#ill be crawling back to the dead after this

[thekillermaretwinz]

I've returned from the dead to do a poll then I'm going back to being dead

[muntitled]

Tic-Tac-Toe

Pairing: The Salesman x Fem!reader

Summary: Every Wednesday your schedule consisted of attending classes during the day, and satisfying the needs of a sadist through the night.

Warning: Dead Dove Do Not Eat, Violence, Kidnapping, Isolation, SociallyAnxious!Reader, Blindfolds, Stalking, Knives, Blood, Gore, Stockholm Syndrome, Smut (+18) mdni, Degradation Kink, Praise Kink, Insertion, Fingering, Rough Sex, Erotophonophilia, Dom!Salesman, Sub!Reader, Dacryphillia, Sadomasochism, Gunplay, Deepthroating, Breeding Kink, Unprotected sex

A/N: Hell is empty

4k Words

You're strapped in a chair, like always, and you are blindfolded because he doesn't trust easily.

It's terribly annoying.

At any point of during and after your little 'arrangement' you could have called the cops. Doesn't he understand that?

Every Wednesday, you're taken from the warmth of your apartment, and you're delivered right back at 00:00 on the dot, every Thursday with barely an inch of life left in your bones. You'd either always come back wet, with semen sliding between your thighs, or with mysterious marks- old and new- crawling underneath your sweater. Whatever mood he was in, he'd always leave you feeling sore.

It should have bothered you.

The thought of seeing this large, domineering shadow-in-a-suit every Wednesday should not overwhelm you with all these feelings of excitement. Instead, you should do like all the mentally ill girls do and just get some fucking help.

But you want him to trust you, for some reason.

Which was utterly ridiculous considering the fact that to him, you were something akin to a porcelain wind up toy for his amusement. You had no business requesting he remove the blindfold aspect but still, you asked anyway. Toy's couldn't be trusted, could they?

"I'd really appreciate it if I didn't have to wear one of these everytime I visit your place." He removes the blindfold, and in a second, your vision is filled with nothing but him. One moment you were in the cozy warmth of your dorm room. Curled up on the couch while your roommate spends her youth effectively- out with boyfriends and friends and everything you didn't have. You answered the front door when you heard his special knock, like you always do. You walked with him to the cab. You let him put on the blindfold. You said 'I'm fine’ when the taxi driver got a little too nosy and you let him lead you away from your boring life.

If only for a few hours.

You'd let him do whatever he wanted for those few hours because such surrender was almost sacred. You forfeited your safety in his hands, to do with it whatever he pleased and in that, you found rest. Whatever happens, happens.

Forget this room- what was essentially his personal dungeon, windowless, red and boasting various torture objects- your eyes are only on him.

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't feel the need to kidnap me anymore? We do this every Wednesday," You become more childish around him and he lets you. Like you forgot you are a fully autonomous university student. There was power in that too. "Surely we've established some sort of trust?” He doesn't respond to you immediately. You crane your head up at him, hungry to lock eyes with his cold, empty slits that enchanted you body and soul.

You are in love with him, perhaps.

That's a logical response isn't it?

You laugh almost.

Listening to yourself try to rationalize your fondness for such a horrible man.

Said horrible man is silent. All you hear is the clicking of his dress shoes as he moves to the leather seat directly across from yours. Your eyes scan over all his movements.

The right corner of his lip quirks up. A small coffee table creates the only distance between you and he bends over to pour you both a generous glass of Brandy on the rocks. You don't drink it. Ever since he's been bringing you here, you never do. He knows this, yet still he pours.

"This relationship isn't about trust." He says finally. Something inside you, that is perhaps a little broken, actually purrs at the sound of his voice. You're hyperaware of your thighs squeezing together on the leather seat. They're spilling out of the sundress you purposely wore today.

Lots of your clothes were for the function of comfort. Your body was full and curvy and not always something to be advertised, unless you wished it to. Tonight, you wanted to show off as much as possible.

A thick leather band is keeping both your wrists locked to the armrests, while he sits back, free and so irrevocably in charge it should scare you. It should. But the sick and incredibly deranged thing is that it doesn't.

Outside, the rain is beating down on whatever building you're in, casting a thick veneer of grey all across the city.

But inside this velvet room... your heart is hammering inside its cage as you watch him undo the buttons of his crisp suit. A black one today. Jet black like his hair.

Although-

"You've got more grey in your hair than last week." You can't help but say.

He tilts his head in inquisition. "Are you insulting me or complimenting me?"

"I'll leave that up to you to decide," you shrug your shoulders as much as you can under these limited restraints. At least he hasn't restrained your ankles this time. Progress. "In here, you're the boss. Right?"

He takes a sip of his drink until finally, you've finally locked eyes. Your bare toes curl and your back arches slightly as you sit a bit straighter in your seat. Like you're in a lecture hall, although he is far more interesting than any of your professors.

"I'm not as young as I used to be," he finally says as he takes one more sip of his drink before bringing his briefcase onto the coffee table. Its presence is ominous and so horribly loud for an inanimate object. It kickstarts all your dormant nerves, revving up all the rest of your senses that have yet to catch up to the fact that you were facing the man of both your desires and nightmares once again.

"Who have you told about our arrangement?" The question causes you to roll your eyes. He watches the petulant movement with that same, silent smile and blank eyes. He unclicks the briefcase. Your stomach lurches and your thighs squeeze together. Pavlov's dog.

"Every time you ask me-" an object clinks onto the table. A butcher knife.

You try to pull your eyes away from the objects he's placing on the table, one by one. "Everytime you ask me if I've told anyone about our arrangement-" another object. A wooden spoon beside the knife. "Everytime I tell you the same thing."

Your throat closes when he uncovers a dildo. Bright pink and fucking menacing. "Carry on talking." He says, snapping your gaze away from the objects lining the table.

"I don't have any friends." Your voice is wobblier. You try to deny the sight of the rabbit vibrator, "It's the reason you picked me." You clear your throat as you hoped to clear all the nerves beginning to fog your mind. "Someone could've followed me here. B-But I don't really know anyone enough to care." The final object that clunks onto the glass coffee table and this time, you're unable to look away.

"Are we ready to begin?"

The metal revolver laying quiet and undisturbed beside the rabbit vibrator makes everything else on the table look like children's toys. Even the butcher knife.

You pull at the restraints, your legs quivering slightly as you shift and writhe in the seat. He studies you as closely as you were once studying him. You can see the excitement begin to flood his eyes at the physical manifestation of your discomfort.

"Now you're getting it." He nods sardonically, taking another sip from his glass before placing the briefcase on the floor beside him. "You were a little too happy to see me," he joked, letting out an airy exhale of laughter.

"You wanna hazard a guess as to what we'll be playing today?" He's smiling, genuinely. With that look in his eyes you can tell he's hovering in the clouds. Meanwhile you've begun to feel real fear. No matter how regular these visits might become you'd never get used to him. It's impossible. Not when he found new and daring ways to torture and pleasure you every single week. You couldn't get used to something as brash and unconventional as him. Like the conditions of a child in a broken home, he kept his tactics inconsistent so that every week is a new hell or perhaps- depending on his mood- heaven.

"If I guess wrong?" You swallow thickly and something dark in him settles. He spreads his legs more, there's a twitch inside his lips before he smiles again.

"Well, guessing isn't the game, so you'll be fine."

You nod your head... assessing the objects. There's menacing objects and household objects. Even just looking at them you can tell what they all have in common.

"Am I going to have to insert-"

"You're not guessing." His voice booms. He rests his elbow on the armrests, his hands corded with veins seem itching to do something, you're not sure what. "I said guess." He commands.

"Hide and seek?"

He snickers, "A favourite-"

"More like your favourite." You snip back, "I couldn't sit down the whole week." You frown at the memory. That week he'd brought you to an abandoned warehouse, letting you run the entire perimeter full.

"It's in your best interest to keep coming to our sessions-" he reminds you, snapping you back into the present.

"You're paying my university fees, I'm not complaining." You nod, before plastering a thin smile on your face, "All I have to do every week is prostitute myself to a literal sadist-"

"Have you given up on guessing today's game?" He didn't like you making him hyper aware of the fact that this dynamic, whatever it is, is considered objectively bad. And so you're not surprised when he swiftly moves past the topic.

He leans forward. His large hand disappears under his chair before uncovering a small whiteboard. Four lines- 2 horizontals are running across 2 verticals, creating 9 blocks. He stands up, while your eye is still focusing on the board. From your point of view it sits underneath the row of objects on the table. You don't even realize your right wrist strap is being untied.

"Colour?" He asks, pushing a crate of whiteboard markers towards you. With your now free hand you pick the pink one.

He snickers. "Predictable." He whispers before placing a large, domineering hand on your head. He presses down your braids, patting you like a stray he's rescued from the cold. You stare aimlessly ahead, fearing you won't be able to contain everything you've begun to feel for him if you lock eyes now.

"We're playing tic-tac-toe," he relents. His hand lingers on your head a bit longer before he's stepping away.

"With a twist, I presume?"

"Clever girl," he nods, walking back to his seat. "So you're aware of the objects."

"Place a gun in front of a girl and she's going to notice."

"Paranoid girl." He tsks before leaning forward.

"You want to start or should I?"

"Wait-" you swallow, "What happens if I win?"

He smiles that dazzling, debonair smile.

"You pick which one goes inside you."

Lightning cracks across the sky. A chorus of thunder roars all at once like some kind of phenomenon and your lips stutter open.

"Th-That's insane I-"

"I shouldn't have to remind you that you came here out of your own volition. "

"What happens if you win?"

"Then I choose." He says.

Your eyes skate over the object. It doesn't take an ivy league graduate to hazard a guess as to which of the objects he's itching to stick inside you.

"There's a fucking knife here-" You're trembling. Tears are pooling in your eyes. It doesn't even matter that you're a somewhat decent tic tac toe player. It doesn't matter that you're confident in this game. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters.

"And there's also a spoon," he nods, neutrally, "And a vibrator, and a dildo. Etcetera. Etcetera." He leans forward, unclicking his whiteboard pen, "your words are just words, Darling. You're just listing things. Start," he says, with a deadly lilt in his voice. "Or I will."

You scramble to uncap your marker with one hand, all while he watches with dead and black eyes. You knew that whoever starts the game was placed at a big advantage and so you're nearly scrambling to place that dignified X in the center block.

"Clever girl." He says once again, drawing his blue 'O' directly beside your pink 'X'. You aim for the block above him. He blocks it. You aim for the block beside the center. He blocks that too.

Your victory comes too quickly. You barely feel it as you strike a line vertically through the blocks. 3 X's.

Relief washes over you but it's overcast with doubt. Like you're celebrating in trepidation as you watch him stand up.

"Congratulations! Which do you choose?"

"I can pick anything?" You ask, staring up at him, bright eyes wild with the adrenaline that comes with wanting to preserve your organs.

"Anything you want, my little winner."

You begin to lean over. His eyebrows quirk up when you wrap a small hand around his wrist.

"I pick that." You say breathlessly. Your eyes zeroed in on his hands at his side. And you watch as he walks towards you, as if compelled by an unforeseen force. His palms are calloused underneath yours and you blow out several unstable breaths as he stands above you. So imposing it's breathtaking.

"You sure?" It's the way he asks it that has you second guessing. And perhaps he sees the caution seeping into your eyes because there's excitement lurking in his. Before you're even able to formulate a response, his hand is locked tightly around your esophagus, vacuuming all pathways shut until you're writhing for air.

"A fine, fine choice," He's becoming more and more riled up the more you writhe in your seat, trying to scrounge for a single breath of air. He doesn't let you. Instead he moves behind you, before leaning down.

If you could breathe, you would shiver at the feeling of his lips behind your ear. "Here we go-" he whispers, before reaching around your torso with his free hand before forcing your legs open. The second he lets his three digits stab into your cunt, he uncurls the grip on your throat as you make a horrid sound somewhere between a moan, a scream, and a haggard gasp. "FUCK- Sl-Slowdown-" you knew better than to request something like that. All you hear is a snicker from behind you as pain blossoms all across your nether regions. He's not gentle. He's not kind. He doesn't allow you to adjust to his fingers before he's scissoring them inside you, causing a blood-curdling scream to rip itself out of your throat. Your back is arched and you're trying to get away from him but the fucking persists.

"You've been wet like this for me the entire time?" He sounds absolutely demented, behind you, "You wanted this didn't you?" He bites at your ear as the first tears begin to pool at your eyes, "My little winner."

"P-Please stop-" His fingers are restless inside you. Curling and uncurling. Scissoring and stabbing as if wanting to open you up and split you all the way in half.

"What a pretty little pussy, huh? Look at what a mess you're making."

"When-" you can't form words. "When- Stop?" It's all you're able to say as your nails dig into the material of his suit.

"The sooner you cum the sooner it stops."

You doubted your ability to cum under these circumstances. He's setting an ungodly pace and it's all so hurried and in a frenzy, it's like your brain does not have time to understand if you even like what's currently being done to you.

"What- Do you want you want my help?" you begin to shake your head. "I'll help you, baby-"

His other hand reaches over and pinches your clit.

Your eyes roll to the back of your head as your orgasm is quite literally forced out of you. Your hips writhe and your ass tries to leave the seat as the first feelings of pleasure rip through you by force. "That's it, Clever girl," he coos, still curling his fingers inside you, "That's my Clever girl." He says once more before stilling his movements. For a second you just sit there, trying to collect your breath while he's still inside you. All at once, his hands are removed from your body.

He grabs a handkerchief from his breast pocket and you watch him clinically wipe his hands before erasing the marks on the board with the same cloth. A very clear boner pushes against his black slacks yet still his face is calm.

"Alright, My turn to start-"

"WHAT!? B-But I won." You scream, absolutely seething with desperation.

"You know everyone who plays 'X' has a significantly higher chance at winning-" You say with your eyes narrowed. He nods.

"And you know that too, which means we each should be granted alternating times to play ‘X’. Regardless if you won or not." You slump in your seat, suddenly far too aware that your bare cunt is exposed.

"Don't mope." He says, "It's not cute." Before drawing his 'X' in the center.

You close your legs, sitting upright with a new zeal of self preservation as you grab ahold of your marker.

You draw your pink 'O' underneath his.

You both play many more rounds. All ending in ties. This is how you play- with a frazzled grip and closed legs. A shiver every now and then overcomes you with the gravity of your aftershocks. His snickers bring your eyes up to his. He speaks as he makes his move.

"You're so focused on blocking," he sighs, "You're not even trying to win anymore-"

"I'm not letting you stick a knife in my cunt." You nod in finality before blocking another move.

"Not even if I say please?" He asks, making a faux pout.

"Fuck off."

"In that case, I have to win."

Your heart kickstarts as he pushes his pen to the board. Images flash across your mind. Blood splattered across his gorgeous face. Your blood as he fucks the sharp end of a knife inside you. You nearly vomit while he speaks. “Easy as-" you block him.

"Tic-" you block him again.

"Tac-" you block him some more

"Toe- I Win."

A victory that somehow escaped your vision. He strikes a line diagonally through the squares and your stomach sinks. He stares at you from across the room. His eyes so deeply satisfied you can feel it radiating off of him in waves.

You lower your teeth to the other restraint, violently trying to free your left wrist from its oppressive hold. And you watch as the devil slowly rises.

Your heart aches. Your brain is sent into complete alarm as your flight or fight kicks in and your sympathetic nervous system fires.

"Now, which one would look pretty inside you?" He drags his fingers along the objects, undoubtedly an act of taunting. You stomp your feet on the ground. You try to push the chair underneath you but it's plastered to the floor.

"Please!" Tears are running thickly. They cloud your vision. You don't even see the way his smile falls enough for him to rub over the bulge in his slacks.

"Fuck," he says gravelly as he relents and picks up the gun. "You're so fucking pretty when you're scared out of your fucking mind. You know that?"

You shake your head as he nears, wondering if this might really be the end. Has your body become too worn out by his games? Has the time for him to discard his toy finally dawned on you both? Is he all grown up with no need for such things as toys?

"PLEASE-NO-"

"Open your mouth." He's standing in front of you, your head directly in front of his raging bulge.

You shake your head, trying to move away but he rips your face towards him. "Listening to me is the only choice you have to make it out alive, Baby. You wanna live, don't you?" He's nothing but a tall figure, with the overhead lights shining around his head like a halo. Your face right by his bulge.

"Little girl needs to go to school." He nods, eyes fluttering shut, "She needs to complete her studies and get a good job so she wouldn't have to meet with scary men like me- Fuck-" it riled him up to no end to have you scared of him. You suppose it triggered a part of him that craved attention. He needed to feel like he existed and if that was reeped from fear then so be it.

"Stick the barrel in your mouth," the bottom of his hand coaxed open your jaw, and, as if on autopilot, you listen. Perhaps there is a way out of this. Perhaps you should just listen.

"That's it... Fuck," he brings your free hand up to rub his erection "That's it, Baby, stick it inside your mouth." Cold metal hits your lower teeth, "Stick it in like you would a cock." He says, looking down at you intently as your tongue unfurls and you suck the barrel in. "Shit-" he places his other hand on the back of your head before forcing you to take the gun deeper down your throat. He's trembling. Far too badly. And so is his finger on the trigger.

"Fuck, you're such a fucking whore, you know that?"

You're gagging and flailing around the barrel, saliva slides down.

So desperate to please him.

In your hast you don't even realize your left hand that had been restrained is now free. Your eyes are closed.

Please him.

Just please him and you'll live.

"That's my brainless girl..." he praises and that rouses something in you. It has your hips bucking against nothing.

"Such a stupid girl..." he continues, "You're gonna ride me, aren't you? You're gonna fuck me so good-" You're not about to tell him that sex wasn't supposed to be apart of this game. You're not stupid.

You faintly hear the sound of a belt unlooping. A zipper siding down. "You're making me so happy, baby." He admits before effortlessly lifting you from the chair until you're straddling him.

You're free.

When did that happen?

"F-Fuck, I need you to ride me." His head is leaning back against the chair. His tie hangs messily from his shirt that has two buttons undone.

You're free.

"Don't try anything," he warns, as he lifts you enough to pull his cock out of his pants. "Matter of fact. Keep it in your mouth while you ride me-" He slams you down onto his cock the very second those words leave his mouth. He's fucking into you with recklessness and fury and violence. His hair falls in his face but the gun is too heavy, without a hand there, it nearly slips from your mouth.

He's careful to catch it, forcing the barrel back in your mouth as he places a hand on your ass, controlling how your ass bounces on his lap. The gun offers motivation like no other. It has you arching your back and swirling your hips as you tighten your cunt around him.

He sticks the gun down too far and you gag. "You trying to get me to cum, huh? You little slut-" you nod, the tears still spilling as pleasure begins to stream through your brain. It has you excited by the prospect of being held at gunpoint. You realize with grave certainty that you've arrived at the point of no return.

"What a good girl- fuck-" he's ramming up into you, his hand on the gun twitching like his cock does. "I'm gonna fucking cum- FUCK-" he does and your orgasm immediately barrels into you at the exact same time. You try to ride him, to milk it as much as you can, to continue to make him happy.

"Such a stupid fucking slut-" he whispers, eyes hooded as his hips still spurt cum into you.

Your ears perk. You see his finger on the trigger move. You squeeze your eyes shut as you hear a click.

"Such a silly girl." You hear him say. "Don't worry, Baby, it isn't loaded." You're still in your body. You're still alive, on his lap, your sundress unfurling around you both.

"Not yet anyway."

© to @muntitled on tumblr; do not repost

[luvergirl-866]

what about a one shot where azzi gets hurt (nothing too serious) and paige just worried about her and takes care of her tons of fluff and maybe some smut at the end? just paint bring the ultimate gentle gf

not a lot, just forever

pairing - paige bueckers x azzi fudd

word count - 3.6k

content - illness/menstruation, language, implied sex, azzi having everyone wrapped around her finger

a/n - a little smth to tide yall over for sll chap 8!! this took me like all day, idk why lol. obviously i went off prompt, that’s my bad 😭 azzi doesn’t get injured but like close enough, and no smut sorry 😔. very much inspired by the fact that azzi has been sick lately and the injury scare last night, just thought we all needed a little fluff after that bc whew! anyway, i hope yall enjoy!!

Azzi is smack in the middle of a perfect dream—in which she and Paige disagree about something and Paige is completely silent while Azzi explains all the reasons she’s right—when her alarm brutally awakens her.

“Nooo,” she groans into her pillow. Her voice comes out all croaky and the word scratches painfully at her throat on the way out. Two warning signs of what she knew was coming—she’s sick.

To be sure, she tries to take a deep breath in through her nose, and fails. She must’ve been breathing through her mouth all night with how congested she is.

Suddenly overtaken by an aggressive coughing fit, Azzi fishes under the pillows for her phone, alarm still buzzing annoyingly.

Somehow, her phone must’ve found itself under Paige’s pillow because after a quick search, Azzi realizes it’s certainly not under her’s.

Sighing, Azzi shoves at Paige’s shoulder, trying to move her but the girl is dead weight when she’s asleep.

“Paige,” Azzi whispers, shaking her now. “Move your big-ass head.”

Paige groans similarly to how Azzi did a few minutes ago, then rolls onto her stomach, unhelpfully clutching her pillow closer. “Turn it offff,” she whines quite babyishly, for a girl who claims to be the ‘masc’ in the relationship.

Azzi rolls her eyes. “I’m trying, it’s under your pillow.”

“No it’s not,” Paige whines.

“Yes it is,” Azzi says, shoving Paige over. “Seriously, it’s getting annoying, you have to move so I can turn it off.”

“Ughhh,” Paige says dramatically, but then she turns onto her side, giving Azzi access to the pillow, and promptly falls back asleep.

“Why, thank you, your highness,” Azzi grumbles, finally finding her phone and turning off that god-awful alarm.

It’s in the silence of the room that she realizes a headache has started to form at the base of her head. Perfect.

She’s already been in bed for too long—if she wants to get dressed, do her hair, and have enough time to drag Paige out of bed and get her ready so they’re both on time to practice, she needs to get up now.

Doing her best to ignore the searing pain in her throat, head, and lungs, Azzi climbs over Paige—who doesn’t move, nothing more than a lump under the covers—and crawls out of bed, turning on the bedside lamp. The warm light illuminates the room and Azzi goes to the closet, trying to find comfort in the monotony of her morning routine. But as she bends down to reach inside the drawer which is dedicated to her underwear, she feels an aching soreness in her legs and pelvis—partly to do with the suicides Coach made them run yesterday, but mostly to do with the fact that Paige was insatiable last night, not stopping until Azzi tapped out after their fourth round.

At the time, it was hot and felt so, so good. Now it makes her groan when she straightens up, and she glares at the lump sleeping peacefully under the covers.

“All your fault,” Azzi grumbles to no one as she gets dressed, because if she can blame her sore legs on Paige, then why not blame her sickness on her, too? “So damn horny all the time. ‘Azzi, it’ll be fun. Azzi, I’ll be gentle. Azzi, just one more, we haven’t even used the strap yet.’” Azzi laments her girlfriend’s convincing tone from last night, that sly smile looking up at her from in between her legs, those hands that bent her over the bed after making her legs shake so much she could barely stand, and pummeled into her so feverishly Azzi was pretty sure she could feel it in her guts. “Damn,” Paige had sighed after they were finally done, “good thing we’re both girls. Because you’d prolly be pregnant with, like, triplets after that.”

Last night, in her fucked-out haze, it had made Azzi laugh. Now, the memory just makes her roll her eyes, kneeling down to check that both she and Paige’s gym bags have everything they need in them. “Not even how that works,” Azzi mutters bitterly. “Dumbass.”

Once that’s done, Azzi leaves the room, closing the door quietly behind her because she may be sore and annoyed but she’s always going to make sure Paige gets her sleep.

When she gets to the bathroom, the door is closed, and Azzi knocks lightly. “‘S me.”

“Azzi?” comes Jana’s equally exhausted voice on the other side of the door.

“Yeah.”

The door opens, and the glare Jana directs toward her once they’re face to face startles her. “What—“

“Sounds like you lost your voice,” Jana remarks, quite sassily if you ask Azzi.

“Yeah, I—“

“Probably from all that screaming last night.”

Azzi freezes, then bites her lip sheepishly. “We tried to be quiet.”

“Paige was quiet,” Jana says, stepping to the side to let Azzi into the room. “You, on the other hand…”

“Uh, oops?” Azzi responds, flashing an apologetic smile.

As usual, it works, and Jana shoves her affectionately as Azzi steps into the bathroom.

“Wait till y’all are alone if you’re gonna be trying to make babies,” Jana teases. Then she studies her face and says, “You don’t look too good, Azaray.”

Azzi nods, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she wets her toothbrush, seeing herself for the first time this morning. Her cheeks are flushed, bags heavy under her eyes, lips pale. “Think I finally got sick.”

About two weeks ago, a couple of the girls got sick with some kind of flu. Of course, with the team spending all their time together, the rest of the girls followed soon after. Paige was one of the last to get sick, last week, and as soon as she did Azzi knew any hopes of staying away from this virus were out the window. Considering the fact Paige and Azzi would live inside each other’s skin if they could, if one of them gets sick, both of them do.

Paige got better over the weekend. Now it’s Tuesday and Azzi becomes even more annoyed at the thought that Paige gave her this illness.

“You’re still going to practice?” Jana asks, watching as Azzi brushes her teeth.

Azzi nods.

“Why?”

Azzi shrugs her shoulders, then says around the brush in her mouth, “Can’t mish it.”

“We all skipped when we got sick,” Jana says.

Shrugging again, Azzi spits into the sink, rinses off her toothbrush. “Season’s starting soon. And I’m already not cleared to play right away, I don’t wanna get pushed back even further.”

Jana raises an eyebrow at her. “And you think Paige is gonna let her precious princess go to practice with the flu?”

Azzi looks at herself in the mirror, and is reminded that she is, in fact, a grown woman. A grown woman who is independent and knows her own limits and can make decisions for herself.

“Paige can’t let me do anything,” Azzi replies, sure of herself.

Ten minutes later, she walks back into Paige’s bedroom to test that theory.

The room is still dark, as expected, and also as expected, Paige is still snuggled up in her purple fluffy comforter.

The sight of her girlfriend, wrapped like a burrito in bed with only her face uncovered, blonde hair splayed over her pillow, makes Azzi soften a bit. She’s honestly like a baby when she sleeps, and it gives Azzi cuteness aggression.

Finding it a little harder to be annoyed at her horny, sickness-spreading girlfriend, Azzi flicks on the light, smiling when Paige grumbles faintly.

Azzi sits on the edge of the bed, brushes her hand through Paige’s hair like she does every morning. “Hey,” she whispers.

Paige snuggles further into the comforter. Now she’s only visible from the nose up.

“Time to get up,” Azzi continues.

