract your hand into yourself. 

You don’t register a thing as you’re suddenly being pulled back up to your feet. Face to face with the pirate captain, your soul finally clicking back into place. 

“Didn’t think I scared you this bad.” He’s made a joke, but all you can see is his face that’s a mask of rage.

The initial instinct is to move away, pulling your elbow out of his grasp in an attempt to flee. You fail as he tightens his grip to a painful degree, hauling you towards the ajar door of the quarters. 

It’s only then that you realise that there’s more people in the room.You note another big, burly man next to the window you just assaulted, inspecting it with another shorter man. You don’t get to note more as you’re pulled into the narrow hallway, begging the saints he doesn’t take the turn towards the lower decks. Instead you find he leads you upstairs to where the main deck is. 

Walk the plank? Did navy ships have planks to walk on? Not that you’d mind too much, you were trying to drown yourself and this ship in any case. But then there’s a settle of dread in the pit of your stomach, realising death may be the most merciful thing this man could give you. 

The pirate captain pushes you against a mast, one of his other minions rushing in with coils of rope on his shoulder. The sun beats down on the deck, not a gust of reprieve from the wind. 

“Keep the ropes tight, she’s got less wit than I’d thought,” the pirate captain says with a grunt, huffing as he lets go of you. He takes a few steps away, hands at his hips, the image of vexation. 

The person who ties the cords around your hands whispers slowly, “Stop moving.”

But you can’t, not when the panic is near the lip, not when all the possibilities are flashing gore filled images into your vision. It's scary to blink. 

“Why won’t you let me die?” you ask to the back that’s turned.

He turns around, not even bothering hiding the exasperation that paints his face, mouth opening furiously before closing again. “Why won’t—Because you were trying to take us all with you!”

“Kill me!” you all but scream. “They won’t know till you’ve gotten what you want, I’d rather be dead than let you try whatever’s brewing in all your sick heads!” 

He’s silent for a moment, noting your defiant gaze, your pull against the ropes, the heaving of your chest. Taking a few steps forward, Hoshi seems to be attempting to bring the boil in his blood to a low simmer, “Listen, princess. We’re pirates alright, but me and my crew, we keep to ourselves. If your daddy the king hadn’t decided to meddle and steal my fucking ship, you would’ve been home in your pretty palace, asleep in your bed of gold by now.” 

The pirate captain’s face is closer than you’d ever be comfortable with, seething in a way that has you pressing further into the mast. “We may be degenerates but we keep our own morals, as twisted as your people heed them to be.” 

When he finally pulls away, you take a breath and thank the air that simply exists, eyes downcast as you attempt to look braver than you feel. 

“I’m not pushing you overboard. I’ve duped your people once, they’ll be more prepared next time. We need you alive while you’re in our hands.” 

“How are you going to summon a ransom? You sent away your only messengers,” you ask, a sad attempt at a mock, but also because you wanted to know what his plan was. 

“Your useless Admiral’s taken up that job.”

“By lifeboat? You’ve left them all for dead, how do you expect this genius plan to work?” 

“They could’ve swam to shore if it came to it, we were close enough.”

“How are you so sure?” you spit.

“Do I need to gag you too?” he gives you one last irritated look before stalking off towards the lower deck. You’re left alone in the cooling afternoon heat, the sound of the sea keeping your ears company along with your own slowing breaths. 

Everything he said has a good enough chance to be a complete and utter lie. Never trust a pirate. No weapon to cut yourself out of your impossibly tight binds, nothing to protect you or give you reassurance besides a pirate’s word—the worst pirate’s word. 

Your battered thinking leads you straight through the setting of the sun, the orange glow of the sky shrouding the ship in the dreamiest backdrop while you live what you can only sum as a nightmare. Perhaps not, for you doubt your mind could ever conjure up a terror like this. 

This was life, the most terrifying nightmare of all. 

Having managed to wiggle your tied hands downwards, you had seated yourself with your head against the wood of the mast, staring into the translucent skies. So much freedom that taunts you in its illusion of proximity, yet so far still. 

There’s murmurs below deck, the only semblance of life you’ve heard in the past few hours after the stupid pirate captain stormed off. It seems to be on the stairs, a heated argument. 

“Obviously this wasn’t part of the plan, the chances were supposed to be zero to absolutely none. We landed with that scumbag’s successor, that’s just our piss luck and nothing more.” 

“You wanted a woman for bait, this should work the same.”

“Hao, I wanted a woman for bait to trigger a lukewarm reaction, this princess could either doom us all or make our job a fat punch easier, and I’m not betting on the latter.”

There’s a pause. 

“If only she’d cut it with the random hysterics and creepy-staring-at-the-sky we could actually get something useful out of her.” 

“Pray that window holds up or any chance of a miracle is gone to the wind.”

It’s like you’ve woken up with the way the stupid idea begins to form in your head. You think of your father, the kind of man he is, the kind of ruler he is. All the ‘if’s are guiding you to a conclusion. One that gives you a fighting chance, one that may go beyond this massive navy ship and clear into the rest of your life—if you make it that far anyway. 

Your father and his men would come, give this unhinged pirate what he desires so dearly, you know that for sure. But you also know it wouldn’t be for you, but for the crown that’s destined to fall upon your cursed head. 

If it’s his ship that he wants…

The next time you see one of the pirate captain’s goons on the deck, you ask for an audience. 

“DID YOUR STUPID FATHER drop you on your head as a baby?” 

Hoshi stands before you under the light of the midnight moon, an incredulous expression on his face. You try to keep the scowl off your own but it proves difficult when his voice pierces your skull. 

You ignore him from your position on the floor, “I know my father, and I know he loathes you enough to finally want you and your incompetent crew gone for good.”

He scratches his chin, “Can’t be that incompetent if he hates us so much.”

“I can help you.”

“You were ready to die than to be on the same ship as us a few hours ago. What’s changed?”

“Perspective,” you shrug in an attempt to remain nonchalant. 

“Are you gonna go back to wailing in the morning then?” 

God, this was going to be the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do. 

“You want your ship back and you were hoping for someone less important to exchange it for. But you’re stuck with me and you know it’s not going to end well for you. You need my help.” 

“Why so merciful, miss princess? Are you not on your father’s side?” 

You gulp as discreetly as possible.

“I want something in exchange.”

He raises his eyebrows, staring at you to continue. 

“I want you to kill my father.”

If his eyebrows were raised before, they’ve broken for the skies now. He leans his head back, eyes closing for a moment before reopening, reigning back to you before asking very gracefully, “What?” 

“I want you to kill my father.”

“No, I got that bit,” he snaps. “Your father as in, the King?”

“Yes, as you’ve pointed out far more times than anyone ever has.” You can’t help but roll your eyes despite the weight of the situation and the hammering in your chest. 

He stares at you in an expression you can’t quite read, and it unsettles you deeply. For a moment, you wonder if you’ve gravely miscalculated, watching as he moves around the mast you’re tied to. Out of the corner of your eye you see the metal glint of a dagger, and you nearly short circuit. 

Is he about to cut your hands off?

You feel a distinct tug at your wrists, the sound of slicing, and the voice in your head asking why it didn’t hurt. 

Suddenly your hands are free, intact and free as you achingly bring them in front of you, wincing audibly at the pain of moving them after so long. 

“You can jump into the water if you’d like, I won’t stop you.” He walks back over, sitting cross legged opposite you, at eye level. 

“What?”

“You’ve clearly gone mad, I’ll find another way to get my ship back.”

“I’m being serious.”

“Of course, and I utterly enjoy having a kingdom’s worth of blood on my hands. Shall I take the entirety of the court down while we’re at it? Carry out a fucking waltz with Jack Ketch?”

“Why are you acting like you’re above murder? Another part of your strange moral code?” 

“No, no, not above it at all. But I like my head and rather not have it guillotined. They might skim over the death of some too-nosy soldier but I doubt they’d leave me be after I put a bullet between the King’s eyes.”

“I’ll protect you.”

He looks at you for a moment, “Quite reassuring.” 

You sit up straighter, licking your lips as you prepare yourself. “My father isn’t a good man.”

The pirate captain snorts, “Oh, I’m well aware.”

You try not to stare too hard at the still unsheathed dagger that he digs into the floorboards, knifing out splinters in disregard. 

“My father doesn’t want me home, he wants the crown home. He wants me to be a carbon copy of himself, he wants to be in control long after he’s gone.” You try not to grind your teeth too hard but it’s difficult when your father’s face burns behind your eyelids. “I want control over the throne, full control.”

“And your conclusion is to eliminate him.”

“I don’t have another choice.”

“Then what? You’ll pardon me and my crew after we get our hands dirty for you?” he asks, eyes wide in mock hope. 

“Yes. You can do whatever it is that you sail about doing and no one will be of bother. I might ask you for sparing favours. For a wage of course. But other than that, you can live as lawlessly as you wish.”

“You’re asking me to become your personal lackey?”

“Having a queen’s favour is no small feat I hope you’re aware. Besides, it's a leap better than the hoops you’ve been jumping through during my father’s reign.” 

You realised his face had been shrouded by the dark between your negotiating and the clouds that had veiled the moon. Every moment that was supposed to strengthen your understanding of the man that sat across from you only brought you more confusion. 

“You want your ship and freedom of land and sea,” you continue when it’s silent for a beat too long. “I only ask for a small favour in return.”

“I’d argue the miniscule nature of what you’re asking from me,” he scoffs.

“Nothing is too outlandish when it’s a life of liberty on the line.” 

There crawls in the silence once again, the same one that seems to grab you by the throat for every moment that ticks past undisturbed. 

“We’ll have to see to that,” he says, huffing as he gets back on his boot clad feet. You follow him with your eyes as he walks towards the creaky stairs that lead to the lower deck, utterly confused. 

“Where are you going?” you ask, bewildered at his strange behaviour. 

Turning around, just as he had a mere day ago in your quarters and you feel yourself suppressing a shudder. “I have a crew to consult.”

So he was considering it. 

“But you’re the captain.”

“And?” 

THE SKY IS A lighter sheen of blue, leaning towards the premature hours of the morning. He’d left you untied, and as you gaze into the duned waters in the minimal light, the urge to jump in and create a ripple that goes beyond just the water is less tempting than you’d thought. The prospect of having a dead father, and a dead king, was enough to snap you out of your hysteria despite it being a plot of your own devising. 

You’ve been alone for a while, little indication that there was other life on this ship at all with the lack of human activity. There wasn’t much that you knew of sailing or ship handling, but leaving the deck unmanned for this long gave you the vague impression that you were on a vessel with poor practising pirates. If they’d thought you’d be equipped to handle any hiccups, they’d either find out the hard way, or whenever it was that you could find the wit to bring it up to the pirate captain and his strangely attached crew. 

Something that sounds distinctly like boots are thudding gradually up to the main deck, the unmistakable blond of the pirate captain himself coming into view. You aren’t quite sure what it is, but the low thuds are sending your heart racing, panic overcoming your senses for a brief moment before you recalibrate. It’s only then that you realise it’s been more than 24 hours since the ship was hijacked. Somehow, you could have believed it was a lifetime. 

He’s disturbingly nonchalant, hand at the sheathed hilt of the dagger at his hip, a casual glance around at the empty abyss of ocean and sky. When he reaches the far end of the deck, right above the prow, he stops. 

“Are you going to push me off the rails?” you ask, half genuine, half trying to fill the silence as you face one another. 

“No.” He said it plainly, the single word reply leaving you even more uncomfortable. 

“Have you thought about what I said…with your crew?” you ask, hand coming up to grab the railing for support. 

“I did.” 

“Do I sense an objection?” you ask, swallowing the lump in your throat

“Not exactly,” he says. “We want to hear your master plan for this heist before we agree to anything.” 

He’s asking for a plan, a plan that you do not have.

You aren’t sure how he figured it out, perhaps it was the slight darting of your eyes as you thought of a response, but he seemed to read you like a book. He snorts loudly, “You don’t have a clue, do you?”

“You’ve done this before, you’d know better.”

“And if I led you astray?”

You look at him, this time right into his dark eyes, “Then you lead me astray.” 

“Your contentment with death is wildly unsettling.” There’s a ghost of a sneer at his lip. 

“I’d rather be lounging in the bottom of the ocean than live with a prospective future with my father.” 

“So I’ve heard.”

There’s a huff that leaves you as you steel your voice. “I’m not trying to set you up if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

“I doubt you’d have that capability,” he says as he leans his forearms over the railing. You briefly consider pushing him over but think better of it. 

As much as you wanted to be a sneaky link, you simply didn’t have that trait. You blame all the dependency your father’s fostered into you, ensuring that you couldn’t rule without his influence. 

“Are you willing to brew a plan or not? I need to time my dip in the ocean accordingly,” you say, sounding almost disgruntled.

He lets out a big sigh, “Follow me.”

He’s made himself familiar with the ship, you soon realise, as he leads you right downstairs to the lower deck towards the war room. When he opens the door, the room is lit with lamps, casting a golden glow on the reddish interior, warmer than the rest of the ship. 

“Stay here, and don’t do anything stupid,” he tells you as he shuts the door behind him, leaving you alone in the cabin. 

You only exhale in response as you turn away from the door, towards the large table in the centre. It’s slightly cluttered, studying the scrawled notes as you realise they’re all from the Admiral, his directions and plans of course littered across the table. Turning towards the map on the walls, you lift a finger to trace the lifted ridges of snow capped mountains, trailing towards the dipped shallows of the blue water. 

It was an exact replica of the tactile map in the war room back home, and you’re suddenly hit with a pang of nostalgia. Not that you’d been away from home for too long, but the end result of what you're about to do, regardless of the outcome, would change your life forever. 

You feel yourself breathing in the lingering scent of mildew, a strange comfort in the warm quarters.

There’s a creak at the door, and you quickly retract to find the pirate captain back at the door, walking in with a trail of men behind him. You recognise them by their faces, watching as they all take their places in the edges of the room. They look relaxed. You note the pirate captain taking his place behind the main drawing table. 

“Your throne, miss princess.” He gestures exaggeratedly towards the lone cushioned chair across from him. You’re hyper aware of all the eyes that are trailed on you, and you feel almost embarrassed to take the only seat. 

It only lasts for a moment. You walk up to the chair with what you hope exuded confidence and take your place across from the pirate captain. His men circle the edge of the room, and you count five other men. 

He sighs, “I think introductions are in order.”

“Mingyu, Minghao,” he points to the two men that had inspected your window right after you tried breaking it open. 

“Jun,” he gestures to the one who had found you in your quarters the night it all went wrong. 

“Seungkwan and Chan,” you recognize the latter as the one who’d tied you to the mast at his captain’s command. 

“They’ll be helping kill your dear father.” 

It’s silent for a moment as you attempt to moisten your mouth. You’re reminded you haven’t eaten or drank for hours, not since one of them had come up with a tray of whatever they could find for you from the reserves. 

“I know I may not be the most admissible person to trust, or vice versa—” You hear someone snort but choose to ignore it. “But I’m willing to make myself useful to you if it means you would help me too.”

“Would it not be easier to lock him up instead?” someone asks, and you turn to find Seungkwan asking the question from next to the tactile map. 

“He has too many people indebted to him, too many that are too loyal for their own good. I cannot truly rule for as long as he’s alive and well.”

“And how do you expect his loyal court mongers to let you bid favour to the people who killed their king?” the pirate captain asks with a raised brow. 

“Which is why it needs to look like an accident.” 

“How do you reckon we go about that?”

“What message have you given the Admiral?”

“You don’t answer a question with another question—”

“We need to be transparent with each other if either of us wants to make it out relatively unscathed.”

He doesn’t look too happy but he answers anyway, “My ship and five hundred thousand for all our trouble. Two months from now at the Green Islands up north.”

The Green Islands were anything but green, the glaciers being near uninhabitable owed to the ruthless weather. It was smart enough, it’d be near impossible to bring as much violent power that far north, no matter how influential anyone is.  

“Is five hundred thousand all I’m worth?” you feel the beginnings of a sneer rise up your mouth. You aren’t sure what prompted it but you don’t want to fight it either. 

“Didn’t know I was bartering for a fucking princess’ case, did I?” he snaps. “Now tell us how you want us to commit the undetected homicide of a King.”

“We need to blow up his ship.” To your surprise (and maybe even a little horror), the pirate captain breaks into a slight grin. Neither do you miss other bits of his crew releasing a bit of a snicker. 

There’s a flare of defiance within you, “Do you have any better ideas then?” 

“No, no. Go on,” he says with his head hung. You’re surprised he has the character to shield his smile. 

“He doesn’t frequent the seas but I’m almost sure he’d be present at the exchange.”

“Almost?” he questions.

You hesitate. The combined chance of needing the crown home and seeing to the downfall of his enemies would be enough warmth to send him to the greenlands himself. You were confident, but your father could also be unpredictable.

“He’ll be there. I’m sure of it.” 

The pirate captain lifts his head, locking eyes with you. You try not to look as weak as you felt, as unsure as you felt, pooling all the remaining confidence into your face. 

He swallows before looking away, addressing one of the crew members. “How big are we talking?”

Jun looks up like he’s only just begun to pay attention, fumbling over the revolver in his hands as it thuds to the ground like a theatrical mistake, “What?”

His captain sighs before replying, “Explosion. How big does it need to be to blow up a naval ship with a King on it?”

The man brings a hand up to the back of his head, scratching his nape. “If it’s anything like this one, we’re gonna need a lot of ammo.” 

“Just enough to sink it,” you speak before you could decide not to. “Even better if they don’t realise it’s happening.”

He thinks for a moment. “We could plant it in the bilge somehow.”

“But how do we get on that ship? When they’re giving us a tour of the lower decks?” The man you recall as Seungkwan scoffs. 

“Throw a grenade on board somehow?” you hear one of them suggest. 

“Real subtle, Chan,” you hear another mock. 

The war room is in shambles before you know it, loud voices talking over threats to slit throats and to shove people overboard. The room is humid and it feels as though the light from the oil lamps are fading. You close your eyes amidst the utter chaos, rubbing the heel of your palm on your temple in an attempt to soothe the throbbing vein. 

“Enough!” The pirate captain has spoken and you have the urge to ask what took him so long. 

Tranquility once again and you almost thank the man. Before anyone can say another word, nausea begins to build in your stomach. 

It takes you a minute to realise the room was spinning and that you weren’t completely losing your mind. The ship begins to rock harder as the seconds tick by, everybody in the room seemingly still as they perceive the change.

“Batten down the hatches,” the pirate captain says to no one in particular.

Chan is the only one who moves to the door to leave before he’s interrupted. 

“All of you. Those clouds weren’t looking too nice up there, we’ve got a storm on our hands.”

By everyone he surely did not mean you, because as the room rushes out and you hear the thuds of boots clamouring up to the main deck, you’re left alone with the captain. Yet again.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep steady, and you wonder how he’s able to remain balanced while on his feet. It isn’t long before your chair begins to slide as well, the legs croning as they slip on the hardwood. You spring up on instinct, hands coming to the bolted down drawing table to stabilise yourself. 

The pirate captain seems unphased, moving the curtains on the far end to try to get a glimpse at where the water breaks. He steps like he knows exactly where the evermoving floor would be, barely glancing below to gauge his footing. 

“Shouldn’t you be up there?” There’s effort in your voice, your grip on the table as hard as ever as the ship banks to a hard left. He barely grabs the wall in support. 

“Huh? They can figure it out themselves, they’re big boys,” he grunts.

“Your big boys were at each other’s throats a moment ago,” you grunt back, stumbling at a particularly forceful lurch. 

“If you weren’t so ill prepared they wouldn’t need to use their brains, that’s always dangerous,” he shoots back. He’s on the other end of the room, pushing the unbolted cabinet back in its place 

“I gave you a job and it's up to you to see it done, I’m not—ah— I’m not supposed to be planning at all!” 

“Are you?” He’s turned to look at you know, mouth hitched in a snarl as his forehead reflects a light sheen. “Because trying to murder a—”

“Trying to murder a King isn’t a normal task,” you finish for him in a hiss. “Yes, as you’ve reiterated a million times.”

“Great, so you know!” Sarcasm is a deadly look on him, you realise as he walks over from the cabinet to where you were in the middle of the room. The waves have given in, the rocking becoming significantly slower. “Now do you mind telling us about a plan that actually has better odds?”

Your white knuckles have relented, the hands that gripped the table coming loose as you stare back at the pirate in defiance. “I should just hand you over.”

“It’s sweet you think you’re in charge here,” the grit in his voice is evident. “This isn’t your turf anymore, miss princess.”

“You don’t trust me, and you don’t give me reason to trust you—ugh.”

The waves seemed to have decided she hadn’t had enough just yet, this particular lurch sending you hurtling backwards into the wall, back hitting the hardwood as the stable pirate himself loses his footing. You could almost believe you’d landed sideways with the gravity that’s lost its way beneath your feet. 

The chair you were once sitting on is hurtling towards you with a vengeance, gaining momentum as you simply watch it approach like a wooden bullet. A boot clad foot kicks it to the other end and you realise the pirate captain’s gotten hold of his bearings before you have. 

“What happened to being transparent with one another?” he huffs, breathless and wide eyed as he attempts to pull himself to his feet. 

There’s another lurch that sends you both skidding towards the table, just short of grabbing on before you’re hurtled into the cabinet that had moved again, and now slams back into the wall with the weight of the sea and two humans with a bang!

“Fine. You give me your ammo to blow up the bilge, let me on the ship with my dear father and one of you scoops in and saves me before I drown with him,” you yell over the sounds of clanging and banging of everything on this cursed ship, and the whooshing and thunders of the skies, winds and water. “And if I riddled the chances of you letting me drown with my father? Where does that leave me?”

“On the bottom of the seabed,” he deadpans. “But that also leaves me without my freedom.”

You find the opportunity to look at him for a moment, and he’s looking at you too. He looks away towards the door, already making moves to walk out and join his crew above deck. The conversation was over, and it was evident in your lack of reply.

Mother nature, however, sends another one in as a surprise and you're both sent flying to the other end of the ship, yet again. 

There’s a cushion to your blow this time as you find yourself landing right into the pirate captain’s chest, hand above his heart in your instinct to save yourself any more bruises. Between your bickering and the staggering of the ship, his shirt had flown open nearly down to his navel. 

Your eyes barely register the nasty scar across his left pec, instead moving upwards to lock eyes with him. It’s insanity, how you instinctively dart your eyes towards his half open mouth. 

“If you wanted me that bad, miss princess, you could’ve just asked.”

Whatever airborne drug that’d been willy nillying in your noggin seems to spin into a rage as his words register a moment too late. Clenched jaw and a vice grip on his shirt, you spit back. 

“I don’t ask for things. They come to me.”

There’s a crash above you and you realise the oil lamp that was suspended above has shattered, raining glass over your forms. 

Expect you don’t feel it, because he’s ducked over you and suspended his arms in the air to catch the crystalline. 

Before you can decide whether it was instinct or not, you hear a yell at the door.

“Captain! One of the—oh.” 

A barely balancing Mingyu, is staring into the now dimly lit war room, his captain and their supposed prisoner pressed against one another in a dark corner of the room. 

Your instinct forces you to take a slow step backwards. 

“Get back up,” he snarls, already pushing past you to stalk towards the door. He actually makes it this time, shoving Mingyu into the hall towards the stairs. 

Not as much as a glance back before he slams the door shut, leaving you in the tattered war room alone, shards of glass at your feet.

THE STORM SEEMS TO have done its damage as it calmed itself for the rest of the morning and well into the day. 

One of them had come down and escorted you to your quarters, Chan telling you that you could keep it while the rest of them adjusted in the other cots and quarters aboard. Changing out of your ragged, days old clothes felt luxurious, the familiar scent of your quarters putting your tense shoulders at ease; or at least a semblance of such. 

Neither you nor the captain have attempted to speak to each other after the incident in the war room. Having berated yourself for letting your guard down enough, you chalked it up to the lack of food and sleep and put the matter to rest in some deeply buried chest in your head. 

For now you board up the door of your cabin (because you haven’t completely lost it), and burrow under the covers for some much needed shut eye. 

You aren’t sure how long the universe lets you rest, because unless you’ve slept all the way to the Green Islands the banging on the door seems incessant enough to warrant an arrest of its own. The sleep is slow to leave, and it’s hard enough to push an entire drawer against a door, the bleariness paired with whoever the fuck was outside the door isn’t making it easier to push it away from the entrance either. 

By the time you’ve wrenched the door open, you’re thoroughly annoyed, and met with a very alarmed Seungkwan. 

