#maybe shes a coward. Needle hurt too much the first time

[natsmagi]

(cw suggestive? not really but)

thoughts on natsume with nipple piercings? and natsume with piercings in general... like why did enstars canonically said that she likes piercings yet only has her earlobes pierced it's not faaaaiiiirrr

LOOOOOOOOOVE NATSUME WITH NIPPLE PIERCINGS!!!!! LOVE NIPPLE PIERCINGS AS A WHOLE!!!!!!!

in a way tho i kinda get natsume on the whole "likes piercings but only has 1 hole pierced on each earlobe" thing Bc me too (though i have plans on hopefully changing that this summer)

so as someone whos in a bit of a similar boat i just like to think that natsume thinks piercings are hot as hell (correct) and is dyingggg to get more but either hasnt had time or is taking her idol image into heavy consideration. That said i am 100% of the belief that the SECOND natsume starts finally getting piercings she would be swarmed with them

[wrencatte]

"I don't know about this."

Merrin tugs on his earlobe. He reaches up and smacks her hand away. "You are the one who suggested it. Do not be a coward now."

Cal shifts a glare in her direction before stepping out of the way of a bustling local. "Suggesting isn't the same as agreeing. If I'd known this is where you were taking me, I would've said no."

"Would you?"

"Listen, I...okay, no, I wouldn't have, but still! Oh, don't give me that look."

Merrin laughs. "I do not know what you're talking about."

Cal rolls his eyes, smiling helplessly. "Let's get this over with."

This goes pretty quickly.

The place is as reputable as it can be for the prices, and Cal already knows what he wants to get. Two simple deep green studs for a standard lobe piercing. Nothing fancy. Nothing wild. The pain is nonexistent. This place is loaded with echoes from excitement and laughter to full-on sobbing from either physical pain or emotional hurts. Cal feels echoes of the worst piercings -- he is never going to get one like that, he thinks a little terrified at some of the places people are willing to stick a needle -- and some not so great tattoos, plus his own experience getting a not so great tattoo, so when the needle goes through his earlobe, it barely registers.

Merrin leans over the piercer's shoulder, humming to herself as she observes Cal with a critical eye. "Would you consider a second one?"

"Technically, I'm already getting two," he points out. One for each ear. Greez is going to lose it when they make it back to the Mantis. Maybe they should go to a bar first, give Greez and Cere a chance to be asleep so they can skip the initial awkwardness. Merrin quirks an eyebrow. "What did you have in mind?"

She touches her own ear, where she already has multiple piercings. Cal follows the motion with his eyes until she lands on the one she wants to show him. He grimaces.

"Maybe next time?" Anything past the lobe might be too much right now. Some of Merrin's piercings are interesting, yeah, but they look good on her. They're unlikely to look good on him.

"I will hold you to that."

"Well, ain't you two adorable," the piercer grunts. Merrin flushes grey and looks away. Cal's face turns as red as his hair. "If you ain't gettin another, get outta my chair. Pay up front."

[keshimasu]

He's dead asleep when the doctor wakes him. It remains instinct to swat away away the hand like his mother is trying to shake him awake late for school. Shouta can't remember the last time she did that-god does she even know or care that he's missing or is he listed as dead-and though they hadn't parted on great terms, she'd never fisted a hand in his hair and yanked him to his feet. The coward is too short to actually do the job, a 'real' nomu has to do it. It's still one of the kinder ways his day starts.

Shouta's dragging fatigue twists to a flash of fury at the indignation at being shoved out of his relatively nice dark room into light that makes his headache rear. He knows better, but he's tired and everything hurts down to the bone and he just wants to hit something. Hard. He's not opposed to losing a few strands or dislocating a shoulder to vent that anger. A punch is too short range for the situation. His foot connects solidly with Garaki's back, making a satisfying thud of boot on bone.

The fact that he falls sputtering on his face is just extra. In Shouta's sleep deprived state, it's hilarious. Even if he can't laugh, the painful rasping sound just doesn't have the same effect, he can grin. A moment of successful autonomy is worth being held up by his hair as legs cave to what very well could be molten steel in his veins. How that little trick is pulled off, whether it's quirk or remote activated, he doesn't know. It doesn't matter.

Breath wheezes out of his lungs as nomu hauls him down the hall, too many nerves and muscles misfiring to coordinate body enough to trudge under his own power. Humiliating but still not the worst. No worse than feeling eyes that were not his own open to send heroes crashing to the ground or spending days bound to a table trying to fight off invading genes like an infection.

His eyes - the real ones the real ones the real

Don't open don't open keep them closed they're not his none of this is his him anymore

His eyes, only two, still burn too much to open yet all of them squeeze shut. If it was a job he would’ve been given the details before which means it’s something else. Maybe he’s displeased the master again and they’d had this conversation before so clearly Shouta hadn’t been paying enough attention the first time. He never was a great student.

A door shuts, when did they get to another room where is he, and an eye on his hand catches a glimpse of a chair and table. Both are standard metal, bolted to the floor. He doesn’t have time to process more before large arm finally lets go of his hair in favor of firmly planting him in the seat. It rams his forehead into the table, which he now notices is slightly lower than normal and makes his neck bend uncomfortably, but the message is clear. Don’t move.

Heart pounds so loud in his ears he almost misses the nomu leaving. But it’s not a normal set up, there aren’t even any restraints and the doctor is tying his hair up with the hands of a man who’s never even done a ponytail. If he wanted, there’s an eye on shoulder blade that would have a clear view with how loose black fabric pools around hunched shoulders. He’s never wanted to see Garaki work and knowing what was coming wouldn’t change anything.

For all his nerves, Shouta doesn’t flinch at cool alcohol at the junction where neck becomes back. He doesn’t flinch at the sharp jab of a needle or excruciatingly slow scalpel through skin muscle no fat to bone. His hands shake and he blames it on the chill in his veins. Sensation pricks painfully like pins around the open wound but there’s no rush of blood. His infuriatingly sluggish brain takes several moments to connect the dots. There’s no way in hell they trust him enough to remove the implant in his spine serving as a bean sized shock collar. Replacement maybe or upgrade.

The table is blissfully cold on his rapidly overheating skin. It would be better if he just passed out now but he’s never been that lucky. He forces an unsteady breath in through his nose and clamps jaw against rising anxious nausea. One set of footsteps is replaced with another this one heavier like someone wearing those dumb thick platform boots. Eye on his wrist peeks at leather pants. He wishes he could hide face under mountains of dark hair for some semblance of anonymity. Not exposed pulled open under harsh fluorescents. The tie snaps to unseen pressure and black falls over his head. If only he could telekinetically fling the stranger into the wall.

- @djsouled

[theshenanijiang]

Not ZZS pretending to be okay and wanting to move on. Aw. Did he leave a note for Chengling? Or was it someone else? Is this a trap? Wow this kid has gotten pretty good at sneaking. I spoke too soon. Thank goodness Gu Xiang was there to save his sweet self.

How did Pretty Arhat know to write a note for Chengling using the name Xu? I guess Qin Song knew? ZZS is always in the right place at the right time for trouble. It is his super power.

Not Pretty Arhat and Evil Boddhisattva doing a good cop/bad cop routine. LOL

Chengling: "My father raised no cowards!" I love this kid so much.

ZZS: I am your ancestor! ZZS, buddy, don't give Evil Boddhisattva any ideas about calling you daddy, okay?

3-v-1 battle with revolving doors activate! He has a needle shooter! Cool!

Evil Boddhisattva telling ZZS she is going to show him what it feels like to want to die more than be alive. And I just cackled. Cause really? Doesn't he already know?

The estranged bfs are back together! WKX really just yeeted the two scorpion sect assassins across the room to get to his hurt beau. How cute! I stan me a good "I am crazy and give no shits for anyone but you and maybe our adopted son" guy.

Ah! Scorpion King! Yay! This is the greatest hits episode! His apathetic face is such a thing of beauty. I think he is invested in the WKX/ZZS now. LOL

WKX: "I heard your Uncle offered his daughter in marriage. I only have A-Xiang and I don't care, but I don't think you can handle her." Never change, king.

Ah... Chengling is growing up! Wow that is so messed up. That's where Chengling's piece of the glazed armor is? No wonder he keeps grabbing his side and had a fever!

Oh wow! High praise from ZZS! I predict a training montage in Chengling's future!

Secret entrance! Now that is what I am talking about! I love a good secret entrance!

Chengling stuck between his estranged murder dads and not knowing what is going on. Trying to reconcile them. -Pets his hair- Chengling... sometimes it isn't that simple, but just because they are fighting doesn't mean that they love you any less. (huh my divorced child is coming out I guess.)

WKX is really loyal to ZZS. *sighs*

ZZS really put together that WKX saw his mom dead by a comment about shoulder blades. WOW. Also, WKX, why are you so scared to tell ZZS who you were?

WKZ looks shook while ZZS tells the tale of who he is. He told Chengling all that and Chengling still says Master. The loyalty on this kid.

Nature is healing. The Four Seasons Manor has a sixth generation. Congrats to Chengling for being first disciple!

[yanderenightmare]

yandere bully ! BAKUGO KATSUKI

goodiebag WARNINGS: yandere, noncon, profanity, abuse, anger issues, anxiety, arson, bullying, child neglect, child abuse, drugs, addiction, anorexia, guilt, pills, unprotected sex, stalking, trauma

TIP-JAR

PART ONE 

IN CASE OF FIRE: PUSH ALARM - PART TWO

IN THE TRAILER

She ran away from him in the hallway.

He’d warned her of what would happen if she did.

Knowing it was a matter of when as the next day he was left waiting, grazing the halls of where she’d left him with a kicked ball-sack on the dirty school-floors, all lovesick and frenzied with fire ants raging over his skin and a manic promise that one way or the other he’d get her. Lying in suspenseful spiteful wait to tell everyone what type of slut the little spitball in class 3c General Studies really was.

But, timing was everything, and as the day went by without him spotting her he realized the opportunity to ruin her reputation in school wasn’t going to rear its head.

She was home… 

Sick.

Or, that’s what she’d told the school. One quick question at the reception told him so.

She was home. 

Home in that run-down trailer-park sorry-excuse for a home she despised, the one she cried about so often, the one with neighbours who didn’t give two shits worth a damn about who she was or that her mother was a crackhead-whore in no position to take care of her. 

She was there instead of at school begging him to stop, begging for him to give her a second chance, begging him to kiss her, like she was supposed to do.

Standing outside her trailer, he wondered if whether her mom was home or not. He wondered if either one of her neighbours would care if they saw him break in, if it even was considered breaking in.

He spotted her mother slouched on a beach-chair beside some other trailer with a needle still stuck to her arm, ugly destroyed skin sizzling in the summer-heat, mouldy flip-flops sticking to her feet. 

He cringed at the sight of it, but knew then that his pursuit would go on unprovoked, which at the very least brought him some sense of relief.

She’d gotten in through scholarship as she in no form or way could afford a school like UA. That much was clear, unlike how unclear the crystal-meth shards decorating the plastic salon-table placed on the outside of their van was. 

She transferred half-way through the first year, all on the account of pure hard work.

He could respect that. 

He did respect that. Given she was quirkless and all. It was the reason she’d caught his eye.

It all went sideways when she rejected his invitation to Homecoming.

He’d already gone miles away out of his comfort-zone, out of his element, talked himself into asking her out, only for her to turn him down.

Him.

Best student in Hero-course 1A at the time.

Rejected.

He knew it was petty of him to bully her because of it, but… she didn’t only make a fool out of him, she broke his fucking heart.

He could have listened to Kiri, and tried to forget about her through some other extra, but... he wanted her. He’d decided. She was his. And a quirkless trailer-rat like her was in no position to just say no.

In some sick sense he believed she deserved better. Him being better. But, he would like for her to ask for his help, instead of him just giving it to her. He would like to see her grovel, beg, just a little bit, or a lot. He wanted to see her regret her decision. He wanted to see her sorry. He wanted to see her want him as much as he wanted her. And he wanted it to be her who initiated it.

But… he could see that wasn’t happening. He could see that his unorthodox methods of courting her through continuously trying to bend her until she broke only consisted of her rewinding or snapping back like a rubber-band.

She was distracted, too busy being broken by what life had given her, too busy with juggling different shifts, bills, schoolwork, to be thinking about him and how he pushed her around a bit at school.

He eyed the cracked paint of the faded trailer with much the look of a snob on his face. Fingers brushing over the door-handle, testing how much noise it would make if he were to pick the lock, coming to a complete loss. 

He could barely believe it… the door was unlocked, and when he stepped inside he was even more distraught to see there was no existing lock there to be locked in the first place. 

Meanwhile her mother was too busy slowly dying to better protect her daughter from depraved humans who could come and do just about anything they wanted with her.

Meaning… just look at him.

Soft snores brought him back to where he was once he closed the door behind him. Making the short way to the source of the groggy sounds, feeling his stomach flutter at the thought of how wrong it was of him to be there, sneaking about like some love-obsessed sick stalker, getting turned on by hearing his prey sleep.

What the fuck was wrong with him? 

And why didn’t he care enough to stop?

He stood at the foot of her bed, hands in the pockets of his trousers, head tilted to the side to view her sleeping frame.

Sleeping on top of the covers, not under.

He doubted it was because of the heat, the same way he doubted the mattress beneath was clean.

She was curled onto her side, knees bent and tucked up. Cute with that teddy-bear she used as a pillow, silly and stupid but cute because of it, especially in her uniform despite having left the tie and blazer off.

She was wearing her uniform.

Meaning... she’d either gone to bed with her clothes on and slept through the entire day, or she had planned on going to school this morning, but weaseled her way out like the weakly coward she was.

Well, in that case… what he was about to do would serve her right then...

Ought to teach her lesson.

He lifted his hand out of his pocket, producing a finger to poke her ankle softly, before stroking up a path alongside her socks, all four other digits joining in the stride before the fabric came to an end and his callous fingertips glided onto the doughy flesh of her leg, over the dome of her knee and onto her even softer thigh, coming to the edge of her skirt.

He always liked her in that skirt. 

That’s where his mind was at as he started lifting to see what underwear she was wearing, yet never getting that far as something sharp dug into each side of his wrist.

Her nails weren’t of course any close to lethal, yet managed to surprise him as she whipped around to meet him, digging the talons into his roughened skin.

She might not have prioritized figuring out who it was that was currently touching her in her bed, but she had assessed the situation enough to know that someone was in fact in her house and touching her, something of which is not a good omen when you live where she lived, nor in any other situation for that matter.

He tried subduing the splash of struggles that followed her awakening by climbing and crawling some further up on the bed in order to control what myriad of flailing limbs came at him. 

Soon, hands that had primly started clawing at him were safely locked in his much larger hands.

“Oi, relax! It’s just me!”

As if it being him would have any other effect than of rising her already racing heartbeats. Yet, even as her lungs heaved for as much air as her tight chest would allow her, he managed to capture her focus, her hands pinned to each side of her head whereas her feet were stopped amidst their kicking, crushed beneath the weight of the much stronger, much more encompassing mass and weight of Katsuki’s legs.

He hunched over her, back arching with his face a mere half-foot away from her own, the only thing supporting his upper-body being his arms, which were stretched out and grasping at her wrists, pushing them into her pillow.

Her eyes were large with craze-ridden fear as they locked with his recognizable carmine ones. 

“Bakugo?” 

Shocked and scared, with the creeping feeling of anticipation waving over her again, now all for different reasons then when she first understood there was an intruder in her caravan. 

Somehow, it being Bakugo gave her an even starker unsettling eerie feeling than if it had been a total stranger. Maybe because oblivion is bliss and knowing what is to come makes the inevitable that much more inescapable. 

Still, she demanded he tell her, even though she thought she might already know the answer. 

“What are you doing? Why are you here!?”

“You weren’t at school.” He stated, spoken as though it preforming as explanation enough, though serving as far from it to the girl beneath him, the confusion shown in the way she scrunched her brows together.

He noticed, contemplating whether or not he should make his reasons known, but deciding against it and for playing with her for just a little while longer.

“I thought, since you managed to wiggle your way out of your punishment at school, I’d bring the punishment to you.” 

He searched her features for any cracks in her composure, but though she looked beyond uncomfortable, she made no moves to push him off.

Her eyes squinted instead, narrowing at him. 

“I’m not scared of you, Bakugo. I know you’re not gonna hurt me.” 

Her body started twisting under him. The action far from vigorous, mainly meant to show her discomfort as she knew she wouldn’t go anywhere unless Katsuki decided she could.

And though the intention to her wiggling was not to evoke his arousal, it most certainly managed to do just that.

He inhaled sharply and she felt her body freeze up, seize at the feel of his hips making a shift to slot himself against her, grinding down onto her flattened and unmoving body.

“Hurt you?” 

He let out a low rumble of a laugh, like building thunder. 

“Who said anything about hurting you?”

Her breath strained as his eyes scrunched closed upon her jerking, his own teeth sinking into his bottom-lip to maintain the hiss on his tongue at the pull in his pants, his head descending to nuzzle against her chest, spiky hair poking at her chin. 

Mouth breathing hot breaths onto her ear, causing her to whimper.

“Thought you just said you weren't scared?”

She swallowed thickly, improperly giving his rhetorical question an answer, feeling her wrists go numb under his hold and her blood running cold.

“Bakugo…?” 

He didn’t answer and she felt herself go even more rigid at the absence of his voice.

It wasn’t often Katsuki didn’t speak back to her when she willingly spoke to him. In fact, it was never. But now, he was quiet, too quiet, making the frightening rugged sound of his heavy breathing overwhelm her ears, dulling her senses in the process before everything being sent into hyperdrive upon the feeling of his hand leaving her one wrist to cup her breast outside her shirt, giving the mound a careful and slow yet full squeeze.

She yelped at the sudden attack, her body jumping up against him, making yet another teasingly harsh contact with his clothed cock.

This time he hissed, both upon her delicious little struggles but also because her newly freed hand had actively made the decision to pull his hair as a desperate means of making him move.

It worked to some extent, at least in freeing her other hand which opened for the opportunity to drag herself out from beneath him. 

Yet, the action was stopped in a series of rather clumsy fighting, where Bakugo managed to retract the upper-hand once again, pinning both her wrists with one hand whilst tugging loose his tie with the other. 

He’d slotted himself between her legs now, her skirt spreading and hiking up her thighs as she struggled to stop him from tying her wrists together and fasting them to the handicap-bar mounted on the side of the bed, yet failing.

Her body free for him to touch now, to tamper and play with, and she felt her heart catch in her throat, small pleas coming erupting from the place because of it, but he didn’t seem to hear her, and if he did, he was electing to ignore the pitiful sounds.

His hands traveled down her sides, thumbs rubbing over the scratchy material, the fabric of her shirt stiff as a result of using dollar-store laundry detergent.

White shirt; made up of thin fabric to make the fight against the Tokyo-heat easier, yet resulting in it being so temptingly easy to make see-through with just a little spill of water. Water Katsuki was always so eager to pour, either with light teasing spritzes from his water-bottle or in carrying her over his shoulder into the showers and holding her there as the water rained down upon her, drenching both her and himself, then offering ever so mockingly if she would like to borrow a shirt, because unlike her he had a dorm-room with fresh and dry clothes, whereas she only had that one uniform and all other clothes made up of more holes than actual textile.

He chuckled at the memories as his fingers moved up-front and centre to tamper with the buttons.

“I bet you just hate this uniform, don’t yah?” His voice, although maintaining the snicker, was soft. Not loud and abrasive and rushed, but as though he was enjoying himself, thoroughly at that, drinking in the moment.

His movements too, were slow; careful.

Large warm hands stroking down the bare skin of her stomach, feeling the tremors as he did so, with eyes glued to those perfect mounds found beneath what looked like a well-worn sports-bra, making him wonder what she’d look like if he were to dress her up in expensive red lace. She’d be mouthwatering to look at either way, and breasts are just as soft whichever way they’re dressed… it’s not like the bra is staying on for too long anyway.

He swallowed thickly to stop his mouth from dripping.

He tucked her shirt out from her skirt, taking a moment to grip her midriff and squeeze to try and ease her struggling. 

It only resulted in her thrashing even more, whirlwinds of panicked get-off-me’s and fuck-you’s and stop’s spilling from her mouth in rapids, but the plead seemed to repel off Bakugo’s ears like water off a ducks back where the desperation only aided in satiating his sick sadism, in the same fashion tears fell from her eyes aided in making his stomach churn or flutter with something he could only describe as bliss, her arms trying to the best of their efforts at tugging at her bonds, to no avail except for making the skin found their chaffed and sore.

He spent a few seconds deciding whether he wanted the skirt on or off as he felt up the fabric between his fingers, more memories flushing his mind with such sweet and potent nostalgia of him lifting up the short excuse for coverage in the school-halls every day to sneak a peak at her underwear, or those times he would bend her over classroom-desks and push his bulge where it would fit so snuggly against her ass.

“Kinda feels like this skirt gets shorter and shorter for each year...” He mused, stroking up the skin of her thighs, lifting the fabric in the process, revealing a pair of black cotton boxers which, despite being lackluster, forced a groan to rumble from his chest.

The fuck-you’s had turned to please’s and the change made a smirk curl onto his lips as he put his lips to the inside of her thigh before pulling away to look down at her, all spread open and quivering for him. 

Breasts all perfect, squished together in the comfort of her bra, hair splayed on top of the pillow, her nose turning all red and adorable with her eyes brimming with both panic and tears.

Her skin felt so soft and untouched beneath his fingertips as he stroked up and down her thighs, pulling them towards him, as far as the bonds on her wrists would allow, slightly struggling with how much the panic had taken a hold of her, her legs kicking and flailing.

But he liked it that way. 

Messy and desperate.

“Don’t be difficult, Quirkless, you’re not getting out of this.” He spoke so calmly, so collected and controlled and determined. As though he wasn’t doing anything wrong, as though this was his right. “This is the only thing you’re any good for anyways.”