Paige doesn’t respond. Not a good sign.

“You only have twenty minutes to get ready, babe,” Azzi insists, brushing her fingers gently over the face she has touched and kissed too many times to count. “You really gotta get up.”

Again, there’s no response, but when Azzi leans down and presses a kiss to her cheek, Paige finally cracks her eyes open, sleepy smile gracing her features.

“Oh, good, you’re not dead,” Azzi says sarcastically.

Paige wriggles out of the blankets just enough to free her arms, wrapping them around Azzi’s neck and pulling her down for a kiss.

She only manages a peck before Azzi wrestles out of Paige’s grip, pulling away. “We can’t.”

Paige closes her eyes against the overhead light and pouts. “Why?”

“Because I’m sick,” Azzi replies, brushing her thumb over Paige’s bottom lip, “you big baby.”

Paige’s eyes miraculously fly open at this, and though she’s still squinting, she looks incredibly more alive than she did two seconds ago. “For real?”

“Yeah,” Azzi sighs. “Could only avoid it for so long, I guess.”

Furrowing her eyebrows, Paige pushes up onto her elbows as if to get a better look at her. “Why’re you up right now? You gotta rest.”

Here they go. Azzi preps herself for an argument, and desperately wishes for her dream from last night to come true. “I can rest after practice.”

Paige scoffs as if she’s just told a joke. “You’re kidding, right?”

“It’s not a big deal, I feel fine,” Azzi tries, but then her body betrays her and she coughs so hard she nearly doubles over.

Paige is wide awake in an instant, shooting up to rub her back, not even complaining about how she doesn’t wanna get up or it’s so cold in here. “Az, you’re definitely sick.”

“Thanks,” Azzi coughs into her elbow, “I didn’t know.”

“Sassy, too,” Paige remarks. Azzi tries to glare at her but it must not pack a punch because Paige just gets this sympathetic look on her face. “Aw, baby. Just lay back down, lemme call Coach and tell him what’s goin’ on.”

“No, Paige,” Azzi croaks, grabbing her wrist to stop her from reaching for her phone. “Don’t tell him I’m sick. He won’t let me come in.”

“Yeah,” Paige says, using her free hand to grab her phone despite Azzi’s protests, “that’s kinda the point.”

“You don’t get it,” Azzi replies, trying to reach for Paige’s phone but Paige stands up, holding it over her head and out of Azzi’s reach.

“Oh, yeah?” she asks, looking down at her. “Try me.”

“I wanna play,” Azzi says emphatically, the bright light of the room and the stress of talking making her head full-on pound now. “And if I miss practice I might be…”

“Pushed back further,” Paige finishes, lowering her arm when Azzi nods. Azzi doesn’t make a reach for the phone, though, and Paige kneels down in front of her, resting her arms on Azzi’s knees. “Your head hurt?”

“No,” Azzi lies.

Paige licks her lips, reaches a hand up to cup Azzi’s cheek. “I’ll grab some Ibuprofen, okay?”

Paige is up before she can respond, throwing some clothes on and leaving the room while Azzi sits helplessly on the edge of the bed. She glances at her phone—they only have fifteen minutes to get ready now.

When Paige comes back, she has two pills in one hand and the thermometer in the other, a worried frown playing on her lips.

Azzi stands up, trying her best not to let show how dizzy it makes her. “You don’t have to take my temperature, it’s okay.”

Paige only hands over the medicine, watches Azzi swallow the pills down.

“Okay, we’re good,” Azzi says, gently pushing Paige away by her chest. “No need for the thermometer. I’ll get through practice fine.” Even though she’s pretty sure she needs something a lot stronger than Ibuprofen to cure the aches and pains all over her body.

“If you have a fever, you can’t go to practice,” Paige says, stepping toward Azzi with the thermometer clutched almost menacingly in her hand. “It’s not allowed. Those are the rules.”

“Well, I don’t,” Azzi says, though she’s sure she does. And that’s exactly why she shies away when Paige lifts the thermometer to her forehead.

“Az, stop it,” Paige says when Azzi grabs her wrist, ducking away from the object. “You gotta let me.”

“Did you not hear me, earlier?” Azzi asks, and then there’s a cramp in her abdomen, sudden and painful and all-too familiar. “Oh, my god. No way.”

“Wha…? Azzi,” Paige says as Azzi rushes past her, following her on the way to the bathroom.

She tries to go in with her but Azzi shuts the door and locks it, rushing to the toilet and pulling her pants down to find exactly what she feared.

She started her period. Fan-fucking-tastic.

“Az?” Paige calls through the door. “Yo, you good?”

Azzi nearly cries. This is it. She gives up. She’s going to sit here and melt forever and Coach will never let her play basketball again and Paige will leave her for some other girl who isn’t sick and gross and bloody.

“Did you die?” Paige asks. “Baby, you gotta respond so I know you didn’t die.”

“Didn’t die,” Azzi responds weakly. Though she might as well have.

“Okay…” Paige says slowly. “So, can you let me in?”

Azzi gets the strangest sensation then—in which she both wants to yell at Paige to go away and simultaneously feels as if she needs to be curled up in Paige’s arms within the next five minutes or else she might…well, die.

This is basically how she feels every time she starts her period. She’s sure it’s very fun for Paige.

Situating herself, Azzi stands up, clutching at her stomach, head pounding—it’s like the Ibuprofen doesn’t exactly know where to help. She washes her hands and then hesitates near the door, unsure whether she wants to emerge, but that need for her girlfriend wins over her annoyance at the world and she opens the door.

Paige doesn’t have time to react before Azzi is walking directly into her chest, arms limp at her sides while she resists the urge to scream into Paige’s sweater.

“Uh…” Paige says, wrapping her arms tentatively around Azzi’s shoulders, “you okay?”

“Started my period,” Azzi says, voice muffled in Paige’s shoulders

“Oh. That’s early,” Paige notes. Azzi can nearly hear the smile in her voice when she says, “Least you’re not pregnant.”

There’s another thing about Azzi on her period: her patience for Paige, which is usually plentiful, dwindles into nothing. And suddenly her stupid jokes and tendency to poke fun don’t seem endearing anymore.

The fact that every major organ in her body seems to be fighting for their life right now doesn’t help, either.

“It’s not funny,” Azzi says, pushing away from Paige’s grasp.

Paige reaches for her. “Hey, sorry, I—“

“Call Coach,” Azzi grumbles, sentence interrupted by a painful cough as if to taunt her, “don’t even care if I can’t play anymore.”

It’s the farthest thing from the truth, of course. The thought of this little flu being another thing getting in the way of her playing makes her stomach turn. But she doesn’t say that, just marches right past Paige and into the bedroom, shutting off the light before jumping into bed, where she plans on pouting for the remainder of the day.

Paige doesn’t follow her in, and Azzi can hear the soft noise of her talking out in the hallway. Probably calling in, telling them Azzi won’t be at practice. The faint sounds of her voice turn that switch once again, and she wants Paige by her side more than anything else.

A few minutes pass before Paige is coming into the room. She comes to the edge of the bed and leans over it, placing her hands on either side of Azzi’s head as she hovers over her. “Baby, I gotta go to practice. I asked Coach if I could stay here but that was a hard no.”

Azzi would be shocked if otherwise. Even so, she dreads spending the next couple hours without Paige by her side, because Paige is the only person who can ever really make her feel better.

Still, she nods, doing her best to manage a smile up at her girlfriend. “Okay. I’ll just go back to sleep, it’s okay.”

Paige nods, leans down to brush their noses together. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Paige.”

Paige presses a kiss to her lips. Azzi doesn’t have it in her to protest about germs. “You’re not mad at me?”

That gets Azzi to really smile, a little. “No. Just cranky.”

“Mm.” Paige gives her another kiss, then one on her forehead, before straightening up. “I’ll be back soon, mama. I’ll bring some stuff back for you, okay? Just lemme know what you want.”

Azzi nods. She almost watches Paige leave in slow-motion, like a sad scene from a movie. She can almost hear the background music.

Rolling over, she tries to relax, hoping for some more sleep. But her eyes stay wide open.

——————————————

Two and a half hours later, Paige comes home to find Azzi unloading the dishwasher.

As soon as Paige steps through the front door, Azzi freezes, a guilty look on her face. Paige’s mouth drops open as if affronted.

“Yo, what’re you doing?” Paige asks, kicking her shoes off.

Azzi steps away from the dishwasher. “Uh, just thought I’d do some cleaning up…”

“Bro,” Paige says. It’s perhaps the most disappointed bro Azzi has ever heard.

“I’m sorry!” she says, leaving the kitchen fully to meet Paige at the door. “I couldn’t get back to sleep and I needed a distraction.”

Paige walks past her to set the two bags of groceries she brought home on the counter. “You need to rest,” she corrects. She rounds back on Azzi, taking her by the hips and walking them toward the couch. “You won’t get better if you don’t rest.”

“I took DayQuil,” Azzi pipes up, as if it’ll earn her brownie points.

Paige gives her a look and then sits her on the couch. “Lay down.”

Dutifully, Azzi does, allowing her body to relax as much as possible even while everything hurts.

“Can’t believe you did chores,” Paige goes on as she walks back to the kitchen. “‘S not even your dorm.” She sounds almost as if she’s muttering to herself now as she goes through the grocery bags. “Walk in and my sick girlfriend’s doing the dishes. The fuck.”

“I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal out of it,” Azzi says, lifting her head up. Paige gives her another look and she lays back down.

Usually (that is, outside of the bedroom) Azzi is the one who tells Paige what to do. But today, she’s too weak to argue.

“It’s a big deal because I told you to relax while I was gone.” Pulling out a tray, Paige arranges all of the groceries on it. She carries it over to Azzi, and it’s a little haphazard with snacks and medicine and a glass of water but it’s also perfect because Paige did it.

“Thank you,” she says when Paige sets the tray on the coffee table.

“Uh-huh,” Paige replies nonchalantly, already leaving the room on the hunt for something else. When she comes back, she has a heating pad and the blanket that Azzi has dubbed as her favorite in hand. “Which one? Heating pad, blanket? Both?”

“Both,” Azzi says without hesitation.

Paige is already plugging the heating pad into the wall.

She places it on Azzi’s lower abdomen, exactly where the cramps hit her the worst, and then throws the blanket over her.

“And here’s the remote,” she says, passing it over once Azzi is situated. She pushes her hand into Azzi’s curls, scratching gently at her scalp as she kneels by her. “What else you need, baby? I can go make you somethin’, or if I forgot anything from the store I can run back.”

Azzi shakes her head, reaching her arms out for her girlfriend, who is quick to pull her into her arms and hold her there. “My girl,” Paige murmurs in her ear, rubbing her back soothingly. “I’m sorry you’re not feelin’ well, baby.”

Azzi hums into her shoulder. “Feel a little better now.”

“Yeah?” Paige kisses her temple, then pulls away. “You wanna turn on the TV?”

Azzi nods, and Paige sits down, laying Azzi’s head in her lap, one hand stroking her pulse point while the other flicks through Netflix.

Azzi stares up at her girlfriend, wonders how she got so lucky. (She has no idea Paige thinks the same thing every time she wakes up to Azzi’s gentle voice in the morning.)

“Paige,” she says, and Paige looks down at her immediately. “I love you.”

Paige smiles down at her, leaning over for a sideways kiss. “I love you, mama.”

“You should stop kissing me.”

Paige kisses her again. “I already got sick, you cant give it to me.”

“I don’t know if we should rely on that.”

“You could have the black plague or some shit,” Paige says, pulling Azzi’s head up now to kiss her a little more deeply, “and I would still kiss you.”

Shaking her head fondly, Azzi scoots up, Paige’s legs opening to make room for her as she sits sideways between them, resting her head in the crook of Paige’s neck. She smells good, freshly showered, hair still a little damp. Paige picks a movie before hooking her arm around Azzi’s back, using her free hand to hold the heating pad in place over her tummy.

“Getting sleepy?” Paige asks after a few minutes.

Azzi nods, hums into her neck. “Little bit.”

“Go to sleep, pretty girl,” Paige says, hand soothing up and down her back, and Azzi is finally right where she belongs, safe and secure and at home in Paige’s arms.

For the first time all day, her body stops aching. And finally, with Paige’s gentle voice whispering sweetly in her ear, she gets some much-needed sleep.

[yandere-daydreams]

Title: Rotting Divinity.

Pairing: Yandere!Scaramouche x Reader (Genshin).

Word Count: 2.9k.

TW: Reader Is Referred To As A Shrine Maiden But Gender Neutral, Set A Few Years After Dottore Starts Experimenting On Scaramouche, Unhealthy Relationships, Obsessive Behavior, Kidnapping, Themes of Chronic Illness, and Mentions of Human Experimentation.

Scaramouche opened his eyes as the sun set, casting the sky a dull pinkish blue. You were standing above him, a straw basket on your hip and a frown tugging on the corners of your lips.

He let a groan as he hauled himself into a more dignified position, palms planted in the raw dirt and dried grass caught in his hair. One glance was spared to establish that he was no longer in the Doctor’s cramped observation room, all cold stone walls and porcelain tables with leather straps stapled into each corner, before his attention settled on you. “Mortal,” he barked, speaking loudly enough to hear himself over the pain still buzzing in his skull. “Which island is this?”

“Yashiori, near Serpent’s Head,” you muttered, disappointment heavy in your tone. When he clicked his tongue, you went on, your frown deepening. “You ruined my herb garden.”

Had he? He couldn’t remember anything after the Doctor worked those long, tapered needles underneath the skin of his forearms; after an iron mask was forced over his mouth and nose and he began to think his body may tear itself apart before that sadist had the chance to. He wasn’t supposed to be in Serpent’s Head. He wasn’t supposed to be on Yashiro at all. He hadn’t meant to be here, and yet, he’d be thrown in a cage of iron bars and subjected to another round of testing as soon as he trudged back to that dungeon of a facility. Thinking about the feeling of thick, pulsing electricity coursing through his hollow limbs was enough to send a familiar bolt of agony down the length of his spine. It was little more than a phantom, a shadow of the torture it would take to unlock his truepotential, but it was enough to leave him curling into himself involuntarily, glaring at the soil with a hollow type of malice.

He would’ve recovered in a second – less than a second, a moment, a breath – if you hadn’t fallen to your knees at his side, cooing as you pressed the back of your hand into his forehead. “Are you hurt?” If he’d tried to answer, his response would’ve been lost to your fussing, the way you hummed and shook your head as you hauled him to his feet. “Body aches? Migraines? Whatever it is—” An arm was drawn over your shoulders, his weight forcibly rested on you. “—I’m sure I have something for it inside. A place for you to rest, too – however you got here, the journey had to be burdensome.”

He considered protesting. Even in the state he’d been reduced to, it would’ve taken nothing to pry himself away from you, to shatter your ankles underneath his heel and leave you begging for the mercy of the creature you’d tried to pity. He could’ve penned a letter to the Doctor as you bled out in the soil of your own garden, recovered his strength as he took your body apart and fed your remains, piece by piece, to whatever scavengers would have you. He could’ve, if he’d wanted to. He could’ve, but then, he saw what you were wearing.

The sleeves of your kosode were rolled neatly to the elbow, the hems of your pleaded hakama dusted with dirt and grass stains. Unlike the maidens of Watatsumi and the Grand Narukami Shrine, you wore neither red nor blue, but white. Pure, never-ending white.

Scaramouche went limp in your hold, his eyes falling shut as you let out a surprised laugh, doing your best to accommodate his now-dead weight. He could kill you tomorrow, he figured. It was already dusk, and while he didn’t mind traveling at night, he knew the Doctor wouldn’t begin to wonder where he was until the sun rose tomorrow morning. He wasn’t a dog, eager to crawl home and prove his obedience. He could wait until he was called for.

At least, by then, your worrying might’ve done something to dull the burn of the electricity underneath his skin.

~

“So, you’re telling me that this is a waste of time.”

You ignored him with a light hum, a quick movement of your tasseled gohei. Normally, daily rites were something to be performed quickly and efficiently before the unlucky shrine maiden responsible for carrying them out returned to scrubbing floorboards and disturbing fortunes, but in a life as slow as yours, with so little to occupy the many hours of your countless days, even repetitive tasks such as this were given an unnecessarily artistic flourish. Scaramouche might’ve called it indulgent, if he ever decided to be so kind to you.

Currently, you were dancing in front of a dilapidated shrine at the base of the snake’s skull; the paint mostly chipped away and the wood close to rotting. You’d explained, four days after he first allowed you to haul him into your ancient cabin, that you would be responsible for rebuilding it once it inevitably collapsed, an honor only bestowed upon caretakers every few centuries, and he’d told you that you ought to save yourself a few decades and tear it down that day, but you’d only laughed. Most things he said made you laugh.

He'd noticed early on that you were of a weak constitution. Dark bags circled under your eyes despite how often and how deeply you slept, and you seemed unable to carry anything heavier than what could fit in one of your woven baskets. There should’ve been another shrine keeper, if not several. And, if there could only be one, then it shouldn’t have been you.

Still, Scaramouche was glad that you had been chosen, even if you were a bad fit for the position. If it’d been anyone else, he would’ve had to get rid of them days ago, and he was thankful to be spared the effort.

“It’s not,” you said, consciously clipping his choice of words. You finished your rite with a deep bow, then turned to Scaramouche. “Shows of dedication make him happy.”

“He being…” His gaze drifted upward, to the fanged skull. Orobashi no Mikoto – the beast’s name provided by some nameless well of knowledge that seemed to linger in the space between the back of his throat and the pit of his chest. Consciously, the only title Scaramouche had ever thought to put to the serpent was that of ‘festering remains’. “…the fucking corpse?”

Right. It was too easy to forget that there was a pretense to his time with you; that he was supposed to be some wayward, ailing traveler with a mysterious condition your charms and cures could only keep at bay. He wasn’t lying to you. All he did was lie back and let you fuss over his nonexistent pulse, the bloodless pallor of his skin, the way his temperature never seemed to rise above that of damp clay. He wasn’t like the Doctor – scheming and underhanded, prone to leading his victims in circles before gifting them with the mercy of a slow death – or the priestess he could only vaguely remember from his first days, all dark eyes and whispers of a merciful end. You liked doting on him, and he didn’t mind keeping his mouth shut.

“If you keep using that kind of language, you might have to start sleeping outside.” You took up the basket of lavender melons you’d (admittedly, unwisely) left in his care, snatching it away before he could add to the small pile of black seeds stacked on his opposite side. Your hastiness left one of the rounder melons toppling over the well-worn edge, though, and he caught it with a single hand, grinning as he dug his teeth into the ripe flesh and claimed it for himself. You rolled your eyes, but quickly occupied yourself with clearing away yesterday’s fruit from the shrine. “It’s not complicated. We keep him happy, hold our rites and make our sacrifices, and he ensures that my crops grow quickly and the village prospers.” A pause, a smile thrown carelessly over your shoulder. You smiled as easily as you laughed, something that irritated Scaramouche to no end. “If it wasn’t for him, you wouldn’t be recovering half as quickly as you are.”

“Don’t give yourself too much credit.” He dug his teeth into the lavender melon as you gathered your things, sugary juice turning his lips tacky as he went on. “I’ve always been hard to kill.”

You came to stand above him, your smile small and eyes vaguely narrowed. “If you’re feeling that strong,” you started, holding your now-emptied basket in front of you. “Then you shouldn’t mind weeding the garden and fetching water, this afternoon.”

It only took him a moment to think to protest, but you were already gone, stumbling down the mountainside as he hastily pushed himself to his feet. He called your name, but he could already hear your voice – rising above his in one of your obnoxiously repetitive hymns and drowning him out as he chased after you.

~

The villagers welcomed you as sheep welcomed field dogs; from a distance.

Scaramouche trailed behind you as you plodded through the humble village, humming and clutching your basket close to your chest, fiddling nervously with the pure-white material of your sleeves. The crowd parted around you, twin walls of watchful eyes and hushed voices forming well-ahead of your path and collapsing as you strode past them, either unable or unwilling to acknowledge the thick silence that seemed to hang over you like a shroud. Occasionally, you’d stop at a stall or a doorway, handing off bundles of wrapped herbs to gloved and trembling hands, and less often, you’d send him a smile over your shoulder, your tired eyes wrinkling at the corners, as if apologizing that he had to come along for such a dull errand. That was how you described it, when he asked where you went off to every few days. ‘Just a quick trip to the market,’ you’d said, as you tried to convince him to stay behind yet again. When he cited your poor health and his growing concern that he’d find you dead in that garden of yours one day, you didn’t waver. ‘You’ll only be bored if you come. The villagers aren’t very friendly.’

Scaramouche decided, mostly on a whim, that he would burn down this village before he returned to the Doctor. If he had time.

He moved to rush forward, to place himself at your side, but a hand shot out of a narrow alleyway and caught him by the wrist. It was a middle-aged blacksmith, judging by the ash smeared across his cheeks, the thick apron hanging from his neck. Scaramouche was quick to pull out of his filthy grasp, but he spoke regardless, his voice low and rough. “Mind your distance, boy.” A glance towards you, a deep sneer. “Don’t you know who that is?”

Scaramouche glanced over him, fighting the urge to scoff. “Why is no one speaking to the healer?”

“That’s no healer, that’s the shrine maiden.” He said it as if he’d caught Scaramouche attempting to throw himself into a rifthound’s mouth. “They cultivate the serpent’s remains. You’ll be dead in a week if you—”

This time, Scaramouche was the one to reach out, his hand wrapping around the blacksmith’s neck. By instinct, a bolt of pure, searing electro shot from his palm into the man’s neck, leaving him limp and convulsing in Scaramouche’s hold. Scaramouche released him as the last of the aftershocks faded, watching him collapse to the ground before planting his heel on the man’s diaphragm, prepared to shift his weight and crush whatever laid below his foot should the blacksmith say something to displease him.

“I’ll ask again,” he said, slowly, ozone thick in the air. “Why is no one speaking to the healer?”

~

Scaramouche returned to your cabin closer to sunrise than sunset. Somewhere, back in the village that he would see reduced to embers if it was his last act on the face of Teyvat, the charred remains of a blacksmith smoldered at the bottom of a stone well, and he opened the door to your ramshackle home with enough force to tear the rotted piece of wood from its hinges.

You were kneeling beside your work table, grinding dried lavender petals into a fine powder. He closed the space between you in a breath, knocked the pestle from your hand in another, then collapsed beside you. “You’re going to die?”

You eyed the spilled lavender wearily. “Even the archons will fall, eventually.”

He let out a ragged sob, burying his face in the dip of your shoulder. You allowed him to, your arms coming up to wrap loosely around him. You’d always been weak, but now, you seemed as feeble as a morning gale.

He was unable to speak, so you took up the mantle, tracing idle patterns into the base of his spine as you went on. “I know what they tell newcomers, about dead gods and their rot, but it’s not as bad as it sounds. He gifts us with herbs to cure our sick and soothe our elders and in return, someone sacrifices a few years. The villagers might not be able to linger, but they make sure I’m taken care of.” He felt you smile, heard you laugh. “So long as I get to help people, I don’t mind making sacrifices.”

“Other people don’t matter.” It took him longer than he cared to admit to pry himself away from you, to straighten his back and drag a deep breath into his aching lungs. He was thankful, not for the first time, that he couldn’t cry. You would only think him irrational if he fell apart so visibly. “How long do you have?”

Your head lulled to the side, your attention drifting to some indistinguishable point on the far wall. “Only the gods can say what fate has—”

“How long?”

“…another year.” Your tone carried a sort of detached acceptance, as if you couldn’t summon the energy to care. “Maybe two. The last caretaker was very fortunate – he survived half a decade in his position.”

He tried to speak, to scream at you for not telling him sooner, but his voice caught in his throat and you reached up, cupping his face in both hands. Slowly, with a dry chuckle, you leaned forward, resting your forehead against his. The cool porcelain of his skin sapped the warmth from yours, but for once, you didn’t seem to mind his unusual anatomy. “I hope I’ll be able to cure you, before I’m gone.” You were mumbling, now, speaking barely above your breath. “Do you think you’ll be able to stay for a little longer?”

He tried to answer, but you’d fallen asleep on top of him by the time he opened his mouth.

~

He left the next morning, while you were still tucked underneath a small pile of furs and quilts. A letter was penned and sent to the Doctor’s base, a caddy of wildflower seeds purchased from a young girl peddling wares by the side of the road, and he returned to your cabin just as your sleep turned restless. When you rose an hour past noon, he pestered you into taking him to the groove near the shoreline. By the time you returned, chiding him for distracting you from your responsibilities and pointedly ignoring the basket full of fruit at your hip, the sun was low in the sky and masked soldiers had stamped your garden into the ground. Your cabin was in flames and your shrine had been reduced to little more than a pillar of smoke in the distance.

Whatever concern you might’ve held for him was immediately forgotten. Dropping your basket, you moved to run towards the embers of your home, but Scaramouche caught you – one hand on your shoulder, another on your waist. Careful not to break what couldn’t be repaired, he forced you onto your knees, letting you scratch at his wrists as you screamed, the noise anguished and ragged. Masked soldiers gathered in the outskirts of his vision, but he bared his teeth, keeping them at a distance as you thrashed in his steadfast hold. Once he took you somewhere else, somewhere better, you’d be able to calm down.

Once he got you away from your rotting god and your unthankful village, you’d be able to worship something worth your time.

A moment passed, then another. Finally, the Doctor emerged from the crowd, his white coat unmarred by the ash in the air. He regarded you with a grin, then looked to Scaramouche. “This is the filthy toy you’d like to take home?”

It was a foolish question, undeserving of an answer. Scaramouche countered with one of his own. “Can you fix them?”

“Can I save a human being who’s been brought to the brink of death and infected thoroughly with the rot of divine remains?” The Doctor hummed, clicked his tongue. “That depends, little puppet. How much time are you willing to spend on my vivisection table?”

Scaramouche glowered, but he didn’t protest. Rather, he pulled you close – your crying softer, now, your struggling impossibly weak – and held you against his chest as he responded. “Do what you have to. They’ll be staying in my chambers, and you won’t lay a hand on them without my permission, doctor.”

“I do wish you could call me Dottore.” He sighed, shaking his head. His acquiescence was communicated with a dismissive roll of his wrist, a silent order communicated to his lackeys. His soldiers moved to take you up, but he kept you in his arms as he pushed himself back to his feet, letting you cling to and beat against his chest in tandem.

Your voice was hoarse, your shoulders trembling. Tears streamed freely from your eyes, and he allowed himself to wonder how poorly you would take it if he ran his tongue over your cheeks. “You— You monster. Hundreds of people will—"

“You said you wanted to stay with me, right?” His smile wasn’t as soft as yours, as comforting, but he did what he could. You let out another agonized sob, crumbling against him as he let his lips ghost over your forehead, speaking against your skin and above your wordless cries.

