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minisugakoobies · 1 month

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Paradise | JJK - Epilogue

Pairing: Jungkook x Reader

Genre: smut, neighbors to lovers (not quite friends but not quite strangers), slow burn, love triangle, Stripper!AU

Rating: M (18+)

Warnings: it's happy ending time!, lots of domestic cuteness, fingering, oral sex (f receiving), shower sex, teasing, dirty talk, someone gets a lap dance 👀, sex in the champagne room, aka sex at work (don't be that coworker!), unprotected sex (monogamous relationship with alternate bc), multiple orgasms

Word Count: 9.1k

Disclaimers: NSFW, obviously I don’t own BTS - they just inspire me

Summary: That sexy man on stage - the one currently giving your friend the lap dance of her LIFE - is your super shy neighbor, Jeon Jungkook?!

A/N: And now we've reached the end! I can't believe it's been three years this month since OC and Jungkook's story began!! A gigantic THANK YOU to everyone who has liked, commented, reblogged, recommended, and/or sent asks about Paradise. This is for you! 💜

Unbeta’d as usual. Please don’t be a silent reader, I’d love to hear from you! Tell me what you think of the ending! 💕

Previous Chapter ♦️ Paradise Masterlist

Bzzzzzzt

Saturday afternoon dawns bright. You can hear birds chirping outside the windows, joined by the buzzing of bees.

Those are some loud fucking bees.

No wait, that’s your phone.

Bzzzzzzt

You grab it off the nightstand.

Huh, nope. No missed texts or calls.

Bzzzzzzt

What the hell is that sound?

Throwing back the covers, you lug yourself out of bed, snatch a t-shirt from the floor and yank it on, and traipse down the hall, following the incessant hum.

Bzzzzzzt

The noise leads you to the bathroom, where your boyfriend stands over the sink, examining himself in the mirror.

“Hey, jagi,” Jungkook greets you warmly. “Did I wake you? Sorry.” He leans over, planting a soft kiss on your cheek.

“No, it wasn’t you. I heard some sort of buzzing.”

“Ah, yeah, that was me.” He holds up some sort of metallic grey tool. An electric razor? But he doesn’t have one of those. You know by now that he waxes for his job, and what little hair ever appears on his face he takes care of with a simple disposable razor. “Testing this out.”

“I didn’t know you had one of those,” you say, leaning against the doorway.

“I don’t. Namjoon-hyung let me borrow it.” He tilts his head left and right, staring at his reflection.

“Borrow it for wh-oooh my god, Kookie, no!”

Your question becomes a wild wail as your boyfriend brandishes the razor and in one swift move shaves off a chunk of his hair. Watching the dark locks tumble into the sink feels like a scene from a horror movie, unfurling in slow motion.

You glance at Jungkook. Where glorious waves once adorned the side of his handsome face, there is now naught but stubble.

Meanwhile, Jungkook chuckles as he examines his handiwork. “What’s wrong, jagiya? You don’t want to see a fresh new me?”

“Not if it means sacrificing your gorgeous hair!” you pout.

Of course you love all of your boyfriend. Goes without saying. But his hair! It’s so pretty and thick and silky and fluffy and -

-and he’s going to shave it all off??

Bzzzzzzt

Another swath joins the first. Two sad curls at the bottom of the sink.

“Kookie, why?” you lament. “Your pretty hair!”

“Relax!” He laughs, running his tattooed fingers over the scruff that remains where he’s shaved so far. “It’ll grow back eventually. You’re starting to make me think you only love me for -“

Upon catching sight of the expression on your face, he trails off, eyes widening.

“Don’t be stupid,” you reassure him. “I love you for so many reasons. More than there are stars in the sky.”

He grins, turning away.

“Your hair is just, like, 25% of that. Maybe 30.”

“Okay, I’m kicking you out now.”

“Don’t bother. I’m going. I can’t bear to watch anymore.” You spin on your heel, heading for the kitchen. “If you need me, I’ll be crying into my cereal, mourning over breakfast.”

“Could you mourn me up a smoothie while you’re at it?”

As you raise your hand over your head to flip him off, he giggles, pausing in his task to admire the way your ass peeks out from under the t-shirt of his that you’re wearing, before disappearing back into the bathroom.

In the kitchen, you quickly whip up a banana smoothie, appreciating how the obnoxious whirr of the mixer drowns out the evil buzzing echoing down the hallway. Sticking the smoothie into the fridge to keep cold until your boyfriend finishes murdering his hair, you sit down to enjoy a bowl of your favorite sugary cereal.

It hasn’t taken much for you to acclimate to Jungkook’s schedule over the last few months since Jennie’s wedding. You’ve all but moved in, hanging around his apartment (usually napping) until he gets home from work in the early hours of the morning. Most of the time, you stay up for a bit, talking and helping him unwind (sometimes fucking, sometimes giving him a gentle massage to soothe his muscles, sometimes just letting him lay with his head on your chest). Usually near dawn you fall asleep, and then wake at noon to spend the afternoon together until he leaves for Paradise in the evening.

So you've become accustomed to a midday bowl of cereal by now. Of course, it helps that you’re no longer bound to the 9-to-5 life, ever since you quit your job.

The bathroom is rather quiet for several minutes, so you figure Jungkook’s completed his horrible task. So you brace yourself for the sight of a shorn head -

-only to be surprised when he strolls into the kitchen with a sharp undercut.

“Well?” He turns this way and that, striking poses as he walks over to you. “What do you think?”

His dark hair is slicked back, revealing a shorn section on each side of his head, perfectly highlighting his brow piercing. Long strands still flow on top, a swoop falling into his eyes as he smirks at you.

It defies the laws of reality, the way something like this can make your hot boyfriend even sexier. How is it even possible?

Standing, you extend your fingers, letting them run over the short hairs, enjoying the pleasant prickle.

“I think I owe Namjoon a thank you card,” you murmur. The soft stubble tickles your fingertips, like fuzz on a peach. “Maybe even a gift basket.”

His smile grows as he draws you into his arms. “See, you were worried for nothing.”

“I really thought you were going to shave it all off!” you exclaim. Nuzzling his face into the curve of your neck, he laughs, amused huffs of breath dancing over your skin.

“Nope.” He slides your hand into what remains of his hair, lithe fingers encouraging yours to wrap around his locks. “I am thinking about dyeing the rest, though. What do you think sounds better - cherry red or buttery blonde?”

“Blonde!” Did you blurt that out a little too fast? Maybe, judging by the cock of his eyebrow.

“Blonde it is.”

“Do you want your smoothie?” You reach for the fridge door, but he stops you.

“I gotta clean up first. All those little hairs…” His eyes drop to your lips. “Time for a shower.” It’s an invitation that you’re all too happy to accept.

Jungkook first steps under the spray of water to rinse away the hairs still clinging to his face and neck. But as soon as you join him, he crowds you against the wall of the tub, mouth meeting yours, hand diving between your legs, opening you up to take his cock. He’s a bit rushed in his movements, driven by a fervent need to bury himself inside you as quickly as possible, but you don’t care, just as desperate to feel him yourself. It doesn’t matter how many times the two of you do this - every time you need him just as much as you did the first time.

When he slides into you, you let out a loud moan, knees already too weak to stand on. He holds you pinned against the tiles as he thrusts into you, wrapping one of your legs around his waist to help keep you up. “So good, jagi,” he grunts, setting a fast pace. All you can do is hang on, every stroke of his thick cock into your throbbing cunt making you sob his name, until your panting gives way to cries of ecstasy. He spills inside you then, his lips pressed to your cheek, breathing soft words of love across your skin.

In the afternoon, after Jungkook has gone to meet Namjoon at the gym, you decide to take a walk downtown to get a little work done. It’s surprising to you how much has changed in the last few months. Before, the thought of working on a Saturday would’ve sent you into an anxious (and annoyed) spiral. But now? You’re not bothered by it at all. Apparently that’s what happens when you like your job.

Not long after the wedding, you’d gone to the interview Wendy had graciously hooked you up with. Jungkook had helped you prepare, but you were still nervous as fuck. You needed to escape your current company. You needed this new job.

But as the interview progressed, that nervousness turned into a different sinking feeling. Because as the interviewer droned on and on about your responsibilities in this new position, it became more and more clear that you were essentially interviewing for the same job you were trying to leave. It wasn’t a way out. It was a trap. If you took this job, you’d be caught in the same quicksand, dragging you down again.

Despite your growing sense of trepidation, the interview went incredibly well, and you felt pretty confident that you would be hearing from the company soon. Which left you with little time to figure out if you wanted the new job or not.

In the end, it was your promise to Taehyung that made the decision for you. His presentation to the bank was a success, and with his new loan, he’d opened his own studio. Even though you’d done countless presentations over the years at your company, helping too many of their clients to count, this was the first time you’d actually felt joy at the result of your hard work. Helping Taehyung to achieve his dream was a special moment.

It also gave you an idea. A week later, you declined the new job offer. And turned in your notice to your employer. No more working for others.

Time to be your own boss.

It’s just a few blocks from your apartment building to where you’re headed. The bell hanging over the door chimes pleasantly as you let yourself into the little shop. Taehyung’s photography studio is technically closed on Sundays, but with the key he gave you, you can come and go as you please. It’s an arrangement that suits you well.

As you’d expected, Taehyung is sitting in his office in the rear of the shop when you get back there. He nods a quiet greeting, then perks up when he sees the second cup in your hand. You’d stopped at the coffeehouse on your way here, knowing that Taehyung is still splitting his time between Paradise and his studio, which means he’s usually exhausted on Saturdays.

“You really are an angel,” he murmurs, grabbing the cup.

“I know,” you grin, taking a seat at the makeshift desk Taehyung had created for you. He’d been so grateful for your help that he’d insisted that you use his office as your own temporary workspace while you established your consulting business. You were in no position to turn down free rent, but you’d agreed to only if he let you act as his interim bookkeeper. It was only fair. “Where’s Yeontan?”

“I gave my assistant the day off,” Taehyung replies. “He’s back at the apartment with Ji and Min.” He pauses to stretch lazily. “Thanks again for helping with the move the other day. We still owe you and Kook dinner.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll make sure you pay up.” You never turn down a free meal, though honestly, it was enough of a reward for you that you’d gotten to watch your friend Jisoo fall in love with her two boyfriends over the last few months. That’s the word she’d used for them both the other day, when you all helped Taehyung move into Jimin’s place. You hadn’t seen Jisoo this head over heels for anyone since… well, since you’d known her.

Taehyung sips his iced Americano. “What are you working on today?”

“Going over the stuff Felix sent me. We’re meeting with the bank on Tuesday.”

Having Taehyung as your first official customer had been a blessing. After he’d raved about you to the other dancers at Paradise, you’d suddenly found yourself with a whole list of potential clients. There was Felix, who wanted to buy a food truck for his baking hobby and start a brownie delivery service; Namjoon, who was considering creating an urban nursery for the plants he grew in his tiny greenhouse; and Bang Chan, who wanted to discuss the possibility of running his own gym. Even Hoseok wanted to introduce you to a friend of his who was thinking about opening up a male strip club called Outlaws. You’d barely struck out on your own and yet your calendar was already packed.

You pull out your laptop and settle in. “What about you, what’s on your slate today?”

“Just going over some shots.”

The other dancers at Paradise were the best hype team. They’d spread word of mouth about Taehyung’s photography and the studio had been booked since day one. Not that his talent didn’t bring in customers on its own. But it was so touching to see the others rally around Taehyung like that.

The other dancers had also embraced you warmly. You’d already met most of them from your visits to Paradise or the night of Taehyung’s exhibit, but once Jungkook introduced you as his girlfriend, it was like you’d gained an entire family of siblings overnight. And now that you’re on the inside, it’s so easy to see the way they care for one another. No wonder Jungkook loves working there so much.

Well, that, and the tips he makes.

Taehyung slides over so you can see his screen. “It’s Jennie and Yoongi’s session, if you want to take a look.”

“Oh, yes, please!”

Jennie and her husband had recently booked a photography session to announce Jennie’s pregnancy. As Taehyung slowly scrolls through the shots, you try and fail to will yourself not to tear up. Your friend’s baby bump gets bigger every time you see her and it’s unreal to think that it won’t be long until Baby Min is here.

Wordlessly, Taehyung hands you a tissue.

“Thanks.”

After spending so much time with Taehyung over the last few weeks, you understand why Jungkook adores him so much. He has a very comforting presence, which is nice for you right now, since building a company from scratch is a nerve-wracking experience.

“So, tonight’s the night, right?”

Again you grin, nodding. “Yeah.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Excited. But also if I’m being honest, a little scared.”

Everyone - all of your friends and family - has been super supportive for you during this time, lending their help whenever asked. But no one has been more supportive than Jungkook. He’s listened to you rant about your worries and fears at two in the morning when you know he wants nothing more than to hit the pillow and snooze until noon. He’s made you meals when you were too busy to tear yourself away from your computer to eat. He’s spent so much of his own time taking care of you that you started to fret you’d turned into another job for him.

But when you voiced this concern to him, Jungkook shook his head. “Taking care of you isn’t a job,” he’d said. “I do these things because I want to, not because I have to.”

You’ve never known anyone like him before. Never known someone who could be so selfless, so freely giving of himself all the time. So freely giving of his devotion, in every sense of the word. You can’t help but want to worship him yourself.

Despite his claims that he’s doing these things of his own free will, you still feel like you owe him something. A sign of your appreciation. Hence your plans for tonight.

“Why scared?”

You finish your drink, but don’t put the cup down, twirling it in your hands as you think. “What if I make a total ass of myself?”

“Not gonna happen.”

“Easy for you to say,” you snort. Of course he’d be confident, if he were in your shoes. Taehyung radiates an aura of exceptional self-assuredness. It’s difficult to imagine him being rattled by anything. If tomorrow he was told that he needed to perform emergency brain surgery, he’d snap on his surgical gloves without so much as batting an eye.

“Listen, I know Jungkook. More importantly, I know how much he loves you.” Taehyung flashes you a reassuring smile as you look at him. “There’s nothing you could do tonight to change that.”

The funny thing is, you’re pretty sure he’s right.

Jungkook’s already making dinner when you get back to his place. The delicious scent of gochujang jjigae draws you into his kitchen, where he stands facing the stove, his back to you. Walking up to him, you can’t resist sliding your arms around his waist.

“Hi,” you sigh, burying your face between his shoulder blades, breathing deep the ocean scent of his cologne.

“Hey jagi,” he hums, a happy note vibrating through his chest as he rests his tattooed hand on top of yours for a second. “Food’s almost ready. Can you grab some bowls?”

As you reach into his cabinet, it strikes you just how domestic this moment is, getting ready for dinner with Jungkook, like you’ve done so many times before. Thankfully, he’s the one who usually does the cooking, while you help however you can (typically just by staying out of his way - it’s what you do best in the kitchen). It’s unbelievable how easily you’ve fallen into this routine with him. Not a trace of fear in you as you reflect on it.

“I wasn’t sure if you were gonna be back in time to eat with me, but I made enough for two just in case.” He joins you at his little table, ladling stew into your bowls, before he takes the seat across from you. He’s dressed like he usually is for work, just a hoodie and sweats, since he’ll be changing into costumes all night.

“You’re too good to me, Kookie,” you simper playfully with a sweet grin, but you really mean it, knowing that if you’d texted him that you wouldn’t be back, he’d still make extra and put it in the fridge for you.

He rolls his eyes, but the tips of his ears betray him, turning pink. The two of you dig into your meal, quietly enjoying the food and each other’s company.

“I meant to ask you,” he says after a few minutes, “do you know when Jin-hyung will be back in town?”

When you’d called things off with Seokjin, you’d made him promise to keep in touch while he was out traveling for his cooking show. He’d taken that pledge to heart, texting you brief updates and sending photos from the road. You’re glad to have made another friend from this whole experience. Especially one whose name you can drop to make hard-to-get dinner reservations. (Seokjin gets a real ego boost when you do that - he’s the one who suggested it in the first place.)

Though things had gotten off to a rocky start between Jungkook and Seokjin, they’d become fairly good friends themselves. It doesn’t really surprise you, since they have more in common than they thought (not even counting you) - both are talented and determined, funny and handsome, not to mention both give a hell of a lap dance. Also, it’s hard not to love Jungkook, no matter how you meet him.

“Um, I think last time I heard from him, he said he’d be back in two weeks for a short break.”

“Good. That should give me enough time to finish.” He doesn’t say anything else, but you can read between the lines so well with him by now.

“Jin’s going to love his portrait,” you reassure him.

As soon as Seokjin had seen Jungkook’s artwork, he’d wasted no time in commissioning the younger man to paint his portrait, to be hung in his newest restaurant. You know that Jungkook is thrilled at the opportunity, but he’s also a little nervous, wanting to impress Seokjin. It’s pretty cute, truth be told.

You glance up to find Jungkook watching you with a small smile.

“What? What are you looking at? Am I a mess?” You grab your napkin, dabbing at your face, but he shakes his head.

“Nothing. I’m happy you’re here. I feel like I’ve barely seen you the last few weeks, you’ve been out working so much.”

“Oh, right.” You scratch your ear, giving him an apologetic look. “I know, I’ve been busy.”

“I’m not saying that’s bad!” Jungkook raises his hands. “I just… missed you.”

“Kookie,” you sigh, heart bubbling over with fondness. Your boyfriend is such a sap.

You set down your spoon and rise to your feet, locking your arms around him. He looks up at you with so much love in his eyes you nearly pinch yourself. But you don’t have to. This isn’t a dream, it’s your life. Silently, you thank the universe for everything you did that led you to this man. Then you press a gentle kiss to his waiting lips.

“I missed you too. But I’m hoping all this will be worth it.”

“It will be, jagiya,” Jungkook asserts, cupping your face gently. “I know it’s hard. But you know what you’re doing. And you’re not alone - you’ve got so many people in your corner. Like me.” He grins, kissing the tip of your nose lightly. “I believe in you.”

There’s a sudden lump in your throat, making it impossible to speak, so you let your lips express what you feel. What’s left of your dinner sits forgotten as you climb into his lap, kissing him until you’re both breathless. Only then you’re able to whisper a quiet thank you.

Jungkook’s right. You can do this. Especially with him by your side.

Sparkling Rosé ✨ (8:15): Are we still on for brunch tomorrow?

Bestie 😇 (8:17): Yes! I miss you guys

Bestie 😇 (8:17): This baby’s not even here yet and they’re already keeping me busy

Bestie 😇 (8:18): Plus I’ve been craving waffles for days

Sparkling Rosé ✨ (8:19): We miss you too!

Sparkling Rosé ✨ (8:19): And you too, YN! You work too hard

You (8:20): I know 😔I miss you all too

Lovely Lisa 💋 (8:21): I’ll be there!

Queen Ji 👑 (8:22): Yes we’re doing brunch because YN needs to tell us allll about tonight!

Sparkling Rosé ✨ (8:23): OH THAT’S RIGHT!

Lovely Lisa 💋 (8:23): Ahhhh that’s tonight?!

Sparkling Rosé ✨ (8:23): Break a leg! 🙌

Lovely Lisa 💋 (8:24): LET’S GOOOOO

Queen Ji 👑 (8:24): You are going to KILL IT

Bestie 😇 (8:24): *airhorn.gif*

You (8:25): 🙈🙈

You (8:25): We’ll see

You (8:25): But thank you 😘

Queen Ji 👑 (8:26): Oh no! None of that

Queen Ji 👑 (8:26): Trust me, you’ve got this

You (8:27): And just how are you so sure about that?

Queen Ji 👑 (8:28): Jimin told me. He never lies

You (8:29): I knew I should’ve asked Namjoon

Sparkling Rosé ✨ (8:29): As if he wouldn’t tell me

Sparkling Rosé ✨ (8:30): I like the guy but he can’t keep a secret to save his life

Lovely Lisa 💋 (8:31): Relax, you’re gonna be amazing! Just have fun with it

Bestie 😇 (8:31): Yessssss have fun

Queen Ji 👑 (8:32): But also put your back into it

Bestie 😇 (8:33): You should probably stretch first

You (8:33): Yes, eomma, I will

Bestie 😇 (8:34): I’m going to kindly ask that you never call me that again

You (8:35): But you’ll be hearing it all the time soon!!

Bestie 😇 (8:35): Not from you though! 🙅

Queen Ji 👑 (8:36): Sorry, eomma, we’ll behave

Bestie 😇 (8:37): Oh god, *especially* not from you

Bestie 😇 (8:37): Okay I’m out. I’ll see you all tomorrow. But don’t forget!

Bestie 😇 (8:38): 📣You’ve got this! 📣

Queen Ji 👑 (8:38): She’s the best mom

A few hours later, you find yourself alone in an unfamiliar space. A small room, containing only a handful of pieces of dark furniture. Velvet curtains drape three of the walls, while the fourth is a mirror. A crystalline chandelier hangs from the ceiling, the glass reflecting the soft lighting, scattering shimmering spots of illumination around the room as the bass pumping from the overhead speaker makes the decoration bounce.

You wipe your sweaty palms on the skirt of your dress, wishing you could take your friends’ advice and relax right now. Instead, your nerves are jumpy and your pulse is racing. The waiting isn’t helping.

As you switch seats for the tenth time since you got here (you can’t decide which is a better place to sit, on the pleather couch or the matching chair), you adjust your dress, hoping you look more confident than you feel. Confidence is key for what you’re about to do, according to Jimin.

Maybe you should’ve thought this through more. More practice would’ve been helpful, too. Why did you decide to do this now? You’ve really got to work on your patience, you think, eyeing the couch again before moving seats again.

The curtains sway slightly as the door to the room opens. Immediately your mind empties of all thoughts as your adrenaline kicks in. It’s showtime. You sit up, trying to strike an enticing pose, waiting for the man who opened the door to finish locking it and turn around.

“I hope I didn’t keep you waiting t- baby??” Jungkook freezes, head cocking to the side in confusion. You knew that Jimin had told him he had a Paradise customer waiting for him in a private room. “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to surprise you,” you grin, suddenly feeling really shy. Which is the exact opposite of what you need to feel right now, if you’re going to pull this off. “So, um, surprise!”

Jungkook smiles, obviously thrilled with your surprise, and crosses the tiny space in two strides. You stand to greet him, taking in his outfit, a silky black shirt unbuttoned over a pair of black leather pants. He looks just like he did the night of Jennie’s bachelorette party, only with a new haircut. The fabric of his top is soft beneath your fingertips as you lay your hands on his shoulders, accepting his kiss hello.

“Not that I’m not happy to see you, but… you know you didn’t have to pay to see me, right?” Jungkook murmurs against your lips. “I’ll dance for you any time.”

You do know that, because he’s danced for you several times now. Sometimes he likes to get your opinions on a new routine, and other times… other times, he just feels like dancing for you.

Knowing all this, you nod, smoothing down the folds in his shirt, trying to distract yourself from the way your stomach is tying itself in knots. Relax, you remind yourself, taking a deep breath. There’s nothing to be nervous about. It’s Jungkook.

“I know. But this actually isn’t about me tonight. It’s about you.”

Applying a little pressure on his shoulders, you push Jungkook onto the couch. He looks up at you questioningly, but doesn’t say anything, merely takes a seat. That’s so like him - to read you so well that he understands you’ve got something planned, so he’s letting you lead the moment. Just that tiny act of deference heartens you, leaving you more sure about what you’ve got planned.

You walk over to the panel on the wall that controls the overhead speaker. Your phone is already hooked up, and with a few swipes, you change the playlist.

“I wanted to do something for you, to show you how much I appreciate everything you’ve been doing for me.” For some reason it’s easier to explain why you’re here without looking at Jungkook as you do it, so you fiddle with the phone a little as you speak. “I know the last few weeks have been stressful, because of everything I’m trying to do, and I just… I want to thank you. And I thought this was the best way to do it.”

