#in the heads of those dehumanizing her

[madtomedgar]

How did I miss that Han Kang won a Nobel???

[please-picturemeintheweeds]

(Tw Matty Healy, Sexism) Gender based sexism is some guy saying they were emasclulated by the idea of dating you ten years ago and then coming back 8 years later out of nowhere and promising to have changed and promising babies and marriage and then ghosting after you openly and publicly commited to them and all their off color jokes. Matty Healy is a shit show of gender based sexism and weird hang ups about woman having success like geeze and I know Joe Alwyn wasn't a saint neither but at least he kept that shit to himself and didn't openly say

"But I didn’t make a big deal out of it myself. It’s not really anything to talk about, because if she wasn’t Taylor Swift we wouldn’t be talking about her.

“She wasn’t a big impact on my life. It’s just interesting to me how interested the world is about Taylor Swift.”

“And the reason I mention that is because if I had gone out with Taylor Swift I would’ve been, ‘F**king hell! I am NOT being Taylor Swift’s boyfriend.’ You know, ‘F**K. THAT.’

“That’s also a man thing, a de-masculinating, emasculating thing.”

and then turn around, pretend to be prince charming and then peace out and get engaged to the next person they dated.

Fucking AMEN to that!! I think those quotes get directly at the core of why his betrayal was so rotten- he clearly got off on pursuing The Taylor Swift like a fucking big game trophy hunt, and the subsequent dropping her like a used Kleenex. Obviously I don’t know the man, but it seems to me that he was very much into degrading her, watching her bend over backwards to be with him, “tarnishing” her reputation, and then being the guy that broke The Taylor Swift’s heart. I can’t possibly understand all the nuance of trusting partners as an extremely famous diaristic songwriter, but I imagine that for him part of the thrill was knowing she was writing about him. (Side note: Which is why I respect her approach to writing about him in TTPD so much! She didn’t have to do that but she spoke honestly about her embarrassing situation and took the satisfaction away from him I guess) Idk it makes my skin crawl to even try to get in that guys head but somethign something intimacy of songwriting something exploiting emotional vulnerability. Maybe he didn’t do it on purpose, maybe he regrets it, maybe he’s not all bad, blah blah blah idk he just gives me the creeps and I don’t trust men’s motivations generally, especially when we have an enormous amount of data showing that this man gets off on women’s pain and trauma.

[simptasia]

mum and i were almost not able to buy our house because a real estate lawyer heard us casually say i'm autistic and alarm bells went off in her head, because she believed that meant i wasn't mentally capable of understanding what i was signing up for

[computercreature]

something i see a lot in the dungeon meshi fandom is attributing izutsumi's personality traits to her being a cat. and while ryoko kui definitely gave her cat-like traits intentionally, she's a talented enough writer to also give her a backstory with reasons for those traits. for example, her tendency to only do and eat what she wants.

izutsumi's character arc revolves around freedom. she grew up caged in a circus. and although she was fed enough to survive, this was only because a living catgirl attracted more customers than a dead one.

[id: first image is izutsumi as a child framed behind bars and standing on all fours, making it clear how skinny she is. a hand in the foreground holds out a bowl of what appears to be kibble. narration says “thrown in a cage and given food every once in a while… is that what you would call ‘being raised’?” in the second image she is now sitting on the floor of her cage and eating a rat. end id]

look how skinny she is! we see her eating what appears to be... kibble? oats? and then a rat that she possibly caught for herself. she had no choice but to eat anything she could.

[id: part of the dungeon meshi manga. a slightly older izutsumi is tied to a post and tade sits next to her to say "we've got a roof over our heads, beds, food, and clothes. they've got everything here. is there someplace nicer than this out there?" izutsumi thnks for a moment and says "i hate that someone's already decided what i'm going to eat tomorrow. my name, the clothes i wear, where i sleep, where i go next... here, all of that's been decided by another person... even though, come tomorrow, i might want to eat something else instead. that's why i'm leaving." at this, tade cries out in shock. end id]

when she's taken into the nakamoto household they begin to treat her much better. she's on about equal footing as tade, who also had a rough living situation before being taken in, and tade loves it there! they get healthy and tasty food and they're not sleeping in cages. but izutsumi still isn't free. she can pass off her chores and vegetables to tade and disobey in any way she can but she can't leave. maizuru even put a collar on her, further dehumanizing and trapping izutsumi.

when izutsumi joins laios's party, she's finally 'free', but it's not the kind of freedom she wants. she has to eat even more food she doesn't want or else she'll starve. but the difference now is that she's can leave at any time, and if she stays, she's treated as an equal. they're not feeding her monsters because they see her as inferior. they're all eating the same food so they can reach their goal(s). and this is part of izutsumi ultimately learning that in order to do what she wants, she has to be willing t do the things she doesn't want to

[metamorphesque]

Aurora (Arshaluys) Mardiganyan was just 14 when the sky collapsed on her head. In 1915, as the Armenian Genocide began, her village was torn apart by turkish soldiers. She watched as her father, her brothers and all the men in her family were dragged away and murdered. The women and children, including Aurora, were spared only to be marched into the desert—a death sentence of a different kind.

The march was relentless. Day after day, Aurora trudged through the searing heat, surrounded by the dying and the dead. There was no food, no water—just the constant, gnawing hunger, thirst and sexual mutilation. Those who fell behind were shot or left to die under the unrelenting sun. Aurora witnessed countless mothers cradling their dying children, their bodies wasting away before her eyes. The air was thick with the stench of death, and the ground was littered with the bodies of her people, unburied, forgotten.

According to her story, the turkish soldiers decided to nail the 17 girls of her village in the group to crosses—in a grotesque parody of their Christian faith, but they miscounted and only constructed 16 crosses; Aurora was the lucky one who was not crucified.

She endured much, being sold into a harem as a teen, for 85 cents. She was beaten, assaulted and dehumanized in ways no child should ever endure. Aurora’s spirit was broken over and over again, yet somehow, she survived.

When she finally escaped, Aurora found her way to the United States, carrying the weight of what she had witnessed. She was alone, orphaned by genocide, but she was determined to tell the world what had happened. Her story, Ravished Armenia, recounted the horrors in graphic detail—images too painful for most to even imagine. But for Aurora, they were not just stories; they were the memories that haunted her every day.

She agreed to relive her trauma once more, acting in the film Auction of Souls, where she portrayed her own suffering and the atrocities she had witnessed. But even then, Aurora was exploited. The people behind the film saw her pain as a commodity, and she was never properly compensated. She gave everything—her story, her dignity, her voice—but received little in return.

In the early 1930s, both the book and the film faded from the public’s attention. The sudden and complete silencing of the film had two explanations: the growing U.S.-turkey alliances, and an agreement between Hollywood and Germany. Aurora had written about being raped by a roving gang of german soldiers in turkey before being sold into a harem

The film that was supposed to tell her story was lost, leaving behind only fragments, just like the memory of the millions of Armenians who were massacred.

Here you can find Aurora Mardiganyan's book, "RAVISHED ARMENIA".

[genderqueerdykes]

as an intersex trans wo/man, i've noticed that unfortunately it has become painfully obvious that not only do radfems and terfs try to abuse trans men into falling in line with their beliefs, but unfortunately, this happens to trans women and transfemmes as well. i've unfortunately seen several trans women fall down the the "men evil, women innocent, trans men have cis male privilege, trans men don't struggle, trans men aren't men or trans they're just confused butches," pipeline really quickly after transitioning or their eggs cracking, and it's not necessarily that transfem's fault, but rather an abusive person sweeping in to take advantage of someone who needs and wants validation in feeling like a woman. the person who put the terf ideals in their head during this crucial stage in development is to blame, it is not inherently the trans woman's fault.

vulnerable transfems and trans women become indoctrinated into these things. trans women and fems are not inherently bitter, shitty, hateful people. it's a select few who become groomed by radfems who push this belief, and push it hard, because that's what you do when youve been indoctrinated into a cult. it's not an issue inherent to trans women and transfeminism at all- it's vulnerable people being groomed. this is a serious issue of trans women and fems being groomed and brainwashed.

this is a huge deal and we have to stand up for each other, because the transfems getting groomed into this need support and help to get out of this cult. it is not okay for women who are just trying to find their footing to almost instantly get sucked up into a literal hate group. we have to help trans people who become indoctrinated into gender essentialism, antimasculism, and transandrophobia just as much as we help other trans people unlearn transmisogyny. these issues are both damaging our community on the whole.

radfems are aggressive and will try to indoctrinate anyone they can into antimasculism, transandrophobia, and gender essentialism. a lot of trans women in the early stages of transition really want to be validated as women and such, will become groomed by these groups of cis women who will gladly feed them toxic ideals like women can never be wrong, women are always innocent, men are always harmful and evil, it just benefits the radfems, not the trans woman. this behavior grooms yet another person into spreading radfeminism without realizing it. when one espouses these beliefs they become a spokesperson for radfeminism and terfism

i'm plain tired of seeing this argument, because it is nothing but gender essentialist binarist bullshit:

"transphobia is worse for trans women than trans men because of x, y, z."

its not worse. its different. but equal.

i understand that many folks have not lived the life a trans man leads, but whenever you try to speculate on what it's like, you will always be wrong, no matter what, because you weren't in that person's shoes. it's impossible to see the nitty gritty of how a specific group of people are treated unless you are that person or spend lots of time around large groups of those types of people. trans men face homelessness at a disproportionately high rate compared to other groups of queer folk. we also deal with forced detransition. we deal with being dehumanized by she/her pronouns. we deal with having lesbianism and butchness weaponized against us. we also deal with sexual violence. we also deal with physical, mental, and emotional abuse. we deal with gaslighting, lying, being robbed, abandoned, injured and killed. its virtually impossible to find support if you're a pregnant trans man.

trans men have a lot of unique struggles. this is not a comprehensive list, but rather to show you that ALL trans people struggle. we are united under the same banner of transphobic treatment. we are struggling, but we are struggling together, and we can uplift each other without tearing each other down. punching down on another trans person hurts us all.

belittling the trauma of other trans people is a form of queer infighting that terfs want you to do in order to fracture our community further. queer infighting doesn't help anyone whatsoever. trans men do not have it harder than trans women. trans women do not have it harder than trans men. amab and afab and intersex enbies don't have it worse than each other. these are all completely different and unique struggles that deserve to be acknowledged for what they are. you cannot use the same scale of severity for a totally different problem.

people love to completely gloss over the issues trans men face for the sake of believing that all men benefit from patriarchy. saying that trans men are not affected by specific kinds of transphobia is spreading the radfem belief that only women struggle under patriarchy. queer men, men of color, intersex men, gay men, bisexual men, trans men, polyamorous men, genderfluid men, bigender men, gender non conforming men, feminine men, men who crossdress, disabled men, neurodivergent men, mentally ill men, and other marginalized men suffer under patriarchy as well.

i'm not tolerating radfem gender essentialism being woven into queer ideals anymore. this behavior has to go. when you genuinely believe these things, we all lose.

[unnamedmedicalprofessional]

Things that both happen in the same episode of doctor who

(content warning for dark humour and references to various morbid topics)

1.A thoughtful and moving depiction of suicidal depression/The Doctor fights a giant invisible chicken

2.An iraq war allegory involving aliens that cut off human skin and wear it/those aliens also fart a lot and laugh about it

3.The Doctor is tortured for billions of years in a metaphor for the incremental nature of moving on from grief/doors are revealed to be canonically sentient and mad at everyone and the doctor makes a psychic link with one

4.The Doctor grapples with the consequences of abandoning his friend because he cannot face the inevitability of her death/aliens make kids into geniuses by feeding them french fries fried in space oil so they can hack into the universe, they are then killed by said french fry oil

5.A man must deal with his loved one's inevitable death from a terminal illness/the doctor flys a sleigh pulled by a flying shark while wearing a santa hat

6.The Doctor accidentally causes his companion to be killed then brought back only to be trapped in a dystopia for ten years mutilated and dehumanized/missy dabs

7.The endpoint of the human race is revealed to be them mutilating themselves putting their heads in spheres and sadistically murdering other humans for fun/The Doctor becomes tinkerbell jesus

8.The Doctor admits that he's seen so many people die that he's lost count and become numb to it/the villains evil plan revolves around burning a sea monsters poop as fuel

9.The Doctor grapples with the ethical implications of the death penalty/a farting alien tries to blow up a town and then escape on a space surfboard

10.The Doctor abandons his companion for 30 years and then erases a version of her from existence against her will/a robot is killed by getting hit on the head by a replica of the mona lisa

[2tarbell]

anotha raspberry sorbet i thought of if that’s okay!!! road head w trailer park rafe🤭

TRAILERPARK!RAFE + ROAD HEAD ⋆.˚ ᡣ𐭩 .𖥔˚

“you know what to do. aht— don’t go pissin’ me off anymore, kid. hop to it.”

those words resulted in your boyfriends cock down your throat as he was driving back to his trailer. going forty-seven in a thirty-five, it’s like he wanted to get pulled over. wanted to show how much of a slut his girl was for him. how quickly she unbuckled his belt and got to work.

the low groaning mixed with the crunching sounds of gravel beneath the tires of his truck filled your ears. his hand was tight in your hand, guiding your eager mouth along his solid length. you’d been teasing him all night, it’s the least you could do. or that’s what he said anyways.

going out to the bar wasn’t even what he wanted to do. no, rafe would prefer staying in with you. cuddling up and pretending to watch a movie before one of you put your hand too high on the others thigh and—

rafe felt his eyes almost roll back — snapping them open in a hurry and turning on his blinker, preparing to turn onto the bumpy dirt road to his trailer. he took a glance down, immediately tensing and his hips bucking up into the wet warmth of your pretty mouth.

the sight of you, ass perked into the air and back arched deliciously, made the night of standing there watching you dance and flirt with everything all worth it. he couldn’t let you know that, though.

“this— this teachin’ you a lesson? huh? thought that shit was cute?” his voice was low, so low. riddled with cracks and growls that made your stomach coil with heat.

with a nod and a garbled whine, you redoubled your efforts, the slurping sounds growing louder and more intense. the grip he had on your hair mimicked the one he had on the wheel, white knuckled and straining to keep the truck straight.

his pubic bone met your nose, the head of his cock pressing into the back of your throat. his hand left your hair, sliding down the back of your head and to your back. his palm was warm and squeezing every inch of you it could reach. it found home on your ass, kneading the plump flesh and tugging you closer.

you gagged, tears streaking your makeup down your face in white lines. rafe pulled your head off, load shooting out and all over your face with a growl-turned-whine. it was then you realized the truck was stopped and parked haphazardly outside his small trailer.

his gaze was piercing, unforgiving despite the dangerous act you two just did. the realization he wasn’t gonna break that easy made a pout form on your cum covered face.

rafe chuckled wickedly, “dirty girl. look at’chu…”

his rough hand grabbed your chin, smearing the creamy release all over your skin in such a mean way. the act had you whining — hot tears welling up pathetically. it was so dirty, so dehumanizing.

and yet you loved it. you hung off of every word he drawled out in that sexy voice. just wanting to be his good girl again. here you were, letting this big, bad man demean you. here you were squeezing your legs together when he shakes your head in his tight grip.

“rafe, daddy, ‘m— ‘m sorry, i jus’— i didn’t think that—”

“nahhh, you didn’t. too fuckin’ dumb to think. jus’ need dad to do it all for you, huh?”

how quickly you nodded in agreement would have your mother clutching her pearls.

[wonysugar]

puff, puff and pass | ot4 aespa

♫⋆｡♪ ₊˚♬ ﾟ. high for this — the weeknd

synopsis : your dream blunt rotation, except you’re the blunt.

pairing : yoo jimin, ning yizhuo, aeri uchinaga, kim minjeong x fem!reader

genre : smut, porn without plot (sorry)

tags : high sex, aespa kind of gangbang reader to be quite honest—, objectification, reader is referred to as ‘it’ like once, oral sex, vaginal penetration, joint rolling tutorial included brought to you by jiminjeong xx, i’m joking, don’t do drugs yall

warnings : heavy use of drugs, like, they’re all high as hell help (more specifically marijuana) both fem!reader and aespa are intoxicated in this

word count : 1,4k(??)

a/n : the fact that i was basically finished with writing thisa while ago and the only thing stopping me from posting it was the fuckass moodboard.. AND EVEN THEN IT ISN’T EVEN ALL THAT I HATE ITTFJHHFJEJF anyways, here’s some food MWAHH love you sugarcubes<33

“come on, you’ve been at it for ages— pass it already.” complained ning, her voice all whiny. 

from those words alone, a normal individual would think that the five girls in the room, including you, were doing a blunt rotation of some sort. or perhaps you all were just participating in a chill activity that consisted of passing around an object for entertainment, nothing harmless.. right?

well.. yes! you’d be right in assuming that it was, in fact, a blunt being passed around originally. that is, until the other girls (intoxication clearly having taken over the good parts of their brains) thought it would be a great idea to pass something else, another object, one that’d cure their boredom in the middle of fucking nowhere. 

that said object turned out to be your very own body.

“ohh my god shut up—” was what aeri moaned, sharply inhaling air through her teeth as she fucked her cock deep into your mouth, the tip touching the back of your throat with every thrusting motion she made. you were on all fours in front of her, fitting all of her into your mouth, watching your head bob up and down her long shaft effortlessly as you took all of her rigid length like the good slut you are, it made her lose control of her senses. “fuck y/n i’m so fucking close—“

then, to both you and aeri’s surprise, right as she was about to finish all over your mouth, your hair was suddenly pulled on from behind. “ah-ah, too late, it’s my turn now.” was what you heard ning say from behind you in a singing tone, visualizing the kind of annoying smile she had on her face whilst saying that to aeri. 

you winced at the sharp pain you felt on your scalp from such a tug, which was then immediately replaced by the overwhelming sensation by the feeling of ning’s dick sliding up and down your wet slit, teasing your entrance with her tip. 

in response to having you pulled away from her at the moment of her sweet release, you saw as aeri’s face contorted from one of pleasure to one of frustration very quickly, despite her seemingly sleepy eyes due to the ridiculous amount of cannabis she ingested, and keeps ingesting. “i wasn’t done, asshole.” exclaimed the half-japanese girl, clearly upset that the chance to cum all over your pretty face got taken away from her and delayed for another short period of time.

ning simply laughed at her before swiftly sliding her cock into your wet, wet cunt. you moaned loudly, as being in a situation such as this one while simultaneously being high just made you feel everything way more than you usually would. it was like all five of your senses were invaded with different, filthy things, and all of those things contributed to making you feel so, so good. you felt mindless, only present to please those that were freely using your body.

you loved every single second, as dehumanizing as it was. perhaps that’s what made it so arousing.

“please— i’m doing her a favor. she knows this dick fucks her the best, right, doll?” you looked back at her with hooded eyes, unsure what to respond.

while yes, ning knows how to use her length, you were quite frankly blinded by the drugs at that moment.

all you really wanted was dick, regardless of how you got it.

so, you mindlessly nodded, “stick to jerking off and watching how it’s done, ‘kay?” is what added ning, earning another annoyed groan from the other girl in response, before the latter sat down on the couch before you. with that, each second that passed was an increase in speed for the girl on top of you, your back to her stomach.

