#once again not sure if this needs a blood warning or not

[tortillamastersblog]

Back To You - Part 16 | Sam Carpenter

Pairing: Sam Carpenter x reader

Warnings: mentions of violence, death, blood, injuries, and swearing

Summary: When Sam left after turning eighteen, you were devastated. You’d been in love with her since you were kids and her leaving meant you never got to tell her how you truly felt.

Fast forward a couple of years, Tara gets attacked and Sam returns. . .

A/N: Fair warning there might be a couple of typos and shit in this part because I’m too tired to proofread properly

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The door of the theater falls shut behind us with a loud bang and I can’t stop myself from flinching ever so slightly.

Sam squeezes my hand and I squeeze back, letting my eyes roam around the room.

Nothing’s changed since the last time we were here and I cringe once again at the sight of the mannequins on the stage dressed in the old Ghostface cloaks.

It’s eerily quiet, but the knowledge that backup is ready to jump in and help us when Kirby gives them a signal brings me some sense of peace.

When Sam and I came out of the bathroom earlier Bailey had left to go to the station which gave me the chance to pull Kirby aside and tell her about what we figured out while Sam distracted the others, especially Ethan who kept looking at me with his big doe eyes.

She believed me instantly and we quickly came to the conclusion that in order to end this we either have to kill Bailey, Quinn, and Ethan, or get a confession out of them, so they go to prison for the rest of their lives.

I opted for the latter because I’m sick of people dying, but we agreed that should anything go wrong, we will kill them.

We also agreed that the less people are involved the better, so Kirby called the hospital Anika is at and convinced them to call Mindy in Anika’s name, saying she wanted to see her girlfriend.

We tried to come up with a plan to get Chad out of the way as well, but nothing came to mind, which is why he’s here with us now.

Danny’s also here, but we left him outside under the guise of needing someone to call for help in case something goes wrong.

He doesn’t know that the FBI is already stationed nearby, waiting to be called in by Kirby.

Sam, Kirby, and I are the only ones who know and even though I wanted to tell Tara and Chad, I never got the chance because we were never alone.

At first, Danny and Ethan were with us, and then it was just Danny because I managed to prevent Ethan from getting on the same subway as us by shoving a stranger in his way.

I’m sure he’ll be here soon though, just like Bailey who’s in on the “plan”.

We told him we wanted to trap Ghostface and execute him which he immediately agreed to since he doesn’t know we know about him yet.

He was super supportive and even told us to use public transport to avoid getting targeted, and if I didn’t know better I would have actually believed that he was concerned.

I still don’t know why he, Quinn, and Ethan are doing all this, but I guess we’ll find out sooner.

“I cleared the whole place before you got here,” Kirby says, turning to face us. “This—“ she nods her head at the door we just came in through, “—is the only way in or out.”

“What about weapons?” Sam asks, her hand still in mine.

Tara is holding onto Chad’s arm, nodding along to what Sam just asked.

“One gun and I hold onto it,” Kirby lies. She slipped me a knife earlier when I told her about what we found out.

It’s tucked into the waistband of my pants, hidden by my sweater, and not even Sam knows about it.

I know right now would probably be a good time to come clean and tell Chad and Tara everything we know (and tell Sam about the knife), but we can’t be sure that this place isn’t bugged.

“I’m the only one with a badge, so that’s the way it’s going to be,” Kirby says when the others look at her in disbelief. “We’re safe here,” she adds and even though I know the FBI is on standby outside, I’m still not entirely convinced. There’s three Ghostfaces and four of us, and they’re all armed.

This is going to be fun. . .

I wish we’d had more time to plan, because this is all super reckless, but we can’t risk someone else getting hurt, so it will have to do.

The others look skeptical, too, but no one voices their concerns and a moment later Sam’s phone rings. She disconnects our hands and pulls it out of her pocket, her eyebrows furrowing when she sees that it’s Mindy who’s calling her.

She glances at me and I dip my chin, wordlessly telling her to answer it.

“Mindy? Hey, you okay?” she says. She walks off in search of better reception and I let her be, turning to Chad and Tara who are eyeing the glass display cases with disgust while Kirby makes her own way through the theater, looking at everything with her lips pressed into a thin line.

“Sprout. . . Chad,” I say quietly, approaching them. They turn with furrowed eyebrows and smile weakly when they see me.

“Y/N.” Chad exhales sharply and I squeeze his arm reassuringly.

“You guys okay?” I ask.

Tara shakes her head and hugs me while Chad grimaces. “Not really,” she whispers. “I’m scared.”

I sigh and hold her closer. “Yeah, me too.”

“Same. . .” Chad watches us with a forlorn look and I chuckle softly before pulling him into the hug as well.

“You’ll be okay. Both of you, I promise.” I press a kiss to the top of Tara’s head and nudge Chad.

They both shudder and tighten the hug before my phone rings and I’m forced to pull away.

Dread settles in the pit of my stomach as I pull it out of my pocket, but then the sight of Paige’s name flashing across the screen makes me relax again.

It’s not Ghostface, Y/N. Calm down.

“Paige, hey. Everything okay? Are you in the city yet?”

Despite the situation, Paige laughs softly. “Yes, everything’s fine. I’m not in the city yet, I still have two hours to go. I’m just calling to tell you that the hospital called.”

The tentative smile that pulled at my lips just a second ago vanishes and I tighten my grip on the phone. “A-and?”

“Lee’s still in surgery, but he’s stable.”

Tears prick at my eyes and I spin around to avoid Tara’s and Chad’s concerned looks. “Okay, that’s good. That’s really good.”

I swallow thickly to get rid of the growing lump in my throat and Paige sighs on the other end of the line.

“Yeah, it is. . . so what about you? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, but—“

The lights turn off and the call disconnects. A scream pierces through the silent theater and I whirl around.

Tara.

She and Chad seem to be unharmed, but they’re tripping over their feet, trying to get away from something, of rather, someone.

It’s hard to make out what’s happening in the dark, but even before a homemade Stab movie gets projected onto the white curtains that have been lowered in front of the stage, I know that Ghostface is here.

Baile, Ethan and Quinn are here, right now, and we didn’t see it coming.

How didn’t we know? There’s only one entrance and we would have heard them come in. Right?

But what if Kirby overlooked a different entrance? What if she didn’t search the place probably?

Speaking of Kirby, my blood runs cold when my eyes land on her. Her face is covered in blood, and it looks like her nose is broken, but what’s more important is the blood on her shirt from a stab wound in her stomach and the knife pressed against her neck by Ghostface, standing behind her.

Ethan or Quinn. . . Bailey is taller.

“Fuck.” I rush to pull Tara and Chad behind me, feeling anger rising in the pit of my stomach when Ghostface tilts his head mockingly.

This is not how this was supposed to go down. Kirby was supposed to stay hidden, she was supposed to observe and call for backup.

Movement out of the corner of my eye makes my heart skip a beat, but when I turn my head, there’s nothing there.

A second later though I feel a presence on my other side, and I whirl around, expecting another Ghostface, but it’s just Sam, wide-eyed and panting.

“They’re here,” she breathes, “They’re—“ she freezes when her eyes land on Kirby, “—Fuck.”

She grabs my arm, and together we shield Chad and Tara while Ghostface continues to watch us wordlessly.

Kirby is deathly still in his hold, despite the obvious pain she’s in because she knows that if she even attempts to reach for her gun or her radio, her throat will be slit.

Some blood is already trickling down her throat because of how hard Ghostface is pressing the knife against her skin, and I shiver, remembering how I was in that same position a year ago.

Every breath, every blink could be your last one, and it’s a horrifying experience.

This is definitely not how I thought this would go. Was I skeptical of our half-assed planned? Yes. Was I expecting it to go off the rails at some point? Also, yes, but I didn’t think shit would be hitting the fan this quickly.

Well, there’s no point in keeping my mouth shut any longer.

“Let her go, Ethan. She has nothing to do with this,” I say lowly. I know it’s him because Quinn is even shorter than her brother and she probably wouldn’t have had the strength to overwhelm Kirby.

Ghostface falters ever so slightly, obviously surprised that I know who’s under the mask, but he doesn’t move or say anything.

“What are you doing?” Tara hisses, tugging on the back of my sweater. “That’s not Ethan.”

Sam squeezes my arm, and I glance over my shoulder for a split second to meet Tara’s eyes. “Yes it is,” I say, forcing myself to sound calm. “He’s behind all of this with Quinn and Bailey.”

“What?” Chad lets out a surprised gasp.

Someone starts clapping slowly behind us and we all whirl around to see Bailey standing there next to another Ghostface.

He’s smiling menacingly and claps one more time before exhaling dramatically. “I knew you’d figure it out. I mean, the way you looked at me at the police station after the bodega. . . I knew you knew something was up.”

I narrow my eyes, but stay quiet.

There’s no way to get a confession out of all of them now, at least not one we can use against them in court because Kirby was supposed to record everything, so we’re moving on to plan b.

Kill them. Kill all of them. Make them pay for what they’ve done to Liam, Gale, Anika, and Brooks, and for how they tired to frame Sam for what happened im Woodsboro.

“Also, Ethan saw you talking to Kirby, so I knew we had to do something sooner rather than later to make you pay.”

“Make us pay?” Sam asks indignantly. “For what?!”

The homemade Stab movie still playing in the background flickers eerily, casting weird shadows over everyone’s face, but especially Bailey’s when it tightens in anger.

He pulls out his gun and waves it around. “For killing my son!”

“Your son?” Tara snaps over my shoulder.

“Yeah, he’s right there.” I gesture at the Ghostface still pressing a knife to Kirby’s neck.

Bailey snorts and the Ghostface next to him takes off his mask.

Quinn.

I knew it, and so did Sam, but Chad and Tara suck in a breath behind me.

Ethan takes off his mask as well, somehow managing to do it without letting go of Kirby.

“Not him!” Quinn snaps with wild eyes before pointing her knife at Sam. “You killed—“

The curly hair, the thick eyebrows. . . E.K. Ethan Kirsch.

“Richie. . .” I say through clenched teeth.

Sam’s hand around my upper arm tightens. “You’re Richie’s family?!”

Tara and Chad shift uncomfortably, but they don’t say a word.

Of course they’re Richie’s family. How did I not see that coming?

They want revenge for what Sam did to him and they started it all by spreading rumors about her online, so when they kill her, kill us, people will just suspect some rando who took matters into his own hands after he found out Sam was the “real” Ghostface.

How fucked up is that. . .

I glance at Kirby while Bailey, Ethan, and Quinn catch the others up on what I just figured out, and nod subtly when her fingers graze against the pocket of her leather jacket.

The radio. . . We need to call for backup. We need to get out of here.

There has to be a second exit we don’t know about because how else would Bailey, Ethan, and Quinn have gotten into the theater unnoticed.

My call with page was disconnected, probably because Bailey turned on some kind of signal jammer, which could mean the radio is also useless, but getting my hands on it and trying to call for back up is worth a try anyway.

I mean, don’t radios and cell phones operate on different frequencies?

All thoughts of frequencies are quickly forgotten when Bailey steps forward and holds out a weathered Ghostface mask.

“This is your father’s, Sam,” he says. “Quinn’s got Stu Macher’s and Ethan has Nacy Loomis’s, your grandmother’s. . .”

“It really runs in your fucking family, doesn’t it,” Ethan pipes up, and the way Sam’s breath hitches next to me makes me want to bash his head in.

This is exactly what she’s afraid of, being like them, and I just know it’s going to take a lot of therapy and a lot of pep talks to make her, once again, believe she really isn’t anything like them

Tara sniffles quietly, and I reach behind me to squeeze her hand when she holds onto the hem of my sweater.

“This is what we’ve been counting down to,” Bailey says, waving the mask around with the same crazy look in his eyes as Quinn. “I’m going to need you to put it on.”

Oh, hell no.

Sam breathes heavily, and for a split second I think she’s going to take it—she’s going to give them what they want after all, but then she lets go of my arm and smacks the mask out of Bailey’s hand.

“Fuck you!” she spits and her confidence fills me with so much pride that I don’t react fast enough when Quinn lunges forward, slicing Sam’s exposed upper arm with her knife.

She was wearing my zip up hoodie earlier, but it’s so hot in here she must have taken it off while on the phone with Mindy, leaving her in only her gray tank top.

Shit, Mindy. . . Why was she calling in the first place? Is she okay?

There’s no way to find out now, so I quickly pull Sam back against me, out of reach of Quinn while she presses a hand to the cut on her arm.

It’s only superficial, but it’s already bleeding pretty badly and it will definitely need stitches.

“Stay the fuck away from her,” Tara shouts, trying to step out from behind me, but Chad holds her back with an arm around her waist.

“You’re a killer, just like your father, Sam,” Bailey says, pointing an accusing finger at Sam and this time, unlike when Ethan opened his stupid mouth, I don’t hold back.

“No, she’s not you!” I snap, baring my teeth. With her free hand, Sam squeezes my arm around her middle, either to silently thank me for standing up for her or to get me to settle down.

“Yes, she is you motherfucker!” Quinn screams. “She killed Richie like the cold-blooded psycho that she is!”

That’s it!

I let go of Sam and rush forward to tackle Quinn, but Ethan is quick to react. He shoves Kirby aside and jumps in my way before I can get to his sister, stabbing me in the shoulder right below my collar bone—right below the scar on my neck where Amber stabbed me.

“Ah, you fucking little twig,” I exclaim, squaring my shoulders, ready to take him down instead when Sam pulls me back by the back of my sweater.

“No, run!” she shouts and I spin around, knowing she’s right.

Tara and Chad are already weaving through the glass cases, trying to get to the metal door we came in through and Sam and I follow them.

Quinn and Ethan are hot on our heels while Bailey shouts how he knew Sam had to die when he saw the pictures of what she did to Richie.

Everyone who had something to do with his death dies. . . Yeah, no thanks.

Amidst the chaos, the fact that we don’t have the key card to unlock the door dawns on me the moment we’re standing in front of it. Chad tries to pry it open, but it doesn’t budge and when Quinn and Ethan’s footsteps get louder behind us I exclaim, “Forget about it. We’re not getting out this way! There has to be another exit!”

“The roof!” Tara says. “I saw an exit sign leading to the roof behind the seats on the balcony overlooking the stage.”

The roof? Seriously? We’ll be trapped there, too, unless there’s a fire escape.

Anything’s better than this though, I think as Ethan and Quinn skirt around the corner.

“Okay, go left! There’s a staircase up to the balcony!” I shout and we start running again, abandoning the metal door, which could possibly still be our only way out.

Somewhere in the theater a shot gets fired, and I pray to God that Kirby is okay, but I don’t have time to dwell on it as we get to the staircase.

I yank on Sam’s arm and pull her in front of me, and usher her to follow Chad and Tara, but she stops when she notices me freezing on the bottom step.

“What are you doing? Come on!” Urgency seeps into her voice and she tries to drag me up the stairs, but I don’t move.

“No, get to the roof and get help, I’ll buy you some time,” I say, pulling out the knife Kirby gave me.

If Quinn and Ethan want to get to the others, they’ll have to go through me first.

Sam’s eyes widen when they land on the gleaming blade and she shakes her head adamantly. “Fuck no! I’ve left you behind twice now, I’m not doing it again!”

“Sam— I—“ I want to protest, but then Quinn appears with a lazy smile, dragging the blade of her knife along the wall, seemingly in no hurry to get to us any more.

No, no, no. Why’s she so calm. What’s going on?! Where’s Ethan?!

“Y/N!” Sam urges, which snaps me out of my thoughts.

Right. We’ve got to move, no matter how slow Quinn is walking, she’s going to get to us eventually if we don’t move.

“Shit. Yeah, okay! Go, go, go!” I follow Sam up the stairs, taking two of them at a time with my heart pounding in my ears until we get to the top.

Oh damn, we’re higher up than I expected.

It’s at least a ten foot drop from the balcony to the main floor of the theater, but that’s not what I’m worried about.

No, what I’m worried about is Ethan, who’s blocking our path to the roof because he somehow managed to climb the scaffolding connecting the balcony and the main floor to our right.

Tara and Chad are rooted to the ground, staring at him while he simply waves his knife mockingly.

“You really thought you guys could get away?” He laughs and I grab Sam’s hand and spin us around when I hear Quinn coming up the stairs behind us. “Yeah, no. You’re all going to die here tonight and pay for what you did to Richie.”

Tara whimpers and she and Chad take several steps back until their backs are pressed against Sam’s and mine.

The weight of Kirby’s knife in my hand, the one that isn’t holding Sam’s, does nothing to ground me.

We’re caged in and there’s nothing I can do without risking getting hurt because both Ethan and Quinn also have a knife.

“Richie deserved everything he got!” Sam spits next to me. “He was pathetic and killed innocent people just so he could make a new Stab movie! A fucking movie!”

“He loved those movies!” Quinn exclaims angrily and I can’t help but scowl at her.

“That doesn’t excuse what he did! How deluded are you to think that it’s okay to kill people just so you can make a movie?!”

“Shut up!” Ethan shouts and even though I can’t see him, I know he’s absolutely livid right now.

I don’t shut up though. Not only because I can’t stop myself from going on, but because I need to get him to snap and move so we can get to the roof.

“I mean, how fucked up is it that your dad brainwashed you into avenging your brother’s death? He’s a grown ass man and he’s using his kids to do his bidding. Really gets you thinking about who the favorite child is, or was in this case, doesn’t it?”

Quinn’s face contorts into a grimace of rage and I can see both her and Ethan lunging at us from miles away, so I act before they can.

I let go of Sam’s hand and pick up a discarded scaffolding pipe, shoving it into Chad’s hands before turning back around and kicking the side of Quinn’s knee when she comes at us.

She cries out in pain and goes down, and I spin around just in time to see Chad knocking the knife out of Ethan’s hand with the pipe.

“You piece of shit, you know nothing about us!” Ethan shouts, scrambling to pick the knife back up, but Chad is one step ahead of him.

He kicks the knife under the seats before stepping to the side so Tara can knee him in the face, knocking him out.

Yeah, get his ass, Sprout!

Quinn wails furiously and jumps to her feet, her rage obviously numbing the pain in her knee. She tightens the grip she has on her knife and lunges at Sam who raises her arms defensively.

“Oh no you don’t!” I growl, darting forward and catching her wrist mid-strike. I twist it so the knife is now pointing at her and watch in horror as she runs straight into it, stabbing herself in the throat because she can’t stop her advance in time.

Her eyes widen, and she chokes on her own blood for a moment before Sam kicks her in the stomach, forcing her to let go of the knife and fall backward.

She twitches helplessly, coughing and clawing at her own throat for what feels like hours before finally going deathly still.

“Good fucking riddance,” I spit and Sam nods, seemingly in a daze with her eyes trained on Quinn’s dead body until I grab her hand and pull her away. “Let’s go!”

Tara and Chad have already left and I can only hope that they made it to the roof okay. Where Kirby and Bailey are, I have no idea, but the theater’s been deathly quiet since that gunshots I heard earlier.

Please let that have been Kirby shooting Bailey and nod the other way around.

“We need to call for back—“ My words get stuck in my throat when Sam lets out a surprised cry behind me. Her hand lets go of mine and I hear her knife clatter against the ground before I whirl around to see that she’s tripped over something.

No, not something, someone. And that someone is Ethan who’s got his hand wrapped around her ankle.

“Son of a bitch!” Sam seethes and kicks him in the shoulder, which makes him let go of her, but when they both jump to their feet, my heart drops at the sight of him holding the knife she just dropped.

“You’re not going anywhere!” He slashes the knife through the air, missing Sam’s throat by an inch which makes me see red.

I yank Sam behind me, ignoring the way my back stings because of it, and tackle him.

He grunts when we go down and I feel him dragging the knife across my side, but all I can focus on is the sound of Sam’s voice, crying out my name, and the sensation of falling.

Falling, and falling, and falling.

“Y/N!”

I look up and it’s only when I see Sam bent over the railing of the balcony with a bewildered look in her eyes and an outstretched arm that I realize Ethan and I went overt the edge.

No. This was not supposed to happen.

I want to reach out and grab her hand, but it’s too late. I’m falling and before I know it, everything goes black.

I can’t have been out for too long, because when I come to again, everything is quiet.

There’s no shouting, there’s no police and I’m still in the theater, staring up at the blurry outline of the balcony and the dark ceiling.

Sam is nowhere in sight, but when I turn my head I see Ethan right next to me, sprawled on the ground amidst the glass shards of the display case he fell on.

Black dots are dancing in my vision, and I know it’s only a matter of time before I pass out again, but I know for a fact that he’s dead.

His neck is bent at an unnatural angle and his lifeless eyes are staring at me. His lips and chin are covered in blood from when Tara broke his nose with her knee and there are tiny glass shards sticking out of his cheek and forehead.

That’s two for two, I guess. . .

I avert my eyes and go to sit up to find Sam and the others, only to feel my heart drop when I find that I can’t move.

No. Not again.

I try again, willing every muscle in my body to help me sit up, but it doesn’t work.

All I can do is turn my head, and even that is difficult now that I think about it.

It’s like trying to run in a dream, and before I can stop it, a desperate whimper slips past my lips.

Not again. Please, not again.

The memory of Leroy’s face— the firefighter who pulled me out of my parents car after the accident— makes its way to the front of my mind and when I close my eyes I see his sparkling blue eyes above me.

No, not again. Not again. . .

“Y/N!”

My eyes fly open and I look up. Leroy’s blue eyes swim in and out of focus before they’re replaced by dark brown ones.

Sam.

She’s kneeling over me and has her hands on the side of my head.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. What did you do?!,” she whispers frantically, her eyes darting between mine.

I go to say something, but she shushes me by pressing a finger against my lips. “Don’t answer that. Save your strength. Just stay awake, okay, keep looking at me.”

I don’t know why’s she’s telling me to stay awake, but then I feel the almost irresistible pull of sleep tugging on my insides.

My eyes flutter, but I can’t in good conscience rest until I know it’s over— until I know that everyone’s okay.

“T-Tara. . . Chad,” I whisper, my eyes momentarily focusing on the pendant of Sam’s necklace. It twinkles in the low light and fills me with an indescribable warmth, knowing that she hasn’t taken the necklace off since I’ve given it to her. It also somehow chases away the panic that threatened to wash over me just a moment ago when I realized I couldn’t move.

“They’re okay,” Sam says, her voice breaking which makes me look at her again. Her eyes are filled with tears and her bottom lip is quivering the same way it did when I collapsed at the hospital a year ago. “They’re both okay. Kirby’s okay, too.”

I exhale shakily and blink back my own tears. “So, it’s over?”

Sam nods, running her thumbs over my cheek. “It is and help is on the way, so try to stay awake, okay? I know you’re tired, and you’re in a lot of pain because you took quite a fall, but you have to stay awake.“

“Quite a fall” feels like an understatement, but I don’t comment on it. I just shake my head and sigh quietly.

“‘M not in pain,” I slur, feeling my consciousness slipping away again.

It’s true, I’m not in pain. I just can’t move, but that’s okay because I know everyone else is okay. They’re all going to be okay, including Gale and Liam.

“What do you mean you’re not in pain? You just fell ten feet! How can you not be in pain?” Sam grabs my hand and laces our fingers together. I can’t feel it, but I see her doing it. I also see her furrowing her eyebrows when my hand stays limp before realization dawns on her.

“Y/N. . .” Tears roll down her face and I want nothing more but to reach up and wipe them away, but I can’t. “You’re— You’re—“

“‘S okay,” I whisper, trying my best to smile. “I’m okay.”

“No, you’re not, you’re not,” she hiccups and lets go of my hand again to cradle my head and the back of my neck just as my eyes begin to flutter. “Hey, keep your eyes open! You hear me, Y/N?! Keep your eyes open!”

But I’m so tired and she’s here. She’s finally here after everything that’s happened.

“Sam?”

Tara’s voice makes Sam look up and I take that as my chance to close my eyes.

Just for a little bit, I tell myself, but as soon as my eyes close, darkness washes over me.

“Y/N? Y/N!”

They’re all okay.

She’s here.

_______________________________________________

Before you come for me I just want to say that—spoiler alert—we’re going to be okay!

This part was a pain to write, but it’s done and I can rest now.

Only one more part to go!

Tag list: @bella423 @artrizzler19 @btay3115 @canyonyodeler @quadofthec @pussyydestroyer @rqizzu @pithod @morganismspam23 @idontliketoread2137

[idciminlove]

FIGHTER.

Part Two - O

Kang Dae Ho x f!reader

Cinnamonacid on AO3

Warnings- death, blood, gore, shooting, (red light green light game) murder, slight PTSD reactions, mentions of past OD, etc.

You play the first game.

There’s something off about this place. You didn’t trust it. Didn’t trust how easy it was to win that money from the salesman, over nothing but a simple kid’s game, didn’t trust the fact that you were basically drugged when you were brought here, and you didn’t trust the masked men that gave you the instructions. It was far too secretive, far too easy. But it wasn’t like any scheme you’ve seen before, and you needed the money.

The salesman had given you the money for winning ddakji, making good on his promise, while you only had to pay for your losses in slaps. (They hurt, but you were used to being hit much harder.) He gave you a business card with shapes and numbers on it, which inevitably led you to here, where you were promised even more money.

45.6 Billion. With that kind of money, you could pay off your debts and pay for your mother’s treatments. You could take care of her and maybe even buy a nice place for her to stay after her treatments.

So you did as told, signed the contract and followed the other players as they went to play the first game. Classical music echoed from the speakers, bouncing off the all brightly painted walls and staircases. You stared at the player in front of you, a woman wearing a matching green tracksuit to yours. You were all matching, except for the varying numbers that set each of you apart. There were so many people here, the total amount probably somewhere in the hundreds. It made everything so crowded.

“Ah, my good luck charm. I’ll be winning these games for sure.” A voice called from behind you. You looked over your shoulder, spotting an older man, which you recognized. He bet on your fights, and went to almost all of them. He was one of your favorites to see amongst the crowd.

“What are you doing here, old man?” You remarked, happy to see at least one familiar face in the sea of strangers, making you feel much less alone.

“I’m here to win and make some money, just like everyone else, and now that you’re here, I definitely will.” He was a gambling addict. You knew that with how often he was betting at your club, but there was something about him being there that made you feel good. Even when you were on a losing streak he would bet on you, time and time again, never losing faith.

You had a drink with him once, after a win. Let him tell you about his wife and kids and his old job, before he got fired and imprisoned for fraud. You never thought of him differently. He had been struggling, just like you.

That’s why he’s here, after all.

–

It’s strange, being two places at once. Both outside and inside, with the walls around you painted the matching background of a farm, but the ceiling was gone, and you could see the sun and the sky, and feel the breeze against your skin. A large doll shaped like a young girl stood on the wall opposite to you, facing straight ahead, with two guards standing next to both sides.

You listened to the instructions, which were quickly interrupted by one of the players, number 456. He walked ahead of all of you, shouting something about how you all had your lives at risk, with guns in the walls, and moving sensors in the doll’s eyes. You couldn’t fully comprehend what he was saying, the skeptical remarks from the other players overpowering his words. The others talked about how he was crazy, how he was trying to scare them into losing, how he was probably drunk off his ass. You didn’t know what to believe.

The doll turned towards the tree and moved her hands over her eyes. The timer started to count down. 456 didn’t stop shouting. Everyone was skeptical. You took a deep breath, centering yourself. You felt calm and confident. It’s easy, just a kid’s game. You could win this.

You heard the gunshot before you saw it happen. 196. The bullet flying through her forehead, blood and brain matter scattering, some of the blood splattering right onto 230’s face.

You’ve seen dead bodies before. You saw your father's. You found him when he overdosed. But that was different. You never saw anyone die in real time, never saw the light fade from their eyes, or the bullet go through their head. It almost didn’t feel real.

