#plus it's just unsettling to be boxed in there

[canisalbus]

So, about the latest piece, I'm wondering. Does Machete dislike the confession duty solely because of the burden of listening to others' sins and carrying their guilt? For the fact that even if someone confessed to him, for example, that they just murdered someone, he couldn't do anything about it, since their sins are only for God to hear? Or is it because he is sure that one day someone will confess his own, Machete's, sins?

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[solxamber]

Prologue: A Day Like No Other

This is the prologue for the 1k Event! It'll split into routes from here!

1k Masterlist

When you woke up that morning, you expected an ordinary day—classes, Grim stealing food from your tray, and maybe an explosion or two courtesy of Ace and Deuce. What you didn’t expect was for nearly every boy in the entire school to suddenly decide, out of nowhere, that they wanted to ask you out.

Riddle Rosehearts

He corners you right after class, red as a lobster, clutching a rulebook in one hand like it’s his lifeline. "I… I thought you might like to attend a formal tea ceremony with me this weekend. You have excellent posture, and I believe we would engage in delightful conversation."

He clears his throat and adjusts his collar. "Of course, I’ll have a list of acceptable topics for us to discuss."

You stare at him. He's shaking slightly.

"...Is this a date?"

His ears turn crimson. "It is not—" He exhales deeply. "Yes, it is. Please say yes."

Trey Clover

Trey smiles warmly as he approaches you after club activities. "Hey, I made a batch of tarts, and I thought we could eat them together. Just us. I mean... It’d be nice to spend time with you. Alone."

He rubs the back of his neck, trying not to look embarrassed. "And if you’d like, I could teach you how to bake something... Maybe, uh, something sweet?"

Cater Diamond

Cater pops out of nowhere, phone already in hand and pointed at you. "Yooo! Wanna go on a date with me? We could take tons of selfies, make Vil jealous, and trend under #CoupleGoals."

You blink at him.

"And hey," he adds with a wink, "if we get along, maybe I’ll tag you in my socials. Exclusive content, you know?"

Ace Trappola

"Okay, look," Ace says, leaning casually against the wall. "I’m not saying you should pick me over, like, Leona or Malleus or whoever—but I’m way more fun than those guys. C’mon, let’s go out. I’ll buy you ice cream. Two scoops."

He wiggles his eyebrows. "You know you want to."

Deuce Spade

Deuce looks nervous but determined, like he’s psyching himself up for a boxing match. "I—I know I’m not the smoothest guy around, but I really like spending time with you! And if you’ll go out with me, I promise I’ll… I’ll be a perfect gentleman. Or at least, uh, I’ll try to be."

Leona Kingscholar

Leona, as usual, doesn’t even try to sugarcoat it. "Come nap with me."

"Is that your idea of a date?"

He shrugs. "You don’t seem like the type to want fancy dinners. This is less effort. Plus, I sleep better when you’re there."

Ruggie Bucchi

"Heyyyy," Ruggie grins, tugging on your sleeve. "How ‘bout you and me hit the town? I know a place that gives out free meals if you pretend to be engaged. C’mon, it’ll be fun!"

Jack Howl

Jack frowns, clearly struggling with the words. "I’m not great at this stuff, but... If you want, we could run together sometime? Or, uh, go on a walk?"

He glances away, ears twitching. "It’d be nice. With you."

Azul Ashengrotto

Azul adjusts his glasses, smiling like he’s just sealed the most important business deal of his life. "It would be an honor to escort you to a dinner at Mostro Lounge. Of course, all expenses will be covered. Consider it... an exclusive arrangement."

Jade Leech

Jade leans in just a little too close, that unsettling smile plastered on his face. "I believe we would have an interesting time exploring the woods together. Perhaps we’ll discover some mushrooms... or each other’s secrets?"

Floyd Leech

Floyd swings an arm over your shoulder, grinning ear to ear. "Oi, let’s go somewhere fun! If anyone bothers us, I’ll squish ‘em."

"Floyd, is this a date?"

"Obviously! Hehe, you're stuck with me now, Shrimpy."

Kalim Al-Asim

Kalim’s eyes sparkle with excitement. "Wanna come to a party? It’ll be huge! And afterward, we can ride my magic carpet under the stars!"

You barely have time to respond before he’s already planning an itinerary.

Jamil Viper

Jamil sighs, looking like he’s regretting this already. "If Kalim hasn’t dragged you off yet… would you like to grab lunch? Somewhere quiet, where I won’t have to babysit anyone."

Vil Schoenheit

Vil regards you with a calculating smile. "We could attend an opera together. Or a fashion show, if you prefer. You have potential, you know. I wouldn’t mind refining it."

Rook Hunt

"Ah, mon trésor!" Rook exclaims, dramatic as ever. "It would be a delight to hunt for beauty with you! A picnic in the forest, perhaps? Under the moonlight, where all things enchanting dwell."

Epel Felmier

Epel grins mischievously. "Wanna go smash stuff?"

"...That’s your idea of a date?"

"Yup." He winks. "You in or what?"

Idia Shroud

Idia looks like he’s on the verge of fainting. "So, uh... I-I heard there’s this new game releasing. M-maybe we could play it together? Or not. Forget I asked."

Before you can respond, Ortho pops up cheerfully. "Say yes! My brother’s been practicing this for weeks!"

Malleus Draconia

Malleus looms over you, an almost shy smile on his face. "I would be honored if you would accompany me on a stroll through the gardens. There are many things I wish to show you... and, perhaps, learn from you as well."

Lilia Vanrouge

Lilia grins, his fangs glinting in the light. "How about a little mischief together? We could visit an amusement park or play pranks on the first years. Either way, I guarantee it’ll be memorable!"

Silver

Silver, looking half-asleep, gives you a soft smile. "If you’d like, we could... I don’t know. Sit under a tree and talk. Or just... exist, I guess. As long as it’s with you."

Sebek Zigvolt

Sebek stands stiffly, as if on the verge of saluting. "I would like to take you to dinner! Not that it matters to me, of course! But it would be... logical for us to spend time together. As comrades!"

Rollo Flamme

Rollo catches you alone, adjusting his pristine cuffs with his usual air of seriousness. “I dislike crowds, so I will be brief,” he says, voice as even as his posture. “Would you like to accompany me to a quiet tea house? I find your company... less intolerable than most.”

You blink at him.

He clears his throat, visibly uncomfortable. “Consider it a date.” Then, after a pause, he quickly adds, “If you wish, of course.”

His ears are red, but he refuses to meet your gaze, determined to keep his dignity intact.

And just like that, you find yourself drowning in invitations. Your phone buzzes with reminders from Ortho ("Don't forget to reply to my brother!") and Epel’s laughter rings in your ears. Ace and Deuce whisper ominously about Riddle’s wrath.

Leona, meanwhile, lazily waves from the other end of the hall. "Pick whoever you want. If it's not me, just don’t wake me up."

So...

Who will it be?

1k Event Masterlist (Go here for routes)

Main Masterlist

[corruptedcaps]

What a drag

Anna was worried about her best friend Chloe. It wasn’t just that Chloe had started smoking, though that was odd enough. It was how the cigarettes seemed to changed her.

Anna first noticed it during one of their usual hangouts at their local coffee shop. Chloe lit up a cigarette, her fingers effortlessly handling it like it was something she did every day. There was something in the way she exhaled the smoke, how her eyes seemed to glitter with a new, almost unsettling confidence. At first, Anna thought it was just in her head, but as the days passed, it became impossible to ignore.

Chloe was more vain now, always checking her reflection, fussing over her hair, her clothes. She wore makeup Anna had never seen her use before. Seductive red lipstick, winged eyeliner, bold choices that made her look stunning but unlike her. She had started dressing differently too. Wearing dresses that barely covered anything, plunging necklines that showed off an impressive rack that Anna had never noticed before.

The looks Anna could have seen past but her attitude was changing from the kind and sweet girl Anna knew into some sort of vapid and arrogant 'it' girl that was more unrecognizable by the day.

Anna had started to suspect that all the changes had something to do with the cigarettes when she noticed that no matter how many Chloe smoked, the box always seemed full. At first, Anna dismissed it as a trick of the light or her own imagination. But the more she watched, the more convinced she became that something unnatural was going on. So she put together a plan to get her Chloe back.

One afternoon, while they were sitting in the park, Chloe excused herself to use the restroom, leaving her purse behind. Anna’s heart pounded as she saw the cigarette box peeking out. This was her chance. Quickly, she rummaged through her own bag, pulling out a regular pack of cigarettes she had bought earlier, just in case. With trembling hands, she swapped them, slipping Chloe’s strange, never-ending box into her own pocket.

When Chloe returned, she didn’t notice a thing. She took out a cigarette from the new box and lit it, but Anna could tell immediately that something was different. Chloe seemed puzzled for a moment, almost repulsed by the cigarette she was smoking. Her confident demeanor wavering slightly as she took another drag.

"Em, is it ok if we call it a day? I'm not feeling to good at the moment." Chloe asked rather sheepishly.

"Oh yeah of course, just text me when you get back." Anna said hugging Chloe and feeling the familiar embrace back. That was when she knew she had done the right thing.

Anna walked home with a sense of relief, convinced that Chloe's strange transformation would soon reverse. She had done what she needed to do. As she stepped through the front door, she called out, "Hi, Mom!"

"Hi, honey," her mother, Debra, replied from the kitchen. But then her voice sharpened with concern, "What’s that in your pocket?"

Anna froze. In the rush of swapping the cigarette boxes, she had completely forgotten about the one she had slipped into her pocket. She had meant to toss it out on the way home but had totally forgot. Guilt prickled her skin as she pulled out the mysterious pack, holding it awkwardly in her hand.

"They're not mine I swear! They’re Chloe’s." Anna stammered, her voice faltering under her mother’s piercing gaze. But Debra wasn’t buying it.

"Anna, don’t lie to me. I didn’t raise you to be liar, or a smoker!" Her mother said, her tone both stern and disappointed. "You’re going to sit here and smoke every last one of those, then you’ll realize smoking isn’t so cool."

Anna’s heart dropped. She opened her mouth to protest, to explain everything, to say how the cigarettes were somehow magic but even as she thought it she knew how ridiculous it sounded. Plus once her mother set her mind to something, she wouldn't budge. Debra was already setting up an ashtray on the table, her expression unyielding.

Anna hesitantly took out a cigarette, her hands trembling. As she lit it and took a drag, she was surprised by the taste. It was sweet and smooth, not at all what she expected. She understood now why Chloe was so put off of the pack she had switched. The smoke felt oddly comforting as it filled Anna's lungs, leaving her feeling almost...good. Relaxed. She took another puff, sinking deeper into the sensation.

But as Anna exhaled, something odd began to happen. Unbeknownst to her or Debra, her fingernails started to lengthen, growing into a perfectly manicured set painted red. They gleamed with an unnatural sheen, elegant and sharp, as if they had always been that way. Anna, lost in the sweet smoke, didn’t even notice the transformation.

Anna finished the first cigarette, exhaling slowly as the sweet aftertaste lingered on her lips. "Can I go now?" She asked in a slightly bratty tone.

But Debra crossed her arms, her expression firm. "No. You’re going to smoke every cigarette in that box, just like I said."

Rolling her eyes, Anna took out another cigarette and lit it. As she brought it to her lips and took a deep drag, more changes began to take place. Her chest started to swell, gradually expanding beneath her shirt, still unnoticed by either her or Debra. The sensation was so gradual, so natural, that it didn’t register as anything unusual.

Meanwhile, as the nicotine worked its way through her system, Anna’s thoughts began to shift. She found herself caring less about her mother’s disapproval and more about how good she felt. A sense of superiority started to creep in, an arrogant voice in her mind whispering that she deserved to do whatever she wanted and fuck the consequences.

Her mother wasn’t the only growing irritation in her as she started to feel her eyes were blurring. Taking off her glasses she found to her wonder that her eyesight was sharper than it ever was.

Without waiting for her mother’s instruction, Anna reached for another cigarette and lit it with practiced ease. It was becoming second nature to her now, the act of smoking feeling as natural as breathing. She inhaled deeply, the sweet smoke filling her lungs with a comforting warmth.

As she exhaled, her thoughts of her mother darkened. "Who is she to tell me what to do?" Anna thought, the arrogance growing stronger within her. A wave of irritation washed over her as she glanced at Debra, her mind swirling with mean, dismissive thoughts. “She’s just a jealous old hag. She’ll never understand what it’s like to be this… perfect.”

As Anna continued to smoke, the changes in her body accelerated. Her hair began to grow longer and thicker until it cascaded down her back in luxurious waves. Her waist subtly tightened, drawing in to create a more pronounced hourglass figure. Meanwhile, her lips softened and plumped, taking on a fuller, more seductive shape that made her face look almost doll-like.

As Anna stubbed out her cigarette, she didn’t hesitate before pulling out yet another. She lit it with a smirk, her eyes gleaming with a newfound superiority as she looked at her mother. The changes within her had solidified, leaving little trace of the shy, nerdy girl she once was.

Debra, seeing her plan backfire, grew alarmed. “It’s okay, Anna. You can stop now.” She said, her voice tinged with fear and regret.

But Anna refused, a mocking smile playing on her now-plump lips. “Oh, no, Mommy, you were right. I do need to be punished.” She purred, her tone dripping with sarcasm. She took a long, deliberate drag. She curled her lips into an ‘o’ and puffed out a perfect circle. The ring rising about her head like a sinister halo.

As Anna inhaled deeply, the smoke seemed to take on a life of its own, swirling around her body before seeping into her clothes. The baggy t-shirt she wore began to tighten, the fabric transforming as if molded by the smoke itself. It shrank and shifted, morphing into a tight, revealing black bodycon dress that clung to her newly sculpted tits, accentuating every curve.

At the same time, her face began to change even more dramatically. Thick makeup appeared, as if applied by an invisible hand. Dark eyeshadow that made her eyes smolder, sharp eyeliner, and deep pink lipstick that highlighted her now-plump lips.

Anna looked over at the nearby mirror and for a moment panicked at what she saw. Staring back at her was a gorgeous brunette wrapped in the tightest outfit she had ever saw. This wasn’t the nerdy and weak girl she saw every morning, no this was a wicked bitch who commanded respect.

Her shocked expression soon turned into an evil grin as she took another drag of her cigarette. She had been right, it was the cigarettes after all. They had made her into everything she feared Chloe would become and she loved it. Chloe's transformation had been slow because she had been unknowingly pacing herself. Anna had been forced to corrupt herself she was glad she had.

As Anna grabbed another cigarette and put it between her perfect lips, Debra reached out and snatched the box of cigarettes from Anna’s hand. She had finally clocked the transformation in her daughter. “That’s enough.” She said, her voice trembling with both fear and desperation. But as she glanced inside the box, her heart skipped a beat, it was still full, as if none of the cigarettes had been smoked at all.

Anna watched her mother’s reaction with a cold, detached amusement. She sat with her legs crossed, taking another drag out of her cigarette. “Give them back.” She said, her voice dripping with a calm, almost lazy menace.

“No, Anna! We need to find someone who can help you. This isn’t right, none of this is right.” Debra insisted, clutching the box tightly.

Anna’s expression remained unchanged as she let out a soft sarcastic sigh. She took a long, deliberate drag from her cigarette, exhaling a thick plume of smoke directly into her mother’s face. The smoke curled around Debra, who gasped and coughed as it invaded her lungs, forcing its way into her system.

“I said, give those back, Debra.” Anna repeated, her tone icy and commanding. Her use of her mother’s first name was chilling.

Debra’s resistance crumbled under the weight of Anna’s words. Her hands, once so firm in their grip on the cigarette box, trembled as she slowly extended it back to Anna. She didn’t understand why, but she felt compelled, almost powerless to do anything else. With a shaky breath, she handed the box over, her heart heavy with dread as she realized how much control she had lost.

Anna took the box in her long nailed hand, taking out another cigarette and lighting it off of the still unfinished one in her hand. She looked at the new cigarette light up with a subtle flash of pink. Somehow she knew that this would cause whoever smoked it to become her slave.

“Here Debbie, take a nice long drag.” Anna said holding out the cigarette for her mother to take. Again Debra felt incapable of refusing. Anna smirked darkly to herself as her mother reluctantly begin to smoke. Casually flipping over the box of cigarettes in her hand, she read the warning she hadn't noticed before, 'Contains Bitchotine.'

[hongism]

mists of celeste ➻ 51

➻ pairing: ??? x fem reader

➻ genre: space au, pirate au, space pirate!ateez, angst, smut

➻ word count: 21.1k

➻ rating: M

➻ warnings: language (additional warnings under the cut, pls heed them!)

➻ summary: Months into your stay aboard The Horizon, it becomes apparent that things are not as cut and dry as you thought, and that you might have bitten off more than you could chew with this crew.

⇐ previous | next ⇒ | masterlist

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act seven ➻ part three

additional chapter warnings: cannibalism (dream), discussion of suicidal ideation, hallucinations

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When you come to, you almost don’t realize that you have woken up at all because you open your eyes to complete darkness. The first thing you notice is the weight at your back, something digging into your shoulder blades and making you wildly uncomfortable, but that sensation is pushed to the back of your mind as your brain starts catching up with the reality you’re in. Your right arm does not feel wholly attached to your body in any way, and even when you attempt to use it to help move around in the cramped space you’re in, it refuses to budge at all.

Above you, there is a firm plank of wood that slots into your faux coffin so perfectly you imagine it’s aiming to act as your grave.

In your left ear, you hear a quiet yet unsettling whispering coming from outside the box.

“I know you’re there,” comes the distorted yet familiar tone, “I’ll pull every splinter of wood off this box to reach you. You can’t hide forever.”

You swing your left arm up as hard as you can manage given the limited space you have to deal with, ramming your elbow into the block of wood over your body. The huffs of your breathing make the enclosure feel that much smaller, and in turn, it causes your moves to lean more frantic than an organized attempt to escape.

“Keep struggling just like that. I like a fight~”

The voice belongs to San — there’s no doubt about that — and yet it sounds nothing like your San.

Twisting onto your side, you slam your left shoulder sideways into the wooden box, and that finally loosens whatever seal is keeping it shut. You tumble out onto the cold, metal ground followed by spools of what looks to be fabric and threads. Your right arm aches suddenly with a sharp pang in your upper bicep that makes you hiss and clutch at it desperately.

It’s dark all around save for one singular light in the distance, but it flickers into nothingness every so often.

“I’ll give you a head start if you’d like,” comes San’s cruel whispers from just beside you. A chill of terror passes down your spine, but when you turn to look over your shoulder, there’s nothing — and no one — there.

You hoist yourself up while still gripping your aching right arm. A bit of feeling has returned to it, just enough to let you twitch your fingers and make a weak fist with them. The light in the distance illuminates enough of the room you’re in to show you a somewhat clear path to the only exit, though the shadows around you have an almost sinister feel to them. You open your mouth to speak into the darkness, a witless hope that you can reason with the San that’s out there, but your voice bubbles up and dies on your tongue. With those hopes dashed, you resolve to simply make a run for it.

Breaking into a sprint, you launch yourself towards the archway leading to the exit as the shadows rise up to meet your every step like they’re chasing you. The boxes scattered throughout the room are like a maze keeping you from a safe and easy exit. When the light flickers out, you stall and count the seconds until it flickers back into its wobbly pattern again — thirteen plus a half. Each time the darkness swallows you, the exit seems to get further and further away no matter how much you run towards it while the light is on. A cry of frustration rests on your lips but the sound refuses to come out.

“Won’t you look at me, star?” San’s voice rises behind you once again. Darkness envelops the room.

Thirteen and a half.

“Do you fear me?”

Yes, you think. Your fingers squeeze around your bicep until your palm is wet and hot with some sort of liquid that makes your skin slippery.

Five and a half.

You tense. The shadows at your back feel so close that it’s almost like there’s a breath of cold air running down the back of your neck.

“Does my presence frighten you?” he whispers.

One.

You reel around just as the light comes back to life, intent to catch San where he’s lurking once the shadows are dispersed under the fluorescent haze. The world spins terribly even though you hardly moved much, and you topple over like a wobbly top onto your knees. The light has morphed into a solitary spotlight coming down from above onto you, blinding you so much that you try to block your vision to an extent. You look forward to the floor only to be met with a horrifying sight.

“…San?” you say under your breath in a slight panic.

There’s a body on the floor before you, and with the excess light that’s suddenly spilled into the room, you can clearly see that you’re inside the cargo bay aboard The Horizon. The place where you started your journey with this crew. And now the place where San’s slumped and crumpled body lies before you like a corpse. You reach out towards the back that’s facing you with a tremor in your hands that won’t go away. Your fingers close around a cold arm and twist the body so that you can see the face even though the build looks so starkly like San that you’re dreading it.

The moment you do, however, the face morphs and twists before your eyes until it resembles Minho. Gasping, you scramble backwards on your hands, tweaking your injured arm as you do. His lips are blue, as though he’s been dead for some time, skin pale and eyes wide open — bloodshot. Saliva runs down from both corners of his mouth, dried and flaking against his ghostly white face.

A strange whistling echoes throughout the cargo bay.

Minho’s corpse speaks to you.

“Why did you bring me here to die?”

You twist over onto your hands and knees, ignoring the flare of pain that shoots down your arm as you launch yourself forward in a vain attempt to escape. The whistling continues to ring in your ears, like a macabre song fueling your sprint out of the cargo bay and into the attached corridor. You move through the hallways frantically, passing room after room with open doors and faceless bodies inside each one. By the time you reach the mess hall, you’re out of breath, and your sanity is fraying at the edges because of the damn whistling that refuses to stop following you.

The lights here are flickering too, and the usual hum of machinery that radiates throughout the ship is absent completely. The tables in the hall are shoved to the side haphazardly and coated in a thick layer of dust. Beside one of the toppled tables sits Jongho’s guitar, broken on the ground with its strings snapped.

“There you are.”

You don’t have time to process who the owner of the voice is — you barely have time to brace yourself for the impact that strikes you from behind. It does nothing to save you from the impending fall, though the floor dissipates as you approach it face-first, and you swing into darkness instead. Next thing you know, you’re sitting in a chair with no way of seeing what’s around you and warmth blossoming across your face.

The hands that cover your eyes are not your own yet they are just as calloused and rough on your skin, but the voice against your ears is so soft by comparison.

“Are you ready, mon amour?” It’s Seonghwa who speaks with a foreign warmth to his tone you haven’t heard in some time. You bring a hand up to cover his, eager to pull him away and restore your vision. “Not yet, you haven’t answered the question.”

“I’m ready,” you breathe out in nothing more than a whisper.

“Good.”

Light creeps into your vision, pulling back the curtains of darkness, and what you see before you is both astonishingly beautiful and horrifying at once. You’re at a dinner table small enough to seat two, and across from you sits none other than your captain. Except unlike you, who possesses the freedom to move from the chair as you please, Hongjoong has ropes bound around his torso and keeping his arms stuck to his sides. He stares ahead at you, face oddly blank and expressionless. Seonghwa creeps into your peripherals draped in white robes that make him look like a saint sent from the heavens.

“Seonghwa.”

“Shh, mon amour. Let us prepare this feast for you to enjoy.”

A deep haze settles over your mind, whether from the odd sweet aroma in the air or from Seonghwa’s lilting voice. You do not feel fully present as you watch what unfolds next. As Seonghwa takes his captain by the hair and drags his head so far back that it seems as though his neck is the feast in question. Something glints in Seonghwa’s hand, but you realize it far too late, as the next second leads this dinner into something far more horrifying.

He splits Hongjoong’s neck open on the blade. Little crimson rivulets spill over the silver. Your brain is calling for you to take action, to stop this gruesome scene before it becomes worse, but still your body does not move. Seonghwa continues to wrench the knife along skin without relent, as though it is nothing to him, like Hongjoong is merely a slain animal for him to butcher as he sees fit, and you are terrified.

“Is this not what we are owed, Y/n?” Seonghwa says, angling his head down to the blade. He pulls his tongue along the flat where a minute amount of blood has pooled. “Our devotion deserves just rewards.” The edges of his sleeves are staining more and more by the second, though it is nothing but an afterthought in the moments that follow. Seonghwa turns his head further in to lay his lips along the seam he has created in his captain’s flesh. He sinks teeth in deep, and when he draws back, there is blood up to his nose and dripping down his chin.

“We’ve earned this, Y/n.” If your body could function according to your mind, you would certainly jump in your seat from the sudden intrusion of a new voice joining the fray. Yunho comes in from the left, out of a strange pit of darkness that seemingly has no beginning or end. He balances a knife of his own in one hand, fingers barely clutched around the hilt, but his grip shifts once he steps over to the table. It’s with a firm hand that he drives it directly into Hongjoong’s sternum. Or, what you believe to still be Hongjoong. His face is more obscured than anything, and his form does not seem recognizable in the slightest to you, but it was him before Seonghwa slit his throat. It must still be him now, no?

Then this man beside Seonghwa cannot be Yunho. You have never known him to be violent.

“We have all given him parts of ourselves, my star.” Warmth surrounds you. Before you realize it, you are standing, and San is there behind you like a mere extension of yourself. His arms wrap around your body, hand resting steady on the base of your throat. Hot breath pours from his lips and down the side of your neck. It causes a tingle to rush up and down your spine; though despite that, your body still does not feel like it is your own. “Does it not make sense for us to take in return?” San’s hands retract to rest on your lower back. He pushes you down like he wants to bend you over the table, but rather than letting your chest collide with the empty plates laid out there, he nudges your leg up with his knee. Like a puppet, you crawl across the table, sending utensils and glassware both to the ground. San caresses your head and squeezes the back of your neck in silent reassurance. That this is okay, this is fair, this is what you are owed.

When you reach the other side, Hongjoong is upright once more. It is still him, though you aren’t sure if there is relief in you upon seeing his face. Knife still in his chest, throat still slit and bleeding — now even with a chunk of flesh ripped out to add to the carnage — he stares right at you with strangely lively eyes. All this and yet the monster is still not defeated. What a fool you would be to believe that it would be an easy feat.

“If there is something you desire—” blood coats his teeth, making his crazed grin all the more insane “—you must tear it from my flesh.”

His fingers are cold on your wrist. You did not notice how close you came to the edge of the table, now teetering between the wood and falling into his lap, nor did you realize that you had brought a hand to his chest in the process. That’s where he holds you now, keeping your hand flat over his heart with an ice cold grip.

A phantom heartbeat makes itself known on your fingertips. A steady and calm ba-dum, ba-dum that gets stronger and stronger the more your fingers sink into flesh and bone.

Something shifts.

You don’t understand how, but you are no longer on the table. Hongjoong does not sit across from you any longer, nor are there even the slightest traces that he ever was there to begin with. The table is clean once again and set for one — you and you alone. You are already holding a fork and knife in your hands.

Seonghwa comes forward from the spot where your captain just was, dressed again in white but this time he is clean and free of blood. He sets a plate down before you, one you do not immediately look at because you are too busy examining his face for any trace of Hongjoong’s flesh and blood. He smiles without showing his teeth and nods towards the dish.