“can you guys stop bickering already? it’s like, ruining the vibe.” said what sounded like jimin, her words were slow, clear and enunciated.

that’s when you caught a glance of her and minjeong, sitting on the other corner of the dark room. they, on their side of things, were rolling yet another blunt, minjeong was focused on intricately filling the folded paper with the marijuana whilst jimin held the filter for her, aligning its edges perfectly with the edges of the paper before rolling it, twisting the end of the joint and eventually lighting the latter. 

“and can you roll that shit quicker? it’s getting boring having ning do everything.” snapped back aeri, a bit louder so that the two relevant girls could hear her above the music, clearly annoyed. obviously, ning heard and grinned at her mockingly, earning an eye roll from her.

“we’re working on it, be fucking patient, girl.” replied minjeong.

what differed her ways to handle you and ning’s was mostly the gentleness that was employed with you; aeri was rough, sure, but she also prioritized your comfort above everything else when you were sucking her cock. ning, on the other hand, was fucking you like she had a point to prove, she’d thrust into you in an almost animalistic way, also making sure that she could hear every single dirty noise that came out of your mouth. 

not like that was hard to do anyways, with how loud and shamelessly lewd you were being for her. 

with that being said, you weren’t exactly surprised when you felt her fingers lock your jaw into a tight grip, making you face the couch aeri was sitting on. the chinese girl dug into your skin with her long, pretty acrylic nails, leaving very visible red scratches on your stomach as she got closer and closer to her climax.

“you’re so tight, baby..” said ning with a groan, huffing and puffing into your ear with each pump of her dick into your walls, all of it causing you to moan out incoherent words. “oh fuck, i think i could do you for hours on end—”

when you actually concentrated on the girl in front of you, you noticed how no longer upset she seemed about being denied her orgasm, but more so impatient to have you all to herself again. she watched you attentively as she stroked her own dick, wishing she was the one to stretch your pussy out instead of it being done by the annoying and cocky girl that was behind you, ning. 

those two are very close, so it’s very natural for them to take basically everything as a competition.

then, as if to prevent you from looking anywhere else other than her, aeri quickly stood up in front of you and grabbed ahold of your hair, rougher than usual, before impatiently teasing your already agape mouth with the head of her cock, slapping it against your desperate lips before bucking her hips into your mouth, inserting it effortlessly. ning was still behind you, pounding you just as mercilessly as she’s been doing this entire time.

you came, repeatedly, at that. what else could you have done when you were being fucked stupid by two different dicks at once, both at different speeds and intensities? obviously, it didn’t take long before they came inside of you, too. aeri’s warm juices filled the entirety of your throat, forcing you to swallow every drop of it as she pushed her cock down deeper, while the chinese girl's dick was buried deep into your wet, swollen cunt, the perfect view of your spread ass obviously playing a huge part in her orgasm.

teamwork at its finest! especially when the two other girls are finally walking their way towards you, stumbling in their steps, all giggly and jittery from the weed, clearly excited to make you take a puff out of their freshly rolled and lit-up joint. too fucked out to have at least one remotely coherent thought, you let them ruffle your hair and get a tight grip on it to make you face minjeong’s pale hand, holding the blunt in between her fingertips.

still recovering from aeri’s thick load in your throat, you didn’t even notice how jimin had her phone camera above you, filming you from practically every angle before locking your jaw in a tight grip, laughing and caressing your lips with her thumb.

“come on, pretty slut,” she said, her voice just above a whisper, “take a hit.”

and you did, you took multiple, even. you felt yourself lose every ounce of sobriety left in your body with every inhale you took of the joint, if you even had any. so much so that you weren’t even fazed by sometimes having it suddenly replaced by one of the girls’ dicks at times and even forgetting that all of that was getting recorded by jimin. 

once that blunt was finished, they simply thought it’d be funny to have you crawl around on the floor like a desperate little whore that’s trying to get her throat used like it deserves to be, you took them, turn by turn, getting their mixed loads all over your mouth and throat, turn by turn. 

unfortunately for you, you couldn’t remember what it was that happened afterwards, all you know now is that your head hurts like a bitch and that your legs feel like you went to the gym for a week straight with no breaks. 

with that information, it was needless to say that you definitely got passed and used around by the other girls like you wanted for the rest of that long and hazy night.

[adventuringblind]

The Thrill of It (1.8K Words)

LandOscar x Reader

Genre: Street Racer AU, Smut

Summary: Sometimes the boys come back from races a little riled up, it doesn't help tonight that they get a bit possessive when someone lays a hand on what's theirs.

Warnings: PinV sex, unprotected sex, public sex, exhibitionist Lando, Sub reader, Dom Oscar, Oral, face-fucking, Hair pulling (?), minor degradation, Oscar being stressed after because AFTERCARE IS IMPORTANT OKAY

Notes: I'm back! Did you miss me? I think this is the most lewd smut I've ever done... But reminder that comments and filling my inbox with nice things motivates me to write!!

Side Note: MINORS AVERT YOUR EYES!! ADULT CONTENT AHEAD!!

Masterlist // Request Form // My Website // buy me a Ko-Fi

The lights amongst the crowd flitted about in shades of neon. The people are rowdy tonight on the sides of the street. All of them handing off their cash to each other to bet on which driver they think will win. 

It’s a dangerous game with no medic on scene. She supposes that’s the thrill of it. Knowing there may be no return once they put their foot on the pedal.

Lando and Oscar are practically swimming in the cash now. While she isn’t in the spotlight, they certainly are. These are their streets. They know Woking like the back of their hands now. 

Lando says he drives by feeling where Oscar has a map of the turns memorized. It speaks volumes about their character.  

You’d think these idiots would stop betting so much on other drivers. She’s been here enough times to know they never learn. Always lured into a false sense of hope. She doesn’t mind it, simply finds it funny. 

She finds herself entranced by the sounds of the engines, the people chanting their names. She sees other people oggle the two, hands becoming a bit more than friendly as the night progresses and alcohol is consumed.

A car pulls below her hiding spot. The second car driven, a truck she can sit in the bed of when things get overwhelming and the people too much. 

Those friendly hands tend to slip when they see a pretty stranger. Boundary lines are crossed. Another thing they should know by now: Oscar and Lando are the kings of these streets and it’s best not to mess with their queen. 

The bed of the truck shakes as they climb in with her. Their faces are half hidden in the dark. The other is illuminated by intermittent flashing lights. 

 Lando looks all too happy about the stunt he just pulled. A dangerous thing that could have killed him if not done right. The adrenaline has his pupils dilated. “Don’t think he’ll be coming back again. Gave him a run for his money… Liturgy!” 

“Literally-” 

“Yes, that’s what I meant - Literally!” 

She tilts her head back and laughs. Drunk off the atmosphere of the night and maybe the fumes of whatever people have been smoking all night. “Scared him off then?” 

“You know it baby!” Lando latches right onto her exposed neck with his teeth for all of two seconds before Oscar is dragging him off. It leaves them both whining. “Osc! I’m doing things!” 

“You’re doing our things.” The dehumanizing language should not have her this hot and bothered, in Woking, in October. She’s wearing a skirt with nothing aside from panties underneath and one of Oscar’s zip-ups with a tank top. Not the best choice of clothing all things considered, but she could care less. Not when it gives them easy access when they are all riled up like this.

Oscar drags her into his lap. The feeling of strong thighs underneath her in almost the right spot has her whimpering. “Didn’t realize you’re already so needy for us darling. Forgot how much seeing us drive turns you on.” 

She nearly cries when Oscar pulls her underwear to the side and slips a finger through her slit. “Look at this Lan! She’s a mess already!” Oscar’s free hand grips Lando by the collar and pulls him closer; nearly choking him out in the process. When his fingers are pulling obscene sounds from her, he brings them away. Up towards Lando’s mouth which unlatches to suck on them eagerly. 

The Brits eyes roll back as Oscar jams four fingers down the back of his throat just for the sake of it. “S’pose you’ve earned it tonight, Lan. You’re already a mess anyhow and I think you’ve been leaking since you got out of the car.” 

Lando mumbles something around Oscar’s fingers. It’s unintelligible - or she’s too lost in her haze to comprehend anything. Having slotted down on Oscar’s thigh to get some kind of friction. 

The sound of Lando’s belt buckle coming undone becomes louder than the engines. Then the wet sound of lips clashing together. The hand Oscar previously had in Lando’s mouth is now around his neck. 

The same story time and time again. Lando goes by feel where Oscar exudes superiority in how he has them memorized. 

She clocks the hand on her waist moving to the back of her head. Oscar switches to kiss her instead. The filthy kind - all tongue and teeth. It keeps her occupied long enough for Lando to shimmy his boxers just far enough down. 

“I knew you were leaking.” Lando makes a weak noise at that. Oscar’s words seem to have that effect on him. Both of them - really. “I bet you like showing off for all these people, huh? The possibility of us being caught like this. You get off on the thrill.”

The boys help her reposition her boy. Oscar gets two of his fingers in her, hovering just above Lando’s cock. Which - to Oscar’s credit - He’s not wrong. Lando is leaking like a faucet that has a consistent drip. It is mesmerizing and should be illegal. 

Oscar gets a third in her, dutifully stretching her open despite having to support her weight. Lando thrusts into the air out of impatience which earns a lovely smack to the side of his ass. “You should know better, Love, that all good things come with time.”

She feels empty for all of two seconds before her body is plunging down onto Lando’s cock. She can feel him twitching behind her - trying to remain still until given the go-ahead to move. His hands paw at the slope of her back and curve of her ass. 

In front of her, Oscar is undoing his own belt. She should’ve realized sooner how he had positioned them. How the truck bed is conveniently long enough to let Lando work out his residual energy by thrusting into her while Oscar makes use of her mouth. 

He’s always three moves ahead of them. 

She leans down, ready for him without him even having to ask. “Spit,” He commands. She does it without hesitation. 

Oscar makes use of the makeshift lube and gives himself a few strokes before motioning her forward. She unhinges her jaw and relaxes her throat and still - she gags. 

“See Lando, patience works wonders.” 

“Please Osc, please - I’m dying over here-” 

“Go ahead baby, you’ve earned it.” Oscar chuckles. 

They find a rhythm. When one is going in, the other is going out. She’s drooling all down the exposed skin Oscar is showing. 

“Best. Fucking. Reward. Ever~” Lando punctuates each word with a particularly hard thrust. The sounds are ridiculous and they are lucky that the sound of engines revving is drowning them out. If anyone is watching - well - they are certainly getting a show. 

Oscar’s voice cracks. “Fucking hell, you two look so good.” She concludes the walls of his resolve are starting to crumble. That the grip she has on his waist to ground herself is enough to make him snap and throw him over the edge. 

“You like the show, Osc.” 

“You could say that.” 

Lando likes to be seen and Oscar likes to watch. She likes everything in-between that. To be the object of their affections and an element of desire. Something they covet enough to lose themselves like this. 

Everything gets messier - if that was even possible. Oscar snaps his head back and grips the back of her head so he can hold her stead and fuck her throat. Lando grips her hips and sets an unrelenting pace. Each movement is sloppier than the last. Each moan is more pitched. 

She swallows. Her throat constricts enough for Oscar to growl from somewhere deep and sum without any warning. The tears are streaming down her face as she gags on the new and sudden change of consistency. 

He drags her off and gives her no time to recover. Simply lunging forward and nearly sending her crashing backwards onto Lando. His hand goes back to the Brits throat while his tongue goes so deep into her mouth that there is no way he can’t taste himself. 

Lando is a mess of high pitched whines. “Please - please I’m close-” 

She inhales desperately as Oscar unlatches from her mouth only to find the sensitive spot on her exposed collarbone. “Osc-” 

“I could keep you two like this forever. Desperate and whiny. Leaking with the thought of how good it would feel to cum.” They are both letting out desperate sounds. “I bet that guy from earlier would have stayed away then. So consumed by us that he could smell it on you.” 

“Yesyesyes - please-” She’s going to lose her mind. Lando might be closer than she is and yet he won’t slow down. There is nothing but this until Oscar tells them yes. Because it feels better waiting for it. 

And Lando will always go by feel.

“You’ve earned it Lando, fill our girl up yeah? Make her cry harder.” 

Oscar has to cover her mouth as everything goes white. Her ears are ringing - swimming in the sounds of their voices and nothing else. It’s white hot blissful nothing. No thoughts or anxieties, no worries about some guy making passes at her. 

Here she knows the two men who want nothing but to see her smile and cry for their cocks. Which is a stark contrast considering - but she wouldn’t have it any other way. 

Oscar recovers the quickest. Swiftly jumping out of the truck bed to grab their extra blanket and hoodies. “I can’t really clean you two up yet, but will this do for now?” He shifts his weight between feet. Normally more prepared, ready to meet the needs of physical pains and emotional needs that come with the aftermath. 

They both nod and excitedly wait for him to climb back up. “That… was amazing,” she laughs. Her voice broken and hoarse from her throat being used. 

Oscar winces. “I need to get you some water.” 

“Osc-”

“Yeah.” 

“Relax! It felt good! It was great and we’re okay.” Lando gestures to the two who can barely move. Bodies still twitching from the overwhelming sensations. “Now we shall bask in the glory that is the ridiculous amount of cash we made tonight!”

“What are you gonna spend it on?” 

“You, of course!” Oscar leans her into his side as Lando throws an arm around her shoulders for good measure. 

Cars begin to drive past. Leaving for the night either to wherever they are staying or another race. They wave off some of the familiar faces and flip off the annoying ones. Yeah - she wouldn’t have it any other way.

[yandere-daydreams]

tw - unhealthy relationships, non/con, mentions of overstimulation, dehumanization, semi-public sex, and abuse.

[commissioned piece. donate to palestinians in gaza here.]

If Arlecchino had it her way, you think you’d be more of a doll than a person.

Not that it would make much of a difference when it comes to how she treats you. To her, all the world might as well be pieces of a chessboard; playthings to pose and position as she deems fit. Knights are sent into righteous battles, pawns are burnt to ash on first line of fire, and you’re made to watch it all from your place on a glass-enclosed pedestal, where the cruelties of the world are visible, but at a distance. That’s a flaw in her little world that Arlecchino hasn’t realized, yet – your eyes, unlike those of the delicate figurines she favors, are not only painted on.

You suppose you should count yourself lucky, when compared to the rest of her unfortunate collection. Most of her pieces are chipped and scarred, sharpened into fine, deadly points only to be discarded when they begin to dull. You, on the other hand, have proved yourself worthy of her maintenance. Your wardrobe is curated to her particular tastes, every style of bow and pattern of lace hand-selected to suit her preferred aesthetics, and she spends each morning running comb after comb through your hair, brushing rouge onto your cheeks, taking leisurely minutes to decide if she’d rather see you in blue or pink or lilac – always light colors, always gentle. You think, sometimes, that you must look like a groomed dog next to her, pastel and ridiculous next to her monotone elegance. Often, you try not to think about how little of a difference it would make if she added a leash and collar to your daily ensemble.

She rarely lets you leave her sight. Of course, obligation does draw her away from you from time to time (a rarity she laments as often as you pray for), but whenever possible, she has you sitting pretty by her side or, better yet, perched in her lap, straddling her waist and sobbing quietly into her chest as her clever fingers bring you to the brink of climax for the nth time in the past hour. The company she keeps rarely makes a difference when it comes to how or when she touches you – although, you do try not to remember how many of her colleagues have seen you with teary eyes and open legs. A doll’s owner rarely questions the way they choose to handle their toy, and so, she’s content not to think about how she handles you. Her only acknowledgement of your suffering is a quick kiss to the cheek as she coaxes you onto your own feet, a muttered comment about the new stain on the dark fabric of her pants. It’s a miracle that you can bear the humiliation of it, but your endurance is a convenience, not a necessity. There’s no reality in which your limitations alone would be enough to stop her.

Arlecchino does, at least, make the occasional effort to pretend she thinks of you as a partner, rather than a plaything. She’s made it clear that, in her ideal world, you’d happily accept the total loss of your autonomy and thank her for each and every second you spend under the torment of her obsession, but she settles for the occasional, trembling smile when she presents you with a gift or confection you lingered on while passing by an especially charming shop, the tender intimacy of your head resting on her shoulder when yet another meeting proves to be more long-lasting than your attention span. On her best days, she’ll even respond to your timid requests to please not leave another bruise on your neck, another fang shaped indentation on your collarbone with a breath of a laugh and a hushed explanation of why she has to, rather than just an outright, wordless dismissal. You wouldn’t quite say she listens to you, but it’s as close as she comes.

Dolls, after all, are incapable of requesting to be played with in a certain way, or asking their owners to treat them more gently, or speaking up about anything at all.

A doll, Arlecchino’s ideal doll, can only watch with a smile as it’s broken apart.

[villainsandvictimsalliance]

Horikoshi giving hero tropes to the villains is probably my favorite part of bnha.

He presented us with a nervous wreck of a boy at the beginning of the manga. Look, he seemed to say, isn't he creepy? isn't he evil? He met Tomura in his most lanky form. Malnourished, neglected, real dead hands all over his body and blunt nails digging mercilessly in his skin.

Sure, the story paints him as a real villain. He is there to kill kids, after all. He wants to kill the light of the hero society, to spread violence and hatred all around. He's also very very suspicious. You get that feeling that there's more to the story. It's in the way he acts, his desperation. He looks sick. What is he making him so? What is his story?

Tomura is a loser. A failure since the beginning, if you follow the narrative. Characters like Stain, Overhaul and Redestro point it out: Tomura isn't the best strategist per se, they can't understand his reasons to do what he does, there's something wrong with him in villain terms.

That's when the brain starts to pick up the signals and plants the doubt. Many people don't notice it, but something in the story gives away that he is a very special type of villain.

We see him alone in his dark messy room, staring at a screen. We see him drinking alone in a bar as he sits on his misery. Over and over, we see that evil boy and his burdened stance. Only Kurogiri is there. His master only talks to him through some radio. He doesn't mention anyone else. No one else seems to live in that bar but Kurogiri and him.

Back then, when Tomura was all about AFO and All Might and no one else, he felt hollow. Rotten.

We first saw him approach someone for help and some company after the first LOV members were introduced. We meet Toga and Dabi, then Tomura goes to find Deku. Is he still creepy? Yes. Is he still evil? Also. We have Giran talking about Tomura with the fondness you reserve for a spoiled child. The way Kurogiri and Giran talk about it, it's more like Tomura needs to make some friends. He's not used to it, so he's being rude to them.

He's a chosen one reluctant to make friends, since he's used to doing things on his own— or at least with people he didn't care about. Next time we see him, his telling Kurogiri that he doesn't want them to die, he wouldn't sacrifice them for a goal and he actually wants them to succeed. He talks like a leader, he considers them important.

