#mauve nails

[chicinsilk]

US Vogue April 15, 1957

Juliette Marglen's nail polishes. From left to right, Rembrandt Ruby, Mondrian Corail, Degas Mauve, Lautrec Orange, and Cézanne Cerise. Gold backed diamond ring by Cartier.

Les vernis à ongles de Juliette Marglen. De gauche à droite, Rembrandt Ruby, Mondrian Corail, Degas Mauve, Lautrec Orange, et Cézanne Cerise. Bague de diamants adossés à l'or par Cartier.

Photo Irving Pen vogue archive

[jelreth]

every time i paint my nails im like 'oh they dont need to be black, i like my nails in every colour' and then later i paint my nails black and it feels like the beast in the woods fell back asleep . the dread is gone the evil is defeated etc etc.

[hotniatheron]

the color mauve and i will always be in a torrid love affair

[tteokdoroki]

⋆ 𝜗𝜚 ˚⟡. — SATORU GOJO. a woman in uniform.

about. satoru let’s you try his uniform on in the bedroom and loses his fucking mind. not even the strongest sorcerer can resist a woman in uniform.

warnings. minors, blank and ageless blogs do not interact ! nsfw, smut, power play, pussy jobs, oral sex ( m!receiving ), clothed sex, blind folds, some slight sub/dom dynamics, fem!reader. i wrote this with my clit tbh.

i think that gojo goes feral for you wearing his uniform. the whole get up, the blind fold and the jujutsu tech jacket. he’ll try to fight it, the feeling of power slipping away, as you crawl up the bed and between his thighs — your tongue dragging over your lips.

“oh, you shakin’ satoru?” he can see the excitement dancing around in your eyes even through the fabric covering them. he can sense the flare in your energy as you loom over him, ranking your nails down creamy washboard abs while his infinity fizzles away. “poor you. it’s not fun to be on the receiving end, is it?”

if satoru really wanted to, he would flip the situation in an instant — have you pinned to the bed with your clothes askew and your mouth hanging open in breathy whines as you beg for him to touch you. but he doesn’t. he can’t. you have so much power over him when you’re dressed like that and you act like you’re the strongest one in the room. you both know that he has the power to end your free rein over his body.

he is the strongest after all.

your mouth is quick to follow your nails, teeth and tongue trailing a wet path from gojo’s prominent collar bones, between his firm pecs and down his tense stomach. you suck hickies into the bone of his slender hips, shades of mauve and navy-ish blue blooming against pale skin like adding water colours to a blank canvas. satoru inhales sharply, losing control of his invisible barrier just so he can savour the feeling of you ravishing his body with nips and sucks and kisses.

you haven’t even gotten to the good part yet.

“lift your hips, satoru, let me see what you’ve got under all this,” you coo sweetly and it’s as if you’re drizzling honey in his ears. the white haired man follows your command like it’s the law, instinctively bucking up and away from the bed so you can pull down his boxers. “how sweet, you’re so hard.” satoru’s cock springs free from its restraints, sticky and bright red at the tip, pulsing and thick at the shaft. when you touch him and take hold of his length in your tiny hand, kitten licking the entirety of him while you look up at him hungrily through your blindfold… the man is sure he might die. you could kill him like this, with his infinity down…and you’re fully aware of it.

teasingly, you ease his cockhead past the seam of your kiss swollen lips and let it nudge the soft epithelium on the inside of your cheek — lubing him up, getting him ready for more of your torture. “should i suck you off? or should i ride you?” you manage, even though your mouth is full of dick…the next, your nose is buried in a trail of soft white pubic hair.

“don’t do that… please…” satoru whines, chest flushed and heaving, brilliant blue eyes boring deep into your soul. his fists form balls at the sides of his shaky legs, he could reach out and touch you — coax you into giving him more. it’s not like he has any restraints on…except for the metaphorical ones of your will and your control. you let go of him with a lewd pop, a trail of your saliva mixed with milky precum tying you to his sensitive erection. “f-fuck…”

cocking your head to the side, you use a soiled thumb and forefinger to lift the black hand over one of your dangerously pretty and mirth-filled eyes. “do what?” you respond with an inquisitive purr, licking your lips and moaning at the taste of the six eyes on them.

“s-shit,” satoru curses, blood curdling and boiling hot lust spreading through all four of his limbs at the sight. “don’t act like you don’t know what you’re doing to me…don’t act like you don’t know how feral i am for you…” saliva pools on the pallets of his tongue, slipping in between the sorcerer’s words as you move like a vixen in the woods above him — sliding yourself into gojo’s lap to position yourself perfectly above his aching cock. “don’t—“

gojo chokes on a moan as you begin circling your hips, plush and puffy pussy lips sucking in the length of his cock whilst it lays flat against his tummy. if he focuses his mind enough, pushes through the dark veil of lust you’ve pulled over his mind that works in overdrive, he can just about see his bulbous, leaky tip peeking out from underneath the folds of his dark uniform — the uniform that’s draped so perfectly over the curve of your mouth-watering body. a deep groan anchors itself in gojo’s chest like the roots of a sturdy oak tree and his hands leap up from the bedsheets to grip your peachy ass barely hidden by his clothes.

“don’t this, don’t that,” you hum condescendingly, as you alternate the movement of your hips — dragging them back and forth, back and forth over your lover’s pathetically wet dick. you make sure to clench your slick hole every time it meets his tip, glazing him in a small stream of your arousal. “don’t you know how to shut up ‘n take it, satoru?”

the dominance in your voice has the white haired man in shambles, twitching beneath the weight of your body on his. for christs sake, he’s the strongest, he brings curses and sorcerer alike to their knees just by mention of his name. so why is he so weakened by the sight of you above him? by the sight of you in his clothes, grinding sloppily on his wet cock? gojo doesn’t want infinity projecting him, not when he occasionally slips inside of your welcoming, tight cunt when you thrust yourself down on him.

“g-god…baby, please!” he hiccups, fighting the urge to force you down onto him fully — bully his way into your squishy insides. satoru could do anything he wanted to you, in a single moment he could have you sniffling against the sheets and crying as much as your cunt does…but the way you rein him in just by wearing his clothes stops him.

“what’s the matter, handsome? you cryin’?”

at your teasing, the cream that oozes from his sensitive tip paints your clit adds to your gathering arousal as it soaks through satoru’s uniform. nastily, he doesn’t think he’ll wash it, he wants the memories of tonight to stay with him forever. he wants to remember how you took over him and took his every capability in using his power — reducing the satoru gojo to a pussy drunk fool.

the scent of your sex is the only way he can think to immortalise this moment.

“i can… i can take it. give it t’me, want everythin’ you’ve got,” satoru simpers eagerly over the lewd, sticky pap, pap, pap of your sexes meeting in a salacious bump and grind. he has no idea where to look — intimidated by the control that oozes off of you, the control that he gives you. if he stares at your bouncing breasts beneath his jujutsu tech jacket or your clenching cunt for too long, he might just bust all over you and his inform before he even has the chance to be inside of you.

light laughter escapes you at gojo’s babyish bleats and whimpers — so you lift the blindfold once more, lips spreading into a slow and sexy smirk, much like the kind he would tease you with. “i don’t think you can handle my everything, baby.”

and you’d be right. not even the strongest sorcerer in japan could handle his woman in his uniform.

꒰ end. — all rights reserved © tteokdoroki 2024. do not copy, repost, translate & recommend elsewhere.

[strang3lov3]

Play Stupid Games

Summary - Who woulda thought you could make Joel come by playing with his nipples? NOT ME!! (3.6k words)

Tags - implied age gap as Joel calls reader kiddo, Joel Miller Nipple Worship, almost sub!joel, for like 8 seconds max, sub to softdom!joel, unprotected Piv, nipple orgasm, premature ejaculation, come eating, thigh riding, fingering, Joel talks you through it. A/N - this ended up being something between a drabble and a fic. I don’t know what this is. God spoke to me and I listened.

Thank you thank you thank you @noxturnalpascal for cleaning this mess up, thank you @beefrobeefcal @tightjeansjavi and @joelsgreys for the encouragement I needed to finish this!

Joel’s sheets are scratchy yet soft, his walls are illuminated by the flickering light of his burning candles. Joel’s naked under his blankets, your naked body tangled up with his. Your head rests on his chest and you draw lazy patterns with your fingers on his soft, pillowy tummy as Joel reads Stephen King’s The Shining to you, turning the pages when he asks you to. This is your evening routine with him, and you’ll never tire of it. Sex first, then a shared shower, where Joel washes your hair and you wash his. He dries you off, then you go back to bed to snuggle and read a book together. You giggle at the way he always wears his glasses too far down his nose, and he lightly drags his nails along your scalp. His clean and masculine scent takes over your senses and that low, gravelly tone of his voice as he reads aloud to you usually puts you to sleep in no more than twenty minutes. 

“Turn the page for me, hon,” Joel asks.

You’re not so tired tonight. You’re watching Joel’s chest rise and fall, lost in your own world and not really paying attention to his reading. Instead, you’re watching his skin erupt in goosebumps as you trace his chest, toying with his sparse chest hair, lightly teasing his nipples, they’re a dark sort of mauve-brown color. Joel’s breath hitches as they pebble beneath your touch. 

He bounces his book lightly on the crown of your head. “You with me?”

“Mhm,” you hum, “Of course.”

“Mm,” Joel mumbles, not convinced. And he’s right to not believe you. You’re grinding against his thigh subtly, but not subtle enough for Joel to not notice. He smirks as you reach between his thighs, first cupping his balls and then playing with his cock, feeling him begin to thicken in your palm. “Ohh,” Joel grins, “That’s why you’re not listening.”

“I’m listening,” you reply, stroking his cock. It’s always such a satisfying feeling, running your thumb along the thickness of his head, feeling him twitch and grow harder. 

“Are ya? What’s happening right now?”

“Wendy…”

“Wrong,” he interrupts, “Try again.”

“Jack–”

“Danny,” Joel corrects, “What’s Danny doin’?” You don’t know the answer to that question, of course you don’t. Because you’re too distracted by what’s happening in your hand. “Exactly,” Joel says. He sets his book down on his stomach, the pages split to mark his place. He reaches under the covers and wraps his hand around your wrist, halting your movements. “You wore me out tonight, kiddo. I don’t have it in me to go again.”

It’s true, you did wear Joel out. It had been a few days since you’d last had him, and you were missing him dearly. Joel was gone all day, and you’d watched all three Indiana Jones movies, which didn’t help your case in the least. Fuck it, you might even be ovulating. You’re not exactly keeping track. Whoops.

You practically tackled him when he walked through the door. Dinner was made and the table set, but it remained untouched as you let Joel know just how much you missed him. Scrambling to unbuckle his belt, you walked him backwards until the backs of his legs hit the couch and he sat down. You wasted no time shimmying off your pants and pulling his own halfway down his thighs. He guided you to straddle his lap, his already rock-hard cock held loosely between his fingers.

Usually he’ll tease you a bit, make you beg and ache and cry for it as he drags his tip through your folds, toy with your clit for a moment before notching himself at your entrance. Today, upon realizing the severity of your need for him, he pulled your hips down on his cock, burying himself in you entirely. He let you adjust to him, feel the stretch and the ache of him inside you. No fingers to warm you up, no tongue, he simply gave all of himself to you. 

Once adjusted, he began to roll his hips, grunting in your ear as you moaned sweetly in his own. That patch of hair at the base of his cock rubbing against your clit, how his thick cock hit all of your sweetest spots with each of his deep, sloppy, and quick thrusts. He was relentless, just how you needed him. As he fucked you, he slid his hands up the softness of your tummy and your rib cage, then cupped your breasts, flicking and twisting your nipples with his fingertips. 

Per your wishes, Joel had brought you to the edge and pushed you over it multiple times by the time it was all said and done. You came on his cock once and begged him to let you come once more, and then one more time after that before he finally let himself go. By the time you’d finished, the sun had gone down and dinner had gottencold. It could’ve been hours, and Joel was spent. He could hardly keep his eyes open in the shower, swaying back and forth as he flirted with the idea of falling asleep under the warm water running down his shoulders. 

-

“I’ll do all the work, Joel,” you offer as you squeeze his cock. “I just need you for a second.” 

“Charming. You lied to me twice just now,” Joel smirks, turning his head to look down at where your head rests on his shoulder. “Didn’t you?”

“No, of course not.”

“Oh, sure. You just need me for a second, huh? Can I time it?” You bite your cheek to hide your sheepish smile. You see his point, but you weren’t lying, just slightly misrepresenting the truth. “Yeah, and you know what else is a load of bullshit? I’ll do all the work, Joel,” he mocks, putting on his best girl voice and batting his eyelashes. 

You’re definitely not lying about that, though. “It’s true,” you argue, “I’ll–”

“Yeah, right. You ain’t done a lick of hard work in your life. You got me in the palm of your hand and you don’t gotta lift a damn finger to get what you want. Do you?”

You’re not answering that. Instead, holding up your pinkie finger, you swear to Joel, “I promise, I’ll do it all.”

Joel eyes you suspiciously before holding up his pinkie finger as well. You link fingers, kiss your thumb as he kisses his own, then smush them together. “S’a deal now, my darlin’.”

Joel first takes off his glasses, then dog-ears the page of his book to mark his place in the story before he sets both down on his nightstand. He raises his hands in the air as if he’s surrendering to you. You pull down the blankets and straddle him, your already wet pussy grinding against his now fully-hardened cock. You smile mischievously, biting your bottom lip as you pin his wrists to the bed on either side of his head. “Goddamn,” he drawls, “Am I nothin’ but a piece of meat to ya?”

“Mhm,” you reply, kissing his cheek and then his lips.

Joel smiles against your lips, “Alright, sweet girl. Show me what you got,” he mumbles. You pull back and Joel waits patiently, his wrists still pinned under your palm as you decide what you’re gonna do to him. You start first by grinding yourself against his member, garnering an amused smile from him as his tip catches against your clit and you moan. “Very nice,” he praises, “Gimme some more.”

Still grinding on his cock, you kiss his lips again, then down his jaw, down his neck, biting and sucking as you do so. “No marks,” he warns, squeezing your ass. 

“I know, Joel,” you whisper, continuing your trail of kisses down his chest, down his tummy and back up again. You line yourself up with his cock and sink down on him, experimentally licking a nipple at the same time. Joel shivers. You do it again, this time gently teasing his other nipple with your fingers. 

“What are you doin’, kiddo,” Joel murmurs quietly. 

“Nothing, Joel.”

“I think you’re lyin’ again. Think you’re causin’ trouble.”

“I’m taking care of you.”

“I don’t, fuck, I don’t know–” you hum against him, sending vibrations through his skin. You’re grinding on him as you do so, rubbing your clit against that patch of hair at the base of his cock, taking in all of him - the feeling of him inside you, how you’re pulsing around him. His smell, his warm and thick body underneath yours. He’s breathing heavily, little whimpers escaping his mouth as he squeezes your ass and your sides, his fingertips digging into your skin so hard it hurts. He seems almost desperate. 

“Don’t know what, Joel?”

“I don’t - fuck, ohh god, please, please–” Holy fuck, he’s begging, and you didn’t even know he could do that. You’re not sure what he’s begging for - more, less, go, stop. “Why’re you teasin’ me like this, sweetheart, why’re–”

“I’m not doing anything, Joel,” you smile against his skin. You’re trying it all out now, with one of his nipples you’re using your fingers to twist and tease him, feeling him jolt and tremble with your touch. With your mouth, you’re using your tongue - tracing the outline of his areola, swirling your tongue in a spiral to reach his sensitive bud. And then you switch, using your tongue on the nipple previously occupied by your teasing fingertips. 

“Bullshit. You’re—fuuuuuck,” Joel lets out a long groan, his cock twitching inside of you as he squirms underneath you. “I can feel you smirkin’.You’re testin’ my patience. You need, I need, Christ–you’re startin’ something you’re not gonna like finishing.”

He’s warning you that this might be a mistake, but this only fuels your fire. It’s always you who’s squirming and crying and whimpering, begging for god knows what as Joel grins above you, torturing your clit and promising you that it’ll all be okay, that you’re not gonna break. 

You’ve got him reduced to a mess, he’s moaning and whimpering, breathing heavily with his eyes squeezed shut, his brows knit together. You can feel in his touch that he’s conflicted, squeezing you tighter yet itching to push you away. His skin is tingling, his balls tightening as you clench around him, still grinding yourself ever so slightly on his pelvis. You’re making a sloppy mess of his chest with your mouth, all spit covered as you circle his nipples with the tip of your tongue, rolling the bud gently and carefully between your teeth. It’s torturously pleasurable when you begin to suck and nip at his nipples and Joel thinks he’s gonna–

“Fuck, Christ, oh my god, oh my god, mmm-ohhhh.”

He’s spilling into you, surprising both you and himself. He comes loudly and desperately, all needy whimpers and cries as he pulses inside you, painting your insides with his warm, sticky spend. Grabbing you and holding you tight, his grip easing as his breaths begin to even and he eventually goes still. You rest on his chest, feeling him leak out of you. When you finally sit up to admire your work, Joel’s got his eyes closed, his cheeks are rosy. A few tears running down his face and when you wipe them away, he opens his eyes. 

“You look proud of yourself,” he tells you. His tone is pointed yet quiet, like he’s bashful. “Learned a new trick, huh.” 

“I did,” you smile. He’s gone soft inside of you and you get up off of him, but Joel pulls you back down. “Nuh-uh. Where do you think you’re going?”

“Just to the–”

“Sit back down. I ain’t finished with you,” Here it comes. You anticipated Joel getting revenge in some way or another, but you’re not sure how he plans to. Maybe he’ll lay you on your back, lick you until you cry the way you did to him. He might bring you to the edge over and over and over again, yet never push you past it. Or he’ll make you come until your legs twitch and shake uncontrollably, and you’re a sweaty, sobbing mess of overstimulation. He’s done it all before and you know he’s not opposed to doing it again. “You’re gonna hold up your end of the bargain. Do some hard work for once in your life.”

You begin to protest, “I already did.” 

“That don’t count. You cheated and found a loophole. You wanted me, so you’re gonna have me,” You’re not sure what he means or what he wants from you. You thought you did already have him. “Get on your knees, kiddo,” Joel says, slapping his bare thigh. When you pause, Joel nudges you and guides you to straddle his thigh. “Like this,” he says. 

“What am I supposed to do?”

“I’m sure you’ll figure that out,” Joel drawls, “I gave you a hint already.”

He’s placed you on his thigh. He says you wanted him, so you’re gonna have him. But you’ve made him come already, so that means–

“I can’t do that.”

“You started this, you’re comin’ one way or another,” he says. “You’re not getting up until you do it. You’d best get to it.”

His tone is serious, but you’re sure this has to be some sort of game. He watches you, how you furrow your brows in confusion. Joel sits up and adjusts a few pillows behind himself, spreads his legs further apart and holds your ass cheeks in his big, strong hands. “Rock your hips f’me.”

Slowly, you rock your hips on his thigh. You can’t feel much except for the mess you’re making on his leg, your arousal and his spend. It’s all awkward - the clunky and graceless rolling of your hips, the quietness in the room as Joel watches you intently. You shift your thighs, holding on to one of Joel’s hips and one of his shoulders as you rock your hips, trying to feel anything at all. You do - just for a second, maybe. “Keep goin’,” he tells you while drawing lazy patterns on your thigh, but you’re not sure that you can keep going. The expectant look on Joel’s face has you feeling uncomfortable. Not the bad kind of we need to stop this now uncomfortable, but just sort of puzzled. Joel could have tortured you with his teasing and he probably would have gotten a better result. He seems to know this, so he begins to guide your hips again. You’re not sure how he does it, but he finds the perfect angle and he knows this when you moan for him, squeezing his shoulders tight. “Like that,” he instructs. 

You do your best to mimic the action, but it’s just not happening. He must’ve been flexing his thigh, or the way he moved your hips is a way that you can’t replicate without help for some reason. Frustrated, you slump down onto his chest. “I can’t do it.”

“You’re gonna have to,” Joel coos. 

You shake your head, “No, no. I want–just fuck me. I want you inside me, I can’t come without you inside me.”

“Yeah, I know you want me inside ya. Can’t do nothin’ about that on account of what you did to me, now can I?”

You whine and groan in irritation. “Then I need you to do the w–” you press your lips in a thin line. Oops. 

“Work,” Joel adds for you, finishing your sentence. “S’that what I’m hearin’? You need me to do the work?” You nod your head, it’s worth a shot. Maybe. “Not gonna happen, hon. We shook on it.” You pout, whining and groaning again. Joel strokes the skin of your back, “Oh, I know, I know,” he coos, feigning sympathy. “Let this be a lesson to ya then, kiddo. You play stupid games, you win stupid prizes.”

“Joel,” you protest.

“Joel,” he mocks. “Come on, get up. Get to work.” Joel pushes you back, forcing you to sit back up on his thigh. Generously, he helps you find that movement once more. Where your hips tilt at just the right angle and you can feel the pressure of his thick thigh against your clit. “Right there,” you gasp, holding his hand on your hip. “Nuh-uh,” Joel shakes his head and pulls his arms back, crossing them on his tummy. 

It’s okay. You’re gonna figure this out. You brace yourself on Joel’s shoulders as you search for that sweet spot on your own. Within a couple of minutes, you think you find it. You’re alternating between feeling good, better, worse, then to worse, good, and better. At moments it’s great, and then it just…disappears. And at this point, you’re exhausted. It’s been god knows how long since you even found yourself on Joel’s lap in the first place. You groan, resigning yourself to defeat. You’re about to get off of Joel’s thigh when he grabs your bicep. “Aw, come on kiddo. You givin’ up that easy?”

“Yeah,” you tell him, your tone saying all that you’re feeling. Dejection, frustration, disappointment. 

Joel shakes his head, “M’not lettin’ ya.”

“Joel–”

“Deep breath in and out for me,” he instructs, and you roll your eyes. He repeats himself, “Deep breath. In. And. Out. Do it now.” And so, not wanting to make this any worse for yourself and just wanting to get it over and done with, you close your eyes. You breathe in deeply, letting your tummy expand with his instruction, then exhale your breath fully. “You need to settle down,” he says as you continue your breaths. “S’it. Nice an’ slow.” 

“I’m sorry,” you mumble, “It’s just hard.”

“Know it’s hard. What’d we talk about though, hm? Hard work, right?” you nod your head, “Yeah,” Joel says, “I know. You’re gonna work for it, sweet girl. I’ve been spoilin’ ya.” A few more deep breaths, and Joel speaks again, “M’not gonna do it for you, but I’ll walk you through it if you’d like.”

“Yes,” you beg, your eyes flying open. “Please. Help me.”

“Least you’ve still got your manners,” Joel smiles. He reaches for your knees then, spreading them wide. “Tilt your hips forward, sweetheart, and rock ‘em on me,” he tells you. “What feels good? Back and forth, left and right?”

“Back and forth.” 

“Then do it.”

 And so you do it, just like you’ve been doing this whole goddamn time. Joel watches in your face that you’re not quite there yet, but he encourages you anyway. “That’s it, you’re gettin’ it. Tilt down a bit.”

You’re rocking your hips on his thigh, grinding against him, and with his advice it finally, finally feels good. “Fuck,” you moan. 

“Again,” he instructs, “Keep goin’.”

You grind on him, this time with more intent. Faster and harder, having found that sweet feeling that’s beginning to build in the pit of your stomach, you savor it.

“Good girl,” Joel praises. And then as if to reward you for your hard work, Joel reaches between your thighs and finds your clit with his middle and ring fingers, giving you something extra to enjoy. He’s circling your clit as you move your hips, and when that feeling in your stomach begins to build, you ride him  more intensely, chasing after that high you so desperately need, that you’ve worked so hard for. 

“Need it–need you, Joel, don’t stop, don’t–”

“I’m not goin’ anywhere. Take your time, kiddo, I’m right here.” 

“You’re here,” you nod, your brows furrowed together and you’re almost unable to speak, too focused on the prospect of release. 

Your velvety folds soaked in Joel’s come and your own arousal. “I’m– fuck, Joel, I’m close,” you moan.

“I know you are, keep goin’,” Joel coos, “You’re right there, just let it happen. Gimme a good one, sweetheart,” You feel your orgasm building to a new edge when you hear him say, “Come for me.”

All it takes is that one command, laced with Joel’s encouragement, and you’re sent tumbling over the edge. Your long-awaited orgasm begins at your core and travels through you, washing over you with pulsing waves of pleasure. “Joel,” you moan breathless and needy, writhing on top of him. You feel it everywhere, in your spine and down your thighs. Your clit twitching, your walls pulsing around nothing as you ride him.

“That’s it, kiddo, there it is. Good girl,” Joel coos. “Did so good.” 

With a soft moan, you fall limp next to Joel, steadying your breath.  

A moment passes. “Finish the job,” he whispers.

“What are you talking about?”

 “You made your mess on me, so you’re gonna clean it up. Part of the deal, sweetheart,” Joel gestures to your combined arousal on his thigh, then swipes his middle two fingers through the mess and pushes it between your lips, “You know what to do. Lick it up,” he instructs. 