“Now, there’ll be nothing in the world capable of taking you away from me.”

[queenimmadolla]

𝐅𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫'𝐬 𝐃𝐚𝐲

(dad!eddie munson x mom!reader)

Summary: . . . You and your kids wake Eddie up with a surprise for Father's Day. warnings: fluff and Eddie being down bad for Reader 🤭, implications of baby making.

word count: 2k

more dad!eddie here

“'Shhh', mama?” Your four year old asked as she trailed behind you in the hallway.

  “Yeah, we have to be quiet so you can wake daddy up with a surprise.” You were trying not to make too much noise with the flowers, wrapped in apparently the world’s loudest brown paper, hitching your nine-month old up higher on your hip.

  Thank goodness neither of your kids were in a fussy mood, especially considering you’d gotten them up early after the terrible night before. Wayne had a new tooth coming in, he was absolutely miserable and your poor baby made sure to let everyone know. He’d been wailing most of the night and Eddie took it upon himself to soothe him, rubbing some baby friendly orajel along his gums, massaging them with fingers dipped in cool water, and offering frozen teething rings and plenty of comfort in the form of nonstop cuddles.

  He hadn’t joined you in bed until the early hours of the morning, which worked out perfectly. Eddie had been dead asleep when you got up, squishing a pillow you’d planted in place of yourself to his chest.

  Next came getting the kids ready, which was also surprisingly easy. Penny was pliant with sleep, letting you dress her without whining (she kept trying to lean forward so she could rest on you and go back to sleep—it was the cutest thing) and your baby was still soothed by Eddie’s remedies, letting out content coos as you changed his diaper and also got him ready.

  After a quick trip to a music store downtown (and by quick you meant 45 minutes, Penny took delicate care in picking out another final gift for her daddy and told you not to rush her every time you’d ask her to hurry) and a stop at the flower shop, you arrived back home and it looked like Eddie still hadn’t stirred, which gave you time to make breakfast.

  You’d sat Waynie in his high chair, gave him some cut up pieces of banana to gnaw on—which he did so as aggressively as possible—and went about making pancakes, eggs and bacon (which Eddie liked to devour until he felt ill).

  Penny was of course your little helper, sitting on your lap while you assisted her with whisking the eggs in a bowl for Waynie’s scrambled eggs, and then perched on your hip to help you flip the pancakes. She’d insisted that Eddie’s pancakes all be heart shaped and you loved the idea, so after a couple of failed ones that would be on your plate, you eventually got it down and she wrapped her arms tightly around you in a hug for it.

  Once breakfast was plated and the table was set, you gathered Wayne and the flowers while Penny carried Eddie’s decoy gift towards your bedroom.

  Quietly, you opened the door and peaked in, smiling  at Eddie’s sleeping form.

  “Okay, let’s go wake him up. Shh.” You propped the door open for Penny to slip in before you and she grinned up at you, using her free hand to hold her finger to her lips, she’d be quiet.

  She set the rectangular box on the end of the bed and then climbed on top while you sat Wayne down on the bed.

  He was just starting to crawl, so he very shakily made his way towards Eddie—face planting quite a few times but it didn’t deter your baby.

  Penny looked back at you for confirmation and you nodded in encouragement. That was all the permission she needed.

  “Daddy! Daddy, wake up! It’s daddy’s day! Wakey, wakey!” 

  She poked and prodded at his side when he groaned and shifted onto his back, eyes squinting open. That wasn’t good enough for her, she moved to sit on him and Wayne finally reached him, using his dad’s shoulder to prop himself up enough to sit back on his bum while he let out a happy shriek, chunky little palms slapping eagerly at his dad’s face to do the trick.

  Eddie made a face, nose scrunching up but you could see the smile curling on his lips, dimples appearing.

  “Okay, okay! I’m awake! Stop the assault!” 

  Penny laughed as he sat up, which almost sent her sprawling on the bed but she caught herself on his leg. Eddie tutted, that wouldn’t do.

  Eddie reached out and pushed her off of him and she laughed hysterically as she bounced against the mattress which made the two of you chuckle. For some reason your daughter loved to rough house with him. 

  Penny didn’t stay down for long, quickly crawling back up to lay down along the side of his pillow and Eddie turned his head to look at her after he’d gathered Wayne and sat him on his chest.

  “Happy Fodder’s Day, daddy. You aw the best daddy in the whole wide everywhere.” She whispered to him, very seriously, and he leaned in to give her a smacking kiss on the nose.

  “Thank you, baby.” His voice was raspy but you could detect the emotion under it. Eddie was so gonna choke up.

  “You wanna give him his present?” You prompted her, and Eddie’s head darted in your direction, grin widening at the sight of you in his favorite dress.

  “Oh, yeah!” Penny scurried to the end of the bed and knee-crawled back to Eddie, hands outstretched to offer him the rectangular box.

  “What’s this?” He asked, tucking Wayne into his side so he could grab the box.

  “You gots to open it, daddy.” Penny demanded, eagerly leaning in to stare at the box while he did.

  “Sorry,” you both traded looks of amusement before he took off the lid and moved the tissue paper aside to reveal a new guitar strap; black and decorated with crossbone skulls. “This is for me?”

  “Yeah!” Penny nodded her head ecstatically. “Mommy lemme pickeded it out!”

  “Thank you so much, little pretty one.” Eddie moved his hand to the back of his daughter’s curly little head to bring it in so he could press a kiss to her forehead, then he turned to the baby at his side. “And you, too!”

  He leaned down and pressed a kiss to the sweet smelling curls on his baby’s head. In return, Waynie started gnawing on his arm.

  You sat on the side of the bed and pulled him away from Eddie’s arm. Your son looked at you, affronted,  like you’d committed the ultimate crime until you held a pacifier to his lips. He eagerly gobbled it up and relaxed back against Eddie, once more content as he suckled.

  “Penny, do you wanna go get the other thing?”

  “Wha─?” She looked at you, confused for only a moment before her big brown eyes lit up. “YES, YES, YES!”

  Penny quickly climbed off the bed and ran to her room, where you’d hidden it.

  “What are you up to, trouble?” Eddie asked and you turned your head away from the doorway to find him looking at you, sleepy eyes clouded with love and affection as he reached a hand out to stroke along your exposed thigh.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” 

  “You’re trying to make me cry again, aren’t you?”

  “Not me, no way. No how.” 

  “I GOS IT, MOMMY!” Penny ran back in, chin raised to peak over the box she carried. It wasn’t too heavy for her, just big.

  She brought it over to you and you handed it to Eddie before pulling her up onto your lap as you watched him unbox it.

  “I wonder what it could b—.” Eddie’s mouth parted just slightly as he pulled a small amp from the box. It wasn’t just any amp. It was an amp you’d sneakily picked up from the music store last week—he had a ton of amps sprawled around the apartment but Eddie’s favorite portable one had recently gone out on him. 

  The amp itself would have been a fantastic gift alone, but you’d taken a few extra steps to personalize it for him. You’d painted the black amp with a solid red background and then let Penny and Wayne paint whatever they wanted on it. 

  Penny had gone all out, making sure to paint her family holding hands on it, along with plenty of depictions of her dad, one of which was him wearing a cape because he was her hero and since Wayne was too little to use a paintbrush, his little hand and foot prints were on it. 

  On one of the sides was your initials (last name replaced with an ‘M’ to represent the Munson name you’d taken on when you’d married him) + EM 4Ever, tucked into a heart with Cupid’s bow shot through it. 

  “SUPISE! D’ya like it, daddy? I drews on it, and it got Waynie’s feets and hans.” Penny looked so proud of herself, smile nearly taking up her entire face.

  Eddie sniffled and you hid your grin in Penny’s hair. You got him.

  He licked his lips and cleared his throat to try and keep himself together but you could see the shine in his eyes when he raised them.

  “I love it so much, baby girl.” He choked out, holding Wayne a little tighter to his side.

  “You wanna give daddy a hug?” You whispered into her ear and she crawled off your lap to throw herself at Eddie, arms wrapping around his shoulders.

  Eddie was careful to make sure Penny didn’t squish Wayne as he held her to his chest, eyes squeezing shut and his freehand cradling the back of her head.

  “I luh you, daddy.” Penny mumbled, resting her cheek on his shoulder.

  “I love you, pretty Penny.” He pressed a multitude of kisses to her curls as he basked in the moment before his eyes shot open and over to you. “What are you doing all the way over there? Get over here and give me some love.”

  You affectionately rolled your eyes before you complied, lifting Wayne out of his arms and into yours to take his place tucked into Eddie’s side. Eddie demanded kisses the moment you were near, and because you loved him, you ignored his god awful morning breath and let him have his way.

  His lips remained pressed to your temple, an arm slipped around your waist so he could lift the skirt of your dress, fingers tracing the words I love you along your thigh as Penny explained all her paintings in great, excessive detail.

  Later, when you were all at the table eating the breakfast you and Penny had made, Eddie could barely get a bite in without staring at you. Wayne was in your arms, face pressed against your breast as he nursed (always did it before he ate solids), while Penny babbled to you about how fun cooking with you had been and how yummy it was as you helped her scoop up her food on her little fork.

  Eddie knew Father’s Day was a day meant to celebrate him and essentially all the other fathers of the world, but he’d much rather appreciate you. You’d given him Penny and Wayne; his sweet (usually) little girl and his baby boy. Without you, he wouldn’t be able to be a part of this day, really.

  Eventually, you felt the weight of his stare and looked up at him, gaze inquisitive.

  “What?” 

  He just huffed out a gentle laugh, brown eyes warm and making a certain feeling stir in your belly, “Nothing. Thank you. For them.”

  Eddie nods towards Wayne and Penny.

  “Well, you definitely played a part in getting them here.” You mused, reaching a hand out to stroke over Penny’s curls. 

  Sure, you made them but it wouldn’t have been possible had Eddie not finished inside of you on a regular basis. 

  When you looked back at him, Eddie was smirking, his eyes were heavily lidded and darkening–his bedroom eyes. The warmth in them was simmering into something much more intense as he leered at you with absolutely no shame. Lustful.

  You could feel yourself heating up, bashful nature hitting you full force as he nearly ate you alive with his gaze alone. You knew what was coming next, what he was about to say.

  “Wanna make another one during nap time?”

[lowkeyrobin]

can u write a tmr newt x gn!reader where they were really close in the glade but slowly started to drift off of their friendship when they were in wckd compartments but got together again during one of the scorch nights(angst to fluffy thingy) tried my best to make it make sense:^)

ooo okay okay I got you ; idk I just had zero ideas for this?? I apologize lmao, I got like the basis of what you wanted, I'm just posting bc I spent way too long making just this 💀

NEWT ; rekindling a friendship in the scorch

summary ; friends to not friends to friends again in the scorch

warnings ; language

word count ; 959

masterlist

You and Newt were inseparable in the Glade. You did nearly everything together, following each other around, finding comfort in one another. It changed once you escaped the maze, however.

Even though you shared a room in your new home inside a lab, it didn't help whatsoever. After that first warm shower, everything between you two just changed.

You were never able to have lunch with your friends, always being pulled away for more and more testing. You'd seen Newt following Thomas around like a lost dog.

Between all the stress and physical deterioration, you didn't have time to talk or share thoughts with him anymore. He seemed to think the same way as you basically ignored each other as the days passed. Everything seemed to be a problem now, even though no words were spoken, only looks, or for that matter, the lack of them.

Upon finding out that WCKD was never gone in the first place, you quickly join the escape with your new friend Aris, crawling around through the vents at dark. The escape was quick and calculated, and nearly ended in death, probably a solid fourteen times. But, your group escaped to the dark, sandy scorch outside.

Bergs fly overhead, lights shining onto the sand in search of you. You all ran through the rough terrain as fast as you could and hid behind a large area of hills, waiting for them to retreat, hoping they wouldn't find you.

Unluckily, you slid down next to Newt, not a glance shared between you two. You instead looked over at Aris and Thomas to your right, making sure they were both in one piece.

The long, painful hike through the scorch continued, Newt behind Thomas and Teresa while you were behind those three, then Minho and Fry. Winston and Aris were behind you, symmetrically separating you and Newt.

The night passes, hours and hours of walking and sweat fatiguing you.

You stumble upon a mall, building up your outfits and learning some more about the Cranks that flooded the scorch. Your fight through the mall was intense and still really God damn awkward as you found yourself helping Newt up off the floor after being tripped, nearly left for dead for the Cranks.

You sprint behind the group, catching up as Thomas leads you to the exit.

Once the adrenaline wore off, it was back to the exhausting trudging through the sand.

You kept your distance with Newt, especially after Winston had fallen ill to the Flare Virus. You'd both known Winston for most of the time you could remember about your lives. The pain after hearing the lonely gunshot in the distance stopped you all in your tracks before continuing some moments later.

The days were far too long for the group of teenagers. Why you were all bundled up in a desert was beyond you, but you'd take listening to the others rather than dying because you didn't cover up. No one knew who was actually immune or not, so it wouldn't be worth it to try and test it out.

You'd taken refuge under some rocks in a little flatland area in the desert once it hit dark. You'd barely spoken in the past few days, malnourished and exhausted. You, Aris, Fry, and Newt are the stragglers left awake, baking cans of beans over the fire while also tending to it, making sure the others got some warmth as they slept.

As the hours passed, Fry and Aris fell asleep, cuddling up in the heavy clothing they found extra warmth in. Who knew a desert would be freezing once the sun had set? Obviously not you, since most of any important memory ever had been wiped, but yknow.

That left you and Newt awake, sitting a few feet away from each other, an awkward silence among you. You tap your fingers on the sand beneath you, then graze them around in little patterns, unable to find yourself tired even if you wanted to. You were exhausted tired, not sleepy tired, sadly.

The blonde surprisingly speaks up.

"Thanks for saving my ass in the mall"

You glance over at him, then look back down at the sand beneath your fingertips. You nod. "Yeah, anytime"

He slowly nods, looking out at the empty miles of sand and dirt surrounding you in all directions. "Is something wrong between us?" He asks, "You haven't been talking to me at all, and you've always got this intimidating look on your face when I look over at you, so I mean, I didn't wanna bother you, ya know?"

You shrug in response. "I mean, it started back at that lab. They were always testing on me and I was just tired, but once we escaped I kinda thought you were trying to ignore me. I dunno, sorry if I read that wrong"

His expression morphs to one of sadness and guilt before wrapping you in a hug, pulling you closer to him.

"I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to ignore you, Y/n"

You lightly smile, wrapping your arms around him. "Sorry for kind of being a bitch about it"

"Look, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. We did kind of escape the maze, then WCKD after being tricked, and we've been running through this bloody desert for days. I don't blame you. If anything, I'll blame Rat-Man for burning you out with testing in that lab. " The dirty blonde smiles, patting your back.

"Oh, thank you, Newt. How could I ever repay you?" You chuckle, pulling away from the hug as he does.

He shrugs, a devious yet smug smirk on his face. "You could repay me in water?"

"My cantine has been empty since this morning!"

"Damnit"

[the-midnight-blooms]

sincerely, yours | jyh

pairing: husband!jeong yunho x wife!reader AU: hanahaki au word count: 2.4k ATEEZ as angst tropes series: Hongjoong | Seonghwa | Yunho | Yeosang | San | Mingi | Wooyoung | Jongho

masterlist

Trope: Unrequited Love 

Dear Yunho,

I hope this letter find you well, whether you open it now or decades later when you sit at my grave. Perhaps you’ve married again, and another child sits in your arms- I'll never truly know how much I mean to you.

Whoever had said falling in love was a blessing had clearly never fallen in love with the wrong person in their life. Such an astute claim that was. Falling in love was one the worst things that could have ever happened to me, especially since the deadly case of Hanahaki was up for grabs.

I will not sugar-coat it, I love you as dearly as if you are mine. I love you as if I can have you. I love you as if I am entitled to you. I always have, and will until I am torn apart by this wretched illness.

Perhaps she had acted too resistant in the face of love. Acting like it was a sin for women on a dark path, yet at night she dreamed that in the dead of a void her lover would crawl to her and ensnare her in his arms. Pepper her with gentle kisses and unbroken stares. Perhaps that was the reason why Yunho had first been warded away from her, taking on many lovers. Always rushing back to her to tell her how perfect each woman was, how he cherished them, fixing onto their smile, their eyes, their beauty unparalleled. There was something about them that made his heart swoon and something about her that rebuked him.

“Then who will hold you at night, when you are so lonely that you cannot even comfort yourself?” He asked her one evening, sat under a great oak tree heads on each other shoulders; the action itself burning her heart- how she wished he wanted her the same way she wanted him. You. Will you not hold me? Will you not shield from the terrors of this world that I am so frightened against?

He had come to her in the torpidity of the night, finally, heart yearning as he realised that where he should have spoken aloud his lovers name, he said hers. Where his lover should have been soaring through his dreams, carrying his child, plastering kisses all over his face, running down the sand on the crust of the roaring sea; it was her.

"Yunho? What's wrong?" With watery eyes he stared down at her, body wracking with sobs.

"It's you. You're all I have ever wanted."

Who should I blame for being so devoted to you? I can’t blame myself, I’m sorry. It hurts too much and already the bronchi of my lungs have been replaced with the sturdy branches of a willow tree. Flowers now bloom on the membrane of cells, tissues all compressed between saccharine petals. You may laugh at my poetry but you adored it once. After all, once our souls were bound in holy matrimony, did I not gift you a poem every anniversary? Did you not read those words aloud me under the cover of the night, as if it was your soul speaking to me and not I?

An ecru, vintage radio sat perched upon the wooden worktop, in an equally old kitchen on the outskirts of the country. Just two miles below, down the grassy hilltop lead to the sea-the rush of the tides blanketing the sand, drawing it towards the deep. Delicate waves enveloped each other, producing a cacophony of sounds that drowned out the hum of the radio. The humidity of the kitchen suffocated her, as the flames of the oven whispered to the baked good blemishing it with a golden-brown that would soon prompt her to pull it from the rack. Wandering to the front porch, she followed her lover's figure saunter up the hill-his pace increasing as she opened her arms out for him. Swooping her up from the ground, he spun her around in the air-his tight grip central around her waist. A shriek escaped from her lips as he did so. Gently, he put her down, the couple laughing synchronously as she dragged him into the kitchen. Flopping down onto the chair, Yunho went straight to the radio-sitting on top of the worktop, fiddling with its button an array of tunes inbounding the pale kitchen walls. Settling upon a popular Latin song, he got off the countertop- beginning to sway his hips to the music. When his movements became much more faster and fluid, she could not help but erupt in a fit of laughter. He reached out for her hands, enamouring her hands within his.

"You know I can't dance." He laughed, recalling the memory where she almost tripped on her wedding dress in front of a crowd of people gawking at them during the first dance. Turning the dial, he rested his hands on her waist gazing down at her. Resting her chin on his chest she peered up at him with her own doe eyes. Remaining in each other arms as the world swept by, wind rushing in from the window lace curtain fluttering in the breeze. A sweet smell drove out from the oven, she hastily pried herself from his embrace grabbing the tea towel.

"What have you got in the oven?" he pondered, as she went to her knees opening the oven door. A small smirk formed on her lips. He looked over her shoulder. "Buns?" Holding back giggles, she composed herself before looking up at him with a deadpan face nodding dubiously.

"Interesting choice. I thought you were baking a cake. Never mind, these are nice." He rambled as she flipped over the buns onto the wire rack, leaving them to cool. "How long were they in the oven for?" He winced slightly as he tried to reach for one, sharply retracting his hand away as the hot surface lacerated his finger.

"About four-five weeks." He gave her a confused look, as she turned around meandering to the living room. Five weeks? He looked back at the buns. He knew croissants often took three days to make, but five weeks for buns? As if a switch had flicked in his head, he stuck his head in the living room doorway.

"We have a bun in the oven?" Nodding, he swept her off the floor like a bride, spinning her around in his arms as if she weighed nothing to him. "WE HAVE A BUN IN THE OVEN!"

You may have once told me you adored me, but you no longer do now.

She recalled staring down at the loose petal of a bright pink dicentra flower in her fingers, blood splattered across the crystal white sink in her bathroom. A strangling sensation fulfilled her throat, slumping onto the lid of the toilet seat. Beads of sweat formed across her forehead, the cogs in her brain stopping for a split second as fatigue gnawed at her. The pounding on the bathroom door startled her, shoving the pink petal in her pocket- she opened the tap using her fingers to scrub away the splatter of her blood that remained on the sink. Looking down she found her niece peering up at her with her wide eyes and an innocent face, her little lips lightly gaped as she took in her auntie's dishevelled state. Lifting up her niece in her arms, she pecked her chubby cheeks a giggle eructed from her as she walked into her bedroom. Yunho sat on the edge of the bed, taking off his work tie a sheepish smile of his face. Nari's short arms held out for her uncle, in a disinterested manner Yunho took her from his wife's hold, lazily entertaining his niece.

"You could at least pretend to be happy when you play with Nari." His wife taunted, late at night in a hushed tone as her niece fell into a deep slumber.

"She's not my child, I don't see why." A loud thud echoed in the room as he dropped his phone onto the night stand.

"Yunho." she snapped, eyebrows furrowed in anger. He never was like this, something had happened after her miscarriage. Like a lever had been pulled, refiguring his kind-hearted nature into a malicious monster. It struck her heart with fear, that now that she could not give him a child-he longer wanted her. "She is still a baby, how would you like it if someone did that to your child?"

"I wouldn't know. I don't have one, do I?" As if a blow had been struck against her, she rolled her body in the opposite direction, in the bed, holding back the tears that threatened to fall. Why are you holding it against me? She wanted to say. A deep sigh escaped from his lips, he indolently patted his wife's shoulder as if it would compensate for the damage ensued by his apathy. Erupting in a harsh fit of coughs, a current of petals flew from her mouth blessing the earth beneath.

To ask me stop loving you is like asking for the earth to stop orbiting the sun. To ask me is to tell me to stop breathing. Oh my darling, my lover divine, I wish I could. No matter what I do, you won’t love me back. So I plead of you to acknowledge my suffering. To know that others may blame you for the way you taunted me. Because I never meant anything more to you than someone to fill your lonely nights when nobody else wanted you.

Over the subsequent months, her health had deteriorated significantly which had not gone unnoticed by her husband. Her eyes had sunken into its pockets, painted by dark circles highlighting the restless nights where the pain denied her sleep.

"You never told me what the doctor said." Nailing her eyes to the chopping board, the knife cut fluently down at the fruit sweeping it up in a plastic container. She hadn't told Yunho, it was Hanahaki. Neither could she forget the pitying look in the doctor's eyes when she revealed it to her. A married woman suffering from Hanahaki? Just how cruel could the world get?

"They're just running some blood tests. They haven't got back to me on the results, it's probably nothing. If it was important they would have called me." Yunho frowned, as he put his lunchbox in his bag. Walking with him to the foyer, he kissed her forehead before leaving to walk to his car parked on the drive way. The pain in her chest alleviated but not so much that she did not sink to knees when the car pulled out from the driveway heaving for air as she felt her lungs being pierced by the abrasive bark of a tree.

Where petals had drifted out of her mouth, flowers now bloomed. For one evening, Yunho came back home from work finding his wife draped over their shared bed- lips shrouded with petals. flowers at her neck. Concerned he shook her awake, with bleary eyes she sat up fingers pressing into her temples. Lifting up the petals with his slender fingers, he stared at her with a questioning look he only hoped she'd catch. Though no words had left her, she did not know what to say. He was not supposed to find out like this.

"I have Hanahaki disease, Yunho." she breathed out, her coarse voice prescient. An spectral silence befell amongst the couple, what else was there to say? The situation spoke for itself. "I just want to know, at what point in our lives did you stop loving me?"

“I didn’t know that I had fallen out of in love with you, because I still feel comfort when you’re there." He spoke slowly, a desperate attempt at piecing together the right words as he tried to come to terms with the fact he was the one who had caused her poor condition. "Sometimes I only feel myself entitled to breath when I look at you.” As if that was the cure, a declaration of love-those menial words that had put her in this position in the first place.

“Then why am I dying? Why is this disease tearing me apart? You’re killing me, Yunho.”

“Don’t say that.” He shook his head profusely, tears brimming at the front of his perfect eyes. "Don't say that, please." Her husband begged, pressing his palm to his lips to prevent the grievous dissonance of his sobbing.

“What else would you like me to say? That I am the disloyal one? And I am in love with another who cannot love me back? Be fucking realistic, I have been in love with you a lot longer than you have been in love with me.” Her body trembled with the cold, her own tears streaming down her cheeks. She didn't try to hold back the distressing sound as he had. Leaning her head back on the headboard. "What about me disgusted you? What about me made me so unworthy of your love?"

"I wanted a child." Grabbing the pillow, she plundered it against his head as hard as she could. Lunging at him, the collar of his shirt balled up into fists, his slender body oscillating back and forth as she screamed out her soul.

"It's not my fault I cannot conceive! If you had known that before marriage would you have never married me? Would you have never loved me? Is that all a woman means to you? A machine to give birth, or an object to satisfy your desires?" Letting go off his shirt, she subsided into the silk pillows bawling to her heart's content. "Leave Yunho." His breath hitched in his throat. Soundlessly, he got up from the bed trudging towards the doorway, glistening pearls dropping from his porcelain face. He stopped, turning around with a pleading look.

"Leave and if you come back to me- tell me it is because you love me. So much so that it is the ailment to this disease.”

When you did not come back to tell me you loved me, it almost certified the fact that you really had fallen out of in love with me. Perhaps it is better to die than to live a life of solitude, for every day I live I can feel my heart rupturing at the mere sight of you. I wish you find someone to love as much as I love you.

So, one last time before the Angel of Death takes my breath away and draws my soul out of my body: I love you, Jeong Yunho. I love you so much that I have died in your name. I love you so much that if I was given a choice to relive this life again, I would. No matter the pain, no matter the heartache, I would live this life again. All for you.

Sincerely, Yours.

All Right Reserved © the-midnight-blooms

DO NOT REPOST, TRANSLATE, REPURPOSE, OR PLAGISRISE ANY OF THE WORK HERE

A/N: i feel like yunho + unrequited love is such a fitting trope for him? Yunho doing the salsa literally came from me and @n0v4t33z talking about how his hips don't lie. ALSO AS A BRIT BUNS ARE CUPCAKES!! when i first heard about 'bun in the oven' i didn't know it was a teacake (burger bun), but i made it one for this fic.

let me know if you’d like to be added to the tag list for any future fics I post!

[syluscore]

Every Version of You (2)

A reverse harem with three variants of Leon Kennedy and feminine reader.