Panic broke out, people were screaming and trying to run away. There were more and more gunshots. 456 shouted over the screams, and you tried to breathe, tried to focus and listen to his voice. Breathe, just breathe.

The timer was running out, you were going to have to move. On the next green light, you ran ahead, doing as 456 said, to get behind someone. You stood behind a taller man, studying the number on his back, trying to focus and stay calm, despite the adrenaline and fear running through your veins.

388. He looked tall and strong, but he was shaking like a leaf, his hands trembling as he tried his hardest to stand still. He was terrified, just like you.

You gazed at a woman beside you, noticing her hands shaking as well, but much more visibly, no one standing in front of her to protect her. She got shot.

It was still a red light, but you found yourself moving, reaching over and grabbing 388’s hand and holding it, hiding it behind his back. He almost jumped, startled from the contact, but he stopped himself.

You don’t know why you did it. Maybe it was the fact that you didn’t want to see another person shot right in front of you. Maybe it was the adrenaline making you move before you could think. Or maybe it was something else. You didn’t know. All you knew was that you didn’t want him to die.

“Don’t let your hands shake. They’ll catch you.” You whispered, squeezing his hand softly. He didn’t respond, just squeezed your hand back, his bigger hand trembling around yours.

Green light!

You moved in front of him, not letting go of his hand, leading him ahead. It felt nice, to have something to hold on to. To have someone there with you, knowing that you’re not going through this alone, even if they were a complete stranger. It gave you a brief feeling of safety in this death trap of a game.

Red light!

A group of people beside you got shoved, all toppling over like dominoes. You recognized one of the players that were pushed, as the old man you knew from before. Your heart dropped. The group shouted in surprise or anger, but it was already too late, with all of them getting shot in the head or chest killing them instantly, including that man. You couldn’t help but let out a small gasp.

It was 230. He had done it with a smile on his face. Smiling. The fucker was smiling. Smiling like this was a joke. He had just killed a man, one who was kind, one with a family, one who had believed in you, and he thought it was funny?

Rage and sadness brewed inside you, the emotions desperate to break free. Your hands began to shake. You wanted to make him pay.

388 squeezed your hand, grounding you, making you remember where you were and what you were doing. You calmed down slightly. 230 was a problem for later. Right now, you have to survive. Not only for yourself, but for your mother as well.

So you kept going. Once you got close enough to the finish line, you ran. You ran for your life, ran so fast you felt your lungs burning and your legs shaking. 388 followed close behind, holding on tight to your hand, the both of you interlocked, refusing to let go of one another.

Just before the last red light, you dragged him across the line, doubling over and panting softly. You made it. You survived..for now, at least.

[crowsofdarkness]

Soldat: Chapter Five

-gif not mine. credit to owner-

Pairings: Bucky Barnes x Female Agent! Reader. Slight Steve Rogers x Female Agent! Reader

Content Warnings: language, 18 + implied smut, angst, fluff, kidnapping, violence.

Summary: Agent Y/N has worked alongside Steve Rogers at SHIELD for some time all while keeping a dark secret from everyone. Until one day that darkness faces her head on and she's forced to make a choice. Continue fighting along side Captain America? Or find her home once again with Soldat?

Authors Note: This was originally published on my old blog as a trilogy so I will be in the slow process of adding it to this blog. This is the first of the trilogy and will take place during The Winter Soldier. If anyone is interested in being tagged, let me know!

Tags: @globetrotter28 @sakuracyberhex @chinggay85-blog @bookofriverr @misatxox @that-blonde-girl

Soldat Masterlist

Slow steady beats echoed low in the room. The weight of something unknown was weighing down my left arm as my eyes slowly fluttered open. Through hazy vision, I saw three different tubes sticking from my arm, the beeping echoing louder and faster. I went to pull the tubes out but realized my right wrist was handcuffed to the headboard of the bed I was laying on. 

“What?” Shock ran through me when I heard how rough my voice had sounded. 

“Ah, you’re awake.” 

My eyes snapped over to the doorway as someone walked in, wearing a lab coat that looked like he had missed the last couple of laundry days. 

“What the hell did you do to me?” I croaked out. 

“Tsk, no questions. You need to rest.” His accent was German. 

“Let me go!” I writhed against the bed but hissed when the metal handcuffs dug into my wrist. 

The doctor came over to my left side, shooting some unknown liquid into one of the tubes, and gave me a small smile. 

“Rest now. It’ll all be explained soon.” 

The fight in me drained as my eyes fluttered closed, the need to sleep suddenly overtaking me. 

“Soldat, make sure if she wakes up again to administer more of the serum.” 

I woke again with the feeling of being weak and drugged long gone. Oddly enough, I felt strength and power surging through my blood. I went to stand but noticed I was handcuffed to a metal chair then looked around, taking in my surroundings. Wall to wall safe boxes, iron gates, and a giant safe.

 A bank vault?

Next to where I was sitting were some random monitors that lined a lone chair in the middle of the room. What caught my eye, however, was the mechanism that was connected to the chair. 

“What-?” I started to question but abruptly shut my mouth when a group of men entered the room. 

What appeared to be Hydra men dressed in black, weapons drawn, filled the room followed by a very distraught looking soldier. 

“Soldat,” I breathed. 

Our gazes locked and for a small second, something as if remembrance flashed over his face before he was shoved into the chair. The low light of the room making the sweat of his bare chest glisten and the memories of us burning low in my belly.

“Move it,” the man grumbled. 

Someone in a white lab coat sat next to Soldat and started to work on his metal arm, it being damaged in the fight. 

“Honestly, I’m surprised Cap let you out of his sight.” 

Scoffing, I shook my head and resisted the urge to bust my way out of the handcuffs.

“Rumlow, I should have fucking known. And Steve didn’t. Your men kidnapped me.” I deadpanned. 

“It was pretty easy,” Rumlow shrugged, “You saw your precious Soldat and suddenly you were a little girl.” 

“Fuck you, Rumlow!” I spat as I tried to pull my wrist free, wanting to knock his teeth down his throat. 

A smug smile came to his face when he grabbed a fist full of my hair, a loud yelp leaving my lips. With one hand in my hair and his other wrapped tightly around my throat, I desperately gasped for breath. 

“I’ve always wondered what those lips tasted like,” Rumlow lusted. 

“How about a mouth full of blood?” I choked before slamming my forehead into his nose, him releasing me from his grasp. 

“You always were a little bitch.” 

Suddenly, I felt the cold metal of a gun pressed to the side of my head, Jack Rollins on the other end of it. The hard barrel left a mark causing me to bite my tongue to silence the pain. 

“What should we do with her?” Rollins asked. 

Soldat was silent the entire time while watching everything with an intense stare. He wasn’t the same Soldat that I knew all those years ago. He was different; more broken. There used to be a small light behind those blue eyes but now it was just darkness. 

“If Steve could see how pathetic you look right now.” Rumlow shook his head. “Does he know about the past between the two of you?” 

Rumlow pointed from Soldat to me. “Does he know that you and Sergeant Barnes fu–?”

Soldat sat up with a start, throwing the man that was working on his arm clear across the room. Suddenly, everyone’s guns and attention were on the soldier whose body was tense, rigid with what I could only see; fear. 

“Sir, he’s uh-unstable. Erratic”

Eyes fell towards the doorway and my skin quivered with disgust as Alexander Pierce walked in. The air around us went thick as Pierce looked from me to Soldat. 

“Mission report?” 

Silence from the soldier. He stared at me, a blank and emotionless look on his face. 

“Mission report. Now.” Pierce demanded. 

Pierce moved closer to him, bending at the knees to look into his eyes. Raising his hand, Pierce’s skin collided with his cheek. Feeling an intense rush of pain in my cheek, I bolted in my chair with a low yelp leaving my lips. 

What the fuck?

The slap seemed to break the soldier's frozen state and he looked up at Pierce. 

“The man on the bridge?” His brows furrowed. “Who was he?” 

“Steve,” I muttered, my heart aching to escape and find my way back to him. 

“You met him earlier this week on another assignment,” Pierce reminded him. 

No one needed to be an expert in body language to know Pierce was lying with the way his back muscles tensed underneath his suit. 

“I knew him,” Soldat breathed, glancing over to me. 

My heart hammered in my chest while my skin pricked, the hairs on my arms standing up, sadness washing over me. Except I wasn’t sad, so how come all I wanted to know was crawl under a blanket and cry?

The scrapping of a chair forced me to look away from him and watched as Pierce took a seat in front of him. 

“Your work has been a gift to mankind. You shaped the century and I need you to do it one more time,” he commented. 

Confusion rattled my brain. 

“What are you making him do?” I questioned. 

“I advise you to stay out of this, Y/N. I’m already upset that he brought you back here.” Pierce said, turning his body towards me. 

“That makes two of us,” I snapped. “You could have just let me go.” 

Pierce ran a hand over his chin. “I would have if our doctors here didn’t make a good case on why you were the perfect candidate.” 

I swallowed thickly. “Candidate for what?” 

He ignored me, giving Bucky his full attention once more. “Society is at a tipping point between chaos and order. Tomorrow morning we're going to give it a push but if you can't do your part, I can’t do mine. If you follow orders, we’ll let Y/N here go.” 

I noticed that Soldat wouldn’t look at me now, purposely avoiding my eyes. 

“Hydra can’t give the world the freedom it deserves,” Pierce finished. 

“I can’t believe you’re part of all of this,” my voice falling on deaf ears. 

“But I knew him,” Soldat assured, his lips pressed in a tight line. 

Pierce nodded before slowly standing up, nodding towards the doctors in the room. “Prep him.” 

“But he’s been out of cryo freeze for too long.” The doctor begged. 

“Then wipe him and start over.” 

“Wait, wipe him? Cryo freeze?” I stammered while finally catching Soldat’s gaze. 

His lip quivered as I read the silent plea of guilt and helplessness in the lines of his face. His chest and shoulders went rigid when he realized what was about to happen. The doctors pushed him back into the chair, the sadness vanishing. My body shook with fear as I watched his arms get locked into place, the buzzing of the mechanism on the chair coming to life. It clamped over the sides of his head, sending electric shots through his body. 

“FUCK!” I screamed while lowering my head into my lap. 

The pain felt like pins and needles being stabbed into my brain, over and over again. Our screams bounced off the walls as I choked out a loud sob, the excruciating pain causing me to fall to the floor with the chair following. My body writhed, trying to break free from the handcuffs but the crushing feeling of my head paralyzed me. It all became too much as I passed out from the intense pain. 

[pineappleudh]

*Watch what happens when I cast a spell I don't know!

Merry Krismas! :)

[smowkie]

Tag people you want to get to know better or catch up with

Thank you @novemberhush for the tag ❤️

Three ships you like - McShep, Wincest, Stony (ack, hard to limit it to three when the ships start to fight for attention x'D)

First ship ever - first ship where i knew that i was shipping was Sterek. idk what my actual first was because i never really used to think about these things until tumblr and Sterek happened to me x'D

Last song you heard - Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs performing Fast Car at the Grammys

Favourite childhood book - Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian (i've apparently always loved the Bad Things Happen trope)

Currently reading - McShep fics. i just finished watching the Stargate shows and i fell head over heels in fucking love with Rodney McKay, so i wanted to read fics about him and ao3/the fandom was like "we have McShep fics, those have McKay" and since i did like that ship it felt easier to find Rodney heavy fics in the ship tag than to try and find them through the character tag. i did find lots of Rodney feels there, but i also found lots of John Sheppard feels, as well as a brand new OTP... x'D but it's nice. i like it.

Currently watching - catching up on Halo. i am very weak for that big boy in his fancy armor. (the decision to add a gif here was a painful one, because how do i choose between a gif like this one and one with the helmet on? oof. in the end Pablo Schreiber's face won because it's very expressive, but christ i love that armor)

Currently consuming - tea, though "consuming" is a stretch as i've only drank half the cup and the tea has long since cold xD

Currently craving - i'm getting hungry and i have food planned (and mostly prepared) that i'm gonna fix soon and tbh i'm just thinking about that, so wraps with pulled pork i guess.

I tag @rieraclaelin @veltana @kiefjerky @ladydrace @niwolah @thor-ohdamnsonn @lena221bee @ravingrevolution and anyone else who wants to do this, feel free to claim a tag from me. And as always, no pressure to anyone tagged, feel free to ignore this, these are supposed to be fun ❤️

[acourtofquestions]

KINGDOM OF ASH (by SJM)

Chapter 48

THE FAMILY REUINION🥹😆😭🫶& MY SOULLL

But when they reached Princess Hasar's battle tent, when they had all gathered around a map of Anielle, they had only a few minutes of discussion before they were interrupted. By the person Chaol least expected to walk through the flaps.

A moment later, Chaol was glad he was sitting down.

Nesryn breathed, "Holy gods."

Chaol was inclined to agree as Aelin Galathynius, Rowan Whitethorn, and several others entered the tent.

They were mud-splattered, the Queen of Terrasen's braided hair far longer than Chaol had last seen. And her eyes ... Not the soft, yet fiery gaze. But something older. Wearier.

Chaol shot to his feet. "I thought you were in Terrasen," he blurted. All the reports had confirmed it. Yet here she stood, no army in sight.

Three Fae males-towering warriors as broad and muscled as Rowan—had entered, along with a delicate, dark-haired human woman.

But Aelin was only staring at him. Staring and staring at him.

No one spoke as tears began sliding down her face. Not at his being here, Chaol realized as he took up his cane and limped toward Aelin.

But at him. Standing. Walking.

The young queen let out a broken laugh of joy and flung her arms around his neck. Pain lanced down his spine at the impact, but Chaol held her right back, every question fading from his tongue.

Aelin was shaking as she pulled away. "I knew you would," she breathed, gazing down his body, to his feet, then up again. "I knew you'd do it."

"Not alone," he said thickly. Chaol swallowed, releasing Aelin to extend an arm behind him. To the woman he knew stood there, a hand over the locket at her neck.

Perhaps Aelin would not remember, perhaps their encounter years ago had meant nothing to her at all, but Chaol drew Yrene forward. "Aelin, allow me to introduce"

"Yrene Towers," the queen breathed as his wife stepped to his side.

The two women stared at each other.

Yrene's mouth quivered as she opened the silver locket and pulled out a piece of paper. Hands trembling, she extended it to the queen. Aelin's own hands shook as she accepted the scrap.

"Thank you," Yrene whispered.

Chaol supposed it was all that really needed to be said.

Aelin unfolded the paper, reading the note she'd written, seeing the lines from the hundreds of foldings and rereadings these past few years.

"I went to the Torre," Yrene said, her voice cracking. "I took the money you gave me, and went to the Torre. And I became the heir apparent to the Healer on High. And now I have come back, to do what I can. I taught every healer I could the lessons you showed me that night, about self-defense. I didn't waste it-not a coin you gave me, or a moment of the time, the life you bought me." Tears were rolling and rolling down Yrene's face. "I didn't waste any of it."

Aelin closed her eyes, smiling through her own tears, and when she opened them, she took Yrene's shaking hands. "Now it is my turn to thank you." But Aelin's gaze fell upon the wedding band on Yrene's finger, and when she glanced to Chaol, he grinned.

"No longer Yrene Towers," Chaol said softly, "but Yrene Westfall."

Aelin let out one of those choked, joyous laughs, and Rowan stepped up to her side.

Yrene's head tilted back to take in the warrior's full height, her eyes widening-not only at Rowan's size, but at the pointed ears, the slightly elongated canines and tattoo. Aelin said, "Then let me introduce you, Lady Westfall, to my own husband, Prince Rowan Whitethorn Galathynius."

For that was indeed a wedding band on the queen's finger, the emerald mud-splattered but bright. On Rowan's own hand, a gold-and-ruby ring gleamed.

"My mate," Aelin added, fluttering her lashes at the Fae male. Rowan rolled his eyes, yet couldn't entirely contain his smile as he inclined his head to Yrene.

Yrene bowed, but Aelin snorted. "None of that, please. It'll go right to his immortal head." Her grin softened as Yrene blushed, and Aelin held up the scrap of paper. "May I keep this?" She eyed Yrene's locket. "Or does it go in there?"

Yrene folded the queen's fingers around the paper. "It is yours, as it always was. A piece of your bravery that helped me find my own."

Aelin shook her head, as if to dismiss the claim.

But Yrene squeezed Aelin's closed hand. "It gave me courage, the words you wrote. Every mile I traveled, every long hour I studied and worked, it gave me courage. I thank you for that, too."

Aelin swallowed hard, and Chaol took that as excuse enough to sit again, his back giving a grateful tinge. He said to the queen, "There is another person responsible for this army being here." He gestured to Nesryn, the woman already smiling at the queen. "The rukhin you see, the army gathered, is as much because of Nesryn as it is because of me."

A spark lit Aelin's eyes, and both women met halfway in a tight embrace. "I want to hear the entire story," Aelin said. "Every word of it." Nesryn's subdued smile widened. "So you shall. But later." Aelin clapped her on the shoulder and turned to the two royals still by the desk. Tall and regal, but as mud-splattered as the queen.

Chaol blurted, "Dorian?"

Rowan answered, "Not with us." He glanced to the royals.

"They know everything," Nesryn said

"He's with Manon," Aelin said simply.

Chaol wasn't entirely sure whether to be relieved. "Hunting for something important."

The keys. Holy gods.

Aelin nodded. Later. He'd think on where Dorian might now be later. Aelin nodded again. The full story would come then too.

Nesryn said, "May I present Princess Hasar and Prince Sartaq."

Aelin bowed—low. "You have my eternal gratitude," Aelin said, and the voice that came out of her was indeed that of a queen. Any shock Sartaq and Hasar had shown upon the queen bowing so low was hidden as they bowed back, the portrait of courtly grace.

"My father," Sartaq said, "remained in the khaganate to oversee our lands, along with our siblings Duva and Arghun. But my brother Kashin sails with the rest of the army. He was not two weeks behind us when we left."

Aelin glanced to Chaol, and he nodded.

Something glittered in her eyes at the confirmation, but the queen jerked her chin at Hasar. "Did you get my letter?"

The letter that Aelin had sent months ago, begging for aid and promising only a better world in return. Hasar picked at her nails. "Perhaps. I get far too many letters from fellow princesses these days to possibly remember or answer all of them."

Aelin smirked, as if the two of them spoke a language no one else could understand, a special code between two equally arrogant and proud women. But she motioned to her companions, who stepped forward. "Allow me to introduce my friends. Lord Gavriel, of Doranelle." A nod toward the tawny-eyed and golden-haired warrior who bowed.

Tattoos covered his neck, his hands, but his every motion was graceful. "My uncle, of sorts," Aelin added with a smirk at Gavriel. At Chaol's narrowed brows, she explained, "He's Aedion's father."

"Well, that explains a few things," Nesryn muttered.

The hair, the broad-planed face ... yes, it was the same. But where Aedion was fire, Gavriel seemed to be stone. Indeed, his eyes were solemn as he said, "Aedion is my pride." Emotion rippled over Aelin's face, but she gestured to the dark-haired male. Not someone Chaol ever wanted to tangle with, he decided as he surveyed the granite-hewn features, the black eyes and unsmiling mouth.

"Lorcan Salvaterre, formerly of Doranelle, and now a blood-sworn member of my court." As if that weren't a shock enough, Aelin winked at the imposing male. Lorcan scowled. "We're still in the adjustment period," she loudly whispered, and Yrene chuckled.

Lorcan Salvaterre. Chaol hadn't met the male this spring in Rifthold, but he'd heard all about him. That he'd been Maeve's most trusted commander, her most loyal and fierce warrior.

That he'd wanted to kill Aelin, hated Aelin.

How this had come about, why she was not in Terrasen with her army ... "You, too, have a tale to tell," Chaol said.

"Indeed I do." Aelin's eyes guttered, and Rowan put a hand on her lower back. Bad— something terrible had occurred. Chaol scanned Aelin for any hint of it. He stopped when he noticed the smoothness of the skin at her neck. The lack of scars. The missing scars on her hands, her palms. "Later," Aelin said softly. She straightened her shoulders, and another golden-haired male came forward. Beautiful. That was the only way to describe him. "Fenrys ... You know, I don't actually know your family name."

Fenrys threw a roguish wink at the queen.

"Moonbeam."

"It is not," Aelin hissed, choking on a laugh.

Fenrys laid a hand on his heart. "I am blood-sworn to you. Would I lie?"

Another blood-sworn Fae male in her court.

Across the tent, Sartaq cursed in his own tongue. As if he'd heard of Lorcan, and Gavriel, and Fenrys.

Aelin gave Fenrys a vulgar gesture that set Hasar chuckling, and faced the royals. "They're barely housebroken. Hardly fit for your fine company." Even Sartaq smiled at that. But it was to the small, delicate woman that Aelin now gestured. "And the only civilized member of my court, Lady Elide Lochan of Perranth." Perranth. Chaol had combed through the family trees of Terrasen just this winter, had seen the lists of so many royal households crossed out, victim to the conquest ten years ago.

Elide's name had been among them.

Another Terrasen royal who had managed to evade Adarlan's butchers.

The pretty young woman took a limping step forward, and bobbed a curtsy to the royals. Her boots concealed any sign of the source of the injury, but Yrene's attention shot right to her leg. Her ankle. "It's an honor to meet all of you," Elide said, her voice low and steady. Her dark eyes swept over them, cunning and clear. Like she could see beneath their skin and bones, to the souls beneath.

Aelin wiped her hands. "Well, that's over and done with," she announced, and strode to the desk and map. "Shall we discuss where you all plan to march once we beat the living shit out of this army?"

[cosmictheo]

𝐎𝐋𝐃 𝐌𝐎𝐍𝐄𝐘 | hwang in-ho

( gif credits to @lalaray )

—summary: for some reason, player 001 seems to like you a little too much, way more than you think. amongst the chaos after the mingle game, he gets closer to you. —pairing: hwang in-ho/young-il/player 001 x female!reader —word count: 4.5k —warnings: bro has a lot of names, +18, smut !!! (minors dni), most definitely ooc!in-ho, descriptions of the reader having female genitalia, some porn with some plot, oral sex (female receiving), fingering, slight voyeurism? (a guard outside the bathroom listening all the tea💀), sub in-ho!!!, obsessive, possessive behavior, mentions of stalking, slight manipulation, in-ho being a slut for the reader, they want each others bodies so bad, panic attack, blood, killing, yk usual squid game stuff.

writer’s note: english is not my mother tongue, so please forgive me if there is a grammatical error. hope you like it!

ᯓ✶ part one ── part two

The first thing you saw were Young-il's eyes, and then you sensed his hands resting on your shoulders, a subtle touch but one that struck your entire core, sending shivers up and down your spine, snapping you out of the trance of shock, drawing you back to reality and back to him.

“Hey, hey, shhh...” he spoke softly, leaning close to you, making all you focused on was him, his voice, his eyes, the way his lips uttered your name. Him, him, him...

“Young-il?” you breathed out, matching your respiration to his ever-calm one.

He nodded his head slightly, his fingers stroking your shoulders soothingly. “You're okay. You did so good. It's over now” his soft whispers felt like an anchor back to earth, anchors you were clinging to with all your might.

“I got you” he assured you, helping you to your feet again. It was only then that you noticed that you were still in the room set of the third game, there was only you and him left in the arena, and the multitude of bodies sprawled around the bloodstained floor, of course. Noticing your gaze drift to the dead people, his hand lifted to your chin, standing right in front of you to block your field of vision and reduce it to just him, his serene face and piercing eyes, “Just look at me, angel. Keep those pretty eyes on me, yeah?”

He delicately pleaded you, his thumb tracing patterns of grazing caresses on the skin of your chin, treating you as carefully as possible. 

And you complied, of course, succumbing to the gentle darkness contained within his eyes. Like a little lamb falling into the wolf's trap.

“There you are,” a little, honest smile tugged at the corner of his lips.

A couple of guards were standing near you, watching you in silence and strangely, allowing Young-il to comfort and help you during your panic attack. The first one you had since you had arrived in the horrifying place, you hadn't cracked once, holding a tough and fearless armor.

“You are safe with me. Nothing will happen to you,” his other hand moved down from your shoulder through your arm, igniting a warm flush on your skin under the passage of his palm, all the way down to encounter yours, his fingers intertwining between yours. “I'll make sure of that, okay?”

You merely manage a trembling nod, holding his gaze. His reassuring, gentle demeanor was all you needed at that moment, in that strange place, full of strangers, he seemed to be the only familiar sight to you, the light among all the ruthless darkness. And his face, exuding concern, completely captured your heart.

Young-il offered you that one protector figure you always needed, that someone to rely on and trust even in your darkest moments.

“Come with me, please” one of the guards, the one with a square outlined on his mask, interrupted your moment, stepping up beside you, his gun pointed at the ground and not at either of you, thank goodness. His voice held a diplomatic, yet polite tone, glancing at the two of you. Young-il glanced at him with a scowl on his face, not too happy that the guard had popped onto the scene, apparently, his gaze went ice cold in the span of a millisecond, “Sir, miss, you need to go back to the main room with the other players.”

“The lady needs to freshen up a bit, could I accompany her to the bathrooms?” Young-il asked— no, rather, he actually demanded of the armed guard, his demeanor shifting to an authoritative one, straightening up and looking at the masked man with imposing eyes.

The guard looked from Young-il to you and back to him, finally nodding his head just once after a few seconds of contemplation, looking at him too long, nearly as if he was considering Young-il's expression, “Of course. Come with me, please.”

You did not decide to comment on the strange behavior of the guard, even they had been acting like human beings, empathetic and considerate. You really couldn't think of anything much at all, all you could focus on was Young-il's hand placed on your lower back as you walked together through the winding, ridiculously colorful corridors and staircases inside the seemingly infinite building.

His touch had your mind a fuzzy blur and the panic and self-doubt in your veins had already been well forgotten, replaced by a state of constant flushing, feeling so small next to him. The feeling was a good one, though. Definitely.

Ever since you had met him he had seemed to have a special liking for you, always making sure you were safe and secure, putting you above the others, making you feel protected and seen. Before every game he made sure he stayed by your side, willing to take whatever risks were necessary for both of you to come out of it alive. Gi-hun had told you a couple of times that he liked you, much more than a friend, but you refused, huffing that it wasn't the place to think about that, much less regarding a man who was married, supposedly. The two of you had really bonded so well, as if you had somehow known each other for a very long time before this.

Once you were in the bathrooms, Young-il closed the door behind both of you, leaving the square guard just outside, and then guided you towards the sinks, opening one so you could take a sip of water.

“Let me...” he quietly whispered, rolling up the sleeves of his turquoise tracksuit and soaking his hands for a few seconds before raising them to your face, running his fingers gently across your cheekbones, removing traces of blood droplets that had been lucky enough to land on your skin, he thought to himself. For some reason, everything felt more intimate than it should have.

You stood in silence, watching him with big, attentive eyes as he wiped your face delicately, as if your skin were the finest porcelain. All that could be heard for a few moments was the water running from the sink and the thundering beat of your heart, desperate to flee out of your chest and leap into his.

“Young-il?”

“Hm?” he hummed, very much focused on cleaning your face, his countenance encouraged you to ask him anything you wanted, it was peaceful and gentle.

“Why do you care so much about me?” you dared to ask him, in a low tone, brave enough to hold his gaze, which softened at your question.

He held back his hands, pulling them away from your face very slowly, analyzing your flushed face for a few moments, contemplating an answer.

“You're special. Very different from the others.”

Young-il sympathized with you, with your history, your person. Usually when he looked at you, he saw his old self, from before all this. He saw in you the good side of things, your good heart, your innocence and kindness, you were much more than a pretty face. He could see past your usual gloomy and pouty face, past your sharp and too cunning eyes, you were too much for that place. And that's why he intended to take you out of there and keep you with him, to have you by his side to care for you and provide for you.