It’s not lost on him, the hypocrisy of having you clean up a mess that he had you make. But like he asked, you do it. You’ll do it every time he asks. He holds your hair back as you lick the mess from his thigh, savoring that slightly salty, masculine flavor he knows you love. “Such a good girl. You ready to go to sleep?”

“No,” you yawn, and Joel puts on his glasses again, opens the book back up and reads you the story. You’re sleeping on his chest in minutes. 

If you enjoyed, please please please reblog, leave me a comment, or send me an ask. Your words go a long way and keep me motivated to write 🩷

Forgot to add cat pics!!! I add these at the end of my fics now

[luvf4ngz]

In Bloom - jason todd.

Contents: Marking, Biting, Scratching, Possessiveness, Implied Sexual Content

Word Count: 464

Authors Note: Consider this a love letter to Jason Todd and my marking kink - taken from my AO3 <3

For the most part, Jason Todd enjoys the powers that he got from his dunk in the lazarus pits. Increased strength, increased speed, and increased stamina - things like that made it easy for him to do his job. To take down the baddies of Gotham and clean her from the inside out. To protect the ones he cared for, to protect the ones that didn’t have anyone else.

One thing he hated, however, was his healing factor. 

He hates how fucking fast your scratches and hickies disappeared off his body, leaving him a blank and loveless canvas once again. 

He always craves your marks on his skin. He absolutely adores the scattered love bites and dark bruises decorating his frame. He can often be seen in the bathroom of your shared home, body twisted in the mirror as he admires the deep carmine strokes that paint his back, or leaning in close to lovingly rub at the mauve blotches that stain the skin of his neck. 

He makes it a habit to show off your markings, often refusing to sport a shirt wherever he’s out and about - or at the very least a quite revealing muscle tee. His marked skin makes his friends’ eyes roll, makes his brothers give him disgusted expressions, and makes strangers on the streets grimace at him. 

He doesn’t care. He's shameless, especially when it comes to you. 

He always just wants to show you off, to express how fucking grateful he is to be yours. 

That's why he always encourages you to sink your teeth in harder, to rake your nails down his back harsher, anything to make those little symbols of your love for him last longer.

“That’s right, princess, there you go. You’re taking me so well, huh? Hold onto me a little tighter.”

In return, he’ll slam his cock into you faster, grip onto the soft of your hips harder, bite and mark you up himself. He paints your body like Monet, because to him you’re definitely as precious as the most exquisite work of art in the world.

He’ll never get enough of feeling how your skin gives way to his sharp canines, or how your shaking body feels under his calloused fingertips.

It’s the thought of losing you, of ever having to let you go that makes him fuck you rougher - that makes him hide his face in the crook of your neck and dent your skin with his teeth.

He relishes the sight of you the next morning: spread out on the bed with telltale signs of lovemaking covering every inch of your flesh. 

He can feel his heart beating out his chest, feel his blood thrumming furiously under your veins because you’re so wholly and undoubtedly his.

Just as he is yours. 

Thank you so much for reading! A comment or reblog is much appreciated. Have a great day <3

- sumi ☆ミ

ミ☆ masterlist

[tnypuppy]

suguru LOVES breeding his puppy girl !

cw: fem!reader, unprotected, reader wears puppy ears, pet play, missionary, clit play, g-spot stimulation, creampie, breeding, cervix kissing, mention of buttplug, pet names (puppy, pup, baby, good girl, girl)

word count: 1.3k

: ・ෆ・┈・┈・ᕱ⑅ᕱ・┈・┈・ෆ・ :

"suguuuuu-!" a high pitched-cry is leaving your parted lips the deeper suguru pushes into you. he's pushing your twitching legs back, silently encouraging you to hold them back, and you do.

he's balls deep inside of your hot gooey cunt, pretty hole weeping with how much his veiny cock stretches you. your slick is drenching him from the tip of his rod all the way to his balls. suguru is cooing when he feels how much tighter your grip gets — his hand sliding up to play with the floppy dog ears of your headband.

"what is it, girl?" his voice perks as his hand gently squeezes a plush dog ear, mauve eyes glazed; view flickering between your fucked-out face and where your nether regions clash together. "does my puppy feel good when i fuck her like this?" suguru swivels his hips, throbbing head of his dick smearing circles of precum against your poor cervix.

"uh-huh.. is too much.. is so much, sugie.. so good." you nod as you breathe heavily. nails digging into your twitching thighs as you hold them back - he's stretching you out so good that it's almost overwhelming.

"aww." he cooed - "it's too much for my girl?" he cocks his head, pulling his hips back to rid your pretty pussy of him. his hand wraps around the base of his cock before he slaps the length of it right against your saturated slit, ridge of his cockhead tapping right on your clit; eliciting a nasty whimper from you.

suguru is rocking hips against you, length now gliding up and down your saturated slit as he focuses on your pathetic expressions. he makes sure his cockhead keeps catching against the hood of your slippery clit. needy to be back inside, he roughly grabs your hips and angles them — his cock slamming back into you; a mixture of pleasure and pain croaking out from the depths of your throat.

"it's okay, pup. my good girl. you've taken this dick so many times before." the growl he gives out is feral, and your eyes are widening in pleasure when you feel him massage his cock into your g-spot. "you can take me, baby."

your pretty moans are coming out in stutters now; little black spots peppering your vision each time his cockhead is thrashes into your g-spot. letting out precious gasps for air between each moan he rips from you; you grow even noisier as he detaches a hand from your hip, allowing the pad of his thumb to toy your sensitive button. you feel so stupid, brain getting fuzzy as he continues to fuck into you — he's making you feel SO good with how well he fucks into your g-spot and toys with your clit.

"such a good puppy for letting me fuck you like this. you're so dirty, baby." suguru's teasing you with smugness, arrogant grin spread across his lips as he admires the view you give him.

"y'know baby." he starts, clearing his throat to prevent a moan from slipping out. "n-..next time we do this, we should see about getting you a tail, yeah? maybe a tail plug for that cute ass of yours." he chuckles when he feels your cunt tightly grip him at the incredibly lewd suggestion.

his dick is so thick that each and every vein is imprinting itself into your snug walls, his rigid tip making out with your g-spot while his thumb massages circles into your clit. you're feeling a giant hot knot in the pit of your lower stomach; a knot that's tugging and tightening with each rub and massage he gives to you. the best and worst part of this is you can't do anything but take what he's giving you - it's so much but it's so good. god, he's reducing you into a dumb girl and you both are loving every moment that passes.

"sugu..a-ah. suguru. mhm." you're so cute when you whimper n' stammer like this! desperately nodding your head in approval, brain so mushy that it's hard to form a coherent sentence. suguru is eating up every little noise and reaction he gets from his good girl.

you're getting tighter around him and his balls are wavering. frequent grunts are leaving suguru's lips now — strong thighs flexing as he's nearing a delicious edge that he wants to be thrown over. same as you.

"m-mm." he's moaning now and he can't help it. you feel so good around him, he can tell you're close and he's loving it. "is my good girl close?" he's smiling as his body lurches over your shaking one, thumb quickening it's circles as a shrill sob is leaving you.

"g'na cum, s-suguru. can i? pleasepleaseplease." the tight knot in your stomach is beginning to blossom, you're teetering now; you're so close to cumming on your boyfriend's cock.

suguru groans at your begging, head getting dizzy as his balls are basically jumping in excitement to release all it's sweet milk into you.

"yeah.. y-yeah. cum for me. cum, be my good puppy. gonna breed this pussy when you do, baby." he's rambling as he feels himself right there, ready to cum with his pretty girl. the grip on your hip as he keeps you angled is so tight — you're definitely gonna have bruises but neither of you care right now.

"h-hnnh.. cummin', sugie.." you let out the dirtiest cry of his name before it's quickly developed into garbled moans and jumbled words.

your squeeze on his cock is dangerous as you cum, hot and snug walls spasming tightly onto him. each limb is twitching and multiple waves of hot euphoria are slamming into your cunt. your skin is blistering hot with pure pleasure; you see white and black stars cluttering together in your sight, your body feels so overwhelmed and overstimulated and it's so good. his dick slides deep into you now instead of just prodding at your gooey sweet spot, and he's stammering and grunting as his thumb rubs your clit upwards; making your sobs louder.

"baby-" he breaks out into a series of grunts and moans, hips stuttering rapidly as his hands are squeezing at your bruising hips. he's stuttering and calling you a good girl, a puppy, and his baby.

he delves his cock deep in and bottoms out, pushing his twitching tip right against your shallowing cervix. thick ribbons of his hot milk are decorating your cervix, your dripping mound being held closely against his hips as you both let out filthy moans and gasps. both of you feel his cum sloshing around his cock, trying to escape to your entrance. suguru, despite being fucked out, is having none of it. he bucks his hips into yours a few times to fuck his cum back in, wanting to keep it secure - where it belongs.

after the remnants of both of your explosive orgasms begin to settle, you two grant yourselves a moment to recollect and catch your breath. suguru's softening cock is slipping out of you and his hands are gently laying your hips against the bed. suguru pulls the puppy ear headband off the top of your head and lurches over your body again; this time to press a chaste kiss against your forehead.

"you did so good, baby." he whispers lovingly against your forehead. "so proud of you."

you mumble a soft response back to him and suguru pulls back; your sleepy eyes trying their best to stay open as you let out a tiny yawn. he smiles so sweetly to you and your lips weakly pull to return a smile back.

"rest, my baby. i'll take care of everything." he reassures as your eyes slip shut, the weight of suguru leaving the bed as he goes to retrieve a cup of water — as well as a wet towel for the sticky mess between your legs. <3

[cameronspecial]

Innocent reader who got a new perfume without knowing it was a pheromone perfume and it’s driving Rafe crazy but she doesn’t understand what’s happening. He just wants to smell her and kiss her

Drives Me Wild

Pairing: Rafe Cameron x Reader

Warnings: Mention of Sex at the End

Pronouns: She/Her

Word Count: 0.4K

Masterlist

The liquid in the heart-shaped glass seems innocent. It isn’t, at least not to Rafe. He didn’t think anything of it when Y/N returned from the store with the bottle and happily showed it to him. He was on a work call, so he smiled and gave her a kiss before walking to his office. He regrets not looking further into it because now, her smell haunts him wherever he goes. She has been gone since this morning and he can still feel her presence. The cinnamon makes him yearn for her to be here. He finds himself sitting by the front door with his phone open on Find My iPhone in anticipation of her coming back. The nail of his thumb is bitten to its core and it rests there until the fumble of her keys in the lock causes him to spring up to his feet. As soon as she is through the door, he is on her, placing kisses at her pulse points where she puts the perfume. His nose is buried behind her ear and he nibbles the skin under her jaw under her ear. A dark mauve stain begins to bloom where his teeth nip. 

She giggles at his touch and steps forward to try to escape his hold. She has to start dinner. He only lets her shuffle forward a little bit, still in his arms. Her waist twists in his hold, so she faces him. “I have to go start dinner,” she informs him. The only confirmation he gives that he heard her is that he walks them both into the kitchen. He doesn’t detach from her as she moves around the kitchen. She expects him to let go of her when she begins to cut the vegetables, but he doesn’t. 

Instead, her perfume overtakes him and his assault on her skin begins again. His lips trail up and down her neck and once it is covered in kisses, he lifts her wrist up to his mouth. This causes her to place the knife down so he doesn’t get hurt. She loves his kisses; however, they are annoying when she is trying to get something done. “What is going on with you, Baby? Why are you so clingy?” she snickers, trying to wiggle herself out of his hold. He shrugs and continues his attack, “I don’t know. It’s just something about you that drives me wild.” And then, the tension in his pants begins to grow and she can feel his hard-on pressed against her butt. He is an elephant in a musth as he begins to rub himself against her. The mood in the room shifts to one of passion and Y/N abandons her attempts to make dinner, letting Rafe lead her into the bedroom. They have no idea what gets Rafe so enamoured by her, but they aren’t going to complain.

Taglist: @winterrrnight @loves0phelia @thelomlisrafecameron @wickedlovely121 @thepatriarchykeychain @drewsmusee @starkowswife @maybankslover @forstarkey @loving-and-dreaming @magicalyoura @rubixgsworld

[trashogram]

He Chose You (Pt. 8)

Lucifer/Reader: Lucifer chooses you to be the mother of his child. Rated E.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 13.5 | Part 14 | End

The illness persists in the weight of your skin over your bones yet the loss of actual muscle and fat that turn you skeletal. Your legs become bow-like and pain radiates just above your hairline. Your vision crackles with scattered flashes of black dots, and you drink like a man lost in the desert. 

Only foods that are red stay down, and even then you only nibble at peppers and plug your nose at the raw meat you stuff in your mouth. You feel the sunlight outside your window when you open it up and stick your hand through, as walking out of your apartment is a chore you can only handle once a week at most. 

Once a homebody, reclusive out of necessity and exhaustion from simple interactions, you now live for Lucifer’s chatter. His presence abates your fever, physically and emotionally. The dependence on him, as sweet as he appears, makes you itch inside. 

Everything is terrible, you tell yourself at least once per day, as the illness persists. 

But if Lucifer is good at anything, it’s providing you with distractions from the ever-present suffering.

—

The sounds you made put the Angelic Choir to shame. 

“Lucifer, don’t say that!”

The King of Hell’s laugh was muffled as he stayed buried in your cunt. The memory of you being so flustered was almost just as sweet. 

He eyed your tightly screwed expression just over your growing belly, and felt gratified at his idea to have you propped up by pillows from head to hips. With the boost, Lucifer could watch you enjoy yourself and remain comfortable. 

Let him feel the springs of your mattress dig into his knees and stomach. They were secondary to the pain of his own hardness straining in his slacks. 

A keen from you, and the feeling of your nails as they raked through his hair and over his scalp, had Lucifer moaning. His eyes rolled back, momentarily blinded by euphoria. 

“Ooh!” 

Eyes snapping open, Lucifer lifted himself from the bed quickly. His tongue slipped out of you, dripping onto the sheets when he was mindless to reeling it back in.

“Why’d you stop?” Your whine between quick pants made him blink.

One eye at a time. 

“I thought I hurt you.” He smiled, sheepishly, once his tongue was back in his mouth. 

His mauve-lids and golden lashes fluttered when you wiped the slick from his chin. There was no missing the color that had returned to your cheeks with all the exertion he was putting you through, and he felt a swell of pride at being able to breathe life back into you. So to speak. 

“Heaven help me.” You said, sarcastically. 

Breathlessly.

The Devil’s hips jerked when your hand rose to grip a fistful of his blond hair. You manually lowered him back between your legs, heedless to the way his entire frame shivered.

— 

‘I think I… I think I’m in love with her.’ Lucifer looked so earnest, meeting the glow of Ozzie’s stare. 

The Sin clucked a tongue in his King’s direction, shaking his head. ‘Well, don’t tell her that. You’re gonna scare her away, man.’ 

—

Lucifer watched you fall apart from just his tongue (its length and width being inhuman notwithstanding). 

You were so beautiful like this. Legs shaking, body spasming, letting go.

‘I love you.’ 

Man’s (alleged) Greatest Enemy could just barely contain himself. 

‘I love you I love you I love you’ 

—

Lucifer brings you another scroll one sunny day, and you find it riddled with names. 

“I’ve been thinking about what to call him or her, so I made a list! …Kinda, sorta during a meeting… whatever, it wasn’t that important!” 

Oh, you could see that. 

“Do you like any of them? Which are your favorites? No! Gimme your top 5!” His jubilation is so innocent, but something inside you hitches. 

“Does it actually matter what I think?” You chuckled. 

“Of course it does!” He cried. “You’re the mo— uh… you’re putting in most of the work!”

The weak save went unchallenged. You were already circling names, likening the process to navigating a minefield as you looked through a long line of names you couldn’t even pronounce or read. 

‘Ehb 

Horus

Azor 

Carlton’

“What about a girl?” Lucifer asked out of the blue. 

Your head cocked to the side as you realized your picks had been relegated to just one side of the endless list. That he’d written down names for boys and for girls struck you as odd. 

 “You think it’ll be a girl?” 

Lucifer looked at you with a curious gaze. “Could be, couldn’t it?”

After a moment, you shrugged. “I guess so…” 

The King’s confusion crinkled around his eyes and caused an uncanny few lines in his otherwise perfect forehead. You flick the pen at him teasingly to wipe the look from his face.

You write a few names down, and watch with a smirk as his frown turns upside down. 

‘Adrienne 

Charlotte

Maleficent’

You ignored the painful thought that this was a pointless endeavor. Naming a dead thing.

—

With eyebrows raised, you sat waiting dutifully, hands clasped over your stomach while he rummaged through the box. 

“Aha!” He pulled out two red objects, one in each hand, and knee’d the chest out of the way to present them to you.

“Surprise!”

Two remarkably crafted stuffed animals were set before you on the couch cushion. 

Goats. 

It took you a second to place them, staring at their intricate appearances — covered in fluffy red fur from head to cloven hoof, with large yellow eyes and tiny red smiles stitched on their stark white muzzles. 

Shiny, metallic-looking horns curled over the curvature of their little heads, tips almost touching the tiny approximations of wings protruding from their backs. You noticed that the little wings were also sticking out of the backs of their tiny tuxedo suits; solid black to further contrast their Luciferean color schemes. 

An uncharacteristically high-pitched squeal escaped you. 

Damn these hormones. You internally chastised yourself while reaching out to finger at the detailed plushies. 

“They’re so cute!” You admired the unbelievable softness of one’s fur, hand overlapping with Lucifer’s as you turned it this way and that. His grin was so wide in your peripheral vision as he soaked up your fawning.

“Aren’t they?!” Lucifer squealed along with you. “They’re twins! But see this one has lighter fur and this one has sharper eyes. I tried to give them little differences so they had some individuality.” 

“Michael and I looked so similar in the Beginning, a ton of people always got us mixed up. Sometimes it was fun, but I got tired of hearing him bitch about it after the first couple centuries.”

A more serene countenance overtook your counterpart, with his line of sight drifting off to the floor beside you. Lost in thought. Or perhaps reminiscing. 

“Michael?” You asked gently. 

“My brother.” Lucifer replied. 

“Ohh, I think I remember… is he a Prince of Hell too?” 

The formerly Divine man frowned. “… No. Not him.”

A shadow fell over you both, distant sadness suffusing the air. You reached for him instantly, only for Lucifer to switch on like a lightbulb and grin manically. 

“Oh well! Who knows, maybe he took Dad’s side just to make sure no one ever confused us for each other ever again!” 

You pulled away. “… right.” 

Lucifer shook his head after a glance in your direction. 

“Um, so, I was thinking…” He began. “Maybe we give one to the baby an-nd… one could stay here… with you…” 

There was no hiding the confusion that crossed your face. 

You ‘tsk’ed. “You wanna deny the baby half this cuteness?” 

In response, Lucifer tittered, still adamant on looking around the room instead of meeting your gaze head on. “Hah, no. I was thinking that, maybe, we could keep one of them here and… and then they could reunite every time the baby and I… or just the baby… visit…”

Slow realization made your already weak constitution roil. 

Perhaps, if you’d been yourself and not the hollow shell of a person you’d become while pregnant, you would’ve been angry. Or upset enough to shout. Maybe you would’ve gotten up and left him there on his lonesome, wordlessly demanding he not entertain that idea ever again. 

Certainly, the You from before this insane, impossible scenario wouldn’t hesitate to react melodramatically. 

You sighed, fiddling with one of the goat’s tails. “Oh Lou…” 

He cringed beneath the weight of your words, laden with a heaviness that harshened his already guilty conscience. 

“Wait, before you say no —” Lucifer felt his mouth running away from him. “Maybe you could think about it and then decide? Maybe after they’re born?”

“It doesn’t have to mean anything. I don’t expect anything from you.” 

“You’re expecting me to be its mother.” Your tone broke no room for argument. 

Mauve eyelids drooped as Lucifer looked down in shame. “I — ”

“I wouldn’t make a good mom.” Your statement stopped him in his tracks. 

Frustration simmered in Lucifer, slowly creeping into his expression as you continued, unrelenting. His posture went rigid, hands beginning to clench at his sides.

“It’s not that I don’t care. I probably care too much, actually.” You admitted.

It was true. Regardless of your paranoia and how justified it was or not, the sole basis for why you felt the need to argue in the first place —

(And wasn’t that just pathetic? You had feelings for the Epitome of Evil and had entertained being safe and happy with him) 

— the reality was that you’d been a broken human being before this cosmic impossibility entered your life. 

“I just don’t…” You sighed. “I wouldn’t be a good part of their life if I was in it.” 

Your head whipped up, vision spotting when Lucifer blurted:

“You are the best part of my life.” 

He looked angry. Furious. So much so that the sclera around his irises began to radiate a blood-red. 

“Do you know how hard it is? To leave you? I have to convince myself every single time that you’ll still be here when I return!” Lucifer claimed. “And soon I won’t even be able to do that!” 

“I don’t want to say goodbye forever! I… I l…” 

You shuddered, stiffening in your seat. As soon as he realized, Lucifer’s display was cowed. 

“Fuck, are you alright? I’m not — I don’t know what came over me!”

You shook your head. “No.” 

“It stopped.” You whispered. 

Lucifer’s grip trembled around your wrists. “Stopped?”

His breathless echo of your words drew your eyes up. You saw the storm brewing in his ruby eyes, as even though he waited for you to elaborate, a million thoughts pelting at his brain like hail. 

“The pain stopped.” You said. 

Your hands felt over the bump beneath your breasts, as if you might find the imaginary ‘off’ button and turn it back on.

It was ludicrous to think about, but you immediately wished for the agony that had been crippling you to return if it meant that this baby wasn’t… wasn’t… 

Tears glistened in your eyes. Lucifer drew you to his chest in spite of the fear that was pulling his shoulders taut. 

“Wh-what did you do today? Anything different?” The ex-Angel asked shakily. 

His eyes scanned you up and down, lingering on the little dolls he’d just gifted you. 

“No… n-no, nothing different.” You said. “I was in bed all morning, and th… then Cass was here and we had tea… we went out and walked a little bit outside.” 

“Did you fall?” The King hedged. 

You gasped, eyes widening. Instinctively your arms wrapped around your middle at the foreign feeling emanating from within. 

“Did…! You fell??” He panicked, grabbing onto you like a life raft. “Where? On what?!”

His words drifted away as you were enveloped in the strangest surge of feeling you’d ever experienced. 

You could only just muster up the energy to shake your head. 

Sudden warmth. 

And pressure. 

A tiny flutter, one you’d never felt before. 

You inhaled quickly yet deeply at the feeling of something pressing against your belly-button from the inside. 

It made you grin, hands coming back to grab for Lucifer’s own and to pull them to your stomach. “They’re alive!” 

The man’s jaw went slack, staring sightlessly for just as long as it took to soak up the sudden heat there. The baby took pity on its poor, trembling father and kicked again. 

It was Lucifer’s turn to gasp, looking back and forth between you and the bump with dawning awe. 

“It is!” He laughed, a tad bit hysterically. “It — they are alive!” 

“… And… glowing…”

“You’re glowing!”

*** Tag List: @crescent-z, @for-hearthand-home, @undertale-is-sansational, @loslox, @navierkalani, @yaimlight, @ivoryviness, @crystalplays28, @flowerempress, @wally-darling-hyperfixation, @altruisticradiodemon, @moonlight-readings, @halparkebitch, @charliecharlie65, @sockgoblin, @cocomollo, @caniseethefourthsword, @squeegeeclean, @crow-twink, @an-emovision, @marydragneell, @lafy-taffy, @fandom-imagines1, @loquacious-libra, @glowymxxn, @avadakadabra93, @froggybich, @hamthepan, @ukor02, @adaizel, @boogiemansbitch, @vinillies, @lbcreations-blog, @thesoundresoundsecho, @serenity-loves-red, @alientee

[uhohdad]

THE GIRL WHO CONQUERED THE MOUNTAIN

KONIG X READER [HUNGER GAMES AU]

You & Konig have been chosen to participate in a twenty-four tribute fight to the death.

18+, NSFW, 144k WORD COUNT, AO3, Virgin!Konig, Outcast!Konig, 18yo!Konig, GentleGiant!Konig, Fem!Reader, Mentor!Price, Blood & Injury, Graphic Violence, Death, PTSD, Alcohol Use, Slow Burn, Sexual Content, First Time, Smut, Fluff, Angst

· THE TRIBUTES I · THE TRIBUTES II · THE GAMES · THE VICTOR I · THE VICTOR II · THE AFTERMATH I · THE AFTERMATH II ·

➤ THE GAMES

When you wake, your cheek is still pressed to Konig’s chest. Your lips have settled in a dot of your own drool that stains a spot on his shirt a shade darker. Your head raises to face the knock on the door, and Konig’s head follows in suit. You’re not sure if he was already awake or not, but your eyes meet, both of you already dawning that unsure stare.

You know what this knock means.

This is your call to death.

You take a dry swallow, body already shaking with fear.

You and Konig give each other one last squeeze before you pull away to roll out of bed to answer the door.

