#new chapter dropped last week which is cool

[aloraaki3]

School systems when you are being bullied

[superblysubpar]

<- part three | part five -> | series masterlist

chapter summary: Steve drives you to work all week.

the song: Smoke by Caroline Polachek

also for your listening pleasure: Do You Believe In Love by Huey Lewis & The News, We Are the Champions by Queen, and In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel

6,475 words | please see masterlist for gen warnings / wearing steve’s clothing, but size isn’t mentioned / for the purposes of this fic, you drink coffee and you take it sweet / alcohol mentions/consumption - you are tipsy in this / brief descriptions of car accidents/injury with some blood/ slight descriptions of panic/anxiety happening to Steve | my blog is 18+

Hawkins, Indiana - Tuesday

You slam the alarm button down when it goes off on Tuesday morning, sitting on your bed, fully dressed, one hour too early. 

Your knee bounces up and down, your teeth rip at the skin next to your thumb, and you stare at the clock, counting down, literally, to when your ride will be here. 

Steve had offered, when he dropped you off last night, to pick you up all week. It was supposed to rain off and on till Friday, you shouldn’t have to bike so far, it was the least he could do all babbled out of him as you sat in his passenger seat still wearing his clothes. 

What was the surprise, to both of you, is that you’d said yes to his offer. 

He’d blinked at you, you blinked at him and he nodded, fingers fiddling with the radio dial as he murmured, “Cool, cool.”

You’d sat in his passenger seat in silence, both staring out the windshield at your apartment complex until Steve cleared his throat and looked at you with raised eyebrows.

“Oh!” You quickly snapped off the seatbelt and pushed the door open, pausing to look down at the clothes you had on and the wet ones in your hands. “Um, I’ll, I can change quick and-“

“No!” 

He snapped his jaw closed and rubbed at his temple, blowing out a breath before he gestured, “I meant, like, don’t go to the trouble. It’s late, and, I’ll see you, and it’s fine, I don’t even wear those pants to sleep in because they’re too hot and-“

“Steve?” You interrupted, lips twitching against a smile. 

“Yeah?” He replied limply.

“You’ve been spending too much time with Robin.”

“Tell me about it.”

He smiled. You smiled. Something was definitely wrong with your stomach and so, sure you were about to be sick in his car, you mumbled something about seeing him tomorrow and quickly closed the door, then climbed the stairs up to your front door. 

Steve waited to back out of his parking spot until you were safely inside where he couldn’t see you fall backwards against the door with an exhale and you couldn’t see him rubbing his face at the exit of the complex mumbling the word ‘idiot’. 

Which is what you felt like, when you woke up with the sunrise, still wearing Steve Harrington’s clothes. 

And you were still feeling like it after you showered, scrubbing at your skin till it stung because you felt like you needed to wash off any evidence of the smell that clung to your body like it was supposed to. But somehow that didn’t stop you from spending longer on picking out an outfit, or taking more time to get ready. Reasoning with yourself that it was because you didn’t have to bike, that you woke up early, it’s nice to dress up and take care of yourself every once in awhile, it feels good to be put together for no one but yourself. 

This is what you’re currently telling your reflection, avoiding eye contact with the sweatshirt as you stomp out of the room towards your kitchen. 

But as you move down your hallway, something, or rather someone, outside the window catches your eye and you grab your bag and leave your apartment to figure out what he’s doing. 

Steve’s crouched down next to your bike, large fingers working on something with the chain with a furrow between his eyebrows. He doesn’t hear you approaching, which is probably why he shoots up at the sound of your voice, the back of his head smacking right into the metal bike rack.

“Harring-“ his name cut off with a sharp empathetic wince as his eyes shut tight and his jaw pulses after he curses under his breath.

“Sorry,” you rub at your elbow, scuffing a converse on the ground as you squint at him, “Believe it or not, that wasn’t on purpose.”

Steve exhales what you think is supposed to be a laugh, as he blinks at the ground, “Yeah, I…” 

His words get lost somewhere between his brain and his mouth somehow because all he can think now is:

Pretty.

The word makes his tongue feel too big for his mouth, like he needs to say it or it’ll just keep sitting there and he’ll suffocate as it swells.  It’s not like he’s not thought that word around you before, he has. But the urge to say it hasn’t ever quite made him feel like this, like he’s gonna die.

“You…?” Your head tilts, eyes squinting to inspect him more, heartbeat thrumming faster as Steve stares at you intensely.

“Don’t,” Steve finishes, standing up slowly, your red helmet swinging in his fingers. 

“You don’t?” The two of you blink at each other.

“Believe you,” Steve offers.

“Oh, right.” 

You hate that you feel so warm under his stare, hate that you’re wondering if he likes your outfit. You hate-

“I, um,” Steve gestures to the bike, “I didn’t want you to feel like you had to say yes to me driving you. Since you, you know, hate me.”

“I don’t hate you.”

The words slip off of your tongue so easily, you bite down on it in fear that more lies will fall out. 

The words to Steve are, however, exactly what he needed to hear to remember who the hell he is. 

Steve grins, two freckles lifting as he asks, softly, fondly, “Yeah?”

“I,” you swallow, wondering if it’s possible that Steve Harrington possesses the power to erase ‘how to speak’ from your list of skills and abilities simply because he’s got nice eyes and smells good.

His grin settles, a smug smirk keeping his lips in a flat line before he whispers, “What’s the matter, baby? Cat got your tongue?”

Your eyes narrow, arms crossing over your Journey t-shirt as you snap, “I don’t hate you. I despise you.”

Steve’s gaze darts over your face, before golden iris’ are settling on yours. He takes a step closer, dangerously closing the gap between your bodies as he whispers, “Yeah? Well I detest you.”

His chest rises and falls, bumping your crossed arms, the toe of his Nike’s touching the tops of your converse. So close you can count freckles on his nose and see green in his eyes.

“Wow,” your words hushed, but dripping in sarcasm, “Another big brain word and it hasn’t even been a week. Would you like a prize?”

Steve’s eyes flash, his lips twist up as he leans in even closer, “Yeah,” murmured as the tip of his nose almost touches yours, mint toothpaste fanning over your lips, “I would.”

Your breath leaves your lungs, held somewhere so it can’t escape as his nose brushes the bridge of yours before it’s suddenly gone. 

“Come on, we’re gonna be late,” spoken over his shoulder with a grin as he heads towards his car. 

Steve faces his car again, biting the inside of his lip out of your sight as you close your eyes out of his. 

Were you just going to let him kiss you?

Your legs feel wobbly as you make your way across the pavement towards the maroon car, and even more so when, nestled inside and buckled, Steve’s hand rests on the back of your seat as he says, “You look really pretty today, by the way.”

His forearm flexes in the corner of your eye as he looks over his shoulder to back out of the spot, spinning his steering wheel with the other hand effortlessly. The movement and skill makes your legs press together under your skirt, and you bite the inside of your cheek, adamant on ignoring what your body wants to tell you.

Steve fiddles with the radio dial as he comes to a stop sign.

“You know,” you bite, mad at yourself for falling for this, mad at him for starting it, just mad, “I haven’t forgotten that you have five days left to get me, of all people, to sleep with you. And as much as it pains me to say this, we’ve been in each others lives for quite awhile now, and I know you, Harrington. This isn’t working, it’s not going to work, and the fact that you think-“

He says your name roughly, tight, like the word burns his throat to say it. He leans over the console, ducking his head to catch your gaze causing a strand of hair to fall over his forehead. 

“Have you ever thought, for one second, that maybe, just maybe, I’m not as much of an asshole as you think, but because I know you hate me, I’ve never even tried to give you a compliment because that’s just not what we do? Tell me, honestly, if I’d have told you that you looked pretty, before today, before this bet, you wouldn’t have bit my head off then too? Or, god forbid, would have believed me?”

His breath is sharp, his gaze pierces into you, making something in your chest spark and sizzle, it’s not unlike the swell of pride you get when you win, and it’s better. 

It’s addicting. 

A horn honks and Steve blinks, facing the windshield and moving the car forward again. 

“I don’t hate you,” the words are a whisper, not as easily said as earlier.

“Right,” Steve clears his throat. He glances over at you with a small smile, then back at the road as he sighs, “Just despise.”

You hum a feeble agreement, and let Huey Lewis & The News fill the silence, asking if you believe in love. 

Steve’s fingers tap along to the song, his lips part, every other word softly exhaled as he sings under his breath. Which makes it hard to convince yourself that his words were just words, they meant nothing, and yours weren’t true either.

Steve Harrington doesn’t think you’re pretty and you hate each other. 

Despise. 

Whatever.

Your hands rest in your lap, thumb catching on a loose thread in your skirt that you are indebted to now. 

Not because Steve thinks you look pretty in it. 

But, because, if you instead search for where the loose thread begins, that brain space cannot be occupied by trying to figure out other times Steve wanted to call you pretty, or how you would have reacted, or how there’s two coffees in his cupholders next to your elbow. Focusing perhaps on, how the snag happened in your skirt could even make it so you don’t think about how, somehow, the leather of the seats and the coffee in such a tight space only make his normal scent of something minty and woodsy better and-

“Before you ask, no it’s not poisoned, and no, this isn’t me trying to woo you or whatever.” He gestures to the coffee, as if he’s reading your mind, “Could you hand me mine? Think it’s the front one.”

You’re shocked to learn that one of them is for you, and even more so when he grabs the cup from you and sips, grimaces, then coughs. 

“Ugh,” he licks his lips and holds it over to you, “That one was yours.”

You hand him the other cup, staring down at the one he handed back to you.

He bought you coffee and seemingly knows how you take it. 

As he pulls into the Family Video lot, expertly avoiding the kids skating and running around in front of Palace Arcade already, he sighs.

“You know,” he puts the car in park and looks at you, “I don’t have cooties.”

Haven’t even thought of the fact that if you took a sip, your lips would be where his had been, your body warms at the ‘kiss through contact’ possibility like a thirteen year old girl with a crush, heartbeat erratic still from the gesture of getting you the coffee.

“Actually, I was wondering if you did in fact poison this, because you despise me.”

“Detest,” Steve offers quietly with a smile.

“Detest,” you agree.

“I took a sip of it though. How would it be poisoned?”

“Maybe you’re like Westley and built up some sort of tolerance to this particular poison.”

Steve stares at you, blinking in silence until finally he asks, “What?”

“The Princess Bride?” You unsnap your seatbelt as he starts to get out of the car, talking over the roof of it. “Harrington, you have to have seen The Princess Bride?”

Steve swings his keys on his finger as he follows you to the front door, squinting. Both of you loving to have something to discuss that feels like easily navigated territory again. 

“Is that the one with Daisy?”

“Buttercup,” you correct immediately, stopping on the sidewalk to face him, “That’s our first movie today. No ifs, ands, or buts.”

“Fine,” Steve shrugs, but then nods to the cup in your hand, “If you take a sip and say thank you really sweetly.”

You scoff, “I don’t have to do shit, I’m the manager. And that was an if.”

Steve nods, holding his hand out. “Okay, then give me the coffee.”

“But...” you hesitate, the smell of cinnamon and vanilla wafting up to your nose. 

He definitely knows your order.

“Thought you said no ifs, ands, or buts?” Steve grins.

Your lips scowl before you mutter, “Don’t be cute.”

“You think I’m cute?” He smiles wider than he has all morning, showing off perfect, dazzling teeth. 

You roll your eyes and lift the cup to your lips. His eyes remain on yours, drinking you in just as much as you drink the coffee, gazes unwavering upon each other. 

It’s hard to swallow the perfectly made to your specifications coffee when he whispers, “That’a girl. See, was that so hard? Now, what do we say?”

“Thank you,” you grit, but Steve’s hand stops yours from unlocking the door.

“That wasn’t very sweet…” he tsks, sing song lilt to his voice.

With his hand over yours on the handle, you sigh, focusing on getting to watch a favorite movie instead of the way it engulfs yours. Batting your eyelashes, you force out a cheery, “Thank you, Harrington.”

Steve smirks, shakes his head no. He leans in, just like he had at your apartment. 

Just like when you almost let him kiss you. 

“First name, honey.”

That sparking, sizzling, simmering feeling is happening in your chest again.

Steve’s breath in is yours out as you murmur, “Thank you, Ste-“

“Jesus Christ! Thank fuck you’re alive! I’ve been…”

Eddie’s shout drifts off as he jumps out of his van, his eyes darting between you and Steve who’s starting to stand up straighter, hand dropping from the top of yours.

You clear your throat as Eddie grins at you, then Steve, then you again as he steps closer.

Eddie’s gaze looks over your outfit and your cheeks warm as he hums, raising his eyebrows over bright brown eyes that see right through you. 

“Well, don’t you look nice today.”

  Hawkins, Indiana - Wednesday

  He was already on thin ice, and now, you were planning to fully cut a hole in said ice and let him meet his demise in the cold, dark water beneath it.

  Eddie doesn’t seem to care, as he winces with fake sympathy, and tosses an M&M in his mouth as you glare at him with your arms folded over your chest. 

  “What do you mean, you can’t take me anymore?” 

  He shrugs, but takes a step away from you, seemingly out of harms way.

  Physical harms way at least.

“I have to go back into the shop, Wayne needs me. I’m really sorry, I’ll make it up to you?” He puts on a nice, big, Munson level show - hands folded in prayer, big pouty lips, and blinking sad doe eyes. 

  You stand in front of the counter, rubbing your temple from the fluorescent that’s been blinking all morning. 

  “I didn’t eat lunch, I didn’t pack a lunch, because you promised the diner, you made a big deal about tradition,” you start towards him, hangry and looking for vengeance. 

  Eddie quickly sidesteps around the corner, standing directly across from you as you both go in a circle around the main counter where Robin sits, typing at the computer. 

  “Beer, on me,” he pleads, quickening his pace, “Tomorrow. A whole pitcher, just for you. I won’t even make fun of you when you get a gutter ball every turn!”

  “I don’t want beer, Munson! I want a strawberry shake and a damn cheeseburger!”

  “I can take you.”

  Steve’s quiet offer makes you freeze, Eddie grins and backs out quickly towards the front door, pointing, “What a wonderful idea Steve! I wish you both a lovely first date!”

  “Eddie!” you shriek, stomping towards the door, but he’s gone. 

  The bell chimes as he dashes through it with a salute, Steve clears his throat while you stand frozen, staring at the closed glass doors. 

  After Eddie had found you yesterday, and thoroughly bothered you about your outfit, and what he didn’t interrupt, because there was nothing to interrupt, he’d shown up at your apartment with far too many questions and far too much of an opinion on your relationship with Steve Harrington.

  Not a relationship. A friendship.

  No. 

  A mutual understanding. A common ground. An agreement of ceasefire of your overt…hatred. A, maybe, slow ascent to friendship, one day, perhaps. 

  Which seemed to please the idiot who was betting against Steve winning, well into the night. So, he agreed to take you out to lunch the next day, honoring your tradition, yet assuring you that the conversation was in fact, not over. 

  Robin finally breaks the silence, calling your name, then, “You good?”

  “Yeah,” you mumble, crossing your arms, “Just debating sleeping with Harrington so Eddie loses three hundred dollars.”

  There’s a choking sound behind you, and you spin to see Steve’s mouth stuffed with Red Vines.

  Your Red Vines. 

  “Are you kidding me? What did I say!”

  You stomp towards him and he holds up his hands in surrender, talking around the candy, “Hey, remember me? Steve,” he swallows, backing away and tripping over his heels. “I’m the guy who brought you coffee two mornings in a row and has the ability to bring you to a delicious, cheesy burger, fast?”

  You’re inches from him and he yelps, wincing before you even attack, then a shouted, “I’ll pay!”

  Stopping in front of him, you snatch up the package of Red Vines and growl, “And a shake.”

  Robin gapes at the two of you, then looks at Steve, “You brought her coffee? You never bring me coffee.”

  Steve glares at her while he grabs the package of candy back and holds them high above your head, ignoring your protests. 

  “You can have these back when you learn to say please.”

  “Can you pass the salt?” You speak around the fries in your mouth.  

  Steve sits across from you, eyebrows raised. 

  “Please,” you grumble. 

  You shake the salt over the basket sitting between the two of you after he hands it to you. The basket holding the fries he ordered immediately and flashed the waitress a smile and wink for so you got some food fast while you waited for burgers and shakes. 

  He watches your shoulders relax after a few bites, and decides he can attempt conversation, “Better?”

  Your head nods, fingers covering your mouth full of food as you say, “Yeah. Thank you.”

  Steve nods too, looking anywhere but you while you lick salt from your thumb or suck on the straw in your glass of coke. 

  “Glad I could help.” He risks stealing a fry for himself, his stomach grumbling in protest as it watches you eat and it gets nothing. 

  “Sorry,” you fiddle with the straw wrapper in your hands, shrugging, “I know I much more resembled a ravenous wild animal than a normal human being back there.”

  “Glad you said it,” he mutters, ducking when you throw the folded straw wrapper at his face. He catches it, playing with it between his own hands, staring at the table. “You were pretty upset though, what’d you mean about tradition?”

  You shove fries in your mouth, buying time to respond, wondering how much you should tell Steve. 

  “Um,” you cough into your fist, squinting out the window at the sky turning gloomy. 

  “It’s okay,” Steve waves it off, “I didn’t mean to pry. You don’t have to tell me.”

  He shoves fries into his own mouth, right as the waitress brings two burgers over, sliding a strawberry shake onto the sticky tabletop. Steve’s chewing becomes frantic, holding up his hand and you’re saying the words before you can even register what you’re doing.

  “Could he get some extra pickles please?” 

  “Of course, hon,” she sways off, delivering another shake at a different table while Steve blinks at you. 

  “What?” You avoid his intense gaze, looking at your burger as you lift it to your lips. 

  “Didn’t think you were paying that much attention to me,” he finally says, smiling at the waitress when she drops off a small container of pickles. 

He looks at his burger, not you, so maybe that’s why it’s easier to keep talking about it.

  “Kind of make it hard to not pay attention, Harrington.”

  The pair of you sit in silence, chewing your burgers as rain starts to tap softly against the window, the red neon sign next to you flickering and making his yellow tshirt orange. 

  “Wish I knew you were watching sooner,” Steve looks up to find you already staring, “Wouldn’t have acted like such an idiot, maybe this would be a different story.”

  Your heart thuds in your ears, too warm under the softness of his eyes.

  “Acted?” You manage to push past your lips, tilting your head. 

  Steve smiles, and grabs for the shake, waiting for you to protest him putting a second straw into it. When you don’t, you surprise yourself by offering up, “It’s from the night we met.”

  He blinks at you, wrinkle forming between his brows as he sucks on the straw between his lips. You look away from them as you clarify, “Eddie. The diner. It’s a tradition from the night we met.”

  “Oh,” Steve nods, pushing the shake away and returning to his burger, adding another pickle. 

  “Yeah, I,” you close your eyes, then open them to look down at your food, blurting out, “Met him, after I threw that beer. In Brendan’s face. He took me to the diner, here, for pie, and I sort of spilled my guts to him.”

  Steve’s jaw pulses, the furrow of his forehead only deepening as you explain, not lessening. He takes another bite of his burger, ketchup smearing against the side of his mouth, offering you a reprieve from staring at his lips as he speaks around his bite, “Got it. That’s when you guys started dating, right?”

  You blink, lips parting but nothing comes out other than a shocked, “Ha!”

  Steve looks up at the scoff, taking in your wrinkled nose and how your eyes stare at his lips as you laugh, “Eddie…Ed,” you giggle, “No.”

  “You and…never?” Steve sits up straighter, eyes bouncing between your own. 

  “Not even a little bit,” you laugh, touching your lip, “You’ve got…”

  Steve swipes at his lips while he asks, “But you said you spilled your guts, I just assumed after what that asshole said and did that Munson like comforted and you and…”

  He trails off as you lean forward, rolling your eyes. 

  Your thumb swipes over the corner of his lip as you shrug, “Yeah, we bonded over assholes and crushing on people who’d never give us the time of day while sharing cherry pie. Best friends ever since.”

  Steve’s heart thrums as your fingers linger on his jaw, before you sit back again.

  And then you lick the ketchup off of your thumb. 

  He finally stumbles over the words, “I love pie.”

  “Yeah?” You grin, grabbing the shake.

  Steve nods, keeping eye contact as your cheeks hollow around the straw. But then he rolls his shoulders back and grabs the shake out from your lips and back across the table.

  “Except cherry. You’re delusional for choosing that over lemon.”

  “You’re delusional,” you yank the shake back towards you, “If you think you’re having any more of this.”

  Steve leans over the table as you begin to sip the shake again, only to wrap his lips around the second straw, noses bumping as he tries to drink it faster than you at the same time. 

  Your feet are intertwined under the table as you push at his shoulder and he tugs on the glass, both of you making a slurping noise as you get to the bottom, then grabbing at your temples from brain freezes while laughing.

  “I can’t stand you,” you push the glass towards the middle of the table. 

  “That’s better than detest, I’ll take it.”

    Hawkins, Indiana - Thursday

  Steve holds out the bag of popcorn to you, and you grin, taking some as you lean into him, a little tipsy, in the backseat of his car. 

  You, because you were last out to the car, and Steve, because he doesn’t do well in the front seat when Robin is driving. 

  Which is saying something, because Eddie isn’t doing so hot as it is.

  “No, Buckley!”

  “Give me a break, Eddie! It is super dark outside, and I’m a new driver, never attempted driving in the rain, and I don’t know wiper speed to rain droplet ratio!”

  You snort, nose in the popcorn bag as your shoulders shake. 

  Steve shushes you, mumbling, “You’re kind of a menace tonight.”

  “Eddie’s,” you hiccup, blinking up under heavy eyelashes at Steve’s profile, mesmerized by the freckles that dot it, “Fault. Got me all that beer.”

  “No comments-” Robin begins to talk over her shoulder.

  “Ba-ah-ah,” Steve points forward, stepping on an invisible brake in the backseat while Eddie grabs her chin and keeps it locked straight ahead.

  “From the peanut gallery,” she finishes loudly.

  “No peanuts back here,” you throw a piece at Eddie’s ear, “Just popcorn!”

  Steve remains facing forward, watching intently as Eddie directs Robin on slick roads towards her house. “You didn’t have to drink it all.”

  “Oh,” you sigh, sliding over to the window and pressing your forehead against the cool glass, “But I did, Harrington. For I am the champion of bowling night!”

  He opens his mouth, but you sit up straight again, and press your finger to his lips, softly saying (but thinking you’re singing), “No time for losers.”

  Steve smiles behind your finger, eyes soft and melting you a little. 

  Which you almost say out loud, but the song on the radio grabs your attention. You squeal, which makes Robin jump, which makes the car sway and Steve grab your shoulders, pushing you back on the seat as you yell, “Turn it up!”

  “You’re such a loser,” Eddie grumbles, but does as you request. 

  Peter Gabriel’s In Your Eyes plays a little louder, but no one can tell, because you’re loudly singing over him.

Eddie rolls his eyes at the way Steve watches you, and Robin bites her lip, fighting back laughter as you shout, “You all love this song, don’t lie to me!”

  You scream into your fist, dramatically singing, tossing your head, pointing at each of them. 

  “And all my instincts,” you take a deep breath and whip over to Steve, kneeling on the seat, “They return!”

  You shove your fist into Eddie’s face, who pretends to bite it, refusing to sing. But finally melts at your pout, mumbling along with you, “Without my pride.” Robin happily joins in, in a high falsetto, when you whip your fake microphone over to her, “I reach out from the inside.”

  As they all join in with you for the chorus, you fall backwards, laughing, catching Steve’s eyes. 

  You’d like to blame the beer, the cozy dark backseat, the way Steve smells, the rain, the fucking song. And while you can’t blame them for something that was inevitable, you can pretend that without this specific combination you never would have. 

  If you were sober, and In Your Eyes came on, you never would have touched the two freckles on Steve’s cheek, your fake microphone falling limp, palm flat against his chest. 

  If it weren’t dark, and he didn’t smell so good, you never would have let those same fingers drag down his jaw, only to linger on his lips. 

  And if it weren’t raining, and Robin hadn’t taken a second to look back in her mirror and say, “Holy shi-“

  It never would have happened. 

  Eddie shouts, Robin screams, and something heavy and warm is on top of you as the car spins on the water that’s flooded the streets. 

  Your ears are ringing, muffled words lost in the sound, and you can’t move, something holds you down. 

  It takes a second to realize the car isn’t moving anymore, and there’s hands on your cheeks. When your eyes blink open, there’s golden hazel ones that remind you of a scared boy looking at you intently.

  “Are you okay?” He gasps from on top of you where you’re both horizontal in the backseat now.

  “I’m fine,” Robin says sarcastically from the front seat, “Thanks for-“ Eddie shushes her.

  “Of course,” you grumble, hands that were clutched in Steve’s shirt loosening and pushing at him.

  His hands shake on your cheeks, fingers touching a spot on your forehead that has you wincing and his chest moving up and down faster.

  “Harrington,” you push at him more, his hand cups your cheek, eyes turning glassy as you insist, “I’m fine, get off.”

  “Hey,” you shake his shoulder as stares at your forehead, breathing harder still, “Harrington, relax. We’re all fine.”

  The side of his face flashes with red and blue, his heartbeat thuds against your chest as his breathing continues to ramp up. Your hands cup his jaw, thumbs delicately swiping over his cheeks. 

  “Steve. Look at me.”

  His shoulders shake with a stuttered breath and then his hand quickly reaches forward, gently cupping the back of your head as the door behind you opens. 

  Someone speaks, but neither of you hear them, eyes remaining on each other as you whisper, “Take a deep breath, Steve. Please?”

  You nod as he does, your hands loosening on his cheeks as he starts to let his weight hover over you instead of pushing you down. 

  A voice from behind you asks Steve to get out first. He’s held back as paramedics help you out of the car and lead you over to the back of the ambulance. Robin stands next to you and you shake your head, the words I’m so sorry easily able to read off of your lips and Robin stops them with her hand up. 

  Eddie stands next to him, watching, just as intently, and he clears his throat. 

  “That was…” he starts, looking at Steve, then back at you, now getting your forehead looked at. “Glad you were back there, man.”

  Steve nods, numb, as he watches you wince and say, “I’m fine,” to the EMT stitching you up. His fingers graze down the bridge of his nose and his swipes underneath it, nodding when Eddie says he’s gonna go check on Robin. 

  Everyone is fine, save for your head injury. His car is fine, save for a ding on the back bumper.

  Your side. 

  He saved you.

  He protected you. 

  He was scared for you. 

  Your heartbeat picks up as your gaze on the wet asphalt beneath your scuffed sneakers catches bright Nike’s approaching. 

  “How’s the patient?” 

  Steve’s voice is soft, scared, not a thing like you’ve ever heard before. 

  Which is maybe why when you look up at him, nothing comes out of your parted lips.

  Rain drips from the tip of Steve’s hair, curling around his ears, a droplet caught on his cupid’s bow, darkening the green shirt he wears. 

  The EMT stares down at you, waiting, then she smiles, staring at your forehead as she offers, “She’ll be okay. No concussion, probably a little sleepy from the pain meds she just took, but overall just a little dinged up. Nothing a little night of tender loving care from her boyfriend can’t fix.”

  “Oh, no, I’m-“

  “He’s not, we’re not-“

  Steve and you talk at the same time, stopping when the other speaks. 

  “Oh, my mistake,” she hums. She looks down at you as she inspects her last stitch, smiling softly, “Well, maybe some tender loving care from a friend then. Can I count on you handsome? Get her home safely?”

  Steve nods, cheeks pink as he waits for you to stand, his hand resting by your elbow just in case, then hovering near your lower back as he walks behind you towards his car. 

  “Dingus!” Robin shouts from Hopper’s truck. 

  Steve turns to look at her, and as he holds the door open for you, he leans down and murmurs, “I’ll be right back, you’re…you okay?”

  “Mhm,” you nod, blinking from the pain of the movement. 

  Steve doesn’t look like he believes you, but nods, and closes your door softly, running over to the truck, squinting in the rain. 

A soft tap hits the glass of your door and you jump, rolling the window down for Eddie, the boys swapping places without you realizing.

  “Hey sweetheart, how you doing?” He folds his arms on the frame of the door, bent down to take a closer look at your head. 

  “I’m fine,” you answer without thinking.

  Eddie’s lips twitch, fighting the urge for the joke, “Of course you are. You okay with Harrington taking you back? Hopper always can? Need me to stay over?”

  You watch Robin grab Steve’s jaw, pushing and pulling him to inspect him while he rolls his eyes and pushes her off. A much more physical approach, but the same as Eddie’s nonetheless. 

  When you don’t say anything, he follows your gaze and sighs. “Yeah, you’re okay. Fucking hell, I gotta figure out where I’m getting three hundred dollars from, thanks a lot you Peter Gabriel loving dork.”

  “Eddie, I-“ you protest and he waves his hand, smiling.

  “Save it, you’re hook line and sunk for him. You have been since the day I met you, fine.”

  He kisses your temple, opposite of your cut, and taps the hood of the car before jogging over to the truck, swapping with Steve again. But he pauses in the middle, grabbing Steve’s shoulder and pointing at the car, then pats him and jogs off again. 

  Once Steve is back in the car, you wait for him to drive, to say something, but he looks at you expectantly and then you realize-

  Your seatbelt. 

  “Sorry,” you murmur, and then it’s silent. 

  No radio. 

  No talking.

  Just the swish of rain on the pavement under spinning wheels. The rhythmic pit then pat of it hitting his windows, the slosh of the wipers back and forth. Steve’s breathing. 

  You don’t realize you’ve been soothed to sleep from it all, the combination of alcohol and adrenaline fading, until the car is coming to a complete stop, engine off, and your door is being opened. 

  Steve leans over you, unbuckling the seatbelt, whispering, “Come on, trouble.”

  “Mmm,” you protest, eyelashes fluttering, head hitting the headrest with a frown. “Steve.”

  “I know, just a few more minutes then you’ll be in bed, come on.”

  His hands slide into yours, gently pulling you from the car, guiding you towards the stairs. Your lead filled eyelids blink with each step, as you mumble, “Keys.”

  “I got ‘em, come on,” his hand presses to your lower back, then roams higher, pressing lightly when you sigh from the feeling. 

  A door opens, a hand wraps around your waist and a shoulder supports your head. 

  Steve blinks in the low light of your lamp that must be on a timer, taking in your space for the first time. He closes your door, keeping his hand on your waist to steady you as you sway while he bends down. 

  He watches you, as he unties a sneaker, patting your ankle as he quietly says, “Lift your leg up for me, honey.”

  You do as you’re told, blinking down at the boy who gently removes your shoe, then the other as you rest your hands on his shoulders for balance. 

  “Steve,” you gulp around his name, blinking back tears.

  He looks up at his name, frowning as he stands, large hands cradling your jaw as he tuts. “Hey, what’s the matter? What’re these for, huh?”

  His thumbs swipe over your cheeks, catching big tears that spill over your lashes as you blubber, “I’m so so-sorry. Everyone could have been really hurt. I hate Peter Gabriel. I’ll ne-never listen to hi-him again.”

  Steve laughs, and you frown, blinking at him through tears, “It-it’s not funny. Stop laughing at me.”