“Please eat, mon amour. You’ve worked so terribly hard for your meal.” He finishes his words with a full-blown smile. His teeth are stained red.

Before you, on a pristine plate, lies a still-beating heart.

It’s not the morning hour or your lover shifting in the sheets that finally pulls you out of your sleep, but rather a muted horror lingering in your body from a rather violent and gruesome nightmare that came upon you once you fell asleep last night. Despite your wishes to forget such a thing, it persists in your memory, even as you climb out of bed and make your way to the bathroom where San is already up and prepping for the day ahead.

“Good morning,” you mumble while rubbing the sleep from your eyes. He returns the greeting just as incoherently, lips wrapped around a toothbrush, but he still makes way for you to press a quick kiss to the corner of his mouth.

“Water’s still warm,” he pulls his toothbrush out a bit to get the words out, eyes on you through the mirror as you strip down to nothing. “I didn’t wanna wake you up.” He doesn’t need to explain a thing, though you’re certain he already knows as much so you don’t voice those sentiments out loud. You stand up straight to look at him through the reflection too. A small smile plays at your lips, one that’s meant to be reassuring. You hope the smile doesn’t drop too soon when you turn, but if it does then San plays the part of being clueless exceptionally well. He was correct about the water though, as it feels blissfully warm on your skin.

Your hopes to forget the dream that plagued you last night are dashed almost immediately, however, when you close your eyes to keep the barrage of water from spilling into them. It returns to you in a flash, like you are reliving it just the same, and the dream floods your senses fully. The metallic taste on your tongue horrifies you to the point of eliciting a small gasp from you that leads to water rushing into your throat and making you choke. You only realize that you’ve bit your cheek once you’re recovering from the sudden choking fit.

“Are you alright?” San sounds two seconds away from a serious panic.

“I-I’m fine, fine, just had an awful dream.” That isn’t what he was asking, but the realization dawns on you only after you’ve spoken.

The curtain pulls back a bit to show San’s concern in full. The soft pout on his lips makes you want to kiss him.

“I bit my cheek and choked on water because of it. And I was thinking about my dream. Wasn’t… I don’t know, it was just surreal and horrible.” You don’t imagine there to be any normal way to explain what you dreamt about in the slightest. Leaning forward out of the shower a bit, you plant a quick kiss against his frown to reassure him. “I’m fine, I just need to fully wake up and shake it off.”

“If you wanna talk about it…” he trails off, eyes still full of concern and trailing over your face even as he tastes your touch on his lips with his tongue. “I’m gonna head down and get some breakfast. Take your time.” He seems to note that you’d like space to mull over your nightmares, even if your reassurance hasn’t diminished his worry much at all. The curtain falls back into place, leaving you enclosed in the shower in peace, and you let out a small breath when you hear San leave the room.

You douse yourself with water and hang your head under the showerhead to let it pelt you from above in a vain attempt to clear your mind. The metallic scent of blood was so real and prevalent that you can almost taste it on the back of your tongue now, as the memory of the dream sinks back over you like a dark shadow.

Your limbs seem to move on their own as your right hand brings the fork forward to sink into the beating flesh of the heart. Blood spills out of the tiny pinprick holes your fork leaves in its wake. The scarlet pools at the base of the plate. The knife slips through the organ after some struggle, as though the thumping flesh is wrought with steel.

Seonghwa still stands across from you on the other side of the table with his hands folded in front of him like a steeple. He smiles, lips closed and tightly wound into a grin that’s almost painful to look upon because of how strained his expression is. He watches you cut away at the heart and take a small cube neatly onto your fork.

“To think he would let you of all people feast upon his heart,” he says, eyes wide and unblinking. You pause with the bite halfway to your mouth. The knife in your left hand clatters against the plate when you drop it unceremoniously. Seonghwa unfurls his hands and lays them against the pristine white tablecloth. “Tell me, mon amour, would you…” he swallows hard around nothing. You remain frozen in place, and it’s your turn to watch him now as he slides around the edge of the table and comes over onto your side. Seconds tick by at an agonizingly slow pace, and Seonghwa lowers himself to his knees. A trembling hand clasps around your thigh tightly. It takes you a moment to recognize the expression painting his features to be excitement. “Would you grant me a bite?”

Your hand moves the fork over to him without conscious thought. You coax his chin up with your free hand, fingers lingering on the underside of his jaw as his pretty lips part in an almost feral want.

“Ask nicely and perhaps I might.” Your voice comes out in a sultry tone that does not feel like your own despite it sounding like you. Seonghwa exhales a shaky sigh, his pupils blown out and sweat beading his brow.

“Please…” Seonghwa shudders and shifts his chin down, catching your thumb between his lips and nipping at the pad gently. “Just a bite.”

You split the seam of Seonghwa’s lips further open upon your thumb and wedge it between his teeth, finally bringing the fork down to his waiting mouth. His breath lies hot against your thumb. The soft pants he exhales are frantic, and his gaze upon your face is so unsettlingly steady that you cannot force yourself to be the first to look away. As the fork descends upon his mouth and pushes the small bite onto his tongue, you retreat and pull your thumb out of his mouth. Seonghwa moans around the morsel, a little rivulet of blood trickling down from the corner of his mouth as he shudders around the taste of Hongjoong’s heart.

Seonghwa’s chest is heaving when he pushes up on his knees and reaches for your face with both hands. You let him cup your cheeks, neatly manicured nails digging into your flesh as he tugs you down to meet his lips with your own. What follows is a mess — a kiss full of blood, saliva, teeth, and the lingering heartbeat resting atop Seonghwa’s tongue as he thrusts the wet muscle into you to coat the whole interior of your mouth with the taste of iron. The fork in your right hand hits the ground with a sharp clang that rings too loudly in your ears. You search the table blindly with your other hand until you find the plate with the rest of the heart on it, and when you close your hand around what’s remaining, the heartbeat thumps like it’s part of you.

Saliva connects your mouths when you push Seonghwa back and separate your lips. He’s dazed, still looking up at you like you’re some benevolent god offering him saintly blessings, and you do. As you swipe your thumb over your bloodied lip, you push the heart firmly against Seonghwa’s parted lips. He groans, eyelashes fluttering around the taste, and there’s a sick squelch resounding in the air once he works his teeth into the flesh.

“This,” he says through soft pants, twisting his chin down into his shoulder to catch his breath even as you force the organ further against him. It stains his pretty tanned skin with red streaks that drip down the front of his white garb. “This shall be our final feast.”

You come to again on the floor of the shower, hunched over with your head leaned into the corner of the tiles. The water beating down on you is icy now; any lingering warmth you had upon entering has dissipated while you were unconscious. Beneath your head where the water can’t quite reach is a streak of crimson. You lift a hand to your head first in search of the source of the blood but stop immediately when a fresh drop falls. Tapping your nostril with your middle finger first to confirm, you rub roughly at your nose with the back of your hand to sweep away any other droplets that threaten to come out.

The shower handle doesn’t budge right away when you reach for it blindly above your head, fingers slipping off the knob upon the first few tries. By the time you finally do get it to shut off as intended, you’re huffing your frustrations out in small bouts of profanities.

Your head hurts by the time you are able to finally pull yourself out of the shower and get dried off, but the nosebleed has stopped so you take it as a small victory. San set out a fresh set of clothes for you on his way out it seems, something you had forgotten to do entirely, and you smile as you see them laid out on the bed through the bathroom doorway. Even though you’ve thoroughly dried off, it’s still somewhat a struggle to tug your pants on, and your turtleneck is even more a pain in the ass. You slip into your boots by the door as you’re lacing up the corseted vest San set out for you overtop your shirt. You tie it tighter than is necessary, mostly on account of your thoughts drifting off to other things as you go about your routine.

Of all things to dream about, the cannibalism of your captain is a new — and quite startling — one. No part of you wants to revisit the visceral images that haunted you, and you aren’t sure you want to understand the subliminal messaging your brain is trying to communicate with you either. It’s best, you imagine, to push everything about it far to the back of your mind to be forgotten in the waking hours and only recalled when night falls again.

The corridor outside your shared room with San is void of life, though you can hear voices rising from the first floor of the hostel. Upon descending the stairs halfway, you catch sight of San standing near the foyer, one arm folded over his broad chest as he uses the other to accentuate whatever he’s talking about with minute gestures. Nightingale stands across from him, with the bright glow of his eyes tracking your every move as you descend the staircase.

“Pardon me then,” he utters through a nod in San’s direction.

“Oh.” San glances back over his shoulder, gaze softening upon landing on you. “There you are.”

“Sorry it took me so long.” You aren’t wholly certain how long you spent passed out on the shower floor, though given that San seems to have already eaten, you imagine it was enough time to cause a bit of worry.

“No worries, star, I spoke with Nightingale to pass the time. He’s found a charter for Soojin and Luca to take, one that’ll get them to one of the larger ports a few cities over. Setheno here is more of a trading hub than one meant for more widespread travel. Apparently, Nightingale intends to leave with them, though it doesn’t depart until the beginning of next week so you… you still have time with Soojin. Not sure if or when we’ll cross paths again.” San shrugs, extending his hand out to you as you step up to him. “He also mentioned that the two of you had spoken recently.”

“Ah that… I, uh, I’m sorry for not bringing it up sooner. We were preoccupied with other things and it slipped my mind. Since we had already discussed similar things so much, I didn’t want to bring it up again and again or seem vengeful by any means.”

San shakes his head quickly even before you’re finished speaking. His hand shifts around your hip to rest against your lower back. “I’m not upset, don’t misunderstand. Simply wanted to be transparent and let you know that we had spoken about it as well — just the time you went to speak with him in the training room, that is. I had already given him a heads-up after I told you that story making sure he knew you were wholly aware of it. Even though I told you the circumstances of our relationship and what Captain had me do to him, I am very glad that you heard it directly from Nightingale too. Not just my side of the story.”

“Did you by chance tell him I knew of your history before I did that?”

“It’s possible.” San purses his lips and looks off at the wall as he seems to rack his brain trying to complete the timeline of matters in his head. “I stopped by the training room first thing in the morning after I told you, to speak with Yeon — Nightingale — and let him know the extent of your knowledge about our history. To be frank, I also told him that he need not be the one to share that history with you as I had already done so because I didn’t wish for him to feel it was his responsibility in any way. It seems he wished to disclose it regardless though.” He shifts his chin down and looks back at you with a small smile decorating his lips. “It’s a miracle we even have a working relationship, given said history.”

“He… didn’t mention any of that when I spoke with him.” Though you sigh, it comes out more as a breath of relief than anything else.

“You were still in bed when I got up, so I imagine I was the first to accost him. I’m sure he thought it was an organized attack on his psyche when we both came to corner him separate times to dig up ghosts of the past.”

“Which would explain why he acted like a raging asshole who purposefully tried to drive a wedge between the two of us?”

San’s hand withdraws from your back, and he lowers his head. “Please do not — just.” A breath before he deigns to lift his head again. “If you say anything further, I will not be able to resist hurting Nightingale. Should he hurt you, then I will hurt him tenfold in return. So please, if you do not wish to see that then bite your tongue.” You take his face into your hands.

“Quiet those thoughts, San,” you murmur. His gaze chases your lips then flutters shut.

“You’re right, it’s not helping anything to think like that.” When he brings up a hand to cover one of yours, your chest tightens. You wonder, albeit briefly, if you’re of any help or solace to him as he is to you. “I’m supposed to go help Yunho stock some supplies for the ship in a few minutes. You wanna come along?”

“It’s not as though I have any other plans,” you shrug, letting your hands fall down by your sides in unison.

The morning air is far more welcoming than the ambience you experienced last night on your walk with Mingi. With bright beams of sunlight cascading down across the gorge and the dense fog lifted from the streets, it’s almost as though that place you walked the night prior was nothing more than a figment of your imagination. Just as your cruel nightmare had been. Minho is going to have the time of his life when he hears about it, you know that much for certain.

“Ah, there you are!” Yunho comes into your line of sight in a flurry of white as he balances a stack of boxes on the ground before you and San. “San, these small crates are ready to go on over to the docks, I’ll take care of the medications!”

“This is more than expected, no?” San says, brows knitting together as he releases your hand to take up the crates. Yunho stares for a moment with his mouth open and his jaw wholly slack before he winces and shakes his head.

“Yeah, I guess I messed up inventory because I had to shift some numbers around and alter some entries.”

“It’s not like you to do that,” you add, and the earring dangling from your right ear chimes with the movements of your head.

“Hongjoong said the same thing but…” he hesitates. His tongue darts out to wet his slightly chapped lips. “Something must’ve slipped through. It happens! I’m sure it’s not the first time I’ve done so.”

You take two of the crates atop San’s stack without a word, and it earns you a sharp pinch in the side from the man himself.

“Can’t let me show off my big manly muscles for you, huh?”

“What? You don’t wanna see mine?” you tease in return, nudging him with your hip.

“Oh I’ve seen you show them off quite well,” he hums as his gaze seems to trace your body beneath your clothes.

“Ew! Ew, stop being gross in front of me, I’m still here!” Yunho covers his eyes with his free hand, balancing the crate he’s holding on his hip and cradling it under his arm. “Let’s run these over quickly; Mingi and Jongho are already at the dock running a post to help load and transport supplies. Say, do you know if we’re offloading today too?”

“Mhm, Seonghwa and I are meeting with a number of buyers this evening,” San replies, sidestepping you slightly when Yunho nearly knocks into him. “As are Captain and Yeosang, I believe.”

“Ah… sweet freedom,” Yunho hums, but his tone isn’t as light and airy as it usually is. You dare to glance over at him, to try to catch his expression or the gleam in his eyes, but he masks his emotions masterfully.

“He’s been a bit incessant since we landed, yeah?” San talks as though he understands what Yunho means nonetheless, and although it excludes you to an extent, you are certainly good at making your own assumptions. And frankly — it wouldn’t take a genius to guess.

“You know him as well as I do. Can’t stand change even a little bit.” Yunho clenches his jaw. “Speak of the devil.”

Ahead, Hongjoong stands with Seonghwa’s tall and lithe form at his back like a menacing shadow. If possible the circles under his eyes are even darker than last you saw him, though you aren’t graced with the sight of face for long before he’s turning away in a clear attempt to avoid eye contact.

“Here’s the rest!” Yunho says as you approach the dock, and any remnants of his emotions are tossed behind the metaphorical mask he slips on when Hongjoong acknowledges your presence. “Also, Mingi, those pain meds are at the top of this crate. I kept a bottle with me back at the hostel in case you need more while we’re here.” He passes off the box under his arm to the Berserker, patting the side of it as Mingi nods.

“Is something the matter?” you inquire when Mingi turns to you next. He motions for you to add your crates to his growing pile, waiting to respond until you’ve securely set them atop the one he’s carrying.

“I’ve been having a killer headache since last night. Have you?”

You lock eyes with him just before he straightens and the crates block his face completely.

“No, I’ve been just fine—” it’s unwise at best to lie to Mingi, but to do so with Jongho just mere steps away as well is simply asking for trouble “—no headaches. Has anyone else been having them?”

“Lieutenant,” Mingi says under his breath. He shifts his body to the side just enough to block Hongjoong and Seonghwa from seeing his lips as he continues to whisper to you, “though that may be due to another reason altogether.” The Berserker turns away, and you straighten up, clearing your throat in the process as the weight of your captain’s stare bears down hard on you.

“That’s the last of things, Captain.” Yunho passes his load onto Jongho as San departs from your side to help organize the cargo in the transport.

“Seonghwa will follow along to help finalize the deal on that side of the gorge.” Hongjoong beams like a proud cat, but the man at his shoulder does not share the same sentiments on his solemn expression. “Do be good and behave. I am quite eager to be rid of all the excess goods we’ve been lugging around for so long.” You avert your eyes so that you do not have to see the way his sharp gaze tries to sear holes into your skin. His index finger drums against the band of one of his rings on his opposite hand like a metronome. Steady and unwavering, tick tock, a slow and deliberate rhythm.

Seonghwa’s chin dips to his chest as he nods, and the man turns on his heel to follow after the Berserkers without waiting for further instruction. You almost wish to go with him when you see what unfolds before your eyes next — your proud captain sidling up to Yunho and looping his arm around the healer’s lithe waist. The look in his eyes reminds you much of an apex predator. As Seonghwa had once mentioned sending Yunho into the lion’s den, that analogy is not lost on you nor is it an inaccurate one to say the least.

“What are we doing today, dearest?” he purrs against Yunho’s shoulder despite the rigidity he’s met with. Yunho only has the gumption to stop the man when Hongjoong reaches down and tries to lace his fingers through Yunho’s, only to grasp at air as Yunho instead clears his throat and dodges the wandering touches.

Hongjoong’s soft gaze shifts in an instant, and his lips draw into a firm little line as he once again attempts to grab Yunho's hand.

“What exactly is it you’re trying to do, Captain?” Yunho hisses through his teeth with so much venom that he spits a little.

In that moment, your oh-so-proud captain has the audacity to look like a kicked puppy, lips folding out into a minute pout, and the tension in Yunho’s shoulders melts into nothing half a second after. Tick tock. Like clockwork.

Yunho lets out a sigh, one akin to defeat. He waves Hongjoong off and pries himself out of the man’s grasp, leaving him to glower and stare at the side of Yunho’s head with barely concealed fury. “I’m going back to the hostel. It’s too humid today to walk around. Come with, Y/n? San will probably go along with the Berserkers.”

You glance back at the transport, seeing San still inside next to Jongho, and give a slow nod. When you fall into step with the healer, it takes everything in you to not pass a lot over your shoulder at Hongjoong, just to see his expression one last time before you go.

“Sorry, I thought he would follow if I didn’t ask you to come with me. The last thing I want right now is to be cornered again.” Yunho’s lips quirk into a crude smile as he speaks.

“I can’t blame you,” comes your quick response. “It’s hard to say what’s worse: being alone with him in silence or when he decides to open his mouth.”

“Both are…” Yunho laughs out of the blue. “Truly stressful.”

At the door to the hostel, Yunho pauses his stride and turns to look at you. The image of him driving a knife into Hongjoong’s chest flashes before your eyes. If he were an angrier man, one not afraid of violence, perhaps that would be a potential reality on the horizon. Either Hongjoong’s hold is truly so deeply rooted that those under his thumb cannot move, or he is merely lucky that those closest to him are incapable of harming him.

But this Jeong Yunho before you is more akin to a white lamb left on an altar, much like Seonghwa and all others Hongjoong delights in toying with.

He grins a tad awkwardly.

“How do you feel about going to a bar with me tonight?”

────────────

Your excess of free time leads you into the courtyard, though you cannot claim to be outside for the scenery and nothing else. Rather, it’s the man seated at the small table he was at last time you spoke with him.

“I didn’t even have to hound you to meet me this time,” he chirps as you sit in the chair adjacent to his in lieu of announcing your presence. “What a delightful change.”

Minho turns the book in his lap over so that the pages splay over his thigh, and when he folds his fingers over the back, the spine gives a slight crunch.

“May I ask you an odd question?”

This makes him perk up a hair, eyes flashing interest as he angles his torso more towards you. “That is what my job is for, in a sense.”

“Does your job also include the interpretation of dreams?”

Minho offers a shrug, eyes flitting up to glance at the sky before coming back down to reconnect that unsettlingly firm eye contact he seems so obsessed with.

“I’m no fortune teller or witch, but there is some science to it.”

“What does it mean to dream about eating someone?”

A laugh rips from Minho’s lips, and it quickly devolves into a cackle that has him doubling over on himself. He slides his book off his thigh, snapping it shut without bothering to mark the place he left off on. He gives it the same amount of care when he tosses it onto the table like it’s nothing.

“There are simpler ways to occupy my attention, Ghosty, I must say,” he says, still chuckling as he jerks his chair across the cobbles to face you head on. “But you always pick the most exciting options. Eating someone?”

“My dreams since coming here have been odd and surreal, much like intrusive thoughts but dialed up to eleven.”

“Well, you aren’t alone in that. I’ve been having strange dreams too though… I fear none quite like cannibalism.” He draws a hand up to his face, thumbing over his chin before continuing. “In any case, dreaming of consuming someone can mean a myriad of things. It can be sexual in nature, it can mean you feel so close with someone that your subconsciousness interprets that connection as a need to take that person into yourself. Or there could be a level of intimacy to such actions, the act of one giving themselves unto you so wholly that they give you their flesh. Dreaming of such things is not always cannibalistic in terms of literally wanting to eat someone in the waking world. I would not be concerned that you will suddenly have the desire to change your diet anytime soon. Sometimes those dreams steam from desiring someone heavily — either sexually or otherwise. If those you’re consuming in your dreams are faceless beings, then it could be as simple as your mind begging for a deeper connection or a level of intimacy that is neither sexual nor romantic necessarily.” Minho pauses to smile at you, eyes falling shut and creasing briefly before he snaps them back open. “But I could sit here and psychoanalyze you for days if not weeks and still not be able to give you a definitive answer as to what it means for you specifically to be having cannibalistic dreams.”

His tone leaves more to be desired, as though there’s another thought hanging at the end of his tongue waiting for its cue.

“And yet…?” you prompt, almost immediately regretting your curiosity. The chime dangling from your right ear lets out its melody when you tilt your chin and further seek his gaze. Minho leans forward at the waist and into your personal space.

“And yet I can piece together who it is you are consuming in those dreams of yours, hm?”

Though you smile, your eye is twitching.

“You fear the conclusions you come to on your own might be true, so you go to others seeking other answers but when they tell you that you’re correct, you become incensed.” Minho hums and folds his arms loosely over his chest. “Hardly a unique dichotomy. It is in our nature to become so defensive, after all.” The doctor moves one hand and flicks an invisible fleck of dust off the pad of his thumb. When he speaks again, it’s with a flourish of his wrist. “There is nothing to be ashamed of really. Desires are natural. Lust is powerful. A denouement is on the horizon. And frankly, it’s hardly your fault given how every piece has been moved with such care to bring you to such a mental state. You cannot be expected to have done anything else with the odds so stacked against you—”

Minho catches himself a beat too late, eyes flicking open and darting over to your face in an instant as his typically manicured expression slips into one of slight panic. He exhales a breathy laugh.

“Ah… I see now,” he mutters. You hold his gaze. “How easy it is for one to let their guard down…”

Your tongue feels like cotton, and the thoughts in your head have slowed to as near a halt as is possible. Though your lips move around unformed words and phantom questions, you can’t seem to bring yourself to ask. As the doctor said, you dread vocalizing your thoughts only to have them confirmed to be true. Even if you already know.

If he were to ask right now: what is it you are feeling?, then you aren’t wholly sure how you would be able to answer that. Neither dread nor disappointment stirs in your chest, though there is a deep ache. In truth, it’s nothing you did not already know even if you had hoped Seonghwa spoke the words purely out of contempt in the heat of the moment.

When your hatred turns to infatuation, I’ll be sure to tell you all the ways in which Hongjoong has orchestrated the destruction of your psyche since your arrival here.

Minho makes no effort to correct himself or cover his words; in fact, he deigns to say nothing at all.

“Aren’t you going to say something?” you say, unsure of your volume thanks to how loudly your heart is seeming to beat in your ears. The man opens his mouth, closes it, then squeezes his eyes shut.

“What is it you’re expecting me to say?”

“That you misspoke,” you answer almost before he finishes his question. “That you spoke out of line, based on assumptions, that — that…”

“What point is there in appeasing you with half-hearted words that you know to be lies?”

“You tell me, you’re the psychologist!” When you jut your hand out to him, Minho’s face returns to its usual candor. He folds his fingers around your outstretched ones, clutching the back of your hand tightly as he moves quickly and efficiently to kneel in front of you with his knees on either side of your feet.

“Ghost — Y/n, breathe.” His other hand moves to your knee. “You have to breathe. Deep breath in, hold it, hold it, now let it go. Again, again. Come on, again for me.” Your hand is trembling against his despite how tightly he’s gripping it. “It is not your fault. You did not know. You cannot blame yourself for this.”

You sink into yourself. “I should have followed Jisung off that fucking cliff.”

“No, no, Y/n, that’s what we’re not gonna do or say. You’re spiraling.”

“I’ve lost my fucking mind.”

“You’re having a perfectly reasonable reaction to uncomfortable truths.”

“I must be fucking crazy,” you say through a shaky laugh as you lean back in your chair and let your head dangle off the back of it. “I must still be sleeping, that’s it. I’m not awake yet.” Minho grips you hard enough to make certain that his nails bite at your skin, as though to prove you wrong. “I need to—” Fuck, you need to feel anything other than this crippling anxiety pulsing in your veins. You bend in half again in a blur of movement, rushing forward and into Minho’s space in search of something that is surely a detrimental mistake, but he’s quicker than you are even in this panicked state because he flicks his hand up from your knee to place it firmly over your mouth before you get too close to planting your lips on his. Something akin to disappointment burns in his stare, though it’s replaced so swiftly that you want to believe you imagined it. Cheeks flame with an inherent shame as a wash of realization rushes over you.

“Enough of that,” he states firmly, as though chastising a small child. “You are not sleeping. You are not dying. You are not insane or crazy or whatever other colorful word you can think of that is synonymous with those two things. You are having a panic attack, Y/n, and you will be okay.”

Your body stops fighting him so heavily then. The logic in his words, combined with how certain his tone is, blocks out every spiraling thought for just a moment. The tension in your shoulders slacks as you slump in the chair.

“Thank you,” he says under his breath, slowly bringing his palm off your mouth. “Now, I need you to breathe with me. Steady and slow, just following my movements. Breathe in as I clench my fist, exhale as I release it, okay?”

You wet your lips as you nod in the hopes that it will dispel some of your trembling.

“Do not look at my face,” he murmurs, hand raised by his head. And when, slow and steady like a pulse, he draws his fingers in until they’re a tightly wound fist, you let his motions guide your breathing. Though your chest burns, the tightness in your throat is far more pressing and weighty. While not impossible, it is difficult to a degree to gulp down breaths until the searing panic dilutes. The black coating the edges of your vision diminishes. It comes with regret though because looking upon Minho’s face in your peripherals shows you an expression of such deep pity that you glance away in an instant.

Is this the oh so glorious fall from grace that Seonghwa had been waiting for?

“Ghost of Eros, who have you become?” It’s Jisung’s voice that echoes in your ears. You haven’t allowed yourself much time to fall into these thoughts since his death, mostly to keep yourself sane and away from more hellish thoughts. You crave the allowance to cradle your head in your hands and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze until all thoughts pop out of you, but Minho keeps your right one firmly occupied still.

“You used to be the most renowned sniper in certain parts of the galaxy.” Ah, not Jisung’s voice. Minho is the one speaking to you. Yet his tone is tinged with that same venomous pity as before. “Say, do you even remember how to fire a sniper rifle, Ghosty?”

“Of course I do,” you say as you come back to yourself bit by bit. “You just… it’s not something that can be described so easily without demonstration.” You glance down at where Minho kneels before you. From this angle you can see down past the high collar of his white coat, and a blossom of redness sits across his smooth skin near his collarbone and across the line of his shoulder. He shifts under your stare, and the shrug makes his collar cover the welts across his skin.