He leveled with her clothed little sex, slung her legs over his shoulders, watched as she squirmed upon his breath, heard her whimper and plead with his name as he stuck his tongue into the fabric, her legs doing a little involuntary kick while her thighs where firmly secured in his hands.

“Worthless quirkless little pussy on legs.”

She sobbed as his fingers latched around the ribbon of her underwear, pulling, tearing the fabric, with no need to pull it down her legs, just a need to pull them off.

A content and knowing smile made its way onto his lips, yet she was unable to see it in her position, something of which she was thankful for, or… as thankful as one can be when being defiled by a friend. 

Not that Bakugo was much of a friend anymore, but he had been, at some point before he'd offered more than one concerning opinion about quirkless people and their place in the world.

Of her place in the world.

He didn’t share her nostalgia though, not when the future was smiling at him with the face of her shaven warm pussy right in front of him.

“Did you get yourself all nice and ready for me? Huh? Knew I was coming?” He teased as she shook her head sporadically, unable to form any type of words in her overwhelming embarrassment and fear and panic.

He grinned smugly, despite knowing it was due to her spot on the swimming-team she kept herself clean and hairless, also knowing that the only reason she took swimming-lessons was because she and her mom couldn’t afford the hot-water bill, making her take showers at school instead, and that a spot on the swimming-team gave her a free-ticket to using those showers anytime she wanted.

How many times had he snuck in there to watch her soap up her body?

How many times had he palmed his erection to the sight of her?

How much he’d wanted to waltz in and take her against the cold tiles, make steam roll off the walls, hearing her voice echo his name... 

Now he had the real deal though, no more time for fantasies.

She was smart, she was resourceful, but not enough to put a lock on her door.

She was lucky if one thought about it.

Lucky it wasn’t just any random guy who walked in and took her like Bakugo was going to take her.

Lucky it wasn’t just anyone’s tongue jutting out to lick up her spread folds.

Lucky it was Bakugo who was hugging her thighs close to him, using them as soft warm pillows as he nuzzled between them to lick and suck and bite at the little bundle of nerves found right there in front of him.

Lucky it was Bakugo that had her squirming and quaking and whimpering and crying. 

Because, taking everything into consideration, she was safe with him.

Safer than she would or even could be with anyone else for that matter.

Who else could really protect her like he could, like he will, like he has?

She should be grateful he still wants her after she rejected him, humiliated him like she did. She was sure going to pay for it tonight. But first, he could at least treat her to what she had been missing, especially when thinking of how much he was going to take from her before the day let up.

It almost made him feel bad.

Almost, being the keyword, because without it he wouldn’t have thought it funny how many noises she could make without alerting anyone from outside, how no one cared whether she blubbered out common sniveling protests and screams of his name, begging him to stop, or those equally loud yet scarce moans that sprung from her despite her not wanting them to, each time he sucked too hard or too harshly on her clit, teeth rubbing over the sensitive skin found there. Her hips dancing a panicked series of shimming from side to side, controlled in his grasp and only aiding in his tongue finding new places to lick and suck at as he laid abusive worship onto the temple between them. Nose bumping and dipping and rubbing onto places too tender as his mouth moved lower.

Her knees jolting as he kept them spread open, claws digging into the grabbable flesh each time she would pound the ball of her heel into his back, the movement always falling still upon the building simmering threat of explosions in his palms, pain much sharper than that of his nails.

She wanting nothing more but to wrench away, especially upon feeling the shameful treacherous dripping of herself down onto the bedsheets, disgusted with her body, humiliated beyond repair, with the tongue of Katsuki lapping up what mess he had made out of her, teeth from a grin gracing in feather-light motions, yet still managing to shoot electricity up her core. 

All she could do was pant and sob through moans and trying her best to force out more protests even though she knew it was to no use, until she felt him pull away, leaving her cold in loss of contact with heat. 

She doubted his removal was because she’d begged it from him.

Her doubts being answered as she heard the crisp clatter of a belt-buckle opening.

Her eyes were swimming, gifting her with more panic as she wasn’t even able to see what he was doing, yet knowing, again wishing she didn’t, wishing she was rather deaf as well as blind, wishing all her senses to simply give away, all so that she didn’t have to witness what she was surely soon going to have to be the victim of.

She heard the clothes dropping to the floor, looked up at him through bleary blurry eyes, still recognising the sandy nuance of his skin fully on display before her. 

His large hands found her knees again, prying them open. His hips fitting between her thighs.  

“Ba- ba- Baku- go,  plea- please, don’t- don’t… stop.” She choked on her tears, on her fear, on her panic, on the feeling of the cold breeze making her exposed sex shiver and beg for something warm to fill it up, on her disgust.

“Don’t stop?” He snickered, pinching her clit between his fingers, making her arch with a whine before trying to wrench away, yet stopped by his hands steadying on her knees, spreading her open for him.

His cock-head delved between her folds, and he had to catch a pathetic whimper from escaping his throat, settling for biting his lip instead and ridiculing the reason as to why he was feeling so weak in the first place. Growling at the little girl beneath him, all tied up and defenceless and hopeless and pathetic, but still able to make him feel so small.

“I knew you were just a stupid slut.”

It helped hearing her scream for him. 

It helped hearing her choke on her own gasps as he filled her tight little space up with the warm length of his cock. 

It helped feeling her squeeze and seize around the girth of him, hugging him close and tight, filling and stretching her out so nicely.

She had resorted to hectic crying, no words, no protests, just sobbing, hiccupping, coughing up her own cries. 

And, although he imagined himself growling and groaning he fell short of those guttural rusty sounds and fell prey to whimpering like a lovesick puppy humping a plushie-toy instead. 

His hands holding onto her hips as though letting go meant death as he rolled his hips into her, feeling her warm velvety walls welcome him home.

It felt so good he nearly barreled over, his face buried in her chest, hand coming up to enclose over her mouth as so to stop the cries and hear those soft muffled moans she made instead.

Small stifled broken wet mews spurred into his palm, as he kissed a trail up the valley of her chest and onto her neck, whispering with his breath shaky.

“If it makes you feel any better… this is my first time too.”

He didn’t know why he said it. Maybe because he was suddenly regretting his decision of being a monster, or maybe because the fright of being vulnerable disappeared at the feeling of conquering what made him afraid.

“I spread a rumour in second that I fucked Ururaka just to see your reaction.” He let out a breathy laugh, the open smile on his face indicated his nostalgia, as though it were a fond memory. “But you didn’t care at all did you?”

He snapped his hips forward, hitting something painful making her scream beneath his hand, opening it to hear her sob out in whimpers.

“Did you?!” It was accusatory and loud and right next to her ears, as he bared his teeth.

She was sure she was bleeding, feeling as though he was tearing her up, splitting her open, every harsh thrust felt deep within her abdomen, churning her guts.

“I- I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sor- sorry!” She spluttered out, more thick gulps of tears streaking her cheeks with red.

“You know what I think?” 

He leaned in closer, his nose poking into her cheek, lips brushing her ear, hands now having moved to cup her knees, pushing them up into the bedsheets beside her shoulders, hiking her up to meet his sharp thrusts. 

“I think you wanted this…”

She shook her head as his grin gleamed from seeing her discomfort.

“Leaving your door unlocked like that, you were begging for this to happen.” He laughed, biting her earlobe, heavy balls clapping against her ass.

She sniveled. “You- you know we can’t afford-” She started, but was cut off by her own broken moan as Bakugo yet again made another sharp movement, sending an earth-shattering smack to fill the crammed space of her RV, and then again cut off by Bakugo’s own response.

“Yeah? But you could still afford that dress you wore to Homecoming couldn’t you?” He sounded crazed, upset and angry and obsessed with making her regret it. “When you went with that fucking extra instead of me?” 

His forehead pushed against hers, eyes a feral red and large with rage, watching in sadistic glee as she scrunched her eyes together in pain, trying to block his voice out from her head. 

“Yeah, I bet you’re sorry now.” He growled, again taking a break from his series of shallow thrusts to push deep into her, making her whine in wet agony. “That was the worst mistake of your life and you’re gonna make it up to me tonight.”

He pushed himself up, looking down at the crying mess he was buried inside, licking his lips.

She couldn’t stop apologising, as he fucked into her, her hands going numb under the bondage of his tie around her wrists. 

“I’m sorr- sorry-” She croaked, face burning from her tears.

“Yeah? You better be.”

He gathered her ankles in his hands, holding them up, one hand coming to roll her sock down her leg.

“You’re gonna be.”

His hand caressed her small bare-foot tightly, thumb digging into her sole, his mind drifting to how cute and tiny it was, smaller than his hand, and strangely soft for someone who chooses to walk everywhere to save money.

“I’m sorry-” She blubbered. “I’m- I’m sorry...” 

She struggled for breath between her apologies and cries, forgetting how to inhale as Bakugo’s cock crammed into her, stripping her lungs of their air.

He kissed the pad of her foot, before leaning down again, hands once more cupping her knees and pushing them against the mattress.

“Good.”

She quaked beneath his stare, his sharp teeth too close as she cringed at the wet creamy sloshing sound of his cock pounding into her.

She had to look away, wanting to twist to hide her face in her pillow and cry until he was done.

But he wouldn’t have that.

“Hey, look at me when I fuck you.”

Gathering her face between his fingers, he scrunched her lips together as his own face closed in, his teeth coming to bite down on the vulnerable pout.

“You’re nothing without me, you understand that?”

One of his hands seized around her throat, adding slight pressure to accommodate his words.

“Good for nothing.” He spit. “Except for being my little slut, right?”

His claws scratched her throat, making her mewl and suck at her bitten bruised lip, tasting the metal.

“Come on, slut, I asked you a fucking question!”

Again, he angled his cock to jut into her painfully, making her gasp in strained pain at the stretch, followed by a sob.

“I’m just a slut-” She sniffled, eyes spiralling when looking into his unforgiving scarlet ones.

He smiled again, kissing her cheek.

“Who’s?”

The kiss became a lick, as he dragged his tongue up her tear-slicked cheek.

“Who’s slut?”

He felt her tremble and stiffen under his tongue, her eye’s squeezing shut.

“Your slut.” She answered, but it proved not to be good enough as another sharp painful thrust hit her core. “Bakugo’s slut.” 

She knew it was wrong the second she said it as a growl rumbled against her neck, his teeth gracing, scraping against her tender flesh. 

“Katsuki’s slut!” 

The words all broken and wet and beautiful coming from her bloated and reddened lips.

He placed a chaste kiss to her jaw, nibbling his way up to her mouth, whispering upon them. “Yeah, that’s right, you’re nothing without me.”

He kissed roughly, growling for her to kiss back, hand still tightly locked around her neck, begging for her to refuse him only for him to squeeze the life out of her.

His tongue pushed into her mouth as he slobbered and drooled above her, mouth sucking on her lips, trailing down her jaw and down her throat, nibbling and biting and lapping at her skin like some hound drooling over steak.

His hand left her throat to grasp her clothed breasts as he hit a particular spot, calling an unintentional bucking of her hips into him, making him groan in pleasure, his own thrusts gaining speed, hitting that same spot he now knew would make her unravel.

“You’re so lucky to get my cock.”

He worked himself into a taller position again, dragging himself off her chest to admire what artwork he’d made of her collar and chest.

“Say you love it.”

She shook her head, a petty begging-look on her face. 

It was a weak protest, almost enough to make him let it go, yet still outweighed by his need to make her pay.

His hips suddenly thrusting into her deeply, sharply, in all the ways he’d found out hurt.

She cried out. “No, no, Bakugo, please!” Panicked sobbing, her chest arching in pain, her legs coming to kick him off, yet were stopped as he pushed her knees into her chest. Jutting into her brutally.

“Say you love it and I’ll go slower.”

He saw her knuckles whiten at how hard she was balling her fists, tugging at her bonds desperately.

“I’ll fuck you good.” He promised, finding himself grow excited upon the thought. “Nice and slow like lovers do.” He had to snicker, even as she sobbed and hiccupped up screams that caught in her throat at his sharp thrusts, her eyes screwed tightly shut, allowing no tears to drop yet leaving them swimming in stinging salt.

His head dropped again to her temple, lips nibbling lightly on her cheek bone, his heavy breaths sounding louder than what snapping noise was made between his hips and the softness of her ass.

“Come on…” He drawled an impatient growl into her ear, a rumble that strung another whimper out from her.

More sobs followed, broken in their execution. “I love it… I love it.”

She hadn’t screamed it the way he wanted, but hearing it hang loosely onto her cries, all trembling and weak, was somehow better than what he thought he’d wanted anyway.

He slowed down, enough to lessen the sound of flesh slapping flesh and for the squishy noise of him filling her up again and again to replace it.

“What do you love?”

He made his way to rip open the seams of her shirt on her shoulder, not caring in the moment that she didn’t have a spare uniform to replace it. The shirt gone before she could even answer his question.

“You’re cock, I love you’re cock.” She sobbed, as her bra met with the same fate her shirt had, leaving her in just her little black skirt and one sock remaining, her tits springing loose, bouncing on both her cries and Bakugo’s movements.

“Fuck, good, such an obedient little pet.”

His head fell into the newly presented bare flesh with a moan, heavy panting as he slobbered up the valley between her breasts, palming the soft mounds before twisting the nipples between his fingertips, pulling at them, playing with them, his mouth sucking and biting, teasing the tender sensitivity.

His hands quitting their torment in favor of holding onto each their knee to keep her spread open for him as he rolled deeply into her spot.

“Feels so fucking-” He groaned, not bothering to finish the thought, before another impulse struck him.

His position in having his face buried in her neck and his body laid tight and snug on top of hers moved, making her feel the wisp of a chill coat her as their warm sweat-slicked bodies parted, feeling almost as though they were glued together as he pulled away, cock still being kept warm inside the comfort of her walls.

His hands came up to fickle with the knot that kept her hands locked above her head, his fingers sloppily tugging to loosen the tie, before gripping her hips tightly in a fashion meant to make sure she understood that despite being loose she was far from actually free.

Lifting her up of the spot she’d sunk into on the mattress and on to straddling his torso, his feet hitting the ground with a dunk with her propped up on his thighs, every little movement of his adjusting making his cock poke and message into other new dangerous places, places too tight to be attacked in whichever reckless unthoughtful way Bakugo saw fit.

Fingers running, or rather digging into her skin and making way to rake up her sides, grabbing and clinging to her midriff to pull her close, with his thighs beginning to impatiently move in a boyish manor to satiate the need for friction his member craved.

One arm wrapped around her waist, the other hand made to grab her chin, allowing him to look over her, again tempted to bite into those lushes red lips, all bloated and made for his teeth to gnaw on. Yet, his mouth made way to her neck instead, licking up her throat, sucking on the thin skin, wanting to make his mark flourish in red explosions all over her.

“Be a good quirkless slut and bounce on my cock, make yourself useful for once.”

His knees jolted upwards making her hop, followed by his cock sinking deeper into her.

Her hands held uncertainly mid-air made to grip his shoulders at the further intrusion, biting back another cry, however unable to keep the sobbing sigh from rupturing her throat.

However, she wasn’t given long to recover as his hand came down to plant a red-hot slap on her ass, making her jump on her own.

“Come on, don’t be shy.”

She started moving, unsure of what or which way to do it, finding the rhythm of rocking her hips forward after a while, earning a disgusting sigh of satisfaction from the blonde holding a bruising grip on her.

“That’s right...”

His arm moving to hold a death-grip on her waist, thumb digging into the underside of her ribs, poking each time she lolled forward and at the same time threatened her to stop.

His other hand came to grip her face again, stiff lips crashing against teary lips. Sucking her face as though stealing her life-source, only breaking between breaths to announce cocky cruel comments and instructions.

“Stay right there, slut.” A thrust from his hips accompanied the nickname, making her wince and lurch forward into him. “Aww that’s cute.”

Both his hands went under her skirt to grab at her ass, lifting her up only to sleeve himself inside her once again.

“Does that feel good? Huh? Right there?”

Another slap and she rested even harder against his chest, trying to find comfort in the pitch black her screwed-shut eyes left her in, yet the overwhelming scent of caramel wasn’t easily ignored, and neither was how perfectly his cock sunk into her.

His hands fingered the fabric of her skirt as he bumped into her from beneath. Tugging on the textile until ripping it off, the action earning her gasp as she was now wearing nothing but her one sock, the skirt having provided as some false sense of coverage.

“Is the slut enjoying herself?” He mocked, a salacious grin constantly spreading on his face between moans and grunts.

She shook her head, the urge to fight herself to freedom awakening yet again as her hands moved to push at his chest. 

“No… stop.”

But her back was supported, or rather steadied, with Bakugo’s large palm, little sparking ignitions gaining control of her struggles quickly, the fight leaving her body with a whimper of defeat, just as quickly as it had arrived.

Another sharp thrust ripped a strangled moan from her and he grinned. 

“Liar.” He snickered. “You’re gonna cum on my cock like a good little slut 'cause that's the only thing you know how not to fuck up, only thing your whore mom ever taught you.”

Forcing her hips to roll faster, the slick coated their thighs as her tits bounced for him.

“Does she share this bed with both you and her crackhead fuck-friends?” 

He couldn’t defend his need to make her cringe in his arms, why he wanted to see her ashamed, why he wanted her crying into him. 

“Such a freak. Are you gonna cum on the same sheets your mom sleeps on?”

Sharp fingers dug into her cheeks again, all because he wanted to be entertained by the show of her breaking.

He pulled her hips closer, fighting to hit that spot that had her mewling earlier, wanting to hear her mewl again, wanting to prove his point.

Once he found it she fell flush against him, melting in his hands, soft-spoken moans falling like drool down her chin.

“Like that, right there?” His words fell hot on her lips as his thumb pushed into her mouth and down onto her tongue, holding her chin in place. 

Her eyes crossed then upon his cock nudging in just the right way against her cervix, as well as her brows drawing up into a pretty eruption. 

“Fuck, that’s hot.” He groaned, clutching tighter onto her hip, rocking her forward to meet his thrusts. “Are you gonna cum on my cock, huh?”

With his thumb still dipped into her mouth, she tried her best to retort. 

“No…” 

It couldn’t be referred to as defiance as it was too pitiful to be called that.

“Yes, you are.”

He sucked on her collarbone, making his way up by kissing a trail of slobbering kisses and bites to her ear. 

With his hips still angled just right, his thumb left her mouth to grip her other hip. 

He could feel her tight little pussy start to convulse around his shaft, small flutters that squeezed him tightly, milking him.

She hated that she wanted to spill over so badly. The surging swimming boiling buzz constantly teased by Katsuki’s plush cockhead pushing and poking and jabbing at her cervix again and again.

She felt it coming, the snapping, breaking, splitting, the building coming close to bursting, yet she was reminded of who she was with in her reach for bliss and found herself regretting chasing it.

“No, no, not with him, not with him, not-”

It was too late as she tried holding it back, tried grasping it as hard as she was clamping down on his cock, as hard as she was digging her nails into his shoulders.

The movements of his hips slowed down. 

“There you go. Feel good, slut?” He mocked as her body spasmed, skin freezing over under his touch, feeling disgusted, skin-crawlingly disgusted with herself and how she was unable to control the continuous spasms that seemed to ricochet through her spontaneously. “Don’t worry, I’ll help you out.”

His speed picked up again, humping into her, making her ride through her orgasm, feeling the almost painful ticklish pressure build again upon each time he bottomed-out ruthlessly inside the comfort of her wet walls.

“No, Bakugo stop, stop!” Her pleads weren’t met.

“Is it too much?” He laughed, gathering a fistful of hair at the nape of her neck in order to make her look up at him, making her wince as he spit his words into her face. “Mommy didn't do too good a job at raising her slut, I see. Can't even handle cumming without crying." He jeered, mock pouting at her with his forehead pressed into hers, blood-soaked orbs forcing eye-contact from her wide tear-stained ones as she whimpered. "Aw, is my cock too much for the little whore?”

“Yes, stop!” She couldn't care less if she was answering some cruel nickname , the painful pressure assaulted inside her was something too vehement she needed to make relent, but yet again was her plead answered with a lack of mercy in an eerie whisper and nothing more.

“I’m not finished yet.”

All she could do was beg for him to finish… so that’s what she did. 

“Please...”

He gathered her face in his hand again, fingers squishing into her cheeks hurtfully as he made to sneer into her face. 

“Please what? Please fuck your whore cunt harder? Please make you cum again?”

Even as he snickered and mocked, his cock twitched at the sight of her. 

Eyes all puffy and swimming in her own tears, eyebrows knitted together, begging for mercy. 

Completely and literally held in the palm of his hand, yet her gaze still managing to make him feel fuzzy with the flutter of butterflies in his stomach.

“Oh fuck, say you love me.”

Cold dread made up most of her body, what else was the rising crippling shameful feeling of something sweet knotting up somewhere in her lower abdomen again, this time harder than before as her already abused high was continuously pocked by Katsuki’s swollen cockhead kissing her cervix harshly again and again and again, driving her insane. And all of it made his demand impossible to answer, impossible to even comprehend.

Yet, she was in no position to refuse with her face held up between his fingertips and his crimson eyes boring holes straight into her terror-wide heart.

“Say you love me or I’ll cum inside you.” His voice lacking all she considered still human. Not a hint of remorse or guilt or shame or pity.

She gulped on her breaths, yet managed to voice the words. “I love you, Katsuki.”

Her eyes now unable to look away from him. Even as he picked up the painful pace, stabbing at her core, in places she had no former knowledge of, places the length of her fingers could never even as much as dream of reaching.

“Fuck.” A boyish virginal whimper laced the moan that escaped him at her words, satisfaction easing the raging and crazed look on his face. “I love you too.”

His toes curled painfully, cold and numb against the floorboards.

“I love you.”

Hands warm and sliding against dewy and doughy flesh.

"I love you."