When they show us the LOV around Tomura as he talks to a kidnapped Bakugo, there's something in there already. How they worry when Bakugo hits Tomura and knocks the hand out of his face. They humanize Tomura, which is a lot to say when AFO did everything he could to dehumanize him. They make Tomura be more mature, more responsible and more capable. While AFO paints Tomura as a foolish child that cannot get things right until he's guided there, the LOV trusts Tomura to take care of himself and guide them.

That's when the hero tropes with villains started.

A quick list from the top of my head:

Twice overcame his trauma mid-battle in order to save Toga and then the LOV.

Tomura was tempted by Overhaul to betray the LOV in exchange for power. He pretended to agree, only to backstab Overhaul because Tomura would never forgive those who hurt his friends and would never betray the LOV.

Magne went to attack Overhaul for offending her and her friends, defending their ideals and their right to exist 'til death.

Mr. Compress took the leading role in many dangerous situations to assure that the LOV would get their win, but also to assure they'd make it out alive.

Tomura would forgive people not on his behalf, but for the benefit of the LOV.

Giran refused to sell any info about the LOV and laughed in his captors face because he was not so important to them. Turns out he was bluffing about it being all business, since we know from Twice's flashback that he did it also for the fondness he felt towards the LOV and the LOV went there to rescue him.

The LOV rushing through a battlefield the size of a city while desperately trying to find a way to save Tomura.

Twice and Mr. Compress refusing to leave Tomura fighting Gigantomachia alone and taking the burden of his training with him.

Dabi doing all he could to save Twice and snapping when he realized Twice was dead.

Mr. Compress worried about Toga and her solo mission.

Spinner telling Toga that she needs to come back safe and sound to them.

Tomura refusing to die or give up while the LOV still needs him (to be a hero).

Twice already dead and still moving because he needed to save Toga.

The entire LOV refusing to even consider defeat because they blindly believe that there is no way Tomura can lose.

And there's so much more...

The LOV made Tomura act heroic. They gave him a reason to want to save and protect, instead of just wanting to destroy.

The power of friendship but for evil.

Isn't it the best thing ever?

[cocklessboy]

I see a lot of people saying that gender-affirming health care like top surgery for trans people like myself should be freely available (which is correct), but one of the reasons they often give is that top surgery is very safe and has a very low rate of complications compared to other surgeries. And I often see transphobes clutching their pearls over the few people who do have complications. What about them?! What if you're one of the unlucky ones?! Should we really let those transes risk it??!!!

Setting aside the fact that no one raises such concerns over other types of surgery, I'd like to use myself as an example for anyone who needs one.

In May of 2022 I had top surgery (double mastectomy). The surgery was done by a gynecological surgeon, not a plastic surgeon, because that way my insurance would cover it.

The surgeon did his job and removed the breast tissue, but he did not make it look pretty. I have dog-ears at both ends of both scars (extra bits of skin that hang off in a very unappealing fashion), my chest still looks unnaturally flat with no muscle or fat despite a lot of working out, and one of the stitches didn't heal properly and was left as an open wound through "secondary healing" for several months before it finally healed over into a very large scab (and eventually a very large scar). My nipples are uneven and irregular and look... well, just awful, really. Due to bad genetic luck, I wound up with keloid scars which, instead of getting smaller and lighter over time, have instead expanded, becoming thicker and darker. Worst of all, I now have chronic nerve pain in my chest. My GP thinks the surgeon must have hit a nerve during the procedure, and now I have random sharp pains all over my chest even now, nearly ten months later. The pain might improve with time, or it might not.

I basically had almost every possible complication one can have from this surgery short of infection or death. Some of the aesthetics might be fixable with more surgery (though plastic surgery will be expensive). Some are probably permanent. I might never feel comfortable taking my shirt off in public again. I might have to tattoo over the scars.

And pay attention to this next bit, because it's the most important part of this whole post: I do not regret the surgery. Even with all the complications and the ugly state of my chest and the pain. If someone said they could push a button and make it so that the surgery never happened and I'd have a perfect, unmarred chest with C-cup breasts again, I would tell them to take their button and fuck right off. Because even with basically the worst of all possible outcomes, that surgery was the best thing that ever happened to me.

I don't feel good about taking my shirt off in front of people now. I do think my chest is ugly. But it's a male chest now. When I put on a t-shirt, it rests flat against my chest. No one will ever mistake me for a woman again. I'll never have to wear a bra or binder ever again.

The dysphoria I felt from having breasts was so severe that a hideously scarred chest and chronic pain are vastly preferable. The euphoria I feel when I look in the mirror with a shirt on is something I never knew I was capable of feeling.

And it's my fucking body, and it's up to me what I do with it. If I wanted to tattoo myself from head to toe, or file my teeth into fangs, or have a doctor break my legs and surgically implant extensions to make me taller, that's my right because it's my body. The fact that all those things are regarded as basically acceptable (if a little weird), but I had to have a dehumanizing interview with an old cis psychiatrist who hates trans people and wants us all sterilized just to get a piece of paper giving me permission to have my tits removed, is fucking absurd.

Top surgery (of any kind) is generally very safe, and complications are rare. But even with the worst outcome, a trans person will basically never regret it.

And frankly, if a cis woman wants her tits cut off, or a cis man wants a pair of boobs to play with on his own chest, more power to them because literally who gives a fuck what people do to their own bodies? I saw a dude on TV when I was a kid who'd tattooed his whole body to look like a cat, filed his teeth into fangs, and had loads of plastic surgery to surgically implant whiskers and make his face look more feline. It was weird! But literally no one said that should be banned because he might regret it. It's his body to do whatever weird shit he wants with.

The next time someone clutches their pearls and kicks and screams about how you can't let someone permanently alter their body in a way they might regret, feel free to point to me and my complete and utter lack of regret.

(Or have a little fun with it, go hard in the other direction, and say you absolutely agree, which is why we should ban ALL non-emergency surgeries until the patient has been FULLY evaluated by three psychiatrists - along with tattoos and piercings. Oh, and ballet lessons for anyone under the age of 25, since ballet changes the structure of a child's body FOREVER.)

[pearlsdefenseattorny]

since we're all talking about SU again, i want to say my perspective of pearlrose neither condemns their relationship as toxic or upholds it as ideal. i think that stance is surprisingly uncommon. theyre a comfy mix between Meant for Each Other, and Coercive Doomed Incommunicative Mess, and the middle ground ive settled on is that despite powerful mutual love, they never fully understood each other nor could they provide what the other really Needed in a comitted relationship. i LOVE them together. not just becuz theyre sweet and cute and sexy but becuz, like most of SU's relationships, theres a huge well of depth to dip into. much of it is sad. the tragedy of pearlrose isn't that Rose didnt love Pearl (bonkers take) or Greg showed up and ruined everything (double bonkers) or Pearl had to move on from her evil abusive ex (triple bonkers), but that neither of them could wade that swamp of trauma and shared history and feelings to SEE the other clearly and accept her. THATS sad. not your weird half-baked surface level heteronormative take which boils Rose to down to a caricature and Pearl to a victim.

Rose is a really sad character. PD was a deeply empathetic individual in a society which criminalized empathy, stamped down compassion, and rewarded and fostered exploitation and dehumanization of those hierarchically beneath you. i am totally willing and happy to hash out all her sins (gag order, abandoning spinel, bubbling bismuth, lying..) but not until we aknowledge the humility and good character revealed in establishing the rebellion itself, emancipating pearl, and so on... homegirl never even knew what mutual respect was LIKE before greg becuz in rebecca sugars own words, he was the ONLY one who demanded to be treated like a real person. i think she said "everyone else had either been above or below her."

Rose was set up for moral failure! she didnt stand a chance (and neither did pearl😬) but she made the boldest, most humbling, most *dangerous* move of playing both sides then at last ceding power and we need to give her credit. the biggest failure of the movie was hammering into the audience's head how awful she was. she was so complicated. she was so sad. she hated herself. she loved everyone. she tried so hard. she LOVED pearl. you werent always good Rose Quartz but they could never make me hate you

[rel124c41]

THE LOST ART OF KEEPING A SECRET. jade leech & floyd leech

The aquarium receives new additions perhaps once every two weeks; usually they are cute little things with rainbow fins and gem eyes. These two are not cute little things; they're huge and they have human faces. "Well I've got a secret, I cannot say" - Queens of the Stone Age, Track 2 on Rated R. a gift for @hallowed-father; based on their beautiful fanart 💕

tags: aquariums, late night conversations, captivity, situational humiliation, dehumanization, mutual pining, dubious ethics, kidnapping, vivisection, nursery rhyme references, eventual happy ending

word count: 12,668

The first two times you try seeing them, all you see is your reflection. 

It makes sense unfortunately. With the lack of any light, you are going to have a hard time seeing them. Cloudy black settles over the skeleton and hair shaped vegetation. You can turn your head on a swivel (which you do on the second try) but there is no way to discern what swims through darkness. Instead, all you see in the aquarium tank’s water is your face. 

Each uniquely human feature of yours squints in the nebulous, oscillating dark. To an observer, it would seem that you think if you flatten your eyes into pressed almonds something will reveal itself to you. Nose scrunching, you squint in a grandmother who lost her glasses way that is simply laughable. 

There must be something inside the exhibit.

Nothing. Nothing but your desolate reflection. 

On a small plaque, the words no use of flash photography wags a censure finger at you. Besides the cerulean halo on the corners where the wall meets ceiling, the room must remain dark at all times. Even during operating hours – or so you have heard from Deuce – they refuse to allow any other light in the secluded room. 

Besides the ultramarine ouroboros, the oval-shaped room is dark beyond dark. An extreme that is on another level than what you are familiar with. As a nightguard, you are familiar with the dark. Quite familiar. 

For example, there is one aquatic animal that you managed to see that other people cannot find nine times out of ten. In the shadows, spider crabs hide. They call their environment interestingly enough: the twilight zone, a part of the seafloor that gets little light and is very cold. With only three crabs in a sizable aquarium, it is understandably hard for others to find them. While the guests that linger after hours or closing staff puzzle over their location, you find them with ease. Behind the ship, by those bones, in the left corner no no higher in the left corner;  your eyes have long since adjusted to the nocturnal proclivity of your job. 

(One of the closing staff employees joked you were like a cute, little opossum. You think he meant it as a flirt; you found it insulting. Pressing your shades higher up on the bridge of your nose, you clocked in with your head down, vexed.)

However, in the tenebrous depths before you, you are like a disgruntled archaeologist standing in a desert of Swiss-cheese holes. Unable to locate anything. Tilting your head in a slightly different direction, your eyes squeeze into petite slices, searching. 

The flashlight in your hand is a heavy temptation. If you just raise it, the absence of light will readily receive it. Melted pinks and greens of vegetation will pop, brown and amber of decorative rocks will shine, and whatever colors lie on these new fishes will certainly look like a gorgeous splendor under visible light. It would take the smallest wrist motion. Your reflection held in black water stares back at you, glaring daggers. ‘C’mon, do it,’ your reflection urges.

Light slugs over your sneakers, contemplative. ‘Perhaps not,’ you think with regards to the penlight. You know that you loathe having any type of light in your face; do unto others as you would have done onto you. The button of your tool clicks off. By now, you should already be down by the stingrays. 

‘Third time might just have to be the charm,’ you think with a frown. 

In the fishbowl glass, mummified with shadows, your reflection mimics that childhood disappointment.

‘I’ll try again tomorrow.’

Turning to leave, spine to the aquarium tank, you miss the first instance of light emerging out of dark. 

It pulls upward like an ember blown skyward out of a campfire pit. The movements of it are languid. Flickers of yellow orbit in a whirlpool, lazy like they have just woken up. That clean circle becomes distorted, shrinking and growing like window-shades are being maneuvered over it. Then, a twin of yellow joins the first, a hair keener than the first. Both circles of light hang in the shadows, not brightening or shining beyond an intensity that is noticeable. Shrewd with their intentions.

When the door to the oval room clicks close, the window-shades pull down like a blink and the aquatic water changes from being speckled with playful yellow back to tenebrous black.

As it turns out, the phrase ‘third time's the charm’ holds an eternal merit. Because the next night, which is the third time you look into the aquarium tank, your wish is granted. 

The unluckiest charm; the unluckiest wish.

The aquarium gets new deliveries once every two weeks. As the nightguard, you are not kept on the up-and-up unless Deuce Spade is working. And as an honor college student, Deuce is usually scheduled – during daylight hours of course – on the weekends when exam season is not keeping him occupied. So, you missed the news about this new delivery initially. All you knew about them was from the very insightful texts of Deuce Spade (two in total):

The new deliveries can’t be around light. Think it's anglerfish? 

and

Apparently not anglerfish, those have to live under pressured water. Why do people act like that’s common knowledge to know??

Your available information is: they are not anglerfish. That is all.

You really are left with no hints to what hides in murk. After two weeks, no plaque detailing the species is nailed to the wall or statued on a slanted board. The room is void of identification. Perhaps that is the reason your body seems so magnetized towards deciphering this mystery. No identification by now is unusual. Plus, night shifts drag like limping feet; why not try to stall off boredom?

This time around, you power off your penlight before entering the room. Instead of letting the light stamp a circle of itself on the ground, you enter pure darkness. Blue vibrates above you. Not complete darkness, you correct, stepping on the path that limited blue illuminates. 

The room and tank resemble an egg with a cut-off top. The room is oval shaped but missing a quarter of its full shape, the top half knifed off to make room for a tank full of about five hundred gallons of water. When you reach the wall, the length is forty feet, this sliced egg-top, you place determined hands in your slacks pocket. 

And squint until the muscles in your eyes quiver with strain.   

Penguins must be kept in cold waters. Vents are constantly blowing cold air into the exhibit to keep it under forty degrees. As your breath comes out in a puff of frosty air, you wonder deeply just what kind of species can be kept in such frigidness. Deep sea penguins? That would certainly be interesting. 

Your reflection challenges you with a mimic of your squinting. Keep dreaming, it says. No matter which way you look over tenebrous shadows of vegetation and rocks, nothing is making itself clear to you. This time you risk inching closer. From this distance, you can count the vertebrae-esque leaves of a winding ludwiga. Ice seems to heartbeat off the glass, kissing your features. 

What can you see?

Nothing. Nothing but your desolate reflection.

That is until a little organic lantern – small like a dragonfly– comes alive in the water. Despite your excitement, you keep yourself frozen and still. Your tiny gasp bleeds out your mouth and hits the glass gradually. The dragonfly powers on and off in two blinks. Morse code for ‘I’ but you doubt this animal knows that – you just happened to take a college elective for Morso code. You watch this single, pinprick lantern with great interest.

‘I think it really is an anglerfish. I mean, it makes complete sense. Deep sea water temperatures. The utter lack of light. Maybe, the researchers found some way to replicate the pressures, and the staff just doesn’t know yet. That would be revolutionary.’

Then, a second dragonfly joins the first. On a black-emerald and black-turquoise torrent, the ember dips down low. Glittering like a sun-rays on water, it slithers closer with curious intent. It was leagues keener than its twin, metaphorically hexagonal instead of circular. This dragonfly too powers off and on in quicker blinks. Four blinks which is ‘H’ in Morse code … useless knowledge. 

Anglerfish cannot communicate. The entire ecosystem of a brain from fish to human is different, like trying to compare a tropical amazon to a winter wonderland. Just far too different to understand one another.

But, it is impressive that the aquarium was able to get such a deep sea creature to survive in a simulated habitat. 

“Hi there.” You wave your fingers. Pressing yourself closer to the glass, you wait for your eyes to adjust and register the razor teeth and fat jowls of an anglerfish brown face. Cold air starts to swim under your jacket, your body’s tilt causing the material to slip. Then, you make eye contact.

Eye contact? Eye contact. Turns out those lantern-shaped dragonflies you are looking at are not the bait anglerfish have attached to their bodies. It is not a hunting evolution you openly leer at. Rather, you look them in the eye. 

All the fire of your wonder extinguishes like a pinched match.

As if the vents are working overtime, a sudden chill falls over you. Goosebumps settle over your shoulders. You jump back and misty gray air (your gasping breath) explodes in front of you. It is not your desolate reflection that swims in front of you. Someone else’s face is in there.

There are creatures in there; that is undeniable. What fights to make itself conclusive in your reeling mind is the image of the creatures. Creatures – so completely alien when compared to the mixture of muscles that make up an anglerfish– with human faces. Human features. A nose. A pair of lips. A pair of squinting eyes, staring right back at you. 

One of them throws their head back in laughter when you fall to your ass, reeling inward and outward. What the fuck is a human – two humans! – doing inside an aquarium tank at 2 A.M.!

You climb back up to your feet with all the grace of an injured crab. Your left arm feels longer than your right; you feel like the ground has morphed into quicksand and is suckling on your right boot; all of your world has become disoriented. In your jacket, your penlight weighs down your left side like a brick. Pulled by a mental riptide, you wrestle until you finally stand on two (trembling)  legs like all bipedal humans should. Earth tilts as you watch the one who laughed move forward, blue blanketing him. 

He taps the glass. Exact over the bullseye point of where you stand, reeling, in the glass from his point of view. In intelligent acknowledgment of you.

You two lock spheroid eyes, analyzing each other with hell-bent resolve. Mapping the features of each other in your brain’s fusiform face area so you can recognize each other at later times. His human features settle like all the others before him in your cerebrum. Packaged in the inferior temporal cortex, packaged in the fusiform gyrus. The human visual system that specializes in recognizing faces accepts him. 

‘That is a face. I will recognize it later and recall it as one thing only: a face.’ Just like that, your brain, your fusiform gyrus mails you the annotation. 

A part of you wants to cry and the other wants to puke. You do neither. You react with a different system of your body.

Muscles press your flashlight’s button on and muscles move it up quickly when the second one starts to move closer to the glass. You do it out of fear. And with strange, instant regret. 

The one closest to the glass folds into himself, seething. A webbed, tooth-white-with-green-gradient hand covers his eyes in agony. His other hand slams the tank in a tight fist. It knocks the world back into orientation. You flee the scene with your flashlight swinging wildly back and forth with your sprint. 

This time there is no laughter.

You rush out like they are chasing you, laughing over your shoulders. With a harsh crash to the ground, panting in disbelief, you pull trembling knees towards your stricken face. What the fuck – what the absolute fuck! A carapace cloak falls over your brain to ignore knocking thoughts and rationalization. Wordless beyond three words, they swirl in your head. What the fuck – what the fuck.

Your spine lies on another exhibit. Stingrays lie underneath the aquarium’s sand, sleeping and unaware of you. Part of you knows you will not be able to sleep in the morning. 

“What the fuck.”

You unlock your phone with your face when you get home. 

The lamp glows, allowing your phone to register the face identification. As quickly as the string is pulled on, it is tugged off. Dawn rests against your black-out curtains like zombies pounding on doors sheltering food. Brightness on the screen is kept down to the lowest possible setting. You type the name of where you work into your phone.

‘There has to be information on them. You can’t just have that’ – pale-green faces with matching gold eyes – ‘that living in an aquarium. And if it’s in an aquarium, shouldn't that aquarium be like inside Area 51 or the Oval Office. Anywhere but nowhere!’

