#not only did he really not have much to do in the void besides ruminate and think and daydream

[howlsofbloodhounds]

Color is the type of severely mentally ill person who is very self aware of just how severely mentally ill they are, how, and in what ways. They spend hours obsessively overthinking about it actually.

[lyallblacklupin]

Don’t miss the Yule Ball.

Remus sorts out his feelings about Sirius. 

Tags: Post-Incident with Severus Snape, Angst with Happy Ending, Getting Back Together, Trust Issues.

Chapter 4

If someone had been there to witness what happened to Remus after Sirius had left the dorm, they would have had given him the longest hug to repress his teeming guilt that had gushed out of him so hard that he had collapsed on the floor, rocking back and forth for tears to come out, but they never came. He never wanted things to be turned this way between him and Sirius, which were completely unexpected. Sure, he did fantasize of being asked out by Sirius, but not in his right mind he had ever had any hopes for it to happen. He really underestimated Sirius. He was strongly reminded that the void in his chest was Sirius’ absence in his life which was expanding day by day, ripping his heart in the midst. He wanted Sirius. So much. He felt selfish—in fact he was selfish, and right now it didn’t seem like much of a sin.

He was again at the Gryffindor Table in the Great Hall, sipping coffee heedlessly, mind floating elsewhere in the crack of dawn. There were no classes today due to the Yule Ball in the evening. He had nothing to distract himself with. Surprisingly, he was greeted by a very unusual couple that he had to blink his eyes a little too much to believe he was seeing right.

“Oh, stop blinking! I know it’s hard to believe.” Lily Evans grumbled, with a slight amusement in her voice.

“Oh Evans, it’s not hard for me to believe. I am very much alive right now!” Yes, that was none other than James Potter, grinning his usual stupid, stupid smirk.

“For your information, we are not dating, Potter. We are just friends who happened to be going on a very casual event of our school.” Lily imitated a very elegant voice, smiling successfully that James couldn’t stop looking at her—or couldn’t stop swooning at her.

“Sure.” He shrugged, the smile not leaving his face for a second. They both slipped into their seats beside Remus, but they didn’t sit together. James and Lily were sitting on Remus’ sides. When the silence had prolonged for more than it was necessary, he found both of them staring at him.

“What?” He was utter confused.

“You think we are unable to see that long face of yours?” Lily commented, arching her brows like Mcgonacall. He shook his head slightly. He knew that he was not going to get away from this, “Tell us what happened?”

Remus was unable to gather words. He felt like he had no ounce of energy left in his body.

“I don’t know what to tell…” He trailed off.

“Okay, how about you tell us what are you feeling?” She put her hand on his.

“I don’t know that either.”

“Okay, okay…Umm. How about we ask you questions and you try to answer them?” Remus was not thrilled with her idea, so he stayed silent which she took it as his approval, “Did you have a fight with Sirius?”

“Not exactly a fight…” Remus was replaying the memory in his head for the infinith time, “Merlin, I wish it had been a fight.”

“Was it about…what he did with Snap—“ Lily was cut off by the shake of his head.

“No, it was not about that!” He said irritatingly, “We are way past that, okay?” He wasn’t asking but he was making it clear.

“Are you?” James interjected.

“Look, I have forgiven him long time ago. It’s just getting difficult to be, you know…normal?”

“Okay, let’s talk straight here, mate,” James put his arm around Remus—which was a typical ‘James Potter move’ when he was trying to convince someone, “You guys were dating before…all of that,” He did a vague hand gesture, “And right now, you guys are just these uncomfortable exes who are missing each other so much but have a tendency to ignore that.”

“Of course, I miss Sirius. He was my only best friend, James.” James gasped dramatically, making a show of how mocked he felt by his comment. Remus rolled his eyes at him.

“Yes, but James is trying to say that you guys miss being each other’s boyfriends.” Lily said those words with such gentleness that Remus felt heat creeping up on his neck. He was suddenly reminiscing the best memories of his life when he was dating Sirius.

“You are an ignorant, self-centered and a mean boyfriend, do you know that?” Remus replied blankly, his temper had reached the level of exhaustion because Sirius was right that Remus was never going to win any arguments with him. So he flopped on his bed but Sirius crawled from his behind to take him in his arms.

“But you love me.” He whispered, planting tiny kisses on Remus’ ear and jaw. Remus had turned into a mush, because it felt so good. He decided that he wasn’t unhappy on his position in their relationship. His mind made a mental note to himself that he’d rather let Sirius win all the arguments if it meant that he was never going to leave Remus.

“I do, I do love you.” He whispered back.

“Moony?”

“Remus?”

Remus jerked out of his ruminating to see James and Lily gawking at him.

“Sorry, just zoned out of the conversation.” He cleared his throat and Lily offered him her coffee.

“You’re a mess, Rem. You need to sort this out with yourself.” She was right, Remus knew, but he also wanted someone to tell him what to do.

“What do I do?”

“Go to the dance with him!” James piped up, and Remus flinched, “What?”

“Urgh. That was how it all started…”And then he told them what happened when Sirius asked him to be his date, how it turned out, and how infuriatingly he didn’t know what to do.

“You have a date!?” Lily scowled at him. Not only James was looking disappointed by the news, but Remus also felt sick of himself.

“I am the worst person in the world. I messed up. I messed everything! I knew that this was not what I wanted! I never wanted to date anyone. And yes, I admit, I haven’t moved on. Not even a little bit. I still think about him, and I can’t stop thinking about the fact that he had always been the one to calm me down whenever I’m angry or sad but then Snape happened, and I made a promise with myself that I will never let Sirius come near me. But I was this overconfident shit that I thought I will be able to handle all it. And then I wasn’t…and I can’t…”

His chest was thundering as the sobs began to cloud his throat, waiting for Remus to let go of himself. He didn’t want anyone to touch him otherwise, he’d never stop crying now that his heart was opening and becoming vulnerable.

“Moony…” James’ gentle voice was enough to bring his emotion at the brink of his eyes. He didn’t just underestimate Sirius, but also himself. That was very unlike Remus. He hated being the center of attention, he hated breaking down in public, and he hated people’s soft words—let alone the physical gestures.

“Don’t.” It was all he could manage to say when Lily had touched his arm. He was on his feet as he fled the hall, in desperate need to reach the lavatory.

So it was about what happened with Snape, came a voice in his head when he was inside the vacant bathroom. There was still mistrust, swimming with his judgments. His mind was telling him that he shouldn’t commit the same mistake of getting into relationship with Sirius but his heart was not helping at all. It was so in love. He was trying breathe properly.

Let love be your guide, his heart said.

And then get lost? His mind retorted.

Yes! Remus wanted to slap himself.

He had been pushing feelings all of his life. He had been very difficult with Sirius for straight two days when Sirius had confessed that he was in love with him. The most remarkable thing was that Sirius understood his struggle with feelings and emotions. He had the art to scoop them out of Remus’ system. Moony, this is the only way to calm yourself, he had said to him. And now, as Lily had said, he was a mess. Without him. Without Sirius.

After few hours—what felt like minutes—he washed his miserable face and walked to the courtyard. He didn’t want to go the Gryffindor Tower to face anyone. He was a wreck. He didn’t want to face Sirius either, so he just sat by the outdated fountain where the tree was protecting him from the sun. He decided that he was not going to the Ball. He just wanted to rehearse his future act of turning down Catherina Johnson gently. He relaxed himself there. It had been fifteen minutes, and he had been thinking of his DADA essay for Patronus charms, which was a win-win for him as a distraction.

However, it wasn’t long when he took out his wand and tried to cast a patronus.

“Expecto Patronum.” He whispered, thinking about the time when his friends had first time accompanied him to the moon as Animagus. A silver wisp glowed on the tip of his wand but then died out after a second, which made him eventually want to think about the moments that had made him genuinely happy. He thought about the time when Sirius had told him he was a good kisser, when he had told him that they should start dating, and a lot more but they were not strong enough to cast full patronus, just a silver light flickering. He was confused. He focused and focused, becoming impatient. He was also worrying if Sirius was not associated with his happiest memory then maybe Remus had been in an oblivion—or say, stupid in love. He knew that love was the most powerful element to do wonders, even in the wizarding world. But What if it was never love? What if it was just infatuation? Then why was his heart hammering so violently in his chest? But then he was suddenly reminded of a very bad day in his fifth year when he was walking by the dungeon where the sixth-years were taking their Potions class, and Slughorn had called him to volunteer.

“Mr Lupin here is a fifth year, and he has advanced enough to brew Veritaserum which is supposed to be taught in his next year. Uh—Mr Lupin please, come forth and—Mr Lupin?”

Remus was extremely annoyed by a certain scent saturating the room. He was sniffing, and whipping his head to follow it. He had completely forgotten that he was volunteering with Professor Slughorn because he is so concentrated on the scent which is filling his nostrils, making him quite dizzy.

“What is this smell, Professor?” He asked, still looking here and there. He knew that some of his senior students were making fun of him as the room was filled with faint sounds of sniggers and snorts.

“Mr Lupin, you are in a Potion classroom, there are numerous of potions sitting out…” Remus ignored his rambling because the scent is getting stronger. He couldn’t put a finger on it because it was reminding him of many things. Musk, which was making him lightheaded. Cigarettes. Damp hair after hot shower. The feeling of leather on skin, and also the forbidden forest. The scent had a strange sense of familiarization. It was vague but he was drawn to it. It was like he was sitting in the heart of someone—someone he knew, because he could feel their heart beat in his ears.

Remus’ whole day was a disaster because he couldn’t brew the Veritaserum properly, Slughorn had sent him back to his dorm, he was tackled by Peeves on his way, and he was also annoyed by some portraits which had made fun of his scars. After his prefect rounds, he entered the common room with a foul mood, and spotted Sirius Black sitting alone on the couch. He looked at his pocket watch and found that it was past midnight. Sirius stood up and held out his arms, smiling at him. Remus threw his satchel and books away, and fell into Sirius’ arms. He was embraced so tightly and warmly.

They both stayed quiet, and Remus nuzzled his face in the crook of his neck. That was when his eyes snapped both because he caught a whiff of the same scent that had been annoying him in the Potions.

“That scent.” Remus murmured, pulling away from Sirius.

“What scent?” Sirius asked, perplexed.

“Oh! Not you, now! I have had enough of it! This scent is driving me mad, Sirius!”

“Hey, hey, calm down, Moony, why are you crying?”

“What?”

“You are crying.”

“Oh.”

“Come here.”

He was embraced again, and then it hit him. That scent was Sirius. It was not coming from somewhere, it was just Sirius’ scent. Very natural, and very Sirius. The potion he had smelled in the dungeon was Amortentia. Sirius had always been the one to give Remus the physical interaction he shared with no one in his group. Due to his claustrophobia, he had always found hugging very uncomfortable, but not with Sirius, never with Sirius.

“I’m claustrophobic.”

“I know.” Sirius tightened his hold on Remus, pulling him impossibly closer, and he was not choking for breath. That made him cry, more and more. He was not embarrassed for the streaming tears, so he let them fall because it was just Sirius. His home.

“Expecto Patronum.”

A full grown silver dog shot out of his wand, running in circles around Remus enthusiastically. And suddenly, Remus realized why such an odd memory was his happiest and the most powerful one because it was the day when he was brought in front of the raw truth that he was in love with Sirius Black.

It was afternoon, and everyone was gathering for lunch a little earlier because the Great Hall was going to be sealed for the decorations of the Yule Ball until the evening. Remus looked around him, everyone was beaming and laughing with the exhilaration for tonight. He needed to find Sirius. He wanted to talk to him. He wanted to see him, at least. He walking quickly through the crowd, looking for him.

“Hey Remus!” He turned to find Catherina staring at him. Remus groaned internally.

“Hi, Catherina.” He tried to smile.

“Oh, call me Cathy. My friends calls me Cathy.” They fell into brief silence but she break it—to Remus’ horror, “So what’s the color of your robes tonight?” He frowned at her, “Oh, it’s okay if you don’t to tell but please don’t wear anything mustard. I have an extreme aversion to—“

“Catherina, I can’t go with you tonight.” He tried to ignore the hammering of his heart.

“What?” She looked distraught.

“I’m sorry—“

“Is this because of Black?”

“What does Sirius has to do with any of this?”

“Oh you bet your arse, it is! You guys think you are so subtle.” Remus is frozen in his place, “Who do you think you are? You thought I was just a bloody nobody to whom you’ll say yes without having to mean it—“

“Catherine, it’s not like that! I’m not feeling well, I can’t go—“

“Oh, save it, Lupin! You first agreed to be my date and broke Black’s heart, and now you’re going to his date by breaking mine?” She looked hurt, very hurt and Remus wanted to just die because her words were too true to be painful, “Can’t you see what you are doing?”

“I am so sorry, Cathy. Please. And I’m not going with anyone!” But she was shaking his head, “You have to believe me. And you are right, I did break your heart and you have no idea how pathetic I feel! I am a terrible person. I don’t deserve to be your date.”

“You are not,” She spoke after a brief silence, “You are not a terrible person. You are just stupid.”

“Same thing.”

“Look, you didn’t break my heart. You hurt my feelings, and I didn’t expect that from you. But you know what, people surprise you.” There is a very awkward silence between them and Remus couldn’t stop himself from apologizing. She gave him a long strange look, and then walked away.

Remus didn’t stand for any longer, he began walking. The thoughts, the guilt, the pain, the unjust things, the stupid acts, unfathomable love, all of that was dawning upon him at every step he was taking. His pace was becoming frantic as he reached closer to the Gryffindor Tower.

He entered the common room, his heart was racing abnormally. He paid no heed to the fourth-years standing in their robes and gowns. He ascended the staircase to his dormitory. For a second, he thought he was the same fifth-year student fleeing the Potions class because a certain scent had screwed up his day. He barged into the dorm just like he had on that day in the common room.

And once again, he found none other than Sirius Black, sitting alone in the room.

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3

Chapter 5 is coming soon!

[tonystarkissist]

“Didn’t know where else to go”/ Revenge - Villainous July

Part 11 of “Oh Sweet Child, The Things I’d Do for You...”

Summary:  Tony's out of his element. He’s ignorant to many things in relation to offering someone else comfort, but closure and vengeance is one thing he’s damn good at.

Rating: Teen (For language and Thematic Material)

Warning: Self-loathing and lack of care for life, mentions of abuse, and slightly graphic dialogue towards the end (maybe too graphic, but I got caught up in the moment; sue me).

Word Count: 4.5k

Previous Chapter ~ Masterlist ~ Read on Ao3 ~  Next Chapter

Peter’s there for days, maybe weeks, he couldn’t keep track at this point. He’s glad he had the foresight to warn Ned of his absence. His friend would definitely be the leading cause behind filing a missing persons report, because he knows Beck wouldn’t do it, content to mooch off of CPS as long as possible. And Peter really didn’t need anyone out looking for him. He didn’t even want to think about the turmoil and stress that would ensue. He didn’t want to deal with it. Ever.

He just wanted to lie here on this couch forever, stare at the fire crackling in the fireplace and watch the orange light bleed through the darkness of Mr. Stark’s home. It reminded him of that night he’d followed Mr. Stark here… he missed him. Still.

He wasn’t afraid to admit it anymore at all; not even ashamed. He missed him. And he felt so incredibly guilty for turning the man’s world entirely upside down. If Peter hadn’t acted so carelessly none of this would be happening. Tony wouldn’t be on the run, Beck wouldn’t have found out about Spider-Man, and Peter wouldn’t be slowly starving to death, lying here on Stark’s couch, the licks of flames dancing up from the fire cradling him in a hypnotic trance. 

There was food in the kitchen, he knew there was, but just the thought of food made him sick, and he knew if he did try to stand he wouldn’t have a chance at making it that far before passing out. 

He’d long since accepted the fact that he’d die at a young age due to his vigilante hobby, but he must admit he never expected it to happen this young, especially not since Mr. Stark started showing up every moment he needed him. He hadn’t failed him once… until now. Now that Peter needs him… he’s not here. He stares down at the shattered face of the watch he’s been clutching in his hand since he arrived. Mr. Stark wasn’t coming back, and that was something Peter would have to accept. How could he come back, with all these people looking for him? It’d be impossible and probably the stupidest decision the man could make. But of course Peter’s still clinging to that childish hope that he’d see him again. Preferably before he wastes away here on this very couch.

Though at this rate, it didn’t seem like that was likely to happen. He didn’t even feel the pangs of hunger anymore, and he could feel his body slowly shutting down. It felt almost like a relief to be ridded of that constant ache in his stomach.

He’s been living off of that one school lunch meal for a week, and Peter could feel the definition of his bones when he ran a shaky hand over his ribs, or along his shoulder and arms. It wasn’t healthy by any means, but what did he care? There would be no “long run” to worry about, just the next couple of days before he peacefully slipped off to sleep into a gentle void of nothingness. And if this is what those last couple of days felt like… then he had nothing left to worry about. 

He drifted off, muscles and body aching from lying in the same position he had been for days. He had nice dreams, most consisting of finally being with Aunt May again, and his parents. They were waiting for him when he arrived and he was so, so happy to see them, it brought tears to his eyes. He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of doing this before. No one but Ned would’ve missed him… and Ned would get over it-- will get over it.

Something draws him out of his dream just before he falls too far, and at first he thought it was the usual convulsing of his stomach urging him to vomit up some bile, or perhaps the heat of a fever and a throbbing headache, but it was none of those. 

Instead, it was a soft, light pressure against the side of his face. A small, calloused pad of warmth slowly stroking along his cheek, beneath his eye. It made his nose tickle, and his nostrils flared in response to the touch. His ears slowly cue in, and he’s hit with a sudden cacophony of noise. From the light sound of traffic several blocks down, and the small crackling of the dimming fire in the fireplace, all the way to the soft words belonging to a voice all too familiar, yet entirely unidentifiable.

“Pete?” The voice cracks with anxious distress. “C’mon Pete, wake up.” 

Then there’s a gentle hand on his shoulder, and all feelings along his skin and limbs begin to return. He’s being shaken back and forth, head lolling from side to side, but his groggy mind confuses it with… he didn’t know what it was. He just knows that everything feels numb and sensitive all at the same time. 

The warm embrace against the side of his face disappears, and something scratchy and pokey is pressed gently against his lips, urging them to part. “C’mon Pete,” the voice begs again. 

His tongue felt heavy and thick, weighed down by congealed saliva, but the pressure broke past the barrier of his lips despite it. He still couldn’t force himself to open his eyes. 

The potent taste of salt hits his tongue and it sends a sudden shock through his whole system, like it finally realized it was in the waking world. The groggy convulsion alerts the voice of his slight awareness and now his body is manhandled into a sitting position. Even though his eyes are beginning to peek open he has no strength left in his limbs to try and fight the external force. He’s leant up against a warm cushion-y surface, a heavy weight settling over his shoulders as the culprit for the salt is pushed past his lips once more. 

He bites down slowly, crumbs falling off at the corners of his mouth and the voice from earlier is quick to praise him. 

“Good job, kiddo. C’mon, just a little more.” The taste sits heavy in his mouth and it slowly grows soggy atop his tongue, which urges him to swallow it. And, it seemed that the moment it slid down his throat, his body remembered all that it was missing and he was hit with a sharp pang in his abdomen, and he’s quick to take another bite. 

His head lolls to the side, the cracker pushed back against his mouth, and his forehead pressed against something warm, engulfing him with a strong whiff of aftershave and alcohol. And slowly he’s able to piece together the warm shape he’s pressed against: an arm around his shoulders, a solid body sitting beside him, and the sharp outline of a jaw propped atop his head. Meaning the warmth bringing life back to his frozen nose and face must be the neck and shoulder. 

His mind can only conjure one person to picture with him in this scenario. However unrealistic it was.

“ ‘ny?” Most of it’s a groan, but it must’ve been articulate enough for the voice to understand, and he’s instantly blanketed in more warmth and praise, pulled even closer to the warm body. 

“Yes! It’s me. It’s Tony, kid.” The jaw resting on his head moves slightly in a way he couldn’t fully discern, and it’s followed by a soft but strong protrusion pressing against the top of his head, warm air passing over his scalp in short spurts before the jaw returns to its place.

It makes Peter smile. He’s not entirely sure why yet, but the warmth that blooms across his chest enlivens him in a way he never thought he’d experience ever again. 

He eats more crackers, and he sips water through a straw regularly pressed to his lips as well. He doesn’t know how many he eats or how much he drinks, but soon enough the feelings begin to slowly bleed back, urging life back into his limbs and his brain. His stomach wasn’t very happy, but that didn’t come as a surprise to him

“You feeling better kiddo? That’s almost the whole pack.” A heavy hand is pressed to his face, then migrates up to pet his hair. “I don’t know what’s good to feed ya when you’re like this. You gotta help me out here.”

“Mm,” Peter groans. He knows it's unhelpful, but his belly felt stuffed and now all he could think about was how cold he was. The penthouse was warm and cozy, but it seemed ever since he arrived, Peter still couldn’t shake that chill that had settled in his bones. The thought alone made him shiver.

“Are you still thirsty?” The voice sounded nervous. “Yeah, you’re probably still thirsty. Lemme go get some more water.” The body begins to move away, which meant so was the warmth. 

A strong tremble travels along Peter’s body with nervous anticipation, the muscles in his fingers spasming to grip at the person desperately before they could leave him alone. 

“Hey, hey, what’s wrong?” A strong hand grabs his fingers, gripping them gently between their larger ones. “You with me? You okay?”

“Mm,” Peter replies unhelpfully once more. He may not be able to reason or ruminate just yet, but he does know that he’s cold. He grabs the fingers around his and holds on tight, searching out warmth once more by diving his head back towards the warm cushion-y barrier from before and rooting himself there.

“Okay, okay.” The arm around his shoulders moves to rub warmth into his other arm, encircling him completely in the embrace. “Why’d you do this to yourself, Pete?” The voice whispers, a palpable despair in their tone. “You scared me.”

“Mm,” Peter hummed, eyelids pulsing open and closed with a firm determination to remain awake. His vision was blurred with soft orange light and the hard blackness of shadows. A sight he’s come to find as quite familiar and ironically comforting.

He feels better this time when he is pulled to sleep. Not so much on the brink of death anymore, but he feels he’s still teetering precariously close to that cliff. Though despite the nonsense the thought made, he knew the voice and the warmth would hold on tightly, and they wouldn’t let him fall.

***

He wakes up, warm and comfy in a nice big bed. He rolls onto his side with a groan, stomach screaming with hunger, and he lifts a hand to rub his fingers over his burning eyes. His entire body felt like it’d been wrung through a trash compactor. And he didn’t know how he ended up in a bed… He opened his eyes and looked around the room, then cursed under his breath. He was in Tony’s bed. In all the time he’s stayed hidden away in this penthouse, he’d stayed on that damned couch. He didn’t know what had occured last night to result in him crawling his way into this room.

His muscles felt weak and very unsteady, but he forced himself out of bed anyway. He needed to get out of that room, he needed to get back to the couch. He struggled opening the door, and he clutched at the wall as he stumbled and tripped his way back towards the main room. It didn’t even occur to him to question the light bleeding down the hall via the opened curtains scattering around the place. This morning wasn’t making any sense anyway, it didn’t matter. 

He was a little more than halfway there when he collapsed, his left leg giving out first, tripping up his balance and toppling him to the wooden floor. He lands with a heavy bang, and he winces at the dull throb that resulted in his side.

“Peter?!” Loud footsteps follow the exclamation, and Peter’s entire body seizes with shock. 

Was that??

It was.

Tony appears from around the corner seconds later, crouching in front of him with bulging plastic bags draped from his arms, hands reaching out towards him to help him off the ground. 

“What in the world are you doing out of bed, kid? I told you to stay put.” And before Peter could even put up a protest, he was being lifted into the air and led back down the hall the way he came, back into Tony’s room. 

It was like he’d just returned from the dentist, cotton stuffed in his mouth, tongue paralyzed, and brain conjuring weird loop-de-loops because he was still high on the pain meds. Because Mr. Stark was here. Carrying him. 

If he wasn’t so startled and shocked by the man’s sudden appearance, he’d surely be mortified, but all he could do was stare dubiously at the side of his face as they walked. Then he was being lowered gently back into the bed, and as soon as Tony released him he dropped the bags from his arms and they hit the floor with muted thumps. Giving the man the freeness to meticulously tuck the sheets and cover back over Peter’s frailing body. 

Any semblance of flesh had withered off his bones, thanks to his recent lack of appetite. 

There was a harsh line molded between Tony’s brows as he messed anxiously with the sheets, and then turned his fixations towards the bags he’d just dropped. Peter didn’t speak a word during the entire ordeal, still unsure if this was just some weird dream or not. 

“I picked up some stuff from the convenient store down the block. This’ll do much better than those Saltines from last night.” He lifts up the bottle of red gatorade to show, cracks open the lid, then plops a little bendy straw into the opening. “I would’ve gotten the ones with the sippy cup caps, y’know,” he rambled, sitting down on the mattress beside him and holding the straw up to his lips with shaky fingers, “but this was all they had. I’m assuming your favorite color is red, but I got all the other colors too.” Just as Peter takes a tentative sip, Tony pulls it back looking as if he was in the midst of a panic. “Damn, I should’ve asked you what flavor you wanted. Do you want blue instead? I can get the blue one,” Tony bends down so quickly it almost gives Peter whiplash, hand and head disappearing beside the bed, the rustling of plastic bags sounding during the frantic search. Then Tony sits up to brandish the blue gatorade,offering it towards him instead. “Or I've got green… and the white one.”

