#its always winter on that mountain lmao

[thesamoanqueen]

Roman Reigns Summerslam 23

[utterlyazriel]

whom the shadows sing for — (and the thief's echoing hymn)

a/n: here she is... chappie four <3 thank u for ur patience and 1000 kudos to the anon that made a plot suggestion that i had already written lmao-- as always let me know what u think! things are heating up....

word count: just under 4k

synopsis: You return to regular training for the first time in a month. Azriel asks a favor from Rhys and finds you in a less than stellar condition when he returns to camp

CHAPTER FOUR :: FRIENDS

Velaris is a sight for sore eyes.

After nearly a month of endless white scenery, of the blinding glint of the sun against snow, paired with endless pine, the sight of a city is a reprieve in itself.

And because it’s Velaris — because it’s home — something else settles within Azriel.

A hackle that always stays on high alert finally lies down. The constant agitation of his shadows falls into a calming hush. He breathes easier.

He's back with his family and can be here to keep them safe if need be. He's back to the closest semblance of comfort he's ever known.

Where do you find comfort?

Azriel blinks a little, taken aback at the abruptness of the thought.

The lone shelter in the mountains, spaced out from the circle of buildings, every bit representing your isolation from the people of the camp — that was your home.

Where you resided and took solace from the world in, the place you felt safest. But... it's no place of comfort. It's a crutch. A necessary support. Somehow, Azriel has no doubt that if you could survive out in the snow, burrowed amidst the elements, you would, if only to have one less thing to maintain.

You've never even seen a city before, he thinks. All you know is the mountains.

Suddenly, eyes cast across the breathtaking beauty of Velaris, the hum of the Sidra carving its way through his beloved home, the buzz of people on the streets, Azriel recalls the very time he lay eyes on it himself.

It never stops being breathtaking. That much is true, but then again, there was no comparison to the first time.

The warm feeling that had grown in his chest. The way something he hadn't known ever existed within him had unfurled, like a flower blooming in the sun. Something Azriel now knows to be hope.

He hadn't known a place this beautiful could exist.

Wouldn't have been able to dream it up when all he had known for so, so long was darkness and shadow.

Even in the time after the cage, all there was to see was the white of winter and the cold bite of the harsh mountains. He learned how blood looked melting into the snow, how to sleep with one eye open, and all the different shades of cruelty.

Azriel remembers being unable to comprehend the sight, the stumble in his heart at the indisputable proof before him. That despite what had been drilled into him by his father, his brothers, by every Illyrian warrior who punched down on bastards, there was a place where peace reigned above all.

People who lived in harmony. Where Art and music are considered a treasure alongside other skills, each equally important. And Azriel belonged there, as much as any of them.

It had been one thing to walk through the city, to marvel at every cobblestone, at the trims lining each and every window, to have people regard him with such a polite and casual manner — not a second glance at his wings or his hands.

It had been something else entirely to fly over it as night fell.

Mountain ridges illuminated by his most constant friend, the rising moon, watching the moonlight spill over the dark red rock of the mountain and paint it ever softer. Sweet ocean air and the very perfume of the city intertwined within the current as he soared above it, mighty wings beating.

Azriel could remember that first day and night in Velaris vividly, like an unforgettable dream. How easy it had been to fall in love with it, to let its arms unfurl and to allow himself to make a home within them.

Looking out across it now, as Faelights begin to twinkle and blink to life as the night creeps in, all Azriel can think of is how much he wants that for you.

To bring you here. To have both of you fly above the city and wander down the streets aimlessly, to show you that there were places far kinder in this world than all you had known before.

He yearns for you to have the same dawning realisation he did—that so much more existed outside of those gods forsaken mountains.

Azriel knows you're a very guarded male. You have more than enough reasons to be. He's already pushed a thousand boundaries you have and each time you let him into your sanctuary in the mountains is a sign of enormous trust.

Maybe for that reason, Azriel wants to be the first to extend that kindness to you.

A twinge in his chest sings a different, golden answer.

Azriel ignores it and steals one more look out at his home, swallowing down how all logic seems to be pointing to the same thing, time and time again.

He finds the High Lord in his study, papers stacked high on his desk that have only grown higher in Azriel's absence. His dark hair is tousled in a way that means he's been running his hand through it too much.

Azriel lifts the shadows from beneath his feet as he enters, letting the other hear the sound of his soft footsteps. Rhys looks up at the new arrival. Despite his tired appearance, it does nothing to dim the grin that overtakes his lips at the sight of his brother.

"My, my, aren't you a sight for sore eyes?"

Azriel grins back, stepping forward Rhys pushes back from his desk and stands. His usual wings have been hidden away through his magic and Azriel notices their absence when he pulls him into a brief hug. Rhys lingers close, his violet eyes raking over his friend.

"Not bad to see you either."

"You flatter me." Rhys purrs, his voice all buttery and smooth. "You've got new eyebags. Overworking yourself as usual, are we Az?"

"I presume you make such lovely comments about Feyre too?"

"And risk her wrath?" Rhys smiles, eyes glittering at the mention of his mate. "Never."

Azriel rolls his eyes, letting his obvious endearment at his brother's happiness show. They truly are a perfect pair.

He crosses his arms across his broad chest tightly, if only to hide the fleeting flicker of wanting the spools tight in his chest. A ribbon of envy, woven between his ribs.

If Rhys notices, he doesn't comment. Instead, he says, "Usually, you're itching to escape the mountains but not this time I see."

He pauses, eyeing up the Shadowsinger to see what response it'll give. Azriel yields no comment back. Expecting this, Rhys smiles.

"Either way, you'll be happy to hear that Cassian has returned from his time off and is ready to resume his usual duties."

Azriel stills at the words.

He knew that Cassian would at one point return to his usual positions and that Azriel himself, would return to his spymaster post. But it's come sooner than expected. Perhaps, time with you has been passing far quicker than Azriel thought.

"I found the cause of the rumours."

"Yes, I assumed you had," Rhys says, wandering back around the deck to slump into his chair. He leans one arm against the armrest, his knuckles against his temple.

"I also assumed that you spent all that time dealing with it. Much of a problem?"

Azriel considers his words carefully. The trust he's managed to garner with you is fragile, though he knows his friend would not severe it or interfere if he asked.

Another part of him knows it's unusual behavior of him, to offer his skills so willingly to a stranger. But, well, you're not exactly a stranger anymore.

"There's a male.” Azriel begins, choosing his words carefully. “A bastard, the one causing all the stir-ups. He feeds the other bastards when he can. It's what had Lord Mylind kicking a fuss."

Rhys curses lightly at the realisation of just which camp they are dealing with.

"He's learning to make healing tonics," Azriel continues, noting how Rhys' head straightens up a fraction. Interested. "In hopes of slipping them to freshly clipped females. To see if it can reverse the damage."

Rhys sits back in his chair completely, his hand brushing over his mouth in deep contemplation. For a moment, he says nothing.

"I suppose I don't need to ask if there's been any female training then."

Azriel feels himself glower instinctively, his wings hiking up an inch higher without meaning to. He thinks of Lord Mylind and the conversation he had on the first day in their camp. The sheer display of male arrogance, snarling, and threatening violence outright.

"No.”

Rhys curses again, his eyes crushing closed. He seems to filter through a pained reaction, his face contorting until it lands on a tired resignation.

“The camp of Exordor made very good on a bargain struck during a very hard time.” Rhys grits the words out.

Something dangerous flashes in his eyes at the mention of the deal that had turned sour. A cold ripple of night shudders through the room.

No amount of soldiers supplied during the war had been worth the suffering that camp Exodor alone produced— or continues to produce if the whispers that came out of there held an inkling of truth.

It’s a rotten place, tucked deep in the mountains, and some of the worst brutes Rhys has ever had the displeasure of meeting were born in the bowels of that place.

“It doesn’t lift for another 50 years." Rhys sighs, his voice wavering with a hint of shame. "I can’t touch them without slaughtering them all— innocent or not.”

Azriel didn’t say anything for a moment. This information is not new. He watches as Rhys digests his silence, leaning back in his chair as the wheels spin in his head, dizzyingly fast.

For the second time, Rhys' brows jump.

“You’re helping him.”

Not a question.

Azriel nods.

"You don't want Cassian to take back over."

"No," Azriel murmurs. "Not yet. The male is... He's guarded. Isolated. It has taken time to earn his trust. I believe in what he wants to do and I believe he has what it takes to achieve it.”

He thinks of the quiet evenings within your shelter, your patience as you taught Azriel what you could — how you took every piece of information from him on the chin, not one complaint of ever tiring. He thinks of the heaving in his chest, the tug on his heart.

"I ask that you let me see this out." Azriel finishes, his shoulders rolling back as he stands tall. Let Rhys understand how this had become more than just a mission to him; it’s a personal calling, one he must answer, one that he needs to see out to the end.

Rhys surveys him intensely, unblinking for a moment. Then something devious crosses his face, catching in a smile.

"That's not the only thing you want to ask me, is it?"

Azriel looks to the ground, suddenly bashful. This would be entirely too revealing of the closeness he felt, to ask this, to offer this. He asks anyway.

"I wish, with your permission, to take Heartstriker." Azriel's voice rumbles lowly. He forces his eyes back up, meeting Rhys' strong gaze. "To gift to him."

Something dips into Rhys' smile, threatening a smirk and for that reason alone, Azriel feels his ears tinge hotly. His face remains calm, however, giving nothing away.

"Heartstriker? As a gift?" Rhys repeats, with a sly smile. "Pray tell Brother, when's the wedding? Since when have you ever been known for gift giving, let alone something as dear to you, such as a sword? I might just have to meet this bastard."

Azriel’s ears only get hotter, betraying him. He prays it doesn't show on his face, though he's sure the increased swirlings of his shadows give him away. And Rhys’ infallible ability to read his flustering each and every time.

"Is that permission?"

Rhys, seemingly realising he won't be getting any juicy details, quits tormenting his brother with a flourish of his hand. He leans back in his chair relaxed, a softness creeping into his expression.

"It's been yours to take all these years, Az." Rhys finally lands on. "You did earn it, after all."

—

The shelter looks bigger without him here.

Betrayingly, it’s the first thought you have when the door swings open, letting you into your nest of safety. You heave in a breath that rattles loudly and it gets swept up in the foul whistle of the Mother's Kiss.

On your side, your blood-soaked hand clutches your abdomen tightly. Pain spiderwebs up your body, fraying every nerve with a burning agony.

Every step feels loud and clumsy.

You cough as softly as you can, yet still feel the warmth of blood on your lips. The familiar metallic tang overwhelms your mouth.

You must be dripping blood behind you, dragging a slushy mess of crimson snow in on your boots. Fuck, what are you doing again? Your head throbs. They must've knocked your head hard this time if you're losing focus this quickly.

The Mother's Kiss howls fiercely, a reminder of the cruelty outside your little haven.

Right. You remember you need to close the door— and you shove the deadbolt closed along with it. If your ribs were aching a little less, you would reach up and do up the second deadbolt too, at the top of the door. You try to anyway.

Your arm gets mid-way up before you freeze, pain lashing every nerve in your midriff, enough to make you wince loudly. The bindings on your chest aren't helping. For a moment, dark spots dance before vision as you quickly tuck your arm back down, moving too quick.

Fuck. Fuck. One deadbolt will have to do.

It feels as if the whole world lurches when you take your next step, blurring like thick taffy for a split second. You stumble towards your bed and realise as you sink onto your knees on the edge of it, you need to dress your wounds.

Another bloody cough. Has your nose stopped bleeding yet? It's impossible to tell between each and every other ache.

What were you doing again?

Without meaning to, you begin to slump over, nearly lying down in your bed.

Dressings! That's right, you need to make sure the wound on your side isn't still bleeding, need to make sure it's clean when it finally begins to clot, need to...

Need to... what did you need to do?

That's right— you need to sleep.

Your head crumples against the pillow like a dead-weight as you collapse against it, exhausted. As your consciousness wanes, you cough again, a splatter of red spraying your pillow.

Not good, you think absentmindedly. Eyes slipping shut, you miss the familiar figure out the window, approaching through the storm.

—

You're wincing before you even realise you're awake.

Crackling. Logs spitting out little snaps fill the air, the quiet roar of a hearty fire; the first things you hear when you come too, far too slowly for your own liking. Your left ears hum loudly in discomfort— no doubt a result of one of the harsh hooks you had caught in the face earlier today.

Next, you smell something... clean?

Your tongue comes out gingerly, licking your cracked lips and you realise quite suddenly, there's an absence of blood on them. The thought slams into you at the same time you realise; you hadn't been able to stay awake for long enough to even light a fire.

Panic reaches through your ribs and grips your heart, tight, and you sit up without thinking.

Pain follows you closely like a lazy afterthought that slams into you, soaking into your body meanly and making you regret moving so fast. Your head swims heavily, throbbing dully.

A pained noise threatens to leave your lips and you force it down. Then force your head up, eyes blinking rapidly, trying to assess the threat, trying to do something.

Panic squeezes your heart painfully again when your hazy vision clears just enough to reveal the shape of a body before you— your blood chilling in your veins as you realise there's somebody else in here with you.

The whimper you held back before slips out before you can help it, your body squirming backward without thought. Your breaths comes out in sharp pants, bursts of pain accompanying each one, and right as you hit the wall, your vision focuses.

Your lungs empty in relief.

It's Azriel before you, on his knees, his scarred hands are held out in front of him.

They aren't touching you, just hovering, his palms up to indicate he means no harm. His wings are tucked back, hunched down to be smaller than usual, and all around him, his shadows whirl about animatedly.

There's an expression on his face you've never seen before.

"—on't move," He's saying, his low voice finally registering in your ringing ears. His hazel eyes are fixed on your face, darting about quickly. "You'll re-open your wounds."

He's talking about your wounds but for some gods forsaken reason, all you can think is how surprised you are that he came back.

The thought loops endlessly, like a holy mantra —he came back, he came back, he came back— and you realise that you were both terrified and also sure that he wouldn't be coming back at all.

That somehow, somewhere along his trip back to his home, he would have realised you weren't anything worth coming back for.

"Azriel?" You wheeze.

Just to check—you have to check.

Maybe he's a mirage. He certainly would be the kindest mirage you can think of.

You think you see something soften on his face, his wings dropping an inch lower behind him. His hands are still held out before you, still waiting. He's endlessly patient. His shadows seem to slow a bit, less frenzied.

"Yeah," He murmurs gently in response. His hazel eyes burn as they take in the sight of you again. "They got you pretty messed up. huh?”

You're sitting on your bed still, you realise. Blinking slow, you take an inhale, trying to put together how he got here— your eyes fly to the door. It's locked, this time with both deadbolts secured.

Azriel follows your gaze, turning his head slightly. "They're a good precaution. Don't be dissuaded that the spymaster of this court managed to get past them."

You wheeze again, some delirious laugh that gets cut off when pain splinters through your side. You groan lowly, unable to hold it in and your hand creeps slowly to paw at your side.

Faintly, you can feel the scrape of bandages on your skin, covering the wound, and sigh in relief. It makes your diaphragm sink down, the bindings around your chest shifting and that sends a frantic bolt of alarm through you once more.

“You—” The word scratches out your throat and you cough weakly. Every instinct starts to light back up, hackles rising— there has never been someone else around when you're too weak to defend yourself. It takes a moment with eyes closed and measured breaths to lean into your trust. You trust him, you know you do.

“You... patched me up?”

The question comes out wary and pointed despite your efforts. Though that might just be the gravel in your throat from having your face beaten in.

You don’t know how to covertly ask if he saw— if, that when he pushed your bloody shirt up to nurse the slash in your side, he noticed the gauze around your ribs.

It's an alien and terrifying thought, Azriel finding out. A worry deep in the marrow of your bones warbles in response, a thousand hairs standing up on end at the possibility.

How a revelation of that magnitude could sever the first trust you've had in years.

How it could lose... the first friend you've ever truly had.

A string of nausea tugs in your throat, bile threatening, and you have to swallow it down with the crippling fear that's been thrust into your system.

This is how it goes. The intrinsic balance of the world —to be gifted closeness and friendship, is to submit to the possibility of losing it.

Back against the wall, it settles into you very starkly, a thought sharp and clear; you do not want to lose him in any way.

Some part of you thinks he must see you as some kind of starving mutt, growing far too attached to the first hand that feeds it. But looking at him now, his shadowed face and kind expression, the depth of his eyes... you're convinced he sees something more to you.

And you want him to, desperately.

In a way you can't comprehend, can't begin to understand— how can you be so tied to someone you've known for so little? How can it hurt so much to be parted from him when you're barely friends? When he doesn't even know who you truly are.

Perhaps, you think, this is what all friends are like. You wouldn't know, you haven't had any before.

Azriel nods mutely, a strand of his dark hair falling over his forehead. He seems to be considering his words carefully and you take the moment to steal a few deep breaths.

When he speaks, his voice is softer than you’ve ever heard. "I understand that might be... crossing a line. But—" A waver in his voice. "— but I could smell the blood from out in the storm."

There's something left unsaid in his sentence, his tone clipped. Whatever it is, you're far too tired to discern it. Your body, overwhelmed with tension, abruptly loosens as the perceived threat of danger seeps away. It drains you, a sudden wave of tiredness cresting upon you— because you know, undoubtedly, you're safe now.

Not quite meaning to but unable to stop yourself, you sink down and fall limply against your bed. Your wing curls over you defensively, a blanket and shield all in one.

Azriel's hands finally lower, resting gently atop his thick thighs. His shadows dim their chaotic activity, almost lazy with how they whirl about his neck and shoulders. You wonder absentmindedly what they feel like against his skin.

Looking back at his face, you find his eyes haven't broken their watchful gaze on you— intense enough to stir up an unfamiliar warmth within your chest. You avoid it and his eyes, your tired eyes catch sight of something behind him.

"You brought...?" You can't quite finish your sentence, a vicious shiver wracking your frame, making you curl up closer. Tiredness chases it, the threat of sleep looming closer and closer.

Your eyes close without meaning. In the darkness, Azriel's voice swims before you, muted and far away.

"You have to get better before I can give it to you." His voice has dropped to a whisper. It makes your lips twitch in an attempt of a smile. It's funny, hearing a legendary Illyrian warrior like him whispering.

"Okay," You might say back— though you're not sure if it sounds like a word at all.

It doesn't matter. You're already asleep.

[NEXT PART: CONFIDANTS]

—

tags <3

@strangerstilinski @janebirkln @itsswritten @mischiefmanagers @hnyclover @waytoomanyteenagefeels @idkitsem @illyrianbitch @jeweline16 @fightmedraco @iamjimintrash @maeandering @spideytingley @aneekapaneeka @cassianswh0reeee @viciane @astarlitsoul @mybestfriendmademe @archiveofcravings @reputaytionn-13 @bionic-donut @chessebookgirl @itseightbeats @littleblackcatinwonderland @twsssmlmaa @fanworrior @skysayhi @vintageoldfashion @tequilya @fabulouslyflamboyant5

[loudclan-clangen]

HEY so the last ask reminded me that this is set in Alaska! As someone who used to live there it makes me very happy to see, so just for fun I brainstormed lore ideas/questions for a Clan there n I thought id share :) this is Long lmao i apologize

The terrain for one thing. Growing up I remember all the horror stories of people getting stuck in muskeg and not being able to get out before the tide comes in. so that’s always freaky, but i imagine that if theres any in the area then the cats might try and take advantage of it as safely as they can? for prey and such. on that note whats their water situation like anyways? braided rivers?

any specific ideas for what area of mountains the cats are in? are they in the higher ranges, the ones wrapped up in clouds, the rocky kind like the ones around Denali? the greener ones with all the trees? is their territory frequented by hikers and/or tourists or are they relatively untouched wilderness? I think i remember it being said that LoudClan is somewhere more towards the south, is it intended to be generally vague? :0

Predators!!!! The cats can deal with all sorts of unique stuff in a setting like this, bears n lynxes n wolves… eagles… possibly even wolverines since theyre up in the mountains? i’d be curious to see how a clan would react to a wolf pack passing through the area lol. also ive always just loved the concept of a queen finding an abandoned lynx kitten or smth and unknowingly adopting it and it just keeps… getting bigger… whoops… oh well its the clans weird child now

So many fun lil prey animals too, ground squirrels n ptarmigans n such!! I bet ptarmigans would totally harass cats during breeding season and that could be funny. maybe standard apprentice training is to learn the different ground squirrel alarm calls. maybe they even sometimes encounter dalls or caribou or moose on patrols (perhaps moose have even been known to kill before, so theyre considered dangerous).