When you turn back around, Jungkook’s watching you with such a rapt expression that you can’t help but feel almost foolish about being so worried about this. It doesn’t matter if you can’t give him a show on the same level that he does. You’ve got his full attention no matter what you do.

You’ve got his love.

With that comforting thought, you take a steadying breath, in and out, and then begin.

Dancing is really not your strong suit, but the biggest lesson Jimin taught you is that it’s not the moves themselves that matter - it’s the attitude with which you perform them. It’s all about setting a mood.

So you let the music guide you. Let yourself sink into the groove set by the drums and bass. Jungkook lets out a tiny “oh, fuck,” when you start to shake your hips. You fight the urge to giggle, biting your lip in a sultry manner instead. You’re wearing a cute but simple dress, something that will be easy to remove when the time comes, but you dance like you’re dressed in the sexiest outfit imaginable, sliding the skirt up your thighs a little to tease him.

Even though you’re only a few feet away from Jungkook, you take your time approaching him, dragging out the anticipation. His hands rise automatically, reaching for you, but you dodge his grasp, taking them in your own hands instead. Something else Jimin taught you - lay down the rules right away.

“I’m here to dance for you, Kookie. So let’s get one thing straight - I’m the one in charge.” You squeeze his hands to draw his attention to them as you place them at his sides. “That means no touching me, unless I say it’s okay.”

Jungkook blinks at your words, but he doesn’t argue or try again to touch you. “Yes, baby,” he says, eyes brimming with adoration as he nods at you, and again you feel a surge of confidence.

With your back to him, you place a hand on both of his knees, guiding him to spread his legs apart. Then you lower yourself into his lap, laying back against his chest and tilting your face towards his. If either of you leaned forward the slightest bit, your mouths would touch, but you resist the urge, and he waits breathlessly to see what you’re going to do next.

You bring your arm up, then trail your hand down his chest, across your breasts and stomach, and on to his thigh, just skimming past his crotch. His hips buck slightly beneath you, and you grind in his lap, giving him the friction he seeks.

“Don’t worry, I’ll touch you all you want,” you whisper.

Jungkook groans loudly. You glide around the couch until you’re behind him and run your hands down his arms and over his chest. The silk of his shirt is starting to stick to him where he’s sweating. You’ve barely started and you’re already having an obvious effect on him.

It’s not just his temperature that’s rising, you note with a smug smile when you return to your spot in front of him. The tight material of his pants barely restrains his erection. Again you sit on his thighs, facing away from him, throwing your legs out in a wide stance as you pop to the beat.

“Shit, baby, yes,” Jungkook praises you with a deep groan when you lean forward, giving him a good view of your ass as it bounces. “Where’d you learn to dance like this?”

“Well, um…” you pause to bend further, nearly touching the ground, enjoying how Jungkook swears quietly when he gets a glimpse of your panties, “you know how I’ve been so busy lately?”

“Uh-huh…” Jungkook responds mindlessly, far too occupied with the sight in front of him. He’s being so patient, keeping his hands at his side like instructed, but the telltale twitching of his fingers lets you know that he’s fighting hard to behave.

You decide to take pity. Just a little. Turning, you straddle him, and grab his wrists. “Here you go,” you wink, placing his hands on your hips. “Just hold on for me.”

Jungkook hums, vision trailing up your body from where your hips are swaying to where your breasts are now in his face.

“I was working, but I wasn’t at Taehyung’s studio. I was taking some lessons from Jimin.”

He looks up at that. “Wait, you were what?”

The surprise on his face makes you giggle. There’s that wide-eyed Bambi look that you love so much. As the next track on your playlist starts, something a little slower, you shift into a grind, dragging your ass over Jungkook’s lap. He hisses, fingers tightening their grip, almost bruising in their hold, but he doesn’t try to guide you like he usually does when the two of you are in this position. It impresses you, the restraint he’s showing.

It makes you want to make him lose control.

You run your fingers through his hair, lifting it off his face, and lean close to his ear. “I wanted to make this good for you, baby. Give you exactly what you deserve.” Your lips hover across his cheek, not touching, but your breath caresses his skin, making him shudder beneath you.

“Jagi,” Jungkook swallows thickly, eyelids heavy with desire as he peers at you. “You’re amazing. I can’t believe you’ve been hiding these moves from me.”

You bite back another big smile. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”

His hands fall from your waist as you spin around, nudging his legs apart. Following the rhythm of the music, you undulate your body down his, your back sliding down his chest, then down his lap, until you’re on your knees. Then you place your hands on the ground in front of you, lowering your bottom half to the floor in a slow humping motion, before flashing him as you whip your legs into a split in order to roll yourself onto your back.

“Holy fuck, jagi,” Jungkook gasps, digging his hands into the couch on either side of his thighs, desperate for something to clutch. “You’re finally gonna do it. You’re going to be the actual death of me.”

Despite yourself, you start giggling. “Kookie! Don’t make me laugh.” You take your time rising to your knees, then to your feet, playing with the hem of your skirt. “I want you to take this seriously.”

“Oh, I am, baby, believe me.” Jungkook bites his lip, nodding. His eyes follow the path your hands take, dragging the skirt up to reveal your lower stomach. Meanwhile, one of his hands has found its way to his crotch, squeezing his hard cock through his pants. You’d considered making another rule earlier, that he couldn’t touch himself, but truthfully, you want to watch him enjoy himself.

“Good boy,” you purr, and Jungkook whimpers loud enough for you to wonder if you’ve tapped into something previously undiscovered about him, but you’re too busy to ponder it any further as you swing your hips, using his knees to help you drop yourself down to the floor again in a low squat.

The power you feel as he watches you is beyond intoxicating. What you’re doing right now is nothing compared to the skill he displays when he dances, but you understand a little better why he does this for a living. You feel like you could do anything right now.

As you come back up, you lean into him, hands on his chest, your face so close to his, and this time the need to kiss him is too strong, so you stop denying yourself, connecting your mouths briefly, just enough to have him chasing you when you pull away. Before he can protest, you distract him by pulling your dress over your head in one swift movement.

“Baby,” he moans, eyeing the matching lingerie set you picked out especially for tonight, his favorite color and his favorite texture, the black lace just begging him to run his fingertips all over it. “Is that new?”

Of course he’d notice. He’s got the contents of your underwear drawer practically memorized. Not surprising since most of the sets are from him. He’s got a thing for nice lingerie and you’re more than happy to indulge him.

“Bought it just for you.” With your back to him, you straddle one of his thighs, centering yourself on the thick muscle, and roll your hips in slow figure eights. Grabbing his hands, you wrap them around you, placing one on your bra and the other just over the band of your panties. “Do you like?”

Jungkook’s answer is a wordless growl as he strokes the lace. You hum, tossing your head back so it rests on his shoulder, and slip the hand over your lower stomach down further, until he’s cupping your mound.

“Ah!” you gasp, hips jutting forward when his eager fingers go rogue and press against you in a sign of his slipping control. “I - I’m guessing that means yes.”

“It means fuck yes,” Jungkook declares. “You’re driving me insane right now, you know that?”

“I think I’m getting the idea,” you reply, trying to focus on finishing your dance and not just outright humping his hand. Tracing your fingernails down his forearms makes him loosen his grip enough for you to climb off him. As the next track plays, you drape yourself over the side of the couch so your back hits his lap, and lie there shimmying to the beat for a few seconds before unhooking your bra and tossing it aside.

“Jagiya,” Jungkook rasps roughly, tongue licking furiously at his lips, and even though you’re only maybe halfway through the routine you’d been practicing, you decide to skip to the end, because clearly your boyfriend is close to breaking, and frankly, so are you.

You throw your leg over his lap, straddling him again. Taking his hands, you lace your fingers together, using him as a counterweight to help you dip backwards, so low your head nearly brushes the ground, before you roll back up, pressing your forehead to his. You stare at his mouth and he stares at yours as you inhale a steadying breath to speak.

“You can touch me now.”

The current of electricity simmering between you suddenly blazes out, igniting the air around you. His hands slide to the small of your back, and your arms loop around his neck, both of you pulling each other as close as possible as you meet in a charged kiss. Jungkook moans into your lips, tongue chasing the sound. Your mouth parts to let him in.

Jungkook’s hands keep moving, gripping your waist, your ass, your breasts - it’s like he’s been starving for you, like those few minutes that he wasn’t allowed to hold you were an eternity and now that they’re over he must take his fill. Your skin vibrates beneath his fingertips, so much pent-up energy ready to burst, and you seek an outlet, grinding your hips down onto his.

“Kookie,” you whine helplessly, and Jungkook grunts in response, rutting his erection against you, fitting between your legs so perfectly, the two of you like puzzle pieces coming together to form a complete picture of lust.

“I’m here, jagi,” he murmurs, lips brushing along your jawline and back to your mouth before continuing down the other side. “I’m here.”

In a second, you’re on your back, watching Jungkook peel off his shirt before he covers your body with his. His kisses are just as greedy as his touches, and you lose yourself in him, devouring the desire on his lips with a wild ravenousness of your own.

But as he trails kisses down your body, you open your eyes and stare directly at the chandelier hanging over you, and a thought hits you with startling clarity - oh, right, you’re still at Paradise. At Jungkook’s place of work.

“Jungkook. Jungkook,” you repeat, threading your fingers through his hair to tug his head off your breast, where his tongue was lapping at your nipple. “Should we do this here?”

Jungkook blinks at you a few times. “Isn’t this - don’t you want to?”

Of course you want to. But all those times you’d pictured this moment, your best hope was that he’d enjoy the dance and promise to thank you in private later when he got off work. You hadn’t really considered that you’d do such an amazing job that the two of you would fuck on the spot. (Okay, that’s a lie, you’d considered it a lot. But still. Imagining fucking your boyfriend at his job and actually fucking your boyfriend at his job are two very different things.)

“I want to,” you reassure him, brushing a wandering drop of sweat from his brow. “I just don’t want to get you in trouble.”

Jungkook laughs, leaning up to press a kiss to your cheek. “Baby, trust me, I’m not the first one to do this. There’s a reason “no sex in the champagne room” is a saying.” He sees the mix of confusion and disgust on your face and laughs again. “I’m not worrying about it and neither should you. But if you are, we don’t have to do anything. This has been more than enough for me.”

“So… you liked your dance?” you ask in a tiny voice.

Jungkook lets out a pained groan. “Baby, I loved it. I can’t believe you did all this for me.” His hand brushes over your hip, playing with the lace there. “You’re too good to me, you know that?”

“Not true.” If anything, he’s the one too good to you. “But I’m trying.”

He kisses you again, slow and sweet. You feel yourself melting into his embrace. Any remaining concerns vanish as Jungkook lowers his head, taking your nipple into his mouth again with a messy kiss. If he’s not worried, why should you be? Besides, as you arch your back, chasing Jungkook’s tongue as he drags it down your torso, only an apocalypse could stop you now, and maybe not even that.

“You know,” you start, gasping slightly when his teeth graze lightly over the swell of your stomach, “I’ve fantasized about this.”

Jungkook glances up at you. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. I mean, I usually pictured you dancing for me, but, um, we always ended up fucking.” A flash of heat licks the back of your neck as you meet Jungkook’s eye.

“That’s usually how I imagine it, too,” Jungkook informs you. The casual admission of this mutual secret fantasy stokes your arousal. Jungkook flames it further when he ruts his hard cock against you. “Sometimes you ride me, sometimes I bend you over this couch, but it always starts with me giving you a private show.”

Your breath leaves you in a hiss. “Fuck. That sounds good.”

“Which one?”

“Both,” you groan, rolling your hips. “All of it.”

Jungkook kisses your neck to smother his laughter. “It’s not too late, you know. I can make those fantasies come true.” His tone deepens as he speaks, becoming darker. Oh, you know this tone so well. He’s shifting to demon mode.

“Another time. I mean,” you clarify immediately, not wanting him to misunderstand, “you can give me a private dance another time.”

“Aww, is my baby too worked up right now?” he teases, and this time he doesn’t bother to even try to hide his laughter when you whine, pressing your hips into him again. “Okay, jagi, I promise I’ll dance for you another time. I won’t make you wait any longer.”

Again he slides down your body, kissing over the soft lace of your underwear. He pulls your thighs apart with his hands so he can stick his face directly between them. His stuttered breath blows hot over the damp material barely covering you. Impatient, you reach to push your panties down, but Jungkook grabs your hands and pins them over your head. “Kook!”

Jungkook shakes his head at your pouty cry. Leaning over you, he catches your bottom lip with his teeth, pulling it to his mouth for another wet kiss.

“Let me, baby,” he coos sweetly, and then he takes the lace band in his teeth and slowly drags your panties down your body using only his mouth.

“Fuck that’s hot,” you moan, unable to tear your gaze away. Jungkook hums, dropping the sodden silk on the ground before lowering his lips to kiss your pussy. He’s sloppy and loud, and in a brief lucid flash of sanity you pray that the music covers the sounds out in the hallway.

Jungkook always moves at his own pace, in his own time, and nowhere is that more evident than the way goes down on you. He loves building you up slowly, so slowly, until you’re going out of your mind begging him to let you cum. Tonight, however, he’s moving fast, slipping two fingers inside you, getting you ready for him. If asked, he’d claim it was for you, but the truth is that he needs you as much as you need him right now.

“Love the way you taste,” he murmurs, fingers spreading you wider, dragging his tongue over your clit. He curls his fingers, smirking at your gasp, and repeats the movement. It feels so good, too good, so your hand snakes out and grabs his wrist, and he stills, looking up at you in confusion.

“Wanna come on your cock,” you explain.

He groans, reclining back on his knees. “Whatever you want, jagiya,” he says, fingers flying to the laces on his leather pants. He’s used to taking his time untying them on stage, drawing the moment out seductively, a marked contrast to the clumsy way he tugs on them now, trying to undo them as quickly as he can.

With only a little bit of struggling, he pushes his pants down, then kicks them off completely. He wraps one hand around his hard length, thumb and forefinger pinching slightly just below the flushed head. Your teeth sink into your lip as you stare at him, taking in sight of this gorgeous man kneeling between your legs, looking every bit as hungry as you feel.

“Tell me how you want it.”

You clench unconsciously at Jungkook’s command, mind running through all the possibilities. Honestly, you don’t care how, you just need him inside you now.

So you reach out, gently prying his fingers away from his cock. Jungkook sighs when you take it in your hand, a sound of deep-seated contentment, like he’s been waiting all night for you to touch him. You understand the sentiment, thighs twitching as you slowly pump him a few times, using his slickness to make your movements easier.

“Just like this,” you say, guiding him towards your slit. He hisses as you slide his head through your folds, and presses forward a bit, helping you coat him in your arousal.

“Okay, jagiya,” he murmurs. He arranges himself between your legs, lifting one calf, then the other, over his broad shoulders. You shiver, breathless with anticipation as you catch the feral glint in his eyes. “Just like this.”

A harmonious pair of moans fill the room when he enters you. He waits for a moment, because as rushed as his fingering was, it wasn’t enough to fully stretch you out enough for him. When you whisper, “okay,” he starts to move. The first few rolls of his hips are slow and easy, him savoring the tight warmth of your cunt around him, you delighting in the sensation of being filled so completely. He kisses the side of your knee, staring down at you as you whimper beneath him with every languid thrust.

When your hands stretch out for him, he leans down, bending you in half to press his mouth to yours. He sinks deeper into you, your bodies locking together more closely, and you lace your fingers through his hair, until you’re breathing each other’s kisses like air. You whisper Jungkook’s name and he sighs yours back.

“Love you so much, jagi.”

His mouth nudges your head to the side in search of that sensitive spot behind your ear, and you open your eyes to catch sight of the two of you in the mirror. Even if the room were pitch black right now, you’d be able to see yourself lying there, the way you’re lit from within. Your love for Jungkook burns inside you like a star in the night sky, pulsing bright and steady.

“I love you, too.”

Jungkook’s pace steadies, his pelvis starting to bounce off your ass with more speed.

“Oh, fuck, yes, baby,” you moan, watching him piston his cock inside you. “More, please, Kookie! More!”

Never let it be said that your boyfriend doesn’t listen. He pulls out, getting off the couch, and, with strong hands gripping your thighs, positions you with your hips resting on the arm of the couch, to raise you high enough for him to plunge back in from a standing position.

And then he gives you exactly what you asked for.

Jungkook fucks you hard and fast. His furrowed brow drips with sweat as he snaps his hips into you. You know nothing could break his concentration now - eyes sharply focusing on your expression, ears listening for the change in the pitch of your voice. When he feels your walls starting to constrict, he grips your thighs to tilt you just enough to find the right angle to tap your sweet spot with every pump -

“Jungkook!” With a loud gasp of his name, your climax arrives. Your cunt pulsates so tightly around him that Jungkook clamps his arms around your legs, pulling your ass flush against him so he can grind into you.

“Oh, fuck, jagi, ‘m so close.” His voice is already wrecked, sounding rough and broken. He bends slightly at the waist, forcing your legs closer to your stomach, putting you at an odd angle, but you’re still buzzing with pleasure so you don’t notice the stretch, just let out a low moan as Jungkook starts to move again.

He bends further, sliding his hands behind your back, and then he lifts you, using that surprising strength of his to hold you as he slides around to sit on the couch. Your legs support you just long enough to straddle him, and then you sink down onto his cock, more than happy to collapse against Jungkook as he fucks up into you.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he chants, bringing one of his hands up to cup your cheek. “Always so good, jagi.” You meet his gaze, struck by the love you see in his eyes. No matter how often he looks at you like this, it makes your heart sing every time. You kiss him before sitting up, meeting his thrusts with your own movements.

“Come for me, Kookie,” you murmur sweetly, drawing your boyfriend’s eye with the movement of your hand as it heads down your stomach. Your fingers rub at your clit, rolling the engorged nub around, and the delicious drag of his cock inside your constricting walls has you hurtling towards a second orgasm just as Jungkook reaches his first.

Your playlist begins the last song as the two of you cling to each other on the couch. Jungkook’s arms are still locked around your back while you rest your head on his shoulder. He sings along quietly to the music, his soothing voice wrapping around you like a blanket. It’s a favorite song of his, just as it’s a favorite of yours - the song from your rooftop dance at Jennie and Yoongi’s wedding.

When the music ends, Jungkook sighs. “We should definitely do this again.”

You laugh, sitting up. He grins at you and you lean forward to press a light peck to the tiny mole under his lip. “I may have booked you all night.”

“Like I was gonna let you walk out of here anytime soon,” he scoffs. He stops your giggling with his kiss, lips soft and lingering, and you sigh, hugging him close again.

There’s a part of you that can’t believe you just fucked your boyfriend in a strip club, but somehow it felt inevitable that you two would end up here like this. Like from the moment you walked in here all those months ago, there was no other way this would go.

It was such a strange trip to think about. You had to go all the way to Paradise to meet the love of your life who lived next door. Fate could really take the most roundabout way, but the journey was more than worth it.

“You really didn’t have to do all of this for me.” Jungkook’s voice brings you back to the moment.

“I want to do everything for you,” you reply with a shake of your head. “You deserve the world, Kookie.”

“I have everything I could ever want, jagiya. Right here in my arms.”

Normally, this is where you would roll your eyes at him for being so sappy, but that’s hard to do when you’re blinking back tears. Instead, you squeeze him a little tighter, so he knows that you feel the same way.

“You know…” Jungkook starts after a few seconds, then stops. You shake him a little to urge him to go on. “There is something else I’ve been thinking about. Something I want to do, but I wasn’t sure if you’d be into it.”

“What is it?”

He glances down, and there’s the shy bunny smile that you remember from all those months ago. “I’d love to paint you.”

“Naked?” you whisper, hand to your chest, looking scandalized.

He laughs, nose wrinkling in glee. “That actually wasn’t what I meant but I’m absolutely down if you are.”

“We’ll see,” you grin, kissing his cheek. “One thing at a time. Right now, we’ve got this room to ourselves, and I believe you promised me a dance.”

“Yes I did,” Jungkook agrees, chin jutting out to catch your next kiss with his lips. “Anything for my love.”

“I love you, too,” you sigh, kissing him back.

************************************************************************

A/N 2: Yes, there will still be some drabbles down the line, but this is the end of the main story! Thank you for sticking with me! 💕

If you liked this fic, please consider reblogging! Likes do not help it get seen by other readers. 💕

Masterlist 💜 Find me on AO3 💜

#bts smut #jungkook smut #bts scenarios #bts imagines #bts x reader #jungkook x reader #jeon jungkook smut #jeon jungkook x reader #jungkook x you #jeon jungkook x you #jungkook fanfic #bts fanfic #thebtswritersclub #fic: paradise

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uhohdad · 4 months

Text

THE GIRL WHO CONQUERED THE MOUNTAIN

KONIG X READER [HUNGER GAMES AU]

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

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

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

➤ THE GAMES

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

You know what this knock means.

This is your call to death.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No words are exchanged.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your face loosens for just a moment.

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

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

“Mhm,” She hums, “Now win.”

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

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

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

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

“Hey,” Mauve says.

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

“You’ve got it.”

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

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

Mauve gives you one final nod.

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

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

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

Sixty Seconds.

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

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

Desert.

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

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

Forty-Five Seconds.

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

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

Summer, Spring, Winter, Fall.

Cute, Capitol.

Thirty Seconds.

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

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

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

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

Fifteen Seconds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Konig.

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

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

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

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

Konig is trying to kill you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I would kill if I need to.’

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

Just a lie, something to keep your guard down.

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

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

Konig specifically wanted to be the one to kill you.

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

You’d been right all along.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can work with maple seeds.

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

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

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

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

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

The boom of the cannon makes you flinch.

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

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

Nine fires. Nine tributes dead.

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

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

Don’t think about it.

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

Another thought makes you stop.

Nine of you dead.

Is Konig still alive?

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

You… don’t want him to be dead.

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

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

Shut up, Price! Shut up! Shut up!

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

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

He’s not dead.

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

He’s not dead.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They’re lucky you’re docile.

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

So sorry to disappoint.

When the cannon goes off, you flinch again.

Okay, maybe you weren’t being televised.

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

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

You really hope he’s still alive.

Fourteen left. Thirteen not including you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The next face is the girl from ten.

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

Konig’s alive.

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

Konig’s alive.

And killing.

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

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

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

Both from District One & Two.

Both from District Four.

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

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

You & Konig.

The boy from ten.

The girl from eleven.

That’s it, you think.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The career pack will be hunting, no doubt.

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

Maybe you just look into things too much.

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

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

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

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

He was probably the one who killed her.

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

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

But maybe he does miss her.

Maybe her death did mean something to him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And also not dying.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Get your head in the fucking game.’

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

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

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

You need to get upside-right.

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

Think, think, think!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘C’mon, Plucky.’

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

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

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

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

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

Slowly, painfully, you climb.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Atta’ girl.

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

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

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

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

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

The boy from eight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Wh-“

“Willow! The girl from my district!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You take a generous amount of breaks to rest.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another tribute down. Thirteen tributes left.

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

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

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

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

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

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

When you wake up, you’re already laughing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can’t get up.

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

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

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

The sky turns to a starless, inky black void.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then you see yourself.

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

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

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

There you are.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Ni-iiine! Where you at Nine?!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We just want to talk!”

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

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

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

No one should be this cheerful in the arena.

It’s not human.

“Where’d she go?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By some miracle, you go undetected.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They look delicious.

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

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

Fuck.

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

You can’t do it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unfortunately, your next thought is of Konig.

No.

You cannot think of him.

It’s only a matter of time now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eleventh place isn’t so bad.

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

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

Staring into Eleven’s eyes.

But it always seems to come back to Konig.

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

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

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

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

How humiliating.

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

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

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

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

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

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

But they don’t come.

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

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

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

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

You wonder if anyone’s betting on you.

You curiously comb over the possible tributes that remain.

The girl from one.

Both from two.

Both from four.

Boy from six. Boy from seven.

Both from eight.

You.

And Konig.

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

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

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

You wonder what Konig thinks of you still being alive.