It’s Price, wearing a matching solemn expression, his brow creased in sympathy at your face drained of color and jaw that trembles.

He nods at you, and wordlessly embraces you, your face buried in his chest as his arms wrap around your shoulders.

“You’ll be alright, Pluck,” He whispers, giving you a squeeze before he pulls away. He looks over your shoulder and sees Konig, slouching off the edge of your bed, staring at the floor.

Price refrains from giving you that knowing, smug grin. He nods again, licks his lips, and the three of you still, staring off into nothing. Mourning in your last few moments.

At breakfast, Ruby has the sense to ease on the chatter, the four of you eating in a grave silence.

Neither you or Konig have much of an appetite. In fact, every bite you force down threatens to make a reappearance, but you have to. You have to eat and drink as much as you can hold because if you can survive the day, you will soon be starving.

No words are exchanged.

Wordlessly you and Konig are chaperoned down to the ground floor, led by Capitol guards to the hovercraft launch pad.

You are strapped into your seat, where you are given a tracker, implanted deep into your inner forearm with a thick, hollow needle. You don’t hold back your wince as it’s driven into your flesh.

There’s a lump in your throat that won’t go away. As you gnaw at your painted nails, your hand jitters in front of your face. You wonder if forcing down breakfast was a bad idea, because it’s swirling around your insides, stomach churning as you sit with nothing to distract yourself. In a futile attempt to soothe yourself, your thumb rubs over the smooth, golden front of Konig’s token.

When the hovercraft’s windows go black, you can’t help the sharp inhale you draw in.

You can’t bear to look at Konig as you’re separated in the catacombs deep beneath the arena.

Mauve’s waiting for you at your launch room. She looks a little pale today, her usually uninterested demeanor wavering.

Pressed to the far wall and immediately catching your attention is an open, crystal tube circling a metal platform that will soon deliver you to the arena. The sight of it widens your eyes, as if you were staring down an opponent in the arena. Your breakfast sloshes around in your gut, fists clenching at your sides.

Mauve sighs and hands you a pair of black pants with a matching tactical belt. The pants are wind resistant, a swishy material on the outside and a thin layer of wool on the inside.

You nod slow, jaw slack and shaking, breaths audible. Dizzy and unsteady, you almost trip as you step into your pants, catching yourself with a hop.

Mauve helps you into the most supportive sports bra you’ve ever had the pleasure of wearing, and a black shirt, reminiscent of the one you wore for training. Your arms fumble to make it through the holes of the fabric. Once on she takes a black jacket off a hanger and opens it for you. You make a half turn on unsteady feet, slipping one arm after another through the sleeves. She pulls it up onto your shoulders, brushing your hair from the back of your neck as she smooths the hood along your shoulders.

Your rattling fingers fumble for the zipper and fail to connect either side of the jacket. Mauve gently takes it for you, zipping up to your middle. You try to whisper her a thank you but it just comes out a breathy squeak.

The jacket was made for you, you can tell. The almost silken, water resistant material perfectly confirming to the curves of body, comfortably hugging you. Similar to the pants, another layer of wool lines the inside. At the absence of pockets, you slip Konig’s token into your bra for safe keeping.

“Look,” Mauve says, annoyed as ever, “I try not to get attached. But you,” She sighs, lowering her voice, “You make it hard.”

Your face loosens for just a moment.

Maybe you had pegged Mauve wrong. You hadn’t considered that she may be avoidant and uninterested to just her tribute. You assumed that’s all she ever was. But maybe outside of here, away from the kid she has to watch die every year, maybe she is nicer. Open and loving and supportive. It makes you think that if someone had tried to judge your entire personality based on how you’ve acted since the reaping, maybe they’d peg you wrong too.

“Thank you, Mauve,” Your words are nothing but a shaky whisper.

“Mhm,” She hums, “Now win.”

You scan her face, your entire body trembling in fear.

An even, robotic voice comes over the speaker and announces that the launch will begin in thirty seconds.

You choke on the lump in your throat, a hiccup leaving at your futile attempt to swallow.

Your feet are made of lead as they approach the launch pad, careful, shuffled steps up to the tube.

“Hey,” Mauve says.

When she looks at you, she gives you a single, slow nod.

“You’ve got it.”

With full blown eyes, you return her gesture, and the glass encloses you with a zip.

Immediately your palms are pressed to the glass, your instincts clawing to free yourself from this cage.

Mauve gives you one final nod.

Your entire body jumps when the platform begins to raise, and you watch Mauve until she disappears, ascending into darkness.

-

The first thing you notice as your tube breaks into open is the freezing air. Almost immediately your trembling intensifies, each shallow breath turning to steam that billows in front of your face. You are blinded, nothing but bright white as you jerk your head around. For ten seconds your vision struggles to readjust, twitching as you force yourself to orient to a shine powerful enough to bring tears to your eyes.

Once your eyes adjust to the sun, your focus is pulled to the cornucopia, centered equal distance from each of the tributes’s platforms. All twenty-four of you, in a circle, a minute away from a bloody slaughter.

Sixty Seconds.

The pure white snow that surrounds your feet reflects a brutal full sun.

You follow one of the tributes gaze, the boy from District Three, you think. He’s staring off into the distance, into the sandy landscape just to the left of you.

Desert.

Sand that stretches for what looks like miles, massive dunes that billow along the lifeless sea of orange. A mirage of heat radiating off the piles of sand, dotted with the occasional dead brush.

To your right, behind the story-tall cornucopia, the desert landscape seems to come to a grinding halt. As if a line had been drawn vertically down the horizon. The yellow, hazy sky that hangs over the desert abruptly turns to a blanket of crystal blue sky filled with fluffy, brilliant white clouds. Just next to the split, contrasting against the brilliant blue sky, is the border of a hedge maze. Thick, massive walls of foliage reaching well over the size of a redwood tree, pink flowers that look almost like cherry blossoms intertwined with the deep green walls running along the perimeter of its quadrant. From here you can see at least a dozen openings in its massive walls, leading into it’s chambers.

Forty-Five Seconds.

The arena is divided in four, with the mouth of the cornucopia in the exact spot where each of the landscapes meet,  six tribute platforms in each quandrant.  Surrounding yours, and the closest five other tribute’s platforms, is snow. Blinding white, the desert’s sun reflecting off its pure coat that comes to a perfect right angle pointed at the cornucopia. When you look behind you, you see the snow stretches along the entire quadrant, eventually obscured by a forest of pine trees. The sky above the pines is a solid, weak grey, flurries dotting the air.

When you look over your left shoulder, you find the snow and pine forest comes to a dead halt, another split in the sky and landscape. It’s picked up by a forest of red maple and ginkgo trees - vibrant crimson and yellow leaves that camouflages just a few feet beyond the treeline. The leaves’ colors immediately remind you of fall, and then it clicks.

Summer, Spring, Winter, Fall.

Cute, Capitol.

Thirty Seconds.

The desert was a death sentence. No water, no food, and heat that would collapse the strongest tributes in a matter of hours.

Snow was out of the question, too. With Price’s instructions to avoid the cornucopia, there’s no way you’d have the proper supplies to survive such a climate. Even just standing in the corner, with the desert quadrant being just a few yards away, you and the five tributes surrounded by snow are shivering from more than just fear, noses and cheeks turning red from the chill air. Staying close to snow would be important, through, as it’s the only source of water you’ve got eyes on from your platform.

The sight of the hedge maze is enough to make your stomach churn. A feeling in your gut that was hard to ignore, even with the rationalization of ideal temperature and concealment. It was too risky. An enclosed space like that, no way to tell what dangers and traps the gamemakers have hidden inside. Too easily cornered into hand-to-hand combat.

The fall forest - that’s your best bet. Dense trees to hide in. Survivable temperature and bordering the snow quadrant.

Fifteen Seconds.

With your arms crossed over your chest in a desperate attempt to keep warm, you do one last quick scan of the four jarring landscapes, just to ensure you’re making the right choice. You find the mouth of the cornucopia again, a pile of goodies spilling out in the exact spot all four quadrants meet. You see weapons made of the finest quality metal, shelter materials, full armor and gear designed with the extreme temperatures in mind. It’s no use eyeing them up, you’d never survive in a dash to the cornucopia. Your eyes flick down to the items scattered around your feet, the lesser value supplies sprinkled further away from the cornucopia. They stick out well in the snow, nestled into the top layer of ice. Just from your spot you can see an empty water bottle, a carabiner, a flashlight. A multitool the size of your index finger, a set of rubber soles - you think to attach to your shoes - and a pair of black, coarse gloves.

You follow the items that trickle into the hedge maze quadrant, and there you find Konig, about seven tributes to your right.

He’s hard to miss among the other tributes, and he’s looking right at you. Catching his stare, you share one last look of hesitance.

You realize you haven’t taken a breath in an uncomfortable amount of time, gulping one deep breath of sharp icy wind while you look to Konig with parted blue lips and eyes pooled with terror.

One last reassuring glance between two tributes that are both just as lost and just as unsure and just as deathly afraid.

When the gong goes off, your brain goes blank. The plan you’d so carefully crafted over the longest minute of your life untangles the moment twenty-three tributes race off their platforms. Half in a full sprint to the mouth of the cornucopia, the others scattering in a full dash to the quadrants.

No one dares rush into the desert, many going out of their way and stumbling through sand to escape the heat that coated them in layer of sweat. The tributes assigned to that quadrant had already removed their jackets and secured them to their waists to escape the dry heat of the sun. A handful of tributes rush for the hedge maze, less offput by its unknown in the interest of full concealment. Two male tributes, one who had snatched the shoe attachments, flashlight, and gloves, dare to brace the snow, running side-by-side and whizzing right past you as they disappear into pine trees. The rest of the tributes make a dash to the fall quandrant, quickly disappearing behind the coverage of yellow and red leaves.

You were still glued to your platform, giving everyone else a massive head start. Frozen in your place, sucked right back into that blackhole of dread and fear you experienced on reaping day.

There’s one thought that tears through the fog, and it’s Price’s voice.

What the hell are you doing, kid?! Get out of there!

It’s his voice that gives you the courage to step off your platform, daring a few feet forward to risk grabbing the canteen and carabiner with one hand, the multitool in the other. The metal wet with melted snow freezes your palms with a harsh bite.

When you look up to make sure no one’s targeting you, the color drains from your face at the sight of the boy from District One thrusting a sword into a boy’s neck. His blood sprays nearly a foot in front of him, coating his killer in a cup of deep red blood. The boy from district one smiles, his grin coated in the blood of his kill.

About ten yards from you, in the fall quadrant, the girl from District Four wrestles the scrawny girl from District Ten to the ground for a 3-inch long knife that was stabbed into the dirt. She managed to overpower her, pinning her down with a straddle before driving the knife into her stomach. She removes the blade several times, plunging it back into Ten - repeatedly slashing her guts and sending blood flying. Ten keeps her grip on the knife that punctures her, face frozen in shock.

The girl from District One, now back to back with her bloody companion, is successfully using a spear to skewer anyone in her reach.

Your head snaps to a figure rushing towards you. The boy from eleven, you think, has his eyes locked on you, running full speed in your direction. At his side is a scythe, its metal gleaming as it catches the bright desert sun with each of his strides. You stand straight from your half-ducked position, having been stuck in your squat after grabbing your meager supplies. The snow crunches under your boots as you make a few shaky steps backwards, palms rising instinctively to brace yourself. You’re still locked in fear, lower lip stammering and unable to get out even a plea for mercy.

Suddenly he’s stopped in his tracks, his legs and upper half folded forward by strong arms and hands clasped tightly around his ribs. You watch with a gaped mouth and blown eyes as he rises a foot-and-a-half off the ground. His limbs flail as he tries to swing the scythe behind him to defend against his assailant. It’s quick, Eleven’s tilted to the side and he’s thrown brutally into the ground. For a moment his body is a blur, and then his head catches on a raised platform. His skull hits the metal with a heavy thunk, followed by the distinct and unmistakable sound of his neck breaking.

When you’re finished eyeing the boy from eleven, dead the moment he hit the platform, your eyes dart to the culprit.

Konig.

He’s peels the scythe from the dead tribute’s hand, looking over his shoulder for any approaching tributes.

As soon as he meets your scared eyes, he starts in a full sprint to you, weapon at his side.

A breathy squeak turns to steam in the frozen air as you stumble backwards. Your heel catches on your own platform, seat hitting the snow and legs sprawled out on the chilled metal.

It’s the betrayal that shocks you back to your body.

Konig is trying to kill you.

Your feet kick desperately at the smooth platform as you turn over in the snow. Stiff, frozen limbs quickly scramble to get yourself up and into a sprint. You keep your few supplies pinned tightly to your chest as you fight against the snow swallowing your boots with each step. You break into full speed when you’re in the fall quadrant, the freezing air turning to a much more bearable temperature the moment your foot harshly hit the dirt littered with yellow petals.

Finally! You hear Price in your head. You can even picture him, leaned towards the screen, hand coming off his knee with an annoyed wave.

Each time your foot slams against the dirt it sends a shock up your legs, still defrosting from the harsh bite of the winter quadrant. The adrenaline pumps through you with each pulse that pounds against your temple, breath as sharp as crystals with each inhale.

Branches grab hold of you as soon as you break through the trees, peeling up the first few layers of exposed skin. With each snap and break of the branches, the searing, white hot image of the boy from eleven flashes in front of your eyes. His eyes that had gone lifeless the moment he crashed into that platform, a small bounce of his head off the metal pillow before he landed limply in his final resting place.

You stay right on the border of the winter quadrant, just to the right of the snow-capped pine trees.

When your hearing comes back to you, previously deafened by an unrelenting replay of a broken neck, the first thing you hear is your heavy breaths, followed by the screams of tributes behind you. They’re quieter now that you’ve made distance from the bloodbath, but there’s no mistaking the raw desperation in their cries of pain and pleas for mercy. You can’t help but flinch at the particularly cutting shrieks.

You run until your legs hurt, until your face and hands are covered in scratches, until your lungs beg for respite, and then you run some more.

You’re thinking about all the tributes that ran into the fall quadrant. Most of the ones that didn’t make a dash to the cornucopia ran into the quadrant you occupy. Your focus had been elsewhere, but you think around six or seven tributes made a run for it as soon as the gong sounded. More may even follow after they’ve grabbed supplies from the cornucopia.

This doesn’t sit right with you, all of these tributes in such a condensed area, almost all of them bigger and stronger than you. They’ll surely stay close to the border of the snow district as well, drawn in to the water supply. It’s frustrating that these tributes had the same plan as you, but you don’t have much of a choice without proper supplies to survive the extreme climates.

Maybe the hedge maze was the right move after all. To your knowledge, only a handful of tributes were daring enough to head to the spring quadrant, and at the very least the hedge maze should provide decent cover. There may even be supplies hidden deep within it chambers.

This in mind, you don’t break your strides, heading deeper into the fall quadrant.

You don’t stop until your stomach threatens to retch, dropping to your knees in exhaustion. If a tribute were to run into you now, they’d surely have no trouble ending your life.

When you finally catch your breath, successfully spitting away the nausea and rubbing away the cramp in your arm from the deadly grip on your items, you’re surprised you’re still alive. That another tribute hasn’t found you and turned your throat inside out.

You’re eager to get away from the snow border, knowing that the tributes will be lingering close by. You’re thankful you risked the water bottle, even if it meant the vivid memories of so many brutal slaughters. You’re sure it will give you an advantage, able to move deeper into the fall quadrant without having to stay close to scoop up handfuls of snow.

When your legs permit you, you stand with a wobble, inching yourself toward the pine trees. You kneel down in the dirt littered with brilliant yellow ginkgo petals, and scoop handfuls of snow up to your mouth, letting it melt into a very refreshing swallow of ice cold water. You don’t even try to mute your noises of satisfaction and relief. Once you’ve quenched the unbearable thirst brought up from running, you uncap your bottle and begin to stuff snow into its small opening.

You can’t get the image, the sound, of the boy’s broken neck out of your mind. It’s stopped playing on a loop, but it now intrusively rips through your thoughts without warning, folding your whole body forward into a cringe.

You’d known Konig was strong. You’d watched him in training, lifting weights you could hardly roll.

It was nothing in comparison to watching him pick up that boy from eleven with ease. He lifted that boy, who was by no means small nor weak, spun him around, and threw him like he was a ragdoll.

You really thought that Konig would have the decency not to try and kill you immediately. Just yesterday you were friendly, sharing both a bed and your intimate thoughts. Moments before the  gong you were benefiting from each other’s reassurance. Shouldn’t there have been a cool-down period? You didn’t realize that not agreeing to be his ally meant you were agreeing to be enemies.

It was naive of you to assume you’d be on neutral ground in the arena, you realize.

‘I would kill if I need to.’

You hear Konig’s words intertwined with the repeated sound of Eleven’s neck cracking.

Just a lie, something to keep your guard down.

He killed that boy not out of self-defense or necessity, but because he could. He was running right towards you, ready to pick you off too, just because he could.

He didn’t even have the decency to let someone else pick you off before he broke your assailant’s neck.

Konig specifically wanted to be the one to kill you.

You’re running over every moment you’ve ever shared with him, now tainted with the cruel truth. He had been tricking you all along, luring you into ease and comfort with his presence just so that he could draw you in to kill you.

You’d been right all along.

When your canteen is full, you wipe off the outside of the bottle with your jacket and use the carabiner to clip the bottle and multi-tool onto its rung. You fasten it into your belt loop, but your plan immediately falls apart when the multi-tool starts to bang against the metal of the water bottle with each movement, making far too much noise for your liking. You remove the multi-tool with the faintest annoyed grunt, and take the opportunity to shuffle through its insides. Your fingers are stiff from the cold snow, but nails manage to pry out the sheathed pieces of metal.

Inside you find a blade, about an inch long. The blade is sharp but thin, and would offer little use for self-defense, but will surely be helpful in terms of survival. There’s a second blade, one with a serrated edge, its jagged teeth varying sizes. The multi-tool also shields a corkscrew, a small pair of pliers, a file, and the tiniest pair of scissors you’ve ever seen.

Instead of putting it back on its rung, you stuff the multi-tool into your sports bra, raising goosebumps on your flesh as your body works to warm up the metal.

You begin at a walk further into the fall quadrant, away from the snow and slightly diagonal as you rub your freezing hands together to warm them up.

There’s not much sign of other tributes, but you be sure to head the opposite direction at the slightest rustling of leaves.

You walk at a steady pace now, one you think you can maintain as you dredge deeper into the forest.

You need to figure out a source for food. You weren’t lucky enough to get your hands on any rope or wire, so snares were out of the question. There’s no other vegetation besides ginkgo trees and red maples as far as you can see, but you can’t see very far past the low hanging branches and petals.

You don’t know much about ginkgo trees, so you have no clue if they bear edibility.

There are the last of the maple seeds that occasionally flutter to the ground with their mesmerizing dance.

You can work with maple seeds.

Something for your stomach to at least chew on, even if it meant malnourishment. The bark is also edible, you remember.

And sap! If you can figure out how to harvest it, you’ll get a sweet treat in reward.

There’s something about the trees that seem artificial, though. The colors are a little too bright, the branches a little too flourished with leaves. Not even the petals littered on the ground have a hint of rotted brown on them.

Even with the unease the trees invoke, you risk gathering maple seeds from the forest floor.

You’re not sure how far you’ve traveled, It feels like miles.

The boom of the cannon makes you flinch.

The bloodbath must be over, and they are now firing the cannon that signifies a tribute’s death.

You pause your walking to count on your fingers as the booms fire one after another.

Nine fires. Nine tributes dead.

For a moment, you are enraged. Nine children dead as punishment for crimes that took place well before their creation.

And then you hear Price again, reminding you to use that rage as fuel to survive.

Don’t think about it.

You let out a deep breath, starting up at a steady pace.

Another thought makes you stop.

Nine of you dead.

Is Konig still alive?

To your dismay, there is a pang in your chest that vibrates through your whole body, bleeding a strong emotion you can’t quite pinpoint throughout your entire being.

You… don’t want him to be dead.

He just tried to kill you, and even so the thought of him not making it through the bloodbath is twisting your guts in knots.

‘You don’t think that boy is going to have a giant target on his back?’

Shut up, Price! Shut up! Shut up!

Your feet kick up a few fallen leaves as you force yourself to keep moving.

He can’t be dead, you decide. Even if he had been hanging around the bloodbath with a pack of careers itching to use their weapons on him.

He’s not dead.

You need to tell yourself this, because you can’t afford to feel emotional, even if the emotion you feel is knotted up and begging to be unraveled.

He’s not dead.

Your legs are burning, feeling heavy and unsteady at the same time. Your bends to scoop up maple seeds slow, relishing in the breaks from walking a little too long.

As you walk you peel some of the maple seeds, hoping they can give you some energy to keep going. You’re doubtful, though.

You wince at the break of bitter seeds against your tongue. They’d taste sweeter cooked, but you’re working with what you have.

When you’re really at your limit, you plop down in front of a particularly large maple, thick trunk and camouflaged in a cluster of low-hanging ginkgo branches.

You eat a few more maple seeds, replacing them with the ones in your reach. You take a swig of your water, now melted and cool to wash down their taste.

You wonder how often you’ve been shown on screen, and when? At any moment you could be broadcasted live to every person in Panem.

Surely you wouldn’t get too much coverage, usually after the bloodbath they’ll be busy dissecting all the deaths that occurred all at once, but they will occasionally cut to you to show you’re still alive.

You freeze when you hear the rustling. This is no blow of the wind. This disturbance is animal, this is human, and both of those options mean danger.

You don’t so much as breathe, deathly still at once. From outside the coverage of the ginkgos, you see the flash of a large boot as it walks briskly through the foliage.

They walk like they’re not even afraid of danger, not stealthy in the least bit. Crunching leaves, snapping branches.

Long after they’re out of earshot, you let out a drawn out exhale. If you had killer instincts and a weapon, the tribute would have died by your hand. All you’d have to do is slink out silently behind them and do it before they even knew what hit them.

They’re lucky you’re docile.

Surely you were being featured then. Two tributes in such close proximity, they were probably gearing up for a fight.

So sorry to disappoint.

When the cannon goes off, you flinch again.

Okay, maybe you weren’t being televised.

It’s annoying how your first thought is of Konig. With each tribute that falls the odds of his survival dwindles.

You tell yourself you only care about his survival because it would be best for your district, best for your loved ones. Extra food parcels for every citizen in reward for giving the Capitol a victor.

You really hope he’s still alive.

Fourteen left. Thirteen not including you.

You rest against your maple until dusk, and decide this is a good enough place to set camp as any other.

You already know you’re not going to sleep tonight, but you hope you can at least get some rest.

With the fading light of day you slide out of your ginkgo hide out, and while making as much noise as you dare you begin to saw off some ginkgo branches, supporting them on their undersides to minimize the shake of the twigs and leaves. Only the sound of scratching wood and vibration of branch could draw any nearby tributes closer. You stop every few push and pull of the blade to check for signs of danger. It’s slow going for such an inadequate sawing tool.

By time the sun goes down, when the generously bright moon rises, you’ve successfully cut four decent sized branches dense with leaves. You arrange them around the trunk of your maple tree to conceal your resting body from the rest of the woods.

The cluster of trees does a good job concealing you, but the extra branches should ensure your black clothes don’t stick out against the ginkgo leaves and fill any gaps in the bottom of the branches. For good measure, you scoop up a decent pile of leaves, making sure to kick over nearby leaves to conceal the disruption, and sprinkle the bright yellow petals over your lower half in hopes of blending in with the dirt. You keep yourself propped up against the trunk of your tree, settling your legs in breaks of the tree roots.

You keep your supplies secured tightly to you, just in case you have to make a dash.

You disturb some of your ginkgo petals when the blare of the anthem starts. Over the defeaning music you poke your head into a clearing in the trees. Partially obscured through full branches you can see the Capitol emblem projected into the sky. They’re about to display the faces of the fallen shortly, and you will be able to figure out by elimination which tributes remain.

They appear in order of district, so when the girl from three projects in the sky, you know the careers from one and two are alive. No surprise there.

Her headshot is followed by her companion from three, both from District Five, the girl from District Six.

The girl from District Seven, the one you saw laughing on her chariot with the boy from her district. He’s still alive, though.

You hold your breath once her headshot disappears, bracing yourself to soon see Konig’s face in the sky.

The next face is the girl from ten.

For the first time in the arena, a smile creeps on your face, breathy and toothless. The wave of relief that washes over you is immediate and flooding.

Konig’s alive.

The warm feeling is cut short when you see the face of the boy from eleven hanging over you in the sky, and when you look at his picture, all you can see is his lifeless eyes. His limp bounce off the platform, the crack of his neck.

Konig’s alive.

And killing.

You wonder how many more lives he’s taken today.

Both the girl & boy from District Twelve flash in the sky, the anthem ends on a flare, and the forest seems unbearably quiet in its absence.

As you settle back into your nook, you try to figure out who’s left.

Both from District One & Two.

Both from District Four.

The boy from six, the boy from seven, and both from eight.