He was excited about the idea of getting to know you further, like a new game in which he had to crack his way through. And In-ho, he was good at games.

You blushed slightly, the hint of a smile tugging at the corner of your lips, “Special?”

Young-il spun around, allowing you to see his side profile as he washed his hands in the sink, concealing the impulse to smirk as he noticed the immediate effect his words had on you. He had you right where he wanted you. 

Now he wasn't wearing his usual dark mask, capable of covering his each and every emotion, no, now his expressions and gestures were for everyone to see, so he had to try a little harder than usual to be cautious. As you too were very careful and cautious, always attentive to your surroundings, you had figured out the objective of the last games as soon as you arrived at the arenas. It had been a record, no other player had been as interesting and quick-witted as you. You only needed a couple of minutes, a scan through the walls, the equipment brought by the guards, and you already had the answer. You were a prodigy. Not even he knew what you were doing in there to begin with, when you should have been in the best university.

You would definitely be a favorite of the filthy V.I.P.'s and that, for some reason, made him uneasy.

“Mhm...” he hummed once again, wetting his face now, refreshing himself as well, thoughtfully, “That makes you dangerous.”

His eyes held a slight playfulness as they met yours now, and his pupils expanded as he watched you step closer to him, unwrapping your sweatshirt from around your waist and lifting it up to his face, gently wiping and drying his skin with it, running the cloth carefully over his cheekbones, forehead and chin, drying every drop of water, sweat and blood that rolled across his skin.

“Why?” you tilted your head, big, interested eyes watching him intently as you carefully wiped his cheeks.

Young-il gazed at you for a few seconds, feeling himself swooning at the careful way you were treating him. He cleared his voice subtly before replying to you, in all honesty, “You're the only one I care about in here.”

Usually In-ho encountered with people who looked at him with fear, with trembling hands, hesitant voice and submissive manners. Most guards were like that with him, he was the Front Man after all. Just a movement of his fingers, a word emitted by his voice, was enough for the whole building to move at his command, for anyone to race to do what he ordered.

But you... you simply reached out to him, touched him, treated him with care, with gentleness and softness, looking at him with warm and sympathetic eyes.

“No other person makes me feel both weak and strong” he rasped out, quietly, his warm breath brushing against your lips, which gaped at his words, his choice of words, “That's dangerous for a man like me”

You motioned to pull your hand away from his face, but he was quick to grab your wrist, stopping the movement.

“Young-il, you're married, I can't—” you hurriedly opted to go the right way, trying to talk some sense into him, shaking your head softly, blinking several times within a single minute. Your heart was already starting to beat faster and he could feel it through his thumb placed on your pulse.

He shook his head, seeking your gaze, his fingers gently squeezing your wrist, not wanting you to move too far away from him.

“I'm not married. I lied” he revealed to you, almost desperately. There was no reason for him to lie to you on that, because he knew that you were someone he could trust, and that everything that was going to happen there, would remain within those walls. A little complicity. A minor crack in the script, in the whole scheme that he had been working on for weeks.

You let him grab your wrist and the jacket of the tracksuit you had previously held in your hand fell to the floor, making a muffled noise that echoed off the quiet walls of the bathrooms. Your brow furrowed slightly, not understanding what he was talking about now.

“You lied? Why?” you asked in a low tone, as if anyone could hear you. It seemed, at least it felt like too private and all too intimate a conversation for anyone to overhear.

“I didn't want to push you away and scare you with my... life resolutions” Young-il lowered your hand now joined with his, looking at you with brighter eyes than usual, “It was the wiser thing to do.”

“Resolutions?” all you appeared to be doing was asking and asking, and In-ho, right there and then, was willing to answer all you wanted to know. Your tone of voice drifted into playfulness, void of judgment or disgust, on the contrary, you reassured him, “All of us here have made bad choices in our lives, that's why we're here. We're all the villains of society”

“Villains...” he repeated, savoring the word and approving it with a gentle nod of his head. Then he tugged on your hand, lifting it to his face, placing an affectionate kiss on your knuckles, doing all of that while keeping eye contact, “But you're not bad, not like them, not like me. You're just so good, angel.” There was the petname again, and it held the exact same effect as when he first called you that, making you blush softly, your legs trembling just barely, your core reacting instantly, your body succumbing to his, longing for him.

His fingers caressed the palm of your hand tenderly, “You have no blood on your pretty hands, no perversity in your little head, no, you're a good girl. You always have been, right?”

He read you like an open book, even though you had been cautious and reserved since the games had begun, you had not let anyone in, much less pass over the walls you had built around yourself. Yet in the span of a few minutes, Young-il had ripped them apart, tearing his way through them, into you.

You caught a glimpse of pity in his eyes.

“You don't have a debt, you just don't have anyone out there waiting for you, to take care of you, provide for you” At his words, you gulped, watching him kiss your knuckles once again, making your heart race, then his lips kissed your pulse on your wrist, and after that, he tugged you closer, placing your palm against his chest, making you feel the beat of his heart as well, “I could be the one. I could take care of you, protect you, give you everything you want. There wouldn't be anything I wouldn't do for you and those eyes. You'd just have to stick by my side, look pretty for me, hm?”

In-ho had been watching you, of course, ever since you had met Gon Ji-cheol in the subway, ever since you had encountered Gi-hun. He knew your life completely, he had grown obsessed with you. You were everything he needed, everything he wanted, the missing piece in his new life. The anchor he desperately needed, yearned to hold on to.

And to your flesh he clung, his lips making a path of light, but tentative kisses on the back of your hand, across your skin, up your arm.

“Young-il...” you breathed out his name a bit stunned by the whole sudden confession. At the sound, he felt his limbs tremble, his lips had reached your bicep and it wasn't until he kissed your shoulder that he opened his eyes so he could look at you with raw adoration, his breath joining yours at the closeness.

“I'll get you out of here, safe and sound. I won't let them touch a hair on your head” he promised, reassuring you, pulling you in, inviting you to slip into his orbit, “I just need you to trust me”

Your eyelashes grazed your cheeks as you blinked slowly, your hand rising to his shoulder, thumb brushing his neck, “How will you do that?”

“Trust me” he pleaded, staring at you for a few seconds before leaning down into you, both of his hands landing on your waist, holding you against him, his face nestled into your neck, he began to press his lips into your skin, kissing it. You close your eyes in utter pleasure, feeling yourself getting all aroused, suffocated by all the attention, the sweet words, his desire for you. 

“Would you do that for me?” he rasped out against your skin before kissing it, sucking lightly, “...hm?”

You nodded, swallowing hard, his lips rapidly kissing your throat, and suddenly, everything was him, his mouth, his breath, his hands squeezing your waist. Him... 

You lifted your chin, allowing him more access to the soft flesh of your neck, seductive lips exploring every inch of your skin.

“Yes”

“That's my girl” he cooed with tenderness, kissing your neck one last time before pulling away from it so he could look at you, not even letting you breathe the air that had slipped out of your lungs for the entirety of his doing, before he was kissing your lips like a starving man.

He breathed against your lips in between frantic open-mouth kisses. He almost felt himself melt as his ears were blessed by the delightful little noises leaking out of your mouth, panting and low moans escalating up your throat.

“Young-il…” you whispered his name, your voice sheepishly lowering as you noticed the look in his eyes, your hands clasped around his neck, fingers trembling from the thrill and sudden shame that shook you.

“Jump” he said, his tone of voice heavy with command, his hands reaching around your waist and down onto your ass to lift you up effortlessly onto the side of the sinks, balancing himself tight against you in between your legs, which wrapped around his hips and pressed him further into you, under an instinctive impulse.

You panted against his lips as you felt his erection against the inside of your thigh, his body eagerly surrendering to yours in desperation.

His commanding voice and face were something that really turned you on even more, if that was even possible. It wasn't usual for him to be this stern with you, he was usually like that with the other players, with strangers, always cautious, quiet and tactful, meticulous of his every step and every word.

“W-wait— we're going to fuck in h-here?” you somehow managed to asked in between frantic, breathless kisses, barely opening your eyes, catching him with an expression of raw lust, pupils fully dilated now.

Young-il smirked playfully, allowing you to catch your breath for a moment, hands caressing your skin appreciatively beneath the fabric of your shirt, before dropping down and laying on either side of you against the sinks, veins bulging against his skin, “You want to do it in the other room? I don't mind having an audience.”

His little tease and the way he tilted his head made you blush furiously, fingers nuzzling the back of his neck, curling between locks of his hair.

“The guard will hear us...” you tried to talk some sense into him, whispering quietly to him, leaning your head even closer, as if you were little kids sharing a forbidden secret.

But Young-il stood his ground, kissing your lips shortly, to reassure you, noticing the worry in your big eyes, “Don't worry about him, don't worry about anyone,” his hand snaked between your bodies, spreading your legs a little further apart, “He won't hear a thing, they never hear or see anything. Not if they are ordered not to”

One of his hands reached up, stroking your hair soothingly, sensing the softness of your locks between his fingers. You were perfect, perfect. And he just knew he could lose all track of time, if it meant letting himself fall into you, touching you, feeling you, worshipping you.

"Lift your hips for me, yeah?”

Obedient, you lifted your hips just a little, letting him pull the hem of your tracksuit pants down your legs, taking it out of the way of obstructing his path into you.

“I know you want this as much as I do, you don't have to say it,” he cheekily smiled, looking up at you once he had lowered your pants down until they were at the level of your ankles. On his journey upwards, he kissed the side of your leg, your knees and your thighs without taking his eyes off yours, he was ruthless and you looked so pretty to him.

“Your body speaks to me, it has spoken to me since the first game. I've noticed the way you look at me. You are a naughty girl.”

You heaved a sigh, closing your eyes and pulling your head back as his hand dipped into the center in between your legs, feeling the wetness of your panties and the heat, your cunt pulsing around nothing. Your hands, now on either side of you clasped onto the ceramics of the sinks, your back arching beautifully.

You can't help the way your body trembles, flutters and simply submits when his finger rubs your swollen clit through your panties, feeling your face and your whole body flush, feeling a sudden wave of embarrassment at the magnitude of his words and the enormity of all that was happening.

“Look at you,” he cooed, eyes locked on your pussy once he had pulled down your panties with precise but desperate motions, ran his index and middle fingers through your slick folds, making you moan, “you're soaking wet for me, just for my kisses? Fuck, you are so beautiful. My pretty, dirty girl. Letting herself be touched by a stranger.... but then again, not a stranger at all, hm?” his voice almost sounded mocking when it reached your ears, “I need to taste you,” his gaze moved up to your face, and he looked nearly pleading, he licked his lips in anticipation, fingers sinking just barely into the small entrance of your core, “may I?”

“Please—” You at once nodded feverishly, almost whimpering over the words that rushed into your throat, “Yes! Please, Young-il, please—”

He dropped to his knees in front of you, slouching closer, sinking right between your legs, his hands lingered around your knees, squeezing them against him with a possessive hold.

“In-ho” he corrected you, flushed against the skin of your inner thigh, pressing kisses along it, all too drunk already by your intoxicating scent, his mind going fuzzy with desire, the urge to make you his, “Call me In-ho”

You didn't even pause to doubt what he was telling you, Hell, you'd call him God if he asked you to. You were in the palm of his hand, on full display. His lips kissed your sex and you mentally thanked fate for putting you there, with him.

“Say it” he ordered, just before he plunged his tongue deep between your folds, knocking all the little breath left in your lungs. “Say my name, angel” the vibration of his voice against the most sensitive flesh of your body clenched the knot deep in the bottom of your belly.

“In-ho” you named him between shaky whimpers and little moans, like a prayer. One of your hands dropped to his head, fingers sinking into the black of his hair, tugging it and making him hiss against your cunt. “In-ho...”

In-ho, In-ho, In-ho...

“Good girl”

God.

He ate your pussy like it was his very last meal, lapping and drinking in everything you had to offer, every bit of wetness from you. The slurping noise burst through every wall of the bathrooms and suddenly, you didn't give a shit if the guard outside heard you, you didn't give a shit if all the guards heard you. 

They could be right there watching you, you couldn't care less, it wouldn't change the way you tugged at his hair, how your eyes rolled back and the way he was gazing up at you from below, kneeling perfectly between your legs as if they were the gates to heaven.

His tongue seemed familiar, his fingers squeezing your thighs, his eyes locked with yours, his lips kissing your sex with no breath, all the breath he needed was you. He didn't feel like a stranger, your body acquainted him, perhaps in another life. It all felt like deja vu, a reminiscence.

Your muscles tensed and he felt it through his tongue. You were about to cum, and your throat felt scratchy from all the moans and whimpers rasping through it.

“Gonna cum, baby?” he coaxed, pulling away from your cunt for just a couple of seconds, sneaking a hand in and pressing just barely at your entrance with a couple of fingers, kissing your clit and sucking it just right, “Yes you are,” he grumbled endearingly, his tongue tracing caresses all around your clit now, looking up at you.

“You're so tight” he marveled, watching in awe as your cunt eagerly attempted to suck in his fingertips, clenching and struggling to fit them. “Look at her, so eager... such a good girl, aren't you?” Once again he leaned into your clit, kissing, sucking and caressing it with his tongue, already too pussy drunk to stop. “Cum for me. Cum on my tongue, yeah, just like that”

“Holy shit, In-ho—” you hiccupped, feeling tears blur your vision, a wave of pleasure unleashing from deep in your belly. You moaned his name like a prayer, pressing his head closer to your cunt on an instinctive impulse, “Mmph!”

Maybe it was seeing his chin and mouth all dripping wet of you, or his dark, deep eyes marveling at how your pussy squeezed tight around his fingers, or his other hand sliding up under your shirt, finding one of your breasts and flicking your nipple. Maybe it was all of it, either way, you were cumming like you had never cum before. Your whole body was shaking and succumbing to the overstimulation. Succumbing to him.

In-ho gulped down everything you gave him like magic waters.

“You taste better than I imagined,” he confided, licking his index and middle finger as well, catching every trace there was of you that he could possibly consume as if it were honey.

Then, he kissed your pussy once more before standing up, sending shockwaves of electricity through your whole body with his touch, his hands settled on your hips, holding you so you wouldn't fall.

And he just smirked. He moved closer to you and kissed your mouth, making you savor your own taste through him, his hands appreciatively caressing your thighs, swiftly pulling up your panties back on.

“You're perfect, perfect,” he smoothed against your lips, his forehead leaning close to yours and he kissed you again, praising you, holding you tight in the afterglow of your orgasm, “My girl, my favorite girl, so good for me"

“We need to get back before someone starts to get suspicious,” he mumbled softly, helping you to your feet and pulling up your pants, always holding you with his hands and strong arms.

“B-but,” you retorted, your hands gripping his shoulders, still feeling your legs a little wobbly and unsteady, your dilated pupils and half-closed eyes following him as he arranged you, “I want to-”

He interrupted you, grinning warmly, stroking a lock of your hair away from your forehead before kissing your lips once more, as if closing a deal, a promise, “There will be time. Be patient, princess. We don't want the others to find out about my favoritism, do we?” seeing you still looking a bit confused, and still denying with your head, In-ho smiled playfully, “That would be very unprofessional of me, so this will be our secret”

This time you kissed him, sealing the secret.

[chuluoyi]

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐋𝐀𝐃𝐘 𝐖𝐈𝐅𝐄

- zayne x reader

everyone knows dr. zayne is cool as a cucumber, and it's a given for him that you're known as his wife, but when a fresh-faced new resident seemingly makes a move on you... what will he do?

genre/warnings: very suggestive, jealousy (a very jealous zayne, in fact), making out in his office, crack, fluff, hunter!reader, you and zayne have a daughter

note: inspired by that one kim min-kyu scene in business proposal :D this is actually an extension for nocturne of twilight and dawn's first light but can also be read as standalone

You hadn't seen your husband for two weeks.

There was a spring on your step when you entered Akso Hospital right after your long intercity mission. You had acquired some bruises and they weren't anything serious, so you figured you’d just have Greyson treat them. Besides, it gave you the perfect excuse to hand him some cookies as a souvenir.

And, of course, ask him to ring for Zayne to meet you once he had the time.

"Miss, do you need help?"

But a curious voice addressed you when you loitered around in the lobby, and you turned around to find a bright-faced young man with red hair and wearing doctor's coat.

"Ah, yes, I want to meet Dr. Zayne," you smiled. "Or Dr. Greyson will do."

The young doctor perked up at the names you mentioned. "Oh, are you a patient? Do you have an appointment already?"

"Hmm, no, actually I am—"

You halted mid-sentence before the words his wife slipped out, rethinking your choice. You knew of Zayne's infamous reputation in the hospital, and while almost everyone in his floor knew you, this new doctor didn't, and you thought it was best to leave it that way.

"Yeah, I already have an appointment," you nodded, plastering an thin smile. "Just tell Dr. Greyson that Y/N wants to meet him."

"Right, right, I'll page him now..." he mumbled, pulling out his pager and his phone. "I'll text him too..."

"Thank you."

"O-oh, Miss! Wait!" the young man called after you in a hurry when you turned around. "I've noticed it for a while, you have a cut on the side of your lips..."

"Ah, this..." Your fingers instinctively brushed the dried blood on your lips. You hadn’t thought the small cut was noticeable. "Yes, it’s from earlier—"

"Actually, I’m an ER resident!" he interrupted with a bright grin. "Let me treat you first!"

Caught off guard by his enthusiasm, you barely had time to react as he gently but firmly guided you towards the emergency room.

"Dr. Zayne! Dr. Zayne! Your wife is here~!"

Zayne had barely stepped into his office after a grueling surgery when Greyson barged in, all too casually, delivering the news with a grin. "She’s waiting in the lobby!"

He blinked, slightly taken aback. "Oh?"

You're back? He pulled out his muted phone, checking the notifications. Sure enough, you’d sent him a message an hour ago, letting him know you’d safely landed in Linkon.

His little, snarky wife. For the past two weeks you had been away, the house had felt lonelier. Sure, his daughter—who resembled you in personality, no less—was a bundle of sunshine and adorable beyond words, but without you, there was always that subtle void in the air.

Or maybe it wasn’t the house at all? Maybe it was just him—utterly, hopelessly whipped.

"Why isn’t she coming up to my office?" he asked suddenly, noticing the odd detail.

"Hmm, yeah, and it’s weird... why did the new resident say she’s asking for me?" Greyson mused, turning toward Zayne. "Don’t you want to meet her instead? Whatever she needs me for, I’m sure you could handle it."

Zayne promptly left his office and took long strides toward the elevator. As the doors started to close, he even half-sprinted, calling out to the person inside to hold it for him.

Okay, maybe he was a little too eager, but was it really so wrong to be this excited to see his wife again when the two of you had been apart for two weeks?

...then again, you didn't need to know. You would roast him to bits should you know he missed you this much.

Zayne got off at the lobby, expecting to find you there— only to find the usual flow of hospital staff and visitors. He was about to call you when he wandered past the emergency room and turned the corner—and that’s when he got his shock of the day.

There you were. But not alone.

With a guy.

Whose hand is touching your lips.

"It must be tough being a hunter, huh?"

The red-haired resident carefully tended to your bruised arm, wrapping it in a fresh bandage as you sighed, thinking back to the mission. "Yeah, there are definitely some hard days..."

"But despite all that, you still keep yourself in shape!" he remarked, eyeing your toned arms with a hint of admiration.

You let out a sheepish laugh, remembering those pull-ups sessions with Zayne. "Haha, that's because my husband makes sure I'm getting enough exercise..."

"You're married?!" His voice was filled with disbelief, and it caught you off guard, yet he grinned afterwards. "Wow! Is he a hunter too?"

You would've never guessed, boy. This resident doctor was cute, you thought, ever so curious at everything. You could only imagine the look on his face if you told him that the Dr. Zayne was your husband.

You were about to refute it when his fingers brushed against your lips. "Oh, sorry, let me apply some ointment here first..."

His touch felt cool to your lips and you were momentarily stunned at the contact— but then a gruff cough startled you so much you almost jumped.

The towering figure of your husband behind him. Zayne's dark gaze was fixed on the man in front of you, like he could murder the poor guy with just a look.

"Z-Zayne...?" you squeaked against the ointment on your lips, and the resident quickly turned behind him in surprise, hastily greeting him, "Oh, Dr. Zayne!"

Zayne shot the poor man a single, pointed look before his gaze shifted to you, clearly unamused.

He suddenly grabbed your hand and, without sparing the resident another glance, swiftly pulled you away. The other guy was left standing there, speechless, as Zayne led you off, leaving him in the dust.

. . .

"Zayne!"

Oh, how he actually missed his name coming out from your lips.

"Are you done with your schedule?" you asked as he pulled you into the elevator, confusion evident in the way you tilted your head. But when he didn’t answer, you glanced down at his firm grip on your arm, suddenly realizing something. "Wait, no... are you angry?"

Sigh. It irked him so much, actually. Because, how could you, after weeks—

No, he actually knew he was being irrational. He shouldn’t overreact like this just because someone else touched you. But why is he so annoyed, still?

"Wait, why?" you kept asking, wide-eyed, as the two of you stepped out and made way towards his office. "I'm not injured! I'm fine! It's just some bruises—"

Without a word, Zayne pulled you into his office, swiftly locking the door behind him. Before you could say another word, he cornered you against the wall, and you fell silent instantly.

It had been a while since he’d seen you this way—stunned, caught off guard, and utterly silent under his gaze. He studied your face closely, watching the way your breath hitched as the tension between you both thickened.

It sparked something inside him seeing you like this, a sense of satisfaction that he couldn’t quite explain, but one he welcomed nonetheless.

That was when he saw the blood on your lips. "Did you get punched in the face?"

"Y-Yes, but— it's nothing severe!" you defended, trying to convince him. "It's such a small cut anyway!"

He frowned. "Why didn't you come to me?"

"What? Hey, I was about to ask Greyson, but—"

That got him frown even deeper, even irate. "Why Greyson? When you come home with any injuries, you come to me, not anyone else."

You let out a resigned sigh, slumping your shoulders in defeat. "Because I know you'll fuss over me, duh."

"I don't fuss," he retorted.

"You do," you shot back, pursing your lips. "You try to act like this cool, calm robot all the time, but you always drone on and on whenever you patch me up. You're worried, it shows."

Zayne huffed, shifting his gaze away from you as he felt his face burn. Was he that obvious? How could he not, though, when you managed to get hurt so often and yet acted so innocent about it?

Then as if inspired, you caught on immediately. Your eyes sparkled, and a mischievous smirk tugged at your lips. "Wait, just now... don't tell me... Are you jealous?"

Damn.

"Heh, Dr. Zayne, really?" Your voice was playful now, mocking him. "Whoa, how can this be?"

How had you figured him out so easily?

You continued in a sing-song voice, putting both hands on your chest, "Ah, my heart flutters! My husband is apparently—"

Enough. This time, his patience snapped.

He didn’t hesitate even for a moment. A low growl escaped him, and in one swift motion, he crashed his lips against yours, silencing you with the most effective method he could think of.

"Mmph!" You gasped in surprise, the teasing words at the end of your tongue completely forgotten. His gray eyes gleamed. Been too long, he thought, and now he was making sure you knew just how badly he craved this.

The kiss was searing as he deepened it, his tongue seeking yours with urgency. "Hngh!" You let out a feeble whine when he teased you by biting your lips.

Zayne held back a snort. One of his hand then strayed inside your hunter uniform, unclasping your bra with a flick.

"—?!" Your eyes widened as you realized what was happening, and before you could process it, he pulled away. But you were far from right in thinking it was over. The dangerous gleam in his eyes kept you tense as he swiftly removed his glasses...

...before he pulled you back towards him and claimed your lips once again.

With a swift, commanding motion, he guided you toward his desk. His papers scattered at the sudden movement, but he had you bent over it regardless, forcing your body to arch. One arm wrapped around your waist, pulling you firmly against him, while his right hand fondled your breasts, repeatedly squeezing, palming and switching between them.

"Mmm...!" You let out a strangled moan, instinctively holding onto his shoulder, feeling the way how he groped you ignited your core. "Ahh..."

Your body was tantalizing as always. Hardened and sometimes bruised from your work it may be, but to Zayne, you were still beautiful as ever.

When you gasped for air, he decided he was done with your swollen lips. His lips then trailed down to your neck, sucking hard on it, creating a squelching sound that sent a shiver racing down your spine.

"W-what's... gotten into you...?" you breathed out, tangling your fingers in his hair, hyperaware of his hands still roaming over your nipples.

In response, he nibbled at your skin and flicked your breasts at the same time, causing you to freeze and draw a sharp, hitched breath. "Haah...!"

Unbeknownst to you, his lips curled wickedly at your reaction, and he continued to pepper your neck with series of wet sucks as if to mark you altogether. You writhed under him, whiny and sighing, relishing his hot breath on your skin.

You were utterly at his mercy, pliant and helpless in his hands. There was a deep satisfaction in knowing he was the only one who could bring you, his lawfully wedded wife, to this state—

Still, he wouldn’t allow you to be indecent in a place like this. When he finally pulled back, he was breathing heavily, eyes dark with lust, his fingers lightly tracing the edge of your jaw. "Don’t tempt me," he muttered, voice low and raspy.

You gazed up at him, your heart pounding. "Zayne..." you whispered, a whine broke through the heat on your flushed face.

His expression softened just enough, a flicker of tenderness cutting through the intensity. Pretty. That’s what you were, undeniably so. How he had missed out on you so long once was his greatest regret.

Carefully, he helped you sit upright, his touch gentle as he clasped your bra and began buttoning up your uniform, disheveled from his earlier ministrations.

The gentle way he touched you was a stark contrast to how it was earlier. "Is that a new way to treat busted lip?" you nudged his collar, feeling a little braver now.

"For bad wives, yeah."

"I'm not a bad wife! Just disobedient on some occasion."

Zayne's fingers brushed your face as he finished with your uniform, his dark-gray eyes steady on you. You pouted.

"You're the one who's bad," you accused with slight resentment, not missing a beat as the heat between your legs started to dissipate. "Leaving me unfinished like that."

"Hmm? Am I?" he murmured, the faintest amusement in his tone.

"You have to take responsibility tonight, you big meanie," you mumbled, your pout deepening as you avoided meeting his gaze.

Zayne snorted at the sight of you—so precious in his eyes, his thumb lightly grazing the corner of your lips in a gesture so tender it made your heart skip, before whispering in your ear:

"Well, if your voice won't wake our daughter, that is."

Epilogue

Not long after, just as you had gathered yourself and were preparing to leave the hospital to head home, a sudden knock at the door of his office startled you both.

Quickly, you moved to sit on the patient’s seat, feigning nonchalance as you braced yourself for whoever was on the other side. Zayne reached for the door, but before he could unlock it, a familiar voice called out.

"Excuse me!" the resident's voice sounded a bit hesitant but firm. "Dr. Zayne, the miss left her handbag earlier!"

Zayne let out a low, irked sigh. You glanced at him curiously, watching as he opened the door and came face-to-face with the redheaded resident.

Without a word, he extended his hand, and the resident blinked before handing over the bag.

"I-is the miss still here?" the young doctor asked, almost intimidated by his unfriendly gaze.

"Ma'am," Zayne corrected, his voice flat.

"Huh?"

"Call her ma'am. She's someone's wife."

"O-oh, and her husband is—"

"Me. I am her husband."

Your eyes widened in surprise at the matter-of-fact exchange, heat rising to your cheeks as Zayne’s words hung confidently in the air. He curtly thanked the poor resident before slamming the door shut in his face.

Your jaw practically hit the floor. "Zayne!" you gasped, staring at him as he turned back towards you, entirely unbothered.

Your husband was as cold as the snowman he often made, but somehow the way he boldly declared he was your husband was just so him that it made you so giddy.

You tilted your head, crossing your arms with a playful smile. "You’re really jealous, huh? How?"