  He clears his throat, nodding, “Right. It’s not funny.”

  His lips twitch when you frown more, fingers curling around his wrists that still support your cheeks.

  “Bedroom?” He asks softly.

  “Harrington,” you sniffle, eyes rolling, “I hardly think this is the time to try to make a move.”

  He shakes his head, “I meant so I can set you up before I leave, smartass.”

  You point down the hallway, but then sigh, “Can you get me a glass of water.”

  He raises his eyebrows at you expectantly.

  “Please?” you pout your lips out.

  Steve nods towards your bedroom, “Yeah, I can do that.”

  He watches you wander down the hallway, and click on a light in your room, before he heads to your kitchen. As he fills the glass up, he takes the opportunity to glance around at pieces of you he’s not normally let in on. Wondering where certain trinkets are from and what they mean to you. He notices the large collection of vinyl. He grins at the stack of Family Video tapes that are clearly over the rental limit, even for employees. 

  And he’s ready to say something sassy to you about it, when he reaches your room, but you’re already laying in your bed, eyes closed and curled up on your side.

  In his sweatshirt. 

  He sets the glass of water on the nightstand, then lifts your comforter, pulling it over bare legs exposed from small sleep shorts. He leaves a quick note about leaving your front door key in your mailbox. 

  Steve hesitates before clicking off the light, taking in your slow, even breaths, the shadows on your face, peaceful with sleep. 

  He kisses your cheek as he turns off the light, lips lingering against your skin for a moment longer than he probably should have. 

  “Goodnight, honey.”

AN: thanks for your patience in this chapter and the next! This chapter is actually what sparked the core of this whole series, and I’m excited to finally share it with you. It was originally being written in the winter, and the events of this chapter are heavily inspired by a moment that happened between my parents before they were married! My dad and mom were in the backseat of a car, an accident happened, and my dad had leaned over to protect my mom, and she says that's when she knew she was in love with him. Take that for this story however you'd like 🤭 So while it’s not exactly what happened anymore, the essence is still there and I hope you love it, it definitely holds a special place in my heart. Also, I simply can’t help myself from including The Princess Bride in all of my series it seems. Thanks for being here!

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[midnightorchids]

Hey babe- I wanted to know how you felt about booknerd!reader x Jason. Because it's been rotting my brain forever now and I need to know what someone as genius as yourself thinks about it. So like- We know Jason is a book girl. He's got huge floor to ceiling shelves in his apartment filled with non-fiction, historical fiction, classics, and maybe a few Si-Fi titles. I feel like he would love Toni Morison, Maya Angelou, Henrik Isben, Margret Atwood, and maybe even Harukai Murakami. He has this beautiful collection of leather bond additions of the Iliad Bruce gave him when he was 16. And when he finally invites you over, he cannot contain his excited smile as you start gushing over his home library. He makes you guys coffee and you spend hours talking about your fav genres, authors, online author drama - and after he's walking back to his apartment after dropping you off, he's smiling down at his phone at the message you sent. 'I had so much fun today! Ur library is so so so cool, was wondering if you would be ok going with me to Chapters next week? Wanted to pick up the new Skyward book' He's kicking his feet and hiding his face in his pillow. So deeply overjoyed that his crush shares in his immense love of literature. After you guys officially get together, he buys you so many fucking books. He fallows your goodreads wishlist religiously and surprises you almost every month with a new addition to your growing collection. He usually collects used paper backs, but for you, he splurges on the hardcover special additions. Of course it's because he loves you but it's also so that, maybe, you'll be more incentivised to move into a different apartment. One with floor-to-ceiling book shelves and a shared bed... just saying.. He branches out into more genres and authors he wouldn't usually read from just so he could talk about your favourite books with you. You do the same - your book collections getting mixed together in the process. Library dates, bookstore dates, used-bookstore dates. Your first couple of dates and realisations of love happened in and around books. You would always leave little messages inside the first page of the books you give him. So that if your every away or he's on a mission and he takes a book with him, he'll have one of your small messages of love as a reminder of something to return home to.

Hi hon!! I’m so sorry for the late response, I’ve been dying with uni and just life in general recently, but I’m back and ready to write again!! But I agree with pretty much everything that you said, like you’ve written it out so well and it’s just so cute! I was literally giggling and kicking my feet at the last one omg. I shall try to add more stuff!!

Jason’s go to present for his loved ones is annotated copies of his favourite books. He only does this when he feels comfortable with a person because sharing his thoughts feels raw and vulnerable sometimes.

Having a significant other who loves to read and appreciates these types of gifts would make him feel happy and very emotional. It’s not often he gets to share this side of himself with people.

When he gifts his copies to his friends or his partner, he feels like he’s leaving a piece of him with the person, so he only does this when he trusts you.

He leaves detailed little messages on the margins of his books. He draws little smiley faces on the cute parts and angry faces on the parts that made him upset.

In the books for his significant other, Jason leaves little notes around the quotes that remind him of you. He highlights them in a different colour and makes sure his notes look extra tidy.

He sucks at wrapping things, so sometimes you’ll get a very poorly wrapped, tape covered novel. You’ll look at the wrapping and laugh, you’d pinch his cheeks teasingly and tell him he did a good job. He’d turn his face away in embarrassment, which leads to you placing a gentle kiss on his cheek.

Then, there would be times where he doesn’t have the energy to deal with the horrible wrapping paper. So, you’ll be gifted a plain paper back with a sticky note on the front cover that reads ‘for you,’ in squiggly lines.

It’s honestly sweet and he gets very shy about it.

Also, Jason’s taste in books is very diverse, he reads anything from the classics to romance to gothic horror. He reads anything and everything and because of that, I think that it would be very easy for you to share your thoughts and recommendations with him.

Even if Jason hasn’t read the book, he listens intently with a huge smile on his face. He loves listening to you talk. If he doesn’t know the author or the book, he will try to familiarize himself with what you’re reading and branch into different genres.

There would be lots of reading and bookstore dates. You’d browse through the different aisles with his hand in yours, only letting go when a particular book catches your attention. He watches you in awe as you gush about the different series.

(Side note, my friends and I always go to bookstores and just point out the worst books we’ve read and I think Jason would do that too.)

As you search through the shelves to find your next read, he’ll come to you all excited, rambling about the book in his hand. From the looks of it, it seems like he loves the book. His hands are moving around, he’s smiling and giggling, but if you pay attention, he’s actually just cussing out the author.

This becomes a tradition in your relationship. You both bring up books that you hate instead of the ones that you really enjoy. You’d spend the next hour of your bookstore visit just giggling at the random passages that the author thought were good enough to share with the world.

I think this would also lead to a book club of reading awful books sometimes just for shits and giggles. There would be weeks where you would read amazing, well written stories together, but then there would be times when you guys would pick up something bad just to make fun of it.

Overall, Jason would love having a book nerd significant other because he finally has someone who he can geek out with.

[stevie-petey]

I know you just dropped a new chapter but I have a blurb if you wanna write it. Could we see others perception of bug. Like Mrs. Clicks class, bugs just chilling and doing her work while there are people so entranced by her and she doesn't even know it. Like Robin, Steve, Jonathan, Nancy, maybe Eddie 👀

ooooo i LOVE a good character study thank u for this request !!

enjoy <3

"your book report isnt bad, but..." you sigh, trying not to let your disbelief of how horrible the paper is show. "it could use some work."

jonathan nods at you solemnly. the librarys florescent light burns down upon his shame. "be honest, how fucked am i?"

"... pretty fucked."

the boy covers his face with his head and groans, causing the librarian to harshly shush him. its the middle of study hall, the entire section is overtaken by a crowd of kids either pretending to study or silently mourning their grades.

youre the only one actually doing any work, jonathan has long since given up on his stupid essay. english has never been his best subject, youve always basically written all his papers for him in exchange for math help. its been a good system.

until goddamn mrs. greer caught on and threatened suspension.

"its okay, maybe i could try and copy your writing style?" you suggest, but jonathan only responds by dropping his head onto the table. he doesnt even know what his writing style is. you rub his back in soothing circles, hopeless as well. "okay, yeah. i tried."

robin buckley sits a few seats away from you and jonathan. she watches you curiously, eyes narrowed at the hand on the boys back. she doesnt quite understand your relationship with jonathan. truthfully, she doesnt really pay much attention to the guy. she thinks hes cool, sure, maybe quiet, but youve always interested her more.

jonathan says something to you, which you laugh at, and again the librarian shushes the two of you. jonathan ducks his head down, embarrassed, but you only giggle with a flushed smile on your face. you try to hide the smile, though even robin knows that its impossible to hide a smile like yours.

youre wearing a soft purple sweater today, a flannel far too big for you covers your shoulders, and robin desperately wants to ask you where you got it from. shes always wanted to talk to you, but fear has stopped her from ever getting too close.

she isnt sure if the fear is from your beauty or from how genuine of a person you are. youre known as hawkins sweetheart, youre practically untouchable, and robin doesnt think youd like someone like her. shes awkward and annoying and speaks too fast and talks too loud.

eddie munson really hates the library, but he hates hawkins high even more. he'll be damned if he has to spend another fucking year here. so here he is, pretending that he knows what the fuck hes doing as he starts on one of his long overdue assignments. theres thirty he needs to hand in for one class alone. hes fucked.

it doesnt help that someone behind him keeps giggling.

he turns in his seat, ready to tell the girl to shut the fuck up, but then he sees that its you. he freezes, his anger suddenly gone.

youre the girl who loaned him a pencil last week. eddie had been so nervous for the exam that he had forgotten a goddamn pencil. he had panicked, he really couldnt afford to fail, but mrs. greer wouldnt let him get up to find a new one.

eddie had been close to tears, embarrassed and overwhelmed, when you had tapped his shoulder. "here,"

in your hand was a pencil, offering it to him. eddie took it from you, relief flooding through him, and he gave you a curt nod before frantically starting the exam with five minutes wasted.

eddie never actually thanked you for that. in fact, he had completely forgotten all about it until he saw you later that day talking to mrs. greer to arrange a time for you after school to retake the exam. apparently you also didnt have a pencil ready that day.

you had given him your only pencil, knowing youd fail the exam, just so eddie wouldnt.

so eddie turns back in his seat, grips your loaned pencil that he still has, and goes back to his assignments. your giggling carries over to him, and the sound is a pleasant one now. all things considered, youve got a cute laugh.

nancy wheeler stands in the romance section of the library, waiting anxiously for steve harrington. hes late, he promised her hed be there right after lunch, yet she stands alone.

she can hear your laughter from where she stands. she peers around the corner, sees you with jonathan, and she rolls her eyes fondly. youre always together, but she does find it cute. youre sweet together, in an old, married couple kind of way.

jonathans eyes drift from your laughing frame to nancy. she sucks in a breath, caught, and he raises an eyebrow at her. hes intrigued, wonders why shes staring at you and him, and nancys cheeks burn. she doesnt really talk to you and jonathan, she hasnt for a long time.

nancy turns away awkwardly and pretends that she hadnt seen jonathan at all.

steve sees you first when he enters the library, late and out of breath. well, he hears you first, and he smiles even before he can understand why. he knows you hang out in the library with jonathan, hes expected you to be there, but its still somehow a pleasant surprise.

youre head is thrown back, mid laugh, and steve shakes his head at you. youre always smiling, always kind, always lovely. he sees the paper jonathan has you reading for him and steve supposes that eventually youll be trading english essays in for marriage licenses.

its inevitable.

who wouldnt want to marry someone like you? steve knows he does, and he finds nancy waiting for him in the romance section, and he thinks hes finally met your match.

[sunmoonjune]

some updates!!

hello again my loves <33

It's me dropping in again to give y'all another update! apologies for the lack of posts and answers to messages lately :')) I have a lot going on irl but I am have some exciting news!!

LTM (book one of two) is almost finished (just one or two chapters left) and it will enter the final editing stage before I self-publish it! :D and that's right, it is book one of two! the name is no longer LTM and I will make another post later to explain everything about the book and what will happen with LTM the ff and how to get the published version etc. (mostly bc I don't have all the answers yet xD) but I just wanted to let you guys know where it stands in terms of publishing it!

I printed my first copy of it last week to begin the editing process and it was super cool to hold my own book in my hands :OOO very exciting stuff

in terms of other updates,, now that they've had a few shows I feel comfortable saying that I finally got to see atz live and in person at one of their shows!! After so many years I finally managed to get tickets and it still doesn’t feel real that I actually got to see them :’)) they were absolutely MIND-BLOWING and I still have post concert withdrawals to this day :")) loren and I have been discussing much about it and how san somehow looks even BUFFER irl (which is insane to both of us)

ALSO I'm trying very hard to finish a polyteez one shot for you guys in between editing and work and school! I've been in my domestic fluff feels so I want to finish a fic for you guys :D

anyways just wanted to update y'all on the messiness of my life and apologize for not being around so much :")) I'm still trying to get better at this

[digi-lov]

Digimon Liberator Novel

[read on the official website] DEBUG.1-1 [Yuuki] - DEBUG.1-2 [HEAVY METAL PLAY] - DEBUG.2-1 [Winr] - DEBUG.2-2 [GOOD GAME]

First spoiler free, then more detailed including spoilers under cut

So the first 2 chapters of the Digimon liberator novel dropped last week! We don't exactly know how frequent it'll update, but most likely not as regular as the comic. First impressions on the main characters, I really like them. I think they are fun and interesting enough to drive the story. They don't feel like exact copies of previous characters, and make me exited for a fresh adventure!

As far as I could tell, the translation seems fairly good, but there was a mistranslation of a card effect. However the translation of TCG card effects can be a bit tricky, and the translators might not have known the official english wording. They also show the respective card right there, so it's easy to see what the effect should be, but it might be confusing to people who weren't already familiar with the cards.

Nevertheless I'm optimistic and looking forward to read more!

So now for a bit more detail

First off, I think they way they incorporate the player's tamer cards is really smart. A player get's their own blank tamer card, and can obtain various effects to add to it within the game, to customize their own tamer card to their play style. Nice! This way it doesn't feel like a weird 4th wall break for Yuuki to have a Yuuki Tamer card for example.

I really like Yuuki , immediately! She's fun, and she definitely has flaws and quirks to work on that'll make her interesting to watch grow. Her relationship with Impmon is nice too. Impmon is not exactly a serious character, but does want Yuuki to be a bit more serious, and recognize the weight of the situation. To an extend, Impmon wants Yuuki to take their partnership more serious in turn, I'd say. The way they talk to each other feels very familiar. You can tell they're close, not holding back complaining about the other. They bicker, but they also quickly drop the fight when needing to figure something out together.

Yuuki's Impmon, as most already know, get's a new evolution line: Punkmon, Loudmon, and HeavyMetaldramon. I love them! I like how it gives Yuuki and her Impmon more of an individual identity, than if they used a previously common Impmon line. The detail about Yuuki being a dancer, and vibing with the cool metal dragon is sweet too!

Also, I wonder if that Altea character is this girl from the poster? It's interesting that Impmon is not a fan of her...

Winr and FunBeemon's introduction was great too. Winr seems like a proud kid, without being feeling too stuck up. The story taking place after he's already known Yuuki for a year, really helps with his walls having started to come down already. I'm curious if his parents will be related to the in universe Digimon Franchise or Game Company in a way, or it they're just generic absent rich parents. Which, I don't think would take away from Winr's character if they are. I feel for him to want to escape from his home life into a virtual world. I love his relationship with FunBeemon. FunBeemon is very attentive to Winr's feelings, and cares a lot about him. And Winr doesn't get annoyed by it, but appreciates it, even though he doesn't quite know how to express it. The new evolutions for FunBeemon are also cool! I've like FunBeemon for a partner Digimon for a while, and I'm excited to see it finally happen!

I'm curious about Winr's real name too, assuming Winr is his username. Winr is a play on "winner", with his Japanese name サイキヨ Saikiyo being a play on 最強 (さいきょう) saikyou meaning "the best" or "the strongest". FunBeemon's nickname "Winnie" is キヨちゃん kiyo-chan in Japanese.

For anyone who's interested: Japanese first person pronouns

Yuuki uses the japanese first person pronoun あたし atashi, which is quite feminine, but as being too over the top girly is sometimes seen as disruptive, atashi also has a do-as-I-please kinda vibe sometimes. For example, it's used by Yuffie from FFVII. The even more cute-girly atai in turn is often used in media by very strong-willed, rough women, such as Plumeria fom Pokémon Sun&Moon, or the Gerudo women from the Legend of Zelda games. It can also be played straight as super cute too thoug, like with Vivian from Paper Mario TTYD.

Impmon uses オレ ore, which is a strong, proud, often masculine pronoun. In formal situations it would be considered rude, but it's normal for guys to use in a casual setting. Very rarely it is also used by super tough women in media, such as Kumatora from Mother 3, or Big Mom from One Piece. Eiichiro Oda mentioned himself knowing women who use ore, but this is quite uncommon and likely a modern developement. You go girls! Impmon also uses it in katakana, which gives it a bit more emphasis.

Winr uses 僕 boku, which is quite common for young boys, or more soft spoken men in casual settings. In media it is also occasionally used by girl characters that have a "tomboy" vibe, but also sometimes by female singers in their songs.

FunBeemon uses 私 watashi, which is technically a polite neutral pronoun, but using it in a casual setting has a feminine connotation.

PS: Sorry this took so long, I'm still very sick, and writing coherent sentences with okay spelling is diffcult.

[eff4freddie]

Touch | Part Eight

You and Ellie grow closer in Joel's absence. Jackson holds its breath for the return of the second expedition.

Words: 6k

Warnings: descriptions of injuries, angst, no smut I'm sorry

A/N: So this is the last big chapter of Touch. I'm planning a smutty epilogue because these two need a proper send off, but the main storyline ends here. Just want to thank you all for your support of this story, which was my first foray into writing fics for a long time. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Part Seven | Series Masterlist | Epilogue

You and Ellie fell into a routine of sorts, occupying yourselves while waiting for news. In the morning Ellie would go down to the stables to ‘check the horses’, which you knew was code for her looking to see if Joel had slipped back into Jackson overnight, but he was her dad, and you didn’t begrudge it. You hated when she came back with her shoulders slumped.

Ellie had already decided she didn’t have to go to school given the circumstances, and you had no authority to fight her on it. Occasionally you would mention that Joel probably wouldn’t be pleased when he got back to discover she’d missed classes, and she had been so dismissive of the very idea that it took you right back to eighth grade, trying to hang out with the cool kids and being summarily ignored. You were basically her roommate. Roommates don’t nag each other to do their homework.

You were doing your own maths, anyway. If Marla had ridden through the night with Jacob strapped to her back it meant that the site of the ambush was a two-days ride away at a normal, non-life-threatening pace. It also meant it was a two-day ride back. If they encountered any nastiness on the way there or the way back that could waylay them for a few days, maybe more if there were injuries. And then, of course, there was the infinitely more complicated mathematics of how it would tally if they died. You weren’t sure what you would count, if that happened, if it wasn’t the days until they came back.

You wondered, if none of them made it back, where you would go. You would obviously have to leave Jackson, the destruction you, Ray and Marla wrought on the small community complete at that point. You just weren’t sure where, in which direction. Salt Lake sounded bad, and you were getting tired of the cold. You wondered if you would be able to make it down to the Gulf of Mexico, if you just headed south for as long as you could until you hit ocean. You knew it was unlikely you would be able to do it on your own, and you also knew that you would have to. That at the end of all this it was always going to be you, alone.

It didn’t hurt to think about. You were matter of fact about it. If they didn’t come back, you didn’t deserve to stay. You were pleased with the almost complete detachment you felt at the thought of it. At the freedom.

--

Maria and Robin dropped by while you were teaching Ellie the muscles of the back and neck, in the hope that she would have some kind of education upon Joel’s maybe-return. She was good at it, too, getting the hang of the Latin despite the language now being even more dead then when you leaned it. When they arrived, Ellie took Robin from Maria and cradled him in her arms, Maria showing her how to support the head while he dozed. For the first time since Ellie had arrived she was still, quiet, over-awed by the tiny, precious life in her arms. You took Maria into the kitchen and poured her some tea.

‘This takes me back,’ she said, and you grinned at her, offering to massage her feet. She demurred. ‘You don’t need to see what I’ve got going on under here,’ she said. ‘I mean, I haven’t seen it for months.’

You knew that Maria was checking on you, and you loved her for it and hated that she had to do it. Robin was only weeks old, barely a month, and yet she was nurturing you. You had barely seen her since the birth, since she had made you feel so necessary, so wanted, and your cheeks burned at the thought of it. The last two friends you had ended up dead or banished. You were just bad at it.

‘Hey,’ Maria said, like she could read your mind. She reached out and put her hand on yours, warm from the tea. ‘It must be weird…no, awful, to be the one left. I can’t imagine.’

You weren’t going to cry in your kitchen with Ellie in the other room holding Maria’s baby. That just wasn’t a thing that could happen. You swallowed hard, heard your jaw click under the strain.

‘I really like Ellie,’ you said, pain blooming from your temple into your eye socket. You consciously stretched your jaw, your hand over your mouth to try and cover it.

‘She’s a good kid, been through a lot,’ Maria agreed.

‘She’s a good distraction,’ you said, and Maria smiled at you.

‘I want you to know you have a place here,’ she said, and you wondered how she always knew the right thing to say, wondered if she could actually hear your thoughts. ‘Tommy…and me, well both of us, Tommy’s worried about you because…not just because of the expedition and the pharmacy and all of that going wrong, he’s worried that…’ Maria gathered herself for a second. ‘He’s worried that you only think of yourself in terms of what you can offer other people.’

You felt the sting of it, the little nerve Maria had unearthed, opened up to the chill of the air. You flinched away from it, but she was still holding your arm, and you realised you hadn’t noticed she hadn’t yet let you go. ‘Listen,’ she said, but kindly, and so you did. ‘When you came here, and we made you stand in front of the town council and basically said you could only stay if you contributed to the community…’

‘I understood that was how it works, of course it does,’ you said, and she raised her hand to shush you. You obeyed, again. She was growing into this mother thing.

‘I realised, we basically told you that all you’re worth to us is what you can do for us. Yes, its important everyone can contribute because that’s how we keep the place running. But I need you to know that’s not your value. I need you to know that.’

It was getting really hard not to cry. You could see her eyes misting over, her mouth in a grim line to bite back the tears. ‘I asked you to help me, to help with Robin, not because I wanted you to do something for me. It was just because…I just like you, is all.’

You didn’t even really think about it, you just grabbed her into your body and held her, and you felt her shaking a little, like she had been so terrified to tell you, and you didn’t want the Gulf of Mexico. You wanted her in your kitchen and Ellie in your loungeroom with Robin. You wanted Tommy chopping wood or storing coal or doing whatever the fuck manly shit needed doing around the place. You wanted Joel standing in his socks at the counter burning the toast and swearing under his breath about it. You wanted what you had always wanted, which was just to belong.

You pulled back from Maria, rubbing furiously at your eyes. She wiped the tears from hers.

‘I like you too,’ Ellie said, from the doorway, and you both startled, which made her jump a little, which jostled Robin, who delivered several pointed arguments about his thoughts on the experience.

‘Fuck, sorry,’ Ellie said, the panic written all over her face. ‘Oh fuck, I said fuck,’ she said, looking at you for help. You looked to Maria, who regarded you both with an amused expression on her face.

‘You two are as bad as each other,’ she said. She took Robin from her, and Ellie settled down at the table. For a second there was just the sound of Robin, grizzling in his mother’s arms.

‘Hey, Maria,’ Ellie said, lifting her hand to point to the muscle at the side of her neck under her ear. ‘Levator scap-yew-lay’ she said. You applauded her; genuinely, warmly, proudly.

--

You weren’t really ready to emerge from your cocoon, would have stayed hermitty and weird forever, except that Ellie wasn’t having it. For one she couldn’t sit still in the house for days on end, but she was still only fourteen and the idea that something might happen to her because you let her go out while you let yourself rot on the couch was even less palatable than having to be social.

The first time she took you to the mess hall you felt the anxiety at the bottom of your lungs, your sternum feeling like it had shrunk in your chest cavity. You were convinced people were staring, resentful of you and all that you brought with you. You didn’t want them to worry for Ellie, didn’t want them to wonder how you were going to corrupt her, end up with her dead or thrown out of the gates. You wanted to sit at one of the back tables, but Ellie was determined not to make any of it easy on you, and steered you over to the main table, the long one in the middle of the room, where a bunch of townsfolk were already chatting. You joined at the end of the row, feeling how you retracted into yourself, feeling your shoulders round over. Ellie sat opposite you and smiled at you, brightly. You realised she was treating you like some kind of project, a rehabilitate-the-crazy-lady experiment, maybe some kind of pet.

‘This is the soup they had the other week,’ Ellie said, gulping it down so fast you were worried she’d give herself indigestion. ‘The chicken one? Do you remember?’

You had no idea what she was talking about, and you stared at her.

‘I brought it round with half the loaf of bread. The kitchen ladies did not want me to have it. So, I swiped it while they were washing up.’

You felt something heavy roll in your stomach. ‘That was you? You brought the food?’ you asked, and you weren’t sure if – when you were finished being flawed – you were disappointed or relieved.

‘Yeah, didn’t you know?’ she asked, and you shook your head.

‘You didn’t leave a note or anything,’ you explained, feebly.

‘I guess not,’ she conceded.

‘I thought it might have been Tommy,’ you lied, unconvincingly, but Ellie wasn’t paying attention.

‘I mean, you were close. It was Joel’s idea,’ she said, and what you now realised was a full-sized boulder turned again in your gut.

‘It was?’ you squeaked, and she nodded into her nearly empty plate. You pushed your soup around, your mind trying too hard to digest this new information to turn itself to eating.

‘Did he say anything else?’ you asked, but you were interrupted by Tommy bursting into the mess hall, his eyes wide and scanning over the crowd.

‘They’re back!’ he called, and several people immediately rose, hustled for the door.

‘How many?’ someone yelled back, and Tommy nodded, but there was something wrong, something grim on his face that you didn’t want to acknowledge, didn’t want to even consider.

‘All of ‘em,’ he said, but then he faltered, and swallowed hard, and you knew, then, were already getting to your feet. ‘Some of them are in a bad way,’ he said, and he was looking at you and then looking at Ellie, and you were tucking her under your arm as you pulled her towards him at the door.

‘She shouldn’t see,’ he said to you, quietly, and you shook your head at him.

‘Try and fuckin’ stop me,’ she said, before you’d even had a chance to speak. He sighed, but you were past him then, your arm on the door pushing it open for her, shoving her through first.

--

The infirmary was only three rooms connected by a short corridor, and in times of serious outbreak or multiple injury it was woefully understaffed, under resourced.

There had already been some kind of make-shift triage for the returned residents, two of the men assigned to one room since they only needed looking over and could then be let go, but Dougie told you, pulled both you and Ellie aside to murmur in your ear, that Joel had his own room. The one next to the surgery.

‘Is he dead?’ Ellie asked, and if you didn’t know her as well as you now did you would have mistaken her bluntness for coldness, for desensitisation, but you knew instead that she was steeling herself, that if there was going to be pain she wanted it now, fast and hard, to rip into it with bared teeth.

Dougie shook his head, and you exhaled for maybe the first time, ever, in your life.

‘He’s not in a good way,’ Dougie said, but Ellie was already marching down the hall to see him, and you were already trailing behind her, your head over your shoulder to offer Dougie your whispered, harried thanks.

But you stopped when you got to his door, let Ellie slip through without you, suddenly considering that you could be intruding, that he had no interest in your being there, didn’t even know you’d been caring for his daughter while he was gone, or that she had been caring for you. You didn’t even really know him, weren’t sure how you felt about him, weren’t sure that you wanted to see him bleeding and broken, weren’t sure that you could handle not feeling his touch on yours again, his whispered encouragements as you came undone underneath him, the rise and fall of his chest under your ear as you both fought back sleep to stay awake together for just a little bit more increasingly precious time.

You’d marched down to the infirmary without even thinking about it, and now you were trapped in thinking too much about it, and what if he woke up and was angry at you again, found something else to throw in your face, and had you forgiven him for that or did that not even matter when he had nearly died, did arguments and anger and hurt just become nullified when the other person endangered themselves to protect you and the community you lived in, because that seemed like a dangerous precedent, and-

Ellie wrenched the door open and stared at you, paralysed, three steps away.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ she said, reaching forward and pulling you in. ‘Get the fuck in here.’

It wasn’t like the movies. There wasn’t a beeping machine, a screen counting out his heart rate, his breaths. He had a little tube up his nose feeding him oxygen but he wasn’t in a white gown, wrapped up neat and tidy under a woven blanket. He was lying, still in his boots, crooked on an old, rusted gurney. Your eyes travelled over him, taking stock; the left eye swollen shut, the abrasion to the cheek suggesting a fractured orbital bone, the red and purple swelling across his brow and up to his temple. The blood under his fingernails, the makeshift splint trying and failing to straighten his obviously broken wrist. You stepped forward and opened his shirt, scanning for more injuries across his skin, found a deep gash in his side and countless bruises, something mottled and purple underneath his ribs. Like he’d been kicked while he was on the ground, while he was already down.

You felt a flash of anger, tears spilling over your cheeks. He was out cold, pale and shivering, and you raised your hands to his midsection, felt the wound there, deep and angry and so close to his spleen.

‘We checked him already, he’s not bit,’ Dougie said from the doorway, and you wiped at your face, set your mouth in a line, intended to turn and address him but couldn’t move from Joel. You felt Ellie standing at your shoulder, observing you as you checked him over. ‘He’s going to need half the supplies they brought back with them,’ Dougie said, laughing a little as if this was funny.

‘They got them?’ Ellie asked, and Dougie nodded to her.

‘Some are dangerously expired, but others are just…expired,’ he said. ‘I gave him some of the morphine, even though he was already out.’

‘He has a head injury,’ you pointed to his collar where dried blood was staining the pillow brown. ‘Are you sure that’s safe?’

‘I stitched him up,’ Dougie said, defensive. 

‘What if there’s internal…’ and you stopped yourself then, because Ellie was in the room, and her eyes kept swivelling back to Joel, back to his body, back to the blood. ‘The mottling,’ you said, without further explanation, in the hope that Dougie had managed to find that part of the textbook.

‘We don’t have many options, if there is,’ he said, and you felt yourself get woozy.

‘What have you done so far?’ you asked, and Dougie just stared at you for a second, and you were going to throttle him, actually kill him in this place of healing, if he didn’t answer at least one question properly in the next twenty seconds.

‘We can give him a transfusion, keep his blood pressure up.’

‘Tommy,’ Ellie piped up. ‘They’d have the same blood right? They’re brothers.’

You nodded at her, and she ran from the room. In her absence, you turned to Dougie.

‘Tell me,’ you said, simply, and he sighed.

‘It’s a wait and see game,’ he said. ‘If there’s serious internal bleeding we’d need to operate but…’ you looked around the room, observed the notable absence of a sterile field.

‘I can’t,’ you said, and you weren’t totally sure what exactly you were referring to, but that didn’t make it any less true.

Joel stirred in his sleep, just enough for you to swivel around to him, plant yourself down on a chair and grab at his hand.

