#scratching the wood with his nails... NASTY

[amymbona]

Probably the nastiest shot from the whole movie

[earthtooz]

x : HOUSE OF CARDS :*+ﾟ

in which: for as long as you remember, sunday covers his eyes when he cries.

warnings: 1.5k words, fluff with elements of angst, kind of follows canon- not exactly though, sunday cries gold because i said so, based on his character stories, gn!reader who is an observer to the complexity that is sunday's lcharacter

a/n: an attempt into studying sunday was made- i don't think i hit the hammer on the nail quite right, but i tried, i mainly just wanted to celebrate him + his lc coming home YAY. i wish i had more time to let the outline of this marinate, but i couldn't see it being any better than it's current state, so apologies if this isn't the best or most eloquent read of your life.

Sunday had a habit of covering his eyes with his wings when he cried.

He didn’t cry often, but you would know when he did whenever his feathers pressed against his face, hiding his golden eyes and the ichor they’d shed front he world, not allowing anyone to see the depths of his soul, the magnitude of his suffering. 

The first time he did this was at the young age of nine, a fledgling barely a decade in to the tapestry of life. It happened after he fell over while chasing you and Robin around in Gopher Wood’s gardens, knee scraping against concrete and skin peeling in the process, resulting in a nasty scratch, and his wings fluttered to cover his face almost immediately, even stifling his sniffles as traces of golden tears streamed down his cheeks, dripping onto his clothes.

He bared himself to you not too long after, the tears and snot drying as you tended his wound with Robin singing him a comforting lullaby.

These were the innocent tears of childhood, none of you yet changed by the harsh realities that fate would guide your paths on.

The second time was after his first music class.

It seemed Robin stole the affinity for singing from him as their music teacher berated him, likening his voice to that of a ‘duckling’, comparable to the sound of nails on chalkboard. A 12 year old Sunday was sent out of class not too long after, the start of a tantrum beginning to take place as his eyes welled up and began sniffling, fists and wings clenched.

You come to his aid not too long after, having heard the commotion and wandering over, but when he saw you, he ducked out of your sight and covered his eyes with his wings, splaying them over his face. They were larger now and capable of covering the expanse of his head, only exposing his forehead and chin as you tried to console him.

“Hey, it’s okay!” You coo, rubbing his shoulder comfortingly. “Mr. Big Guy tells me your piano playing is amazing and that you’re a real prodigy, Sunday!”

The sniffles halt momentarily. “Really?” His wobbly voice had asked.

“Yeah! He’s proud of you, and you should be proud of that too!”

He bares himself to you, glassy golden eyes looking into you, trying to seek comfort in the familiarity of your friendliness and company. “You mean it?” 

“Of course!”

“Then… are you proud of me too, Y/n?”

“I’m always proud of you, dummy, now stop crying and cheer up!”

“You’re right,” he chuckles, wiping his face with the back of his hand as his other went to grasp yours. “I shouldn’t let that witch get to me.”

“Sunday! Be respectful of your teachers!”

Despite how often the grey-haired boy would listen to your whims and wishes, he never stopped calling his vocal teacher a witch or anything along the variant. It displeased you every time, but the most you would punish him with was a gentle slap on the arm and a scowl that would melt away as soon as he’d share his giantmoa pudding tarts with you.

A few months after that shared moment, Sunday had begun taking the Family lessons from the Bronze Melodia. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, he had dreamed of being an influence that would change Penacony and its Dreamscape for the better, and now it was finally his moment- his calling to the world had finally been heard, and they answered with a path that was of utmost righteousness and virtue. 

However, as he took more lessons, learned more about the ways of the Family, he grew into someone else. 

The third time you saw him cry was when you received the news that Robin was shot. A bullet wound to the neck, it was a miracle that she survived, but Sunday was inconsolable, even whilst knowing that she was alive, just on another planet. The distance was akin to torture because no matter how desperately he wished to be by her side, he couldn’t cross it while shackled to his duties in Penacony, so the spirit of the elder brother rested in your arms and cried. 

He sobbed quietly into your shoulder, wings covering his eyes as the two of you sit on the floor, a hauntingly beautiful image of despair as his limbs intertwined with yours. Sunday had collapsed on you the moment you welcomed him into your embrace, the ability to hold himself up being too much to stomach after knowing that he could have lost his sister. 

He cries until your limbs grow pins and needles, until you begin to feel weak under the weight of his grief and your own, until you feel the puddle of tears on your clothes drying. 

Gloved hands hold onto you tightly, and he knew something then and there.

“I can’t lose you,” he whispers, breath shuddering as despair rolls off him in waves, and Sunday removes his face from your shoulder, a cold look of determination staring up at you. “I must protect you, I must shield your happiness too so that we may never suffer again.”

“What?”

His words are incomprehensible to you at this point, and they sound akin to the ramblings of a mad man. “You will never struggle to be happy again, I will give you everything you need- I see it now, Y/n. The strong must guide the weak, for who else will they seek solace in?”

Realisation seeps into your bones like ice. After so many confessionals, so many witnesses of humanity at its most helpless, he has grown nihilistic, devoid of hope towards the resilience of human beings. Still, he yearns to help. Yearns to help people thrive even though he does not truly believe in things getting better, and shoulders this impossible fight by himself. 

The sweet boy you once knew has hardened his defences, fortified his walls and relentlessly chased the most obscure path of Harmony: Order. Destroyed himself under the belief of being responsible for creating a painless reality for humanity, and you witnessed the catalyst for Sunday’s own dismantling whilst he was laid on your lap. 

You haven’t seen him cry since that day. He no longer hides himself behind his wings because he no longer gives himself a moment to mourn. Devastation is engrained in every fibre of his being. 

Now, when he plays the piano for you, you don’t hear the melodic tune of the most important person in your life- you hear a complex piece of toil and struggle. When you sit next to him on the piano stool, you watch the dexterity of his fingers and how his face remains serenely calm whilst playing the hardest sonata known to man, acclimatized to the toughest scenarios that even the polished wood of the piano won’t warp his pristine image. 

Then, when he is finished, you lay your head on his shoulder as you shower him with praises, searching for a familiar fragment of him that you can grasp onto. However, all you find is a shard of bittersweet longing when he turns to place a dainty kiss on the top of your head.

Everyday before the Charmony Festival, you feel like you know him less and less. He won’t even touch the giantmoa pudding tarts you leave on his desk. 

The fourth time you see Sunday cry, he is a changed man.

After exiling himself from Penacony, you naturally grow to ache for his presence. At least Robin has returned to you and will share conversations about the mysterious future of her older brother, sometimes you cry together, over him and also over other things, but at the core of all your emotions is how badly you miss him. You miss him as you overlook Penacony’s Grand Theatre, you miss him in all the old desserts you used to love together, you miss him when you think about him. 

Letters are infrequent and never quite soothe the emptiness, but you hope that in some vast corner of the universe, he is discovering a sense of peace he could never have here. The events of the Charmony Festival still make you cringe, but knowing that he is with the kind souls of the Astral Express relieves you.

In fact, you have half a mind to be rather jealous- you want to be exploring the stars as well.  

However, he comes back to you after countless moons.

You run into him where you least expect to, on the streets of Penacony, under the vibrant advertisements for SoulGlad, Hanu’s Advertisement, and Robin’s latest album. Under the blinding neon monstrosity of Penacony’s main street, you are swept into the arms of a man who you have missed for countless moons, who you have thought of as the weeks turn into months, who you fell in love with since the time he scraped his knee after falling on pavement. 

And this time, he doesn’t cover his eyes as liquid gold drips down his cheek.

You forgot how unfairly pretty of a crier he is, but you don't have time to think about it as he pulls you close and rejoices on your lips. There's a small whimper that escapes you when you feel his tears fall on your skin, but your hands crawl up to the collar of his coat to keep him close so you can keep catching them.

His gloved hands come to rest on your cheeks in kind, stubborn to not let you stray too far again.

He tastes like giantmoa pudding tarts. 

“I’ve missed you,” you whisper between kisses. 

He responds by pressing you closer and pouring his devotion into your mouth.

© EARTHTOOZ 2024, do not steal, translate, repost my fics and do not recommend my fics onto any other site.

[mcondance]

another tim + his dorm fantasy lol ☆ reader is able to be fucked against a wall ☆ he’s described as “way taller than you.” matthew is 6’4 so tim is 6’4.

bf! tim and his unbelievably good dick. he fucks dirty and he fucks well, pretty face twisted up at the feel of you around him.

against his door is how you take it, how he gives it to you this time. strong from years of hockey and fueled by a love for this, his ruts and thrusts and the way he fucks you right is normal and routine.

your hands curl in his tee with something nasty printed across the front, nails almost ripping holes in his shirt. he wouldn’t care if you did, cause it’s his style, of course, but also cause he can wear it around, getting compliments and odd looks and only the two of you know what the rips came from.

always needing and wanting, you kiss him as best you can with him rocking you against the cold wood, hands on the sides of his face and just barely scratching at his box blonde hair. messy and wild, tongue and spit and overshot kisses that land on each other’s cheek or nose half the time.

broad and strong, way taller than you, he’s a pro at picking you up and drilling into you exactly how you both need it. you whine raggedly from deep in your throat, letting his deliberate strokes bang you against the door, throwing your head back and moaning to the sky. it’s almost too much to be getting pounded like this, and it’s everything.

his boxy tv playing an old rerun of living single, loud conversations passing outside his dorm room, the city buzzing just outside his window, and the two of you, enthralled and having fun fucking like the movies.

[imbadatparking]

The Wither’s

“The Ol’ Wither’s house ain’t nothin’ but snow and coal, now. 

The gray winter pulls on its hinges and clings to it like rust on metal. The paint thickens and peels off like cracked nails, revealin’ molded wood underneath. The planks splinter and lay worn by the passage of time. It sags off the frame, like pale, dead skin too heavy for brittle bones. The windows that haven’t yet broken are cracked and half-boarded. They glow an eerie blue, curtains darkenin’ the light that tries to escape. The wind pushes against it, causin’ it to tremble. 

The surroundin’ overgrown weeds grow in tangled clumps, lost in the grass that hadn’t been mowed in over a lifetime. Damn shame too – my grandaddy used to tell stories of the beautiful sunflowers that there yard used to grow, their thick, beautiful stalks that shot up to ten feet tall, the way their mustard gold petals turn towards the sun in youthful yearnin’. Now, the only thing that grows there is them vines, full of malicious intent, and there ain’t no sun they can turn too. 

The dark oak front gate groans when the wind gets too heavy, a warnin’ against those foolish enough to approach. They’re a rare bunch, but they tend to come in abundance. The trouble-makin’ youngins who get adrenaline rushes from triple dog dares, teeterin’ on the edge of brave or just plain stupid; squatters that leave cigarette butts littered across the already gross property; CPS and CVS and all the other nonsense government spies with sticks up their asses and an itch to scratch. Jameson, who doesn’t know the difference between black and white, is certain the latter’s been comin’ ‘round just to find somethin’ wrong. I’m inclined to believe him, just this once – I can’t be the only one who’s seen them pokin’ around poor Molly’s trailer. It ain’t her fault she’s livin’ disability check to disability check.

Ain’t nobody ever been inside, and those who say they have are just flat-out lyin’. Everybody knows of the rot that sets in every year. The heat must be too much for the old wood, and the smell that wafts off it is like nothin’ I’ve ever encountered. It smells bad enough that the police did an investigation on it a while back. Someone said there musta been dead bodies in the walls, but when they tore apart the inside, the only thing they found was those nasty maggots. Apparently them nasty critters had been there for months.

The ‘Withers? Well, nobody really talks about ‘em no more. They’re just an ol’ part of this town’s lore. And, well, we’re not really sure how true their stories are, see –? They’re ghosts, now, too lost and sad to let go. 

Between you ‘n me, they were an odd couple. Jamie and Sarah were the parents, the ones who started the beginning of the end of the Withers’ legacy. They’d inherited the two-story from Sarah’s grandparents – her father had earned it from his father, had earned it from his mother. you know how it goes. Who knows who owned it first, or how long ago it was built. Apparently it’s been such a state since their daughter went up and left to become some big city hotshot. She hadn’t been the same since her brother died in that fatal accident. 

Terrible thing, the way that family attracted tragedy like nobody’s business. Or everybody's business, if you live ‘round here. Some people just can’t handle it. They drift away, dreamin’ of becomin’ somethin’ like an artist or a singer or a poet, and they end up dead, addicted to drugs, or back at the gates of this town, beggin’ to be let back in. You know how it goes – we all do. It’s the same song and dance. 

It's just unfortunate that the house has got to be the one to pay for it, just sittin’ there, witherin’ away. Us too, of course. Whatever happens to one family in this town, affects the rest of us.

But those are just rumors and you didn’t hear nothin’ from me. All that really matters, all we really know, is that that house right there has more ghosts than a cemetery. 

Some say it’s the same place where Missy Felps went and died – her innocence stolen like a final breath before drownin’. Her pinky piggytails were the only trace of her left behind, ‘cept for the stories the kids around the block whispered with exaggerated terror. Missy’s fate was left to be told by those with too wild of imaginations and middle schoolers with too much time on their hands. The adults ‘round here pretty much know better, keepin’ their mouths locked and sealed ‘bout secrets untold, as they should. Ain’t nobody want anybody talkin’ ‘bout them as Missy is talked ‘bout, so most had the half-mind and empathy to look the other way.

Missy had been the ripe age of six when her screams echoed through these ivy-clad streets. That night, the lights flickered low and yellow as they turned on, their dull glow illuminatin’ hopelessness and danger. Neighbors had run out into the street as the ambulance had wailed loud enough for the next town over to hear. News of her death had been known straight to Atlanta by the time mornin’ time had come. The sky had been colored in a hazy mix of oranges and pinks, and her headstone had been a black shadow ‘till the sun came out.

Most of the story had come straight from Missy’s ol’ neighbor, Georgia Smith.

I’m not one to talk ill on a lady, but Aunty Georgia could hardly be considered as such. She has more words to say than she outta be allowed.  She didn’t just run the gossip mill – she created it. You can hear her whispers carryin’ through the cold wind if you listen hard enough. Her weathered hands knit the tales that laysthe foundation of this town like they knit her sweaters ‘n scarves ‘n gloves. She always sits in that same rockin’ chair, an ominous creak as she rolls forward, echoed by an ominous creak as she rolls back. She has as many stories ‘bout her as she’s created – kids sayher one blind eye was the reason she knew everythin’, that she was the one who killed the stray tabby that’d turned up in her front yard, that her wealthy, white collar grandson was threatenin’ to send her into one of them mental institutes – but nothin’ could be considered true, ‘less it came straight from her mouth.

Yeah, she’s one person to be wary of, especially around your secrets. Nobody outta blame her, though, Lord knows that mansion’s been awful empty since her good-for-nothin’ husband up and left her. You know, all her kids are adults by now, out in the real world. Empty nest syndrome ain’t for the faint of heart, and she’s had that condition for years now. Most the town’s got their bets placed on the day she clocks out and never clocks back in. Jameson says she’ll last ‘till May, but there’s no way she’ll survive past April. 

No matter – the town’ll find a new Aunty Georgia once the mournin’ is done and the everyone’s done well to move on. There was an Aunty Georgia before I got here, and I’ll be damned if there ain’t when I leave. There always is, there always be. That’s the way things work ‘round here. 

Don’t worry if you’re not used to it yet, sometimes it takes a while. New soil, new roots – we all get it. Though, most of us ‘round here have been ‘round here since pretty much the beginnin’ of time. Ain’t no reason to leave. We got a market and a gas station, and that’s all we need. None of those fancy academics with their billion dollar homes – makes the charm of this place dwindle and the economy crash.

In this town, life unfolds like the lazy river that runs along the fields of cotton and sunflowers. The drawl of conversation is as slow as the molasses in the sweet tea, and always has been – ain’t no point in rushin’ when we're all goin’ the same destination. 

After all the Withers’ ain’t the only place where there’s ghosts, and they won’t be lonely for long. That’s just a fact of life.”

[whaleofatjme1920]

From Where the Land Meets the Sea - Chapter 2

[GN!Reader]

[Warnings: Minor wounds described, nothing too bad.]

[AN: 4374 words! <3]

Full Index

Chapter 1 | Chapter 3

Reblogs are appreciated!

Sluggishly, you woke to the sound of thick droplets of rain pattering against the window and roof of the cold place your body laid. You felt a deep pounding near the base of your skull and the back of it, something deep, sharp and unpleasant. Instinctively, you raised your hand to soothe the piercing arche but were halted by the thick cords wrapped around your wrists. You glanced downwards to see the thin white zip ties that accompanied them, and with a heavy sigh, you realized that your ankles were in the same shape. 

The familiar texture of cotton coated your mouth and tongue. It was hell, the lack of moisture. You swallowed on instinct a few times and attempted to garner some spit to wet your mouth by pushing your tongue around your throat. It’s a useless effort though. You’re only met with more dryness. As you slowly came to, you finally took in the unpleasant scent of the room. Iron. Must. Mildew. All of those things at once. Your stomach turned at the recognition. 

On the floor were marks. Not from claws or anything supernatural, but boots, maybe tools at one point. It had been a while since someone really took care of the place, that much you could tell. The scratch marks that you expected to see were adorned and splattered on the walls, most notably around the door and window. The window was clouded in thick condensation around its edges. You slowly sat up to the best of your abilities and peered out of it only to see the woods that peeked through the thick, blanketed fog. You wished you could run off into it, far from this place. 

An eerie creak filled the air and sent your heart racing. Sweat beaded on your brow. There was no way you could fight in such a position as this. You scrambled atop the greasy, cold sheets that you laid on and backed against the wall. You looked like a wild, caged animal. Which really, that’s all you were to them. You huddled into yourself, fearful, but felt a deep sense of anger balled tightly in the back of your throat. 

In front of you, the man who danced death with your mother stepped forward. At his hips hang hatchets, their blades sharp at the tip but dulled from hacking into muscle and bone near the centers. He cracked his neck loudly, inhaled, and moved to the side to give the person trailing just barely behind him some room. He looked exhausted, almost as if he wanted to be anywhere else than playing glorified babysitter to you. He cleared his throat and nudged the person beside him unceremoniously, harshly, with his elbow like they were trying his patience. He cleared his throat again. 

Gingerly, you peeked your eyes upwards to see their face clear through the gnawing fear you felt. Your gaze then met theirs - hers. The woman’s eyes you looked into were so dark, you hardly believed they were real. Dark pools, black holes of the universe that sucked you in further with every lingering second, you couldn't pull away, not even when she moved her hand up to show you that she had brought you something. You pressed further against the wall and bared your teeth in a nasty snarl to scare them away from you. 

The woman stepped forward. Her movements were deliberately slow to not spook you any further. It was like she was attempting to soothe a spooked horse, the way she spoke to you and carefully sat down on the bed. Her face cringed when she felt the seeping, not-quite-wet cold of the sheets before her expression was shifted back to that of neutrality and exhaustion rolled into one. 

“Toby,” she breathed out as her slender, cut up fingers pulled at the tab on the top of the can. There was dirt under her nails, or maybe it was dried blood. Cracked into the crevices of her skin was more dirt. More filth. More evidence her work operated outside of the legal spectrum. Her hoodie was just as dirty. Was it ever that white to begin with? There wasn’t a centimeter of it not caked in the earth or stains of her time rolled around in it. 

The man, now identified as Toby, reached into his back pocket. His brows furrowed for a moment as his fingers shifted around, almost frustrated with how long the simple request had been taking when he finally curled around his smooth prize. He clicked his tongue at the woman before tossing it her way.. A loud exhale sounded from his uncovered nose as she fumbled for a moment but caught it. He leaned back against the wall, popped the bones in his neck and then his wrists, and trained his steely gaze on you. He watched you like a zoo animal, wondering if you’d do any tricks if he poked you hard enough. 

The woman sighed as she lowered her shoulders. She attempted to make her form smaller, less threatening, rounder and to give you a sense of ease. She sighed once more, “c’mere.” The tone matched exactly how she appeared to you. “You need to eat something. Please,” she said as she dipped the spoon into the food. The scent of watery strawberries just barely filled your nostrils. 

You tilted your head, carefully staring down your nose to the contents of the can. Just barely, you caught Toby shaking his head at the woman as she turned her attention back to you. Cautiously, you moved atop the bed inch by inch to the woman. You sniffed a few times. 

“Kate,” Toby warned in a low, taunting voice. 

You watched as ‘Kate’ rolled her dark brown eyes with an amused glint hidden deep within them. You frowned when she pressed the spoon to your lips but opened your mouth slightly regardless, of course accompanied by your equally foul glare. You practically inhaled the food, not caring that the strawberries were waterlogged, not sweet at all and slimy beyond belief. If you were in a better state of mind and a higher position of power, you might have considered it a texture nightmare and outright refused the fruit all together. 

At least your stomach was not rumbling anymore. The thick clouds in your brain were just barely starting to thin. 

Kate stood up, placed the plastic spoon in the now empty can and made a move towards the door. She gave a passing glance towards Toby before the two of them froze. Her shoulders squared, as if she was fixing herself to be presentable and of power and respect. Her eyebrows raised, and her tired expression shifted to the vague notion of surprise. “You take it,” she muttered under her breath. Her calloused hands shoved Toby the can decorated with the plastic spoon before she stepped back. 

Toby rolled his eyes to mock her and pushed off the wall. “I’ll be right back,” he said over his shoulder as he shoved the door open and slid out. 

A pregnant beat of silence passed through the room as Kate settled in Toby’s place. You noticed that she had trained her gaze anywhere rather than looking directly at you and wondered if she was preoccupied. That or she just didn’t like you. You bit your lip and swallowed quietly, still tasting the remnants of watered down strawberries and must. You decided to take a gamble. 

“What have you done with my family?”