“Oh thank goodness, I was about to try opening it,” he says, looking genuinely relieved. “I thought you might’ve….anyway.”

“You weren’t trying to break in before?” you ask.

He only thrusts a tray of rations and water towards you, “Captain said to give this to you.”

Accepting the tray, you try to balance it in one hand with furrowed brows, “Oh.”

“Um. That’s it, sorry for waking you up.” He makes a move like he’s about to turn around and leave but falters. “If…if you need anything a bunch of us are on the main deck.”

And then he’s gone. 

You take it as your cue to shut the door, kicking one of the heftier pieces of furniture against it before moving back inside. 

When you peer up your tiny window, it’s late afternoon and the beginnings of orange on the surface tell you the sun is beginning to set. You decide it was a good enough amount of sleep. Setting the tray down on the smaller than usual desk, you find that these pirates do not have a knack for subtlety. Many of your letters and papers are haphazardly stacked and shoved into one corner of the table, very obviously sifted through. 

Not that you care too much, there was nothing awfully important that you wouldn't have told them yourself. Ripping off a piece of bread from the tray, you take pleasure in chewing as loudly and as open mouthed as you wished, plucking the parchment at the top of the pile to study. 

It’s another one signed by your father, not a question of your wellbeing in sight as he scrawls ink on paper all the incorrect things you did in the Southerner’s banquet last month. If anything, you were glad the stupid Admiral was away from your presence, his incessant habit of reporting your every breath and turn to your father was becoming too much to handle. 

This was one of his tamer letters, less insults attached to his criticisms but a pain to read anyway. You don’t brush away the crumbs that fall onto the parchment. 

There is not a diplomatic bone in your body. Perhaps move on from drinks and dessert and into more important territories besides the Duke’s son. Our kingdom needs a ruler that’s strong, not one that forgets where she is after a sip of brandy!

If you squint hard enough, it almost reads as a parent scolding a child for a spill, like regardless of what you did, he might just love you the same. 

You wonder how good of a mood he was in when he wrote this. 

Sifting through the rest of the papers you take a mental note of every reason he’s given you to believe that you’d be a hopeless ruler, a few years ago you even questioned why he kept you around before realising his contradicting intentions. As you read, letter by letter, you think of reasons you know are going to make you a better ruler, better than him and better than his stupid court of old men.

These pirates are a blessing, you think, and you aren’t about to let this chance from the universe drown in these waters.

HOSHI ISN'T IN TROUBLE. No, he isn’t. On his butt on the sleek floorboards of the ship, his own golden dagger glinting in the sunlight as it's held in a threatening hold, except it isn’t in his hands. 

It’s pointed right into his jugular vein, held by some grimy sailor who considers himself something akin to a pirate. Perhaps the stench this sorry excuse of a crew carries around may be their idea of a criteria, but as Hoshi remains inches away from death, all he can think about is the atrocious fingers around his dagger, and all the scrubbing he’s going to be doing after this is all over. 

Mingyu had warned him, told him to take down the flag of the navy from the mast, the royal seal in the smack middle of the ginormous thing. He brushed it off. He wasn’t quite sure if he was tipsy, hungry or just plain exhausted when he made that decision, because he’d forgotten just how stupid some of these simpleton sailors could get. 

They were taken by surprise, their only weapons mops and buckets of soapy water as they were ambushed by some overlooked wherry that had suddenly thrown hooks over their railing and climbed up like uninvited sewer rats. 

In the initial confusion, interrupted mid-chorus of some pretty siren and her pirate prince, the first few intruders had simply crumpled over onto the slippery deck, a few slipping overboard completely from the suds and water on the wood. His crew, and Hoshi himself, could only stand and watch as the newcomers sabotaged themselves for a few incredulous moments before they gained their bearings. 

Chan and Seungkwan swang their mops right into the necks of a couple, sending them into the ocean without waiting for a splash. 

Hoshi slips out his dagger with practised ease, swinging the butt of the hilt over the head of another ambushing intruder, right on the head as he crumpled to the floor with a loud thud. He kicks him over for an indication of where he came from. No ink that shows an alliance, no brooch or jewels with a crest. 

New guys, ones that were clearly still learning the ropes. 

Hoshi’s crew had better senses than required for him to yell out orders, and it only took a few more disgruntled minutes to disable the remaining extra men aboard. 

“Where the fuck did these guys come from?” he asks no one in particular, mostly just annoyed that they were disturbed. 

Minghao, who’s peeking over the railing replies, “It’s a tiny thing. They either lost their actual boat or didn’t have one at all.”

He vaguely registers him making a jerking arm movement over the exterior before he hears a wail and a splash. “Disgusting.” Minghao holds his hands away from his body like he didn’t want it anymore. 

Hoshi’s mistake was keeping his guard down, because before anyone could warn him, the dagger that he held loosely against his hip had slipped out his palm. The next thing he knows, his neck is in some grimy sleeve’s grip, and the point of his dagger is lodged into his own throat. He holds his breath, afraid he might pass out completely from the stench alone. 

“Not a move.” He sounds like a boy more than anything, but his grip indicates a harsher life. “Everybody into that fishing boat. I’ll throw this one in when you’re done.” 

He sounds unstable, but that only makes him more dangerous. Hoshi can’t try to wiggle his way out of this one, one wrong move and it’s the end. His crew can’t do anything as they stand with broken mops and empty buckets as their weapons. 

It was stupid of him to even allow himself to be cornered like this, not when he’s weaselled his way out of more dangerous situations with more ease than this. 

His crew looks at him, and he can only close his eyes in encouragement. He watches as Jun steps over one of the defeated bodies to reach the hooks that’ve lodged into the railing. His movements are slow, and he can tell he notices the unhinged nature of this boy that he doubts is barely over 17. 

Chan follows, then Seungkwan as Jun double checks the integrity of the ropes. He’s stalling. 

“Hurry!” It was supposed to come out as a threat, but it sounded more like a plea from the boy. 

And then Jun stops completely, his eyes trained on Hoshi. His eyes are wide, his grip on the rope so tight he can see the whites of his knuckles from the other side of the ship. 

No, he wasn’t looking at him, he was looking behind him. Before he can register, there’s a loud bang of a gunshot, and Hoshi feels the body of his captor slump against his back, his dagger dropping to the ground with an ominous clang. He falls with him, turning over to push the dead weight of the body off of him. 

There’s smoke in the air when Hoshi looks back and it takes him a moment to realise who just basically saved his life. 

You stand in your nightgown, shawl over your shoulders, and a revolver, Jun’s revolver, clenched tightly in both hands. It remains frozen in the air, hovering as he takes in your face. Eyes wide, mouth open slightly, the colour drained from your face. 

Hoshi scrambles to get up as the rest of the crew swarm both him and you. He grabs his dagger before anything else, looking back to see a bullet lodged in the back of his captor’s skull, blood pooling the deck. 

He looks back at you shoving the revolver back into Jun’s hands eagerly, like you didn’t want to feel the warmth of the metal any more than you wanted to make that shot. 

He looks back at the cooling body, and then back at you, an undeniable warmth overcoming his chest. 

You just saved his life.

“Are you alright?” he hears Chan ask you. You nod slowly, and then quickly. 

“Where did you find this?” Jun asks. 

“Uh, in one of the quarters. Downstairs. I went down because I thought it’d be safer, you were handling it and I didn’t want to get in the way. But then…all your weapons were there.” 

Your voice sounds airy, like you were in a daze. Hoshi comes to the stark realisation that this may have been your first time with a weapon, and then even more horrifying, your first kill. 

“I’m sorry, I just thought it was getting out of hand and—” 

“It’s alright,” Seungkwan says. He watches as you let him lead you back down the stairs below decks. 

It was like the shock turned you into a different person, complacent, less defiant. Seungkwan clearly had more of an emotional range, because it certainly took Hoshi too long to realise you might be on the edge of panic. 

Hoshi doesn’t say a word as you disappear, the smell of gunpowder from the singular shot wafting through the deck. He doesn’t realise he’s staring into space until Mingyu interrupts. 

“Should we—”

“Throw them overboard,” Hoshi says, voice flat. 

“But, this one seems like he’ll come around. We could question him and drop him off wherever next—”

“He’s a shit seaman, if even a pirate, he’s got what came for him. Throw. Him. Overboard.” Hoshi is out of breath, yet grits the words out through clenched teeth. “All of them.”

Hoshi slips his dagger back into its sheath at his hip. All he can think about is your blown pupils and you in your nightgown. All he can think about is how they were almost bested by a child. All he can think about is how you had to make that final shot to save his ass, that he couldn’t do it himself. 

Mingyu senses his mood and asks no more questions, simply pushing the remaining bodies out into the water. He vaguely registers Minghao sending the men a prayer into the sea. Mingyu’s already trying to get the stupid naval flag off the mast, stripping off his jacket and disposing of it at the base to start climbing. 

Chan pushes a clean rag into his chest, and he looks down to receive it and notes a tinge of blood at his collar. Right, he was bleeding. 

They go back to cleaning, except it’s a lot more silent. 

Jun walks back up to help, but this time he has both of his clean, black revolvers strapped at his hip.

THERE WERE FEWER PEOPLE in the war room this time around, the captain sits beside Mingyu, Jun and Minghao as they attempt to sketch out a crude rendition of your discussion. The pirate captain does nothing but use his dagger to pick under his nails, barely speaking as he listens in on the conversation. 

Not that you cared, you and the rest of his crew seemed to get along better than you did with the captain anyway. Saving the man’s life seemed to hold no weight to him, not that you expected it but a ‘thank you’ would have sufficed. 

“Keep the grenade til the last minute if it makes you feel better, so you’ll know I’m not trying to sink the wrong ship,” you sigh as you clarify. Minghao doesn’t reply as he scribbles the details. Jun rolls his eyes at his meticulous nature. 

“We need to port in the next couple days if I’m gonna finish this grenade in time,” he says, looking at his captain pointedly. 

“We can stop at Port Ash,” Hoshi says. 

Port Ash was no man’s land, which also meant it was every man’s land. 

Being mostly occupied by pirates and other thieves and criminals it was considered dangerous territory for anyone who didn’t speak in lies, deceit and fists. This crew would fit right in, but you worry for yourself. 

“That’s not gonna be till a week and a half,” Mingyu interjects. 

Jun frowns as he looks at Mingyu and then back at his captain, “I can’t wait that long.”

“We’ll pick up what we can at Hasry when we stop for rations,” Hoshi replies. 

“But—”

“Deal with it. There’s nothing we can do about it.”

Jun looks like he wants to say something, and Mingyu has the good sense to interject again to ask more questions about the plan. 

“How much manpower do you think the king’ll have?” he asks.

You sigh, crossing your arms as you lean back in your chair. “I have no idea. Could be five, could be fifty.”

“Not even an inkling?”

“Considering how he wants the lot of you gone, it’s probably on the larger side. But…” you pause. 

“But?”

“He’s smart. Always seemingly one step ahead. I wouldn’t be surprised if he catches us blind.” 

“I know enough about that,” Hoshi snorts. There’s a glint in his eye that suggests something, but you don’t press.

“I was wondering…we should probably change course even if it takes us longer. My father might intercept—”

“Did that. Didn’t take the obvious alternative route either,” Mingyu replies, and you note that he looks proud of himself. “We can take our time too, the ransom note suggested we took the way past Scarsfield.”

“We should be careful of other boats anyway,” you say, gulping down a lump in your throat before continuing. “Those other sailors could’ve been my father’s men too, for all we know.”

“They were on a smaller boat too,” Hoshi adds, he looks like he’s making connections in his brain. “What’re the odds they were dropped farther back into a smaller boat?”

There’s a pause as you absorb what he’s implying. “Are you saying they’re on our tail?”

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” he says, exhaling heavily through his nose. “He’s done it before. It was a sorry attempt then and it was a sorry attempt now.”

“How did you shake him off last time?”

The panic in your chest is barely there, but as you register the possibility, you find yourself breathing increasingly heavy. 

“Circling farther out before going the opposite way so we wouldn’t cross paths.” He shakes his head. “But we can’t do that now, not when we can’t afford detouring. The port stops are as late as I’m willing to go.”

“What if we skip Hasry? It’s our more obvious stop, we’ll just stop at Ash later,” Minghao suggests. 

“We’ll starve, we’ve got no food,” Hoshi gruffs.

“Portwater?” 

“Too far.”

It’s silent yet again as everyone racks their brains. You feel very useless all of a sudden, you didn’t know the names of harbours or ports this far out.

“We’ll just port at Hasry and be extra careful, there’s nothing we can do.” Hoshi sighs at his own ultimatum. 

He gets up and walks around the table to the door, “I’ll update the others.”

You glance as he walks past you, his figure leaving a gust of wind in your face. He smelled nice, which was saying something considering the state some pirates are known to be in. As he brushes past, your gaze is met with the other side of the war room, an empty oil lamp bracket on the wall. 

The memory of the storm floods your mind, and suddenly your cheeks are burning. Snapping your head back, you're thankful they’re all absorbed in the papers and plans on the table, oblivious to the memory that’s flashed before your eyes. Mingyu was the one who saw you in your compromising position, and you didn’t know him well enough to decide whether he’d do something as dumb as dish out his captain’s ‘affairs’. 

You file out the room with them. They don’t escort you to your rooms, make sure you stay in one place, restrict your wandering anymore. Perhaps they’d realised you weren’t actively attempting to sink the ship anymore, or that if you jumped off the edge it didn’t matter to them that much, but you appreciated the space anyway. 

Briefly catching Seungkwan filling Mingyu in on the past couple hours they’d been below deck, you turn over to catch his eye. He waves, and you wave back. You don’t realise what you did till it already happened, noting the smile on his face as he did it. You choose to move past it and find the captain. 

There was something you wanted from him. 

There’s no trace of him on the main deck, eyes scanning the area to no avail. A movement from above catches your peripheral attention, eyes squinting as you crane your neck up to look. Hoshi has leaned his back against the railing of the crow’s nest, arms crossed, visible hand occupied with a brass telescope that glints in the sunlight. 

He isn’t using it though, merely gazing at the horizon with furrowed brows. As though he could see better without the device in his hand. In the few minutes that you’re looking at him, you notice the muraled, multicoloured shirt that blows with the wind, a kaleidoscope of beiges, greens and reds. The crop of his blonde hair blends in with the clear blue-white sky. 

Briefly wondering how he’s managing the impossible heat, a hand coming over your own eyes as a visor, you simply look back down. Seungkwan is next to you. You aren’t quite sure how he got there, but he stands next to you, hands on his hips, a pleasant expression on his face. 

“Is there anything you want when we dock? We’re trying to make a list,” he says. Somehow, the prospect of pirates making lists boggled you a little. It was a little jarring, not quite sure why he asked a captive anyway.

But then again, were you a captive anymore?

“I don’t think so, no,” you reply and then juggle whether you should push it with another measly formality. “Thank you for asking.”

“That was your first kill, wasn’t it?”

“What?” You knew what he was talking about, but you weren’t expecting him to bring it up in the moment when he’s asking you about restocking supplies. And especially not with a smile on his face. 

“That day, when you used Jun’s revolver to shoot the lad.” 

A kid. He was a child. 

“I…yeah I’d never done it before.”

“What made you do it?” he asks, remaining as nonchalant as ever. 

“I—I don’t know, it looked like there wasn’t another option,” you say, not quite sure of yourself either. 

Why did you shoot him? You’d never laid hands on a gun before, your father forced you into the category of archery and crossbows, not that you were very good at them either but it was also because you simply wanted to spite your father by being plain bad. It worked, because it only took a year and a half and an arrow straight into his study window to retire from the sport entirely.

Even then, your targets had been apples, barrels and tree trunks. Never a person. 

You’d heard of what people tended to do in pressuring situations, and with the way the aftermath unfolded, it didn’t seem like you made the wrong decision to pick up that revolver anyway. 

But the feeling lingers, the same one that you saw as you gazed into the back of the boy that held the captain of this ship hostage. It felt wrong. Like watching the pirate captain cornered was a picture you couldn’t quite make sense of in your head. 

So you pulled the trigger. 

“In any case, we’re glad you made that decision. We all owe you for it.”

You don’t know what to say to that, so you gulp, inhale and press your lips in a line. “That’s a lot for a pirate to say.”

“I know.”

BY THE TIME YOU manage to corner Hoshi it’s already the next day, and you’re only a couple hours away from docking at Hasry. 

It’s an anxious ordeal, the crow’s nest constantly occupied by someone trying to catch sight of a possible tail. There was no sign, yet anyway. 

“I want to learn to use a knife.”

He was piling coiled ropes when you’d said it, pushing the heap to the side, sweating through his clothes. There was a flash of confusion on his face as he registered you. 

“Why? So you can slit all our throats in our sleep?” he grumbles as he pushes a barrel against the railing. He’s too aggressive, and the force has the splashback soaking his clothes in freshwater, tsk-ing audibly. 

You ignore the way his previously loose shirt now sticks to him, ignore the way the droplets land on your boots when he shakes his sleeve. 

“We’ve discussed what we might be up against, I don’t want to be useless when the time comes.”

“Seemed pretty alright with that revolver.”

“Anyone can shoot a gun,” you say, getting the sudden urge to fidget with the front of your shirt. You try to make your voice sound as declarative as possible. “I want to learn to fight. With a knife, with a sword, with my hands if I have to.” 

He doesn’t say anything as you look down, fiddling with the tassels on your shirt. Your excuse was the sun and the way it was beating down on the deck this afternoon, getting tired of squinting to simply look straight. When the silence prolongs you look up to push further, juggling with bringing up the fact that you saved his life and that, as Seungkwan very graciously told you, he owes you. 

The sound your throat makes is unhuman, because when you look up the captain's soaked shirt is now off his back. 

The skin is near white from the glare of the sun, remnants of glazed water that’s somehow made its way to his back as well. The dip in his shoulder blade reflected a dark marking, one that you couldn’t make out. 

He wrings it as you can only watch, mouth gaping like a fish. Hanging it over one of the suspended ropes to dry, he mutters as he walks to the lower decks. 

“Fine,” he says nonchalantly. “We’ll get you a knife at Hasry.”

Hasry. Right. 

The port is quiet, at least as quiet as a port can be. There’s not much to see but fishermen both returning and leaving for another week's worth of fish supply. Minghao manages to pay and convince the harbourmaster that they were merchants on their way back to the Kingdom, stopping for supplies. The naval make of the ship helped, and then the crew pulled lines and ropes secured from masts in ways you couldn’t quite decipher. 

You assumed you would stay on board, yet when Chan knocked and brought you some roughspun clothes from the town, you were informed you’d be joining them. 

Hoshi deemed it safer, keeping the rest of the crew on board while he, along with you and Seungkwan, ventured into the village to get what was needed and leave before the sun fully set. If they really were being followed, the ship was going to be the first thing they seized. 

Pulling the grey shawl further up your head, you attempt to look as blended as you could, Chan pressing down your shoulders to force you into a slouch. 

“Stop walking like you're important,” he had said. 

“I’m a princess,” you snapped back, but he wasn’t listening, only jabbing at you to keep the haughtiness out of your tone before it caught somebody’s attention. 

The town was a quaint little place, something out of what you were read from storybooks, reminiscent of the paintings that you’d run past on the walls of the palace. The streets cleaner than you’d expected, the faint scent of baked goods in the air mixed with, onion soup, was it? In any case you were glad you were past the fish market, the yelling and the stench nearly sending you to the pavement, gagging. 

When Hoshi returns, you and Chan are looking at a jewellery stall that’s selling necklaces, bracelets and anklets that look like rosaries; colours of deep ocean blue and sunset pinks, beautifully vibrant against their grey canvas backdrop. 

You can only observe from afar, instructed to not interact with anyone while he was gone. Hoshi was gone to get food supplies, but returned empty handed. Systems were in place, that the crates would be on their way to the “big naval ship” at the docks for the rest of the crew to receive.

“They said there was a blacksmith up this alley” Hoshi says, eyes also trained on the uncharacteristically colourful jewellery stall, but he does nothing to move towards it. “We can get your knife there.”

“Knife?” Chan asks, confused. 

“Miss princess wants to learn to fight—”

“Don’t!” Chan hisses, eyeing the men in black uniform that patrol the market from the shadows. 

“It’s fine, they’re too far,” Hoshi says. “Let’s get this over with.”

You do find a blacksmith, an older man with a greying beard and bloodshot eyes that presents Hoshi and Chan with an array of knives and daggers. Either they were able to give an excuse, or he gave no mind to the third woman that trailed behind, the blacksmith continued to deal with the two men as they haggle over prices. 

There’s another seller a ways away, and she’s laid out her goods on the floor on what looks like old drapes. It’s a woman, not much older than you were, unravelling a long string of leather cord. She cuts it, strings a charm through and seals the frayed end with a candle flame that burns at her side. 

The curtain she’s laid her accessories on is patterned with bright colours, and you realise you can’t make out any of it from where you stand. 

Glancing behind you, the men are still occupied with their bartering, seemingly forgetting of your presence. Taking a step back, you pretend to skim through the neighbouring stalls, glancing breezily at woven baskets, layers of folded fabric and towers of painted ceramic cups. 

You stop before the laid out array of more necklaces and earrings, scanning the ground. The vendor looks up and gives you a big, crooked toothed smile, urging you to come forward, to take a look at what she has to offer. 

Something does catch your eye, and you immediately crouch down to see it better. Picking up the necklace from the charm, you let the gold and red rest on your fingers as you study the make. 

“That one’s new,” the woman says. “Practical too.”

The small brass letter opener that’s looped through the cord looks like it could do its job just fine despite its miniscule size. 

“It’s quite popular among the busy merchants,” the vendor speaks in a rough tone, almost like she had a perpetual sore throat. “Easier to use this instead of looking for those bulky ones in their neverending drawers and—and in their cabinets.”

She lets out a laugh, “Quite pretty too.”

You stare at it for a moment, “How much?”

“Ten coin.”

You sigh, setting the necklace back down onto the cloth. Standing straight, you turn to walk away before she yells again. 

“I’ll do seven!” 

You consider whether you should speak, but you also doubt you’d be recognized just by the sound of your voice.

"I don’t have coin,” you rasp. 

“How about that pretty thing on your finger then?” she asks. 

The ring on your middle finger is a simple band of silver, a coming of age present from your father’s court a few years ago. You stare at the band, worth boatloads more than what this woman in an alley was offering you.

But you find yourself moments later, middle finger empty, and pocket lined with the long leather necklace with the miniature letter opener charm. 

By the time you return to the blacksmith’s shop front, Chan is handing the man his coin as Hoshi holds an object sheathed in fabric. They turn around just soon enough to make it seem like you never left. 

“Why are you standing so far away?” Chan asks. “Come closer.”

You listen, moving closer to the both of them as they get ready to make the trek back to the docks where the ship waits. 

“The crates have probably been loaded too,” Hoshi says, his hands suddenly empty. You assume he’s pocketed the knife somewhere. “Let’s hurry and leave before—”

“Princess?”

It was your mistake that you turned around to acknowledge the title, something you realise as soon as you register the man that spoke to you. 

Henley was a stout man, dressed even now in the finest suit of a berry colour, hair white as a ghost. There was no reason for a merchant so rich he had ties with the royal family to be wandering in a harbour market, but he also had every reason to be here. 

If it was the recognition in your eyes, or the fact that they were just being smart, you feel one of the pirates wrap their fingers around your upper arm and pull you to walk away from the alley. 

“Princess!” Henley yells and you cringe at his volume. People are looking now, and you briefly wonder why you aren’t running yet. 

Your heart is pounding against your chest so hard it’s deafening any other sound in your ears, you still don’t know which one has a hold of you, but you let them guide you into a speed walk as you exit the narrow alleys of the main market. 

The shawl above your head is pushed further down, shielding your face in a shadow. There’s nothing in your mind other than Clarence Henley and his rich suit, his gold pocket watch, his trimmed, white hair. His face that you only ever saw within palace walls, always accompanied by your father. 

There’s a good chance you’re shaking, because you can feel your body rejecting it with the pain in your palms that you can only consider to be your own nails pressing into your hand. 

The stench of the fish market helps, bringing you back from your daze as you finally register the ground beneath your feet. It’s only a few more minutes till you reach the docks and you’re suddenly being pushed up the ramp that leads to the main deck of the ship.

It’s immediate comfort, the familiar brown of the floorboards, the scent of saltwater and warping sounds of the sails. You’re led to your quarters, where you finally let the makeshift hood and cape fall. 

“Are you alright?” 