They stare at each other for several moments, and Peter’s not entirely sure what Tony expects him to say, so he settles with something simple.

“I-I like red.”

The straw is back at his lips and Tony’s nodding a little too feverishly. “Yeah, yeah, see I knew that.”

Peter sips on the drink, Tony watches him, and that little worried crease between his eyebrows doesn’t go away.

When he’s finished, he pulls away from the straw and leans back against the pillow, finally feeling a bit refreshed. Just as Tony begins to insist he drink more, Peter asks his question. “What are you doin’ here?”

Tony scoffs at him, an offended frown coming over his face. “This is my house. I should be the one asking you that question.”

And really, that was a good point. Peter didn’t know why he was here either. He drops his gaze to stare at his lap. He didn’t mean to worry the man, or get in his way… he just wanted someplace warm to stay.

“‘M sorry.” He mumbled softly, a heaviness overcoming his eyes with the pressure building behind them. 

“Shit, kid, I didn’t mean-- I didn’t mean it like that.” Tony’s hot palm presses against the side of his neck, thumb dipping under his chin to force his gaze back up. “I’m just worried ‘bout you. I came home and found you on my couch, passed out and-and small as a twig, pale, and I didn’t know what to do.”

Peter leans into the touch without thought, absorbing the tender affection like he was starved for it. 

“I didn’t know where else to go,” Peter whispers, tears finally beginning to fall from his eyes. The thumb tucked beneath his chin quickly moves to soothe over his cheeks, brushing the fallen tears away. It forces a smile from Peter, a bittersweet, desperate smile, formed with quivering lips. 

Tony rips his hand away, suddenly and violently, like he’d only just realized what he was doing, stumbling away from the edge of the bed. He shook out the hand that’d been against Peter’s cheek like it had been infected with an abhorrent substance, and the man turned his back to Peter, other hand lifting to run through his hair while he cursed under his breath. 

He avoids Peter’s eyes when he does turn back around. He points towards the gatorade sitting on the bedside table and clears his throat before delivering his instructions. “Drink all of that. I’ll be back soon.” 

He shuffles from the room, grabbing one of the plastic bags on his way, and Peter can hear his distant mutterings under his breath as he leaves the room. It left an odd sense of emptiness in him, and he turned to look at the small bottle of red gatorade. 

He didn’t reach for it, opting to watch the door. Awaiting Tony’s return.

Tony reappeared after several minutes, looking much less perturbed than when he had left. He came bearing soup and he set it down beside the empty bottle. He kept his distance this time though. The worried line between his brows were gone, taking upon an unperturbed expresion… simply gesturing with his head towards the steaming bowl.

He pulls up a chair, and when Peter still hadn’t made a move for the soup and Tony remained under his unyielding stare. After several more moments, and Peter had yet to move, Tony reached over to place the bowl gently in his lap. It wasn’t full by any means, so Peter didn’t worry about it spilling. 

“Peter, you have to eat,” he nods down towards the bowl again. “And while you eat, I want you to tell me everything that happened while I was gone. Everything that got you to this point.” He waves his finger in a circular motion in gesture to his body, fixing Peter with a stern look, and Peter drops his head shyly.

“Can-can I eat first?”

“Sure.”

Peter eats as slow as possible under Tony’s watchful eye. Sadly, however, there was only a finite amount of soup and when Peter was finished, Tony was ready to talk, taking the bowl from his hands and putting it to the side. 

“Alright, kid, spill.” Tony had his serious frown on; the same one Peter remembered he wore during the couple lectures he gave in the past. “No skimping on details.”

Peter turns his gaze away from him, skin prickling with anxiety. “My foster dad found out I was Spider-Man… an-and he thought I was working for you. I just… it made him really angry and I just wanted to get away! So, I came to look for you, but you weren’t here and I thought you were never coming back…”

He’s bowing his head to hide his tears, meaning he didn’t realize Tony had gotten out of his chair until he was settling beside him on the bed, and Peter’s head snapped up to look at him when he felt the matress dip. The man sat right beside him, shoulder pressing up against his, and the worry line making a reappearance. 

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have left you like that.”

“I-I’m not your responsibility,” Peter argues, “you shouldn’t feel sorry. I’m the one that screwed everything up and ruined your life.” He felt the trembling in his lips begin once more and he turns his head to hide it. “Everything that’s happened… to you… to me. It’s all my fault.”

Strong fingers grab his chin and force his gaze back, and Tony’s glaring down at him. “No, none of this is your fault.”

“Are you stupid?!” Peter bites, cheeks heating up with both frustration and embarrassment. He shakes off Tony’s grip on his chin. “You told me to stay away from those weapons, but I didn’t listen! And then I end up getting into trouble, and you felt the need to come rescue me!” He grips his hair, pulling at the curls in frustration and turning back to his lap as he continues to ramble. “And-and it’s my fault that I left my suit on my floor before bed. So it’s my fault when Beck found them,” he turns his gaze back up to Tony, tears now flowing freely from his eyes, “and it’s my fault that I didn’t fight back. I’m Spider-Man… it’s-it’s, he should have no power over me and-and he only has it because I’m scared.”

Tony’s grip is softer this time when he grabs his chin. 

“Hey,” he soothes, lifting his other hand to wipe away the tears, “don’t you ever blame yourself for this. You’re a kid, I’m an adult, and it’s my job to keep you safe.” His gaze turns steely, and Peter feels his grip tighten slightly on his chin. “I just need to know one thing Peter… did he hurt you?”

The silence and the immediate influx of tears was apparently enough confirmation for the man, and he instantly releases Peter, a tight growl rumbling through his chest as he pushes himself off the bed. Peter sees the orange flareup appearing above the man’s collar, climbing up the veins of his neck. He knew well enough to know Tony’s intentions. 

“No,” he chokes, diving after the man. He grabs a strong fistful of his shirt before he could get too far, and Tony turns to look down at him, his blue eyes vivid as ever. “Please don’t…” 

“Peter,” Tony growls, a tight rumbling passing through him. “He’s not getting away with this. He’s not getting away with laying his hands on you.”

“Please…” Peter begged desperately. “Please don’t kill him… Please.” He’s crying in earnest now, and Tony takes pity.

He grabs Peter’s hand, gently prying it from his clothes to hold firmly in his palm. “Pete.”

“Please don’t leave,” Peter tries. 

He couldn’t stand the thought of being responsible for Beck’s death, because then the world’s point would be proven. Spider-Man was just as bad as Iron Man. Any notion of ‘hero’ was dead. 

He knows Tony will kill him. He can see it in his eyes. The rage.

“Please don’t leave me.”

“Peter…” Peter’s tempted to label the sound that emits from the man as a soft whine as Tony slowly sits himself back on the mattress, never releasing his hold of Peter’s hand. 

“Stay.” He tugs Tony closer. If he was close enough to hold onto, Peter could keep him from leaving. 

“Okay, okay,” Tony relents, scooting back up beside him. Peter doesn’t risk doing anything more than pressing his shoulder against him. The touch was enough to draw him comfort for the moment. Just enough to lull him back into a peaceful sleep.

***

Beck’s seething, fisting the red cloth in his hand. Peter was gone… and he was in deep shit. There was no way CPS wouldn’t investigate him after this. He stares at the undecorated Christmas Tree standing lifelessly in the corner as he downs another swig from his bottle. He grimaces. He didn’t usually go immediately for the hard liquor, but the week had been particularly difficult for him. After his Boss found out about Tony Stark being alive… it had been chaotic. And it never failed to construct a headache waiting just for him at the end of the day.

There were two sharp knocks at the door, and he flinched in surprise, eyes darting to the clock hung on the wall. 10:48. Who the hell was at his door so late at night?

Before he even had a chance to stand from his easy chair, his door blew in. 

He leaped from the chair, dropping everything in his hands during his frantic stumble. The bottle shattered on the floor, and the suit soaked up the spilt liquid. He shouted in surprise and stared at the man standing in his doorway. 

“S-Stark?”

The man in question steps past the threshold, onto the fallen door. His eyes glowed, his entire body illuminated like he was under the light of a strong fire. He doesn’t say anything, but Beck thinks he knows why he was here.

Beck slowly moves himself away from the room, backpedaling as quickly as possible, tripping over his own drunken steps. Stark moves closer. 

“Hey, Stark. What are- what are you doin’ here?”

“I think you know.” His voice was gravelly and strained, and Beck shuddered.

“I-I really don’t,” he lies. He crashes into the decorative table set up at the beginning of the hall. A potted plant and several books crashing to the floor. 

Stark steps closer, chin dipping to his chest which only highlights his sharp, shining glare, his head tilting only slightly to the side.

“I reeally think you do.”

Beck falls to the ground. 

And as Tony begins to gain on him, he starts his rambling. “Whatever that kid told you was a total lie, I swear. He makes up all kinds of stories! I’ve been nothing but hospitable--” Tony grabs him by the throat, lifting him clean off the ground with nothing more than his human arm. Then he squeezes, bringing their faces close as Beck chokes desperately around his hand. 

“It’s too late,” he whispers into his face, voice calm and soothing, “I remember you… how much trouble you were back in the day.” A dangerous grin flitted over Stark’s face. “Nothing you say will get you out of this. I’m going to make you feel every bit of pain my kid suffered at your hands. In fact, if it wasn’t for that kid, I’d slit you open and splash around like a child playing in a puddle, and string your guts around that tree like decorative garlands. You best be glad I’m a man of my word...”

***

When Peter blinks awake, his head is lying on the pillow, blankets pulled up around his shoulders and Tony sat beside him. Head thrown back against the headboard, mouth open, snoring, and a discarded tablet hanging loosely in his grip atop his lap. 

Peter smiles, snuggling further into the pillow and pulling the blankets tight around him. 

He didn’t think to pay any mind to the small splatter of red on the cuffs of his shirt.

Next Chapter

@multiverse-irondad-july​

[corvidkingden]

Hello it is me the Panda asking for some good good Promptis idiots in love

Promptis, idiots in love?

Got it. How about a first kiss that almost didn't happen? [Read it on ao3]

--

“Noct, I swear if you don’t get your ass up here,” Prompto called down to him from where he was perched rather precariously on the edge of the cliff overlooking their camp. It wasn’t particularly high, high enough to give them a bit of space from Gladio and Ignis, but low enough that Prompto felt capable of scaling it on his own. Just barely so though, any higher and he would not be up there, he was a disaster walking and he knew it. It was a miracle he’d made it up without any scrapes as it was. Grinning widely he leaned forward just enough to peer down at Noctis as he stood at the base of the cliff, looking up at him silently judging for not just asking to be warped up.

“Yeah yeah, I’m comin’, someone’s gotta make sure you don’t fall off,” he huffed out, taking a few steps back for a better vantage before warping up beside him. It was a far more graceful approach than the blonde’s awkward clamoring up the side of the rocky wall. Which he most definitely watched him do but was pretending he didn’t for now. He’d tease him later for the number of times he stopped to give himself a pep talk.

“So what’s so important-woo!” Noctis yelped in surprise at suddenly being dragged down by the surprisingly strong blonde, his heart rate spiking as he teetered over the edge, but Prompto held a firm grip on him. He had half a mind to chew him out for being so reckless, even if he could have easily warped out of falling, but the moment he planted himself next to him what little anger that fueled the urge faded. The unabashed joy he saw on that freckled face, lit up with a grin, was all it took to melt it away.

He made it so hard to be mad at him.

“Look,” Prompto answered, nudging his shoulder with his own as he gestured up at the sky, turning Noct’s attention away from him for now. He probably could have kept staring at that grin all night otherwise.

The sun was slowly setting on the horizon, dipping low between the trees in the distance, still painting the land in golds and pinks where it shone through them. But the highest point of the sky was now a deep blue black, stars twinkling overhead. It was beautiful for sure, but it was hardly their first night under the stars. So what made this one so special? “What am I looking at?”

“You have no eye, I swear, come here,” the crownsguard huffed in exasperation, hooking his arm around his neck and dragging him in closer as he pointed straight ahead. “Look again.”

Noctis was momentarily distracted though, focused more on how close they were than where Prompto was trying to get him to look. All he could think about was his warmth, his smile, how he could see every tiny little freckle, even the palest ones that dusted his cheeks. How easy it would be to lean in and kiss across them and watch those cheeks turn pink. But he forced himself to look ahead, catching sight of what Prompto was pointing out just in time. A small shooting star danced across the sky in an arc of light, making him gasp softly. “Oh shit…”

“See? Told you,” Prompto murmured, in awe of the sight himself, watching the shooting star disappear into the black blanket of the night sky. His arm stayed hooked around Noctis as they both watched more slowly light up the expanse of darkness, turning the void into a shimmering pool of light.

It was beautiful, peaceful, a much needed moment of serenity after everything that had happened already and...well everything they still had to prepare for. They could hear Ignis and Gladio talking below while they prepared dinner, the tent long since set up. Insects and frogs chirped in the distance, the world falling asleep around them and falling away entirely as they both drifted and were lost in the moment.

Without thinking, Prompto looked over at Noctis as the meteors started to dwindle, growing fewer and less frequent, about to make a snide remark about him trusting him next time. But his words caught in his throat. He could see the reflection of them in his blue eyes, the small smile that curled on his lips as he’d fully relaxed for the first time in weeks. He was even more beautiful than the night sky above and all the man could do was stare in silent awe.

Feeling his gaze on him, Noctis turned to ask him why he wasn’t looking but he never got to get the words out, their noses brushing from the proximity, a tension settling between them so suddenly it almost seemed to knock the wind from them both. It wasn’t new, it was something that had always been there between them but they both tried so desperately to ignore it. It was never the right time, never the right place. Neither of them could seem to drum up the guts to admit to the feelings overwhelming them, completely unaware that the other felt the same.

The air between them felt heavy, hot, a spark of static tingling across their skin as they were caught frozen in limbo. Who would move first, would either of them even do it? Would this finally be the moment to break their resolve or would it soon be catalogued as another too little, too late. Noctis could hardly think past the sound of his own heart thumping heavy in his chest, dulling out the sound of anything else.

Just as he thought maybe, maybe he could do it, maybe now was the time to swallow his nerves and seize it, they were interrupted. “Dinner is ready,” Ignis’ voice carried up to them from below, unaware of the moment he’d just cut into so abruptly. “You’d do well to come down anyway, you’re not in range of the runes and daemons should be coming out any moment. I’d really rather not have to spend another night listening to an Iron Giant lurking outside our camp please.”

“Right-right, sorry, Iggy. We’re coming,” Prompto called back, stumbling over his words as he quickly let go of Noctis, pulling away to try and find his own air to breathe and gather his thoughts again. They’d been so close, he’d been only moments away from ruining everything by closing what little space had been left between them. Ignis calling out was a blessing and he didn’t even know it. He was flushed so thoroughly that he felt feverish, his heart was practically trying to break out of his chest the way it was beating so hard and his stomach was twisting so painfully he wasn’t sure he’d even be able to eat dinner. But he needed to get down there and regain control over this. He’d gone this long keeping his crush a secret he was not going to let it slip now.

Noctis cleared his throat awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck as he looked down at the two men below already plating up their meals. He knew he should say something, even if the moment was ruined, because that was the closest they’d ever been and who knew when it would happen again. If it would happen again. He needed to tell Prompto before they left for Altissia and he might have just lost his chance. “I uh…”

“Thanks for coming up and watching them with me,” Prompto cut him off, that brilliant smile gracing his face again, though Noctis could see the hesitation and worry in his eyes. He knew him too well to fall for that grin, even if it did make him feel a bit warm and more than a little fuzzy inside.

“Yeah, yeah of course...surprised you didn’t get any pictures,” he smiled back, laughing slightly, hoping he could ease the awkwardness that had settled between them by sparking up another conversation instead of simply warping away. It seemed to work because Prompto truly lit up almost instantly, hopping up off the ledge.

“Actually, I did! I had my camera on the tripod getting some long exposures,” he grinned widely gesturing behind them, earning a laugh from the prince when he saw it. “Two steps ahead of you bud.”

“Always are,” Noct shook his head, eyes shining with mirth as he gazed at his best friend for a moment. He wanted nothing more than to just drag him right back in and fully close that space between them, to finally feel those soft lips against his own.

Prompto floundered silently under his gaze, looking back at him, feeling frozen in place as he tried to read what he saw in those eyes. As he tried to fight his own desire to scurry back over and lean in to kiss him too.

“If you’re much longer, Gladio may come up and drag the two of you down here himself,” Ignis called again, completely ruining the moment once more. Prompto saw it as a blessing, saving him from potentially making a horrible decision, but Noctis wanted to warp down and smack him for cock blocking him twice now. Kiss blocking? That just sounds weird.

“Coming!” Prompto called, snatching his camera off the tripod and tucking it away in his pocket again, tossing the tripod back into the armiger in one smooth motion. Marching back over to the ledge he eyed it a bit skeptical, trying to figure out the best way to scale back down the side of the cliff. Climbing up it had been so much easier, though it helped that he hadn’t looked down the whole time.

Seeing the nervous look on his face, Noctis saw an opportunity, hooking an arm around his middle and pulling him in close. “I got ya,” he said, though it had sounded way more suave in his mind. But he didn’t give it time to ruminate, warping the two of them back down into the camp below in a spark of blue light.

When they landed, dizzy and warm and full of adrenaline, they forgot that they weren’t alone for a moment. Pressed close as they were, chest to chest, Noct’s arm still wound tight around Prompto’s waist to keep him safe, it was like something straight out the movies. It would be so easy, so perfect, to just close that gap.

Noct could feel his nerves quickly dwindling under the weight of how much he wanted to just kiss him already, overpowered by the build up of years and years of denying himself. He wondered if Prompto felt the same, the way he could feel his heart racing said yes but the kid was shakier than a chihuahua, it could mean anything.

“You two need a room?” Gladio taunted as he made his way over to help Ignis pass out the plates, an all too amused grin spreading across his lips as he took in the sight of them huddled so close. He and Ignis had been able to read the tension between them from the start, but at this point it was so palpable it was unbearable. They’d both had half a mind to just shove them together themselves. But Ignis insisted that if it were to happen to let it happen at it’s own pace.

“Shouldn’t you be doin’ push ups or something?” Noctis shot back at him, and if looks could kill Gladio would be dead where he stood. Much as he wanted to do this, he wanted to be the one to tell Prompto how he felt, not Gladio and his big mouth. Letting go of the blonde in question, he didn’t notice that the boy looked ready to burst; he was so red. Slipping away from him he took one of the offered plates and planted himself down in one of the chairs to eat.

They eventually all settled in, no one daring to bring up what had just happened, though Prompto was uncharacteristically quiet through dinner. Noct kept looking his way hoping to catch his eye, trying to pull him into the conversation but Prompto was thoroughly distracted it seemed. Maybe he was reading the signs all wrong? He felt his stomach twist nervously at the thought, what if he’d made him uncomfortable?

He was entirely unaware that Prompto was just trying to figure out the very same. His mind was reeling, flip flopping frantically between imagining those lips against his and the thought of him pushing him away. Maybe he was wrong and Noct wasn’t trying to kiss him, maybe he was just trying to be nice and not flat out reject him.

But if he did want to, what did that mean for them? Was it even worth pursuing at this point? He was supposed to get married soon, that was the whole reason they were out here in the first place. Astrals, this was too confusing, it was so much easier when he thought his crush was entirely one sided.

Ignis and Gladio were all too aware of the tension between them, they’d seen it coming a mile away and if either of them were asked, they’d say they were surprised it took this long for it to finally happen. When neither Noctis nor Prompto seemed to be paying attention to what was going on the two older men got up to clean off their plates and clear away what was out from making dinner, giving the boys a moment with their backs turned.

It took a second, but Noctis realized the pointed departure, watching them to be sure he wasn’t misreading it before stretching his leg out to nudge Prompto’s boot. “Hey…”

“Hm?” Prompto quickly lifted his head, flushing slightly at being caught completely zoned out.

“Can we...talk?”

“Oh-uh yeah-yeah sure,” he nodded, brow furrowing immediately with worry. This was it, this was where he’d tell him off, turn him away. At least he’d been preparing for this for a long time, he was ready for it. At the end of the day he was just happy to be his friend after all.

Noctis stood then, a bit solemnly seeing the way Prompto’s face turned. He’d definitely made him uncomfortable it seemed, so at least this way he could apologize with a bit of privacy. Leaving his plate by his seat, he offered Prompto a hand up, tugging the blonde from his chair once he set his own plate down.

They walked to the far edge of camp, putting more distance between them and the older men, sitting on the edge of the rune lined space they both kicked their legs, an awkward silence settling between them. It was the polar opposite of the peaceful quiet they’d had up on the cliff, making them both want to scream just to break it.

“Noct, I…”

“Let me,” Noctis said, patting his knee gently, leaving his hand there as he turned to look at him. He could feel that lump swelling in his throat again, stomach twisting anxiously but he knew he needed to do this before he lost the chance again. “You...you’re my best friend, you know that right?”

“Yeah, buddy,” Prompto nodded, shifting to face him more as his stomach dropped heavily like lead. Rejection he could deal with, but was he about to say he didn’t want to be friends anymore either? “Of course, forever right?”

“Forever,” the prince nodded, looking into those lilac eyes and seeing the worry in them. Maybe that wasn’t the way to start this off, he opened his mouth to speak again but stopped lost on what else to say that wouldn’t simply make it worse.

“...Noct, it’s-it’s okay,” Prompto reached out, taking his hand. “I understand, you don’t have to say it. I made you uncomfortable and I know I shouldn’t have, it really wasn’t my intention. But I still want to be friends with you, I don’t want to lose that-that’s so much more important to me.”

“No, Prom, wait--” Noctis tried to interject as he watched him fall into one of his flustered tangents. They were endearing, but he was going to dig a hole for the both of them with this one.

“Honestly, I knew I was okay with it a long time ago, and I’m sorry I made it weird earlier. I really promise I wasn’t trying to. I just get so in my head sometimes and I don’t think about what I’m doing or-or what I’m saying--”

“Prompto,” he groaned.

“I just want to make sure you know I’m not gonna be upset, I get it, I’m not goin’ anywhere--”

Noctis cupped his cheeks and pulled him in, shutting him up with the crash of his lips against his, feeling him tense at first before melting right into the kiss. Pushing his fingers back into his soft blonde hair, he pulled him closer, shifting so their noses weren’t pushed together so uncomfortably. Feeling Prom’s fingers curl into the front of his shirt and tighten only made his heart leap though. This was it, it was happening.

They kissed until they were breathless, until it felt like the world was spinning faster and yet somehow frozen all at once, pulling away only because their lungs begged it of them. Their foreheads still pressed together, Noct let his hands slide down to the sides of his neck, simply holding him there as their breathing mingled, steadying despite the frantic patter of their hearts.

“You’ve really gotta let me speak next time,” Noctis murmured, grinning as a giddy laugh bubbled up out of Prompto.

“Shut up,” he huffed in mock exasperation, pulling him right back in and kissing him again, feeling every ounce of worry fall away from his shoulders.

It wasn’t what either of them had pictured, but it was special nonetheless. Sat underneath the stars, far away from any of their problems, they lost themselves in one another for what brief moment the gods would grant.

[curly-bangtan]

Heatwave Drabble #1: That Night in Mykonos

[Heatwave // Godless] [Drabble Masterlist]

Pairing: Taehyung x reader

Summary: That one not-so-forgotten filthy drunken night in Mykonos that you and Taehyung never speak about again. For good reason.

Genre: drabble, smut

Warnings: unprotected sex (don’t do it), beach sex, oral (m/f), taehyung’s tongue technology, dom!Tae, daddy kink, exhibitionism kink, facial (lol oop), cumplay, spanking, degradation if you count slapping your face with his dick, may make you fall in love with this couple even more soz

Word count: 6k (why am i incapable of making even a drabble short and quick?)

A/N: As per highly requested… :) If you’ve randomly stumbled upon this, definitely read Heatwave first to understand the plot.

.

The gentle washing of the waves sings a lullaby to your ears. You have always loved the sound of the ocean, so serene, yet holding so much power. Wiggling your toes, you watch the minute grains of sand trickle off your feet like a waterfall. Nonchalant, you take a swig of cider, its fruity acidity burning a bittersweet trail down your throat.

‘Man, I fucking love Mykonos.’ Taehyung slurs beside you, tipsy from his fourth bottle of beer he’s clutching like a trophy.

‘Thank you again for bringing me here, Taehyung.’

The two of you are sat on a towel by the beach, watching the moon paint its own reflection in the water. Sky crystal clear, as it is every single night here in Greece, the constellations hanging over your heads set a tranquil tone to the last evening of your trip.

‘Hey, what did I say? Stop thanking me. Now you have to finish your drink.’ Playfully, he flicks the tip of your nose in reprimand.

Grinning, you roll your eyes but follow his stupid rule. Not that you can’t hold your liquor, but this is your seventh drink, and you’re starting to feel it pulsating up to your head.

‘No, but you were right.’ Words tumble out of his pretty lips that you can’t help but admire. ‘It was a good call not to go out tonight. If we actually went hard at VOID, our flight tomorrow would be hell.’ He is referring to the club you have been religiously visiting almost every night this week. ‘This is much better. Nice and chill.’

With a mighty sigh, he falls onto his back, head hitting the edge of the towel, narrowly missing sand invasion in his hair. Rolling your empty bottle away, you join beside him.

‘This has to be the weirdest but also best holiday of my life.’ You ruminate. The stars are shining particularly bright tonight, you wonder if they know it’s your last night here and want to bid farewell.