Kate could sense the fear in your voice, how it wavered just shy of cracking into a million pieces from the hairline fracture embedded deep within it. She could practically feel your heart seize as if it were her own. Still, humoring you, she curled her brow up on her pale face and raised her left foot to prop against the wall. “What happened to a simple hello?” She started with a loose sigh. “I mean, I’m Kate but you already heard that.” Her eyes bored down on the floor as if it was leagues more interesting than you. Her form contorted slightly, unnatural, arms crossed over her chest and shoulders squared inwards. She was uncomfortable. Deeply so. 

Damn her comfort, you were much more interested in learning all that you could about your situation. You took another gamble and changed your approach. ���Please,” you pleaded softly as you raised your eyes upwards to finally align with hers, “just tell me something useful. It can be anything.” Your pleading almost fell on deaf ears given the way you looked at her. Uneasily, as she was your predator. Fear. Exhaustion. And just a hint of understanding that she must be just as tired as you but in a completely different way. 

She sucked in the air around her sharply, practically whistling it when she caught your downtrodden expression and body language. You looked small, genuinely small. Tired and beaten, cold, and uncomfortable beyond belief. Some part of her felt bad for you, and another part of her whispered louder and louder still that you were nothing more than her ward, her victim. The more human part of her began to shout, and unfortunately, she listened. Kate checked the door and honed in on the sounds around her. She couldn’t hear her group members moving around. She felt safe enough to speak. 

“Last night didn’t go as planned,” she whispered softly. Her tall form loomed closer to share the secret with you. “Your parents-”

The door swung open. Toby, accompanied by a man dusted in faded yellow that reminded you of the dust kicked up from the earth stood unimpressed in the doorway. His muscles were tensed underneath his hoodie followed by his equally tense energy. Though he was wearing a black ski mask painted with a comically large red frown, you could tell he was scowling. His hands were balled into fists, steeled to suppress his budding rage. He honed in on Kate, even more unimpressed at how caught-in-the-headlights you two looked before him. 

“Get out,” he commanded plainly. 

“Hoodie, I’m-.”

“Get out, Kate,” he repeated as he accented his words with sharp venom. 

The woman shot him a look - one you couldn’t quite decipher - before she tucked her tail between her legs, head down and tried to scurry past him. 

Hoodie’s gloved hand gripped tightly at her shoulder, enough to make her squeak, as he pulled her uncomfortably close. His teeth grit together under his mask as he whispered a warning before harshly shoving her out of the room. He then turned to you, squared his shoulders, and stalked up. He seemed to take mild joy in how you scrambled back on the bed and pressed pathetically against the wall in a vain attempt to bury inside of it and avoid his presence. If he came any closer, he’d burn you. 

He reached his gloved hand out, the same one that had hurt Kate, and roughly grabbed your chin. He could feel your flesh under his covered nails. “Your parents? The ones that put up that pathetic fight last night?” He watched as fear welled in your eyes. His hand moved your face around so he could get a good look at you. Covered in filth from the woods. You’d seen better days and he knew it. This was not one of them. “They’re fucking dead.” 

You didn’t want to cry or show weakness, but you couldn’t stop the tears from flowing. More and more drops of water braided together into waterfalls that pooled at your chin. The tears that spilled from your eyes were almost enough to fill the seas. You gasped softly when Hoodie pressed you back, his hand letting you go as if you were a piece of trash he’d forgotten to discard before he rolled his eyes at you. 

“Look at me,” he demanded. He crouched down slightly. “Look at me.” He didn’t want to repeat himself. When you finally did as told, he carried on. “I’m only saying this once, so listen up,” he continued, his facial expression largely neutral under the mask. He didn’t seem to want to be bothered with babysitting you, or even spending time in your presence. Though, you did manage to catch a glimpse of regret in his body language due to how harshly he’d handled you. The little nick on your chin caused from the rough seam in his glove… It almost made him pause. “You’ve got fifteen minutes for a shower. When you’re done, come right back to this room. Move it.” 

Hoodie stood up, nodded to Toby, and then left as quickly as he entered. The air felt impossibly warmed from his anger, but uncomfortably cold that chilled your bones from the dreadful news he’d imparted on you.

You hardly managed to register the words through the pain you’d felt. How could you be told such life altering news and expect to go on? Your parents were your entire world. They supported and loved you through everything. They were all you’d ever had in the world, and now, they were gone. You tried to stifle your breathing to force it to something even paced but hitched on every breath. “Oh gods,” you whispered through your pain. Your body began to rock back and forth to soothe and let loose some of the energy bursting from within. 

Toby crossed the distance to meet you at the bed. He crouched down, flicked his pocket knife out and snipped at the binds on your ankles. He then moved upwards to your wrists, not caring that the blade was cold against your skin. He shot a look at you: don’t try anything. 

It’s not like you had that energy to begin with. 

You felt your world had come crashing down around you. You were pieces, no longer whole. There was no other way of putting it. 

Toby’s hand reached around to your bicep. Tired of your crying, he yanked you upwards and guided you out of the stale room. 

You glumly looked around at your surroundings. The place you were in, it was dim. The clouds from the late summer, early autumn rainstorm were blocking the sun’s light. The floor was ill taken care of. When was the last time the wood had been polished? Certain floorboards were rotting away. Others had nails sticking out to show they’d been just barely ‘repaired’. Black mold decorated the corners. This was not a place anyone stayed in for too long, that much you could infer. 

You watched as the dusty floors picked up in boot traffic, and tiredly, you looked up. The living room. You were in the living room. You could tell by how much ‘nicer’ the room appeared. A few mismatched lamps, an overhead light with a burnt out bulb on one side, the furniture didn’t match, again, you could tell this place was not anyone’s true home. It was a crossroads, somewhere for people like… you. 

You could feel the presence of several other people but kept your eyes glued on the floor after sneaking a quick peak. What characters these people were. None of them felt real, or at least, they’d be gawked at in civilized society. Who cuts their face into a smile? Why are several of the people here wearing masks? The only reason you wanted to catalog their faces was not for feeding curiosity, but rather for alerting the authorities when you escaped. 

“You’ve got more like, thirteen minutes,” Toby said as he opened the bathroom door. “Remember, quick. There’s clothes in the cabinet.” And with that, he shut the door. 

From where you stood, confused, scared and alone, you could hear him slide against the wall and settle down. He whistled as he waited, and it brought you a sense of deep unease. It was stupid, but you didn’t want to waste an opportunity to feel just a bit better. You bit your lip, let your mind go blank, stripped and turned on the water. The ice ran circles up and down your back, making your body go numb. But it was a pleasant numb, one that allowed the heavy marks and agitated flesh on your wrists and ankles to soothe for a moment before it shifted to something a bit more lukewarm. 

Your lips pulled downwards as you gingerly traced your fingertips over the marks. You’d have to get that situated. Not wanting to face the world or the situation you were in, you slowly turned off the water as Toby’s whistling began to slow. He was not whistling the jeopardy theme song. How quaint. 

You stepped out into the cold air and rummaged around in the cabinet under the sink. Jeans, some socks, a few shirts… They had a few colors, but you weren’t picky and blindly chose, ending up with the dark grey one. You popped the shirt on and opened the door to the bathroom and readied yourself for whatever evils may come your way. Though, a shower and a fresh change of clothes, that didn’t feel like something a murder victim would be gifted. What on earth had you found yourself in? What did Kate mean by things not going according to plan? 

You winced when Toby grabbed your wrist.

“Sorry,” he apologized as he moved his hand upwards to your forearm. It was almost human, the way he reacted to your display of discomfort and pain. “I’ll send EJ to look at that.” 

Internally, you wondered which one of the monsters in the living room was ‘EJ’ before being shuffled along back through the living room and to the room you knew as your prison. Obediently, you sat back down and waited, absentmindedly nodding when he told you not to do anything stupid in the meantime. You pondered jumping out the window, though it was sealed shut and shattering the glass would make far, far too much noise. Maybe you could use a shard to stab a captor? No, mom and dad never taught you how to fight. Though, apparently they’d learned themselves. 

You weren’t allowed to be consumed by your thoughts as a polite knock sounded on the door. It’s not like it was your place to answer, so you didn’t. You held your breath as you watched the next monster waltz into your prison. 

He was tall, but not gangly. In fact, it looked like he was strong, much too strong. His true face was obscured by a mask, something deep blue like the pools of twilight decorated by an oil spill from a black hole. He smelled faintly of citrus and even more so of tar. 

“Eyeless Jack. Just call me EJ,” he greeted - and you took note of his relatively thick Polish accent - as he softly closed the door. For such a large, imposing figure, he was so even mannered and gentle with precise movements. In his other hand was a first aid kit. It looked tattered in some places, falling apart at the hinges due to its heavy usage. Huh, even monsters need first aid from time to time, don’t they? Eyeless Jack drew closer to you before sitting down on the edge of the bed. He looked comically large atop it, but you dared not to laugh. He set the worn box down on the sheets and made a ‘give me’ motion with his gloved hand. 

You studied him cautiously before deciding that he was ultimately there to help you. Hesitantly, you handed him your wrists which earned his hum of approval. You were surprised at how gentle he was in treating you. His grip was firm, but had a professional’s touch as he worked on disinfecting your battered skin. 

“They really tied you up good,” he observed aloud to make light conversation. 

You made a noise of disgust and rolled your eyes at him. The pain you felt physically was nothing compared to the weight on your heart. “Is that a compliment or an insult?” 

He brushed off your statement, choosing not to acknowledge your words at all, all the while not caring at how you sat on the bed in order to give him better access. “It’s nothing I can’t handle.” He pressed the cloth drenched in isopropyl alcohol on your wrists, gently dabbing and letting the strong smelling liquid fill your nostrils and drip along the curve of your wrists before he glanced down at your ankles. In his opinion, your ankles were in much worse shape than your wrists. “So,” he whistled, “how are you?” 

What kind of question is that? Is he mocking you?

“What does it matter to you?” You spat. 

He looked genuinely surprised that you answered him because his head snapped up momentarily from his work. His ears shot upwards, like he heard a sudden noise. You could imagine his eyes were just as wide before he moved his attention back down to his work.

You fought the urge to cock your head to the side. “What?” You asked curtly. 

“Oh, I was just making small talk. Filling in the quiet spaces, I find it weird when patients are too quiet,” he explained as he banaged your wrists up before he patted the bed to nonverbally tell you to reposition yourself so he wouldn’t have to contort to fix you. “I don’t actually care.” 

The pure nonchalance as if he were telling you the time almost made you gape like a fish plucked from the water. 

You awkwardly put your attention on the window and cleared your throat to cover your shock. Quietly, you let him finish his work. You felt much too awkward to even try and open your mouth. So, you allowed your thoughts to remain on your parents, the people you loved most. The memories you had of the life before this, and the life you would have had provided masked maniacs didn’t siege your house. When Eyeless Jack finished on your ankles, he briefly checked over his work once more, asked a few follow up questions like any good doctor might and then left. Though, much like Toby, he told you not to do anything stupid in his absence. 

The rest of the day was rather silent, especially from you. From what you could hear though, someone was stationed outside of your cell and they would shift out every hour or so. Some people were more precise than others. In your boredom, you tossed a pebble at the window and gained the attention of Hoodie, who must’ve spent an eternity in the doorway debating whether he should punish you or not before he closed the door and went back to waiting outside of it. It’s not like he wanted to spend any more time with you than he had to either. 

Eventually, someone came back in to feed you. This time, it was Toby. He was satisfied with plopping the can and plastic spoon down in front of you and watching from a comfortable, yet close distance away. He eyed you like a hawk, refused to speak to you, but found amusement in you subconsciously thanking him. That happened often, often enough for him to add it to his mentally tally board. All the victims that thank him for something as vital as food. It’s human to be grateful even in shitty situations. 

The night washed over your cell in the world far too slowly for your comfort and with it came the bane of being lost in your thoughts. You felt lonely, oh so lonely. You curled up on that crumpled, dirty bed and began to cry. It was soft, as you did not want to gain the attention of your captors but your body could not think of any other way to relieve the stress. You thought about your life, the things that mattered to you, and shuffled deep in your memories for anything that could bring you a spot of joy. 

You were 15 years old and it was a stormy night. Your friends, they were busy with other things and flaked on you last minute. This wasn’t the first time they’d disregarded your feelings, and it certainly would not be the last time. Your parents, who had a rare night off together from work, wanted to cheer you up. Your mother sat with you on the couch and browsed the selection of movies while your father made popcorn that rivaled the stuff you got at the theatres and poured other fizzy drinks that would undoubtedly upset your stomach later. You chose the scariest movie possible and had the joy of hearing your father scream like a child. You and your mother pelted him with popcorn. A storm raged outside. The half-baked apologies from your ‘friends’ for flaking were left unread. When you were spooked, your parents cuddled around you and promised to always protect you. You had never felt safer than in their arms. 

You stared at the ceiling, mentally counting the little rough popcorn-like bits when the moon finally cut through the clouds. How you wished you could go back to the days before this, when the nights were warm. When you were loved. You imagined the stars in the popcorn bits, and faintly listened to the waning voices outside your door. The whispers of what is yet to come have not yet reached your ears.

You closed your eyes. Though sleep is the only option, is it not a choice you would willingly make. 

Still, a seed of resilience had been planted inside of you. None of them could deny that they saw it. You still had some bark despite your bite being stolen away from you. You would grow your teeth back astronomically fast, sharp, rough calcium deposits bursting through your gums that would explain the reason people would grant you space. But that was well known through trial and error with someone like you. Though you felt alone and scared, you couldn’t even begin to know the half of it. In your pathetic, heartbroken state, you were denying yourself your nature. But that was expected, and you were-

Familiar. You are too familiar. 

It was only a matter of time until you learned why. 

[spinderella-umbrella]

A Peter Pettigrew Project Prompt

Excerpt here

Prompt: A bed, marshmallows and a bicycle.

Idea/Concept: Crookshanks has it out for Scabbers

Ron drools in his sleep, and even rats can do better than a drool soaked pillow for a bed. Scabbers the rat scuttles out of Ron's clutches, the boy not even stirring as Scabbers slips from his fingers.

The rat stops in his tracks when he catches a whiff of something sweet as he scales down the side of the bed.

Little feet hit the floor without a sound, though his untrimmed claws click on the wood flooring as he goes to investigate the delightful sugar-sweet smell.

Scabbers is delighted to come across a single, fluffy pink marshmallow the size of his head, lost under the bed. It’s his lucky night, innit? His little rat tongue darts out to taste the powder-coated sugary treat, before he sinks teeth into the side of it.

His little rat brain had forgotten how tacky and sticky marshmallows could be- he tries to pull away with his first chomp to chew, and his teeth are stuck. His little rat shoulders slump as he sighs. Alas, he’s tired but in no hurry. Surely if he just licks it enough, it will disintegrate and he will be free.

He’s lapping at the marshmallow in his mouth, pushing his tongue against the back of his teeth to unstick them when he hears a low growl behind him. He stiffens, hoping that if he just stays still enough, Crookshanks will be fooled into thinking he’s not there, and be on their way. Perhaps his rat scent will be covered by the scent of marshmallow?

No such luck, it seems, as a giant paw snatches under the bed right for him, catching him by his tail and dragging him out from under the bed. Peter wants to scream, to cry out to his master to save him, but he can’t, because his mouth is still stuck with marshmallow.

Desperate to get out of Crookshanks clutches, Scabbers scrambles at the ground, nails scratching and breaking on the wood as Crookshanks pulls him free from under the bed into the open, their other paw landing on his back to stop him from squirming. Scabbers feels like a pancake, and all he can do in his current position is continue to lick his way free of marshmallow.

Apparently Crookshanks is at a loss of what to do with him now that they have captured him, and for a moment, they’re still. The rat knows he has to act quickly before Crookshanks makes a decision. They’re probably going to eat him.

Crookshanks’ paw lets up just a tiny bit, and Scabbers flips beneath their paw, thrashing and scratching and causing enough confusion and pain that he can scramble away, running, free from the cats clutches and that pesky marshmallow- stuck now between the toes of the nasty cat.

Crookshanks is making chase, he knows it, but he slips between the crack in the wall and he’s home free- Getting out alive… It’s like riding a bike, huh?

[hidingaway1995]

Gale Stuff

Gale was in control of his temper these days. Or rather, he didn’t have a temper most of the time. Things were both delayed and muffled with the distance from his heart and the apathy that had sunk into his very bones during his long, aimless existence. There were still times he lost it, just like he had as a young man, but he always knew they were coming.

One day, as he was fixing tack behind the horse barn, he heard the sounds of an animal in pain and a man’s shouts. In case it was an emergency, he put his work aside and jogged towards the noise. A man, one of the other ranch hands, stood over a cow on her side, raising a chunk of wood to strike the wallowing creature again.

“Up! Get up you stupid-”

Gale stepped in, catching the larger man’s wrist. “Don’t do that. It’s not needed. She ain’t got milk fever.”

Malten, that was the other’s name, shook him off. “She’s got to move! I’m not coming back out here after dinner to get her in!”

“Try a bribe. You know cows are stubborn.” Gale’s voice was even, face blank. He noticed, in a distant way, that there were nails sticking out of the wood Malten held and nasty scratches on the cow’s shoulder and side. “If those get infected and she dies, it’ll come out of your pay.”

Malten rolled his eyes and threw the wood aside. “You deal with her, Mr. High and Mighty Runt.” He shoved Gale hard in the chest and he nearly fell. Malten stalked off, aware of those creepy gray eyes on his back. Tallman wouldn’t do anything, he knew, but he still disliked the man’s gaze.

Gale sighed, checked his battered pocket watch and got to work, bribing the cow into the night pen and pouring a little moonshine on her scratches. She slobbered something disgusting onto his shirt and he rubbed her nose. Animals were so easy. He knew how to feel about animals, even when they were inconvenient or unpleasant.

He went back to mending tack until someone rang the mess hall bell. Dinner was uninspired as ever. It was meant to keep a group of men in working order, not really be enjoyed. Throughout the meal, Gale kept checking his pocket watch.

“You got somewhere to be tonight?” One of the others asked, jokingly. Gale was quiet, but still part of the group. “Some pretty lady visiting the rest of us should know about?”

“No. I’m waiting for something. It’ll arrive soon.” He told the man and went back to eating. He finished his dinner, dropped off his plate and cup in the kitchen and checked his watch one last time.

10…

He shrugged out of his coat and lay it on the bench by the mess hall door. On top of it went his knife, hat and work gloves. He emptied his pockets too. The watch went on top.

6…

He shook out his arms, rolled his neck and turned to survey the room. There was Maltan, sitting at a table with his friends. Gale started over, flexing his hands. How much could he get away with and not lose his job? How much control would he have in-

3…

“Hey.” He said, tapping the man on the shoulder. “Stand up for a second.”

“Fuck off, Tollman.”

1…

The rage flared behind his eyes was so intense that he gasped. He seized the other man by the back of the head and slammed his face down into his bowl of stew as hard as he could. Maltan came up spitting and cursing. Gale did it again, splintering the wooden bowl on the stupid man’s face and flattening his nose for good. The ugly fight that followed left at least 4 other ranch hands unfit for duty and Gale unemployed. He was not too regretful.

[theogbadbitch]

First of all, thank you for the tag ! Secondly,

“You snatched your bag from off the floor, slinging it haphazardly over your shoulder and starting to walk towards the door. “ not her tryna high tail her ass out of there😭

“Sit down Joya’ He spoke in your ear, his tone leaving no room for argument.”

“He nodded towards the desk.” 🌚

“Age gaps in mmm relationships” You sighed through your sentence, eyes flutter closed as he sucked on the skin above where your pulse thumped. “ hmmm what a coincidence 🌚

“His spit it back onto your pussy before sucking your clit into his mouth, making you squeal.” Oh this nigga is NASTY. How you supposed to sit in his class and look at him after this???????

“Inside Professor, please” You moaned, nails scratching at the wood surface of the desk, searching for stability. “

“He leaned down to lick you clean before grabbing you by the back of your neck, tilting your head back so he could spit it into your mouth.” OH—

“Swallow” He said, closing your mouth for you. “ lawd have mercy

The way I would’ve had that damn project turned in by 8am the NEXT morning???????

This was absolutely filthy I loved it.

Office Hours

Summary: You’ve been a star pupil in Professor Richmond’s sociology class—always willing to help others, always on time, and you do great work. So when your focus starts to slip he feels he can help you, and you can help him with a dilemma of his own.

A/n: I did make an oc for this fic because I feel awkward using “y/n”, especially in dialogue. Her name is Joya and she has short hair which is mentioned later. This is the longest thing I’ve ever written and I struggled with making the dialogue flow and not seem awkward. Please be gentle with me! 🤍

Content warnings: slight age gap, dubious (consensual!) professor/student relationship, oral, slight public play, penetrative sex, spit, a spank or two, cum eating

—

You stood outside his office doors, trying to see into the frosted glass window of the door. You lifted your right hand to knock gently, knuckled rasping against the cool glass. The sound of the brass knob turning made you stand up straight, the weight of your bag straining on your shoulder. The door swung open and his wide frame took up most of the door way. His tie was loose around his neck, the first few buttons open. He pulled his right hand from the pocket of his slacks to usher you in with two fingers, closing the door behind you and flipping the lock.

“I noticed that you’ve been distracted in class recently. Is there anything that I can help you with to get you back on track?” Terry leaned his elbows on the desk, muscles flexing with movement. Your eyes moved around the room to avoid his gaze. Neutral colored clay pots, books, pens, the occasional plant, and notes were scattered around his office. Late afternoon sunlight filtered in through the window spreading warmth throughout the room. You played with the rips of your jeans, twirling the frayed edges of fabric around your finger. Realizing you’ve been quiet for a beat you open your mouth to speak but close it again when nothing comes out.