‘Joel,’ you said, not sure if he could hear you, hoping he could, hoping he wasn’t in any pain and knowing it was impossible that he wouldn’t be. ‘Joel, I have Ellie, and she’s doing so well,’ you said, murmuring into his unresponsive face. ‘I have her, Joel, so you just rest, OK? You just get better.’

You reached up and gently, carefully, put your hand in his hair, rested it over his right temple, seemingly more intact than the left.

‘We just need you to get better, Joel,’ you said. ‘We all do.’  

You thought for a second you heard a grunt under the gentle rhythm of his breath. ‘Be OK, baby,’ you said, one hand in his hair and the other gripping his. ‘Just rest, and be OK.’

--

Tommy’s transfusion raised Joel’s blood pressure, which was good but also indicated that he had lost a lot of blood. Dougie showed you how to check his blood pressure manually with a cuff and a watch, and you kept an eye on it every hour. If it kept dropping, there was likely internal bleeding.

It remained stable through the night.

What had happened out there became clearer as the morning progressed, as the other riders were patched up. The group from Jackson had managed to find the pharmacy, had cleared it out and secured the perimeter, before turning back the way they came.

The remaining raiders, those who had managed to escape their pet clickers, had been tracking Marla’s path back to Jackson. They had seen how well-equipped Marla was, how strong Jacob had been, how well he had been able to muster up a defence. They’d figured that meant they were well fed, well stocked, that there would be somewhere worth pillaging if they could get to it.

They were young but they were clever, probably only just born on outbreak day, and they’d managed to circle the group before Joel had noticed them. He’d shot one of them point blank, rearing his horse back to try and get to the others before they could clock what was happening, but the younger men had been quicker. He’d fallen from his horse, or maybe shoved off, it wasn’t clear in the chaos, and they’d tried to drag him, pulled him by the arms away from the group, stomped on his ribs a few times. He’d fought them the whole way, scoring a couple of gashes to his chest and abdomen in the process. It was only when the dust had settled, when the three raiders were dead and Joel was struggling to mount his horse, seemingly unable to coordinate his limbs, that they noticed the blow to his head. He’d been woozy, then, stumbling over his words, but they’d managed to get him upright on the horse enough to limp back to Jackson. They’d almost made it back when Joel blacked out completely, falling forward into his horse’s neck and not sideways, this small stroke of luck possibly saving him from an even worse fate.  

You listened to all of it, this breathless retelling of actual and near death. You could hear, even through the exhaustion and the pain, the awe the second expedition party held for Joel. That he had seen the raiders, maybe heard them, maybe smelt them, that he was so fast on the draw, so accurate with his shot, so quietly deadly. That he had gone down swinging. That he had come back up.

These stories drifting down the hallway to you, to where Joel lay. Your eyes raked over his body, his wrist now properly splinted and bandaged, his wounds sewn up. He drifted in and out of consciousness, aided by the expired morphine, but he tended to come back to the world fighting. The first time he’d nearly knocked Ellie off the end of the bed, had ripped the breathing tube out of his nose so hard he’d permanently bent it, had been wild eyed and terrified and so lethal, so deadly, as you grabbed his face and turned it to yours, told him where he was, told him who he was, while Dougie injected more drugs under his skin. After he had slipped back under, you liked to imagine that before the drugs he had been relieved to see you, that you had eked out a measure of comfort for him, that he knew you were there, that he wanted you to be.

The second time you sent Ellie away. It was late and Joel was finding new and creative ways to swear the infirmary into the ground, and you could sense the worry in her. You reassured her you’d stay with him, that you didn’t need anything to eat, could sleep in the chair by the bed. That she shouldn’t have to see this, that she didn’t need to hurt herself just to keep him close. You would do that for her. You would reach into yourself and carve away a space for him. Keep yourself hollowed out and aching, should he decide to make a home between your ribs.

You had already decided that when he woke properly you would leave him there, go and get Ellie and Tommy. Not intrude on the family. Go and sit in your little kitchen and run your fingertips over the kitchen table, let the wood grain catch on your skin, scrape the cells from you where you had held his hand.

You didn’t expect to sleep, so you startled awake, confused and aching in places you didn’t know you had from the stupid fucking chair, when Joel stirred again. Judging by the darkness it could only have been 3 AM, maybe 4. You steeled yourself for whatever destruction Joel was about to bring down on his own sick bed, lifted his hand in yours to your cheek, rested your face in his palm, hoped the weight and the heat of it would settle him, would ground him. You heard him clear his throat. This time, however, he was just exhausted, just himself.

‘I can go,’ you offered, too quickly considering he was still orienting himself, and you cringed, started to backtrack. ‘You’re in the infirmary,’ you started again, collecting yourself, watching his face for any hint of fear, any hint of anger.

‘Ellie,’ he croaked, his voice dry.

‘She’s staying with me, she’s OK,’ you said, reaching out to put a hand on his shoulder and then pausing, doubting, dropping it instead to the pillow.

‘Thirsty,’ he grunted.

‘Oh,’ you said, immediately snapping upwards and nearly knocking yourself out on the lamp over the bed. ‘Right, of course.’ Dougie had brought you water and a packet of dry ramen noodles approximately seventeen years past their use-by-date. You poured him a glass, cradling his neck to help him angle himself to drink it. You felt the heat of his skin on your arms as you lifted him. You didn’t think about it. Not at all.

‘Do you hurt anywhere?’ you asked, and he grunted at you. You knew it was a stupid question, and you tried again. ‘Do you want me to get Dou…the doctor, to get you some more drugs?’

‘Not yet,’ he whispered. You leant in close to him so that you could hear, and he fixed you then with a gaze sharper than anyone who had been unconscious for as long as he had should have been able to. ‘Makes me fuzzy and I want to…’ he trailed off, his eyes scanning your face.

‘I didn’t come to you about Marla because I think you’re a killer,’ you said, realised you had been waiting to say it to him, hoping he would wake up so you could finally set him straight. ‘I came to you because I knew you wouldn’t be cruel. I knew you’d do it well. Respect her.’

He lifted an arm as if he was going to cradle your jaw in his hands, but his face shifted into pain the moment he moved. You realised his ribs would be screaming in protest, and you grabbed his arm and forced it back to the mattress. ‘Don’t,’ you said, ‘it’s OK, I’m here.’

Joel turned his eyes to the ceiling, and you could tell that he was hurting. ‘I’m going to get you the drugs, you can’t just lie here like this…’ you said, standing up again. He grabbed your arm to stop you turning away from him, his grip strong, as he kept his eyes on the ceiling.

‘Ask me why,’ he grunted, through gritted teeth.

‘Why what?’ you asked, and saw the way he was bracing against the pain, felt a shot of frustration with yourself for prolonging it with your stupid fucking questions. ‘Why?’ you asked him.

‘Wanted to be a good man for once,’ he said. You sucked in a breath. ‘For Ellie,’ he went on, closing his eyes. ‘For you.’

You could feel something coming loose in you, a snapping of a hinge, the whine of a rusted and long-abandoned cellar door.

‘Joel,’ you said, because there wasn’t much else you could say in that moment, trying so hard to hold down the stirring turmoil in your chest. He held up his hand to stop you, almost waving you away, and you knew it was because it was hurting him to stay awake, hurting him to say it out loud, hurting him to hear you upset and not being able to soothe it for you. So much hurting in this bruised, bloodied body.

‘Let me…the drugs,’ you said, pulling yourself away from him, feeling his fingers grasp for you. ‘I’ll be here when you wake up,’ you reassured him, his eyes closed and his jaw tight. ‘I’ll be here,’ you said again, saw him nod, took the permission to finally, finally relieve him.

--

You weren’t there.

Couldn’t bring yourself to be, unnerved by the way his gaze snapped to yours, the way he had grasped for you, the way you felt the fracture of something vital, something that had kept you alive all these years. You sent Ellie in first thing in the morning, told her that he was calmer overnight and that you needed a proper sleep, set yourself up on the couch and tried not to think about it, tried to close your eyes and let sleep take you, felt it abandon you like you’d just done Joel.

You figured he wouldn’t remember it, what you had promised him, what he had said. The morphine would wash it away, would cleanse it from him. You would need to carry it, feel it sloshing around against your legs as you walked, but you were OK with that so long as it was only yours.

You busied yourself, cleaned up a little around the house because living with an un-housebroken teenager was a challenge in itself, went to the mess hall and bartered for a loaf of bread and a parcel of butter no bigger than a quarter, wrapped up in grease paper. That butter was going to cost you two massages but you knew Ellie preferred it, that without it there was so little flavour you could offer her.

You thought about going to Maria’s, thought about lifting Robin’s forehead to your lips and feeling his gentle, simple warmth thaw you out. But you worried Tommy would be there, that he would ask you why you weren’t with Joel, that he would ask you why had been, why you’d spent nearly three days at his bedside only to abandon him the second he was vaguely aware you were there.

You didn’t know how to explain. You couldn’t even get it straight in your own head. You wanted to cower from it, the strength of it, the weight. You took the back way back to your house, hoped you would slip out of everyone’s mind if you stayed out of sight.

Tommy was on your doorstep when you got there. Of course he was.

‘He’s askin’ for ya,’ he said, simply. You felt your shoulders drop, the defeat ripping up your spine, and you shrugged at him, your bottom lip wobbling.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ you said, simply, the six words that could kill you in an apocalypse. Tommy didn’t pretend not to understand. He took the packages from your arms, left you standing on the porch while he went inside and set them down. Came back out carrying a warm jacket for you and a cushion from the couch.

‘That damn ‘firmary chair is awful,’ he said, and you gave him a watery smile. ‘He’s askin’ for ya, so that’s what we’ll do,’ he said. You nodded at him. He took your elbow, led you down into the town.

‘It’ll be Spring soon,’ he said, making conversation, as you sniffed into the midday cold. ‘Jackson’s so beautiful in Spring, the wildflowers, the new leaves on the trees. You’ll love it.’

You nodded again, barely listening, wondering if you would ever be able to form actual sentences again. ‘S’new life,’ Tommy went on, ‘everything feels new. Like comin’ out of somethin’. Like a crack under the door where the light gets in.’

‘I don’t know if I can do this,’ you said.

‘Which part?’

‘All of it,’ you answered, sweeping your arms in front of you.

‘Well, you gotta do somethin’, so it might as well be this,’ Tommy said. It occurred to you that Maria’s ability to drop truth bombs at exactly the right moment was rubbing off on Tommy. You’d need to have a word to her about it.

Tommy led you into the infirmary, as if you didn’t have the place mapped like the back of your hand at that point, and down towards Joel’s room. He stopped at the door, and you realised he’d come as far as he was going to go. You looked at him, hoping for some final wisdom that might push you over the line.

‘What if he’s mad at me?’ you asked, feeble and weak.

‘He’s askin’ for ya,’ Tommy said, one last time, and you finally understood. You felt prickling heat at the back of your eyes, but Tommy had the good grace not to mention it, not to try to comfort or soothe, knew that it would make it worse somehow, bring it too close. With a shaky hand, you pushed open the door.

Joel was propped up, awake and gazing out the window at the street. He turned to you as you walked in, and your breath left you. The swelling around his eye had gone down, he was already looking less purple and bloodied than the night before, was more alert, was more him. You paused in the doorway, took him in as he waited for you.

‘Hi’, you said, barely above a whisper. You were gripping your hands in front of you, shivering in the doorway. You waited for him to yell, to thrash, to chew you out for leaving him to wake up alone and in pain.

You didn’t expect his eyes to mist over, for his bottom lip to tremble. For him to be soft, for him to need you.

‘C’mere,’ he said, lifting his good arm up to beckon you, and you fell into the four steps to him, launched yourself at his bed, gripped him by the waist and lay your head on his good shoulder, ignored his sharp intake of breath as you jostled him. You felt the tears spill over, your face tucked into his elbow while he ran his hands through your hair, and he held you as you sobbed into him.

This time, you knew it was for all of them. For the entire balance sheet, for the grand tally. For your parents, for Marla and for Ray, for Maria who so very much reminded you of your sister, for nearly losing Joel, for Ellie tucked up in your bed pretending she wasn’t counting the seconds until his return. For the love you held for all of them, your collection of losses and grief, for the realisation that all this time you hadn’t been feeling the absence of love but the presence of it, its full force, that it hadn’t gone anywhere, that so long as the love stayed so did they, in just enough of a way to sustain you.   

‘M’sorry,’ you muttered after a while, trying to pull back. He held you firm to him, his chin on the top of your head.

‘Scared ya, I guess,’ he said, and you could only nod.

‘There’s so much that scares me,’ you whimpered, and he grunted his agreement.  

‘M’scared too,’ he said. You raised your head to look at him, to understand, and he gazed down at you. ‘This is somethin’. Right?’ he asked, his voice giving out on the question.  

‘Think so,’ you said. He smiled, warmly, down at you, lifted a hand to rub at his face.  

‘We did it arse-backwards,’ he said, and you waited for him to explain. ‘Haven’t even dated ya, and here we are clingin’ to each other like…’ He trailed off, and you weren’t sure how you wanted him to finish that sentence, were sure you just wanted to continue to rest your head on his chest while he spoke, wanted to hear the timbre of it, feel the resonance.

‘Like it’s the end of the world?’ you finished for him, eventually. He chuckled.

The two of you fell into a silence, a warm one, a silence filled with all the words you were going to get to say to each other, when the time was right.

‘Is there anything you need? Anything I can do?’ you asked, after a long while.

‘Don’t need you to do anythin’ more than you already have. Just be patient with me, baby. S’been a long time since I felt this’ he said.

You reached over and took his hand from where it rested on his belly, turned his fingers over in the grey light from the window, examined the cracks, the swelling, the cuts. You lifted a knuckle to your lips, tasted the copper across your tongue, the tang of it, the life under his skin.

Gently, so gently, you held him there, felt his pulse against your skin, felt his body give, the tension in his muscles unspool. Heard his breathing slow, his other arm gripping tight around you. You let your eyes drift close, not having to see him to know that he was right there, in this moment with you. That he was with you, that this was the two of you.

That you had his touch. That he had yours.

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[dronebiscuitbat]

Oil is Thicker Then Blood (Part 50)

Frustratingly, even after a week, there was no more sign of Doll. Even with V scouting through the vents more then once and dropping by the Russian’s old, now charred apartment.

There was also the matter of Guy.

He was fine. He'd run off seconds after the bite occurred to go get it looked at, the medical staff had simply wrapped in up to stop the oozing. They'd also told him to “Keep his fingers away from heavy machinery.” Not believing him when informed that a toddler had broken the casing on his fingers, not a hydraulic press.

Thankfully, he seemed to now be avoiding the Doorman family like the plague, if he caught a whiff of N he would make excuses to quickly leave the area, which N was absolutely not complaining about, the less interaction he had with the creep the better.

Right now though, N had been placed on patrol near his own apartment, Hal, and a few other officers that he didn't know the names of, were doing the same, it wasn't only for Doll, there were teams assigned to each section of the bunker. Hal had just assigned him closer to home.

Which he was thankful for, it quelled his worries whenever he went past his own door and saw it shut and secure, sometimes he could hear Uzi moving around inside, and it always made him smile.

He'd always been protective of Uzi, literally since the day they met. Minus the first few hours, He'd always known, almost innately, that she was smaller and more fragile then him just due to their model differences.

But now, ever since they'd “taken that next step” it was like that feeling was put into overdrive, if he was too far away from her, it was almost painful, and his worry got so bad he was irritable, grumbling at small inconveniences he'd normally just wave off with a smile and a laugh.

It was maddening.

But, there was very little he could do until they found Doll. And that was looking increasingly less likely considering that between V and the entire WDF police force, they should have found something!

Even if that was more scraps of cloth, oil trails, blood trails. Heck, even little bits of leftovers from her meals since she had to eat eventually. But nothing. Which meant one of two things.

One, that peice of cloth was old, and Doll hadn't been in the bunker anytime recently.

Or Two, she knew she was being hunted and was deliberately covering her tracks.

Considering the freshness of the blood on the rag when he'd found it, the second was far more likely.

A voice came through over shortrange, slightly garbled due to distance, but not enough to not hear.

“Anything?”

It was one of the officers that N didn't know the names of, he'd probably have to ask them eventually, but for now, all he did was respond.

“Negative.”

This job, the patrolling part at least, was very similar to his last job in a lot of ways. Getting orders over shortrange was nothing new to him, and neither was a lot of the police jargon that broke through the usual chatter. Though, that chatter was new. J and V were usually quiet aside from the occasional update, the workers though, they were more talkative.

The difference though, is that he was actually helping people. He hadn't done a lot yet, mostly just descacalating some irritated workers in a disagreement and the occasional petty theft. But even so, it felt good, there wasn't any guilt associated with watching over people, and even better he felt like he was earning his keep, both the apartment and the oil provided from the nursery. Which had the bonus of cooling him down way more efficiently then oil taken from the dead, as it was brand new, and golden.

Speaking of…

He took a swig of his container as he turned a corner, his audio receptors tuned on high so that he could hear even the smallest noise that came from the vents or otherwise.

“Get off me!”

The voice was masculine, and muffled between it's distance and multiple steel walls in the way. Still, N turned his attention towards it, whoever it was sounded distressed.

He made his way through the halls towards where he thought the voice originated, going left, then right. Entering a section of the bunker that was entirely empty… mostly.

There was a young man, extremely young, 16 at best, with purple eyelights and black hair tied in a man bun, he had aviator goggles perched on his head. A black leather jacket with like 15 pockets and a white undershirt.

“Dammit Chloe, get off!”

“Awww, come on Nico… this wouldn't be the first time~” Chloe was pinning him to the wall, holding one of his hands above him, she was leaned into him, trailing a finger up along his chest. Despite this, he wasn't blushing, he almost looked fearful.

“Fuck off!” He shouted, his voice cracking and ruining whatever intimidation he could have had, Chloe giggled.

“That's not what you said last time~” She slunk a hand under his shirt and out of view, but the way he flinched and the pathetic groan that escaped him let N know exactly where she'd touched him.

“I-I didn't know you were older then me! This is w-wrong!” The poor boys voice was trembling, and he looked like he was about to break down at any moment, N decided that he'd had enough of this.

“Hey! What's going on here?!” He shouted, making both drones jump. Chloe immediately released the boy, and he let out a breath of relief, until he saw who exactly was bearing down on them.

“Uh-! you? You're part of the WDF now?” Chloe's voice came out surprised and wary, she took a few steps back from N as she looked him up and down.

Then her face turned flirtatious again.

“That badge looks good on you~”

“Knock it off. You're my age, this kid's like 16, not cool Chloe.” N said firmly, his tail held far far away from grabbing distance, his posture defensive, though he felt more safe now with his position.

Chloe seemed to get a little nervous, eyes darting over to the teen still pressed up against the wall, she smiled warily.

“Oh! Well… we weren't doing anything… right Nico?” She gestured to him, and his violet eyelights suddenly went hollow, he looked at her, then back at N, before he looked at the floor.

“Yeah, whatever, we weren't doing anything.” He mumbled, putting his hands in his pockets and letting some of his raven hair fall over his eye.

N sighed, looking over at Chloe, who had the words biggest innocent smile he'd ever seen. He didn't believe her, he'd heard and seen enough to pick up that she wasn't innocent, but if the kid wasn't admitting it, there was a good chance he'd deny it if he brought them into headquarters too.

“Then move along. Neither of you should be in this hallway anyway.” He didn't like it, but the best thing he could do for this kid at the moment was to get Chloe away from him.

“Yeah. I'm leaving.” Chloe sauntered off, flashing Nico a look as she left, he seemed to gulp at it, before she was gone and it left the two remaining drones in the hall, looking awkward.

“Thanks…” Nico mumbled, not quite looking at the man in front of him, he kicked his feet as he started to walk away. But N stopped him, hand resting on the younger drones shoulder.

“Where you headed? I can walk you.”

“I-I don't need…” Nico trailed off, huffing a bit to himself before looking back on at N, N felt something tug at his core, those eyelights were strangly familiar, and not just because they reminded him of Uzi.

“Just home… if you don't mind.”

N nodded, following the drone through the halls until they entered familiar territory, where Uzi was clearly just leaving with Tera held in her arm, Nico stopped suddenly, looking at the both of them.

“Hey Zi, where you heading?” N asked his girlfriend, who smiled at his voice and turned to him, Tera did too, looking over at him and shouting “Papa!”

“Dad asked me to head over to the WDF office for something, he wouldn't say what even after I grilled him…” She ended it irritability, like perhaps she'd shared a few choice words with her father.

“That's weird… you think he would have told me when I saw him this morning…”

Uzi turned while he was talking to glance over at the drone who'd stopped, purple met purple, and suddenly the teen drone looked both terrified and guilty.

“Haven't I seen you before?” She asked him and he startled back, looking like he'd just been put on the spotlight.

“Uh… I don't-I don't think so.”

“Hi!”

Uzi looked over at Tera, who not only had said her third new word at a record setting pace, but was leaning off her mother to smile happily at the teenaged drone in front of them.

Nico looked taken aback, before something bittersweet took over his face, like he was both extremely happy and extremely sad.

“Hi there, buddy.” The way he said it was muted, but he did add a little wave in, which made Tera smile and lift her arms up to be held, which took Uzi off guard and had her pulling her away.

“Tera no! We don't ask strangers to pick us up.” Uzi scolded, and Nico gave a half smile in return, rubbing his neck in nervousness.

“I'll meet you at the office? I said I'd escort this young man home.” N smiled down happily, swooping down and giving her a nice big wet kiss on the mouth. She squeaked, and pushed him away, embarrassed.

“Not in front of people!”

“You did it in front of all our freinds?”

Uzi grumbled, hitting him in the arm gently.

“Not the same thing!”

N laughed before turning to face Nico, only to find the young boy had disappeared, and a quick look around the hallways confirmed that he was nowhere nearby.

“Huh.”

Next ->

[rascal-xo]

Hi :) first of all, I already made a request for you a month ago. And I was very happy with the outcome of it. So if you are bored sometime in the future, here is another request:

Its Holidays (You can choose which, I believe spring would be cool because it would probably rain) and the whole 141 are by their family members. So since Ghost got none, he stays at the military. Since the reader is new in the crew she doesn't know that he always stays at there.

You came home late from a mission which took longer than expected. You go to bed and can't sleep so you decide to make tea and you are surprised the you meet Simon there. You tell him that you don't have a family too and it gets kind of angsty. From then on you could decide how the story goes on...

Are they just sleeping together on the couch or is it going to continue in a more smutty way? Who knows?

Thanks in advance 🪸

When It Rains, It Pours | Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley x Female Reader |

Chapter Summary: You and Simon happen to be the only two on base during spring break.

Warnings: Language, Fluff, mentions of loss, trauma, a bit of sexual undertones.

Word Count: 1.6K

A/N: I’m so happy you liked the last request I wrote for!! I hope you enjoy this one too :)) Might do a pt.2 so lmk 🫶🏼

PT. 2 HERE

You had just returned from a 2 week long grueling mission, and the rain was pouring down on you as you stepped off of the plane, and onto base.

It was almost night, and the sky was gloomy and dark. You're were still wearing your gear, and the weight of it had been pressing down on your tired muscles, making them ache even more.

Your head was pounding, and you could feel your heartbeat in your ears. You let yourself look up at the sky and let the rain wash over you, feeling the cold drops soaking through the layer of your clothes that weren’t covered by the vest, and let it seep onto your skin.

You were exhausted and sore, but you knew that you had done your duty and completed the mission. Despite the rain and the fatigue, you felt a sense of satisfaction that came from knowing that you had gone through with your orders successfully.

Laswell had a lot of hope on the line with you as the new Marine recruit for the 141. Herself and Captain Price had picked your file from the dozens of qualified soldiers.

As you stepped inside the familiar lodging’s building, you were met with a silence. You dropped your duffel bag, then remembering you would the only one here.

The team had all been given time off for the spring holidays, to go to their respective homes and find some rest. You on the other hand had taken on more work instead, not having the ‘luxury’ of something to go back to.

It was better that way. You would be far more comfortable here where you had a sense of security on base, even if you were alone.

You made your way to your room, shedding off your gear and leaving it in a neat pile by the door. You could feel your muscles relaxing just from the act of removing the weight from your body.

You decided to take a warm shower to ease your sore muscles, hoping it would also help to clear your head. You turned the faucet on and stepped into the warm stream, feeling the hot water wash away the grime and dirt from your skin.

Taking your time in the shower, not wanting to rush the experience, you washed your hair, feeling the suds massage your scalp and the warm water rinse it away. You ran your hands over your body, feeling every inch of your skin, enjoying the sensation of finally being clean.

After what felt like an eternity, you reluctantly turned off the water and stepped out of the shower. You walked over to your small closet and grabbed a random Marine labeled t-shirt that you had around from your BMT trainee days. You slipped it on and felt the familiar comfort of the cotton against your skin.

Despite the warm shower, you found yourself unable to sleep. You tossed and turned in your bed, trying to find a comfortable position, but nothing seemed to work. You couldn't shake the feeling of unease that lingered in your chest, and the sound of heavy rain hitting the roof only added to your restlessness.

After what felt like an eternity, you finally gave up and sat up in bed, letting out a frustrated sigh. You rubbed your eyes, feeling the exhaustion weighing heavy on your body, but your mind refused to let you rest.

You decided to get up and make yourself some tea, hoping the warm drink would help soothe your nerves somehow. As you made your way to the kitchen area, you were lost in your thoughts, trying to gather your uneasiness.

You didn't notice another person hunched over, sitting on the couch until you were only a few feet away. Startled, you let out a gasp, and Simon looked up at you, his knives in his hands.

"You scare easily, Sergeant." He spoke, teasing yet absolutely serious in his tone.

"Sorry, I didn't think anyone else was here." You answered softly, before going to find any sort of tea you could make. Unbeknownst to you, Simon watched you going about your business, trying not to let yourself make eye contact with him.

As you busied yourself with making tea, Simon remained silent, observing you with a keen eye. He had been on a mission as well, but he had managed to complete it earlier and had returned to base before you, staying true to his callsign.

After a few moments, he stood up and walked over to you, his knives left on the coffee table where he had been cleaning them off. "Why aren't you home, Sergeant." His voice was deep, but his eyes held a glint of curiosity.

You hesitated for a moment, unsure if you wanted to open up to someone, but something in his demeanor made you feel like you could trust him. "There's no home to be at." you admitted, taking a sip of the hot tea a little too quickly before it had cooled, making you bite back a hiss. "What about you?"

Simon took a moment to consider your question, his expression unreadable. "I stick around here, Sergeant." he finally replied, not going any further into detail. "Can't sleep?" You leaned back against the edge of the counter, a couple of feet in front of the Lt.

His demeanor was a bit more relaxed than you were accustomed to seeing him. His heavy camo and skull mask were replaced with sweats and a plain black balaclava, only revealing his deep brown eyes. For the first time you could clearly see his tattoos, with his sleeves pushed up to his forearms.

"Can't catch much of it these days." You spoke, letting the hot mug rest in your hands. You could feel his piercing gaze on you, while you tried not to meet his eyes.

Simon remained silent for a moment, taking in your words. "Doesn't get much better if you're always this tense, I'm afraid." He might not have been joking, but you found humor in his blatant honesty.

"I'm not the tense one." You claimed back, a small tired smile playing at your lips. It was strange yet comforting to have someone else here, especially that someone you had never really spoken to before. outside of a professional setting.

He suddenly walked up closer to you, taking the mug from your hands and placing it on the counter. "Turn around." He asserted. You wondered if his field voice was just his all-the-time voice, but nonetheless you followed his direction.

He wasn't completely what had gotten into him so suddenly, seeing you in the kitchen barefaced and vulnerable to your surroundings. He had taken a keen liking to having you on the team, but even more having you to himself.

His hands found themselves on your upper shoulders, causing you to jerk a little. He immediately felt how tense you were, but being under his touch didn't exactly lighten that sensation.

Simon began to knead your shoulders, you felt the tension melting away. He worked his way to your arms, his strong hands working out the knots and kinks in your muscles. You couldn't help but let out a contented sigh as you leaned back against him, feeling the warmth of his body seeping into yours. It felt wrong, letting your Lieutenant touch you like that, but it felt too good to stop.

"You don't have to, Lt-"

"Simon." His voice was low this time, soft, but he didn't stop. You suddenly felt self conscious, realizing you had failed to put on any pants under your t shirt that was coming down your upper thighs.

Your heart started racing a bit as you tried to subtly pull your shirt down, hoping to cover more of your legs. Simon must have noticed your movement, but he didn't comment on it. Instead, he continued massaging your arms, his touch firm yet gentle.

His touch was surprisingly gentle for someone so strong, and you found yourself relaxing into it despite your initial reservations. As the tension in your body continued to melt away, you couldn't help but feel grateful for Simon's unexpected gesture.

After a few minutes, his hands gradually slowed down and eventually came to a stop. You turned around to face him, feeling a little bit awkward but also strangely comforted by his presence. You weren't sure what had just happened, but you knew it was something you couldn't ignore.

Your tea had gone cold, being the last thing you could think about in the moment. You stood there for a moment, just looking at each other. The air between you heavy with unspoken words, and for a moment it felt like he was seeing right through you.

You finally broke the silence, "Si-" Which was suddenly cut off by his mouth coming down onto yours.

Your mind went blank for a moment as you felt Simon's lips pressing against yours. The sensation was both familiar and foreign at the same time. You had never imagined that anything like this could happen between the two of you, but now that it was happening, it felt almost inevitable.

You tentatively kissed him back, your arms wrapping around his neck as he deepened the kiss. It was like a floodgate had been opened, all the pent-up desire and attraction suddenly spilling out between you.

As you pulled away, gasping for air, you both looked at each other with a mix of surprise and intensity. This was new territory for both of you, and you weren't quite sure what to do next.

Who knew something so wrong could feel so right.

[eleni-cherie]

a thief's origin✨ || bts • kth - chapter 0.7

"you're afraid I won't wait." "I'm afraid you will."

a criminal and a doctor should be as different as the sun and the moon - but unexpected things happened every day. like him finding his safe haven in her.

© 2024 | eleni_cherie

»»»

masterlist: here

— genre: thief au, gangster comedy, adventure, romcom, humour, angst, fluff, sexual tensiON, slowburn, mutual pining, strangers to friends to lovers s2f2l

ALTERNATIVE UNIVERSE. CHARACTERS NOT NECESSARILY LIKE THE REAL PERSONS. ALSO VERY UNREALISTIC PLOT LOL - JUST PRETEND READING A MANGA/COMIC OR WATCHING A FILM, REALLY.

SUGGESTIVE THEMES. MENTIONS OF VIOLENCE & BLOOD (BUT NOTHING TOO GRAPHIC, IT'S STILL A COMEDY!)

»»»

30th December Barcelona, Spain

There was no trace of snow in the foreseeable time and Cassandra's already gloomy mood only dropped more as she averted her eyes from the grey buildings outside.

If it was cold, it should at least snow, she believed. But she knew something like this was impossible for a city right at the mediterranean sea. The only thing they got there was humidity and gusty winds.