He didn’t answer, his gaze still fixed elsewhere, most definitely trying to save his dignity.

You chuckled softly, stepping closer to him with a teasing sway. Your fingers traced the sharp line of his jaw, turning him to face you, and you winked at him mischievously.

"Well, I’m all yours. But if it makes you feel better, maybe I’ll stay away from any ER residents for a while~"

[moonlight-prose]

a request, if i may, of praising old man logan as he filfthly eats you out and it makes him combust the more you praise him? okay running away again

speak of her over my grave and watch how she brings me back to life

a/n: look at him taking off his glasses in absolute shock of this ask- no okay does old man logan have a praise kink? i would raise it higher and say every version of logan has a massive praise kink. this is a man who wants to know he's doing good in life. his love language is acts of service so he might get to hear a pretty thank you. also i'm not sorry for how feral this got. i have no explanation.

summary: he knew he loved you when your words begin to piece his heart back together. he knew he loved you when he flourishes at your praise. he knew he loved you when nothing in this world could matter but the sound of your voice telling him you love him too.

word count: 3k+

pairing: old man!logan x f!reader

warnings: EXPLICIT SO MINORS DNI, oral (f receiving), praise kink, logan is obsessed, dirty talk via reader, he is so pretty when he blushes, manhandling, cumplay, cumeating, overstimulation, crying, he's needy in this one, angst, tortured soul of an old man, reverence, religious trauma + greek mythology hints.

He can feel the strings of fate pull tight around his broken heart. In a failed attempt to draw him back together. To piece together an organ that barely beat for him anymore. He might have felt it once, before it broke. Before it gnarled itself like the branches of a dying tree, one half twisting away from the other in a desperate attempt of survival.

He deemed it a useless part of his body until you came along. You with your smile that held enough cloying sweetness to choke him as he stood helpless. Silently begging for you to say his name. To bring him back to life.

Whatever horrors that plagued his mind—endless nightmares that promised nothing but anguish—suddenly came crashing to a halt at the sight of you. So pretty in your denim jeans and velvet top. An angel seated in the center of a bar that held more filth than you deserved to be near. Logan couldn’t fathom that luck struck him this hard.

Not when death had already claimed his soul; notched yet another tally in the endless wall of people that came before.

He felt the dirt pack under his nails as he clawed his way out of the grave he put himself in. Years spent alone—a man lost to the ravages of time—had turned him bitter. With rough edges and biting words that stung far more than he intended. How could he believe he deserved to live after he contributed so much to the endless pool of blood that tainted his soul? How was he allowed such softness after biting off bits of brutality his whole life?

Logan was pretty sure he survived on borrowed time that had already run out. He could feel death breathe down his neck as the days went on. A reminder that what little of his life remained would be spent suffering. And he found that accepting it was easier than battling against the will of God, or whoever toyed with his lifeline.

It was far easier to die than find a reason to live.

Until you said his name.

Softly. Sweetly. Reverence wrapped in a tight grasp of need.

You brought him back from the edge—took his hand and refused to take no for an answer. You and the safety of your touch; the promise in your kiss. You dragged him into a life he didn’t earn; one that almost tasted too sweet—too sour.

After near a decade of being buried beneath the dirt, he felt himself collapse above ground and suck in his first real gasp of fresh air. Alive, once more. Hell spit him out with a vow of love and who was he to argue against it.

His fingers dug into your plush thighs, tugging them open to see what lay between. He marveled at their softness, eyes wide and awestruck at the sight of you spread beneath him. You practically glowed in the dim light of the bedside table. Yellow, musty, yet angelic when it caressed your body with its heavenly touch.

He wondered if this was real life; your nails digging sharply into his shoulders gave him the answer.

"Logan," you sighed, voice high with need.

The strings pulled taught. A vice like hold that drew him to you.

Maybe that's what this unutterable feeling was. The gnawing pit at the bottom of his heart. A greed he'd never indulged before—too afraid of what it might ask for next. He wasn't a man who asked for much. Rather someone that found himself far too content with nothing. But tonight he found his lips forming the words of a false prayer that his mother taught him as a child.

Hail the angel in his bed. Hail every good fucking thing you brought into his life.

His teeth sunk into your thigh, body jolting at your responding moan. Fingers dug into his hair, tugging at the mussed locks with a high pitched whine. You were a needy little thing, but Logan found he desperately wanted to be needed.

He smiled laving his tongue over the tender spot, working his way up to where you dripped for him.

So slick. So perfect.

Saliva filled his mouth. "What do ya want baby?"

Your chest heaved; he could feel the heat of your body under his palms. "Your m-mouth Logan."

His eyes trailed along your brow covered in a sheen of sweat. The room was thick with the humid air of the outside world. But that didn't deter him from craving your skin near his. The pressure of your thighs around his head a welcome weight. If he sunk his teeth in where the curve of your leg met your hip he knew he could draw out that soft choking noise he longed to hear on days spent driving alone.

If he had his way he'd crawl into you to seek your serenity straight from the source. He'd never divulge about the ache that chewed him up on the inside, but Logan wondered if you knew. Could you tell how much he craved you? How much he couldn't live without you.

When your glittering eyes met his, the resolve he spent years building cracked like glass. You peered into him as if he was a stained glass window. A god you were more than happy to worship.

"You want me to lick this pretty pussy?" Fuck, he sounded drunk off your taste already.

His mouth hovered over your throbbing clit, your scent now filling his senses. Overwhelming him with what he wanted most. But he needed to hear it. The lilt of your begging; the soft echo of your need that washed over him like soothing river water.

He couldn't live without it.

"Yes," you sobbed, thigh twitching.

The string sliced his heart open, blood pooling onto the white bed sheets. Oh what a sweet death your love made. Oh...what a bittersweet way to go.

He'd die right now if you asked him to. Hand over his heart on a silver platter if you so wished it. Maybe that made him far too gone for his own good, but Logan couldn't remember a time in his life where he got this. Safety. The hope of love burning far too bright and far too hot for him to fly near it.

Yet there he was. Icarus happily soaring in your sun like glow.

"I got ya honey," he murmured. "Gonna take care of what's mine."

You nodded frantically—tears welling up in your eyes. "You take care of me Logan."

The breath in his chest stuttered, eyes dark as the words fell past your swollen lips. He wanted to explain why his cock twitched against his stomach. Why he now leaked into the sheet with heavy panted breaths. But every time he came up short with the words needed to form an answer.

"Yeah I do sweetheart," he breathed. "Don't I?"

"Uh-huh."

"Take care of what belongs to me."

There was no warning when his hands dragged you closer with a rough tug, mouth closing over your clit with a desperate suck. A cry wrenched from your mouth, sparks sharply traveling down your spine. He licked through your slick with a growl. Hands an unbreakable press against your thighs.

The sight of your body bowed, mouth open for small gasped breaths that never came, snapped something in his mind. He was an old man. Well past his years. But the taste of your pussy along his tongue brought back a ferocity he often tamped down in his younger age. He felt the feral want claw at his chest, and answered it with a broken snarl.

Swallowing down every drop you gave him, he plunged his tongue into your entrance, thrusting messily until a smear of your shiny slick began to coat his mouth. It covered his cheeks and clung to the hair of his beard. He'd clean it out later, taste you on his tongue until he was aching for another go. But for now he was preoccupied with the way you cried for him.

"Oh fuck!" Your thighs trembled over his shoulders, hips canting down to drag yourself along his tongue. "So good."

He shuddered, eyes rolling back at the sound of your praise. You caught it within seconds, lips pulling into a breathless smile that left him gasping for air. His teeth nipped at your thigh briefly as his hips ground into the mattress below.

"You like that baby?" you breathed, thumb smearing your own slick against his cheek.

Something hot washed over his body. A needy sick and twisted ache that he'd never indulged in before. He wanted to be a good man to you; longed to be needed. And fuck if you didn't give him everything.

You were his walking wet dream. His future handed off and wrapped in a neat little bow.

"L-Love your tongue Logan-" A high gasp tore from your throat when he dived back in. Slurping at your clit with a heady moan as you dragged him closer. "Taking care of me so well."

His hips canted down into the bed, fucking his cock along the warmth of his stomach, as you gushed into his mouth again. Eyes zeroed in on your face, pupils dilated as he growled into your flesh. You no longer could see the man you loved, but the feral side he tamped down during the day. The animal he longed to release in your presence.

"Fuck I'm gonna cum."

His arms looped around your thighs and with a sharp yank, he had his face buried deep enough to suffocate himself. You sobbed an incoherent version of his name. Nails clawed at his shoulders, but Logan could feel the pulse of your clit under his tongue.

He sucked it into his mouth with a grunt, rolling it along his tongue as you trembled with the oncoming shocks of an orgasm that threatened to destroy you.

Tears dripped down your cheeks and Logan felt the satisfying part of his heart begin to stitch itself back together. The strings were tight enough to numb his pain. To quell the flare of agony.

That used to be all he knew, all he counted on most days. When there was nothing left and he'd propped the shovel in the dirt—his grave open and waiting—he stumbled right into your arms. He found his reason for living.

Heat curled around his spine as you shook with the impending orgasm—the stimulation on your clit practically debilitating. He grunted into your soaked flesh, eyes narrowed as he chased the release that pulled his stomach taut. But this wasn't for him to indulge in; this wasn't his pleasure.

So with a throaty moan you felt reverberate along your body, he scraped his teeth along your clit and watched as your body went stiff.

"Logan!" you cried, fingers scrambling for purchase on any part of him you could reach.

You gushed into his awaiting mouth, praises of it's so good, you're so good falling upon his ears like the whimpered prayers of a devout worshiper thanking your god.

"Taste so fuckin' good," he mumbled, drunk on what you gave him.

He didn't care that you were jolting with each pass of his tongue along your pussy. He didn't care that you were shocked with overstimulation, small broken cries of his name muffled by the press of your thighs against his ears. He licked at you until he couldn't breathe. Buried his tongue into your twitching entrance and sucked out your cum with a happy hum.

"P-Please." You tugged at his hair, pulling him off you with a sob. "I-I can't anymore Logan."

"'M not fuckin' finished," he said, eyes glazed and face coated in your slick.

You made a mess of his face. The light catching along where you spilled into his mouth and along his throat. And still he wanted more. He'd spend hours between your thighs, burning your skin with his beard, if it meant he could divulge in your sweetness.

"It hurts-"

A grunt rumbled in his chest, his arms tugging you back even as your feet kicked along his back. "Just one more honey. Yeah?"

You shook your head. "B-But-"

"Thought you said it was good."

"It is."

"Then lemme be good for you." He wanted to tell you that the world went quiet between your thighs. That all his grief, all his pain, lessened when you sobbed his name.

He wanted to show you the string that looped his heart to yours—the only thing keeping him alive—and thank you for bringing him back from the dead. But words weren't his forte. Violence had become the only tenderness he knew and you didn't deserve the rough edges of an old man. You should have more.

But when you let him touch you like this—caress your skin and lick between your folds—he felt as if he was a man who finally was worthy of someone as precious as you. He could pretend he didn't bear the brunt of a fucked up soul.

The weight on his chest lifted when your tear filled gaze met his and you nodded. Small, barely there, but it was enough for him to seal his mouth back over you with a ragged moan. Your body shook as his tongue slid through the seam of your pussy. The tip nudging against your clit—careful to draw the pleasure from your body slowly.

He didn't want to give you pain. His heart wouldn't survive that. But he was a broken man; someone who begged for more even as his teeth sunk into what was already given.

You were his meal. His sacrament in the midnight hours until dawn broke across the darkened sky. You were the other half of his soul.

How could he not indulge in your sweetened tang until his tongue went stiff?

"I love you," you sighed, eyes rolled back when he sucked at your pussy, a wet low moan echoing in the air. "My p-perfect husband."

The cold press of his wedding band against your thigh drove him over the edge. You weren't officially married. Didn't have the backyard wedding with a preacher to match. But Logan had placed a ring on your finger near a year ago, sliding one over his own with the vow of forever cemented in his words.

Even if that didn't mean much in the eyes of a god who abandoned him near a century ago.

"Oh-"

Your head tipped back, mouth dropping open as his fingers dipped into your wet heat. Thrusting lazily until he found the spongey patch along your walls—driving the pad of his middle finger into it with a needy moan.

He knew it wouldn't take long for you to fly off the edge of a second release. That didn't make watching you climb to that peak any less satisfying. The sight appeased his soul. It gave him a chance to breathe; let him know that after so much bad—after so much pain—he could do something good. He could bring you to the edge of pleasure and drag you over again and again.

He could finally be the man you believed he was.

Not the animal they created.

"C'mon," he muttered. Eyes fixed on the shape of your breasts as your body curved off the bed. Hips dragging along his face with a stunted cry.

A wail bounced off the walls, piercing his eardrums with the symphony of your cries. His fingers rapidly pumped into you with a squelch that had heat burning his cheeks—lips pulling your throbbing clit into his mouth as you broke. The climax slammed into you; battering your already swollen pussy.

Logan could feel his cock swell at the sight.

"Fuckin' perfect," he grunted, teeth bared as he clambered to his knees and wrapped his fist soaked in your slick around his leaking cock. "'M gonna cum sweetheart."

Your eyes fluttered open, fingers digging into his thigh. "Please. Wanna see it baby. Look so pretty when you cum Logan."

His chest tightened, body shaking while you watched in rapture as he fucked his fist rapidly. He wouldn't fucking last, could feel the burning consume his body, but something held him back. The string around his heart yanked him away from the edge, tearing a cry from his throat when his frustration peaked.

You could see it—the glimmer of need in his dark eyes. This wasn't the first time he longed for your words. It certainly wouldn't be the last.

So you spread your legs and sat up slowly—arms wrapping around his shoulders to bring his lips down to yours. A soft moan was muffled by your mouth; the peak of his release within reach. He could practically feel the tips of his fingers graze it.

"Cover my pussy baby," you mumbled into his mouth. "Be good for me and mark what's yours."

The growl came from the very bottom of his chest when he finally came. Your name was a bitten out snarl pressed to your mouth in an open mouth kiss as he spurted over his knuckles. He pumped his cock to milk every drop; eyes fixed on the way it covered the swollen lips of your pussy. Dripping down to your entrance that fluttered at the sight of his sweaty and crimson tinged face.

"I fuckin' love ya honey," he murmured, hand cupping your chin to drag your lips back to his. "Best thing that's happened in my life is you."

You smiled, thumbs pressing to his cheeks. "Love you too Logan."

Clutching you close, he felt the string go loose. The breath finally rushing back into his lungs at the sight of your eyes glowing with the kind of light that brought him back to the first day The night he met you in that shitty bar—alcohol the only thing on his mind until he saw you.

The night you spoke his name over his covered grave and dragged him back to life with a smile.

[iceunhie]

— PUSH AND PULL : honkai star rail.

premise. as someone who's always believed in the term “try and try again,” (peak delusion, you know) rooting yourself in their heart has always been your goal, no matter the cold rejections and curt declines you receive. however, even you have your limits; perhaps this little push and pull you two have going isn't worth your time after all... but what happens then, if the chaser becomes the chased? (oh, how the turns have tabled.)

...or, when you play hard to get with them.

— ft. sunday, aventurine, jing yuan.

warnings: angst n fluff, messy messy, these boys are in love but are wayyy too chicken to admit they actually adore you, genderless reader.

a/n. inspired by @/xiaowhore's playing hard to get headcanons! my holy trinity 😇 n MY FAVES RAHHH

NEXT : BACK TO MASTERLIST || ASKBOX

SUNDAY is perplexed. very much aware of his qualities which enlists him as one of the finer (finest) bachelors of Penacony (he was the Robin's one and only blood, and was also the head of one of the main guiding forces of the Family, after all), sunday isn't sure he's ever come across someone as.... tenacious as you.

foolish, to be more precise, for he cannot for the life of him comprehend exactly why you are the way you are with... him.

no matter his respectful declines of your invitations to promenade around Penacony (re: going on dates), you really didn't know how to leave him be. though he hasn't exactly said he hated it, sunday was, admittedly, rather... affronted. your gifts, in particular, were your loud declarations of your affection (that make his wings flutter more rapidly than he'd like); but sunday was rather inconvenienced at the whole thing.

nonetheless, he does still accept them. reluctantly, mind you. not because he was fond of your constant shower of affections, which seemed so permanent that he began to look forward to them got used to it. to your credit, your gifts were very much to his tastes. (Robin once gave him a rather soul-searching look when he found himself wearing the gloves you gifted, light blue and white in color. he still uses it, just not when his sister is in the vicinity.)

in fact, perhaps he may have gotten too comfortable. little by little, your constant intrusions on his time have thawed a way to his heart; making sunday look forward to your jovial greetings and grandeur elaborations on your day, and such a thing makes him feel scared sunday needed to nip this in the bud, and fast.

so he confronts you, abruptly one day as you give him his newest gift—a jewelry box for his earrings. (surely, the rapid thumping of his heart was due to his irritation at your constant persistence, right?) “i'm afraid this can no longer continue. i am flattered by your... fancy for me, but i do not wish to enter a relationship in the near future.”

the utter silence that follows is torture to him—but he endures. he tries not to look at the momentary flash of hurt on your face. you seemed to quickly recover, though. giving him a simple smile (it didn't reach your eyes. it shocks him how his chest ached at the realization) and shaking your head when he returns the gift to you.

“i understand, mr. sunday.” the formal usage of his name instead of your chipper ‘sunday!’ makes his face twitch. “but please, keep the gift. think of this as my last declaration. it... would do me a great comfort, just this last time, if you accepted it instead.”

(if he had grabbed your hand at that moment as you left for the door, would he regret it?)

when you leave, sunday thought it would put the conflicting feelings in his mind at ease—but it doesn't. a week and two days counting, true to your word, sunday receives no flagrant gifts, nor little messages on his phone that tell him to take care of himself, to eat, and to make sure to remember to check up on Robin.

instead, contrary to the feeling of ease, regret follows him instead.

it's at two weeks and five days counting when sunday could no longer stand the sight of papers that stacked atop his desk and the image of you leaving for the door replaying in his head far too many times for him to count, that he contacts Robin.

and she, once hearing about the situation, gives him a very, very enlightening talk. (of course, not without giving her brother a lecture of the lifetime. part of him felt shame to know that his sister knew of his... turbulent love life, but she was the only one who he could trust, anyway).

“absence makes the heart grow fonder,” she says. “but in your case, brother, your heart has already decided it's course, right?”

sunday eyes the smooth velvet of the jewelry box you gifted, ruminating. his earrings lie there, carefully pristine and beautiful, gold and silver intertwined. he has worn them without fail, clean and spotless. (of course it was. such a design so intricate was only chosen by you. the thought makes his ears warm).

the next days are agonizing. vigor renewed and epiphanies well-spent, sunday spends the rest of his time after finishing his duties researching and painstakingly finding the best jeweller he can find (even employing the suggestions of a certain gambler, much to his dislike), and spending a god awful amount of time revisiting and rechecking which spots you like, which places you enjoy, to the point it comes up in Penacony's headlines that sunday is interested in someone.

surely, it should've reached your ears by now, yes? sunday panics. your preferences are well-accounted for, and he's sure the Bloodhound family members that report to him have to tell you that the person he had in mind was you. even Robin, who was your closest friend, has probably told you already.

it's embarrassing to admit, but; to hell with it, the day he meets you after three weeks and sees you having a pleasant chat with aventurine, of all people, sunday thinks his heart had shattered into little pieces and stabbed themselves into his body. not so much as sparing him a glance, moreso.

so when, finally at his wits end, sunday chooses to corner you at the dewlight pavilion and spills out how he has royally screwed up in the worst way possible, no one is surprised. at this rate, you would be swept up in the charms of that wretched gambler, and what sunday lacked in, aventurine more than made up for.

“wait, don't go to that gambler just yet.” he's breathless, he's chaotic—and something in his heart squeezes when you finally look at him. “i... i wish to take up your time now, if that's possible.” (he wishes he would take up your time forever, really, but that was still too early).

you eye his getup. all of your gifts, lined on the man you spent so long chasing after—you see the gloves you gifted, the tie with not so much as a single crease, and the earrings that shine more brightly in the light of the pavilion. (it suits him. like you) it was as if sunday had completely surrendered himself to you, had all but decided to proclaim that he was yours, and this was nothing short of a plea for you to hear him.

“please.” he says. almost begs. “i can't bear not seeing you anymore. allow me to correct such a damning mistake.”

and if you were skeptical, the way sunday looks at you would dispel any doubt you could ever have. (his wings, they were fluttering.)

(months later, after a nerve-ending confession, many days of dinners, shared gifts involving matching jewelry and promenading to your wishes, it dawns on sunday he was absolutely dancing to your tune. did he regret it, though?

....no, most certainly not.)

if AVENTURINE were to be honest with himself, he saw you as a useful “friend” rather than a romantic interest. was it bad of him? of a sort. but risk cutting himself open and letting someone he might grow to care for know about all the ugliness that follows his life? no, he's fine as it is, thanks.

the first thing he notices is that you're kind—though he distrusted most of his colleagues and preferred none to get close to him, aventurine, in some morbid moment of curiosity, instead allowed himself to bask in your attention. instead of curtly disparaging you, he flirts back at your compliments (the way your face heated up in return was far too endearing that he can't help but want to kiss you he finds it amusing) and consistently texts you a “did you get home safe” or a “i bought you this because it reminded me of you”; at this point, it was like you two were dating.

was it leading you on? yes, but he supposes it was a win-win; he could send you those tiny bits of validation that was enough for you to stay respectfully at a distance while he probed at your intentions. unlike others who attempt to garner his favor, you're genuine, and you seriously take the time to know him. because you always text back with hearts, always reassure him, tell him to stay safe and wish him luck at every gamble, every high stakes bet he finds himself in. you even complimented his perfume once (and, if he had to be honest, he could not stop thinking about it all day—because that perfume he commissioned exclusively was based off of your own favorite scents and it was extremely embarrassing that he loved hugging you knowing that you loved the way he smelled and that it felt extremely domestic).

(sometimes, he doesn't reply. for months on end. suddenly the golden-haired man you love goes cold and you know then that aventurine ghosts you and then returns when he's in need of a friend—never a lover. it hurts you, but at the very least, you know he cares in his own way.)

and, if aventurine had to be honest, it was killing him from the inside bit by bit. as if to drive the knife deeper, you never danced around what exactly was going on with you two. you never ask why he ghosts you, then sends you a bundle of gifts all of a sudden and then rapidly spends time with you and repeating the cycle. no, you were consistently by his side, so warm and so caring—so unlike him—that aventurine wonders if it's really all right to open his heart to you.

if, by some chance, he actually wanted to be with you, would you treat him even more sweetly than before? aventurine thinks you would—you were beautiful in your entirety, and he was practically undeserving of you. he imagines himself kissing your hand and having you in his arms—and that feels like ice cold water being dumped onto his head, because you could do so much better and yet, why him?

so when aventurine hears about how a certain doctor was visiting you for some unknown reason, his already fragile sense of security in this little will-they, won't they crumbles.

and when he finds out that you were staying over with ratio? something twisted lodges itself in the little brushes of his heart, coiling and coiling—making him feel green. aventurine is aware you and the doctor are good friends, and ratio was the one who even told you to make a move on him! how could he just—suddenly interrupt?!

(was it dramatic? extremely. but knowing his friend and the person he secretly adores might end up together? you can't really blame him.)

he supposes this can be attributed to him. it was an egregious mistake, a blunder aventurine made—he never gave you a clear sight of whether he truly loved you or not and now you're slipping away from him.

so, he does something very unexpected.

at 3:00 AM in the wee early morning hours, aventurine practically barges into one Dr. veritas ratio's home, demanding what the hell was going on between you. and as if he had expected it, his doctor friend merely gives him a shrug in return.

“perhaps they were simply getting fed up by a certain IPC member—who is clearly head over heels in love with them—giving them mixed signals.” ratio's tone is stern, and aventurine definitely knows that the look he gives him is the one he gives only to fools.

you idiot, the doctor seems to say. yeah, yeah, he is; aventurine ignores the clear pinprick at his dignity.

yes, he supposes he is the fool here. “ah.”

“yes, ‘ah,’ indeed. now, let me propose a question.” the purple-haired man says. “will you react in such a way when i tell you that in order for my friend to stop their anguish, i managed to get them to fraternize with one of my colleagues?”

“...what?”

“they will be having a meet-up seven system hours from now.” ratio shrugs. eyes aventurine, who's looking at him like a gaping, stupid fish. “i can only hope that no one would dare to disrupt.”

...it doesn't take him long to be rid of the gambler by then.

(a few hours later, you stop by the Intelligentsia Guild to see one veritas ratio with a smug smile, eyeing the fur coat draped around your shoulders, and the flushed and happy expression written on your face.

“did it work?” he asks.

you laugh, “splendidly.”

indeed, that gambler was a fool, and there's nothing more than dr. ratio loved than to educate such fools to shape.

“that will teach him.”)

as a quote unquote ‘old man’ who knows that he's well up in his years for a relationship, JING YUAN finds you to be quite amusing.

it doesn't take a detailed analysis to know that you were smitten with him, really. you're a complete open book by his standards—if your heated face and slightly airy voice whenever you were even placed in the same vicinity with the Dozing General was anything to come by. while flattering, he also shares the similar mindset of being too old for any love his way—and he could be mara-struck at any given time, and jing yuan does not wish such a life filled with anguish and pain for the one who may steal his heart. but, worry not, brave suitor of the Arbiter General! unlike the other two above, this man has the experience of millenia, and is open-minded and aware that you truly wish to be perceived as a potential lover.

in fact, jing yuan's recent favorite habit is sneaking off the Seat of Divine Foresight purely to freak you out, watching you scramble up your words, seeing the heat crawl up your nape and bloom all across your face. adorable. you certainly knew how to appeal, that's for sure.

(“heh, it seems i've found a new place to stay in so that the Diviner Fu won't grill me alive when she sees me.”

and when he's rewarded with a bashful and speechless look in return, a smile and your, “i'm glad, general.” it surprisingly lightens up his mood by more than he expected.

that, in turn, gives him a frightening 30% energy boost; fu xuan was utterly shocked to see the languid man actually working and looking like he enjoyed it, for once.

“did something good happen today, jing yuan? why so enthusiastic?”

“i just felt like working more than usual, diviner Fu. i seem to have my energy levels at a high.”)

now, jing yuan is considerate and perceptive first and foremost, so there's a high chance that out of all the men here, he is the most open to giving you the chance to pursue him. he does inform you beforehand that he has no plans of accepting your confessions in the future, and that is where the ‘hard to get’ part comes in.

it's like playing a confusing romance visual novel with a fickle love interest—you never really know what you're doing, whether it's something jing yuan would like or not, and you don't know if he even thinks your attempts are moving his heart. (tldr: he friend zones you).

he maintains the same distance no matter his banters with you, no matter how many times you tell him that you'd help yanqing out with sword lessons. it's like he was just... treating you as he would a friend, and that you were basically stuck in the friend-zone forever.

(he keeps it to himself, but something warm stirs in his chest when he sees yanqing sleeping on your shoulder after training practice, with your arm protectively around the boy's side.

your sleeping face didn't make it easy to look away either; it's one of the few moments in which jing yuan shows just the slightest bit of reciprocating your pursuits; he brushes back the stray hairs covering your face, and drapes a blanket over the two of you.

of course, perhaps to tease yanqing, he also takes the calligraphy brush and makes a work out of his face, doodling all over it.

when you wake up, there's a lingering scent of ink and yellowed paper that fills your senses. when you turn to the boy beside you, you almost giggle out loud.)

it's a little disheartening—and while jing yuan did acknowledge that you were slowly, slowly burrowing yourself in his heart, he doesn't act on it fast enough, and instead lets the realization sit in his mind for a while.

it gets to the point where it feels as though he were preparing to distance himself, and even yanqing had asked if he was well. your visits with the Arbiter General also decrease, as he suddenly buried himself in his work even more than before.

he doesn't get to see you all that much afterwards, despite the lingering feeling of missing you filling his heart.