“I’ve, um, just been distracted with other classes and volunteering around campus” You said with a nod, trying to appear more out together even though you felt like you were gonna melt into your shoes. You droned on about your other classes and picking up volunteer work to help with build up your portfolio. Terry listened intently as you explained the situation, his eyes boring into yours as you spoke. It wasn’t the best excuse but it’s better than telling your professor that you’ve been dreaming of him fucking you senseless. You began to sweat, the combination of the sun and Terry’s eyes on you made you feel like you were burning up. You glanced at the clock and swallowed the spit accumulating beneath your tongue.

“I understand Joya, really I do, but this upcoming presentation is worth a good amount of your grade. I have resources that can help you, study rooms in the library to reserve, tutoring help, office hours even. I hope you haven’t been wearing yourself thin” Terry stood and walked around the front of his desk and leaned against it. Your eyes snapped up to his face, his close proximity making his scent waft up your nose. Sweet like coffee and earthy like sandalwood. “Oh no I’m fine” you shook your head as you stood up, feeling like you’re overstaying your welcome and teetering on the tightrope of danger. You snatched your bag from off the floor, slinging it haphazardly over your shoulder and starting to walk towards the door. You heard Terry huff before his steps sounded behind you. His hand was on your shoulder and pulling you back into his chest before you could reach the doorknob.

Your breath was caught in your chest. You felt the print of his dick against his slacks, starting the harden against the curve of your ass. “Sit down Joya” He spoke in your ear, his tone leaving no room for argument. When he noticed you going for the chair again he nudged it to the side to stop you in your tracks. He nodded towards the desk. You backed up slowly until your thighs felt the cold wood. You sat yourself on the cold surface, plucking a pen from under your thigh. He came to stand between your parted thighs, thick index finger lifting your chin up so your eyes meet his.

“What was our topic of discussion last Tuesday?” He asked, finger tracing down your throat and chest, a trail of goosebumps left in its wake. You left out a soft breath before speaking. “Moral and ethical dilemmas” You responded, thighs shaking as his finger continued its trail. “What was one of the examples?” He started to place kisses on your neck, lips soft and warm against you. “Age gaps in mmm relationships” You sighed through your sentence, eyes flutter closed as he sucked on the skin above where your pulse thumped. He hummed as he pulled your shirt off in one swift motion. The fat of your tits spilled from the fabric of your bra, all the more enticing for his teeth to skink into.

“Take these off” He ordered, tugging on the loop of your jeans. Terry reached for his shirt, buttons opening without resistance. You shimmied out of your jeans and panties, the fabric joining your shirt in a heap on the floor. Terry leaned down to kiss you, giving you just a few pecks at first. His hand settled on the back of your head, his fingers nestled in your short curls. His tongue massaged yours gently, tasting your day off your tongue. Your nipples found a home between his thumb and index fingers, his digits rolling and pinching them. You arched into his touch, skin on fire with need.

You were pushed to lay flat on his desk, his hand across your belly. He pulled the hood of your swollen clit up to expose you more, the throbbing bud at his mercy. Terry licked a stripe from your hole up to your clit to gather your essence on his tongue. His spit it back onto your pussy before sucking your clit into his mouth, making you squeal. Your thighs clamped around his head as he continued to eat you. Your hole clenched around nothing as he brung your hips closer to his face, burying his tongue deep inside you.

With your hands pressed flat on the desk you tried to scoot away from your professor. Hot pleasure sizzled in deep inside your belly, orgasm building with each stroke of his tongue. Your eyes rolled back as you came in Terry’s waiting mouth. He hummed against you as you flooded his tongue. He rubbed your thighs to help soothe you, gently bringing you down from your high. The clicks of his belt coming off and hitting the ground made you lean up on your elbows. You watched as he kicked his pants off and to the side.

He scooped you up into his arms and placed you on your feet, turning you around to bend you over his desk. He rubbed his leaking tip around your clit before sliding his shaft between your folds. He jerked himself with his right hand, spreading your juices and his precum all over his dick. The shuffling of feet coming down the hallway made you look up, eyes wide in fear. Terry hand came down to spank your ass two times, your bottom lip trapped between your teeth as your skin stung from the impact. “Be quiet for me, you don’t want us to get caught right?” He asked, sliding in your wet pussy inch by inch. You exhaled all the air you had as he bottomed out, balls pressed against your clit.

You both were still, pussy stretched and leaking around him. His veins pulsated along your walls. He set a slow pace, digging as deep as he could. His tip brushed against your spot just right, your mouth open in silent moans as he worked you open. Terry threw his head back as he continued to thrust, his balls full and tight. He pressed you harder onto the desk, your arch growing deeper as his pace picked up. Was it wrong to fuck your student? Yes absolutely. Did you feel better than anyone else? Yes abso-fucking-lutely.

“Where do you want me?” He asked, feeling himself about to burst. Your body was buzzing, goosebumps erupting over your skin as you start to fuck back to meet his thrusts. “Inside Professor, please” You moaned, nails scratching at the wood surface of the desk, searching for stability. His balls started to slap hard against your clit, his hand resting on your hip clutching you tighter. He gave you one more pump before he started to flood your pussy, pulsating and twitching inside you as his load leaked out of you and onto the desk. You came again once you felt him empty himself inside you, a ring of white cream wrapped around the base of him.

He pulled out of you slowly, your walls hugging him tight like they didn’t want to let him go. He watched as his cum rolled out of you, pooling under your pussy. He leaned down to lick you clean before grabbing you by the back of your neck, tilting your head back so he could spit it into you mouth.

“Swallow” He said, closing your mouth for you.

[beels-burger-babe]

A Pain You'll Soon Regret - Pt. 1

***This...This is glorious. Oh ho, I will most definitely give you this fic @millenniumofpain! I will do so gladly! Thanks for sending in this great request!***

Poly!MC Summary: MC and the demon lords get in a fight resulting in MC leaving. They planned on going to Purgatory Hall until things cool off, but they never quite make it there. TW: Heavy Angst, Violence, I don't know what to tag this, but there is a pretty nasty verbal fight, Gore/Injury Part Two: HERE, Part Three: HERE, Part Four: HERE

You growled to yourself, angrily wiping tears from your face, as you marched away from the House of Lamentation, away from your partners.

Well, you said marching. It was more of a stumble what with the way your intoxicated brain could barely walk forward. You wished you could say you didn't know how things got like this, but the evidence had been there all along. It was in the slow build of tensions that increased and increased until they overflowed. It was in the way everyone would bite their tongues more and more frequently rather than communicating their thoughts.

Everyone had little things about the relationship between the eight of you that bothered them, and no one said a word until the words could no longer be held back.

It all started after you came back from clubbing way past curfew with Asmodeus.

The two of you were definitely drunk and were giggling messes as you did your best to hold the other up.

You both jumped when the hallway light turned on to reveal Lucifer and the others waiting there for you.

You bit back a sob as you thought of the vicious words that came out of their mouths.

"You're so reckless! Do you know what could've happened to a human like you this late at night in this state?! For Diavolo's sake MC, I expected this behaviour from Asmodeus, but I expected more from you!" Lucifer shouted Asmodeus groaned and leaned against you. "We were just having some fun. It's my date night. Don't get your wings in a twist." Beelzebub glared at him. "Just because it's your date night with MC doesn't excuse you putting them in danger. You couldn't even defend yourself right now, forget about defending them!" You frowned and stepped forward. "Guys relax. Nothing happened." Mammon scoffed, "That's always how it is with you! You think that just because nothin' has happened to ya that it's fine. You ain't invincible MC. Gah, it's like you're just throwin' ya self into dangerous situations just to get us to come to save ya again!" Satan raised an eyebrow at Mammon's comments and crossed his arms over his chest. "Maybe that's what they want. Attention. Is that the real reason why you keep being so reckless?" he tsks and scowls at you, "If you wanted attention MC you could've asked one of your seven boyfriends." You looked at them all with wide eyes. "Wha- I do NOT do all of this for attention!" Levi snarled, "Then why do you do it? Huh? Why else would you get drunk in one of the most notorious clubs in the Devildom? Why else would you date all seven of the Lords of the Devildom?" You stepped back as though you had been slapped by Levi's words. You glanced around at the others, but no one rose to your defence. You met Belphie's gaze hoping, that maybe as the only one to have not spoken up, that he'd be on your side. He just snickered and gave you a perplexed look. "What? Don't expect me to step in. You got yourself in this mess." You stood shocked and hurt; almost unwilling to believe that your partners, the people who you thought loved you unconditionally, verbally attacked you. Anger bubbled and boiled inside of you until you couldn't contain it anymore. "If you guys have such a problem with it, then maybe I won't depend on you anymore! I'm reckless, yeah, I admit, but I never did it for attention and I certainly never put myself in danger just so you all could play the hero," you turned your anger to Leviathan, "And in case you forgot, you all agreed to date me! I thought it was because you all loved me as much as I loved you but apparently fucking not! So if you don't mind, I'm going to leave now like the attention-driven child that you all think I am!"

Not your classiest moment, but you didn't care. It was clear you weren't wanted at the time, and you were too tired to handle the brutal words that they were throwing at you. So you left. Which brought you here, stumbling your way towards Purgatory Hall, drunk, and sobbing as you shivered from the cold Devildom air. You could just see the shape of the Hall ahead of you when you suddenly tripped and found yourself tumbling to the ground. You winced as you felt your knees and hands scrape against the ground. You groaned and turned yourself over to inspect the injuries. "Just when the night couldn't get any worse," "Well, well, well, what do we have here?" You stiffened as three demons came out of the woods around you and began circling you like vultures about to swoop in on their prey. The tallest one snickered. "Looks like the Lords' little pet strayed too far from its masters. Lucky us~"

A shorter, rounder one smiled sharply as drool trickled from its mouth. "Their loss, our gain," it leaned forward and inhaled deeply before sighing in pleasure. "Oh, get a whiff of that fear~ Just, delicious! Do you think it's true when they say that human tears really do add seasoning to its meat?" You tried to scramble away from it, as your heart pounded in your chest, but yelped as your back bumped against a curvier one. Its long nails dug into your shoulders as it secured its hands near your neck. "Only one way to find out." You were in trouble. These demons clearly had no intention of letting you go. You needed to get out of there before it was too late. You jammed the heel of your palms against the back of the wrists of the demon that holding you down, while you leaned backwards away from it. You were able to get just enough slack to roll away from the demon before jumping back to your feet. You were still surrounded, but at least now you weren't defenceless on the ground. Progress.

You did your best snarl, one that you and Mammon had jokingly practiced together one day, and glared fiercely at them. "Do you have any idea who you're messing with? I could have you all killed with just a snap of my fingers. You have one chance to run away, or I promise you that no one will ever be able to find your sorry corpses."

The tall one laughed and smirked at you. "And what exactly are you going to do? Scratch us with your blunt little nails? Bite us with your flat teeth?" The round one perked and began to hop excitedly. "Oh! Oh! Maybe they'll summon the lords to do it for them! Such a pathetic thing doesn't stand a chance on its own."

The curvy one wore a sickening grin as it leaned down mockingly at you. "So, you gonna call your guard dogs or what?"

You froze. You couldn't summon the brothers. Technically, you could, but not at this moment. Not after that fight. They had basically screamed at you about how they were tired of you getting yourself into situations exactly like this and then come crying to them for help. And what did you do? Take off and prove them right. They didn't want to be your heroes. They didn't want you.

You were on your own in this, and there was no way you could fight and win. Without a second thought, you turned towards Purgatory Hall and ran. The laughter of the demons rang behind menacingly. You barely got five steps away before a set of claws slashed deep into your ankle. You screamed out as you collapsed roughly to the ground, making your forehead against the dirt road.

You twisted onto your side to see the round demon drooling over your heavily bleeding leg with a nearly psychotic expression. "I love it when they try to run." That was the only warning you got before it sunk its razor-sharp teeth into your calf. You wailed loudly in pain as you used your other foot to try and kick the demon off of you, but it wasn't so willing to let go of its meal. The tall one grabbed your arm, bending you foreword as it roughly folded it behind your back. You cried out as you felt your shoulder pop out of its socket and nausea swirl in your stomach. "Not so tough now, are you?" It purred in your ear as it licked the tears off of your cheeks. You choked on your sobs as it roughly bit into the flesh on your collar, and weakly struggled in its grasp. "Let go of me! H-Help! Somebody! Help me!"

The curvy one finally approached you, burying its fingers into your hair before harshly yanking your head towards it. You screamed before it slapped its clawed hand across your face. Bile threatened to rise out of your throat as you felt your own blood drip down your cheek.

Spots began to blur your vision as the demon leered down at you with its menacing eyes. You felt your stomach drop as a realization hit you. This was how you would die.

You whimpered as you thought of the brothers, and how you never got to even kiss them or tell them goodbye one final time. Hell, you didn't even get to see them smile at you. Instead, you were reminded that you could never be what they needed you to be.

You would die scared, in pain, and unloved.

The curvy demon laughed as it wrapped its hands around your throat. You struggled to breathe and whined as, for just a moment, you saw Belphegore choking you to death once more, and not this monster. You morbidly thought that it was only fitting for you to be killed the same way twice. The demon leaned closer to you, demanding that you meet its un-naturally yellow eyes as it smiled. "You realize it now don't you? That this is your death bed? That no one is coming for the pathetic little human. I bet no one would even-" Before it could finish its sentence a blindingly bright beam burst across the side of its face sending it flying across the ground. You could hear the other demon curse and began to take off as two voices shouted and more bright flashes were sent in their direction. As your vision began to fade, you saw tear-filled, innocent blue eyes look down at you and a small mouth framed by chubby cheeks try to speak. But it was too late. With a final whine, you felt your eyes roll to the back of your skull and your mind plummet into darkness. ***This request is just evil and I love it. There will be a part two. So stay tuned for more pain. Hope you enjoyed it @millenniumofpain! Thank you for allowing me to write this!!***

[seijorhi]

Final Girl

Kuroo Tetsurou, Bokuto Koutarou & Akaashi Keiji x Female Reader

And please check out the incredible fanart @lausterdomyamong created for this fic here 💕💕💕

TW blood, gore, violence, minor character death, implied non-con, pregnancy mentions, nsfw

Your lungs are burning. 

You haven’t run like this in years, your thighs are screaming at you for a reprieve. With every step it feels like the soles of your bare feet are splitting open but you can’t stop, not for a single second.

You can’t stop. You can’t stop. 

Keep running.

It’s dark, and you can barely see.

Stumbling like newborn foal through the thick undergrowth, tripping over the roots that catch at your feet. Your legs are scratched and bleeding, and there’s a nasty scrape along your arm from where you’d fallen and tried to cushion the blow, but you shove it all down and you keep running.

You can’t hear much over the sounds of your laboured breaths and your own heartbeat hammering away inside of your ears, but you know you must be making a racket. Branches breaking, leaves crunching underfoot as you clumsily dash through the woods - keep running, keep going.

Being quiet won’t save you if they catch up.

The loud whoops and the hyena like laughter that echo out through the trees behind you spur you onwards. Faster, you have to run faster.

This is nothing but a game to them. 

“Wait- wait, just stop for a sec… do you hear that?”

You sigh, rolling your eyes as you scoot closer to his bedroll, “Really, babe? The campfire stories weren’t enough for you? Do you not want me to sleep at all on this trip?”

There’s a teasing little grin on your face, not that your boyfriend can see it in the darkness of your tent. You expect him to laugh, grab you by the waist and pull you under him - make some quip about his wicked intentions of not letting you sleep a wink, but he doesn’t.

He stiffens, pushing himself back upright onto his palms, head cocked to the side like a dog listening for the faintest hint whisper of a sound.

“Babe-”

“Shh!” he hisses, and it’s more shock than anything else that has your mouth falling shut. His hand reaches across to grab yours in the darkness and he squeezes it just once. An apology maybe, or a reassurance that you’re still there with him. “Can you hear that? I think… I think there’s someone out there.”

You swallow uneasily, goosebumps prickling at your skin. If this is part of some stupid joke, you’re gonna kick him out of this tent and make him bunk with his friends for the rest of the trip. He’s never been one for mean spirited pranks, but this is freaking you out.

“It’s probably just one of the guys-” or an animal, or the wind, or his own overactive imagination. You guys are out in the middle of the woods after all. 

“I’m gonna go out and check,” he whispers, pulling his hand from yours and pressing a quick kiss against your cheek. “Stay here.”

There’s a road, a long stretch of winding highway that you’d driven along for what felt like hours when you’d first arrived with your friends. There’s no possible way for you to know if you’re going in the right direction, but if you can just make it there, then-

The thick scent of smoke invades your nose and for you falter - just for a split second - searching for the source. There, maybe two hundred yards away to your left, you spot the orange glow flickering between the trees and your stomach lurches.

Dark figures flit through the clearing, maybe a dozen of them, half illuminated by the bonfire. You can hear their laughter, the shouts and drunken revelry as they party the night away. They don’t have a care in the world, and why should they? Real monsters belong in horror movies and scary stories, not lurking in the shadows of the woods. 

Leave them.

The vicious thought takes you by surprise, but for one awful moment, you consider it. The promise of fresh new toys to rip apart and break, drunk and blissfully unaware, surely that would be enough to tempt them away. You’re just one girl… 

(The truth, the one that sits heavy in your stomach, whispers that you know better than to believe they’ll ever let you get away.)

Your heart pounds against your ribs, your legs unwittingly slowing down. You don’t have time for indecision; it’s them or you.

If leaving them to the wolves meant that you walked away from this, if you could make it back home-

There’s a shout, a scream that rips through the crisp autumn night before it cuts off with an abrupt gurgle. A loud thud followed by a laugh you don’t recognise - one that sends a chill running down your spine. More voices, more screams. Footsteps and a splatter of something dark and viscous against the side of your tent.

There’s a hoot and a chuckle, closer this time, and you hear a sob that’s all too familiar. Pleading. 

Your friend begging for her life.

“Shh, shh, shhh. Aw c’mon sweetheart, don’t be like that.”

Another hiccuping sob. “Please… p-please I don’t wanna die…”

“Kuroo-”

There’s a petulant huff, a loud voice interjecting, “s’no fun when they’re just sitting there.”

Kneeling frozen in your tent with one hand clamped tightly over your mouth to stifle your own terrified cries, you squeeze your eyes shut, not daring to draw breath. 

Somebody sighs - the first one, you think. “Y’know, I think Bokuto has a point… Do you like games, sweetheart?”

There’s no response - at least not one that you can hear - but she must have nodded, because the voice continues, “Glad to hear it! Tell you what, we’re gonna play a little game, and if you win, we’ll let you go! Sounds fair, right?”

“We’ll even give you a headstart, just cause we’re nice guys! Whad'ya reckon ‘Kaashi? A minute? Two?”

There’s a short silence, filled only by the sounds of her ragged whimpering. “Two,” the second one - ‘Kaashi - decides. His voice is deadpan, smooth, cold and blunt, but there’s an underlying current of something excitable - the barest hint that he’s not quite as disinterested as he sounds. “She won’t get away.”

No.

You veer, sprinting towards the camp. 

The others died while you hid like a fucking coward, too scared to do anything to help them (it wouldn’t have made a difference, but you should have tried) you can’t do this again. 

You can only imagine how you must look, a strange woman sprinting out of the woods, barefoot, your nightgown torn and filthy, blood streaking your skin. You can pinpoint the moment that they catch sight of you, one of the guys doing a double take and jerking so badly he almost falls off the log he’s perched on. “What the fuck?!”

Another turns, eyes wide and gaping, “Dude, she’s fucking pre-”

“RUN!” you bellow, just in time to see an axe arc through the air beside you and embed itself smack bang in the centre of his skull with a sickening thud.

“Now that’s a bullseye!” Bokuto hollers, maybe thirty feet behind you and gaining quickly. “Didja see that, Akaashi?”

Screams erupt from the other campers, scrambling frantically to their feet as their friend collapses lifelessly to the ground, blood still spurting gruesomely from his wound. 

“Don’t go gettin’ cocky now, the night’s still young,” Kuroo drawls, swinging his baseball bat - the dark wood flecked with dried blood, rusted nails crudely hammered through the barrel - experimentally through the air a few times. “And last I counted, I was still two up on you.”

There’s no time to humour the fear that rips through you like wildfire. You grab the nearest camper - a girl not much older than yourself, staring wide eyed and trembling at the body in front of her - and yank her forward with you. “Run,” you hiss again.

The others scatter, drunk and clumsy - a split second too slow. 

A boot lands on the fallen tree stump, its owner springing gracefully over it. Akaashi’s machete gleams in the moonlight, sweeping gracefully like an extension of his arm as he slices downwards. Blood sprays, drenching his front, and another body falls to the ground - this one missing half a face. 

It’s brutal. Chaotic. 

Ruthless. 

You can’t look back, you can’t help them. The girl is screaming at you, yelling words you can’t hear, trying fruitlessly to tug her wrist out of your grip, but you don’t relent. You don’t slow down, not even as dread fills your stomach and tears burn unshed in your eyes. You can’t help the others - not as Kuroo’s bat comes swinging out of the darkness, tearing flesh and muscle from bone, not when Bo yanks his axe from his victim’s head with a foot planted on his chest, immediately giving chase to another with a wild grin, not when Akaashi’s machete, slick with blood, cuts through her friends like butter - but you can save her.

Just one person- 

“Kitten, come back and play!” Kuroo shouts after you with a sickeningly fond chuckle.

- so long as you don’t stop running.

The camp is eerily quiet, even the crickets have stopped. You have no idea how long ago they left to hunt down your friend, how long you’ve sat, sobbing in silence, too scared to breathe, waiting to see if they’d come back. 

Your friends are dead. Your boyfriend is dead. 

You don’t realise how badly you’re shaking until you try and move - almost falling flat on your face when your arms give out. They’re gone, but every noise, no matter how muted, feels deafening and you try not to flinch as you drag yourself towards the mouth of the tent. You don’t have time to prepare yourself for the carnage waiting for you across the camp ground, you can’t think about the fact that people you love have been torn apart and murdered while you cowered away frozen in fear.