Something pulling, straining, building to burst was chasing release, sending spasms to shoot through his shaft.

"I love you."

He knew what was coming. He knew it would be better than ever.

“We’ll get you a pill later, ‘kay?”

The guilt was washed over with the promise of painting her walls.

“It’s fine.” He tried reassuring as he felt her revolt in his arms, all her strength fighting to get off him, yet was no match against the force of his hands holding onto her, and his need to explode inside.

She resulted to begging instead. “No, no, Katsuki stop, don’t, please!”

Feeling her hope being crushed in his palm, picturing his laughing face as she turned her vision to black, his feral smile like supersonic light, dangerous and deadly and made to rip throats out.

And then it was done, she felt the last thrust like the last blow through her gut.

Cream filling her up, smearing between their thighs, Katsuki’s head resting on her shoulder with his hands holding onto her hips, fingers marking their presence into her back yet softening their grip with each of his panting breaths landing on her breasts.

Her blood ran cold through stiff veins, as though she were dead. Her skin crawling, as though rotting with mites. 

Sickness. 

Sickness in her lungs, in her throat, building, climbing up her pipes.

She slung herself off in a hurry, and with Katsuki coming down from whatever sick high he was riding, he wasn’t alert enough to catch her, which was probably a good thing because after her staggering her way to the bathroom, feeling his cum and her wetness leak out of her and drip along the inside of her thighs, she only barely made it in time to open the toilet compartment, get to her knees in the small space and haul her guts out into the small stained bowl.

Feeling like her mother, each time she came home all sweaty, mascara smeared with tears on her face like a garbage racoon, sticking her fingers down her throat and gagging until she collapsed on the floor, face laid in her own puke.

She heard Katsuki’s heavy footsteps, one and two before his hand met with her neck. Collecting her hair in a ponytail in his grip with the other hand encompassing her naked back.

She was afraid he was going to pull her up, expecting her scalp to soon scream in protest at the feel of her hairs being ripped up from their roots. 

Yet, as she awaited the torture… all she felt was the slow stroking of carefully placed paths running up her spine and then down to the small of her back in a manor either meant to be comforting or patronizing, with her hair being kept away from her face as she retched on repeat.

It was mostly just water and acid, and Katsuki made a mental note to make her eat later as he helped her up with his hands under her arms, supporting her when seeing how her shivering rendered her knees too weak to stand on her own, lifting her up on a tiny counter which would have been impossible for him if he were to try and sit on it, yet seemed the perfect size for her.

The ruff base of his thumb brushed the spit from the corner of her mouth, her large eyes meeting his own as he leaned in, soft weak hands only barely pushing against his chest in an act to stop him, but his lips pushed onto her anyway.

Parting with a string of silver connecting them, and he couldn’t help but fall prey to how beautiful she was even in her broken ugliness, how prettily her eyes fluttered with sticky eyelashes clutching together as though hugging for comfort, stray wisps of hair dancing in front of her face. Her wet breaths, sobbing breaths, hiccupping breaths, trembling past those soft pillow-y and blossomed lips, plump and full and bitable, or huffed through her nose, sniveling and sniffing and so very unfairly precious.

His thumb stroked over those lips, watching them quiver. 

He took time admiring her, feeling her cold fingertips vibrate against his chest, wondering if she could feel how hard his heart was hammering inside his ribcage with how much she was shaking. Wondering if she knew just how much he’d wanted this, how long he’d wanted this, how despite him ignoring her cries, that she understood how this wasn’t in vain, how he wasn’t just doing this because he could, that he was doing this because he needed to, that he wasn’t doing this because he hated her but because he loved her, loved her too much to let her simply slip from between his fingers again.

His fingers latched onto the band of her sock, pulling it down and off at her toes, finally leaving her completely bare.

“Let’s get you in the shower.”

He moved to pick her up, uncaring of her newly sparked urge to fight him.

“No, Katsuki…”

She tried pushing, she tried making him stop despite everything being slippery and sticky and gross. The want to cry herself to sleep knowing and finding some comfort in the fact that Katsuki was done with her and long gone outweighed the want to get clean.

“The water’s cold, you won’t like it.” She argued in a weak attempt to sway him from the idea, yet knowing full well that he didn’t care.

“Come on…” He drawled as he caught her bothersome fists by the wrists in his massive hands. “We’ll take a shower and then we’ll go get your pill…” 

He fought to find eye-contact. 

“We both know you don’t have the money for it anyway…”

Typical of him to mention her situation. Typical of him to use it against her. And though it was typical, though it was predictable, it still made her heart clench, her soul twist, her spirit crumble.

He swore he saw something start to break in her eyes, wanting to deliver the final blow to snuff out whatever fight she still had left. 

He leaned in more, his nose brushing against hers.

“You need me.”

Her struggles stopped at that, Katsuki wrapping her legs around his back to support her as he carried her to the shower. Her cheek resting on his shoulder, completely deflated.

It wasn’t at all as in the movies. Sweet couples who help wash each other’s hair, warm bodies gliding against one another, soft perfect handprints printed on the dewy glass.

She hadn’t been lying, the water was freezing as the showerhead spritzed the water down on them with a force close to that of aching.

They didn’t both fit in the crammed space either, Katsuki was sure that even him alone wouldn’t fit in the tight space, where he was left to have one foot on the floorboards outside the door, water rushing into the hallway, running down his leg, but he didn't care.

His frame blocked the door completely, allowing her no shape or form of exit as he made her stand there, under the showerhead, hair slicking to her neck and nipples perking into hardness under the freeze, goosebumps strutted and coated her flesh from head to toe, her cheeks and lips blossomed with a purple hue, her eyes closed, head dipped in discomfort or shame or embarrassment or sorrow or a bit of everything and even more.

Her body trembled beneath his warm hands, as they cupped her breasts, palming them and playing and pinching with her back hunching in a weak effort to get her discomfort across, despite knowing how he didn’t care, with the fact having been proven time and time again.

His warm calloused fingertips brushed down her abdomen, eyes stark and loud as they looked at her body, thinking of how unblemished and beautiful her skin was as opposed to him, no roughness or ugly greenish bruises, just milky smooth and rosy suppleness and all his.

His hand traveled further, causing her small ones to reach out and grip around his wrist, both hands giving their best effort at trying to stop him. Though his other hand was quick to wrap around her throat and extract a sweet gasp with the movement.

Her hands removed their pressure yet remained on him as he brushed featherlight touches over the sensitiveness of her sex, fingertips dipping into her folds, slithering in the slick velvet of his cum mixed with her wetness.

A sob ricocheted through her as her toes curled, fingers bending and nailing into his wrist. Still, he continued. Fingers pushing inside, pumped knuckle-deep inside the puffy spongey walls, reaching deep before scissoring, making her knees bend, yet kept from falling by the hand around her neck keeping her up like a noose as he curled the two digits.

Her eyes avoided his, looking down at his limp cock who somehow seemed just as intimidating as before, like a sleeping beast ready to wake at any second. 

Yet, as much as he played with her sex, his own remained still.

He picked her up again as he saw more of her skin going purple, not really wanting her to get sick, just refreshed.

Water flooded on the soft-with-mould floorboards in the tight hallway as her feet dragged against the walls when he yet again carried her to the bed. And as much as she wanted to fight as he placed her dripping body down onto the sheets, she couldn’t find the energy. Tears, however, still managed to drip down her face, unhurriedly gliding down her cheeks, warm in stark contrast amidst the freezing shower-water.

“Do you wanna hear something really fucked up?”

It was rhetorical, but he wouldn’t have gotten an answer either way.

“I used to be jealous of your crack-whore mother…”

Her face cringed, confused yet still not desiring to know what he meant.

“Fuck, I’m still jealous when you come to school and I see that there's somebody else who makes you cry harder than me.”

She had to swallow in order not to gulp.

“You’re sick.”

Those were the wrong words, for as quickly as they entered the air, he was once again on top of her, squeezing the breath from out of her lungs.

“I’m sick?” He questioned, fingers plunging inside her, a forced moan ripped from her throat. “You’re the one cumming and creaming and squirting all over my cock while crying.” He bit out while starting to pump into her cruelly, finding it easier now as she was already wet from before. “Telling me you love it, telling me you love me.” He laughed as he sneered. “Who would’ve known what a slut you are. So desperate you let your own bully fuck you like this. You fucking whore.” 

His pushed his thumb into her clit cruelly, a sadistic smile on his face as she struggled.

“Stop, shut up, shut up!” Her palms made to push at his hard chest, yet was weakened as she felt the burning sweetness start to pool were his fingers poked.

“You don’t like that nickname? No? Aww, that’s fine.” He hissed, then scoffed. “It’s not true anyway...” He muttered beneath his breath, trying to find what sweet spot his fingers could reach as so to have her unravel beneath him again, wanting to lick the sin from her expression, wanting to bathe in his victory of making her his. “How did it feel to have my cock balls deep inside your precious little virgin innocent cunt, huh? Better yet, how does it feel to know how I am your first? First to kiss you, first to fuck you, first to make you cum.”

“Fuck you.”

Any remnants of strength was now spent on those last words, as the rest was spared to support her oncoming orgasm, the one she could feel clawing, sucking all senses up as though preparing for an implosion.

“That’s right…” He whispered. “Fuck me. Your first and your last.”

His ominous tone had her guts churning, which in some sick sense only added to the pooling dam that was about to snap inside her, but she kept her eyes wide, further digging into what his words meant, wondering if this would be her last day on earth, wondering if Bakugo would be the last person she'd ever see, ever feel, ever touch.

“You look like I’m gonna kill you.” He observed as he curled his fingers once again, making her hips buckle into his hand, which in turn made him grin. “Nah, I’m not gonna hurt you…”

His head dipped so that he could nibble at her neck, lick up the tender flesh with his fingers pumping in and out of her, coated in slick, collecting and drenching in his palm.

“I’m just gonna make sure no one ever touches what’s mine again…”

She couldn’t explain why the growl in his voice had her abdomen doing flips.

“Including that fuckface slut you call a mother.”

His fingers scissored, her back arching as she moaned.

“You’ll be lucky I even let you graduate.”

She couldn’t quite catch what he was saying anymore, just the lilt in his tone which had her falling apart beneath him, the walls of her pussy fluttering in pleasure.

“People go missing all the time.”

Her toes curled and she braced herself.

“That way I can have you all for myself.”

His warm lips pressed against her neck, his growls reverberating on her skin.

“All mine.”

His fingers poked at something that was about to burst and as she wanted to climb further up on the bed to escape it, she also wanted him to follow.

“Where you belong.”

And there it was, body melting into the mattress, all shame obsolete in those seconds.

Unable to see him lick her orgasm off his fingers as her eyes had crossed and traveled way too far into the back of her skull.

Unable to prepare for his kiss as her mouth hung open, soft feeble moans cut loose into the air, captured by Bakugo’s mouth.

She didn’t catch the second he stopped kissing her, nor did she catch the moment he got off the bed.

She must have fallen asleep for a short while because when she opened her eyes again Bakugo was dressed, rummaging through cabinets containing worn out clothes and things like it, seeming displeased with most of what he found.

She looked to her side, where placed on the bed was a towel, fresh underwear and a bra.

She motioned for the towel first, feeling the shameful wet stickiness between her thighs, hurriedly wiping it clean before putting on her garments, looking up to see Bakugo staring at her, having found something suitable to dress her in.

“Put this on.” 

She didn’t bother looking at what he’d so graciously offered her of her own clothes.

Her eyes narrowed at him instead. 

“I don’t want your help.” She sneered, looking away, crossing her arms over her chest as so to hide herself from his piercing gaze.

His fingertips were quick in clutching her cheeks, raking them into her skin as he turned her head back to look at him.

“Too bad, you need it.”

The fabric was cast at her lap unceremoniously, the soft silky feel cold against her bare thighs.

“Put it on.” The growl was followed by him removing his hand with a push.

She huffed before looking down at the presented article, wondering what Bakugo wanted to dress her up in, her lips forming a disgusted snarl.

“It’s my mother’s.”

The yellow summer-dress, flowy and frilly in texture, something she’d never wear, something Bakugo knew well she would never wear.

“It’d go to waste on her.”

This made her look up, curiosity or maybe even a form of flattery evident in the curl between her brows.

The sudden eye-contact catching Bakugo off guard as he’d shared the uncharacteristically tender opinion of the girl out loud.

He scoffed, crimson eyes darkening in an attempt to hide the building flustered panic, masking it with a growl instead. 

“Put it on, I won’t ask again.”

She fingered the fabric for a while longer before treading it on over her head, letting the skirt dress her thighs with a featherlight fall.

Looking like a spring-daydream, not at all as though she’d just lived through a nightmare.

With her drying hair falling in messy curled tousles down her shoulders, Bakugo reached out a hand to fasten the small wispy strands coming to tickle her forehead behind her ear, grabbing her wrists in favor of her hand when he pulled her up.

“Let’s go. I can’t stand this shithole.”

Wondering if he should have said that he couldn’t stand her in that shithole instead.

TIP-JAR

PART ONE

[actress4him]

For Bad Things Happen: could you please do Keith strapped to an operating table with Shiro coming to rescue him? (Ironically the opposite of what happened in canon 😆)

Sure thing! I enjoyed this one, though I wrote the last bit with a fever so I’m hoping it makes sense and the quality didn’t drop.

@badthingshappenbingo

Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender

Prompt: Strapped to an Operating Table

Warnings: human experimentation, noncon body modification, non-graphic amputation, non-graphic mouth whump, emeto, blood mention, death mention, threatened eye whump but nothing actually happens, needles

.

.

The first few times, Keith fought against the restraints. Growled at the Druids that stuck needles in him and pulsed magic through his veins. Screamed his anger to disguise his fear, despite the fact that no one listened or cared.

That changed after the first surgery.

When they took his arm, a bit of his defiance went with it. He didn’t have the energy to fight so hard anymore. After all, it had been days with no sign of anyone coming for him, and now there was this thing attached to him that he refused to acknowledge as his own.

He didn’t know how Shiro did it. How he just...accepted something of hers being part of his body. Used it like it was nothing, like it had always been there. Like it hadn’t been crafted specifically for him by the witch who took pleasure in torturing him.

As the experiments dragged on, he still snapped his teeth at any fingers that strayed too close to his face. Still glared his hatred at the emotionless masks that hovered over him.

But he remained silent. Stoic. Stopped rubbing deep rivets into his wrists and ankles, pulling on metal straps that had no give. Haggar noticed the change, smirked that infuriating smirk and commented on how much better behaved he was.

He couldn’t fight anymore, but he wouldn’t let them see how he was crumbling to pieces inside. Only once he was returned to his cell did he allow himself to curl into a ball, metal arm laying out as far away from his body as possible, and let his thoughts run wild.

Why haven’t they come for me?

They’re not coming for me.

They shouldn’t come for me.

I don’t want them to endanger themselves.

I can’t keep doing this.

I want to go home.

The second major procedure wasn’t quite as bad as the first, though when the choices were ‘amputation without meds’ versus ‘teeth removal without meds’ it wasn’t really something he wanted to dwell on comparing.

A metal contraption was shoved into his mouth, the crank on it turned until his jaw was forced wide open, and Haggar herself took out both his upper canines and replaced them with what he’d find out later were fangs. She tended to lurk in the background while her Druids carried out the tests from day to day, but she took over the major stuff herself. Keith wasn’t sure what was worse, having to stare at the Druid’s masks, or at her ugly face. At least with the Druids he couldn’t tell that they were actually enjoying the whole thing.

And he didn’t have to worry about her seeing when a few tears slipped down to his temples.

That night in his cell he accidentally bit his tongue, his lip, then his tongue again with the sharp new fangs. He wanted to scream, wanted to rip them out with his bare hands, but he was too much of a coward to go through that pain again. She was turning him into something he didn’t want to be. She was making him look like...like them, like a monster, like the half of his biology that had enslaved and murdered so many people, the half that he tried so hard to pretend didn’t exist.

What will Shiro and the others think when they see me again? Will they even recognize me by the time she’s done with me?

Are they even coming?

It’s been so long. Has to have been over a week, at least.

Maybe it really is better if they don’t come at all.

The next experiment they ran made him violently ill. He really couldn’t afford to lose any of the sparse food they gave him, he’d already lost so much weight. The only good news was that they were forced to cut the testing short that day, dumping him back into his barren cell to fend for himself.

He was so tired. Tired of being there. Tired of being poked and prodded and cut and changed. His body was flagging, all of the substances they’d injected him with and the blood he’d continuously lost taking its toll.

He wasn’t sure how much longer he was going to last. If the team was coming...they might be too late.

After that day of puking his guts out, he no longer even had the energy to glare or snap. He let them drag him to the lab, shove him onto the table, and pin him down with all the many restraints without so much as a sound, and stared up at the ceiling doing his best to ignore what was being done to him. All of his fighting now went into keeping the tears he could feel burning his eyelids from escaping.

Shiro...I’m sorry. I tried to stay strong. You should...you should just forget about me.

More time passed. By Keith’s best guess it had been a few weeks since he’d been captured, but he’d kinda stopped bothering to count. They strapped him down to the table again, and he didn’t even really care until Haggar appeared above him.

She was going to take something else from him.

How much more, until he was no longer himself at all?

“Such unusual eyes,” she croaked, dragging a far too sharp fingernail across his cheekbone. “More advanced than Champion’s, for sure, but still nothing like they could be.”

Dread crawled up Keith’s throat and stuck there, making it difficult to breathe. “No,” he whispered. “No, please, don’t…”

A smile lit up her face. “Ah, he finally begs. I’ve been wondering what it would take.”

He didn’t even care anymore. “Please don’t take my eyes, please.”

“Oh, don’t worry.” She turned to the side, busying herself with tools. “I’m only taking one for now.”

He was gonna be sick. Panic blared in his mind, burning his chest and throat and eyes...his eyes, his eyes. He’d never really liked them all that much. They were a weird color, not normal, an outer indication of how different he had always felt.

But he didn’t want them to be taken. He was...he was gonna end up looking like Sendak, wasn’t he? The thought only increased the pressing nausea.

He turned his head to the side, sure he was about to throw up, when an alarm began wailing out in the corridor. Red lights flashed overhead, and he squinted against them, confusion taking over his panic. Haggar and the Druids suddenly hurtled into motion, snatching up tools and gathering around the table, but their frenzy was interrupted by the door slamming open and more people pouring inside.

The next few moments were chaotic. Keith couldn’t lift up his head enough to see what was going on, but he heard the familiar enough sounds of fighting and dared to hope. That this was finally over, that someone had come for him, that he wouldn’t have to lose anything else, after all.

“Stop!” Haggar screeched. Her hand fisted in his hair, and his breath caught. “You really don’t want me to inject this into your precious Paladin. You see, I’ve been saving this for a later experiment.” A sharp point grazed the side of his neck. “Pure quintessence. What will it do to him? Even I don’t know. Quintessence is a tricky thing. I’m hoping it will bring out more of his superior lineage. But it could very well turn him feral.”

“Haggar. Don’t.”

That was Shiro. Shiro. He was really there!

“Then drop your weapons,” she hissed.

No. He was so close, so close! “Sh-shiro, please…”

“It’s okay, Keith. It’s gonna be okay.”

The silence was so thick that he could hear Shiro’s arm power down, hear two different bayards return to neutral and clatter quietly to the floor. He squeezed his eyes shut, willing the tears to stay put.

The crack of a gun split the air.

Keith’s eyes flew back open, but he barely saw Haggar jolt and disappear through the sudden pain stabbing through his neck. He screamed, and he didn’t know how much of it was from pain and how much from fear.

Shiro materialized over him, and he would have laughed aloud from relief if he hadn’t been shaking so hard. “Hey bud, it’s okay. You’re okay now.”

“N-no, no, get away, get back, get away from me. You can’t…” Keith sobbed. “I don’t wanna hurt you, you have to leave me.”

“We’re not leaving you,” Shiro replied firmly. “Look.” Gently, telegraphing his movements, he reached for the syringe and pulled it out of Keith’s neck, eliciting a whimper. Then he held it up for him to see the golden liquid. “She didn’t get to actually depress it, see? You’re good. You’re safe.”

Safe. A feeling that he’d never thought he’d have again. Shiro was here, running his hand through his greasy hair, and the others were cutting through the restraints, and it was over.

Except that it never really, truly would be. “Shiro, she...she…”

“I know.” He pointedly didn’t look at the arm and the teeth, but they were there on display for everyone to see. “It’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna get through this, okay? Together.”

He was free now. No more metal restraints. No more Druids or Haggar. Shiro gathered him up into a huge hug, and it was the best thing he had ever felt in his life.

“Okay,” he whispered, tears running down his cheeks and the front of Shiro’s armor. “Together.”

——————————

Instructions for requesting a square here!

[mynumberfivethings]

I Heard A Rumor...

They land back in 2019, which is a relief, of course, until it’s not. 

“What the fuck even is the Sparrow Academy?” Diego grouses. “Lame ass bird fucks.” he chucks one of his knives across the cramped motel room they’re currently occupying and watches it get lodged firmly into the tacky wallpaper. 

Allison grabs the second knife Diego’s about to fling out of his hand and glares  daggers at her brother. “We’re staying here for free, because I rumored the motel staff into not noticing we exist, so maybe don’t wreck the place?” 

Luther nods in agreement. “Allison’s right, we need to be as inconspicuous as possible right now.” 

Diego rolls his eyes. “Whatever. So Five, now what?” the siblings all go to turn to Five for the answers they’re so desperately seeking, only to be met with the sight of the pseudo thirteen year old laid curled up on one of the beds, sound asleep. 

Luther frowns. “How in the hell can he seriously sleep at a time like this?” 

Allison leans over Fives still form and not so gently shakes his shoulder, jarring him awake. She feels a little guilt upon seeing the initially panicked look on his face as he comes to awareness once again, but damn it, she just wants to see her kid again, is that too much to ask? 