~ Masterlist ~ Previous Part ~ Next Part ~

WORD COUNT: 3.7k

SONGS: Daylight - David Kushner and Linger - The Cranberries

CONTENT WARNINGS FOR PART TWO: depression, grief, suicidal thoughts, death idealization, yearning for childhood, reminiscing on girlhood, paranoia, nightmares, monsters, dead looking bodies, time travel, the unknown, denial, trauma, PTSD, hugging, embracing, kissing, first kiss, mentions of readers death

TAGLIST: @growingupnrealizing​ , @weneewinnie , @delulusimps , @yoonbabe-d , @missjoenowhere , @cassiecasluciluce 

!!!!!MINORS DNI! THIS BLOG AND POST ARE 18+ ONLY!!!!

PART “CHAPTER” TWO:

Your eyes are puffy and stinging. You’ve always hated how weak you are; how easily you fall apart. You thought that you were getting stronger. You truly believed you had hardened from all the adversity you’ve witnessed and endured the past couple of miserable years.

But seeing Leon’s limp body fall into that machine, watching him disappear right in front of your eyes, you feel like that young, terrified little girl again. 

The girl who didn’t like scary movies, covering your eyes anytime you thought something even remotely scary was going to appear on screen. The girl who didn’t like to be alone, feeling safer surrounded by others. The girl who relied on a night light and leaving the closet light on because nothing was scarier than the dark. 

You want it back. God, you want your girlhood back. You feel physically ill from the pain coursing through your veins and chipping away at your soul. You want your sweet and naive innocence back because regardless of how strong you wish you could be, you’re incapable of it and you can’t endure this. You weren’t built for this. How could you ever fool yourself into believing you could be strong in the face of incomprehensible pain. 

You close your eyes tight and will yourself to go back in time. To be in that tiny bed underneath some frilly blanket, comfy in some nightgown with a cartoon character on the front. You’d pull the blankets up to your chin, plushies on either side of your small frame and by god, you’d not just be, but you’d feel fucking safe.

Your blanket would tuck under your feet, protecting your toes from the invisible monsters of your overactive and colorful imagination. And that would remain your biggest concern in life. The only danger to you would be the shadow coming off of some stray jacket, illuminating from the little bit of moonlight shining in through your sheer bedroom curtains. 

And you’d squeeze your eyes shut real tight. You’d think about running outside after lunch with your classmates to the playground. Your friend would push you on the swing and you’d wait in line for a turn on the slide. You’d finally accomplish skipping some of the monkey bars as you crossed them. 

Your happy place would have you slowly relaxing and unwinding until sleep took you. The imaginary monsters would fade away along with your consciousness.

The morning light would greet you through your bedroom window and you’d sit up. You’d stretch real big and crawl out from under the covers. The fears that stewed within you in the dark would be long forgotten. They’d vanish in the daylight and you would be free of them. 

You wouldn’t think about how inevitably night will return and so will the monsters. You’d only think of the present as you got dressed and ready for school. You’d be confident, well rested, and most importantly: peacefully and irrevocably happy.

When you’re young, your monsters don’t chase you into the day. The entire world could be falling apart around you and you wouldn’t even know it. Because when you’re young, you're exempt from the world’s cruelty. 

You never anticipate the day it’s all stolen from your fragile arms as it approaches. One day, something that means nothing to everyone else in the world will change everything for you. Your girlhood is stripped from you and the world comes crashing into you. You can beg and plead for that innocence back, but once it’s gone it can’t be undone. 

Maybe you weren’t meant for this world, never meant to live past your cherished girlhood. Maybe you’ve lived past your expiration date and that’s why you suffer so deeply.

The world is trying to form a life around someone who shouldn’t be here. People will tell you it’s better to have loved and have lost than to never have loved at all. But they never tell you none of it would’ve ever mattered had you never been at all. 

You feel broken to your core. You’re not the little girl running barefoot through the grass chasing fireflies anymore. You’re the woman who just watched the man she never got to love die in front of her, who can only think of the relief she’d feel to just follow after him, join him somewhere better than here.

Anywhere is better than the concrete floor as the world goes on around you while yours feels as if it’s coming to an end. How can no one else feel the complete utter loss?

“Hey, please listen to me,” the man with his arms wrapped around you tries to get your attention. You’ve been ignoring every attempt he’s made since Leon died. But his grasp on you has never wavered. As you fell apart, the man held you and your pieces together, keeping you from self imploding and becoming nothing but a stain on the floor.

“He’s going to be fine. Just be patient.”

Your eyes finally dart up to his face. “Fine? What part of any of this gives you the impression that everything will be just fine?” Your voice wavers, weak from sobbing and screaming.

“I wish it was easy to explain, but I think you have to see it for yourself. He’ll be right back here soon, I promise. You have my word, I swear to you,” his voice is completely sincere, but you can’t help but huff out a laugh at his words. You did see whatever this was for yourself. You don’t think this man can defy the laws of physics, so how the fuck can Leon be okay?

“Let me show you something.” He stands up and reaches his hand out for you to grab. It’s not like there’s anything else for you to do, so you let him pull you up and guide you to the other side of the room.

He stops in front of the body on the floor. The man is on his side, facing away from you so all you can see is his limp form. 

You look up at the man next to you with confusion.

You’re finally able to take in his appearance. The man has dark brown hair and a beard to match, both tidily trimmed. His dark eyes are complemented by his dark, prominent eyebrows. His broad shoulders match his large presence, his arms damn near the size of a person’s torso. The man could crush your body within the palm of his hand and not break a sweat. It’s intimidating, no matter how gentle he seems. 

“You see him breathing, right?”

You look down at the body beneath you and see a slow heartbeat. At least he’s not dead, but it doesn’t change how weird it is that he fell at the same time that… Actually you’re not going to think about that right this second. If you want to properly process any information at all, you have to focus on what’s in front of you and not the tsunami growing inside of you.

You nod slowly, prompting the man to continue. 

“Walk around to his other side and get a good look at his face.”

You raise your eyebrows in confusion, not following with what this has to do with Leon being somewhere in a tank allegedly alive and well.

“Go ahead, it can’t hurt to look. Just don’t touch him. What he’s going through right now is still super new and we don’t know how outside forces on his body will affect him.” 

Sighing, you give in and slowly walk around the man on the ground. His face is tucked against the floor so you have to squat down to see it properly.

You take in the man's features and immediately recognize him, or who he looks like more accurately.

“Um,” you pause as your brain tries to formulate words while it still feels like mush, “He looks like Leon.”

“He does?”

“Well, yeah, he does. He looks like Leon maybe, I don’t know, 5 or so years ago.” You look up at the man, searching his face for answers but not finding anything. You’re not even sure what you’re looking for and it’s starting to irritate you how he isn’t actually explaining anything.

“It is.”

“Come again?” You question.

“It doesn’t just look like Leon from 1998, it is Leon from 1998. That’s where he’s from.”

You laugh as the man jokes with you. Now isn’t the time for stupid jokes, but it feels good to laugh. Maybe he knows you need to laugh after the breakdown of the millennia. 

“I’m serious. And the man up above the tank?” He points up at him and your eyes follow. “That’s Leon from 2014, from the future. He’s the reason we’re all here, but he’ll explain that to you more when you’re ready.”

You just stare up at him, waiting for him to drop the bit but he doesn’t falter.

“I know we’re far away from him, but doesn’t he look like an older Leon? And it’s pretty crazy that the man on the floor looks exactly like Leon used to. I wouldn’t lie to you, especially at a time like this. You may not believe me now, but it will start to make more sense. Well, as much sense as it can make.”

You continue to stare at him, the face crack has to be coming soon. Much to your surprise, his face remains deadass serious.

You rub your eyes, trying to relieve the ache from the dryness. Willing them to refocus and make things make sense. 

You look back down at the man on the floor with the dirty blond fringe, the soft jawline with supple but plump lips. He’s so goddamn beautiful and unmistakingly Leon, just as you remember him from Racoon City.

“R-Rookie?” Your voice breaks. You feel the need to cry but there’s just no more tears left for you to cry. The rivers have run dry. 

Your body aches with the need to reach out and touch him. To feel his soft skin and confirm he’s real and right here in front of you. Something to assure you this isn’t some twisted dream you need to wake up from.

But that’s wishful thinking. Your emotions and deep rooted pain is too intense for it to be a dream and you know it. Your brain could never concierge up something like this. Your brain could never allow you to stay asleep as your heart breaks. You always wake up when the nightmare gets too bad, and it’s been beyond terrible since the moment these men showed up.

“We’re ready to wake one of them up now. Which one do we pull out, Chris?” The man at the functions panel calls over to us.

“Rookie.” The man that you now know is called Chris answers almost immediately.

“And does the senorita agree?” 

Your head darts up and your eyes connect with the other mans.

“Please.” Your voice is barely a shaky whisper.

He nods his head, his shaggy dark brown–almost black hair falling back over his shoulder as he focuses back on the panel. 

You look back over the sleeping Leon, you can’t help the small smile that slips out as you admire the sweet rookie. Maybe you’ve gone crazy and this is all a delusion, a way for your brain to cope with trauma, but you’re so happy to see his younger self. He still has that boyish look to him, a hopefulness about him even while fast asleep.

A bittersweet feeling creeps up on you. You watched as the light in his eyes slowly dulled out. As the horrors he’d seen and people he’d lost slowly chipped away at his mental health. It’s so sweet to see him and remember the happy go lucky rookie he once was, but it’s such a bitter pill to fucking swallow knowing how it’s all ripped away from him quicker than he can even process it.

He still hasn’t had that time to process everything that’s happened over the past few years. You’ve always encouraged him to go to therapy and come to terms with it all, but he isn’t ready to cope with the trauma. If he can push it away, maybe, just maybe it’ll be less real. He wouldn’t need to cope with it if he just never allowed himself to get into it.

Leon groaning on the ground beneath you pulls you from your thoughts. You fall to your knees as you fight to keep your hands at your side. You don’t want to hurt him and no one has told you if it’s safe to touch him yet. 

His eyes twitch as he rolls onto his back.

“Leon?” You speak quietly, hesitantly. His eyes finally snap open as he looks over at you. 

A smile breaks across his face despite him wincing in pain against the unforgiving concrete floor. “Funny seeing you here.” 

“Yeah,” you speak on a huff of air. Because of course he’s joking and spouting out some bullshit one liner at a time like this. 

You reach your hands out in an offer to help him up and he slowly obliges. His eyes widen as you actually use your strength to help pull him up. 

“Okay, muscles. When’d you get those?” He says with amusion filling his voice.

“Well, I’m not just some archivist for the police department anymore.”

“What happened?” His concern and confusion is clear as he tilts his head slightly. Did they pull Leon from before the outbreak? Does he not know of the horrors you faced through those dreadful late September nights?

“What time is it, like, where you’re from?”

“Um,” he closes his eyes as if deep in thought. “September 1998. Like the 20th was when these assholes showed up.”

So he hasn’t lived through the outbreak yet. Interesting.

He started with the RPD in early September, before everything went to shit. You didn’t start much earlier than he did–some time mid summer. You two only talked briefly when you would run into each other throughout the station. You didn’t form a bond until after that night. A zombie apocalypse and killing the rotting shells of your former friends and colleagues will do that to you. The giant fucking tyrant and monsters didn’t help either.

“Do you know why you’re here? Why either of us is here?” You ask, finally feeling like maybe you’re ready to talk about it. You trust Leon more than anyone else. This is still your Leon, just from the past you suppose. It’s still weird to think about, but there’s bigger issues at hand currently.

“Hardly. They’ve explained some stuff to me but I don’t understand any of it. Guess I’m just here for the ride.”

Your heart sinks at his response. The one person you trusted to be honest and explain things to you doesn’t know what’s going on either. 

Chris speaks up, “He’s here to help you. Sure, you could recognize an older Leon but you’d know a younger Leon. We could’ve left him out and just came back here to your current Leon, but Leon wanted you to be comfortable. He wanted to do everything he could to help you understand and just believe us in general.”

You furrow your eyebrows. “But why? Let’s say this is time travel or whatever the fuck, why are you doing any of this? What’s the end goal?”

“I think it’d be better for Leon to explain it to you.” You whip your head towards the Leon standing beside you, but Chris shakes his head and continues, “Not that one. The older version. We’ll call you Rookie, you know, just to make things clearer.”

“I don’t know how this could ever be clearer.”

“Maybe we should put you back to bed, Rookie.”

“Maybe we-”

Rookie is cut off by the man at the control panel speaking again. “I’m going to wake up the big boy now.”

You and Rookie go silent as Chris joins the other man at the panel.

“Do we really need to wake his grumpy ass up yet, Luis?”

“Don’t you worry. She’s here now so he’ll be in better spirits.”

“You’re so sure?”

“No,” Luis turns to face you. “Hey if Leon is being an asshole, feel free to put him in his place for us. You’re the only one who might be able to.”

Leon on top of the platform shoots up from where he’s laying with a loud gasp. He massages his temples as his chest heaves.

“Fuck, that’s the last time we have to do that right? Shit’s fucking painful.”

Luis speaks in a taunting voice, “Good morning sunshine. Wake up on the wrong side of the bottomless vat?”

Leon doesn’t speak, only shooting daggers at Luis with his eyes. Luis just shakes his head as Leon climbs slowly down the ladder. 

“It’s the last time,” Chris does his best to assure Leon.

“Fantastic.” Leon marches over to the control panel, before crossing his arms over his chest.

“We’re doing this all for you. You remember that right?” Chris arches an eyebrow at Leon.

“Doesn’t make it any more comfortable.” 

Luis and Chris shake their heads at Leon’s attitude before quietly talking amongst themselves. Leon just stands there, staring off into the empty vat of liquid.

“Leon?” You speak quietly, but Leon instantly hears it. Almost as if he’d be listening and waiting for your voice.

He whips around and looks over at you. He doesn’t move a muscle once his eyes meet yours. His eyes well up with moisture and unspoken emotions. You can see his chest rapidly rising and falling. He looks like his body is vibrating purely from intense thoughts and feelings, raging inside of him until his body is left paralyzed, unable to feel anything besides the deep, dark ache.

In an instant, something snaps inside of him and he’s taking long strides directly in your direction. Your breath hitches in anticipation as he reaches you in a mere seconds, taking you into his arms and wrapping his biceps around your neck. You’re pulled against his chest before your brain can even catch up, before it can even process that he’s hugging you.

Despite the anxiety of being in such close proximity to him, you’re also overcome with an overwhelming calmness. You melt beneath his touch and allow yourself to relax completely within his arms. You’ve never felt anything quite like this before. Nothing has ever felt so perfect in your entire life. Nothing’s ever felt this fucking right.

He nuzzles his face into the top of your hair, breathing in so deeply, as if you are his life support machines and he’d cease to exist without you against him. And you hadn’t realized it until today, but it’s the same way for you. Who are you without him? You’d be the first to admit it’s super unhealthy to feel this way, but it was never intentional. You feel like you belong right here and it makes your heartbeat stutter to think that maybe he feels the exact same way.

He releases his grip on you and pulls back just enough to look down at your face. His hands cup your cheeks as he takes you in, looking as if he’s in an absolute trance. As if he can’t believe you’re right here in front of him. You’ve never felt so adored or appreciated as you do while he stares at you with this bewildered look on his face. 

Your eyes instinctively close and your brain is slow to catch up with what’s happening. Your eyes dart open again once you process the fact that his lips are against yours. He’s kissing you. You’ve never kissed Leon before.

Of course you’ve thought about, fantasized about him in ways you could never speak out loud. It feels better than you ever imagined and it has your eyes falling shut once again. Before you realize it, you’re wrapping your arms around his waist tighter, pulling him even more closely into you. You cling to him as if you’re an open wound and he’s the pressure keeping you from bleeding out completely. You’re the wound and he’s the fucking suture.

You know it’s fucked up to have never admitted your feelings for Leon out loud before, and yet, you’re here lip locked with his older self. None of it makes any fucking sense but somewhere deep inside of your soul, it’s the only thing that’s ever made any sense at all.

When he deepens the kiss, you welcome him into you without any objections. You let him piece you back together with nothing more than his touch.

He releases your face and slides his hands down your body until he reaches the back of your thighs, pulling your feet off of the ground so you’re forced to wrap your arms around his neck and your legs around his midsection.

You know somewhere in this room are three other people, or rather two other people and another version of Leon, but you can’t find it within you to care. To even allow yourself to focus on having any sort of shame when he clearly has none. You’ve never needed anything more than you need this man right fucking now.

You know the fact you’ve been on an emotional rollercoaster all fucking day is amplifying your need, but it feels so good. You just want to feel good, you want him to make you feel good.

Your lips finally separate and your foreheads press into each other. You stay there perfectly still as you breathe each other’s air. Your breath is his and his breath is yours.

“Le-Leon,” you stutter out breathlessly but he just shushes you. His lips grazing yours as he continues to hold you so close, unable to withstand even a centimeter existing between the two of you.

He pulls back so he can look directly into your eyes intensely.

“I’ll never let anything happen to you again. You’re not dying on me this time. I don’t want to live without you anymore, I can’t fucking do it, okay? A life without you isn’t a life worth living for me.”

Dying? What the fuck is he talking about?

[starmapz]

shame on me || chapter nine || peonies & carnations

gojo satoru x female vessel reader

❝gojo satoru is the strongest sorcerer. when you come along with power to match his own, his responsibility to the world gets the best of him and his first impression is poor to say the least. when he needs your help, by some miracle you're too kind to deny him. or maybe he's just manipulative enough to convince you. either way, you're stuck training his student, a vessel like you. what could possibly go wrong?❞

warnings || 18+ only. contains explicit content. enemies to lovers. extreme angst. graphic descriptions of injury and death. hurt/no comfort. hurt/comfort. fluff. major character death. anxiety. panic attacks. extreme slow burn. eventual smut. p in v. oral (f! and m! receiving). praise. overstimulation. unprotected. fingering. mating press. slight nanami x reader. happy ending!

additional tags || gojo is a dumbass but very lovable. very very very minor love triangle, will not be a main theme. no competing. takes place after season 2. au where gojo is not sealed and the shibuya incident does not go down the same. nanami is alive. choso is around. no major manga spoilers but will contain themes and ideas touched on later.

wc || 7.5k.

edited but not beta-read.

series masterlist || main masterlist || previous chapter || next chapter

“Kento?”

You shakily step forward, your shoulder tilted back under Satoru’s grip as he firmly holds you back.

Just as you had found some sort of peace, just as you had managed to bandage and lick your wounds, the world won’t let you have peace. The honeyed gaze you’d mourned for so long stands tall at the treeline staring right back at you. His skin is covered from head to toe in scarred skin, the left half of his body now with more subtle scars from the stomach acid of the curse you’d been swallowed by almost two months ago. Most noticeably, a new marking runs along the top of his head. As though it’s been sliced open and stitched back together again.

You blink, feeling as though you’re seeing some sort of sick illusion designed to make you feel ill. Because you are. The rational part of you knows this isn’t him, souls don’t get to come back from the afterlife once Miriko has escorted them onwards.

And yet he stands here before you, his eyes devoid of their regular warmth.

It’s not him. It’s not Kento.

And it tears you to pieces knowing that someone took his body from you, when Miriko might even have been able to save him.

“Who are you?” You ask meekly. Satoru’s grip on you doesn’t waver, holding you back as you try to step forward again. You pull against him but his fingers curl into your shoulder as though he has intention to bruise.

Kento’s- no- the person’s gaze narrows, a sly smirk finding its way to Kento’s lips in an expression that makes your skin crawl. It’s so uncharacteristic for him that you physically recoil at the sight.

“I see you’re keeping secrets, Gojo.” Even his voice sounds wrong, the way it seems to hold syllables in a crooked manner.

That’s not Kento. The phrase repeats itself in your mind at every turn, the only fact grounding you right now.

Gojo doesn’t give the imposter the satisfaction of the response he wants. “What do you want, Kenjaku?”

You can’t bring yourself to tear your gaze from the stolen body of your lover to look to Gojo for answers, feeling as though you’ll fall apart the moment he’s out of sight. As though his image, stolen or not, is the only thing capable of saving your sanity in this instant, equally the thing capable of making you fall apart at any moment.

“Isn’t that an interesting plan your Vessel has some up with?” He tilts his head, a cold glimmer in his gaze. Electricity runs up your spine and you shiver.

“I thought he was dead?” Yuji whispers, staying out of earshot of Kenjaku. The name feels foreign to relate to Nanami’s likeness.

“He should be,” Gojo hisses, his hand hot on your shoulder. Anger radiates from him as he responds to Kenjaku. “You have thirty seconds to explain yourself before you’re a hole in the ground.” His voice drips with venom.

“Very well. I’m here to keep you all distracted.”

A grin curls his lips, petrifying you to the spot. Anger and agony turmoil deep within you, your legs shaking.

“But it would appear my job is done,” he hums in satisfaction. “Goodbye Satoru, Sukuna. y/n,” his voice lowers as he utters your name, turning on his heel and waving as he parts the treeline.

“No!” Your cry pierces the sky as you dash forward. Whether it’s your suffering or your anger fueling you, whether you would tear him apart or beg for him back, you don’t know. One way or the other, your feet carry you to him before your mind can catch up.

Before you can reach the treeline, a pair of strong arms restrain you, pulling you back. The pads of your fingers dig into his skin as you clutch desperately against his muscles, trying with every ounce of strength to escape the arms, but they don’t relent.

“Yuji, get Kusakabe and Choso and go after him!” Gojo instructs, making a point for Yuji not to go after him alone. Your student dashes off as you try desperately to tear yourself away from Gojo.

“Please!” You cry desperately as tears start to fall and your breathing begins to falter.

“y/n, it’s not him,” he reminds you softly, his voice hushed and gentle. As your body begins to shake in his grasp, no longer pushing against him, he catches you as your knees give out. Lowering the both of you slowly to the ground, he doesn’t dare let you go.

“They took him from me,” you cry out breathlessly, your vision blurring behind your tears.

“I know sweetheart,” Satoru comforts, gently rubbing your arm.

As the realization of Nanami’s stolen likeness turns to reality in your mind, your breaths turn shallow, the edges of your vision going white. You curl into yourself, gasping desperately for air as you shake violently, unable to hold yourself up.

Satoru recognizes your pain from when you were in the hospital, his muscles tensing around you as he realizes you’re panicking as you gasp for air. For help.

In contrast to when this happened in the hospital, Satoru doesn’t feel useless as he lets go of you, only to sit down on his knees in front of you, gentle fingers tangling with yours.

“Focus on my voice darling,” he whispers, his thumbs running over the back of your knuckles as your lungs burn under the crushing weight of anxiety. Your eyes flicker to his face as a sob wracks your body.

“I- I can’t-”

He shushes you softly. “I’m here, I’m not going anywhere.”

You clutch desperately to his hand, letting him pull one of his hands from your grip as he uses it to cup your face, wiping your tears.

It wasn’t fair. Wasn’t fair that you never had a chance to try to save your boyfriend.

Your anxiety threatens to swallow you whole, to envelop you in darkness, and as it does you feel something within you slipping. The more thoughts of Kento race through your mind, the more you feel it again.

The same twisting feeling in your gut of losing yourself. Losing your humanity. You hunch forward, your stomach threatening to wretch against your will as you claw desperately at the ground.

This time, though, you’re not alone.

And as the threat of losing yourself grows deeper and darker and stronger, so too does Satoru’s resolve as he recognizes your pain and agony.

Like a hand reaching through the darkness, he finally reaches you.

“y/n! Sweetheart, c’mon. Listen to me, listen to my voice,” you aren't sure how long he’s been trying to get through to you, but as he cups your face and moves your vision up to him, you manage a breath of air. As it fills your lungs, your vision clears just a bit. “That's it, breathe for me.”

Your lashes flutter as you focus on his chest, slowing your breaths as you cling to him like a life preserver.

His voice keeps you above water, and as your breathing steadies, you look up at him through teary lashes.

“Here with me now?”

You nod slowly, lips parted as relief floods Satoru’s expression. His blindfold sits around his neck, gaze focused entirely on you, like nothing else in the world could ever matter.

Taking a deep breath, you straighten your back and pull your cheeks from the sorcerer’s gentle grip on you, taking a moment to get your bearings. Your body feels hot and there’s a faint tremor in your hands still, but the relief of feeling air in your lungs pulls any focus away from the aftereffects of panic.

As Gojo’s arms fall to his lap, your eyes trail his movements, landing on his arm where you had gripped him in an attempt to break free of him. To your horror, decay litters the back of his forearm, cracks wrapping his muscles. They extend the length of his forearm, wrapping up to the middle of his bicep.

Glancing down at your own hands, still tremoring lightly, you realize you have matching splits littered across your own skin from the tips of your fingers.

“Oh my god,” you whisper, gingerly reaching out to hold his arm. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

“It’s okay,” he soothes with a calm grin. To your surprise and relief you can see now that it is veeeery slowly healing. “Crazy technique though, you don’t make it easy to heal.”

You shoot him a sorrowful glance, resting your hand on the ground and transferring cursed energy from the life of the grass beneath you into both his and your arms.

“I’m so sorr-”

“Stop apologizing,” he insists before you can even get one apology out in full, flexing his hand as you heal it with ease. The ground beneath you shrivels and decays, spreading across the ground in a random root-like pattern. With his arm healed, he holds it out in front of him with a grin. “See? Good as new.”

It’s oddly reassuring and you shoot him the best lopsided smile you can manage, though it doesn’t meet your eyes. Although you both had a long way to go in understanding one another, and certainly a long way to go when it came to anger and being constantly at odds with one another, Gojo was surprisingly understanding with you at this moment. Soft, even, and it puts you at ease.

Getting to his feet, he brushes his knees off and pulls you up with him.

“Thank you, Satoru. I- I think I would have… lost it again without you.”

He hums as he runs a thumb over your knuckles. “Not losin’ it on my watch,” he squeezes your hand reassuringly, giving you a gentle tug towards him. When you follow his lead, he tucks you against his body, eyes scouring the treeline. They shine brightly and you wonder just what he can see with his Six Eyes.

He grimaces after a moment, pulling his blindfold up over his face.

“He’s gone,” he tells you, breathing out through his nose.

You follow his gaze out to the treeline. “Who was that? Who’s Kenjaku?”

“A sorcerer who seems to want us to suffer,” he starts. You glance up at him, wondering if there’s a deeper meaning behind his words than the surface level nod to what he’d taken from you here and now. “He has the ability to move between bodies,” he explains, his chest rising and falling as he lets out a breath.

“Why- Why would he…?”

“He wants me dead. He wants me to hurt, and you got caught in the middle.” He hangs his head, strands of white hair straying from their upright position to lay over his blindfold. “Fuck,” he mutters simply under his breath.

“What did you do to him?” You ask, trying to keep your voice light-hearted though it doesn’t come across as such.

“Ha ha,” he shoots you a smile, knowing you intended it as a joke despite your tone. “He just wants to watch the world burn,” he shrugs, “and I’m the strongest.”