The grip you have on your emotions, your sanity, is fragile, but in your terrified hysteria, you understand one very important thing - they could come back at any moment, and you cannot be here when that happens. 

You cannot stop and cry for your friends, you cannot afford to break down when you see their bodies hacked up and scattered around you - you won’t even look - you just have to take the car keys fisted in your right hand, get to your boyfriend’s truck and get the fuck away from this nightmare as quickly as those wheels can take you. 

Crawling on your hands and knees you slowly pry open the tent flap, biting your lip and wincing at the quiet hiss of the zipper. 

The cold night air hits you like a slap in the face, but it’s nothing compared to the overwhelming coppery tang of blood that settles on the tip of your tongue as you breathe it in. You bite down on your whimper, squeezing your eyes shut and forcing your leaden limbs to move - you can’t afford to stop now, you have to get away.

You won’t look, you won’t look, you won’t-

“I was wondering when you’d finally show yourself.”

Ice douses your system, your heart lurching. Your eyes shoot open, darting towards the source of the voice - there, leaning calmly against the thick trunk of a tree only a few feet away from you is a man. Tall and slender, with dark hair and delicate features, you’d probably go so far as to call him pretty if it wasn’t for the blood splattered garishly across his pale skin and the teasing grin tugging at his lips. 

Absolute terror renders you helpless as he pushes away from the tree and takes a single, calculated step towards you. “Kuroo and Bokuto won’t be long, they’re just finishing up with your friend.” His pretty smirk widens as your eyes well up with tears and a gasping sob finally rips its way free from your chest, “but I don’t think they’ll mind if we get started without them.”

You’re following the well trodden path, praying to god that it’ll lead you back to the road, to any kind of safety. The shouts and screams behind you died out a few minutes ago, but you can’t let yourself think about what that means - it’ll only slow you down and you’re so close.

“Wait, wait, stop! We ha-have to go back!” the girl cries, trying once again to pull you to a stop. “My friends-”

“I’m sorry,” you pant, glancing across at her - and you are. Her eyes are wide and terrified, swimming in a pain you know all too well. It’s selfish and cruel, and it’ll tear her apart just like it has you, but if you let her go now… “It’s too late for them, we need to keep-”

“Baby, you know you can’t hide from us!”

Bokuto. Your heart seizes just as the girl shrieks, and you risk a glance over your shoulder, slowing just a faction. 

They’re closing in, all three of them, less than twenty yards away.

Panic and desperation bite at your nerves - you can’t let them catch you, not now, not when you’re almost free. But your body is aching, your muscles on fire and your stamina is shot to pieces. You’re on your last legs and they know it. They don’t even have to run anymore, they’ve worn you down completely - it’s a miracle you’re still standing.

And it’s childish and petulant, but you just want to scream and cry and yell and beat your fists against the ground because it’s not fucking fair!

You were so close.

Your grip around her wrist slackens just a touch, and the girl takes the opportunity to rip her hand free from yours. You expect her to run, to flee like a bat out of hell and leave you crumpled in the dust, but instead she turns to you with a withering glare, “This is all your fault. You brought them here. You did this.”

The accusation hits you like a slap, but before you can even open your mouth to protest (she’s not wrong, you know she’s not wrong) she grabs you by the shoulders and with all the strength she has left, shoves you back in the path of your pursuers. You stumble from the force of the blow, not expecting it, and for a moment you feel yourself start to fall, instinctively curling in on yourself to protect your belly-

Strong arms catch you before you can hit the ground, pulling you against a warm, muscular chest. “Gotcha,” Kuroo breathes, his tongue darting out to lick at the blood splattered across your cheek.

Vaguely, you register Bokuto’s low, furious growl as he launches forward, his axe raised high. The sharp, piercing screams are cut off quickly - violently - as he buries it in her neck with a snarl. He swings again and her head tumbles clean off to bounce across the forest floor, but he keeps going, swinging again and again and again until her body is nothing but a bloody, mangled mess for the animals to scavenge. 

Your vision blurs, and it takes you a moment to realise that it’s tears welling up in your eyes as Kuroo’s hands run up and down your sides, drifting protectively across the gentle swell of your stomach. “You did good, kitten,” he coos, Akaashi and Bokuto coming up either side of you. “But it’s time to come home now, don’tcha think?”

A hand cups your cheek, drawing you to meet Akaashi’s twisted, lovesick expression, “Gotta reward our pretty little girl for playing her role so well,” he murmurs, his thumb gently stroking the delicate skin. 

“Maybe we can fuck another kid into her,” Bokuto adds with a grin, his previous rage all but forgotten, sated along with his bloodlust thanks to the butchered corpse lying a few yard away. His golden eyes, half lidded and burning with lust, flicker across your face for just a moment, drinking in every last drop of crushing defeat and despair before his lips crash down on yours in a savage, bloody kiss.

This was nothing but a game to them - one you never had a chance in hell of winning. 

[nuggiebugge]

Norman Bates

This is a general headcanon request from the lovely graveyard_fairiez

(Go look at their work, its so amazing istg. They have a slasher drabbles book, go read it.)

Sleeping

he would sleep on his stomach in a starfish position

Or he would like, wrap his entire body around a body pillow

He is a sleepwalker, you're gonna have to put a collar with a bell on him lol

Lock all doors at night, and invest in a refrigerator lock, he likes to sleep raid

He is known to go out at night and switch into his mother, hopefully you get to him before he goes too far outside

Favorite foods

i think he would really like Italian food

Lasagna babe

He would like to make you spaghetti for dates, he's a hopeless romantic

(Low key he would love to recreate that lady and the tramp scene)

Other than that, he would also really love Asian bbq.

Take him to an authentic Japanese bbq place and he will love you forever

Habits/ quirks

he has a really bad habit of picking his nails, get him some gloves

He likes to talk to his taxidermy if he’s feeling lonely, go give him a hug :( my baby

If he's bored, he's gonna munch on something random. Like, a piece of plastic he found or a piece of wood, little nasty man.

If he finds something off centered, it just irks him to a point that he has to make it perfect. If a picture frame is even slightly off, he is centering every frame in the hotel.

His idea of a date

his mama raised him right. He is either cooking his s/o something completely from scratch, or he's taking them out to dinner. Split the bill? Are you crazy?Let you tip? No. He’s tipping.

Sweet baby might take you out for a romantic picnic later on in your relationship, take you to a clearing in the woods near his hotel.

He would make you chocolate covered strawberries, and feed them to you like royalty (because you are, tf?)

Animals

He is a cat guy, enough said.

He prefers animals to be stuffed, but cats are the exception

They are s cute and fluffy

He thinks hairless cats are scary

Dogs are also scary

He hates small dogs like chihuahuas or corgis

Those little bastards are so mean

Movies

his favorite type of show or movie unironically would be chic flicks, or cheesy romance

A sucker for twilight movies

He likes sappy cavity sweet movies like marley.

Music 🎶

i have a feeling he loves velvet core music

Or reggae music

Bob Marley be hittin

If you're a metalhead like Moi, he will totally head bang with you!

He loves all kinds of music, velvet and reggae are his favorites though.

[pseudoneiiric]

@deathwis​ / @e1dest​​ asked:

cracked knuckles bump along a wrinkled forehead, cautious and flighty. only grazing along the skin enough to feel out signs of warmth ; an inspection half assed given how naturally sun soaked jay is, though he's firm on not pushing it. wood scratched fingers retract back into an equally worked palm -- mangling into a fist as he edges away. no fever, that's good. all thoughts are scattered and red tinted, murky fog of an irritated headache disguising the original reaction to this whole goddamn thing : a peeling sort of primal fear. knees ache from the awkward climb down the muddied slope, dirt caked under janky nails and strands of sandy brown mussed and askew thanks to the humid whipping of air. narrow chest smoothing out from panted breaths, blue eyes a hidden tint brighter since he can now assess the damage. but all that worry's finally being shoved into an even more smothered anger, 'cause fucking god how could jay be such an idiot?

“how'd it happen? when you're out here, you're supposed'ta be watchin' your step.” tyler scolds, all unimpressed and difficult. exhausted gaze rakes over the variety of red lines scratched over baby fat skin. the new holes in hand-me-down clothes. recognizes the ratty remains of dale's old shirt clinging to a wiry frame immediately, which only serves to make him bristle further. lips pressing into a thin line as hollow cheeks puff out in aggression, bracing against the urge to jerk jay closer to force an inspection. not like he'd appreciate it anyway, tyler's sure. finally, intent eyes land on the swollen red of his brother's the kid's knee ; ignoring the way bile crawls up his throat at the sorry sight. “nevermind that, can you stand?” his level tone wavers, voice shrinking a size in barely concealed empathy. it'd wound his pride if he could focus on anything but the signs of pain flickering across jay's face. and being crouched down beside him makes that more than a little difficult.  //  smth smth baby brother had a nasty fall in the woods & scared this man shitless <3

it’s not like jay doesn’t watch his back — something he’s eager to voice with a grumble, since he knows tyler never gives him the benefit of the doubt. dale always gives him the benefit of the doubt with these things, though the youngest holt can’t argue that when he took this nasty spill, the first name he called out, broken and fearful, was tyler’s. knowing that if there was gonna be anyone that could patch him up, keep him safe, it’d be the eldest. his older brother, with a yawning distance between them that jay doesn’t think they can ever close. not with tyler so much older and always scoldin’ him like he’s his pa. the way tyler stares at him at dinner always unnerved him, too, not even bothering to say anything. it’s no secret in jay’s head that tyler’s more like a pa than a brother, though jay can mouth off to him in a way he can’t with pa. takes that small victory where he can, at every opportunity that comes up. “i was,” is what he forces out, though his voice is tight with pain. “you know i always do.”

but he doesn’t give voice to what actually happened, worried that tyler will say something biting about it, and jay’s just not in the mood. not when his knee feels like it’s going to buckle. “i think... i can stand.” but when he tries, his knee immediately seizes up, and he lets himself fall to the ground — better than reaching to tyler for support. tyler probably wouldn’t appreciate jay getting handsy anyway, even though jay hisses at the feeling of stray pebbles scratching his palm. “i think it’s sprained.” the words are said plaintively, lost blue eyes looking around for anything he can use to splint it. he already knows there’s nothin’ around here — if he coulda splinted it, he woulda already done it. “you’ll...” and jay hesitates, not wanting to trigger tyler’s ire by asking him to do something, practically telling him, “hafta help me back home. i remember the way, i just can’t get there on my own.”

[lazarettta]

First Glimpse

Summary: Just a random glimpse into the life of a rare pairing of Sasha Banks and Bianca Belair.

Word count: 1.7k

Warnings: suggestive scenes, language maybe, but fluffy late night stuff w a married couple.

Sasha wasn’t sure if it was the thunder that woke her up or the constant flashing from the lightning through her window in her bedroom that she shared with her wife. Sasha lifted her head from her slumbering wife’s chest and looked around their bedroom slowly, and saw nothing out of the ordinary. Sasha figured it was just those damn horror movies her wife insisted on watching right before they go to bed. 

Ever since the damn global pandemic came and forced the WWE to halt production until the worst of it was over, it’s been hell trying to figure out how to keep themselves from losing their minds being confined indoors. And Sasha could only do so many makeup tutorials and watch so many Disney movies. 

Sasha sighed and carefully slid away from her wife as she pushed her side of the covers aside and slipped out of bed. Sasha quickly glanced at the clock and rolled her eyes. That was another thing that the Coronavirus screwed up; her sleep schedule. She tried her hardest to keep up her usual schedule but after two days, she gave up. Not because she wanted to, but her wife took their three month vacation very seriously and wasted no time sexing Sasha up and down their house.

Sasha flipped on the stairway light, she didn’t want another incident again—she was lucky the last time, because now was not the time to go to the hospital. Sasha made her way down to the kitchen, she wasn’t particularly hungry but maybe a light snack would help her go back to sleep. 

The moment Sasha turned on the kitchen light she heard nails scratching and sliding on their wood floor as Lola, their pitbull, came scrambling in no doubt hoping to get something to eat too. At first glance, Lola was muscular and very fit but the moment either of them walk into the kitchen...Lola the fatass is right there, waiting for her share even though she has treats and eats hearty meals. 

Of course, it didn’t help that they always indulged her. 

Sasha stared down at her dog, eyebrow raised, “Why is that everytime I come in the kitchen... you in the kitchen. Lola you need to get a job.”

Lola shuffled, huffed and was content to watch her. Sasha pulled the milk out of the fridge and she opened the cabinet, searching for the bowls and she rolled her eyes, cursing her wife for putting them on the top shelf. Sasha considered getting the chair but it was too far and it would’ve made too much noise. 

Sasha took a deep breath and climbed up on the counter carefully and she reached up for a bowl, of course she could’ve just used the other ones closest to her but those weren’t her favorite cereal bowls. 

Sasha nearly grabbed it when she suddenly felt two strong hands on the back of her bare thighs, long nails gently grazing the bottom of her panties beneath the long shirt she wore. 

“Whatcha doin’ pretty girl?”

Sasha looked over her shoulder at her wife, smiling softly, “Making cereal, want some?”

“I could eat.” Bianca smirked though she was clearly still half asleep.

“Nasty.” Sasha rolled her eyes and grabbed two bowls, setting them down on the counter before she forced Bianca back a few steps so she could get down safely, though they both knew that Sasha wasn’t going to hit the floor even if she did slip. 

Bianca took the bowls from Sasha’s hands and set them aside as she pressed Sasha back against the counter with her arms on either side of her, and Sasha placed her hands on Bianca’s forearms. 

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

The couple were quiet for a few moments, content being in each other’s presence until Bianca couldn’t resist leaning down and softly kissing her wife, who immediately returned her affections. When Sasha slid her hands further along Bianca’s arms until she was able to wrap them around her neck, one hand tangled in Bianca’s dark hair, and the other cupping the base of her neck. Bianca moaned softly, attempting to deepen their kiss but Sasha’s growling stomach interrupted them. 

Sasha pulled back slightly, though their foreheads were still touching, “Captain Crunch or Frosted Flakes?”

“How about you?” Bianca moved her arms around Sasha’s waist tightly, hugging her close.

“Later. Now pick.”

Bianca sighed loudly and dramatically, kissing the top of Sasha’s purple head, “Tsk, fine. Captain Crunch.”

Sasha smirked, wiggling her way out of Bianca’s embrace, “See, now was that so hard?”

Bianca crossed her arms, halfheartedly mugging her wife as she walked into the pantry, “Girl, with you? It’s always hard.”

~~

Bianca lay on her side next to Sasha propped up on her elbow as she drew random patterns along Sasha’s spine, feeling her erratic heartbeat slowly coming down. Bianca couldn’t help but feel smug about how limp her wife was, especially since she was talking so much mess downstairs half an hour ago.

One of Bianca’s favorite things to do was to shut Sasha up. Her way, of course. Everyone else just wanted to beat her up...but not many of them could get through Bianca first. Their TV was playing in the background, some late night Lifetime movie that they were only half heartedly watching while they caught their breath.

“So,” Bianca started quietly, eyes no longer on the TV but one the random patterns she traced on Sasha’s spine with the tips of her fingers, “I think I’ll be drafted to Smackdown soon.”

Sasha shifted slightly so that she could look at Bianca curious and hopeful, “How do you know that?”

Bianca shrugged, “I talked to Stephanie and Hunter the other day when you went to the grocery store. It’s not set in stone, but it’s likely we’re gonna be on the same brand soon.”

“I guess that means I gotta tell Bayley to hit the road soon, huh?”

Bianca laughed softly, but she didn’t answer. Instead Bianca rolled Sasha over so that she was on her back, and despite Sasha’s exhaustion she was already spreading her legs in anticipation. Bianca’s gaze never left Sasha’s even as her free hand made its way down Sasha’s belly as Bianca draped casually over one of her spread legs, holding her still.

Bianca and Sasha continued to look into each other's eyes as Bianca worked Sasha’s tired body until she was trembling beneath her and gasping sharply as another orgasm tore through her body. It wasn’t until Sasha was whimpering and her eyes started to droop that Bianca finally relented and the last thing Sasha saw before falling asleep, was her wife licking her fingers clean with a self satisfied smirk on her face.

“I hate you,” Sasha mumbled.

“I love you too, babe. Sleep tight.”

Two weeks later…

As it turns out, Bianca had been right about her getting drafted to Smackdown, but she wasn’t the only one that was moved to a different brand. Roman Reigns and another Superstar were sent over to Raw. It was right around the same time the WWE sent out a mass email to all of their Superstars on roster about pre-taping shows and PPVs without an audience. And while the email was in no way forcing anyone to come in and guaranteed that they’d still be paid, everyone in the WWE knew how Vince McMahon could take rejection. Not very well, but a few of them were brave enough to say no and face the wraith that may or may not come their way later down the line.

But that wasn’t why Bianca was carrying two suitcases through Orlando International Airport with Sasha making sure that Lola was on her best behavior behind her. Wrestling was what they truly loved to do and while they loved being at home and spending time together, they were going to be on the same brand now and there wouldn’t be any more long lonely nights and FaceTime calls and sexting.

The decision to get a temporary six month apartment in Orlando twenty minutes from the Performance Center was an easy one, and they were on a redeye out of California a week later. 

“What do you think it’s gonna be like?” Sasha asked Bianca as they got settled in the rental waiting for them with Lola in the backseat, staring out the window at the new city they were in.

Bianca shrugged as she reached over to take Sasha’s hand once they were on the road, “Girl, you’re askin’ me like I don’t know what you know. It might be some bullshit, but we gotta make the best of what we have, right?”

“Right. Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Sasha sighed, shaking her head, “I guess it’s...I already feel weird without a crowd being there and going city to city, but it’s nice to be in one spot too. Are you ready to be on the best show in the WWE?” Sasha grinned softly when Bianca scoffed, and adjusted her glasses.

“Yeah, but...I’m gonna say this one time. Evans better not talk to me, she better not even look at me if she knows what’s good for her.”

“You have to let that go, baby. That was two years ago, we were barely talking back then.”

“I don’t care, the moment I seen you strutting backstage like you owned the place...I knew I was feelin’ you, and I had to ask you out. You were mine...no one knew it yet, but I did.”

Sasha snorted but she’d be lying if she didn’t like having someone defending her honor, even if they barely knew her (at the time), “So, what? You’re gonna break everyone's nose for saying something bad about me?”

“If I have to, don’t let these acrylics fool you. Tennessee bred, we protect what’s ours.”

“Even if I can handle myself?”

Bianca laughed, looking over at her wife but she didn’t say anything. Though she didn’t need to, that slight red painted smile and that mischievous glint in her dark eyes told Sasha everything she needed to know...Smackdown was about to be a lot more interesting for her..and anyone who got in their way. FIN

[michiieewrites]

Shigaraki - Grind On Me (fic)

WARNING: SMUT, 18+ ONLY!!

A/N: So last week had this dream about Shiggy and things got heavy and heated very fast, so this fic is based on that. I hope you will all like this fic. If you want more, don’t be shy to slide into my inbox, I don’t bite :D Anyway, enjoy!)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hurried footsteps slip inside. You follow the white haired man into the living roo. Once inside, you both feel the tension leave your bodies. Even if your chances of getting caught are rising with the minute, all you are is curious. You were both supposed to be in class at your college, but today is ditch-day.

You’ve never been in the Shigaraki-home before. Tomura never invited you over and you weren’t one to pry. He was your friend and you knew that he had a hard time letting himself be vulnerable around others. Give him the time he needs and he’ll slowly unravel the mess of strings inside his heart.

Looking around the living room, you could kind of guess why he never invited you. Everything was… big. Not in size, but in stature. From the outside, the house looked decent enough. Clean and obviously for a wealthy family. But nothing too crazy, nothing that stood out. The inside however, showed that the family that resides here is just straight up filthy rich. Dark wood decorated the interior, the walls filled with classic European art, even the chandelier was covered in crystals.

Turning around, you are met with carmine eyes. His eyes are studying you, trying to read your reaction. When his gaze falls away from your face, he walks over to the wine colored couch behind you. He sits down, leaning back and spreading his legs. The expression he wears tells you that he’s waiting for you to say something.

“It’s uh… I bet it fits your father’s taste,” you tentatively say.

A couple of seconds are filled with silence. Tomura nods. “Yeah, he says it’s shows the importance of our family. I think he just likes to ‘look’ at his money.”

You only met the man once, when he was waiting in the car while you and Tomura browse through the game store. He seemed like the type of man who wasn’t easily impressed. The look he shot you was that of someone who thought others should be beneath them. Someone with a goal ahead and the ability to make it happen, no matter the cost. Sometimes your friend would tell you a little about the path his father had laid out for him. At times, he listened to his father and his plans. At times, he would curse him to Hell and beyond. And at times, he just didn’t know what else there was to life, so he just went along with what others expected of him.

You sit down beside him. Your hand lies on his wrist and his eyes are pulled to the action. Because of his quirk, he was very cautious with touching others. But with you, the risk was worth it. It was worth it to feel the tips of your fingers touch his skin.

“Well, I’m very grateful that you invited me to your home, Tomura.”

“I thought you wouldn’t be swayed by the money my father has.”

In time, you had learned to sometimes read between the lines of his words. This time it meant that he trusted you not to suck up his father’s ass. That you would actually want to be around him for the person he really is. It made your heart squeeze in happiness for being allowed to closer each day.

Just as you pull your hand away from his wrist, you notice the tag of his shirt is out. You tuck it back in his shirt, your fingers grazing his neck. A startled gasp leaves his throat. He whips his head to look straight at you. You quickly pull your hand back.

“I-I’m sorry,” you stammer out.

His chest is falling and rising quickly, signaling his panting. “Do it again.”

You aren’t sure you heard that right. “W-what?”

“You heard me,” he said. Leaning over to your side, his arm going behind your back and pulling you closer at the same time. “I told you to do that again, Y/N. Touch my neck.”