“We need to figure out a way to get back to our timeline.” she tells him, arms folded over her chest.

Five scratches the sleep from his eyes, unaware he’d even passed out in the first place, wincing as he sits up fully on the mattress. “This is our timeline.” he informs all of them, his voice coming out scratchy and thin. God, he’s exhausted. And practically everything aches. 

“What do you mean?” Klaus shakes his head. “In our timeline Ben is very much dead-not some weird emo douche who flocks with a crew of birds-so please do explain how the actual hell this makes any sense.” 

Five sighs, “We changed the linear time of events and the order in which they were supposed to originally occur when we were in the sixties and now this is, for all intents and purposes, our timeline.” 

“Screw that. We need to reestablish our actual timeline.” Allison counters. “I’m not staying in this weird alternate bullshit dimension any longer than we have to-we still have the suitcase, right? Let’s go back to the sixties and fix what we broke. Easy.” 

Five looks at her like she’s lost her mind. Which, she very well may have, he thinks briefly. “Look, I know you want to see Claire again, but you need to consider-”

“No.” Allison interrupts angrily, tears starting to fill her eyes. “You don’t understand at all. How the hell could you? You haven’t had anyone for years, but me? I’ve had people, people I care about-which might be a foreign concept to someone like you, but-” 

“Right,” Five cuts her off in turn, unwilling to linger on the sting her words have caused. “I just need time to-” 

“Time? Haven’t you had enough of that, already?” Suddenly the room is engulfed in complete and utter darkness and the Hargreeves go into high alert, trying to figure out where the hell that voice is coming from. 

Could it be one of the Sparrow Academy heroes? Could they have followed them to the outskirts of town? 

“Show yourself, you coward!” Diego shouts, knives at the ready to attack their intruder. 

A flash of thunder illuminates the room for only a split second before the lights come back on and the Hargreeves find themselves frozen in place, unable to move even a muscle, try as they might. 

Save for one: Five. 

“What the hell...” he mutters, as he watches his siblings struggle to try and move from their positions. 

“Now, Allison.” that same disturbing voice commands. 

Allisons eyes go wide as her mouth begins to move without her permission and out come the words, “I heard a rumor you killed your brothers and sisters.” 

They watch with dawning horror as Fives eyes roll to the back of his head and turn an off shade of blue before he seamlessly plucks Diegos knife from where it was embedded in the wall earlier and faces his family, where they stand, helpless. 

“Shit!” Diego curses, trying in vain to move even a single digit. 

Vanya tries to conjure her own powers but finds that she can’t for some reason. “Five...” she calls out, knowing it’s futile. 

Five blinks over to Klaus first, who yelps in surprise, he barely has time to beg Five to reconsider when Five brings the knife down-

There’s boisterous screaming and panicked yelling and general chaos and Klaus is so sure this is it, that Five has plunged the knife straight into his heart and done away with him, until he opens his eyes and realizes nothing is protruding out of him...

Instead, Five has thrust the knife into his own leg. He’s breathing hard, his trembling fingers still hovering over the hilt of the weapon. 

The disembodied voice booms, “Allison!” 

And Allison curses, but she can’t stop the words from tumbling out of her mouth. “I heard a rumor you stabbed me in the jugular.” 

Fives eyes go pale blue for a second time and without even flinching he takes the knife out of his upper thigh and blinks so that he’s facing Allison this time. 

They can all see him struggling, perspiring, fighting against the rumor as he brandishes the knife in one hand, raising it up above his head slowly. 

Allison tries to let out another rumor, a contradicting rumor, perhaps, the way she had done when Five had been in front of Klaus, but again, the words get stuck in her throat. 

Whatever being is in the room is in total control of her powers... 

Allison feels something collide with her neck but it’s not the sharp sting of a knife she’s expecting. It’s Five’s forearm against her, protecting her from his own attack as he shoves the knife directly into his flesh. He’s panting now, with the force that it’s taken him not to obey her mind control. 

“Kill them.” the voice demands angrily. 

“Fuck you.” Five bites out through clenched teeth. 

As if those were the magic words, the voice departs and the Hargreeves can feel their limbs and move about once again, the tense atmosphere dissipating. 

“Holy shit!” Klaus gasps out, “What the fuck, Jesus!” 

Five grunts as he removes the knife from his forearm and wields it threateningly. “Allison,” he practically begs, his voice strained. “Unrumor me. Now.” 

Allison is more than happy to comply, hurriedly saying, “I heard a rumor you didn’t want us dead.” 

The knife clatters as it hits the floor and Five collapses next to it a second later, exhausted and hurting something awful. 

“Shit,” Diego grabs a bunch of hand towels from the bathroom and kneels down. “We gotta stop the bleeding.” He presses two towels against the stab wound on Fives forearm and Vanya grabs the rest to press against the one on his thigh. 

Five tenses up beneath them, his face scrunching up in pain. “Fuck!” 

“I saw a first aid kit in the lobby by the front desk, I’ll go get it!” Allison calls out, already halfway out the door in her haste. 

“Should we move him to the bed?” Luther asks, hovering over his siblings, concern and anxiety eating away at him. 

Diego curses. The hand towels are drenched in blood already. They need to stop the bleeding and soon, or else. “Elevate his leg.” he orders, letting Luther help Vanya try to stem the bleeding there. “Klaus, go get more towels from one of the maids if you can.” Klaus scurries to obey while the others continue to put pressure on Fives multiple injuries. 

Klaus and Allison arrive back at the motel room almost simultaneously, one with a stack of clean towels in their arms and the other with a giant red box in hand. 

With the extra towels and the supplies from the medical kit, they’re somehow able to stop the bleeding long enough to move Five up to the bed. Luther’s extremely gentle as he transfers him from one spot to the other. 

When it’s time to stitch him up, Vanya and Klaus volunteer to do it. Five is too exhausted, both mentally and physically to pretend to be stoic about any of this. He throws his good arm across his face, shielding his eyes from the light. 

“What do you guys think that was?” Luther asks the room at large, when the silence stretches on too long. 

Klaus doesn’t look up from where he’s threading his needle on Fives thigh, replying dryly. “Yet another person place or thing that wants us dead?” 

Diego scoffs. “It’s gotta be one of those Sparrow fuckheads. Who the hell else? I bet it was that goddamn cube-I still can’t believe dad adopted a fucking cube-Christ.” 

“Whatever it was, it was in control of my powers.” Allison frowns deeply. “When I tried to unrumor Five nothing came out-even when I tried rumoring one of you into being able to move again, so that at least we would stand a fighting chance against our little serial killer over here, nothing.” 

Vanya nods, “Same here. I tried to use my powers but it was like there was some kind of a block or something? Like when I was still taking those prescription pills.” She looks at Fives pale face-what she can see of it, from underneath his forearm-and risks the question, “Five, how did you manage not to....you know...?” As someone who’s had first hand experience being unwillingly rumored by their sister, she knows it’s not something one can easily brush off. 

Quite frankly, it’s a miracle they’re all still breathing... 

“Yeah, I thought for sure we were dead.” Diego walks over and playfully ruffles the top of Fives messy hair. “Good job not making yourself an only child.” he jokes, freezing entirely when in response to his teasing Five lets out what can only be described as a faint whimper. 

“Five?” 

“I almost killed everyone.” Five struggles to get the full sentence out, his breath hitching. “Fuck.” he curses, unable to stifle a sob. It’s a pathetically sad little noise, but it brings the rest of his siblings to his side immediately. 

“Hey,” Allison kneels down beside the bed and places a careful hand on his knee. She feels him flinch underneath her. “You resisted my rumor-twice. Do you know how rare that is? You saved us.” 

Five scrubs his face with the sleeve of his white button up shirt and finally uncovers his eyes. They’re red and puffy from crying, eyelashes wet with his tears. “I don’t want to be alone anymore.” he admits brokenly. “I can’t lose you guys again.” 

“Shit Five,” Diego leans down and briefly touches their foreheads together, the palm of his hand cupping Fives head. “You’re not alone, we’re right here. Not going anywhere.” 

Vanya nods determinedly. “That’s right. You’re stuck with us.” 

Luther towers over the group with a faint but genuine smile. “You know, I always figured you loved us, but I guess I didn’t realize the extent until today.” 

Five sniffles, wiping away more tears he can’t seem to stop from coming. “I would trade you all up for a decent cup of coffee.” he lies, feeling more exposed than he has in literal years. 

Klaus smirks. “Nuh uh, no take backs, Fivey. You loooooove us.” 

Five rolls his eyes but it doesn’t have quite the same effect it normally would, considering the fact that he is still very much crying. 

Allison clears her throat, squeezes his knee again, this time to get his attention, and says, “And we love you. I’d ask if you know that, but honestly I think the answer would make me too sad.” she sighs. “Five, I’m really sorry about what I said before-I was taking all my frustrations out on you and I spoke carelessly, without thinking.” 

Five shakes his head, overwhelmed. “It’s ok.” 

“It’s not.” Allison insists. “Five, I don’t know if anyone’s said this yet, but I think it’s long overdue. I’m so happy to see you again. I missed you, you know. A ton.” 

Five didn’t think he was childish enough to still need to hear such silly sentimental things. He’s not the type, he’s tried to convince himself. It’s not as though he was expecting some big tearful family reunion upon his arrival, after all. So he wasn’t crushed or anything when his return was met with little more than perhaps confused contemptment. He had things to do, apocalypses to stop and all that jazz. 

That’s what he told himself, of course. 

But it doesn’t ring very true now, not when he can’t help but let out another sob. 

He’s too old for this, he thinks, as Diego pulls him gently to his side and Allison grabs hold of his hand. 

He doesn’t need them to love him back, he thinks, as Klaus finishes taping up his wound with a tenderness only reserved for those he loves, as Vanya wraps gauze around his forearm with care. 

He’s been fine all this time, he thinks, even as Luther says, “Good to have you back, Five.” 

It’s good to be back, he thinks, turning his head so that it’s buried against Diego’s shoulder when he lets out another sob. 

.

[mintelepathy]

“now you look like the badboy your fans write fanfics about”

jungkook x reader (or oc)

word count: 865

summary: oc raction when jungkook comes home full of tattoos

fluff

masterlist

“Is it going to hurt?” you asked again.

“Babe, it’s the third time you ask me that in the past hour”

“I’m so nervous” was your response.

“I can’t see why though. you deal great with pain so I’m pretty sure you’re barely going to feel it”

“ You make it sound like I’m a masochist”

“Well.. “

Getting your first tattoo was a big deal for you. you’ve always wanted to have one but you were basically a coward who needed her boyfriend’s support to take courage.

  A year ago

Since your boyfriend went out to have dinner with his friends today you decided to just spend some time at home watching movies. It’s not like you didn’t like to go out with your friends as well, but the problem was that you actually didn’t have friends at all.

Well you did have one good friend, but she was too busy spending time with her boyfriend in Paris and that’s why meeting her right now was kind of impossible. You weren’t sad about the fact you didn’t have a great social life, you loved being alone and the only company you needed was your boyfriend and your cat which was currently sleeping in your lap.

You heard the door being opened and then you heard Jungkook’s voice letting you know that he had arrived. You tried to place your kitten on the couch as slow as possible before you got up to welcome Jungkook, when you saw him your jaw almost hit the floor because one of his arms that was once empty now was covered in tattoos.

You loved tattoos and Jungkook had always told you how much he wanted to get one, but you weren’t excepting to see him coming with an inked arm tonight.

“Oh god.. you are insane” you said as he came closer showing you his arm with a proud smile in his face 

“Do you like them?”. Was he actually asking that?

 “Actually the right question is: Do YOU like them?”

“I love them, I’m so happy I decided to get them today” he seriously looked so happy and cute that you couldn’t hold it anymore so you kissed him softly for the first time today. You broke the kiss just to tell him that you loved his tattoos as much as he did and then kiss him one more time, it was quiet difficult for you to stop kissing him but you needed to breathe at some point.

“I noticed that now you look like the badboy your fans write fanfics about” he laughed at your comment and give you a short kiss before going to kitchen to drink some water.

“How do you know that?” he asked while looking at you again.

“It’s all over Tumblr babe, your fans will be so happy after seeing your tattoos” you smiled at him. “Do you want to finish the movie I was watching before you arrived?” he nodded in response.

You couldn’t stop thinking about tattoos now so when both of you were cuddling on the couch you asked him:

“Can you send me the address of the tattoo shop you went today after we finish to watch this?”

“Are you getting a tattoo soon?” he smiled.

“I wanted it just in case.. you know how scared I am of needles so it may take some time for me to actually get one” he smiled turned into a pout after hearing that but he totally understood your point.

“I’ll send it to you right after we are done with this” 

Then you both focused your attention again on the movie and you relaxed at the feeling of his fingers caressing your hair.

 Present

“You will be fine” he said as you entered the tattoo parlour.

You asked him to go inside the room with you because you were shit scared to be honest. 

When the tattooist asked you if you were ready the only thing you did was give him a nod and grab your boyfriend’s hand.

You close your eyes as you heard the sound of the tattoo machine and wait until the pain hits you, but you felt nothing because you don’t remember anything after you closed your eyes.

Yeah..  you had fainted and it was embarrassing.

When you woke up Jungkook was looking at you with a worried expression and he told you that maybe the best would be not getting a tattoo, but you insisted because believe it or not you were completely fine.

Fifteen minutes later your rib tattoo was done and it wasn’t the worst experience of your life as you expected it to be, actually it didn’t hurt at all and that made you feel like the dumbest person in the world.

“I was so worried for you” Jungkook said once you were in the car again.

“I’m sorry, I think the sound of the machine really terrified me, it wasn’t bad at all. I’m already thinking what’s the next thing I want to get tattooed”

“Ok, but just promise me that you’re not going to faint next time” both of you laughed at his remark.

“I promise”

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Fish

For @whump-advent-calendar‘s day 4-6, Burn/Candles

CW: Referenced medical whump and dehumanization, light burn (accidental), captivity, muzzling, drugging reference, reluctant whumper turned caretaker

Introduction | Siren Song | Cries | Here | Not Sure | Draw Blood | Fish | Signs

---

BAHRAM’S NOTES NOTE TO SELF - SAVE IN EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE. DO NOT LET DR. L SEE.

October 22nd, 20XX 3:45 am Mer in Residence: 19 Days

It’s time to admit I’m more or less keeping a diary at this point as I get to understanding him. So far I’ve written separate notes to myself… for ten or so straight days of the nineteen we’ve had him here, and it’s getting harder to write the official transcriptions the way Dr. L wants me to.

Dr. Lachlan insists I call the mer ‘it’, that it’s to help me distance myself emotionally since it’s such a good mimic of humanity, but I don’t think it’s a damn mimic, I think it’s just… human.

I mean, obviously it’s not HUMAN, but… Miah spelled it out for me, we had an argument about this when he first got here. She gets so angry that he’s getting hurt and you know, I guess I believed Dr. L - mer aren’t my specialty field, I’m a snake man really, I don’t know the first bloody thing about fucking cetaceans. 

Anyway, I said to her at the time, “It’s not human.”

She told me, “Maybe not H-U-M-A-N, but P-E-R-S-O-N,” just like jabbing me in the chest afterward. Also, Miah can fingerspell in a way that really makes you feel like a six year old getting yelled at by your mother, for the record. I can’t describe it any other way. I was ready to just melt away from personal embarrassment before she even finished signing “person.”

That’s not the point of this. 

I didn’t start a diary just to tell myself how right Miah is about all of this, but hey, here we are.

I need some days off so badly.

Miah wasn’t around today, it’s really just been me and the mer - I’m off for four days coming up here, after 20 days of work, and she’s going to come in and do 24-hour watch until I’m back. It’s not so bad - I don’t really know anyone here, and the bed’s comfortable enough. Dr. L’s paying rent on my apartment so I won’t lose it while I’m working, anyway.

I still feel like some low-level henchman, though. Like any moment some asshole in a tank top is going to show up with guns and I’ll just be a faceless evil stepping stone before the boss fight with Dr. L. 

I mean, we all know that Dr. L’s going to be the boss fight, right? Anders would just like lay down or throw Miah in front of himself or something.

No, that’s not fair, he really does love her.

Bahram this is all hypotheticals about a video game. Get back on track, man.

So Miah must have gone shopping or something. She came back with a bag full of these candles from this bookstore she really likes. I mean she came back with an insane amount of books, too, but she had this candle she pulled out and put down on my desk.

She set down the candle - it’s this really nice deep blue and has some kind of like ocean scene painted on the label, like, isn’t that thematic - and smiled at me. “This one reminded me of what we’re doing,” She told me, and her signs were… softer. Her expressions were softer alongside them.

Does that mean… anything? I don’t know. She just put it on my desk and then wandered off. I thanked her but I had to take her shoulder and get her to look at me, first. Maybe her face was a little red.

Maybe not. 

We keep the tank room pretty warm, I’m sort of cold-natured and the mer seems more active when we keep the lights really warm, so… 

I don’t get why she bought me a candle and why she looked away before I could thank her for it. I don’t get it, and I feel like I should, but I don’t. Is she not looking because it wasn’t a big deal, or because it was a big deal, or… what?

I really WOULD sink into the floor if Dr. L or Miah ever saw that I wrote this. Get it together, Bahram. You are not writing a diary about Miah fucking Kirsse. 

It’s been just me and the mer, all day. Dr. L was gone, too, meeting with whoever’s funding this whole thing. She’ll be gone until next week, so there’s no real work getting done, for now. Just blood draws.

She’s showing them its claws she took off. I don’t know why. Honestly, I have such a bad feeling about this, but I needed the cash and nowhere else was hiring for a job that would give me room and board and still time to work on my own research. Not that I’ve done a bit of THAT in a week.

I get too distracted by the mer.

He swims in circles. He stares at nothing, or pokes the plastic coral and ferns we got him, or hides in his cave. I can switch the screens over to watch the camera feed from inside the cave, but he doesn’t do much in there, either. I caught him picking at his scales, and I need to ask Dr. L about that. She took three scales off his tail, which for the record I had nothing to do with (whose record? I’m writing this to myself, and what the fuck does it matter about scales when I’m the one sticking the damn needle in his elbow twice a week), and I caught him sort of whistling sadly and picking at the empty spaces. 

They’ll grow back, Dr. L says. She’s not worried.

I am.

A little.

I’m starting to think Dr. L is lying about a lot of things, and I’m not sure what to do about that. If anything. This is a job, and I get paid better than I’ve ever been paid in my life. So… what do I do?

I could call the hotline and report him. It’s anonymous. 

She’d know I did it.

I don’t know why, but… I don’t want her to know it was me. Cowardice, I guess. Pure bloody cowardice.

But Miah hasn’t emailed the hotline, either. We can’t both be cowards, right?

Anyway.

Tonight was tank cleaning, which is a bloody fucking chore. Anders was around long enough to help me get the mer tranq’d and into the lift and then the rolling tank where he can just sit until I get my work done. Poor thing just lolls around when he’s tranq’d up. Barely blinks. 

Doesn’t stop its fucking crying, though.

We took a lot of blood from him today, too, so he was very weak. Barely moved, just curled himself up small so he was totally in the water and watched me work after Anders left. We’ve got a scrubber machine that does the hard work, I just have to hose some things down and then make sure its filter is still operating correctly. Watch the scrubber. Whole process takes about three hours from start to tank totally refilled, as long as I do it weekly. It’ll take much longer if I let it slide.

Double-checked the camera in the cave, and when I walked out of it I saw the mer’s head was up, watching everything I was doing. He dropped right back down under the water when he saw me looking at him. The muzzle looks so monstrous on him, but more than that, it makes him look like a monster.

Maybe Dr. L doesn’t muzzle him to keep us safe, but to keep me from seeing his expressions while I’m here with him all day.

No, that’s stupid. She doesn’t even think he’s sentient, right?

I finished up, and when I came to roll him back to the lift, I saw he’d popped his head up out of the rolling tank and was looking around the room itself. He hasn’t really looked around at all before this, and he was still tranq’d but maybe I fucked up the dosage? Because he was pretty alert, kind of whistling to himself and giving little chirps and clicks. He sounds like some weird mix of killer whale and fucking otters or something. When he saw me, he flinched back down under the water, but I had this idea.

Dr. L took his claws, and he’s still muzzled except when he’s on the table or when he eats, so like, it’s not like he can hurt me, right?

His eyes had gone to my desk, looking at… I guess all my books and papers and my laptop and everything. Maybe the candle. I waved my hand around until I saw that he was watching me again. With those big eyes it’s hard to tell exactly what he’s looking at, but when I clapped my hands he blinked at me, so I know he can hear it, can see me.

Then - and I swear I’m not lying - he moved himself up out of the water, and put his palms together. His earfins twitched out and back against his scalp, and his white hair dripped water all down his shoulders. 

He cocked his head at me. Then he put his hands together, harder this time. He clapped, and then… he clicked.

I KNEW it. I KNEW clicks were questions. Dr. L said their brains don’t work that way, but I bet they do. Who’s even considered how their brains work? Maybe they’re just like us. All the studying I’ve been doing shows that the scans we’ve done of dead ones are pretty similar in overall size and placement of their center of language. They’ve shown that mer populations have their own dialects if they don’t interact with each other, like the Atlantic transients sound totally different than the Pacific transients, which sound different than the residents that stick close to the coastlines up by Alaska...

Making my own head hurt. I don’t even care about fucking mammals, but I guess I do now. 

“That’s right,” I said when he clapped, not like he can understand but still. I said it, and I clapped again, and he clapped back. “Can you give me your head? I’ll take your muzzle off, yeah? If you don’t bite.”

Dumbest fucking idea ever, but hey. 

I think maybe he knows the word muzzle, because he whistled and shrunk down again, lowering his hands. His ear flaps flattened again. I saw the deep red marks around his neck, from how we have to use the catch-pole to get him out, and I just. I just felt like shit, you know?