You remember Price’s warning about the boy from eight. About how something ‘ain’t right with that boy.’

You & Konig.

The boy from ten.

The girl from eleven.

That’s it, you think.

The air of a crisp fall day has turned to a harsh chill. Your breath turns to steam in the cool air, and a steady shiver twitches your body. You zip your jacket all the way up and tie your hood tightly around your face. In a desperate bid you even draw the branches closer to you, hoping for insulation.

You pull your arms out of their sleeves, tucking them close to your chest and rubbing them together for warmth. When this offers little respite, you pull your knees into your jacket as well, smushing your hands between thighs and chest. Your lower jaw chatters involuntarily, and you can’t help but wish you’d risked the bloodbath for a blanket, probable death be damned.

You close your eyes and long for the Capitol showers, hot and steamy and enveloping your whole body in a steamy warmth.

You think about the warmth you felt last night, how cozy it was to be pressed up to Konig’s body and leeching the heat that radiated from his skin.

Yesterday feels like a lifetime ago. How did Konig manage to cuddle up to you one night, and the very next day be hellbent on slaughtering you?   

He must have hated you from the beginning. Hedging his bets, pretending this whole time. You can’t believe you’ve let yourself fall for the gentle giant routine he was peddling.

You got no rest. You experienced every bone-chilling moment of the night, shaking against the unforgiving bark of the maple tree. The closest thing you got to respite was a haze in between sleep and wake, a near dreamlike state where you felt slightly disconnected from the world around you.

It never lasted long though, snapping your head at every rustle of leaves or break of branch. Occasionally the sound of Eleven’s neck cracking will tear through you, and you’re having trouble distinguishing if it’s a hallucination or not.

You wonder how the boys who ran off into the snow quadrant are doing. It may have been their strategy to run from the cornucopia through the snow knowing it’s likely no tribute would follow them. They probably slipped into one of the other quadrants by now. You can’t imagine it’s survivable in the night of winter.

You wonder how all of the other tributes are doing, actually. Did they rest through the night, or did they use this time to be productive?

The career pack will be hunting, no doubt.

You wonder if the boy from seven is mourning his companion. You weren’t actually sure they were friends, but that moment of connection on the chariot seemed so genuine, you couldn’t help but think of them as friends.

Maybe you just look into things too much.

Maybe you just read too far into smiles and stares and never doubt well-intentions.

Maybe you need to grow up and stop being such an emotional, sensitive, needy parasite and find some self-preservation!

The tributes from District Seven probably hated each other, really.

Both of them pretending to let the other’s guard down.

He was probably the one who killed her.

Lured her in security with a genuine smile and a charming laugh just so he could get an easy target to impress the sponsors.

You take a deep inhale to wipe your thoughts clean. You don’t need to be think about the tributes from District Seven. You didn’t even know their names.

But maybe he does miss her.

Maybe her death did mean something to him.

The sun hasn’t risen yet, but you are eager to give your mind actual problems to chew on. Channeling the anger, and all that. You rise slowly, using the trunk of the tree to help sore, numb legs to a stand.

You take a moment to stretch and rub out your achy muscles while you plan for your day.

Your water bottle is about half-full. You tried to ration as much as you could but you covered a lot of ground yesterday and wore yourself to exhaustion.

Okay, snow day. No worries. No running today unless necessary.

Maybe you’ll even get a look deeper into the pine forest and find some berries you recognize.

The thought of a fresh winterberry bursting in your mouth makes your stomach grumble. You begrudgingly finish off the rest of your maple seeds. You’ll replace them on your walk today, but you’re hoping you won’t need to.

Water and food, that’s all you need to worry about today.

And also not dying.

After popping stiff joints, you get moving in a leisurely walk. Instead of your diagonal route towards the desert, you do the same to the snow quadrant. Simultaneously getting where you need to be while tucking yourself further away from the cornucopia. Unlike yesterday, you’re taking care to move stealthily through the trees, avoiding disturbing foliage or heavy treads. The ginkgo petals and packed chill dirt don’t leave behind much footprint, but that’s also true for any tribute taking refuge in this quadrant.

It happens so fast, you don’t even have time to silence the scream that leaves you.   Yanked off the ground in an instant, kicking and flailing and instinctively crying out.

The pain in your ankles is shooting and immediate. With every thrash and struggle a restraint tightens around the tops of your boots.

For a moment, you thought you were dead. That another tribute had attacked from behind and you were about to succumb to your snapped neck, a slit throat, or a skewered abdomen.

After a painful three seconds pass you reorient yourself, and find that you are in fact, alone.

When you look up, you can see the ground is a five foot drop away.

Your legs had been jerked from underneath you, your body forced upside down, and yanked in the air by your ankles.

You’d walked right into someone’s trap, and you’re as good as dead.

Blood is rushing to your head and exacerbating your panic, thrashing desperately in the air to break free from the brutal hold of the rope.

Panic quickly turns to fury as you realize that someone has gotten the best of you. That someone had outsmarted you, had humiliated you, had strung you up dangling and helpless for every eye in Panem to see.

Mostly you’re upset at yourself, because the instinctual cry for help that left your lips was twisted into the letters of Konig’s name.

How pathetic. Calling for another tribute you were not allied with, a tribute who tried to kill you just yesterday.

‘Get your head in the fucking game.’

Face sweating and pulse pumping ruthlessly against your temple, you pinch your eyes shut and force yourself to stop fighting the hold of the rope, and find some fucking sense.

You take two deep breaths through flared nostrils before you thoughtfully survey your surroundings.

You’re strung with thick rope by your ankles along an especially study branch of maple. Five feet off the ground is a fall that would not fair well for you.

You need to get upside-right.

You look up to the knot wrapped tightly around your screaming and tender ankles. Your core was no where near strong enough to bring yourself up to the knot, but it doesn’t keep you from trashing anyway.

Think, think, think!

The world is spinning, the leaves and trunks of the trees swaying and blurring as you dangle in midair. Your view is curtained by your jacket, folded over itself and around the back of your head. You can’t hear a thing over the rushing blood in your ears.

You’re running out of time. You’re going to pass out soon, and that’s only if the tribute who set this trap isn’t running full speed in the direction of your initial scream.

Your fingers fumble for your belt, sliding it off with a whiz.

You force deep breaths, holding an end of the belt in each hand. You curl your core slightly and make a loose loop with the nylon.

You need to get it snagged to the soles of your shoes so you can hoist yourself high enough to undo the snare, or at least get the blood to drain from your face. With one choked breath you try to force yourself high enough to loop the bottoms of your boots, but you miss and end up falling back down and thrashing against the ropes.

Your breaths are heavy and your head is tight and pounding.

With grit teeth and a raw grunt, you fling yourself up, sliding the belt further up your legs.

You just barely graze the tips of your soles before the belt slips off and sends you back down fully horizontal, now with a swing.

The pain is unbearable, your entire body being supported by a tight rashy rope on your ankles. You’re getting dizzy and light-headed, surely close to an embarrassing end.

‘C’mon, Plucky.’

You begin to use your body weight to swing with the rope instead of against it, waiting until you’re at the peak of its swing before you flail your upper half up. Veins bulge from your forehead as you catch the width of the belt on your shoes.

Your biceps immediately strain to support your upper half, clenching your teeth as you pull yourself up by your own shoes.

You can’t help the grunts leaving as you struggle to get your head above your neck.

You take a break to catch a few breaths, the ends of the belt looped around either palm that support your upper half.

“Okay, c’mon,” you grunt under your breath. You grab both ends of the belt with one hand, jerking yourself upwards to get your other palm just above it.

Slowly, painfully, you climb.

One hand over the other, pulling yourself further up the rope.

Your arms are shaking, ankles begging for mercy, but you are just able to grasp your hand around the rope just around the end of the knot, so any weight on your upper half is now supported by the rope attatched to the branch, and not your ankles.

With your last bit of strength you hold the rope with one hand, and yank at the snare with the other, searching for the release loop with fumbling hands.

For a moment the world is a blur. Your back takes the brunt of the impact, vision blinded by a pure white light.

Every last wisp of air has been knocked from your lungs. A ripple of shooting, crackling, crunchy pain spreads from your chest and in every direction.

The groan that leaves you is entirely involuntary, breathless and guttural.

When you dare to take a breath, it goes in wheezing and spiked.

You find your ankles or ribs aren’t broken, merely rattled and swollen. One, shaking, weak arm shoots up in the air and gives a shaky thumbs up, before it collapses back onto the cool dirt.

Atta’ girl.

You’re not sure how long you lay, flat on your back, unable to find strength to move.

It’s not enough time for you to regain the ability to run when you hear the rusting of nearby branches.

You close your eyes and mutter obscenities just under your shallow breath. You did all of that work for absolutely nothing.

You couldn’t keep your mouth shut, alerting half the forest of your location, and someone’s come to answer.

You can barely lift your head to see the assailant bursting through the trees.

The boy from eight.

The tribute Price warned you about during the replay of the reaping. The one with the look so unsettling it made your stomach twist.

If you had any breath left in you, you’d laugh, but all you can manage is a faint huff through your nose. You couldn’t put up a good fight at your best, and now that you’re injured, you don’t stand a chance.

Those sinister eyes lock onto you and at once your stomach twists in knots. You wish you could ask him to make it quick.

“Where is she?!” His voice is booming just as it is demanding, he does not seem to care about attracting anyone else’s attention.

Your eyes widen at his voice, just as angry as he looks.

Your mouth opens, but nothing comes out of your shaking body.

He stomps closer to you, putting either of his boots on either side of your ribs in the dirt. He towers over you like this, staring down at you like the pitiful prey you are. He bends at the core and grabs you by the front of your shirt with both hands, pulling you off the ground and inches from his face. He gives you a harsh shake, rolling your head on your neck.

“Where is she?!” He’s not stealthy in the slightest, his words booming throughout the forest as he spits in your face.

You try to form a word but it just comes out a hitched breath with a lace of a word in it.

“Wh-“

“Willow! The girl from my district!”

He gives you another shake, rattling your sore muscles and jerking your head around on your neck.

When he stills you, you shake your head as quickly as you can manage.

“You lying?!” His face is inches from yours, you can feel the heat of his breath.

“No,” Your voice is a wisp, each strain followed by a crunchy, labored breath.

He studies your face, nothing but fear and pain in your features. The boy from eight scoffs before he throws you against the ground by no means gently. He disappears into the forest with a jog, leaving you dumbfounded on the forest floor to catch what little breath he stole.

When he’s out of sight, your head lays back into the dirt. You force yourself up sooner than you would have liked in case he comes back and changes his mind, or someone else comes looking for the commotion.

You use your multitool to cut off lengths of rope from the snare, a reward for your triumph, and loop it in big circles you drape across a shoulder and your waist like a sash.

After replacing your belt, and even giving it a thankful kiss for saving you from an embarrassing ending, you begin to limp through the forest. You no longer travel diagonally, heading straight for the snow, eager to get your injuries on ice. It’s strenuous, each step a reminder of your swollen, sore ankles. Every stride shoots a sharp pain through them, you can feel your heartbeat throbbing around the swollen flesh.

You take a generous amount of breaks to rest.

During one break, your back flush with the dirt and your legs elevated and propped against a maple, you think of the boy from eight, who had spared your life moments before.

He didn’t seem the type to not kill unless it’s self defense. He volunteered, he had the look of a career, eager for bloodshed. Almost worse than a career. The careers are arrogant, cheerful in attitude. Like they’re happy to be here. The boy from eight did not seem anything other but rage-filled. Disturbed, but not in the way that gets you sponsors. Disturbed like a boy who’s truly lost his mind and yearns for bloodshed.

He’s looking for the girl from his district, though. Maybe you and Price had pegged him wrong. Clearly he wasn’t eager to kill you, he had you on a silver platter, and he chose to grant you mercy.

You’re trying to reframe what little you know about the boy from eight. You wonder if he had actually volunteered to protect the girl from his district. Maybe the seething, gut-twisting anger he radiated was directed at the Capitol for taking a friend away from him. Maybe he’s just determined to protect a girl he loves from a country that does not hesitate to take everything from you.

Adversary or not, you hope he reunites with her. You wish they can spend some time together before the inevitable happens.

The trip to the snow quadrant takes twice as long as it did yesterday, due to your small, limping strides and generous breaks for rest.

Once to the border, where the red maples and ginkgos bleed into pine trees, you take off your boots and socks, and let your sore, swollen ankles rest in the snow. You finish what’s left in your water bottle before stuffing snow to its brim. You scoop a few into your mouth until you’re quenched.

Your whole body flinches at the boom, shaking away what remained of your freezing handful as you look around for trouble.

Another tribute down. Thirteen tributes left.

You should probably get moving. You’re a sitting duck hanging out next to the only source of water near the fall quadrant, but the ice numbs the inflamed pain in your ankles.

Whatever , you think. You’re not going to win anyway. Might as well be comfortable.

You nestle back into the dirt, resting your ankles across the border and in the snow.

The lack of sleep, the exhaustion from traveling, the injury, the lack of food in your belly, it’s all catching up to you.

Your eyes have dark bags underneath them, stomach growling and cramping from hunger. Your body yearns for rest, and your mind aches for a break from fear.

Closing your eyes in a dangerous game, but you can’t help yourself. A sigh of relief leaves your mouth and you nestle into the even ground.

When you wake up, you’re already laughing.

It’s uncontrollable, a painful spasm of your muscles, stomach pushing out laughs that are beyond too loud. They’re raw, real, from deep inside your abdomen, tensing your core in a painful contortion.

You can’t stop it, it won’t stop. You put a hand over your mouth, but your hands and arms are spasming just as much as your gut.

The inhales for breath are few and far between, each one a gasp for air that doesn’t stay in your lungs for long. They’re forced only after the billowing laugher has stolen every exhausted breath of air.

It hurts. Every inch of muscle is screaming, twitching uncontrollably as boisterous, hysterical cackles leave you.

You jam a fist into your mouth, but your knuckles slam into your teeth and hinders your ability to wheeze for air.

The fog is dense. It’s clear, this is the gamemakers doing. A cruel trap designed to draw tributes together and keep the games interesting.

You can’t see more than a few feet in front of your face, your stinging, burning eyes bouncing around and blurring your vision with their jittering.

Your knees knock together as you attempt a run, tripping over both tree roots and legs that fail you. Branches grab hold of you as you stumble through the forest, smashing into tree trunks and knocking yourself to the ground.

You can’t get up.

You’ve lost complete control of your limbs, your voice, your breathing.

The laughs still flow, core begging for respite as they burn from overexertion.

The hallucinations hit like a ton of bricks, intense and sudden.

The sky turns to a starless, inky black void.

The bright cheery leaves of the trees melt like hot wax, transforming into a black, tar-like ooze that drips to the ground and coats the petal-covered dirt. The ooze transitions quickly from a drizzle to a heavy pour, swallowing your whole body, your twitching limbs, and lapping up your sides until it pools over your front. It sloshes up your neck, sealing your mouth, choking you but not at all stifling the howling laughter. It fills your nostrils and yanks on your hair with its sticky, heavy weight. It stops once you’re entirely covered, leaving you paralyzed with just your eyes peeking out from the heavy ooze. The tar sloshes and threatens to spill into your eyes with every involuntary twitch.

The tar is so heavy, your body has to work twice as hard to breathe and expel the laughter.

The ooze floods your eye sockets, and when it all dissipates with a whoosh, you’re still laughing, but you’re you’ve been transported back to the bloodbath.

The sword feels natural in your hands, as if it was just an extension of your arm. The boy racing for supplies only has less than a second to act, and he fumbles it, his eyes only having the opportunity to widen before you thrust the sword square in the center of his throat. Its blade is so sharp, it slices through him like butter, not a lick of recoil. The stream of blood launches at you immediately. You’re choking on it, gurgling a mouthful of warm metal as you stare down District One, who gives a proud, toothy grin as your hands instinctively reach for the blade, slicing your palms open on its sharp edges. Your neck slides from the sword before you collapse to your knees. When your face hits the ground, your arms are wrapped around the bent waist of the girl from District Ten. You don’t hesitate to shove her on the ground, hands shooting out for the knife in her grip. With her hands still clasped around its handle, you thrust the blade into her gut, swinging your arm and mechanically driving the blade into her stomach over and over and over again.

The intrusive piercing plunges through your core stuns you, pinned to the ground and unable to swat away the hands cupped over yours. She’s crushing your knuckles as your limp arms are controlled like a marionette, forcing you to drive a blade into your soft stomach as the knife rhythmically punctures you with little resistance.

You deliver the final blow, your hands wrapped tightly to your spear, the plunge of it sending reverb through the staff and straight up your arms. Each skewer through flesh and fat and muscle shreds your insides until your intestines are completely minced.

And then you see yourself.

Crouched over and grasping your few supplies, eyes blown with fear and frozen in your place, lower lip trembling and body shivering in the ice cold wind.

Your feet slam against the ground with each stride, locked on to your own cowering figure, wielding a scythe at your side.

Your breath is stolen from your crushed lungs when you fold around your sternum, stopped by a strong grip. Your limbs flail, legs kicking and arms swinging as you fight back. When you are launched at the ground with tremendous force, the sound of your bones deafening you with a snap is the last thing you hear before you’re staring down the corpse of Eleven, a heap in front of heavy boots, your large hands reaching to pry the scythe from stiff fingers.

There you are.

You start in a dash, watching yourself trip over your platform before your seat hits the snow.

The snow swallows and frosts your hands as your scramble to your feet and fumble for a run.

You don’t lose him this time. As you tear through the trees, you can hear him tailing you, snapping branches of his own as heavy boots move easily through the woods. You can’t hear any over the pump of blood in your ears and the harsh snap of a neck breaking.

A rough shove knocks you to the ground, your chin slamming on dirt and splitting open. Blood immediately pours from the wound, dripping down your neck and splattering on yellow petals in brilliant red drops of blood.

Konig climbs on your back, sitting on your legs as his hand threads through your hair, yanking the back of your scalp to pull you to your knees in one jerk.

His hiss is devoid of comfort, nothing but loathing in that horrifying voice.

“I’ve been waiting a long time for this.”

You can’t beg for mercy, cackling through each brutal kill, chest trembling on each wheezing laugh underneath Konig’s power.

His arm snakes around your body and pulls the scythe to your throat. With one swipe his blade slices your neck, leaving behind a clean, deep gash. The blood gurgles in your throat, flooding your mouth with the hot taste of metal. As you lie bleeding out on the ground, you have no choice but to stare into the eyes of the boy from Eleven, resting limply next to you.

For hours, days maybe, you are paralyzed in this position, front pressed to the chill dirt as your cheek rests in a pool of your own blood. For each grueling moment your stare is fixated right into Eleven’s lifeless eyes, his neck bent in impossible angles. Eventually his head begins to rotate, making full circles on a still body, catching your gaze on each rotation.

You can’t blink, you can’t look away, laughing in his lifeless, spinning face.

You’re sure that you’ve died, and you will forever be trapped in this never-ending hell, in this graveyard of Konig’s victims.

You wake with a start, shouting Konig’s name on your first coarse breath before you can stop yourself.

“I hear her! I hear her!” Someone shouts, and footsteps confidently break into a run through the forest.

You scramble to a sit as you survey your surroundings. Your head pounds and muscles moan at each movement.

“Ni-iiine! Where you at Nine?!”

Another wheezing, coughing breath leaves you as you stand, wobbling on your feet as you make an unsteady jog away from the taunting voice.

“Ni-iiiine!” Titan, you think, calls in a sing-song.

Your muscles are useless, made of jelly and folding with every step.

You can’t keep it up, so you do the best you can. Hiding in a dense patch of ginkgos behind the base of a tree trunk thick enough to conceal your body.

You try and hold your noisy breaths, hoping the careers can’t hear your heartbeat rattling against its ribcage.

“Where’s your boy toy District Nine?!”

There’s close, so close. Surely they can hear and smell your fear.

“We just want to talk!”

Your hollow stomach twists, pressing yourself further into the coarse bark.

“Yeah, we won’t hurt you,” The voices are closer now, faux kindness dripping from their words.

The hairs on the back of your neck are on end, arms coated in goose flesh as your fingernails dig into the gaps of the bark.

No one should be this cheerful in the arena.

It’s not human.

“Where’d she go?”

“Really, we won’t hurt you!” Someone calls in an unnaturally high-pitched tone.

“Yeah, no hard feeling about before, honest!”

You force your heaving breaths through your nostrils, pinching your eyes closed as you focus to keep still and silent.

“If you don’t want to come out and play it’s fine! We just have a few questions.”

“Yeah - we just want to know where your little friend’s at, that’s all!”

“You hungry Nine? We’ve got food if you’re good!”

Your stomach actually growls at the mention of food, loud enough you’re sure they can hear it. You bite down on your knuckles to keep quiet.

They want to know where Konig is - that’s clear enough. Whether it’s to ally with him or to eliminate the ultimate threat, you don’t know.

You’re not sure how many cannons, if any, have fired since you’ve been drugged by the gas, but if the careers are this confident he must still be alive.

It’s spreads a singular burst of warm, cozy relief through your chest at the thought that he’s still alive.

You can hear them split up, branches scraping as they fan out in the vicinity of your voice.

By some miracle, you go undetected.

They’re convinced you ran further into the woods, and they regroup to head deeper into the forest.

You wait an unbearable amount of time until they’re out of earshot before daring to leave your hiding spot, moving as quickly as your body will allow in the opposite direction.

You’re not at all graceful, an infant fawn learning to use its legs, slamming into trees trunks and ripping through branches as you crash through the woods. A shooting pain fires up your legs with each cry of your ankles.

When the trees suddenly come to a jarring stop, you take a few steps backwards and crouch down, keeping yourself camouflaged in the tree line.

You’ve stumbled upon a large, open, perfectly rectangular plowed dirt field. What’s sitting in the ruts of the dirt rows makes you salivate.

A plot of corn stalks, cobs of corn fanned out in their ripe husks. Flawless pumpkins and squash looking too clean and vibrant to be resting in a dirt patch.

The sight of these beautiful fall vegetables has your stomach lurching at the idea of something to chew on. You haven’t had anything of real substance since being in the arena, and who knows how long you’ve gone without food while drugged.

Your heart does not trust these vegetables. Like the trees that look almost artificial, they are too perfect.

On the other hand, the maple seeds are not cutting it.

You do one last scan of the perimeter, peering deep into the trees to see if you can make out any figures, and before you can stop yourself - weak, clumsy legs attempt a dash straight for the stalks of corn. You quickly shed as many husks as you can from the hold of their stalks and hold them close to your chest with a tight forearm. With the other hand you wrap around the stem of a squash and haul your goodies back to the safety of the tree line. You don’t stop until your knees give out, dropping to the ground in a defeated heap.

You catch your breath before running your fingers over the grain of the husks and the waxy sheen on the outside of your squash.

They could be poisonous. A trap, laid out for the gamemakers that lures in anyone hungry or lacking willpower.

Your stomach is growling, cramping in a beg for food. You feel almost nauseous as your stomach chokes on itself, threatening to retch what little it holds.

They look delicious.

If you had to die - which is no doubt certain - you think you’d rather have it be at the hand of a vegetable than a bloodthirsty tribute.

You unwrap your corn, revealing uniform, mustard-yellow rows of kernels.

Fuck.

Your thumb glides along the glossy, bumped ridges of the kernels as you make one last attempt talk yourself out of it.

You can’t do it.

You bury your face dead center in the cob of corn, sweet juice bursting from the kernels and dripping down your chin. You roll your eyes at the taste of the ripe corn, not bothering to thoroughly chew before you swallow.

The relief is immediate - euphoric even. Your stomach almost instantly relaxes, the nausea and cramps dissipating at once. The moans that leave you are downright erotic.

You inhale the entire cob against better judgement, tossing the remains at the root of a maple, and wait.

You don’t feel ill, and you don’t feel poisoned. In fact, you feel better than you’ve felt in days.

After brief consideration, you shed another corn from its husk and inhale the whole thing.

When the cannon fires - your first thought is that it’s you. That the poison has killed you, and your brain is making its last fires before it catches up to a heart that stopped beating.

Moments pass, you even check your pulse for good measure, and it’s clear it’s not you.

Unfortunately, your next thought is of Konig.

No.

You cannot think of him.

It’s only a matter of time now.

After rest, you use knots you learned to tie in training to sloppily secure the corn with your rope and return the looped sash around your waist.

The gourd is tricky, but by using extra rope length and a generous amount of time you manage to weave a rope hanger to secure the squash at your waist.

The extra weight is noticeable, so you don’t plan on traveling far. Pushing yourself just far enough to make comfortable distance away from the field. You’ll eat some squash tomorrow before traveling to lighten the load.

At one point the anthem plays, and you keep your exhausted eyes open long enough to see the boy from District One.

This comes as a shock. A girl from District Nine should not outlive a career from District One.

One’s face is followed by the boy from District Ten, and you let out a breath you didn’t realize you were holding.

Konig’s still alive as far as you know. The career’s taunts seemed to confirm this.

The face of the girl from eleven flashes and then the sky goes dark.

At maximum there are eleven tributes left. Maybe less if you missed deaths while you were paralyzed.