“You’ve mentioned that,” you mumble, chewing on your lip. “Is Yuji okay?”

“He’s fine. Him and Choso are on their way back, let’s go meet with them.”

You nod slowly, but as Gojo takes a step forward and you remain cemented to the spot, your gaze on the ground, he turns to face you. His brow visibly knits together in confusion beneath his eye covering, examining your pained and confused expression.

“I’m not over him,” you tell the snowy-haired sorcerer quietly. You see the way his biceps tense, pulling the fabric of his dress shirt’s sleeves taut. “I-” you hesitate. “I guess I just feel like a bit of a mess.”

He scratches at the back of his neck, and you wish you could more clearly see his expression, but it’s half blocked. A pit forms in your stomach, twisting in discomfort.

“I-” You pause, trying to make sense of your own emotions. “I don’t mean that- that I don’t care for you, Satoru.” You bite your lip in an attempt to ease your nerves. “I just mean that… Seeing him now, again- I mean I know it’s not him but-” you close your eyes, taking a deep breath. Staring up at Satoru from beneath your lashes, you finally manage to get your point across. “Seeing him just feels like a reminder that the wounds are still fresh.”

From where he stands a foot away, he shifts on his feet as he takes a moment to make sense of your words. The gentle smile that pulls at the corners of his lips is one you recognize immediately. It’s fake. You know him all too well now that you recognize the smile he braves on his lips when he’s forcing himself to be strongest, and in that moment you’re thankful you can’t see his eyes. The guilt pooling in your stomach might just eat you alive.

“I’ll be here when you’re ready,” he assures, his tone hammering home the point that he’s not as ‘okay’ as he’s letting on, but neither are you and you’re no in any state of mind to be trying to help him. Certainly not when the guilt of leading him on eats you alive.

“Satoru…” You chew on the inside of your cheek absent-mindedly.

It’s unfair.

Unfair of the world.

Unfair to you.

Unfair to Satoru.

You can handle the world being unfair to you. It’s a familiar old friend sidling its way along throughout the entirety of your life. Living the shadows, but always there.

Yet looking at Satoru now, it hurts that it’s not fair to him. It hurts that you know you aren’t being fair to him.

It hurts even more when he still offers you his arm, and you still take it. You don’t have the strength to handle this on your own, afraid of losing everything in the face of your grief. So selfishly, you wrap your hand around his strong arm, letting him shoot you his fake smirk.

It makes you angry, though. Angry at yourself for continuing to hold him at a distance while keeping him just close enough to have him there when you needed him. Using him. Using his feelings for you.

You let out a shaky breath as your mind drowns you in doubts. Should you be so angry when he’d used you for so long? When he had done to you far worse than simply keeping you at arms’ length?

It was easier to blame him, to be angry with him, but that wasn’t fair either.

Because the truth is simple. 

You care. You care a whole hell of a lot. Because if you didn’t, then this wouldn’t hurt so bad as it twists and boils in the pit of your stomach. It wouldn’t make you feel like you’re about to wretch.

“You alright?” His voice breaks through your stupor, your eyes lifting to see his cheery smirk.

You frown, but nod.

He hums. “You sure?”

You don’t give him an answer, your brow pulled together as you questioningly narrow your eyes at him. He smirks, jutting his chin out at your fingers, your knuckles white with how tightly you were gripping his arm.

“You’re holding onto me like I’m gonna fly away ‘r something,” he laughs with a teasing lilt.

You blink down at your grip on his arm, relaxing your muscles and easing the tension around his arm, though it didn’t seem to be bothering him all that much. “Sorry. I’m okay.”

He nods in acknowledgment before letting a comfortable silence fall over you both as you make your way towards the school’s main entrance. As you approach, you’re able to make out the figures of Kusakabe, Itadori, Shoko, Yaga, and Choso. Fushiguro is a small distance from the group as well, likely keeping space between himself and Itadori.

As you grow closer, you hear Kusakabe and Yaga discussing the strength of Kenjaku’s barriers in comparison to the barrier surrounding the school, and their concern for the fact that the attacks on the school seemed to be growing in frequency.

You let your hands fall from Satoru’s arm, straightening your posture and steeling your expression as you both arrive at the group. Still, you’re met with pitying stares that only further the shame and sadness you feel.

“He got away,” Satoru comments as eyes turn to him.

Choso nods. “We went after him but he threw himself into a group of humans and we lost track of him,” he explains with a miserable tone.

“Shouldn’t he be dead?” Yaga asks as he turns to face Satoru with crossed arms and a pointed stare.

“I thought he was,” he confirms, though Yaga’s huff of irritation even brings a grimace to Gojo’s face.

“y/n, how are you doing?” Yaga’s voice softens as he turns his attention to you. The pitious tone he uses makes your stomach stir in utter embarrassment as your mouth opens and closes once, twice, words lost on your tongue.

“She’s fine,” Satoru interrupts and for once you’re thankful he’s taking the words from your mouth, but Yaga isn’t so pleased.

“Satoru Gojo, I wasn’t speaking to you. Don’t test me, you’ve done enough lately, or do you want to talk about the incident with the higher-ups now?” Despite the inherent gravity of the subject, his demeanor is that of a parent or teacher scolding a child, and it seems to get to Satoru in such a way as well.

He averts his gaze from Yaga, arms crossing over his chest. “They were asking for it,” he grumbles childishly.

A small smirk makes its way to your lips as Yaga brings a thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose, growing frustrated. He mutters something under his breath about granting him strength before raising a hand in the air, waving it dismissively. “Consider yourself lucky that I’m ending this conversation here, for now,” he warns.

Gojo’s head falls back, mouth open in a child-like silent groan that has you stifling a giggle.

“Let’s get our facts straight,” Yaga ignores Gojo’s little outburst, focusing on the task at hand.

“Kenjaku is using Nanami’s body. He was able to make his way through the barrier and straight to y/n and Gojo, telling them it was a distraction,” Yaga lays out the facts.

“But nothing is missing and no traces of any other curses or curse-users were found,” Kusakabe continues, chewing on a toothpick thoughtfully.

Leaving Gojo’s side, you make your way over to Yuji, who looks a bit shaken. He’s deep in thought, jumping when he notices you beside him. His salmon hair is more disheveled than usual, his playful demeanor replaced with a thoughtful and serious expression.

Your voice is low when you speak with him, Kusakabe and Gojo discussing some details of the encounter behind you. “What are you thinking, Yuji?”

He instinctively brings a hand up to his cheek where Sukuna usually appears. “I just keep thinking about the finger that Cho and I found,” he admits, eyes trained on the grass beneath him. “If they didn’t take it, I don’t know what they could be after.”

“How many fingers are left?”

“Not including the one here, three.”

“Could they have found the other three?”

Yuji weighs the theory against his own thoughts, shrugging. “Why distract us if they’re nowhere near the school?”

Taking a step to the side, you turn your attention to Satoru. His arms are crossed over his broad chest, soft hands rested over each bicep. His gaze is trained on Kusakabe with a serious expression. Though he doesn’t give it away, you recognize that he seems worn out, a look you’re sure you carry as well.

Focusing on the latest attack, if you could even call it that, you wonder if Yuji could be right. How far does his Six Eyes technique allow him to see? Could he in theory have stopped them from getting fingers even if they were far from the school? Why would it matter anyway? At the end of the day, whether Jujutsu Tech gathered them all or the curses did, twenty fingers will always be twenty fingers.

“What if he was lying?” Yuji’s voice breaks you out of your thoughts.

“Hm?”

“They couldn’t kill Gojo on their own in Shibuya and that was without you in the picture, right?” He glances behind you at the eyes now trained on him. “They want you gone.”

“They wanted you to transform,” Kusakabe nods in agreement, running a hand through his short brown hair. The older man huffs, fiddling with the toothpick between his teeth. “They wanted to kill ya while you’re down.”

“Guess we should consider ourselves lucky you didn’t, then,” Yaga grunts, frowning. “What kept you with us this time?”

Slowly, your eyes trail towards Satoru, quickly followed by the steady gazes of the rest of the group. He tries hard to hide it, but the blush that dusts his cheeks is obvious, at least to you. Gingerly, he scratches the back of his undercut in an effort to divert attention away from the growing heat on his features.

To think that Gojo of all people had become your rock, you’re positive no one could expect it. You certainly couldn’t have, even a couple of weeks ago. But as thoughts and memories of earlier that morning flood your mind and your cheeks heat up in a shade similar to his, you can’t help but wonder what the hell the twisting feeling in your stomach is meant to be.

Guilt or confusion, maybe both? You aren’t sure.

All you know is that it feels as though it’s eating you alive, a sickly feeling gnawing at your every limb.

With a knowing expression, Shoko finally chimes in, her finger twirling the end of her hair. “I hate to interrupt, boys, but I’d like to do an exam with y/n.”

Yaga waves his hand dismissively. You catch the way Gojo stares between you both as he watches you wave to Yuji and follow after her. Though you can’t see his expression, you can envision the intense stare behind the black blindfold.

Your shoulders slump as you follow after Shoko, your expression visibly falling.

“You look like you’re about to pass out,” she comments bluntly, shooting you a small smile behind her usual tired expression.

You blink in surprise, chewing on your lip. “Do I?”

“You’re as pale as a ghost,” she confirms, concern etched into her features. The click of a lighter can be heard as she lights a cigarette and brings it to her lips. She pauses after climbing the stairs, leaning over the railing as she takes a long drag of the cigarette. She offers you a drag as well but you shake your head.

Taking a place beside her, she casts you a sidelong glance as she lets out a puff of smoke. From this angle, the destruction to the far half of the school grounds is glaringly obvious and stirs a familiar uneasiness in your chest.

It’s easy to forget that was just over a month ago. Even easier to forget that it was you who caused that damage. Still, it was the one portion of that day you had no recollection of whatsoever. You were just thankful your memories of your final moments with Kento returned to you.

Your eyes drift to the group you’d just left, attention training on Satoru as you reminisce over the morning, which somehow felt like years ago already.

“You two seem to be on better terms lately,” she comments.

You nod slowly, gripping the railing before you. “He decided to stop being insufferable,” you agree with a breathy laugh.

Shoko smiles, her eyes closing as the corners crinkle at your comment. “No more extortion?”

“No more,” you chuckle in agreement. The exhaustion of the morning begins to catch up with you and you slump your shoulders at the feeling, leaning your chin on your arms against the railing.

Sensing your unease, Shoko stubs out the cigarette and makes a motion for you to follow to her office.

The familiar sterile walls and bright lights feel like an assault on your senses as you blink in order to acclimate yourself to the room. You follow Shoko’s silent instruction to sit on the hospital bed as she pats it.

Shoko is silent throughout her testing, eventually determining you were dehydrated and advising you to sleep, which you happily agreed to do once the IV drip had run its course. Given that you were a Vessel, being in a hospital again was a strange feeling, but Miriko insisted dehydration wasn’t something she could heal. As if Shoko’s scolding wasn’t enough, now a dragon was scolding you over your health. Great.

Sitting with her clipboard in hand, Shoko taps the back of her pen against the paper. “It was you, wasn’t it?” She thinks aloud, calm eyes observing your confused expression. “That he brought Suguru to. All those years ago.”

“Oh, Geto?” You ask softly, remembering that Yuta had mentioned he was Gojo and Shoko’s friend. She nods. “That was me,” you confirm, voice small under Shoko’s observant gaze. She bears no scrutiny or malice in her expression, but still you can’t help but feel partially as though she’s silently judging you.

Then again, that isn’t how Shoko is. “What did he go to you for?”

“He asked me to bring Geto’s soul to the afterlife.”

It takes her a moment to process your reply. “Good. I’m glad. He’s safe?” She asks, her voice strained.

“Miriko is the in-between. I don’t know, but I assume he is.” It’s not the most reassuring, but it’s the truth. At least he wasn’t trapped in his body with Kenjaku anymore. That in and of itself was a semblance of peace of mind for you with Kento.

Busying herself with more testing, you let her prod at you as she needs. Listening to your breathing through a stethoscope, you’re both startled as Satoru nonchalantly walks in, ducking through the doorway with a grin that quickly turns to concern at the sight of the IV hooked up to you.

“What’s wrong?” He asks, rushing to your bedside in the most unsubtle fashion you’ve ever seen. You feel your muscles tense as guilt crashes over you again.

“You’re messing with my work, Satoru,” Shoko grumbles, lifting her head as your breath hitches at the sight of the white-haired sorcerer.

Before he has the chance to respond, you interject. “I’m fine,” you assure him.

He frowns, searching your expression for any sign that you’re lying, but when he can’t find one he huffs. “Fine,” he grumbles, turning to leave. He casts you one last glance before he’s out the door.

Shoko rolls her eyes, returning to listening to your breathing. Once satisfied, she leans back in her chair and writes your results on her clipboard. “We gonna talk about that?”

“About what?”

She smirks, leaning forward. “You know I could hear your breathing and heart when he came in, right?”

You pale, if that’s even possible. “Oh.”

“Mhmm.”

“He just scared me,” you lie through your teeth.

“Right,” she agrees, letting up far easier than you expected. She gets to her feet and turns to face the counter, washing her hands as she removes the latex gloves over her hands. “He looks at you the same way he looked at Suguru.”

Your jaw tenses as you fumble with the fabric of your dress on your lap. “Things changed a lot in the last month,” you admit quietly. Shoko eyes you over her shoulder quietly as she lets you continue. “He kissed me this morning.”

Her brow raises, arms crossing over her chest as she turns to face you. Leaning back on the counter behind her, she tilts her head curiously. “You don’t seem very excited considering your heart rate when he walked in.”

Your lips part as you hesitate. “I’m scared,” you admit. She comes to sit on the edge of the bed, her weight causing the thin mattress to dip beneath her. Her presence is oddly comforting and you realize you should have spent more time with her to begin with.

“Why’s that?”

Your chest tightens as you wonder where to begin. Things were scary with Nanami, sure, especially given that there was a decent amount of patience required on his part to ease you into your first relationship in a long time, but with Gojo everything was tenfold.

“I don’t know if I’m ready,” you admit through the sea of emotions plaguing you. “I’m not over Kento yet and this morning… I know it wasn’t him but…” You trail off, eyes trained on a jar full of cotton swabs though you may as well have been staring at the wall.

“It’s not easy to lose someone you love,” she agrees to urge you on.

“I think I feel guilty. Like I’m betraying Ken by moving on so fast,” your voice is barely a whisper and Shoko has to lean in to hear you. She takes a deep breath, nodding slowly.

“He would want you to be happy, you know. He always put others before himself.”

It stings, hearing the words you know already said aloud. You know, you know more than anyone could ever tell you. It doesn’t make it any easier, though. It doesn’t make you feel any less guilty. Worse still, it brings tears to your eyes knowing he would want you to pursue things with Gojo if it meant your happiness.

Bringing a hand up to your face, you rub your temple. It almost gives you a headache simply at the thought of it.

As the IV drip finishes, she stands up from the bed, grabs one of the cotton swabs, and presses it to your arm, using medical tape to secure it. Leaving her hand on your arm for a moment, she stops you from getting up to head out.

“All I’m saying is that he looks like a puppy around you. He has for a while, actually,” she chuckles, a somber glimmer passing through her eyes so quickly you second-guess whether you even saw it. “I know he wasn’t good to you for a while, but he does care a lot.”

You swallow hard, the lump in your throat doing your tired body no favors. Thanking Shoko, you give her a small wave and move to head back to your cabin- Satoru’s cabin.

Really, it had started to feel like yours as well. If you thought about it for longer than a moment, you knew at the end of the day there was a semblance of home returning to your life, something you were certain you wouldn’t feel if not for him- for Satoru.

Where once you had considered your old cottage your home, and to a degree you still did, now your home lived within those around you. Where once your home lived within Nanami and Taro, you’d be a fool to say you weren’t warming up to the idea of Gojo being your home.

Maybe it was worth a shot. Maybe, when the time came, you would be willing to pursue something with him.

Locking eyes with him through the kitchen window of the little cabin you were heading towards, a small smile easily finds its place on your lips like clockwork.

–

The past few days with Satoru had been… odd. He didn’t seem to know what to do with himself after you had told him you weren’t over Kento. He was overbearing at times, practically attempting to drown you in water after finding that you’d been dehydrated, while other times you would catch him staring while being strangely distant with you.

Talks with Shoko helped and had become a nightly occurrence and a good opportunity to give both you and Gojo some time apart. You figured the both of you needed it, given the circumstances of your relationship.

You made an effort to try to find more time for your own hobbies as well, returning to tending your garden outside the old cabin that had once been your home. It brought with it a sense of calm which you were grateful for.

With the sun setting overhead, its warm rays leaving room for the cooler night air, you breathe out a sigh of relief at the sight of a full bed of flowers before you. Your eyes drift over the beautiful summer colors and you find yourself gently running your fingers through the petals of a gorgeous yellow peony that had bloomed far larger than the rest.

Though you’d seen him making his way towards you, you look up with a soft smile as Satoru’s long afternoon shadow stands tall over the bed of flowers before you.

“Thought I’d find you out here,” he smiles, white lashes fluttering from behind his dark shades. You preferred when he wore his shades, allowing you to see his striking blue eyes.

“Am I so predictable?” You giggle, not expecting an answer. He sits down at your side with his arms holding his knees, looking over the array before you. His gaze lands on the peony in your hand, planted soundly beside a peace lily.

“What kind of flower is that?”

“It’s a peony,” you tell him, removing your hand from the blossom. It sways back and forth in tandem with the rest of the buds in the breeze.

“Is it your favorite?”

“No,” you sigh, a bittersweet smile gracing your lips. But it was Kento’s. You don’t dare say it, but Satoru can see it in your smile.

“Which one is your favorite?” He asks, clearing his throat.

Humming, you glance over the array of summer blossoms sitting before you. Each one has a different meaning, carefully chosen to be part of the flowerbed before you for one reason or another.

“I think I like the blue Hydrangeas best,” you decide, pointing to a stem with dozens of flowers bundled at the top in a gorgeous little bouquet of their own. Blue at the top, they fade to a purple and eventually a pink at the bottom of the stem due to how you had watered them. It was a fun little trick you had learned with them that your father had taught you that he had learned from your mother. Though you knew next to nothing about her, it was one of the only things you had to hold onto from her.

“Flowers all mean something, right?” He asks, satisfied with himself when you nod affirmatively. “What about that one?” He asks, staring pointedly at the Hydrangeas.

“Beauty, prosperity, forgiveness, and good intentions.”

He tilts his head at them curiously before his gaze trails slowly across the rest of the blossoms. “What about those ones?” He points to a red blossom tucked in the back of the bed with similar petals to the peony.

“That’s a carnation. They symbolize deep love and affection,” you say softly, looking up at the way his eyes shine as he listens to you.

Sure enough, his questions devolve into a quiz. Questions about dahlias, begonias, tulips, magnolias, and finally landing on the peace lily. The first flower you always planted, which now sits proudly alongside the marigolds. The two flowers that brought you some sort of bittersweet peace.

“That’s a peace lily,” you tell him as he reaches out to gently run a single finger along the lily. They have a much different texture and look from the rest of the flower bed, and very rarely did they go with many of the arrays you put together for yourself, but nonetheless they were important to you.

Of course, Satoru asks what it means as he delicately removes his finger from the fragile bloom.

“Serenity in life, remembrance. Peace,” you tell him simply, staring at the resilient bud as it sways after leaving his fingers. You let out a small breath at the sight of the flower, averting your gaze from Satoru’s, ever watchful.

Usually you couldn’t get him to shut up, but for once his silence speaks the volumes that he doesn’t.

“What does it mean to you, y/n?”

You take a moment to consider his question, chewing on your lip. Sensing your unease at his question, he shuffles himself a bit closer to you. Despite the past few days being strange at best, his presence still gives you comfort and your heart warms knowing he’s trying to give you both the comfort and time you desire.

“I plant them in honor of the mother whose life I took. It- It was an accident,” you stammer over your words as you quickly try to explain yourself. He leans himself against you lightly, reassuringly.

“The one the higher-ups mentioned?”

You nod slowly, the memory a permanent scar on your conscience. “I didn’t know about my technique. My dad passed away and I accidentally awakened Miriko and…” you trail off, mouth opening and closing pitifully like a fish as you shake your head, staring down at your hands in your lap. Metaphorically bloodstained.

“It was an accident, it happens,” Gojo assures you, moving a hand to rub your back gently. You relax into his touch, your shoulders falling slack. Sliding his hand from your back to your shoulder, he pulls you into him. His warmth is a welcome contrast to the air that had long grown cool as the moon began to rise before you both, illuminating his hair and lashes in the most mesmerizing way.

“I know. Accident or not, I still orphaned a boy, though.”

A frown pulls at the corner of Gojo’s lips.

“I did too,” he admits. You stiffen in his grasp, turning to examine his expression but you can’t gleam anything from it. “Megs’ dad killed a girl around the first-years’ age when Megs was like… four or somethin’.” Running a hand through his hair to move it from his vision, he lets out a tense breath and you realize suddenly he’s only telling you this to ease your own guilt.

“He tried to kill me and-” he pauses. Suguru. He doesn’t need to say it. “Well, ‘tried’ might be an understatement,” he chuckles dryly. You stare up at him in shock, looking him over as though he was a ghost. No, his warmth is real.

“Wh-?”

“He killed me. Killed Amanai and her Guardian, would have killed Suguru if he wasn’t afraid of his technique. He was somethin’ else.”

Your jaw slacks at the revelation. He’d… died? Even with the Limitless technique? As much as you hated when everyone called him The Strongest, the name was fitting. It was hard to imagine a world without him, a world where he could fall.

Gojo runs his hand through his hair, this time more intently. He tilts his head so you can see the faintest hint of a scar that never quite fully healed even through his reverse cursed technique. It sits just below his hairline, in the shape of a jagged blade. You gasp at the sight, wide-eyed as you gingerly raise your hand up to his forehead. The skin is only faintly uneven beneath the pads of your fingers.

With his arm still holding you firmly to him, you feel his pulse quicken at your touch. You meet his longing gaze, biting your lip hesitantly at the sudden realization of how close you are to him. That very same longing reflects from deep within you, just barely visible beneath the cloud of guilt and uncertainty. And it’s that same haze that causes you to pull back your fingers, setting your hands delicately in your lap.

Despite your hesitance, Satoru is kind and patient. It’s not something you’d ever thought to be characteristic of him, but since the day you’d admitted to him that you weren’t over Kento, he’d remained steadfast in what he’d said.

He would wait for you. He would give you time.

“I think my favorites are the red ones,” he blurts out in an effort to spare you both of the awkward silence. He never was one for silence, after all. Parsing between the three species of red ones, you let the guilt and seriousness fade as you’re pulled back into conversation.

“Which ones?”

“The, um,” he pauses with narrowed eyes, “Dahlias?”

Your eyes light up at the choice, thrilled and maybe even a bit surprised that he remembered what they were called. “That’s a great choice!” You trill in a sing-song voice, all previous sorrows forgotten as you excitedly twirl in his direction.

“Yeah?” He tilts his head with a genuine smile as he urges you on.

Before you know it, you’re diving into the flowers’ origins, history, how to care for them, and the other colors that can decorate their petals.

“-they’re from the family of Aster flowers, native to Mexico-”

“-they come in about forty different species, and Japan isn’t a great place for them to grow, but during the summer they thrive-”

“-and they usually symbolize elegance and growth, but the red ones you like generally mean perseverance-”

Not once does he interrupt, not once does his gaze ever leave your excited face, nor does he show any disinterest. He listens through your entire excited explanation, not daring to say a word in case you might notice the endless drabble falling from your lips. He savors every moment of your genuine happiness.

As your prattle comes to a close, your cheeks redden as you realize that the Satoru you had come to know who rarely if ever shut up, is silent. If anything, you had taken his place, launching into a rave over flowers, which he surely didn’t care about-

“Tell me about those ones,” he points to a Flamingo flower, the only one to survive the unideal conditions of the Japanese summers for it, and your jaw slacks slightly as you stare at the genuine boyish grin creasing his cheeks with handsome dimples.

The sun is all but set at this point, a chill breeze pushing Satoru’s hair over his vision as he pointedly shakes his head to clear his vision, and yet here he is, asking you about flowers.

Your demeanor softens and you smile gratefully at him. Whether he does genuinely care, whether he’ll even remember a damn thing about the flowers you could barely see in the basking moonlight spreading over the horizon, you couldn’t be sure.

One way or the other, this moment felt like the only thing on earth that mattered.

Noticing your uncertainty at launching into another explanation, he tilts his chin and nods reassuringly, and so you proceed to tell him about the frail flower.

It’s strange how natural it feels to talk to him. As though you hadn’t fought for months on end over every little thing, as if you had known one another your whole lives. Like second nature.

Staring at the lone pink Flamingo flower, you realize just how serious he was when he said he would wait for you.

Here, in this fleeting moment of genuine calm and contentment, Satoru was exactly what you needed.

You smile up at him genuinely, a small jovial sigh parting your lips. “Thanks, Satoru.”

“For what?”

“Letting me go on about flowers,” you chuckle, a bit embarrassed over how long the two of you had been sitting in the patch of grass.

“I could listen to you talk all day.” His eyes are lidded, gleaming with something akin to adoration.

You purse your lips, your heart fluttering in your chest. Before you can convince yourself not to, you move forward and press a chaste kiss to his cheek, pushing yourself to your feet almost immediately.

His wide eyes meet yours with wonder as you offer him your hand. He takes it, moving to stand at your side as you chat about tomorrow’s lesson, his tall figure blocking the breeze from hitting your bare shoulders as he knowingly shields you from the wind.

As you arrive at the cabin and he bids you goodnight, you miss the way he watches you until you’ve closed the door behind you with a longing albeit affectionate look.

You don’t see the way he sneaks back out of the cabin, apologizing under his breath for picking one of your carefully tended flowers.

You miss the way he delicately and carefully pulls out a tall glass (he doesn’t have a vase, but he’s trying his best), and fills it with water.

But while you did miss all the small details, in the morning when you wake up and hear his gentle snores coming from his room, you don’t miss the way there’s a gorgeous red Babylon Carnation sitting in the center of the kitchen table.

Heat gathers at the base of your neck, spreading to your cheeks and up to the tips of your ears. Your heart thumps hard against the cage of your chest as your fingers delicately run across the crisp petals before you that hold more meaning than you’re ready to begin to unpack.

Deep love and affection.

series masterlist || main masterlist || previous chapter || next chapter

a/n || awhhh i had soooo much fun writing that final scene 😭 i hope you enjoyed! likes, reblogs and comments super appreciated ♡

[monarisse]

— The Hex paradox [arthur nightingale x gn!drifter]

Arthur asks, why are you still here.

You can't believe that he thinks you see them as pets.

