#if veronica can wash that blood off her hands so can you!!

[midnightdemonhunter]

still time to make things right

[wreckedandpolemic]

dead girl walking - matty healy

(mdni) in which you and matty dress up for a halloween party, and he can’t get enough of your costume. part of the actress!reader au and promptober75 2024. 3911 words.

warnings: oral (f and m receiving), praise, degradation, a** e*ting (f receiving), somehow quite sweet despite all that

“Hey, are you busy on Halloween?” you ask, letting your head dangle off the bed so you can see Matty.

He grins over at you. “Yeah. There’s this girl I know, been seeing her for a while now, and I know she loves horror movies. I was thinking about buying her a bunch of tacky American Halloween candy and letting her show me all her favourites. As long as she lets me hide in her tits during the scary parts,” he adds with a little smirk. “D’you think she’d like that, love?”

You give a glowing smile. “That sounds amazing, babe. For the 30th. Because you are busy on Halloween, Matthew. You are coming with me to Maya’s Halloween party,” you declare.

Raking a hand across his face, Matty groans. “You know how I feel about parties in this city, darling.”

You smile blithely. “And you know how I feel about Halloween. Promise I won’t leave your side, okay? But this is actually important to me. Me and Maya do Halloween every year.” You pause, a grin crossing your face. “And I wanna dress you up.”

Quizzically, Matty tilts his head. “I’m listening.”

“Oh, I love you,” you grin, clapping your hands together excitedly. “So, I was thinking about Halloween last year, the Detroit show, right? Well, mostly I was thinking about how good you looked covered in blood,” you add, flipping onto your stomach and propping your chin up on your palms. “Shows how committed I am to Maya’s Halloweens. Any other day and I would’ve caught a redeye to jump your bones.” Matty laughs softly. “Anyway, I was thinking about you all sexy and covered in blood and dressed up like a male manipulator, and it hit me.”

You pause for deliberate dramatic effect, and Matty rolls his eyes. “You get mad at me when I drag things out for this long.”

“Shut your mouth. We’re going as Veronica and JD, okay?”

Matty’s eyes gleam. “Are you gonna wear the little pleated skirt?” he grins, finally getting out of the chair and crossing the room to lay next to you.

Pressing your body into his, you sigh happily. “Perv. Are you in?”

He grins, presses a soft kiss to your lips, lets his hand wander down to your ass. “Only because I love you.”

“Mmm, yeah, I’m perfect. Now, d’you wanna pick out what I’m gonna wear underneath? Something to keep you going through the night.” Matty grabs your face and kisses you deeply, grinning breathlessly as he pulls away. His hands trail down to the hem of your shirt, grasping and pulling it off, then fly to unhook your bra. “Eager,” you tease, winding a stray curl around your finger.

Matty grins against your mouth. “I need to be able to visualise it, right?” he says cheekily. “I’m an artist, I need to be able to see the full picture, yeah?” You roll your eyes, giggling and deliberately pushing your ass into his face as you crawl up the bed and relax against the pillows.

Dropping your hands to your waist, you slide your panties down your legs, flinging them at Matty with a grin. “Are you getting a good visual, babe?” You prop your laptop up next to you, start browsing through lingerie sites as Matty gazes adoringly over at you.

“Shit, y’can’t just do that, bunny,” he groans. Turning wide, innocent eyes on him, you click through to a pretty little black babydoll dress. “Don’t give me that look. The big, sweet, virgin eyes don’t work when I’ve had my tongue in your arse,” he smirks.

The memory washes over you and you shiver. “Don’t be crass,” you pout, angling your laptop screen so he can see.

The heat of his body presses into your back as he climbs into bed next to you. “You’re literally fucking naked and showing me lingerie,” he complains. “If I can’t be crass now, when can I be?” Long fingers trace over your thighs, sliding over your ass and squeezing greedily.

“Mmm, okay,” you concede. “Yeah, okay, c’mere.” You roll over, lay on top of him, kiss him hungrily. “Fuck, I want you.”

Matty grinds his hips up against yours, breath coming harshly against your mouth. “Whatever you want, you’ll get, bunny,” he grins, breaking away from you just long enough to pull off his shirt.

Leaning down, you kiss the exposed skin. “Gonna be a proper little bunny for you,” you promise, sliding your cool palms down his chest to his belt. “Wanna ride you, bounce on it, yeah?” you grin, sliding a hand into his sweats. Matty’s cock twitches in your palm, and you stroke him gently before pulling him free.

“Good girl,” Matty grins. “Good little bunny.” You sink down on him, throw your head back, get lost in his hands and his skin and his cock buried inside you. You spend the rest of the night letting him have you in whatever position he wants, finally falling asleep sweat-soaked and sated in his arms.

Halloween finally rolls around, and you’re lazing on the bed and happily ogling Matty as he splotches fake blood on his face. “No, Matty, you’re— You look like a ten year old that just ate spag bol for dinner,” you huff, getting to your feet. “Here,” you say, stepping up to him and gently dabbing a damp cloth on his face.

Matty smiles softly, eyes drifting down to your chest and the black lace cupping your boobs. He presses a soft kiss to your lips, grabs your ass under your skirt, sucks on your lower lip. “Do we—”

“I swear to God, Matthew, if you ask me if we have to go one more time, no sex until next Halloween,” you tease, dripping the fake blood over his forehead and smudging black eyeshadow over his cheek. “There you go,” you grin, pulling back to admire his pretty, sculpted features, long-lashed brown eyes blinking down at you.

“But you look so fucking good,” he whines. “C’mon, you know how fast I get you off, lemme eat you, baby,” Matty pleads.

You swat his arm, scowling playfully. “And fuck up the makeup I just put on you? Nope,” you pop the ‘p’ slightly obnoxiously. “You’re just gonna have to be patient. You can whisper all the dirty things you wanna do to me in my ear all night, and I’ll take my pick when we get home, alright?

Matty groans frustratedly. “Right now, all I wanna do is bend you over, flip up that fucking skirt and fuck you until that party is the last thing on your mind,” he groans, trying to grab you, but you waltz out of his reach.

Smirking from a few feet away, you give a little spin, tiny skirt flaring out and showing off the soft curve of your ass. Matty makes a pathetic little noise, and you scoff. “Behave yourself.” You stop in front of the mirror, turning this way and that to appraise yourself. “Tell me how pretty I am, and then it’s time to go,” you add, grinning at his reflection.

“You are…” Matty gives a deep sigh. “The most beautiful girl I’ve ever laid eyes on. And the most frustrating.”

You laugh airily. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m a massive cocktease, heard it all before. C’mon, coat on, let me see the full outfit.” Matty shrugs on the trenchcoat, and you stop cold. “Oh, my God, you’re so hot,” you rush out, almost a moan. “Okay, okay, the car’s here, we need to go before I let you distract me any more.”

Ducking out of Matty’s path as he tries to kiss you, you beeline for the door. It takes you minutes to wrangle him into the car, wincing and apologising to the driver. Matty tries desperately to grope you the entire ride, and you keep swatting his hands away with teasing little giggles. The music is practically shaking the foundations of the building as you walk up, every step sure even in six-inch heels.

It takes forever to find anyone you know well enough to want to talk to, shrugging off a dozen sycophantic influencers who just want a story for Twitter. Matty’s pressed close to you, his hand in yours warm and grounding in the sticky-hot room. You can tell he’s already ready to throw in the towel, so you pull him to the bar. “C’mon. This’ll be way more fun when we’re drunk.” You press a lime wedge into his mouth before slamming three tequila shots, kissing him hard as you suck the sharp, sour taste out of his mouth.

Matty leans over and orders a drink, downs it and orders a second before you wander away again. A high squeal of your name makes you turn, grinning widely as Maya bowls into your arms. “You look amazing! ‘Oh, it’s not much,’ my ass,” she scoffs, pulling back to take you in properly. “And you!” she adds, punching Matty in the arm. “I’ve been trying to get you to come to these things for five fucking years, Healy.”

Shrugging, Matty smiles ruefully. “Sorry. But, it would’ve been six, if not for this one. Too convincing for her own good,” he says, tugging you in by the waist and kissing your temple.

Maya grins. “Yeah. I kinda hate you and Charli now, you know?” You scrunch your brow quizzically. “I had to change venues three times, ‘cause so many people wanted to come. Everyone wants to be wherever you two are. Bloody logistical nightmare,” she teases. “Now, come on. I wanna dance.” You grab her hand eagerly, throwing a glance at Matty over your shoulder. “Don’t be a snore, Healy. Come on, or you’re not getting her back at the end of the night.”

You stretch out your other hand, grinning widely, and Matty takes it after a split second. You squeal in delight, tugging him along to the dancefloor. Laughing delightedly, you let Maya pull you in, rest her hands on your hips as you grind back against her. “Are you sure it has to be him?” she teases. “It’s like you’re dating my gross older brother.”

You laugh, meeting Matty’s eyes. “I’m in love with him, unfortunately,” you mock-sigh. “Plus, I love you, but I am never giving up the sex,” you add, spinning to face her. “I mean, oh, my God. He does this thing where he folds me in half, and—”

Maya shrieks, shoving at you. “Ew! You heard what I said about him being my brother, right? Get away from me, I need to go and drink until I forget that you said that,” she groans, and you roll your eyes and let yourself drop into Matty’s waiting arms.

“We’ve done it at your house, by the way!” you shout at her retreating back, cackling when she claps her hands over her ears.

“Why are you telling my little sister about our sex life?” Matty says with a long-suffering sigh.

“You guys are such prudes. I was only telling her about that thing you do where you bend me in half, how good you are. I want you to do that to me later tonight, okay?” you smirk, swaying your hips to the beat.

Matty smirks, leans down to speak in the shell of your ear. “You’re fucked if you think you’re giving me orders, bunny,” he says, and you shudder, slinging your arms around his neck.

You dig into your purse, pluck something out at random to drop to the floor. “Oops,” you giggle, bending over and pressing your ass into him. “Wait, is that Charli? C’mon, your other half must be around here somewhere,” you say, darting off as Matty follows you with a beleaguered sigh.

Sat across from Charli, you throw back your head in laughter as she recounts a story from her last photoshoot. You’re in Matty’s lap, squirming deliberately to rile him up, even while you sip innocently at your rum and coke. “Stop it,” he murmurs in warning. “Behave yourself.”

You giggle. “Never.”

Charli pulls you off to dance again, and you lose your head in a dizzy, drunken haze of thudding bass and glowing flashbulbs. Matty’s hands are on your hips, his lips on your neck, and you grind your hips back against his. “It’s a shame there’s still so long left. I wish you could take me home already.” You take his hand, slide it under your skirt, gasping as he slips it into your panties. His fingers brush lightly over your cunt, and you can’t suppress a moan. “Feel that? Feel how wet you make me? Gonna be such a good girl for you tonight.”

“Oh, my God,” Matty groans into your neck. “Oh, my God, bunny, you’re fucking killing me. Please let me take you home. I wanna do things to you. Bad things. Disgusting, perverted things.”

You grin, spinning in his arms so you can press your back to his chest and grind your ass against his hips. “Like what?” you say, low and breathy. “Convince me,” you add, red-painted lips stretching wide around a smirk.

Matty’s hands slide around your chest, groping you obscenely and groaning. “You know what you do to me like this, love. I can’t take much more, m’gonna have to fuck you right here. When I get you home, it’s up against the wall, okay? Gonna rip those fucking panties off, fill you up, fuck you so good you can’t even remember your own name. Then you can bend over the counter for me and I’ll get you all cleaned up, yeah?”

Arousal clenches tight in your stomach. You sway your hips. “Mmm, this all sounds like normal stuff. I’m not hearing perverted, filthy, disgusting…” you tease, sweeping your hair off your neck to let him kiss there.

“You need more convincing, huh?” Matty murmurs, soft in the shell of your ear. “Alright. After I clean you up, I’d like to get you in bed. But I don’t know if we’ll make it that far. I might have to bend you over the sofa on the way. ‘Cause this skirt isn’t hiding anything, and those little panties really aren’t helping how bad I want my tongue in this pretty ass.”

Your knees nearly buckle. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” you whimper. “Fine, you win. Call a car, I need you,” you plead, turning so you’re speaking against his lips. Kissing him hard, you melt against him as he grabs your ass greedily.

“I’m not done yet, bunny. Then I will get you in bed, on your hands and knees while I fuck your sweet, gorgeous ass, okay? Then, I’m going to plug you up, keep you nice and full of me until I fuck you again. Yeah?”

You go hot all over. “Tell the driver to break traffic laws.”

“Five minutes,” Matty grins, leaning down to kiss you slow and deep.

Someone taps their foot impatiently behind you, and you turn with a sharp grin to find Maya with her arms folded. “Will you two stop being disgusting for five fucking minutes?”

Laughing, you shrug. “That’s about all you’ve got, ‘cause we’re about to go home and fuck all night,” you smirk.

They both give shrieking groans, and you only laugh harder. “Oh, would you look at that? Car’s here, let’s go — Bye, Lim, great seeing you, won’t let it be so long next time!” Matty rushes out in one breath, tugging you so hard you stumble in your heels. You blow Maya a kiss as you scramble off, and you’re in Matty’s lap in the backseat before you know what’s happening.

You kiss him feverishly, time warping around you until, in what feels like both seconds and weeks, you’re outside your apartment building. In the time it takes to get from the ground floor to yours, it seems like Matty’s seconds away from dropping to his knees in the lift; you’d welcome it. Your body is pleading for him, hunger groaning in your chest, aching between your thighs. It takes what feels like an age to get your keys to fit in the door, stumbling inside with his lips still on yours.

“Remember what I promised?” Matty murmurs, lips against your jaw.

Giggling, you shudder. “Mhmm. But can we skip to the part where you bend me over the sofa? Please,” you breathe, spreading your legs around his thigh so you can grind on him. “I need it.”

Matty pinches your ass, and you whine. “Needy little bunny. Fuck, I love you so much. Go on, bend over for me, my girl,” he says, and you scramble to obey, draping yourself over the plush arm of the sofa and spreading your legs wide. You hear Matty drop to his knees behind you, and true to his word, tears your panties off.

The sound of expensive lace ripping to shreds makes you wince. “I liked those,” you murmur weakly, and Matty laughs.

“I’ll buy you more,” he promises, spreading apart your cunt and licking a slow stripe through. “Fuck, I’ll give you anything you want.” His tongue slices through your core, a sharp bolt of ecstasy jolting up your spine. “I love your fucking pussy,” he groans, wrapping his lips around your clit and sucking softly. Grinding your hips back against Matty’s face, you whimper out a plea. “Yeah, I know what you want, sweet girl. Don’t worry, bunny, I got you. Gonna give you what you need, yeah?”

And then his tongue flickers up, just barely kisses at your hole, and your knees nearly buckle. “Oh, fuck,” you whimper, drool pooling in your mouth as Matty drives his tongue deeper. Your back arches and you moan, Matty’s hand coming up to toy with your clit and sending shockwaves of pleasure through your body. Whimpering, you press back against him as he rubs circles into your clit and licks down to your cunt.

You’re dizzy, nearly sick with it, your thighs slick and your mind slicker. Matty kisses your clit, slices his tongue back up to your hole, lapping greedily. “God, such a good girl,” he murmurs reverently, tracing his fingers over the curve of your ass. He slaps the side of your ass, spits on your cunt, licks your hole, and you moan out his name. You’re spinning out, crashing closer to your climax, grinding your hips back desperately.

“Matty, please,” you whine, and you feel him smirk into you.

“C’mon, bunny, I got you. Cum for me,” he orders, rubbing his thumb into your clit and coaxing you to an earth-shattering climax. Your pulse thunders in your ears, liquid ecstasy flooding from your cunt and dripping down your thighs, Matty’s tongue still roaming hungrily over your skin. Fists clenching, you whimper out his name, legs trembling and head spinning.

You crawl gracelessly onto the sofa, stretching up to beckon him. “C’mere,” you plead. “Wanna kiss you.” Matty breaks into a grin, climbs on top of you, his body firm and warm against yours.

He leans down to speak against your lips. “I gotta give my girl what she wants,” he says, pressing a soft, near-chaste kiss to your lips. You slide your hands into his hair, pull him down so you can kiss him hard, tongues sliding together as your breaths mix in the air between you.

Grinding up against him, you moan softly. “Y’so hard,” you smirk. “Let me help you?” Your hands slide greedily down to his belt, unbuckling deftly and freeing his cock. You stroke along his length, tracing the vein throbbing on his underside, and coat your fingertips in his precum. Sucking your fingers happily, you give a teasing little moan at the taste of him, and Matty gasps, buries his head in your neck.

His lips are soft and wet with spit against your skin as he kisses, licks, sucks, leaves lasting bruises that are going to be a bitch to cover up in the morning. “Fuck, I fucking love you,” he groans, grinding his hips down against your core in a way that makes need pulse through your entire body.

Your hands fly down to Matty’s waist, shoving his jeans and boxers off at once. “Let me suck your dick,” you whine. “Please. I need it, need to make you feel good, god.” You pump his cock, spreading wetness down his length, savouring his soft moan.

“Yeah, c’mon, good girl,” Matty croons, flipping you so you’re on top of him. You grin, kissing your way down his body and trailing your tongue over the tattoo at his hip as his hands thread into your hair. He gasps as you mouth gently at his cock, moaning when you wrap your lips around his head. “Fuck, y’so good. My good little bunny,” he groans, easing your head down until your nose presses against his skin.

You moan around him, bobbing your head as the smell of his sweat fills your senses. Relaxing your throat as best you can, you let Matty thrust messily into your mouth. He moans your name, fucks into your mouth, twitching and gasping. Tracing your fingers over his belly, you feel the muscles tense under your touch, teasingly pressing kisses against his base and across his v-line. “Mmm, I love you,” you sigh, lapping at his head and letting spit drip from your mouth and slide messily down his cock.

“I fucking love you,” Matty groans, pulling at your hair just enough that your scalp stings, pain weaving its way into pleasure between your thighs. “So fucking— oh, my God, bunny, fuck!” he gasps as you take him as deep as you can, gagging and drooling around him. “M’gonna cum, bunny,” he moans. “Where do you want me?”

You smile around him, pulling off and licking along his cock. “Wherever you want,” you murmur. “But I kinda want it down my throat, if that’s alright,” you tease, eyes alight.

“‘If that’s alright,’ she says,” Matty huffs, gently easing you down his cock. “Jesus, bunny, I fucking love your pretty mouth, gonna make me fuckin’ cum, make sure you swallow it all, yeah? My little cumslut,” he adds affectionately, bucking his hips as you moan around him. Your name spills from his lips amid near-crazed praises, ropes of cum splashing on your tongue as the taste fills your senses.

You swallow eagerly, pulling off to smile dazedly down at him. “Thank you,” you say, in the innocent, soft tone that drives him wild.

And, like clockwork, Matty practically whines, manoeuvres you until he gets you into his arms. “God, such a perfect fucking girl.” Your stomach swoops as he picks you up bridal style, then thinks better of it and throws you over his shoulder, swatting your ass. “Good girls get rewarded, yeah? Tell me what you want, bunny, anything you want,” he promises, and you laugh wildly as he carries you to bed.

“What if you already promised me exactly what I want?” you giggle, heat pulsing between your legs at the mere thought.

“Oh, I did, did I?” Matty teases, his smirk audible.

You gasp as Matty throws you into the bed, kissing you hard as you slide your hands into his hair. “You gonna make me say it?” He nods, grinning widely. “Mmm, okay. You promised to fuck my ass and then plug me up, remember?” you say, and he splutters at your boldness. “Get your ass in gear, Healy, come on.”

[perahn]

Good Friday, 2023

You were born, I’m told on a snowing night; Mary, saddlesore and shivering helped from the donkey’s back into the stable’s small shelter. Sometimes, though, I picture You born here Your star blazing disruption through the Southern Cross on a night too hot to sleep.

