#idk if i need to add a warning for his eye infection it’s not that graphic

[marty--party]

who the hell is this guy ….

haven’t tried gijinka in awhile and man i forgot how fun making designs are :D

[lipglossanon]

Crossing the Frame

Infected!Leon S. Kennedy and fem!reader

Warnings: 18+ MDNI, one shot, horror, body horror, unwanted insemination, OC, mentions of blood/death/bodily harm, vomiting, reader called chief

not proofread; inspired by the Alien series; something before October—might add more later idk

title from Crossing the Frame by Coheed and Cambria

It’s sudden. One moment you’re empty, a void unto yourself. The next, your eyes are open, unseeing as your brain begins to think again, thoughts filling the crevices of your mind. 

You cough violently, curling onto your side, an homage to your fetal beginnings. Pressing a hand to your abdomen, a skittering fear runs down your spine like spider legs. 

Something isn’t right. 

Closing your eyes, you struggle to remember why you’re here. You were to help an agent… one who had been infected by the Plagas strain. Kennedy, you think. The president’s lapdog. 

Pain radiates through your pelvis and you gasp wetly. It needs out, you think. Followed immediately by, what needs out? What’s inside you? Bile rises in your throat. 

Weak as a newborn kitten, you raise up onto your knees. Turning your face away, you gag and cough, a mix of stringy bile and saliva spilling from your mouth. 

A headache throbs behind your right eye; slipping your glasses off, you cup the socket and gently rub your eyelid. It doesn’t ease the pain—but it doesn’t make it worse—so you give up and put your glasses back on. 

Finally looking around, you take in the mess of what was once the lab. Beakers and burners are overturned, unknown liquid spilling off the surface and onto the floor; papers are scattered about like someone just tossed them before leaving. Another searing cramp makes you double over even further, breasts pressing against the tops of your thighs, hands hugging your stomach as you cry out painfully. 

Once you can breathe without wanting to die, you ease back up, slowly climbing to your feet so you can find help. There’s no one left in the lab and the door’s opened halfway, showcasing an empty hallway as far as you can see. 

Shuffling steps outside halt your own progress—hip digging into a counter as you freeze in place. 

“Hello?” Your voice cracks and you have to clear your throat—the dry heaving from earlier making it sting. “Hello?!”

A rattling breath makes you duck behind the counter—unable to see—only able to hear the door being pressed fully open while those same footsteps shuffle inside. 

“Hello,” a voice whispers, “are you in here, Chief?”

You slowly arch your neck up to peek over the counter. An intern, Andy you recall, looks around the room, hand cupping his side where blood has stained through his lab coat. Pushing yourself up, you use the counter as a crutch in order to stand in place. 

“Thank god! You’re alive!” He smiles, hazel eyes tired and strained. 

“What happened?” You rasp, swallowing to smooth your vocal cords. “I think I have a concussion.”

“The subject escaped. Leon Kennedy,” the intern steps closer, wincing with the movement. “He was infected with—“

“Plagas, I remember that,” you gesture to his side. “What about this? Or why’s the room trashed? I think I’m—“

Infected. The word curdles on your tongue like spoiled milk. 

“I woke up already bleeding,” he moves his coat and shirt aside, showing off the padded gauze and tape keeping it bandaged. “I think I got cut from the window overlooking the observation room. It shattered when he broke out.”

You nod, short flashes of memories coming back to you.  It was early morning when they brought Kennedy in for observation. Dressed in only a hospital gown, his skin looked sallow and washed out. The bags under his eyes made the blue that much darker. His hair seemed to be the only thing that defied his poor health, looking sleek and shiny under the fluorescent lights. 

The examiner had the agent remove the upper half of his gown, letting everyone see the raw and irritated scar from the machine that supposedly destroyed the embryo in his chest. X-rays proved there were remnants clinging to his chest wall—the reason why he had been called in to your lab. 

Being the chief medical officer in charge, you had sat quietly in the audience chamber above the room—watching as the scientists and doctors argued and questioned Kennedy, who only had the scattered notes from his mission to really backup any of his claims. 

They injected him, you remember suddenly. He had reacted negatively, body jerking and twitching before he began to scream incoherently, voice raising in pitch until your vision wavered. The glass splintered and rained down on the room, slicing anything in its path.

The alarm began to blare and you locked eyes with what used to be Agent Kennedy, black washing out his sclera and dark veins overtaking his skin like twisting vines. 

“Are you okay?”

Shoulders jerking upward, you shake your head before looking back up into Andy’s drawn face. 

“Yeah, just trying to make it all make sense.”

“Yeah,” he sighs, clenching his teeth suddenly. “Fuck, I fixed myself up as well as I could, but I definitely need to get help.”

“Of course. Are we still under lockdown?”

“Uh huh,” he sucks in his top lip. “It’s why I came this way. I was hoping to find your keycard.”

In case you were dead rings as loud in the room as if he had spoken it. Reaching down, you hold up your lanyard. 

“Lucky for you, I didn’t lose it.”

You both smile even if it’s an empty consolation. 

“Do you need help walking?” You point to his side. 

“I’ll be alright as long as we don’t have to run.”

Both of you know if it comes to that, neither of you would be making it out alive. 

Slowly making your way out of the specimen room—why were you even in this room?!—the intern follows behind you, quiet and careful. The two offices you pass by are empty, not a pencil out of place. The hallway itself doesn’t look like anything is off. A blaring light by the exit’s the only thing to signify anything is awry. 

Leaving the safety of the hallway, you hold the door open for Andy, letting it fall shut once he’s past the threshold. 

“Do you know why I was in this section?” You turn to him, keeping pace instead of walking out in front. 

He shrugs, “Everyone kinda went their own way once he got out. I think someone said you needed to grab the data on the latest test batch?”

You pat your pockets and find a small thumb drive in your overcoat. 

“Okay…” 

You frown down at it, mind still entirely blank. 

“He—“ Andy cut himself off. 

“He what?”

“The subject followed after you. I don’t know if they stopped him or anything like that. I kinda passed out,” he gave you a bitter smile. “I guess at least I wasn’t outright killed.”

“So he killed people?”

Andy nodded, “We’ll pass a few colleagues. Rose and Dr. Kline. Others are too bad to guess.”

You feel a pang of sadness, “That’s awful.”

The intern doesn’t say anything, eyes cast down to the floor. You let the conversation go, splitting your attention between your surroundings and the young man walking next to you. Surprisingly, it’s an uneventful walk out of the research and development area. But once you meet the intersection between it and medical, everything changes. 

The door slides open with a low hiss and you freeze, the salty tang of copper wafting out. The stench of blood and god knows what dogs your footsteps as you guide Andy through the carnage littering the floor. 

“It’s so much worse than before,” he whispers. “It’s like he came back.”

Fear makes your legs weak but you press on, eyes darting around for any movement, ears straining for any odd sounds. The alarm system wails in the distance, amber emergency lights pulsing in time with the sound. You eventually pass by Dr. Kline and his assistant Rose, mutilated in ways that turn your stomach. Andy touches your arm and you push past the bodies, eyes eagerly seeking out the red EXIT sign attached to the stairwell door. 

You touch the handle and a searing bolt of agony rips through your abdomen, like something with a mouthful of teeth is shredding your uterus. It hurts so much you can’t even make any noise, collapsing onto your knees, hands wrapped around your middle like it will stave off the pain. 

“Chief?!”

Andy tries to kneel but groans, legs shaking as he rights himself, hand grasping your shoulder. 

“I can’t,” his voice breaks, “I can’t lift you, Chief. Please, stand up. We’re almost out.”

You open your mouth to reply and puke, bile rushing up from your stomach to stain the floor. Eyes watering, you dry heave for far longer than last time until your body has nothing left to give. 

“Please,” the young man whimpers, “I don’t wanna be alone.”

A shaky hand reaches up to pat the one he has in your shoulder, “I-I’m okay. I think.. I think I’m sick. I don’t know if it’s safe to even be around me.”

Standing up, he doesn’t pull away. 

“We both probably are,” he mumbles, eyes drifting to the door. “But we gotta try.”

You press a hand to your abdomen, “No, Andy. I think I’m—“

“A host.”

A new voice cuts in—low, humorous. You both turn, the young man beside you grabbing your bicep with an iron grip. It takes a second to spot who spoke. Eyes partially concealed by blood soaked fringe peek from around the corner, an off shoot hallway in the opposite direction of the emergency exit.

One hand with abnormally long fingers, creeps over the edge like a deformed spider. The nails look like sharp little talons, and what skin you can see is dark, dry and scaly. 

“He’s, he’s not—oh god, what is he?” Andy whispers, and you shake your head. 

“I don’t know.”

Kennedy laughs and it floods your body with chills. 

“I’ve evolved,” he speaks, voice normal in complete opposition to his looks. “She will be, too.”

Andy subtly tugs your arm and you both take a step back, eyes never wavering from the eerie stare from the creature in front of you. A chittering noise comes from Kennedy and his other hand joins the first, splaying wide against the wall. 

“It was so easy to make you a host,” he laughs again, eyes glittering. “And you didn’t even lose any blood.”

The pair of you make another shuffling step back before those dark eyes narrow. You snap your CAC off of your lanyard clasp and press it against the hand Andy’s using to grip your arm. 

“Take it,” you hiss under your breath. “Go first, get to the containment ward. If everything’s gone to shit, activate the evacuation code and seal yourself off from here.”

“What about—“

Tears drip from your eyes, “I’m contaminated. Please, Andy, just get out of here. I’ll try my best to buy you time.”

“Okay,” he lets out a wet sounding breath. “Okay, Chief. I-I’ll do what I can. Thank you.”

You nod and he finally lets go of you, the heat at your side slipping away. Listening to his shuffling steps, you hear the security pad beep, followed by the stairwell door swinging open. It closes with a soft snick, but you don’t turn away from the pair of eyes in front of you.  

“You knooow you can’t stop me,” that chittering noise again making you realize that’s his laugh. “But it’s sweet of you to give him a head start.”

The cramping in your abdomen is beginning to flair up again but you grit your teeth and take a half step back. You continue walking backwards until your back bumps the door. Hating having to lose sight of him, you turn your sights on the security pad. You make quick work of it, you pull the lab ID card from your pocket, slide it into the slot, and snap off the bottom. The pad blares red—ERROR repeating itself across the small screen. 

“Do you think that’ll stop me?”

He murmurs directly behind you, raising the hairs on the back of your neck. 

You’re too scared to turn around. 

“Probably not, but it invokes a building wide security warning and shutdown,” voice trembling, you reply. “It also alerts the Agency that there’s been a breach.”

He hums, “Clever. Not that it matters.”

Those hands of his, basically scaly claws at this point, wrap their disjointed fingers across your waist and interlock—trapping you in place. The parasite in your body trashes wildly, cramps perforating your abdomen until you become only pain; your legs tremble, weight now held up by the monster’s hands—fear overriding the incessant will to live. 

“It needs out,” he croons, a strange clicking echoing behind you—like mandibles, you think almost deliriously. “Doesn’t it?”

Glancing down, you catch a segmented tail slipping away, tipped with a hardened exoskeleton that looks sharp enough to pierce. Gray begins to creep into your vision as your legs fully give out, Kennedy’s odd hands catching you underneath your breasts, pressing on your ribs so hard you feel the muscles shift.

You’re able to catch sight of his mutated face before passing out; too horrified to scream, you welcome the reprieve of inky darkness. 

[oh-theseus]

the sound

pairing: astarion ancunin x gn!reader, astarion ancunin x gn!tav summary: your relationship with astarion has ran its course, but what happens when he recognizes the sound of your heart in a crowded tavern? word count: 4,071 a/n: this is post-game spawn astarion!! he's a freak here. like he's kind of a obsessed weirdo. idk, i wanted to play into all the weird things vampires can do 🤷‍♀️ also shamelessly admitting that the basis of this comes from 'the sound' by the 1975. def recommend giving it a listen :) anyways though SORRY I WAS GONE!! hope you guys accept this as a decent apology gift <33

warnings: ooc spawn!astarion, mean/toxic astarion, he's also kinda obsessed, astarion chokes reader???, blood depictions, blood drinking, stalker astarion if you squint, not a happy ending. SORRY I LIKE WEIRD FREAK SPAWN ASTARION!!! lmk if i need to add more!

Your relationship with Astarion had always been tumultuous. Perhaps that was because it was forged amidst the potential ending of the world, or perhaps it had something to do with the insane emotional baggage both of you brought to the table. Whatever it had been, it had not been enough to keep the two of you together.

Somewhere between killing Cazador and defeating the Absolute, things fell apart. And it wasn’t just Astarion’s fault, or just yours. Both of you… stopped trying? That didn’t feel right. Because you were trying, you really were. But it was never enough, on either side. So, you decided to part ways. It was better that way. At least that’s what you told yourself so that you could sleep at night.

Months passed, and Astarion became but a distant memory of fangs in your skin. Or, you tried to make him little more than that. You kept yourself busy in Baldur’s Gate, running errands of all sorts. You traveled some, but never as far as you did in order to defeat the Absolute. The days were long and grueling. Some nights you woke from nightmares, other nights you spent with lovers you’d never see again. Despite feeling a bit lonely at times, you have learned to enjoy this new circle of life for yourself. The routine kept you grounded. Kept you from thinking too hard about the vampire you once loved.

Taverns also helped. Not just because of the alcohol, but because everyone always wanted to talk about something. You had come to learn that most of the stories you heard were lies - or at least very embellished truths. Regardless, the fellow patrons were good company. They would laugh or cry shamelessly and were always willing to buy you a drink when you looked particularly rough. They didn’t pry, either. To them, you were just some other lonely fool coming to distract themself for an evening. And a good distraction it was, too.

Until that vampire you were trying so hard to forget walks in. 

For a moment, the world stops. Your eyes are locked on the figure in the door, his white curls seeming to glow in the moonlight outside. He winces when he steps inside - he didn’t like loud places, you remembered that. He looks just the same as you remember him, of course. A man unaged for two hundred years. What was a few months to his eternal not-quite-youth?

You look away before he can see you. And though you try to focus back on the adventurers in front of you, you find it difficult to do so. Your heart pounds with anxiety. You aren’t sure why you’re worried. Even upon parting with Astarion, he had remained relatively civil. But you knew Astarion better than most, so you knew that time did not heal Astarion’s wounds. No, time only seemed to make the vampire’s wounds fester up and get infected. If he wasn’t angry with you then, you had a feeling he would be angry with you now.

“I’ll be right back,” you say to the group of strangers you’re sitting with. You stand slowly, eyes scanning the crowded tavern for Astarion. You don’t see him, and your eyebrows furrow together - had you imagined him? It wouldn’t be the first time you saw something that wasn’t actually there.

The bar is crowded, the bartender working quickly to try to please everyone. You take one look at the scene and decide that slipping out the back door into the quiet street outside will bring you more relief than waiting however long for a single drink will.

As predicted, the streets of Baldur’s Gate are quiet. The moon is high in the sky, the fullness of it casting a soft glow over the street before you. A cat scurries out of a barrel nearby, but other than that, you are alone. Your back presses to the wall of the tavern beside the door, sliding down until you’re crouched on the ground, your hands rubbing across your face. 

This was all rather silly, wasn’t it? Running and hiding because your ex-lover showed up at the most popular tavern in the city you knew he resided in. It was childish, pathetic even. Still, you don’t get up. You let the cool night breeze dance over the exposed parts of your skin while your hands fall away from your eyes. Your eyes remain closed though as you inhale and exhale slowly - you were getting quite good at this self-soothing thing, weren’t you? You hear the door opening and the sound of feet stepping outside, but don’t think twice about it. People were allowed to leave the tavern, weren’t they?

“Ah, I thought I heard you.”

Correction - everyone except for Astarion was allowed to leave the tavern.

Your eyes fly open, and you’re on your feet in a moment. Astarion stands before you, wearing that all too-familiar smirk of his. You watch as his crimson eyes flicker across your body twice over, stunned into silence. Your heart is racing still, though you would wager it’s beating faster now based on how loud it was in your own ears.

“Cat got your tongue, my dear?” Astarion tilts his head to the side when he speaks. He is mocking you, of course. You were right to assume that he had grown angry with time. “I could hear you all the way inside, you know. Isn’t that just so interesting?” Hear you? What in the Nine Hells was he going on about? “What are you talking about?” You manage to ask, face wrinkled up in confusion. Astarion seems confused for a moment too, a distant look in his eyes that you knew meant he was trying to recall a memory. Impatient with him and his growing silence, you shift from foot to foot. Get on with it, you think.

“Hm, seems I forgot to tell you about that,” Astarion seems to say to himself. He focuses on you fully once more, waving his wrist when he next speaks. “Your heart, darling. I can hear it.” If this information had been presented to you a year ago, you might have slapped him. But you’d become quite desensitized to weird things - especially weird things pertaining to the nature of vampires. At least this part of Astarion’s nature made sense to you, unlike his inability to cross running water. If he was meant to live off of blood, then you supposed he should be able to hear the thing at the center of every living creature that made that blood flow.

But there were countless people in the tavern. You scoff - he’s lying. He couldn’t have been able to identify your heart among the numerous others in there. He must have seen you when you slipped outside.

“Your lies flatter me, Astarion. Truly,” you state sarcastically. Once, your sarcasm might have been full of mirth and lightheartedness when it came to him. But none of that is present now. Perhaps time had made your hurt fester, too? You always were more alike Astarion than you cared to admit.