Gingerly, your hand reaches out. The pads on your fingers press against his scratched up neck and the action makes him leans his head back, letting a soft groan. A little more daring, you decide to let your fingers travel along his neck. Your fingers press down, a feeling too light to massage any muscle. Only to make their presence known to his body.

You feel movement on the couch and instinctively look down to see Tomura bucking up his hips ever so slightly. His neck exposed, his whole body reacting to your touch. You can feel the fire slowly spreading from your fingertips up your arms, all the way up to your chest. Looking back up, you see lidded eyes watching you closely. Daring you to continue your adventure.

So you do. Crawling into his lap, your legs on both of his sides. With his own legs already spread wide, he has to hold on to you. Pulled as close to his chest as possible, one of his hands travels down your side. His touch is lighter than silk, rougher than an unpolished diamond. With his pinky lifted up, his hand rests just above your ass.

Now both your hands are touching his neck. Making a path down to his collarbones, exploring more unmapped territory. Maintaining the eye contact, you have to ask: “Are you sure you’re okay with this?”

Pressing his pelvis up against you, he lets out a longer groan this time. “Fuck, yes. Don’t tell me you never thought about it?”

In truth, you have. The pull you felt when you two sit closely next to each other. The comfort each other’s presence gave to the other. The intimacy of just enjoying each other’s company together. Grazes of simple touches lingering a little too long. The body heat that is shared from standing too close to each other. The trust between you two makes it easier to break down every wall. The protectiveness when you’re too far apart.

All these thoughts run wild through your head and it shows on your face. How your eyes fall down from his immodest stare to his lips. Emotions like an open book and all Tomura can focus on right now is how good it feels to touch. To touch you, to be more precise.

His free hand goes holds onto the back of your head and pushes your lips to his own. Cracked lips press against soft ones, not too fast or too slow. He swipes his tongue across your bottom lip and he tastes the mint chocolate ice cream you had earlier that day. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he registers your hands going back over his shoulder and down his back.

Wanton noises are heard throughout the living room. The temperature of your body is rising and you just know you need to feel something, anything that can restrain this heat. Your body has a mind of it’s own and grinds back down on Tomura. The man beneath pulling back from your kissing to let out a filthy and loud moan.

“Fuck Y/N! Fuck fuck fuck, yes, just keeping doing that.”

His breathing becoming more labored. The hand against your head entangles itself in your hair while the other one presses your body down. Following his movements, you grind yourself against the growing bulge in his pants. You place a kiss on the little mole next to his mouth and slowly make their way down his chin to his neck. You pay a little extra attention to the spots he keeps scratching himself.

Tomura moves his hand to hold on just beneath your ass, his fingers tracing along the swell. Mumbles of ‘good girl’, ‘right there’, while occasionally tugging on your hair. The vibrations of your moans against his skin. He grows more and more impatient with the way your body moves on top of him, but he doesn’t dare stop the heavenly treatment you’re giving him right now.

His pants are getting too tight. Even through the layers of clothing he can feel the heat of your pussy. Practically feeling how wet you’re getting. His own precum now staining his boxers. The plum weight of your ass in his hand, your mouth sucking on his skin. The occasional whimper being voiced. The need for feeling more of him coursing through your body.

As the minutes tick by, your movements becoming more desperate, trying to feel up the other as much as possible. Your hips have set up a pace of their own, your nails clawing at Tomura’s back to hold on. Your mind occupied by thoughts of how good you could really make him feel if this went on any longer. You don’t wanna stop. Only being spurred on by the feeling of your pussy grinding on his stiffening cock.

His lips constantly kissing your hair and whispering filthy things to you. “I finally have you riding yourself in my lap,” he whispers.

Your response muffled by the bite you hold on his neck. Sucking and licking over the new bruise. “I’m not the only one humping like a horny mess, Tomu.”

Pressing down just a little harder to hear that delicious groan of him. “Ah, you’re right, Y/N. But who knew you’d be such a nasty little bitch? Dry humping her best friend on his father’s couch?”

“And who knew his father would come home early today?”

The new voice startles the both of you. Both your heads look to see who it is. You don’t know what’s worse; being interrupted while making out or being interrupted by Mr. Shigaraki. Filled with shame, you try to get up from Tomura’s lap, but are being held back by his arms around your waist.

Sure, he respected his father, but right now Tomura wished he would perish on the spot. How dare he interrupt this moment between Y/N and him? Your face is burying itself against his shoulder, your body curling up in itself in his lap.

How dare his adoptive father make you feel like hiding yourself?

Smirking, a plan is forming in his mind. Still keeping you locked in his arm, he shifts you around a little till the older man has a good view of what’s between his legs. Looking AFO dead in the eyes, he starts palming himself.

“Unless you wanna see my dick out and proudly fucking Y/N here, I suggest you leave the same way you came. You got 5 seconds,” Tomura says.

For a moment nobody moves. Not until Tomura starts unbuttoning his pants, does AFO turn around and walk out the front door. Reveling in his victory, he turns his attention back to you. His eyes filled with primal longing and care. His tongue swiping over his lips, a promise of how the muscle can pleasure you.

“Now where were we, my little vixen?”

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***Please let me know if you liked this ending, thank you!

Tagged: @mrsreina​ / @reinawritesbnha​ @thots4daze​ / @kzombi3​ @league-of-villians-headcanons​ / @probablydysfunctionalvindication​ @aizawascumslut​ @hipster-merchant-of-death​ @ravenfeet222​ @strawbirb​

[the-silentium]

Home Sweet Home

Masterlist - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8

Fors is an Original planet. I do not give permission to people to use it for their own fics, the planet, the animals, the Nightmares, the lore or anything related to Fors. Thank you.

Pairing: Bad Batch x Reader

Words: 7569 words

Warnings: Angst, sexual innuendos.

A/N: Last “soft” chap before the action come back ~  

**Words in bold are words said in French, which means the clones can’t understand it.**

Taglist: @clone-rambles / @mandaloriandin / @apathetic-catastrophie / @jenstar1992-2 / @haloangel391 / @lightning-wolffe / @cherrydemon5​ / @and-claudia​ / @lackofhonor​ / @gaymasonjar​ / @depthsreturn​ / @koskareevesismyqueen​ / @leonidas-banana-phone​             

____________________

Nothing changed. Not the obnoxious people, not the earthy smells, nor the heavy atmosphere. The loud locks of the gates closing behind your group still resonated through your ears, sounding too much like the last nail sealing your coffin shut and not like a protecting device. Was it your instincts telling you that you made the wrong decision? Or was it just the dread of returning somewhere you never wanted to return? Either way, it was clear that you didn't feel any bits of nostalgia at being back between these rocky walls. 

Hells, even the council's room was giving off unpleasant vibes with its tall bookcases carved directly into the walls that protected way too many old books that weren't all redacted in French nor in Basic. A map of the planet hung on the furthest wall of the room, the different villages identified with their respective symbol to help with trades, hunts, fights. Frabas' name crossed out in blood-red ink to remind everyone of the overnight genocide that happened there. 

The lanterns were the only nice things in the room. The soft green and blue crystals contained within the glass enclosure bathed the whole room in their light. Maybe if you focussed on them long enough their glow would soothe your mind. 

"Excuse me? You spit on it?" Tech's sudden high pitch tone was surprising enough to pass through your incessant flow of thoughts 

"Yeah. Right there." He pointed at an intergrown knot close to the far extremity of the table where the heads usually sat. "What? Did you want me to piss on it? That's a bit too animalistic." Kayden added as soon as he noticed Tech's offended expression that quickly morphed into a disgusted one. 

"Honestly, with you people, I wouldn't have been surprised." Crosshair's jeer traveled the room in a second. It took even less to drop Kayden's mood.  

His hand tightened around yours and without losing a single second, you matched his grip to keep him from expressing his frustration through anything physical. Now wasn't the time to start a fight between your own team members when several other players might want to hurt you. 

If tonight's bad luck could turn into good fortune at least once, now would be the time. The 'diplomats' were out of harm's way, Kayden had technically done what he was told and thus was not considered a traitor, leaving you alone on the spot. 

"Look who just found his voice again." He caught your message and used his words instead. "I was sure you'd swallowed your tongue when you ran like a chicken back there."

"And who ran the fastest in the group eh?" The sniper walked to the table. His hands fell flat on the wood to support himself as he leaned forward, daring the brunette at your sides to make a move. 

"The fastest is usually the one to survive." He pointed out as he scratched at his clothed chest with his free hand, his right one still prisoner of your grip. 

"Crosshair." Hunter slightly pulled him backward by the pauldron and away from the incoming confrontation. "Enough." He added with a growl, clearly remembering how this wasn't his brother. Not fully. 

Against all expectation, Crosshair did back off, although he quickly moved his animosity towards the new source of irritation, clear proof that this wasn't the man with whom Hunter had shared so many memories, good or bad. He was a total stranger that didn't respect him at all and lived to push his buttons. Why he stayed with you all was a mystery, although you weren't complaining. Keeping him restrained while in the jungle would have been a true challenge. 

It was like waiting for a storm to explode. The dark grey clouds were there, the strong winds blew away everything in their wake, the thunder resonated in the distance, yet there wasn't any droplet of rain. The men faced each other just like in the cave, mere centimeters separated their chest plates and anytime now, the first blow would mark the start of a colossal downpour. 

It was nerve-wracking. Even Wrecker and Tech were watching, clearly pondering if they should intervene or if by doing so they would aggravate the situation. You started getting up as the door opened and startled you into seating down again. 

Never had you thought that seeing Arlan enter a room would make you feel relieved, yet, this was exactly how you felt at the moment. It seemed like the sudden entrance of an outsider was enough for Crosshair to back off. You subtly crossed your fingers that he wouldn't lash out at the leader even though the scene would very probably make you feel so much better. The consequences of going against Arlan just weren't worth it.  

Before the dark-haired leader could notice it, you separated your hand from Kayden's, both your backs straightened and your unbothered masks came back on. Wearing the well-worn suit of this fake cocky personality was deeply uncomfortable but truly necessary. Over the years it became your best shield and Kayden your best ally. 

"Take a seat." Arlan waved towards the table as he walked deeper into the room, passing Hunter and Crosshair like they weren't even there. It took years to be able to read the black-haired leader, but it definitely came in handy now. 

His calm tone hid a deep irritation that showed through the tightness gripping the muscles around his eyes. He quickly tamed his features as he took place at the end of the table, his elbows immediately meeting the hardwood of the armchairs to allow his fingers to interlace before him. 

Soon the 4 seats opposing you were occupied with rigid troopers. Their helmets still firmly on would have been seen as an enormous lack of respect if only Arlan's attention wasn't already focussed on two nasty boots dripping mud onto the piece of art that was the table.

Arlan only needed one look to communicate thoroughly his thoughts. The hard gaze that could easily be misinterpreted as a constipated one transpired enough threats that Kayden removed his boots without any further delay. The ultimatum was clear and you both knew that there was nothing Arlan despised more than repeating himself. Well, maybe you two were the firsts on his list, but that was especially because you loved to make him repeat himself. 

If only he didn't look like there was an entire fire-ants colony in his pants, Kayden would have kept his feet up for a bit longer just to raise the man's blood pressure a little. You swore he got more grey hair each time he had to talk with the two of you. 

The disapproving sigh accompanying the stormy grey hues boring deeply into yours was a true gift to Kayden whose smirk widened in consequence. 

"Do you know why you're here?" The question resonated within the room with utmost seriousness, a seriousness that you forced yourself to shrug nonchalantly in response. 

"Surely not because you missed me." You placed a smirk on your lips to copy your sidekick and complete the infernal duo act. 

His dark-grey sleeves rode up his arms as he bent forward, his elbows now resting on the table, to get a closer look at you, 3 chairs away. Whilst being very tempting, flinching under his hard stare was out of the question. Four months in a medbay with kind people almost made you forget what the world was really made of; selfish people who always looked out for weaknesses to exploit and were eager to beat others down in hope to raise themselves up. 

"We are here to talk relations between the Republic and your planet." Hunter sharply stated, cutting short the staring contest. "My team was sent in a preliminary manner to inform you of the Republic's intentions seeing as your representatives couldn't be reached through official channels. In the following days, two senators will be coming here with adequate troops to talk in the Senate's name." 

How the room got hotter in a second was a mystery. All you knew was that even though his tone was borderline too crisp to be qualified as diplomatic, Hunter's words were so perfectly chosen that you wondered if he'd done this kind of job before. 

As the silence following Hunter's declaration stretched, Arlan's gaze moved to the hard visor of the commando trooper. The intensity of his stare left you thinking that maybe he was able to see through the shade. Unfazed, Hunter stared right back as you did just moments prior. 

You nearly missed it. If you hadn't been watching Arlan as intently as you were doing, the minuscule flash in his eye would have been overlooked. A muscle jumped in his jaw, filling you with dread. Something was wrong. Somehow he had the upper hand and he was internally relishing his win. 

"A very well executed lie, but I am sorry to announce you that the Republic won't come here, Sergeant. Not after the Jedis signed a treaty to never come on this planet ever again." You were sure he paused just to get a reaction out of the commando. Hunter's helmet hid his expression perfectly. If he'd reacted or not was totally lost on everyone, unfortunately, it wasn't the same for Kayden whose eyes grew as big as saucers. "No Jedi, no clone, no senator, no Separatist, no outsider is welcome here." 

Say what now? Never before had you ever heard of Jedis ever landing a foot on Fors, even less signing a treaty. 

Hunter's helmet slightly dipped in your direction, surely to get some answers through your body language. Surely, he got the message when you gulped, wariness filling your eyes as you continued to stare at the man in his mid-50s. His message had been pretty clear from the very beginning. That he felt the need to add that the clones weren't welcome caused doubts in your village ethics to creep into your mind. 

As far as you knew, no one had ever been executed in cold blood. Sure, you'd heard stories as a child about how people who were a tad bit too disturbing in the community would vanish overnight, obviously thrown out into the jungle to be feasted on by some hungry creature. Without knowing if they were true events or simply a way to make children behave, you took a habit of sticking with Kayden as soon as the firsts Furants that created their nests in the crooks of the walls circling the village entered the gates to hide, signaling that 7 pm had recently passed and the Nightmares would show up in under an hour. After all, there was no better nuisance in Alryan than the two of you. 

Knowing that Arlan's smugness was carefully hidden under layers of practiced indifference, a very tantalizing urge to break your knuckles once again send tingles into your dominant hand. Breaking his nose for a second time would definitely help your mood as well as everyone else's in the room, you were sure of it. 

"The- the Jedis? But they never-" 

"It is not common knowledge." Arlan archly cut Kayden short and rolled his eyes with that very particular expression that made you feel like the stupidest idiot in the galaxy. In response, the tingles in your hand intensified. "This treaty is way older than me after all. We never needed the Republic's help in any way, not then and certainly not now." He at least had the decency to meet his eyes as he talked.

"And what do you think of the Nightmares? Frabas-" You piped up, the image of a traumatized red-head girl shaking in her bloody clothes popped in your mind. "They could've helped with that."

"They are protectors." He closed his eyes in exasperation and pinched his nose like he'd repeated the concept over and over again to a child that never retained anything. 

"They don't protect shit! They kill us!" 

Where had he been his whole life? Every night they came and howled, screeched, hissed, yapped and laughed on the other side of the gates in hope of having some juicy flesh and fresh blood to appease their hunger and thirst. Some even went as far as hitting the gates repeatedly in hope of breaking their way in. 10 hours per night, 368 nights a year, every year.

"They protect the Core that's in you--" He interrupted himself as soon as he noticed the irritation breaching his mask, allowing venom to drip through the closing cracks. His rage fit only lasted a second but it was a second too much. He gave you more than he wanted you to know. 

"What do you mean? In me?" You could feel yourself starting to shake. In apprehension, anger or fear you couldn't tell. There was too much going on at the same time, assaulting your already tired mind. 

"Nothing that you need to know." His tone was definitive, his grey eyes conveying the same message. 

"Bullshit!" You jump to your feet just as he pushed his chair to get up. "If it's in me like you say, I deserve to know!" 

Your yell must have triggered something, because as soon as the words flew from your mouth, Rhian and his troops entered the room, bows fully bent and ready to shoot in your direction. Elijah had his hammer in both hands, fully prepared to use it against a clone- your money went on Wrecker- if needed and Pete was ready to blow a tranquilizer- or it could easily be a fast-acting poison- into someone's neck. 

The answer to the intrusion was immediate. Wrecker's chair went flying behind him at the impact of his legs when he followed his CO's movement. All four troopers stood on their side of the table, imposing and totally ready to enter a fight if need be. You and Kayden though? Totally not ready. You were unarmed and by the time you took hold of Kayden's bow, at least three arrows would have found their way into your body. 

"All you really deserved was to die on Murphy Day." He snarled in your direction as his impatience once again showed through his slipping mask. "Throw them in the slammer."

That's it. Goodbye knuckles. Always the perceptive, Kayden grabbed your upper arm, right below the Algax's clean-cut, and pulled you back to his side even before you made the first step towards the bastard. Always there to keep you alive for another day. What a nice friend. 

"Hands behind your head." Rhian barked as he approached you and Kayden from behind. 

Doing as you were told, you noticed the troopers hesitating before doing as ordered when you nodded at them. Tech lifted his good hand, the other keeping hold of Crosshair's cage. One of the archers went to seize it, but a sudden shoulder to the sternum kept him away. 

He's not just a nerd. You smirked as the archer stumbled. 

"Let them keep it." Rhian waved off the fuming archer who definitely wanted to go back and win his fight. Too bad. "Walk ahead. You know the way." Rhian nodded towards the door after getting a hold of Kayden's bow and quiver, his very own bow aimed at the floor. The string was stretched just enough to cause serious damage if he needed to defend himself quickly, but he seemed to know that it wasn't needed. 

Kayden led the way with you in tow, Elijah and Pete moved away from the door to let you pass at a safe distance. Out of the corner of your eyes, you noticed Rhian breaking formation to move up to Arlan, who surely waved him over. 

You sighed as you remembered that he didn't even tell you why he wanted you here. 

The clone's boots resonated against the rock floor at each of their steps, close enough to appease your mind. 

"Do you know a way out of here?" Hunter's voice emanated softly within your ear. 

You moved your shoulder blades in a circular motion as if you were stretching the muscles and nodded your head at the same time as to not look too suspicious to the archers escorting the group. Good thing that they didn't notice your earpiece yet.

Wrecker must have been the one right behind you because he relayed the message to Hunter through the private line. 

"Now?" You rotated your head from side to side like when you needed to crack your neck. 

"No." Came Wrecker's whisper. 

"In the slammer?" A small nod. 

"Yeah." 

"Then we wait and we get out as soon as possible." Hunter told his half-plan to the Batch who hummed their approvals. 

Once again the unusual parade that you formed along with the armored men attracted many curious eyes. Ignoring them was easier this time around, the familiarity of their chary gazes finally coming back to allow you to concentrate on something else. 

This part of the village was carved so deeply into the mountain that even the occasional howls coming from the jungle couldn't be heard. There couldn't have been better protection for a population of more than 700 people than a natural barrier of rock. Sure, this very convenient refuge could easily become a tomb for a lot of villagers in the event of a breach, but several emergency tunnels were created for this very situation. They were maintained at a perfect condition in case a repeat of Frabas' catastrophe ever came to happen. 

Every Alryan learned the location of every single tunnel at the youngest of age. They were only to be used in emergency cases and right now, it was an emergency. It all depended on the perspective. 

"It never changed." You stated quietly as the slammer's entrance came into view, the dark purple glow emanating from its depths was a stark contrast to the lively colors of the main area. 

Goosebumps rose on your arms as you followed Kayden down the tunnel. The nearby natural well raised the humidity in these parts of the mountain and thus caused the air to become colder. Just my luck, you thought as the fresh air infiltrated your clothes by the multiple tears in their fabric. 

"In there." Rhian speed-walked to catch up with Kayden and direct him to a cell carved into the wall on his left. 

You were locked up with him, Wrecker and Hunter got situated in the cell facing yours, Crosshair and Tech on the one right beside theirs. 

Right as Tech got in after a growling Crosshair, Rhian took hold of the cage and kicked Tech inside who landed in a yelp. You weren't even gripping the bars yet that the heavy door closed behind the engineer. 

"Give him back!" 

"Sorry 'bout that." He threw the cage in the air twice, the flame within shaking frantically as it hit the bars. "Orders are orders." He ignored the yells of his name bouncing in the detention center and walked out unbothered, his men in tow. 

"How quick can you get us out of here?" The urgency in Hunter's tone only added to your own raiding anxiety. What would Arlan do to Crosshair? He was totally defenseless. 

"Couple of minutes. But we'll need Back-Up. I hope you have it." You turned to Kayden who scoffed in mocked offense. 

"You have back-up?" Tech wondered out loud, tilting his head. "I thought no one would help you here." 

"Jeez. Thanks for the vote of confidence." Kayden held his heart before reaching for his chest pocket. "Back-up is my Godot." He pulled a hand-sized lizard from his pocket to show the Batch. 

The Godot's orange scales shone softly at Kayden's contact, their light reflecting onto the soft line of baby blue leaves growing on each side of its spine. Its three-fingered paws grabbed fingers and clothes to remain in place while two black eyes moved independently from one another to take in what was happening around. Its long tail wrapped around Kayden's wrist as he lifted it up to show off, the small leaves at its end shining brightly in surprise. 

Wrecker gasped and lifted his helmet to get a better view of the animal. "That's what I saw the first time, Tech! It's the lizard that disappeared!" 

"Nothing disappeared Wrecker. There was nothing there." Tech rebuked.  

"Don’t be so sure about that! They can camouflage themselves, right Back-Up?" At the half-baked order, the tiny lizard shut off its light and changed its skin pigmentation to copy its environment to perfection. 

"It disappeared Tech! See? That's what I saw and you didn't believe me!" Wrecker's tone raised as he pointed to Kayden's seemingly empty outstretched hand. 