The chesty chuckle Taehyung lets out reverberates into you. ‘Definitely the weirdest.’ He turns his head to face you. ‘I can’t believe I’m in Mykonos with this random chick I met in the club, who offered to rent me her place, so I guess she’s now my roommate, when this whole trip was planned to be a surprise for my girlfriend who had been cheating on me for months.’

Taehyung is especially chatty and vivacious when drunk, you’ve noticed from the past few days. Normally he’s laid back, spaced out even. But give him some booze, and all his emotions and thoughts cartwheel out of him. Though you’re only beginning to know him, he’s immensely interesting, you can tell he holds so many layers to him that requires inquisition over time.

‘Wow, random chick from the club? Bitch, you ripped out my hair.’ You laugh and smack at his chest, hand lingering for a little too long.

Wait, chest smack? Why are you using your classic move on him?

You’re a flirt, you can’t help it. The cider’s doing its thing, you guess.

‘Man, I’m so sorry about that, you have no idea how awful I felt.’ He inches closer to you until his head is rested upon your shoulder. Right, he’s also especially touchy when drunk. Anyone who walks past right now could mistaken you as close friends, when in reality, you’ve known each other no more than a month.

To be completely fair, you have spent everyday of this said month together since that club night, helping him move in and unpack, and now travelling together. You guess you’re kind of friends now.

‘These past few weeks have been so crazy. I was just trying to have a good night out when a wild Kim Taehyung appeared and somersaulted into my life. And now we’re lying by the Mediterrenean sea together, tanned and drunk.’ His hair is tickling your neck so you push it away. Your fingers brush against his forehead and he hums at the contact.

‘But hey, on a serious note, hand on heart,’ Taehyung gazes up at you, ‘I’m so glad I got to do this with you. You are one of the coolest people I know, and I wouldn’t have wanted to come here with anyone else. Not like I have anyone else right now… My ex can go fuck herself, or fuck Jimin. I have a bigger dick anyway.’

You sit up, choking on your laughter. Out of the blue, he’ll always hit you with these one-liners that are absolutely pure gold. ‘Okay, Mr. I’ve-Fucked-Nine-Girls-This-Week.’

Pride beaming from his smile, he tugs you back down beside him. ‘Hey, I was in a relationship for three years, I need this. Miss I-Had-A-Threesome-With-Two-Guys-On-Our-First-Night.’

The two of you splutter your drunken giggles. The two guys were Italian, come on, how could you have passed up on the opportunity?

Despite the time of evening, the breezes that gust pass are humid. The temperature is perfect, actually, no sun blazing down to melt you into puddles. You’re probably too drunk to appreciate this moment but one day you’ll look back at this night cherishingly, you hope.

‘You’re right. I’m glad I came with you, Taehyung.’ It’s your turn to look at him. ‘I’ll get such an earful from Lotta when I get back but it’s all worth it. I can’t believe we got away with half of the things that we did!’

‘I know right?’ His arm feels particularly warm against you. It may be the alcohol working its magic but his voice sounds so deep and mellow tonight, like dark chocolate dissolving in your mouth. ‘The way they upgraded our room to a premium when we pretended to be a couple on our honeymoon.’

The memory is fuzzy but fond in your inebriated mind. ‘You’re welcome. I’m a master bullshitter.’

‘We even got that couple’s spa treatment and free wine and dine night.’

To be completely honest, it wasn’t difficult pretending to be loved up newly-weds. A lot of that affection you were displaying towards Taehyung wasn’t fake; he’s this perfect specimen of a man, gorgeous face, toned body, captivating personality, quirky humour - anyone’s dream boyfriend, really. You’ve tried to tone your attraction to him down, you can’t be lusting over your new roommate after all. Things would get too messy. But it was just for fun anyway, there’s no harm in a few pretend embraces and neck kisses to get those couple’s perks.

You’re just friends.

Though a part of you envies the nine girls he’s slept with this holiday, because you’ve seen the outline of his bulge in his swim trunks and Holy Shit… But as much as you like to fuck around, there’s a clear line that separates roommates and guys you bang. Those are two mutually exclusive groups of people in your life, the Venn Diagram does not intersect.

‘Hey, you wanna go for one last swim?’ You’re pulled from your thoughts by Taehyung’s suggestion.

It’s a bad idea, swimming this late at night, having downed a few bottles. But when has your inner conscience ever stopped you from doing what you want?

‘’Course.’ He is already removing his shirt as he stands, and you can all but ogle at the muscle of his moonlit back as you reply.

Following his action, you turn away from him and peel off your shorts that have stuck to your skin from sitting for so long. Are you perhaps trying to tempt him with the view of your bent over ass? Hmm, possibly… He does pay an awful lot of attention to your rear every time you wear these shorts... Carelessly flinging your top onto the rest of your things, you spy him staring at you in your periphery, hands stuffed into his shorts pockets. You adjust the pad of your bikini top, perhaps more dramatic than you needed to.

A smirk plays at your mouth. Why are you trying to get his attention?

Feet sinking into the soft sand, you pad after him towards the calm beckoning water. Your head is feeling hazy from the ciders, and when you spot the lazy smile he’s wearing, you know it’s hitting him too. Gazing up at the moon, you realise you feel blue. Not blue in a sad melancholic sense. But blue as in cool, relaxed, heart-at-peace blue; you’re going for one last night swim in the most beautiful country with your handsome new roommate, blue. A hint of romantic lyricism. Maybe.

‘I’m really gonna mis- Taehyung!’ You screech into the quiet night when he all of a sudden picks you up and carries you bridal-style into the sea.

And tosses you into the water.

Arms flailing midair, you’re catapulted into the waves like a pebble. The cold hits your curled spine first, harsh and shocking. Then it detonates within you, a volcano of ice numbing all your senses and aching your bones.

When you find your bearings and gasp up for air, you see him, ocean up to his knees, head whipped back in laughter, clutching his tensing core, eyes pinched into crescents as the most warming sound leaves his mouth.

‘You piece of shit!’ You lunge for him, but your limbs feel heavy in the water, restricting the power of your attack that he dodges so effortlessly.

But you don’t give up so easily. Tide washing you towards him, you launch yourself again, saltine droplets splattering all over his face. Resigning, Taehyung lets you drag him by the hand away from the shore, waddling clumsily against the stubborn current that’s determined to push you back to the beach.

‘Dick and balls, it’s freezing.’ He heaves.

‘Wuss. You’re not the one who got dunked.’ The chill is licking at your skin, seeping into your hair that splays out in floating silk tendrils. You’ve stopped walking on the sand now, instead spreading onto your front and allowing your swimming arms and paddling legs to move you.

Water up to his chest, you see the goosebumps rise on his blue-bronze unsullied skin, star-freckled sea reflecting wavering diamond silhouettes onto his chiseled front. Following the defined protrusion of his salient collarbones, then the sleek inward curve of his neck, your gaze arrives at his face. His strong brow never fails to strike you; tongue loitering out between his folded lips; brown tufts of salt-kissed, breeze-licked hair a mess but a masterpiece still. Eyes painted with a warm summer glimmer, sapphire and still, he observes you from where he stands.

The fluttering in your heart is now indistinguishable from your shivering due to the wet cold.

‘Come on, let’s swim out a bit further.’ He nods to the open ocean, refusing to spare you from his pinning stare.

Body heavy from the alcohol, the cold and simply your lethargism, you dive below the surface. With your water-blurred vision, you swim after his slow walking legs, bubbles you release tickling your face. You grapple onto his ankle, hear his muffled yelp and stifle a mischievous giggle.

Launching off the sand bed, you lurch up to the surface, inhaling sharply at your first breath of air. You push your hair back to see Taehyung regard you with a mystical expression.

‘It’s too deep here,’ you whine, ‘I can’t touch the floor.’ Not particularly athletic, treading water in order to stay afloat is wearing you down.

‘Hold on to me then, midget.’ He chuckles and holds out his hand which you quickly grab onto. With the stability he provides, you pull yourself up his arm like a buoy line and perch your elbow on his shoulder.

Which draws you unexpectedly close to his face. Nose mere inches from his chin. You smell his familiar honey musk.

Unfazed by your proximity, his arm circles behind you before landing one your waist, the warmth of his touch blooming like flowers on your skin. Why does his hand feel so nice on you? Why can’t you stop staring at him?

‘Better?’ Vibrations of his throat hum into your core.

‘Thanks.’ Your poise on his shoulder is sliding so you snake your arm around his neck, hoisting your body up against his. The contact snaps a cord inside you, sensation of him tingling everywhere you touch.

‘You’re such a little princess.’ He rolls his eyes theatrically in feign mockery, but his smirk betrays his mirth.

‘Shut up, you love it.’ This playful banter weighs heavy in your chest, constricting it, winding it. Because if it were anybody else, it would be flirting... Or maybe you are flirting with him right now. You’re not sure anymore.

A droplet of water is trickling along the edge of his jaw, your focus is transfixed at its smooth descent to his chin. Your bodies are bobbing with the calm waves, up, down, up, down. Then your eyes lock and-

Fuck.

You want him.

You really fucking want him.

Right now.

Right here.

Taehyung’s glare sears a mark in you, and it’s burning like the flames of hell all the way down to your sex. With the side of his finger, he doesn’t need to so much as touch you to tip your head up his way because that’s how willing you are. One tilt, that’s all it takes to kiss him right now. His fingers are sinking into your tender waist, and immediately you wonder how they must feel inside you.

‘I do love it.’ He slides his cheek against yours and traces the bridge of your nose with the tip of his.

And then.

You taste the sea on his lips, salt and cold. It feels like diving into the ocean, plunging into the deep blue and simply allowing your body to be swept away. His kiss is greedy, hungry, willing you to submit to him and follow his lead. And in your intoxicated state, you do so.

Legs wrapping around his torso in the water, his hands caress up your thighs to your ass, digging into your plump flesh with an ardour that releases a damp arousal from your slit. Your own fingers grope down his chest and toy with his hair, scratching and tugging. When he nibbles on your bottom lip and you know that you’re done for. You melt like putty in his control, meeting his tongue with a soft obedience you don’t normally exert.

‘Taehyung.’ You gasp into his mouth.

‘I’m all yours tonight, baby.’ is all he says before diving back into you. Those words sends the possessive animal in your mind wild with satisfaction. Because yes, he better fucking be all yours tonight.

Kissing Taehyung feels different. Perhaps it’s because of the build up of tension you have been harbouring these past few days. Or maybe it’s the thrill of knowing that you shouldn’t be doing this, the thrill of doing the forbidden. Or rather, it’s the way he wields his dominance over you so ferally and fervently, like he’s been waiting for as long as you have to do this.

Kissing Taehyung is teeth and tongue.

Kissing Taehyung is salt and the midnight breeze.

Kissing Taehyung is blue. The kind of blue you see only in the hottest of flames.

When you feel his stiff length poke underneath you, your cunt is set ablaze with desire. Desire to sink down onto him this instant and have him pound into you amidst the ocean until you both feel faint. Desire for him to break you in half with all his might, make your eyes water with from the pleasure he stabs into you.

Slowly he begins to walk you back to the shore, gripping your legs around his waist as you lock your arms around his neck. Lips never leaving each other longer than a second to breathe.

His ravenous mouth travels down to your breasts, and he doesn’t hesitate to devour them from your bathing suit, suckling angry red marks down your cleavage and around your nipples. Though clothed, the prominence of his cock burrows between your wide open entrance, rubbing against your bikini-clad clit and making you thrust your hips further into him.

Feverish from his touch, you don’t realise you’re on land until he gently falls onto his knees and carefully places you on the towels below him. Too drunk to even care if anyone else is on the beach, not that there was before you got in the water, you pull him by the neck onto you.

As he kisses a torching trail down your wet body, your mind is somewhere else, in a heaven that worships Taehyung. Hands kneading your exposed breasts, the wisp of his breath tingles down your navel, tying a knot in your core. With his teeth, he obscenely tugs loose the string that ties your bikini bottom together. The fabric falls loose lifelessly, revealing your soaking cunt, shimmering with want for him.

‘So wet.’ He muses as he kisses your pelvic bone, finger stroking up your slick to gather the liquid of your arousal. Then he prods his finger into your mouth, your tongue compliantly lapping up your own taste, salty from the sea. ‘Who made you this wet?’

‘You.’ You’re practically pleading as he sucks viciously at your inner thigh, so close to your weeping pussy.

‘I want you to call me daddy.’

You stiffen under him. Daddy. He wants you to call him daddy. Oh, but of course Taehyung has a daddy kink. It’s so ridiculously characteristic now that he has revealed it, that if you aren’t drunk, you would be rolling your eyes and laughing.

‘Fine, daddy.’ There’s an undertone of travesty to your reply. Whether he notices, he doesn’t show as he kisses closer and closer to your slit.

At the first contact of his lips to your clit, your hips buckle upwards and fingers fly to entangle his hair. Sucking harshly on your sensitive bud, all you’re capable of is squirming and writhing underneath him like a possessed body. The sensation of his mouth sucking on your succulence sends a shot of ecstasy down your quaking legs. Your head feels dizzy.

‘Fuck!’ You whine.

‘You like that, baby?’ When he looks up at you, wet smirk on his lips breathing hot air into your cunt, a coil winds in your stomach.

‘Yes, daddy.’ Your grip on his hair tightens.

Then he’s gorging you like a feast, tongue fluttering on your swollen bundle of nerves, your kryptonite, teeth scraping along your folds seductively. After several licks of your entrance, he pushes not one, but two digits into your cunt. They ease in, lubricated by your moist walls that welcome the pressure of his intrusion into you like the open sea. He draws wide circles inside you, and it feels like your innards are being stirred to perfection by a metal rod. In the meantime, his assault on your clit does not falter, rhythmically hitting his tongue against you, allowing the vibrations of his humming to penetrate your core.

Looking down, this is simply the most beautiful sight you’ve ever witnessed. Taehyung, eyes glimpsing up at you hungrily, face buried nose-deep in your pussy, hands gripping under your thighs that are rested on his shoulders, all the while the moon shines its ethereal glow onto you and the iridescent ocean in the background plays a symphony harmonious to your moans and his filthy slurps.

Suddenly, an explosion of pleasure arrives at your clit. ‘Oh, fuck yes!’ You screech, throat raw from the pure elation that washes over you. The throbbing in your cunt releases at his continuous friction, pulsating so wildly you think you will burst. His fingers pump out your high as he sucks one last time, long and hard, on your beating clit. ‘Ah… Oh my god… Taehyung…’

Finally he emerges from between your legs to breathe. You watch as your fluid dribble down his chin lewdly, your thumb swipes to catch the wetness.

‘How was that?’ Untangling his arms from your legs, he walks up on his elbows to meet your lips in a tender kiss.

‘Mind-blowing.’ You utter against his mouth, eyes rolling to the back of your head for dramatic effect. ‘Let’s continue back in our room.’ Quickly you do up your bikini, impatient for more.

Without needing another word, Taehyung sweeps you into his arms, gathers all your belongings and hastily carries you back to your hotel located just a minute away from the beach. Although, it takes much longer than a minute for you to arrive seeing as multiple detours are made along the way, fondling behind a tree, kissing in the elevator and missing your floor.

And when you’re finally in the confines of your room, he pins you to the closed door, not even bothering to switch on the lights, lips latched onto your magnetising neck. Your wrists trapped in his grip against the hard wood, you ache to touch him as his teeth find your earlobe. Nipping at your soft round flesh, a pleasant shock is sent down your spine at the twinge of pain.

‘Daddy…’ You sigh.

He pulls away to stare into your beseeching eyes. ‘What do you want daddy to do to you?’ His voice is a low grumble of dominance, digging its talons into your brain.

‘I want… I want you to fuck me until I cry.’ In the dark of the room, your attention flickers to the moonlit terrace outside. ‘Right on that balcony over there.’

Something in his obsidian eyes ignite at your suggestion. Zealous with lust, he brings you through the glass door that opens to the fresh night. ‘You want me to fuck you right here, baby? For everyone to see?’

Danger lurking one kiss away, you sense the precarious position his sanity is at. So you reach down and grab his hard member over his shorts, and tip his mind to a carnal frenzy.

‘Yes please, daddy.’ The name is the last straw for him. His breath hitches as you tug down his pants and allow his enormous cock to spring free.

Spinning you around roughly, he bends you over onto the rail of the balcony and strips off your swimsuit in one deft gesture. From here, you have an unobstructed view of the coast, lined by bustling bars and closing restaurants. The neighbouring terraces are a metre away, if anyone walks out now, they would horrifically witness Taehyung’s gargantuan length about to drill into you from behind.

Your heart is pounding in excitement of the risk as well as the anticipation of his cock. Not being able to see him, he can thrust into you any moment now, he must be revelling in such control he holds.

Then you feel it, his large round tip pressing against your entrance curiously. Your legs shake expectantly while fresh arousal leaks out of you, mixing with his precum he’s pressing into you. ‘Beg one more time for me.’

Taehyung and his motherfucking ego.

‘Please, daddy.’ Allowing the words to drag out on your tongue, you twist your neck to look at him with wide pleading eyes. He looks like a king, towering over you with this much assertion, relishing in the power he holds above you in this very moment.

‘Good girl.’

Hands holding your hips in place, he slams his tremendous member into your gaping cunt in one forceful plunge. You can’t help but cry out at the sheer stretch of your walls he’s spanning. Holy fuck, he’s so big he makes it feels like your first time.

All you feel at first is an incredible cinching of your core, the ache of him impaling his rigid shaft through the resisting pressure of your vagina. God, is he fucking massive. He seems to know it as well because he gives you a second to adjust to his size, palm scaling smoothly up the hill of your back to gather your hair in his hand like a rein. Then he is pummelling into you, hips slapping against your bottom, ringing such vulgar sounds in your ears. His cock, hard as if carved from marble, piercing through the pain and moulding a thing of sweet sweet pleasure inside you. You grip the rail so tight its edge gouges marks into your skin, your head hung low between your tense arms.

‘Fu-u-u-uckk-k-k-’ He fucks those syllables out of you one by one. At this angle, his cock is curving up the wrong way into you, jabbing at pockets that normally aren’t reached.

A part of your soul is no longer with you, propelled elsewhere by his ceaseless merciless attack on your cunt. Then comes the sting of his palm when he spanks a searing hot mark into your ass cheek. The sharp pain is refreshing alongside the dull ache behind the euphoric throb he is penetrating into you.

‘This fucking ass of yours, baby. Been driving me nuts in those shorts all week.’ Another slap echoes in your ears, and you welcome it by curving your back more to tip your tush higher for him.

‘Daddy, you fuck me so good.’ Playing along with this narrative he’s into, you egg him on further, stroking his ego as your walls are stroking his dick. Because, damn, he is fucking you so good. Pounding into you with such vigour and violence that your folds are beginning to sting.

You’ve reached a point now where you’re no longer intoxicated by alcohol, but more the addictive fumes of him.

Moans that fall from his lips tingle at your clit, which you start to play with to add to your stimulation. Another smack on your ass, this time so surprising that you scream out. ‘Yes, be loud for me. Let everyone hear how good I make you feel.’ He coaxes.

Taehyung begins to slow, which you know is a sign that he’s close but doesn’t want to blow his load yet. He bends over you, your hair still tied around his wrist, and nips at the shell of your ear. You’ve never known your ear to be such an erogenous zone, for when his tongue flickers at your inner shell, a shudder convulses through you. Leaving slobbery kisses down the curve of your shoulder, he slowly pulls out of you.

‘Finish on the bed?’ As Taehyung embraces you from behind, his strong arm comes under your cold lonely breasts that perk up at his attention, his dripping wet cock sitting between your red ass cheeks. The hum of his deep rasp on your neck sends your head lolling back onto his sweat-dotted chest.

‘Sure.’ What leaves you is a mere huff, you can’t even conjure your voice.

His lips seal yours as he walks you back into the room, leaving the glass door open for the night breeze to grace you. Amidst the savage sex, you treasure such a soft, delicate moment on your tongue, delighting in the way the tips of his fingers trace up your side. When his hand slithers up to your face, you melt into the warm flesh of his palm, mouth opening up for him to unfurl into.

Then the back of your knees hit the bed, and you know it’s about to begin again. Without breaking the union of your lips, you clamber onto the sheets with his frame hovering over you. Grappling on his neck, you drag Taehyung atop you as your head sinks down onto the plush of the pillow.

He sucks on your plump bottom lip one last time before pulling away. Fluid still profusely oozing out of the slit of his tip, telltale of his concupiscence, he perches between your legs. ‘How do you want it, baby?’ His tone endearing, yet eyes deadly dangerous.

Impatient for him to fill you to the brim again, you lift your both legs up for him to grab and place onto his shoulders. ‘Like this please, daddy.’

That’s all you have to say for him to grunt okay and push deep into you, knees digging into the mattress like lampposts. In this position, his cock reaches your cervix without hindrance, his swollen head slamming into your end every thrust he gives. It’s a different type of ache this time, more acutely targeted at the one sensitive spot inside you. As he continues you thrust into you, bollocks swinging at your ass, a build up of sensitivity gathers at your core.

You feel it approaching, that imminent contortion of your cunt, looming over you, on the brink of toppling your senses.

‘Keep going.’ You whimper, the filthy feeling of his prick hammering so fast into you enough to bring tears to your eyes. You try to keep them open, watch his tongue poke out in concentration as he watches your body quiver under his. But the intensity of his fucking is truly too overwhelming that a single droplet leaks out and flow down your temple.

‘I’m so close.’ Taehyung heaves, pecking the bone of your ankle. Something ruptures within him, his sanity, humanity, and suddenly with an even more arduous determination he drives into your walls like a crazed beast. Sole purpose now to reach the climax awaiting him, he spreads your legs open wide before him and rabidly plunges his twitching prick.

And for the second and third time this night, your orgasm hits you, one immediately followed by the other. ‘Taehyung, I’m-’ You’re a crying thrashing body beneath him, the ecstatic pleasure obliterating your mind into ruins as your cunt erupts. The string of profanities that leave you sound incoherent to your own hearing.

You won’t be able to walk straight tomorrow, you’re sure of it.

Taehyung watches you break on his cock, walls tightening impossibly around him, until only a husk of your being remains.

‘Holy shit, I’m gonna come.’ Frantic with excitement, his hips move sloppily. ‘Where should I come?’

‘All over my face? In my mouth?’ Cupping your breast, you gaze up at him with salacious eyes.

‘Oh my fuck- Yes.’

Yanking himself out, a string of your own release threaded at his tip, he slides himself up the bed until his knees are on either side of your head. Pornographically he slaps his hot length on your cheek several times as you roll out your tongue for him. ‘You like that? You like my dick on your face?’

‘Hmmm.’ You engulf his seeping tip in your ready mouth while he jerks himself off with a teenage boy’s zest, his knuckles hitting at the underside of your chin.

Eager to coax his orgasm, you lick fervently at his sensitive head, right on the patch of skin around his slit that drives every man insane.

‘Oh fuck! Baby-’

Abruptly, he withdraws his cock from your mouth. Not after two strokes, he is shooting hot white spurts of his seed onto your face, your eyes shutting just in time to avoid being fired at. Some of his fluid lands in your mouth, brewing bitterly on your awaiting tongue. Eyes squeezed shut, his cock pulses involuntarily in his hand as he lurches his high to an end.

‘You look so fucking good with my cum all over your face.’ Taehyung stares at his piece of work, splattered across your cheeks, on your forehead, and unfortunately for you, in your hair. Feral demeanour dimming, he leans down and gently smears his ejaculation all over your skin before nudging it into your mouth.

Like his good little baby you are, you swallow it like it’s your milk.

‘Mm…’ Throat hoarse from all the moaning, you suck his taste off his thumb.

Exhaustion dawns over the both of you when the adrenaline drains from your blood. Ache straining between your thighs, you waddle over to the bathroom quickly before him cum dries into a crusty nightmare.

Your sex-ridden, hair-dishevelled, hickey-speckled reflection greets you in the mirror. Realisation of your actions sink into your heart along with the sour taste of guilt.

What the fuck have you done?

You just had the wildest sex with Taehyung, your new roommate.

Taehyung, your new roommate.

Taking a deep breath in and out, you try to form back the logic shattered by his brutal fucking. Why do you have to be the way that you are? Just why are you so incapable of controlling your nymphomania?

‘You okay?’ Taehyung’s bass booms from the bedroom, startling you from your turmoil.

You gave into your temptations. You fucked up.

But this isn’t unsalvageable, you two can recover from it. After all, it’s not like you have been lifelong best friends, you’ve only just met each other, still stepping into deeper stages of your friendship day by day. As long as you don’t let this happen again, stop seeing him in a sexual light, you two should be fine.

Yes, you’ll be fine.

Drying your washed face with a towel, your answer is muffled. ‘Yep, all good.’

When you roam back to the room, you see him sprawled out like a Greek God, still shirtless but now wearing sweatpants that outlines his bulge all too well, bed sheets bunched to the side to aerate his sweat-dampened body. His eyes crawl over your naked form with a thirst that has you willing to drop to your knees and suck him off again. Spoilt in the attention he’s doling you, you climb beside him perhaps too seductively than you should.

Stop. You shouldn’t.

Taehyung doesn’t waste a second to pull you into his chest and smother you with slow, passionate kisses. Such contradiction to his rough handling of you sheer minutes ago. His tongue feels heavier, nicer as it rolls along yours, maybe because you’re now sober, senses no longer dulled by alcohol.

It’s a difficulty to retract from his romantic poet of a mouth whose sole purpose is to entice you into its warm embrace. But you do. ‘Hey… We really shouldn’t have…’ You can’t bring yourself to finish your sentence because you care too much for his feelings to hurt him.