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

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

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

Maybe he’s happy you’re alive.

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

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

All after he tried to kill you.

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

Back to the snow today.

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

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

You head in what you think is the right direction.

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

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

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

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

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

And why not admit it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No.

That is no animal.

That is a person.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Please,” Whispered like a desperate prayer.

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

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

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

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

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

One for her, one for him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you don’t miss.

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

This seems like your best bet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your face tightens, you take a deep inhale-

But you can’t do it.

You can’t kill this boy.

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

Your eyes flit behind you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Excited voices, more than one, are approaching.

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

Out of the fucking frying pan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe this would be a good time to die.

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

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

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

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

You really did give it your best shot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He gives you a smile, exposing his menacing canines.

“Yet.”

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

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

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

“Just kill me!”

He snorts before throwing his head back in another laugh.

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

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

He gives another laugh.

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

Just get it over with.

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

“Fuck you!” You grunt.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You won’t.

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

He may kill you.

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

Your dignity, he may not.

That is something that only you are entitled to tarnish.

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

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

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

You do not hesitate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The careers think that you and Konig are allies.

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

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

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

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

Price, you think.

It was Price.

Price saved you back there, not you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is that when Price got the idea?

It’s genius.

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

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

Why didn’t you think of it?

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

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

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

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

It’s an impossible arrangement.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your head drops back into the grass in defeat.

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

Because you know what the alternative is.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is hard to ignore how lonely you are.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You tuck it away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is the finale.

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

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

You clip your shoulder on the entrance and hiss with pain, hand immediately springing up to rub out your shoulder. As you run, you pull your hand away to find your palm coated in bright red blood.

Your arm stays firmly pressed to your upper arm, futilely trying to staunch the flow as you push forward, careful not to brush against the hedge’s walls.

The ground starts to rumble again, vibrating under your feet but with much less intensity than the fall quadrant. It’s still enough to throw you off balance, a hand springing out to find support but only slicing open your palm on the hedge’s defenses. Your hand, now dripping with blood, pulls to your chest as you fall to your knees from the shaking earth.

This is it.

You are surely going to die in this awful hedge maze. The maze that offput you so before will be your final resting place.

It takes you a moment to realize the walls are sinking into the ground. Its leaves and pink blossoms being swallowed up by the dirt. You squint up to see the tops of the mazes revealing more and more sky as they descend.

You bring yourself to shaky feet, surveilling the descent of the walls.

Your heart pounds at the possibilities that will soon be revealed to you. Surely what lies behind these walls will be your death.

When the walls have descended to your height, you shakily get to your feet, peering over to find only more hedge.

The walls disappear, the tops coated with a layer of grass that melds perfectly to the ground and leaves no evidence of their existence, and the earth stops shaking beneath you.

Only four walls remain in an equal square with no exits, trapping you alone in a large grass field. You take a moment to survey your wounds, peeling your hand off your shoulder. Your shoulder was flayed, inflamed four-inch slashes burning along your upper bicep. Oozing, thick red blood drains freely from the raised flesh, staining your jacket and coating your hands in its warmth. The slices on your palms were serated, whatever having sliced it carving out extra flesh as the ground jolted you around.

With your good hand you reapply pressure to your shoulder in an attempt to staunch the flow of blood as you inspect one of the remaining hedge walls.

They were barbed. What seemed like inviting leaves and cherry blossoms are actually spikes and petals of razor sharp blades.

Once you’ve made the discovery you make distance from the walls, looking around for the horror they clearly wanted you to face.

For a moment your eyes are searching the hedges, waiting for impossible beasts to slink from the wall’s blades. Capitol mutts bred designed with psychological and physical damage in mind.

You get the opportunity to catch your breath, checking on your wounds in between scans for threat.

A flinch tears through you when the ground rumbles again.

Through the disorientation of the trembling dirt, you make out that only one wall is descending, and it was not one that leads to open air, but one that lead to another chamber within the maze.

At the massive hedges sink lower, you can see the area leading to it has also shed its complex chambers, revealing a similar square pen of hedges.

Whatever awaits for you on the other side, you’re about to be ensnared with it in a rectangular prison with no chance to escape except to bury yourself through the hedge’s razor sharp blossoms.

You reach to prime your blow dart, but your hands come up empty. Frantic hands pull the rope from your torso and scramble through the loop of rope, but it’s gone.

It’s gone.

Surely lost to the lava, knocked free from your shoddy knots during the earthquake.

The dread is instantaneous, flooding you from head to toe with a nauseating heat. Your only shot, you just let your only shot drain through your fingers.

Fuck.

When the wall is three feet from the ground, you can see a singular tribute on the other side, bent over in a similar position to support themselves on the ground that thrusts you about.

As soon as the tops of the maze sinks into the ground and disappears, the tribute is already tearing through the grass and in a beeline straight towards you.

It’s the girl from District One.

“Nine!” She yells in a war cry so daunting it makes your gut instinctively twist.

In her hand she wields her spear, coated in layers of blood. From the old, crusted brown of week-old kills to the deep red at its silver tip, freshly drained from minute-old wounds.

Your breath catches, eyes wide.

You were surely going to die, another blood stain to decorate her spear.

You’d never seen so much rage coming from one person. Not even the boy from eleven or Konig, both moments from killing you, didn’t wear an expression with this degree of loathing.

A sickening, animalistic wail rips from the back of her throat as she raised her spear, not breaking her lengthy strides.

“He killed him!’ Her froths carry when she’s close enough, “He killed him!”

You’re not sure who ‘He’ or ‘Him’ is, but you know you’re about the take the blunt of her vengeance.

‘Just don’t let anyone in there use it against you, okay?’

Your brows pinch, you take one breath to steady yourself, and you brace.

When she’s only a few yards away, she launches her spear at you, another pained cry shrilling throughout her grunt. When you make a dive out of the way, you can hear the spear whiz right by your ear and disturb tufts of your hair. You’re sure it nicked you, but when your hand comes up to your ear to confirm you’re not sure if the blood on your hands is from the wound inflicted from the hedges or her.

You rush for the spear that lodges in the dirt three feet from you. You’re quick but she beats you to it, and you have no choice but to cling onto the blood-stained handle with your injured hands and hope that she can’t make enough distance to pierce you with it.

“He killed him!” She repeats, words so savage she’s spitting in your face.

The spear lays horizontally between your chests, erratically jerking in the space between you as you grapple for it.

She’s all muscle, arms toned and her face doesn’t look any more hollowed than it did when she stepped into the arena. It’s easy to see she’s overpowering you, flinging you around as she yanks on the spear in your firm grip.

“He killed him! He killed him!” These words punctuate each torque of the blood-stained handle, a vicious replay spewing from her mouth on repeat until it turns into a brutal harmonization. With each pull you wince as the tainted wood forces against your sliced hands.

It’s the neck snapping of the boy from eleven, and with each yank that pulls you forward you see Konig snapping the boy’s neck.

“He killed him!” Yank, snap! “He killed him!” Yank, snap! “He killed him!” Yank, snap!

From here you can see the tears streaming down her face.

It must be the look of bewilderment, or maybe pity, that flashes across your face, because as soon as you notice her tears her face relaxes for just a moment, like she’s waking up from a dream. She cuts off her repeated cries with another vicious grunt, tightening her grip onto the spear’s staff, and runs full force at you.

The weight of her pulling the spear closer suddenly disappears, knocking you off balance. The handle catches on your collarbones and sends you both crashing to the ground.

You don’t let go of the spear as she moves to straddle you, sliding down your thighs and planting herself firmly on your stomach. White knuckles contrast the blood you’re adding to her collections of stains, mutilated palms fighting for the spear.

With one hand she forces the staff of the spear into your sternum hard, and with the other she swings at you, connecting her fist to the side of your jaw with enough force to make you see a blinding white.

When you return, hands still clasped firmly around the spear, she’s digging into her waistband for something that will surely end your life.

You trash violently under her before you find some fucking sense and use your good hand to reach through the hem of your collar, into your sports bra, and retrieve your multi-tool.

Pluck and a multi-tool, that’s all you have.

You were most certainly going to die.

You manage to flip out the first tool your blood-covered fingernail found as she reveals a six-inch long silver blade.

“He killed mine, I kill his!” Her scream is guttural, her words through hysterical tears barely registering when she swings using both hands to thrust the blade down into your skull.

With a swing of your arm you block the knife, slicing a deep, lengthy gash into your forearm as your other hand jams the inch-long corkscrew straight into her eye.

The shriek of pain is unlike any other you’ve ever heard. It completely swallows your cry from the deep gash on your arm elicited. The feeling, the sound, of her eyeball squelching as the corkscrew pierced is still shooting up your arms, making your body cringe more than the nasty gash she left behind. Immediately her tensed body folds in on itself, her fingers shooting up to thread through the multi-tool and coating her hands with the steady stream of blood.

With all you have, a grunt escaping from deep in your diaphragm, you work yourself free from her restraint while she’s distracted by her wounds.

You retrieve her spear, now stained heavily with the same blood that spews from the gashes along your shoulder, arm, and hand, coating you in dark red sleeves of dripping blood. The girl swings at you, but not yet used to her loss of depth perception and debilitating pain, misjudges how far away you are.

You take a moment to let yourself wallow in your pain, to shake the feeling of skewering the girl’s eye that still shed tears as you back away from her haunting wails.

She’s foaming obscenities at you, trying to come to her feet but dropping to her knees as the jostling of the multi-tools shoots pain through her with another haunting wail of agony.

When she reaches up to yank the multitool from her eye, you prime yourself with the spear, pointing it in the direction of a howl so piercing it deafens you. Her blood covered eye is still threaded onto the corkscrew when she pops it free, ripping out a chunk of her shredded optic nerve with it.

You have to close your eyes, your heart sinking as you wince in sympathy at her pain.

You can’t bring yourself to end her like this. Now would be the time, it would be the smart thing to do. You’re perfectly justified, you know that. She attacked you, she tried to end your life, and you are completely in the clear morally and legally.

Through her sharp sobs you can hear Price’s voice. He’s screaming at you through the screen, he’s giving you permission, he is telling you to use that pluck to give her spear one last poetic stain.

But you can’t do it.

Her maimed wails are drawing nothing but pity, knowing you are the one who is responsible for her pain, even if she had just tried to wedge a knife through your skull.

“Nine!” She shrieks a yell of vengeance and pain from her mouth coated in the blood that pours from her eye socket.

“Nine!”

She shakily gets to her feet, her hands already swiping for you, blindly swinging the multi-tool still stabbed through her own eye even though you’ve trailed your blood at least twenty yards away.

“Stay away!” You yell as your slices palm screams under a tightened grip on her spear.

“Nine!” She cries, her feet picking up into an unsteady jog toward the sound of your voice.

You back away, keeping the spear firmly pointed in her direction.

The girl from one, blinded by her injuries, tears, and rage, does not slow when she runs full force into her own spear, the entire silver tip disappearing into the flesh just under her rib cage.

The wooden, round end of the spear thrusts into your gut with a breathtaking amount of force. Your eyes were already closed when she coughs a warm, sticky spray of blood onto your face.

She’s choking on her own blood, the last haunting sounds of life gurgling from the back of her throat.

You don’t let go of your grip on the staff until the girl from one goes limp, her body dropping to the ground and pulling her spear from your blood-covered hands. Even when the cannon’s boom fires to signify her death, you can’t open your eyes, can’t bear to see the girl from District One’s lifeless body. Your tears begin to streak the fresh blood on your face.

“I’m sorry!” You scream in the direction of her body, “I’m sorry!”

Your pleading cries become hysterical, your words repeating as foaming as the girl from one’s as she charged at you with the same spear that killed her. The feeling of her squishing eye still shoots up the bones of your arms and down your spine.

Your eyes finally snap open at the encore of the ground shaking.

You try and move away from the girl from one, her body bouncing up and down like a rag doll - and suddenly you’re staring at the Eleven’s lifeless body bouncing off the metal platform.

You’re knocked to your limbs, blood draining freely down your arms and painting the grass with generous red streaks as the earth quakes.

The large hedge wall is descending, and as it is swallowed into the ground you can see what remains of the hedge maze, entirely stripped of its inner walls and chambers. Over the top of the descending wall you can see another large, rectangular pen of equal size that will soon form a square of the hedge’s outer most borders with no exits in sight.

When the wall has fully descended, you rise to shaky feet and find two tributes rising from the ground that finally settles. Two more tributes lie dead in heaps on the grass at the far end of the maze.

The tribute on the right is The Mountain, no mistaking that size, but he’s covered from head to toe in gear. Thick gloves. A pair of green cargo pants. Black guards on his joints and forearms. A holster sits at his upper thigh, carrying some sort of blade. He wears a thick black vest on his front that spills over with supplies.

The most haunting is the mask, a nearly uniform black fabric that drapes over his neck and bunches around his vest, pinned in place underneath a tactical helmet. It reminds you of an executioner.

He doesn’t even look human . Any comfort you had found from him before the games, any scraps that remained after he snapped that boys neck and raced to kill you, has completely disintegrated.

The mask has two circular cutouts above two faint streaks of color and reveal the only part of him exposed to light, those eyes that have shared so many reassuring glances with you - and they’re staring in your direction.

You hear him shout something at you, your name, you think, that harsh voice carrying all the way from across the hedge maze. His hands find his head before he starts in a jog to you, slowing when he sees the body of the girl from one, imbedded on a spear and lying limp in the grass.

He looks back to you, and then his head whips in the direction of the other tribute to find a knife flying in his direction. He throws himself to the ground in a dodge, and the boy from two takes his opportunity to advance on Konig in a full sprint, already reaching into his jacket pocket for a replacement weapon.

Konig rolls forward before getting to his feet, making a run for you.

You’re frozen again, eyes flicking between both of the imminent threats before you, trying to figure out who you should focus on first.

You start in a run towards the girl from one’s body, not slowing, but wincing as you pull the spear from her abdomen without looking down. You run a few more yards before whipping around, slightly crouched as you extend the spear in the direction of Konig and the boy from District Two. Titan, the boy with canines that come to perfect, razor sharp points.

Konig fumbles when he meets your eyes, the fear and the determination in them as you point your weapon at him. He slows, his eyes momentarily finding the tip of the spear, and then the body of the girl from one before he turns to look for Titan. He retrieves a large knife, it’s not the scythe you saw him wielding at the bloodbath, but it’s similar. A long, silver blade that almost constitutes a sword raised in warning at Titan.

Titan slows, and sidesteps to survey you both. The body of the girl from District One lays limp in the center of a three-way standoff, with two boys who very much dominate you in size and strength on either side.

Titan gives a cruel laugh, showing off his razor sharp canines. The knife he had retrieved from his jacket falls to his side, as if he’s not even worried about either of you atttacking.

“Where you been District Nine?!” He yells almost teasingly from his spot, clearly directed at you. You tighten your grip on your spear with your blood-soaked palms, brows furrowing.

“I’ve been looking for you!” Titan follows up in an almost sing-song tune.

He laughs at your confused face, the way your eyes uneasily flick from Konig to Titan.

Titan takes two slow yet confident steps in your direction, and both you and Konig prime your weapons with a flinch.

Titan laughs again, bending his core - as if you treating him like a rabid lion was just so hilarious it steals the breath from him.

“You two, wow. What a pair!”

You and Konig share an unsure glance before returning your careful eyes to Titan.

He points at Konig with his knife, “You I expected. It was always you, right?” He sloppily points the blade in your direction.

“You I didn’t expect!”

He laughs again, taking a few more slow steps toward you, “We knew what you were, though!” He shakes his head, “We knew you were important. Just didn’t think you’d make it this far.”

“It’s a good thing you did,” A cruel smile unwinds across his face, canines fully exposed, “I hate admitting this, but I don’t think I’d be able to do it without you.”

He finishes by taking a few more steps towards you, and Konig follows his lead this time, both of them closing in on you.

You have to stop taking steps away when the end of your spear brushes against razor sharp leaves.

“Back up!” You spit, thrusting the tip of the spear in the air in Titan’s direction as a warning. He holds his hands up, the knife held with just a few of fingers as he displays his palms.

“Easy now, Plucky,” He says with a condescending smirk, “I wouldn’t want to end up like your friend here.”

Titan doesn’t drop his smile in the slightest when his boot steps on the corpse of the girl from one, a symphony of ribs snapping under his boot.

You suck in a breath at the noise, the boy from eleven blinding you with his lifeless eyes. Your whole body cringes, eyes pinching closed and stomach threatening the retch.

Snap, bounce, dead.

The boy from two’s boots break into a sprint towards you, followed shortly by the sound of Konig’s footsteps, and all you can see is Eleven’s lifeless eyes as you swing your spear blindly through the guts of the girl from District One.

You hear Konig’s harsh voice shout.

The spear’s handle scrapes painfully against your flayed palm as it’s ripped from your grasp, a pair of brute arms trapping around you as you flail your limbs, scratching and clawing at faceless muscle.

You’re quickly jerked so that the assailant is behind you, pressing your back to his chest. A sturdy forearm wraps across your collarbones, the other digging firmly into your lower stomach.

When you’re firmly pinned, you can see Konig, frozen in place and staring right at you through his hood as you thrash in Titan’s arms.

You can feel the vibrations of his words on your back you when he speaks, his lips tickling your ear as he coos into it, “Oh, it’s okay, Funny Girl. You don’t need to fight it.”

Your head trashes violently against his sternum, spitting grunts leaving your raw throat as your bloody, injured hands scratch at his forearms.

“I said don’t fight it!”

You flinch at the volume of Titan’s voice, no longer playful and teasing, booming his direct order in your ear as he shakes you in his grip.

His arm slides up from your chest to wrap around your neck, nestling you between a bulging forearm and bicep. He gives you a warning squeeze, cutting off your air just to show you he can.

“Behave!” He hisses in your ear.

Your hand comes up to grab onto Titan’s crushing arms, futilely pawing at him in an effort to give yourself more breathing room.

All you can do is stare wide-eyed at a faceless Konig, his blade primed as you wriggle in Titan’s grip.

Titan lifts your feet off the ground by your neck, drawing half of an inhuman squeak from you before your windpipe is fully constricted.

“Now drop it!” Titan yells.

Your legs kick in the air as you search for ground, fingernails scratching at Titan’s arm and leaving streaks of your own blood behind. Eyes wide with terror and mouth gaping for air that can’t be inhaled.

“Drop it or I kill her!”

Konig lets his weapon fall to the ground, slowly raising his arms to show his empty palms to Titan.

Titan laughs, letting you dangle and struggle for air a little while longer until he sets your feet back on the ground. He takes his arm off your neck and puts his palm to your forehead, pinning your head against his chest.

Immediately you’re pulling in breaths, choking on the air you’d been fighting for with everything you have.

Titan’s just giddy with excitement, even doing a shuffle with his feet to release some of his energy.

“Do you see this, Funny Girl?” Titan whispers, his lips pressed against the grooves of your ear as you cough for air, “See how you reduce a mountain to a molehill?”

You jerk your head away from him, squirming in his grasp, but he applies more pressure to your forehead.

“This is just perfect! This is rich,” Titan laughs before he continues, “You know only one of you can leave, right?” He throws his head back in a laugh, forcing your body to turn slightly to the right.

His voice drops, each word coming to a point that digs at Konig, “And yet you’d still sacrifice yourself to save a girl that never had a chance.”

Konig must have some sort of plan you don’t fully understand, because none of his actions are rational.

“Don’t be shy, Konig. Come on down!” He says with an over-the-top voice.

Titan laughs again as Konig takes careful steps closer, palms still displayed in surrender.

Titan presses his lips back to your ear and speaks excitedly through clenched teeth.

“I am so glad you made it this far.”

He gives your body a shake before he leans down to plant a sloppy kiss on your cheek from behind.

You wince in disgust, giving a few more earnest thrashes against his arms.

It fills you with fury, actually.

This brute can have you restrained, manhandle you and steal your breath - that’s part of the game, you can’t blame him for that.

But to tease you like a cat does his prey?

To kiss you?

You’re over Titan, you decide.

“Oh, what’s the matter, Funny Girl?” He says in mock sympathy, removing the hand from your neck to cup your jaw, fingers creating indents on your face as he smears your own blood with his fingertips. He tilts both your body and your chin to force you to look at him.

“Don’t be upset,” He coos, ignoring your grit teeth and glaring eyes, “Some people were just born to serve me, to die for me.” His voice falls to a dangerous growl, his fingernails digging painfully into your cheeks, “Get over it.”

His eyes flick to Konig, who’s approaching too fast for his liking, “Woah, woah, woah there, lover boy.”

Titan’s arms switch positions, the one across your stomach rising to skim his knife across your front, the other letting go of your face to secure your waist to him. He presses the blade up to your throat, grazing the metal against the crook of your neck in a clear threat.

You tilt your chin up to get away from the blade, looking down your nose at Konig, who freezes.

“Did you not like that?” He asks Konig, applying more pressure on the blade to your neck, not yet breaking skin, but pulling a fearful squeak from you as the cool steel creases your flesh.

He lowers his voice to a purr, “Do you not like it when I touch your things?”

Titan takes his hand off your waist, knowing the knife on your throat will keep you firmly in place. He brings his other hand back up to your jaw, pinching your cheeks and shaking your head teasingly at Konig.

You and Konig have no choice but to lock eyes, his gear offering little comfort as you pull down on Titan’s arm. You can’t read much behind that half-lidded cold stare and black hood.

“Just do it!” You yell at Konig, “What are you waiting for?! Just kill us both!”

“Oh, I’m going to,” Titan presses his fingers tighter into your face in the assumption you were addressing him.

He shakes your head again and lowers his voice, pressing his lips back into your ear.

“But I’ve been waiting for this moment my whole life,” He says, “I’m going to take my time.”

“Do it Konig! Kill us both!” You yell, furrowing your brows and thrashing against Titan.

“Do it Konig!” Titan mocks. He puts his mouth back to your ear again, “Let’s see if he can do it.”

He pulls away to shout to Konig, keeping your face firmly in his hold, “Do it! Kill us both!”

Konig stays still in his spot, not reaching for his weapon, just flitting his eyes between you and Titan.

“What are you doing?!” You scream, “Do it!”

“Stupid girl,” Titan grits in your ear, “Don’t you know he can’t?”

You elbow him hard, and he makes a low guttural noise, briefly letting go of your face. You go to push free from his knife but his hand quickly snatches a head full of your hair.

You let out a yelp as he jerks your head backwards, his knife briefly jutting out in the direction of Konig, who used your distraction as a chance to near closer. He’s close now, but when Titan notices this he takes a few steps backwards, dragging you back by your hair with him.

Titan laughs at Konig, giving you a harsh yank on your scalp. “Trying to save her?”

The hand with the knife pulls back and snakes around your neck again, threatening to squeeze the life from you.

“Kill us! Don’t let him win!” You get out.

“I am so sick-” Titan cuts off his statement the same moment he cuts off your air, lifting you off the ground.

“Tell her!” He booms, “Tell her why you can’t do it!”

Konig’s hands lower, eyes widening as he watches you claw at his arms, blood still gushing from your wounds.

“Tell her or she dies! Tell her!” He jerks you around by your neck, body swaying like a rag doll.

Your nails dig into Titan hard enough to draw blood, your legs kick his with the soles of your boots, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“Tell her!” He shouts, his spit dotting your cheek. He makes a show of tightening his grip on you.

You’re vision is getting spotty, the swings of your fists slowing against unmatched strength.

“Last chance!” He says.

Konig sees the life fading from you, and breaks into a sprint, full force in your direction.

If you could speak, you’d tell him ‘finally.’

You close your eyes and brace for death, listening to the sound of Konig’s boots rapidly approaching and the blood pumping in your ears.

You take the brunt of his impact, your face and already injured arms on the receiving end of the supplies tucked in his chunky vest.

The three of you lose balance, toppling backwards until Titan regains his footing, and then you’re smushed in between two monstrous boys, waiting for one of them to take the win.