"Wrecke-" You tried to warn him to keep his voice down but heard steps coming your way. 

"Back-up, go get the master key at home." Kayden hurriedly whispered to the Godot and quickly kneeled to allow it access to the ground so it could wander away and get the required object. 

A guard appeared at the end of the corridor just as Kayden got up and threw himself onto the upper hammock fixed to the walls. He moved around to get comfortable and into the right position, hands under his head. 

"So, I've heard that Stockholm syndrome was hard on you." Brett, a particularly annoying scout, mocked from behind his beard. 

"Nope. Still don't like y'all." You replied nonchalantly despite the urge to punch him through the bars. 

"I was talking about them." He pointed to the two cells containing the clones and you lifted a single eyebrow. 

"Tech, definition of Stockholm syndrome please." You asked, maintaining eye contact during the whole process. 

"Stockholm syndrome," You saw the genius perked up at your request. Sadly, he didn't lift a finger in the air while he recited the meaning of the word. "Is a psychological response wherein a captive begins to identify closely with his or her captors, as well as with their agenda and demands." He ended with a nod and the movement satisfied you enough to let the lack of a finger go.  

"That means you dumbass." You spat as you crossed your arms over your chest. "I'm with them willingly." 

"Get fucked!" Kayden shouted with a laugh that got half a smile out of you. 

"You? Our captive? It sure felt like the other way around." He finally switched to basic and the hate coating his words told you that he wasn't talking about the pranks and snarky attitude, no, he was talking about something bigger than that. 

"What are you talking about?" Maybe you could get more answers out of him than you did with Arlan. 

He scoffed. "Stop trying to play the idiot. Between the two of you, Kayden's the best at it." 

You ignored said idiot's thanks to press the matter. "Okay and let's imagine I really don't know what the hell you're talking about. What in the damn world did I do?" You remembered Arlan's word and almost added what is wrong with me? but Brett was already dropping the three medicine canisters to the ground, out of reach from either your cell or the clones' and went away. 

"You live." 

You sat on the ground, drained of every ounce of energy you once had. What was wrong with you? Why did everyone want you dead? The fear you felt at Arlan's words came back as you thought about what it could all mean. The Nightmares who stopped appearing when you left and came back when you did. Whatever the Core was that supposedly resided in you and the fact that the Lumsin knew what it was while you didn't. That the villagers never saw you as an annoying brat but a vile oppressor. 

You faintly heard Kayden talking with Tech about Back-up, but couldn't make out the exact words, your own thoughts being way too loud for you to clearly hear anything outside your head. 

"It's alright. Don't worry about it." An arm fell on your shoulders and pulled you into Kayden's side who now sat next to you on the ground, successfully pulling you out of your own mind. Yet, as comforting as his gesture was supposed to be, you only felt guiltier. Even when everyone else pointed their fingers at you, he was still there to keep yourself up even after you'd vanished on him. 

Kayden scratched the clothes over his heart again and cut off your incoming guilty declaration. 

"Question. If the half-skull one was to break my jaw or somethin' and that you didn't see it happen, would you believe me if I told you it was him?" Kayden asked, frowning too deeply for you to brush the question off as one of his stupid ones. 

"Wha-?" Then it dawned on you. "Did you threaten him?" You asked Hunter, voice raising in octaves. 

You knew Kayden probably deserved it, but he was your best friend. You've been helping each other for more than 15 years and there was no way you'd let him get beaten for a stupid jealousy tantrum. 

An invisible hand squeezed your heart as you felt Kayden relaxing against your side. He doubted that you'd listen to him. More importantly, he doubted that you'd trust his word over someone else's. Sure it was Hunter's word, but you knew the Sergeant was not in his right mind and not only because of the irrational feeling. 

"He wouldn't stop talking." The unbothered tone in which he answered shocked you. 

"Yet you've never threatened Tech." 

"That's not the same." Why must he sound like he truly believed that he did nothing wrong? 

"You may not value his life and health, but I do. A lot." You emphasized the last word so he got the message. "And his word is the only single one in the galaxy that I never ever doubted." 

Kayden's breath sharply filled his lungs and Hunter's fingers curled into fists. You still deeply loved the dark-haired Sergeant and seeing him frustrated at your words made a real number on your insides but that rational part of your brain told you that he would tire of you someday and would leave, whereas Kayden had shown countless of times that he'd be there to hold your hand, push your back and pull you up whenever needed. 

"Good to know." 

Why did his acknowledgment of your words make you sick? You'd said those words yourself and they were true, so how could they hurt that much? If it wasn't of the half-circles traced on the back of your right hand, you certainly would have had a physical reaction. It could have been hiding in your hammock or tears leaking from your eyes, you didn't know. 

"You don't trust us?" Wrecker's hurt translated in his low, nearly inaudible tone if it wasn't of the earbud deeply pushed into your ear canal. 

"I do Wrecker. I really do. It's me that I don't." Damn. For someone who wanted to avoid feelings-talks like the plague, you found yourself right in the middle of the deepest one ever. 

"I don't understand." He admitted. 

"I-" You sighed, trying to find the words that would explain something you didn't know how to explain. "I don't myself Wrecker. I make people despise me and-" The words escaped you. Out of exasperation, your free hand moved up to rub your closed eyelids and drag the pads of your fingers down your cheeks. 

"When they don't you persuade yourself they do and you tell yourself that they'll give you up so you start to doubt them even when there's nothing to worry about." Kayden shrugged at your wide eyes looking at him. "Don't be surprised I know you better than yourself. You did the same shit with me but I didn't let you." 

"Then why did you doubt yourself against Hunter?" 

" 'cuz you love him." He answered in your native tongue and you were grateful for it. You weren't ready to say the words out loud and if Kayden, the person who just demonstrated that he knew you like the palm of his hand, said those words himself, then he'd throw your feelings out in the open and you couldn't have that. Not when your brain still expected the Bad Batch to get back to their ship and leave you on Fors, where you belonged. 

"You were there longer."

"Yeah, but that was because you couldn't escape me. Give them their chance. You might be surprised." He patted your shoulder like an old man who gave advice to a youngster. 

"We wouldn't give you up. You're our friend!" Wrecker added once the conversation in a foreign language died. 

"If you still doubt our friendship, then you might want to remember that we passed hundreds of hours training you to be our pilot and that we lied to our superiors to keep you." Tech pointed out, this time with the finger in the air. It brought the tiniest of smiles to your lips. 

"Or remember the moments shared." Hunter surprised you with his quiet words that Kayden definitely couldn't hear without a comm device. Had he realized that he was fighting a non-existent enemy? Or did he feel as bad as you following your exchange?

"Or you can remember that you're a freak." Tech slapped his lean brother's shoulder 

"So I belong with you guys? Yeah, I'll- I'll do my best to remember all that." A chuckle escaped your lips. "Thanks." You added under your breath, to which the boys nodded and Wrecker smiled brightly. 

"Is your chest okay?" Tech asked and pointed at Kayden who was still scratching his torso. 

"Yeah, 's just itchy. I think Kerth put some poison Ivy in my clothes. I wouldn't be surprised." He pulled his shirt forward to look at his skin. He winced. "That does look like it." 

"You never get tired of looking at yourself?" A soft feminine voice chuckled from down the hallway. 

Soft brown eyes shone behind fiery red locks, their owner walking straight to your cell where she stopped to pass you a hot container. You'd recognize that smell everywhere and apparently so did your stomach who growled loudly in anticipation of receiving some soup. 

"Good timing, I see." She chuckled, put her pack on the ground and offered you a container. "It's not poisoned, I promise. I did it myself." She assured in basic when you kept watching her hands without making any move towards the food. 

Still unmoving, Kayden took it upon himself to grab two containers and let the redhead give the clones their servings. 

"They wanted me to only feed the soldiers but I slipped some for you two as well. For all the spare crusts." She nodded at you, who kept watching her in silence. Before turning around to go back to where she came from, the woman had the kindness to grab the discarded medicine canisters and offer them to Kayden. "Take care." 

Wait. You had to tell her. It was like your brain forgot how everything worked. Opening your mouth wasn't hard compared to finding what to say. Even then your throat constricted in an attempt to shut you up, but you couldn't let her go without telling her. 

She deserved to know. 

"Fleena." Was all you managed and it was enough to stop her in her tracks. When she turned, your hand was already fishing around in your pocket for the small piece of wood. 

She came back as you brought your closed fist forward and dropped the dirty necklace on her open hand. 

She stared at it, surprise taking over her soft features in a flash as soon as she recognized the symbol. She turned it to inspect the back and now was the right time for the earth to open beneath your ass and take you away. 

"Where did you get that?" The tremors in her voice send a knife through your heart. 

Swallowing down the lump in your throat, you made sure to choose your words better than with Hunter. "Nixon was a Wanderer."

"He-" She started with hope until she registered your sentence. "Was?" 

There it was. The moment to own what you did finally arrived. 

"What did you do?" She pressed as you kept silent, unable to say it out loud. 

"It wasn't him anymore, Fleena. He hadn't grown up and kept walking in circles on his bleeding feet. He was tormented." 

You freed him. You helped him. Now that her horrified hazel eyes bore into yours, Crosshair's words that were so helpful before held no sense. 

"He was still my brother." She clutched the necklace to her chest, tears running down her cheeks. 

"Nixon was gone." 

"I don't expect you to understand. You don't know anything about having a sibling." 

The silence following her retreating steps was even heavier than before. No. That wasn't true. The boys spoke in the background and in your ear, prompting you to remove the device to have some peace. 

"You're right, I don't." You grumbled in your knees that were now up to your face to hide your features, your arms tightly wrapped around them to keep them close. 

"That's the biggest bullshit that ever came out of your mouth." Kayden scoffed next to you. "What do you think I am then? Your friend?" He puffed like it was the stupidest joke he'd ever been told. "Fuck no. We've been family ever since your dad died so cut the crap or I'll hit you." 

I should be punching you for saying such stupid stuff. 

"For real. I'll hit you so hard you won't ignore me again." He shuffled around to better position himself, arm lifting-

"I've abandoned you." You spat more at you than at him. 

"Siblings sucks but we love them anyway." He shrugged. "You're no exception." 

Tears gathered in your eyes. Even after leaving him alone to fight for himself, Kayden still loved you as much as before and never once held a grudge against your actions. He was a true god-given gift and you'd treated him unfairly. 

Pain exploded into your shoulder and you found yourself colliding with the ground. 

"The fuck?" Four spots on your shoulder hurt so deeply that it didn't take long for you to realize that he'd hit you with his knuckles. 

"My monthly quota was not yet achieved." He smirked, watching you massage the beaten skin. 

"Don't you think I'm hurt enough already?" 

"Stop whining, we have Biogel." He shook the metallic container before your face. 

"That thing hurts like hell." You groaned, pushing his hand away to sit straight. 

"When did you become such a baby?" You shot him the deadliest glare you had in reserve. "Hey. It's a very small price to pay for completely healed wounds in under 30 minutes." 

"Completely healed?" Tech inquired, eying the matching container in his hands that Kayden pushed him. 

"Yeah! One good layer and bye-bye! Works for sprained stuff too, just takes a little longer." Kayden answered as he helped you apply the cold sticky gel onto your arms. "Little tips: let someone else put it on you." He added as you hissed and groaned under the burning feeling that came with the product. 

Your hands closed and opened repeatedly to keep from hitting Kayden in retaliation for the pain he was putting you through. The raging fire led to intense stinging that you could describe as white-hot needles poking your damaged skin. 

"Please remember that you love me." Kayden said right before he dropped a huge blob of Biogel onto the hole in your leg. Had he not jumped away, your elbow would have connected with his chest at high speed. Instead, all that got injured were your nerves, your vocal cords and Hunter's head. 

"I'll murder you if you do that again." You whimpered while clutching your upper thigh in hope of cutting every pain transmission from your leg to your brain. 

"Good thing it was the last one!" He laughed from his side of the cell, Biogel discarded to the profit of the warm bowl of soup which he was already drinking like he'd been starved for a week. 

Wrecker's gasp and groans filled the air. A quick glance his way showed Hunter applying a coat of the translucent substance on his burnt hands and neck as well as on the cuts on his arms. Then came Hunter's turn who covered some scratches from the Yappians and after some thought applied some of it on the side of his forehead. No sound escaped his throat, the only proof of the pain assaulting his nerves being the scrunching of his face, unlike Tech who yelped when Crosshair carelessly applied the gel on his wrist and arms. Then, like pain didn't affect him at all, he splattered some on his swollen ankle and it was done. 

"I'm sure no one really wants to eat right now, but it'd be good to eat the food until Back-up comes back and we have to leave." Kayden reminded. 

"What's that?" Crosshair asked, more worried about the soup than Wrecker was. The tank was already slurping the soup down, mindful of his sensible fingers. 

"In basic I guess it translates as bone soup." Wrecker stopped abruptly, mouth still scotched to the bowl. He eyed you in distress, pondering if it was safe to swallow or not. "It's good, despite the name. Hunters usually eat that before a hunt to boost their systems, right Y/N?" Just for the sake of the game, you nodded. It was true anyway. 

"And eh… what's in it?" Tech moved the container in small circles to try and identify what was floating in the light yellow liquid. 

"Roots, meats, some veggies, guts and ground bones." You kept your poker face as Kayden enumerated the 'ingredients' and Wrecker lost all colors. "Where do you think the name comes from?" 

Wrecker spat his enormous gulp and you laughed to the point of tears, soon joined by your best frie- brother. 

"He's just fucking with y'all, Wreck. It's called bone soup because there's bone marrow in it to help with our joints. And there’s no guts. We're no savages." You did your best to control your laugh before digging into your soup eagerly. How Kayden always managed to get your mood up was a total mystery, but it always worked and you were grateful for it. 

"Could've fooled me." Crosshair taunted. 

"Ya can choke on it." You said at the same time Kayden did, getting a laugh out of it. 

The delicious soup filled your stomach in less than 10 gulps and it wasn't until you put your bowl down that you realized how good it made you feel to fill that emptiness in you. The soup wasn't enough to make you sleepy after a nice meal and provided just enough nutrients for everyone to be able to face the fast-approaching escape without a problem. Mixed with the Biogel, you were back at the top of your games. 

Arlan really made an error in taking care of the group. 

"What now? What's your plan?" Hunter wondered, posing his container on the ground. 

You met gaze with Kayden and he nodded confidently. "How well can you all swim in your armors?" 

"In calm water, we are fine but slow. We can't go in strong water. The current will catch in the plastoid and will drag us down." 

A hum resonated from within your throat and you pucker your lips. "You can't give them up. That scratch out the underground well and the waterfall." You taped your lips in thought. Watching Tech who still drank with only one hand, you knew that hiking wasn't an option as well. For now at least. 

"Then it's the dark pit." Kayden pointed out. 

It indeed was the last possible option. The other remaining one would be to use the front gates and it was the least possible one. 

"Yeah. The other tunnels would take too long to get out and then we'd lose too much time walking back at the Old Man's cave." You recalled from your mental map of the jungle. "I'm fairly sure we have two hours until dawn. The Old Man's Cave is 15 minutes away from here if we run." 

"Then we run." Hunter agreed. 

"Now, to get out… Hey, big guy." Kayden called. "What's the name?" 

"Wrecker." He answered proudly, almost puffing his chest out. 

Kayden scoffed. "Obviously. Should'a figured." He turned to you. "Is it too late to change my name?" 

The moron was too far for a shoulder slap, so you showed your exasperation with a roll of your eyes. "Stop screwing around and tell us your idea." 

"Yeah yeah." The childish tone wasn't surprising on his part. He turned his attention back to the tall clone. "So, Wrecker, I bet you're experienced with big shafts so how good are you with pulse-hammers?" In a flash, you threw your empty container at his head with utmost precision that you knew Crosshair would be proud. The flying object was as unexpected for him as the inappropriate sentence was for you and hit him square on the forehead. 

"I'll strangle you." You threatened. 

"Kinky." He winked while nursing his forehead. 

"With what?" Wrecker inquired, too focussed on the unknown term to pick up at the dirty joke.

"Her han-"

"Not that, morron." You cut him off. "The big hammer that exploded that tree back at the pit." You clarified for Wrecker. 

"Oh! I've never used one before, but I'm sure it can't be that hard!" Excitement glimmered in his eyes at the perspective of using the powerful weapon. 

"Oh believe me it's hard." Kayden smirked way too smugly for your taste. 

"Okay. Time out. Planning is paused." You poked the palm of your hand with the fingertips of your other hand. "I call pervert veto card." You deadpanned. 

"Oh hell no you can't!" Was there panic in his voice? Yes. Definitely. 

"Oh heck yes I can! Once a year for 24 hours and I'm using it now." Thank the gods you'd not used it before. 

"But-!" 

"No but or butts. No sexual reference in any form, implied or not. 24 hours starting now." He glared at you from his spot two meters away. You could have laughed at his face that perfectly mirrored a kid who just got his Christmas gift stolen directly from its small weak hands. 

"You're fucking me in the ass." He grumbled like an overgrown petulant child.

You lifted an eyebrow. "Try again. You can do it."

"Party pooper." 

"There you go." As you turned to the rest of them, a laugh escaped your lips at the clones’ expressions. 

Crosshair, despite his feelings blockade, was covering his mouth, Wrecker was laughing his ass off, Tech looked relieved behind his horrified eyes and Hunter chuckled. He appeared to be pleased and somewhat totally used to the situation, which grabbed your curiosity. 

Later. You forced a cough to get everyone's attention. "Let's continue. To answer your question, Wrecker, handling a pulse-hammer is not hard. Only remember to not touch the head," You had to stop to point at Kayden in a threatening manner when you sensed a perverted comment about to escape his idiotic mouth despite the veto card being used. "And hit with the glowing side. If you hit with the other side, you'll damage the hammer and it'll be useless." 

"I can do that!" Wrecker enthusiastically nodded. 

"So we plan into exploding our way out of here? What do we do about Cross?" Tech pointed out what he thought was a flaw in your plan. 

Right at this moment, Back-Up appeared before Kayden, its fluffy leaves puffing out in pride as Kayden removed the Master key from its belly pouch. What a marvelous creature they were. Being able to fit your own size in an extensible pouch that covered your body from your collarbone to your pelvis was truly amazing and more than practical. 

"We'll split. Kayden will guide you guys to the emergency tunnel and I'll go get Cross. I'll meet you all as soon as I can." 

You nearly hadn't finished that Hunter inevitably rejected your plan. "No. We stay together."

"We can't. You guys will be the decoy I need to sneak around and find him and having one of you with me will catch attention and slow me down." You cut Hunter as he still looked like he was about to be opposed. "I still have my comms and earbud. I'll contact you every 5 minutes." You offered in an attempt to compromise. 

Silence stretched and you got up, already ready to depart. The tingling in your arms and leg had subsided some time ago and to your sweet surprise, applying weight on your leg didn't hurt as much as before. 

Kayden unlocked the cells and a hand softly grabbed your forearm. "Fine. You comm every 5 minutes and you take this." He moved to Tech to rummage through his belt and hand you a pistol. "Use it if needed." 

You took the pistol with a steady grip despite the uncertainty shaking your guts. It was the very first blaster you've ever had in your hand and it was heavier than you thought. "Don't worry. I will." You assured him, voice strong and unwavering. 

But… could you really?

[hongism]

mists of celeste ➻ 33

➻ pairing: ??? x fem reader ➻ genre: space au, pirate au, space pirate!ateez, angst, smut ➻ Word Count: 10.5k ➻ Rating: M ➻ Warnings: language, violence, guns and weaponry, blood, future warnings tba ➻ summary: Sneaking aboard the ship of a renowned space pirate may not have been the best idea, but you’ll have to make do with what fate has handed to you

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✧✧✧ act four ➻ part eight

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Five people in the room. Dark walls, wood panels laid over bricks at haphazard and awkward angles, quiet voices muttering off to the side, three cots smashed together as closely as possible on one side of the room, body splayed out on the two cots on your left whilst you lie on the third. Every muscle in your body aches and burns like it’s been sitting over a fire for the better part of a day. There’s a slight itch to your throat, but you can’t even bring yourself to cough. You don’t move; you aren’t sure you could if you wanted to, so you don’t push it quite yet and instead settle for lying down and listening to the hushed whispers around you.

Seonghwa’s voice is the first to drift to your ears, and just the sound of it lets a bit of comfort sink into your heavy bones. You wish he was at your side and not across the room, and the small cravings for his hand in yours swell up in chest. Jongho speaks up after that with his deep timbre that rumbles against the soft sound of the air conditioner. And lastly, Yunho. His voice grates hard on your mind, and you wish you could fall asleep just so that you wouldn’t have to listen to it any longer. One quick glance to your left tells you that Yeosang is sprawled on the cot beside yours, and just past the steady rise and fall of his chest, you catch sight of Hongjoong’s blue head of hair.

Five people in the room, and San isn’t one of them.

Rest is out of the question at this point, especially with the swirling memories of the dream you woke up from not too long ago.

“Ah, Tsukio. There you are.”

“Tsukio?” You question, head falling to the side as confusion waves over you. Water continues to lap at your feet and pushes between your bare toes. “That’s — you’ve never called me that before.”

“Yes, I have, child. Ever since the first time you visited me.”

Daichi turns back to the pebbles under him. He nudges them some more with the end of his twisted branch, then lets the stick splash against the surface of the lake. He pushes himself up to his full height, yet something about it doesn’t feel quite right. He isn’t as tall as you remember him to be. Not only that, but your body doesn’t feel the way it usually does. You feel heavier, like something is wrapped tight around you and pulling your shoulders down with its weight, but you can’t bring your hands up to look at them any longer.

“She is too close to you,” Daichi utters without sparing you another glance.

“She?”

“You were foolish enough to let the fire come in and scald you. The water will drown you in her embrace.”