But then the cool nonchalance in his pupils relieve you of your fear. ‘Yeah… Probably not the smartest move.’

His fingers toy fondly with your hair, twirling it like a velvet ribbon. Eyes wide with his boyish innocence, you wonder if this is the same person who was just slapping his dick on your cheek and made you call him daddy. This trip was meant to allow you to understand him better, yet you remain stuck, perhaps more than before, in his enigma.

And you wonder how his girlfriend could ever have sought after anyone else Taehyung is… Well he has just done that…

‘It doesn’t change anything, right? We’re still friends?’ You want to roll out of his clasp yet his arms feel so soft and smooth and perfect to fall asleep in.

‘Of course, Y/N’ From the earnesty in his tone, you know you can trust his word.

To resume your previous playful dynamic, you pinch his nose between your knuckles. ‘Then let go of me, friends don’t cuddle.’

‘Friends do cuddle.’ He frowns, shocked as if you’ve just slapped him across the face with a whole cabbage of kimchi.

‘Uh… No they don’t.’ Repulsed by such affection, you try to wiggle away but he locks his arms around your torso like a vice.

‘I don’t know what kind of friends you’ve had, but you’re stuck with me now and in Taehyung-land: Friends. Cuddle.’ Blowing raspberries on your ticklish neck, he lets you squirm like a fish in attempt to escape his coddling, chest rumbling into your back with laughter. Your squeals of help turn into giggles. Raspberries turn into kisses.

You freeze. ‘Oi, friends don’t kiss friends’ necks.’

‘Come on, we just had sex, let me just kiss you a bit more.’ Watching him pout so babily, your heart squeezes. Fuck. Why is your heart squeezing?

But you kiss his jutted lips, still. Savouring his taste that you know you won’t have the chance to delight in again. ‘Fine, but if you try to kiss me tomorrow, I’ll kick your nuts.’

Taehyung takes that as a green light to use you as a snuggle toy for the rest of the night, mouth gallivanting the ocean that is your skin.

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07/09/18

© Copyright 2019

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@shookpreme @taetaeobsessed @tangledsparkles @nonexistentfucks @evilkookie @nbiased95 @shimtatae @taehyungmakesmeoof @itscalledgayhoney @tahaing @deliciouslydisturbed365  @expensive-bangtan-girl @jwlmnbt @herakimkim @dnyad @kaepjjang365 @angelswrld @expensive-bangtan-girl @icyi-sky @gingerpeachtae @taexxxiiaa @spring2787 @monixreal

[starswornoaths]

Her Pendants, His Garden

A commission for my dear friend @karoiseka of her girl and the resident crystal catboy! Post 5.0 below the cut, but no spoilers for the new patch, so you’re safe and sound to read! Thank you so much for your patronage, hon!

Commission Info!

If there was one thing, just the one, that the Exarch would consider a secret he would rather be kept to himself for fear of mockery, it would be that he felt something of an understanding of trees.

“Understanding,” might be a poor choice of word, though he wasn’t sure how else to describe the feeling he grappled with, standing still in the boundless, beautiful garden that was all of Lakeland, knowing he was the oldest thing in it. The lilac colored grass, the lavender elf trees, the brilliant blooms that had sprung to life...all things he toiled to help bring to life, things he had watched stretch ever higher, ever toward the sky. 

Perhaps that was why he struggled to consider himself wholly selfless: how could he plant trees whos shade he would never walk in, knowing that he would live for eons, as the Crystal Exarch?

“Your thoughts are loud.” His companion— his dearest one— mused at his side.

He turned toward her, the Warrior of Light and Darkness both, and couldn’t help but smile. Karoiseka hadn’t so much as looked his way, and yet she still knew him well enough that he was, once more, getting very much into his own head.

“Can you hear them? Do you know what I’m thinking?” The Exarch asked with a playful smirk. 

Truly, it wouldn’t surprise him in the least to discover that she knew exactly that he was thinking about; more often than not, she seemed to have an eerie, almost preternatural sense of what was weighing on his mind. As long as she never suspected he had a gift for her on his person, then he might yet manage to surprise her with something that wasn’t potentially world ending today.

“I’m not a mind reader, Crystal Boy,” she reminded him, and then she turned to face him, bending to peer up at him from under his hood. “But I can practically hear the gears in your head turning. That rarely means anything good.”

“I think of plenty of positive things!” G’raha insisted, even as he tugged his hood down to shy away from those piercing eyes of hers. 

“Oh? And what are you thinking of?” She asked with a perk of her ear and a swish of her tail.

He watched Karo straighten as they continued to walk down the garden path, and felt a twinge of guilt at not wanting to explain what, precisely, he had been ruminating over. His mind hadn’t wandered far before she had pulled him back to the present, thank goodness, but even with how close they had become, how much he loved her, endlessly, he struggled with trying to put to words how he felt regarding the years he had lived, and how much farther they stretched than they should have. 

No, better to think of the present. Of the warmth of her hand in his. Of the happiness, the want to live that she inspired in him. Of how he had never looked forward to tomorrow so much as he did when she reentered his life. Better to focus on her.

“I was ruminating on the weather, and hoping it holds for our outing,” he said instead— technically also the truth. 

“Oh, is that all?” Karo asked, and threw her head back in a laugh as if in relief.

The sound was bright and genuine. Her laugh was a ray of sunshine that he lingered in, warmed by her radiance. How quickly she made such concerns as nigh immortality seem so petty, compared to committing the present to memory. Historian and archivist as he was, he would be remiss in his duties to not take in her every brilliant facet.

So he decided to let himself be G’raha Tia today— and more specifically, just for her, he could let himself be Raha.

She made a point to reach for the hand not yet turned crystal, to make sure he could feel her touch and be comforted by it. He was glad he had foregone his usual arm wrappings; he’d have her touch as unobstructed as he could manage. He readily laced their fingers together and moved that inconsequential, crucial ilm closer to her, to unmake the distance entirely.

Karoiseka had done as much for him, had waded through the void and been battered by the stars themselves, had fought her way along the better path, all just to reach him. It was the least he could do to embrace the life she had battled so desperately for him to have— and to embrace her, for the love they had unexpectedly found along the way. 

Their walk wasn’t far— he could only wander so far from the Crystarium when not away on business, after all— though when they finally stopped at the shore of the lake, they at last came to a stop. After a scan to ensure they were well and truly alone, they set bow and staff alike against the tree beside them at the lakefront, a physical way to show that they had both unburdened themselves of titles and obligations, if only for this singular moment to enjoy their surroundings and one another alike. The breeze coming off the lake was refreshing, and the way it caught her hair when she turned to look at him stole his breath. Though really, she always did that anyway.

For a moment, they took in their surroundings— and each other— though the Exarch eventually gave into his own selfish desire and draped his arm warmly around Karoiseka’s shoulders. He didn’t dare tug her closer, he didn’t want to push her in any way, though he deliberately angled himself ever so slightly toward her in silent invitation.

When she let out a happy hum and bumped her head into his chest as a show of affection, she stumbled back unexpectedly when her temple connected with the spot he’d hidden his gift to her— the box tucked away in his breast pocket. 

“Oof— what—” She startled, gently rubbing at her temple.

A moment of panic hit him when she managed to hit the one spot on his chest he had hoped to conceal, though it was easy enough to hide that panic with the equally genuine panic of fretting over his beloved.

“A-ah! I’m so sorry, Karo—!” The Exarch let go of her hand and stepped in front of her with a swiftness that blew his hood off of his head. He ignored the way only one of his hands felt the gentle warmth of her skin when he cupped her face in his hands and tilted it up closer for inspection. “You hit one of the embellishments on my coat— did it hurt you?”

“No, no, you’re being silly.” Karoiseka insisted, flushing prettily beneath his searching fingertips, bright eyes averted even as she didn’t pull away from him. She pouted most endearingly when he smoothed his thumbs over her cheekbones. “You can stop fussing.”

“I have. Now, I am admiring!” The Exarch laughed, glad that he managed to sidestep her discovering the gift he had before he was ready to give it. “To have such beauty in my grasp, how could I not?”

“Oh! Y-you—!” Flustering, Karoiseka swatted at his chest— and when her hand smacked the hard, decidedly square box in his coat that accompanied a strange rattling, her hand froze there. The discomposed expression on her face twisted into a ponderous arch of her brow, a shift of her sharp gaze, and a curious tilt of her head against his hands. “Wait...what is…?”

He realized a second too late that she was staring at it, her fingers molding over the edges, flexing, inspecting, testing.

“Ah.” Knowing when he was caught and cornered, the Exarch sighed, removing his hands from her face to scratch at his cheek and fiddle with a tassel on his coat in nervous habit. “I had meant to surprise you with it.”

Her hand still remained enclosed over his coat, around the box, though she made no move to attempt to divest him of it for closer inspection. After a moment, her fingers went lax, no longer gripping around the edges, and shifted away from the box altogether to lay over his heart instead.

“You needn’t surprise me with anything. You know that.” She said, and it struck him how quietly she spoke those words.

The thought occurred to him that she might think the surprise grave, given his previous attempts at secrecy with her and the rest of the Scions. Or she might not have expected him to want to give her gifts.

Or...was she unaccustomed to it? Was it unwelcome? The thought hadn’t even occurred to him before now, though suddenly the slight weight of the gift in his breast pocket felt as dense as lead, and he had to make a concerted effort to swallow his heart when it leapt into his throat the moment that panic gripped him. 

“I know. I wanted to!” The Exarch managed around a stammer, mentally cursing himself all the while. Nevertheless, he persisted, “It was the least I could do— I feel as though we’ve hardly had a moment to ourselves, and I wanted to show you how much I—”

“You’re babbling, Crystal Boy.” She chided gently, words wrapped in a giggle and formed around a broad smile. “Be at ease. I’m flattered, I just want you to know I don’t expect it.”

“Ah. Ah!” His ears perking with realization were enough to give away that he hadn’t realized he’d gotten caught in a bit of a loop, his brightly blushing face only flushed all the deeper the more he looked at Karoiseka, who for her part was watching him with growing amusement. “Y-yes, of course! I’m glad to have surprised you— or rather! Surprised you in a good way— or in what I hope is a good way—” 

At Karoiseka’s pointedly blanched expression, brows raised in a very clear show of waiting for him to be quite finished with his anxious rambling, he visibly straightened himself as he cleared his throat, and when she removed her hand from his chest he made an effort to tug his robes back into place. 

“I should stop overthinking it, I think.” He admitted in a calmer tone.

“I agree.” She replied in a flat tone.

“Right.” With a deep breath to collect himself, he tried, again, to find his eloquence. “Karo. I know I’ve likely exhausted you for how much I remind you of how happy you make me.”

“You don’t. That’s impossible.” Karoiseka corrected him. Her ears tweaked in amusement as she offered a bashful smile. “I could never get tired of you in any sense of the word.”

“...Right.” He amended, ignoring the heat growing on his face. He was fairly certain his blush was spreading clear down to his chest by now.

When he averted his eyes from her patient, expectant gaze, he couldn’t help but let his focus shift to her bow, crossed over his staff and propped against the tree. It’s familiar blue crystals shimmered faintly in the sunlight, dappled with an iridescent kaleidoscope of fractals of light. 

Once he’d found his courage again and he peered at her with a sidelong glance, she looked ethereal, breathtaking, and somehow that made the words come easier. 

“Though I was not the one that gave you the bow you now wield, I know it was crafted with fragments of the tower.” 

“So I was told.” With a content hum, Karoiseka nodded. “But really, I could tell even before the weaponsmith said so— only so many crystals that are this shade of blue.”

“I rather liked the idea of a part of my home going with you on your journeys. To accompany you when I cannot.” The Exarch felt himself wince as he continued, “But I misliked the idea of only offering a part of me as a weapon for you. To mark you as an arbiter of the Crystal Exarch. Such an implication felt ill suited for you.”

“I never viewed it that way.” She tried to reassure him, though when he held up a hand to signal he wasn’t quiet done talking, she offered him a grin filled to the brim with fond exasperation. “Alright, alright, go on. I’m listening.”

Helpless in the face of his affection, helpless in front of her as he always was, the hand he’d held up moved to close the distance between them, to cup her face in his hand. She eagerly leaned into his touch, though her eyes twinkled in mischief when she snuck a kiss to his palm as she did so. Despite his flustering at her affectionate antics, her affection eased him into finally reaching into his coat with his free hand and producing the box she had bumped into. 

“I would much rather offer you a piece of my home that I had taken myself, and made into something that served no other purpose than to bring you joy.” He murmured, and slid his hand from her face to open it. “I wanted you to always have a part of me with you, to show the world— any world that you’re in— that I am yours, Karo. Always.”

The Exarch’s breath caught in his throat at the way she peered into the box, her eyes wide as saucers and her lips parted in shock. Though she moved a hand in the space between them, it hovered there, moving neither without nor within. She stood, transfixed by the two crystal hair tassels inlaid in the box. There was such little movement that for a moment, he feared he had offended her.

Then she spoke.

“Raha...” Karoiseka whispered in a voice that trembled with the weight of reverence and unshed tears in equal measure. 

That one utterance unmade him entirely, struck him at his heart, and before he could even register the sting of tears in the corners of his eyes— and in hers— she launched herself into his arms. Even unfeeling as it was, his crystalline arm wrapped around her to clutch her closer without thought, without anything but the instinctive need to always keep her close to him and remind him that he was human, that he was alive. He managed to avoid spilling the crystal tassels out of the box, even as he yet stumbled to keep them both upright from the force of her impact.

He made to ask if she was alright when he heard a telltale sniffle from somewhere around his shoulder. Her arms— powerful, fierce, unyielding as they were— squeezed him so tightly that he felt every jagged piece of his crystalline heart fit back into place. She had that effect on him all the time, really, but the physicality of it was soothing. 

“You like them?” He asked in spite of himself, just to be sure.

Karoiseka slipped her arms from him and stepped back, gazing at him with wide, glassy eyes, and in lieu of her own babbling, she smiled wide enough to make the corners of her eyes crinkle, enough to make those tears slip down her cheeks, even as she vigorously nodded. His posture softened in relief, and he moved to gesture toward the box still in his grip.

“Would you like me to put them on for you?” He offered.

With another enthusiastic nod of her head and another sniffle, he handed her the box and took the first of the two tassels in hand.

“They’re not too complicated— I am not much of a goldsmith, admittedly— a simple hinge and a clasp was about all I could manage.” He spoke softly as he clasped the first one around the end of one of her braids. “Though Iola was instrumental in ensuring that my handiwork was of suitable durability, for a blessing. I wanted to make sure these would endure whatever trials and tribulations you may face.”

“They’re beautiful.” Karoiseka finally managed to croak out, and from what he could see in his peripheral view, she was peering down at the other tassel, still in the box. “I can’t put to words how much this means to me.”

“You needn’t.” The Exarch reassured her, taking the second tassel. “That you would wear them so gladly is proof enough. I only hope these small tokens can convey even a little of how much you mean to me.” 

“Of course they do!” She reassured him.

The second braid he aimed to adorn was a little smaller, and a little trickier to put a tassel on. The fiddling gave him time to babble distractedly, letting his heart be more honest with her.

“I know that obligations have kept us both busy— and I, in particular have been scarce of late for my work. I feared it would be less apparent how I cherish you, so I suppose this is something of a declaration of mine, if you would have it.” 

“Always.” She promised him. 

The clasp finally worked through her braid and secured itself properly, though he lingered, his hands moving almost on their own, completely naturally, to hold her face again. 

“No matter what happens, I beg you to never doubt my heart, or your ownership of it.” His hands guided her head into tilting down just an ilm, just enough for him to press a kiss to her forehead. “I love you.” Her head straightened, and he kissed the tip of her nose, cherishing the way it crinkled cutely under the attention. “I love you.” The third kiss, she met him half way for, their lips finding one another in soft enthusiasm. “I love you, Karo.”

The tears she had managed to swallow came back in full force, though her smile had never been bigger or brighter, and he had never felt so warm.

“And I love you, Raha.” She whispered, overwhelmed. 

When she moved to embrace him again, he marveled at the way her new hair tassels caught the light that filtered through the tree branches, and shattered it in resplendent rainbows across her shoulder, across his chest. It seemed most fitting to him, as she had always been the sun spot that he had lingered in, a shunned outcast finding refuge and acceptance. In her arms, even the parts of him he had lost to the tower felt warm.

[goodfortune-au]

Good Fortune (Soulmate AU) Chapter 8: Interplay

She simply couldn't explain it. Once she had laid eyes on the impersonal words of the news broadcast that morning, memories of the night previous came flooding back in a torrent. It was almost like a waking nightmare. She re-lived it all; the search for Stan, seeing Pennywise amid the crowd on Up-Mile-Hill, losing the rest of the children, running into Patrick, being thrown off the bridge... But one specific detail juts out in her subconscious. The screaming; the wet, the tearing, her ears ringing with it as she fought desperately to stay cognizant despite the increasing pain in her ribs. She was terrified in her haze, fearing that once she faded to black she may never wake up again, a helpless victim of whatever had preyed upon her sadistic assailant. Even worse was that her guardian angel seemed to be concerningly absent during the whole ordeal, leaving her vulnerable to whatever stood lurking in the shadows. To tell the truth, she was truly traumatized after what had happened last night, but she forced herself to pull it together for them, for the kids. She couldn't afford to let them see her fall apart, not when they'd just been through trauma of their own. She was the adult, she needed to be strong. There was simply no other option.

The Losers’ parents had, for the most part, been fairly understanding about the impromptu sleepover from the night before. Though the whole of Derry didn’t seem to harbor much of a liking for Angel overall, she at least held favor with the Losers’ parents. She’d been babysitting for the likes of them for years and was a trusted authority figure for them at this point, so they saw no issue in letting her take the parenting reins whenever they couldn’t be bothered to do so themselves. That was a lot of the time, to be plainly frank. Derry’s adult population was often painfully oblivious and patently negligent, and that included the parents too. Even the more meddlesome ones like Eddie’s mother were still prone to it, content to control their children to a certain extent but leaving the rest to whoever cared enough to step in and finish the job. They had all responded to her phone call with something of a blase indifference; Ed’s mom simply asked if he’d taken his medicine, Richie’s parents were relieved to have kept him out of the house at all, and Bill’s hadn’t even answered the phone. The only parents to have raised any kind of issue were Stan’s, and that was largely due to his physical condition when they got him back the following morning. She’d gotten a bit of an earful over her supposed carelessness in taking care of him, and they’d informed her that Stan would be taking a break from visits with friends for the time being. She felt bad, but she knew that there wasn’t much she could do about it.

She called out that day, finding her injuries both mental and physical too much to stomach working her shift for the time being. It was about time she took a day off anyway; something a little extra could surely come of use to her. Things were hard as of late, and besides her coping mechanisms there wasn't much else to keep her happy. Her coping mechanisms could only go so far, too; they were like a band-aid to a grievous wound, they could only do so much. She was slowly but surely declining. She was putting off laundry, she was neglecting her personal hygiene, eating too much. She was losing interest in her passions the last few weeks; she hadn't been able to finish so much as a sketch most of the time. The only thing she could seem to draw was him, but she couldn't really put her finger on why. She would get the urge sometimes during the Derry Children's Hour, and before she knew it she was there on the sofa, rendering him distinctly in her own quirky style, enjoying the feel of the pencil as she detailed the whimsical curls of his hair and the luxurious silk sleeves on his suit. Beyond that she was creatively void, nothing would come to her besides him. He seemed to be a muse for her, and she could only surmise that it was because he brought her a sense of comfort and solace. He made her happy, and she maybe… Just maybe… Had a little bit of a crush.

Actually, forget little. It was full-blown. She couldn’t stop herself smiling ear to ear whenever she saw him now; couldn’t help herself giggling like a school girl whenever he spoke whimsically or played silly little games with the children, whenever he did that adorable laugh of his. He always spoke of himself in the third person, too, something she’d always found particularly cute and endearing. There was just so much about him that she enjoyed, and she couldn’t control the way she couldn’t control herself when she thought about him. All she wanted to do was hug him in her distress; feel those long arms closing around her, keeping her safe from the big, bad world she lived in. Look into those cerulean eyes, feel the sense of content seeping back into her bones like the warmth of a lit fireplace on a cold, winter's night. And how he would crack jokes, make her laugh, make all her troubles melt away with expertly crafted wit and jest. She wanted him. It seemed silly and stupid, but it was true nonetheless.

And with each passing day she felt that desire grow stronger, as infatuations are want to do. She knew she could never possibly indulge it, but she enjoyed the fantasies anyway. She imagined him whisking her into a dip, the drumroll, the apex to a truly romantic moment, before he leaned in for the kiss… She blushes just thinking about it, letting the fleeting thought linger in her mind as long as it cared to before being replaced by other thoughts. How ridiculous it all was, but in this current state of affairs she couldn’t deny the comfort of a fixation. It kept her distracted, as distracted as she could be anyway; distracted from the increasing turbulence of life, the doldrums of depression. It kept her distracted from the mystery of Georgie’s disappearance, and the likely implication that whatever had attacked Patrick might surely have had a hand in his vanishment too. It was a terrifying thought, and one that most certainly shook her to her core, as the thought of having narrowly dodged being at the mercy of such a monster was too uncomfortable to stomach. She briefly ruminates on the thought of her own face plastered to all the latest missing posters around town and it makes her shiver. Maybe her guardian angel really was keeping her safe. Maybe she was lucky after all.

As the days of November progressed, she found herself sleeping in more and more, and before she knew it she was regularly losing half her days off to long, indulgent naps. She couldn’t help it; it was hard not to be tired in times like these, hard not to call it quits after draining days at work, and to tell the truth… She was chasing those dreams. She hadn’t been having them as of late, not since Halloween, a phenomenon she found truly perplexing, and it was admittedly making her stew in dismay whenever she woke in the morning. Those dreams were something of an escape for her; she looked forward to having them, as much so as she looked forward to the gifts from her guardian angel. They made her feel watched over, they made her feel safe. She so badly wanted to feel safe, and she wanted to see him. There was still the Derry Children’s Hour, but his appearance was never a guarantee. Up until they’d stopped, the dreams had been just such an assurance. But no longer, it seems, at least not for now. She briefly worried that it may signify the end of her infatuation, short-lived and intense as like many others, but with all her chagrin about having possibly lost him, she reasonably doubted that to be the case.

Pennywise was all too delighted to witness this in her, the desperation to see him that he so badly wished to cultivate. It made him stew in anticipation from day to day; as he prowled beneath Derry, taking his meals and sipping the fear of all who he chose to subject to his torments. He would think about her always as he took them for his appetite, imagined sating a different hunger as he let the sumptuous blood from his victims drip from his jowls; licking his lips, savoring the taste of the flavors mingling together on his palate. He was content to leave her gifts but he had decided to stop the dreams at least for now, leaving her mind empty to the possibility of his coaxing and alluring sweet talk so that she may come crawling back to him, begging him for those delicious little manipulations once more. He had the dream repeat with little variation on purpose; he wanted her to be hungry for more, wanted her hopeless with desire until he was all she could think of. He knew that that would take time; slow and steady wins the race after all, but he would see to it that it happened no matter the cost. And he knew she was already well on her way, with her life slowly declining, with the way she was falling headfirst into all her unhealthy habits once more.

To tell the truth, that did concern him greatly. He wanted her to be happy; wanted that almost as much as he wanted his own happiness, and to see her so downcast on a day to day basis worried him. He knew how prone she was to self-destructive behavior, how her moods would swing on a dime; he knew how she could go from feeling good to spiralling into negativity in a matter of weeks or even days. He knew she wasn’t immune to thoughts of such things as suicide either, and he truly couldn’t stand the thought of losing her to such a thing. No, better such an act be reserved for anyone else in the town too weak to face the bedlam of their insignificant existence, but not her. Never her. Thankfully, however, he didn’t worry of that so much. She was such a strong, resilient, stubborn girl. He’d known that as he slept, known so much about her life that she wasn’t even aware of, and thankfully it was coming in handy now that the time was upon him to take her. Of course, it would be in due time, but he would see to it that it happened before the end of his cycle, before he returned to the bowels of Derry, deep below in the cavernous reaches of a place unknown to a single living soul to take his long twenty-seven year rest once more. How he longed to take her with him, keep her by his side, eternally youthful as they wandered through the long and winding, ageless passage of time together. The thought truly enchanted him; Pennywise was a creature who wanted little else than to eat and sleep forever, but there was something else missing for so long that he was eager to keep for his own. And now that it was here, now that she was here, he would do everything in his power to win her. It was simply an urge, an instinct he couldn’t control no more than he could control his hunger for fear and flesh. He needed it.

And despite the fact that she didn’t yet realize it, she needed it too. She had been missing the same thing her entire life, a companion to love and cherish her, keep her grounded during the hard times and give her a steady shoulder to cry on. She needed it because she was just so lonely, nowadays her only friendly acquaintances being the presence of those loathsome brats. He still grimaces at the thought, knowing that their continued existence was a liability to his plans but knowing he couldn’t eat them so soon for fear of alienating her, of scaring her away. It was a tricky situation to be sure, and one he needed to make sure he wouldn’t fuck up. He only got one shot at this, and he dared not to think of failure. It simply couldn’t be. And oh, how he would love and adore her, how he would bolster her and shower her, lavish her in affection and tenderness when he finally won her. She would reciprocate his attentions in full, she would idolize him and return his gestures in earnest, happy to demonstrate her gratitude from that which would save her from herself.