I’m shit, that’s what I am, we’re torturing a child, more or less, who hasn’t done a thing to anyone but be by himself because he lost his bloody fucking family. I can’t keep telling myself I’m not the bad guy, you know? 

I’m going to jail if I report him, aren’t I? I helped bring him in, after all. There’s my whole career down the drain.

Is this how it felt when everyone was being shit to monkeys in the 70′s and calling it psychology? Did some of them just go along with it because they thought they had to?

This is not helpful, Bahram.

I sat down at my desk and tried to figure it out. His eyes were on me the whole time. I looked over at Miah’s candle, and looked at the label. Like I said, ocean scene. Fronds and ferns and…

I turned the label to face the mer, and tapped on the image with my finger. “Fish,” I said, feeling dumb as hell. I told myself, it’s a bloody animal, Dr. L would roll around laughing at you for this.

But he came back up out of the water. There was a long moment, and I heard him click, and then a soft, “Sssshhhhhh,” sound came from behind his muzzle. They have lips like ours, although their way of communicating is basically whalesong and relies heavily on underwater acoustics. He’s louder in the tank than out of it, although I guess fear might make him quiet, too.

The recordings I found on youtube they get in the ocean are deafening loud. Their voices travel so well underwater, it’s amazing. People sell fucking CDs with mersong over piano to fall asleep to. 

I poked at the ocean scene on the label again. “Fish,” I said firmly. “Do you want fish?”

He knows fish. 

I KNOW he knows fish because he sat up, held out his right arm, and tapped his elbow with a blunt-edged, broken-off claw before he looked back at me, trembling with fear. He clicked again, twice.

I can’t even tell you how shit I feel, realizing he was asking if I was going to take his blood first. That’s what he meant, it has to be. He poked at the exact spot where he’s bruised up from the needle. 

But it makes sense, right? 

He’s been here twenty days, more or less. Every couple of days, when he’s hungry enough, we bribe him with fish to get the pole on him, take blood or whatever else, and then he eats. 

No, WE don’t take his blood. I take his blood.

He thinks - and he’s fucking thinking, I know he is - that he only eats if we stick a needle in him.

I’m hurting a child.

I’m teaching a child to be hurt.

I’m not religious but this feels like the sort of thing you ask for forgiveness for, doesn’t it? I should call Maman and ask her who I could talk to. I’m going to call Maman or Baba tomorrow.

No I’m not.

What would I tell them I need to speak to someone about?

What if whoever I speak to calls and reports him, and Dr. L knows it was because of me?

I need to stop thinking about this. 

“No, NOT draw blood,” I said, and he whimpered again, held out his arm further, closer to me, tapped his elbow again. I knew he could still hurt me - their strength is prodigious, the first time we got him out of the tank he nearly pulled Dr. L down into the water with him - but I decided it was worth the risk. 

I kept thinking, he’s more scared of me than I am of him, but you know, of course he is. He’s the one with bruises.

I stretched my own arm out and showed it to him. He flinched back a little, and then leaned forward again, sitting in the little rolling tank that’s barely big enough to hold him. His blunt claws touched my arm, delicate as a feather, clicking as he poked at the sleeve of my sweater. 

“No draw blood,” I said. “Just fish. Eat.” I mimed chewing.

He looked at me and clicked twice, cocking his head, then looked at my candle from Miah, pointing at the ocean scene. “Ffff-sshhhh,” he said, muffled. 

“No, that’s a candle, it just has fish painted on it. Candle. Fire. Yes?”

Blank stare. 

Then, repeated, “Ffff-sssshhh.”

I sighed and pulled out my little lighter. I don’t smoke or anything, but I hate the way matches smell, so I have a lighter on me basically all the time. Plus, having lighters was a pretty good way to make friends back in undergrad when I gave a fuck about that. 

I flicked on the lighter, and the mer chirped, curiously. 

Has it never seen fire before?

Why would it, it lives in the ocean. Don’t be a dumbshit, Bahram.

“Fire,” I said, and held it out a little for a closer look. “Fire.” I tilted it and lit the candle, and the mer leaned forward, rapt, as the wick sparked up to flame and I blew the smaller flame on the lighter out. 

“FFfffff,” The mer said, barely audible. It clicked and held out its hand, and I wasn’t fast enough.

“No, wait stop-”

The mer’s fingertips touched the flame and it let out a deafening loud cry of pain and jerked its hand back down into the water, whimpering at the new kind of hurt, looking at me like it was MY fault, and maybe it was. Eyebrows furrowed, little crease in its forehead, big sad eyes. 

The big sad eyes are wrecking me.

“Well, don’t touch fire and you won’t burn,” I said, shaking my head. “No touch fire. Fire bad. Fire burn.”

He held out his hand to show me. “Ffff-rrrrr.” It was a plaintive little breath of air, not quite a real sound. 

The ends of two fingers were a little dark, that’s all. I could explain that by saying he’d hurt himself in the tank, maybe. I shook my head and pointed at the water, and it put its hand back in there, huffing a little breath of relief, I think. The water probably helped with the sting. 

“Right. Fire bad. No fire.”

“Ffff-rrr... buh-ddd.” 

“Right. Fire bad.” I stood up and walked over behind him, and he tried to turn and watch me but I shook my head and pointed back at the candle and he sort of huffed again and looked away. I felt him tense when my fingers touched the back of his head, but he sat still.

Probably because if he struggles when she goes to take the muzzle off or gets her fingers near his mouth, Dr. L has this electricity stick thing… 

I’m not supposed to mention that in the transcripts.

I’m not supposed to mention how he screams, and he doesn’t sound like a whale or an otter, then. He doesn’t sound like an animal.

He sounds like a child.

He IS a child

He’s just

I’m a fucking

No. I need to focus. This is stuff I can’t tell Dr. L, I need to write it down here where it’s safe.

The muzzle is easy to get off, you just need to be looking right at it, and I unbuckled and pulled it free, feeling a little resistance from how well it stuck to his face. Without it on, there are deep red lines along his cheeks and jaw, not open or bleeding, just irritated. 

He didn't grab at me, or bite. Just watched me with his big eyes as I laid it down on my desk. For a second we were both just quiet, looking at each other. 

Then he pointed at the candle again. “Ffff-sssshh.”

“No,” I said. “Candle. Fire.”

The mer’s eyebrows furrowed and he shook his head, echoing what I did earlier. His hair slapped around. His teeth look like shark’s teeth up close, only there’s a lot less of them. “Nnnn-nnnuh,” He tried, shaking his head again.” Nnn-uh. Ffff-sssshhh.” Then he pointed at his mouth, opening wide, showing me the tongue behind his teeth. “Fffff-sssshhh. Ffff-ssshhh.”

I laughed, covering my mouth - he seems to be scared when we show too much teeth, probably in the ocean it’s a threat and they don’t smile like we do. Which, why would they? 

But, see, I realized that he wasn’t pointing at the candle at all, but at the fish painted on it. Then he moved to look at the bucket of fish he gets as a reward for obedience, and pointed at that, then looked back at me to see if I was paying attention.

Of course I was. I was barely fucking breathing. This is signs of abstract thought process, recognizing that the image of a thing isn’t the thing itself. That he can point at it to represent what he wants. “You want fish? Is that it? You’re hungry? Want to eat some fish?”

The mer blinked and made a sound like a chirp, clapped his hands together. “Rrrrr. Fff-sssshhh.” He pointed at his mouth again. “Ffff-ssshhh. Buh-rrrrmm. Ffffsshh.”

“What did you say?” I whispered. My heart went cold. I can’t describe it any other way.

“Buh-rrrrmmmm. Ffff-sssshh, Buh-rrrmm.”

The bloody thing knows my fucking name. 

He knows we have names and he knows mine and that means-... that means he has one, doesn’t it? If he has a name, if he has

I’m his fucking nightmare aren’t I 

I’m the worst fucking thing that could happen to him, me and Miah and Dr. L and Anders and this is a job but it’s the worst thing that’s happened to him and it’s only

It’s going to get worse for him.

He’s going to die here and he’ll know all our names when he does.

Anyway, so... you know... I brought him a bucket of fish.

What else was I supposed to do? 

He knows my name!

He let me put the muzzle on him again without fighting after he finished, and I got him back in the tank once the water was refreshed, and he’s sleeping off his meal now. I can see him on the feed, curled up inside the cave.

But I’m wide awake, so I thought I’d write this, because…

Because what the hell do I do now?

I can’t tell Miah.

Can I?

 ---

@astrobly @burtlederp @finder-of-rings @slaintetowhump @moose-teeth @misspelledwitch @whumpfigure @whumptywhumpdump @boxboysandotherwhump @whumpywhumper

[blackteaandbones]

Reposting this little Avatrice piece because the original tags are buggy for some reason.

Thank you to @arashimaru and anon for the prompts :)

Prompt 1:

Beatrice is injured during a mission but hides how bad her wound actually is to make sure she doesn't distract her team and the mission is completed at all cost. Ava sensed something is wrong but as usual can't argue with Bea's logic. Cue some kind of dramatic reveal (blood stain, Bea collapsed, you name it) which then forces Ava and Bea to talk and Ava gets to care for Bea for once. 

Prompt 2:

I was wondering if you’d write something where Bea is hurt/sick but hides it so they can complete a mission. It makes it way worse and eventually the group finds out, preferably by dramatic reveal (like collapsing or something). Ava panics and maybe even blames herself and they have to talk. The group reminds bea that she has worth outside of like her training and fighting abilities and that they care about her.

Part 1 of “Damned if you Do” under the cut

“You’re a damn fool.”

“I know…”

“No. You don’t know. If you knew-” Mary snaps, pulling the thread tight and tying off another stitch, “you wouldn’t have done what you did, and Ava here wouldn’t be trying to keep your blood inside your fool body where it belongs instead of letting it spill out all over the floor while I try to put you back together. If you knew,” she adds, jabbing the needle in again and ignoring Beatrice’s wince, “you would have stayed at your post instead of swooping in like prince-fucking-charming and getting yourself impaled!”  

“Language,” Beatrice chides weakly.  

“Language?” Mary scoffs rolling her eyes over Beatrice’s shoulder at Ava. “Language, she says to me, after scaring the shit out of everybody for no goddamned reason.”  

Beatrice sighs. “Ava-”

“Ava was fine!” Mary cuts her off. “Weren’t you Ava?”  

“Oh, no. I’m staying out of this.” Ava would have raised her hands in surrender, but she has one arm  wrapped around Beatrice; holding her up while Mary works to close the gaping hole in her side, and the other hand pressing a blood-soaked wad of fabric that had once been one of her sleeves over the exit wound in her back. They’d lost precious minutes once they’d made it home to the safe house and gotten Beatrice into her bed, peeling off her armour and cutting her out of her habit, leaving her in only the bra and loose pants she wore under her skirt (Ava is holding her respectfully okay?) and she hadn’t been able to bear to let go of her any longer than necessary throughout.  

Luckily, Mary had been too pissed to comment on her handsiness, though Ava knew she’d noticed.  

“Coward,” (fair, but hey!) Mary mutters, snipping the last thread. “Okay, let’s do the other side, then we’ll wrap her up and leave her to think about what she did.”  

Instead of moving Beatrice, Ava switches places with Mary so that Beatrice can lean forward into her shoulder while Mary stitches up her back.  It’s not perfect, but they don’t want to lay her down until they’re done, or they’ll just have to sit her up again to bandage everything, and according to Mary, the less she’s moved the better.  

Ava isn’t complaining, and Beatrice doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to let go of her either, clutching the front of Ava’s shirt in white knuckled fists while Mary peels the bloody fabric loose and douses the wound with antiseptic. Beatrice hisses through her teeth, a whimper catching in the back of her throat.  

“Talk to me,” she breathes.  

“Uh…” Ava instantly forgets all words ever. “About what?”

“Anything.”  

“Okay, um… “ words, words, words… “How does Moses make his coffee?”

“How?”

“Hebrews it.”  

Beatrice snorts into Ava’s chest.

“You’re right,” Ava agrees. “That one was terrible. How about… What’s a missionary’s favorite kind of car?”  

“She gets a sword through the gut, and I’m the one being tortured,” Mary mutters under her breath, (because she’s a jerk who hates fun.)

“A convertible.”

That one actually gets a chuckle out of Beatrice, her shoulders shaking in the circle of Ava’s arms.  

“Hold still, or you’re going to have more than one hole in your gut!” Mary grumbles, but Ava can see the hint of a smirk at the corner of her mouth. (busted!) She’s almost done, the flow of blood slowing to a trickle as she pulls the ragged edges of the wound together.

One more. “How long did Cain hate his brother?” She pauses for dramatic effect. “As long as he was Abel.”

“I take it back,” Beatrice groans. “No more talking.”  

Ava gasps in mock affront. “I’m hilarious! You don’t know what you’re missing.”

“We’ll take our chances,” Mary answers for both of them. “There.” She sits back, wiping the sweat off her forehead with a bloody hand. “You’re all done. I’ll send Camilla in with some of the good drugs while Ava gets you cleaned up, then we can all get together and talk about how much trouble you’re in.”

“When did we stop talking about it?” Beatrice sighs. “I can do that,” she adds when Ava reaches for the bowl of warm water and rags Camilla had left with them before fleeing Mary’s wrath. “I’m not a complete invalid.”  

“You were literally just impaled,” Ava says, holding the bowl out of her reach. “I think you can let someone else take care of you for five minutes.”  

Beatrice frowns, but she doesn’t protest when Ava sets the bowl down beside them on the bed and wrings out one of the rags. Ava holds out a hand and Beatrice reluctantly offers one of her own. Ava takes it reminding herself that this is medicinal touching, and there are no hormones allowed in medicine (really, this whole teenage libido thing is getting ridiculous. Time and place much?) She does one hand, and then the other, wiping the dried blood from Beatrice’s palms and between her fingers; trying to forget with every swipe of the rag over soft skin how much worse this could have been.

No one had realized she was even wounded until the fight was over. It had been chaos; the plan fucked sideways from their first move, but Ava had been handling it. Mary and Lilith had her back, Beatrice and Camilla were running the secondary ops, and the Halo was even behaving itself; they were going to be fine. And then suddenly Beatrice was there between Ava and a sword (a sword she totally would have countered by the way,) and it all went tits up. Camilla was left hanging, the plan in tatters, they fought their way free only for Beatrice to promptly pass out, hands clamped to her side.

Ava remembers a lot of shrieking and panicking after that (most – okay all of it hers.)  

“I’m sorry,” Beatrice says, eyes downcast, shoulders bowed. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”

I wasn’t worried,” Ava lies, wiping the last of the blood from her wrists and getting a fresh rag before moving on to her waist.  

Beatrice glances up through her lashes (unfair,) a subtle tilt to the corner of her mouth that says she knows exactly how full of shit Ava is. “My mistake.”  

(To be continued)

[dreams-of-the-arcana]

Took a bit but here it is! @positive-meme-experience

Pairing: Zotikos “Tikos” Orion Katsaros-Yakinthos X Jasmine Faucher ( @xvi-the-tower’s OC)

⚠️ Warnings: Violence, Description of injuries, Blood, mild Possessive Behavior, Fire, Stitches (This is kind of dark so please read with that in mind) ⚠️

Mine Now

The crew of the Charybdis’ Decent were not strangers to conflict. If anything it seemed as though they drew it straight to themselves. Or maybe it was as the First Mate often suggested and the hideous figurehead brought it instead of protecting them. Tikos refused to remove it though, insisting his Siren was much better than some generic deity who would expect things.

So as the ship gripped tightly to another and the crew swarmed on board with weapons at the ready, it could even be considered a normal day. Chaos erupted on the deck of their opponent. Flashes of steel and loud yells of challenge flew from everywhere. In the midst of it was their Captain. Tikos brandished a sabre along with a hungry grin, his eye taking in everything. Alongside him was his faithful companion, Jasmine Faucher. The pair traded jokes as they sparred and boasted as to who would take down more enemies. Nothing got an opponent quite as angry as being disrespected during a battle and it happened to be a specialty of theirs.

“Oh look here, Darlin’. I believe this big sword is compensating for something,” Tikos laughed loudly and pulled the sword straight out of their hand.

“Must be, Cap! Compensating for lack of skill!” She returned and launched her chain and sickle at anyone who tried to approach Tikos’ back.

“Think you’re scary? Think again.”

“What should we have for dinner? I’m getting bored here!”

“Stay down and watch me count out your coin or get up and see what happens. Your choice.”

Back and forth they went happily, seemingly having the time of their life.

Then suddenly Jas spotted a large figure with a hidden dagger out of the corner of her eye.

“Watch out!”

She yelled and launched herself at Tikos who went stumbling away just in time. Jas unfortunately just put herself exactly in line with the dagger. It bit into her shoulder and dragged for a fraction of a second before being pulled back out. When Tikos regained his bearings he quickly jumped at the attacker with his bare hands. They went tumbling to the floor where Tikos pulled them into a tight headlock. Now he was quiet as he strained his muscles to block their airway until they lost consciousness. He dropped them unceremoniously and stood up to look towards Jas. She waved the hand on her uninjured shoulder and silently reassured him. Though she expected he’d want to make sure personally.

But Tikos had missed seeing the knife strike her entirely. So he gave a relieved sigh and put his boot on the knocked out persons back.

“How nice of you to join us, Captain Houghton. Haven’t seen you since... well since you slithered away from our deal like a coward!”

Jas usually loved watching this part. Something about seeing her lover standing proud and victorious sent excitement straight through her. But as she felt her wound start to pulse with her adrenaline waning, she wanted to get to the Doctor. So, stealthily she snuck away back to the Charybdis’ Decent to find them.

Tikos didn’t notice at first, he’d gotten used to Jas being around and watching. Usually it led to the two of them being unable to keep their hands to themselves as soon as things were settled. But as he tossed Houghton into the cell and looked around he couldn’t find her anywhere.

“Heh,” Houghton chuckled as he pulled himself up to sit against the bars.

“Got somethin’ to say?”

“It took me a bit but I figured it out.”

Tikos wouldn’t humor him by prompting any more and instead waited.

“That girl,” Houghton finally said. “Honestly Zo, I didn’t expect to find you shacking up with August’s sloppy seconds.”

But Houghton had made a grave mistake, he hadn’t waited for Tikos to close the locked door before saying anything. Tikos soon showed him the error in this.

A sickening crunch filled the brig and caused Houghton’s imprisoned crew to recoil in fear. Then a scream followed, one of intense pain. Houghton curled into himself defensively while Tikos hovered overhead with his fist still raised and bloody.

“Y-you broke my... my fucking nose!”

“Shut up,” Tikos’ voice was calm and cold. “Say another word or even think about her and I’ll put you on the bottom of this ship myself. That’s my woman. Get it? Mine. Now pick yourself up, you look like a disgrace.”

He stood still as a statue until Houghton stood back up. As soon as he was back on his feet Tikos slammed his knee into his stomach which sent him right back down with another groan of pain.

“This time, stay down.”

With that Tikos swept out of the brig. Frustration still biting at his heels. It’d been some time since he’d heard that name mentioned and the anger never subsided. For the time being, he wanted to find Jas and hopefully work out the pent up tension.

The longer he searched though the more it built. Where could she even be? It wasn’t like her at all. By this time after a fight they’d be locked together where ever they decided was fit and enjoying the afterglow. Something wasn’t right and it just doubled his frustration. She was definitely going to get all of it when he got his hands on her.

Soon he was completely pissed and throwing open doors with much more force than necessary. The usual rush of endorphins after a battle had soured. Until finally he found the right door.

As soon as the Doctor’s door flew open, Jas jumped in her seat and hissed in pain. They’d been mid-stitch and the Doc gave her a stern warning not to move again: ‘No matter who comes in throwing a tantrum.’

Tikos strode inside angrily until he spotted Jas laid out on the little cot. His eye snapped to the needle repairing her shoulder. The room fell silent, dangerously silent. Jasmine squirmed under her Captain’s hard gaze (and maybe because a heat had begun to pool in her belly) while he stood motionless and watched. She knew that look, oh Arcana did she know that look well. The Doctor continued his work, blatantly ignoring the anger from one occupant and the building sexual tension of another.

‘Kids,’ he thought to himself.

“... who did this.”

It wasn’t a question, Jasmine knew that, it was an order. One that sent a shudder down her spine.

“It’s really not that ba-“

“Don’t make me repeat myself.”

Jasmine shut her mouth immediately. The look on his face was cold and calculating. He was replaying the battle trying to find any instance where she was out of his sight. It dawned upon him and he ground his teeth together.

“Houghton.”

“Yes, but I put myself between you two willingly-“

“Stop talking. I’m going to fucking make him suffer...”

With that command he turned and left the bay. Jas turned an apologetic but questioning look to the Doctor who only rolled his eyes.

“You can chase after him when I’m done and not a moment sooner.”

She huffed and sank back down on the bed with a pout. It was only a little cut. But she knew whatever Tikos was planning would be much worse than anyone could anticipate. Oh how she wanted to be there to watch it unfold.

Only a few long hours later, Tikos stepped back into the med bay. The same hard look on his face as he gave her the briefest gesture to follow him. Jasmine hurried to obey and rushed to his side. He led the way back out and onto Charybdis’ Decent’s deck. The entire crew of the captured ship stood in a line along the port side of the ship all shackled together and waiting. In front of them was Houghton, dried blood down the front of his face and shirt. The Charybdis’ Decent crew seemed to vibrate with energy. They knew what was coming and they couldn’t wait to watch it.

Tikos took his place in front of Houghton.

“You’ve been defeated, Jakob Houghton. As such I now revoke your title as Captain. I claim your ship, The Hades Damned as mine.”

The crew snickered, it was the highest dishonor to a Captain to not only lose their ship but be publicly humiliated like this. They couldn’t wait to get to shore and spread the tale.

Jasmine’s eyes were fixed on Tikos though, she knew there was more to this.

“Now Houghton,” he stepped forward and lifted the other man up by his lapels. “Watch.”