“You wound me.” Astarion presses a hand to cover his dead heart in mock hurt. But he smirks down at you still. “Don’t you think I know exactly how to flatter you?”

Astarion takes a step closer to you. You’re suddenly very aware that the wall of the tavern is pressing against you. It’s almost frightening how much he looks like a predator like this. It’s almost… exciting. Your heart races faster, and Astarion’s smirk turns into a knowing grin.

You should’ve ran a stake through his heart when you had the chance.

“I do not have time for your antics.” Your voice conveys the same authority you once used to lead a makeshift army against the Absolute. Astarion finds it funny that you think it will work on him, the person who resented authority more than anyone or anything you had ever met.

“My antics are simply me wishing to catch up with an old friend. I hadn’t realized that was a crime these days.” He takes another step forward, that knowing grin of his not disappearing.

“Oh, a friend? Is that what we were?” Somehow, the implication that you had only been a friend hurts more than any insult he could possibly hurl at you right now. Had he truly thought so little of your nights together? Of the secrets you shared, the times you let him feed from you? “You wear your heart on your sleeve, my love. So easy to hurt it, isn’t it?” Astarion has moved so close to you now, that if he required air to breathe he’d be breathing in what you were exhaling out. You watch his eyes dance across your face, then trail down to your neck. Wordlessly, he grabs your chin and tilts your neck to the side.

Your hand is on his wrist immediately, the other one reaching for your blade strapped to your hip. You think he’s going to bite you. 

“Ah, ah,” Astarion stops your hand from grabbing your weapon with a tight grip around your wrist. “I’m just looking. Always so hungry for blood, aren’t we?” You don’t like the comparison of your desire to protect yourself to his need to drink blood. You don’t comment on it though, too busy watching his eyes burning into your neck.

If he wasn’t going to bite you, then - Oh. The scars.

Two puncture wounds on the right side of your throat, scarred over from the amount of times Astarion had bitten into that exact same spot to drink from you. You feel his hand leave your chin and push your collar to the side, exposing the scars to him more. He chuckles darkly, and you use your free hand to shove him away from you.

Astarion stumbles back, a look of surprise on his face. It’s quickly replaced with anger - an emotion you had seen on his face so many times before, but never directed at you until this very moment. 

“Do those make finding a little playmate difficult?” Astarion asks, eyebrows raised in mock interest. You would ask how he knew about your habits, but he did tell you once that he had a remarkable sense of smell. He could probably smell the elf you’d taken home last night on you still. You have half the mind to be embarrassed. The other half of your mind really wants to hit him.

“That’s not really your business anymore, is it?” You counter, crossing your arms over your chest. You’ve moved off of the wall now, making sure there’s empty space behind you should he try to approach you again. “But, I am glad you are still as jealous as ever.”

“Hah! Jealous!” Astarion does that fake little laugh of his. He goes so far as to bend over and then wipe a non-existence tear from his eye when he stands. “Darling, I truly could not care any less who or what you are doing in your free time. Rather - I could not care any less about you.”

It’s your turn to laugh at him. “Bold words for the man who just confessed to knowing the sound of my heart amidst all those other ones in there.”

Astarion doesn’t like this response in the slightest. You grin wickedly as he clenches his fists at his side and narrows his eyes. You two always did know how to hurt one another, didn’t you?

There is a truth to your words though. It was bold for him to claim not to care about you anymore, but to still have the sound of your heart so well memorized that he could find you in the middle of a loud, crowded tavern after months of not seeing each other. It’s almost romantic, if not a bit obsessive. Though, Astarion’s version of romance always had been a bit obsessive, hadn’t it?

“Cat got your tongue, Astarion?” You use his own words on him, tilting your head in the very same way that he had done not five minutes ago. You don’t suppress the wickedly pleased grin that spreads across your face when Astarion’s jaw clenches. Yes, you knew exactly how to hurt him. 

“Very original,” he hisses. You simply shrug - as if all of this and him are not worth your time. He does not like that. Not one bit.

When you and Astarion were together, he was always very careful with you, unless you requested otherwise. You had seen that he was strong in a way that was inhuman, but had never been anywhere close to being on the receiving end of that strength. Until now.

You let out a gasp when you are pushed back against the wall of the tavern. You immediately regret it, given that it leaves you with no air in you when Astarion’s hand wraps around your neck. Not strong enough to bruise, but certainly strong enough to have you reaching for your blade. Again, he beats you there and pins your hand to the wall

“You forget yourself, little dove,” he whispers, mere inches from your face. If someone else were to slip out the back door of the tavern, they would likely think you were two lovers with no shame. 

Given that you can not speak, you simply look at him. If you weren’t terrified of choking to death, you might have glared at him. Instead, you look at him with big, wide eyes. They plead for you - they show your fear. Your heart gives it away too. And the way your blood races beneath his hand. Your anatomy betrays your emotions more than you do.

But Astarion’s does, too. In his eyes, you see many things. Anger, of course, but there is also guilt, sadness, fear - hunger. His eyes go to those scars again. Your eyes go impossibly wider in understanding.

Your free hand taps at his wrist repeatedly, begging him to release you. He must see your desperation, because he relents. You would have fallen to your knees while you gasped for air if his hands did not catch you on either side of your waist. 

His crimson eyes are darting over your features, watching as you catch your breath. He’s got that far-off look about him again. His hands squeeze your waist gently, as if he was making sure you were still there. You know what this means - how many times had you seen Astarion act just like this because he hadn’t fed in a few days? And given that he was still a spawn and was limited to nights hunting alone, you imagined it might get hard to find something to eat every once in a while.

“I forget myself,” you mumble when you can breathe properly again. You straighten up, expecting Astarion’s hands to remove themselves, but they do not. “Does your hunger always make you act as a feral beast?”

Astarion winces at your insult, as if you had hit him instead of just spoken. He had thought you wouldn’t notice. But those big, wet eyes of his never kept his secrets when he desired for them to be kept most. 

“Perceptive as always.” His words are almost a compliment, just as his hands are almost comforting. 

“You haven’t come out here to taunt me, then?” You ask, anger seeping into your tone. Did he truly think you would just give him your blood after the stunt he had just pulled? “Were you seeking a meal for the evening?” Astarion is the one to shrug now. His hands leave your sides - you find yourself almost missing his touch. “I didn’t have a plan, darling. All I knew was that your heart was racing, and I wanted to know why.”

When he said it like that, it made it almost sound like he was worried about you and your safety.

A thick, uncomfortable silence settles over you both like a wet blanket. He’s thinking again, but this time, so are you. You’re thinking about the scars on your neck, the hunger in Astarion’s eyes. You’re thinking about how it used to be comforting to let him drink from you. You’re thinking a lot of stupid, foolish things. You’re also tugging the collar of your shirt down and tilting your head to the side. 

“Be quick.” You always were too generous for your own good, weren’t you?

Astarion doesn’t seem to understand what you’re telling him to do until your index finger taps over the scars on your neck. A look of pure delight fills his face, mixing together with surprise and something like mockery.

“In public? My, you’ve gotten dirty, haven’t you?” Astarion says, placing one hand on your side again. You don’t give him the pleasure of a response when his second hand comes up to your neck and traces feather-light touches over the marks. His gaze goes soft when he speaks next, peering into your eyes as if he can see into your very soul. “You are certain?”

No, you are most definitely not certain. 

“Yes,” you force out, tearing your eyes away from Astarion. “Do not be greedy.”

Astarion needs no further invitation. The hand that had been tracing your skin finds its spot on the back of your neck, holding you in place while his hand on your hip keeps you steady. The gasp that leaves your lips when his fangs puncture your skin is anything but quiet. Your hands have moved to his shoulder, gripping him so tightly that your knuckles have gone white. You’d forgotten how uncomfortable it was to have someone’s teeth in your flesh.

He drinks in slow, measured gulps. Those plush lips of his suck gently on your skin, his tongue laps up the liquid that tries to escape his mouth. There is a strange intimacy to it all that you choose to ignore. You choose especially to ignore the soft groan of pleasure that falls from his mouth when your fingers start to get cold and dig further into his shoulders. A single half-shove to his shoulders, and he pulls away, a trickle of your blood making its way down his chin.

Silence sinks into the (very limited) space between the two of you once more. Astarion wipes your blood from his chin, then shows the same courtesy to your neck before covering the puncture wounds with your collar once more. You wrinkle your nose a bit when he takes his thumb into his mouth, sucking the last taste of you from his skin - while maintaining eye contact, of course. It’s revolting - it’s erotic. You don’t let that thought linger.

“Better?” You ask, hoping that the swirl of strange emotions inside of you is masked in your voice. 

Astarion smirks - your voice has betrayed you. “Oh, much. You’re too good to me.”

You swallow your spit, your throat bobbing up and down with the movement. Astarion watches it carefully with dilated pupils. He’s still holding your waist, you’re still holding his shoulders. Neither of you makes to move away from the other.

The silence seeps into your very being. It finds the deepest parts of you and closes around them like a pale hand squeezing your neck. It finds your guilt - the old guilt of giving up on the man before you all those months ago. The new guilt of betraying yourself by letting him feed from you. You hadn’t even made him ask. 

“Would you like to hear a secret?” He whispers, his eyes back on your face once more. 

No. “Yes.”

He smiles at your response. His hand not gripping your waist begins to trace the slopes of your face with practiced familiarity. “I’ve been coming here every night. I heard you in there a few weeks ago - I only just got the courage to step inside tonight. I was hoping to see you.”

For some reason, your mind brushes over everything else he has just confessed, instead focusing on his final sentence. I was hoping to see you. It makes your heart skip a beat like you’re some kind of lovesick schoolgirl. Astarion’s smile widens, and you curse yourself for not being able to control your racing heart. It’s humiliating to know he can hear the exact reaction your body had to every word he said.

“Why?” You ask, far softer than you wanted to. 

“Oh, is it not obvious my dear? I miss you.”

You’re reminded of the time Astarion told you he loved you after only a few nights spent together. He had been trying to manipulate you then - was he doing the same to you now? 

“You expect me to believe that?” This time, your voice is forceful as you intended for it to be the first time. “You do not know me if you think I am foolish enough to take you for your word.”

Astarion laughs with his whole chest. His head tilts backward for a moment, the moonlight catching in his stunning white curls for a moment and making them appear to glow. His eyes have narrowed when he looks back down at you - you’re playing his game better than he thought you would. Unfortunately for you, though, he knew exactly what he could do to make you lose.

“No. Let me show you.” Astarion waits for no response before he leans forward, pressing his lips to yours. As soon as the familiar pressure of his lips is on yours, your body tenses. You are trying to decide what you want to do. But then he presses more into you, and you melt.

You can taste your blood on his lips. There’s something else, too. Bitter, yet a bit sweet. Some kind of wine, if you had to guess. His fangs brush over your lower lip, threatening to sink into the plush flesh there. But the puncture never comes, and inside it’s his tongue intruding your mouth. You let him explore the space of your mouth, your body shivering when he trails his tongue along your lower lip.

And then he’s gone - his lips glistening with a mixture of your spit and his. You are panting a bit, bringing a hand up to touch your lips as if you can undo what you have just done. You do not even register that Astarion has finally removed himself from your body, too busy trying to make sense of why you hadn’t pushed him away. 

You had come to the tavern tonight as part of your routine. To talk with old friends and new, and to not think about the very vampire who stood before you. How had you ended up kissing him and letting him feed from you? You might be sick from the deep sense of betrayal you feel inside of you. You’ve betrayed months of personal work to forget him. And for what? A single kiss and words you know are empty.

“You are perfect, every time,” Astarion remarks, his tongue darting across his lips to clean them of the wetness decorating them. He grins wickedly, then straightens his back. No, no. You know this look. He thinks he’s won.

You fell for his trap.

Again.

“Unfortunately, I do have rather important business to attend to.” He doesn’t even bother to look at you, too busy with straightening out the sleeves of his shirt. “Do keep yourself safe, darling. I would hate for something to happen to my little treat.” And then he’s gone, slipping inside of the tavern through the back door as if he hasn’t just ruined you with a single kiss.

You stand there, heart racing and eyes wide. You want to peel off your skin, to hide within your bones so that no one else could ever bother you. You are mortified. How could you be so stupid? You had known from the beginning that he was toying with you. Yet, you let him drink your blood, kiss your lips. And you would have given him more, if he wanted it. 

You clear your throat - it’s your turn to straighten out your clothing now, especially your collar.

Your heart is still racing when you walk away from the tavern. All the way down the street you find yourself repeating one thing, over and over and over: “Don’t you think I know exactly how to flatter you?”

You’ve never wished someone had been wrong more.

taglist: @bowtomytenderdays @misscrissfemmefatale @letsstargaze @peterpankat @sukuna-connoisseur

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[qualquercoisa945]

okay so in mag106, "a matter of perspective", it's revealed that ivy meadows, first introduced in mag36, "taken ill", was the care home in which melanie's father was staying.

TWs: fire, illnesses, death, corpses, and as always feel free to ask me to add warnings if i'm missing anything

now for those that don't recall, ivy meadows was attacked, for lack of a better term, by the corruption, its residents slowly becoming infected by a disease that would slowly kill them, a yellow rash that would eat at the flesh. The exact wording of the episode is the following:

[Image ID: A screenshot of a section of the transcript from episode 36 of The Magnus Archives, Taken Ill. After the second sentence, the text is highlighted, turning it from blue text with beige background to white text with grey background. It reads: "Based on the colour of those sections of skin still whole and unblemished, Mr. Miller couldn't have been dead for more than a few hours, half a day at most. You wouldn't have known, though. Large sections of his body were covered in a wet, creamy yellow rash, which... I'm not a doctor, so describing exactly what it did to the flesh it touched would serve no purpose except to start me having the nightmares again. Let us just say that it gave a plentiful home for the flies that swarmed around his body." End ID]

now this is the first part of what i wanna talk about, which is: did elias show melanie the fire? or did he show her the disease?

to be entirely honest i think the implication is that he showed her the disease but it did take me a reread of this episode to realize the possibility so i'm bringing it up here regardless

the second point i want to make, is that, later in the episode, the statement giver, nicole baxter, returns to ivy meadows only to discover the disease has spread even further. she's then intercepted by two people, and i'll just let the transcript do the talking:

[Image ID: A screenshot of a section of the transcript from episode 36 of The Magnus Archives, Taken Ill, with blue text on beige background. It reads: "I turned and began to sprint back towards my car. I had to get away, to get out. Then, without warning, I felt something heavy hit me in the side and I lost my footing, falling to the ground. I looked up to see an old man pinning me to the ground, his long, white beard matted and filthy. I screamed and tried to escape, but his age seemed to have done nothing to diminish his strength, and he kept his grip easily.

Then he spoke in a thick Mancunian accent and told me to keep my voice down. I noticed that his skin was unblemished pink, and behind him stood a young woman, tall and lean with close-cropped hair and a deep scar over her right eye. She carried a large canvas bag, and was shaking her head, telling the old man to leave me alone. After a few suspicious glances, he got up. I could swear I recognised him from somewhere, but when I asked the two of them who they were, they just shook their heads and told me to leave. I asked them what was going on, and the old man looked at his companion, as if asking permission, said something about knowledge being a good defence here. She shook her head and said that leaving quickly was a better one. I didn’t need to be told a third time." End ID]

now that alone, with further knowledge of the series, would let us suspect that this is trevor herbert and julia montauk, but the episode itself implies it, with jon saying, and i quote, "And the old man and his companion… who does that remind me of? If he wasn’t dead, I’d think it might have been Trevor –" before being interrupted by tim.

now the exact thing i want to talk about is the fact that like, ivy meadows was burnt down right, by trevor and julia. and idk!! maybe i just have brainrot for this girl but i just think julia and melanie interactions would be nifty and even more so with this added context ya know

[pomegranates-and-blood]

νοσταλγία (Chapter 1)

(Gif credit to @kikuthestrange​)

νοσταλγία Masterlist

Pairing: Ivar/Reader (eventual)

Summary: This is a retelling/romantization of the Greek myth of Persephone’s abduction with Ivar as Hades and you as Persephone. The Reader character is a Byzantine woman, follower of the Greek Pantheon/Religion, and a devoted follower of Persephone. This takes place after 5A, but the universe of this is a little changed in relation with the series, of course. Thank you for giving it a chance, hope you enjoy!

Word Count: 2.8k

Warnings: As usual, mentions and descriptions of blood, death, torture, injury and people being burnt alive. Mentions or allusions to rape. If there’s anything else I didn’t mention, please let me know. Fair warning that the Reader Character may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but please give her a chance.

A/N: Um, idk. Hope you like this, and again, really sorry if this is OOC. That is one hell of an insecurity I have when I start writing for new characters, but I really hope I’m not messing Ivar or any of the others up.

You are focused on the blending of some herbs to help the pain of some of the warriors, when a round metal shield is dropped at your feet. You raise your eyes from the snake engraved on the old metal to the Saxon, giving away nothing except a small twitch of your mouth.

But you know what that symbol is. It is a mark of the Attics.

“Most of the Greeks are dead,” He states, certainly, viciously. Your eyes fall closed, and you heave a sigh. “And I will personally see that the survivors are hunted down.”

You knew this was going to happen. The Varangians cornered Stithulf into the confine of these walls and yet last night he sent a hunting party, the best of the best within his Arab mercenaries.

You knew he wasn’t going to try and kill Ivar the Boneless or his brothers. No, he was going to take revenge on the people he deemed failed him, the people he deemed owed him a victory.