SFW, second pov, hurt/comfort, misunderstanding, angst with a happy ending | 3.6k

ao3

There is a flex of a hand — meat under the skin is terribly tense, just like their owner. Long unclipped nails, map of the old scars with pigment just a little bit lighter than everything else. Further: burn, raw marks from laser. Further: a contaminated virus from the elder beast of Deimos. Further-

This is just a body that holds your consciousness when there are no more metallic constructs of dead people that should be controlled. It was... actually, not so horrible to unfold the truth behind the creations of Ballas. Or others. There was always something more than you in these turned-to-be-bones metallic wires and engines. Always lurking in shadow; just not enough to be found, but enough to feel the sudden twitch of a cobalt fingers or unknown step of feet. Sometimes, even more: dance with a weapon, full of joy; murmur in an unknown language; search for something behind the back. Unnecessary. Unasked. Unprovoked. But... familiar, almost to the pain in your drifting mind.

It's ironic — that they all called you The Drifter. Not The Operator — not anymore, at least. Even if there was someone, in this time of the universe, who would gladly use this title on you, it would not be the truth. And you will not allow it. Hundreds of years after all of this, there would be a child with angry eyes and a thirst for power, who changed too much and too little to be completely you again. So you give them the future and keep yourself in the past — it seems right. Especially because (it's ill-fitting, it's wrong, and it's foolish, but deep down it's what makes them and you one person), The Operator can't travel here. They ask in rare times together how it was.

And for you, it's never "was." It's still here.

———

After winter, spring and summer together, they became steadier, softer. Smoother. Happier. Amir sleeps better. Angered only by some unnecessary presence before, now Quincy finds serenity, covering your back on missions. Aoi plays on the borrowed piano from the music store, and Eleanor whispers in your mind stories that she read in the past about Great Britain. Sharpened on the edges Lettie, today holds her hand to yours, so her beasts could crawl on the skin of this body with hushed squeaks, smelling with their little noses acid and kerosene, that scaldra pours on you every day. Lettie clicks her tongue in disappointment when she sees a new wound on the meat of shoulder — because in this body you can't heal as fast as they, and it's hypocritical to come out of frame when they're — the Mighty Hex, batch of soldiers of the future, your Friends, in the end — still here. And-

It's so. Fucking. Funny. A snicker falls from your lips before you can stop it.

Lettie furrows her eyebrows. In her eyes — something eats the previous light joke and fills it with thick tension.

"What did he do?" Anita squeaks, runs to her siblings, and you just blink.

"Who?"

Oh, it's not a secret. You... can guess who she talks about. And Lettie knows it.

"¡Pendejo! You know who. Don't play an owl with me."

Sharp teeth of the future crash into each other. Smile on these lips — sugary sweet from lies. This is not something new. How many people "The Great Hero" of the New War has deceived around the years of the Narmer regime?

"Nothing. Why you-"

She smacks your arm.

"Shut up. Don't want to hear your explanations. His brooding takes its toll on you," she painstakingly cleans her fingers from void-touched blood. From all of them, Eleanor is one who can feel lies, but Leticia is... another deal. She doesn't have the need to hear your thoughts. Magic of doctors, you guess.

It's strange that she cares about you. After all, these six are a team. And the seventh angle doesn't belong in the hexagon, even if it forces itself inside.

But, for Lettie, you let it slide. Hold her palm in yours and blink a little bit slower.

"I take care of that. Promise"

———

You know it — even too much of something good can be poisonous. Like trivia: this body was not ready for the delicious food that they have here, so on one night with beer and Hex you threw up in the bathroom on the second floor. But... Compare this and... your genuine worry for Nightingale seems like a wrong play of komi, where no one could win.

Worse: you remember Umbra. His blind eye and this wordless trust between him and The Operator. This wordless care that travels with them everywhere. How could you not feel envy when this child not only found the way from Zariman 10-0, but even saved the frame that could think without Tenno? Well, now you have protoframes. They joke with you in their bones, and they help you when it becomes unbearable — this world, this time, this loop. So why, when you stretch out your hand only how you can, it turns out... It is too much. Or too little.

And... what even happens in this thick skull of his, when he abruptly leaves a conversation on KIM, then agrees on Amir's play and, after... drowns you in questions?

Broadsword

So what is it? Pity? Or are you stupid as well as crazy?

Broadsword

Stop dodging! Why. Are. You. Still. Here?!

There is a reminiscence of a dull ache from Duviri. Another swing of an axe above the head. Endless swirl of colors. And buzzing in the skull. This body trembles, unable to comprehend all emotions from a feverish mind, and you pull your hand to clean your face from... something. Anything.

How could he even ask this shit? Like you some bystander that already left them after a week of knowing, just to start a new adventure far far away. Like you didn't search abandoned markets for his favorite beer, didn't bring special ammunition to Quincy, didn't practice with Aoi and Amir on the transmission of intel. Just some guest, not important to add in their ranks.

Nidus quietly shrieks when you transfer back to him. It is something of a habit. You can't even feel the exact moment when his broad frame already exits the backroom, too busy with boiling emotions inside your mind (the biggest question there: what if Kid would be able to help them without this mess of emotions. What if Hex liked the Operator more?).

Höllvania Central Mall never sleeps. Especially now, when there are not seven, but many more breathing shadows waiting for the other day to live, so... It is a little bit of awakening — see disbelief and caution in the eyes of bystanders when the form of Nidus makes his way from the second floor to the first in one jump. But still not enough to stop the heavy steps of the infested frame.

He's in his usual spot, crouched between some ammo for his rifle and computer, and Arthur... seems a little bit surprised. Like it wasn't you who he wrote just seconds ago.

Pity. He called your carefully crafted relationships with the Hex "pity." And you, yourself: crazy and stupid.

"You could just-" There is something more behind his dazed expression, some dark undertone, but it is not about him. Not anymore.

"How could you," Nidus freezes like a mannequin in the doorframe. This body constructs itself right against Nightingale; scarred fingers cling to his shoulder to feel something else beside the usual eerie words of KIM-messages and hushed phrases under the sick sky. His brows rise up even more now, "How could you even think of something like that!"

Arthur's lips twitch.

Prince of fire Lodun, in all his ugly glory, paints your mind with blood and red.

"It's bothering me already enough time to just let it slide," his words twist something in the pit of your stomach, and Lodun's voice screeches somewhere around the frontal lobe. He shouldn't say such words to you. It is blasphemy. Lie. His hand rips your own from himself almost like you hurt him, and the scar around the palm that he left you with starts to pulsate, "You walk around the Mall like everything is okay and we're not just some dead meat to your future."

He is poisonous. Some sort of divine punishment for you, as if you didn't suffer enough for years and years of survival. There are no more light jokes, no more strange, vigorous words with the undertone of something bigger. Only a stern glance on this body.

Prince Lodun fist his finger and crack another hole in your mind walls.

Body of the Drifter winces.

"Are you fucking kidding?" teeth clacks. The jaw's strained to its limit. All of this time together, just drained in the sink, "What do you think? That I stayed here just to forget about you all in the next minute?"

He doesn't need to say it aloud. The answer is written on his face already, and it's making Lodun more loud in your mind.

"How many times have you already done that?"

Lodun roars. This head is pounding.

"What?!"

It's unbelievable. He looks at you with such a sardonic expression, as if he knows that you did something so bad that you even can't stand with him in one room, and... you want to go right in his head to fucking show Arthur how terribly wrong he is.

The worst of all: he keeps going.

"It's convenient, isn't it? To play "friends" with people you can just leave behind," his grip tightens, and Arthur steps forward. A little more and it would become a fight.

You hold back. Just a little bit, but the patience in this body already wears itself.

"So that's what's stuck in your head?" You snarl, "Not bad enough, don't you think?" One step to him, and you feel — one more, and you can crash in his metallic chest. Eyes squint, "Make me a villain more, why not? Maybe I should take control of one of you and dispose of everyone else, huh?" Luscinia weeps in the corner of your mind with these harsh words, but you are unable to hear her — spiral of Loduns anger in its all-power captured you. There is something of a hurt in Arthur's face. But you only use his own method on him. It's almost like he didn't think of this — that you could use his friends against him or even make him a bystander in the nonexistent massacre.

"You can," his voice drops lower. Grip tightens even more — soon bones in this body would be broken by his fingers. "So I advise you to stop pretending like we're important to you," Nightingale bends his head, and you can see the hues of his blind eye for the first time, "and put us all out of this misery."

You're tugging this hand away — alas, it's not working, and a wave of dull pain passes through the body. He never thought that it was as hard for you as for them.

Luscinia crying. The Sorrowful Soprano of Duviri weeping like a mother who lost something too precious for her, and with Loduns anger, it's too much to feel in one moment. Your mind makes itself the battleground of the old Tales.

You want to say: maybe you're right.

You want to say: maybe I should just leave things like they are.

But... the Hex already made themselves important for you. So much that you gladly would stay here forever, with this ancient technology and people of the past. The Operator has their people. Why shouldn't you have yours?

You take a deep breath. Close tired eyes.

"If you think that I should go, I'll do it." There is something too heavy in these words, so you can't raise this head anymore, with your gaze a little bit blurry. Not from tears, "You all became too important for me, so if it would be better for Hex, I'll be gone to my time."

You know: without you, they will all be dead in the New Year of 1999. The reactor will blow up, and Arthur will bleed on the floor of the radiated room, near the bodies of Aoi and Amir.

And you can just feel the power of Spiral, to send it all back in January, to start again.

"Don't make yourself a martyr. You can leave when you want."

That's it.

You snap.

"My fucking Sol," you twitch this head, "you are as dense as Razorback," Nightingale becomes a little bit puzzled by the unknown comparison, but you continue, "What should I say? "Sorry, Arthur, I stayed here because I know that without me you all will die." Your voice becomes louder and louder; it breaks in some words, and you feel: the dam was broken, "And I developed feelings for you, and all of this embarrassing flirting was so bad because I had never done it before? You know, because I was trapped all of my youth in an endless loop of my own death, and I didn't even think that I could feel something like that"," his grip finally becomes loose, and you break the palm from him, only to point the finger at Arthur, "Everyone knows about it. I thought that you-"

Wait. You thought that he already knew about your feelings for him — it was so obvious that Eleanor even asked you not to think about her brother on united missions. But... You shut this mouth and looked at Arthur. He's... flagger-basted. No more anger in his eyes, only genuine surprise, and — worst of all — he continues to keep silent.

"Great," you roll this eyes. Fuck it. Maybe he knew, just feelings weren't mutual, and Nightingale didn't acknowledge it, to leave things as they were. But now you spelled it all aloud, and there is only one way to turn it back. Maybe... no. You don't want it.

Sol, you should just go to the backroom and decay in some corner.

You take a deep breath.

"I'll be going to throw up somewhere on the second floor from embarrassment," you transfer back to Nidus, "don't message me," and head towards the escalator.

Worst: he didn't even stop you.

———

Quincy screams in your comm and it's almost unbearable how he just throws a stash of Scaldra supply on the garage floor, just to head back to civilians in the old supermarket without another word to you.

Blew up the tank without care of flying too far away to not be hurt; melted one of the other stashes; almost got Kalymos dead. You've gone more hectic. But it's still better than lying on a couch with nausea and a sorrowful expression (it's still better than nothing — you remind yourself — you still feel something, and it's better than apathy).

Funny: if the Kid could see you, they would be furious. Throwing some tantrum about how such a mindless thing would wreck you, The Drifter, to some pathetic ordinary human. They were always like this: more hard than you, more prideful. They could chew Arthur's words and twist them so much that the man would not be sure what he even wants anymore. But the Operator is too far away. And you are too arrogant to travel back to them. Lotus would calm you down, embrace you in a motherly hold; however... you don't want it right now. One thing that surely helps: killing. Scaldra or Techrot — doesn't matter.

"I'm worried about you," tells Aoi when the sharp talons of Garuda give her a package full of CDs, "I heard your argument with Arthur." She seems a little bit sheepish, but... you know, that you actually can trust her. Of all Hex, Aoi is the most understandable. You can tell her all your worries, and she wouldn't laugh or write off your feelings. "It's hard with him sometimes, but Arthur cares about us all," of course he is, "you included."

You hum. The sound comes a little bit muffled.

"I'm sure." No, you're not, but there is no need to talk about it right now. Aoi squints her eyes in disbelief. "Sorry, Aoi. It's between me and him and i-"

"Drifter," his voice is too loud in Aoi's lair, but you don't turn to Nightingale. Maybe he will disappear if you don't acknowledge his presence. "We need to talk," Morohoshi shows some kind of gesture that you don't recognize, with her big finger pointed out, and she shakes her head, smiling.

If there were only two of you, you'd find a reason to just vanish in the air.

Damn. Why is it harder than killing an archon with a bow?

"Alright," you sign. Garuda turns around to Excalibur and he is already heading somewhere in an unknown destination.

What does he want to say? That he made a decision to stay with you on friendly terms so that you could save Hex's lives? That he'll save them by himself? Good luck with that. You'll still be here, even if he wants to banish you from others, just not in his line of sight. And when clocks turn 23:56 without catastrophe, you'll let them go and transfer yourself back to Loid, to solve problems of Deimos.

It's some sort of warehouse — you've never been here before, and it's strange how music from the hall becomes only disoriented muffles when Arthur closes the door. You stand a little bit farther from him than usual — not to make yourself comfortable here.

Arthur leans on some kind of cabinet.

Heavy silence falls on you two.

And when you think that this was a bad idea — to come here with him — Arthur starts talking.

"You know that all my life I was a military man," he spins that damn sword — Arthur's voice... not so loud. He speaks almost carefully, like his words already were chosen before this talk, and... you don't know what to think about. Emotion without name, without personification in Tales of Duviri, born in a pit of stomach, "and... I think I was ready to leave some things behind," he's not looking at you; his gaze stops on scratches on the floor, "because there was not enough time, or... I didn't try to understand others more."

You gulp. Garuda's scales tremble.

"And I tend to search for enemies where there aren't any." Finally, Arthur looks at you. There is more than tiredness from endless nights; quiet longing, a hint of uncertainty, something... tender.

He sighs.

"And," Arthur chuckles, and you grit your own teeth, thrashing about to step from Garuda or stay in her bones, "I'm not even entirely human. I mean, look at me," he gestures at the metal skin of his body, "not a usual choice of the mass."

Still, it's better to talk face to face. Especially on topics like that, you make a decision in one moment, to reappear beside him in another.

"Arthur," your own voice strained with hoarse hesitation, "you're a good person. You shouldn't talk about yourself like that." There is a hint of a smile in the corner of his lips, and Arthur blinks a little bit slower.

"You're always saying such things that give me hope." Spinning of his blade comes to an end, and the warehouse becomes more... steady. Peaceful.

Nightingale clears his throat.

"Did you mean it?" comes almost in a whisper, "that you have... feelings. For me."

You tear your gaze from him and put it down, not able to look in his eyes. Yes. It is definitely harder than killing an archon.

Fingers dip in the elbows.

"Yes."

Nothing more. Just a short, clear answer to put any misunderstanding behind.

Remarkably, the stomach stops swirling. All of this body became... calm, like all the worries just disappeared with this one word. Even if Arthur doesn't feel the same, you are glad that you two talked about it. Finally, you can open a new page in-

"It's mutual."

What?

You snap this head to him, and, for the first time in an eternity, you see Arthur smiling. Without some undertone in it, without pressure. Just a clear, happy smile on his scarred face, and you even see some little dimples on his cheeks.

And, maybe it's too early and you should wait some time to do such things, but these hands — your hands — reach out to him, to bury your fingers in his hair and press an uncertain but full-of-burning-emotions kiss to his lips.

It's raw — skin to skin, first too gentle to feel something more than the texture of others, but with every passing moment, all of this bottling adoration for him seeps through the motion. And Arthur answers you, laying his metallic palm in the crook of your neck, to deepen the kiss — he opens his mouth, presses you to himself more, to finally give you something that you wanted too long to confess.

In reality, it's still better than in imagination.

When there is not enough air in your lungs, when your shuddered inhale mixes with his own and both of you break away for a moment, you press your forehead to Arthur's, holding onto his shoulder.

"You know," he starts after a moment of silence, with a voice a little bit rough on the edges. You open your eyes and move your head a little bit to look at him once more. Cold fingers start to play with the strands of your hair. "If someone had told me that I would want to kiss someone from the future who trespassed my mind, I think I would kill them," Arthur breathlessly laughing and-

"Sol, you're unbelievable." You smack his shoulder and move to get out from his grip, but Nightingale presses you even more into himself, and you feel how his laughter starts to seep through your bones.

"You're stuck with me now. No refunds, sweets." Arthur pressed a chaste kiss on the crown of your head, and... you hug him, closing your eyes back.

The Harbinger of Joy, Mathilda, smiles for the first time in what feels like eternity.

[imagine-lcorp]

Having Arachnid Powers and Dating Lena Luthor Would Include...

Request

@sandwichitodemilanesa could you please write what would include dating lena, being a kind of spider woman? probably have gotten your power because of Lena's dad or brother experiments to make a superhuman but now you're trying to be a super friend and save the world . thanks  you so much <3

A/N: Hello y'all, sorry for being MIA, honestly adulthood is kinda sucking my soul, but as I've said before I'm still around. This time doing this little piece that was such fun honestly, also I love sandiwichitos de milanesa so I just couldn't ignore it. Thank you so much for the request and I hope you enjoy it! <3

Lena Luthor x Superhero Fem!R/Arachnid Powers/Word Count: 1,388

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

Your story starting the first time Lena ever saw you, you were on the news, stopping a bank robbery.

You were using nothing but a black hoodie, grey pants, a ski mask, and a pair of worn out shoes, and had disappeared before Supergirl could arrive.

The cameras spotted you swinging your way out through the building of National City, using what at first she imagined were hook-shots.

Like the rest of the city, she started seeing you more often on the news with growing curiosity as you helped all citizens.

The news outlets trying to come up with names for you; "The Human Spider", "The Web Slinger", "The Wall Crawler", "Arachnid Woman".

Your first close encounter with Lena was during a supervillian attack on L-Corp. The top floors were crumbling while Supergirl was fighting and you appeared, saving all the people from the falling debris, including her.

You carried her in your arms as you used your webs to pull you down to the ground, keeping her safe but leaving before she could say anything.

She and the whole DEO searching for you after that, wanting to know who you were and where you came from.

Lena investigating you but coming to dead ends, trying to understand you and your powers from what she sees in the news and DEO reports.

Losing hope after many months only for you to swing to her office balcony one night as she looked down the city.

"I believe you and your friends have been looking for me."

"Mostly me, but yes."

"What for?"

"I wanted to thank you, for saving my life."

Distrusting Lena initially due to personal reasons and avoiding further contact but slowly getting used to her as you came to her aid several more times.

"We should stop meeting in life threatening situations, Miss Luthor."

"We certainly should, and I still don't know your name."

"I guess you can call me (Y/N), for now."

Warming up to her and even visiting her a few times at her office. Always reaching her floor by crawling on the side of her building or swinging with your webs to avoid being spotted.

You always work this late, Miss Luthor?

I could ask the same.

You know what they say, crime never sleeps.

Lena noticing more and more of how your powers work, even making you a suit to help you out, leaving it on her balcony with a little note after leaving early from work one day.

Smiling at the gesture and the news making noise about your new look the next day, giving you new superhero names and such.

Going to her office more often and starting to enjoy your small conversations with her and the balcony kind of becoming your meeting place.

Finally building enough trust to tell her who you were and explain how you got your powers.

Telling her you had been very sick, almost too far gone a few years back, when her brother offered you some sort of experimental treatment for your illness. You accepted and Lex brought you to Luthorcorp.

Little did you know, her brother had been running illegal and dangerous human experiments in there.

You had woken up in a cryosleep chamber years later in a secret facility, as you had been the only survivor of his experiments and the only one who seemed to assimilate your new given powers correctly.

"I had nothing and nowhere to go but I didn't want to use my powers to take advantage of people."

Lena offering you a place to stay and helping you go back on track with your life.

Supergirl and Alex also offering you a place in the DEO but refusing as places like that bring you bad memories but offering your help back in case they need it.

Having a bit of trouble adapting your new life with the superhero gig going on but Lena helping you as best as she can with everything you need.

"What if I say I need a million dollars?"

Lena discovering your funny dorky side.

Your relationship with Lena growing over time as she helps you settle as the newest heroine of National City.

Lena helping you design your supersuit and inventing new devices for you.

"I think I need to come up with a superhero name. People are starting to call me 'The Tarantula' and 'Black Widow'."

"Mmh, maybe you would like something more classic?"

"Like what?"

"How about… 'Arachne'?"

Her choosing your new name and going along with it.

Visiting her regularly when the city seems calmer and conversing for hours in her balcony.

Developing a soft spot for her and finally inviting her to move with you through the city.

"You know I have a driver and a car, right?"

"Swinging is faster, you can avoid a lot of traffic."

Lena actually enjoying the rides with you, although only the short ones.

Lena introducing you to the Superfriends.

"So, spider powers, uh? What's that exactly? Extra eyes? Extra legs? Can you stick to any surface?"

"No extra limbs as far as I'm aware…and I suppose I can stick to anything, uh, so far?"

"Cool. And the web, does it come from-?"

"Alex, stop."

"I'm just asking. What? As if you aren't curious too."

Lena helping you train and taking the chance to analyze and help you with your own powers.

She realizing she worries about you the more you get involved in fights to protect National City, particularly when Kara isn't in town.

She being the one to patch you up at your place when you don't want to stay at the DEO.

"You should see the other guy. The other guy, in this instance, being a killer croc."

Lena visiting your place and spending more time with you outside her office and the DEO.

Putting more attention to her and her safety when a fight or battle breaks lose.

Realizing after many of those you like her more than you think and going to her balcony one night to confess your feelings.

Lena admitting the same and being happy about it as you ask her to go on a date with you.

Spending your first date with Lena watching the sunset from the highest place of the city after a rooftop picnic.

Lena making sure to leave L-Corp early to spend more time with you.

Helping each other when there are criminals on the loose and being very protective of Lena if there's any after her.

Upside down kisses.

Taking her to dates by swinging around the city and her offering her limousine from time to time as a way to spoil you.

Making it official and the Superfriends being really supportive and happy for you.

Being awkward and nerdy around each other.

Very interesting moments in bed.

Grabbing food or coffee for her any chance you can so you can visit her at her office.

Dates on her office balcony also becoming a regular thing.

Sticking upside down out of her window and knocking at it at the end of her office hours to take her home.

Enjoying swinging around the city just to keep her clinging to you.

"You better hold on tight, spider-monkey."

"Is that a Twilight reference? I shouldn't have let Kara convince us to watch those."

Lots of game nights with the Superfriends and always teaming up with Lena.

Lena being your unofficial handler and she always being on your side whatever happens on your fights and missions.

You always supporting Lena and her ideas, but knowing when to call her out when things feel out of hand.

She doing the same with you, particularly when you feel responsible for everyone.

"I'm sorry, (Y/N), sometimes the hardest thing about this is you can't always save everybody."

Hugs so tight and long they feel like home.

Leaving Lena huge messages around different spaces of the city written with your web. Mostly hearts with her initial in the middle.

Being really close and intimate on your alone moments.

Always coming to aid the Superfriends when they need you or teaming up with Alex and the DEO.

Lena spoiling you with new gadgets and even making you a new suit with nano-tech.

"Like Kara's, but way cooler."

"Oh yes, but don't let her hear you say that."

[vynegar]

vyn 5th birthday ssr, part one

so… it has (yet again) been almost a year and a half since my last translation. honestly i didn’t expect to be back either since i’ve been taking a hiatus from reading CN server cards, so this is a surprise to me too! there were just some parts of this story i really liked and wanted to translate, so here we are. i hope you enjoy!

disclaimer (there is an extra one): this is a fan translation and i am not fluent in chinese, so keep in mind that there will be mistakes. please also note that although i’m translating this story, i don’t necessarily agree with everything that’s said in the story or with how it handles certain topics (mainly regarding the justice system and mental illness). feel free to let me know if you have questions, concerns, or comments.

do not repost without explicit permission. if you want to quote this or reference parts of the translation, credit and link back to me.

check my masterlist for more of my analysis/translations.

timestamps go along with the card video here. it’s not mine, please support the uploader ShiroNaya by liking/commenting/subscribing. also note that while the video uses the S-CN dub, the text is T-CN, so the on-screen text may have slight differences with the dub and my translation.

[PART ONE]

[0:31] Themis Law Firm

It was lunch hour, and the drowsy atmosphere spread through the office like a virus. Sunlight blurred the words on my screen until they were hard to distinguish. My thoughts were starting to wander, as the red circle I had drawn on my desktop calendar looked especially bright.

MC: (Come to think of it, it’s almost Vyn’s birthday…)

Last year we were stuck in Svart because of the Appointment Ceremony, but this year things were quiet. However, I couldn’t be sure if this was simply the quiet before the storm, or if Eirik had truly understood Vyn’s resolve after we escaped…

MC: (Either way… last year was tumultuous, but this year we should be able to peacefully celebrate Vyn’s birthday. Maybe I should ask him what his thoughts are…)

I unlocked my phone. Figuring that Vyn was probably still taking his afternoon nap, I instead started to search restaurants he might be interested in…

Kiki: Huh!? Is this real?!

The quiet office broke out into commotion; Kiki’s shout startled me so much I almost dropped my phone.

Kiki: MC, look at this.

Before I could react, my vision was completely obstructed by a phone screen Kiki reached over to show me.

???: I, Zheng Yan, have had my life ruined by false charges! My family was torn apart, and now they’re all dead! Do I really deserve all this?! Yes, I’ve made mistakes. But if this is all just karma, then where’s the karma for the people who harmed me?!

Kiki was showing me a livestream of a middle-aged man standing on a rooftop. His face was haggard, his hair was mostly white, and he made no attempt to conceal his pain and despair. The hoarse shouting was scattered to the fierce winds.

Zheng Yan: You’re all good people, but I… I just don’t want to live anymore!

MC: What?!

The man stepped over the railing. His cumbersome body seemed like he might lose his balance at any moment, causing several more people in the office to cry out in alarm.

MC: Is he livestreaming his suicide?!

Kiki: Yes. He’s only just started, but the stream already has over a million hits.

A livestreamed suicide made for a shocking headline. Before long, the law firm was filled with continuous sound of the man’s laments.

Zheng Yan: My son is just a boy, but because we didn’t have the money for his treatment, all he could do in the end was just wait at home to die. When he was in so much pain he couldn’t sleep, I was in prison. When he was on his deathbed crying out for his dad, I was still in prison! I’m despicable. I should just die! I’m sorry, Xiao Zhuo, I’m so sorry… (1)

He was crawling on the ground, weeping. I couldn’t help but frown at the sight of such a heartbroken father.