Also just….. the day-night cycle??? I’d honestly be pretty interested to see how that ties in, like it’s daylight forever in the summer-early autumn and pretty much perpetually nighttime in the winter-early breakup. do the cats have any thoughts or beliefs towards that? do they like to look up at the northern lights, and listen when theyre so clear that they can hear them?

Okok thats all now sorry. I got way too excited lol i miss AK sm, i left when i was little 💔 if any of this has been discussed already in a lore post then ignore me its been a hot minute and i rattled this off on a whim!!!

Love this! Okay, let me try to hit all of these questions in a way that will hopefully be understandable for everyone so if you're the asker please skip past the definitions/backstory.

A 'muskeg' is like a swamp or a bog. I assume that you're referring to the area outside of Anchorage that we always called the 'Mud-Flats", because that's where I heard stories of people getting stuck. (Specifically there's a very famous urban legend of a soldier stationed in Anchorage who went out with his buddies, got stuck up to his waist, ended up tied to a helicopter, and when they tried to pull him out with the helicopter he uh... separated. And his legs can supposedly still be found in the flats. (I WANT TO CLARIFY THAT THIS IS NOT TRUE. THERE WAS A SOLDIER, HE GOT STUCK, HE DROWNED, THE SEPARATION HAPPENED AFTER HE WAS DEAD AND THEY TRIED TO RETRIEVE THE BODY. THEY DID GET HIS LEGS BACK TO MY KNOWLEDGE.)) It's pretty much a long stretch of quicksand (but it's like more mud and silt than sand? idk how to really describe it i haven't been there much cause ya know, hearing stories like that will kinda cure your curiosity as a kid.)

Anyway, Ghostclan's territory used to be Mud-Flats, but long before the cats moved in twolegs came and installed the Rip Rap (big jagged rocks that are placed on the coastline to keep it from erroding) that make up Freezingclan's territory and that kinda took some of the danger out of it. Since the tide no longer comes up so high, while getting stuck is certainly not a good thing, it's not a death sentence as clanmates have time to gather help and dig you out. Though it does make it hard/near impossible to launch an attack on Ghostclan without an insider to lead you around the wet spots. Larger prey can sometimes be found stuck in the mud, having died from exhaustion, but the wetness causes the meat to rot quickly, and what is left draws the attention of larger predators, while also adding the issue of having to avoid getting stuck as you retrieve it, so it's not really a reliable source of food as much as it is a last resort. Ghostclan also contains the territory's braided river, which the cats call the "Friendly River" because it's three smaller streams that meet up into one large one. (I didn't do the best job rendering this on the map but that is what I was trying to represent. I'm not a landscape person, I'm doing my best.) Because the territory is a narrow valley set right on the coast they don't have a ton of room for the rivers to braid, but the thought was there!

It is intented to be generally vague, because I'm not an expert on geography and I live a couple of hours from this exact area, I didn't want to say "yeah it's here" and then have people correct me with minute little things. Plus if it's entirely made up then I can alter things to my liking. But the territory is inspired by the land along the Seward highway, where on one side it's these big mountains and on the other it's just a short sloping coastline. It looks like this in real life:

(You can even see the railroad and layer of rip rap that I included in the territory map) I imagine it's a place where the road veers inland so that the clans can have more space to roam. While the railroad runs through the mountain the highway is just on the other side of it. The mountains here are nowhere as tall as Denali, but they aren't anything to scoff at either. I imagine them being something like this, (which I believe is Exit Glacier?):

The lower areas are densely forested with tall trees and thick shrubs, but the greenery gets thinner and shorter as the elevation rises until you get to the higher ridges and peak which is pretty much just rock. Loudclan camp would be located at the transition point between grass and rock, so that there is no place above them where their enemies might hide and wait to pounce. As for humans, the territory used to belong to a small mining town. They dug the mine, installed the rip rap, built the buildings, and leveled the area of the mountain that Loudclan camp is set on, but over time resources dried up and people left. Now it's nearly untouched save the railroad, which still runs through the mountain regardless of whether there's a stop there anymore. The fact that you have to either cross railroad tracks or mountains to get to it, and its remote nature mean that hikers don't usually put in the energy to venture that way. (My mom grew up in Sutton, a former coal mining town and railway hub that was long past it's glory days by the time she was born and so this fictional town is kind of an omage to that).

The cats absolutely will interact with unique predators! The game has done me the favor of adding in wolverines already (and let me tell you, they cause PROBLEMS), but the cats might also face off against an aggressive little ermine (which are much fiercer than their appearance would have you believe) or even find themselves stumbling upon a blackbear gorging on blueberries early in the fall. They aren't really in the correct area for a wolf pack (and to my knowledge i don't remember writing about any) but who knows what's to come? Okay, now onto Lynx. Up until about 30 seconds ago I was under the impression that domestic cats and lynx could hybridize. Why did I think that? Well because everyone and their mother up her SWEARS that their female cat got out and mated with a lynx at one point or another. That or their big long hair tom cat is part lynx. So who was I to question whether that could even happen? Well apparently it can't but oops, too late, already headcannoned that several characters are part lynx so fuck it. These cats are special. They've speciated. Juneaucliff's dad was a Lynx. What are you gonna do about it? Huh? Regardless, yes, the cats do interact with Lynx, but they speak the same language, so it's a bit of a different situation. It probably won't be mentioned unless people ask about specific characters, but anyone with ear tufts/unusually large stature/big paws may have been descended from a lynx at some point.

The prey animals I think are more dangerous than the predators honestly. So many of them are specifically adapted to the terrain in ways that the cats aren't. Imagine chasing a snowshoe hare across the mountainside, following directly in their tracks only to suddenly feel the snow fall away beneath you, because while their big feet allow them to skid across the crevasse without disturbing the crust of the snow, you're just a little bit too heavy and you sink a bit to far and now you're falling to your death. You're sitting on the edge of the river during a salmon run, watching an eagle dive down to grab a fish. What are the chances it changes it's mind and grabs you? A cat weighs a lot less than a king salmon. And moose would be a danger. 9/10 they won't even glance twice at you but the one time you get unlucky enough to jump down from a tree and land between a cow and her calf? Maybe with no snow a cat could outrun a moose but those long legs mean that there's no feasible escape in the colder months. Even in the warmer months a cat can be trampled by a herd of caribou if they aren't vigilant while walking along the flat lands of the valley. Ptarmagins are easy food, but they're annoying and they spook off every other kind of prey within their designated "territory" and are just generally a nuisance. Some of them are useful, though, Dall sheep wool is is great for insulating nests and shed antlers from moose and caribou can be used to strengthen camp walls and build dens or can be broken into smaller sections to splint broken bones.

The day/night cycle absolutely plays into it! That's why starclan moved into the Black Water Pool. It's the only place where night always exists. In moon 14 Part 2 Twistedtail explains to Wildfirecry that starclan had to move, saying "We couldn't survive there. Not when the sun silenced the stars for seasons at a time". Many cats believe that their ancestors can't see them while the stars are hidden, that the light of the sun blinds them, and therefore are more likely to do devious things in the summer when the sun never leaves the sky in order to avoid punishment. They don't live far north enough to experience perpetual night but even so, only having 6 hours of daylight in the winter does make patrolling and hunting much more difficult. As of right now, the northern lights mean something different to every cat. They each interpret them/were taught to believe something unique about them. Are they the last words of dead cats frozen in the air? Are they the souls of your ancestors dancing across the sky? Maybe they're a sign from starclan, demanding that the lead healer come speak to them at the black water or a sign of good luck for a little born beneath them. No one really knows, except for that they're something important. (I'm not committing to anything cause they could be used in so many interesting ways that i don't wanna limit myself ya know?)

anyway, thank you for the ask, this was so fun to talk about! My apologies for not answering as many asks as I had hoped to over my break, I was on a trip and then had to buckle down on school work and then got sick (just a cold. im fine) but things are looking good for a beginning of July return time still! (Note because I know what tumblr reading comprehension is like: I'm not returned quite yet. I still have to write a paper for school. But soon! Yay!) If you have asked an ask in the past month: I'm so sorry please be patient. There's so many of you. If you were sending me actual, physical mail I would be completely buried in it. I love it, and hope you keep doing it, but... just know it might be a minute... or two... or ten.

[franciskirkland]

APH South Italy/Romano Headcanons 🇮🇹

(SFW, Spamano/RomaSpa centric)

He wears a lot of jewelry, but it's classy never flashy. Several rings, one of which is engraved with an 'A' for Antonio. Usually wearing at least a solid gold chain and a crucifix.

He's very Catholic, in a uniquely Italian way (iykyk i cannot elaborate)

He smokes like a chimney, high quality cigars and cheap cigarettes. If you ask him to put it out he will blow it right at you. This is on top of heavy cologne (Versace Eros) so you can smell him from a mile away.

Certified Short King™, maybe around 5'7? I can see him with almost any sort of physique, that being said I don't think he's a twink, he at least has some wiry strength. He's lean but solidly built, maybe even has some pudge esp as he ages?

He's very warm toned. His skin is a light olive, not pale yet not quite bronze. He tans well but isn't tan all year round. Honestly he probably uses tanning beds during winter lmao

He's got a fair amount of body hair and often leaves his shirts unbuttoned to display this, intentionally or not. He's a sharp dresser when out in public, but at home he sits around in sweat stained tanks and boxers.

He loves his red wine, and apertifs. Grappa or Sambuca for something a stronger. Doesn't mind the taste of hard liquor at all. Definitely holds his alcohol better than his brother or Antonio.

Loves sailing and yachting, leisure sports. Has a bit of a gambling habit. Not to a destructive point, just in good fun.

When he's in a good mood he hums to himself and you might even catch him singing if he thinks he's alone.

Dances to Dean Martin in the kitchen with Antonio. He actually likes cooking together. Normally he'd be the type of person to hate others in his space while doing something, but Toni is an equally talented chef so he allows it.

Makes a big pot of sauce and polpette on Sundays. Italians will know. Eats wayyyy too much meat than is healthy. You can pry his salumi out of his cold dead hands.

He's sensitive and not always rational - the type to make mountains out of molehills and deflect real issues with humour. Explosive temper. Born to argue. Quick to throw insults (and hands). Just as quick to forgive and forget. If he holds a grudge you really fucked up.

If he likes you, he'll tease you and call you names. If he doesn't, he won't bother to talk to you much. He likes to fuck with people to an extent but has little patience for unnecessary conversation.

He can be extremely condescending; and to Tonio exclusively, extremely sweet. He's a smooth talker and romantic when he feels like it, laying on the pet names and sweet nothings, especially when he wants something in return.

He's honest and loyal, but generally a very private person. It's difficult to earn his trust and get on his good side but once you have it you're one of the lucky few. He's hospitable and generous and often does that for show. Loves to give meaningful and lavish gifts. If he cares about someone not only will they be spoiled in a material sense, but he'll do favors for them to make their life easier.

(note: this might be controversial re; accuracy but i don't actually have beef with his canon human name. 'lovino isn't a real name' well yes and no. it's not common or representative. but there's so much variety in italian naming that it certainly could be a first name. according to forebears there are 259 ppl named lovino on record but only 9 are in italy lol. or u could just call him ~romano~ which is a more popular human first name. i kinda like lovino, its unique.)

[warden-melli]

I mean, Melli literally(if my personal headcanon that wardens live close to their ward is true, and if not then im not looking 😒) live what seems like at least halfway up the biggest mountain in Hisui. So my own personal headcanon is that he both isn't afraid of heights and is pretty good at like cardio and trekking, but he would also be more used to the cold since winds are really cold and harsh the more up you go up a mountain(to a certain point at least until theres no wind at all but then you have a different problem lmao). Like I think he would be more athletic than most in his clan, maybe he would even be a little smug about it hehe. I know I would be hehehe

You and I have extremely similar headcanons :)

It's technically not canon that all Wardens live close to their wards, but it's kind of implied, especially with Iscan's home being able to be visited on the coast. I’ve always assumed that we just didn’t get to see where their homes are because it wasn’t relevant to the plot, or that the devs just didn’t bother to add them in, or even that they’re just in locations that we can’t reach. I think with any sort of fictional world, especially in an rpg, that there’s an expectation that the audience will use their imagination to flesh out some of the experience, and I think given the canon details we have been given it’s a very easy conclusion to come to (that the Wardens keep homes close to their wards)

But yeah, I totally agree with absolutely everything. I’ve always imagined him to have extremely powerful legs due to all the hiking and climbing me must do, and it’s true that he’s frequently exposed to snow and freezing temperatures where he works. It completely makes sense that he would have a higher tolerance for the cold than most other members of the Diamond clan. While Hisui is a cold place in general, the swampy landscape where the Diamond clan settlement is located is likely to be one of the most humid places in the region. Also an observation. Of all the Wardens he’s the only one depicted with his hood up, which implies that he frequents colder locations. He’s also secretly shy, and the hood up could be a subtle nod to his true nature, but also two things can be true lol

One of my personal headcanons is that Melli also takes care of the Voltorbs as part of his duties looking after Lord Electrode, and that a major part of that job is ensuring that (as part grass types) Electrode and its colony of Voltorbs survive the harsh winter. I imagine that there’s a few weeks during the coldest part of winter that makes travel over the mountain impossible due to heavy snowfall and winds, and that it’s Melli’s duty every year to gather supplies, leave the Diamond clan and stay completely isolated in his home on the mountain for those few weeks, so that he can can ensure the colony are fed and kept safe during the most dangerous time of year. He has to be prepared before the bad weather sets in, because it’s virtually impossible for anyone to leave or reach that part of the mountain at all during that time, and that he has to endure extreme temperatures and ration accordingly so that he, his pokemon partners and his Lord can survive the harsh winter.

I also agree that he would be much more athletic than the average person, and yeah I could see him being a bit smug about it in the right situation lol. I kinda see him as someone who’s secretly ripped (not bulky, but toned) and it honestly that it shocks people when they’re able to see that for themselves. That due to his foppishness many people perceive him as more delicate than he is, and then they see him shirtless and they’re like where the fuck did those abs come from what???

[inkblot22]

The Same As Always

So I can already hear it. If I'm so scared of Rook, why am I always writing about him? That's because fear makes me nut, and I'm horny on side (this is not my main blog lmao) Also I'm so sorry, I cannot remember who made this divider since I downloaded it a few years ago, so if it's yours please let me know and I will credit you! This is kind of a reimagining of events based on that very loose series I have floating around on my page (He Begs Not For Petulance) so I hope it comes across as well as those.

Who is this fic for? I tried to keep it very gender-neutral, so hopefully anyone who can handle it. I apologize, since Rook does use the masculine version of most pet names in this (cheri instead of cherie, etc) but it's less feminizing than him referring to the reader as "ma biche" or "ma coccinelle", so that's just how that goes. It is a shame, but I also stayed away from "mon nounours" because that is also a bit too gendered. Very cute, though.

Anyways, this fic is DEAD DOVE, DO NOT EAT. It's not as dark as my usual stuff, but that's not saying much. TW for noncon (touching and sa), knifeplay, blood, head injuries (accidental), captivity, and yandere. Also rusty, probably incorrect French and Rook Hunt, of course. I don't add translations because I feel like if the reader doesn't know all or any of what he's saying, it adds to the creep factor.

You don’t like it here. You think you don’t, at least. It’s hard to explain.

It’s winter, it has been for far too long. Maybe you’ve been here for a bit too long as well. It’s hard to keep track of time, since the sun seems to never rise wherever you are.

You can’t exactly remember how you got here. You remember the wagon. You’d needed quick travel through the mountains, but you also can’t remember where you were traveling. You remember everything going dark, waking up to see a blood-stained stone before you, feeling the warmth on your forehead and wondering where the wagon had gone. Your first thought was that you were now in a survival situation as it began to snow around you, the snowflakes dancing in the wind that found its way inside your loose clothing. You stood there for a moment, maybe, and then you started walking, and from there it all goes black. 

You can definitely remember the first time you saw him. You were lying in an unfamiliar bed, something snug around your forehead. A candle cast a warm, quiet light into the room, and it burned through your eyelids, your vision a murky orange-pink until you opened your eyes and came face to face with… him.

Flaxen hair, a soft smile as he reached forward to caress your cheek, and most of all, those intense jade eyes. You jumped and immediately felt woozy, but you were confused enough to pay that little mind.

The man shushed you, gently pulling you back into a relaxed position and cooing at you as though you were a small child, “Ah-ah, fear not, mon cheri, you are no longer in death’s grasp. Do you remember your name or how you’ve gotten here?”

You couldn’t answer him at first. His eyes narrowed, the rest of his face still a pleasant mask, and he eased you onto your back, your head against the pillow.

“Fret not, mon petit. How about I tell you my name, and then you can decide if you’d like to tell me yours?” His voice was quiet when he spoke to you, and you noticed that there was a large knife sheath snug on his thigh.

You were still bewildered. You couldn’t connect any of the dots that had led you to this moment, and it was making your heart beat a bit too fast for your liking. The stranger smiled wider and squeezed your trembling hand.

“Je m’appelle Rook Hunt, le chasseur d’amour. I found you wandering aimlessly in this forest, the life pouring from your head like a faucet. You passed out in my arms, and brought you here.”

You didn’t remember wandering around. You could remember getting up, but you didn’t remember wandering around. Your hand comes up to your forehead, the soft bandages rubbing against your fingertips. When you looked back at Rook, you tried to figure out what you should say. Your tongue felt thick in your mouth.

“I… I’m kinda thirsty.”

Rook smiled ever wider and stood, and you got the chance to look around a bit more. You seemed to be in a small log cabin, the bed in a sort of nook, away from the rest of the cabin. You could see Rook from where you were, his back facing you as he poured you a cup of water. The kitchen area was open, but small, a table with three chairs right next to it, and you could sort of see a pretty ornate looking rug, but as you were looking at it, Rook returned and helped you into a seated position.

He held the cup for you as you drank. When you finished, he placed the cup on the table and stroked your cheek, still smiling. His actions towards you were awfully familiar, as though you were old friends or something.

“Where am I?”

“A little cabin in the woods.” Rook didn’t remove his hand from your cheek. His gloved thumb was so gentle against your cheek. “Why don’t you get some rest? You lost quite a bit of blood, cheri.”

You did feel tired… and even though you were confused, it was almost as though a spell was cast on you, lulling you back to sleep.

You’re almost certain you don’t like it here. Although he never said anything to you about it, it became somewhat clear that you couldn’t leave once you felt well enough to move around again. At least you were moving, though.