The arms of sleep are not difficult to fall into. Your body and mind is completely worn out, and you’re still feeling a sluggishness from the fog.

You have one last thought as you succumb to the sore exhaustion.

Eleventh place isn’t so bad.

Sleep is nothing short of horrific. The nightmares are worse than the bone chilling fall air.

The nightmares - reliving the bloodbath. Cycling through every haunting memory, taking on the tribute’s perspectives one after another.

Staring into Eleven’s eyes.

But it always seems to come back to Konig.

You fight him all night - a choreographed dance of playing out every death resurfaced by the hallucination, taking turns between being slaughtered and doing the slaughtering.

Those signature hooded eyes switch between ravenous and blood thirsty to pleading and petrified without transition.

Sometimes he’s the one lying limp on that metal platform, neck twisted and bouncing off his final resting place, sometimes it’s you. Often when you look up, it is not Konig standing over his own corpse, but you.

You must wake up twenty times throughout the night, stifling your apologetic cries and begging pleads all leaving you in shouts of Konig’s name.

How humiliating.

How you call out for him time, and time, and time again. The audience watching you cry for his aid at every sticky situation you get yourself into. How he has proven himself to be not worthy of your comfort, but you’re stupid enough to let him worm his way into your heart anyway. To care about him enough that the very thought of him turning on you, the thought of you turning on him, is frightening enough to startle you from a nightmare.

The sound of a cannon wakes you with finality, and you shoot up in the chill early dawn air.

When the anonymous threat you anticipate doesn’t come, you make slow movements as you get ready for the day.

You break into the squash, slicing into the rind with your multitool and biting into sloppily cut chunks of the bitter gourd. You wash it all down with half a bottle of water, and survey your bruised ankles.

They’re still swollen, and the lack of hydration and surplus of poisonous fog hasn’t helped. Red, inflamed veins streak pink bruises that fade into a dark purple.

Maybe you’ll just sit under this tree and wait for death. You have corn, this bitter gourd, and a half a bottle of water - surely that’s enough to hold you over until somebody finds you, right?

But they don’t come.

The number of tributes must be dwinding, more than you thought.

For the first time, you’re thinking Price had a point. Maybe you could hunker down and wait it out until the end.

Not that you’d stand a chance in the finale.

You’d have to face the career pack, and if your suspicions are correct and Konig is alive, the possibility you’ll have to face him grows with every fallen tribute.

You wonder if anyone’s betting on you.

You curiously comb over the possible tributes that remain.

The girl from one.

Both from two.

Both from four.

Boy from six. Boy from seven.

Both from eight.

You.

And Konig.

Probably not. Certainly you have the longest odds of anyone left.

You wonder if Price is proud of you for making it this far, struggling your way forward with each step.

Surely this is the best he could have hoped for, both his tributes alive in the second half.

You wonder what Konig thinks of you still being alive.

Is he impressed? Surely he didn’t think a weakling such as yourself would make it this far.

Is he relieved that you’re still alive, and confused about why, just as yourself?

Maybe he’s dreading the possibility of having to be the one to kill you.

Maybe he’s happy you’re alive.

Maybe he’s eager to be the one who watches the life drain from your eyes.

It’s confusing - why you think about him so much. Why you hope he’s okay. Why you want him to want you to still be alive. Why you dream of him. Why you call out his name instinctually before you’ve even regained consciousness.

All after he tried to kill you.

You find a scrap of motivation in the late afternoon, spending the entire morning with your head lulling against the trunk of a large ginkgo, finishing off two more cobs of corn, and hoping whoever finds you makes it quick.

Back to the snow today.

You need something to do to keep your mind off him.

You tie up the remaining half of the gourd, sling your rope of corn over your shoulder, and head for the snow quadrant. You don’t think you’re far off, the fog having paralyzed you and prevented you from going far. It didn’t take you long to find the field after ditching the careers, but you’ve been disoriented and you’re not confident you know the way.

You head in what you think is the right direction.

You take your time, taking lights steps through the forest, more careful than you have been not to leave tracks. Extra cautious to listen for danger.

You have the sense that your death is approaching. An ominous feeling of finality deep in your gut that grows with each step. Surely the next tribute you encounter will be your death.

You know you’re walking slow, but it’s taking much longer than it should to get to the snow quadrant. You’re less sure you’re going the right way.

You walk until dusk, your steps slow as the day stretches on, ankles throbbing with each step. The tree roots give the terrain an unevenness that contort your feet awkwardly with each step, and the weight of your vegetables aren’t helping.

You’re daydreaming about Capitol dishes. What you wouldn’t give to sink your teeth into the crust of a warm loaf of bread, inhale an entire cut of the finest steak, swallow a heading scoop of potatoes, finish off two servings - No! Three servings of hot stew!

And why not admit it?

A glass of whiskey doesn’t sound too bad right now.

You realize you’re in trouble when you see the unmistakable landscape of orange sand.

You’re swallow the harsh reality that you’ve completely gone in the wrong direction just as you hear it.

It’s faint, far in the distance, the sounds of a dying animal.

Against better judgement, and with a tented brow, you near closer, and are surprised to find the snow quadrant, both the desert and the vast snow visible through the gaps in the trees.

You have unintentionally trekked the entire way back to the cornucopia.

When you reach the tree line, you peer with squint eyes through the gaps in the trees, focusing in the direction of the low, guttural moans of a maimed creature.

It’s the boy from District Eight. He’s posted at the cornucopia, wielding a thick, slightly curved blade. Out of thick logs of wood and rope, he has constructed a pulley. Strung up by its arms is an animal, slightly swaying on the end of its restraint. The animal has been skinned head to toe, but is still alive, the red muscle stitched with small white pockets of fat, rising and falling with each muted moan.

No.

That is no animal.

That is a person.

You can tell it’s a girl, but there’s no way to identify the tribute, entirely unrecognizable and coated in blood.

The sight has you stumbling backwards, your heel catching on a tree root and landing harshly on the dirt. A squeak leaves your lips without thought, your hand shooting up to cover your mouth. The boy heard it, because his head swivels in your direction. He can’t see you, but you catch him scanning in your section of the forest. You roll over in the dirt and make an ungraceful dash into the trees, your vegetables banging against your torso with each stride.

After making sufficient distance, you duck behind a tree, pressing your back against the trunk as you stop to catch your breath. Your hands find your knees, doubling over and gagging as you process the horrific sight. Each of your gasps for air are skewered with guttural croaks, your face drained of color.

Killing each other, that is the name of the game. You cannot blame the tributes for that. But what you just saw was uncalled for, barbaric, cruel. Dragging out her excruciating pain and suffering, and for what? A show?

When you realize what you have to do, your heart twists and a curse leaves your lips.

You look up to the sky, and speak, much louder than you should, “Give me something,” You say, voice raw, scratchy, and desperate, “Give me something to put her out of her misery.”

“Please,” Whispered like a desperate prayer.

Your head ducks between your knees again, dry heaving towards the dirt.

Just when you think your plea has been ignored, you see it. The parachute takes its time as it descends from the sky, landing gracefully in the dirt at your feet.

You open the large metal canister attached to the parachute as if it’s an explosive. Careful fingers reveal a long hollow tube and two darts, tied in a neat bundle with a patterned, textile ribbon.

You blink, face blank as you undo the knot with shallow breath and roll the darts between your fingers.

Engraved onto the bulbous tip that secures the sharp needles is the number ‘8’ in beautiful, elegant writing.

One for her, one for him.

She must be the girl from eight, the girl who stood as far apart as she could from the boy on the chariot. The girl who prompted the boy to lunge forward and volunteer, the girl the boy had his tunnel-vision set on seeking out.

You grasp your hands tightly around the darts, take a deep breath, and head toward the tree line.

This is risky, so risky, but you know you cannot let this girl suffer. Every moment she is alive, moaning miserably and dangling in the air, your insides will be knotted with guilt. This girl, that you don’t even know, will haunt you for the rest of your short life if you do not free her from her pain. You have nothing to lose. Even if you end up just like her, you’ll know you tried.

You will have to kill the boy who spared your life. How is that going to play with the audience? A cruel, heartless girl with no mercy, who refuses to treat others how she has been treated.

Through a particularly thick cluster of trees, you crouch down and observe the scene.

The boy from eight has moved on from searching for the source of the disruption you made, now casually peeling an orange as if there’s not a skinned-alive human dangling and groaning in pain a few feet away. Each of her low, maimed cries twists your insides a little tighter.

You’re not sure how you’re going to pull this off.

You could wait for him to leave, but each moment you don’t act that girl will suffer.

You could go right for him. From here, you don’t see him armed with a long range weapon, only his medium-sized blade, while you can get him from a distance.

If you don’t miss.

You could lure him into the trees, hide yourself in the thick foliage. You might be able to get away with missing if you can camouflage yourself.

This seems like your best bet.

You tuck yourself further into the trees, load the dart gun, and take a deep breath. Hopping from one foot to the other as you work up the courage, you let out a whoop, as loud as you dare.

You wait, eyes pinched in a brace and body shaking against the tree bark. When the trees don’t rustle, you let out another yell, louder than before.

Your eyes pinch shut for a moment, mumbling unintelligibly under your breath.

It’s the third whoop that draws him into the trees. You can hear him, he must be only twenty feet away.

You get a glimpse of him through the trees, the flash of a blade pushing branches out of the way or the black of his clothes moving slowly into the forest.

When he passes you, you slink through the trees, tailing him with silent feet, side stepping branches and exposed tree roots. Your heartbeat is pounding in your ears, your skin pulsing with each pump of your heart.

You get as close to him as you dare before you place the tube to your lips.

Your face tightens, you take a deep inhale-

But you can’t do it.

You can’t kill this boy.

He deserves it, more than deserves it. But you can’t do it.

Your eyes flit behind you.

Without little thought, your feet break into a run towards the cornucopia, sore ankles making a beeline for the girl. With one hand you hold the dart gun, the other on your rope sash to keep the vegetables from banging against you.

From this close, each wheezing breath and raspy moan that leaves her clenches your teeth a little tighter. It’s like she’s using her breaths to scoop out your heart bit by bit.

You can see the wrinkle of her exposed muscles, the bones of her fingers, her eyes coated in her own blood.

“I’m sorry,” You whisper to her, maybe you yelled it, you’re not sure. Tears well in your eyeline and blur your vision.

You do not hesitant to take the spare dart in your hand and thrust it right into her side.

“I’m sorry!” You hiccup, the tears flowing relentlessly down your cheeks, “I’m sorry!”

She lets out three final rattling breaths before she succumbs to the poison, her chest stilling.

You let out a sob, turning away from her lifeless body.

You flinch when her cannon fires, another choked sob leaving you. She’s gone but you can still hear her moans of pain in your ears.

The tree branches are disturbed, your head whipping in the direction of the fall forest.

Your weak ankles break into a run, wobbling as you get up to speed. You look over your shoulder, vision blurred with tears, but see no one.

Excited voices, more than one, are approaching.

You’re coming to the conclusion just as the careers break through the pine trees and confirm your suspicion.

Out of the fucking frying pan.

Your strides double in speed, feet running along the border of the spring and desert quadrants.

“There she is!” They call, just as they did when they heard you yelling out for Konig in the forest.

The careers seem to glide over the snow, not the slightest bit hindered by the terrain as they chase you.

The boy from eight breaks through the trees, you know because he’s yelling in the same voice that screamed at you while searching for the girl he wanted to skin. Booming and frothed in rage.

You can’t make out what he’s saying, deafened by your own crystallized breaths and the blood pumping in your ears.

When you dare look over your shoulder, both the careers and the boy from eight are merging at the cornucopia, the boy from eight raising his blade and running straight for the pack of careers with fervor.

For a moment, the three remaining careers and Eight redirected their attention to the new threat. You hear the sound of metal clashing, indecipherable screaming.

It’s the girl from one, you think, who orders one of them to follow you as you run along the border of the hedge maze.

You do not want to duck into the hedge maze, but you are injured, lacking concealment, and being chased by a trained killer.

Maybe this would be a good time to die.

Let it be done by someone who knows how to land a fatal blow in one strike, a quick death.

A cannon fires, but you don’t slow, feet slamming ruthlessly against the ground. Your ankles beg for respite, and your body isn’t in the best condition, every muscle croaking out their ache with each jostle.

If it’s the cannon for the boy from eight, the careers will have no problem catching up to you.

Each breath is painful, and between your own wheezes you can hear the footsteps drawing closer.

You really did give it your best shot.

You hope Price knows that. You hope he’s proud of you, proud of you for not giving up.

You did better than you thought you would. Surprised yourself, surprised the nation, by making it this far.

It’s quick, so quick, the arms snagging you by the waist and forcing you to exhale the rest of a broken breath. At once you’re slammed into the sand, stunned at the sharp pain that explodes in your ribs, losing grip of your final dart.

The arid environment, the scalding sand, it doubles the beads of sweat that pull from your pores.

There’s little to do about Titan, the monstrous boy from District Two, pinning you to the ground with minimal effort.

It’s laughably weak, but you still swing at him, your shoulders digging further into the boiling sand with each swing. Frustrated but exhausted grunts leave you with each swipe at him. He doesn’t bother to restrain your hands, he swallows each swing without so much as a flinch.

He puts his knife to your throat - not yet pressing against your flesh, but enough to threaten you into keeping your upper half pinned to the gritty sand. The heel of his palm digs into your collarbones hard enough it’ll surely bruise.

Your nails scratch at his massive arms as you bury your head further into the stand, squirming away from him as instinctual squeaks of prey leave your throat.

“Sh, sh, sh,” Titan coos, trying to place a finger to your lips but pulling away when you snap your teeth at him, “We’re not gon’na kill you.”

He gives you a smile, exposing his menacing canines.

“Yet.”

He laughs at his own stupid joke, throwing his head back, the cool steel of the blade brushing against the crook of your neck as he laughs.

He finishes on a deep inhale, giving you a wicked smile.

“I think you know what we want, yeah? So tell us where he is, and we’ll let you go! It’s that simple!”

“Just kill me!”

He snorts before throwing his head back in another laugh.

“Adorable,” He says with a sigh, “You’ve really got the stuff, don’t you Nine?”

Titan swivels his head, “He can’t be far, right? I know you don’t like to stray.”

He gives another laugh.

“Or are you having a fight?” He laughs again, and you grunt in annoyance, “Trouble in paradise, hm?”

Just get it over with.

“Why don’t you yell for him?” He asks.

“Fuck you!” You grunt.

Titan’s smile falls. This Titan - a cold faced Titan - is much more nervewracking than an irreverent one.

Titan’s eyes have gone absent, his lips bored. His knuckles scrape down your chest as his hold tightens around the handle of the blade.

Your face is plastered with regret, lips parting to rectify but it’s too late.

His other hand springs to wrap around your throat, cutting off your breath without hesitance.

Your legs kick underneath him, but your strength is no match for the powerful boy planted firmly on your front.

His eyes have unfocused, he’s not even staring at you - he’s staring through you.

Before, at least he was human, even if he was insane. Now his features are entirely devoid of emotion, of empathy.

His hand relaxes, but his grasp remains firmly around your throat. Immediately you’re choking in breaths, coughing on the air you gasp desperately for.

Titan’s stare is still icy, but his teeth grit, and his light requests turn to threatening demands, “Call for him.”

You’re still trying to catch your breath, eyes blown in fear and lips parted around fearful huffs.

“Call for him!” He yells, emphasizing his sentence by squeezing your windpipe for just a moment, to remind you he can, and jostles you by the neck.

You won’t.

You won’t succumb to this lunatic’s demands. You will not give him the satisfaction.

He may kill you.

Your life, he can have. That is the name of the game.

Your dignity, he may not.

That is something that only you are entitled to tarnish.

He presses the knife further into your skin, slicing through just hard enough for blood to bead on your flesh, “Call for him or I’ll make you!”

When he yells, his shout tears from the back of his throat, the words ripped from low in his gut. His whole body jerks with his words, his spit flying from his lips and splattering on your face.

It’s his spit - momentarily stunning you as you wince away from the spray - that activates something in you. It forces your thoughts back into the body that was reacting solely on fear, and at the same time gives you an idea.

You do not hesitate.

With a deep pinch of your eyes and an animalistic grunt muffled by tightly pursed lips, you fling two fist fulls of sand in the direction of his face.

Immediately he flings himself back, his hands retracting from you as forearms move to wipe the gritty sand further into his eyes. He scrambles to his feet and fumbles backwards away from the pain that follows him.

Titan’s spitting in between his cries as he tries to rid his mouth of the sand.

You keep your face pinched tightly even after the sand stops raining back down onto your face, blindly kicking away from him, rolling over on the scalding ground and rising to your feet.

You shake your head, stumbling blindly through the desert as you clear off your hands to brush clean your face.

The rough grains feel like sandpaper against your skin as you rub away both sand and his spit with your shirt.

You open your eyes, blinking rapidly to test your vision and find it unscathed before making a rush back for the spring quadrant, shoes swallowed and kicking up puffs of sand with every step.

Titan’s folded in a heap on his knees, grunting in pain and trying to rub out his eyes. He curses you with every breath.

You scoop up your final dart and its tube, and for a moment, you consider driving it right into Titan’s flesh, but your feet are already scrambling away from his foaming threats and grit wails of pain with no desire to look back. You’re still powered on adrenaline, snap decisions made with little room for consideration.

It feels like you’ve been running for miles, but it couldn’t have been far. When your ankles give out, you’re sent stumbling onto the plush grass of the spring quadrant.

You have no strength to attempt getting to your feet, so you lay face first in the grass in the position you collapsed in.

You go over all of it in your mind as you catch your breath and try to pry the ghost of Titan’s fingers from your throat.

You already knew the careers had wanted to know where Konig was, but Titan demanded you to use your voice to lure him to your aid. In fact, Titan refrained from killing you so he could use you to draw Konig in. He had you on a silver platter, blade to your throat, and he let you slip through his fingers because he wanted to use you to get to Konig.

You assumed your brush with the careers in the forest was their shot in the dark, the best lead they had to find their white whale. But this run-in with Titan has given more than enough credit to their taunts in the forest.

The careers think that you and Konig are allies.

Why else would they think your voice would lure Konig in?

The only other possibility is that Titan thinks that Konig hates you enough to come running at the opportunity to be the one to end your life.

But that doesn’t make sense, because Titan suggested the reason you weren’t together in that moment was because you were having an argument.

‘Trouble in paradise’ as Titan said, which implied there was an established partnership between you and Konig in the first place.

Price, you think.

It was Price.

Price saved you back there, not you.

He didn’t assign Konig as your chaperone in training because he actually thought you were trouble, he did it for the same reason he put you in matching outfits for the interview, the same reason he ensured Konig was caught off guard by being asked about you in front of the entire country.

Price wanted the tributes to think that you and Konig cared for each other. That you were something more than just two tributes from the same district.

Because Price knew that if he could make everyone believe you and the strongest tribute were friendly, the other tributes would keep you alive as leverage against the ultimate threat in the arena.

Konig didn’t have a weakness, so Price made you his weakness.

Titan could have easily ended you, then and there. But he didn’t, because he thought that with you at his fingertips, he held the key to taking down his toughest opponent.

But of course, that’s a mislead, tipping the advantage back to Price’s golden boy.

And you unknowingly laid the groundwork for it - didn’t you?

Holding Konig’s hand at the opening ceremony, him accepting yours without hesitance.

Is that when Price got the idea?

It’s genius.

It directs the heat off of his star tribute’s back and onto yours, and simultaneously gives the other tributes a reason to keep you, the bait, alive. It gave you the opportunity to make an escape from Titan, which of course, Price knew you would.

Because you fight dirty, you fight smarter, and the careers only know how to fight right . They are trained to kill, not keep alive. And everyone knows, especially Price, that as long as it is not a fight to the death - it will be a fight that you win.

Why didn’t you think of it?

Price has manipulated the others into keeping both of his tributes alive, all without your knowledge.

Of course Price couldn’t tell you that was the plan, you would have never accepted it. Konig needed to be blindsided on that stage, and you would have fought Price tooth and nail at the implications. At the very suggestion that you are ‘bait.’ That you and Konig cared for each other enough to come running into trouble to save each other.

The plan only works if both tributes stay alive, which is something you would have never agreed to. Tethering your life to Konig like that, so blatantly relying on him when the entire time you’ve been trying so hard not to do so. Surely even Konig would have put up even a bit of a fight at being assigned a weakness.

Konig is not only overshadowing you, but Price has stitched your fingers to his coattails.

It’s an impossible arrangement.

If Konig dies, you have no worth to the other tributes. If you die, the size of the target on his back doubles.

And if you both manage to pull it off until the end - well, what happens then?

The plan both ensures your survival and destines you to die at the same time. No matter how you work it through in your head, Konig always comes out on top.

You almost don’t even notice the parachute that lands by your head. You barely have the energy to lift your head from the dirt, cheek still nestled into the grass as you pry open the container.

It’s a single, modest dinner roll wrapped in ribbon. You roll onto your back and hold the gift in front of your face, using the bread to block out the sun. The ribbon is beautiful, a neatly trimmed scrap of patterned textile that matches the one that tied the blow darts to their tube. It’s knotted into a perfect, perky bow on the roll’s apex.

You carefully undo the ribbon and rest it on your core as you inspect the loaf. Underneath the bow lies the number ‘8’, branded with slightly darkened crust.

It is a gift, but not from Price. The ribbon, the bread’s branding - this is a gift from the people of District Eight. If the ribbon is anything to go by, then the darts were a gift from them as well.

The bread is a thank you for putting that girl out of her misery. For risking your life to put her pain first. For eradicating the boy from eight, one way or another.

You hold the loaf just under your nose, taking a deep inhale. It’s still warm, you can feel the heat radiating on your lips.

“Thank you,” You whisper to the wind, to District Eight, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

You eat half of it right there in the dirt, in the wide open air, not even muting your groans of pleasure as you take bites into something hearty for the first time in the arena.

The bread isn’t the rich Capitol bread, it’s district bread. Inferior in every way, but it is the most delicious loaf of bread you’ve ever tasted in your life.

You wash it down with what’s left of your canteen, which isn’t much.

You’re going to have to get back to the snow soon, and unless you want to go the long way around, you’ll have to cut across the cornucopia again.

Your head drops back into the grass in defeat.

You’re debating whether or not you should give up, whether or not to just lay out here in the open and wait for someone to come along and kill you.

Because you know what the alternative is.

It’s nightfall when you finally move from the dirt, moved by your own thirst.

When you stand, the ribbon you’d placed on your chest flutters to the ground. You stare at it with deep breath before bending over to pluck it from the grass. You’re not sure why you want to keep this reminder of the girl from eight, but you can’t stand to discard it. You loop the ribbon around your wrist and sloppily tie it into a bracelet.

You shake all the sand you can off yourself, fix your poor, knotted hair, and make your way back to the cornucopia. You need to get back to the fall quadrant, back to the precious snow and camouflage.

You don’t have much of a plan other than haul ass as you approach the edge of the hedge maze and break into the open air of the cornucopia.

You’re not sure if it’s the darkness, the dwindling number of tributes, or a mixture of both, but you manage to go undetected as you make the clearance.

Good. You’ve had enough excitement for one day.

You dig yourself far into the forest just in case, getting lost in thick branches on every side before you stop to fill your canteen.

You find a place to settle in for the night, already aching for warmth of the spring quadrant. You briefly consider risking sleeping in the open air just so you don’t have to freeze on the chilled dirt of a cool fall night, but you barely manage to fight the urge.

You find a thick patch of trees to hide in, doing your best to camouflage yourself as you settle in for rest.

The anthem plays, but you don’t bother getting up to watch the faces in the sky. You don’t want to see the girl from eight, you don’t want to put a face to the girl turned to butcher meat.

You’ve lost track of how many tributes are left, but you know the pool is shrinking.

And for the first time, you’re thinking maybe you could actually win. It’s a thought that you immediately reject, but it creeps its way back in through the image of the careers and Konig simultaneously receiving life-threatening injuries, and maybe a lucky shot with a blow dart for whoever remains. Maybe the gamemakers will somewhat tilt the scales in your favor, some rigged trap that wipes out the heavy hitters.

Rest does not come easy, but you manage to sneak in a few hours of sleep over the course of the night, in between nightmares and the shutter of your own teeth.

The morning is quiet. You have no plan, sitting at the trunk of a tree and resting. You finish off a good chunk of your vegetables, only a few husks of corn remaining.

You haven’t heard a cannon since the boy from District Eight. Things have quieted on the field, which is bad news for you. If the audience gets bored, the gamemakers will make it interesting. Soon, when the tributes get sparse, they will begin to force you together, manipulating you into confrontations.

The exhaustion has fully caught up to you. You spend the entire day resting by your tree, occasionally getting up to stretch your sore limbs. You elevate your ankles, nurse your water. For a moment, you even forget you’re in the arena. It’s like you’re having a solitary picnic in the forest on a day off in District Nine.

It is hard to ignore how lonely you are.

You are aching for human touch, or even just a conversation that doesn’t revolve around fearing for your life.