And that was to say nothing of his primal urges. Pennywise was rather an animalistic thing, driven by raw and unabated desire, and this was something he had desired for quite a long time. He’d known of her dormant soul for so long, a gift bestowed upon him by a greater force, and he had waited ages just for her to be born into this shitty little world. Pennywise was an entity, a creature just as any other that longed to f*ck and to breed. He was no different than that of a dog in that respect; he wanted to fill his mate with seed and watch her stomach grow full with his spawn, his children. It was what she was intended for, it was her purpose; it was her purpose to be with him, to stay with him, and to take whatever he pleased to give her. He entertains the thought of her laying beneath him, simpering and whining for him to take her and he finds himself salivating at the mere idea of it. Her rosy red cheeks flush with wanton yearning, how she would squirm and beg for his cock to fill her. Crying out in pure pleasure as he ruts in and out of her, taking his size so perfectly, her warm wet tightness deliciously sheathing his length, because she was made just for him. It spurs him on, gives him the drive to continue his manipulations, as he only knew it was building towards an eternity of happiness, of having gotten exactly what he wanted just as he always did.

She was simply unaware of the greater scheme of things, of the thing pulling strings without her notice. While she knew there was something amiss in Derry, she hadn’t yet connected the dots linking everything together. She hadn’t the time nor the energy to spend thinking on it too much, although she was still patently uneasy as a result of the events that had transpired on Halloween. She tried her best not to think of it, tried to disregard the guilt creeping into her mind ever since that night, plaguing her thoughts whenever a vacancy was present. Ah, survivor’s guilt. Though she greatly disliked Patrick Hockstetter, she hadn’t wished him to suffer such a clearly gruesome fate. It was true he was a little shit of a kid, and she had no doubt he’d done far worse than push a girl off a bridge, but she still couldn’t fathom it. That just wasn’t the kind of person she was. She tried to forget as she continued on with her life, but the sound of his screams lingered in her mind like a hook on the most haunting song in existence. It was hard to forget the paralyzing, sweat-soaked horror she’d felt as she lay there immobilized, and she wanted more than ever to feel safe, to feel the aura of her protector sweeping over her like a delicate but comforting perfume. No such luck, however, even as she crawled into bed, eager to resume the pattern of dreams she’d been having but coming up disappointingly short.

Despite the lack of dreams, she’d kept finding gifts at the very least. Throughout the month she was pleased to find herself amassing a collection of various little things; old jewelry, buttons, marbles, shiny things like crumpled up tinfoil and metal barrettes. She’d even found another bouquet of dying sunflowers, this time placed conspicuously outside her stoop for her delight, a welcome surprise as she stepped out the door one morning to make her way to work. Whatever was leaving these things seemed aware of the fact that she specifically liked offerings of pearls and would more often than not would leave strings of them in different colors tangled in tree branches for her to find. It made her feel fuzzy, the thought that something cared enough for her to discern whether or not she had a particular preference for something. She kept all these things in an old chocolate box, and when she found herself having a hard day, when she couldn’t find Pennywise on the Derry Children’s Hour or couldn’t bring herself to manage a single sketch she would look into it and simply smile, letting that wonderful warmth take over again.

Before Angel knew it the end of November was upon her already, and the occasion of Thanksgiving was fast approaching. Though most chose to spend the holiday with loved ones, Angel had decided to opt out this year, not caring to make the journey to Haven to see her family as she found it particularly stressful and hard on her socially. She had already planned to go out to see them for Christmas and she hadn’t been... Particularly looking forward to it. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see them; rather, she didn’t want them to see her . Not like this. She was having a hard time keeping up appearances as of late, and she was particularly vulnerable around her family. She knew there was the risk of potentially pouring her heart out to them, and it might have been fine as a child and as a teenager, but as an adult it was just embarrassing. She wanted to put on an air of confidence. She wanted to convince them that she was doing just fine on her own, that she didn’t need their help, not anymore. And right now, she didn’t know that she could manage it. Maybe next month, when she had more time to get her shit together.

So she planned to spend it alone. The Losers were all obligated to spend the holiday with their own families, so it was simply her with the company of Mayor Jello to keep her from complete isolation. She didn’t mind it so much; maybe she would rediscover her love for cooking along the way. Maybe it would make her happy for a little while. She had no idea, but it was worth a shot. So she went to the local grocery, stocked up on plenty of cooking supplies, and made her way back home to undertake the arduous task of creating a Thanksgiving dinner all on her lonesome. She had decided on a menu of the obligatory turkey, honey-glazed ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and gravy. She also planned to make sweet potato casserole for dessert; something she’d always loved growing up. She always fancied herself something of a decent cook. Of course, baking was her specialty, but she was reasonably competent in the other areas of the craft, so how hard could it be to manage a single meal? She even looked forward to it a little bit, not just for the sake of delicious food, but because she remembered deriving such joy and enthusiasm from the activity. She could use a little enthusiasm right now.

She comes through the door with several plastic bags dangling off her arms and a backpack strapped to her back to house the turkey. She comes in, she sets her groceries down in the kitchen, and then sets to the task of unbagging everything so that she can start as soon as possible. Thanksgiving was the next day, and she was content to do a little prep work so that the proceedings would go by that much more smoothly. She decides to start with the gravy, knowing that she could store it ahead of time without much hassle. She sets a sizeable dab of butter down in a skillet and lets it brown while she cubes a loaf of bread for the stuffing. After she sets the bread aside to stale she checks on the butter, and then she whisks in about a quarter cup of flour to thicken it. She lets the flavor of the beef broth waft through the house as she stirs it into the mixture and indulges in the rich, savory smell as it comes together in a nice coagulated sauce, then sets it aside in a Tupperware in the fridge for safekeeping. She peels the potatoes, chops and stores them in a pot of cold water, and along the way she finds herself smiling and humming while she sets about her tasks. She always found cooking to be a therapeutic sort of activity, one she didn’t mind taking her time with, and she was pleased to rediscover a small flicker of her affinity for it. When she finishes her prep for the night she reclines to her bedroom for some much-deserved rest and leaves the day behind her. Another night without a dream.

She sleeps in late despite a conscious effort not to, and resumes her prep the next day in something of a foul mood. Not even Mayor Jello could charm her out of her irritation, futile meows and purrs falling on her deaf ears as she throws her hair in a scrunchie and sets about the kitchen in a brisk and impatient pace. She finishes up the stuffing, mashes the potatoes, and preps the ham for glazing, which she shoves into the rack below the turkey to roast after she’s done. Things were coming along rather swimmingly so far despite her aggravation and general tension, and she felt rather proud of herself for having come this far on her own. See, she didn’t need her family to get things done. She could manage herself just fine on her own. In time her bad mood starts to dissolve and she finds herself in good spirits again, whistling a merry tune as she takes things out of the oven and sets things aside to continue preparing others. It was well past six at this point and the sky was darkening outside, clouds in the sky illuminated by a bright waning moon. She rather enjoyed the sight of it through the sliding glass door to her backyard, and found herself gazing outside absentmindedly as she continued her prep work.

All that was left was to put the finishing touches on the turkey and make the sweet potato casserole, which to be honest was a relatively easy recipe. She hadn’t the patience to peel two different batches of potatoes so she simply opted to buy the canned kind to save herself some headache. She mashes them in a pot and sets them to low-medium heat, and once they’re of reasonable temperature she stirs in the brown sugar. She estimates a healthy dosing of vanilla extract to bring out the flavors more, and as the time passes the house fills with a fugue of sweet and savory mingling together to create something truly captivating. She’d been saving her appetite all day, and truth be told she was really looking forward to finally sitting down. She pours the sweet potato mixture into a glass pan and covers it with a generous helping of mini-marshmallows before she replaces it with the turkey and the ham in the oven. Both look absolutely wonderful; she’d rubbed the turkey all over with butter and set it to roast with a blend of fresh herbs, and the ham, scored with cross-hatch, had come out a gorgeous candied red on the crisp outside. She starts to slice the turkey, cutting off a leg along with a sizable chunk of ham, just counting the minutes until the casserole comes out of the oven and she can finally start eating. She shreds a few pieces of white meat and deposits it into Mayor Jello’s bowl, who eagerly starts to eat once she finishes dumping it in.

She bides her time, trying to stave off impatience and letting the TV distract her until the oven finally beeps (she’d been watching a re-run of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and found herself momentarily placated by the array of colorful floats and vivacious performances), and then she gets off the couch to sojourn over to the oven. She’d kept her turkey and ham carvings in the oven so they would stay warm, and as she started to take the plates out of the oven she couldn’t wait to reap the delicious spoils of all her hard work, the sights and smells enough to make her mouth water in anticipation. Her hands are shielded by bunched up kitchen towels and as she sets her meat plate down she goes to reach for the sweet potato casserole. She has a sturdy grip on the dish but the dishtowels around her fingers start to slip, and as she pulls it from the oven her skin makes contact with the molten hot glass.

“F*CK!”

SMASH!

All it had taken was one moment, and with one minor slipup, she had found her dessert a mess on the floor, covering the linoleum of the kitchen with a disheartening mess of sweet potato mixture and shards of broken glass. She stares down at it for a moment, not fully processing yet what had just happened, not even the pain of a single piece of shrapnel that had lodged itself in her bare foot from the impact. And then, after an eternally long beat of silence, she feels the tears welling up in her eyes, her lip quivering, the heat of dismay starting to bubble up through the skin of her face. She sinks down to the floor and starts sobbing; ugly, loud, inconsolable sobs, and in no time at all her face is a mess of hot tears and snot. She covers her face with her hands and continues to weep, and there in the silence of the room, there is nothing to console her save for Mayor Jello, who comes from his food bowl to rub against her leg. She appreciates the gesture but she cannot, for the life of her, summon the strength to reciprocate his affections right now, so she simply pushes him away and continues in her heartbroken wailing.

This continues from some time, even as the food grows cold and the sky grows darker and darker still. She’s there, frozen on the floor amidst a heap of her broken efforts, and she can’t seem to stop crying even as she pauses to take deep gasping breaths in through her runny nose. Her eyes are red and puffy and her cheeks are furnace-hot, and all she can hear is static in her ears, her legs growing numb from having been folded so long. She shouldn’t get so worked up over something like this, it was one simple mistake. It was only one thing, everything else had turned out so well, but all the same she finds herself demoralized, drowning in crippling misery. Seconds become minutes and minutes become an hour, and she’s still there on the floor, sniffling and staring off into space. And then, feeling starts to return to her, a very particular, unmistakable feeling, and she looks up with bloodshot eyes to hear something plinking against the glass door leading into the backyard. When she gets up to investigate, she steps gingerly over the broken glass to inspect something bobbing against the sliding door. She opens it cautiously, looking out.