It happens so fast, and for most of it you had your eyes closed, but as soon as Titan releases his grip on your neck you’re roughly flung to the side where you drop to your hands and knees, coughing and wheezing as you try to catch your breath.

There’s the sound of impact after impact, and when you have the strength to lift your head, your heart stops.

Titan never regained his footing.

Konig had shoved you both backwards where the razor sharp hedge walls had imbedded themselves so far into Titan they’re supporting his weight. His knife lays unreachable at his feet, blood pouring generously and coating the leaves under his back in thick, dark red trickles.

Konig isn’t letting him slide off, one hand pressing firmly into his chest so the blades in the hedge walls work their way further into him.

Titan’s eyes are wide with shock, his head being forced to the side with each blow Konig lands to his face.

You jolt at the sight and fumble back into the grass as you crawl backwards from the altercation, eyes locked onto the scene you can’t bring yourself to look away from.

Konig lands a hit to Titan’s jaw, and blood sprays from his mouth. You hear a crack, Titan’s cheekbone shattering you think, and you finally pinch your eyes shut as the Eleven’s neck breaks behind your eyelids.

He’s delivering blow after blow, almost mechanically. One after another in beats so rhythmic you can anticipate and wince for the next strike before it even lands.

At least with the boy from eleven he made it quick and painless. Dead before he even knew what hit him.

This is overkill.

It’s twisting your gut, nausea boiling under your skin and bile creeping up the back of your throat.

You’re not sure why he doesn’t just grab the knife and finish him off.

You can’t think of a worse end. Beaten to death, feeling your skull steadily cave in, each punch pushing you closer and closer to death while jostled against a thousand blades.

When Konig is finally done with him, Titan is unrecognizable. Face mashed in, skull caved, beaten to a bloody pulp. His teeth chipped and broken, probably having swallowed his defining canines after Konig knocked them down his throat.

The boom of the cannon makes you flinch.

When Konig turns around and takes a couple steps back, he doesn’t look at you right away. He stares off into the distance at a far hedge wall. You can see the gear in his vest rising and falling with his heavy breaths. Filtering out whatever emotion must come with killing a man with your own fists, surely.

Titan’s body begins to slide forward, what’s left of his head pressed limply to his chest. He reaches a tipping point and his upper half drops, the rest of the blades on his lower back brutally ripping through his flesh as he collapses in a lifeless pile on the grass.

When Konig’s cold, deadly eyes find yours, you can’t help but start, letting out the squeak of a prey. You can’t move, lips parted, eyes blown in disbelief.

“Wait, please!” Your bloody palms shoot out defensively.

“You can have it!” You shout through a raw throat, voice desperate. You try to swallow the lump in your throat, but to no avail. Your voice lowers, “You can have the win, but please.”

Your words spill out one after another in a jumbled mess, “I just don’t want to die fighting, and afraid, and - “ You cut yourself off, your voice dropping to nothing but shallow breath, “Please.”

He’s silent, the half-lidded eyes through his black hood revealing nothing to you, still except for the steady rise and fall of his chest.

“Let’s just talk, before you do it, please. I - I don’t have any weapons,” You keep your arms up, your whole body shaking.

You pinch your eyes shut when it elicits no reaction, your voice shooting back up to raw and desperate, “Konig, please! Just let me prepare myself!”

“Please,” Your final beg finishes with a whimper, sight still cut off with a tight pinch.

And then you hear his boots take off in a full sprint, and you know that this is it.

He wants you to die scared and fighting.

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

326 notes · View notes

fadedncity · 4 days

Text

wc: 1.6k (teaser)

pairing: jeno x fem!reader

cw: supernatural!au, werewolf(lycan)!jeno, vampire!reader, natural enemies to lovers/forbidden love type of situation, injuries, blood, full fic tags: smut, angst, mention of death and family loss, flirting, sexual tension, teasing, pet names, oral sex, multiple orgasms, unprotected sex, way more plot than i expected, plus more

a/n: hey yall so i finished this fic a while ago and it’s just been sitting in my drafts and then i was kinda unsure whether i wanted to post it but i still might. so lmk what you think!

TUESDAY [3:31 AM]

Rain pours in sheets, pelting against your skin. Your footsteps are silent as you sprint through the underbrush, hot on the heels of the Lycan ahead of you.

Even with his head start, it took you no time to catch up to the him. Your pace matched his as you zeroed in on his steady breathing and rhythmic drum of his footfalls. Lycans are fast, and he hadn't even shifted forms yet. But still, you had no trouble keeping up with him.

All the while you closely trail the Lycan, you're cautious of your surroundings, keeping your ears peeled for any sign of a presence accompanying you both in these woods.

Just as you were about to fall in line with him, an unexpected sound sliced through the night—a whistle, followed by the unmistakable twang of a bowstring.

An arrow whizzed past your head, embedding itself in a tree trunk to your left. Stopping in your tracks, you tilt your head, seeing sparks and smoke emitting from the arrowhead now embedded into the old pine tree. But you aren't given any more time to investigate as you're tackled to the ground by the Lycan.

Before you could push him off, his body shields you from the explosion of blinding light so bright you could've sworn it was day for a split second.

He just saved you.

"Are you okay?" Jeno asks, rain dripping from the ends of his hair as he stands from the dirt.

"Yeah," you nod, hesitantly taking the hand he offers. "Thanks," you say, looking at the tree bark melting off the trunk.

The humans have UV explosives. Great.

Both you and Jeno hear the sound of cars approaching from the nearby road and take off running again. Without a word, you plunge deeper into the forest, your movements synchronized with Jeno's by necessity.

"How did they even find us?" Jeno asks, looking over his shoulder, his voice barely audible over the rain.

"I was just going to ask you the same thing."

The hunters were relentless, their shouts echoing in the distance, along with the pounding of their boots. You moved swiftly, navigating the maze of branches and roots with an ease born from decades of practice. The forest seemed to close in around you, the trees pressing in like silent sentinels bearing witness to your flight.

Then shots start firing off, the sharp cracks of bullets cutting through the air. It sounds like they were coming from every direction, the rain making it harder for both you and Jeno to locate where the hunters are.

A bullet soars past you and stops whistling in your ears when it hits flesh, tearing through skin and muscle. Jeno beside you roars out in pain and begins to slow down as the metallic taste of blood enters the air around you. You shoot him a look of concern over your shoulder.

"I'll be fine," he says. But when you see his hand pressed to his shoulder, blood seeping from an injury that should've already started healing, you know he's far from okay. "We need to get out of these woods," Jeno winces as he applies pressure to the gunshot wound.

"I know a place not too far from here," you tell him.

[6:37 AM]

The moon's silver glow was waning, giving way to the first light of dawn. The storm had passed, leaving the forest dank and muddy. Urgency rose as you were closing in on daybreak. You and Jeno raced through the forest, the scent of his blood and sweat mingling in the damp morning air.

Jeno's breath was labored, each step accompanied by a pained grunt as he pushed himself forward. The wound on his shoulder, though not fatal, was slowing him down.

"The sun's gonna be up soon," Jeno pants, his voice weary.

"I know," you raise your eyes to the sky, "But we're almost there."

As you ascend the mountain, you spot the entrance behind a thick curtain of ivy and moss. The camouflaged door was almost invisible against the rocky face.

The two of you approach the fortified door. But not before you start to feel the uncomfortable sensation of pins and needles all over your body, a warning of the daylight's deadly approach.

The air grows warmer with the first rays of sunlight piercing through the treetops, casting long shadows stretching like skeletal fingers across the ground, leaving you exposed. You scream out in pain just before you can reach the door, feeling the severe burns blistering across your body under the sun's relentless gaze.

Without hesitation, Jeno quickly removes his jacket and throws it around you, shielding you as best as he can from the searing sunlight.

You reach the door with trembling hands and enter the security code to unlock it. You hear the mechanism click and attempt to push the door open, but it remains stubbornly shut. The hinges, unused for so long, now rusted, obstruct your entry.

"It's stuck," panic edges your voice.

Using his good shoulder, Jeno presses his weight into the door, helping you push it open. The thick metal gives way with a heavy creak, welcoming you inside. The moment you both are through, Jeno slams the door shut behind him, enveloping you in the safety of darkness.

The flickering emergency lights cast long shadows across the walls, the only source of illumination along the steps down to the bunker. You can hear the sounds of the forest growing distant, muted, and distorted through the layers of earth and stone as you descend further down.

With the adrenaline from the chase already simmered down, the reality of your situation sets in. Here you are, a vampire, with Jeno, a lycan, forced into hiding together by humans hunting you both. The silence stretches between you, heavy with unspoken words only filled by the sounds of Jeno's steps behind you.

Your burns are already beginning to heal now that you're out of the sunlight. The cool, dim interior of the bunker feels like a sanctuary, the pain in your skin subsiding by the time you lead Jeno into a high-ceiling room.

"Thanks, again," you break the silence, returning his jacket. Even in the shadows, you can see Jeno's eyes examining your burns. "I'll heal," you assure him. "You, on the other hand, aren't for some reason."

"I'm fine," Jeno lies.

"You're not. You're still bleeding out. I can smell it."

Jeno stays silent, knowing there's no use in arguing with you.

"I'll go see if I can find the generator and a med kit or something," you say.

The underground facility is large enough to house an entire clan and well-equipped for emergencies. Or at least it had been once. The walls, thick and impenetrable, provide a sense of security, but the darkness within was oppressive, the silence deafening.

You move through the narrow corridors, blindly navigating yourself through the place. The emergency lights give off a faint glow, barely enough to see by. The bunker has an air of abandonment from years of sitting unused here. Cobwebs clung to the corners, and dust motes danced in the faint light.

You quickly locate the electrical room and, after a few tries, manage to get the generator running. The lights flicker on, and the air kicked on, ventilating the compound. As you make your way back down the corridor, you pass the uniform lockers, and just with your luck, you find a med kit sitting at the bottom of the cubby. You grab it and hurry back to where Jeno's waiting.

You find Jeno right where you left him; leaning against the wall, face pale and drawn, sweat glistening on his brow, damp clothes clinging to his defined muscles. From where he stands, the light casts deep shadows across his face, highlighting the strain etched into his features.

"Sit," you say, opening the case of medical supplies on the table.

"I can do it myself," Jeno mutters, though his voice lacks conviction as he weakly pushes himself away from the wall.

"You look like you can barely stand on your own. Just let me patch you up so you can at least stop bleeding all over the place," your words are punctuated by the snap of latex gloves you slip on.

Jeno has no energy to protest. He drops his jacket onto a chair and peels off his shirt, sitting on the table in front of you.

You don't have much time to ogle over the Lycan's chiseled physique as your eyes are drawn to the skin turning black and blue around the bullet's entry point. In all your years of existence, you've seen some pretty bad shit. But even this sight—Jeno's bloodied and seemingly infected shoulder, is enough to make even you wince.

"There's no exit, which is probably why you're not healing. Whatever specialized bullet hit you is still in there," you observe, examining the injury closely.

"Great," Jeno groans, throwing his head back. "Think you can get it out?"

"Sure, but it's not gonna be fun," you tell him.

"Let's just get it over with."

a/n: please lmk what you think! if i do post the full fic it is 11k so be weary 😭 thank you for reading! <33 feedback is appreciated!!

324 notes · View notes

seonghrtz · 7 months

Text

𝒇𝒂𝒊𝒓𝒚 𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒆 𝒔𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒔 ✶ geto suguru

꒰ daylight ! ꒱ geto suguru, a powerful fairy who has had his wings taken from him, finds himself falling in love with the girl who has been cursed by his mother.

❛❛ if you're kind, you might discover something extraordinary you can do ❜❜

pairing. fairy!geto suguru x (aurora)fem!reader.

contents. maleficent universe, fluff, angst, childhood friends to lovers, forbidden love (?), he fell first he fell harder, royal!au, slight age gap (geto is 4 y.o older than reader), mentions of death, maleficent is geto's mom, ooc geto.

amy's note. hi sweetie, this is amy!!! i was so excited to write this one in particular. i love geto so much, and i think he deserves more, but since we are talking about him, it will obviously have a little angst, but with lots of cute and happy moments. i think geto is the one who best fits the whole aesthetic of maleficent, and here we are!!! i hope you enjoy it and have a good read <3

comments and reblogs are very much appreciated!

𝕺𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐔𝐏𝐎𝐍 𝐀 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄, there was a vast enchanted forest called the Moors. This forest existed a long time ago, even before humans settled within its borders, and it was home to countless magical creatures who lived free. Creatures that humans had never dreamed could exist. They all had their uniqueness and strangeness, and even though they were from different species, they lived in harmony with each other ⸻ something that sometimes even members of the same species could not do. The Moors were neither a kingdom nor a dynasty. Hierarchy was unknown among its inhabitants, everyone was equal (even with their differences). However, the forest had its guardians, the fairies. Fairies, specifically forest fairies, were powerful beings who served as protectors of the forests. They were responsible for keeping the Pillar of Harmony intact and protecting the forest from those with evil and malicious intentions.

When the first humans established their kingdom near the edge of the forest, the relationship between them and the inhabitants of the Moors was one of the best ⸻ which seemed surprising. Curiosity ran through both worlds, which were close but different in many ways. However, as the years went by, this friendly relationship seemed to become more unstable and fragile.

Until the fateful day when Moors lost his guardian to human greed.

Stefan, the young prince of the human kingdom, had greed and selfishness in his heart when he tried to dream that one day he could control the Moors as well as his own kingdom. But things didn't go according to plan and it backfired.

On a frosty dawn, Stefan and a few guards set out on a mission to capture the wings of the Moors' guardian fairy, imprison her, and finally take over the forest. Not as discreet as they should have been, they entered the forest before dawn, armed and determined. Things began to go wrong when, instead of capturing the guardian fairy, they first captured her four-year-old son, Geto Suguru.

The little fairy boy, who was absent-mindedly wandering through the forest, watching the day creatures rest while the night creatures went on with their lives, didn't notice the humans approaching with their evil intentions, and the next thing he knew, he was grabbed by the arms. The boy whimpered and cried, trying desperately to free himself from the arms that were twice his size and stronger than his frail frame. Geto let out an agonizing scream as he felt the metal chains wrapped around the beginning of his wings. The pain and burning made the boy choke on his screams and tears, which mingled into a painful sound.

Once Stefan had gained the wings of the helpless child, he pursued his ambition to gain the wings of the Guardian of the Moors. Geto was thrown to the side, writhing in pain and crying for his lost wings. The pain seemed unbearable. Not just the physical pain, but the pain of knowing that he could no longer fly, that he would never touch the sky again. His freedom in the sky, where no one could reach him, had been taken from him when he was still a helpless child.

"My son..." Geto heard his mother's voice and her footsteps approaching his slumped body. "My dear son... what have they done to you?"

"There you are, Guardian of the Moors." Stefan spat out the words with contempt.

"Young Prince Stefan of the realm of men..." the fairy said, trying to control her anger, "Give my son back his wings!”

"If you give me yours, I might think about returning his... if I don't take them for myself in the future."

"You will regret this moment." The woman's hand closed tightly on her staff.

"And why would I regret it? You're a freak!"

"Your wife is pregnant with a beautiful baby girl who is about to be born, and in a few months, if not weeks, you will take over your human kingdom... it would be a shame to have something as precious as your daughter taken away from you."

"How do you know that, you witch?!" the man shouted angrily.

"Listen, everyone," the fairy said, drawing everyone's attention as a green spell emanated from her, "The princess will indeed grow up with grace and beauty and be loved by those who know her, but at sunset on her eighteenth birthday, she will stick her finger through the spindle of a spinning wheel and then fall into the deep sleep of death! A sleep from which she will never awaken unless awakened by a kiss of true love! And this curse will last forever, no power on earth can change it!"

"How dare you curse my daughter, barely born!" Stefan drew his sword from its sheath and positioned himself to attack the guardian.

"And how dare you rip my son's wings off and think you'd get away with it!"

Geto's eyes blurred with tears and an unbearable pain in his back as he watched his mother fight the future king. The little boy couldn't keep up with what was happening, his head was spinning and the only thing he could see was his mother's last breaths as she was caught off guard at a clear disadvantage in the unfair fight. As his mother fell to her knees, he felt the earth tremble and huge thorns grow larger along the edges of the Moors. Frightened, and not knowing what those giant thorns were, Stefan and his companions fled with Geto's wings, happy that they had killed the guardian of Moors and won her son's wings. Without enough strength, the boy crawled over to his mother's fallen body. He rocked the woman from side to side, trying to wake her, but his actions seemed to be in vain. His mother's heartbeat could no longer be heard. With a tightness in his chest, Geto lay down on his mother's lifeless body and cried himself unconscious.

Deep down, he wished this was all just a nightmare that would end the next day. And he would live happily ever after with his mother.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ ㅤ ✶

With the Wall of Thorns, Moors was protected from any threat from humans or any other creature that tried to take over the forest. Geto thought that time would make him forget that tragic night in his life, but he couldn't have been more wrong. But time only helped him develop a dislike for humans and their arrogance and greed. Time helped Geto work hard to train his powers and learn to live without his wings. Even at the age of eight, he had incredible abilities that might have taken longer to learn.

The sun was rising in the east, and while the nocturnal creatures went to their shelters, the daytime creatures awoke to the sun's rays and began their day. Little Suguru, eight years old, followed the forest path to a lake he always went to in the morning. Ever since he was a baby, his mother had taken him to the pond to pick some of the plants that grew around the edge of the pond. It was a little routine that kept his mother's memory alive.

Geto just didn't expect to be followed that morning.

"Who's there?" The boy turned when he heard the hurried footsteps, but there was no one there. He returned to his destination, but the footsteps followed him again, "Whoever it is, I don't want to play!" A low chuckle echoed through the room, causing Geto to roll his eyes. With an idea in his head, he started on his way again. When the one following him was least expecting it, Suguru quickly turned around to see a little girl half his age fall to the ground, startled by the boy's sudden movement, "What do you think you're doing following me?" Geto crossed his arms in front of him, but all he got in return was a giggle.

Geto watched the little girl sitting on the ground. She didn't seem to belong to any of the species that sheltered in the Moors. She resembled Geto physically, but she didn't have wings or a pair of horns.

"Why do you have horns?" the little girl asked with a smile. She stood up, slapped her hand on her baby blue dress, brushed the dirt off it, and stared at the boy in front of her.

"Because I'm a fairy." Geto rolled his eyes and returned to his morning chores, "Now leave me alone!"

"My fairy aunts don't have horns!" The little girl followed Geto with light footsteps.

"That means we are a different kind of fairy."

"Wow! There's more than one kind of fairy?" the little girl smiled, "I'd like to be a fairy!"

"And why would you like to be a fairy?" asked Geto curiously.

"Because you have magic powers! And some fairies can fly too!" she said, her eyes shining, "I can't do anything interesting or unique, even though my fairy aunts keep telling me I'm a princess, whatever that means, I don't have anything extraordinary about me..."

"If you're kind, you might discover something extraordinary you can do."

"Can I... can I touch your horns?" The little girl asked.

"Um, just once!" Geto leaned down a bit so that the little one could touch his horns.

Geto thought that this little interaction would end right there, and that he would never see this little girl again in the vast forest. He just didn't expect her to come down to the lake with him every morning to talk about anything and everything.

Her presence could fill the boy's loneliness.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ ㅤ ✶

When that little girl told him there was nothing extraordinary about her, Geto was absolutely sure it was a lie. And he seemed to prove it with every passing year. And the passing years never scared Geto, but perhaps his feelings were the only things that could scare him.

Within a few months, the presence of the little human at his side had become commonplace. It was difficult to spend any time apart. They had become inseparable best friends. They were always running around in the forest, playing with each other and with the other creatures that lived there. And from time to time, the girl even helped Geto practice controlling his magic. They shared stories and secrets.

And there was only one secret that he had never shared with her...

Every day, Geto Suguru fell more and more in love with that gentle, delicate human being.

Geto didn't know when he fell in love, for him there was no right moment, he just fell in love. And maybe his feelings were the biggest problem. They couldn't be together, not when they were from different species, or when she was the child his own mother had cursed before she died ⸻ a fact that wasn't hard to discover. The young fairy would have to suppress his feelings and accept that they could never be together in this universe. However, Geto decided to enjoy every minute of his friendship with the human who had stolen his heart until her eighteenth birthday, when she would return to her home ⸻ the human kingdom.

"It's a very nice gift, I'm sure she'll like it," said Dival, the shape-shifter who had been rescued by Geto's mother and had since become the advisor and right hand of the Guardians of the Moors ⸻ and who had also advised Geto in his training.

"It's just a souvenir..." Geto sighed, looking at the amethyst necklace he had made.

"You should tell her your romantic feelings for her..." Dival watched the quick movements of the boy's chest.

"I can't do that, Dival"

"Why not?"

"First of all, she is a princess. Just as I have my responsibilities as the guardian of the Moors, she has hers as the future ruler of the human kingdom. Besides, we're different species. You know how humans treat anything that is different by their standards. Not to mention that we're just friends, that's how she sees me and will always see me..."

"And all this keeps you from being happy in love?" Dival crossed his arms.

"These things aren't as easy as they seem..." Geto sighed softly, "Especially when your feelings aren't reciprocated.

"You should definitely get rid of this idea of unrequited love. She likes you! You can see how she looks at you and how she treats you!"

"It is not like that! She's just kind to me, like she is to all beings. I don't get any special treatment." Geto clutched the amethyst necklace in his hand, afraid of losing it, and left for the young princess' house. "See you soon, Dival!"

"How stubborn he is!" Dival muttered to himself as he watched Geto's figure disappear between the thick-stemmed trees in this part of the forest.

The conversation he'd had with Dival a few minutes ago replayed in his mind: could she possibly reciprocate his romantic feelings?

The answer seemed to be right in front of him…

Geto stopped walking quickly when he noticed the young princess singing a love song while dancing with another human. Perhaps Suguru had to worry about how this tall, white-haired, blue-eyed young man had managed to get past his mother's wall of thorns. But the dreamy smile on the young woman's face made his heart squeeze with pain and fear. The fairy looked away and decided that it would be best to wait until the princess left for her kingdom to deliver her gift ⸻ if only he had the courage.

The young fairy made his way to the lake he used to go to with his mother, which had become one of his meeting places with the young princess, and sat on a rock by the shore, watching the crystal clear water and the aquatic creatures that lived there. Geto didn't know how long he stayed there, pondering feelings that should never have blossomed.

"Sugu!" The princess's voice snapped Geto out of his deep thoughts, and the boy turned back, murmuring her name.

"What are you doing here?" Suguru asked, she should have been on her way to the castle by now.

"You didn't think I would leave without saying goodbye, did you?" The girl smiled and sat down next to the boy.

"I thought you'd be more excited to see where you came from and to see your parents again."

"Yes, I'm excited... But then I remember that I'm leaving all this behind and I get scared..." she sighed.

"You can come back, you know." Geto turned to the princess.

"But the thing is, sometimes I don't know if I really want to go! It's a completely different world, even though it's right next door. And I don't want to leave you..." she looked up at the clear blue sky, it would be a while before it darkened. "Could you come with me?"

"You know what they did to my wings and my mother, I don't think I'll be welcome there." Geto sighed deeply. A few years ago he had told her the fateful story of the day King Stefan invaded the Moors, but he hadn't told her that it was his father who had orchestrated the attack and torn off his wings.

"I know, I just don't want to be away from you."

"Come to me whenever you want, I'll be here waiting for you." Geto gently held the princess' hand and placed the stone from the necklace in her palm. The young woman smiled gently and hugged Suguru until he gasped for breath, drawing a laugh from her.

And Geto, deep in his heart, hoped that she would come back as soon as possible.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ ㅤ ✶

Geto put his hand to his forehead and took a deep breath. He was sitting on a kind of throne made of twisted logs and thorns, the place he usually used for one of his duties as Guardian. The sky was dark and the stars were not visible, and Geto found himself clinging more and more to the mere memories that floated through his mind.