MC: What happened to him? What made him like this?

Kiki: It seems like he was wrongfully imprisoned in Svart, but he hasn’t gone into specifics.

MC: Svart?

The sobbing gradually stopped. Zheng Yan calmed himself, then looked back into the camera.

Zheng Yan: But before I die, I won’t let the person who harmed me get away with it!  I’m going to show everyone your true colors!

[flashback]

[3:39] Interrogation Room

The room was dim. With the only window facing a hallway, even the alternation of day and night had lost all meaning here. Worse still was the unrelenting rain – like hypnotic white noise, the incessant thunderstorm wore down even the most resilient of minds.

Zheng Yan didn’t know how long had passed, but based on the increasing impatience of his interrogator, Detective Jack, he figured his custody limit was almost up (2). Just hang in there a little longer, he thought. They had simply gotten the wrong guy. Soon, he would be free, and once he was out of the police station he could go home to Stellis. It was summer, which meant Xiao Zhuo’s birthday was coming up. Zheng Yan hadn’t seen his son since coming to Svart. Did his son still remember him…?

???: Ahem.

A coffee spoon clinked against the walls of the cup. The crisp sound immediately interrupted his wistful daydreams.

???: You seem distracted.

Ah yes, how could he forget. There was someone else in the room.

A young man sat across from him nonchalantly, holding a coffee mug. There was nothing remarkable about his appearance – except his unforgettable eyes. Zheng Yan had been to prison in Stellis and seen people with all sorts of looks in their eyes: those muddled with desire, those agonized by regret… but he had never seen eyes so clear that they made him feel ashamed. People had weaknesses because they had a goal, and this man seemed to have no goal.

Zheng Yan: Oh… what were we talking about…?

Although the atmosphere wasn’t tense, Zheng Yan still felt a sense of unease. The young man hadn’t revealed his name, only that he was a psychology consultant invited by the police and that he just wanted to chat with him. It didn’t sound very formal, almost as if the police were out of other options… However, it was still possible that this was just a smokescreen for something else. What had this person been thinking when Zheng Yan was lost in his own thoughts?

Young man: We were talking about how the different the weather is in Svart compared to Stellis. You are still not accustomed to it.

The young man easily brought up the trivial topic, wasting the police’s precious time.

Zheng Yan: Ah… that’s right, summer here is nothing compared to summer in Stellis! Xiao Zhuo’s mom would always make a big pot of mung bean soup around this time of year, and any leftovers we would make into mung bean popsicles. Whenever Xiao Zhuo got so hot he was sweating like a pig, he would eat one to cool off. You probably haven’t had mung bean soup before, have you? Back when I was in Stellis, it was too sweet for me, but now I miss the stuff.

Young man: I have tried making it before, but it is not as hot here as it is in Stellis. Its cooling effect was not that apparent.

Zheng Yan: Oho, sounds like you’re interested in Stellis! You’ve even tried making mung bean soup. I didn’t think people from Svart had even heard of the dish.

Young man: Is that enough to count as “interest?” Although, it is true that I would like to visit Stellis.

The man was reticent, but it was the first time he showed an emotion that Zheng Yan could not understand.

Zheng Yan: Sounds good! When you have a chance, come visit me at my home. People from Stellis are very welcoming to guests.

Young man: “Visit you at your home”… So you believe you still have a chance of leaving.

The man responded to Zheng Yan’s promise with an almost-instinctual disdain, as if he knew something that Zheng Yan didn’t. His tone wasn’t even that of a question, it was one of finality.

Zheng Yan: Why wouldn’t I? I already said, I didn’t kill anyone. And the police haven’t found any evidence – are they planning on arresting a good person?

Zheng Yan unwittingly rose his voice. Ever since he’d been detained, everyone had been acting like he would never be able to leave… Why? He hadn’t killed anyone! The police had it all wrong, and there was no way they found any evidence. Once the custody limit was up, he would be free to go. Xiao Zhuo was still waiting for his dad. Zheng Yan was certain he’d be able to go home, of course he’d be able to, he had to.

Young man: You, a good person? Perhaps Stellis and Svart have very different definitions of what it means to be a “good person.”

Zheng Yan quickly realized that getting emotional was playing right into his hands… But no matter how much he tried to control himself, the derision in the man’s words wounded him deeply. When he left Stellis, Xiao Zhuo had said the same thing – sobbing, he said that he didn’t want a bad person as his dad. Xiao Zhuo was only a child, so that undisguised loathing had stabbed Zheng Yan right in the heart. He couldn’t help but clench his fists.

Young man: I saw your Stellis criminal record. First burglary, then armed robbery… just one crime after another. Right now your child is only seven years old, but the sum of all the prison terms you have been sentenced to is longer than the time he has been alive.

Zheng Yan: I admit it, I made a lot of mistakes in the past. I lost my way. But for Xiao Zhuo’s sake, I turned over a new leaf – I’m a changed man now!

Young man: Hah…

The man snorted. His blatant ridicule provoked Zheng Yan once again, even after Zheng Yan’s effort to calm himself down.

Zheng Yan: Is something funny?!

Young man: Why of course. I would love to ask Xiao Zhuo whether he thinks someone sitting handcuffed in an interrogation room is a “changed man.” I am sure he would laugh even harder than I did.

Zheng Yan: You have the wrong guy! I didn’t kill anyone, the cops made a mistake!

That had provoked Zheng Yan. His handcuffs made a harsh sound as metal scraped metal, a reminder of how dire and helpless his current situation was.

Young man: The police would not arrest someone without a good reason. Only you and the deceased were in the office when the crime occurred, and you do not even have a proper alibi. Do you really think you can escape this?

The man’s index finger tapped the table sporadically. In contrast with Zheng Yan’s agitation, he seemed certain of his victory.

Young man: You are only this relaxed because you believe the crime occurred in a locked room. As long as the police are unable to determine how you committed the crime, you will be released once your custody limit is up. But were your efforts really that flawless? To be honest with you, your custody limit is going to be extended again. This means that the police will have more time to investigate.

Zheng Yan: You guys—!

On the verge of being consumed by rage, Zheng Yan was no longer rational enough to discern the veracity of that statement. The young man paused, suppressing his annoyance at having to waste time talking to Zheng Yan, then put on a charitable expression.

Young man: There is a difference between choosing to turn yourself in and having to confess. I am sure you understand this better than I do, considering all the experience you have.

Because he wasn’t a police officer, the young man spoke with no reservation. Each word was filled with contempt for someone with a criminal record.

Zheng Yan: How can I confess to something I haven’t done!

Young man: Stop with the useless defiance. Have you thought about how your son would feel? Maybe when you left Stellis for a fresh start, he still had a sliver of hope for you. But if he knew how much of a coward you were, how you were trying to escape the consequences of your actions, I bet he would wish he never had someone like you as his father. You see, all you fathers are like this. You claim that you have your children’s best interests at heart, but in reality you are nothing but selfish!

Zheng Yan: That’s not true!

Zheng Yan pounded the table, but nothing could stop the man’s scathing words. The young man was still speaking, but Zheng Yan could no longer hear it. Once again, he recalled Xiao Zhuo’s sobbing face.

“I don’t want a bad person like you as my dad!”

“He would wish he never had someone like you as his father.”

The two voices wove together until they seemed to come from one person, and Zheng Yan couldn’t take it any longer.

Zheng Yan: Shut up! You’re lying! There’s no way… Xiao Zhuo is my son, there’s no way he wouldn’t want his dad!

Young man: Who would acknowledge a father who brings nothing but shame?

The man’s voice seemed to get sharper and sharper. Zheng Yan wished he could cover his ears but was unable to. With tears and snot streaming down his face, he knew he looked a complete mess already, but he just wanted the man to shut up.

Zheng Yan: Shut up! Shut up!

Young man: There you go again, trying to run away. How utterly humiliating it is for a son to have a father like you!

Would confessing to the crime shut that man up? He just had to confess, and that man would shut up. Then he would confess – to the murder or to whatever other crimes, he would confess to them all.

Zheng Yan: I… I did it. I confess.

Young man: Now if only you had done that earlier.

Completely numb, Zheng Yan didn’t even know what he was saying. He mechanically pressed his thumbprint to the document with his confession, signing it. Then, as if possessed, he looked again toward the young man.

Young man: *sigh*

The man hadn’t left yet. Of course the victor would want to stay behind to examine his spoils.

Sensing Zheng Yan’s gaze, the man looked back unflinchingly.

[11:11] [screen blacks out]

Zheng Yan vaguely recalled a nature documentary he had once watched with Xiao Zhuo back in Stellis. The eyes of a cheetah were visible from where it was silently hiding. It wasn’t that it had no goal, but rather that it had already determined its plan.

[11:19] Themis Law Firm

The sun was still high in the sky, but Zheng Yan’s narrative was so expressive that I felt like I was really in that dark, damp interrogation room.

Kiki: Do you think this Zheng Yan is telling the truth?

Kiki clearly felt the same way I did, as she subconsciously rubbed her arms and shuddered.

Kiki: Our current justice system is so refined that I don’t believe a confession could be induced or coerced… but his story is just so horribly realistic. It’s hard not to believe him.

MC: Right. Even if he were coerced to confess during the interrogation… There’s still a lengthy trial afterwards, where Zheng Yan would have plenty of opportunities to retract his confession. If there were no evidence whatsoever, how could he get such a long sentence based only on some botched false charges? But still, he doesn’t seem like one of those suspects who puts on act in order to be exonerated…

As a lawyer, we had seen countless suspects who kept up the crocodile tears until they were faced with ironclad evidence, then finally confessed.  As a result, it was critical for us to learn how to distinguish those who were putting on a show from those who were sincere. But his words had even stirred experienced professionals like us, let alone the vast majority of the public in the comments. Immediately, the comments toward the person who forced the confession became vicious and hateful, the words they used downright vitriolic. 

MC: Pain and despair aren’t difficult for a criminal to feign, but fabricating other characters in a story is much harder. You can practically feel the pressure from the psychology consultant that he described. If he hadn’t personally met the man, then considering his rash personality, it would be very hard for him to describe him so vividly.

Kiki: Vivid? I didn’t really feel that way, I just thought that person sounded scary. Maybe it’s because you’re with Dr. Richter, who’s also a psychologist. You’ve seen so much of his work that the story affected you more.

Kiki was just making an offhand remark, but it had given an outlet to the discomfort I was feeling. It was impossible to ignore the connection after the mentions of Svart, psychology consults, and those comments about his father. And yet I was unable to associate my image of Vyn with that person who trampled all over someone’s mental defenses. There was no way that the Vyn I knew could be an immoral person who stereotyped others and lodged personal attacks.

MC: Maybe you’re right…

Zheng Yan was still tearfully describing what he experienced in prison and how he returned to Stellis to find both his wife and son had passed away. I could faintly hear police sirens in the background. It seemed that the police had arrived at the scene, and the situation was changing rapidly. Zheng Yan, however, was hopelessly consumed by his own fury.

Zheng Yan: At first when I got out of prison, I just wanted to forget about everything that had happened and be together with my family. But I no longer had a family. At first I just wanted to take my own life and end it all, but I never thought that… I’d come across news of that psychology consultant. I never thought that he would actually come to Stellis, and even become a famous professor at Stellis University.

As Zheng Yan recounted his enemy’s personal information, it wasn’t clear whether he could predict the waves that those details would make.

Zheng Yan: The person who harmed me is out there living a great life, and here I am, an innocent man made into a criminal! How is the world so unfair!

Each sentence crashed into me like a tidal wave. Dimly, I guessed what he was going to say next, but I felt I could no longer think.

Zheng Yan: I know that if I say his name on livestream, it might be considered slander. But I’m willing to take responsibility for everything that I say. I’ll pay the price, no matter what it is. It’s not like I have anything left to lose!

Zheng Yan paused before facing the camera head-on, as if making a declaration of war.

Zheng Yan: It took a lot of work to find out what that consultant is called nowadays.

If he hadn’t spoken out on this kind of platform, maybe the situation could still be salvaged. But here, like an arrow released from a bow, there was no turning back.

Zheng Yan: His name… is Vyn Richter!

With a “whoosh,” that arrow sliced through the air, piercing me right between my eyes.

[END PART ONE]

[PART TWO]

(1) Xiao (小) is a prefix to make a nickname out of the name Zhuo (卓)

(2) “Custody Limit” Big Data Lab entry (under Academia>Law): A custody limit is the legal time limit that an accused person can be detained while under investigation, prosecution, or trial. Under Svart law, the police can arrest a suspect for up to 48 hours. If the suspect isn’t formally charged within the time limit, they must be released. The time limit can be approved for extension, but cannot exceed 96 hours.

[stsgluver]

summary. instead of spending two weeks in a hot country, you're stuck in a cramped hotel with your boyfriend.

wc. 1.3k

tags. richly!gojo au, fluff, slightly suggestive themes but not really you've got to squint hard, swearing once

series masterlist

“i’m literally dying,” gojo whined, falling back dramatically onto the double bed in the room.

you shot him a glare from where you sat on the floor, searching through your suitcase for ibuprofen which you had grabbed in the airport’s pharmacy to help with the searing headache you had. despite his tendency to have migraines that could leave him bedridden for days, gojo had decided not to bring any painkillers just in case and that was just one of many reasons you might be killing him before the fortnight is over. “if you complain one more time you will be dead.”

you were meant to be going on a two week, all inclusive holiday with your darling boyfriend and his mega rich family in a hot foreign country, the worries of college pushed far to the back of your mind for fourteen days of pure bliss. 

but fate clearly didn’t think you’d earnt such restbite as upon arrival and taking the mandatory test, both you and gojo had tested positive for covid-19. the light sniffles he had put down to hayfever and the headache you’d assumed was just what came with having gojo satoru as a boyfriend, were in fact symptoms of the illness you both had.

so now here you were: isolating in a small hotel room until your isolation period was up, or you both tested negative. it was sparsely decorated – a double bed in the centre of the room and a television opposite. there was a small open wardrobe where gojo had dumped his suitcase and an ensuite that would just about fit your lanky boyfriend. although not the best, there was some air conditioning as well which made the stifling heat just a little bit more bearable.

the staff had given you a specific number to call if either of your symptoms got worse and food would be brought to you at specific times everyday (not like the usual room service gojo was used to where he’d order banquets of food at stupid times in the morning). there were also the morning tests that you now had to do daily which left you pathetically sneezing afterwards. all in all, nothing that you had expected for your get away.

after finally finding the medication, you quickly swallowed two pills down with a sip of water. the sooner they could kick in and actually do something to help ease your discomfort, the better.

crawling onto the double bed, gojo welcomed you with open arms and you gratefully curled into his side, throwing one of your legs over him. yes, it was boiling and yes, you were mildly irritated with your boyfriend, but you were also in pain and, for all his flaws (which he denied having any), nothing could top being held close by him. the two of you were clingy with each other at the best of times – being ill and feeling sorry for yourselves only made you both worse.

“pass me the remote,” you patted the space next to gojo blindly, too lazy to lift your head to actually search for it. it had now been almost an hour of you two cuddled up on the bed, and for the last thirty minutes gojo had been rewatching the same show over and over. whilst you headache had marginally subsided, listening to the same crappy show was only driving you insane.

“no, i like this show,” gojo whined, swatting your hand away.

“satoru,” you dragged out, muffled as you pressed your face further into his top, “you’ve watched this episode three times, you don’t need to watch it again.”

gojo hummed thoughtfully, running his hands through your hair. it was enough to make you fall asleep if you weren’t careful. “yes i do.”

“why?” you rested your chin on his chest, meeting the gaze of his bright blue eyes that sparkled as they looked down at you.

“because i’m ill.” he coughed twice for affect, sounding as pathetic as ever as he ‘checked’ himself for a fever too. 

you narrowed your eyes at him before pinching his side, causing him to let out a small yelp. “who’s fault is that?”

“covid’s.”

“no. yours,” you said pointedly, a little more alert as you relayed all the reasons why it was in fact gojo’s fault that you both had contracted this illness. “i said don’t go to geto’s party, we’re about to go on a very expensive holiday. you said but baby please please please-” you huffed, rolling back onto your back next to him defiantly. “so i gave in, as per, and now we’re–”

gojo brought his other hand to messily pat the top of your head, coaxing you to turn to face him. “i love it when you’re mad,” he was wearing a shit-eating grin that only widened when you blankly stared back at him – your annoyance radiating off of you in waves more powerful than the ones you could’ve been enjoying on the sun-ridden beach. “you’re so sexy.”

“you’re corny. and annoying,” you sat yourself up as you held out your hand, lifting a finger with each complaint, “and stupidly tall, and a pain in my ass… and i feel like you’re not even listening.” 

gojo crossed his arms behind his head as he condescendingly nodded along, gazing up at you with a lopsided smile. his top had risen up ever so slightly to expose a sliver of his abs and you hated how attractive he looked when all you wanted to do was throttle him for his childish behaviour.

“oh i’m listening baby,” he encouraged with a teasing tone, tracing small patterns on the exposed skin of your leg. “go on.” there was a fire in his wake, one that no hot weather could ever compare to, not even covid had this much of an affect on you.

“i don’t think i want to anymore,” you mumbled arms crossed as you slowly lay back down and avoided his eyes, trying not to give him any indication that you were a complete fool for his touch (like your sudden bashfulness wasn’t completely giving you away).

gojo was slow with his movements, thoughtful as he dragged his hand up along your thigh, grazing your hips, giving your waist a light squeeze as he traced the outline of your body. your breath was caught in your throat as you allowed him to do as he pleased, all previous grievances forgiven as you watched entranced. gradually, he closed the gap that you had created, shifting his body until he straddled you, holding his body up by resting on his forearms either side of your head.

gojo dipped his head down, lips milimetres from your own that you would barely even need to lift your head from the pillow to touch. his voice was an octave deeper as he spoke. “shame, i was just starting to–” 

and then he fell into a fit of very loud and very barky and very not sexy coughs. he didn’t even give you the decency of trying to limit the spread of his germs and buried his head into the crook of your neck once his coughs were over.

“mood fucking ruined,” you hit his shoulder lightly and he babbled something that was completely muffled and only tickled as his lips brushed your skin. “please let me at least change the channel so i die from this illness and not insanity.” 

gojo lifted his head up ever so slightly, just enough so that he could peck the corner of your lips and point to the spot next to you. “i slipped the remote under my pillow. tv’s all yours baby.”

a/n. I think this is like the first thing ive posted in almost a month. I MISS YOU GUYS xxx

taglist. @jar-03 @animeflower26 @hyori2

[hannahbarberra162]

Yes, I have a lot to work on. BUT ALSO mean Marco. So. I'll pop it on Ao3 later as an OS.

It's fun to be mean.

TW: DEAD DOVE, NON CON, mean mean Marco, Victorian asylum AU, medical mistreatment, forced exhibitionism

The clacking of shoes on the tiled floor made you perk up your head as far as it would go with the restraints. You’d been defiant that morning and had bitten the orderly when he tried to feel your breasts during your morning “treatment.” You regretted your actions - the orderly had then stripped you down and dressed you in a medical gown before putting you in full restraints to the narrow hospital bed. Your arms and legs ached from being stretched in the same position for so long and your neck was bound to the bed as well, making looking in any direction other than up difficult. You had a gag in your mouth to ensure you didn’t bite anyone else and it was making your jaw ache while drool pooled in your mouth. You’d been staring at the blank white ceiling for hours, finally feeling like you had the “insanity” that your family claimed was your ailment.

You’d been in the asylum for months - or so you thought, it was difficult to keep track of time from your windowless room. Your family had wanted you to marry Marco “the Phoenix” Newgate, the handsome doctor who ran the asylum. He had gotten his nickname for being so skilled in medical treatment that he’d brought many patients back from the brink of death. Marco was from a large and wealthy family, the first son of the Newgate magnate. You didn’t care, there was something in the doctor’s eyes that gave you pause, some base part of your reptilian brain telling you to run. You couldn’t shake the feeling that he was a predator and the hair on the back of your neck rose whenever he kissed your hand chastely. Your parents accused you of having hysteria for not wanting to marry such a well respected, handsome and intelligent bachelor. Ever the gentleman, Marco “The Phoenix” said he would honor the original arrangement, that he would see to your treatment personally in his own luxury sanatorium. Thus your family had checked you into the sanatorium against your will and he’d been tending to you ever since.

Society was abuzz with how kind the doctor was to love someone as silly as you, how incredibly lucky you were that the blond doctor would make you his wife after your illness had concluded. There were more sordid whispers that the doctor was a skilled lover, that he was a veritable angel in bed. But you knew better - you knew the doctor was a demon sent from hell. You hated seeing his half lidded eyes as they watched you succumb to his treatments, his very presence made your skin crawl. There was nothing to do - you were stuck in the sanatorium until he said you were mentally fit. And you suspected that day might never come. 

Still, you held onto a naive hope that the sound was the nurses coming to check on you and give you a sip of water. As the reverberating sounds of chatter reached your ears, you heard the low voice that made an unbidden shiver run down your spine. Closing your eyes, you held on to one last shred of hope that they’d continue down the hallway to torture someone else for a change. The jingle of the door handle had your heart beating faster and faster as the creaking door opened. 

“Which of course, brings us to the patient here yoi,” the doctor said, speaking only to his medical students. He rarely spoke to you directly in front of others, preferring to talk to you during your personal night treatments. Your nipples hardened even as you tried pulling against your restraints in vain. He had you trained well, one of his best and most responsive patients, he said. He always said it was a shame that you had to linger in the Psychiatric Hospital with how lovely you were, but he simply couldn’t release you until your hysteria had cleared. 

Walking closer to your bed, the doctor pulled a stool to the front of your bed and snapped his fingers to the orderlies who had come into the room with him. You tried to stop the whimper that left your throat as they adjusted your bindings so your legs were in the stirrups attached to the end of the bed. You’d tried fighting at this point many times before but the only effect was the further tightening of the straps on the stirrups, securing your legs in an even harsher grip. Doctor Marco turned the crank to the stirrups, opening them as far as they would go. Your already aching legs protested sharply but you didn’t make any noise; you knew from experience that the Doctor didn’t appreciate it when you did. Cold air hit your bald pussy as Marco hummed in approval.  

Sitting on the low wooden stool, Doctor Marco slotted himself between your now open legs, your bare pussy on display to the assorted medical students crowding around him. You’d been shaved personally by Marco to better allow the students to see your anatomy, he said. Even though this treatment had been given to you many times before, shame brought a flush to your face as you heard Doctor Marco snap gloves on his hands. At least you could only stare up this time, you didn’t have to watch the medical students become engrossed in your torture.

“Unfortunately this patient has to be completely restrained due to her temperament. She was brought to the hospital a few months ago by her family, her hysteria causing her to be completely unmanageable. And who can tell the group the cure for female hysteria yoi?” the doctor asked. You already knew the answer, you’d heard parts of this lecture many times over. 

“Yes?” the Doctor said, indicating a student who had raised his hand.

“Prophylactic enemas?” one student answered, making your shudder. Doctor Marco ran a hand down your thigh as a means to soothe you but it only made you quiver more.

“No, though this patient does receive those as well to induce colo-rectal compliance. Any other answers?” Doctor Marco asked the assembled students. You heard no other students speak and Doctor Marco sighed, causing your panic to rise immediately. You tried to close your legs out of instinct for what you knew was coming, but Doctor Marco slapped your inner thigh.

“It seems your professors have been remiss in their classroom instruction yoi. But that’s what practical rotations are for. The patient needs to be brought to repeated orgasm in order to quell her hysteria. Observe,” the doctor said, bringing his hands closer to your cunt. You whined and tried to move away but were so tightly bound there was no movement you could make to shift from the Doctor’s wicked hands. 

“You see, she is already moving in an attempt to avoid treatment. Many patients with hysteria behave this way but you can guide them back to health with a firm hand,” Marco said, punctuating his sentence with a slap to your pussy. “Don’t feel the need to be soft with them, poor handling is what got the dears into this mess in the first place,” Marco said as he spread your pussy lips apart and held them in place with his long fingers. Marco hadn’t done anything yet but your body had been through this procedure many times before and just the touch of his finger was enough to start your body’s reaction. You started to get wet, your slick pooling at the top of your thighs.

“As you can see, moisture is already dripping from her body to prepare for the cure to her ailment. This patient is particularly responsive which is why I prefer for medical students to observe her. Now this,” Doctor Marco said, pinching your clit, making you yelp, “is her clitoris. It contains the highest concentration of nerve endings in the female body. And most physicians believe that the fleshy nub is the sum total of the clitoris - but that is not the case. It actually has a larger area than that, spanning around the clitoris in an almost circular formation, though you will always get the best reaction from touching the clitoris directly.” Marco began stroking your clit with his gloved fingers, taking moisture from your leaking hole before continuing his ministrations.

“You may have noticed I used her own fluids as lubrication. That is preferable and we will get to the vaginal canal momentarily. For the moment, watch and observe.” With deft fingers, Doctor Marco began rubbing your clit in a practised fashion as he had so many times before. He knew your body like it was his own, playing you like a violin. He stroked with consistent pressure, rubbing you in small circles to the rapt attention of the students. You mewled against your will from behind the gag, small cries spilling from your lips as he continued to tease you. Your humiliation grew with your wetness as he continued to play with you to the endless intrigue of the students.

Doctor Marco was keeping you primed but never quite achieving release as he once again turned to his students. You tried to move your hips towards his hand in hopes of ending the session but the Doctor simply stopped stroking you, leaving only the hand still holding your lips apart.

“There are many potential treatments available at this juncture - you can bring the patient to the brink of orgasm but deny it at the last moment. This is effective as behavioral modification in addition to relieving hysteria. I once kept this patient engaged but unable to orgasm for five hours and at the end she was most agreeable to anything I suggested.” You shuddered as you remembered the event, you had cried and screamed for hours, begging for relief, for the doctor to stop, for God to strike you down from above, for anything other than the Doctor’s hands and mouth. It was brutal but luckily Marco saved it for those times when you were “non-compliant,” and “defiant.” You hoped today’s treatment didn’t include the same.

“You may also wish to cause several orgasms in short succession. This is likely to cause immediate distress to the patient but positive long term results. It is also a much shorter treatment duration than withholding orgasm which can be useful if you need to treat many patients. Today I’d like to demonstrate this technique for your edification.” Tears pooled on your lash line as you heard the announcement. You had been praying to any god that would listen for one orgasm at the hands of the doctor, the shortest treatment he gave you. Marco began stroking you gently again, this time pushing two of his thick fingers into you and bending them. Your toes curled as he forced your reaction.