And it makes the whole ground cave under your feet, the realization that it is done. That the last of the Attics lie bloodied on the unforgiving earth. That their faith in you, their love for you, was their downfall.

Just like Narses’.

“I always knew you Christians were just as bloody and cruel as the worst of us,” You say instead, looking down at the shield again and picking it up with trembling hands, “You slaughtered hundreds of innocents.”

“If you had fought for us…” He starts, but you interrupt him with a glare. Some things don’t change even if you get far from home: all it takes to stop an army, to make a man like Stithulf hesitate, is a heathen witch.

If only their God hadn’t taught him to fear yours, the world would be so different.

“We’d all rather be dead than slaves to a Christian.” You hiss out, curling your fingers over the cold and bloodied metal. And you mean more than this battle, this war not your own that regardless you lost; no, you mean Byzantium, and the home you left behind.

“You could have avoided all of this, Greek.” He insists, the scar that runs from his neck to his uneven sideburn stretching around the smile he offers.

For a moment you imagine letting your hand run a knife deeply through that scar, open it again and see it pour red and victorious blood. Trace with a knife over every scar, so that he only remembers the torment you brought him.

No, that’s wrong. Trying to hide the grimace at your own thoughts, you shake off the shame and stand up. Holding on tightly to the shield, you feel you carry the weight of thousands of Greeks on your hand.

And because you were taught speaking things helped make them real, you promise, “Our Gods live on, and the worship of them is not something blades and blood can smother. Quieten, yes, but never silence.”

“You will die for your pagan ways, you know this, don’t you?” He asks, stopping you for a moment at the…honesty in his voice.

“I do not fear death,” You answer, and when you walk past an open window that looks over the foreign and cold horizon you add, quiet enough that only the Gods may hear you, “I welcome it. Let Hades summon me home.”

“I have reached an agreement with the Vikings,” Stithulf calls out, voice loud and echoing in the halls. You grip the shield tighter. “There will be…negotiations tomorrow.”

Your mouth smiles and your tongue runs with dangerous words before you can stop yourself, “You will sit and talk with the same men you scoured the world trying to kill?”

“I know when I am defeated, Greek. Something you lack.”

You say nothing else, the defeat finally setting over your shoulders and all you can do to keep appearances is to keep walking and pretend the tears are not clogging your view as you walk past unfamiliar halls, on unfamiliar grounds, with the weight of unfamiliar and familiar ghosts over your head.

Spending the rest of the day, almost till the sun sets, taking care of some wounds and fevers, you can almost pretend to yourself that the life you give here, the damage you heal here; can start to make up for all the death you and your mistakes have caused.

You raise your head from your work on the stitching when strange rhythmic sounds reach your ears.

Metal on wood. Dragging sounds. Metal on wood again. Something dragged again.

The door to the barren and almost empty home you are using as a makeshift infirmary opens, and the silhouette of Ivar the Boneless stands on the doorway.

Your heart pounds in your ears, and the warrior with his injured skin under your fingers hisses a breath when your needle pierces deeper than intended into his skin. You mumble an apology in Greek, but keep your eyes on the King.

“You don’t need healing.” You quip quietly in his language, rising to your feet and motioning for the Greek you were helping to remain in his seat.

To be honest, you don’t know why you stand up, why you straighten your back and raise your chin. You can pretend to be as tall as you wish, as strong as you wish, but everyone in this room knows if the Varangian wants you dead you will be so.

“I wanted to talk to you.” The Viking offers, forced nonchalance as he approaches. His legs don’t seem to work normally, and the contraptions around them are like you never saw before. The healer in you notes they look…painful.

He gets close enough you can see his handsome face clearly in the candlelight, but far enough you don’t feel threatened. The King remains standing, straight and proud, by one of the wooden pillars.

His pale eyes, you note in the now clear view the candles provide you, switch to the warrior sitting a few feet behind and then return to you. You resist the urge to play with your fingers.

“Why?” You ask, retrieving with trembling hands one of the linens you will use as bandages for the wound on the Greek warrior’s back.

“I’m…curious.”

“So am I,” You reply, rolling the needle you use for the stitches between your thumb and forefinger as you study the man. “It is not every day that I find myself meeting with a Viking King.”

“So you know who I am.” He states, and you cannot know if he is disappointed, proud, or a mix of the two.

“Of course I do,” You answer without hesitation, “And I also know it is not me who you are supposed to be meeting.”

“I wanted to talk with you, witch.” He insists again, reminding you of a spoiled child, but also showing you that, either for the foreignness or something entirely him, the Varangian is uncertain on how to talk to you.

It almost makes a smile curve at your lips, and your impulsive heart wants you to send the warrior off and talk with this strange man, this…Ivar the Boneless.

“I…am busy,” You answer instead, returning to your stitching. If your hand trembles a little and you cause a little more pain than you intended as you finish up the last of the stitches, no one can blame you. “I must tend to the wounded, Varangian.”

“A smart woman would know better than to deny me.”

“I never claimed to be smart.”

“Are you always this insufferable, woman?” He snaps, anger rises in his voice, making the warrior you are standing behind tense under your fingers as they wrap a bandage over his back and ribs to keep the wound from infection.

But you, past the fear, feel a small smile start to curve at your lips when you find the pale eyes of the Varangian King.

“I try.” You reply with a shrug, but a growl is the only answer you get.

You watch with wide eyes as the Viking unsheathes a small knife from somewhere in his chest and, instead of throwing it like you would expect, he flips it so that he grabs onto the blade instead of the handle.

His fist clenches around it, eliciting a sharp breath from the King and blood that drips between his fingers.

“There,” He grunts, opening his hand and letting the knife clatter unceremoniously to the wooden floor. He returns his piercing pale eyes to you and his mouth almost bares in a snarl, his nose furrows in cold anger, as he speaks, “Now you have to tend to me.”

So the rumors were true, he is actually crazy. Although you doubt a man that can topple Aelle, that can conquer York, is crazy.

No, he is clever. If maybe too angry and arrogant, he is still cunning. That thought alone reminds you to keep your guard up.

A part of your mind begs you to be sensible about this, not to do anything stupid, but you finish wrapping the wound on the warriors back with skilled fingers, and tap his shoulder so that he stands. Ivar the Boneless keeps his eyes on you, defiantly and terrifyingly, as he watches you move. You turn your attention to the Greek and nod as goodbye, “Go, I will be fine.”

The man looks between the Varangian and you, before putting his right fist to his heart, his left arm bent behind him in a goodbye and a sign of respect to you.

“Anassa.” He mutters in farewell, and you watch him go wondering how many days will it take for him to also die because of your mistakes.

And as the door closes behind the Greek, you notice truly how engulfing the darkness and the defenselessness are. The city moves on around you, but all that reaches the small cabin you are in is the faint sounds of a stray horse or farm animal. The Saxons wouldn’t want the heathen witch to be near their soldiers, after all, even in a city that was never theirs with barely any civilians on it.

All that means you are all alone and defenseless, with a Viking known for his cruel and vicious ways. Gritting your teeth and fighting to keep your heartbeat from drumming away in your ears, you turn back to the Varangian and motion for a chair near you.

He doesn’t move. Of course he doesn’t, because no one in this cursed land listens to a damn word you say.

His hand still drips red to the wooden floor, and you pointedly look at it where it rests on his side and back to his face. The King only cocks his head to the side, eyes narrowed.

“You speak many tongues,” The Varangian states, not even a question, “Our language, the Saxons’, but I don’t recognize the other one.”

“Greek,” You reply, “I am not from here.”

“I noticed.”

With a shrug, you state, “Probably why you haven’t killed me yet, isn’t it?”

But the Viking doesn’t answer. Instead, he limps towards you, but where there should be -to a sane woman, maybe- a threat, a danger, you only find your heart beating with the same fast pace it did when you were about to cross a dangerous and wild stream by Eleusis’ forests. A hint of fear, a hint of curiosity, and much more than a hint of freedom.

The rage of the stream deafened you, uncertainty beat quickly on your chest…but your bare feet still continued running towards the water.

You keep your eyes on his.

“You are…outspoken, witch. Are all Greeks like you?”

“You should lower your eyes when men are speaking.” He advises with more than a little anger in his tone.

You hear faintly of Sieghild’s mocking scoff, and you stand up from your chair and stalk to Narses in a few strides, keeping your eyes on him. A sick part of you is trying to test him, to dare him into laying hands on you to shut you up.

The lies would come easier if he did.

“I cower before no man, my love.” The endearment drips with poison, and the twitch in his expression tells you he is aware of it.

There’s rustling of armor, and out of the corner of your eye you catch sight of Lysander straightening to his full height, the mantle of the soon-to-be Anax of Sparta set well over his shoulders as he walks calmly towards you.

For a moment of distrust and panic, you think he will take the side that wants to silence you, but your cousin stands next to you, although slightly behind, offering you his support. His hand is comforting on your shoulder.

“You may do things differently in Attica, but in Laconia our women are not slaves,” Lysander promises, voice dripping authority and more than a slight threat, “Descendant of Theseus, aren’t you?” He breathes out a chuckle, “You will have to venture into the Underworld like your ancestor to make a woman of Spartan blood cave.”

You breathe out a laugh, “No.”

“So you are not afraid of me.”

You look into his pale eyes and wonder for a moment. What is there to fear? It is true his fame precedes him, even if you choose to ignore his name, his truth. Rumors of madness, ruthlessness, unpredictability, rage, cruelty; they all are kept safely in your mind, to torment you faintly with exactly the kind of beast you try to dance with.

But you remember the time that mad man in the flimsy boat offered to take you to cross the Aegean, and how the threat of pain and death and cold all hung over you like shadows; and yet the curiosity of what lay in the realm of what if made you still get on that feeble boat. You have a feeling it is the same kind of stubborn and reckless curiosity that makes you offer the King a small smile.

“I learned long ago not to fear any man, Varangian.” You answer, motioning with your hand to his injured one, hoping for response this time.

The Viking’s eyes are defying as they challenge yours, but you refuse to lower your gaze. He sits by you on one of the chairs, movements graceful and confident as he discards the crutch he uses to walk by the table.

After a breath, he offers you his injured hand.

You don’t hesitate, even if a part of you tells you that you should, and take a seat at his side, working instinctively as you start wetting a clean cloth in some water infused with honeysuckle and goldenseal.

Taking his hand and opening the rough fingers to your sight and touch, you clean off the blood and hope silently that you are not the one responsible for Ivar the Boneless getting an infection for a stupid wound on his hand.

“Why are you and your people here, if you are from the Mediterranean?” He asks suddenly, but it doesn’t startle you like it should.

With a deep breath and keeping your eyes on your work, you offer, “The obvious answer would be attacking your city, my King.”

“And retreating.” He points out lowly, not biting into your taunt.

Lifting your eyes to his, you search his pale gaze for a few moments. You offer him sincerity in exchange for his calm, “The Christians were going to surrender, we knew this the moment your army arrived. We had no interest in this war of yours.”

“Then why fight in it?”

“Obvious answer, my King?” You ask around a smirk, and the man’s eyes darken as he leans closer. A finger underneath your chin threatens you as much as a sharp blade could, and you swallow past a dry throat.

“Careful.” He cautions, and his lips curve around a smile as dangerous and poisonous as it is enthralling and tempting.

“Our commander agreed we aided the Saxons in exchange for their army’s help in our homeland. With my-…with the commander dead the Greeks were called to retreat.”

“But not you,” He points out, still uncomfortably close. “You didn’t retreat.”

You wish you had an answer to his unspoken question. But you don’t. You could have run with Galla and the others, you could have forged your own path with Sieghild away from battle, the Gods know you have done so before.

You could have, but still you fell back to the Saxon city as if survival was to be achieved only by acceptance of defeat.

“A lady ought to have her secrets, I’m afraid.” You answer instead, lowering your eyes back to your work. Although you can sense the young Viking wants to demand more, because of course he does, he remains silent.

______

Hi, thank you for reading! I really hope you are liking this so far, and that it isn’t boring lol

Again, thank you so much, and I’d love to hear from you!

[red-hood-vigilante]

hbo spn storylines, drabbles, ideas, thoughts, wishlist, whatever you may call it. it’s messy, nothing makes sense and pretty sure a lot of these contradict each other

more of sam at stanford with jessica/flashbacks. jessica potentially lives but is revealed to be a demon (but she developed actual feelings for sam and really did come to care for him because a demon falling in love with a human would be SO interesting) OR she lives but her memory gets wiped like dean did to lisa OR she dies like she did but she is a ghost that haunts sam (he welcomes it but eventually he lets her go -> character arc). he still dreams about her though and he has her keepsakes with him wherever he goes, her rings, her favourite book, anything that was left of her from the fire

you have to be extremely careful when making deals with demons because they are cunning and evil creatures. they will follow the rules of the deal but will find loopholes to put some sadistic twist on the terms. you want money? of course, too bad you’ll be arrested for fraud before you can use any of it and spend the next ten years in jail before i drag you to hell. you want a perfect husband? sure he’ll love you. in fact, he’ll love you so much he’ll keep you locked up in the basement to keep you safe etc etc. saving a person often becomes the person that causes or leads to your death.

the creation of jack: after s5, when lucifer is trapped in the cage again lucifer fuses his own soul with a human soul to create jack, who escapes to earth to find sam and castiel. i have a longer post about this saved in my drafts

lucifer is trapped for good in the cage after s5 but if he was to return again, dean would kill him while sam would kill michael - this would be nice parallels and a sort of fulfillment of the “one brother must kill the other” prophecy because one brother DO kill another brother, just not their own

more azazel and how he came to the plan of how to free lucifer; opening a hell gate earlier, more experimentations with the demon blood etc

mary was infected with the blood when she was a baby, sam is the first and only second generation special child (longer post about that here)

personally, i want to see more and know more about john and mary’s relationship. when mary died, john and mary had fulfilled their destiny (having sam and dean) so does that mean that his love and dedication to mary post her death was falsely fabricated by the angels to ensure sam and dean would grow up in ideal conditions to become hunters? or maybe, after mary’s death, john wakes up from the spell with two kids he doesn’t recognize and a wife he thinks he loved, but the memories of the past years of his life are like a fever dream; he never wanted to live in a town like this nor was he interested in having kids? but here the house is, and here are his kids, but now he’s alone and empty and with no answers. (idk i just find john and mary and their relationship very fascinating) if the latter, if john and mary see each other again it’s like the spell activates again and they become blindly in love with each other, but once gone, they return to their confused and hazey state of mind, like just woken up from a coma

i do like mary coming back but i love how in s5 when she wasn’t found in heaven it was hinted that she was just discarded because she had fulfilled her “purpose” and i think this adds to the whole notion of how heaven and angels can be really cruel AND how mary is this mythical, religious figure to both sam and dean and we only get to know her through their lenses, like religion and faith

ruby is present for a longer amount of time to make the reveal even more shocking. at one point or another, dean does actually trust her and they all work together on cases for a while. ruby’s backstory as a witch is more explored. i like her death in s4 because she’s in this total state of euphoria and has achieved a goal only she was entrusted with, and she is so convinced sam will understand, until sam holds her down while dean carves her heart out. so we either keep that or she serves lucifer for a while (until he kills her which she is happy about because of her blind loyalty to him, could again mirror dean and john/castiel and heaven) or she serves lucifer and like crowley she realizes lucifer will kill demons after humans (redemption arc, but i don’t really like that, let her be evil!!)

dean and sam helps bela out of her deal and she becomes their go-to person when they need a magic item or book. she doesn’t like it but she owes them. regularly hooks up with jo.

angels are really hollow soldiers - they only follow orders and don’t understand the concept free will or choice or individuality at all. they are extremely righteous and strike without warning often on a whim, often very bloody (explosions a la castiel in swan song). if something fall into what they consider justice they will kill it. no concept of love, attraction or gender. real form can’t be perceived by humans unless they want them to, which leads to eyes melting (pamela) or breaking a person’s mind (in 5.16 zachariah actually says that sam and dean sees him in his vessel bc they’re ‘limited’. so.)

castiel, anna, maybe uriel and some others are exceptions to this, but only becomes so after longer exposure to human’s world. even then, they don’t change their violent whims, just the reasoning and where their loyalty lies

hbo spn is s1-5 stretched out for 8-10 seasons with the aesthetics of s1-2. i’m cutting out demon dean, purgatory, the mark of cain, the men of letters, the alphas, leviathatan, god being the real villain all along and the other worlds because it was just too much and far remived from the roadtrip aesthetic. keeping kevin, charlie (she is introduced via ash bc they’re hacker friends), the trials, rowena, uuuh the angels falling is such an interesting concept but idk if it would fit. maybe metatron? but his motivations are different. soullessness + the concept of souls might be kept if it’s explained better. i’m torn on whether or not to include the campbells

hell, heaven and purgatory are explained but only seen in glimpses, keep these ideas ambiguous and up to interpretation outside of what we hear. remember the line ‘hell is...well, it’s like hell. even for demons’? leave it at that. the exception is 5.16 bc that episode fucks so hard

if we end on swan song and let the show be the tragedy it is, i want to keep the ambiguous ending. is that sam or lucifer? if it’s sam, will he contact dean or walk away? we will never know! there is also no ‘the world is ending’ more than once, it really lost its impact after the second or third time.

idk how i feel about the men of letters - it is logical that there would be organized hunting and an established network and system on how to do things, but for the sake of keeping it hbo-style and grounded, there are no networks beyond the roadhouse and singer’s salvage yard.