You click on the website of your place of employment. The types links are highlighted in white bubbles: GET YOUR TICKETS, WAYS TO SAVE, and ANIMALS UP-CLOSE. Your finger follows the last tab and you come across a Let’s Get Started sheet, asking if you are a member and, if not, to start booking. A colorful curse parts your lips.

You return to the home page. Take in the organization again. Okay, there are some links above too: Visit, Animals & Exhibits, Learn, Research & Conversation, News & Events, Support Us, Shop. 

Gravitating towards Animals & Exhibits, you watch as a list unfurls like a scroll. None of them are unusual animals. From beluga whales to steller sea lions, you are looking at a dead-end list of regular animals which you have passed multiple times on your nightguard route. Aquatic animals whose features do not turn your entire morning full of sleep into restless pacing. 

This is nauseating. For piscine features to be manipulated like that. Sea creatures come in a variety of features that are unique to them; eyes that reveal the innate instinct to survive above compassion or companionship, dorsal fins that branch off their body like tiny mountains, or those puckering lips that circle to suction fish-feed from the surface of their tanks. Those features you can compartmentalize with the aquarium you work with well. They belong there with the other undersea creatures. Your heart pangs in disgust.

This is immoral. For human features to be manipulated like that. A face you might see walking out of a movie theater, hand in hand with his girlfriend. A face you could have the possibility of getting to know if you were not a college dropout; someone in your biology or english elective or calculus class that would ask for help with a certain question. Staring into that man’s left umber eye and right gold eye, you realized how all those features made him human. Your heart pangs in sympathy. 

This is? You take a tranquil breath that soothes you like medicine from an inhaler, and the next thought sets your world back on the correct axis. This is out of your paygrade.

You return because, fucking, of course you do. A job is equivalent to a life. You experience less hardships when you have a good job – which you thankfully do. You have a good job that you must keep.  

One: legally, graveyard shifts pay more than others in your state. Two: it was ideal for the degenerative disease you have. Three: “I need money. Money is good. I need money. Money is good. I need money. Money is good. I need money. Money –'' There have certainly been better mantras sung in your car; though, this melody keeps you sane. Most importantly, it keeps your foot steady on the accelerator. So with three very good reasons – really just two overlapping ones and a single unique one – you return to work the next day like nothing is wrong. 

Thus, you are going to ignore it. Thus, “I’m going to ignore it,” you tell yourself. Thus, you are going to stand in front of the oval-shaped room’s door for the larger half of thirty minutes, studying the steel. Ah, this is far from ignoring it.

It is just … absent of sentimentality, you know that they are only fish. Fish that you see on guys’ dating profiles, fish that you eat with a medley of dipping sauces, fish that shit in the very water they swim in. You are no PETA advocate that will say fish are like the monkeys of the ocean, learning to use rudimentary tools and are sophisticatedly smart because they form social groups. However, despite this, there is a tiny pebble in the river that manages to disrupt the entire flow; the pebble wants you to apologize to them.

Which is outlandish and pure insanity!!

Which is really why you should not push the door open with your hand. And, which is why you glare at your traitorous fingers and listen to the creak of an opening door, bemoaning how utterly stupid you are to be opening this Pandora box of possibilities.

You let the flashlight sway once in an overarching cut across the room. Then, you point it at the ground and squint at the aquarium again. Besides a few layering shades of ebony speckled with blue, there is really not much for you to distinguish in the stomach of shadow. Putting yourself on an even playing field, you flick off your flashlight and step forward. 

Feet shuffle inch by inch. Looking straight, your acuity of vision decreases bar by bar. Gravity shifts like a restless faultline has awoken under your feet. You want to run away while you walk forward.

When you touch a hand to the frigid glass, you finally feel steady again. Once more, your exhale makes itself physical in a small cloud on the tip of your nose. The temperature is graciously grounding. 

“I’m okay,” you remind yourself. You blink to stabilize your vision.

Apologize to the fish then you can finally leave. Simple enough.

Yet, as you wait and squint, no glowing eyes emerge in the dark. You hold yourself there, waiting for just a flicker of motion in what seems like everlasting comatose. 

This is pointless. Why am I even here? I doubt they remember my face, much less hold a grudge over it. Fuck, why did I let myself get sentimental over some eldritch homunculus that is an affront to biological evolution! Why aren’t they at Area 51 or the Oval Office – why did faith push them here?

Inner seething concluded, you turn your flashlight on and the room brightens. For a split second, your face lies its reflection on glass with a resentful aura. You maneuver light towards the door with determination. Your body follows, making a hasty turn towards your exit. There are rounds around the aquarium to be made, iced frappuccinos in the breakroom you want to drink, and momental, life-altering plots to be ignored forever.

Until the glass behind you thuds in tension-raising noise like when a bird hits window-panes with little to no warning.

Breath caught in your throat, you whirl around to make eye contact with him. He wears such a handsome face, one that could belong to a heartthrob actor if not marred by the fins replacing his ears and the mossy green hue of his skin. His playful inquisitive eyes are entirely human in shape and structure; the black pupil and then the color ring of an iris. Too bad they too are disfigured by rare and nauseating colors, olive-umber and gold. 

That right eye reminds you of lighthouses on the coast. Captains are not supposed to stir towards lighthouses; they avoid the light, even if it carries a certain warmth. Why is he looking at you so warmly?

Somehow, you just manage to catch out of the corner of your eye the motion of his hand. An acute nail points down at your beaming flashlight which imprints a halo of light on the carpet floor. Then, he raises his hand up to around his shoulder. His fingers move in the starting shape of someone about to play thumb-war before he starts to move his thumb up and down. Clicking an imaginary button, signaling for you to turn off your flashlight.

Stunned, you numbly do. Light is pulled and magnetized back into the pen’s surface, like an object beamed up into a spacecraft, at a speed unseeable to the human eye. The eye contact between you two is almost an intense lip-lock that both of you cannot part with. 

This is one you shined the flashlight at. Right into those encapsulating eyes. The right one is yellow like liquid spilling out of a pineapple. Bright and playful.

“I- I uh,” you fumble with your apology. He probably won’t understand a word. You purse your lips nervously. Are there any words in the English language that can package up your sympathies from homo sapien to fish; is opening your mouth even worth it? “I wuh-wanted to –.”

Your apology withers when the eel-mer starts to tap on the glass. 

Intentionally, you listen. Yet irrationally, you expect to see or hear more Morse Code. Perhaps it is his anthropoid features that misled you to the conclusion that he might know the coded language. With a needle-hook nail, he taps a rhythm. 

It’s nothing though? The letters are gibberish, with even the number 5 sitting pretty between an O and a C. Of course it is not a code. Coming to your senses, you doubt he could even understand your apology if you gave it to him. There is a fine line drawn in the aquarium’s sand: fish and humans are not equal, one is more intelligent.

With some infinite patience, the fish taps the glass again. You listen and recognize it as the exact same taps and pauses from before.

“This is ridiculous,” you mutter under your breath. You hold eye contact, scrutinizing him. So used to having zero company, you surmise aloud, “I must be so sleep-deprived and loopy that I dreamed you up … A piece of undigested beef like Scrooge said.” As if to solidify his independent self and independent thinking in your solipsistic world, he taps the rhythm again.

This time – you think because of the repetition – you finally understand why he is tapping. It almost sends you flat on your ass once more. 

Oh. You throw a hand up to your mouth, faintly covering up a disbelieving laugh of joint horror and amusement. Disbelief crystallizes itself in the air; a tiny cloud of your reeling mind dissolves in front of you as you drop your numb hand. “Hah.”

The fish taps a nursery rhyme. One you know from kindergarten. One you would clap the rhythm of with your hands. You remember vaguely the pattern you’d move your hands to play with another child. The vague lingering sense of being hushed and secretive while playing your little singing games, giggling in the back of the classroom, bites your goosebumped flesh. 

How appropriate for a man trapped in an aquarium to know the nursery rhyme A Sailor Went to Sea. He does it again, the lyrics plucked from the cobwebs of your memory: A sailor went to sea, sea, sea; to see what she could see, see, see; but all that she could see, see, see; was the bottom of the deep blue sea, sea, sea. 

You don’t know fully how well your sight would fare in the bottom of the deep blue sea, sea, sea. Still, with a hesitant squirm, you approach the frigid glass. The man inside the aquarium waits this time rather than launching right back into tapping.

Raising your arm, you make certain to dig your nails into your palm. A little reality-checking pinch never hurt anyone. One of those pallid nails rises up and taps back. Feeling like you are the spinning ballerina, you listen to the melody of this Pandora box plays unchained and uncaged in the ice cold air:

A sailor went to sea, sea, sea

To see what she could see, see, see

But all that she could see, see, see

Was the bottom of the deep blue sea, sea, sea

There is no way to get around it. The third shift is lonely. Here in this aquarium? They only require one person to clean all the tanks, turn off decorative filters, and supervise aquatic life. That sole person has been you. With an iced frappuccino and penlight as your pirate’s sword and hooked hand, you have managed the task of protecting this vessel well.

Just because of your longevity of working as a third shifter, it does not make it come easy. Two tabs in your eighteen open Safari tabs are on articles about coping with night work. Coping with solitude when the entire world works in the opposite of you. One article details trying to stay on top of social interactions. All these shifting hours have been mistakenly used up. As you move through hallways like a haunting shark, you roll in your mind all the lost opportunities and all the regrets of having people in your life that you could’ve formed relationships with but never did.

Your metaphorical ailment has been sleep apnea. Eye scorned. Unable to catch your breath. You've been awake for years with no company. Along with being alone, you have been so achingly tired. Circadian rhythms in a body never change.

Your friend plays well in rhythms. The instrument of his disposition is easy to read after a month of ‘knowing’ each other. He has the attitude of a drummer. 

It is hard to get yourself used to his existence at first; he remains uncaring to your fretting. Lacking melodies or harmonies, he seems like the type that would rather keep things easy and simple than embellish. 

You come to visit? He wants to play. You’re too exhausted to play? He can entertain himself. What you have is very plain sailing and hardly involves any talking unless you start it. Besides, he is still just a fish and thus cannot converse with you. 

He really enjoys tapping on the glass. He plays a variety of rhythms; ones you do not know then, very strangely, some that you do know. As night by night moves along in time’s steady march, you grow comfortable enough to play back. He will play a rhythm only once, you copy it back with aid from your memory. You have even started to show him music on your phone, seeing how quickly he can pick up on certain beats and mimic them for himself.

Sometimes though, all he wants to do is simply listen. Which is activity the two of you share in tonight, absent of that third member who you are sure is hiding deeper among the burrows and the oscillating, five ribbed kelp. That distant drummer in your phone floods the cold room with music.

A small booklet covers your heart as you lie wistful. The floor is rough cement. There is no better place to lounge though. Underneath your head, a furry gray seal pup you borrowed from the toy store acts as your pillow. You try to think of yourself weightless like you are in water as you remain close-eyed and contemplative.

Like a siren call, music slithers out of the bottom of your phone’s speakers. Legs crossed over one another, you briefly tap your foot along to the rhythm that you are sure your friend is enjoying. “Look for reeeflections, in yo-our face; canine devotioo-ton, time can’t erase; Out on the cor-ner or locked in your room; I never buh-lieve them and I never assume-uh!”

Speaking of your friend, you have not bothered to check on him in a while. One of your diseased eyes peels open. Face held in a wink, you estimate if your friend is close enough to the glass that you should be able to see him clearly enough despite all the darkness. 

You do not expect him to be lounging right there beside you. It gives you a little shock of surprise. A moment passes by and that feeling suddenly intensifies to a shock of the heart. Not in a romantic way but in the way of a death row prisoner being electrified to death. 

You bolt upright, skull and hair flying off the seal pup plushie. Prescription sunglasses tilt down from their forehead perch, landing crookedly on your nose. The creature waves a sharp set of gradient-covered claws in your face. The only reason that your electric heart runs above its normal BPM is because that glowing lighthouse-esque eye is on the left side rather than the right.

“It’s you.” The creature, who you have not been becoming friendly with for an entire month, smiles at you and your shocked voice.

Though you are certain he has been watching you – not just while you were resting your eyes on the ground for a much needed cat nap, but for the entirety of these thirty-one nights – his eyes still flutter around the space where you sit in observation. He takes in each individual item around you like trying to find certain objects in spot-the-difference puzzles. After a moment, you ask while pointing to your phone, “Do you not like the music?” His wandering eyes are magnetized to your face when you address him.

Hell, they are intense. Intenser than any eyes you have really looked in before, rivaling even the strictest teachers you had or the meanest secretaries you have known. The colors in his gold and umber iris swirl like tiny galaxies of brown dust and broken stars. Intelligent eyes like those are daunting and, thus, terrifying to level your gaze with.

Despite knowing you will not get an answer, you march on in your one-sided conversation, “I get it that music isn’t everybody’s thing. Does it disturb you?” You wait. The newcomer does not talk either. “Ah, not a fan. I get it.”

You may receive no verbal answer, however you sense he does not want to play patty-cake through a sheet of reinforced aquarium glass. “Whatever yooo-u dooo-oh, don’t tell anyone; whatever yooo-u dooo-oh, don’t tell –” The song cuts off as you press the pause button.

“I should have been more considerate,” you apologize, able to steadily carry on this solo because you have grown used to it. You do talk a lot to the other fish. Almost in the same way one can carry on an unbalanced conversation with a pet cat or dog. “You just swim over to let me know and I’ll turn it off. I would never want to disrupt anyone’s sleep.”

‘Just like I would never again want to shine a light in anyone’s eyes.’ You still regret that with each fiber of your being.

For a silent moment, you two observe each other. Though you are a hundred percent certain this is not his first time scrutinizing you. You realize his hair is a mirror-flip reflection of the other fish’s just as he raises one of his hands. 

Maybe he is like the other fish. Despite not giving the impression of a drummer, he might still want to play that rudimentary game of patty cake where you two match and copy each other’s rhythm. Perhaps it is all their fish brains can comprehend. Even though his eyes might seem intelligent, he is nothing more than a piscine creature. However, that thought stalls when a single, black-dyed claw reaches up to his own throat, tapping it delicately.

“Hm?” You tilt your head curiously. 

In response, he takes his index and middle finger and taps once more his own throat. Then, he takes those fingers and depresses them over the reinforced sheets of glass. 

“Do you want me to,” you trail off, eyes stuttering over the items at your disposal. “I can’t sing if that’s what you’re getting at. I’m no singer.”

 Eyes, one of them full of shattered stars and the other full of blown-up planets, stare on. Unchanging and showing you no inclination of what he wants you to do. The other fish will at least whine, squint, or show joy if he thinks whatever words your vocal cords stretch into will entertain him. “Though, I could,” you trail off again.

Trailing off is an awful habit of yours. You rarely can make full, complete conversation after almost half a decade of night shifts. However, those intense eyes encourage you to go on. “I could read to you?” Your fingers point towards the booklet that had fallen off your chest. “If you want?”

Once again, no answer. But, at least you are not staring alone at your desolate reflection. His figure behind the glass – the yellow eye on his left side watching each of your body’s movements – is so very real and alive. At least, you are not alone this time. Though, the company is unorthodox biologically.

“Reading … I can do that.” Only for a little while though. Eventually, your eyes will start to blur at the tiny scripture. However, as you pick up the book and place it in your lap, the first line is big enough that you can read it easily, “Once upon a time –”

As a wedding gift, Pandora received a box from Zeus. Though gifts by definition are simply something given from person to person, the word gift carries with it a subliminal, secondary definition. Gifts are to typically be opened.

Acting against that thought, Zeus warned Pandora to never open the box. You never understood that. 

Why would one dangle temptation in front of another’s face? Why even plant an apple tree in the Garden of Eden? Why even craft a box if it should remain shut evermore? Temptation is a seductive thing. It slithers up into a body with shining honey eyes and lures like a hook. Because of this, it is best to keep it under lock and key.

If Zeus really did not want the box opened, he should have kept it as a hidden secret underneath thousands of layer crusts in the mountains.

As the story goes, curious Pandora opens her wedding gift. From it, the four horsemen of Judgement Day leap and gallop out, thick plumes of disease rattle out of the box in shaking coughs, and envy and greed claws their way out with black, knife fingernails, raping Pandora of her beautiful face and stealing her glittering necklace. Bleeding scratches upon her cheek and lungs filling with disease-ridden smoke, Pandora slams the box shut with a regretful hack. 

Only one thing remains in Pandora’s box. Hope remains trapped inside the wedding gift. Alone, hope paces the perimeters of the box in their curiosity. Marveling at how much room and space they have to stretch out, hope takes a long, peaceful nap for all eternity.

You wish you could take a long, peaceful nap. You have a lot of trouble managing to fall asleep fully without waking up in intervals. When you work against your body’s natural circadian rhythm that is simply what happens.

Today, you have what Doctor Safari’s helpful tabs are telling you is a third shifter headache. To alleviate them you take no pills. Far too smart of an idea to take those. Instead, you take an iced frappuccino out of the break room’s fridge and turn off every single light in the aquarium, down to the blue LEDs that snake on the ceiling.

“Much better,” you sigh to yourself in relief. In nebulous black, your feet carry you to the place where company awaits and has been awaiting for about two months now.

It has been a slow trail of companionship. Progress is not fully linear. Part of you has forgotten how hard it is to socialize after years of isolation. 

To be honest, you feel like a man who has lived up in the mountains alone for years, living and hunting by nomad methods, only to be shown a cellphone as soon as you reach the mountain's descent. However, they must feel the same way. They have lived down in the ocean for years, living and hunting in aquatic methods, only to be brought up and shown the eye of a penlight shining in their face. The three of you are all just struggling along in finding how to make companionship work. 

But God, does it work. You hesitate with it, suddenly remembering the fins as placeholders for ears or the tails under their belly-buttons. Yet, human eyes and smiling lips will restore your content in the next moment. Something about them solves your loneliness.

They may never speak. However, you often have trouble navigating the maze of words.  In the end, you consider them friends in an unease definition of the word.

By the time you make it to Pandora’s box, your coffee is drunk down to the last drop and you use the chilled glass container as an impromptu ice pack across your forehead. Where you come through is not the typical oval-shaped room. Instead, you venture up a tongue of metal steps to the top of their aquarium tank. It is a circle-shaped room. Designed largely like a pool, the only lighting is three spheres on each wall. The room consists of a gaping black hole of water and a slight drop in floor elevation so staff can stand ankle-deep while feeding or caring for them.

At least, you assume. Because the first time curiosity lured you to the top of their tank, your fingers had been nibbled at. Nothing extreme and more like dogs cobbing to show affection, but it still surprised you when the right-gold-eyed one took your hand in his.

Now, you carry along with a plastic bag of treats and tread into the water without hesitation. Walking in the familiar steps of your companionship as you have done night after night. They are eager to see you it seems.

Too bad the world tilts and you are suddenly no longer looking down on them but eye to eye. You realize what has happened with gritted teeth. A careless trip of unbalanced feet, now you sit on hands and knees in inch-deep water.

You also realize something with more horror than before. The prescription sunglasses that were perching on your forehead have been knocked off and are slowly slipping inside the tank’s depths. 