It was also at this point that Rook began leaving the cabin often. It left you bored, not that his form of entertainment was a good one, and you started cooking to alleviate that boredom. You couldn’t really recall if you were good at it before, but you were decent enough to make basic stuff, so you did. For some reason, Rook had an icebox, not a refrigerator. You didn’t know what it was at first, and you felt like it was rude to open random cabinets in a strange man’s cabin, so you left it alone until he informed you that there were usually fresh vegetables inside.

You’d sit next to the potbelly stove and sip tea as you stared out the window at the snow. This winter was going on for far too long, and it always seemed to be dark here, but you didn’t know where “here” was.

Rook would stomp back in, snow caked along the feather in his hat and melting off the brim, and he’d cast you a smile before swishing into the basement. When he’d return, he’d guide you back to the bed and sit at the table himself, writing furiously… until recently.

Last night, he’d led you back to the bed after checking your wound and changing the bandage, but instead of taking a seat at the table and writing, he slipped into the bed beside you. You didn’t know it at the time, but this would be the precedent for the rest of your life.

“What are you doing-”

“Shh, shh. Relax, cheri. I will recite a poem for you.” He curled his arms around you, holding your aching head to his chest as he whispered.

“What?” You were fatigued, still recovering from your injury, but you struggled to break out of his hold anyway.

He shushed you again, his deceptively slim arms keeping you immobile, and then he began to speak, quiet and steady, “My darling is silent. Quiet as the night.”

“R-Rook…”

He continued speaking as though you hadn’t said anything at all, “Mon orilles sont pauvres faute de sa douce voix.

As I look at that sweet face,

Beautiful as a flower, as the moon, as the blood in our veins,

Je me sens seule dans ma peau.”

You… are not amazing at French. A small English to French dictionary was left on the table whenever Rook left, but reading made your head swim, pangs of pain so bad that you had to rest immediately. But, from what little you understood, the man who had saved you from a cold death outside seemed to have something worse planned for you, if you were in fact this “darling” he spoke of.

You definitely do not like it here. You’d made the mistake of pushing Rook’s increasing affections away every chance you got, resulting in him reading your reluctance to be around him as hostility. You’d gone to cut some vegetables and found that all the knives were replaced with children’s safety cutlery. While you could very well still cause damage with them, you couldn’t do anything life-threatening without a lot of effort and no fighting back. The serrated plastic edges were only good for cutting through the flesh of fruits and tender meats, and the rounded tips meant you couldn’t really pierce anything.You couldn’t even skin a fish that Rook came back with, he did it with his hunting knife after watching you struggle for an irritatingly long time.

And then there’s the cellar. You had taken a nap after trying to read and woken up, the sky dark as usual and a terrifying grinding, clunking noise coming up from the basement. You felt like you needed to hide, so you did. You crawled under the bed and waited, the basement door flying open and a few more candles getting lit echoing as the grinding noise- the sound of something big and heavy being dragged- moved further back towards the area of the cabin that you didn’t go in usually. There wasn’t much over there except for a wardrobe, and you didn’t like opening cabinets here. It stopped being about politeness a while ago, and had turned into the fear of finding something you didn’t like.

When you heard the front door open and close, felt the frigid rush of air that entered the cabin, you felt like you were frozen as well. You couldn’t move as you heard the sound of water being poured, and you worried for a while that you would start to feel the wooden floor beneath you grow cold and wet. Instead of wet floors, however, you saw Rook’s feet- you could only tell because of the freckle that peeps over his sock on his left leg and the fine blond hairs prickling from his skin- in your narrow window of vision from where you were cowering.

“Cheri… come out from under there.” 

You did, but you did so slowly. As soon as you were no longer under the bed, Rook pulled you to your feet and looked at your face. He’d never made such a serious expression before, not that you’d seen, and it made you feel a bit panicked.

“R-Rook, what was all that noise?”

His face smoothed and he let go of you, then he waved towards the dark corner of the cabin.

“I’ve run a bath. The water is warm, lapin, so you’d best get in before it cools.”

You did feel grimy, and since you were okay with standing and walking around for longer periods of time now, as compared to the first few weeks you were here, you jumped at the prospect of getting clean. You quickly undressed, knowing it was dark enough that Rook probably couldn’t see you, and climbed into the warm water. You couldn’t see if there was any soap, but as you were squinting into the darkness, kneeling in the tub as you leaned forward over the side, you felt something brush against your back. When you turned around, you shrieked like an owl and had a very intense internal dilemma.

Rook was seated in the tub behind you, or in front of you now, since you were facing him. He produced a bar of soap and began washing himself, dipping his head under the water so he could wash his hair as well. You couldn’t help but blankly stare at him, eyes wide as he acted so casual. This had been a problem for a while, actually, but never so severe as this. Rook was overly familiar with you, he touched you as though you had been married or were close friends, and apparently now he thought it was fine for you to share a bath. His eyes met yours in the dark corner, and he possibly smirked. You couldn’t quite see, but you could hear it in his voice.

“Ah, mon cher, did you need the soap? But you can’t see very well, can you? Come and let me wash your supple skin.”

A moment before he said that, you were debating if you should get out of the tub or something. You couldn’t tell if it’d be better to be ogled as you dressed or if staying under the water would give you a bit more modesty. After he said that, his arms reaching for you, you began to stand up. Although it was dark, you still saw his eyes flash, saw a slight movement in his wrist, and you were brought to your knees. It felt as though vines were wrapped around you, and you tilted forwards into your captor’s chest as your balance failed you in the dark water of the tub.

This man was a mage. You didn’t think you’d ever met one before, but you couldn’t remember. You wailed and begged for him to let you go as he began to gently wash you, but he simply shushed you and pressed a kiss to the crown of your head.

You absolutely hate it here. As you chopped carrots for the stew you had decided to make, you wondered where you were from or where you were going, and hoped someone knew you had never shown up and was looking for you. You didn’t think that was the case, however.

“That does smell divine, trickster.” Rook said, walking up the stairs from the basement, “Et vous êtes terriblement mignonne, portant ce petit tablier adorable et préparant le dîner…”

“I can’t cut the meat well with this. Can I have an actual knife, please?”

Rook didn’t answer, leaning against the wall and watching as you chopped the carrots with some difficulty. He looked pleased, though whether it was with you or the situation remained to be known. When he finally pushed off of the wall, he wrapped one arm around your front, burying his face in your hair as his other hand slid down your thigh.

“Get off of me!” You tried to slash his arm with the knife, but it barely even scratched his skin, and the hand that was resting on your waist came up to crush your dominant hand so you’d drop the knife.

Panic spiked through your veins as he slipped his hand up your leg so he could slide it in the waistband of the pants you were wearing. His hand that was crushing yours lowered to hold your wrist against the counter.

You’d never tried this before, but when his lips pressed against your neck, you felt your breath hitch and you let out a desperate cry for help. 

Rook laughed in response and nipped your neck, his teeth pinching your skin between them. His hand in your waistband smoothed down your pelvis to gently massage your sex, and you screamed again, thrashing and flailing so he would let you go.

Despite him never quite showing this side of him to you before, Rook was something of a strategist. As far as you could tell, it hadn’t been that long since you’d gotten here, if your head injury was anything to measure time by.  

“Relax, ma crevette. You are still recovering, no? Allow this lowly hunter to take care of your body.”

Your head hurt and you felt dizzy as he stoked your arousal. A disconnect between your mind and body grew into a chasm and you began to bawl as a pressure built up in your core. Your head was spinning, it felt as though your brain was throbbing, and you shuddered and wept as Rook peppered kisses on your cheek. He had you pressed solidly against the counter, his body keeping you more or less still. His breath was hot on your skin, and you felt like you were in hell.

“Come, trickster. The soup can wait. Je dois t'avoir.”

“No!”

Rook paid you little heed as he dragged you backwards towards the bed, and while you were expecting him to just throw you onto it before he assaulted you, he gently swept you off of your feet and laid you down. That was where his mercy ended, however, if it could even be called mercy here. That knife that was pressed to his thigh, still warm from his skin and him doing whatever he did in the basement, was quickly unsheathed and trailed lightly up your sternum.

“Not struggling any longer, mon petit lapin? I’m glad to see you’ve come to your senses.” His blade slid back down and he used a finger to help hook it under the hem of your shirt, cutting through the fabric as though it was nothing, “And I am sure you must be confused, but a little… exercise is good for your condition.”

You wanted to vomit, but Rook’s gloved hand cupped your chin. His knife felt cold against your now bare skin, and your breath hitched as you sucked in and held it, your eyes looking down at where Rook had his knife.

One of his leather-covered fingers tapped your cheek, and you looked back up at him. He smiled sweetly and sat up a bit, his blade still pressed flat against your stomach, right over your navel. He caught the fingertip of his glove in his teeth and yanked that glove off, tossing it to the side and passing the knife to his now bare hand. As he leaned forward to hover over you once more, his knife pressed under your chin and his gloved hand slipped into your pants, shifting lower than your crotch to prod at your poor ass. You closed your legs tighter in panic, and Rook tutted at you as though you were an unruly child.

“Come now, cheri, you should relax.” He whispered, leaning closer to press a kiss against your forehead, where you’d hit your head and how you’d gotten into this whole mess. “Plus vous êtes tendu, plus la douleur est forte…”

“D-don’t do this, don’t-” Your voice sounded so shaky, and you realized that you were trembling. Every time you made the slightest movement, you could feel the sharp edge of Rook’s hunting knife against your chin.

“Open your legs, Trickster. I’m not touching you for my benefit… although your faces of bewilderment and pleasure are quite sweet.” His finger circled the tight ring of muscle around your anus and you slowly relaxed.

“Wh-why are you d-doing…?”

Rook smiled sweetly and removed his finger from your anus slowly, instead dragging your pants down your legs and relaxing his hand with the knife against your neck. When your lower half was mostly bare above the knee, he pressed two fingers into your ass and slowly massaged you from the inside, tilting his head as his face fell.

“After I graduated from NRC, I did not think I’d see your darling little form again. It was a welcome surprise… but I don’t suppose you know what I’m talking about.” He mused, reaching over your head to grab something. He opened the little bottle with one hand, the slippery liquid cold on your asshole as he resumed his gentle fingering, “You don’t remember me in the least. Do you?”

You felt so woozy and scared, but it explained so much if he knew you… but that didn’t matter. He was still a stranger to you, and one who was currently preparing to do more terrible things to you.

“Heh… I did think so.” Rook quickly unbuckled his pants and tugged them down just enough to free himself. He pulled back away from you to seat your thighs on his own, his cock slowly inching into your poor hole. His knife slid away from your neck but remained in his grip as he slowly slid his hips forward, his opposite hand holding your ass.

Your vision was white for a moment, and when it returned it was blurry. Were you crying? You could hear loud, shuddery breathing, and it took a moment for you to figure out that it was coming from you. Rook sighed peacefully, as though this was a walk in the park for him. 

“Aw… I do not enjoy harming you, trickster.” Rook murmured, his hips slowly beginning their undulating motion. He shushed your pained sounds, “This is my love for you. You’ve only grown more beautiful these past few years.”

You winced and pushed against him, your feet shifting so you could try to kick him away, and his knife came back to rest against your collarbones. His hips rocked a little faster, every pump leaving a burning stretch that only felt like it doubled over onto itself.

“Did you know? How I felt for you, how I longed for your touch all those years ago? These three on my own… they have been l'écrasement de l'âme. I’ve had far too much time to- Putain, tu n'es pas du tout détendu…” Rook wheezed and grunted, dark and low.

You felt a pit in your lower belly, and you grabbed the wrist that had the knife, your watering eyes wide as you looked up at this man who apparently knew you.

“Please, petit, you have to… fuck- you must unclench, or this will not last much longer.”

His demand was probably one of the most ridiculous things you’d heard. You couldn’t relax. He had a knife to your throat, he was rearranging your guts, and he had chosen just now to inform you that he was aware of at least a portion of your past. You made this strange whining shriek noise, and Rook’s hand holding the knife slipped ever so slightly.

It was unclear as to whether or not he did that on purpose, especially since he removed the blade from your skin and lasciviously lapped at the small cut on your collarbone, his lips trailing up to your ear.

“Préparez-vous, car je vais déposer mon amour dans votre estomac en attente.”

The sentence itself was honestly quite jarring, but Rook groaned loudly into your ear and nearly folded you in half as he came inside of your ass. It felt hot and sickly, and the musky smell of Rook’s skin and sex permeated the room. Your head panged, woozy throbs that made your stomach churn. Rook dragged his body up and gently teased your sex with his gloved fingertips, his murky green eyes glued to yours. 

“Wh-”

“Did you truly think I would not give you the same bliss you have given me?” He mumbled, “You really don’t remember me, then.”

As he pulled out of you and stroked you to your own orgasm, he smiled sadly.

"Don't worry, trickster. You will remember in time."

[vacantgodling]

please tell me more about kiskkaddon because I am permanently in love with this word

as always thank u for indulging me <3 kiskkaddon is actually one of the parts of the world that i know less about BUT i will try to tell u everything i currently know... just know i may come back to this and tweak and update this probably in the next few months LMAO.

so, kiskkaddon, like diisai is across the eastern sea... which is actually to the west of the main terranean continent. i actually don't know what the main land mass is called but i'll get to naming that eventually. but for reference its located up north here, in the yellow.

the reason it's yellow? welp, kiskkaddon is known as a desert. the name itself translates to something like "the all swallowing desert" in old aegean--a language i promise you i'll never develop but just know that it exists LMAO. despite its 2 land bridges that connect it to both diisai and to the main continent, the northern land bridge is actually cut off and barely accessible by the looming mountain range of the north, and the southern bridge, while accessible, is not easy to get to due to yknow. the all swallowing desert.

the reason that it is called this is because the desert itself is consistently expanding and growing more and more intense as time goes on; which does relate to the fact that it receieves much of phyddione's (or the sun's) direct light and due to some other shit, there is an unchecked deity of the desert who will become a book 2 or another side story problem. the kisks in general worship many of the same gods as mainland terrae, however just like diisai, they do have some of their own traditions after a few thousand years of isolation from their cousins.

how did kiskkaddon become isolated? well, i'll try to bullet point tl;dr this as much as possible.

after the day of fissures in the spring of 478ir, the nomads were forced out of the fortress city of eros.

they began to make their way up north on the guidance of their oracle and reached a mid-continental mountain range in winter 479 and were then instructed to ascend the mountains to escape the monsters at their heels

as they ascended, they ran across a narrow mountain pass but as they crossed, it collapsed resulting in the deaths of a few hundred people (most notably princess pinella dia)

this also separated the back half of the group from the front half.

instead of waiting or trying to cross this treacherous territory, the lieutenant leader of that company decided to lead them back down the mountain pass and into the wilds. they have no idea how to reutrn to eros, and they can't follow their king into the mountains. so with no oracle, they begin to traverse the wilds on their own. losing many numbers, but eventually making their way up north to the northern mountains, skirting them, and coming into the desertland of kiskkaddon.

once they entered the deset they were unable to leave it, and thus had to adapt.

some other general cultural notes:

character wise, currently there's only 4 characters that i've developed in some capacity from here: jace kaganoff, miki kaganoff, vivo kagaar, and raaga chaar.

because the southern company of nomads were built up of the hardiest warries to protect from attacks at the flank and to protect the elderly and children who could not keep up with the front of the procession, thousands of years later, kisk still has a staunch hardy warrior culture. their warriors are cutthroat and tend to be larger than the average terranean both in height and width.

they have a love-hate relationship with the desert, especially in present times. as the labyrinth grows more restless, it further affects the deserts of kisk (though no one has made this connection yet). more and more kisks are leaving their homeland to try and seek more stable lives on the mainland, but it is a trecherous journey.

like eros, they have a unique situation regarding sex, love, bonds. they too practice extreme monogamy but this is for survival reasons: MIRANKA to them is known as his alter deity, RANKIMA, the god of survival among other things (as for many years they had no knowledge of the mainland's affairs and how the god of relationships came to be). it is known to them that having magic grants them a better chance of survival, so high monogamy and getting Big B bonded before RANKIMA will grant them magical prowess that will better assist themselves, their children, and their community to brave the arid desert. so the loose attitude mainland terraneans and diisaians have is like. not the thing for them bc its a matter of life and death.

(aka this is why jace and miki's relationship is such a mess)

culture wise i definitely draw a lot on the subsaharan or desert vibes that many cultures have. there's also definitely a code of honor. they are semi-nomadic people and tend to settle in one place during the "winter" months (which for them means the dunes do not move as much) but tend to move more during the summer

also like diisai, the monsters of these areas were not herded into the labyrinth, and therefore still have monsters roam among them. their culture is also a high monster killing machine (because again, survival is the most important thing to them) and scientists and researchers of silverkeep have noticed that kisk warriors tend to have a higher natural immunity to beast posion, similar to the hunters of eros, which they are currently exploring.

i'm sure there's more stuff, but tbh i don't know HELLA a lot about kisk like i said. even this RANKIMA stuff is a new development for me because i keep expanding the lore. but rambling at people tends to help fire the synapses lmao so thank u for asking/listening :3

[jovenshires]

9, 10, 28, 29 bestie !!

tyyyy bestie <3<3<3

9. What fic meant the most to you to write?

my wife, my best friend, the project i will always carry with me, dancing on my own. nothing like dealing with your own issues through the lens of a gamer boy who lives off of mountain dew kickstart and jurassic park movies <3<3

10. What fic made you feel the happiest to work on?

if we keep score was so so so much fun!!!! it really took on a life of its own and i LOVE to worldbuild so even though it was Stressful, i had a good time writing it for sure <3<3<3

28. How did you recharge between fics?

as i told you specifically i literally took like. a work week off. i listened to music, i binge-watched an anime, i went back to work after winter break, i read some of a book. it was great! back to the grind now though <3<3<3

29. If this were an awards show, who would you thank?

i was gonna answer this like a joke but it made me emotional so here are my genuine very real thanks KLNFKNFKLNFKNL

i'd like to thank smosh first and foremost for getting me through what has objectively been one of the most difficult years of my life. the company's been through ups and downs, but so have i, and i find a real genuine comfort in these guys playing board games and making memes so truly thanks so much to them. especially tommy and spencer bc where would i be without them KDNKLSNFK

thanks of course to soupy for being the second person to post a spommy fic and co-pioneering this nation with me. i am so honored to have her as a mutual, a friend, and a peer. her works are incredible and she jumped into the deep end with me when no one else would. and to add onto that i'd like to thank every spommy writer for sharing all of their incredible works, and every spommy nation member for commenting or giving kudos or coming into my askbox. genuinely you all made my year so much better and inspired me to keep creating and keep growing. i love you all so much, there are no words to describe how grateful i am for you <3

thank you to julie, who accepted every insane stray thought, text message, and rambling fic plot. she sat there as i described iwks in detail in my car on the way to the mall. god's bravest soldier. she's truly a real one for that, i might have stopped talking to me by now LMAO. thank you to mauricio for entering back into my life, validating every insane thing i've ever said, and just overall being an amazing friend. we have been through so much together you and i and im honored to be on this crazy journey with you now. shoutout too to snel and baflegacy who have also gotten a TON of my insane ramblings via dms, i adore yall and im so honored to have gotten to know you. <3<3<3

i cannot stress enough how HUGELY thankful i am to stella. when i tell you none of my works would be where they are today without her. she does the very stressful and tedious task of reading over my works for me, and i am forever grateful. like almost none of the fics i've written would be even half as strong as they are without her help. not to mention she's just one of my favorite people on this planet in general; i love talking to her and being in this online space with her and creating with her and yeah. my partner in crime, thank you so so much.

and finally: all of smoshblr in general. i have been here for six years now, and i've never had a fandom feel so much like home. all of my friends and mutuals, new and old, and every other follower of mine to boot. you all know who you are - i adore each and every one of you. thank you for everything. <3

send me fic writer asks!