....that's until jing yuan hears word of a recent mara-struck incident involving the Sky-faring Commission; with your name listed among those heavily injured.

when he visits Bailu's clinic after yanqing urges him, jing yuan takes in the sight of you, littered in injuries from head to toe. your life, about to snap. he never even told you that you won; you did manage to steal his heart and for the first time in a long time, jing yuan allows himself to love.

so if, after three weeks later when you're finally healed up and ready to go, jing yuan brings you into his arms and drags you to let him sleep in your lap, you can't really blame him now, can you?

a/n: i love yearner hsr men,,, might do a pt 2 though. thinking of mayb ratio, jiaoqiu and f/heng next time...... sighs dreamily

@ ICEUNHIE: do not repost translate or plagiarize my works.

[dawnwriterimagines]

Traitors Among Us

SIMON 'GHOST' RILEY x Fem!Reader Task Force 141 x Fem!Reader (Platonic)

PART 2

Part Three: The Guilty Plea

Part Four: The Verdict Due

Summary: You're a rat, a traitor. At least that's what Task Force 141 believes due to the evidence and claims scattered against you. It doesn't matter what you say, everyone's against you, ready to end you for it...until the truth comes out.

Warning(s): Torture, Heavy Angst, etc.

---

Drip.

Drip..

Drip...

Your shoulders seize up involuntarily as freezing droplets continue to hit your skin, eyes squeezed shut to try to ignore the sound that had been going on for who knows how long.

Another drop of water hits your spine from the faucet placed above you, it's cold as it runs down your bare skin. It feels like ice. Hitting the same spot over and over and over...

Drip...

Not even able to take a deep breath, you release a strained cry, it can hardly leave you, not that you hadn't cried enough already. You could feel the dried blood, tears and snot still on your face and a testament to your torment. You haven't been able to get the metallic taste of your blood of of your mouth since you got in here.

You breathe slowly, trying to relieve the pain in your chest. Body positioned downwards, chest pressed down to your knees, a leather buckle holds you down and over a metal stool. Wrists torn open by old shackles and stretched upwards to connect to the steel pipe in the middle of the room.

The stress position had been Johnny's idea, putting you in it to begin with. The bastard...

Kyle had been in and out to collaborate with Price on the interrogation, he didn't have the heart to do you any harm like his Captain. But, that didn't stop him from stomaching your screams as he turned the handle up, piercing cold crashing down atop you, it beats down on your back, by the time it's done your shaking, and your skin a bruising purple hue. It goes on like that for hours, even as you beg. He reads you the files again.

Price would then take the baton from the corner of the room, the side of your face already swollen from the last strike, you were seeing red out of your left eye and soon you wouldn't be able to see out of it if the swelling continued.

"Please..." you shivered, miserably.

"Over in a jiff, love, but i need somethin' from you, you know that." Was his reply, he tapped the baton against the metal below you, the reverb makes you jump each time, leaving you to stare at it as you watched his boots walk around you.

"Cap'n, It's not...It's not--me..." you tried, breathless. "I'd never.."

The steel baton came down on your shoulder, first. There was an immediate response from your constricted muscles, limbs that had all tensed up at once despite their numbness. Pulling at the shackles that kept you in place, the hit shocks you, nearly silencing you completely, it hurts, then it burns. Mouth open in a silent scream, you squeeze your eyes shut in an effort to block out the pain that crawled through your shoulder. "It's not me!"

You've been suffering from hypothermia for a few days since then. Your shoulder crushed right out of place or just plain broken, you weren't sure. It's not like you could feel much of your arms in this position.

It hurt. Not just the painful strain that this position was currently putting on your muscles, but everything else...

Of course, you've handled torture alike this before. Captured and tortured by enemies, ransomed for pay and fought tooth and nail to live, then found your way from that hell...only for the men who you'd kill for, to do the same thing to you with no remorse.

In the quiet of the empty room, you sobbed in agony. Squeezing your fists, but you couldn't even feel them, as far as you knew your fingers could only twitch in response to your demand.

You weren't sure what you were doing here.

Well, you knew. There was a mole, all evidence pointing to you, whatever it was had completely stunted their mission earlier in the week, left them hiding in a safe house for days until they were picked up by evac. Apparently, you'd leaked mission details to some hostiles over seas, you weren't sure which ones, they were hoping you could tell them. You had absolutely nothing, lost.

Of course, they didn't believe you. Although you expected to have at least a sliver of trust, someone to speak up against these claims and believe you...

It must've been too much to ask.

It came out of nowhere, at first you had been in bed with Simon, your fucking Fiancé, then that meeting with Price, then just...they'd cornered you in that room. Knocked you out without even an explanation, woke you up strapped down, confused, stripped of your uniform and feral as you demanded answers. Nobody listened to you.

That first night you thought you were gonna die. The second night you thought you had. The third night you were just convinced this was your hell.

You were soaked to the bone, and unable to stop shivering. The only sound you could hear was your own chattering teeth in this never-ending void of darkness.

It was so fucking dark in here, your eyes darting around to every corner, hoping for even a measly crack of light that your eyes could adjust to. Every sound, scratch, scrape or click made you jump, you couldn't see shit in here, so just about everything made you hyper aware. You couldn't help your anxiety as the sound of the faucet, the constant drops against your spine, the jingle of your shackles and the whimpers that echoed against the walls as you struggled to comfortably breathe. Maybe it was the thought of a mouse crawling up the stool and along your skin, or someone in here just staring at you in the corner, or the door finally opening for Price to start slicing into you demanding answers you didn't have.

You were on the cusp of losing your mind. If you hadn't already.

But it's been a few hours since then...

Maybe even a few days...

It could even have been a week.

You weren't too sure.

Simon had been the last one in here. He'd pulled the strap loose around your neck, hauling you up to an upright position by your jaw, eliciting a whimper from your lips. Able to breathe a bit easier, your lungs finally decompressing and you gulp down air greedily, "Simon..." this had been the first time you'd seen him since. He wears his balaclava, he is Ghost, not your Simon Riley.

As your bloodshot, swollen eyes raise to look into his cold ones, so unfeeling. You hadn't even realized you were so hopeful for his trust in you until then, looking at you like you were absolutely nothing to him, the same look he always had before pulling the trigger. "Simon, please, stop this..." your words slurred by your shivering, exhausted. "You know me...please."

Your tears slide over the leather of his gloved hands, while he holds tight to your face and cuts your pleads short with a painful squeeze. "Shut up," he says. His eyes are blank, but his voice is low and seething. "Shut the fuck up!" Simon harshly grits out to you, jostling you harshly. You squeeze your eyes shut, weeping miserably, throat closing up to your agony.

He had to know that you would've never done this to him. He should've known that. Given you the benefit of the doubt at least. You'd have never done this to him...

"I'm sorr-" you try, he squeezes harder to silence you swiftly, and snatches a tiny bowl off the tray he'd brought in. Raising your jaw a bit higher, he pours down a chunky broth into your mouth, letting it all just fall down to your throat. It's disgusting. He doesn't ease up for even a second as you toss and turn your head to breathe.

"Don't say a fucking word," he seethes, his hand enveloping your neck and keeping your head raised upward. "As if I should believe you..."

He then takes the next cup to do the same, your eyes bloodshot wide and you jerk away from him as you choke, unable to stomach anything, but he doesn't let you. This time you inhale accidentally, blocking your airway, eyes watering as you writhe for oxygen, your shackles clang violently as you attempt to retaliate, the first fight you've put up in days. His grip doesn't let up, even as you struggle and start to vomit up whatever he decided to shove down your throat.

When he finally lets go, you curve over and heave up whatever's left in your mouth, hyperventilating as you empty your guts on the floor. Hacking up whatever you can, it hurts, your throat burning from the sobs that leave you in between coughs. "If you love me, if you--ever had--" you spat at him. You'd given him everything, every part of yourself, nearly given him your life in the battlefield, and yet...it wasn't enough. "You would fucking believe me!" your voice cracks with the effort it takes to scream at him, to curse him to hell.

"My trust? That's what you want," Hollow eyes stare back at you, his attention flickering around to the uncomfortable shift of your shoulders in those cuffs. Your swollen left eye that had been hit so hard, the white of it had filled with blood. The black and blue littering your sides and your spine, the loss of color in your skin from the stress position and the cold that had you uncontrollably shivering. "You've had it before. You must've sold that to them too."

Your head drops to the stool again, releasing a heavy breath. "It wasn't worth much, if it was so easy to lose..."

Usually it's not very easy to set Simon off, you've known him always to be quite mellow, besides the barely concealed rage he had settled in his chest since you've known him. But, today, you were an exception.

Fisting a hand in your hair, Simon yanks at it, pulling you upwards for your to face him. His other hand coming up to wrap around your throat before your tortured scream can even manifest. In that moment, it feels as if he'd snapped your spine in half, having not used the muscles to stretch that area in over a week. Your shackled wrists shifting in the cruel position.

His eyes are wild and rageful, the balaclava that covers him twists just the same, his grip very telling to his violence as he squeezes down any chance at air or even a sentence. "Easy to lose..." he repeats, spitting in your face as he strangles you. "Easy t'lose your life! If you don't tell me the fucking truth," he pulls out the knife you'd seen him slit so many throats with before, you hear the familiar sound of it first then its cold steel pressing into the side of your ribs. "I'm gonna carve out your heart, and I'll take it real slow, let you feel every little thing I do to you in here," he shakes you harshly as a startled cry escapes you, your tears are burning hot against your cheeks. "You don't get to cry. Or whine. Or beg!"

"Stop--" you try to squirm away from him, to get as far away as possible, from this place, from this moment.

"Just tell me the truth," Simon's face twisted in agony, for just a second, his thumb drags along your jaw, meaningfully. "You'd be doing us both a favor..."

As his vast hand finally loosed around your neck just enough to hold you up, awaiting the bitter truth. Simon's knife catches on the protrusion of your ribs, nicking the skin, drawing blood on purpose. You stare up at the ceiling, the flickering old lights, the dripping faucet that's tormented your already fragile state for weeks now. "The truth..." you spoke, hoarsely. "You've all shown me...it doesn't matter to you. If it ever... Believe what you want--" you close your eyes, you're exhausted. Sleep had evaded you for days. "You and your truth and this team, you can all go to hell."

And finally he lets you go, letting your fall forwards, unable to find the relief of a cold floor but back to the strenuous position you'd been placed in. "AH!" nearly popping your shoulders out of place, or maybe they had, you bite down on your tongue, shaking in silence.

If you could see Simon's face, you could've relished in the uncertainty flickering in his eyes, the sudden doubt that led his knife back in its holder and his nails to bite into the flesh of his palms. He opens his mouth to say something, but nothing leaves him, instead he stands there.

You can't say a thing to him now, everything that's happened was just a little reminder that whatever you said, whatever you did, it didn't matter. Their minds had already been made. You really would die here.

Simon stands there a little longer, he doesn't say anything, you're not sure if he stays there to watch your suffering a little longer or to wait to say another heart-wrenching thing. Maybe he's just there to wait for you to die. But, he just watches as you wretch and cry in a ball atop that stool.

He leaves not long after, he didn't bother to strap you down this time. He left the old light on, but it must've been older than you thought.

The single bulb fizzled out completely hours ago. Not unless one of them decided to cut the silence and turn on the light to start another 'questioning', so suddenly being able to see more than darkness wasn't anything to be excited about.

They'd leave you in the dark until then, to await the next moment any of them would grace you with their presence.

To be honest, you'd imagined you'd be stronger than this. But, there was nothing to hold onto, so what did strength matter?

It was too late anyway.

They'd broken you days ago.

---

The truth had come out, two days later.

"Oh god..."

"Oh my fucking God," Simon rushed down the corridor, Price tailing right behind him. "Oh my God!" his normal monotone voice now a mess of fear and panic, breathing harsher, on the cusp of hyperventilating with every stride as he ran faster than he ever had in his life.

Finally getting to the interrogation wing of the department, he bangs his fist on the plexiglass of those silently monitoring the rooms, "Open the fucking door!" he's buzzed in before he can pull on the handle another time.

Rushing down the hall to the now green lit room, lights flickering to life with every step closer down the hall of empty rooms. He nearly rips the door off its hinges as he bursts inside, the lights of the your tiny prison don't come to life as they should. Light spilling into the cell, to hit your limp figure first.

He doesn't deserve to say your name. "(Y/n)," Simon rushes over, to his knees instantly. A puddle of vomit, water and spoiled broth soaks through his uniform.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry," he sobs out his mistakes, unhooking your chains and cutting through your buckles as fast as he could. "Oh my god, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry!" he catches his fiancé as you collapse, turning over and off the stool, your legs having lost all sense of feeling. You fall into his arms, catching you carefully. "Price!" he cries out, desperately.

"They're on the way!" Your captain assures, he sees the medical team rushing down the hallway, a stretcher, a box of medical supplies. Christ.

You're freezing to the touch, your skin a hue of blue, not to mention the bruises, the cuts and the swollen areas throughout your face and spine. You suddenly inhale, sharply, coughing terribly. You're sick, breathing shakily, "Simon...?" you breathe, confused. You can't see. Your eyes swollen shut from your torture at their hands.

"It's me, it's me," Simon assured, although he knew it probably brought you no comfort. He snatches the blanket offered up by Price, your captain a mess of himself, holding himself together at the doorway, nails biting into the steel.

As Simon wraps you in the first glimpse of warmth you've had in days, you ease up a bit, fingers twitching upwards to pull the threads closer around yourself. "It wasn't..." you shiver, Simon listens intently as he rises with you in his arms, running off to meet the medical team halfway. "It wasn't me..." you gasp out. "It wasn't..."

Simon can't say a thing as he hears your tormented voice stutter in fear of him, lips pressed tight together, heart sinking and as the nurses take your body, he collapses to his knees.

Part 2

and if you'd like to support a fanfic hoe in need...would you Buy me a Coffee?

[aliceinborderlandsquidgame]

One hell of a team | In-ho x Wife!Reader |

Summary: You will follow your husband anywhere.

Warnings: S2 Spoilers - Violence - Different back story for In-ho - Blood - Death - Use of (Y/N) - Reader gets called "love" -

The Frontman, the man with the most power within the island, to who the guards obey without question.

Was currently trembling under his wife pointed look.

"You want to enter the games?" You asked him, your tone cold and almost jugdmental.

In-ho calmed himself down. It was an idea that stayed with him after the death of the Chairman and even more with how player 456 had insisted the last two years in finding them. He had played before and won, he knew how terrible others could be, he had walked out like a new man, used the money for himself and you. Never really gave much thought on how many lives were lost.

But, for some reason he wanted to go again.

"Im going with you"

His glass of wishky fell onto the floor, the loud crash did nothing to bother you while you ate.

"No, thats not happening. I need you here to control the games and guards" In-ho started trying to get a valid reason to why you defenetly should not come.

"Oh, you need me to? Well I need you here. With me. With our family. How do you think I would do seeing you there ? I still remember how you got when you came back from these the first time"

"That was different" The Frontman said taking a deep breath "I wont be just one more player, it will be like when the Chairman went in"

"That still does not ease my mind" (Y/N) responded "Till death do us a part and follow you anywhere" you recited showing him your weeding ring. "Remember?"

In-ho felt his chest got thight at the sight and the memory of the small yet full of love weeding you two had back when life was more simple.

"Alright, you can come with me. Its not like you would wait for my approval" he responded smiling at the end "But no one must know that we are married, you understand that ?" He added now serious

"Of course, its what makes more sense, we will just casually meet there and see how it plays" You nodded to him "And please, better clean up that glass before someone steps on it"

"On it, love"

~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~

For the most part pretending not to know each other was easier than expected. While you knew the guards knew who you two were you were still a bit scared. Specially during the green and red light, since both of you had got separated and now you were froze in your spot.

"You need to move" In-ho said from behind his arm playing along "Follow me in the next sing, alright? Just take my hand"

"Im scared, im sorry" You said feeling guilty over wanting to be there with him and starting to fail on the first game no less.

"I know, I was too. But im here, just follow me"

~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~

You had to hide your smirk when he pressed the circle to go on with the games, you knew he would do it just to piss off Player 456 and make things more cahotic.

He went with the rest and stood besides you trying himself not to smile at you.

~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆

The first approach to Gi-huns team was tense to say the least. You two had voted circle and even worse In-ho had been the vote that ended the tie.

But with his own charisma and yours you two got to be on his good side.

Till In-ho decided to talk, really you sometimes forgot who sassy he could be.

"And some picked umbrella?" He asked faking suprise when he had seen it on first hand. "Most of them died I assume"

You could see the look on player 456 and decided to be more sensitive

"Hey, dont be like that. Im sure they went in blind and did not know what it was about" You said keeping a safe distance so no one would think you two were together or knew each other before the games.

In-ho was having too much fun.

~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆

That first night they both were in their respective beds. Still keeping their false relationship. However once (Y/N) was sure all were asleep she went towards In-ho who was awake like he knew she would be coming to him.

"Are you alright?" He asked in a whisper, worried that for her this would be too much.

"Im fine, I wanted to see if you were fine"

He nodded not saying a thing but taking her hand.

"Also, I saw you break that fight, really ? When did you even learn to do that ?" This made him smile and hold her hand thighter "Really! I only see you in your office all the time"

"You think I would come in here without knowing how to defend myself or you?"

She smiled at him, blushing in the dark. "No....I just thought all you did was be in your office and give orders"

In-ho rolled his eyes "Just wait till we are out of here, i will show you just how fit im"

~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆

The six legs game was both a chaos and funny. Honeslty you could not help yourself on hugging him and player 456 (who was slowly getting on your soft side) as you saw a team win.

However the shoots that came for these who did not survive were too much. You would swear In-ho gave the guards a cold stare because you would flinch sometimes.

"Hey, dont worry they wont shoot the ones who havent played" Player 456 reassured you with a calm tone

You nodded, knowing that even if you lost they wont shoot you or In-ho. It was still sweet to see him trying to calm you down.

~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆

"Not a word" He said during the night when you two were able to talk again.

"I was not going to say a thing, but you did in on purpose or were you really missing ?"

In-ho closed his eyes knowing you would later get the recording of him missing during the game and use it against him.

"It was all planned" he said trying to sound as convincing as he could.

"Whatever you say Honey"

~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆

The game of making pairs gave you nausea because of the carousel kept spinning around. And the rounds were stress again. The worse part was getting separated from In-ho who find you seeing how two players were dragging you so they could have the number they needed.

You havent see him get that angry in years, his protective self being on as he pulled one from the neck and punched the other one.

He kept punching almost forgetting there was a game you two were supposed to play.

"Leave him we still need two more" You urged only for a guard to shove two confused and scared players besides you and In-ho.

"We got them" He assured getting your hand and going to one room.

~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆

"In-ho!! (Y/N)!!" The worried screams of Gi-hun filled the place as he looked for both of you.

Even if he had promised to try and dont get attached to new players and survive he could not help but feel a connection with both of you.

"Gi-hun!" In-ho's voice called making him look over and see him coming towards the rest with you by hand something that made him curious but decided not to ask.

"Im glad to see you two alright" Gi-hun said seeing just a few bruises on you, and noticing blood on In-ho knuckles.

You catched his eyes and went to explain "He saved me" you told the rest looking at them then at In-ho who was looking back at you "I would have not made it otherwise"

The look of love you two shared was so genuine, some wonder if you two were together but trying to be discrete to protect yourselfs.

~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆

"They will most likely attack us tonight" Gi-hun explained as he showed the fork the guards had left when the food was given.

The idea only assented itself when the men returned from the bathroom, with blood on them. 

"And what do you propouse us to do?" In-ho asked all of the Xs were in a circle trying to listen to what Gi-hun had to say.

Gi-hun told the others his plan, honestly you thoguht it was nusts, it wont work. They were far suprassed on numbers but you had to shut yourself up.

You could tell your husband was both amazed by it and even kind of respecting it. Or at least that what he showed to him. He needed Gi-hun's trust after all.

~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆

"Hide well" In-ho said besides you in a low tone "We can trust the guards but till they get here we cant trust the others"

You nodded knowing that very well since this was a typical phase of the game for years.

"We will be safe" You said holding his shoulder. "Do what you have to do, dont worry about me" You tried to make him feel at ease but he could not. The only thing that scared him more than anything were the other players trying to get to you.

"Just hang in there" He responded his forehead against yours.

~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆

The fight was on its hot spot. The players were killing each other without a second thought.

Nothing like living it, even if you have seen this type of thing multiple times. Its was unnerving to see them just going at each others troath. The screams and cries were too much for a moment, the dark did nothing to help.

Thats when you felt it. Someone had dragged you out from under the bed and was now on top of you. You saw the player move their left hand ready to Strike at you. You tried to punch and defend yourself but the person on top was too strong.

A cold scream left your mouth as the fork pierced your shoulder.

You could not help it, the adrenaline and anxiety was getting on you.

"In-ho! In-ho help me please" You screamed for him, your husband the love of your life.

"Shut up, the next one will be your neck" The person said and for a moment you saw it. Dying in here and leaving In-ho.

Till you felt the person being pushed and the screams of them. You blinked trying to make sense.

It was In-ho, he had taken the fork from the player and was now piercing the neck of the player, not even leaving a chance for them to survive.

"GO HIDE NOW!!" In-ho ordered, he being scared himself and angry. He saw red when you were dragged and it was for the brutal grip Gi-hun had on his arm that he did not move faster.

You did as told getting under another bed and making sure no one could reach you.

"You fucking scum! How dare you lay hands on my wife" In-ho almost screamed too angry to see that the player was now dead. All his face and hands where covered in blood.

"Stop it!! They are dead, we need to continue the plan, the lights will be back soon" Gi-hun said taking him and pulling him away from the dead player.

"Get (Y/N), and be ready" Gi-hun told him trying to keep himself calm even when he was close to jump over and save you and In-ho. He wondered if he had hear it right, you were his wife?

In-ho did not waste time, searching for you in the dark till he noticed you. He went quick, pulling yourself out from the bed telling you its was him.

"Shh shh its me, its over dont cry Love" He said trying to make you feel better.

"In-ho?" He nodded and you cried harder "In-ho I was so scared"

"I know love I know, just a bit more alright? It will be over soon. Listen once the guards come in and we follow Gi-huns plan do not come. Someone will come and get you"

"Im going with you, im not leaving you in a bullet fight!"

"You know nothings gonna happen to me, I want you here, safe, alright?"

Finally you accepted.

"I love you In-ho"

"I love you too Love"

~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆

As In-ho had said when the guards got back after the fight one took you, Player 120 tried to protest but was put back in her place by other guard.

"You are under suspect of have been part of the riot. You are now eliminated from the games"

The guard said playing his role, starting to get you out of the room while you screamed following the act.

~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~

"Apologies Madam, orders from the Front Man" The guard said bowing once you two were outside and out of reach from the others players.

Even if you were still breathing hard you nodded. "Dont worry, just take me to him". The guard nodded.

~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~

He knew he was needed in the control room but refused to let you alone like that. He went to your share room, his heart broke at your image, bruises and blood over you. A guard was checking your shoulder but left after he order them to.

Silence fell over both of you as he went to you and hugged you careful not to hurt your shoulder.

He removed his mask to look at you properly.

"Im sorry, I should have never let you come, I should have stopped this sooner" He said with pain in his voice

"Dont blame yourself, I told you I was going in with you. This was not your fault In-ho" You reassured him feeling sad and worried over him.

"I cant not blame myself" He gently passed his hand over your cheeck "You are the best thing in my life and I almost lost you because of my own desires, never again"

You two kissed softly grounding yourselfs. You two were safe and together nothing else matters from now. Only the love and devotion you two had for each other.

~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~

[ckret2]

who wants a prism break?

So, the Theraprism! The Theraprism sucks, right?

This is like, a good day.

The Theraprism clearly sucks.

Have a one shot of Bill escaping Theraprism with the most desperate escape plan imaginable: reincarnation.

(Warning for, as you might expect, psychiatric hospital abuse.)

####

There are fates worse than death. Like boredom, for instance!

####

Everything was black and numb and silent and cold so so cold but no he could only call it cold if he felt cold and Bill didn't feel coldness there was just the absence of a feeling the absence of heat the absence of light the absence of sound the absence of touch the absence of air.

The absence of everything.

Bill had loved a void once—a micro black hole. Every time they touched it slowly killed him, spaghettified his limbs, drained his energy. His energy was so vast that she never claimed a drop of a drop of a drop of his reserves—but it still hurt like nothing else to be crushed and stretched and ripped and consumed by her event horizon. The pain was wonderful. Being shredded was ecstasy.

This void was the opposite of her. 

He couldn't even feel anything when he tried to scream—without air, he couldn't feel his vocal plates vibrate. He couldn't feel his hands, his face, his eye; he tried to bite himself just to feel something and he couldn't feel his mouth, he tried to rip open his wounds and couldn't find them; why couldn't he see his own light, why couldn't he see his blood, where had he gone, was he gone—

Reality returned like a light bulb being switched on.

The first thing he registered was a shrill sound on the verge of inaudibility; and then the pain in his eye, his sides, his wounds; and then the dull gray light, the hard floor under his knees, the antiseptic stench in the air conditioning.

He stopped screaming. The shrill sound stopped.

"Energetic as always, are we?"

Bill blinked blearily at the Orb of Healing Light hovering before him. He croaked, "I'll regurgitate you."

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that." A glowing translucent clipboard manifested in front of the Orb. "Well, you've gone through this enough times to know the drill! Do you need a moment to recover, or—?"

"No no, I'm fine, I'm fine." Bill slumped forward, trembling hands on the floor, waiting for the vertigo to pass. "I'm fine. Do your thing." He'd rather get the post-Solitary Wellness Void reorientation interview over with.

"Perfect. What's your name?"

"I'm ol' Vinegar Pete."

"No clowning, please."

He sighed loudly. "Bill Cipher."

"Good. Where are you?"

He considered saying hell, but decided he'd used up all the clowning he could risk for one day. He didn't want to go back in. "The Theraprism. Ward 333."

"Very good. When are you?"

"I was gonna ask you," Bill groaned. "How long was I in the hole this time? A million years? Ten million?"

The Orb checked its notes. "Eight minutes."

"Wh—no, no I know that time moves slower out in reality than in the prism. I'm not asking how much time passed in reality, I'm asking how much time passed here."

"Eight minutes," the Orb repeated. "Outside the Theraprism, one third of one second passed."

Bill groaned again and flopped flat on the floor.

"Do you know why you're here?"

"Why are any of us here?" Bill asked the gray linoleum tiles. "Usually because some dumb beast tripped into the booby trap that sets off its reproductive process. How's your species work, you pop outta nebulas, right—?"

"I meant, coming out of the Solitary Wellness Void."

"Oh." Bill tried to remember what his infraction had been this time. "Because I failed to escape."

"Because you tried to escape."

If he'd succeeded, they never could have punished him. "Sure."

"Good, you seem oriented to your surroundings. Let's get you to the nurse and then back to your cell." The nurse? What did he need a nurse for?

He only realized then that he must have succeeded in reopening his wounds in the SWV: the never-quite-healed crack across his exoskeleton was wider, the edges chipped and bent. It hurt. His eye socket hurt too; he tasted blood. With the way his whole body usually ached after leaving the void, he hadn't even noticed.

Through the crack in his exoskeleton, his edges had frayed into fine golden threads. The sight of silvery blood on his hands made him nauseous; he hastily looked away and reminded himself it was only his own. 