Tikos dropped him facing the port side where The Hades Damned sat. Confusion clear on the parts of his face not too swollen to emote.

“Zo, what are y-,” Houghton started.

“RELEASE!” Tikos cried out.

The other ship began to float away slowly while everyone aboard watched. Confusion ran rampant, why would Tikos set loose a ship? A ship he could sell or claim for his own fleet. It didn’t make sense.

... But it soon did.

Tikos raised a hand towards the ship as it moved away faster. Almost storm force winds pushing it away. Suddenly a loud explosion shook through the air and set The Hades Damned ablaze.

Jasmine gasped aloud, that had been a fine ship and now it would burn into nothing in minutes. All because the Captain had hurt her. The burning of The Hades Damned was nothing compared to the desire coursing through her at that realization. Tikos had set all this up to make the person who hurt her suffer. She looked over at the slack jawed pirate watching his ship burn. A grin tugged at her lips. But Tikos wasn’t done yet.

“Now, two miles in the opposite direction of your useless hull is an island. I suggest you swim fast, Houghton.”

Before anyone could process, Tikos reared back and kicked him firmly off the ship into the water. Many of the crew ran to the edge to watch as Houghton desperately swam for his life. Laughs and jeers rained down on him.

Tikos didn’t stop to watch and instead turned to the crew in shackles with a cold eye.

“Any of you having any strong feelings about what just happened?”

They smartly said nothing.

“Good, take them back to the brig.”

Finally, he turned to look at Jasmine. The intensity in his eye stunned her for a moment and she couldn’t move a single inch.

“You and I have unfinished business.”

“But... but what if Houghton gets away? What if he comes back with a grudge? He definitely hates you now so-“

“That won’t happen.”

“How can you be so sure? What if-“

His hand reached out and covered her mouth. Slowly he leaned in close until she could feel his breath on her ear where he whispered.

“There’s no island.”

A hard shudder ran through her again and she knew she was in for a sleepless night. She couldn’t wait to start.

[rphelperblog]

Divergent Rp meme

“We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.” 

“Becoming fearless isn't the point. That's impossible. It's learning how to control your fear, and how to be free from it.” 

“I have a theory that selflessness and bravery aren't all that different.”

“Fear doesn't shut you down; it wakes you up” 

“Sometimes crying or laughing are the only options left, and laughing feels better right now.”

“A brave man acknowledges the strength of others.” 

“I am selfish. I am brave.”

“Politeness is deception in pretty packaging.” 

“Then I realize what it is. It's him. Something about him makes me feel like I am about to fall. Or turn to liquid. Or burst into flames.”

“It must require bravery to be honest all the time.” 

“Who cares about pretty? I'm going for noticeable.” 

“...there is power in self-sacrifice.”

“People tend to overestimate my character,”

“Human reason can excuse any evil; that is why it's so important that we don't rely on it.” 

“lies require commitment.” “Two things you should know about me; The first is that I am deeply suspicious of people in general. It is my nature to expect the worst of them. And the second is that I am unexpectedly good with computers.” 

“He told me once to be brave, and though I have stood still while knives spun toward my face and jumped off a roof, I never thought I would need bravery in the small moments of my life. I do.” 

“Maybe there's more we all could have done, but we just have to let the guilt remind us to do better next time.” 

“A chasm reminds us that there is a fine line between bravery and idiocy.” 

“We kiss again and this time, it feels familiar. I know exactly how we fit together, his arm around my waist, my hands on his chest, the pressure of his lips on mine. We have each other memorized.” 

"But what would we say? 'I didn't know you that well, but I'm sorry you got stabbed in the eye'?” 

“You know I'm getting a little tired of waiting for you to catch on.”

“It isn’t right to wish pain on other people just because they hurt me first.” 

“Part of me wonders if this is a suicide mission disguised as a game.” 

“He acts so tough that he’s probably afraid of marshmallows

and really bright sunrises or something.” 

“I have your back. I didn't mean only when it's easy. All the time.” 

“And I'm the kind of person who does not let inconsequential things like boys and near death experiences stop her.” 

“But I will find new habits, new thoughts, new rules. I will become something else.”

“We believe in bravery. We believe in taking action. We believe in freedom from fear and in acquiring the skills to force the bad out of our world so that the good can prosper and thrive. If you also believe in those things, we welcome you.” 

“I like to think I'm helping them by hating them. I'm reminding them that they aren't God's gift to humankind.” 

“human reasons can excuse any evil.”

“If you are really one of us, it won't matter to you that you might fail. And if it does, you are a coward.” 

“You are holding a loaded gun, you idiot. Act like it.” 

“Hearing him talk about his mother, about his intact family, makes my chest hurt for a second, like someone pierced it with a needle.” 

“I hear my heartbeat. I have been looking at him too long, but then, he has been looking back, and I feel like we are both trying to say something the other can't hear, though I could be imagining it. Too long - and now even longer, my heart even louder, his tranquil eyes swallowing me whole.” 

“I wish I could say I felt guilty for what I did. 

I don't.” 

“It isn't just brave that she died for me; it is brave that she did it without announcing it, without hesitation, and without appearing to consider another option.” 

“It was him or me. I chose me. But I feel dead too.” 

“Half of bravery is perspective.” 

“There is power in controlling something that can do so much damage - in controlling something, period.” 

“I want to be brave, and selfless, and smart, and kind, and honest.” 

“It's easy to be brave when they're not my fears.”

But maybe what I saw as fearless was actually fear under control.” 

“Sarcasm is always at someone's expense.” 

“My father says that those who want power and get it live in terror of losing it. That's why we have to give power to those who do not want it.”

“One choice can transform you.”

“What do I believe? I do not know; I do not know; I do not know.” 

“Humans can't tolerate emptiness for long.” 

“Valuing knowledge above all else results in a lust for power, and that leads men into dark and empty places.” 

“Sometimes it isn't fighting that's brave, its facing the death you know is coming.” 

“That is death - shifting from "is" to "was.” 

What good is a prepared body if you have a scattered mind?” 

“Those who seek peace above all else, they say, will always deceive to keep the water calm.” 

“My problem might be that even if I did go home, I wouldn’t belong there, among people who give without thinking and care without trying.” 

“I ignore my fear. When I make decisions, I pretend it doesn't exist.” 

"I like how you look. You're deadly smart. You're brave.” 

“To me there's a difference between not being afraid and acting in spite of fear, as he does.”

“I would rather be dead than empty” 

“I want to break something, or hit something, but I am afraid to move, so I start crying instead.” 

“The cruelty of fate is that I must travel with the people I hate when the people I love are dead behind me.” 

“the first time is always the hardest.”

“I traded cowardice for cruelty; I traded weakness for ferocity.” 

“If you don't like something, change it. You are not a tree.” 

“I note how calm she looks and how focused she is. She is well-practiced in the art of losing herself. I can't say the same of myself.” 

"Stay away from him or I'll decide I no longer care.” 

“why is your heart racing?”

“That’s my girl. Tough as cotton balls.”

“What irritates me most about him is his natural goodness, his inborn selflessness.”

“Well, I already know what happened to my face”

“Sometimes I just... want to see it again. Want to see you awake.”

“I am fed up. I am fed up with tears and weakness.” 

“I get up, because I’m supposed to, but if it were up to me, I’d stay in my seat for the rest of time.” 

“Maybe I was afraid to trust him with something so personal as my devotion.” 

“One choice can transform you—or it can destroy you. But every choice has consequences” 

“Any idiot can stand in front of a target. It doesn't prove anything except that you're bullying him. Which, as I recall, is a sign of cowardice.” 

“All three combined is...a different kind of stupid formerly unheard of by humankind.” 

“I feel myself acting like a lunatic, but I can't stop. It would be like refusing to breathe.” 

“There's a difference between not being afraid and acting in spite of fear.” 

“Don't try to define me” 

“We should think of our family. But. We must also think of ourselves.” 

“I will be my undoing

If I become my obsession.” 

“What makes you different, makes you dangerous.” 

“though he does not touch me, he steadies me.” 

[fire-the-headcanons]

Follow the Beacon Qrow—A Place in This World

[Link to Masterpost] [Two chapters this week! Make sure you read the other one first!]

Finally, it was over.

All the pain faded after Raven stabbed him. And now he… he wasn’t sure, exactly. It just felt like floating. Far away, the doctor and Ozpin were doing something to his body, but he couldn’t tell what. Not like it mattered. He was dead.

Should he try to find Bones? …No. Bones wouldn’t want an apology. Probably better to avoid him, if possible.

The doctor left with a needle in hand. As he watched, Ozpin moved from the chair to sit on the bed next to his body. Carefully, gently, he pulled it into a sitting position and leaned its head on his shoulder. Rubbed its back and murmured quietly, a constant stream of words Qrow couldn’t quite hear. He kind of wished someone had held him like that while he was still alive, but this was nice too. They wouldn’t be fussing over his body if they weren’t going to bury it, right?

…Maybe he had a mom here that would want him. Could he find her if he did, without knowing a name or face? And he'd betrayed the tribe. …No, she’d hate him too, if she even ever wanted him at all.

The only other dead people he knew were the ones he’d killed. He was definitely too much of a coward to look for any of them.

Ozpin rocked, and the universe almost seemed to sway with him. The murmured words grew louder, almost understandable.

…He did know of someone else. If he found Summer’s dad, Qrow could at least tell him how great she was.

"Qrow"

He paused to listen. Every few seconds, his name managed to stand out from Ozpin’s mumbling. More words started to resolve themselves, heavy and cold. "Safe… Qrow… back… safe now…" Weighing him down. He was so tired…

"…all right, Qrow… safe now… move… all right, Qrow. You’re safe now. Nobody’s going to hurt you. You’ll be able to move soon, just rest. You’re safe, Qrow, it’s all right. Everything’s going to be all right."

He could feel Ozpin’s hands on his back, hear the words clearly. His body breathed and he felt part of it again.

"You’re safe, and you’ll be able to move soon. It’s all right."

Ozpin was right, he couldn’t move. What was happening? What was Ozpin doing to him? He was supposed to be dead—

"You’re safe, you’re safe…"

After an eternity, Qrow’s fingers twitched.

"There you are, there you are… Just a few more minutes, everything will be fine."

He could blink, and then he could breathe, and finally he could turn his head, shakily move his limbs. Where was the wound? He couldn't see any blood, feel bandages, but from the pain Raven’s knife must have cut even deeper than Sanguin’s. At least she had gotten away—her body wasn't on any of the other beds.

"It’s all right, it’s all right," Ozpin soothed, taking Qrow’s good hand. "You’re safe. Can you speak?"

All he managed was a small noise in the back of his throat. He was so tired…

"Can you tell me how you’re feeling?"

It took every ounce of energy he had to answer, "Cold."

"Let’s get you under the blankets, then." He leaned forward, gently lowering him away—

A whimper escaped his throat before he could stop it. Ozpin paused, and pulled him back into his arms. Awkwardly, still holding Qrow secure, he wrenched the covers free and pulled the blanket over his back. "Is that better?"

He managed a nod, relieved the professor wasn’t angered by his weakness.

"I’m very glad." Ozpin rubbed his back again, through the blanket. "Qrow, can you tell me why you hurt yourself?"

He hadn’t really… meant to die. At first. He wanted the brand gone, wanted any small part of his guilt gone—but then it was so easy to just… not call for help. Curl up in the tub where he wouldn't leave a mess. Go back to sleep, and… "I don’t want to hurt anyone else."

"Isn’t that why you came to Beacon? You don’t have to anymore."

"It’s—it’s—" It didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered anymore. He was weak. He was a murderer. He didn’t want to be a bandit and he didn’t deserve to be a Huntsman. "Y-you don’t understand. My, my Semblance, I—I can’t stop it."

Ozpin’s hand stilled on his back. "Your Semblance?"

The effort of keeping the tears back made him shake. "I—I make bad things happen. I-I attacked Azraq, I hurt Tai’s ankle. I broke Raven’s arm. I ki—I k-kill— k-killed o-our dad—" His throat closed over, he couldn’t speak or even breathe. Ozpin’s arms tightened, and he managed a few strangled gasps. "I can’t—stop—I, I can’t…"

He could leave the tribe, stop raiding and stealing—but no matter what he did, he would never be able to stop hurting people.

"...I can’t be a good person."

"Qrow—"

"Please." His eyes squeezed shut. "This is b-better for everyone. P-please, just… just leave the room a-and, and let me go."

Ozpin started to rub his back again. "No. No, we don't do that here."

"Please—"

"We are going to help you."

"I'm not—I can't—"

"Semblances respond to our emotions, Qrow, and I think you've been very hurt for a very long time. There have been others before you who did immense good for all of Remnant, despite… similar setbacks. It's unlikely you'll ever master it completely but as you start to heal it will improve. "

He whined, tears leaking out despite himself. Ozpin believed him.

"It's all right," he soothed, the motion of his palm on Qrow's back uninterrupted. "Just let it out, you'll feel better."

Qrow turned his face into the professor's shoulder and sobbed, shuddering with each gasp for air. Ozpin didn't scream or hit him, even when seconds turned into minutes or he wailed out loud.

"I need you, Qrow," the professor murmured as he tried to catch his breath. "Your teammates' parents and I are part of an organization dedicated to protecting Remnant. If doing good is your goal, you have unique gifts that could help our fight. I believe your Semblance is one of them. …The world needs you, Qrow, please don't leave it yet."

Ozpin wanted him.

Slowly, he dared to wrap his arms around the professor's back. After endless minutes his breathing finally settled and the tears stopped. Ozpin continued to hold him, regardless.

"What...what do you need me to do?" Qrow rasped.

Ozpin wiped the last of the water from his face with a half-curled hand. "For now, stay in school. Learn and heal. I've set an appointment with Beacon's health services for you tomorrow afternoon. We're going to help you."

He nodded, closing his eyes.

"Do you promise not to hurt yourself?"

He nodded again.

"...I need to hear you say it."

"I promise."

Next Chapter: Raven—Killed us Both

[Ozpin—no—stop—

Anyway. This is what I think happened that led to Volume 6 I don't think Ozpin was trying to manipulate him, he just didn't realize this kid would sell his soul for a hug and a kind word.

Ozpin is immortal, ancient. Impossibly wise and kind. Qrow didn't see Ozpin as a leader, general, or strategist—Ozpin was his god.

You can see it in the Battle of Haven, the way he protected Oscar. They way he spoke to them when the battle was over. He had kept faith, and his god delivered them. And, at the time, I thought "…uh-oh."

Then the kids asked what the Relic of Knowledge could do, and Qrow looked at Ozpin as expectantly as any of them, and I got even more nervous.

And then Jinn showed up and all hell broke loose

Up until The Incident Qrow was always shown as trying to Do Good and Be Good—punching Oscar was wrong (obviously) but I always thought the scene worked well because it illustrated how badly Qrow was shaken by Ozpin not trusting him the way he thought.

It also sets upreally really good parallels between Salem&Ozpin and Tyrian&Qrow. Currently Salem and Ozpin have both set themselves up as gods—and they are both terrible gods—but Ozpin is a good man, so when he stops playing god things will improve. Then you look at the two followers, Tyrian is not following Salem blindly the way Qrow's been worshipping Oz, and every time they fight Tyrian wins. —they're all really good foils ok? I love these four

Basically, the whole fic was inspired by Vol6, don't @ me. Anyway. Ozpin and Qrow are fantastic characters and I hope they find happiness at the end of all this]

[janekfan]

Hello friend!! I thought of a prompt, and if you like it, it's yours!! What if Tim was kidnapped by the circus with Jon?? They're having a bad time together; Tim is hostile. Eventually, Jon starts to get quieter, and Tim thinks he's in a mood. Jon complains of a headache, and Tim thinks he's being a baby. Until he finds out he's burning up and was just too afraid to say anything because he didn't think he could take Tim telling him he didn't care 😭 (but, begrudgingly, he DOES) 💖

oooooooh this prompt! Had me feeling things! Thank you @taylortut!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/26400745

It was Tim who woke up first, unsure of where he was, still with the residual anger he’d had on his way to confront Jon about all of this nonsense still burning incandescent. Hindsight being 20/20, he probably should have taken the anonymous tip on Jon’s location with a grain of salt and a fistful of caution but he was just so angry it was filling him up like a poison, overflowing with nowhere to go, and it was so much easier to focus on his boss because it was his fault they were in this mess.

It was his fault Sasha was gone.

It was his fault they were all trapped.

“T’Tim...” Barely an exhale and if the room they were contained in hadn’t been dead quiet, he’d ignore Jon. Still might. Let him sit in the guilt and shame of having inflicted whatever this was on yet another assistant.

If he even cared.

“Where...are we?” There was some light to see by, but not nearly enough to determine the answer to that even if he’d wanted to speak to him in the first place. Based on his own headache, Tim assumed that Jon had been knocked unconscious as well and corroborated it with the hiss of pain drawn sharply between his teeth.

“Shouldn’t I be the one asking that?” Snapping callously and surprising even himself at the harsh bite in his voice, Jon flinched hard, turning with it to examine the space.

“We’re tied up.” He remarked, nonplussed, and Tim heard him pulling at his bonds. It wasn’t rope, but something softer and before he could think on it further a shaft of light fell upon Jon as a being, not quite a person, stepped through a door. “Nikola.”

“Well acquainted are you?” Tim scoffed.

“Not by choice.” And he didn’t look anywhere except straight at the thing he’d named, vitriol in his eyes, in the firm set of his jaw.

“Oh, Archivist. Don’t be like that.” Her smile was inhuman, too many teeth, not quite right. “And please do stop frowning like that.” Jon turned away from the fingers claiming his chin and Tim had once been so close to him that he knew he didn’t like to be touched unless he trusted you. Like Tim had trusted him. “I want you in pristine condition for the show.” She snapped once and several mannequins surrounded and released Jon from his bonds. They tried to drag him through the door and Jon fought like a beast possessed, wild and feral and loud and no match for their sturdy yet gentle grip as they carried him off against his will. It left Tim alone in sudden silence, a little stunned and more than a little worried and he’d take that to his grave, thank you very much.

With nothing else to focus his attention on, Tim could only think of how awful Jon looked illuminated in that cold beam with that monster leering down at him. Could only think about how hard he fought before he was hauled away in cold, plastic hands and wondered if that was the last of him.

But he was returned, quiet and haunted, still and silent when they tied him back down and resisting the water they held to his lips until they forced it on him by holding his nose, sputtering and hacking as they poured it down his throat. Calm, Tim took his ration, puzzling over his strange behavior and trying to get a closer look, but Jon just hid behind his overgrown hair, using it like a curtain to shield his face and visibly shivering.

“Given up already?” He sneered, trying to get a rise out of him.

He failed.

Time waxed and waned, strained and stretched, dilating like a pupil in the dark whenever Tim tried to keep track of it. Eventually, he gave up. It didn’t seem like there was any rhyme or reason regarding when they took Jon, but he assumed it was at least once a day. Each time he raged against them with everything he had and each time they overpowered him like he was a child and hurried him off to god knows where. Each time he was tied back down he had an odd blank look in his eye that gradually cleared until it didn’t, trembling finely and Tim used it as a way to needle him, goad him, tried to make him do something, anything. Without a response he didn’t know if he was getting through to him, but it made him feel better to take out his frustration on Jon.

Days passed. Inexorably slow with nothing to do save yell at his sole companion. Jon still tried to make his taking as difficult as he could, but he was slowing down, losing strength on a diet of bread and sips of water. Now when he returned he shook with the effort of weeping without sound, turned away as far as he could and spilling sorrow down the front of his shirt.

“Oh, little Archivist.” Nikola purred one day, lifting his face with a delicately placed fingertip. “Do you know why he hates you?” A new game they were forced to play. Because they were held captive by the Circus. And the Circus had taken Danny. And Tim screamed himself hoarse demanding answers from Jon when he'd been told.

“You’re lucky I’m tied down, Jon! I would take my answers by force if these fuckers would let me!” Jon never said anything other than apologies and it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t fair and when Jon cried it made him that much more furious because what right did he have to be upset when he was the one doing all this to them!

“We can’t have that, Tim.” She would smirk, placing her hands over his shoulders in a mock massage, tone soothing and so understanding. “We need him to be perfect.”

“Perfect.” Tim spat. Perfect. And Jon shook harder at Nikola’s cryptic words until she turned her machinations toward Tim because, after all? If he’d kept a closer eye on his precious family, would he have lost him at all?

“It’s really your fault if you think about it.” Tim tried his damndest to get closer, grappling so hard with his bonds he fell over and still tried to take a chunk out of her with his teeth. She merely laughed, ridiculing them both.

“Leave off!” Jon shouted, Tim’s chest was heaving against the floor as he twisted and bent himself into all manner of shapes in a fruitless attempt to attack her again, blind with rage and hate.

“Only because you asked so nicely.” Nikola caressed his skin and Jon bit his lip until blood ran in rivelets but she left.

“I’m so sor--”

“Save it. Don’t think this changes anything.” Uncomfortable and sore and still seething, Tim laid there until they came for Jon.

Whatever they were doing was taking a visible toll and Jon’s resistance began tapering off and he became too tired to put up a fight. He’d developed a cough that kept them both awake. It began small, chronic and dry, but no less obnoxious and only Jon could find more ways to make this captivity more difficult.

“Stop it.” Clipped and bitter.

“Sorry, sorry. Smoking, you know.” Tim didn’t answer and Jon’s attempts to stifle it were sorely lacking, bursting from his chest like a gunshot.

“You know what they want, don’t you.” Surprised, he looked up, nodding slowly, brow furrowed. “Well?”

“It’s. It’s.” Real fear raced across his face before he could stop it and he swallowed thickly.

“Lemme guess. It involves you.” Tim’s ire began to rise because of course it did.

“Yes.”

“And you won’t just give it over to save us?” Jon looked away, eyes shut tight.