It was the day before New Year's eve. The second-last day of the year. One day and eleven hours more and it'd be the next year already.

It was a strange feeling considering to her it didn't feel like a year had passed already. The only evidence it did being the coldness outside that had suddenly picked up in the last two weeks. 

She returned to study a patient's file. Today would be another double-shift. Could be worse, at least she wasn't working the next two days.

After asking one of the nurses to give the patient 150mg codeine, she finished her round right on time for her lunch break. Already spotting Stella and one of the assistent surgeons and Stella's on-off-crush, Julio, sitting at a table in the far back of the cafeteria and bickering over something as usual. And Cassandra gave them a quick wave, signalising she'd seen and would join them, before going to pick her lunch. Her stomach was already rumbling when a different kind of buzzing caught her attention then. It was the phone in her pocket.

doc (6:30am): happy birthday, wherever you are :)

cool guy (1:12pm): you remembered! cool guy (1:12pm): thanks :P

Her lips instinctively curled up. It was Taehyung. 

It had been a week since they'd last spoken, which wasn't surprising considering he had a different kind of busy life.

At least he took time to ressurface at all. Kind of like a penpal, where she had to wait for his letter to arrive and respond before having to wait yet again. Especially since they were indeed one-sided penpals with him sending her postcards from all the places he visited.

She was used to it, but that didn't mean she wasn't worrying a little whenever a longer period of time passed with no trace of him. Unpredictable things could always occur, despite him and his friends being unmatched in what they did.

doc (1:14pm): ofc i did :O

After typing in her quick reply, she shoved it back into her pocket when it started buzzing again. Perplexed by the unexpected incoming call, she hesitated for a moment before eventually accepting it.

"Hey." 

She inhaled with a smile. Something about his smooth voice greeting her so cheerfully always making her a little weak.

"Hey, your timing's as great as ever," she giggled when the line moved and she took a step forward. Hearing his surprised 'Oh?'.

"To what do I owe the honour of this call?"

Taehyung could hear the smirk all the way through the line. Laughing under his breath.

"What do you mean? It's my birthday after all. So I deserve actually hearing your birthday wishes."

She bit back a laugh, having missed his silliness. "Happy birthday, cool guy. Was that all you called for?"

"Almost," he said, his tone turning gentle then,"I also wanted to hear how you were doing."

"Well, I.." she began but paused. 'Fine' was her first instinct, however, she concluded he'd most likely see through her blatant lie, because in all honestly she wasn't doing fine at all. So she settled for a more vague response. "..I'm a little tired. But otherwise everything's fine. How's it there?" She knew he'd never tell her where exactly in the world he was currently at, so she didn't even attempted to find out.

"It's.. yeah, it's great. We're working on something.." His voice faded then and Cassandra was about to carry the conversation to the turn of the year, when he spoke up again. His concerned tone taking her aback."You sure everything's fine?"

She swallowed. No matter how hard she tried, she'd always be an open book to him it seemed. Even when he was miles away. 

No, she thought, nothing's fine. I almost lost a patient because of bureaucracy, almost messed up a chest tube on another one, haven't properly slept in days, I'm gonna spend the turn of the year all alone and I'm an idiot because I miss you. 

She couldn't bring herself to let any of these words slip from her lips though. She didn't feel like making him feel bad and pity her when he was who-knew-where in the world right now and couldn't do anything for her misery anyway. Besides, she also didn't want to embarrass herself.

"Yeah, it's just, you know, work. It's not always that easy." This wasn't even a lie. But she felt he still wasn't completely sold on it. 

"Hm, you sure that's all?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Because work's always tough for you but you sound more distressed than usual."

She froze. Did she? She didn't even notice anymore, but others obviously did. Or at least, Taehyung did. So with a sigh she gave in, elaborating more after all. "It does take a toll on me. And tomorrow's New Year's eve, which I can't celebrate with my family and I have no plans, which could be regarded as sad and pitiful by some, but hey! At least I'm not working like some colleagues, so can't complain." Her casual laugh to gloss over her gloominess probably sounded forced. And she licked over her dry lips. "I just didn't want to dump everything on you.. I know you're busy with your own work." Another small giggle getting automatically added at the last words, another poor attempt to save her pride. "Anyway, it's also a shame you can't see your birthday gift, you know? It's pretty mad after all."

"A mad gift, huh?" He played along with her sudden change of topics. Although he could sense there was more to her previous words. "And what gift?"

The line moved and it was almost her turn at the registry, "Never heard of a surprise? You've got to wait until coming here again."

Taehyung scoffed playfully on the other line. "Oh, that's how it is?"

"Of course."

"Alright. I'll hurry up then, I guess."

»»»

31st December

Cassandra usually celebrated this day by playing cards and drinking with her family. Since it wasn't possible this year, she settled for eating a whole pizza by herself and watching one of her comfort shows. The perfect plan really.

It was past 10pm on New Year's Eve now and she was in the middle of her little rewatch party, when the sound of the door bell startled her and she paused the episode. 

Cassandra didn't expect seeing anyone that night. Especially since there were barely any hours left till the turn of the year.

A knock at the front door followed then, causing her to tense up even more. She wasn't a particularly fearful or easily scared person. However, due to the late hour and randomness her first instinct was to switch off all lights and remain quiet. Only when an annoyed and whiny: "Cas, open up already! It's cold!" was heard from behind the entrance door, her tense muscles finally relaxed.

The last person she had expected seeing standing in front of her door was Taehyung and yet, there he was. Doing just that with furrowed brows and an amused laugh.

"Were you hiding from me?"

"Wh.. no. No. Well, yeah, but I didn't know it was you," she defended herself with a small pout.

His cheeks were slightly flushed and raven hair tousled due to the harsh wind outside, hands shoved deeply into the pockets of his dark brown coat. He looked quite cuddly and inviting.

She instantly shook that thought away, though. Eyeing him suspiciously when also spotting the bare neck and open collar.

"And since when do you feel cold?" she sarcastically snorted then. A knowing smirk on her lips as she let him enter. Meeting his wide boyish grin.

"Maybe I fibbed a little there."

She laughed under her breath, shaking her head. "What are you even doing here? Thought you were working on a job."

"Well.." He let out an awkward laugh when a shiver crept up his skin. He might not freeze, but that didn't mean he wouldn't feel the coldness at all. Especially with the temperature difference inside there. "I don't know actually."

She took a step back to narrow her eyes at the taller man. A puzzled smile tucking on her lips as she tilted her head. "So did you just randomly come here all the way from wherevever you were?"

"It's just.." It sounded too silly, thinking about it now, but frankly, he simply had a feeling of her needing him. And he realised how completely irrational and odd it must sound if he said that out loud. So he stick with another excuse. "We were done with the job earlier than expected and wanted to take a little break, so.. might as well come to collect my birthday gift."

Cassandra blinked. Somehow she wasn't quite buying it. He never struck her as a guy who'd travel countries just for a simple gift. Especially since he should know it wasn't anything of value compared to the actual treasures they were hunting.

"Hope you don't have too high expectations of that gift, though," she mumbled with a coy smile as he followed her further inside, "Might get disappointed otherwise."

Taehyung shrugged with a cheerful, almost childlike grin. "A gift is a gift. I take what I get."

He observed her crunching down at other side of the living room to pick up a rather big square, wrapped in fancy paper, from her desk. She felt her fingers trembling all of a sudden, not having expected to see him this time around after all, so she hadn't had any time to mentally prepare to get embarrassed yet. And the few steps she walked back to him clearly weren't enough.

"It's nothing special, really. I mean, what do you get someone who can literally get anything he wants? But I hope it's not too terrible."

Cautiously, he accepted the object from her with a scowl. Her intention was to lower his expectations but all it did was hightening his curiosity, especially since he didn't have any clue what it could be. He'd appreciate it either way though, whatever it was.

"Happy belated birthday, Tae."

He tried not to rip the paper when opening it, but as it accidentally did, he gave up midway and just tore it off making Cassandra laugh amused at his childish eagerness. Only for her to bite down on her bottom lip and avoid his glance when he finally unwrapped it.

His expression softened, brown eyes grew round in astonishment.

"A painting." He looked up at her in awe. "You drew this?"

She shrugged nonchalantly, still not daring meeting his eyes. "You said you liked my drawings and.. you also said you'd like having one of yourself like, and I quote, 'one of these sleazy rich guys'," she added air-quotations for the dramatic effect. Her hands dropping to the side then. "I know considering you travel around from hideout to hideout, it's not practical, but.. I don't know, maybe if one day you do get that house of your own, you'll find some space for it." 

He hummed, his eyes preoccupied with the painting in his hands.

The detailed strokes, the soft-coloured paint. He wondered when she'd even found time to create it in between of sleeping and working. What amazed him the most, however, was the expression on his painted face. The look in his eyes. It tucked on something in his heart, the way she captured this brief moment of tranquility in them. He wondered if anyone else had ever noticed this kind of expression on him when not even he himself had.

That painting was how her eyes saw him. The way she saw him. And it was beautiful. It touched him how someone could see him like this. So.. human. Not a thief. Not a gunman. Just him.

He swallowed. His silent gaze wandered back to her then, catching her impatiently peeking at him as he was taking quite some time to silently gape at the present, increasing her insecurity about it.

He didn't understand why she was belittling herself so much when she didn't have to make him a gift in the first place.

"Thank you, Cassandra," he breathed eventually. His voice unintentionally cracked at the end as it came out hoarser than expected. She had almost missed it, so quiet that it was. But when she realised, her eyes slowly met his already smiling ones and all the nervousness she had felt before was suddenly swept away when seeing the sincerity in his face. He meant it.

She gave him a small nod in acknowledgment.

"Say.." he said then, taking another glance of the painting in his hands, "You said no plans tonight, right?"

»»»

"Should you not avoid such crowded spaces?" Cassandra yelled over the loud background chatter of half-drunks. One of them bumping into her shoulder, his red glittery party hat slipping from his head and almost poking her cheek.

Spending the final hour of the year at platja del Somorrostro, one of Barcelona's busiest beaches, surrounded by a New Year's crowd of strangers brimming the entire area wasn't where she had expected to find herself at. 

And all because of Taehyung.

His dark waves peeked out from between a couple of people in front of her, him clearly not hearing her nor noticing her absence beside him and she squeezed herself through to reach for his sleeve not to lose sight of him again. He paused when feeling the tug and looked over his shoulder, catching Cassandra puffing out her cheeks. "Hey, wait for me!" she pouted and he laughed.

"Sorry, did you say anything?"

"Yeah, I asked if you shouldn't be avoiding such crowds."

They pushed through the mess and Taehyung made space for her to follow behind him as he navigated them to a low pavement wall, seperating the sand from the street.

They reached the uplifted sea promenade soon and he climbed onto it when spotting a gap between some chatty teenagers. Holding his hand out for her which she accepted, letting him pull her up.

"More the opposite," he clarified then as he let his eyes wander over the sea of funny party hats, chaplets and woolen beanies. He could bearly spot where the actual sea began and where the crowd ended. His eyes then returned to her with a cheeky grin. "The more people, the easier it is to get lost in the shuffle."

Cassandra could only smirk at this. "I assume that's your go-to tactic at heists as well?"

"Hm, maybe. Who knows," he reciprocated her smirk. Knowing exactly how riled up it'd get her whenever he stayed vague and not providing more info. He simply enjoyed teasing her too much to ever let go of it, besides the obvious benefits of her not knowing any details for her own safety.

To be fair, this New Year's Eve was also quite different from what he'd originally planned for it to look like. The original plan foresaw him and the guys to sneak into a yacht party at the coast of Alexandria - something he wouldn't tell her though.

Partially because he didn't want her to ask why he was missing it out, partially because he couldn't let her know any details.

Furthermore, he'd never been a man of big parties and celebrations anyway, everything always seeming shallow and blown-out-of-proportion to him. And that sense only intensified when sneaking into some fancy party to steal idiots' jewelery and money. So in a way, he also did it for himself and not only for her. Besides, if he acknowledged the influence she had on him to just ditch anything at the mere feeling of her needing him, he'd need to apologise to Jimin for all the times Taehyung had scolded him for doing the same exact thing for Arabella.

"I hope we can see the fireworks from here."

Her words interrupted his train of thoughts and he watched her tiptoeing beside him before setting her heels back down and taking a sip from the mojito bottle she'd bought at a convenience store earlier. Cheeks already rosy from the alcohol in her system due to being a light-weight.

He took a swing from his own bottle of red wine. "Don't worry, we got a clear sight up here."

Cassandra hummed, getting tired of standing she decided to sit down on the cold stone next to a woman with a blue wig. Wrapping her arms tightly around her angled legs and bringing them close to her body. The midnight air making her shiver under her coat.

"Oh!" she exclaimed then, holding her phone up.

He narrowed his eyes at the dim display. The clock said six more minutes to midnight. He glanced at his wrist then, making sure his watch said the same. It was precise after all, something necessary when doing a coup. And indeed, six more minutes.

Explained why people around them became more jittery.

"Do you have any New Year's resolution?"

He mused for a moment over her question. Flashing her a grin then. "Not getting caught. You?"

The red-head lightly laughed at this before shaking her head. "No, don't think I got any."

"Huh, didn't expect that," he blurted out and felt her inquiring eyes on him.

"Yeah? Why not?"

He shrugged. For a moment he contemplated how to phrase his disbelief, licking his lips shortly which had become dry in the low temperature. "You striked me like the kind of person who'd have a whole list of resolutions to be honest. That's all."

Cassandra blinked, taken aback as she indeed used to always have some kind of resolutions while growing up and this might've been the first time she didn't. Perhaps she was more obvious than she liked to admit after all. A dry laugh left her lips then.

"Well, I used to -"

"Knew it," he grinned triumphatically and took another sip from his drink, "What happened?"

"Nothing. I just realised none of my wishes or resolutions ever came true. So I stopped."

Four more minutes.

"But if you would have to do any, what would it be?"

She took a moment to genuinely think about it and hummed while doing so. Only obvious ones popping up in her mind. "I guess.. to successfully complete this training year, not lose my mind in the hospital and.." Her eyes lowered and she paused, smiling to herself in a sheepish manner. "The last one is a secret."

His brows arched, but he didn't press considering it must be private.

He looked down at his watch again. 

Two minutes.

Somewhere in the distance behind them someone had already started blaring firecrackers. The loud cracking roaring over the drunk slurring, yells and chatter of the people scattered around them on the sea promenade. As far as the eye could see, streets were completely filled with people choosing spending the turn of the year outside among strangers in the cold. Most didn't seem to mind, Cassandra being the only one shivering.

And Taehyung noticed, scooting closer to her in a poor attempt to shield her body from the wind which had pushed its way through after all.

It was quite unfair, she pouted to herself when leaning into Taehyung's shoulder, how she, with her onion-layers of clothes, thick coat, scarf and beanie, was still freezing while he was out there with nothing but a sweater and a thin coat doing just fine.

"Thirty seconds," he announced when looking at his watch again.

Cassandra tilted her head to take a glance as well. "Twenty."

He sensed her warm breath brushing over his exposed skin. The pink-tinted tip of her nose and cheeks contrasting her pale skin which was faintly glowing under the yellowish streetlamp's light further away.

Everyone around them began counting down at the top of their lungs then.

"Ten!"

"Nine!"

"Eight!"

Taehyung searched her eyes, seeing she was already smiling at him. And they held each other's gaze while continuing counting down with the crowd.

"Seven!"

"Six!"

Their smiles widened.

"Five!"

"Four!"

"Three!"

"Two!"

"One!"

Fireworks errupted from the main square in the distance, splashes of colorful lights painting the black sky and illuminating the crowd with loud popping sound of explosives. The hooting party horns and cheers from the crowd jarred into a deafening wave and everyone fell into each other's arms.

And yet, despite the commotion by the boisterous mass of people, all Cassandra could see was the curve of Taehyung's bright smile. Losing herself in the glittering sparkles in his irises. Just for that moment, it felt as if it was only the two of them there.

"Happy New Year, Cassandra"

"Happy New Year, Taehyung."

They laughed lightly, breaking eye-contact and instead decided to watch the rest of the elaborate fireworks show and its golden rain when some odd - to him at least - customs caught his attention then. "Why're so many people kissing or eating grapes?"

Cassandra tore her eyes from the colourful shapes to briefly glance at him, redirecting them to the night sky again. "New year's traditions. People eat twelve grapes for each month for good luck. Or kiss to save themselves from a year of loneliness."

He seemed intrigued by this. "Are there more?"

"Not sure, I don't believe in this superstitions."

He huffed a laugh at her bolt claim. "Says the girl who bought a lucky charm to a heist with her."

Gasping, she averted her eyes from the fireworks again only to face his shit-eating grin. "T-that's something different. It was my emotional support!"

Taehyung only arched a brow, continuing giving her a doubtful look. Much to her annoyance. "No, I mean it. I don't believe in these New Year's traditions. Or at least I try not to but, who knows.." A rueful smile ghosting over her lips. ".. maybe that's why none of my New Year's wishes ever comes true."

Taehyung looked at her indeciphable expression before looking back at the firework.

"What about you?" She assumed to already know his answer but she was still prying to know.

"I'm superstitious. A little bit at least."

She smiled softly, somehow not being surprised at all. "Oh yeah?"

"I need to, sometimes it's a matter of luck. Especially in what we do." He threw his head back in gleeful joy as another set of fireworks was fired. A cheeky smirk gracing his lips then. "And don't they say luck and timing is everything you need?"

She agreed. Even in medicine where everything was scientific and empirist, they still often had to rely on luck and hope. When it came to a therapy or medication to work or when the surgeons needed to wear their own lucky charms to boost their confidence and succeed in a difficult surgery. But it also depended heavily on the patients themselves, if they believed in it or not.

She laughed under her breath. It was a laugh of self-pity as she felt she neither had luck nor timing. At least not in the way she wanted to. And she emptied her bottle in a swing. A feeling of fizziness and light-headness overtaking her mind.

"You know what?" she blurted out after a short while and giggled highly bemused, "We should kiss for good luck!"

Usually she'd know despite the bubbling feelings for her criminal friend, which she still tried convincing herself didn't exist, that kissing him while being tipsy probably wasn't a good start for anything. But any rationality was clearly last seen 0.5l of mojito mix prior, the very few enzymes she apparently had to break down alcohol, already saturated awhile ago. So her intoxicated mind simply found that sudden idea marvelous and entertaining. She'd never get a proper kiss from him anyway - or any guy in the forseeable future with her work schedules - might as well make him her platonic and amicable New Year's kiss in a desperate attempt for any kind of good luck for that upcoming year.

Taehyung, however, only chuckled when seeing her flushed red cheeks and the empty bottle. Not taking her random request seriously until he saw her face turning into an offended sulk. Bottom lip sticking out. "Wait, really?"

"Yeah, it's the tradition!" she pouted, "I don't want a year of loneliness. So you gotta kiss me!" She had an adorable, almost naive giggle decorating her puffy lips. And for a second his eyes lingered on them before eventually shaking his head.

"I don't think -"

"Then don't think," she grinned. "Let's just do this. Just a quick peck."

"Okay, fine," he dragged a sigh, surprised at himself for giving in so quickly when he and Yoongi always accused Jimin of getting easily wrapped around pretty women's fingers. "O-only 'cause I really don't want you to end up a lonely cat-lady though."

Rolling her eyes, she puffed out a snort. "Thank you. That'd be very kind of you!"

She turned her body fully towards him then, head getting dizzy at her abrupt movement.

Why was he even considering this? Oh yeah, to do her a favour. 

Emptying his own small bottle of wine, he also shifted in his seat before taking a brief look around them.

Kissing in public usually wasn't his style, but this could hardly be considered public as they were practically unnoticable in the amount of people around them. And besides, there'd been several others, whether friends or couples, who had exchanged pecks at the stroke of midnight.

So he exhaled and placed his hands on her arms, holding her in place so she wouldn't accidentally lose her balance as she was already swaying with a silly smile. 

"Alright."

"Mhh, do it."

"I-I'm doing it."

"Fine, then do it."

His skin felt on fire. He shouldn't have drunk that much. He might not be a light-weight like her, but he wasn't a big drinker either.

"Just kiss me already," she began whining impatiently, wiggling under his grip. A couple of loose curls falling from the side and framing her face while doing so. "Or I'll be a bigger loner than I already am."

He frowned with a snort. "That's emotional blackmail," he deadpanned then in an attempt to distract from his irrational nervousness.

But Cassandra immediately paused staring at him wide-eyed as if someone had slapped her and she only now realised where she was and what she was doing.

With an awkward laugh, her eyes fell to the space between them. Perhaps the buzz was beginning to wear off or it was a moment of clarity, but she realised it was pointless if she had to force him. Perhaps that would even give her bad luck in the end. And she already had enough of that.

She shook her head, embarrassed of her tipsy self. "Y-you're right. Forget it. It's a stupid tradition anyway. Can't remember the last time I kissed anyone on New Year's."

His brows furrowed at her sudden change of mind. "No, it's fine. I'm gonna do it."

"No, seriously. We don't have to," she ensured him, her words muffled from her woolen scarf as she tried burying her face in it. Cursing herself from minutes ago for even speaking out that rash nonsense.

However, Taehyung's grip around her upper arms only tightened. Making her grow stiff under his stare.

"I said I would and I keep my word." His voice was calm yet determined, which surprised him considering his hesitation and she dragged a breath, straightening herself under his hands. 

Was it weird that she didn't feel nervous despite it all? Probably. She blamed her low cogitation and the knowledge it wouldn't have any romantic significance anyway. Just friends following a tradition like many others around them.

"Fine, let's go."

He swallowed as he met her warm orbs. And he began fidgeting all over again. "Alright, okay, great. That's what I'm gonna do."

"All right."

His hands left her arms, instead placing themselves around her delicate neck and caging her velvety curls in his palms. A light shiver ran down her spine and she wasn't sure if it was the coldness of his fingers or the warmth of his touch. It was firm yet tender and she sensed her pulse picking up in rate with each passing second.

"Okay, ready?"

Cassandra only nodded, unable to speak all of a sudden. Maybe she wasn't drunk enough to stop her feelings and thoughts taking over her senses after all. 

Her eyes flicked to his heart-shaped lips before making the stupid mistake of glancing back at him and meeting his eyes. His face was open and vulnerable in the streetlamps and fireworks above them and she caught a hint of wonder on it as they stared at each other. Slowly, he began leaning closer. And she swallowed down the tiny gasp that dared escaping her lips.

"One, two.." He paused then, scowling at himself. "No, wait. I'm not actually gonna count down."

"O-okay."

"That's not my style when I kiss."

"Okay."

"I don't count d-"

"Tae, it's fine," Cassandra giggled, interrupting his ramble. She'd never seen him ramble before. Was he.. flustered? She'd always imagined him kissing lots of women in disguise. Even if he always claimed not even Jimin, the actual flirtatious among them, did that.

The thumbs on her cheek gently brushed the stray strands aside then. His eyes shifting to hers again. The last fireworks sparkled in them and for a moment his heart forgot how to beat.

"R-ready?"

"Yeah," she breathed.

He closed his eyes, his face coming close. A deep crease set between his brows then, making his face look rather angry for a kiss. And her tipsy mind ultimately lost focus upon that hilarious realisation.

"What's this face!" she bursted out laughing, unable to contain herself and he backed off, irritated about her laughing fit.

"W-what face?"

"You can't make that face when you try kissing someone," she choked out in between of laughs while pointing at him.

"Oh, so you say something's wrong with my face now?" Taehyung only scoffed, somehow glad about the interruption though. He wondered if his fingers were actually shaking or if it was from the vibrations of her laughter.

"No, idiot! You're handsome and you know it!"

Startled at the unexpected compliment, a timid smirk tucked on his lips at her drunm words. His chest warming despite him downplaying the muddled feeling that was raising. "Oh, so you think I'm handsome now?"

She groaned in annoyance, lightly hitting his chest over the coat. "Don't pretend."

"So, do you want me to kiss you or not?" His teasing smirk returning.

"Maybe if you didn't make that face."

"That's very nice of you considering I'm doing you a favor here," he laughed under his breath. Not remembering any woman having ever made him laugh so much despite complimenting and confusing him at the same time. 

Cassandra inhaled and exhaled deeply, calming himself again somehow. "Alright, let's do this already. No big deal," she nodded to herself, sternly, "Just kiss me."

"Nope."

She gasped at his evil grin. "You were about to, though!"

Taehyung only shrugged unimpressed and abruptly let go of her. "Yeah, before you bruised my ego," he retorted simply, causing her to huff.

"C'mon," she nudged his arm, "I'm sorry. I promise I won't laugh again."

"Apology accepted. But I'm not gonna kiss you." His lopsided smirk torturous, making her frustration grow.

"You're making such a big deal out of it, just kiss me already!"

"I'm not gonna kiss you!"

"Kiss me!"

"No! Not like this!"

Cassandra paused. Her parted lips, ready to counter something back in their bickering, abruptly pressed together into a thin line when processing his last words. She stared at his now bewildered face when he also realised what he had just unintentionally confessed.

"What?" she blinked confused, "What does that mean?"

Taehyung's eyes were wide, panic clouding his mind. "No. No-nothing. I just, I didn't mean it like that," he began with a terrible stutter the longer he looked at her inquiring eyes.

It didn't make sense. He was always capable of staying cool-headed even in stressful situation. It was inevitable in heists and when being in diguise. Then why did he totally blank out with the way her warm bambi eyes were digging daggers into his as the seconds passed. "I just, I mean we can't like that because that's not - it's very - like, you don't.. That's not what -" 

But Cassandra didn't even seem to be listening anymore, staring absendmindedly up at the sky instead, being clearly still tipsy and all over the place - he could tell.

Taehyung stilled then. The beanie was pulled to her brows, scarf hiding half her face. Only her round eyes peeked out, holding a lovely innocent wonder in them.

It was irrational. It was scary. How it was more thrilling celebrating with her and cheap wine from a 24/7 store at the beach, than being in an expensive smoking on a yacht surrounded by millionairs while drinking the most expensive champagne.

Cassandra abruptly shook herself out of her short abstraction then and flashed him a smile. 

"Come, let's leave or you wanna get hypothermia?" She was joking, but he noticed her anew shivering and he realised she must still be cold. 

"Y-yeah, let's go."

»»»

The new year was only a couple of hours old. Quite early to go home for most, but Cassandra felt exhausted despite having completely sobered up by now. Much to her own dismay, she wasn't the night owl she'd used to be anymore.

The air felt colder when she turned into her street. The way home taking longer than expected due to what it seemed half of the city being out on the streets and traffic jams everywhere. Lines of cars, impatiently honking and only moving for a few centimetres before having to stop again.

Taehyung followed behind her, wanting to fetch his gift before leaving the city again. It wasn't unusual for him to only stay for a day there before having to move again, but somehow she'd hoped he'd stay longer. 

The night breeze hit his warm cheeks as they reached the front door and she fumbled with the keys in the dark. Eventually finding the right one and unlocking the door, allowing them both to enter.

The painting was on the coffee table where he'd left it. He picked it up, examining it one more time in silence before tucking it under his arm and heading back to where she was in the hallway. Still busy taking off her shoes and jacket.

"Thanks again for this," he smiled gently and watched her lowering the beanie, ruffling through her curls to give them some of their lost volume back. "I'll make sure to store it in a save place." His voice was almost a whisper when he attempted to open the door, only to sense her tugging at his coat.

"Wait, I-" She pursed her lips, gaze falling as she saw his questioning glance. "I wanted to say thank you for spending the turn of the year with me.. I appreciate you coming all the way here so I wouldn't be lonely tonight."

His lips parted, taken aback. Had it been so obvious after all? However, he chose to pretend being confused and not knowing what she meant instead. "Who says that was my reason?"

Cassandra shrugged, lips curling into a rueful smile. "Maybe I just wished it was.. Whatever it was, still thank you. And I'm sorry."

Taehyung frowned. Gaze falling as well. "No need to apologise," he muttered, instinctively knowing what she was referring to. He swallowed then, shoving his free hand into his pocket. 

In retrospective, it hadn't been such a big deal and yet, he was glad he hadn't proceeded to kiss her like that. He knew he'd have regretted in the long run.

"I feel like it, though," Cassandra continued then with a sigh, "I feel so stupid. I shouldn't have insisted on keeping a tradition. Especially since I don't even believe in supersticious stuff."

He eyed her with a doubtful look, making her roll her eyes and sigh in defeat.

"Fine, I do. Sometimes. Some stuff. Not all."

He chuckled lightly making her smile.

Truth was, Cassandra was disappointed in herself for getting so weak and desperate, putting him in such a position and creating this awkward tension between them.

"Tae, you didn't have to kiss me." She felt like she needed to underline this. Her voice small and filled with guilt and shame. "Please, don't feel bad."

"I know, don't worry," he reassured before they grew quiet. 

In times like this she really disliked his withdrawn and secretive personality. Usually his aloof and coy aura intrigued her, but right now she needed him to speak to her. And the fact he didn't, made her fidgety.

They stood there for a second longer. 

Faint music was echoing from somewhere in the building while the piercing sound of lonely firecrackers was heard from the streets.

"Well, okay good then.. goodnight. And Happy New Year again." She tried sounding cheerful, masking her regret of screwing things over in her irrational state.

She wouldn't see him again for an indefinite period and that was how they'd be parting ways now. She hated herself from two hours ago.

Dragging out a breath, she reached for the door handle to let him out when a grip on her elbow prevented her from doing so. 

Taehyung grabbed her arm and in a swift move, pulled Cassandra into his chest. Strong arms catching her, wrapping around her smaller figure and before she could even properly react, his lips had already engulfed hers.

That was it. All the self-control she'd exerted over the past months went straight out the window in that moment. Her neurological system completely shutting down by the overload of neurotransmitters, hormones and endorphines, simply swiping her mind blank with the only remaining thought being how incredible his warm lips felt against hers.

Her arms instinctively found their way around his neck to pull him even closer. Feeling the cold metal of his necklace against her fingertips. And she kissed him back fiercely, Taehyung wounding his hands more into her long hair at this. It curled around his fingers, silky and fluffy and for a moment he lost any sense of time or his surroundings when all he could feel was the vibration of her skin against his and the bewitching rum-lime taste of her lips full of unspoken feelings and endless promises. 

Their lips moved, molding, melting into one another. Whatever logic and reason there had been, had long gone away. There was nothing left but their intertwined lips and breaths.

Eventually, they slipped from each other after what felt like an eternity but could have only been a minute. Panting against each other.

Their eyes remained closed, not daring opening and letting that moment ending in smoke so soon. Taehyung rested his dazed forehead against hers and leaned in. Planting one last kiss on her lips, this time less heated but rather tender and mellow. Savioring the last bit of the sour-tasting liquor mixed with his sweet wine. And Cassandra leaned into him more before they let go of each other at last.

Her eyes fluttered open immediately, dark lashes lining against her pale skin in a state of surreal haze. He wasn't sure if she'd ever looked more beautiful as in that moment, right after he'd kissed her and he felt the urge to do it again at this sight. 

"I meant something like that."

With that, he stepped back and picked up the painting from where he'd set it on the ground. Brushing past her. And he left without saying anything else.