####

As Bill wearily followed behind the Orb and two security guards followed behind him, he had to periodically turn to hover sideways to streamline himself. These days he was so weak that he could feel the air resistance pushing back against him when he floated; with his wound reopened, he felt like the air pressure could snap his exoskeleton along the crack and break him in half.

"You're not Emmy," Bill said. "You're, uh..."

"A-AOX4."

"Oxyyy," Bill said weakly. "Heyyy. S'been a while. Usually I get a personal welcome back from the void, why didn't Emmy show? Don't tell me it doesn't see me as a threat anymore!" He'd be offended if it didn't. D-SM5 was the closest thing he had to a nemesis these days. Even if he couldn't beat it, he wanted to think he still irritated the daylights out of it.

"Director SM5 couldn't make it. It's overseeing the preparations for Paingoreous's reincarnation."

"That's today? Good riddance." Paingoreous had started getting sanctimonious the past few hundred group therapy sessions—don't you have any compassion for your victims and it's possible to live a happy life without slaughtering all your enemies first and maybe I should ask for permission before I vivisect my friends' faces—passive, self-defeatist crap like that. Vivisecting your friends and seeing who complained was how you found out who your lame friends were! Now that the wet blanket was leaving, the rest of them could get back to spending their sessions reminiscing about the glory days and trying to set the donuts on fire when the therapist was distracted.

"Yes," A-AOX4 said pointedly, "it is good he gets to leave to go become a productive member of reality. We're all so happy that he's rehabilitated enough to earn a new chance at life." (Bill rolled his eye. A-AOX4 ignored it.) "Wouldn't you like a chance to rejoin reality, Bill?"

More than anything. He'd been in this crystallized brain's perpetual dreamscape for what felt like both a thousand years and a single day—time never passing, an eternal inescapable moment. He'd tried to break out, sneak out, or bargain his way out more times than he could count; sometimes he was locked in the SWV as punishment; and sometimes the staff gently stopped him, confiscated his supplies, and chastised him for the effort—and the reminder that he was as powerless as a child was worse than the void. He'd gone delirious from the boredom, hallucinating screams and burning faces as his mind struggled to stimulate itself (and he'd been medicated for it). He'd so despaired of escaping that he'd looked for a way to burn up the remains of his energy and vanish for good (and he'd been medicated for it). He ached with the need to see the stars again.

But not enough to sell his soul for it. If he took the staff's route—let them break him down, sandblast off his rough edges, erase everything that made him him, and finally physically transform him into some alien creature—then whatever left the Theraprism would no longer be Bill Cipher.

"What, and force you guys to find a new 'unique case'? I wouldn't do that to you! I know how much you love me," Bill said. "Besides, why would I go through all that just so I can reincarnate as a sentient snowflake, or Mi-Go antennae lice, or..."

"A butterfly," A-AOX4 cut in, an edge of impatience creeping into its tone. "Paingoreous has chosen to reincarnate as a butterfly. We all think that's a very productive way to channel his desire to digest his own skin."

"Unless it's one of those blood-drinking butterflies, lame." Bill scoffed. "Wait—hold on, you said butterfly? Like an Earth butterfly?"

They were, of course, not actually speaking an Earth language, but an interdimensional pidgin that borrowed words and grammar from dozens of worlds. When around the Orbs of Healing Light that held half the staff positions, Bill tended to speak a dialect of the pidgin that used flashes of light for 40% of its vocabulary. It was perfectly possible that the word Bill knew as "butterfly" was also used for some alien creature, but—

"Yes, an Earth butterfly. A Vanessa atalanta, to be precise."

Aw, boo. Not even a cool butterfly. "He's reincarnating on Earth?"

"Yes. Many of our patients reincarnate on Earth. As long as you're careful about which region and century you reincarnate into, it's at the top of our recommended list of Goldilocks zones."

There was another phrase that Bill recognized, but this time he was sure his definition was not A-AOX4's definition. "Whaaat do Goldilocks zones have to do with reincarnation."

"You didn't pay attention to the orientation session on our outpatient reincarnation program, did you."

"What! I didn't get an orientation session!" said Bill, who probably didn't remember any such session because he didn't pay attention to it.

"Well—we rank millions of planets and their dimensional parallels based on their potential to help patients reintegrate into reality. We do try to set our patients up for success," A-AOX4 said. "To qualify as a Goldilocks zone, a planet has to meet the Theraprism's rigorous list of criteria: its lifeforms, cultures, laws of physics, and position in interdimensional society must all be conducive to a patient's continued recovery. We want to ensure that our patients' new lives are neither so difficult as to retraumatize them, nor so easy as to let them coast by avoiding continued personal growth, but right in the middle, so that they're emotionally and spiritually challenged without being overwhelmed. The Goldilocks zone: a perfect compromise between two extremes."

"Yeah, sure, sounds great." Bill could feel his eye glazing over in disinterest. Fight it, Cipher.

"Do you miss Earth?"

Bill tilted to glance askance at A-AOX4, and was surprised to see it had turned to focus a spotlight on him. Oh—it thought it had finally found a carrot to dangle in front of him. That was a popular strategy here: they figured out what a patient wanted most, and then used it to coax them into good behavior and "rehabilitation"—better still if they could attach a sense of urgency to it. Don't you want to see your descendants again before the last of them dies out? Don't you want to see your homeworld before its sun swallows it? Don't you want to reconcile with your god before the heat death of your universe?

But Bill had no universe, no homeworld, no family; no lovers or friends or gods that hadn't betrayed him and left him to rot here; and he'd remained smugly steadfast in refusing to give D-SM5 and its minions anything else it could use to get under his chitin. He was proud that he was too broken for even the famed Theraprism to fix him.

A-AOX4 probably thought it had finally found an opening. It might be useful to let it keep thinking that.

"You kidding me? Earth? Pfff! I don't miss that overgrown asteroid one bit!" He waved off the suggestion, and winced when the gesture tugged wrong at his reopened wound. "But hey, you don't study a world for millions of years without finding a few things about it to like. The music's pretty good. And the movies and literature, though if you ask me, they peaked between the first two World Wars. I like trees, evolution did a great job with trees. And humans really went off with the architecture. The pyramids? 10 out of 10. And some of the locals aren't bad, I've got a few exes from Earth."

"Do you? How many exes?"

"Living? Just a hundred forty or fifty," Bill said dismissively. "Earthlings just have those pretty eyes, you know? I'm a sucker for a pretty eye! But outside of that, no, there's nothing on Earth for me."

"I see," A-AOX4 said lightly, and dropped the conversation.

Hook, line, and sinker.

####

The original definition of a "Goldilocks zone" came from astrobiology. The Goldilocks zone was the ring of space around a star in which an orbiting planet could support liquid water and thus water-based life: not too close to the star and too hot, not too far and too cold, but just right. Earth, for instance, orbited Sol in its Goldilocks zone.

It was from this definition that other, more metaphorical definitions of Goldilocks zones emerged. Such as the Theraprism's: a world that was neither too stressful nor too boring for a newly brainwashed—sorry, "cured"—patient. And apparently Earth was in that Goldilocks zone, too.

Which was very interesting to Bill—because in their search for a new home, the Henchmaniacs had come up with their own definition of a Goldilocks zone. For them, it was a dimension close enough to the Nightmare Realm with a thin enough barrier that they could easily punch through it, but not so close and so thin that puncturing the barrier would pop it like a balloon and cause the dimension to immediately prolapse into the Nightmare Realm—which was a problem they'd had before. More than once. They needed a dimension they could easily cut a hole into, but control it, so they could slowly pump the Nightmare Realm's contents in. A barrier neither too vulnerable nor too strong, but just right.

And wouldn't you know it—but Earth happened to be in that Goldilocks zone too. Right next to a point in the dimensional membrane so thin, the Nightmare Realm could almost stretch through and kiss it.

####

Since Bill Cipher was infamously known as the last survivor of a trillion-years-extinct species, and had until recently been capable of instantly repairing himself, there were no medical records on how his anatomy worked. It didn't help that at some point eons ago he'd somehow managed to graft a 3D exoskeleton to his 2D anatomy without breaking his own physics, meaning no one had seen his true body in recorded history. Bill knew how he worked, but refused to offer any hints. So the Theraprism staff had to guess at Bill's medical treatment.

But Bill was still made of energy, and even weakened he could eventually self-repair. So whenever his injury was exacerbated, the nurse tended to just patch up his exoskeleton to keep it stable enough to send him back to his room.

On top of his mysterious anatomy, the staff had no idea how to medicate his physiology. They knew he could be medicated—Bill's personal substance (ab)use experiments were notorious far outside the Nightmare Realm—but they had to treat him like a newly-discovered form of life in figuring out what affected him, how it affected him, and how much it took. He'd been on and off hundreds of drugs as they tried to chemically stabilize a mind for which they had no idea what baseline stability looked like. D-SM5 had told him that between the enormous doses needed to impact his energy-based physiology and the vast variety of drugs he'd been through, Bill's medication regimen was the most expensive in the Theraprism. He took some pride in that.

He had very few things to take pride in anymore. He clung to what meager victories he could.

If Bill got his way, he wouldn't be medicated at all. None of the substances they wanted him on were what he'd call recreational. (Although for a while he had gotten away with not telling the docs that one of his antipsychotics had given him a side-effect of kaleidoscopic hallucinations.) Plus there was the fact that he'd heard rumors that quite a few pharmaceutical execs were good pals with a certain director—not that Bill would name names, of course!—that's his motto, Don't Slander Maliciou5ly!

But when he resisted taking his meds, they could send in the guards to pin him down so a nurse could inject a sedative so strong he wouldn't remember anything that happened for the next few hours to months (hard to tell) until they started tapering it off... and although he'd rather die than admit it, after losing that fight five or six times, even he had to admit to himself it was a lot less scary to just take their rotten drugs. Better to go through his days with his mind dulled and hazy than blacked out altogether.

To retain what little pride he had left, he'd reached a compromise with his jailers.

When the nurse had finished attaching the reinforcing splints around Bill's injury, they grabbed a medication measurement cup, filled it halfway with syrupy eye drops, and double-checked Bill's chart as they dropped thirteen different pills (plus a fourteenth pill for a painkiller) in the cup.

As Bill redressed, he eyed the unappetizing cocktail of antidepressants, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, and things he'd forgotten the purpose of but that probably weren't doing whatever the doctors hoped and definitely weren't doing anything Bill liked. "My straw?"

"Right, right." The nurse handed over one of the wide-diameter disposable white straws they kept on hand for patients who struggled to drink (or, in Bill's case, patients they struggled to get to drink).

Only a tiny fragment of Bill was actually locked up in the Theraprism—like pinching the glowing lure of an anglerfish in a trap while the rest of the fish thrashed outside—and because most of Bill's vast energy was elsewhere, he was nearly powerless. But he still had enough energy to heat up a finger, twist the straw around it, and hold it there until it had melted into a new shape.

The nurse sighed. "Do you have to do that every time? You ruin more straws than you get right."

Imperiously, Bill said, "Leave me to my whimsy." He tugged off the straw when it had cooled down to examine the corkscrew shape he'd made. The wall was a little flattened in one place, but he could pinch it back open. "See? It's perfect!" Cheerfully ignoring the nurse, he stuck the straw in his cup and slurped down his pills like tapioca balls. He tried not to remember what was in them.

A-AOX4 had left Bill with the nurse, but the two mall cops with medical kinks known as Bill's personal guards were still waiting nearby. The nurse's office was next door to the cafeteria—for ease of patients picking up their medications at meal times—in an anteroom that was connected to the rest of the ward by a set of locked double doors. A couple of guards were stationed near those doors at all times, and generally the guards assigned to Bill hung around with them while Bill was in the cafeteria or nurse's office. Bill floated up to them, regarding them with the disinterest of a king ignoring the servants he expected to open doors for him, and continued to ignore them as they escorted him back to his cell, one in front and one behind, while he sipped on his drugged cocktail.

The Dimensional Tyrant Ward was already one of the most heavily-guarded wards in the Theraprism; but to reach the maximum security cells, a patient had to pass several increasingly heavy security checkpoints with increasingly impenetrable security doors. The final door was warded against all magic, unhackable, unbreakable, and so airtight that even without his exoskeleton there was no gap Bill's 2D form could slide through. The doors to each cell—outfitted with tiny one-way mirror portholes, no latches or hinges on the inside—were a little less heavy duty, but packed with just as many failsafes. The Dimensional Tyrant Ward's max security hall had the most advanced security architecture of any psychiatric facility in the multiverse.

Bill had made a trillion year career of trying to break his way through a door nobody wanted him to go through. He could think of seven different ways to get through the doors. Sooner or later he'd find a way out of this place altogether.

A few of the doors had modifications: this one with a metal slab over the porthole to protect passersby from the occupant's petrifying gaze, that one with extra soundproofed padding coating the door. Bill was almost insulted his own door didn't warrant any special modifications.

His favorite door was The Beast's. A comfortingly yellow triangular sign on the door displayed a black symbol of a steak. Red signs above and below read "CAUTION! FEED UNSEASONED MEAT ONLY." "NO SUGAR ALLOWED." The Beast's heavy snuffing was audible through the door; his hot, sickly sweet breath seeped through the slot in the door that had been installed to deliver his food.

Bill's escorts automatically drifted to the far side of the hall to avoid The Beast. Bill, whose first medication was already starting to kick in, zigzagged lazily back and forth across the hall, heedless of how close he came to The Beast's cell.

Bill had never seen this door opened once in all his time incarcerated, and the dust settled on the additional chains and padlocks stretched across the door showed just how long it had been since the last incident. But some of the patients who'd been here longer than Bill still couldn't bring themselves to speak of the last time he'd escaped. Elder eldritch gods shuddered and gibbered nervously at the mention of his name. 

Bill tilted over to try to peer through the food slot at The Beast. A quivering, sickly blue eye stared back at him. Honestly, Bill thought The Beast was adorable.

Outside Bill's door, the guards waited for Bill to finish his medicine, hand over his cup and straw, and open his mouth and lift his eye out of the way so they could check and make sure he'd swallowed them.

And then he was left in his cell.

####

A perfect cube of uniform dull grey tiles supernaturally lit by a uniform dull grey glow, no light source, no shadows; in a max security room in the Maximum Security Wellness Center, patients weren't even trusted around light fixtures. The staff had removed everything Bill had used thus far to commit violence or attempt escape, plus a few more things as punishments for various infractions: journal, paint, pens, books, magazines, puppets (he missed those the most), even the furniture. He'd never earned the privilege of a TV or radio. By now, all he was permitted were black, red, yellow, and blue dry erase markers to draw on his walls—and the red and blue had gone dry; the "Be a TRY-angle!" poster they'd replaced whenever Bill left the room until he gave up and stopped tearing it down; and the clothes on his back. He'd gradually gotten himself banned from every extracurricular and recreational activity the Dimensional Tyrant Ward offered. Whenever he was fresh out of the SWV, when his restrictions were highest, his schedule consisted of mandatory individual therapy, mandatory group therapy, med checks, and the cafeteria.

He spent the vast majority of his time in his cell, sitting curled up alone, day after night after day, barely moving, barely talking, barely eating, waiting for nothing at all.

####

The seamless door swung open and admitted an Orb of Healing Light.

Bill blinked blearily up at the Orb. It was hard to tell how slowly time passed here, but he was sure it couldn't have been more than a couple hours since he'd been returned to his cell: that was when his medications made his mind the foggiest. "Emmyyy. Where ya been? Didn't see you when I came out of the Solitary Dullness Void. Nice of you to, uh..." A second ago he'd had a clever quip about how D-SM5 had clearly dropped by because it missed Bill, but he'd forgotten how to word it.

"Well, I'm here now. I'm flattered you missed me, Mr. Cipher."

Bill blinked heavily. "You turned that around on me," he griped. "Not fair." Ugh, the room was spinning. He flopped on his back.

"A-AOX4 tells me you showed an interest earlier in our outpatient reincarnation program," D-SM5 said. "Since it looks like your schedule is light these days, I thought you might be interested in attending Paingoreous's reincarnation?"

It took him a moment to process the offer. "Really? That's something people can attend?" What was the catch?

"We usually only extend the offer to the departing patient's friends, and—exemplary patients. But... I thought you might benefit from watching the process for yourself. It may encourage you to take a little more interest in your future."

For it to push a possible lead so fast, it really was desperate to find some leverage they could use on Bill. It probably thought of this as a rare opportunity—a patient from Ward 333 wasn't ready for reincarnation every day.

"Wow. I sure am encouraged," Bill said. "You have no idea just how encouraged I am."

####

If an unambitious office building and a utilitarian hospital reluctantly got married out of a vague sense of heteronormative social obligation, had a depressed child, and the fae spirited it away to replace it with an even more depressed changeling child, the child's small intestines would look a lot like the Theraprism's interior hallways: it was windowless, it was labyrinthine, it was beige, and it was grey, and it didn't even care anymore. Monotonous commercial high-traffic carpet alternated with monotonous commercial high-traffic linoleum. The fluorescent lights buzzed just enough to be annoying, but not quite enough that you'd feel justified in snapping and screaming "I've had it!" as you swung a pleather-seated metal chair at the light fixture.

Even though Bill had been languishing in the Theraprism for hours and/or millennia (Bill couldn't tell; he couldn't feel the passage of time), he hardly knew his way around the Dimensional Tyrant Ward, much less the rest of the facility. As D-SM5 led Bill (and six guards) out of Ward 333 and into a lower security zone, he looked for any scant identifiable landmarks and tried to memorize which turns they took by coding the lefts and rights and ups and downs into a mnemonic word. The walk helped wake him from his medication stupor; but his mind never quite felt fully on.

Bill had only briefly glimpsed the Theraprism's reincarnation unit during intake, just one of many rooms he'd been whisked past as he was dragged to Ward 333 screaming and cursing the Axolotl's name. Entering the unit now, it looked like an occult sacrificial altar carved from marble that had been modeled after a 23rd century starship's teleportation platform, contained in a room that looked like a magic planetarium: glowing stars hovered around the dome of the ceiling. Against the back wall in pale pink marble was carved an impossibly long axolotl, swimming in a figure 8 so its vapid smile almost caught the tip of its ribbonlike tail. Bill glowered at it. Backstabber.

He, D-SM5, and the other observers who'd already arrived were in a connected observation room with an enormous, thick window and a sealed door. Next to the window was a large computer console encased in the same marble as the reincarnation altar. That probably controlled the process.

The audience consisted of three aliens who looked a little like Paingoreous might have with his face unpeeled, a few patients and staff Bill recognized, more he didn't, and Jessica with the shining spherical head and the thirteen fingers. Oh boy. If he'd known Jessica would be here he would have tried to polish. Bill straightened his bow tie and smoothed his rumpled orange jumpsuit.

Paingoreous himself was already in the next room, standing on the altar. At the sight of Bill, his exposed facial muscles twitched, as though trying to widen his eyes even though their eyelids were already long gone. "Bill? What are you doing here?"

D-SM5 answered before Bill could blurt out a witty retort. "I invited Mr. Cipher. I thought he would benefit from seeing what he can look forward to once he's improved. I hope you don't mind."

Paingoreous's face immediately smoothed out. "Yes—of course, director, if you say so. I remember how difficult it was in the early days. I'm happy to help my fellow patients in any way I can." Suck up. A dry note entered his voice, "Especially a more troubled patient."

Bill took one of the folding chairs lined up in front of the window and shot back, "I'm about to have one less trouble! Byyye!" (Did Jessica think that was funny? Sometimes she did. He snuck a sideways glance to see if she was laughing. Oh, right—she didn't have a face.)

Paingoreous didn't dignify him with a response. Too good for the likes of Bill, no doubt. Paingoreous wasn't obligated to answer anybody—except the staff, of course.

Bill had never met the real Paingoreous. By the time Bill was committed, the monotony, medication, and mandatory therapy were already well on their way to killing whoever Paing had once been. No way the offensively bland sap leaving now was the same one who'd come in with his face skinned and muscles pinned open.

A technician was already turning on the computer console, running through a whole list of checks as the machine booted up. A hum filled the room as the altar began to softly glow. To all appearances Bill was facing forward, slitted pupil aimed straight at Paingoreous; but his anatomy was built for watching things out of the corner of his eye and his real attention was focused on the reincarnation technician. "So how's reincarnation work in this dump?" Bill asked D-SM5. "I didn't get the orientation."

"Yes you did," D-SM5 said. "I was there."

"Oh yeah? Well, I don't remember seeing you."

D-SM5 sighed. "First, Paingoreous's memories of his current life must be erased, to give him the best fresh start possible and to comply with Earth's soul sanitization regulations."

"Seems like a big waste of time. His head's already empty enough."

One of the Paing-ish aliens a couple seats over shot Bill a dirty look. "That's my son in there."

"Not for much longer, he isn't."

"Be respectful," D-SM5 said warningly.

Bill ignored it. "So once you've scrubbed his brain clean, what then?"

"Then, we reincarnate him. We've already carefully selected his destination and species; except for special circumstances, we generally don't customize the patient's body further, as the program is already set up to divinely design the body most well-suited to the soul about to inhabit it."

"If these bodies are so perfect, why customize them at all?"

"We wouldn't want, say, a recovering pyromaniac to be reborn with pyrokinesis." (Bill felt unfairly targeted.) "Once his species and destination are entered into the program, off he'll go to start his new life as an egg."

"An egg?! Sheesh, wasn't going through childhood once bad enough? I assume his childhood was bad, anyway! Nobody with competent parents ends up like him."

The Paing-ish alien beside Bill bolted out of their seat and lurched aggressively toward Bill. (Ha. Too easy.) The next alien over tugged them back by the arm. Bill was sure he heard a whispered, "Careful, do you know who that..." 

D-SM5 said, "One more crack like that and you're going back to your cell."

"Fiiine. Why can't he skip straight to being a butterfly, though?" What he really wanted to find out was how to skip straight to adulthood.

"For starters, because spontaneous generation has been heavily restricted on Earth since the 15th century, and banned completely outside of special circumstances since the 19th century."

Spontaneous generation. The creation of fully formed life from unliving matter: maggots that emerged from flesh, geese that emerged from barnacles, snakes and crocodiles that wriggled out of the mud of the Nile. He'd always planned to legalize it again when he took over. So if the only reason the Theraprism couldn't do it was because it was banned, then they must have the technology for it, right?

Bill tuned D-SM5 out as it prattled on about the mental health benefits of restarting life and beginner's mind and boring therapeutic psychobabble, and ignored the flashing lights and divine music as Paingoreous's memory, personality, and identity were all wiped clean. He was only interested in what the reincarnation technician was doing. (Although when Bill briefly glanced at Paingoreous, his shape seemed somehow uncertain, as though his molecules had only just walked into the room and promptly forgotten what they'd come in for or who they were supposed to be. Ready to be reshaped into something else.)

The technician opened up the primary reincarnation program, checked a box confirming that the patient's previous incarnation had been erased, and began setting up the specifications for his next incarnation. Choosing the reincarnation world was easy enough: under the drop down menu, the "Goldilocks zone" worlds were sorted first. Earth was sixth on the list. Choosing a dimension was just as easy.

However, choosing the location and time period looked more complicated; rather than searching through a handy list of continents or geological epochs, the technician checked Paingoreous's patient file and typed a couple of long strings of numbers into the blanks for the coordinates and time. They didn't look like any date system or coordinate system Bill was familiar with. How the heck would he work with that?

And selecting the species, to Bill's horror, meant scrolling down a menu ordered by how frequently a species had been selected for reincarnation at this facility. That was insane! The Theraprism always discharged patients as unambitious species where one member was nearly incapable of making a meaningful impact on the local biosphere—anything useful like an octopus or a goat would be buried amongst the literal billions of species that had received zero reincarnations. Couldn't you just start typing the species's name to jump down to—? But no, the Theraprism's keyboard didn't have characters to type human loan words. The technician seemed to be scrolling manually.

That was fine! That was fine. Whatever Bill left as, he wouldn't be it for very long. He wasn't shopping for a makeover; just for an escape pod.

The technician located Vanessa atalanta (147 prior reincarnations) and kept moving, tabbing past a dizzying array of options—sex, size, coloration, visual clarity, caterpillar spine distribution, a whole list of health conditions and mutations the technician skipped—and every box she tabbed past automatically filled in with the word "DEFAULT". How many boxes could be filled in with defaults?

Bill leaned toward D-SM5. "So do you chuck these suckers out anywhere random on the planet or what?"

"Of course not," it said promptly. "What a thought! We take a deep interest in our discharged patients' well-being. We never leave where they spend their next lives at the whim of the computer's randomized decision." 

But they could leave it up to the computer. Still watching sideways as the technician scrolled past an "advanced settings" button without touching it (was that where the spontaneous generation option was hidden?), Bill asked, "Do youalways choose for the patient, or can the patient make requests?"

Dryly, D-SM5 said, "Unless you make some enormous progress, I doubt you'd get clearance to reincarnate anywhere near that town you terrorized, if that's what you're wondering."

"What! Who said I want to visit that crummy valley! All those mountains and trees? Ugh! No, do you know what kind of place I like? The Greater Cairo metropolitan area. Dry! Sandy! Flat!" said Bill, who detested flat landscapes with all his heart. "Covered in pyramids! Sometimes with my face on them! Plus there's the Nile! I love the Nile! I love being in the Nile! I'd spend all my time in the Nile if I could! I've had some loser ex-friends say that living your whole life in the Nile is an unhealthy coping mechanism to avoid addressing problems in your life, but if you ask me they're just jealous of how amazing my life is—"

"Ready for reincarnation," the technician said. "Proceed?"

D-SM5 left its seat, hovering closer to the glass to catch Paingoreous's attention. "Are you ready?"

"Sure," said Paingoreous, who clearly wasn't certain what he was claiming to be ready for.

"Proceed," D-SM5 said. Bill fell silent, paying close attention to how the technician began the reincarnation process.

She clicked a button that said "EXECUTE" (gruesome), clicked through a couple more confirmation screens, and then the faint background hum grew to a rumble and the magical stars glowed brighter. "Ten seconds," she said. "Nine... eight... seven..."

"Hey!" Bill shouted through the glass. "Friendly tip for Earth! Humans love when you fly into their eyeballs! You should do that!"

D-SM5 rounded on Bill, glowing furiously at him. (Maybe it was Bill's imagination, but he thought Jessica looked amused. Worth it.)

The soon-to-be caterpillar formerly known as Paingoreous stared in confusion at Bill. "Okay," he said—and then there was a bright flash of light.

He let out an awful wail of pure soul-rending agony.

When the light faded, he was gone.

The observation room had fallen perfectly silent.

"That's fine," D-SM5 said. "That's—that's normal."

####

Every once in a while, the Theraprism got something right. It was one of the few big government-sponsored "respectable" institutions that didn't make a fuss about how Bill ate. They just let him go to the cafeteria, strip down, unpeel his exoskeleton, and hang out with the photosynthesizers for half an hour or so in the corner under the grow lights. No gasps of horror or screams of outrage—not from the staff anyway; some of the patients took a bit to get used to it when they were new. It was a refreshing change.

On the other hand, even though they were willing to turn a couple lights high enough to melt most mortals' eyeballs when Bill was feeding, he never left feeling truly energized. The grow lights were designed for species with leaves and solar panels; they weren't designed to fuel up a god made of energy. A few bright lightbulbs didn't measure up to raw starlight.

He figured there wasn't any point in complaining. As much as he hated feeling like a gas tank trying to burn a dust mote for fuel, he knew that they knew that long before he even reached 1% of his usual power, he'd be strong enough to vaporize the Theraprism with the snap of a finger.

When he'd had his daily dose of light, he folded shut, redressed, and drifted over to the actual food for dessert. He grabbed a bottle of an allegedly "lemon" nigh-flavorless clear soda—this would do—and hovered toward the exit.