[gemsofgreece]

I know this is obnoxious and very nitpicky but athens is neither the hottest nor the driest place in greece lmao, parts of the Cyclades islands are the driest by far and as for the hottest, if you consider highest temperatures in the summer or the summer average highest temperature a good pick would be sparta/southern peloponese in general or if you consider the yearly average temperature then it would be a southern Dodecanese island maybe kastelorizo, or southern crete and gavdos due to the very mild winters

Sincerely a person who spents way too much time on wikipedia

See, while a lot of this should make sense, it is not exactly correct. South doesn't always equate hotter and drier. Besides, I was not talking about annual averages, as I was saying Athens is not good for summer in specific.

Regarding Athens versus Sparta - Athens has higher average highs for summer (though Sparta is pretty hot too) and Sparta has more precipitation than Athens throughout the year and also a little more in the summer as well. The differences are small but the conclusion is the same: Athens is hotter and drier than Sparta in the far-south. Here are the full climate reports for Athens and Sparta from the same website to avoid scewed data. In case you are wondering why, it's probably because Sparta is built on the foot of Mt Taygetus, which brings it a little more rainfall and coolness. Athens has Parnitha but it is a smaller mountain. Athens also dried up and built over all its rivers, turning its once semi-humid microclimate to a very dry one. All these things affect the real and even more so the felt weather. If you add to that the extreme urbanisation of Athens, the gasses produced by the traffic and its alarming lack in vegetation, it makes summer there an extremely difficult business.

As for the islands, the south of Athens' region (and a bit of Corinth next to it) are the only mainland regions which belong to the same hot semi-arid zone as the Cycladic islands you mentioned. I can't tell you which of all these places is the absolute hottest and driest without looking it up, but some of Attica belongs to that zone and the part that doesn't has all the aforementioned conditions that make the felt climate very similar. Furthermore, I was also talking about main destinations - if there is somewhere a village of 10 people that is hotter and drier than Athens, well, I might have not taken it into account in my travel guide post lol

The map is from the Wikipedia page “Climate of Greece”. In orange is the hot semi-arid zone.

Then I searched Kastelorizo island in the Dodecanese and Elounda in South Crete; both of those are colder in the summer than Athens, with an average high 2-3 degrees below Athens, although they are drier (like, 2 days of rain in Elounda versus 4 days of rain in Athens). Search them up in the same website. (Kastelorizo is with the name "Megisti".)

It is not a mystery that those islands have lower average highs than Athens, because they have something Athens lacks. They are surrounded by the sea, which always makes the climate milder and they have much stronger winds, the Aegean sea breezes. For example, when travelling to the Cyclades, you will need to have a jacket with you for the evenings. If you put a jacket in Athens in July, it's probably a suicide attempt.

See, there's a lot of stuff that makes environmental conditions what they are. I can confidently repeat that the summer heatwave in Athens - both in terms of numbers and experience - will be more unpleasant than in Gavdos or any other arid southern island.

Fun fact: Wanna know another place that gets extreme highs, more than Sparta and most of these islands we mentioned, and is the true heat archenemy of Athens?

And Lamia too, which is between Larisa and Athens. But those are clearly more humid and rainy than Athens so.. 🤷🏻‍♀️ (I didn’t edit the map with the arrow btw, it was like that on its own and for some reason I find this very funny.)

[bonesandthebees]

chapter six time!

and you are excited because its not going where we would expect

im not quite sure what i expect, i dont think it will go perfectly, i think perhaps something will happen that will change force their dynamic to change in a sense theyre going to this abandoned area, lots can happen they could get stuck, they could experience something crazy, a lot could happen and any one of them should realistically either drastically change their relationship or lead to a change that will eventually force their relationship to change but yk

anyways time to read!

he left the ferro thing (i cant bother to look at how to spell it right now my bad) which is you know interesting

i like this little flashback because niki obviously realizes that wilbur will do what his dad says and its obvious his father wants him to play into tomys. and thats the game of politics niki knows there arent truly friends here, but its hard to watch someone youve trusted and had on your side for so long suddenly be pulled in a different direction due to this game and i think its also just niki’s own game in a way as she figures out what she must do and yeah its a balance

and thats another thing because they know each other the way friends do but they cannot be truly “friends” because of how this works

be careful on the mountain roads… somethings going to go wrong there and itll probably be wilbur who pays the price

i think ive seen this film before and i didnt like the ending

a bad feeling…

oh my goodness shouts!

bandits!!! this is going to go terribly!

and theyre here for tommy so of course wilbur is going to protect him (right…) yeaaaa get behind him (this is going to go terribly)

oh lord we’re going off roading i dont think this carriage has four wheel drive

and crashed

PRETEND TO BE DEAD

oh god his leg is broken isnt it

yes! play dead!

A BROTHERHWHEHEHEH

the contract? someone paid for tommy’s death and i have a sneaking suspicion its one of the potential heirs quackity would make sense with his warning and schlatt probably would i wouldnt be shocked

oh lord i got so distracted it is significantly later than when i started writing this

they lived! big shock!

but uh oh! now they have to try and survive in the winter in the wilderness alone! i wonder how that will drastically change their relationship!

anyways this chapter was great im very excited for the upcoming arcs and whatnot and im very invested in wilburs broken leg and all because ive taken one too many medical courses that have made me a tad too aware of how to properly care for a good chunk of injuries but thats besides the point! hope you have a good day and i cant wait for the next chapter :]

- 🪿

the thing with niki is that her and wilbur's friendship is very real and has existed for longer than they've been aware of the political games. it's a matter of is that friendship going to continue through all of this? how far can their relationship bend until it breaks completely? niki in no way thinks her friendship with wilbur is fake or over. but she's trying to figure out what matters more to him—is it loyalty to his father, or loyalty to her? is she ever going to be the most important person to him? or is she always going to be one step behind?

"oh lord we're going off roading I don't think this carriage has four wheel drive" this made me laugh out loud thank you for that the carriage does NOT have four wheel drive

lol knew the brother line would get you guys

hmm who paid the contract for tommy's life... so many options...

wow now they're stranded alone in the wilderness together! surely this won't have any lasting impact on their relationship!

don't hold your breath for proper medical treatment tommy and wilbur are 1) trapped in the wilderness and 2) this is technically a medieval-ish era so. medicine ain't exactly up to modern standards lmao

[kerubimcrepin]

Episode 13 - A Diamond for Ruby (Part 2)

The text on the advert is, yet again, the Lorem Ipsum placeholder.

The numbers are not a part of any other in-universe script as far as I know, so they are very likely just random scribbles.

(Guy who is normal voice) Perhaps this episode's story takes place after Kerubim's gobbal-watcher gig, which will be revealed but not shown in episode 35, The Gobbal Set.

Adding these to the list of random shit Kerubim did that we just don't see in the cartoon:

Literally everything to do with Atcham.

Kerubim working with Arachnees some more.

Winning Amakna's great treasure hunting tournament three times over.

Seeking out the precious relics of Sufokia.

To be added.

I don't know if this bit is even funny or how long it will grow. And I am afraid.

The Crackler mountain is around Amakna, geographically speaking.

Perhaps she is sending people to a far away place, despite this whole episode taking place in a snowy area.

Or it's just winter, and this is some random city in that region.

He is so wonderful.

On the topic of the stone, I wanted to wait a little, before translating anything that's written on it.

I won't include its other appearances, because as I made sure, the writings on it are consistent across the episode. Despite them not making any sense.

You're welcome.

(I did spot some stray "L"s on its other appearances, when some side of it was almost entirely unseen save for a single letter, so I think they used those as filler. But I don't think it's interesting to include that.)

Class expectations canonically have ruined the mental health of one person. And god willing, there will be more characters who are just shit at what their class is supposed to do. Amen.

I think Ruby here, Patafiks (a guy from a future episode), and Atcham should smoke weed together.

Nightmare blunt rotation. Thousands would be injured.

Flash frames of Kerubim being sent to space by the Crackler.

Joking. He's back, and he called her Ruby-zzare, as a yet another defiant, cunty act.

he almost left Joris without fingers.

This cartoon is so genuine, kind, and loveable.

I really love the relationships between the main trio. Joris and Kerubim have a lot going on, sure, I can write a novel about it. But Simone and Joris have a wonderful bond, and what is going on with Kerubim and Simone is very interesting too.

They're genuinely good friends, and he's a good boss who cares about her too, but besides that I always felt that Kerubim has a bit of a... soft spot for her? A bit of a crush, which is pretty much canonized in one of the future episodes?

Obviously it's not voluntary, and not something he would act on. It's just that Kerubim likes women who are like Lou, and Simone is, in some regards, a lot like Lou, — he can't change how he feels, and at times it makes him just a bit flustered.

I think it's a pretty realistic and cute portrayal of that sort of one-sided involuntary crush, lmao. I like portrayals of these feelings that AREN'T in any way reciprocated, elaborated on, or angsty. It's just how life is, y'know?

Anyway,

Joris deserves this. <3

[writinglittlebeasts]

The Lurch - a short horror story

in 2021, i wrote a horror story from the perspective of a paranormal magazine journalist (think, like, an online publication) chasing down an urban legend in made-up town, pennsylvania and getting a bit too close for comfort

without further ado (under the cut): the lurch (i took a screenshot of the title in my document because i love this font, sorry lmao)

content warnings for animal death (mentioned and implied) and personal injury

_________________________________________________________

You come by a lot of stories about monsters in the mountains. It’s hard to avoid them, honestly, when the light from any given street or home seems almost snuffed out at the treeline. Forests so thick that you can’t see the neighbors. As these things go, it’s often children who tell these stories; shapes in the dark, noises they haven’t yet familiarized themselves with and can’t place, and on. The rumor mill of the elementary school playground works quick and constant, and there are always new stories to go around. If you look hard enough between the lines you’ll find glimmers of real fear inside. In between the boogeymen and the bullshit there are things that your cleverest parents can’t explain. If schoolchildren make the most monsters-- and if stories of this nature so often trickle down --then it follows that to get to the root of the truth and the source of the story, you need to look to the teenagers. 

My introduction to Trailhead, Pennsylvania was idyllic, in a word. When you look at it, it feels very clean; touristy. The taxi stood on the curb before a small park, a bubbling fountain in the center and trimmed hedges in neat rows at neat intervals between cobbled footpaths. There were three motels, catty-corner to each-other and almost ringing the park, their parking lots deserted in the off-season. The street was quiet, several shops were closed while others hosted one or two employees that I could see through their large front windows. It was very centralized, as these places often are, waiting to shake off the last dredges of winter and open their arms to waves of transients. Waves pouring out the doors of these three motels, one of which I would call my home while I researched idyllic Trailhead’s darker tales. 

One tale in particular had caught my eye. 

Schoolyards work the same way in every town. Mine is no exception, and my niece regales me with rumors while I pack her lunch in the morning and while I help her tidy her room before bed. On one such evening, poring over her homework, she told me a story that one of her classmates had told her, one he himself was told on a family trip to Trailhead, Pennsylvania in the fall. To hear her tell it, somewhere in the woods, up the mountain, is a monster made of sagging skin and limp hair which drags itself over the ground by its boney fingernails. She explained to me that it eats small animals and leaves traces of itself where it passes, though she was unsure what these traces might be. Between her mother’s scolding and her pencil etching short lines into her workbook she told me that its name is The Lurch, and that it was all the rage in Pennsylvania. 

The nature of my work means that I didn’t immediately dismiss this story. I was interested in its origins, how much I could find. Whether it was local to Trailhead or was more widespread, like your jackalope or your killer clown. I found nothing online. Other lurches exist, but not of the sort that my niece described. On the heels of my last article, I brought this curious story to my editor. They agreed that it was interesting, but had no contacts in Pennsylvania who might know more. I had my own, but the fact that I made the trip to Pennsylvania in person might tell you that they knew nothing at all. 

Setting my bag on the floor and turning back to look out over the parking lot, over the park and quiet street, I couldn’t help but feel that I knew nothing at all. It was hard to look at these little brick buildings with their white roofs and pristine surroundings and imagine that it could birth a monster like The Lurch my niece had told me about. The next day I would venture into town and the suburb that sprawls around it, and if I was lucky I would find out just how it might have. 

In the morning the sun woke me even through the dark motel curtains. I thought, quite optimistically as I hadn’t come out of sleep and to my senses and likewise hadn’t been in town for very long, that the sun itself wanted me to start my investigation. 

I started it in the donut shop where I ate my breakfast. I say donut shop, but it felt like a waystation. There were no tables or chairs, only a long room with a door at one end and a counter packed with toppings at the other. They fried your donuts fresh, just behind the counter and to order. While my donut-- a large, advertised as they were by size on a menu board over the workstation --fried, I spoke to the baker. When I asked him if he had ever heard of The Lurch he set his gloved hands on the counter between us and looked up at the ceiling for a long moment, only the sound of dough fighting oil filling the air until he finally shook his head. 

“Can’t say that I have,” he said, and turned back to his fryer. Tonging my donut out of the oil he continued, “But I don’t think you have to worry about it, you know?” 

After assuring him that I did and collecting my donut, I thanked him for his time and ventured back out onto the street. Shops that had been dark and empty yesterday were now cheerfully lit and their employees bustled about inside like they were waiting for me to come in. They probably were. It seemed like I was the first new face they’d seen in weeks. 

I toured through every store on the main street, exchanging polite greetings and answering the same questions about where I’d come from and how I was enjoying the town. Asking these shopkeepers my questions was somewhat less predictable. A few didn’t want to be interviewed at all, which I had to accept though it frustrated me. Most of them knew a little of the story, second or third-hand from one of their children, but could only nod along with my retelling, offering no details of their own. 

One shop’s register was tended by a young individual who couldn’t have been more than a year out of college who was intrigued by my article and offered a similar outline of The Lurch’s story to that of my niece. The Lurch was a monster made of misshapen flesh that ate small animals and dragged itself along the ground. They did add one detail that my niece had missed, however: that The Lurch would eat any animal that it came across, including human beings. It was a small victory, but any information is useful information when the story seems so small itself. I thanked the individual and left their shop, knowing that I would need to go deeper to learn what I wanted to know. I would need to go to the source. 

My interviews with the teenagers were informal. The town of Trailhead is small and amusements are largely expensive, but in posting myself up at a diner close to the high school I was confident that I would get to speak to many of its students, and I was right. They poured in in groups of two or more and sat around large baskets of french fries, some milling from table to table when they would recognize friends who arrived after or before and escaped notice. I approached them in their larger groups with my notebook in hand. Of course, the table quieted when I appeared beside it. It was only after I explained myself and told them what I was hoping to learn that they started to open up to me, some students even waiting expectantly for their turn at my ear. I found it refreshing, in a way, after the enthusiastic but dry interviews I’d conducted that morning. 

Before I name any names, I want to make it clear that all of those names have been changed to protect the identities of both the minors who have assisted me and of other individuals who would rather not be associated with my article or larger publication. I make this clear because I have to, but I word it in this way because Andrew (which is not his name) didn’t believe that I would and threatened to read my article to ensure that I had. The fiend. I hope that you enjoyed the lengthy passage above, Andrew (which is not his name), which I’m assuming that you had to read to find this disclaimer, and that the disclaimer itself met your expectations. 

The first student to answer me, I will call Josephine. They were bracketed on either side by school friends and soft drinks, and the longer we talked, the more of their friends joined in to add details or contradictions, the more enthusiastic they became. Josephine told me that The Lurch was a local legend, a so-called cryptid that the teenagers used to scare younger kids around town. I asked if that meant that they didn’t believe in The Lurch, but they shook their head and told me that they did. Rather, they told me that they did, almost. They wanted to believe in a flesh-eating monster living in the woods outside their town, but it was hard without any proof. When the story was so fantastic. I asked which parts of the story seemed fantastic, and a second student answered: “All of it.” 

Different students chimed in, some from adjacent booths. One said that The Lurch had arms but no legs, and I nodded. As there were no known species of animal with only one or the other, I took it down in my notebook. One said that The Lurch had no mouth and was shouted down by everyone at his table, who then insisted that eating small animals was a tenet of the legend and therefore it had to have a mouth. Nothing could survive without a mouth, they said, and he was forced to concede. I took it down in my notes regardless, interested in any variations to the story. You really can’t help but wonder how a creature might eat small animals without one, even if it is irrelevant. Others told me that my investigation was a waste of time, as The Lurch couldn’t have been real. When I asked what they meant, one of the students told me very matter-of-factly that if pets were going missing with any real frequency then they would have heard about it by now. I had to agree. I made a note of it. 

I next asked if any of them had stories of encounters with The Lurch. None present had personal experience, but I heard six stories in that diner. The rough outline of each, with variations only on minor details, involved someone (whose name was a topic of debate among the group) stumbling upon a creature which dragged itself along the ground in the middle of a meal. The observer would hide themselves, and in the disgusting fashion of any good story about a monster they would hear the blood-curdling screams of The Lurch’s victim. Of the six stories, five took place at night. The sixth wasn’t popular with the students, who insisted that if someone had seen The Lurch in a gas station parking lot during regular business hours then it would have been all over the news. 

I asked before I left if any of the students had ever heard of The Lurch eating humans. Every one of them had, but they assured me that somebody at school must have made that up to scare elementary schoolers. They couldn’t answer when I asked who had done it. I wasn’t about to try to interview elementary schoolers, either. That lead was a bust, but I didn’t cross the note off of my list. It was part of the greater story, and I hadn’t gotten to the bottom of it yet. 

I spent the next morning interviewing employees at the Trailhead ecology center. It was small, and it was closed when I arrived. Both employees had jobs at a university out of town, but lived in Trailhead and maintained the center for local outreach and coordination with the Trailhead school district. I was interested in animals that could be found locally, more specifically local predators. How they could have impressed themselves into the local consciousness as a monster. The employees were very helpful, but I couldn’t make any determinations based on what they told me about local carnivorans. Hoping to make any progress at all I inquired after any animals that may have only forelegs, but they had no knowledge of any animals like that in the area. I thanked them and returned to my last haunt: the diner.

It took some convincing, and then a little more convincing by way of a cash bribe, but I found a group of teenagers willing to take me up the mountain. On my insistence, Josephine’s older brother agreed to come along. His name is not Andrew, and he used to frequent trails up the mountain before he settled into his career at the local auto repair. He was skeptical of my motivations until I reminded him that I was a strange woman paying a handful of teenagers to follow me into the woods, and agreed very quickly after that. 

There were five of us in all when we met for our first leg of the search; myself, Andrew, Josephine, Charlotte, and Nathan. None claimed to have seen The Lurch themselves, but the students wanted to see what I found-- if I found anything --and were more familiar with the woods than I. Josephine and Nathan alternated leading the charge, conferring with one-another before deciding which forking path to take or how far to stray off of it. Saturday and Sunday we found nothing at all, picking our way up the trails with our eyes on the ground for any evidence of a body crashing through the undergrowth or of animals that body might have eaten. We managed three trails in one afternoon, turning back when we deemed we’d gone too far. 

It’s poor investigation, but our determination of ‘too far’ was arbitrary. I am no woodsman, and while the trails were beautiful they were also very boring and offered little by way of tracking a monster which may or may not have existed based on very little evidence of behavior. Charlotte shared my opinion, and on the third day of our search she decided to discontinue her involvement with the investigation. I racked my brain for information that might prove more forthcoming but came up empty-handed. 