Cassandra stood there in the empty hallway, stunned. Everything around her was spinning and she feared she was intoxicated all over again.

Her fingers slowly rose then to touch her numb lips. Ensuring they were still there. Along with the lasting sense of Taehyung's touch.

Her New Year's wish had finally come true.

»»»

next chapter: 0.8 here

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[rotandguts]

✶ ┄ YOU WEREN’T MINE TO LOSE

danny (evil dead rise) x fem!reader, 

part one of the ‘august’ series. 

camp map

summary: the first week back at camp is never easy, but it definitely doesn’t help matters that your lifelong rival and ‘mortal enemy’ is there. both picked as camp counsellors, you’re forced to work together for the good of the camp, but that doesn’t mean you have to like each other.

word count: 10k+

content: SUMMER CAMP AU, rivals/enemies to lovers, implications of transphobia, mentions of bullying, slowburn, angst, mentions of alcohol/intoxication/underaged drinking, mentions of sex, mentions of divorce and abandonment, hints of david allen (evil dead 2013) x fem!reader, some people may be quite OOC?

A/N: EEEEEEK, this is going to be a long one but will be split up into chapters. btw i have no clue what danny’s actual last name is so for the sake of this story its bixler bc that's what beth’s confirmed name is okay? I AM SO SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG LMAO part 2 and 3 will take very long also okay okay i’m so sorry pls enjoyyyyyy xoxo

publishing date ―  july 21st 2023 |  © rotandguts

✶

The winding road on the way to camp was claustrophobic, your first year driving there yourself. You prayed you were still on the right route, your phone’s GPS struggling to update after losing service a while back.

The sight of the endless rows of green trees was becoming redundant, the charm of the wilderness already wearing off on you upon the second hour of your journey. Eyes on the road, you slurped on the blue raspberry Slusho you picked up at a gas stop mid-journey. Savouring the cool syrup induced taste in the summer heat, windows down and car speakers blaring.

A large wooden sign came into view, confirming your path and indicating the end of the long journey. Engraved on the sign was:

CAMP KANDAR

est. 1959

You have gone past this sign every year since you were 8 years old. Initially reluctant to attend, you grew to truly love the place. You giggled at the thought that they almost had to pull you kicking and screaming from the car when you realised you would be remaining there for a little over a month the first ever time you arrived. How times had changed seeing as you were now willingly returning as an adult.

Camp Kandar was just outside Los Angeles, a safe hub to send your kids away to learn what the outside world was like at a reasonable price.

If you imagine what your ideal slasher sleepaway camp would look like from a 70s horror film, Kandar probably looked exactly like it. You were surprised that in all the years of running it no one had actually died there, as far as you were aware anyway.

There were rumours and myths of the camp being built over an ancient castle. Or maybe it was a burial ground? It changed every few years when new counselors got to tell their own version of the myth to the young campers.

This actually would be your first year as a counselor at the camp, it was either this or spending more time slaving away at your job in the local Henrietta’s pizza. You could no longer bare the daily heat and stench of the pizza kitchen, especially during summer.

Hands from distant figures you couldn’t make out waved at you on arrival. Your car finishes its journey in the parking lot beside a Buick Roadsmaster at the child and parent drop off point. You furrow your brows, the campers weren’t meant to arrive for another 2 days.

Exiting the car, you take a moment to breathe in and embrace your new home for the next few weeks, your summer sanctuary for over the past decade greeting you like an old friend. Thick, moist summer sweetness so rife in the air that it makes you feel almost sick to your stomach.

The first thing on your itinerary was to collect your uniform from the camp reception, which you were sure you’d be manning at some point during your time working there. You thought of all the things you’d be able to do now as a counselor, buzzing around the prospect of sneaking out late to whatever party they’d always throw near the old cabin. None of the younger campers were invited, only hearing fabled tales of wild goings on from the distant music and laughter in the night.

Camp director Williams definitely knew about the extracurricular goings on at the camp, and while he took no nonsense, he knew that kids just want to have fun. It’s what made him such a great leader, although the shotgun on the wall above his desk definitely kept campers on edge.

With your case trailing behind you and your backpack hanging casually from your shoulder, you set off towards the camp reception. The building clearly needed a refresher, certain letters in the sign slightly faded due to time and the wood of the steps creaking to a cautious extent under your feet.

Doors swing open, eyes flicker to you. A woman with long red hair stands at the desk with her back to you, obviously in distress talking to director Williams, her arms flailing with hushed whispers.

“Oh great. And you’re here, now. My day just gets better.”

And him.

You turn around and there he is, bags slung on the floor, leaning against the wall with a Nintendo Switch in hand.

Danny Bixler-Sutherland, your worst nightmare.

You had met him that first ever year at camp, becoming close friends after you were assigned to share a bunk. But something shifted in both of you, you were unsure when it all really started. You were both naturally competitive at the group activities from a young age and usually always sorted onto different teams, you always wondered if your competitive playing style drove a wedge in between you both.

Director Williams places a hand on her arm in comfort, “Please, we’ve known each other for how many years now? You know you can call me Ash, Ellie. We can just get bunks sorted for them until moving in day and then sort out proper accommodation. Means they’re not alone in the cabin.” He began to walk towards you, shifting the woman to face you. It was Danny’s mother, Ellie with a striking hair dye job.

Danny had always been in your dormitory growing up, until he came out and his mom fought tooth and nail to get him transferred to the boys dorm. He was popular around camp and people adjusted to the news quickly. But, there were of course a handful of dickheads that treated him like shit because of it. Director Williams put great measures in place to ensure none of them bothered Danny again, some of them being kicked out of camp. You had always wondered if that shotgun had been involved in Williams’ interrogation of them, you hoped it had.

Ever since the summer when the championship was determined to be a tie after you and Danny broke into a fight during the last challenge, you’d been at each other’s necks at almost every possible second.

However, deep down you had an inkling that it all really had something to do with a night that same year, around five or six years ago when a small group of the pre-teen campers, including the both of you, snuck out to camp in the woods.

It had been a largely uneventful night, the excitement in the moment mainly fuelled by the breaking of rules. By the end of the night it had become apparent that despite the bunks in their dorms not being the comfiest, they sure beat the makeshift tents and dusty forest floor.

But the shift in the air was clear. You went into those woods that night, hoping for a last chance of that closeness so present in your youth. By the time you left in the morning and returned to your respective dorms, you barely spoke.

Both of you may have been at each other's necks at the best of times, but insulting each other's appearances or anything personal was a line you both silently agreed to never ever cross. You remembered overhearing bitchy whispers from some of the girls in the cafeteria about him when he first appeared with short hair pre-transition, and you took great pleasure in cutting their hair that night when they were sleeping.

When the girls reported you to the director he had simply shrugged and said, “Talk shit, get hit girls. First rule in the book.”

And it’s not like he wouldn’t do the same for you. Some of the boys had been teasing you, more specifically teasing your figure, behind your back. Low and behold, you had heard that Danny took the charge when standing up for you. It was little things like that that meant you could never truly hate him, and same for him about you.

It was kind of like, the only people that could be mean to you both were the two of you. It was endearing in a way that you would rather die than to admit outloud, a sign of respect from your former friendship.

“Is this a bad time?” You question Danny, feeling like you’ve walked in on something you shouldn’t have but not wanting to pester director Williams until he ends his conversation. “Every place you exist in is a bad time.” Danny remarks, concentration still fully on the games console in front of him.

“That’s a low blow even for you, someone woke up on the wrong side of bed today, Mr Crankypants?” You retaliate, readjusting the weight of your backpack.

“You’re a little too old for camp, scout.” That was his nickname for you ever since you were younger. Without context it seemed almost endearing, but the reality of it drove you crazy.

In an attempt to impress an older counselor years ago, you had told a little white lie that you were a scout with all the training. This was a lie you kept up for almost the full time at camp, and doubled down on it on most days. On a hike, one kid began to have an asthma attack and the responsibility of helping them was promptly put on you by the panicking teen counselor.

Luckily, the kid was completely fine but it became apparent to everyone that you not only were not a scout but had zero knowledge in first aid training. No one had really cared, the counselor got in trouble for their negligence and own lack of first aid knowledge. Everyone went back to their normal jokes the next week after a spot of light torment from your fellow campers.

But you cared. It was just one of those borderline traumatic cringe moments in your life that you wish you could forget. And Danny, who was on the hike that day, knew that.

“Yeah I could say the same to you, DJ Dan.” He grimaced, slamming the console down on the reception desk.

“Jesus H Christ, how many years now with you both and you’re still doing this shit?” Ash wiped his brow of sweat, Ellie’s eyes fluttering between the two of you.

“Hey, Y/N. Good summer?” She smiled. You’d known the woman in passing for the same time you’d known Danny. She had definitely been on the receiving end of many phone calls about your behaviour towards each other, and your perhaps even worse behaviour towards others while acting in defence of one another.

Smiling and nodding back to her, “Yeah great so far, thanks - yours?” Despite trying to keep her smile, for a second her face flickered with something unreadable, Danny nervously shifted, eyes bouncing to his sisters in the corner of the room. They were so quiet you had failed to notice them sitting there.

“Same old, I guess.” Her hands clutching her car keys tighter. “How are your parents?”

If you were being honest, you didn’t know the answer to that.

“They’re fine. Same old, I guess.” You gripped the strap of your backpack a little tighter too. Your parents, while not mega rich, had a good bit of money. Most of your life, you’d spent much of your time without them or with a nanny. Summer was great because it meant going on holiday with them somewhere, anywhere. Until they realised they could hire a nanny in the form of Camp Kandar for the entire summer that was far cheaper and even further away from them.

Ellie politely nodded, before approaching the girls. “It’s just two days extra, right? I’ll be there to pick you all up the first second I can and bring you home.” Bridget nods, the older of the two. Kassie looked pained for a moment. Danny began to walk over, finally leaving his haunt, sitting beside Kassie and holding her small hand in his own.

“But what’s gonna happen? Are we even gonna have a home?” The youngest Bixler sibling clung to a pole with a doll's head stuck on top of it, you elected to ignore it as Ash pulled you to the side.

“Here’s the uniform, good thing you got here when you did ‘cause you and Danny took the last of that size.” Your eyes widened at his statement as Ash continued on. Danny, still holding Kass’ hand, glared at you with a twisted smile.

This confirmed the worst, he wasn’t here for a brief visit to drop off his sisters like you’d prayed, he would be a camp counselor too.

“Rota will get sorted by tonight, but all that’s really needed is some clean up jobs around camp before we open. You’re sharing with Mia in Cabin 13.” Your face lit up. Like Danny, Mia and her older brother David had been attending the camp since you were young. David, being two years older than her, became a counselor when he turned 18. You didn’t know if she would be returning this summer to do the same, the last time you’d texted she seemed reluctant to return.

“Great. Happy to do that.” Danny rolled his eyes at your enthusiasm. “Suck up.” He muttered. You chose to ignore him.

You set off towards Cabin 13, ensuring you got the first pick of the beds.

The cabin itself was small and pokey, compared to some of the other larger counselor cabins which resembled camper quarters with bunks. Considering the added privacy that came with having only one roommate, especially a roommate you were close with, the size of the cabin was fine with you.

When you arrived, you found the cabin cork board already decorated with pictures and the left bed claimed with a sports bag emptied out on the sheets. You couldn’t even waste time being dismayed that you got there second, not when you could hear Mia singing in the shower. You began unpacking everything you could and changing into your new uniform, the faster you got settled in the quicker you could get on with the fun activities.

When Mia had eventually got out of the bathroom, dark long hair damp with her new uniform on (a green and white t-shirt with the camp logo on it), she squealed as soon as she saw you.

Mia Allen was 5’2 and looked probably around 7 pounds soaking wet, give or take. Ever since she was little she’d been much smaller than the others, but what she lacked in size she made up for in her quick wit and snappy attitude.

And plus, it certainly helped that she had an older brother that could only be described as totally swoon worthy.

While at times sardonic and off putting, she was your best friend at the camp and had been for many years. Both of you being placed in the same dorm each year led to a sense of familiarity with you both. You knew each other’s habits better than anyone.

Others viewed her as troubled, with rumours of past years involving her using drugs on camp grounds or going apeshit on other campers - but you knew better. She had experienced her fair share of bad times in her life, mostly as a way of dealing with her sick mom, should she be punished for them forever? You definitely didn’t think so.

“Thank GOD Williams listened to my roomie request, I almost thought I was gonna get stuck with Olivia.” She bounces on you and embraces you within a death grip.

“I thought you and Olivia were friends?” The older girl was a medical student now but still returned each summer to help, she’d hung around you both growing up. She loved to follow the rules, with no exception or nuance to them. However, Olivia was without a doubt the most responsible of all the counselors and it meant the staff didn’t need to train her in first-aid every year.

“Um, yeah, of course we are. But I’d rather choke on my own vomit than have little miss campus police as my bunkmate. She does her own room inspections every week, David says no one even asks her to do them.” Mia rolls her eyes, going over to her bedside cabinet to put some perfume on.

“Fair enough, I’m so happy to see you. I seriously thought I’d be the only one coming back this year.” Running a hand through your hair, you watched her lean into your shared mirror and put on her earrings.

“I know, you need to tell me everything that’s happened since I last saw you. Oh my god, so much shit has happened with my mom it’s fuckin crazy, man.” She began to apply lipgloss. “Tell me about it on the way to initiation, I didn’t realise the time already!” You grab her wrist, pulling her from the cabin.

“Slow the fuck down! Listen, they won’t start without us, and we’re like two minutes away.” Mia halted your speed, wrapping an arm around your shoulder.

In the distance you could see Danny and some of the others heading towards the campfire area, or as the campers called it, The Pavilion. His head flew back with laughter at something a girl you didn’t recognise said.

“Not you literally gawking at your boy-toy.” Mia murmured, making you turn to look at her with furrowed brows. “What?”

“Yeah, you heard me. And don’t think I’m talking about Eric or Pablo, ‘cause I’m not.” She pulled out a carton of cigarettes from the pocket of her shorts, offering you one. You politely turn it down with a shake of the hand, “Maybe later.”

“This whole uhhhh I hate you so much uhhhhh I hate you too charade is so 2018. Like I wish you’d just give it a rest already and fuck it out.” Mia struggles to keep the cigarette in her mouth as she acts out her impressions of you both before lighting it. You almost choke on her words.

“What the fuck, Mia! Not cool!“

“I am literally right! Don’t think I’ve forgotten that whole truth or dare bullshit from last year.” The smaller girl took a long drag and shifted her weight on her feet, hand resting on a tree beside her.

“You shouldn’t be smoking out in the open like this - at least do it in the cabin with the shower on.” You roll your eyes and begin to power ahead to the Pavilion. “A-HA, don’t try and change the subject with me missy because you know I am not that bitch to be messed with.” Mia begins to chase after you, almost tripping while stealing glances around to make sure no one actually catches her in the act.

“Mia, I think you should quit while you’re ahead. You know my feelings towards that boy and you know none of them are pleasant.” Halting and turning to face her, she does the same with slightly more unbalanced, disjointed movements.

She takes a puff, “Yeah, I thought I knew your feelings. And then you said what you said.” She wasn’t giving up easily.

“I don’t remember what I said.”

“Bull-fucking-shit, this is like pathological liar level. You’re gaslighting me, man!” She waves her arms around manically with wide eyes, obviously trying to tease you. Giving her one last begging look, she stubs the cigarette out. “Fine. But we’re talking about this later.”

With that, she powers on in front of you. It’s as if the nicotine has given her enough energy to run a marathon as she determinedly stomps towards the campfire.

That game of truth or dare had been a drunken mishap at the secret end of year party. You had both managed to score an invite thanks to David, and by association Danny had been invited by Eric. Olivia was too buzzed on wine coolers to feel the need to kick you out, so you managed to spend most of the night there. Mia’s drunk alter-ego ‘the Abomination’ eventually appeared which led to you and David escorting her back to the girls dorm in the early hours.

You had been asked by a drunken Mia, the absolute fucking menace that she was, if you had to spend a night in bed with any of the boys who would it be? Immediately without thinking, in your own intoxicated state, you answered Danny.

Before you could even realise the deeper implications of the question, you immediately attempted to justify your answer by stating that you had shared a bunk for years and didn’t kill each other during that time.

She had teased you in front of the entire group, in your own state of embarrassment you had failed to notice Danny’s wide eyes and rosy cheeks.

But the teasing was over quickly with Mia throwing her entire guts up in front of everyone, leading David to jump back onto his feet and promptly drag her from the scene, requesting that you help carry her legs.

What you’d failed to tell Mia, tell anyone for that matter, is that despite your answer to her question, you and David shared a kiss.

It was behind the cabin after you both dragged her back in her drunken state, you hoped all its occupants would be sound asleep. He’d looked at you with a glimmer in his eye, his testing patience, seeing who would make the first move.

Both of you had been dangerously towing a flirtatious line all summer, a line that you’d been tiptoeing on for probably the past nine years prior.

It had never ever been a possibility before, you were his kid sister’s best friend. You were just you. But here he was looking at you like that.

Do you regret it in hindsight? Sure, but you hardly remember it. Your heart was beating so fast you thought it might break out of your chest like that little creature from Alien. The moist summer air of the early morning clinging to your skin, a strong hand on the low of your back. Pressed tight chest to chest, a forbidden taste.

You jumped apart at the sound of the snapping of sticks by god knows what.

You parted with wide eyes and uncertainty rising in your chest. He placed a gentle hand on your cheek.

“I’ll speak to you tomorrow, yeah?” You nodded, a smile growing. The start of something new blossoming.

David and Mia were gone by the time you woke up, you had assumed David had driven them off specifically so you both didn’t need to address any drunken awkwardness from the previous night. Mia wouldn’t have opposed, with her hangover probably kicking in tenfold.

All that was left in his departure was a letter saying that he’d see you next summer and that you should call him when you got home if you wanted to pick up where you left off, with a phone number left under the statement. You text the number, leaving him with a message.

hey david,

last night was a mistake. it was a plain and simple heat of the moment mistake - as much as I’d like to start again, i can’t do that to mia.

You sent ‘i’m sorry.’ when you didn’t receive a reply after a month.

Quite frankly, you were dreading seeing him far more than Danny. With Danny at least, you knew that whatever you had said last year had gone right past his head (or atleast you thought it had). Danny wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to make you squirm, surely?

Honestly, now that you had been able to think it through - you wouldn’t be opposed to starting where you left off with David, the whole him being your friend’s brother thing aside. He was handsome, kind, and popular around camp. He’d looked out for you since, like, forever and you trusted him. If you were searching for a summer fling David would certainly be your go-to.

But whatever. If nothing happened, nothing happened, especially after the text you sent him. You could play this totally cool, right? It was just David. Stupidly hot David, with his constant tan and his almost annoyingly unwavering warm demeanour. You still remembered the first time you saw that smile. You were eight and he was ten, you fell down and scraped your knee during a group activity. He ran to you before any counsellors could even get to you.

“You’re okay.” A hand reached out, you grabbed it. And there was that smile. A smile you could trust. Yeah, maybe you were gonna be okay.

It was undeniable how he made you feel. Your legs turned to jelly everytime you laid eyes on him, you felt like such a ditz. But the presence of Mia complicated everything. You couldn’t do that to her. It would be too weird. Unless, you kept it a secret? A secret summer fling could be exactly what you need. Why did you have to send that damn text?

But then ultimately, he was just safe. Despite his attractiveness, all of the passion of the fling would be mostly fuelled by his relation to Mia, and if you’re being honest that was a line you did not want to cross with her. If she even found out that you both had kissed it’d be game over.

You’re snapped out of your thoughts by Mia calling your name.

“Are you even listening? Wait up, I have little legs!” She was significantly behind you now, struggling to keep up with your pace as you unconsciously powered ahead in front of her. “Sorry Mia, my inner volume was too loud, I guess.”

She squints, smirks before tapping your arm. “Yeah and we all know exactly who you’re thinking about.” Your eyes widen.

“Dann-”

“No.”

Barging past her again, the Pavilion now in sight, both of you being the only two left to arrive.

While the overall area has rows of structured seating comparable to wooden bleachers facing a stage, for more intimate occasions such as this there were stools placed closer to the stage.

“Fashionably late as always, you too. First strike.” Ash attempted to chase away flies with his prosthetic hand, shooting her a stern look. “Hey- what the hell? What happened to a friendly camper hello?” She resigned herself to the first tree stump available in front of you, beside her brother. You could only see his back and still you could feel the butterflies going wild inside you.

“You forfeit that when you come back here as a counselor. You’re being paid for this, this is a job. Stay. On. Time.” You swallow, taking the seat near Danny. He’s whispering something to Eric, but your eyes still meet.

Neither of you break but both of you wonder who will be the first to.

You pick up on things that have changed since last summer. His hair, chestnut again after a brief bleach blonde stint. You didn’t know what he suited more, you liked both.

You almost mentally slapped yourself for thinking that. But it was hard to not think how actually kinda attractive Danny was in staring competition moments like this. His eyes had such a mischievous glint in them that begged you for more, egged you on like what you were doing was so, so wrong.

Your cheeks grow heated and you can’t bare to stare any longer, losing the silent game.

“Okay, Bridget and Kassie will be staying here with us a few days early. That’s okay. Just make sure you’re on best behaviour at all time big kids, make sure you’re doing your job and looking after the little ones.” Bridget rolls her eyes at his words. She’s fifteen and thinks she can take on the world single handedly. Kassie looks a little less sure, resigning herself to staring at the ground and kicking some wood chippings at her feet.

“Cheryl, you wanna take it from here?” Director Williams turns to his sister, who appears by his side. “Sure thing, I’ve sorted the camp rota.”

You glance back at Danny, his eyes still on you. He smirks. You feel like you’re on fire. Turning away from him again to look where you had been so desperately avoiding, you see David glance at you. He smiles softly when he realises you’ve caught him, sending a slight wave. You don’t hesitate to return it, hearing a Danny sounding scoff coming from the opposite direction.

Cheryl goes over your duties for the next few weeks, you’re placed in arts and crafts with Mia and Danny. And a new girl who’d never attended this camp prior, Natalie. You assumed it was the girl walking with Danny earlier, now sitting timidly beside Eric.

Great.

Mia you could handle, and you could probably even handle Danny alone too. But Mia’s unrelenting urge to tease you for your misspoken words and Danny’s eyes that seemingly bore into your soul at every chance was going to be a challenge in combination.

Your face must’ve immediately read your exasperation, as Cheryl reassured “Don’t worry, usually it’ll just be two of you in for activities. You guys will be mixed and matched.” Your shoulders sunk in relief, not even realising how tense you had suddenly become.

Your ear is met with the soft whisper of Danny. “Don’t look too excited.”

“Bite me.” You hiss back, he grins with wild eyes, like he enjoys the way you’re speaking to him.

“Hey assholes! And I can call you that now because you’re adults. I better see no fighting, no nothing, or else this year - got it?” More Ash than director Williams warns, you nod.

“I’ll try sir, but she’s the issue.” The boy points at you, false sincerity in his voice. You bite your tongue, giving Ash a look that portrays your frustration.

“Whatever. Seriously, I’m watching you two.” Ash points at the both of you, Danny rolls his eyes. Eric and Mia make a quiet ‘ooooooooh’ noise and then laugh at their accidental timing.

Eric was the same age as David, and his childhood best friend, although you had noticed that they had drifted apart. He was as sarcastic as they come, but knew when to shut up and be serious. He’d been growing out his hair for the past few summers, it now resting just at his collarbone.

He’d taken Danny under his wing when he got moved to the boy’s dorm, it was common that one would be seen the other around camp.

After a few more ground rules were laid out, Ash reminded you that you are now the adults in charge and that any responsibility will be put on you.

“Oh and by the way. This is Natalie, she’s new. I know you all grew up together but please make her feel welcome, yeah?” Cheryl put her hand on the girl’s shoulder, Natalie waving timidly.

She was so effortlessly pretty you didn’t know if you wanted to cry or roll your eyes.

With that, you were free to spend the last night free before your jobs started the next day. As everyone was departing, you notice David eyeing the new girl, who stands like a spare prick as Cheryl inaudibly talks to her. He leaves with Pablo and Olivia after taking a second glance.

There’s those damn butterflies again.

Mia wraps an arm around you and drags you in the opposite direction, heading to your own cabin. You pass Danny, who winks before sending you a sarcastic kiss. You respond with a middle finger.

—

The first few days go smoothly, managing to stay out of any drama. Everyone is seemingly too tired to really interact with each other outside of your shared meals in the mess hall, all of you still adjusting to being in a foreign home.

Drop off day was longer and more tedious than the previous days, an earlier rise than the already early mornings at Camp Kandar. Buses filling the parking lot, hurried parents ushering kids out of cars, kisses goodbye. A floury of campers old and new dragging their luggage behind them in the chaos of sorting cabins. Camp reception was even more packed than before with parents handing off medication and bus drivers piling up all the forgotten items from their respective vehicles.

When the kids arrived, you were kind of ecstatic, seeing everybody arrive from a different angle than you ever had before, remembering how nervous you had been each year on drop-off day.

The camp entrance itself, aside from the parking lot and reception, welcomed campers in with a large arch that displayed the camp’s name proudly. From here, past the reception, led to a large open ground shaped in a circle.

If you kept walking straight, the mess hall was in front with extra benches set up outside for the good weather. To the left, through the trees were the camper dorms. Scattered throughout the many acres, it was common for the little ones to get lost.

Just beyond that were the staff and counselor cabins, with Ash’s being the furthest out of them all. On the opposite end of the camp was the activity field and the lake. It was pretty simple to get around, but the prospect of getting lost in the surrounding woods was intimidating.

Bridget ran towards a group of teens, who welcomed her with open arms. It was odd to think that in a few years they potentially would be the camp counsellors, and you and your peers would be off in the world doing all types of grown up shit. Goodbye adolescence forever.

Your heart dropped when you saw Kassie standing to the side awkwardly, clutching her stick with the doll head on it. For the past few days she had kind of kept to herself while Bridget had helped with the bigger jobs setting up camp. Slowly approaching her, you decided to strike up a conversation.

“Cool doll, what’s it’s name?” You gently poked it, her face lighting up at someone talking to her. Because she was little, it was hard for her to be included like her older sister aside from odd jobs Ash would send her on. Things like sending her to the Pavilion to find the biggest pine cone, or seeing how many laps she could do around the activity grounds.

“Staffanie. I made her, so she can protect me, and scare off anything scary in the woods. Danny says there’s monsters here.” Kassie explains timidly, a shy smile growing slowly.

“She’s cool, hiya Staffanie.” You return the smile, she waves the doll head as if to make her say hello.

“She says hello back.” After a nice lull, she turns to watch a group of kids her own age stand and talk to each other, obviously knowing each other outside of camp.

“I was really scared my first year here too.” You bend down to get to her level. “Really?”

“Yeah, really, it was super hard at first. But then I met Mia and it was all okay.” The little girl looks doubtful. “I don’t know, I think people think I’m weird.”

“Well that makes two of us kiddo. Listen, you’ve got Danny and Bridget to help you out,” Before you can finish she interjects. “That doesn’t count, they're related to me.”

She was right technically. “Yeah, but they’re not required to be nice to you, are they? David and Mia are related and they barely hang out.” You point towards them, on opposite sides of the area, David calming down a crying mother clutching onto her uninterested child. Mia was poking the ground with a stick.

“I guess.” Kassie was still hesitant, head racing with thoughts of what was really going on back home. Her mom thought she’d done enough to protect her from the startling reality of the impending divorce, and in a way she had. Kassie was sure that everything would be fine between her parents, only really worrying about losing their family home.

But even the thought of being at this camp, making no friends and then coming back to nothing was terrifying to the young girl. And it was a reality that a girl her age shouldn’t have to face.

“Kassie, I’m gonna be brutally honest with you. I think you’re gonna have the best summer ever.”

After a moment, Kassie turned with a smile. “You really think so?” You couldn’t help but return it. “I know so, pal.”

It was harrowing, it was like seeing your younger self in a way. Coming here was no easy feat. Sure, the activities were nice and you settled in eventually, but that scary feeling doesn’t really go away even after all these years.

“I’m Kassie, by the way.”

“I’m Y/N.”

Her face lit up. “Wait, I know who you are!”

“Well we have spent the last few days together so I did hope that you would have known my name by now honestly-”

“You’re the girl Danny always talks about! You’re his friend!” Kassie kind of bounces around, her new found enthusiasm infectious but her statement alarming. Not wanting to burst her bubble after seeing her so gloom for the past few days, with a stiff smile you offer a nod.

“I remember all the stories from when you used to share a bunk! Wow, I hope I get a bunk mate just like you!” You aren’t quite sure what she’s talking about, as most of your time bunking with Danny involved arguing about his snoring and your constant shifting above him.

“Yeah, fingers crossed.” You mimicked your own words, she copied you.

“And I can teach them the secret bunk code that you taught Danny, ‘cause Danny taught me!” A stab in the heart. You’d forgotten about that.

You developed a quiet knocking, humming and scraping system to have conversations with each other. It’d been one of those silly kid things you just stop thinking about when you have your first kiss or learn to drive. You can’t really even remember what you used to talk about in the quiet moments of the night when you weren’t bickering.

“We taught each other, just like you and your bunk mate will make up new words. Just go with the flow and you’ll have a great time.”

Kassie nods, more than cheered up from the conversation. “I’ll remember that. Gosh, I hope I get put on your team for the games!”

“Yeah, me too kiddo.” A girl around Kassie’s age stands alone at the drop off point just beyond the arch of Camp Kandar. Her eyes scan the scene in front of her, campers overwhelmingly conversing in their individual cliques. Nudging Kassie, you point in her direction.

“Why not go say hi to her? I think it might be her first day too.” The youngest Bixler-Sutherland sibling nods, and takes a deep breath.

“Kass, if it doesn’t go well I’m right here.” You crouch to her level, placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder. You knew exactly what she was thinking right now, as if this one interaction would determine her ability to make friends this summer.

With one last optimistic look, she trots off with Staffanie in tow.

“You givin’ my sister your shitty advice?” Danny’s voice catches you off guard, him appearing behind you as you watch Kassie from afar.

“Better than anything you’ve offered her the past few days clearly.” You don’t bother to turn to look at him, but you can feel his chin almost hovering in the crook of your left shoulder. His body, while not at all touching yours, feels close.

“Ouch, scout. And here I thought you were giving me flirty eyes at the first meeting the other day.”

“You fucking wish, Bixler.” He seems unfazed at your use of only one of his last names. In the distance, Kassie seemed to be explaining Staffanie to the other girl, who giggled and pet the doll head awkwardly.

Turning your head to face him, you’re almost caught off guard at how close he is.

“Kassie was talking about all the stories you’ve been telling about me.” His eyes flash with alarm for a moment, you have to stop yourself from laughing at the sight. Danny’s attempt to catch you off guard disrupted by your own secret weapon.

“Just the shit from when we were kids, before you become an intolerable bitch.” He stepped back, strutting in front of you.

“Well atleast I’m a bitch and not a complete moron, like you.” He sucks in a breath and scoffs. “This moron’s gonna beat your ass in the challenge teams this year.”

“Not if we’re on the same team, dipshit.”