Tied to the handle is a peculiar sight, one she hadn’t seen before until now. She knew it to be from her guardian angel, because she had felt the warmth of their presence spreading through the dead feeling in her legs, had felt that strange otherworldly hum coursing through her like a vivid wave just moments before. It’s a beautiful red helium balloon, tied to the handle of the door, and she truly doesn’t know what to make of it in this moment. She’s utterly speechless, and simply can’t fathom the timing of this particular offering. If there was any doubt in her mind at this point that she had a guardian angel in the first place it was surely cast to the wayside, as there was simply no way of denying it now that there was so much irrefutable proof. She feels the tears again, but they’re different now. They’re tears of joy, silent joy brimming in her hazel eyes, butterflies starting to flutter restlessly in her stomach as she regards the balloon with wonder and amazement. Now all of a sudden what had happened before didn’t seem so bad, as she’s so taken by this gesture that she simply cannot feel the negativity anymore. It’s washing away from her as she wordlessly studies the balloon, thoughts drifting through her frazzled mind. She debates what to do with it; she knew that it would inevitably lose its helium and deflate. She couldn’t possibly think to discard it when the time came, it would simply make her too sad. After a moment of contemplation she knows what she wants to do, and she pulls the scrunchie out of her hair, letting her chestnut tresses fall about her shoulders as she unties the balloon from the door handle. She winds the scrunchie around the knot at the bottom and secures it with another loose knot below, writing a message on the balloon with the help of a nearby marker. She scrutinizes it for a long moment, admiring her handiwork, and then she takes a deep breath and lets it float off into the sky. It continues its ascent until she can no longer see it among the clouds. It has simply disappeared from sight and she smiles.

~~~~

Snuffling at the delicious scent of her essence through the fabric, Pennywise grins with sheer glee as he favors the message written on the returned balloon. “Thankful for you,” it says, accented with a heart and bobbing carelessly under the ceiling of the wagon.  He can hardly contain himself, he’s so filled with delight that he rejoices in it, revels in it, dancing amid puddles of grime in the sewers below. After all this time, after all his hard work, he had started to see the fruits of his labor bloom so beautifully. She had left him something in return, had even spoken to him in a fashion; she had started to reciprocate his affections, and the simple thrill of it is so sublime, so wonderfully decadent that he cannot stop himself from jingling in excitement at the thought. He truthfully hadn’t known how she would respond to his offerings at first; he hadn’t known she would react so positively, but knowing that she has simply makes him all the more arrogant, all the more self-assured. She was becoming putty in his hands, and in no time at all he would get what he wanted, he knew it. She would be his, she would give herself to him, she would love him and she would give him everything she had. He just needed a little more time to win her, to pull her strings until she wanted nothing else but him. He nuzzles against her gift, and carefully places it in a dedicated corner of his stage. Safe and secure, and he was sure the first of many. He would collect little trinkets from her just as he would leave ones in kind, and in time their bond would grow. Derry simmers with a low, rumbling purr, a noise of content from its enigmatic and insatiable beast. No one would disappear on this night.

[beholdingavatar]

But I’m Afraid You Absolutely Did Choose It

A Rumination on Fear, The Magnus Archives, and the Modern Queer Experience

***

Given the source material on which this draws, there is only one way this piece can open.

Statement begins.

I first listened to The Magnus Archives on the recommendation of the King Falls AM discord server. I’m hardly a horror fan - most horror movies make me want to throw up and then give me weeks worth of lasting nightmares - but the KFAM discord has yet to steer me wrong, so I took a chance. It was - so utterly worth it.

The Magnus Archives is a serial fiction podcast, centering around an institute for paranormal research, and particularly the archives. The series begins with the appointment of Jon Sims as the new head archivist after the brutal murder of his predecessor, Gertrude, and follows - at least for the first season - his attempts to digitize the archive. I suggest you read no further if you are interested and want to avoid spoilers, because the conceit of this piece concerns spoilers from season 2 onward.

The universe in which The Magnus Archives (hereafter TMA) operates is affected by eldritch fear entities, each with their own acolytes and servants, their own rituals to try and enter our world and rule it. I’m no stranger to fear. How could I be, with the world as it is? I’m queer, I’m autistic, I have non-citizen immigrant parents, I’m mixed race - that’s a veritable laundry list, in this day and age. And that’s without tagging on the healthy paranoia that’s developed as a result of years of having every authority figure, every person I considered a friend, pull the rug out from under me at some point or another. Usually, between the fear and the paranoia, the idea of using horror as an escape seems laughable. But there’s something about TMA that makes it different.

Maybe it’s the low, soothing, audiobook voice that Jon reads the statements in. Maybe it’s the fact that the theme music is so good. Maybe it’s relating to archival assistant Martin and his glaringly obvious crush on his boss, Jon. Maybe it’s Basira and Daisy. Maybe it is a lot of things. But the first season of TMA kept me listening, kept me waiting with bated breath for the final line of every episode, when Jon would reveal the creepiest shit to us as listeners. And after the meta plot reveal, the speed with which I listened almost doubled.

There are the fourteen fear entities in the TMA universe. Some of them are fundamentally terrifying to me, like The Buried (the fear of being buried alive, of being trapped), or The Flesh (which is almost exactly what it sounds like, and I will never forgive Jonny Sims and Alex Newall for imprinting in my brain the Foleys for a flesh pit). Some pose interesting frames through which to view myself - as someone perpetually othered due to being autistic, there’s something delightfully empowering about The Stranger (the fear of the outsider, the unknown, what doesn’t belong). Jon, Martin, Basira, Daisy, and Melanie, our core cast, work for another, The Beholding, which is far and away in my mind the most interesting of them all.

The Beholding is the Fear of being known. Not of having someone know of your general existence, but rather the fear of being utterly known, of having some other being know every inch of you, know your innermost thoughts and innermost fears, the things you would never say to anyone. I am utterly fascinated by the Beholding, for a number of reasons. The first is that I want Jon Sims’ job. I could write you a whole other essay on why I would make a fantastic Archivist, but that is not where I want to go here. No - I want to talk about the concept of Being Known.

I’m someone who doesn’t fit into the norm by any stretch of the imagination, due to a variety of parts of myself that I cannot change, all of which have neat little labels. The only problem with this is that as soon as I tell someone one of those labels, they feel entitled to all that there is of me associated with that label. The best example of this, for me, is being queer.

I’m a lesbian, technically. I’ve just never been overly fond of the term, for a whole variety of reasons, ranging from its use as a slur directed at me during my childhood, to some very complex family history I’d really rather not get into in an essay I’m going to put online eventually. Given this lack of fondness towards the term “lesbian”, I’ve gravitated towards other labels, and I’ve settled - after not very long, to be perfectly honest - on queer. Maybe that’s because I grew up around queer historians, who were rather formative, but that’s beside the point. I chose queer, the queer of “we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it”, and of “queer anger is queer power”, and of “not gay as in happy but queer as in fuck you” because that was the person I knew myself to be.

Now, when I say I’m queer, its like whoever I’ve told feels like they can ask whatever question they want regarding my life and my identity, purely due to my use of the word. That’s not how it works. Or rather, that shouldn’t be how it works. What I have instead is the perpetual decision to make. Do I want to come out to this person? Can I deal with the questions right now? Are they the kind of person who I won’t mind knowing all of that? Maybe this is why The Beholding is so interesting to me on some level. Of all the Fears, it is the one I feel I contend with the most, the one that holds the most danger for me as a queer person.

The Fears exist as manifestations of common phobias - Jonny Sims, the creator and writer of TMA (not to be confused with the character he voices, Jon Sims, the Archivist), has confirmed as much in his season Q+As. But in seeing their presence in the world of TMA, seeing the ways that they affect those who interact with them - there’s a bizarre sense of comfort in it. Yes, says every statement Jon reads, there is a plausible reason for it all. They are swept up in the Knowing, in the Othering, there is something hovering that makes all the things you fear utterly legitimate, regardless of whatever else you might hear said. You are allowed to be afraid, there is reason, and there is reason that others will ignore, will overlook, but your fear? Your fear is valid. And, says everything that ever goes wrong in a TMA episode, more importantly, you are right to be afraid.

We, as queer people, so often end up being the keepers of the horror. We are left to remember our dead. We are left to fight battles everyone else has declared won. We are stuck in the trenches while the fronts move, trying to maintain a line without support. We scream until we are hoarse because we know from experience that “silence” is a word for gravestones, a word that leads to gravestones. We hold within our community memory, just now recouping the losses that are the consequences of silence by those in power, all the horrors that we have suffered, because no one else wants to remember them. We, as a community, Know.

So The Beholding is ours, twice over. We Know things otherwise forgotten, in the way of the avatars of the Fear, like Jon, and we are Known, and we fear that happening in ways that we cannot control. And if The Beholding is ours, then we also belong to it. We belong to The Beholding in the same way that the archival staff do. And if that is true, then it chose us. 

There is something glorious about the inexorability of joining the service of a Fear, for the sake of this extended metaphor that is really just me screaming into the void about the brilliance of Jonny Sims and my love for TMA. The Fear chooses you, and you are marked by it and bound by it. We have been marked by the fear of Knowing and of Being Known for as long as we have known who we are. It is the fear that we carry with us at all times. It has marked us. It is the Fear that drove me back into the closet for my time at high school in Virginia. It is the Fear that makes me scared for the lives of those I love. It is the Fear informed by the Knowing, by the statistics we see about suicides, about murders, about homelessness, about illness. It is our fear, as a community, as queer people in this modern world. We are afraid of the history we carry, of being silent, of not being heard, of being known too much in the wrong places, by the wrong people, at the wrong time.

I have a pair of earrings that are eyes - the symbol of The Beholding. I was gifted them long before I started listening to TMA, but now they have taken on a new meaning. I put them on any time I know I will have a tough day. I put them on when getting out of bed is a struggle. I put them on, because they belong to The Beholding, and I like to think of The Beholding as mine, as ours.

And if I’m wearing something of The Beholding, maybe it will listen to me. Maybe it will send my story on. Maybe someday, an Archivist will sit down with a tape recorder and commit this to magnetic tape, so that I am never completely silent, so that I can be Known in a way that I can control.

Statement ends. 

[renegade-skywalker]

I haven’t really been as involved in fandom stuff or posting on here as much as I usually do/would like to (other than reblogging here and there while I try not to burn out at work) but I had this idea that my exile, Eden, and her brother Aiden rekindle their twin Force bond after running into each other on Korriban (sort of... Aiden/Erebus is still playing sides...) and decide to Force Skype and I randomly began writing it so this the result of that... *releases wild head canon into the internet*

---    

          “It’s… weird,” she said, her voice humming, even in his mind, “Seeing you here. Seeing you there.”

              Eden was alone in a bunk, and a cushy one at that, Erebus noted. The room was large enough to house a desk, a small dining table with two place settings, and a double bed on the far side of the wall, a sliver of closet visible beside the bed from where he could see her. In his minds’ eye, Eden was the sole focus, the rest of the room a bit faded and blurry, but clear enough for him to make out the bunk’s contents. She even had a small porthole, its window ablaze with the white-blue of hyperspace in the space of wall beside the dining table. She had several datapads stored there haphazardly, a stylus and a discarded robe, and not to mention the bed was a total mess.

              “Still judging my living habits, I see,” she smiled, almost appearing comfortable. “You’re as proper as always.”

              It felt so strange, speaking to her like this, seeing her like this. They had only touched on something like this when they were younger, exchanging quick messages telepathically during their lessons, occasionally sending each other snippets of thought, flashes of images to supplement their mental notes, making fun of or complaining about Master Vrook all the while. But now… he could see all of her, and feel her too, her quiet calm and soothing energy, more in-tune with herself than she’d ever been…

              “An organized mess, as can be expected,” he replied after a moment too long, “Doesn’t look so unusual, huh?”

              Eden shook her head, almost happy at the sameness of it, and Erebus smiled, too. Same. It did feel as it had before, when they were young, when they were close, when they were all each other had.

              “Have you… ever done this before?” Eden asked, unsure of what to do with her hands, though it looked like she wanted to reach out and touch him, to test the realness of it, as if to enter his room through whatever window they’d opened in a rift of the Force, through the eye of the needle they’d threaded through space and time.

              “Not quite,” he admitted, almost laughing with mirth at the very idea, “This is… I mean, this is rather incredible.”

              He could go on for ages. It seemed such a feat, to reach across space to speak to one another in each others’ minds yet also in the flesh somehow, as if they were both granted a glimpse of the other by merely willing it to be so.

              “You’ve seen quite a bit, so I’m guessing that’s a lot coming from you,” Eden said, almost a question but also most certainly not. She knew what he studied, had perused his notes, examined his life’s work. She’d seen the inside of his ship and the things he’d stored there. “I think… I think I understand it now, and… I’m sorry I never-“

              She cut herself off, her eyes almost glassy.

              “Did you see the rest of the Academy?” she asked again, blinking away tears, her curiosity still clear on her face, “Or did you-? I don’t know, I guess Korriban isn’t exactly new to you, is it?”

              Erebus wanted to laugh but he didn’t. The idea was genuinely funny, though not in the sense that he was laughing at her, just the idea… but a lump in his throat stopped him, forced him to take a breath before answering.

              “I’d studied there, yes,” he said, his voice low, almost a whisper, “But… it’s been a while.”

              “I would imagine,” Eden breathed a laugh now, though not with amusement, “I couldn’t believe some of what we’d found, what I saw in the records, the archives. It’s a wonder any of it is still there. After everything, and I just… I don’t know.”

              Eden shook her head, looking away, wringing her hands in her lap. He could feel it again – Eden’s emotions, waves of feeling lapping at the very edges of his consciousness, as if their life forces were pools rippling awfully close in an endless, cosmic pool – and he couldn’t help but ask.

              “What is it?” he asked, though he almost knew what it was, sensing the guilt suddenly teeming off of her, replacing the calm that was there only moments ago.

              “I… I think I get it now,” she said after a moment, returning her gaze to him as she finished her sentence, “It never interested me then, but…”

              “Things have changed,” he said, sensing her thoughts and speaking them freely, “So now you know why I-“

              “You were the perfect student for Atris,” Eden laughed, though this time there was genuine amusement in her voice, in her face, her eyes lighting up as she sighed before continuing, “I couldn’t have cared less, at least not at the time, and still she chose to fixate on me, she wanted to tutor me, when she had the perfect student right in front of her.”

              Erebus said nothing, Atris’ rejection still a fresh hurt, even after all these years. And yet-

              “But I think I understand your side of things, as well,” Erebus admitted, holding his sister’s gaze, “I felt it. Kavar’s approval, or lack thereof. Even when you surpassed his skills and beyond. What. A fucking. Fool.”

              Anger rippled at the base of his chest, yet he could tell Eden felt it too, either in remembering her own hurts or in realizing they were both scorned as students, yet had failed to confide in each other, all because the Council forced them apart.

              “We should have been friends,” Eden said, her voice heavy, “We should have been friends.”

              “Council be damned, at least we can agree on that.”

              “Damned, indeed,” Eden agreed darkly.  “But the Sith…”

              Erebus felt Eden’s thoughts, images flashing before his eyes as she ruminated, her thoughts not yet forming adequate words – the Sith ruins, the Academy, the remnants of the tombs, but also Alek, and Revan and everything that predicated Erebus’ training, his true calling, his-

              “It’s fascinating,” Eden admitted, her words quick as if she were afraid of who may overhear her and judge her for it, “Everything. The Sith may have caused so much death, created it even, but the things they’ve discovered, the things they built-“

              Erebus knew Eden did not mean their monuments or their temples, but the devices he studied, the tools the Sith had discovered to harness the Force and explore it, the very things that fueled his work and his interest.

              “It’s a wonder what the selfishness can accomplish when dedicated to their own self-preservation,” he said, “Cowards, the lot of them.”

              He watched Eden, a smile flitting over her face in amusement at the truth in his statement, before he added, “Myself included.”

              She didn’t correct him, though her shock at his honesty was apparent. He wasn’t sure if it was as clearly written on her face so much as it was felt, his intuition sure of her feeling as soon as he’d said it. She agreed, but she also didn’t. And she couldn’t explain why.

              “We don’t have to unpack all that now,” he assured, trying to make light of his words and change the subject, “But… I like that we can talk like this, now, even if-“

              “Even if we should have been allowed to, decades ago?” Eden finished for him. “Imagine what we could have done if the Council hadn’t-?”

              “A lot of things,” he rejoined before she could finish her thought, “And not just limited to us.”

              “You can say that again.”

              Once, Erebus would have disagreed. When he was Aiden, he believed the Jedi could do no wrong - he had to believe that. Otherwise, everything he knew to be true about the universe was incorrect. He imagined Atris was still living by that ideology, making excuses in order to keep herself sane every step of the way, and losing a piece of herself every time she stubbornly forced the pieces to fit.

              “You can say that again, too,” Eden said, sensing his thoughts, sensing Atris on the tip of his proverbial tongue, “Not sure if you knew, but I caught up with our old teacher not too long ago.”

              “Oh?” Erebus asked, though in reality he didn’t want to hear the details, at least not yet. There was so much he still wanted to know about Eden – not just about what had happened, but how she was doing, he it felt to be void of the Force, exempt from its pervasive nature, and how she managed to keep it all together despite everything that happened to her years ago, in the years since then, and even in the days and weeks prior to the here and now. But he also wanted none of those things… he just wanted to be with her, like they used to be when they were kids, exploring the universe and experiencing everything together, their thoughts and feelings an ever-growing mesh threading itself together stitch by stitch with every shared experience.

              “A story for another day,” she said, and at that Erebus smiled. Another day. She wanted to do this again. She still wasn’t sure if she should trust him, he could feel it, though to be fair Erebus wasn’t sure if she should trust him either. But she could also tell it was a sore subject, and would not press the matter. Oh, how far we’ve come, sister.

              Oh how far, indeed, Eden replied with a smile, a genuine one, allowing herself to feel the expression in full, despite how used to she was to dispelling it, willing away her happiness in lieu of fear and uncertainty. Not to say that there was nothing unsure about Erebus, though there was something familiar about their talking, something safe. In the way that it feels to be with family, true family. Where that feeling of unspoken togetherness, cohabitation without need for speaking was similar and safe and sound and felt the same, always the same.

              Eden nodded, as if sensing his thoughts, and said, “It’s nice to see you again, Aiden.”

              And with that, Erebus faded away, though not completely, melding into Aiden and folding in on himself again, feeling both his old and new self into one, as if being reborn but not quite. More like… feeling awake for the first time. Truly alive. Aware and awake and wide-eyed and ready to soak the world in.

              “You too, Ede.”

[forgottenpasta]

Lifeline Chapter 5 Teaser

A/n: this is about 1k words lmao. when I tell you this chapter is going to be looooong.

~.~.~

“You’re what, the twentieth guy now, I don’t know, I was never good at numbers.” She rolled her eyes. “Who the fuck trusts witches these days? I would have intervened but most of the time I’m not in a generous mood.”

“Hold on.”, Taehyung held his hand up, confused. “What the hell are you on about?”

She gave him a “duh” expression. “The witch won’t come here. Bet you a storm demon’s precious horns, they’re going to text you with a shift in location soon. Likely a deserted back alley or some other abandoned place.”

“Why?, he asked, though he already suspected the reason.

“The last guy who came asking for the coven, a vampire like you, was found sliced up like sashimi a few days later.” She smirked, as if enjoying the mental picture she was painting. “A few others, shifters and an incubus, were thought to be kidnapped. I don’t know what became of them.”

“My guess?” She shrugged her slender shoulders. “Maybe the witches are using their entrails for some cult, ritual sacrifice to summon Hecate.” She curled her lip in distaste at the name of the goddess of witchcraft.

“Calm down, Indiana Jones.”, Taehyung chuckled at the valkyrie’s dramatics. “Most likely they’re just mugging these poor souls for some quick cash or kidnapping them for ransom. Either way, this is my only lead and I can’t squander it.”

Freyja was surprised. “Even if you end up in pieces inside a boiling cauldron or something?”

“I can defend myself.”

She opened her mouth to say something, likely a jibe at his bravery/stupidity but Taehyung’s phone vibrated with two quick texts on the bartop where he had placed it, causing her to throw a knowing glance at him.

*last minute change up*

*meet me at the lake park, north clearing*

“What did I say?” Freyja crossed her arms, reading the messages from an unknown number on his lock screen. ‘I told you so’ written all over her face. “You’d be a fool to go there alone.”

“Maybe so.” Taehyung slid off the barstool gracefully, pocketing his phone. “But I’ll regret it if I don’t take this chance out of cowardice.”

Apparently that was exactly the thing to say to impress a valkyrie. He figured he had just gained some serious brownie points with Freyja as she smirked at him with a twinkle in her eye.

“It must be important to you, huh? Whatever you’re seeking.”, she probed, clearly angling fo more information. 

Taehyung just hummed an affirmative, staring past the wrangling bodies on the dance floor to the exit, ready to leave the crowded place already.

“Alright.”, Freyja clapped her hands. Jumping over the bar top in one swift motion, she landed beside Taehyung soundlessly. “I’m coming with you on your suicide mission.”, she announced.

“Sure.” Not glancing back at her, he stepped away from the bar, making a beeline for the exit, making sure to avoid grabby hands. The place was swarming with all types of supernaturals. “Not that I care but are you sure you want to leave this place unattended? It’s very crowded for a Friday morning.”

Taehyung pushed open the door and the murky, artificial nighttime air of a cleverly crafted cloaking spell surrounded him. Overhead the sky was ink black, with no sign of any clouds or stars, just a big black void covering the darkened landscape which comprised of a few willow trees, some shrubs and acres and acres of unending grassland. The willow trees were a side effect of purchasing a spell from witches, they were a natural source of power for those performing witchcraft and a trademark of their artistry. The bustling club was smack dab in the middle of nowhere. The only source of light, which poured out of the windows of the two story building like flames licking up the darkness, in the pitch black surroundings.

It didn’t matter though. All supernaturals had perfect night vision.

“Today is the only day I can leave it.” The valkyrie caught up to him easily, both of them heading for the portal between the two willow trees in the distance.

“My mate would never let me go deal with this problem otherwise.”, she huffed. “It’s bad for business, so many patrons going missing. Before long this place might become notorious for it.”

“You have a mate.” It was a statement rather than a question.

“He’s a fire demon.” Taehyung could almost hear her eye roll, but he also didn’t miss the warmth that suddenly coated her voice like silk at the mention of her other half.

“Temper problems and all. Too overprotective. Though I still love the buffoon for some reason.”,she chuckled fondly. “Thankfully he’s out of town for a few days. What he doesn’t know can’t hurt him right?”

He raised his eyebrows in surprise, looking down at the tiny valkyrie who had a wistful look on her face. Missing the demon?

“Odd combination.”, Taehyung commented, sweeping his hair off his forehead. How their relationship worked out, a calm, blunt pixie-sized valkyrie and a hulking (for most demons were the size of a mountain), fire-demon with anger issues, he couldn’t begin to comprehend.

“Fate works in unexpected ways.”, was her simple reply.

He sighed. “That it does.”

As they crossed the threshold of the portal and the cloaking spell disappeared behind them along with the murky darkness, he thought of you.

He thought of you as clear, bright daylight engulfed everything. A fresh breeze blew through the forest that suddenly surrounded him, birds chirped overhead, flittering from branch to branch, playing in the afternoon sunlight. Thick undergrowth covered the ground, ferns overtaking any available empty soil. The gurgle of running water somewhere in the distance mixed in with the cacophony of the forest to create a soothing song that somehow reminded him of the sound of your voice.

The sound of your irate voice calling him an asshole.

Your words had been ringing in his head like a stubborn, catchy tune ever since he’d phoned Namjoon. No matter how much he tried to put it out of his mind, it creeped up in his conscience every few minutes. He did not feel bad about calling you a problem, you were a problem. A massive boulder in the path of their smooth lives and careers that threatened to throw everything in disarray. Taehyung firmly believed that if something was not broken, it shouldn’t be fixed. Their lives were perfect without you. Nothing should have changed. Especially not on account of his huge ego, a mistake he’d made trying to humiliate a witch who didn’t have anything to live for.

“What are you thinking about?”, Freyja watched him observe the forest patiently, letting him ruminate.

Taehyung shook his head, rubbing his chest right over his heart. He couldn’t begin to describe to a near stranger that no matter how much he pushed the feeling aside, an ache in his heart had started to build ever since he’d heard your voice. A kindling of sparks that had the potential to become a roaring fire. It wasn’t intentional, not something he had control over. At least that’s what he told himself when he wanted to reach for the phone, tell Namjoon to put you on the line. When that urge arose he told himself he just wanted to set the record straight with you, to have you on the same page as him. Not, of course, to hear your voice again.

“Vampire, we should get going.”, Freyja said as she pulled ahead of him to the path that led to the northern side of the lake park forest.

“Yeah.” He swallowed, falling in step behind her, his parched throat reminding him of another situation he had no control over. Namely his rapidly increasing thirst. It had been weeks since he’d last fed, the longest he’d ever gone without blood and he was starting to feel it. Images of sinking his fangs into soft, supple flesh racked his brain at odd hours of the day, making his sharp canines drop involuntarily and his body shake with the need to consume blood. It was everything he could do to distract himself from the thirst gnawing at him from the inside.

Still, even the thought of feeding from some random blood bag he could arrange from a dealer, made him nauseous. His body knew what it wanted, what it needed.

The exact opposite of what I want.

Taehyung made his way through the dense forest silently, following the valkyrie who’s footsteps were just as soundless as his. Every noise that filtered through the dense trees reminded him of your voice and he wondered if he was really going crazy, like Suli had. His foggy brain hanging on to that little piece of you, his mate, that he’d managed to hear, like a piece of bone thrown to a starved dog.

Not everything was under his control, but why did he feel like he could kill to hear that angry voice again.

A/n: unedited af :)

[kafkasgods]

new year’s eve event: brandon & frances

brandon chung

it had been a long time coming. that was brandon’s only thought as he searched the middle of the dance floor, standing a head above the rest of the crowd dancing. time was rarely on his side, so despite having set the time, he was still a few minutes late. he could only hope ino had the patience to wait, or even that she’d wanted to met at all. he hadn’t much left room for a no. a single form was still, juxtaposed by the rest, and brandon gently tapped her. “ino?” it’d been smart of him to take his plague mask off before meeting her, replacing it with one that allowed clearer vision—he wanted to capture every detail of his pen pal’s emotions. 

frances casey

ultimately, she waited for homer. it was what frances was good at, waiting. and today wasn’t any sort of exception. she tried not to feel disappointment as ten pm came and went without anything to show for it. she debated leaving, debated crying, tried to ignore the feeling that she assumed to be a halfway decent champagne buzz. and then someone’s hand brushed her shoulder. 

 her heart in her throat, frances’s head turned and tilted upwards at the question. he was bigger than she expected-- in her experience, the well-read weren’t really on the buffer side. she took a step back, just to take him in more fully. “homer?” she confirmed, a little nervous and a little thrilled just the same. “you hardly look like someone who’d read sylvia plath,” she confided after a second. a cautious smile met her lips for a moment before it melted back into curiosity.

brandon chung

brandon couldn’t help but smile at the warm welcome he’d received. “too often you judge a book by its cover, ino. i would have thought you’d spare me the same treatment.” in the middle of the dance floor, they were too oddities standing still. much like their very beings in a time that kept going. but they were here now, in the midst of the hullabaloo, so brandon leaned down slightly, raising a hand for her to take. “might i ask what sort of man did you impress onto me?” 

frances casey

the emotions that he radiated were unfamiliar to frances, which was something of a disappointment. not someone she saw frequently, then. curiosity continued to bubble forward even as she heard his commentary spoken out loud for the first time. she shrugged lightly, not apologetic in the least. 

 “that’s a complicated question,” she mused, slipping her hand into his after just a moment of pause. “i don’t know if you ever had a physical impression. just a presence i was expecting maybe more my height so i wouldn’t have to look up so much.” she was suddenly desperate to hear his thoughts on her. “what about you? i’m sure you imagined me much taller, too. and you knew i was going to be a little judgemental.”

brandon chung

brandon shrugged as there wasn’t must to say about his height. taking her hand as she gave it, he proceeded to place the other on her waist, and smoothly transitioned into a dance. “that i did know,” brandon laughed. “but it doesn’t mean i can’t make fun of you for it.” the question she prompted made him think. it was hard to recall what he imagined of her before when her physical presence now dominated anything he thought previously. “taller?  yes, probably. and brunette, that checks out. maybe older? you look more youthful than your letters let on. just the effects of the casino or are you a descendent of hebe as well?" 

frances casey

frances was transitioned into dancing so smoothly she didn’t have a chance to protest it. a blush rose to her cheeks to match her color scheme of the night and surprised her so thoroughly that she didn’t have any witty retort. instead she settled into being led through the dance, inspecting what lines of his face she could see while he considered. 

 “no,” she replied, an edge of bitterness creeping into her voice at the thought of her mother. “my time with the lotus eaters was very brief, and i was young to begin with. i had more time to adjust than some of the others. and it took me half a decade to figure out your cypher. it was very difficult, i didn’t think i’d ever crack it.” that was something she’d never admitted to before, and it tumbled out of her mouth before she could even track the thought.

brandon chung

they had talked about their time with the casino, but he supposed it had never come up, to talk of ages. it was such a hard number to grasp, even now, and there’d been too much else that took precedence. “admittedly, i didn’t think anyone would. it was a letter to the void,” brandon raised her arm, spinning her, easily. “imagine my surprise when the void answered back. i am grateful for it though.” he rested his hand on her again. “you have gotten me through many dark points in my life. at times, i don’t remember anything about my own time with the lotus eaters besides the remnants of our letters.” 

 an unsettled feeling nagged at him, one that always was present when it came to the casino, so brandon shook it off. “but we’re here together. on this wonderful occasion and, you, in a beautiful dress. i don’t believe it’s the time to ruminate on the past, do you?”

frances casey

“it’s not just you,” frances reassured him. “i think you’re my best friend, outside of witney. my best friend on paper, i suppose.” she started to laugh a little, but the shift in his emotions had frances scrambling internally to set him to rights again. had she said something wrong? reacting in real time to his thoughts was new to her. not as difficult as she expected it could have been, but an obstacle just the same. 