The students had a test on Thursday for which they needed to prepare, so on Wednesday I languished in my motel room and tried to make sense of my findings. I don’t go into these situations expecting to find a monster or a creature; it’s even rare for me to arrive expecting an animal. After all of my interviews and days in the woods I still had little evidence. The stories were consistent, but was this a hint of fact or a story that had been concentrated by time and tale? I didn’t want to admit that there was nothing to find, even though all of the signs seemed to be telling me so. Like something stuck in my teeth I couldn’t help but think about The Lurch. It was possible that someone had made it up, passed it around until it became a local legend, but something as absurd as a creature of flesh, subsisting on any meat it could find and dragging itself along the ground, with very few, relatively plain second-hand accounts of encounters hardly had so much sticking power in the public consciousness as The Lurch seemed to have in Trailhead. Even children grow bored of tall tales eventually, but The Lurch persisted like it were being told in a round. I left the motel to perform more interviews. If I went further from the motel, if I could find a grocery store or a neighborhood park, maybe I might find someone who knew more. 

I didn’t make it to the grocery store, but I found myself passing an auto repair shop. Directionless and curious, I paid a visit to Andrew. He was in the middle of something when I let myself into the open garage, elbows-deep in someone’s chassis. 

I asked Andrew if he knew of anyone who might know more about The Lurch, its habits or its diet or its location. I explained my fruitless research at the ecology center and I told him that I was ready to branch out-- that perhaps there were parents who knew more, or otherwise older members of the community. 

Andrew seemed uncertain for a moment, but he admitted that he hadn’t been entirely honest with me. Now that I write it down, I wonder if my comment about students’ families seemed accusatory. I was frustrated, but I wasn’t angry; often in my line of work people will withhold information out of fear of looking foolish, or superstitious. I don’t mean to sound proud when I tell you that I know I am embarrassing company to keep. He didn’t need additional prompting to begin his story, which I dutifully took down in my notebook. 

He was in high school at the time, senior year, with finals preparation in full swing. He told me that he would regularly be awake past midnight to study or whittle away at essays for his college applications, and that if he recalled correctly this occurred at just past one in the morning. From his parents’ kitchen he could see out the wide front window and onto the lawns of his neighbors across the street. He told me that he wouldn’t have seen it at all if the bulb of a streetlamp hadn’t burst while he stood at the refrigerator. After the initial flash and the sudden flood of darkness in its wake, leaning in against the glass of the window Andrew could see something on the ground. It could have been a trash bag, or it could have been a person. A darker lump in a dark space. 

He told me that what he did next was stupid, and I’m inclined to agree. Andrew opened the front door. 

He recalled a wave of heat, not moist like the air in the late spring that it would have been but dry and thready like the heat of an oven. It came over him on the breeze and died down again when the air stilled, but he could still feel it radiating from yards away. As his eyes adjusted Andrew stepped further out of the house and down the lawn. The lump he’d seen from the window was taking on no clearer shape the more the moonlight fell across it or how much closer he came to it, but he could hear the scratch of something moving over the grass and feel the same strange heat on his face and arms. 

The closer to the creature he came, the more unbearable that heat became. He described a choking feeling, the hot air uncomfortable in his nose and mouth. There was a point where he could move no closer, and I’m thankful that he didn’t. What he next described I have taken down word-for-word so that I don’t twist the events to fit my own perception.

Andrew said: “I couldn’t step onto the sidewalk because it was too hot to approach. I could feel the heat burning my toes through my shoes. It just didn’t seem safe. Instead I walked further down the street, kind of, I guess, parallel to the sidewalk. It was making that rustling, like it was dragging itself, and I heard something smacking into the ground. It was moving so slowly I didn’t notice at first, but it really was dragging itself forward. I could see thin shadows where I thought it must have arms-- or legs. Limbs. I think that it was pulling itself by its fingers. I didn’t have a long time to think about it, because all of a sudden the thing shot across two lawns like it was nothing. It moved so fast that I almost lost it, but I didn’t try to follow it. Something yowled, like a cat-- it was a cat --and it hissed and it screamed, and I could hear something like a release of steam. I didn’t even get a good look at the thing, but I went back inside.”

After locking his front door, Andrew returned to the halo of light in his kitchen. He told me that his skin was red, like a sunburn, and felt warm to the touch. The next day Andrew walked to school with a friend who lived down the street, and as they passed the lawns crossed by The Lurch he noticed that the grass was scorched and blackened in an uneven trail, fish-hooking onto the street and disappearing. Andrew finished his story by admitting that one of his friends at the time, another student at Trailhead Public High School, had shared the story behind his back. 

It wasn’t a long story, but it was a first-hand account of a creature that, until that point, I had only glimpsed through hearsay. As these stories often do, it rippled out from the high school and into the middle school, the elementary school, into children’s homes. His encounter had been scrubbed clean out of the story over the years, iterations replacing him with anything from the school janitor to a friend’s younger sister, the cat with any imaginable animal, and the location was lost in the same way. The suffocating heat, though, was a detail I hadn’t heard before.

“Unless it wasn’t,” I said, implying that the stories of other encounters may have come out following his own, and that in the natural way of things they had twined together. I don’t know if he caught my meaning, but I didn’t give him the time to ask if he did not. 

Something about Andrew’s words had struck a chord with something else I had noticed about the town of Trailhead, Pennsylvania. It was something easy to shrug off until that point, an aesthetic choice, maybe, or a practical one for the sake of maintaining aesthetics. I wrote while I was speaking, brain on fire with possibility. “There are a lot of bricks in Trailhead, for a tourist town whose draw is nature trails.” He seemed to be realizing it for the first time, himself. Even after speculation we don’t know what this means for the town, but we can guess. You can’t see a smoldering trail in the grass if there is no grass to burn. Unsure of where to proceed, I said my farewell to Andrew and returned to my motel room. If I could take him at his word, who was to say that The Lurch was in the forest at all? Maybe I was on the wrong trail. Maybe I needed to reconsider my understanding of the story. 

It snowed overnight. Not an incredible amount, but surely enough to obscure whatever trail we might find based on what Andrew had told me the night before. The snow would cover everything I’d thought to look for, in fact, and so it was no surprise when our group reconvened at the edge of the forest that everyone seemed a bit chafed. They’d had the same reservations as myself, but after some convincing we began our search again. Our next trail would be half-way up one which we’d already explored, a branch we hadn’t had time to follow on Tuesday. 

Even the trails themselves were harder to follow in the snow, light as it was. The trail was marked at its head by a colored tree marker, but past that point only the footpath led hikers on. Nathan and Josephine occupied themselves by scouting ahead, looking for landmarks that would naturally lead hikers around the path. Andrew walked between myself and the students, as I lingered occasionally to theorize in my notebook. The next hour passed in much the same way that every previous search had, with no clear evidence and no clear trail to follow. However, in the next hour, Nathan pulled our small group to a halt. 

Some ways off the trail, the soft blanket of snow simply stopped. In a small enough patch this would have meant very little to us, but for as far as we could see the ground was brown and dry. We approached and eventually stepped into this patch of leaves. I exchanged a glance with Andrew. It was warm enough here to melt the snow. 

I led the group, now, trying to measure every change in temperature. The air was warming the further we walked, something I was tracking to the best of my ability in my notebook. The air wasn’t humid, but flat and dry; without wind. The dead leaves, which had until this point been soaked underfoot by the snow, were now curling in on themselves as they were leached of moisture. I told Andrew that the radius of heat was much larger than I anticipated, but didn’t share any more of his story with the students nearby. The rest of the walk was under a heavy air of excitement and a blanket of worsening heat. The hotter it got, the harder it was to avoid tearing off my winter coat, the closer we got to The Lurch. 

Walking ahead, I saw the creature first. It was a mass of solid flesh, emanating heat without disrupting the air around it. I stood in its scorched trail, surrounded by the unburning, blackened detritus it had pulled itself over. I moved closer to examine it.

You’ll forgive me, but from this point on I can hardly read my shorthand. The carefully constructed narrative ends here, and I’ll be supplementing what I can not read from my memory. I’ve done my best to lay everything out as objectively as I can, but my words will doubtlessly be tinged by the effect that these events had on me as a participant. As a journalist my words and meaning are always a point of contention, the fingers of an agenda never far from mine on the keyboard, but I want you to understand that everything I write here is true and to the best of my recollection. 

It was much larger than I imagined it to be. Its size was contested in every iteration of the story, and in Andrew’s it had been no larger than a person. In front of me, its flat body could have been the length of a school bus and the width of two. As Andrew had told me the night before, the air was almost suffocatingly hot this close to the mass. It moved and churned but I could see no musculature underneath. Across what I must call its back for the sake of clarity it bubbled like it were boiling, the skin popping without breaking, only disturbing the long wefts of hair that were pulled underneath the surface, or else pushed through it. Closest to me on the ground I could see the ends of the grass and the crusting of dead leaves blackening. In its center, the mass roiling around the trunks of trees singed them without settling light to them. I was focused both on watching this creature for every detail my eyes could absorb and on scribbling down my notes-- its physical features but also the smokeless, hot air, the way it unsettled physics itself --and so I did not notice its slow roll towards the toe of my boot. I was very close to it, and it pulled in and pressed out over the ground as it moved. Andrew took my shoulder to pull me back before it could touch me. I started. 

It’s strange to break objectivity so late into the story, or even so far into my career, but at that moment I felt that The Lurch was looking at me. It recognized that I was standing there and it turned its eyeless gaze onto me. It may have been fear clouding my senses, so you can choose to read on and disregard me, but I felt like I was in its headlights. My throat felt like it had caught fire and I couldn’t tear my dry eyes away, nor could I move anything else. The mass jolted over the ground, and from its far edge I could see thin, boney arms pull into view. Its fingers dug into the leaf litter and it heaved itself towards me. Too close to its now rioting body, I was already in its grip. 

I didn’t see what happened, but I could feel its flesh closing over my foot and squeezing. Through my shoe my foot started to burn. The sensation climbed up my ankle and it started to pull on me, strong and fast though it had no momentum to draw on. 

Andrew pulled me out of the mass. It took him some time, which I know because it was only his hard grip around my shoulders and waist that grounded me in space. I had nothing outside of physical sensation: just the stifling of my breath, the heat and pressure as The Lurch tried to absorb my foot, and the rough tug that pulled me free. 

I was not carried down the mountain. We didn’t have the time. For minutes we ran-- Andrew and myself bringing up the rear while Nathan and Josephine crashed down the trail some feet ahead of us. We stopped at one point, realizing that the oppressive heat was gone. All was quiet in the woods around us, and we’d re-emerged into the brisk cold of the snow, the typical Pennsylvania winter. There was no way to know if The Lurch was still following, or if it even could at this distance. We descended more slowly after that, one or the other of the group supporting me as I hobbled down the trail, but we didn’t stop again. The threat of what was behind us hung heavy in our memories and we didn’t want answers to our questions.

As I write this my ankle is elevated, wrapped in a bag of ice which is itself wrapped in a towel. I’m unsure whether or not I’ll take it to the hospital. It’s painful, and red as anything and sure to bruise, but I managed the walk to my motel the same way that Andrew presumably managed to drive himself and the children home. I look at it, propped in a nest of motel pillows that I can see cresting over the edge of my laptop, and I have to wonder how I feel about knowing without a shadow of doubt that The Lurch exists. My life has been dedicated to the origins of local legends for so long, but it must be years since I’ve thought about the reality of monsters. Am I excited? Perhaps I will be once the shock of my encounter has worn off. Perhaps I won’t be, when the reality of what The Lurch will mean for Trailhead and its surroundings sets in.

I’ve contacted the local news network-- I’ve emailed them. I even emailed the networks of the towns surrounding Trailhead. It’s very late at night, and even if they do respond in the morning I am not hopeful that they’ll be receptive to what I have to say. Regardless, I must get the word out. The Lurch is coming down the mountain and it is crawling towards Trailhead, Pennsylvania. Its progress is slow but it will arrive. I don’t know what, if anything, can be done to stop it. I implore you to begin making plans to leave Trailhead before it is too late.

[gamajun]

tag game: tag people you want to know better (thank you @yevrosima-the-third 🤍)

favorite time of the year: april and late august. spring is my favorite season but regardless of that, april is my favorite because it's set in that sweet time after winter ends but spring hasn't actually started properly yet, until it does at some point throughout the month. and late august doesn't have a specific reason, i just always had good memories made around that time.

comfort foods: peanuts, probably! they're addictive so they calm me down haha. i also really like to consume raisins as a snack, although not as much as peanuts.

do you collect anything? the only thing that comes to mind is my stack of old postcards with cute vintage illustrations on them! i love to go to an antique store and look for them, there's a huge bunch there and they all have interesting letters at the back from random people who sent them to their loved ones. my favorite is the one of a mother sending a letter to her child who was staying over at their grandparent's house and she's asking them if they need more socks so she could send them their way😂 also, it's always a thrill to find a good love letter!

favorite drinks: i'll be completely honest, it's still a chocolate milk to this day lmao. i'd be lying if i said otherwise

favorite music artist: truly many, but leonard cohen, michael jackson, hozier, fiona apple and taylor swift have always been standing out to me, so i think them

current favorite songs: at the moment i really enjoy love came here by lhasa de sela, i really love the seductive vibe of it, it's helping me with this piece of fanfiction i'm trying to finish lmao. also, there's this user on spotify called nobody and they make very interesting playlists and there's one called "playlist to feel like a monk meditating and reading in his cell looking for divine truth" and it's spot on

favorite fic: oh, i have many so i'm just gonna make a little list here off the top of my head

Questionable N (one thousand and one nights)

The Crowned Shape (arthuriana)

Until the Black Death of the World (deathless - catherynne m. valente)

we must cultivate our garden (christian bible)

this was our island (stranger things)

i could make you bleed (princess tutu)

Fiddler in the Mountain (beauty and the beast)

come away, o human child (sleeping beauty)

Miasma (macbeth)

sweet dreams and flying machines and its follow-up i'm coming out (i want the world to know) (stranger things)

Old Salt (princess tutu)

The Arc Towards the Sun (the illiad)

putting it in words (miraculous ladybug)

also anything @zimtlein has ever written (i'm not in ml fandom anymore but i still come back to your fics🤍)

favorite video games? night in the woods, gris, the witcher 3: wild hunt and bloodborne

i'm tagging: @love-n-purple @maudlinesque @parismystere @arthurianmotifs @feytouched @treedryad

no pressure, do it if you'd like❣️

[djpurple3]

Goddamn that post abt 'write ur fanfic set in not america go on' is giving me ideas..

[momobani]

YOU’RE NOT KEANU REEVES

If Your Winter Is Hard - Chapter 4 - 11.9k

medium!minghao x exorcist!reader

SERIES MASTERLIST

Warnings: exorcism(duh!); discussion of ghosts + death, reference to death of family members, light violence/ fighting, mention of guns, mention of grief, mention of suicide/ depiction of death scene, mention of food

Sum: your work proves that it will never give you a day off, and a surprise revelation leads you to take in a stray colleague.

A/N: lmao y’all ever heard of that group stray colleagues? Me neither. We’re almost halfway through omg, I feel like chapters from here on out will be mega long, so I tried to curb this one a little.

Point of reference for series: Sell Your Haunted House (and Hotel Del Luna but to a lesser extent, both amazing dramas, go watch). Disclaimer: lot of creative licence here lol, influenced by and used a lot of ideas from Sell Your Haunted House (e.g the setting, certain plot points and prop ideas) with some adaptation, some general/ stereotypical things about exorcism you can learn from mainstream media, nothing too intricate. [seriously go watch SYHH cuz it’s incredible and underrated af and I just had to pay homage to it somehow, so here’s a whole ass fic inspired by it haha]

It’s all open and endless road from here.

You switch gears and relax your hands around the wheel, falling into the steady thrum of the car’s motion and the way the landscape zips past you. Leaving the city was always the stressful part of these trips, making sure you can navigate to the right highway, avoiding the gruelling traffic if you could on your way out.

You’d dropped Hoshi off at his apartment after his doctor’s appointment, his brace finally gone and then made a pitstop at your house to get everything you’d prepared. It was a relatively long drive to the mountains.

The day before you’d even asked if Minghao wanted to come with you to see the tea plantation but he declined since he had a few classes that day. Understandable, but you couldn’t help but feel the little pang of disappointment that you’d make the journey alone again. You were sure that Minghao would have appreciated the vast beauty of the mountains, but you’ll just have to take him another time.

You hadn’t gone for a while to see your aunt, maybe six months or something like that, recalling the last time might have been when spring was leading into summer and now autumn was rolling into winter, two seasons gone in the blink of an eye.

The reason you’d decided to go now was not only because you’d been meaning to visit your aunt, maybe even ask her about group exorcisms, but because you’d somehow managed to finish your tea. You had plenty of the other herbs since those you used only if a medium was unwell after an exorcism, but the tea you drank all the time with Minghao.

There was also the silver lining that the trip was a way for you to relieve some stress; long drives were hypnotising, the dark greys of the asphalt all moulding into one as the scenery flew past you, an earthy sea of land stretching out for miles in any direction.

Before going all the way to the plantation, you liked to make a stop at a nearby lake, its mass encased by mountains. There you could look out to the summit of the closer set of peaks. Your car swivelled into a narrow path, the road a muddy mess since this part was not cemented. It wasn’t a problem since your car had the terrain grappling qualities of a jeep.

You drove to the edge of the path leading closest to the lake.

As you get out the car, you feel the icy chill of the wind on your skin, the temperature difference sending a shiver down your spine. You wrap your coat around you tightly and walk around the vehicle, standing near the edge of the lake. Your boots almost touch where the water laps at the shore gently, the wind forcing ripples across the surface.

You step back and perch on the hood of your car.

The water was otherwise still, a dark mix of indigo and spruce that hinted at the lake’s dangerous depths below. You imagined that in a few weeks the lake will freeze, its face becoming an arctic plane. It was a familiar scene; the way the mountain peaks stacked up against each other in the distance. You’d been here sun, rain, snow and fog, finding yourself in this exact spot during every season, alone.

Your sister never had the patience to stop by, always egging Jeonghan to drive faster because she was hungry or tired and hated the road.

Your lips feel heavy in a frown as you remember, snippets of the past floating around your head. You’d been finding yourself reminiscing a lot lately. You suspected it was because seeing Jeonghan had made the memories flood back in, though you acknowledged it was also that time of the year again.

You beg your brain to let go of the memories for a moment and focus on what you were seeing in the present.

It feels like serenity, sitting here in complete silence, nothing but the wind biting at your cheeks. This was the only place you could imagine staying undisturbed forever; it wasn’t a very well known spot and especially in winter, you’d never seen another soul here.

The cold is beginning to numb you so you take one last good look at the mountains and the lake, then retreat into the warmth of your car and get on the road again.

Large drops of water start to fall onto your windshield and you groan, the forecast having been wrong yet again. The rain keeps you company as you drive slower, your wipers doing their manic little dance across the glass, a quiet piano concerto playing on the radio you’d randomly flipped on.

It stops pouring by the time you reach the plantation, the humble village attached to it coming into view as you pull up the empty country road. You reach your aunt’s tiny bungalow in no time, parking in front where her old car was left, a sheen of wet leaves covering it from a nearby tree.

You take your bags and ring the doorbell. You had called ahead yesterday to see if she was okay to see you, if she had time. Somehow your aunt’s social life was busier than yours, what with you having to work more than hang out with your friends, well colleagues.

She opens the door, already smiling.

“YN!” She starts to usher you inside. “Come in, you must be freezing!”

“Hi, Aunty.” You hug her, letting the door shut. You can feel the way you reek of the cold outside and you must be chilling her but you let yourself be selfish for a moment and cling to her warmth. It was a long time since you’d hugged anyone.  