“Are you blind to how reckless you are?” he asks suddenly. “In all departments, to be fair, but very much so in terms of situations that would put you in danger.” His chin drops to his chest as the doctor lets out a sigh. At last, he releases your hand, pushing up on his knees to help him stand upright for only a second before he’s dropping back into his own chair. “You live like a person who does not wish to. Thus, I am going to ask you this outright, and you will answer me outright in return. Fair, no? Do you wish to die?”

“No,” comes your answer, as though it is the most obvious thing in the universe. Minho levels you with a stare once more, and it prods at your already soft and sensitive outer shell. “No, it’s not that I wish to die. If I were to die then… perhaps I would not mind as much as others might in such a position.”

The man across from you leans forward enough to set his elbows atop his knees.

“Do you think of Jisung often?”

You wonder if this man is truly so good at his work that he can see through to your brain at any given second, or if you wear your thoughts and emotions on your face to be read like a book. On the other hand, the question feels more of one being asked by Minho-the-human-being as opposed to Minho-the-snarky-psychologist.

“I try not to.” Then — “I do not want to.”

“Does that come from a place of guilt?” Silence is often the most telling response. “Allow me to frame things in a more digestible way for you. Let’s say I die trying to protect a person I love. Then that person blames themselves for my death… in that instance, I would see a need to claw my way out of hell to tell her that I am fine. The choice made was not one made lightly. That she has nothing to feel guilty about. Because it was not her fault. That she deserves to be happy more than anyone else, and more than anything, she deserves to live on. If nothing else then for the mere reason of honoring the life given to save hers. The cost of sacrifice is not her guilt.

“I understand that Jisung did much to harm and betray you in the days leading up to his death. Even before then, too. But know that on that cliffside, what your captain witnessed and informed me of in the aftermath of that hell was a desperate man throwing himself at the remaining threat to your life after Hyunwoo fell. He had a goal to push Hyunjin off that cliff as well, and though he failed, he did so in an effort to save your life. Were he a man intent to die from the start, then he would have let himself be killed before even leaving that barn. His final gift to you was his sacrifice, and in that, his remorse.”

“Ha… oddly, that makes me feel more guilty than before,” you mutter through a crude laugh. Minho shakes his head.

“I would not tell you this unless I was certain you were ready to hear it. We are not the amalgamation of others’ hopes and dreams, nor are we destined to carry the memories of those we’ve lost as burdens. Do not carry his death as a burden of guilt upon your shoulders.”

“And what of you, doctor? Do you think of him often?” you inquire in return, finding his gaze drifting upwards to the sky. He chuckles as a hand seems to move to the back of his neck with a mind of its own.

“I did not join him willingly, yet I did not leave him willingly either. I am coping with far worse things than the aftereffects of Stockholm syndrome.” You wish to hear the words he won’t say. I try not to. I do not want to. “What I told you of caged birds carving their way out of their prisons with their beaks… such things come from lived experiences. I fear I cannot share in your mourning or your guilt, and I can never be a person who will sit alongside you to exchange fond memories of a man who left me with no such memories. Unlike you, I have no choice but to carry his memory on the back of my neck for the rest of my life. What he did for you in his last moments was freedom to me. I am free because of his decision to save your life. That shall always be my fondest memory of him.” Morbid, yet you share an understanding in that.

“Perhaps it shall be for me as well,” you mutter, a little wistful, a little longing. “May I request something of you, Minho?”

“Again, I am no witch so I cannot promise to grant any wishes, but I shall certainly do my best,” he jokes, one leg crossing over the other. You think of the man always standing at Hongjoong’s shoulder, tired eyes bearing down on the ground more and more often these days as his cheeks grow gaunt.

“Please help Seonghwa,” you implore. The expression that crosses the doctor’s face is vaguely close to the one of pity he spared you not long ago, though you find it to be less demeaning and more sympathetic now.

“I cannot.” His lips barely move, like he’s sorry to share the words with you. “I cannot help him unless he is willing to come to me. Forcing my care on anyone always has an adverse effect, and it limits what I can do if I am lucky enough to not be shunned immediately. As much as I desire to help him… there is nothing I can do. Not unless Seonghwa finds me first.”

You glance down at your lap in an attempt to hide your disappointment as you nod. The crumbling remains of your relationship with the lieutenant are ground too fine for you to handle on your own. Even if you did have the ability to do so, you wouldn’t know where the hell to begin trying to mend things. Regret bites at your skin like a rabid dog latching onto your ankle and slowing your path forward.

“I suppose that’s all I wished to discuss,” you say, clearing your throat. Granted, you got far more than you bargained for when coming here to ask one simple question. Minho’s gaze maintains its emotion as you stand up. Something rattles beyond the gate, and you cast a sweeping look over the streets on the other side in search of the source.

“I’ve poked and prodded you enough—” Minho twists his head to look towards the fence along the front of the courtyard. Though slightly delayed, he picks up on that same rattling noise you heard moments earlier. “I’ve bothered you plenty for one day,” he continues. The rattling continues behind him, and if you did not afford him your attention then you would have missed the way his blinks come in rapid succession, how he inches himself towards the edge of his chair like he’s eager to bolt out of it. “I do not wish to overstimulate you by speaking further about these matters, but do please be gentle with yourself. Not only tonight, but in the coming days as well.”

“I’ll try.”

“I am always available,” he continues, swallowing roughly after speaking those four words. “Be well.”

“Same to you,” you murmur. You take one last glance over the edge of the spiked fence before you depart the courtyard the way you came and head back into the sanctity of the hostel.

Minho stands abruptly the moment you disappear behind the door, and when he does, a hand holding a none-too-inconspicuous orange bottle juts out from behind the wall the fence connects to.

“Enough of that,” he hisses. His eyes flit across the streets on the other side of the fence; his concerns, however, are baseless as the citizens milling about continue on their paths without sparing the scene a glance. A head of mussed black hair and dingy highlights pokes out from the same place as the bottle, then sharp red eyes come into view next. Minho is graced with the full extent of the Brute of Kebos’ face a second later. His steps carry him to the edge of the fence, close to the wall where he’s met with Mingi fully revealing himself.

“She was on her way out,” he argues. Minho wonders if the Berserker poked and prodded at your emotions the way he had.

“There was no need to draw attention to yourself in such a manner.”

Mingi huffs out a breath of air that sounds oddly akin to a laugh. He dangles the pill bottle over the spikes of the fence. It’s barely kept from tumbling down between his index finger and thumb.

“Captain’s orders.”

Minho feels a twitch beginning to make itself known in his right nostril. Foolishly, he stretches a hand out in a feeble attempt to snatch the bottle from the man’s grip, but Mingi yanks it back. He doesn’t even get to lay a single finger on it.

“And what does your captain desire from me this time?” The Scourge of the Black Sea and his crude bargaining chips, and even cruder methods of exercising them. Mingi glances past the man to the door you just passed through.

“He asks for the same thing she does.” Ah, so Mingi was listening to an extent.

Minho can’t contain the laugh that tears from his lips. “Then I’m afraid my answer remains the same: I cannot help someone unwilling to see me.”

“You’re incapable of knocking on a door of all things?”

One less knowledgeable might mistake Mingi’s words to be an attempt at humor. Minho leans forward and rests his forearms between the spikes lining the barrier between him and the pills.

“Have you ever heard of those old folklore stories and fantasy fictions about vampires? How they cannot enter a home without being allowed in first? My line of work is very much similar to that — I cannot force myself upon anyone, nor can I convince anyone to let me in.” He fixes his eyes on Mingi’s despite how much terror the sight of those red irises brings him. “Simple. As. That. I might as well not exist at all in your lieutenant’s eyes, and until he is willing to see me, then your captain’s orders are an impossible feat.”

Silence stretches between the pair. Mingi stares back at him, but there are no cues or indicators of emotion for Minho to glean from at all.

Then — Mingi twists the cap of the pill bottle off, and before the doctor can even suck in a panicked breath, half of the pills are dumped onto the ground on that side of the fence. At his feet. Some drum against his shoes and scatter across the cobbles. The twitch moves up to Minho’s eye, but he’s blinking so furiously that it’s hard to tell the difference between the annoyance and panic.

“I know you’re feeling antsy, doctor. Did someone take the stash you smuggled into that little pack of yours?” Mingi quirks a brow at him. The faint upturn of his lips tells Minho that the Berserker is enjoying this quite a lot, paying that sadistic voice in his head its dues in things other than blood. “Or did the real doctor finally figure out where his meds have been disappearing off to?”

“Tell…” Minho has to let his mouth form around the words on his tongue in silence for several seconds. He cannot tear his attention away from the bottle in Mingi’s palm. “Tell San to approach him and implore him to meet with me. Or you can do it. Either one of you should be perfectly capable of such a thing.”

“Good on you, doctor.” Mingi caps the bottle, and it’s like all the oxygen in Minho’s lungs comes alive as he starts breathing steadily again. The Berserker cups the back of one of his hands and sets the closed bottle in his palm, delicate and gentle, then with his other hand, he curls Minho’s fingers around the cylinder. Warm. “I apologize for my crude tactics. I was not the one who stole the medicine.” Mingi’s touch is like hot coals against his skin.

“I am aware,” Minho sighs through his teeth as he straightens up. His grip on the pill bottle is iron tight.

“I shall leave you to it then, doctor.” Mingi turns and disappears behind the wall once more, leaving Minho where he is. Once he’s certain that the Berserker’s steps have withdrawn, he shifts his jaw until it pops. A sear of pain ripples through his cheek.

Minho glances at the half-full bottle in his hand, then drops to his knees to pick up the fallen pills off the dirty cobbles through the wrought iron bars.

────────────

When you find Yunho again, it’s already late enough into the evening that you need to have your mask up even though the majority of the people milling about have neglected to do so. Yunho is not one participating in that majority, leaned up against the wall close to the hostel door with his arms crossed over his chest. Though you cannot see his face in its entirety, you imagine he gives you some sort of faint little smile when you pivot and make eye contact with him.

“Didn’t change your mind?” he asks with a tilt of his head.

“Dare I say I need a drink as badly as you do?” you jest in return, though the level of truth in that statement is far greater than you’d like to admit aloud. “Come on, there’s a bar just down the street.” He keeps pace with you despite his long legged advantage. Quiet lingers in the air between you, but it’s far from a peaceful one in your opinion; you both seem to have plenty occupying your minds, and those things are the exact reason why you’re seeking alcohol in the first place.

The bar, quaint as it may be, emanates a nice warmth that’s a welcome relief from the humidity of the evening. The purple-tinted glow of the streetlamps filters through the windows and casts colorful shadows across the tables and floors. People line the booths and the tables, leaving small pockets of unoccupied space near the corners of the bar, but it’s the actual bar itself that Yunho drifts toward with you following in tow.

“Whiskey on the rocks for me—” you’re barely seated when a bartender flits over to the two of you and Yunho puts in his order, leaving you to stutter out a quick “gin and tonic please” as he tries to make a speedy departure. To his credit, Yunho wastes no time in getting into the thick of things right off the bat. “I’m being made a proper fool of, aren’t I?”

Your thoughts drift back to the morning, to the ostentatious show Hongjoong put on, to the day prior when the captain did something similar with more success. Your heart aches for Yunho again, as it has so often these days.

“It’s hard to watch, isn’t it?” comes his second question, and this one is far easier to answer honestly.

“It is, a bit,” you mutter as the bartender returns with two drinks and slides them across the counter. You stare at the budding condensation on the outside of the glass. “But we’re all fools when it comes to love, aren’t we? I’ve ignored things that are very deeply… not right with San, choosing to ignore it time and time again because I want the love I have for him to be easy and simple.”

Yunho huffs out a rather exasperated sigh against the rim of his glass.

“I don’t even deserve this. I don’t deserve to be treated like this. What went wrong wasn’t my fault — it was fucking Hongjoong and fucking Seonghwa playing a dumb game of jealousy with me as one of the pieces. Seonghwa manipulated Hongjoong into getting what he wanted — just like he always fucking does — and then Hongjoong manipulated me into going along with it because he knows I would follow him blindly into anything.” Yunho tangles his fingers through his hair so roughly that your scalp aches just watching him tug at the strands. “Seonghwa just wanted to fuck Hongjoong, so why’d he have to drag me into it?”

“Yunho…”

Conversation slows to a halt between the two of you. The rumbling beats of music hanging about the bar seem so much louder in the absence of Yunho’s voice. Your fingers trace over the dangling chime attached to your right ear as your other hand flexes around the base of your drink. The conversation lulls to a halt long enough for both of you to finish your drinks and receive replenished ones.

“I know my place compared to him,” he says like the words are pure venom on his tongue, “and no one can take that place. I’ve long since come to terms with that.” When he laughs, the sound comes out wet and choked but his eyes only glisten with some form of loathing. “I thought I could get around it since the two of us are so damn different but that doesn’t change the facts. I’ll never be a killer or Siren or anything else of use to Hongjoong so what’s the fucking point? I failed at the one job I had — couldn’t do shit to help Mingi and got replaced by a shiny new doctor because I’m too involved in the personal lives of the crew but we fucking live together so how can I not be involved? Does he expect me to not make friends or have feelings or wants? God forbid I have wants!”

“Yunho,” you say again, louder and with a hand firmly pressed to his shoulder when his voice turns strained. He jerks his chin in your direction as though realizing for the first time since he sat down that you’re beside him. “Just let everything go.”

“I don’t want to be stuck in one place forever, chasing my tail and running in circles because I keep caving to a man who won’t ever…” Either his mind goes elsewhere, or he cannot bring himself to finish the thought. “I’ve been good at pretending I don’t know Hongjoong’s game all this time. Good enough to where he doesn’t seem to realize that I’m fully aware. But despite that, I let myself give in over and over again. I’ll never be able to get out if I keep doing that.”

“What is it you want then?”

“To make a decision for myself and not be judged for it, not have him looking down on me for it. I want… to have someone who isn’t Hongjoong.” Yunho dips his chin to his chest then looks up at you. His tongue runs along his lower lip before he catches it between his teeth and blinks several times in quick succession. The look would be undoubtedly flirtation if not for the deep nervous furrow of Yunho’s brows. “We’ve teased and toyed with the idea, haven’t we? Would it be so bad if we had each other just because we wanted to and not for any other reason?”

For once, you’re assuredly quick to reject the proposal.

“Even if I was fool enough to believe that’s what you truly wanted, I’ve never done that and had it be truly no strings attached.” Unless you were to count that time with Yeosang, though that feels like a different beast in retrospect. “To be strangers would be one matter, but with how messy and interwoven the threads are — that would be an unavoidable mess.”

“You’re right,” the healer mutters through a sad grin. His fourth drink arrives at the same time your third one does, but his pace hasn’t slowed one bit. “Part of me knows that I’m never going to love someone the way I loved Cassie, and there’s so much of me that would rather not try to fall for someone the way I did for her. In the beginning, things with Hongjoong were okay because my feelings for her were lingering and fresh, yet even after it stopped being about coping with the losses we shared, we kept going back to each other. I used to be tied to this idea of making things work because I fell for some part of Hongjoong that I don’t even know exists anymore. I want to be careless and free again without having to worry about how much collateral damage it may cause.”

“Look around: there are plenty of fish in the sea here.” You shrug your shoulders up close to your ears. “Plenty of people would love to have a nice tall man in their beds for a night, I’m sure.” In an attempt to bring some sort of levity to the conversation, you crack a smile and nudge Yunho with your elbow. He ducks his head once again, though this time, the tips of his ears are flushed bright red and he hides the rest of his blush from you by taking a drink. You laugh into your own glass.

“You’re quite intimidating, you know that right?”

“Hm?”

“Like, Cassie had a sort of soft beauty to her, even when she’d come to me with cuts and scrapes I needed to patch up, she still held an almost ethereal aura about her. You’re attractive in a really intimidating way. And that’s not me coming onto you, just to be honest, I don’t have any explicit reason in saying that. I find you objectively attractive, always have. Maybe it was actually really fucking hot to see you stand up to Hongjoong day one the way you did!” He’s laughing as your expression twists into one of shock. “You and San look really good together, yeah?”

Despite biting back a smile, you roll your eyes and push his hand, and subsequently his drink, down to the counter. “Had too much to drink already?”

“Well my eyes still work! What a mean sandwich the two of you would make.” Yunho’s sigh is half joking and half wistful. The corner of your lips quirks up even as you hold your index fingers up in the sign of an ‘x’ over your face.

“You aren’t the only one who suffered a bad experience sharing the dear lieutenant as a third,” you say from behind your fingers.

“Ah, what a good homewrecker the man makes.” You agree with the sentiment internally, because it feels too cruel to voice it. “I hope it doesn’t come between you and San, truly. San has… he’s finally found something to protect and hold onto desperately, and you’ve given him a stronger voice to stand on his own. Without heeding Hongjoong’s every whim, that is. So I hope that the two of you last for a long time.” Yunho shakes his head ever so slightly, lips curling around the rim of his drink. “Such serious talk for a night out! Have you found the freckles on his ass cheek yet?”

“Yunho! I’m not telling you whether I have or not?!”

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding! But really, you gotta give me more credit — that little pleasure piece down there was my doing.” The wink he sends you, coupled with the insufferable, shit-eating grin painting his lips as he speaks drives you to slap the back of your hand to his bicep.

“Where exactly did you learn to do all of that anyway? I doubt it’s something you picked up from your mother in the clinic.”

“I taught myself, for the most part. With lots and lots of videos. And of course, practice, back when the crew was larger and I had many more people readily eager and willing to be test subjects. We made frequent pit stops, sure, but I had to make do myself at a certain point.”

“Yet you don’t have any yourself?”

Yunho laughs. “I wouldn’t dare try to. I’m quite the pussy when it comes to pain. Stub my toe too hard and I’ll scream like a banshee.”

“It’s that bad?” you say through a laugh of your own.

“Jongho and San used to play this evil prank on me where they’d leave little things on the ground for me to trip over or step on, just to see who could make me cuss the loudest. They finally had to quit because the last time, I face planted into a wall so hard when I tripped that I broke my nose and busted my cheekbone. My poor, pretty cheekbone.” He cradles his cheek, eyes squeezed shut to add to the theatrics of it all. “Cruel bastards, the both of them!”

“My team in the military wasn’t big on pranks, from what I recall.” It’s not the liquor that makes you take a trepid walk down memory lane, but Yunho’s reminiscence has you thinking back as well. “One time I fell off the top bunk in our dorms, but that was because I yanked on the bed sheet too hard, all pissed over something stupid, then my hand slipped, I punched myself in the face, and fell off the bed in the process. I tried catching myself on the way down but landed so hard on my arm that I snapped my clavicle.”

“Holy shit? Holy shit, I bet that hurt like a bitch!”

“To say the least, but I think actually my pride was what was the most damaged at the end of the day. I mean what a loser way to break a bone.” You nurse your drink as Yunho laughs again, and a sharp pang of clarity hits you after the fourth sip. Laying your hand on his forearm, you naturally pull his focus to you, a curious and equally puzzled gleam to his eyes. “You deserve to feel happy, Yunho.”

His lips part like he wants to counter immediately — perhaps to tell you that he is happy — then a smile covers the momentary crack in his facade. It’s strained and pulls at the corners of his lips too hard.

“Having someone to fuck isn’t always the solution to that,” you continue before he gets the chance to make excuses or play the fool. “And I know I’m the last person who ought to be saying that, but it’s something I’m trying to teach myself too. If I can do it though, I know you can.”

Yunho’s expression does not give away much, though his brows are pinched together just enough to indicate that some thought in that head of his is causing some level of distress. Rather than offering up a response, he downs the rest of his drink like a pro and fetches enough credits from his pocket to cover both of you and then some.

“At least I don’t feel inadequate doing that,” he mutters, just barely audible, before pulling his gas mask up over his face. A sigh leaves your lips, but you follow him nonetheless, mimicking the same motion as you get up from your stool and follow him to the door. He doesn’t speak again until the two of you are out in the night air outside the bar. “Do you think there’s any happiness to be had where we are? Doing what we do?”

“If you wanted to wash your hands of it all, you could,” you say after a breath of hesitation. Yunho looks forward, shoving his hands deep in his pockets.

“Because I’ve not killed anyone?” he scoffs. The scrape of his heel over the cobbled streets echoes along with the sound. “How many wounds have I stitched up for criminals? To either keep them alive or make sure they can keep on doing as they please? My finger may not be on the trigger, but I am just as guilty of putting the gun in killers’ hands.”

You shrug your shoulders up, walking ahead of the man a few steps and turning to look at him face to face as he steps forward with you.

“The guilt is yours to bear as you see fit, but you are no more guilty than the mothers who birthed those criminals. You told me once that your job is to save lives. Do you measure the lives of those you save by their deeds, good or otherwise?” You spin on the ball of your foot to walk alongside Yunho again. “Then—” your index finger points to the sky, then angles down to the man beside you “—who are you to be the judge, jury, and executioner?” Yunho’s breath hitches. Perhaps your stare is a bit too harsh, a tad too uncaring. “San has killed innumerable amounts of people. He did unspeakable things in his past. Does he then not deserve to be saved by you, doctor?”

“That’s different, the circumstances were—”

“Ah, so there are circumstances to your judgment?”

Yunho hisses through his teeth, a sharp spike to his frustration that hurts your arm when he grips you hard enough to bruise. Though you could easily detach yourself from his grip and plant Yunho on his ass right here in the streets, you refrain from doing so sheerly out of curiosity. A longing for an explanation to his madness. The straps of your mask dig into the back of your head. Yunho has shoved you into a cramped alleyway that’s hardly big enough for two people, but he manages it well enough by pinning you to the wall of one of the buildings. You shift your jaw in an attempt to alleviate the strain caused by the mask biting at your skin.

“You do not understand. There are things I cannot wash my hands of,” Yunho spits out. His mask clanks against yours so hard that you worry it might break.

“Yunho,” comes your breath of warning.

His hand trembles where his fingers are latched around your wrist. When he speaks next, it’s without the same vehemence.

“I have a confession. I can’t blindly continue onwards while holding onto it. I… wanted you when you first joined the crew. I wanted you so badly.” His eyes flicker back to something more recognizable: familiar, warm, an inviting chocolate brown, searching for answers in your gaze. He finds nothing in the firmly set flat expression you’ve schooled yourself into mastering. “I wanted to do to you what Hongjoong does to me,” he continues. The bait bobs along the surface of his eyes, and you can see yourself taking a bite if you’re not careful. “Just to see… if it would be as easy as he makes it seem…”

“But you couldn’t.” A pesky strand of hair has gotten caught in the strap cradling your skull, and its nagging pain distracts you. “Because you’re not that kind of person.”

Yunho lifts a hand to your throat. It’s large and encompasses your skin with ease.

“Hongjoong has a way off killing you without letting you die. Like he’s reaching into your chest and ripping your heart out.”

Yunho’s fingers pulse around your neck, and they surely feel the way your pulse jumps and scatters into a frantic rate that betrays your panic before your expression cracks and the panic seeps through to the surface there. His grip loosens a hair, and his hand trails down a little too far for comfort. You recover from the lapse and snatch him by the wrist to stop his movements. When you dare to look up at his face, you find him staring upwards at the slivers of night sky between the tall buildings on either side of you.

“I know. I pretend to be dumb around Hongjoong but I know. I know Hongjoong is taking the damn painkillers, know he’s trying to make me believe that I’m taking stock wrong even though I’ve been doing it for years without issue — for fuck’s sake — just like I know that when I’m selected for missions it’s not because Hongjoong thinks I have any value being there. All he wants to do is spite Seonghwa. I know I’m only allowed to fuck Hongjoong because he won’t put his dick in anyone that isn’t Seonghwa. It’s always Seonghwa, Seonghwa, Seonghwa.”

“I know, Yunho, you told me already. It’s okay.”

“Ah, I’m sorry, I must be — I’m feeling the liquor a bit, that’s all. Don’t take anything I say to heart.” Yunho’s smile looks more like a sneer though. “Is it… could it be because I refuse to kill? I can’t — reason out why it is that I’m not enough?” His head collides with the wall above your head, and you have to jerk your head to the side to avoid bruising his throat with the hard edges of your mask. “If I should kill someone then—” you hear his inhale even through the filter of the gas mask, then his hand is up around your throat once more. Tighter this time, squeezing at the base of your neck in a way that is wholly ineffective if he were truly trying to murder you here and now. With his ramblings, however, you aren’t sure you can take those chances.

“Yunho,” you offer a final warning in the hopes of reaching the part of his brain that controls his reason. The fingers at your throat dig in like he’s aiming to take chunks of your skin out with his nails.

“If I am tainted, perhaps he will desire me more.”

“Please forgive me for this in the morning,” you mutter under your breath. His head tilts much like a dog’s would when faced with confusion. Unbeknownst to him, it only allows you better access to the pressure point you’re after, and your fingers jam up against it faster than he has time to react. His muscles are rendered all but useless, and you twist his body in your grip hard enough to make his knees give out. The second his knees thud against the ground, you slide your arm around his neck, bending your elbow just hard enough to restrict his air flow without doing too much harm. “This is for both our sakes,” you add just before his gaze goes a bit hazy and unfocused. He passes out in your grip seconds later.

There’s a moment of guilt that takes over you, one born of the panic in his eyes when you grabbed him, but given the circumstances, you’d much rather live with that than have him live to make a decision you know he would regret terribly. You loop your arms under Yunho’s and do your best to hoist him up enough for you to support a majority of his weight.

“You shouldn’t have to kill someone just for another to love you back,” you mutter to Yunho though he cannot hear you. “…I hope that you never have to break that rule you made for yourself.”

You can only be thankful that Yunho didn’t pick a bar at the other end of the city, and your struggle in walking back to the hostel with the much larger man draped around your shoulders like a sack of flour. When you flatten your hand to the door leading inside, Yunho’s head lolls to the side. You nearly slam his temple into the doorframe as you thrust the door open with your foot.

The lobby and attached lounge are both void of life; a far cry from the night prior where you came into such a warm and lively atmosphere. Now, you cross the threshold silently, passing empty chairs and empty couches in a sort of greyish lighting adding to the already dismal ambience. The staircase looms before you, dim and shadowy at the top like it's trying to mock you. The air rushes out of your lungs then back in quickly in an attempt to brace yourself for the upcoming struggle.

“Allow me.”

“I’m beginning to think you lurk around every corner just waiting for me to pop up,” you joke, half-serious as you look up at the man who has just stepped into view at the top of the staircase. He shoves his hands into his pockets, and with each step down the stairs, his sandals slap against the wood.

Five steps from where you stand at the bottom, Mingi tilts his head to the side, gaze drifting over Yunho’s limp form quick enough for you to almost miss it.

“You would be incorrect.”

He descends the rest of the way.

“I know, I know — it’s just a—”

“Every corner would be improbable as there are places where corners do not exist.” Mingi smiles first with his lips, then with his eyes when he squeezes them shut. You’re stunned into silence just long enough for him to relieve you of Yunho’s weight without argument. “But if I give away my hiding spots then you’ll know where to look for me.”