And there he is again, worming his way into your brain like an infestation of parasites, memories of his comfort multiplying on an infested mattress of loneliness.

For the first time since you’ve been in the arena, you reach into your sports bra and retrieve the golden locket that’s made its home against the flesh of your chest.

You smooth your fingers over the front, staring down at the shimmer of the gold. It’s warm from the heat of your skin. You flip it in your fingers, fidgeting with it. Nails pry the locket open just to close it again with a satisfying snap.

You should probably get rid of it. Why would you want to carry around a trinket from someone who tried to kill you?

You should throw it into the forest, just get rid of it.

Konig did borrow it from Ruby, though. It needs to get back to her.

You tuck it away.

There’s really no other way to describe how you spend the rest of the day other than fooling around. You make a crown out of some leaves, undo the thread of your rope and braid it - you even grab an extra handful of snow on your water run so you can make tiny snow-people in your hideout.

It’s as you’re working the multitool into some bark of a maple tree, trying to figure out how to get sap, when you hear it.

It sounds like a wave, or wind, or both? You can’t see or feel anything, blinded by leaves, but just the sound alone is enough to prep yourself to run if needed. It’s coming from the desert quadrant, you’re sure.

There’s a vibration that shoots through your boots, the sound of scraping and grinding. The ground is shaking beneath you, the world now turning to a vibrating blur. Its rumbles intensify until you lose your balance, knocked onto your front to support yourself as your body is roughly tossed around.

You hear the sound of trees uprooting, snapping, the sound of danger approaching. With the instincts of a scared animal, you sprint away from the roar of the trees crashing to the ground.

Running seems impossible on the dirt that jostles you around and makes the tree branches harder to navigate.

With each break of the branches and crack of the trees uprooting, the image of the boy from eleven sears in front of your eyes and robs you of precious breath.

After a small tumble you get back to your feet, tripping over tree roots and scraping yourself on branches.

The rumbling grind of shifting ground draws closer, and you risk a jerk of your head to see chunks of earth and entire trees being swallowed into a glowing pit of lava below a fifty foot drop.

A squeak leaves you as you force yourself forward, flinging yourself through the forest. When you clear the trees, your eyes lock onto the cornucopia, desperate for safe ground.

Your attention is shifted to the left, where the desert quadrant is nothing but a raging dust storm. It’s the sound you heard earlier, gusting winds pulling up an orange fog of sand you can’t see a foot beyond.

When your feet find the soft grass of the spring quadrant, you risk looking over your shoulder to survey the chaos.

The fall quadrant has completely deteriorated, leaving nothing but a gaping hole filled with hot lava. The tops of trees are swallowed up by the mesmorizing orange pool, once colorful petals now erupted in glorious flame.

The thunderous disruption of ground does not just come behind you, because the sound of a forest being destroyed does not stop when the last piece of the dirt littered with ginkgo petals slips away into inferno.

The pine trees are being wrung out, the sound of bark snapping and pine trees uprooting. You can see the snow being shaken off the their snow-capped peaks as they are jerked around under extreme force.

When you hear the shrieks your attention is immediately stolen by the boys who had run into the snow district during the bloodbath clearing the tree line. Your body immediately tenses at the sight of them, but you can’t take your eyes off the ten-foot wave of snow at the boys heels. In an instant they are swallowed by a wall of snow that does not even brake at the two boys who have disappeared in its stomach.

As the avalanche draws closer, you make a run for the hedge maze until you hear an unearthly impact that reverberates like glass being struck. You look over your shoulder and slow when you see that the avalanche has been stopped at the quadrant’s border, not daring to spill into spring’s grass or the abyss of molten rock.

It piles up against the quadrant border, a perfect right angle wedge of a snow. It doesn’t stop until the pine trees are completed swallowed and the snow easily covers three stories above your head.

Those two boys are dead for sure, you think, but there’s no way you would have been able to hear the cannons over the snow.

From your left, you catch a figure emerging from the raging dust storm.

You turn on your heels to run, hesitating when you realize your only choice is the hedge maze. This, this is where the gamemakers wants the final tributes to go.

This is the finale.

You swivel your head to the figure behind you, heading right for you. He’s covered head to toe and obscured by a haze of sand, but there’s no mistaking a figure that large. It’s Konig, and the sight of him rushing towards you makes you push through the gut-turning fear of the looming hedges.

You’re in a full sprint into an entrance, legs already begging for you to give it a rest, lungs fighting against each stride, but you don’t slow.

You clip your shoulder on the entrance and hiss with pain, hand immediately springing up to rub out your shoulder. As you run, you pull your hand away to find your palm coated in bright red blood.

Your arm stays firmly pressed to your upper arm, futilely trying to staunch the flow as you push forward, careful not to brush against the hedge’s walls.

The ground starts to rumble again, vibrating under your feet but with much less intensity than the fall quadrant. It’s still enough to throw you off balance, a hand springing out to find support but only slicing open your palm on the hedge’s defenses. Your hand, now dripping with blood, pulls to your chest as you fall to your knees from the shaking earth.

This is it.

You are surely going to die in this awful hedge maze. The maze that offput you so before will be your final resting place.

It takes you a moment to realize the walls are sinking into the ground. Its leaves and pink blossoms being swallowed up by the dirt. You squint up to see the tops of the mazes revealing more and more sky as they descend.

You bring yourself to shaky feet, surveilling the descent of the walls.

Your heart pounds at the possibilities that will soon be revealed to you. Surely what lies behind these walls will be your death.

When the walls have descended to your height, you shakily get to your feet, peering over to find only more hedge.

The walls disappear, the tops coated with a layer of grass that melds perfectly to the ground and leaves no evidence of their existence, and the earth stops shaking beneath you.

Only four walls remain in an equal square with no exits, trapping you alone in a large grass field. You take a moment to survey your wounds, peeling your hand off your shoulder. Your shoulder was flayed, inflamed four-inch slashes burning along your upper bicep. Oozing, thick red blood drains freely from the raised flesh, staining your jacket and coating your hands in its warmth. The slices on your palms were serated, whatever having sliced it carving out extra flesh as the ground jolted you around.

With your good hand you reapply pressure to your shoulder in an attempt to staunch the flow of blood as you inspect one of the remaining hedge walls.

They were barbed. What seemed like inviting leaves and cherry blossoms are actually spikes and petals of razor sharp blades.

Once you’ve made the discovery you make distance from the walls, looking around for the horror they clearly wanted you to face.

For a moment your eyes are searching the hedges, waiting for impossible beasts to slink from the wall’s blades. Capitol mutts bred designed with psychological and physical damage in mind.

You get the opportunity to catch your breath, checking on your wounds in between scans for threat.

A flinch tears through you when the ground rumbles again.

Through the disorientation of the trembling dirt, you make out that only one wall is descending, and it was not one that leads to open air, but one that lead to another chamber within the maze.

At the massive hedges sink lower, you can see the area leading to it has also shed its complex chambers, revealing a similar square pen of hedges.

Whatever awaits for you on the other side, you’re about to be ensnared with it in a rectangular prison with no chance to escape except to bury yourself through the hedge’s razor sharp blossoms.

You reach to prime your blow dart, but your hands come up empty. Frantic hands pull the rope from your torso and scramble through the loop of rope, but it’s gone.

It’s gone.

Surely lost to the lava, knocked free from your shoddy knots during the earthquake.

The dread is instantaneous, flooding you from head to toe with a nauseating heat. Your only shot, you just let your only shot drain through your fingers.

Fuck.

When the wall is three feet from the ground, you can see a singular tribute on the other side, bent over in a similar position to support themselves on the ground that thrusts you about.

As soon as the tops of the maze sinks into the ground and disappears, the tribute is already tearing through the grass and in a beeline straight towards you.

It’s the girl from District One.

“Nine!” She yells in a war cry so daunting it makes your gut instinctively twist.

In her hand she wields her spear, coated in layers of blood. From the old, crusted brown of week-old kills to the deep red at its silver tip, freshly drained from minute-old wounds.

Your breath catches, eyes wide.

You were surely going to die, another blood stain to decorate her spear.

You’d never seen so much rage coming from one person. Not even the boy from eleven or Konig, both moments from killing you, didn’t wear an expression with this degree of loathing.

A sickening, animalistic wail rips from the back of her throat as she raised her spear, not breaking her lengthy strides.

“He killed him!’ Her froths carry when she’s close enough, “He killed him!”

You’re not sure who ‘He’ or ‘Him’ is, but you know you’re about the take the blunt of her vengeance.

‘Just don’t let anyone in there use it against you, okay?’

Your brows pinch, you take one breath to steady yourself, and you brace.

When she’s only a few yards away, she launches her spear at you, another pained cry shrilling throughout her grunt. When you make a dive out of the way, you can hear the spear whiz right by your ear and disturb tufts of your hair. You’re sure it nicked you, but when your hand comes up to your ear to confirm you’re not sure if the blood on your hands is from the wound inflicted from the hedges or her.

You rush for the spear that lodges in the dirt three feet from you. You’re quick but she beats you to it, and you have no choice but to cling onto the blood-stained handle with your injured hands and hope that she can’t make enough distance to pierce you with it.

“He killed him!” She repeats, words so savage she’s spitting in your face.

The spear lays horizontally between your chests, erratically jerking in the space between you as you grapple for it.

She’s all muscle, arms toned and her face doesn’t look any more hollowed than it did when she stepped into the arena. It’s easy to see she’s overpowering you, flinging you around as she yanks on the spear in your firm grip.

“He killed him! He killed him!” These words punctuate each torque of the blood-stained handle, a vicious replay spewing from her mouth on repeat until it turns into a brutal harmonization. With each pull you wince as the tainted wood forces against your sliced hands.

It’s the neck snapping of the boy from eleven, and with each yank that pulls you forward you see Konig snapping the boy’s neck.

“He killed him!” Yank, snap! “He killed him!” Yank, snap! “He killed him!” Yank, snap!

From here you can see the tears streaming down her face.

It must be the look of bewilderment, or maybe pity, that flashes across your face, because as soon as you notice her tears her face relaxes for just a moment, like she’s waking up from a dream. She cuts off her repeated cries with another vicious grunt, tightening her grip onto the spear’s staff, and runs full force at you.

The weight of her pulling the spear closer suddenly disappears, knocking you off balance. The handle catches on your collarbones and sends you both crashing to the ground.

You don’t let go of the spear as she moves to straddle you, sliding down your thighs and planting herself firmly on your stomach. White knuckles contrast the blood you’re adding to her collections of stains, mutilated palms fighting for the spear.

With one hand she forces the staff of the spear into your sternum hard, and with the other she swings at you, connecting her fist to the side of your jaw with enough force to make you see a blinding white.

When you return, hands still clasped firmly around the spear, she’s digging into her waistband for something that will surely end your life.

You trash violently under her before you find some fucking sense and use your good hand to reach through the hem of your collar, into your sports bra, and retrieve your multi-tool.

Pluck and a multi-tool, that’s all you have.

You were most certainly going to die.

You manage to flip out the first tool your blood-covered fingernail found as she reveals a six-inch long silver blade.

“He killed mine, I kill his!” Her scream is guttural, her words through hysterical tears barely registering when she swings using both hands to thrust the blade down into your skull.

With a swing of your arm you block the knife, slicing a deep, lengthy gash into your forearm as your other hand jams the inch-long corkscrew straight into her eye.

The shriek of pain is unlike any other you’ve ever heard. It completely swallows your cry from the deep gash on your arm elicited. The feeling, the sound, of her eyeball squelching as the corkscrew pierced is still shooting up your arms, making your body cringe more than the nasty gash she left behind. Immediately her tensed body folds in on itself, her fingers shooting up to thread through the multi-tool and coating her hands with the steady stream of blood.

With all you have, a grunt escaping from deep in your diaphragm, you work yourself free from her restraint while she’s distracted by her wounds.

You retrieve her spear, now stained heavily with the same blood that spews from the gashes along your shoulder, arm, and hand, coating you in dark red sleeves of dripping blood. The girl swings at you, but not yet used to her loss of depth perception and debilitating pain, misjudges how far away you are.

You take a moment to let yourself wallow in your pain, to shake the feeling of skewering the girl’s eye that still shed tears as you back away from her haunting wails.

She’s foaming obscenities at you, trying to come to her feet but dropping to her knees as the jostling of the multi-tools shoots pain through her with another haunting wail of agony.

When she reaches up to yank the multitool from her eye, you prime yourself with the spear, pointing it in the direction of a howl so piercing it deafens you. Her blood covered eye is still threaded onto the corkscrew when she pops it free, ripping out a chunk of her shredded optic nerve with it.

You have to close your eyes, your heart sinking as you wince in sympathy at her pain.

You can’t bring yourself to end her like this. Now would be the time, it would be the smart thing to do. You’re perfectly justified, you know that. She attacked you, she tried to end your life, and you are completely in the clear morally and legally.

Through her sharp sobs you can hear Price’s voice. He’s screaming at you through the screen, he’s giving you permission, he is telling you to use that pluck to give her spear one last poetic stain.

But you can’t do it.

Her maimed wails are drawing nothing but pity, knowing you are the one who is responsible for her pain, even if she had just tried to wedge a knife through your skull.

“Nine!” She shrieks a yell of vengeance and pain from her mouth coated in the blood that pours from her eye socket.

“Nine!”

She shakily gets to her feet, her hands already swiping for you, blindly swinging the multi-tool still stabbed through her own eye even though you’ve trailed your blood at least twenty yards away.

“Stay away!” You yell as your slices palm screams under a tightened grip on her spear.

“Nine!” She cries, her feet picking up into an unsteady jog toward the sound of your voice.

You back away, keeping the spear firmly pointed in her direction.

The girl from one, blinded by her injuries, tears, and rage, does not slow when she runs full force into her own spear, the entire silver tip disappearing into the flesh just under her rib cage.

The wooden, round end of the spear thrusts into your gut with a breathtaking amount of force. Your eyes were already closed when she coughs a warm, sticky spray of blood onto your face.

She’s choking on her own blood, the last haunting sounds of life gurgling from the back of her throat.

You don’t let go of your grip on the staff until the girl from one goes limp, her body dropping to the ground and pulling her spear from your blood-covered hands. Even when the cannon’s boom fires to signify her death, you can’t open your eyes, can’t bear to see the girl from District One’s lifeless body. Your tears begin to streak the fresh blood on your face.

“I’m sorry!” You scream in the direction of her body, “I’m sorry!”

Your pleading cries become hysterical, your words repeating as foaming as the girl from one’s as she charged at you with the same spear that killed her. The feeling of her squishing eye still shoots up the bones of your arms and down your spine.

Your eyes finally snap open at the encore of the ground shaking.

You try and move away from the girl from one, her body bouncing up and down like a rag doll - and suddenly you’re staring at the Eleven’s lifeless body bouncing off the metal platform.

You’re knocked to your limbs, blood draining freely down your arms and painting the grass with generous red streaks as the earth quakes.

The large hedge wall is descending, and as it is swallowed into the ground you can see what remains of the hedge maze, entirely stripped of its inner walls and chambers. Over the top of the descending wall you can see another large, rectangular pen of equal size that will soon form a square of the hedge’s outer most borders with no exits in sight.

When the wall has fully descended, you rise to shaky feet and find two tributes rising from the ground that finally settles. Two more tributes lie dead in heaps on the grass at the far end of the maze.

The tribute on the right is The Mountain, no mistaking that size, but he’s covered from head to toe in gear. Thick gloves. A pair of green cargo pants. Black guards on his joints and forearms. A holster sits at his upper thigh, carrying some sort of blade. He wears a thick black vest on his front that spills over with supplies.

The most haunting is the mask, a nearly uniform black fabric that drapes over his neck and bunches around his vest, pinned in place underneath a tactical helmet. It reminds you of an executioner.

He doesn’t even look human . Any comfort you had found from him before the games, any scraps that remained after he snapped that boys neck and raced to kill you, has completely disintegrated.

The mask has two circular cutouts above two faint streaks of color and reveal the only part of him exposed to light, those eyes that have shared so many reassuring glances with you - and they’re staring in your direction.

You hear him shout something at you, your name, you think, that harsh voice carrying all the way from across the hedge maze. His hands find his head before he starts in a jog to you, slowing when he sees the body of the girl from one, imbedded on a spear and lying limp in the grass.

He looks back to you, and then his head whips in the direction of the other tribute to find a knife flying in his direction. He throws himself to the ground in a dodge, and the boy from two takes his opportunity to advance on Konig in a full sprint, already reaching into his jacket pocket for a replacement weapon.

Konig rolls forward before getting to his feet, making a run for you.

You’re frozen again, eyes flicking between both of the imminent threats before you, trying to figure out who you should focus on first.

You start in a run towards the girl from one’s body, not slowing, but wincing as you pull the spear from her abdomen without looking down. You run a few more yards before whipping around, slightly crouched as you extend the spear in the direction of Konig and the boy from District Two. Titan, the boy with canines that come to perfect, razor sharp points.

Konig fumbles when he meets your eyes, the fear and the determination in them as you point your weapon at him. He slows, his eyes momentarily finding the tip of the spear, and then the body of the girl from one before he turns to look for Titan. He retrieves a large knife, it’s not the scythe you saw him wielding at the bloodbath, but it’s similar. A long, silver blade that almost constitutes a sword raised in warning at Titan.

Titan slows, and sidesteps to survey you both. The body of the girl from District One lays limp in the center of a three-way standoff, with two boys who very much dominate you in size and strength on either side.

Titan gives a cruel laugh, showing off his razor sharp canines. The knife he had retrieved from his jacket falls to his side, as if he’s not even worried about either of you atttacking.

“Where you been District Nine?!” He yells almost teasingly from his spot, clearly directed at you. You tighten your grip on your spear with your blood-soaked palms, brows furrowing.

“I’ve been looking for you!” Titan follows up in an almost sing-song tune.

He laughs at your confused face, the way your eyes uneasily flick from Konig to Titan.

Titan takes two slow yet confident steps in your direction, and both you and Konig prime your weapons with a flinch.

Titan laughs again, bending his core - as if you treating him like a rabid lion was just so hilarious it steals the breath from him.

“You two, wow. What a pair!”

You and Konig share an unsure glance before returning your careful eyes to Titan.

He points at Konig with his knife, “You I expected. It was always you, right?” He sloppily points the blade in your direction.

“You I didn’t expect!”

He laughs again, taking a few more slow steps toward you, “We knew what you were, though!” He shakes his head, “We knew you were important. Just didn’t think you’d make it this far.”

“It’s a good thing you did,” A cruel smile unwinds across his face, canines fully exposed, “I hate admitting this, but I don’t think I’d be able to do it without you.”

He finishes by taking a few more steps towards you, and Konig follows his lead this time, both of them closing in on you.

You have to stop taking steps away when the end of your spear brushes against razor sharp leaves.

“Back up!” You spit, thrusting the tip of the spear in the air in Titan’s direction as a warning. He holds his hands up, the knife held with just a few of fingers as he displays his palms.

“Easy now, Plucky,” He says with a condescending smirk, “I wouldn’t want to end up like your friend here.”

Titan doesn’t drop his smile in the slightest when his boot steps on the corpse of the girl from one, a symphony of ribs snapping under his boot.

You suck in a breath at the noise, the boy from eleven blinding you with his lifeless eyes. Your whole body cringes, eyes pinching closed and stomach threatening the retch.

Snap, bounce, dead.

The boy from two’s boots break into a sprint towards you, followed shortly by the sound of Konig’s footsteps, and all you can see is Eleven’s lifeless eyes as you swing your spear blindly through the guts of the girl from District One.

You hear Konig’s harsh voice shout.

The spear’s handle scrapes painfully against your flayed palm as it’s ripped from your grasp, a pair of brute arms trapping around you as you flail your limbs, scratching and clawing at faceless muscle.

You’re quickly jerked so that the assailant is behind you, pressing your back to his chest. A sturdy forearm wraps across your collarbones, the other digging firmly into your lower stomach.

When you’re firmly pinned, you can see Konig, frozen in place and staring right at you through his hood as you thrash in Titan’s arms.

You can feel the vibrations of his words on your back you when he speaks, his lips tickling your ear as he coos into it, “Oh, it’s okay, Funny Girl. You don’t need to fight it.”

Your head trashes violently against his sternum, spitting grunts leaving your raw throat as your bloody, injured hands scratch at his forearms.

“I said don’t fight it!”

You flinch at the volume of Titan’s voice, no longer playful and teasing, booming his direct order in your ear as he shakes you in his grip.

His arm slides up from your chest to wrap around your neck, nestling you between a bulging forearm and bicep. He gives you a warning squeeze, cutting off your air just to show you he can.

“Behave!” He hisses in your ear.

Your hand comes up to grab onto Titan’s crushing arms, futilely pawing at him in an effort to give yourself more breathing room.

All you can do is stare wide-eyed at a faceless Konig, his blade primed as you wriggle in Titan’s grip.

Titan lifts your feet off the ground by your neck, drawing half of an inhuman squeak from you before your windpipe is fully constricted.

“Now drop it!” Titan yells.

Your legs kick in the air as you search for ground, fingernails scratching at Titan’s arm and leaving streaks of your own blood behind. Eyes wide with terror and mouth gaping for air that can’t be inhaled.

“Drop it or I kill her!”

Konig lets his weapon fall to the ground, slowly raising his arms to show his empty palms to Titan.

Titan laughs, letting you dangle and struggle for air a little while longer until he sets your feet back on the ground. He takes his arm off your neck and puts his palm to your forehead, pinning your head against his chest.

Immediately you’re pulling in breaths, choking on the air you’d been fighting for with everything you have.

Titan’s just giddy with excitement, even doing a shuffle with his feet to release some of his energy.

“Do you see this, Funny Girl?” Titan whispers, his lips pressed against the grooves of your ear as you cough for air, “See how you reduce a mountain to a molehill?”

You jerk your head away from him, squirming in his grasp, but he applies more pressure to your forehead.

“This is just perfect! This is rich,” Titan laughs before he continues, “You know only one of you can leave, right?” He throws his head back in a laugh, forcing your body to turn slightly to the right.

His voice drops, each word coming to a point that digs at Konig, “And yet you’d still sacrifice yourself to save a girl that never had a chance.”

Konig must have some sort of plan you don’t fully understand, because none of his actions are rational.

“Don’t be shy, Konig. Come on down!” He says with an over-the-top voice.

Titan laughs again as Konig takes careful steps closer, palms still displayed in surrender.

Titan presses his lips back to your ear and speaks excitedly through clenched teeth.

“I am so glad you made it this far.”

He gives your body a shake before he leans down to plant a sloppy kiss on your cheek from behind.

You wince in disgust, giving a few more earnest thrashes against his arms.

It fills you with fury, actually.

This brute can have you restrained, manhandle you and steal your breath - that’s part of the game, you can’t blame him for that.

But to tease you like a cat does his prey?

To kiss you?

You’re over Titan, you decide.

“Oh, what’s the matter, Funny Girl?” He says in mock sympathy, removing the hand from your neck to cup your jaw, fingers creating indents on your face as he smears your own blood with his fingertips. He tilts both your body and your chin to force you to look at him.

“Don’t be upset,” He coos, ignoring your grit teeth and glaring eyes, “Some people were just born to serve me, to die for me.” His voice falls to a dangerous growl, his fingernails digging painfully into your cheeks, “Get over it.”

His eyes flick to Konig, who’s approaching too fast for his liking, “Woah, woah, woah there, lover boy.”

Titan’s arms switch positions, the one across your stomach rising to skim his knife across your front, the other letting go of your face to secure your waist to him. He presses the blade up to your throat, grazing the metal against the crook of your neck in a clear threat.

You tilt your chin up to get away from the blade, looking down your nose at Konig, who freezes.

“Did you not like that?” He asks Konig, applying more pressure on the blade to your neck, not yet breaking skin, but pulling a fearful squeak from you as the cool steel creases your flesh.

He lowers his voice to a purr, “Do you not like it when I touch your things?”

Titan takes his hand off your waist, knowing the knife on your throat will keep you firmly in place. He brings his other hand back up to your jaw, pinching your cheeks and shaking your head teasingly at Konig.

You and Konig have no choice but to lock eyes, his gear offering little comfort as you pull down on Titan’s arm. You can’t read much behind that half-lidded cold stare and black hood.

“Just do it!” You yell at Konig, “What are you waiting for?! Just kill us both!”

“Oh, I’m going to,” Titan presses his fingers tighter into your face in the assumption you were addressing him.

He shakes your head again and lowers his voice, pressing his lips back into your ear.

“But I’ve been waiting for this moment my whole life,” He says, “I’m going to take my time.”

“Do it Konig! Kill us both!” You yell, furrowing your brows and thrashing against Titan.

“Do it Konig!” Titan mocks. He puts his mouth back to your ear again, “Let’s see if he can do it.”

He pulls away to shout to Konig, keeping your face firmly in his hold, “Do it! Kill us both!”

Konig stays still in his spot, not reaching for his weapon, just flitting his eyes between you and Titan.

“What are you doing?!” You scream, “Do it!”