“No, shit!” You cry out before, with one-track-mindlessness, you duck your head underwater like a hungry mallard. 

Your eyes fly open as soon as you submerge yourself. You watch as languid sunglasses drift lower and lower. Ribs tight on the cement floor, you spear out your arm in a panic, missing the edge of the glasses by a finger’s width before they go down further and further.

No, no, no! Those glasses cost a fortune! 

Stupidly, you consider the idea of diving right into the rest of the tank before you realize another thing. It paralyzes you, shocking and binding your heart. The entire sight of the tank is so easy to see. The bottom of the ocean floor is as clear as crystal, enough where you pick out each gradient of sand. It is comparable to being a person putting on their prescription contacts in the morning, everything clearing up with the right correction lens. 

Usually, your vision is always mildly blurry. Enough where you can navigate night to night without any serious medical aid. But that lingering, splitting-headache pain behind your irises dulls like a blanketed sound. 

It allows you to watch clearly as delicate, black fingertips scoop up your ebony pair of sunglasses. 

Relief fills you as the fish with upturned eyes gently brings them up to you. You surface from water just as both fish break the surface too. It dawns on you that you haven’t been this close, eyes parallel to one another with you on your knees. 

No reinforced aquarium glass separates you this time and yet, calmly, you say, “Thank you. I really can’t thank you enough for retrieving those for me.”

A giant grin grows on the one with downturned eyes. Though you hold a hand out to the other, this one seems to think your gratitude is for him for he loops his arms around your neck, squeezing you. He starts to pepper kisses on your cheek, which you suppose resembles how dogs like to lick their owners.

Your outstretched hand never receives the glasses. Instead, the fish with upturned eyes takes to placing your sunglasses back on the perch of your head. The temple tops fit snugly behind your ears. You watch as the fish with shrewdness in his eyes starts to move the tendrils of wet hair out of your face. 

As your hair is tucked and your cheek is kissed, you wonder just once more why faith has brought them to you.

“(Name)?”

You smile at Deuce’s surprised gap. Today, you wear Noir sunglasses. The lenses are as dark as vantablack, refusing to allow any light touch your retinas. Even the artificially colored lights of an aquarium during operating hours is too much for you. 

Deuce is in charge of the photography printing booth today. Twenty or so different families, couples, groups of teens flicker in rows across the screen he stands in front of. 

“You sound almost disappointed.”

“No, no, not at all,” he rushes to amend. “Just haven’t seen you out in –”

“The sun?”

“Yeah, that.”

“Even a vampire needs a change of pace.”

Like an examined showhorse, you show off your plain teeth. No fangs or shark teeth to be found. 

“I’ll tell you though. Driving here? A complete nightmare.” And, it really was. Usually you drive one handed. Your right hand lies on your thigh, tapping along to the rhythm of the radio’s drums. Today, you had to grip the steering wheel with both hands.

“Well, it is a summer weekend after all. Sucks to get stuck in traffic. ” Deuce nods his head in sympathy.

“Ah,” you look to the side. “Actually it was kind of just weird driving with other people on the road.”

Deuce’s eyes brighten in particle understanding. He might not entirely comprehend it but he still goes, “Oooh. Because you’re so used to driving at night.”

It is not that entirely. “Yeah,” you give a small, lying smile. When you remember driving, you remember it like a dream. You drive in a single lane, all alone in your white truck. Bordering you, two lanes of heavy, steady traffic move in succession towards the opposite direction. Going somewhere you are not. 

Your isolated Chevrolet Silverado was so high up on the ground that you felt a bird. The width of your truck was so wide that you felt you were shouldering your way through a crowd. That is only what felt like happened, not reality. “I just felt a little disjointed.”

The photographs on the monitor keep changing in flickers. Your eyes fall on them. Mother with daughter. Boyfriend and girlfriend. Father and mother and only son. Three girl best friends. Grandfather with two girls and one boy. Blank. 

“Did you get your photo taken?” He asks. He must have noticed your gaze. Has to do his job after all. 

“Ah no.”

You look at the empty block of spotlighted blue. Dark cobalt around the edges and white in the center. How many photos do you have of yourself? You feel in that moment … if you ran away somewhere, no one would notice; there’s no photographic evidence that you exist.

“Nah; had to fight to let them let me pass. Oh, it’s just mandatory. Completely free of charge. And then, they started thinking I was insecure or something so they started complimenting me. Had to explain,” you tap the side of your sunglasses in reference, “and then, finally they let me go. So much fuss for just a photo.”

“They’re really that insistent on it?”

You nod. 

“So what brought you out into civilization anyways?”

“Wow, rude.” 

Deuce laughs. You smile strained. Every time you speak, it feels wrong. You are being too mean or not engaging enough. God, why can’t you just talk to someone like a normal person and carry a conversation smoothly? There is no desolate reflection for you to spy on the laptop, just an empty space of spotlighted blue.

“Visiting some friends.” is your reply.

The publicity on them is quiet and hush. So much so that you feel the world has already known about them – two merman pulled from the bottom of the deep sea, sea, sea. It is entirely possible. With how disjointed you are compared to 99.9 % of the population, it is not so far-fetched to think that they have been in the public’s eyes for a long time and wonder over them has died down. 

However, this exhibit is still listed as the first one. Out of how many? Well, you suppose you will find out later if more are to come, if this is going to be a big success. You only found out from working the night shift, seeing the date on the break-room calendar. 

COME SEE, FOR THE FIRST TIME, CREATURES FROM THE BLACK LAGOON! That is the first message you spy on the aquarium walls, following along with the crowd. Must have been put up by the morning crew. In bright letters, strung underneath party streamers, a multitude of phrases bounce and shout. Instead of being in awe over the pictures of them, your mind focuses on each line detailing: unprecedentedly new; for the first time; never seen before!

Yet, no one shrieks in terror at the sight of them in the posters. Even when you and others are filed into the aquarium auditorium, the crowd murmurs to themselves softly instead of shouting. Under the hypnotic spell of voyeurism, everyone seems more anticipatory than agitated.

You fixate your glasses tighter to your face as you scale up metal stairs, looking over your shoulder at the water. This is where they do the sea lion or seals show. You have not seen a single one in an entire decade. Under the shadowed surface, you can spy two serpentine lengths flowing through currents. 

“Bet this whole thing is a scam. We should go back to Disney in Florida next year; it’s warmer there. More stuff to do too.” You cast a glance at the daughter in her early twenties sitting next to her mother before moving further up.

You do not pick the top row but you do pick an isolated section. Sandwiching yourself next to a stone pillar, your butt lands on the rickety metal bench. Just as you are about to readjust your glasses, making sure that sides of the lenses are atom to atom on your skin, you are interrupted by a loud, consecutive ‘woah’ that you are not a part of, that swims through the crowd.

But, you manage to see a glimpse of it just in time.

You are not sure which one of the two it is. Yet, all the same, you watch entranced as one of them breaches that ink pool. Bioluminescence tints his body in glittering blue topazes. It is like watching a shooting star suddenly fly across the dark night skies. 

The porcupine quills of black that make up his fins bend and the dragon tail of sapphire that makes up his lower body arches. Aerodynamic, he flies through the air and manages just in time to snag the large, squirming spider crab that hangs from a ceiling beam on a metal wire. He disappears with the same speed as his appearance, taking with him into the black hole of water his meal.

Yet, before anyone can close their hanging jaws or the water can stop rippling with the impact of the eel-mer diving back under, music blares from the speakers, moving spotlights suddenly slide over the water and crowd, and a man comes out of the backroom and onto the stage.

You are just done wincing from the bright flash of a spotlight surfing over the bench you sit on when the man suddenly exclaims, “How are we all doing?” You stay tight-lipped as the crowd cheers. “C’mon, you can do better than that! How are y’all doing today?” The crowd cheers, claps, and responds in a long Goooood! 

Cringing with shut lips, you suddenly remember why it has been a decade since you watched an aquarium show. The script is always a bit childish. 

“We have two very special guests for you today. The strong guy you saw just a few moments ago was Flotsam. His brother, Jetsam, is here too. Jetsam, why don’t you come out and say hi to everyone.”

You lean forward, enraptured with the sight. Serpentine coils cut through the water, water jetting up with the force of how quickly he swims. Onto the wayward platform that bobs in the black hole, Jetsam pushes his body up onto it. Instead of a pair of flippers, he waves his clawed fingers to the awestruck audience. 

“Flotsam and Jetsam are both eel-mers. Found and rescued from the northern waters, they are the first of their kind and are very excited to show you all what they can do!” Thus, the spectacle begins.

They go through a variety of tricks. From doing a few figure eights in the water, shooting balls into hoops, and even a freeze dance to the music blaring through the speaker, the mixture of tricks they do feels almost infinite. When the staff member rolls out a clownfish mailbox, announcing the birthdays of a few children in the audience, you wonder how long they must have been training. Days upon days of practice drilled into their memory. 

Birthday children come up to the auditorium’s yellow line as the eel-mers hand out little high-fives to them. One child even proclaims, “Ew sticky!” before his dad tickles him under the arms and picks him up, returning to their bench. Even though it is their first show, Flotsam and Jetsam seem so well-versed in social etiquette. 

However, you cannot help but find it a little demeaning. It seems so beneath them to have to perform like this to a leering audience. Sure, the rewards for each trick is generous, a stocky Japanese spider crab tossed and crushed in their razor sharp jaws, but it feels so ignominious. 

Despite the horrified joy swimming through everyone’s gasps and aws, your heart is so sad.

Another round of tricks starts up. This time it involves a dual pair of bongos. As the staff member picks up a squirting spider crab from the cage onstage, he speaks into his echoing earpiece, “Now, our here, Flotsam is an exceptional drummer. We often find him playing something new every morning, completely of his own free experimentation.” Flotsam swims and props himself on stage as the staff member continues, “Today, we’re going to have him show off a skill to you fine folks!”

Your heart buries itself deeper and deeper into sadness. Perhaps, he never was intelligent. Perhaps, he is just another dumb fish. Canine obedience hammered in through reward and punishment, rhythms only learned because it is trained in him. As you two lock eyes, you cannot find anything that would dispute this theory.

You wait, as does everyone else, for Flotsam to start drumming away as promised. In addition, you wait for his eyes to flicker away from your unrecognizable face hidden by your sunglasses. Neither happens.

“A little indecisive today. I understand, there is just so much good music in the world,” the staff member stalls for time. He rips off a crab leg, holding out the reward by Flotsam’s suddenly demure face. “Why don’t we start off with something easy, buddy. A bit of the musical scale. Do-Re-Mi?”

‘You want to watch out for his teeth,’ you think, rubbing your fingers over the little scars you have from his nibbling. They really are such sharp instruments to break through the shell of a Japanese spider crab.

Thoroughly entrenched, the audience watches the repercussions of a box that was supposed to remain closed being opened.

Disbelief ripples through the crowd like one subtle wave. It is the only sound you participate in. Finally, in sync with the crowd of awake people. Someone to your left moans out of a low groan of phantom pain. The volume of interlocking disbelief grows when the staff member raises his hand up into the light. His trembling red hand hovers in front of his face to verify the view, his ring and pinkie finger bitten clean off. 

Poor bastard’s wedding ring is probably sinking down to the bottom of the tank alongside the crab leg that Flotsam spat out.

Volume pitches and rises. A woman screams. Naturally, that rouses up the attendance like puppet strings. The staff member falls on his bottom then crawls backwards. Crawling away from Flotsam like one, big stumbling crab. Since the seatmate to your right is a stone pillar, there is no one to trip over your feet in their rush to leave but you watch hypnotized many individuals shove and trip their way through bodies blocking the stairs leading down to the exits. Then, calmly, you stand on your metal bench to overlook the crowd. 

Flotsam’s eyes are wide as he stares at you. Reminds you of two tunnels branched off in a cave’s stomach. His fusiform gyrus lights up like newly plugged in Christmas lights, recognizing you. The little pea that makes up your fusiform face area– that clocks in every night to a job rarely done, cobwebs on the cubicle's laptop and dust as a seat covering – recognizes him too. 

It already was recognizing him, seeing him as what he really is. Your lips crack open, “Flo -.” Then, you start barreling down the metal steps. 

Weaving in and out of the disjointed crowd, you race down, sometimes landing on the cement floor and sometimes landing on the metal benches in your hopping steps.A shoulder jostles you so harshly that your sunglasses fall off your face. Between rows of benches, they dive to the floor. You trip, trying to make the leap onto a metal bench. The sound you make as you fall onto metal is so tiny in the cacophony. 

The world goes white. It is like flash blindness from a nuclear explosion. 

Tears pour out your eyes. You clap a hand over them in shame and to hide from the bright … too fucking bright … lights. 

When you finally pick up your sunglasses, marks of shoe soles stamped like tattoos on your upper arms and hands, the auditorium is empty of a single soul. Not even they remain swimming in the tank. Someone must have sedated them and dragged them out. You are alone once more.

That night, you dream a dream that is more memory than a mystified fabrication of wonders or terrors. 

Tender like a newborn, you lie on a wafer-thin sheet of paper that unrolls itself from a cylinder like one big, white wave. Perhaps an iceberg is more appropriate. Hospitals are as cold as the arctic. On the paper iceberg, on the fence of girlhood and the fated teenage years, on the tongue of a vivisection, you balance with broken ankles. Under your thin gown, flowing air and goosebump-freckled skin collide. Blue tints your bottom lip.

You are laid down, anticipating future pain.

“Lay down and I will be with you two shortly.” He had said this and nothing more.

The scent at the doctor’s office is ozone with a hint of vanilla. Near your toes, the long neck of a giraffe stretches skyward, painted on the bricks. Under bright, too fucking bright, light, metal tools glitter like slick seashells. You can feel the prescribed numbing droplets in your eyeballs slowly seep in.

You pinch your eyes shut, feeling like there is a cement block lodged and scraping between the bones of your temple. Why wouldn’t they give you something for the pain? When you open them, they are held open by a speculum and hooks like you are nothing past being an animal in a zoo doing your daily checkups. 

Oh, and you are sitting upright on the paper iceberg now.

Must be the dream’s altercations. Time skipping forward in intervals. 

Dreams are always like a pile of bones. The skeleton all jumbled up and disorganized that you move from femur to ulna. You are not graced with a lot of time to think on the analogy as a very big kitchen knife leans towards your pried open eye. 

The muscles in your cheek twitch when it cuts. With the skills of a head-chef slicing an egg, your eye is cut perfectly down the imaginary midline. Both sides are even. 

He scoops out one side of your eye like a person pulling back from a whole cake with a single slice. It is more inky black and sickly gray. The hues of your eye-cake that is. Far from the bright blue or pink frosting of a cake, it stays saturated in montone hues. You always thought an eye would look like the diagrams in school, colorful with reds and blues, but it is a sickly ebon and ashen gray.

The cornea is hard as a freshly cut nail and the half globe of retina slimes in his gloved hand like glue. Now looking at it, it appears the flesh inside an eye reminds you more of a bruised plum’s insides. A muted hue of purple-black rather than full ebon.

It is the lens of your eyes that really captures the doctor’s attention. He takes the half-cut marble in a pair of tweezers. Between those lobster claws of thin steel, your lens which makes up a pupil is rotated back and forth in observation. 

An eye, though entirely soft and vulnerable, has only one hard bit inside like the tough seed of a peach. It can be cut but it will give resistance. With one good eye and half of your other, you watch the hard material between the lobster claws be pinched in and out to test the give and resistance of itself. Steadfast, it does not bend under the squeezes. 

That half-cut pearl glitters.

Time skips again, moving bone to bone like switching channels. Instead of smells and sights, sound takes over the scene. The faint buzzing of the air conditioner as it breathes over the giraffe’s neck. Water oscillating back and forth over rubbing soapy hands cries loud in your ears. Though, faintly, you can hear the blood from your eye that slips down your chin hit the pad of the paper iceberg you sit on.

The tissue in your hand crinkles softly in sound as you wipe away blood tears. In a chair that might as well be across the globe of Earth, your guardian sobs in intervals with a trembling chin. “Guuuh … gah … hu-hu-hugaaah.” You keep soaking up blood, dabbing the tissue against your face as it whispers in light friction. 

After he finishes washing his hands of your sanguine, the doctor intones two words like a priest giving the final prayer at the start of Armageddon, “cone dystrophy.” That is the last sound your ears can bear to hear before you jolt awake.

Your current doctor has given you exactly twenty-one little sheets. Ishihara tests; multiple circles with a number made of circles in the center. They are tests for color blindness. 

That morning, the colors red and orange permanently fuse into one shade. 

You took three nights off work. A little mini-vacation. The first was so you could spend the daylight hours watching the show with Flotsam and Jetsam; the second was so you could attend your doctor’s appointment; the third was so you could clean up what has been neglected in your apartment. Vacations are supposed to relieve the average worker of stress. You find yourself an outlier, once again.

“Blind by thirty? Blind by fucking thirty?” You bundle up the graphic shirt you were trying to fold into a circle and punch your mattress. The pile of already folded shirts tilts and falls in an arch to your right. “That fucking asshole,” you sneer.

Unraveling the graphic-tee-ball, you straighten your hunched posture with a deep sigh. No use taking your frustration out on innocent clothes. The wrinkled shirt joins the tower once you rebuild it. You reach out and grab a pair of socks. Foolishly, you thought organizing your apartment up for a very overdue spring cleaning would help to organize the disorder running rampant in your head. 

Forlorn and desolate, you look at the laundry mountain. Too bad that is far from happening. 

It is just … A person takes a guess at jars full of jelly-beans or what they’re significant other might have made for dinner, those are the true purpose of guessing games. The audacity of a person to guess when someone else is going to blind. You almost tear the sleeve off your cardigan when you pull in from the mountain’s maw. How dare your doctor estimate your finite health with such casualness. 

You suppose it makes sense. The Salvador Dali-esque dream you had the night before, coupled with losing the ability to differentiate between red and orange; all of these were just the bad omens setting up the stage for your doctor’s appointment. 

Mostly a homebody and not a frequent traveler, there aren’t many sights you are dying to see. However, the idea of losing your sight causes you to grieve it prematurely. Mourning the death of yourself. To just wither up inside this box-shaped apartment as a tomb, the thought of that is odious. You shudder and fold a towel.

Across the mattress, you look at your CRT television cloaked in a thin, see-through blanket to dim the lighting. On the square, a blue pick-up truck punches through metal and wooden gating. Even though the movie wrongly uses the sound effect of glass breaking, it is still impactful as you watch the pick-up truck reverse into an open boating harbor connected to the ocean. The whale and little boy harnessed to the back slowly sink in. 

Freeform is playing Free Willy. To be honest, you are just biding time until the Harry Potter marathon starts up. Thank God, this movie is nearing its end because it is putting dangerous thoughts in your head. You just want to see little Daniel Radcliffe under the staircase and be interrupted by commercials every twenty-five minutes.

The orphaned boy pushes the orca whale out to sea. You fold another article of clothing, unsure if it is orange or red. The hope that Pandora kept in her box begs for freedom.

It is an open secret now. That is a little contradictory, if you do say so yourself. 