"Geto! Geto!" Dival's desperate voice came from afar in his raven form, flying as fast as he could.

"What now, Dival?" Geto watched as the crow turned into a human in front of him.

"They're invading the Moors!"

"WHAT?!" Suguru quickly got up from his seat, eyes wide with disbelief at the news.

"Your mother's curse somehow came true and King Stefan was furious, he sent troops to attack the Moors, but apparently the wall is keeping them out, but I'm afraid that won't last long."

"The sleep curse has come true..." Geto sighed" Suguru looked at a random spot on the ground, his face blank, "She will sleep forever..."

"Can you wake her?" Dival asked.

"I've tried over the years, when I found out she was the princess my mother cursed, it didn't work."

"Can't you try now that the curse has come true?"

"I could try..." Geto looked at Dival, who seemed to be hiding something, but revealed it by looking for ways to wake the princess. "First we have to get there, then I'll think about waking her."

"You'll have to get past the king's troops first."

"That's the least of the problems, Dival," Geto smiled sideways.

And indeed, the troops of the human army were no match for Geto Suguru's power. With a flick of his finger, the fairy immobilized the soldiers, sending them into a deep sleep until he could reverse the spell. Determined, he made his way to the castle, using his magic to clear the way and avoid any unpleasant and unnecessary conflicts.

"King Stefan..." His voice rang out from the throne room, drawing the king's attention.

"You!" the king said in a voice of disgust.

"Well, I think you know that we have some unresolved issues in the past that make me hold on with all my might so as not to crush that tiny little brain of yours. However, due to the current circumstances, I'd like you to listen to my somewhat irrefutable proposal." Geto's hands closed on the staff that had once belonged to his mother.

"What do you want?"

"Wow, that was pretty quick to convince you..." a sideways smile appeared on Suguru's lips, "If you, noble king, withdraw your troops from the Moor's border of your own free will and never come near my forest again, perhaps I can wake your beloved and sweet daughter."

"Can you wake her?" the king's voice came out choked. In addition to his ego, his daughter's life was at stake.

"Only on my terms!" Suguru lied.

"I promise, I promise to leave your forest alone, just save my daughter!"

"I hope you keep your promise or the consequences will be unimaginable." Geto's voice was firm, "Take me to the princess."

The king, still unsure of his decision, ordered one of his guards to take Geto to where the princess rested in her deep sleep. As the fairy entered the huge, luxurious room, he encountered a figure he didn't like very much. The white-haired boy turned towards Suguru, his hands clenching the wooden staff. Geto's purple eyes met the crystal blue of the stranger he had caught dancing with the princess in the forest not long ago.

"Black hair and a pair of horns? You must be the guardian of the Moors," the blue-eyed boy said.

"Get out of here," Geto said, controlling his tone.

"Wow, the princess said you were kind, I don't see much of that kindness," the boy smiled sideways and crossed his arms in front of him. "I bet your kiss would wake her up..." he muttered to himself, getting ready to leave the room.

"What did you say?" Geto looked at the stranger suspiciously.

"Nothing." The boy smiled. "If you'll excuse me, I have some diplomatic business to attend to with the king."

After the boy left, Geto made his way to the princess's bed, where she slept peacefully. This was not a new sight; they had already fallen asleep by the lake they visited every day ⸻ it seemed like yesterday that Geto was studying the princess's features, memorizing all her curves and smallest details under the starry sky. But unlike the last time they had slept in each other's company, when the first rays of sunlight had awakened him and the princess had cracked a broad smile and wished Suguru a good morning, she wouldn't wake up now, not if the spell wasn't broken. Geto sighed, he had been quietly trying to remove the spell from his mother ever since he had discovered that she was the Princess, Stefan's daughter, but nothing was strong enough to break it. And even now, after years of training and trying to control his power, nothing woke her.

"I'm sorry..." Geto's voice came out lower than usual, "I'm sorry I couldn't save you! It's my fault that I was so weak that none of my attempts to free you from this curse worked. I'm sorry I couldn't give you what you needed and be who you wanted, I'm not worthy of having you by my side, not when the only thing that prevails in my heart is hatred. You're too good for this world, too good for me. I wish I could do anything to have you by my side... just once." With a trembling hand, Geto reached for the icy cheek of the sleeping princess and slowly moved closer, touching his lips lightly to hers. He whispered another apology and turned, ready to flee the castle and fortify the wall around Moors, knowing that the king would not let his lies go unchallenged.

"Sugu...?" The weak, sleepy voice of the princess made the fairy stop walking quickly and turn towards the young woman. "You came to see me?"

"I just wanted to see if you arrived safely."

"I just fell asleep..." She sat down on the bed and smiled, "Couldn't you stay a little longer, I want to show you the castle... please."

"Then let's go..." Geto relented.

"Come on, I want you to see everything here!" She smiled openly and hugged Suguru tightly before wrapping her right arm around the fairy's left and leading him through the castle corridors to the throne room where Stefan was.

When they arrived at the scene, the king looked in surprise at his daughter, who was well and awake, and observed the intertwined arms with disgust.

"Arrest him!" the king shouted to the guards, who attacked Suguru, knocking his staff from his hand and binding him to his arm with steel chains, causing the fairy to scream in agony. The princess looked up in horror and saw Geto being carried away, writhing in pain. She tried to save him from the guards, but was stopped by other guards at the king's behest.

"What are you doing?" she looked at the king with watery eyes, "Let him go, please! He hasn't done anything! Please leave him alone!"

"Don't worry, child, I'm just saving our kingdom from this freak!"

"Freak?!" the young woman looked at her parents in disbelief, "He's a living being, just like us! He's never done anything wrong, no evil! Geto Suguru is the kindest person I know, please let him go!"

"HIS MOTHER CURSED YOU, DO YOU THINK I'LL FORGIVE HIS KIND FOR THAT?!"

"How can you blame him when you are the real culprit?"

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN?"

"My fairy aunts told me that you stole Geto's wings and killed his mother in an attempt to take over the Moors." Tears streamed down the young woman's face, "How could you dare to do such a cruel thing, he was just a child!"

"WHAT DOES IT MATTER? THEY TOOK YOU AWAY FROM ME!"

"And you took away his mother! Forever!" The princess wiped her tears with her hands and released the guards. "Because of their selfish desires, the Moors are afraid of humans, afraid of losing their families and their freedom, they are not hideous monsters, they have feelings too. And I can't stay in a place and with people who feel entitled to destroy the lives of everything that is different from them!"

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ ㅤ ✶

The princess ran frantically through the castle corridors as she fled from the guards. After arguing with her father, she soon fled the place, determined to find Geto and free him from prison so they could return to Moors. Looking for a place to lose the guards, she entered a dark room and waited for the guards to pass by. When the sound of footsteps quickly faded, she breathed a sigh of relief; now she would have one less problem to worry about when she found Suguru. However, something piqued her interest when she noticed something in the middle of the room. It looked like a cupboard covered with a long, thick, dusty cloth. She approached the object and, without thinking twice, pulled the cloth down, revealing what it was.

The huge glass box allowed her to see inside, and the young woman couldn't hide her surprise when she realized that she was standing in front of Suguru's wings, which had been stolen by her father.

‘They are beautiful...' the young woman thought, staring in wonder at the pair of wings in front of her. However, she quickly snapped out of her trance when she heard footsteps in the hallway. She took a deep breath, picked up the wings, wrapped them in the cloth, and carefully ran to the catacombs where the cells were.

Noticing that no one was in the catacombs, the princess left her wings in a hidden corner and, on tiptoe, picked up the key hanging on the wall near the exit and went to the cell where Geto was.

"Sugu...?" She whispered, searching the darkness for the fairy. When she heard the boy call her name, she let out a relieved sigh and opened the cell, approaching the fairy in the corner, who was writhing in pain, her wrists aching from the handcuffs. Gently, the princess removed the handcuffs and asked him to wait for her while she fetched something. She walked quickly, picking up Geto's wings where she had left them, but the wings seemed to move on their own with each step she took as she approached him. When the wings slipped from her hands and met their true owner, the princess was even more amazed to see Geto with his majestic wings.

"As much as I'd like to admire you longer, I'm afraid we have to leave as soon as possible before they come looking for me here!"

"Why are we running away?"

"I may have had a fight with my father..."

"You did what?" Geto asked incredulously.

"I had a fight with my father after you were taken away, I can't let my father treat you like that."

"You shouldn't have fought with him... not for me. You just came back home, you found your family again..."

"Why don't you let me save you just this once?" the young woman took Geto's hands in her own, "When I arrived here, I must admit I was excited by the idea of a new world, new places to explore and new people to meet, but at no time did I feel like I belonged here, not like I did in Moors. So please, take me home with you..."

"Are you sure this is what you want?" Geto asked, trying to hide his happiness at what he had just heard from the princess.

"I am absolutely sure."

"Then let's go home!"

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ ㅤ ✶

The princess clung to Geto as tightly as she could while the fairy flew through the sky as if there was no tomorrow. Over the years, Suguru had resigned himself to never experiencing that feeling of freedom again, but apparently he was wrong. Having his wings again seemed like a dream, and to his happiness, it was a dream come true.

When they arrived in Moors, the princess asked Dival to deliver a letter to the king, saying that she had run away and would return to the forest and live there, where she had always felt at home, but that she could occasionally visit the kingdom and spend time with her biological family if they wanted her around.

"Are you going to fly around all night?" The princess asked with a smile as she watched Geto approach her.

"Maybe, it feels too good to stop."

"Your wings... They are beautiful... may I touch them?"

With a feeling of déjà vu, Geto approached the princess and allowed her to gently run her hand over the black feathers of his wings.

"Thank you... for saving me and for loving me as much as I love you."

"Wha... what?"

"I like you, Suguru. I like you so much that sometimes I feel like my heart will explode if I stay by your side for too long... you're my everything. That's why I want to be selfish and have you by my side until the end of this world."

"Well, I think I'll be more than happy to stay by your side until you don't want me anymore." Geto approached the princess, placing one of his hands on her waist, pulling her closer to his body, while the other rested on her cheek, his thumb making a light circular caress of her skin. Slowly, Suguru brought his lips to hers and gave her a soft kiss, which was immediately returned by the princess. Even though he had dreamed of this moment for a long time, Geto didn't rush into the kiss, but enjoyed and savored every moment that their lips were together, as if they had all the time in the world.

"I love you more than you can imagine..." When they broke apart for lack of air, Geto rested his forehead on hers and smiled openly, it all seemed like a dream and if it turned out to be a dream, he didn't want to wake up ever again. The fairy's hands closed around the young woman's waist and he hugged her tightly, as if she could disappear from his arms at any moment.

"But I love you more." The princess said as she rested her cheek on Suguru's chest and listened to his heartbeat, which was slowing down.

"That's impossible, darling!" Geto smiled openly and kissed the princess's forehead, "But I'll let you believe it is."

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h3lgertime · 7 months

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I’ve never drawn a transformer before

#i scream #my stuff #transformers #tf shockwave #maccadam #this is complementing that overkill shockwave post btw #metallic dawn au

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r-type-on-the-master-system · 2 months

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dead end but he's an r-type enemy because i said so

#original art #maccadam #metallic dawn au #tf dead end #r-type

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ohbo-ohno · 9 months

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merry christmas @luminousbeings-crudematter, here's the ghoap x reader purge au! (a week and a half after you posted about it... im so sorry)

5.7k, mind the tags <3

cw: ROUGH NONCONSENUAL SEX in all caps, pwp, under-prepared/painful anal sex, some pretty intense fear stuff, people covered in blood and referenced violence (it's a purge au lol)

Your hands tremble where they’re tucked close to your chest, blood sticky and thick between each finger. You feel coated in it, like someone has taken a brush and gone over every inch of your skin, painted you in red.

It’s in your mouth. You can feel the warmth of it on your tongue, the taste of iron sickening. You tell yourself that maybe you bit your tongue, that it’s not really your ex Phil’s blood coating your teeth.

Your thin pajamas are hardly any protection against the chill of the night air, less so with how soaked they are. The stench of piss is heavy in the air, a mixture of yours and his, but you don’t have time to go back inside and change.

You’re running on pure instinct, an animal urge deep in your mind insisting you run. You’d always thought you’d have more of a flight instinct than fight. Despite how you feel now, how your legs itch to carry you as far away as possible, the cooling corpse left behind tells you the truth.

You stumble into the wall, a wave of nausea knocking you off balance. There’s a trail of red left behind as you use one hand to balance yourself, the other held protectively over your heart.

Your security system - cheap, but usually enough to let you sleep through the Purge - is completely destroyed. There’s no chance of it protecting you, and the bust in windows will let anyone on the streets see your vulnerability. You’ll never feel safe there, and you can’t shake the need to run.

There’s no chance of any of your neighbors helping you. There’s some neighborly camaraderie between your floor-mates, but that all disappears on Purge night. It’s every man for himself, every year, without fail. You know that. You even think the same as them, pretend no one else exists when that siren goes off every year.

But now, shaking and terrified, you wish you could knock on a door and see it open. Hear the security system disengage and see a familiar face, beg for help and thank them on your knees.

It’s a nice fantasy. Reality is less kind, seeing you shake with a dawning chill as you manage to shoulder open the door to the stairwell, cringing when it slams behind you.

The cold cement is rough on your feet, and a distant part of yourself worries about slipping - your feet are slick with blood, and you can hear yourself leaving a trail of footsteps. You don’t try to slow down, holding tight to the metal railing and shuffling down the stairs.

You’re halfway down the first of four flights when the door on the next floor opens, a large figure stepping into the stairwell. Your stumble to a stop before you even register that you’re not alone anymore, and you’re backpedaling before you even fully realize.

He’s big, his face covered in a red skull mask. From your vantage point you can see his hair is shaved into a mohawk, and he’s shirtless with only a pair of gray sweatpants on.

He’s drenched in blood. Even more than you, and you feel like you’re drowning in it. If you’re painted in blood, someone took a bucket and dumped it on this man. You can hardly see any unmarked skin, and you wonder for a split-second if the skull was once white.

There’s an audible grin in his voice when he calls up to you. “Look’it you, bonnie thing. You tryin’ to run?” He steps to the side, leaving a wide open space for you to pass him to the next staircase. You’re frozen where you’re leant against the railing, hardly able to breathe. “C’mon, give it a shot.”

You listen, scrabbling further back and all but throwing yourself up the stairs on all fours. You’re only the need to get away, an innate fear that tells you to get as far from the blood-soaked man as quickly as possible. You swear you hear him laugh as you launch yourself up the next flight, panting already.

There’s no safety found in going up though, as hardly two flights later you’re tugged to a stop by your instincts alone.

Standing above you, hardly six feet away and blocking the door he must’ve just come from, is another giant. This one fully clothed and with a white skull mask, somehow bigger and more intimidating than the man you can hear coming up the stairs behind you. You can’t see even an inch of skin, black gloves on his hands and mean black combat boots reaching nearly his knees.

There’s a moment, before the chase ends, where you contemplate jumping over the railing. There’s no going up, there’s no going back, and you can’t even begin to imagine what these two men want with you. The only thing that keeps you from throwing yourself over is the fear that you wouldn’t die on impact, that you’d be left injured and even more vulnerable to these men.

You’re not sure you could’ve tried that plan had you even wanted to, because the moment it forms fully in your mind a pair of thick arms wraps around you, and a heavy weight forces you to the ground.

You cry out at the sudden shove, palms scraped raw against the cement. The man behind you covers your body completely - his knees bracket yours, his hands rest on either side of your head, and there’s no part of the back of you that isn’t cloaked in him.

He doesn’t say anything as he ruts against you, the blood from his chest soaking through your tank top and making you cringe further away. You can’t stop the quiet stream of whimpers as you try to shrink into the stairs, try to get away from the beast behind you. He doesn’t care, only drops more of his weight onto you and pantomines fucking you.

You can feel the outline of his cock through his pants, as thin as the clothes both of you are wearing are. If you weren’t wearing your shorts, if he tugged the waistband of his pants down, he’d be inside of you.

The thought makes you tear up, makes you want to slam your head back and try to knee him in the balls, makes you want to fight.

But all your fight is gone. It died with Phil and your security system, and you’re left only with a weight in your bones that makes you wish you could sink through the floor.

The hard plastic of the skull mask presses to the sensitive skin of your cheek, biting into the fat there. You can see the gleam of bright blue eyes in the sockets, the creases at the edges that tell you he’s smiling.

“You gonna fuck her here for the first time?” The white skull asks, voice deep enough that you hardly register the words. Your eyes are jerked to his form and it makes you shiver to see him sitting on the top of the staircase you’re pinned to, legs spread wide as he stares down at you with a cigarette between lips exposed by the tilted mask. You feel like a sacrifice, thrown to the stairs of a temple for a god.

“Can I?” The man over your shoulder pants, accent roughened from his own movements. You can’t tell if the wetness between your thighs is piss, blood, or an even worse option. You bite your tongue to hold back a whine, wince at the burst of iron in your mouth.

The man above you tilts his head, smoking blown into the air. “You fuck her here, you won’t get to go again on the roof. Don’t need you gettin’ spoiled.”

Your nails dig into the concrete, folding beneath the pressure as you shake beneath the red skulled man. He whines over you, like a petulant kid being told no for the first time, but goes still against you. That alone has you blinking open damp eyelashes, watching him from the corner of your eyes.

“Alright, I’ll wait,” he pants, chin resting on your soldier. “Give ye some time to get ready, huh lass? It’ll be easier for ye then. Just think about what we’ll do to ye, how good it’ll feel to get properly fucked, yeah?”

You sob when he grinds one final time against you, your hips pushed into the harsh edge of the stairs.

He’s dragging you up after that, hardly letting either of you stand fully before shoving you up the stairs. You can’t catch your balance and let out a small cry as you fall back to your knees, mouth twisting in pain at the unforgiving surface against your naked knees.

You flinch when a gloved hand grasps your chin, tugging up until you’re forced to look towards the white skull above you.

You’ve landed between his feet, a boot on either side of your body, and if you’d moved forward even another half foot, you’d have face planted into his lap.

Your heart skips a beat when you realize you’re making eye contact with him. The dark brown of his pupils blends almost seamlessly with what must be black paint smeared around his eye sockets, and the only reason you even realize you’re locked in a staring contest is the way the light reflects off the whites of his eyes.

You don’t have time to try and move away from him on your own (or, more accurately, to throw yourself backwards and pray you didn’t break something falling down the stairs) before a pair of bare hands are shoving you up from beneath the armpits, making you almost squeal as you jerk in the direction you’re forced.

“Up, c’mon,” red skull grunts, hands flitting from one part of your exposed skin to the next as he herds you upstairs. “Need to get inside ye, kitty, fuckin’ walk.”

You sob as you stumble up the stairs, the top of your foot scraping painfully against the concrete. You glance over your shoulder just in time to see White stand to follow you two, but you’re nearly sent sprawling again when Red only shoves you all the more harshly.

“Pl-please,” you manage to gasp, shoulder roughly bouncing off the wall. A glance up tells you you’re two full flights away from the rooftop. “Please, I don’t know what you want, b-but…” You can hardly talk around the sobs floating in your throat, choking you. “Please, please don’t hurt me.”

Red groans as he tugs you nearly off balance, the sound echoing off the walls and full of what you can only describe as hunger.

“Fuck, haven’t even gotten ye naked yet ‘n yer already beggin. Knew ye’d be perfect for us.”

You can hardly see through the tears in your eyes, the rest of the trip up to the roof all gray with streaks of red and black. You can’t focus enough to try and get away again, can’t get enough of your panic under control to fucking think.

The red skull catches you when you almost go careening over the rails, one broad hand catching you by the chest and gripping.

He groans, you flinch. “Fuck, cannae wait to get my mouth on these.” He pinches with his whole hand, your breast going sharp with pain on every fingertip. You whine, flinching further against his chest and trying to shrink away.

“Keep movin’, Soap.”

“Aye,” Red - Soap - pants, and you can practically hear the saliva gathered in his mouth when he swallows. “C’mon, kitty, only a little further.”

The blood on your hands has dried by the time White is shouldering open the door to the roof, your hands itching and the red flaking away every time your fingers twitch. The night air is a cold shock, just jarring enough to tug some reason back into your brain.

Soap doesn’t stop his herding until you’re far enough from the door for his partner to block it with an old metal chair, the back tucked under the door handle. You tuck your hands beneath your arms, shoulders curled in in an attempt to preserve warmth.

You wouldn’t have expected the night to be so cold. Half of the street is burning - flames painting the sky, giving you the exact opposite impression of the biting chill you feel. There are dozens of people in the streets, carrying guns and axes and chainsaws and all sorts of other weapons you can’t see. You feel bile rise in your throat when you realize the dark pools reflecting flames in the street are blood, not water.

“Fuckin’ finally,” Soap grumbles, and you don’t have any time to think before his mouth is pressed forcefully against yours, tongue shoving at your lips.

Your eyes are wide open, unlike his, and you make a shocked sound high in your throat at the sight of his maskless face. You can’t really see what he looks like with the way he’s pressed against you, but it’s a shock nonetheless.

You keep your lips pressed tightly together, no matter how much his tongue prods and tries to force its way into your mouth. You feel more than hear him laugh against you after a few long seconds, and one of his massive paws comes up to cradle your jaw pointer finger against your temple and thumb under your chin.

He stops trying to force himself between your lips after almost a minute, instead shifting to just… licking your lips. His tongue paints wide across your mouth, soaking you in his saliva. He’s almost scarily determined in the way he accosts you, his grip tight on your face as his other hand shifts to bruise your hip, covering what feels like the entire bottom-half of your face in his spit. You can’t help but grimace, trying to pull away from him, but he’s pressed too close.

“Can’t fuckin’ wait to be in ye,” he pants, breath warm and wet against your cheeks. “I know yer gonna squeeze me just right, bonnie, can tell already.”

“Please,” you say, voice weak. “Please, don’t, I don’t want you to-”

His groan is guttural. “Ye wanna know a secret, bonnie?” His voice is quiet between the two of you, bright blue eyes boring deep into yours when he pulls back. To your endless frustration, he’s handsome.

He leans close, whispering so low that you almost have to strain to hear hum. “That’s what makes you fun. Wouldnae be draggin’ you up here if ye wanted it, could get you any other night of the year for that. But it’s Purge night, lass… so you go ahead and fight as much as ye want, yeah? Just makes it more fun for me.”

You can’t help but sob at that, fat tears streaming down your face as he maneuvers you. You feel disconnected from your body as he forces you down to the ground, your soft belly left exposed when he pushes up your tank-top to cup one of your breasts, a whimper crawling out of your throat at the way the gravel presses into you.

You feel his breathing grow heavier as his hands move down to your shorts, shoving them off your hips and leaving them loose around your calves, completely disregarding your pitiful attempts at crawling away.

“Poor thing, been stuck in these the whole time? They fuckin’ reek, bonnie, no offense. That his piss or yours?”

You shake your head against the ground, face twisted up in acute humiliation. For some stupid reason you don’t want to even begin exploring, you find it necessary to whisper, “H-his.”

Soap hums, and you curse yourself inwardly when the humiliation is slightly alleviated.

“Get ‘em off her,” the white mask says, and you can’t help but jump at the sound of his voice. He’s sat on a large box only a few feet away, leaning back and relaxing, looking for all the world like he’s settled in for his favorite show. “Don’t want anythin’ of his touching her now.”

The sound Soap makes at that is animalistic, a snarl coming from deep in his chest that makes you flinch as he all but tears the shorts from your body. You wince at the wet splat of them landing several feet away.

You force your forehead into the gravel when your knees are forced wide, a rough hand and another pair of knees spreading you.

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no…” you can’t help but beg, voice trembling. “Please- god, please don’t-”

“Fuck,” he moans over your shoulder. “Yeah, keep goin’, lass.”