“Wh-What?” You stammer through your endless confusion. You hardly have the mental capacity to be thinking about the meaning behind his riddles might be, but that added to the strange foreign sensation running through your system doesn’t help to ease your panic one bit.

“How often must I remind you of the prophecy before it sinks in through that skull of yours, Tsukio?”

You grit your teeth together to keep from snapping at the old man and telling him off. You want nothing more than to tell him that you are not Tsukio, you are not Umiko, you are just Y/N and nothing else. He has never even mentioned any sort of fucking prophecy to you in all the time you’ve been meeting with the damn man.

“The moon will meet the sea in fire, and guided by the earth, they will seek the sun. As the sun rises out of the east, so the moon will set in the west with waters crashing out of the south and the earth climbing in the north, and fires will blaze at the center of it all. Blood spilled over pale sands and misted skies.”

You find it in you to pull away from the man, although it takes far too much effort to do so, and you slide back across the mud. The sensation is strange between your toes, and you certainly don’t welcome it, but it carries you away from Daichi and his odd mutterings. That’s good enough for you. You don’t manage to pull that far away before your legs fail. Black waters splash around you when your knees sink into the mud. That’s the position you remain in for quite some time too; unable to pull yourself up and incapable of doing anything other than stare down at the swirling waters. It’s only when they still that your senses return. Because the reflection in the water is not your own.

The face blinking back at you does not belong to you.

It belongs to —

“Y/N.”

You jerk your head towards the sound of the voice, eyes honing in on broad shoulders before Seonghwa’s face comes into view. He kneels down beside your makeshift bed. The second he extends a hand to brush the loose strands of hair off your forehead, a wave of comfort hits you, and the gentle smile painting his lips almost convinces you that everything is okay.

“How are you feeling?” He inquires. His hand remains in your hair, nails now scraping therapeutic patterns across your scalp. The idea of sleeping again comes to mind, but you force yourself to sit up on your elbows and look closer at the man’s features.

Even if you were to put it kindly, Seonghwa looks like absolute shit. The deep circles under his eyes, shallow scratches over one cheekbone and a nasty purple bruise on the other. You can see white gauze under the collar of his form-fitting shirt that seems to snake up over his shoulder, but he uses that arm without any visible issue just fine. You hardly realize how your arm moves on its own accord, reaching up to cup the line of Seonghwa’s jaw, and your thumb drags over his scraped cheek.

“I’ve been through worse, princess,” he chuckles under his breath. The smile on his lips stretches to one of amusement, and if you had it in you, you might laugh back with him. But not now. Not while Yeosang and Hongjoong remain unconscious beside you, and nearly half the crew is unaccounted for.

“I’m – I’m sore,” you manage after a couple of seconds of easy silence.

“Not surprised. You were given a pretty strong tranquilizer.”

It comes back to you then, an almost instantaneous shift in your demeanor as you remember what exactly went down prior to you passing out. Nothing too dramatic or memorable compared to the finale. If you had thought that Han Jisung wouldn’t haunt your thoughts after that, then you would have looked a fool on all accounts. Seonghwa notices the tension that rises in your body, and his hand drops from your head to your shoulder, squeezing gently at the flesh under his fingers. He opts not to comment on your unfocused gaze; rather, he motions towards Yeosang and Hongjoong behind him.

“We don’t know when they’ll be up. Yunho was up within a few hours, but his dosage was apparently a lot lower than yours and Yeosang’s were since he didn’t pose as much of a threat.” You squint at Yeosang’s reclining body once before pulling yourself up into a better sitting position. Seonghwa moves with you, hand never leaving your form for a second, and he’s there to steady you when you wobble a little upon swinging your legs over the edge of the cot. You don’t dare to get up from there, content to just sit and stew as you watch the unconscious crewmates in front of you.

“What happened?” You ask after quite some time.

“I can explain that a bit more when Yeosang wakes. It’s… um—” Seonghwa doesn’t let himself finish the thought. Your heart twinges in your chest, although you know that it isn’t on your own accord because of the way Seonghwa’s expression shifts. His gaze falls to the floor past your cot. You don’t press him for answers, but it is more than clear enough to tell that something awful has happened in the time you were unconscious. Your initial reaction is: no, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know. I would be better off not knowing.

That devolves in a matter of seconds thanks to the worry rolling off Seonghwa’s body in waves. You bring a hand up to the one he has resting atop your shoulder then with a hesitant grasp take his lithe, long fingers between yours and offer whatever minimal comfort you can to him.

“Hongjoong is lucky to be alive.”

If Hongjoong is lucky to be alive, then what of Mingi? Where is he? Is he in a similar condition? Better? Worse? Wooyoung isn’t at Yeosang’s bedside. San isn’t at yours. So where the fuck are they? In another room? If they managed to cram three cots together in this one, then surely they could have made some more room for the others as well.

“We need to let him rest longer, give him time to recover, and let his body catch up on sleep as well. So hopefully Yeosang will get up soon, and you won’t have to stay waiting for an explanation for too long.”

Seonghwa’s words exude a sense of finality, and yet he doesn’t move away from you. He stays put and brings his gaze up to trail over your features. He seeks something in them that you aren’t aware of, a dash of confusion to his dark orbs that has your stomach churning every which way, and you can’t pretend not to know why.

“I thought I would lose you both,” he whispers so quietly that only you can hear the words. “I fear that I won’t be able to have you as fairly as I promised bec-because–”

“Do you still love him?”

“Not in that way any longer.”

“We can talk about that later,” you say, cutting Seonghwa’s thought short despite the fact that you already know where it was headed. It is an easy feeling for you to understand because every aspect of your life seems to drag you back to Jisung somehow. If Hongjoong is Seonghwa’s weak spot, then Jisung is most definitely yours. Too much is happening for you to properly process it all at the moment, so part of you demands to postpone that conversation with Seonghwa as much as possible if only to let you have time to gather your bearings and work through the confusion. Some things can wait. Others cannot. What happened before you got here is one of those that cannot wait. That conversation with Seonghwa can. And Jisung… Jisung is a thought that you will push to the deepest recesses of your mind and avoid with as much willpower as you can muster because while you should have seen this coming, you are still reeling.

He always spoke of coming to Kebos once he retired. It was his dream for the both of you. You didn’t have word for word confirmation that he was alive but you knew quite well that he escaped Eros prior to the execution then he disappeared from your radar. You figured he would be here and yet… you could never have expected him to be in the arena when he was or do whatever it is he did. To the outside eye – to Seonghwa – it might seem like an attack, and that would be logical since Jisung didn’t seem to know who you were until you said his name. However, he had to have seen you before the attack, he had to have known it was you, he said your name without an ounce of hesitation, and he was very clearly watching you because you could sense a presence before he showed himself. If he had wanted to kill you, he would have done so. He could have killed Yeosang and Yunho as well, but here they are, alive and for the most part well with you. San… Wooyoung… you don’t want to think that Jisung would kill either of them, and you don’t want to think that they are dead either.

What exactly was Jisung doing in that tunnel?

You are so lost in those thoughts that you don’t feel Seonghwa pulling away to face where Yeosang lays behind him. Jongho comes closer to the bedside, head stretching out to rest atop your head, and the gentle weight soothes you enough to bring you out of the intruding thoughts. He seems to be in far better condition than Seonghwa is – you can’t spot a single scratch or bruise on his face at least, but his knuckles are all battered. His red eyes are tired and bloodshot in a way that is concerning. He reassures you with a gentle smile before pulling his hand away from your head.

“Yeosang?” Seonghwa nudges the sleeping man with the back of his hand. At first, the blonde doesn’t budge even an inch and remains so still that you would believe that he’s dead if not for the steady rise and fall of his chest. Seonghwa bothers to prod at his shoulder once more, this time garnering a reaction from the man as the Elitist bolts upright on his cot. His body still seems to be on the offensive because he nearly clocks Seonghwa right in the nose with a wildly swinging arm, but the latter deflects the awkward attack before it can make contact.

“Where are we?” Yeosang asks the moment he somewhat gathers his bearings.

“We’re at a hostel not far outside the city, but at a safe distance from the arena.” Seonghwa stands up straight as Yeosang continues to blink around the room. It’s only a matter of time before the blond begins to ask more questions, including ones surrounding Wooyoung’s absence, but Seonghwa beats him to it. “Now that you’re both awake, we can better explain what exactly happened. As soon as Vladimir figured out that it was Mingi down in the arena, he detonated the electromagnetic bomb underneath the building that sent an intense electrical current through the arena itself. Neither Hongjoong or Mingi had time to react or withdraw, so they were both caught in the majority of the blast, but it also stirred up an awful duststorm, which flooded the base and tunnels surrounding the bomb. Then, Vlad dispatched several fighting units to no doubt dispatch of us before we could escape. Jongho and I went down to get Mingi and Hongjoong. We could hardly see a thing in there because of the dust, and it was only when it cleared that we were able to find Hongjoong, unconscious and beaten within an inch of his life. Mingi was nowhere to be found.”

Your gaze flits back down to where Hongjoong lies. His face is turned to the opposite wall so you can’t see the evidence of his fighting all too well, but several bruises poke out of the collar of his shirt. That is enough to tell you how bad things got for him.

“We spent so long searching for Mingi,” Seonghwa continues through a deep sigh. You shift to glance towards Jongho, but the Berserker stares at the floor without moving a muscle. His expression is impossible to read, and you can’t bring yourself to try to figure out how he feels about this. The exhaustion alone on his features tells you about how well he’s taking the situation. “There was only one exit, and that was the tunnel you all were already in. We assumed that we could carry Hongjoong out and find you all with Mingi in the tunnel. However… when we came in, it was worse than we could have imagined. The two of you and Yunho were all lying face down, completely unconscious, and there was a man with a green hood standing close to your body, Y/N. We – I immediately confronted him because I thought it had been his doing, but he claimed that he did not do anything to harm you all. There was still no sign of Mingi there either.”

Seonghwa must have more to say than that. You can hardly believe that he wouldn’t breathe a word about Wooyoung or San, but his continued hesitance offers no comfort and only makes you want to make a break for the door and get out of this damn room. Yeosang picks up on that as well, and this time he is quick enough to ask a question.

“And what of the others? Wooyoung?”

Seonghwa’s tongue pokes out to moisten his lips. He doesn’t respond right away, then he reaches for his pocket, pulling a shattered wristband out and passing it to Yeosang without a word. You lean forward to look on as well but regret it the moment you catch a glimpse of the screen. It’s the band that was assigned to Wooyoung, and you only know that because of the small initials flashing in the corner of the cracked screen. You don’t get to look longer than a moment; next thing you know, Yeosang is pushing himself to his feet and hurling the band across the room. It hits the brick wall with a loud clatter. He must not have all his strength back quite yet because just the simple movement has Yeosang stumbling and falling to his knees. Seonghwa tries to catch him a moment too late, hand clasping around Yeosang’s forearm the second he hits the floor.

“Wh-Where is he?” Yeosang asks, tone heavy with labored breaths.

“We… we don’t know, Yeosang.” The lack of confidence in Seonghwa’s tone betrays how he truly feels, and it scares you when he glances up to meet your eyes. The next words to fall from his lips are far worse. “San is gone too.”

Gone.

Choi San is gone.

“No,” you choke out, hardly aware that you say the small word of denial out loud. “Not again. I-I… pl-please—”

“What would’ve happened if you died out there?”

The world suddenly feels a lot less real, like you’re stuck in a pathetic state of limbo and watching everything happen around you without being a part of it. There is a stabbing pain in your chest that lingers for far too long.

“And I wasn’t there to be with you. What would I have done if you died before I told you how much I care about you?”

Seonghwa, Yunho, Jongho, Yeosang, Hongjoong. Five people in the room. And not one is San.

This time when you reach out to Seonghwa, it’s a desperate attempt to have something ground you. Jongho moves to intercept your movements and stand in Seonghwa’s place, but the lieutenant doesn’t let him do so; instead, he slips away from Yeosang and closer to you. His fingers slip between yours, squeezing tightly at your hand, and his other hand moves around your waist. He anchors himself there, the sinking sensation of his warmth filling your senses as you drink it in deeper and deeper. The black waters of panic surge around you.

This is what you feared would happen.

The reason why you were so adamant and desperate not to get attached.

Seonghwa braces his body against yours. The anchor sinks deeper. You ball your fists around the fabric of his coat, clinging to it like a lifeline, and your panicked gaze drops to where Yeosang still kneels on the floor. Jongho squats beside him now, having taken Seonghwa’s place by his side. If your pain and fear are this deep, then you cannot even begin to imagine how Yeosang is feeling at this moment in time.

Can love be so powerful that it changes the deepest parts of a person? You would like to believe that yes, it can. And you can only say that because of the way Kang Yeosang – an Elitist, an arrogant and logic-inclined Elitist – is hunched over on the floor sobbing into his hands. Sobbing could not even begin to describe his cries, in all honesty. They are wretched and awful, so broken at the seams that every crack in Yeosang’s usually so-put-together composure shows every drop of pain in his body. You aren’t sure what you expected from him — perhaps anger? Rage directed towards Seonghwa and Jongho for not getting there sooner? Towards himself for failing to keep Wooyoung safe? Towards you since you gave your word to him?

You aren’t sure if it’s the panic gradually residing or if Seonghwa is influencing your emotions somehow with his closeness and the heat of his breath on your ear, but your heart slowly comes down to a more regular pace. The intense pain over your heart remains quite present. You can manage that; Yeosang, however, just seems to be devolving further and further into a drastic state of hysteria thanks to the news. There is nothing you can do — nothing any of you could possibly do to console him unless you brought Wooyoung through the door right this instant.

Sometimes, on days that were not so busy or stressful, you would find yourself in the mess hall with Yeosang and Wooyoung, maybe with Jongho or San at your side as well. You never put much thought into it back in the heat of the moment, just filtered through things and stored certain memorable moments in the recesses of your brain. But something you could always clearly see from Yeosang – something you see every single time he looks at the dark-haired man – is the way the Elitist would look at Wooyoung as though he held every star in the universe in the palm of his hand. Now you can reason it out and know why exactly Yeosang would look at Wooyoung in such a way.

Because the man hunched over on the floor before you is crying as though the light of his life has been taken from him, like he is fully enshrouded in such an intensity of darkness that there is no way out.

They are doing nothing more than the rest of every last sorry soul in the universe: trying to create what would be their perfect world. Fate has deprived them of enough. Who are you to take more from them?

You would make every last monster who took Wooyoung from Yeosang pay a hundred times over, just as you would do the same to the ones who took San from you.

Jongho maintains a steady touch on his shoulders, one hand squeezing tightly around each one, but the gesture doesn’t slow or stop the cries falling from Yeosang’s lips. It’s with a rare look of desperation that Seonghwa focuses his attention on Yunho, and with an unspoken plea for Yunho to give him something, anything. All the healer can manage is a shake of his head, and he returns to watching Yeosang sob forlornly. For Yunho of all people to admit that there isn’t anything he can do to help the man right now is a punch in the gut. Seonghwa leans away from you to mutter something into the shell of Jongho’s ear, and the Berserker offers a curt nod in response.

“Let’s get you some food,” Seonghwa whispers once he turns back to you. “Jongho will stay with Yeosang for now and�� try his best to calm him down some. At least enough so that we can discuss further and talk about a plan.” Seonghwa sinks his teeth into his lower lip. “I wish — I’m sorry I don’t have more answers. I wish I could give you more than what we have now.” The way Seonghwa gazes at you speaks more than the words that fall from his lips. The endless apologies on his mind that don’t come to light – you don’t need to hear any of them to know how he’s feeling and how he’s blaming himself for not doing more.

When he stands, you move with him, albeit on shaky legs that aren’t used to the sudden pressure. Yunho leads the way out of the room without a word. Again the world seems to shift under your feet, like a cruel slap to the face, and you can almost feel yourself slipping back into a dingy and rusted cell. Your mind is so disconnected from reality that you don’t even fully fall into a flashback; it comes in snippets instead, gross figments of your past that you don’t want anymore.

“He’s not coming back. I told him to leave for good.”

“H-He wouldn’t do that, Hyunwoo. He wouldn’t leave us. Jisung’s – he’s different, not like that!” Your hand clasp desperately at the iron bars separating you from the broad-shouldered man. Hyunwoo dips his chin to his chest.

“Forgive me, Y/N… the only way I could convince him to leave was to – was to tell him that you were dying with me.” Your throat goes impossibly dry. “Jisung is gone. As soon as they take your chains off, you should do the same. Get the hell out of here, get off this planet, and – and do better.”

Seonghwa’s hand rests on the small of your back. The pressure of his palm increases with each passing second. It pulls you back and gives you glimpses of the present. A dark hallway, stairs, a smiling woman who motions towards an empty table.

“I – Hyunwoo, I didn’t even get to say goodbye!”

“I’m sorry. This was the only way I could save you all. Maybe one day you will get to see each other again, and you can tell him the truth. And he can tell you the truth.”

Sitting down, Yunho sitting across from you.

“What fucking truth? You can’t do this now of all times, Hyunwoo! It isn’t the time to be cryptic and mysterious!”

Seonghwa’s hand still on you.

“You’ll understand one day, Y/N. I promise.”

You don’t understand a thing. And you certainly don’t get why life or fate or whatever the fuck it is keeps wrenching the people you care about from your grasp.

“Do you at least know whether they’re alive?” You ask, tone hesitant and quiet yet pleading at the same time.

“San and Mingi both had their wristbands still on. Vital signs were active for quite some time but…” You don’t even care that there is a ‘but’. Simply hearing that the vital signs were active is enough to wrench a relieved sigh from your lips. “We have reason to believe that they were taken off-planet. The bands only work within a certain range, and the atmosphere affects them greatly as well. Since we were all on-planet, I didn’t set the frequencies to adjust for space travel. I-I should’ve thought of all the possibilities and planned accordingly.”

The woman from earlier bustles around the table, delivering plates of an assortment of foods from bread to fruits to meats. Despite hunger curling in your gut, you aren’t sure that you can stomach the food anyway. Seonghwa nudges a plate in your direction, and you decide to at least put in a bit of an effort for him, if only to make him feel better.

“It’s not your fault.”

The words surprise both you and Seonghwa, heads whipping up to look at the man who spoke in unison. Yunho stares down at the table as though he hasn’t breathed a word at all, but you all know what he said, heard it loud and clear.

“Pardon?” Seonghwa says after blinking away his shock.

“It’s not your fault. There was no way you could have expected what would happen on the mission. Even if you did expect it, there was no possible way of preventing the damage that was done. Thus… it is not your fault.”

“Forgive me if I don’t trust comfort coming from your lips, Yunho.”

The healer sighs upon hearing Seonghwa’s clipped tone, carefully setting his fork down beside his plate, and when he glances up at the lieutenant, his gaze is unreadable.

“I feel guilty too, you know. For not fighting more, doing more, not being strong enough, for not being the one they took. Seeing… seeing Yeosang’s reaction and Y/N’s reaction — those things make me wish that I had been taken in Wooyoung or San’s place. In Mingi’s place. I know you feel the same way, just as we both wish that we could have taken Hongjoong’s place in the arena.” Seonghwa’s fingers curl into a tight fist against the wood of the table. “I do not want to admit this, and it truly pains my pride to say it, but I do realize the truth of the situation. If things had gone worse for Hongjoong, then you would have lost the most out of everyone.”

“Comparing losses is like comparing apples to oranges, Yunho. A loss to me is far different than a loss to you. It isn’t about who loses more.”

“Yet, you would have had to step up and become captain right away. Be on the bridge of the ship alone for the first time in years but with the knowledge that he wouldn’t be coming back. Bury Ho–”

“Is it your goal to pain me right now?” Seonghwa asks through gritted teeth. His tone is almost choked in the way it strains in the back of his throat, evidence of how upset the mere thought of Yunho’s words are making him. Yet, for once, you don’t feel as though Yunho is intentionally trying to upset him. As shitty as it may be, you almost think that it is his attempt at an apology. Yes, his ego and pride and a whole slew of other issues that he has have not gone away and are blocking him from providing a proper apology. But his tone is not aggressive or seeking to draw anger out of Seonghwa.

“It’s not. We both know Hongjoong will awaken and that he will recover. He will be okay, and he’s come back from worse in the past. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t worry, but it allows us to have more confidence this time around. And I know that when he does wake up, your name will be the first on his lips. What Vladimir said before Hongjoong descended into the arena — he mentioned how Hongjoong looks at you like you’re something precious. Still. Even after all this time and everything you’ve been through together, he still looks at you the same way. I merely feel an unreasonable and unruly amount of jealousy when I think about it.”

“And that jealousy drives you to overstep boundaries and lines you should not cross.”

“Then we share in that jealousy.” Yunho’s gaze flits up to meet Seonghwa’s across the table. You expect some sort of altercation to unfold between them, but for the time being, they both remain level-headed. The thread keeping Seonghwa tethered is wearing thinner and thinner by the second; you can see it in the way his clenched fist trembles. “He didn’t start coming to me to slight you, Seonghwa. It was never about rubbing it in or trying to hurt you. He only came to me because he didn’t want to hurt you.”

The thing about love is that no matter how hard you try to force it down, no matter how much you kick and scratch and bite at it in a desperate attempt to push it away, it always comes back with more force than before. The more you fight it, the more it spreads. The thoughts that invade your mind, the memories clinging to your skin like a disease, the emotions curling sharp talons into your heart. So no matter how much Seonghwa claims to love you, he will always be fighting his love for Hongjoong. The same can be said of you and your love for Jisung, or even your care for San. Love is not something you can force out of your heart; it is something that you must gradually grow out of, and you only realize now that all your attempts to run away have made it worse.

“Y/N, I—” Yunho cuts his thought short to look towards the ceiling. He must have had enough of the conversation with Seonghwa, tone shifting as he changes the topic over to you. “You did not run away even though you had every opportunity to.”