However, it is the truth. The public now knows them without embellishment. With the shining gandour and seductive metaphorical-lingerie, it comes to their attention that predators are still predators. No matter how human they may look. 

The thought saddens you. Slowly and unsurely, you have been starting to humanize them in your mind. When you wrestle with the locked doorknob of the oval-shaped room, you grow sadder. 

It makes sense though. Flotsam and Jetsam? They should have been kept in the Oval Office or Area 51; instead they were brought to an aquarium in the middle of nowhere, used for publicity. The crux of humanity rears its ugly head. Sharing each fetish and body part to the audience is the sin of being a curious human. Everyone is a voyeur for something. No one can keep their mouth shut nowadays, always needing to post about their lives. So, they brought Flotsam and Jetsam here to do the exact same thing.

To think there was a time when you were disguised by their humanity. And now, it's all you hope to preserve and keep safe. Ascending the stairs to the circular-shaped room, you contemplate if there could ever be an inch of humanity in an animal. As a set of honey eyes peer at you from across the black hole water, you wonder if it is only canine obedience in their faces. 

Two against one, you all take a moment accessing each other. There are no plastic bags of yummy treats hanging from your arms. No thumping rhythms of songs echo on the walls. Instead of familiar friendliness and comfortable companionship, you all seem incredibly wary of each other. 

“Ya can come closer … We wouldn’t hurt ya, Shrimpy.”

Who the fuck said that?

Frozen in disbelief, you can do little besides watch the black hole ripple in violent sprays. A harsh slap echoes off the wall as a clawed hand breaches water only to grab the face with a right gold eye. Both drop under the water as your mind reels, spinning around options like a broken, juiced-up carnival ride. 

You are tired! You are so tired that you must have hallucinated that! Being awake for so long on the night shift … Why, it must be entirely possible to hallucinate every once and a while! An evolved headache of sorts! 

Yes. You grab onto that thought. Those words were hallucinations. Too bad your grip on the thought grows flimsy when Flotsam breaches the water, snarling, “I wanna talk to Shrimpy! Jade, lemme go! Get off!” A clawed hand grips the back of his hair and pulls him right back under.

A vivid hallucination you are having. Yes! A paragon of hallucinations and headaches after so many night shifts!

Despite the fear, you stay rooted in your spot. Not close enough to where the spilling water of the tank touches your shoes but close enough where you can watch the water steadily. Every once in a while, the sound of rocketing water echoes in the room. Dragon tails of green-blue fracture the surface. A clawed hand will rise up like a zombie breaking dirt only to disappear in seconds. Water flies in turrets and towers. 

Maybe because of the fear, you stay in your exact same spot and watch. Things start to calm down eventually. Bubbles pop on the surface like they are conversing under there. But, that is impossible because fish cannot speak.

‘Don’t backtrack (Name),’ you think to yourself. ‘Their entire existence is impossible. It’s been impossible since the beginning. This is just another step into that twilight zone. Another unorthodox secret brought to the surface.’ The thought makes you feel disjointed like a pile of bones.

It had hurt. The day of the show. You do not why but it had hurt to know they weren’t yours alone. That the secret had been open for some time and it was not just you and them. Thus, you stay and wait for them to breach the surface one more time.

They both do simultaneously. Water cutting the visage of the rest of their body from the shoulders down. Red returns to the scene, staining both Flotsam and Jetsam’s faces in thick scratches. You barely get a second to analyze the wounds before Flotsam shouts, “It was haaard, ‘kay? I wanted to tell them the pretty nickname I made for them! And tell them I liked the new rocks they put in our tank!” He pouts childishly. “It’s so borin’ not being able to talk. I got so bored! You’re boring.”

Even when Flotsam snaps his sharp teeth at Jetsam, he remains unpulsed. “Forgive me for trying to look out for your well-being, but both of us agreed in junction that we would under no circumstances talk to humans.”

“But Shrimpy’s different from the rest!”

“Under no circumstances, Floyd.”

“I knooow,” Flotsam? Floyd? whines. Then, his downwards angled eyes slide over your comatose form. An excited grin comes up to his face. “Doesn’t matter now though. Shrimpy!!”

You are barely given a second to gather your thoughts before Floyd barrels towards you. Spindly arms wrap around your neck and suddenly you are down on your knees in an inch of water. The kiss on your cheek this time feels much less like a dog licking to show affection; it resembles more a human kissing you on the cheek which causes you to fluster. 

“Truly, you make things so difficult at times,” Jetsam? Jade? tuts. The sound of him swimming through the water draws closer. His deep timbre sends a cardiogenic shock through your ribcage as he addresses, “I do apologize for my brother. He was a bit desolate without you here the past two nights.”

For some reason, you wonder how Jade felt in your absence too. Hands holding onto Floyd’s upper arms for a semblance of balance, you reply, “Uh, I took — I took a vacation.” The words feel like marshmallows rolling off your tongue. Gluttonous, fluffy, unreal with their texture. This really is happening, and you have to come to terms with it.

“Told ya it wasn’t because they were scared of us.”

“I never made such a connection. Merely hypothesizing.”

“Mmh, hypothesizin’ my ass,” Floyd grins as he turns to … sniff your hair?

Pushing him away to gain a bit of distance, you address the one you find the least distracted of the two. “You — You can talk? Why — Why didn’t you say anything to me before?” The companionship you had? Was it truly so fragile that you two had to keep secrets from one another?

“Well, you see, (Name),” — your name is so tantalizing coming from his voice that you feel like you are being resurrected from a heart-attack, defibrillator pounding away on your chest — “it was a matter of safety for my brother and I. If we were to say anything —.”

Floyd interrupts, “Everyone’s kind of a bigmouth buffalo fishy here so we keep ours shut.”

“The day to day conversations of the staff, the chatter from the people who visited us in the daylight hours, the unending gossip. We figured it was best to keep our lips sealed for the time being. Who knows how they would have reacted.”

“Nothing’s better than having a few tricks up your sleeve, Shrimpy.” Finally, you are done being squeezed as Floyd falls back into his tank. He rests his hands behind his head and floats buoyant.

“It is an epidemic, I fear. Fufu. Secrecy is such a rare trait to find nowadays.” Jade crosses his arms on top of the cement incline that you kneel in, looking at you sweetly. “Almost a lost art of sorts, eroded away after centuries of geological and evolutionary advances.”

Then, ping-ponging back and forth, they start to slip each secret (that others would probably want under lock and key) they’ve heard.

“Your manager’s wife is infertile thus he avoids conversations about children or preschool.”

“Lucas hit a guy with his car two years ago in a hit-and-run. Didn’t kill him but still.”

“Martha’s daughter just had an abortion. She gripes to Tatiana about how to possibly be supportive about this.”

“Ashley doesn’t like her boyfriend and they’re breakin’ up soon.”

“Deuce is going to fail his statistics class if he scores lower than a 95 on his next test.”

“Patrick is proposin’ to his girlfriend on December 1st.”

“We could keep going,” Jade says with a sly grin. “However, I think the point has gotten across.” He trails one fingernail across your thigh and smiles when you do not flinch. “All that useless prattle makes for some divine entertainment. Besides, matching up with more animalistic expectations can mean others are wildly underestimating us. Having the upper hand is better, always.”

Scrutinizing over his wandering fingernail, you ask quietly, “Is that why you attacked that man?” The question is meant for Floyd. Jade pulls his keen nail back all the same.

“Nah,” Floyd does not look at you as he answers, fixated on the ceiling. “It was humiliatin’. Being looked at that way by ya, Shrimpy.”

You blink in surprise. Shame is such a human trait. Born of social circles and social behaviors that are just uniquely tied to the bipedal species you are. The look on Jade’s face seems to agree with the consensus. You watch green-blue muscles glide through the water, simply drifting to a tame current. You watch black fingernails tap on cement in a tiny rhythm. 

Floyd continues, noticing your silence, “Shrimpy’s the only one that talks to us like people. Everyone else just treats us like a spectacle.” 

The heart in your ribcage knocks. You cannot Free Willy the entire aquarium. But, your Chevrolet Silverado has enough room in the bed for a kiddie pool or two.

Faintly, you recall a distant memory, when you read to Jade so many weeks ago, just as you open the oval-shaped room with the stolen key:

“The creatures stung Pandora over and over again and she slammed the lid shut. Epimetheus ran into the room to see why she was crying in pain. Pandora could still hear a voice calling to her from the box, pleading with her to be let out. Epimetheus agreed that nothing inside the box could be worse than the horrors that had already been released, so they opened the lid once more. 

“All that remained in the box was Hope. It fluttered from the box like a beautiful dragonfly, touching the wounds created by the evil creatures, and healing them. Even though Pandora had released pain and suffering upon the world, she had also allowed Hope to follow them.”

For the past decade, photographic evidence of your existence has been nonexistent. You have found yourself to be an outlier; the world operates to a different rhythm that you have not been able to copy, relicate, or even play along to. Living in perpetual sleep apnea of the soul, you have only found true connection with two other people.

The blue ceiling lights are off as is now the new normal. Without the aid of your penlight, you make your way into the space with confident steps. Sunglasses perched on your head, you find that what has been slowly developing has reached the summit of itself. An impromptu, unorthodox Free Willy plagiarism.

The dark is easier than ever to see through tonight. You smile back when they smile at you. 

Floyd is curled up close to the glass, calling for your undivided attention with his placement. Subdued yet stealthy as ever, Jade lingers behind yet close enough to be seen. Floyd crosses his body across the glass-canvas up and to your right. Jade crosses his body to your left, floating demurely lower. 

The glass-canvas is painted with a few smudges of handprints. Some are from yourself and others from the only and only drummer. He depresses his dominant hand on the glass, leaning in close. His right hand waves up in dark waters in a fervent, warm greeting. His excitement to see you is palpable. You raise your own. 

Both of their eyes shine like spotlights. The only light that you have looked into and found it does not hurt. Jade’s anticipatory smile slithers onto your face in a perfect mimic. You are going to rob the aquarium of those glittering gold dragonfly eyes. Tomorrow, there will be nothing for the staff or customers to find in nebulous darkness. 

Nothing. Nothing but their desolate reflection.

[skzdarlings]

bodyguard: the first guard | part five | chan/reader

masterlist.

(part one of the previous story.)

part one | part two | part three | part four | part five | tba

( read on AO3 )

A sequel to the Bodyguard. Miroh’s daughter is assigned a bodyguard of her own. The past is confronted when old friendships and new enemies are pushed to the brink.

pairing: bang chan/reader content info: sequel to the bodyguard (felix/reader). this is a new reader perspective. this chapter contains explicit sexual content. this chapter also has a content warning for descriptions of torture and dehumanization, plus the aftermath of trauma, themes of identity loss and healing. the previously established story dynamics are prevalent. chapter word count: 10,200 words.

enjoy <3

-

B E FO R E

Felix returns to the base and he is scrutinized, as expected.  They all want to know why he was taken, what the enemy wanted, how he escaped.   Felix has never played so many sides all while obfuscating his real objective.  Alone, he guides himself through the venomous viper’s pit that is this war: Miroh and his enemy, Miroh and the world. 

Where it concerns the enemy, Miroh will always intervene.  He sees the enemy as the antithesis to the house of Miroh.   A rich, spoiled fool, holed up in his golden cave, oblivious to what he has and the work it takes to acquire it.  Miroh is jealous. Miroh is hateful. 

Those are emotions that Felix can manipulate.  He learned it from the best. 

“It was an ambush,” Felix tells him.  “They knew I was going to be there.  They were waiting for me.”  He uses his reputation, formed by Miroh, against Miroh.   

Felix would never lose a fight.  Felix would never fail a mission.  Felix would never surrender.    Felix is a reflection of Miroh so he presents the most flattering image. 

“What information did they want?”  Miroh asks. 

Felix can see the gears spinning in his head.  What could the enemy be seeking so determinedly to lay a trap for Miroh’s asset?  Oh, Miroh has a suspicion.  Felix can see it, because he knows exactly what it is.   

“They asked about Project Twenty-Three,” Felix says.  “I told them I had never heard of it.  Even if I had, I wouldn’t tell them anything.” 

Project Twenty-Three.  Chris has vented about it to Felix.  It is a cyber mission, striking against the enemy’s tightly guarded servers.  It intends to blackout the grid and lay virtual traps while they re-calibrate, compromising not only the enemy but everyone else on that grid: civilians, their homes, their hospitals, their shelters. 

It is a significant job for its scope and because it is the first time a mission will be helmed by Miroh’s daughter. 

Miroh’s daughter, Chris says, intends to sabotage the operation. 

It is Felix’s worst fears coming true.  Miroh’s daughter rebelling against Miroh is doomed to be a catastrophe.  She will inevitably go down and when that blaze tears through the sky, Chris will crash and burn in a similar inferno.  He is too blinded by proximity, too idealistic to see how it is impossible to truly destroy a man like Miroh. 

No one but classified personnel are supposed to know about Project Twenty-Three.  Miroh’s daughter let it slip to Chan, who let it slip to Felix.   As far as Miroh is concerned, Felix should not know about it.  As far as Miroh is concerned, Felix is telling the truth. 

As far as Miroh is concerned, someone is leaking highly sensitive data to the enemy. 

“I’m smarter than that, though,” Felix says.  He appeals to all that haughty vanity and says, “I was trained by the best.  Of course I got away.”

“Of course,” Miroh says.  Where before, he was wary, his guard comes down. 

Felix can sneak in.  Felix can lay his attack. 

“What else did they say?” Miroh asks. 

“I overheard them,” Felix says.  “They’re going to try and kill you.  And it’s going to happen inside your house.” 

The trap is laid.

-

P R E S E N T   D A Y

Miroh only put one soldier through a reconfiguration program.  And it wasn’t me.  It was you.   

Chan looks at you as if you shot him even though he was the one who fired at you.  

The words land with more violence than a bullet. 

It can’t be true.  That is your first reaction: denial. He is lying or he is confused or something, something, something. Anything but whatever he just said. 

He tries to step towards you.  You look at him and think of the First Guard: him in that corridor, a hand around your neck.  He fought just enough to make it real, the way you and Changbin sometimes fight, but it never went too far, did it?  You think back to that first fight in the ring.  You commended yourself for lasting so long, but that should have been a hint.  You would not have lasted a round with the First Guard on a good day, never mind after fighting several others.   He never came at you with the full brunt of his fatal capacity like you would expect, like you should have considered at the time. 

His eyes in the van, the tilt of his head.  

Trusting as your car stopped an inch from his body. 

His hands out like you were a wild, unpredictable animal, a weapon, something lethal he had to contain.   It’s me, he said.  It’s just me.  As if you knew who that was.

He does the same thing now.  You wrench away from him.   

“No,” you say.

He says your name but it doesn’t sound like a name; it sounds like begging, it sounds like please, it sounds like desperation, painfully barbed on his tongue.  You half expect him to start bleeding from the mouth. 

“No,” you say again.  You jerk away even though he has stopped reaching for you.  You feel a phantom hand on your chest and on your head, a cold fire in your veins. 

You slam shoulders as you dart past.  He says your name again, this time like an alarm, only barely short of a scream as he chases after you.  You get as far as the door before he catches you, his hand wrapped around your bicep and your name a weapon on his lips.

“Stop it,” you say.  It isn’t loud but it is brutal all the same. 

He lets go as if you electrocuted him. 

You look at him.  He stares back, all that begging in his dark eyes. 

“You can’t – you can’t leave,” he says.  His panic bubbles into frustration and he says, “You just told me off for doing that, didn’t you?”

You think of him on that rooftop, not even blinking at Miroh’s dead body, like he couldn’t care less, his eyes rivetted to you alone.   

“Do you trust me?” you ask. 

You think he would rather get hit.  A moment of pain, a scar to join the others. Instead, he has to endure the intensity of your eyes, suffer whatever fucked up expression is haunting your body, and then he has to let you go. 

You do not look at his face when leaving.  You don’t want to see this side of him.  There are already too many versions of him in your head, just as there are too many versions of yourself. 

The denial does not last long.  You walk through the brisk night, destination nowhere.  The sky feels too big.

It’s preposterous, isn’t it?  You are in your body right this moment, looking at the world with your own eyes.  How can anything be wrong inside?   But even while attempting to convince yourself otherwise, you know the truth.  It has been long unfurling in the back of your mind.   You have not felt like yourself for days, maybe weeks, maybe the entire three months since this downfall began. 

You don’t even remember what it means to feel like yourself. 

All the nightmares, the visions, the flashes of dreams that feel more like memories – maybe memories is exactly what they are.  So suppressed it feels like watching a movie rather than your own life, but your story regardless.   Sifting through those fragments feels like searching through rubble in a collapse. How are you ever expected to find a person under that much annihilation? 

When it happens, Changbin said, what feels like a lifetime ago.  When it’s just you and you’re trying to decide who you want to be, not who your father wants you to be…  When you’re trying to remember everything and you can’t decide what was real and what was just training and what was Miroh…”

A sob rips out of you.  You have cried more in days than you have in years.  You cover your face and fall into the dark of your closed eyes.  You see your friend, not a fragment or broken memory, but a whole person.  The scar on your palm twinges, reminding you that you are real and here. 

Remember me, he said. 

That was the very first thing you did.   You saw him on that rooftop and you remembered something.  Him, younger, bleeding, emerging from a fog of smoke.  He lifted a weight off your chest.  He made you a promise. 

You try to chase the memory of that dream, try to hold the image of him in your mind, but it moves like water through a sieve.  It’s like he’s standing right there, just in the corner of your eye if you could only turn your head to look.  But you are trapped in place.  Pinned down, a weight on your chest. 

You lose track of time under the stars.  You are too numb to feel the cold.  Only when the sky purples with the very earliest streak of dawn do you move.  You look at your feet as you walk and it feels like someone else is moving you.  You know it’s just exhaustion, a trick of the weary eye, but a shudder moves through you.   

You don’t want to think about it.  Whenever your mind starts to go there – to that room, to that hole, to the cell – it backs away screaming.  It is probably why you can’t hold any picture for longer than a second. 

A small part of you still rebels, insisting it isn’t true because it’s can’t be true, but you know intrinsically that it is. 

This confirmation solidifies when you get back to the room and find Chan still awake, sitting in a chair with his head in his hands. 

He lifts his head.   You can’t hold his gaze for long, swallowed up by the dark depth that sees something in you, far beyond the surface, buried so deep you can’t find it. 

You turn away.   You climb into bed. 

It isn’t an escape.  You know that, even as you close your eyes and shut out the world.   It’s all waiting for you there, your subconscious caught in a perpetually crashing tidal wave.  

You fall asleep, ready to face the nightmares. 

-

It feels like swimming against an acidic current.  You push through but it bears down; you struggle but it burns your skin, sloughs down to the clean marrow.  Pieces of you are lost to the tide.  You try to catch each flaking sliver of personhood but then your arms are full and you can no longer swim.

You are going to drown. 

“Let go,” says a voice, colder than the water.  “This will all stop.  Just let go.” 

Just let go.  Just let your skin unravel.  Just let the tide take it away.  You will never get it back.  You will be a living corpse, a half-consciousness puppeting your bones. 