Snapping your head up, you’re met with Seungkwan and his concerned gaze. 

“Oh, erm.” Your voice sounds…not like your own. 

“It’s okay, breathe.” It helps, because it really did feel like you’d forgotten to breathe. 

“We’re leaving in just a few, everything’s been loaded. Nobody followed you on board, don’t worry.”

Right. You were on the ship, you were in your quarters with some of the most feared pirates on the seas. 

The way Seungkwan is easing you through your gulps of water suggests legends in the mix, but you appreciate it regardless. 

When you’ve come round, feeling more like yourself, the ship has already left Hasry Harbour, sailing into the deeper waters of the ocean. 

“Captain said they couldn’t run because it just would’ve been more suspicious,” Seungkwan informs you as you nod. “Did you…did you recognise him? The man at the market.” 

The thoughts come flooding back, the colour of his suit, the jarring nature of a man of such wealth standing in a rundown port market. 

“He’s a merchant, one of the wealthiest. A friend of my father’s. If he even has any friends.” 

You pause as you think about the near blackout you’d had, the way the panic more than boiled over, taking over your senses and your rationality. 

“I think…” you trail off. “I think I just felt like it was the end. I finally had an opportunity to get rid of that tyrant and seeing something that was from home, felt…it felt like I was going to end up right back where I started.”

Seungkwan doesn’t say a word as you digest your own words, accepting your own fear that had rendered you useless in the time it probably mattered most. 

“Do you feel better now?”

“A little,” you answer. 

“Maybe a weapon can help.”

At the door stands Hoshi, a stern expression on his face as he looks directly at you on the bed. In his hands, the same fabric covered knife he acquired at the market. 

You know that you asked for this, but the jolt in your stomach still makes itself known. 

“He’s right,” Seungkwan says, lifting from his chair. “Blades have a way of calming you in any case.”

You note the glinting hilt of Seungkwan’s sword sheathed at his hip, remember Hoshi’s own daggers that he seems to be emotionally attached to. 

Lifting your head back to Hoshi, you ask, “Can we start now?”

He smirks. 

ALL NIGHT, THE STUPID pirate captain had you taking swings at the air. 

“Your opponent’s baked a fruit cake by the time you were done with that swing,” he comments, continuously unhelpful. “Swing faster.”

It’s nighttime, nothing but a few oil lamps on the floor of the deck keeping you and Hoshi in the light. Your shoulder burns, your forearms are liquid, and your non-existent opponent remains forever stronger than you. 

“I’m done,” you huff, thoroughly spent. Crumbling to the floor, you bring your non-dominant hand up to your aching shoulder in an attempt to massage it. 

It’s been a while, the moon high up in the sky when you finally decide to quit it for the night. He lets you go without a fight, and you doubt you’d have the energy to if he decided to do it anyway. 

The following day, he’s tweaked his regiment a little, and you find that you’re finally swinging at something tangible; him. 

He leaves himself open, an invitation to strike wherever you want. You feign for his shoulder, but he sees you coming from a mile away, already deflecting your flattened blade that comes for his thigh.

“Don’t look where you want to strike, you’re giving yourself away.”

Furrowing your brows, you dislodge your knife from his own and back away again. He’s immediately cocking a brow, telling you to come at him again. You go for his middle, slashing your knife in an arc as he simply deflects. 

“Come on, find a pace,” he grunts. 

Coming down with your knife again, he blocks you but this time with his forearm, pushing you back by the wrists. It was a battle of strength, as he forces your wrists down. He was stronger than you, and there was no way you could push away, so you dispel your own force. He stumbles from the sudden forward force, and you pull away to take a swing from above. 

He recovers faster than you thought he would, already coming up when you’re ready to swing. He raises a hand to deflect, half a moment too late as your blade slashes across the heel of his hand. 

There’s a brief splash of red against the blue backdrop of the sky, and you gasp on instinct, immediately moving away. 

There’s an apology ready on your lips, mouth gaping as you watch him inspect the wound. You don’t get to say anything because he beats you to it. 

“Deep enough,” he comments, like he was inspecting a painting. “Keep this up and you might actually be good by the end of the week.”

Oh. 

“Alright,” he says again, moving back into position.

“Are you gonna wrap that?” you ask, referring to the bloody hand. 

“It’s fine, I’ve fought with worse,” he says. 

You blink as you reluctantly get back into position, bracing yourself as you continue to look at his hand dripping blood onto the deck. 

“You’re getting the hang of pacing, but you need to start considering your blade as an extension of yourself—JESUS!”

You’ve swung at him faster than you ever have, putting everything into that single tug of your knife. He wasn’t expecting it, still talking over your glances at his palm. He had his guard down, and you took the chance. He ducks on instinct, but it could’ve been another scar for him to remember if you’d made it. 

You stumble as he circles you to the other end, flattening his blade on your back.

“Nice try,” he says. “Really nice try. But you never turn your back to your opponent.”

“I lost my footing,” you defend, but even you knew that wasn’t an excuse. 

“And I just stabbed you in the back. And now I’ll have to present your corpse to your father and hope he’ll accept it and give me my ship. We all lose.” 

The pressure of the blade leaves your back and you're suddenly left looking stupid despite doing something somewhat right. 

“You’d just swindle another poor sailor off his boat and move on,” you say. “You’re a slippery thing.”

He has a smile on his face that borders a smirk yet is innocently mischievous enough. It’s a strange sight, bloody hand, relaxed face. There’s a clean-ish rag on a nearby closed barrel that he uses to wipe the excess blood off his hands. 

“I keep going because I live without regret.”

You can only roll your eyes as a scoff leaves your mouth before you can stop it. You simply turn around, settling to the floor, going back to massaging your still aching shoulder. That last blow only made it worse.

“I don’t regret things, miss princess. Ask me why.”

You remain silent. 

“Come on,” he urges, that silly smile remaining on his face. He’s washing the wound now with freshwater from the barrel.

Sighing, you ask him, “Why?”

“Because I don’t ever do things I’d regret.”

“That insinuates you think before you act.”

“Right-O,” he declares, wrapping another torn cloth on his cleaned wound.

“Funny,” you answer. “Because I dont think I’ve ever seen any hint of light behind your eyes.”

He turns around to you, sheathing his dagger at his hip, a dangerous look in his eye.

“You’ve looked into my eyes?” 

The clench in your jaw must have been visible, or the look of disgust on your face might’ve been apparent just the same, because the pirate captain simply laughs out loud before retreating towards the stairs to go below deck. 

“I’ll send Jun up, practise with him.”

You wanted to send your knife, point first, hurtling into his retreating form. 

Never turn your back to your opponent, my ass. 

But you don’t, mostly because he’d probably manage to deflect that too. So you resort to sitting cross legged on the deck, staring at your dagger while waiting for Jun to meet you upstairs. 

Hoshi said he picked the knife based on a number of things you’d already forgotten, something about carbon steel and having a good grip. It’s quite pretty, you’ll have to admit. It’s plain silver, but the reflection it makes in the sun makes it difficult to look away. You’d gotten used to the handle and how it fit in your palm, Hoshi assured you that the more you used it, the more the hilt would mould into your grip. 

Jun stomps onto the deck, revolver-less and instead equipped with an array of knives that he deposits on the deck. 

“Should’ve picked a plain old gun,” he grumbles as he holds one of the longer blades in his hand. “Job’s done and you don’t need to get within ten feet.”

“Don’t have to reload a knife, do I?” you comment, taking the first swing. 

Jun may have an affinity for guns and explosives, but his handling with a knife was still nothing below an expert level. He pushes your arm off before spending you into a ballroom spin, flatting his blade at your collarbone. 

That could’ve been your throat.

“No, but by now I could’ve shot you, thrown you overboard, and been on my way to a nap,” he says in your ear, before releasing you as you get back into position again. 

That could’ve been your throat.

THE FOLLOWING WEEK PASSES with your days and nights muddled into a strange mixture of swinging knives and taking breaks slumped against the deck of the ship, unmoving. 

It’s a particularly hot day, the giant glowing orb beating down on the deck with no mercy. Not that it stops you, because the sun remains unwavering, high in the sky, and you remain unwavering in your wide legged stances as you lunge for Chan again. 

Chan’s entire being glistens in the afternoon light, the beads of sweat that he wipes off his forehead only seem to reappear every couple minutes. His clothes cling to him like a second skin, taking long breaths through his teeth amidst the difficult, humid air. 

You don’t doubt you look the same, one hand in your hair suggesting you just took a bath in your own sweat. But Chan seems accustomed to the heat, and while you weren’t, you couldn’t deny your growing comfortability with it all. 

It’d been a while since your meal, hence your sluggish movements were slowly turning increasingly sharp, having cornered Chan multiple times in the duration. You’re determined to not be the one to call for a time out, so you find yourself pushing beyond what you’ve been doing for the past week or so. 

There’s a particular punch of heat at your sides, and you can feel yourself slowing. 

One deep breath, a slow exhale.

It’s all clangs and reflections of knives, tiny droplets of blood as evidence of both of your tiny, unintentional nicks and cuts. You’re succeeding, pushing the man further and further back. 

“You’re getting sloppy, aim for the blade not my tendons,” Chan seethes through his teeth. 

“I’m trying,” you grunt through the effort. 

You’re set back for a couple minutes before you go back to pushing. Your lungs burn, your entire side is numb from exertion, but you give more than your body is made for, and you succeed—kind of. 

Chan back is against the railing of the deck before he realises it, and perhaps it was momentum, or sheer exhaustion, because one minute you’ve got eyes on Chan’s hands and his blade, and the next he’s gone. There’s a loud splash, and you suddenly realise what you’ve done. 

You just pushed Chan overboard. 

You scream before you can help it, dropping your knife with a loud, resonating clang. Pushing against the rails, you peer down to find a giant ripple on the surface of the ocean, whipping your head around to the stairs leading below deck to find Mingyu and Hoshi bounding upstairs. 

“What? Where’s Chan, he was supposed to be with you,” Hoshi asks, whipping his head around the deck. 

Your wide eyed, horrified response from near the edge tells them all they need to know. 

By the time Chan’s pulled himself on board, soaked and dripping like a wet poodle, you’ve sat yourself the furthest away from the railing to prevent any more trouble. He drops onto the floor, creating a human sized puddle. 

With the way the two men had merely sighed and threw the ladder over the exterior of the ship, you concluded that this must happen enough for them to be beyond the point of concern. It only adds to it when you see Mingyu nudge Chan’s unmoving but heaving body with the toe of his boot, giggling at his expense. 

You make your way over, crouching beside Chan sheepishly. 

“Sorry about that, got carried away.”

He’s sitting up now, quickly pulling himself back to his feet and you spring back from your crouched position. 

“It’s fine, happens.” He has a small smile on his face as he says it and you conclude that he may find the situation laughable as well. 

“Now, Chan,” Hoshi says, not letting Chan move into the deck any further from the railing. “What’s the first thing you learn about brawling on a ship?” 

Chan looks slightly embarrassed as he answers, “Be aware of your surrounding—ARGH.”

Hoshi pushed him into the water. 

You jump as you run back to the rails, watching as Chan’s head re-emerges at the surface after his second dip in the ocean. 

Just as you’re about to say something to Hoshi, he’s stuck his head over the railings as well, yelling at Chan in some singsong voice. 

“One time was a mistake, twice is a problem!”

To your left, only adding to your horror, is Mingyu doubled over in his fit of laughter, heaving as he giggled uncontrollably. He’s also holding onto the railings for dear life, but clearly, for reasons completely different from yours. 

The situation resolves itself as both you and Chan learn a few lessons of practicality. Deciding you’ve done enough damage to your body, you announce that you’d be retiring for the day. 

“Thank goodness, I was about to confiscate that stupid knife, I’ve been hearing clanging in my sleep,” Mingyu mumbles as he pulls the rope ladder back up to the deck. 

In any case, you have the urge to take a dip in the ocean yourself, feeling increasingly uncomfortable in your drying sweat. 

Grabbing a clean washcloth, you fill a bucket of freshwater from one of the barrels on deck and lug it into your quarters. The soaked washcloth does wonders for your overheated body, feeling enormously better after a change of clothes. 

Your scalp, however, remains itchy and burning, so you decide to go back up to the main deck, hoping to manoeuvre a hair wash situation without needing to mop the floors of your quarters. 

Refilling the bucket of freshwater, you set it down before scanning the empty deck for another spare bucket. You try not to scoff at the unwavering determination of the pirate crew to keep the deck unoccupied for such long increments, that last altercation teaching them absolutely nothing. You wonder how they’ve managed to survive for so long like this. 

Shaking the thought, you use the spare bucket as a way to deposit your waste water as you pour cups of clean water over your aching scalp. The feeling does wonders for you, letting the water wash away weeks worth of grime, sweat and stress. 

You’re almost back home in your quarters when the whiff of your hair salts hits your nose, the ones you’d packed for yourself, closing your eyes for a moment as you rub them into your scalp. You don't expect the clench that seizes your chest, but you falter when it happens anyway.

It’s nostalgic, and you hate it. 

It smells like the palace, like the incense your ladies in waiting always burned, the stench of citrus having made its way into your bones from the years of exposure to the scent. It’s too much as you blink back tears, owing them to the suds that have made their way into your eyes. 

The sting helps bring you back, opening your eyes to an orange glow and the waft of seasalt  hitting your nose. You’re more aggressive when you dunk your cup into the bucket this time, too aggressive as you feel the half full bucket tip over and spill water all over the deck as you cause yet another accident. 

Cursing loudly, you try to blink away the suds from your eyes, soap still in your hair as you try to figure out how to get another bucket of water without ruining your fresh change of clothes, mentally kicking yourself at not thinking this through.

“You realise we have to make do with that freshwater till we make it to Ash?” 

Wet hair still in your hands, you attempt to peer up at the voice, only to find Hoshi standing above you, arms crossed over his chest with a funny expression on his face. Huffing, you grumble out in response, “Can you just get me a fresh bucket?”

“Hm, I don’t know, can I?” He removes his gaze and begins to pretend looking over at the horizon and the setting sun. 

Chiding yourself for even bothering to ask, you reach for the tipped bucket yourself, deciding you’d figure it out yourself if this dumb pirate was choosing to be of no help. But before you could latch your fingers on the handle, the bucket’s snatched away. 

At first you think he’s being funny, taking the bucket away to watch you struggle even further. “You—”

Except you watch him as he dunks the bucket back into the barrel of freshwater, lugging it back to where you could reach. “Try not to paint the deck with it this time, I’ve already mopped twice.”

The thank you freezes on your tongue, and for some reason you can’t say it to him. So you make a scene of splashing into the bucket with vigour, sending spills over the rim and taking mild satisfaction in hearing him sigh at the sight of more mopping. 

He’s already gotten hold of the worn mop by the time you’re done as you remerge with clean hair, wringing your own mop of hair to deposit the excess water. Straightening out your back, you take hold of the spare cloth you brought along with you, patting your hair with it. 

The sun remains in its mission to cast its golden glow, but only illuminates Hoshi’s grumbling form as he mops up all the water you’ve spilled. 

“You know, I should really be making you—” He halts as he makes eye contact with you, your hands still occupied with patting your hair dry, flicking the wet strands. You have a rebuttal already prepared, waiting for him to finish his jab. 

“Make me what? you grind. 

You can’t make out the look on his face, somewhere between constipated and on the edge of a yelp, he keeps staring at you. You note a slight trickle of water making its way down your neck and chest, bleeding into your shirt as yet another water stain. 

“Nothing,” he says, to your surprise. 

And with that uneventful climax, you trudge back down to your quarters, a strange brewing in your chest.

[AN]: congrats you made it to the end of part 1!!!!! reblog ur thots and opinions or send me an ask, id love to hear the turmoil in ur minds lol

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Where Will All The Martyrs Go [Chapter 1: Welcome To A New Kind Of Tension]

Series summary: In the midst of the zombie apocalypse, both you and Aemond (and your respective travel companions) find yourselves headed for the West Coast. It’s the 2024 version of the Oregon Trail, but with less dysentery and more undead antagonists. Watch out for snakes! 😉🐍

Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, med school Aemond, character deaths, nature, drinking, smoking, drugs, Adventures With Aegon, pregnancy and childbirth, the U.S. Navy, road trip vibes, Jace is here unfortunately.

Series title is a lyric from: “Letterbomb” by Green Day.

Chapter title is a lyric from: “American Idiot” by Green Day.

Word count: 5.1k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist 🥰

“What do you think, should we kill ourselves now or later?” Rio is spinning his Beretta M9 around on his index finger. This is not advisable. He doesn’t care.

Your hands are gripping the skeletal latticework of the transmission tower, steel hot enough to burn you; no electricity hums in the power lines suspended above your heads. Your eyes are on the horizon, golden June sunlight over fields no one has planted. Weeds are growing up through the earth, feral and defiantly useless, reclaiming their land just like the deer are, and the rabbits and the opossums and the turtles and the squirrels and the doves. The reign of humanity is over. Now you’re prey animals too. “Let’s wait.”

“For what?”

“Maybe someone will save us.”

“Ain’t nobody coming, Chips!” Rio says. “We’re a hundred feet off the ground in the middle of nowhere, motherfucking Catawissa, Pennsylvania, and we haven’t run into anyone since that Amish family back in Lightstreet, and I wouldn’t count on them driving by in their horse and buggy to pick us up.”

“We’re about sixty feet off the ground.”

“Okay, Bob the Builder, why don’t you whip up a helicopter or something to get us out of here?” Rio’s M9 has one bullet left in it, yours has three, nowhere near enough. At the bottom of the tower is a swarm of fifty-four zombies; you’ve counted them twice. There are no cute euphemisms: walkers, biters, the infected. They were once people and now they’re not. They wear the vestiges of their former lives, like how those who believe in reincarnation see meaning in birthmarks: here you were stabbed, there you were kissed by your true love. They lurch and snarl and hiss in their professional attire, college t-shirts, Vans and Jordans, septum piercings, wedding rings. They decompose in a miasma of metallic blood and spoiled meat. Parker had been the last one to the transmission tower, and they grabbed him by the legs. Now they’re chewing the gristle off his bones: disconnected ligaments that swing like strands of cobwebs, scarlet threads of muscle. “Oh shit,” Rio says, looking down. “We’ve got a smart one.”

Most zombies don’t have the fine motor skills to climb, swim, or open doors, but every once in a while—just like out of every 5,000 or 10,000 or however many ordinary humans you’ll pull the lever on the genetic slot machine and get a Picasso or a kid who can score a 1600 on the SATs—you run into an overachiever. This zombie, a teenage boy with red hair and a blue plaid shirt, is slowly scaling the tower. He’s already ten feet off the ground.

Rio aims his M9, semiautomatic, packs a punch but won’t break your arm with the recoil. “Fuck off, Ed Sheeran!” He fires and misses; the bullet grazes the boy’s shoulder. He groans dramatically and asks you in defeat: “Will you take care of that, please?”

You pull your pistol out of your holster and lean away from the tower to get a better angle, holding onto the scaffolding with one hand. You feel Rio’s large fingers close around your wrist, ready to yank you back if you slip. You click off the safety with your thumb, peer through the front sight, aim and wait until you’re sure. It’s a headshot: shards of skull ricochet off steel beams, half-rotten brains spray out in a mist. The carcass plummets to the earth.

“All this horror, all this catastrophe.” Rio’s eyes, dark like a mineshaft, drift mischievously back to you. “We could…distract each other.”

He’s not serious; this is a game you play. “No thanks.”

“You don’t want to die a virgin.”

“I do if you’re the only other person up here.”

“You deny a condemned man his final wish?”

“We’re not dying,” you insist. “What about Sophie?”

“Sophie would understand given the circumstances. She would want me to be happy.”

“What if we have sex and then immediately thereafter get rescued? You’d be a cheater. You’d be consumed by guilt. You’d never be able to take me back to your parents’ doomsday prepper cult commune in bumblefuck Oregon to wait out the apocalypse in peace.”

“You’re going to appreciate those doomsday preppers when you’re eating Chef Boyardee out of a can instead of shuffling around as a reanimated corpse.”

“Yeah, I’m sure I will,” you muse. “So you agree we’re going to get off this tower somehow.”

Rio sighs and whistles a morose tune: what a shame. “You should have gone out with that Marine at Corpus Christi.”

You frown, repentant, wistful. There’s nothing on the horizon except fields and trees and black storm clouds of crows taking flight. “I was afraid of making a mistake.”

“And now look at you. About to die as pure as Pope Francis.”

“How did this happen?! We’re not idiots, we’re goddamn professionals!” You re-holster your M9. You’re still wearing your uniforms from when you went AWOL, stealing away from Saratoga Springs like rats from a sinking ship.

“I’ll tell you exactly how this happened. You let that loser Parker come with us even though I knew it was a bad idea—”

“I couldn’t just leave him there! He started crying!”

“And he had one job, which was to check the oil in the Humvee, and clearly he failed because…” Rio glances at his watch. “Approximately four hours ago, the engine started smoking and the whole thing died on us, so we had to get out and walk, like we’re pioneers or some shit, and then that hoard down there came out of nowhere, and the only place left to go was up. Freaking Parker. I could murder that guy.” An awkward pause. “I mean, the zombies beat me to it. But still.”

“He had two jobs. He was also carrying the extra ammo.”

“Don’t remind me.” Rio isn’t messing around with his M9 anymore. He’s contemplating it as the sun hovers just past noon, hot and shadowless. “How many bullets do you have left?”

“Two.”

“Good. Don’t use them.”

You look at him, this man you’ve known for over four years, this man you’ve traveled the world with. You’ve already gone so much farther than Oregon together. How is it possible that what was once a six hour flight is now a month-long journey that might kill you? “It’s not over yet, Rio.”

“Remember what you promised me.”

His hushed voice in the moonlit indigo of the Humvee the night you left Saratoga Springs: Don’t let me die alone. “We’re going to be okay. We’re going to make it to Oregon.” Then you grin, sweltering summer air breathing over you, humid, heavy, the screeching of insects in the trees. “But if it comes to that, I’d be happy to shoot you first.”

Rio smiles as the zombies below growl and claw at the steel framework of the transmission tower. Flesh peels off their fingers until you can see the gore-stained white of their bones. “Don’t miss.”

“I rarely do.”

“Do you have any more packs of Cheddar Whales in your pockets or—?” He cuts off as he spots something in the distance. His eyes go wide, his jaw drops open. “What…what is that?!”

It’s an SUV, massive, dark blue, rumbling across the field in a dust storm of displaced earth. It’s headed straight towards you. There is someone standing up through the sunroof, short dark hair that whips wildly in the wind, binoculars. You can hear the engine revving and, faintly, Kanye West’s Gold Digger. As the SUV nears the tower, Sunroof Kid ducks inside and closes the hatch.

Rio explodes into hysterical, rapturous laughter. “Oh my God, we’re saved! We’re not going to die up here! Oh, thank you, Jesus, thank you. I’m never going to jack off on Sundays again.”

The SUV, still accelerating, plows through the mob of zombies. Severed limbs go flying; bones crunch and snap. There’s a woman driving, you can see now through the slightly tinted windows. She puts the monstrous vehicle and reverse and does another pass. Zombies paw futilely at the sides of the SUV, a Chevy Tahoe, as it turns out. They smack their open, soggy palms on the windows; they gnaw and lick at the bumpers and the wheel wells. The Tahoe circles to regain speed, the engine growling, a bear, a dragon, and barrels into the remaining ambulatory zombies. The hoard is now largely incapacitated. Rio is cheering and clapping his hands.

The Tahoe’s doors open, and your rescuers appear. There are two men wielding baseball bats: one with long dark curly hair, the other tall and blonde, and there’s something wrong with his face, the left side, though you are too far away to see clearly. They move rapidly through the battlefield of felled, moaning bodies, swinging their bats and crushing skulls. There’s another blonde guy, shorter, softer, pink with sunburn, wearing plastic sunglasses and a teal polo with a popped collar. He’s spinning a golf club in his right hand. He is followed out of the Tahoe by one last blonde, spindly and swift, stalking the perimeter with a compound bow, a quiver of arrows secured to his belt. Rio is singing along to Gold Digger, drumming his fists on the steel beams.

“Now, I ain’t sayin’ you a gold digger, you got needs

You don’t want a dude to smoke, but he can’t buy weed

You go out to eat, he can’t pay, y’all can’t leave

There’s dishes in the back, he gotta roll up his sleeves…”

The driver wriggles out of the Tahoe with some difficulty; she is seven or eight months pregnant. “Stay in the car,” Madame Driver tells someone inside as she slams the door shut. She’s holding a hammer and sets about euthanizing the zombies still squirming on the ground and gnashing their cracked teeth at her.