“You must be tired, come sit.” She practically drags you to the kitchen after you’ve taken off your boots. “You’re just on time, the soup’s almost ready.”

You smile at how attentive she’s being, helping you take off your coat and putting it on a hanger. You leave your overnight bag in the hallway and follow her with another bag. You’re stepping into the steamy kitchen and it feels like a heatwave washing over you.

“Are you trying to make a sauna in here?” You look around and see there’s something cooking in the oven and on every available part of the stove top, four pots on the gas.

“I was just making dinner, it’s nothing much.” She says modestly. You scoff playfully.

“Nothing much? It looks like a five course meal to me.” You find an empty corner of the counter and unload the plastic bag you’re holding. “I bought dessert. Your favourite. I know you can’t get it around here.” You pull out a lemon meringue pie.

“Oh my! Look at my little YN, bringing your old aunt treats!” Your aunt fawns over you all the time but every once in a while she even goes in for a cheek pinch, like right now.

“Hmm, I’m not five any more, I’m an adult.” You scrunch your nose, pouting, as if to disprove your point.

“But to me, you’ll always be my tiny baby.” She pats your cheek lovingly before making you sit down at the table.

In a flash, there’s a hot bowl of soup in front of you, steaming fried cheddar, some braised ribs and even a plate of dumplings. For a while you let your stomach think for you, inhaling food as your aunt happily watches you eat. You hadn’t really eaten much that day, possibly because subconsciously you knew your aunt would go full chef mode and feed you to no end.

“Well I suppose you didn’t come here only to see me. Is there some particular reason for your visit?” She asks you as you’re sipping on some soup. The hot broth warms you from the inside out. You gulp it down and reply.

“I did come to see you, but also for some tea. I’ve sort of run out recently.”

“Oh? That’s odd, you never used to drink it.” She says, clearly mulling it over in her head. After a split second a mischievous look appears on her face. “Don’t tell me, there’s someone drinking it with you?” Was she insinuating what you thought she was?

“What? No, well- yes, I hired a new medium but it’s not like how you’re trying to make it sound.”

“Aha, sure.” She hums, totally unconvinced. “So he’s the one that likes the tea?” She presses.

“Why do you assume the medium’s a guy?”

“Isn’t he? Female mediums are extremely rare. And male mediums are more durable because of their yang energy.”

“‘Durable’.” You scoff. “What are they, batteries?”

“Don’t change the subject. So that’s why you’re here. To take some tea for your new medium.” You look at her wide Cheshire grin, all that’s missing is a swinging tail.

“You must be bored out here, Aunty.” You retort. “I’ve never been interested in a medium and you know that. It’s unprofessional.”

“Pah! Unprofessional? My dear, do you think this is the corporate ladder or the government? Do you think your aunt has never dated one?” She pops a dumpling into her mouth and chews. “It’s easier to date someone in your own world, did you sister never tell you that? You don’t have to explain anything to anyone.”

You get quiet at the mention of your sister. Your aunt didn’t know much about her death and still adored Jeonghan as her favourite nephew-that-never-was. She didn’t even know about the fact that your sister’s ghost was still lingering around the house and office. You’d rather sink into the ground and stay there than ever be the one to tell her that.  

“You’ll understand one day. Ghosts are bad company and eventually the loneliness gets to you.” She continues off handedly. “But anyway, you didn’t have to hire a new medium, did you? You could have just worked with Jeonghan.” She bites on another dumpling.

You think you heard her wrong, the soup attempting to go in the wrong direction and you sputter a little as you choke.

“What?” You croak.

“Hmm?” She looks up and notices the way your face is etched with confusion. “You could have worked with Jeonghan, dear. He’s a medium too, did you forget?”

You felt the world sway around you. ‘Forget?’ This was new information to you. How the hell did you not know about this? Jeonghan was a medium? No way, he must have lied to her. But that’s too much of a lie even for him. You were left stunned, a whirlwind of thoughts swimming through your brain, clouding up what used to be clear waters.

Had your sister known? Why hadn’t she told you? Why hadn’t Jeonghan told you?

You snap out of it; this didn’t change anything. He had still lead your sister off a cliff with his stupid ideas and you weren’t going to let this get to you. It didn’t matter if he was a medium, he was still Jeonghan.

“Right. Well he wanted to work, so I couldn’t really turn him down.” You say, referring to Minghao, then let the conversation pause, trying to clear your head. As your aunt eats you notice the necklace around her neck hanging over her plate. She was wearing the carnelian crystal pendant, the one that matched your earrings and your sister’s ring. She feels you looking and peeks down at it. “You still wear it.”

“You can never be too careful, dear.” She says, taking a sip of soup next. “How is Jeonghan by the way? He came to see me a few weeks ago but he didn’t take any tea with him, remind me to give you a few boxes so you can give one to him.”

“He came here?” You ask, putting your spoon down, suddenly alert. You didn’t know that he and your aunt were still that close, then again you didn’t know a lot of stuff since the two of you hadn’t really spoken in the last couple of years.  

“Yes, he calls me every once in a while but also visits. Last time he bought me a box of macaroons, they were so delicious, I think he said they were from that bakery downtown, the one next to the post office?”

You knew it, it was close to where Jeonghan was living and working; you’d known that he opened up his own freelance practice and had heard his ridiculous prices per exorcism. Word on the street, well the Council gossip, was that he was working for rich clientele only and making a pretty penny off of them. He probably thought he was just shaking a money tree but how those ghosts had even come to be in the first place was kind of shady.  

“Yeah, I know it. Well, he seems fine, I guess.” You say carefully. You had a hunch it would break your aunt’s heart if a) she heard about how you and Jeonghan weren’t exactly best friends any more and b) if she ever found out he was to blame for your sister’s death. The only reason you’d kept your mouth shut was for her sake.

“Good, next time you should come together, you two are always coming at different times.” She scolds you lightly, if you could even call it that. “If you’re not busy, come for your sister’s death anniversary, it’s coming up soon.”

As if you could forget. It was three years next month. You don’t want to make a promise you can’t keep so you just make a hum of approval as you stand up and look for the pie. You bring it to the table, keen to start cutting it.

“Why did Jeonghan come anyway?” You try to make your question sound as casual as possible while you press a knife into the soft cream on top of the pie.  

“Just to see me, see how I am.” You aunt nods. “Ah, right. He also asked me if I knew anything about group exorcisms.”

The hand that’s holding the knife stops short at the crust.

A few weeks ago? That was before you’d looked over the archives in the office. What was Jeonghan doing asking about group exorcisms before he’d even know about the case? Unless Seokmin had told him to come to the site and investigate with them - you didn’t know whether he’d shown up to go scouting or if he’d just shown up at the office afterward.

You mentally curse your past self for not interrogating him further. They probably filled him in after you’d left if he hadn’t gone scouting. Fine, but why was he investigating ahead of you? Was he trying to hijack your case and prove you needed him? What the hell is even going on?

You realise you’ve been silent for too long.

“And? What did you tell him?” You ask as you place one piece of pie on a clean plate.

“What do you think I told him? I said I hadn’t done any during my career and that he should check the archives. Maybe even ask around if other exorcists know anything.”

“Right. Makes sense, besides, the first step would be identifying the ghosts as much as possible.” You say, testing the waters. For some reason you don’t want to tell your aunt that the group exorcism was your and Seungkwan’s case and that all Jeonghan was doing was butting in.

“Exactly, you need to know who you’re dealing with first.” Your aunt takes a bite of pie. She savours the taste and sighs appreciatively. “YN, that really hits the spot.” She praises. You smile despite your brain capacity overflowing.

“I’m glad. I’ll bring you pie whenever I come through.” You vow, taking a bite yourself. It’s sweet but with a tang of the lemon’s sourness, balanced with the sugary cream on top. It’s perfect.

You sleep on the couch, making use of the coziness of the living room while your aunt goes to her bedroom. The bungalow is small and quaint, homely and warm and if you had to move somewhere you’d probably like living here.

The morning comes all too quickly and you hurry to get on the road so you can go home and check your archives; you thought about it and it wasn’t adding up. There was something suspicious about Jeonghan asking around before you’d started working and you wanted to get to the bottom of it. You jump in the shower and speed up your routine.

By the time you get out and dress, you can hear the TV was turned on. When you exit the bathroom with a slight flush of steam behind you, you stop and listen. It’s the news. (You’d forgotten what it was like to actually listen to the news instead of read them).  

“…more information is coming in about the accident on metro line 3. A train car drove off the rails and crashed some time around six am today, disrupting morning commuters around the city. It is yet unclear what caused the accident, although witnesses stated there was power outage across the nearby stop shortly before the time of incident. As of now, there are no reported injuries as the car was found to be empty…”        

You stand there, unmoving. Could this be the work of the vengeful spirit you had yet to exorcise? A power outage and freak accident? It sounded likely if the cause was still not obvious.

“Dear, who’s Minghao and why has he called you three times in the past 2 minutes?” You aunt asks from the table where your phone is plugged in to charge at the closest socket.

“Huh?” You turn your attention away from the news report. “Why is he calling me so early?” You mutter and unplug your phone. Your phone starts vibrating as Minghao’s serial calling continues. You glance at your aunt’s curious face and she feigns ignorance, directing her attention to her plate of pie.

“Don’t mind me, hon, just answer the phone.” She says sweetly. You sigh and fight the urge to roll your eyes before swiping the answer button.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Took you long enough to answer.” You hear Minghao grumble on the other end. “Did you see the news? There’s a train car-”

“I just saw it. I know what you’re thinking but maybe it’s just a coincidence-” you start.

“Line 3 is right next to where we identified the spirit. It doesn’t sound like a coincidence.” He argues. “Where are you? Are you still at your aunt’s?”

“I’m just about to leave, but yeah. I’ll be back soon, then we can make a plan and dispatch him.”

“Okay, I’ll be waiting at the office. Did you move the spare key?” The question rings a bell in your head; you hadn’t moved it even though he’d reminded you that day when you were assembling bookcases.

“I forgot,” you lie. The truth was that you couldn’t bring yourself to do it. “It’s still under the camellia.”

“Alright, I’m hanging up.”

You stand still for a moment, mind buzzing. If line 3 really was that close then perhaps it was your vengeful spirit that had conjured up trouble. You had to send him off asap.

“Was that your new medium?” You aunt pipes up tentatively.

“Yes, and we have work to do. I have to go.” You say. You aunt nods, the action appearing a little sad.

“Be careful, dear. You know how dangerous it can be out there.” She reminds you.

“I know. I am.” You reassure her but it feels like an empty statement. Your aunt stands up and you hug her tight.

“You should visit your parents too. At least once. They’re not that far away. If you can drive here, you can drive there too.” Your aunt was entering nagging mode now. It was routine after she fed you that she felt the need to remind you to do all these things.

Your relationship with your parents was complicated. It had always been, but since your sister died, it had deteriorated dramatically so you avoided the topic all together.

“I’m busy, you know how it is.” You don’t give her leeway to respond. “Thank you for the meal, but I really have to go, Aunty.” You give her one last quick hug and leave as quickly as she’ll let you while she fusses over your bag, boots and coat.            

*

“What the hell are we going to do?” Minghao shakes his head. You’re sitting in the conference room, you, Minghao, Hoshi and Wonwoo. You’d only been expecting Minghao since he called you and was the medium on this case but you were greeted by a crutch-less Hoshi’s enthusiastic welcome as soon as you entered the office.

Wonwoo was tapping away furiously on his laptop, having shown up on his own about ten minutes ago. On your drive back from your aunt’s, you’d thought about calling him but figured he might be busy. Now, you were writing a list of things you could try on your new whiteboard, considering each option in turn.

Option 1 was to go to the same spot and attempt the exorcism in the car, although because of the accident, that area was swarming with rail staff members, engineers and even some of Wonwoo’s colleagues. In other words, there were too many civilians and they could either see something or be hurt.

Option 2 was to find a wider part of the tunnels, usually where there was an emergency exit and try to lure the ghost there while there was no trains. That meant a super limited time on the clock and could be extremely dangerous for you and Minghao.

Option 3 was to not exorcise the spirit today but wait for the smoke to clear and do the exorcism later. The downside of that was that once vengeful spirits got aggravated and starting to influence the environmental energies around them, the better at it they became and therefore cumulatively became more dangerous over time.

“What about trying to do the exorcism in a moving car?” Hoshi asks. “You could tell the passengers you were maintenance or something, empty the car and try to lure him there.”

“That’s too dangerous, we can’t do that. He might do something to a full, moving train.” You reply, still contemplating the three options you’d chalked up, well board marker-ed up.

“But you could easily kick Minghao’s ass-”  

“Hey!” Minghao protests, clearly the notion hurt his pride. “The train cars are too tiny to do an exorcism there.” He says. “And a moving train is too much; you’re not Keanu Reeves.” Minghao directs the comment at you. “And neither am I.” He sounds a little disappointed as he says it, sighing wistfully. You can’t help but run through your head anything in that Speed movie that might give you a clue; it involved a train scene after all, but you come up blank. Whatever, it was a dumb idea anyway.  

“I found the live updates of the amended train times.” Wonwoo says. He turns the laptop screen towards you. It’s a spreadsheet with coloured blocks that run parallel to a time line. “See this part?” He points to an empty block that stems from a row marked as ‘line 6’. You nod. “This is the longest break in any line without trains for today and it’s happening in two hours.”

“Where exactly is line 6?” Your brain is already getting ahead of itself; this could be the solution using option 2.

“It runs about half a mile parallel to line 3 then turns to the west side of the city. It’s not usually a very busy line but because of the accident it’s being put to use today.” He explains.

“Do you have the blueprints of the line?” You ask. You needed to see the structure before committing.

“Sure, hang on.” He taps away again and shows you the screen. “The tunnel dimensions are slightly wider here because line 6 is for the most part the one cargo trains use. Could that work?”

“How much wider?” You narrow your eyes at the blueprint.  

“About an extra meter each side. Actually, just over a meter, see?” He points to the tiny numbers written by each line.

You consider the idea carefully. If you could lure the ghost within that empty block of time and exorcise him then worse case scenario a train went past you while you stuck yourselves to the wall-

“Are you seriously thinking about just running on the tracks, YN?” Minghao snaps. “We could die!” You look at him, finding the near outrage on his face. You feel a little insulted that he thought you would just put the both of you in the face of death for no reason, but you cut him some slack since it was probably his self-preservation instinct talking.

You’re quiet for a moment, weighing up what you were about to say. Maybe he needed to hear it, although it might come off as harsh.

“Did I not warn you about this job?” You ask, your voice low and even. He sits speechless, staring at you. You hated to do this, especially because he was new but whilst the mission was dangerous, you were more than capable of doing this. “Yes, there’s a risk to our safety, but if we don’t finish this, there is a public safety risk. We’re a kind of civil servants, it’s our job to prioritise public safety. I know you know that, it’s why you called me this morning even if you didn’t think of it specifically, but you felt that intuitively - that we had to do something about it.”

There’s a heartbeat of stunned silence then he concedes.

“You’re right, it’s up to us.” Minghao nods, looking down, a little deflated. You didn’t blame him for thinking like that; if you took it out of context then it was batshit insane. Maybe a few years ago you yourself would have hesitated before even thinking about nearing the tracks as part of an exorcism, but you’d had enough experience and maturity as an exorcist to act in a way that was necessary to - in this industry, you had to respect the danger but you also had to grapple with it on a daily basis.

“Besides, who said anything about running?” You turn to Hoshi. “You still have that bike of yours, Hosh?”                

Before Hoshi can respond, Wonwoo’s phone buzzes loudly from its spot on the table. Your proximity allows you to read the caller ID, which shows Narc Dp T.Ldr Choi. A flash of worry strikes you that Wonwoo had to go back to work. He picks up by the third ring, clearly a habit of his from what you recalled when you phoned him.

“Yes, Seungcheol?” He asks. You glance back to your whiteboard, eyes scanning option 2 again. You couldn’t pull it off without Wonwoo. “Okay, I’ll come pick it up. Thanks.” Wonwoo hangs up quickly. “Listen you guys, I have to go get something but how about we meet at the stop that connects line 5 to line 6? You can drive down and I’ll join you.”

“Fine, I need to prepare a few things too.” You agree. “See you in a bit.”

*

You run through a checklist of things you need for the exorcism; you pick out two small boxes of incense and your lighter and shove them into the pockets of your jacket. It was a portable incense which resembled the shape of those extra large match boxes. You chose a shorter, bomber jacket instead of your usual long coat which reached your knees. You needed extra mobility today.

That being said, you strapped your gun to one thigh after you check it’s fully loaded and put another magazine in your pocket since you had no means for a salt cage today. Then you rummage around for a new blade; you needed a different one for vengeful spirits, something more heavyweight. You find the correct one which is a straight, perfectly balanced blade, its surface much wider than the usual pin-like blade you used. It took longer to burn too. This one also has a two inch hollow handle much more like a dagger and you curl the paper containing the ghost’s name in there.

You strap the blade to your other thigh. That should do it.

You grab a few crystals in a small velvet pouch to give to Wonwoo, since he’ll be on site again with you. At this point he may as well keep a bunch on him.

Outside you find Minghao and Hoshi trying to secure Hoshi’s bike to the back of your car.

From where you’re standing, it seems as if every single braincell between them is working at maximum capacity. You go over to check it’s truly safe since you really didn’t need to be shedding bicycles onto the road right now.

“How long have we got?” Minghao asks once the bike is strapped on. You check your phone.

“Under an hour, we should leave now if we want to be on time.” You confirm.

“Alrighty, let’s go!” Hoshi grins and makes to sit in the passenger seat of your car. You grab him by the hood  to stop him.

“Woah there, tiger. Who said you’re coming with?” You look at him inquisitively. Hoshi’s eyes are innocently wide. “You’re still on sick leave. Go home.” You tell him. He pouts and looks to Minghao for help. Judging by the way Minghao pats his shoulder, he was appealing to the totally wrong person.

“Go home, buddy. I got this.” He says. Hoshi shrinks, the way those carwash inflatable boys crumble without air. You feel bad but you needed to be as inconspicuous as possible today and move quickly, all which could only be done with less people.

When you get to the station, you call Wonwoo to find out where he was waiting for you. You’re overwhelmed by the amount of people you see milling around the building, since it was one of the larger stops instead of just an entrance to the metro and platform.

You thought about all these people; they were completely oblivious and were blind to what may loom ahead of them. They would never know about ghosts if they were lucky, only seeing their traces as accidents or coincidences. It was exactly these people that you had to protect. This was your duty, the consequence of your birth and the knowledge your ancestors had passed on to you.

You find Wonwoo at the only single platform in the station and he sits on one of those metal benches beside the staircase with his laptop open. Minghao was lagging behind, insisting that he could deal with the bike instead of you.

“Where is everyone?” You ask Wonwoo. He adjusts his glasses as he looks up at you.

“I hijacked the announcement system and cleared this platform so you can hop on the tracks.” He explains. “The next train is coming in approximately seven minutes, after that, you’ll have fifteen minutes before the next one passes.”

“Right, fifteen minutes. We shouldn’t go too far then.” You muse, calculating how far you could go with the bike whilst you used the incense to summon the ghost. You pull out the pouch of crystals and hold it out to Wonwoo. “Maybe I should get you a talisman for Christmas or something.”

Wonwoo chuckles quietly.

“Thanks. Actually, I got something for you guys too.” He pulls out a small box out of his backpack. He opens the lid and inside there’s a fitted piece of styrofoam and some tiny gadgets held in place. “These are ear pieces. I got them from the Narc department. I need to be able to talk to you at all times in case there’s a change in the timetable. There’s also no cameras in the tunnels so I can’t keep an eye on you, just so you know.”