“Don’t give me one now.” Yunho is trying to say that he was wrong, and you can recognize that. Seonghwa surely can as well. If it’s forgiveness he’s after, however, you aren’t inclined to give it to him quite yet. An apology given under the guise of narcissism doesn’t deserve forgiveness, and forgiveness given in that situation would only breed further issues later on down the line. The selfish part of you also just doesn’t want to forgive him yet.

The meal continues on in silence for quite some time. You don’t bother with trying to figure out how much time passes exactly; all you know is that the air surrounding the table is terse at best. Things only change when Yunho decides to speak again, although this time it’s to drop bombshell information that you could never have predicted.

“You know my mother was murdered here on Kebos.” He doesn’t look up from his plate, but both you and Seonghwa again jerk to stare in his direction.

“I thought she died of illness,” Seonghwa whispers.

“She did. The illness was poison. Poison administered by one Vladimir the Bloody.”

“I — Yunho, I had no idea th—”

“It was my job, my duty, my responsibility to heal her. I knew what to do, I knew how to heal her, how to extract the poison from her body, and I couldn’t do it. Every case I take on is a selfish attempt for me to reconcile those mistakes. To, if nothing else, prove to myself that I am not the failure who watched on as his mother died because he was too weak to save her. I didn’t save my mother, I didn’t keep Mingi from killing his father, and I didn’t save Cass. I broke Jongho’s trust, failed Y/N when she confronted me with the truth, and I cannot count on one hand the amount of times that I’ve failed you, Seonghwa. I’m not asking you to pity me or feel sorry for me. When I first woke up and started treating Hongjoong, you begged me to save him. I do not fear Vladimir taking another life from me. I fear not being able to do the job that is expected of me when the going gets rough.” Yunho drops his hands to the table, letting his palms lie flat against the wood. “I don’t care what you think of me. Whether you find me to be selfish and egotistical — that does not matter to me. I just refuse to let you look at me like I’m still that failure who is helpless and naive. I see it enough when I look in the mirror.”

Seonghwa inhales sharply as Yunho speaks but does not make an effort to come up with any sort of reply until well after the healer has stopped talking.

“Never once have I thought you to be a failure, Yunho,” he mutters. “Nor have I ever despised you. All my anger is directed at myself and Hongjoong. I never wanted you to get dragged into that, but things just happened this way. It’s unavoidable when we all work in such close quarters day in and day out.” Seonghwa sighs and drops his chin to his chest. A hesitant hand reaches up to comb through his dark hair, pushing it off his forehead, then that same hand drops down to his side. “You two should eat quickly. I’m meeting with someone here soon.”

“You are?”

“Yes, the man we found with your bodies initially. I asked to question him about what he saw, if he has anything we can use to find the others, and he agreed to meet me here.”

“Consider me gone,” Yunho sighs, leaning away from the table. “I need to check on Hongjoong and dress his wounds again. And have a chat with Yeosang if he’s any less… hysterical.” Seonghwa offers a hasty nod. Yunho continues pushing away from the table until he’s on his feet, and he doesn’t wait for you to move before he walks up the stairs and out of sight. A hand drops onto your thigh, not searching for anything more than the small contact.

“I would not be opposed to you staying here with me during this meeting.”

“Do you think this person might try something?”

“I doubt he would be so bold as to do that. It’s just that… well, your presence brings me peace.” Seonghwa whispers the words under his breath as though they’re meant for your ears only.

“Because of what we are,” you state even though it was initially meant to be a question. Seonghwa huffs out a quiet laugh and shakes his head a little.

“If that’s what you would like to believe, then yes.”

Seonghwa’s hand falls away from your thigh. At first, you think you’ve done or said something wrong, but the way his back straightens and eyes grow cold tells you that it is something else entirely. You follow his line of sight to the door to the hostel, catching the way it swishes open, and a hooded figure steps through. It must be the man Seonghwa saw in the arena, but you can’t quite catch his face through the harsh shadows his hood casts over his face. Some odd feeling twists in your gut as he moves towards your table, like you already know what is about to happen, and yet that still cannot prepare you for it.

Because when the man slides into the spot where Yunho just sat and tugs his green cloak back to expose his face, you truly feel as though you have entered some strange distortion of reality.

“I don’t believe I introduced myself when we last met, Lieutenant of Death,” he says, tone as clear and teasing as the day you met him all those years ago. “My name is Jisung. Han Jisung. I hope you’ll remember it.”

“I’m sure I will,” Seonghwa exhales through a tight smile. He motions towards you, eyes remaining glued to Jisung’s features as he speaks again. “This is—”

“Y/N L/N, Ghost of Eros. Oh, where to begin with her repertoire? Best sniper in the military of Eros. Assassin of the King of Eros. One of six members in Unit 24, a reconnaissance and extermination team operating under the esteemed military of Eros. Recruit number 17. Little lady, perhaps?” He smiles at you with every passing word. Smiles like not a day has passed and nothing has changed between the two of you. Round cheeks balling up with the same joy they always did in the past, and you nearly believe that time has frozen for the two of you when you see it. Seonghwa brings you back to reality, eyes wide and flashing confusing as he glances between Jisung’s smiling face and your more solemn one.

“You two… do you know each other?”

“Han Jisung, otherwise known in the past as the assassin and reconnaissance specialist of Unit 24. Recruit number 41.”

Seonghwa inhales so sharply that the air whistles through his teeth. His gaze is on you, and you can feel it so intensely that you almost want to burst into tears to alleviate some of the pressure in your head. You have reached the point of no return, chest so tight with emotion that you somehow feel nothing at all when you blink back at Jisung. It haunts you — the mere fact that you are looking at the man who once held your whole existence in the palm of his hand as though he means absolutely nothing to you.

A hand slips back over your thigh, searching for your own desperately, and you know Seonghwa just wants to offer whatever comfort he can right now. The damage is already done. The dam is already broken. And your words spill forth with a reckless abandon that you never imagined you could muster up.

“You knocked me to the ground and injected me with some sort of potent anesthesia. Whoever the hell was with you in that tunnel did the same to my four crewmates. When I woke up, it was to find that two of those crewmates are gone. You’re smart enough to realize how bad that looks for you.”

“I… I do,” Jisung says, tone falling quiet, and his smile droops a bit at the corners. Seonghwa levels him with a suspicious glare, but he doesn’t add anything more for the time being. “I hardly expected this to go over well, but all I can do is plea that you hear me out. My boss — the man I now work for asked for two people to be brought out of that arena. The Brute of Kebos and the Ghost of Eros.” Your throat turns to sandpaper, and Seonghwa’s hand clenches harshly around your leg. Jisung’s lips twitch as he grins a little wider. “You know I’ve never been good at following orders, especially when they come from a leader I can’t see directly. I have two superiors — my boss and my captain. My captain is the one who dispatched me and my three crewmates to take care of the mission. I have never met or seen my boss; I don’t know his name, his face, anything about him. That made it easy to decide what to do, because as soon as I heard ‘Ghost of Eros’, I knew I wouldn’t be able to take you. So, when I went into that tunnel and saw you with four other people, I made a spur of the moment decision to take two others under the guise that… that we simply could not find the Ghost of Eros, but we brought two others instead.”

“You used my crew as a bargaining chip?” Seonghwa seethes.

“To protect Y/N, yes. I know that if it meant protecting your crew, you would do the same.”

Seonghwa’s jaw stutters, but he is unable to come up with any sort of reasonable or logical response. Jisung is right, and you all know it. That doesn’t keep your rage from overflowing, although it isn’t directed at the man across the table. More than that, ti’s what he said. That his boss — whoever that may be — wanted you, and because of you, both Wooyoung and San were taken. Guilt sweeps over your whole body, overtakes your senses in less than a second, and before you know it, your vision blurs with unshed tears.

“You should have fucking let them have me,” you spit before a dry sob tears through your throat.

Because of you, your team fell to pieces and broke apart. Juyeon abandoned his best friend. Soojin left the only family she had. Ash lost all the people he looked up to. Jisung gave up everything. And Hyunwoo walked to his death.

“Why wouldn’t you let them have me? What were you thinking? That you couldn’t set me free at some point on the way back to your boss? That I couldn’t fucking protect myself? Why would you take them in my place?”

Because of you, Wooyoung was taken. San was taken. The light of Yeosang’s life is gone. All your past mistakes rush back to greet you, reflected in the face of the man before you.

“Even after all this time, you would always be my priority.”

Seonghwa snakes his hand around your back, fingers dancing over your spine as he lifts it to brush against the base of your neck. You wish that the action would bring you comfort, that it would do something to alleviate the burning pain spreading through your chest, yet it does nothing except make your tears roll over the balls of your cheeks. Jisung’s brows knit together as he watches you cry. He stretches a hand halfway across the table and stops there, unsure about going the rest of the way.

“If I had known what they meant to you… I’m sorry, Y/N.”

“If you had known what they meant to me, you still would have done it.” Jisung shifts his jaw at your words, eyes blinking away from yours and confirming what you already know to be true. There’s another question on your lips, one that you desperately want to ask but can’t bring yourself to speak into existence, so it dies in the back of your throat with your cries. Seonghwa’s fingers continue their methodical drags over the base of your neck.

“That is true, yes, but — but now it means that I can help you get them back. All of them, including the Brute of Kebos.”

“What’s the catch?” Seonghwa inquires. Jisung wets his lips then presses them tightly together before speaking again. His gaze falls on you, the soft gleam in them taking you back to a starlit night full of cherrywood and sugar and the taste of honey and vanilla on your tongue.

“I want to retire from this life of… constant running and fighting and following orders. I want to do something for myself, but someone made me a promise a few years ago. To retire with me, move here on Kebos, and put that life behind us. If I’m going to help you, I need a surefire promise that after we get them back, Y/N will come back to Kebos with me.”

“That is not a deal I can agree to. Not without having time to discuss it with both Y/N and my captain—”

“Are you not the acting captain, Park Seonghwa? I saw the extent of the damage done in that arena, most delivered by none other than the Brute of Kebos. You can’t tell me that he will be up anytime soon, and I doubt your friends can wait that long for an agreement on your part.”

“Don’t – don’t drag him into this,” you mutter, trying to keep your tone as flat as possible. “I’ll do it.”

“Y/N, no.” Seonghwa blinks down at you. His eyes are wide and glassy, and even just those two words convey more emotion than you thought possible. He said he was afraid to lose both you and Hongjoong. What about when it comes to choosing between three crewmates – people he’s been with for years now – and you, someone he’s only known for months. It isn’t a decision you would wish on anyone. You don’t know what you would do in such a position. You do know that you would rather see yourself back in a prison cell for treason than let Wooyoung, San, and Mingi be taken to some god-forsaken place. As Seonghwa once said, sacrifice and trust go hand in hand. Now, he needs to trust that this is the best decision you can make and let you make it.

“You love her,” Jisung states, drawing Seonghwa’s gaze off you for a moment. “What is love compared to duty? Would it keep you from agreeing to my help, something invaluable in this situation?”

“You would do well not to romanticize love in such a way otherwise you will be sorely disillusioned. Love contains the freedom to choose what you want without the other person making any decision for you. Hence why if this is what Y/N wants to agree to, then I will compromise for her.” There lies a hidden meaning in Seonghwa’s words. They aren’t just meant to defend himself and explain his reasoning, but criticize Jisung for what lies behind his bargain.

“Love means keeping promises as well.”

Those words bring a dramatic halt to your tears, causing anger to bubble up in your gut as you process them, and all you can think is how fucking hypocritical it is of him to say such a thing.

“Don’t subject me to a life without you in it, Jisung.”

“I could never. I love you far too much to do that.”

“Promise me that you won’t.”

“I swear on my life that I’ll never leave you.”

“Then why did you not keep the ones you made me?”

“I was told that you were going to die.”

“If you had truly believed that… If our positions had been swapped, I would have at least stayed and done something to stop it.”

“I suppose that’s where we have our differences then. I trusted Hyunwoo enough to believe him when he told me you were both slated to die and that I should leave. But you’ve always had a problem with trust, haven’t you?”

“I think it’s best if you stop talking before you ruin your chances of walking out of here alive,” Seonghwa retorts before you can come up with a response.

“You wouldn’t dare kill me when I’m the only one who can help right now.”

“No, but I can hurt you just enough to leave you within of life and force the information out of you. I do not wear the mantle of ‘Lieutenant of Death’ for show. Although, if you truly believe that it’s merely a farce, I would be more than happy to show you how I got the title. You have what you want. She’s agreed to this deal of yours, which means it’s now on you to uphold your end of the bargain.”

Jisung regards the man with nothing more than a wavering glance for several seconds. Then he drops his head, a messy mop of blond hair falling forward to cover his forehead.

“I can meet you here again tomorrow morning, but it’s too late to be going out right now. My guess is that your captain will need at least three days before he can even be well enough to move to your ship.”

“It will only take him two. He’s a determined son of a bitch after all.”

“Of course he is. I’d expect nothing less from someone of his notoriety. Tomorrow, I can bring information concerning where they’ve taken your crew as well as what they intend to do with them, if I can. Boss has been pretty mum about his intentions, but I can at least figure out what they’ll do with two he didn’t ask for.”

“Won’t your captain be suspicious of your absence?”

“My captain is none other than Vladimir the Bloody. He doesn’t care to keep tabs on his men when they aren’t working a job for him. My job is complete. All that’s left for me to do is report back on the status of the mission. After that… I can easily eavesdrop on his conversations with the boss. I’m a Spectre, after all, and a damn good one at that. I’ll do my part. You have my word.” Jisung pushes himself up from the table, stepping over the bench and turning around to face you again in one move. “Y/N, if there had been any other way to get you out of there, I would have done it in a heartbeat.”

You answer him with silence. Your bloodshot eyes avoid his features like the plague. You only decide to look at the place where he just stood when you hear a door swishing, and it’s empty when your gaze falls upon it. Seonghwa’s hand slips down to meet yours. He intertwines his fingers through yours without saying anything, offering a silent plea for you to follow him when he too stands up. And you do. You let him pull you to your feet and up the stairs without complaint, even when he stops in front of a new door and guides you inside. It’s a single bedroom, much different than the one you woke up in, and Seonghwa parts from you there with a gentle kiss to your forehead and a whispered promise that he will be right back.

You hardly process a thing as you fall to your side on the bed and tuck your legs up into your chest so that you are curled into the most fetal position you can manage. The darkness in the room adds to your dazed state, shadows blur together into almost human-like forms in the edges of your vision, and you find yourself drifting back in time until your surroundings feel a lot more like that hotel in Echidna where San laid his soul bare before you.

A shaky hand reaches across the darkness to brush over the mattress as though San will appear under your fingers if you do so. He wouldn’t have been taken if not for you. Why won’t that thought leave your mind? The guilt that eats away at your stomach is far too much; it physically hurts you with every breath you heave, and your breaths rasp into the empty air before you. Fingers tighten around the linen sheets. The shadows almost come to a rest before you, almost morph into a face that is recognizable, so close to a dimpled smile and cat-like eyes.

Please be okay. Please be alive. I don’t know what I would do if you aren’t okay.

“Y/N.”

The voice doesn’t startle you or cause you to shift in the slightest. Every muscle in your body feels ten times heavier than before. Seonghwa slips into the empty space before you, causing that shadowy figure vaguely resembling San to dissipate into thin air. Whatever spell was binding you to the silence shatters, and you choke out a fresh sob. Seonghwa catches your wrist and tugs you into his embrace without hesitation. You can only press your forehead against his chest as tears begin to fall.

“This isn’t your fault, Y/N. I promise,” he murmurs, chin coming to rest atop your head. “You didn’t make them get taken, you aren’t the reason why they were taken. That decision… it was not yours. Jisung is the one responsible for that, not you. And he is paying for that choice by helping get them back.”

There is an elephant in the room. One so large and intruding that it occupies most of your thoughts as you listen to Seonghwa speak. You choose to continue avoiding it, running from him, pushing it back to the deepest recesses of your mind while you can.

“I’m t-tired of running from the – the past only for it to r-repeat itself,” you stutter through choked sobs. Seonghwa’s hold tightens around you.

“I know, Y/N. I know you are. I am too. But I understand. We are going to get this. All of us, with not one person left behind or forgotten.” His chin shifts until you feel his lips caressing the curve of your ear, hand tangled deep in your hair. “I’m here, I’m with you. I’m not going anywhere. For now. For as long as it lasts.”

When you first asked him to make that promise, you did not think that your time together would be so impossibly short, but now it truly feels like there is a ticking time bomb surrounding everything about you two.

“Why didn’t you ask him to make a different deal?”

“Because it was your choice, Y/N. I hate the mere thought of having to trade you for — I hate it. Yet if this is what you truly want… if you have a chance to rest peacefully at last with someone you love, who am I to deprive you of that? That is all I could ever want for you.”

“Stop me from doing it, Seonghwa,” you cry weakly. A pathetic whimper slips past your lips as you pull your head away from his chest to look him in the eye, and you are startled now because nothing could have prepared you for the sight before you. Tears paint the smooth skin of his cheeks, leaving ugly streaks down the side of his nose. “Make me stay. Please, I-I won’t stay otherwise. If nothing else just – just make me stay because I’m a Siren, because Hongjoong needs me, because you need me. Be selfish, please, I’m begging you.”

“I was selfish enough to have you as long as I did.” He smiles through the whisper. Not a happy or content smile, not one that brings you comfort, not one that blossoms a warmth in your chest. It’s one that takes your heart right out of your chest and squeezes it so painfully that you cannot breathe. “We can find another Siren. There are always others out there but this? This could be your only chance to have a normal and peaceful life.”

“I don’t want it. I don’t want normal or peaceful, I don’t want to go.”

“I think that deep down in your heart, you know that this is what you want. What you’ve always wanted. A chance to be free of expectations and pain. I would do anything to give you that opportunity, yet maybe Hongjoong and I are meant for each other simply because of what we are at the end of the day. Scourge of the Black Sea and the Lieutenant of Death. San told me that you have pardon papers. You can use those to clear you—”

“But they aren’t for me! They aren’t for me. I don’t want – I don’t deserve to be the one who is pardoned. What makes me more deserving than the man who died for me?”

“Oh, darling, if you could see yourself through my eyes, you would know that you are the most deserving person in the universe.” Seonghwa cups your cheek so gently, with such care, and holds you as though you are delicate and precious. “I know my fate, Y/N. It is to die amongst the black sea at my captain’s side. I do not think that is meant to be your fate though.” If you could possibly cry any harder than you are, you truly would. It is hard enough to breathe as it is, sobs continuing to tumble from your lips as Seonghwa keeps on holding you in the palm of his hand. “I’m sorry. I would do anything for you, but I cannot force you to stay. That is the one thing I cannot bring myself to do.”

You crash your lips against Seonghwa’s in a mess of salty tears and saliva, teeth clashing with his, but he’s right there with you, gasping into your mouth as a quiet sob slips through his previously unbroken visage. There is no more strength left in your body. You don’t have it in you to continue the kiss, and you can barely keep your eyes open at this point. When Seonghwa pulls his mouth away from yours, you can’t even chase him for another kiss, letting him slip a hand behind your head and tuck you into his shoulder. Hot breath ghosts down the back of your neck. You cling to it as desperately as you can like it’s the last bit of warmth you will ever be able to have from him, even though you know deep down that that is not true. He carries you into a deep sleep like that, and it is a sleep that awakens new dreams in you with new and haunting implications to them that you won’t be able to explain come morning.

…

Panic surges through your veins, startling you into a state of consciousness, but when your eyes open you can only see dark shadows in your vision. You aren’t alone. You know that much thanks to the steady sounds of breathing around you – at least two people with you, wherever it is you are. There is a strange sensation about your body, one that you recognize from your previous visit to the Dreamscape, but you cannot see well enough to stare down at your body and figure out what it is. Two shaky hands dart up to your neck, clasping around something terribly cold and metal. It’s a collar of sorts, and it refuses to budge even a centimeter as you try to yank at it.

A finger slips under the ridge of the metal. You brush over the cold skin there only to find a blossoming scar across your neck, one that spreads no matter how far you move your hand along the collar. You jerk your hand out from under it with a growing feeling of disgust churning in your stomach.

In the very least, your eyes are starting to adjust to the darkness, and you can make out the two figures with you. One sits off in the furthest corner of whatever cell you’re being held in. Broad shoulders slumped forward and showing unconsciousness, but you can detect the faintest scent of blood coming from him. The other is closer to you, only an arm’s length away from you, but his head faces away from you so you can’t make out any of his features.

You dare to reach out to him, forcing your tired muscles into action as you drag yourself closer to him. Even through the darkness, your hands look far too masculine to belong to you, but you hardly have time to think about that when you pull the man to face you.

A strip of white in his hair. Unmistakable features, even in the dark.

San.

You stumble back with a gasp, head hitting the metal wall behind you so hard that your vision goes spotty for several seconds. You still can’t see straight as you force yourself towards the other man in the corner. Hands fumble over his collar, jerking and pulling until his head falls forward into your waiting hands. Fluttering lashes pull his eyes open. Red eyes. Close-cut hair on the sides, blood trickling down the side of his temple.

Mingi.

You lose all control of your body — if you can even call it your body. Something else takes over, something pushes its way forward and assumes full control when Mingi fully comes to and squints at you. Off to the side, San is waking up as well, a soft grunt falling from his lips that has the body you’re in darting back over to where he’s hunched.

“San, are you okay?” The words aren’t yours. The voice is foreign but not quite, only odd because it feels like it is coming from your lips.

You can remember it now. The face in the water was not your own. It was Wooyoung’s. You remember it oh so clearly because it scared you so much the moment you saw it. You were in the Dreamscape yet you were in Wooyoung’s body.

San blinks himself to full consciousness, squinting harshly through the dark to look at you better.

“Wooyoung?”

✧✧✧ a/n: hi yes welcome. welcome. to the finale of act four. welcome yes wow can you believe it? i can’t um yeah so !!! a TON happened! let me know what you think, how you feel, how much you hate me! i love to see it! that ending tho 👁👁

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