And I am told You died on a hard, bright day, burning with thirst under a scorched sky, Your mouth coated in dust and stung with vinegar. But I woke to rain this morning, so here I think about Your Passion in the rain.

How thick grew the leaves in Gethsemane? As the moonlight cracked through clouds the first drop touched Your hand. Peter, John, James - they were dry enough to sleep, but did the trees crowd close enough to shield You from the rain? Surely the blood, sweated through Your skin and dripping from Your robes, could not fall to be immediately washed away.

Rain, gentle yet, hissing in the torches, so their light is uncertain, and the men look more urgently for the traitor’s kiss. They took You quickly, hurrying to be out of the rain: home and dry.

A small space under an awning, a brazier warming Peter’s hands. A servant girl accuses him: he’s as wet as someone who’s been out all night, soaked like the criminal within. Peter lies to keep his sanctuary: he had work to do, he fell off the boat. He just got caught in the rain. The rooster's cry awakes a memory, he flees into the growing storm.

The crowd within are mostly dry, and warmed by hatred and self-righteousness. You cannot hear the rain strong and steady on the roof: it’s drowned in their demands. Only when troubled Pilate speaks to You alone, only then under his words and Yours, the constant drumming.

The soldiers didn’t want to work in the rain. They complained about the mud, they’d have to clean their armour. But, they said, at least the lucky ones with whips could warm themselves with exercise. They laughed and grumbled, as people do trying to enjoy a mucky job. They pulled the robe over Your flayed back, and perhaps the cool wet cloth might have soothed if they’d been gentle. There is no mercy in the crown and pain is harder when you’re cold.

The weight of the cross settles on Your shoulder. The wood is soaked and slippery already, and You walk. Your garment, woven in one piece, clings and chafes at every step. A stone turns under Your foot and you fall, facefirst in the mud. The rain falls too. It’s heavier now, forceful: pretending to be hail. You can barely see Jerusalem’s dear streets.

There are women, rainstreaked, tearstreaked. One of them sneezes. Veronica dries Your face: A small mercy, and futile in the eyes of those who only see the saturated cloth, the falling rain.

Simon of Cyrene is hurrying: his wife waits to scold him for tracking mud across her nice clean floors, he’s caught his death of cold, the foolish man. He smiles at the thought; his arm is seized: The soldiers push him towards You and the cross. This isn’t right, he says. I’m innocent, you can’t - They can.

You squelch together through the mud and stinging rain. Up the hill, and gravity pulls harder now. So tired and cold. There is so much left still to endure.

Stripped bare, laid down against the cross Needles of rain against Your skin, against Your eyelids are lost in the piercing of the nails. You are lifted, raised into the rain and cutting wind.

Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani!

The world should ache in silence at Your death: The rain falls on and on.

[delafiseaseses]

Let's look at the Forecaster's forecasts.

I just wanna say that by reading this post about 'The Forecaster' (real name: Clay as seen in his script notes) you owe him some caps, alright? Go pay him after this. Boot up FNV, go to 188 Trading Post and give Clay what he's owed for this.

Anyway, that aside we'll start with the least interesting one 'Here':

"Local, local, the here and now... little of interest... things to buy, false hopes, and regrets watered down, washed down in dirty glasses. With regret comes a girl... smiling sad, brown robe, name Veronica, half here. Wraps her and her heart up like a pack, in the pack, a key, some say. Forecast: Cloudy, with a chance of friendship.

Ouch. Thinking small only hurts a little, but it's a sharp pain."

Even he admits it's a 'little of interest' forecast, 'thinking small'. Not too much to really disect: 188 Trading Post has some traders, regrets and Veronica Santangelo.

Let's go next to to what The Forecaster thinks on The Courier themself:

"Your face does the thinking - two to the skull, yet one gets up. Odds are against you... but they're just numbers after the two-to-one. You're playing the hand you've been dealt, but you don't let it rest, you shuffle and stack, and a gamble... a gamble that may pay off? But how? Forecast: Rapidly changing conditions.

A lot of thinking - most of it in your face, it's almost shouting at me. Sorry if I said anything weird."

Clay, you really don't have to worry about it, lad. Anyway, we did indeed get two shots to the head, and the idea of the odds being against us, but that just being 'numbers' makes sense there (especially since New Vegas is, you know, all numbers in reality). It's the hand we've been dealt, but as the protagonist we can indeed change our hand quite a bit. Pretty sure the 'gamble' is backing one of the 4 endings. Rapidly changing conditions, considerin'g' we go from shallow grave to the decider of the Second Battle of Hoover Dam... yeah, that's pretty apt.

Speakin' of Second Battle of Hoover Dam, we're going into 'Everywhere', my favourite of Clay's forecasts.

"Bull and Bear over the Dam, at each other's throats... but a light from Vegas? Ball spinning on the wheel, more than two at the table, placing bets. All lose in different ways, a dam of corpses, towns of corpses, scattered across the sand. But whose, in what shares? Even the dealer doesn't know. Forecast: A rain of blood will flood the desert and not purify it.

Bleh. Thinking about Everywhere always makes me feel a little sick..."

I'm not surprised it does, Clay... all the conflict and loss is almost certainly bad for the... "thoughts". Anyway, what a summery of the main conflict. Legion vs NCR, House over in Vegas. Could be the Courier, but they don't really 'lose' like House can. And the losses, so many of them. Not even 'The Dealer' can predict the exacts of who or where (my personal interpritation of 'The Dealer' is 'The Developers' by the by). The bloodshed, it won't purify the land: War never changes. Every ending has cons and no matter what happens, even if we were to never kill anyone, it's too late for a lot of people.

So, that's done. No need to 100% believe my ideas on the Forecasts. And go pay Clay. Really, do it. Give the Psychic boy money!

[jojo0039]

Fox River - Cute Poison Part 2

        The next morning she gets a call from Veronica saying she was stopping by the station to ask the cops who arrested Lincoln some questions.

When she pulls up she sees Veronica already talking to one.

She gets out of the car and makes her way over to them.

"Dispatch was called in an anonymous tip saying they seen Burrows running from the garage where they found Terrance Steadman." he stops and sees Jess.

"Hey Donovan." he greets her with a smile.

"Is this your sister?" he asks pointing to Veronica.

"Yes, she is. Now what were you saying?" she asks him wanting him to continue.

"Oh right. So we went over to Burrow's place went in and saw your client washing the blood off his pants. I don't have to tell you it was Steadman's blood." he replies sarcastically.

Jessica rolls her eyes at him.

"In your first report, it said you just seen Lincoln in the bathroom. Then in your testimony, he was washing his pants. So which one is it? Did you see him wash the pants or not?" Veronica demands to know.

Jess is impressed with all the research that her sister has done.

"Yes. He was bent over the tub with his hands wet looking guilty as hell." he tells her with a raised tone.

"You better watch how you speak to my sister. You won't like what happens." Jessica threatens standing closer.

"How are you involved in this anyway?" he questions Jessica.

She shrugs.

"He's my ex-husband." she informs him.

The cop raises his eyebrows in surprise.

"No shit." he scoffs.

He looks back at Veronica.

"If you have any other questions take it up with the department." he says before storming back into the station.

Jess turns back to Veronica.

"You OK?" she asks her sister.

"Yeah I'm fine." she says as they walk to Veronica's car.

"That guy was a jerk." she says as she goes to unlock her car.

"Yeah. He was but don't worry I'll rough him up." Jessica says not liking how that cop talked to her sister.

"Excuse me? Donovans?"

They both look up and see the man who was in the room with them for their meeting with Benjamin Foliak.

He has his hands up.

"Sorry didn't mean to scare you." he says nodding in Jessica's direction.

She doesn't notice that she has her hand on her gun.

She quickly moves her hand from the gun and shrugs innocently.

"What are you doing here?" Veronica asks him.

"I'm Nick Savrin, I'm with Project Justice." he clarifies.

"I know who you are. What do you want?" she asks him.

Jessica looks at her wondering why she is acting this way towards him.

"Look my boss may not think Lincoln's case is worth looking into but I do." he tells them.

"Is there someplace we can go and talk?" he asks them.

Veronica and Jessica look at each other before answering.

"There is a cafe down the street we can go." Jessica finally tells him.

"Lead the way ladies." he smiles while looking at Veronica.

        "What stood out for me was that most cases take 10 years to exhaust out the appeals for Lincoln's case it took three." Nick says as the three of them sit at a table.

"So are you thinking that Lincoln's case had some political influence?" Jessica asks sipping on her coffee.

"I mean it was the vice president's brother it's not that hard to believe." Nick retorts back.

"But how were they able to get through the system like that so fast?" Veronica asks him.

"All it takes is a special notice in the clerk's office. But it's not how Lincoln's case that interests me it's why." Nick says back to Veronica.

"If Lincoln was set up then why?" Nick questions mostly to himself.

"And the answer to that might lay with the victim." Jessica applies her detective skills coming through.

"What do we know about him? He was a CO pushing alternative energy." Jessica says brainstorming.

"Successfully. He was pushing alternative energy successfully so oil companies, the government our whole country benefited from Steadman Energy." He brainstorms back.

He looks at Jessica and then Veronica.

"Why did you wait until now to take on this case?" he asks them curiously.

"I thought he was guilty like everyone else. But then I got a voicemail from an unknown person and it got me thinking." Jessica says to Nick.

"Plus she's his ex-wife and still loves him." Veronica points out to Jessica who just gives her sister a pointed look.

"I just hope it's not too late." Jessica says taking another drink of her coffee.

"It might be." Nick warns them.

"You two need to prepare yourselves for that." he says looking between the two again.

"What about you?" Veronica asks him curiously.

"What made you get into death penalty work?" she asks him curious about Nick.

"My father served 15 years for a crime he didn't commit. I know firsthand that once the government gets you in their crosshairs there is no getting out. That's why." He leans forward and looks all serious.

"Now do you two want my help?" he asks them.

[munsons-maiden]

𝐒𝐨𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐓𝐨𝐮𝐜𝐡

This one was requested by my lovely friend Veronica @rumblelibrary​ and it’s my first time ever writing for a female character since my outing last year so I’m really excited😁😍 I hope you enjoy - Love, Kiki 🖤

𝐏𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 |  Sylvie x gender neutral reader

𝐑𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭 |  washing her hair 

𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲 |  Sylvie arrives at your flat - her safehouse - bloodied and bruised and tired. You decide to help her get the rest she so desperately needs. 

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐭 |  fluff 

𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭 |  1.2 k 

𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 |  none  

 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐋𝐨𝐤𝐢 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭, 𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐜𝐤 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐦𝐲 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 ♡  

𝐀𝐬 𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬, 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞𝐬, 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐝🖤 

“Where – good Lord, Sylvie, what happened?”, you gasped, rising from your place on the sofa to greet her as she stepped through the glowing yellow rectangle which had opened up and into the small hallway of your apartment. Soot clung to every inch of her clothes and streaked her lovely face, and – “Is that blood?”

“Not mine”, she replied matter-of-factly, and it sounded so incredibly tired. She was so strong, so tough, and yet, standing in the dimly lit hallway, Sylvie looked as frail and defeated as you’d never seen her. You rushed to her, gently taking her into your arms, and could feel how her muscles slowly relaxed while she melted in your embrace.

“I’m so tired of running for them”, she whispered, and the strain in her voice betrayed how close she was to just breaking into tears right there and then.

“I know,” you spoke softly. “And I wish you would let me help you carry this burden.”

Upon hearing your words, she pulled away, her face so serious as she said, “No. Don’t say that. I can handle them chasing me through the times as long as I know you’re safe. You’re…” She drifted off, searching for the right words. She often did this. Having grown up on the run, all by herself, isolated…your heart bled whenever you thought of how it must have felt for her, all these years, all these centuries on her own. With nobody to trust and rely on but herself. It made tears well up in your own eyes.

“You know I’m not good with these things”, she finally sighed.

“This is your safehouse. I know”, you soothed, but beneath the tiredness and defeat, a new fierceness flickered to life in the stunning blue of her eyes, and she took your hands in hers.

“No. I couldn’t care less about this apartment,” she stated, “I only care about you. You’re my safe haven. And I know I’ll probably never be able to be yours, but I will do everything in my power to keep you safe. You know that, right? Because I really need you to know that.”

Tears were brimming in her eyes as she said it, and you could feel yourself falling for her all over again. You’d never thought it possible to find this kind of love, the kind which was so infinite and still seemed to grow with every shared smile, every brush of her hands against yours.

“I love you, Sylvie”, you whispered softly, and finally, a smile curved her lips while she was already leaning in for a kiss – but you raised your hands to stop her, gently twirling a strand of her blonde hair between your fingers, flakes of dried blood raining down on the floor.

“I’m sorry darling, but you look like a pirate and you smell like one, too”, you commented, and she laughed. It sounded beautiful, like the tinkling sound of windchimes in a gentle summer breeze.

“Okay”, she yielded with fake indignance. “I’ll have a shower if you’re sensitive about the grime and mud and blood. But somebody has to do the dirty work.”

With a last chuckle, she made her way to the bathroom with you following behind. “How about you take a nice, relaxing bath after washing away all that grime in the shower?”, you chimed up, while you placed a fresh, extra-fuzzy towel on the sink for her, and she paused her process of undressing to gape at you as if you’d just proposed to dance naked in the woods.

“A bath”, she repeated.

“Yes.”

“I haven’t taken a bath since I was a child in Asgard.”

Now it was your turn to gape.

“I was always on the run. Having some relaxing down time was never an option,” she explained with a little shrug, letting her soot-covered poncho fall to the ground alongside the golden horned headpiece – but you could hear the bitterness lacing her words at the memories of what the TVA had ripped from her, the life they stole without a pang of conscience. Just another variant who’d refused to bow their head to the will of fate, however involuntarily. It took a few seconds for you to push back against the rage boiling in your blood on Sylvie’s behalf, the hatred you felt towards these nameless monsters abusing their power in the name of order. Not now. She needed you. “Then it’s settled. Jump into the shower and I’ll prepare you the most relaxing bubble bath anyone ever had.”

When she stepped out of the shower after a few minutes, dripping all over the tiles, the bathtub was nearly filled to the brim with warm water, tendrils of steam curling into the air.

“I’ll be your – what do you call it in Asgard? – handmaiden for the evening”, you smiled, busying yourself to ready the bath with Sylvie awkwardly standing beside you, watching with interest as you added a few different oils into the steaming water. When everything was ready, you fell into a small mock-curtsy, and she laughed before she rid herself of the rest of her clothes and settled in the tub. The whole bathroom already smelled like a meadow of spring flowers, the scents wafting through the room on tendrils of steam rising from the tub, and Sylvie sighed as the warm water wrapped around her sore muscles.

For a few seconds, she just closed her eyes and breathed in the fragrant air, before she said, “What now? Do I just…sit here?”

You chuckled. “I mean, you can stay in the tub as long as you like. I could wash your hair for you, my love”, you added as an afterthought, and laughed as she nodded eagerly.

You settled at the edge of the bathtub behind her, and gently began to guide her head backwards so her blonde hair was floating around her like a halo. A soft smile started to play at the corners of Sylvie’s lips at the feeling of your fingers tenderly threading through her hair when you started to brush out the soot and dried blood with your fingers, before you nudged her to raise her head so you could start massaging shampoo into the strands.

“I feel a little like a golden retriever”, she mused as she angled her head further into your soothing touch, and you laughed.

“You still smell like one, for sure.”

“Maybe you should have poured all these oils right over me instead of into the bathtub,” she jested, but when your hands started massaging her scalp, her eyes fell shut with a deep exhale, as if she’d been holding her breath for a long time and now let it go, and it was as if you could see the shadow of fear, the tension and tiredness of the past centuries on the run fall away from her, the worry lines on her lovely face smoothed out. She looked so serene, so beautiful, that you felt the breath catch in your throat at the sight. At the thought that, of all people in all timelines, she’d fallen for you.

“You’re staring”, she mused softly, tearing you from your thoughts.

“How can you know that? Your eyes are still closed.”

“You’re always staring.” The smile on her lips widened as she whispered, “Just as I’m always staring at you, love. In case you didn’t notice.”

You hummed, grabbing the showerhead of the tub to gently rinse the shampoo from her golden curls. When you were done and shifted to rise from the tub’s edge, her hands gently grasped yours.

“You know, it’s pretty lonely here in this huge tub.”

You raised an eyebrow. “Is that an invitation?”

“It’s a command”, she quipped with a mischievous smirk. “I thought you were my handmaiden for the night.”

I'm still taking requests for Loki x reader and Sylvie x reader! 💚🖤

[dollythesheepp]

Endless Forms Most Beautiful, Chapter 5.

You can read it on AO3 here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/39467289/chapters/102546582

"Veronica, where have you been?" asks a female voice when Janis picks up the phone.

"It's a long story," Janis says. She sloppily parks the car on the empty dirt road and then gets out. Her legs shake so much that she needs to lean against the vehicle so she doesn't end up on the ground.

"Did you meet Edith? I can't get a hold of her." Janis turns her head to look at the car, where Edith's dead body lays. She shuts her eyes tight, but every time she does that, the image of the bullet hitting Edith's head appears, she can still picture every detail as if it had happened in slow motion.

"She's dead," she says, her voice falters and the last word barely comes out.

"What?" the woman asks in disbelief.

"Someone shot her right in front of me!"

"Jesus!" the woman gasps. "Are you alright?"

"No, I'm not alright!" Janis screams, adrenaline and panic still rushing through her. "She's in the back of my car, t-there's blood everywhere..."

"Oh my god," the woman says. She repeats it three more times, each louder than the one before as if she doesn't know what else to say. "So it's true..." she whispers.

"What is?" At this point, Janis is reluctant to ask but does it anyway.

"That someone is killing us," the person responds. She sounds alarmingly calm. Janis on the other hand is not. She kicks the front of the car with the heels she got from Veronica's closet and curses, albeit that doesn't do much to calm her down.

"Did you get the briefcase?" the woman says. "Never mind, we can worry about that later. You have to get rid of the body."

"What?" Janis says. "How?

"I-I don't know!" she exclaims. "You're the cop, like, buy a shovel. Just remember to get her samples."

"Samples?" Janis repeats.

"Hair and blood," the woman says softly like she fears Janis will crack if she speaks too harshly. "You can do this."

"Why don't you help me?"

"You know that I would if I could," the woman tells her. "Look, one step at a time, ok? I'll call you back at midnight." The woman hangs up the phone, leaving Janis alone with her rambling thoughts and yet another dead woman who looks exactly like her.

"You can do this," Janis mutters to herself, echoing the words the woman said to her like a mantra. She takes a deep breath to steady herself and then opens the car door; the urge to vomit floods over her as she looks at Edith's body.

Who the hell are you?  She thinks. It takes a lot of effort but Janis manages to put the corpse in the trunk of the car, then she covers the bloody seats with a blanket she finds.

She follows the anonymous woman's advice and buys a shovel. On her way back, she returns to the lake, finds Edith's car, and gets a hold of the briefcase. Janis wonders what the hell is inside; she hopes is cash.

She decides to wait until dark to start.  Just like the perky newscaster had announced on the local news, the weather gets worse; the temperature drops quickly and the winds start picking up, leaves and dirt flying everywhere as Janis plunges the shovel into the ground over and over. Even as she shakes —from the cold and from the fact that she's burying someone— sweat runs down her forehead. She barely notices the tears streaming down her cheeks, tracing lines on her dirt-stained face.

Janis takes Edith out of the trunk and throws her inside the pit. She gets up, panting and looks down at the body, If not for the hole on her forehead, Janis would have guessed she is asleep. Asleep inside a hole on the ground, with blood smeared down her face.

She can't believe this is her life now.

Panting, she clutches the shovel tightly in her hands, picking up the dirt to start covering up her mess.

***

It's 6 am when she shows up at Damian's apartment.