“Stupid girl,” Titan grits in your ear, “Don’t you know he can’t?”

You elbow him hard, and he makes a low guttural noise, briefly letting go of your face. You go to push free from his knife but his hand quickly snatches a head full of your hair.

You let out a yelp as he jerks your head backwards, his knife briefly jutting out in the direction of Konig, who used your distraction as a chance to near closer. He’s close now, but when Titan notices this he takes a few steps backwards, dragging you back by your hair with him.

Titan laughs at Konig, giving you a harsh yank on your scalp. “Trying to save her?”

The hand with the knife pulls back and snakes around your neck again, threatening to squeeze the life from you.

“Kill us! Don’t let him win!” You get out.

“I am so sick-” Titan cuts off his statement the same moment he cuts off your air, lifting you off the ground.

“Tell her!” He booms, “Tell her why you can’t do it!”

Konig’s hands lower, eyes widening as he watches you claw at his arms, blood still gushing from your wounds.

“Tell her or she dies! Tell her!” He jerks you around by your neck, body swaying like a rag doll.

Your nails dig into Titan hard enough to draw blood, your legs kick his with the soles of your boots, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“Tell her!” He shouts, his spit dotting your cheek. He makes a show of tightening his grip on you.

You’re vision is getting spotty, the swings of your fists slowing against unmatched strength.

“Last chance!” He says.

Konig sees the life fading from you, and breaks into a sprint, full force in your direction.

If you could speak, you’d tell him ‘finally.’

You close your eyes and brace for death, listening to the sound of Konig’s boots rapidly approaching and the blood pumping in your ears.

You take the brunt of his impact, your face and already injured arms on the receiving end of the supplies tucked in his chunky vest.

The three of you lose balance, toppling backwards until Titan regains his footing, and then you’re smushed in between two monstrous boys, waiting for one of them to take the win.

It happens so fast, and for most of it you had your eyes closed, but as soon as Titan releases his grip on your neck you’re roughly flung to the side where you drop to your hands and knees, coughing and wheezing as you try to catch your breath.

There’s the sound of impact after impact, and when you have the strength to lift your head, your heart stops.

Titan never regained his footing.

Konig had shoved you both backwards where the razor sharp hedge walls had imbedded themselves so far into Titan they’re supporting his weight. His knife lays unreachable at his feet, blood pouring generously and coating the leaves under his back in thick, dark red trickles.

Konig isn’t letting him slide off, one hand pressing firmly into his chest so the blades in the hedge walls work their way further into him.

Titan’s eyes are wide with shock, his head being forced to the side with each blow Konig lands to his face.

You jolt at the sight and fumble back into the grass as you crawl backwards from the altercation, eyes locked onto the scene you can’t bring yourself to look away from.

Konig lands a hit to Titan’s jaw, and blood sprays from his mouth. You hear a crack, Titan’s cheekbone shattering you think, and you finally pinch your eyes shut as the Eleven’s neck breaks behind your eyelids.

He’s delivering blow after blow, almost mechanically. One after another in beats so rhythmic you can anticipate and wince for the next strike before it even lands.

At least with the boy from eleven he made it quick and painless. Dead before he even knew what hit him.

This is overkill.

It’s twisting your gut, nausea boiling under your skin and bile creeping up the back of your throat.

You’re not sure why he doesn’t just grab the knife and finish him off.

You can’t think of a worse end. Beaten to death, feeling your skull steadily cave in, each punch pushing you closer and closer to death while jostled against a thousand blades.

When Konig is finally done with him, Titan is unrecognizable. Face mashed in, skull caved, beaten to a bloody pulp. His teeth chipped and broken, probably having swallowed his defining canines after Konig knocked them down his throat.

The boom of the cannon makes you flinch.

When Konig turns around and takes a couple steps back, he doesn’t look at you right away. He stares off into the distance at a far hedge wall. You can see the gear in his vest rising and falling with his heavy breaths. Filtering out whatever emotion must come with killing a man with your own fists, surely.

Titan’s body begins to slide forward, what’s left of his head pressed limply to his chest. He reaches a tipping point and his upper half drops, the rest of the blades on his lower back brutally ripping through his flesh as he collapses in a lifeless pile on the grass.

When Konig’s cold, deadly eyes find yours, you can’t help but start, letting out the squeak of a prey. You can’t move, lips parted, eyes blown in disbelief.

“Wait, please!” Your bloody palms shoot out defensively.

“You can have it!” You shout through a raw throat, voice desperate. You try to swallow the lump in your throat, but to no avail. Your voice lowers, “You can have the win, but please.”

Your words spill out one after another in a jumbled mess, “I just don’t want to die fighting, and afraid, and - “ You cut yourself off, your voice dropping to nothing but shallow breath, “Please.”

He’s silent, the half-lidded eyes through his black hood revealing nothing to you, still except for the steady rise and fall of his chest.

“Let’s just talk, before you do it, please. I - I don’t have any weapons,” You keep your arms up, your whole body shaking.

You pinch your eyes shut when it elicits no reaction, your voice shooting back up to raw and desperate, “Konig, please! Just let me prepare myself!”

“Please,” Your final beg finishes with a whimper, sight still cut off with a tight pinch.

And then you hear his boots take off in a full sprint, and you know that this is it.

He wants you to die scared and fighting.

· THE TRIBUTES I · THE TRIBUTES II · THE GAMES · THE VICTOR I · VICTOR II · THE AFTERMATH I · THE AFTERMATH II ·

[iridessence]

so I recently got booked for a burlesque show in nola that has a really great concept— each performer does two sets. in the first one it’s a classic burlesque act (think rhinestones, big hair, glamour, often vintage), the whole shebang. But after the first set is intermission and they (the producers) set up an x pole and the second set takes the audience to the strip club. the performers are able to interpret strip club as they see fit and in fact there is a lot of overlap— many of the burlesque people I know did or still do work at the clubs, so it’s not far off from them, but maybe the crowd is a little different.

anyway, I have not done club work ever, mainly because it’s just not seemed like a gig I could get based on my body and i imagine a lot of club runners aren’t interested unless they personally find you at least somewhat fuckable. but i had an opportunity to play around with what it might be like if i could work at a club, and i still brought a little glamour to it, but mainly i went for more of an ldr stripper fantasy and well… it was a glorious time.

I wore a baby pink powder puff bra, a marabou cuff robe and a pink g-string to nail the vibes because it’s either that or like, a rose bikini i did not have or an American flag sling shot which I couldn’t stomach for a lot of reasons right now. i wanted to wear makeup that felt appropriate to both my vintage burlesque set and a strip club mood so i went with a cut-crease eye look and just changed my lip from red to pinky-mauve between sets. basically hair was the high pony in my icon, and naturally I danced to a couple ldr tracks and just felt very sexy. One of my cast mates said I was giving high-end gentlemen club stripper that the other girls secretly hate because when she comes in, she’s going to make all the money, and that gave me a good laugh.

In general, there was just so much great support from the other burlesque buddies in the crowd passing through from other shows— and a couple of them fan girled over LDR and her Americana stripper bullshit with me. Bunch of audience members also said they thought the shift between sets and moods was really cool. The producer said later that they cried because the whole show was everything they hoped for… a great night indeed.

[natewriteslol]

Rumors: pt.1

Vil Schoenheit x Reader

Enemies to Lovers

Word Count: 3.7K

Summary: Vil and you have had a semi one sided rivalry as soon as your time at NRC began. However, the feud soon has to be put aside to stop an anonymous gossip blog attempting to ruin yours and possibly other students’ reputation. Will you and Vil be able to find whoever is behind this? Or will you be a fallen victim to those who call themselves, ‘The Catacombs?’ 

══════════════════════════════

Ever since your explosive introduction at Night Raven, you always had the tendency to stick out like a sore thumb, captivating everyone with minimal effort. You didn’t belong here amongst wizards, beastmen,merfolk and royals, yet you managed to fit right in.

 I think that was what really pissed him off, especially since he had worked so hard in order to accomplish what you do, impressing others and having eyes on him. However Vil had quickly got over it, his success wasn’t measured by popularity and validation from others, and he shouldn’t worry about a measly nobody that could never hold a candle to him. Instead, the dorm leader focused on keeping peace within his life, enjoying the routine and tranquility. 

Which just wasn’t your thing.

You were clumsy, loud and did things your own way with no regard for how others felt. He did give you credit for you having the confidence to be yourself and being extremely empathetic to those who needed it. 

Maybe the tipping point was you seeing him in his most vulnerable state, watching him overblot and lose control in envy against one of the people he hated the most. You were there to solve the issue and stop him alongside your friends. And worst of all he heard you point it out to them, believing that no one could hear your whispers. 

But he heard every word. 

‘He completely lost it over Neige, I’m glad we got it under control,’ he heard you say quietly to Ace and Deuce. 

Later on, you decided to offer him a juicebox as he sat on the empty auditorium stage…

Apple flavored.

Which he swears on his unique magic  that you did that on purpose to spite him, a sick joke that only made his distaste for you stronger. It felt like you knew exactly what to do at every moment to make him lose it, like yelling “on accident” when he needs to master a potion formula, saying something crude in the lunch room, the way it seems everyone is obsessed with you.

 And of course it was extremely shocking to Rook when his dorm leader had begun re-explaining his disdain for the new kid at school. Despite laying back on the dark purple bedding that would make anyone relax and the sunset pink lighting from the lamp, Vil was far from calm. He had to recount the latest anger-inducing incident to his friend during their “sleepovers” on a Friday night, being wary of his not yet fully dried mauve nail polish as he talked with his hands. 

It was this day that really made him angry, his last straw as some would say. He held his pen as he wrote notes busily into his notebook, heavily invested in order to pass the upcoming exam. It was wonderful, as the class was quiet just as he liked it, allowing him to fully concentrate and absorb the contents of the slide show created by Professor Crewel. 

However, it was easy to hear a decrepit wooden door close in the pin-drop silent classroom. As the black and white man’s back was turned to the class, reading out the text of the slides to the class, you, Y/N L/N thought you could be slick enough to be unscathed by Crewel’s wrath

You being late was more set in stone than the heat within the land of the Scalding Sands it seems. Your satchel was barely slung on your shoulder with your weird, round cat creature barely catching up behind, and it was just Vil’s luck that he had to be the poor sap that had the only seat that was available amongst the many wooden tables. Crewel began scolding you as you fumbled in your seat, and whilst onlookers found it hilarious they wouldn’t dare look or let out a snicker at the scene. Your nervousness  made you fumble your belongings in your bag as you attempted to get out your pen and notebook, your arm would touch his. 

Making him neglect his usual manners and his side-eye of judgment fell upon you. Of course you didn’t notice as he began to study your features, the look of panic flooding your face. Although, this moment of looking at you ended up being a grave mistake.

“Mr. Schoenheit, if there is a huge problem with L/N being late to the point where your eyes can’t be bothered to take notes on the slides vital for your final then you will be delighted to join us in a discussion after class,” Crewell spat, his anger piercing the air. 

His lilac eyes quickly reverted to the projector placed in front of the usual chalkboard. He was embarrassed yet no one could judge him or usually break out in whispers, in fear that they would be included in the punishment. Vil cursed at himself internally but that damn out of season, raggedy bag you carried was enough of a distraction, not counting the person attached to it. 

All throughout the lecture, the actor had prayed that Crewell would forget about the mishap completely as there was an hour of class remaining, yet it had appeared that luck was not on his side at all.

He had tried to flee with the crowd of students rushing out the door, hoping no one would pay him any mind. But after he made one sharp movement to get out of his seat- 

“Mr. Schoenheit!”

Shit. 

Everyone had completely rushed out, with some snickering at the scene, not wanting to be there when the scolding would ensue as entertaining as it may be to see. 

“Care to join us in the conversation like I suggested earlier?” Obviously this was not a yes or no question and Vil had no choice in the matter, but nodded out of courtesy. 

“Yes, Professor,” Vil replied, coming down the short steps from his seat in the front row, not making even a hint of eye contact with you. 

“I understand that the action of lateness pesters you heavily, Mr. Schoenheit. Does it not?”

“...Well, yes it does, Mr. Crewel. However, I promise that another incident like this will never happen again and I will be sure to mind my business more when it comes to fellow students,” Vil said, wanting to spit out some words that could please his teacher into letting him go off the hook. 

“Despite being an actor, lying truly isn’t your area of expertise, young pup,” Crewel replied quickly, keeping a hand steady on the pointer he held. He then turned to you, his look softening as despite you not being an astounding student, Crewel favored you very much. Once again your formula of minimal efforts yet good results was absolutely infuriating to him. 

“I truly worry about you Y/N, as along with your grades, your attendance along with Grim’s as a default are. I will be having a meeting with Crowley about the extra work he has you doing on campus to allow you to live here as well. However, I will be suggesting a partner assignment that is extra credit for the both of you.”

“I mean no disrespect Mr. Crewel, but I personally am in need of no extra credit whatsoever. I have a 99.5 percent in this class which will obviously be rounded by the grading admin,” Vil explained with a slight laugh in his voice. You rolled your eyes as it was plain to see that the blonde was putting you down. Sure you may not have a 90 something percent, but he didn’t have gnomes gnawing on his ankles this morning that he had to take care of himself with no magic. 

But Crewel just looked at him with a concerned look, he was no stranger to shade being thrown and he was not about to tolerate that disrespect. He then explained as he moved to his desk organizing papers , “Oh dear, it looks like you have a bit of incorrect info dear pup. The grading admin stopped rounding this year due to academic dishonesty and such. Also I must add that you and Y/N had gotten the exact same test score, a C- if I remember. And with this being a huge difference from your usual scores, this will drag you down, I fear.” 

The blonde’s breath hitched, he would be fucked for this semester and although not royally, that lack of satisfaction would eat him alive. That last exam Vil had little to no time to study due to his role as a villain in “Love Conquers All” on MovieFlix but of course karma stops for no one.

“A way we could solve this though is through our extra credit tutor program. Both of you enroll, Schonheit tutors you and makes sure you get to class on time, and if there is improvement then both of you benefit. And Mr. Schonheit will get the satisfaction he craves for his grades.”

"Does that sound like a plan?" Crewel had waited for a nod from the both of you, but Vil quickly rejected that notion faster than Ruggie could snatch someone’s wallet.  

"How do I know that they will honor their promise, Professor? I am a very busy person and I do not wish to waste my time with someone who does not take things seriously,"

But you found his cocky attitude completely unbearable at this point. There was no way you were going to allow him to speak as if you weren’t standing right next to him. “I actually do take things seriously, please don't act as though you know me,” you said blankly, actually looking at Vil while talking for once.

"Excuse me?" Vil replied, he was thrown off completely due to you being completely silent this entire conversation. 

"Listen, I don't flunk because I don't want to and I don't show up late because I want to. I'm willing to fix it if Crowley changes the work schedule because it's virtually impossible to be a handyman and student all at once sometimes," you clarified. 

`

"I am an honorable person," you held out your hand to Crewel "and I swear I will change. I just need some help."

  Crewel smiled, enjoying the fire in your spirit to stand up for yourself. You then turned to Vil, holding out your hand with a stern expression and as unsettled as he was he took your hand in his gloved one and shook it.

"Good choice my pups, I know you both won't regret this."

But despite having many differences, you both thought the same thing.

‘Yeah right.’

~~~

After the dramatic retelling, the man grabbed the golden, hand held mirror on his night stand to pluck his eyebrows, carrying on his irritated commentary, “So now I have to watch over them like a babysitter. Can you believe this?” 

“Ah, Roi du Poison I do feel sorry for this causing you so much stress, but don’t you believe the little Trickster could hold their end of the bargain?” Rook questioned, as afterall, you were a good friend of his and he knew you of all people could keep a promise. It was always in your heart to get things done, regardless of how you feel about it. 

“Oh please, I will give it a week, Rook,” he replied, hyper fixated on evening the arches of his brows only for Epel with sleepiness intertwined still in his walk, wondering what the cause of the angry tone of voice from Vil was for. 

“What’s going on, you guys?” Epel questioned with a yawn. 

But Vil snapped his fingers in recall, completely ignoring the question, “Ah, Epel you just reminded me, remember when we were walking to class and L/N had come up to you, ruffled your hair and such and was very curt with me? What even was that?”

“...”

“What is it?”

“Vil, Y/N is really aware you don’t like them. They actually talked to me about it today,” Epel explained bluntly. 

Rook nodded in agreement, facing the vanity mirror as he peeled off his face mask“Oui, they try their best to not look at you even.”

Vil paused in thought, he didn’t think he made his dislike toward you so obvious but I guess it was quite the contrary.

“They don’t go spreadin’ but they told us, they’re cool about it though,” the lavender haired boy quickly added, not wanting to make anything worse for you. 

But it didn’t necessarily matter whether or not you both liked one another, what mattered is that you got the job done by solving your faulty grades and attendance. Dislike is just a small hiccup, plus there were plenty of justifiable reasons as to why Vil did not like you, despite being told otherwise from everyone. However, he didn’t face repercussions nor are there heavy consequences for an opinion after all. 

BUZZ.

The trio’s phones either vibrated or let out a cheery notification. Even from the door open ajar to the rest of the dorm, you could hear the different sound effects from student’s devices. The odd coincidence made them all look at their phones at the same time to look at what it was. 

“This just in for some hot new gossip! I heard from a little birdy that the fairest of them all is viciously bullying the new transfer from a whole new world. But…they’re being partnered up to tutor by Crewel! Looks like all beauty doesn’t come with grace :( 

-The Catacombs” 

“The hell is this?” Epel said quietly, staring at the anonymous text message. It wasn’t a registered number, instead it was an auto programming since it was only five numbers reading: 88709. 

“Oh mon dieu, Roi du poisson,” Rook uttered, unknowing of what to say, going from looking horrified at his phone to his dorm leader for any type of response. 

By then the phone notification of Vil’s was ringing out of control, and he could hear Pomefiore members’ reactions to such an appalling message. He was receiving texts non-stop from multiple people asking him all the same questions,

Is it true? 

 Why he would put someone down like that?

 Why does he have a problem with Y/N? 

But a text from one specific person ate him alive completely.  

Jack:

Hey, I don’t know if you saw the message

He quickly typed to the beastman in attempt to defend himself, knowing what they both went through together as children. Vil couldn’t let Jack of all people misinterpret him as this bully to his good friend. 

Vil:

I would never bully anyone, nor do I waste my energy on people I don’t like. The stress ages you too much 

Are you seriously going to believe this anonymous crap over me Jack?

Jack:

I’ll talk to you later.

It’s not that I don’t believe you, but I have never heard the nicest things about you from them.

Something like this absolutely could not get out to the public, bullying scandals can completely drag down a career as almost everyone goes through that traumatic experience of being casted aside because you’re different. And he would never be a monster like that toward someone, but playing villains in countless movies and tv shows would make it seem completely believable. 

It was them who most definitely put out that rumor, and Vil didn’t care whether it was late at night, or if Rook and Epel wanted him to stop.

He was paying a visit. 

~~~

With nothing planned and being extremely exhausted, this might’ve been the slowest moving Friday night you’ve ever experienced. And while you haven’t been inclined to care too much about what people say about you, to say you weren’t haunted by your encounter with Vil would be an understatement. Of course you were well aware of his distaste for you, but today it just felt as though it reached a boiling point with the way he was acting. But to take your mind off of it, you freshened up after a long day in class, slipped on something comfortable, put your phone on “Do Not Disturb” and decided to watch some movies on your laptop whilst eating snacks with Grim. After all, you deserved a reward as it would be the last day of relaxation before you had to lock down completely on your education. 

Your cat and yourself ended up nodding off to sleep on your couch easily due to the calming environment of your house, as the ghosts decided to take a hint on the mood you were in and were extremely quiet. As both of you were catching up on needed rest, you heard an excessive pounding on your door.  Whoever this was, it felt like they were about to break down your door with how aggressive they were knocking. 

Grim nearly attached to the ceiling with fear, making you yelp in fear, naturally frightened to answer the door to see who was behind that hostility. Your eyes bolted to your tall case clock, the time reading 10:32pm, the late time didn’t ease your anxiety whatsoever.

However, after adjusting to your surroundings, you decided that you needed to answer as to whoever was continuing to hammer on your door as it was giving you a headache. Neglecting your human world instincts of not opening doors to strangers, you walked up to your tall mahogany door, only to find your favorite person on the other side.  

Vil Schoenheit. 

His face was painted with true anger that you’ve only seen during his overblot, “You have some goddamn nerve writing that shit about me.”

You were absolutely frazzled and confused overall, “What even are you talking about? And why are you at my house?”

“Answer your fucking phone and you will find out,” the blonde replied noxiously, watching your every move believing that you were trying to play stupid with him. 

As you opened your phone screen, your eyes were lit up by notifications, as everyone and their mother had texted and called you in a matter of minutes. 

But one message sat completely unfamiliar coming from that fateful, 5 digit number. 

It was horrible and beyond untrue, even though he didn’t like you, you would never stretch it to bullying. Maybe as a joke amongst friends but never to be taken seriously. And as you digested that everyone had gotten this text message and with him being a celebrity this would do heavy damage. And whoever wrote this was out to get you both as many are absolutely in love with Vil, others hate bullying and hearing a glorified superstar being accused of such horrible things would make tabloids run with this story. 

This was a complete lose lose situation. 

You looked up to see Vil hovering over you, watching you like a hawk, you swore you saw his eye twitch with irritation, “I would never write something like this. And listen I am so sorry-”

“Who else would write something like this? Do you think I’m a damn fool-?” A small hand on his shoulder cut off his angry tirade progressing as he was about to move forward.

“Vil, we are going to get nowhere if you just get angry and lose control, now Y/N do you have any clue as to who would write something like this?” your friend Epel questioned kindly, juxtaposing his dorm leader completely. 

“Not exactly, I don’t hate Vil at all like that and I wouldn’t spend my Friday night making up shit like that and you can check all of my technology,” you defended, offering your phone.

His suspicion got the better of him, snatching it out of your phone Vil scrolled through your phone messaging history. And despite going against his suspicion, he didn’t have any concrete proof that you were the culprit.

So until then, he guessed that you were just as wronged as him.

~~~

You all quickly moved to the inside of your house, both to get away from the cold night air, but also to get out of sight as to anyone who could be watching all of you right now. To say that this made all of you, especially you and Vil paranoid wasn’t an over exaggeration. Beginning to theorize with your two friends as to who would write something like this about you two. But unfortunately, every possible “lead” you had was just a dead end, no clear motive, but then again who would need a motive for a stunt like this. It was obvious that attention was what they craved, to drive both of you up the wall and unfortunately they succeeded.  

“All they gave is a nickname, but any phone number could be tracked to a specific device used,” You said, as student announcements used 5 digit numbers all of the time, this person had to be skilled in tech. 

Vil leached off of your theory, “The catacombs is quite a gothic name afterall, we need to search Ignihyde or Diasomnia.” 

“Why them? That seems stereotypical” you asked, feeling argumentative on such a baseless theory. 

“Because, Ignihyde is the most technologically advanced dorm, and Diasomnia students seem like the type to enjoy playing tricks like this anyway,” Vil explained as if it were obvious, his sharp gaze never leaving yours as he spoke.

While the flames of his anger had been flamed, it seemed as though his disdain for you was more permanent than a wine stain on a wedding dress. Never fleeting even during this moment of vulnerability from both ends, but you had no energy to begin bickering about it.

“Roi du poisson et mon Trickster, if we want to find whoever is doing this cruel joke, you must put aside your differences and work together,” Rook said, cutting the tension and bringing the platinum blonde back to Earth. 

Whilst both of you didn’t want to admit it, the archer was right. If you wanted to figure this out you couldn’t be at each other's throats, fighting one another constantly. Otherwise you would accomplish little to nothing. 

And there was no way ‘The Catacombs’ could be hidden forever, and you would make sure to uncover the skeletons within it. 

~~~

A/N: Hi everyone! This fic takes inspo from an amazing novel that I read called "Ace of Spades" please read it its absolutely fantastic and the author is a genius. Thank you for bearing with me for the long time it takes to pump out content, you guys are amazing and it's always great to have opportunities to write.

xoxo, Nate <3

Taglist: (pls let me know if you want to be tagged in the next part!!)

[donatellawritings]

cherry - around your neck - r. jerimovich

pairing(s): richie jerimovich x f!reader

warning(s): language, age-gap, explicit sexual content

song: the party & the after party by the weeknd

24 hours. Twenty-four hours remained until you’d stand face-to-face with the older blue-eyed man who’d come to plague your every thought, in recent times. Twenty-four hours, so close, yet so dauntingly far. Seated directly before the mirror your worn chipped-paint coated vanity, you drank yourself in. Dressed in the thin, black mesh fabric of your nightgown, you carefully examined yourself for any outstanding flaws. The concealer that once sat comfortably under your eyes now faded and live-in, courtesy of the mentally and physically taxing classes you’d endured hours prior.

Your eyes were a bit smudged from your generous application of mascara, you’d decided your staple eyeliner wasn’t needed today. Your faded and worn brown and mauve lips adding a much needed flush to your lips as you forced a closed-mouthed smile at your reflection. Your deep-red painted acrylic nails combed through your hair, adding a smidge of volume as you tilted your head, posing in the mirror, once more. Were you desirable enough? You’d just hoped that Richie would think so.