 “sure, we can move past it easily enough,” she agreed. the warm color in her cheeks had yet to recede, and frances suspected it wouldn’t. “you just had a birthday, right? happy belated! i hope you did something fun to celebrate.” she understood the sentiment, but didn’t follow that pattern herself. frances just hoped that didn’t make matters worse, again. “and you really dressed for the occasion tonight. you look like a fairytale prince.” the easy admission made her heart skip a beat. mortifying.

brandon chung

“oh? i’m your best friend?” brandon repeated with a slight grin. “i wouldn’t have guessed.” it seemed an obvious thing to simply exchange identities. to be friends right there in person. but something would die then. the letters would fade and the hold they had on the past would cease to exist. brandon couldn’t be the one to break it. “i have to say, i’m not at all sure how well i’ve presented myself in pen versus the person before you.” 

brandon swayed with her, a little surprised as she wished him a happy birthday, if only because he himself had forgotten it. it was a day or two ago and would have slipped his mind had his brothers not reminded him. “as with the holidays, i spent it with my brothers. there’s never any predictability with them, but they do get me a chocolate cake that is divine time and again.” he flustered slightly, wondering why his conversation sounded so tired and banal. 

“ah, thank you. i just sort of figured time in the present should be lived large. and i had a cane that tied it all in together. you, on the other hand—” once again, he twirled her, making a point, as her dress circled her for a moment. “i think i have a new favorite color.” 

[parkhabits]

A Promise to Keep {Part 2}

Jaebum x OC x {Jinyoung feels} Warning: grieving Genre: Fluff/angst Previous Chapter

The sun shined brightly on her face, the light illuminating through her hair as she danced along the shoreline. The tides of the ocean rippling around her ankles, she admired the blanket of ocean blue as seagulls squabbled above her. It was evening and the sun was setting, the last of the beach goers were packing up and heading home. The scent of the Caribbean Sea filled the air as she inhaled, drawing in the last rays of the sun.

 Jinyoung stood on the beach, his hands in the pockets of his shorts as he watched his newlywed wife. The backdrop of the sun setting over the ocean and her standing there was breathtakingly beautiful to him. She turned around to face him, crooking her finger towards him and signaled for him to come over. Jinyoung walked over, the waves crashing against his ankles, grasping her hands in his,he leaned down and pressed his lips to hers. She wrapped her arms around his neck and brought the kiss deeper, loving the warmth that flowed through her body as his lips moved against hers. When they pulled away he brushed her sea swept hair away from her face.

 “Come on Mrs. Park, let’s get ready for dinner” a sense of satisfaction washing over him.

 “Mrs. Park” she ruminated as she looked into his eyes, tingles curving up her spine. “I still can’t believe that’s my name now. It’ll take some time before it sinks in,” She smiled up at him.

He pressed his forehead against hers, the corner of his eyes wrinkling as he smiled down at her, “That’s okay, we have forever.” --

She woke reaching out only to feel the cold empty spot beside her, just as it had been for the past eight months. She crawled out of bed, the hardwood floor cold against her bare feet as she made her way towards the bathroom. Their labradoodle was sprawled on the floor by the bed. “Good morning Bear,” stopping to reach down and stroke his fur. His head turned and ears perked up as he watched her make her way to the bathroom. She glanced at herself in the mirror, the shadows under her red, puffy eyes prominent. She couldn’t remember the last time she had a good sleep, even during the months before he passed, she was in the hospital with him.

She washed her face then brushed her teeth. Combing her hair, she brought it into a low ponytail and that was good enough for her. She threw on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Since Jinyoung’s passing, she made herself look presentable but rarely put in any effort beyond that. The house was silent as she made her way to the kitchen, Bear trailing behind her. She filled the kettle with water and placed it on the stove waiting for it to boil.

 “Morning beautiful, I’ll skip out on breakfast this morning. I’m running late.” Jinyoung walked over and kissed her forehead.

 “At least take an apple for the road, do we still have dinner plans tonight?” she said as she handed him the fruit.

 Jinyoung took it and rubbed the apple against his sweater before taking a bite, he walked towards the door, “Wouldn’t miss it” he winked at her before he left.

 The kettle whistled bringing her back to reality, she let out a heavy sigh as she turned to shut off the stove. As she reached for it, her wrist brushed against the hot kettle, “Shoot.” She headed to the sink and rinsed her wrist with cool water, staring out the window above the sink. She pictured Jinyoung waving at her in the driveway before getting into the car. It wasn’t real, but she wished it was. How many times since his passing had she wished for him to still be there with her. She regretted the days where she ran off to work without kissing him on the cheek goodbye. The first couple months after his passing were hard, she expected nothing less. Her mom or sister initially stayed over with her so she wouldn’t be alone. Jinyoung’s family would come visit too, friends and distant relatives came to pay their respects and give their condolences. When guests were over she immersed herself in entertaining them, too focused on making sure everyone else was okay. Anything to distract herself from her own feelings. After a month or so, the visits diminished and she was left in the house by herself, the empty void of Jinyoung distinct. She tried to keep busy. She returned to work and would meet friends or family when they asked and she tried to make herself be good company. However, the effort of putting up a front left her exhausted and rarely in the mood to go out nowadays. She knew no matter how much she acted like she was okay, she wasn’t. She had lost her best friend, her partner, her love of her life. She didn’t know how she could ever recover from the pain she felt when his hand went limp in hers that day. When his heart stopped beating, she swore hers did too. She didn’t want to worry or burden anyone with her heartache, so she coped alone. It was the hardest for her at home, because that was when the emptiness of his presence manifested the most. She pulled out some chicken breast from the freezer and set it on the counter to thaw for dinner later.

She grabbed her tea and made her way towards the spare bedroom. Walking over to the closet she pulled out a quilt and ran her hands over the trimming. Her sister Val announced last week that she was pregnant. Their grandmother had made them the quilt that they had shared together and fought over countless of times. Her mom found the quilt in a packed away box when they were cleaning out the attic. The flashback of the memory came to her.

 “Oh look what we have here! Oh you and Val used to fight over this quilt so much when you were children.” Her mom said shaking it and getting rid of the dust that accumulated on it.

 “I remember,” she smiled at the fond memories as she grabbed hold of the quilt.

 Jinyoung walked over and placed the boxes he was carrying to the side as he knelt beside her. “It’s beautiful.”

 “Take it home with you and keep it. So when you and Jinyoung have children they can have it, then pass it down to their children” her mom smiled, clasping her hands together as she let out a dreamy sigh thinking about her future grandchildren.

 Jinyoung wrapped his arm around her waist and smiled at her, “Hopefully soon, right?”

 “Now let’s not get too carried away” she laughed, “We’ve been married for a year. There’s still so much more I want us to do before we start having little munchkins running around. There’s plenty of time” She rested her head against his shoulder, giddy at the thought of their future children.

 She wiped the tear that had rolled down her cheek at the thought of the memory. She planned to give it to her sister as it was just as much Val’s as it was hers. She no longer needed it, all the dreams of her future children and coddling them in the quilt that she used as a child died alongside Jinyoung. She felt the heartache in her chest. Needing to distract herself  she made her way to the living room. Jinyoung loved to read, he had made a collection of his favorite authors or poems and had built a book case in the living room to display it all. There were five more boxes of books that were left in the living room and an empty space on the opposite side of the wall. Jinyoung was going to build another bookcase but after the circumstances it never happened. She pulled out a book and settled on the sofa, leaning against the arm and crossing her feet and immersing herself in the book.

 She had turned the last page of the book, noticing that the light around her had dimmed and the sun was beginning to set. Bear came into the room and jumped on top of her, his wet fur soaking her shirt and jeans.

 “Bear! Why are you wet?” confused, she looked down the hall way to see wet paw prints. Getting off of the sofa she followed the trail to the kitchen. To her surprise a puddle started to form in front of the kitchen sink. She opened the cabinet, a leak had sprouted. “Dammit.” Picking up her cell phone she tried calling for a plumber, but they told her that they weren’t available to come until two days from now and her dad was away on business.  She sighed, Jinyoung was always the one fixing things in the house. She scrolled through her phone to see if there was anyone else she could call to come help her. She paused when she came across a name on the list, “Worth a shot.” she said as she pressed call.

 Jaebum walked into his apartment, tossing his keys onto the counter. It was a long day at the studio and the artist he was working with was frustrating. He didn’t know how many times they had to redo the track and yet he still wasn’t feeling it. Lately his inspiration has been low and his temper high. He needed a break, some time to take a step back from composing and producing. He walked over to the fridge and opened it. He also needed to go grocery shopping. His eyes scanned the fridge only to find remnants of left over Chinese food and a carton of milk.

 “Looks like takeout again, what should I get this time?” he muttered to himself as flipped through takeout menus.  His phone buzzed and when he saw the caller ID he was surprised.

 He reflected on the promise he made to Jinyoung, “take care of her”. If Jinyoung wasn’t in the picture they probably would have never even crossed paths in high school. She wasn’t the kind of girl he normally noticed back then, she was always dressed so proper compared to the other girls who wore low cut shirts and mini skirts. She would spend her time in the library where as Jaebum would spend time in detention after skipping out on classes. She was definitely meant for someone like Jinyoung and definitely not him. He had to admit, he didn’t really understand Jinyoung’s request but he knew he was doing a shitty job of it. After his best friend’s passing he didn’t see her much, nor did he try making any contact with her. Now he was on his way over to help fix her sink, “does this count as taking care of her?” he thought to himself as his car approached the house with the white picket fence. That was always Jinyoung’s dream, a big house with a yard similar to the one he grew up in, where he would raise his children. Jaebum didn’t want any of that, he found no excitement or urge to settle down, one woman for the rest of his life? No thanks. As he walked up the driveway he noticed how tall the grass was, the paint on the white picket fence and porch were starting to peel and the house looked a little worn down. He made his way up the porch steps and rang the doorbell.

He heard some fidgeting at the door and then it finally swung open. He noticed how she looked the same as before, aside from the dark shadows under her eyes. Her hair was tucked away in a neat pony, however some strands had fallen loose. She was attractive even if she wasn’t wearing any make up. He didn’t know what he was expecting when he saw her but she looked more put together than he had imagined. It relieved him in some way as he remembered holding her in his arms the day Jinyoung passed away. All he could do was stay silent as she grieved in his arms.

“Hi thanks for coming,” she said as she held the door open, she tucked the few strands of hair that had escaped her pony tail behind her ear. The color rising to her cheeks, embarrassed that she had called him after all this time over a leaky sink.  

 “No problem,” Jaebum said as he stepped in. Bear came running over and instantly greeted Jaebum. “Hi Bear, long time no see.” Jaebum said squatting down and rubbing him.

 Jaebum followed her into the kitchen, inside the place still looked the same but it felt different. She cleared her throat, “I tried wiping it up but it just keeps leaking, I pulled out all of Jinyoung’s tools. I don’t know which one’s you need.” She said as she fiddled with her fingers, flustered.

 “Thanks,” Jaebum shrugged off his jacket and tossed it onto the counter. He walked over to the sink and got on his knees to take a look; pulling out his phone he turned on the flash light. “Yeah, it just needs to be tightened. Hand me the wrench?” he said as he held out his hand. She passed it too him, “do you mind just holding this and shining the light here?” Jaebum handed her the phone.

 “Sure,” she said taking it, “I’ll watch what you’re doing too so I know what to do in case it happens again,” She crouched down beside him and shined the light on the area he pointed to, leaning in closer to observe.

 Jaebum noted the way she smelled of lavender, so soft and subtle.  He tightened the locknut around the pipe, grunting just a little bit when he used more force.

 “That should do it,” he said as he stood back up to his feet.

 “Thank you so much Jaebum, normally Jinyoung would have done this and I had no one else to call.” She wiped her hands against her jeans.

 The room filled with silence as both of them looked in different directions, avoiding eye contact. Jaebum rocked back and forth on his heels, and dug his hands into his pocket. “Well, if that’s all you need, I better get going.” He started making his way out of the kitchen.

 “Do you want to stay for dinner?” she turned around after him, “It’s the least I can do to say thank you, we haven’t seen each other for a long time. I’m making chicken stir fry.” She wanted to be polite, after all he was her husband’s best friend.

Jaebum was surprised at her offer, they had never spent any alone time together. It definitely sounded like a better alternative than to the pizza he was going to order for himself, “Sure, thanks. Did you need help with anything?”

 “No I’m fine thanks,” she said as she started to prep things.

 The room filled with an awkward silence. Jaebum didn’t know what to do while she cooked dinner. Seeing Bear’s chew toy on the ground he decided to keep himself entertained with a game of tug of war.

 “Come on Bear,” he said as he led the dog into the living room. Bear happily followed along, chew toy in his mouth. He noticed the boxes of books piled on the floor and the empty space, he remembered when Jinyoung told him he was going to build a bookcase, as well as a place to put up pictures or trinkets that they had collected on their vacations together.

 About twenty minutes passed when she called Jaebum into the kitchen for dinner. He walked into the kitchen to see the table set. “It smells good,” he commented as he pulled out a chair and sat down, the scent of food caused his mouth to water and stomach to rumble.

 “I’m sorry, I don’t have any beer.” She said as she transferred the food into a serving dish.

 “That’s okay, I’m good with water.” Jaebum replied, although the thought of an ice cold beer was tempting after the busy work day he had.

 She walked over from the stove and set the dish on the table. Jaebum’s eyes widened in surprise as he saw how much food she made for just two people.  “I’m sorry, there’s so much. I’m not really used to cooking for two people anymore so I kind of overestimated” she said as she sat down, her cheeks flushed.

 The kitchen filled with awkward silence, with only the sounds of the forks hitting against the plates as the two of them ate. It was the first time they were having dinner just the two of them. For her it was the first time in a long time she had sat at the dinner table with someone and for Jaebum it was the first time in a while since he shared a meal with a female who he wasn’t trying to woo. Jaebum scooped more food on his plate, it didn’t matter if there was a huge portion because it was one of the best stir fry he’s ever had. He didn’t know something that looked so simple and fairly easy to make could be so delicious.

 “So how’s work?” she said trying to break uncomfortable silence.

“It’s going okay,” he said as he shoved more food into his mouth.

 She noticed the hesitation in his voice when he answered, “Just okay?” she prompted hoping that he would elaborate more for the sake of conversation.

He didn’t really like discussing or thinking about work outside of hours, but if it was to break the silence then he might as well. So he told her everything, how he was feeling frustrated with the artists, the lack of inspiration and motivation he was feeling, as well as how he thought of taking a break. She listened intently, even laughing along with him at some of the comments he made. After that, the atmosphere eased up. She told him about how her sister was expecting a baby and how her cousin David was getting married. They started reminiscing about the high school days, “You guys did not, that was you two?” she burst out laughing when Jaebum told her a story of how Jinyoung helped Jaebum play a prank at school.

 “No I swear it was us,” he laughed, “It was even Jinyoung’s idea.”

“I never knew you two were behind it, poor Mr. Kelly.” Her abdomen hurt from laughing so hard.

“He made me swear to keep it a secret from you,” Jaebum grinned.

They both sat back comfortably in the chairs, smiling at the recently shared memory. “I miss him.” She said, a distant look in her eyes at the reminiscence of Jinyoung.

 Jaebum’s face went somber, “I do too.” The room fell silent again but this time it wasn’t uncomfortable. Jaebum looked at his watch. “I didn’t realize it got this late. I should get going.” He stood up, “Thanks for dinner.”

 “Of course,” she followed him to the door to see him out.

He tried opening the door, but the lock was jammed. Giving it a few wiggles and turns it finally unlocked but he still had to use force to open the door.

“Yeah sorry about that, the lock has been jammed lately or something.” she said as she scrunched her face. “I’ll get someone to come fix that.”

Jaebum took notice of the front yard again, “The grass is getting really long hey? Also, the fence and the porch’s paint is starting to strip, and I think the tree over there is dead and it hasn’t even grown yet and the bushes need to be trimmed.” He commented.

 “I was thinking of hiring some landscapers to come and help me. Maybe even hiring one of the neighborhood kids and asking if they want to paint my fence. I was going to work on the garden tomorrow” she said crossing her arms at the chill breeze that swept in. “Just another thing to add to the list of things that need to get done.”

“I’ll do it.” The words came out before he could even process what he said.

Her mouth gaped open, “No really you don’t have too. I’ll just hire someone, or even do it myself.”

He looked at her, if she couldn’t even fix the leak in the sink, how would she be able to do all the manual labor of fixing the place up. “No, I’ll do it. Since I’m taking a break off work it’ll be nice to keep myself busy.” It’s the least he could do, maybe helping her fix things around the house was a good way to “take care of her” he thought to himself.  “I’ll be by tomorrow to start, if that’s okay with you.”

She was still taken aback by his offer. “Thanks Jaebum, I really appreciate it. How about I pay you back with more food? Anything you want me to make I’ll do it, just make the requests.” She offered trying to compensate.

Her cooking was fantastic; and he couldn’t resist a free meal. “Throw in some beer and we’ve got ourselves a deal” He winked and flashed her a grin. “I’ll see you tomorrow,”

She smiled, “See you.”

--

Things are going to be busy as it’s the last couple weeks of school, but I’ll do my best to keep up with posting. I have so many Jaebum feels and had brainstormed many ideas just gotta get it all written out, so stay tuned :)

~ Lea.

[elfnerdherder]

The Fault in My Code: 1

Summary: Soulmates find their other half when they look into their eyes. After the next time they sleep, they wake with one eye the color of their intended.

Will Graham avoids eyes. He's never wanted a soulmate, never wanted to be told by the universe who he was supposed to feel a connection to. He already struggles enough with connections, thank you very much. As a psychiatrist, he works with soulmates who have lost their other half through various means, part of a social system that regards the journey to your soulmate as the most important thing a person can do. Coerced by Jack Crawford to consult on a case where the assailant is targeting soulmates, Will finds himself turning to the notorious Dr. Lecter to gain insight on how he's choosing the soulmates to target.

Things go horribly awry when he looks into Hannibal's eyes, though. The next morning, he wakes up with one eye blue, the other maroon. He's never wanted a soulmate, least of all one behind bars for murdering dozens of people and eating them. Hannibal thinks it's delightful -it's been dreadfully boring since he was locked up.Romance, thriller, mayhem, soulmates, and a grumpy Will Graham

You can read it on Ao3 Here

Chapter 1:

           “I have a soulmate, Dr. Graham. You can look me in the eyes.”

           “Some people reported their eyes changing color, even after looking at a person with a soulmate. That’s how the polyamory act was passed.”

           “I know enough about you that I can safely say we’re not soulmates,” Jack said dryly.

           “That’s nice.”

           “Will you at least look at the file?”

           Will glanced down to the file between them, and he slid it closer for inspection, idly biting his thumb. It was a nice setting, if he was being honest. Jack Crawford of the FBI cornered him at his favorite park with the sun shining and the birds tweeting with reckless abandon. Children played just down the small incline. Will was going to have to be civil.

           “I work with grief counseling now, Jack,” he said, opening it. The gruesome body, split down the middle and laid on two parts of the bed didn’t shock him, although it should have. Jack didn’t ambush him in a pretty place to show him photos of garden layouts. He pulled out another photo of a mirrored shard in the eye on the left. The eye on the right had been stabbed out, completely obliterated.

           “Soulmate grief counseling, from what I’ve heard. People who’ve lost their soulmate, and they have to try living in a world like this without the other half of them.”

           “And this one is making soulmates feel that grief…” he flipped to another photo, sighed. “I haven’t done a psychological profile in years. Years.”

           “I just need you to look.”

           “I don’t want to look,” he said, staring down at them. It made his eyes, two solid seafoam blue eyes, burn. “You know what looking does.”

           “I know what Dr. Bloom told me, and she said you were the best damn profiler she’d ever seen. She said you once walked into a room, noted blood trajectory and said you’d hoped you could have gotten a higher spread because you wanted to see what the blood would look like on the lightbulbs.”

           “He wanted the bulbs to burst,” Will said after a moment. He closed the file and rubbed his eyes. “He wanted to see how much blood it’d take for the bulb to burst.”

           “You saw that. Your empathy is something that’s still being discussed in psychological circles-”

           “You’d think they’d respect another doctor’s desire at privacy-” Will interjected.

           “-and your knowledge and understanding of psychological behavior of soulmates has led to several captures of very dangerous people,” Jack finished. “This is clearly a soulmate dispute, as you could see from just those photos. Genuine anger. This is the second person he’s done this to, and if what little understanding we have of him is correct, he’s going to strike again within a month.”

           “I saw the first on the news,” Will said, propping his chin up with the palm of his hand. He studied Jack’s hideous paisley tie. “He covets. Chooses who he thinks should be his soulmate, and he makes them his in death.”

           “Is this a man whose lost their soulmate and is committing crimes of passion?”

           Will let out a derisive snort and jerked his head in a no. Soulmates committing crimes of passion in the aftermath of losing their ‘beloved’ were given soft sentences, met with understanding and mouths that softened with empathy rather than tightened in anger. If sentenced, their jail time was such that they might as well have called it a holiday.

           “Is he messy?”

           “Semen, saliva…a bit of blood, but not enough to go on.”

           “I really don’t want this, Jack,” he said.

           “I know. After Hobbs…”

           “We’re not going to discuss Hobbs,” he said pleasantly. He curled his bottom lip into his mouth, wet it, and sneered. “Molly isn’t going to be happy.”

           “Any laws you could have used to forcefully decline are null and void with her. You’re not soulmates.”

           “No,” Will agreed, and he, not for the first time, felt a stab of relief at the thought. “No, we’re not.

-

           Molly worked for a small dating agency that helped people find their soulmates through various means. That being said, neither she nor Will particularly enjoyed the idea of someone forcing their hand in who they felt a kinship with, so when they accidentally met eyes with one another after a lurching train stop threw her into him, they both almost wept with relief when their eyes didn’t change the next day.

           They’d been together ever since.

           “Still two blues?” she asked jokingly when he came in. Neither of them were much in the way of gourmet foods, but she made a homemade pizza to die for from a recipe on Pinterest.

           “Still two blues,” he reassured her. The air smelled of baking dough and hot marinara sauce.

           “Carla at work was helping a man set up his account two days ago. Came in yesterday with one green and one brown. He came in today and demanded a refund since he didn’t even get to use the account,” Molly said, coming out from the kitchen to give him a peck on the cheek. “Boss is giving her a bonus, but I don’t know why for.”

           “Your system works, that’s why. It’s so he doesn’t have to buy a wedding gift when she tosses in a two weeks and elopes at the end of the month.”

           “Is that how you say it to your clients?”

           “We make lists of the good things in their life that are still present, and we brainstorm hobbies that will help them get out of the house so that they can rebuild personal boundaries and maintain stable social circles for a support system.”

           “Good use of your doctorate,” she teased.

           He grinned and headed into the kitchen, grabbing a glass out of the cupboard for some water. At the sight of two glasses in the otherwise empty sink, he paused, staring at them with the hints of anger licking at his gut.

           “I didn’t do cheesy bread, but I did make the dough from scratch since I know you like it,” she said, following after him. She patted his rear idly and reached around him for the dishcloth by the sink. “I even added fresh garlic rather than garlic salt, since you griped last time.”

           “Did you send Jack Crawford to the park after me?” he asked. “Or was he just a really good guesser?”

           Molly had the grace not to lie. She wiped down the counter where she’d done most of her cooking, blonde hair tucked behind her ears.

           “I told him, since I thought you’d like it better in a public place rather than your own house.”

           “That’s true,” he agreed. He gulped down his water so that he didn’t shout.

           “Are you going to help him, Will?”

           He finished the water, a little iron in the aftertaste since the city couldn’t be bothered to fix up the pipes. He turned the glass around in his hand, thinking. Ruminating. “If I don’t, he’s going to keep killing. They already talked to Bloom, and she referred them to me. That means she can’t say for certain, but she knows I could say for certain. She doesn’t refer people to me just to be an ass.”

           “If you do?” Molly asked. She finished wiping down the counter and looked at him, frowning. “What happens if you do?”

           “…Molly, you didn’t know me when I did that kind of work. I wasn’t pleasant.”

           “Some would argue that you’re not pleasant now,” she said. Her teasing smile faltered, though. Her blue eyes were still as pale as undisturbed shallow water, no hint of green or sapphire at the edges. He marveled at their color, face unmarred with clashing eyes that didn’t match. Three years with her, and not once had they changed. Every time he saw them, he wanted to weep with relief at the thought.

           “I don’t know. I could relapse, I could maybe…lose a bit of myself.” He filled the cup up again, to do something with his hands. “What if I meet someone’s eyes? What if I get inside my own head too far? I won’t be the same if I do this. You won’t know me the same.”

           “You’d told me enough about the things you did for the FBI. You won’t be the same, but I won’t mind getting to know you all over again, if you don’t mind.”

           There it was. Molly didn’t mind. This time he sipped the water, letting the mineral taste linger as he stared overhead at the ceiling fan that turned about lazily.

           “He’s going after soulmates,” he said.

           “That means you and I are safe, at least,” she reassured him.

           Molly was safe. Will Graham was going to help the FBI hunt a killer. He blessedly hadn’t yet found a soulmate.

-

           Planes were a terrible place to avoid eyes. Everyone was a stranger, and the idea of meeting the other half of their soul on a getaway was a dream come true. He could count on both hands and a foot how many airlines advertised someone meeting a stranger on an international flight, waking up after a nap to find that one of their eyes had changed color. The idea that you could meet ‘the one’ on a business flight to Cincinnati? Fantasy made reality by Tacoma Airlines.

           He found himself crammed into a window seat with a chatterbox beside him, contemplating his lack of mismatched eyes with their lack of mismatched eyes, and it was only when he pulled out the case files and began going over them did they finally quieted down. They must have seen the bodies.

           Because it was on the FBI’s dime, he called Alana... just because.

           “Did you send Jack Crawford after me?” he asked once he’d been patched through.

           “I told him that you’d have insight that I didn’t, but I also recommended that he leave you the hell alone,” Alana said. She recognized his voice despite the passing of years.

           “I’m headed to Baltimore.”

           “That’s where the last body was, right?” Alana asked.

           “He wants me to see the crime scene. This morning, he also got a call from Dr. Chilton at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane saying that one of the inmates there had information regarding the case.”

           “Promising,” Alana said wryly. They both remembered Frederick Chilton from school, and it wasn’t precisely with fondness.

           “Since you inadvertently sent him to me, I’m going to use you as leverage to get him to let me talk to the inmate. He’s always had a thing for you.”

           “Margot doesn’t let me forget it,” she sighed.

           “How is Margot?”

           “She’s great. I’ll let her know you called.” A beat as Will flipped through the files again. Beside him, his chatterbox companion had fallen asleep. “Who was the inmate?”

           “Hannibal Lecter,” Will said.

           “Were you going to tell me that, or were you going to wait for me to ask?” Alana wondered. She was as perceptive as he was surly.

           “I was hoping you wouldn’t ask,” he said.

           “What, because I was his TA?” She laughed, but it wasn’t entirely sincere. “Will, that was years ago. I’ve actually spoken with him long after, when I passed my board. He was proud of me.”

           “He once said that, given the chance, he’d have eaten you,” Will reminded her.

           “Thankfully, I was far more useful to him blind than in a roast,” she quipped. “Have you ever met him before?”

           “I haven’t.”

           “…I wouldn’t recommend it. He may have information, but if he’s just now deciding to share it, there can’t be a good reason.”

           “I don’t have a past with him, so that will either gain me an edge or lose me one. At the very least, I wasn’t running around publishing theories on him like the others. They made his shit list.”

           “Look, I’m able to say that I ‘survived’ him by being too blind to see, but that doesn’t mean I take him lightly. Will…” Her voice trailed off as she struggled to find the words. “I can’t think of a nice way to say it.”

           “Say it ugly, Alana,” he urged.

           “Your way of thinking is something I think he’d see in an instant. He’d use it to chew you up and spit you out. He gets into the strongest of minds and…you read the reports. He’s not like other psychopaths.”

           “He’s not,” Will agreed. Enough studies had come out that he’d realized most of those writing them didn’t have a handle on the man. When Dr. Chilton allowed Lecter to publish articles of his own in the journals, that solidified his theory.

           “You’ve been out a long time. Profiling a killer at the back of the task force is one thing. Walking into a room with Dr. Lecter is another thing entirely.”

           “If he has information, Alana…I don’t think Jack can get it. You know Jack.”

           “I know Jack,” Alana agreed.

           “It’s part of the investigation,” he said. “Mostly I just called to say that if you’re in any of the areas I’m visiting, I’d like to see you.”

           “Evasion techniques don’t work on me, Will.”

           “They would if you let them,” he replied.

           “Please be careful…you know, I really do wish people just left you the hell alone. You’ve done enough, and I’ve heard nothing but great things about your practice with grief counseling soulmates.”

           “Thanks.”

           “Still no one for yourself?” she asked.

           “I have Molly,” he defended. Molly was better than any soulmate. It was an active choice to be together, and that sounded far more romantic than being together by force.

           “Tell her I say hello. Try to get some sleep on the flight too, alright?”

           “I will.”

           He didn’t sleep, but he continued to peruse the files, staring at the bodies of the two people whose eyes had been gouged out. It didn’t take a genius to see he’d removed the eye that had changed color, the one that didn’t ‘belong’.

           It didn’t smack of soulmate rage, though. There wasn’t an aching pain of loss, but of greed, of need. He’d have to revisit the crime scene, taste the air and the screams that still echoed in it. The idea of stepping into such a place made his stomach turn, but there he was. Molly said he could save people, Jack said he was the only one to help, and there was a psychopath in a psychiatric hospital that claimed to know something about it.

           He almost missed the soulmate grief counseling sessions.

-

           Frederick Chilton had two brown eyes. Will studied the desk in front of them, hands clasped behind his back so that if he had to curl them into fists, the other doctor didn’t see.

           “Dr. Bloom phoned me last night, said you were coming. I got another call from Agent Crawford, too, but his was more in the assurance of my cooperation with you. As I said to them both, I am more than happy to be of assistance, seeing as how if this person is apprehended they’ll be brought to my institution.”

           “We appreciate you’re cooperation,” Will said.

           “I’ve worked with Bloom quite a few times, Dr. Graham, but I haven’t really seen you since school. Good work with the grief counseling?”

           He didn’t take the jab.

           “I’d imagine after consulting with the FBI, it wouldn’t be as…exciting.” Chilton stood and moved about the room, an air of arrogance to him that smelled like sandalwood. He watched Will out of the corner of his eye, much like he would one of his patients. “But here you are, and I’ve got Dr. Hannibal Lecter downstairs that supposes he knows the person you’re looking for.”

           “We’re going to need as private a space as possible so that I can question him. I may have to pass him some papers, if that’s alright?”

           “How many times are you going to question him?”

           “I’m not sure yet.”

           “Well, to start, he’ll remain in his cell. We have strict protocol with Hannibal Lecter, and I don’t deviate from it in any way, shape, or form. If you’re worried about eavesdroppers, I can place small partitions on either side of you, but there he will remain.