You and Minghao each get one, Wonwoo explaining how to fit them properly into your ear and making sure the bluetooth signal is working. This is the most hi-tech thing you’d ever used for an exorcism so far, who knew your ancient profession was becoming so modern.

“There’s one slight problem.” You realise. “Minghao’s might malfunction when he gets possessed. Ghosts can mess with energies, wouldn’t that affect the bluetooth connection?”

“Probably, but as long as you have one, I can let you know what’s going on.”

You’re pretty much set and you wait for the last train to pass before you can start your mission. You’re already clutching your lighter and incense box in your hands, itching to light it up and get started. You hated the way your anticipation (or was it anxiety?) was building up.

You’d confirmed the plan with Minghao on how you were to proceed. He’d pedal while you rode on the back of the bike and held up the incense to attract the ghost. Then you’d just hope the spirit fell for it and came to find you in time. It felt like an incredibly reckless and almost silly plan, but sometimes desperate times did call for desperate measures. Your meticulous planning had to be reserved for more tame exorcisms.  

“I’m going to isolate us as soon as I can, that way your body won’t run off.” You tell him. He’s already paling but he accepts the reassurance.

“Yeah, yeah. It’s a good thing I won’t be conscious for this.” He mutters.

“Okay, the train is coming in like thirty seconds, get ready.” Wonwoo warns. The two of you walk to the edge of the platform, Minghao holding the bike’s handlebars to guide it and you with your incense.

You peer out into the tunnel and see the headlights in the distance. Next, you can feel the vibrations of the platform, the ground beneath you ever so slightly pulsing and you hear the crass rumble of the train as it zips over the rails and past you. You close your eyes to avoid the cloud of dust and dirt the speed of the train stirs up around you.

As soon as it’s gone, you flip your lighter open and light the incense while Minghao manoeuvres the bike down to the gravel around the tracks. It’s not a very deep drop, indeed there’s much deeper ones you’ve spotted around town but you still take care when following him down.

“Good luck, guys!” Wonwoo calls from the platform. You wave in acknowledgement and get on the bike behind Minghao.

The tunnel ahead is mostly dark with emergency green lights mounted on the ceiling every twenty or so metres. Your eyes take a while to adjust to the dimmed environment. You mentally berate yourself for not bringing a torch when Minghao pulls out his phone and holds it in one hand, the light casting in front so he could see where the bike wheel was making contact with the ground.  

The incense is starting to burn nicely and you hold it high above your head with one hand while the other grabs onto the back of the collar of Minghao’s jacket, your fingers barely brushing over the skin of his neck and where his hair touched his nape. You set off down the tunnel, picking up speed eventually despite the friction of the gravel underneath the wheels.

“I miss my motorcycle. Also what is this stuff we’re riding on?” You hear Minghao whine. “It’s like wadding through cement.”

“Less complaining, more pedalling.” You instruct. The incense is doing its job, burning steadily from its box. You’d picked an especially strong type that Joshua had warned you against using unless it was in an emergency. You figured this was as close to its purpose as you were going to get.

“Why don’t you try pedalling.” He mutters. It’s so quiet you almost miss it but even so, you can hear the pout in his voice. You have to resist the urge to smile, despite the situation.  

You get bored after a minute, you arm aching slightly.

“Here ghosty, ghost, ghost.” You call out suddenly, waving the incense side to side. As soon as the words leave your mouth, you remember that your were wearing ear pieces and Wonwoo could hear everything. You were too anxious and desperate to be embarrassed right now. You feel Minghao’s shoulders tense at your bizarre method of trying to get the spirit’s attention.

“I can’t wait to not be awake for this shit.” He states, pedalling a little harder.

You’re tracking the minutes on your watch, both your phone and Minghao’s having alarms set for ten minutes only so you could have a five minute warning if things were getting drawn out. You’ve been cycling for about four minutes now, and nothing.

“Stop, let’s turn around and double back for a bit.” You suggest. You were conscious of not getting too far away from the platform. Wonwoo had let you know there was no emergency exits for at least a kilometre and that your best bet was getting back in time even if you couldn’t exorcise the ghost.

You had entertained the idea of using the platform but the space really was too tiny and there were a lot of objects that could complicate things; the ghost could start throwing them around or levitating them and damage a lot that you couldn’t fix. Not to mention that anyone could still walk in despite Wonwoo’s announcement tampering.

You cycle back toward the platform for two minutes, going back like you said. Then you feel it.

There’s a cold breeze flowing through the tunnel that you hadn’t felt before. You squeeze Minghao’s collar, the action pulling his coat slightly as you lower your face to whisper in his ear.

“Did you feel that?” You ask. “I think it’s coming.”

He hums in response, slowing down a little. It had been silent so far, only the sound of the shifting gravel under the bike to accompany the two of you down the tunnel since Wonwoo was keeping quiet. Now the emergency overhead lights were buzzing, one flickering in the distance. You point to it without saying a word. Minghao gets the message and pedals harder again so you can get closer.

You wave around the incense a little more as you near the flickering light then extinguish it. You take note of the temperature here and it has unmistakably dropped, your breath starting to ever so slightly frost in front of you. That meant he was coming.

“Stop here. We can go on foot.” You pat Minghao on the shoulder.

“Okay.”

You come down from the bike and he props it against the wall as securely as possible, leaning so it doesn’t fall onto the tracks. It was facing the right direction too in case you had to really hurry up. You focus on the tunnel in front of you, your eyes straining to make out the ghost’s shape.

You can’t see him yet but you do spot the fog that’s emerging ahead, its slow creep along the tracks making the hairs on your arms stand on edge.            

You had about eight minutes left and you needed at least two of those to get back.

Make that six for the exorcism.

“He’s here.” You say, mostly to Wonwoo through the ear piece since you’re sure that Minghao can see the figure emerging from the shadows.

“Copy that.” Wonwoo responds.  

You can barely make out the ghost’s figure out as he glides towards you under the dim, green lights. The greyness of the fog is illuminated by the lights, giving it a more lively, but creepy hue.

“Give me your hand.” You instruct Minghao. He complies without complaint. You’d discussed the best way to keep his ring safe and that was if you were the one to take it. Your fingers feel for Minghao’s in the dark, searching for the ring blindly. You locate it just as the ghost nears you even more.

You risk a glance at your watch. It was now or die trying.

“Ready?” You ask. You hear Minghao gulp loudly in the shadows.

“Yes.” He whispers.  

And you begin, pulling the ring off of Minghao’s finger and stepping back as the spirit flew into his body and knocked him over. You pull your gun and start shooting around you to create a cube isolating you and the ghost. Each bullet pings off and a wall of energy crystallises around you.

These wouldn’t hold out for too long. The time the energy stayed in place had never been calculated like an exact science because each wall was different and each one collapsed at unpredictably. You sheath your gun and pull out the exorcist’s dagger.

Minghao was getting up, groggily and jerkily as if the ghost was getting used to having a body again after being transparent for so long. You see the light in his irises and note the possession was complete.

Then you don’t waste a second, lunging at him, blade forward and aiming for his chest. Minghao easily dodges your attack, looking at you wildly, clearly unsure of what to make of you. You try again, trying to force him against the wall of energy, knowing it will weaken the spirit if it came into contact with the crystallised panel. You don’t succeed when Minghao simply throws you off him, aided by supernatural strength and you land on the ground, using the momentum to roll to your feet.

All you had managed to do so far was annoy the spirit.

This time he lunged at you and you dodged, side stepping then aiming a kick at Minghao’s torso. The blow lands and you surprise him just for a moment. You think this is it, and stab forward. An arm swipes away at you and hits the side of your head, sending you flying against the wall. You huff as you slide down the wall, unable to keep your footing.

“YN?” You hear Wonwoo’s concerned voice in your ear.

“I’m fine.” You reply, getting up.

Time was ticking and you were getting desperate. Minghao’s body on the other hand hadn’t broken a sweat yet. You stormed him yet again, managing to land a couple of blows to the chest and torso, your fighting practice coming in to play finally, but Minghao’s body is seasoned to withstand petty attacks like that, his reflexes strong enough to operate even when his consciousness was overpowered.

He shoves you away yet again and you wait for another blow but it never comes. Instead you see him running away. How is he running away?

Shit.

The wall of energy had already given out on you.

You bolt after him, unaware of what direction you were headed in in the dark. This was a big problem but you pushed it away, prioritising finding Minghao and sending off the ghost. He’s not running that fast, the ghost’s attempted sprint coming off as clumsy since he’s not used to this body and you pick up your speed,  the series of morning jogs you’d been going on paying off.

You take out your gun and shoot past him, making him run straight into a crystal wall. He yells loudly, the sound echoing through the tunnel. You skid to a stop and shoot a couple of times behind you, sealing you in again. This time all you created a double pane on each end.

And off you go again, kicks, punches and blocks when Minghao’s body responded to the physicality. You’re cursing the ghost so hard in your head, angry at how much of a fight he was putting up but then again this was a vengeful spirit.

Then again by his very nature, this ghost was seething, furious at whatever had wronged him in his life, but also wanting to find some kind of solace in being trapped in this form. These were the most pitiful types of ghosts, their anguish running deeply.

Minghao yelled again, the energy of the scream and the kick it was accompanied by hurling you against the tunnel wall, your body splatting against the concrete surface with a loud cry of pain. You swear you felt your spine shudder and you fall to the ground. It had knocked the wind out of you, making you see stars for a split second as you coughed out excess spit.

While you were on the ground you felt a weird floating sensation. As if the ground beneath you was-

No, it was definitely doing that.

The ground was vibrating.

You must have missed the sound of your alarms going off.

The lightning strike of panic - crackling, palpable, fear - that you could taste, wracks through your body and you whip your head around at each side of the tunnel. The train was coming from the left which meant you’d ran further away from the platform.

You were completely, totally, utterly, royally, abysmally fucked.

In that moment your entire body was flooded with regret. Regret that you’d tried to do this exorcism, your arrogance colouring you ashamed. Regret that you weren’t stronger and you’d let the ghost run. Regret that you’d ever let Minghao join this ridiculous industry. Regret that you were going to be the reason that he died in the next minute, far too young and not even aware of what was happening.  

Minghao’s body was banging his fist against one of the crystallised walls, each hit followed by an angry ‘arrgh’ when the salt stung him. The train was coming in front of him but the ghost was clearly not understanding the situation.

You decided in the span of several milliseconds that you weren’t done yet. You weren’t going to die.

Not like this.

Adrenalin seized your whole being and you mustered every ounce of energy you had, running towards Minghao and pushing him against the nearest wall, managing to catch him completely off guard, bringing the blade home and squeezing the two of you as close to the concrete as you could physically muster.

“Go peacefully.” You breathed, bracing yourself for whatever happened next, your body overlapping with Minghao’s. You’re vaguely aware the blade starts to burn away as you hold your fist to his chest, your face pushed again his shoulder.

Then the train thunders past you, its sonic boom rattling every single one of the 206 bones in your body and you’re not sure if you’re screaming since you cannot hear another sound except the train.

The blade is burning away, your body getting rigid, and your brain cannot even register what is going on.

The vengeful spirit’s dying memory grips your being and you relive the moment that the body makes contact with the train. You’ve never felt anything like this; it’s an out of body experience as pain, searing white agony shoots through you and you wish you were dead.

That’s just the thing.

That was the dying moment of the ghost. The last thing this man knew on this earth.

He did die.

But you didn’t. You just lived through it.

The most harrowing experience of your entire life.  

You’re screaming and crying and wheezing and wailing and howling and chocking and coughing into Minghao’s chest as you come to, faintly aware that he’s clutching your frame in his arms as tightly as you’re clinging onto him. He puts a hand over the back of your head, steadying you a little as he rubs your back with his other hand, trying to calm you down as you shake, your head empty.

“Shh, you’re alive. We’re alive, it’s okay.” You vaguely hear Minghao murmur. His voice is vibrating through his chest and you feel it against your cheek. You can hear his heartbeat, the quick but steady thump comforting you as you calm down.

Your ears are ringing and popping and every sound is just a little muffled as you struggle to adjust to reality again.

You’re not sure how to talk yet so once you let Minghao let you go, you just point in the direction you need to go in. He nods and takes your hand, making sure you follow him. Your legs feel like jelly but you manage to walk. You find Hoshi’s bike and Minghao helps you get on.

Your body slumps over his back and he pedals you back to the platform where you hear Wonwoo shouting something and Minghao shouts back in response. You don’t know what happened, all of it is still just noise to you.

You get down from the bike, swaying slightly and step to the edge of the platform. You look up and see Wonwoo is grabbing towards you, trying to get you to take his hand. You do and he hauls you up. You don’t make it to your feet and just sit on the floor, blank.

The guys get the bike up between the two of them and then Minghao hops up onto the platform. He explains something to Wonwoo, who looks like he’s been through several stages of grief already.

“I’m sure the train went past us, but I was still unconscious. YN was awake the whole time.” You hear.

“YN?” You see Wonwoo crouch in your field of vision, worry etched into his face. Your senses are slowly recovering and you feel your ear is empty. The gadget must have fallen out at some point. It was probably an expensive piece of equipment.  

“Sorry.” You mutter as you think it, dazed and not realising that Wonwoo has no idea what you’re talking about. You make to get up and he grabs one of your arms while Minghao’s hands find your other arm.

Right, Minghao.

You reach and unzip your pocket, pulling out something. You unfurl your fist and hold it out to Minghao, his ring resting in your palm. He takes it but doesn’t let go of your arm. You feel a cough shake your body.

You’re starting to hear and see and feel and become aware again. There’s a call of your name originating from somewhere and footsteps coming nearer. You turn around as if you’re stuck to an axis and focus.

Jeonghan is barrelling towards you.

Your forehead scrunches in confusion. What was he doing here? You hadn’t told him you were doing anything.

“I freaked out when I couldn’t get in touch with you so I called Jeonghan.” Wonwoo explains sheepishly.

“What’s with Jeonghan being everyone’s emergency contact.” You attempt to croak, your mouth extremely dry and jaw heavy.

“YN!” He calls again as he reaches you. “Are you okay?” He grabs your shoulders and inspects your face, looking for signs of, well you weren’t sure.

There’s not much brain activity taking place in your head but you do put together a recent conversation about Jeonghan. It was yesterday. That feels like ten years ago right now. Your aunt had told you Jeonghan was a medium. You stare at him, as if you’d be able to tell just by looking at him if that was the truth.

He seems satisfied there’s nothing physically wrong with you, though your back would beg to differ. You probably had bruises and maybe even a cracked rib, who knew.

“What are you looking at?” Jeonghan asks, suddenly alert. “You missed me or something?”

“As fucking if!” You snap reflexively.

“Ah, so you’re okay.” He says, relaxing. He lets you go but you don’t look away, scanning him for talismans. The obsidian ring is on his finger like always but you notice a chain that you’re not sure you’d ever taken note of before dangling around his neck. What was on it? Was it perhaps a set? Did your sister give it to him?

“You look like you’re about to keel over, let’s get you home.” Wonwoo interrupts your staring contest with Jeonghan’s jewellery. You don’t argue with that suggestion, making a noise of approval before letting Minghao steer you in the right direction.

*    

It takes you a couple of days to feel semi-normal again. It had been a tough time however, from the constant hand tremors to the insomnia induced by the random dreams you kept having every time you fell asleep. Even a nap was taxing because you ended up receiving unwanted memories from the ghost man’s life. You’d taken to checking the stock market every hour, like clockwork, looking at the squiggly lines on a graph and not understanding a damn thing but knowing if it was good or bad somewhere deep in your gut.

You drank coffee like it was water from the fountain of youth, your body buzzing like a bumblebee as you became a jittery mess, jumping at the slightest noise, usually Minghao or Hoshi coming through the kitchen door behind you.

You’d realised that it was obviously just after affects of the exorcism, but these were much stronger and more consistent than you’d ever had before. Maybe because it was the first vengeful spirit that you’d ever exorcised. All other ghosts paled in comparison.

Minghao, Jeonghan and Hoshi took turns checking up on you and for once you didn’t complain that Jeonghan was hanging around the house. You wanted to keep an eye on Jeonghan anyway because of what your aunt had told you yet much to your dismay he didn’t do a single suspicious thing, which you found was in itself suspicious.

The three of them all did things in their own way, Minghao dropping by between classes and making sure you ate by cooking something with the ingredients that Jeonghan had stocked up in your fridge, and Hoshi making sure you did stuff other than glaring at the money graph and swearing at every tiny dip.

It was already late evening the fourth day when you’re driving back to the office after you’d convinced Minghao you were feeling up to a scouting mission for one of your next projects. He’d driven on the way there, but you insisted that you had accumulated enough hours of sleep to be safe to drive. He was reluctant to give up his place in the driver’s seat but he eventually did and with surprisingly not that much scepticism and side-eyeing.

“We’re going to need to do another preliminary scout for this one, I really didn’t like that old lady’s basement; something stinks and it’s not the mould.” You tell him as you make a right turn. Minghao nods.

“I know, there was something super intensely hostile about the way those cats stared at me when we went down the stairs.” You see him shudder in your peripheral vision.

“Agreed.” You sigh. “Right, am I driving you home?” You ask.

“No, it’s okay, just drop me off at the studio.” He replies.

“It’s really fine, I can drive you. See?” You pause, hands steady on the wheel. “No more hand tremors.” You smile proudly. It was probably because you’d stopped chugging coffee after Jeonghan stole- no, ‘temporarily misplaced’- your jar of powder Columbian medium roast two days ago. You’d suffered the withdrawal symptoms and had overcome the urge to run to the nearest cafe, so you thought you were doing quite alright.

“Aha, no, just drop me at the studio. I wasn’t going home now anyways.” Minghao insists a little too hard. You glance at him and see his lips are pursed and he’s looking anywhere but even vaguely in your direction. There was something shifty about his demeanour but you decided to ignore it for now.

“Okay, studio it is.” You concede. It’s not like you knew where Minghao’s apartment was anyway - from one secretive person to another, he’d never made the effort to tell you and you’d never tried prying. Regardless, you were much more comfortable with him these days, the two of you getting used to each other’s presence and habits and being much friendlier too.

You say goodnight and watch him grappling with the militia of locks on the door. You decide something isn’t right from the way he grins and waves at you before he walks in. There was something unsettling about him being this smiley after a long day of work. So you do what any other concerned boss/ colleague/ friend would do in the situation:

You drive around the block and return to spy on him.

Hmm, not exactly spy, that’s a harsh word, more like check up on him to see if he’s okay.

You park in non-towing zone (you re-read the sign three times to be sure) and sit in a restaurant on the main street that has a perfect view of the studio, waiting to see if he leaves. You do end up ordering some dinner, something tiny and simple just so you don’t seem like you’re on a stakeout instead of eating.

Except, you have to make that plate last an hour because Minghao is not going anywhere. Did you miss him leaving? Unlikely since you’d have definitely heard the roar of his motorcycle. Unless he was walking and had slipped through without you noticing. You see it’s almost closing time in the diner you’re sitting in and pay your bill, being one of the last customers to leave.

You feel almost silly as you cross the street and creep up on the studio slowly. There’s no window on this side of the street so you duck into the side alley and discover Minghao’s motorcycle is in its usual place. That’s suspicious.

He hadn’t left yet.

You walk a few steps further and find a window that shows one of the big sparring areas. The lights are still on and you take a good look around. There’s some punching bags attached to one area in the far corner of the room, a massive mat in the centre of the room presumably where classes are held and a pile of the same style blue mats in the closer corner.