I mean, fuck, clearly you were desirable enough if he’d asked to expect a video-call from him, so close to your first official meeting date. The palm of your right hand carefully pressed against the knuckles of your left, popping the knuckles and granting you the slightest bit of relief from your anxiety-ridden nerves. Why did he want to see you? Did he want to put an end to your tryst, before it even got a chance to begin? What did Richie Jerimovich want from you that he needed to see you at this very moment?

Opening your sticker-covered laptop, you waited. Watching the reflection of yourself, through your webcam, you adjusted the hem of your nightgown to sit comfortably against your breasts, pushing them up just a bit.

Now biting into the your acrylic-reinforced thumb nail, your foot tapped against the cold carpet of your bedroom floor. Scraping your teeth against your nail, you stared at the screen of your laptop, hopelessly.

The chime of Richie’ video call request shocked you, your posture straightening as you rushed to accept the call, exhaling a breath with a smile as the call connected, revealing sight of Richie, his eyes blown and bloodshot.

“You look beautiful, sweetheart.”

-

Truth be told, Richie couldn’t find it himself to wait any longer. The past three days had been eating him alive, the impatience and anticipation that came with seeing you, touching you, becoming all too powerful against his already shaky sense of willpower. You were intoxicating, a way more addicting and raw being that was stronger than any of the substances he’d previously conducted dealings with. He could only come up with so many scenarios of you, in his mind to get himself off in the dark and tense hours of the night. So, he gave into temptation, gave into himself.

Richie could tell that you were nervous, shit, he shared the same sentiment, if not more. Asking to see you a day earlier than planned, out of the blue, he could only imagine the worst things that you could say to him. yet, the sight of your skin clashing against the confines of the thin mesh fabric, your breasts perked up just right, made it that much harder for Richie’s patience to take hold. He didn’t care where you two would go, or what time it was, he needed you, and sooner rather than later.

“Thank you, Richie,” you smiled softly, licking over the leftover mauve that stained your lips.

The two of you sat in silence for a beat. The sight of your chest rising and falling with a shaky breath becoming too much for Richie - he was too far gone.

“Richie is everything oka-”

“I need to you see now, I just, I can’t fuckin’ wait until tomorrow,” Richie blurted out, running his hand over his grown out bear, shaking his head with a smile.

You remained silent, biting down into the swell of your bottom lip with a short and breathy laugh.

“Fuck, sweetheart, you’re just makin’ it real fuckin’ hard for me, looking like that,” he continued, slightly adjusting the tie that laid around his neck, the glint of his gold chain peeking through from underneath his white button-up shirt.

Richie’s nerves began to run rampant as he aimlessly rambled, “I get it if you want to wait, you deserve to have the fanciest dinner of your fuckin’ life, but I need to see you, baby, so fuckin’ bad-”

“I don’t want to wait, either.” You spoke faintly, leaning your face to sit in the palm of your head.

Fuck. Richie was so fucked.

-

A subtle ache that hummed between your legs made its way through you. Knowing that Richie held the same virtue of desire eased your initial anxiousness, the two of you were teetering on a dangerously thin line and you both knew it.

Richie swallowed thickly, “Give me twenty minutes,” he spoke, his raspy voice now holding a heavier tone, “twenty minutes and I’m all yours.”

You shifted in your seat, tightly crossing your left leg over the other with an obedient nod, “all yours,” you repeated.

Richie abruptly ended the call, leaving you a nervous wreck as you sat in silence, the sound of the mild rain that hit your window, failing to calm your buzzing veins that struck you with adrenaline.

You took one last look at yourself in the mirror, debating on whether or not you should touch up your makeup, the farthest part of your subconscious telling you that you may not need to. Something about Richie’s demeanor excited you, he was domineering, yet this time he seemed feverish, almost needy?

You could barely speak yourself, lord knows how much you craved Richie, to the point where the thought of finally having him was nearly enough to bring you to your knees.

Throwing your head back, you let out a sigh, a smile laced with excitement and shock pulling at your lips as you struggled to come to terms with the fact that you were only minutes away from finally indulging in the baby blue-eyed older man. A laugh escaped your throat as you ran your fingers through your hair, before pulling your head up straight.

Standing up from the vanity, you quickly scanned your bedroom or any sign of mess. Why are you so nervous, it’s not like this is your first time being a with a guy, let alone having one at your apartment, but a 45 year old man who you met online - that was a first for you.

You made your way to the living room, turning your television on to a random channel, before heading to your kitchen cabinet, where you sifted through, until you’d found two wine glasses - did Richie even like wine? Setting the two glasses on your kitchen counter, you snatched your refrigerator door open, reaching for the cheap bottle of Moscato that you’d gotten for yourself for special occasions, like this very night.

Slamming the refrigerator door shut, you hastily reached inside of your freezing, grabbing the ice tray and cracking it, allowing a few cubes to all into each wine glass, before sliding the half-used ice tray back into the freezer. Placing the wine bottle next to beside the two ice-filled wine glasses, you took a breath.

The abrupt shrill of your ringtone broke you from your brief moment of stillness. Fuck, fuck, fuck!

“Coming!” You shouted, to no one in particular, your heart racing as you rushed to your bedroom.

Snatching your phone from your bed, you accepted the call, bringing your phone to your ear, “sorry, I was just fixing up some stuff,” you answered, swallowing the lump of nerves that had formed in your throat.

The sound of a car door closing could be heard on the other end of the phone, “S’okay, I’m downstairs - shit, uh, what apartment are you stayin’ at?” Richie questioned.

It took everything in you not to take a peek at him from your bedroom window, “Oh, yeah, I’m in 4E.”

“Alright, give me two minutes, sweetheart,” Richie cooed.

“Bye, Richie,” you ended the call, scanning over your appearance in the mirror of your vanity, “fuck,” you muttered under your breath.

-

Richie stood in the dimmed elevator, his leg bouncing as the elevator beeped with each passing floor. He was so close to you, he could taste it at the tip of his tongue. He kept his hands inside of the pockets of his leather jacket, exhaling sharply as the elevator door opened, allowing him to enter the Fourth Floor hallway.

“Fuckin’ aye,” he laughed to himself, shaking his head in disbelief as he approached the door with ‘4E’ imprinted in gold.

Sliding his right hand out of his jacket pocket, Richie brought his knuckles to the heavy door, knocking rhythmically against it. Richie silently cursed himself out as he waited at the door, his head hung low. The sound of you unlocking the door caused Richie to straighten and broaden his shoulders.

Richie’s eyes fell on yours the moment you opened the door. That fucking dress - god, Richie couldn’t even think straight as the two of you stood in silence. His eyes drank you in, he couldn't help but want to study everything about you - you were much shorter than him, so much so, that he wanted nothing more than to have you against the wall with your legs wrapped around him. He could tell that you’d just spruced up your hair with those sleek red nails, he wondered what they’d feel like digging into his back and shoulder blades. He wanted nothing more than your lips on his, seeing the way you’d lick over them, leaving him a needy and greedy mess.

Man, you were such a fuckin’ tease. Of course, you’d decided to keep that nightgown on, Richie tried to remain a man of manners and respect, keeping his eyes trained on yours, instead of on your hand that smoothed itself against the curve of your hip.

”Y’gonna let me in, sweetheart?”

-

You were completely entranced by the man who stood before you. He was tall, oh so tall, and you loved the way his oversized leather jacket clashed against his unbuttoned dress shirt and slacks. You allowed his bright baby blues to selfishly drink you in for a beat, before stepping aside, “come in,” you spoke softly.

Your eyes fluttered closed for a quick second as you shut your front door, taking a small breath before turning to face Richie, whose eyes scanned your apartment.

“You got a nice place here, yeah?”

“Uh, yeah, thank you,” you forced out a laugh as Richie’s eyes landed on yours, before motioning towards the kitchen, “would you like some wine?”

Richie shrugged off his jacket, neatly placing it on the arm of the couch as he licked at the corner of his mouth, with a nod, “Thank you, beautiful - y’need me to open it or?”

“If you don’t mind,” you accepted, your stomach turning in excitement as Richie approached you, sliding his warm hand across the side of your waist as he made his way into the kitchen.

-

Richie grabbed ahold on the wine bottle, gripping it by its neck as you leaned your back against the kitchen counter, “Y’like white wine?” He questioned, pretending to be engrossed in the cheap bottle.

“Red gives me headaches,” you spoke.

“Depends on the type you get.” Richie quipped, not missing how your hand gripped the edge of the counter.

Richie was slowly drifting off into the deep end - the tension-thick air becoming too much as he stood before you, huffing out a breath as he reached over you to open the refrigerator, sliding the bottle inside, before pushing the door closed.

Now face-to-face with you, Richie keeps his eyes directly on yours, “Tell me, where’s your head at, sweetheart,” he questioned, the tips of your noses ghosting against each other as you shrugged.

“Can-can I touch you?” You asked, your voice coming out as a whisper as you lifted your head, inching your lips closer to his.

“I’m yours, I already told you that, baby.”

And Richie meant every single word.

You nodded, “then can you touch me?”

Richie nodded, bringing his hands to your waist, smoothing his hands against your skin, before lifting you onto the counter, allowing his hands to cup your face, “tell me if it’s too much and I’ll stop, I fuckin’ swear I’ll stop, baby,” he spoke, his raspy voice needy and hoarse as his eyes search yours for any signs of displeasure.

-

With that, Richie’s warm lips were on yours, the kiss warm, wet, and hungry as you both moaned into it. Richie’s scent of musky cologne and faint cigarette smoke sent you into a daze, a whimper sneaking past your lips as Richie’s tongue slid against yours. The rough hair of Richie’s beard deliciously scratched at your lips as he adjusted himself, deepening the kiss even further, pushing you farther back onto the counter, any further and Richie would be climbing onto the counter himself.

A gasp left the two of you’s lips as you both caught your breath before you hooked your leg around Richie’s slim waist, pulling him in closer with a throaty moan. Richie’s calloused hand slightly tightened around your throat as he groaned into your mouth, the sensation of your nails accidentally scratching at the side of his neck becoming all too good to him.

Without breaking the kiss, Richie hiked your other leg around his waist, swiftly wrapping his free arm around you as he pulled you into his chest, carrying you over to your dining table.

Richie pulls away from you, feeling a faint pang in his chest as you pouted, “I know, baby, just lay back for me, I need to fuckin’ taste you,” he pleaded, pulling you in for one more quick kiss, before you laid back against the cold glass surface of the table.

A short gasp left your lips as your back arched, the frigid glass singing your skin through the thin mesh of your nightgown, “fuck,” you muttered.

Richie’s hands were quick to lift the hem of your nightgown, allowing the mesh to bunch up at your waist as he tapped your legs, silently beckoning you to spread them as you complied.

“Fuck, so fuckin’ pretty,” He smiled, pulling you closer to the edge of the table, before lowering his head between your thighs and pressing a wet kiss to your panty-covered pussy.

Richie presses another kiss to you, before sliding your underwear down your legs and allowing them to fall to the floor, a groan leaving his lips as he raised one of your legs to rest over his shoulder, kissing your inner thigh with open-mouthed kisses before making his way back down to your aching pussy.

Pressing his tongue flat against your wetness, Richie took a long and greedy lick up your folds, repeating this a couple more times, before sticking his warm and taut tongue inside of you.

“Fuck, Richie,” you breathed out, trying to grab at the completely smooth glass surface of the table as he stuck his tongue inside of you once, more, pushing himself deeper with a moan.

Richie had you right where he wanted you. And fuck, eating you out his new favorite hobby.

Richie was disgustingly greedy with you, the mixture of your slick wetness and his saliva coating his beard as he slurped away at your pulsing clit, your hoarse moans like music to his ears as he continued to lap away at you, the hand that held your leg over his shoulder now moving towards your core.

“Keep going, please, don’t st-”

Your whines fade into a gasp as Richie slides his index finger into you, the squelch of his finger enclosed in your walls sending you into a frenzy as Richie pulls his glistening face away from between your legs. Your mouth is hung open as Richie begins to thrust his finger at an agonizingly slow pace.

Taking in the wet sound of your pussy taking in his finger, Richie leans over you, his free hand now gripping your throat as he leans his forehead against yours, “M’gonna put another one in baby, just keep - fuck, just keep those pretty fuckin’ eyes on me, okay?” Richie speaks, his voice deliciously low as you nod feverishly, your nails scratching at the table.

“I-It feels so good, Richie, fuck,” you cried, your hoarse voice struggling against Richie’s grip on your throat.

Nevertheless, you did what you were told. You kept your eyes on Richie’s as he pulled his finger out of you, quickly re-entering you with both his index fingers as he pushed them all the way inside of you.

“Oh, fuck, you’re doing so fuckin’ good, baby,” Richie moaned, watching closely as you fought to keep your eyes on his.

Richie’s fingers quickened their pace inside of you, the lewd sounds of how wet you were, coupled with the ferocity of his skilled fingers leaving Richie wanting nothing more than to make you cum.

“Richie, I-I’m gon-”

“I know, baby, I know, I got you,” Richie cooed, maintaining the quick and hard pace of his fingers as he sloppily kissed you, keeping his forehead against yours as your eyelids became dangerously heavy.

“I’m so fucking close - so fucking close,” you moaned, your vision growing hazy as Richie hummed.

“You’re so fuckin’ close, I can feel it, baby.”

Richie’s hand moved from around your throat, to cradle the back of your head, forcing your to keep your focus on him as he curved his fingers inside of you, hitting that deliciously sweet spot, over and over again, until you let out a throaty cry. Richie quickly kissed you, his finger working you through your orgasm as you cried into his mouth.

Richie slowed his fingers to a gradual stop, allowing you to ride out your orgasm against his hand as you came down from your high. Your breaths were choppy and uneven as you tried to regain your composure.

Your pupils were blown, eyes wild as Richie took in your post-orgasmic appearance, so he decided he'd test the waters, bringing his/lips to your ear, “open,” he commanded, a burst of pride sweeping inside of his chest as he watched you close your swollen lips around his fingers.

You sucked softly, your strained eyes never leaving Richie’s as you gently pulled his now dry fingers out of your compliant mouth.

Richie couldn't wait to fully have his way with you, hell, in this moment even he knew that you had him wrapped around your finger. You did so good for him.

The two of you sat in silence, after Richie carried you to your bedroom, Richie standing between your legs, leaning over you as you pecked his lips, “You can stay the night, if you want,” you offered sweetly.

-

Richie was all yours and he understood that, one-hundred percent. How could he say no to those eyes, those same eyes that soaked his in as you came to a climax, how could he say no to you?

“Y’want me to stay?” He prodded.

You smiled, kissing the pendant of his gold chain that hung in front of you, “I want you to stay.”

Richie groaned, gently grabbing your chin between his thumb and index finger, “alright, then you got me, baby,” he agreed, pressing his lips to your forehead, softly cradling the back of your head.

You weren’t sure what this would mean for your relationship, moving forward. Hell, Richie wasn’t even sure what this meant, but he knew that he wanted you, every part of you, he’d just hoped that you wanted all of him too.

-

i hope you all enjoyed part three - now things are going to finally get fun <3

[monarchberrysblog]

ORAL FIXATION !!

₊˚ʚ 💉 ₊˚✧ﾟ. sweet tooth . 🦷🍨

☆ miguel o’hara x fem! reader ☆

☆ summary: a simple consult with the oral hygienist.

☆ content warning: cunnilingus, oral fixation, throat fucking, throat bulge (not mentioned but implied), choking, cum (lots, lots of cum), semi-voyeuristic behavior, latex glove kink (?), light degradation, and hair pulling.

☆ word count: 837 words

☆ author’s notes: yeah… I went to the dentist. my sick and twisted brain got to work after the consultation.

"Good girl."

".!"

Sticky as tree sap outside the bumpy bark, your saliva dripped down to the exam room's smooth grey wooden floors. A thin coating of precum and spit glistened from your chin down to your chest. A satisfied hum from the back of your throat resonates a low, lively vibration near the back of your tongue. Your knees ached from the textured wooden floor while your hands grasped his seat's sides, nails digging into the cushion.

Red knees and indented skin showed your shame. It created a sight of illusion. You only came in for a consultation, but the drool and precum in between your cleavage said otherwise. The red wine color tint on your lips contrasted your white teeth, but the color clashed so well with Miguel’s mauve tip.

"You said your jaw was hurting? Doesn't look like it now." He gently thrusts a bit of his length into your mouth, earning a gurgle-like moan.

"Shhh, I'll make it fit." Your eyes widen to the size of charger plates used during dinner time at an Olive Garden.

The bulging, misty look greets Miguel, but within your pupils, with a mere glance, anyone could have missed it.

The space is dominantly characterized by a wavering implication of ardor, which shows the intoxication behind the smudged pencil eyeliner and dilated eyes. Miguel’s gloved fingers weave into your hair, securing a hold at the back of your head. The lilac latex in his hands immediately clings to the rubber, creating more uncomfortable hair tugs. Some tugs were enough to catch a breather without his dick in your mouth.

The sight of precum decorating your lips like lipgloss churned. Then, an idea came to him, unwarranted.

The palm of his hand cups your chin, his fingers and thumb digging into the plush of your cheeks. "Open up." His words were vile, like a plague, but enticing to pursue immodest actions.

Through the grasps between his fingers and thumb, you nod, his cock near your cum-covered lips. He wears a dern expression when he sees you nod as he removes his hand from your hair and works his belt out of the belt loops of his pants instead. You open up barely enough to let the mushroom-like tip in between your lips and teeth, grazing the sensitive, taut skin. "A little more, querida."

The angry aching around your wisdom teeth knawed, a blade twisting deep into your gums, the blade's tip twirling at your nerves like cooked noodles gathered around a fork. While attempting to open, he thrusts his hips, his length choking you.

His happy trail tickles the tip of your nose, his fingers immediately weaving into your hair and keeping you there. He slowly pulls out but pulls you away from his happy trail, enough to give you more air to breathe. But the sensation of his now irritated tip found its way back in. "Let me know when you can't breathe." The muffled, wet gurgles filled the room.

The gentle humping against your throat overstimulated, but feeling lathered against the back of your throat was enough implication of what was going to happen. Miguel thrusts himself back in and doesn't allow any room for you to back down.

"Take it, sweetie." He urges, but the subtle drip of his precum landing on the floor with a 'plop' finally pushes the limit. You gurgle your words, but his length makes them inaudible. The words merge into vibrations and gnaw at the sensitive tip.

Despite him being in an uncomfortable position, his hands grasp your throat and gently squeeze your throat.

The soft thrusts evolved into harsher ones, and your nose got tickled by the sensation of his pubic hair tickling you. His fingers probed at your throat, his latex fingers feeling around until he seized and squeezed firmly. You gurgled and could feel your gag reflexes kick in. The mere panic in your eyes with your tears created a titillating sight.

Your hand continued to pat his thigh, an indirect beg for him to go easy on you.

But it only encouraged him to push down more, feeding you more nearly. "Stop it." He snaps, his hand grasping onto your wrist and pinning your hand down on the chair. "You can handle it."

"Stop squirming..." He groans and pushes himself, enough to feel the back of your throat. The soft thrusts evolved into rapid ones, feeling the mushroom-like tip bullying its way down, begging to be enveloped by your throat's warm, velvety walls.

The harsh, precise motions became sloppy, spit leaving puddles on the floor, his boxers, and chair. His low groans grew more audible, but he kept his mouth shut. He lets go of your throat and hair and seizes his movements. The warm fluid coats your aching throat, allowing it to work as aloe vera against irritated skin. The sensation overflowed, leaking out of your mouth. He pulls out his softening dick and cups your chin gently. His thumb wiped away your spit and his cum. "Doesn't seem like anything is hurting anymore."

Tag List: @cherrysxuya @awkward-platypus @pheebslu @bbb1rd

[tteokdoroki]

☆༉ — KATSUKI BAKUGOU. in good hands.

about. katsuki experiences phantom pain in his hands from quirk usage and you try to massage the pain away.

warnings. minors, blank and ageless blogs do not interact ! sfw, hurt comfort, fluff, angst, phantom pain/limb, war arc references, ptsd, mentions of therapy, descriptions of pain, bakugou being loved so tender, afab!reader + pro hero!bakugou.

the idea of giving bakugou hand massages is so intimate.

his quirk is so raw and powerful, i feel like becoming a pro-hero would only make his palms more calloused, cause aches between his fingers and scars that burn like with a phantom pain at random points during the day. and even though katsuki is smart enough to know that his scars have healed, his wounds have scabbed over and new skin has grown — he can’t shake the stabbing, tingling feeling that crawls up his arms as if a thousand tiny needles are pricking him.

the massages start when you catch bakugou on his knees in the middle of your shared bedroom, his hands clenched in fists so tight his nails have made his palms bleed. you set the fright in his eyes, the ache intertwined with the mauve brown that forms a rim around the ruby centre.

“what…what happened kats?” you’re quick to fall to your knees by his side, hesitant to touch him, worried for his safety — because katsuki hasn’t been like this in years. he’s been doing so well, seeing his therapist and taking his meds — ever since the day he came back to life.

but you know just by looking at him and listening to the ragged breaths just barely escaping his lungs, that bakugou is not okay. “i don’t fucking know,” his voice is strangled and panicked, like a deer caught in a hunter’s trap it can’t escape. “it just…it just fucking hurts a-and i can’t get it to stop.”

that day, you hesitantly reach out to touch katsuki— trying not to spook him as if he’s a frazzled wild animal. “let me see,” you whisper evenly, avoiding a croak in your voice because seeing him hurt, hurts you. slowly but surely, the blonde uncurls his fists, letting you take his hands into your own — smaller ones. at first, his strong and muscular stature flinches back, crumbles down to the ground in chunks of the brash man he used to be. “it’s okay, baby, i got you.”

your words wrap around katsuki like a tender hug, safe and secure between each and every one. your finger tips trace softly over the marred flesh of his hands, guiding katsuki through each of his painfully relived memories. trembles wrack the blonde’s body like a high magnitude earthquake — he can barely hold it back now, the tears that gather in his sun kissed lashes and burn tracks down his cheeks. but you don’t want him to hold back. you want him to feel.

thumbing the parts of his hands where the pain is centred, you lean forward to kiss bakugou on the forehead, providing an epicentre of relief. he wouldn’t call you a cure, no, it’d be too selfish to put the burden of his ease on the person he loves most. instead, he says that you help him heal, soothing the fuzziness locked between his cramping digits and extends up the muscles of his arms.

when you touch him as if he’s made of glass, katsuki knows that he can be vulnerable with you and that dull ebb of phantom agony seems to dissipate under the gentle drag of your fingertips over his skin. the two of you stay on the floor for a little longer, working through the aches pulsing in katsuki’s palms and arms until they eventually stop — just like his tears do.

“thank you,” he says, voice as quiet as you’ve ever heard it. “‘m sorry—“

“never be sorry for being in pain or asking for help.” you cut him off before his words take residence in the quiet hum of the air. shifting to your knees so that you tower over him (sitting legs crossed on the floor), you drag katsuki’s head to rest in your chest — cradling him and shielding him from the cruel world. “i don’t ever want you to be sorry for this. i’ll by your side no matter what. you hear me, baby?”

katsuki only nods, knowing doesn’t need to respond with words while his hands hesitantly come up to wrap around your waist. he pulls you into him so that you don’t disappear. and while you stroke back his hair and squeeze him so tight — katsuki realises that as long as he has you, he’ll never be weak or have to hide how much life hurts sometimes.

as long as he’s with you, he’ll be in good hands.

꒰ end. — all rights reserved © tteokdoroki 2023. do not copy, repost, translate & recommend elsewhere.

[cyberfreaky]

just dilf! jake saying to shy reader, “yeah baby that dick is good, huh?”

thank u and goodnight

you’d have your hands desperately grappling onto jake, nails clawing at his bare back as he pounded himself deep inside you. the euphoria of jake fucking you dumb was overwhelming, you’d bury your face into the crook of his neck as you sheepishly bit back your choked moans. “mmhm..” you’d mewl silently, panting breathlessly into jake’s ear.

he’d immediately notice your coyness, chuckling lowly to himself as he’d lower your head down against the pillow — his lips curling into a smirk. “wanna hear those pretty, lil sounds.” jake would taunt, revelling in the way your amber eyes would roll back in pleasure. you’d whimper quietly as your face flushed a deep mauve, avoiding his gaze as your body jerked with each rough thrust.

“aw, gettin’ all shy on me?” jake would continue teasing, attaching his lips to yours with a muffled laugh. he’d pull away swiftly, analysing your screwed up expressions. you’d cautiously open your eyes, lazily gazing into jake’s as you bit down on your bottom lip. he’d grin mischievously, rutting into you even harder just to watch you squirm beneath him. “mm, daddy’s cock feels good, huh?” he’d grunt tauntingly, making you whine shamefully in response.

— all rights reserved © cyberfreaky (2023) do not repost, translate or copy my work without given permission.