You sob at the feeling of warm skin against your bared behind, his thick length slotting itself smoothly between the slightly spread lips of your pussy. Your eyes squeeze shut and it takes all your willpower not to keep begging.

He slides himself back and forth against you for a few long breaths, using online the slight slickness from a mixture of piss and blood to get some friction. But to your immense horror, it only takes a few moments for the sensual movement against your clit to have your body preparing itself.

The slight wetness at your hole might be a betrayal, but it’s not nearly enough to ease the way when he pushes inside of you with no warning.

You nearly scream, a high sound of pure panic and pain when it feels like you’re being split in two. Somewhere off in the distance, you hear someone laugh. Right above you, Soap groans.

He’s buried himself to the hilt inside you before the pain has had any time at all to fade, and he’s fucking into you hardly a second after that.

Every thrust forces a grunt from your throat, the entire weight of him slammed into your back each time his balls smack against your clit. Your face is twisted up in a grimace, your whole body racked with pain that your assaulter couldn’t care less about.

“Fuck, kitty. Yer squeezin’ me so good, such a good girl, shit-! Knew you’d be ti-tight as a vice, fuck, but didn’t know you’d be squeezin’ me so tight I can hardly move.”

Your whine is plaintive, his moan is filled with pleasure.

“Yer gettin’ so wet for me, bonnie. Ye like this, huh? Bet you like it just as much as I do, gettin’ thrown around and takin’ advantage of. That it, kitty? Ye like being forced?”

You sob and shake your head against the ground, crying all the more when sharp pebbles dig into your cheeks.

“Naw, I think ye do. Why else’d you be- fuck, squeezin’ me like that?”

“Cause- because-” you try, but you can’t get the breath in to get more than a single word out.

“Huh? Cause- cause-?” Soap mocks, his voice pitching up to mimic you as he plants himself deep inside you, grinding his hips against the meat of your ass. “C’mon, kitty, tell me why. Go on.”

“Cause I want you to stop!” You cry, balled up fist slamming into the gravel. You can’t help but whine ow when the sharp rocks poke into your skin, and Soap’s laugh shakes your entire body.

“Good,” he whispers, breath hot against your ear. “Squirm all ye want, lass. I love it when you fight.”

You can do nothing but go limp beneath him as he begins fucking you again, his pace somehow faster and even more relentless. It’s a small mercy that there’s no fight left in you, that you can’t give him any more pleasure.

It certainly doesn’t stop him, though. Despite the fact that you’re doing your best impression of a dead fish, Soap pants and moans against your shoulder like you’re the single best thing he’s ever slept with. His cock is painfully hard inside of you, and his pace never once slows.

He’s loud when he finally comes, the sound of his orgasm clear enough that you know he’s thrown his head back to the sky. You can only whimper as he rolls his hips against you, working the last spurts of cum out of his cock and into your unwilling body.

“Fuck,” he sighs in your ear, sounding far more satisfied than he has any right to. “Good girl, kitty. You were perfect.”

You sniffle beneath him when he slowly pulls out, both of you groaning at the sensation. He gives you an almost perfunctory pat on the ass, and stands to walk away. You manage to open your eyes and focus just in time to see him slide to the ground in front of his partner, leaning against the wall.

“Yer turn,” he sighs. “Warmed her up good for you, Lt.”

Despite the hatred boiling in your gut, you can do nothing but lay limp on the ground and watch as his partner stands, cracking his neck and moving towards your prone form.

You want to run, you want to fight, but you can only watch the executioner come closer and wait for the metaphorical axe to fall.

He crouches by your head first, grasping your chin and pulling up until your torso tries to follow to alleviate the tension. He stares deep into your eyes for a long moment, and you find that it’s impossible to even tell where his pupils are with no real lighting. You feel like you’re truly looking into the empty eye sockets of a skull, no man and no mercy to be found.

“You’ll call me Ghost when I fuck you,” he rumbles, thumb stroking over the scrapes on your cheek. He doesn’t wait for a response, simply hauls you up by the shoulder and turns you onto your back.

He’s rough with your limbs as he shoves your legs together and up, his forearm banding across the backs of both of your knees and holding them to your chest. You whimper and wiggles as best you can, but the bruising blow against your thigh is enough to have you gasping and stilling.

“Don’t fight,” he warns, and you feel his gloved fingers running up the crack of you. “You’re hurtin’ enough as it is, and I’m not gonna help. You wanna make it worse too?”

You shake your head, unsure if he can even see you through your legs. He doesn’t respond, and hums when he swipes two fingers through the liquid gathered between your lips.

You whine when those fingers move further down, a fresh panic creeping in when he presses around your back hole.

“You should be glad Soap fucked you so good,” Ghost drawls. “He gave you all the lube you’re gonna get.”

You feel like an animal when you whine again, unsure of how to even begin trying to speak. You yelp when a thick finger slides into your hole, completely disregarding any resistance and forcing its way in until it’s buried to the knuckle. Your cries go ignored.

“Quit squirmin’,” Ghost scolds, pulling his finger out to smack your ass before shoving two back in. “You’re fine.”

You’re not, you’re terrified and hurting and upset, but none of those things matter when Ghost only coaxes more of your slick and Soap’s spend to your unused whole so there’s less resistance.

The only blessing you have is the fact that you can’t see more than the outline of Ghost’s figure with the way he’s got you positioned. You try your best to close your eyes and float into disassociation, and while you can’t fully manage it, the fact that you can’t see his face - his mask - helps you distance yourself from what’s happening.

The moment you realize this is of course the moment it stops being true.

He seems to decide you’re ready after scissoring three fingers inside of you, hefting himself up so that he looms more fully over you. You can only whine as you feel the movements of him unbuckling his belt, feel the weight of him slap against your slightly spread cheeks.

Fresh tears fall past your lashes as you stare up into the fathomless darkness that are Ghost’s eyes. There’s nothing there, just a cold empty skull prepared to ruin you.

You don’t even have the energy to beg.

The stretch of him inside your ass is five times worse than Soap was. There’s no natural lubrication, and nowhere near enough synthetic lube either. Your hole feels like it’s on fire, the stretch white hot as he gives you no mercy.

You’re not even fully sure what you’re babbling as he slowly sinks to the root, only aware of the pain and fear and panic sitting heavy in your heart. You fear you’ll choke on your tears, head jerking back and forth.

He sighs when he bottoms out, heavy barrel chest forcing your knees past your shoulders. Your hips strain, just another pain from the endless abuse.

“There,” he grunts, patting your thigh when you go limp from it all. “Stay nice and still now, just need a place to dump my cum.”

Upsettingly enough, that hurts. The idea that you could mean nothing to this man is somehow worse than the thought of him having some other twisted feelings for you, your hormone-addled mind deeply insulted.

His thrusts are long and slow, each one pulling nearly completely out before slamming back in. The sound of your skin slapping together is embarrassingly sexual, and a distant part of you is aware enough to pray that no one nearby had heard your screams and cries.

Ghost is near silent as he fucks you, the opposite of Soap. You can only hear the occasional grunt when you squeeze him because he’s inches away from your face - you can even feel the occasional gusts of breath when his hips start working a little faster.

There’s nothing you can do but lay limply beneath him and take it, just a vehicle for his pleasure. You almost manage to float away, to pretend none of this is happening or has ever happened, when his free hand moves from your thigh to the top of your cunt.

You nearly squeal when he rubs your clit, the smooth leath gliding over your slick bud. Your eyes fly wide open, back arching as much as you can with three hundred pounds of man holding you down. The loud laugh from several feet away only makes you writhe more.

“Make her squirt, Lt!” Soap shouts, his voice carefree.

“Shut it, Johnny,” Ghost grunts, voice roughened with pleasure. You don’t even have time to focus on the fact that he’s just told you Johnny’s name, far too preoccupied with the tidal wave of pleasure rushing towards you.

You have no idea why it happens. You’re never quick to come - almost every single partner of yours has complained about you taking so long to get off, it’s been an Issue in several relationships.

So it makes absolutely no sense that after hardly a minute of rough circles against your clit, you’re clenching down on the cock in your ass and moaning loudly as your orgasm overtakes you.

The natural clench of your body only makes the pain worse, a sharp spike of it running up your cunt and making your moan shift into more pained sounds. Ghost only moans in tandem above you, his thrusts becoming slightly less even as he lets your orgasm coax out his own.

You sob when you feel his cum paint your insides.

Unlike Johnny, Ghost doesn’t pull out after he comes. He lets your legs fall limp on either side of him, just barely managing to catch them for you before you slam your ankles to the ground. He leans his torso over yours, elbows resting on either side of your shoulders while you do nothing but wait beneath him.

He’s sweat off some of the makeup. This close, you can see hints of pale skin in the sockets of the mask. There’s nothing to read in his eyes, but that flash of skin tells you he’s still a man.

You swallow, trying to work moisture back into your dry mouth, and whisper, “Will… will you let me go now?”

You know it’s more likely he’ll kill you. It’s what you can only imagine happened to all those bodies in the streets, what you know happens to tens of thousands of women every year.

So it’s not a surprise when he doesn’t answer you verbally, instead covering your mouth with his palm and pinching your nose shut with his fingers.

Your eyes flutter shut after a moment, lungs tightening already, and all you can hope is that suffocation is a quick death.

———————————————————————

You wake, gasping, in a dark room.

You’re lurching forward before you’re even fully aware that you’re awake, coughing loudly and gasping when it feels like your throat is bleeding.

“Oh, poor thing,” you hear a familiar accented voice coo, and a moment later there’s a warm hand patting your back. “Yer alright, deep breaths.”

You jerk back from Soap - Johnny - as soon as your coughing is under control, scrambling back on your palms and staring at him with wide eyes. He only grins at you, looking for all the world like any other normal man in his sweater and sweatpants.

He got changed at some point - these pants are clean. He’s not wearing his mask either, and you’re struck dumb by how non threatening he manages to look.

He also changed your clothes - or Ghost did, maybe. You try to cover your chest with one hand, but there’s no hiding the fact that you’re completely naked.

Johnny only laughs at your attempted modesty. “Been starin’ at them for hours, lass. Ye’ve got nothin’ to hide.”

That’s… horrifying, and does absolutely nothing to calm you down.

It’s then that Ghost rises from a chair, stepping forward and making you aware of his presence. “Calm down, Johnny. We don’t want her panickin’ this early.”

Soap fully pouts, tilting his head at you before glancing up at his partner. “I haven’t even done anythin’, Ghost. Was just sayin’ hi, tha’s all.”

Ghost snorts, gripping Johnny’s mohawk and tugging back until the other man sprawls back on his ass. “You know how you are, pup. Give your kitty some space.”

Johnny listens, crossing one leg beneath him and bending the other close to his chest, looking casual as can be. Meanwhile your heartbeat only gets faster, and you wince when you happen to lean too far one direction and feel a throbbing reminder of what these men did to you.

Ghost steps forward again, crouching just out of arm's reach. You realize he’s not wearing the same skull mask as before, but a balaclava with a printed skull pattern instead. His eye sockets are unpainted, and you’re shocked by how such little things make him look so much more human.

“You can calm down. Long as you behave, nothin’ much worse’ll happen to you.”

You find yourself almost comically not-comforted by that, and can do nothing more than stare at him with wide eyes.

“Where…” Your voice cracks, so you swallow and start again. “Where am I?”

It’s Johnny who speaks up. “Our place. We finally brought ye home with us, kitty.”

The world feels like it’s slowed around you, and your eyes drag from one kidnapper to the other. You have to swallow again to work any moisture into your bone-dry mouth.

“Is the Purge over?”

The creases at the corner of Ghost’s eyes are painfully obvious with how pale his skin is, and you shudder at the thought of him smiling.

“Been over for… what, five hours now? Somethin’ like that.”

You can’t fight the tremble in your voice now. “Then… then you have to let me go.”

Ghost’s head tilts, the creases get deeper. “Do I?”

You nod with as much conviction as you can - which is almost none. “You can’t keep me here. You’re breaking the law.”

Ghost leans closer on the balls of feet and you lean further back, your spine pressing into the wall behind you. “Are we now? And who do you think will stop us, pet?”

“The- the police. Someone will report me missing, they’ll come looking.”

“Oh? And you think they’ll come here?”

You nod as best you can, and jump when Ghost laughs. It’s low and quiet, only a few beats, but it’s like gasoline thrown on the small fire of panic in your mind.

“You have no idea where you even are, and you think they’ll find you? I hate to break it to you doll, but you’ll be lucky if they look for you for a week. You have any idea how many people go missin’ after the Purge?”

Your breath is quickening. “So that’s it? You’re just going to… going to keep me here, forever? What are you even going to do?”

His laugh is sharper, meaner this time. “We’re gonna do a whole lot more of what we did last night, pet. Keep you as a little cocksleeve, a pretty thing tucked in the basement just for our entertainment. Ain’t that right, Johnny?”

You manage to tear your eyes away to look at Soap and see that he’s nearly salivating, having inched closer and closer and shifted so he’s knelt behind Ghost. There’s a feral spark in his eyes that has every hair on your body standing straight up.

“Yeah, tha’s right. Don’t worry, lass, we’ll make sure yer never lonely. Might even stay the night with you, cuddle up in the winter. Bet ye could keep our cocks nice and toasty in the cold, huh? Gonna let us use ye as a little heater?”

“A heater, a mattress, a fleshlight… your future’s lookin’ bright, sweetheart,” Ghost drawls, mockery dripping heavily from the cruel words.

Your eyes dart back and forth between the two men and their predatory stares, your heart racing against your ribcage.

It’s not a conscious choice for you to launch yourself towards them, reaching out and clawing your sharp nails down Soap’s face with a feral scream that tears your throat to shreds.

Even as Ghost throws you off and forces you to the ground, you vow to fight these men to the end. You’ll kill them both if you have to, leave them dead and wander however many miles it is back to your apartment.

Ghost only laughs when you shout this in his face, and you scream as you lunge forward, just managing to catch his masked chin between your teeth and bite.

With your fight instinct back in full force, you’re ready to make their lives hell.

#lumi im SORRY hand on the bible i could not tell you why this took me so long #it's pwp. it's pure smut. there is no justifiable reason for this taking a week #i literally have FOUR fucking docs of purge au's rn lmao like when i tell you i tried to write this SO MANY TIMES it was just not happening #ghoap x reader #bo writes #purge au #how do i tag this to get people to see it but not to get people complaining about dark fic to me #...i don't #oh well. special treat for you guys lol

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dragon-kazansky · 4 months

Text

Heart of the Dreaming

Morpheus x Female Reader

Soulmate AU

You are the daughter of Rodrick Burgess. You find out about the "demon" in the basement and decide you want to see it. Things take an unexpected turn when your soulmate connection is made with the man you find down there. You are the one he has been waiting for, and you're being taken away from. Not for long. Dream will protect his soulmate.

{Masterlist}

{Previous Chapter} - {Next Chapter}

Chapter Nine - Piece of me

☆☆☆

You stand beside Dream as you stare at the old depleted building. On your way here, Dream had explained to you Hob Gadling. Once a century, they would meet in this pub. Dream would ask Hob about his experiences and his life, seeing if he really wanted to continue living.

You were fascinated. It dawned on you that you and Hob had something in common. Both of you would live forever.

"I'm sorry."

"You have nothing to apologise for." Dream looks at you curiously.

"Still, this place meant something to you."

"The pub wasn't going to last forever."

"I suppose not..."

As you look around the fence, you spot a red line drawn right across the metal. You reach out and trace the words 'The New Inn' with your finger. "Do you think this is important?"

Dream reads the words and then follows the line with his eyes. He begins to wall in that direction. You follow him.

You end up outside a very pretty building. A little pub. There are people sitting outside in the garden having a drink in the sun. You smile slightly at the sight. It was fascinating to you.

"Do you think he's in there?" You ask.

"Perhaps."

Dream walks slowly toward the building, and you continue to follow him. Inside was nice and cool. You look around. The pub wasn't huge, and you liked that. The woman behind the bar smiles at you as you walk past.

Dream leads you further into the pub and comes to stop. You look up at him and then follow his gaze. There's a handsome man sitting by himself at a table grading papers in front of him.

The man looks up slowly and then smiles. "You're late."

Morpheus smiles, too. "It seems I owe you an apology. I've always heard it impolite to keep one's friends waiting."

Hob gestures to the chair opposite him. Morpheus pulls the chair out and then looks at you, offering it to you instead. You seem a little startled by that, expecting him to just sit down. You take the seat and watch Dream pull up another chair.

"And who's this?" Hob asks, smiling at you.

Dream speaks your name. You smile softly and feel rather bashful under Hob’s gaze.

"Nice to meet you."

"You too," you smile at him.

Hob turns to Dream and raises his brows up with a smile. Morpheus smiles back, not giving away anything else.

The two old friends catch up. Hob talks to Dream about many different things, and you listen with great interest. You had missed out on so much.

Dream shares his story with Hob. You find it hard to look at either of them while Dream talks. You're ashamed for what your family had done to him.

"Hey." You look up when Hob calls out quietly to you. "You're safe now. I'm sure he doesn't hold any malice toward you for what happened. Right?" Hob looks at Dream.

Morpheus looks at you. "I do not. You are not the reason I was trapped there. But being trapped there was the reason I found you."

You don't really know what to say to that. You stare at him. Your mind is riddled with thoughts and feelings.

Hob looked between the two of you and smiled softly. "Are you two together?"

You both turn to him.

"Yes." "No!"

You turn to Dream. "We're not... together."

He looks at you. "Are we not?"

"Of course not."

He leans forward a little bit and looks at you a little closer. "Are we not bonded?"

"Well, yes... but..."

"That is enough for me," he says.

"But..." The words die on your tongue. You feel a little confused by what he thinks. Did he assume that automatically meant you were both a couple?

"I think you've still got some things to figure out. Forgive me for asking," Hob says softly.

"It's alright..." You assure him.

Hob gets up to order a round of drinks, and you sit next to Dream awkwardly. He keeps his eyes on you while you both wait for Hob to return.

"Do you dislike me?" He asks suddenly.

"What?"

"Do you dislike me?"

"No." You shake your head. "I'm just not sure what it is you want out of this."

"I thought that was obvious," he replies.

"I meant we could be friends. Being soulmates doesn't mean we have to be in love or anything." You look at him. He sits there quietly, staring at you. "You're looking for a lover?"

"I've had lovers before. I want something... different."

"Different?"

"More," he clarifies.

You drop your gaze to the table and sigh softly. He wants someone he can love unconditionally without dear of them leaving him. You glance up to see he's still looking at you, and you're not sure what to do. Luckily, Hob returns. He places a drink in front of each of you and looks at you both.

"Are you against me having feelings for you?" Dreams asks softly.

"No. I just... I'm still learning about you. I haven't even really spent much time in your realm. It's kind of overwhelming being a human one day and then the soulmate of a cosmic entity the next."

Dream's lips curl into a tiny little smile.

Hob looks between you both again. He's kind of amused by his old friend. He never really imagined him as a romantic type, but it's clear he wants something with you.

"Do you hold no feelings at all for me?" Dream then asks.

"No, I... I'm curious about you, but I can't say I'm in love with you or anything. Are you lonely?" You ask.

"Perhaps."

"It makes sense why you want this to be more, but I don't think we're compatible like that."

"No?"

"You're just so... different." You look at him with a sorry expression. He can tell you're trying to be sincere.

"Because I am not mortal?"

"Because you're so closed off."

He stares at you for a good few long moments and then casts his eyes away. It's not like he doesn't know what you mean. He's just ashamed it had to be said out loud.

He just wants you to like him.

"You will stay in the Dreaming with me, yes?"

"Yes."

"Then I shall ask no more lf you," he says, looking back at you once more. You look into his pretty blue eyes and find your heart skips a beat.

Hob picks up the conversation with Dream again, and they talk between them some more. You listen and chime in every so often, but for the most part, your mind drifts.

You wonder what will come of this bond you share with the Sandman.

☆☆☆

Once again, you stand in the palace within the Dreaming. This time, you have time to actually take it in. You can tell just by looking around that Dream himself designed every little part of his realm.

He was obviously proud of his work. The rook he gave you was designed by him, too. You can tell he went to a lot of effort to make sure you would be comfortable here. He clearly wanted you to like your new home.

Home.

The Burgess mansion never really felt like home. It became your prison. Now you had a home. A home unlike anything you could have imagined before. It made you feel warm.

A knock on your door makes you snap out of your thoughts. You turn and call out, letting the person know they could enter. Dream steps into your room and your heartbeat picks up.

"How are you settling in?" He asks kindly.

"It's a very nice room. I'll be quite comfortable in here."

"Good." He walks over to the bed where you're sat and stands about a foot away. You can see the cogs in his brain turning, trying to work out what he wants to say.

"Are you alright?" You ask.

You see the way his posture straightens slightly. There was clearly something he wanted to say.

"I have a proposition for you."

"What kind of proposition?"

"A declaration if you will. I want to give you a piece of myself as a sign of my loyalty and devotion to you."

You stare at him in a mix of shock, confusion, and awe. "A piece of you?"

"A portion of my power. I offer it to you as a gift."

"You don't need to do that," you tell him, worried about what that would entail.

"I want to."

You look at him, really look at him, and see the way his eyes subtly plead with you to do this for him. You realise then just how much he holds you in high regard.

"Alright..."

Dream lifts his chin up a little and then holds out his hand. You stare at his pale hand for a moment before taking it. He pulls you up to your feet carefully and then pulls you a little closer to him. His hand remains clasped around yours. You keep your gaze on his face and watch as he closes his eyes. Your hand starts to tingle, and you look down to see what looks like golden sand around your entwined hands. You gasp softly as you feel a strange warmth bubbling in your chest and then as quickly as it came, it vanishes.

Dream opens his eyes and gazes at you. He holds your hand in his, his thumb lightly brushing over your skin.

"How do you feel?"

You look up at him and take a moment to think, to feel. "I don't know."

Dream lifts your hand slowly up to his lips and kisses your knuckles gently. You can't seem to tear your eyes away as he lowers your hand and let's go. You feel his fingers slip from your grasp like sand.

"I will teach you how to use this power if you will let me."

All you can manage to do is not quietly, unable to use your voice right now. You feel warm. You feel safe. You feel his love through your veins.

This was his way of telling you how he felt.

You look down at your hand. The sand is gone. The tingle is no longer there. However, you can still feel the phantom warmth of his hand in yours.

"What do I do with this power?" You ask softly.

"You help me here in the Dreaming." He smiles slightly. He is proud of this step He has taken.

You close your hand and look up at him. You offer him a smile.

He looks relieved.

This new life of yours starts now.

☆☆☆

@deniixlovezelda - @missdreamofendless - @kpopgirlbtssvt - @meganlpie - @thoughtsfromlayla - @ladyjbrekker

@mwaaaaaugh - @bluespecs14 - @intothesoul - @lady-violet - @navs-bhat - @krahk - @oldsoulmagic

@rubyrose2014 - @lorkai - @roxytheimmortal - @star-maker-rain-dancer - @intothesoul - @gemini-mama - @whotperlinda

@dreamingblueberries - @the-shadow-of-aurora - @novavida - @blackgirlmagicforever

@permanentlyexhaustedpigeon88 - @hopshusushi - @sloppyzengarden - @thecraziestcrayon -

#heart of the Dreaming #morpheus x reader #dream x reader #female reader #the sandman #dragon writes

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kyri45 · 4 months

Text

The Forgotten Island, AKA The Kingdom of Stars

A ISAT and Sky:Cotl Mix list of headcanons for a possible sequel of the main game.

MAP HERE!

Basic Information and Assumptions from the game:

From what we know, The Country is a rocky, forest, and mountain-filled island, close enough to be seen from Bambouche. Because of the cold climate, I’ll assume that it's located more northern than anything else in the ISAT world. Let’s also assume that it’s a highly humid country (it’s an island, so). Therefore, for a society built principally on the study of stars, I will further assume that the mountains there are high enough to well surpass the level of the clouds.