i want sam and dean not have a permanent home except the impala, motels and impala ONLY. the bunker had potential but it was just for the sake of convenience it was there with all the lore and answers they needed when it was necessary. maybe eventually they do stop travelling so much when it becomes more about the Big Stuff instead of the episodic cases that requires driving all the time but it will be like an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere. i want sam and dean to never have a physical house as a home but they scrape together whatever they have make something similar to a show

as the show progresses, sam and dean become pretty hated by other hunters because they’ve started apocalypse and have an increasingly shitty reputation. and john was an infamous good hunter but also a dick. everybody knows that people who work with the winchesters often end up dead, that one brother will sacrifice anything and anyone to save the other and that they frequently work alongside demons. even the ones they DO work with (jo, ellen, bobby, rufus, bela) are hesitant to be involved with them

sam’s powers are strong but after killing lilith and the truth revealed to him, he represses the powers in shock and fear of how blinded he was by them and the rush of power they gave him. a little more about how sam fears what the lust for power and strength did to him. he continues to repress his powers, often to a dangerous point where he will be on death’s door as a result of not using them. when meeting jack and mentoring him in using his powers, jack asks him about sam’s powers after sensing them. sam eventually decides to lead by example and embraces his powers again, but remains extremely careful about using them (this also fulfills dean’s arc of having to let go of the holy-innocent-pure-ideal-not a person but an idealized version of sam-little brother sam he has put on a pedestal for so long)

bobby is viewed as a father figure by sam and dean but bobby makes it clear he doesn’t want that burden or relationship in his life after his wife died. he makes this clear to them too, but sam and dean have fucked up perceptions of parental figures so they don’t think bobby means it (they just latch on to whatever parental figures they can find)

we see more of sam’s relationship with the side characters; sam and jo hunt together on occasion, he hangs out with ash and talks hacking when visiting the roadhouse. he and ellen loves playing poker together. if anything, dean is the one who’s isolated - he only ever really cared about mary, john, sam and cassie, and never really had any friends. sam is way more well adjusted and sociable after spending time at stanford where he’s had conversations that didn’t only revolve around dead bodies and lore. 

this could also feed into dean’s extreme abandonment issues and isolation he feels and how this would affect his psyche

sam and dean are both unknowingly prepared to become the perfect vessels; sam loses his humanity by becoming more and more like lucifer (defying his father and his will) while dean becomes prepared by doing what michael did; casting his brother away in his time of need (blindly following his father and his will). very much like in s4 but even more intense and brutal (i love angst :))

we see different hybrids; demon/human (antichrist), human/(arch)angel (nephilim) and demon/angel (???), but none of them are all powerful bc narratively that’s really boring. they’re strong but have very specific powers that affects them and/or their surroundings in catastrophic ways (but no other worlds bs, we stick to the road trip aesthetic, keep it grounded). i want the only all powerful character to be god but he doesn’t show up at all, he’s the ultimate absent father. is it chuck? we never find out!

powers would for example include giving people diseases, force anyone close to them to tell the truth (not consciously, it’s just the air around them), read minds, create storms, light things on fire when they’re angry, make people hallucinate etc. like fucked up shit but not things that are too grande because again - that’s really boring

abbadon, the princes of hell and the four horsemen are more fleshed out villains instead of the one season reign the each had. 

being a prince of hell is a title that is inherited - after azazel dies, sam gets the title because he is the one with azazel’s blood in him OR meg does, but idk if that would be as interesting (if she actually was his daughter)

it remains a horror show throughout, lots of gore and blood

the moral code and ethics of the brothers are the opposite of the beginning; dean thinks in black and white, sam sees shades of grey and individuals instead of what they are. however, as the show progresses, their train of thought becomes opposites; dean becomes more open to how people are true evil and how monsters are often victims of their circumstance while sam becomes harsher and less forgiving after ruby’s betrayal along with finding out the truth of his existence and how there’s been demons around his entire life. eventually they’re on the same page and they see the circumstances. 

on the other hand; i also really fuck with the idea of dean maintaining his black and white morals on that all monsters=inherently evil, humans=inherently pure and good, but he is the only human on team free will. sam is half demon, castiel is an angel, jack is a nephilim, rowena is a witch, garth is a werewolf, mary is a zombie etc

demons become demons in hell by agreeing to become the torturer and thus giving up their humanity to be free of pain, does that mean they could become humans again by regaining some humanity? by doing good deeds? (potentially this is confirmed with jessica and how she came to love sam; genuine love and care for a human could reverse the demon process?) this also means dean was a demon in hell but was purified/turned back again when castiel raised him. this also plays into dean becoming like michael; in trying to absolve himself from what he did in hell he becomes ruthless, unforgiving and righteous to evil, much like the angels, regardless of his personal connection to a person and what he would consider “evil”

dean and pacifisim: after dean is cured from being a demon/the mark of cain/is made aware of his blind righteousness that he used as an excuse to kill, he becomes firmly determined to reign in his anger and violent tendencies by becoming a pacifist (like sam in s11) as a way to redeem all the blood he’s spilled. of course in his profession and true dean fashion he won’t be able to do it 100% so he decides to only act in self defense, and he only goes batshit violent on the offense when it’s about protecting sam

OR. dean’s self righteousness becomes his own downfall; the belief that all evil must be eradicated, refusal to see the circumstances and the shades of grey is what pushes him to lose his humanity and become a demon and therefore, in a potential ending the ruler of hell, because i think it would such an interesting journey from a to b, that dean starts out human, revels in his holiness, executes and kills in the name of his own holiness in the belief that he’s becoming the ultimate angel, the ultimate hero when it’s doing the opposite. if this happened then sam would take the opposite route; starts as a human, becomes more and more demonic, stops himself and returns to his hopeful and optimistic self, has faith and humility and that is what makes him ascend from abomination to purified and holy (trials). 

this could be a perfect 10 season structure as well: s1-5 are when sam and dean start off humans; dean becomes holy and as close to an angel a human can be, while sam drinks the demon blood and almost becomes one to gain the freedom and power he wants, but begins to turn it around to send lucifer back to hell. s6-10 is when dean becomes the unholy and sam becomes the holy even though neither realize because now there’s no grand master plan - this is who they are, who they choose themselves. don’t know how this ould end though; either as normal humans again (but there wouldn’t really be a ”normal” after everything) or they really go off the rails with sam like ruling heaven (not as god though, just as a good and just man) and dean ruling hell. castiel is human and stays on earth with jack.

the gothic americana aesthetic is kept throughout the entire show and is only shot on film

after s5 castiel returns to heaven to help restore order, and he takes charge for a little while, but eventually returns to earth after trying to introduce democracy to angels who didn’t get it. in his place, anna takes over and she rules heaven well (after trying to kill mary when going back in time she isn’t killed by michael, but narrowly escapes and remains in hiding to heal until castiel reaches out and finds her)

when finding out they are The Vessels and will be brought back regardless of what they try, sam and dean explore what this means more. dean throws himself into dangers and to protect others. he is burned, blown up, stabbed, electrocuted, beheaded and eaten, but wakes up the next morning in his bed without a scratch, without any pain and memories of his deaths. he revels in this untouchability. sam kills himself over and over only to be resurrected again and again by lucifer. he remembers the pain and blood.

that being said, while dean is like angel royalty, sam is demon royalty. the demons don’t go after him, they don’t hurt him. some even offer up themselves to be drained of blood, even after lilith’s death. it makes it really difficult to stay clean but he pulls through with dean and castiel actually supporting him. to help sam get through his addiction, dean stops drinking alcohol and they go through their withdrawal together

the angels almost worship dean as the michael sword and have an open disgust towards sam for being lucifer’s vessel - they always answer dean’s prayers and calls for help, they follow his orders if need be and don’t hesitate to heal him if he needs it. sam could pray until his vocal chords bleed or call out for help while holding his guts in his hands; none of the angels would come to his aid. the only one who answers sam’s prayers is lucifer as a voice in sam’s head or a hallucination. sam could call demons to help him out but he refuses

sam isn’t the first hunter to drink demon blood, to try to enhance his own abilities using the supernatural as a means to get there - there are hunters who have altered themselves with parts from werewolves and vampires to become better hunters, like the styne family (the guys from s10), blurring the lines again of what’s good and human vs what is evil and inhumane

if angels can’t find a vessel to volunteer, they will force them to say yes - the how is not important, only that the ‘yes’ is said, whether its meant or not, any verbal yes will do. the angels never sleep and they never eat, which is disturbing to sam and dean who are exhausted all the time and eat scraps whenever they can

castiel, like all other angels, is taught to despise and not care about sam winchester at all, but the more castiel gets to know sam, he becomes fascinated with him, how lucifer’s ultimate vessel, starter of the apocalypse and destroyer of god’s creation can be so kind and gentle, so full of faith, acceptance, optimism and hope. in dean castiel sees a good man, yes, but also a man who’s bloodthirsty, rages, revels in war, resorts all problems with violence, loves conditionally and expects unquestioned loyalty. sam too, has a darkness and bloodthirst in him, but it only comes out in glimpses. castiel thinks it’s funny, how sam turns out to be the opposite of lucifer while dean is so alike michael

[luloco]

Hello I have opinions about this book

WARNING: HEAVY SPOILERS FOR BOTH AURORA CYCLE BOOKS, DUH

Ok I’ll preface this by saying I adore the Illuminae files (especially Gemina, Nik Malikov stole my heart) so I know these authors do good books and write great characters which, for the most part, apply to these two. First, the characters in order of least favourite to favourite (plus commentary)

Aurora: yeah look, I’m usually all over my OP characters with flaws but she’s so ✨whiny✨ (which is fair considering but I’m not patient) at first her relationship with Kal was cute and I’m usually all over that insta love trope but this time it didn’t sit that well with me? It was just too perfect and had no problems and then there was the whole “ohhh your father is that star slayer man? Gtfo you’re dead to me” which was overly dramatic and had me rolling my eyes bc they all overreacted (except for Scarlett I think she had actual reason to be mad bc of Ty) also Aurora please just fucking swear it bothers me so much

Kal: in the first book I was all over this I loved him then come book two and this man’s whole ass character is literally just him simping over Aurora which is boring. That being said I still love his character design 😔👌🏻👌🏻

Cat: (yo idk about y’all who actually read the book but the narrator for Cat was trying to do british or something and coming off as fake Australian) (and I’d know, I’m fucking Australian) but in all honesty I didn’t like her character that much she was kinda annoying especially when they had us going that she’d betrayed them. I only liked her when she “died”, I won’t lie, I cried but mostly bc of Tyler. The whole fucking Ra’hamm thing was not what I expected but honesty it shouldn’t surprise me that much after reading Gemina...

Zila: first book she was kinda just there doing nothing much but in the second book we get that backstory and character development and I love her my tiny gay trigger happy genius pls cherish and protect her and someone hug her please

Tyler: first book ty was like ok cool whatever you’re hot and a goody two shoes aww cute I love you and Scar’s relationship I’m jealous and he doesn’t swear until he does bc cat’s dying and I’m crying over it and then book two we get sassy Tyler and we also get him being traumatised by Cat which was not ok at all I didn’t like that my poor son give him a break.

Saedii: I like her about the same as I like Ty, probably a bit less, mostly because her and Ty are the chaotic duo we absolutely needed and they had me cracking up so hard like snorting laughing and wow she’s great I need them together for two-way emotional healing (like hell she fucking flew away and left him I ain’t even worried)

Scarlett: she’s hot, sarcastic and tall so I can kinda relate? Also short red hair? Doesn’t try that hard? Relies on natural talent? I think I just like her because she reminds me of me but that’s beside the point I just adore the Jones twins a lot and also her looking after Fin and respecting him bc if you didn’t guess by now he’s my favourite.

✨Fin✨: someone get my baby back to the Zero and let him curl up in some zero gravity PLEASE. I like these books for the characters and their relationships and Fin and Scarlett are my favourite pair I love them a lot. He always takes it upon himself to cheer everyone else up despite never expecting it back and I love that he lets Scarlett help him and how smart and sarcastic he is and idk he’s just my favourite if anything happens to my son I will cry. Also, disaster bisexual king. Pls let them have their kisssssssss.

One thing I don’t love about these books is how predictable they are for me, here’s the shit I guessed and the shit that caught me by surprise

- I knew straight the fuck away her dad wasn’t gone and was alive or something and when Princeps was unmasking itself I literally said out loud “and surprising no one, it’s her father”

-it was also really obvious that Kal’s father was the star slayer man to me after his sister was introduced or maybe before then idk just obvi

- the weapon was obviously the one he used to kill the sun like ✨duh✨ and they were all so surprised too

- the whole Scar and Ty being half Syldrathi surprised and delighted me

- literally the whole Ra’hamm collective mind infection plant kinda blindsided me a little but I think it’s cool looking forward to seeing how it ends

I could’ve sworn I had more things but it’s late so I’ll probably add to this later.

I’m excited for whatever time travel shenanigans they get into in the third book bc we all know they’re coming fuckin aye!!

Overall very enjoyable series, the plot is fine but the characters are great I love most of the dynamics and despite thinking their whole schtick is kinda cringe I hope we see Aurora and Kal’s relationship fixed too (as well as more Tyler/Saedii content PLEASE)

[har-rison-s]

heaven: 16

nothing lasts forever

request/plot: Stan x Reader where they were together back in Derry and kind of forgot about each other after moving away but they always had a void in their lives. And then when Stan is just about to do it after Mikes call his phone rings and it’s you and you’re crying after just getting off the phone with Mike to come to Derry. You both end up going back and seeing each other at the restaurant and you guys just catch up after all these years that passed and old feelings come back.

A/N: Hi! Part sixteen already. Whew, last one was quite long, wasn’t it? It’s one of my best works ever, I think. Has me feeling so many emotions, and quite strongly, idk. Welp, here goes one of the last chapters. I still haven’t decided how many more chapters there will be, but I just know this Heaven is nearing its end. I hope you all like how this turns out. I’m still a bit conflicted between a few characters and plot points of the ending, like I have a few versions of the ending in mind, and I wanna execute all and none of them at the same time. If I decide on this one ending that’s the most strong out of all of them, I hope y’all won’t kill me. I just finished rewatching the 1990 mini-series. Damn, that’s messy. The dialogues, the special effects… Don’t even get me started on the acting. Anyways, happy quarantine reading! Love you lots <3

warnings: long as always hahahah, wounds, blood, food, nothing else

word count: 3.7k

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Gif credit goes to owner, which isn't me! (Also, it's raining in the gif but idc! Y'all know it's morning and sunny as hell in Derry, Maine rn!)

“Could we have six menus and a first-aid kit?” Richie Tozier asks the young waitress who has approached their miserable-looking table. Her eyebrows raise and she scans the eight adults to see why they would need a first aid kit—not that it’s any of her business—and she screams, coming across Eddie’s bleeding side. The Losers flinch at the high pitch of her scream.

“You need to get to the hospital!” She says, tears streaming down her face. Now this one’s quite emotional for six o’clock in the morning, the Losers think in unison and exchange looks between themselves, finding it imposible to say any words at the current moment. 

“I promise, he’s fine.” Richie tells the girl, looking at her through his thick glasses.

“It’s just a scratch.” Eddie says non-chalantly, and the waitress thinks to herself that these really are a bunch of crazy people, as she presumed when they walked inside the diner. “Besides, I’m a doctor. Could you please bring the menus and a.... uh, a first-aid kit?” He squints and tries his best at a smile at the crying waitress. 

She gathers herself, wipes her tears and smiles as wide as up to her ears. “Right away.” She says in a squeaky voice and leaves their table. The Losers exchange looks between themselves once again, overwhelmed by the events of the night and by the heavily emotional waitress that they have to deal with. They huddle closer together to one another in their red-and-white leather seated booth. 

The place smells of freshly cooked food, coffee and cigarettes. Oh, they’ll all definitely have coffee. A mood and energy booster, that’s for sure, that’s what they need. Though none of them are sure they even have such a thing as a ‘mood’, or ever will. This morning they’re certainly not in any kind of mood. To be completely honest, the Losers feel quite hollow. They feel completed, and they feel a lot of love and pride, but they feel empty inside, as if there’s a hole in their chests and it keeps getting more hollow. 

Stanley’s head rests on Y/N’s shoulder, his hair fallen against her delicate neck. She runs her fingers slowly through his semi-dry curls. Only the roots have dried, and slowly the draught moves further through his jet black strands, taking its time. Stanley places his hand over Y/N’s in his lap, their fingers intertwining seconds after. She lays a kiss on his forehead, and he closes his eyes. You can be at peace.

Y/N looks onto Eddie and Richie, both anxiously waiting for that requested first-aid kit. But they look more peaceful than ever before and Y/N thinks, they all must look that way. Richie’s arm has fallen with natural force around Eddie’s shoulders, and Eddie holds that slack hand in his own, creating a lock of security around himself. Richie’s other hand is drumming against the marbled surface of the table, and he looks at Bev and Ben across the table.

They’re talking to themselves abotu something so quietly that no one can hear them. Their foreheads are pressed together and they’re playing with each other’s hands softly, playfully. Bev’s crimson locks touch Ben’s cheek ever so softly and he closes his eyes. January embers. He opens his eyes again and looks strongly into Bev’s. My heart burns there, too.

Bill tries not to watch them too strikingly. But it’s hard, his first supposed crush and love sitting at the other end of the table with his best friend, completely in their own world, completely in love. It’s hard for his heart, to be precise. His mind knows better. You know better, Bill, you have a wife that you love and, now that you think of it, looks a lot like Bev here. And Beverly’s happy. So are the rest of your friends. You’ll go home and you’ll be happy, too. Back home with Audra, her movies, your novels and their shitty endings. 