“…places where corners do not exist?” you murmur.

“You’re overthinking it, Ghost. It’s just a joke.”

“I didn’t kill him,” you say, nodding towards Yunho’s limp form that’s now supported by Mingi. The damn Berserker makes it look so easy that it hurts your pride, for no reason.

“Well, he’s still breathing, so if you had claimed to then I would be questioning both your sanity and how good you are at killing people.” Mingi’s words actually stir a laugh out of you — one of disbelief, but still a laugh nonetheless, and you shake your head. Loosening the mask around your face, you let it hang about your neck and suck in a breath of air unfiltered now that you’re in the safety of the indoors.

“He was rambling nonsense and on the verge of making… a terrible decision.” Your gaze lingers on the side of his face as Mingi hoists him up a bit higher. “It’s thanks to my intelligent decision to knock him out that I did not kill him.”

Mingi’s gaze sharpens on you.

“He made an attempt on your life?” What comes out as a simple statement at first morphs into a question by the end of it. Your subconsciousness drives you to rub at the base of your neck where the skin itches some still.

“No,” you say after several seconds of silence. “No, he was seeking guilt. I told him that there was still a way out of this for him, that of all of us, he could escape freely. He despised that answer quite a lot, and then—” a lazy wave of your hand finishes the thought for you.

“It is understandable. His greatest fear is inadequacy. Yet, he is a Normie. He is not capable of anything great. He has no place on this crew by comparison.” Mingi’s flat tone coupled with the brutally harsh words take you aback. Climbing the stairs slowly, you keep pace with the Berserker while eyeing the man draped over his back. Still unconscious, or a very good actor perhaps. “He is useless, and yet he remains. Because he is needed when others make mistakes.”

“Mistakes?” you hum. “Our captain seems to make a lot of those.” You ascend a few more steps only to realize that Mingi is not following you. Turning, you see him three steps below you, red eyes watching you with blank curiosity. You squeeze the railing tight in your left hand.

“Yunho should leave the crew, then.” Said as a statement, you almost don’t realize that Mingi is asking you if that is your true opinion until many seconds pass in silence.

“Yunho should… do what is best for him. What is best for his heart and mind both. If he is truly so miserable here, then why should any of us demand that he stay? If we — if we truly care for him then allowing him the freedom to choose is the best thing we can do for him. Even if we do not like the choice he makes. You know much about that, do you not?”

“I could have chosen to take the serum, yes,” Mingi says, shaking his head as he speaks. “You fought for my ability to choose back then, but that is different than now. Yunho has zero desire to leave. Given how you are speaking, you know that very well. He has made his choice. If you truly care for him, then is it not best to allow him to live with that choice no matter the consequences?”

Your tongue weighs heavier in your mouth, and an acrid taste is rising in the back of your throat. You try to clear your throat to dispel it.

“You have not yet given up on your hopeless ploy to save people who do not wish to be saved, Ghost.” Mingi’s gaze turns narrow, and he looks up at you through half-lidded eyes. “Or perhaps is that an excuse to cover up your subconscious intentions? Dispel those closest to the man you find so evil so that you may drive the knife into his chest without suffering deeper guilt.”

“Are you accusing me of something, Mingi?” It’s nothing short of a miracle that your voice remains steady and contained. He steps up one, two, three. Now he looms over you, bending at the waist just enough to be eye to eye with you, and there are mere centimeters between your faces.

“It is in your nature, Ghost, to kill those with authority over you,” he says, his breath huffing out over your cheeks. “I keep warning you time and time again. You will not succeed this time if you make an attempt. Do you truly wish to die at the hands of someone you cherish so deeply? Or have you deluded yourself into thinking that he will not be the one to execute you at his captain’s command?”

“And how do I know you are not doing your captain’s bidding right here and now?” You tilt your chin up and look Mingi in the eye without faltering. “How many instruments has he engaged to orchestrate my failure and destruction?”

“Oh, how interesting.” Mingi chuckles. “You finally caught on.”

“So again I ask if you are accusing me of something? Because if you were truly doing that, then I would not be alive and breathing right now, would I?”

“Between the two of us, you are not the only one guilty of regicide, Ghost. It is in our nature,” he repeats through a whisper that makes you shiver. “The question is… how willing are you to repel that part of your nature?”

“Are you?” Your gaze narrows on him as you hiss out your counterargument, but Mingi hardly reacts at all. You may as well have not said anything at all based on the way he blinks slowly back at you. “Let’s simply get Yunho upstairs,” you murmur, turning your chin away from the man and looking towards the top of the stairs. Mingi leans back enough to let you breathe easy again, and you steal a glance his way when he straightens up. “Where’s his room?”

“Hongjoong is in it.”

“What?”

“He had Seonghwa book one room for him and Yunho to share.”

“That’s—” utterly psychotic. You bite the words back though; you’ve frayed the ends of Mingi’s nerves enough for one day and it would be unwise to continue to do so further. And though your rage towards how Seonghwa has been treating you of late is not quelled one bit, you do feel some outstretch of sympathy solely on account of how downright cruel such a request from Hongjoong is.

“Yeosang and Wooyoung are sharing, as are Jongho and myself. You and San have a room, the doctor and Nightingale, then your friend and her small charge.”

You hesitate at the top of the stairs. The hand you have wrapped about the railing is so tightly wound that your knuckles are stained white.

“…Our captain had the lieutenant book a room just for himself?”

Mingi mumbles something, uncharacteristically quiet and under his breath. You do not press him to echo the words to you.

“Then let’s bring Yunho to San and I’s room. We’ve got a perfectly suitable couch he can sleep on.” The door to your room is blessedly right across from the stairs, and you give a series of light knocks to announce your arrival that’s met with no argument. San awaits inside, propped up in bed with a book set before him and the lamp casting light over the pages. His features mold into a smile that’s soft around the edges just before his gaze flits past you and finds Mingi lugging in an unconscious Yunho about his shoulders. The book snaps shut with a pop! and he slings his legs over the edge of the bed.

“Did something happen?”

“The two of us went for drinks, and he had a bit much,” you explain. “I, um, had to knock him out to get him back here.” As far as you’re concerned, San doesn’t need to know anything beyond that right at this moment. Mingi allows you such privacy and leads Yunho’s limp body to the couch across from the bed.

“Ah… Hongjoong and him are sharing a room too. We got back not long ago but — disturbing his beauty sleep is asking for death, pretty much,” San mumbles, bringing his hand up to his mouth. “We can leave him here no problem, right? Are you comfortable with that, star?” When he comes over to where you’re standing, his hand drifts to cup your hip, thumb tracing over the flesh through your clothes. You don’t think twice before leaning forward and pressing a kiss against the line of his jaw.

“Mhm, that’s fine. I actually suggested that too.”

“He’ll be fine on the couch for one night surely.” San cracks a smile that’s a little lopsided and very endearing. “Though, if he complains, I’ll just remind him of how much worse it could’ve been!”

Mingi clears his throat as he rights himself. His gaze slips from you to San then down to the man now sprawled over the couch cushions.

“And if he asks where his bedmate has gone?”

San’s lips fold into a more devious smile. “I’ll simply say I’ve borrowed him for a bit of fun!”

Mingi does not betray much with his expression, but you know that he does not find the excuse to be so believable that it will deceive Hongjoong.

“Then, if that is all…”

“Hm? Oh, yes, goodnight Mingi.” San offers a small wave but Mingi does not budge even as the Spectre turns to the bed.

“Thank you for your help. I appreciate it,” you say to the man.

“Of course.” He looks like he wishes to say more, but refrains on account of San, who’s begun to hum behind you as he crawls back into bed. “Goodnight.”

You exhale a breath that was lodged firmly in your lungs when the door snaps shut behind Mingi. It doesn’t take much work to rid yourself of your clothes and get into something far more comfortable, though glancing at Yunho on the couch leaves you with an inkling of guilt again. His attempt on your life was still very much that — you hardly regret stopping him the way you did (in fact, you left him practically unscathed) — but the place it was coming from was neither genuine or one born of reason.

“He came onto me,” you mutter over your shoulder. Once again, you hear the flutter of pages and a snap as San forgoes his book and redirects his attention to you.

“You are welcome to do whatever you please.” His tone holds no animosity; San can be perhaps a bit too forward with his emotions when he speaks. Tonight, you are grateful for it though. “Yunho is a very good partner, quite doting and accommodating to whatever needs and desires his partner might have.”

“Not…” you clear your throat. Abandoning the dresser, you move to the bed and slip underneath the covers. “Not in that manner. Though it was a topic of discussion briefly. As was the idea of a threesome, but I rejected both offers rather quickly.” You fold your hands over the sheets. It’s a struggle somewhat to look at San’s expression as he’s still sitting upright further up on the mattress than you, but his comfort comes in the form of fingertips tracing your hairline. An encouragement to continue, or a sign that he’s listening intently to what you have to say. “I suggested that he find others to sleep with instead. Can’t take him anywhere: people were ogling him from all sides while he was… lamenting his relationship struggles.”

“Far from surprising. He’s always garnered that sort of attention wherever we go.” San laughs as he runs his fingertips over your scalp. “It’s a shame…” He stops himself from finishing the thought, but you’re not given a chance to press him to continue. “You’ve not stopped trembling since you came in,” he murmurs. With his free hand, San moves his book off to the side table and sinks lower under the covers until he is eye level with your shoulder. “What…” San seems to weigh his words very carefully before daring to speak again. He settles on the most barebones question of all. “I’m always here if you need to talk, yeah?”

And you yourself cannot fathom why you’re trembling at all or when it began. Mingi failed to mention it to you, though you understand that it could have been mere courtesy. To confirm, you lift a hand from the sheets and watch your fingers shake like grass under unruly wind in the low light.

“Ah,” you let out a noise of realization. “I didn’t eat anything before or while we went drinking. Maybe that’s why my head’s bothering me too.”

“Do you need anything to help you sleep?”

“Mm, no, I just need to sleep it off.” You let your hand fall back to its place atop the sheets. “You said once that Yunho is the best drinker on the crew, right?”

“Best at handling alcohol by far, yeah.” San laughs a little as he angles his head down to rest against your bicep. “I’ve seen him down eight shots in a night and not even be tipsy afterwards.”

It stands to reason then that Yunho’s excuses of blaming the alcohol for his behavior are shoddy at best.

You do not fear Yunho, nor were you in any sort of genuine fear for your life back in that alleyway. Your brain barely perceived him as a threat — certainly not one to leave a lasting impression on you. And though it is odd, questionable even, and calls into question your sanity, you do not feel unsafe in San’s presence. There is a lingering unrest brought about by the severe lack of knowledge surrounding what Hongjoong may or may not have had him do to you since your first meeting, but the safety that comes with being beside San has not been called into question. When he tucks himself back under the sheets and rests his head in the juncture between your neck and shoulder, you are all too aware of the steady breaths coming from the couch.

Perhaps it is not that you are afraid, but rather that this unending discomfort comes from some deeper realization. Tonight, whether sober or not, Yunho seemed prepared to abandon that cardinal rule he set for himself: to never bring harm to someone. Solely because he believed it would grant him Hongjoong’s favor.

────────────

A familiar landscape greets you when sleep finally descends, though it doesn’t come with the mild comfort of white sands and black waters. Grey dust pools around your feet, bare and sinking into the flaky terrain as you take a few tentative steps into the ruins ahead. Even in its dilapidated state, you can see that you stand in the remains of a church. Something acrid reaches the inside of your nostrils, making your lip twist in disgust. The stench of something long dead.

One pew remains intact. Upon it sits a figure with contrasting black and white hair split horizontally across the back of his head. His form is so perfectly still that it makes you wonder if he’s even truly there. When you push further into the ruins, the ground gives way with each step, making the grey ash climb up to your ankles. Something sharp digs into the soles of your feet. From what you remember of being in a place similar to this before, you do not want to look down.

“Wooyoung?” you call out. You grip the end of the pew to step carefully around it and look at your friend. He deigns not to return your stare; instead, his gaze is trained firmly on the shattered remains of what once was a stained glass window behind the pulpit.

“Do you know what used to be there?”

His question catches you off-guard, and as you shift to look between the window and his face, you shake your head. Then, right before your eyes, the glass trembles and morphs, broken pieces climbing up from the heaps of ash around the church. As though drawn by some magnetic pull, they move to fill in the frame. The picture fills itself out piece by piece, stained red by the moonlight filtering in from behind, and it makes the imagery all the more horrible to look at.

Long, bony fingers that stretch into sharp points spiderweb over a small face with closed eyes with even smaller hands clasped as though in prayer. The arms attached to the hands descend from above but there is no body to be seen, nor is there a face to put to the monstrous figure. The figure below — the child — kneels on a stone that juts out over a deep black abyss. In the empty space between the arms of the unknown beast, a red moon gleams. Below the abyss, separated by a thin bronze strip, there is a raven with its wings spread wide, and the head is turned sideways, its maw open and pointed towards the sky. The one eye that’s visible is the same red as the moon above it and the one currently hanging above your heads. Its talons curl around a bleeding heart.

“Daichi says that the murders… the sacrifices were always for the greater good of our people. What justification can there be for killing your children and grandchildren under the guise of being blessed by some unseen gods? I don’t get it,” Wooyoung mutters. He leans forward and places his hands on either side of his knees, clenching his fingers around the wooden bench. “If they had known what would happen to them, would they have still done so? Or would they have murdered more in vain attempts to beg for protection from their gods? Repeated the ritual in smaller and smaller increments of time until there were more adults than children? Or even… sought younger candidates for their plight?”

You deign not to answer any of his questions outright; they do not seem to be directed at you in the hopes of response anyway, but you doubt he’ll receive a response from either the ones responsible for the atrocities or those beings such sacrifices were for.

“Our ritual failed. Why?” Vague memories filter their way through your head but they aren’t tangible enough for you to grab hold of.

“I won’t die because of their fate. I won’t let them choose how my life ends or when it ends.”

“Our fates have been sealed, Tsukio. Isn’t it simpler to accept that?”

“Don’t call me that. That’s not my name. And yours isn’t — it isn’t Umiko!”

“They did not have the opportunity to conduct it.”

“Why?” you press again, harder and with more force to your tone. Wooyoung is selecting little truths out of the bigger picture.

“They…” Wooyoung stands suddenly, pursing his lips as he looks down at the floor where ash resides. You wonder if he too feels the slight crunch beneath his toes, if he knows what remains there. “…did not have enough children to do so.”

“They did not have five children to sacrifice?” you retort the second he finishes speaking, and a flush rises up his neck to stain his cheeks. In one blink, Wooyoung looks utterly ashamed, but in the next, a flash of anger takes over his face. You wish to inquire further, wish to know what sowed those seeds of shame, crave to understand that which you cannot remember yet Wooyoung can. None of your questions leave your lips, however.

“They did not deserve to bear even a single child if they were going to just raise their young for slaughter.” Wooyoung turns his palm to the sky, narrowed gaze glaring down at the ash painting his skin. He thumbs over it with his other hand. “I don’t like it here. I don’t want to be here.”

Before you can react, the world around you swirls like it’s in the center of a vortex, and the church dissipates into a haze of nothingness. In its place, black water stretches out before you. Your toes sink into soft sand and smooth stones now instead of ash and bones. The violent and sudden shift makes your stomach lurch, sending you forward to propel your hands forward to brace on your knees in a barely successful attempt to catch yourself as a dry heave ripples through your body. Wooyoung looks none too bothered in stark comparison.

“How do you do that?” Wooyoung watches you carefully out of the corner of his eye as you approach the spot where he crouches by the water. “I can’t seem to control any bit of the Dreamscape while I’m here.”

“That’s not true,” he sighs before patting the sand beside him. You take the invitation to sit down there, folding your legs underneath you. “You can, we share the same abilities in that way. You simply can’t remember how to do so.”

“Would you show me, if I asked?”

Wooyoung’s lips quirk a little, and he shifts to kneel in front of you. Taking your left hand into both of his, he flips your palm up to the sky.

“Close your eyes.” Two fingers dig into your palm. “Imagine a butterfly sitting on your hand; the type doesn’t matter, just picture it in your mind. Think about how it would feel, the shape and size of it, what it would look like.” You do as told without complaint or question, letting his instructions flow over you as he continues to speak. “It gets easier over time, and takes less time and effort. Like me now, I can change a whole landscape with just a thought. Or revisit old memories in the same manner. It starts small, though. Thinking something into existence out of nothing. Keep focusing on that image of a butterfly in your hand… and eventually you open your eyes—”

Your eyes flit open when you feel the slightest phantom touch against your palm.

“—to something amazing,” Wooyoung whispers through a smile, looking down at the same spot on your palm.

There in place of his fingers sits a small butterfly with wings painted blue and black. The wonder that bubbles up in your chest is palpable, like the wings of that very butterfly are beating frantically against your ribcage. It folds its wings in and out on your palm, small spindly legs testing their strength against your flesh, then in the blink of an eye, it brings itself into the air and flutters up and away into the starry sky. You lift your hand closer to your face, and your fingers trace over the spot where the creature just was as though another might pop up in its place.

“So, yes, you are capable of altering the Dreamscape as you see fit. You likely have already done so here and there; perhaps, not consciously, as Seonghwa mentioned to me you only feel able to use your abilities if your life is under duress. That makes sense — to an extent, it’s true. Your Siren genetics act as a barrier of sorts to defend you in times of need, but you are equally capable of using them in other circumstances.” Wooyoung reaches both his hands out, motioning for you to let him take hold of yours. This time he cups both your hands together. His palms are warm against your knuckles, and his fingertips skate over your wrists. “Now try again, with something bigger. The same way as before.”

An image blooms behind your eyelids when you shut your eyes, and as you focus on bringing the creature to life with your mind, Wooyoung’s honey tone seeps into your ears.

“While you won’t be able to do this in real life, it helps to start trying to hone these abilities in the Dreamscape. Learning to focus your energy into something, to pull from an invisible pool within you — these are both key in being able to draw upon your Siren abilities in the real world. It’s easier when your body is asleep because there aren’t any external stressors happening at the same time — so long as you aren’t ripped out of sleep early.” Wooyoung’s hands withdraw from yours, but you can still feel the heat emanating from them so he must remain close. “As a Siren, you can do all sorts of things that others might find odd and unnatural. But that’s how the universe works, no? San has his endless stamina, can blend in with shadows to conceal himself, has that Spectre constitution that lets him run faster and jump higher. Yeosang has his intelligence, the elevated mental capacity that comes with being an Elitist. A natural tendency to lean towards logic over emotionality, and everything comes easier to him even if it’s something he’s never tried before. Mingi and Jongho have their unmatched strength, but also the unfortunate side effect of absorbing the emotional auras of those around them which makes Berserkers more prone to aggression and violence due to an overstimulation of the limbic system.

“And people like you and me, Seonghwa — what we have is a legacy. It differs from person to person. No two Sirens will have the same extent of ‘powers’, however, I despise calling our abilities that because it sounds childish. We’re all born with our intuition. You’ve felt it before with both Seonghwa and myself, and I know I’ve mentioned it to you. We can sense another Siren’s distress and push out energy to soothe or provide comfort. Similar to Berserkers, a bit, in that we can feel what other Sirens feel. Some history books even claim that the first settlers on Celeste were Berserkers and the gods of Celeste blessed them to create Sirens, though I find it hard to believe. The key difference is that rather than absorbing emotions from fellow Sirens, we possess something of a heightened empathy.”

Wooyoung withdraws his hands completely, quicker than you expect him to, and the haste in his movements bring you to open your eyes and look over at him. His gaze lingers on your hands. Whatever words he was going to share with you are lost as his lips part to let a sigh slip out. Something soft writhes between your palms, fluttering and beating a few times before quiet warbles emit from the space. You part your thumbs, gingerly and ever so carefully, to reveal a round budgerigar so young that its adult feathers have yet to fully come in. It twists its head around, surveying the surroundings with beady black eyes, before stretching its small wings and unveiling the black striped pattern across them.

“You… made a bird.” Wooyoung reaches out to it with his index finger crooked like a perch, and the bird climbs up without hesitation. It remains unphased when Wooyoung brings his face close to it, merely letting out a little warble and tilting its head at him. “Incredible.”

Without another word, Wooyoung lifts his hand up above your heads, and the bird immediately takes flight. You watch it disappear into the trees across the lake with a similar feeling of wonder as before when you created the butterfly. Wooyoung’s gaze lingers longer than yours, seemingly consumed by thoughts you aren’t privy to, and when he turns back to you at last, his expression is more troubled than anything.

“As I was saying — Sirens, we can shift the density of our bodies to go through objects like a wall or a door, though it is more difficult to master as you risk getting stuck inside whatever object you’re trying to phase through. But, well, it’s different for you. Most Sirens cannot go through living things, or rip a man’s heart clean out of his chest.” Wooyoung gives you a sympathetic smile.

“Nothing we don’t already know,” you reply with a shrug.

“Seonghwa mentioned a certain incident that occurred on Dorado.” Wooyoung winces a bit and looks down at the sand. “He was asking me questions, at least. I put two and two together based on what we had talked about that one time and asked the right questions to get the information out of him. Not maliciously! I just needed to be certain about why he was asking, in case — so that I could understand better. I ended up doing some research on a few of the databases Hongjoong has access to, and there are records of Sirens being able to do similar things. Most, unfortunately, were captured by the military or slavers to be used as weapons. Some were test subjects as well, and there are a few detailed studies about being able to phase through living beings. Other records showed that militaries use Sirens as batteries to power other soldiers with their blood, which is horrific. I couldn’t stomach to look into that for long, it was just too gruesome.”

“Then it’s possible that both you and Seonghwa could do so?”

Wooyoung hums, nodding a few times, “Yeah, in theory. I’ve never made any attempt to do so. And Seonghwa never mentioned it before he learned of you doing so. Had you ever done anything similar before then?”

“With a living creature, no. Early on when I first joined the crew, I recall being able to pass through bullets without taking harm on my first mission. Then when I was captured with San, I was able to free myself by phasing through ropes.”

“Both of those instances were likely your natural instincts jumping out as a form of self defense.”

“What of your ability? Daichi mentioned it some time ago, that we were found to be most apt for sacrifice because we were Sirens not meant to exist. He implied that I shouldn’t be able to rip a man’s heart out with my bare hands, just as you should not be able to kill Sirens within the confines of the Dreamscape.”

“If I am able to kill Sirens here in the Dreamscape, then it’s a tad terrifying to think of what forsaken ability you were given. And to be fair, ripping hearts out is a mighty horrifying ability to have, so it might very well be what sets you apart. Though Daichi is limited by the constraints of our knowledge here, as far as I know. Unless there is an unknown entity that resides in the Dreamscape alongside him, then he only shares information which we already know. Hence why he can be so damn dodgy when answering questions. I’d assume that at the time when you told you that, he was gleaning knowledge from the two of us, or potentially Seonghwa. Seonghwa believes that you should not be able to do what you did to that man; that was why he approached me asking for information, because he has some inkling that you and I are not the same as him.”

“He’s inconsistent at best,” you say, drawing a confused glance from Wooyoung before clarifying, “Daichi is. Sometimes it truly does seem like he only knows what we know, but other times, he speaks in riddles and circles as though he knows more than he lets on.”

“Something of an unreliable old man, hm?” Wooyoung jokes through a soft laugh. “I know he dislikes me because he fears me. I have tried and failed to kill him before. But because so much of his identity is an oddity to me, I’m not sure if I can hurt him at all. Regardless though, he loves to remind me that I was supposed to die alongside you and three other children a long time ago. I don’t believe him when he says that we were only meant to die because we were special. We were marked to die as babies. Our abilities did not come until later, until after the cult had conducted all sorts of experiments on us. That cult was the same one who made us a dyad, with the hope that in the future we would have been able to further a stronger bloodline. Why would they have gone through so much effort for children marked to die?”

You recall this somewhat from what Wooyoung has told you in the past.

“We were part of a group of children used by a defunct sect of the main church… an old, defective sector that had broken off a long time in the past and taken their teachings with them…There were thirty children to start, all chosen from birth and offered by their families for the tests, yet each year, more and more children died. By the time the Ritual Year came along, there were only seven children left, and among them, both of us remained…It wasn’t something given at birth, not a gift from the gods — it was a harsh result of cruel and repeated testing and experimentation that kills dozens of children. Except, despite us successfully making it through that ordeal, we were still meant to die in the ritual, as a sacrifice to the gods.”

“Perhaps they wanted to find a way to halt the sacrifices,” you mutter, toying with a bit of loose skin around your pinky nail. “Instead of sacrificing children to be blessed with Siren abilities, maybe their intent was to make it so that Sirens could be self-sufficient without gods. I imagine… any parent doubtful of the church’s teachings would have been eager to find a way out for their child.”

“I suppose that much could be true. I remember next to nothing of my parents, even less of my grandparents, so whatever beliefs they held true to are a mystery to me.” Wooyoung inhales so sharply that he winces a little. “Regardless of any of that, it’s a good sign that you're still able to tap into your abilities. It means more might come back to you as time continues to pass.”

“Sometimes it feels more like I’m regressing rather than moving forward,” you complain, dropping your hand and leaving your cuticle be for now. Wooyoung hums.

“It makes sense, given what you’ve been forced to go through lately,” with his words comes a tone so full of reassurance that it makes your chest ache. “An overload of new information on top of relearning yourself — learning that much of what you thought you knew to be real was a carefully constructed lie. No one would blame you for having those feelings. It could very well be that your own mind is getting in the way of you remembering what it means to be a Siren in an attempt to protect you from further harm. Since your mind may be uncertain what’s real and what isn’t, you could be unintentionally blocking yourself from honing your abilities and can only tap into them in life or death situations.” Wooyoung reaches out across the space between your bodies and sets his hand down on your knee. “I promise I’ll do my best to help you distinguish between what’s real and what isn’t. I can only do so much if your mind subconsciously thinks that whatever memories are still locked behind the wall the serum put up are dangerous. But I do like a challenge. Hell, I made an Elitist fall in love with me, so what’s some pesky military medicine compared to that?”

You purse your lips, letting one of your hands cover Wooyoung’s and give it a small squeeze.

“You’ll have to forgive me if I rely on your optimism too much. It’s hard for me to be as confident as you.”

“That’s okay. I’ll be positive for both of us!” Wooyoung twists his hand in your grasp and pushes it upwards with his own. Your fingers splay out against each other, his extending past yours by several centimeters. “When we were little, my hands were smaller than yours. I thought I’d never hear the end of it with the way you so mercilessly teased me.” His eyes turn glassy as he looks at your palms pressed together. “Before I moved into Yeosang’s room at the castle, when we shared a cot in the broom closet next to the kitchen… we would compare hand sizes every night, and I always insisted that my hands would be bigger than yours one day. After we were separated and you were forced to leave, I would hold my hand up to the ceiling and ask you if it had finally outgrown yours.”

It sends a pang through you knowing that Wooyoung has to relive these memories alone, that you cannot share in the nostalgia the same way he does. You hardly know what to say now, so you intertwine your fingers and cling to him as tightly as you can without causing pain. His hand trembles in your grasp, the same way his smile wobbles.