“You can tell she is eager for release from her keening noises, the constriction of her vaginal canal, and the curling of her toes. If she were a better behaved patient you would be able to hear more of her lewd sounds as well. It is possible to see the constrictions from the outside but in clinical practice one should feel it manually yoi. Would anyone like to volunteer to identify the sensation?” You paled as you heard the Doctor’s question - this was something new. He’d never allowed the students to touch you during a treatment before. In your heart you knew this was retribution for not kissing him back the night before during his private session. But there wasn’t anything you could feasibly do to change the outcome of your current situation.

“You yoi. Come forward,” Marco said, handing a glove to whatever student he had selected. You heard another glove snapping on and short, limp fingers begin to prod at your opening.

“That’s it, push inside, she’s ready,” Doctor Marco instructed, the hand surging forward. The student was clumsy, nothing like Marco’s long skilled fingers. You felt multiple hands on you as Doctor Marco began stroking once more while holding your pussy open on display. The student was bothering you, pushing too weakly and inconsistently for you to enjoy the sensation. You whined in pain as he jabbed you with a stabbing motion rather than the smooth thrusts of the Doctor. Despite the jerks of the student’s hand you could feel yourself moving towards orgasm once more as Doctor Marco gave your clit more focused attention.

“Can you feel her canal gripping you?” Doctor Marco asked the student as he applied more pressure to your clit. After another moment of clumsy fingers moving about in you, Marco removed the hand of the student from within you. You sighed in relief as the painful sensations ended.

“No, no, you need more practice. You are showing hesitancy yoi. You need to remain in control, you are the doctor and she is the patient. Do not give her quarter to defy you. Allow me to demonstrate, this time using three fingers rather than the two from before. She can be quite wanton, you have to ensure she is satisfied,” Marco said, replacing the student’s fingers with his own. His large fingers stretched you as he worked them into you, pushing and curling his middle finger. You mewled loudly as he brushed your sweetest spot over and over again, still playing with your clit all the while. Panting, you felt the tension in you rising as you were brought closer and closer to orgasm, the students taking notes on your flushed form and leaking pussy. 

“I am stroking her Grafenberg spot, hence her intense reaction yoi. The clitoris can be stimulated simultaneously to produce orgasm as you'll see in just a moment. Come closer, I believe this patient is nearing their precipice.” You heard shuffling feet moving towards you as you strained against your bindings. Marco was stroking inside you with every pump of his fingers and rubbing your engorged clit, bringing you to close yet another unwanted orgasm. The loud squelching sounds of his fingers drowned out the murmurs of the medical students as they watched you curiously. 

“You can see her lubrication is increasing moment by moment. Her muscles are tense and she is straining against her bindings, those are all signs to look for. Ah, here she goes. Watch, I’ll give her a little spank and she’ll orgasm.” With that Marco slapped your clit and as if on command, you came around his fingers, screaming from behind your gag. Your vision went white as he continued to stroke and pump within you as you came, dragging out the sensation as long as possible. You were breathing heavily, trying to catch your breath as he removed his fingers. He parted your lips again, rubbing at your engorged clit with his thumb. You whined and started crying, the sensation too raw and close to your previous orgasm. 

“See how compliant she is? She has become increasingly docile and relaxed after many such treatments. Right now we are not letting her rest, she will be brought to another orgasm shortly by my hand,” Marco said, looking down at your face. He noted your tears with a smirk, reaching for your face to wipe them away. Unable to move, he brushed away the tears before taking your face in his hand.

“Perhaps later we can have a practical lesson and you students can take turns giving the patient her treatment under my supervision. Wouldn’t that be lovely, dear?” Marco said, addressing you directly for the first time. You looked up into the Doctor’s heavy lidded eyes, fear clouding your expression even as another orgasm built within you.

“Yes, she’s quite a needy patient. She will need many more treatments to ensure her mental health returns. Isn’t that so darling?” Marco said, looking you in the eyes. 

“But I have personally dedicated myself to healing her. She can stay in the asylum for treatment as long as she needs.” 

[water-to-drink]

Not Even Death Could Make Us Part

(Pairing): Yan!Heizou x gn!reader

(Synopsis): Your boyfriend has come back as a ghost after being murdered, but after he suggested an idea that would bring you two closer it shows his true colors

(Tags/Warnings): MDNI, DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT Character and reader’s death, murder attempts, strangulation, angst, mentions of suicide, use of (y/n), (if i missed anything lmk)

(Word Count): 2.3k

(A/N): This has been in the drafts for about a year, so I hope y’all enjoy this

Rain drops repeatedly hitting the white flowers on the casket is the only thing your attention is on, the only reason is that if you brought your attention somewhere else you would be reminded that you’re standing in front of your boyfriend casket

He wasn’t taken by something like illness or a fatal car accident, no he died because the crook he arrested had someone else kill him as either an act of revenge or to make sure he didn’t testify in court

When you first heard of it you wanted it to be a nightmare that you wake up from and see him breathing right besides you, but no matter how much you wanted his to be an awful dream you’re now here at his funeral

It did help that when the news first broke friends and family offered their condolences.

You didn’t want people’s condolences, their condolences won’t bring your boyfriend back!

You hated how they all looked at you with their pitying looks, if you could you would crawl up in the casket with him. But you know you can’t do that so you make the long trek from the cemetery back to the apartment you used to share with Heizou

Opening the door to the apartment that now only you inhabit, you’re immediately greeted with various framed pictures of the two of you. Many of them taken during dates, holidays, and vacations all of them containing his carefree smile, the same smile you fell in love with. Now only it’s staring back at you from a paper with ink on it, serving as a cruel reminder that he’s gone

You take the framed pictures and put the faced down along with taking down the ones on the walls, maybe one day you’ll be able to put them back up, but now it’s too painful to even look at them

After a full week isolating yourself in the empty apartment you decided it’s time for you to go back to work. You already used up your bereavement days, but it’s a good reason to be out of the house and occupy your mind with something other than Heizou, at this point you’re starting to think the isolation and grief is starting to get to you. When you would walk out into the living room you would find the pictures you took down back in their original places, at first you came to the conclusion that you thought of taking them down but didn’t. That wasn’t until you found the pictures back up knowing that you took them down, not to mention you’ve begun to hear a voice

Heizou’s voice

Going back to work might be what’s best for you, maybe interacting with people will be good for your mental health instead of wallowing in your own misery

Your first day back was good everyone made you feel a bit better, they made you laugh and told you the latest gossip you missed while you were gone

It felt like everything was back to normal, but as you made your way to your apartment you knew that you won’t have someone to tell what happened at work. Maybe you can call a friend and talk to them?

Yeah you think you can do that

Opening the door the apartment that now only you inhabit, you’re greeted with the sight of your deceased boyfriend, as if he had never left

Wearing the same carefree smile he always had

This can’t be real. You saw his body at the morgue and at the funeral. This has to be the grief induced hallucination you desperately tried to avoid

“Baby, you can see me!” He, the thing that looks like your dead boyfriend exclaimed cheerfully

You stepped back in disbelief until you fell on your butt, this has to be all in your head. You gotta call someone to come over and to tell you it’s a hallucination

“I know it’s hard for you to process all of this, but you gotta believe that it’s me.” He crouched down and held your hand, void of the warmth you once knew instead replaced with coldness. “I’ve been watching you for weeks thinking I was dead, without a way to comfort you or make myself known to you-”

“No, you’re dead.” You state more to yourself than to the apparition

“I-I know I’m dead, but I’m not a figment of your imagination. Look!” He says as he walks over and lifts up a coffee mug you used this morning

Heizou picks up the mug and walks towards you before setting it in your hand

The mug felt ice cold in the areas he touched and weighed a ton in your hands. Looking up at your boyfriend you felt tears form in your eyes

“Heizou…?!”

“Baby.”

You dropped the mug and leap into his arms only for you to harshly land on the floor. You turned towards your boyfriend who had a horrified expression on his face.

It didn’t matter as long as your boyfriend is back

Living with a ghost isn’t so bad, it’s like having a secret roommate. It’s like everything is back to the way it was before. You two would watch your favorite shows, sang together while cooking dinner, and playing your beloved card games

But there are times where you’re reminded just how different the two of you are. You can’t feel his warmth, every time you reach out to touch him your hand just goes right through him, you have to be mindful not to mention him in front of friends since they can’t see him and you don’t want them to think you’ve lost it. You wouldn’t blame them, the whole concept is crazy even for you

It’s something you have to adjust to

Like you can’t reach over and touch Heizou anymore, no more surprise hugs or good night kisses. However he can touch you only if he concentrates hard enough

It seemed like he caught onto your internal dilemma, it doesn’t surprise you he was a famous detective when he was alive so it’s no use trying to hide anything from him

“(Y/n), is something bothering you. You know you can tell me.” Heizou said as he sat right next to you on the couch

“It’s hard adjusting to...” You replied while gesturing to him, “this. You being a ghost, don’t get me wrong I’m very happy that I get to see you again, but I feel that we’re just too different now. I can’t hold you in my arms like I used to, I have to be careful not to mention you in front of friends or else they’ll think I’m crazy. And sometimes I think so too.” The last part coming out broken in between sobs and tears begin to form in your eyes. “If only there’s a way for things to be how they used to be.”

As tears clouded your vision you missed the expression on Heizou’s face, it was the same expression he would make when he came up an idea

“You love me, right?” He asked as he reached out and wiped away your tears with his cold hands

“Yes, of course.”

“You would do anything for me?”

“Y-yes, Heizou where are you taking this?”

“I just wanted to know before I told you my idea.”

“If I can be with you again like before then yes.”

“Would you die for me?” Your heart stopped and you got up from your place on the couch, effectively getting away from the redhead. “Think about it, this way we can be together. We can finally feel each other’s touch again, we can-”

“Do you know what you’re asking of me? You’re asking me to take my own life for the small chance that I return as a ghost.”

“Yes, but it’s the only way we can-”

“We aren’t taking about this anymore, you got that?” You rubbed your temples to soothe the oncoming headache you feel approaching. “I’m going to bed and don’t come into the bedroom!” You said as you stormed into the room that was noticeably much warmer than the living room

The next day you went to work, last night’s argument replaying in the back of your mind, you even skipped making yourself some breakfast instead opting to buy something cheap on the way to work

You were so preoccupied with your task you didn’t notice your friend was standing next to you until she tapped your shoulder

“(Y/n) are you feeling okay by any chance?” Ganyu asked, her voice laced with concern

“Y-yeah, I’m fine. Why did you ask?”

“Today you came in a much more sour mood then normal and you look a bit unwell.”

“I’m fine, I just haven’t been eating well since the funeral.” You lied

“Do you want to come over to my place, I can make you a nice nutritious meal.”

“I don’t know if I can make it. I’m not feeling all that wel-” You begin to slur your words

“(Y/n)? Are you sure? You look like you’re about to pass out-”

Ganyu’s words slowly faded oou as your world turned black

Coming to you find yourself staring up at a pristine ceiling and in a hospital bed. Before you could come to your senses you hear two voices talking, the soft voice of Ganyu and another voice

You turned your head to see Ganyu talking to a man with green hair and glasses, Ganyu turns her head towards you and a look of relief washes over her soft features

“Oh my archons, thank goodness you woke up!” Ganyu stood up and rushed over to your bed

“W-what happened…” You asked

The doctor, who you learned his name is Dr. Baizhu, explained everything. How you fainted during work and Ganyu was the one who called for help and also the potential cause of your sudden fainting spell

“Carbon monoxide?!” You repeated Dr. Baizhu’s words in disbelief

“Yes, and if hadn’t fainted when you did you would’ve died.” Dr. Baizhu explained

“But how is that possible? I have a detector at home, it would have alerted me if there was any of it in the air!” You desperately tried to explain

You didn’t know how this would happen until it dawned on you

Finally after one day you were discharged from the hospital, there was only one thing on your mind, confronting the ghost in your home

“Heizou!” You yelled as you entered the apartment and walked into the living room, forgetting to lock the front door

“What’s up, baby? Did you know how worried I was when you didn’t come home?” Heizou asked after he fazed into existence in front of you

“I know you fucked with my detector!”

“Baby-”

“I just got it checked out, there should be no reason for it to already be fucked up unless you did something to it!”

“I only did it so we can be together!”

“Slowly killing me isn’t the way to do it! I still want to live my life, go places and meet new people-”

“So you can leave me?”

“Not like that Heizou, do not twist my words!”

“How else am I supposed to interpret that! You said you missed holding me, what stops me from thinking that you want someone who is alive like you!”

Your words get stuck in your mouth as you start to get scared of your boyfriend

“I can’t stand the thought of someone else having you, you know how many lives I’ve ruined just to be with you!?”

“Heizou, what are you talking about?”

“Remember your old partner and how they got arrested for money laundering? That was me, I planted evidence so they can be arrested.”

“Why did you do that?” You whimpered out

“So I can be with you, I saw how they were treating you. Calling you the most vile names.”

“H-how did you know that? They would only do that in private. Were you spying on me?”

“It was for us to be together! But now that I’m like this, I can’t love you how I want to anymore!” Heizou had a crazed look in his eyes

“Get the hell away from me! God can’t believe I stayed with your crazy ass, I’m leaving!” You began to walk towards the door

“No. Nooo!!!” He shrieked as he pushed you down to the floor. “No! You’re not leaving me, I won’t let you!” He continued as his hands began to put pressure on your neck

You desperately begin to struggle against the ghost even flailing your arms in an attempt to escape, but your hands just fazed through his nonexistent body. In a futile attempt stop the ghost of your boyfriend from choking you further

Is this how you were going to die?

At the hands of the ghost of your former boyfriend?

You look up to see the face of your boyfriend one last time and see the crazed look he has. Is this how you die?

Your vision finally fades into darkness

Heizou released his grip from your now bruised neck

“Now get up.” Heizou demanded

You laid there unmoving

“Get up! You got to get up!” Heizou began to panic. “Please get up! You can’t leave me!”

Heizou pleaded for your spirit to appear before him and began shaking your lifeless body. He didn’t know how long he’s been at this, but stopped when he heard a knock at the door

“(Y/n)?” The familiar voice of Ganyu called out from behind your apartment door. “You didn’t come to work today and didn’t return my calls so I got worried.”

Reaching up to knock on the door again it parts slightly, anxiety now building up in her she slowly pushed open the door revealing your lifeless corpse on the floor

[silk-flower]

Chasing After Dark [James Sunderland X Reader]

synopsis: Could Mary really be here, waiting for him in this town? James doesn't know, but the deeper he dives into this bottomless pit of memories, the more he starts to regret his decision of ever coming here. One of the many questionable reasons he still stays is you, though that might be too hard of a pill to swallow.

status: part 1 [you are here], part 2, read on AO3

content warning: female reader, death of a character [prior], thoughts about death and illness, self-deprecating thoughts, grieving and trying to move on, slight misogyny, horror, mutual attraction, age gap [reader described as younger], romance

author's note: I've been playing this game non-stop ever since it released and James is the only thing on my mind lately, giving birth to this piece. This is a reupload from my deactivated blog.

James looks up at the decomposing ceiling as dirty water drips down from the rusted pipe on the wall of your makeshift haven. Only numerous particles of gray dust and your soft breaths break the stillness of the silent room, the air stale with the stench of mold. If Brookhaven's long-abandoned hospital could be considered peaceful at this hour of the night. No chance with those disfigured creatures running amok, chasing you down the building halls.

Now that he tiredly watches you rest on that soiled hospital bed like a guard, he starts to realize how much of a toll this town is really taking on you and himself. Naturally, he is aware that, like everyone else summoned by Silent Hill, you have your own reasons for being here. May it be looking for a loved one, for forgotten memories, or for mysterious disclosures that he is clueless of and doesn't want to ask about. Similar to him, but in any case, it's not his problem. Just like you didn't ask about what the hell he was doing here, looking for someone who was supposedly already dead, he never was the one starting that undesirable conversation. He just was here to find Mary.

James sits in silence, hands clutching the torn armrests succumbed to time, slipping in and out of consciousness as his eyes stroke over your frame, not to lose focus. In an attempt to distract his tired mind, his fingers tinker with the leather case's loose thread. Curling into fetal position, as though attempting to resist an unseen force, makes you appear so tiny and defenseless on the hospital gurney. It reminds him of the time he so desperately wants to forget, but it just keeps surging up to light. He wonders if you're dreaming about something. Pity at a place like this one could only see nightmares. 

You shouldn't have come here. The fact that you were wandering alone in this lifeless ghost of a town, with sticky fog engulfing you as you became increasingly lost, was beyond his understanding. It might have been too late if he found you mere minutes after that crawling monster rushed from under the car. You were James' companion on this odd voyage, even though he didn't want you to be in his way. Keeping him grounded in a sence.

He closes his weary eyes and lets out a sigh, spreading his legs and letting himself fall back into the rolling chair, if only for a few moments. The movement sends a thick, nasty cloud of dust flying into the air, making him cough. There have definitely been better times here.

James takes you in while listening to your gentle breathing, how your brows furrow as your eyelids flutter ever so slightly, delicate hands clutching the torn bedsheet as you lay there. In this whole godforsaken town, this room could have been the closest to what he could call safe for the both of you. You didn't have much of a choice anyway, exhausted to the point of collapsing.

Though he wasn't really sure why, it seemed like his subconscious had given him the responsibility of looking after you ever since he had met you a few days prior. Perhaps because he yearned for a human connection of some sort, or perhaps it was just that you were a clumsy woman. You were really something, frustratingly snail-pased at times, your aloofness making him lift a brow occasionally.

"What a gentleman, truly", James huffs at his own arrogance. It's not that he was any better himself, a shadow of a man he used to be someday. Fighting his own battles in silence, he couldn't possibly be taking patronage of you. But at the same time, he couldn't leave you with all these monsters lurking around every corner, ready to pounce on you. Mary wouldn't want him abandoning you and he wasn't that kind of person, he kept telling himself. Thus, you looked out for one another; more him for you, of course.

James' eyes dart to your silhouette, fluttering eyelashes, and slightly flaky lips, completing your pale face like a soft palette. Your mouth parting gently as you huff against the ragged pillow. The sight makes the corners of his cracked lips rise involuntary. Perhaps he was being too harsh on you; kind and ever so cheerful, you were the voice of reassurance and reason behind his self-destructive actions for these past few days. Convincing him to take the health supplements and hope for the best, even if sometimes that seemed unmanageable. To keep himself safe and healthy to some extent. For his wife, how funny. As if the memory of Mary wasn't ever preserved in his mind. But it relieved him that someone cared, making it feel not so devastating. Bearable at times even.

His mind surges to all those times of need when you supported him with your soft words or how your smaller hand traced his tense shoulder to show compassion as you smiled weakly. Or how you looked up at him horrified, fear and tears in your eyes as he shielded you from the monsters with his back getting slashed by the great knife. Even James didn't understand why he had to throw himself in front of you when he could have avoided that crazed pyramid thing. It appeared like the creature harbored some obsessive resentment for the both of you, thus it seemed only reasonable to keep you away from its wrath.

He remembers the swell of your chest against his and the warm flesh of your waist in his hands as he caught you jumping from the broken window. Simple affection and a live connection with another person — likely the closest he has been to someone in years. He hasn't been this close to a woman in such a long time... Adrenaline pumping through his veins, the pressure of your upper body letting his rough finders trace your abdomen. Your eyes catching his hazel-green ones like soft glittering stars, looking at him with silent gratitude. Your waist safely held in his hands, and your fingers resting so comfortably atop his wide shoulders.

It was too close, too soft. To the point where "secure" felt inappropriate to him, infinitely pleasant, but wrong. Blasphemous even, like he was committing a sin by helping you. He wanted to put you down as fast as he could, to drop you even, as soon as he recognized that feeling. James felt something other than this never-ending grief when the weight of your quivering body shifted something within him. Guilt, yes. He knew that feeling well. But there was something warm and satisfying as well. Something he thought he didn't know how to feel anymore.

The feeling made him want to pull you closer for some reason.

— James? I said thank you for catching me, — you gazed into his eyes curiously, with that sweet naivety still present in your own.

— Oh, yeah. Sorry, I... Don't mention it.

What did you do to him? The way you looked sheepishly to the side, as he released you almost reluctantly, stunned him. Missing the warmth of your skin on his as soon as he let go felt indefinite; it relieved him and scorched his insides at the same time. The guilt of wanting more of you when he had no right for that. The longing for you.

The man's eyes snap open, hands clutching the faux leather armrests so hard now that his nails pierce through the moth-eaten foam filler, pain dulled by the overwhelming feeling of guilt and shame. James sighs audibly, cradling his face in his hands, caloussed fingers gradually tugging at his sunken cheeks. What is he thinking?

He still has that whitish rim bordering the finger where his ring used to sit. Because James loves Mary. Do you now? Because James knows that right beneath the surface of his threadbare heart he will always love her, no matter how smooth your skin felt compared to her faded and bloody when she was on her deathbed. So how can he indulge in thoughts like that? She was his wife, for fucks sake.

She was a living rotting corpse. And you wanted her to die.

— No, — he whispers adamantly, interlocking his fingers before his face, — It's not true.

And here you were, this young woman, sleeping soundly in front of him, trusting him with your life while he mulled over his shallow fantasies of you. Eyeing you like the unsuspecting prey while wearing a mask of marital fidelity. Pretending he doesn't want anything to do with you as he yearns for you. Angela was right.

He doesn't have to remind himself because he can feel it constantly. Guilt, shame, and regret, none of which will ever cease. Even if he tried, he couldn't — he wouldn't take advantage of someone as young, naive, and carefree as you. Why would a beautiful woman like you ever want an empty shell of a man like him? A broken shard of his own past, undeserving and ungrateful. Pititful James Sunderland, looking for someone who's long been dead in this ghost town because he's scared of letting her go. Someone who thinks of another woman inappropriately while searching for his Mary. He can't even be honest with himself. 

Even now, he still watches you in your sleep, mouth slightly agape, peaceful expression on your face making his heart throb as he thinks about the possibly over and over, torturing himself. Maybe he should forget everything. Wake you, grab you by the hand, whether you want it or not, and leave this town. And then what? Foolish thought.

James lifts his head as his tired eyes catch the sight of the peeling flower pattern wallpaper above the bedpost. Glue long since dried, crumbling at the edges, patches of withering paper are being dragged down the wall by their own weight. The faded image is obscured by a spatter of unidentified liquid, which gives the area around the hole in the middle an almost meaty appearance. Staring back at him like a sickly-pink gaping slit, a flower of dead flesh.

I need to peel it off more.

— James...

Something heavy rises in his chest, and he lets out a low gasp before returning his gaze to your sleeping body. He hasn't been taking his medication for a while now. It's too dark in here.

Your sleep becomes more restless as you fidget around the mattress, your legs getting tangled in the sheets. You look frazzled, breathing becoming more agitated as you wince. Your hands cling to the tattered bedsheet as if hoping it would hide you from whatever is chasing you in your dream. A frail moan breaks out of your sore throat, and before James can stop himself, he's on the bed right next to you as he grabs your shoulders and shakes you awake.

Someone powerful drags you out of your nightmare, the sudden intrusion of them almost making you gasp as you jump to sit up straight. The scream gets stuck in your throat as you wake. The bed cover slips off your sweaty body, revealing you to the night chill of the real world. Still not fully awake, unable to separate dream from consciousness, you catch two familiar eyes looking back at you with unusual intensity.

— James? — you mumble almost inaudibly, still shaken but unable to recall the nature of your fear. Tiny beads of sweat roll down your temple as you try to recollect your breathing, placing your hand over your chest.

— Hey, look at me. I've got you; just breathe.

James hates how patronizing and coaxing his voice sounds as his bigger hands circle your upper arms in an effort of calming you down, but he can't stop himself from soothing you. It's too easy to be gentle with you.

— You're alright. Breathe with me, — his eyes fixate on the way your lips tremble and his heart fills with dull ache. You're so fragile, so real. Alive.

His thumbs rub gentle circles into your tender skin when he stills, suddenly realizing he'd crossed the line. You're not a child. He has to let go of you. But you're still maintaining eye contact with this strange man as he guides you through your breathing slowly, the act of it feeling almost intimate but natutal at the same time. 

James stumbles over his own words, loathing the way his voice scrapes his throat like sandpaper as he talks.

— You're safe now, we're in the hospital. Remember?

You blink back at him, and he notes the light returning to your lovely eyes as you breathe in. James' close proximity only dawns on you as you feel his hot breath fan over your face and neck, ghosting over your cheeks and lips gently.

— Yes. I think I do.

Your breathing gradually slows down as your eyes trace over his features. Dark circles under his eyes followed by the first inklings of the crow's feet. The individual hairs of his stubble starting to peek through the dry skin. The weight of his calloused hands on your shoulders rubbing in a soothing motion as if applying an unseen salve to your skin. The same tough hands that swing the heavy metal pipe until they bleed to keep you safe from the terrors of this place. They care for you in an unusually tender and loving manner, and the gentleness of the deed sends a surge of heat to your face and core.

And his eyes. So fragile and soft, almost puppy-like, but also lonely and gloomy, filled with deep melancholy as they pierce into you with concern. He is worried about you. Too much for a man you've only met a few days ago.

Your hand falls on his chest, not sure whether you should push him away or not. You don't and your breathing stills, as you immediately feel James through every nerve in your body. The subtle odor of sweat and cologne that is wearing off, his breath flowing out of his cracked lips, his lean chest flexing under his shirt, and his growing anxiousness, which mirrors yours. You can feel his heart thumping rapidly as your gazes meet.

And James must feel yours too, for as soon as your breath catches with silent desire, his hands slide agonizingly slow down your arms, releasing you from his grip. Surprisingly, you feel cold and lonely upon losing his touch. You don't have time to respond to the sensation as he softly pushes you down into the bed, towering over you. He knows you're feeling it too. Worse, you might know what he's thinking and what he needs from you. Saying it out loud would cause his world and all he believes in to crumble. His life, his devotion to Mary. James cringes at the thought and shuts his eyes. He has to step away, or he'll lose himself.

— James, —

— No, please, — he looks down on the mattress and grits his teeth like it pains him to speak, — Don't say anything.

He stops you in mid-sentence from opening your heart for him, his expression distraught, nearly begging you not to continue. Otherwise, he would not be able to find any more excuses not to give into your heavenly touch. You don't push it, facing him calmly instead. 

Hovering over your motionless body carries him far away, as you catch his wistful look, filled with anguish and some indistinguishable emotion. James' gaze lingers on the wall behind you for a few seconds before returning to your face, his eyes dreamy and glazed over. His breathing comes out with a small rumble, making his throat spasm as he speaks again, putting on a tiny smile.

— Try to go back to sleep. It's still too dangerous outside.

You sink into the cushion and cross your hands across your chest like a chaste maiden, suddenly feeling timid for some reason. As James' bigger hand traces over yours, covering it protectively, with it comes the sense of security. You close your eyes with a small exhale, drifting back to sleep. 

— I'll watch over you.

Just this time, James assures himself.

Just a little bit more.