Golf Club says: “Jace, bro, that’s so embarrassing. You’re gonna let her do that?”

Curly—or, rather, Jace—shrugs. “Exercise is good for the baby.”

All three blondes respond at once in a chorus of appalled disapproval. Interestingly, your rescuers have British accents. From within the Tahoe, someone turns off the CD player. This is wise; noise tends to attract more zombies. Madame Driver, unaffected, puts her hammer through the eye socket of a former Arby’s employee.

Jace flings back: “She likes helping! It would be sexist to tell her she’s not allowed to!”

The Scarred Man looks up at you and Rio and salutes, two fingers glanced off his forehead. You begin climbing down the scalding rungs of the transmission tower to meet them.

“Oh fuck, Aemond, you gotta deal with this,” Golf Club says. He is holding a yowling zombie at arm’s length by the straps of its overalls. It’s tiny, maybe a kindergartener. “You know I can’t kill the little kid ones.”

The Scarred Man, Aemond, turns to him. He’s wearing a maroon Harvard University t-shirt. “You have to learn how to do things yourself. I might not always be around.”

Golf Club scoffs. “As if I’d outlive you.”

“Go on. You can do it,” Aemond says. Behind him, more people are emerging from the Chevy Tahoe: Binoculars Buddy, a slight girl with shifting, watchful eyes, a blonde woman in a billowing sundress and with a burlap messenger bag slung over one shoulder.

Golf Club is still struggling. “Aw, Aemond, man, he’s got light-up sneakers!”

Jace strides over irritably. “Aegon, you’re so fucking useless…” He kicks the miniature zombie to the dirt, raises his bloodied baseball bat, and brings it down on a skull that disintegrates like an overripe Halloween pumpkin. “You’re welcome.”

“Get bit, you poodle.”

Rio hits the ground first, his boots thumping against untamed earth. Aemond sets his baseball bat aside and reaches out to offer assistance as you dangle from a white-hot steel beam. “No,” Rio tells him roughly. “Back up.”

Aemond shows his palms and complies, retreating several paces. Rio helps you down. Now you can see Aemond’s face perfectly. There’s a relatively fresh wound running down the left half of his face, the violent red of burgeoning scar tissue, clear stitches; his eye has been sutured shut. But that’s not why you’re staring at him. His other eye is a focused, hypnotic blue, his short blonde hair disheveled. He keeps touching his chin, a nervous tick. Immediately, there’s something you like about him. He gives you the impression of someone who has gotten very good at hiding how afraid he is. Aemond looks away from your gaze, thinking you’re horrified by his injury. Then, reluctantly, he comes back. There’s forbidden temptation the lines of his ravaged face, a curiosity, a hesitation.

“Thank you for saving us,” you say to your rescuers, tearing your attention from Aemond. It’s not easy. “That was really, really cool of you, and we know you didn’t have to do it. So thanks.”

“Yeah,” Rio adds. “Sorry your Tahoe is covered in guts now.”

Aemond turns to confer silently with his companions, then asks you: “Where are you headed?”

“Odessa, Oregon.”

He nods. “We’re going to California.”

“NorCal,” Jace says, holding his baseball bat across his shoulders. “Bay Area.”

“Are you two together?” Aegon asks.

“Yeah,” Rio says, misunderstanding the question.

“Not like that,” you clarify. “He has a wife and baby, that’s what’s in Oregon.”

“So you’re single,” Aegon says, grinning toothily. His fellow travelers—family? friends? classmates? a combination thereof?—grumble and roll their eyes.

“Um, I mean, yeah, technically…?”

“Aemond’s also single,” Madame Driver informs you, relishing the chaos.

“He’s single but deformed and traumatized,” Aegon says. “I am mentally uninjured.”

You chuckle awkwardly. Your eyes, by their own volition, flick back to Aemond. He peers down at the ground then up at you again, smiling, a little sheepish, a little wicked.

Aegon groans, swinging his golf club around. “Man, come on.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Aemond replies.

“No, it’s just right there, all over your fucked up face.”

Madame Driver feigns a sympathetic frown at Aegon. “How sad. Guess you won’t have anyone to give your syphilis to.”

“I don’t have syphilis,” Aegon tells you. Then, to the others: “I can’t be the only single guy! It’s pathetic!”

“I’m single,” Archery Team says brightly.

“You’re like twelve. You don’t count.”

“I’m seventeen!”

“Are you Army?” Aemond asks you and Rio.

“Navy,” Rio replies. “We were stationed at Saratoga Springs in upstate New York.”

Aemond is fascinated. “You’re deserters?”

“What are you gonna do about it, Brit Boy?” Rio says. Aemond blinks at him. Aegon cackles, drawing huge circles in the air with his golf club.

“Everyone’s deserting,” you explain diplomatically.

“They were going to evacuate the base and send everyone left into New York City,” Rio says. “Fuck that, we’d heard things, we weren’t about to go on some suicide mission. We weren’t even in a combat unit for Christ’s sake, we’re Seabees.”

“You’re what?” Aemond asks, puzzled.

“We do construction. That’s why we were still at the base. If they’re putting us on the front lines, the situation is desperate. I’m not going in the meatgrinder. I’m not gonna be like those Hitler Youth kids sent to Russia.”

Aegon is squinting behind his sunglasses, truly lost. “Huh?”

“We should go west together,” Aemond suggests. He’s attempting to sound casual.

“I thought we didn’t want to travel with strangers, Aemond,” Jace says pointedly, mocking him. “I thought they couldn’t be trusted, Aemond. I thought they might slit our throats and steal our Tahoe in the dead of night, Aemond.”

“We’re useful!” Rio bargains. “We can shoot things!”

Aegon is very confused. “I thought you did construction.”

“Everyone has to go through basic training,” Aemond tells him impatiently, watching you.

“She got the Marksmanship Medal,” Rio says, grinning, proud.

“A lot of people get that,” you demur immediately.

“We can give you guys weapons training,” Rio continues. “You seem…like you probably don’t know about guns. Like you read a lot of books.” He gestures to Aegon. “Except that one.”

Aegon snickers, unoffended, still swinging his golf club around. “I don’t read books. I read maps.”

“Okay, lets do it,” Aemond says. “We’ll stick together across the Midwest and split up before we get to the Pacific. That puts us at ten people, and there’s safety in numbers.”

“Why do you get to make all the decisions?!” Jace demands. “Who signed that fucking contract? I didn’t consent to those terms.”

“Because that’s what Criston told us the last time the phones worked,” Aegon replies smugly. “He said Aemond’s in charge. So he is. If you want to find your way to California on your own, you’re welcome to try.”

“Who’s Criston?” you ask.

“Our fake dad,” Aegon says.

“Oh, your stepdad?”

“No, our mom is still married to our dad, he just sucks.”

“He does suck,” Archery Team confirms.

Rio tells you: “Hey, Chips, you’re standing in a torso.”

“Am I?” You look down. Your boots are buried to the ankles in the rotting gore of a bare midsection with only one limp arm still attached. You step out of it and shake off the bits of decomposing organs. “Gnarly. Thanks.” You spot Parker’s backpack containing the extra ammunition, pick it up out of the dirt, and throw it over your shoulders.

“Chips?” Aemond says. “Like…chocolate chips?”

“No, like woodchips. I’m a carpenter. I mean, I was a carpenter, I guess. That’s what I did in the Navy. Some people call the carpenters Chips.”

“I was an electrician,” Rio says. “So clearly, now that all the power is down, that turned out to be a fantastic career path.” Then he formally introduces himself. “Hi everyone, I’m Rio.”

Aegon perks up. “Oh, like the Rio Grande.”

Rio pretends to be scandalized. “Wow, racist.”

“So racist,” you agree.

Aegon’s chubby pink face fills with horror. “No, wait, I didn’t…um…”

Rio laughs and taps the nametag on his chest, black letters stitched over green camouflage: Osorio.

“His first name’s Bryan,” you say. “But no one calls him that.”

“My mom calls me Bryan. Sophie calls me Bryan.”

Aemond points at his companions, one after the other. “That’s my brother Aegon and my sister Helaena. Jace and Luke are our cousins. Then Baela and Rhaena are their girlfriends. Well, Baela…she’s kind of a fiancée. But there’s no official ring yet.”

Jace says: “Unfortunately, all the jewelry stores were looted on account of the apocalypse.”

“And I’m Daeron,” Archery Team says buoyantly, waving. Then he shields his eyes as he notices something at the edge of the field. “Oh, guys…?”

There are zombies approaching with clumsy, staggering strides, only a few now, but more will follow. That’s the thing; they are in seemingly endless supply. It’s easy to get too comfortable with them, to think of them as slow and mindless, even comical, even pitiful. But they can surprise you. And it only takes one bite to become just like them.

“Time to return to the Tahoe,” Baela announces, waddling towards the driver’s seat. Rhaena climbs in the passenger’s side. The rest of you pile into the back. The SUV has nine seats; Aegon crouches on the floor without being asked to. He’s unfolding a map he pulled from the pocket of his salmon-colored shorts and laying it flat across Rio’s knees so everyone can see. Baela turns the key in the ignition and the Tahoe rumbles to life. You spot a few red gas cans under the seats. If you can’t find more when that runs out—siphoning it out of other vehicles, stumbling across a gas station that is miraculously not drained dry—you’ll be walking, biking, or skateboarding to the West Coast. Or embracing the Amish lifestyle with a horse and buggy.

“We were planning to swing by Fort Indiantown Gap,” you tell Aemond. He twists around in his seat to look at you, that absorbed crystalline blue gaze. “That’s where we were headed before our Humvee broke down. It’s a National Guard Training Center. It’s probably cleaned out like everywhere else, but if it’s not…we might be able to find some guns and ammo there.”

“Where is it?”

“An hour south of here, just outside of Harrisburg.”

Baela is watching Aemond in the rearview mirror. He gives her a nod. “How do I get there?” Baela asks you.

“South on Route 42. Did you see the signs on your way in…?”

“Yup. Got it.” Baela steers the Tahoe across the field, kicking up a vortex of parched soil. She intentionally runs down four zombies before swerving left onto a two-lane road. Then she turns up the volume on the CD player: War Pigs by Black Sabbath. “It’s a mixtape,” she informs you.

Aegon points to southcentral Pennsylvania on a map of the United States of America, highway arteries and local route veins. “We’re here,” he says, sliding around on the floor of the Tahoe as Baela drives. His index finger traces the path; it’s a precarious balance between avoiding the most heavily populated areas and still having access to the necessary trappings of civilization: supplies to scavenge, roads to follow, buildings to take shelter in. “We’ll stop by Fort Indiantown Gap and then head northwest, thread the needle between Pittsburgh and Cleveland, stay south of Detroit and Chicago, cut across Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, that top part of Utah, then go our separate ways in Nevada. Oh my God, it’s just like the Oregon Trail! Do you guys remember that game?! Fording rivers, getting dysentery, hunting bison to extinction?” He starts humming the theme song.

Jace smirks, chomping on a Twizzler. “Hope you don’t die of a snakebite or something. That’d be awful.”

Aegon ignores him and refolds the map. “Rio! Fuck, marry, kill. The last three first ladies before Biden.”

Rhaena says, exasperated: “Aegon, you have to stop asking people that. It’s inappropriate.”

“Oh, easy,” Rio replies. “I’m fucking Laura Bush.”

“That’s what I’m saying!” Aegon gives him a high five.

“And then I have to marry Michelle.”

“You gotta.”

“Which means Melania gets the grape Flavor Aid.”

“It’s the only logical answer.”

“I’d fuck Melania,” Jace says.