“How lucky I am to finally see the day where I can say I was right to your face.”

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You’re stirred awake by a gentle nudging against your shoulder, and it isn’t until your consciousness starts processing what’s going on that you hear San’s voice filtering through the haze of sleepiness.

“Hey, star, we gotta go downstairs.”

“Mmhmph?” you grumble, hand grabbing at air a few times before it finds purchase on San’s warm and solid bicep.

“Yunho wants to introduce us to the owner of this hostel. He claims — he says it’s his father.”

genuinely am seriously so thankful and grateful and touched by everyone who has been sending love and messages lately, even if just to say they've been thinking of me/moc or rereading in the long wait it truly truly motivated me to keep pushing onwards and keep going despite everything :')

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a/n: good god where do i even begin TT if not for an apology for the obscene and absurd and stupid amount of time it has taken for me to get this out 😭 genuinely was wanting this to be posted in january but holy heck look at the time it's.... may... kms...

nothing will make up for the long wait but i do hope you enjoyed this chapter nonetheless!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

[anomaly-hivemind]

Horror Convention || No. 9 Gloryhole w/ Horror Characters x Fem! Reader

Kinktober Masterlist

Word Count: 1995

Warnings: gloryhole, free use, exhibition, overstimulation, large cock, vaginal sex, gangbang if you squint, vagianl fingering, mask kink, stranger sex, cosplaying oral sex, blow jobs, hand job, spit as lube, multiple orgasms,

You were going to a horror convention, it was your first one and you couldn't be more excited to go. You were wearing a slutty freddy krueger outfit excluding the knife coves because they sold out at the spirit halloween. It was too late to buy any online. You were wearing a ripped up black and red cropped top, a jean mini skirt, some stressed thigh-highs and wedges.

When you finally got inside the convention center, there were a lot of things going on with an unsettling low amount of security personnel around. It was a bit overwhelming but you were going to push through it just fine. It was full of cosplaying horror characters, new and old, popular and niche. Even horror shorts films, tv shows and games.

“Can I take a picture with you? I really like the freddy outfit,” the muffled voice of a guy said behind an old respirator.

Oh yeah sure, I like your outfit too. It's from my bloody valentine right?” you lean into the guy so he could take the photo. The guy pulls you close to him for the picture, then he turns to face you.

“Yeah I've had this for a while now.” he laughs and crosses his arm.

“Well it's super cool, practically identical to the movie.” you look him up and down, he was a carbon copy of the original.

“A bunch of my buddies and staff are hosting an event on the west wing in an hour. You should totally go. “ The Harry warden cosplayer handed a pass for the event. ‘Glory Horror’ printed on the card.

“Yeah I will be there.” you nod and take the pass. You can't believe you got an event pass for free.

=========================================================================

An hour had passed, you had bought a scream poster, a friday the 13th shirt and the regret of your shoe choices. You push past the last part and make your way to the event. It was a ways away from everything else which was a bit suspicious but not enough for you to turn around. You show the bouncer guy your pass and ID, because you guess this is an 18 plus event.

You take a seat in the front, the seats were really comfortable. The lights were dim and the walls around the panel looked sound proof. This was super fancy for a panel. It makes you wonder what's going to happen, especially with how fast the room is getting filled with horror fans such as yourself. Most of them were wearing masks from what you can see in the dark space.

A bright red stage light hits the middle of the stage. The familiar guy from earlier that gave you your pass to this event walks to the center. Two other people dragged something onto the stage behind him, also dressed up, one looked like Amanda the pig from the jigsaw moves or the dead by daylight game. The other person was dressed like the monster from Jeepers creepers. There was a large box with a set of holes of different sizes, odd but you find the tv and cameras placed inside and outside the box.

“Welcome to this year's Glory Horror event. Many of you who know about this event already know what's up, but for our virgin Marys let me explain what’s up.” Harry warden cosplayer says through the microphone, his mask muffling his words.

“We’re going to pick a lucky Slasher Slut in the audience to go into the box.” The man snickered as the crowd went wild. Harry looked into the group of seated people, presumably to find someone to put in the box.

“Anything goes when you're behind the veil.” he points to the closed door.

You look around the audience that you were in and they all seemed excited to either be picked or see who was going to end up being picked. You just stare at everyone in confusion.

“You, are you willing to take a dive into carnal pleasures and try out the box?” He points to you from the crowd, when you point to yourself he nods. You stand up, nerves run down your spine as you walk onto the stage. You were surprised with how excited every person in the audience seemed to be that you got picked.

“What am I supposed to do?” you asked while looking at the box.

“It's pretty self explanatory, but you get in the box, the cameras are already set up, we gave you a screen to see the reactions you're giving people.” You nod at him and step into the box, it was large and you could stand up right without being seen by anyone, not counting the screen that was broadcasting you to the outside.

“You can strip down any point and if you want out of the box just push the button to unlock the door.

“You want me to do what now.” you asked from behind the wall, your voice muffled mostly.

“Strip, take off those slutty clothes and either open that pretty mouth or a hole. Prepared to get stuffed in whichever you choose and you can switch at whatever time doll.

You think for a moment, you could back out right now but a part of you wanted to see what happened. With a shaky breath you take off your freddy krueger fit and finally take off your dreadful shoes. You were just in your bra and underwear, taking a seat on your knees in the middle. The bigger hole was covered with a black sheet.

A knock on one of the sides catches your attention, you turn your head and your eyes widen. A veiny cock filled the hole, making it look smaller than it was and it makes your mouth water. You looked over at your screen to see what you're working with, a guy wearing a Michael Myers mask. Your lip quivers as you wrap your fingers around his length.

His balls twitch as you tighten the grip on this stranger’s cock. You use your saliva to wet the tip of his dick. You hear the faint groan of the Myers look alike, it was hot and a turn on for sure. You take his cock deeper in your mouth, almost gagging on it, using your hand to massage his balls and or stroke the rest of his meaty meat.

Another knock from the others size makes you pull your lips off Myer’s member. Someone else had slid their dick into the other hole, the screen splits so you can see the masked figure. It was Brahms, down to the black messy hair, even matches the drapes decorating the base of this man’s uncut dick.

You take your other hand and start to rub at his cute dick. Both of your hands were being filled with their cocks. You were soaking wet from how hot this was and if your hands went filled you would be touching yourself right now. You placed licks on both the dicks one after the other. Even the thought that there were a bunch of people on the other side of this box, watching and listening or maybe even waiting to take a turn with you.

It was hot, you felt hot and you wanted more of all of it. You squeeze the guys dicks as you jerk them both off with determination. Michael myers’ dick twitching was the only short warning you get before he shoots a hot load onto your chest. Your bra ruined with cum makes you pout for a moment before you take the thing off. You put your mouth onto the remaining man and take him down your throat. Brahms cums down your esophagus, his seed tasting weirdly sweet on your tastebuds.

You lick your lips after pulling away the dicks both gone from the holes, making you sigh. You slide off your panties and just as you thought you dripped in arousal. You rub yourself and let out short moans, a guy that was looking like Jason Voorhees pushed his phat cock through the hole. It looked heavy, craving your touch. You touch yourself with one hand while sucking off this fat dick. Even if you couldn’t fit all or even most of it into your mouth you sure as hell tried. You moan against the length of this Jason.

Your fingers thrust into yourself at a similar pace as you sucked and stroked his dick. You come to a stand and turn around, your wet cunt fluttering with horniness. Lining your slit with a guy who looked like a slasher’s dick. You let out a hearty moan as this fat cock stretches you out. You could feel his dick twitch and the man moan from the intrusion. He bottoms out in you, your walls clench around him and then he starts to move slowly in and out of you. You rub your clit as your hole gets pounded into. Another dick pops into the hole in front of you and wraps your hand around it with hesitation. Peaking at the screen in the box you see that it's a guy dressed up in a ghostface outfit.

“Ohshit ohshit ohfucking hell.” you were on the verge of coming and the mix of a Jason hitting all your spots with his girth was making it harder to focus on stroking the guy in front of you.

You try your best to get the other guy to completion but your own impending orgasm was a bit of a distraction to say the least. This Jason guy’s thrust was getting relentless and it was super hot to say the least. You hold on for as long as you could but when you feel the man’s load start to pool down your leg sends you down the edge. Before you could complain about how fast the guy pulled out another guy pushed into you, somehow even thicker and longer than the Jason guy.

You squeeze the hell out of the ghostface and your thumb pushes on his slit. It makes the guy come all over you and hand it a messy gush. The new masked covered hottie was fast enough to work you past that previous orgasm but Jason had given you but now you were getting a bit overstimulated. The faint tapping of the man's pyramid helmet on the box wall makes you giggle. Yet the humor in all of this was cut short from the brutal thrust this pyramid head was giving you.

You were already about to fall into another climax, you couldn't help but scream out a moan that you're sure everyone in the panel heard. Maybe even people outside nearby could hear your whorish moans and whales. This massive curved dick was rubbing your insides just right and your lower half couldn't take much more of it, not standing up like you are right now at least. You reach another chaotic mind altering, pussy spasming, leg trembling, back arching, toe curling climax that almost gives you whiplash an.

You feel the sticky seed fill your cunt and pull out with lackluster pace, almost like he didn’t want to leave your warmth so it takes a minute or so before he actually does . When the pyramid head finally pulls out, your body drops to the stage ground with a thud. You were panting like a dog, cum was dripping out of you and sticking to your thighs. Your heart is pounding in your chest as you try to catch your breath.

“This is the best Horror con ever.” you say breathlessly, as you look at another dick slipping into one of the holes. Checking your provided inside the box you see who it is, the host of this event… it’s Harry warden.

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

To be alone with you 7

Warnings: this fic will include dark content such as dubcon/noncon, obsession, power imbalance, cheating, and other possible triggers. My warnings are not exhaustive, enter at your own risk.

This is a dark!fic and explicit. 18+ only. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Summary: Your babysitting gig becomes complicated. (f!plus sized!reader)

Character: dilf!Clark Kent

Note: Long time, no see.

As per usual, I humbly request your thoughts! Reblogs are always appreciated and welcomed, not only do I see them easier but it lets other people see my work. I will do my best to answer all I can. I’m trying to get better at keeping up so thanks everyone for staying with me <3

Your feedback will help in this and future works (and WiPs, I haven’t forgotten those!)

Love you all. Take care. 💖

Spaghetti and meatballs. Simple and delicious. You assume it’s one of Clark’s specialties, the way Jonny talks about it. A plateful steams before you, the garlicky scent tugging at the appetite you hadn’t noticed before.

After the unsettling night alone, you’re starting to feel normal again. It’s comforting to have someone else there, even if it is Clark. He’s not a bad guy, he’s nice enough, it’s just that underlying imbalance that makes it awkward. Technically, he’s your boss. Even if he wasn’t, he’s much older, you’re not sure you have much in common.

“Uh, what do you want to drink?” Clark calls from the kitchen, “I see Sprite and… not much else.”

“Oh, I’ll have one, please,” you answer. You don’t drink soda often, your mom’s the one who keeps the Sprite in the fridge but it’s so hot out you could go for a crisp drink.

You wait patiently, not wanting to be rude and start before he’s sitting down. It only seems right after he went to all the trouble of cooking for you. Clark appears with two glasses. You’re surprised he didn’t just bring the cans but don’t think much of it.

He puts a glass beside your plate, then his own, a few cubes of ice in his. You notice how his hair curls with the heat, a little askew from his efforts in the kitchen. You smile and thank him for the drink.

“This looks good. You really didn’t have to go to all this trouble. Dad left me pizza money.”

“It’s fine. I’m a bit restless without anyone around. I’m used to this,” he shrugs as he sits down, his shoulders wider than the chair. Sometimes you forget how big he is. It’s almost absurd when he’s just an overworked suburban dad in your head.

“Dig in, please. You didn’t have to wait,” he stirs the sauce into his noodles.

“Oh, it’s okay,” you twirl your fork in the pile of pasta. You blow over the steaming sauce and lean forward, tasting it as you try not to flick sauce all over. You hum and do your best to slurp up the ends of the noodles without making a mess. “That’s pretty good.”

“Yep, got more than my good looks,” he chuckles, “I can cook too.”

You smile, taking another bite and chewing through the tension. There’s a bit of zest to the sauce. You can’t disagree with his self-appraisal. He can cook.

You take the folded paper towel next to your plate and wipe your lips before you reach for your soda. You gulp it greedily and nearly choke. You sputter as the carbonation bubbles up to your nostrils.

“You okay?” Clark asks, his cheek ticking.

“Oh, yeah, yeah,” you sniffle and push the paper towel to your nose. You laugh at yourself and clear your throat, “I… haven’t had sprite in a while, guess I forgot how it tastes.”

“Ah, well, did you want water?” He asks.

“No, it’s fine. Not bad,” you turn the glass and look at the soda, “bit of an aftertaste.”

“I don’t really have soda,” he sits back, poking at his plate, “most water. A juice box here and there.”

“Makes sense.”

Your forks clink as you eat in silence. The air is thick as both of you search for something to talk about. Where you’re struggling to find some commonality, there’s a twitchiness to him that suggests he’s trying not to say everything.

“If you’re up for it, maybe we could watch a movie?” He suggests.

“A movie?” You weigh the prospect. You suppose it’s a better idea than staring at the wall. Movies are a great way to fill awkward silences. “Sure, why not. Been a while since I saw anything good. Do you have anything in mind?”

“Nah, not really. I mostly end up watching Pixar so it’s on you. I trust your judgment.”

“You shouldn’t,” you scoff, “I love Pixar.”

He smiles and gives a small chuckle, “well, just don’t be mad when I mouth along with the dialogue.”

“Kidding,” you take another sip of Sprite, trying to wash away the tomatoey tang, “promise, adult movies only.” You cringe as you realise what you said, “I mean, grown-up– er–”

Clark laughs louder, “I got it,” his cheeks bulb as the cleft in his chin deepens, “I know what you’re saying, don’t worry about it.”

“Right,” you shift in your chair, thoroughly embarrassed. You really are so smooth. It’s a good thing it’s just him, you’re sure he’s not very worried about your dumb remarks.

🏡

Despite your efforts to help, Clark insists on cleaning up. You let him as you go upstairs to take a quick shower. Sweating in the sun reading all day has left you feeling a bit musty.

You pull on a pair of striped pajama shorts and a loose tee shirt. You do a face scrub and some moisturising serum before finally emerging, feeling fresh and a bit sleepy. You can hear Clark below scuttling around.

You go downstairs and peer towards the darkened doorway of the kitchen. You pass it and stop just at the threshold of the front room. You find Clark laying out the cushions on the floor along with the throw blankets and pillows. The coffee table is moved aside to allow for some space as the TV glares behind him.

You give him a curious look and he flinches as he notices you. You come forward slowly as the loose hem of your shorts ripples against your thigh. You’re suddenly very aware of how much of your legs are bare. Oh well, it’s only Clark.

“What are you doing?” You ask as you cross the room.

“Oh, me and Jonny do this. I figured you weren’t into making forts but I just thought–” he stops and looks down at his handiwork, “it’s lame, isn’t it? I’m sorry. I’m just trying to make things feel normal… for both of us.”

You give an empathetic smile, “it’s nice. Really,” you look him in the eye, the bold blues gleaming back at you, “it’s sweet. And it looks cozy.”

“Great,” he lightens up as he drops the last pillow, “well,” he turns and grabs the remote, “choose something.”

You nod and take the remote. You sit on a cushion and lean back against the couch. You flick through the new additions on the main screen and choose a movie you’ve heard a lot of buzz about. You blink as the light suddenly goes out and you look over to see Clark’s shadow moving towards you. It gives you an eerie wave of deja vu as you recall the silhouette of the intruder.

You shudder and reach to put the remote up on the couch behind you. You turn back around and a large yawn erupts without warning. You rub your itchy eyes and shake your head, the edges of the television almost blurry as you try to focus on it.

“Tired?” Clark nudges you as he sits beside you.

“Didn’t sleep after… after last night,” you say.

“Ah, of course not. That was a stupid question.”

“It’s f-i-ine,” you yawn again, “really. I’m sure I will tonight. Especially with you here.”

“Really?” He breathes.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t be able to turn the lights off if I was alone,” you lean into the couch as you slouch down, “anyway, I’ll be quiet. Movie’s starting.”

He doesn’t answer as he mirrors you, plumping a pillow behind himself as he wiggles down and gazes up at the screen. Your eyelids feel heavy as you fight to keep them open. The opening scene barely ends as you feel your body slackening with fatigue. You’re barely going to make it through the credits.

You turn onto your side, leaning on your elbow as you hug a pillow under your head. You feel Clark shift too. You blink, a long blink, and when you open your eyes again, you’re lost. You have no idea what the characters are talking about.

You flutter your lashes and try to sit up. You give up as an achy weakness bites at your muscles. Oh well, if you fall asleep, you fall asleep. You can’t fight it anymore.

You close your eyes and wade in the shallow pool of exhaustion. Your head goes wobbly as you’re vaguely aware of the hues flickering and flashing from the television. A sudden warmth rests on your hip, a light sensation you can’t place.

“Are you awake?”

The question blows through you. You don’t have the strength to answer. Your eyes feel strange, dry and almost painful. 

You wiggle, shaken by a strength not your own. You slip further from consciousness. You flip onto your back, dragged down until you're entirely flat on the floor. Your eyes are glued shut as you’re trapped in the dregs of sleep. You can’t break through, but you can feel the world around you.

You feel a tickle over your stomach and along your chest. A soft squeeze and a dampness blows over your throat. Heat surrounds you as something prods below your jaw, something soft brushing on your neck. A low drone swirls in your ears.

“Mmm, sweetie, you smell good,” Clark’s voice distorts as you languish in the void, “I bet you feel even better.”

Another tickle. Just along your thighs. A coolness that breezes over you as fabric ripples against you. The loose leg rumples against the crease of your leg as a stroking sensation flicks around your clit.

The electrifying currents radiate from your core. Your chest rises and falls with your rushing breaths. Your heart beats loudly, further deafening the muffled voices coming from the television and the low moan drifting into your ear. Your name plucks at you but cannot rouse you.

Wetness across your cheek then on your lips, delving inside, pressing to your tongue. A sloppy lapping, slickness around your mouth, a new weight over you. Tugging at your shirt and roughness against your tender skin. Squeezing and kneading your chest as a fire razes over your.

Your legs are pushed wide. You feel the world shift and tilt as you come near the surface. Your eyes slit and you can see shadows pulsing all around. A heavy blackness hangs over you as you feel heat against your thighs. Firm muscle holding you open.

You gasp as the wetness along your cunt eases the intrusion. Your eyelids flick up and your eyes roll as your head lolls dizzily. You fight to lift your head but can’t. It’s too much just to look around. 

The single digits moves in and out of you, inching deeper each time, the ridge of knuckles grazing your walls. You moan as the hand pulls back and a second finger stretches you. In, out, the wet noise of your tight cunt nips at your shame. 

It’s not a dream. It can’t be. It feels too real. Too deep. He’s touching you, he’s inside you. Mr. Kent rocks his hand against your cunt as he hangs his head next to yours and pants, his large body draped across you.

“Baby,” he purrs as your arms remain paralysed at your sides, “shhh, it’s okay. It won’t hurt…” he whispers, “the pills will help.”

You don’t understand what he’s saying or what he’s doing. No, no, you’re wrong. It has to be a dream. He wouldn’t do this. He doesn’t want you. He has a wife. He’s heartbroken over her.

The glare of the TV limns his shoulders, broad and rounded with muscles. He’s naked. The colours skew over his skin as he curls his back, dragging his fingers free of your cunt. He leaves a wet trail down your thigh.

He pushes his knees up, keeping you splayed around him. He feels along your shorts, once more delving past the loose cotton. He prods against your folds. A bulbous, thick shape that has you clenching. He lines his tip up with your entrance and leans in, just enough for you to whimper.

He slides back along your lips, slickening himself with your stolen pleasure. He rubs against you, over and over, stopping again at your entrance. He huffs and jostles you, urging his thick forearm under your neck. Your head hangs back over his arm as you groan and curl your fingers against the blankets.

“Baby, it hurts me too,” he dips his hips, forcing his tip past the tight resistance. Your voice rises, tiny, short squeaks as you feel the daze splitting with your inside. “Just a little…” he rocks back and in again, an inch at first, over and over, shaking each time. “Little more…” he sinks in further and your voice grows more steady. 

Your eyes are wide and terrified as the pain assures you of reality. You tense but your body won’t obey. You can’t stop him. You can’t move!

“Little…” he repeats and thrusts deeper again, “...more,” he rolls back and in. His arm bends around your neck as he buries his face in your hair. His other hand braces your thigh, nails digging in as he keeps his motion. With each tilt, he slides in more. More and more until you’re agonizingly full.

You let out a whine, long and desperate as he reaches his limit. He keeps himself there as he whimpers and shakes. He wiggles his hips as he feels you around him.

“Oh god, I… you’re so good. Why are you so good?” He puffs and thrusts, jolting your entire body, “you… you’re so good I had to. I know…” he ruts again, “I shouldn’t… I shouldn’t…I shouldn’t…” he chants as he keeps his motion, easing back slowly only to snap back into you.

Your eyes wet and tears trickle out. It’s more than the pain, it’s the horror swelling in you, boiling but unable to flow over as you remain helpless. You close your eyes and choke on a sob as he rams into you faster, flesh clapping louder each time he dips into you.

You ache as he fucks you. On and on. It feels like forever as you strain against the futility, only able to bend and unbend your fingers. Please stop. Please get off. All you can utter are senseless garbles.

“Baby,” he growls, “I’m gonna– I can’t–” He pushes off of you in a panic, sliding halfway before he spasms and bucks, whimpering as you feel him spill into you, “shit, shit, shit,” he pants as he stills himself, “I didn’t mean to… not inside…”

Your head falls to the side, your eyes rolling back into your skull. You let the darkness win. You’re going to wake up and it’s all going to be a nightmare. Right?

[rbbrbikerthorp]

A New Neighbour Moves In

[Please note: all characters are 18 plus and any reference to boy or girl is purely descriptive or used in dialogue between the characters.]

Mitchell was living the life much like any typical 23 year old male would. He’d graduated university, he had started his career in recruitment for legal and financial services and was starting to earn good monthly commissions on top of his basic salary. He’d used all the money inherited from his grandparents to buy a 1-bedroom flat in a new development, just on the edge of the city centre. Mitchell didn’t have a steady girlfriend – he wasn’t in a long-term relationship place. As he told his mates at the gym, he was a ‘date them and ditch them’ once he’d managed to ‘get them in the sack’ kind of bloke.

It was a Monday morning and Mitchell needed to get to work. First, he had to navigate his way carefully out of the flat where he’d been invited to spend the night. The girl he’d met in the club the previous evening had taken a shine to his blue eyes, rugby toned body and wavy blonde hair. “Another notch on the bedpost,” Mitchell thought as he tiptoed his way out of the girl’s bedroom. Mitchell made it a policy to only meet women in person and he would never exchange contact details. It meant that none of his ‘conquests’ had any idea of how to find him and, as he was enjoying his ‘tom cat’ life so much, he sure didn’t want to be found. He went on his Uber app and requested a taxi. In less than two minutes one had pulled up in front of him. He took one last look up at the window to check the curtains were still closed and the car pulled away from the curb.

He arrived back at his flat in plenty of time to get ready for the day ahead. He shaved his weekend beard growth and then turned on the shower. Whilst the water warmed up, he took a moment to admire himself in the mirror. He loved how beefy his legs looked from the years of playing rugby first in secondary school and then in the university’s first team. His regular attendance at the gym meant he had a well-defined chest and arms. Women loved his bum as it stood out, firm and muscular. Yes, at that moment as he entered the shower cubicle Mitchell was very content with his life, but on this day, things were about to change.

As Mitchell locked his front door, he noticed piles of boxes outside the flat next door. As he turned towards the lifts, he ran into a large man. He barely stopped as he fell into him. Stepping backwards he said, “I’m really sorry, I didn’t see you there.” As the guy regained his balance, Mitchell noticed the man’s shaved head, jeans with bleach marks with tall black boots with white laces tucked into them. Even though he thought of himself as a tough, well-built guy, he stuttered feeling inadequate and intimidated by this stranger. “I…I…I’m Mitchell,” holding out his hand, “n... n… nice to meet you. So, you’re moving in next door? I… I… always wondered who my new neighbour would be? It’s been vacant for ages.

The man smiled, “I’m John and yes, it was quite a steal really. Apparently last owner had been shacked up with his fiancé for the last few months and they were about to get married. I made an offer a bit less than what they were asking for, but, because he needed to put money down as a deposit on a new house, he had no choice but to accept.”

“Well,” Mitchell replied being polite, “I… I… I’ve got to get my bus.”

“Yes, I can see you’re dressed for an office. As you can probably see I’m not a suit person myself.”

Mitchell laughed nervously. Why was he feeling so unsettled by this guy?

“Look, why don’t you drop by when you get home from work. I always like to get to know my new neighbours.”

On the spur of the moment, Mitchell couldn’t think of an excuse not to accept the invitation, so he said, “why not? Must go!” As he walked away, he could sense the man was staring at him. He shouted, “good luck unpacking” and then lowered his voice a little, “weirdo.”

John couldn’t help admiring his good-looking young neighbour’s physique, and he shook his head hearing Mitchell mumbling that last word. He began to create a mental picture of what Mitchell might look like wearing less formal clothing. Tattoos were common on young men of a similar age these days, so John wondered if he had acquired any ink yet. He was sure to find out later when Mitchell would drop in for a chat and John would explain was his lifestyle was all about. John set about unpacking so that he could prepare for his young neighbour’s visit.

It was around 7:30 in the evening when John heard a knock on the door. He opened it to find Mitchell had changed out of his work suit into a t-shirt and sports shorts. “Come in.” It felt more like an order to Mitchell than a pleasantry.

“You got everything unpacked I see.” Mitchell said trying not to stare at the many pairs of tall lace-up boots all lined up by the door; taking in the various bomber jackets hanging on the coat rack and the skinhead themed pictures and posters on the walls.

John noticed Mitchell’s “That’s nothing lad, I’ve got way more kit in the bedroom.”

Mitchell really didn’t want to know any more about what might be in John’s bedroom, “takes all kinds I guess,” he thought as John handed him a beer. The two men chatted, but as Mitchell sipped away at the beer, “wow”, he thought, “this stuff has a real kick.” He found himself becoming more relaxed and more willing give direct answers to John’s questions; about his job, his personal life, his family and friends. Mitchell was hoping that by dressing as though he was going to the gym and John would bring their chat to an end and let him go on his way. Mitchell was starting to fidget as you do when you’re about to stand up. However, John had different ideas, “stay right there lad, and I’ll get us another beer.” Mitchell suddenly found himself wanting to stay and slumped back into the sofa.

“So wh… wh… what do you for a living?” Mitchell asked with a slight stutter and slur as John handed him another glass of beer.

John smiled, “I’m glad you asked. To put it simply I change people.”