The blood and grime that had been covering every inch of her body were washed off at an empty gas station bathroom, and thankfully, her backpack was still in the car so she was able to change into some of her clothes without having to go back to Veronica's place —she doesn't know if she would be able to explain to JD why her white blouse was covered in blood.

She doesn't knock on the door and lets herself in using her emergency key. She walks into the apartment expecting to see Damian crashed in his bed, instead she sees the place empty, but the bathroom light is on and she can hear her brother singing along to some Cher song she doesn't know the name of, so at least she knows he's home and not planning another fake funeral for her.

His place looks like a mess, which is odd because Janis is usually the messy one. The pillows, usually displayed so neatly on the couch, are tossed carelessly on the floor, there are beer bottles, used cigarettes, and tissues everywhere. But the worst part is the coffee table. The small furniture is covered in candles, cards, and pictures of Janis from different times in her life —did Damian have to use the one from seventh grade when Janis tried to cut her own bangs? Cheap shot— The whole thing is basically a shrine to Janis, she doesn't know if she should gag or laugh.

"Caitlyn, I told you to leave! I have a knife and I will stab you in the-" upon hearing someone entering his place, Damian storms off the bathroom screaming but stops when he sees Janis standing in his living room with her arms crossed. "Oh, it's you. Aren't you supposed to wait three days before rising?"

"What the heck is this?" she makes a face and gestures to the coffee table.

"Your wake. It was painful," he says. "Now that you're dead Caitlyn is even more obsessed. She cried on my couch for hours, it was driving me crazy."

"We don't have to worry about that anymore," Janis says. She collapses on the couch, the overdue exhaustion taking over her, enfolding her mind and her every limb like a heavy blanket. She closes her eyes, unaware of Damian watching her.

"What's that on your neck?" he asks. By reflex Janis puts her fingers on the spot Damian points at, right under her jaw; when she looks down at her fingers, they're red. She must have missed a spot.

"It's nothing," Janis says. She ignores her sore legs and gets up, to escape Damian and his questions.

"It's not nothing, it looks like blood," he says. "What's going on?"

"I don't want to talk about it," Janis says. She rubs a wet dish towel on her neck to clean up the blood. It's not fair to lie to Damian so she decides to tell him a part of the story, and give him just enough information to mitigate his curiosity.

"Remember those birth certificates I found? Veronica's and two others?" Janis begins. Her fingers nervously fiddle with the hem of her shirt, the material familiar to Janis; it feels good to wear a piece of clothing that actually belongs to her and not to someone else who looks like her, it makes her feel like herself again.

"Yeah, EEdith Becker and Denise Sadler" Damian nods his head.

"I met Edith," she tells him.

"Is she another twin?"

Janis hesitates for a second, "Yes." Damian opens his mouth but Janis cuts him off before he can get a word out. "Don't start, Damian."

He ignores her plea. "What did she say?"

"I'm not getting into it. Just leave it, please!" she says. Longing to change the subject, Janis grabs her bag and hands it to her brother. "Look at what I have."

"The evil twin's money?" he ventures a guess before even looking inside the bag.

"Enough to leave Caitlyn and the twin sister weirdness," Janis says. "God, is that too much to ask?"

Damian opens the bag and furrows his brows. "Apparently yes," he says bluntly. Not the reaction Janis expected him to have. He gives back the bag to Janis, who takes it confused. Then, she understands why Damian isn't as excited as she thought he would be. Instead of money —the hundreds of Grants and Benjamin Franklin's Dennis Wallace gave her this morning— the bag is filled with papers.

"What the fuck..." she mumbles. Frantically, she turns the bag inside out, all of its contents fall on the floor, but no money. One small card grabs Damian's attention and he reaches out to look at it.

"Detective Heather Chandler," he reads out loud. "Is that the cop you mentioned?"

"Yes, Veronica's partner. Lizzie said she was following me," Janis says. The cogs inside her head start turning. "She probably switched the bags when I wasn't looking. I can't believe this."

That bitch, she thinks. Janis' breathing grows heavy as anger gradually starts to consume her like fire. Knowing her since they were little kids, Damian senses her fury sprang to life.

"Jan, let's not freak out..." he starts calmly, holding up his hands like he's trying to soothe a wild animal that's ready to attack. "It's ok, just try to be calm."

"That bitch!" this time, she yells. Blinding rage and frustration leads to Janis knocking down anything that stands in front of her. She had been so close! She had held the money in her hands. She had her freedom, her ticket to start a new life so close she could taste it and Heather just took that away from her. Who the fuck does she think she is? Janis curses every member of Heather's family, swears, kicks, and screams, she pours out everything that she had been holding inside her for the past days.

Soon enough, her funeral tribute is scattered all over the floor, along with anything else light enough for her to throw against the wall. Damian just stands quietly, watching as she wreaks havoc in his apartment. He doesn't stop her until she grabs a flower vase that looks like it will scatter in a very satisfying way.

"No, not this one!" he yelps, yanking the vase from her hands. "Philip gave me this!"

Slowly, Janis starts to calm down, her anger dissipating with every ragged breath she takes as she comes back to her senses. Damian helps her organize all of the papers tossed on the floor. At first, Janis had thought they were random papers that Heather had put to equal the weight of the money, but once she skims through them she finds out they're photocopied files from Dawn Schweitzer's case. She leafs through police reports, pictures of the scene of the crime —Dawn Schweitzer laying on the ground, two bullet holes on her chest, and a black cellphone in her hand—,  official statements from Heather Chandler, from a guy named Ramsey Sweeney and from Veronica herself, all describing what happened that day from their perspectives. Clearly, Heather thinks Veronica has some studying to do.

"What is this?" Damian looks over her shoulder.

"It's the Dawn Schweitzer case. Heather left it for me," Janis explains. "Well, for her," she uses her head to point to the black urn containing her dead twin's ashes.

Heather Chandler is smart. Janis truly underestimated her.

"If I want the money, I'll have to be Veronica again," Janis says.

"How long do you think you can fool a cop?"

"Until I get our money back," Janis replies. She grabs Veronica's phone from her purse and starts looking for Heather's number.

"You're going to call her at six in the morning?" Damian asks.

"Trus me, she's waiting for this call," Janis spits. Heather picks up after the first ring, proving her point.

"Took you a while," Chandler says, her saccharine voice hiding the snide remark.

"What the hell are you doing?" Janis practically screams over the phone.

"Just following orders."

"Orders to steal from me?" Janis returns without missing a beat.

"The hearing will happen in two days and Gowan told me to take you by the hand and walk you through it," Heather says. "I hope you checked the bag before crossing the border."

"What? I'm home!" Janis says, she swiftly remembers to modulate her voice, always thinking about the videos she watched of Veronica as a baseline. Frustration settles over her, she can't believe she is back at playing pretend with a cop. "You got it all wrong."

"I never get it all wrong," Heather says.

"Well, there's a first time for everything," Janis deadpans. "Because this is not what you think."

"I don't have time to talk about this now. Meet me at Lulu's at 10," says Heather. "Don't be late."

Heather hangs up. Janis stares baffled at the phone, still trying to process the conversation.

"Who the hell is Lulu?" she mumbles to herself.

***

Before talking to Heather, Janis decides to go back to Veronica's house for a proper shower and maybe a few hours of sleep. She steps into the living room and hopes the place is empty. She calls JD's name to be sure and breathes in a sigh of relief when her calling is met with silence. Janis cannot deal with Veronica's horny boyfriend right now.

Janis removes her jacket and tosses it on the couch, along with her purse, then takes off her boots and throws them across the room. She walks to the kitchen for a glass of water or anything else that can stop her pounding headache; she doesn't hear JD walking in until he speaks up.

"Where have you been all night?"

"Shit!" she gasps in surprise and almost drops the glass in her hand. "Don't do that!" she says with nervous laughter, to try to keep the tension to a minimum, It doesn't work very well because JD's stern expression does not falter.

"You didn't come home," he says.

"I was at the station," Janis lies. "The hearing is after tomorrow, I have to get on top of everything."

"I was worried about you," he says, he is close enough that he is able to caress Janis' arm with his hand. Funny, he says he was worried but not once did he bother to call her. "I am worried about you, all the time. We've been through this before."

"No, we haven't," Janis says, she takes a step back so his hand isn't touching her anymore, his arm falls limply next to his side.

"I don't think you're ready to go back to work, you need to take it slow," he says. Janis fights the urge to roll her eyes. She can't help but wonder how people used to treat Veronica before the shooting, did they always talk to her like she was a precious vase that could easily shatter at any moment, a ticking time bomb about to explode?

"Is that a diagnosis? Because I have plenty of professional help for that."

"Ronnie, please-" he says as he reaches out to touch Janis again but she slaps his hand.

"Don't touch me," she barks. JD looks at her perplexed.

"You know, I can see that this shooting is killing you but you stopped talking to me months ago," he says, every word that comes out of his mouth seems to be loaded with hurt and resentment. "What the hell do you want me to do?"

Janis shifts her weight from one foot to another as her eyes linger on JD, standing in the kitchen with disheveled hair and bags under his hazel eyes, he seems so desperate, pleading, begging Veronica to talk to him, to let him help her.

"Nothing, it's my problem," Janis is able to say despite the sudden lump in her throat. JD doesn't seem satisfied with the answer.

"I can't keep doing this, Ronnie," he runs his hands through his hair. "I can't keep waking up every night, checking your breathing, scared that you're mixing your meds with booze or god knows what else." He swallows hard like he knows the words about to come out of his mouth will be hard for him to say and for his girlfriend to hear. "I'm going to stay with my dad for a while, he needs some help with his company anyway."

"Ok!" Janis exclaims, incapable of containing her relief, which earns her a baffled scoff from JD. She reprimands herself and puts on a sad face. "I mean... if that's what you want." she shrugs, trying to seem nonchalant.

"It's not, trust me, but I think it's our best option," JD says.

When Janis steps out of the shower an hour later, JD is already gone.

***

A quick Google search helps Janis find out there is a diner called Lulu's just a few minutes away from the police station. She arrives there at 10 am sharp.

When she opens the door, the aroma of freshly made pie —the signature dish of the house according to the internet— hits her in the face, making her stomach rumble. She spots Heather instantly, seated at the very last booth, her back is turned to Janis but her ginger hair and overall snobbish poise —which is evident even from her back— are unmistakable.

Janis walks to the table pretending to be familiarized by the quaint diner, as if she had been there thousands of times, which she assumes is true based on how casually Chandler had mentioned the place and how the staff seems to recognize her when she walks in, offering smiles and cheerful greetings of "Hi, good to see you again, Veronica!"

Heather takes her eyes off her phone when she notices the other woman's presence, she observes silently as Janis sits down in front of her. A waitress comes right after, smiling amicably, and asks her if she wants her usual and if Heather wants a refill on her coffee; they both say yes.

"Where is my money?" is the first thing Janis says once the waitress leaves with their order. She forces herself to be discreet and speaks in a low voice, even though all she wants to do right now is slap the smug expression off of Heather's face.

"Is it really your money, Veronica?" Heather Chandler asks in a contemptuous tone, raising her eyebrows quickly in a mocking way. She takes a sip of her coffee —red painted lips leaving a stain on the pristinely white cup— but keeps her icy glare on Janis the whole time like she's looking for something, any indicator that proves whatever postulation she's got on her mind.

"What are you implying?" Janis questions. "That this is a payoff? It's not."

"Then cut the crap and tell me where it's from," Chandler demands.

Janis huffs, taking enough time to come up with a lie. "It's mine and JD's, alright? I cleaned out our joint savings account," she says. "He doesn't know, yet. You're right, I was going to leave town but I couldn't do it so I turned around."

"For him?" Heather snarls, she spits the words out of her mouth bitterly, like that possibility, or simply the thought of JD, hurt her somehow.

"No, to clear everything," Janis says. "I'm not dirty, Heather. I just freaked out."

The waitress comes back with their order, she fills Heather's empty cup with steaming hot coffee, plus another cup for Janis, and puts a bagel in front of Heather and a slice of blueberry pie for Janis —Extra whipped cream just how you like it, Ronnie, the waitress says with a wink.

Heather follows the woman with her eyes until she's out of sight, then turns her head to face Janis again.

"Did you have any previous connections with Dawn Schweitzer before the shooting?" Chandler asks. She ditches her previous snarky tone and faces Janis with a stoic look on her face, detective mode on, like she's talking to a suspect and not to her supposed friend —Janis isn't sure friend is exactly the right word, from the short time she's known the woman, Heather has switched from being rude to her to actually caring and treating her decently faster than Damian switches boyfriends.

"What? No!" Janis says, taken aback by the question and Heather's sudden change.

Heather narrows her eyes. "If there is another version to this story, if this money is somehow connected..." she says in an undertone, through gritted teeth.

"It's not," Janis assures her, although she's not entirely sure that is true.

Chandler takes the files out of her bag, the original ones Janis supposes, and throws them on the table, startling the old man on the booth behind them.

"Then walk me through it again," she says. "So I know you won't crack under questioning."

Janis takes a deep breath. This is something she can do, something she expected Heather to demand, so she is prepared. She had spent hours reading those files, memorizing every gruesome detail her sleep-deprived brain could handle. The only thing she doesn't understand is why Heather is so focused on Veronica's hearing and her going back to work; from what Janis read, Heather doesn't have any serious involvement in the case.

"I was by myself that night," Janis starts, in this moment, she's a performer acting out a monologue. "I was canvassing witnesses from another case, the Sun Jewelry heist that had happened a week earlier. I wasn't even looking for Yip."

"Who's Yip?" Chandler says through a bite of her food, despite knowing the answer; she was in the case with Veronica after all.

"Xan Yip, Internacional racketeer. I had seen her sheet that morning," Janis says without missing a beat, then puts her index finger on the picture of the alleyway where the crime happened, and points to a spot circled with a red marker. "Here is where I thought I saw Yip."

"You thought?!" Heather arches one eyebrow.

"No, I-i did see her. I called her name and I told her to freeze but she kept running," Janis continues. She's aware of Heather's cold stare, testing her. The words suddenly seem to fade, all of the facts and details from the case melting slowly into a puddle inside her brain. "Then she disappeared down the.. hm...you're making me nervous," she tells Chandler.

Chandler gives her a satisfied look. "Good. Now you know how it feels," she says. "When did you draw your weapon?"

"When I entered here," she points at another red circle. "She ran to the left and I followed her. That's when I heard somebody behind me."

"And?"

"And I turned around and I fired twice." Janis swallows, mouth suddenly dry. "They were both wearing black but it wasn't her."

"Then what did you do?" Heather continues with the interrogation.

"I saw the phone in her hand and I used it to call the station," Janis says. "Then you showed up."

Heather's austere countenance doesn't soften. She leans on the table, her face now inches away from Janis', and speaks in a low, hushed voice: "If they find out you called me before you called the police they are gonna start digging. And if they dig, they will find the pills. And if they find the pills they will bring them up during the hearing, then you might crack under questioning and tell them that I put the phone in the victim's hand to cover your tweaker ass."

Janis tries to contain the bewildered look on her face, hiding her surprise as Heather unknowingly confessed her involvement.

Your ass is not the only one on the line here, Heather had said before. She hadn't understood what she meant by that. Not until now. Heather might be a bitch but it appears she is a bitch with indisputable loyalty.

"I wouldn't do that, Heather," Janis mutters. "Dawn Schweitzer was at the wrong place at the wrong time, that is it. None of this ends up on you."

"Good," she says. "But just to be sure, I'm gonna hang onto that money until you're cleared, got it?"

***

After her meet-up with Chandler —fucking Chandler who won't give her money back,— Janis goes back to JD and Veronica's house.

The absence of JD is a relief to her. She uses this moment, where her only company is the expensive bottle of vodka she finds in the freezer and the cars zooming outside, to deal with the other thing that's been puzzling her all day: the black briefcase she found on Edith's car, the one the woman on the phone asked her about. Janis puts the heavy object on the kitchen counter and studies it. It's locked, not surprising. In lieu of wasting her time trying to guess the combination, Janis goes for the easy route and uses a knife to break the lock open. It takes her a few tries and she ends up with bloody fingers but eventually, she hears the rewarding sound of the briefcase opening. Much to her chagrin, there is no money. Janis is starting to get sick of opening bags expecting cash only to find completely random things instead.

There are no files from the Dawn Schweitzer case either, so at least she knows Heather didn't stick her nose where she doesn't belong this time. Janis' brows furrow as she looks at the chest X-rays, blood samples, and multiple ziplock bags with strands of hair inside. On another part of the bag she finds a piece of paper with addresses written in blue ink —the address to Veronica's house and another one from a neighborhood around 45 minutes from the city— and four IDs: one of them belongs to Edith Becker, born in Germany; the other three to a Celeste Beaumont from France, a Natalia Carchidi from Italy and a Maya Wagner from Austria.

Janis doesn't know any of them but she knows their faces, despite the different haircuts and clothing, those three other women look identical to her. Just like Veronica and Edith. Five of them. There are five women out there, not just in the USA but across Europe too, that look identical to Janis. And she would bet big money on what Denise Sadler's face looks like.

What the actual fuck.

Janis feels a headache coming as the thoughts run through her head too quickly to keep track of. The whole situation feels like a big enigma to her, an intricate puzzle where all the pieces look the same and yet none of them fit, and she just got handed three more pieces.

She keeps staring at the briefcase for what feels like hours, until midnight when the mysterious woman calls again.

"You're punctual," Janis says.

"Veronica! How did it go?" the woman asks. "Did you find the briefcase?"

Janis' eyes linger on the mentioned object. Every time she thinks she knows something, she's met with a dead end and she's tired of it. This woman, whoever she is, is the closest thing Janis has to get answers.

Screw it, she thinks.

"Who is this?" Janis says, dropping the act.

"What?" the person asks, confused.

"Veronica is indisposed right now," Janis says. "Who am I speaking to? Is this Denise?"

The voice goes silent for a couple of seconds. "Just one. I'm a few. No family, too. Who am I?" the woman repeats the words Edith said to her seconds before she died. Janis huffs in frustration.

"Sorry, riddler, that means nothing to me," she says. "Veronica wanted me to say that I have the briefcase. Do you want me to bring it to you?"

Silence again. At first, Janis assumes the woman is trying to come up with a reply, but once she hears the annoying beep echoing on the phone, she realizes the woman hang up.

"Fuck," she mumbles.

She eyes the paper in her hands again. Since this Denise chick is refusing to talk to her over the phone, Janis has no choice but to talk to her in person.

***

The next morning, a 40-minute drive later leads Janis to a pristine house in the suburbs.

The entire neighborhood looks like it belongs on a TV commercial, it's disgusting. The rows of houses, all similar to each other with colorful bikes and minivans parked on their perfectly mowed lawns give off a creepy vibe to her that she can't explain. It reminds her too much of those horror movies where the cookie-cutter family always ends up murdered or eaten by zombies.

Janis shakes off the weird feeling and drives to the back of the house. She has three steps plans: knock on the door, explain things to Denise and force some answers out of her. She prepares herself to leave the car when the garage door opens and a red minivan —of course, it's a minivan— exits. Janis doesn't think twice and follows it.

The minivan drives for 15 minutes and stops at a kid's soccer club. Janis carefully parks her car at a safe distance, so the driver doesn't see her but she can still have a full view of them. She watches with caution as two young kids step out of the car, both of them wearing soccer uniforms and bickering with each other about something she can't hear; the boy appears to be around nine or ten years old, the girl is smaller, maybe six or seven. The door on the driver's side opens and a woman steps out, she walks over to the kids, now shoving and yanking each other's hair, and says something to them, breaking apart the fight with her hands on her hips, leaving the kids sulking. She is wearing gym clothes and straight brown hair in a tight ponytail. And just like Janis had guessed, a face exactly like hers. Twin number six is a damn soccer mom.