“No.” He tried to take a deep breath and it lodged somewhere in between. “But it’s becau--”

“Save it. Coward. It’s enough that you won’t consider it.” Resentful, Tim again wanted to get his hands on him because of course he’d refuse. There wasn’t a more selfish man in the archives. “So this is it then? We go the way of Sasha?”

“I--”

“Because you didn’t help her either. Didn’t even notice.” It was his turn to hide because he’d be damned if Jon saw him cry. “Maybe if she’d been the Archivist, it would have been you.”

Jon didn’t, couldn’t fight this time and was more lifeless than any time before when they secured him which seemed to please Nikola and she praised him, dragging fingers through his messy hair, pulling sharply on the tangles.

“Ah, you’ve finally learned, Jon." And she tapped his cheek, sickeningly tender, before finally leaving him alone.

“Giving up so soon?” Tim scoffed; ‘so soon’ being weeks into their capture when Jon was clearly exhausted, sleeping more and more in between waking enough to hack up a lung. He could hear the wheeze on his breath from where he was across the room. “Figures.”

“Jus’… m'head hurts.” Laughing bitterly, Tim told him to keep it to himself. Dealing with Jon when he was in a mood or whining for the sake of it hadn’t made it onto his agenda. But the part that cared, that he’d tried to stamp out and fill with hate, reminded him that they were both dehydrated and hungry.

Reminded him that Jon was getting quieter and quieter, going long stretches between speaking and this time when he was carried away, he was frighteningly lax and loose, head thrown back and gasping, overbright eyes half lidded. This time, when they dragged him back and tied him up, he was crying openly, shaking fit to fly apart and eerily quiet. But the tears were there, streaming down his face and gathering on his chin before his trembling got the better of them.

“Jon?” If anything, he sobbed harder, the sound choked off as he tried so, so hard to be quiet.

“Please s’stop, Tim.” And his whisper was so broken, so small and sad, that Tim shut his mouth, because Jon was at his breaking point and he’d helped push him to it.

Now Tim couldn't stop looking at Jon and it made the other man self conscious when he was awake enough to notice, trying to keep his head turned away when he had the strength and it wasn't thrown back over the chair while he gasped like a fish out of water.

The few times Tim caught him looking his way were fraught with weariness. Jon's red rimmed eyes, bruised and ringed with shadow, held a constant question and reminded him too much of his paranoia. Truthfully, the stare was heavy and he was uncomfortable with the weight of it leveled across his shoulders.

"What're you staring at?" But it was a half-hearted attempt at inflicting hurt and Jon shrugged, blinking and a few times as if to clear his vision.

"You okay?" It sounded like he'd been swallowing gravel, rough and low and painful.

"What do you think?" And Tim couldn't stop responding in anger, swearing to himself that Jon's defeated expression meant less than nothing.

Jon wasn’t well.

He’d been unconscious for the better part of a day and Tim hadn’t been able to rouse him; shouting at him from the other side of the room wasn't enough but he tried once more out of desperation.

“Jon, buddy. Jon!”

“Mmwha'Tim?” Cracked right in the middle, it was forced through a deep wet cough that sounded bad. Really bad. The effort left his narrow chest heaving with every difficult pull for air, like he was breathing through a straw.

“Oh, thank god.” Even with the distance between them Tim could see his face twist up in confusion. “You weren't answering me.”

“Talkin t'me?” Panting and pale in the weird light, Jon’s features seemed carved from shadow and sweat.

“Yes, who else??” More than used to Tim’s frustration and annoyance, Jon just let his chin tip forward on his chest. “Jon, what's wrong.”

“Head hur's.” Slurring badly, Jon gave up words altogether in favor of letting his dark lashes flutter closed.

“You've said! What else?” Yelling and angry and helpless, the guilt rose in him like a slow and deadly tide when he saw tears slipping down his face. Tim was scared and he was mean, shouting and demanding, because of it. Because he thought he was done caring about this paranoid menace who had posed as his friend and gotten them into this mess. And he wasn't, oh he wasn't and something was seriously, seriously wrong and he was tied to a chair two meters away and couldn’t do anything about it. “Jon! Don’t, hey! Don’t go to sleep!” But it didn’t matter, he was already gone.

“Well, don’t you look tetchy.” Tim ignored Nikola’s jab the next time she and her clowns came to visit and through a surge of protectiveness he hadn’t felt in so long for anybody, he spoke on his behalf.

“Please. Jon, he. Something’s wrong.” She didn’t look impressed.

“He’s stopped his fighting.”

“Let me check on him. Whatever you need him for, he won’t be any use if he’s dead, right?” Nikola laughed, cruel smile striking fear into Tim’s heart for the first time.

“It wouldn’t matter, truly. But. Well," grabbing a fistful of hair, she forced his head back and forth to get a good look at him. "I just don’t think he’s done yet. And that would be a shame--I do so wish to look my best.” Tim was no closer to figuring out what was happening but it didn’t matter anymore. “I assure you, if you try to run.”

“I won’t.” Swiftly promised, they’d escape another time. Somehow, someway. “Untie us?”

“Us?” She chuckled and in the end, only released Tim but it would have to do, and once he was sure she was well and truly gone, he stumbled on numb legs to stand over him.

“Jon?” Gently, like he might break under the weight of his hand, Tim laid it over his forehead, brushing back through his tangled hair when the heat of it met his palm. He was a furnace, burning away to nothing and very sick. “Jon?” He tore a strip off the bottom of his shirt, wiping away the sweat because there was nothing else he could do until he finally came around. “Hey, Jon.” Jerking away with enough force that Tim had to catch the chair, he coughed with his shoulders hunched around his ears like--

Like Tim was going to strike him.

“Oh, no, no.” What a mess they’d made. “Hey, none of that.” When he went to apply the compress again, Jon flinched, shaking, muttering breathlessly:

“Don’touch, please, don’touch me any’anymore. Pl’please.” So now he was free, free to see up close the terror and fear, faced with it plainly enough to question that Jon wanted any of this at all, or if he was just as caught in it’s spiraling web. He wore himself out, body slumped uncomfortably where he was tied as he lost consciousness and Tim was at a loss as to what to do. He wasn’t able to pick apart the knots, didn’t have anything to slice through his bonds. No medicine, no water. Nothing, and so he finally relegated himself to pounding on the door, shouting, pleading for water because Jon was out of his mind with fever and wouldn't let Tim touch him. Of course it went unanswered, and instead he found himself sitting crisscross at Jon’s feet. “Don’...don’touch…”

“I won’t, I promise. Not, not until you say I can.” Wringing his hands, remembering every time they'd helped each other through a sick day at the institute. Remembering when he was free to touch and free to comfort. Jon ruined that. But it shouldn't mean he was afraid of him.

“T’tim?” The whimper of recognition made the fist around his heart squeeze. “They...they’re. My skin. Take it. G’g’gonna take it.”

“Calm down, you’re not making sense.” And shaking so hard with chills his teeth were chattering.

“It’s going to, to hurt. She, Ni-she.” Worked up, Jon was hyperventilating, barely getting any air between his coughing and rambling but he wouldn’t listen to Tim. “It’s, it’s. I, I, I don’wan’to h’hurt anymore…” Delirious, he had to be, paranoid and ill and delusional and he said as much.

“Okay, Jon? That’s not going to happen.”

“Why Tim!” Nikola’s delighted voice rose up behind him and he startled. “He didn’t tell you? This ritual requires a special ingredient, a costume! Of special power and distinction and you,” she tapped his forehead sharply, “just don’t fit the bill!”

“Costume?”

“Of course!” When she clapped her hands together it made a sharp plastic clatter. “Our Archivist here will have the most lovely skin when we’re through with him.” Tim felt sick to his stomach. Jon. He’d. He’d called him a coward. Wished awful things on him and maybe it would be impossible to be friends again but, but they’d been friends once. Been close once. And.

“Please. He, he needs water.” His voice shook. “His--” skin “It’ll be better if he’s had enough water.”

“A wonderful idea!” She turned away from where she was tracing lines over his body, “to think I wanted to kill you upon arrival, when you’ve been so useful in keeping our mutual friend in line!”

“Slow, slow Jon.” He pulled the cup away when it seemed he’d try for the whole of it at once, “you’ll make yourself sick.”

“T’Tim...need.”

“I know, be patient.” Jon’s brown eyes were piercing even glassed with fever, all his limited focus directed at Tim.

“N’no.” He paused to get enough breath to speak. “Run. You n’need to run.” Days ago, Tim would have done so in a heartbeat but the thought of abandoning him now. He couldn’t.

“I cant.”

“Tim”

“No, not without you.” His gaze was devastating and he dropped his head.

“Why?” He didn’t have an answer and thankfully didn’t need one because at that very moment a yellow door appeared where one had never been before and through it stepped a man who both was and wasn’t, face ever changing, limbs elongating in strange intervals and he had to look away.

“I’ve come to kill you, Archivist.” A distorted echo that was also not an echo filled up the room.

“Get in line, you’re not the only one who wants a piece.” The being seemed taken aback, tickled that a human would even dare, and Jon used the gap in their conversation to draw its attention.

“Michael.” The thing that was Not What It Is shifted focus, oil on water. “Tell me.” And while Jon couldn’t say anything more than that, he did and instead of killing the archivist, Helen saved him, using sharp fingers that warped and writhed to slice the bonds and send him sprawling to the ground. Or would have, if Tim hadn’t caught him. He wouldn’t respond to Tim’s shaking and shouting and when Helen offered to grant them both safe passage as a favor to her favorite Sims (her only Sims, Tim figured) he lifted him into his arms and stepped through the door.

And into his own flat.

“Do tell him I say hello, would you?”

“Uh, yeah. ‘Course.” Awkwardly, he waved with his arms still full of Jon. “Thanks.” When he was sure his flat had only the same number of doors it came with, he laid his burden down on the couch, heading to the medicine cabinet for any fever reducer he could find and filling a glass with water on the way. It took too much time to wake him and he wasn’t aware enough to parse the instructions Tim was trying to explain, that dreadful whistling almost deafening this close and the crackling in his lungs like dry leaves in autumn. So he propped him up against his shoulder, body blazing through their clothes, and slipped the pills onto his tongue one at a time so he could swallow them with small sips. Replacing himself with several pillows shoved behind him, Tim wrung out a cool flannel and smoothed it over his forehead, ignoring the sluggish, enquiring gaze until it disappeared behind heavy lids and his face relaxed into sleep.

There wasn’t anything in the fridge that survived his absence save for the bicarbonate of soda and beyond that, Tim didn’t want to take a chance opening anything. The bread was moldy, but a packet of biscuits with peanut butter helped dull the hunger and, though he would never admit it, gave him a reason to stay up to watch over Jon. Flushed and fevered, he mumbled nonsense in his sleep, and Tim recognized enough that he soon decided not to listen, the horror of it too much to bear just yet. He fell into his own bed, relaxing sore muscles and glanced at the clock blaring too bright numbers that he didn’t want to read, his last conscious decision that they’d been gone this long, what was one more night before telling everyone else they weren’t dead.

The sun, blessed sun, fell across his face and he let himself have a lie in until he remembered who was passed out on his couch and he dragged himself towards responsibility, a knot of apprehension tight in his throat, relaxing when Jon looked, well, not well, but better. Apparently sensitive to being watched, their eyes collided briefly before ricocheting away and Tim was irritated by it and the way Jon was avoiding him again.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were that sick?” Though Tim stood over him, Jon continued to look at his hands, tracing a finger over the rough scar spanning his whole palm. He took his time, thinking, so long that when Tim shouted “well?!” he jumped, eyes wide, breath catching.

“You. You said.” Coughing into his elbow, he needed a moment to recover. “Said t’to keep it to myself.”

“When you were complaining about a headache!” Jon shrugged with one shoulder, curling into himself small and fragile, somehow more so in the late morning light.

“Didn’t think--”

“No, you didn’t, you never do, Jon!”

“--you’d want to know.”

“Jon.” But would he have wanted to know? Would he have ignored it like he had his anguish? What reason had Tim given him when he’d used everything he experienced in that room and out of it as a weapon against him? Jon was looking up at him, wan and pallid, waiting for whatever Tim had to say and he knew he would take it like he’d taken it in their captivity. He sat on the low table in front of the couch. “Jon. I’m. You know I’m angry with you.” He nodded. “I’m sorry for, I took it too far. But, I’d still have wanted to know.” He pressed the next dose of medicine into his unblemished hand and made sure the water glass was within reach. “Take those.” Before he slipped into the kitchen and away from their shared mistakes, but he could still hear.

“Thank you, Tim.”

“Oh,” he popped his head back into the sitting room. “Helen says hello.” And chuckled when Jon threw an arm over his eyes with a groan.

[peachyunjinnie]

❝there’s always a first time❞ hjs ― m.

― summary:

your brother seungmin is very protective over you, but one day your best friend gave you a stick and poke tattoo and you get an infection. fortunately seungmin’s friend jisung as a hobby tattoo fanatic helps you take care of it and when seungmin wasn’t there you two decide to run away.

badboy!jisung/goodgirl!reader | fluff, smut | 5.3k ↬ content warnings: swear words, the mention of alcohol and drugs. drunk/high sex, with a little size and corruption kink.

a/n: i had this idea a couple of days ago and i tried my best to get this idea into a fic, i hope you enjoy it !!

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The relationship between me and my cousin Seungmin is better than with anyone else, you could say that we could consider ourselves as siblings and even best friends. We had the same taste in humor and even better lived in the same house after my mother died right after she gave birth to me. My father ended up bringing me to my aunt and uncle at the age of 2. 

Seungmin is 1 year older and has ‘BBPI’ as he calls it which means Big Brother Protection Instinct. I know, complete nonsense and as a 16-year old I don’t get why I have to be protected. Well, as Seungmin said I am still ‘his small sister’. Pathetic. As said before Seungmin is 1 year older to be exact 11 months and 28 days and has friends, for whatever reason, he has a whole group. Well, he warned me about one of them, the walking trouble: Han Jisung. He basically is the opposite of me, a 180 if you want to say it.

He stole the car of his stepfather numerous of times and I remember seeing him drunk and completely stoned in school, that I will never forget. Last year he was stumbling through the hallways of our school. His hair messy and his smile never leaving his lips. He had the hardest time trying to keep his eyes open, or even just keeping his legs moving. And the best part, he puked on his teacher's chest. It was the highlight of the whole day, no the whole semester. His stepfather thank god is very wealthy and managed to keep him in school, somehow.

I heard a lot of rumors about this Jisung and I really do not want to believe that he was in the Russian mafia boss nor do I want to believe that he killed his father and is living with his mother who helped him. It was really funny though to hear how unique and ridiculous the fantasies and the gossip was at our school, I mean a Russian mafia boss, seriously?

I hung out with my own friends, but sometimes I would get to talk and just meet my brother’s friends. In conclusion, we even had the same taste in friends. They were really nice. I really have the best friendship with Felix and Changbin. Felix firstly has an excellent taste in music and humor, secondly, he is by far one of the most concentrated gamer I’ve ever met. Changbin is just Changbin. He is kind of annoying and clingy with his friends. Which you would’ve never expected from this buff hulk. And to be completely honest with you, Changbin and Lix...are kind of cute together.

Well, with Seungmin being as protective as he is, he has told me clearly that dating is already a picky topic but dating one of his group members. I think he would be as angry as he was when I asked him what a ‘Day6′ was. He really ignored me for 3 weeks straight, with a text message saying ‘if you know who wonpil is then you are allowed to talk to me’. (stan day6, cowards.)

“Stop moving so much, I’ve done it before and you’re overreacting.” She whisper-screamed. She was nearly done with her K on my thigh, It was way bigger than I thought it would be, but it looked good.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m just getting poked by a hot needle on my thigh over and over again.” My sarcasm was louder than the thoughts in my head that were shouting lines of ‘you’re so in trouble’ or ‘you will never be able to get this off your skin’. 

“So.. Here we go. Done.” She said as she was looking at her masterpiece of a K on my thigh of the size of a thumb. But it looked even and nice. She has done a (The first letter of y/n) on her thigh. I cannot believe how red it was though, and swollen. Extremely swollen

“Kim, when will it be ‘okay’?” I asked her with a slight nervous undertone. I really am the biggest chicken on earth. She opened her bag and got saran wrap. She took some out and wrapped it over her creation with such a soft touch. I still cringed and squinched.

“Maybe a week or two. It doesn’t take too long.” She smiled at our bond. I smiled with her. We ended up in a big hug and stayed like this for some time before she packed her stuff and headed out.

I admired her work on my thigh and stood up, with an overwhelming pain spreading across my thigh. I couldn’t stand up on my own feet, my thigh stung extremely and harshly. 

Panic rising through me, what the heck should I do now? Should I call my mom and tell her about it? Should I tell Seungmin and ask him for help? Should I just emigrate to Brazil and start my new life as a Silvia Theresa Rodriguez? 

I crawled to my bed and tried my best to let the 2 years drama club pay off. I called my mom and asked for a painkiller. She came up to my room and sat on the edge of my bed.

“Honey, is everything okay?” Her concerned eyes scanned my body and noticed my messy hair and my pale face. I coughed.

“Mom, I-I’m sick.” She sat there and looked at me and gave me the painkiller with a glass of water. 

I snatched it out of her hand and gulped the pill down as if it were the only banana in the jungle. Her concern grew faster and she shook her head.

“I’m going to call your teacher. You’re not going to school.” She said as she got off my bed and walked off with her phone in her hand, dialing the number.

After the longest 8 hours, Seungmin came home, and thank god came into my room. With a bag of McDonald's and a big smile, he went to my bed and sat down. 

“Why didn’t you come to school?” He gave me the bag and with a breathtaking smell of fat and fast food filling my nose and getting the best of me. 

“Oh, I am sick my head hurt a little, and mom overreacted.” I said with a huge load of fries in my mouth.

With a small pat on my thigh, he hit the right spot of the K and a shriek came out, my whole body tensing up and Seungmin looking at my covered thigh. He took the blanket off. My shorts relieving the now swollen and slightly scabbing spot. 

A moment of silence filled the room and Seungmins face has gotten from a healthy color to a concerning red and then to a frightening purple.

“Surprise...” I smiled awkwardly.

“Y/N, you got a fucking tattoo...” His voice was a low growl, but still, you could clearly hear the pure panic in his voice.

“Uhm, haha yea. So I made it myself, you like it?” My shaking voice showing the state of mine. My thigh looked pretty bad and as painful as it would’ve been, without the painkillers.

“Did you disinfect it?” My whole head went blank. Of course, it was so swollen and scabbing, Kim didn’t disinfect it. My face went paler than pale and I rethought the consequences of an infection.

“Okay, I’ll take that as a no. Get your shoes and we will get to my friend he will help you.” He really was very serious about the infection so I stood up with a numb pain, but not as overwhelming as it was yesterday. I searched for my shoes and directly followed him.

A quick bus ride and a small foot-march later there was a big but still small and cozy house. Red and white, reminding me of a red velvet cupcake. Looks fancy but is cute at the same time. The grass and the dwarfs decorating the beautiful view. A middle-aged lady working in the garden, planting in seeds and watering the red tulips. 

“Hello, Mrs. Han is Jisung home?” He grinned at her.

“Oh hello, Seungmin. Nice to see you again!” She smiled at him with a motherly aura surrounding her. She hugged him and I could see that she liked Seungmin a lot. He didn’t really know what to do awkwardly stood there and let her do. She noticed me standing there and hiding behind Seungmin's tall figure and met with her warm brown eyes.

“Hello, and who are you?” she asked with a bigger smile.

“Uh, I am Seungmins sister.” I immediately trusted her and her warm embrace.

“Ah yes, I can see the model genes going in the family. You seem like you’re in a big rush to see Jisung, he’s in his room.” She told us and saw my embarrassed blush across my face as Seungmin took my hand and yanked me downstairs to where Jisung was.

The basement as a room, interesting. It was colored black and had a lot of posters of some bands that I have never heard of. There he was on his bed smoking a cigarette and admiring his newest addition to his arm, a slightly red and in saran wrapped tattoo. A small skull drinking from a glass bottle, very precise and well made. He sat there and continued to smoke.

“Seungmin, what’s up.” he took a puff. Not giving anyone a single look. His hand tapping over his forearm and keep admiring his skull. 

“I need your help. My sister made a tattoo and now it’s infected. Do you know what to do?” Seungmin seemed very concerned and worried. Jisung stood up and chuckled a little.

“The little Y/N, has a tattoo?” He asked me and looked down at me. 

His eyes have the same warm brown as his mothers and I weirdly trusted him regardless of his reputation. His hair was dyed a very light blonde and his face was very chubby, unlike his body which was athletic: muscular but slim. He had two tears on his face and my thoughts went crazy. Who in the actual hell did he kill and the rumors of Jisung being a Russian mafia boss came into my mind and I reconsidered if I should be worried to be in a room with him?

“Seungmin, I have some lemonade for you.” Mrs. Han's voice echoed through the basement and he looked at Jisung.

“Go for it, I will take care of her.” He gave him green light and Seungmin looked at him with a look in his eyes. Which could be translated into ‘If you hit on my sister, I will drag your corpse to the nearest forest and let you get eaten by the birds’. Jisung nodded and Seungmin went upstairs.

“So tell me, how did you do that?” He said with a smile as he pointed to my infected K. His hair falling on his face, a little messy but still perfectly proportional.

“Uhm, a long story...” He went to his desk and took out a liquid and a cotton pad. He pushed the chair next to the bed and patted the bed. I quickly sat down. Him in front of me.

“I have time, come on.” He looked up and gave me a simper. I felt a small tickle again and wanted to trust him with it.

“Well uh, my friend Kim wanted to get us bonded. She took a needle and poked my skin for some time until it was done.” He laughed a little, letting me see his whites. 

“You stick and poked and didn’t disinfect it?” His eyes still on mine and not leaving the look they had, of the warm and soft chocolate brown.