The cafeteria monitor stationed in the door elbowed her way in front of Bill. "Ahem."

"What?"

"You know the rules. No food outside the cafeteria."

"What! This isn't food, it's a soda. Beverages aren't food, everyone knows that." The monitor didn't budge. Bill tried whining. "C'mooon, I got injured in the void today. Look at this!" He gestured demonstratively at his splints. "Look how much pain I'm in!"

The Solitary Wellness Void made this cafeteria monitor uncomfortable. She'd never said so directly, but she tended to turn a blind eye when patients who'd just come out of the SWV were more aggressive than usual or tried to sneak extra desserts. One time when Bill had come out of a week in the SWV, she'd wordlessly slipped him a couple of packets of low-sodium fear sauce, a condiment usually distributed exclusively to the obligate phobophages in the ward. "Besides, it's my birthday! I'm a birthday triangle! You wouldn't deny a birthday triangle a soda, right?"

"Is it really your birthday?"

"Heck if I know. It could be. I don't know it isn't."

She was trying not to smile. "Fine. Just one time. Don't let anyone catch you with it and finish it before you're back in your cell."

"You got it, toots." Bill glided past her.

He slipped from the cafeteria into the nurse's office before his guards could catch sight of his illicit drink. "Hey, bartender! I'm here for my nightcap."

The nurse prepared Bill's evening battery of drugs. He bent his straw into a fun zigzag—honestly it was really more of a sad N shape—slurped down half the eyedrops, and opened his soda to refill his cup.

The nurse looked over at the hiss of the cap opening. "Hey! Hey—"

"It's just soda!" Bill protested. "The cafeteria monitor said it was fine! Besides, what's a little soda gonna do? Nullify all seven of my antipsychotics before I reach my cell?" (Bill had overheard the nurse grumbling to a colleague about the amount of antipsychotics he was on. They thought it was utterly excessive, considering that they'd had no evidence the drugs were doing anything but making him more erratic—which was something, because Bill had seen patients near drooling catatonia from their meds without any of the nurses questioning their current dosage. Conversely, the docs thought Bill's odd biology meant they needed to give him more if they wanted any hope of impacting him.) "Come on. It's not even caffeinated!"

The nurse took the soda bottle to check the ingredient list, then relented. "Fine. I suppose it won't do any harm."

"You're a peach." Bill topped off his cup, poured the rest of the soda over his eye, crushed the bottle, and consumed it too.

"The plastic probably isn't good for you, though."

"I like the way it melts in the back of my throat."

As he drank his medicated soda and got escorted back to his cell, he lazily drifted back and forth in the hall as far as the guards would let him go, dawdling more than usual—he knew they hated it when he dawdled, but they knew he hated spending one second more in his cell than necessary and grudgingly put up with a little lollygagging to keep the peace. But their tolerance ran out in the max security hall as Bill slowed down even further near The Beast's cell. The guard behind Bill pushed him. "Hurry up." 

"Hey!" Bill wobbled off path and stumbled into the wall, spilling some of his drink. "What's your problem!"

"You stopped moving."

"I did not! I'm just taking my time! Enjoying the weather out here."

"Well, take less time."

"Ugh, fine. Didn't realize you had plans I'm keeping you from." Bill rolled his eye and kept moving.

"Hold it!"

Bill froze. He turned around. The guard was pointing at a streak of clear fluid that had spilled from Bill's cup and rolled down the door. His bones frosted over.

"You dropped a pill," the guard said.

Bill's gaze focused on the circular soap-green tablet on the floor. "Are you kidding?! Aren't the other twelve enough?"

"No exceptions, Cipher."

"You don't expect me to eat it off the floor!"

"Do you want to go all the way back to the nurse's office for another?"

Bill groaned in frustration. "Fine!" He snatched it up, wiped it off on the guard's sleeve, and popped it in his mouth. The guard raised a fist; Bill bared his fangs; and after a tense moment, the guard backed down first. The Theraprism had taken nearly every other power from Bill, but it couldn't take his teeth—and though he knew the guards would win any fight, Bill could make it hurt.

They returned him to his room; Bill handed over his cup; they checked to make sure his cup was empty, inspected his mouth, and locked him in.

He hoped they wouldn't notice that half his pills had stuck in the zig-zag bend of the opaque white straw.

He hoped they wouldn't notice The Beast's tongue thrusting through his food slot to lap up the spilled soda that was running down his door and over the bright red "NO SUGAR ALLOWED" sign.

His entire plan hinged on it.

####

Bill was drawing on the wall with his scant art supplies when he felt reality ripple around him, like the wave in a still pool when someone new quietly slides into the water. He looked up from his work. It was happening.

There were several thuds; then a crash; and then the peal of a prison alarm piercing the air. The alarm melted into shrill dolphin-like laughter, and then the frenetic staccato of a hyper speed dance song that threatened to fracture Bill's internal organs. He shuddered as the sound tore at his wound like freezing ice crystals expanding a crack in a boulder.

But he rose into the air and turned to face the door, ready.

Just in time for the door to vanish. The Theraprism melted away like mist in the sunlight—and oh, the sunlight was glorious. The wide open sky pulsed maddening colors so vivid that the faraway rainbows looked monotone in comparison; the land consisted of rolling hills of candy-coated tongues and stomachs and muscles, the paws of enormous buried corpses thrusting up into the sky, the crevasses between burial mounds running with artificially-flavored saliva. It was Bill's kind of place. He wished he had time to hang around.

Before him, orange fur matted with a fine dust of powdery sugar, wild eyes contracted to pinpricks, stood The Beast.

"You did it, you beautiful monster!" Bill shrieked with laughter. "I knew you'd come through!"

The Beast rumbled, "Em deerf evah uoy."

"You're welcome! You can return the favor later! Me, I have somewhere to be." While The Beast was asserting his personal reality on top of the Theraprism's idea of reality, none of the Theraprism's walls or doors existed. Bill wasn't sure exactly how far The Beast's radius of influence extended, except that it was at least far enough to get him out of the maximum security hall—but he had to move now, before the guards rallied to sedate The Beast. Bill slipped a finger into the band of his ankle bracelet and found that under the influence of The Beast's physics, the stiff plastic stretched like a warm rubber band. He tugged it off and tossed it aside. "Seeya, pal!"

But The Beast held up a paw, blocking Bill before he could zip off. "Noob ym tpecca," The Beast said. "Hself ym emusnoc."

"Oooh. Woww." Bill looked at The Beast's candy paw. "Oh, man. Generous offer! You have no idea how tempting it is to take a taste, but I've really gotta get somewhere, and I've gotta be at least sober enough to pull that off..."

"Emusnoc," The Beast insisted. "Hsur ragus eht fo ssendam gnilims citatsce eht ni em nioj. Rehtegot srorroh letsap dna serusaelp kcis hcus wonk lliw ew. Evarg lufituaeb ym ni em htiw tor."

Bill stared again at the paw. The tip of his tongue slipped out beneath his eye to lick hungrily at his waterline. When was the last time he'd been on something that felt good? "Oh, what the heck!" He took The Beast's paw. "I can do this buzzed! How much damage can one little lick do, anyway?"

####

The guard heaved open the maximum security hall's door. The floor was covered in tacky pools of neon candy and removed ankle monitors. "It's just like we feared," the guard shouted into a walkie-talkie, glancing quickly through each cell door's window. "Every single max security patient escaped under The Beast's reality-altering field."

The guard stopped at the sight of neon yellow and orange, peering through the window at the triangle flopped flat on the ground and surrounded by powdery pink sugar.

"Well," the guard said, "all of them except Cipher."

Through the walkie-talkie, D-SM5 tiredly said, "He licked the paw, didn't he."

"Looks like it, boss."

D-SM5 groaned. "All right! Positive thinking! That's the second biggest threat in the ward already accounted for! Silver lining to Mr. Cipher's substance use issues. Assist in securing the others."

####

The good news was that The Beast seemed happy to frolic randomly around the Theraprism rather than head toward the exit, forcing the other escapees to follow along to remain under his reality-altering protection rather than get stranded in small rooms and locked-down halls. The bad news was that his meandering route let him pick up more and more revelers. After an hour, only a third of the max security patients had been re-captured and dragged back to their cells, and twice as many medium security patients had joined the riot. 

A-AOX4 was on hand in the maximum security hall to supervise as the guards brought in super-powered escapees. Most of them came back loopy on either The Beast's toxins or on the sedative that had been injected to keep them calm. A-AOX4 was checking them for awareness of their surroundings—name, where are you, when are you, why are you here—as each one was locked back in their cell.

And each time it passed by Bill's cell, it glanced in, concerned.

Bill had been almost pleasant when he'd come out of the Solitary Wellness Void—maybe after all those sessions in isolation he was finally ready to be more of a team player. And D-SM5 had said that he'd been unusually well-behaved and attentive during the reincarnation. A-AOX4 had hoped their most surly patient was finally opening up. It would be a shame if this incident with The Beast resulted in his new progress backsliding.

Plus, it took a heavy dose of anything to impact Bill at all, much less knock him out cold. He'd already had to go to the nurse earlier today; what if he needed medical attention?

So after locking up the latest subdued prisoner, A-AOX4 said to one of the guards, "Take over monitoring incoming patients. I'm checking on Cipher."

It unlocked the door and hovered into the room. "Cipher?"

No response. He was plastered flat to the floor.

"Bill?" It floated lower to check his condition. 

He was paper.

Paper meticulously colored in with yellow marker and folded into a triangle; scraps of paper colored black, carefully torn into hand and feet shapes, and shoved in the sleeves and pants of his prison uniform.

A-AOX4 lifted up the paper. On the other side was Bill's "Be a TRY-angle!" poster. He'd written across it, "IS THIS TRYING HARD ENOUGH FOR YOU?"

It turned toward the door—and discovered Bill had filled the wall with a drawing of himself making an obscene gesture, with a word bubble that read, "GIVE MY REGARDS TO THE AX! And tell Jessica I said bye xoxo"

It zoomed out into the hallway and grabbed its walkie-talkie. "Director SM5! Cipher's escaped his cell! He left a decoy! He's not with The Beast, we don't know where he is!"

There was a moment of dead air. And then the director growled, "I think I have an idea."

####

Trying to keep his giggles as quiet as possible, Bill looped through the Theraprism's halls, drifting between The Beast's rolling fields of hard candy corpses and the Theraprism's rigid monotone halls. What had he been worried about! Getting hopped up on astralplanar sugar before escaping his cell had been a great idea! It gave him instant shortcuts through half the walls! And he could handle a little buzz like this! He was totally in control of his actions and knew exactly what he—

How long had he been flying the wrong direction? He turned around. Wow was he high, he could barely focus on anything but all the colors. He wondered if The Beast's toxins had any weird interactions with his meds.

He was lucky The Beast had decided to dawdle around the Dimensional Tyrants Ward: here at the far end of the Theraprism, there were no signs of crisis beyond the sealed doors indicating the facility was under lockdown—and once he was outside a high security ward, there were plenty of cracks, gaps, and vents that Bill was thin enough to slide through. He hadn't even seen a guard since he'd left his cell. By the time he reached the reincarnation room, The Beast's landscape was fading out and the sugar crash headache was fading in, but the facility was still on lockdown and no one seemed to be looking for Bill. He slipped beneath the locked door and powered up the console to the reincarnation machine.

He skipped straight to the reincarnation program and checked the box that said, yes, the patient's brain had been washed. He paused when a warning pop-up blocked the screen. The technician hadn't gotten a pop-up. He had to read over the two-sentence warning three times before he understood what he was looking at. The soul sanitization routine hadn't been run recently, was he sure the patient's memory was erased—ugh, yes. He irritably clicked the confirmation and hoped that would be the last of it.

Bill quickly selected Earth and dimension 46'\; he tabbed past the coordinates and date, and they both automatically filled in "DEFAULT." D-SM5 had said the computer would make a "random" decision if you didn't plug in a time and place, but the staff didn't know Earth like Bill did. If he left the time and place up to the whims of fate, then something as weird as a trillion-year-old alien chaos god escaping a criminal insane asylum to spontaneously generate as a fully grown mortal would be sucked straight into the weirdest place and time on Earth. Gravity Falls: August, 2012. Weirdmageddon. He was willing to bet his life on it.

He was betting his life on it.

After that, with any luck, he'd be able to shed his new body like any other puppet and return to his castle in the sky. If for some reason he couldn't get out of it, he'd only need to pull a couple of magic tricks outside a normal mortal's capabilities to catch his past self's attention, find a way to prove his identity—heck, with any luck, they'd be seeing through each other's eyes and that would instantly confirm it—warn his past self about the Pines' treachery, prevent his own death, save Weirdmageddon, restructure the universe in his image, and rule his new party paradise as god-king for all eternity. Easy.

He scrolled down the list of available creatures, looking for something that would be easy to reach the Fearamid and prove his intelligence with—something with vocal cords that could speak eye-bat would be useful, it'd save him a lot of trouble if he could just shout at his sentinels in their own language and startle them into listening—but, to his surprise, the first useful species he found was humans, down amongst the species that had received a single-digit number of reincarnations from the Theraprism. Really, humans? They allowed that?

Over the blaring alarm, a voice made an announcement. He completely tuned it out—and only realized a moment after it ended that he'd heard his own name. They knew he'd escaped.

Bill didn't have time to search for anything better. He selected humanity.

He tabbed past dozens of features he could choose from for his body—default default default default—who cared what the body peed out of, he wasn't keeping the thing long enough to fill its bladder! He clicked open the advanced settings—there, spontaneous generation! He hoped this thing wouldn't drop him on the sidewalk as a baby, but usually when a human suddenly popped into existence, it was an adult sculpted from clay or something, right? He'd be fine! He checked the box for spontaneous generation.

He got another error message. He groaned. He wasn't sober enough for this.

Something about spontaneous generation being banned on Earth after 1859, is he willing to assume the liability if the patient generates after—yeah sure whatever, he clicked yes. Another pop-up prompted him for the digital signature of the person assuming liability. He typed in D-SM5's name.

As soon as he clicked enter, another error message popped up. "What!!"

He flinched at the sound of a muffled pneumatic hiss. Outside, somebody had unlocked the doors to this hallway. The alarm was still blaring; the Theraprism wasn't coming off lockdown. That meant whoever had unlocked the hall was coming for him.

"Focusss." He skimmed the new warning. Something about humans being on a list of species for which spontaneous generation was restricted—what loser had written a law about that! Who cared if a fully-formed, brand-new human popped out of thin air in the middle of town! What about Bill's wants?! He checked another box YES HE'S SURE HE WANTS TO SPONTANEOUSLY GENERATE A HUMAN YOU MONSTER and pounded enter.

Another pop-up. It wanted to know on which god's authority the spontaneous generation had been authorized.

Bill froze. Why did it need to know. Would it check? A machine that could reincarnate a soul was probably also a machine that could shoot off a prayer. Or was Bill supposed to have some kind of divine authorization code? Which gods were even allowed to authorize that kind of thing? He didn't know which stupid legislative body had made this stupid law or what their stupid definition of a god was! Gods weren't even real, they were just stupid, arrogant, stuck-up jerks who were powerful enough to trick people into thinking they were important! Like Bill! What name were they looking for?!

He heard voices in the hallway. He darted over to the door, slid his fingers through the seams around the doorframe to crush the latching mechanism so it couldn't be opened, and darted back. That wouldn't hold them long; he knew from experience that the guards could bust down the doors in these low security wings without much difficulty.

"Bill Cipher!" That was D-SM5. It had come personally? In any other circumstance, he'd be flattered. "Open up immediately!"

"Has that ever worked?" A god, a god, a god... his eye caught on the bas relief at the back of the next room. If there was any god this place would accept orders from... The guards were ramming the door; the bending metal groaned. He typed "THE AXOLOTL" and hit enter.

The button grayed out but the pop-up didn't go away. The screen froze. "What." Bill tried clicking again. The cursor turned into one of those little spinning balls that meant the computer was quietly having a stroke. "No no no no—"

D-SM5 hollered, "You know what the consequences will be if you don't—"

"I'm not listeniiing to yooou!"

"You're only going to hurt yourse—"

Dropping his voice to a demonic boom to drown out the director, Bill recited, "'I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby's house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited! People were not—" There was a shriek of tearing metal, and then a bright glow behind Bill as D-SM5 peered through the gap in the door. Bill started talking faster, "'Were not invited they went there they got into automobiles which bore them out to Long Island and somehow—'"

The pop-up disappeared. The cursor returned to normal. The box next to spontaneous generation was checked. Bill stared for a split second, then quickly closed out the advanced settings, scrolled to the bottom of the page, and hit "EXECUTE."

Someone blasted the door out of its frame; based on the blinding glow that accompanied the blast, Bill suspected that wasn't one of the guards, but D-SM5 itself. He frantically clicked through the next two confirmations, flung a couple of folding chairs toward D-SM5 and its thugs, and dove beneath the door to the next room. Ten seconds.

"Cancel the reincarnation!" D-SM5 snapped.

A guard ran to the console. (What if they saw where Bill had gone? They could probably guess the planet, but would the computer keep records of his destination, what his new body looked like—) "I don't see a cancel! I don't think—"

"Then get him off the altar!"

Five seconds. Please spawn as an adult and not a baby, please spawn as an adult and not a baby, please— Bill hadn't broken the door between the observation room and the altar; the guards easily unlocked it. "No no no—!"

"Don't let him esc—!"

Three seconds. An impossibly bright light shone down on Bill. He reflexively peeled open his exoskeleton to accept it. LIGHT—oh, he felt even more alive than the time he'd stolen a bottle of stimulants from the nurse station, ground them up, and snorted them off Mrs. Mirrorcube's back. His eye widened, taking in as much free energy as he could—and then he focused his gaze through the window on the console, focusing the infinite light into a laser powerful enough to instantly melt through the window and explode the computer. The guards fell back, trying to shield their tender mortal flesh from the fury of Bill's fire. Enjoy the blisters.

D-SM5 bellowed, "Bill Cipher, you mo—!"

"CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, SUCKA!" He could feel his body ripping apart, cracking open at the wound. It hurt, but not the hurt of dying; it was the euphoric hurt of spaghettification, of being infinitely sucked beyond a beautiful event horizon. Bill's triumphant cackle filled the air—

—and then the room was silent and dark, and Bill was gone.

####

(If you're new here: I posted this as a one shot because I think we could all use a little Bill escaping from Theraprism, yeah? However it's ALSO part of my ongoing Bill-stuck-in-a-human-body fic I'm currently editing for TBOB compatibility. So, if you enjoyed this and want to see where post-reincarnation Bill goes, check out the fic!! And if you DON'T want to read the rest of the fic, I hope you enjoyed the one shot and I'd love to hear your thoughts.

If you do check out the main fic be forewarned it's only 100% TBOB compatible up to chapter 6. After that it is, bizarrely, 98% TBOB compatible, because somehow I accidentally wrote a fic that lines up with the book so well that I'm legit worried people could use TBOB to work out fic spoilers. But I still need to edit the remaining 2%.

If you're NOT new here: hey gang this is the new chapter 6!!! I finished editing this chapter about fifteen minutes before post time so it's not as polished as my usual chapters, but I hope it didn't read that way. Anyway, I look forward to hearing what y'all think!)

[eraenaa]

Virginal Whore

Aemond Targaryen x Celtigar Reader Tag List

Synopsis: Prince Aemond sets out to find a whore to warm his bed; he finds a virgin instead. 

Warnings: Dub-Con, Oral Sex (f receiving), Mature, 18+, P in V Sex, Not Proof Read

Word Count: 3,345

Sequel: Prince's Whore

Strife, suffering, and sorrow are all the Prince now feel— perhaps even then. He could no longer stomach the tolls of the war that was reigning havoc on the lands of Westeros. He sought a moment of reprieve, solace in the arms of a lover that he could take into his bed. Harrenhall was bent to his will; everyone was taken and at his mercy. He had women in his grasp, serving girls and some highborn ladies, even a bastard of House Strong, yet as comely and shapely as they were, none were able to stir the need brewing deep inside him. He could not find the want to take them into his bed and warm his cock.

He was, for a moment, entranced by a witch who held the name Rivers. The sorceress tried to seduce him with her lingering glances and mysterious presence, and he was ready to give in, to take her to his bed, but he had caught her placing her spell upon him. Slipping a vial of an unknown substance into his wine, Aemond could not tolerate such acts. He invited her into his chambers, luring her in with the pretense that he had succumbed to her charms, and as she sank to her knees before him, his cock in her mouth, and he was on the verge of spilling his seed in her throat, he took a dagger and slit her throat— him coming undone as her lifeless body fell and her blood pooled onto the floor. 

That sufficed the need in Aemond for a short moment, but just a few days later, he found himself in want of release again— something that would quench the ache in his loins and the fire in his veins. Not just a mouth around his cock but a cunt as well.

He blended into the night and reached town; slipping into a whore house, he heard a few of the soldiers muttering about. When he entered the establishment, nothing of note came into view. It was the same as any houses of pleasure he had stumbled upon during the night. He was in desperate need of company. Scattered around him were the perfumed bodies that masked the smell of vile scents wafted about the room. His eye searched for something that could possibly sedate his raging cock. 

He peeled away his hood, uncaring that the whores and their patrons could see his silvery locks; surely they have more pleasing matters to attend to rather than his presence. As he announced himself, he was quickly approached by a rather well-dressed man who he supposed was the owner. “My prince, welcome… you honor us with your presence.” He bowed lowly, and Aemond simply scanned his eye about the room once more. Without another word, the owner snapped his finger, and Aemond saw some workers hastily running across the establishment, surely readying themselves for him. 

Aemond was led deeper into the den of depravity and into a secluded room where a bed waited along with a line of whores on their knees, waiting for the prince to take his pick. Aemond still paid no mind to the owner as he tried to sell the girls. Aemond assessed each one of them, presenting him with their seductive gazes and trying to allure them with their smiles, pushing together their breasts in the hope that would press even further desire into the prince. 

He sneered as he almost finished assessing the lines of girls, ready to demand the owner to present him with a new batch, but his gaze was then caught by a cowering figure. Her eyes were planted on the floor, and she had used her long, flowing hair to cover her body, trying to display at least one ounce of modesty. 

Aemond strayed closer to you, his curiosity peaking. When the owner’s gaze noticed the prince had focused on you, he quickly stood by your side, who was kneeling at the end of the line. “A newcomer, my prince,” He said and forcefully yanked the back of your head in order to raise your face so the prince could see your features. “I think you would like her, my prince… the prettiest one we have.” 

Aemond said no word nor made any reaction, only studying the way your lips quivered and your eyes pooled with tears as you tried to avoid his gaze. “If her face does not please you enough, I am inclined to tell you that she is a highborn lady snatched away from her traitorous lord father’s care at the start of the war,” He added in pride. It was most beneficial for his business to have an asset such as yourself. Pretty, filled with youth, and had the blood of nobles coursing through your veins. 

Aemond blinked as he felt his cock strain further into his trousers. You were certainly far from his usual type, but only you had stirred such a need in him that he had not felt in many moons. “And if that still isn’t enough to please you, your highness… I shall as well inform you that she is a virgin. Untouched by any man… but I do warn you that may not be the case in a short while.” The owner heinously laughed. Aemond did not know how to take such facts. He was accustomed to experienced hands bringing him pleasure and comfort… but there was just something in your innocence that he found wholly more appealing. 

He turned to the owner and gave a nod. You breathed sharply as the room quickly emptied out, leaving you alone in the presence of a cruel prince. You were still on your knees, and your gaze quickly panted themselves on the floor once more. Aemond placed his hood by a chair and assessed your trembling frame that still knelt on the cold floor. “What house do you come from?” He questioned and brought a chalice already filled with wine to his lips. He drank two sips from it, but you still have not answered his query. “Speak, girl. Are you a mute?” He questioned, stepping before you. “N— no… my prince,” You say, ever so silently. He reached to grab your face in his hands, his fingers squeezing your soft cheeks together, a horrified expression screaming in your eyes. 

“What traitorous house do you come from?” He almost spat. “House… House C—Celtigar, your Highness,” You almost cried, and Aemond was silently surprised. The blood that coursed through your veins was not from any plain noble house; the blood in your veins was the blood of Old Valyria. “Hm,” Aemond hummed as his fingers that held your cheeks savored the way your soft flesh felt. “And how have they taken you?” He questioned and raised the cup of wine to his lips once more, waiting for your answer. 

“I was to be sent to Essos, but they— they commandeered the ship and slain the captain, and I was— was sold off from one man to another.” You explained, your hands clenching at the sheer fabric they made you wear, the material so thin that it did nothing to hide your body. 

You boldly raised your gaze at the prince, hoping to find at least one speck of empathy in his lone eye, but you paled further as you saw a sinister smirk rise to his lips. How fortunate was Aemond to stumbled to the whorehouse at this moment, having the pick of the litter. An overly pretty, untouched noblewoman is now kneeling before him; the gods seem to take pity on his needing state that had plagued him for moons that had left him restless and irritated. “Stand,” he commanded and finally let go of his hold on your cheeks. Watching as you slowly and wobbly obeyed and stood on your feet. 

He raked his eye upon your body, from your pretty face to the apex of your neck to your breast that hid behind the curtain of your hair. His gaze continued to travel downward from the curves of your hips and waist to your sex that was hidden by a dark shadow and to your plush thighs— as he saw the limbs of lavish flesh, a deeper sense of lust overcame him. He placed the chalice down and stepped closer to you. Aemond’s smirk widened as he heard a whimper leave your lips and your eyes tightly closed as he tore away the sheer fabric they made you wear. 

He threaded closer and brushed away the hair that covered your frame, feeling you shiver beneath his touch as his hand trailed to the small of your waist, then upward to your ample tit, your nipple pebbling beneath his cold and calloused touch. He lowered his head and placed it in the nook of your neck, inhaling your scent that was not riddled with the generic perfume that they bathed the whores with. Compared to them— you were a breath of fresh air. 

You gasped and turned stiff as the prince, without warning, pushed you upon the silk-covered bed. You cowered towards the headboard, petrified at the sinister smirk on the prince’s lip, completely enjoying your fear. “I must admit… I’ve never fucked a virgin before,” He said lowly as he took off his tunic, and you looked away as you felt your cheeks heat. “I’ve always preferred my women to be ones with experience… but there is, I suppose, something appealing in being the one first to taint a maiden— perhaps that is why my brother could smell them from a mile away,” Aemond said, a bit amused as he now realized the reason for his brother’s preference of seeking out virgins to be brought to his bed. 

Aemond undid his trousers, standing bare before you as you curled into a ball at the head of the bed. Aemond relished in your cry for help as he pulled you toward the edge of the bed— thrashing upon his hold. You feel your tears slip from your eyes as the prince spreads your legs, and your cunt is fully exposed before him. You inhaled a sharp breath as you felt his breath fanning your folds, assessing you. Aemond bore witness to the truth that you truly were a virgin, your maidenhead still intact and just waiting for him to be ruined. 

He thought about how to proceed; usually, he would have a maiden on their knees or on her stomach and take her from behind— no tenderness or foreplay, simply taking what he wanted and be done with all the bother. But somehow, your cunt was calling for his lips. He never found the appeal of it, feasting on a cunt that had been used and abused by differing men, sullying himself with the taste of other men on the body of a woman. However, you were untouched, and Aemond indulged himself with an act he was rather more curious about. 

You froze as you felt the prince’s fingers trace along the slit of your cunt, the sensation new and disturbing as no one had ever touched you in such a place before. You felt his hand press your fold together, his eye on every movement you made. Aemond marveled at your cunt, never truly assessing one before— he never thought a cunt could be so… captivating. When he ran his fingers in the middle of your slit again, he chuckled darkly as he felt wetness gathering in them; despite your reluctance and defiance, your cunt was begging to be touched. Aemond’s mouth salivated at the thought. 