Janis waits until they leave the parking lot to get out of the car. Her hoodie covers a part of her face, to avoid people from Denise's social circle recognizing her. Denise walks in the direction of the football field, where dozens of little kids run energetically with sweaty uniforms and red faces. She chats with other moms for a while, gives them kisses on the cheek, and laughs, then she enters a shed, just a few meters away from the field.

Janis uses the opportunity to follow her. Twin number six doesn't hear nor see Janis walking in, she's facing the wall, focused on the orange slices that she's cutting for the children.

"Denise Sadler, right?" Janis asks, scaring the woman, who turns around rapidly, with a hand on her heart and eyes wide open.

"Are you out of your mind?" Denise hisses. Her nostrils widen in anger as if the mere presence of Janis is somewhat insulting to her. "How dare you show your face in here?"

Janis holds up both hands in a way that shows she's come in peace, she's very aware of the knife still in Denise's tight grip. "I'm just looking for answers," she says.

"How did you find me?" Denise asks, the knife now inches away from Janis' face.

"Your address was inside the briefcase," Janis explains. "I've got what you wanted."

Denise scoffs and rolls her eyes like Janis had said the stupidest thing she's ever heard. "You idiot. You don't even know who you're talking to," she says, still furious. "Where's Veronica?"

"She's dead," Janis tells her, waiting for Denise to start freaking out, yell, blame her, or something like that, "She killed herself."

"I don't believe you, " she says, with a neutral expression, but the way she keeps waving the knife around shows her distress. "She would never do that."

"I'm sorry but it's true. I saw her do it," Janis tells her. "I can explain everything. My name is Janis and-"

"I don't care who you are!" Denise says harshly. She starts to pace around the small shed, rubbing her temples and looking at the ceiling. "Why me, Lord? I never wanted to be a part of this. Do I wear a huge kick me sign on my back?" she whispers.

"Cam you just explain to me what's going on? What are we to each other?" Janis asks, at this point she is ready to beg for answers so she can stop running in circles. Denise looks at her with a jeering expression on her face.

"Are you kidding me? This is not my responsibility" she says, her voice tight. "You will get a call tomorrow. Get the hell out of my neighborhood and wait until then."

She grabs the tray of freshly cut oranges and opens the door, ending their conversation. She turns to Janis one last time. "Oh, and hide your ugly face on the way out," Denise says before slamming the door.

***

The next day, Janis arrives at the station with her heart racing. Just like the first time, everyone in there stares at her with interest, like they're watching a car crash unfold right before their eyes. She spots Heather seated at her desk, who gives her a quick smile before her expression goes back to neutral. The whole thing feels like a flashback, but this time Janis is determined to not screw up.

Lieutenant Gowan guides her towards the board room, where the same people from the first time wait for her. Janis takes a seat.

"Alright, let's see if we can do this again," says the man seated across the table from her. "Say your name and rank for the record, and then begin."

Janis leans closer to the microphone, confidence running through her veins.

"Detective Veronica Sawyer."

[lena-in-a-red-dress]

Notting Hill AU Snippet #11

Kara hesitates outside the Travel Book Shop, noting in distraction that the outside is just about the same color as Lena's blue door. She wonders if it was a deliberate choice, or something Lena simply inherited. It would be simple to ask-- Lena is just there beyond the window, shifting between the front desk and back office completely oblivious to the crisis of faith happening on the sidewalk outside.

She doesn't know what to say. 'You left' is too accusatory, and too much of an echo of what Kara had done six months ago. No, she can't say that.

'I missed you' would be honest, perhaps to a fault. No, too tender.

In the end, Kara can only gather her courage and enter the shop without a game plan. It just so happens that she chooses a moment when Lena is in the back, meaning the person who comes to greet her is a short man in a bowtie.

He nearly swallows his tongue at the sight of her.

"Could I speak to Lena, please?" she asks, heading him off.

To her surprise, the man-- Winn, his nametag reads-- assumes a skeptical expression. "And who's asking?"

Kara doesn't have patience to play games. "Please, just tell her I'm here."

Thankfully, Winn obliges with only a judgemental glance that scrapes her from head to toe. He disappears into the back, and Kara can just make out what he says to Lena.

"Delivery for you up front."

"Can't you just take it?" Lena asks, distracted.

"Nope! Asked for you directly."

Kara hears Lena sigh. "Honestly I don't know why I pay you--"

Lena comes into the front room and freezes. Their eyes meet, and Kara feels something click into place inside her, just as it had on set the day before. But this time, Lena doesn't smile, not even the hesitant one she'd given at Hampstead Heath. Instead, Kara sees her jaw tighten before she walks woodenly behind the front desk.

"You disappeared yesterday," Kara says, desperate to break the unnerving silence. When Lena doesn't respond, Kara covers with a smile. "I guess something came up--"

"Actually, I heard you talking to Siobhan," Lena cuts in, finally. She lifts her gaze to meet Kara's again, and Kara is startled to see the steely glint of resentment in her eyes. "I wonder why you're even here, considering I'm nobody."

Kara's mind races to retrace her steps, to rewind to whatever she might have said. In the next instant, she remembers Siobhan asking about Lena out of hand, and dismissing her interest in a wash of jealousy.

"Oh, no, Lena, that's not--"

"It doesn't matter," Lena interrupts again. She drops Kara's gaze, even as she swallows thickly. "You know, I thought you'd be different."

Different? "From what? The rest of Hollywood?"

If that was Lena's misgiving, then Kara had no hope. Kara had it in her blood now, been bred to it. She had no hope of divesting herself of it now.

"From Veronica."

A record scratches in Kara's brain. She struggles to catch up, remember who Veronica is. Had they met? No... Veronica was-- the bad break-up.

Kara's cheeks heat in a devastated flush.

"I don't doubt that you're two very different people," Lena continues. "You're kind, in a way Veronica never was. And trusting. But even so-- I'm still the dirty little secret, aren't I?"

When Kara inhales, it feels like shards of glass in her chest. "Lena, I know there's no way I could ever make up for the things I said to you. I behaved so, so badly, and I-- I hate that I hurt such a loving, caring person."

Lena turns her chin away, hiding the shimmer of tears in her eyes. Kara forces herself to continue.

"I can't make it up to you, but I want to try. If you... if you can find it in yourself, to maybe... like me again."

A long moment follows, and Kara clenches her jaw against the urge to fill it with more. More words, more pleas. Anything but the unbearable weight as Lena gathers herself and her thoughts.

"What happens," Lena says finally, "if I say no?"

"Then... I leave. I'll go back to America, and I won't call you, or visit you. You won't have to see me again."

It's the only thing she can do. As much as it would devastate her, as much as it would rend her in two a second time, she would do it. She would let Lena go. For good.

"Then," Lena says slowly, her voice low, "I think I have to say... no."

Kara swallows a sob, ducking her head to hide it. She nods. "Right. Okay. Of course."

"We're from two different worlds, Kara. I can't spend my life waiting to be cast aside, Kara. And with you I know I would be. As I already have. Twice." Lena sniffles, clearing her throat. "I deserve more than that."

Kara lifts her head, nodding. "You do. You absolutely do."

She knows she should leave, but her feet refuse to move. She stands riveted to the spot, wringing every last moment from this last meeting with Lena.

"The fame thing isn't really real, please know that. Those few weeks with you were more tangible to me than a lifetime in the industry. Under all the lights and the make-up, I'm also just a girl, standing in front of a girl, asking you to love me."

Kara holds Lena's gaze, and in her eyes she sees nothing but fear and sadness. No forgiveness, no change of heart. When Lena finally lowers her gaze, Kara knows her battle is lost.

Swallowing thickly, Kara risks moving closer, and when Lena doesn't pull away Kara leans in to press a kiss against her cheek.

"Goodbye, Lena."

---

Kara walks back to the hotel in a daze. She makes her way back up to the suite she shares with Alex, and when she closes the door behind her, her sister is on her feet, eagerly awaiting the news.

"So? How'd it go?"

Kara reveals the truth with a barely contained gasp. "She said no."

For the rest of the night, Alex holds her as she sobs.

previous / next

[soyforramen]

Sting

Or an update to the urban-fantasy AU:

Betty bit at her nails as she stared at him. It was unnerving, to say the least. Jughead had seen her in many moods, but this was the first time she’d stared at him as if he were a specimen behind glass. He’d been startled when she stormed into his apartment, clearly with a purpose, though the longer they stood there the more that purpose seemed to fail her.

“Take your shirt off,” she said.

Jughead was grateful that she’d missed his shocked expression in favor of digging through her backpack.

“I’ve got a grimoire that should work against Penny. It took some experimenting, but Veronica and I think it will work against demon fire.”

Oh.

Of course Betty would have come up with a solution to that particular problem. And of course her interest in his skin was purely professional. Why should it be anything else?

(Careful, Jug, came a voice that sounded far too much like Veronica for his tastes, otherwise we might think you’d want her to have a more personal interest.)

He sneered at that thought and stripped off his jacket. Betty was a problem solver, and in this case Penny had become a big problem. The demon had been creeping around the cult’s warehouses lately, likely waiting for a time to catch either one of them alone and vulnerable. And when a demon decided to claim a territory, they were keen to keep out anything that might threaten their dominance.

Jughead turned away from Betty as she was pulling out a plastic sheet and stripped off his flannel and undershirt. Even now, dead and starving, his breath hung in the air. He glanced over his shoulder at Betty, still working on the spell, and wondered if he should turn the heater on. But when she stripped off her own jacket and sweater to reveal the scarred, tattooed skin underneath – her runes sharp and stinging to his eyes – he decided against it.

He stared at his bookshelf, his heart pounding as hard as it could after two days without feeding. Jughead put all of his energy into focusing on the overflowing bookshelf rather than the half-naked witch behind him. As he scanned the titles, he realized he’d never been able to track down the last copy of his grandfather’s treatise on how to find and kill witches; now, though, he was immensely grateful that he’d never found it.

“This might sting,” Betty said softly behind him. She placed her hand on his back to steady the stencil, and the electric tingle of her skin reminded him of being alive in all the best ways. Strange, mumbled words hummed in the air around him.

Sharp, stinging pain dug into his very soul and Jughead bit his lip to keep from crying out. Unable to bear it for more than a few seconds, he cursed out and leapt away from her.

“What the hell is that, holy water?”

Betty winced. “And aloe and grimwood. It’s the only thing guaranteed to protect against demon-fire, and after she attacked you last week …”

“And she’s been guarding the cult,” Jughead finished, recognizing why Betty used the equivalent of jalapeno juice in an open wound on him.

She nodded, flushing a pretty crimson color. “And until we know what she’s doing with the cult, this is the best I can do.”

Jughead’s eyes were caught on the flush of her cheeks and how it lit up her face. His stomach growled suddenly and Betty’s eyes went wide. The color on her cheeks deepened and she stepped back, twirling a finger at him.

Dutifully, he turned back around to let her finish. He bit the inside of his own cheek this time and focused on the crack in the wall rather than the pounding of her blood as it ran through her carotid artery at a rate of 5.1 kilos pure, viscous, life-saving liquid a minute, pushing 95% oxygenated blood through her body, rushing it to her cheeks, her neck, her throat, each and every red cell warming up her temperature to the perfect –

“Done.” Betty reached around him and held out the canister and plastic sheet. “My turn now. There should be some open space back there, but be quick about it. The ingredients won’t stay active too much longer.”

When he turned, Jughead found her back towards him. Her lithe, delicate hands held her ponytail away from her skin and he could see the pulse point on her neck jumping. His eyes, inherited from Judas’, no doubt, traced her skin, bronzed from the sun and full of life, to a mostly blank spot between her shoulder blades.

Hesitantly, he placed the cut plastic against her skin. Her whole body shuddered and he drew back.

“Sorry. Cold hands comes with the being dead thing.”

“No, it’s not you –“ Betty cut herself off and the back of her neck flushed.

Jughead fought back against the hunger that sat at the back of his throat and pressed the plastic against her skin. When he pressed down the nozzle, a sickly green liquid that attacked his eyes and nose clung to her skin. Slowly, he ran the liquid across the plastic.

“Now what?”

Betty shook her head and reached towards her sweater. A shiver ran down her back and Jughead traced the air along her spine, careful not to touch her.

“I think that’s it,” she said.

When she turned, Jughead held the canister out to her. (What did she do with them?, he wondered. Recycle? Reuse them for other spells? Throw them out into the city dump to create mutant creatures resistant to both human and underworld threats?)

Betty took it from him, taking great care not to touch, or look at, his skin.

“There’s some still left, if you want another hit to your front,” she offered.

“Will it help?”

She shrugged and took the plastic, turning it over in her hands. “It can’t hurt.”

“Alright.”

Betty placed the sticky, warped plastic against his skin. Her fingers were light and hot against his chest, forcing him to grind down on his back molars and count backwards from a thousand in Welsh.

As the liquid ate away at his skin, Jughead threw his glance towards the ceiling and held his breath as the noxious substance was applied. To keep his mind of the pain and the fumes, he counted all the ways his upstairs neighbor had irritated him in the past two centuries, the most recent of which was finding her nosey way into his brain. The liquid hit a scratch, not fully healed, and he jerked away.

“Sorry, almost done,” Betty said softly, misreading his movement.

She shifted so that her hand covered his heart, stilling the sudden fever in him. In this instant he knew that he’d do anything she asked, regardless of the risk to himself or the rest of the world. It was a dangerous thing, especially when one considered Betty didn’t realize the power it gave her.

The plastic peeled away from his skin, taking with it Betty’s hand. It’s absence left him colder than he’d ever been before, alive or dead.

“The protection should last a week, as long as you don’t wash it off,” she said, refusing to look at him.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Betty told him, her focus on packing up her ingredients.

The sudden cold behavior came as a start, and he slowly drew his own shirt back on. It wasn’t until he walked her to the door it struck him. After all, witches never made it their business to consort with the undead, and it seemed as if she’d finally found her senses when it came to him. Perhaps this was her way of politely setting boundaries. They were finally starting to get somewhere with the cult, and it wouldn’t be much longer that they’d part ways. It was only natural that one of them begin thinking about what happened after. And what it meant when they –

Betty paused at the door, her eyes catching his for the first time since she’d entered.

“I didn’t shiver because of the cold. My runes protect me against that.”

And with that she was gone into the night, leaving him to wonder whether she’d spoken those words at all.

[jebazzled]

They can’t ALL be serial killers: keeping your villains funky fresh

Ah, villains. Spicy assholes. Tricky buggers.

Villains can be very intimidating to write: writing requires you to put yourself in the shoes of another person, which is one thing to do with a decent person. But when you are putting yourselves in the shoes of a bad one - whether it be someone who is simply not very likeable or someone who functions in an antagonistic capacity to a story or rp universe’s hero - well, it can be uncomfortable. 

I didn’t start writing villains until well into my rp career, and I can’t think of a single character I wrote in my undergraduate creative writing degree who was an asshole. I now write a small handful of them - and like most things, I don’t think writing a villain is quite as scary as we sometimes build it up to be in our minds!

That said, writing a villain is an exercise in nuance, and this is something that is often missing from antagonistic characters. In this tutorial, we’ll talk about what makes a villain, and what makes a villain a well-rounded character. 

Triggers, mentioned largely in passing as examples: criminal activity, murder, assault, child abuse, car accident, drunk driving, animal abuse

What makes a villain?

Generally, when we talk about villains, it’s in the context of a narrative, some sort of overall plot theme where there is Good and there is Evil. Think: Death Eaters, the Dark Side, the Horde, the Daleks, the Orcs, etc, etc etc. For the purposes of this tutorial, I’m talking about characters who serve in that antagonistic role, but everything can also be applied to characters who are just shitty people without a part to play in any larger scheme. 

In a plot context, per Oxford Languages, a villain is “a character whose evil actions or motives are important to the plot.” To be important to the plot, you do have to post, and if that’s something you’re struggling with, you might want to check out my Writer’s Block TED Talk ;)

A villain can have any number of reasons for being Like That: perhaps they were raised with a particular worldview, or were targeted by a negative influence at an impressionable and vulnerable stage, or genuinely believe they are doing the right and good thing. Maybe they’re just an asshole. In-character, your character likely doesn’t identify as a villain (because everyone is the hero of their own story) and in-character, your character might have friends, allies, and others with varying knowledge of your character’s misdeeds. 

However, out-of-character, you and other writers should recognize that your character is a shitty person. Writing one-dimensional, universally terrible assholes isn’t much fun, though. Which is where nuance comes in. 

Give your character other traits than “evil.” 

Unless your character is THE Big Bad - the Voldemort, the Sauron, the Hordak Prime - there is no reason for them to be Ultimate Evil, and writing them as an endless wash of evil will be boring for you to write and boring for other people to read. Your character should be something other than naughty. 

Using my own handful of villains/bad guys as examples, since obviously I take my own advice, and with apologies that 99% of my rp writing is in the HP verse:

Claude is a Death Eater as well as second-in-command of the magical mafia. He’s an expert blackmailer, has no qualms with murder, and can get pretty gruesome about it if he’s pressed to make a point. He also doesn’t drink, is a devoted father (has framed finger paintings in his study! drinks the pink lemonade his daughters love in crystal rocks glasses!), uses weird slang (”beat it, bozo!”) and takes the family spaniel on daily walks through Kensington Gardens. 

Cleo is a Death Eater and a lifelong bully, prone to theft, physical abuse, and with a knack for the Cruciatus Curse. She’s also deeply insecure, with an unshakeable need to be seen as useful; she’s competitive, and she’s horny enough to drop her purist pretense if a Muggle girl is what’s easiest to get her rocks off. 

Sadie is a squib spying on Order-organized safehouses for the Death Eaters. She’s also intensely curious and ambitious, determined and self-directed, and if she doesn’t understand emotions, it certainly doesn’t stop her from understanding how to manipulate them to maintain the illusion that she is not a threat. 

All three of these character concepts are more compelling than:

Veronica is rude, hates people, is outwardly mean to everyone she meets, uses cultural slurs on the regular.

We get it! Veronica is a shitty person! What else is she? In real life, shitty people typically do find camaraderie somewhere, somehow. Maybe Richie is a total asshole but has made a lot of money from his hedge fund, and he is generous enough with his yacht, ski condo, and jet that he has an entourage he thinks are genuinely his friends. Maybe Kaiytlynn is selfish and entitled, but her access to the entire royal family of Spain keeps her gainfully employed, and she’s genuinely good with her bedazzled bra business. Maybe Claudia is a giant racist, and she’s also YouTube’s most popular craft video creator. 

In real life, maybe there are some shitty people who exhibit fully antisocial behaviors and are rewarded for it. But this is fiction writing, and moreover, it is collaborative fiction writing, and Veronica is not a character who is fun or enjoyable to plot with. Antagonistic plots can have more trouble finding their footing than strictly romantic ones - but they can be fun and rewarding, provided that the antagonist is a compelling one. 

Let your character be something other than “evil.”

Give your character a cover.

More specifically than a trait other than “evil,” give your character a cover. By this I mean: give your character an angle that obscures their true colors, something that lures people - good people and bad people - into a sense of safety. 

Give your character something that keeps other characters from taking one quick look at yours and immediately clocking them as a bad guy. 

In real life, it often takes time to realize toxic people are toxic. In real life, people enjoy circumstances that make people less likely to view them as toxic - just look at the number of people who think Jeff Bezos’s obscene wealth is a marker of his merit as a human being. 

If your character commits a murder a week, is actively abusive to everyone they meet, and has no relationships with any other characters who might vouch for them - idk, man, I think your character is going to get caught! If your character is a quiet and unobtrusive owner of a vintage boutique, however? Well, they certainly don’t scream “IT’S ME! I’M BAD TO THE MOTHERFUCKING BONE!”

In the case of my bad guys:

Claude is a doting husband and father, notably not ascribing to purist tendencies that discourage women from work outside the home. He does legitimate work in real estate and investments, in addition to his shady dealings, to have a legally-sound paper trail should he ever be investigated. His family money funds an entire wing at St. Mungo’s Hospital, and he contributes to political campaigns for centrist politicians. He presents as a harmless goofball. He killed a man well before he turned seventeen. He almost went to Azkaban before graduating from Hogwarts. (”Oh, but he’s on the straight and narrow now!”)