Maybe I don’t want to go home, he finds himself thinking. And he’s a bit surprised by that thought. Hmm. What does that mean? Maybe I could live in Derry, spend the rest of my days here, watching as the town, hopefully, evolves, changes. Maybe he can live with Mike now. Bill looks over at his friend. Mike’s smiling, smiling for his friends and his own self, but he’s not looking at them. Mike is probably gonna stay, isn’t he? So what’s so bad about me staying here, and with him? 

Actually Bill doesn’t even wanna think about going back what’s been, for the last thirteen years, considered home. The thought of it makes him sick, for some reason. Maybe he’s not yet ready to think about it all, think about the possibility of going back to England and telling Audra they’re moving to Derry. Yeah, she is not gonna like it at all. And he’s not gonna like that she won’t like it. The thought of it makes him sick, as already said. 

“Here are your menus and the kit.” The waitress has returned, and she doesn’t look shabby anymore. She lays out the menus on the table with her delicate, seemingly teenage hands, and puts the first-aid kit on the table in front of Eddie. 

“Thanks so much.” Eddie speaks his thanks the loudest, and the young girl leaves again. Eddie immediately opens the red box and searches for disinfectant and bandages. He finds a bottle of Equate antiseptic and hands it to Richie, continuing his search for cotton gauze and pads, assuming he won’t find plasters as big as he needs in here. 

Richie unscrews the antiseptic and lifts up Eddie’s shirt. Jeez Louise, it’s a bloodbath. Eddie’s started to bleed onto the seat. Y/N sees their desperate situation and hands the box of tissues on the windowsill to Richie. But Richie gives them to Mike, so he can help clean the wound while Richie cleans it with wipes Eddie’s found in the box. 

“You’re losing a shit ton of blood, dude, you feeling okay?” Richie asks Eddie, carefully cleaning the scrape in his side. Eddie winces here and there, and even draws back when it really stings. 

“I’m fine.” Eddie replies in that same non-chalant voice he’s used for the past half hour. “It’s not that much, anyway.” Richie shakes his head at that statement. They’re almost done with cleaning the skin and wound. The blood still flows, though. 

“We’re going to the hospital later.” Richie states in a soft, commanding voice. Eddie doesn’t really pay mind to Richie’s words, having trouble connecting to thoughts about the next five minutes. He’s gathered some bandages from all that he could find in the kit. Then Eddie looks down at his left side and groans.

“Looks like something took a bite out of me.” He states, looking at the obvious strike in his skin and a bit further than that. There’s other layers visible already, a darker red than his skin. Muscle, that is, and he can see some blood vessels too. Oh, dear God, he’s going to faint. The blood flow is not stopping. 

“Be thankful it didn’t.” Richie reminds him. Eddie takes some medical wool and gives it to Richie. He puts it, as softly as he can, directly into the wound after it’s disinfected, to hopefully stop the blood drip for at least a while. Eddie winces, and his face scrunches so much he feels tears squirting out at the corners of his eyes. That is not a nice feeling at all. 

Mike presses his hand on the wool to keep it there while Richie gets bandages from Eddie. He puts the biggest plasters at the top and bottom of the wound, securing the wool, and Mike lets go. Then Eddie adds more wool, puts tissues and bandages over it, and Richie helps him secure it all with gauze. Quite messy, but for the time until they’re in the hospital, this will have to last. Richie cleans up the blood around their make-shift work place and puts Eddie’s shirt back down. They throw the tissues in a trash can under their table—wow, they have that kind of thing here?—and lean against the sofa, both tired, more tired than before.

“No staph infections in our lifetime.” Richie states between yawns. The ones who were there, in the back alley where the two holy words were spoken first, laugh. But Mike and Bev only share looks of confusion. Richie lays a kiss atop of Eddie’s head and embraces him back in his arms. Now they have time to look at what the menu’s offering.

Y/N opens the menu in front of her and Stanley so they can both read it at once. Stanley sighs. “I don’t have my glasses.” He mewls. The words printed on the laminated paper are blurry to him, and he realises his obstacles are either back at the  hotel or lost in the over-flown sewers or the underground lair. He blinks his eyes twice, but he still can’t read anything except for Derry Diner Menu, which are much larger and in bold. 

Y/N tilts her head to rest on his. “Breakfast. Pancakes - ones with caramel, ones with chocolate, ones with bacon and cheese, ones with berries and fruit, ones with ice cream…” She reads out loud. “Country breakfast - ham, eggs, fries, baked beans. Eggs Benedict, Lobster Benedict, Irish Benedict, Eggs Florentine, waffles, steak & eggs.” She sighs. “Anything strike your fancy?”

Stanley shrugs. “Keep reading.” He says, and feels his eyelids and chest heavy. Her voice is so sweet and soothing. Y/N nods.

“Breakfast burrito, mac and cheese, mac and cheese with lobster,” she widens her eyes, “chili, chicken pot pie… turkey, roast beef sandwhiches… sea food, side orders…” she flips through the menu, which requires to move the arm that’s around Stanley. And she finds that his body is limp against hers. She worriedly looks down. 

His breath passes through his slightly parted lips, his eyes are closed and his face is completely relaxed. He’s asleep. Y/N almost laughs into his face, but she turns away and suppresses her giggles. Her friends look at her. “He’s fallen asleep.” She tells them in a whisper, pointing down at Stanley. They nod and most of them smile. No wonder. They feel like doing the same, and they’re actually on the verge, if they weren’t concentrating on reading the menu and hoping for coffee soon. 

Y/N stops her giggling fit and looks down at the menu again. What do I want, what do I want… “What are you guys gonna order?” She asks her friends. 

“Probably pancakes.” Comes from Bev, who’s decided for both her and Ben.

“Us too.” Mike informs. “Bacon?” He asks.

“Berries.” Ben responds. 

“We’re gonna get that country breakfast or whatever.” Richie says. “To get proper fat, you know, grow into Eddie’s mom.” He explains further and everyone giggles, even Eddie himself. 

Y/N hums. “I’ve got no idea. I want everything, but it just won’t fit.” She states and Bill chuckles. “I know what to order for Stanley, but myself…”

“Take the same and stop working your brain.” Mike suggests. Y/N looks at him.

“It’s worked enough for the past hours.” Bill supports his argument. Her eyes shift to Bill, and then she looks down at the menu again, a smile on her face now. 

“I guess it’s just that easy now.” She admits and closes the menu, putting it on the table instead. Making decisions really is that easy now. She leans back into the seat, Stanley’s body moving with hers. He gets more comfortable while sleeping, his face nuzzling into her neck, tickling her a bit, and his arms going around her, securing themselves together at her waist. Y/N smiles and hugs him back, resting her cheek on his curls. She closes her eyes. 

“What will you have?” Bill asks her and she opens an eye to look at him, her own eyelids feeling sort of heavy now. “Before you join him.” He whispers, smiling. She smiles back.

“Love you, Bill.” She tells him sincerely. “Eggs Benedict for us both.” She says and Bill nods. “And coffee, too. Both black, but two sugars in Stanley’s.” She’s surprised herself that she still knows how he likes his coffee, or which breakfast option he’d always choose. It’s like it’s basic knowledge now, something that’s imprinted in her mind and feels like it’s been that way since she can remember. She closes her eyes again and lets her exhaustion take over. She wants to rest, just for a little bit, just lay with Stanley for a while.

She did join him in sleeping for a while. Bill wakes her up when the food and coffees have arrive, starting to tickle her, Ben doing the same to Stanley. The two adults jolt awake, eyes wide and confused, and make their friends laugh. 

“Morning, sleepyheads.” Richie nods to them with a smile. Stanley nods right back and Y/N and he both right themselves, sitting up straight. Y/N moves her hair behind her ear and Stanley flattens his shirt. They look down at the fresh food in front of them, though their vision and look on their environement is still hazy from the good-as-hell nap they just woke up from. 

“Bone, apple, tit, was it?” Richie suggests as a toast for the Losers’ diner breakfast. Everyone laughs once more, but they clink their coffee cups together, repeating Richie’s ridiculous words and they laugh again, harder this time. Languages have never been Richie’s strongest side. 

They all drink coffee in unison and regain some amount energy at that, then delve into their steaming breakfast which fill their noses up to the maximum with utterly irresistible aromas. Richie, like the beast he is, devours half of his plate in the first few minutes while everyone else devours their food bit by bit. But everyone is so endorsed in eating that they don’t pay mind to their friends, for the time they’re eating they even forget they’re with their friends, lest someone else entirely. Food is very good right now. Heavenly, if you might.

When they’re done, they all slump into their seats, letting out groans of content and holding their bellies. “For a diner, that was really good.” Bill says. Y/N laughs. Bill, Eddie, Stanley, Ben—cross that, all of them, except herself and Mike, have grown used to dining at fancy restaurants where it costs to even reserve a table, grown used to making great mega-dishes at home for themselves. They’ve grown used to business events with crazy dinners and a wide range of appetisers. Champagne, wine, whiskey of the highest classes. So this is entirely out of their usual menu, and Bill is, of course, taking it like a snob. Hence Y/N laughed. 

She and Mike have not lived the life their friends have. Not that it’s bad lives they’ve been living upto this point, just different, way different from most of the Losers Club. Y/N hasn’t become a famous writer, architect or fashion designer, neither has Mike. So for one, their daily routine differs, and two, their eating habits differ from their friends’. Diner food may be the lowest of them all, considered so by the highest class of society, but Y/N can safely admit that she likes diner food and doesn’t mind having it once in a while. And what can Mike have in this shithole town, anyway, other than make-believe restaurant meals, takeout and diners? Neither of them mind eating here now or any other time. 

“I want more.” Y/N manages to croak out, and everyone laughs. “Anyone up for a sundae split?”

“Ugh, we’re really gonna get fat.” Eddie sighs. 

“Haystack’s gonna have a come-back!” Richie announces and changes his face into an excited expression. But he still makes his friends laugh, including Ben himself. His laughter rumbles deep and low like a bear’s roar.

“I’ll have a sundae split with you, Y/N/N.” Beverly says, then. Y/N smiles at her. 

“Anyone up for a Diet Coke and salad?” Mike asks now, and they all laugh again. Richie joins the girls for a sundae split, and the rest agree with Mike’s offer. 

“Wait, wasn’t Y/N working in a diner for a while? In, like, high school?” Eddie asks now, as they wait for the waitress, and he looks at Y/N. She looks at him, tired and full from the eggs, but nods. 

“I was.” She confirms. “Not this one, though, the one in the center of town.” She leans towards the table to sit proper and rests her elbows on the surface. She crosses her arms and puts her chin on top of them. “After Bowers and Cockstetter were… out of the picture, I had the freedom to work in the skirt the diner required me to.” She recalls. Those boys were always onto her and Beverly, while they were still alive, which made it hard for them to ever wear something remotely feminine. They always got some sort of cat-calls, and groping was the worst of what would come from them. “Jesus…” 

“What scumbags they were.” Beverly joins in, also leaning against the table. She moves her hair out of her face, and looks to Y/N, but Ben’s worried gaze catches her eye instead. She turns to him. He only reaches for her hand with his own. I’m here now. 

“You working in a diner was the best thing, Y/N.” Richie says, putting emphasis on ‘best’. She looks at him now and smiles, remembering how stoked they all were for free food and the food that she actually made. Mostly deserts. Stanley’s arm makes its way around her waist. She leans closer to him. “I mean, the birthday parties there were amazing. Nothing could top them.”

“Wow, Rich, even college and work parties?” Mike asks, and they both chuckle.

“You bet your fur, Mikey,” Richie says, patting his friend’s shoulder. He looks reminiscent for a second, his head hangs down, and then he tries to put it into words, “you know, I think—I think because childhood, and teenage years, were the best part of my life. I mean, I’m forty now, so I’m old enough to say shit like that, you know, but… It’s true. I know that I thought it then and I know it now—those were the best parties of my life.” He admits and looks around at his friends. “Because—because I was still young, and because it was the best childhood, I think, any kid could wish for. Even counting in all the shame, the fear, and IT. And because I was with you guys.” 

A silence falls upon the Losers Club. But they smile at Richie, and at each other, realising that’s true. Those were the best years of their lives, and actually, taking the horrible parts, the best childhood any child could wish for. The best friends anyone could wish for to spend that childhood and those confusing, difficult teenage years with. Without each other, they wouldn’t be the same, and they wouldn’t be as strong and as full of love and, perhaps, belief. 

“You know…” Stanley starts to say, they look at him, “nothing lasts forever.” He states, shaking his head with a dreamy look in his eyes. Nothing does seem to last forever, that is true. But he has a feeling of differing in opinion with his own statement. Nothing lasts forever—the monster they thought had lived under Derry forever, eaten its kids and other residents, cast a spell on the adults and the whole air of Derry, is now dead. So that doesn’t last forever. The promise they made—it is fulfilled now, meaning it won’t last forever, either. It lasted as long as needed to unite them all again. But this… what they have…

“Except for friendship.” Y/N says, looking at him. “And love.” Yes, friendship and love. Those will last forever. The love they have for each other will outlive all their future deaths, all their future kids’ deaths, and their kids’ deaths. This love, and this bond, it will last forever. It will always be somewhere in the predicted long life of the Earth and humanity. It will fly with the wind, blossom in flowers and rosy cheeks, it will swim with the ocean and breathe with the air. Always.

“And love.” Eddie says it with Y/N in unison. They smile at each other. Love. What a wonderful thing. It might as well be a living creature, like fear was. Only much stronger.

“Desire.” Ben suggests. Beverly closes her eyes and leans her head on his shoulder. I know, Ben. But we’re here now. All the desire pent up in teenage and adult years seems much lighter now. For Beverly, Ben and for Richie and Eddie, too. And for Stanley and Y/N. All their desire towards each other has finally been released, even if the door to it is only open in a narrow slit now. Desire might as well live in all eight of them, desire for each other, desire to meet each other again, desire to have that unbreakable friendship again. Desire for that lived in their hearts all these empty years, it was unknown and mysterious, a feeling they could not guess. Now it’s known, and out in the open, nothing to hide from each other. Or anyone else, for that matter. They’re proud.

The Losers Club fall silent, but comfortably so. They’re finally in a comfortable state with themselves and each other, and with the world around them. Strange, vile and ignorant as it may be, the world is truly amazing, though, and much bigger than they all thought. Brought them together that one summer, made a bond that will last forever. They’ve got a lot to thank it for. But they’ve also got every reason to kick the world in the butt and other places. 

For now, they’ll let it slide. For now, they’re only focused on being in the diner, getting desert and then showering. Most importantly, for now, they’ve got each other, safe and healthy, and that’s all they need. That will do. 

“Anything else you’d like to order?”

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[twoidiotwriters1]

Starcrossed Losers VII (Josh Wheeler xReader)

A/N: So I guess most of you already heard the news about Daybreak… It sucks, and I’m really upset about it, but don’t worry, I won’t stop writing about the show, I love the story and I think as long as there are people interested in it, we can keep it alive. With nothing else to add, I hope you enjoy the chapter, see you on Thursday

Words: 4,153

Warnings: Blood, dead people, feelings, Y/N has a breakdown at some point and Eli is there to kinda calm her down??? idk, bad writing cause I just can’t proofread to save my life.

Previous chapter // Next chapter

I sent Wesley and Angelica to talk to Eli but it was a failure so now I’m waiting here while they get medicines from another place. I’m hungry as hell and waiting for a solution isn’t helping my anxiety. So I write a third note apart from the ones Wesley and Angelica put about going to the pharmacy on Josh’s hand saying I‘m looking for more bandages (cause now we only have one left) and that he better don’t move from where he is or I’ll knock him off again.

See? this is what I mean, people only cause you problems if you’re a good person. Will Josh wake up to thank us for doing all this stuff? Probably not, cause he’s too busy thinking about kissing Sam to be a decent human being. 

But who am I to judge anyway, is not like I was the embodiment of selflessness. I was going to end Alex’s relationship, that’s the kind of person I am.

——————————————

“Alex, hey! Alex!” I’ve been standing outside his place for what it feels like the longest time, it’s freezing and dark out here; if my parents notice I’m not home I won’t hear the end of it, but this is important. I need to know exactly where I’m standing on Alex’s life.

‘Y/N, you literally told us like two chapters ago that you and Alex never talked about the kiss, what the hell are you doing?’ Well…

“Y/N? Is all okay?”

Just keep reading.

“Stuart,” I say in a tone of surprise, “I didn’t know you were coming over to Alex’s”

“Yeah, we’re gonna watch a movie” Stuart says, giving me a curious look, “I didn’t know he had invited you”

“He didn’t,” I say quickly, “no, I just need to talk to him about something… school stuff.”

“School?”

“I know it’s late, but you know me,” I shrug, trying to sound as casual as posible, “I got all anxious about it and he wasn’t answering my texts, so…”

“Oh, I think it’s because he’s taking a shower,” He smiles, “but hey, let’s go inside so you don’t freeze to death.”

“I really don’t wanna bother…”

“Come on, Y/N, you’re a friend,” Stuart replies, “it’s better if you stop worrying about it and ask him, you’re here anyway.”