A gasp left your lips, and you tried to close your legs as you felt the prince’s tongue replace his finger and lick a clean stripe in the middle of your folds. Aemond could not help but moan at the taste of you, tart and sweet, and he began to wonder if this was how his depravity would begin, with a taste of a virginal whore.

You bit your tongue as you felt his lips latch on the sensitive pearl, his tongue darting out and licking you further, teasing your hole and bringing further wetness. “Stop acting so demure and coy; you enjoy this, do you not, my lady?” He menacingly said against you, refusing to let his lips stray away from the sweet nectar of your womanhood. 

You shook your head and felt your tears fall further, but any denial you do did nothing to stop the arousal dripping from your cunt. Aemond chuckled and used his tongue to tease you further, slipping it into the void of pleasure. 

You finally let out a moan, one that was unexpected, and you felt shame as you found pleasure in such actions. That spurred further determination in the prince, darting his tongue in and out of you, his fingers sinking into your plush thighs as he, too, was overwhelmed by the pleasure of feasting on your cunt. Your sensitive pearl rubbed itself against the high bridge of his nose, your blood alight, your skin glimmering with a thin sheet of sweat, and your body ready to succumb to pleasure. Aemond felt it too, that you were close to what he concluded to be the first climax of your life, your body agitated and uncertain, your moans wry and held fear. He was debating if he should let you come undone now or wait when until his cock was buried deep inside your cunt. He was straying towards the latter, but as the thought of tasting you further infiltrated his mind, the prince obliged you to reach your peak and taste your orgasm. Your uncertain moans turned loud and sure, and your hands instinctively clutched the silver locks of the prince’s hair as you came undone by his tongue. 

Aemond hummed in content, feeling his cock weeping at the taste of you. “I’ve never thought a cunt could taste so delectable,” He mused and planted his weight on his knees, staring down at your bare, flushed body and your face that was still trying to comprehend your first taste of pleasure. 

The prince did not give you much time to grasp what had happened as his rough hands found home on your waist, and his cock was aligned against your dripping entrance. Your pleasured-clad face morphed into one of pain as you felt his length penetrating your undefiled hole. It was mean and sadistic, but Aemond found pleasure in taking away your innocence. He was filled with further satisfaction as he glanced down and saw how his cock was tainted with red, your maidenhead taken by him. 

“What lord will have you now, my lady? Now that you’re the prince’s whore?” He grunted as his cock was fully sheathed inside you, the tip of it brushing a spot he knew all too well. “Are those tears of pain or pleasure?” Aemond taunted as he bent down closer to your face, his fingers brushing away the salty water that spilled from your eyes. “If it is the former, I will try not to take it as an offense. There are worst fates than being my whore, my lady— just ask the girls that served my brother,” He smirked and kissed away your tears, his lips straying further to yours.

He never found much pleasure in the act; he would only sometimes oblige the old madame in his once-favored whorehouse with the act because she seemed quite keen on it, but he never liked the way she tasted on his tongue after. But you, gods, was it too much if he would say that just one taste of you has had him on the verge of addiction?

You took in sharp breaths of pain as the prince thrust into you; he was kind enough to slow down his movements, letting you accustom yourself to his length, but by the second, Aemond was growing impatient. His moves started to move at a faster, almost violent pace, ignoring your cries of pain as he was certain they would soon turn into cries of pleasure. He had never had a cunt as tight as yours before; he had never truly paid enough attention to every fluter, every clench, every movement of the woman he was fucking, but now he could not help but focus on anything that you did underneath him. 

He savored every moan and sigh that left your lips, every line on your furrowed brows, every scratch of your nail on his back as you felt his length rutting inside you. Aemond let out a groan as the moons of need started to overwhelm him. He was close to the peak he desperately sought, but he was genteel enough to coax one out of you first; you were a noble lady; after all, it would be terribly rude of him to leave you need and unsatisfied. 

Aemond straightened his back and felt his cock twitch as he saw the site of you laid before him, your legs on his shoulder, his fingers sinking on your soft thighs, and your tits bouncing at his every thrust. You watched through hazy and pleasured-filled eyes as the prince licked his thumb and placed it flat against your nubbin, and his other hand pressed down on your lower stomach and spurred you further into pleasure. Your lips spewed out his name as you came undone, and the prince was quick to follow you. Filling your cunt with his seed, and finally, Aemond felt relief and satisfaction over him. 

The prince panted heavily as he tried to regain his thoughts; he removed his length from your cunt and felt a lazy grin come to his lips as he saw the essence of both of you spill from your hole. Through your haze, you did not expect the prince to dip down and capture your lips into a kiss once again; tongue sought entrance, and you could not find it in yourself to deny him. 

Both of you panted as your lips parted. You stared into the unique lilac eye of the Targaryen prince and were soon overcome with the implications of what had just happened. Your cheeks further turned red as you avoided his gaze once more, ashamed at how you relished and had enjoyed being defiled by him. 

Aemond smirked and collapsed atop of you, savoring the feel of your intertwined bodies for a moment. You just lay there beneath him, and somehow, that was enough for him. But as he felt your hands wrap around him and your hand went to comb through his hair, he let out a further satisfied sigh at the feeling of comfort he never thought he could find in another. 

It did not take long before Aemond had drifted into slumber. The cacophony of his release, fatigue, and you lulled him into a deep yet quick slumber. When he woke, he found you asleep beath him as well, looking so peaceful with your tear-stained cheeks and plush parted lips. Aemond delicately removed himself from you and silently walked out of the room. 

When you woke, you found a pouch filled with coins by your side and the distant sound of moans and footsteps approaching. You raised the sheet of the bed to cover your naked frame as the curtain was lifted, revealing the silver prince. You stared in confusion as he tossed the dress you wore when you were abducted on the bed. “Get dressed,” You could only stare at him in further confusion, your limbs refusing to move. 

Aemond smirked as the fear returned in your eyes. He was halfway through his return to Harrenhall, but the thought of you haunted him. He finally found the release he sought, and it would be foolish of him to let it wander free. Aemond was a selfish man. He could not oblige the others and let them have a taste of the pleasure that only you could present.  

“Get dressed. I have brought you from your master. You’re all mine now, my lady.” 

[yzzart]

── ★｡𖦹°‧ KENJI SATO SEEING THE SCRATCHES ON HIS BACK .ᐟ

୭˚. ᵎᵎ content warnings: mention of sex, oral, back scratching, sexual content.

⭑.ᐟ Everything happened, properly, while Kenji was getting ready to mark his presence, alongside the team, heading to the arena for the match later on. — Coach Shimura ordered him to appear early, something that bothered the player. — Sato didn't need this, it was something dispensable, and he was forced to agree.

⤷ Due to the fact that he was unfortunately removed from your side; unable to cling to your body, cling to your touch or worship, lasciviously. — Longing to feel you once again; even though he had done this moments ago, he was still insatiated by you. — God, just by clicking his tongue, your taste reached his palate.

⭑.ᐟ Getting up from the bed, half-heartedly and with little enthusiasm, and admiring your serene and moderate image as you rested, Kenji fought the urge to ignore the order and lie down next to you; unfortunately and evidently, the sense of responsibility spoke louder.

⤷ And, knowing you like the back of his hand, Kenji knew you would disapprove of him if he did that. — Like a good boyfriend, he wouldn't make you upset.

⭑.ᐟ On his walk to the bathroom, assuming that he could put an end to the indolence that coursed through his body, Sato did not fail to feel some burning pains, small discomforts in his back, awkwardly running his hand around the area. — Ignoring, for now, the mental questions and went to the mirror.

⭑.ᐟ Kenji could already imagine the coach's voice echoing, unbearably, in his ears, scolding him for arriving at least a few minutes later than expected; and he was already reasoning out the most understandable excuse in his mind. — Or he would just say "don't worry, it won't hinder our competence", no, better not; but deep down he would like to say that.

⭑.ᐟ In front of the mirror, which showed his hair, in pure disarray and mess and his discouraged face, feeling bored, but, enigmatically, seductive, Kenji is worried, once again, about the discomforts of his back. — While uttering incoherent mumbles and swear words and directing his hand towards his skin for the second time, Sato allowed himself to turn towards the reflective glass, wanting to know what was bothering him so much.

⤷ And that's how he came across your art.

⭑.ᐟ Kenji's eyes examined, in fact, venerated with prudence and eccentric attention the marks, made by your nails, prominent and so protruding and, at the same time, deliciously burning exposed on his back; expressing an exotic, inconceivable and voluptuous sexual countenance. — The red lines, which blended into the tone of his skin, burned him both physically and mentally.

⤷ He couldn't imagine — oh, this cynical, shameless man believed it — that there was a small, furtive possessive streak coursing through your blood as you yearned, longed, to mark him.

⭑.ᐟ His fingers moved, still in disbelief, over a part of the skin he could reach, and he felt the current protuberances there and Kenji's lips couldn't stop themselves from forming a slutty, depraved smile. — He fucking loved what he was seeing, maybe more than he should have.

⤷ The moans, whimpers, and murmurs, that begged with desire for more, that came out of your beautiful mouth cried out in Kenji's mind; remembering, again, them like a song lyric he had memorized. — Sato began to identify a pulse, a throbbing in his dick and a wave of excitement flood his chest.

⭑.ᐟ Your boyfriend didn't care how fast he had to get to the arena, he would miss the time anyway, and then he contemplated what was captivated about him. — Showing off his corpulent, athletic back, wanting to see the marks better and not wanting them to disappear from view. — Kenji would beg for more of them later, he was sure of it.

⤷ Well, you better pray your nails don't break.

[biteyoubiteme]

pretty boy; bloody nose

fem!reader x bangchan 

synopsis: you're a doctor at a hospital where Chan comes after a fight. 

warnings: 🔞!!! boxer!chan, blood, broken bones, bruises, praise, unprotected sex, creampie, thigh riding if you squint, 'pretty girl' used once, choking (m!rec), prob forgot some sorry

wc: 4k

an: all the photos of chan at or for the Fendi show have me gagged lol feedback is appreciated!! :)) [m.list] check out my other chan fic :)) [am/pm]

It was your starting shift when Chan came in. clutching his bloody nose with one bruised hand and pressing his other one to his wounded side. “my savior,” he smiled, dimpled cheek prominent even through the pain. He had blood in his mouth, teeth tinted pink with it. 

“Someone had a good night,” you laugh flipping open his chart, “says some minor pain but you seem to have lied seeing as you are currently bleeding right in front of me and you didn’t log it,” 

“my nose is fine, it was checked out by my coach, it should stop bleeding soon,” the rag he has to his face soaked through with red. “and I’m not a liar it’s only a bit painful and I wouldn’t have come in if I wasn’t contractually supposed to,” 

“uh huh,” you nod, tapping your pen against the clipboard you held. “So your nose doesn’t need to be set because your coach, who may or may not have any medical background, said so?” 

his smile widened and the cut on his eyebrow started to leak again from the movement. “exactly,”

“and I don’t need to see what you’re hiding right there,” you point with your pen to his fingers cupping his hip. 

“nope, I’m mainly a bit sore around the arms, so minor pain. I am not a liar,” he shrugs and you let yourself fully take him in past his injuries. He's slouched back against the hospital bed, his white tank splattered with his blood, gray sweatpants slouchy on his hips. if you could see his whole face without his hand in the way you’re sure he’s gorgeous essentially with a smile like that. what you didn’t like was to watch someone's cocky ass waltz in and say they aren’t hurt when it’s obvious they are. 

“well I am also contractually obligated to give you the best care I can offer and as your doctor, I’m here to say I can’t let you go without an exam,” 

“full body?” his tongue running across his teeth as you roll your eyes. it wasn’t exactly professional to let your annoyance show but you didn’t think he would run and tell someone. 

“let's start with your nose,” you turn placing your clipboard down and picking up a pair of gloves, “lean your head back,” 

Chan follows your orders as you walk around the bed to his side. 

“How did you end up here?” you ask, lifting the rag from his face. His nose wasn’t bleeding as much as it must have been earlier but it was still messy. And even with blood smeared all over, he was one of the most beautiful people you’ve ever seen especially as he grinned up at you. 

“fighting,” he shrugs. 

“Is this the part where you tell me that I should see the other guy?” you reach over to grab some clean gauze before cleaning up his upper lip. 

“Maybe,” he dragged out the word, the smile as flirty as ever.  

you lightly press your finger to his nose to check if it’s broken but only feel a little swelling. “keep your head back to stop the bleeding. let's now see your side and then we will tape up your eyebrow,” 

“I’m perfectly fine,” 

“Not unless I say you are, come on let me see,” 

Chan is slow to lift his shirt but when he does his side is covered in deep purple bruises. “you're going in for a CT,” 

“what? no, I'm fine it was a few hits nothing I haven't felt before,” 

“better safe than sorry I'm sure you've heard that saying before. next time don't go getting into fights,” 

“It's kinda my job,” 

“pretty boys like you shouldn't be fighters, and they shouldn't be putting their perfectly healthy bodies in distress, we need to check for any internal bleeding,” you peel your gloves off tossing them in the bin along with any bloodied gauze, chan's head still laid back as he watches you, “a nurse will be in to take care of your eyebrow and take you for the CT,” you pick up his chart, penning in the request. 

“You're not going to take me?” 

“I'll be back in to discuss the results it shouldn't be too long a wait it's slow tonight,” you didn't look up from his chart as you said it but you did when he said, “I want you to take me,” it's not suggestive in any way but the way that he says it is, deep and throaty like an invitation. his head lobbed to one side watching you, eyes leaving a trail of heat up your body as they trace your figure. 

“I will see you after your results come back,” you say, rushing to get out as fast as possible. it was frowned upon to flirt with patients no matter how hot they looked or how willing they seemed to flirt back. you went on your rounds before getting Chan's results, the nurse bringing them to you with a smile. 

“he will not stop talking about you,” 

“What?” but you can feel your heart thumping all of a sudden. 

“asking questions and whatnot,” she giggles as you pull out his scans. “Does she usually work Thursdays? Is she seeing someone? going on and on,” 

“about me?” You're a little shocked but trying to play it off. 

“if you don't give him your number I will hand mine over,” 

“We cannot give our numbers out to patients,” but your blush is hot on your face. who would know you gave him your number? no one. “we will both be out shortly please have his discharge paperwork ready,” 

“Should I put your number on it?” she jokes and you roll your eyes before pushing his room door open. 

“no internal bleeding,” you say once you close the door. “but you should ice your side the swelling will go down soon,” 

“I told you nothing was wrong, he couldn’t hit hard enough to cause internal bleeding anyways,” Chans sitting up now with his legs off the bed. 

“you should be getting checked regularly for damage that is visible, especially if you have pain,” 

“It was only a little pain,” he rolls his shoulders back making his tank top stick to his pecks. 

“you should take an over the counter pain med and then try to avoid fighting,” 

“Now where’s the fun in that? if I hadn’t been sent here I wouldn’t have met you,” dimples on display just for you. 

“uh huh sure,” you wave at him to stand, “Let's get you out of here before you steal the hearts of the nurses,” 

“the only heart I’m interested in is yours,” it’s cheesy but you can’t help the smile it gives you. “Let's go,” you laugh, pulling open the door for him. when he walks out he turns to face you moving backwards. 

“if I got into another fight would I be able to ask for you specifically or would you need to give me a number to hold onto just in case?” 

“flirty and shameless,” you say, walking him to the front desk to check out. 

“that did not answer my question,” 

“I’m sure you could find me in the hospital directory if you looked hard enough,”

“and if you’re not working? will it go straight to voicemail or will I somehow be able to get you over to take care of me?” 

“for someone who didn’t need my help at all for his little bit of pain, he sure is worried for his safety now,” 

“I was told by a gorgeous doctor that I should be concerned with putting my perfect body and pretty face in the line of fire,” 

“I said you had a perfectly healthy body,” you shake your head at him.

“You did say my face was pretty tough,” he leans against the desk elbow propped up to the perfect height to flex. “And I'm sure I can show you how perfect my body can be,” 

“goodbye Chan,” you wave your fingers in his direction walking away before you embarrass yourself in front of your coworkers. 

-

It's only a week later when you see Chan's chart in front of you again. “This one was asking for you by name,” the nurse comments. 

“of course he was,” but even as you say the words you can't help but feel the fluttering in your stomach. most people who came in you didn't see again and if they flirted you were happy to see them gone but Chan wasn't making you feel that way. 

he was alone in his room when you went in. laid out on the bed with his hand to his nose. It was like deja vu only now his tank was black instead of white. blood dripping down to his lips that smile directed at your heart. his eyebrow looked better but was still slightly discolored from last week. 

“I think this time it's broken,” but he's not showing any pain if it's the truth.

“your nose again? you’re too pretty to be taking punches to the face,” you pull on a pair of gloves walking over to inspect him. 

“That's why they do it, they are jealous,” he lifts away the gauze the nurse must have given him. 

His nose is clearly broken and needs to be set. you press your finger lightly to the bridge checking out the bone. Chan's eyes flutter shut and he lets out a weak moan, so soft that you probably wouldn't have heard it if you weren't so close to his face. you try to ignore the sound feeling along his cheekbones but when you press to the corner of his eye he lets out another soft whine. 

“I'm going to have to reset it,” you say pulling your hands away from him, “you can set up an appointment-“

“can't you just do it now? I don't think I'll need all the fuss of local anesthetic i think I can handle it,” 

“It's going to hurt,”

“it didn't hurt much when I was hit I'm sure it won't be too bad the other way around,” 

“You know it's okay to admit when it's painful,” you say, prodding again at his nose, he gives another soft moan at the touch, shifting his hips and leaning further back. 

“I like it, so even when it's a little painful I don't mind,” 

you move to grab a splint for his nose before preparing him, “I'll be quick so you shouldn't feel much but it will still hurt,” this wasn't the first time you've had to fix someone's broken nose but it would be the first time you were worried about messing up someone's face. you had full trust in your abilities but your anxiety was not helping. 

Chan crossed his arms nodding before you pressed the heel of your palm to his nose, “Deep breath,” he followed your instructions and without warning you reset his nose. He flinched knuckles bleached from holding on so tight to himself, moaning as you pulled your hands back. you grabbed the split to finish the job, “see quick and easy,” his voice thick before he clears it. “I think I need a minute,” 

“I can get something for the pain real fast,” you say tugging off your gloves already moving to get the meds. 

“no no I don't need that, I just need a second,” his head is leaned back, throat exposed, arms still crossed while he shifts his hips again drawing your attention to his waist. you can clearly see the outline of his hard bulge through his gray sweatpants. 

“Oh!” you turn around fast to try and give him some form of privacy feeling your face get hot. “I um- I'll just-“ you cut yourself off picking up his chart and moving to the door.  you close the door as he tries to say something but you’re already down the hall trying not to think about what you saw. you don’t really care it’s not the first time you’ve seen someone turned on in the hospital although all the other times you rolled your eyes. Now you’re stuttering and trying not to think of Chan in a way that could get you into trouble. 

but it’s all you can think about.  

how long would he need? would he be actively trying to get rid of his problem mentally or physically? what would have happened if you had stayed? would it have been beyond awkward or would you officially have to resign for having sex while on shift? 

you give Chan's chart to another doctor to check over your work and send him off. you didn’t want to go in and embarrass him or embarrass yourself for that matter. so you hid like a coward. 

-

it was a rare night off for you and you took the opportunity to spend it with your old friends. 

at a nightclub on a busy strip downtown your friends decide to bar hop. you had a late shift tomorrow anyway and didn’t care about sleeping in. At the third bar, your friend's boyfriend starts talking about a fight happening across the street. “the guy's undefeated I swear I just wanna see the end,” 

“If you’re dragging us along you’re paying the entrance fee,” your friend says before another pipes up, “and a drink each!” 

“Fine, fine let’s go, it's already started!” all of you rush across the street joining the moving queue as people file into the building. 

You can hear the cheering already, the announcer shouting over the speakers, your shoes sticking to the floor as if you were still at the bar. but this is far from it, people are jostling each other around, and the seats all first come already full. it’s not until you’re making your way up the steps of the bleachers that you see who’s in the ring. 

Chan is shirtless and glistening with sweat, hair stuck down across his forehead, lip bleeding around his mouth guard. muscles rippling as he delivers a blow to his opponent. 

you’re almost shocked still and unmoving in your walk up to a seat. someone behind you tries to move past you and you stumble, unaware of your surroundings. 

Chan doesn’t know why he looks up because he always tries to focus solely on the person in front of him determined to beat him. but he does let his eyes flicker up to the stands to see you apologizing to someone moving past you. He's caught off guard by your presence and the right hook that makes his head snap away from you. 

the crowd shouts in disapproval as you take your seat. Chan is now bleeding from his nose like every other time you’ve seen him. The droplets of blood fell to his toned stomach each breath pushing the trail of blood further down. 

you’ve never been into fighting, not watching or participating but now you’re fully invested. you don’t even want a drink when your friends ask if you need anything. your eyes follow Chan as he delivers hit after hit to the man in front of him. and when they call a winner you’re up out of

your seat cheering along with the rest of the watchers. 

“omg is he looking at us? I swear he’s looking right at us,” your friend laughs next to you. 

Chan is in fact looking up the stands at you. That dimpled smile on full display after he’s taken his mouth guard out. when he sees you looking back he mouths ‘Wait for me’ and you’re putty. you don’t even try to think that he could have been talking to someone else because you’re delusional enough not to give a fuck. 

when you make it down to where Chan is signing autographs you’re a little nervous after how you left things. but that goes away when he grins, split lip reopening. “my favorite medical professional,” 

“I thought I warned you not to get your pretty face in the way of someone’s fist?” 

“How else am I supposed to see you if I don’t come in needing your assistance?”  

the crowd around you is clearing and you’ve already told your friends not to wait on you so when Chan asks, “Can we talk?” nodding his head in the direction of the locker rooms, you don’t turn him down. 

He leads you to the hallway just out of the way from everyone else. “I wanted to apologize for the last time I saw you,”

“no no, I should apologize I shouldn’t have given you someone else to work with,”

“no really I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable I swear I was trying really hard not to have any kind of reaction I just-“

“It's okay truly I wasn’t uncomfortable it’s natural although I've never reset someone’s bones and had that happen-“

“I'm sorry,” he chuckles, rubbing at the back of his neck, arm flexing and you realize he’s still shirtless. all finely toned muscles on display the damp towel used to wipe away any blood and sweat thrown over his shoulder. but a spot of blood had been missed right at the band of his shorts. without thinking you reached out to brush it away with your thumb. 

Chan and you stood frozen, his breath shallow as he watched your finger wipe at his skin just low enough to send a shiver down his spine. 

“Are you doing anything else tonight?” he asks when you pull away. 

“you were just in a fight and you still want to go out?” 

“with you? yes. With anyone else? no,” you’re standing close together and when someone walks past to reach the locker room door Chan moves in blocking you against the wall. your hand comes up and rests on his ribs, his bruises gone from his first visit only now to be replaced with fresh ones. 

he’s leaning down close to you as another person moves around you two to enter the locker room. Chan's breath fanning your ear before he whispers, “We don’t have to go out, we could stay in…” 

he technically was not your patient, you weren’t at work and you weren’t obligated to deny yourself anymore. not when Chan was standing here willing and you were wet from just watching him win his match. 

“Okay,” your voice was low and weak but all the confirmation Chan needed to pull you along after him. 

past the locker rooms are a few offices and Chan knows there’s a secluded restroom right by there. you don’t even think twice as he shuts the door behind you locking it. you’re both on each other the second Chan turns around. hot and heavy kisses down your neck and over your collar as Chan palms your ass over your short skirt. your hands tugging at his hair but not the way Chan likes, “harder,” he breathes between kisses, “I want it to hurt,” and when you do his moan is music to your ears. 

Chan walks you back into the wall pressing you against the tile next to the sink. 

“When I thought about fucking you I never imagined you dressed like this,” Chan lifts your leg to his hip, hot hand running under your thigh and up under your skirt. 

“disappointed we can’t play doctor?” 

“I don’t care as long as I finally get to have you,” Chan's free hand slides up under

your shirt palming you over your bra. his mouth is back on yours as he wedges his knee between your legs. his thigh placed right against your clothed clit. 

Chan's hand fits right in the pit between your hip and thigh, fingers digging in as he pulls you forward on his thigh. 

your hips start to move against him, moaning into his mouth as you rock back and forth against him. “My pretty girl wants me so bad,” he breathes, planting kisses down your jaw. “I can already feel how wet you are for me,” 

with anyone else you would have been embarrassed about how needy you were but you didn’t care with Chan. not when he had been on your mind for weeks now, when every time you got off recently you had been imagining Chan's fingers doing the job instead of your own. 

Chan taps your other leg muttering, “Jump,” and you follow his orders, Chan moving to set you down on the sink’s countertop. He pulls away, hooking his fingers in your panties and tugging them down your legs. He stays on his knees leaning over to kiss you on your inner thigh. you tug off your shirt tossing it on the counter next to you. 

you cup Chan's jaw letting your thumb run over his bruised bottom lip, your finger moves over his nose brushing down the slope. Chan's smile is lazy, his gaze pouring over you. “you’re healing nicely,” 

“to have your hands all over me I’d make a million more visits, and,” he lifts himself until his lips are brushing yours, “I love the pain,” 

you slip your hand into the waistband of Chan's shorts wrapping your fingers around his stiff length. He moans loudly against your cheek as you stroke him. Chan's hand pushes under your skirt pressing his thumb into your clit, circling slowly. 

“I can’t wait anymore,” Chan grunts pushing your skirt up higher around your hips, dragging you closer to the edge of the counter before you remove your hands from his already leaking cock. 

Chan pushes down his pants to free himself before he’s lining up with your entrance. 

he doesn’t hesitate to thrust in fully pressing his pelvis to yours. both of you moan out your arms wrapping around his shoulders. chan inches out before slowly pushing back in. You whine, laying your head back until it’s laid against the mirror. 

you wrap one of your hands around Chan's neck, “is this okay?” 

Chan nods, “Harder please harder,” you squeeze enough to make his eyes flutter, the same way they had when you were back in the hospital fixing his nose, his hips finally picking up pace. every drag of his cock makes a bolt travel down from your spine to your knees. your back arching, Chan drags his teeth down your throat. 

your free hand scratches down Chan's back and you move your hips to meet his, trying to build any friction. 

“you feel so deep,” your voice not sounding like you as Chan angels himself up brushing against your g-spot. your legs wrapped around him shake at the contact, your walls squeezing around his cock. 

“I wanna hear you cum for me,” Chan moves his fingers between you rubbing your clit until you see spots, knowing exactly what you needed. 

Chan picks up his thrusting pace, punishing you with his cock, tip pressed right against the deepest part of you. “cum inside me please,” you beg, your nails usually nicely kept for work scratching him like they weren’t shortened. 

His thrusts falter at your words, his moan in your hair loud and echoing in the small room. “please I want it, I want to feel it,” your fingers around his throat give a squeeze and Chan knows he won’t be able to deny you.  

with a few sloppy thrusts, Chan is coming hard enough that his upper half gives out, laying on you. your hands leaving his throat and twisting in his hair as he shoots out ropes of hot cum inside you, hips jerking. 

The feeling of his release and his fingers on your clit send you over the edge, your legs locking around him as you cry out his name. Chan's slow thrusts help you ride out your high. both of you panting arms wrapped around each other not wanting to let the other go. 

clarity starts to set in as you catch your breath, your hair sticking to the back of

your neck. chan pulls out, the slick sound making you pulse around nothing. Chan watches as your combined cum slides out. He lifts your leg under your thigh using his thumb to spread your pussy lips apart watching as more comes out. “Next time I’m at the hospital I won't be able to forget this,” he drags his thumb up to your clit making you jump. spreading the slick around, “I might even ask for you to treat me this well again,”