           “I’m sure Dr. Bloom regaled you with tales of him, to try and prepare you for the person you’re going to meet, but I must tell you –this is nothing you’ve seen before. I’ve heard of cases you’ve consulted on, too, and I maintain that statement, Dr. Graham.”

           Will sat down since he supposed this was going to take a bit.

           “You may pass him soft paper, but nothing else. Use the food drawer to initiate that exchange, not the bars. No pens, paperclips, stapled documents, or anything that could be potentially used as a weapon. If he attempts to pass you something, do not take it. If he attempts to ask for things to be used as a weapon, alert an orderly waiting just down the hall. You think these are obvious things, but I’ve seen a side to him that none of the journals have seen.

           “Just a year after his being here, perfectly congenial and polite, he complained of stomach pains. Instead of remaining in with the nurse, the orderlies stepped outside for a smoke break.”

           Chilton paused, to better savor the build-up. Will stared at his argyle tie dispassionately.

           “They managed to save one of her eyes,” he finally revealed. “His pulse was first at seventy-two, but did not rise above eighty-five throughout the entire ordeal, even when his shoulder was dislocated, even when he swallowed her tongue.”

           “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. He had no plans of being in such close proximity to Lecter.

           “See that you do,” Chilton urged. He turned back to face Will, tucking his hands into his pockets. “Twelve sessions I’ve had with him, twelve. Even Dr. Bloom took a whack at him, since they once worked together. Nothing. He is impenetrable.”

           “I’ll see what I can do,” Will said.

           “Yes, with your reconstruction of crime scenes,” Chilton said, and a spark of interest made him rock back on his heels. “You’ve caught many a person, especially in regards to crimes regarding soulmates, yes? You’ll have to tell me, since I’ve quite a few soulmates in this institution, just how you recreate that? No, no, not today,” he said, waving a hand as Will shifted in his chair. “Bloom told me you were off limits today, she made me swear it. Another time.”

           “I’d like to see Dr. Lecter now,” Will said.

           The maximum security part of the institution has large deadbolts that slid shut with a disturbing clang. Will didn’t jump at the noise, although he did tighten his grip on his folder. When an orderly pushed a cart down the way, he masked his footsteps behind them, wanting a moment to see Dr. Lecter before Dr. Lecter saw him. He’d sat in on the court trial, mostly a support for Alana since she testified against him. The man, sitting accused of multiple first degree murders and cannibalism, was serene as a spring morning. Even when he was sentenced, he didn’t complain. He allowed himself to be led away, his flat eyes looking across the crowd, pinning each person that’d spoken against him like butterflies to a display board.

           He lay on his cot, head propped against the wall with a pillow, eyes closed. Will stood at the bars, staring. He was long, lean, no sign of faded muscle despite his captivity. A cookbook sat propped onto his chest, and five seconds into Will staring, his eyes opened.

           “I’d recognize that aftershave anywhere,” he drawled. “Alana Bloom often came to my office with it reeking along her neck and mouth when she was my TA.”

           “I keep getting it for Christmas,” he said.

           Along the room, taped to the walls, skylines of various places were shaded with acute detail, from the Eiffel tower to churches in what looked to be Italy. More paper flooded a table bolted to the floor, and pens of various color were scattered across it.

           “Christmas,” Lecter said, and he sat up, closing the book on his chest with a snap. “I’ve sent Alana Christmas cards every year, and she thanks me every year, too.”

           “Dr. Bloom is all politeness.”

           “Do sit down, Dr. Graham. I believe that just down the hall, there are chairs held within a closet. At least, that’s what it sounds like.” Lecter stood, and in his off-white jumpsuit, his skin was somewhat sallow, although his hair was combed and neat.

           “The orderly is getting it for me, as well as partitions.”

           “Partitions?” Lecter’s brows lifted. “Ah, you mean this to be private. I’m intrigued.”

           The orderly returned, and underneath the light Will noted two different colored eyes. One was hazel, the other as green as pine. Will helped him set up the partitions, and he wondered at Chilton allowing someone with a soulmate to work in the maximum security. Normally, having something society was too terrified to lose so close to danger was a bad thing. He wasn’t sure if it was Chilton treating soulmates as equals, or if he was jealous his own eyes were still the same color.

           Lecter waited until everything was set up for Will before he sat down, crossing one leg elegantly over the other. Will studied his chin, the way it lifted.

           “That was quite polite of you,” he said.

           “Always happy to help.”

           “Is that what you do now, Dr. Graham? Help? I know you once profiled killers for the FBI, consulted on cases of the truly criminal. Why, you even weighed in on my case when they asked you to. Now, you give counseling to soulmates, so I’m told.”

           “I do.”

           “I see you have two blue eyes; no soulmate of your own, I see. Afraid to look at people? Afraid of what you’ll find? Of just who you’d become attached to, given the way of your mind?”

           “Dr. Lecter, you informed Dr. Chilton of your having information regarding the recent attacks on married soulmates. I’m here to ask about that, if you don’t mind.”

           “Are you always so blunt, Dr. Graham?” Lecter asked. His lip curled around his name. “No small talk where I’m concerned?”

           “No small talk in general,” Will said.

           “Small talk is all that I enjoy these days,” Lecter said with a sigh. “With Dr. Chilton, that’s all one can truly do. I bet he took one look at you and tried to paw at your mind like a senior at a freshman girl’s virginity. I’ve read about you in the journals, psychiatrists baffled at your perfect blend of neuroses that made you quite the asset for the FBI.”

           “I’ve read about you, too,” he said.

           “Mostly the cannibalizing, I’m sure,” he drawled.

           “Mostly.”

           “One of the grad students that wrote to me framed the letter I sent back. Quaint.”

           “I have the file here, if you want to take a look at it. I could really use the help, Dr. Lecter.”

           “You haven’t offered me anything, yet,” Lecter said, and Will felt his eyes digging into his skin. He stared pointedly at the hands that clasped Lecter’s knee. “When someone wants something from me, they usually offer a reward.”

           “I wasn’t going to do you the disservice.”

           “Disservice? Dr. Graham, whatever do you mean?”

           “You will either help, or you won’t. Offering you baubles when Dr. Chilton already tries to sweeten you up with what you have in there is disrespectful, isn’t it?”

           “You have tanned hands. They’re not quite the hands of a psychiatrist, but they’re not yet the hands of a manual laborer. A part time job, hmm? Something to keep you busy in between group sessions and grieving patients?”

           “You told Dr. Chilton that you had information, Dr. Lecter. It wasn’t the other way around.” God, Alana was right. Speaking with him made Will feel like he had ants crawling into the back of his mind, chewing through everything.

           “A ring on the right finger; a promise band, but two eyes of the same color. You know what, Dr. Graham, I’m curious.”

           Will stood up, folder in hand.

           “Good bye, Dr. Lecter.”

           “Let me see the folder, and I’ll help you,” Lecter said, standing up.

           Will crossed over to the small food box, sliding it open. It took a bit of force to stuff it in, but when he did he shoved it over to Lecter. Lecter opened it and retrieved the folder, his hands graceful, smooth despite the rough cell he rotted in.

           It was as Will was turning away from him though, that something happened that he should have honestly prepared himself for. What had Chilton said? Don’t get too close; keep him in your sights? When he went to sit back down, Hannibal grabbed his wrist tightly through the bars, and Will jerked around, a curse hissing from his lips.

           He looked directly into Dr. Lecter’s eyes.

           Lecter grinned, an awful, terrible thing. Underneath the light, his eyes were maroon, and the moment he met his gaze, Lecter released his wrist and stepped away, heading back to his chair in order to peruse the file. Will stumbled back, heart lurching, but he didn’t sit back down. He moved to the partition, and he prayed that the rasping gasps of breath coming from him weren’t audible to Lecter just across the way.

           “Give me some time to go through these, Dr. Graham, and come back. You and I will have much to discuss, I think,” he called out, unheeding of Will’s panic.

           Will all but fled from the maximum security.

-

           He woke some hours later on his hotel bed, his neck at an odd angle. He sat up, groaned, and popped his neck, letting it carry down his back as he stretched. The hotel he was put up in wasn’t the best, but it did boast a complimentary breakfast.

           He washed the taste of sleep from his mouth, rubbed his face, and considered calling Molly. He reconsidered when he thought of Lecter’s hand on his wrist, branding him. He washed his hands, splashed his face, then looked up at the bathroom mirror, freezing with the hand towel pressed to his mouth.

           One seafoam blue eye, one maroon.

[skellylicious]

Sasster Snippet

I’m seriously so high right now. Uh if you guys wanna see the first four pages of the story I’m writing where Sasster is kidnapped, here it is. *whispers* I’m so high...

@stealthnerd I’m so high.

The door slammed solidly behind him, the hard clunk of a metal bolt sliding into place further deepening his misgivings. Had he really just been kidnapped by what appeared to be, for all intents and purposes, two alternate versions of himself? Oh, he had suspected for some time that alternate timelines must exist, including copies of himself and the monsters he knew, but to have it confirmed shortly before being abducted was a difficult thing to wrap his brain around. And where was he? He had been roughly carried, manhandled really, before being ripped through the void, appearing in what seemed to be a large home or mansion of some kind in a secluded forest. There was no way of telling if he was still in his own timeline, let alone where he was geographically.

A faint rustle of fabric behind him alerted him to the presence of another, and he rapidly turned, coming face to face with a rumpled, sleepy human girl. She was dressed in a nightgown, tucked under several soft looking blankets on a queen-sized bed. Had they really locked him in some human’s bedroom? Feeling all too much like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole, he paused, reluctantly meeting the gaze of the girl. She seemed unsurprised to see him, and he wondered whether she had been aware of the apparent plans to abduct him, and was in league with the two monsters who had left him here, before remembering the lock on the door. Perhaps she was a prisoner as well.

“Are you going to do something, or can I go back to sleep?” she asked rather abruptly, startling him out of his thoughts. Her hair was mussed, and there was a decidedly grumpy expression on her face, he realized belatedly.

“Do something…?” he inquired with confusion, lifting his broad shoulders in a slight shrug. Was she expecting him to rescue her? He was hardly in a situation to be doing favors for other people.

“Yeah, like are you going to take off your clothes and bend me over the bed?” Her face was unreadable, her tone impatient.

He stared at her, quite certain he had misheard. “I don’t even know you, do you make offers like this to every stranger you meet?” She startled him by laughing, tossing her hair back out of her eyes as she sat up, propping her back against the headboard. “It wasn’t an offer, it was a question. Who are you, anyway?”

This was very unsettling. He had intended to demand answers himself, yet here he was being questioned by a human who had some very interesting expectations that he had very mixed feelings about. “And who are you?” he responded, determined to take control of the situation as much as he could. This human wasn’t the slightest bit intimidating, but she also didn’t seem to be intimidated by him, which was...unusual.

She grimaced, pulling the covers up to her chest and folding her arms. “Spot.” Whatever he had expected, it hadn’t been that. “Your name...is Spot?” he said finally, after a long pause in which he attempted to determine whether she was being serious. The slightly mocking smile on her face told him she recognized the ridiculousness of her answer, which in turn told him nothing of whether she teasing him or in earnest.

“My name is Spot,” she repeated solemnly, mirroring his earlier shrug. “I had a name before that, but I don’t remember it anymore. Spot is the name they gave me.” Ah. A fellow prisoner indeed. Well, quid pro quo, he decided. “My name is Gaster.”

She frowned at him. “How many of you are there?” Ah, perhaps not as ignorant as most humans he’d come across. “I haven’t the slightest idea,” he replied with a small shrug. It really wasn’t important anyway, and he certainly had more pressing matters to consider right now. There was a window in the room, and he examined it cautiously, briefly ignoring the girl, who had now gotten out of bed and was standing beside him.

“That’s locked too,” she commented, rather to his annoyance. “And I’m pretty sure G has installed alarms since the last time someone broke in here.”

“People actually break into this place?” He couldn’t begin to fathom why. While the home itself was certainly charming and well kept, the occupants were decidedly unsavory, save for the girl, who while not dangerous, was not particularly interesting either. She smiled grimly, clearly ruminating on some unpleasant memory, and shrugged. “Just the one time. Didn’t go too well for them.” He assumed she meant the burglars, and didn’t inquire further. Maybe if he didn’t encourage her, she wouldn’t talk quite so much.

A brief silence followed, where she perched on the edge of the bed, watching him methodically pace and examine the rest of the room. Clean, expensively furnished, and deceptively secure, he finally decided with a tinge of despair. He finally turned back to ‘Spot,’ and she tilted her head, as if reaching a decision. “If you want,” she said hesitantly, not moving from her place on the bed, “You can sleep on the bed. But only if you stay on your side, and no weird stuff.” He could only imagine what she meant by that, and tried not to.

“Unlike some, I don’t have boundary issues,” he grumbled, recalling with distaste how easily the taller monster had slung him over his shoulder. She chuckled at that, and he liked her a little better for it. The bed was certainly large enough to contain them both without any awkwardness, beyond the fact that he was sharing a bed with a human to begin with. If he couldn’t escape, rest was the most logical step to take next. He was surprised to find that he was tired, exhausted actually, but wasn’t sure he’d be able to sleep at all. Still, there was nothing to be lost by trying, and it he was more or less obliged to try, since he had clearly interrupted this human’s rest. “Very well,” he sighed with ill grace, awkwardly seating himself on the other side of the bed, and watching as the girl cuddled back under the blankets.

He had fallen asleep in his clothes more times than he could count, often too focused on his work to care, but now the lack of a better option irritated him. He may rarely change for bed, but he still enjoyed having that choice. A small freedom that he realized might come to seem pitifully irrelevant as the days passed. Kicking off his shoes, he tugged the blankets over himself, ignoring the slight but forceful return tug of the human reclaiming her share of the bedding. He lay on his side, certain that he wouldn’t get any sleep, but as he stewed, his thoughts became slower, and he eventually drifted into a more or less peaceful slumber. ***

The next morning, the click of the lock being undone startled him awake, and he blinked sleepily at the door, then at the girl slumbering peacefully beside him. Frozen by the sound, he waited cautiously to see if his abductor would appear, but after several moments passed, it appeared not, and he relaxed slightly.

Outside the door, G shook his head irritably, sighing as he walked away. Voidster had to stop locking the girl in her room. While she was, technically, a prisoner, she had made no attempts to escape, and it was needlessly cruel to keep her confined to one room. His memory of the previous night was somewhat lacking, due to the copious amounts of scotch he had downed to quell the frustration he felt that his mate had wandered into another timeline...again. It was tempting to put a leash on him, if he wouldn’t enjoy it so much, G thought sourly to himself. Scoffing, he wandered away to the kitchen, starting the coffee that he drank as part of his morning routine.

He was interrupted by a broad heat at his back, muscular arms curling around to embrace him from behind. [Good morning,] his mate purred, rubbing his cheek against G’s like a satisfied feline. Irritably, the lich tilted his head away. “I’m still angry at you,” he stated plainly, trying and failing to coerce his voice into sternness. His half-hearted attempts to pull away did nothing to dissuade Voidster, who frowned and tilted his head. [Why?]

“You were experimenting with drugs again, weren’t you?” The lich inquired in a flat tone, rolling his eyes. That explained his partner’s apparent lack of memory of the previous night. Laughing softly, Voidster released him and stepped back, shrugging. [How will I know which drugs to use on the test subjects unless I try them first?] G sighed, turning to face the incorrigible monster. “You realize that’s the absolute opposite of how experimentation is supposed to work, yes? You try the drugs on the test subjects first, that’s why they’re called test subjects.”

[Well, no harm done,] the taller monster rumbled, folding his arms. [Although I am curious why you’re upset with me.] “Forget it,” the lich muttered, turning back to his coffee to pour a cup. Black and bitter, just the way he preferred it. “As you said, no harm was done. Luckily. Stop developing experimental drugs and testing them on yourself. Is that so much to ask?” Voidster contemplated his words for several moments, mulling the request over in his head. Finally, with a slight sigh, he acquiesced. [Fine,] he murmured, approaching G once more to run a tender hand down his shoulder. [Only set aside the coffee for now, and make love to me. It’s easily been a day since we last lay together.]

Ah, so that was why he was being so cooperative. Only to his mate would a single day seem such an unbearable amount of time. Smirking, G set the mug carefully on the counter, about to tease the other man for his impatience, when he was interrupted by a rough, heated kiss. Hard, muscular arms pulled him against his mate’s broad chest, trapping him there as Voidster’s tongue ravaged him. When he finally drew away, G gasped for breath, trembling slightly with lust and surprise. He hadn’t necessarily expected to make it back to the bedroom, but the unbridled passion of his partner was overwhelming at times.

Roughly, he was shoved up against the table, trapped between Voidster’s body and the furniture. The taller man smirked and placed his clawed hands on either side of the lich, leaning forward to brush his clothed erection against G’s thigh. The lich felt himself stiffening in response, and panted, a feral growl weaving into his short bursts of breath as he fastened his jaws against the throat of his lover. Eyes half-lidded, the beast allowed himself to be bitten, his claws hooking under G’s buttocks to lift him onto the table, their groins pressed hard together.

It came as a shock when his mate’s violet eyes widened, his hands releasing the lich so that he overbalanced, and fell off the table. The distance was too short for him to correct his stance, and he fell painfully on his hip, snarling up at Voidster, who was staring in confusion at something behind him. [Who are you?!] the taller man growled suddenly, taking a menacing step forward. Lithely twisting around, G climbed to his feet, sudden memories rushing forward to assail him at the sight of the stranger. Fuck, that was what had happened last night. He closed his eyes and pressing his fingers to his temple, warding off what promised to be an unpleasant headache.

“Are you joking?” a leaner and less bestial version of themselves demanded in an outraged voice.

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Billy was at home. Surrounded by his family, he was sitting with a warm blanket around him, wearing a Santa hat and staring out the window. It was snowing out, and he was glad he no longer had to shovel the driveway; since he had turned eighteen that duty had fallen to his younger brother Sam. Billy got to stay indoors, next to the fire, bundled in one of the thick knit sweaters his grandma still made, regular as clockwork, every year, shipped to his house no later than late November. Just thinking about having to be outside in the sleet made his skin crawl. In fact, now that he considered it he felt slightly damp, and even a bit cold, as though the weather could reach him through the thick glass. He looked around, thinking that perhaps he had accidentally knocked a drink into his lap, but he saw nothing, nothing at all. Billy jumped up with a start, and he saw that he was no longer wearing his thick sweater; suddenly, with a rush of insight, he saw that he was wearing a dirty pair of fatigues, and the void his family had slipped away into had been replaced by the muddy, grim walls that had been his true home for the better part of the last year.

He sat back down, wishing he hadn’t woken up: it wasn’t his shift on watch and he had no reason at all to be awake. To be reminded of Sam, too, who had been killed in the East almost six months ago, was a prospect that Billy hardly relished. He yawned and shook his head to drive away the sickening thoughts that would otherwise creep into existence, and then checked the time on his battered, mud-encrusted watch. It was almost midnight, and the rain seemed to have stopped, though the floor, if it could be called that, of the trench was as filthy and wet as ever; his arm had fallen into this muck, triggering his swift removal from dreamland. He rubbed his eyes. Billy had never had luck taking sleeping pills, as some did to escape from the hell they inhabited; besides, they stopped you from dreaming, and his dreams of him were what kept him going. He grabbed his rifle and helmet and headed down the trench, figuring he would relieve Royce early: the man was his friend and still, this many months in, pushed himself as far as he could out of a misplaced, in Billy’s eyes, sense of duty. 

The watchtower, really just a fortified concrete bunker peeking out just above ground level, was down the trench and slightly forward. They called it a tower more because of the enormous pile of rubble that nearly buried it, remnants of previous, actual towers eradicated by the omnipresent artillery, along with the mound of dirt and bodies. The latter was gruesome still to Billy; though he never looked long enough to try to recognize any of them, he was fairly sure he had known people whose final resting place was now destined to be merely an ablative layer. He tried not to think about this: he had seen too many consider such horrors only to go mad and run off in one way or another, usually meeting the same fate: neither side welcomed those who deserted the trenches. Billy subsisted, he put one foot after the other, he watched, he slept and most importantly, he dreamed. 

That second quality, however, is what got him to Royce’s position. The latter thanked him for the relief, but insisted in staying out the remainder of his shift. This did not surprise Billy, and he welcomed the company, and the body heat, however minimal: one of their favorite jokes, back when jokes had been told, was that Royce with his eternal dedication must have been cold-blooded to survive the way he did. It was incredibly cold out, and he only knew it to be above freezing because of the pools of muck that remained lurking, waiting for him to sink a boot into. He knew it had frozen earlier in the month because that had happened, and he had woken up to find the outside of his boot solidified with a brown ice, and his foot severely frostbitten inside. In October, the radio had been hit, but before that they had received approximate weather forecasts that at least prepared them for such eventualities as best they ever could. Billy had not missed as some had when it went; it mostly played patriotic music and blared announcements of victories in other sections of the front, announcements that hardly anyone believed anymore. The reinforcements usually did at first, but anyone who had been here as long as he had had given up hope of any change of the line in either direction. 

Royce, who strictly enforced and upheld all rules he could get his hands on, refused to light a cigarette while even slightly visible in the watchtower, much less allow a fire for cooking. However, when he left at midnight, Billy checked to see that he was actually heading back down the trench and then pulled out the camp stove that Dill, who had been a mechanic before the draft, had cleverly hidden in the side of the bunker. He was new, and his status as a draftee would have normally made him worthless to Billy or Royce, but Dill was clever, and did little things like the stove that made life almost bearable. The coldest, and darkest, time of the night was from midnight to dawn, which made it the most dangerous, according to the commands that percolated down, but Billy discounted this for two reasons. One, he figured the enemy, from what he knew about human nature and what he had seen of their trenches, to be folks in much the same situation as him, meaning that they would hardly mount an attack, or bother shooting at all, at such a miserable time of night. Second, he was damned cold. He felt his sleeve where it had fallen into the trench muck, and it crunched with ice, so he pulled his greatcoat closer around him. 

The chill went to his bones. He had on a thick scarf over his face, wrapped around his head under his helmet, but he still had hardly any feeling across any of it. His hands, equally frigid, were buried in his pockets under thick gloves; this would render him useless were the enemy to suddenly show up, as he could hardly shoot or sound the alarm, but as per his logic he was unworried. His feet Billy had given up on: they had both suffered frostbite at one time or another, and though he diligently stuffed his boots with padding, he felt the cold bite sharply still into his toes. He laboriously extricated a hand from his pocket and reached around on the ground for the blanket Royce always pointedly cast to the ground in the name of readiness but the other sentries used religiously. Finding it, he drew it around himself, shuddering at the filthy, cold, damp of the thing. 

In June, things had hardly been better, he reflected. Such self-reflection was how Billy stopped himself from going mad during the darkness hours: the pitch-blackness and silence deprived him of singing or reading. Not that he could particularly do the latter: he had had to sacrifice even his Bible for latrine usage, the more proper materials having been lacking since before even he had arrived. Singing, however, was one of his favorite pastimes at this time of year. Or at leasts, it had been, but as he thought to himself, so had a great many privileges that he now no longer had the remotest chance of experiencing. Life before he had enlisted had been different, but even considering it was an exercise in pointlessness, because even if he survived the trenches, and the bombings, and the barrages, he could never go back to what he had had before. In June, it had been hot, dreadfully so: they had had to strip down to undershirts, and the hollows that now gave some measure of protection against rain, sleet, and snow had been precious slivers of shade. June had also brought the news of Sam’s death, though to Billy’s shame he had found himself unable to express hardly any emotion with regards to the grim tidings; eventually he had managed to pen a letter expressing his condolences home, but that had been the only missive sent over the past year. Still, Billy thought, June, or even November, wasn’t quite the same as December. 

  Billy passed the next few hours with such ruminations. His watch ended at six, which was about when dawn broke, and he has just seen the first glimmer of thin sunlight through the smoke clouds when Dill came to relieve him. He passed over the blanket, and cup he had used for hot water, the coffee, tea, and any flavorings other than the cardboard of their rations being long gone, and headed back down the trench. He was tired, and planned on sleeping away the next eighteen hours. In his mind’s eye, this meant he would spend that long with his family, reliving the holidays of his childhood, but he knew this would never happen. His dreams, like the one had had dreamt earlier, often turned into nightmares when reality intruded, or they just started there: his worst had been a vision of an agonizing death in the deserted no man’s land, though to his gratitude Royce had woken him fairly quickly due to his screams: he assured Billy that it was out of a necessity for silence, though a rare glint of humanity in his eye suggested otherwise. The taste of nothingness still haunted Billy, though; his diet of water and the tasteless rations of flat bread that the radio had assured them was representative of a fully balanced diet did nothing to wash away the tang of blood he had imagined. 

Yet Billy still wanted sleep, and dreams. The only alternative was to sit and contemplate the opposite wall of the trench. He admired Royce’s seemingly endless reserve of courage and drive; the man would sit, bolt upright, in his position in the trench, waiting for the enemy to charge so that he could mow them down with his machine gun. This, of course, had never happened, and Billy had once confided in his view of the enemy to Royce as an explanation: this had only gotten him a reproving glance, as the latter seemed incapable of viewing their counterparts across the dry, cracked dead zone as anything other than flies to be squashed. Since then, he had mostly kept his thoughts to himself; though Dill and Royce were his friends, the drab existence they all led meant that such a relationship was almost meaningless. They had nothing, barely even thoughts, and so there was nothing to share in, no mutuality, just subsistence. 

The feeling of hopelessness that such thinking developed in Billy made him tired, or at least increased his desire to stop being awake. But, when he got the to the makeshift barracks, in reality just a series of nooks in the front side of the trench where he, Dill, Royce, and the others slept, he saw an incredibly unusual occurrence. Normally, he returned to see a few sitting up and staring, Royce either asleep or busing himself with something unnecessary but necessary per-regulations, and everyone else asleep. All three categories were as good as one another in that none would bother talking to him, and so he normally slid into the nest of blankets, shaking out any rats or particularly large roaches, and shut his eyes wishing for oblivion. This time, however, he rounded the corner and was greeted by a gathering. Royce has his back to Billy, and everyone else was in a circle in front of him, listening. Billy hurried forward, hoping against hope for any good news.

He was disappointed. He joined the circle, and his eager expression slipped away like a ghost when he heard what Royce was saying. Evidently, the order had come by runner that an attack was to be made, spearheaded by their section. The time, Royce said grimly, was to be midnight that night. Billy dropped to his knees in shock upon hearing this. He stared stupidly at the pile they made of their rifles, stripped of any wood for fires: they were still usable, though they had conserved little ammunition and not even Royce had fired his for as long as anyone could remember. And now, the order they had dreaded and dreaded before dismissing it as ironically too hopeful in its promise of any change had brutally arrived. The idea of disobeying the order was not discussed; the high command had control of the numerous artillery batteries a few miles back and would happily eviscerate en masse any unit that refused orders. The only option was to go over the top, though as Billy collapsed into his bed, he considered before drifting off that this meant one way or another, he would have no more miserable, cold night watches.

Billy woke up at eleven o’clock that night. He was roused by Dill, who sought to spare him of Royce’s brusque awakenings that gave little room for preparation before the sentence was to be carried out. The former informed him, while they readied their gear, that he had been mumbling in his sleep, though of what he had been unable to discern. Billy shrugged it off; he preferred nothingness to the possibility of further nightmares, especially before facing possible realization of the latter. As he polished the rusted carcass that was his only defense against the enemy’s line that, if his own was any indication, positively bristled with mounted machine guns, he considered his own mortality. The past year of life in this Hell on Earth had not quite sapped the will to live from him: he had long considered death as an option, but the dream of Christmas had kept him going, at least since the first slush had fallen and crusted across the blackened non man’s land studded with burnt out trees and buildings, delivering a perverted vision of yuletide harmony.

The time approached, and the preparations drew to a close. Billy clapped Dill on the back, and the two took their positions on either side of Royce. He, for the first time that Billy could remember since training, actually smiled at each of them. It was an unpracticed, wan expression, and it made him look rather like he was going to vomit, but Billy knew that like himself, Royce was just as susceptible to the fear of charging into the gunfire as the next trooper in the line. The others took their places, and Royce motioned for everyone to climb up to the upper level of the trench. This was a small outcropping only a foot below ground level; its excavation had allowed for the presence of the dirt that made the raised protective barrier they now crouched behind. This was the last vestige of safety; beyond it lay death, plain and simple. Whether it would come in the specter of a bullet to his brain, or his bayonet in the gullet of the poor sap manning the enemy machine gun, Billy did not know, and in a way, he did not hope for either. He was at peace.

As this thought came to him, Royce counted down to one, and then motioned. Seeing this, Billy hopped over and was greeted with the twisted vision of festivity that lurked in his mind like a Satanic iteration of his family memories. He drank it all in, seeing wreaths in the tortured stretches of barbed wire strung in the blasted trees and Santa in his sleigh in the artillery-illuminated clouds, drawn by reindeer of smoke and announced by screams in place of bells. Billy found that his legs were rushing him forwards even as his mind recoiled at the horror that permeated every crevasse of his psyche. He continued forwards, feeling a sense of clinical, withdrawn surprise that he had not been shot yet; Royce had not made it but a few steps, and his intact head even less; the whereabouts of Dill were unknown to Billy. He found himself behind a wall, one of the burned out ruins that had, long ago, been a farmhouse, festooned with holly and mistletoe for the season; he swore that from where he hid, he could almost hear the carols and smell the sweetness.

Billy peered over the wall, and felt a sudden flush. He dropped his weapon in amazement. Standing up, he saw a family in the house, and when he looked back towards the trench he had come from, it was nowhere to be found. He moved forwards, but felt a hand on his shoulder; looking back again, he saw an old woman who said something to him, something he could not make out. He bent towards her, and she smiled knowingly and handed him a lumpy, thick red knit sweater. He found that his fatigues seemed damp, and he felt much better when he peeled them off and pulled the sweater on over his head. The old woman, seeing this, pushed him towards the family, who stood smiling at him; they seemed to welcome him back. Billy smiled, and suddenly he heard a sound outside the window. He rushed over and opening it, saw a group of carolers outside: to his surprise, Royce was there, and Dirk, and Sam, along with a few others who seemed shrouded but somehow recognizable. They were singing, and looking back at the family, and down at his sweater, which seemed downright suffused with vibrant, shocking crimson, Billy opened his mouth and joined in the song.

@literaryexperimentation