Claude’s cover is that he masquerades as a genuinely good person, and a nice person. When people think about his old-money Sacred 28 family and what that might mean for Claude’s political activity, they also think about how he is a Gryffindor - not known for churning out Death Eaters - and they think about how he doesn’t seem intense enough to be a Death Eater. They don’t suspect enough to have much to go on. 

Cleo works as an Auror, and she’s genuinely good at her job - if only because she manipulates cases away from incriminating Death Eaters and their allies and occasionally Imperiuses a contact or two from her days as a Knockturn Alley bouncer to frame them for a crime. She doesn’t use slurs like “mudblood” at the office and doesn’t talk about blood status there, either. She doesn’t pretend to be nice, and her honesty there makes it easier to believe she’s not pretending when she does her job. It helps, too, that she is not Marked. 

Cleo’s cover is that while she seems like an asshole and is an asshole, she works in the agency tasked with eliminating Dark wizards and she’s good at her job, as far as anyone can tell. She is an asshole, but there isn’t reason to suspect she is an asshole who is part of the Death Eaters, and it is not illegal to be a dick.

Sadie goes out of her way to be friendly to every new safehouse occupant, acting as a guide to newbies about how to live in the shadows. She performs the role of caretaker, therapist, and confidant, carefully doling out the reveal that she is a squib for sympathetic effect. 

Sadie’s cover is that she manipulates other people into viewing her as too weak to be any kind of threat, and she intentionally manipulates people into relying on her for support and guidance. 

If your character is not experiencing social repercussions for being an asshole, they need to have a cover. If they are being an outright asshole, this should negatively impact them somehow. 

An outright asshole might be stuck in a dead-end job because no one wants to promote someone who’s not a team player. An outright asshole might be super lonely without the self-awareness to realize that their garbage personality is the reason for their romantic troubles. An outright asshole might not be able to talk their way out of a problem. 

If your character is an outright asshole and experience no repercussions whatsoever, they’re probably a bit OP. 

Give your character a motive. 

Now the big question: why is your character Like That? Like, for real. It’s so easy not to be a dick. Why are they a dick? What’s in it for them?

Yes, some characters might be an asshole because they think it’s fun and they like to watch other people suffer. But if all your characters are like that - isn’t that kind of boring?

If all your characters are like that - are you actually writing distinct, well-developed characters, or are you just spitting out the same edgelord with different faces?

Some of your character’s reason for being a dick can be because they think it’s fun. It can’t be the entire reason. It especially can’t be the entire reason all the time. 

Of course you can come up with a big tragic reason why a character is an asshole - but it truly doesn’t have to be that deep. (Tips on tragic backstories here.)

Of my baddies:

Claude is a purist because someone has to be a lesser class, and it’s sure as shit not going to be him! Claude is a Death Eater because his father saw a business opportunity - both direct work (e.g. the DE contracting Claude and his goons out for a hit, trafficking dark goods, doing deals with purist groups in other magical organized crime outfits across Europe) and indirect work (e.g. having stronger appeal to some of the most influential wizarding families.) He doesn’t love being branded with the Dark Mark (HE is the master of his fate, goddammit!) but hey, it’s a living.

This is a motive centered around financial gain and expediency. Claude is shitty to value money over human life, and he has no qualms about violence - but the motive is not “fun.”

Cleo is a Death Eater because, as a girl from a pureblood family of no importance, she recognizes that many of the people in the Death Eaters are important and influential, and she wants that kind of power. Additionally, she does get a kick out of violence, but she’s a weapon more than she is a fighter: she’s a tool who needs someone to wield her, to give instructions, to give her purpose. The Death Eaters offer both.

This is a motive centered around status and around order - Cleo being a person who needs order externally forced upon her. 

Sadie is working for the Death Eaters because she believes they will win the First Wizarding War, and she wants to secure a place in their new order - ideally something more than she had previously as a squib. She figures if the good guys are really good they’ll forgive her for keeping herself alive - but that the bad guys won’t forgive disloyalty. Also, her boss in the Death Eaters indulges her research in the Dark Arts, which is fun. 

This is a motive centered around security and self-satisfaction. It’s very selfish and cold, but it’s not, like, Sid from Toy Story. 

Why is your character Like That? What do they get out of Being Bad? What do they like about it? What purpose does it serve for them? 

If you can’t think of a reason your character would be a Bad Guy beyond that you want to write a Bad Guy, you should probably rework the character. It’s tricky to write someone who really should just be a Good Guy as a Bad Guy because, depending on your site’s setting, you might end up being a Bad Guy Apologist, leaning into the positive qualities of your character without writing them as an actual villain/antagonist/baddie - and remember, Death Eaters are shitty people! Antagonists antagonize! They should be complex, but you should never lose sight of an abusive class being abusive! 

And finally,

They can’t all be serial killers.

It’s tempting, since we’re writing fiction here and we all love drama, to reach straight for a Big Evil when we’re writing a baddie. They murdered ___! Egads!

If all of your baddies murdered their spouse/parent/sibling, again I ask you: are you actually writing distinct, well-developed characters, or are you just spitting out the same edgelord with different faces?

(If all your baddies specifically murdered a woman, might I ask you to examine this choice? Misogynistic violence is not a shortcut to character development.)

Cast of characters aside - what is it your character does that makes them evil? It is worth noting that bad behavior exists on a spectrum, and to jump to the far end of that spectrum without building the character up to it is often jarring and confusing. There are many, many things your character can do that might contribute to their Bad IdentityTM without killing anyone!

Baby Bads: No one gets hurt in a serious way, but the character is unpleasant. Think: a schoolteacher might not let you go to recess. You might get detention. Examples:

petty theft

general assholery

bullying

lying, small & large scale

general unkindness

minor manipulation for personal gain

Middling Misdeeds: These might cause some harm - physically, emotionally, or otherwise - but there’s some room for smart-talking or otherwise evading major consequences. Think: suspension. Examples:

larger theft and other money-related naughties: money laundering, ponzi schemes, etc

physical assault/battery

blackmail

bribery

large-scale manipulation for personal gain or for fun

hate speech (to be clear, I, JB, think this is way more than middling, but in art as in life, a lot of characters are going to do it and get away with it.)

Terrible Transgressions: The far end of the spectrum of antagonistic behavior. If your character is doing this shit, it shouldn’t be coming out of the blue. If your character is doing this shit, there’s got to be a character-driven reason beyond “flavor.” These are things that would get you expelled and moved into criminal court. A lot of things that are viewed as standard topics requiring a trigger warning fit into this category. 

murder

sexual assault

torture

child abuse

It’s easy in rp, where there are often way more criminal types in a character population than we hope exist IRL, to forget that murder is.... like.... it’s a BIG DEAL. It’s not something everyone has done. And thank dog, right?

If you’re attached to your character being someone’s cause of death, for specific character-driven reasons, you might think about alternatives. For example, if you hope to convey that Brandon Baddie is a callous asshole, instead of having him kill his roommate over a household chores dispute, you might have him drive drunk, hit a pedestrian, get out of the car, see the body, and drive away. If you hope to convey that Sandy Sadist is cruel, you might have her threaten her sister’s dog, but not actually hurt it, enjoying the fear of the sister and of the dog more than she would enjoy actually hurting either. If you hope to communicate that Ruthie Reckless is thoughtless, you might have her driving 100 mph speeding to the edge of a cliff while her father sobs in the passenger seat, stopping just inches from the edge. 

There are so many ways to make a point. If you’re going to kill someone to make a point, do it sparingly, and with very deliberate purpose.

Whether you’re starting your first villain or hoping to hone your villainous sword, I hope you found this tut helpful! Best of luck, and happy writing!

[fvckyouimaprophet]

lights low, flames high

5x11 alternate ending where tabitha and betty "vibe" while they're on shrooms, and by vibe i mean make out | read on ao3

The music bounces off the bunker walls—small and insulated as it is—and melts into Betty until she’s not sure where it ends and she begins. Then again, she supposes the shrooms are partly to blame. She’s never been good at relinquishing control, and Jessica’s words loop in her head. Let the trip take you wherever it may go. She’s certain that the budding anxiety in the pit of her stomach is not what Jessica meant. It doesn’t help that the last time she was drugged— 

Her nails dig into her palm, cutting off that thought. Deep breaths.

“What is this?”

Tabitha’s question makes her jump—the thought of anyone else in the room long out of Betty’s mind.

“What?”

“This music.”

“Oh, it’s from Hair,” Betty says.

“That’s that anti-Vietnam musical?” Her lips betray her, quirking upwards in amusement, but nonetheless, Tabitha sways along with it and drags her finger along the edge of the table.

“Most of my musical theatre knowledge comes from Kevin,” Betty admits. She closes her eyes and runs her fingers along the bed. So many memories for a hole in the ground—and mistakes too.

She pushes the thought out of her mind and focuses instead on the feel of the fabric and the pilled polyester of the pillow cover. Its touch is strangely satisfying and absorbing.

“Can I lay down too?” Tabitha asks, and Betty blinks her eyes open and back into focus as the room swims around her—the red of the lava lamp making the walls look aflame. Betty nods her head before she recalls the spare mattress and hobbles up.

“Wait, I have a better idea.” She tugs at the edge of the mattress, but her grip slips and tugs the bedsheet off instead. It’s hard to focus with her body floating, and she stumbles backward.

“Careful!” 

Before Betty can fall into the table, Tabitha places a hand on each of Betty’s arms and steadies her with a light squeeze. As unexpected as it is, the sudden warmth of someone beside her feels nice, and her breath catches in her throat. With Tabitha this close, Betty notices—not for the first time—the scene of her perfume. It’s oddly comforting, if unfamiliar. She breathes in slowly, careful not to give herself away.

“Thanks,” Betty says, and when she turns around, Tabitha’s hands drop. The sudden lack of contact is inexplicably disappointing, but her mind can’t focus enough to linger on it. The music swells around them, swallowing them both, judging by the look on Tabitha’s face.

“What were you trying to do?” Tabitha asks.

“There’s a spare mattress. We can just move them to the floor if I can just…” She tugs at the mattress again, careful this time not to grip it by the bedsheet. And when it starts to budge, she grins.

“Let me help.”

They make quick work of pushing the table to the side and getting the mattresses to the floor, especially considering how much of a chore it is to move at all. It’s not the most graceful she’s ever been, but here in the comfort of the bunker, there’s little to worry about. 

And the shrooms—Betty has to begrudgingly admit they make things a little softer at the edges. The moment Betty thinks she’s grasped a thought, it's out of reach. With everything that’s happened with Polly and the chaos of Charles and Chic, it’s a relief to be floating, untethered.

“You know this music isn’t half-bad, but I don’t know how Jessica had time to prepare it when we weren’t paying attention,” Tabitha says, and Betty rolls on her side to face her.

“I still can’t believe she drugged us. And then left us here with some music like that makes it all okay!”

They look at each other, the intensity of Jessica’s actions washing over them before Tabitha bursts out laughing. “I have to admit, this isn’t how I imagined spending my night, but it’s not so bad. You’re not the wet blanket Jughead made you out to be.”

The words linger between them for a second, Jughead’s name harsh and unforgiving.

“I shouldn’t have brought him up,” Tabitha quickly adds.

“It’s fine,” Betty says and is surprised by the fact that she means it. The silence draws out for another moment, and Tabitha rolls over onto her side as well. With their mattresses on top of one another, it means that Tabitha’s face is inches apart from hers. 

It’s an intimacy Betty’s nearly forgotten. Glen hardly counts; half the time, Betty doesn’t remember him—which says something considering his role in recent events. And her training hasn’t lent itself to many new friendships. But now, with Tabitha so close that Betty can smell the artificial sweetness of a strawberry milkshake on her breath, it feels reassuring.

“What do you think of Riverdale so far?” Betty asks.

Tabitha laughs and puts a hand under her head, propping it up. “I’ve… never seen a place quite like it.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“What’s yours?”

“Haunted. Or… Sometimes I wonder what I’m fighting for. I grew up here, and I have all these memories, but it feels like I’m holding onto something that’ll never exist. I used to think the town would heal itself—that the bad things that happened were the exception, but I’m not so sure I think that anymore. When it was just Jason and Mr. Blossom, that felt like an anomaly. But then it turned out my dad was a serial killer and Veronica’s was a power-hungry egomaniac, and Jughead’s mom came to town and rallied the Ghoulies to sell Jingle Jangle, and—”

“Jughead’s mom did what?” Tabitha asks and stares, horrified and wide-eyed.

The absurdity of it all hits Betty until she can’t help but smile. “Oh yeah. And that’s hardly the highlights reel.” Her filter’s too far gone to stop herself, so she adds, “You know, we set her drug lab on fire.”

Tabitha shakes her head and laughs in disbelief. “Holy shit.”

“And I haven’t even told you about the cult, or the creepy video store that sold pornos and illegally filmed sex tapes.”

“My grandfather told me some stories—mostly about Hiram and Veronica, for obvious reasons.” She hangs her free hand over the mattress, close to Betty, and Betty glances down, distracted by it. “And hey, maybe you’re right that this place is cursed, but I gotta believe in it. I’ve invested everything into Pop's, and as fucked up as Riverdale is, I don’t think it’s a lost cause. And I don’t think you’d have chosen to stay here if you thought that either.”

Betty bites her tongue, ignoring the automatic urge to argue. “Maybe,” she says, but her voice doesn’t sound entirely believable, even to her own ears.

Tabitha reaches out prods Betty’s shoulder with her two fingers—light and teasing. “I can practically see the effort it’s taking you not to disagree.”

There’s no use lying. The shrooms have made sure any knack she has for it is out of reach. “Sorry.”

“It’s a little rude, but I suppose I can find it in my heart to forgive you.” She smirks at Betty, and it strikes Betty that Tabitha must be as at ease as she feels. The Flesh Failures—her favorite song from the soundtrack—starts to play, and Betty adjusts herself, dropping her hand just slightly until her fingers touch Tabitha’s.

It’s silly perhaps. But she can’t stop the thought of Tabitha’s hands on her arms from flickering through her mind. It’s been so long since she’s found a touch that she hasn’t wanted to pull away from but, instead, lean into. She waits for Tabitha to move her hand back to her mattress, but she doesn’t. The realization takes a second to settle in as Betty watches, her stomach tightening in anticipation.

When she glances up, Tabitha is staring at her.

“I can—” Betty starts, pulling her hand back, but Tabitha reaches out, her fingers hooking around Betty’s to stop her.

“You don’t need to.”

Her world feels fuzzy around the edges, and Betty can’t stop herself as she lets out a breathy oh. The sound of her own heart rises over the music, and she’s suddenly aware of how hot the room is. Next to her, Tabitha inhales sharply through her nose and leans in.

Betty’s hit with a brief moment of clarity just before they kiss. It cuts through her, all the emotions she’s kept curled inside spilling out. They wrap around her as the song starts to wind down, and their lips meet. It’s tentative and gentle, careful to give Betty room to move back if she wants.

But she’s tired of overthinking. Her body aches from near-sleepless nights punctuated by nightmares. All she knows is that Tabitha’s lips feel soft and inviting, and, for once, she isn’t going to question it. Betty leans in, sinking into the kiss as she reaches out and wraps her fingers around Tabitha’s shirt.

Tabitha cups Betty's jaw, and the feel of her skin against hers is electric. Betty’s eyes close, and a small whine leaves her lips as she tries to steady herself against the rush of blood in her head and the dip in her stomach. The high is still riding full force, amplifying each little movement they make, and it’s all too much.

Betty pulls back, breathing deeply and quivering.

“You okay?” Tabitha asks. She squeezes Betty’s hand as her brow furrows with concern.

“Yeah, I—” Betty struggles to find the right words, so she just nods her head and concentrates on her breathing until she settles into her body once more.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have done that,” Tabitha says, although she doesn’t look like she quite believes it.

“This,” Betty says, motioning to herself, “has nothing to do with you kissing me. Or, if it does, it’s in a good way.” A cautious grin spreads across her face. “Can’t say I saw that coming from you, though.”

“Well, you should know better than to underestimate me.” Tabitha grins back.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

The sound of the needle in the runout groove fills the silence, and Betty sucks in a sharp breath before pulling herself up with some difficulty, aware of how heavy her body feels. The mattresses, even just on the floor, look appealing.

“How do you feel about sleeping?” Tabitha asks, echoing Betty’s thoughts.

“I feel great about it.” Betty steps over to the record player, lifting the needle up and turning it off before making her way back. She half-falls as she sprawls back out.

Against the scratchy fabric of the mattress, her body feels weightless. It doesn’t take long for her to start to drift. She focuses on the sound of Tabitha breathing beside her until her mind starts to wander half toward dreams.

Just on the precipice of sleep, a hand brushes against hers, warm and familiar. Betty smiles, and the dreams overtake her.

[xopheliasunflowerx]

Jerome V & 10, 12, 42, 48, 55 for the prompts? thank you !! 😊

Bittersweet Revenge (Jerome Valeska Imagine) {Requested}

Summary: You’re the younger sister of Theo and Tabitha Galavan, you get bullied at school and Jerome notices. You two have some unexpected fun together.

Prompts:

10: why did you push me against the wall?

12: I never met a criminal before, what’s your cool code name?

42: bite me

48: you’re a hell of a tease

55: quit saying you’re bored, or I’ll find a way to entertain you

Pairing: Jerome Valeska x Galavan Reader

Fandom: Gotham

Warning: bullying at the beginning! And torture near the end :)

~*~*~

School, the building of hell... literally. You hated it here, so much with a passion. You enter the hall, your F/C hoodie covers your face. Strains of H/C falls out behind your ear and back into your face. You blow on the strain but it just comes back down on you. You roll your eyes as you continue walking down, finding your locker.

You wrap your fingers around the cool lock as you enter your code number. Clicking you open it as you collect your books for class.

With a blink of an eye your books are out of your hands. You look up seeing Veronica, the most annoying and ugliest girl you know.

She has long sunflower blonde hair that was down past her shoulders, with chocolate brown eyes. She has tanish skin, pretty hard to get in Gotham probably fake. Pretty plump lips that looks to be fake like Kylie Jenner’s lips. She wears a yellow sweater with a matching yellow skirt, a black crop top showing off her body and her breast which are popping out. She has long black high heels on with long black socks.

The other two girls Caroline and Helena her minions stand next to her. Caroline has short curly brown hair, beautiful rings in her locks. She has dark beautiful skin with blue eyes. She wears a white tight crop top with long sleeves, small black booty shorts that are high waisted. White socks that are pulled up with black converses on.

Helena has long ash brown/blonde hair that was tied up in a ponytail, with a blue ribbon in her hair. She has fair skin, with green eyes. She wears a black denim jacket with her sleeves rolled up, a white tight shirt with the end tied up in a knot, a high waist blue skirt with the teams symbol on them. She has black high heel boots on as she sucks on a lollipop.

Veronica laughs at you, her giggles echoing through the halls giving you a headache already.

“Aww, did the retard drop her books?” She says with a fake smile, her teeth showing off. Her minions next to her giggles copying her every move.

You narrow your eyes at her, as you lean down to collect your books. She then kicks you down to the floor, your cheek meeting the cold hardwood. She laughs wildly as she then pushes you away from her.

“You’re such a freak!” One of her minions, Caroline laughs at you.

“No wonder why you can’t laid, no one wants to have a freak obsessed with them.” Veronica says as Caroline and Helena screech of laughter.

You groan as you turn around, trying to get back up but Veronica kicks you again. Her heel stabbing you, pain washes through your whole body.

“Such a fatty!”

“Fat-Ass!”

“Ugly bitch!”

“Slut!”

“Freak!”

“Whore!”