“Pablo told Eric who told me that you’re in red team. I’m blue team, scout.” He circles you like a shark smelling blood for the first time, your eyes stay trained on him.

“How the fuck does Pablo know? Why would director Williams or Cheryl put us on opposite teams? Isn’t that just begging for trouble?” Your hands raise to rest on your hips, fists clenching.

“‘Cause maybe Pablo’s tight with Ash and Ash sorts the teams ‘cause Cheryl does rota. I was in red team but Eric asked to swap places and I said yes so I could be on the opposite team from you.” This bastard, always testing you. Always looking for a fight. Always needing to win.

“Why the fuck would you do that?” Knuckles white, this was all going to backfire on you specifically.

His taunting grin begged you to lose your temper.

“‘Cause it makes us better. Why be just good at working together when we could be even better tearing each other apart?” There was that closeness thing again, him getting up in your personal space. This was all a stupid intimidation tactic and you weren’t going to let it slide.

“When director Williams calls it out he won’t let you switch, even if Eric asks.” Something was going on here, more than what he was letting on. His eyes take a dangerous glance at your lips, he was playing dirty.

It wasn’t like you thought of him in that way anyway, nor he with you surely. Ultimately, he infuriated you.

Though, anyone would admit he was in great shape. Chiselled jawline and soft blue eyes that would make anyone swoon. He was attractive and you had shared a bunk with him, it was inevitable you would potentially form a deep attachment to him, you supposed. It’s definitely not like you had thought about him in the heat of the night in the safety of your own room, miles and miles away from camp. It was a hundred percent not like you had ever, ever replayed your most heated debates in your head, thinking about how breathless he could make you feel.

Fuck Danny Bixler-Sutherland.

“Don’t be so sure, they can’t reject a team transfer as long as someone on the other team volunteers a switch, it's against camp rules.” He backed away, hands held up in surrender. That stupid fuckin grin still on his mouth.

“Plus, Mia would be a far better teammate than you.” And with that he leaves you.

You couldn’t get his words out of your head.

What the fuck was he planning? Would Eric stoop so low to be involved in some stupid plot to have you guys in prime fighting positions? What was he getting out of this?

Stumbling across the sea of new campers to get to Mia, a plan quickly trying to form in your head.

“Mia, I need to call in a favour.” She dropped the stick at the mention of her name, pretending that she had actually been busy the full time.

“Fuck no, baby.”

“Pretty, pretty please with a cherry on top?” Mia crossed her arms. “What is it?”

“You need to swap teams with me.”

“How do you know we’re on opposite teams?” Her position unchanging, eyes burning into your soul as if you were breaking the rules somehow.

“Danny might’ve let something slip, he’s in my team and wants to change with Eric so we can be competing, but I don’t wanna do that.” She glances over your shoulder at Danny’s current location, beginning to guide the campers to their assigned cabins.

“How does he know this?” You roll your eyes, scratching your forehead. “It’s a long story, but please Mia, I’m begging you - I need to beat him at his own game.”

Mia stands for a moment, watching the boy, before smiling and looking back at you.

“This is ‘cause you wanna spend more time with him isn’t it?”

“Whatever the fuck helps you sleep at night.” You cannot let her win this foolish debate she’s created in her head.

“Sure thing, I’ll swap I guess.”

—

You had completely zoned out of the induction campfire ceremony. It’s mandatory every year anyway, aimed at the campers specifically. You weren’t missing much. This team shit was driving you crazy, as soon as Ash coughed up that it was time for the counselor sorting ceremony you shot upright. Across the seating area you could see Eric nudge Danny, who barely acknowledged him.

“Okay guys, team red. Okay people here we go. Olivia, Y/N-”

“I wanna swap teams.” You stood up.

Some of the campers ooooooed at your exclamation, Olivia scoffed. “What’s so bad about my team?” You turned to her, apology written all over your face.

You couldn’t swap if you didn’t have someone to swap with, you knew this. But if Mia came in clutch then you also knew that Eric wanted to be on the red team for some reason, so no matter what he would swap with Danny.

“We’ve not even finished reading out the rest of your teammates.” Director Williams answers with an irritated tone, and honestly, rightfully so. You were being difficult.

“Blue is usually my team, c’mon Williams we know this.” Much to his chagrin, you are right. “Well, seeing as we’ve not even called out blue team members, how is anyone gonna swap with you?” All eyes on you, intimidating you more than you cared to admit.

Luckily, Mia came right to your rescue.

“I’ll swap with her.” She stands proud, like she’s testifying to the court.

The fingers on his prosthetic hand scratch his nose, for a second you wonder how it would feel to have such an appendage. His hand had been gone longer than you’d been alive apparently, the camp legend was that it got torn off by a bear in the camp outskirts when Ash was a counselor here himself.

“How the hell did you know you were on the other team?”

“Last year you warned us we spoke too much when we’re together at these things, I thought this year you’d want to keep us separated.” Mia’s excuse didn’t really make any sense, seeing as he had allowed them to share a cabin, but she was right in saying that when they were partnered up they did not shut the fuck up. “Red’s more my color anyway.”

The older man shrugged. “Swap accepted, I suppose.

That was that.

“Shall we continue? Okay, red team. Olivia, Mia, Danny, Sheila and Eric. C’mere.”

Your heart dropped.

What the actual fuck.

Even Mia turned to you in confusion as she began to walk down to the stage with the rest of her team.

Danny must have known all along that Eric wasn’t actually going to swap, he’d done this to throw you off his trail. If anything happens between you two it’s your fault for the switch over now.

But why? Why was he so desperate to manipulate you like that? If it had gone wrong at any point, if you had chosen to stay on the team, who would he have swapped with? Maybe Pedro was in on it too, but looking at him now he seemed even more zoned out than you were.

Danny’s eyes found yours in the crowd, you were instantly reminded of all the other types of shit like this he’d pulled in the years prior. You felt like a total idiot for causing a scene, tears threatening to fall.

“Blue team, let’s go! David, Y/N, Pedro, Natalie and Kelly.”

David. He’d completely slipped your mind.

Fuck this shit.

You couldn’t even turn to look at Danny through the rest of the sorting of the teams, not able to face his stupid smug face that you knew would be looking at you. Why did he have to be such a headfuck all the time?

The full thing kept playing on your mind even when you were back in your cabin with Mia. She was smoking a cigarette, leaning out of the bathroom window. Head in your hands, you sat on the closed lid of the toilet.

“Thank fuck we have our own toilets now, jesus, could you imagine only being able to use the fuckin shared one?”

“We still have to clean all the cubicles when it’s our shift, a private toilet just adds one more toilet onto that.”

She inhales the cigarette for a moment, letting it hit her lungs. Even with the window open it still stunk.

“Yeah, but like atleast it’s our toilet. I’d happily clean your piss on the daily over the combined piss of like 60 something kids.” Mia looks different with the moonlight on her face. Her eyes, kind of buggish normally, seem even bigger. Sometimes she looks like a different person, you think.

“From everything I know, I really thought he liked you.” She murmured, flicking the butt out the window when she finished. “I tried to warn you.” You look at her through your hands. She sinks down onto the tiled floor of the shower.

“Just so weird, right? Like what could he have gotten out of that?” Mia stares off to a point in the corner of the room, in contemplation. “I don’t even get why you don’t like each other. You both used to get along so well.”

You’d heard it all before, and your constant avoidance of the question came from the fact that quite honestly you didn’t even know how to answer it.

“All I know is that I’m gonna get him back tenfold.”

She smirks at you. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

—

For your arts and crafts block that week, you’d been assigned with Natalie. She was nice enough, kind of quiet but sweet with the kids. She’d spent most of her time asking you where things were. As far as you could tell, she was older. Probably not by much, at least around the same age as Olivia, David and Eric. She was from Salt Lake City, which you thought was a little far to come all the way to camp, but you didn’t judge her too much for it. It’s good to get away from home sometimes.

Kassie had indeed been placed on your team. Telling her that you were confident that with her and Staffanie on the team, you’d beat anything her brother threw at you both earned a giggle from her.

Another surprise was Bridget being placed on your team. She kept to herself or her friends mostly, but was more outspoken than a lot of the other teens.

Bridget had been attending camp the past few years since she turned 8, so you were more familiar with her than Kassie. In saying that, the age gap did mean that neither of you had really spoken to each other, especially as you weren’t a counselor before.

Each week, the teams would participate in challenges. Kids would file into the pavilion in their respective team colours, carrying makeshift posters and signs they had made during arts and crafts.

Waves of red and blue lining the wooden bleachers, allowing you to zone out while Danny lingered in your line of vision.

A soft hand to the low of your back, you jump. David waits with a smile and a water bottle on offer.

“Hey.” You soften, tucking a loose hair behind your ear.

“Hey, barely got a chance to catch up with you

since we got here. How you doing, kiddo?” The hand moves to your shoulder, a tinge of disappointment rushing through you. Another nickname, albeit a well meaning one, but one you still held in disdain.

“Not too bad, I've been busy keeping your sister out of trouble.” He chuckles, the famous David Allen smile appears. “I don’t know what she’d do without you.”

An earnest pause, but also a dangerous one.

“Listen David-“

“About last summer-“ Interrupting each other before either could make their point, and yet both so obviously on the same wavelength. The kiss.

“You go first.” His arms fold in a polite defeat. God, the bastard just oozed charm.

“Just wanted to address what happened last summer, between us. Just incase you felt uneasy or something it doesn’t have to be anything big if you don’t want it to be.” Heat rising in your chest, you felt like a stupid idiot with a school girl crush.

As if he could read your own thoughts, David placed his hand on your forearm. “Don’t beat yourself up over it.”

Danny lingered from afar, no stranger to the occasional glance your way. He almost scowled when he saw your company.

You wanted to mention the text, you wanted to ask why he never said anything. Why he didn’t reply. But David simply rubbed your arm, “We don’t need to talk about it.”

A sigh escapes your lips, one you hadn’t even realised you were holding in. “Cool.”

The first challenge passes by fairly simply, despite Danny’s obvious attempts to wind you up. He was a competitive fucker, that’s for sure.

Team Blue manages to take the win for the night, with the kids chanting David’s name. He runs up to you, sweating profusely and yet managing to effortlessly appear like he was a vampire from Twilight instead of someone who just won a game of dodgeball.

“Great work kiddo, my second in command.” A grin appears, one that you can’t help but mimic knowing finewell that you spent the full game preoccupied with Danny.

From the corner of your eye, you could see Eric nudge Mia with a smug smile and whispered in her ear. She looked at you immediately and grinned, the worried pit immediately returned in your stomach.

She skips towards you, with Eric retreating to Danny who stands on the sidelines looking a bit misplaced.

“Guess who’s going to a party tonight?” Mia offers you two thumbs up and does a shuffling dance, that only manages to kick up dirt and makes you cough.

“The Abomination?”

“Okay, fuck you. Us! They’re having a party outside the woods. Dude, our own counselor party!” It had been something you’d spoken about for years, but you felt the effect had been lessened after last year's antics.

“I don’t know, Mia. I want to take this next challenge seriously and-”

“And what? All the tension from today will mean nothing when we’ll all be hungover tomorrow, group bonding?” You tried to find another excuse. “What about the kids?”

“Girl, fuck the kids! I want to party.” All you could do was answer with an awkward shrug, which she took for total defeat.

“YAAAAY. Okay, quick, we have like 2 hours to get ready-” Mia grabs your wrist and pulls you in the direction of your cabin, Danny standing on the hill watching you as you go by. If you weren’t so nervous about the prospect of being at the party with David and trying to listen to Mia, you’d think he was checking you out.

“You better be there, Scout!” Eric calls after you both as you pass, Danny’s head dipping beside him seemingly finding the ground extremely interesting right now. “Suck my ass, Eric!” He howled in response, earning a fit of laughter from you and Mia.

—

The winding path, illuminated with random lanterns left by partying campers long ago, seemed to go on forever. The prospect of getting absolutely shit faced at the end of the trail after a long week of ensuring the safety of screaming kids, patching up old equiptment and cleaning up actual shit was what kept the counsellors of Camp Kandar going.

The transition between the July weather and August’s own was usually indistinguishable, but tonight was particularly breezy. Regardless, the blazing campfire your colleagues crowded around gave a small amount of relief.

Cheap bottles of liquor and red solo cups, firebright light and wine coolers left discarded on the forest floor in favour of roaming hands on dancing teens. There was almost something melancholic about it all, one day they’d well and truly grow out of this forever. The fleeting fun of camp summer, the spontaneity of beers in the woods on a lukewarm summer night.

David strummed lazily on a dark cherry coloured guitar, you almost wanted to roll your eyes at how it looked like he’d stepped right out of a young adult rom com.

“I don’t get what you see in him.” Danny appears, housing a beer you can’t quite decipher the brand name of. You can feel his judgement despite his eyes also watching the older boy at the other side of the fire, unaware to his dueling voyeurs.

“What are you talking about?” He licked his lips, letting out a scoffing almost laugh at your reply.

“You never suited acting stupid, Scout. But then again, are as predictable as a Chainsmokers song.”

Fingers clenching around your cup filled with god knows what, how dare he? It took everything you had in you to show restraint and now throw its contains over his loose fitting tank top and cargo shorts. He was dressed like every female gaze dream skater boy forever immortalised on countless Pinterest boards - and yet you were the predictable one apparently.

“Why do you have to be such a fucking dick all of the goddamned time? You’re insane.”

“I’m not the one sleeping with my best friend’s brother.” Wide eyes snap to his, still burning holes into David’s skull across the fire with a tinge of unnoticed envy.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” The clench around the red cup switches from anger to fear. He could always read her better than anyone. He finally looks at you, his blue eyes somehow welcome despite the venom you shot at each other. A pit in your stomach started to burn as if someone was inside digging it themself.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be getting this reaction. All I’ll say is don’t waste your time on him.” You could feel your eyes roll back, here he was backtracking trying to act like he was helping you again. No way were you falling for it again.

“I can spend time with whoever I want to. You’re just jealous that without alcohol I can’t hang around you without social distancing myself at all times.” You down the rest of your cup, just trying to keep your shaking hands preoccupied.

He shrugs. “Maybe I am.” His gaze shifts back to the rim of the beer. He contemplates copying your action and downing it as well. “Or maybe I just don’t give a shit ‘cuz I won’t even be around to see the fallout when you fuck it all up next year.”

Your turn to look at the boy again, taking in his frame for a moment. His hunched demeanour doesn’t read like he’s telling a joke or trying to wind you up.

“W-what?”

“Yeah, this is my last year. My parents are getting a divorce and my mom can’t afford to take us here anymore. And everything that was saved for my collage fund is getting put into the divorce. Surprise!” Danny uncannily laughs, clearly highlighting just how rotten the situation is.

“And it’s so fucked because we’re moving away and Bridge and Kass are leaving their entire lives behind and they’ll never get to experience this and they barely even know that we’re never going home again and it’s all just so so fucked-”

“Danny…. I didn’t know.”

“Yeah, why the fuck would you I don’t even know why I’m telling you this-” He starts to dab at his eyes and make a hurried exit before you reach out and grab his wrist.

When you look into his eyes you see that same boy from the first year you bunked together. The boy that was scared of the dark, the boy that was chatty and so eager to be outdoors yet scared of the wilderness. You see little Danny, all alone in the big bad scary world with no parents to really protect him, as much as his mom was trying. You felt like you couldn’t breathe. You never knew he was going through anything this serious.

“Wanna go on a walk right now?”

You expect him to tell you to fuck off and storm away, or cast some snarky remark about David. He just nods slowly. “Let me just tell Eric where I’m going.”

“Cool, I’ll get you at the carving tree.” He kind of fumbles a nod and scurries to find the older boy.

You turn and David is behind you like a jumpscare, you’re unable to hide a yelp. He laughs and places a hand on your forearm, you grow tense - mind too preoccupied with Danny. “Everything okay? I know you and Bixler are kind of neck and neck, I’d hate for him to spoil the party for you.”

Glancing back at the blonde boy as he searches for Eric, a tinge of guilt pierces through. “It’s fine, I can handle him.

“Well if you ever wanted me to say anything to him, let me know.” He shrugged, guitar still resting over him.

“I actually had something to ask you.” The liquid courage was saying it was now or never, and if it all went wrong you could escape into the woods with Danny who would probably be feeling even worse than you.

“Uh-huh?”

Here goes nothing.

“Today, when you said we shouldn’t talk about the kiss or whatever. I just wanted to ask what changed your mind after you left that note on my pillow?” David’s face is unreadable.

“What?”

“And yeah, I’m sorry if the text I sent was brutal and I won’t lie and say I’ve not thought about the kiss a lot. But I don’t know man, just help me here.” It almost sounds like a rant as the words escape your mouth, David raising an eyebrow in retaliation.

“Well I’ll try and help you out, I don’t know what you’re speaking about.” He seems dumbfounded, an expression you’ve never seen cross him.

“The text. The note. You left me a note, did you not?” Hands trembling, you wish you had it with you in the chance it would somehow completely restart his memory.

“I left with Mia. I needed to get out of there, it was crazy and intense, and kinda good, but like totally wrong.” He moves you to the side, speaking in hushed tones as if it was an affair on par with JFK and Marilyn and not a stupid drunken kiss.

“And then I texted you.”

“No you didn’t, I don’t even have your number. Show me your phone.” The device feels like a brick from the Great Wall of China when you pull it out of your pocket. You try your best to hide your uneasy fingers when you scroll to the conversation, a silent prayer that you didn’t delete it.

There it was plain as day. It was a real conversation. He lightly grabs the phone off you, still holding it at a level that you can both see it. He taps on the contact and stares for a moment.

“Kiddo, I am so sorry. I don’t know who the hell this could be ‘cause that’s not my number.” David peels his own phone out his back pocket and shows his own contact. He was right, the number was completely different.

“I promise I don’t have a second phone as well, and I’ve never changed it. Not since I was like 13 and you still had a Motorola Razr, remember those?” He smiles, going back into a personality mode similar to a dad or grandfather. You weren’t going to lie and say it wasn’t giving you the ick.

All you could do was nod.

“Nevermind, I guess.” He parts with a pat on the shoulder like he was your sports teammate. And technically that’s all he was. A teammate, a friend's brother.

You turn in the direction of the carving tree, Danny stands in the distance. The stomach pit returns, you wish the digger would just go on strike.

All you can do is collect your thoughts for a moment and prepare yourself for the trip ahead, ensuring to grab a bottle of vodka from the ground as you approach him.

[wooahaeruby]

Chapter 33: Sparks

Chapter Word Count: 4,270

TW

None, it's cute.

Master List | Prev | Next

“You called?” Sitting at your desk, you were packing up your bag for the day. “Twice might I add.” 

“What are you doing?” Seungcheol asked. “Wait, I mean, hi…How are you? What are you doing?” 

You laughed as you turned the computer off and made your way to the door. “I’m doing okay today, thank you for asking. Currently, I’m about to leave the office, do you need something?” 

“Can I pick you up from your place at seven?”

“I don’t see why not, do I need to dress up or can I change into something comfy?” Waving goodbye to your coworkers, you stood in the elevator, heading down to the parking garage. 

“ Oh, fuck- Um.” You heard him fumble with his phone before he cleared his throat. “ Can you dress up a little, but you don't have to be over the top?”

“I can, I’ll see you at seven.” 

“ Cool, I’ll- uh- I’ll see you then.” 

Hanging up, you chuckled to yourself, seeing Seokmin getting into his own car when you made it to yours. 

“Plans for the night?” He asked, leaning over his car hood. 

“Got a date tonight.” Dropping your bags into the passenger seat, you could see him smirk. 

“Is it with-?” 

“Yep. Just called me before I came down.” 

“Have fun then.” He laughed, moving towards the driver’s door. “Oh, Hao wants to talk with you, give him a call or something.” 

“Ay ay, captain.” You gave him a salute before getting in your car and driving off towards your apartment. 

It would be the first night in a week that someone wasn’t in bed with you to sleep. Wonwoo had come over the other night before Jeonghan showed up, wanting to install panic buttons around the apartments, more as a precaution, hoping you wouldn’t actually need to use them. One was placed on your nightstand, facing your bed where you could reach it easily, another was placed under the counter of your computer desk, and the last was in the kitchen, on the underside of a hanging cabinet. 

Kicking your shoes off, you glanced around the dark living room, staying silently to listen for any changes but nothing peaked so you turned on the lights and continued inside. Glancing down at your watch, you had just over an hour and a half to throw on a nicer outfit and some makeup before Seungcheol showed up, enough time to even do your hair a little. 

With Dreamcatcher helping with your closet clean up, there were some…new clothes you noticed through the week; new business outfits, new…shorter skirts, and some different blouses. There were boxes of new shoes in your size stacked in the corner of your closet as well. 

Then…Then you kinda had an idea and you knew you had to roll with it. 

You pulled items from your closet, a little smirk spreading on your lips.

“So, Seokmin said you asked my girlfriend on a date.” Jeonghan snickered over the phone. 

Seungcheol sighed. 

Of course Seokmin told Jeonghan, he thought.

“I am…Is that a problem?” 

“Where are you taking Mouse?” 

“I…heard her saying to Mingyu that she was craving sushi…so…” He rubbed the back of his neck, going into his shared closet in the penthouse, grabbing a pair of slacks and a loose fitting button up. 

“You are a fucking sap, I love this so much.” Jeonghan laughed, which only made him sigh and groan. “ If we weren’t crimelords, I’d put our lives in a soap opera.” 

“I’m hanging up now, I need to shower and get dressed.” 

“Wah~ You’re no fun. I’ll just get all the details from my girlfriend later, loser.” 

“Whatever.” Seungcheol hung up before Jeonghan could get another word in and jumped into getting himself ready. 

As he stepped out into the living room, checking his pockets for his phone, wallet and keys, Jihoon stepped through the door, backpack thrown over his shoulder, dressed in his gym ware. 

“Where are you going?” Jihoon asked, kicking off his shoes. 

Seungcheol huffed, “I’m going out…” 

Jihoon paused, looking at him up and down. “...With Mouse.”

“I hate all of you.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, “But if you have to know, yes, I am going out with her.” 

“Cool.” Was all he said, strolling down the hall before coming back. “Soonyoung, Wonwoo, Mingyu, and I are going to the fight club tonight. Jeonghan is running a free-for-all for anyone who wants to fight.”

“Yeah, count me out. Don’t get your asskicked and make a joke out of us.” Slipping on his shoes and grabbing a jacket, he headed out and down in the garage. 

Okay – if Seungcheol was being honest, he was praying he wouldn’t fuck up tonight and it would be a step in the right direction. He had been texting her regularly throughout the week, but tonight was the only night he had free time to actually put some action into place. Jeonghan’s little fight club also got some of the guys out of her hair while the youngest three were running Ruby for the night. Minghao and Junhui were out of town on a job and wouldn’t be back until the following night. 

Pulling up to Mouse’s apartment, he parked in one of the visitor spots and made his way towards the garage door entrance. One glance at the watch on his wrist showed he was a few minutes early, but he didn’t bother to worry, stopping at the newly installed security panel and typed in her apartment number. Once the panel buzzed and the door unlocked, he wasted little time getting to the elevator and getting to her door. A simple knock had him hearing her call out for him to wait a minute.

Shoving his hands into his pockets, Seungcheol waited, biting at the skin of his lips, even rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. He looked down at his feet, raising his head almost instantly when he heard the lock click and the door open. 

And he blinked, once, twice, and he damn near wanted to pass the fuck out .

Mouse stood before him dressed in a bishop sleeved, scoop necked red blouse and a short black skirt and tights. She lifted her foot and fiddled with the strap of her chunky heels, hand placed against the door frame. Grabbing her jacket, she slipped it on, a smile spreading on her red colored lips. 

She is gonna kill me , was all he managed to think, eyes wide as he took in her beauty. I might die . 

“Hi, hey.” Mouse pulled her purse off the console table beside her door, pushing her hair behind her back. 

“Hey.” Seungcheol cleared his throat, sliding his hands from his pockets and holding one out for her to take. “Ready?” 

She was quick to close and lock the door before taking his hand, letting him lead her down the hall and into the elevator. 

“So, where are we going?” She nudged him with her elbow, keeping their hands clasped together. 

He snickered, shaking his head. “I’m not telling you that, you can find out when we get there.” 

“Hmm, boo.” Mouse rolled her eyes but continued to smile. “I heard the guys are busy tonight?” 

“Yeah, Han is having a free-for-all . Kwan and the other two are running Ruby, but I think Vernon and Chan are going to watch the free for all since Kwan owes them a favor. Busy night.” 

“And you just happened to be free?” As the elevator doors opened, she eyed him curiously, a playful tilt to her head. 

“It’s my first night off in a while.” He admitted, shoulders dropping. “Thought I’d spend it right.” 

Mouse hummed, seemingly satisfied with the answer he gave. She gently swung their hands as he led her to his car, unable to stop himself from chuckling softly.

The drive to the sushi place he had picked was calm. Seungcheol was content answering Mouse when she asked how the days had been, able to express more of the nitty gritty of the group while in the car. 

He had also taken her words two weeks ago into some consideration recently as well. Or well…He had done a lot of thinking since the night Mouse and him talked. If she was going to be here, sitting beside them at least somewhat at their metaphorical table, the least he could do was be honest. And he was a little terrified she’d actually put more effort into hitting him if they fought again. She had done great work training with Chan, but with Minghao and Junhui soon? He’d need a bulletproof vest twenty-four seven. 

She was laughing as he parked, stomping her feet some. “How do you fuck up that bad?!” 

“I’m telling you, Mouse…I don’t even know at this point. Sometimes Mingyu is just too big for his own damn good and he broke the box of the ammo shipment, the actual box… Jihoon was going to kill him…”

“It was a crate! I can’t believe he managed to do that!” 

He simply gave a laugh before exiting the car, quickly rounding his vehicle to help her out. She took his hand the moment it was offered and stood, smiling up at him bright and wide. 

“Shall we?” He closed the door for her, clicking the lock on his key easily. 

“I think we shall, Seungcheol.” 

The place was relatively fancy, many different groups of people and couples littering the fully booked restaurant. Seungcheol had taken it upon himself to pull your chair out and push it in for you before taking his own seat, shedding his jacket. 

“So…” You snickered, picking up the menu placed on the table. “Who told you I was craving sushi?”

Reaching up, he rubbed the back of his neck, sending her a gummy, shy smile. “I…might have heard you talking with Mingyu the other day when he had you on speaker.” 

Looking past the menu, you eyed him for a moment, your lips twisting into a small smirk. “And here I thought you could read my mind.” 

Seungcheol scoffed and he laughed, shaking his head, jostling the relatively unstyled hair on his head. “I wish it was that easy.” 

“Is your hair naturally that wavy?” The question had him running a hand through his locks, brushing them back from his face before shaking his head to let it fall naturally. 

“I mean…Kinda? If I really let it grow out, it gets a little poofy since I don’t really do anything with it. That's why I usually keep it short. I kinda need a haircut soon since it’s been a while.”

“It looks good.” You complimented and you watched him swallow, eyes big, childlike. “I like it.”

“I- Thanks..” Despite the restaurant's dim lighting, you couldn’t miss the reddening of his cheeks. “Let’s- What looks good to you?” 

He dropped his gaze, lifting the menu to hide from you, eyes scanning over the items listed. 

It was cute, seeing him flustered over a simple compliment. You smiled to yourself, scanning over the plethora of options, debating what you wanted. 

The waiter that came to serve you was sweet, a nice young man that looked absolutely nervous, probably one of his first days. He filled the empty glasses before the two of you with water. With a glance between the waiter and Seungcheol, it was almost silently decided that you’d share whatever was ordered, not that it wasn’t expected after the last sushi ‘date’ the two of you had. 

“I’ll get right on that.” The young man hurried off, leaving you with a smile and a shake of your head. 

“I remember when I waited tables in college for a little while.” 

“I can’t even imagine you doing that.” He furrowed his brows together but he laughed, lifting the glass of water to his lips. “Why did you stop?” 

“Because some drunk guy slapped my ass and I punched him in the face.” 

Seungcheol choked on his water, picking up the fabric napkin to cover his mouth as you laughed, trying to keep yourself from losing it. 

“You punched him? So you’ve been doing reckless shit all your life?” He cleared his throat. 

“You really should hear about all the trouble I got Jongho and I into when we were together for two years.” 

“Mouse, I have all night. I’m all ears.”

“You…set off a bottle rocket…into your foster dad’s car exhaust pipe.” Half his mouth was filled with food, pointing his chopsticks at you with a frown on his face. 

“Yeah. He deserved it for beating Jongho.” You don’t see the problem now, just like you didn’t see the problem back then. “For no reason, mind you. Not only were these assholes just taking the government checks, but they worked him and I to the bone with chores, and we got punished if we didn’t. He was told to hand wash all the dishes with a toothbrush because he didn’t sweep the floor since he was finishing his homework.” 

“That’s…what the fuck?” He was taken back, eyes shifting from you to stare down at the platter of sushi between you both. 

“One time, that foster mom locked me out of the house because I was a minute late back  after a school event. She didn’t let me in for two days and Jongho had to sneak me stuff.”

“What-” 

“Yep.” You snickered, grabbing a piece of food. “Then I got Jongho and I out of there. Apparently insulting them was the tipping point. Fucking pricks.” 

“Man, and I thought I had a fucked up childhood.” Seungcheol managed to laugh and you nodded. 

“I’ve…heard a little from Hannie about what happened to the three of you.” 

His eyes were searching for something in the sushi, gaze flitting around with no set destination. He opened his mouth to say something but closed it, leaving you to continue. 

“I want to believe that you and I, and the rest of the guys have done well despite the adversity.” Nonchalantly, you picked up a piece of sushi and popped it in your mouth. “I mean look at you, big business, kicking ass and all. And me, the not so damsel in distress that has fought a few people for the hell of it.” 

That managed to get Seungcheol to chuckle under his breath, a sigh leaving his chest but a smile was present once he lifted his head. 

“And while on the topic, why can parents fucking suck sometimes?” You rolled your eyes, sitting back in your seat, seeing the smile on his lips widen. “But in general people can suck. This is why before all of you I was a homebody. Video games can’t hurt me physically, just emotionally.” 

“Oh my god, shut up.” He laughed brightly, dropping his chopsticks and covering his face in some embarrassment, not sure if it was for you or him. 

“Hey! Whoa!” You kept your dramatic gasp quiet to not draw much attention to your table. “How dare you tell your date to shut up. Here I thought I was out with a nice gentleman that wanted to make me swoon and now he is telling me to shut it. Some men…” 

“Mouse.” Dropping his hands, Seungcheol whined, a pained smile on his lips as he gazed across to you.

You leveled him with a playful look, unable to stop yourself from laughing. “Yes?” 

He held you in a soft gaze, letting his eyes roam over your features before he shook his head, dropping his eyes and picking up his chopsticks once more. “Nothing…Nothing at all.” 

“Good,” You smirked, “Kinda looked like you were attracted to me for a minute there.” 

Seungcheol sputtered out a laugh, covering his mouth so as to not choke on the piece of food he shoved into his mouth. “Oh no, totally not, you’re kinda weird if you ask me.”