“Change people?” Mitchell asked thoroughly bemused.

“Yes, I change people. I take ordinary people, with very traditional upbringings and boring lives and I change them into whatever takes my fancy.” You, young Mitchell are just the sort of person I look for to mould into something more, hmm, you know ‘out-there’.”

Mitchell had downed half the glass of beer at this point.

John continued, “maybe I’ll slowly take them from the lives they are currently leading and over a few hours, a few days, maybe a few weeks transform them. They might end up as a…”

John could sense Mitchell’s fear about what might happen to him but continued, “The next person I change may end up as filthy mohawked punk, a dirty greaser biker, a Leatherman, a goth, a rubber slave. Who knows? It’s whatever takes my fancy at that moment. After a time, I get bored and need a new challenge, so I sell them on to people into the lifestyle and I move on to my next…”

Mitchell couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He opened his mouth to challenge what John was saying but he discovered it wouldn’t move. His heart was pounding, his anxiety levels were on the rise – no matter how hard he tried he was unable to form any words.

“Mitchell, I want you to calm down! Mitchell is such as pompous name, so from now on you’re gonna be called Mike. Now, I will carry on. John pulled out an amber charm which he swung from side to side, glowing eerily in front of Mike’ glazed eyes. When I combine this fine-looking stone with a special ingredient I have – oh you know I added a few drops into your beer, my victims become more… open to the changes I want to make to them. More compliant.” Mike’ eyes were affixed on the stone. “That’s right, just follow the stone, from side-to-side, follow the stone, transfixed by its glowing beauty/” John was comfortable in the knowledge that Mike would soon be his personal boy toy. “Isn’t that the most striking, bright and coloured stone you’ve ever seen Mike?”

He tried to open his mouth in one solitary second of defiance, but all he could managed was a barely audible squeak. His independence, his free will, his ability to fight and think freely had departed. There was no resistance left in Mike. His mind was now mush, the lad could only obey and conform.

John pulled Mike to his feet and dragged him to the bathroom. Once there, he placed him in a chair. “Right Mike, I’ve been thinking all-day about the life I want to give you. How do you fancy being my skinhead son? I’ve always wanted someone I could call a son, but being gay it was never going to happen, and I think you will make the perfect skinhead.” John didn’t wait for Mike to reply - he couldn’t; he did however see the confusion and distress in Mike’ eyes. He chuckled to himself.

John walked over to the bathroom cabinet and took out several items: some electric clippers, scissors, a pack of Mach 3 razors and a can of shaving cream. Turning his head to look at the boy, he smiled, “Only real men have hair. So, yours needs to go Mike. I’ll start on your legs and then your chest, all of that lovely blonde hair on your head and not forgetting the parts in-between. I’m going to enjoy getting rid of that wavy blonde hair. When I’m done, you’ll have a perfectly smooth bonehead.” John cut through the lad’s t-shirt revealing a well-defined torso. Staring at the blank canvas and thinking what he would do to it, he couldn’t help but squeeze one of Mike’ nipples. John detected the tiniest of yelps, so he squeezed the other nipple. There was no reaction this time, Mike’ mind was lost. He continued to stare into the  amber jewel that was hanging in front of his face.

John turned on the clippers, starting with the boy’s left leg. Hair started falling in clumps on the floor. Once the left leg was done, he moved on to the right one. Soon John was wiping them down with a cloth, applying a astringent lotion so that the smooth skin shone in the bathroom lights and after a few more applications, regrowth would never be a problem. Then it was onto the chest. Although Mike was only in his early twenties, he’d already got quite a covering of fur, which John’s clippers made quick work of. Mike’s arms were also denuded of hair. John turned off the clippers and, with the same cloth, applied more of the special lotion to the recently clipped areas.

John stood up and smiled. He paused for a second, “this is the last time there will be any hair growing on your head.” He pressed the on switch, and after hearing the familiar ‘clack’ he began ploughing all the way through the boy’s golden locks. In no time at all Mike was motionless sitting in the chair with a zero-grade cut. John picked up the can of shaving cream, squirted it into his hands and rubbed it copiously all over Mike’ head. He took the necessary time to ensure all the fuzz was removed and Mike’ head felt like a cue-ball. In no time at all there was a shiny hairless skinhead son sitting in front of him.

Looking down, John smiled as Mike’ identity lay on the floor in clumps. He looked up at Mike who was sitting perfectly still, with the same glazed eyes and dazed expression on his face, oblivious to the changes being made without his consent. He took the cloth, poured some more lotion into it and rubbed it into his son’s head.

“Stand,” John ordered. Mike complied, happily obeying his skinhead master. The sports shorts were pulled down over the now smooth legs and John stood back as he grabbed the clippers. “Now boy, I need you to get nice ‘n’ hard so I can make sure I get all your hair… down there...” He watched as slowly but surely there was movement in Mike’ groin. John grinned as in no time at all full mast was achieved. “Very nice boy,” John said out loud, “I bet you were popular with the women. Is that six, possibly seven inches? Good and think as well. Unfortunately for you, you’re not going to have much use of it as my son, but it will look amazing with a thick gauge PA, and a Jacob’s ladder.”

‘Clack’, John turned on the clippers and began the removal of the last remaining hairs on Mike’ body. He had to hold himself back as he rubbed the special lotion into the skin around the groin and on the mounds that had once been covered in thick hair. When he was satisfied the boy was as smooth as the day he was born, John left the bathroom to get something from his bedroom. When he returned Mike hadn’t moved, he was still lost in the stone “Now here I have the perfect thing to complete you. Now stay perfectly still.”

Later, John walked into the main room of the flat dressed in full skinhead gear. As he gazed at his newly denuded skinhead son, he felt his manhood straining inside a pair of skin-tight bleachers, which were turned-up and touching the top of a pair of 30-hole red ranger style boots. He was looking lustfully at the 23-year-old standing to attention, still wearing the expression, he had when the amber jewel turned him into the compliant vessel he now was. “It’s time for the next stage in your transformation lad.” With that John walked over to a cupboard an opened the doors.

The cupboard contained piles of skinhead gear from boots to bleachers to braces to bomber jackets. First, he instructed Mike to put on a yellow jockstrap. “You’ll be wearing this non-stop for a few days – it needs to get in nice ‘n’ ripe.” Then he passed the boy a t-shirt, which Mike willingly slipped over his head. “These are your bleachers; they’ve got two zips – front and rear – you’ll soon find out why,” he grinned, “slip them on.” Mike pulled up the tight-fitting jeans that had been liberally splashed with bleach. Mike didn’t take any notice of the fact that they’d been cut off just below the knee and turned up so that they would show the full extent of the boots he would almost always be wearing when he wasn’t in his work gear. John walked across to Mike carrying a pair of red braces which he attached to the bleachers, pulling them right up his bum crack – so much so that Mike let out a little groan. To finish this stage of the transformation, John handed Mike the left boot. It was black with 20 eyelets and partly laced. John talked Mike through how to ladder lace the boot tightly and perfectly. John fitted a padlock at the very top of the boot before handing over the right one. When John was happy with the way that one was laced, he fitted another padlock. “Stand!” Mike stood up. “Turn to look in the mirror, see the Skinhead son I’ve created. This is what you are now a proud skinhead and my skinhead son.

“Now, we can begin your training. Kneel!” Mike complied. “I know your tongue will still be a bit tender, so I’ll be gentle. Open!” John commanded, and with that he slid his cock into Mike’ open mouth. “Move your tongue slowly, showing how much your love the bottom of your skinhead dad’s cock. Make sure you keep your lips tightly closed as I don’t want you to spill anything.”

He sat back as his cock was held between Mike’ virgin lips and soon found himself about to cum as the hard stud, he had introduced to the lad’s tongue work its magic. The combination of it all and the sensitivity soon had John unloading his massive load. “Swallow!” Mike swallowed quickly trying not to “spill’ as he had been instructed. John soon slid from the lips of his new son and quickly zipped up his own bleachers. “Yes,” John thought, studying the boy who, in addition to the tongue piercing also had a stud in each lobe and four more studs all the way up each of his ears. Mike would serve him well as his skinhead son, but first he needed to complete the lad’s transformation. “Right son, let’s go – I need you to see a friend of mine.”

With that John grabbed a green bomber jacket with orange lining and threw it to Mike, “put it on,” he instructed. Mike slipped on what he would get to know as an MA1 and followed John out of the flat. Right away he found it strange walking in heavy soled, tightly laced boots, but he didn’t complain – he couldn’t.

The skinhead and son waited a few minutes at the bus stop before one came along heading in the direction of the city centre. They alighted just before the main shopping area. It was an area that would be unfamiliar to Mitchell, but Mike was oblivious to everything now. He obeyed his skinhead dad, just as any good son would do. The two skinheads walked side by side into a small industrial estate. One of the units had a sign saying, ‘Anaconda Tattoo Studio and Piercing’. John walked ahead of Mike, as they got to the door, John walked in but for a second Mike hesitated. John knew this sometimes happened, especially with all the distractions of the outdoors. He pulled the amber stone out of his pocket and held it in front of Mike. “This way boy,” he ordered. Mike complied; his eyes once again completely transfixed on the glow of the jewel.

Once inside the tattoo studio, John turned to Mike, “stand here son. I need to talk to the owner.” Mike waited as instructed. Despite tattoos being made popular by the countless athletes and celebrities who adorned their bodies with intricate permanent markings, the old Mitchell would have never crossed the threshold foot into a tattoo studio. But here was Mike waiting to submit to whatever his skinhead dad was discussing with the owner.

John came out of the back office followed by a hulk of a man who was wearing tight leather trousers, a black vest, which exposed his muscular arms covered in tattoos, shaved head with long unkempt beard and on his feet were heavy biker boots. “Son this is Griff, he’s going to give you some more piercings and your tattoos. But first, you are to strip down to your jockstrap. When you’ve done that, go over there and sit in the chair. From now on you will do exactly what Griff tells you to do. He’s going to give you your first marks to show the world that you’re a proud skinhead. After you’ve got your first ink, he’s going to give you some more metal. I’m going to leave you for a bit, but I’ll be back to see the finished work.” Turning to Griff, John said, “he’s all yours.”

Griff walked over to Mike wearing only his jockstrap  sitting obediently in the chair. Since John had already removed all the boy’s hair, Griff simply wiped clean the areas to be tattooed and then laid the first outline template on the skin. His machine was then started up, some ink was added, and the needle started to buzz.

He then began applying the needle over the site of the first tattoo, Mike felt a dull pain but didn’t flinch. Once the first tattoo on the boy’s left arm was completed, Griff went on to add the other tattoos as instructed by John. He started work on a full sleeve on Mike’s right arm, which would take four or five visits to complete. Then he added a bulldog to the rear of the lad’s right calf. Finally, two swallows were added to the back of the each of the lad’s hands. Griff whispered into Mike’s ear, “that’s all I’m doing now lad. John has booked half a dozen more sessions, so you’ll be coming back to get your neck, back and chest inked, and I can finish off the full sleeve. Now stay still. There’s a couple more things to do. Griff pushed away his tattoo cart and returned with another.

Griff looked at the docile boy in the chair. I think we will start with the nipples. Griff played, stroked and flicked them for a few moments until they were firm. He then slipped a needle through the left nipple, at which point Mike squealed. He then installed a barbell through the hole left by the needle and screwed a ball onto either end. He repeated the process for the right nipple. “No touching lad.” Griff then turned his attention to the lad’s groin and applied a topical cream to the so-called policeman’s helmet (bell-end to others). “Right, we’ll give that a little while to take effect and, in the meantime, we can sort out your nose piercing. This will hurt, but only for a second.” Griff then picked up a clean needle from his trolley and quickly passed it through the front part of the septum. Mike’s eyes began watering, so he knew the boy was feeling the pain from the intrusion of the needle. Carefully he inserted a ring into the boy’s septum, and then said out loud, “That will take six weeks or so to heal, then John wants it swapped for a bigger ring.” Now, the cream should have dulled your senses on your knob so let’s add the final bit of metal you’re getting today. He wiped the area to be pierced with an antiseptic skin cleanser, put a mark where the piercing was to be made, and begin the piercing process. The most painful moment for Mike in the piercing process was when the piercing needle punctured his urethra. One the needle was through, Griff inserted a circular barbell and spoke again, “don’t worry if you feel a bit of discomfort – a dull, throbbing pain that’s to be expected.

At that moment the door opened, and John walked in carrying a large shopping bag. “He’s all done, just as you instructed John. Don’t forget to leave the starter jewellery in for six weeks – no less, and make sure you use the aftercare solution. After that we can do a bit of stretching to your liking.”

As the days turned into weeks. John had started his son on the path to being a smoker. First, he gave him a gum to chew to introduce nicotine into the body, then he encouraged him to vape. When he felt there was an addiction starting, he told the boy to smoke cigarettes, starting him on five a day, and quickly moving onto ten, then fifteen. Within a couple of weeks, he was getting through a pack a day.

Mike also kept up his weekly visits to Griff, as more of his skin was covered with ink. Over the period, the full sleeve was completed, the Union flag was tattooed on the back of Mike’s next, the word skinhead was tattooed in script of his back and the letters that made up the word skinhead were inked on his knuckles and finally a Celtic cross was inked on the left pectoral. On the most recent visit Griff replaced the rings in his septum and PA with heavier gauges. As per John’s instructions, he also replaced the studs in his ears with rings and the ones in the lobes with spreaders. Mike joined his skinhead dad in a new gym, one that was run by an ex-boxer friend of John’s. John made sure to get Mike in the boxing ring so that his pretty boy face could get roughed up a bit. John wanted his son to look a bit freakier.

Mike didn’t look like the sort of person who would work in an office anymore, so he was signed up to work in the city council’s recycling centre – they were always in need of people to sort through other people’s waste. Five days a week he stood by a conveyor belt dressed in dirty Hi-Viz gear, and safety boots separating glass, metal, plastic, paper and cardboard into different bins.

After work, the boy would return to his skinhead dad’s flat, which was much bigger now that the wall had been knocked through joining what was Mitchell’s flat and John’s flat together. This night was special because as soon as he got home, Mike got out of his stinking workie gear he’d be in since just after dawn and into the skinhead gear his dad left out for him. Tonight, skinhead dad would be introducing his skinhead son to the lads in the pub. Mike dressed in his bleachers, a black Fred Perry, yellow socks and red 20-hole boots. Mike was ready in time for his dad to return home. John walked through the door and saw the perfect skinhead son standing there. “C’mon son. You’re gonna meet your skin bruders.”

[sophrosynesworld]

Game On

“Izuku, get that notebook away from me before I toss it into the fountain.”

“Oh my God,” Mina busts into laughter next to me, her eyes wide with mock horror. “You kicked the puppy!”

I glance at Izuku, who’s standing there with wide eyes, looking utterly betrayed. He clutches his precious notebook to his chest like it’s the only thing holding him together.

“Come on, just a few questions?” he pleads, frustration lacing his voice as he hovers behind me, desperate to pry into my quirk.

“Five bucks,” I reply, holding out my hand with a grin. Izuku frowns, hesitating for a split second before reluctantly rummaging through his wallet. Just as he’s about to pull out some crumpled bills, a crisp twenty lands in my hand.

I glance over to see Todoroki joining us, his expression as unreadable as ever. “I’m curious too.”

Before I can even process what’s happening, the front door slams closed with a bang. Denki stumbles inside, nearly tripping over his own feet in his excitement.

“Yo, check this out!” he yells, instantly stealing the spotlight. In his hands is a small metallic box, his eyes practically glowing with excitement.

“What is it?” I ask, more than happy for the interruption, as Todoroki and Midoriya groan in unison, clearly annoyed that their interrogation has been cut short.

Denki flips the box around, revealing a flashy cover with our faces on it. “It’s us! Someone made a whole video game about our class!” Kaminari waves the box around, drawing the attention of our sleepy classmates who begin to filter into the common room, curiosity piqued.

Within minutes, the once-quiet morning buzzes with excitement. Conversations overlap, and eager eyes dart toward the box in Denki’s hands.

“What’s so damn important?” Bakugo grumbles, shuffling in like he’s been dragged there against his will. He collapses onto the couch with the grace of a grumpy old man, his hair sticking out at odd angles, a scowl permanently etched on his face. He crosses his arms, sinking into the cushions like he’s already counting down the minutes until he can leave.

I open my mouth to respond, but Izuku’s already off and running, words spilling out like a rapid-fire stream of consciousness. Bakugo’s eyes roll, but he stays sitting next to him, a massive improvement from a few months ago.

Given how much Deku knows, I wouldn’t be surprised if the developers had consulted him directly, maybe even asked for a copy of his ever-present notebook. The sheer depth of his knowledge is almost unsettling, but it’s also so typically Izuku that I can’t help but expect it.

As Denki fumbles with the cables, his tongue sticking out in concentration, the game quickly takes over the room, shifting the energy entirely.

The moment Denki connects the game system to the TV, the screen flickers to life, casting a bright glow across the common room. The screen flashes with an over-the-top title card: My Hero Brawl! - The Next Gen, complete with 8-bit music and an announcer’s voice shouting, “ARE YOU READY FOR A PLUS ULTRA FIGHT?”

“Who made me look so manly?” Kirishima exclaims, a wide grin spreading across his face as he admires the blocky, muscular version of himself flexing on the character selection screen.

Izuku’s eyes widen as he scrolls through his phone, quickly turning it around to show us Bakugo’s character. “This is incredible! Look at the detail!”

Bakugo’s expression darkens as he snatches the phone from Izuku's hand. “What the hell?! Who made me look like this?”

I lean over, stifling a laugh. “You always look like that, Bakugo.”

Without warning, a deafening boom shakes the room as Bakugo detonates the phone in his hand, sending sparks flying and forcing everyone to duck for cover. The explosion propels Deku and Bakugo into a full-on shouting match.

“YOU?! THEY MADE ME SHORTER!” Mineta’s shrill voice cuts through the chaos as he flails his arms, desperately trying to draw our attention to the main screen. His character is nearly microscopic, barely reaching the height of the barrels scattered across the stage.

Mina bounces over to a couch, plopping herself down between Koji and Momo with a mischievous grin. “So, how does this work? Can we pick ourselves?”

Denki cracks his knuckles, a sly smirk on his face. “Oh, definitely. But I’m warning you guys—I’m in it to win it.”

Bakugo’s cracks his knuckles, the sound echoing like gunshots. “Pick whoever you want, extras. I’m out for blood.”

The moment the first round begins, the room erupts into a betting match. Everyone lunges for their controllers, eyes locked on the screen as the pixelated characters spring to life. Denki’s character zips around, crackling with electricity as he unleashes a barrage of lightning-fast attacks. Kirishima’s Red Riot charges forward, his “Unbreakable” form turning him into an unstoppable force of nature, even blockier and more imposing than ever.

Dynamight launches into the air, explosions detonating beneath him as he unleashes a storm of fiery blasts. Denki grins as he narrowly dodges each explosion, retaliating with a burst of electric bolts that crackle across the screen.

“Come on, you extras! Stop running and fight me!” Bakugo’s voice is a roar, his fingers hammering the buttons with brutal intensity.

Red Riot barrels in, blocking Dynamight's attacks with his hardened armor, while Chargebolt cackles from a distance, raining down lightning strikes. “You gotta get through me first, bro!”

“I WILL LITERALLY KILL YOU!” Katsuki’s eyes burn with fury as he unleashes a devastating explosion, the impact shaking the screen. But before we can see any affect, Zero Gravity, swoops in from the edge of the battlefield, launching a pixelated attack. The ground shakes sending everyone else’s characters floating helplessly into the air.

“What the—?!” Denki stares in disbelief as his character is tossed around like a leaf in a storm.

Uraraka flashes a cheeky smile. “You didn’t see that coming, did you?”

Kirishima laughs clearly impressed. “That’s what you get for underestimating Uraraka!”

With each round, the intensity ramps up. Characters zoom across the screen, delivering bone-crushing blows, unleashing powerful special moves, and narrowly escaping defeat.

Izuku watches, his fists clenched in anticipation, before finally stepping up. “Mind if I jump in for the next round? I want to see how ‘Deku’ holds up!”

Bakugo’s eyes narrow, a dangerous smirk curling his lips. “Get ready to lose, nerd.”

The next round begins with a burst of energy, Izuku’s pixelated hero standing tall. Dynamight wastes no time, launching a relentless assault of explosions. Deku ducks, weaves, and counters, his movements fluid and precise. Every button press is a calculated strike, every dodge perfectly timed.

“You’re finished, Kacchan,” Izuku grins, his fingers flying across the controller as he lands a devastating combo that sends Dynamight flying across the screen.

Bakugo’s jaw tightens, his fingers mashing the buttons in a desperate attempt to trigger a special move. But it’s too late. Deku counters with a well-timed attack, knocking Dynamight out cold.

“KO! WINNER: DEKU!” The announcer’s voice booms as Bakugo’s character plummets into the void.

The room explodes into cheers, the sound bouncing off the walls as Bakugo glares daggers at Izuku, who shrugs with an innocent smile. “What? It’s just a game.”

Bakugo’s grin turns wicked, his eyes narrowing to slits.

“Rematch. NOW.”

Authors Note: This was so hard to write. Just pretend it doesn't suck :)

[a-memory-a-distant-echo]

ok, you know what, fuck it, fic recs post. historically i try not to rec works in progress or things i haven't commented on and i'm throwing that fully out the window for this because honestly, fucking whatever.

if you're on this list and i haven't been fully unhinged at you in the comments, please know that it's because (1) i'm the worst and (2) i'm trying desperately to calibrate so i hit 'enthusiastic' and not 'kind of frightening, actually'. i swear that i have written at least several sentences of a comment for every fic on this list, it's just that i'm genuinely impossibly slow, sometimes. it's me, not you.

my previous rec post is here, in case you missed that. as a bonus, special for this rec list and as a concession to the horrors, i am attempting to guess how much any given fic will fuck up the average person. obviously this is a ymmv kind of situation, but i'm trying, at least?

everything else under a cut because i am longwinded.

and found by @dangerouscommiesubversive, explicit, every possible combination of di feisheng/fang duobing/li lianhua | li xiangyi; bless, but i am not typing all that out. starting off with a wip where i haven't left a comment in like four fuckin' chapters, breaking those rules real good. this fic is a fucking ride. i will admit that i wasn't entirely convinced by the premise when i saw the blurb, but i am nothing if not willing to admit when i was wrong, and i was—once again—totally wrong. this is the fic where i was like 'ok but…is anyone really, like, desperate for gen z li xiangyi?' and then i read it and i was like 'ohhhhhh fuck yeah, ok, i get it, i was actually fully desperate for gen z li xiangyi.' he is. such a little prick. i love him. there has been something unexpected and delightful in every single chapter of this so far, plus a number of impressively memorable one-liners. this fic is fun and distracting and at least as of chapter seven, i'm gonna say it's not even gonna fuck you up. (please note that this is only through chapter seven!)

and the days are bright red by @junemermaid, explicit, di feisheng/fang duobing/li lianhua. rip to my beloved tumblr mutual @junemermaid, because they're getting called out twice in this list, but: tough. this fic is so delightful. featuring: memories of slut era li lianhua, the mortifying ordeal of being known, an entire box of historically accurate sex toys, fang duobing and di feisheng communicating (sometimes silently) in a way that unsettles li lianhua (back from his months-long sojourn), some very hot sex that is both very much about sex and also about trust and being perceived, casual intimacy, and fledgling tenderness. there are Emotions in this, and they get moderately intense, but it's a very kind and surprisingly gentle feel-good fic.

a drink under a clear window by @momosandlemonsoda, explicit, di feisheng/fang duobing and fang duobing/qiao wanmian. a fic that tackles the dreaded v-shaped polycule and makes it work. it seems like perhaps it shouldn't: fang duobing as the hinge, with di feisheng and qiao wanmian on either side, but actually it works perfectly, and is a lovely little glimpse at who they could become and the relationships they could have. i love the thought of qiao wanmian having come into her own as a leader in her own right, as more than just the representative of the ghost of li xiangyi, and this does a wonderful job of letting her be her own person. also, yes, ok, passing fang duobing back and forth like a party favour. this is a post-canon fic in which li lianhua is dead, but the fic itself a straightforward delight that is not at all fucky uppy.

the floating clouds, no resting place, again by @junemermaid (not sorry), technically gen and no ship, but functionally pre-di feisheng/fang duobing/li lianhua. the hair-washing fic. ohhhhhh. i started jotting notes for this post the day that i finished this fic, and i really thought that they were in any way comprehensive, but instead, what i typed and left as a note to myself was this:

and honestly. you're right, hypothetical reader, that doesn't totally make sense, but i stand by it regardless, because i apparently had that thought in [checks date i last saved the file] fucking august, and i'm still nodding along with myself. that is that this is like. this fic is very beautiful and will make you ache and will leave you slightly better at the end of it than you were at the beginning. it may also make you cry; this seems to me a fair enough trade.

the floating lotus by @anndramarama, not rated, di feisheng/li xiangyi. pre-canon stuff doesn't always work super well for me, but i really enjoyed this one, featuring di feisheng and li xiangyi when they're both so young and arrogant and full of themselves—and stupid and naïve and young and almost hopeful in a way that they're often not, in fic, for all that they were barely but children at the point of the donghai fight. they just seem…vulnerable, i guess, in this, in a way that i find touching. seasonal bonus: a ghost story, of a sort. given that this is set pre-canon, i think it's hard to come in any softer than bittersweet, which this very much is.

from here one's hand could pluck the stars by @howlingmoonrise, explicit, di feisheng/fang duobing. sex pollen fic! also featuring, a little surprisingly, given the premise, incredibly explicit and enthusiastic consent. look, this does what it says on the tin. di feisheng gets sex pollened. fang duobing is left to stay with him. the obvious ensues. unfortunately, it is also devastatingly charming? fang duobing is earnest and sweet; di feisheng is suffering beautifully terribly and trying so hard not to impose on fang duobing. they're both trying so hard to be respectful of what the other person needs, but they're also still bratty and argumentative and exasperated/exasperating, and it's very entertaining. this will fuck you up none percent, and may even make you laugh.

my war is done by @orchisailsa, explicit, di feisheng/fang duobing/li lianhua. another wip, with the first of three chapters posted, but please understand that this chapter is nearly 15k and so fucking good and compelling. li lianhua lives! and returns to find that things have changed in his absence, and perhaps that he has also changed in his absence, and now wants things that he had told himself he didn't mind not even having to lose. bonus: road trip and—delight!—only one room at the inn. also some other stuff that i'm not spoiling, but that made me absolutely gleeful. this is definitely a work in progress, and while i don't think there's anything particularly upsetting in the chapter, it does end on something of a cliffhanger. i personally do not feel that this is an upsetting cliffhanger, given the information about the fic that's presented in the tags, but it is technically a cliffhanger.

awkward paragraph break, but it's also important, i think, to mention the absolutely stunning (and not at all safe for work) companion piece to my war is done, you'd be there calling my name, by saki the cup bearer, who i don't think is on tumblr. it's fucking incredible; i am very decidedly not an artist but i cannot begin to imagine how much effort went into this. just. holy shit.

not unlike him in shape and form by @philologicalbat, explicit, fang duobing/li lianhua. ok look. i fucking love when things are deeply emotionally messy, and this is so emotionally messy. li lianhua who's been attracted to fang duobing and not doing anything about it, then discovering that fang duobing is shan gudao's son and is very much going to do something about it. he wants in this, and he's cunty and manipulative and mean about it, and sometimes also almost sweet, almost tender, and i love that, because i feel like li lianhua is very often an object of desire and very rarely gets to desire. i love how human he gets to be in this fic. this is not a sweet or gentle fic, but it does end in a moderately tender place that is tentatively hopeful, i think.

unbecoming heir by @bettercostume, explicit, di feisheng/princess zhaoling. i am taking your hand in mine and begging you to trust me. i know what this fic looks like. it's noncon and a weird pairing and you might look at it and expect it to go in the obvious direction and: it does not. this fic is so good that it makes me angry. it makes me miserable and everyone in this fic is trying so miserably, miserably hard, and it's fucking devastating. i spent literally thirty minutes earlier today yelling at my wife about it. i cannot rec this fic strongly enough. this is not a happy fic, but it is a good fic. it will absolutely fuck you up. this is very complimentary but also you will be fucked up.

until you are its primary evidence by @ilgaksu, mature, di feisheng/fang duobing/li lianhua. the single most effective use of what is effectively a prologue that i've ever seen in fic, are you kidding me. this fic is nothing at all like what i expected it to be, and is something far better than what i could have imagined. it's fang duobing's point of view, which is a rarity already, and it's so well done, and it allows him so much humanity and so much anger and grace alike. there are so many tricky things about this fic—the prologue, the fact that it's set in the amnesia arc, fang duobing's pov, the fact that it actually addresses canonical disabilities and illnesses without being fucking weird about it, the tension between the three of them—and it's all balanced so well. this has some emotionally heavier moments but ends tentatively happily; tentative only because it's set during the amnesia arc, and, well. we know what comes next.

as a final note: if you wrote one of these fics and feel that i've wildly misinterpreted the emotional tenor of the ending, please message me in whatever way you prefer and i will correct it. i would not normally presume to guess how things are likely hit people, as i am in many ways not anyone's ideal reader, but today it seemed like it was kinder to at least try.