All these words echo through your ears, their laughter fading in and out. Everything starting to become a blur of a mess. Blood creeping out of your nose with bruises beginning to arise on your skin.

You hear loud noises all around you, you can’t tell what they are. It’s so blurry and a loud buzzing noise echoes through your ears. The pain encountering every second.

You then black out.

~*~*~

You enter the door to your home, glad to be here than there. You hiss as you feel the pain in your side begin to sob. You try to ignore the pain as you then walk up to your room, trying and not wanting to be noticed.

“Ah, Y/N. I want you to meet our new guest.” You hear your brother say, you turn around seeing a red haired boy. He smiles devilishly at you with interest.

“Hiya gorgeous, I’m Jerome.”

You raise a brow then smirking a little bit. “I never met a criminal before, what’s your cool code name?” You ask with curiosity. He chuckles at you as he stares darkly at you.

“You can call me your master.” He winks making you chuckle at him, Theo frowns at the red haired boy as he then quickly changes the subject.

“Now, Y/N. I want you to be nice to our new guest. As they’ll be here for awhile.” Theo says as you nod at him. Theo then notices the blood on you. “Y/N, why is there blood on your pants?”

You turn around to face your brother with annoyance. “I got into a fight at school, nothing happened.” You say making Theo frown.

“You know you shouldn’t bring attention to yourself like that, you know better.” Theo says firmly. You sigh as you nod, putting your head down. “Go and clean yourself up.”

You walk your way to the stairs as you then run towards your room, closing the door behind you. You throw your bag against the wall in anger, ripping your hoodie off to see your bruises and cuts.

A black eye, a cut lip, bruised cheeks, you hated it. You screamed as you then punched the wall next to you out of anger. If only you could get revenge, but you know you’re not allowed too.

“God I hate my fucking life!” You yell as you then fall onto your bed, so much hatred filled your bones.

They deserve to get punished, especially since they think you a Galavan is a low life scum?! No! You’re better than them! You are a Galavan, who the fuck do they think they are?

You then sit up with a dangerous smirk, your eyes turn dark as you then giggle. You know how you can get your revenge. And it’s so simple.

You get changed out of your bloody clothes and into something better. You wear a black crop top with a star on the straps, a black leather jacket, black skinny jeans with black cargo boots. You put your hair up in space buns then you walk out of your room to find the ginger boy.

Once your eyes landed on him, you smirk.

“Hey, Clown Boy.”

He turns to face you with confusion, all you can do is smirk at him.

“I’ve got some business we need to do.”

~*~*~

Dimmed lights appear above the old rusted rooftop, flashing and flickering out with a small buzzing noise. Dust flies everywhere around the old abandoned house.

Moaning and groaning can be heard, muffled and softly.

Her eyes flutter open softly, adjusting to the harsh lights on her delicate eyes. She moans as she tries to move, but she can’t. She tries again, still nothing. She then begins to panic. Her muffled cries covered by duct tape over her lips. She looks down seeing that she’s tied up to a chair.

She frantically looks around seeing her minions there too. Helena and Caroline. Veronica begins to panic again as she struggles to get free.

“God, I’m bored. Can we do it now?” A voice echoes through the warehouse. The three girls look up trying to find who the mystery person is.

“Quit saying you’re bored, or I’ll find a way to entertain you.” A male’s voice echoes, sounding more closer and closer to the girls.

The first person laughs, chuckling with a sinister smile. They then enter the light. You enter with Jerome, you smirk at him as you roll your eyes.

“Bite me.” You say with a daring look in your E/C eyes. Jerome snaps his head towards you as he throws out a laugh.

“You know I will.” He threats with a flirty stare, a look of lust enters his eyes.

You smirk. “Is that a threat or a promise?”

“You’re a hell of a tease, gorgeous.” He says. You stare into his dark eyes falling deeper and deeper to his charm. You wanted him so bad.

The three girls scream, ruining your moment together. You and Jerome turn to stare at the three girls, you then chuckle sinister at them.

“Oh, I completely forgot that we had guest here.” You say sarcastically. You then smirk as you skip your way towards Veronica, she looks at you terrified as she tries to move away from you. You remove her duct tape from her lips as you stare at her.

“Y/N! What are you doing? Please let us go!” Veronica begs you, causing you to laugh, a laugh that hasn’t been heard leaving from your mouth before.

You then turn around to face her clearly. A dangerous smirk enters your lips.

“Hmm? What am I doing? Well you see.” You walk around her, “I'm done with your bittersweet tragedy. It's no fun, when I'm sitting all alone. I’m taking the abuse from your pathetic low life. And I’m sick of it! I want you dead!” You scream at her making her scream no. You then place the duct tape around her mouth again.

You and Jerome grab a syringe filled with poison. You then stab the three girls making sure to do it slowly. They scream, muffled so no one can hear them.

You and Jerome’s laughter echoes through the abandoned warehouse.

[lioncubofboone]

I finally finished a lil fic so here ya go

Inspired by this post and by the lovely @firewood-figs

And I know I’ve kissed you before, but I didn’t do it right

Can I try again  

 Winters at Hawkeye Manor were brisk, but snow rarely touched the pale, dying grass of the East. Lightly bundled up, the kids could still run and play as they always had. Roy was still getting used to this idea of playing with Riza, as she had all but ignored him for the first six months of his tutelage under her father.

But he would take what he could get. And today, what he could get was racing each other through the branches of an old oak in the front yard. He was older, his limbs a little longer and a little more coordinated than 11-year-old Riza, so he had a few branches on her when he heard a gasp. He looked down in time to see her tattered dress caught on a branch, pulling her backwards and throwing off her balance. He was not fast enough to catch her by the arm before she tumbled to the gravel below. Little sisters in mind, he expected a wail of shock and pain as he descended but was only met with the Hawkeyes’ trademark silence.

Riza’s jaw was clenched shut, a tear welling in her honey-brown eyes. A quick inspection of the scraped knee showed her pride was more wounded than her skin, but Roy still lent her an arm to lean on as they came inside. He opened the door and was met with another surprise, for the ghost of the manor himself, Master Hawkeye, was padding around the kitchen in a paltry attempt to make himself some tea. Berthold cast them a glance, eyes roaming over Riza’s rumple dress, the blood dribbling down her shin, then turned back to the stove.

Roy blinked. Nothing? Really?

Berthold sighed at the temperamental stove as Roy sat Riza at the kitchen table, her gaze never leaving her father’s back. Roy tried to breath through the muddled emotions clogging is chest: frustration at the man ignoring his father, ire, exhaustion, and sadness at Riza’s face, schooled perfectly blank. He had come to learn that she was not devoid of emotion, far from it. Just extremely good at hiding.

Roy on the other hand, was a tea kettle, forever on the brink of boiling over. Fist clenched, he turned to give Berthold a piece of his mind, sick of biting his tongue, but his Master was already leaving the room, ascending the stairs.

“The stove is being finicky. Riza, you’re far better at managing the thing than I am, you’ll finish preparing my tea, won’t you?” He asked as a formality only, already halfway up the stairs to his study, never looking back to his daughter.

The fire died in Roy’s chest as he turned back to Riza, her expressionless eyes following her father up the stairs, watching the study door long after it had closed. Finally, she pushed herself to her feet and began to hobble to the stove to obey.

“Sit,” Roy ordered. “I’ll finish it.”

Her eyes went between Roy and the now-empty stairs, battling herself. But Roy could be stubborn too, standing between her and the empty tea kettle until she relented and came back to the table. He retrieved a wet cloth and an adhesive bandage from the closet with the door that did not close all the way and knelt before Riza, hands outstretched, waiting for her permission.

“The tea,” she reminded him with a frown.

“He can wait.”

“But... the tea,” she said again, with a little more urgency.

Roy sighed and began to wipe away the crusting blood on her shin, holding her leg steady with a hand across her calf. “If it was so urgent, then he could do it himself. I’m putting your injury above his tea,” he grumbled, not bothering to filter his annoyance.

Riza watched, wide-eyed, and Roy wondered if this was the first time anyone had helped her like this since her mother’s passing. He was a tactile person, instinctively reaching for her like his sisters always had for him. For the first few months, every touch was met with a jump, skittering away from him like he’d burned her. When he’d offered to braid her tangled hair for her she’d stared back, reminding Roy distinctly of the stray kitten he’d found in the alley behind Madame Christmas’ bar one evening, eyes wide like he’d cornered her. But just as Veronica had with the kitten, his patience had slowly rewarded him with a gentler Riza.

This Riza watched silently as he dabbed at the last of the injury and secured the bandage over it. Veronica herself in his mind, he remembered how Madame Christmas would always seal their bandages with a little ‘magic’ as shed called it. Without thinking, he placed a quick kiss atop the bandage. He stood quickly as he realized what he’d done, blush creeping up his neck as he turned to wash his hands and fill the tea kettle. He could still feel Riza’s gaze on his back as he prepared the tea and took it up the stairs, confusion creasing her brow.

 Can I try again

 Roy was always impulsive. He’d tried to temper it, biting sores into the sides of his cheeks as he choked back words that wanted to spill out, emotions that wanted to bubble up from his chest. Watching the silk of his childhood friend’s blouse fall to the floor, seeing the array before him, painstakingly transcribed onto the alabaster canvas of her back, he bit so hard he tasted blood.

First the anger, white hot, scalding his stomach and rising like bile in his throat.

Then the sadness. She was probably so scared, just a child at the time. 

Then the self-hatred, as it always seemed to circle back to that, as Roy realized he’d left her all alone in this house to be mutilated by a ghost of her father.

He closed his eyes against the sight, but found the red salamander burnt into the backs of his eyelids. He’d tempered his impulsiveness for as long as he could and he leaned forward to place a light kiss on her shoulder blade, hoping she felt all his tormented emotions through it so he didn’t have to untangle them enough to speak aloud. She didn’t flinch at the contact, letting her chin fall to her chest to expose the rest of the array, now dimpling with goosebumps that spread down her back.

He swallowed thickly and got to work.

 Can I try again

 He tasted Riza’s blood in his mouth.

He gathered her in his lap, her bourbon-tinted eyes misting with exhausting and fear, and the anger roiling in his gut mixed with the unending fear of almost losing her until it spilled over, a tear tracking through the grime on his cheek. He pressed his lips against her clammy forehead. She was too cold. His hand found the side of her neck, feeling the pulse beneath the patch of ruined skin, and when she flinched everything bubbled within him again.

If he stayed like that, lips against the crown of her head as he held her, no one in those tunnels would have given him any grief over it. There were some things more important than laws.

 Can I try again

Roy felt the fire settling in the pit of his stomach, but this one was welcome. It pooled like lava in his belly, setting his skin aflame everywhere she touched. He’d teased her with chaste kisses all day, ones at the base of her jaw and the inside of her wrist and the place where the lace of her white dress had tapered to expose the tops of her shoulders. “Finally,” he’d murmured into her ear as they were loaded into the waiting car, rice falling from her perfectly-pinned curls and onto his lap and she leaned across to capture his lips in hers hungrily.

He half-expected her to pull back and admonish him as he trailed kisses down her jaw to the sensitive part of her neck, half expected a hardened “Sir.” Old habits die hard.

But when he was only met with a breathy “Roy,” he abandoned the masterpiece of a hickey he was creating to catch those lips again, nudging them apart with his tongue to taste her. She hummed into his mouth, delighted, and for once the only emotion pumping through every vein in his body was love, love you so much, so damn much, and he hoped that she tasted it on his tongue, felt it in the way his broad hands wrapped around her thin waist to hold her against him, heard it in the way he called her “Mrs. Mustang” as he scooped her up and carried her across the threshold of the Furher’s mansion.

He hoped she felt everything he felt in the way he kissed her, but if it wasn’t clear, he’d at least get to spend the rest of his life trying again and again.

[shadow-assassin-blix]

Cell Block Tango

This is in honor of one @tintinwrites. I love her lots. This came to my brain at 4am. I hope you enjoy! I don’t quite have the pizazz that you do when it comes to these, but I tried my best.

HOW PEDRO’S CHARACTERS WOULD DIE VIA THE 6 MERRY MURDERESSES OF THE COOK COUNTY JAIL

LITTLE HABITS

You know how people have these little habits that get you down. Like Bernie, Bernie, he liked to chew gum. No, not chew, pop. So I came home this one day and I'm really irritated and I'm looking for a little bit o' sympathy and there's Bernie lyin' on the couch, drinkin' a beer and chewin'. No, not chewin' Poppin'. So, I said to him, I said "You pop that gum one more time" and he did...So I took the shotgun off the wall and I fired two warning shots ....Into his head.

Frankie. He chewed gum a lot, I’m sorry. Jack Whiskey Daniels. 

SIX WIVES

I met Ezekiel Young from Salt Lake City about two years ago and he told me he was single and we hit it off right away. So, we started living together. He'd go to work, he'd come home, I'd fix him a drink, we'd have dinner. And then I found out "Single" he told me. Single, my ass. Not only was he married. Oh no, he had six wives. One of those Mormons, you know. So that night when he came home from work I fixed him his drink as usual...You know, some guys just can't hold their arsenic.

Oberyn. Do I really need to explain? 

MILKMAN

Now, I'm standing in the kitchen carvin' up a chicken for dinner. minding my own business in storms my husband Wilbur in a jealous rage. "You been screwin' the milkman, " he says. He was crazy and he kept on screamin'"You been screwin' the milkman" And then he ran into my knife....He ran into my knife ten times.

Dave York. Nuff said. Also... Maxwell Lord.

THE INNOCENT (S)

Mit kersek, en itt? Azt mondjok, hogy a hires lakóm lefogta a ferjemet. En meg Lecsaptam a fejet. De nem igaz En artatlan vagyok Nem tudom Mert mondja Uncle Sam hogy en tettem Probaltam A rendorsegen megmayarazni de nem ertettek meg

Yeah, but did you do it?

Uh uh, not guilty! 

Marcus Pike, Din Djarin (the babies)

HOTEL CICERO

My sister, Veronica and I had this double act and my husband, Charlie traveled round with us. Now, for the last number in our act we did these twenty acrobatic tricks in a row. One, two, three, four, five, splits, spread eagles, Back flips, flip flops, One right after the other. So this one night before the show we are down at the Hotel Cicero the three of us, boozin' havin' a few laughs and we ran out of ice. So I go out to get some. I come back, open the door and there's Veronica and Charlie doing number seventeen: The spread eagle. Well, I was in such a state of shock, I completely blacked out, I can't remember a thing... It wasn't until later when I was washing the blood off my hands I even knew they were dead!

Comandante Veracruz. You know it fits. Don’t lie. Javier Pena

ARTISTIC DIFFERENCES

I loved Al Lipschitz more than I can possibly say. He was a real artistic guy sensitive, a painter, but he was always trying to find himself. He'd go out every night looking for himself and on the way he found Ruth, Gladys, Rosemary, and Irving. I guess you could say we broke up because of artistic differences. He saw himself as alive and I saw him dead.

Max Phillips. Ezra   

[multimetaverse]

Riverdale 5x01 Recap

Well here we go again, not even a global pandemic could stop Riverdale from returning. Riverdale premiered nearly 4 years ago on January 26th 2017, it’s been 4 extremely long years but tonight’s ep officially means that Riverdale outlasted the Trump Presidency

Appreciated that extensive recap because I forgot most of what happened in S4

As I recall we know that Chic is in league with Charles but he’s also apparently a legit FBI agent which makes him perfectly placed to be part of the voyeurs

Sure seems like Jellybean would have access to Jughead’s laptop long enough to get a copy of his story

Not Veronica finding the song Archie wrote for Betty and wanting him to perform for her...

Pretty wild to think that the first Varchie shower sex scene was when Archie was washing his dad’s blood off after Fred was shot by the black hood

There’s zero suspense with Hiram’s ‘fatal illness’ both because we know from Katy Keene that Hiram is still alive 5 years in the future but also there’s no way the show would have Hiram go out like this

Like Veronica, I love calling up my parents doctors so they can reveal their confidential medical information over the phone

Lmao at Hiram beating his disease by beating up thugs

Waldo Weatherbee! There’s a name I haven’t heard in years. It’s nice that the Riverdale school district is so big on second chances considering Weatherbee joined a cult and let them take over the school

As Winston Churchill remarked when he was first lord of the admiralty during the first world war, the only naval traditions are ‘’rum, sodomy, and the lash’’

The Katy Keene tie in is pointless since it was cancelled after only one season

Riverdale pitting Choni and Kangs against each other seems problematic

Hey it’s ex Sheriff Keller, is he gonna interact with his son at all?

Can’t say that Cheryl isn’t a good friend

Veronica sure is gonna feel silly when she finds out that Archie wrote that song for Betty

Have Cheryl and Toni never discussed their families and who they’re out to?

Can’t say Kevin isn’t a good friend either

Well at least Toni’s grandma seems more Blossomphobic than homophobic

David don’t give af if he’s playing a snuff film on the tv right at the front desk. Business must be booming if he can throw combination raves and screenings

This is like the 10th time Riverdale has featured an Archie fight intercut with an unrelated story line

How convenient that Jellybean just happens to be at the rave!

Archie has a knack for throwing away opportunities

Love Nana Rose’s early 20th century camera

Omg I had forgotten that Hiram is still mayor. Can the mayor just appoint some random teen to be his deputy?

I legit laughed out loud when Mary said endgame again. Sometimes you just gotta hand it to the writers

Still incredibly creepy that Bughead are dating and living under the same roof as their parents who are also dating and had a son together 

It feels like we’re coming full circle in a way as the series started with a big school dance

God knows this show has fucked up their lgbtq story lines many times but it was nice to see both Kangs and Choni get some focus at prom

Oh wow I did not think that Archie would be the first to reveal he cheated on Veronica with Betty, I thought the voyeur would take care of that

Cheryl taking the throne, as she should

This Cheryl and Toni scene might be some of the most nuanced writing we’ve seen on Riverdale in a very long time. It was surprisingly mature and neither Toni nor Cheryl were blamed or villainized 

My Varchie heart can’t take this sad, sad breakup

Well that was a downer ending except for Bughead though I’m sure they’ll get their unhappy ending soon enough. How many times has the show gone back to dark! Archie? 

This season is likely going to be messier than usual with covid restrictions, having to mash what were supposed to be the last few eps of S4 into S5, and doing a 5 year time jump. Can the show pull off a mini-renaissance like Glee did in S6 or is it stuck in terminal decline? Until next week Riverdalers

[neocity-sarai]

The Last of Us

✧ main concept: divergent au! (inspired by the divergent novel by Veronica Roth)

✧ pairing: lee jeno x reader

✧ alerts: mentions of death, blood, violence, suggestive, sexual implications, cursing, mentions of other nct members, longer than I anticipated

✧ song reference: “hurricane” by fleurie

Society is a complex concept. It’s this mind-twisting thing to question who gets to live where, who gains freedom- who gets a choice. Categories. Categories of people: they get to choose where you belong like they’ve already wrapped your entire existence in chain links. In Chicago, we’re deemed by another word for categories, something called the faction system. The first is Abnegation- the selfless souls and the ones who actually care about what goes on around them. On the total opposite end is Erudite. Erudite’s full of big-brained people or so they claim, I have yet to interact with many Erudite-ties. Amity is my favorite one if I had to pick, they’re like the neutralizing acid to the fire and ice of the factions. All they do is farm the food and give each other extra cookies when a new neighbor moves to their section- no harm done. Candor seems like the most intimidating because of their snappy mouths and their inabilities to lie if your dress looks ugly. My dad tells me they’re difficult to negotiate with. The last but not least is Dauntless. The faction with the scary- absolutely mental kids who jump off moving trains and through knives around like they’re frisbees. Yet, there’s something so exhilarating, so free about them. On the day of my choosing ceremony, my nerves raced like a million circuits sparking through my veins. Dad gave me a knowing look, his eyes are hardened and stiff while he clutches mom’s sweaty palm. I have always been Abnegation born. My blood pumps to the beat of my family’s simple, slow-paced life. Our clothes have always been a shade of faded grey: the color of the clouds before they tease a rainstorm. The minimalism of our plain walls, my mother’s sleek bun, and my bedroom have always kept me comfortable all this time. Why do I find myself yearning for more?- I'm greedy for the taste of adventurous anticipation. Shouldn’t I just stick to what I know? What I’m used to? 