“Of course you would, you sick, sick man,” Aegon mutters, rolling down a window and sticking his head out like a golden retriever, his sunglasses still on, his blonde hair flapping in the wind. There’s a tattoo in black ink on his forearm, you notice for the first time: It’s not over ‘til you’re underground.

~~~~~~~~~~

Fort Indiantown Gap is a ghost town like a gold seam emptied, an oil well run dry, a collapsed coal mine. There’s no central armory but instead a series of arms rooms, one for each unit. Every single scrap of lethal metal is gone: no pistols, no rifles, no grenade launchers or machine guns, no ammo, not even pocketknives, although you do find clean PT uniforms for you and Rio to change into, t-shirts and running shorts and sneakers. Clothes are surprisingly difficult to acquire now. Most stores have either been looted or overrun by zombies, and Amazon is tragically no longer delivering. You can break into houses that seem abandoned, but then you have to hope the people who lived there just so happened to be your size and also aren’t waiting inside to eat you. It’s not usually a wise gamble.

You study Aemond and his companions as you move through the base clearing buildings, you and Rio with loaded M9s in your holsters and clutching borrowed baseball bats; gunshots are best avoided if possible so as not to attract unwanted attention. Aemond and Jace take point, almost always; Aegon hovers on Aemond’s blind left side, wagging his golf club around, occasionally slapping Aemond’s shoulder to remind him he’s there. Daeron prowls at the back and on the periphery. Baela pretends she isn’t struggling to keep up. Luke and Rhaena are the lookouts. Helaena fills her burlap messenger bag with small treasures you don’t even notice her accumulating: bottles of Advil, batteries, lighters, pens, tweezers, Band-Aids, Uno cards. You encounter only three zombies, easily decommissioned. Fort Indiantown Gap must have been evacuated weeks ago. You wonder what pointless battles her soldiers died in. Everyone knows the dead have won.

What the abandoned base lacks in weaponry it makes up for in food. You find a chow hall with an untouched kitchen, a wealth of shelf-stable delicacies: chili, saltine crackers, applesauce, fruit cocktail with bright red gems of cherries, peanut butter, strawberry jelly, green beans, carrots, peas, beets, tuna fish, chicken noodle soup. You feast—a Thanksgiving, a Last Supper—then settle into the barracks next door as the sun begins to set. There are plenty of bunkbeds and a closet full of pillows and sheets. Someone always has to be up to keep watch; Daeron and Jace immediately go to sleep so they can get some rest before they are shaken awake sometime around 2 or 3 a.m. Baela says she’s going to lie down for a minute and almost immediately begins snoring. Helaena makes silent amendments in her notebook; she keeps an inventory of everything the group has, needs, or wants.

Outside, Rio and Aegon are engaged in a spirited game of Uno. Luke is sitting cross-legged on the roof of the Tahoe with his binoculars. Rhaena is beside him softly reading a book out loud: The Hunger Games. Aemond is on a wooden bench on the front porch of the barracks, watching the sun sink into the west. When he notices you, he seems pleased. “Hi.”

“Hi. I’m sorry we wasted your gas to come here.”

“No, it was a good idea. It was worth a shot. And now we have a safe place to sleep tonight.” His eye drops lower, his scarred brow crinkles in concern. “What happened to your hands?”

“My hands?” In the haze of the adrenaline, you didn’t even notice. Your palms are blistered, swollen and stinging. “Oh. It was the transmission tower. The steel beams got really hot while we were up there. I’ll be okay.”

“Let me bandage them. You don’t want to get an infection.”

“Really, I’m fine, I shouldn’t inconvenience—”

“Sit down,” Aemond insists. You take a seat on the bench while he goes to the Tahoe to fetch a black nylon bag about the size of a briefcase. Rio casts you a furtive, crafty grin. It’s nothing, you mouth back, more to convince yourself than him. Your pulse is thudding in your ears; your cheeks are warm. You haven’t felt like this since you almost agreed to go on a date with that Marine you met at Corpus Christi, where your battalion had been dispatched to build a series of new airplane hangars. Aemond returns to the bench and begins wiping down your palms with antiseptic. “Sorry if this stings.”

It does, but you’re grateful for the distraction. “It isn’t too bad.”

“You’re not from Oregon.” He’s noticed your accent.

“Kentucky,” you confess.

“You aren’t making a stop at home before traveling west?”

“Why would I want to go back there?”

Aemond looks at you uncertainly; he can’t tell if you’re joking. You like the way his voice goes quiet when it’s just the two of you. You like the way he barely shows his teeth when he talks, like he’s keeping secrets.

After a moment, as the sky begins to turn to orange and pink and lilac, you continue. “People join the Army for a paycheck and a place to sleep, free college, health insurance. People join the Marines to prove they’re the best. People join the Air Force because they want to be in the military but think they’re too smart for grunt work. And people join the Navy to get away from home. I wanted to get far, far, far away.”

Aemond smiles. “Are you far enough yet?” He doesn’t mean by miles. He means the fact that the world will never be the same. Now he’s coating your hands in a thick white ointment, cool and blissful.

“I was afraid of so many things, and now none of them matter.”

“We all have brand new things to be afraid of.” He gets a roll of gauze and begins to wrap your palms, careful to keep your fingers and thumbs unencumbered.

“Aemond?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened to your face?”

He shrugs. He’s trying not to be resentful about it; he can’t change it anyway. “We were scavenging supplies from a Home Depot. We had to board up the house and wait until things…got quieter and it was safe to travel out of Boston.” And by got quieter, he means that the initial wave passed, the zombies began to wander out of the cities and disperse, the survivors were hunkered down and not participating in gunfights or Vikings-style pillaging in the streets. “A piece of sheet metal fell on me from the top shelf. Aegon and Jace dragged me home, they thought I was dying.”

“I’m glad you weren’t. Who treated it?”

“I did.”

You can’t disguise your shock. “You…you stitched up your own face?”

He smirks, finishing the bandages on your hands. “I was in medical school before all this.”

“You’re a doctor?”

“I was an intern. So definitely not a doctor, but the closest thing to one I had access to. And I had taken some things from the hospital when everything went to hell. So I got a little mirror, and I lidocained myself very generously, and I started suturing.”

You don’t know what to say. His eye?? He stitched his eye shut?? “I mean…you did a great job.”

“I’m aware I look like Frankenstein, but I guess it’s better than not being here at all.”

“No, seriously. You look amazing, Aemond.”

He stares at you, bewildered. You realize how bizarre it must sound. You both start laughing as Aemond packs his supplies back into his medical kit. He touches his fingertips to his chin a few times—restless, meditative—then stands to return inside the barracks. “I’m…going to go check on Helaena.”

“Yeah. Cool. See ya.” You don’t watch him leave. This takes intentional effort.

Seconds pass anonymously: no time you need to be anywhere, nothing late, nothing early, no television premiers, no football games, no State Of The Unions, no time zones to do mental math over. You aren’t even sure what day it is. The earth has erased your invisible prisons. Now all that remain are the real ones: weather, terrain, disease, predators.

There is the creaking of weight on the porch steps. You warn him: “I’m not interested in your commentary.”

Rio winks as he says: “Maybe you won’t die a virgin after all.”

[atlabeth]

🧸 - i hope this piques your interest LOL but i'm deep in a benedict bridgerton mood waiting for s3 to air

could you do a fluffy slow burn blurb for him where reader completely takes him by surprise? up to your interpretation men are just always sexier when caught off guard and proven wrong 😁☝🏼

happy 3k again my love!!

twin flames

pairing: benedict bridgerton x fem!reader

summary: you and benedict bond at an art exhibition. he only seems to be oblivious when it can embarrass him most.

a/n: thank you so much for the request!! it was literally the first one and it's taken me almost a month. lol. im so sorry. but i hope you enjoy!!!

wc: 1.1k

warning(s): all fluff

“This is beautiful,” Benedict murmured, and he glanced at the man beside him. “Is this not one of the best pieces you’ve seen?” 

“I suppose it’s alright,” the man shrugged. 

“Just alright?” He frowned. “Are you feeling well, sir?” 

The man frowned as well as he moved onto the next painting, fully ignoring Benedict. He just shook his head and focused back on the painting, thinking aloud. 

“The use of color is just—” he shook his head again. “It’s incredible. The way the brushstrokes are used for depth and the unique way of shading… It all melds together so well, and yet I never would have thought to use any of it in that way.” 

“Is that true?” 

Benedict’s eyes flickered down to see you by his side, a pretty woman in a rather unassuming dress. He’d never seen you before at one of these exhibits, so you must have been new. He would have remembered a face such as yours. 

“Certainly,” he said, nodding with exuberance. “Art is meant to make you imagine, feel— when I look at this piece, I feel some sort of amazement. It captures the beauty of a starry night impeccably, but the technique gives it a completely fresh feel. It is as if I am looking up at the horizon on my own for the very first time again, amazed by the vastness of the world.” 

You smiled. “That is very kind of you to say, sir. You’ve quite an eye, sir—and certainly a way with words.” 

Benedict shrugged. “It is very simple with a piece such as this. I could wax poetic all day, Miss…” He trailed off, and his gaze fell back to you. “I apologize, my lady. You have me at a disadvantage.” 

That coy smile remained on your lips. “Miss Tilbury. And you are Benedict Bridgerton, yes?” 

He nodded, and he couldn’t help the slightly nervous laugh that came along with being in your presence. “I am embarrassed. You knew my name, but I didn’t know yours. You must forgive me.” 

“Oh, it is of no matter,” you said, brushing your hand through the air. “You already know more about me than most.” 

His eyebrows rose, and when his mouth opened, he found himself at a loss for words. It took a moment to compose himself—it was awfully difficult to think with those pretty eyes focusing so intently on him. 

“Pardon me for asking, but are you new to these exhibits?” 

Your eyebrows rose. “What makes you think that?” 

“I’ve not yet seen you around here,” he said. “And I am sure I would remember a face such as yours.”

“No,” you said, and your smile widened. “No, I frequent these sorts of exhibits. I’ve seen you before—I just must not have caught your eye.” 

“Oh, I think that impossible,” Benedict insisted. “Not only are you quite beautiful, my lady, you’ve also a sharp mind and a quick wit. Those are three things I can never ignore.” 

At that, you fully grinned, and he felt a smile of his own form. He’d only just met you and yet he felt this innate need to bring you joy. Perhaps it was a good thing you’d only just now met, for he could easily imagine thoughts of you consuming his every waking hour. 

“And you are quite the charmer, Mister Bridgerton,” you said. “Are you always this forward with women you just met?” 

“Only ones such as yourself,” he assured. “It is a delight to be able to discuss art with a twin flame.” 

“A twin flame?” 

“Someone who sees things the way I do,” Benedict said. “I tried to have a conversation about this piece with a man just before you, but he did not seem to understand it the way I did. You are refreshing, Miss Tilbury.” 

“Ah,” you said, and you nodded sagely. “Well, I may have just a bit more insight into this piece than that man did. I am the one who painted it, after all.” 

Benedict blinked. The words didn’t fully register in his mind. “What?” 

“I am the artist of this piece,” you said, gesturing at the painting they stood in front of. “I’m certainly flattered to know you enjoy it.” 

Benedict blinked again, and he felt heat spread across his whole face. He could not find any words in him for a strikingly long moment. 

“You can see my signature in the bottom right corner,” you continued. “My initials, of course. I paint under a pseudonym, for though those who run these exhibitions are more progressive than most, it can still be difficult as a woman to get our art displayed.” 

“I— I apologize, my lady,” Benedict finally managed to stammer. 

You tilted your head to the side as you looked back at him. “For what?” 

“For not knowing your name,” he rushed, “and insinuating that you were a newcomer, and acting as if I know more about your own art than you do.” 

You laughed, and Benedict once again found himself smiling at it. It felt like fresh snowfall—you were indeed refreshing. 

“You need not apologize, Mister Bridgerton,” you assured. “I do not lie—it is indeed flattering to know you see my art in such a light. I have seen some of your own pieces, and you are talented.” 

“I do not always feel it,” he mumbled. “More often than not, I can only see the flaws in my work. You have a rare quality indeed, my lady—you are able to compliment yourself.” 

“I do not believe in the need for self-deprecation in the artistic world,” you mused. “I am proud of this piece, so why would I not compliment it? I already have enough men trying to scorn me each day—I see no reason to contribute to the fire with my own words.”  

“And there is no reason for you to!” Benedict exclaimed. “Miss Tilbury, you’ve a way with a brush that very few do—at least with what I’ve seen. I— I consider it an honor to even be standing in your presence, if I am honest. Have you any other works I can see?” 

You smiled. “I do, but none of them are available in a manner such as this. I hope to display more soon.” 

“As do I,” Benedict said, nodding rapidly. “Mayfair should consider itself lucky to be graced by such fine artistry.” 

“And I consider myself lucky to get compliments from a man such as yourself.” Your smile turned slightly coy. “I could offer you some tips, of course. Since you were such a fan of my artwork.” 

Benedict could only stare at you for a moment. He did not know whether your words held more or not, but he realized he was alright with either—or both, if he found himself lucky enough. 

“I would love to, Miss Tilbury.” 

“I see no need for formalities.” You said your first name, your eyes sparkling. “We are twin flames, after all. Yes?” 

Benedict’s throat bobbed, but he could not help his grin. “Yes.” 

[hotshotsxyz]

buck, eddie & the great comet of 2024

(buddie) (1.1k words) for and inspired by @moonlightperseus who said, and i quote, "do you think he would break down crying in bucks arms out in the middle of nowhere under the stars". yes. yes i do.

There’s something to be said for wallowing, Eddie thinks. It’s hard to make any new mistakes, for one, and it’s far less labor-intensive than any of the alternatives. So yeah, maybe he’s wallowing a little bit, but it’s not like he needs to be saved from himself.

He says as much to Buck, who immediately rolls his eyes.

“I’m not saving you, I’m kidnapping you,” he says.

“Maybe I don’t want to be kidnapped,” Eddie replies. He settles further into the couch to make his point.

Buck frowns. “I don’t think the kidnap-ee really gets a say in it,” he says. “Anyway, you’re not going to make me go alone, are you?”

 “To what?” Eddie asks. “You haven’t even told me where we’re going.”

 Buck’s eyes light up like he’s won something. Eddie replays the last few seconds of conversation in his head and groans.

“Come on, do you trust me?” He asks, and it’s not even really a question. Or, if it is, Buck knows the answer just as well as he does.

“Fine,” Eddie sighs. “I’m picking the music, though.”

Buck grins. “Deal.”

Just to fuck with him, Eddie starts their drive with the most depressing song in his library.

Buck snorts as soon as he recognizes it. “A little on the nose, don’t you think?”

“I’m being kidnapped,” Eddie says with a shrug. “I can be mopey.”

“Yeah, but… Trading Yesterday mopey?”

His nose wrinkles and Eddie can’t help but laugh. “Oh yeah, Trading Yesterday, Amber Run— sure you don’t just want to leave me to my misery?”

“Nah, I always want you around,” Buck says, a little too soft, a little too sincere to be anything but the truth.

Eddie’s breath catches in his chest. “Okay,” he says. He tries to ignore how raw it feels as it leaves his tongue.

“Just add some Death Cab for Cutie for me,” Buck teases.

Eddie huffs something close to a laugh and adds Transatlanticism to the queue.

By the time Buck turns onto Angel Crest Highway, Eddie’s given up on trying to work out where they’re going.

“You know, I thought you were joking about the kidnapping,” he says.

“Oh no, I take my kidnapping very seriously,” Buck says, glancing over.

Eddie laughs, and then his stomach growls. “Any chance your plot includes snacks?” He asks.

The corner of Buck’s mouth quirks up. “What kind of kidnapper do you take me for?”

“The kind that’s trying to Stockholm Syndrome me, clearly,” Eddie drawls.

“Is it working?” Buck asks. His eyes are alight with mirth, and not for the first time Eddie finds himself a little distracted by them.

He hums an affirmative. “You’ve got me right where you want me.”

“Alright,” Buck says. “We’re here.”

Here is, seemingly, a random scenic overlook. In the distance, the sun is slowly sinking below the horizon.

“And we’re… watching the sunset?” Eddie guesses.

“Nope,” Buck says. He pauses and tilts his head to the side. “Well actually, yeah, I guess we are. But not just the sunset!”

“So…” Eddie prompts.

Buck rubs at the back of his head. “It’s, uh— do you remember that comet I told you about a few months ago?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, and he does. It’d been while they were on shift, a slow one if Eddie remembers correctly. Buck had excitedly shown him a NASA article and said that he was putting it in his calendar for—

For Chris.

“Oh,” Eddie breathes.

“Is— is that okay?” Buck asks.

Eddie closes his eyes and tilts his head back. “Yeah,” he says, a little rough. “I just wish…”

“Me too.”

A familiar wave of guilt crashes through Eddie’s chest. It’s just one more thing on a long list of things Chris is missing out on because of him.

“I’m still glad we’re here,” Buck says, taking Eddie’s wrist in his hand.

Eddie feels a little nauseous when he realizes he is too.

Buck packed them an entire dinner to eat while they wait for the comet to become visible on the horizon. If Chris was here, Buck probably would’ve brought a few camp chairs for them to use, but as it is they sit on the floor of the Jeep’s cargo space, legs dangling past the rear bumper. It’s a little chilly in the mountains; Eddie appreciates the long line of warmth that is Buck’s body pressed against his, shoulder to knee.

In hushed tones, Buck tells Eddie everything he knows about Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, which is, apparently, the comet’s name. He describes its origin in the Oort Cloud, and how it survived a seemingly deadly trip around the sun.

“It won’t be back for another eight hundred centuries,” Buck says breathlessly.

Eddie loves him like this. He loves the curiosity that emanates from him in waves, and the way he seems to have absorbed every little fun fact he’s ever read. He loves the way Buck glows when he shares his knowledge with anyone lucky enough to be in his orbit. He loves—

He loves Buck.

And that’s—

It’s—

Oh.

Of course he does.

The comet makes its appearance forty-five minutes after the last rays of the sun dissipate into inky blue.

“There,” Buck says, pulling Eddie toward the guardrail and pointing at a tiny streak of light in the sky.

All at once, Eddie is desperately sad. He’s here and Buck’s here but Chris isn’t, and it’s not supposed to be like that. It’s supposed to be the three of them together. It’s supposed to be Buck and Chris bouncing fun facts off each other, and Eddie watching fondly as the two people he loves most in this world revel in the joy of sharing a new experience. It’s supposed to be their family, their whole family.

Buck turns to him, like he’s somehow sensed the sudden shift in Eddie’s mood. He offers him a small, sad smile.

“I, uh, I reminded Chris about the comet this morning,” he says quietly.

Eddie takes a shaky breath.

“He should be seeing it too, right about now,” Buck continues. “I know it’s not… but—but we’re looking at the same sky.”

An overwhelming mix of sadness-gratitude-guilt-joy-sorrow-love hits Eddie square in the chest. “You…” he whispers.

Buck bites his lip. “I just… I thought you’d want to know,” he says.

Out of nowhere, a sob bursts from Eddie’s chest. In an instant, Buck’s arms are around him.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry I can’t fix it.”

Eddie tucks his face into Buck’s neck, and for the first time since the night Christopher left, he lets himself cry.

Buck holds him until the comet is far beyond the horizon.

[audliminal]

Survivability Bias Pt 4

Masterpost Ao3

“Cassiopeia,” Danny murmurs, his eyes never leaving the glimmering void above him. “Though epsilon looks dimmer than it usually is. I wonder if it still has a ring...” Around him, the world is shadowed, the distant lights of cities visible on the horizon but not bright enough to truly disrupt his view of the night sky. It had been a bit nerve-wracking leaving the town, but he’d been making an effort to lay low for the last week, and had seen nothing to indicate anyone was coming to search for him. The idea of visiting the firefighters still makes his skin itch, but a little trip to stargaze had started seeming like a reasonable risk to take, and with the calm expanse of void above him, Danny can feel something deep inside of him settle. The buzz of fear that’s been around since before he even got here evaporates, as he counts the stars and constellations. They’re not all the same, Cygnus seems to be mostly missing, and a few of the individual stars Danny remembers seem to be gone, but for the most part, it’s the same. Certainly more familiar than anything else has been so far. The technology here is all far more advanced than anything Danny’s seen before, which is ironic considering the portal.

It’s funny, really that he can be this far away from home (a literally incalculable distance), and the stars are still generally the same. Even the ones that are new are still stars; still the same burning masses fueled by fusion and gravity, and feeding the universe at large with new material. They're still millions of light-years away, and yet they’ve been there for so long, streaming their light into a void, where it can eventually reach this very spot where Danny’s currently standing. All his problems seem so small in the face of the great expanse of space.

“Amazing!” Danny exclaims, letting himself just laugh with delight. Maybe he’s alone here, but has he ever felt this free before? Nobody to drag him away, or force him into fights, or yell at him about the chores he hasn’t done yet. Hell, if he really wanted to, he just take off, go hang out in space, maybe fly until he finds one of those alien planets that he’d seen mentioned on Wikipedia. Sure, it would probably take a stupid amount of time to get there, but he could , if he wanted.

Behind him, there’s a rush of air, and the sound of a person taking a breath, and Danny tears his gaze away from the stars, flipping himself into a fighting stance as he runs through the list of heroes he’d read about, trying to remember which of them could fly. As he turns, his eyes lock on to another boy, though, that looks to be close to Danny’s own age.

“Woah, dude.” The boy says, holding his hands up and floating a few feet backwards. “I’m not here to fight?”

“Then why are you here?” Danny asks. He is just a kid, so like, maybe , it’s safe, but also the symbol on the kids chest is the same one Superman was wearing, so he could just be a recruit or something.

“I dunno, man, I just heard you talking and got curious? Not exactly many people around that can just hang out in the sky, you know. I can leave if you want.” The other  boy’s expression seems sincere. Mostly he looks startled and a bit uncertain, and deeply unlike the weird, heroic, confident posture that Superman seemed to have in every picture. This guy looks like he’s trying to look confident, sure, but not like he actually is .

“You’re not Superman, but you’re wearing his logo.” Danny says. Dropping his stance, but not letting himself fully relax. Just because it’s not a fight, doesn’t mean he’s safe, after all.

“Yeah, uh, I’m Superboy.”

“Superboy,” Danny echoes. “I read something about sidekicks? Is that-” Danny cuts himself off when the other boy winces.

“No, I’m not his sidekick. More like he’s helping to train me. We’ve got the same powers, so... Yeah.”

“Huh. Training sounds... Nice? What’s that like?” Honestly, training sounds downright miraculous. Danny hasn’t been able to stop thinking about the destruction caused by the train crash, and how everyone in Amity had always complained about the damage caused by ghost fights. He hasn’t forgotten how much he’d gotten himself hurt in those early days either, not that anyone else had ever noticed that bit.

“Yeah, I guess it’s nice. I take it you don’t have a mentor, then?”

“I’m not a hero.”

“No? I thought- I mean, you look a lot like the description of the guy who helped with the train crash over in Concord.” Superboy frowns, glancing off in the direction of Danny’s hometown.

“I mean, yeah that was me but I’m not. I don’t wanna fight anyone.”

“Oh, yeah that’s totally fair.” Superboy immediately responds with a laugh. “Honestly most of what we do isn’t actually fighting people, so y’know. You don’t have to be a fighter to be a hero.”

“Oh.” That kinda makes sense. After all, Danny had done a lot of fighting back home, and nobody had called him a hero there.

“Yeah, it’s like. There’s a lot of stuff about emergency response and civilian rescue and stuff. Hell, from what I understand half of what the Bats do is just, like detective work. That’s a lot of what my training’s for, actually. I’m pretty good at destroying stuff, I guess, but Supes says I need better control, before I can be trusted to handle relief stuff, because I might accidentally hurt people with my strength or something.”

“That’s. Cool, I guess?” Danny risks a glance up at the stars. No attack comes with Danny’s split attention, though after a moment, Superboy slowly floats over to his side.

“What are you looking at?”

“The stars.”

“Just, like, in general?” Superboy asks. He sounds dubious, and Danny can feel him glancing between him and the sky every couple seconds.

“What, have you never gone stargazing before?” 

Superboy doesn’t say anything for a minute, and Danny glances over. The false confidence has completely evaporated from the other boy’s expression, and instead he just looks unsure.

“I’ve never really had the opportunity before.” Superboy finally murmurs, quieter than any of their conversation so far.

“Well, I guess you’re in luck!” Danny says, offering his new companion a smile. “Because I’m something of an expert in it!” And Danny begins to point to the different constellations, and tell Superboy as much as he can about all the stars and planets above them.

“You really are an expert, huh?” Superboy eventually says, in the middle of Danny’s tangent about why Pluto isn’t considered a planet anymore. That had been one of his most interesting discoveries in his Wikipedia explorations. He’d been kind of surprised at first when it hadn’t shown up on the list of planets, but he’d specifically searched for it, he’d learned about it’s reclassification, along with all the reasoning behind it. He’d been a little sad at first, but the realization that it came alongside the implication about a whole number of other bodies orbiting their sun had been exciting in it’s own way.

“Yeah,” Danny responds with a laugh. “I, uh, really like space. I actually wanted to be an astronaut as a kid.”

“But you don’t want to be one now?”

“I mean,” Danny hums. “It’d be nice, but I don’t think it’s really a plausible goal anymore. It- the way I got my powers came with some... complications. And anyway I kind of don’t legally exist anymore, so it’s. I can’t even go to space camp, let alone go to actual space.”

“Is that, uh, why you don’t have a normal heart beat? I didn’t wanna ask and be rude, but like, you sound kinda like a really large bee.”

“Yeah, that’s, um. I mean I’ve never been called a bee before, but yeah.”

“Wild. But like, if it’s meta stuff, then aren’t they legally not allowed to discriminate against you for it? They’re not just gonna be like ‘oh you don’t have a heartbeat guess you can’t go to space.’”

“I mean, there was, like, a meta scholarship on the website, but...”

“You’re worried about revealing your identity.”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“Well, that’s fixable. I mean, I didn’t have an identity to even reveal until this year, so the Justice League can definitely-”

“I don’t want them to know about me,” Danny interrupts.

“Oh.” Superboy says. “Well, what about just, like one person? Because Robin could definitely make you a whole new identity all by himself, and I know he has no qualms about keeping shit secret from everyone else.”

“Robin.” Danny thinks he remembers that name being referenced in relation to Batman. Something about a boy wonder. “Is he our age?”

“Yeah.” Superboy looks excited. “I could introduce you sometime if you want?”

“I dunno.” Even one Justice League associate knowing about him is concerning, and if Superboy knows about the thing with the train, then probably the adult members do too.

“Well, you don’t have to decide now! I have super hearing so if you call my name I’m almost guaranteed to hear it!”

“You can just hear me anytime?” Danny asks.

“Oh, uh. I mean technically yes? But generally it’s like effort to just tune into one person from a distance. But I listen for anybody calling for me, in case they need help or whatever, so I’m always kind of listening for that.”

“I’’ll keep that in mind, I guess.”

“Right. Uh, do you wanna tell me more about the planets?”

[keikikait]

ʟᴏꜱᴛ ɪɴ ʀᴇᴀʟɪᴛʏ (ʀᴀꜰᴇ ᴄᴀᴍᴇʀᴏɴ x ꜰ! ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ)

check out my other rafe series here!

read the prequel series here!

pairing: rafe cameron x f!reader, (not au, both are early to mid 20's)

word count: 4.9k

summary: rafe is late for your date at the island club

warnings: no smut but is suggestive (read at your own risk), handsy rafe, mild violence/fighting, whipped reader & whipped rafe, they go to a restaurant but i don't specify any kind of food, rafe is angry for like 3 seconds but not at reader, mean jj, use of the word 'whore', i don't think they've shown rafe's new place yet so i made one up, i haven't watched all of s4 so if i get shit wrong i'm sorry, not proofread

a note: this was supposed to be short. oops

please reblog and like, it means a lot! let me know what you think!

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ���*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ*:･ﾟ✧

You and Rafe had date nights every Friday.

It was the only sense of regularity that he had, and he wouldn’t miss it for the world. He would plan it, tell you when and where to be, and you would eagerly oblige. He surprised you with something new every week; one Friday you’re driving across the thoroughfare towards the mainland for a shopping spree, the next Friday you’re on a private yacht watching the sunset. This week, he decided to go for the tried and true; dinner and a movie.

‘6 PM’, he told you, ‘and wear that silk emerald green dress.’ He had to run out for the day, still dealing with the aftereffects of Ward’s death and his departure from Tanneyhill. Trying to sell a giant, 6-bedroom mansion wasn’t as easy as you thought, as most of the residents of Kildare couldn’t afford to buy it from him. He was considering turning it into an Air B&B, a project he would rope you into to help with the interior design. You and Rafe had a new place, another mansion still located in Figure Eight, although this one is much smaller, a Spanish revival you had a lovely time decorating. 