“Some say I’m mysterious, but I can also accept being weird in this situation.” Nodding your head, you gave him a thumbs up. “Just don’t let my friends hear you say that. They can be a little overprotective if you ask me.” 

“Hm, I wouldn’t have thought.” 

Between the two of you, a quiet calm settled, letting you eat, taking in the ambiance and the chatter around your table. There was comfort in the quiet, the promise held close to your heart that he wasn’t going to do anything stupid anymore, and hoped that all would fall into place. 

He wasn’t like Jeonghan who loved to talk about everything and anything. He wasn’t Joshua who could make you laugh loudly at the smallest things. He was Seungcheol, a strong leader with a shell that seemed a little hard to break. He was a big softy that was goofy and now wanted to play video games every time he caught you sneaking off with Wonwoo to Pandora. 

He was becoming himself more and more than you already saw and you really liked it…

It wasn’t too long before the platters were finished and the waiter was asking if there was anything else either of you would like for the evening. Seungcheol peered at you, raising a brow but you simply shook your head, leaving your companion to ask for the check. 

You observed Seungcheol now, watching as he grabbed his wallet, sitting comfortably as he drummed his fingers on the table. When he noticed your gaze, he tilted his head, one corner of his mouth raising in a half smile, leaving you mesmerized by how handsome he looked. Part of you prayed he didn’t cut his hair, but it wouldn’t matter over all, he was striking with or without it this length. 

He was quick to pay the check when it was placed down, not even bothering to look at the amount as he slid his card over. He signed quickly before getting up, moving towards you to take your jacket, holding it up for you to slip on once you stood. Once he was comfortable with you bundled up, moving some hair from off your shoulder, he got his on, holding out his hand. 

“Can I convince you to go on a walk then maybe….get just some ice cream?” 

Your heart clenched in your chest, but you placed your hand in his, lacing your fingers together with a nod. “I’d love to, Seungcheol.”

Hand in hand, the two of you left the restaurant, leaving his car behind in the parking lot to return later. The air was frigid but the heat Cheol radiated as you stood close was enough to keep you comfortable. You were lucky you went with thicker tights to keep your legs warm in the short skirt. More or less you let him lead the way, a shy grin spreading on your lips as he swung your clasped hands.

A glance over showed a wide smile, his eyes flicking from you to the path, keeping you close. There was nothing needing to be said, knowing he was happy, probably way more than you were, but you were happy nonetheless. The ice cream place he ended up leading you to wasn’t far, a small hole in the wall shop with two little tables and a singular worker behind the counter. With the change coming into winter sooner rather than later, not many were going out to get ice cream. 

The bell over the door announced your arrival, a loud chime sending the worker to her feet, greeting you. You returned the greeting, approaching the glass to peer at the many options of sugary treats. 

“What do you want?” You looked at Seungcheol, curious as he didn’t even look at the different flavors. “Do you already know?”

“Yeah, I get the cherry-vanilla swirl.” He was serious, lips pursed before he gave a firm nod. When he gazed at you, the purse turned into a childish smile. 

“You know what, can we share?”

A chuckle rumbled deep in his chest, nodding his head once more. “Yeah, we definitely can, Mouse.”

“You are a fucking idiot.” Jeonghan laughed under his breath, removing the gauze from Soonyoung’s forehead, hoping it stopped the bleeding from the cut near his hairline.

“Don’t call him that, at least he won.” Mingyu snickered, grabbing more gauze and holding them to Jihoon’s nose, definitely broke even if it’s just a slightest bit.

“So…should I call Cheol?” Chan asked, raising his hand, sitting on the bleacher-like stands beside Vernon. 

“Do not-” Joshua shook his head, only for Jeonghan to send him a look. “Come on, they are fine.” 

“Soonyoung definitely has a concussion and Jihoon’s nose is broken. He’ll be pissed coming home to this.” Jeonghan sighed, nodding his head to Chan. “Give him a call.” 

Chan was already dialing the number before he finished the sentence, leaning his head back. 

“Hey- yeah everything went fine, but…” Chan groaned. “Yeah, I know you are out on your little date, but Jeonghan told me to call you because- It was Soonyoung and Jihoon…Yeah, but one has a concussion and the other has a broken nose…Mouse- Give the phone back to Cheol- Oh my god- Okay, I’ll see you in a bit.” 

Chan looked around once the line went dead, flattening his mouth into a straight line. “So uh, they are coming.” 

“And now we will feel the wrath of both Mouse and Seungcheol.” Wonwoo huffed, holding an ice pack to his eye. 

They showed up faster than anyone really anticipated. Jeonghan thought they had more time to clean up some blood and patch up Soonyoung and Jihoon. 

Mouse bursted through the door first, one hand holding the skirt as she hurried over, nearly skidding to a stop before Soonyoung. 

“Mouse!” Soonyoung was dazed, flinching at how loud he was, reactions a little slow and eyes out of focus. “Hi.” 

She sighed, taking his face gently into her hands, brows furrowed in sympathy. “Hi, Soon…” 

“You…” He shook his head, taking a deep breath through his nose, a pout forming on his lips. “You look really pretty.” 

“Thank you, how’s your head?” 

“The room is…a little sideways and I’m tired.” 

“You can’t sleep until we get back.” Jeonghan huffed out a sigh, wiping his hands with an alcohol wipe, making sure there was no blood. 

Mouse placed a gentle kiss to the top of Soonyoung’s head before she moved over to Jihoon, shoulders deflating at the already bruising area surrounding his nose and under eyes despite the ice pack.

“You both look like shit.” Seungcheol stepped in, hands in his jacket pockets, stopping not that far from Mingyu who was packing up the first aid kits. 

“Be nice.” Mouse warned and he huffed. She reached out, lifted the ice pack some, and glanced beneath it. Jihoon flinched but overall did nothing. “Damn, is there anything else broken?” 

“Beside the nose, no, but I’ll be sore as fuck tomorrow.” 

“Ah, nothing a little ice and some rest can’t fix, I can make the chicken bake you and Soonyoung like.”

Chan nudged Vernon with his elbow, snickering. “We should get beat up more so Mouse can take care of us.”

Whipping her head around, she sent him a glare. “Don’t you dare.” 

“Your skirt is short.” Joshua commented, grabbing his longer coat and handing it to her. “Put this on.” 

“Ah~ She is fine~” Jeonghan snickered, wrapping an arm around her waist, placing a kiss to her cheek, eyeing Seungcheol. “Sorry for ruining your night~” 

Seungcheol rolled his eyes, moving towards Jihoon to look at the injuries to his face, then to Soonyoung who gave a tired smile, and lastly to Wonwoo. “Can you at least tell me if all of you won your stupid ass fights?” 

“I almost got pinched in the last round but the dude broke my nose and I got pissed so I dropped him.” 

“Gotta stop toying with him.” Mingyu hummed, giving Jihoon a gentle pat to the back. “Soonyoung did great until the guy slammed him into the floor. He managed to get him in an armbar before his opponent tapped out.” 

“What about you?” Seungcheol looked to Wonwoo once more, raising a brow. 

Removing the ice pack, Wonwoo’s eye was a little swollen, definitely going to be bruised more the next day. He couldn’t help the smirk spreading on his lips before talking again. “Cocky asshole that swung before the bell and I dropped him in under a minute.” 

“Good.” Seungcheol broke into a smile, shaking his head. “Alright, load up, come on. We should get them home before they can barely move tomorrow.” 

“Can someone drop me home and I can grab my car?” Mouse leaned against Jeonghan, her head resting comfortably on his shoulder. Joshua’s jacket was folded in her arms, at least covering some of the front of her legs. 

Jeonghan scoffed, the hand he had on her waist tightening some. “Why the hell would we if you can just ride with one of us?”

“Ew, fuck off, no flirting in front of everyone. My poor eyes.” Chan gagged, covering his eyes dramatically with both hands. “They are burning out of my skull.” 

“It’s watching your best friend get with your brother.” Seokmin gagged as well, bringing his hands to his throat to choke himself. “End me.” 

“We could make this so much worse.” Mouse lifted her head, looking up to him with a smirk wide on her face. 

“Do not!” The choirs rang through the warehouse before a following rumble of laughter layered together.

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Tag List:

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[late-to-the-party-81]

Power Play - Chapter 1

AN: And here is Week 5 of HBS and the start of a new multi-chapter fic, this one a Bucky x Reader story, cos I like to give you all some variety. This also strays into Soft!Dark! Territory, cos, you know… Mob! Bucky. Thanks @buckybarnesevents for the inspo.

I’ve chosen the prompt When I first met you... Electricity

Beta’d by @buckysbarne

Dividers by @firefly-graphics and banner by me. Pictures of Seb courtesy of https://sebastian-stan.com/

Master list | Hot Bucky Summer Master list

Summary: Waking up in a mobster’s house the morning after the night before was not how this was supposed to go…

Relationship: Mob! Bucky x Undercover Agent! Reader

WC: 2.3k

CW: Kidnap, Manipulation, Soft!Dark! Bucky, Alcohol consumption, Reader briefly believes Bucky will force her against her will (use of R word once), kissing, Russian Pet names as mangled by Google translate (all variations of sweetheart/darling except Pchelka, which is explained.)

Your head was foggy and your mouth grainy as you opened your eyes, blinking against the harshness of the late morning sun coming through the window.

“Good morning, Pchelka.” Strong fingers gripping your chin and pinching your jaw harshly, brought you out of your stupor, and you looked up at the owner of the gravelly voice. 

“Did you sleep well? I slept like a log. I’m going to say that it was because of the connection we made last night.” He chuckled darkly. “Did you feel it, sladkiy? The electricity when I first took your hand in mine? Because I did.” His body shivered at the memory, and you felt a fission of fear travel down your spine.

His eyes were blue - cool and chilling - and you wished you were looking at them under different circumstances. Wished you were here with him under different circumstances, because although he was your enemy, you weren’t blind.

James Buchanan ‘Bucky’ Barnes. Revered head of the New York Mob, and so sinfully handsome it was no wonder that men and women swooned at his feet.

“Are you going to answer me, Pchelka?”

His brow was arched, amusement still playing at his lips. Challenging you to defy him.

“I’m not your ‘little bee’. And I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He let your face go with a snort that told you that he knew you were lying. Because you were. How could you not have felt it, when your slim hand had been completely engulfed by his when you’d been introduced? When he’d raised your hand, gently turning it to press a kiss to the fluttering vein in your wrist.

You should have known then that you were fucked. Should have called the whole thing off and got out of there. 

But no. You’d decided that you had to stay - had to pull your big girl pants up, get a hold of yourself and prove to everyone else that you were capable of carrying out this mission. You wondered if your colleagues, your fellow agents, were trying to actually rescue you, or were they laughing at your ineptitude?

Barnes crossed to the far side of the room, a classic dark wood office with floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with leather-bound tomes. Turkish wool rugs covered the wooden floor that matched all of the furniture. He picked up a decanter, poured a hefty measure of amber liquid into a matching tumbler and brought it up to his lips. You didn’t even realise that you were watching him that intently until he smirked.

He walked back over to you, power and grace showing with every move of his body. He sank into a crouch before you, dipped his finger into the alcohol and then painted it over your lips. Instinctually you licked it away, and the whisky burned on your tongue.

“They think you’re dead, by the way.” That got your attention, making you halt with your mouth part open, tongue tip still midway through catching the errant drops he’d applied. His finger returned to the glass, then back to your lips once again as you sat, stock still. 

A sudden anger burned through you, and you tried to leap to your feet, but you hadn’t counted on the bonds that tied you to the chair. You struggled against them, hands curling into fists and feet ineffectually kicking as you let out a wail of frustration.

“Tsk tsk.” Barnes admonished you for your reaction as he stood and backed up to rest against the edge of his, no doubt antique, desk. “And here I was thinking you’d be more grateful. If you’d continued in that job you’d have died of boredom, milyy. Just think. I’ve actually saved you.” He took another sip of his drink, observing you and you wanted to shrink under his gaze - you had to look a mess.

Your evening gown, which had looked stunning on you when you’d gotten ready for this op, was now torn and filthy. Your nail polish was chipped, a couple of the nails torn, and no doubt your makeup was smeared across your face. Somewhere along the line, you’d lost your shoes, or had they been taken from you? Admittedly a lot of it was a blur and you’d also been unconscious for some time, only waking up once you were here, tied to this chair, a smirking Barnes looking down on you.

Conversely, he looked so put together it should be illegal. Last night he’d smouldered in a dinner suit, but this morning he exuded power and danger. His shirt was black, with two opened buttons, showing off the silver rope chain around his neck. His suit jacket and pants were also black but covered with a wide pinstriped check. He had a large signet ring on the pinky of his left hand, and silver and black onyx ring on the adjacent ring finger, and it was hard to take your eyes off them. His pants were tight across his crotch, leaving little to the imagination, and he’d finished off his outfit with a pair of patent black boots and a pair of blue-tinted sunglasses, perched on his head. In a nutshell, he was sex personified and you needed to get your head back in the game before you did something you’d regret.

“You’re deluded, you know that?”

“Focused, Pchelka. Not deluded. I didn’t get where I am now without knowing what I wanted and taking it. And I want you. I think you want me too.”

It was your turn to snort, and you didn’t bother to hide your derision. “In your dreams!”

He was back in front of you in an instant, his beringed fingers curling into the leather chair back, his face millimetres from your own.

“I don’t think I imagined how you trembled when you were in my arms, lyubimyy. When I led you around the dance floor and you felt as though you were made to fit in my embrace. I don’t think I imagined how you sighed and leaned against me as I spoke soft words in your ears.”

Heat burned your cheeks and you tried for some bravado.

“All an act, I assure you. As you know, you were my mark.”

His mouth broke into a feral grin and, for the first time, you were worried. Worried about what he had in store for you… and worried that you might like it.

“You keep telling yourself that. I don’t think you’ll be able to maintain that lie when you’re screaming my name later.”

“I didn’t know your name was Rapist.”

He moved one hand from the back of the chair to rest at the base of your throat, fingers applying just enough pressure to remind you who was in control here.

“Don’t insult both of us, Pchelka. When I take you, you will welcome it. Want it. You will be begging me to make you mine. And I think it will happen sooner than you think.” His voice was a hypnotic whisper, and you could feel yourself spiralling, enchanted by the power that he exuded from every pore, so when he kissed you, you were unprepared.

Barnes used the thumb of the hand he had around your neck to tip your chin up. His pink, sinful lips demanded entry efficiently and you were powerless to resist. His mouth explored yours, tongues tangling, and when he teasingly broke the kiss you were horrified to find that you were whimpering.

Your captor just continued to smile, animalistic and condescending.

“Electric, as I said. You betray yourself without even meaning too. It’s a good thing that I’m a nice man, and I’m not torturing you for information. You wouldn’t last five minutes.”

Feelings of anger, shame and embarrassment rose within you. He was right, god damn it. You weren’t cut out for this work. You knew it. He knew it. The people you worked with knew it. Backroom paper shuffling was where you excelled, but there was no way you could’ve turned down the opportunity for undercover work, because success would have meant a level of recognition and respect that you could never have hoped, to gain otherwise, even if the op was a classic, and somewhat demeaning, honey-trap. 

You closed your eyes and willed the tears not to fall.

“Please, Mr Barnes. Just let me go. I don’t know anything. Nothing has happened here that can’t be forgotten.”

“Call me Bucky, lyubimaya. And I don’t want to let you go, or forget you. Stay here with me. Leave those narrow-minded idiots you work for. I would treat you with the respect you deserve. And you wouldn’t just be on my arm and in my bed, you would be by my side. You have useful skills that shouldn’t be wasted.”

Your eyes snapped back open and looked at him in surprise and confusion. “What do you mean?”

Barnes - Bucky - ran the knuckles of his left hand down your cheek, the coldness of his rings a balm to your heated flesh. Tattoos peeked out from under his sleeve, twisting and winding down his skin, and onto his fingers. Vines and flowers and thorns. Letters of the Cyrillic alphabet.

“You think that I would bring you here, to the seat of my power if I didn’t already know every… little… thing… about you? I know what your role was before you started this ill-advised op. I know where you lived. I know what cereal you like for breakfast and what your regular coffee order is. You’re always flitting too and fro, concentrating on work. Busy as a bee.”

You weren’t sure why you weren’t shocked, but you asked him all the same. “There’s a mole inside my unit?”

“Of course, Pchelka. There’s always a mole. Always someone who is more than willing to trade loyalty for power and money, or someone who is so desperate that they can be easily persuaded. Desperate people do desperate things, and tell themselves they aren’t really the bad ones, it’s just their circumstances.”

Both his hands had now settled on your waist, the size of them making you feel smaller than you often thought of yourself. Bucky himself was still on his knees, between your bound, spread legs, his torso virtually pressed against your inner thighs. You absently noticed that the knife you’d placed in a thigh holder was missing. No doubt Bucky or his men had found it almost straight away once you’d been rendered unconscious. You hoped it had been the man in front of you - the idea of being touched in such an intimate place by someone other than him was abhorrent. A part of you wondered why you didn’t think that him touching you was also horrifying.

“And which one do you think I am? Disloyal or desperate?” You arched your brow, trying to ignore the way his fingers were branding you through the satin of your dress.

“You, milyy, are a secret third thing. You are an intelligent woman, who makes decisions based on all the information available. It’s not disloyalty if you’ve been betrayed first. It’s also not desperation that would make you join me if I have no pressure point - no sick aunt, no cousin in debt to a loan shark, that sort of thing. If you joined me it would be because you wanted to. Because you saw the merits of such an action.”

You had to admit, his offer was tempting. You hated your job and you hated your co-workers. It was still a ‘boy’s club’ and all the inclusion and diversity training in the world couldn’t counteract the toxic masculinity that the job attracted. You hated that, despite putting up with this job for so many years, you were still living in a crappy apartment with too long a commute to work.. You hated that, despite the fact you never even got around to taking your PTO, you also weren’t making any decent deposits into your savings account. Okay, you weren’t quite living paycheck to paycheck, but you were by no means where you thought you’d be by now. 

The long hours also meant little time to socialise, and the friends you’d once had, had all dropped away one by one as you’d cancelled one social engagement after another. This also meant that your love life was, as the song goes, DOA, and after a while, all the toys in the world failed to satisfy. Which also meant that the feeling of soft, expensive wool, encasing a warm, hard body, rubbing against your inner thighs was upsetting your equilibrium quite a bit.

Then, as if he knew exactly what he was doing to you, his face dipped closer again, his breath, tinged with whisky, fanning over you.

“Imagine how it would feel, Pchelka. The power. The pleasure. You’d want for nothing. Every need would be met. Every whim indulged.”

It was your turn to shiver and as your eyes fluttered closed again you heard him chuckle.

“You want it, don’t you. You want me and everything I can give you. It’s okay to want those things. I want things as well. I want you, lyubimyy. I’ve waited a long time for a Queen.” 

“You don’t know me…” Your denial was whispered, and even you didn’t believe what you’d said.

“But I do. I know exactly what you need...”

His lips captured yours once more, but this time you didn’t even pretend not to respond. You drank him in as though he would quench your thirst and you only remembered your bonds again when your body strained against them. Your knees managed to dig into his waist though, and you felt him smile against your lips.

His hands slid from your waist, to one wrist and then the other, freeing them. You threw your arms around his neck, not even trying to get away. In any case, your ankles were still bound.

Your fingers brushed over the short hair on the sides and back of his head, the strands prickling your skin. His own hands were now cupping your face as he continued to kiss you, and you knew what was going to happen. You were falling under his spell.

Chapter 2

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[tokiro07]

Undead Unluck ch.223 thoughts

[Well...That Could Mean Anything...]

(Contents: immediate reactions - cancelation scare/renewed hope; speculation - story progression)

Please Say "Sike"

...I guess I should've seen that coming

If they can skip the three months leading up to the Quests, why not skip the month of the Quests?

Granted, my assumption was that the Master Rules wanted to fight and defeat the Union, that they were willing to interfere with their training but not to actually cheat at the Quests themselves, which seems to have been an accurate assumption to make

The fact that even Soul objected, demanding an explanation and even going so far as to attack Luna in retaliation, explicitly tells us that nobody involved wanted this outcome

The question this begs, though, is if Tozuka wanted this outcome

The overwhelming response to this chapter was definitely an anxious one. Folks were already super nervous because UU's been in the back of the magazine for the last few weeks while also being notably absent from a recent list of profitable manga that Shueisha put out recently, so seeing this chapter explicitly skip a bunch of content that had been built up for the last year or so was troubling to say the least

However! It also didn't take long for the fanbase to reevaluate the purpose of this direction

Hold the Line!

As Luna notes, Andy held off all ten Master Rules for eons. Of course she lost faith in them! Hell, Andy bodied Sick in less than a minute, and what few members of the Union that Language took out came back - it's pretty easy to see how the remaining fights were going to go, both from Luna's perspective and ours

And that's boring

While we all wanted to see the cast fight their natural enemies and learn more about themselves, awakening their souls and developing new ways to use their Rules, the truth is that was going to become formulaic sooner or later. Language's ambush on Nico and Ichico was a great way to keep us on our toes, but unless all of the Master Rules dropped in on the Roundtable Room at once, there wasn't really a good way to keep things fresh without it feeling like they were on a conveyer belt

There's also the fact that Ragnarok needs to be triggered by failure, so much like with the Four Seasons, the Union was either inevitably going to fail at beating one of the Master Rules or beating them was going to trigger Ragnarok anyway - both of which are outcomes to Quests that we've already seen. The Quests getting autoskipped though? That's a fun twist on the established pass option while also raising the stakes and giving both the cast and audience a scare

If UU weren't having such a rough go in the real world, we'd all be seeing this scene as a super cool twist, and I think that's what Tozuka intended it to be, but because we have reason to fear for its future, we can't help but take it as a bad sign

While Sun basically eating the Master Rules and beginning his assault on the Union certainly looks like a sign of the end, though, I think that this is meant to be the Master Rules all storming the Union at once like I suggested

Two Cakes

Many of you likely noticed that the rings that surround Sun have orbs with Roman numerals engraved on them, corresponding to the ranks of the Master Rules. This implies that the Master Rules haven't been absorbed, but rather sealed

If the Master Rules are still alive, they can still be battled, and likely will need to be defeated to weaken Sun. Using what was learned from the battle against Seal, the Union will likely use their souls to enter the orbs, giving us all of the match-ups and character development that we wanted to see while also moving at the breakneck pace that Tozuka seems to be so fond of

I imagine that someone may need to stay outside to hold off Sun while everyone's souls are separated from their bodies (if that's even an issue), so that will likely be Andy and Fuuko's job since they're ostensibly at their peak already and don't need any further development aside from the finale to their stories, though I could also see this being Chikara's big moment, holding off Sun all by himself while everyone else fights

All that said, this doesn't necessarily mean that we'll have the year and a half run that I projected last week; if Tozuka really is being forced to speedrun the story, it's possible that each Master Rule fight will only be one chapter and serve as a capstone for a different character/set of characters' arcs, but even then, it's extremely likely that the intention is to at least last until the next round of new manga, which will coincide with UU's fifth anniversary

Skipping the off weeks for Christmas and New Years, this gives us, at a conservative estimate, 16 more chapters to work with

To-Do List

Considering the number of events that still need to happen, I think 16 chapters could feasibly work if it looks a little something like this:

Establishing the formula - Chikara's capstone

Sick - capstone for Rip/Latla

Time - capstone for Shen/Mui and likely Feng

Justice - awakening of Unjustice/capstone for Julia?

War - capstone for Billy/Tatiana

Luck - likely a moment for Fuuko, though not her capstone

Change - capstone for Gina(+Sean?)

Death - likely a moment for Andy, not his capstone

Soul - group effort?

Sun - group effort, Ruin returns

Sun pt. 2 - capstone for Ruin

Sun pt. 3 - capstone for the Union

Final boss - Luna

The Heart

Luna defeated - capstone for Andy and Fuuko

Epilogue

This definitely would be a bit rushed, and I'd much rather each fight get a lot more time to breathe, but the main point I'm trying to make here is that it isn't impossible to tell a complete and satisfying story with the time remaining so long as the focus is on completing the character arcs of the cast members that have been established to be the most salient this entire time rather than trying to give everyone a slice of the pie

Tozuka's already made it clear that not every cast member is created equal, which is an unfortunate necessity in an ensemble cast that's under the constant threat of axe-ecution by Jump's editorial staff, so if things need to be pared down, this seems like a reasonable way to do it in my opinion, though again this could easily be doubled or even tripled depending on how badly Shueisha wants the series to still be producing content to coincide with the Winter special episode or possible season 2

Don't take this list at face value, though - remember, I'm just a reader, and while I've been right every now and again, I've also been wrong much more often, so my projected timeline is almost certainly off-base. I just hope it's wrong in the right direction!

Hell, my entire premise of needing to fight the Master Rules in the first place might be wrong! Not in the sense that they won't be present in the story anymore, but more in the sense that they won't be antagonists anymore

The Enemy of My Enemy

If you'll recall, the way that Andy escaped from Seal wasn't by taking down all of the Rules that Seal captured - it was by convincing them to fight back. With Luna having betrayed her creations and manipulated her counterpart, it really doesn't take much stretching of the imagination to see how the Master Rules might have a bit of a bone to pick with her

Therefore, instead of having a dedicated battle against each Master Rule, it's equally likely that there'll be a dedicated battle with each of them. This would let each of them show off their powers and personalities while also letting us build up the tension against Sun without simply rehashing the previous Ragnarok

More importantly, though, this would solidify one of the most major themes of the story: union. Every human enemy save for Ruin has become an ally, and we've had plenty of situations where UMAs have gone against God's orders and allied themselves with humanity, so having the most human UMAs do the same would be the perfect way to wrap up that narrative throughline

However, that again is still pretty predictable, almost rote with how the story has progressed so far, so I still expect one more wrinkle to come out of left field, regardless of how many chapters we have left:

The Union will lose

Failstate

The biggest question mark hanging over this entire series, at least for me, is what Sun and Luna's goals are

What is the world supposed to look like after the game ends? If Luna loses the bet and humanity can't reach the Gods, what's meant to happen? Will humanity be wiped out, will the Rules become harsher on them, what?

To truly understand the weight of the threat, of what the Union is trying to prevent, we need to be shown at least a glimpse of it, so even if Time or Soul or the Heart or whoever will immediately undo the damage, the Union needs to see what they're fighting for

Bonus points if that's the moment that reforms Ruin - that he sees how much worse everything is with humanity's loss, how ruined the world will be, and he decides then and there that he needs to ensure it remains unruined

Again, though, Tozuka has always proven to be a few steps ahead of me, so even if I have the basic ideas, the final product surely won't look much of anything like what I'm suggesting, and will surely be better than anything I can imagine

Looking Forward

In a perfect world, Tozuka would be able to take as much time as he wants to flesh out every single character and backstory and battle to his heart's content, but that's just wishful thinking. The undeniable truth is that Tozuka is working in the most cutthroat company in an already cutthroat industry, so naturally not everything can or will go to plan

However, even under those conditions, Tozuka has managed to tell a consistently engaging and beautiful story that has served as an inspiration to many of us for the past nearly five years. As I've said a thousand times now, we need to have faith that Tozuka is going to continue to do his best to deliver a story that we'll love, even if we don't agree with every choice he makes for it

He certainly doesn't want us to read each chapter filled with fear and trepidation; he wants us to read them with joy and wonder, like we always have! Whether Tozuka decided that this was the best time to end it or Jump forced it on him, whether UU will last for four more months or four more years, the single most important thing that we can do is enjoy what Tozuka has to offer. That's all he's ever wanted from us, and it's what this series has taught me to do

So come on, you do it too:

Until next time, let's enjoy life!

[peaches2217]

Untarnished

Chapter 2 (TW: Brief but graphic descriptions of burn injuries)

AO3 Link | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

~~~

Bright lights. Distant beeping. Something soft beneath her head, silky and downy and pleasantly cool. Peach’s first conscious thought was a timid prayer of gratitude. She was dead, or she was dreaming a new and unfamiliar dream; both prospects filled her with a peace deeper than she’d felt in months.

Dead, she decided when she opened her eyes and found Toadsworth at her bedside. The strain of her abduction and taking charge of the kingdom in her absence must have killed him. The thought didn’t bring her as much sadness as she felt it should have, because her slender hand in his small, wrinkled hands felt just as it had in life, and fat tears of joy and relief rolled down his round cheeks and dripped from the tips of his mustache, and if only she had the energy, she would have cried too.

No — dreaming, she amended when Toadette joined him. Her lady-in-waiting was still far too healthy and young and feisty to have dropped dead suddenly, unless by some great coincidence. Peach was laying at a slight angle, her legs straight out but her upper body inclined; Toadette climbed up into her lap (which Toadsworth objected to vehemently, but his protests, naturally, went unheard) and threw her arms around her neck, and suddenly she was crying too. Yes, this was certainly a dream. Since when did Toadette cry?

“I made wishes for your safety every single day!” she said between hiccuping sobs. “And I kept your room dusted and aired it out every day and had the maids change the bedding every week because I knew you’d be coming home! But I’m— oh Peach Pit I’m so happy you’re alive!”

Peach's throat suddenly felt tight, almost suffocating. She’d never dreamed about going home. In her dreams, she simply hadn’t been abducted to begin with, or else her abduction was treated as a memory so distant that it scarcely crossed her mind.

She didn’t dare let herself believe this might be real; perhaps waking up would be even harder now, and perhaps it would finally sap the last thread of hope she uselessly clung to, but for now, what was the harm in enjoying this strange dream? False happiness is still happiness, however temporary. So she let herself hug her dear friend back, and she let herself reach out and find Toadsworth’s hand once more, and she let herself feel present in their company and protected by the plush blanket tucked around her. It all felt so fuzzy and surreal and good.

And then the screaming began.

Instantly Peach’s blood froze in her veins. Her surroundings didn’t shift or go dark, as they usually did when she was startled out of a dream, and though she felt cold, everything around her remained warm. Even her illusionary Toadsworth and Toadette reacted to the sound, twisting their necks in alarmed horror in its direction — some room to the left of where Peach lay, it seemed.

By the second scream, a nagging sense of familiarity kicked in. She knew the wall she and her steward and lady-in-waiting stared at, recognized the muted pink wallpaper with white and dark pink accents. Didn’t the castle infirmary have that same wallpaper? She rarely had need to visit, lest she might have been able to place it sooner.

And she knew that voice. She couldn’t quite place it, since the cries were wordless and muffled by a layer of dressed stone, yet it made her stomach turn all the same. It was guttural, it was heart-wrenching, it was—

By the third scream, it all came flooding back.

“Y-your Highness, please—”

“Peach, hey, it’s okay, lay back down—”

“Princess, you mustn't—!”

More familiar voices surrounded Peach, voices she should have been happy to hear, but she paid them no mind. Something was holding her back. A blanket. A body. A wire taped to her hand. She winced as she ripped herself free, her feet moving independently of her mind, which assaulted her with vision after vision after terrible vision.

Mario, collapsing to the cobblestone streets of Toad Town in pure exhaustion, fate catching up to him once more. Mario, his face strained and his spine slumped but his eyes ever sure, wincing and hissing through his teeth but soldiering on anyway, stopping only to ensure that she was able to do the same. Mario, a broken heap at her feet, scorched to the point of disfigurement and motionless in a pool of his own blood.

Mario, screaming in unbearable pain, just out of her reach.

This was no dream.

Something caught her right hand just as she reached the door.

“They’re taking care of him!” Toadette cried somewhere behind her. “You’ve gotta let us take care of you, too!”

Some job “they’re” doing, Peach wanted to snap back. She could help him. How long had she been unconscious? Surely she had enough magic back now — she could continue mending the worst of his wounds, or she could help “them” fix him more quickly, or at the absolute least she could rearrange the receptors in his brain and make him think he wasn’t in pain. 

She tried to yank free of Toadette’s grasp, but she only held on tighter.

“I can help him.” She tried again, throwing her body forward against the much smaller girl’s weight, but it still wasn’t enough. “Just let me help him, and then I’ll return.” 

Then her left hand was seized, just as she tried reaching for the door. “You’re not helping anyone in this state.” Toadessa, head of the castle’s medical staff. She didn’t actively try pulling Peach back as Toadette did, but she remained firmly planted and unmoving. Something hot burned in Peach’s chest and throat, bitter like bile, and though the room was beginning to spin and her legs were already shaking, she tried once more to throw herself forward.

“Let me help him!” she cried. “Please!” She could have easily ordered them to let her go; she was their Princess, and no matter how they wished to help her, her word was still law. But this never crossed her mind. Those agonized shrieks drowned out every last rational thought, and all she could muster were futile efforts to break free and pleas that went unheeded.

Two Toads. It took all of two Toads to hold her back. One more effort was all her body could take before it failed her, and she fell to the infirmary floor with a startled yelp.

By the time she went slack, the screaming stopped.

All Peach could hear now was panicked murmurs behind her and the sound of her own breath, gasping and rapid. Air came too quickly for her lungs to absorb any oxygen. Her hyperventilation only exacerbated her dizziness, and that in turn nauseated her beyond measure, yet she knew vomiting would be of no use, because there wasn’t even anything in her stomach.

Silence rang in her ears. The silence was even more oppressive than the screaming. At least if Mario was screaming, she knew that he was alive.

Not that she could help him anyway. Not if she couldn’t even breathe properly. Not if it only took two Toads to hold her back.

“Your Highness…”

Her hands remained seized, as though she might actually try to escape again. As though she could.

The small but strong hands holding her back were real. The chill where stark tiles met bare skin was real. Mario’s screams, and then his silence, were real. 

Peach’s gasps gave way easily to sobs, yet she couldn’t even do that properly; they came in quiet, punctuated whines, the kinds of sounds an injured animal might emit. She doubled over there on the floor, making her best effort to fold in on herself to stave off the cold and the wooziness and the sheer helplessness that threatened to crush her alive. 

If only it would.