Except there’s a bunch of bedding on it, a pillow and a stack of blankets from what you can make out. The door to the side opens and Minghao walks through, a towel over one shoulder. He’s wearing a thick jumper and some sweatpants. You’re glued to the window, completely astounded.

Was he sleeping in his studio?

Is that why he didn’t want you to drive him home?

You’re lost in thought so you don’t see exactly when Minghao notices you and jumps out of his skin at the figure at his window. You do notice when he starts to take those ominous and rapid gazelle strides of his and you almost trip over your own feet jumping back. He yanks the window open, eyes wide and startled.

“YN?” He asks. “What are you doing here? I thought you went home?”

“Uh,” you say dumbly. “I could say the same!” You deflect the question back at him. Minghao considers it for a moment and nods.

“Fair enough, come in, it’s cold outside.” He gestures to the front door and you agree to go around.

Once you’re inside, you follow him down the hallway. You take note of several stray cardboard boxes that are dotted around the building’s foyer, the type that most people used for moving and it more or less confirmed what you were starting to think.

“Now, please enlighten me as to why you were peeping at my window?” He asks when you enter the small office attached to the room you were looking into before. You sit in one of the empty chairs opposite the desk while he occupies the one behind it.

“You make it sound like I was trying to be creepy. I was checking if you were in there.” You shrug. “And anyway, you’re not seriously going to sleep in your studio are you? What’s going on?” You press. He looks as if he’s contemplating whether to tell you the truth or not. He resolves on something but you’re not sure exactly what.

“Remember when I told you that I was getting less and less students?”

“Yeah, I mean how could I forget the Minghao Midday Special that took place in my car.” You resist the flashbacks that threaten to wash over you. Minghao looks mildly offended as he pouts at your comment. You almost laugh at the expression then remember this is supposed to be serious.  

“You know I was experiencing after effects that day, cut me some slack for fu-”

“Alright, alright, yes. You were saying?” You get your conversation back on track.

“Well, I found out the reason why so many students were leaving. There’s a new studio closer to some of the schools in town and they have more funding and advertise and what not near there and parents are keener to send their kids over there since they don’t have to make the trip. Basically I’m not making enough money and one thing led to another and I moved out of my apartment.”

It’s what you suspected but hearing it for real makes your eyebrows shoot up in surprise.

“So you’re living here now? For how long?”

“It’s been a couple of weeks already.”

“You’re kidding right?” You ask rhetorically. “Minghao, you know I have a spare room, all you had to do was ask. C’mon, you’re not staying here another night. It’s winter and there’s no goddamn heating.” You get up, ready to fight him if he refuses.

“I’m really fine, it’s actually not that bad-”

“I don’t care, I’m not leaving you here to freeze. Get your shit, we’re going.” You conclude, giving him no space to argue as you walk out the door to go get the car.

Clearly you got through to him because when you wait outside the studio, he appears with a duffel bag and gets in the car with no more protests.

When you get back home, the two of you take some of the boxes from your sister’s room and put them in the living room. You’ll deal with all of them properly tomorrow since it was late now. Once you’re done, you start to brew some tea.

“Second drawer down.” You say to Minghao when he comes through to the kitchen, gesturing to the far wall.

“Huh? What?” He asks but goes to your new bookcase wall, one of which had three drawers on the bottom half. He slides it open and finds the box of tiny tea light candles that you’d bought from IKEA. “This it?”

“Yeah.” You say from where the stove is. “For the vibes,” you repeat back to him when you bring the tea to the table. Minghao chuckles as you as pull out the lighter from your pocket and hand it to him so he can light the candles.

You sit for a moment, sipping the tea.

“Thank you.” He says suddenly. You know he’s not talking about the tea. “You didn’t have to do this but thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. That’s what friends are for.” You say. You don’t say anything more, because you know you don’t need to. You knew he’d do the same for you.

Friends.

You’d really come so far to think of him as friend. Sure you worked together and that was that, but you spent a considerable amount of time together and it was hard not to become familiar with each other through that.

You thought that Minghao was easy to get along with; it was easy to fall into step with each other and you shared enough similar qualities so that you had your own harmony. Besides, you lived alone and it might be nice to have someone around again, you just hoped that your sister’s ghost wouldn’t freak him out or anything.

*

As planned, the next day you begin to sort through all the boxes in the spare room and see if you can store things more efficiently. You had space beside your laundry machine, the room doubling as more storage so you could potentially put some stuff there and then buy some new furniture since you’d had to get rid of the old pieces. Like most things in this house, they were ancient, worn and beyond repair once they finally gave out.

After your sister’s death, it had been one of the only things you’d done to the room other than pack things up into boxes. There was no point in all her things gathering dust, you may as well preserve them. Deep down you’d mostly done it so you didn’t have to look at it all and you kept the door closed.

Maybe it was a good thing for Minghao to move in and live there - you would stop thinking of it as only the place that your sister had used once before. Now it would be your friend’s room too.

“What’s all this stuff?” Minghao asks behind you. You were looking through a box of clothes to make sure they weren’t getting mouldy. You swivel your head and focus on what he’s talking about.

Behind a stack of boxes is a bunch of canvases covered by old table cloths. As far as you remembered all the canvases were blank, ready to be painted on, an unexpected hobby your sister might have been trying to pick up but never really pursued properly.

“Uncover them.” You tell him so he can see for himself. With careful hands, Minghao makes sure that there’s minimum dust flying around as he removes the cloths. You stop what you’re doing to watch him.

His face lights up when he sees the canvases, much to your surprise. He’s actually smiling. You hadn’t really seen this side of Minghao before. This bright eyed, excited, child-like side. You find yourself wanting to smile too.

“Do you paint?” You ask him. He hums in response.

“A little, it’s just something for fun.” He explains. You nod, mostly to yourself since he hasn’t stopped staring at the canvases.

“They’re yours to use if you want them. They’ve been sitting there for years, you may as well paint on them.” You say. This seems to snap Minghao out of his trance.

“Really?” He asks, dubious. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” you sit down from your crouch. “My sister would want someone else to enjoy them even if she couldn’t, y’know. She was really generous, always putting others before herself.” You find yourself reminiscing for a moment.

“She sounds nice, I bet she was really kind.” He says, sitting down too.

“She was. She looked after me a lot, practically raised me. Always made sure I ate more, I was getting to school even if she was late. My grandparents passed away sort of early, so it was just me, my sister and my aunt for a long time, but my aunt had to work so my sister was basically my mom too.”

“That can happen, older siblings have a lot of responsibility, don’t they.”

“I guess, and younger siblings don’t really know what to do until they grow up and realise how much they’ve been looked after and loved. And then it’s too late.” You purse your lips. “Sorry, we were doing something, let’s keep going.”

“No, it’s okay. I like hearing about your sister. I wish I could have met her properly.” He replies earnestly.

“Thank you, I think she would have liked that too. Actually, I was kind of worried that her ghost might make you uncomfortable, she doesn’t show up much, not any more at least. Just keep your ring on.” You tell him apologetically.

“Not at all, I’m not going to be here for long anyway, don’t worry about it.” He looks like he wants to say something more.

“Go on.” You jerk your chin, encouraging him to speak.

“I was just wondering, is there a reason that she’s still here?”

“You mean, have I ever tried exorcising her?” You ask crudely, knowing he was trying to be polite and not offend you. “I have. I tried with Hoshi, then Seokmin and even Vernon but she wouldn’t possess them. She just kind of stood there. My guess is that she’s attached to the house or waiting for something but I can’t figure out what it might be.” You felt guilty, that was the truth, that you couldn’t send her off to rest in peace, but every lead you’d tried to follow led to a dead end.

“I could try it. If you wanted.” Minghao offers. You look at him and see the sincerity in his eyes. You’re a little touched by the gesture, as well as him listening to you talk about your sister. You hadn’t really spoken to anyone about her for all this time, usually avoiding the topic and keeping it to yourself.

“Maybe one day.” You say, getting up. “Now, where were we?” You take a look around the room and resume your clearing.

Amongst the piles of things you find a half empty box containing a smaller, old wooden box, one that you could guess originated from a century ago. You pick it up and unhook the metal clasp to open it. You’re shocked to find the contents of the box.

Inside, nestled in a purple velvet cloth, is what you can only describe as a vintage revolver. It must be decades old, one of the family heirlooms you’d only ever heard about but never actually seen in the flesh. You wonder why your sister had it. Was this a box your aunt had packed? Why had you never seen it? Why was the cardboard box only half full?

“What’s that?” Minghao peers over your shoulder as you look upon the gun.

“It’s a family heirloom. Many exorcist families have certain items that they pass on from generation to generation. This is one of ours. Its barrel only supports six bullets so it can only be used by the most skilled and elite exorcists. I wonder if my sister ever used it.” You say popping it back into its casing. You’d have to call your aunt and ask her what to do with it.

“Ah, got it. Seems cool. You should try it sometime.” He says casually, getting back to his own box.

You stop short, was that supposed to be a compliment?

You weren’t an elite though, you were so far from it, yet the idea that you could potentially become one tugged on your heart. It was ironic since you were never ambitious like your sister - she had always wanted to be great at her job, to make a mark on the family history, but you were just there since you had no choice.

Regardless of the intention of the comment, you allow yourself a tiny smile until you turn around and see the open box in front of Minghao. You see the beach towels and the bright green and yellow fabric of your kite, its shape crumbled and you would guess, broken. You face drops into a frown.

“Hey, YN, what should I do wi-” Minghao turns to look at you and stops abruptly when he sees your expression.

“Just leave it in the utility room.” You say.

Who knows, maybe when summer came, you’d use those again.                      

*

A/N: *gasp* and they were roommates! lol thanks for reading!! feedback is always appreciated <3 

*copyright 2021-  © momobani

[hotdogct]

as dreamers do ||| n.jm

pairing: na jaemin x reader genre: fluff words: 2.2k a/n: hello!!! this is my first piece of writing in a very long time, so apologies if its all over the place/makes no sense!!! obviously this is all a work of fiction, disclaimer, blablabla, idk what i’m doing i just wanted to write drabbles about nct lmao, so with that being said!!!! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Do you trust me?”

You roll your eyes in the direction of your coworker, Jaemin, who was sitting across from you in the fluorescent lit break room located just behind Splash Mountain’s gift shop and exit. The two of you were part of the massive workforce of college aged youth that Disney recruited every year to staff their theme parks and resorts. While you weren’t initially thrilled with your role as a custodian, you learned to appreciate its quirks - and that included the unique cast of characters otherwise known as your coworkers. From the full-timers that did their best to ignore your presence, knowing another semester would just bring a fresh wave of new faces, to your fellow program cohorts - Jaemin being one of them.

Assuming he was just quoting Aladdin at you, you offer no response to Jaemin’s initial query and continue scrolling through your phone, shoveling the few remaining cheese crackers from the nearby vending machine down your throat, intending on savoring the remaining minutes of your last break for the evening.

Your thoughts wandered back to your fellow cast members. There was Daehwi, sheltered and away from home for the first time, affectionately nicknamed ‘baby’ by everyone he befriended. Wendy, with her melodic voice and cheerful disposition, eager to break into song at a moments notice. Lucas, who might’ve come to Florida to party first, but worked equally hard. Hani, who arrived a few weeks after you, always the first to come help when you radio that your restroom has overflowed, again. Even Jinho, who had initially fooled you with his youthful looks before revealing this was his third time through the program, had somehow wormed his way into your heart. But nobody had been as captivating as Jaemin. When you first met him in passing in the cramped break room, you were convinced casting had made a mistake, that he was lost on his way to costuming for entertainment. He certainly looked like a prince - perfectly straight teeth, boyishly handsome good looks. A few days later he was assigned to clean the same bathrooms as you - “bathroom buddies” as everyone affectionately would call the practice. There, in the shared stockrooms, you learned who Jaemin was beyond his beautiful face - how his friends back home called him Nana, that he was studying photography in college, that he was an only child, a helluva flirt. Even your music tastes were similar, a fact you discovered on one of the many cramped, late night bus rides back to program housing where the two of you stood packed shoulder to shoulder, like sardines in a can. Jaemin interacted with guests both young and young at heart with an effortless charm and grace. Your managers loved him immediately, and before you knew it, you found yourself incredibly enamored with him too.

It wasn’t until his hand suddenly broke through your field of vision, blocking sight of your phone, that you realized Jaemin had stood up and was now standing directly in front of you. His head covered the harshest of the overhead lights, casting a soft halo glow around his black, messy hair and broad shoulders. He smiles down at you, innocently, and you feel your heartbeat accelerate when your eyes meet his own.

“Do you trust me?” he asks, again. This time, without thought, you place your hand firmly in his.

******

Jaemin leads you out of the blinding light of the break room silently, into the dark of the early winter evening. Eyes still adjusting, you follow behind him, thankful that your corner of the park was mostly deserted - Splash Mountain still closed for the season, only a few stragglers were coming and going to use the restroom in the area. You vaguely remember that Jaemin had been assigned a nearby zone to clean that evening - which was it again…?

He leads you up a flight up stairs, then, and that’s when it hits you. Train Zone. The Frontierland Railroad Station. It was an easy zone to clean, as the railroad shut down early each night before the fireworks display. Gathering the trash in an empty zone like this was a godsend, especially when compared to the other ride queues you had to clean, oftentimes fighting constant guest traffic like a fish swimming upstream.

Lost in your thoughts, you follow behind Jaemin as he completes his task diligently, making sure each trash can within the train station is empty and re-bagged for the next morning. It had been a few days since the two of you had worked in neighboring areas, and you often found yourself tongue tied when around him. The background music loop of Frontierland was noticeably absent, the speakers within the station shut off for the night. This led to Jaemin singing nonsense songs while tying up trash bags and wiping down surfaces, dancing lightly on his feet.

Turkey leg-g-g

At the train

D-d-d-driving me insane~

All you could do was laugh at his antics, and before you knew it, the nearby banana boat parked at the exit ramp was full of trash bags. Satisfied with the results of your hard work, you were about to begin the walk to backstage, where the dumpsters were located, when Jaemin turned about face, walking instead towards the train station.

“What are you doing?!” you hiss, not wanting to shout but needing to stress your confusion at his actions. Jaemin stops at the gate, unlatches it, before turning around, beckoning you over with a smile.

“I asked you if you trusted me, didn’t I?” his voice low in your ear upon your arrival at his side, banana boat now parked safely out of any guest traffic. Jaemin unlocks the gate for you, both of you falling silent on your walk back up into the depths of the train station - no more cute, silly songs spilling from his lips.

“Are you sure we aren’t going to get caught?” your voice carries louder than intended across the empty room as you go through the turnstile, and you wince.

Jaemin’s boisterous laugh took you by surprise, followed a moment later by his hand ruffling the top of your head, messing up your hair. As if to say, foolish.

“Getting the trash from up here is technically our responsibility. So what if it took us a little long?”

He was right - the best part of your job was the agency it provided. Sure, you were cleaning up garbage and bathrooms and vomit, but you could walk around freely. Explore hidden corners and crevices of the park. You knew all too well the allures of the shared hallway between the Frontierland restrooms, the stock closet next to the Veranda breezeway, the dumpster behind the Haunted Mansion - places the rest of your desperately horny coworkers had used to hook up in weeks prior. As you follow Jaemin around a corner towards the front of the station, through an open passageway, you wonder if that’s what he has in mind. That is, until you see the view in front of you.

Jaemin had led you to a small balcony that overlooked the whole expanse of Frontierland. From above you could spot guests walking about the park to and fro, the Rivers of America flowing gently behind them in the distance. Bits and pieces of Cinderella’s Castle were visible through the tree line, shining bright in multicolor as the nightly projection show proceeded to play.

“Jaem, it’s….”

“Nice, isn’t it?” He finishes your thought for you, his hand brushing over the staged decorations of fake barrels and crates against the wall of the balcony that seemed perfect to sit upon. Moments later, Jaemin plops down with a satisfied smile on his face and pats the space beside him, silently asking you to join him.

“Nice is an understatement” you offer in reply. A small laugh leaves his lips, a breeze rolls through. For just a moment, it is quiet and still.

“I’ve been wanting to show you this place for a while, but the stars just never aligned right until tonight.”

“You mean, the computer system that automates scheduling and staffing didn’t randomly place us in neighboring areas of the park until to-” Jaemin’s stiff elbow into your side lets you know to drop the wit. That you could do, but a question lingered in your mind, still, and you did have to voice your sole concern.

“How do you not get caught up here?”

Jaemin turns around, points to the solitary light on the balcony, and it’s then that you notice the bulb is off. You might feel exposed looking down upon everyone, but quickly realize that nobody is looking up at the closed train station - let alone looking for two cast members in white uniforms in the dark, goofing off on a weeknight.

Fooling around…

You were thankful for the cover of darkness in that moment, as you felt your cheeks turn crimson at the thought. Being alone, with Jaemin, this close, in the dark...This all seemed very sudden, despite everyone knowing about your big crush on Nana - he had to know too?

“So,” Jaemin’s voice cuts through your ever-racing thoughts, and your chest goes cold. “A little birdie told me there’s something you really, really like…”

If jumping off the balcony was a safe option, in that moment, you would’ve taken it. A confirmation of your worst fears - that Jaemin was aware of your ridiculous, schoolgirl like crush on him. You are speechless, sunken, pulse racing, and terrified.

Without the usual cue of area music, caught up in the last hour, you had missed your usual clues. A loud boom caused you to jump in your seat, out of your brain, head immediately turning towards Jaemin - only to make eye contact with him, bright lights reflecting off the surface, who smiles and motions for you to turn around. Of course.

If you were known for one thing amongst your cohorts, it was that you loved fireworks. Even on the most hectic of nights you found a way to make sure you were outside during the nightly display, never taking for granted that you were being paid to watch the sky light up in time to music. You had your favorite spots to watch from, but had never once considered the train station. From the corner of Frontierland, it felt like the fireworks were almost on top of you - cascading down upon Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, the expanse of empty night sky providing the perfect canvas. As the speakers above you were silent, there was no accompanying soundtrack, but it didn’t matter - you knew the whole show by heart. You were unaware of how long your mouth had been hanging open in blissful, childlike wonder, only noticing when Jaemin gently pressed his finger up against your chin, closing the space between your upper and lower lip through simple momentum. Moments later, his hand brushed over yours, testing the waters, and finding no complaint, interlocked his fingers with yours, and gravity pulls your head to his shoulder. A soft, steady hum leaves his lips, as you settle into this newfound bliss.

The rest of the fireworks show plays out in front of the two of you - two white ghosts in a dark shadow, illuminated by glowing streaks and bursts of color from the night sky. You’re working at the most magical place on earth, sure, but this felt like the most magical moment of your life.

Before you know it, the sky calms again, signaling the end of the show. You remain frozen for a moment, not wanting to leave. When you finally stand back up, awkwardly untangling yourself from Jaemin’s frame in a rushed manner, you can almost feel yourself floating back down to the ground, back to reality. Jaemin, your co-worker, Jaemin the flirt. He brought you up here just to watch the fireworks after all. Had you been a bit more outgoing, a bit less awkward, maybe...

Taking a few steps towards the entryway, a sudden hand on your wrist pulls you against the wall - thankfully, out of sight of any guests, but now engulfing your entire body in shadow. And it’s here in the darkness that Jaemin’s hand releases itself from your wrist, finds its way up to your cheek. Here, he leans in and kisses you - pressing his chapped lips against yours gently, but with enough intent and purpose that you swear you were seeing stars after a few moments. It doesn’t last long, as all fairytales would tell you. When you part, Jaemin rests his forehead against yours, both slightly damp from the Florida humidity, and you can feel him smile against you, somehow breathless, letting out a low chuckle, before asking,

“Did you think I was talking about the fireworks?”