As the afternoon sun dipped below the horizon, casting a warm glow across the landscape, you found yourself perched upon a solitary bench situated beside the parking lot of The Island Club, the salty tang of the ocean breeze carrying the distant sound of crashing waves. Couples filed into the club, paying you no mind. Even though The Island Club wasn’t far from your new place, Rafe still bought you an Uber, just to make sure you were safe. It was almost 6:15 PM at this point, and every call and text to Rafe went unanswered. You had already informed the staff of his late arrival, ensuring that your reservation would not get cancelled. You check your watch again before standing, walking around the parking lot to check the streets.

Where was he?

You tug your dress down your legs. It was Rafe’s favourite on you, hugging your ass and hips perfectly. It was finally starting to get cold on the island, and even though the black leather jacket you stole from him didn’t exactly go with your outfit, it was keeping you warm. The wind flows through your hair, and you push it out of your eyes, looking down the street, trying to spot him on his bike. You sigh, your shoulders dropping. You turn around to head back to the bench, pulling your phone out of your small purse, ready to call him again.

You’re about to sit down when you hear the revving and rumbling of his dirt bike, pulling into the left side of the parking lot. You sigh, putting your phone away as you walk over to him. You bite your lip when you see him wearing that grey blue waffle-weaved sweater that makes him look delicious. Rafe turns his bike off, pushing the kickstand down before getting off, reaching up to unbuckle the strap of his helmet.

“Hey, handsome.” You say, stepping off the curb and approaching him. You reach out, putting one of your hands on his bicep, fingers slightly digging into the muscle. Rafe pulls his helmet off, keeping it clutched in his hand. His eye and cheekbone were swollen, slightly yellow, and a cut underneath his brow bone marred his otherwise handsome face. The cut was deep, and blood was caked along its edges. It was clear that he had been in a fight, and he had not come out of it unscathed. He winced as you suddenly reach up to touch his cheekbone, a worried look on your face. “What the fuck? What happened?”

Rafe winces as you touch his cheek, pulling back from your touch. He wasn’t in the mood for your coddling. His jaw was clenched tight, his shoulders tense from the fight. He had no intention of telling you what happened, either. You never needed to know about the trouble he was in. He puts his helmet on the seat of his bike and grabs your waist, pulling you in front of him. “Don’t worry about it,” he says, trying his best to keep his voice level so that he didn’t snap at you. He pressed a kiss to your temple, not bothering to conceal the bruises and blood on his knuckles. Was it his or someone else’s, or both?

“Are you okay?” You ask, moving your hand off his bicep to rest on his waist. “Rafe, please tell me.”

His expression hardens as you continue to push. His fingers grip your waist almost painfully tight. “I said, don’t worry,” he repeats, his voice stern. He’d never talked to you like this, and you could hear the warning behind his words. His eyes stare down at you, intense and full of anger, although you’re not quite sure if it’s meant for you. “Let it go.”

You don’t push it, not wanting to anger him anymore. It was supposed to be a nice, relaxing night. You wrap your arms around his waist to pull him into a hug, laying your head on his chest. Rafe hesitates, surprised by the sudden display of affection, but then he wraps his strong arms around you, pulling you in close. He buries his nose into your hair, inhaling the scent of your shampoo, and for the first time that night, his shoulders finally drop, his whole body relaxing. He squeezes you tight to his chest, his chin resting on the crown of your head. 

He remains silent as he pulls away slightly, looking down at you. He keeps one arm wrapped around your waist, his hand gripping your side as his other hand flies to your neck. His grip is loose, but his thumb presses against your pulse — a small habit he picked up after he started dating you. In his own words, it’s a way to calm him down and to remind himself that you were safe.

Rafe sighs, pressing kisses to your forehead before leaning his against it, rubbing your pulse back and forth as it races under your skin. His voice is soft when he finally speaks, “I’m fine. Just ran into a problem.”

“What kind of problem?” You ask, rubbing your hand up and down his side.

“Nothing you need to be worrying about, sweetheart,” Rafe mumbles, still keeping his head pressed against yours. Rafe never used pet names with anyone else, but with you, it felt different. His eyes drift down to your lips, unable to resist. They were a faint shade of red, glossy and puffy from your bites, just as he liked them. “Just some shit with JJ and John B. I handled it.” He leans down and presses a soft kiss to your lips, the hand on your neck moving to cup your cheek. Even as he pulls away, he keeps your body pressed against him. “Let’s not let this ruin our night, alright?”

“Are you sure?” You ask, brushing your thumb across his abs. “We can go home and order in if you want. I don’t want you to feel compelled to go out tonight.”

“Baby, I’m fine,” he murmurs, his voice soft. He understood where you were coming from, but only you would ever try to get out of a very expensive date because you thought he was too tired. “I got reservations for a reason. I don’t plan on missing our date night just because of a little fight.” The hand on your waist moves to the small of your back, pressing your body closer to his. He’d planned out everything for tonight. A fancy meal, followed by a quiet movie night at your place, then ending the night with his face buried between your legs, your wrists bound to the headboard. He didn’t want to ruin a date night that both of you were looking forward to. 

You sigh, but don’t push it. You didn’t want to ruin the date with an argument. You grab his hand, careful not to brush across his shredded knuckles, before leading him towards the entrance. “If you change your mind, let me know.”

Rafe rolls his eyes, but he can’t help but smile a little bit at your persistence, thankful that you cared. He follows behind you, his strides matching yours. He winces a little bit when you grab his hand, his knuckles stinging from the fight, but he doesn’t dare let you know that. 

He holds the door open for you when you reach the entrance, waiting for you to go through before he follows behind, placing on hand on your lower back as you walk. His eyes drifted down to your ass, and he had to stop himself from reaching out and smacking it. Now that his father was dead, he had to try to keep the Cameron image clean and pristine at The Island Club. They weren’t fans of him to begin with.

You head through the small entrance, moving to wait in line for the hostess stand. The country club was pretty packed, a common occurrence for a Friday night. The couple in front of you were older, and the woman's eyes soften as she looked over her shoulder and spotted Rafe. 

He kept his hand on your lower back, not trying to hide the fact that you were both together. His eyes stayed locked with the older woman in front of you, not surprised to have already been discovered by one of the regulars. He could see the woman’s concern from a mile away, her expression shifting when she saw the scrapes and bruises on his face. Rafe sighed, his jaw clenching in annoyance. Even here, he couldn’t get away from his reputation. His hand started to rub small circles into your back, silently trying to soothe himself more than you.

The woman whispers to her husband before turning around again. “It’s Rafe, right?”

Rafe raises an eyebrow at the elderly woman, a hint of a scowl on his face as his eyes meet hers. He gives her a small nod, although he doesn’t feel like talking to a regular at The Island Club right now. He wanted nothing more than to spend the evening alone with you. “Yes, ma’am,” His response is short and brief. “That’s me.”

“I was a friend of your father,” The woman says. “We were business partners a few years ago. I’m sorry for your loss, Rafe. My condolences.” 

Rafe’s expression changes as soon as the woman mentions his father. He knew that most people from The Island Club had been friends with his old man and business partners with him. Hearing condolences for his father had become a regular part of his routine, but that didn’t mean he liked hearing about his father’s death every single time. His hand on your lower back tightens, pulling you a bit closer to him. He gives her a forced smile, trying his best to look polite. “Thank you, ma’am,” he responds, his voice stiff.

The woman smiles softly before turning back around, stepping forward towards the hostess stand. Rafe’s hands traveled from your hips to your lower back, pulling you closer to him. He was lost in reality, almost as if he didn’t want to admit to himself that his life was fundamentally changing. His father was dead, and his relationships with his remaining family were ruined. But he had you, and that’s all that matters to him right now.

You lean your head against his chest as you wait, hands wrapped around his bicep, rubbing it lightly with your thumb.

Rafe sighs as you lean against him, his hand on your lower back drifting down to cup your ass. He could only hope that the other patrons wouldn’t notice, although he didn’t really care that much. But that woman was going to tell everyone about how rough he looked tonight, and he knew that some people would have comments about that, too. Rafe lowers his head to speak in your ear, although his voice is quiet enough that only you could hear. “Can’t wait to get you home,” he murmurs.

"Yeah? You excited for me to get on my knees for you?" You ask. Just as Rafe had been thinking about you all day, you had been thinking about him. You couldn’t wait to sink to the floor in front of him, your hands eagerly unbuckling his slacks before letting him fuck your face. Your favourite part, though, was the way he gripped your hair and moaned as he cummed down your throat.

Rafe sighs, groaning low in his throat as your words go straight to his cock. He’d always loved it when you talked like this, even if you were in private or texting. He didn’t want you to talk to anyone else like that. You were his. “Mmm, I’m more excited to see your face when you ride me,” he mumbles, moving closer so that his mouth is right next to your ear, still careful to keep his voice low. He wanted to take you home right now, but he had been looking forward to this dinner all week, and he knew you were too.

The older couple in front of you step away, being led by the hostess to their table. You approach the stand, and you smooth out the front of your dress as you wait. Although Rafe was used to the rich life full of country clubs, cotillion and croquet, you weren’t. You wanted to make a good impression on the staff of The Island Club.

Rafe stands tall and proud as you both step up to the hostess stand, his arm still wrapped around your waist, his hand resting on the small of your back. He glances down at your dress, taking in every detail of your appearance. You looked absolutely stunning in that dress, and it was taking all of his self-control to not get hard right now. The way you anxiously chewed on your lip, the way your hair was shining in the ambient lighting of the country club, the way you wore the ‘Rafe’ name necklace he bought you…he loved everything about you. He tugged you closer, loving the way you put a hand on his stomach as you leaned against him. You both had matching gold rings, engraved with your anniversary, yours on your forefinger while his sat on his thumb. 

The hostess looks up to greet both of you. She glances down at the reservation book for just a moment before nodding, a polite smile on her face. “Mr. Cameron,” she says. “Your table is ready.” She gathers two menus before leading you through the dining room towards the more private, member’s only area of the country club.

Even though you had been dating Rafe for a while, almost a year, you were always surprised by his influence. He had everything he ever wanted at the tips of his fingers, and because you were dating him, you got those luxuries too; endless shopping trips, a house full of anything you could dream of. And a handsome boyfriend, of course.

As you walk behind the hostess, Rafe’s fingers intertwine with yours, holding your hand tight. He was aware of all the eyes on him, as you could hear the whispers and murmurs from their fellow patrons, knowing they were all aware of the fight with John B and JJ, and the rumors were probably already spreading like wildfire. The hostess leads you to a secluded corner with a single table set for two, two candlesticks illuminating the table with a warm glow. 

“Thank you,” Rafe mumbles to the hostess as his eyes drift towards the far corner of the room. He lets go of your hand with some reluctance, before holding the chair for you at the small booth. He was thankful for the secluded booth, knowing it was going to be easier to touch you under the table. Rafe slides in next to you, reaching over to grab your knee, stroking his thumb softly back and forth. He wanted to put his hand on your throat to feel your pulse again, but he didn’t think that the patrons and staff would like that.

You thank the hostess, setting your purse down in the empty space next to you. As the hostess walks away, Rafe’s hand slips under the skirt of your dress, grabbing onto your inner thigh and rubbing back and forth. His touch is featherlight, just the lightest graze of skin against skin, although he can feel all the heat from your skin. 

He picks up the menu from the table, pretending to scan the food while his hand caresses you. He leans in toward you, although his eyes are still scanning the menu. “Do you know what you want to eat, sweetheart?”

“You.” You say immediately, flipping the menu over to look at the other side.

Rafe can’t help but let out a slight chuckle at your immediate response, his hand on your thigh stopping for a moment. His eyes finally look up at you from the menu, an amused look on his face. “Mmm, not yet, baby, but you’ll get it later. Promise,” he grins, his eyes drifting back down to the menu as his hand starts to rub against you again. “And for the main course?”

You sigh, glancing over the options. You didn’t really love any of the dishes on the menu, but you weren’t opposed to eating any of them. Rafe wraps his large, warm hand around your inner thigh and squeezes, yanking you a bit closer. It’s a simple gesture, but it makes your head spin, your brain shutting down for a split second. You purse your lips as you read before looking away, shifting in your seat. “You pick.”

He can see the way your body reacts to his touch, and it satisfies him to know that he can still affect you like that. It just makes him more eager to get you back home tonight. His fingers press into your thigh when you move closer to him, but he quickly loosens his grip when the waiter comes up to your table. 

He finally decides what he wants for the main course, and he orders for the both of you. His hand slides down your thigh, finally withdrawing, although he places his palm flat against your skin, resting his hand just below the edge of your dress. You sip on your drink as you wait for your food, feeling Rafe’s hand travel up your thigh again, as if he couldn’t resist. After the waiter walks away, Rafe’s focus turns back towards you, and he glances around the room to make sure nobody was watching. Seeing as everyone around him seemed to be doing their best to ignore him, he felt comfortable enough to continue his touch. His hand moves from your thigh to your hip, pulling you closer to him. “I like this dress on you,” he murmurs, his eyes raking over your body.

“Thank you,” You say as his hands travel up higher. “You look really good, baby.” You reach out and place your hand on his bicep, squeezing it. You couldn’t resist. He always looked good, but something about the way he looked in that fucking blue sweater and grey slacks made you go crazy, wanting to put your hands all over him and your mouth on his cock.

He gives you a smirk as your hand wraps around his upper arm, and he leans back into his chair. Your praise always brought out the cocky, arrogant side of him, and he absolutely loved when you told him how good he looked. His ego always needed a boost. He flexes the muscle underneath your hand, and it ripples underneath his sweater. “Yeah? You like this, don’t you?” He grins.

You nod, your mouth going dry. It was so hard to concentrate, all you wanted to do was shut your brain off and let him take control for the night. He knows exactly what effect he was having on you, and he loved seeing the effect that he could have on your body just from a little flex. “You feeling needy, baby?” He mumbles, his fingers pressing against your panties, right over your clit. You suck in a breath, gripping his sleeve to try to ground yourself. You nod.

The smirk stays plastered on his face as his palm squeezes tightly on the soft flesh of your inner thigh. He can see the way your shoulders tensing, knowing that you were trying your best to keep yourself from writhing in your seat. “Soon, sweetheart. We just gotta get through dinner,” he mumbles, although he wanted nothing more than to take you home right now and ruin you, make you cum over and over until you cry.

The waiter approaches with your food, setting everything on the table. It snaps you back to reality, and you move your glass so he can put your plate in front of you. As the waiter sets the plates down, Rafe reluctantly pulls his hand away from you. His hand goes to pick up his fork, although the movement is absent-minded. His eyes stayed focused on you, and the only thing he could think about was getting you home and alone. Eventually, he forces his eyes away from you and to his food. His other hand moves behind your lower back, resting his palm flat against the exposed skin, his pinky finger playing with the waistband of your panties.

You struggle through dinner, your thighs pressed together. The food was delicious, and you and Rafe spent a good amount of time talking about your plans for Tanneyhill, all the while he was brushing his fingers along your inner thighs and your panties. He was doing it on purpose, trying to rile you up, and it was working. You eat as quickly as you can, snatching your purse and  dragging him out of the restaurant after paying and leaving a tip.

You rush towards his bike, and he can’t help but chuckle at how desperate you are. He spins you around, pulling you against his chest. “Relax, baby. We’ll be home soon.”

You whine. “I need it, Rafe.”

Your whine was like music to his ears. His hand goes to cup your cheek, his thumb brushing against your bottom lip. His eyes are dark with lust as he looks down at you. “You’ll get it.” He says, grabbing his helmet and pushing it over your head. He secures the strap under your chin, kissing your nose. He climbs onto the bike, pushing the kickstand up.

“Do you have a helmet?” You ask, fiddling with it. It was definitely too big for your head.

“Nah,” He says, looking at you over your shoulder as you climb on, wrapping your arms around his waist. “I don’t need one, baby. I’m a professional. It’ll be fine, just hold on tight.”

“Rafe,” You say, your eyebrows furrowing with worry. “Are you sure?”

Rafe sighs as he places his hands on the handlebars, hearing the tone of worry in your voice. “Sweetheart, I swear, it’ll be fine. The house isn’t far,” he sighs, shaking his head and starting the engine. “I’ll go slow, okay? Just hold on tight and don’t let go. You’ll be fine, baby, I promise.”

You have no choice but to listen to him, tightening your grip around him, your purse squished between his back and your chest. “Okay.”

He nods slightly before reaching down to grab your thighs, pulling your body to fully press against his. He wants to be able to feel your skin against his. He doesn’t say anything else as he starts to drive, slowly making his way out of the parking lot. He had been through worse. He could handle a simple drive home without a helmet.

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ*:･ﾟ✧

You pull up into the driveway of your house, safe and sound. You wait for Rafe to pop the kickstand down and turn the bike off before standing, putting your purse back on your shoulder. You reach up, unclipping the helmet before pulling it off, shaking your hair out.

Rafe climbs off of the bike, gently letting go of the handles just in case it came tumbling. He bites his lip before reaching out, grabbing your waist and pulling you to him, his other hand immediately coming up to cup your neck. “You were worried for nothing, baby,” he murmurs, gently pressing his lips to yours. You kiss him back, your hands flying to his waist, lost in the feeling of his tongue on yours.

“‘Bout time y’all showed up.”

You and Rafe pull away, glancing down your driveway.

JJ and John B hop out of JJ’s van, parked right against the curb.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” You ask, your hands dropping from their spot on Rafe’s stomach. Rafe’s grip on you tightens, feeling you pull away. His eyes are narrowed as he looks at JJ and John B as they approach the two of you.

“What, you two on a date? Couldn’t even invite us?!” JJ laughs, his hands shoved into his pockets. You thought that Rafe looked awful, but it’s clear that he had the upper hand during his fight with JJ and John B. JJ looks terrible, his eye bruised and almost swollen shut, the side of his face scratched up like he fell onto gravel. John B has a split lip and a deep purple bruise on his eyebrow, his knuckles caked with dried blood.

“Wow, JJ. You look like shit,” You say, unable to hold back. “You already got your ass beat, are you back for more?”

JJ glares at you, his hands tightening into fists in his pockets. “Careful where you run your mouth, slut,” he growls, taking a step towards you. 

That’s all it takes to piss Rafe off.  “Watch your mouth,” he growls. He steps in front of you, blocking JJ’s path.

You just laugh, unable to take him seriously. You push past Rafe, shoving your purse into his chest. “Excuse me?”

JJ stares directly at you, his expression turning into a scowl. “Careful, you don’t want to fall back into old habits. You’re just a little whore for all of the Pogues,” JJ growls, and John B puts a hand on his shoulder, trying to get him to shut up, but it isn’t enough for JJ to back down. He takes another step forward, his eyes locked on you and your face.

Everything happens quickly after that.

Before you could say another word, Rafe is launching himself at JJ, grabbing the collar of his shirt and throwing him against the side of his van. JJ tries to land a punch, but Rafe’s faster. He just keeps landing punches, one after the other, not letting up for a second. John B. jumps on Rafe, trying to hold him back, but it isn’t enough.

You quickly rush over, grabbing the back of Rafe’s sweater, tugging him backwards. “Stop. They aren’t worth it, Rafe.” His fist is raised, and he turns to look at you, hearing the panic in your voice. He freezes when you call out to him, and John B. jumps off of his back. 

The air is tense, everything is still and dead silent. All you can hear are their heavy breaths, and John B is holding onto JJ, preventing him from attempting to start another fight.

“If either of you ever come back here,” You walk towards them, getting up in JJ's face. “I'll bury you.”

JJ doesn't back off, and he glares down at you, a cruel smirk on his face.  “You gonna do it yourself?” JJ stands up, still being held back by John B. “Sweet, helpless little thing like you? Or are you just gonna try and hide behind your boyfriend?” His eyes trail down your body as his smirk grows, his teeth stained with blood.

You consider hitting him. You really do. But you know that JJ wouldn’t be scared to hit you back, and you really didn’t want to ruin this dress.

You step back before spitting on him.

A mixture of fury and shock shoots through JJ’s whole body, his face grimacing. “You bitch, I’ll fucking—“ JJ snaps, and he starts to come at you. John B grabs onto him, holding him back, but he’s barely able to restrain JJ, trying to calm him down.

You turn around, walking away from him, back towards your house. “Take your little bitch ass back to The Cut.” 

“You little whore, did you forget where you came from? Did you forget who you used to whore yourself out to?” JJ says, still fighting against John B’s grip on him. “You’re gonna regret that someday, you hear me? Someday you’ll have no one to protect your pathetic little ass, and I’m gonna be there, laughing at you. Just watch.”

Rafe starts to walk towards JJ and John B again, but you wrap a hand around his forearm, pulling him back. “Baby, stop. He’s not worth it.” You look up at him, trying your best to get him to calm down. 

JJ finally stops trying to shake John B off, realizing that he isn’t going to be able to land a hit on you, no matter how badly he wants to. “You’re lucky you’re not with the Pogues anymore. I’d teach you some manners,” he calls after you.

You drag Rafe back inside as JJ and John B get back into JJ’s van, the tires screeching as they drive away.

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ*:･ﾟ✧

★taglist: @ietss, @momoewn, @blairsblg (italics means i couldn’t tag you!)

if you would like to be tagged for any future parts (if i make them), please reply to this post!

part two is here!

[swiftiethatlovesf1]

Seaside Sparks

Hii, I hope you enjoy this summer romance with Lando :) I think he deserves a happy ending for this last race.

"Not again," you complained in your head as the fourth volleyball fell next to you and your friends. It was a hot summer day, and your friends had decided that the best way to spend it was at the beach. Everything was perfect: no clouds, no wind, the sea was calm. Everything was perfect, except for a group of boys whose ball kept annoying you each time they threw it at you.

"Ugh, are they incapable of playing with the ball inside the volleyball court?" one of your friends complained.

"I'll go give it back this time and ask them to try to avoid us," you said, trying to maintain the peace.

However, the ball soon left your thoughts when you saw the culprit of all the attacks; tall and handsome as hell, with curls that made you want to touch his hair and the most addicting eyes you've ever seen.

"Thanks for bringing the ball back," the boy said as he took you in, leaving him breathless. "I'm sorry for annoying you. I guess volleyball is not our thing. I'm Lando, by the way," he explained as he offered his hand.

"I'm Y/N, and don't worry about it. Just try to hit the ball away from us, or my friend will have a less friendly chat with you," you said, trying to lighten up the situation.

A comfortable silence settled between you two as you gazed at each other, only to be broken by a shout from one of his friends. "Coming! Do you wanna play with us by any chance? We are missing a player," Lando asked, wanting to spend more time with you.

"Me?" you asked, shocked. "Um, sure," you accepted, going with the flow.

You ended up having a lot of fun with Lando and his friends, and you managed to avoid the ball going elsewhere. As the sun set and everyone started leaving the beach, you and Lando tried to avoid leaving each other since you both seemed to have a connection like magnets.

"Do you want to go for ice cream? I know a place," Lando asked nervously.

"Sure," you answered, trying to hide a smile that was threatening to burst from your face.

You wondered what you were doing. You were going on a date, if you could call it that, with a stranger named Lando. You were not a spontaneous girl, but something about him made you want to get to know him, his magnetic aura drawing you in.

As you both approached the ice cream parlor, your hands brushed against each other, and slowly interlaced as blush covered both of your faces.

While you waited in line, you got to know each other, and before you knew it, it was your turn. "I'll have a vanilla ice cream, and she…" Lando started.

"Chocolate ice cream, please," you finished.

As Lando paid, insisting it was his treat, you both settled on a bench overlooking the ocean, the sky painted in vibrant hues of pink and orange by the setting sun. The gentle sound of waves crashing against the shore filled the serene silence between you.

Lando turned to you, his eyes reflecting the warmth of the sunset. "Y/N, I know we’ve only just met, but tonight has been incredible. It’s been so long since I’ve felt this free, without the weight of expectations or the pressure of the world on my shoulders. Spending time with you feels so natural, like we’ve known each other forever."

He paused, searching for the right words, his gaze never leaving yours. "I can’t quite put it into words, but there's this connection between us that I’ve never felt before. It’s like you understand me in a way no one else does. I’d really love to see you again, maybe go on an actual date, if you’d be up for it."

You smiled, your heart fluttering at his sincere confession. "Lando, I feel it too. Today has been magical, and I haven’t felt this alive in a long time. I’d love to go on a date with you."

Lando's face lit up with a genuine smile, and he gently took your hand in his, the touch sending a warm thrill through you. As the sun dipped below the horizon, you both sat there, basking in the new and exciting possibilities that lay ahead.

The silence was broken by your giggles. "Wait, Lando, you have some ice cream on your face," you said as you tried to wipe it off. As your face neared his, your attempts were stopped by his lips crashing into yours in a sweet kiss. It might have been the first, but it surely wouldn't be the last.

The kiss lingered, your senses overwhelmed by the taste of vanilla and chocolate mingling with the saltiness of the sea air. His hand moved to cup your cheek, deepening the kiss, making your heart race. You felt a mix of exhilaration and calm, as if everything in the universe had aligned perfectly in that moment.

When you finally pulled away, your foreheads resting against each other, you both laughed softly, the world around you fading into a blur. "So, about that actual date," Lando said, his voice low and filled with promise. "How about tomorrow? Same time, same place?"

You nodded, your eyes sparkling with excitement. "I’d love that, Lando."

As you walked back to your friends, hand in hand, the future seemed bright and full of endless possibilities. With Lando by your side, you felt like you were ready for any adventure that came your way.

[roosterforme]

The Younger Kind Part 26 | Rooster x Reader

Summary: Bradley says some things in the afterglow of winning custody of Noah that surprise you in the best way. You believe him, but you also need some time to think. But with some bad news on the horizon, when he tells you that he trusts you with Noah more than he trusts anyone else, you don't doubt him at all.

Warnings: Angst, swearing, fluff, smut, and age gap (18+)

Length: 3900 words

Pairing: Single dad!Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw x babysitter!female reader

Check out my masterlist for more! The Younger Kind masterlist.

"Just stay in bed," Bradley rasped when his alarm woke both of you on Thursday morning. You'd spent a good portion of Wednesday night telling him that you needed to go home, get used to your own space again. And then he had spent a few minutes listing all the reasons he wanted you to stay. 

Your favorite reason was that he and Noah needed you with them. He was insistent. 

"Daddy," you groaned, reaching for him, trying to keep him in bed. He rolled his big body on top of yours, propping himself up with his elbows to keep from crushing you. "I need to finish my school assignments by next week so I can graduate."

"I'll help you get them ready to submit," he promised as he kissed your lips. "Now you just stay put, Princess. I'm taking the day off from work. I'll drop Noah at daycare, try to get him back on his normal routine since he missed yesterday. And then I'll be back to spend the day with you."

"Really?" you asked as he got out of bed on your side. You had a side of the bed. You had a specific side of the bed that was yours in Bradley's bedroom in his beautiful house. You sank back against the pillows in contentment, so cozy in Bradley's sweatshirt.

"Yes," he promised. "I'll get him up and out the door, and I'll be back soon." You watched him get dressed in some jeans and a soft tee shirt. He shoved his phone and wallet into his pockets before kissing you on the forehead and saying, "I love you," like it was the most natural thing in the world. 

And then he was gone, and you were thinking about what Meredith might be doing right now. You hoped she was crying over the fact that you had outsmarted her, since she had been trying to manipulate you as much as she had Bradley. You rolled onto your side with a smile. Bradley already seemed so much more relaxed now that he and Noah were free and clear of Meredith. He'd briefly mentioned getting restraining orders, citing the desire to never hear that you saw Meredith in public again as his main reason for looking into it. He said he'd talk to Tracy about everything. 