Another post also pointed out how the Country closest reference would be Iceland, which I couldn’t agree more ( even though I don’t think it would be THAT cold, I think the cold is more from the altitude than the position on the globe itself)

My personal take:

If even children are aware from a very young age of the physics and rules of the cosmos, then it’s safe to assume that these things not only are being taught in schools but are also present in their everyday lives in their homes. Just like the Change god is present in the form of statues and figurines around every house of Dormont, we could imagine that every house of The Country could have had its own observatory floor.

For an entire town, or city, or even country, to be able to see the stars perfectly at night, they would need to have their buildings more elevated than wide, so that the upper floors aren’t so affected by street lights pollutions or other form of illuminations for the roads.

As for the materials, we can drop down to at least:

Wood, from probably evergreen trees such as birch or even pine and spruce?

Basalt, from the (most likely) volcanic beach. It has also wonderful heat-keeping properties so It wouldn’t be strange to assume they use it in their buildings as well. The dark color also reflects less light during the night and would increase the star's visibility.

Other grey stones or concrete, from which they build at least the base of their tower-based architecture to be able to sustain multiple floors.

While an island such as The Country should technically be poor in metal, the presence of volcanic terrain and geysers should, on the positive side, mean that there is the presence of gold! So yes, shiny gold decorations for observatories or other star-related rooms are realistically allowed :)

I will take as a reference from the world of Sky 3 main realms for this AU:

Isle of Dawn: can be used as a reference for the surroundings part of the kingdom, using the same rocky and sandy morphology. Sky also has many boats scattered around the kingdoms, and since the Country mostly based its economy on trade and fishing was its main source of protein, I’ll take those as a reference as well.

Valley of Triumph: for its peaks, mountains, and climate. Also maybe for their transportation methods and house architecture from the Village of Dreams

Vault of Knowledge: the Vault itself is just one big building that could be well used as a like the main capitol center building for archive, research, and study of Wish Craft and stars. The architecture itself can also be used as an inspiration for other buildings such as libraries and schools.

I'll be updating this thread with possible more personal designs and sketch about the architecture!

Let me know if you finds errors in what I wrote or personal suggestions!

#kyri45 #isat spoilers #in stars and time #siffrin #sky cotl #sky children of the light #isat sky AU #isat sky cotl AU

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handful0fteeth · 1 year

Text

sexy when you scream

stranger kinks 2: roleplaying

summary: you told eddie you wanted him to stalk you. he obliges, and makes your wildest fantasy come true.

pairings: eddie munson x fem!reader

warnings: slight 90s!au, smut, minors DNI, explicit language, lots of dirty talk, A LOT of cnc, stalking kink, kidnapping kink, bondage, fearplay, (slight) knifeplay, rough sex

words: 9.7k

Oh, you are so fucked.

The cold, hard metal of your keys bite into your palm as you clench your hands together, pressing them against your chest as you slowly take inventory of your porch.

You wouldn't believe it if you weren’t standing here and seeing this with your own eyes. But here it is, in all its terrifying, thrilling glory. You worry your bottom lip with your teeth and take a step back.

Hundreds of daisies have been sprinkled on your front stoop; some rest in clumps atop the seats of your wicker chairs and a dusty metal table, while others are threaded through the thin whorls of metal within your iron porch columns. A path of daises led you to this discovery in the first place, smatterings of pink, white, and red petals and long green stems guiding you to your home from the driveway. In front of your door, pink clusters have been arranged to form the first initial of your name inside of a crude heart.

A cold wind blusters a few flowers across the tops of your tennis shoes, and you retreat down the concrete steps leading up the porch a little further. This egregious display was most certainly not here when you left for the gym an hour ago. You adjust your duffel bag on your shoulder and swallow hard despite your suddenly bone-dry mouth.

You know who did this. You spin on your heel, scanning the sparse forest encasing your home for anything - or anyone - who shouldn’t be there.

“Hello?” Your voice is small, scared, fluttering away on the autumnal breeze with all the conviction of a mewling kitten. The forest remains defiantly silent.

You see it when you’ve stepped onto your driveway, back turned to the floral explosion blocking your door. Nestled about one hundred yards away from your house, mostly camouflaged beneath a tapestry of oak leaves that have gone red and orange with the October chill, is the white-brown front bumper of a car.

No, not a car - a van.

Your stomach flips as you ascend your porch steps. The trees are blocking the windshield, so you can’t see if anyone occupies the van’s interior, but it feels like eyes are on you. Trying to find your house key proves difficult as your hands shake, and you keep glancing over your shoulder to ensure the van doesn’t move. Losing sight of it somehow feels scarier than knowing it’s there.

You finally slip the correct key into the lock, but when you turn it, there’s resistance. You try again - no luck. You hold the knob and lift, shimmying the key inside the door to dislodge whatever lay inside, but nothing gives. Sweat beads at your hairline and pools in your palms, and just as you’re about to throw the keys down in defeat, you notice your silhouette is pasted against the door. The world is suddenly much brighter than it was moments ago, and when you chance a look behind you, you realize why.

The van’s headlights have flared on. You blink against their harsh yellow light as your stomach drops into your shoes.

Shit. You bend, trying to peer inside your lock's narrow channel to figure out what’s jamming it. The dying evening light doesn’t give you much clarity, and you curse yourself for forgetting to switch on the porch light before you left.

A loud rumble pierces the air, disturbing a few nesting birds nearby into flight; he’s revving the engine.

Yep, definitely fucked.

You scrape the tip of your key along the rim of the lock, hoping you can dislodge whatever’s inside to unlock your door. White and pink petals crumble out, and it dawns on you as the glow of the headlights abruptly shuts off, and the engine cuts out.

He’s stuffed daisies in the door.

“Motherfucker!” you growl, slapping your hand uselessly against the doorjamb.

The sound of a car door slamming shut makes you whip around. The oak trees still obstruct your view, so all you can make out of the figure now slowly stalking toward you are a pair of dingy white sneakers crunching over the carpet of rotting leaves.

You don’t think - you just act. You swing your duffel back off your shoulder, offloading the unnecessary weight, and hear it crash into one of your wicker chairs as you dash down your porch steps. You fly around the side of the house, mud squelching and slipping beneath your tennis shoes, and just before you reach your backdoor, you trip.

All the air in your lungs whooshes out as you collide with the cold, wet ground, and mud squishes up between your fingers as you skid forward on your stomach. Pain zaps through the knee you landed on like lightning, and you gasp, but you don’t have time to sit here. He’s gaining on you. You can feel his presence at your back, if you can just get inside before he reaches you…

You scrabble forward, clawing at the mud and flinging clumps behind you as you struggle back up to your feet. Footsteps squish behind you, measured, slow.

The screen door crashes against the wall as you fling it open, but you hardly hear it over the blood rushing through your ears. Luckily, or stupidly, you never lock your back door, and though you have a hard time grasping the knob with your mud-slick palms, it gives way quickly as you barrel your entire body through it. When you slam it shut, your whole house rattles. A silence settles over you, thick like smoke and just as suffocating. Over the roar of blood in your ears, all you can hear is your own ragged breathing.

Then, you laugh.

You bend over, hands gripping your knees, lungs still burning, heart still pounding, and you start laughing. Mud is drying on your skin and clothes, and as your body quakes from the force of your laughter, flakes drift to the floor in front of you. Adrenaline throbs through your body, and something stirs in your stomach, intermingling with the fear that’s still got your teeth on edge and your hands shaking. Before you can name it, the doorknob in front of you jiggles.

He’s trying to open it.

You slap both hands over your mouth to stifle the giggles still pouring out. You wonder if he can hear you, if your girlish sounds of mirth are amusing or irritating to him. The knob wiggles harder, more insistently, forcing the door to tremble on its hinges, and just when you think it’s going to shake itself loose - it stops. The quiet creeps back in as you lower your hands, giggles under control for now. Seconds bleed into minutes, and you’re just standing by the door, watching it expectantly, like at any moment, the lock will magically fail and allow your unexpected guest inside.

Bangbangbang!

You can’t help the scream that bursts from your lips. The sound of a demanding fist pounding on your door rings out like a shot, and you aren’t even aware that your feet are whisking you away and into your kitchen until you’ve almost run straight into the counter. When you whip back around, ready to threaten the presence at the door and bluff your ass off, the banging stops as suddenly as it started.

Oh, he’s good.

You scurry to the living room and snap the curtains closed on all the windows, but not before peering outside. You eye the spot where the van is supposed to be parked and are met with nothing but empty forest.

Where did he go? He couldn’t have driven off that quickly, could he? Surely you would’ve heard the tires squeal over the forest floor, and surely he couldn’t have disappeared in a matter of seconds? You nibble your bottom lip again and back away from the windows.

You rub your bare arms, trying to soothe the gooseflesh that’s apparated over your entire body and take a deep, shuddering breath. Your heart still thunders against your ribcage, so much so that you’re sure it’d be audible from across the room.

You only notice the envelope taped to your fridge when you turn to face the kitchen.

You almost scream again. The writing on the outside is a familiar scrawl, addressed in black ink to a “Sweetheart.” Your legs are like lead as they shuffle over to the fridge, and when you bring the letter to your face with trembling fingers, a blend of cigarettes, weed, and something earthy-sweet wafts into your nose. Your resolve melts a little when you peel open the envelope and read the note within:

Hope you liked the flowers. I picked ‘em special for you. I’ll be seeing you soon, sweetheart, even if you don’t see me. Behave yourself.

A shiver ripples down your spine. You run your fingers over the letter, feeling where he’s pressed the pen into paper so hard it’s left indentations. God, you’re so tempted to run outside and call for him now, to end this little game before it’s even truly begun - the heat in your cheeks and the throbbing between your legs demands it. But where’s the fun in that?

You hug the note to your chest, chewing your lip, and slide down to the floor like a smitten schoolgirl instead of someone who should be terrified that their house was broken into and that whoever broke in left you a note promising constant observation. And on some level, you are scared. But the fear is the best part of all of this.

When Eddie asked you weeks ago if you ever had any fantasies you’d be interested in roleplaying, you’re sure he was expecting you to say you’d love to be the naughty student to his seductive professor or even something in a fantastical, magical vein that he could really sink his teeth into, but you didn’t. You hadn’t wanted to answer him at first, truthfully, because for all the dark, wicked things you’d already confessed made you embarrassingly wet, you didn’t think Eddie would be very on board with the idea of acting like some psycho stalker while you pretended to fear for your life.

Oh, how wonderfully wrong you were.

You hardly had to elaborate on the finer details of your fantasy before he emphatically agreed to participate, and he didn’t allow you to leave anything out, either. When you tried, when you curled in on yourself or tucked your head out of shyness, Eddie was there, grabbing your chin and crowding into your space, encouraging you with his velvet-soft tenor to keep going. The words tumbled out of you so freely it was like you weren’t even thinking about them - you confessed to wanting to be desired so fiercely that nothing would stop Eddie in his pursuit, not even you running from him. You wanted him to obsess over you, to make it clear that he was always there, always watching and waiting for another opportunity to express his devotion, whether you liked it or not.

You admitted, with Eddie’s deft fingers rubbing tantalizing circles around your clit, that you wanted him to make you scared. True, bone-chilling fear isn’t what you were after; you just wanted that thrill, that dump of adrenaline that kicked your body into overdrive, like when you’d watch a scary movie. In the face of mundanity, the dreary day-to-day that was living in Hawkins, that jolt of fear let you know, doubtlessly, that you were alive.

The shrill chime of the phone tears you from your thoughts, and you yelp. You back into the fridge reflexively, eyeing the phone on the adjacent wall like it’s a wild animal rearing to bite if you make a move toward it. Your heart batters so hard against your chest that you’re sure it’ll burst free at any moment and plop on the floor in a bloody, steaming heap. Gross.

You don’t move, and the phone rings out. The house isn’t silent for a full second before a second call jars the receiver, and you swallow thickly. You wonder how many calls you’d have to ignore before Eddie came banging around the house again, and for a moment, you consider doing just that. But that’s not part of the game. You’re supposed to be a poor, helpless victim who does just the wrong thing at just the wrong time. So you stand, your thighs quaking with the effort of keeping you upright, and pick up the phone.

“H-Hello?”

“Why’d you run from me, sweet thing?” Eddie croons. His voice is dark and smooth, and even through the receiver, it rumbles right down into your core. “I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Who is this?” you ask, and though the tremble in your voice is real, it isn’t from fear. You’re so fucking excited. You have to chew on your thumbnail just to suppress the giggles building in your throat, and you’re glad, for once, that Eddie can’t see the smile on your face.

“Aw, what, you don’t recognize me?” Eddie pouts, and you can practically hear him jutting out his bottom lip. “That hurts, sweetheart. Really stings.”

“Who…who the fuck are you?”

Eddie sucks in a hissing breath through his teeth. “Ouch, such foul language from such a pretty girl. I should wash your mouth out for that.”

The thought is, confusingly, very arousing. You decide you’ll table that and bring it up to Eddie at a later date.

“Anyway. D’you get my note?” he asks, as cool and casual as ever.

“I…How the fuck did you get into my house?”

He laughs. “Let’s not pretend you live in Fort Knox here, sweetheart. All I needed was a few tools and five minutes, and boom - it opened up like it was waiting for me. Just like you will.”

Fuck. You choke on your tongue as you press your back to the wall, knees buckling and threatening to drop you to the floor. You wonder where he’s calling from, if he drove away from your house, or if he just retreated further into the woods. If he’s out there now, watching, waiting.

“I’m not doing shit for you, you fucking weirdo,” you snarl, and Eddie laughs again.

“I am definitely gonna have to teach you some manners, aren’t I? Rude little thing, you are. I wonder if you’d be so keen on mouthing off if I was standing right in front of you.”

“I’m not scared of you.” A lie; you’re most definitely scared, but you’re also so fucking horny you’re having a hard time thinking straight. By sheer force of will, you don’t beg down the phone for Eddie to just come and take you now. You want to wait and play this whole thing out just as you two had planned, but God, it is so hard to have patience when he condescends to you.

“You should be,” Eddie purrs. “‘Cause you know what I like to do to mouthy little brats like you?” You hear him shift wherever he is, and the sigh that billows past his lips sends a shiver down your spine. You know that sound intimately, and how his breath hitches as he speaks confirms precisely what you’re thinking.

“I like to make them scream. Break ‘em ‘til they beg for mercy. And it’d be so easy to do, tiny little thing like you can’t even run two feet without tripping over herself.”

Your mind goes blank. An embarrassed flush rises high on your cheeks, but you hardly notice; Eddie’s low, almost imperceptible groan is bouncing around the inside of your skull, and you know for a fact you heard the jingle of his belt coming undone. He’s touching himself, maybe pulling his cock out of his jeans as you speak, so aroused at what he has planned for when he gets his hands on you that he can’t help himself. You clench your thighs tightly, pretending your panties aren’t getting wetter by the second.

“I-I’m gonna call the cops,” you threaten weakly. “I’m gonna c-call them right now, and when they get here they’ll-”

“They’ll what, sweetheart? Hm? C’mon, don’t be silly, you know they won’t believe you. Not like they’d be faster than me anyway. By the time they busted in, I’d already have my cock down your throat.”

You have to bite down on the back of your hand so hard it hurts to stop the moan that wants to spill out. This side of Eddie, this arrogant, cold, mean side of him, is unexpected but dizzyingly sexy. You can’t help the image that trickles into your brain: you on your knees, your hair fisted in Eddie’s hand as he thrust himself so deep in your throat that you’d have no choice but to gag on him, blinking tears from your eyes as your supposed “rescuers” came face-to-face with the very man you called to report in the first place.

“I’ll be seeing you soon, Y/N,” Eddie promises, his voice gruff with arousal. “But I’ll make sure you don’t see me ‘til I want you to. Think you can be a good girl for me ‘til then?”

“Fuck you,” you spit, and he laughs.

“I thought so.” There’s a pause, and when Eddie speaks again, it’s softer, quieter, like he’s afraid someone is eavesdropping. “Are you okay, by the way? Like, really. That fall looked like it hurt.”

You smile, twisting the phone cord around your fingers. “I’m okay, baby. Just muddy. I don’t even think I scraped anything.”

“Good. Do you remember your safeword, angel?”

“Mmhm. Mercy.”

“And what happens if you call mercy?”

“Everything stops, right there and then,” you say, repeating what you’d gone over probably dozens of times before tonight. As excited as Eddie was, he refused to participate in anything risky like this without a safeguard, for both of your sakes. As he’d put it, “If the whole point is you sayin’ ‘no,’ how am I supposed to know when that really means ‘no?’”

Eddie chuckles. “That’s my good girl. Alright, go get cleaned up. I’ll be watchin’ you.”

The line goes dead without another word.

You stare at the receiver for what feels like a long, long time. You’re half expecting him to call you back, maybe to taunt you some more, but he doesn’t.

You’re still so fucked. And you’re thrilled.

~~~

Days pass without much incident.

When you wake up the next morning, the daisies have all mysteriously disappeared from your porch, as if they were never there. Your duffel bag has been propped up in one of your wicker chairs, but when you unzip it, it’s empty, save for a single pink daisy at the bottom. You don’t know if Eddie’s around or watching, so you stealthily pluck the flower out of your bag and tuck it close to your chest. You suppose it sort of ruins the illusion if you keep your “stalker’s” creepy calling card, but beneath that, who are you to throw away the flowers your boyfriend gifts you?

You try to go about your life normally but catch yourself constantly looking over your shoulder, flinching at every twig that breaks in the woods, running to the window to fling the curtains open if you think you hear a voice on the breeze outside. There’s never anything there, but you always check. Nighttime is when Eddie’s decided he’s going to mess with you the most. He doesn’t need to break in, as you gave him a key ages ago, but you’d discussed that feeling more authentic for the fantasy, so he does it.

He comes in at around three o’clock every night - you awake to footsteps creaking along your floorboards, shadows rippling over your wall, and dissipating in the blink of an eye, but when you gather the courage to storm down the hallway, he’s nowhere to be seen. You only know he was there because his scent lingers behind him, earth-sweet and smokey with cigarettes. The anticipation makes it harder to fall asleep every night, like a kid waiting to catch Santa Claus in the act.

After a week, he amps it up. You awake to daisies in front of your bedroom door, and when you return home from work that night, a white one is on your pillow. He’s edging closer and closer to you, circling like a vulture readying its descent toward its meal. You start waking up to calls in the middle of the night, but when you pick up, Eddie doesn’t speak. He only breathes, deep and slow, into your ear until you scream at him and hang up. You toothlessly attempt to brat at him, perhaps bait him into just doing whatever the fuck he’s planning already, but he remains cool-headed. When you swear at him, he merely chuckles, a knowing, expectant sound, and any insults you can conjure during your calls go unheeded.

That’s possibly the scariest part about this - Eddie does not, and has never, taken your bratting lightly. He enjoys nothing more than putting you squarely back in your place should you decide to put even one toe out of line, so the fact that he’s permitting abject disrespect and taunting from you means he is biding his time. You know he’s running a mental tally in his head, and you will soon reap the consequences.

That thought runs rampant in your head when you doze off one night, too exhausted to keep your eyes open. The book you’re reading lays askew on your lap, and the rain pattering against your window lulls you into a deep, dreamless sleep. You don’t know what time you drift off at, nor how long it is before you’re jostled awake, but when you regain consciousness, you’re immediately cognizant of three things.

First, you are upside down. Blood pools in your skull, making it very hard to concentrate on anything but the dull, persistent throb in your head.

Second, you can’t move. You thrash uselessly, but your arms burn in the position they’re forced into behind your back, and your legs have been bound at the ankles.

Lastly, your mouth is full. You try to scream, but the sound comes out garbled behind a thick, round hunk of something that’s been shoved so far into your jaw that it aches. You can feel thin straps on either side of your face, digging into the tender flesh of your cheeks, and when you poke at the strange object with your tongue, all you feel is smooth, rubbery roundness.

The fog of sleep stubbornly refuses to clear quickly enough for you to orient yourself, so all you can gather for a moment is that you’re cold. When you shiver, a dark, gleeful sound slithers up your spine, one you’d recognize any day.

“Well, good morning, gorgeous,” Eddie hums, and when he shifts, you glean a better understanding of what’s going on. He’s thrown you over his shoulder as if you weigh less than nothing and brought you outside somewhere. You can’t tell if you’re just outside your house or if this is a different part of the woods - all you can see are the dark, spindly shadows of dying trees against the velvet black of the night. You thrash futilely, screaming obscenities at him as best you can as buzzing heat cracks through your veins like lightning.

“Aw, what’s wrong? Didn’t order a wake-up call, huh?”

His voice sounds oddly muffed, though you can’t discern if that’s due to the blood roaring in your ears. Something clatters open ahead of him, and before you can blink, you’re being tossed through the air. You shriek and land on something warm and soft; when you flex your fingers against it, you realize it’s a pile of thick, fuzzy blankets laid atop what appears to be a mattress. You don’t need to look further to realize where Eddie’s dumped you - you’re inside his van.

He’d modified the back of it ages ago, when you first started dating, partially because having sex on the floor was murder on your back and hips, but mostly so you two could have somewhere private to sleep and hang out. Eddie didn’t have anything against going to your place, but he always seemed…stiffer, somehow, inside the four walls of your home. Like he was acutely aware that he didn’t belong there, or at least didn’t feel like he belonged. Your house's tidy, eclectic decor was so different than the cluttered, shabby interior of his trailer, and that had never bothered you, but it so clearly bothered him.

When your eyes fall on Eddie’s face, you realize why he’d sounded so strange. He’s wearing a mask, one he no doubt procured from a Halloween store - the long, white face appears perpetually frozen in a mournful scream, and its black eyes are narrowed at you in apparent anguish. A black shawl hides Eddie’s long hair, blending in with his all-black outfit tonight. He tilts his head at you slowly, crossing his arms and leaning against the van’s open door.

“Whatsa matter, pretty girl? You look so scared. You scared of me?” His voice is cloyingly sweet, deliciously patronizing. You whip your head from side to side, viciously denying it, even though your entire body is shaking and your heart is hammering against your chest. You’re coming to regret your choice of pajamas tonight, as the thin, silky nightgown you’d chosen before slipping into bed does nothing to protect you from the frigid air trickling into the van.

You’d also forgone panties entirely, something you aren’t sure Eddie’s noticed yet.

How long had it taken him to tie you up? You wiggle your arms within their bonds and glance down at your legs, noting the white, plastic sliver encompassing your ankles. Zip ties? Where the fuck did Eddie get zip ties? And how did he manage to use them without you waking up? Surely, no one was that careful.

Drool oozes from the corners of your mouth, dribbling embarrassingly down your neck, heedless of your attempts to rub it away with your shoulder.

“If you behave, there’s nothing to be afraid of,” Eddie coos. He bends toward you, and a single, black-gloved finger crooks beneath your chin. He angles your face toward him, expression entirely indiscernible beneath his mask. His thumb brushes over your cheek so gently, mopping up some of your saliva, and you have to remind yourself of the part you’re playing so you don’t lean into his touch.

Then, Eddie’s hand is gone from your face, only resuming occupancy on your body when it closes around your throat. You squeak, a wet, pathetic sound from beneath your gag, and your eyes go wide as saucers.

“Although, you seem fucking incapable of behaving yourself lately,” he snarls, jostling you back and forth. “What’d you think was gonna happen, hm? Acting all fucking high and mighty, talking to me like I’m some scumbag? You need to learn some fucking respect, girl, some goddamn humility.”

You whimper, Eddie’s threats tingling pleasantly down to your pussy. Tears well up in your eyes, and you desperately try to communicate an apology, but it all comes out as broken nonsense. You knew this was coming; you knew he wouldn’t let you off scot-free for anything you’d said over the past week, but something about the white-hot indignation in his voice makes the fear smoldering beneath your arousal burn that much brighter. You try wrenching out of his grip, but all that earns you is a fist knotted in the hair at the back of your head.

“Oh, you’re sorry?” Eddie mocks, pitching his voice higher. “Yeah, I bet you think you are. But you’re gonna learn what sorry looks like soon, what it really feels like. I told you, breaking little brats like you and making them scream for mercy is one of my favorite pastimes.”

Eddie shoves you onto your back, and the faint light from the yellowish bulb inside the van vanishes as he crawls on top of you. The chalk-white features of his mask hover just above your face, shiny and thick and reeking of powder. You wail in protest, hurling muddled insults at him while trying in vain to tug yourself free of the zip ties. The struggle feels good, cathartic, in a way. It helps to alleviate all the jittery, excited energy pent up inside your body, and it thrills you to know that Eddie won’t stop fighting you right back unless you call mercy. He’ll take what he wants from you as roughly as he pleases, and in turn, you’ll give him everything you have. You trust him implicitly, so when he grabs your throat again and squeezes until you’re gasping around your gag, you lay there with raw, feral arousal roiling in your belly instead of fear.

“How’s my angel?” Eddie whispers into your ear, and you relax further into his hand. His fingers slacken just enough to allow you a small, shallow breath, and you nod vigorously. You hope your eyes can communicate what your mouth can’t right now.

“Good girl, you’re doing great. If you need to tap out, I want you to kick your feet down three times, okay?” He raps his knuckles by your head to demonstrate his point. You nod again.

When he lifts his body off yours, cold air sweeps you up in its grasp, and you shudder. Wordlessly, Eddie hops out of the van and slams the door shut, leaving you alone in the back. He jumps in the front and revs the engine just as you’ve begun to scream and flail around again.

“Scream all you want, sweet thing,” he encourages. “No one’s gonna be able to hear you anyway. Nobody’s comin’ to save you from me.” The metallic squeal of a guitar suddenly bursts into your eardrums; Eddie’s turned on the radio and cranked it almost full blast, effectively drowning out all your cries for help. If anyone were outside the van, they wouldn’t even know you were there.

Eddie hits the gas, and the van thunders to life before speeding off into the night.