“No, we didn’t and stop making fun of me- Ah-” His cold hand touching my thigh. My body stiffened and it was hard to relax.

“Calm down, relax. You wanna listen to music? disinfecting this will be a little uncomfortable.” He stood up and walked to his stereo. He took out a cassette and stuck one in. A prehistoric cassette, I haven’t seen this since I listened to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban one years ago. After some seconds of silence, ‘All The Small Things’ by blink-182 boosted through the speakers.

He turned around and sat down again and wet the pad with this liquid. He took off the wrap and the air hit the wound. It was a stinging soreness, that leads me to look away and bite my lower lip, hard.

He took the wet pad and started to clean up the wound as careful and gentle as possible, the stinging and burning pain was a very harsh rush of pain. I whined and groaned loudly.

“Does it hurt?” He asked as he was still cleaning up.

“Well, yes,” I said with a small whine.

“Good. If I see you with a new tattoo I will get you punished.” his voice getting raspier and raspier. But he still cleaned the wound up and was done with the disinfecting. He stood up again and got some of the saran wraps and pointed his finger, signaling me to stand up.

I stood up from his bed and he kneeled down to wrap it up. His hands still very cold and tickling my thigh. 

“So Kim, is your friend?” His voice a little absent.

“Yes, my best.” I had to automatically smile.

“Tell me about her, how is she like?” I was surprised at his interest in my personal life but answered him.

“Oh, um she is reckless and she never thinks about her actions. She makes out stupid things that I have to box her out of. But she also has a nice and gentle side that not many know. I love her a lot.” I smiled at our memories and how easy it was to be myself around her.

As I was in my thoughts, Jisung took out a bottle of Jack Daniels and takes a glass. He gets him a good amount and gets another glass after seeing my big eyes. After a long friendship with Kim who was known for drinking, I have never drunk any alcohol, well until today. He gave me a glass full of brown fluid.

“I- I can’t believe we did that.” I laughed as Jisung was holding my hand walking on an abandoned street in the middle of nowhere. He had given me a big sip of the whiskey, it was a burning sensation of my taste buds being confused and curious for more. 

“It’s better, not being sober right?” He asked stumbling into the sunset.The bitter taste of the alcohol and the adrenaline of me running away with a friend of my brother without his permission. I felt every single touch of his hand tightening and holding my hand in his clutches not letting go.

“Come on drink it, Y/N. The painkillers are not going to help you any better than Jackie will.” He smiled and waved the glass in front of my nose. I mean I never was drunk and I want to know what it’s like. My curiosity and stupidity have gotten control of me and I accepted with a shaky hand. 

I took a small sip of the whiskey and the bitter and stinging sensation was so disgusting. I couldn’t swallow it and started to look around for somewhere to spit it at. But with Jisung forcing me to look up at him with his fingers, pushing my head upwards. 

“Swallow it, now.” his eyes burning holes into mine and letting me breathless with no other choice other than swallow. I gulped the fluid down and the burn in my throat was unbelievably harsh. 

“Good girl, now. If Seungmin sees your ass drunk this will be very dangerous for both us. Do you have any other clothes or is this everything you’ve got?” He already searched in his closet and gave me a black hoodie with some jeans. 

“Here you go. Hurry up, my mom is not going to keep him for any longer.” He went upstairs and left me with there a little tipsy and with some clothes from this boy that I barely knew. 

After getting them on I noticed the size difference, Jisung has it in L. On me it was XXL. The size was really funny and the jeans that should hug his waist like they are on the ones he is wearing, are now hanging from my pelvic bone. I saw my reflection of the mirror and busted out in laughter. 

Jisung came down and looked at my new outfit, and laughed as well. He came in front of me and squished my cheeks. He played with them and ruffled my hair into a mess, I officially am looking like I just woke up with my PJ’s. 

“You look so cute, this stuff is the tightest clothing that I have and your body is just sliding through.” He smiled and looked into my eyes, his hands still cupping my cheeks. A strong smell of alcohol and cigarettes leaving him, mixing with his cologne.

He stepped back and admired this baggy look. He had a hand on his chin, thinking about what can make it look even better than it already does. With an idea in his mind he sought for.... a belt. 

He took the of course black belt and put it over my waist. I almost wanted to remind him that I am not a toddler and can put on a belt myself, but the sudden closeness of him and his firm grip on his jeans on me. My heart did a small tap dance, but he continued to put it on with no sign of hesitation.

“This looks better. Take your shoes and let’s get out of here.” Trouble, that was what I am going to get after this. Am I out of my mind going with Jisung with no other thought? Am I dumb for trusting this dude that threw up on his teacher's chest in the hallway last year?

He packed his bag with a shit ton of bottles and some other stuff that I don’t even want to know what it is, the curiosity of what is in this bag now really bugged me. What did he have in this bag? He started to notice my glare on his black backpack.

“You ever had drugs, little one?” He asked as if it was the most normal thing to ask a 16-year-old. If I ever had drugs, the small sips of this weird and burning stuff and the coffee I had in the morning.

“N-No.” My stutter surprised me and the sudden tension started to get harder and intense. My subconscious shouted in my head to get out and go home with Seungmin, but this Jisung really had something and I wanted to explore that.

“There’s always a first time and I needed to go out anyway. You wanna meet my friends?” His smirk was absolutely precious and there was no way in hell that I could say no to this face. After my agreement, he smiled even brighter than before. He took some of his rings and gave those to me and some chains. I looked so different from what I daily wear and with a hat my appearance was complete.

“I-It’s so much better. Not having this pressure.” After another big gulp of the whiskey, he threw the bottle to the road and opened his bag. A see-through water like a bottle. He gave it to me and I opened it after some seconds of struggle. We stumbled through the sunset of the lonely and empty roads of a beautiful panorama.

“Le-Let’s sit down for a while. I am so ti-tired.” I laughed and sat down on the empty road. He joined me and took the opened vodka bottle from me and took a small sip after gasping dramatically and getting a green bag out of his pocket. It looked like leaves and after a long time of finding out what it was, I knew it when he started to build a joint.

I took the bottle and drank the alcohol. I couldn’t believe this scenario, I am drunk and I am about to get high. I will get so much damage for this one night, but it still felt like it was a Bonnie and Clyde after play. Such a euphoric moment, and a moment I would’ve never have dreamed of.

So deep in my own thoughts and my own actions and with this alcohol in my hands, I didn’t see that Jisung was already done with his work. He saw my lazy eyes and pointed out to his bag.

“Hey, listen to music on my phone the code is 0325.” I crawled over to his bag and searched for the perfect song and here it was. New Flesh by the Current Joys, a carefree and a lighthearted song. The song started playing and Jisung snickered.

“I start to really learn a new si-side of you. Little miss Y/N.” He finished his joint and licked it clean. He grabbed in his bag and pulled out speakers. This bag really is a survival kit. He connected them to his phone and the music blasted out with such an enormous volume.

He took out his lighter and the fire sneaked it’s way through the marijuana and gives out a really unique smell. He seemed relaxed and fell on his back. He now was lying on the hard and cold cement road, his little relaxing tool between his fingers.

“So you never smoked before, like ever?”He has gotten up again and let his arm over my shoulder, giving me a really focused look.

“N-Nah.” I giggled for no reason. My head felt dizzy and my vision getting blurry after breathing in second-hand smoke.

“So I’m gonna show you, ho-how to do it the right way.” He smiled and almost closing his eyes completely.

He took my face into his hand and held the joint on the other hand. He gave it to me and I held it the best way I could, trying to let it fall down. I took a big hit and coughed all of the smoke out in a matter of 3 seconds.

He laughed uncontrollably and as he was laughing my head started to turn, my stomach started to growl and my mouth was getting dry. I honestly did not expect it to work that easily but I felt the difference in my body. I took another puff of it and another.

With a little time it has gotten easier and better to not cough. Jisung after not talking for what seemed like a whole eternity, started to notice that the sky is getting darker. He saw a whole field next to the road and threw his stuff in there and threw himself as well.

“Come here! The field is soft.” He shouted from his new spot and I giggled and jumped on top of him. His laugh resounded through the emptiness surrounding us and my giggle became a little quieter when I felt his hand on my hip. As before, when he put on the belt for me, my face grew hot and my eyes stayed on him and I played with his hair. He stroked my body with his fingertips, it feeling like electric wires rushing through my hot body. 

I leaned down and then kissed his soft lips. Right at this moment I didn’t care about anyone. My brother, my parents, my friends not even my own thoughts that screamed in my head to cut it off and go home. I wanted to live and wanted to enjoy, feel this moment. Exactly live in this moment right here and there. In a field in the middle of nowhere with the music still blasting somewhere near us and the taste of alcohol still running through my mouth and most importantly, Jisung being right here and there. 

“I d-don’t want to pressure you to anything, Y/N.-” I shushed him up with another kiss and his smile making the butterflies in my tummy explode into a mess. He tucked on his hoodie and leaned into my ear.

“I am sure you look even better without my hoodie on.”

I giggled loudly, his hand getting lost on the inside of my hoodie. Grasping on my bra and massaging it softly. My world turning in circles and the music still playing on the highest volume from the speakers, somewhere in the grass.

“I want you, now.” I said, looking down to him. I took off my hoodie and threw it next to Jisung beneath me. His hands still on me, my hair falling down to the side of his face. I was needy and what could feed this hunger was him.

“If your brother could see his little girl…” he smiled at my face being some small inches in front of his. the taste of the marijuana in my mouth mixed with the strong vodka and whiskey was driving me into the dumbest things.

I kissed his soft lips, touching them a little and his tongue rolling with mine. He tasted like danger and everything forbidden for me, giving me a thrill of my life. I continued to go down his neck, sucking the best I could making it hard due to the lack of energy.

“You’re doing great, little one.” He moaned when I once reached his hard and perky abs, leaving a trail of bruises and hickeys all the way down here. He groaned once I unlocked his belt and pushed his jeans down to his boxers. The outline of his dick was hardly poking out, getting me to an idea of my first blowjob ever.

I pulled the off and there he was, poking at me. The hard and red tip, cum dripping on them slightly. I took him in my hands, carefully pumping him. His eyes following my actions his whines and stares telling me to put him in my mouth, I couldn’t get him all in, him laughing at me trying my hardest to deepthroat.

“Your little mouth is amazing.” He mumbled with his eyes closed tightly, his hands getting lost in my hair. Moans and grunts getting me wetter and wetter. I couldn’t breathe and with my mouth being filled up completely, my eyes turning to the back of my head.

I backed up and took some time to breathe, a string of saliva connecting my lips with his wet and throbbing dick. He pushed his hair back, his hand still on my head, grabbing and pulling at it hardly. I choked lightly on his pressure on my head, pushing me down and forcefully getting me down. After some seconds of complete silence he let go and a broken groan echoed through my dizzy head.

“Uh fuck, how can this small mouth get all that in?” He smiled looking down at me with his lazy eyes on the string of saliva connecting his tip to my lips. I started to laugh out, the feeling of a dick in my mouth reminding me of a Popsicle. He laughed as well, this whole scenario being unbelievable. It was deep dark outside, the only light being the lanterns of the side street and the moon, shining out heavily. The wheat among us, the music that still played beside us.

He suddenly stopped giggling immediately and closed his eyes. His head was thrown to the ground and he held my head in his hands, still thrusting into my mouth hardly.

“Wh-Where can I c-cum?” He stuttered and I just continued to bop my head down his length, feeling every inch in my mouth, I choked a little on the twitch of his cock. “Fuuuck.” He groaned loud through the hard beats of the music. I felt his dick twitch again in my throat and as I moaned the vibrations got him to spill his load into my mouth. The warm liquid running through my throat, I choked once again and the shivers went down my spine mercilessly.

“Ah fuck.” He tried to collect his breath, moaning more curse words. I still sucked at the tip and popped him out of my mouth, his seeds running down my lips. I looked up at his brown eyes, stars above us reflecting in them. He had the warmest and softest expression on his face, starring down at my cum filled mouth, trying my hardest to swallow everything.

“Now it’s your turn, princess.”

[penaltybox14]

DecoFiremen: No happy choice

@zeitheist @darknight-brightstar @squad51goals @its-skadi  Silky is sick in the city, and Josiah has to make some choices, and have some conversations.  Emotions are hard, yo.

It's never good, to see that look on Eddy's face.  His fighter's jaw is set, but his eyes are soft like ships on a dark harbor.  This is the face that bodes bad news, something Eddy can't fix with his hands, a hot cup of coffee or a knock about the ears.  When Josiah sees that look, after breakfast one late winter's day, the first thing he thinks is the state has come to call on Davey again.  He'd taken them in his teeth that day at the gate, and thought if not rid of them altogether, he'd bought them enough time to think of how to put them off for good.  It did wake him, though, to watch the high moon paint his quarters and fear the state might come back, with papers, with authority, with some force he could not bluff. 

(If they were to take Cleary now, he thinks, the boy would be lost forever.  He would be some shadow growing thinner and paler on the back ward of the state hospital, he would settle sure as smoke in that long dark hall of his or drown in the lake below the lawn.  For sure, he would.)

"No," Eddy says, his raw knuckles flexing, catching the rattle of Josiah's thoughts, "no, it ain't the young fella."

"So what is it, then?  You hear from town there's none left of those hot peppers the grocer pickles, that you eat whole from the stem?" 

Josiah's humor falls as flat and pale as vellum in the typewriter, gnawed down by keystrokes.

"Got a telegram from the city, Birchy."  Eddy grips the butcher-block of the back kitchen's table, leans, uprights, and leans again.  "Silky's gone down sick."

"Sick." Josiah has to steady himself.  His bad leg throbs like a bad dream that upends the day.  "Gone down sick?  Who sent it?"

"Hastings at 27.  He's at casualty down at Bellevue, thinking it's pneumonia."

He cannot go.  He cannot go: he is responsible here, the Captain of this house, their grounds.  He cannot go: to leave his post, to leave the lads, to leave the boy.  Worst of all, that: to leave the boy.  What kind of captain would he be then, to leave the newest and the rawest of recruits, who still trembles under the blunt wind of the sear and some days even falls to it?  Some damn bastard, he would be, but his heart and his bent leg howl as the breath of horses, carrying him surely to the city.  He was a coward once who left a hundred thousand words unanswered, the great sulk of an overgrown child.  It was not Silky's fault, was it, after all, that the roof had caved, that his body had broken under the greedy teeth of the timbers? 

But he had never told Silks that, had he.  And he could, now.  He could have the chance to say it again. 

"It's an awful long way, to the city."

"I haven't seen him since the promotion."

"You'd be leaving the boy."

"I know it."

"Do you?"

"I do know it, Eddy."

"Took you how long to answer a simple letter?  How long would you plan on staying?  Til he was well?  Til the dark took him?"

What a bitter kick in the chest, the fury rising up inside him so hard it makes his eyes water.  "Silks isn't going to die.  He didn't die in that damn fire and he won't now."

"If'n you go, Birch, I'll drive you to the station.  But you'll tell Lufty and Monroe and the lads, and most of all, young Cleary, where you're off to."

Lufty, he knows, will understand.  Lufty and Monroe both, are men who have swallowed smoke and coughed out grief in spatters on the sidewalk, ribs heaving under the weight of it.  Josiah was not the first fireman to be ground hard in the blaze's splintering teeth, he will not be the last. 

Though some days he feels as if he is the only fool to lose a brother by his own carelessness and greedy fury.  Fool, to lie shattered, dry and cracked and thirsty for the safe embrace of brick walls and floorboards that creak with midnight steps and men who roll over in starched sheets and roll over again.  Fool that Silks had sat for, holding the hand without the needle, speaking to him from far away through the ether and the lazy dream-fields of poppies and long sunshine.

But the boy, god, the boy. 

Whatever he does, he can't spare the boy.  Would that he could.  For his sear to have broke before his voice, the boy ought to be allowed to live a life of perfect grace, running the field with the lads and catching perch down in the pond, every line charged, every ladder strong, every jake out clear. 

Silks or Davey, he thinks, what'll it be, what choice do I have?

The sun sprawling across the yard has taken on the keener brass of springtime - the snow is still deep, the ice still thick enough to drive a double hitch onto, but the turn of the earth is winning out as she always does.  The lads sweat at their work - Lufty and Monroe have let ladders and ropes ice overnight, and each exercise begins with a clamor of ideas on how to handle the frozen gear.  Bertram and Jules are keen to lead, while Kitson, Jacob, and Lee, the newest lot, scamper about and skitter like fawns.  How funny, to see from the broad steps, that Davey knows nearly as much as a half-year, though he has not the strength yet.  He will, though.  There is an awkward, coltish grace about him.  Something he has not grown into.  Josiah woke one night when the sky was half-silver with stars and Davey was standing in his quarters like a ghost-child, the sear singing in their bones.  A long way to grow, that one.  A long, fine way.

Lufty catches him after lunch.  Lufty is harder at the edges, often, than Eddy has ever been.  Even when Josiah was still stiff about the collar in his new kit, Eddy was all bluff, and quick to mild.  Eddy would brawl for any jake among them.  Lufty was tougher to read, even after he was on the boards.  Lufty Parker was burned once, and badly, in a fire at the piers in Chelsea.  His scars creep up the side of his neck, and cup the back of his head like a brief and tender lover.  They invite no dormitory tales, only an edgy kind of sorrow.  Josiah had heard, in his rook year, that three men had plunged into the East River, but just one had come up.  The oakbellies, he had been told, had tried to make Lufty a captain, and he'd refused to show up for the ceremony.  They'd tried to make him a battalion chief, and he'd hopped the first train to Troy. 

So he had been told.

But Lufty knows the white rooms and white coats at Bellevue and the casualty ward.

"There's not no happy choice to make, Birchy," Lufty says to him in his office.

 "It's just not gonna be so.  That said, it's not about if you goes, I think, it's about if you're coming back."

"You think I won't?"

"I know you will.  But it's not me what needs convincing."

Josiah sighs.  His leg is tight, aching, and he ought to stretch it out.  But he's afraid if he ventures out now, he'll run into Davey, breathless with some discovery.  "What am I supposed to say to him, Luft?"

"To Silks or the boy?"

"Either one."

"I couldn't say.  When I went into the river, I thought we'd all come out.  We had a fire at our heels and the river below us, and the last thing I remember before spitting up black water on the cobbles was Matty taking my elbow and Tom saying it'd be alright."

He's never heard this story, not from Lufty's taut lips and clenched teeth, so he stills like a boy in church and lets the old memory - the smell of creosote, and the greasy river, the snapping pilings and the blinding smoke - shiver on the air and fall as motes of golden dust.  The worst was not the plunge, was it, but the waking.

Alone. 

It's going to hurt them both, but crueler for the boy.

After Lufty leaves him to his battered thoughts, he sits at his desk until the dusk unravels into night.  The dinner mess bell clangs.  The lads thunder about downstairs like wild horses, shouting, stampeding.

He ought to get up now, go to the kitchens, get a bite.  Eddy is always after him to put something more than gristle and spite on his bones.  He plants his hands on his desk, ready to make the effort to stand, when of a sudden Davey's there, in the door.

Josiah has a good look at him, now, under the humming electrics.  Still too thin, for his widening shoulders.  Hair in need of a trim or at least a comb.  (He tries to do it like Bertram Cochrane, slicking the sides down, but the loose black curls are springing free by midday).  A tear in the shoulder of his shirt fixed by clunky, deliberate stitches.  A boy exuberantly ragged at the end of a long day. 

"Capper.  You weren't at mess."

Josiah pins a smile to the corner of his mouth like he means it.  "Eddy send you up?"

"No sir."

"I'll be down soon."

The boy hesitates.  "Capper?  Are you angry?"

"No.  Why would you say?"

"You been up here all day, Capper, that's all.  Eddy said - well I think he said, maybe I just thought of something he did say, you know, the sear said he - well you know.  Eddy's sear is so bright sometimes.  I forget.  Eddy said you used to get your hackles up and hide out in your quarters all day."

Josiah chuckles softly.  "He's right.  I did.  I'm not angry, m'son."

"What's wrong, then?"

"Come sit."  There is not gonna be no happy choice, said Lufty.  And there won't be, but he'd be crueler not to tell the boy. 

Davey comes round to his desk and pulls up a chair, as he does when they read and talk, about things Josiah knows - like radio manuals and floorplans and exit strategies - and things that Davey knows, like checkers and poems and music.  "I told you 'bout my pal, Silky.  You remember, his letters."

"Yes sir."

"He saved my life.  Before I was a captain."

"I dream that sometimes.  Like you know about the lake.  And Liddy."

Josiah picks up a pen and twirls it over the blotter.  His chest is tight, like breathing through a wet kerchief.  "Davey, Silky's very sick.  We got a telegram from his captain."  He takes a deep breath, pushing through it, like crawling under thick smoke, palming every door.  "He's in the hospital in the city."

Davey watches him through a child's lashes with eyes that pierce him like a brother.  Josiah longs for a horse between them, the calming stroke of the soft brush on the soot-dappled back.  He longs for the darkness between bunks, staring at the ceiling.  In the low, fragile light, Josiah sees the dampness welling up in Davey's eyes.  It is too hard to hide. 

Davey knows already.  He is biting his lip, as if he is already a young man. While he lay in a Bellevue bed, a needle in one arm, Silky had bent over the other, murmuring.  Josiah, from his awkward seat with his bad leg locked in its brace, leans forward in one great surge and takes the boy in his arms and holds him tight.  As close as his nightmares, as tight as his memories.  "I will come back.  I will, Davey, I promise you.  I'll come back."

The child's stumbling sear is a raw mess of questions, frantic as birds beating their wings against a low-slung slate-clouded sky.  He is crying.  Good, Josiah thinks.  Good that grief be open. 

"You promise," Davey whispers at last, hoarse with a sob and muffled deep into his chest.  "You got to promise, Capper."

"Promise. I promise, I promise.  As sure as I can't run, m'son, I promise I will come home."