You were just about to doze off again when Bradley walked back in with Noah in his arms. "He wouldn't leave without saying goodbye to you," he rasped, setting his son on the bed. You supposed that meant he didn't mind if Noah saw where you had slept last night. 

"Come here, sweet Noah," you whispered, pulling him in for a big hug and kissing his chubby cheek. I love you. Have fun at daycare."

"Love you," he said in his soft, little voice before Bradley scooped him up again and left the room. 

When you heard the front door close, you knew you wouldn't be able to fall asleep again, so you stretched and then got out of bed for the day. You wanted to grab a shower, but you thought it might be fun to wait until Bradley got back to do that. Instead you changed into one of his floral print shirts and made your way to the kitchen. 

You really should have been working on something for school, but when you opened the refrigerator for the coffee creamer, you sighed. They were basically out of food again already. A few eggs left in the carton and some vegetables would make a decent enough breakfast, but you'd need to help Bradley go grocery shopping again soon. 

You had just finished your mug of coffee and the grocery list when you heard the front door. "Hi," you called out to Bradley, and he walked into the kitchen where he immediately froze. There were coffee cups in his hands, and you could already see where he'd written Princess on one of them. "I'm going to make you breakfast."

But he was too busy staring at you, his gaze trailing down your body. You were immediately reminded that the only article of clothing you were wearing was his shirt, completely unbuttoned. 

Bradley set down the coffees and smirked at you. "You're gonna make me breakfast, Princess?" he asked. He grabbed your purple crown from where it had been left overnight next to the toaster, and he carefully put it on your head. 

"Yes," you whispered. "I was going to make you an omelette."

He groaned as his fingers stroked down along your cheek, caressing the side of your neck before continuing down the front of your body. You shivered as your eyes closed when he said, "You're so sensitive."

His fingers lingered on your belly before he started stroking your pussy. "Daddy," you gasped, and then he was on his knees in front of you. 

"You're perfect," he crooned, looking up at you. "Everything I want." His voice and his eyes were so open and honest, and then you ran your fingers through his hair. 

"I knew you'd have a good day, Daddy," you whispered with a grin. "After yesterday, you deserve a relaxing one."

"You know what will help me relax?" he asked. 

"Tell me."

And then his mouth was on your pussy.

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

Bradley licked you up and down, loving the way you moaned softly every time his nose tapped your clit. When he ran his palm up and down the back of your thigh, you carefully put your leg over his shoulder, giving him even better access to your pretty pussy. And that purple paper crown on your head? All that did was make him feel like he and Noah had claimed you for their own. 

"Daddy?" you whispered breathlessly. "Are you going to make me squirt?"

Well. Now that was the only thing he wanted to do. "Is that what you need, Baby?" he asked, rubbing his mustache across your clit.

Your response was a bit incoherent, but it sounded like a yes. And Bradley was in the best mood he'd been in for weeks. Noah was his, and you were his, and he was going to meet up with Tracy next week to finalize everything that was important to him. So he'd gladly spend the whole day, right here on his knees with his mouth on your body until you came all over his face.

He smiled against you as he lapped up your wetness, but you really got loud when he added his fingers into the mix. You were leaning back against the counter, gripping the edge, and he knew he was going to have to get you to the edge of overstimulation. Just like last time in his bed. And just like the first time on the couch. 

So he changed up his pace, sometimes languid and sometimes frantic. And he changed up the pressure, sometimes feather soft and sometimes rough. His knees were starting to ache from how they were digging into the kitchen floor, but he didn't dare move. Because you were starting to get loud. Your head was tipped back, and your perfect breasts were on display as his colorful shirt fell open even more on your body. 

You were so young and flawless, and he never even tried to kid himself about the way that turned him on. But now you were his, and he would love you and take care of you well so that you'd want to stay. 

"Bradley!" you cried out, leg tightening against his back. "Oh!"

He grunted and rubbed his fingertips back and forth across your clit as the little bud tightened for him. He smiled as he changed his tempo. A little slower, and you were coming for him. A split second later, and you had pushed the back of his head closer as you squirted onto his mustache and lips. 

"Princess," he moaned as you sagged against him a little bit. You were still reeling as he cleaned you up with his tongue, eliciting little gasps from your softly parted lips. When he stood with a soft groan, he palmed himself through his jeans. He was rock hard as he pressed himself against you and stroked your tits. You were wrung out, biting your lip as your eyes fluttered open and closed, but he couldn't help himself. He wanted it so badly. "Will you let me fuck you, Baby?"

You nodded and turned your back to him. "Yes," you sighed, leaning down on the counter with your cheek pressed to your crossed arms. "Yes."

Bradley gingerly unzipped his jeans and pulled himself free, and when he buried his cock in your warmth he hissed in pleasure. You were mewling and whining softly, seemingly still exhausted from soaking his face, and Bradley couldn't believe you were letting him get off like this. He grabbed you by your hips, the hem of his shirt you were wearing brushing his wrists. Then he fucked you hard and thought about how you should wear his clothes all the time.

He wasn't going to last long in this state, palming and squeezing your hips and ass as he got you whining his name softly. He went a little harder, but as soon as you looked up at him and smiled softly, he was filling you with his cum. His loud groans filled the kitchen as his movements became jerky. And then he collapsed against your back with his lips on your neck. 

"You want me to make you an omelette, Daddy?" you asked softly while he was still inside you. 

"Yeah," he replied, wrapping you up in his arms. "Then I'm taking you out to lunch. We're going on a real date."

He watched you preen as his cum dripped down your legs. But you did nothing to clean it up as you washed your hands and started cracking eggs into a bowl. You added what was left of the cheese that was in the refrigerator along with some onions and peppers. After you made two omelettes, you settled onto his lap at the table

When you looked at the coffee cups, you hopped up again and started to dig in one of the drawers near the sink. "What's wrong, Baby?"

"Nothing," you murmured, returning to his lap a moment later with a permanent marker. Bradley watched you scribble over the word peasant on his cup and write Knight in your tidy handwriting. 

"That's flattering coming from a Princess," he whispered next to your ear. 

"It's true," you told him, taking his chin in your hand and kissing his lips. "You saved me and then you fought for Noah."

He closed his eyes as you stroked his chin with your thumb. The fact that he had his son all to himself meant he could share him with you. And he was working on a restraining order against Meredith to keep everyone a little safer. So maybe he was capable of more than he originally thought.

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

Shower time with Bradley ended up being more sweet than anything else as you and he got each other all soapy. He brought his phone in to play some music, and he sang along softly as his big hands glided along your slick skin. 

Once you were all dried off and in Bradley's bedroom, you just stood there naked. "I need to go back to my place. I hardly have any clothes here, and I need to do laundry."

He just grunted and said, "You should just move in with us."

You started to pull on your denim shorts and one of your tops as you rolled your eyes. "You're not serious."

But it didn't seem like he was joking at all, actually. He paused and looked at you as he put on some deodorant, his brown eyes sincere. "I'm serious," he said, his voice sounding a little more vulnerable than you expected it to. 

"I'll...think about it." But you already had. And the idea of it was too exciting for you to finish processing in front of him right now. He'd just been awarded sole custody of Noah yesterday. Both of you were probably feeling a little high on adrenaline and elation. 

But he just nodded and reached for your hand. "Let's stop at your place later after I take you out for lunch. If you want me to drop you off, I will."

You were already considering how it would be if you didn't get to make dinner for Noah and give him a kiss before Bradley tucked him into bed for the night, and you didn't like it one bit. You knew what your decision would end up being. You loved being here too much. Maybe you'd just stop home and get more of your stuff and your car.

As Bradley closed the passenger door for you after you climbed into the Bronco, you couldn't help but smile. "Is this our first date?" you asked him as he started the engine and backed out of his driveway. 

"No way," he replied. "Gotta count all the nights we watched movies on the couch with Noah. Oh, and the night I fed you the dinner that my date didn't stick around to eat," he said, smiling at you as he drove to one of the cute shopping districts in the city. "And just yesterday I took you to my custody hearing. That was a pretty romantic day out, yeah?"

You bit your lip and sighed. "So romantic. You really dial it up to eleven, Daddy."

"Only the best for a Princess," he insisted with a grin as he parallel parked in front of a cute bookshop. "I made a reservation for the cafe across the street."

Your eye bugged out. It was an expensive French bistrot. You were wearing cutoff shorts. "I'm underdressed!"

"You're fine," he insisted, leaning over to kiss your lips before he took the keys from the ignition. "But we have half an to kill. Bookshop?"

"Absolutely," you agreed. A few minutes later, you were running your fingers along the spines of some mystery novels while Bradley followed you so closely, you could feel his body heat. When you stopped to pick up a hardback, his lips found your neck, and his hands found your waist.

"Daddy," you scolded in a whisper.

"Can't help it."

Then you headed for the children's area, and your eyes lit up. "Noah would love this one!" You held up a picture book of dinosaurs, and Bradley let you hand it to him. 

"What else?" he asked, smiling as he followed you down the next aisle. 

"Outer space. Farm animals. Opposites. Cars. Fairy Tales." You handed him four more books and then picked up a fifth. "Airplanes."

"Well, he really needs that one," Bradley said, adding it to the pile as well.

"They have coloring books!" You knelt in front of the rack and chose three that he didn't already have, and Bradley took them before helping you to your feet. "Which one would he like the most besides the airplanes? I want to get him two."

Bradley shrugged. "We can get all of them."

"I can't afford all of them."

His eyebrows went up. "Baby, I don't want you spending your money on us. I'll buy them."

"But-"

"They can still be from you," he promised. "But I'll pay for them."

"Okay," you whispered, suddenly reminded that you and Bradley were not at the same points in life. He had a thriving career. You were going to be scrambling to finish your assignments in time to graduate and look for a job. And now, because of Meredith, you knew he had money. 

But you let him take you by the hand and lead you toward the register. You knew these books were going to cost nearly a hundred dollars. Then Bradley stopped short in front of a display of baby books. You felt his arm slip around your waist as he leaned down so his lips grazed your temple. 

"Been meaning to ask you, Princess," he said softly, and you turned to look up at him. His face was calm as his gaze dipped down to your lips. "Were you really buying a pregnancy test when you saw Meredith? You think you could be pregnant?"

"No!" you replied with a startled laugh. "Her lawyer just said that to get me upset! I'm not!"

"Okay," he said with a shrug. "Just checking to see if we should be buying any baby books."

You just shook your head as he set the books for Noah down near the registers. "Absolutely not! That would be a disaster."

"Nah," he whispered, taking out his wallet. "It would be okay. Well...maybe not quite yet, since you're just graduating now. But...later."

You were silent as he paid for the books, but you laced your fingers through his. You weren't sure quite what to say, as you and he walked across the street, so you just let your mind race with possibilities. 

And then you were seated at the adorable cafe table with him for lunch. The restaurant was all pastel colors, floral arrangements and expensive desserts. He ordered a bottle of champagne to share, and you were a little bit tipsy as you giggled and bit into a lemon macaron when the bill arrived. Your eyes bugged out when you saw it. Three hundred dollars. 

"Bradley," you gasped. "How much was the champagne?" 

"Don't worry about it," he said, giving you a funny look. 

But as you walked back toward the Bronco with his arm around your waist and a head full of champagne bubbles, you blurted out, "I'm not interested in you for your money."

"Never thought you were," he replied casually, opening the passenger door for you with a kiss. "Let's go stop by your place."

As he walked around to the driver's door, you knew you should insist that he drop you off at home. But when he climbed in, he turned to you and said, "I kind of miss Noah. Mind if we pick him up early after we stop to get you more clothing?"

And then your love for both of them felt so palpable all you could say was, "I miss him, too."

"It's settled then."

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

Later that evening, after the three of you went grocery shopping, Bradley watched you teach Noah how to play Go Fish on the living room floor with a forgotten bowl of popcorn next to you. He was essentially just your servant for the night, bringing both of you snacks and drinks while you played. Not that he minded at all. 

The fact that you tried to let him know you weren't into him just because he had a job and some money was pretty humorous. But then again, you'd just witnessed Meredith trying to fleece him. So while he didn't need you to say anything about it at all, he did appreciate that you had. 

Bradley had also surprised himself. When he considered that you might be pregnant? Well, he didn't hate the idea of it one bit. The more he thought about it, the more he wanted Noah to have a younger sibling or two. The more he thought about it, the more he wanted to raise said children with you. But you were young. There would be time to plan for that in the future.

He sat on the couch and sorted his mail from the past few days. He'd been so preoccupied with Meredith and Tracy and everything going on, he realized he needed to catch up on chores. "Almost time for bed, Bub," he said, smiling as you let Noah win at the card game. Then his hand froze before opening the envelope that arrived today. 

Deployment papers. 

If he hadn't skipped out on work again today, he would have been informed in person. Shit. Six weeks away from home. He watched you laughing as you ate a few pieces of popcorn. And then Noah was climbing into your lap and asking you to read another one of the books you'd picked out for him. 

"Okay, but your dad said it's almost bedtime. How about we go brush your teeth and get pajamas on? And then I'll read the outer space book before you do goodnight kisses?"

Noah readily agreed, and then you were leading him from the room. Bradley took the opportunity to email Tracy as well as send a text to Nat. His best friend had been bugging him to elaborate about yesterday, but she also knew he needed a little bit of time to process things and take a little break after all the worrying. 

"Daddy?" you called out, and Bradley smiled as he stood. "We're ready for bed."

"I'm coming." He sat on Noah's floor and listened to you read the book about solar systems and space exploration while Noah looked at the pictures. And when it was time for goodnight kisses, Noah gave you one and then Bradley leaned down to smother his face with a dozen. He giggled and then yawned, and as Bradley took your hand and pulled you out of the room, Noah's eyes were drifting closed. 

You started to pull Bradley toward his bedroom with a smirk, but he shook his head. The startled look on your face reminded him that you were only accustomed to getting what you wanted around here now. And he loved that. "I need to show you something first," he insisted, kissing your forehead. 

"Okay, but why do you sound so reserved?"

"Just come here, please." He picked up the mail from where he left it, and then he sat down on the couch. You eased yourself down next to him, taking the papers when he handed them to you. "You know what that is?"

"No." But as soon as you scanned the header, your eyes went wide. You read for a few seconds before whispering, "You're being deployed?"

"Yes," he replied, but you had returned to the document in your hands, your eyes moving quickly down the page before you wrapped your arms around his neck. 

"Who's going to care for Noah?! Bradley, he needs to be on a schedule with daycare. And someone needs to make sure he eats healthy dinners and snacks. And he needs bedtime stories and coloring books." You looked panicked, and then tears filled your eyes. "And I don't want you to go away. I'll miss you too much."

He collected you onto his lap and swiped your tears away as they fell, but he couldn't help but smile. Your concern for Noah, ever since the very first day, made him feel so calm. And he knew you loved his son. "Well, I'm kind of hoping you'll care for Noah while I'm gone."

"Me?" you squeaked, lips parted in surprise. "You'd trust me with Noah by myself for six weeks?"

"More than I'd trust anyone else."

You threw your arms around his neck again and sobbed against him. "I'll do it. I'll stay with Noah. I'll take expert care of him."

"You already do."

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

Oh, Daddy! We don't want you to leave! But the way he trusts Princess is everything. Hope you enjoy your fic, @beyondthesefourwalls And thank you @mak-32 !

PART 27

@hotch-meeeeeuppppp

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[feefivefoe]

Publicly, reader becomes the biggest diva Gotham has ever seen.

As soon as they realize that they aren't going anywhere, they deicide "ykw let's make this Bruce's problem" and play up the nepo baby stereotype to a t.

Why haven't they been in the public eye for so long?

"Daddy paid for me to live abroad for almost a decade! He left Gotham after his parents died, so he thought the new experiences after I lost my mom would help me broaden my horizons, or whatever. I just wish he let me stay in Paris longer, I liked the food there the most!"

How was it to be back?

"Ugh, don't even get me started. Now I have to deal with boy smell all day. It was sooooo much nicer to live in an empty penthouse. My life is pretty much over, but apparently Damian wanted to 'meet his blood sibling' or whatever."

Will you be taking any future role in Wayne Enterprises now that you've settled in?

"Is THAT what it's called? No way in hell. It's hard enough being around so many people all the time! No, the other one can do that."

Other one?

"My 3rd brother, whatever is name is. It started with a T...I think?"

Tim Drake?

"Yeah, that one!"

Their former friends and coworkers are both confused and horrified. First you go missing, then publicly get shown as a Wayne and with such a ditsy personality? Were they living in reality right now????

[wwaheoh]

“Your Hot Furry Boyfriend Takes You on a Date But Then Ethereal Horrors Beyond Your Understanding Interrupt [ASMR]” Von Lycaon x gnReader (Romantic)

a/n: was listening to an actual asmr rp video and realized how down bad i am

The cold night breeze whistled through the streets, a coat lended to you by your boyfriend, Von Lycaon, stopping you from feeling it in its entirety. There weren’t many others on the street, only a couple others milling about. Shops were beginning to be closed, street lamps buzzing to life, owls and cicadas beginning to sing as the Sun began to dip itself under the horizon.

Snuggling closely to your boyfriend, he wrapped his arm around you, the warmth of his fur and the solid feeling of his toned body provided were comforts of steady warmth. Smiling, the two of you continued on to your shared apartment, basking in each other's presence.

Then there was a boom.

Shattering the serenity of the evening, a dark pulsating sphere burst out in the middle of the area they were in. Screams rang out as people began to run away from the ever-growing ball. A newly formed Hollow was emerging.

Lycaon moved quickly, taking his phone out and dialing his colleague, “Rina, there’s a Hollow forming on Fifth Street.” He held you firmly, beginning to basically carry you as he moved to get you as far as possible from the emerging Hollow. “You know what to do.” Hanging up from his phone before pocketing it, he turned to you. “Let’s go Dear.”

Only a few steps before the Hollow burst, enclosing the entirety of the surrounding area in its new space-warping environment.

“Faster than expected…” He murmured to himself, a sense of worry building in him- though not outwardly exposing it, mannerisms learned from his years as part of Victoria Housekeeping. Without a Proxy, there was no way they could get out without getting lost within the Hollow themselves. All they could do was,

“Wait for Miss Rina.” Lycaon held you tight, knowing that your Ether Aptitude was way less than his. A safe estimation would be that you had twenty-three minutes until your time ran out. That would not happen.

As the two of you ventured throughout the Hollow, aiming to either encounter Public Security or be located by Phaethon- either way, being sitting ducks was not an option. At your behest, the both of you searched for survivors. It seemed most people followed protocols, encouraged to learn it by heart from a young age. You couldn’t not know what to do in case of a sudden Hollow appearing when living in New Eridu after all.

Just as you were looking through some windows, searching for the elderly or those unable to escape, Lycaon rushed forward in a blur of white being trailed by a cool blue. An Ethereal. It had just rounded the corner before being split into two and ultimately disintegrating back into the Unknown Substance of the Hollow. You rushed to be closer to him, before he raised his hand.

His ears rotated before his fur stood up. A break in his characteristic cool composure. Quickly, he grabbed you before you could even react and rushed the two of you behind an alley. Just as you were about to speak, he covered you mouth. You moved to shoot him a look of indignation before getting a good look at the expression he wore. Worried.

A shadow passed through the streets. It was large, about the size of a firetruck. Looking up, the two of you became petrified at the sight of the Ethereal. Bigger than any ever recorded, squid-like in it’s appearance. It flowed through the skies like water, a dead gaze as it searched for… something.

“Psst!”

The two of you jumped, Lycaon nearly punting the pint-sized newcomer before stopping himself midway through, the now recognized-Bangboo raising its small arms in surrender. “Wait! Miss Rina sent me!”

“Ah, Master Proxy. I apologize.”

“It’s fine! That weird squid Ethereal is something I’d expect to see at the Outpost! But forget that, let’s get you out of here.”

“Please, I think we have about thirteen minutes left.”

“Isn’t your Aptitude high?”

Lyacon motioned to you, with you waving as the Bangboo waved back.

The Bangboo turned back to the wolf-Thiren.

“Is that your…?”

“Significant other? Yes.”

“Wow! For some reason I both did and didn’t expect that…” The Bangboo muttered to themselves before turning back to lead them. Then they stopped before quickly motioning for everyone to hide.

The shadow of the titan-sized Ethereal passed by once more, now seemingly closer to touching down onto the ground than before.

“Alright let’s go!” The Bangboo whisper-yelled, waving for them to follow. As they passed and rounded a few more corners, the Bangboo seemed to have gotten a premonition, “Ethereals!” Lyacon burst forward to protect the team as mentioned Etherals burst out of the woodwork, black charcoal bodies with green oozing out from their underbody.

He stepped forward before bursting into motion, leaving a small crater where he used the ground as a starter block. Quickly disposing of the enemies in a professional matter, none of the Ethereals could even hope to land an attack as he fought, decimating their numbers with practiced ease.

Taking out his watch as you and the Bangboo caught up with him, you noticed a furrow in his brow. Questioning it, he replied, “Eight more minutes. Phatheon, we must hurry.”

“Right!” The Bangboo replied, scurrying forward to lead the group out once more. Passing through a few portals. The tell-tale sound of Public Security vehicles and Rescue Bangboo becoming more audible as your group began to reach the exit.

“EEEAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!”

A screech that could be heard from all throughout the Hollow, turning back, all three of you watched as the Ethereal noticed your group, having sacrificed hiding for efficiency in haste to get out. The being began to approach with frightening haste, unnatural in how something so big could move so fast.

Breaking out of his stupor fast, Lycaon hoisted you and the Bangboo up with his arms and began to sprint in the direction Phaethon pointed them in before being disrupted.

“Where to Master Phaethon?”

“Left!”

“Now take a right!”

“One more- oh jeez it’s catching up!”

Lyacon used every ounce of strength in each push his legs gave, pushing through stray smaller Ethereals, not wanting to give the monstrosity chasing them a chance to catch up. After a few more blocks, it had gotten so close that you could hear the squelching of it’s tendrils, with it only being stopped by the buildings. Just as it seemed that it would begin to make a grab at Lyacon, gunfire rang out.

Public Security, with this particular group headed by Zhu Yuan and Qingyi, with backup from neighboring departments as well as their very own, laid down gunfire on the Ethereal. Forcing it to evade to avoid taking the brunt of the firepower being let out on it.

“Phatheon!”

“One more right!”

He barreled forward, just as a wave of nausea hit you. Two more minutes.

Sprinting forward, he fell into one final tear in reality, arriving in a space in front of the Hollow.

Setting you and the Bangboo down, he let you catch your breath as he reconvend with Phaethon.

“I am in your debt, Master Proxy. Money will be forward-”

“I- It’s fine Sir!”

“Pardon?”

“Just for this once! Take it as a token of good faith.”

Lyacon smiled, nodding as he turned his attention back to you, leaving the Bangboo to return back home.

“Are you okay?” “‘m fine… just tired.” “Of course, let's have you checked then we can return home, okay?” “Mm…”

You nodded off to sleep as he lifted you in his arms, taking you over to the doctor to get checked. Waking you up only for a little bit before falling right back to sleep after all the tests were done. You were cleared- only being exhausted from prolonged exposure to the Hollow.

Setting you softly onto the shared bed, Lycaon softly caressed the top of your head. Thankful for having been able to get you out with minimal roadblocks. Had the two of you been even a little slower…

Best not to think about it.

Later, the Hollow would be contained once more through the combined efforts of Public Security and the military sector based in Scott Outpost. Only a few casualties- a testimony to the effectiveness of their efficiency.

[sweetercalypso]

Uncharted Territory (Abby Anderson)

Word Count: 2.7k

Summary: Stranded on patrol with the person you hate most, there’s not much to do besides fuck out your feelings

Notes: 18+ only, minors dni; enemies to lovers, hate sex, thigh riding, tribbing, semi-public sex, mean!Abby, switch!Abby, mentions of weapons/cordyceps (general tlou references), lots of swearing.

The fear settling in your gut should serve as a reminder of where you are.

Truthfully, it reminds you of where you are not. You are not sleeping peacefully in your bunk, or eating in the cafeteria with your friends, or anywhere under the protection of WLF and its adherents. You’re forced to focus on the places you’re not because you don’t actually know where you are.

You, and your patrol partner, Abby, are lost.

Your blonde counterpart walks five paces ahead, never bothering to look over her shoulder to see if you’re in tow. It’s your responsibility to keep up, she’d told you earlier in the day. I’m making it back – with or without you.

Now, you focus on her braided ponytail swishing between her shoulder blades in an effort to distract from the pain in your muscles and the burning ache in your calves.

The two of you have been walking for hours, not entirely sure of the direction or the destination. Abby seemed to be following a trail, but what was once eroded by familiarity now offers only bare traces of the path underfoot. It’s been a long time since anyone’s been where you are now.

Tall, heavy spruces block the view of the horizon, limiting the ability to gauge how far you’ve travelled or how close you are to the city.

While you’re surveying the thicket of trees around you, a root sticking up from the dirt catches you by surprise and sends you stumbling forward with a muttered oof.

Abby stops in her path, turning sharply to stare at you. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“I tripped.”

She scoffs. “Yeah, I know. So does every other person lurking in the fucking woods.”

Your eyebrows pinch together, heat rising to your face as you struggle to maintain your composure. “Abby, there’s no one around for miles.”

“You think I don’t know that? I’m talking about the infected – what if you just woke up a hoard because you fell over their roots?”

“It was a tree root!” you spit back, offended that Abby would consider you to be so careless. “You could’ve warned me about it, by the way. Or you could at least tell me where we’re going.”

“I told you,” she seethes. “I’m going back to the truck.”

The two of you had been a part of a larger group of WLF members sent out to survey an area east of the city. Beyond the stadium and the neighborhoods surrounding it, there was an unkempt expanse of evergreens that stretched hundreds of acres deep. A few days ago, whisps of smoke were spotted rising through the treetops a couple miles in, and Isaac had prepared a group to investigate.

Ten people rode out to the location, including yourself and Abby. Most of the group suspected a small fire in the midst of Washington’s dry season, and a few others figured it was a group of stragglers setting up camp under the cover of the dense forest. Either way, there was little cause for alarm.

The group was split into pairs and instructed to search in small areas before reporting back to the vehicles with their findings. Provided with a crudely hand-drawn map and not much else, you and Abby left in search of whatever person or thing had caused the fire.

Somewhere along the way, you’d missed a turn or walked too far along a path and the two of you got lost, venturing deeper into the woods than you were supposed to. When you suggested that you retrace your steps, nothing on the map seemed familiar, and there was nothing to indicate that another group might be nearby.

You should’ve known something like this would happen. Anytime Abby was around, it was bad news – and she thought the same of you. Your mutual hatred was something the entire WLF base had heard about, and many had witnessed the arguments and shouting matches first-hand.

When the two of you were paired together by Manny, you could see the snickers on the faces of the other group members. Abby had huffed under her breath before shoving the map in your hands and flipping Manny off as she stomped in the opposite direction.