We walk inside Alex’s house and I sit on the edge of the couch, unable to control my anxiety. I look over to my friend and a sudden idea hits me. I could tell him and all would be over…

Stop! What did Katie just told you? I can’t do it with Stuart here, I can’t ruin their date. I can’t ruin my friends’ relationship just cause I’m confused about my own feelings. This is dumb, I can live with the doubt, I don’t have to do this. I’ll tell Stuart to not worry about it and I’ll-

“Y/N?” Alex appears at the end of the stairs, his hair is damped and his shirt has tiny droplets. But overall he looks nice.

And that’s when I realize, Alex never dressed like that for our outings. Or for when I was the one going over to his house to watch movies. He never did any of those nice things he does for Stuart. I discovered (with lots of pain) that if I ask him right now to tell me who is he in love with, he’s not gonna say my name.

And that’s all I needed to know.

“Uh, hi,” My voice comes out hoarse, I try to fix it before I continue, “you know what?” I look over to Stuart, “I can fix it on my own, don’t worry about it. Thanks for letting me in though.”

“Are you sure?” Stuart asks me in confusion.

“Yeah, I’m sure. You…” I look intently to Alex, making sure he knows what I mean with what I’m about to say, “clearly have something more important going on here. Don’t worry, I’ll do fine.”

Alex opens his mouth to answer but nothing comes out. He stares at me with a pained expression. Stuart walks me out since he’s the closest to me.

“Enjoy the night for me, will you?” I ask him once we’re outside, “and take care of Alex, he’s the only best friend I have.”

“Sure thing, boss,” He chuckles, “have a good night, Y/N. Try to not get so easily scared about little things.”

——————————————

“I don’t get easily scared,” I grumble, holding tightly the bandages against my chest, “fucking Stuart, being super nice…”

My rambling dies as soon as I’m in front of Josh’s bed. He’s tied up and has a piece of fabric on his mouth. Crumble is standing beside him.

“Uhm,” I look at her, “what the fuck?”

“He’s safe,” She mumbles, looking at his hand with hunger, “Don’t worry, he still has all of his body parts. Except for the finger.”

“I want to ask… but at the same time, I’m too afraid to do so,” I shake my head, and put the bandages on the table next to me, “that’s enough, we’re fixing this on our own, Crumble. I’m talking with Eli myself, he’ll give me whatever it is he has on that fucking pharmacy and he will do it, now,” I point to Crumble expecting to look at least a bit threatening, “no biting while I’m gone!”

“No biting,” Crumble shakes her head with enthusiasm.

Cut to five minutes later, I’m standing next to the curtain and screaming to get his attention.

“Eli Cardashyan, get your ass here right now!”

“Ah, have you guys come to your senses?” He’s got an annoying smirk on his face, “Do you have my lotion?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I ask, “No. Wesley and Angelica haven’t returned but Josh is getting worse and I need medicine. Please.”

“Open this shit up, then.”

“No can do, Wesley took the keys with him,” I reply.

“Then I’m sorry but I can’t help you.”

“Can you stop acting like a child for a second?” I huff in exasperation, “Neither Josh or I ever did anything to you at school. Help him.”

“But you saw,” He points his finger and wiggles it through the curtain, “you saw how they treated me and you never did anything about it.”

“Dude, if I would’ve tried to help every single student that the jocks mistreated I’d have been killed in the first month. I wasn’t fucking Sam Dean, no one knew my name and sure as hell no one respected me more than they respected you. How important is that now anyway? That happened months ago when dogs were still normal size.”

“Well, now more than ever my survival depends on whether or not I like or trust you. And I don’t. So I want you out of here.”

“Fine,” I try to grab his finger but he takes it back, “give me the medication and I’ll make sure we all leave the mall tomorrow morning.”

“For real?” His eyes widened.

“Well, yes asshole. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“I was fucking with you just to get on your nerves,” Eli raises his hands, “I have no medicines.”

“You don’t… What?!”

“I told Wesley before, I don’t have what he needs. That’s why they decided to look for it elsewhere,” He chuckles, “but it’s good to know you’re easily persuaded.”

“Fuck you, Eli!” I exclaim, “All I’m trying to do is to keep Josh alive, cause I don’t run away from problems and I’m totally capable of facing them, okay?! I need him to be okay, cause then all I did was a waste of time!”

And I’m having a crisis, I’m totally having a crisis when I fall to the floor crying over a stupid dying boy. 

“Hey, calm down,” Eli scrunches down to be at my level, though he can’t really touch me cause I’m sitting way further, he stays as close to the curtain as possible, “I’m sure Wesley and Angelica will get them, don’t lose it.”

“I’m such an asshole,” I cover my face with both hands, completely unable to stop the tears, “I can’t seem to do the right thing no matter what”

“What do you mean? You’ve been taking care of Josh for a whole day, you’re not an asshole.”

“I’m only doing it cause I feel guilty!” I shake my head, “I did something horrible to my best friend and my sister, and now I want to fix it with another human being so I feel less guilty about my shit. And I just fucked it up again. I should pack my bags and leave”

“Dude whatever you did, I’m sure it doesn’t make you a monster. I mean, Baron Triumph already took the title.”

I hate this. I’m drowning in stress and I’m telling this to Eli out of all people. Now he most certainly will use it against me and I can’t do anything about it. The worst part is that I’m truly scared of what might happen to Josh if we don’t give him the right treatment. He still has the chance that was taken from me months ago. He can be reunited with the person he cares about the most.

I manage to calm down enough to clear my head and stand up, I clean my face and I look over to Eli with a threatening expression.

“For the record, I’m not crying because of Josh”

“Yeah, I could tell because your speech had no shit to do with him”

“I just have a lot to deal with,” I take a deep breath before continuing, “I know I’m not a monster. I said I was an asshole. And if you tell them anything of what just happened I will-”

“No need to put a knife on my throat,” He interrupts me, “I won’t tell them.”

“How do I know you’re being honest?”

“Cause you just had a breakdown in front of me and I don’t want to see that again, that shit’s scary,” Eli stands up too, “whatever happened before the nuke, well, you said it, it doesn’t matter anymore. It’s all bullshit now.”

“But you said…”

“Yeah, whatever,” Eli starts to walk away, “go back to Josh, make sure he’s not swallowing his tongue or something.” 

I really want to keep the conversation going, but he’s right. I should go back to Josh. And thank fuck I did, cause I came back to a horror show. 

Crumble was sitting at the edge of the bed, watching a bowl filled with larvae as they were eating out of Josh’s hand.

“Am I going to come back to some freaky shit every time I leave you alone?” I ask in fear, pulling her away from the bed, “What is going on?”

“They’re eating the infection,” She replies happily, “you said we were gonna fix this, so I helped you fix it.”

I look at his hand and I can’t see the skin, but we saw something about it in class, I think, like a semester ago. I don’t know what to say except for…

“Thanks,” I sit on the chair I slept in last night, “I can’t believe we didn’t think of that.”

“It’s cause you can’t think with an empty stomach,” Crumble nods, “we can share my worms after they’re done if you want”

“I don’t eat people…” I scrunch up my nose in disgust, “or worms. Or infections. Thank you for the offer, though.”

“Okay,” she turns around and goes back to have a conversation with her dolls.

“It’s been a hard couple of days,” I mumble, looking at Josh and trying to feel okay with the gross sound of the larvae eating his flesh, “but somehow, I’m okay with it.”

I try to remember exactly how did Josh and I meet. The first time, I mean. When we did our school project.

“Y/N L/N and… Josh Wheeler” Crumble mentions, and I straighten up in my seat.

“Who the hell is Josh Wheeler?” I say under my breath.

“That’d be me,” The boy at my right says, turning his body towards me.

Ah, shit. That’s awkward.

“Oh, sorry,” I smile apologetically, “I hadn’t heard your name before.”

“That’s cause I’m new here,” He smiles, “it’s alright, don’t worry. Josh is a common name anyway, so plenty of people don’t remember how I look.”

“I’ll make sure I’m not one of them.”

“That’s very appreciated, Y/N. I can call you Y/N, right?” He asks.

“That’s my name after all,” I grin.

“Cool,” Josh nods, “so, about the project…”

“If you can do it this thursday, I’m free.”

“Me too. We can go at my place if you want, my mom won’t be home so we won’t bother anyone.”

“Uh,” I hesitate for a moment, “Not that I don’t love going over to strangers’ houses but…”

“Don’t worry, I won’t try anything funny,” Josh chuckles, probably knowing exactly what I’m thinking, “but if you feel uncomfortable we can just go to your place, or the library”

“No, it’s fine. We can go to your place,” the dude seems decent, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, “see you next thursday, at two outside school, then?”

“Sure,” He gives me a small smile before heading out of the classroom and we keep going with our lives.

——————————————

“We’re here!” Wesley pulls me back from my thoughts and I jump from my seat towards the entrance of the store.

“You got the stuff?”

“Oh, we got the stuff,” He shows me Angelica’s bag, packed with white bottles of pills. I squeal a little and give Wesley a tight hug, “look at that! Someone’s happy”

“I didn’t want to carry his ghost for the rest of my life, so yes. I’m relieved,” I grab the bottles but Angelica takes the bag from my hands, “hey!”

“I’m gonna make edible slime for him”

“Are you serious?”

“It won’t take long, besides he’s asleep now, right? And Crumble said she found a way to get rid of his gangrene, so he’ll be fine.”

And that’s when it hits me, Josh is going to be fine.

“Yeah… yes. Do the slime then, I’ll be with Josh.”

“You can rest if you want,” Wesley offers, “he’s out of danger.”

“I got used to being there, you know?” I shrug, “it won’t hurt to sleep one more night on the chair.”

It’s a lie, of course. It will hurt my neck and back, but I need to see the work completed, I need to see him with color on his face and laughing stupidly at his own jokes. 

——————————————

“You have a bad memory?” I ask Josh while pointing at the three post-it notes on the kitchen.

“Nah, that’s just my mom making sure I do what she needs me to do while she’s out,” He brushes it off, “just ignore them.”

“Okay,” I walk over to the living room and sit next to him, opening my backpack, “where should we start?”

“I think the second subtheme was the most extense. I was reading it during lunch and I feel like it will take us years to finish it, so maybe that?”

“You were reading about chemistry during our lunchbreak?” I giggle.

“Well I didn’t want to look like an asshole today, like, what if you had done research on your own and then came to my house to hear me say ‘oh, I don’t know what our work is about, I spent all night playing Outlast’ that would’ve sucked”

“I guess,” I reply, “let’s use all that knowledge then, before it fades.”

“I have plenty of knowledge,” He nods, keeping the joke alive, “I even googled the words I couldn’t understand.”

I laugh again and he joins in happily. He’s nice, I wonder if we’ll still talk after this.

——————————————

Spoiler alert, we didn’t. We finished the work, we got a ‘B’, we high-fived and said “hey, nice work” and we moved on. Cause that’s what you do when you’re seventeen and you’re paired up with someone you barely know. I had other stuff in my mind to be thinking “You know what could be fun? If I befriended that Josh guy I met in chemistry class”, I kept my promise, though. I never forgot his face, and he remembered my name and waved at me whenever he saw me in the halls. That was sweet.

When I wake up the next morning Josh’s aspect has improved. He’s not pale and isn’t sweating as much. The bowl with larvae is gone and it’s been replaced with the one with slime.

I rummage through my stuff and find a small package of cookies. I also pull out my notepad and cross them from my list. I’ll make sure to replace them before I leave. Halfway through my breakfast, Josh moves slightly and raises his hand, which is still reddish but now is a normal reddish and doesn’t smell like Ghoulie.

“Goodmorning, champ,” I smirk.

Josh looks at me and drops his head back on the pillows.

“I’m alive.”

“You are,” I eat the last cookie and drop the package, “eat up. Angelica made it for you.”

He turns his head towards the table and sees the slime, sitting up with more strength and animosity than the day before, he takes the bowl on his hands and tastes it carefully.

“Good?” I ask, he nods in approval.

“Cool,” I get up to leave, but he speaks up.

“Wait,” I turn around to look at him, “how long have you been there?”

“Oh,” I blush, not really wanting to answer the question, but I figure that if I don’t do it, someone else will, “the whole time, probably?”

“You stayed the whole night again?”

“I know you don’t like that-”

“No, thanks,” He replies with a soft, tired voice, “I was a dick the other day, thank you for looking after me.”

“I was making sure you were alright, that’s all”

“I know. I’m really sorry for treating you like that, you didn’t deserve it.”

“I’m glad we’re on the same page now,” I reply, “cause that means I can go without feeling guilty.”

“Oh. Right.” I think he looks disappointed for a second, but it goes away as soon as it comes, “You’re leaving…”

“I have to go restock so…” I don’t wait for a reply and I flee before he speaks to me again. 

Why? Oh, cause I hate confrontation and if I hear him I’ll probably want to stay. Turns out I kinda got attached to stupid Josh for spending a whole day watching over him and now is like that puppy you rescue from the rain, that you know you can’t keep but it has the cutest eyes you’ve seen and it’s just so cute? Yeah, I know you know what I’m talking about.

I’m on my way to retrieve the stuff I left on the store when I run into Josh. He’s out of the bed and is looking quite lively.

“Hey!” He grins, “I wanted to thank you.” 

“Dude, you already did that,” I roll my eyes smiling, “you need to stop before my ego flies through the roof. I’m telling you, you don’t wanna see-”

“You saved my life, Y/N. Along with the others, sure,” He adds, “but you went out of your way to stay and made sure the others got the medicines. You could’ve left me to die and you decided to stay and help.”

“Well, I needed my redemption. I didn’t do it just to be nice.”

“You kind of did,” He points out, “just like how you called me by my name whenever you got the chance at school, and how you offered me help to find Sam even though this was supposedly Triumph’s territory. You’re cool.”

“Thank you. You’re nice.”

“Don’t call me nice,” He shakes his head, “you say someone’s nice when you don’t have anything else to say”

“No. It depends on how the person says it. I say nice when there’s plenty to say,” I correct him, “but I can list all of it if you want,” I think about it for a moment before I start to enlist, “you’re sweet and caring, and resourceful. And you’re brave, cause instead of joining any tribe, you have been looking for a girl all on your own-”

“Okay, okay!” He stops me mid-sentence, “you win. Nice is good. I get it. Stop.”

Josh smiles openly at me and I catch myself thinking about how pretty his smile is.

NO. We are not going over the road again, Y/N. Don’t even think about it.

“Anyway, I wanted to thank you, so I got this for you” He pulls out a pair of bright, lime-green skates from his backpack, “I decided it was my turn to do something for you so I got you new skates.”

“Holy shit,” I whisper, trying to look cool about it, “any reason why you chose this color?”

“I don’t know, they felt like you,” Josh says simply, “if that makes any sense.”

“Thanks,” I mumble, and I know, I know I’m blushing.

Now more than ever I need to leave before this feeling grows into something more dangerous.

“You’re not even staying the night?”

“I told Angelica I would stay until you were better. How do you feel?”

“I feel…” He doubts for a moment, then continues, “I feel better.”

“Then my work here is done,” I smile, “take care, Wheeler.”

“I know it’s sappy to say it, but I will kinda miss you.”

“Shut up,” I roll my eyes, avoiding eye contact.

“Seriously, who will take care of our injuries when you’re gone? You should leave a notebook with instructions about what to do in case of stabbing, ghoulie bites, sunburns and stuff like that. You must have googled those too on your boring days, right?”

I laugh, nodding.

“I did,” I didn’t, but you know, fanfiction writers are dedicated as fuck to their research, “but maybe some other time? if we see each other again, I’ll make sure to have the notebook ready.”

“Deal,” Josh is beaming, not for me though, he just seems happy to be alive. 

My heart can’t take that sight so early in the morning, so I look away.

“Uh, Angelica told me they wanted to talk to you…” I mention.

“Oh,” The boy frowns, “okay.”

I follow him those few steps so I can say goodbye to Wesley and Angelica too, and luckily enough, both of them are sitting next to each other.

“Hey,” Josh raises his voice, “what flavor is this anyway? Antibiotic apple or, uh…” He chuckles, “triage truffle?”

Ah, there they are, the silly jokes. Fuck, I’ll miss that stupid sense of humor.

“They call it Josh-Cut-Off-His-Finger-Because-He-Sucks-Dick Berry,” Angelica answers softly.

“Rude,” I reply, then I realize she’s crying and my heart drops, “Hey, what’s wrong?”

“What’s going on?” Josh asks beside me, “Are you crying?”

“Come with us,” Is all she says before standing up and taking us outside the mall where they lead us towards a car.

Wesley opens the trunk and we stare at a corpse covered with a white sheet with bloodstains.

“We found her body on the way back.”

I look over to Angelica to find some kind of sign that this is all a bad joke, surely that can’t be…

“Show me,” Demands Josh, I hold my breath waiting for the worst.

Wesley pulls the sheet away and there’s no longer a face where it should be a face. It’s destroyed. The only thing that I recognized, is that yellow pin she used to wear all the time on her clothes.

“No…” I whisper.

“Sam,” Josh leans shakily against the trunk and carefully caresses the hair on her head, “oh, Sam…”

It’s more than I can take. I walk away from the car and turn my back to them, hands against my eyes so I don’t start crying for the second time that week.

This is not fair. It was supposed to be a happy ending. Josh, finding the girl and me finally free from any guilt. It wasn’t supposed to end with Sam Dean’s body at the back of a car. 

I wanna say that I’ll leave anyway. That I’m still packing my bags and walking out. But no. I’m staying cause I can’t leave Josh when they just took away from him the only thing that mattered the most. I know how that feels, and it sucks to have to live it alone. It hurt when Alex walked away after I had killed Katie. I’m not gonna do that to Josh, or anyone. I’m not scared. 