[therantfairysblog]

Trust

"what?'

The two having a nice tea break after their daily training. Iguro sitting there with him caressing kaburamaru.

"I'm serious, shinazugawa. I feel like, this is it. This whole calmness before a storm, everything is quite unsettling to me. And i think i need to entrusted kaburamaru to someone. I feel like you are really good with animal you know" with his mask hiding his mouth, shinazugawa didn't really captured his expression, but there's really some serene sadness in his voice.

"....well you sure as hell you want me to take care of him as if I'm surely come out alive, what a confident" shinazugawa chuckled.

"Yes I'm sure of it," the seriousness in his tone take him aback. Iguro was always a serious and strict person but he feel that today, he looked like he already make up his mind for something.

"shinazugawa, I'm fine if you want to entrust him to others. Kaburamaru is a good helper, i just don't want him to be lonely" iguro drank his last drop of tea.

"Well...if you said so, plus if i got the mark, I'll probably don't live long anyway,"

Iguro just smiled.

........

He opened up his eyes with the sound of people crying his name. The curse is the one he let out when his dad just simply push him out from death. What a shitty old man.

"shinazugawa sama is waking up! Please checked on him"

He doesn't feel anything. His body hurt like a hell but he feel numb. The final look his brother give him before fading away still stuck in his brain. Perhaps for as long as he live.

His ears hearing the chaos surrounding him. People are dying now huh. Well that shitty demon finally gone so i guess... it's time to pay the price. His eyes grow bigger when one of the kakushi screaming.

"Serpent hashiraa and love hashira over there!!! First aid!!"

"..... I'm so sorry, they both... gone. We late"

"....write their name in the record. Give message to the kasugai crows." The chaos among them keep him awake.

"i see..." shinazugawa mumbling and just like that, he lost another friend, he really didn't know what to feel. Laughing? Crying? His life feel like a joke at that point.

His eyes keep watching the kakushis cleaning up the place, he watch one of them putting a little snake into a box carrier. Kabu...

"Hey you, come here...'

"Shinazugawa sama, yes, please don't force yourself to get up," the kakushi who bring kaburamaru come towards him.

"leave kaburamaru with me... I'll take care of him..."

"...of course, but shinazugawa sama need to be treated first.," the kakushi bring the carrier with kaburamaru in it. Putting it beside him.

"...hey, is there any hashira left ...that kamado guy and his friends...are they okay?" shinazugawa asked silently. Now that's it's over, everything come to his mind. The silent sobbing of the kakushi answering him

"...kamado sama....pulse.... aren't....only Tomioka sama is alive but he is in a bad condition..."

".....i see," his hand reaching out kaburamaru, caressing his little head. The animal looked very distraught. Of course. ' Kabu kun....you are grieving too aren't you...? I'll do my best, you'll not alone..."

"Kaburamaru is my best friend....i hope he'll be happy and live a long life..."

And the world getting dark again. He fall asleep. How he wish this is only a nightmare. How he wish that.

[titanic-angel]

мιgυel o'нara х ғ!reader

⁎︎✴︎ adronιтιѕ 2 ✴︎⁎︎

ѕynopѕιѕ ➪︎ yoυ warм υp тo мιgυel

warnιngѕ ➪︎ ѕwearιng

noтeѕ ➪︎ so next chapter is gonna be real fun but rn you have to have a lil crisis abt your trust in Miguel

↽︎ part 1

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He flexed his hand after he shook yours.

Barely noticeable, if you hadn’t been observing the grooves of his knuckles, or the vein that crawled from his wrist. The hands that enveloped yours in a shake should’ve been cold- calculated. A deal brought to fruition by its apathy.

But it was warm.

When he let go, a beat. Static on your fingers, an itch on your prints. Long enough to breathe but too fleeting to think. If you hadn’t been focused on his hands and their features, you would’ve caught the way he stared at yours.

Almost preserving, you would’ve thought.

“Miguel?”

His name apparently snapped both of you from the recesses of you minds, from the brink of thought and the absence of it.

“Sorry, yes?”

Lyla’s eyes passed over the two of you. You were unsure if it was because of her size, her cloudy stance and voided build. But you were positive the look in her eyes knew more about what just happened than you ever would.

“The tour? Remember? Of the lab,” She giggled, although the word is too flimsy to describe such a dry sound, “she was right, you really don’t know host etiquette.”

He grumbled, before his eyes came to meet yours.

If you had to pin-point the feature that prompted the foul taste in your mouth (a reasonable person would call it envy, but you were childish enough to cease the thought), it would be his condescending stare.

“The lab you’ll be working in is on the 3rd floor. It’s my personal lab,”

Your nose wrinkled. Tacky (lucky).

“Lyla will be showing you around.”

Lyla tutted from his shoulder, waggling her finger. “Nuh-uh, I did all the business-woman stuffs I can for the day. You get to show her around.”

You were being treated like a chore.

Charming.

“Plus, I’m feeling awfully tiered,” she winked at you. Unsettling, but it queued curiosity.

“Have fun kiddos!” With a flash of yellow and tints of blue, she was gone.

Leaving you to breathe the stiff air that separated you and the goliath in a dead quiet.

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You would’ve slaughtered for Elevator music.

If it meant that the deafening silence, driven by a mutual desire not to be trapped in an isolating metal box, would end.

You felt stupid, and maybe a little self-centered, for only knowing your floor. There wasn’t a better alternative, as your job forced you to either move laterally across your own or, occasionally, up to the tenth floor to retrieve extra scraps or parts that no one else wanted to grab.

Ever since your royal fuck-up with that human robot, you had essentially become the errand-girl of your engineering pod. No one took you seriously anyhow, so you might as well be useful.

You liked the tenth floor. It was dark, the scattered metal parts and canopy of wires above you created a comfortable jungle. Filled with things you were familiar with, inventory that when you touched, it created rather that crumbled.

You weren’t Midas there.

Consequently you’ve forgotten that it’s called the tenth floor for a reason.

And you were going to the 3rd.

Underground.

There was a difference, aside from the number. The attic, even with its close quarters, was a sanctuary of sorts, one with a view that made you forget your reputation.

But below, burrowed under sediment and gravel, you sat a breath away from your grave. You wouldn’t be surprised, if you were buried here.

You would even call it fitting.

The elevator lurched to a halt, the sight of your reflection meeting yours through the stainless steel. It look distorted, not quite like a cracked mirror but it wasn’t clean. It was foggy, and as it disappeared, you wondered if that’s what you looked like to your colleagues.

Foggy.

It certainly felt the case, on the 3rd floor.

Miguel casted a shadow, literally and figuratively, when he walked. His shoulders were built to carry expectation, body molded to turn heads, attention. Admiration kissed his heals, it’s maw biting at his fingers, his lips, his throat.

He made you foggy, because for as long as he existed, there was nothing else to look at.

You perished by his side. Your aggrieved appearance, the droop of your mouth and cave of your back existed as a warning. You ate praise like a woman starved, a thank you so infrequent it sounded like a myth when whispered.

You noticed it’s phenomenon when you passed people down the hall, eyes gravitating towards Miguel.

(Attention is a picky child, and it never liked you.)

When he opened the door, a crevice in the darkest corner of the floor, the stench of cleaning supplies and plastic gloves wedged into your sinuses. It was a similar smell to his office, but the weight of humidity made it sour to swallow.

Once your nose adjusted, you finally consumed your surroundings.

An organized table, a glass cabinet containing every scrap and screw in a designated box. A plethora of tools, varying in size, clean and gleaming.

Paradise.

“You’ll be working here for most of the engineering process.”

His voice was the closest it had ever been to you. It never lost the roughness around its edges, but It’s placid cadence was gentler than it had been before.

You nodded slowly, still drinking in the freshness of your workspace.

“If you have any materials you need that aren’t here, we can retrieve them from the storage on floor one.”

You took a step towards the table, running your hand over the cool, solid metal. Your reflection wasn’t foggy, it was clear, precise, detailed.

You weren’t a silhouette down here.

You turned around to face Miguel.

A hunter, tensed, and dangerous. Wary of you, observing the way your chest rose with breath and hollowed without it. His face a novel of age told in creases and folds, hostile and glacial.

So different from his hands, you thought (one that you buried).

“Do you even use this?” Your question had more bite to it than you intended.

He nodded slowly. “Sometimes, if I need to.”

You rose your brow. “How often is ‘need to’?”

“Maybe once a month.”

You nearly choked. “Once a month? You use this room once a month? God, you are clinically insane.”

It baffled you that a room like this sat unused and empty for weeks at a time. It was no mystery why the room looked so untouched.

So perfect.

Your hand found the bridge of your nose. “Jesus. So they just, gave this to you? And you don’t use it?”

His brows crossed. “Of course I use it. It just doesn’t have a lot of purpose in my line of work,” he sighed, muffling his frustration, “and it’s essentially… yours now. So it doesn’t really matter.”

Yours.

The hot oil and dry metal of your old lab became a memory, a hiccup in your lungs. The years of anonymity and shadow felt irrelevant now, the possession of something greater kissing your filthy hands.

Yours.

“Thank you.”

An accident. A crack in the seamless anger you had molded around your shoulders- armor. He saw it, and you felt the way it vibrated, cotton-mouthed and speechless.

You weren’t supposed to thank the hand that fed you poison, not if you were already rotten. You were supposed to bite, rip it’s tendons and foam at the thought of its empty palm, bare and boneless.

But you let your awe, a spark of tender in a fire of brutal, speak for you. Moved your teeth and numbed your tongue, so the words felt effortless, light.

Maybe, even, forgiving.

Miguel nodded, his silence a salvation. He knew what you felt, and how it wrecked you. But he didn’t acknowledge it, and for the second time you felt like expressing gratitude.

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A drowse. An ease. A lull.

You tried to describe overwhelming air that surrounded you when you stepped back out into the hallway with any word that wasn’t comfortable.

It couldn’t be, for the sake of your enmity, your acid. You had to make him drunk on it, the burn of astringency rotting his throat, signing his respite.

It would make your victory, the loosening of your leash at the sight of the other side of the fence, all the more delicious.

(But taste wasn’t your strongest sense, was it?)

Could you live on the sight of polished metal? The feeling of the lab under your fingers, it’s gleam on the life-lines of your palm? Do you take the peace offering (domestication of a cornered dog), or do you fight it, wrestling the cage you put yourself in?

Do you drink it’s draft, eat it’s still, the heart of it all stuck in your canines?

(Monster, they’d call you. But you’d be fed.)

Perhaps, his shadow wouldn’t starve you. You were no flower. You didn’t belong with daffodils and lavender; you grew with the moss and fungus and the dirt they sat between. You could be a creature of midnight, if you chose.

But you didn’t like the dark. Firmly rooted in childish imagination, chills never ceased when the lights went out. You hated sleeping with a lamp, or the screen of a computer (a grown substitute for your childhood night-light), but you hated the depths more. Dissimilar to those your age, you never grew out of that fear.

(But could you?

It all made you reconsider your wariness in Miguel. Would you be the same, without your spite? Does it kill your fire, or ignite it? You don’t trust these questions, but you don’t trust much of anything, do you?)

The corridor was absent of buzz, and for a moment you forgot the evening had crawled down Alchemax, digging its pitch claws into its gaps and dragging the employees home.

You were alone with the company saint.

One glance at him, at his broad shoulders and strong nose, the way his mouth curves down, silenced all considerations of trust.

There was too much of him to try. Too much you were unfamiliar with, even if he gave you a sanctuary. So instead, you caged your thoughts, following him blindly even as they festered.

His stride was difficult to match, long and purposeful, but not empty of uncertainty. He stuttered around corners, paused at cross roads.

His limited visits of the floor spoke loud as he tried to navigate it.

“Do you even know where you going?” You asked, leaning forward to meet his pace.

He looked at you, offended. “Of course I do.”

He paused, looking at the left and right halls, before going left. You laughed.

“Doesn’t look like it.”

He walked faster now, avoiding you.

You caught his expression, lucent under yellow bulbs. The guise looked weathered, old, as if it had been used a thousand times before, pulled from his pocket, worn from its coarse fabric.

It would be wrong to call it annoyance, anger or exhaustion. In fact, it would be wrong to call it anything at all. It was the vacancy of emotion, of a ‘look’. Miguel was hard to read, but now it felt impossible. It made you shiver, how something so absent could mean so much.

(But why did it?

You hadn’t ever been bent on knowing someone more than their hands- what their fingers can weave and mold. How malleable metal and something more could be under their nails. Their face, their features their looks never mattered then, so why now- why him?

Did his words really have this much weight? Could a gesture that told you ‘it’s for you, it’s yours’ so powerful and foreign that it broke the walls you has so patiently built from scratch, from pique and contempt?

Surely, your will was stronger. You couldn’t be persuaded, tamed by a shiny new toy.

But maybe you had been. A glimpse of generosity, humanity in him was all you needed to let your repulsion simmer and still.

Give a dog a bone. It fetches.

At least, until you stopped throwing.)

You felt guilty.

Maybe he never meant to give you the room on purpose, and you were just desperate for something (someone) to show you appreciation.

But a part of you, the one that was good at reading underlying messages, told you he wasn’t as heinous as you thought he was.

“Here, follow me.”

You weren’t sure if he had actually come with you. You just had to trust that he would trust you.

(Trust falls underground. There wasn’t any risk. Slow steps, small, cautious. But it was something.)

When you pointed to the elevator on the map and looked over your shoulder, his veil had vanished. It was replaced by a tranquility, one that lifted the corners of his mouth. Not quite a smile, but close.

Closer.

When you finally made it to the steel doors, the reflection that looked back at you was still foggy. But maybe that was okay.

You didn’t look the same to everything.

This time though, it didn’t disappear.

Instead, the box reeled, and suddenly the bottoms of your feet felt the expanse of gravity below and how still you were above it.

The short alarm felt secondary after you were plundged into darkness. Fragile, hysteric beats in your chest, followed by a string of curses.

“We’re stuck.”

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special thanks to (aka taglist) ➪︎ @cherryrevenger @toaffes @vomit4brains @vxxxb @minimari415 @buko-pandan @viriexo @asimplesimpleton @marcswife21 @the-silvercow @mochi46106 @ch6ntt @epihowl @hexmaniacjade @jinsomniacs

[poeticjustice1010]

𖣗𖦆⊹🕷 Haunted by secrets

 ❙❘❙❚❙❘❙❙❚❙❘❙❙❘❙❚❙❘❙❙❚❙❘❙❙❙❚

Summary: A girl influenced by her best friend to explore an abandoned house with an unexpected outcome.

Word Count

2222

Warning

Minors Dni

put your age in bio

blank accounts will be blocked

Smut, Ghost, death, angst.

Tag if you want to be tagged

Chat box for request

Haunted by secrets

Characters - Hyunjin x oc, Lara Raj, Fatou, Seulgi.

Summary - A girl influenced by her best friend to explore an abandoned house with an unexpected outcome.

Word Count - 2222

Warnings - Fluff, Smut, Angst,etc.

A/N - "This series is completely experimental"

But Genesis, it’s going to be so sick!” Seulgi's eyes sparkled with excitement.

“What are we even gonna do at an abandoned house?” I asked, my curiosity piqued.

Seulgi smirked mischievously. “Duh, try to summon a ghost or something?”

I stared at her blankly, trying to process the absurdity of her suggestion. “Seulgi, you know that’s not my thing because of my faith.” I took a deep breath, steadying myself. “Plus, this sounds super dangerous. What if we get hurt?”

Seulgi rolled her eyes playfully. “Relax, our friends will be there. Besides, I dabble in this stuff in my free time.”

I sighed, knowing I could not win against Seulgi’s stubbornness. “Fine... But we’re not staying long, okay?”

Seulgi chuckled, her confidence unwavering. “Deal.”

…….

……

I sat in the car's back seat, my gaze fixed on the scenery blurring past the window. Autumn leaves drifted down from the trees, clouds moved at the same pace as the car, and birds flew in circles above, lost in their world.

A tap on my shoulder pulled me back to reality. I turned to see Lara, her bright smile contrasting my growing unease. “Hey, ready to explore the haunted house?”

“Sure,” I replied, trying to mask my anxiety.

“Well, rumor has it there’s a ghost that haunts the place, but it’s probably just an urban legend,” she said with a wink.

“Yeah, I’ve heard that, too. I guess we’re about to find out!” Fatou chimed in from the front seat.

I gulped, forcing a nervous smile, already regretting my decision.

……

…..

“We’re here!” Seulgi announced, her smirk widening. We piled out of the car, armed with backpacks and flashlights. The house loomed before us, its eerie silence adding to the unsettling atmosphere. We approached the front door, but it was locked.

“Looks like we might have to head back—” I started to say, but Lara cut me off, her eyes twinkling with mischief.

“I’ve got a lock pick,” she said, pulling it out with a grin.

“Where’d you get that?” Fatou asked, eyebrows raised.

“I have my ways,” Lara replied mysteriously.

Inside, the house was surprisingly well-kept. “This doesn’t look abandoned,” I remarked, puzzled. The interior was a beige, cream, and gray mix, giving off an eerie, sterile vibe. The silence was thick, broken only by our footsteps. It felt like the house was holding its breath. A shiver ran down my spine, and I noticed Lara looking equally uneasy. The air felt heavy, and I couldn’t shake the feeling we were being watched. Our nervous laughter echoed through the empty rooms, amplifying the unease.

The kitchen had oak cabinets and a granite countertop, contrasting the outside’s shabby appearance.

……

“Maybe the ghost still lives here,” Seulgi teased, her voice lightening the mood slightly.

I rolled my eyes as the other girls giggled. “It’s kinda nice in here,” Lara admitted, looking around.

We pulled out our phones, the flashlights cutting through the dimness. We explored the upstairs rooms, which were surprisingly normal, and then ventured back downstairs. As we navigated the house, we stumbled upon a door that supposedly led to the basement.

“Maybe we can summon the ghost down there,” Seulgi suggested, her tone daring.

Lara opened the door, and an immediate sense of dread washed over me as if someone had died there. The cellar was dimly lit, filled with old, dusty furniture and cobwebs. The air was musty, and the silence was deafening. The basement stretched endlessly, its dark corners and hidden nooks adding to the sense of foreboding. The light switch didn’t work, so we used our flashlights, the beams casting eerie shadows on the walls.

As we explored, Seulgi found some paintbrushes and pencils. I stood in front of a painting in the corner of the basement. I picked it up and read the label: “Self-Portrait.” The painting depicted a young man with striking features and an intense gaze. An odd connection tugged at me; the more I looked at it, the more familiar he seemed. The signature in the right corner read: “Hyunjin.”

…..

…….

“Genesis... Genesis...” The words echoed in my mind.

I felt a tap on my shoulder. “Hey, are you coming?” Fatou said in a concerned tone.

“Yeah, I am,” I replied, my unease resurfacing.

We approached the other girls, who had already set up everything. The Ouija board lay flat on the ground. Seulgi read the instructions. “First, we sit in a circle as we have already done. Place your fingers on the planchette in a circle around the board.” We all complied, placing our fingers on the pendant. The room went silent for a second.

“So who wants to go first?” I felt all eyes on me.

“Come on, Genesis, you need to face your fears,” Seulgi determinedly urged.

I took a deep breath. “Okay, what do I do?” I asked softly.

“Just ask a question,” Seulgi said in a monotone voice.

The room quieted briefly before I spoke again. “What's your name?” I asked softly. The planchette moved chaotically, jolting a panic inside me. “Are you guys moving it?” I blurted out.

They shook their heads. “No,” they replied in unison.

“Relax, Genesis, everything will be fine,” Seulgi reassured me. I sighed in relief as the planchette formed the words “H... Y... U... J... I... N.”

……. ..

We sat for a moment, stunned. “So the ghost’s name is Hyunjin?” Fatou said, her voice steady.

“Yeah, and obviously, he made the paintings,” Lara added, glancing at me.

I remained quiet, thinking about the possible outcomes. I had even seen his self-portrait. Is that really what he looks like? Everything felt surreal, like a dream—maybe even a nightmare. My heart sank.

“Genesis...” I heard my name being called softly. I blinked, coming back to reality.

“You zoned out again,” Seulgi said, her brow furrowing in concern.

“I’ll go,” Lara announced with a slight smile. She took a breath, her eyes narrowing in focus. “How did you die?”

“Maybe asking that wasn’t a good idea,” I said, worry creeping into my voice.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Lara assured us.

The planchette moved again, and I watched, captivated yet terrified. “M... U... R... D... E... R.”

……….

Lara sighed, clearly unnerved by the revelation. “Okay, my turn's over. Fatou, you're up.”

“So he was killed after all,” Fatou said softly. I began to think about how he died or why someone would hurt him.

The room fell silent again before Fatou hesitated, eyes scanning the Ouija board. After a moment of thought, she took a deep breath. “Alright, here goes. Why were you killed?” The planchette trembled, and we watched it spell out “S... E... C... R... E... T.”

“Secret?” Seulgi whispered. “Why would someone kill over a secret?” I wondered aloud, my mind racing with possibilities.

The planchette began to move again, spelling out: “K... E... E... P.”

“Keep? Keep what?” Lara asked, leaning in closer.

The planchette moved once more, this time faster: “A... L... I... V... E.”

“Keep alive?” Fatou said, her voice trembling slightly. “What does that mean?”

“Maybe he knew something he wasn’t supposed to,” I suggested, my heart pounding.

The room fell silent again, the weight of the ghost’s message hanging over us.

A tense silence enveloped us as we processed the implications of Hyunjin's last message. The room, which had seemed merely eerie moments ago, now felt suffocating with the weight of the revelation.

Seulgi was the first to break the silence. “We need to figure this out,” she said, her voice tinged with urgency. “If his soulmate is near, she could be in danger.”

The air in the room felt heavy with anticipation. Seulgi's eyes flickered with determination as she prepared to ask the next question. "Okay, my turn," she said, her voice steady.

She took a deep breath, her fingers pressing firmly on the planchette. "Hyunjin, what secret were you trying to keep alive?"

We all leaned in closer, our breaths held as the planchette started to move. It moved slowly at first, then picked up speed, spelling out: “L... O... V... E.”

“Love?” Lara repeated, puzzled. “What does that mean?”

Seulgi's brow furrowed as she thought hard. “Who were you trying to protect?” she asked, her voice almost a whisper.

The planchette moved again, quicker this time: “S... O... U... L... M... A... T... E.”

“His soulmate,” I whispered, the pieces falling into place. “He was killed because he was trying to protect someone he loved.”

The room fell silent, each of us processing this

revelation. It felt like we were getting closer to the truth, but the full picture was still out of reach.

"Where is your soulmate now?" Seulgi asked, her voice urgent, as if she couldn't let go of the thread of the mystery.

The planchette trembled, then spelled out: "N... E... A... R."

"Near?" Fatou echoed, her eyes widening. "Does that mean she's close to us?"

The planchette moved one last time, spelling out: "Y... E... S."

A chill ran down my spine. Whoever Hyunjin's soulmate was, she was near us, possibly even one of us. Our innocent adventure had suddenly turned into something more serious and deadly.

….

Before anyone could respond, the sound of creaking floorboards echoed from above. We all froze, our eyes darting to the ceiling.

“It’s probably just the house settling,” Seulgi said, but she didn’t sound convinced.

We gathered our things quickly, feeling an overwhelming need to leave the basement. The Ouija board was left behind, and the secrets have been discovered. As we made our way back upstairs, the atmosphere in the house seemed to grow heavier, as if the walls were closing in on us.

We huddled in the living room, trying to make sense of everything.

“So, what now?” I asked, glancing at Seulgi. “Do we just leave and pretend this never happened?”

Seulgi shook her head. “We can’t ignore this. If someone’s in danger, we need to do something.”

Lara nodded. “But what? We don’t even know where to start.”

“Maybe we should look for clues,” I suggested, thinking about the journal I had seen earlier. “If Hyunjin left anything behind, it might tell us what happened.”

A cold breeze swept through the hallway, and the temperature dropped noticeably. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

“We need to get out of here,” Fatou said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“No,” I said, surprising even myself with my sudden boldness “We need to finish what we started. Hyunjin died protecting someone he loved. If there’s any chance we can help, we owe it to him—and her.”

The others looked at me, fear mingling with determination. Seulgi sighed deeply, her resolve wavering. “Genesis, we can’t do this alone. We need more information and more help. Let’s go back, regroup, and determine our next steps.”

Reluctantly, I nodded. Maybe Seulgi was right. Leaving was the safest option for now.

We hurriedly packed up our things and returned to the car, the house's eerie silence following us. The oppressive feeling began to lift as we drove away, but a sense of unfinished business lingered.

Back home, the night's events replayed in my mind on an endless loop. The Ouija board and Hyunjin’s messages all felt surreal, like a bizarre dream. After a long, hot shower, I finally collapsed into my bed, hoping for a few hours of rest.