My heart practically stops when I see my brother slit his calloused palm open as crimson blood drips to the stillness of the water, the drop rippling the serenity of it. To my right, I hear my mom choke on her breath while she continuously flicks her head back from my brother to my father. The creases on his face deepen, his mouth folding into a dipped frown. “Erudite.” Reflective tears begin to roll down mom’s face, her other hand covering her mouth in efforts to suppress her sobs.

“Y/N. L/N.”

The emotionless woman’s voice catches me off guard. I feel my muscles locking together. My hands getting progressively clammy that even my mother’s fingers can’t calm the bump of my knee. I huff out a shaky breath. I don’t even realize that my knees are carrying me down towards the stage as the tall woman guides me to the table at the center of it. The room feels like it’s spinning out of control, how have I not thrown up yet? Like a puppet master entwining the strings, my split hand hovers over the bowl of silver flintstones. I watch the shiny, scarlet liquid trickle down in slow motion- each second ticking in a time bomb. The thought of jolting my hand towards the bowl of sizzling, asphalt coals makes me shudder. The woman eyes me with utter impatience. I squeeze my eyes shut while I mentally count down from three, as if that would urge me to make a last-minute decision. It works. “Dauntless.”

The cheers that vibrate behind me of deafening, the auditorium shakes from the constant tremble of the stomps. The classic, recognizable, dauntless hoot is like a call of a wolf pack, a mantra that beckons the beauty of danger. I feel several hands slap the fabric of my dress on my back, I don’t even want to glance up to see my parents’ faces. Instead, I shuffle with the rest of the people dressed in black outfits as I accidentally catch my mother’s desperate eyes from the side aisle. 

I can’t believe I just did that. I went against everything I’ve been taught, everything I’ve ever really stood for. Why does it feel so good? Unfamiliar faces grin at me as they launch themselves up tall, rust-covered beams, climbing the heights like excited monkeys. When they reach the top, they run forward like a line of stallions, waiting to seize that perfect moment. A bullet train whooshes past my nose by a hair as it’s rickety cars trail behind it. “Let’s go!” screams a boy. Freezing in my spot, the wind threatens to knock me off my feet and onto the ground below the railings. A girl next to me motions at me with her finger, “What the hell are you waiting for?”I digest her words before I take off behind her- gaining on the speeding train. I was never built for this. I wasn’t ever built to run this hard, to run this fast. Everything blurs past me in a tornado of city buildings, tiny people, and ribbons of sunset lighting. Looking ahead of me, the railing is about to end and I don’t have much time left. The same girl sticks her head out the train opening, “Hurry the hell up! Hurry!”

I scream with a burn in my lungs, my legs launching my body into the narrow space. I land on a funny part of my shoulder as my body rolls and rolls- someone’s leg halting my tumble. My dress is wrapped around my thighs, my hair sticks my lips in a mess. “Whoa, going somewhere?” I whip my hair out of my face, a boy removing his foot from the side of my shoulder while all the other dauntless members chuckle by his comment. He’s not at all what I’d expect to see when I sit up. He’s a taller-framed boy who’s dressed in a navy-black outfit and a carved face that could be sculpted from a roman statue. His hair is a pure obsidian shade, one that’s darker than the finest ink in my brother’s fountain-pen collection. His jaw juts out in an aesthetic manner, his bangs curling on one side of his forehead while he pushes his tongue against the side of his cheek, “I don’t remember the last time the leaders cleaned the floor of this train, you might want to stand.” I stutter before standing up way too fast as vertigo washes over my brain in interval waves. I dust myself off, feeling the grime on the tips of my fingers. I nod at him, “Uh, thanks for stopping me?” 

He laughs as his midnight eyes crinkle into slim crescents, his white teeth gleaming brighter than the gold ball that hangs on the edge of the streaky sky. He runs a gloved hand through his damp, dark locks, “You’re going to deal with a lot more than getting yourself soiled on a sooty train.” Nodding, I look around to see the other initiates glaring back at our conversation, their eyes unfazed when I catch them. I awkwardly shift towards the tall boy, his height towering over me. His eyes, framed by thick, dark lashes side-eye me, “You’ll get a hang of it though. Welcome to Dauntless.”

Right. I’m dauntless now. When the train bangs into some obstacle with a ear-shattering boom, I have to grab the frames of the windows for support so I don’t accidentally pummel the boy to the ground. He breezes past me as he steps off the platform as if our conversation had all been in my imagination. “Everyone, gather around!” All the initiates follow suit, gathering around a boy dressed in a thicker, leather jacket and matching pants. He’s a bit shorter than the raven-haired boy yet his build seems almost similar. Glittering gold rings litter the edges of his ear cartilage, his lips red like his hair, and eyes that could swallow your soul. He claps his hands in the air, “My name is Taeyong. I will be your head instructor responsible for your training. My vice is this idiot here- Jeno.” Jeno headlocks Taeyong hastily, scraping his fingernails against the top of Taeyong’s flaming hairs, “Hyung, you’re just as much of an idiot as I am.” Taeyong pushes the younger back with immense force- enough force for Jeno to step back, hands raised in mock surrender. Once Taeyong clears his throat, he stiffens, “Okay, first order of business. Let’s get to where we need to be.” Taeyong shuffles backwards, lifting himself until he stands on a short ledge. The other initiates gasp, their jaws dropped in shock. Taeyong smirks, “See you on the other side. Jeno, don’t be late.”

Taeyong falls back in a t-position, his eyes closing with relief as he plummets down into the shadowy void beneath him. “Wait!” a girl screams, lurching over the ledge to watch Taeyong disappear as his laugh echoes from the chasm. Jeno shakes his head, a small smile gracing his thin lips, “That sucker.” His eyes snap into realization, irises gleaming with amusement, “So, who wants to go first?” I subconsciously find myself backing away from the spot where Jeno is standing, my skin feels cold from the sudden wind that whips around us all. He points at me with a determined finger, his black glove hugging his knuckles, “You. Armadillo on the train, you’re up.”The blonde girl next to me cackles at the name, her snorts come out in an irritating sound. His joke wasn’t that hilarious. I slowly slip through the people, Jeno taking my hand to help me up on the ledge. I jolt at his sudden contact, “Relax. You’re wearing heels, just making sure you don’t land on your arms.” I swish his hand away, spreading my legs apart for grasping balance. This is absolutely insanity. Squinting into the void, it looks like I’m about to descend into a black hole never to be seen again. An extremely short boy shouts impatiently, “We don’t have all day! It’ll be my 50th birthday in 2 seconds!” 

Shaking off their laughs, I concentrate on the syncopation of my heart. I can do this. I just need to breathe. I suck in the air that’s tinted with a smoky note, heaving it into the body of my lungs. Let go. I’m falling. I scream when my dress flies up uncontrollably, my hands fumbling to keep it down. My hairs whip my cheek painfully as the stinging sensation covers my skin. Unh. My back hits the rubber of a puffed inflatable. I feel the dips in water-proof latex beneath me. I’m rolling again, my hands reaching out for purchase. Like a flash, my body is submerged in ice cold water that flows into the heat pockets of my clothing. When I swim up for air, I notice a large, circular pool bed that’s floating on azure-tinted water. It’s a cave. The walls are thick with granite. Some rocky spikes stick out on the rims of the hole, water dripping from the tips. I hear a shout, “Incoming!!” Jeno lands on his back, his figure scrambling into the blanket of water as he grabs hold of my waist. He splashes around, waves colliding with my face, “Jeno, stop flailing!”

He pauses, staring back at me, “Wait a minute, you’re not drowning?”

I raise my eyebrow, “Does it look like I am?”

He purses his lips, hair matted over his eyes slightly, “Well. I can say no now. It seems. I heard a scream and thought you were..”

I shake my head, “No, I just fell in, that’s all.”

“Oh.”

We pause for a moment before Jeno guides me to the concrete floor that extends a few feet away from the inflatable platform before extending his hand to me. I take it, my dress dragging in a wet, soggy mess. Before looking up, Jeno exclaims, covering his eyes, “Shoot!”

“What?! What?!” I scream.

Jeno motions at me with his finger, “You- you’re- your dress..”

I look down at my dress, “What’s wrong with my dre-”

Not only has the fabric of my dress soaked through, my chest was obviously transparent. My cheeks heat up in embarrassment, trying my best to cover up with the folds of soggy fabric, “Jeno, don’t look!”

Jeno’s eyes are squinted so hard, “I won’t! I’m not!”

Taeyong’s voice booms in the cave, “What’s going on here?”

I wave a cautious arm in the air, swiveling around out of Taeyong’s view. He screams beside Jeno, “What’s taking so long? Why are you down here?”

Jeno’s words come out in an undecipherable line, “I--well you see, I heard a yell and I thought she was drowning and well, I saw her scream and well- other initiatives are still up top..”

Without having to turn around, I mentally see Taeyong rolling his eyes, socking Jeno with a punch, “Must I do everything myself?”

I hear him advance closer to me, “Why are you turned around?”

I flail my limbs as hard as I can, “I’m indecent! Don’t come any closer!”

Taeyong pauses his footsteps before he cooly says, “Jeno, get her changed while I get the rest of the initiates. We start orientation soon, we’re already behind schedule. I’m not about to be lectured by Yuta.”

Taeyong walks off to the side of the cave, opening a plain metal door in the process. Jeno huffs, “Okay, you’re going to have to follow me. I promise I won’t turn around.”

I scurry to him, my back still facing him, “You’re sure?”

“You can count on it.”

When I finally swish around, I notice the undercut line of Jeno’s hair and a thin, black swirl that extends around the back of his ear to his back. Tattoos are also a signature dauntless thing. I shouldn’t be surprised. Jeno marches quickly ahead of me, “You know, your tumbling is getting you into trouble. You really are an armadillo at heart.”

I scoff, holding myself back from knocking him in the shoulder blade, “Can you stop calling me that? I have a name, genius.”

Jeno smirks, “Oh really? What might that be?”

“Y/N. Don’t wear it out.”

Jeno coughs lowly, “I think I like armadillo better. But, I guess I could alternate.”

“Don’t call me that period.”

“Geez, don’t let the cold water turn your heart to ice.”

Finally, Jeno pulls out a ring of spiky keys. He turns one into a locked closet that houses multiple shelves of black uniforms: black sweatshirts, jogging pants, and black combat boots in every size. “What’s your size?”

“Medium and shoe size is 7.”

Jeno nods, perusing through the racks, “Coming right up, Y/N.”

Once he’s done, he sets a pile of clothes and a pair of boots on a short table, “You can change here. Come out of the closet when you’re done.”

I do as he says, slipping off the soggy mess of my dress off my ankles. Once I put the whole outfit on, I realize that I don’t look like myself in the mirror. So different from back home. So different from just yesterday. I tie my sticky hair into a thick braid, my mother’s hair-tie holding it together. “I’m ready.”

When I step out, I get a once-over from Jeno, “Black suits you better than that drab grey. How’d you wear that every day?”

“I didn’t mind much because all of abnegation is like that.”

He tsks his tongue, “Well, you won’t have to anymore.”

The walk back to the rest of the initiates is silent as Jeno guides me through a series of hallways and cave corridors before reaching a spacious room, “Hyung, we’re good to go.”

All the other kids are already dressed in uniform, the girls glaring at from where they stand- their eyes filled with envy. Is it because I came in with Jeno?

Taeyong shakes his head disappointingly, “We’ve managed to catch up. Let’s start the basics.”

As Taeyong paces back and forth on a small platform, he teaches us all about Dauntless rules. He discusses dauntless values like they’re his sworn religion since birth. He beats his curled fist onto his chest with determination, enunciating all the pillars that uphold the faction itself. He lists the leaders: Yuta, Johnny, him, Jaehyun, Mark, and someone named Jaegger. Once he’s done, Jeno rises from the chair he was sitting in, “How about we get started with some action?”

Taeyong holds a palm at him, “Hold on. I have to call Jaegger. He wants to supervise.”

Jeno groans, “That guy again?”

Taeyong nods sternly, “You know the rules.”

Taeyong hadn’t explained who Jaegger was yet. Within several seconds, a burly man busts through the metal door, his entire bald head detailed with inked markings. He’s got spikes sticking out of his ears and by the rims of his eyebrows- he looks like a villain straight out of a street gang. His icy, blue eyes dart with hysteria, “Let’s get it done.”

Taeyong nods, “I need two volunteers.”

Among the group, the blonde girl who had stood next to me before shoots her arm up instantly as she flips her hair onto one side. Besides her, no one else volunteers. They stare around each other or look down to the ground, avoiding all forms of eye contact. I accidentally look up because I don’t expect Taeyong to be in my line of sight. He flicks his fingers at me, “You. The one who messed up during the first jump. Try it out.”

Jeno intervenes, “Hyung, she just got into warm clothes- I don’t think she should-”

Taeyong glares back at the taller boy, “Hush, Jeno. I’ve made my decision.”

Jeno closes his mouth, shaking his head in refusal. Everyone in the group parts away from me like a drop of oil in a puddle of water, this singling-out thing is not doing good for me. The blonde girl follows me on to the platform ring that Taeyong and Jeno step off of. I look at her. She looks at me. We glance at Taeyong but instead, Jaegger speaks. He rubs a hand across his polished, bald head, “Rules are simple. This is a combat exercise. Go at it until one of you can’t stand.”

I stare back at him wide-eyed only to see Taeyong crossing his arms beside Jaegger and Jeno looking like he wants to say something. He doesn’t though. Jaegger raises an eyebrow with a scar slashed on it, “Well?”

I look back at the blonde girl and she’s got a sinister grin smashed on her face, “Well, this should be fun.”

Thinking back on the conditions, blondie is built thicker than me, she’s got more muscle, and she’s got huge hands. In this situation, how can I win? Defensively, she raises her fists in front of her as she toes around me. Occasionally, she’ll flip hair out of her face before she skips forward to swing at me. I miss it by a little bit of room, her eyes angry with frustration. Jaegger coughs dramatically, “Stop being idiots and commence already. I don’t have time for bullshit.”

 I’m too focused on Jaegger’s words to realize that blondie’s already coming at me in one swift motion- her first hitting square on the high point of my nose. I taste rusty iron like I’ve licked a bucket of old nails. Blood seeps from my nose on to my lip, I swipe the red stream with my sleeve. My best bet is to catch her by surprise when she’s not expecting it. Lunging for her torso, I try tackling her the hardest I can muster only for her to jab her elbow into my spine. Feeling myself hit the hard platform not only feels like excruciating pain but also feels like sheer disappointment. I can’t give up so easily. I rise from my fall, my back hunched and limbs swinging at awkward angles as I try to take her down once again. Instead, she wraps her bulky arms around my waist as she practically throws me to the copper outline of the ring. I see swirling stars, the room getting sucked into a dizzying oblivion of shadows. My breath is sucked out of me, my legs unable to move from the instant paralysis. When I wake up in a few hours, searing pain throbs at the corner of my brow. A rosy bruise blossoms on the bone, purple marks littering my chin and cheek. Ow. It’s only the first day and I’ve already landed myself in the infirmary. The only pleasing thing about it is that the room is lit with melancholy lavender-colored lights- the purple glow making me feel like I’m in some type of euphoric fever dream. A girl lays awake in the gurney bed next to be, her eyes shot up at the ceiling. She’s thinner than me, freckles dot her face in clusters. Her orangey hair is tied in a messy ponytail. “Oh, you’re awake.” she says.

I nod, “Do you know how long I’ve been out?”

She turns her head to me, revealing a sickly-looking gash on the side of her cheek, “A few hours. I just woke a bit before you. Your snoring was super loud.”

Opening my mouth, I try to think of what to say. I can’t. I muse, “What happened to you?”

She smiles, her lips upturned at the corners, “We’re in the same batch. After your fight with Marlene, Jaegger made me fight too. Obviously, I didn’t win.”

There’s some sort of innocent nativity that I sense in her, it’s almost adorable. She shifts on her side with a wince, “I should also probably tell you that Jaegger told us about the point dock system.”

“Point dock?”

She nods, placing a stray hair behind her ear, “Yeah. He said, ‘if we believe you don’t make the cut, you’re out. Out of dauntless. Out of your old faction. You’ll be left to the factionless..’ and then after, the whole class went silent.”

My mouth drops into a square, “What? Out for good? They can do that?”

She slaps her hand onto her forehead, “Apparently so. You and I are so screwed.”

I nod, “How do you know if you don’t make the cut?”

She replies, “Oh, Jaegger said they’ll make it crystal clear.”

I close my mouth, making the conversation evaporate between us. “What’s your name?” the girl says.

“Y/N. You?”

“Seulgi. Amity if you were wondering.”

“Abnegation- born.”

“I see.”

I swing my legs off the gurney bed, “Can we just leave?” Seulgi rubs her thumb and index finger on her chin, “I think so. There’s no one here besides us.” When both of us exit the violet infirmary, we’re greeted with ominous, stone-covered corridors that vibrate with the sound of hollering further down. We follow the sound into the main foyer. It’s a lobby full of long tables, initiates dressed in raven-colored uniforms, and strings of crystalline lights that glitter above their heads. It’s teeming with life, some people are in a separate area as they tackle each other within a ring and some opt to sit and talk in the lounge space. Seulgi notions, “This is the pit. I guess this is where everyone hangs out.” I nod back at her, “No kidding.” I hope that didn’t sound ruder out loud. When we make our way towards the tables, we see a couple of boys and girls wave at Seulgi, “Seul, over here!” She happily runs to them, dragging my hand along. They embrace her in firm handshakes and side hugs, passing us both two plates of food. A boy to Seulgi’s left laughs, “Some bruises you got, poor Seulgi.” She grins, “Hey, at least I fought the best I could. Later, I’ll become stronger than Serena and beat her up.” The group erupts in laughter, some unknown liquid spilling out of their silvery cups. She gestures at me, “We’ve got a new recruit for our crew.” They go silent, peering around Seulgi to get a better view of me. 

I awkwardly wave, “Good to be here?”

The boy flashes me a thumbs up, “Glad to have you. You put up a fight against that bitch Marlene.”

Laughing a little, I nod, “It doesn’t help that she threw me around like a bulldog’s chew toy.”

A girl across from the boy says, “It wasn't even fair though! She was way bigger than you, the circumstances were so unbalanced.” Seulgi nudges me in the arm, “Tough cookie, you’re going to beat her one day. I know you will.”

The boy raises his cup, everyone following his lead, “Cheers on that! Cheers to dauntless’s newest additions!”

Our cups almost overspill our drinks onto our food, drops landing by my plate. Seulgi perks up suddenly, “You know guys, I have an idea. How about we get celebratory tattoos? You know, dauntless style?”

The girl who sits across from Seulgi cackles sarcastically, “On my virgin body, no way!”

Seulgi punches her lightly, “Come on, Adema, don’t be a vibe-killer! It’ll be fun!”

“Quit being so loud initiates.” 

     We all pause our excitement, turning our heads to see the voice that had spoken to us. It was Jeno. He stood before us, one plate of food in one hand. It was like his demeanor had suddenly changed from friendly vice Jeno to a cold-blooded teenage version of Jaegger. He flops his food down with clank, launching himself into the seat next to me. I speak up, “Jeno, we weren’t being that loud. Everyone here is like, yelling.”

He cocks up a dark eyebrow, lilting his head to the side, “Who said I asked? I saw you all being loud, that’s how it is.”

Seulgi nudges me once more, whispering, “Don’t engage, it’s fine.”

Her plead makes me want to provoke Jeno even more. I sip my drink in contempt. Glaring at him, “did something happen? Why are you like this all of a sudden?”