I’m staying.

Taglist.

@letsbloodmagic @hollywaterpls​

[wilsonsnest]

winter, Sweetheart - VI

this is the part where i go age of ultron? whose ultron? and civil war? idk her. we’re pretty much totally deviating from here on out folks. feat. shit getting real and nat to the rescue.

warnings: sickness, hurt/comfort, bad medical practices

He finally settles them in a Bucharest. Romania, he admits, probably isn’t the safest place for the both of them to hide out. But Sweetheart is getting worse, and he loses strength too quickly to make moving possible. The Soldier - Bucky, now, he’s trying it out still. He tries to fix the Falcon’s wing as best as he can, but he’s no expert when it comes to cyberbionic systems even if he was, the mess of Hydra’s experiments would have made his skills useless anyway. Neither of them really knows how the wings work exactly, and the best he can do is solder any wires that seem to go together and snip any ones that seem to be in the way.

Neither of them are keen to test the results of Bucky’s patch job and so Sweetheart’s wings stay tucked away and covered. He supposes it doesn’t matter anyway, their former “employers” are either dead and on the run. The Soldier and the Falcon are on their own now.

For a short time, things seem okay. Bucky accessed Hydra accounts that even most Hydra techs wouldn’t have a clue about. He’s able to buy them a shitty one room apartment with peeling wallpaper and a creaky wooden floor where the landlord asked zero questions except for cash payment.

He steals painkillers for them both, easier than buying illegally or legally. Both of their flesh bruises and wounds heal fairly quickly though, thanks to the bootleg serum Hydra had pumped them full of. Bucky is in good enough shape, but its the Falcon’s broken wings that are causing the problem. The strain of the pain has reached levels where Sweetheart mostly stays curled up in bed, sweating into the mattress and gritting his teeth in pain. It was running like an infection, but the wound was entirely technological.

The last time Bucky had taken a look, the Falcon had actually whimpered in pain. He didn’t try to touch his wings again after that. At this point, he would only make things worse. Bucky focuses on the things he can do for Sweetheart. He washes him, feeds him and starts hunting for someone who can fix this. He knows there has to be some cowardly Hydra doctor that ran off before everything came crashing down.

But the longer he searches, the worse Sweetheart gets. There are nights when neither of them sleeps. Sweetheart is in too much pain, on as many painkillers as his body can stand and Bucky stays by his side, almost hoping for someone to find them so he can take his anger out on someone.

He gets desperate and he drops a clue. One that only a particular person will recognize.

Bucky waits by the kitchen counter, the windows blacked out and a singular light on near him. Theres a gun stored in one of the kitchen drawers, close enough that he knows he has a 75% chance of getting to it before she can attack him. He stiffens, as the door opens and Natasha walks in, dressed in a tailored pantsuit hands weaponless. Bucky narrows his eyes, and can see the points where she’s hiding her supplies, probably more firepower than he has currently stored in this room.

But theres an uneasy truce here, and they respect one another enough to not greet each other with guns drawn. He’s shot her once before, but he’s also the one who taught her own to survive worse.

She closes the door behind her, but doesn’t lock it. “I was wondering who contacted me. The Winter Soldier,” She gives the civilian clothes he’s wearing a once-over. “or James Barnes.”

“Bucky.” He says tightly, only really sure of that for now. He moves in an arc around the room, careful to face her at all times. He doesn’t want to get too close, but he also wants to be near Sweetheart in case he has to haul him away to escape. The Police could already be on their way.

“I know someone who’d be happy to hear that.” She says softly, and its more genuine than he ever remembers hearing her speak. She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear, no wire. “I can’t guarantee someone hasn’t tracked me here.”

Bucky nods, he knows that. He moves to kneel by the mattress Sweetheart is laying, finally asleep after a long night. His skin is ashen and clammy, sweet dappling his feverish forehead. Even asleep, he shakes. Bucky swallows and gestures toward him, not touching. “He needs help. I can’t… fix this.”

It’s hard to admit this weakness, but he fears the worst if he doesn’t get help. Natasha’s brow furrows, and she takes cautious step forward. She can tell how hard this is for him, how bad it must be if he’s willing to risk asking for help. Her eyes are unreadable, but theres no disgust or anger and Bucky is grateful for that. Natasha never met the Falcon, though their training overlapped at points. Hydra kept the Falcon isolated and even more secret than the Winter Soldier.

“I can call Stark.” Natasha offers quietly. She looks at Bucky now an shakes her head before he can protest. “It’s the only way he isn’t ending up in a jail cell or worse.”

“The Falcon,” The name tastes bitter on his tongue, but he’s never called him Sweetheart in front of anyone before. It would be like a betrayal to do it now. “Has never killed anyone.”

He knows this because he made sure of it. Natasha gives him a plaintive look and raises an eyebrow but Bucky only holds her gaze steady. Eventually she concedes and nods. “It gives us something to work with at least.” The tight spot in Bucky’s chest loosens just a little.

“His name is Sam Wilson.” She adds, dipping her head toward Sweetheart. Bucky just stares at her blankly and she huffs a little. “His friend, Riley, the one whose car you destroyed? He was Sam’s partner in the Air Force. He thought he was dead. He’s looking for him,”

Like Steve’s looking for you. It goes unsaid, but hangs in the air between them.

Still, to know the Falcon’s identity feels surreal to Bucky. It means nothing. As far as Hydra was concerned, Sam Wilson was erased. He has only ever been The Falcon and to Bucky he’s always been Sweetheart. He doesn’t know if he likes how Sam feels yet.

“Do you have a go-bag?” Natasha asks even though she already knows the answer. “As soon as I call this in to Stark, everyone is going to know. Including Steve.”

Bucky grimaces, but he knew that was coming. Even hearing his name makes his head hurt. He isn’t ready to face that yet, or else he would be going with them. He hates the idea of leaving Sweetheart, but can’t handle being around Steve or the rest of them. He glances at Sweetheart, shaking beneath the thin sheet and presses his lips together tightly. He’s never left him not knowing he’d be back. He has no idea when they’ll meet again and it terrifies him. His Sweetheart has been his responsibility for so long, how can he trust anyone else to look after him?

But then Sweetheart moans low in his sleep and rocks a little, trying to soothe his own pain. Bucky moves closer, presses his metal hand against his hot skin. Sweetheart settles and Bucky looks up at Natasha. “Don’t tell him.”

“I can’t lie to Steve anymore.” Natasha almost sounds apologetic, but he can tell shes telling the truth. “And he’s smarter than he looks, he’ll see right through me.”

Bucky ducks his head, but nods, he can appreciate her honesty at least. For a moment he rocks in place and out of the corner of his eye he sees Natasha look away. Grateful, he leans forward and presses his lips to Sweetheart’s temple. A promise that he would see him again. He moves quickly after that, he wouldn’t be surprised if the Avengers are already en route.

He lifts the floorboards to grab his backpack and heads towards the window. He stops and glances toward the Falcon and Natasha. He can’t hide his concern from Natasha though and she carefully moves closer to the mattress.

“I’ll stay with him.” She assures him. Theres a determination in her gaze that makes Bucky want to believe her. “Rileys told us a lot about Sam. He’s a good man. I won’t let anything happen to him.”

Bucky wouldn’t know anything about that, but he does know that the Falcon deserves the chance to be free from whatever Hydra did to him. The truth is, he only really trusts himself as far as Sweetheart goes, but his hands are tied in this instance. He’s kept his Sweetheart’s hands as clean of blood as possibly could and thats all he can really claim. With a final heavy sigh, he slips out and the window and disappears.

[holographic-chogi]

Protector pt.4/?

Author: holographic-chogi

Pairing: fem!reader x stray kids

Rating: PG-13? idk how to rate things accurately so take this with a grain of salt

Warnings: swearing (mostly Changbin), graphic description of getting stitches, blood, and mention of guns (please let me know if I miss anything!)

A/N: Ayyyy I finally wrote the next part!! Plenty of dramatic boy action incoming. There’s all kinds of drama happening here. Also, I gave Minho a touch of sass towards the end there, I wanna stay realistic lmao. Also sorry everyone for the long wait times! Things have been a bit hectic on my end but I aim to release a part every 2 days? No promises tho we all know my record of sticking to these deadlines. 

Summary: a virus has wiped out most of humanity, and society has collapsed. People survive in groups where they live in constant fear and a struggle to survive. Women were the primary victim of the virus, leaving few behind. You are one of the few, kept in secret since the beginning. However, you’ve just been caught.

Masterlist 

You were limp in his arms as he sat you in a chair; a dazed look on your face. Before all of this, you’d been confined to “your room” at the prison, so you weren’t used to this kind of action. The young man left your gaze in a blur, and you could hear the faint sound of him calling out for Minho. Pity, you hope you didn’t wake him up. Your eyelids are heavy, and you can feel consciousness slipping away as you lean back, shutting your eyes.

Next thing you know, you jerk awake to a searing pain on your collarbone. A different man fell backwards from your jolt, barely stopping the vodka bottle in his hands from spilling. You immediately reach for the source of the pain, only for another hand to promptly pull yours away before it can touch the wound. You turn your head to see that the person who had saved you earlier was at your side, brows furrowed in worry. He simply locked eyes with you and shook his head, forbidding you from repeating the action, before setting your hand back down. Pulling you from your daze, the man from the floor spoke:

“Hi, Y/N right? My name’s Minho. I’m sorry if that hurt but I have to do it again. I wasn’t able to disinfect the whole wound.”

You glanced down and put two and two together. That dog had left a pretty nasty gash beneath your clavicle, they must be in the process of fixing it up, specifically pouring alcohol in the wound to prevent it getting infected. Explains the vodka bottle. You close your eyes, bracing for the pain as you nod your head, prompting him to continue.

You heard a voice from the man at your side, “I’m Hyunjin, by the way,” he paused. There was was something so calming about the way he spoke, so serene. He must be trying to distract you. “You did a good job fending off that dog. I was surprised you held him off that long.”

You could feel a hand on your shoulder, and then another blast of pain erupting from the wound. A pained whimper escaped your lips as you hunched over, tears forming in your eyes. Hyunjin moved close, his breath on your ears as he murmured, “You’re doing so well. One more step and you’ve been through the worst of it.” Hyunjin’s hand moved from your shoulder and down beside your own. “You can hold my hand for this next part. Squeeze as hard as you need to.”

Minho came into view more clearly when he moved you back into an upright position, probably for better access. You saw pity in his eyes before he turned to grab a small tin beside him. Your own eyes widened when it hit you, he was going to stitch it up. You remembered Hyunjin saying that you’d need stitches outside, but it hadn’t hit you until now. You quickly grab Hyunjin’s hand, eyeing Minho as he opened the tin, readying a needle.

Your breaths quickened and the hold on Hyunjin’s hand tightened as the needle grew closer. You looked up at him with pleading eyes at the last second, hoping that maybe he could carry you away again. You barely got a glimpse before the first stitch.

It was agonizing, the vodka from before felt nothing like this. As soon as it happened, you let out a much louder cry, voice cracking from disuse. Tears streamed down your face as your nails began to dig into Hyunjin’s hand. Looks like he’d have a scar too. Your other hand gripped the arm of the chair, the only thing stopping you from bolting.

You heard Minho speaking to Hyunjin in a hushed voice, “She’s gonna need about seven more of these. I think we need someone else to hold her down.”

At that, footsteps sounded from across the room, moving behind you before you felt a set of hands on your shoulders. They were keeping you in place firmly, but you couldn’t help but notice how gentle they felt. Who was this? Had they been here the entire time? A very familiar voice grumbled above you, “I got her. You can keep going.”

Changbin?

The thought was in your head for only a moment before you felt the needle pierce your skin again, pulling flesh up and over the wound. Your scream was much louder this time, and you would’ve lurched forward had it not been for the grip Changbin had on you. You heard Hyunjin from beside you suck air through his teeth, but before you could see him, the screen door up front burst open, diverting your attention. Felix darted into the room, panic evident as he tried to catch his breath. You locked eyes with him just as the needle renentered, and everything went black.

You weren’t sure how long it had been before you regained consciousness for the third time today. Before moving, you opened your eyes. For some reason you couldn’t understand, the first thing you wanted to know is if Changbin was still there. Minho was bandaging Hyunjin’s hand, specifically the one you had held. Felix was sat on the floor, biting his nails anxiously with his eyes down. There was no Changbin in your line of sight.

Felix must’ve noticed you were awake, because before you knew it, you felt his arms frantically wrap around your frame. In seconds, he was ripped from you and tossed back to the floor. Changbin was looking down at him, annoyed. “Do you not remember what I said about being so touchy? She just got stitches dumbass.” Wow. Guess he was still there. Had he really cared enough to stick around? He looked up at you, and flinched when he saw your open eyes. Must not have known you were awake. He quickly averted his gaze and nudged Minho, speaking barely above a whisper: “She’s awake.”

Minho moved in front of you, kneeling to eye level, a comforting smile on his face. “How are you feeling, Y/N?”

You avoided his gaze, embarrassed. “I’m good, thank you.” you shrunk into yourself, “Thanks for helping me out there, and sorry for freaking out so much.”

He giggled, “You actually did well. You should’ve seen Jisung the first time I had to stitch him up. He screamed before the needle even touched him.”

Hyunjin adds from behind him, “You’re one tough cookie, Y/N.”

You look to Hyunjin, before looking down at the bandage on his hand, feeling your heart sink. “Hyunjin, I am so sorry.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, “Nah it’s nothing. The bandage is dramatic if anything.”

Your conversation was cut short by the door flinging open, knocking a framed photo down from the force. From behind it emerged Chan, followed by two others. One was the young one you had noticed earlier, and the other you recognized from the night of the raid. Chan turned to face all of you, face red with anger. When he saw the bandages from beneath your blood soaked collar, you could see a vein protrude on his throat. His voice boomed as he spoke, the soft, blushy boy from earlier completely gone.

“What the hell happened?”

Minho turned away from you, calmly packing up all of his tools. “Some stray dog got in, got Y/N pretty good. I just stitched her up.”

Chan scanned the people in the room, “How did it get in? Last I checked, dogs can’t climb fences.”

Hyunjin calmly ran his fingers across the bandage, sounding distracted as he answered, “It was my bad. I left the back entrance open when I was carrying a few deer in, I had to make a couple trips so I thought it’d be fine to leave it open.”

“Do not pull that shit again. How could you be so irresponsible?” Chan spat, “I told Y/N we could protect her. It’s day one and we’re already stitching up a wound!”

Hyunjin’s eyes lazily moved from his bandage to lock with yours. There was a look in them that you couldn’t describe. “She isn’t made of glass, Chan. I think she’s tougher than she looks.”

Your heart soared. Before today you were always the weak one, a burden. To think that someone actually sees you as more. You simply smiled back at Hyunjin, hoping he caught your gratitude.

Chan took one look at you, his anger faltering. “I know she isn’t. But she isn’t made of steel either.” he paused, looking behind him at one of the others that had followed him in. “Jisung, you’re going to stay at the farm and keep an eye on Y/N.”

A babysitter? Wow. Were you really so helpless that you needed to be guarded personally? Surely shit like this wasn’t going to happen again. The man whom you assumed was Jisung nodded, before looking at you with a smile, sending a little wave.

You hesitantly waved back, an uncomfortable expression creeping up on your face. “Nice to meet you Jisung.”

With his signature dramatic huff, Changbin pushed himself from the wall he had been leaning on, “When is this Jiho dude going to show up? She’s a pain in the ass.” and before anyone could respond, he was out the door.

Jisung broke the following silence with a chuckle. “It’s not like I was useful out there anyway.” he looked back at you, smile wide. “Nice to meet you, Y/N!”

You had spent the afternoon with Jisung. He took you to see the animals in the stables (two horses and two cows!), showed you around the house, and gave a full tour of every spot you had yet to explore. His presence was comforting, and he made you tear up from laughter more than once. He felt like a long lost best friend. At one point during the day, before the guard switch at noon, you and Jisung had sat up in Woojin’s perch, playing cards and eating snacks.

Jisung sat at the edge, near the ladder, his long legs stretched up to rest on the wall as he gestured to Woojin with his hand full of cards, “Dude, when are you off shift? We gotta clean up this trashfest before Seungmin gets here.” He chuckled to himself before popping another chip in his mouth, “He’ll burst a blood vessel if he sees this mess.”

Woojin ignored him, turning to you instead. “I gotta go to bed soon, it’s almost noon.” He yawned, “I should be up around dinnertime with Changbin. Wake me up if Jisung gets too annoying.”

“Hey!” Jisung tossed a card at him, hitting Woojin in the forehead.

From the other perch, you heard a heavy sigh, “Can you three shut up? I’m too tired for this.”

You still hadn’t spoken to Changbin since the stitches, but he’s undoubtedly been on your mind. Why had Changbin come inside when you were getting them? Even more, he actually helped hold you down so you didn’t get hurt. Was he worried? He couldn’t have been. Regardless, you felt that you should thank him.

You turned around, leaning over the perch wall facing Changbin. “Hey, I haven’t had the chance to thank you yet.”

His eyes widened for a moment before his face grew into a scowl. His voice came out more hostile than before. “For what?”

You were taken aback for a moment, before continuing. “Thank you for helping Minho help me. It probably wouldn’t have gone well had you not been there.”

He turned away from you, his face obscured. “It wasn’t for you. Chan would’ve been pissed if we fucked things up more than we already did.”