My heart skipped a beat as I saw a figure on my bed,

“Genesis,” a soft voice whispered.

I froze, my heart skipping a beat. Slowly, I turned my head towards the foot of the bed. 

“Hyunjin?” I whispered, my voice shaking.

He nodded, his eyes filled with a sadness that seemed to reach into my soul. “I need your help,” he said softly, his voice carrying the weight of centuries. “She’s in danger.”

I felt a surge of emotion—fear and empathy. “Who is she? Where is she?” I asked, my voice steadier now.

“She’s closer than you think,” Hyunjin replied, “You are the key, Genesis. Only you can save her.”

“Why me?” I asked, my mind racing with questions. “How am I connected to all of this?”

Hyunjin's gaze softened. “Because you are here, Genesis. You are my soulmate, reborn.”

The room seemed to spin as his words sank in. Everything clicked into place—the strange sense of familiarity, the connection. It was all so surreal. But it isn't. This is all real. It was me all along; it's just fate. 

“But what do I do?” I asked, my voice trembling. “How do I protect myself?”

Hyunjin stepped closer, his form becoming more solid. “You must find the truth about my death. Only then can everything be fixed. 

Trust your instincts, and trust in our bond.”

As he spoke, I felt a warmth spread through me, a reassurance that I wasn’t alone in this. “I’ll do it,” I said, my voice filled with determination. “I’ll find out what happened and protect us both.”

Hyunjin’s form began to fade, but his smile remained. “Thank you, Genesis. Remember, I am always with you.”

With that, he vanished, leaving me alone in the darkness of my room. But I no longer felt afraid. I had a mission, a purpose. With Hyunjin’s love guiding me, I knew I could face whatever dangers I came across. 

…….

part 2 coming soon

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

This is a part of Felix I really like. When it comes to Rodrigue, as long as Rodrigue is safe, Felix is his usually tsun self... but as soon as anything dangerous happens to him (in both games) Felix gets anxious.

It's a nice detail because it makes sense for him to feel that way after losing Glenn, and since this is in VW, he's also, presumably at this point, lost Dimitri. It makes sense that if something felt off about his family (i.e. Dimitri is basically his brother, thus family. Dimitri literally sees Rodrigue as his second father) that he would get uncomfortable.

What I love about it is how much it speaks to his real feelings. He can act uppity and vocal all he wants, but as soon as something happens to these people he claims he doesn't like or care about, it makes him antsy. For all the nonsense he talks about them, as soon as something happens to them, he struggles to accept it (such as why, in his AM advice box note, you have to tell him that that's just the way life is sometimes when he's grieving about his father).

For all of Felix's complaining about Rodrigue, as soon as Rodrigue suddenly isn't able to update him regularly or communicate with him during a war, he becomes uneasy. He's not suddenly grateful like oh finally the old man shut up. He gets nervous that they've suddenly had little to no contact. He's unsettled not knowing what's going on with Rodrigue.

I love this line because it's who Felix really is, without all the posturing. He'll act tough and angry in front of them, but as soon as something goes wrong, he wants to know what's happening. He's afraid of not knowing what's going on. He's afraid that the Kingdom could be in a bad situation, or worse for him, that his father could be in a dangerous situation.

If he didn't care about Faerghus or his father anymore, why would it bother him not to get updates? If Rodrigue was in contact with Felix despite Felix being in the Alliance army, Rodrigue obviously had no issue with that and still took the time and effort to remain in contact with him. Plus, if Felix says this now, it means they'd been pretty regularly exchanging information up to that point and it's just recently started to go quiet, and Felix is uncomfortable with that. He wants to know what's happening.

It's so rare that he acts like this, but when he does it's very powerful. It's sincere and genuine - something he usually is not. He hides his feelings about people if they're safe in front of him. If they're not in front of him and could be in danger, he's worried.

I just wish we had more lines like this because they're so good for his character and help to get him past the issue Houses often has with tropey aspects of characters being their entire personality. In Hopes it's handled significantly better imo, but before we had AG Felix we only really had crumbs of who Felix really was and the parts of himself that he hid from others.

[minthe-deserved-better]

SATOSHOKO

"Ijichi!?" Satoru deadpanned as his friend fixed the bow-tie around his neck. "Ijichi of all fucking people?!"

Satoru didn’t find a tie necessary for graduation.

He didn’t find it necessary for any occasion actually.

But especially considering the fact that his graduating class consisted all of three people, the decision to write the occasion off as informal wasn’t particularly difficult.

In all honestly he had considered skipping the entire event all together, finding amusement in horror that would be both flashed and shared across the faces of his parents and sensei alike. Plus the smirk that would be sported by his two classmates acted as enough motivation in of itself.

However that was until Shoko had invited herself into his dorm one night. Small box in hand that, after tearing the wrapping paper to shreds, contained a small yellow tie. Silk by the feel of it. With her quote saying “I’ve always liked the color on you.”

And how could he say no to something like that?Yellow was his favorite color after all. It reminded him of the softness of Shoko’s bed comforter, the safety and validity of their friendship.

There was a time when he hated the color and everything associated with it. He refused to wear it for months as a child. Wouldn't even eat candy with that particular hue.

Something about the overzealous color made his cynical, yet adolescent self inwardly cringe. Didn’t like the way it clashed with almost every other color on the wheel, being so incredibly opposite of the blues he much preferred for totally unbiased reasons.

But all it took was for Shoko to tell his 16 year old self that the color made her smile and catch Shoko wearing a light yellow, boarder line cream colored blouse that tied above her belly button on a beach in Okinawa to make him realize that yellow really wasn’t all that bad.

"Don't you start with me,Satoru." She finished the bow-tie and patted his chest. Spinning on her literal heels to face her bathroom mirror again.

"Of all the douche bags in that school, you had to pick him?" He groaned.

"Okay, one, he isn't a douche bag. He’s just shy. And two," She held up the appropriate amount of fingers, "I said nothing when you decided to play kissy face with Mei Mei for five months!"

Satoru winced at the memory. "That's different."

"It is not!"

"Mei Mei tortured you during our first year. And she apologized for it."

"She only apologized after she had your dick in her mouth!"

"Be that as it may," Gojo bit back his smile, "She still did it. Ijichi is insufferable. Won’t even look me in the eyes when he talks”

"Because you’ve got unsettling eyes. Plus you and Geto absolutely terrorize the kid.”

"I don't want to get into the logistics of it all..."

"So don't."

His best friend applied a final coat of her lipgloss. She could feel him staring at her reflection in the mirror so she met his eyes.

"Satoru, he’s sweet , and is good to me. He's the first guy to be good to me in forever. (Besides himself of course)I think he loves me."

The wistful look in her eyes was enough to make him downcast his in shame.

"I'm sorry, Sho." Though the apology was for her, he spoke it to his shiny new shoes.The ones his parents had sent to him for the sole purpose of wearing today. “You deserve to be happy."

"Hey," The tip of her index finger pushed at his chin, tilting it as high as he usually held it. He tried to look everywhere but her beautifully made up face. Shoko was having none of it. She used her thumb to hold him steady.

Her dark eyes clashed with an emotion too intense to put a name on. "I love you, stupid. I'll love you even if you beat up my boyfriend."

"Is that you giving me permission?" He joked weakly to lighten the mood. Her eye roll was one for the books. "I love you too." Satoru added as more of an after thought.

"I know you do." Shoko leaned past him to grab her graduation gown from the hook near her dresser. Pulling a face when she slid it on her arms and saw the way it clashed with her white dress.

"God, why do we have to wear such an awful shade of blue?"

"I like it." He shrugged. His gown was already on and zipped. "It's a royal color."

“Cause you’re a fucking prince huh?”

"Must you always argue with me, woman?"

Shoko’s bedroom door swung open while she was laughing at her best friend. The third of their trio welcoming himself in.

"You guys take for fucking ever."

Geto threw his arms across Satoru’s shoulder, knowing better than to potentially mess up Shoko’s hair or freshly ironed gown.

“Some of us take longer to look good Suguru.”

He smirked, glancing at her through the mirror.

“A problem Im happy to not have.”

“Screw you!”

“Your boyfriend wouldn’t like that Sho. Speaking of which-“ He motioned behind him with his thumb. "He’s waiting for you with your parents . The gentleman got you some flowers.The nice ones too.”

Shoko smiled to herself and the realization that had never really been lost on Geto, but had been abhorrently denied by Satoru, situated itself in front of the trio. The truth that high school had brought them memories. A kind of co-dependency that wasn’t a hindrance to anyone involved, but graduation was a sick reminder that brought them opportunities that didn’t depend on one another the way they had before.

The truth made Satoru nauseous.

"I told him not to make a huge deal out of it." She smiled.” I don’t want him to see me yet.”

Satoru rolled his eyes.

“You’re not getting married or anything.”

Geto flicked him In between the space of his eyebrows.

“Don’t be a dick.”

He scoffed, pushing his hand away.

“I’m not, but like c’mon, you don’t think that’s kinda ridiculous?”

Suguru shrugged, sliding his arm from Gojo’s shoulder to wrap Shoko in a tight hug , forgoing his previous efforts to not mess up her hair and gown.

“I think you’re just bitter because you can’t monopolize her time anymore.”

Shoko snickered, looking over Geto’s shoulder to tease Satoru.

“I don’t monopolize her time, she just happens to give a lot of it to me. A joint effort kinda thing.”

Shoko shrugged, moving past Geto and to the door of her room.

“Well whatever explanation you come up with, just please be nice to him.” She looked at them both as she spoke. “Karma might take it as a sign and maybe send you someone who can handle you.”

He grinned, shoving his hands into his pockets.

“No one handles me better than you.”

“That’s the problem Satoru.”

She groaned walking towards the hallway, fully prepared to be welcomed by both her parents and the lucky bastard that had managed to weasel his way into her good graces.

His parents had to be paying her or something.

"God, you totally wanna bone her or something.”

Geto adjusted the cap on his head.

"Eat shit." Satoru shoved him to the side, adjusting his tie after the fact. “I’m being a good friend.”

"Doesn’t matter what you were trynna be. Ijichi beat you to it." He was only half joking. "A wolfish grin took over his face. “Bet she liked it too.”

“I’m gonna kill him.”

Geto nodded, not disagreeing.

“Well you like getting in trouble anyways. You always have that stupid smile when she’s yelling at you.”

And Satoru snickered, knowing that there wasn’t much he could say to prove otherwise.

”Kinda turns me on, not gonna lie to you.”

“You're sick Satoru.”

He barked out a laugh, mixing him with his shoulder as they walked.

”Her parents like me more though, got that going for me.”

Geto straightened out the wrinkles of his gown, squinting with an amusing amount of concentration.

“Her parents like everyone. Said I had great hair.”

Gojo peered over his shoulder, observing the carefully crafted bun on his head. Didn’t take him long to make the decision to mess it up, running his hands through it all.

“Yeah, so wear it down on our special day. You look like a pretty princess.”

“Why, so you can be my prince?”

“Yeah and then Shoko will have to want me.”

He cringed, embarrassed by association.

“You’re pathetic.”

[frostgears]

We Who Are Far From Home, ch. 6: Bree 4

Bree found herself staring over another railing. Instead of a frigid ocean, this one kept her from a two-kilometer drop. But oh, the view…

The sun rose behind her, glinting gold off a chain of mountain lakes and glowing through snowpack, leaving shadowed forested valleys alone with a promise of deeper greens later in the day. Worth protecting, she thought, and then, is this bit even mine? Nobody had yet gone to the trouble of painting red lines on the ground visible from airships. She couldn't tell Pact from Kingdom from unaligned from wilderness up here.

"Can't believe you used to be a little bratty underclasswoman," Emmerline said from behind her.

Bree turned, arranged her face in an approximation of an actual smile instead of an unsettling grin. "I was never a brat," she responded. "Best behavior at all times. Scholarship to maintain."

"Sure you were. Always got the last word in lecture and the first move on the dance floor. I was just thinking that you look so fucking dignified now."

"Hah. You want to know something horrifying that I picked up from the Fist?"

"You had me at 'horrifying'," Emmerline said.

"Ghoul."

Emmerline grinned, warmly, invitingly, a grin sculpted by a dozen generations of posh ancestry to produce one dangerously handsome woman. "Spill it," she said.

"You know they're calling me 'Bree the Blessed' now?"

"Get out. The Fist is?"

"They are. I'm sure they didn't invent it. The Fist idiot reading off the charges said 'commonly known as Bree the Blessed' right before they announced they were there to kill me."

"Well, that's a step up from 'Bree the Bodiless'. Which was never true anyway! You have a body."

"Mmm, yeah," Bree said, "that's what's got me brooding off the port bow of the Eternal Blue, as it happens. It's… I'm… I don't know. I think I'm starting to like it."

"We should all be so lucky,"

"I'm serious!"

"So am I. I don't get the problem."

"The body comes with certain habits. Or thoughts. You said 'dignified', right?"

"Yes, and I also said you used to be a huge brat. Couldn't go five minutes without starting something. Now you seem, I don't know, calmer. You've been hanging out at the bow for hours now, doing what, watching the clouds and thinking deep thoughts? Plus you look like you were born to have that cloak flap dramatically in the breeze. Well. Not born, I suppose. But it suits you either way."

"Em, this isn't me! I'm not sure what is me and what's the doll body and what's from the compulsions and constraints and bindings it was crafted with."

"You sure you didn't just grow up a bit?"

Bree tensed all of her frame actuators in frustration.

"I'd be more sure if I hadn't helped Coda build a few dozen like it with the same service compulsions. Mostly in the parts I can't swap out."

"Ah."

"I can practically feel the need to be a good helpful little… servant," she said, stopping "maid" just before it escaped her voice box. "And I don't know how far it extends! None of the dolls would ever have serious magic, power, allies, all the things I have, so I have no idea what'd happen if one got them! Am I only running around protecting the Kingdom because a bunch of control spells are woven into the pretty little reliquary where my brain should be? Or because that damned archon laid something even worse on it?"

Emmerline tilted her head, appraising.

"Bree. Darling. Two things. One: I'm under no such compulsions. I tracked you down, remember, after you saved my life? I'm here of my own free will." Emmerline held up a finger, then held up another. "So's Nost."

"Please. The way she looks at me. The things I've done to her—"

"It's a small airship. I've heard them. Has one of them been talking? Because I've had more than a few chats with her while waiting for your return. As obviously submissive as she is, Bree, as unassuming and as self-effacing as she can be, it's easy to forget that she's older and more experienced than either of us. She's been with good and bad partners, she's completely capable of choosing for herself. Oh, she also wants your body, but that's just her being an artificer."

"What about Zai?"

"Hmm, yes, Zai," Emmerline put up a third finger, furrowed her brow. "I have no idea. Is she here because she believes in you enough to go rogue, or is she the king's loyal servant, ready to stab us in our backs the instant we try something that Royal Intelligence wouldn't like? Sorry. Can't illuminate the bottom of that swamp," she said cheerily. "But that brings me to my second point: Zai's here and making herself useful because you started a fight with one of the great powers of the world, and by some measures, you are winning. How many of your dolls went and did that?"

Bree laughed, and turned from the rail. "Okay. Okay. Just me, so far. You might have a point."

"And you might still be a dramatic brat. Just a successful one. Stop questioning why everything, focus on how and when and where and what next and keeping the demon-fuckers in the Pact busy. Keep doing that and I'll back you up with all I've got."

"I'm not your underclasswoman any more, Em, I didn't even graduate. And we're a long way from the Academy now."

"Eh. Close enough. We Academy girls gotta stick together."

She offered a hand. Bree took it. Em pulled her, with some effort, into a hug.

"Did Zai put you up to this?" Bree said softly into Emmerline's ear.

"She only said you were moping near the bow."

"Not moping. Just… being. Promise."

"She did, however, have a suggestion for our next port of call."

---

"So you were able to get something out of those letters!" Bree cheered. "Nice. Thought our last excursion before I went north had been a bust."

"She helped," Zai said, jerking her head in Emmerline's direction.

"I recognized a phrase, that's all. Our pet spook had the first few words of the key worked out, and I just happened to remember the epigraph of 'Four Flowers on the Wind'. Funny that they used a Kingdom novel to key their code."

"You saved me at least a week, on that letter alone. And the reason they used a Kingdom novel is because it'd look strange to be caught with Pact literature. Now, the letter named a target for the squad you took it off two months ago, and Bree, you left them unable to exfiltrate and report?"

Bree nodded. "I did ask. Same as always. One chance, put your weapons down, walk away. No takers."

"I envy your ability to make the offer," Zai said suddenly. "You're strong, you can give them that one chance, knowing they'll almost certainly not take it. I'm weak, I fear giving my enemies anything, and I'll kill them before I offer them the chance to kill me." The spy had a pained expression.

"You wouldn't want to be a doll, Zai," Bree said. "Or would you? I'm not sure I'd recommend it."

The spy shook her head, her hair-bun wobbling side to side. "I think not. I've honed my own body; it does what I need." She pursed her lips briefly. "For now. Anyway, the letter: they're meant to converge three heavy squads at the Turquoise flower show, and the Pact noble Marchioness Miriya of Rostalpan is to be executed by the Fist, for the crime of collaboration with the Kingdom, in front of all the mingling aristos from both sides. Apparently Miriya loves flowers. She'd be an example for any other aspiring collaborators: don't even think about the other side of the fence."

"Is she a collaborator?"

"Not sure. Doesn't matter. We have the means and opportunity to visit Turquoise, and look like we're meant to be there right up until we counter-ambush the Fist."

"Miriya. Miriya," Bree said. "Heard that name before, I think. What do you know about her, Zai? Em?"

"Rostalpan is a poor march and house by the standards of human Pact nobility. No demonic patronage. That's all the Service knew when I left," the spy said, "a two-line entry in the Big Book. Didn't rate anything in the Little Book."

"Artist," Emmerline chimed in. "Landscapes. Competent, not brilliant, unless she's evolved spectacularly."

"You know her?" Bree asked. "Would she recognize you?"

"Not likely, since this was way back during the last peace treaty. My father took me to the cultural exchange. Said the peace would be no doubt over soon, but that I should learn what I could."

"And that was what you took away?" Zai asked.

"I was thirteen. What fine points of international politics do you remember from when you were thirteen?"

"At thirteen? I was in His Majesty's Reformatory for Wayward Youths for the crime of frightening a dauphin's horse with my screams after he ran me down in the street, maimed my brother, and broke my leg."

"Gods, you never said! And you're on our side?"

"What side?" Zai shrugged. "That dauphin will get his someday. Preferably slowly. The rest of you parasites will give up their riches or die. Meanwhile, I don't want to see my neighbors die to war and then demons than you, or the doll. So we work together, yes?"

Emmerline stared. She winced. She opened her mouth, closed it again. Then, "Yes," she said, and stuck out a hand.

"Right." Zai clasped it briefly, let go. "Bree, do you need help reconfiguring yourself? Should we go fetch Nost?"

"Oh good, you haven't forgotten about 'the doll'. Yes, please," Bree said, "it's much faster that way. But full briefing first. I don't think she's going to like it."

---

"So, Zai, you're serious about this? You want to have Em make an appearance at this resort town? To do what?"

"Turquoise is at a triple boundary between the Kingdom, the Pact, and the Gulf of Pearls. Neutral. Full of aristos from both sides, on vacation and behaving badly. We're going to visit to catch the famous yearly flower show and cozy up to this Marchioness before the Crimson Fist does. Em is once again Lady Emmerline Dupree, second daughter of House Dupree, still on her increasingly lengthy gap year between Academy graduation and royal service. Bree and I are her servants."

"This is going to burn Em," Nost said.

"Had to happen sometime," Emmerline snorted. "Last chance to clean out the family coffers, raid the closets, and steal the silverware. Least it's for a good cause."

"All right. What about me?"

"You're known to too many Pact security elements. You stay with the ship, as backup."

"And Bree isn't known?" Nost asked. "They have a whole list of epithets for her."

"Not… in my old body," Bree said, looking to Zai, who nodded.

"Her old body?" Nost blanched. "As in… no, you said the archon took that one. Which means… No. No no no. Bree, you can't. Everything we've built together, you won't have it!"

Bree grinned. Her grin left some humanity to be desired. Someone had told her that it never reached her eyes, given that even her current face didn't have the fine articulation she'd need to match human skin. It also displayed far too many teeth, which she'd added an extra row of, just because. Pity the teeth would need to stay with this head.

"Hey," she said, "Originally? I was literally 'maid' for the job. Get it?"

---

prev: We Who Are Far From Home, ch. 5: Bree 3

next: We Who Are Far From Home, ch. 7: Bree 5

[beneathashadytree]

Hiiiiii! I wanted to request an angsty fic, where reader is like Scarlet Witch in WandaVision who makes this alternate universe where Whitebeard is alive and like Ace is Vision and they both have kids. While all that's happening in the Hex, the Red Hair Pirates, remnants of the Whitebeard Pirates, and the Straw Hats try to stop her since she's taking over the New World. (The Marines are trying to kill her) I'll leave the angsty details to you since I suck at thinking🤣 THANK YOUUU, HAVE A GREAT DAY!

PICTURE PERFECT - PORTGAS D. ACE X READER

Warnings : Marineford spoilers, mentions of death, blood, gore, and the like, grief and delusions, this can be generally unsettling, this is not proofread, reader is gender-neutral!

Genre : angst (plus creepiness)

Word count : 1.0K words

Additional notes : Hi nonnie! So sorry for taking a ridiculously long time to get to this, but as you might know by now, I’ve been on hiatus after certain traumatic events in my life. I had to change up quite a few things in this because I haven’t watched anything from the Marvel Universe, so I know absolutely nothing about how this would work🫠 Also, I’ve had requests for ficlets (4K+ word-long pieces) turned off for over a year now, so I couldn’t get into too much detail anyways. And of course, as stated in my rules, unless the gender affects the plot, I write my readers as gender-neutral to be as inclusive as possible. However, I hope this could be somewhat satisfactory to you, with the general vibes I could manage🥹💗

Requests : Are closed for the time being.

Want to support me financially? Here’s my CashApp!

Masterlist

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. This wasn’t how they’d planned out their future together.

They’d always expected a life on the run; they’d never imagined anything different. But still, the love between them was too intense to deny, and too unconditional to ever think for a moment that it would ever disappear. If they had no faith in anyone but themselves, they could, at the very least, believe in their love.

Wherever they would’ve gone, they’d still be just as smitten as they were the first day they met. No matter how their future played out, they were so sure that their love would have them dying in each other’s arms at a peaceful old age, their last breaths weaving in bed together. Wherever one went, the other would follow. That was how it was supposed to go.

It wasn’t supposed to end with them carrying Ace’s limp, ice-cold body in their arms. It wasn’t supposed to be the acrid smell of burnt flesh that suffocated them. It wasn’t supposed to be his blood that drenched their clothes and stained them unsalvageable.

They weren’t supposed to be gasping for air as their entire body shook violently, pure horror painting their features. Nor were they supposed to feel bile rising at the back of their throat and tears stinging their eyes at the terrible realization that his chest wasn’t moving, not one inch. As a matter of fact, nothing much remained of his mangled chest at all—if they could even recognize it as his chest anymore.

Their trembling only intensified, failing to register just how empty and mutilated he seemed in their lap. Vision swimming, they couldn’t help but let the ugly sobs rack their body, their tears falling freely down their cheeks. They hiccupped on their sobs, the sounds mingling with the moans of a deep, deep pain that threatened to swallow them whole.

Ace had left them. He’d left them behind. He’d left them behind in a world they no longer wanted nor cared for. He’d left them to look forward to nothing, to feel so empty and numb but somehow consumed by a sadness so immense it nearly ripped them apart.

Perhaps it was that moment, that moment when their entire world crumbled around them, that drove something to crumble inside of them. Something broke, and that odd, unfamiliar something awakened the deepest pit of their sorrow within them. Pandora’s box opened, and it shattered their very reality as they knew it. With Ace’s dead body in their arms, and their wailing piercing the stormy vortex of sudden bleak night, they were soon swallowed into it without even being the slightest bit aware.

The grief was blinding, and they’d lost all control. Where it took them, they didn’t care nor pay it any notice.

***

Having lost track of time, they hadn’t any idea how long it had been. In all cases, it didn’t matter. No, it truly didn’t matter what had happened on that day; after all, why would it? They still had Ace.

Yes, they still had Ace. And he was sitting right behind them on a small, tattered-but-well-loved couch. Strong arms cradled them close to his chest—a perfectly intact, moving chest, not even the slightest bit scarred. Would the universe demand a price from them, for the heinous crime they’d committed just to have this? Maybe. But this universe, at the very least, was one that handed everything to them on a silver platter.

“What’s on your mind?” he mumbled, lazily planting soft, open-mouthed kisses up their neck to their ear, and his teeth lightly tugging at their earlobe.

They hummed in delight, snuggling deeper into his embrace. “Nothing much. Just thinking about how lucky I am.”

Ace laughed a little. “You just called us “three snotty-nosed brats” an hour ago.”

“And? You know I’m right,” they teased him, before asking, “Speaking of, did the kids give you a hard time falling asleep?”

Yes; kids. Kids that kissed them goodnight, kids that clung to them whenever they went out, and kids that would get mud on their carpets but shoot them the sweetest smiles that got them out of trouble every single time. Kids that cried when they scraped their knees, and kids that ran into Pops’ arms whenever he demanded his favorite grandchildren visit him.

Kids that made the small house feel like a warm home, and kids that fit perfectly into that delusion of happiness they’d built, with a father and grandfather that were perfectly healthy and fine. Deceptively so.

Perhaps this sort of deception wasn’t as sinful as it sometimes whispered it was in their ear. Their Devil Fruit had never proved itself useful, and their lack of desire to use it had been the reason why they’d found themself stunned by the existence of this universe of their own creation. The grief that had nearly killed them of heartbreak had been the very same thing to offer some salvation to them, by granting them a second chance in a world where things were perfect, in an almost eerie way.

“—babe? Babe? Hey—“

“Yes, yes,” they sighed, momentarily snapping out of it. “Sorry, got lost in my thoughts for a second.”

“You’ve been doing that pretty often lately.” Ace’s handsome face contorted into a worried frown. “Are you sure everything’s okay?”

They didn’t respond to that. Almost as though on autopilot, their feet carried them to the kids’ room. With stiff movements, they bent over to brush their hair back from their foreheads, hands subtly passing underneath their noses to check that they were breathing. Good. They were very much alive, and very much real. They were real. Not just figments of their imagination.

Ace still seemed confused as they turned to walk back to him. Peering into his beautiful dark eyes, they held their breath for a moment. Yes, yes. Good. His eyes were alive; they weren’t unblinking, nor were they unseeing.

And as they reached up with trembling hands, they could trace the freckles on his cheeks and feel him leaning into their touch. The warmth of his skin was a stark contrast to the icy coldness that remained as a phantom touch in their memories.

They could live like this, forever and ever. No losses, no sorrows staining their flawless lives.

Plastering a smile on their face, they nodded. “Of course. Everything is picture perfect.”

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