~~~

You must be more tired than you’d initially thought because somewhere between your initial “kidnapping” and the van finally skidding to a stop, you doze off again.

It’s hard not to - Eddie blasts the heat, probably because he can see you shivering in his rearview mirror, and the blankets pressed beneath your nose smell just like him. How can you not bury your face in them? And you only intended to shut your eyes for a second, honestly.

A hand caressing your cheek pulls you from your sleepy haze, and you blink at Eddie’s still-masked face. Having briefly forgotten he was wearing it, he startles you, and you suck in a sharp breath as best you can through your gag. He chuckles.

“Just me, pretty girl. Look at you, drooling all over yourself already.”

You feel the slimy wetness of your saliva coating the side of your face as soon as he mentions it, and you self-consciously try to wipe some of it away by rubbing your face into the blanket. He lifts the corner and dabs it along your cheek and jaw.

“Do you need a minute, baby?” he asks. “You look so comfy.”

You shake your head. You can sleep back here whenever you want, but Eddie’s gone through all the trouble of dragging you out here (wherever here is) for a reason. You’re dying to see what it is.

Satisfied with your answer, Eddie wraps his fist in the front of your nightgown and pulls so hard he forces you into a sitting position. Your arms tingle and your head spins with the sudden decrease in blood as he tugs on the loops holding your gag secure. As they fall away, the rubber ball in your mouth plops into your lap, but your mouth isn’t empty for more than a moment before Eddie’s gloved fingers slide across your tongue and press into the back of your throat. You gag and gasp in surprise, trying to flinch away, but Eddie holds your head in place with his free hand.

“If you scream, the next thing going in your mouth is gonna be my boxers,” he warns, and you wrinkle your nose. That’s a soft limit, something you’re not entirely willing to try but are open to having your boundaries pushed about, especially for a punishment. Admittedly, a dark, perverse thrill slinks through your gut at the thought. Having Eddie on your tongue like that, inescapable and unavoidably pungent, is equally humiliating and intriguing. But you don’t have time to try and weigh that thought out, so you just whimper and rock your head from side to side as much as possible.

“That’s what I thought. Keep your fucking mouth shut.”

He drags you out of the van by your gown, swinging your body in front of his as you settle unsteadily on your feet. You squint into the surrounding darkness and realize with a cold squeeze of dread that you have no earthly idea where Eddie has driven you. The trees are thicker here, dying leaves black in the moonlight, and there are no stars when you look up at the sky, only bulbous clouds. The air is still and cold, dense with the threat of rain.

The edge of something scintillatingly sharp drags itself down your spine, dangerous even through the fabric of your nightgown. You don’t dare turn around, but you can feel Eddie pressing himself closer as he allows that pointed edge to linger on your flesh.

“Feel that?” he asks. He taps it against your thigh, and you gasp.

“Y-Yes,” you squeak.

“That’s my knife.” Fuck. You have to hold your breath to prevent the moan that wants to spill out.

When Eddie kneels by your legs, he takes a moment to drag both hands appreciatively down either side of you, fingers flexing and kneading the soft flesh of your thighs as his blade pokes menacingly through your skirt. Then, in one swift motion, he slices through the zip tie around your ankles.

As if sensing your inclination to bolt away immediately, Eddie stands and snatches the plastic loop still ensnaring your wrists and tugs you backward against his chest. He wraps his other arm around your neck and the steel of his blade glints from the corner of your eye. You refrain from inhaling his scent, leather, cigarettes, and sweet earth, but just barely.

“Hold on, bunny, don’t hop away just yet,” he murmurs against your hair. “I haven’t explained the rules of our game yet.”

“Game?”

“Mmhm. And if I hear one bit of attitude from you, I’m gonna cut this pretty little dress off you and make you run around these woods stark-naked. Do you understand me?”

“You wouldn’t dare,” you bite, not entirely understanding why you feel the need to do the exact opposite of what he’s just told you to do. He laughs, a downright sinister sound.

In one fluid movement, his knife cleaves through the front of your nightgown, splitting it open all the way down to your belly and allowing your breasts to spill out. Your nipples harden immediately from the frosty air, and you gasp, hands instinctively trying to cover yourself up.

“What were you saying? I wouldn’t dare?” Eddie teases. He nudges the torn fabric aside purposefully, further exposing you and taking the opportunity to grope your soft, chilled flesh. Warm breath washes over your ear, and he grinds shamelessly into your ass from behind.

“Now, our game. I’m giving you the chance to run, run, run aaall the way home. If you can find the way back through the woods and make it there before I find you, you’re free, sweetheart. I’ll leave you be and won’t darken your doorstep anymore. But…” Eddie bends you over forcibly, ghosting his lips across your skin as he speaks. You want to beg for him; your body cries out for it, but you don’t. You’re so fucking wet from all of this, from his threats and the glaring danger of his blade, that your thighs stick together every time you adjust your stance to gain some semblance of balance.

“If I find you before you make it home,” Eddie purrs, “I will spend the rest of the night breaking you, bit by bit until you can’t remember why you ever wanted to run from me in the first place. You’ll be my perfect little victim. Sound fair?”

“I…I…” You’re certain your brain just split clear down the middle. Something inside of you, something ancient, urges you to flee, to make your way back to safety by any means possible. But something else, the very same need that demanded it be known all those weeks ago when you first told Eddie about it, desperately wants to be caught. You want to streak through these woods, possibly getting yourself hopelessly lost in the process, only to have Eddie successfully hunt you down and make you suffer so beautifully for him. It’s so overwhelming that you don’t notice Eddie’s cut through the zip ties on your wrists until both arms have fallen limply at your sides.

He steps back, leaving you uncomfortably cold all over again, and lands a hard swat on your ass. You yelp and twirl around to face him, glaring heatedly at that morose white mask. His arms are folded, his posture is relaxed - you haven’t even started running yet, and he’s already so confident, the bastard. You pinch the sides of your shredded nightgown together and step back from him.

He flaps the hand clutching his knife at you, waving you off. “Go on,” he says. “Run along. I’ll even give you a thirty-second headstart since I’m so nice.”

When you, stupidly, don’t move a muscle, he heaves a sigh and pulls the sleeve of his jacket up to look at his watch. “Twenty-eight, twenty-seven-twenty-six…”

Shit. You pick a random direction and sprint.

The sound of him counting fades as distance mounts between you, and once you’re alone, in the total silence of the forest, Eddie is not the only thing you’re afraid of. You’ve heard stories about these woods, the frightening disappearances, and general odd goings-on that happen within. As you leap over a dead, fallen log while determinedly holding your rapidly disintegrating nightgown together, you recall what happened a few years ago to the kid Hawkins deemed Zombie Boy. Supposedly found long dead in a reservoir, bloated and green with decay, his family even held a funeral for him - only for him to turn up, alive and well, weeks later. What could’ve caused such a terrible misunderstanding? What’s worse, who’s to say that whatever - or whoever - caused that misunderstanding isn’t still out here? Who’s to say that they aren’t listening to every branch that snaps below your bare feet, that they haven’t picked up on your scent by now and are tracking you with all the stealth and efficiency of a wolf?

You shake the thought from your head and persevere.

You can’t remember, for the life of you, what direction home is in. You must start down half a dozen different paths before you think better of it and double back to the place you started, and none of your options seem correct. You curse yourself for dozing off in Eddie’s van instead of trying to count how many turns he took, what direction he was going in, anything that might help orient yourself now.

Something rustles the bushes a few yards behind you.

You don’t think - you pick a path and fly down it, swatting low-hanging branches out of your way and ignoring the brambles that hook into the fraying hem of your nightgown. Maybe you should’ve let Eddie cut this cumbersome thing off you when you had the chance. All pretense of trying to be sneaky, of trying not to attract attention, is gone - you are running blind, panting, heaving, whimpering, slapping down tree limbs, and crunching over dead leaves in the hopes you manage to stay just out of Eddie’s reach.

You are terrified. You are exhilarated. You’ve never felt this free in your entire life, and you can’t believe it’s taken you so long to ask Eddie for this.

You weren’t sure before, as you’d tried to tell yourself it was just the sound of your own footfalls echoing in the woods, but you’re certain now that you can hear Eddie’s boots striking the ground as he gains on you. Your thighs burn with the effort of propelling you forward, and every pull of ice-cold air into your lungs is like swallowing needles, but you press on. You want him to catch you, but he needs to work for it, and as you swing a hard left over fallen logs, his hysterical laughter explodes into your ears.

You chance a look over your shoulder. Eddie’s lithe body weaves and slinks through the forest behind you, seemingly unaffected by the foliage that’s presently slicing open the bottoms of your feet and legs; his mask bobs mournfully above his black clothes, a bloodless beacon reflecting what little moonlight leaks through the thick stormclouds above. He’s so close that if he really wanted to, he could reach out and snatch you up by the nape of your neck like a kitten.

You scream. The sound reverberates through the trees, shrill and elated, and another round of laughter booms from Eddie like thunder.

You’ve just managed to leap over a gnarled root without tripping over it or slipping in the mud when you feel fingers at the back of your neck. You squeal and swat aimlessly, which is a stupid fucking idea - Eddie nabs your wrist and pulls, forcing you to come to a skidding halt.

“Let go of me, you fucking freak!” you wail, thrashing against him as he gathers your hands together and snickers into your ear.

“Looks like I win, pretty girl,” he breathes. Something jingles just beyond your head, and before you can wonder what it is, Eddie shows you - steel handcuffs, silver and glittering, dangle in front of your eyes. You whimper and drive your elbows backward, fighting with everything you have to force Eddie off you. You succeed, albeit minimally, and can free one hand. You swing and claw at him, fingers scraping for something to grab hold of until they finally pinch one of his mask’s eye sockets. Lightning cracks across the sky overhead as you rip the mask off Eddie’s face.

The brief flash of light gives you a full look at his face. His brown eyes are wild and bright, crinkled at the edges from the maniacal grin splitting his cheeks apart. His skin is pink and glowing with sweat, and you can’t help how your heart swells as you stare at him. Perhaps if you ever do this again, you’ll set a shorter time limit - you don’t know if you can handle not seeing him for over a week again.

“If you’d stop squirmin’, this’d all go so much faster, sweetheart,” Eddie huffs, trapping your hands together again as you uselessly pound them against his chest. Despite your best efforts, Eddie snaps one cuff around your wrist with a soft click and, as he works on the second one, pushes you both up against the broad trunk of a tree. The bark scrapes painfully along your shoulder blades as you shriek and try to kick him off of you, but it’s too late. He wrenches your arms above your head by the thin chain connecting the handcuffs, and browning leaves descend onto your face as he loops them over a branch.

It’s so high up that you must stand on your tip-toes to avoid burdening your arms with all your weight. Because of that, you can’t gain enough momentum to swing them back down, and Eddie takes a leisurely step back to admire how well and truly stuck you are. He pants, leaning forward on his knees and staring at you through his dark lashes.

“Goddamn, you are a feisty little thing, aren’t you?” he asks, giggling breathlessly.

“Get me down from here, right now,” you growl. Admittedly, it’s very hard to be intimidating while your tits hang out of your shredded nightgown, but you still try.

“That’s not what we agreed on. I told you - I catch you, you’re mine. Good thing, too, my dick was just achin’ watching your cute little ass running from me.”

You whimper as Eddie straightens himself out, heaving one final, deep breath before passing a hand through his hair. You don’t realize he’s flicked his knife out again until he’s got the blade right beneath your nose.

“Now, let’s get this shit outta the way.”

You gasp and reflexively bend your body away as Eddie plunges the sharp edge down through what remains of your nightgown, hacking away at it as if it’s personally offended him until it’s reduced to nothing but a pile of silken scraps by your feet. You shudder, wholly unprotected from the cold now and utterly incapable of hiding the arousal smeared down your inner thighs from him.

His breath clouds in front of him as his eyes roam over your naked body with all the hunger of a predator eyeing its meal. The pink of his tongue darts across his bottom lip as he stalks up to you, already making quick work of his belt.

“D-Don’t touch me, don’t you fucking touch me!” you howl, even though the idea of his hands on you right now makes your stomach flutter. He ignores you, of course, and casts his gloves aside before resting both hands on the trembling flesh of your biceps. He’s so wonderfully warm, blood pumping right below the surface of his skin.

“I can’t wait to split this pretty pussy open,” he murmurs, mouth hovering just above your cheek as he drags his fingers down, down, down until they’re slipping between your hips and cupping you. You try to disguise the pathetically aroused sound that falls from your mouth by shrieking in faux disgust.

“Stop it! Get off, get off!”

“Dirty girl, you’re soaking wet for me already.” Without warning, Eddie plunges two fingers deep inside you, chuckling at how your eyes roll into the back of your head, and a scream tears itself from your throat.

“S-Stop it,” you sob. You throb around him, unable to disguise your body’s physical reactions, and it only sweetens everything for you. The way your cunt betrays everything you’re saying, twitching and clenching and gushing around Eddie’s fingers in the face of your pleas for him to stop, your insistence that you don’t want him, pulls you deeper into this fantasy.

“I don’t think you really want me to stop,” he muses, thrusting in and out of you so slow you’re confident you’ll go bat-shit insane soon. “If you did, you wouldn’t be dripping for me. What a nasty girl you are, all worked up for the big, scary man who chased you down in the woods like a scared little bunny rabbit.”

“Fuck…fuck you,” you say weakly, and stars explode behind your eyes as Eddie curls his fingers inside you. You screw your eyes shut and press your lips together to trap the noises threatening to burst out of you.

“Oh, I will,” he promises. “I’m gonna fuck you stupid. And then, I think I’ll keep you all for myself. Take you home and keep you tied to my bed like a good little pet. I’m sure you’ll learn to love it.”

You could cum just from listening to Eddie talk. Your heart is pounding so hard you can feel it beneath your tongue, and if it weren’t for the steel around your wrists forcing you upright, you’d sink to the ground and beg for him to fuck you already. You don’t care if it’d break the illusion, if it doesn’t coincide with the game - you are desperate, dripping just as he said, and the lust fogging your brain makes it impossible to consider anything but your own arousal.

“P-Please,” you whimper, hoping all you need from him is conveyed in that one word.

Something hot and hard nudges between your legs, and you gasp - you didn’t see him do it, but Eddie’s removed his cock from his jeans. The hand not buried against your pussy is fisted around the base of it, pale against his red, wet shaft and thick head. You gulp hard.

“Please? What a sweet word out of that filthy mouth.” He crushes you harder against the tree and lifts one leg over his hip, stroking himself slowly as you struggle to keep your eyes forward. His fingers leave your weeping cunt painfully empty for a brief moment, and then he slides his cock through the slick puddling just below your hole and teases his head around the rim.

“Oh, darn, looks like I forgot a condom, too,” Eddie says, sucking his teeth and shaking his head at his apparent negligence. Your stomach clenches, and heat pools between your hips. “I’m sure you don’t mind, do you, dollface?”

When Eddie enters you, you tip your head back and moan. It’s been a criminally long time since you’ve felt him inside you like this, hot and raw and forcing your muscles to stretch around his thick cock. It burns just a little, but the lack of prep and the pain hueing your pleasure makes it better.

“God, God, oh God…”

“Nope, just you and me, sweetheart.”

Eddie’s teeth latch onto the flesh below your jaw, pinching and sucking it into his mouth as he bullies his cock deeper inside you. Usually, he’d take his time getting you ready for it, loosening you up around his fingers and drawing a few orgasms out of you until you were perfectly pliant for him. Right now, though, he doesn’t have it in him to bother with all that, and you are so grateful.

Fat drops of rain plop onto your hair and dribble down the sides of your face as Eddie starts fucking you in earnest. His hands come around to grasp greedy handfuls of your ass and pull you in tighter against him, and he quickly litters the side of your throat with hickeys as his hips snap forward. You can’t help how you squeal and groan as you’re jostled against the tree, and you realize with a shudder of humiliation that you’re getting close already.

“P-Please…please, Eddie, please…” You don’t particularly know what you’re begging for; you just hope he’ll take pity on you for it and give you more. You need impossibly more. You need him to ruin you properly. The way he throbs inside you reminds you of the lack of protection, and you beg for him again.

“What a fuckin’ whore. I knew you wanted it,” Eddie snarls, the edge of his teeth rasping against your jaw.

“I…fuck, Eddie, please, it’s so much,” you whine, choking on air as he buries himself as deep as he can get. He shushes you, and another flash of lightning in the sky illuminates his handsome face as he pulls back to look at you.

“Do you need mercy, baby?” he asks, blinking rain from his big brown eyes. Your hair sticks wetly to either side of your face, and you can’t tell if you’re shivering more from cold or pleasure. You whip your head from side to side.

“N-No, no mercy,” you mewl, “I-I just…please, please just fuck me, break me, I need it so fucking badly, baby, please.”

He doesn’t respond, not verbally, anyway. He yanks your other leg around his hip, settling your weight entirely in his lap, and the slight change in angle pushes him just that little bit further inside your twitching cunt. Your mouth drops wide open as he quickens his pace, the denim of his jeans slapping against your bare ass so hard it burns, and the way he grunts from the effort makes your toes curl.

“I didn’t think you’d be such an easy fuck,” Eddie teases. “Guess you’re just a dirty slut after all, huh?”

“Fuck, oh God, fuck, I’m cumming, I can’t stop, E-Eddie!”

Your orgasm scorches through you like molten lava, burning you from the inside out and robbing you of enough air to scream. As Eddie continues pounding into you, you claw at the branch beneath your fingers, desperate for something to anchor you to reality. You don’t think you’ve ever cum this hard in your entire life, and the fact you did so without even once touching your clit fills you with an odd sort of pride.

“Fuckin’ squirting all over me, fuck, sweetheart,” Eddie growls, and you only realize he’s right when warmth starts trickling down your thighs. You blush, trying futilely to bury your face in his neck out of embarrassment. When he doesn’t stop fucking you, and your orgasm ebbs enough for pain to start lapping at the edges of your pleasure, you whimper.

“H-Hurts, hurts.”

Eddie shushes you. “I’m not done with you yet. Just shut up and take it, like my good little victim.”

He crushes you tightly against the tree, huffing and panting into your ear while he desperately chases his own pleasure inside you. You cry out openly, the chill of the rain intermingling with the heat of his body against you so deliciously that you think that if lightning struck the pair of you right now, you’d die a happy woman.

“You’re gonna take every drop of my cum, understand?” Eddie snarls. “If even one drop leaks out of you, you’re gonna lick it up.”

“Yes, fuck, I understand.”

“Your pussy clenches so hard when I threaten you, baby, fuck, you’re gonna make me cum.”

Thunder claps overhead as Eddie presses stills inside you, cockhead pressed as deep as it’ll go inside your throbbing slit and starts cumming with a wanton howl into the night. Liquid heat floods into your core, and though you weren’t even aware of it building again, your second orgasm crashes into you as you realize the risk you’ve just partaken in by letting Eddie cum inside you. It feels so right, allowing him to claim you this way, bearing his mark on the deepest part of you, and you know for a fact that after tonight, you will beg him to never use another condom again.

When he’s finished, Eddie sags against you, trembling hands digging into the globes of your ass as he shakily supports your weight. You pant, blinking rain out of your eyes, and kiss the wet curls beside your face.

“Thank you,” you murmur.

~~~

Turns out, Eddie didn’t take you far from home at all.

In fact, he drove only a mile away and spent about forty-five minutes doing circles in the woods because he didn’t want to disturb your nap. He tells you this as he leads you out of the forest and back to the van, holding his leather jacket above your head like a makeshift umbrella.

He retrieves a towel from inside and wraps it around your shivering, rain-soaked body before planting you in the driver’s seat. After he drapes a thick, flannel blanket around your shoulders and points all the vents toward you as the heat blasts, he cups your face in both hands and kisses your forehead.

“You did such a good job, sweetheart,” he murmurs, trailing his lips down over both eyes, your cheeks and finally landing on your trembling lips. His mouth, despite everything, is still so warm.

“I did?” you ask sleepily. He nods and rubs your arms to inspire blood flow back into your extremities.

“You did. I’ll draw a bath for you once I get you home, okay?”

“Join me?” Eddie smiles and pinches the sides of the blanket tighter around your shoulders.

“I would, but someone’s gotta feed us both.”

When he hops into the driver’s side, you note with a snort that he’s stripped down to his boxers. He laughs and revs the engine, throwing an arm over your seat as he reverses out of the forest.

Eddie doesn’t allow you to walk the few paces up the steps and across the porch to get inside your house. Instead, he cradles you against his chest, bridal-style, and struts through the door he purposefully left unlocked before setting you down on the toilet in the bathroom. You slump against the sink as he readies your bath, arms pillowing your head and eyelids drooping. Steam fills the room and carries the sweet, light scent of roses, and the flash of a pink bottle in Eddie’s hand clues you into the fact he’s dumped some soap into the faucet to create huge piles of white, frothy bubbles.

You’re nowhere near steady enough to lower yourself into the tub alone, so Eddie grips you by the elbows and slowly sinks down until your butt hits the water. It’s almost too hot at first, but after your body adjusts to the sudden change in temperature, you recline against the porcelain at your back and sigh. Eddie brushes a hand over your hair and kisses your forehead again.

“Thank you,” you mutter, eyes closed.

“It was my pleasure, sweetheart. I’m so proud of you, you handled everything like a champ.”

You glow under his praise and nestle further into the hot water and bubbles. It’s going to be a challenge not to doze off here.

When you blink your eyes open, Eddie’s still hovering next to you, lips quirked in a small, soft smile as the early morning light falls in purplish shafts over his face. You reach for him, sliding your palm through the hair at the back of his head, and bring him close enough to kiss his lips. He tastes like rain and cigarettes.

“I’ll come get you when the food’s ready, alright?” he whispers, squeezing the hand you’ve rested on the rim of the tub before standing. You nod dreamily.

“I love you,” you call after him, and though his frame is bleary through the steam condensing in the room, you see him turn back and smile at you.

“I love you too, pretty girl.”

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