But that still left one question. “Why did you come inside? You should’ve been up here.”

Woojin added from behind you, “I had to take watch actually. We heard you scream from here and Changbin beelined for the house.” He smirked, “Looked pretty worried to me.”

Changbin shot a venomous look at you, eyes narrow and teeth clenched. “Don’t fucking flatter yourself. Woojin doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.”

Just after he spoke, you heard a knock from the bottom of Woojin’s ladder. You moved away from Changbin to look over the edge. An unfamiliar man stood at the bottom, looking up, shielding his eyes from the sun. “Hey Y/N, tell Woojin it’s noon. I’m taking over.”

You lean back, eyeing the mess of trash and playing cards. “Seungmin’s here. Better clean fast.”

You and Jisung had spent a bit more time outside before heading in for the evening. Eventually, that just boiled down to you reading a book on the couch while Jisung sat opposite of you, cleaning a rifle. Occasionally, you’d look up to watch Seungmin and Minho on guard. Minho seemed much more relaxed, gun ready, but leaned back with his feet up. Seungmin was much more tense. He stared down at the land beyond the fence with pinpoint accuracy, finger always on the trigger. You could even see him keeping watch when it was Minho’s turn. He definitely came off as the anxious type.

At around seven, you saw Minho head down the ladder and make his way up to the house. You watched him as he moved around the porch, out of view from the window until he eventually re-emerged from the side of the house, holding a very heavy looking paper bag. You stood up and hurried to open the door to let him in, holding a hand out, offering to carry it.

Before Minho could even respond, Jisung’s arm appeared from behind you, reaching around your waist to grab the bag. He looked back at you while he took it to the counter, “Not until you’re healed up.”

Minho nodded, cracking his knuckles before moving various pots and utensils onto the counter. “Jisung’s right. You shouldn’t carry anything heavy with those stitches so fresh.”

God, you felt like such a burden. You wish you could contribute more. “What are you doing with all that?”

“Getting dinner ready. Jisung’s probably just gonna sit and watch.” Minho side-eyed him, “He’s banned from cooking.”

Jisung leaned against the wall, “Yep. Sounds good. Have fun slaving over the stove Minnie.”

You chuckled at him before moving next to Minho, “If he won’t help you, I’m more than happy to.”

Minho beamed at you, before hoisting a bag of potatoes onto the counter. He held out a peeler and smirked. “Get peelin’ sister.”

As soon as he said it you began peeling, eager to help. Eventually, Jisung spoke from the corner, “Let’s not put her to work like this Minho.” He looked to you, trying to sound enticing, “Wanna go hang out with Felix?”

Minho scoffed, “Oh please Jisung, she can handle this just fine. Why don’t you head off and go make yourself useful. You don’t need to keep an eye on her right now.”

Jisung opened his mouth to protest, but came short of an answer. He looked at you defeated, and you shrugged. Minho wasn’t wrong. “You’ll have to survive without my presence. Can you manage?”

He smiled back at you, and held a hand to his forehead in mock distress, “How could I?”, before turning to leave.

Once the screen door closed behind him, Minho nudged you with eyes still on the cutting board in front of him. “The boys seem to like you.”

You chuckled, “I like them too.”

A bit of worry shown on his face, but his tone was still playful. “You’re gonna be trouble, aren’t you?”

You looked away from your work, over to him. “What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “Nevermind. Get back to it.”

While Minho and you were finishing up, you noticed Changbin head down the stairs. You turned away from him to pull a rack from the oven, but you could feel his eyes on you. You continued to work, pretending not to notice until you turned to set the rack on the counter. The two of you locked eyes for a moment, before Changbin’s gaze turned from soft to agitated. He quickly moved towards the drawer, pretending to have been grabbing silverware. What was his deal?

Dinner was incredible. The last one to the table was Jeongin, and as soon as he sat down, everyone dug in. You never had warm food back at your old group, you usually just ate whatever cans Jiho could scrounge up. In truth,, there was rarely any food saved for you, because the others didn’t think you were useful enough to be fed. Jiho always had to argue or steal in order to get you anything. Tonight however, you were eating roasted venison that Hyunjin had caught, warm mashed potatoes and stewed veggies that Felix had grown and a glass of milk from one of the cows outside (You had come to learn earlier that they were named Lucy and Toes. Named by Felix and Jisung respectively). Everyone else spoke to each other around you, but you were too absorbed in the food to care. Occasionally, either Felix or Jisung from beside you would try to start a conversation with you, but you could barely stop eating long enough to answer.

However, Chan’s voice from across the table made you set the fork down. “Y/N, you ate today, right?”

You swallowed your current bite and nodded at him. “Felix made me some eggs.”

Jisung laughed nervously from beside you, “You’re eating like you’ve never heard of food before”.

You shrugged, looking down at your plate. “I didn’t really get to eat food like this in my old group. This is just really good.”

Hyunjin leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. “What did you eat back there?”

“Just a can of something here and there. They were focused on feeding the more useful members.” you sighed, “Haven’t had warm food in awhile so it feels like I can’t get enough of it.”

You noticed Changbin clench his jaw from the other side of the table.

Felix narrowed his eyes, his voice lowering, “How often did they feed you?”

You could feel the tension rising, and tried not to make any eye contact. “I ate...enough.”

Chan spoke up, “Leave it alone everyone. It’s none of our business”. But you could tell from his face, from all of their faces, that they didn’t believe you.

Felix placed a hand on your shoulder, rubbing it soothingly. “Well as long as you’re here, you can have as much warm food as you want. I’ll cook you all kinds of yummy stuff.”

Changbin glared at Felix’s hand, and once Felix noticed, he averted his gaze and removed it.

Minho had watched the interaction play out, eyeing both you and Changbin thoughtfully, before returning to his food.

[ashphoenix06]

Countdown: Part One (JSE ego universe)

*warning: this story is a four part piece on the fight between Anti and Jack before he went in a coma. In this universe, this happens before the events of “Say Goodbye.” This story DOES show our favorite Irish boy going through some awful things before the video. Reader description it HIGHLY advised!*

*Also, I’m trying a new style of writing for this one, so bare with me.... lol!*

***********

October 2016

31.....

Jack wakes up with a start in his bed, his chest heaving as he tries to calm himself down. The nightmare was still there, hovering around in his mind and yet... he couldn’t remember it at all. He throws the blanket aside and walks to the bathroom to wash his face, rubbing his right eye.

30.....

Today was a normal day for Jack. He went through the usual motions but felt a bit tired for some reason... and his right eye kept itching...

29......

There was this.... presence? Jack turned his computer chair around to the noise. It sounded like his name... but... the voice was like a corrupted audio file. Something didn’t feel right with him about this, but he chose to ignore it as he went on recording.

28.......

Today was his first blackout. Jack had finished texting Jackie about his ideas for a Halloween video and was starting to head to the kitchen to make himself something to eat. He was in the hallway one minute and the next he was halfway done with his lunch. He shook is head when this realization happened but decided to go with the excuse that he’s was tired.

27.......

Nothing much happened today. Jack tried taking it slow as he went about his normal routine. That damn itch came back though... no amount of eye drops could make it stop. Maybe he needed to see Henrick... maybe his old infection was coming back?

26......

Jack went to see Henrick about his eye after his uploads were done. His German doctor ego ran all the tests and came back with negative result. He did, however prescribe Jack with eye drops to see if it helped any.... it didn’t.

25......

Jack spent the rest of his day hanging with Chase, who was still in the hospital. This ego was closer to his profession than the others, so talking to him was easy. They had also gotten closer since Jack had that heart to heart talk with him... he was proud of how Chase was recovering from shooting himself. He didn’t tell the dad about his recent blackout this morning.

24......

The YouTuber awoke with a splitting headache and extreme fatigue. Not one to jump to conclusions, he kept claiming to everyone who texted that he was sick. He did his uploads and then relaxed for the day... well.... not really relax. His eye was acting up again... and he could swear he hear that distorted staticky voice again.

23......

Now Jack was shaken a bit. He went and watched a couple of his uploads and saw the... glitches... He didn’t add them and neither did Robin. He would of assumed it was just bad uploading... if this didn’t slightly remind him of his nightmares.

22......

Who was that guy in his dream? He looks so much like Jack... but something was... off. Jack found himself spooked after this last dream. The other guys eyes had bleed, his right eyes was ACTUALLY green. But he... looked just like him! Jack shivered. Who was this guy and why did he slash Jack’s throat? The YouTuber had woken up screaming, drenched in sweat. He couldn’t remember most of the dream... except that one part, where his demonic look alike had slashed his throat...

*********************

This is the fourth prompt requested by @glitchbicth! I was going for something different in writing this. There are three more parts coming soon! 💜💜💜

Tags:

@honestlyitsjustkenna @nekob00 @the-rampaige @septicuniverse @aquaticember06 @greenglitchbitch @goldenoceanaart @idk-and-wtf @silver-freddy @nixon-by-night @mysepticheartfan1 @just-your-average-glitch @lyra-mithril-aryl--op20

[rreader]

the only hope - tlou!au (3)

pairing: kim namjoon x reader ; (jeon jeongguk x reader)

fandom: bts ; exo

warnings: tlou!au (post-apocalyptic!au) ; language ; abuse ; kai is kinda the villain in this story, so idk if this is a warning, but just in case haha

genre: angst ; horror

previous: 1 ; 2

summary: namjoon and his brothers kept to themselves, trying their hardest to survive in a world where infected roamed around and, they themselves, lived in constant fear of becoming one of them. until you entered his life. and then everything changed.

chapter summary: he only wanted to help. give you one night of rest. he had no idea that things would escalate that much in one night.

a/n: let me say it right away: I am so sorry for that cliffhanger hahaha. (also, two more things: please note that I don’t think yoongi is abusive in any way. this was only in the heat of the moment and WILL be addressed in a future chapter. as for kai: yeah, idk, he was just the face that popped up in my head when I imagined a sexy villain, so yeah :’))

You woke up to various voices outside of the bedroom you were sleeping in. You blinked a couple of times, the morning sun already warming up your face, a small smile spreading on your lips because of it.

When had been the last time you had gotten a decent amount of sleep and had woken up to the sun and not to an Infected or somebody else trying to kill you?

Certainly ages ago.

But as much as you enjoyed this, you had promised them and yourself to only stay for the night to catch up on sleep and you needed to get out of the city anyways. At least now you had the energy to do so.

So you pushed the covers aside - as hard as it was - and let your legs dangle over the mattress for a couple of seconds, before slowly getting up and walking over to your bag to pack up.

Unfortunately, you didn't even get as far as the other end of the room, before the door got pushed open and you were forcefully shoved against the wall, a forearm pressed hard against your throat, cutting off your air supply.

“Yoongi! That's enough!” you heard Namjoon yell, he and another of his brothers trying to pull the guy in front of you away, “It's not her fault!”

“Isn't it?! Before last night, we were fine, didn't run into trouble once! But the second she shows up, everything goes to shit!”

“You're overreacting! They're probably just wandering around the woods as always,” Jin said, trying to calm him down.

Yoongi's eyes were filled with rage, but you could barely keep yours open with the way he was still preventing you from breathing.

Just before you were about to pass out, he took a step back, brushing his hands through his hair. You immediately sank to the floor, coughing and gasping for air. Namjoon knelt down in front of you, cupping your face in his hands, apologizing and trying to get you to breathe in deeply. Your forehead fell against his chin and you just focused on your voice, trying to breathe in sync with him.

“They should have been back hours ago. This isn't like them,” Hoseok said, agreeing with his hyung, if not with his ways of getting someone to talk.

“I agree,” Jimin said, crossing his arms in front of his chest, worry written all over his face for the fact that his younger brothers had gone out for supplies and haven't come back yet.

“You’re right. They’re taking longer than usually, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re in trouble. They’ve done this before, remember? And remember what we did then? We panicked. And what happens when we panic? One of us almost dies,” he looked at Jimin, who immediately lowered his head in shame at the memory.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this hyung,” Hobi shook his head and looked down at you, “She might not have anything to do with it, but I still think something is up.”

While the three of them were arguing with Jin on who was at fault, you were still trying to get your breathing to even out. You'd think you'd be used to something like this, people physically assaulting you to get you to talk.. but maybe this was just something that would always be as painful and uncomfortable as the time before.

“I'm so sorry,” Namjoon whispered for the millionth time, his thumb gently caressing your cheek, “We're just all a little on edge. Our younger brothers haven't come back yet.. we're worried.”

You took a deep breath to answer him: “What does that have to do with me?”

“Don't fuck with me. I know a fugitive when I see one. And you're not just some random girl Namjoon picked up in a store.”

Yoongi seemed to have been the only one who saw right through the lie that Namjoon had told them last night, since the others were all furrowing their eyebrows in confusion.

“You're a fugitive?”

Your chest was still heaving heavily, looking into the eyes of all five of them in the room, before carefully getting up and throwing every single one of your things carelessly into your bag without another word.

“Wait.. he's not joking? Why did you bring a fugitive here, Namjoon?” now even Jin was upset. He had been the only one to take your side, thinking that you were no danger for them.

“She needed help. What was I supposed to do? Leave her to die?”

“Yes. That's how we have survived for so long.”

The arguing continued. Now it was all four against Namjoon. Until you turned around, bag already hanging from your shoulder.

“I'm not yours to worry about anymore. I'm leaving and you will never see me again, I promise.”

“A little too late now, isn't it? Whoever or whatever is following you, surely ran into OUR brothers. And let me make this one thing very clear to you,” Yoongi walked up so close to you, that you could feel his breath against your face. Namjoon instinctively took a step towards you, in case he had to intervene, “If they're dead? You are too.”

“I'll add you to my list of people trying to kill me, then,” you spat back, walking around him and towards the door, but mouthing a silent thank you to Namjoon, before you turned around and were about to walk out of their lives forever.

Or at least, that's what you had thought.

                                                             * * * 

You decided to make your way out of the city through the woods, the buildings and streets being too risky for you at the moment.

Your fingers were wrapped tightly around your dagger and with the sleep you had gotten last night, you were hyperaware of your surroundings. Every chirp, every breeze, every snapped branch, your head would whip into the direction of the sound, ready to strike if necessary.

But so far, you had ran into nothing and nobody.

You were alone, with nature being the only company you had.

That is, until you heard it.

That familiar voice you had tried so desperately to forget. The one that had haunted you for the past weeks. And he seemed to have just arrived.

You should have run, should have turned around and made your way out of the city like you had planned on doing. But what stopped you from doing so, was one of his lackeys saying:

“We found them wandering around the woods. They mentioned her by name. They said (Y/N).”

Wandering around the woods, plural, so more than one person, knowing you by name.

“Fuck,” you murmured to yourself, closing your eyes when guilt rushed through you.

Yoongi had been right. 

This really was your fault.

“Ah, so you know my dear (Y/N), then?” Kai knelt down in front of Jeongguk and cocked his head to the side.

Taehyung wriggled in the grasp of the man behind him, scared for his younger brother's safety.

“We..-” Jeongguk was unsure. He didn't know you, so betraying you shouldn't be so hard, right? At least that's what Yoongi had always said. When it comes down to it, he should always look out for himself first. But now that he was pretty much signing your death sentence? It was a lot easier said than done.

Kai smiled and licked his lips, “I understand, I really do. She's a pretty girl and I'm sure there aren't that many around anymore. Maybe you even have a little crush on her, hm?”

“What do you want to know?” Taehyung said sternly.

Kai turned his head to the older one, “I want to know where I can find her,” his voice was calm. So calm, that it made a shiver run down Taehyung's spine, “Because, you see.. that girl? She's mine. She belongs to me.”

“She belongs to no one,” Jeongguk replied, without thinking twice about it. The back of Kai's hand harshly came in contact with Jeongguk's cheek, making tears prickle in his eyes because of the impact, but he forced himself not to let them see. He forced himself to be strong.

“Don't!” Taehyung wriggled more and more, “I'll tell you everything you want to know, just.. don't hurt him!”

“You don't have to tell him anything,” you said, stepping out of the shadow the tree had provided, hands up in the air. All attention was immediately on you, guns were raised in your direction, but their boss lowered his hand he had previously raised, signaling them to lower their weapons, “Let them go, Kai. This isn't about them.”

Kai grinned and got up from the ground, Taehyung leaning over to his younger brother, asking him if he was alright. Jeongguk only nodded a little, not wanting the older to see the tears.

“Running away from me.. now that was a BIG mistake, (Y/N). You should have known that.”

“We do what we have to survive.. isn't that one of the things you once told me?”

“I would never kill you. You're too valuable for that.”

“Right. You only want to experiment on me. Torture me. Want to add a couple of scars to the ones that are already on my body. Because what am I, but a test subject to you?”

The closer Kai got, the more your fake confidence faltered. He may not look like it, but that guy was one of the scariest ones you had ever met in your life.

“You're our future,” he whispered, cupping your face in his hands.

Your gaze flickered over to the two boys still kneeling on the ground, then back up to Kai's.

“I'll go back with you. I won’t try to run again and I’ll let you do whatever you think necessary to me. If you let them go.”

Kai turned around, eyeing the boys, “What? Do you care about them?”

“It doesn't matter whether or not I care. They have nothing to do with this. You don't need them.”

“But that's precisely the point, isn't it?” he dipped his head, so that his lips were almost touching yours. You felt yourself gagging and tried to lean back, but he held your face so tight in his hands, that you couldn't move, “I don't need them.”

And the next thing you heard, were guns going off and your eyes widened in shock.