Jeno widens his onyx eyes at me, his jaw gritting with pressure, “Don’t you think it’s a bit rude to assume?”

I shoot back, “I’m respectfully asking, I’m not inferring. There’s a difference.”

Jeno cards a veiny hand through his messy locks, “Either way, I don’t care. You should just know when to stop asking.”

All of dinner was awkward to say the least. Even so, by the end, we all made our way to the dauntless studio- the one built like an underground speakeasy nightclub. The lights in the room rotate between red, green, and blue lights as some rnb song vibrates in the background of hissing needles. A row of velvet-cushioned chairs lined the parlor as a gigantic tower of tattoo designs rotated in the center of the room. A bar was placed on the side where there were a row of sinks and hair-cutting stations. We all muse around the swirling tower, Seulgi opting for a design of a flaming rose. “Where are you going to get yours?”

She smiles at me, “I’ve always wanted one near my hip. I don’t know, it just sounds sexy to me.”

The boy whose name goes by Renjun laughs, “Should I get a biker-hillbilly esque skull or should I go for the phoenix?”

The girls laugh, “Definitely the phoenix.”

When I trail off to find my own design, I opt for a more simple dauntless insignia as a commemoration. I don’t want anything too crazy. Renjun and Seulgi sneak up on me, “Find what you want?”

I smile back at them excitedly, “I think so!”

“Next appointment for Y/N!”

I sigh, “Well, that’s me!”

Seulgi laughs, “Good luck, girlie!”

When I make way to the counter, I’m greeted by a honey-blonde boy who seems only a few years older than me. His hair falls longer past the nape of his neck, his features apparent of chinese descent. He rolls up the sleeves of his white dress shirt, his arms covered in beautiful patches of flowers. I take note of the pair of angel wings on his throat. He sighs, “My name is Ten, I’ll be doing your design today.”

“Okay.” I sit down in his station’s chair, the one embellished with gold detailing. He sticks a smoking cigarette into his mouth after breathing out a misty cloud, “What’d you want?’”

I give him the slide of my design, he raises his eyebrows at me, “Really? Just this?”

I shrug, “I like simple.”

Ten makes a skeptical facial expression, “I can respect that.”

When he works, I try my best to stay as still as possible. I feel my arms and hands shake too much in the anticipation of the needle’s point . Instead, I��m pleasantly surprised by the sharpness, by the slight but not overbearing pain when Ten outlines the symbol in jet black. He continues to chew on the butt of his cigarette, swallowing back the bitter flavor, “So, you a new initiate?”

I turn my head towards him, “Yes.”

“How do you like it here?” 

“Still takes some time to get used to, it’s not all bad. Better than being bored back in abnegation.”

His eyebrows crinkle with recognition, “Huh, I used to be in abnegation too.”

“Really? What made you switch?”

He pauses for a moment, thinking about his words, “My family. I wasn’t the biggest fan of their house-hold rules.” “I’m sorry to hear that.”

He shakes his head defiantly, “No need to be sorry. I enjoy Dauntless.”

Ten continues, “By the way, I’m done.” The skinny boy hands me a beautiful- rose-detailed mirror, the glass reflecting the dauntless insignia on the back of my shoulder. He puts a pair of small glasses on, “I’ll give you all the aftercare items you’ll need- it shouldn’t be puffy like that for too long.”

I smile at him, “I honestly love it. Thank you.”

He grunts in agreement before packing various bottles and fabric cloths into a small pink sack and handing it to me. Ten pushes up the bridge of his glasses from slipping down his nose, “Could I ask, what’s your name?”

“Uh- Y/N.”

Ten breaks into a smile that’s almost scarily big, “Ah-Y/N. I thought so. You got dauntless on your aptitude test, right?”

“Um, why are you saying it like that? And to answer your question, yes, I did.”

He laughs amusingly, “Anyway, a little birdie tells me that you made Jeno so embarrassed on your first jump.”

My cheek flare up with redness, “You heard about that?”

Ten unwraps a honey lollipop from one of the drawers at his station, “Of course I did, Jen’s like a little brother to me. I know things even the others don’t know.”

Winking, Ten motions at me, “Don’t tell him I said this but, I think he needs someone like you in his life. The kid’s been struggling on his own.”

I raise my brows out of curiosity, “To tell you the truth, he was extremely rude to my friends and I at dinner just now.”

Ten waves me off, lollipop flinging between his fingers, “Agh- forget that! It’s just a mask that he wears to seem tough since he’s in dauntless. He’s just a sweet kid.”

I mutter, “Even so, he was very rude.”

“He doesn’t mean it, he would never say that on his own out of malicious intent. Please, just give him a chance.”

As resignation, I consider it, “Okay. I’ll try my best to forgive him of the grievances.”

Ten reaches into his bottom drawer again, pulling out a strawberry lollipop, “Good. Take one for your troubles.”

Once I finish thanking Ten, I wait for the rest of the group to get their tattoos before heading back to our dormitory. Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen it yet. When we get back, I’m appalled by the acidic smell of bleach that floats from the showers in the corner. The beds are hard as rocks and even worse- there’s no privacy between the boys or girls. Dauntless couldn’t have spent one more second to install walls in the rooms? The next few mornings were dreadful. Every single day, we were awoken by Taeyong’s and Jaegger’s barking orders through a megaphone. Days and nights were spent learning partner combat, close-range shooting, and weapons mastery. Of course, it was hard for me to keep up. I barely could hit the dummy targets. I was the first to run out of breath during the exercises. Even Seulgi, Renjun, and the others were making amazing progress. Jeno’s nice enough to give me an array of pointers, some personal lessons when Taeyong isn’t paying attention. The question remains: will it be enough to be my name above the line?

Few days later

Because I was still struggling the most, I only believed it to be right that I had to work the hardest to do something about it. In my family, we were never allowed vanity. But, we were allowed pride. I felt the need to prove myself to the other initiates, to Taeyong, and to maybe even as far as Jeno. In the middle of the night, I was in our classroom as I practiced close-range shooting on a rice-bag decoy, my goggles becoming foggy from my warm breath. It was probably past midnight then and seeing how silent it was, I’m sure everyone was safely tucked into their back-breaking beds. That’s when I felt a pair of arms surround mine- a face pressed up against my cheek. Without having to look, I knew it was Jeno. His lips barely grazed my hair, his fingers wrapped securely around mine. When did he come in? I didn’t even notice him? He places his index finger on top of mine where the trigger is, “The trick is to focus on your scope rather than the target itself. Aim at an angle so you don’t miss.”

I follow suit, my bullet lodging straight into the bulls-eye heart of the rice decoy, some grains spilling out into a small pile on the floor. I nod, testing his tip again, my bullet hits the decoy by the shoulder. He gives a small applause, “Now you’ve got it!”

“Thanks for the lesson.”

“Yeah, no problem.”

Jeno chuckles awkwardly, “So, I was just on my way out to grab a few things and I’m making a stop by the coffee machine, did you want me to get anything for you?”

I shake my head, “I’m good, thank you.”

My mind flips back to Jeno’s stark hostility that peeked through a few nights ago- how could he be the same boy now? He heartily laughs, “I’m getting you one. You’ve been at this for hours and I think you need it.”

Sighing in defeat, I pique, “Wait, how do you know I’ve been up?”

Already making his way to the door, he turns as he smiles until his eyes fold into his eyelids, “Just a hunch. I’ll be back.”

I take a rest on a near-by bench, my legs thrumming to the vibration in the building pipes. A loud boom sounds from outside the training room as if someone had dropped something. Peeking out the tiny door window, “Jeno, is that you?”

There’s no reply. Opening the door carefully, I stick my head out into the hallway to my left- there’s no one in sight. In a span of a few seconds, I feel a rag be pressed to my mouth as my screams come out in silenced muffles. Three large figures wrap their arms around every part of my body, carrying me as if I was a sack of trash ready for dump-pickup. Kicking and screaming kind of helps but doesn’t at the same time. I’ve learned to maneuver my body in certain ways, twisting out of grips but whoever these people are, they keep a strong pin on my wrists. They’re all wearing black masks like some vigilante robbers- cowards, they don’t even dare to reveal their faces. I continue to scream, “Let me go! Get off!” The more I struggle, the more they squeeze my wrists and ankles. Suddenly, I’m dropped to the ground, my back hitting the concrete with a smack, one of the figures wrenches my braid over the chasm drop. The person grabs my face, threatening to toss me down the water-filled void, “We know you’re protecting Jeno’s secret! Confirm it or die!”

I grit my teeth in response, “What the hell? What secret??I barely know him?”

The voice, that of a young boy’s, “Trying to play stupid huh?”

My words come out in whimper, “Seriously, I have no idea what you’re talking about. We’re not even that close.”

The second figure hisses at the younger boy with a deeper gruff, “We’re taking too much time. Let’s just get rid of her.”

Feeling my back lose stabilization on the ground, the top half of my body is already above the chasm- a little more and I’d splat like an insect. I reach out to grab hold of something, someone, only to be met with a kick to the ribs. I bite my tongue out of pain, blood seeping to  my lips. The iron taste is familiar yet sickening, I didn’t come to dauntless to die like this. 

“Get the fuck off her!” Jeno’s voice booms with anger as he flies his fist at the figures standing behind my captor. One by one, they fall to the ground in defeat as their limbs fail to lurch back at Jeno. He grabs the boy holding my hair by the back of his collar, swinging him into the granite wall behind us as the boy’s pained shouts reverberate through the cave. In haste, Jeno pulls me up into his arms, his eyes wild with furious sparks that flame at the center of his ash eyes, “Why did you go outside when I wasn’t back yet?”

I stutter, “I heard a loud noise so I stuck my head out and yeah..”

He shakes his head, “Do you like getting into trouble? You almost died back there!”

Gazing at him, “But I didn’t. Because you came.”

Jeno’s features soften, his frame melting with the weight of my body in his arms, “Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?”

“Just be quiet and see, Y/N.”

After Jeno leads me through a series of elevators, stairwells, and corridors, we arrive at a door. Swinging it open, we’re met with a cold gust of wind, my skin tingling from the icy air. Jeno sits at the end of the rooftop as he plops down, legs swinging over the edge. The view is absolutely breathtaking. In Abnegation, we never really had any windows to see the outside world. This was a stark contrast: a view of each of the sections in the distance. Candor’s buildings touch the stormy skies, Amity’s farming dome covers their entire section, and the center city emits noises from the factionless bartering for food. If you squint hard enough, there’s a wall that surrounds the entire perimeter- urging you to wonder what’s beyond it. Jeno says softly, “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

I nod in agreement, “Really is.”

Plopping beside him, our thighs barely touch, my hands placed awkwardly on the roof’s surface. Jeno fixes his hair as he tustles his bangs back and forth before biting his lip in anticipation. His voice comes out in a timid but deep vibration, “I’m sorry.”

I stare back at him incredulously, “What are you sorry for?”

Jeno fiddles with the black thread from the fabric of his gloves, “Back at dinner. A few nights ago, I wasn’t very kind to you and your friends.”

Surprised with his apology, “I hope you had your reasons.”

Jeno’s habit of over-biting his lip becomes apparent because they’re pink in the middle and red at the edges. He bobs his head slightly, shutting his eyes with confirmation, “I do. More than you know.”

I put a hand on his shoulder, “If that’s the case, apology accepted.”

When I look at Jeno, he represents a rhythmic soul, one that marches to beat his own drum, and one that’s capable of showing unconditional love. Ten’s correct- his hard exterior reveals the heart of an innocent boy, one that also happens to be covered in bloody scars. “Jeno! You’re hurt!”

Jeno touches his face lightly, the scratch on his cheek irritated, “Oh. I barely noticed these.”

Taking his hand, “Jeno, we need to clean those or they’ll get infected.”

Giving me a small smile, he drags me back through the door we came through. I don’t even register that we’re still holding hands, his large fingers around my palm. I silently pray that he doesn’t notice the heat that’s enclosed between us. After we enter, the room widens into a warehouse-like studio: paneled windows, an unmade bed, and a small kitchen that resides at the corner. The clouds look more organic through the glass window, the view of the factions illuminated with  dim lights. Jeno’s rummaging through his kitchen cabinet to find a first aid kit as he sits down on the black sheets of his bed, pulling out q-tips and antiseptic cleaner. Wincing, Jeno shuts one eye as he smoothes the liquid onto the cut on his face. 

I say, “Here, let me help.”

He opens his mouth to refuse but closes it when I take the q-tip from his hand anyway. I clean my fingers with a wipe before squirting some cooling gel onto the tip of my thumb. Jeno’s breath feels warm on my face, his eyes unmoving from mine. I try to ignore his intense staring, “Jeno, look away.”

He quirks an eyebrow up, “Why?”

“Because you’re making me nervous.”

Jeno’s laugh is full of mirth and sincerity, “Nothing to be nervous about.”

Jeno’s eyes shift to the ground, his lashes framing his eyelids. Jeno looks beautiful when he isn’t trying. When the dim lights illuminate the bridge of his nose to the high points of his cheek, his features harden and soften depending on the angle of his face. Though he has some scratches on his cheeks, some above his eyebrows, it doesn’t change him. He tuts, “Now look who’s staring.”

I quickly dart my eyes away, heat crawling up the expanse of my back in embarrassment, “I wasn’t! Where else are you injured?”

He touches a tender spot on his back with his shoulder blade, “One of those attackers had sharp nails, he got me right by my shoulder.”

“May I?” I gesture beside him on the bed, my mind flashing back to when my mother told me it was rude to sit on someone’s bed without asking. 

He nods in affirmation, lifting the hem of his black sweater over his head. He stretches his back muscles, rolling his shoulders back to move them. I yelp a bit too loudly, “Why are you taking off your shirt??”

Chuckling, Jeno reaches a hand back to scratch at the hairs on his nape, “How are you going to treat it if you can’t reach it?”

“Oh, right.”

I see my hands visibly shake when I apply some more gel to the scratch that aligns in a downward line by his linear tattoo. When I press my fingers to the smooth skin of Jeno’s back, I feel myself letting out a breath I had been holding in. Jeno starts to hum an unfamiliar tune while he takes off his black gloves, tossing them to the floor. I have to say something, it’s way too quiet. “So,why this tattoo?”

He turns his face over his shoulder, “You wanna know?”

I hum, “Yeah, I do.”

Jeno goes on to explain it, his mother’s favorite flowers are cherry blossoms. He talks about how he was originally in Candor and how his mom would paste clippings of Japan from books on to her bedroom walls. His back is like a canvas for the faction insignias, all of them entwined with sakura branches that wrap around his ears and neck. “Basically, I love my mom so that explains the sakura blossoms. For the factions, I don’t believe I can just be one thing. I want to teach myself how to protect the people I love, to be kind, honest, and smart. I don’t want to be shoved into one mold, you know?”

Giving him a nod, “I get that. That’s how I thought- or, think. Now.”

In that moment, I remember Ten’s words: “Jeno has been struggling by himself.”

I pat his shoulder, “Jeno, could I ask you something?”

He turns around to me, his chest is bare and toned. Muscles are carved with definite lines that cross all over his body, “What is it, Y/N?”

“When I came in for a tattoo, I talked to Ten. He told me you struggled by yourself or currently struggling? What’s that mean?”

Jeno narrows his pointed, smoky-filled eyes at me, “Ten said that?”

I nod, “Don’t be mad at him, he’s just trying to help.”

Jeno makes a whirring hum from between his lips as he leans his hands back on the bed, “It’s hard to explain but, things aren’t always easy for me here.”

He pauses before continuing, “Ten knows something about me that most people don’t.”

Saying nothing, my heart beats with anticipation, I withhold myself from pressing him even further. On his own he says, “If I tell you, I need to know if I can trust you. I can’t afford to let this slip.”

Holding up my hand in pledged oath, I nod, “You have my word.”

“I’m divergent.”

My gasp sounds like my lungs have failed due to how loud it sounds. Truly, I didn’t expect those words to come out of Jeno’s mouth, “You’re divergent?”

Nodding solemnly, “Yes. My mother died because she was harboring me, my results got reported. Ten found us when he was on patrol with Taeyong, they took me in and forged the results so I could live.”

Connecting the dots, I point at him knowingly, “Is that why you tried to put on a front during dinner?”

Jeno sighs, “For whatever reason I thought the more mean I was, people couldn’t see through the mask.”

Instinctively, I place a firm hand on Jeno’s bouncing knee, “Jeno, you don’t have to act that way when you’re with me.”

Oh no. Why did I touch his knee like that? He must think I’m trying to come on to him or something, judging by the confused look on his face. I messed up. Jeno cockily smirks, launching himself until there is absolutely no space in between us. His face is only a couple centimeters away, a mischievous glint shines in his shadowy irises. He’s so close I can spot the faded mole at the flat of his cheek, some of his dark hairs fall to his brow. “Y/N, am I making you nervous right now?”

I gulp, my eyes widened like disks, “Very.”

Jeno flicks his eyes to my lips, his smile curling on one side, “Don’t be nervous.”

Like that, Jeno’s lips are on mine in a split second- a soft, slow sensation washing over us like time’s been stopped instantly. I feel myself relaxing as I straddle Jeno’s lap, pulling him closer by his shoulders. The way Jeno moves his head, forehead bumping against mine feels bone-chillingly pleasant as he continues to kiss me passionately. The dark-haired boy moves his rough hands through my hair as loops curl in between his fingers. When I pull back for air, my heart feels like it’s burning when I memorize the honey-golden sheen of Jeno’s skin, his parted lips swollen from our contact. Kneeling up on the bed, I rise to look down on Jeno, his strong arms grasping me by the waist as I lean down to his lips again. Jeno traces the curve of my jaw, his lips moving to the hollow of my neck- his lips sting against my skin. Shutting his eyes in pleasure, Jeno sighs into my shoulder, “Can you just stay here?”

I hug his chest even harder, “Won’t I get in trouble?”

Jeno laughs, “For being with me or for missing curfew?”

I laugh, “Both?”

Jeno kneads my area by my  hip, massaging my sweater upwards, “Can I?”

I look back at him, raising my eyebrow, “Do you even deserve me?”

His smile reveals the highlights of his teeth, “I can try my best for you? Don’t worry about the others giving you a hard time, I can take care of it.”

My arms hang off Jeno’s shoulders, hands crossed by his neck, “Really, Jeno?”

Jeno gives me a fond nod, “Really.”

When I lower myself to Jeno’s level, he helps me lift the fabric of my top above my head. His eyes widen at the sight, he almost looks surprised. I panic, “What, what is it?”

He shakes his head in resignation, “When I first saw you, tumbling on the train, I thought you were the prettiest person in that dirt-covered train car.”

A blush glows on my cheeks, I feel my ear sting a bit- the feeling causing my heart to tremor. Instead, I result to leaning my forehead against Jeno’s, “You’re not bad at all.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Jeno smashes his lips against mine once again, harder than the last time as we lower ourselves into Jeno’s navy-blue pillows that sit in a squished pile by the headboard. I sweep a hair behind Jeno’s ear, peering up at his figure on top of me, “We should sleep, I was told that we have intense training tomorrow.”

Jeno’s eyes crinkle like moons, “Y/N, you really know how to kill the mood don’t you?”

I slap a hand against his pectoral muscle, “Jeno, let’s just go to bed!”

“Okay, okay.”

 Jeno gets up to turn off the lights before tossing himself next to me on his bed. Pulling the comforter over our bodies, I feel his breath hit the back of my head as he hums in content. I turn my body to face him, his eyes already softly shut. His eyelashes are even more prominent, his hair is a bit more messy than it was in the last few hours. Pressing a kiss to his forehead, I stare back at him for a little bit longer. In the dark, he flicks open one eye, “How do you expect me to go to bed if you keep kissing me?”

“Goodnight, Jeno.”

Pouting, Jeno huffs playfully, “Good night, Y/N.”