~~~

Peach still shivered as she stood beneath a rain of hot water. Her favorite soap had been brought to her, and while she wanted to revel in this small luxury, its flowery fragrance just made her dizzy. The soap also helped her identify every last scratch and sore on her body, burning with white-hot heat where it touched broken skin, and she wasn't quite sure if she hated the sensation or if she was grateful for it. Whatever the case, she took slow and deep breaths to refamiliarize herself with the way she used to smell, taking care to keep her eyes closed as she scrubbed off.

The lights were just as bright in the infirmary washrooms as they were in the resting rooms. Glimpsing her reflection had been bad enough. She couldn’t bear to look at herself any longer than necessary.

She was even worse off than she’d expected to be. In the first month of her captivity, she had done her best to spread out the single daily meal she was given, eat it slowly over the course of several hours. As despair slowly claimed her, she found she couldn’t even finish her meals at all, and there were days when she refused food outright in favor of curling up on her cot and letting gentler daydreams sustain her. By the time Mario reached her, her skin hugged the bones in her hands closely, and the dress that had been tailored to fit her perfectly hung loosely from her figure. So she had expected to look in the mirror and find herself frailer and paler. Even so, she hadn’t recognized the sickly and bruised figure that stared at her with dull, sunken eyes.

Feeble and filthy and poignantly helpless. She loathed to think that might be Mario’s final image of her.

Another shiver tore through her body. No, that wasn’t the case. He was alive. He was alive and if he was going to die, it wouldn't happen while she bathed. Toadessa had graciously checked and reported back to Peach, and she confirmed his relative well-being with such assurance that she was either telling the truth, or she had suddenly become a spectacular liar. Peach couldn’t afford the energy to suspect.

He was hurt. But he was alive. For now, that was enough.

Toadette was waiting for her when the water shut off, and Peach graciously accepted the oversized, fluffy towel she offered, eager to trap as much of the water and steam’s residual heat as possible. It swallowed her whole while careful fingers worked through her tangled hair, yet she shivered anyway. Still so cold. Why was she still so cold?

The nightgown she donned once her hair was presentable was only slightly better. It too hung from her more loosely than she was used to, but the feel of laundered silk against clean skin made the cold a touch more bearable.

“You oughta have a hot bowl of soup waiting for you by now,” Toadette said from where she knelt on the floor, wrapping the open sores on Peach’s feet in pillowy gauze. Her usually energetic timbre was far quieter, her bright smile more nervous. The brief glimpse Peach caught of her black eyes as she sat back to asses her work betrayed even more unshed tears.

Peach couldn’t blame her. She could hardly stand to look at herself. Toadette had no choice. She tried to thank her, or at least apologize, but the words wouldn't come.

She wasn’t hungry, somehow. Perhaps she had grown too accustomed to starvation. Perhaps she would feel differently in a moment’s time, when presented with her first hot meal in three months. She would at least make an effort, she decided, because seeing her eat would lift Toadsworth’s spirits. She owed him that much after the hell she had put him through.

But it wasn’t Toadsworth that awaited her when she was led back into her room. A much taller figure sat hunched over on the leather loveseat against the opposite wall, his knee bouncing frantically, his cap dangling in his hand by the brim; he looked up when he heard Peach, and for a moment she could do nothing but hold his eyes and hold her breath.

“Princess…!” A smile spread across his face, and he slapped his cap back on his head and held his arms out as he stood, and Peach found herself rushing into those arms before her legs could fail her again.

Luigi’s hugs were light but sturdy, his embrace a beacon of security in uncertain times. The embrace he welcomed her into now was no different, solid and gentle and warm, and for the first time, Peach truly felt that she was home.

“Oh, santo cielo!” he whispered into her shoulder. “Per fortuna stai bene…!”

Peach inhaled sharply. No more tears. She was already so sick of crying.

He never pulled away fully. He kept his hands on her shoulders even as their hug ended, beaming at her through misty eyes. “Th-the doctors say you’ll need to eat soup, soup, and more soup for the time being, but lucky for you, Mama knew a thousand ways to make a good soup! So we’re gonna keep ya well-fed, yeah? You’ll be feeling like yourself again in no time!”

He looked… disheveled, in a word. His neatly-styled mustache wasn’t neatly styled at all, fraying at the tips into a series of split ends, and the hair on his head didn’t look much neater. But most obvious were his eyes. The skin beneath them was dark, and his upper eyelids drooped as he spoke, as if he was struggling to keep them open. Seeing him in such disarray made that feeling of home a bit more distant than before.

It made perfect sense for him to be in such a state, Peach supposed. Between a dear friend being kidnapped and his brother…

Wait. Why was he here?

“What about Mario?” She finished her thought aloud. “Where is he? Is he alright? Has he eaten yet?”

“Oh, Peach Pit,” she heard Toadette grumble not far away. Peach couldn’t bring herself to be annoyed, not when she knew how deeply her friend worried for her, but it was still well within her rights to inquire about his health, and she had half a mind to say as much—

“No, no,” Luigi said quickly, leaning sideways so he could speak over her shoulder, “it’s okay! We'll get her fed! Gotta make sure she's comfortable first too.” Then his attention was back on Peach, and he dropped one hand but still kept a point of contact on her shoulder, and Luigi was notoriously squeamish when it came to extended periods of physical contact… 

The first stirrings of dread came alive within her, dark and heavy.

But Luigi’s face remained cheerful, and though his smile softened, it wasn’t sad. “He’s out cold right now. The doctors gave him the good stuff, so he’ll be out for a while, but I’ll bet the first thing he asks for when he wakes up is a big plate of carbonara, and we’ll take care of that! So don’t you worry.”

The corners of his eyes creased, and not just from his smile. These reassurances were as much for his own sake as for Peach’s. Suddenly her tongue felt woolen in her mouth.

“May I see him?” she somehow managed.

Luigi didn’t break from her gaze to seek Toadette or Toadessa or anyone else who might have been in the room’s approval. He nodded without hesitation. “O-of course. Of course.”

She tried not to hold her breath as she was led to the next room over, focusing on her breath and the grounding sting of each footstep. Growing faint or passing out wouldn’t improve his condition.

Not that his condition could get much worse, she realized upon seeing him.

He’d been stripped and washed at some point, but that still didn’t give Peach much to look at. Whatever wasn’t covered with a blanket was swaddled in gauze. Layer upon layer wrapped across his chest and arms and hands, around his midsection, over his shoulders, and their sterile white made the angry red splotches and scratches that peeked from beneath them look that much more painful.

All she could see in full was his face. Aside from a wrap around his head, partially covered by his hair, it remained unobscured. And the absence of soot and dried blood gave Peach a good idea of what the rest of him looked like: wrecked, his skin dark with bruises or else bright with first- and second-degree burns.

In spite of this, he looked… peaceful. His expression read as neutral and his mouth hung loosely open, the gradual rise and fall of his chest assuring Peach that he was breathing. It was even more obvious in this state that he hadn’t touched a razor in days, if not weeks; the stubble on his cheeks and chin had grown out enough that it looked almost like a proper beard. He looked handsome, even now.

Peach exhaled shakily. The picture of serenity on the brink of death. She wanted so badly to take his hand in hers, yet she feared to find it cold to the touch. She feared for the first time that a single touch might break him.

“It looks a lot worse than it is,” she heard Luigi assure beside her. “You shoulda seen him after this scrap he got into with Scapelli back in high school, or the first couple times he tried parkouring through an active construction zone. He didn’t look much better then than he does now!”  

Peach tore her eyes from one unnerving sight to set them upon another. There was concern in Luigi’s tired eyes, concern and fear and uncertainty, and his shoulders slumped under the weight of those burdens. Yet his voice was friendly, his smile kind, and he regarded her with every bit as much fondness as always.

Why? He should hate her. It was for her sake that Mario was like this in the first place. And if he didn’t pull through…

Her vision went unfocused, and she ducked her head and squeezed her eyes shut, as if that alone could stop the guilt that overtook her, or better yet, make her invisible. One less pitiful sight Luigi would be forced to endure. Hadn’t she already put him through enough?

“Hey.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and drew her close, and she selfishly accepted his embrace, slumping against him. “Hey, h-he’s gonna be okie-dokie, Princess, you know that! He’s a tough cookie. This is hardly all it’s gonna take to keep him down.”

She wanted to believe him. She wanted so desperately to believe him. But she’d never heard Mario scream like she had today. “He sounded like he was in tremendous pain.” She could barely utter the thought above a whisper.

A pause.

“Well... y-you know how Mario is with doctors,” Luigi eventually answered. “He can get the stuffing beat outta him and walk away just fine, but the second a doctor touches him it’s ‘Oh, the pain! The agony! Mamma mia, make it stop!’” And he laughed, just genuinely enough to fool anyone else, but not well enough to fool her. 

The remnants of a smile still lingered on his lips when she found the nerve to look at him again. How could he smile through all of this? How could he smile at her, the one responsible for his brother's potential demise?

“...They put something really strong on the worst of his, uh… everything,” he finally confessed. “Cleaned ‘em real good then slathered ‘em in some mix of Mushroom tonic and crushed Flowers and…” He laughed again, even less convincing than the first time. “The anesthetics had kicked in just enough to make him kinda loopy, but not enough to knock him out. I’ll bet it wasn’t nearly as bad as he thought. He probably just panicked.”

Or he was well enough out of it that he couldn’t hide how badly he hurt any longer. This went unspoken, but the thought hung heavy in the air above them nonetheless. Peach’s mind conjured up a disturbing image: Mario thrashing in agony, his brother pinning him down so the doctors could work, meeting his cries with reassurances stuttered in their shared tongue.

She did her best to force the image from her mind, replace it with the image of Mario resting peacefully before her. She didn’t need to know any more than she already knew. What mattered was the here and now, and here and now, he was alright.

“...I honestly thought it was gonna be a lot worse.” Luigi’s voice was quiet, the slightest bit slurred with exhaustion. “I’m just… happy he’s okay, for now.”

Mario, hurt but clean and on the mend, dozing restfully beneath comfortable sheets— Mario, his face melted and blistering, charred skin sloughing from every exposed plane and floating atop the viscous scarlet that flowed without end—

Peach balled her hands into fists and squeezed until her arms trembled from the force. She had put the younger brother through enough heartache. She alone would bear the truth. It had been worse. So, so much worse. Getting him to the state he was in now — getting him home alive, if only barely — had nearly killed her twice over.

And until she saw him back on his feet, she would continue to wish she had succeeded in giving her life to him. At least then his recovery would be guaranteed.

It should have been her. Why wasn't it her?

Luigi jostled her out of her ruminations, letting go of her shoulders to clap a hand gently against her back.

“How about this: we let him rest, you get some rest too, and I'll come get you when he wakes up. Sound good?"

Peach thought to protest, but she knew any objections would be pointless. Denying herself the chance to heal wouldn't help Mario any faster. She nodded in reluctant agreement, an action which Luigi mirrored.

“Then let's get you some’a that soup, yeah? Toadsworth will have my head mounted on the wall if I let you starve. For that matter, I don’t think Mario would be much happier.”

A new image cut through the morbid memories and visions that weighed heavy in Peach's mind: Toadsworth, chasing a screaming Luigi through the corridors of the castle with a halberd twice his weight and three times his height, a scuffed-up but otherwise healthy Mario looking on from a doorway in some mix of exasperation and amusement.

For the first time since awakening, laughter bubbled in Peach’s chest, fleeting but joyously light.

“‘Ey,” Luigi cheered, his own expression perking up, “there’s a smile! Oh, it’s so good to see you smile again, Princess! C'mon.”

She let her muscles loosen as he led her back towards the door, already prattling on about the hearty tomato soup waiting for her, and his newfound pep made her feel just a bit less heavy. No, martyrdom would benefit no one. To let herself curl up and wish for death, no matter the reasoning, would be to spit in the face of all that Mario had fought so hard for. All that he had nearly died for, too.

Taking one last glance at him as she left the room, she let herself believe for the time being that everything had worked out exactly as it needed to.

As it stood now, they both held a fighting chance for normalcy. Though Peach would have happily given her life for his, she much preferred the thought of them both living, rediscovering their own normals side-by-side, reveling in all of life’s little pleasures together. And if that was selfish of her, well, maybe she could afford to be a bit selfish for now.

~~~

Sleep eluded Peach, which she counted as both a blessing and a curse.

She was tired, so utterly tired, and yet she couldn’t get comfortable. The lights in her room were dimmed, but not turned out entirely for the sake of sporadic nurse visits, confusing her already ruined circadian rhythm. She hadn’t struggled to eat as much as she feared she would; the soup she’d been promised was tangy and sweet and the slightest bit acidic, and she’d scarfed it down while Luigi and a slightly more upbeat Toadette entertained her with lighthearted stories. They’d even managed to draw a few more laughs out of her.

But now her belly felt uncomfortably heavy, and the silence felt heavier still. And she was still so cold. Laying on her back, she couldn’t breathe properly, not helped by her constant shivering. Laying on her side, she could at least pull her blankets tighter around her own huddled form, but curling into herself agitated her full stomach and nauseated her. She'd only had one meal. She didn't care to lose it.

The blessing part of this struggle came from the simple notion that she’d already slept enough. There was little to do in her dungeon but pace and brood and sleep, and she hadn’t even done much of the first two in the past several weeks. No, she decided, folding back her blankets and finding unsteady footing, there was no point tossing and turning. If she was going to remain awake, the least she could do was use her time productively.

This was how she found herself back at Mario’s side in the hour before dawn.

As she approached his bedside, she glanced over at the loveseat against the opposite wall. Luigi was sprawled on its cushions, his cap pulled over his eyes and a thin stream of drool dripping from the corner of his mouth, his legs dangling over the sofa’s arm. How many sleepless nights had he endured in these past months? The room was silent save for his soft snoring and the steady beeping of a heart monitor, and Peach intended to keep it that way. Stars knew she owed him that much at least.

Kneeling beside Mario, she hesitantly reached for his hand, steadying her breath before touching his wrist. A sigh of relief forced its way past her lips at their contact. Her fears were unfounded. He was warm.

She spent a moment tracing her fingers over the back of his hand in contemplation. The dark hair that normally covered his skin had been shaved in the name of finding a good vein for an IV drip, and a piece of medical tape beneath a thin layer of gauze held the needle in place, delivering much-needed fluids to his system. A perfect entry point. Though her magic could penetrate even covered skin easily, she found it was most potent when concentrated directly into the bloodstream. Right now, she needed as much potency as possible.

Resting her palm atop that spot, she closed her eyes and focused. Surely there was enough by now. Maybe not enough to heal, but at least enough to ease the pain, or maybe even seal up some of his lesser injuries. 

But even conjuring her magic in the first place proved a great struggle. Her muscles constricted as she called it forth, a dull ache which grew into sharp, stabbing surges, and she dug the nails of her free hand into her thigh to keep herself focused. No matter how she tried, nothing came of her efforts. She willed it forward once, once more, once again, as if dragging a barbed hook through layers of sinew; she sniffed and gasped each time, biting into her tongue to keep any further noise reigned in, and still nothing came of it.

Only once had her own magic caused her such pain: reviving her dead hero, what felt like weeks ago now. But it worked. Her pain bore fruit, and her efforts were rewarded with renewed life. Why wasn’t it working now?

The ambience of the heart monitor came into the forefront of Peach’s senses, its once-steady tone picking up in tempo and compromising her already fragile concentration. 

Her body relaxed against her own volition, and she cursed beneath her breath. Yet as oxygen poured back into her lungs, as blood flow returned to her brain, her frustration morphed into hope. Increased heart rate. If his heart was beating faster, that meant something was happening. That meant her magic was coursing through him, no matter how little, and his body was repairing itself again. Right?

With one last deep breath, she lifted her eyes to his face.

His eyes were already fixed on her.

Peach yelped out in shock before she could stop herself, slapping a hand over her mouth moments too late. That shock was reflected in Mario’s eyes, already wide when their gazes met, growing wider still as they stared one another down; the brilliant blues of his irises caught the blinking lights of assorted medical equipment, cloudy and drowsy but awake and aware.

The monitor hooked to his pulse went haywire, but its frantic beeping faded into ambiance once more.

“Hey,” he whispered. His voice was hoarse from exertion or disuse or some combination of the two, but it was his, and that single word set Peach’s pulse racing every bit as quickly.

“Hey,” she whispered back. He smiled weakly at this, and somehow, she smiled back.

Peach had never been the impulsive sort. As a politician, she made sure to consider her every move deliberately before acting, a habit that had been drilled into her while she was still in high chairs. So she wasn’t quite sure what force compelled her to climb into his bed, nor was she quite sure what force compelled him to make room for her. Whatever their reasoning, three minutes and several careful adjustments later, they laid facing one another, their heads sharing the same pillow, their bodies separated only by her gown and his blanket.

Peach knew well enough how improper this was, and still she didn’t care. Not with Mario so close, so present, so alive. The exertion of rolling onto his side and scooting a few inches back had exhausted him; with his last ounce of physical strength, he draped an arm over her side, weakly flexing it forward, as if trying to pull her closer. She would have happily met him halfway if it didn’t mean losing her line of sight. She wanted to look at him just a moment longer, just to make sure he was really here.

She drew her hand up slowly, careful not to agitate any of his numerous wounds, until at last her fingertips rested at his jawline. That seemed the safest place to touch. Perhaps the only safe place to touch for now.

Mario muttered something beneath his breath, too quiet for Peach to hear, and she feared that even this gentle touch was too much for him.

“Beg pardon?”

“Sorry about the beard,” he repeated, and though his eyes remained closed, he smirked. He was joking. He was awake and aware and alive and cracking jokes. He really was going to be okay.

Though she lay exposed above the blanket, the bitter cold she had grown begrudgingly accustomed to melted away, and warmth penetrated to her very bones.

“Actually, I quite like it,” she found the strength to tease back, and she swore she felt his skin grow hot beneath her fingers.

“Y’do?”

“Mmhm.”

“Mm. Think I should keep it?”

“I think you should do whatever you want for the rest of your life.”

He chuckled at this, deep in his chest. “I like the sound of that.”

Her touch remained light, just in case, but if his facial hair hid any additional injuries, he wasn’t showing it. He looked peaceful beneath her touch, smiling softly as she stroked her thumb along the curve of his jaw. Had he gone without food, too? His face seemed sharper, his cheeks less plump than she remembered. 

She didn’t have very long to muse on this notion. When he eventually peeked his eyes open, they pulled her back into the present moment; they were heavy with impending sleep, and the pain she feared would remain etched into them eternally was nowhere to be found. All she could see in those eyes was adoration. Adoration so strong and pure that it made her feel impossibly small yet equally unstoppable, so obvious that she wondered how she hadn’t seen it before.

Perhaps she had seen it. Perhaps she had convinced herself it was all in her imagination; perhaps she was too afraid to let herself hope that he might return her affections.

He returned her affections. He was alive, and he would be okay, and he loved her just as deeply as she loved him. The rush that overtook Peach would have easily brought her to her knees, and she thanked the stars that she was already laying down. 

Their words of mutual confirmation comprised the second of two mantras that kept Peach going, even when she was certain she could go no further, and in her fear for his life she hadn’t let herself dwell on them any further. But they’d exchanged that mantra back and forth even as their already limited energy dwindled, even when collapse and failure and death felt inevitable, filling the air between them when all other words failed: I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you…

“I love you,” Mario said now, in that same hoarse whisper as before.

Peach inhaled sharply, and suddenly the tears she’d so valiantly fought off stung at the backs of her eyes. He’d told her those three blessed words ten or twenty or fifty times in the past day, but this time was different. There was no desperation or disbelief in his voice, no heaviness of affliction or regret or uncertainty, no exhaustion holding his tongue. He said it quietly but unwaveringly, unapologetic.

How else had he said it? At multiple points in their journey, he couldn’t find the strength to translate his thoughts into the common tongue, and so he would squeeze her hand and utter a pair of foreign words to her, the same two words, over and over and over.

“Ti amo,” Peach echoed now. Foreign or not, those words felt right on her tongue, effortless.

Mario’s face changed, suddenly more alert than before, and for a brief instance Peach felt cold again. Had she misremembered or misspoken? Just as quickly as he’d reacted, though, he closed his eyes and pushed his cheek deeper into the pillow, that breathtaking smile returning in full force.

“Noooo,” he whined, the syllable broken up by a breathless laugh, “don’t say that, Princess! I’m not ready to wake up yet.”

The arm draped over her flexed again, and his bright smile morphed into something darker, sadder. Something like bleak resignation.

He thought this was a dream. Nothing but a pleasant and misleading dream, perhaps one of many, just as she’d thought her own awakening to be. The first of a new wave of tears forced their way past Peach’s defense, and she swallowed thickly to rid the lump in her throat.

“Then don’t.” She obliged his nonverbal request this time, scooting closer until their bodies were flush, ducking her head beneath his chin. Warm. So present and real and warm. “Just— just sleep for now. Rest with me.”

Mario hummed, and she felt it reverberate in his throat, the vibrations and unshaven scruff tickling her cheek. “Will you… be here?” he managed after a moment. “When I wake up?”

Peach sniffled. He no longer smelled of burnt skin and fresh blood. Medicinal salve filled her olfactory senses now, sharp and clean. “They’ll have to drag me out kicking and screaming.”

This earned another laugh from her hero, her closest friend, the love of her life, and he nuzzled his chin into the crown of her head with a satisfied sigh.

They lay together in comfortable silence after this, and while Mario dozed, Peach took the opportunity to ground herself. The twangy aroma of salve; the rise and fall of his chest against hers; the weight of his arm holding her close; the beep-beep-beep of a heart monitor gone steady once more. She buried her face into a thick patch of gauze on his shoulder and let her tears flow freely, content to tremble in the safety of his embrace.

This was real. She was home. 

She was home.

[here4tripitaka]

Chapter 57: Opposite Day Tripitaka gets violent; Wukong cries; Sandy goes nuclear

The one where Tripitaka dies. Except not.

This week I’m going to jump around a bit more. Let's get into it.

Tripitaka and Wukong

Last week I was deeply unimpressed with Tripitaka and sympathetic to Wukong. This week it’s the opposite. Tripitaka gets 10/10 from me for the way he handles things, whereas I’m pretty unimpressed with Wukong for (1) hitting Tripitaka and (2) being an insincere git who’s trying to get back in with Tripitaka for all the wrong reasons.

It’s not that he’s realised he was wrong to kill all those people; not that he misses Tripitaka; not that he’s worried Tripitaka won’t be able to complete the journey without him. No, he’s just too embarrassed to go home with his tail between his legs:

Have you ever had an ex who promised to change that thing you broke up with them over - only to go right back to their old ways once you agreed to get back together? Well, Wukong is the platonic version of that:

Tripitaka, to his credit, is not fooled:

Is this really the same guy who was fooled three times by Lady White Bone - and so many others? I think our boy is growing up.

This is one of my favourite themes in JTTW - this stuff about gullibility being a moral shortcoming. I mean, I don’t actually know whether Wukong is sincere here. But it doesn’t seem like it.

I’m still against the violence - the band-tightening spell. But I have more sympathy for Tripitaka this time, because he’s made it very clear he wants Wukong gone. BOUNDARIES, WUKONG. And Tripitaka seems much more calm and collected, so it doesn’t seem spiteful.

Wukong continuous with his “weasley, manipulative ex” schtick:

Tripitaka, to his credit, maintains his boundary:

You really can’t say fairer than that. He doesn’t get violent - he gives Wukong a square warning.

It's pretty much the same when Wukong circles back when Tripitaka is hungry, dehydrated and vulnerable. Tripitaka still isn’t having it, and decides he’d rather die than accept sustenance from him. This, of course, is where Wukong hits Tripitaka - which is just beyond the pale.

Crying

Wukong gets an audience with Guanyin to dob on Tripitaka, and here’s where it happens:

I know next to nothing about pre-modern Chinese culture, but apparently this is how it’s DONE. 

For context, a few weeks ago, I tried to find out what the deal was with male crying. After all, Tripitaka cries a LOT. It turns out that academic Ya Zuo has done a bunch of work on it - at least for the Song era. It was fascinating - to me, anyway. (Scroll down to the row of tear drops if you’re not so fascinated, cos I’m gonna go on a spiel here.)

Crying was seen as an activity done by men, to be witnessed by other men, mostly for the sake of consolidating elite power alliances with… you guessed it��� other men. Women and plebs could cry too, but their crying was seen as LAME, whereas elite male crying was BOSS.

This is kinda cool. Out of all the times somebody cried in Record of the Listener, it was men 42% of the time. That doesn’t sound like much, but women only made up 25% and children 4%. I guess the rest of the time it was deities, animals or - importantly - crying as a group activity. Group crying was well and truly a male-led, bromance-promoting activity. If Game of Thrones or House of Cards had been set in Song China, all the top players would have been strategically crying:

“[C]ontrary to the modern association of tears with weakness, male lacrymation [crying] in the Song acted to articulate and reinforce a position of dominance." (at 42)

Interestingly, Zuo finds that they weren’t necessarily crocodile tears - despite being political and purposeful.

Zuo explains a lot of interesting things. Apparently, one of the upsides of tears was that they could bridge awkward gaps where verbal communication would have just made things worse. As Zuo points out (I’m very loosely paraphrasing), you can’t really explain to the new emperor how you are TOTALLY loyal to them even though they just took over from your best bud the old emperor, who stood for the polar opposite. But you CAN bypass the awkwardness and cry your way into demonstrating some sort of unexplained yet heartfelt loyalty.

Wukong’s crying TOTALLY fits this. The “power alliance” thing, that is. Not the “this is too awkward to talk about” thing. He’s crying to try to convey his deep sincerity to Guanyin and forge an alliance, so he can force Tripitaka’s hand.

Tripitaka’s general teariness is a different beast. I’m still not sure that I understand the cultural context, but Zuo does talk about male tears in relation to morality. For instance:

That probably goes some way to explaining the waterworks when the queen of Women State and the scorpion demon tried to seduce him.

Guanyin: I’m always delighted when Guanyin makes an appearance. I could go on and on. Still, I don't really see why she thinks Wukong can't be in two places at once. Everyone knows he can do the hair-breath-clone thing. Unless someone's impersonating him.

Also, why would she send WUKONG with Sandy to go ascertain the truth at Flower-Fruit Mountain again? That’s like sending an accused criminal back to the scene of the crime with the police inspector to “help” them work out if the accused really did it.

Sandy: It was interesting to see Sandy take centre stage. I thought he was the even-keel voice of reason in the background. Apparently not, cos his idea of getting to the bottom of the truth about his doppelganger is simply to… kill him.

Dragon Horse: Why are they always tying up Dragon Horse? He’s an intelligent dragon-person in horse form. Surely he’s committed to the journey and knows not to wander off:

…

Tripitaka’s seeming death: Sandy and Bajie's reaction to thinking Tripitaka was dead was… oddly lax. They really should have tried a bit harder to check before calling it:

Calm down, guys. He's not dead.

Blue woollen wraps: What’s the deal with these? If they’re just blankets, can’t they get more? Did I miss some backstory? I’m gonna have to CTRL+F the chapters I missed, or something.

Tea rice: This made me want to try making tea rice. I’d never heard of it.

(Couldn’t find a pic of Chinese tea rice.)

Bad management: Why does Tripitaka bother to ask who wants to go to Flower-Fruit Mountain if he was always going to pick Sandy?

Wukong and the passport: He seems to think there’s a LOT more meaning to it than there is. Has the stress of the split turned him into some kind of passport conspiracy theorist? (Jokes.)

Wukong’s reply to Sandy about Golden Cicada makes no sense: Sandy points out that Wukong can’t just make his own journey to the west, because Tripitaka is Golden Cicada and that’s kind of the whole point. Wukong basically replies that he’s created his own clones of Tripitaka, Bajie and Sandy. But clearly the clone Tripitaka isn’t Golden Cicada, so it’s not really an answer.

Wukong’s group EATS their fallen comrade: what?!

Red Boy is still pretty snarky. I don’t think Wukong understands the concept of, “He’s just trying to get a rise out of you”:

And that’s it from me this week! I’m off to find out what the deal is with this Flower-Fruit Mountain Wukong clone thing.

“This is not what I meant when I said, ‘Let’s do body doubling'.”

@journeythroughjourneytothewest

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Image credits: The usual spiel. The images/gif above are random content from the web, some modified, some not. They are not original. The pre-existing images should turn up with reverse googling or have links embedded, but feel free to ask and I’ll dig up sources.