You decide to drown.  You slip further and further into the blackness behind your lids.

“Hey, it’s me!  I’m coming!” 

Changbin.

You can hear his footsteps as he thunders towards you, but you can’t see him.  Your eyelids are so heavy, as if being held shut by a hand in the water.

Another hand reaches straight through the corrosive cold and seizes your face in a desperate grip. 

“Wake up,” Changbin says.  He taps your cheek repeatedly, a little harder each time, a little more frantic.  “Hey, wake up.  Please.  Please wake up.”

It feels like he is prying your eyes open.  One moment there is nothing but darkness, then Changbin is there.  He looks like he did when you last saw him, grown, fight-ready, a little scar on his face.  It bleeds more than such a tiny mark should.  A droplet hits your cheek, burning hot compared to the water. 

“It’s me,” he says. “Hold on.  Keep your eyes open.  Don’t go.  I promise I’ll get you out.” 

Don’t go.  Don’t go.  An echoing reverberation that circles the wooden beams high above your head.  You look there, staring at the ceiling as your lungs slowly fill with oxygen. 

The ceiling shatters in a spray of splinters, the world vanishing in a cloud of grey smoke.  Changbin is gone and your father stands over you, keeping that weight on your chest with a press of his fist. 

“You’ll thank me one day,” he says, and plunges you back under water.  Ice cold currents and electric hot fire twine in and around you in an unfathomable vice.  Your vision flickers as you twitch and flail, avoiding one sensation to succumb to the other. 

“Don’t go,” Changbin says.  “I promise I’ll get you out.” 

Another bolt of lightning slices through you. 

“Just let go.”  A cold and clinical voice.

There is a war between those voices.  Time passes slowly as you volley in the current, slamming into one or the other. 

In the bubbling frenzy, you hear a whisper.  

“Let her go.”  That is not Changbin.  That is not your father.  It’s too soft – soft, until it’s not, until it sounds like speaking through an open chest cavity, heaving up its heart with every cry.  “Please,” the voice begs.  “Let her go.” 

“Thank me,” your father says.  He stands with his back to you, angled just enough you can see the gun in his hands.   You can’t see the person on the receiving end.  You just know it’s a soldier.  You just know it’s a boy. 

You have to stop it.  The thought overwhelms you and you reach for the gun, but your hand never makes contact, splashing through cold water. 

“Subject recognizes control,” says that clinical voice.

There is a hand on your chest.  It pushes you back under water. 

You are alone in the current and the corrosion and the cold.  The hand pushes you deeper and deeper into the endless darkness under you.  

You are going to drown.  You are going to let yourself drown. 

“You don’t want to do that,” you say. 

Your father still has a gun in his hand.  It is pointed at that boy. 

“Subject— Control—”

You need to get that gun.  You need to swim.  You need to see him.  You need to save him. 

You finally let go. 

-

You open your eyes. 

Unlike in your dreams, it’s fast.  You jolt awake in a cold sweat.  The ceiling is unmoving, the air cool and dry from the motel’s cheap, noisy air conditioner.  The blinds are closed but the neon light outside the window creates a fuzzy square halo.  It brightens the room just enough to see  the outline of everything clearly.  

That includes Chan.

He is still awake.  If this was just one night ago, you would tell him to get into bed and sleep because you can’t have him tired for the mission.  But now, you find yourself staring back at him, at his bare and open face, his tired eyes and the uncomfortable tension in his shoulders.   

When you went to sleep, he was sitting on that same chair in the corner, and it looks like he hasn’t moved once.  He’s been waiting for you. 

He’s been waiting a lot longer than one night.   If she ever came back to me, he said, revealing years of hope, of watching, waiting for you to break through your conditioning and show him a sign.  He was never brainwashed, just trapped in a precarious situation, bound to a bargain with no way out that didn’t compromise you.  He could have saved himself at any time but it wouldn’t have mattered.   

“You were never reconfigured,” you say. 

“No.” 

The question and answer breaks a dam.  A flood of questions pour to the front of your mind, overwhelming you, taking you back to your dreams where you almost drown – again and again.  You remember the report, stating too much recollection could trigger some kind of breakdown.  Yes, you could ask Chan to tell you everything, to string together all those gaps in your nightmares, but you already know that would not help.  It would either feel like a story about a girl you do not know, or it would just throw you deeper into the whirlpool.

You let those questions turn over themselves like a crashing wave.  When it settles, you ask the one question that remains.

“Were we friends?” 

He doesn’t answer right away.   He leans forward, puts his elbows on his knees and clasps his hands under his chin.  He is impossibly strong but right now he looks too weak to support himself.

“No,” he finally says.  His eyes dart to the floor.  “No, we weren’t friends.” 

He looks at you and you fall into the unspoken story within his eyes.  You have been conversing without words since you met.  He has been looking at you with that wanting tilt and desperate stare since he stepped into the ring. 

You remember a fragment from a dream.   Him, younger, his face ravaged with tears and his mouth open on a muted shout.   It would be easy to mistake that as him being tortured, his pain that palpable.  But your memory is not of his suffering, just his watching, just his waiting.   

All this time, he has been waiting.  

“Did you love me?” you ask. 

This answer comes faster, but rougher as if guarding against vulnerability.  His voice is low.

“Yes.”

A phantom spark fires up your arm, straight into your heart. 

“Did I love you?” you ask.

He holds your gaze, though it feels like he is looking just a little past you, seeing something you can’t see.  Then again, maybe he doesn’t see it, maybe he is just searching, and maybe he comes up empty.  Because when he answers, his voice is airy, and the word is like a hiss of pain, like getting hit in the chest and all the air leaving the body at once.

“Yes,” he says.

You feel the weight of that hit too.  Wavering under the force of it, you blurt, “I don’t remember.” 

“I know,” he says.  He drops his head into his hands and rubs his palms over his face, scrunches his eyes shut tight and shakes his head.  “I know.”    

You want to go to him.  You are not sure where the urge comes from because, despite what he said, you have never loved like that.  Is it something buried inside you, something that remembers?  Maybe it’s just you, who you are now, the person who has spent the last few days with this man at her side.  His proximity has been a confusing comfort from the start.  Maybe it’s a memory or maybe it’s just him. 

You stand before thinking it through.  He doesn’t even notice, a sign this competent soldier is very far gone, his face still buried in his hands.  When you touch his shoulder, it catches him off guard, both arms jolting as if stung. 

He looks up at you, his hand instinctively flying to the one you rest on his shoulder.  He clasps it, holds it there, presses it down like he needs convincing it is real. 

He meets your eyes.   You do not know what you look like; you just know it hurts him, that it makes everything so much worse. 

A child-like sob punches out of him.  His eyes close tight, his face going red as he fights to hold it in.   He cried earlier and it looked like the typical outpouring of stress and hurt, but it did not look like this. 

After that first sob, reminiscent of the little boy he never really was, years of torment come tearing violently out of his chest.  Flashes of memories melt with the sight, his young face twisted as he wails, that muted shout filled in with his voice now. 

He holds his forehead, doubles over.  When you see the top of his head, those other images fade away.  It is just him, here, now.  Whoever he is, he has been good to you.  Your hand is still on his shoulder and he is still clinging to it. 

“Chan,” you whisper.  You’re not sure if he hears it, but his breath catches when you nudge him upright.  You are certain he can’t see very well through his tears, but he looks up anyway. 

When you climb into his lap, wrapping your arms around his neck, he does not hesitate to throw his arms around you.  His hands find your back and he presses you so close, it feels like he is trying to push you right into his heart.  He puts his face in your neck where he fights to steady his breathing. 

You touch the nape of his neck.  You shiver at his long exhale. 

You feel miserable and choked for a myriad of reasons.  For him, everything he as endured and lost.  For you, who doesn’t even know what she lost at all. 

“I’m sorry,” he says.  His breathing is less laboured, though his voice sounds sore.  He exhales again, some tension leaving his shoulders where you rest your hands. 

You squeeze those shoulders and lean back to look at him.  His expression is more than a little abashed, gaze uncertain.  You are not good at smiling but you try, even though you think your brows are furrowed and his sorrow is reflecting back through your eyes. 

“Thought we agreed to stop apologizing,” you say. 

His laugh is as weak as your smile, but certainly there.   You touch his face with your scarred palm, feel the curve of his jaw where that wound runs sharpest.    You think you can only touch him because of that scar.  You used to balk at the sight of someone else’s tears, even deride them.  You don’t remember being a lover.  You didn’t even realize you had a friend until it was too late.

You might not know who you are, and you might not know how to describe how you feel, but you certainly understand it feels different, and you certainly know what kind of person you do not want to be anymore. 

So you do not rip your hand away.  You curl a tuft of hair behind his ear. 

“I just—”  You trip over your own words, wishing you were a better speaker, more personable and warm than your stiff recitation.  “I can’t be that person,” you say.  “I don’t know what person I will be, but I’m not – I can’t—”

“I know,” he says, sincere.  He is holding your waist and he gives it a small squeeze, a reassuring touch that moves through you with a burst of warmth.  It simmers in your bloodstream when he smiles – his eyes still sorrowful despite the dimple in his cheek.   “I don’t wish you were someone else,” he says.  With a wince, he says, “I wish I was.” 

Your stomach twists in an awful knot.  You think of all that blood on his hands.  Despite his efforts to keep it away from you, you feel it on yourself.  You have to close your eyes to push away the flood of images, unsure which are imaginative fabrications and which are potential memories.  You just know he looks too young to have that kind of red on him. 

You open your eyes and look at him.  His eyes are open but his gaze is faraway, lost in thought.  You touch a tendril of curly hair, feel it under your fingers like you have the past couple nights.  He looks at you with eyes that have already shared multiple conversations. 

“I wish you hadn’t suffered,” you say.  “I don’t think anyone should suffer that way.  I don’t think the ends justify the means anymore.  But also I—” 

Even while your heart is changing inside, getting those words outside is a different struggle entirely. 

Chan looks at you with that tilt to his head, that questioning brow, his eyes a lot softer with his curiosity.  Your breath is jagged, a messy gasp as you gather yourself.  You look away, wholly incapable of maintaining eye contact.

“I got in the car with the First Guard,” you say.   “Not with some other version of you.  This soldier.  This Chan.”   You look down at your hands, absent-minded in the way you move them, from his shoulders down to his chest.  “This is the man I trusted,” you say.  “The one I still do.”

Your eyes lift.  They meet his.  His expression is a mix of confusion and amazement. 

His lips part with a question, but it gets caught.  He stares a little longer, then he asks, “Why?”

An unexpected laugh bubbles and bursts right out of you. 

“I have no idea,” you say, giving in to that bubbly feeling, letting it fill your chest and lift you up like a safety raft.  “I don’t know anything at all.” 

You realize there is something freeing in that thought.  No, you don’t know who you are.  No, you don’t know what is going to happen past right now.  You have to save your friend.  You have to end your father’s business.  Everything else, the becoming of you and the world and your place in it, is unanswerable.  You can’t find blueprints or scour maps or form battle strategies.  You don’t know where the water leads.  You just have to swim. 

“Maybe it doesn’t even matter,” you say with a shrug.  “I don’t know.  Nothing about yesterday, nothing tomorrow—”

“Just right now,” he says.

His voice is a little lower.  Just right now.  That was the pact you made the other night. 

Your whole body comes alight, waking from the ice cold state it has been frozen in.  It warms under his palms on your hips and where his dark eyes roam. 

“Just right now,” you repeat as softly.  You look at your hands again, realize more consciously how intimately they rest on his chest.  Rather than retract, you swipe your thumb across the exposed strip of skin where his flannel is buttoned askew.   “Maybe that’s all I need to know.” 

This right now feels different than before.  You don’t blame his emotional reaction to your earlier intimacy if it was an affect of all his memories, all he had lost, and all he was.  You think your straightforward trust in him – not in spite of his identity, but because of it – has shifted things again.  Your hands on his chest and your words in the open seem to have changed the shape of this whole room. 

“I’m the First Guard,” he says.  His eyes drop to your mouth then back up.  “You’re Miroh’s daughter.” 

“Yes, you are,” you say.  “And no, I’m not.”  You see the shiver that moves through him when you run your hands up his chest and curl your hand around the back of his neck.   You feel his thighs get tense under yours, his whole body reacting.  “Say my name,” you say.

When he does, it is not like a weapon or alarm, but spoken in a way that makes you feel like you have never heard your name spoken properly before that moment. 

You kiss him first and this time it lands deliberately, catching him mid-breath and stealing the rest of it.  When you start to lean away, to see if it’s all right, he puts his hand on the back of your head, curls his fingers in your hair, and draws you right into him, stealing back that breath with a desperate kiss. 

In a way, this is familiar to you.  You always liked and used sex as a grounding exercise.  You feel present in your body, regardless of how floaty and detached you felt before.  From the tingling top of your head to the curling of your toes, you feel every inch of yourself, alive and hot. 

But it feels different too.  You were always eager to chase the high, to reach the final destination with little care for the journey.  You realize, maybe, it is about the becoming, itself.

“Chan,” you say, squeezing his hips between your legs when he runs his hands under your shirt.  You climbed into bed still wearing your pants and shirt, wishing differently now as you rock your body against his. 

You buck a little eagerly, sensations going to your head quicker than intoxication.  Chan brings you back down, shushing you gently, guiding your open mouth back to his.  He kisses you slowly, touches you like he is memorizing every contour.   You make a sweet sound into his mouth, cupping his face as you kiss him back. 

“Can we—” you start.

“Yes,” he says.  “Yes, yes.” 

You stand on shaky legs and strip your bottom layers away.  The few seconds apart are dizzying, the whole world around him fuzzy as that neon yellow light leaking into the room.   Because he is staring at you, looking dazed and dishevelled, it takes him longer to unbutton his jeans than it did for you to remove your pants altogether.  You climb back onto his lap and do not help at all, distracting him with another kiss. 

A kiss always felt like a waste of time, but you think you could content yourself with just kissing him forever.   Slow or fast, gentle or needy.  

You are kissing when he gets inside you, gripping your bare thighs with a possessive hold that will feel tender tomorrow.   You luxuriate in the pleasure and the pain, your body yours, shared with him, reciprocated in turn.  

Whatever else existed – or could exist – ceases to matter for a time.  You come together and come apart in each other’s arms, chests pressed together, hearts racing against each other.  You tug his hair and pull his face into your neck, moaning under the press of his teeth and the heat of his lips. 

“Mm, fuck,” he groans into your skin, clutching your hips even tighter, rocking up into you while you roll down against him.  His gentle curse has you whimpering, his mouth on your throat making you shake.  “Mm, get all tight when I bite you, you know,” he murmurs, and leaves no time for argument or embarrassment because he nips at your neck again.  You do exactly what he said, clenching around him with an involuntary shudder. 

“Fuck,” is all you say.  He breathes a laugh against your skin. 

You clutch his shoulders when he gathers you and stands, moving the couple small steps towards the bed where he lays you out.  You are apart for only seconds, but you feel so cold and empty that it is almost terrifying.  When he shucks his jeans and gets back on top of you, you unbutton his shirt with shaking fingers, body in convulsions from the angle he is fucking you.   

You have never been fully alive in your body until right now. 

You come while he fucks you and you come again, when he puts his hands on you, like he really does need to feel every inch of you with his searching fingers.  When he keeps touching you, you are so stimulated you slap his chest, making him smile at your loss of words. 

 You lay in a tangled heap, your legs twined together.  Your shirt is gone and his is unbuttoned, your cheek on his chest as he lays on his back.  You let yourself be a little lulled by the cadence of his breathing.

Your eyes eventually wander.  You realize the sun has joined that neon light, the fuzzy halo around the window now a clearer glow.  The day is beckoning.  It brings you back to reality, to the world outside this re-shaped room. 

“I know I need to face it eventually,” you say.  “I don’t know what will happen. But right now – I can’t be distracted from the mission.  I need to rescue Changbin.  I need to stop my father.”

Miroh is dead but everything he did haunts you, like a ghost around every corner.  You can’t afford to confront the other ghosts, including your own. 

“Whatever happens after right now,” you say.  “I guess I’ll see.” 

“I understand,” Chan says.  He is caressing your spine, fingertips stroking up and down the slope of your back.   He scratches a little at the nape of your neck, making you hum in contentment.  “Really,” he says.  “I know things got crazy earlier but… I think right now… I can do right now.”

You look up at him.  He smiles down at you, dimples digging into his cheeks.  You have to look away, because you just promised yourself no distractions, but that smile causes a flush of warmth that goes beyond the physical. 

“Well,” you say with a sigh, patting his chest.  “Maybe by then you and me will be friends for real.” 

You feel his body stiffen, shoulders dropping, the hand on your nape freezing.   You look up to see his face, a questioning brow quirked.  He is returning the expression, though his countenance is a little more drole. 

“What?” you say. 

He answers with a firmer grip on the back of your neck.  He rolls you over, onto your back, keeping your head lifted in his hand.  The length of his open flannel drapes over your warm skin, a soft tickle as he leans down and kisses you.  It starts gentle but doesn’t last, his tongue parting your lips and the hot, needy press of his mouth pinning you to the bed and his arms.   You kiss back but hardly keep up, dizzy with breathlessness as he licks into your mouth, as he chases down the breath of you, as he keeps your lips on his for as long as he possibly can. 

Then he leans to one side.  His breath tickles your neck before he kisses just below your ear.  He whispers, “I don’t want to be friends.” 

He looks at you with a far too innocent dimpled smile.  You think Chan might be a bigger threat to your well-being than the First Guard. 

“Okay,” you say, breathless.  “Noted.” 

-

You open the blinds.  Once the room is full of sunlight, you revert to soldiership and work on your next strategy. 

There is no doubt the Miroh corporation is floundering in a state of panic.   They are not only dealing with the loss of its boss and heir, but also destabilizing insider attacks on various sectors while vulnerable.  On top of everything else, stocks have plummeted and investors are running for their lives and their wallets. 

You and Chan have watched the company as well as the social reaction.  With different leaks and financial fallouts, especially given Miroh’s connections to governmental and military divisions, it is no surprise that different stories have been cycling through the news.  You have kept an ear on the radio and an eye on tv stations. 

As you scour blueprints and map your next manoeuvre, you have the news playing at a low volume in the background.  They are currently reporting the combustion of a Miroh facility.  Their research and sources have led them to deduce it is an inside job.  

That much is fairly obvious as no one else could do what you and Chan are doing, though you are not suspects.  The media believes you are dead, that both you and your father were assassinated at the same time.  You are not sure if the company honestly believes you died, that the First Guard killed you then disappeared without Miroh to corral him, or if they reported that so they could kill you without a fuss in the future. 

There are no reports on Chan, of course.  No one outside of Miroh’s world even knows he exists. 

The major suspects are disgruntled investors and former employers, so far mostly scientists and research assistants given the targeted facilities.  With some of the government leaks, there are also theories that some deals with legislators went sour and resulted in a target being painted over the name Miroh. 

This seems to the angle the current report is taking.  At first, you are only half-listening, as the news reporter does not mention anything you have not heard before. 