You were in charge of the map, but Abby ultimately had the final say in the direction you took, and you both blamed each other for the position you were in now.

“Abby, we’re walking in circles. How much longer are you going to pretend like you know where we’re going?”

Sweat rolls down the side of your neck and the strap of your gun digs uncomfortably into your shoulder. It’s clear that Abby’s in the same state of exhaustion as she adjusts the heavy holster on her hip. She hadn’t even bothered to count the bullets left between you – you’d die anyway without a way out of the forest.

“M’sorry, do you have a better plan?” she asks, cocking her head to the side. “It’s your fault we’re lost, anyway.”

“My fault?” You stomp towards her, uncaring of the dry branches that snap under your feet. “How s’it my fault, Abby? You were the one in charge.”

“You had the map,” she insists, shoving her finger into your chest when you stop in front of her. “You should’ve been paying more attention.”

“Yeah, well you were the one in front. You must’ve led us the wrong way.” You say, enjoying the way Abby’s jaw tenses in frustration.

“When we get back, I’ll make sure Isaac knows that his favorite little lap dog is incapable of following directions.”

Abby’s expression morphs into that of rage. She pushes you away, sending you stumbling back a step.

“Fuck you,” she pants, puffing out her chest.  

You react without thinking and shove her back, much harder than either of you had anticipated.

The shock sends Abby thudding onto the ground, her hands catching her weight before her ass hits the dirt. She kicks out in retaliation and swipes your feet from under you, sending you toppling over her form and driving you both onto the ground.

Landing against her chest, you’re forced to plant your hands on her shoulders to keep yourself upright. Abby’s chest heaves against yours and she scoots her hips to buck you off, unintentionally jostling you closer as you wrap your thighs around her waist to keep from being thrown onto the ground.

She grabs your hips and squeezes roughly in an effort to keep you from squirming any closer. When you stop to look at her, you’re astonished by the view. Her pupils are blown wide and strands of hair stick to her flushed cheeks and you can’t help but imagine that this is what she looks like when she fucks. Her breath comes in short puffs against your face and she licks her lips before tucking her chin to her chest to avoid the closeness of your position.

Overwrought with adrenaline, you follow the tilt of her head and smash your lips onto hers roughly. She pushes back after the surprise wears off, kissing you with fervor until you’re both forced to part for air.

“What the fuck was that?”

“I-I don’t know, I just thought –.”

Abby cuts you off by pressing your lips together again and curling one hand around your jaw.

“Don’t” she murmurs against your mouth. “Don’t think. Just take your fucking pants off.”

With her free hand, she works to remove the holster at her hip and you’re suddenly aware of the weapon still secured across your chest. You break the kiss to undo the strap from your shoulder, setting the gun to the side before yanking your shirt off and throwing it somewhere behind you. Your bra follows shortly after, and when you return your attention to Abby, she’s watching you with hunger in her eyes.

“S’pretty,” she says, cupping your breasts and running her calloused fingers over your smooth skin. The warmth of her hands paired with the humid summer air melts the uncertainty from your bones and you press yourself into her touch without restraint.

“Who knew such a pest could have such nice tits.”

There’s a playful bite to her words and it’s reflexive the way you respond with the same fire.

“Always knew I’d be the one on top,” you quip, moving over her with a sugary voice and a faux roll of your hips. “Y’wanna take charge but you never do. You’re all bark and no bite.”

She bucks her hips up to jostle you in your place, grinning slyly when you lose your balance. “You’ve thought about this before then, huh?”

“Thought about what? Putting you in your place? All the time.”

Your hands go to the hem of Abby’s shirt, shucking the material up to her chest. She takes the hint and raises her arms up, letting you tug the fabric over her head. She reaches around her back to undo her bra, pulling it off and adding it to the mess of clothes around you.

Abby sits up with you in her lap and puts one hand on the back of your neck, bringing her lips to your throat to plant kisses anywhere she can reach. While she’s busy marking your flushed skin with her lips and grazing teeth, you work open the button of your pants and shimmy the thick material down your hips.

You remove yourself from her lap just long enough to pull your pants off while Abby takes the chance to do the same. When you’re bare to each other and the silent forest around you, she pulls you back on top of her and runs her hands up your sides.

“Y’gonna let me taste your pretty pussy? Huh? Gonna come on my mouth? Or d’you want my fingers instead? Bet you’re so pretty when you s—.”

You groan out loud, putting a hand over Abby’s mouth playfully. “Stop talking and fuck me.”

She laughs heartily against your palm, a chirpy sound you don’t think you’ve heard from her before. “Yes ma’am.”

Your hands move to her shoulders as Abby slots one of her thighs between yours, creating a divine pressure between your legs. Shifting your hips experimentally, you stutter over the muscled expanse of her thigh. The stimulation proves to be too much for your frantic mind and you struggle to keep a steady pace.

“Abby-” you choke out, thoughts too static to think of a better plead.

She grunts in acknowledgement, seeming to understand what you’re asking for. Her grip becomes pinching on your hips as she slides your cunt over your toned thigh, flexing her muscles in a way that sends an unexpected tremor through your clit.  

The sudden pleasure makes you cry out, furrowing your brows together and throwing your head back as Abby leads your movements.

“S’that all it takes to get you to quit running your mouth? Y’just needed to get fucked, huh?”

Abby closes the space between the two of you, leaning in to kiss you again. She nips at your bottom lip, sinking her teeth into the gentle skin there and tugging sharply. A broken moan escapes your parted lips and she takes the opportunity to slip her tongue into your mouth.

A sheen of slick glistens against her skin where you slide your puffy clit over her thigh. It takes all of your energy to remain upright as she ruts your hips over hers with a pace that blurs the line between pleasure and punishment.

You pull away from her mouth to suck in a breath of air, taking the chance to warn Abby of the tension building in your core.

“Gonna come, mmph – please.”

“That’s it,” she grunts, eager eyes transfixed on your tits bouncing in front of her face. “Let go – make a mess, baby.”

Pleasure overrides your senses, flooding your veins with a rich intensity and filling your chest with warmth. Your cunt throbs against her thigh, slick dribbling down her skin in sappy rivulets. She lets you ride out your orgasm for a minute longer, still grinding your hips against her thigh until you become too sensitive to continue.

“Too much,” you rasp, letting your hands rest on top of Abby’s as she slows the pace of your hips.

You gently squeeze her fingers in appreciation and the intimacy of your touch is almost too much for Abby to handle. She feels her own cunt clench at the sudden realization of your position – Abby might be the one making you come, but the way you command her through subtle touch lets her know that she’s not the only one capable of taking charge.

“S’my turn to make you feel good.”

Your voice snaps Abby out of her thoughts and she watches you reposition yourself between her legs to press your slick cunt against hers. Abby lets you have control, leaning back and resting on her elbows while you hover over her on your knees.

Your hands grasp at her thighs, forcing them further apart to make enough room for you to move. After a moment of adjustment, you find the perfect angle to rub your sensitive clit against hers, causing you to hiss from the feeling of bittersweet overstimulation.

The silence from Abby is unfamiliar and you can’t help but taunt her as you rock your hips into hers.

“Always got something smart to say – where’s that energy now? Cat got your tongue?”

Her expression is foreign, somewhere between needy and content, and you want to study her features until you’ve discovered every detail you’ve missed in willful ignorance.

“Lemme hear you,” you say, coaxing her into a comfortable state. “Don’t hide from me now.”

Abby breaks from her stoic mask for just a moment, allowing herself to openly enjoy the drag of your clit against her delicate bundle of nerves. Her moans are raspy and guttural and pure heaven, and you move against her cunt faster in hopes of drawing more sounds from the blonde underneath you.

The air is thick with your shared pants and the lewd sound of your cunts grinding together. Your combined slick wets the insides of Abby’s thighs and travels up to your naval, smeared over your skin like a translucent haze.

Abby glances down at where you’re connected, humming appreciatively at the sight. “So fuckin’ pretty” she says, mind reduced to nothing by the pleasure coursing through her body. “Next time, you’re putting that pretty pussy on my face.”

The promise of something more is what pushes you over the edge for the second time, sending you forward onto Abby’s chest with a pitiful cry. Abby wraps one arm around you and bucks her hips wildly, finding her own climax as you pant against her mouth.

Her muscled legs tighten around your thighs when she comes against you, pulling you impossibly closer as she comes down from her high. The shwick of your cunts rubbing against each other falters as her movements come to an end.

The stillness of the forest engulfs the two of you in awkward silence, neither of you entirely sure of what to say now that the adrenaline has worn off. You open your mouth to speak, but before you can say anything to relieve the awkward tension in your chest, you’re interrupted by the sound of branches breaking underfoot.

Your eyes widen in shock to find another pair of WLF members standing a couple yards away, looking like they’ve stumbled upon the implausible.

Manny wears a devious grin, like he’d foreseen this exact outcome when he sent the two of you on patrol together. Nora stands beside him with her gun in hand, and you can imagine she was expecting something else waiting beyond the trees by the look of shock on her face.

“Now that’s something I thought I’d never see.”

Abby groans and hides her face in your neck, growing more flushed with each second spent under her friends’ scrutiny.

Manny howls with laughter, patting Nora on the shoulder as they turn their backs to give you the privacy to get dressed and find your composure. You mumble a string of curses under your breath as you slowly remove yourself from Abby while trying to block out your friends’ awkward presence. Manny’s voice breaks through the hands you have pressed over your ears, still rumbling with laughter as he shakes his head.

“You two are never gonna live this down.”

[bullet-prooflove]

The Prettiest Damn Thing: Russell Shaw x Reader

Tagging: @kmc1989 @claymoresofinfamy23 @mqdhvtter @bribow010 @encounterthepast

Companion piece to:

The War Correspondent - A mysterious phone call from a retired War Correspondent leads Russell on a journey he doesn't expect.

Home - Russell comes home to you after a rough day.

When Russell was working for Horizon, he used to call you from payphones on the road. He’d find an excuse to leave his team, usually a supply run and then head out to one he’d reconned earlier.

“Hey beautiful.” He’d always begin. “Just checking in.”

That feeling he’d get in his chest when he heard your voice, it gave him something to live for, especially on the darkest of nights, the ones where the job almost killed him.

After every call he’d dial a random number, usually a restaurant he’d clocked on the way through town before asking their opening hours and hanging up. It was another precaution, another way of keeping you safe because Russell, he’s never trusted Horizon and he certainly didn’t trust those assholes he worked with.

“What are you thinking about?” You ask, interrupting his thoughts and Russell tilts his head towards you.

You are just the prettiest damn thing, sitting in the passenger seat of the convertible, wearing that white, lace dress. There’s flowers threaded through your hair and you’ve stolen a pair of his shades you from the glove compartment.

He doesn’t think he’s ever seen a more beautiful bride.

“That payphone back there, it made me a little nostalgic.” He says, his gaze fixing on the road once more. The silver ring on his finger glints in the light from the sun as his grip tightens on the steering wheel, the way it always does when he thinks about his time with Horizon.

“Do you miss it?” You ask him and Russell shakes his head.

The months apart, the secrecy, the paranoia. Always looking over his shoulder, always worrying about the fall out. No, he doesn’t miss a damn thing.

“I like what we have.” He tells you, his hand reaching for yours across the gear shaft. “The security firm we’ve built, it gives me that adrenaline without the PTSD.”

After what happened with Doug he couldn’t stay with Horizon so he’d defected. The two of you had taken a trip out of the country for a while, spending a little time on a beach while he recuperated. Those few weeks had given him the space he needed to take a beat, to reevaluate his options.

“I have an idea.” You had said one evening when you were curled up on a hammock together. He’d been half asleep, listening to the sound of the ocean and you’d been draped across his chest, his fingertips combing through your hair. “Come work with me.”

“Honey, I think you get to boss me around enough as it is.” He’d mumbled against your hairline. “Besides it’s a little too domestic for me.”

The truth is, he worries about getting bored. The way he was raised, the life he’s led, cheating spouses and lost cats are not going to be enough for him. He’s an adrenaline junkie at heart, he needs something that challenges him, that gets his heart racing.

“Russell.” You say, tilting your head up towards him with that knowing smile of yours. “You have no idea the shit I get up to when you’re not around. Think less creeping in the bushes and more Magnum P.I.”

You can’t be serious he thinks, it can’t be that exciting but it is. It’s reclaiming stolen paintings, breaking into restricted spaces to detect security flaws, it’s tracking down a cult because they’ve been disappearing people and the police can’t help. The two of you work together just like one of his black ops teams and Russell enjoys every single moment of it.

Which leads him to where he is now, in the convertible with his new wife racing towards a DOD black site because his brother’s gone completely off the reservation.

“Colter’s gonna like me right?” You ask, your fingertips tapping a rhythm on the car door, your gaze fixed firmly on the road.

“Honey, we’re about to break him out of one of the most secure facilities in the country on our wedding day.” Russ tells you as he shifts gears and puts his foot down. “Trust me, he’s gonna love you.”

Love Russ? Don’t miss any of his stories by joining the taglist here.

Interested in supporting me? Join my Patreon for Bonus Content!

Like My Work? - Why Not Buy Me A Coffee

[anim-ttrpgs]

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy July 11th Update, Wolfmania, Our Biggest Update Yet!

This update was delayed by about one week, but I think everyone will find that this was well worth it, as this has been our most significant update ever to the rulebook and general content of Eureka. Where do I even begin?

Maybe I’ll start with the best part. For a limited time, this update is FREE! You can grab a PDF from the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club Discord server from now (July 11th 2024) until the next book club round starts! (Which will probably be about a month.)

Here’s just a few of the highlights for this update, you’ll find the full changelog below.

Major cleanup and copy-editing is underway again finally, and we managed to eliminate 42 pages of unnecessary blank space and extraneous text, as well as rewording and reorganizing many rules sections to make them clearer and easier to read. You now only have to read 20 pages before the first mention of how to roll dice, rather than 70.

Ten new character traits.

A PC’s Wealth stat now has a much greater effect on them in more areas of gameplay.

A ton of new art assets.

A bunch of massive improvements to combat that make it flow smoother with fewer interruptions, some of these improvements will be discussed in detail in their own post.

Repurposed Chapter 7 into being a chapter dedicated to GMing and homebrew.

Huge cleanups to the supernatural chapter.

Some changes to monsters overall to make them more modular and less restrictive in character creation.

Two new playable “supernatural” “creatures.”

Two new mage traits as well. (Which also double as two new spells for the witch)

The weaknesses of a vampire are now a bit more subjective and modular. For instance, in character creation you can trade off a greater sensitivity to garlic for a more potent sense of smell, or a lesser sensitivity to garlic for a weaker sense of smell. Vampires are now also explicitly thematically tied to religion, religious trauma, and religious horror.

Wolfmania! The wolfman monster now has different transformation options during character creation. You now choose your wolfman PC’s partial wolf transformation and full wolf transformation, with four options for each. There are some major narrative trade-offs for different combinations but I’ll let you figure that out for yourself.

Then, there is "The Eye of Neptune." "The Eye of Neptune" is a Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy adventure module that has languished in an unfinished state for like six months, but we finally got it like 99% complete. The only thing missing are the maps and the artwork, which it is fully playable without.

Man has built a city of steel and black blood atop the endless abyss. It is a beating heart bound together with labyrinthian pipe veins. Hundreds of miles away from civilization, it stands in the midst of the Gulf of Mexico with naught but empty horizons around it. Within is a vast structure of winding halls, grinding machinery, and thousands upon thousands of small parts working to achieve a grand design. It is the Offshore Oil Rig Neptune, and it was once run by 200 workers. Now, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has fallen to more or less a dozen. These last vestiges of life in the rig spread themselves thin and work their hands to the bone to keep the massive beast running. In the midst of this overwhelming isolation, two members of the already shorthanded crew are unaccounted for, Seth Barlowe and Lukas Ward. The installation manager, Noah, has convened a meeting to try to find out what happened to him. With the crew already severely shorthanded and tensions running high, a mysterious disappearance is the last thing anyone needs. 

You can get a copy of The Eye of Neptune, as well as another adventure module, several stories, and continuous monthly rulebook updates from our Patreon for only $5/month!

Now here's the full changelog! I'm mercifully putting it under a Read More because it's our longest one yet!

CHANGE LOG 

Copy-editing Progress: Thoroughly copy-edited up to p. 47.

CHAPTER 1

Better clarified how Heat increases.

Minor edit to Role of the Narrator.

Changed the name of Chapter 1 to “Core Gameplay Rules”

Minor tweak/clarification to what happens with a 7-9 on a Heat roll.

Instead of +1 Heat when the villain is in league with the police, Heat now simply does not decrease for the duration of the adventure. 

Heat rolls are now made whenever an investigator’s Heat increases by 3 or more within a single scene, rather than being made on multiples of 3 Heat.

Added another entry to the list of how Heat can increase

How much Heat an investigator starts the adventure with is now based on their Wealth stat.

Minor sentence reworks

Added a more detailed story of A.N.I.M. and Eureka’s history to the foreword

Moved Verisimilitude section out of Foreword down below Inspirations 

Moved “Deadly Combat, Permanent Consequences” to Chapter 3 above Grievous Wounds

Moved the “Monsters” section of the foreword to Chapter 8

Better clarified starting Heat

Lots of copy-editing and minor twinning, additions, and tweaks

Fixed the Quick Term definition for Truth being inaccurate.

Moved a bunch of sections from Chapter 1 to Chapter 7, including Heat

CHAPTER 2

Fixed the Believer Snoop accidentally being put with the Woo-Woo trait

Tweaked the None of My Business Trait

Changed Traits section to “Mundane Trait List”

Changed the amount of Penetrative HP for Not Finished Yet trait to 13 instead of 10

Added holster to item list.

Found out bump stocks are no-longer illegal 

Added “It’s for a Book” trait 

Added “Moneybags” trait

Added “The Ascot” trait 

Added “Gang Way!” trait 

Added “Dangerprone Damsel” trait

Added “Master of Disguise” Trait.

Added “Ninja” Trait

Added “Quick Draw” trait

Edited the Food Budget item to be more clear

Changed it so that guns no-longer come with bullets, these must be bought separately

Changed having +2 Wealth to “middle class” and +3 Wealth to “upper middle class,” to better describe how the Wealth skill actually influences the game

The formula for calculating WP is now 3D6+6+[Wealthx2]

Increased the WP price for certain items to reflect the above change

Added “Frugal” trait 

Added “Kleptomaniac” trait

Added art of example investigator Nick Morgan

Moved a bunch of sections from Chapter 2 to Chapter 7

Moved some stuff about investigators losing items to Chapter 7

Moved some stuff about homebrewing traits into Chapter 7

Changed the name of Chapter 2 to “How to Make an Investigator” because now all the NPC stuff is moved to Chapter 7

Better clarified skills

Changed the heading “Additional Traits” to “Choosing More Than Three Traits”

CHAPTER 3

Added clarification that sometimes it does matter whether a weapon is a blunt weapon, a piercing weapon, or a cutting weapon, and we trust players to be able to intuit what types of weapons are what.

Made animal teeth and animal claws separate entries on the weapon list

Better clarified when Speed needs to be calculated and when it doesn't

Explained what a node map is

Removed the rules for doing turn order based on Reflexes rolls, and finally made it so that Epicenter Initiative works with firearms combat.

Added rules for equipping weapons during combat

You now add Acceleration bonus to Athletics rolls for characters moving long distances in theater of the mind combat. Need to go around and remove the special speeds for various supernatural characters. 

Added a section that explains why so many pages is dedicated to combat despite this game being an investigation game primarily

Added art of some small knives

Put “Deadly Combat, Permanent Consequences” to this chapter instead of the Foreword

CHAPTER 4

Added some art to the gun information list 

Made Fully Automatic Fire have a hard limit of 12 bullets per attack. 

Added Quick Cycling rule, allowing characters with a +2 or more in Firearms to fire Two-round Bursts with Single-Action and Repeating firearms.

CHAPTER 5

Added rule for ride-by attacks to basic melee attack

Better clarified Escape

Attempts to disarm a character now have bonuses or penalties based on the difference between the Athletics skill of the two characters involved, similar to how Escape attempts work. 

CHAPTER 6

Clarified that Acceleration is not affected by Composure

Tiny tweak to how chases are described

Better clarified when Speed needs to be calculated and when it doesn't

CHAPTER 7

Added “How We Play Eureka” section explaining which optional rules we personally do and don't prefer

Changed the name of Chapter 7 to “Advanced Narration and Homebrewing”

Added a ton of stuff from other chapters to Chapter 7 to make it a general chapter for Narrators as well as help with game/module design and homebrewing. It is currently a little bit of a mess but is at least serviceable until we get to the point where we can fully copy-edit it.

CHAPTER 8

Minor vampire tweaks

Made it so that that the vampire sensitivity to certain scents is more codified and now causes composure rolls, and now works more like their compulsion to count things in that the placement of the weakness on their tiers of fear determines how much of a bonus they have to Senses checks involving smell and taste. 

Adjusted Even Monsters are Afraid of Something section to reflect the above changes 

Added more mechanics for how NPC vampires interact mechanically with weaknesses. 

Better clarified the full moon roll for wolfmen. It is now just 1D12+1. 

Better codified superhuman strength as a rule.

Gave the math for handling consistent HP across alternate supernatural forms its own section.

Completely redid the wolfman wolf forms. Now during character creation players can choose one of four options for each of the wolfman’s wolf forms, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. Up to 16 possible combinations! Wolfmania!

Improved the werewolf trait to fit with the updates to wolfman

Adjusted wolf manifestation of vampire to fit with new wolfman rules. 

Better clarified vampire claws

Added Supernatural Bonuses and Investigation Rolls section

Tweaked wolfman involuntary transformation so that the form they rampage in is still random even if they are already in a wolf form when the rampage starts

Changed stats of vampire’s bat manifestation

Better clarified vampire sunlight and silver weakness mechanics

Totally revamped vampire’s monstrous beast manifestation 

Redid the Superhuman Speed mage trait, made it a lot better 

Improved the Stealth bonus of the Invisibility mage trait

Improved Stealth bonuses of thing from beyond.

Added a “Purpose” mechanic to living dolls, which is what the doll in question was built to do. When they act towards this purpose, they get +1 to rolls, and when they fail or otherwise ignore their purpose, they may lose Composure. 

Updated Even Monsters are Afraid of Something section to reflect the above

Made it so wolfmen lose 2 Composure from skipping a meal instead of 1.

Clarified that the thing from beyond does not need to stay in human shape the entire time they are digesting a human victim. 

Clarified the possibility of escaping from a monstrous supernatural beast’s stomach for both the giant wolfman forms and the monstrous vampire manifestation. 

Clarified Telekinesis trait

Added “Manifest Weaponry” Mage Trait

Added “Incredible Strength” Mage Trait

Added ability for an investigator to be a talking dog.

Changed “wannabe monster hunter” to just “monster hunter” and added a new sidebar

Rewriting large chunks of the first half of chapter 8, redefining each type of supernatural investigator, and adding a fourth category of investigator. Work in progress

Monster investigators now only require 18 investigation points instead of 21. 

Removed “Is this a monster or a mage” section. This is no-longer needed now that these categories are more clearly defined. 

Removed blood sacrifice from the witch’s true nature and just committed to making it be about cannibalism and about using magic–any of their magic–for petty and/or entirely selfish reasons. 

Gave witches a proper weakness

Changed the name of the witch to Fairytale Witch

Moved Alternative Witch into the misc. category

Removed large chunks of chapter 8 that were either no-longer needed or had become so outdated as to be contradictory to other rules

Vampires now gain 1 additional point of Composure for every 5 Morale or Composure damage they do to their victim during an attack, to better codify how they feed on human suffering as much as the literal blood they drink.

Added the “Monsters” section of the Foreword to this chapter instead

Changed the name of the Thing From Beyond’s “Shapeshifter” trait to “Imposter Syndrome”

Moved some stuff about homebrewing traits into Chapter 7

Elegantly designed and thoroughly playtested, Eureka represents the culmination of three years of near-daily work from our team, as well as a lot of our own money. If you’re just now reading this and learning about Eureka for the first time, you missed the crowdfunding window unfortunately, but our Kickstarter page is still the best place to learn more about what Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy actually is, as that is where we have all the fancy art assets, the animated trailer, links to video reviews by podcasts and youtubers, and where we post regular updates on the status of our progress finishing the game and getting it ready for final release.

Beta Copies through the Patreon

If you want more than just status updates, going forward you can download regularly updated playable beta versions of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy and it’s adventure modules by subscribing to our Patreon at the $5 tier or higher. Subscribing to our patreon also grants you access to our patreon discord server where you can talk to us directly and offer valuable feedback on our progress and projects.

The A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club

If you would like to meet the A.N.I.M. team and even have a chance to play Eureka with us, you can join the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club discord server. It’s also just a great place to talk and discuss TTRPGs, so there is no schedule obligation, but the main purpose of it is to nominate, vote on, then read, discuss, and play different indie TTRPGs. We put playgroups together based on scheduling compatibility, so it’s all extremely flexible. This is a free discord server, separate from our patreon exclusive one. https://discord.gg/7jdP8FBPes

Other Stuff

We also have a ko-fi and merchandise if you just wanna give us more money for any reason.

We hope to see you there, and that you will help our dreams come true and launch our careers as indie TTRPG developers with a bang by getting us to our base goal and blowing those stretch goals out of the water, and fight back against WotC's monopoly on the entire hobby. Wish us luck.

[markrosewater]

I think you made a great point about Universes Beyond from a design standpoint and true in my experience playing the cards. I've played Hobbits vs Sauron regularly and had a blast. I have a Lara Croft Commander deck that is one of my favorites. Captain America looks both fun and flavorfully perfect. Throw and Catch is a perfect encapsulation of how he functions in comics.

But as a person satisfied by the design, I still can't help but feel uncomfortable. A lot of this is a premium product, limited in it's release and distributed in a way that makes players getting it difficult. Most people don't know Lara Croft exists and won't know the fun of bringing Legendary Artifacts and Lands back with her.

It also just feels like too many cards. A lot of people had already been complaining about too many set releases before Universes Beyond ramped up, and this is just adding to it. Too many sets and cards to keep up with. And it's expensive. Personally, if Magic went back down in set releases and had 1 universe beyond a year, it wouldn't feel like too much.

The design team is killing it with these cards. You have to read so much negativity that I do want to make clear I'm loving most of what is being designed. Even the cards in Universes not for me I can recognize cool mechanical and flavorful design. The parts that dissatisfy me are the parts you and the design team are not involved in. Too much and too expensive. Thank you for reading and keep up the good work.

One point that I think has been missed is that 2025 has less overall product releases than 2024. Here's what released in 2024:

Ravnica Remastered

Murders at Karlov Manor

Fallout

Outlaws of Thunder Junction

Modern Horizons III

Assassin's Creed

Bloomburrow

Duskmourn

Foundations

That's nine new product releases, eight with new card designs (Ravnica Remastered was all reprints), and eight that were booster releases (Fallout was just Commander decks).

Here's what we're releasing in 2025 (and this is it, we announced everything):

Innistrad Remastered

Aetherdrift

Tarkir Dragonstorm

Final Fantasy

Edge of Eternities

Spider-Man

Unannounced Universes Beyond product

Note: Foundations continues to be on sale, but with the same content it had in 2024

That's seven new product releases, six with new card designs (Innsitrad Remastered is all reprints), and seven that are booster releases.

That's two less new releases, two less new products with new content, and one less new booster release.