Then you catch the latter half of a sentence you are not expecting.

“—of greater potential concern as this latest attack was on a military base.”

Both you and Chan whip your heads up at the same time. 

You have not attacked any military bases. 

“Turn that up,” you say.

Chan is already on his feet and moving towards the bed where the remote was discarded.  He turns up the volume on the television and you both watch the report. 

It is not impossible that a domino effect could ripple from one facility to the next.  The more attacks you make – targeting all the little chinks in Miroh’s armour – the more likely it is that certain institutions will collapse entirely on their own.  Either people will chase the money, like a lot of former investors, or they will abandon course altogether.  Eventually, Miroh’s world will eat itself alive, with or without your help. 

But you have so far only targeted a couple smaller research facilities.  Yes, there have already been consequences, but not enough that a totally unrelated military base on the other side of the country would spontaneously combust. 

You stare at the screen.  That base is big.  It isn’t going down without a fight.  No one outside of the house of Miroh would have dared target it.  No one else would have known how. 

“Changbin,” you say. 

Chan puts a hand on your shoulder, squeezing reassuringly.  You look at him then at the television, at the story unfolding rapidly in front of you. 

“It’s him, isn’t it?” you ask.  “It has to be.”

There might be just enough chaos in the ranks that if a solder of Changbin’s calibre was being held, something might fall wayside and he would have an opportunity to escape.  

You are just not sure he would try.   Changbin has obviously undergone changes of his own, all seeming to stem from that final confrontation with Lee Felix before the enemy went down and took his world with him.   Changbin clearly decided once and for all what was really important to him.  Changbin has always played the game carefully, but in the last few months he repeatedly put himself between you and your father.   He intercepted multiple interactions with Miroh’s men, altercations you dismissed as nuisances at the time but shudder to realize the weight now. 

Changbin threw himself in the middle, again and again, painting a bigger and bigger target on his back.  He seemed resigned to his demise.  For that reason, you are not sure how much he would fight even if given the opportunity.  He seemed whole-heartedly certain he would be left behind, no matter what happened. 

You curl your hand into a fist, digging your nails into your scar.  There was so much you should have told him.  If he knew that you were willing to fight this hard.  If he knew you would find out the truth.  If, if, if—

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Chan says. 

You look at him just as he kneels down beside your chair.  He takes your hand, the one with the scar, and unfolds it carefully. 

“Kicking yourself won’t save him, yeah?”  Chan says. 

“Yeah,” you say with a huff. 

The report continues.  It details this attack as being an inside job as well.  Supposedly, according to rumours breaching the walls, multiple people have gone missing, but their identities have not been given to the press.  Hearing that, you become marginally more hopeful that Changbin is among them.  The company would not report their supposed missing persons because they are most likely prisoners being held in less-than-legal circumstances.  Changbin would be that type of prisoner.  

The fight is ongoing.  He could still be there. 

“It’s a lead, at least,” Chan says, echoing your thoughts. 

“Maybe we’ve been looking in the wrong place this whole time,” you say.  You have been targeting the science sector when maybe your father kept it all in the military house after all.  Maybe after the initial pass through that research facility, he was moved onto a more secure base, given his background as a former child soldier of the special-ops program. 

Well, if that is the case, their extra security did not work.  Of course it didn’t work.  It’s Seo Changbin.   You could laugh at their idiocy. 

“We need to find out either way,” you say. 

You manage your expectations for now, but as you sit at the table and change course to plan an entirely new strategy, it is with a hope as clear and bright as the sunlight.

-

It is a lot of driving to the military base.  You will get there at nightfall the next day if you stop only sparsely. 

You and Chan are swift in packing and climbing back into that car.  You take turns sleeping and driving, though the last leg of the journey is spent on edge.  You are braced and ready for a fight, all that determination exacerbated by the very real possibility that you are about to see Changbin again. 

What will you say to him?  What will he say to you?  You wonder how much he knew about the reconfiguration.  Clearly, he knew something, if not the specifics, as he went to great lengths to keep you away from your father. 

You thought Changbin had saved you on an emotional level, but you realize now how it crossed into every sphere of life.    

You close your eyes while Chan drives.  You see Changbin on that rooftop, saying he will not leave you behind.  It was the first hit that shattered the glass around you.  Miroh had so carefully built that clear coffin around your consciousness, and Changbin smashed right through with the sheer brute force of his friendship. 

You glance at Chan.  Miroh did everything in his power to make sure you forgot about him.  Bang Christopher Chan, the First Guard.  Someone you loved and who loved you.  Your father would have focussed on that.  He would not have seen anything. 

Why would he care about a friendship?  What does that word even mean to a man like him?  He would have looked right past Changbin.  He spent all that time wiping Chan from your mind, that he never thought to look for anything else. 

Your body gets cold as you remember – something.  You close your eyes.  You are standing in front of Changbin.  He’s young, in his late teens, about the age you would have been when they reconfigured you.  He is looking at you with uncertainty.  You feel an uneasiness looking back at him. 

Don’t you know me? he asks.  He pulls a face, makes some dumb noises, waves his hands.  Then he frowns.  Changbin can be funny, but he turns it off in a second, as deadly as the rest of them.   So much anger floods his eyes, they look black with the focussed intensity of his fury.  You know me, he says.  Think.  Remember me. 

You see a slant of moonlight, a windowpane, a streak of blood.  Remember me. 

You feel a weight as it is lifted off your chest.  You hear him shouting your name.  You hear him running. 

You know me, he says. 

You flinch – in your memory? – right now? – and a piercing wail floods your mind.  You don’t want to go towards that scream.  You can’t go there. 

It’s me, he says.  Hold on.  Keep your eyes open.  Don’t go.  I promise I’ll get you out.

“Changbin,” you say. 

“Hey, hey, baby, hey—”  That is Chan.  He is shaking your arm.

Your eyes pop open. 

You have never had flashes of recollection while awake.  It feels like a bigger adrenaline rush than waking from a nightmare, very little to divide your mind from reality. 

You take a few steadying breaths while Chan rubs your shoulder.  He was driving but the car is now stopped on the side of the road.  You did not even feel him braking. 

“What happened?” he asks when you are settled enough to speak.

“I don’t know,” you say.  “I just—I was thinking.  Remembering.  Not like that.  It’s complicated.  I just—”

You close your eyes.  A teenage Changbin is still standing there, looking at you warily. 

You know me. 

I know you.

“Changbin,” you say, choked up.  You blink your eyes open and take another breath.  “I’ll be okay,” you say.  “We can’t stop for long.  Let’s get back on the road.”

Chan does not look convinced, frowning as he stares into your face.  You blink at him, then narrow your eyes into a squint.

“Did you call me baby?” you ask. 

He clears his throat and turns back to the steering wheel.  Looking out over the dashboard, definitely not at you, and with the tips of his ears more than a little red, he says, “You’re right.  Let’s get back on the road.”

In spite of everything, you find yourself smiling. 

-

It is only natural that you are waylaid at the very last minute, right on the cusp of sunset as you approach the vicinity of the military base.  Not only is your path to finally rescuing Changbin obstructed, but it is halted by the most asinine, mundane nonsense in the world. 

Soldiers, agents, entire convoluted military operations – those you can easily take.  Minimum wage workers, on the other hand, are impossible combatants.  More grizzled than the worst of ancient servicemen, they blink at your pleading with a harsher chill than a mob boss.   You are certain this gas station attendant has seen some shit because he is not remotely inclined to assuage anyone’s anxiety. 

“The till is down,” he says with an icy tone, face pinched unpleasantly.  “It’ll be back up in a minute.” 

He goes back to talking to his manager on the phone, smacking his computer till at random intervals.  It does not exactly inspire confidence. 

While you and Chan have been getting by with theft and subterfuge, you do everything in your power to not draw attention.  That means you pay for gas as many stations have security cameras that log and report drive-offs and defaults. 

That means you are stuck in this line with several other customers while the hapless cashier whacks his computer.

The little bell above the door rings as Chan steps inside the shop. 

“What’s taking so long?” he asks. 

“I want to hit him,” you say, pointing to the disinterested cashier.  “He’s never gonna get that thing fixed.  We have somewhere to be, we can’t just stand here all day—” 

“Ah, ah, ah, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Chan says soothingly.  He interrupts your rant as you were raising your voice.   Not that it matters because the incompetent cashier is not paying any attention. 

“I’ll take care of it,” Chan says.  “You just have to know how to talk to people, yeah?” 

The cashier paid you absolutely no mind when you tried to complain.  He gave you a nasty look and ordered you to get to the back of the line.  Chan, on the other, receives a quick onceover and a blink of seeming approval. 

Chan leans on the counter and smiles a devastatingly charming smile, those dimples blinding.  The cashier puts the phone on his shoulder and looks at him expectantly.    

“Hey there,” Chan says. 

“Hello,” the cashier replies, coolly but not as rudely.  “The till is broken, sir.  We’re going to have to wait for a repair.”

“You know, I’m pretty good with my hands,” Chan says.  “I bet if you let me under there, I could figure something out.” 

The cashier blinks at him.  One blink, two blinks, three.  Then he hangs up the phone and opens the gate to let Chan behind the counter. 

You cross your arms and roll your eyes. 

Chan, perhaps unsurprisingly given his necessary breadth of skills, helps the useless cashier get his dumb register running again.  You all but throw the money at his stupid pretty head before marching away. 

“Thanks, Wolfgang,” the cashier says, using the made-up name Chan gave him.

“No problem.”  Chan winks back at him.   “Have a good day, uh—”  He squints at the name tag, gives it only a sparing glance as he steps out the door.  “Hyunjin,” he says.

The door swings closed and you continue on your way. 

-

Fortunately, you have no more preposterous interludes.   You approach the base differently than the facilities, especially because you have not been able to do a proper sweep.  However, that should be fine given the entire operation here has already been massively destabilized.  All the main assets have moved along, either because of imminent danger or because the media now has its eyes on its actions. 

Either way, you get inside without much fuss.  You stick together for longer, not trusting the dark corridors and labyrinthine tunnels. 

It is a lot emptier than anticipated.  The fight seems to have ended some time in the last couple hours.  There is an eerie, unsettled feeling, like a house abandoned in the middle of a meal.  Unlike the dusty underground hovels at the research facility, this place is still breathing.   You are not sure what it will cough up. 

“Still think he’s here?”  Chan asks, likely coming to the same conclusion as you: that even if Changbin was here, he has probably moved on.  He has either escaped and gone of his own volition or he was caught and reprimanded and has been relocated. 

“Maybe,” you say with a sigh.  “Maybe not.  But it’s still a lead.  Treat it like one.” 

You finally split up to cover more ground, agreeing to reconvene at the central warehouse in half-an-hour. 

Maybe Changbin is no longer in these walls – maybe he was never here at all – but there might still be answers.  You suspect there are questions too, because you cannot imagine who outside of the special-ops program would have both the calibre of skill and necessary intel to pull of an operation like this.  Someone reached right into the heart of this base and yanked at its ventricles like it was nothing.  And if not to escape, then why?

It has to be Changbin, you tell yourself, even while a sense of wrongness creeps under your skin.  It is the same odd, unsettled feeling you get when you think about the night the enemy died – specifically when you think about that security system somehow being wiped after the house burned down with everyone inside it.  It is that strange discombobulation, where the answer is probably simple and right in front of your face, so blatant that its absence haunts and distracts you.

You are distracted with thought.  Maybe that is why you make your first mistake.

You turn a corner and crash right into someone.  You are shocked because you did not hear their approach.  Even distracted, you should have heard footsteps in an empty corridor, especially in heavy combat boots.  You are quiet but you have unique bodily control that even well-trained soldiers cannot replicate.  No one else can walk that quietly.

It is clear the same startled reaction ripples through their body. 

You draw guns at the same time, firing with equal speed and precision.  You also both duck at the same time.  Smooth as a dance, you whirl around each other, firing and re-loading until they do a spin-kick and knock the gun aside.  

As you fight with your hands, you only catch glimpses of your opponent.  They are dressed all in black but not in Miroh’s uniform, a balaclava pulled over their face and head.  They are very slender, but they land a hit like someone twice their size. 

Your second mistake is your own fault.  You underestimate them based on their build and it earns you a good right cross. In the ensuing dizziness, they make a break down the corridor at an alarming speed.  It leaves you reeling more than the hit. 

“What the fuck,” you say, staggering after them. 

This person does not work for Miroh, that much is obvious.  It also definitely isn’t Changbin.  This person has the completely wrong build, opposite of Changbin in almost every way.   No, it isn’t your friend, but it might very well be another prisoner.  They might have an idea of what happened.  They might know if Changbin was here and where he went. 

The thought propels you into a determined sprint.  You cannot follow sound as the person is good enough to keep their footsteps low, but you are just as skilled so they likewise do not see you coming. 

They coincidentally head straight for the central warehouse.   The warehouse previously functioned as a pseudo-armory, but it has already been completely cleared.  It is two levels, the top floor a balcony walkway overlooking the main warehouse floor. 

The warehouse is empty except for the intruder. The person seems to be deliberating.   They remove their head covering for a second, long enough to catch their breath.  You see a flash of black hair and a hint of a masculine profile before you are spotted.   The man tugs the fabric back over his head. 

He leaps right off the balcony. 

It is too high for a normal person to jump without breaking a leg.  Naturally, you run to the railing to look over.

Your adversary is a step ahead of you.   He is dangling there, waiting for you to approach so he can swing back over and knock you down.  You skid across the balcony level, the metal walkway rattling under your weight. 

You don’t stay down for long.  Another fight begins, a back and forth tussle that makes you think you need more training.  The past day has been more than a little hectic, but you should be able to take down even a well-trained soldier. 

He does another spin-kick, a solid roundhouse that knocks your mask right off.   You stumble sideways while the mask clatters across the balcony before spilling right over the ledge.  It is a long descent before it smacks the ground. 

You ground your footing, assuming a defensive stance with a swift upward swing.

“Who are you?” you ask.

At the exact same time, the man says, “You.” 

That prompts another question, a bigger question, why on earth this stranger would recognize you in this context.   You cannot even think about your question, however, because the man abruptly flies at you with twice the verve as before.  Caught off guard, at first you struggle to defend yourself.   When he finally swings too wide, giving you an opening, you do not waste the opportunity. 

You tackle him, fully and bodily, arms around him as you charge the balcony.   You shove him right over the railing.  It is not so high that he’ll die, but you don’t want to kill him anyway.  You need to ask him questions – like did he do all this and how and why?  Are there others?  Is Changbin among them? 

You grasp the railing.  You are prepared to swing and jump over but you stop short at what you find.  The man, who should be nursing a fractured leg right about now, is instead getting to his feet.  He looks a bit dizzy, shaking his head and rubbing his temple, but he is otherwise unscathed. 

You just stand there for a second, gawping at him like an animal. 

That shielded face finally lifts, eyes finding yours across the space.   His head cocks, seemingly a dry and irritated, Really?

You launch yourself off the balcony, landing heavily but safely.  You absorb the shock and straighten, not taking your eyes off this man for a second. 

“I’m not interested in hurting you,” you say. 

He scoffs, pointedly looking down at your uniform. 

“I don’t work for Miroh anymore,” you say.  “I’m just trying to blend in.” 

“You?” he says.  It is so far the only thing he is willing to say.  His voice has a darker, deeper tone, scratching at the back of your head, but his monosyllabic replies do nothing to help place him. 

You want to say more but he doesn’t let you, jumping back into action.  You huff in aggravation, wanting to shout, we’re on the same side!   But he is fast.  You expend your energy just keeping him at bay.

Your stamina is fairly well-matched, just like everything else.  You move around the warehouse, kicking and punching and flipping around each other, losing track of minutes. 

A sheen of sweat breaks under your uniform.  He is slowing down too.  There is just one difference: he still has his gun. 

He gets you behind the knee and puts you on your back.  Before you can retaliate, he draws his gun and points it at your face. 

You freeze, staring down the barrel.  You slowly lift your eyes to him, just in case any sudden movement convinces him to fire.  So far, he is holding, though you are not sure why.  If he truly wanted to avoid detection, it would have been in his best interest to kill you and move on. 

He hesitates.  His hand is steady but his eyes are darting around inside the masked fabric. 

Your eyes continue to wander up, up.  Your heart leaps when you see Chan approaching on the balcony, silent and serious, gun in hand.  He has a longer-range weapon, not a little pistol like you and the adversary.   He takes aim from his perch but you shake your head.

You know Chan can make the shot, that he could get the man through the head and not so much as graze you under him.  But if this man dies, his answers go with him. 

“No!” you shout at the same time the gun goes off. 

You wrap your legs around the man’s midsection and yank him to the side.  You roll, one over the other until you are pinned once more.  You are both unharmed.  With the head covering, it is hard to tell if he is frazzled.  He certainly whips his head around quickly, trying to see where he dropped his gun. 

You spot it at the same time.  You glance at each other then bolt, stumbling over one another as you charge the discarded pistol. 

Chan jumps down off the balcony.  He takes more of a running leap, jumping forward rather than just down.  It gives him far more momentum so he hits the ground and tucks into a roll, riding the wave of that momentum until he is in the middle of the room. 

Chan reaches the gun first.  He kicks it out of the way and comes at the adversary with his bare hands.  He may not understand why you wanted to save an enemy who had you pinned under a gun, but Chan must trust there is a reason because he fights to incapacitate rather than kill. 

It is a good fight, but the man is already tired from fighting you. 

And you are good, but Chan is better.  If he could not beat you, only tie, then he cannot beat Chan. 

Sure enough, it takes a few more moves before the man is on his back.  Chan, still wearing his half-mask, straddles the man’s chest, pinning his arms at his sides and his body to the floor.  He draws a knife out of a thigh holster for good measure.   

“Got him,” Chan says.  “Who is this guy?”

“I have no idea,” you say, jogging over to them.  “That’s what I want to find out.”

“Let me go,” the man says, wriggling uselessly under Chan’s weight.   “I have nothing to say to her.”

“I told you already, I’m on your side,” you say.  “Or at least I’m not on Miroh’s side.”

“Whose side are you on?”  Chan asks with a jerk of his head. 

“Mine,” the man answers.  “Now let me go.  I have a job.”

“We have a job,” you say.  “We’re the ones who have been taking out the facilities so far.”

That gets the man to stop squirming.  He looks at you through the narrow eye slits in his balaclava, eyes darting to where you stand behind Chan. 

“You?” the man asks, seemingly his favourite word. 

“Yes, me,” you snap.  “And who are you exactly?” 

“One way to find out,” Chan says.  He does not wait for any further acknowledgement, ripping the man’s mask right off his head.  It is not a cruel or violent action, more a casual shrug of his arm than anything.  You are not expecting to find anything more than the scowling face of a stranger.   

You and Chan freeze.   

Staring back at you, with his hair returned to its natural pitch, his dark eyes narrowed in an intense glare, and a face full of unmistakable freckles, is a former agent of Miroh’s special-ops program.  One of the last and a traitor, not to mention supposedly dead. 

“You,” is what you say.

You do not know what else to say to Lee Felix.